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21: You Rolled 38

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From relay FM it's Upgrade episode number 21.

00:00:12   Today's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by lynda.com where you can instantly

00:00:16   stream thousands of courses created by industry experts.

00:00:19   For a 10-day free trial visit lynda.com/upgrade.

00:00:23   Squarespace. Start here, go anywhere. Mailroute. A secure hosted email service

00:00:28   for protection from viruses and spam and Stamps.com,

00:00:31   postage on demand. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined as always

00:00:36   by the one and only Mr. Jason Snow. Hi Myke, how's it going?

00:00:40   I'm good PowerSlider, how are you? Oh I'm doing great. I did,

00:00:43   I sent you guys a picture of me listening to Connected

00:00:47   while driving past one infinite loop in Cupertino last week, that was just for

00:00:51   you. It was, that was old school, kicking it

00:00:54   I was power sliding through the loop, as we do.

00:00:57   It's the only way to roll.

00:01:00   So we have a big show today.

00:01:01   Big show, lots of stuff.

00:01:03   We have lots of...

00:01:04   I'm looking at the document right now, and we have a whole series worth of follow-up.

00:01:09   Yeah.

00:01:10   But we have a little special thing that we're gonna do...

00:01:12   At the end.

00:01:13   At the end today.

00:01:14   So last week...

00:01:15   I'll tease it for now.

00:01:17   Last week, we were talking about the Holocaust Cloak.

00:01:20   Yes.

00:01:21   Which is a reference to the Princess Bride.

00:01:23   Indeed.

00:01:24   horrified to find out that I have not seen The Princess Bride. So I watched The Princess

00:01:29   Bride yesterday and we're going to talk about it today.

00:01:31   Yes, so stay tuned till the end if you want to hear that.

00:01:36   So should we kick it off with some good old-fashioned follow-up?

00:01:38   Yeah, let's do the follow-up. I had one quick bit of follow-up from Lister Michael about

00:01:45   Marco Marketing, which is from a couple of shows ago, but I wanted to pass this along

00:01:52   because the idea here is, you know, yes, Marco is, Marco Armet is high profile, but he's

00:01:57   also putting himself out there and becoming high profile. And I think the argument I made

00:02:02   was that 21st century marketing, that's part of the deal. That's not cheating. That's part

00:02:07   of the deal. So Lister Michael wrote in and said, "I'm in the process of changing jobs

00:02:11   for the second time in almost exactly a year. I'm going from a pretty good to a great one.

00:02:14   And I can partly lay that on the fact that I was willing to do something in public and

00:02:18   be a professional about it. I'm an iOS developer, and most of the openings understandably want

00:02:22   to see candidates who have an app they can point to in the app store to even be considered.

00:02:26   I don't really get to do that because I used to work for the government making interactive

00:02:30   training and the job I'm just winding down is an enterprise app for sales reps and managers.

00:02:34   In theory I could make an app in my free time, but trying to put the effort to make an app

00:02:37   that I consider worth releasing is daunting. So last year I set writing at least one blog

00:02:42   post a week in a professional voice and stuck with it. I'm nearing almost a full year of

00:02:47   of posts without missing a week now,

00:02:48   and it's lucky to break 20 page views on a good week.

00:02:51   Some weeks it feels like pulling teeth to write anything,

00:02:53   other weeks it goes well.

00:02:54   The thing that amazed me is when I decided to apply

00:02:56   to a handful of the very best iOS developer shops

00:02:58   in my area, right around the one year mark

00:03:00   of starting my new job,

00:03:01   both because I wanted a change of culture

00:03:04   from my current job and to see if I was good enough,

00:03:06   I got an interview at my number one choice,

00:03:08   which I had gotten a form letter rejection from a year ago.

00:03:11   In the interview, three of the four interviewers

00:03:14   mentioned checking my blog, which I put on my resume under contact info and in a positive

00:03:19   light as they had skimmed it over before the interview to get a feel for me.

00:03:22   Even more surprisingly, one of them skipped the technical portion of the interview because

00:03:25   of it and instead focused much more on the cultural process section.

00:03:29   The blog probably isn't the whole story.

00:03:31   Not being a relocation hire probably made me a lot more appealing and I've done a whole

00:03:34   lot of professional development in the last year, but I'm convinced it helped get me in

00:03:37   the door.

00:03:38   So yeah, being willing to put yourself out there has value, even if you're not remotely

00:03:43   popular, listener Michael. Thank you. I just thought that was a great story.

00:03:48   I think that, like, I enjoy reading this as well, because it's a good--I think it's good

00:03:53   to show these days that you have the ability to do other things, you know?

00:03:58   Yeah, yeah, and that you're serious about. I mean, this is--I think we might have talked

00:04:03   about this on an earlier show, I know I've talked about it on a podcast somewhere, that

00:04:07   when I hired somebody, when I would interview people at IDG, especially for junior editor

00:04:12   jobs. I would ask them about things like if they were straight out of college or recently

00:04:17   out of college, what they did in college in terms of writing and editing. And, you know,

00:04:22   it was a check to see how committed they were to this as a profession. And if they said,

00:04:27   "Well, you know, I wrote papers for my English classes," I was much less impressed than if

00:04:31   they said, "Oh, well, I worked on the student newspaper and I started this online journal

00:04:35   and I did this other thing," because that's a sign. That's a sign that this is somebody

00:04:39   who takes this area, this business, this profession seriously. And I think listener Michael is

00:04:46   doing that here where he's saying, he's not even raising his profile necessarily as he's

00:04:51   putting himself out there and demonstrating his commitment. And I think that's a big deal.

00:04:58   And I think it's something people look for in interviews. That checks a box. That's like,

00:05:03   oh, this person is serious about this,

00:05:05   has something to commend themselves.

00:05:08   I think it's very valuable if you're trying

00:05:11   to hire somebody to look at something like that.

00:05:14   - My brother's in university,

00:05:16   and he would like to do journalism one day.

00:05:19   That's what he's interested in.

00:05:22   And he's really interested in sports journalism.

00:05:24   So he's done some stuff,

00:05:27   like he wrote for a couple of websites,

00:05:29   but I'm always really, really pushing him

00:05:32   to have his own blog because whenever he applies for internships or any kind of like small

00:05:39   position somewhere or writing programs they all just want to see examples of his work

00:05:45   and the best place to do that is to just have a blog and it's like what I kind of take it

00:05:49   back to how I got started doing this stuff.

00:05:52   I just had a podcast I did every week and I showed up every week and just got better

00:05:55   over time and you can kind of practice in obscurity in a way because it's very rare

00:06:01   that you'll put something onto the internet and all of a sudden all of the internet find

00:06:06   out about it on day one.

00:06:08   But it allows you to hone your skills and to practice.

00:06:11   So if you have any sort of interest in anything technology related, I'm assuming that you

00:06:19   like it.

00:06:20   If you want to have a job in it or anything that you're interested in, if you want a job

00:06:24   in a certain field that is a passion of yours, get a blog about it and write about it or

00:06:30   do a podcast about it.

00:06:31   - Yeah, showing passion for the subject

00:06:35   that is also what you want to have be your profession

00:06:38   is generally a really good sign.

00:06:40   It's a good sign for people who are hiring you

00:06:42   and it's a good sign for people who want,

00:06:44   you know, who are colleagues

00:06:45   or potential future colleagues that,

00:06:47   oh, this is somebody who's got enthusiasm

00:06:48   and wants to talk about this stuff.

00:06:50   And it makes a difference

00:06:51   and it's not necessarily a calculation of like,

00:06:53   score them from one to 10 on enthusiasm.

00:06:56   But it just, it's,

00:06:59   The fact is that most of the other people in that industry

00:07:01   are enthusiastic about that too.

00:07:02   And seeing your enthusiasm about it makes a connection too.

00:07:08   So yeah, I thought-- anyway, I thought

00:07:10   it was really great feedback.

00:07:12   And it was a hole that I didn't expect this podcast to go down.

00:07:16   But it's actually been kind of a very interesting place

00:07:19   to go, this idea that in this modern era,

00:07:23   There's a perception of what deserved success looks like.

00:07:28   And then we throw a lot of things away

00:07:35   that are actually a huge part of whether something

00:07:37   is succeeding or failing and you can't ignore it.

00:07:39   And this was just another example of something.

00:07:41   This is a site that nobody read.

00:07:43   But the people who needed to read it read it

00:07:46   and it made a difference and that's cool.

00:07:48   It's good to know.

00:07:49   - I'm gonna be a good brother, Jason,

00:07:51   and get my brothers.

00:07:52   I'm going to put his site in the show notes today.

00:07:56   Good for you.

00:07:59   Scoring some good brotherly love points there, I think.

00:08:02   Well done.

00:08:03   Let's move on.

00:08:04   What else do we have today?

00:08:05   Oh, so much feedback about pens and tablet computing.

00:08:10   Do you wish you'd never said anything?

00:08:11   No, no I don't.

00:08:14   I think this gives me perspective.

00:08:16   I will point out up front that when I brought up this subject, the very first thing I said

00:08:20   is I hate pens and can't write and don't like styluses because I don't like pens and pencils

00:08:29   and writing things out longhand. I'm really bad at it. My handwriting is illegible. I

00:08:34   don't enjoy it. I would much rather type notes. But I did profess a skepticism from seeing

00:08:42   pen-based computing technologies in the past. And we had a really interesting spectrum of

00:08:47   responses from people about their experience with pen input and tablet computers. So I'm

00:08:56   going to run a bunch of it down. Really, hopefully really quickly, but probably not. Okay, here

00:09:03   we go. So listener Alec wrote in and said notability changed the game for him. Beside

00:09:10   the benefit of syncing with the cloud and audio recording, he said there were some key

00:09:14   features copy and paste not just for text but for drawn figures this is

00:09:17   something that I think you might have mentioned briefly this idea that that if

00:09:22   you're if you're taking notes on something that requires figures or that

00:09:26   requires little pictures things like that having that available and being able

00:09:31   to kind of copy and paste it it's not something you can type you have to write

00:09:35   you have to write that down so so we listed that colors didn't need multiple

00:09:41   Pen's laying around on a small pullout desk. Sorry, Myke, but I could change the color

00:09:45   later if I wanted to. Easier to tap a swatch and change the color than physically drop

00:09:50   and regrip a new pen. "Hey dude, I missed class. Can you send me the notes?" Share sheet. Boom.

00:09:57   That's good. And he said, "Notability subtly tweaks your strokes and I found that made

00:10:01   my handwriting and figures look better." So I thought that was interesting. Notability

00:10:05   listener Troy wrote in to say, "For most undergraduate students, tech needs are driven by two things,

00:10:13   cost and reliability, and it's going to be a long time before any type of digital note-taking

00:10:17   technology beats pen and paper on either of those. By far the most common note-taking

00:10:21   technology used in my classes is pen and paper. That said, I see students take notes on just

00:10:25   about every sort of device except pen input tablet. I've actually seen students two thumb-type

00:10:30   notes on a phone, something I wouldn't have thought possible. Those students are going

00:10:34   to fail, by the way.

00:10:35   [laughter]

00:10:36   You think?

00:10:37   I can type pretty quickly.

00:10:39   No, they're probably fine.

00:10:40   That was my initial thought, was they're not the best students, but they are trying to

00:10:45   get something down on their phone.

00:10:47   No, it may be.

00:10:49   I like listener Troy's point here, which is he thought it impossible, but hey, if it works

00:10:55   for them, then that's great.

00:10:57   So here's my question to you.

00:10:59   Yeah.

00:11:00   Would you think that someone would fail if they were typing on a keyboard on a laptop

00:11:03   their notes.

00:11:04   No, my concern is just that, I mean, we don't have any judgment here about how good these

00:11:10   students are.

00:11:12   They could either be great phone typers or they could be people who just like couldn't

00:11:17   find their pen and need to take a couple notes, but it's not very good.

00:11:22   If I was taking notes on a phone, that would be bad.

00:11:26   But they could also be just geniuses who are great at taking notes on the phone.

00:11:31   that could be just a purely generational shift. I feel way faster on the iPhone.

00:11:38   Like, I feel it. Whether I am or not, like, I feel like I'm a faster typer on the

00:11:42   iPhone than I am on the on the Mac. Wow. I should do some sort of test. I don't

00:11:50   even understand. I can't even understand what you're saying, Myke. Are you speaking

00:11:53   English anymore? Have you lapsed into some other words you're using? Not words

00:11:58   that I understand. Is this, has the Atlantic Ocean separated us again? Oh no, okay.

00:12:03   Listen, Troy goes on to say, "I see a variety of Mac and Windows laptops,

00:12:08   occasional iPad, a handful of Surface devices. I've seen some live scribe pens." Live scribe is

00:12:13   that thing that records audio and, but you know, but he asked students if they use the audio and

00:12:18   they say they thought they would, but they never do. But here's the key point from Listen to Troy.

00:12:22   "If I can go a little professory on you for a bit, most of the time the tech gets in the way.

00:12:25   The purpose of class notes is to provide something for your memory to latch onto so you can remember

00:12:30   the material, not to produce a verbatim transcript.

00:12:33   An aside from me, Jason, we used to have a lecture note service when I was in college

00:12:38   and the whole...and sometimes what they'll do is, even now, is sometimes professors will

00:12:45   record their lectures and post them as podcasts.

00:12:47   The idea is, you know, if verbatim...don't do a lot of work to generate the verbatim.

00:12:52   It's like trying to do a verbatim transcript of an Apple event.

00:12:55   It's like, you know what?

00:12:56   They're gonna post the video.

00:12:57   You can get the verbatim transcript later.

00:12:59   Take the important notes, get the highlights here.

00:13:01   And this is what he's saying is,

00:13:03   verbatim transcript is not the objective.

00:13:06   The key, he goes on to say,

00:13:08   is to have as close to a friction-free environment

00:13:10   for that as you can.

00:13:11   Note-taking is as much about the process

00:13:13   as it is the result.

00:13:14   Having to quickly summarize the material

00:13:16   and reshape it in a way that makes sense to the note-taker

00:13:18   is a large part of it.

00:13:19   For people like Jason, who type, that's me,

00:13:21   100 words per minute, that probably means a laptop

00:13:23   with a good keyboard for a majority of my students,

00:13:25   the note-taking method with the least friction

00:13:27   and least distraction from the task at hand

00:13:29   to still pen and paper,

00:13:30   and I don't see that changing for many years yet."

00:13:33   Listener Troy.

00:13:34   So thank you for that.

00:13:35   I would say actually, as a college student,

00:13:37   I was not, even when I got a laptop in grad school,

00:13:42   typing to take notes was not something that I did.

00:13:45   And the only time I type to take notes now

00:13:47   and type quickly is when I am trying to get quotes down

00:13:51   because if I'm doing an interview or something like that,

00:13:56   where there is no transcript

00:13:57   and I need to get the direct quotes,

00:13:59   I will type because I can type down

00:14:01   what they're saying really fast.

00:14:02   But in general, I prefer much shorter notes.

00:14:05   Like Troy says, I'm really trying to hit the highlights

00:14:08   and give myself, and give my memory,

00:14:10   like he says, something to latch onto.

00:14:12   And there's other feedback we got,

00:14:16   not all of it in our document here, that was very similar,

00:14:19   which is the point to having notes is more a process

00:14:24   that leads to you pondering the information

00:14:27   and filtering it and attaching it

00:14:29   and it's part of the learning process.

00:14:30   Not, you're not a court recorder,

00:14:33   you're not writing down a transcript

00:14:35   of everything that's said.

00:14:36   Listener Gary wrote in to say,

00:14:39   "Regarding note taking on the iPad,

00:14:41   "I prefer it over pen and paper

00:14:42   "for the same reason I prefer reading books on the iPad.

00:14:45   "I can have all my notes with me.

00:14:46   "I can have other documents that I need

00:14:48   for a meeting on the iPad and mark them up with notes. So that's a fair point.

00:14:52   I think the interesting thing about this feedback, and we do have some more, is how much we received.

