0:00:00[Music]
0:00:10From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 252. Today's show is brought to you by Lumen5,
0:00:17Bombus, and TextExpander from Smile. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined, as always,
0:00:22by my Summer of Fun podcasting partner, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.
0:00:27Hello, Myke Hurley. It's good to be here for the Summer of Fun. It's July. Can you feel
0:00:31it? It's July. I can feel it. Jason, we promised on our last episode some super special guests
0:00:36for today's episode. Would you like to introduce said special guests?
0:00:39Okay, yes, we have two special guests, and this is going to inform what we're talking
0:00:44about today. First off, these are both Relay FM hosts who I have multi-decades of history
0:00:52with, host of the Parallel podcast, and my former colleague at MacUser Magazine back
0:00:59in the day, Shelley Brisbane. Hello.
0:01:01Hello. It's nice that you invited the old people here on the show. I'm glad to be here.
0:01:05Yeah, we're going to show Myke how it was done back in our day when podcasts were just
0:01:10rants on the sidewalk.
0:01:11I'm just sitting here on my lawn, waiting for somebody to try and get on it and see
0:01:15what I might do.
0:01:16Now, Shelley, you and I work for MacUser. We had a columnist, this fellow, Andy Inotko
0:01:24is what I think you pronounce that. It is. It's hard to pronounce or spell. And he is
0:01:28the host of the Material podcast here on Relay FM, as well as a regular panelist on MacBreak
0:01:33Weekly and a visitor to WGBH Boston's public radio. Hello. Do I get it all right there,
0:01:39Andy?
0:01:40Yeah, I talked for half hour about technology on NPR here in Boston, but once a weekend,
0:01:47it usually comes out pretty much okay. I do gesture a lot with my hands, even though it's
0:01:51simply radio, but over the past couple of years, I'm kind of winding that down.
0:01:55Oh, it's, you know, just calm down. I've been in the audience for that, so that's pretty
0:01:59good. That's a nice thing. So we have my pals who I have known since the '90s here, and
0:02:07we're going to talk...
0:02:08Jason, can I say my usual line? It's traditional. I've known Jason for so long that he is the
0:02:14man who taught me how to boldface in HTML.
0:02:17It's true. It's true. That was back when we were still learning what a web browser was.
0:02:24So we're going to talk about Apple and the many transitions in Apple's history, but before
0:02:29we do that, I think we should answer a Snell Talk question, Myke.
0:02:34We should. Just because we have guests, we do not issue from tradition around here. It's
0:02:37the summer of fun, but it's not the summer of no tradition, Jason. So we're going to
0:02:42go with a #SnellTalk question from Gordon, and I was looking through our list and I was
0:02:47like, let me pick something which kind of fits in with today's episode. So I went for
0:02:52something which is pre-OS 10, and the idea of the question comes from Gordon. What is
0:02:57your favorite app that you still use regularly that dates back to the pre-OS 10 days? Mine
0:03:03is Graphic Converter. Jason, do you have an answer for this?
0:03:07I actually do have a few answers. I'm wondering if perhaps I should defer to my guests if
0:03:12they have favorite apps that date back to the pre-OS 10 period. Andy and Shelley, do
0:03:18you have favorite apps from the olden times? I do, actually. I like Graphics Converter.
0:03:23I still use it. Graphic Converter, pardon me. I still use it, but I startled James Thompson
0:03:27when I met him about a year ago and I said, James, I really love Drag Thing. And he was
0:03:32like, really? As in, that's been a long time and that's a 32-bit app. I don't use it all
0:03:38the time, but I use it on a laptop that I have because that's how I like to see my icons.
0:03:43That extra squeak was about, really? It's a 32-bit app, it won't be updated and we'll
0:03:47stop working in the fall. Exactly. And he made me aware of that. And
0:03:51I'm trying to let myself down easily, get some other solutions that are more modern,
0:03:56but I always enjoy Drag Thing. All right. That's a great one. Andy?
0:04:00I feel like there's one that Jason and I both absolutely adore and as a sign of my friendship,
0:04:05I should leave that for Jason. I had you go first for a reason. I got another one in my
0:04:11back pocket. Okay. In that case, it has to be BB Edit,
0:04:14which is the, BB Edit is a program, technically a programmer's text editor, but it has been
0:04:20powering tech writing and all kinds of writing behind the scenes for eons because...
0:04:26I used it today. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm pretty sure that
0:04:30when Jason taught me that, "Oh, here's how you both face something." It was code, HTML
0:04:35code I typed into a BB Edit document to create that formatting. And up until fairly recently,
0:04:41it was what I wrote every single one of like two or three weekly columns on because it's
0:04:45a text editor. It gets out of your way. It's 100% reliable. It is fine tuned, extremely
0:04:52sleek, efficient code. And the people who create it are awesome people. And it's like,
0:04:58every time that I use it, I feel like I'm smart for choosing to use BB Edit. And I'm
0:05:05pleased. I'm also pleased that it's sort of like when you have that rice cooker that you've
0:05:11used since college, that it's like, "Okay, everything's okay. This is definitely my MacBook
0:05:17because look, I've got BB Edit on it." Just like every MacBook and PowerBook I've had,
0:05:22it is a touchstone of reality for a lot of people who write on Macs.
0:05:26Yeah, I wrote a column last week where I referred to BB Edit as the app of Theseus in that it
0:05:31has gone through so many transitions, as we're going to talk about here, that there's nothing
0:05:36left from what was there at the start. But it's also never had one of those schisms where
0:05:42there's a new version and it's completely incompatible with the old version and doesn't
0:05:45do what the old version did. It's never done that. It's always just kind of kept evolving
0:05:49with the times, which is delightful.
0:05:52Rather than that simile, I would use the old Japanese wooden temple. I said, "This temple
0:05:57has been here for 800 years." Like, "Wow, the wood looks fresh." Well, yeah, because
0:06:02every time a piece of wood rots out, we replace it. So basically, it's nothing in that older
0:06:07than 50 years. And it's like, but it's always been this temple. It's always been there.
0:06:12It's never blown up. It's never caught on fire. No one has ever... They're never going
0:06:18to change a command and say, "You know what? Let's turn this into a coffee house. And it'll
0:06:22be like a coffee house with like a wine bar on it." And then they had to go back to being
0:06:27a temple because that was a terrible idea. It's been like consistency often.
0:06:30My answer is going to be, and this is an app that had a little bit of a schism, but it
0:06:34is essentially doing the same thing with the same author. And that's Default Folder from
0:06:38St. Clair Software, which I remember downloading as shareware in college. And I still use it.
0:06:44And actually one of my more proud moments of the last couple of years is I was using
0:06:48it at one point a few weeks ago and thought to myself, "Hey, you know, there's something
0:06:52Default Folder doesn't do." I actually had an idea for a feature in Default Folder. And
0:06:57I emailed John, the developer of Default Folder, and said, "Could you do this? Is this possible?
0:07:03Am I missing this feature?" And I had one of these stranger things. It does happen occasionally
0:07:08when you write about this stuff, which is the next day, John sent me a beta build with
0:07:13my feature implemented. Okay. And it's great. And the nice thing is that I've heard from
0:07:19several people afterward when it was rolled into the official kind of beta releases of
0:07:24Default Folder saying that they actually wanted that feature and are glad that it's there.
0:07:29So that's nice. But Default Folder, for those who don't know, lets you set when you choose
0:07:35open or save in a document in any app, you can set what the default folder is that you're
0:07:40saving into and you can set it per app. You can override it. There are a bunch of things
0:07:44where you can click on like a finder window that's behind and it will switch to that finder
0:07:47window. And a new feature you may not be aware of is it can now actually use a script to
0:07:54determine based on current conditions where you want to save something. It's a new feature.
0:08:00Whoever thought of that feature is a genius. So that's mine.
0:08:05I didn't even know that this thing was still in existence and I've got the webpage open.
0:08:08I remember using it a long time ago but I just assumed it was gone.
0:08:13Thank you, webpage. I think I will try it for free for 30 days.
0:08:16Thank you so much to Gordon for the hashtag Snell Talk question. I'm pretty proud of my
0:08:19choice for this week.
0:08:21It's a good one.
0:08:22Good choice.
0:08:23It's a very good one.
0:08:24It's a very good one.
0:08:25For our panel here today. You can always send in a question for us to open an episode of
0:08:27Upgrade with the hashtag Snell Talk. So Jason, you mentioned transitions. Transitions is
0:08:33one of the big discussion points that we're going to talk about today because Apple are,
0:08:39we've been talking about this over the last couple of weeks as we move into Catalina with
0:08:43Catalyst apps and then looking forward to Swift UI and what that could do for Apple's
0:08:48platforms as well as looking at the introduction of iPadOS. There is a lot of stuff going on
0:08:53right now. I mean, that's not even beginning to mention the fact that we could be moving
0:08:58from Intel to ARM in the near future. So as a way to kind of provide maybe a little bit
0:09:04of context and background for these upcoming transitions, it might be a good idea to look
0:09:09at the past because Apple has been through many transitions from personnel to architecture
0:09:16to software. So you wanted to assemble our group today to discuss that, right?
0:09:21Yes, the group. Don't call them the group of elders. We're not going to use that word.
0:09:27We are really more of a council really. Yes, that's right. We were consulting with those
0:09:32who've seen, well, it turns out, Myke, if you stand around long enough and just watch,
0:09:38you become a witness to history. Sometimes it's boring history, sometimes it's exciting
0:09:42history, but it's history. And Shelley and Andy and I have been standing roughly near
0:09:46the corner of technology and liberal arts for a few decades as the parades have gone
0:09:51up and down the street. And I feel like that gives us a perspective that, again, I don't
0:09:58feel like I've been standing on this corner for 25 years, but I really have. And every
0:10:04now and then we go through one of these transitions and I realize I'm talking to somebody like
0:10:08you, Myke, who has not even, didn't even do the PowerPC to Intel transition, let alone
0:10:14the transition to PowerPC or the OS9 to OS10 transition or any of these other transitions.
