Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:09 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, Episode 192, and today's show is brought to you by Eero,

00:00:16 ◼   ► StoryWorth, and Simple Contacts.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hello, Jason.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hello, Myke Hurley.

00:00:24 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:25 ◼   ► I'm very well, Jason Snell.

00:00:26 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm doing great.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Do anything interesting this last week?

00:00:29 ◼   ► Sure did, my friend.

00:00:31 ◼   ► I have my bachelor party in Austin, Texas.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Oh, nice.

00:00:34 ◼   ► With a bunch of my favorite people.

00:00:37 ◼   ► But nobody wants to hear about that, Myke.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Oh, look at that.

00:00:40 ◼   ► We're going to go into our hashtag Snell Talk question.

00:00:42 ◼   ► I like that. Very clever. Very clever indeed.

00:00:45 ◼   ► You stuck with me right in.

00:00:46 ◼   ► You took advantage of my jet lag.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Joel wants to know, Jason, if a movie is released in IMAX 3D

00:00:53 ◼   ► and as well as regular 2D,

00:00:55 ◼   ► do you have a preference of which version you would like to see?

00:00:59 ◼   ► Great question, Joel. And my answer is, I don't like 3D movies. I have seen some 3D

00:01:06 ◼   ► movies that I thought were fine, that did a good job, but in general, I don't like

00:01:12 ◼   ► them. I don't like the fact that because of the way the 3D process works, you generally

00:01:16 ◼   ► get a darker picture. I wear glasses, so I don't really like the fact that I spend

00:01:20 ◼   ► an entire movie with two pairs of glasses stuck on my face.

00:01:25 ◼   ► I hate that so much.

00:01:26 ◼   ► It is the worst. So I will always pick a regular 2D movie. IMAX, I've seen some IMAX movies

00:01:33 ◼   ► and if it's an IMAX movie, I like them. But a lot of times there's a film that's in IMAX

00:01:39 ◼   ► often times, like The Dark Knight I saw and it was at an IMAX theater. And it was, most

00:01:44 ◼   ► of the movie was just the movie projected on the giant IMAX screen and then there were

00:01:49 ◼   ► some parts of it that were shot in IMAX that were at the IMAX ratio and then they went

00:01:53 ◼   ► back to the other aspect ratio. My only IMAX movie was Blade Runner 2048 and that had some

00:02:00 ◼   ► IMAX stuff in it and it was glorious, right? Like it looked wonderful. Yeah, it looks great.

00:02:06 ◼   ► It's a little bit weird but I don't have an IMAX theater near me, honestly. Well, I mean

00:02:11 ◼   ► near me. In my county I don't have any. I would have to go to kind of the far side of

00:02:15 ◼   ► San Francisco or out into the East Bay which means I never go to IMAX movies and I try

00:02:20 ◼   ► to avoid the 3D movies. In fact, and we'll put a link in the show notes, I own what are

00:02:26 ◼   ► called 2D glasses. I've never seen these and this is maybe one of the best things I've

00:02:31 ◼   ► ever come across. So if you go to a 3D movie and you don't want to see 3D, you wear these.

00:02:38 ◼   ► That's hilarious. And what it does is, you know, the way 3D movies work is that the two

00:02:43 ◼   ► lenses are polarized differently so that you see two different images and that's how 3D

00:02:49 ◼   ► works is that they give you that depth sensation. 2D glasses are only one side, and so it flattens

00:02:59 ◼   ► the image. I will say, for people who are maybe thinking sort of like, "What about the

00:03:04 ◼   ► purity of the 3D image?" I'll just point out, almost every movie made now that's in 3D is

00:03:09 ◼   ► faked. They have a -- if you look in the credits, like, Infinity War is a good example of this.

00:03:14 ◼   ► If you sit through the credits of any movie, and a Marvel movie is a good one to sit through

00:03:17 ◼   ► the credits through because you want to see what happens in the post-credits sequence,

00:03:21 ◼   ► you will see an entire section of names that are the people who did the 3D conversion because

00:03:28 ◼   ► 3D cameras are really heavy and hard to use and most people don't bother. They just shoot

00:03:33 ◼   ► it in 2D and let some company sit there and apply fake depth in order to give that 3D

00:03:39 ◼   ► effect. And if you like 3D movies, that's great, but I don't care for it. I don't think

00:03:43 ◼   ► it's really necessary. I try to avoid them and I have 2D glasses for when I actually

00:03:48 ◼   ► want to avoid them. I also did, in order to cure one of the other issues we've got, I

00:03:54 ◼   ► have bought but haven't used yet, some 3D clip-ons. The idea there is, well, what if

00:04:00 ◼   ► I go to a 3D movie and I can clip some little 3D lenses onto my glasses and don't have that

00:04:06 ◼   ► second set of plastic over my face? And it's compatible with most of the 3D theaters. So

00:04:12 ◼   ► So I've got those, and the next time I end up at a 3D showing, I'm going to try those.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I've used the 2D glasses before, and they worked just fine. But the 3D clip-ons I'm

00:04:25 ◼   ► going to give a try. We'll put links into the show notes. I haven't used it yet, but

00:04:29 ◼   ► if you're curious about that. But Joel, my standard answer here is 2D works for me. In

00:04:35 ◼   ► fact, when they started doing MoviePass and the MoviePass service, where you pay a certain

00:04:39 ◼   ► amount of money and you can see a certain amount of movies that keeps changing. One

00:04:44 ◼   ► of their restrictions is no 3D because of course 3D movies cost more. That's why they

00:04:48 ◼   ► do them so they can charge you more for them and create an experience that you can't get

00:04:52 ◼   ► at home. And I was okay with movie pass being like, "Oh no no, 2D only." Like, "Oh, what

00:04:58 ◼   ► a shame. I can only see a 2D movie." That's what I want to see.

00:05:01 ◼   ► I just said while we're talking about movies, absolutely no spoilers, but I enjoyed Infinity

00:05:06 ◼   ► you wore more the second time. Me too. Sorry for a second time this past week and I enjoyed

00:05:10 ◼   ► it more. Me too and I will also say as an aside it was my first time in an Alamo draft

00:05:14 ◼   ► house and I loved it. Which is a wild experience. I have to say I looked at that and I thought

00:05:20 ◼   ► this is how the movies stay in business. This is how people keep going to movies is stuff

00:05:25 ◼   ► like this because I loved it. I loved it all. I loved the reserved seats which I know a

00:05:28 ◼   ► lot of movie theaters have reserved seats now but none in my area do. I love the reserved

00:05:32 ◼   ► seats. I love the fact that we, you know, order food and it's delivered and if I

00:05:38 ◼   ► want another beer during the show I just write it on a piece of paper and stick

00:05:41 ◼   ► it on on the little thing in front of me and somebody comes by and brings me a

00:05:44 ◼   ► beer and then at the end I sign my credit card slip and it's done. It's

00:05:48 ◼   ► amazing. That's so funny like when the person's like crawling down and they

00:05:53 ◼   ► like hand the beer up to you it's a it's a very weird experience but a good one

00:05:57 ◼   ► at the same time. Yeah, yeah, so thumbs up to a second viewing of Infinity War

00:06:02 ◼   ► thumbs up to the Alamo Drafthouse, thumbs down to 3D.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I think I agree with basically everything you just said. I stopped going to 3D movies

00:06:12 ◼   ► a while ago, I just wasn't interested in it anymore. It just wasn't necessary for me because

00:06:18 ◼   ► it felt like more and more of it was being hamfisted.

00:06:21 ◼   ► And it's more expensive, right? They charge you more for it. That's the other part of

00:06:24 ◼   ► it. If somebody is wondering, by the way, why is it that I am sometimes forced to go

00:06:27 ◼   ► to a 3D movie. It's mostly about logistics. Whether it is I need to see something quickly

00:06:36 ◼   ► for a podcast, which does happen, or whether it's my family can only go at a certain time.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And we don't live, the closest theater to us does not have a lot of screens. In fact,

00:06:47 ◼   ► the closest theater to us has one screen, which is great. But, and it's a great experience,

00:06:52 ◼   ► except if the timing is that the only time we can take the kids is on a Saturday at this

00:06:56 ◼   ► time and it's a 3D showing, well, we're going to go to the 3D showing. If we can avoid it,

00:07:01 ◼   ► we do, but we can't always avoid it. And likewise, if the timing, if I need to go see a movie,

00:07:05 ◼   ► now that I have movie pass, this is probably less so where like I'm really going to try

00:07:09 ◼   ► to use that and not do a 3D showing, but it does happen sometimes where you just end up

00:07:14 ◼   ► at a 3D showing. So it's not as if a big burly man comes and says, "You will go to the 3D

00:07:19 ◼   ► movie now." Like it's not quite like that, but it's just expediency. But if I can avoid

00:07:23 ◼   ► yeah it's cheaper and I don't need to see it and I kind of don't want to see

00:07:26 ◼   ► it which is why I bought the 2d glasses. Do you know if the new Avatar movies are

00:07:30 ◼   ► being shot in 3d again? Oh of course of course. Because I would see that right

00:07:35 ◼   ► because I saw the original Avatar 3d and it was incredible in 3d. I agree I mean

00:07:39 ◼   ► the list I can make a list of 3d movies that I really liked I liked Avatar I

00:07:43 ◼   ► liked Tron Legacy in 3d I thought it looked really cool and Hugo is the one I

00:07:50 ◼   ► keep mentioning. Because yes, Martin Scorsese made a 3D movie that's a family movie and

00:07:56 ◼   ► it's called Hugo. And not only is it a good movie, but it is beautiful in 3D because you

00:08:01 ◼   ► were seeing a master working with the best cinematographers and they were like, "Okay,

00:08:09 ◼   ► we're going to make this in 3D. We're going to make it really good." And it was really

00:08:13 ◼   ► good. But then I've seen all sorts of summer blockbusters in 3D and it just kind of leaves

00:08:18 ◼   ► me cold, it doesn't really do anything for me. There are occasional moments where you

00:08:22 ◼   ► think "oh well that looks pretty cool in 3D" but most of the time I find it distracting

00:08:27 ◼   ► and unnecessary. And plus it does make the movie darker.