00:14:58   I was surprised how much came through. I have strong feelings about this topic, and I think

00:15:05   you do too, but it didn't necessarily mean for me that I thought we were going to get

00:15:11   this much feedback about it. Just because we have opinions doesn't mean

00:15:14   that anyone else cares at all about what we care about.

00:15:19   I think of all of the things we've spoken about, this may be by word count the most

00:15:25   feedback we've ever received. Lots of long emails about this.

00:15:29   Not handwritten, I'll point out. There should be. Well, we're waiting, you

00:15:33   know. Post takes a little bit longer than email, so we're waiting for the handwritten

00:15:37   stuff to come through. We do have a sponsor break I would like to

00:15:42   take now, Jason, if that is okay before we continue the rest of the follow-up for today.

00:15:46   All right, epic follow-up. You know it's epic when there's a sponsor break in the middle

00:15:49   of it.

00:15:51   It's already February. What are you waiting for? Invest in yourself this year and start

00:15:55   learning something new at lynda.com with a 10-day free trial for listeners of Upgrade.

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00:16:37   lynda.com you can do that.

00:16:39   Maybe you want to learn a little bit about marketing online to help with your business

00:16:42   or website, which goes back to what we were talking about a little earlier.

00:16:45   You want to improve some skills in something that you love and you set up a blog.

00:16:50   These guys at lynda.com, they can help you out with that.

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00:17:04   in.

00:17:05   Listen yourself today and sign up for a free 10-day trial to lynda.com by visiting lynda.com/upgrade.

00:17:12   That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash upgrade.

00:17:16   Go ahead, I challenge you to learn something new.

00:17:18   Thank you so much to lynda.com for supporting this show and all of Relay FM.

00:17:22   - All right, again not handwritten.

00:17:25   This comes from a good, good friend of the show.

00:17:28   It's Upgrading Tony.

00:17:30   This is Tony Sindelar from various Uncomfortable podcasts.

00:17:35   This is not about Dungeons and Dragons though.

00:17:37   Tony is in academia.

00:17:38   He says, "I would say that students have overwhelmingly moved to doing note-taking electronically,

00:17:41   whether typed on a laptop or inked on a tablet, just as faculty have overwhelmingly moved

00:17:45   from chalk talk to PowerPoint.

00:17:48   Inking with an iPad or Surface does have a lot of advantages for note-taking, especially

00:17:51   diagrams, symbols, concept mapping, but we still aren't there yet in terms of ease of

00:17:55   use of the tools.

00:17:56   So I guess I agree with Jason's skepticism.

00:17:59   People in education have been hoping for crazy new improvements that will fix everything,

00:18:03   but it keeps not being here regardless of the latest vendor trying to push something.

00:18:06   I remember a pre-iPad era associate provost lobbying for all first-year students at a

00:18:10   large state school to be required to buy one of those clunky expensive Windows XP-based

00:18:15   tablets.

00:18:16   So Tony—interesting points because he's saying electronic note-taking is predominant

00:18:24   now but that he's skeptical about whether the tools are just good enough yet, which

00:18:31   is sort of where I am is I don't dispute that this could be great. I just am a

00:18:35   little bit skeptical about whether people who are writing and saying "oh yes

00:18:38   I use digital link for note-taking" whether they're doing that despite it

00:18:43   being clunky or because it's just not it's just super awesome and I need to

00:18:48   get a rush out and get a stylus and start writing everything. That's never

00:18:53   gonna happen. It's never gonna happen.

00:18:57   This makes me think of that Surface Hub, you know, like the digital kind of note-taking type thing.

00:19:03   Oh yeah.

00:19:04   Yeah, because you know it's like that sort of idea, right?

00:19:07   Everything's better if it's on a screen instead, but none of these things have really caught on.

00:19:12   I remember in school we had smart boards, they were called, where basically the teachers could...

00:19:25   They were kind of like projected screens.

00:19:28   It was weird. It was like it was a whiteboard,

00:19:30   but they would write on them with these pens that didn't actually write on the board.

00:19:33   It just created something that was projected onto them.

00:19:35   But very often, the projector was turned off and they just used the whiteboard.

00:19:40   Yeah. We had one that was...

00:19:43   It was a real whiteboard, but you used these pens with special little stickers on them.

00:19:47   And the idea was that it was recording everything that was written up on the whiteboard,

00:19:51   and you could play that back later.

00:19:54   But yeah, it didn't. I don't know. I mean, the world, this is one of the reasons why I think I

00:19:59   bring more skepticism to this than a lot of the listeners is because I've been in this, I've been,

00:20:05   this is one of those areas where my, my, I've lost my childlike enthusiasm for technology

00:20:10   that I, I, that I keep in other areas. I have lots of areas where I'm very enthusiastic about

00:20:15   new technology. This is one of those where I've been disappointed so many times that I, I now have,

00:20:22   I view it much more cynically.

00:20:24   I can't tell you, it's been like 15 or 20 years

00:20:26   that people have been saying,

00:20:28   we're gonna change how people take notes.

00:20:29   And I just, I remain quite skeptical that it's good enough.

00:20:34   Not that it doesn't have advantages,

00:20:35   but that is it good enough?

00:20:36   Is it, and maybe that's,

00:20:38   and we were originally talking about Apple doing a stylus.

00:20:41   I mean, maybe that is what, you know,

00:20:43   Apple is trying to do here is can we make something

00:20:45   that is good enough for Apple standards?

00:20:47   'Cause boy, if Apple comes out with a stylus

00:20:49   and it's lame, then that's not good.

00:20:52   So I have two more pieces of feedback here

00:20:55   about this issue that I wanna get to

00:20:57   'cause so many people wrote in.

00:20:59   Listener Dave writes in,

00:21:01   "My previous two laptops were Windows tablets.

00:21:03   Much of my work involves being onsite

00:21:05   with clients and their environments.

00:21:06   I'm mostly on the normal work floor rather than in meetings.

00:21:09   When you're sitting next to someone's desk,

00:21:10   I find writing notes much easier than typing.

00:21:12   You can sit in what is for me a much more natural position.

00:21:16   You can also make notes standing up.

00:21:17   As Myke said, the notes are automatically backed up.

00:21:19   My tool of choice was OneNote synced via Dropbox.

00:21:22   Therefore, I have all my notes instantly accessible.

00:21:25   My handwriting's pretty awful.

00:21:26   Yay, me too.

00:21:28   But it's important to remember software

00:21:29   to understand handwriting has a much easier job

00:21:31   when it knows the strokes you used

00:21:33   as opposed to trying to OCR a random scrawl.

00:21:35   This is a really good point.

00:21:36   From my initial use in 2004,

00:21:38   the recognition was very impressive

00:21:39   and improved with new Windows versions.

00:21:41   I never formally converted my notes.

00:21:43   OneNote just made them searchable.

00:21:44   Combined with OneNote's fuzzy searching,

00:21:46   it was very rare for searches to fail.

00:21:48   In fact, it felt like it was sometimes better

00:21:49   at reading my handwriting than I was.

00:21:51   I thought that was good feedback.

00:21:53   That's some positive words about Windows tablets.

00:21:57   And finally on this topic, Upgrader Darcy wrote in

00:22:00   and said, "I really enjoy this show,

00:22:03   "especially when you two disagree.

00:22:04   "In that vein, allow me to take issue

00:22:08   "with something that Myke said."

00:22:09   (laughing)

00:22:11   I deleted all feedback that disagreed with me.

00:22:15   So every feature that people think they need,

00:22:18   whether they need it or not,

00:22:19   if they think they need it and then Microsoft's doing it,

00:22:22   that's a potential sale that you lose to Microsoft.

00:22:24   This is something that you've said on the last show.

00:22:26   I think that's accurate.

00:22:27   And what Darcy says is,

00:22:28   "Isn't this the opposite of what made Apple so successful?

00:22:30   Apple's products are typically less feature rich

00:22:33   than its competitors.

00:22:34   Instead, Apple focuses on certain core functionality,

00:22:37   making the product as easy

00:22:38   and as enjoyable to use as possible."

00:22:40   Darcy goes on, "I've been an Apple user since '96

00:22:43   and have been with a company through the darkest times."

00:22:44   that's true, I can verify that.

00:22:46   While I'm elated that Apple's been so successful,

00:22:48   I'm terrified its success will cause the company

00:22:50   to lose focus and to try to fill

00:22:52   every product niche imaginable.

00:22:54   I'm not saying that a stylus is necessarily a bad idea.

00:22:57   It may be part of a focused, well thought out strategy

00:22:59   for the iPad, but focus is key and it is so easily lost

00:23:02   when a company continually breaks its own sales records

00:23:05   quarter after quarter.

00:23:06   Okay, that doesn't apply to recent iPad sales, but still.

00:23:09   In this, I am in complete agreement with Steve.

00:23:12   Steve who?

00:23:13   Oh, Steve Jobs, right.

00:23:14   when he said, "Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.

00:23:18   In light of the recent,

00:23:19   Apple is losing the functional high ground discussion."

00:23:22   Hi Marco.

00:23:23   "It is perhaps more important than ever

00:23:25   that Apple focus on core functionality

00:23:26   and making sure it's hard earned,

00:23:28   it just works, reputation isn't tarnished any further."

00:23:31   Any thoughts about that?

00:23:32   About how wrong you were, Myke?

00:23:33   Any apologies to Upgrader Darcy?

00:23:36   - Yes, 'cause I don't think I am wrong.

00:23:38   So my feeling on this is I agree

00:23:42   that that is how Apple was.

00:23:45   I don't think it's where Apple will be like into the future.

00:23:48   I think that Apple are trying to attract different markets now.

00:23:54   They have a lot more of a focus on the Asian markets than they

00:24:01   did before which is probably a really good reason for why the

00:24:04   iPhones got bigger. And I think it's if they do a stylus I think

00:24:08   that's another reason for why they've done that.

00:24:10   I do believe that if Apple wants to grow,

00:24:13   they have to start doing things like this.

00:24:15   They have to start going for the features

00:24:18   that other people have to attract the other customers.

00:24:20   And I just see that that is a path that they may take.

00:24:24   I agree it's not the one that they have had before,

00:24:27   but I think it's the one

00:24:28   that they could start to take going forward.

00:24:30   That's my own personal opinion.

00:24:33   - All right.

00:24:33   - My punditry.

00:24:34   - I guess, I don't think either of these approaches

00:24:40   is wrong. I think what I would say is Apple is trying to reach different markets. That's

00:24:46   absolutely true. I do feel like that Apple, look, if all Apple was concerned about was

00:24:52   checking a feature box in a list of features, then they would have had an Apple stylus available

00:25:01   for a phone and tablet years ago. So there is a line that Apple needs to cross, a bar

00:25:08   they need to clear. That is, you know, we've got a story with this, that it's good

00:25:14   enough for us. It meets our--I don't mean it good enough in a negative way, I mean

00:25:18   like it meets our standards. Below this point we can't ship it. That bar

00:25:24   may change depending on the market, but I do think it is there, and I think

00:25:28   that's sort of what Darcy is saying here is--

00:25:30   Yeah, that makes sense.

00:25:32   --is it needs to--you can't just throw a pen out there because other people have pens, and they

00:25:37   haven't right they Samsung has been waving that stylus in Apple's face for

00:25:42   years and Apple's done nothing yeah it's a it's like taunting them look at the

00:25:47   stylus the s-pen is here and nothing so when if Apple does come out with

00:25:54   something that would be an interesting moment because what they're saying is

00:25:57   now we've got a story to tell now we've got a product that meets our standards

00:26:01   and what's that going to be and the software and the hardware need to be

00:26:05   good enough to make that something.

00:26:08   'Cause otherwise, if it's good enough now,

00:26:10   if everything is good enough now,

00:26:11   then why doesn't Apple have that product?

00:26:13   I think that's the argument is,

00:26:14   it may be good enough for some people now,

00:26:16   but it seems to not be good enough for Apple,

00:26:18   'cause Apple is content to not upgrade their digitizer

00:26:21   and not come out with its own pen

00:26:23   that kicks all the other pens out of the market.

00:26:26   So what makes that change?

00:26:28   And what's the thing that pushes them to do that?

00:26:30   And maybe it's just to find a reason for an iPad Pro

00:26:34   for being, maybe it's just we need reasons

00:26:37   why we would sell this thing,

00:26:39   but that's troubling in its own way, if that's the case.

00:26:42   I don't know, but I think, yeah,

00:26:45   I think it'll be interesting to see.

00:26:46   This is one of those things that's very,

00:26:49   the answer to this, what happens here,

00:26:51   will give us an interesting data point

00:26:53   on where Apple is right now

00:26:54   in terms of its product philosophy in 2015.

00:26:58   If it does this, that'll be fascinating to see.

00:27:02   And I will try some note-taking app at some point here

00:27:06   against my better judgment because I don't like pens

00:27:10   just to get a better idea

00:27:11   of what the current experience is like,

00:27:12   at least on the iPad, I don't have a surface to try out.

00:27:16   But, all right, that's follow-up.

00:27:20   Yay.

00:27:22   - Time for follow-out.

00:27:24   - Time for some follow-out.

00:27:25   We should mention #AskUpgrade on Twitter.

00:27:28   You can go to Relay FM

00:27:30   and send feedback via the feedback form.

00:27:33   That works too.

00:27:34   And you can be a part of follow up.

00:27:36   We love to hear from you.

00:27:37   Follow out, I just wanted to mention Connected24 this week.

00:27:41   This was your big, and I mean big,

00:27:45   it's like three hours long podcast

00:27:48   where you break down the iPad launch.

00:27:50   - Yeah, it was quite an undertaking.

00:27:54   People may have been familiar with the prompt episode 30

00:27:59   where we did this for the iPhone.

00:28:00   The difference being from a production perspective,

00:28:05   this time we went back a bit further as well

00:28:07   and we looked at the run up to the iPad's introduction.

00:28:10   - Yeah, a lot of research.

00:28:11   - Yeah, Federico did some incredible research

00:28:14   and he took a look at kind of what the rumors

00:28:17   were like leading up.

00:28:18   And so we did that, then we did like the play by play

00:28:22   breakdown of the iPad introduction

00:28:26   and spoke about how we feel about the iPad.

00:28:28   So it was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it.

00:28:30   - Yeah, I liked it a lot.

00:28:32   I really enjoyed, I listened to that on my drive

00:28:34   down to Cupertino and back last week.

00:28:36   I was just visiting a friend, nothing secret,

00:28:39   just visiting a friend.

00:28:40   I've got more friends at Apple these days

00:28:43   'cause some of my former colleagues

00:28:45   are doing work at Apple now, so, but I can say no more.

00:28:48   It's not that exciting.

00:28:51   It's just, it's nice to go down there and visit with pals

00:28:55   who are inside the rainbow curtain now.

00:28:58   That's not a phrase.

00:29:00   - I like it though.

00:29:02   - I wanted to mention this mostly

00:29:05   because I wanted to tell a story

00:29:06   about when I went to the iPad event

00:29:08   related to our note-taking thing.

00:29:13   I think Dan Morin was live blogging it

00:29:17   and I was, or maybe I was live blogging it.

00:29:20   Anyway, you do that and when you're covering it

00:29:22   that intensely, you kind of miss, you miss seeing it.

00:29:26   You miss the, you lose the, you lose the big picture.

00:29:31   You don't see the forest for the trees

00:29:33   when you're covering an event like that.

00:29:34   So I will often watch an event video afterward.

00:29:37   So the later that day, or maybe the next day I'm home,

00:29:43   and I'm watching on my Apple TV,

00:29:46   I am watching the iPad launch on the TV.

00:29:50   on the TV.

00:29:52   And I don't realize that my son,

00:29:58   who was five at the time, is behind the couch

00:30:01   and is transfixed by this.

00:30:04   And it's a fond memory for me now

00:30:05   because he was exposed

00:30:08   to the untempered reality distortion field.