0:10:20And I realize, oh, you know, a lot of people don't have the context of what Apple has done
0:10:24in the past when they've had to go through something like this. I've got a list here,
0:10:27so I think we should go through them. And you guys contributed to this list as well.
0:10:32Going way back, I like this one. I hadn't really thought about it. Originally, the Mac
0:10:36was a self-contained item. It was the original Mac and then the 128 and, you know, it became
0:10:42the 512 and there was a plus and the SE. But there was that moment where Apple made a box
0:10:49that you could attach a color monitor to and that was a Mac too. And I remember it was
0:10:56a little bit later, color Macs were out, but I hadn't used any of them. I remember that
0:10:59first time that I used a Mac that was capable of conceiving of colors and used, you know,
0:11:04could only didn't have a built in display. And it was definitely a very weird kind of
0:11:09transition.
0:11:10Yeah, particularly because one of the reasons why there are a lot of reasons why a lot of
0:11:15people, users in the industry didn't take the Mac seriously at first. Well, A, because
0:11:20you couldn't word process a document longer than nine pages, okay. But it really did look,
0:11:25it didn't look like any other computer. It looked like as intended an appliance, a friendly
0:11:29little pal that's on your desk. And when you had to transfer, it was interesting to finally
0:11:38react to a Mac that was a box with a TV looking screen on top of the box. And it was because
0:11:47that's what all computers since that I'd ever used looked like. And not only that, but it's
0:11:52felt like the face that I'd been looking at for the previous X number of years was this
0:11:57like 500 pixel wide black and white Bloxy face. And when you're looking at a color image,
0:12:05it's like when a friend that you've known your entire, you've known for 10 years, but
0:12:08has never ever not had a beard suddenly comes back from vacation and he shaved. And it's
0:12:13like, I know that's still Doug, but this is a very weird form of Doug that I'm going to
0:12:18have to get used to.
0:12:19Well, and for most people, the screen got bigger because you could attach a radius display
0:12:23to an SE 30, something like that. But for most people, I think the nine inch screen
0:12:27on the plus sized, which is the first Mac I had, was what people thought of as a Mac
0:12:3213. And so even if you just had the 13 inch RGB on the Mac two, you were looking at a
0:12:36bigger image, you were looking at a color image. And of course, the big deal of expansion,
0:12:41those little handle held Macs could be expanded in sort of weird and kludgy ways. They even,
0:12:47you could even get a hard drive and a Mac plus, which I always thought was going to
0:12:50break at some point because somebody would, you know, put it down wrong. But with the
0:12:54Mac two, it was meant to be expanded. You open it up and there were slots and you didn't
0:12:58have to have torque wrench and you didn't have to do all these crazy things and, you
0:13:02know, pray to the gods of hardware repair if you wanted to put memory or a drive in
0:13:07your computer. It did just definitely change the context in that one of the criticisms
0:13:11of the Mac in the earliest days was that it was this appliance. Ironically, I mean, this
0:13:16is sometimes I think the iPad is similar to the concept of the original Mac. That's why
0:13:21I always I always felt like Steve Jobs was trying to push to that same place, which is
0:13:26I want this to be just a thing that you carry around and you don't feel that it's super
0:13:30technical and it is that computer for the rest of us. And the Mac was criticized as
0:13:35so many Apple products are for being not quite what everybody expects from the category.
0:13:41And it was all in one. It was had had a mouse. It was strangely shaped all of these things.
0:13:49And the Mac two when that came in, it was almost like Apple saying, All right, we hear
0:13:53you. Do you want you want a computer box that you attach things to? We can give you that
0:13:58too. But the original and that definitely my first Mac was a an SE. So I definitely
0:14:03was somebody who was entering the Mac through that little nine inch diagonal screen, black
0:14:08and white screen, which I think about it now and I can't even believe what a wide world
0:14:13it opened up to me in that teeny tiny little square, a little rectangle. But it did. And
0:14:19then and then Mac two. Yeah, we had a at my college newspaper, we had a Mac two. And eventually
0:14:25we had a Mac two f x, which was pretty I remember how it sounded because the hard drive ticked
0:14:32and it was so fast. But you know, but for me at home, you know, in my dorm room and
0:14:38all that it was still that nine inch screen. I used to encounter Mac twos in unexpected
0:14:42places. Once the Mac two came out, I saw it on a trade show at a supercom a supercomputer
0:14:47trade show of all things as a front end to a very large computer doing data visualization.
0:14:52And I saw it at an office in IBM because we have to figure out how this Mac thing works.
0:14:56But it didn't really make any sense until the Mac two came along. And so it felt like
0:15:00and obviously Apple did this intentionally. They did all the things that you have to do
0:15:04to make a computer expandable and you know, accessible to all the things that that it
0:15:09is with that other computers are. And it felt like that gave people permission to acquire
0:15:14Macs, even if they weren't going to make them their primary computer. It was a computer
0:15:18that could live in the same environment with other kinds of machines. Yeah, I think the
0:15:23first time I saw Mac two I pretty sure was before it was even released. Because I was
0:15:28a freshman in college and I used to hang out in like the graduate school's graphics lab,
0:15:35computer graphics lab, and they had one in like Los grandes boards stage where it was
0:15:40literally it was a table with Mac two boards like just all wired together that they were
0:15:44writing code either. I don't know if they were developing code for it for Apple or whether
0:15:50they gave they were given an early version of it so that they could see what it could
0:15:53do. But it was weird to see this thing that dominated dominated like it looked like a
0:16:00real computer, even though it didn't have a case on it as opposed to, "No, this isn't
0:16:03this is my this is my friend the Macintosh. This is my Mac plus." And yeah, it was it
0:16:08really was a moment where Apple was realized that they weren't going to get to that they
0:16:14weren't going to get them back to that stage where it's so affordable that everybody can
0:16:17buy one. It's not going to be like the Apple two where families could sort of afford to
0:16:21have one in the house as the home computer that was always they were never going to get
0:16:25to that price point. So the only if they couldn't go down, they had to go up and really sell
0:16:30it as for desktop publishing. The nine inch screen is not that great for laying out a
0:16:36newspaper but hey, will give you not only processing power to lay out that page but
0:16:40the ability to just plug in a huge display as opposed to like Shelley said, crack open
0:16:45that case clip it was a couple of these displays it was literally like a spring clip that you
0:16:52would clip onto the CPU to get at the address lines. Some of them you send them I think
0:16:57you would send them your motherboard, they would send back a new motherboard that had
0:17:02professionally soldered in stuff. So the ability to simply unplug this plug in that you're
0:17:07good it felt like it wasn't a bad transition but it really was like the hippie gets the
0:17:11haircut and doesn't like switch to a three-piece business suit but realizes that perhaps I
0:17:17should start wearing shoes instead of sandals everywhere.
0:17:20So now one of the funny things about living through some amount of history is that you
0:17:25do get to witness this thing you don't realize when you haven't lived through much of it
0:17:28which is this flattening of history and I don't you know want to take the time right
0:17:32now to talk about it but it's not like there weren't other transitions that happened in
0:17:36the early days of the Mac. System 6 to System 7 was an enormous one back when like there
0:17:41was really no ability to run more than one app at once unless you use multi finder and
0:17:46it was this whole complicated thing and System 7 really was a dramatic change but I want
0:17:51to forward a little bit to a time when I actually was at Mac user so in my the beginning of
0:17:58my professional career at Mac user we had a column for a while in the letters column
0:18:03which I edited called ask Dr. Power Mac and it was literally just Stefan Somoji who worked
0:18:10at Mac user back then reassuring people about how terrifying the 68,000 to Power PC processor
0:18:20transition was going to work and for those who don't remember those olden days but maybe
0:18:25if you remember the Intel transition was a similar thing where there were computers with
0:18:29new chips and old software written for old chips and Apple did I think a tremendous job
0:18:37in that era of figuring out a way to translate the instructions for those old apps so that
0:18:43they worked on Power PC processors so you have an old version of word built for the
0:18:4868,000 series and you brought it over to a Power Mac and it ran and it was a little slower
0:18:56sometimes depending on the computer you were coming from but it actually ran and it that
0:19:02was I would say the biggest certainly was the first one I saw but it was a big hardware
0:19:08transition it was one of the first that Apple had to do on that front and the lesson I took
0:19:13away from that was that there was a lot of fear but that when handled correctly people
0:19:19would end up being surprised that it wasn't as bad as they thought that I don't know if
0:19:23you have if you have different recollections of that Power PC transition but I just remembered
0:19:27being a lot we wrote a lot of words about something that ended up being not nearly as
0:19:31painful as we feared. I think so and I think for somebody out there who was buying Macs
0:19:39maybe not a Mac user reader but somebody was out there buying Macs they weren't thinking
0:19:42about it in the same way or to the same extent that we were and Apple at the same time that
0:19:47they made the when they made the Power PC transition they transitioned to vastly different
0:19:52hardware so it wasn't like well your LC will now run a PPC chip it was here's the Power
0:19:57Mac 6100 here's a 7100 and onward and so I think for some people that experience was
0:20:03hidden sure you'd get the dialog box that would say this is a 68k app but it felt like
0:20:08there was a less there was less of a requirement that you be involved in it unless you were
0:20:14just super curious about it or maybe you had a specific piece of software that wasn't going
0:20:19to work but I don't even remember a lot of that it seems like that was a relatively smooth
0:20:23transition mostly just worked yeah I think shelly's absolutely right I think most most
0:20:27humans most civilians they didn't really notice a difference they just noticed I think that
0:20:33eventually they noticed that some of their software was running slowly and some of their
0:20:37software was running super well and it didn't didn't really realize they didn't really realize
0:20:43that what they were running was 68,000 Motorola software in emulation and some were being
0:20:49transitioned into Intel native apps and that's exactly how well Apple did it it's this could
0:20:55be a case study and how to manage fears that anyone's gonna anybody's gonna be feeling
0:21:01in any large moment of transition if you can if you can do everything you can so that they
0:21:05don't notice anything even though there's a titanic change happening under the floorboards
0:21:10that's exactly the way to do it so sometimes I think in principle it's always a good idea
0:21:17to inform people and tell people and make sure things are done out in the open but oftentimes
0:21:23I find myself over explaining a transition or over explaining a concept that I when I'm
0:21:29when I finally like slap myself in the in the head and at eight and a half minutes in
0:21:32my little monologue realize that actually this is not going to affect your lives at
0:21:36all because it's gonna it's gonna affect the lives of everybody working at Apple who is
0:21:41gonna have to work on this and make sure that it works properly but if they do their jobs
0:21:46okay you're just gonna notice that some of your some of your apps are gonna be slow some
0:21:51are gonna be fast and after a year all of your apps are gonna be fast it's really this
0:21:54chain right where it starts with Apple it goes to the developers of apps and then it
0:21:59goes to the user and at if executed properly Apple does provides the tools and the infrastructure
0:22:08and the developers are able to do their updates and you know if it all goes well the user
0:22:14doesn't notice anything right like that is the goal is you know here's a new update and
0:22:19we mentioned you know BB Edit earlier here's a new update and and they don't need to know
0:22:24the users don't need to know that oh well behind the scenes I had to do a whole lot
0:22:27because Apple changed this thing and that thing and all that in the end the user just
0:22:30wants to use the thing and and if if the developers get the tools to do their updates properly
0:22:37it can be an invisible transition which in my mind is the best transition to have.