00:08:30 ◼   ► I'm really happy about the fact that it feels like the trend of a thing happens in a movie

00:08:36 ◼   ► just because it's going to be in 3D seems to have died away. There's a scene where like

00:08:42 ◼   ► "oh and it's all coming to the screen!" you know, there's been a big crash and there's

00:08:47 ◼   ► debris flying directly at you like it feels like some of that's died off which is good because

00:08:51 ◼   ► you watch a 2d movie and you're like oh that was the big 3d effect that i didn't get to see because

00:08:57 ◼   ► i didn't want to see that i think in star trek is it maybe star trek or star trek into darkness that

00:09:02 ◼   ► there's a uh the warp drive is in 3d and i was like oh that was cute but it's like literally

00:09:06 ◼   ► the only thing that made me excited about the 3d in that movie so you know it's just uh it's i

00:09:12 ◼   ► I don't think it's necessary. It's fine if you like it. Obviously it works enough, although

00:09:19 ◼   ► I've read stories that say that audiences are lukewarm about 3D and that it is more

00:09:24 ◼   ► like they go because it's the time that's convenient for them and that some people are

00:09:29 ◼   ► unhappy when they have to put the glasses on. But as long as it is something that can

00:09:33 ◼   ► boost the--the bottom line, we talked about the Alamo Drafthouse--bottom line is the movie

00:09:38 ◼   ► movie theaters are trying to find ways to get people to come to the movie theater because

00:09:43 ◼   ► it's a good experience instead of staying home. And having movies that are exclusive

00:09:48 ◼   ► is part of it, and that's always been the case since home video happened. There's a

00:09:52 ◼   ► period where you need to see the movie in the theater and that's fine. But it is now

00:09:56 ◼   ► about nice seats, they bring you food, they let you reserve your seats, and 3D is one

00:10:02 ◼   ► of those things that's kind of on that list of, especially since 3D TV didn't take off,

00:10:07 ◼   ► if you want to see the 3D version of anything, you gotta see it in the movie theater because

00:10:11 ◼   ► after that you're basically never going to see it again until some other 3D tech comes

00:10:14 ◼   ► along. Maybe with higher quality VR goggles, maybe 3D will come back in that format because

00:10:22 ◼   ► you need to have the special glasses basically to do 3D. Or they'll invent some amazing 3D

00:10:27 ◼   ► TV that requires no glasses. But the industry's attempt to make 3D TV happen failed and it's

00:10:33 ◼   ► going to be a while before they try again. So it's on the list of things. Good Sound,

00:10:38 ◼   ► theoretically, is on that list too. And anything else they can do to make it a more pleasant

00:10:43 ◼   ► experience. And I believe they can do it. Going to the Alamo Drafthouse convinced me

00:10:48 ◼   ► of that. There are ways to make the movie theater experience a nice one that people

00:10:52 ◼   ► actually are excited about doing. I'm not convinced 3D is a big part of that strategy,

00:10:57 ◼   ► but I get why it's a part of the strategy. Plus, it lets them raise the ticket price

00:11:00 ◼   ► for a lot of showings because they charge extra for 3D.

00:11:04 ◼   ► It's an extra fee they get to charge.

00:11:06 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a Snail Talk question, just send out a tweet with the hashtag

00:11:10 ◼   ► SnailTalk and it goes into a document for us to pull later on.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Thank you to Joel for his excellent question this week.

00:11:16 ◼   ► I wanted to just give a piece of follow up, Jason, in regards to Yoav's #AskUpgrade question

00:11:22 ◼   ► last week where Yoav asked about finding a way to get rid of duplicates basically from

00:11:30 ◼   ► photos app. So when you have a shared file, a shared album of photos and you want to download

00:11:37 ◼   ► them or you end up with a bunch of duplicates. And whilst we don't have a great way to solve

00:11:41 ◼   ► that problem, Nash has a great way to get rid of the duplicates once you've got them

00:11:46 ◼   ► as an app that he uses called Best Photos, which will allow you to detect and remove

00:11:52 ◼   ► duplicate photos from your iOS photo library. So this isn't a complete solution to your

00:11:57 ◼   ► problem, but it can fix it on the other end.

00:11:59 ◼   ► and I'll mention I kind of steered away from the post import scenario because

00:12:06 ◼   ► there are a bunch of options there and that wasn't quite what what he asked but

00:12:10 ◼   ► I'll mention power photos from fat cats off where they are an occasional six

00:12:14 ◼   ► color sponsor so they just sponsored the site a couple weeks ago so there's my

00:12:18 ◼   ► disclaimer but I've used it I mentioned it in the book that I wrote about photos

00:12:22 ◼   ► and it is the successor to their iPhoto library manager product and basically it

00:12:27 ◼   ► does all sorts of stuff including deduping, letting you merge libraries,

00:12:30 ◼   ► letting you separate libraries. So if you're trying to do like

00:12:33 ◼   ► stuff that Photos doesn't do, it's worth looking. I think they've got a demo

00:12:37 ◼   ► version that you can try with PowerPhotos from Fat Cat. So I'll put

00:12:42 ◼   ► that in the show notes too. Because I guess if there isn't a way to fix it on the front end,

00:12:47 ◼   ► yeah, you can detect the duplicates later and that is not ideal, right?

00:12:53 ◼   ► you'd prefer it to be smart about detecting duplicates, but a lot of stuff, writing about

00:12:58 ◼   ► photos for the last few years, I get a lot of emails are like, why doesn't it do this?

00:13:03 ◼   ► And my response is always like, because it doesn't because I mean, like, literally, my

00:13:07 ◼   ► goal is to show you what you can do and how you can work around it. You almost have to

00:13:12 ◼   ► have to view the app as a force of nature, almost like, look, it just doesn't do it.

00:13:17 ◼   ► So it's like, we could complain. That's fine about the fact that it doesn't strip out the

00:13:21 ◼   ► duplicates in some scenarios, but it doesn't. So what are you going to do? And the answer

00:13:27 ◼   ► is find a way to fix that because Apple hasn't fixed it yet. So there are some options there.

00:13:33 ◼   ► Jason, I believe you have some upstream news for me this week.

00:13:37 ◼   ► I do. I have some "doo doo doo doo" upstream news. That's not the theme song for upstream.

00:13:43 ◼   ► I just was trying it out, but it didn't work. Little horn. Well, so last week was something

00:13:49 ◼   ► called Newfronts, which is this totally weird thing. To back it up, there's a thing called

00:13:54 ◼   ► Upfronts, which is when TV networks go to New York and they do a bunch of, it's like

00:13:58 ◼   ► a dog and pony show for advertisers, for the biggest advertisers. And what they're trying

00:14:02 ◼   ► to do is say, "Here are all these great things that we're doing and you should give us advertising

00:14:08 ◼   ► because aren't we awesome?" And that means that Upfronts has become also a media dog

00:14:13 ◼   ► and pony show for the networks to talk about their new fall seasons and what their strategies

00:14:18 ◼   ► are. And the New Fronts are an attempt by new media companies that are also wanting

00:14:26 ◼   ► to reach with advertisers. So it's basically like, "Well, we want to do Upfronts too, so

00:14:29 ◼   ► we're going to do this thing called New Fronts." There's also a thing, I think, called Podfronts

00:14:32 ◼   ► that is by podcast networks. You remember that? Where we saw Lex Friedman got up on

00:14:39 ◼   ► stage and talked about how great Midroll was and the people from Panoply and all that.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Anyway, everybody wants to do a dog and pony show in New York City is basically the story

00:14:50 ◼   ► because you wouldn't want to be in New York City. It's a great city. So, New Fronts was

00:14:54 ◼   ► Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, I think. Well, maybe Netflix wasn't there because they don't have

00:14:58 ◼   ► any ads. Anyway, Hulu was there, YouTube was there, some other streaming services were

00:15:02 ◼   ► there, and they made some news. So, Hulu was at the New Fronts and they announced they

00:15:07 ◼   ► have 20 million subscribers. They're US only. They grew four million in, I think, four or

00:15:12 ◼   ► months. So Hulu showing a lot of growth. One of the challenges with Hulu is it's a US only

00:15:18 ◼   ► service right now. It's not just that their 20 million subs are US only, which is actually

00:15:21 ◼   ► a pretty good number in the US, but what's the rest of their strategy? We've talked about

00:15:26 ◼   ► how Hulu is going to be, if the Disney/Fox merger goes through, majority owned by Disney,

00:15:33 ◼   ► and there's a question of sort of like what happens to it? What's its fate? Does it keep

00:15:36 ◼   ► its other owners or does Disney buy them out? Does Disney use Hulu as the place where its

00:15:42 ◼   ► content that's more adult-oriented, the stuff from Fox and FX goes to, and maybe even some

00:15:47 ◼   ► of the stuff from ABC, instead of going to the other Disney streaming services. The Ham

00:15:54 ◼   ► Maid's Tale is like their number one show. It's a success across the board among viewers

00:15:58 ◼   ► and critics and it's won a lot of awards, so they crowed about that a little bit. And

00:16:03 ◼   ► they pointed out, again, that their catalogue is all about TV, which I think is interesting.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Like, it's a TV brand. They have more TV content than any of their competitors. If you think

00:16:11 ◼   ► about it that's kind of interesting because they've been as I think Netflix

00:16:14 ◼   ► and Amazon have been less interested in having a massive library of old TV shows

00:16:19 ◼   ► and things like that they kind of want some hits and they want originals and

00:16:22 ◼   ► they want movies who is all about TV and then they also have a live TV service

00:16:27 ◼   ► that they introduced that's the over-the-top you know cable replacement

00:16:31 ◼   ► that will show you like shows and channels as they're running live so

00:16:35 ◼   ► that's that's what's going on with Hulu and then YouTube was also there and they

00:16:41 ◼   ► made some news. So they premiered their new original series on YouTube Red, Cobra Kai,

00:16:45 ◼   ► which is the sequel to the Karate Kid movies, which has gotten pretty good reviews actually,

00:16:50 ◼   ► as far as I've seen, which is kind of surprising and funny. And they also gave kind of a weird

00:16:56 ◼   ► presentation where I think the money line from the CEO of YouTube who's Susan Wojcicki,

00:17:03 ◼   ► I don't know how to pronounce that name.

00:17:06 ◼   ► I think it's Wojcicki.

00:17:07 ◼   ► Wojcicki? All right, it's a Polish name. Anyway, she said there is not a playbook for how open

00:17:12 ◼   ► platforms operate at our scale. So it's an admission of weakness. Why is that important?

00:17:17 ◼   ► Well, open platforms at scale is all about, remember, she's talking to advertisers. One

00:17:22 ◼   ► of the challenges about having ads in an open platform like YouTube is, you guessed it,

00:17:29 ◼   ► your ads as these very carefully planned and maybe uptight advertisers are working on their

00:17:36 ◼   ► ad campaigns and then their ad gets put next to something violent, something sexual, something

00:17:42 ◼   ► racist and that totally happens with YouTube.

00:17:47 ◼   ► Or just something that becomes controversial for whatever reason.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:17:51 ◼   ► And most advertisers don't want to be attached to anything controversial.

00:17:53 ◼   ► They want to be just blend in and be in the background.

00:17:57 ◼   ► YouTube also has its own YouTube TV, live TV over the top streaming service.