00:30:11   And I had that moment where I was like,

00:30:12   "Oh my God, he's been inside the RDF."

00:30:14   Because he doesn't usually see TV commercials,

00:30:18   he doesn't know. And now he's got Apple event, Steve Jobs just talking to him about how great

00:30:23   the iPad is. And it totally worked because for the next whatever, four months, he would

00:30:28   not stop talking about how we needed an iPad. He's like, "We need an iPad. We have to have

00:30:32   an iPad." This five-year-old kid, "We have to have an iPad. It does this. It does this.

00:30:36   Is the iPad out yet? When are we going to get an iPad? We have to get an iPad." And it

00:30:39   was amazing how powerful that event was, whatever, you know, 30-minute chunk of it he saw was

00:30:45   to him because he was completely enthralled and then could not stop talking about the

00:30:49   iPad. And you know flash forward 10 years and his favorite device is in fact an iPad

00:30:57   and he uses it all the time. So you know he's an iPad kid. Thanks Steve.

00:31:04   I love that. I mean that he was caught up in it. I feel like I was caught up in it as

00:31:09   well. Like I mentioned on the show I was watching the I was watching Steve through the intro

00:31:14   I was like, I should buy an iPad Air 2.

00:31:17   It'd be so amazing to read the New York Times.

00:31:20   And then I was able to break out of it

00:31:21   not too long after, thankfully.

00:31:23   But it will get ya.

00:31:26   - It's dangerous.

00:31:28   - It's very dangerous.

00:31:29   Right, we have completed follow up and out.

00:31:33   And we do have a couple of topics today.

00:31:35   So why don't we take a quick break here and jump right in.

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00:33:51   Squarespace.

00:33:52   Start here.

00:33:53   Go anywhere.

00:33:55   A website on the internet you said?

00:33:57   I have created a website on my computer that is not on the internet and here's the address.

00:34:02   MacintoshHD/sites/Jason'scoolwebsite/coolwebsitepage1_is-this-file.html

00:34:19   That sounds really good. I look forward to visiting that.

00:34:23   Yeah, check it out. It's not on the internet, but you can get to it on my hard drive.

00:34:27   I'll be right over.

00:34:28   Good.

00:34:28   (sighs)

00:34:31   We have topics now.

00:34:32   We should put a thing at the beginning of the show

00:34:34   that says, "If you would like to skip the follow-up,

00:34:38   please advance to 30 minutes in."

00:34:40   - We could make it like one of those

00:34:43   tech space adventure games.

00:34:45   - Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:34:48   You need to know the cheat code to get to the...

00:34:50   So here's the thing.

00:34:51   One of the reasons I'm excited about doing this show

00:34:55   every week is the follow-up.

00:34:57   I've thought a lot about the problems of doing—I think it's an advantage of these sequential

00:35:01   shows, shows that people listen to every week, is that it's telling an ongoing story and

00:35:07   the follow-up is—not only does that allow the listeners to interact, but it also means

00:35:12   that like sort of—there are these echoes that move through the episodes that as you

00:35:16   listen to them you're like, "Oh yeah, I remember that and they said this," and it all kind

00:35:19   of builds, and I think that's great.

00:35:20   I think one of the challenges with it is if you do 30 minutes of follow-up at the beginning

00:35:24   of the show. This is, I think, hypercritical I always felt this about, is I liked the follow-up,

00:35:29   and yet I also felt like you go back and you want to listen to the TiVo episode of hypercritical,

00:35:34   but you've got to go through 20 minutes of follow-up to get there, and it's follow-up

00:35:37   from shows that you haven't listened to in ages. So it hurts on that. It's not like instantly

00:35:44   accessible. You have to wait, or you have to just go through follow-up of things you

00:35:48   haven't heard. And, you know, we don't do anything incomparable for a bunch of reasons,

00:35:52   I always thought the way you could do it is just stick it all at the end, but the danger

00:35:57   there is that then you never get to it. So I don't know what the best... short of putting

00:36:02   in chapter marks, Myke, and that's not gonna happen.

00:36:05   I like the chronology of having the follow-up at the front, because it's leading on from

00:36:15   last time.

00:36:16   Well, like I said, that gives you, for regular listeners, I agree, I think that is the power

00:36:21   of it. I think that's, like I said, that's why I was excited to do this show in this

00:36:24   way is I listen to all these shows that have the follow-up at the beginning and I love

00:36:28   the follow-up at the beginning and the other shows that I do don't have it. So I like that

00:36:34   part of it but there's always that, the downside of it is that, you know, it's 30 minutes of

00:36:39   talk before you, you know, it's not like follow-up isn't topics, it's just in a context that

00:36:47   is lost if it's the first episode you listen to.

00:36:49   I don't know I totally get that because it makes logical sense but I've listened to

00:36:56   shows I've jumped into podcasts before and I've still drawn entertainment from

00:37:01   listening to the follow-up I don't know maybe I'm crazy but I'm assuming that

00:37:06   people well I know people don't go right back to the start and listen all the way

00:37:11   but we do get new people every week so all right

00:37:14   Rifola in the chat room suggests a follow-up sandwich so there's a term

00:37:18   that we need to copyright immediately and steal from Rifola. Follow-up sandwich would

00:37:22   be you start with a hot topic and then you move to follow-up and then you go on with

00:37:26   the rest of the stories. I don't know, that feels a little choppy too. There's no, that's

00:37:31   the beauty of this medium, this format is there's no right answer. We could try different

00:37:38   things. We moved Ask Upgrade to the end, so you know, or near the end. I mean the big

00:37:45   topic this week is Apple's huge results last week.

00:37:50   Yeah, they were huge.

00:37:54   That was a crazy thing the last Tuesday afternoon that Dan Morin and I were covering on Six

00:37:59   Colors.

00:38:01   You get to listen to Tim Cook talk, you get to listen to Luca, the CFO, talk about headwinds

00:38:08   and foreign financial transactions and hedging and things that I do not understand because

00:38:17   they are business and finance things. But you get Tim Cook dropping little tidbits here

00:38:21   and there about sort of, again, I love that stuff about why, you know, why does Apple,

00:38:25   what's it thinking? Why do they do what they do? What is their approach to this? And we

00:38:29   got and we got some of that. There was a good ask upgrade item that we put in here from

00:38:38   a listener whose name I did not translate,

00:38:40   'cause one of the problems with the Ask upgrade

00:38:43   is it just gives us the username.

00:38:44   It's David, it's listener David,

00:38:47   said, "How does Apple produce 34,000 iPhones an hour

00:38:52   and still be supply constrained

00:38:54   and ship them around the world?"

00:38:56   It's a good question.

00:38:59   Nine phones a second were sold in that three month span,

00:39:05   nine iPhones a second.

00:39:07   - Magic and robots.

00:39:09   - It is hard to imagine.

00:39:13   I mean, it's just, I said this,

00:39:15   I can't remember where I said this.

00:39:17   I think I said this somewhere,

00:39:18   but maybe not on this show.

00:39:20   It gets to the point, maybe it was on Clockwise,

00:39:22   it gets to the point where the numbers are hard

00:39:24   just for people to fathom.

00:39:26   It's like the law of large numbers that we talk about

00:39:30   is this idea that, I mean,

00:39:34   and people misuse the term law of large numbers,

00:39:36   But it's often used in terms of Apple in saying that at some point you're so big that you

00:39:40   can't get -- you can't grow much, you can't get much bigger because the number's just

00:39:44   too big to begin with.

00:39:46   This is sort of the argument about Facebook growth will eventually be constrained because

00:39:50   they will run out of human beings.

00:39:52   I think though when we talk about large numbers with Apple, sometimes the problem is it's

00:39:58   just hard for our brains to comprehend what it means that they made that many billions

00:40:02   of dollars and sold that many iPhones.

00:40:04   These are very large numbers.

00:40:06   They're outside of the scope of our day-to-day experience.

00:40:10   And when you look at the numbers too, you see how huge the iPhone is and it continues

00:40:14   to be bigger.

00:40:15   I mean, Apple is essentially iPhone incorporated with a nice side business of computers and

00:40:21   iPads and iTunes and Apple Pay.

00:40:25   But those are all like little cute little side businesses that on their own would be

00:40:29   big businesses, but the iPhone just dwarfs them and every other tech company in, and

00:40:37   maybe every other company in existence. It's hard to fathom.

00:40:44   How do you think Apple feel about having their company so iPhone heavy, and do you think

00:40:51   that it is a, or should be a concern to have one product line out of their maybe five or

00:40:58   or six product lines drive that amount,

00:41:01   that sort of percentage of revenue?

00:41:03   - It's a good problem to have.

00:41:06   I don't think anybody's going to turn down a product

00:41:10   that is that successful and profitable,

00:41:13   but I do think it's potentially distorting.

00:41:18   And I've been thinking about this

00:41:21   with regard to the Apple Watch.

00:41:24   The Apple Watch is a really interesting product, right?

00:41:28   But there are lots of interesting products

00:41:30   Apple could come up with.

00:41:31   In fact, Apple's got some interesting products,

00:41:33   not just the Mac and the iPad, but like the Apple TV.

00:41:37   And they say, "Well, are we looking at that?

00:41:38   "That's an area of interest."

00:41:40   But what's the Apple Watch?

00:41:42   The Apple Watch is an iPhone accessory.

00:41:45   It does not work without the iPhone.

00:41:47   It is an iPhone accessory.

00:41:49   And it may be very successful

00:41:52   as a really, really great iPhone accessory

00:41:54   because we know, I mean, looking at the other smartwatches

00:41:57   that are out there, the only one that really even works

00:41:59   with the iPhone is the Pebble, and as a Pebble user,

00:42:02   I can tell you it doesn't work that well.

00:42:04   They are sort of, it works despite the OS's issues

00:42:07   with the Pebble, not because of.

00:42:10   And so this thing is instantly going to be the,

00:42:16   not just a cool piece of hardware

00:42:19   and not just a fashion item,

00:42:20   but it's going to be really the only way you would interact

00:42:25   with a smartwatch and an iPhone because of that.

00:42:28   It's not just Apple's trademark hardware

00:42:31   and software integration, it's their hardware, software,

00:42:33   and accessory connectivity to other hardware and software.

00:42:38   It's this ecosystem integration on a really,

00:42:43   not like ecosystem like there's a Mac over there,

00:42:45   but it's like there's a watch and a phone

00:42:47   and they're connected together just perfectly, seamlessly.

00:42:50   This is the kind of product you make

00:42:54   when you have a product as huge as the iPhone.

00:42:57   The Apple Watch is exactly what kind of a product

00:43:04   a company makes when they are the iPhone company,

00:43:09   because it's an iPhone accessory.

00:43:12   And I'm not saying that's not gonna be

00:43:14   a really interesting product,

00:43:15   but I was just thinking about it this weekend.

00:43:19   It just, it feels,

00:43:20   if the iPhone was as successful as the iPad and the Mac,

00:43:25   the Apple Watch wouldn't be a thing, I think,

00:43:27   or it wouldn't be the thing that it is,

00:43:29   because you're only gonna sell it to a certain percentage

00:43:32   of the people who have iPhones.

00:43:34   And so you need this giant number

00:43:36   in order to justify making that product.

00:43:38   But they've got the giant number.

00:43:40   They've got the giant number.

00:43:42   What percentage of iPhone users need to buy an Apple Watch

00:43:44   to make the Apple Watch bigger than the iPad and the Mac.

00:43:47   There's a number and it's probably not that big.

00:43:49   (laughs)

00:43:51   Not in saying they'll get there,

00:43:52   but they could theoretically.

00:43:54   - It seems like that the margins might be quite high,

00:43:58   like if the rumored price is believed to be true, right?

00:44:02   'Cause they're charging kind of like

00:44:04   fashion accessory price lines, you know?

00:44:08   There is a potential, maybe not initially

00:44:10   'cause these things can be difficult to produce,

00:44:12   But eventually there could be at least some models

00:44:15   of the Apple Watch where the margins are quite good

00:44:17   on it for Apple, maybe.

00:44:20   - Yeah.

00:44:21   So without putting a value judgment on it,

00:44:27   I think the Apple Watch is a good example

00:44:29   of what is probably a distortion from,

00:44:32   again, I'm trying not to be negative about it.

00:44:34   I'm trying to say this is behavior that is changed

00:44:38   because the number that goes along with the iPhone

00:44:41   is so huge.

00:44:42   and Apple TV is a different product

00:44:45   and it's relying on Apple's ecosystem.

00:44:48   And yeah, iPhone is a part of that,

00:44:50   but it's the iTunes ecosystem

00:44:53   and Macs and iPads and other things.

00:44:55   And if you're prioritizing,

00:44:57   when the iPhone gets this big, I feel like,

00:45:01   any math you do about what kind of products

00:45:05   should you do next comes back to,

00:45:08   well, yeah, but look at this iPhone.

00:45:09   It's like, should we do more iPhones?

00:45:11   should we do things that we sell to iPhone users?

00:45:14   Because even if you sell a small percentage of,

00:45:19   sell a product to a small percentage of those users,

00:45:21   that number is just so large now that, you know,

00:45:25   it's, I don't think this is ever gonna happen,

00:45:27   but I think it's worth just as an exercise, ask yourself,

00:45:32   what would the decisions that an Apple

00:45:35   that just had the Mac and the iPad,

00:45:40   or the Mac, the iPad, and an iPhone that was at the same sales level as the Mac and the

00:45:45   iPad, they're roughly comparable in terms of revenue. What decisions would that company

00:45:49   make in terms of its product direction and development? And what decisions does the real

00:45:53   Apple make? And, you know, those decisions are going to be different, I think, because

00:45:59   I don't think it's a question of like, there's only one path forward. I think there's a question

00:46:02   of there are lots of paths forward, which paths do we choose to walk down? And how much

00:46:06   do energy do we invest in them? And the existence of the iPhone is this great success, you know,

00:46:12   that is going to lead you down those paths, the paths that are fed by and can feed the

00:46:18   iPhone. I think it benefits, ultimately, I do think the Mac and the iPad benefit to a

00:46:23   certain degree just because there's so much money, and it makes Apple successful, and

00:46:27   there's a halo around the iPhone that extends to those products. But, you know, at the same

00:46:32   time if you stand up and say, "Yeah, the iOS for iPads, you know, that interface and

00:46:37   software should be better," you may get a lot of agreement even inside Apple, even inside

00:46:43   the iOS development team that the iPad could be a better product, that iOS could be tuned

00:46:47   more for the iPad. At the same time, look at the numbers. What are you going to prioritize?

00:46:53   It's very difficult to prioritize the iPad ever, I think, when you look at the iPhone.

00:46:59   So it's a challenge.

00:47:01   It's fascinating to look at that number and try to imagine what that does to a company's

00:47:08   priorities.

00:47:09   Lester Jeff wrote in and related to this and said, "Has the iPhone become a little boring

00:47:15   into mainstream?

00:47:16   Is it time for Apple to do something with the next major model that either does something

00:47:20   interesting hardware or software wise?

00:47:22   I'd personally like them to incorporate some gesture-based maneuvers for app switching,

00:47:26   for example."

00:47:27   bad idea, Jeff, but I think what I would say is boring and boring mainstream when

00:47:34   it is this making this much money. Again, how motivated is Apple to do something

00:47:40   big that's like different? Other than wanting to improve things, but I think

00:47:45   there's also a feeling like why would you mess up the thing that's doing so

00:47:49   crazily well? And I guess this is one of those things that I always hear on ATP

00:47:53   that John Siracusa especially talks about, which is this, you know, the idea that success

00:47:59   hides a lot of problems. And I think this is one of those good examples, which is at

00:48:05   some point, if the iPhone really could make a step and be that much better, is there a

00:48:12   point at which Apple would be hesitant to do that because it's just too successful now?

00:48:19   I mean, the counterargument would be back in the day, and this is in Apple's DNA, I

00:48:22   really do believe is that the iPod mini was the biggest selling iPod and they killed it

00:48:27   and replaced it with the Nano because they thought it was better. And you would like

00:48:32   that to be part of this company's culture that they will not be afraid to make a big

00:48:37   change. But at the same time, they are not going to want to alienate their existing iPhone

00:48:43   audience. I don't know.