0:22:41Yeah it's it's you have to get a column out and maybe it'll pop into my mind that oh my
0:22:45god Apple's gonna be changing the the with their web renderer for Safari from KHTML to
0:22:50something else like actually nobody who actually reads this is going to notice nobody who reads
0:22:55this is should care and maybe you're just going to be scaring people into thinking that
0:22:59the rug is about to be pulled out from under you.
0:23:02And that process was made easier by the fact that Apple was so involved in making PowerPC
0:23:07a chip that they could use for their computer their operating system and it wasn't like
0:23:10Apple said you know what I'm gonna do I'm gonna buy a chip from somebody and I'm gonna
0:23:14write my operating system to run on it they were much more intimately involved in the
0:23:18hardware side than that and so that made it easy for them I mean it doesn't diminish what
0:23:22they were able to accomplish for the user but it does indicate that they had that it
0:23:26was smart of them to make the choice they did about how they developed that hardware.
0:23:31Yeah and I'm just remembering that I think they made the announcement shortly before
0:23:36that year's MacHack developer conference which was which was WWDC before Apple thought to
0:23:42actually hold the WWDC so I was in like a hotel room in Dearborn Michigan excuse me
0:23:47hotel with a in Dearborn Michigan with about 200 300 like super super hardcore developers
0:23:53including many who work for Apple and got here so much opinion and so much talking about
0:24:00how this transition could possibly be made I think they actually had a piece of Intel
0:24:03hardware maybe and they were banging on it and trying to figure out how to make it work
0:24:09and it was a weird time because Apple was really trying to make the developers feel
0:24:13as happy about this as they're trying to assuage the any guilty feelings but the that the users
0:24:18might be having.
0:24:19It's interesting when we talk about chip transitions and we'll talk about in our next segment I
0:24:23want to talk about a lot of these sort of Steve Jobs comes back to Apple transitions
0:24:26because that was definitely he was he was making change everywhere he could possibly
0:24:30do it and including ultimately PowerPC to Intel but I think it's interesting when Andy
0:24:36you mentioned PowerPC there was the PowerPC Alliance which was Apple IBM and Motorola
0:24:41the AIM Alliance and that goes back to a thing that has been part of Apple's DNA since the
0:24:47beginning which is trying to go its own way and so going from the Motorola 68000 to the
0:24:52PowerPC it was very much like we're going to go to this new chip architecture that we're
0:24:56helping drive whereas the Intel transition was interesting because that was basically
0:25:02their partners let them down you know IBM had let them down on the PowerPC side and
0:25:08they ended up just taking chips off the shelf from Intel and as we think about Apple going
0:25:14to arm it's funny how that happens they're going back the other way now it's like oh
0:25:19yeah we've been let down again maybe we should take more control over this so I definitely
0:25:24am seeing parallels there but but Myke has reappeared so maybe it's time for us to take
0:25:31a break now before we go get into some CEO transitions and Steve Jobs coming back to
0:25:35Apple.
0:25:36This episode is brought to you by Bombas.
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0:27:31I wrote in our notes the the CEO transitions it is definitely a thing but most people don't
0:27:37think of most of them because there was sort of the you know John Scully came in and Steve
0:27:42Jobs left Apple and then after Scully got kicked out there was a disaster parade of
0:27:50failed CEOs and then Steve Jobs came back and then obviously Steve Jobs got very ill
0:27:55and just before he passed away he handed the keys to Apple to Tim Cook but you know CEO
0:28:01transitions can be meaningful they aren't always meaningful I was definitely a young
0:28:06editor at Mac or at Mac user back in the day watching the that parade of problematic CEOs
0:28:13walk through and you know it was sort of like well maybe Michael Spindler will be the answer
0:28:17and the answer was no he no no Gil Amelio well only in the sense that he found Steve
0:28:22Jobs that sometimes CEO transitions aren't meaningful but Steve Jobs as a personality
0:28:29with a person with a strong philosophy definitely transitioning to him and away from him are
0:28:37moments that you can draw a line and and and at least try to intuit what what they brought
0:28:44to the table as a CEO and I had a list here of the Steve Jobs returns transitions that
0:28:48happened in a very tumultuous time in the early part of this century primarily late
0:28:55late 90s as well the the clones got killed Apple obviously brought in OS 10 which is
0:29:03how Steve Jobs got imported into the organization because it was based on the next OS so the
0:29:09classic OS transition to OS 10 ending in a funeral by the way at WWDC Steve Jobs had
0:29:16a funeral with an OS 9 box in it and put it down below the stage the iMac transition which
0:29:22sometimes doesn't get enough credit which is when Apple took all the old ports that
0:29:26were standards on the Mac and basically kick them to the curb and said we're just going
0:29:30to do USB now then a little bit later the Intel transition and and I think from a developer
0:29:36standpoint one of the things that also happened is as a part of the OS 10 transition there
0:29:41was really this transition to Apple's own tools which were based on next tools and this
0:29:46is essentially interface builder and Xcode which over the course of the time with the
0:29:52OS 10 and Intel transitions all the stuff that was happening with like CodeWarrior from
0:29:58MetroWorks which was the definitive PowerPC development environment all kind of faded
0:30:03away because Apple wanted you on its own development tools so Steve Jobs did all of that and I
0:30:09know that's a lot to kind of cover but I think it's interesting what I would say about
0:30:15Steve Jobs is the advantage of having somebody like Steve Jobs who knew the company well
0:30:20but was outside the company and felt no ownership in current products I feel like in some ways
0:30:26that's the best case scenario for something like this where you get somebody who knows
0:30:30you well but doesn't have any ego invested in any of the details to come in and say no
0:30:36we're gonna kill the Newton and we're gonna kill OpenDoc and we're going to move to this
0:30:42new operating system and we're gonna start talking start doing Intel builds of it in
0:30:45case we need to dump the PowerPC and we're gonna get rid of Mac serial and SCSI and like
0:30:50and Steve Jobs was able to do that and you know that was a tumultuous five years but
0:30:56Apple came out and the Mac I think came out stronger for it yeah absolutely I think the
0:31:01one of the key things that Steve did was to take a look at Apple as a single organism
0:31:09as opposed to think of it as a company that makes this product line they make the Newton
0:31:13product line and they make this product line the one of the most important things that
0:31:17he did I think was simply here is what we are here to do and we're not gonna do anything
0:31:21that has nothing to do with that famously he at one of his keynotes he collapsed the
0:31:29entire Mac product line into a grid of two boxes by two boxes we are going to have portable
0:31:35Macs we're going to have desktop Macs the Macs can be either consumer grade or professional
0:31:40grade one two three four that's all that's all we're gonna do we're not gonna have the
0:31:44Centris 6152C with the special option of as deviates it's going to be simplified we're
0:31:51out there they try doing everything that didn't work so let's focus on the stuff that we can
0:31:56do and you're absolutely right about the iMac being important too not simply because of
0:32:03the fact that they made so many groundbreaking changes like the first computer to absolutely
0:32:09commit to USB and absolutely commit to optical drives but remember that this came at the
0:32:16tail of so many indistinguishable unremarkable beige boxes and Apple had gone from being
0:32:23this exciting product development company to something just made other boxes that you
0:32:30saw at Sears Roebuck that didn't look really any different or any more exciting than anything
0:32:35else out there and so the suddenly see that it was such a true return to form that we
0:32:40are going to quote the original classic Mac by having here is a one friendly box with
0:32:46a big handle deep into the back of it so you can pick it up and carry it some places but
0:32:49it's going to be like it was inflated out of latex and it's going to be colors so freaky
0:32:55we have to invent new names for them and it was so influential just from industrial design
0:33:01that you could buy waffle makers in a range of iMac colors not from Apple of course but
0:33:06it was so influential and if even if it were successful or unsuccessful as computer as
0:33:12a statement to the world especially to investors and people who are supposed to support the
0:33:16stuff that Apple has not given up there is something that you liked about Apple even
0:33:20if you didn't always necessarily invest in their hardware that thing is back we are not
0:33:25going to become another indistinguishable tech company like Gateway or compact we are
0:33:29going to do something that only we can do.