00:18:01 ◼   ► So there's another aspect where YouTube is doing that, Hulu is doing that.

00:18:05 ◼   ► Anyway, I thought both of those stories were interesting just as a way of YouTube doing

00:18:11 ◼   ► some original content that is also interesting because we think of YouTube as a brand that

00:18:15 ◼   ► is very much focused on young people and their original content is a show that will appeal

00:18:22 ◼   ► to Gen Xers in terms of nostalgia, which I think is a funny thing, but I think they're

00:18:28 ◼   ► trying to broaden.

00:18:29 ◼   ► I think between this and the YouTube TV over the top service, they're trying to like...

00:18:34 ◼   ► YouTube Red isn't just for my son, it's for me too is what they're trying to say there.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Right, that's interesting.

00:18:39 ◼   ► The person who's probably actually going to be paying the bill in the first place.

00:18:43 ◼   ► It's true, it's true.

00:18:44 ◼   ► I am the one who pays that bill, so that's exactly right.

00:18:47 ◼   ► And then Hulu I think is interesting because there's a lot of questions like, I think Hulu's

00:18:50 ◼   ► actually a pretty good service, but there are so many different questions about like,

00:18:54 ◼   ► how do they build subscribers?

00:18:55 ◼   ► Are they going to go outside the US?

00:18:57 ◼   ► What's Disney going to do?

00:18:58 ◼   ► Because it's potential that in a year or two what we're going to realize is that Hulu is

00:19:02 ◼   ► Disney's worldwide content strategy for streaming stuff that appeals to adults.

00:19:11 ◼   ► That's not their sports strategy or their Disney-branded, Disney-Marvel-Star Wars-branded

00:19:17 ◼   ► thing that's going to skew a little bit younger, but that it's their strategy for

00:19:21 ◼   ► everything else. And that would be an interesting competitor. Also, if they are all about TV,

00:19:28 ◼   ► that gives them another little talking point, right? Like that they pick up all the TV,

00:19:34 ◼   ► whereas Netflix and Amazon maybe are more concerned with their own programming rather

00:19:39 ◼   ► than like picking up programming from other places and putting it in their service. So

00:19:43 ◼   ► that I'm fascinated by where Hulu's going to go in the next couple of years because

00:19:50 ◼   ► there's a lot of potential there. Or it could just go nowhere. That's also possible. But

00:19:53 ◼   ► they do seem to be growing and they seem to have some sort of a plan, but we'll see.

00:19:58 ◼   ► Netflix has released a remixed version of the fourth season of Arrested Development.

00:20:05 ◼   ► This is super weird.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Yeah, okay, it's weird and there's even a weirder backstory here.

00:20:11 ◼   ► Because Mitch Hurwitz, who is the creator of Arrested Development, he actually did this

00:20:15 ◼   ► a long time ago.

00:20:16 ◼   ► We talked about this on the podcast I do with Tim Goodman in July of 2016.

00:20:23 ◼   ► So a year and a half ago, we talked about this.

00:20:27 ◼   ► up two years ago we talked about this and Tim wrote a story we can put in the

00:20:30 ◼   ► show notes in July of 2016 Mitch Hurwitz said he and told him he'd recut the

00:20:37 ◼   ► original fourth season so this was the Netflix original season of Arrested

00:20:41 ◼   ► Development it got kind of mixed reviews it was weirdly shot because they got the

00:20:46 ◼   ► different actors at different points and so what he they ended up releasing this

00:20:50 ◼   ► thing that was almost like Rashomon style it was like different perspectives

00:20:53 ◼   ► It was 15 episodes long. The episodes were, keeping in mind the standard sitcom and the

00:20:59 ◼   ► first three seasons of Arrested Development were about 22 minutes each. These episodes

00:21:03 ◼   ► were 30 minutes all the way up to like 42 minutes long. They were longer, there were

00:21:07 ◼   ► fewer of them, there were 15, and they were in these kind of blocks of like this character's

00:21:12 ◼   ► story and you'd see them cross over with other characters and then the next episode you'd

00:21:16 ◼   ► see a different character's story and you'd see them cross over. It was a very different

00:21:19 ◼   ► format for the show. And my daughter, who's been watching Arrested Development, had that

00:21:25 ◼   ► same comment and she doesn't know the history. She was just like, "Yeah, that four seasons

00:21:28 ◼   ► were really strange. Like, it's not like the first three seasons." Well, what Mitch Hurwitz

00:21:33 ◼   ► told Tim in July 16 is he actually went back and edited a new version of season four that

00:21:41 ◼   ► works like the traditional first three seasons. He got Ron Howard to do new narration. They

00:21:45 ◼   ► used some shots that are not the same shots. It's a different thing. It's got some different

00:21:49 ◼   ► material in it, and it's 22 minute episodes. Like it's just the old show the way it was

00:21:57 ◼   ► done instead of this new format. And that he had done that, and Netflix didn't want

00:22:03 ◼   ► it basically. And he said it was just sitting on a shelf, or probably more accurately sitting

00:22:07 ◼   ► on a hard drive somewhere. But he had gone back and made a new version of the show. And

00:22:12 ◼   ► at the time, Tim wrote about it, people were tweeting about it, everybody who's an Arrested

00:22:16 ◼   ► development fan went bananas about this and I was baffled by why Netflix

00:22:22 ◼   ► wouldn't do anything with it because it's like the same content and you know

00:22:26 ◼   ► other than a contractual thing it's possible that like they would need to

00:22:30 ◼   ► pay 20th television I think is the is the producer of it more money for an

00:22:35 ◼   ► alternate version but I kept thinking to myself streaming shows and services like

00:22:41 ◼   ► this is the perfect way like yeah put out an alternate version that's cool

00:22:45 ◼   ► "Why don't you do that? And why wouldn't you do that if you're Netflix?" Well, almost two

00:22:51 ◼   ► years later, and with a fifth season apparently in production, now Netflix apparently -- my

00:22:57 ◼   ► guess is Netflix thought, "Well, now we can start warming up people for the new season

00:23:01 ◼   ► of Arrested Development and get them excited about it by doing this recut version of season

00:23:06 ◼   ► four. Perhaps this is why they would pay the money and do the promotion to do it." But

00:23:10 ◼   ► they finally did it. After sitting on a -- probably sitting in a hard drive of Mitch Hurwitz for

00:23:14 ◼   ► a couple of years. Last Friday they released this remixed Arrested Development season 4.

00:23:22 ◼   ► So people who are fans of that show and maybe who didn't like season 4 or didn't watch it

00:23:26 ◼   ► might want to give it a go because it's apparently a more standard take consistent with the first

00:23:32 ◼   ► three seasons. And I just love this story because this is a creator taking advantage

00:23:39 ◼   ► of the fact that they've got all this content to do an alternate version of the show that

00:23:43 ◼   ► they made and the the streaming service can just post it and then you've got an

00:23:48 ◼   ► alternate version it's a little bit like how a lot of the sitcoms especially the

00:23:52 ◼   ► Michael Schur sitcom so like The Office and Parks and Recreation and The Good

00:23:57 ◼   ► Place and Brooklyn Nine-Nine a lot of those shows they would drop the the

00:24:02 ◼   ► episode would air at 22 minutes and then on iTunes the next day they would drop

00:24:06 ◼   ► like a 38 minute version that was the one that they wanted to release but it

00:24:10 ◼   ► didn't fit in the time slot. And in most cases, those are the versions that are on Netflix,

00:24:15 ◼   ► which I think is great because that means in the long run, that's the real version of

00:24:19 ◼   ► the show, not the one that ran on a network with commercials. And I think, again, that's

00:24:25 ◼   ► the brilliance of the world we live in now that you can do that, that there's not just

00:24:29 ◼   ► sort of like, we do it once and then we walk away forever. And how could we even offer

00:24:33 ◼   ► another version of it? And here, Mitch Hurwitz has done an entire different season of his

00:24:39 ◼   ► same season. It's really cool. So I haven't watched them yet, but I'm really excited to

00:24:43 ◼   ► watch them because I think it's a great idea. It's just strange that it took two years.

00:24:46 ◼   ► So the new season's coming out at the end of May, and they released a new trailer.

00:24:49 ◼   ► Oh good! That goes alongside it.

00:24:51 ◼   ► So there you go. So it's part of the promotion of the new season.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Yeah. And something that I find interesting though, the original season four has been

00:24:59 ◼   ► replaced with this new one. Oh interesting. So it's not alongside, they

00:25:03 ◼   ► just put it in there. I can't find the original season four.

00:25:07 ◼   ► It just says "Season 1, 2, 3" and then "Season 4 remix, fateful consequences."

00:25:12 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:25:14 ◼   ► That's the list you get now.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it's also possible that Netflix and Hurwitz talked about it and they're like,

00:25:17 ◼   ► "Yeah, this is better.

00:25:19 ◼   ► Nobody liked it the way we did it.

00:25:20 ◼   ► Let's just replace it and never..."

00:25:22 ◼   ► Because at this point, your viewers of that are people who are binging, which means they

00:25:28 ◼   ► are not seeing the context of the show going off the air for a few years and then coming

00:25:32 ◼   ► back.

00:25:33 ◼   ► Instead all they're seeing is that this thing happened and we move from season three

00:25:40 ◼   ► last episode to season four first episode and like, "Whoa, what happened?"

00:25:43 ◼   ► So you just remove it and it's not a problem anymore.

00:25:45 ◼   ► All right, should we take a break, Jason?

00:25:46 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a great idea.

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00:28:28 ◼   ► and Relay FM. So over the weekend there was an anniversary, a very important anniversary,

00:28:35 ◼   ► it was the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the iMac. This is the computer we know,

00:28:42 ◼   ► the iMac G3 as it became kind of colloquially known later on because there were multiple

00:28:48 ◼   ► versions of it but this is the Bondi blue and white case that you'll be very familiar with.

00:28:54 ◼   ► So this was this happened over the weekend it's been 20 years since it was introduced on stage

00:29:00 ◼   ► by Steve Jobs in 1998 and I want to talk about a few things about this JSON but what I don't

00:29:06 ◼   ► necessarily want to go through is the introduction itself because we've done that already. We did.

00:29:12 ◼   ► In May 2016, we had Stephen Hackett on the show because at this time, I think he was coming towards

00:29:18 ◼   ► the end of his project of collecting all of the IMAX. And we spoke about kind of the announcement

00:29:24 ◼   ► and you told some stories about what it was like when you were working at Macworld then, right?

00:29:29 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, I was in Macworld then, right. Yeah, no, Stephen told his stories, I told my stories,

00:29:33 ◼   ► and you sat patiently while we talked and perhaps doodled or colored or went away.