00:48:45   - Yeah, sure. - What do you think?

00:48:47   - I think boring and mainstream is a little harsh.

00:48:52   I don't think I would agree with that.

00:48:55   I think it's always good and fun to have new things,

00:48:59   but I don't, by kind of, I don't think necessarily

00:49:03   that gestures like the pre would then make the iPhone

00:49:08   not boring if your current concern is that it's boring.

00:49:11   I don't really, considering the phone

00:49:15   significantly changed form factor. Like I don't think you can get bigger than that.

00:49:20   - The six is a big thing. I wrote a piece on Macworld back in April of last year titled "Apple is not here to entertain you."

00:49:32   And it came out of a conversation I was having with Rene Ritchie over lunch in Petaluma, actually, after we did one of the Twitch shows.

00:49:40   And the idea is, yeah, I get it.

00:49:45   People want Apple to do new things,

00:49:46   but Apple's business is not to keep analysts and reporters

00:49:50   and even fans of technology entertained by new things.

00:49:55   That's not their job.

00:49:57   Their job is to make great products

00:49:59   and have a successful business.

00:50:01   And they do entertain us from time to time,

00:50:05   but their job is not to like,

00:50:08   'Cause it's like, you know,

00:50:09   we have this incredibly successful product.

00:50:11   Come on, that's boring.

00:50:12   You already had that product.

00:50:13   Give us a new product.

00:50:14   Like, no, we're gonna keep doing this good product

00:50:16   that we have.

00:50:17   Entertain, you know,

00:50:18   I get that it might not be as entertaining,

00:50:21   but it's incredibly successful and a popular product

00:50:24   and people like it.

00:50:25   And so that's okay.

00:50:28   As long as it isn't hiding problems.

00:50:31   You know, I would hate for Apple to bypass

00:50:33   a revolutionary change to the iPhone

00:50:35   because they don't need to bother.

00:50:38   but they seem to try very hard to not go down that path.

00:50:42   - Should we address something?

00:50:46   - Yeah, yeah, we should.

00:50:49   Well, I want one more point on this just really quickly,

00:50:52   which was I liked that Tim Cook talked about the iPad

00:50:55   and gave it his, and it's in my transcript

00:51:00   that I put on six colors about it

00:51:02   'cause I transcribed everything Tim Cook said.

00:51:05   I recorded and then I used those fast typing fingers

00:51:08   to get a transcript of everything Tim Cook said in the call.

00:51:13   And he makes his sort of impassioned defense of the iPad

00:51:15   and says, look, it's obviously the refresh cycle,

00:51:19   the buying cycle is not as rapid as it is for iPhones,

00:51:24   but he's a believer in the category.

00:51:26   I think it's interesting to watch that

00:51:27   because iPad sales were flat and they're flat.

00:51:31   iPad sales are flat.

00:51:32   So it's something to watch.

00:51:34   It's interesting to see that Apple's not backing away

00:51:38   from it in the sense that Tim Cook says that over time,

00:51:40   he believes that this is a fantastic category.

00:51:43   I also feel like the iPad is unfairly being compared

00:51:46   to the iPhone because smartphones

00:51:49   are just a different category.

00:51:50   Smartphones do not follow the same laws

00:51:52   as computers and tablets.

00:51:54   They don't.

00:51:55   It's much more, the iPad business is roughly

00:51:57   the Mac business at this point, which is not bad.

00:52:00   that's a good business to be in, but it's not the iPhone,

00:52:03   and it's not gonna be the iPhone.

00:52:05   So it's something that's worth watching,

00:52:07   but I do think it's worth people checking out

00:52:10   what Tim Cook said about the iPad,

00:52:11   because it's a statement about how they believe in it,

00:52:15   but that they're still learning what the issues are,

00:52:18   and how often people are gonna buy a new iPad,

00:52:21   because the iPads last, iPads last,

00:52:23   and there's no subsidy to drive you

00:52:24   to buy a new model every two years.

00:52:26   - That's totally it.

00:52:28   I think Apple in the long term, I believe,

00:52:31   will need to get accustomed to the fact

00:52:34   that people will upgrade their iPads

00:52:36   as frequently as they upgrade their Macs or PCs.

00:52:39   I think that that's the thing that they maybe hoped

00:52:45   wouldn't be the case, naturally.

00:52:47   But I think time is telling that that is kind of

00:52:51   the way people treat these devices.

00:52:53   - Yeah, well I mean you upgrade every two years,

00:52:55   you'll upgrade an iPhone for $200,

00:52:57   but that's because your phone company

00:52:59   is paying the other three or 400.

00:53:01   And the iPad doesn't, if the iPad was 199,

00:53:05   maybe that would be the case, but that's just not,

00:53:08   and that's just not how it works.

00:53:09   It's not how it works.

00:53:11   - Do you know what, I still don't even think

00:53:12   that that would be it.

00:53:13   I think it's the inertia of the contract ending

00:53:17   that pushes people.

00:53:20   - And it just isn't there. - Because they can't do it.

00:53:21   Yeah, and there just isn't a thing.

00:53:23   - Right, you could argue that most of the phone's

00:53:26   Phone life can be much longer than two years too.

00:53:29   Maybe not as long as an iPad, but longer than it is.

00:53:32   But if you're on a contract cycle,

00:53:34   it makes it that much easier.

00:53:35   You actually, in the US, the way the contracts

00:53:38   generally have worked up to now, some are changing this,

00:53:41   but generally the phone companies calculated out,

00:53:45   their subsidy is covered in two years,

00:53:47   and your contract is two years.

00:53:49   You can keep your phone for three years.

00:53:50   They don't make your bill, in most cases, any lower.

00:53:55   So you're motivated to get a new phone every two years

00:53:58   because otherwise you're just handing money back

00:54:02   to the phone company.

00:54:04   So there's actually a bunch of motivations.

00:54:08   Now that is changing.

00:54:09   Some of the plans now are more specifically subsidy plans

00:54:12   and you're paying extra for the length of the subsidy

00:54:15   and not forever.

00:54:17   And then there's less motivation to get a new phone

00:54:19   right away because your bill goes down.

00:54:21   - Yep.

00:54:23   Okay, we should make a note before we move on

00:54:26   to our next topic that something crazy happened.

00:54:29   I used to play a dice baseball game.

00:54:33   This is gonna be right up your alley, Myke.

00:54:37   A tabletop dice baseball game, a couple actually.

00:54:42   And both of them had the same mechanic,

00:54:44   which is if you rolled a certain set of dice,

00:54:47   a certain dice roll,

00:54:49   it's like D&D for sports nerds basically,

00:54:52   is what I'm saying.

00:54:53   There would be, I remember in the game that I played in high school, it was 38 was "Something Crazy Happens."

00:54:59   It's like, almost everything else was just a normal play, but then the crazy thing would come up and you'd be like,

00:55:04   "Oh, what happened?" And then something weird, there'd be a guy would be hit by a pitch or there'd be an injury or whatever.

00:55:10   You, during the middle of the last segment, rolled 38.

00:55:14   Yeah, I did.

00:55:15   And all the crazy things happened simultaneously.

00:55:18   So, you are now hearing me locally recorded. Up to this point you have heard

00:55:24   the Skype recording. I apologize if it sounded below our usual standards.

00:55:30   Basically, Skype seemed to be the catalyst for a catastrophic destruction of my Mac,

00:55:36   in which my entire UI froze. The clock didn't move for five minutes and I had

00:55:44   to suffer multiple restarts, I upgraded Skype, then it couldn't read or see any of my audio

00:55:52   inputs or outputs. So after lots of troubleshooting and reading the K-base, here we are and I

00:56:00   think we're okay and we can move on ahead. But it was kind of a catastrophic failure

00:56:06   enough that we wanted to point it out at this point during the show and then move on from

00:56:11   it.

00:56:12   We survived, apparently.

00:56:15   That's the rumor.

00:56:16   You shouldn't say up to this point, "Now it all sounds good," because you don't know.

00:56:21   We may be patching in, "You may have another failure here."

00:56:24   It's possible, but probably not.

00:56:26   Well, we'll address that one when we come to it.

00:56:28   Okay, yeah.

00:56:29   Sorry, wait for the next footnote.

00:56:30   All right, do you want to talk, before we get to Ask Upgrade and the movie, do you want

00:56:34   to talk about YouTube a little bit?

00:56:35   Because this was a link you put in the show notes actually last week and we didn't get

00:56:38   to it.

00:56:39   Yeah, I did want to talk about this.

00:56:42   I'm actually currently listening,

00:56:43   well before we started the show today,

00:56:46   I was listening to an episode of Hello Internet,

00:56:48   which is a show that everybody knows I love so much.

00:56:50   And Brady and Gray were just about

00:56:52   to start discussing this issue.

00:56:55   So for the YouTube discussion, I haven't heard it yet.

00:57:00   - This sort of advanced follow out.

00:57:01   It's follow out with us having not heard it yet.

00:57:04   - Yeah, I would assume that that's probably

00:57:06   the way we could look at things.

00:57:07   But I think that they are probably gonna have

00:57:10   much better discussion about the YouTube side and it isn't really I don't really

00:57:14   want to talk about YouTube per se so let me just set this up so basically

00:57:20   musician Zoe Keating she is kind of being pushed by YouTube into signing the

00:57:27   contract for the new YouTube music deal so basically at the moment she can

00:57:32   currently decide whether if her music is used in a video if she wants to take a

00:57:36   cut of the ads from it that's kind of the contract that she's currently on she

00:57:40   then YouTube want to move her into a totally different contract which has

00:57:43   totally different rules and regulations about the way that her music is done and

00:57:48   she could be a pay channel and there'll be ads on everything and

00:57:51   basically the stuff that she doesn't want to do. Now the reason I wanted to

00:57:55   bring this up is because there was a bit of discussion on the day that you wrote

00:57:58   a little piece, this is like a week or so ago, with people that are on YouTube,

00:58:02   people that are not on YouTube and looking at how kind of YouTube owns this

00:58:07   market and if you want to create videos on the internet you have to be on

00:58:12   YouTube. Like there is nowhere else. You can be on other places but you will not

00:58:17   get the critical mass that you want. If you want to get the audience the

00:58:20   audience is there. And it made me think about what we do and the fact that there

00:58:24   is not currently one single source and how important I think that that is for

00:58:31   entertainment and media for there not to be one single source because you're

00:58:36   you're destroyed. I am very intrigued looking at how Microsoft was

00:58:41   completely railroaded by the European Union. That YouTube is not finding itself

00:58:45   or Google is not finding itself in a sort of sticky situation with them.

00:58:48   Because it is very much like they own the pipe, they own everything. It's all

00:58:53   there, you have no say, there's nowhere else you can go. But I know that there's

00:58:56   there's lots of different reasons as to why it was a problem for Microsoft. But I

00:59:00   just look at it and think you are such a dominant force, you are such an

00:59:04   incredible monopoly on the video streaming world. It scares me to think

00:59:12   that somebody might come and try and do this to podcasts. And there are companies

00:59:16   that are trying but they are not really... I don't... they're having success. I don't

00:59:21   know how much they're succeeding though, you know? Well yeah, it's the... I mean the

00:59:26   fact that podcasts are founded on RSS is a fundamentally decentralizing feature.

00:59:32   that even when you have a big podcast directory like iTunes, in the end all

00:59:37   iTunes is doing is pointing you back at an RSS feed that is elsewhere, and that

00:59:43   has had this great democratizing effect, although it also, you know, not having an

00:59:49   official central point for all podcasts does make it harder to find podcasts. I

00:59:53   would argue that this is one of the great things about the iTunes directory

00:59:55   for podcasts, is there is a place run by a company everybody knows that has a

01:00:01   a directory of podcasts. And that's really good. You need to be in that directory. You

01:00:06   don't have to be, but it's a really good place to go. People know that they can look on iTunes

01:00:11   for podcasts. And it's like YouTube, except that Apple doesn't actually serve the files

01:00:16   or, you know, they could remove you from the podcast directory, but they just don't care.

01:00:22   It's a hands-off kind of thing. It's just the podcast directory is there for you to

01:00:27   to use and it's decentralized behind it.

01:00:29   And YouTube is not the case and it is scary.

01:00:32   And yes, I'm sure Stitcher or some company like that

01:00:37   would love to be able to be,

01:00:40   it's not like, I think what would need to happen

01:00:46   is there would need to be some sort of ground swell

01:00:49   for a particular kind of technology

01:00:52   or all the cars get only one way that they can.

01:00:57   that podcasts get into cars are only two ways.

01:01:00   And they're through Stitcher or, you know, Company X,

01:01:04   and that's it.

01:01:05   That would be the scary thing,

01:01:06   because then they could really exert power and say,

01:01:09   you know, if you wanna play,

01:01:12   if you wanna be in the only place that most listeners go,

01:01:16   then we have power over you.

01:01:18   And that's where YouTube is right now.

01:01:19   And it's scary because YouTube is,

01:01:21   I mean, Gray called it a, it's a monopoly and a monopsony.

01:01:24   It is the only market,

01:01:25   and it is the only place for people to receive the goods.

01:01:29   And it is, you know, it is the Soviet grocery store

01:01:32   with the long bread line.

01:01:34   My kids are huge YouTube fans.

01:01:38   They are YouTube viewers.

01:01:39   They watch YouTube like I watched sitcoms

01:01:44   at four in the afternoon when I was a kid.

01:01:46   I mean, like they don't need to watch "Gilligan's Island."

01:01:49   They have YouTube and they watch it.

01:01:52   That's what, that's their TV.

01:01:55   and it's all on YouTube,

01:01:56   and it all links to other things on YouTube,

01:01:57   and all the creators are on YouTube.

01:01:59   And maybe we'll get to the point

01:02:01   where there's an alternative to YouTube.

01:02:04   I'm sure people are trying,

01:02:06   but Google's purchase of YouTube

01:02:08   has turned out to be pretty powerful

01:02:10   because that is the place.

01:02:12   It's like its own genre, its own network,

01:02:15   it is everything, and it is wildly successful,

01:02:19   and there's a whole generation coming up now

01:02:23   that is going to view YouTube as just the definitive place where all video lives. So

01:02:28   it's, it's, it'll be interesting to see how it goes. In fact, I mean, I could see like

01:02:34   five or ten years out a scenario where Google's, you know, what we think of as Google's big

01:02:40   businesses, especially like the text ad stuff, is a lot less relevant, but Google controls

01:02:46   all video advertising on the internet essentially with this, with YouTube.

01:02:50   - I actually do believe, and I've been thinking about this

01:02:52   recently, that in 50, 60, 100 years,

01:02:56   Google will be remembered for YouTube primarily.

01:02:58   I think that that is gonna be the thing

01:03:01   that people will remember them for.

01:03:03   I think it's that powerful. - It'll be like a trivia

01:03:04   question, did you know that that Google search engine

01:03:06   also was behind YouTube?

01:03:09   - Yeah. - Wow, really?

01:03:10   Both of those things were from the same company, yeah?

01:03:13   In fact, Google bought YouTube, wow, they bought them, wow.

01:03:17   I hope they spent a lot of money on,

01:03:19   I mean, 'cause YouTube,

01:03:20   I was trying to explain this to somebody,

01:03:21   I think maybe it was on the talk show,

01:03:23   'cause Jon Gruber's son is roughly my son's age.

01:03:26   You know, YouTube is not like,

01:03:29   even like a channel two showing "Gilligan's Island" reruns

01:03:33   in the afternoon when I was a kid.

01:03:34   YouTube is all the TV networks.

01:03:36   YouTube is not like a TV network when I was a kid.

01:03:39   It's all, it's television.

01:03:41   Imagine one company owning all of television.

01:03:45   For my kids' generation, that's what this is.

01:03:48   It's not, that's why I think it's a good buy.