0:33:31I think it's worth pointing out that those transitions toward Steve Jobs and toward the
0:33:36iMac and USB and all those things while in hindsight were absolutely right were very
0:33:41bloody when they were happening and Apple had started to go to clones because it seemed
0:33:48like if they wanted the Mac operating system to spread they had to do it but that went
0:33:52away and there were people that were worried about that well is Apple going to be able
0:33:55to survive just making all the hardware itself OS 10 what became Mac OS 10 took a lot of
0:34:02years because even though that was based on Next Step early on it was four years before
0:34:09they I think three or four years before they actually got an OS out there the iMac okay
0:34:14it's it's really cool looking but it's got a hockey puck mouse what is this crazy USB
0:34:18thing and I don't think anybody who said that was particularly enamored of the old Apple
0:34:24specific ports it was just that it was unclear to people that that was the direction that
0:34:31was needed that they needed to go and so while as I say in hindsight it all was it all was
0:34:36right and then Steve you know made mistakes along the way but he the the his hit rate
0:34:40given what had happened to Apple in the mid 90s was pretty darn high I think it's also
0:34:45important as we're praising a lot of this stuff is that then as now Apple has the ability
0:34:51to make these choices that inflict a lot of pain on users such as congratulations none
0:34:57of your old Mac peripherals will work with this new iMac oh and by the way you pretty
0:35:02much have to buy an external floppy drive because good luck good luck storing your data
0:35:09someplace else on and on and on they could do this because they always had that last
0:35:14way to end an argument saying well are you going to switch to Windows no okay well then
0:35:19that's all we're offering you and so it's so it's one thing to say oh see they're the
0:35:23only ones who had the vision to really do this like no other computers had it you just
0:35:28didn't have to buy the one machine that this one company was pushing on you and yes they
0:35:34were eventually proven right but there's so but I don't think that in a competitive Apple
0:35:39was at the size that it was at the time and they were and users really did have options
0:35:45they would not only a certain percentage of them would have chosen to buy computer that
0:35:52is as cool but also impractical as the original iMac also the original iMac was one of the
0:35:58of a product line right like the the transition was slow enough that like the pro users weren't
0:36:04buying the original iMac so it was this kind of was just the oddity consumer model and
0:36:09they'd it happened over time so the the higher part other parts of the market didn't have
0:36:14to respond as immediately but you're both right it was really tumultuous time and sometimes
0:36:20I look back on it and I think well the advantage of having somebody like Steve Jobs in charge
0:36:24is that he would be like he'd say well I know this is gonna bother people but I don't care
0:36:29and they'll get over it whereas Microsoft in that era seemed despite all of their power
0:36:34they were petrified that their product would be rejected by their users and not incorrectly
0:36:40because we saw you know over the next 10 years that Microsoft tried to introduce larger changes
0:36:47to their ecosystem and they were generally just rejected by their user base so you know
0:36:53struggling today yeah like with this type of stuff right like this is still a thing
0:36:57that is a problem for them well an Apple spent before Steve Jobs came back and after he did
0:37:01I guess you could say they probably spent 10 years or so really branding themselves
0:37:06against Windows they don't do that in the same way at all today but at that time they
0:37:11could say as Andy pointed out look we're the Mac you have the advantage of this user interface
0:37:16that is comfortable that is likable that is something somebody who hates Windows can be
0:37:21comfortable with and Apple leaned into it and so did we writing magazines lean into
0:37:25it as well yeah and the other part is that people have an emotion Apple users have an
0:37:29emotional response to Apple that Windows users do certainly not have with with Windows devices
0:37:37it's Windows is the Windows and Windows PCs are really the Toyota Corolla of computing
0:37:45they're for people who I I really just want something where I get in and I begin to the
0:37:50driveway I turn the key it starts up it gets me to work safely and then at five o'clock
0:37:56it gets me home safely I'm not a lover of this thing I wanted to be practical and I
0:37:59really can't tell the difference between this $18,000 car you're showing me and this $38,000
0:38:04car you're showing me despite the fact that the $38,000 car is much more innovative and
0:38:09as much more cool stuff in it so Windows people are not are fickle that way because they're
0:38:14just buying they're buying a bag of flour that's really all they're buying whereas it
0:38:18kind of disappoints us if Apple doesn't do something that's a little bit alarming at
0:38:22times because that's kind of what they're in the job for there and that's their that's
0:38:25their job to do something that are that makes me think wow I don't know if they should have
0:38:31let people into the new Spaceship Campus before the industrial adhesives and the carpet had
0:38:36finished off gassing because that was a really odd choice they just made that product you
0:38:41want them to surprise you and challenge you but also sometimes they make mistakes and
0:38:46it is you know whenever I'm evaluating something that Apple does there's this moment of like
0:38:51well I like that they did it we'll see like the MacBook if we take the the 12-inch MacBook
0:38:57as an example like and the original MacBook Air was like this too where it's sort of like
0:39:02well I this is an opinionated product design they've made some very clear decisions and
0:39:07trade-offs that other people would not necessarily make and it leads to a product that's very
0:39:12interesting and depending on your priorities could be exactly what you're looking for or
0:39:17depending on your priorities is exactly the wrong product to exist at all and you know
0:39:23then you just kind of have to wait and see and with the MacBook Air I think that you
0:39:29know it turned out that it was in the right direction but wasn't all quite there and they
0:39:33need to take another stab at it before they really got it right and they finally did get
0:39:36it I think exactly right it just took them as somebody who had that original MacBook
0:39:40Air and you could really only use it in a meat locker because if it got too warm it
0:39:45stopped working and shut down its course but they did get there eventually and with the
0:39:49MacBook it's the same way like you know among a bunch of other products people love that
0:39:53little thing and yeah it only has one port and there are a lot of people for whom it's
0:39:56not appropriate but but at the time it's very hard to say is it do I just not like this
0:40:02keyboard or is this keyboard a disaster and you can't tell I could tell except for only
0:40:06Andy can tell well now we can tell now we can see it my dislike for the lack of travel
0:40:11on that keyboard blinded me to the all the other problems with that existed so it's a
0:40:19tough one Myke should we take another break I think that sounds like a great idea today's
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0:42:24support of this show and relay FM all right so the the last transition I want to talk
0:42:28about before we we do the tech industry pivot and talk about where we go from here is a
0:42:35mindset and perception transition I think it actually goes along about the same time
0:42:41as the transition from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook it precedes it a little bit but I think that
0:42:46it's all kind of of a kind in this late model Apple that we we deal with now where we've
0:42:54got you know those of us who wrote about Apple and and and use Apple stuff in the 90s like
0:43:00the default mode then was that Apple was doomed I have a t-shirt that says I've been a Mac
0:43:06user since Apple was doomed and boy those were dark days like Mac user which we've mentioned
0:43:11several times where we all wrote and edited and and did you know went to parties and things
0:43:16like that and he didn't get to go to the parties because he was freelancing remote but we had
0:43:21them and you went to the parties in Boston probably we had parties at Mac World Expo
0:43:25in Boston too anyway it died that magazine died in 1997 because the publishers of the
0:43:30Mac magazines knew that Apple was about to go out of business and they wanted to share
0:43:34their loss so that they didn't both take a bath and then you know within six months they
0:43:39realized they had made a horrible mistake but it was too late to back out of it but
0:43:43that was it it was a dark time Apple was falling apart and then over the next decade you know
0:43:50we got the iMac we got the iPod and then ultimately we got the iPhone and the story of this decade
0:43:58is really that Apple is no longer the doomed you know misunderstood edge case niche product
0:44:06vendor for the for the you know the small group who cares about it and more that Apple's
0:44:12huge and powerful and rich and unstoppable and it's a huge shift that I would say also
0:44:19coincides to the perception of Apple is the Mac becoming Apple is the iPhone because that's
0:44:24another huge part of this same story with the the success of the iPod leading to the
0:44:29leading to the success of the iPhone and you know my friend Greg Noss who I went to college
0:44:32with so I've known him even longer than I've known you both he said to me a few years ago
0:44:37you know I remember Apple being that that company that was like it was kind of adorable
0:44:42because they've tried so hard and now they're like the Death Star they they own everything
0:44:49and can afford everything and they're everywhere and you can't get away from them and isn't
0:44:55it funny to in 15 years have gone from death's door to Apple being seen as the you know not
0:45:02the underdog at all but one of the one of the the big guys one of the big dogs I suppose
0:45:07it's interesting when you hang out with civilians as much as I do because back in the day when
0:45:12we were talking about well most people use Windows and some people use the Mac and so
0:45:17my Mac using friends of course we're all on board but most of the people I knew in my
0:45:21life like oh isn't it cute that you use a Macintosh it's so adorable you know and then
0:45:26and now there's so much awareness of Apple as a company in the broader culture people
0:45:30know what an Apple keynote is people know Tim Cook's name who I would argue a lot of
0:45:35people knew Steve Jobs but later on in his tenure and I think Apple as a phenomenon as
0:45:42a cultural force and it frankly more lately is getting sort of wrapped up with a lot of
0:45:48the negativity of tech in general it is very very different and it's so weird to have been
0:45:53in this sort of weird underdog place where you were going hey I like my team I like being
0:45:59part of this sort of scrappy upstart and what are they going to do next to no really Apple's
0:46:04the one that cares about your privacy they're not as bad as the other guys whoever those
0:46:08other guys might be and it's a very odd transition.