00:29:39 ◼   ► I cannot and I will not answer that question. I wanted to look at kind of in context 20 years ago

00:29:48 ◼   ► this product and then kind of looking at how it relates to products of today. So I think first I

00:29:55 ◼   ► wanted to kind of get from you a feeling of this iMac what mark did it leave on Apple? Like do we

00:30:02 ◼   ► see anything else that is a parallel today, good or bad, with this product that maybe

00:30:09 ◼   ► because of its success kind of became ingrained in the company?

00:30:13 ◼   ► I mean, it's always hard to point at one thing or one moment and say that's when it all changed,

00:30:19 ◼   ► right? Because the truth is that what they said later is they started this project the

00:30:25 ◼   ► day Steve Jobs came back in July of the previous year, like that that was when they kicked

00:30:29 ◼   ► it off. And that there were, this is the Columbus project and they ended up shipping these things

00:30:36 ◼   ► and there was, internally there was a lot of turmoil. In fact, you and I were fortunate

00:30:41 ◼   ► to spend some time with a friend of ours who was actually, who was on the iMac software

00:30:46 ◼   ► team, the original iMac software team. Like, they were working on this for a long time

00:30:50 ◼   ► and there was a lot of there. So, we can point to the moment that it surfaced publicly and

00:30:55 ◼   ► say there's the moment but obviously huge amounts of work went in before then

00:30:59 ◼   ► and after that announcement to get that product to ship right I mean it was it

00:31:04 ◼   ► was a huge amount of work but it is on another level I could you point to it

00:31:09 ◼   ► and say what what do they have here like they took the old ports away the it's

00:31:16 ◼   ► actually funny Stephen Hackett and I were talking about this yesterday it's

00:31:20 ◼   ► fun the Macworld story on this actually mentioned something called chirp which

00:31:23 ◼   ► which not a lot of people remember, and I may actually dig through my old magazines

00:31:28 ◼   ► and write something about this, or Stephen will, that there was this idea to create this

00:31:32 ◼   ► common hardware reference platform, which is, I think, what Chirp stood for, and it

00:31:38 ◼   ► was the idea of, like, could you make a PowerPC-based computer that was like a standard PC, just

00:31:44 ◼   ► like an Intel PC was a standard PC, something that everybody who made a PowerPC-based computer,

00:31:49 ◼   ► and at that point there were, like, different companies making them, not just Mac clones

00:31:53 ◼   ► but like for different operating systems and all, and IBM really wanted people to use,

00:31:57 ◼   ► and Motorola to use the PowerPC, and they thought maybe it would be a viable alternative

00:32:02 ◼   ► to an Intel standard PC, would be this chirp standard PC.

00:32:06 ◼   ► So was the idea that by doing this, other people would make Macs? Is that the idea?

00:32:12 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I think that the clones was part of that story, but it was also the idea

00:32:16 ◼   ► that like if you were Motorola or IBM or somebody else and you wanted to do, or be actually

00:32:22 ◼   ► is another example with the BOS, which was considered at one point a possibility as a

00:32:26 ◼   ► replacement for the Mac OS, that if you, or quite honestly, if it had been successful,

00:32:32 ◼   ► Microsoft could have done a PowerPC version of Windows and written to the common platform.

00:32:38 ◼   ► The idea was they wanted to create this common platform that basically any computer that

00:32:44 ◼   ► was running a PowerPC processor would look like. And it didn't happen, basically. There

00:32:49 ◼   ► There were some chirp devices shipped, including I think the Motorola Mac clone was a chirp

00:32:55 ◼   ► computer, although I'm not 100% on that because Motorola did actually ship its own Mac clone

00:32:59 ◼   ► at one point.

00:33:01 ◼   ► But it all fell apart and of course Steve Jobs killed the clones and that was the end

00:33:05 ◼   ► of it.

00:33:06 ◼   ► But why I bring up chirp now...

00:33:07 ◼   ► And the clone wars, right?

00:33:08 ◼   ► And the clone wars, yeah, that was right.

00:33:10 ◼   ► They fought, Darth Vader and Steve Jobs fought together in the clone wars.

00:33:13 ◼   ► That's right.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Tell your kids.

00:33:16 ◼   ► That's the story.

00:33:17 ◼   ► So, I bring it up because in the Macworld article, it actually quotes an Apple product

00:33:24 ◼   ► manager as saying that the iMac project picked up a lot of the stuff from Chirp.

00:33:29 ◼   ► So even though Apple didn't make a Chirp Mac, it used that stuff in order to, you know,

00:33:35 ◼   ► simplify and modernize and it still used that as a jumping off point in terms of building

00:33:39 ◼   ► the iMac.

00:33:40 ◼   ► And what that got them was a modern Mac and a break from the past.

00:33:44 ◼   ► And I think what's interesting about that is not Apple participating in kind of an industry

00:33:49 ◼   ► consortium to build something, which is not a thing that they do a lot today, but the

00:33:54 ◼   ► idea that Apple used that tech to do what it wanted to do, which is make a clean break.

00:33:59 ◼   ► And you see echoes of that in all sorts of other times that they have dropped features.

00:34:04 ◼   ► We joke about all the features that get dropped from Apple's devices.

00:34:07 ◼   ► The optical drives went away at some point, and USB-A went away.

00:34:11 ◼   ► The MacBook only has the one thing.

00:34:12 ◼   ► headphone jack went away on the iPhone when they went from dock

00:34:17 ◼   ► connector to lightning. People complained about that, like, that Apple is fearless

00:34:20 ◼   ► about doing that. So that's part of it. And the design forward is part of it

00:34:27 ◼   ► too. Like, there were a couple of Macs—I read a story today that said this was

00:34:31 ◼   ► the one where Apple's design language came forward. And it's like, well, again,

00:34:36 ◼   ► the story's a little more complicated than that. The Power Mac G3, the beige one,

00:34:41 ◼   ► had this weird plastic like green translucent plastic thing on it that was

00:34:47 ◼   ► like it was like Johnny Ive trying to let me out let me out I want to do

00:34:51 ◼   ► something interesting I put a green plastic thing somewhere. And then

00:34:55 ◼   ► they did I don't think the Wall Street PowerBook G3 gets enough credit those

00:34:58 ◼   ► were crazy looking at the time they had these black laptops with kind of a rubberized

00:35:04 ◼   ► surface and the white Apple logo on the back like they were so different from

00:35:11 ◼   ► the previous PowerBook G3 that preceded them, that you could tell that Apple was doing some

00:35:19 ◼   ► really different things from design standpoint, even though that was probably a product that

00:35:23 ◼   ► was in the works, and at most they sort of agreed to pump up the design stuff a little

00:35:28 ◼   ► bit and make it look a little more interesting in the time that they had. And that came out

00:35:32 ◼   ► a couple months before the iMac was announced, right? So you could get the sense that things

00:35:36 ◼   ► were starting to happen design-wise, but then you look at the iMac, and like, the iMac design

00:35:41 ◼   ► design is unlike anything that was out there. It was incredibly influential in the computer

00:35:46 ◼   ► industry and outside the computer industry. Basically, I would say in the plastics industry,

00:35:51 ◼   ► everybody who made plastic things suddenly said, "Oh, we can finally, somebody is allowing

00:35:56 ◼   ► us," because I think they could always do it, right? The question was like nobody wanted

00:36:00 ◼   ► translucent plastic and colored plastic, brightly colored plastic. And once Apple did the iMac,

00:36:06 ◼   ► like every kitchen appliance and clock radio and everything else was available

00:36:11 ◼   ► in a translucent, bright plastic version.

00:36:15 ◼   ► It became premium, right? In the same way that making everything white became premium after the iPod.

00:36:20 ◼   ► It's like everybody agreed that nothing could be anything but black, white, or beige,

00:36:23 ◼   ► and then Apple was like, "Yeah, we're making a bright blue computer, and good luck.

00:36:27 ◼   ► Just deal with it." And everybody was like, "Oh, people like colors and fun.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Maybe we should do that." And that was a big part of it, too.

00:36:36 ◼   ► So I think you see that today.

00:36:38 ◼   ► I will use this as my monthly request for more color

00:36:41 ◼   ► in Apple devices.

00:36:42 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I think you see it, but it comes and goes, right?

00:36:45 ◼   ► And right now, Apple stuff is like, well, everybody

00:36:48 ◼   ► get excited, because not only is there silver,

00:36:50 ◼   ► now there's a slightly darker silver that we call space gray.

00:36:54 ◼   ► And it's not like, more shades of gray, it's very exciting.

00:36:57 ◼   ► And occasionally, some product will get gold,

00:37:00 ◼   ► and then there will be the product red.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Is that one red one?

00:37:02 ◼   ► Yeah, that's six months later.

00:37:04 ◼   ► Did you wait for the red one?

00:37:05 ◼   ► So yes, I agree there should be more color in Apple products.

00:37:08 ◼   ► That would be something that I would like them to come back to.

00:37:11 ◼   ► But if you remember like the iPod Nanos and all of that,

00:37:13 ◼   ► like they, that was the same kind of approach too.

00:37:17 ◼   ► So I think that those are some of the places where you see this culture that

00:37:22 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was basically building at that point that continues on to this day that

00:37:27 ◼   ► is in the DNA of Apple and the iMac was the first like full representation of all

00:37:33 ◼   ► of that and it evolved and changed as everything does but I think that it was a clear first

00:37:40 ◼   ► 100% step in that direction.

00:37:42 ◼   ► So whilst if you look at any kind of successful company, person, entity, you can kind of draw

00:37:48 ◼   ► a line between all of the dots to see if they're, you know, to go to the success. You know,

00:37:54 ◼   ► you could be like, "Oh, they had that teacher and then they went to that class," or that

00:37:57 ◼   ► kind of thing.

00:37:58 ◼   ► I wonder if we have a special case here when it comes to the iMac G3 when I ask this question,

00:38:04 ◼   ► which is, would we have the iPhone today if the iMac never existed?

00:38:08 ◼   ► So going back to my previous point about like pointing to a moment, in my article that I

00:38:13 ◼   ► wrote on Six Colors about this, I said, and again, I hesitate because there's no such

00:38:19 ◼   ► thing as a moment. That is all stagecraft. Like it's months and years of work that lead

00:38:26 ◼   ► to that moment. But in terms of the outside world, if you watch that keynote from the

00:38:31 ◼   ► Flint Center, and I wasn't there, because at that point, I suspect Apple was calling

00:38:37 ◼   ► us in for briefings, thinking they had something to show us, and in the chaos of the early

00:38:42 ◼   ► days of Steve Jobs, then they ended up not. Because we had a couple briefings where nothing

00:38:46 ◼   ► happened and we're like, "Why did we come down here? You've got nothing to say." And

00:38:49 ◼   ► so for this one, it was a little like the boy who cried wolf. We're like, "Yeah, sure,

00:38:53 ◼   ► got something else and so only our editor-in-chief went. But if you watch that video, the first

00:38:59 ◼   ► half hour of it, or 20 minutes of it, it's amazing. It's like Steve Jobs is sort of like

00:39:05 ◼   ► saying, "We're not gonna die." He puts up a chart about employee retention and says,

00:39:12 ◼   ► "People aren't quitting at Apple as fast as they used to. That's really good. So we're

00:39:16 ◼   ► doing better. This is no longer a place that people are trying to escape."