01:03:52   And Minecraft, it's the same deal.

01:03:53   Microsoft buying Minecraft,

01:03:55   they're not buying a game,

01:03:59   they're kind of buying the game.

01:04:02   And between Minecraft and YouTube,

01:04:04   you've pretty much described 80% of my kids'

01:04:09   entertainment life over the last four years.

01:04:12   - It's like it's not even so much it's all of the TV,

01:04:17   It's everything you could ever want to watch.

01:04:20   Like that's the difference.

01:04:21   It's not just it's all the TV channels.

01:04:23   It's like what do you wanna watch right now?

01:04:25   Okay, it's on YouTube.

01:04:27   Like because somebody is making it.

01:04:29   Someone somewhere is making it.

01:04:31   Like my nephew watches people,

01:04:35   like videos of people unboxing toys.

01:04:37   - Yeah, oh yeah.

01:04:39   - And just showing toys on YouTube.

01:04:42   Or he watches people play Disney Infinity.

01:04:46   Like, it's just what he does.

01:04:48   And it's just this crazy world.

01:04:50   And I remember when he was like,

01:04:52   maybe 18 months old,

01:04:55   and he was playing with my iPhone.

01:05:00   For the first time playing with my iPhone,

01:05:01   he watches YouTube on my brother's,

01:05:04   like his dad's iPhone.

01:05:06   But I gave him my iPhone,

01:05:08   and he navigated to the screen,

01:05:09   and opened the folder in which he could see the YouTube icon.

01:05:13   Like, and I was just blown away,

01:05:15   because he didn't know where it was,

01:05:17   but he saw that little red play button inside that folder

01:05:20   and he knew what that meant.

01:05:21   And then he started going around the recent history

01:05:25   'cause he knew that was where the videos were in his mind.

01:05:28   - Amazing.

01:05:29   - That he's been watching.

01:05:31   That's his remote control, right?

01:05:33   That is his world, his entertainment view.

01:05:37   Now I think that this is incredibly powerful

01:05:39   and I think that YouTube fundamentally is a great thing

01:05:43   because it enables that and it enables creation

01:05:46   and it enables people to find a voice for themselves online.

01:05:49   Anything like that is fantastic.

01:05:51   The problem is when it becomes a business

01:05:53   and it's the only option.

01:05:55   I think that it,

01:05:56   YouTube, the great thing about YouTube is not Google

01:06:01   or the YouTube company.

01:06:03   The great thing about YouTube is the people within it

01:06:05   creating the stuff and like that's when it becomes a problem.

01:06:09   So like with podcasts, we have all of the people

01:06:12   but there is no company that is making us do anything.

01:06:17   - And if you don't like your deal,

01:06:19   you go somewhere else and get a better deal.

01:06:21   - Yeah, because all of the companies

01:06:23   that you might get deals with, there are other ones.

01:06:26   - Right, and with YouTube, the Zoe Keating example

01:06:28   that was chilling, and it's unclear whether this was just

01:06:30   some overzealous rep or what, but the message was

01:06:34   essentially, here are our new terms, you can either say yes

01:06:39   or you can go away.

01:06:41   - And where are you gonna go?

01:06:43   - And where are you gonna go?

01:06:44   - Like this is your living, what are you gonna do?

01:06:46   - Yeah, it'll happen though.

01:06:48   Some YouTuber or set of YouTube stars will do something

01:06:53   where they go off of YouTube and all that's left on YouTube

01:06:59   is pointers to this other place.

01:07:02   And that'll, I mean, I think it's already happened,

01:07:05   but not super successfully,

01:07:07   but I feel like that will just keep happening.

01:07:09   You're gonna try to,

01:07:11   somebody's gonna try to establish a competitor

01:07:13   and try to make deals with these YouTubers to come over.

01:07:17   But it's scary for them because, you know,

01:07:19   unless you're guaranteeing them revenue,

01:07:21   you know, you're really risking,

01:07:22   you're losing that ecosystem.

01:07:24   'Cause not only do they have their followers,

01:07:26   but those people are subscribed to, you know,

01:07:28   20 or 30 different YouTubers

01:07:29   and they're all kind of mixed in together.

01:07:31   It's like leaving a TV network.

01:07:33   You're out of the rotation over there

01:07:34   and instead you have to remember to go to this other site

01:07:37   and watch the videos over there, it's tough.

01:07:40   I mean, that's the kind of mind share YouTube has.

01:07:42   So yeah, I hope that doesn't happen for podcasting,

01:07:44   but it would really,

01:07:45   at this point it would really require

01:07:47   some technological shift

01:07:52   where somebody gets in somewhere

01:07:53   that really opens the door to a huge audience

01:07:55   and that's why I keep bringing up the car.

01:07:57   And if it ended up that every car had Stitcher

01:08:01   and that was the only way people were listening

01:08:04   to podcasts and cars anymore,

01:08:06   then we would all be like,

01:08:08   "God, I guess we have to go to Stitcher

01:08:10   and that would be scary."

01:08:11   But I don't think it's gonna happen

01:08:12   because I think in all those cases,

01:08:14   it's like AppRadio and there'll be multiple options.

01:08:17   Even if it ends up being, unfortunately,

01:08:19   like you have to make a deal with somebody

01:08:21   to get into the car.

01:08:23   But even there, I feel like there will be

01:08:26   some better independent options.

01:08:30   - Yep, 'cause that's why we're not on Stitcher.

01:08:32   Like, I've taken a look at some of their contract terms,

01:08:37   and me and Steven, we just, we don't wanna sign it

01:08:41   'cause we don't think we have to.

01:08:42   So we're not going to.

01:08:44   It's as simple as that.

01:08:45   Like, we're perfectly fine with the audience that we have,

01:08:48   and that audience grows,

01:08:50   and that audience comes from where it comes from.

01:08:53   I'm not really in the interest of signing

01:08:55   my, our souls away, you know?

01:08:58   - Yeah.

01:08:58   All right, we should move on.

01:09:02   Yes, so we should do some Ask Upgrade before we do our special inaugural movie segment.

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01:10:21   which includes a digital scale.

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01:10:51   I will endeavor to send,

01:10:53   I've got a couple of packages to mail out now

01:10:55   using stamps.com.

01:10:56   I have to put together my care package for Myke.

01:10:58   I haven't done that yet.

01:10:59   And I'm sending a little care package to Dan Morin

01:11:02   all the way in Boston.

01:11:03   And I'm gonna put that together later today

01:11:06   and stick it in my mailbox.

01:11:07   And I'm not gonna even walk to the post office 'cause why?

01:11:10   There are people there.

01:11:11   I don't wanna deal with those people.

01:11:13   - If anything, stamps.com is great

01:11:16   for Jason Snell to send people gifts.

01:11:18   And if that's not a reason enough to sign up

01:11:20   so you can send gifts, then I don't know what is.

01:11:23   (laughing)

01:11:24   - Care packages.

01:11:25   It's important for my business.

01:11:27   It's business development for the incomparable incorporated.

01:11:31   Askupgradetime, just a few selected entries from the hashtag.

01:11:36   Lister Brian wrote in to say,

01:11:38   "Do you pirate movies or television?

01:11:40   "If so, how do you explain this to your kids

01:11:42   "or your future kids?"

01:11:43   How do you explain this to your future kids, Myke?

01:11:45   And is it different than jailbreak and app pirating?

01:11:50   So I'll answer first.

01:11:53   I don't pirate stuff.

01:11:54   I will make a minor exception

01:11:56   for things that are completely unavailable

01:11:58   for purchase or rent.

01:11:59   And even then I feel like I need to buy something

01:12:02   in order to balance out my media karma.

01:12:05   So for example, there was a period where Doctor Who

01:12:08   was airing months in advance in the UK.

01:12:11   And I bit torrented those and pre-ordered the DVDs.

01:12:16   And I felt like, eh, it's a fair trade.

01:12:18   And back in the pre-comicsology days,

01:12:22   I would occasionally download comic torrents.

01:12:25   And that would basically drive sales of,

01:12:29   I would buy the trades or the hardcovers of those comics.

01:12:32   And I wasn't downloading new issues.

01:12:35   I was sort of like downloading the,

01:12:36   "Oh, here's 50 issues of this comic."

01:12:38   And I'd read them and I'd be like, "Okay."

01:12:40   And then I'd buy the hardcover of that.

01:12:41   So I don't do it much at all anymore.

01:12:44   Like I said, unless there's something

01:12:46   that's just totally unavailable in the US,

01:12:49   and then occasionally I'll do that.

01:12:50   Like, let's see, "Black Mirror," which is now on Netflix,

01:12:54   was not available in the US for several years.

01:12:56   And one of the incomparable people saw it,

01:12:59   presumably on BitTorrent and recommended it highly.

01:13:03   And I watched that through that means, but that's about it.

01:13:07   I would say the only difference between that

01:13:08   and something like app pirating for me

01:13:10   is that without pirating,

01:13:11   you are often harming a small business

01:13:14   and with movie and TV show pirating,

01:13:15   you're usually harming a huge conglomerate

01:13:18   or set of conglomerates.

01:13:19   I'm not sure that really makes it any better or worse,

01:13:21   but it is different in that way.

01:13:23   But anyway, yeah, that's my feeling about piracy

01:13:27   is that at this point, I'm not using it

01:13:29   to get around buying things.

01:13:31   I'm using it occasionally to get around

01:13:33   geographic restrictions or distribution problems

01:13:36   or just an unavailability of something digitally,

01:13:39   that happens.

01:13:40   Sometimes for the incomparable, we have that

01:13:43   where we're trying to talk about something

01:13:44   that's not widely available.

01:13:46   Or I've downloaded some British stuff early

01:13:50   because we had, I did a Dr. Who recap

01:13:53   with somebody in Scotland and it wasn't gonna air in the US

01:13:57   until like four in the morning his time.

01:13:58   So I downloaded the BitTorrent version, watched it,

01:14:00   we talked and then I watched it again with my family

01:14:03   on TV that night.

01:14:05   So, and when I can I buy things

01:14:07   in order to balance out the books.

01:14:09   So that's mine.

01:14:10   Myke, what about you?

01:14:12   - I do feel like the balancing out the books thing

01:14:15   should be like, that should make it okay.

01:14:18   Like legally, like that should be fine.

01:14:21   - It doesn't, but I feel better about it.

01:14:24   I felt better about those Doctor Who downloads

01:14:26   because I bought the DVD.

01:14:27   It's like, all right, well look,

01:14:29   I was not patronizing,

01:14:32   I think I even recorded them when they aired in the US,

01:14:35   just to feel better about having recorded them

01:14:37   when they aired in the US.

01:14:38   But ideally, yes, I should have waited patiently

01:14:41   for them to air months later in the US,

01:14:43   and watched those, and watched the commercials,

01:14:45   and then felt good about it.

01:14:47   But at least, like with the comics, it's the same thing.

01:14:49   I downloaded a BitTorrent of whatever, of Invincible,

01:14:53   and then I liked it, and then I bought the trades,

01:14:56   or Why the Last Man, something like that.

01:14:57   And it's not ideal, and I don't do that anymore

01:15:00   because it's a lot easier to get that stuff legally

01:15:04   through a digital means,

01:15:05   'cause I was also reading comics on a device,

01:15:06   I wasn't reading them on paper.

01:15:08   So that made a big difference too.

01:15:10   So, you know, but it doesn't,

01:15:13   I don't think it absolves me legally,

01:15:15   but I feel like it absolves me somehow morally,

01:15:18   karmically in some way to have given the creator money after the fact?

01:15:24   I mean obviously like before before people email us, yes I understand that if

01:15:31   you are not being very careful with your settings, your peer-to-peer settings, by

01:15:39   using BitTorrent you are helping other people find the stuff and I know

01:15:44   know that that's that's probably the bigger problem but you know you can you

01:15:48   can lock off your upload and not not be sharing out you're just but I'm sure

01:15:53   they're you know anyway invincible by the way is a great comic book it is I

01:15:58   thoroughly recommend it it's a favorite of mine so I'm gonna put that in the

01:16:02   show notes which you can find at relay.fm/upgrade/21 or in your

01:16:07   podcast app of choice right now. Indeed. So I've, my main reason for not pirating

01:16:16   these days is I cannot be bothered with the aggravation of pirating. I find it to

01:16:22   be a frustrating experience full of just things that I'm not interested in doing.

01:16:27   That's the classic Steve Jobs line, right, when he announced the iTunes Store.

01:16:31   One of the things he said was it's hard to use these peer-to-peer networks and

01:16:36   the quality is questionable and the tagging is bad and it's hard to find the stuff and

01:16:41   it's much easier to just go on iTunes and click a button. And you know, he was right.

01:16:46   There is something to that. People will pay, not everybody, but a lot of people will pay

01:16:49   for convenience. And so if you can make the legal means convenient and pirating is sort

01:16:55   of fundamentally inconvenient in many or most cases, then you know, that makes a difference.

01:17:00   Unless you're like literally like, I cannot and will not buy this, but that's a different

01:17:05   approach than saying it's I'm willing to pay to get that convenience.

01:17:10   So I just believe in streaming just please make it available like that's all I want just

01:17:16   make it available I will pay like I will pay like when I was looking for the Princess Bride

01:17:22   I googled for it and there were a bunch of like daily motion videos or whatever and I

01:17:27   just ignored them until I could find the easiest way to pay and I went to iTunes like because

01:17:32   I just don't want the aggravation. There are, I mean, I guess the only thing that I

01:17:36   maybe do that's questionable is like I use like American Netflix via using a

01:17:42   VPN. Cloak is my VPN of choice by the way. Big fan of that. I like Cloak a lot.

01:17:48   Getcloak.com. Works on iOS and Mac. It's really fancy. I'm a big fan.

01:17:54   But, so you know, sometimes I will do that. Like I will sign into

01:17:59   American Netflix like we're watching Parks and Recreation at the

01:18:02   moment and Amazon Prime Instant only has the first three seasons in the UK so to

01:18:09   get more to get like seasons four to seven I can sign into American Netflix

01:18:12   like I don't even understand why these things happen like okay I do but like it

01:18:18   makes no sense to me like why do this just make it available to me like don't

01:18:22   don't make me do this you are making me want to pirate like season three ended

01:18:27   in like 2010. Come on! Anyway, so Parks and Rec is a great show by the way.

01:18:34   I'm enjoying it. Fantastic show. I'm really really enjoying it a lot. So that's kind of my

01:18:42   thing. I do that. I use cloak. But I'm a paying customer of those services. So if I

01:18:47   was in the United States of America that's what I would be seeing. But I'm not.

01:18:50   I'm here. There's nothing I can do about it. All right. Well that's a good mini topic. I bet

01:18:56   We'll have some feedback on that one.

01:18:58   - Yeah.

01:18:59   - Another Ask Upgrade, listener Chris said,

01:19:02   "Podcasting is a large chunk of both of your careers.

01:19:04   "How many hours a week do you guys spend

01:19:06   "working on your shows?"

01:19:07   What do you think, Myke?

01:19:09   - This is so hard for me to answer now

01:19:12   because it's literally all of my time, you know?

01:19:15   Because there's so much more that goes into it.

01:19:18   So like for example, for this show,

01:19:20   for the like the standard pre-preparation,

01:19:24   Jason puts the majority of the work in,

01:19:26   he puts together the document, which is fantastic,

01:19:29   and I love him dearly for that.

01:19:30   And that's the same with most of my shows, actually,

01:19:33   is that the co-hosts that I work with

01:19:35   put together the document,

01:19:37   and then I take care of all of the other bits, you know?

01:19:41   Like, make sure that there's advertisers,

01:19:42   and make sure that my Mac doesn't blow up.

01:19:46   I didn't do very well doing that today.

01:19:49   But you know, I do the editing and the posting

01:19:50   and that kind of stuff.

01:19:52   I don't know, maybe, let's say,

01:19:55   We used to kind of say like, oh, for every hour

01:19:59   that we record, it's probably an hour's worth

01:20:02   of other stuff as well.