0:46:13Yeah it's when you grow up with Apple as I did and I'm sure you guys did like with Apple
0:46:22too 2 plus or 2e you hear the story about the two hippies in the in the garage who are
0:46:29building these computers and that's sometimes a hard thing to get rid of in your mind when
0:46:34you realize that no they own so many they own so much of the so many markets they have
0:46:38so much power and so much influence they are not the scrappy little upstart they are a
0:46:42huge giant they take big steps and they disrupt every every situation that they walk in simply
0:46:52by being there and this was and it was really hard to remember a day when the only time
0:47:01that I've ever directly confronted another tech journalist to tell him specifically that
0:47:09his reporting was completely out of line and unworthy of him was a major major reviewer
0:47:16who I think he major major columnist who reviewed the I think was meant in the first titanium
0:47:21power book and if it was a 1200 word review 300 words were about the the what the actual
0:47:28product was the actual hardware was in the actual plan for the hardware and the rest
0:47:32of it was but none of this matters because they're gonna be out in business in three
0:47:35months like well of course at $2,000 I mean it's it's a it's weird be stupid to invest
0:47:41this much money on a platform that won't be around in a year from now and now they would
0:47:46you dare tell they can they can keep they can keep any product they want alive for however
0:47:51long they want it simply by force of will that is the that is the absolute goal of any
0:47:57corporation to be able to control its own destiny and Apple is one of the few companies
0:48:01that absolutely controls its own destiny it does not do anything it does not want to do
0:48:06and conversely anything that it does not do they could do it if they wanted to if they're
0:48:11not doing it's because they don't want to do it that's how big they are.
0:48:14Right and I would argue getting just a little bit to what I said before about them sort
0:48:18of getting wrapped up in the criticism of tech I would get wrapped up I would say that
0:48:24Apple whatever the merits of their approach to privacy and user information whether you
0:48:29absolutely agree that they are protecting your privacy 100% of the time or whether you
0:48:33have mistrust for them they operate in a slightly different way than other companies who are
0:48:38in that same in the same business and I think that there is a tendency for people politicians
0:48:44particularly to say here are all the bad actors here are all the actors that we want to regulate
0:48:50and Apple's included because Apple is a big dog not so much to do with what Apple is actually
0:48:55doing or how they're doing it but because they are they are not at all a scrappy underdog
0:48:59in fact they're probably even if you don't if you they're probably the first company
0:49:04many people think of when they're trying to you know wrangle this big thing called tech
0:49:09that people are now much more suspicious of than they were even 10 years ago.
0:49:13So when we do the tech industry pivot which we're about to do I think these are the these
0:49:17are the things to keep in mind it's sort of like Apple is going through transitions now
0:49:21and we'll be going to them soon possibly in a different place as Andy said as a company
0:49:28at the height of its powers that can do whatever it wants essentially in terms of spending
0:49:34money for certain and also this is a company whose priorities are different as well over
0:49:41half of its revenue comes from a single product line and it's not the Mac it's the iPhone
0:49:46and so then we end up with these transitions that are going on so when you think about
0:49:52something like catalyst catalyst is on one level a developer technology that users don't
0:49:59necessarily need to care about but it is Apple's attempt to figure out a way to get all of
0:50:06the work that's been done building software for iPhone and iPad to benefit the Mac because
0:50:12the Mac uses an incompatible method of developing apps there's Swift and Swift UI behind that
0:50:19which is the way to create a new method of writing software that is more easily deployable
0:50:24across all of Apple's platforms down the road and another one that I'll throw in there is
0:50:29this rumored transition at least in part to Mac's running ARM processors designed by Apple
0:50:35like the ones that are in iOS devices and I think that is what struck me when Andy said
0:50:40you know they can spend money to do what they want one of the transitions we haven't talked
0:50:45about but it feeds into this idea of the Mac transition to ARM is Apple transitioning to
0:50:50designing its own processors for the iPhone and the iPad where originally was taking things
0:50:57kind of off the off the shelf ARM designs and now it's got this that that's a case where
0:51:02it spent a lot of money and has been very successful in building its own thing which
0:51:07it controls completely as opposed to having to rely on a partner like Intel that has proven
0:51:12to be problematic in terms of their capability to drive their technology forward so you know
0:51:18we have that here we have Apple at the height of its powers making these these transitions
0:51:23and we don't know how they're going to turn out because we don't have the power we have
0:51:27the power to look in the past from our vantage point on this corner but we don't know what
0:51:31what's in this new parade that is that is about to start marching in front of us so
0:51:36I would love to know what you both think about like the the transitions that are in process
0:51:41and ahead for Apple and how Apple is most likely knowing what we know about Apple and
0:51:45transitions how how it's going to handle it the ARM thing is interesting to me because
0:51:50Apple obviously their position in the marketplace and the amount of money that they have is
0:51:54what makes it possible for them to control their destiny in that way they couldn't have
0:51:58done that when they made the 68k to power PC transition even though they were part of
0:52:02the power PC alliance they couldn't have done that when they were putting Intel processors
0:52:06into max which were a very small portion of the computer market overall but now they can
0:52:12and it totally makes sense that they do and and frankly I don't unless the chips end up
0:52:16being a bad fit for max unless catalyst and Swift UI don't work in terms of making apps
0:52:24properly cross-platform I just don't see a downside it seems like owning the means of
0:52:29production so to speak and being able to design those chips can only go wrong if they make
0:52:33some catastrophic mistakes yeah I'm I'm I'm really excited about the switch to ARM I don't
0:52:40I don't at this point understand if I don't understand how Apple could make ARM processors
0:52:48that can do what they need a professional Mac to do so I believe that it would be a
0:52:55two chip sort of family but that aside one of the reasons why iPhones are so amazing
0:53:02and iPads are so amazing is that they design a CPU to work intimately with every other
0:53:08piece of the hardware that's on that device and also every other thing that's running
0:53:13on that operating system and every other API that that developers are using and so when
0:53:19you when you a generic solution is never going to be as efficient as a bespoke one so when
0:53:25you have a generic Intel processor as amazing as these things are they are not specifically
0:53:31tuned to run iPad OS and they're not specifically tuned to run on a phone when you have a CPU
0:53:38that's designed for augmented reality when it's designed for the exact type of ways that
0:53:45iPad OS handles user interface that's where you get super speed and super power that's
0:53:51why Apple can sell a $300 iPad that is as responsive as many thousand dollar Windows
0:53:58Intel notebooks so I'm really keen to see how they can design a Macbook a consumer level
0:54:04Macbook that yes of course will hopefully be lower power longer life all that sort of
0:54:08stuff but also what new features they can introduce the operating system and the hardware
0:54:13that takes advantage of that level of intimacy as far as the other stuff it's I'm I haven't
0:54:20seen a lot of evidence externally that Apple is as passionate about the Mac as they are
0:54:26about their iOS devices and internally I also don't feel as though I've heard a lot from
0:54:33inside Apple that they feel as though that their flagship their standard of how good
0:54:40Apple can be at developing technology I don't think they feel as though they express that
0:54:44through the Mac I feel as though they express that through their mobile devices and I think
0:54:49that I think that's I think that's true but partly because every time that they trump
0:54:53on how much thought and how much work they've done in making this amazing new Macintosh
0:54:57it's usually about and look how great this is going to be for at developing content and
0:55:01apps for iOS devices as opposed to we are going to make the greatest laptop a student
0:55:07has ever used or the regular consumer has ever used so when I look at catalyst when
0:55:12I look at the move to Swift UI I'm hopeful that it's not a way to tell iOS developers
0:55:19that oh and by the way if you want to bounce off a Mac copy of that app by all means do
0:55:23that and won't have you won't be running in a virtual virtual iPad it will actually have
0:55:28drop down menus and stuff I hope that it's to make sure that if a developer invests time
0:55:36thought and creativity and developing something for one platform they could apply a new fresh
0:55:42set of create creative decisions to making that into a Mac app without having to learn
0:55:47Objective-C if they didn't learn Objective-C or learn how another set of API's for user
0:55:52interface works so I'm a little bit hesitant about it but it looks like a very very impressive
0:55:58move forward well I would agree with a lot of what Andy said as he was talking I was
0:56:01thinking about the degree to which iOS is still a growing evolving thing and I as a
0:56:10Mac first person still think the Mac is the easier system to use not because it's simple
0:56:16but because the thing the hooks are there it's mature it does all the things you want
0:56:21to do to use iOS productively 100% of the time would involve for me a lot of jumping
0:56:28through hoops and that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with iOS it means iOS is still
0:56:32growing and developing and evolving and there's lots of room for that to happen so that's
0:56:37where their energy is going to be and I'm not saying that's right as somebody who would
0:56:42prefer to see the Mac continue to grow and develop and evolve I'd like to see them evolve
0:56:46together but I think it's natural that making iOS do as much as the Mac can do and finding
0:56:52it finding ways for it to do more and different things in the Mac can do is kind of where
0:56:57Apple's you know real creativity and real brain power has to be and that's where we're
0:57:02going to continue to be wowed from here on out and I've said before I think the the arm
0:57:07chip thing is is a no-lose situation for them it'll be interesting to see how they do that
0:57:12on the desktop and on the laptop but I just I feel like there's so much more to happen
0:57:18for iOS including those technologies like augmented reality and and others that are
0:57:24really in their infancy there's just there's like so much out there I feel like sometimes
0:57:28it's hard to see more than the thing you want in the next year the little feature that would
0:57:32make your life better but I feel like in iOS because there are so many new technologies
0:57:37that really haven't become usable in a practical everyday sense because there's so many that
0:57:43are still out there growing that I think they still have the ability to surprise and amaze
0:57:48us with iOS.
0:57:49Steve McLaughlin We talk about transitions I think there was
0:57:51an invisible transition that happened a couple of years ago and Myke and I have talked about
0:57:54this a little bit on this show before the idea that Apple seemed to have come to the
0:58:00conclusion that the Mac was going to just kind of get pushed out on an ice flow and
0:58:05as long as it could float it would be alive but that you know it and its user base would
0:58:12just kind of like get older and fade away and a couple years ago they seem to have made
0:58:18an internal transition where they said okay instead what we're going to do is we're going
0:58:22to bring the Mac kind of into the fold in terms of our product development and our software
0:58:28platforms and that's the root of Catalyst.