00:39:20 ◼   ► i'm really pleased reports you that apples back on track when you have great

00:39:24 ◼   ► people the most important thing is to not lose them when i came back to apple

00:39:29 ◼   ► last summer apples was a lot of them nutrition rate analyzed was thirty three

00:39:34 ◼   ► percent and i'm very pleased to say the ten months later nutrition rate is

00:39:38 ◼   ► fifteen percent and part of that is because people now see how apple can win

00:39:43 ◼   ► again another part of that is 'cause we've made apple much more

00:39:46 ◼   ► entrepreneurial place all the key employees have lots of stock options

00:39:49 ◼   ► boy those presentations are different then. Right? And it was like, you know, and the

00:39:54 ◼   ► Mac sales are going pretty well and, you know, we had the PowerBook G3, that Wall Street

00:39:58 ◼   ► G, and it's really good and we're gonna, I think they made like some adjustments to it,

00:40:02 ◼   ► but it basically had been out for a couple of months. There was a lot of Phil Schiller

00:40:06 ◼   ► coming out on stage to demo like various PCs from Compaq and Dell against Macs so that

00:40:15 ◼   ► they could show the megahertz myth because in those days what they were trying to do

00:40:18 ◼   ► do is say that even though the PowerPC G3 processor had a lower clock speed than a bunch

00:40:22 ◼   ► of the Pentium IIs, that they were actually faster. You couldn't just compare the megahertz

00:40:28 ◼   ► that you had to say like this 333 G3 was actually faster than a 400 Pentium II. But they had

00:40:35 ◼   ► to do like bake-offs where they like start Photoshop results and then Steve and Phil

00:40:39 ◼   ► would stand there and watch as the computers like worked in split screen. It was super

00:40:45 ◼   ► weird.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Tell us about your computer here.

00:40:47 ◼   ► here to come out and try to take you on head-to-head because you asked me to go

00:40:51 ◼   ► out and get the biggest and the best and I did. This is the brand new Compaq

00:40:54 ◼   ► Armada 7800. It's got a Pentium II, the new mobile Pentium II 266. That's the

00:41:00 ◼   ► fastest speed it runs at. It's just been announced. You can't get much better than

00:41:03 ◼   ► this. I'm scared. So we're just gonna have to find out. Now up on this screen on

00:41:10 ◼   ► your left we have the Compaq Armada Pentium II 266. In the middle we have our

00:41:16 ◼   ► new PowerBook G3 running at 233 megahertz and on the far right we have

00:41:21 ◼   ► the G3 running at 292 megahertz. Of course both of these machines are less

00:41:25 ◼   ► money than the Compaq. So let's go ahead. What we're gonna do now is we're gonna

00:41:28 ◼   ► run Photoshop. What a lot of our customers like to do and have been dying

00:41:32 ◼   ► to do on a fast portable. So we've got Photoshop here and we've got exactly the

00:41:36 ◼   ► same file on all of these computers. But it's all about like I need to justify

00:41:42 ◼   ► that Apple still exists because you all remember last year and figured we were

00:41:45 ◼   ► going out of business and now I need to completely change the narrative. It's amazing how hard

00:41:51 ◼   ► he's working to get people to believe that Apple is not about to die.

00:41:55 ◼   ► -Cause you have to do that before you unveil a new product.

00:41:57 ◼   ► -Right, right. Well, and he knows what's coming, right? He knows what's coming. But what's

00:42:01 ◼   ► amazing about it, and he at one point he's like, and especially when you see what we

00:42:04 ◼   ► have today, right? Like, "Ha ha, I'm gonna tease what I've got coming." All of that said,

00:42:09 ◼   ► the moment that he takes the little drape off of the iMac and reveals it.

00:42:14 ◼   ► This is what they look like today. And I would like to take the privilege of showing you

00:42:20 ◼   ► what they're going to look like from today on. This is IMAQ. This is IMAQ. The whole

00:42:34 ◼   ► thing is translucent. You can see into it. It's so cool.

00:42:38 ◼   ► That is literally the moment that Apple went from dead to alive. Like literally that is

00:42:42 ◼   ► the moment and from that moment to 20 years later it has been up up up for

00:42:48 ◼   ► Apple like that was the moment without that moment they probably wouldn't be

00:42:53 ◼   ► around I know because the Mac although the Mac was kind of turning around I

00:42:56 ◼   ► think if Apple had just continued doing beige products and all of that like

00:42:59 ◼   ► would they have gotten to the iPod would they have been able to sell the iPod

00:43:04 ◼   ► would the popularity of the iPod have given them more gas because they weren't

00:43:09 ◼   ► just getting the gas from sales of the iPod, but they got way boosted, the Mac sales got

00:43:14 ◼   ► boosted because of the halo effect where people finally were having positive experiences with

00:43:19 ◼   ► Apple as a brand that they had never had before. Again, we've gone long enough now that people

00:43:25 ◼   ► forget the iPod halo effect. The iPod was, for most people, the first Apple product they

00:43:30 ◼   ► ever bought. And they were like, "Oh, this is great." Or they went into an Apple store

00:43:36 ◼   ► then they saw the Mac and they're like "Oh, Apple makes a computer! This is way

00:43:39 ◼   ► better than that PC that I have! I'm going to get one of these too!" And that

00:43:43 ◼   ► was the infusion of energy and cash that Apple needed in the 2000s in

00:43:49 ◼   ► order to keep going. And I don't think they would have gotten there

00:43:51 ◼   ► without the iMac, which was a hit because it was different, but also because it was

00:43:56 ◼   ► priced pretty well, and because it was the right time. Because up to that point,

00:44:00 ◼   ► so many computers, the idea was "Well, I need a computer at home so I can do some

00:44:04 ◼   ► of my work when I'm at home, and so it needs to be a PC, and it needs to do everything

00:44:08 ◼   ► that my office PC does. But by like the late 90s, really what you needed was you wanted

00:44:14 ◼   ► to get on the internet and maybe check your email. And you could do that on a Mac, so

00:44:18 ◼   ► like there was a real opportunity for the Mac to no longer be seen as this weird incompatible

00:44:22 ◼   ► computer, but to be seen as an appliance that lets you get internet and email at home. And

00:44:30 ◼   ► Jeff Goldblum narrated ad where it's like step one plug it in step two get connected and they plug in the phone cable

00:44:36 ◼   ► There's no step three right like that was the whole appeal of the iMac

00:44:40 ◼   ► You should just plop one of these things down in your living room

00:44:42 ◼   ► It looks kind of neat and weird and fun and you're on the internet

00:44:46 ◼   ► And it's all just you know you don't have to hook up a monitor and do anything like that

00:44:51 ◼   ► it's like super simple all in one and

00:44:53 ◼   ► That was powerful and they sold a lot of them very quickly it became the

00:45:00 ◼   ► the Mac product, the definitive Mac for a very long time afterward, and set Apple on

00:45:05 ◼   ► its way to the iPod and ultimately to the iPhone. But they would never have gotten there

00:45:12 ◼   ► without a product like this because Mac sales were kind of ebbing and everybody—there

00:45:17 ◼   ► was nothing to be excited about. There had been so much press about Apple dying that

00:45:22 ◼   ► there needed to be a turnaround. And you know, in the background, they're working on OS X

00:45:25 ◼   ► because they came—when Jobs came back, he came back with Next Step and they knew they

00:45:29 ◼   ► were going to do a new operating system, but they didn't have it ready yet. So this is

00:45:33 ◼   ► not an OS X device when it ships. It's an OS 8, 6 device, I think. And, you know, so

00:45:40 ◼   ► there's a lot of stuff bubbling in the background, but the hardware alone got people excited

00:45:44 ◼   ► about this computer. And that was how Apple changed its fate.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Is the iMac G3 a product that can only come from a struggling company? Like, could Apple

00:45:56 ◼   ► be that kind of daring again? Or is this always like a Hail Mary to do something so far out

00:46:04 ◼   ► of left field?

00:46:05 ◼   ► I think on your average company, this is not the kind of product that they could do. But

00:46:11 ◼   ► I think that's what Apple is trying to do all the time. I think Apple at its best and

00:46:17 ◼   ► what, again, they don't succeed a lot of the time and they do have to maintain existing

00:46:22 ◼   ► products and iterate them and all of that. But they also have those moments where they

00:46:26 ◼   ► take a leap. And I think Steve Jobs wanted that in Apple's corporate culture. I think

00:46:33 ◼   ► that's the thing that he always wanted Apple to strive for, is what's the next big thing?

00:46:36 ◼   ► We're going to take another crack at this. And we're not going to be afraid of upsetting

00:46:40 ◼   ► the install base. Like, you know, we laugh about it now, about how Mac users were kind

00:46:46 ◼   ► of all up in arms about the iMac because it broke compatibility with literally everything.

00:46:49 ◼   ► You think the headphone jack thing is bad when they took the headphone jack off?

00:46:53 ◼   ► You had every Mac for the previous like 10 years had shipped with SCSI ports and ADB

00:47:01 ◼   ► ports and serial ports and they are all gone in one system.

00:47:06 ◼   ► They're gone.

00:47:07 ◼   ► Gone never to return.

00:47:09 ◼   ► You can buy at Dongle's, you can go to Dongle Town.

00:47:11 ◼   ► Dongle Town was smaller then, Myke, but it was still there out on the frontier on the

00:47:15 ◼   ► main road.

00:47:16 ◼   ► Dongle Hamlet.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Yeah, it was more of a Dongle Village at that point.

00:47:19 ◼   ► - It was definitely there, it wasn't incorporated yet,

00:47:21 ◼   ► didn't have a lot of tall buildings,

00:47:22 ◼   ► but boy, it was there because I had,

00:47:25 ◼   ► I still have some USB serial adapters and USB ADB adapters,

00:47:28 ◼   ► but they did, they made that break.