01:20:03   And I think that that's still a pretty fair thing to say.

01:20:07   But one of my big things is it's not even like active time

01:20:12   working on the shows, it's thinking about them.

01:20:16   I think about them all the time, you know?

01:20:18   Like what can we do for this show?

01:20:20   Like I have a little idea and then I put that in a document

01:20:23   or why don't we try this and send a message to you.

01:20:26   So there's so much even unconscious time, I guess,

01:20:31   that goes into the now.

01:20:32   But for me, it's all I do.

01:20:34   I mean, it's probably different for you.

01:20:36   - Right.

01:20:37   - Because you do other things as well.

01:20:38   But basically, all of my working time is on podcasts.

01:20:43   But one of the big things is it's changing show by show now.

01:20:46   It used to be very clear cut, I would do this,

01:20:49   these are my responsibilities,

01:20:50   these are responsibilities of my co-hosts,

01:20:52   and this is how long it would take to edit.

01:20:54   But now I have different shows

01:20:55   that I edit in different ways,

01:20:56   and I prepare for some shows differently to this show.

01:20:59   So it's very flexible right now,

01:21:01   but it's all of my working time.

01:21:04   - Well, all of my shows are different.

01:21:07   I mentioned this actually in a piece that we'll link to,

01:21:10   which went up on Six Colors

01:21:13   the day that we recorded this, February 2nd.

01:21:15   It's about how I edit podcasts.

01:21:18   And in there, I say,

01:21:20   look, every one of my shows is different,

01:21:22   and the amount of work that goes into it is different.

01:21:23   You're absolutely right, there is this unconscious time.

01:21:26   This is true about writing stuff too.

01:21:28   There's the time where you're thinking about things

01:21:30   that somebody on the outside would look at and say,

01:21:31   "Look, you're not doing anything now,"

01:21:33   but you actually are.

01:21:34   And we have the Relay FM Slack group

01:21:36   and there's stuff that shoots around in there

01:21:38   that I think is informing what we end up with on the shows.

01:21:42   There's a lot of stuff that's hard to define,

01:21:45   but it's also true that there's the specific stuff.

01:21:48   So yeah, on Friday afternoon,

01:21:50   as I'm wrapping up my work week,

01:21:52   I have that moment where I start to think

01:21:54   about what am I gonna talk about on upgrade?

01:21:57   And that kind of goes through the weekend

01:21:59   and at some point on Sunday night or Monday morning,

01:22:03   I will go through our document

01:22:05   and start to cull things from the Ask Upgrade list

01:22:10   and from Twitter and from email

01:22:12   and think about what the topics are of the last week

01:22:14   and what's worth talking about.

01:22:16   And then there's the time to record.

01:22:19   This show is different because you do the editing.

01:22:21   So that's actually very different in terms of my time input

01:22:24   because I'm really spending the time we spend talking

01:22:26   and then the thinking about it beforehand

01:22:28   and assembling a document,

01:22:30   which isn't a massive amount of time,

01:22:31   but it's definitely time.

01:22:33   For something like Clockwise,

01:22:35   there's time spent booking guests

01:22:36   'cause we have to book two guests every week.

01:22:39   And I'm trying to do that more in advance,

01:22:41   which actually saves me time

01:22:42   because I can send out invitations

01:22:43   and try to schedule people weeks in advance

01:22:46   instead of every week having to try

01:22:48   and beat the bushes and find a couple of people

01:22:51   who are free at that particular time.

01:22:53   So that takes time.

01:22:54   And doing the show doesn't take a lot of time.

01:22:57   It's, you know, probably we're on Skype

01:22:59   for about 40 minutes, but it's a half an hour show.

01:23:02   So that's easy.

01:23:02   And then the editing time is mostly me getting it to length.

01:23:07   Like last week's show was 34 minutes long.

01:23:10   So I had to pull four minutes of conversation out

01:23:12   of a pretty tight show, which is hard,

01:23:15   but that's the format.

01:23:16   So that's what it is.

01:23:17   For something like "TV Talk Machine,"

01:23:20   which I do with the TV critic Tim Goodman,

01:23:22   that's a Skype conversation.

01:23:23   That's a two-person Skype conversation.

01:23:25   I do almost nothing to that show.

01:23:26   So we talk for an hour or a little bit less than an hour.

01:23:29   And then in about 10 minutes, I've edited it and posted it

01:23:32   because there's very little for me to do.

01:23:34   I don't really, unless I note something where, you know,

01:23:37   one of us had to, you know, had a technical problem

01:23:40   or had to go talk to our kids who were being too loud

01:23:42   or something like that,

01:23:43   that's pretty much a just very straightforward kind of show.

01:23:47   Something like "The Incomparable,"

01:23:48   not only is there, there is scheduling time for that,

01:23:51   but, and then those shows,

01:23:55   recording sessions tend to be a couple hours long.

01:23:57   And then that is, I posted a video of my edit process

01:24:01   for an episode of "The Incomparable."

01:24:03   That's a two to four hour long post-production for most.

01:24:07   I'd say on average it's probably about two or three hours

01:24:11   to do an episode of that.

01:24:12   And that's, I edit that more,

01:24:15   in a more detailed fashion than I do other shows.

01:24:17   And part of that is the content of the show.

01:24:20   And part of that is the number of panelists on the show

01:24:22   and the fact that it's an unstructured conversation.

01:24:25   So there's more interruptions that have to get smoothed out

01:24:27   and all of that.

01:24:28   And then the total party kill is, you know,

01:24:30   that's a totally different commitment because that's a,

01:24:33   you know, three or four hour gameplay,

01:24:34   which we usually have about a half an hour

01:24:36   of technical frustrations at the beginning

01:24:38   to get it rolling.

01:24:39   But then it's just me having fun.

01:24:40   And then over the course of several weeks,

01:24:43   I have to go through the edit

01:24:45   and do a less detailed edit than I do

01:24:47   for something like the incomparable,

01:24:49   but still, you know, I'm still looking for stray noises

01:24:52   and things like that.

01:24:53   So it varies.

01:24:54   I numbered it up.

01:24:55   I haven't tallied in a while

01:24:56   how much time I spend on podcasts,

01:24:58   but you know, I think it's pretty efficient.

01:25:00   Like this podcast, I probably spend three hours a week on,

01:25:04   and clockwise, I probably spend two hours a week on,

01:25:07   and incomparable, I probably spend five hours a week on,

01:25:10   and TV Talk Machine, that's probably like an hour and a half.

01:25:14   So it varies based on what the show is.

01:25:17   - But like, so like saying about that,

01:25:18   that episode of "Connected" that we did.

01:25:20   - Oh my God.

01:25:22   - That took me between five and six hours to edit that.

01:25:25   - Well, we talked about on one of your previous

01:25:27   interview shows, we talked about the radio drama

01:25:30   and the incomparable radio drama, you know,

01:25:32   the first one and the second one too,

01:25:34   they probably both took me 30, 40 hours to edit,

01:25:36   but those are, you know, exceptions to the rule.

01:25:38   There's the weekly cycle of like,

01:25:41   this is what a regular episode is.

01:25:43   And then there's the, it's just like anything, right?

01:25:44   Then there's the week where you have to work above

01:25:46   and beyond 'cause you're on some crazy project.

01:25:48   And then you go back down and it's like,

01:25:49   now we're back in kind of regular time mode.

01:25:52   Anyway, I hope that answers your question, Lister Chris.

01:25:58   You do the math, add it all up.

01:26:02   But it varies, the recording time

01:26:05   and the edit time can really vary.

01:26:07   And then there's the prep time that can vary.

01:26:09   But it's not, I get the impression from some people,

01:26:11   it's like I can't believe you do like you do what six shows and I do five four a week six weekly shows and four weekly

01:26:17   Shows and there's like how do you have time for anything else? And for me the answer is

01:26:21   It's a part-time job. It is a big chunk of my time, but it's still not

01:26:27   You know, it's you can do the math there, but it's less than 20 hours a week that I spend on this

01:26:33   yeah, so I

01:26:35   Could do more but I'm not gonna

01:26:39   Yeah, you can do more. Trust me. I do. But like, you know, for me, it's, it's, it's,

01:26:43   there's so much more, you know, now than for me to do than there ever was before with all

01:26:49   of my arrangements. Because we run the machine. And, and that, and the machine takes a lot

01:26:57   of oil to get it to run.

01:26:59   Right. Well, there's the running the business part of it too, that is totally, that's not

01:27:04   on every show. That's like running your business. It's separate from the shows, but that's also

01:27:08   and I have that with the incomparable and six colors both.

01:27:11   Brian, real time follow up,

01:27:14   Brian Hamilton asks in the chat room,

01:27:15   how does, how do my sound quality standards

01:27:18   shift between shows?

01:27:19   - That's a really good question.

01:27:22   That is an excellent question

01:27:24   'cause I do have different standards.

01:27:26   - Yeah, me too, me too.

01:27:28   Like I said, I do TV Talk Machine and I don't even record,

01:27:32   I just use the Skype call.

01:27:34   I don't even have Tim record his end.

01:27:37   And my two reasons for doing that is,

01:27:39   generally our Skype call is very good quality,

01:27:42   and we're both local, we're both in the Bay Area,

01:27:45   it's very good quality, it's fine.

01:27:48   And two is, he's not a super technical guy,

01:27:51   and I kinda just don't wanna walk him through the steps

01:27:54   every week of doing his own recording

01:27:56   and then getting it to me.

01:27:57   And if it was a problem, I would probably go through

01:27:59   and set him up with Dropbox,

01:28:00   and set him up with Call Recorder and all of that,

01:28:02   but it's never been a problem, and I don't wanna bother.

01:28:05   So my standards are a little lower,

01:28:06   But since it's only two people talking

01:28:08   and it generally is of good quality,

01:28:10   it's good enough for me.

01:28:11   And I still do take the two tracks

01:28:13   and noise gate them and compress them

01:28:15   and do some stuff with them.

01:28:16   But I don't ask for a self-recorded track for him.

01:28:18   And that's the only show I do like that.

01:28:21   All the rest of them, you know,

01:28:23   it varies somewhat,

01:28:25   but I try to have everybody record their end.

01:28:28   And then it's just a matter of what you prioritize.

01:28:30   With "Incomparable," I'm prioritizing overtalking

01:28:32   and interruptions because that's a panel show.

01:28:34   With Clockwise, because the format is so regimented,

01:28:37   there's not a lot of overtalking and interruption,

01:28:39   but it has to fit in 30 minutes.

01:28:41   So that's what I prioritize is cutting it to fit.

01:28:44   It just varies.

01:28:45   In Total Party Kill, I'm all over the place.

01:28:46   'Cause I told myself when we started doing that,

01:28:48   that I wasn't gonna edit that heavily at all.

01:28:50   And it turns out I edited about as heavily.

01:28:53   In my Six Colors piece, I say I don't.

01:28:56   It's a lie.

01:28:57   I kind of edit that as heavily,

01:28:58   almost as heavily as I do the incomparable.

01:29:00   And that's, I probably shouldn't,

01:29:02   because it takes too much time.

01:29:05   But I kinda do.

01:29:07   I kinda just get into the habit of saying,

01:29:09   I wanna get out all those,

01:29:11   all the over talking and all the weird,

01:29:12   like people bumping their microphones

01:29:14   'cause it sounds better.

01:29:16   But sometimes it's just,

01:29:17   what I said in that article,

01:29:18   and Myke, I know we've talked about this too,

01:29:20   is there's a spectrum.

01:29:21   There's like on the one side,

01:29:22   it's like my wife listens to a knitting podcast

01:29:24   that literally they press record and then they press stop.

01:29:28   And like the act of pressing record is in the podcast.

01:29:32   And if they have to go away for a moment,

01:29:34   they say, okay, we're gonna pause it.

01:29:36   And then, and now we're back.

01:29:38   They like literally there was no editing.

01:29:40   And then on the other end of the spectrum

01:29:41   is something that's like an NPR podcast

01:29:43   or something that's like super edited

01:29:44   within an inch of its life.

01:29:45   And as you move from the one side to the other,

01:29:48   it's just time.

01:29:49   It's more and more exponentially increasing time.

01:29:53   And you gotta decide every show is different.

01:29:55   And that's what I found is every podcast that I do

01:29:57   falls somewhere on that spectrum and it's different based on what the needs are of that

01:30:01   show and I think that's absolutely true. The relay shows are more similar than my shows

01:30:06   are but they're, but still every show is going to be different. You're editing someone else's

01:30:11   show now too and that, the rocket, so that's got to be a different experience still.

01:30:15   That's totally different. Editing a show that's not mine is weird. It's weird. I like to do

01:30:22   it because whilst we're getting kind of the kinks worked out, I have the ability to help

01:30:29   guide the show a little bit, which I quite like, so I can give them thoughts and stuff

01:30:34   like that.

01:30:36   I like that.

01:30:37   And also I would be listening to the show anyway, so I may as well make it part of my

01:30:41   work at the moment, which is fun.

01:30:48   But yeah, it's different.

01:30:50   It's totally different because it's, I don't know, there's something strange about it because

01:30:54   I don't know what's going to happen next.

01:30:56   Like, if I'm editing something of my own, I kind of have a feeling of like, "Oh, I know

01:31:00   I need to work on this bit."

01:31:02   It's strange.

01:31:05   It's just a different kind of experience.

01:31:07   I probably won't edit Rocket forever.

01:31:09   We're probably going to get someone to help us on it, but just for the time being, I am,

01:31:15   which is a good thing.

01:31:16   I like doing that for them to lend a hand.

01:31:20   But I agree, different shows that we do, they're similar, but I do have different standards

01:31:28   of the amount of time that I spend on shows.

01:31:32   And that comes from audience size to the discerningness of the audience.

01:31:40   So I feel like, and I believe there's listeners of The Pen Addict are less critical about

01:31:44   audio then this is this show and if you listen to Bonanza well God help you

01:31:50   that just rolls out as it rolls out you know it's just kind of there's just

01:31:55   different different kind of different strokes for different folks I think

01:32:00   yep too quick we have two more quick bits of ask upgrade that I'll just blow

01:32:07   through here really quickly listener Yap wrote in to say every time I see

01:32:13   Manchego cheese, I have to think about the Manchego vertical and send a picture of Manchego

01:32:17   cheese. So I wanted to mention this only to throw in my Super Bowl fact. We had Manchego.

01:32:23   Philip Michaels, Lisa Schmeiser, and their daughter came over for the Super Bowl. Always

01:32:28   nice to have more people around for the Super Bowl. We had some Manchego. We had a nice

01:32:31   cheddar that I got from Whole Foods. And some Gouda. So that's your cheese update, your

01:32:38   cheese vertical update Super Bowl you missed the Super Bowl this year Myke

01:32:43   you're sleeping so frustrating so that was the plan because I had something I

01:32:47   needed to do this morning then I couldn't sleep oh just just read about

01:32:51   the Super Bowl on Twitter themed I was awake for the entire Super Bowl I'm so

01:32:56   annoyed because I really enjoy watching it but but didn't like I could have even

01:33:00   watched it online but no I didn't I thought I was trying to sleep and I was

01:33:07   just kind of reading Twitter when I couldn't sleep. Never mind, never mind. It looked like

01:33:11   it was an exciting one.

01:33:13   And last bit of Ask Upgrade is Peanut Gallery who said, "I wish for an iOS app that would

01:33:17   let me listen to Relay FM live and participate in the live chat room," which I think is a

01:33:21   good idea and I mentioned this in my monologue in the chat room earlier. I don't think a

01:33:28   dedicated app for this is necessarily going to reach a big enough audience, but if you've

01:33:31   got a--if somebody has a suggestion, if there's some app out there that does this, that would

01:33:36   great I'd love to hear about it but if you are a developer of an iOS IRC app

01:33:42   IRC chat app I guess C stands for chat IRC app you could probably make a nice

01:33:51   differentiator of a feature by point it letting your users also point the app to

01:33:57   a stream URL and do audio while you're in the chat room because that is a use

01:34:04   for podcast fans. So I don't know about a dedicated app or not but if somebody

01:34:09   knows something because that it happens that like you you set it to you set it

01:34:13   to stream audio in the background and then you go to the IRC app and at some

01:34:16   point there's memory problems and it quits the stream and you're not

01:34:20   listening anymore. If only you knew the man in charge. Yeah, if only.