0:58:32It is the idea that SwiftUI will let you build apps that will run on the Mac you'll be able
0:58:36to do a version that will run on iPads and Apple watches and you know wherever else you
0:58:41want to put them and that they're going to you know that's where the new Mac Pro came
0:58:46from and and other kind of things where they seem to have changed their tune a little bit
0:58:51which I find kind of fascinating because you know the story of this current era of technology
0:58:56really is about sort of what cards you've been dealt and so from Microsoft's perspective
0:59:03they missed the boat in terms of the mobile revolution and so are building toward the
0:59:12future from Windows and so we see touch interfaces on Windows and we see convertible PCs which
0:59:19you know Apple isn't doing because Apple's cards dealt it this hand that is the iPhone
0:59:25this incredibly successful product possibly the most successful individual product of
0:59:30our lifetimes forward and backward but it also has the Mac which is like a joker kind
0:59:37of it's like why I also have this thing over here but this is not our strategy our strategy
0:59:41is this this over here and and I'm always fascinated seeing how Microsoft and Apple
0:59:46approach this kind of thing because they they're approaching I think maybe the same thing from
0:59:51two completely different sides because it's where their strength lies and they have to
0:59:55build from there and I am fascinated by the idea that I really wonder what they thought
0:59:59the endgame for the Mac was before because it seems now like they're going to give the
1:00:03Mac the big hug where the Mac is not going to it's going to feel more like iOS than it
1:00:07used to but it's still going to be part of the of the whole picture when the alternative
1:00:12was for them to just sort of say well the Mac is what it is and it'll just kind of go
1:00:15on but it's not going to be interesting and we're not going to focus on it and I don't
1:00:20know if that's good or bad but it does seem like they made that change I think in the
1:00:25end it means the Mac will survive a lot longer but it may not be what we think of as the
1:00:29Mac.
1:00:30I think the problem is that you look at what's been happening in Windows hardware and software
1:00:39and how they've created entirely new categories of laptops and how what Google has done with
1:00:44Chrome OS which was it was as laughable and funny and ridiculous a product as the original
1:00:51Mac was but it felt it feels like it's it's it felt this it made the same trajectory where
1:00:57like oh well now that it doesn't stink the core concept is actually really really good
1:01:03and and in many ways it's actually outperforming for me stuff that I've stuff that I've got
1:01:09going on my $2,000 MacBook and you wonder well okay that's great now let's turn to Mac
1:01:14OS what is better about my Mac today than it was five years ago and are they doing incredible
1:01:21new form factors like like a two-in-one yoga style convertible where I can actually tent
1:01:27it up and use it just as a as a display with the keyboard out of the way no I will have
1:01:31they done really incredible user interface revolutions and tweaks like no mostly they've
1:01:37taken mostly when they add new features during the keynote they mentioned how they are now
1:01:43your iOS gestures and your iOS window tiling and it's other feature that we've renamed
1:01:47from we've kept the same name from iOS is now available on Mac OS it's it's I have to
1:01:52I have to say that it's a very frumpy looking and frumpy behaving operating system at this
1:01:57point I know that they've done made amazing changes under the hood mostly long needed
1:02:02improvements to architecture so it's not as though it's been stagnant but I can't remember
1:02:06the last time there was something about the operating system that got me really excited
1:02:10about what I will be able to do with this Mac that I was not able to do before whereas
1:02:15I've had on other platforms many situations like that I feel like that about the iPad
1:02:20all the time yeah and on the Mac it's the Mac and it's and it's it's fine but I do wonder
1:02:26if Apple is actually cutting off interesting areas of exploration because it's got the
1:02:33Mac and the I like Apple doesn't make a convertible right they make an iPad with a keyboard case
1:02:39but no pointing device well now it's going to be like limited pointing device support
1:02:43and they make a laptop with a screen that you can't remove but Microsoft and partners
1:02:48are tinkering in the middle zone and because of these these barriers that Apple has formed
1:02:52between their product lines they're just sort of isn't something there and it's I feel like
1:03:00it's kind of a shame like I would I've said I would love to see an iOS laptop I would
1:03:04love to see a Mac convertible I'd love to see a Mac with a touchscreen but I'm unclear
1:03:09on on on what transitions Apple considers good ideas and what ones they consider kind
1:03:14of bad ideas slash heresy I don't know yeah and even even the new hardware that they have
1:03:20tends to hark back to old hardware I mean you could be very simplistic and say the Mac
1:03:24Pro harks back to the cheese grater which as I say is entirely too simplistic but the
1:03:28Mac mini that everybody is so fond of that came out last year it's a better version of
1:03:32the previous Mac mini though the computers that have had problems have been the laptops
1:03:36where they've actually tried to innovate in some way or move move people forward in terms
1:03:41of their expectations of laptops and there are there have been a lot of problems whether
1:03:45you talk about the keyboard or whether you talk about the balance of ports I don't feel
1:03:49like Apple is having a good experience with laptops and the computers that they do seem
1:03:53to be you know doing well and firing on all cylinders or things like the iMac and the
1:03:58Mac mini that are actually quite old designs yeah I just don't feel as though Apple is
1:04:03I don't think that Apple is embarrassed about the Mac I don't think that they're trying
1:04:06to ignore it I just think that you can always tell when somebody is passionate about something
1:04:12and somebody is simply responsible about something where they definitely I think that Apple is
1:04:16passionate about the about iOS I think that they are they've got their egos invested in
1:04:22it that this is what we haul out to show people how we are doing something that no one else
1:04:26could possibly do and this is being done as well as anybody can possibly be doing it if
1:04:30not better Mac is like and we have a laptop and works really really well it's very very
1:04:35secure it's designed very very well it's a it's a it's a very nice design but they're
1:04:40not going to point to that to say when they when they invite someone into their rec room
1:04:44that's not the display case they lead people to they lead people to the display case of
1:04:48iPads and the iPad and the and the Mac oh well yeah we have a couple of those two but
1:04:52yeah all right I want to do before we go I have a special upstream topic that is something
1:04:58that I've been holding for a while and I think that you would be perfect people to talk to
1:05:01it about but before we do that we do have one more sponsor if Myke Hurley is out there
1:05:07of course I am of course I am I'm playing the role of the listener the advanced listener
1:05:12of this excellent you know excellent thank you for doing that you're all doing a great
1:05:16job by the way he'll be sending his hit in his snail talk question in a moment I'll be
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1:07:26this show and relay FM all right Myke it's time for upstream we usually do it at the
1:07:31beginning and now it's at the end it's because it's a special summer of fun everything's wild
1:07:35in the summer of fun it's all here but it's all in a different way and this is a topic
1:07:39I think I originally was going to do this with John Syracuse and we ran out of time
1:07:42and it's been sitting in our show document for a long time but I think it is a fun topic
1:07:47and I know that Andy and Shelley are people who have opinions about this and Myke you
1:07:51probably do too and it started with Harry McCracken back in April my colleague from
1:07:57he was my he was the PC World Editor in Chief when I was the Mac World Editor in Chief he
1:08:03linked to a story about why 2.7 million Americans still get Netflix DVDs in the mail what Harry
1:08:09said was when streaming emerged I thought it would lead to just about everything ever
1:08:12done being readily readily available but I've been gravely disappointed and I you know I
1:08:18thought about this for a while about how we think about and when I do episodes of the
1:08:23incomparable this comes a lot up a lot where we do episodes about like last week on this
1:08:27show we talked about Kiki's Delivery Service which is not available for streaming it is
1:08:34not available for digital purchase you have to buy the blu-ray or the DVD that's how you
1:08:38get it and there are a lot of movies that are out of print or they're only available
1:08:42on disk and and while there are places that are collecting movies that are either out
1:08:48of print or going out of print like my friend Monty Ashley always talks up Scarecrow video
1:08:53in Seattle which is basically not just a video store but a museum of film and TV and other
1:08:59video things there's just so much stuff that's not available on Netflix or another screen
1:09:03streaming service and I'm starting to wonder if if you're not on streaming if you're just
1:09:10lost and Miyazaki again is an example a lot of classic movies a lot of great old TV shows
1:09:15a lot of movies that don't have a clear rights holder stuff from Broadway there's so many
1:09:20things some of it is caught up in rights issues but it becomes really difficult when I want
1:09:28to talk about a movie or a TV show and everybody says well I can't I can't listen to that episode
1:09:32I can't listen to your conversation because I can't click one button and watch whatever
1:09:37that thing is and it frustrates me because there's a lot of great stuff out there that
1:09:41are out there that is not streaming and I worry that it's all kind of fading away and
1:09:48I'll also mention as an aside I actually saved a bunch of VHS tapes from my teenage years
1:09:54of primarily of David Letterman shows and found out that by the time I had a setup where
1:10:02I was going to digitize those and put them up somewhere that all of them were basically
1:10:06on YouTube already and thanks to the guy named Don Giller who basically has digitized Don
1:10:12Z. Don Z he has digitized like everything literally let's make sure people are clear
1:10:19about this literally everything and I mean the literal version of literally like it's
1:10:24so much so that when people on staff at the Letterman show and for now former members
1:10:29of staff need a clip they come to Don Z there was a documentary about bathrooms over Broadway
1:10:35I think it was but about the Letterman writer who did all the who did all the the record
1:10:45called Dave's Record Collection would have like really weird institutional and business
1:10:48musicals they had clips from the show that they got they could only get from Don Z that's
1:10:54how exhaustive it is yeah sorry and and no it's amazing and we'll put we'll put Don's
1:10:59blog and there's a New York Times piece about it that he has done this it is amazing of
1:11:05course technically copyright violation right it's not he doesn't have a copyright on any
1:11:10of this stuff and yet he's the one who is making sure that it doesn't fade into oblivion
1:11:15because NBC doesn't care especially about the stuff you know that maybe David Letterman's
1:11:20production company cares a little bit more maybe not I don't know but NBC for the early
1:11:24stuff he doesn't care I'm reminded of another story I read in the New York Times back in
1:11:27March about this guy who obsessively taped boxing matches on VHS and for a long time
1:11:34the entire boxing industry would come over to his apartment and borrow his tapes and
1:11:40he would write on little cards and he passed away like five years ago and his wife is still
1:11:46taping boxing matches to keep the archive going but as things get digitized it's less
1:11:54and less used and she's trying to find someone who will take it away and I look at that story
1:11:58and I think this the other part of it is sure one person can make a ridiculous effort to
1:12:03save stuff for the future but in the end when they go away for whatever reason they pass
1:12:09away they decide they don't want to do anymore what happens to this stuff and I don't know
1:12:14I just find it I just find it kind of disturbing that in this yes we are in an era of plenty
1:12:18where there is more great television being made than ever before and there's a huge amount
1:12:22of content accessible to all of us with the click of a button I do wonder about all the
1:12:28stuff that's falling through the cracks yeah that's absolutely true it's I do believe the
1:12:34copyright is important I believe that copyright paying the people who create stuff is important
1:12:39I don't believe that you should be a Johnny no wanna pay and just simply say well because
1:12:42I can get this on on a bit torrent that means that there's no reason for me to pay for this
1:12:48blu-ray or to pay for this HBO subscription I don't I don't believe that at all however
1:12:53there is there are a couple of ethical ethical exceptions I think that there are so many
1:12:59pieces of content like you described that if not for the fact that there are people
1:13:03who are pirating this stuff it would just go away like my favorite example of this was
1:13:07you know the the flying Karamazov brothers like the juggling comedy troop so they came
1:13:12they did a production at Lincoln Center of the comedy Shakespeare's the comedy of errors
1:13:17and it was like all vaudeville like all juggling all all all wire walking funny as hell amazing
1:13:25and it aired on PBS is live at Lincoln Center once because again it was a it was an actual
1:13:32production and they did a special like live airing of it according to the rules of course
1:13:37they didn't get they can only air it like once or twice and now you can't get it and
1:13:42it's on YouTube parts one and part two well I'll include the links to them and when you
1:13:49see this you would think that I don't think that whoever it was who digitized this and
1:13:55posted it did anything wrong they did something important and noble because this thing would
1:13:59have died it would nobody would know it exists if not for the fact that someone someone stole
1:14:03it and Smirnjakov Karamazov Sam Williams was a was a friend of mine one of the original
1:14:10members the Karamazov's and he was actually very he was actually very very pleased that
1:14:15DVD copies VHS copies were becoming DVD copies and I think he passed away just as YouTube
1:14:22was becoming really really big and I knew that he as one of the performers in there
1:14:27he could not give permission for this but he was happy that people were able to see
1:14:30this and so it's it's amazing to me that how ephemeral this content can be even something
1:14:37as impressive as the Flying Karamazov brothers doing the comedy various I would I don't want
1:14:41to recommend it to people I want to people to be able to click a link and actually watch
1:14:45it.