00:47:33 ◼   ► It was a big deal, but part of what Jobs wanted Apple

00:47:37 ◼   ► to think collectively in its culture was

00:47:40 ◼   ► the users will come along if there's a benefit.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Now there are positives and negatives to that approach

00:47:45 ◼   ► and all the conversation about the Mac laptops

00:47:48 ◼   ► the last couple of years is definitely it cuts both ways but there is something

00:47:52 ◼   ► to be said like that iMac was the point was that it wasn't for those existing

00:47:56 ◼   ► Mac users like it was for new users who wanted to come to the Mac. The Mac wasn't

00:48:01 ◼   ► selling enough to just the faithful to just the install base they needed to

00:48:05 ◼   ► sell to new people and the new people didn't care and in the end the new

00:48:08 ◼   ► people would benefit from having USB where you could literally like this was

00:48:12 ◼   ► the era where if you wanted to detach your hard drive or attach a hard drive

00:48:16 ◼   ► You had to shut down the computer and then unplug everything and then or replug it and

00:48:21 ◼   ► then turn it back on.

00:48:23 ◼   ► And USB is hot pluggable basically so you can just unplug or unplug and it's fine.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Like that was huge.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And how long did Apple just kind of putter around with this old stuff?

00:48:34 ◼   ► So I think Steve Jobs wanted to instill in Apple the feeling that if they felt that there

00:48:38 ◼   ► was a benefit to ditching something like the lightning port or not the lightning port like

00:48:43 ◼   ► the dock connector for the lightning port or like the headphone jack and we

00:48:46 ◼   ► can argue about like the headphone jack was that a good idea and USB-C for USB-A

00:48:51 ◼   ► but you can see why they do it. They do it because Steve Jobs wanted them to have

00:48:56 ◼   ► that culture of like break the rules throw the old thing away. The iPod nano

00:49:00 ◼   ► is a great example of that where they follow that on whatever five six seven

00:49:04 ◼   ► years later where they had the iPod mini and it was incredibly successful and it

00:49:08 ◼   ► was more successful than the iPod and they killed it because the nano was

00:49:11 ◼   ► better and it was a totally different product and that was super weird but

00:49:15 ◼   ► that was the culture was throw the old thing away we want to be our own

00:49:18 ◼   ► replacement flash storage is the future let's let's just kill the old product

00:49:23 ◼   ► and that worked for them so that is I would even say that's the thing when we

00:49:29 ◼   ► criticize Apple and they often do deserve criticize criticism about it

00:49:33 ◼   ► what I like about them is they are always trying this stuff and it doesn't

00:49:39 ◼   ► always work and they deserve criticism when it doesn't work, but I do like that they try

00:49:44 ◼   ► and that comes from Steve Jobs instilling that in their culture. Like, look at the iMac,

00:49:50 ◼   ► it's a great example. Like, they just made a break and it worked for them and there's

00:49:54 ◼   ► something to be said for that because the argument is, if you don't make a break because

00:49:59 ◼   ► you're super comfortable, someone else will do it and they will eat your lunch. So you

00:50:03 ◼   ► better be your own replacement. Build your own replacement, be your best competition.

00:50:08 ◼   ► And I do think that Apple, at its best, when it's working at its best, is doing that.

00:50:13 ◼   ► Happy Birthday, iMac.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it's funny.

00:50:16 ◼   ► I have on my wall a 20th anniversary of the Macintosh cover from Macworld.

00:50:23 ◼   ► And we've come all the way, I guess it's 14 years later, because we've come all the way

00:50:28 ◼   ► to the 20th anniversary of the iMac.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Amazing.

00:50:32 ◼   ► I mean, the iMac now is older than the original Mac was when the iMac was introduced.

00:50:37 ◼   ► That's the thing that blows me away a lot older, but that's how time works.

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00:53:48 ◼   ► So Apple results were last week and it was mostly good, right?

00:53:57 ◼   ► I don't think there were any blockbusters in either direction really.

00:54:02 ◼   ► No, I think they slightly beat their estimates.

00:54:05 ◼   ► They increased their revenue year over year.

00:54:08 ◼   ► They had good results in China, even though people were worried about that.

00:54:13 ◼   ► The iPad did okay.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Mac went down a smidge, right?

00:54:17 ◼   ► went down in units but was flattened revenue or flattened units and up in

00:54:21 ◼   ► revenue it was one of those things where basically what you were seeing is that

00:54:24 ◼   ► the even though it seemed flat revenue was better and that was probably at

00:54:30 ◼   ► least in part because of the iMac Pro just because the iMac Pro boost is

00:54:35 ◼   ► expensive and they they introduced it so they sold a lot of them

00:54:38 ◼   ► relatively speaking you know maybe not a huge amount but enough to boost revenue

00:54:43 ◼   ► revenue, the ratio, right, we figured out average selling price by looking at the ratio

00:54:47 ◼   ► of the sales units to the sales revenue and the revenue went up so the average selling

00:54:53 ◼   ► price went up, which I point at and say, "Well, the iMac Pro was there and that's a much more

00:54:59 ◼   ► expensive computer than they usually sell and therefore it dragged it up a little bit."

00:55:04 ◼   ► But yeah, it was, I mean, the get routine, it was a huge quarter, Apple makes so much

00:55:08 ◼   ► money but in the end most of it was pretty much what you'd expect it was the

00:55:14 ◼   ► continuing story not anything kind of revelatory but there was one little

00:55:19 ◼   ► thing which is kind of interest it was because it was about a very big thing so

00:55:24 ◼   ► since the release of the iPhone 10 there have been many analysts reports and this

00:55:30 ◼   ► we saw this last quarter we saw it this quarter as well last quarter is just

00:55:34 ◼   ► proven by numbers, this quarter it was just proven by numbers, that people have been saying

00:55:39 ◼   ► that iPhone X sales have been struggling. This has been a thing that has been, like

00:55:44 ◼   ► even like the day before I think Bloomberg published this big thing, you know, "Oh, the

00:55:49 ◼   ► iPhone X's are going to be down. It's been a big disappointment and they're going to

00:55:52 ◼   ► forecast it down again and they're going to miss their forecast." None of this happened.

00:55:58 ◼   ► And Apple is saying that it's their top selling phone and has been their top selling phone

00:56:03 ◼   ► since the day it was introduced every week to not just per quarter but every

00:56:08 ◼   ► single week it's the number one selling more iPhone tens than any other phone

00:56:12 ◼   ► it's difficult to know what the exact mix is but it's like they're selling

00:56:15 ◼   ► more iPhone tens than like they are pluses you know I don't know if maybe

00:56:19 ◼   ► when you add both eights together like but you know single handset exactly and

00:56:25 ◼   ► again right like they in their forecasts they forecast an increase in profit and

00:56:31 ◼   ► sorry, increasing revenue year over year, and the literal only way Apple can do that

00:56:36 ◼   ► is by selling more iPhones, right?

00:56:38 ◼   ► There's nothing else that will drive the revenue so significantly for them currently.

00:56:43 ◼   ► It has to be selling more iPhones.

00:56:45 ◼   ► So what is going on?

00:56:49 ◼   ► Why are analysts consistently having this thought that iPhone X is tanking?

00:56:57 ◼   ► I have a theory about the iPhone X one.

00:57:00 ◼   ► There is an overarching theory which is that, which I don't know enough about the investing

00:57:06 ◼   ► world to talk about other than to say that there is one theory that says that the Apple

00:57:12 ◼   ► bears are manipulating the stock, right? That they literally are contrarian because they

00:57:18 ◼   ► are suppressing the Apple stock so that they can make money on the Apple stock, which again,

00:57:24 ◼   ► it's a conspiracy theory and I don't know enough about that world.

00:57:27 ◼   ► You can see that though, right? Like, I mean, it doesn't seem like a wild, like it doesn't

00:57:32 ◼   ► seem like something from fiction. Like, of course I can understand that.

00:57:35 ◼   ► It's either that or there's something about Apple that brings out people who are, um,

00:57:40 ◼   ► who don't understand reality. Um, and maybe that's true too, because that's been true

00:57:45 ◼   ► for years. But the thing is, correct me if I'm wrong,

00:57:49 ◼   ► but in recent times, this, this feels a little bit out of place.

00:57:52 ◼   ► Well, the iPhone X thing has been going on for a while now, and I think I've got my theory,

00:57:59 ◼   ► so here it is. First off, if we go back to before the iPhone X was announced, when you

00:58:04 ◼   ► and I were talking about it and it was this theoretical high-end phone and all of that,

00:58:08 ◼   ► there was a lot of consternation about like, how are they going to do it? How are they

00:58:12 ◼   ► going to make it so that they sell this one? Are people going to want the other one? Are

00:58:15 ◼   ► people going to just defer purchases because they don't want to buy what we now know is

00:58:20 ◼   ► the iPhone 8 when the iPhone X exists, that seems to not have happened, but that was the

00:58:24 ◼   ► beginning of a narrative that you could pick up. And I think some people picked it up,

00:58:27 ◼   ► a negative narrative, like Apple's changing their strategy, fear, fear, right? So we get

00:58:33 ◼   ► into the release and there's some skepticism and it continues to build and there was like

00:58:38 ◼   ► a supply chain report at some point that said that a couple of Apple suppliers were cutting,

00:58:45 ◼   ► had their orders cut, including, I think, for the OLED screens from Samsung.

00:58:50 ◼   ► And you can see how people start to make those assumptions based upon that, right?

00:58:54 ◼   ► Yeah, although there were some just totally weird assumptions, like the one that said

00:58:57 ◼   ► the iPhone X is "end of life," which I can't tell whether that was somebody who

00:59:03 ◼   ► doesn't know what they're talking about or whether there was a mistranslation or

00:59:06 ◼   ► misunderstanding because they're going to stop making the current iPhone X and do a

00:59:11 ◼   ► a new iPhone 10 for the fall, which is probably closer to the truth, right? That it's not

00:59:16 ◼   ► like they're killing the iPhone 10, but that they're going to end the, they're going to

00:59:19 ◼   ► stop making that one and make the new one, which who knows whether they'll do that or

00:59:23 ◼   ► not. I think it's, I think it's possible. I think it's likely in fact, but, um, so what

00:59:27 ◼   ► ended up happening also, let's back up and say, what do we say when there are sources

00:59:33 ◼   ► that are anonymous sources or that are insider sources, you always have to ask, what do they

00:59:38 ◼   ► have to gain by sharing this information. And in the case of suppliers, what they have

00:59:44 ◼   ► to gain is blaming someone else for their bad results because they didn't sell as many

00:59:50 ◼   ► of these things that they usually supply. So they say, "Oh, well, our results are going

00:59:55 ◼   ► to be bad because Apple didn't buy as many. It's Apple's fault. Apple's having trouble.