01:34:26   Anyway. So this is going to be the first Myke watches a movie vertical. Yes. And

01:34:33   And at the end of the episode, I will announce there is going to be another one next week.

01:34:37   There is.

01:34:38   Which I'm excited about. But the Myke Watches a Movie vertical is brought to you by our friends

01:34:44   at MailRoute.

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01:35:44   there almost never are. It's maybe happened once in the last month. If I do find a good

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01:36:34   my mail.

01:36:36   So The Princess Bride.

01:36:39   Mm-hmm.

01:36:40   Now can you please give a little bit of context to this movie?

01:36:45   Because it's one of those films that is a cult classic, right?

01:36:48   It is a cult classic.

01:36:50   Why is that the case?

01:36:51   Like, do you have any kind of feeling as to why The Princess Bride is a cult classic?

01:36:56   So we talked about it in "Incomparable" episode 25.

01:36:59   I think one of the-- so I was late to "The Princess Bride."

01:37:02   I went off to college, and people were quoting lines

01:37:04   from "The Princess Bride," and I had no idea what was going on.

01:37:08   And then I didn't see the movie until I was maybe out

01:37:11   of college even at that point.

01:37:13   So I think for some reason, this movie is particularly quotable.

01:37:20   I think the heightened--

01:37:24   It's the storybook element that these are tropes

01:37:26   that we're used to seeing in fairytales

01:37:29   with a knowing and kind of postmodern,

01:37:34   you know, knowing spin.

01:37:35   There's a commentary on this kind of story

01:37:38   that's happening inside the story.

01:37:40   Plus it's got the framing device

01:37:41   with Peter Falk and Fred Savage.

01:37:43   So, you know, you're commenting on it as a story

01:37:46   while it's happening.

01:37:48   I think all of that is kind of mixed in there

01:37:50   that this is very quotable.

01:37:53   And I would say for the period in my life,

01:37:55   when this came out, the reason that all the college students

01:37:58   in my college were quoting it also is,

01:38:00   you know, when you're younger,

01:38:04   this is the kind of movie that is both familiar

01:38:06   in the sense that it is an old fashioned fairytale

01:38:09   and also, you know, beautifully different

01:38:13   in that it is winking at the whole thing.

01:38:15   And that's clever.

01:38:17   And I think, especially when you're,

01:38:19   you know, high school college age,

01:38:21   You love that idea that somebody is taking this form

01:38:25   that you've been seeing your entire life

01:38:26   and is now playing with it and winking at it.

01:38:29   So, but if I had to pick one thing,

01:38:31   it's that it's just insanely quotable.

01:38:34   - So when I first started hearing people mention

01:38:38   the Princess Bride kind of on the internet

01:38:40   and on shows like yours, there was something in my brain

01:38:45   that got it mixed up with the Anne Hathaway movie,

01:38:48   Princess Diaries and I was very confused as to why all of these nerds enjoyed the

01:38:54   Princess Diaries so much. The Princess Diaries has a 6.2 on IMDb and it's about

01:39:03   Mia Thermopolis has just found out that she is the heir to the apparent throne

01:39:08   of Genovia so it's like a regular American girl who finds out she's a

01:39:14   Princess basically it's so I was very confused but then once I was able to to

01:39:19   break the confusion the interest in Hathaway is not in the Princess Bride

01:39:24   she is not in the Princess Bride Julie Andrews not in the Princess Bride not at

01:39:28   all not even a little bit it is interesting though that even though I

01:39:33   have never seen this movie it has snuck into my conscience like I am aware of

01:39:37   the references I am aware of inconceivable I am aware of would you

01:39:43   like a peanut. You know, I am aware of these things. They have snuck in.

01:39:49   I always find that interesting when you can relate to the reference and can even

01:39:56   make the reference without actually knowing the source material. So that's

01:40:01   one of those interesting things that happens in college.

01:40:03   That's what happened to me in college at first too. It's like, "Hello, my name is

01:40:08   Negan Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. Oh yeah, I know that reference.

01:40:12   I know it from other references, but not from the actual movie, but from the references!

01:40:16   Yeah.

01:40:17   So, I have to make one brief aside, just to read verbatim from my notes.

01:40:25   And my notes say, "Oh my, Robin Wright."

01:40:27   Yes.

01:40:28   "She is beautiful."

01:40:30   Oh yes!

01:40:31   "In this movie, she is just incredibly beautiful."

01:40:34   I am only very familiar with her from House of Cards.

01:40:39   House of Cards, right, sure.

01:40:40   where of course she is also a beautiful lady, but she's younger, probably closer to my age

01:40:46   in the Princess Bride. I was going to call it Diaries. She's very stunning and she's kind of

01:40:54   in her look, the perfect look for a fairy tale princess. It makes perfect sense, right?

01:41:02   And as well, the way that the movie starts, I find to be very interesting because it starts off as

01:41:08   this idyllic romance story right and and it's it's very it's very well done I

01:41:15   like that a lot because it's kind of like with is it care how do you say

01:41:20   Carrie Carrie Elwes that's it Carrie Elwes and and Robin Wright are these two

01:41:25   blonde beautiful blue-eyed you know like sure perfect fairy tale stars and it's

01:41:32   like you know like soft focus lens you know they're like in love it's it starts

01:41:36   off really well and I love how the young boy, is it Fred Savage, right?

01:41:42   Yeah. He's just like, "Is this a kissing book?" And I just think it's so funny, like the way

01:41:47   I just really enjoyed the way that it started. I have a real love for Andre the

01:41:52   Giant, just in general. I was a pro wrestling fan as a kid and remember fondly

01:42:00   watching Andre, you know, the biggest man in the world, you know, fighting Hulk Hogan.

01:42:05   He apparently was given his lines phonetically for this because he doesn't he didn't speak

01:42:10   English very well at all.

01:42:11   No, no, he's French.

01:42:12   French, yeah.

01:42:13   Yeah, and does not, never did speak English very well.

01:42:16   Yeah, but I would argue that it enhances that character that he's sort of this somewhat

01:42:23   impenetrable, confusing giant man.

01:42:26   It's like, yeah.

01:42:28   And they paint him as quite simple as well, you know, because he's like, yeah, which is

01:42:32   which is great and I really like that because when Inigo says to you know says

01:42:38   right at the very end he's like is it Fezzik? Fezzik. Fezzik, like you have

01:42:45   finally done something right like when they're making their escape right right

01:42:49   there's a nice moment where where they're they're they're on the chase and

01:42:54   and he said he wants to fight he wants to fight them and he says no no hide

01:43:01   behind a rock and throw a boulder and throw rocks at them and he says my way

01:43:06   is not very sporting. He's like upset he's like no that's not because he's a

01:43:11   good he's a good guy he's not a bad guy. Vizzini is bad but Fezzik is a very nice

01:43:15   giant person.

01:43:17   Like he's Andre in this role is so fantastically terrible like

01:43:23   yeah that's what's so good about him.

01:43:25   It's endearing yeah it's endearing he is an

01:43:27   endearing character and it is in part because he is not an actor and he's his

01:43:32   lines are kind of you know muddled and and yet I think I think it works because

01:43:38   of that I think it makes you love love that big that big lug yeah I mean

01:43:42   because he's cast because he's the closest you can get to a giant to a

01:43:45   giant yeah like he's seven foot tall also and he suffers with gigantism you

01:43:52   know so he kind of has these larger-than-life features and he so he's

01:43:57   kind of perfect for the role that they're fitting. One of the things that I

01:44:03   really liked about the book, like the storytelling device, is when it would

01:44:08   break to like the present day and then the grandpa would, the grandfather,

01:44:14   would start to read the story back and you'd see the flashes of it happening.

01:44:20   So like he would start to tell the story and it would be his narration.

01:44:23   Where was I? And he'd start reading the parts and then start flashing

01:44:26   around again. And I don't know if this is something that is intended and I wonder

01:44:32   how you feel about that but you know when the grandson complains about

01:44:37   certain ways that the story's going I had the feeling that his grandfather was

01:44:41   changing the story. Ah interesting. Because he's like oh but you know such

01:44:47   as they they shouldn't get away or whatever and he'd be like oh no wait

01:44:51   just just let me continue because they seem to like at these points that the

01:44:54   the story takes sharp turns. Well, but what goes against that is that there's a moment where he says,

01:45:02   you know, what happens to Prince Humperdinck? You know, how does he die in the end? And he says,

01:45:12   "No, he lives. He lives. He gets away with it." And the grandson says, "Jesus, Grandpa,

01:45:19   "Why are you reading this book to me?"

01:45:21   [ Laughter ]

01:45:24   Yeah. -Yeah, I like that bit.

01:45:26   I like that. -Yeah, the whole commentary,

01:45:28   the, you know, "Stop with the kissing" and all of that,

01:45:30   and, you know, that is a -- Yeah, it's a great --

01:45:33   I think it's a great framing sequence to have them all,

01:45:36   you know, commenting on the story as they go.

01:45:39   Like, this is a fairy tale.

01:45:40   We are listening to and watching a fairy tale as it happens.

01:45:45   -I think single-handedly, the best scene in this movie

01:45:49   is the whole scene when Wesley,

01:45:53   who is the Dread Pirate Roberts,

01:45:55   is scaling the wall and Inigo is waiting for him.

01:45:59   And their whole back and forth,

01:46:01   and then the very civil conversation that they have

01:46:04   about their lives, and talking about how they got there,

01:46:08   and then have the fantastic fight, which is so well done.

01:46:12   'Cause there are so many parts of it where it's clearly,

01:46:15   it is Mandy Patinkin and Carrie Elwes.

01:46:19   Mandy Patinkin, like the guy from Homeland.

01:46:21   I was like, oh my God, the guy from Homeland.

01:46:23   That whole scene makes the movie.

01:46:28   The movie could have been so much worse than it was

01:46:31   'cause overall, I will spoil it,

01:46:32   overall I really enjoyed this movie.

01:46:34   That is just so, it's such fantastic, just everything.

01:46:39   Comedy and just great storytelling,

01:46:41   like the whole, it just worked so well for me.

01:46:45   I really, 'cause it frames those characters so well.

01:46:48   full of honor and like, you know, they will die for the cause.

01:46:54   You seem a good man, I hate to kill you. You seem a good man, I hate to die.

01:46:57   And you get the double, I'm not left-handed. I'm not left-handed either.

01:47:03   Yeah, and then like, you know, one would knock the sword out of his hand, so he'd pick up the sword

01:47:08   and knock the sword, and like no one would kill each other at that point. And I really love the

01:47:13   the line, "There's not a lot of money in revenge."

01:47:15   - Yeah. - "I'm in the revenge business."

01:47:17   Like, that is just so fantastic.

01:47:20   - That's like, one of my favorite lines in the movie

01:47:23   is also where they're talking about

01:47:24   the different sword techniques,

01:47:25   and Mandy Patinkin says, "If he has studied his Agrippa,

01:47:29   which I have,"

01:47:30   (laughing)

01:47:31   so it's just, it's a non-segue, "which I have,"

01:47:34   okay, Mandy Patinkin, angry Spaniard with a sword.

01:47:38   And I like that he, you know,

01:47:40   in the end, Cary Elwes knocks him out, right?

01:47:42   He's not gonna kill him.

01:47:44   This pirate that we don't know anything about,

01:47:46   he's not gonna kill Inigo.

01:47:48   He's a good guy.

01:47:50   - Right, so this is where that leads

01:47:52   to a big question for me.

01:47:54   And please correct me if I've got something wrong here.

01:47:57   So Wesley knocks out Inigo.

01:48:01   He does the same to Fesic.

01:48:05   He puts him in a sleeper hold.

01:48:06   That whole thing is hilarious

01:48:07   'cause there's no way Wesley would have survived that.

01:48:10   Like, he's ribbed crushed.

01:48:14   Which, that's a great, I love all of that as well.

01:48:19   - Sleep well and dream of large women, he says,

01:48:23   he leaves Fezzik behind.

01:48:24   - That's good. - Be quotable.

01:48:26   - Good line, good line.

01:48:27   And then when it comes to Vizzini, he kills him.

01:48:31   - Yes, well, Vizzini really kills himself,

01:48:34   but he is the worst of them, right?

01:48:36   He is the instigator of this and he's telling them to kill,

01:48:39   That's why you see him say, "Throw rocks at their heads," and all that,

01:48:43   and don't be sporting about it, just kill them.

01:48:45   It's because Vizzini is, he's arrogant, he doesn't care if they die,

01:48:49   he's just in it for the money, and then it's his own arrogance that kills him in the end,

01:48:54   because he dies with his own poison.

01:48:58   Which is funny.

01:48:59   - Yeah, it's just... - Look over there, what is that?

01:49:02   - I don't see anything. - It's just very interesting.

01:49:06   Like, I get it, 'cause the other guys,

01:49:08   they're just like hired help.

01:49:09   - Yeah, right.

01:49:10   Again, they're trying to make money.

01:49:13   They're in it for the work.

01:49:16   And you also get the sense that as it goes,

01:49:19   they're increasingly uncomfortable

01:49:21   with what Vizini is trying to do.

01:49:23   This is not necessarily what they signed up for.

01:49:26   And he's the instigator of it.

01:49:27   So yeah, he ends up dying in the end.

01:49:29   But even then, he doesn't end up dying

01:49:30   at the hand of the man in black.

01:49:32   He ends up dying at his own hand.

01:49:34   He's just outwitted by the man in black.

01:49:36   - Yeah, yeah, but he put poison.

01:49:40   But yeah, he was always gonna kill him.

01:49:43   - That's true, he did put poison in his cup, that's true.

01:49:46   He did actually poison him and he died, this is true.

01:49:48   - Like it wasn't like he was in the episode of Sherlock

01:49:52   where the pills, right, where it's like this game of wits

01:49:57   as to who's gonna take, do you know what I'm talking about?

01:49:59   Like I think it's the second episode

01:50:00   and they're playing that game of wits

01:50:02   as to who's gonna take the pills.

01:50:04   because he just like, you know, Wesley says that he built up an intolerance to the poison.

01:50:08   Yeah, so they're both gonna drink the poison and yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's true, that's

01:50:13   true. He does, he kills him. He sort of, I mean, he set up that he sort of deserves it.

01:50:17   It's a great, it's a great death. Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the

01:50:22   line. Many deaths.

01:50:26   Couldn't be as far from a Sicilian accent as possible, which I loved.

01:50:30   It's just Wallace Shawn being Wallace Shawn.

01:50:33   - He's an incredible voice.

01:50:35   - Yeah.

01:50:36   - So then we kind of get to the point where then

01:50:39   Wesley is, he's caught buttercup and they're on their way.

01:50:44   And we're treated to one of the most ridiculous scenes

01:50:48   I've ever seen in cinema,

01:50:49   which at this point I am enjoying.

01:50:52   When they're tumbling down the hill.

01:50:54   - Oh.

01:50:55   - And the noises they're making.

01:50:56   - Oh yeah.

01:50:57   - It's so.

01:50:58   - Oh.

01:50:59   (laughing)

01:51:00   and they show one part where like this the stunt double who's filling in for

01:51:05   buttercup takes a terrible turn at one point yeah like it looks really painful

01:51:10   so that that's kind of kind of beautifully ridiculous and then so there

01:51:16   are some weird points in this movie right where it kind of it took me out a

01:51:20   couple of times like so then when they're in the well right after that

01:51:23   they get to the fire swamp and there's the big Muppet rodents that's why that's

01:51:27   what I'm gonna talk about and the incredibly violent fight between Wesley

01:51:33   and one of the the giant rodents that's where we see them he stabs the R.O.U.S.