1:14:46Where to begin I I've collected classic films forever and I love them and I have watched
1:14:53them wherever I could I have bought every opportunity there was I have looked at all
1:14:58the streaming services to see what and what what was and wasn't available the thing about
1:15:01a lot of classic movies is they are just plain out of print there are extremely complicated
1:15:06rights issues having to do with the fact that the companies that made the films have been
1:15:10bought and sold and merged and you know concatenated and the whole thing and so I if you if you
1:15:15give me the name in the studio that made a movie I can tell you who owned it and the
1:15:19chances are very small that it's the same people who made it and the people who then
1:15:23own it don't necessarily have any interest in creating in cleaning it up and making it
1:15:28the kind of quality that would it would need for streaming release there are people who
1:15:34are out there you know doing the Lord's work restoring films or facilitating the restoration
1:15:39of films finding films in foreign countries reels of film and taking them to the USA UCLA
1:15:45film archive and saying hey could you please help us restore this oh if you raise the money
1:15:48we'll do that and then they take them back to the rights holder and they say well we've
1:15:51done this really cool restoration of your film could we now strike a DVD well no because
1:15:57either the rights are contested or the people who own the film don't feel there's a financial
1:16:02incentive for them to do it even if a lot of the work has been taken care of so basically
1:16:06what I've done is behave like a little squirrel and every time I see something that I want
1:16:10I keep it and it can be DVDs it can be I've you know I've DVR'd thousands of movies from
1:16:16Turner classic movies because that's my preferred that's a lot of the stuff I like is from there
1:16:21and and you will be shocked at what's on TCM that's not on video because apparently there
1:16:26are contracts that allow things to be shown on TV that allow them to be shown on cable
1:16:32TV but not streamed because that's not in the contract not stream nor put onto DVD yeah
1:16:37and sometimes what will happen is TCM will show a movie and you'll think oh well that's
1:16:40a TCM movie I can see that again and then if you ask them if you said you know I saw
1:16:45that movie I saw a desk set that I really liked I'd like to see that again when are
1:16:49you going to play it they say well we're gonna have rights to it again in five years because
1:16:53even even for showing it on cable the rights don't necessarily continue so it's it's and
1:16:58I that I guess has a lot to do with why I've had a mistrustful relationship with streaming
1:17:03and I've always believed that instead of having every streaming service so I could have access
1:17:07to everything I wanted in theory that I was just gonna take subscriptions to the streaming
1:17:12services that had what I wanted now and never assume that I was going to be able to watch
1:17:16it ever again and I think that's the only healthy way to behave for what I want especially
1:17:23in light you know look what's going to happen later this year we have Warners who killed
1:17:27Warner Archive and who killed the previous incarnation of their streaming service and
1:17:33they're now going to create some sort of giant bundle thing because they want to leverage
1:17:36the back catalogue that's still saleable the you know the far more current movies so if
1:17:42you have an art house movie if it's a great classic it might end up on Criterion or it
1:17:47might not and I just never assuming that something is going to be available tomorrow that you
1:17:51saw today is the only way I can you know continue to enjoy movies yeah absolutely those blog
1:17:58posts constantly like what's coming off Netflix this month right like and then where does
1:18:03it go who knows yeah but that's exactly the problem it's like there are movies that I
1:18:08love so much that I don't want to ever lose access to them and that's why so often that's
1:18:13why I buy a lot of DVDs and I buy a lot of Blu-rays because I don't want to lose access
1:18:18to airplane I don't want to ever lose access to John Woo the killer okay I don't want to
1:18:27ever have to or the abyss which has never been which is still we're still waiting for
1:18:31the wonderful 4k restoration one of my favorite movies ever and let's also talk about Babylon
1:18:37five that's been an amazing epic TV series but that Warner Brothers just doesn't seems
1:18:44to actively not care not not care about they actively are disinterested in it they actively
1:18:49are saying we could if you if you take this quarter maybe this quarter move it from this
1:18:54glass to this glass I'm gonna put the two glasses in front of you and that will cause
1:18:59Babylon five to be available to people they would not even take that they may break the
1:19:03glasses at that point exactly they took they so actively don't care about it and so if
1:19:08I don't buy the DVDs and if I don't rip the DVDs into files so I can put it on my file
1:19:14server it just does it just doesn't that's no good and that's another reason why one
1:19:20of my favorite apps ever is an app called Downey for for Mac OS and no matter pretty
1:19:26much no matter what is streaming in your web browser it's a browser plug-in and you click
1:19:30on this button and it does everything for you it'll figure out from what service you're
1:19:34streaming from and capture and find the original mp4 file and just download it to a file and
1:19:41I use this on stuff that is on YouTube that maybe shouldn't be on YouTube I do that all
1:19:46the time because thank goodness I get this this made-for-tv movie starring the stars
1:19:51of the producers as in a in a comedy about how about a disease that turns people temporarily
1:19:58into rhinoceroses and that is never coming to DVD and that's not gonna be remade with
1:20:04with with new cast of characters if you don't so at some point someone's gonna notice who
1:20:09some algorithm run by a movie studio is gonna notice the thing is up there and it's gonna
1:20:13disappear and that's what I'm glad that not only did I watch this I also click that button
1:20:17and had downy make me a copy of it it's not legal but I believe it's ethically I don't
1:20:22have an ethical problem with it and the irony is that Warner Brothers at least at the moment
1:20:27notwithstanding what I said about their streaming service they have been one of the better ones
1:20:31about back catalog and companies like Fox companies like Paramount have I mean I'm talking
1:20:36about really ancient back catalog but even the Babylon 5 thing surprises me and I'm not
1:20:40in that loop and they've restored all sorts of crazy TV series from the 70s and 80s it's
1:20:45a politics because it wasn't made by the core TV business it was made by their syndication
1:20:49arm and therefore the core TV business doesn't want anything to do with it that's the story
1:20:53there but you're right I have been thinking for a long time and I know I've talked about
1:20:57this with Myke that in the end I feel like a lot of the older content is going to go
1:21:02somewhere because I do think there's a niche streaming service that could be successful
1:21:10serving older movies and older TV shows but we aren't there we live in a world where all
1:21:17the money is going toward creating more original content for new services and the rest of it
1:21:22is just sort of like floating out there but I do really believe that and I want to believe
1:21:26it maybe I'm wish casting a little because it does I feel like we didn't learn the lesson
1:21:32of every previous transition to a new medium or to a new storage medium or transmission
1:21:38transfer medium whatever you want to put it as of like losing stuff and you'll be like
1:21:42oh those silly people back in the day who put their film stock or put their films on
1:21:48flammable film stock and then didn't take proper care of it but then there's the oh
1:21:52those silly people at the BBC who erased all of their videotapes of Doctor Who because
1:21:57it wasn't going to be worth anything and by the way those episodes exist now in large
1:22:02part because of fans yeah right again it's the YouTube story except back in the 70s it
1:22:07was fans taping shows off of off of off air on VHS or beta or even before that fans taping
1:22:14the audio using just audio cassette tapes is the reason any of that stuff survives so it's
1:22:18very similar to today's YouTube kind of kind of thing and you know but in the end are we
1:22:24not there already that that a lot of the stuff is going to just fade away and unless you
1:22:28happen to grab a copy and have it in these kind of digital underground it's just gone
1:22:33and nothing frustrates me more than coming up with a great movie or TV show to talk about
1:22:37on the incomparable for example and realizing we can't talk about it because nobody can
1:22:42get it or at least not you know you could get a used DVD of it but you can't get it
1:22:47on in HD you can't get it on streaming you can't buy it on iTunes and so it might as
1:22:52well be invisible. I talked to a guy for one of my parallel shows about right about the
1:22:56time that the the Warner streaming service stuff happened last year and we were talking
1:23:02because he had done a film festival on TCM about disability in film and I said where
1:23:08did you get some of the films you had because they were really incredibly rare incredibly
1:23:12hard to find he said well the way I got access to see them was I know a lot of collectors
1:23:17and there was a lot of exchanging back and forth that wasn't strictly legal so that he
1:23:20could view the movies and decide whether they went in the festival and then he had to present
1:23:24this list to TCM and say here's the film I want to show how many of these can you get
1:23:29me and I think it was two years before he actually got the festival on the on the air
1:23:35that it took them to resolve all the rights there were a couple that he didn't eventually
1:23:39they didn't at all get to show this is TCM they've got a team of lawyers that does nothing
1:23:42but rights issues but he still couldn't get those shown and he's got another list which
1:23:46if he ever does this festival again he's going to add and so it's it's it's incredibly difficult
1:23:51and it's incredibly challenging like I say this is a guy who collects film who didn't
1:23:56have access to the things he needed to see in order to create a new work of art that
1:24:00would explain film to new generations.