00:59:59 ◼   ► It's not us. It's not us. We're great. Apple's having trouble." So that's all going on in

01:00:04 ◼   ► the background. And then the results come out and it's like, "No, the iPhone X is still

01:00:07 ◼   ► the best-selling iPhone, iPhone sales are good, where is this disaster?" And I think

01:00:14 ◼   ► Apple made those statements about the iPhone X specifically to bat down those rumors and

01:00:19 ◼   ► say, "Nope, you're wrong." Here's my theory. If you look at the average selling price of

01:00:23 ◼   ► the iPhone, the holiday quarter, and when the iPhone X had just come out, and you look

01:00:29 ◼   ► at the average selling price of the iPhone for this most recent quarter, January for

01:00:34 ◼   ► for Burry March. It's lower, sequentially. It's higher year over year because the iPhone

01:00:40 ◼   ► 10 is more expensive and the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are more expensive than the 7 and 7

01:00:44 ◼   ► Plus were. Let's not forget that, that Apple raised the price on their other phones too.

01:00:48 ◼   ► So year over year, the average selling price is up, but sequentially it's down a little

01:00:53 ◼   ► bit. What does that mean? And my guess is, what that means is that the iPhone 10 sold

01:01:01 ◼   ► an awful lot at the very beginning and the gap between it and the other iPhone models

01:01:07 ◼   ► was greater and since it's a more expensive product, the ASP was higher and that after

01:01:13 ◼   ► that initial burst of iPhone X sales over the next three months in this new quarter,

01:01:18 ◼   ► they came down a little bit. They're still number one, but they're not as far ahead of

01:01:23 ◼   ► the 8 and 8 Plus as they were. Yeah, they haven't done a lap around the course, right?

01:01:28 ◼   ► you know, number two is catching up.

01:01:30 ◼   ► - Which is maybe not shocking,

01:01:32 ◼   ► given that there was the pent up demand for the iPhone X

01:01:35 ◼   ► and so that there were an awful lot of those sold.

01:01:38 ◼   ► I think it's impressive that the iPhone X did

01:01:39 ◼   ► as well as it did in that quarter,

01:01:42 ◼   ► 'cause it was only available for a third of it.

01:01:44 ◼   ► - Exactly, and also you'd think that like a $1,000 phone

01:01:48 ◼   ► will probably do its best numbers at two points

01:01:51 ◼   ► when it's released and the holiday quarter.

01:01:53 ◼   ► - And it was simultaneous. - When it goes to.

01:01:54 ◼   ► - Right.

01:01:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so like, you know,

01:01:56 ◼   ► that's when that's gonna happen,

01:01:58 ◼   ► And you say it happens at the same time.

01:01:59 ◼   ► - So here's my theory.

01:02:00 ◼   ► My theory is that Apple looked at how well it did

01:02:03 ◼   ► in December and said, "Whoa, it's gonna do this gap

01:02:06 ◼   ► away from the eight for its life.

01:02:08 ◼   ► This is what it's gonna be.

01:02:10 ◼   ► So this is how many we need to make."

01:02:12 ◼   ► And then as it got into that first calendar quarter

01:02:14 ◼   ► of this year, beginning of this year,

01:02:16 ◼   ► they started to see that that's not really

01:02:18 ◼   ► where it was gonna be.

01:02:19 ◼   ► It was gonna still be above the other phones,

01:02:21 ◼   ► but not quite as high up.

01:02:23 ◼   ► And that means that they bought too many components

01:02:26 ◼   ► for what the actual selling rate was. And that means they have more inventory. And Luca,

01:02:32 ◼   ► the CFO of Apple, said on the analyst call last week, basically that, he said, "Yeah,

01:02:37 ◼   ► we ended up with a little more inventory and it'll work itself out." And that was a very

01:02:41 ◼   ► pointed response to a pointed question about essentially the rumors that they had cut production

01:02:47 ◼   ► of the iPhone X. And I think the truth is somewhere in the middle, right? He kind of

01:02:52 ◼   ► shrugged it off as like, "Look, it happens. We had a little more inventory and it'll work

01:02:56 ◼   ► itself out soon and it's not a big deal. And the question was like, "Oh, Breathless. Oh,

01:03:01 ◼   ► iPhone X was doomed. What happened?" The truth is, I think, they looked at December and thought

01:03:07 ◼   ► the iPhone X was going to sell a bit more than it actually is selling.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Yeah, they may have gotten a little bit over excited.

01:03:12 ◼   ► Right. Or as Tim Cook said, "We won the Super Bowl, but not by as many points as we would

01:03:16 ◼   ► have liked to." Which is a weird metaphor, but you can sort of see it like we're very

01:03:21 ◼   ► proud of the product and it's great and it is our number one product even if you know

01:03:28 ◼   ► it didn't win by 30 points or whatever it still won the Super Bowl and it still gets

01:03:33 ◼   ► the ring that's what he was trying to say and I think that's I think that's the source

01:03:37 ◼   ► of this entire rumor I think the source of this rumor is that Apple in the natural course

01:03:41 ◼   ► of things and again you might not even notice this if this weren't Apple and everybody wants

01:03:45 ◼   ► to know everything about Apple I think Apple made a judgment in December and then they

01:03:49 ◼   ► looked in January and they're like, "Oh, it's a little less than we thought." But we already

01:03:54 ◼   ► have them in the process of we bought the screens and we bought the components and we're

01:03:57 ◼   ► going to start producing them, which means we're going to end up with a little more inventory

01:04:01 ◼   ► of iPhone Xs that we want, but we know the demand is still there, and so we will dial

01:04:06 ◼   ► back on our orders and that'll get us back in balance and we'll be able to continue to

01:04:11 ◼   ► make as many iPhone Xs as we can sell, but we have a little hump. It's like a snake eating

01:04:18 ◼   ► a pig or something and there's the bulbs and the bulbs moves through. Okay, a cartoon snake

01:04:23 ◼   ► eating a cartoon pig probably. I don't know about actual snakes and pigs. You know, and

01:04:28 ◼   ► it'll work its way through and then out the other side and then that's it, right? Like

01:04:32 ◼   ► they made an estimate. It was a little high. They put it into balance, but meanwhile they

01:04:37 ◼   ► had cranked up the machine a little bit, so they got to crank the machine back down to

01:04:41 ◼   ► get it in balance. I suspect that's it. That's the entire story of, "Oh, the iPhone 10 is

01:04:46 ◼   ► terrible and doomed and they're going to stop making it all is sourced from the

01:04:49 ◼   ► fact that Apple made a judgment in December and then in January or February

01:04:53 ◼   ► made a slightly different judgment to back off a little bit and that's it

01:04:57 ◼   ► that's your whole story but I guess that's a window into how supply chain

01:05:02 ◼   ► details and people who want to break stories about Apple and make big

01:05:06 ◼   ► speculation about like that moment when Apple finally takes a big stumble will

01:05:10 ◼   ► will lead you to places that maybe aren't actual places. And in this case, I think that's

01:05:17 ◼   ► what it is.

01:05:18 ◼   ► It seems like the expectation, and I understand it, is that it's got to happen eventually.

01:05:23 ◼   ► So maybe it's next quarter, right? Like, and I think that's where a lot of this is coming

01:05:28 ◼   ► from that, like, any indication that this might be the quarter will set people into

01:05:34 ◼   ► a tailspin.

01:05:35 ◼   ► What is the greatest enemy of attention? I was going to say of journalism, of being an

01:05:39 ◼   ► analyst, but really, what's the greatest enemy of attention? It's attention's arch-enemy,

01:05:44 ◼   ► boredom. The usual is boring and nobody clicks through on stories and listens to analysts

01:05:51 ◼   ► about boring, usual, business as usual, right? No one wants to read that story of like, "Oh,

01:05:57 ◼   ► it's going to be alright." So if I tell you I have insider information that Apple is going

01:06:01 ◼   ► to kind of continue on its upward trajectory, the phone sales are going to be pretty solid,

01:06:06 ◼   ► services are going to continue to go up, they're going to introduce new products, and in the

01:06:10 ◼   ► end, Apple is not one of these companies that's going to burn out and fade away. It's just

01:06:14 ◼   ► going to kind of be boring and grow slowly and make huge amounts of money. Then, if I

01:06:21 ◼   ► could come back from the future and tell you that, like, it's not going to stop analysts

01:06:25 ◼   ► and writers from hoping that something happens, because that's boring. It's like, "Come on,

01:06:31 ◼   ► do something, do something!" It's the same thing when we talked about the Apple Watch

01:06:34 ◼   ► and people are like, "This is why Apple must release a watch and why it must be the next

01:06:38 ◼   ► iPhone and why it must be a game changer." It's like, must? As long as the iPhone is

01:06:43 ◼   ► growing and doing well, Apple must not do anything. They don't must anything at all.

01:06:50 ◼   ► All Apple must do is keep making good iPhones. That's all Apple must do.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Essentially true. If Apple keeps making good iPhones and the iPhone keeps selling, for

01:06:59 ◼   ► a very long time that's all Apple must do. Now they must find the next thing for when

01:07:05 ◼   ► the iPhone is no longer, when smartphones are no longer the product category that everybody

01:07:09 ◼   ► cares about. That may be a very long time and that's part of the problem here. It's

01:07:12 ◼   ► like, come on, I'm just in my career as an analyst, writer, whatever. Right now, I don't

01:07:18 ◼   ► want to wait 15 years for the next big transition. I want something big to happen right now.

01:07:23 ◼   ► Change the world again. I need that. Right now. And it's not because Apple needs to,

01:07:27 ◼   ► because we want to see it collectively and that's a more interesting story. And so that's

01:07:33 ◼   ► why I think these things are going to continue even if Apple, in fact even more so if Apple

01:07:37 ◼   ► is just a boring, incredibly popular successful company because boring doesn't sell. Boring

01:07:43 ◼   ► is the enemy of attention and I think that that leads to things getting hyped up that

01:07:50 ◼   ► are nothing. Which is not to say that Apple couldn't do something that is really deserving

01:07:53 ◼   ► of attention, that they couldn't have a flop, that they couldn't make a terrible decision

01:07:56 ◼   ► that leads to harming their business totally could happen but in the absence

01:08:00 ◼   ► of that people will still write stuff like this because they're desperate for

01:08:04 ◼   ► something to say and modern Apple is in many ways as we we pick through like

01:08:10 ◼   ► where they're going with the Mac and stuff and iOS and how it's interesting

01:08:13 ◼   ► and it's very interesting to speculate about that stuff but especially as a

01:08:17 ◼   ► business modern Apple is super boring above the waterline where we can see it

01:08:22 ◼   ► where it's just not about future products it's just about the stuff they

01:08:24 ◼   ► release and how much they sell, they're boring. They're a money machine. They make

01:08:28 ◼   ► a huge profit. They sell a lot of phones. They sell other stuff too. What more can

01:08:32 ◼   ► you say? And every time I turn on CNBC, which I only turn on on the day of the

01:08:36 ◼   ► results, there is always somebody there is like, "Oh, Apple's done for," and

01:08:39 ◼   ► somebody else. And then the results come out and everybody's like, "Money, money,

01:08:42 ◼   ► money, money, money! Amazing! It's an amazing thing!" And it's like, yeah, sure,

01:08:47 ◼   ► being a huge company that makes a lot of money and sells a lot of products, it is

01:08:51 ◼   ► boring but it's also you know it's pretty good if you're that company and that you know that's

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01:12:28 ◼   ► So we'll do some #AskUpgrade questions today comes from our first one is from Gustavo.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Gustavo wants to know, "What do you guys think about Apple's leather iPhone cases?"