01:51:38   like multiple times with his sword yeah yeah and and he is bitten quite

01:51:44   savagely a few times as well which is interesting is this the movie kind of

01:51:50   didn't it didn't stick to anything like I felt like it kept changing around a

01:51:55   lot but the whole time I'm entertained throughout it at all and I

01:52:04   really like that this is such a weird and varied cast because then we're met

01:52:08   by Mel Smith a British actor who plays the character known as the albino

01:52:16   but Mel Smith is like he's familiar to me because he is a very famous

01:52:20   British comedy actor and drama actor like he's been lots and lots and lots of

01:52:25   British TV so it's just very peculiar to see some of the casting like it's just

01:52:30   it's so out of left field a lot of a lot of it and it's like I never really they

01:52:36   just didn't seem to be like a real kind of cohesion but not in a bad way just

01:52:41   it's like I kept being surprised by the faces that I was recognizing you know

01:52:45   right and then there's like the very peculiar pain machine suction machine

01:52:53   yes which is which is really weird and then Wesley is killed and then they take

01:52:58   him to the miracle worker mm-hmm I loved all of that who who is it that plays the

01:53:04   miracle worker it's Billy Crystal yes because I knew I Carol Kane is his wife

01:53:08   yeah that whole scene is just so fantastic it's very Woody Allen like

01:53:13   Yeah, so it's a bizarre sort of like just a comedy sketch scene all on its own, but

01:53:18   it's great. The miracle at the Miracle Max shop, he's like, "He's only, yeah,

01:53:22   mostly dead is partially alive!" And Valerie, leave me alone, because she's like, "You're a liar!

01:53:30   You can save him!" And yeah, that's a funny bit. They did a retrospective on the

01:53:36   Princess Bride in a magazine that I was reading last year, and Billy Crystal and

01:53:39   Carol Kane were interviewed and they said they'd be up for a Princess Bride

01:53:43   sequel since they could play the part their parts without makeup now because

01:53:48   they're very old yes they're like anciently old yeah that actual nobody

01:53:55   really lives to kind of old because they're like witches and wizards I guess

01:53:58   something along that line right and then we're treated to think so Wesley is

01:54:02   brought back to life and just in just pure comedy saved by saved by indigo and

01:54:08   - Yes. - And brought back to life.

01:54:09   - Yes, yes.

01:54:11   How he cannot function correctly.

01:54:14   - Right, he's paralyzed basically.

01:54:16   - And the way he moves his body around,

01:54:18   it's just so incredible.

01:54:20   Like, you know, to move his arm,

01:54:21   he like has to get momentum from his other shoulder

01:54:25   to like throw it around.

01:54:26   And then the whole instigation of this episode,

01:54:30   the Holocaust Cloak is brought up.

01:54:31   - Yes, yes, listed among our list of assets

01:54:35   is we also have a Holocaust.

01:54:36   That's a funny scene because they're like,

01:54:38   well, there's, you know, what do we do?

01:54:39   There's too many guys down there.

01:54:40   And then he says,

01:54:42   "Oh, well, if we have a Holocaust cloak, then."

01:54:45   And then they had to put Andre the Giant

01:54:47   on the bonfire thing.

01:54:48   And, "I'm the Dread Pirate Roberts," he says.

01:54:53   - Like there's a few things about this.

01:54:55   So one, like I love the introduction

01:54:58   of the Holocaust cloak is great.

01:54:59   It's like, I liked it, so I took it

01:55:01   and the guy said I could have it.

01:55:04   which is how Vesic says that he has it.

01:55:07   But then there is no explanation.

01:55:09   So I looked this up as to why he could be set on fire.

01:55:13   - He's high up and also a giant, I don't know.

01:55:17   - I looked it up and apparently a holocaust cloak

01:55:21   is impervious to flame.

01:55:23   - Ah.

01:55:24   - And I think that there is something

01:55:27   Dungeons and Dragons related.

01:55:28   - Interesting.

01:55:29   - 'Cause I found a Yahoo Answers article.

01:55:33   And one of the points in here, where does it say?

01:55:35   I'm sure,

01:55:36   oh here we go.

01:55:40   Any who attack the wearer of the cloak

01:55:42   must save versus magic or suffer 2d8 points of damage

01:55:46   from the flames and any weapon they strike with

01:55:49   must make a saving throw or be damaged as well.

01:55:52   - There you go.

01:55:54   - Now I only know about that from your show.

01:55:55   I would not have understood any of that,

01:55:57   but Total Party Kill has prepared me

01:55:59   for the Holocaust Cloak. - It's good.

01:56:00   Good, I'm glad to provide the service.

01:56:02   So, so yeah, that the, uh, it works in that they, uh, they scare off the fear of the dread

01:56:08   pirate Roberts combined with this horrible flaming giant thing moving toward them, scares

01:56:15   off most of the guards.

01:56:17   And then the guy with the gate key says, "I don't know what you're talking about.

01:56:21   Oh, you mean this gate key here?"

01:56:23   And he runs off and they get into the castle for the last momentous bit where you have

01:56:29   have to save the princess and stop the six-fingered man who is Christopher Guest.

01:56:36   More great actors in this movie. Well that's a nice showdown where he can't

01:56:40   move too, right? And the prince is there and it's unclear whether he has any

01:56:46   strength or not to get up from the bed but he talks the prince into giving up

01:56:51   without a fight. Yeah what is the line he uses? Something about pain? To the pain.

01:56:57   To the pain not to the death. Yeah, nice this great kind of like rousing speech as to how he will make you know

01:57:04   He's life misery

01:57:06   He'll cut off all of his arms and legs and

01:57:08   Yes, as you keep and I'll tell you why

01:57:12   Yeah

01:57:15   portable

01:57:16   and I

01:57:18   Really enjoyed this whole scene as a lot of action in it and I like

01:57:23   Diego's scene with his retribution, you know that that's that's a good scene

01:57:28   And it kind of you know, it ends it ends nicely. Everybody's happy

01:57:33   And the grandson ends up in having enjoyed the book and then you get you know

01:57:38   The payoff the payoff as you wish as you wish at the end

01:57:42   You know saying that somehow in some sort of time in some sort of like time-traveling timeline because how could it be?

01:57:49   Yeah, because it's hundreds of years

01:57:52   - Yes, well.

01:57:53   (laughing)

01:57:54   Oh, that grandpa, he says crazy stuff.

01:57:56   - I really enjoyed this movie.

01:57:58   - Good, I'm glad.

01:57:59   Were the accents acceptable to you?

01:58:00   Because there were some Americans

01:58:02   doing British accents in this movie.

01:58:04   - It was, so I was confused by it a lot

01:58:10   because I kind of couldn't understand

01:58:12   where they were attempting to have this movie set.

01:58:17   - That's 'cause Americans don't understand

01:58:18   about regional British accents.

01:58:20   It's just fairytale Britain is where it's set.

01:58:23   - Well, there's just no-- - Except it's actually Florin,

01:58:24   it's actually Florin and Gilder, so it's,

01:58:27   which are currencies, but, you know,

01:58:31   so theoretically that could be like Italy,

01:58:33   but it's just, it's nowhere.

01:58:35   But most of them, most people, with some exceptions,

01:58:38   are trying on English accents to some degree,

01:58:41   fake and not fake.

01:58:42   - So my problem with it is there's no commitment.

01:58:45   Like there's no, nobody will commit to a certain,

01:58:49   So they will not get everybody to commit to a certain accent, right?

01:58:52   Because you have a Spanish guy, you have a French guy,

01:58:55   you have Americans pretending to be English,

01:58:57   you have Americans that just don't even care and are just being American and

01:59:01   saying they're Sicilian.

01:59:02   Yeah. Well, it's more like there are New Yorkers in this movie.

01:59:06   Yeah.

01:59:07   The Miracle Max and the, and the, uh, and,

01:59:10   and Vizini are both sort of just doing New York accents and, and, and, uh,

01:59:14   Miracle Max's wife, Valerie too.

01:59:17   - So I had, even though everybody's talking British,

01:59:20   well, a lot of the main characters

01:59:21   are talking in British accents,

01:59:22   and that's because it's medieval times.

01:59:24   Many, many, many, many medieval time movies,

01:59:27   everybody has British accents.

01:59:28   I don't know where this started,

01:59:30   but it seems like something that I've seen a bunch.

01:59:32   I assumed that it was Italy,

01:59:34   because Florin sounds, and Florian Gilder sounds Italian,

01:59:38   and obviously you've got Vassini, who's Sicilian.

01:59:41   Like, it just kind of made sense to me

01:59:43   that it would be Italy.

01:59:44   - Yeah, it is made up though.

01:59:46   I mean, Gilder was a Holy Roman Empire currency,

01:59:51   and a Florin was a, I think that was an Italian currency,

01:59:55   and they're named, so Florin and Gilder

01:59:57   are just named for currencies.

02:00:00   It's the Florence currency was the Florin.

02:00:02   So it's all made up.

02:00:04   - The setting doesn't really give anything.

02:00:08   - No.

02:00:09   - It kind of could be anywhere in the world.

02:00:10   - Lots of hills and a little medieval city, and yeah.

02:00:13   - But I enjoyed it.

02:00:15   I really did enjoy it.

02:00:16   - I'm glad you did.

02:00:17   - My girlfriend didn't.

02:00:19   - Oh.

02:00:19   - I don't know why she--

02:00:21   - Oh.

02:00:22   No reasons given?

02:00:24   - She just didn't think it was very entertaining.

02:00:27   That was kind of her, she just didn't really--

02:00:29   - She hates me now.

02:00:30   - Probably.

02:00:30   I don't know how she's gonna feel after my next assignment.

02:00:36   - What's your next assignment, Myke?

02:00:37   - So I enjoyed this enough that I would like to do it again

02:00:41   and we're gonna do it again next week.

02:00:43   And this is because basically I know that The Princess Bride

02:00:46   is kind of important to you, it's a movie that you enjoy.

02:00:50   - I love it, yeah.

02:00:51   - But there's a movie that is extremely important to you,

02:00:56   that references are made and I don't get them.

02:01:00   And it's about time that I do, and that's Real Genius.

02:01:03   - Yes.

02:01:04   - So I'm going to watch Real Genius

02:01:06   in between now and next week's episode,

02:01:08   and we will do a second Myke Watches a Movie vertical.

02:01:10   This is not gonna be every week, by the way.

02:01:12   No. Although it may recur.

02:01:16   Yeah, and I think there's a fun in it because you are obviously a man who very much enjoys movies.

02:01:25   You know, The Incorporated shows that, of course.

02:01:28   And I also very much enjoy movies, but I have big gaping holes in my movie history.

02:01:39   And I don't even want to tell you about some of them,

02:01:41   or we'll be doing this forever.

02:01:43   (laughing)

02:01:44   And so I think, yeah, I think it might be fun.

02:01:46   I think it might be fun.

02:01:47   We're doing it at the end of the show,

02:01:48   and people can choose if they want to listen or not.

02:01:50   - Exactly.

02:01:51   - So--

02:01:52   - I have one more note about "The Princess Bride"

02:01:54   just to say one of the reasons

02:01:55   that I think it's interesting and relevant

02:01:56   is that the director of this movie is Rob Reiner,

02:01:59   and I think one of the reasons people are,

02:02:03   it's an interesting run of films for him,

02:02:05   because Rob Reiner's first seven films are all

02:02:10   consensus, critically acclaimed movies.

02:02:15   It wasn't until his eighth film that he made a bad movie.

02:02:18   His first seven are all kind of great.

02:02:21   So his first feature was this,

02:02:24   and he was known as a sitcom actor.

02:02:25   He was Archie Bunker's son on "All in the Family."

02:02:30   And then he made these movies.

02:02:32   He made this a Spinal Tap.

02:02:33   Have you seen this a Spinal Tap, Myke?

02:02:35   - No.

02:02:36   - Oh, Myke, put it on the list.

02:02:38   (laughing)

02:02:39   - We'll be doing it forever.

02:02:40   - Then he made "The Sure Thing,"

02:02:41   which is an 80s romantic comedy, teen sex comedy,

02:02:44   but it's a really good one.

02:02:46   Then he did "Stand By Me."

02:02:48   Have you seen "Stand By Me," Myke?

02:02:50   - Hmm.

02:02:51   - Oh, Myke.

02:02:52   Then "The Princess Bride," then "When Harry Met Sally,"

02:02:55   then "Misery," and "A Few Good Men."

02:02:58   Those were his first seven movies.

02:03:00   They're all pretty good.

02:03:01   Then he made "North," not good.

02:03:03   (laughing)

02:03:04   And since then, he has not made very many good movies.

02:03:07   But those first seven are all pretty good,

02:03:11   and you've probably not seen any of them,

02:03:13   except "Princess Bride."

02:03:15   - Let me look again.

02:03:16   - Have you seen "A Few Good Men"?

02:03:18   "Misery"? - No.

02:03:19   - "When Harry Met Sally"?

02:03:20   - Yes. - Okay.

02:03:21   - I'm sorry.

02:03:25   (

02:03:25   Anyway, anyway, so a great run of movies including This Is Spinal Tap which is also, This Is

02:03:32   Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, and When Harry Met Sally are all in my top 25 probably.

02:03:37   So three movies from one director is pretty outstanding but he had a really good 1980s.

02:03:43   Really good 1980s.

02:03:44   I feel like the Myke watches a movie that could just be renamed the Jason is disappointed

02:03:50   in Myke photo.

02:03:51   That'll be a subtitle.

02:03:55   Myke watches a movie, Jason is disappointed.

02:03:57   But, you know, we'll get feedback from the listeners.

02:04:01   I think putting it at the end is a good decision

02:04:03   'cause people can just dump out

02:04:04   if they don't wanna listen to us talk about a movie.

02:04:06   But, you know, there's a precedent for this.

02:04:09   I recall John Groover and Dan Benjamin

02:04:10   talking about Bond movies.

02:04:12   And if something comes up that it turns out you haven't seen

02:04:15   and you feel like you need to see it,

02:04:17   or I feel like you need to see it,

02:04:19   then maybe we'll revisit this.

02:04:20   So we will do "Real Genius."

02:04:22   We will talk about that.

02:04:23   'Cause why not?

02:04:24   'Cause I want to watch it, I do want to watch it.

02:04:27   I have to admit, I have listened to the entire episode

02:04:31   of Defocus that you did.

02:04:32   I am one of those people.

02:04:35   - Who listens to podcasts about things

02:04:38   they haven't seen or read.

02:04:39   - Yep, which probably helps with my being able

02:04:42   to get the pop culture references.

02:04:45   - It's like you've seen it.

02:04:46   - I know.

02:04:47   So I will watch it, but I don't, I kind of listen to it,

02:04:52   but when you listen to those things,

02:04:53   It doesn't necessarily all go in, I don't think.

02:04:56   But I am excited to see Real Genius.

02:05:00   - Okay, it's very 80s, be prepared.

02:05:02   Put on some leg warmers.

02:05:03   - I'll do what I can.

02:05:05   I didn't get a lot of the 80s, so this can be my 80s time.

02:05:10   Thank you so much for listening

02:05:11   to this week's episode of Upgrade.

02:05:14   If you want to find the show notes for this week,

02:05:16   you can check your podcast application of choice

02:05:19   or go to relay.fm/upgrade/21.

02:05:22   If you'd like to find Mr. Jason Snell on the internet, he is at SixColors.com and of course

02:05:27   TheIncomparable.com as well, or he is on Twitter.

02:05:30   He is @JSNELL, J-S-N-E-L-L-L.

02:05:33   I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

02:05:35   This show is a production of TheGloriousRelay.fm.

02:05:39   You can find our other shows at Relay.fm.

02:05:41   Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Linda, Squarespace, Stamps.com and MailRoute.

02:05:47   And thank you most of all for listening.

02:05:49   We'll be back next time.

02:05:51   Until then, buh-bye.

02:05:52   Bye bye.

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