1:24:02Yeah what percentage of movies before 1922 are considered lost? It's a stack it's an
1:24:08impressively large number where you'll see not just some home movie stuff but here's
1:24:12the biggest star of the day on one of the most profitable movies of that of 1921 and
1:24:19you see oh wow where is it like no it's lost oh wow so it's so I have to go to a university
1:24:25archive no it there is no no copy known to exist.
1:24:28It's the nitrate film and it's also that people didn't see their value and a lot of copies
1:24:32got thrown away and a surprising number of films made after 1930 which is essentially
1:24:36when the silent transition happened are gone or partially gone and that's the the restoration
1:24:41stories that I find fascinating is when you have people like the Phil Knorr Foundation
1:24:45that go out and they say I want to restore this movie and they scour collectors all over
1:24:49the world they find and they'll say well I found this reel in a vault in Italy and I
1:24:53found that the studio had this reel and we combine them together and we raised a bunch
1:24:58of money and we got the UCLA film archive to actually do the painstaking digital restoration
1:25:03and that's the only reason this thing is available on DVD or Blu-ray and then it's you know don't
1:25:08not even to mention things like showing theatrically which is a whole separate thing you know revivals
1:25:13houses have difficulty getting more than a sort of standard set of classics that we've
1:25:18all seen a hundred times or those of us who pay attention to classics have seen a hundred
1:25:22times it's really hard to get those restorations that are theatrical quality. Also the danger
1:25:28of keeping things in the vault and I will put a link in the show notes to the New York
1:25:32Times piece about the universal audio archive fire where all the master recordings were
1:25:39destroyed in in this fire that's the danger of keeping something in the vault and not
1:25:44letting it out to the world is that if you keep it in the vault you might lose the master
1:25:47but at least you will have saved something but if you keep it in the vault and then the
1:25:52vault burns down you keep it on a you're on a archival DVD and the bitrod happens your
1:25:59hard drive crashes your server melts down and the backup turns out to have been faulty
1:26:05the more you spread this stuff around the more likely it's not going to become lost
1:26:09forever and and that is I mean Shelley you mentioned about finding movies in weird places
1:26:14I think they found what was it was at the front page ended up being like there's an
1:26:18entirely different version with the better takes and we've been watching the version
1:26:22with the bad takes or was it or was it his girl Friday maybe it was his girl Friday I
1:26:27don't know about that one it might have been and then I would bet it was front page because
1:26:31that's an older no I think that's right and they did the international version in the
1:26:34US version the US version got the got the good takes the international version got the
1:26:38bad takes and the movie that everybody had been watching as a fan a film fan for 50 years
1:26:42was the bad takes the second takes because the first takes was lost and then somebody
1:26:46found it and that's great because you know but that was also sheer luck and I mentioned
1:26:51Doctor Who before all the black and white Doctor Who really only exists because they
1:26:55put that on film and shipped it to Africa and the Middle East and to show on TV there
1:27:01and those film canisters survived the purge and that's also ridiculous and and luck and
1:27:06you've lost a lot of a lot of stuff so my my I think all of our point here is it is
1:27:11a point of frustration that we live in this world of plenty and yet there's all this stuff
1:27:15that for legal reasons for intransigent owners of the content reasons are languishing and
1:27:24I don't want to live in a world where if it's not available on streaming it doesn't exist
1:27:29but I'm concerned that that's the world we live in already yeah it's about this is our
1:27:35heritage this is our culture and it disappears unless it is honored unless it is preserved
1:27:39just as we say it's it's it's it's it's distressing but there is another piece of hope in here
1:27:46in that even 10 years ago I don't think anybody could have imagined the power that would be
1:27:52in the hands of just individual really motivated fans the ability to create an HD version of
1:28:01the original release cut of Star Wars Episode IV that just from all we have our crappy 35
1:28:09millimeter prints but we're going to source them the best the best cuts from all these
1:28:12prints that we can get from collectors and then we are going to by hand by basically
1:28:17crowdsourcing 100 frames at a time people people getting rid of scratches getting rid
1:28:23of cuts and then the scholarship of oh actually this is this doesn't have the original crawl
1:28:29the original crawl didn't have the series title on it and the ability to have this actually
1:28:34come almost I would say with the color grading and everything a really commercially grade
1:28:391080 blu-ray type of release of the original Star Wars that has not been modified or messed
1:28:45with with a with with future cuts and yep it's illegal nope there's no there's no there's
1:28:50no legally defensive way but again I have this file on my server which is backed up
1:28:56in many places because if I want to see Star Wars as I believe that it exists which is
1:29:01the way that I first saw it that is my only option and I feel like I'm helping to save
1:29:05humanity a little bit just by participating in the piracy.
1:29:12And related to that the fact that we have such greater capacity than before because
1:29:16people were transmitting initial people were transmitting single movies on single VHS tapes
1:29:23and old-time radio shows on single half-hour cassettes and now you can put dozens and dozens
1:29:29and hundreds of radio shows onto a blu-ray disc and transfer it easily you have YouTube
1:29:35out there you have you have enormous hard drives which must be backed up and must be
1:29:39archived offside and all that stuff but you do have the capability of moving large enough
1:29:44volumes of stuff around that it makes it's possible for an individual collector to amass
1:29:49a pretty respectable set of files that they care about.
1:29:53I just upgraded my four terabyte NAS I'm sorry my eight terabyte NAS to a larger NAS because
1:29:59I'm slow with archiving all of my CDs and all my downloaded files and all the blu-rays
1:30:04and DVDs that I've ripped I didn't think I'd run out of space four years ago but I'm running
1:30:09out of space and now I have to back up that as well because if this ever went away I would
1:30:14be very very sad because this is this is a video store this is Netflix for Andy this
1:30:20is like I would pay ten dollars a month for Netflix for Andy but it doesn't exist so I
1:30:24have to have this box with a Synology logo on it.
1:30:28We kind of have that and sometimes what I'll do to watch a movie is I'll just hit random
1:30:33it's the greatest feeling in the world because I know everything on there is something that
1:30:36I collected for a reason and you know four thousand films or whatever I have I might
1:30:41not even feel like watching the first thing it comes up with but the idea that I have
1:30:44that many choices that are tailored to my tastes and interests is very cool.
1:30:50It's cost me a lot of money and time to do it but I'm glad I did.
1:30:54You have to enjoy being a librarian I find I kind of enjoy being the curator I enjoy
1:30:58when I rip a CD to not only say this look this is Joyce Dinanato's picture on the front
1:31:05of the CD it says Joyce Dinanato and the title of the album the fact that she did one one
1:31:12duet on this album does not make it a compilation of various artists I'm fixing that.
1:31:18Well I think we've reached the end of this very special episode this has been a fun conversation
1:31:22I want to thank my guests for being here and making it special.
1:31:26Andy Anotka thank you for being here.
1:31:28Oh always great to be in podcasts with two of my oldest tech friends.
1:31:34He's not talking about Myke I think.
1:31:39Shelly Brisbane thank you too.
1:31:41Thank you thank you for inviting me I rarely get the chance to shake my virtual finger
1:31:46at the sky about old movies and that it pleases me to being able to do that and old Max too.
1:31:51And if there are kids on our lawn get off get off just come on and Myke you too you
1:31:57get off our lawn.
1:31:58All right well do you want me to do do you want me to just go now or do you want me to
1:32:03do the show?
1:32:04I think you should say I think you should wrap up the show first and then get off my
1:32:05lawn.
1:32:06Okay so I do a job for you then I'll get off my lawn and then get off of it yeah.
1:32:10Mow the lawn and then get off it.
1:32:12If you want to find links to this episode including links to all of Shelly and Andy's
1:32:17wonderful places that you can go and follow online including their Relay FM shows you
1:32:20can go to relay.fm/upgrade/252 you can find Jason at sixcolors.com as well.
1:32:28Thank you so much to our wonderful sponsors of this week's episode Lumina 5, Bombas and
1:32:32TexExpander and most of all thank you for listening to this Summer of Fun special.
1:32:38We'll be back next week with another special guest so that will be something for you all
1:32:42to look forward to.
1:32:44Until then say goodbye everybody.
1:32:46Toodles.
1:32:47Bye everybody.
1:32:48Goodbye.
1:32:48Bye.
1:32:49Bye.
1:32:50Bye.
1:32:51Bye.
1:32:52(upbeat music)
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