01:12:38 ◼   ► What do you think Jason?

01:12:40 ◼   ► Do you like those?

01:12:41 ◼   ► Do you use those?

01:12:42 ◼   ► I do like them.

01:12:43 ◼   ► I would prefer not to use a case on my iPhone, but for the 6 and for the 10, it's just slippery

01:12:52 ◼   ► enough that I wanted a little more grip.

01:12:55 ◼   ► And I do like the Apple leather iPhone cases.

01:12:57 ◼   ► I think they're really nice.

01:12:58 ◼   ► You've got to like leather.

01:12:59 ◼   ► I did talk to somebody this week who uses a silicone one because they didn't like how

01:13:03 ◼   ► leather can discolor and it can get, you know, I like that leather is gonna age and change

01:13:10 ◼   ► and look, I like the look of that, but there are, you know, silicone doesn't, so you could

01:13:15 ◼   ► do that if you want, but I really like the leather cases and I'll remind you that Apple's

01:13:18 ◼   ► secret weapon here is that Apple is the only company that can make a case with an Apple

01:13:21 ◼   ► logo on it, which is, you know, if you want the Apple logo on your case, that's how you

01:13:26 ◼   ► do it. But I wish, the iPhone X is so beautiful that I wish I didn't have to use a case on

01:13:30 ◼   ► it because I love how it looks, but I just don't feel like I can have that. I had a dream

01:13:35 ◼   ► last night, Myke, that I was on a roller coaster, or it might have been a go-kart, I'm not sure.

01:13:45 ◼   ► And I got crashed or bumped or something, and I thought, "Wow, that was a really bad

01:13:51 ◼   ► bump." And then I got out at the bottom and looked at my phone and my iPhone had been

01:13:55 ◼   ► smashed in my pocket by the force of it.

01:13:59 ◼   ► And what I'm saying is I'm afraid my iPhone X

01:14:00 ◼   ► is going to get broken, which is why I put a case on it.

01:14:02 ◼   ► - That's a very good reason.

01:14:03 ◼   ► I agree with you for all of the reasons

01:14:05 ◼   ► of why you have a case, and also all of the reasons

01:14:09 ◼   ► you wish you didn't have to have a case.

01:14:10 ◼   ► Like, I agree with all of that.

01:14:12 ◼   ► I tried to run my iPhone X without a case

01:14:15 ◼   ► because I loved the look of it so much,

01:14:17 ◼   ► and it was still just a little bit too slippery for me.

01:14:19 ◼   ► And do you know what?

01:14:20 ◼   ► This thing costs too much money.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Like, it was too expensive.

01:14:23 ◼   ► And yes, I have AppleCare on it,

01:14:24 ◼   ► but I would still prefer not to have to go through that, right?

01:14:27 ◼   ► Like I just don't want, I don't want to break my phone and I'm happy to have a case on it

01:14:32 ◼   ► because my desire to not have a broken phone outweighs my desire to have a phone without a case.

01:14:38 ◼   ► I'm, I'm not such a fan of the leather cases.

01:14:42 ◼   ► I like the silicone cases, um, for two reasons.

01:14:45 ◼   ► I like the color range of the silicone cases more and I personally find the silicone to be more grippy,

01:14:51 ◼   ► which is what I'm looking for.

01:14:52 ◼   ► And honestly, I think this is a personal preference thing because I spoke to many people who say

01:14:57 ◼   ► the exact opposite, who find the leather to be more grippy.

01:15:00 ◼   ► I have no idea if that's anything to do with the oils in your skin.

01:15:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:15:04 ◼   ► I think the silicone is more grippy.

01:15:05 ◼   ► I actually think it's too grippy, which is why I don't like the silicone.

01:15:08 ◼   ► The silicone case, I have a hard time getting it in my pocket.

01:15:11 ◼   ► And the leather leather case, I don't.

01:15:13 ◼   ► So for me, it's the that's the right one for me.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Wayne wants some advice, Jason.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Wayne's first generation stainless steel Apple watch has broken.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Is it worth buying the Series 3 now or wait?

01:15:26 ◼   ► I don't have a good answer for this.

01:15:28 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure there will be a new Apple Watch this fall.

01:15:31 ◼   ► How badly do you want an Apple Watch?

01:15:32 ◼   ► Maybe you could get a used first or second or third generation watch or a refurb and

01:15:38 ◼   ► you could get a deal on something like that and then use that for a year.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I would really try that.

01:15:44 ◼   ► You can find first gen Apple Watches being sold pretty cheap.

01:15:50 ◼   ► a series one or series two used or refurbed maybe the sport and not the stainless and

01:15:57 ◼   ► just figure you're going to use that for a year or two and then the new Apple Watch style

01:16:02 ◼   ► if there is one and generations will have arrived and then you can make a good decision

01:16:06 ◼   ► about buying one that's more or less brand new with the material that you want. This

01:16:13 ◼   ► is good advice I think because if the Apple Watch is something you must have every day

01:16:19 ◼   ► day, and considering you were coming from first gen anyway, if you can find a good deal

01:16:25 ◼   ► on something that is lower than a series 3, do it, because you don't know what you're

01:16:30 ◼   ► missing out on with the benefits of it, because you don't own it.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Right, and I was going to say my wife's battery on her series 0 is dying, and it's a tough

01:16:41 ◼   ► time to buy a new Apple Watch right now, and we're going to pay the $75 and get a new battery

01:16:46 ◼   ► put in it and wait and maybe she'll get a new Apple watch next year but for this

01:16:50 ◼   ► year I think we're just gonna we're just gonna wait and and spend $75 and get her

01:16:55 ◼   ► back up to speed with her Series Zero which she still likes just fine and it's

01:16:59 ◼   ► stainless so again buying a new stainless is that much more expensive and

01:17:02 ◼   ► it's a nice watch it looks great so we're gonna do that instead and I think

01:17:07 ◼   ► that that because it's a weird time right now if there was a brand new

01:17:10 ◼   ► Apple watch out right now I would consider just buying that for her but

01:17:15 ◼   ► But there isn't, so we're gonna defer too.

01:17:19 ◼   ► So yeah, maybe finding somebody's used old watch

01:17:22 ◼   ► that they've replaced with a Series 3

01:17:23 ◼   ► might get you through for, let's say,

01:17:26 ◼   ► year, year and a half until maybe

01:17:28 ◼   ► the 2019 Apple Watch models in the fall.

01:17:30 ◼   ► - And you never know, in three or four weeks,

01:17:32 ◼   ► there may be some big indications of some changes, right?

01:17:35 ◼   ► If they start doing stuff like,

01:17:36 ◼   ► hey, your app should be adaptable

01:17:38 ◼   ► for different screen shapes, right?

01:17:41 ◼   ► Then you'll know, then you'll know.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Jason, not Jason, different Jason, Jason too wrote in to say,

01:17:49 ◼   ► almost every online service I use has emailed me

01:17:52 ◼   ► over the last week updating their terms and privacy,

01:17:55 ◼   ► Twitter, eBay, Amazon, Fitbit, the list goes on and on.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Did something happen across the internet

01:18:01 ◼   ► that has necessitated this or is there another reason?

01:18:04 ◼   ► Jason, let me say four letters to you.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Those four letters are GDPR.

01:18:10 ◼   ► Basically in the EU there are a bunch

01:18:12 ◼   ► your privacy regulations. And it's all about one of the key things while you're seeing

01:18:17 ◼   ► this so much is companies have to update their terms and their privacy policies to account

01:18:22 ◼   ► for how they keep in your data and how it's used and how you can get to it.

01:18:26 ◼   ► But also if you're on an email mailing list, you have to basically now reconfirm in a lot

01:18:31 ◼   ► of businesses that you want to be on that mailing list. So a lot of companies I think

01:18:36 ◼   ► are using the privacy and policy updates as an excuse to email you and be like, "Hey,

01:18:43 ◼   ► you love these emails, right? You should click this button." So that's why you're seeing

01:18:46 ◼   ► so many of those.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Yeah, that's exactly it. And even if you're not in the EU, you need to do... Basically,

01:18:55 ◼   ► if you've got EU customers, you're covered by GDPR. You need to do it and you're subject

01:19:00 ◼   ► to their sanction if you break the rules. So, you know, anybody, any business that's

01:19:05 ◼   ► got people who are users in the in the EU. They have two choices. They can either do

01:19:09 ◼   ► the GDPR stuff, which you're seeing, or like some companies, they can say, "Sorry, we're

01:19:15 ◼   ► not going to have people in Europe anymore," which is usually a sign that their business

01:19:21 ◼   ► is built on shady uses of user data. There are examples of small businesses that maybe

01:19:32 ◼   ► the issues with the cost of doing business. They've got to hire a lawyer to look at their

01:19:38 ◼   ► statements. They worry about the fines. They don't have very many customers in Europe.

01:19:43 ◼   ► There are going to be some outlier cases, but mostly if you're using a service like

01:19:46 ◼   ► there's that service that unsubscribes you for messages that Slice Intelligence owns,

01:19:51 ◼   ► and what that means is that they're actually reading through all of your emails to find

01:19:54 ◼   ► out what you bought so that they can use that in their estimates of market share. And they

01:19:58 ◼   ► this service that I think they bought, they have it to datamine you. And that service

01:20:03 ◼   ► is no longer going to be available to people in the EU. Because in the end, that's the

01:20:07 ◼   ► only reason it's there, is to datamine you. And if they can't datamine you in the EU,

01:20:11 ◼   ► they're not going to bother. So that's a sign, I'll tell you, if you get one of those things

01:20:16 ◼   ► that says, "We're not going to be able to use this service anymore because Europe is

01:20:20 ◼   ► out." That's maybe a bad sign most of the time.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Joe wants to know what do we use for mousing surfaces if not a mouse pad what is your desk made of?

01:20:30 ◼   ► Do you use a mouse? Yeah we don't use I mean I don't think either of us use mice right? Oh Joe

01:20:35 ◼   ► is this was this sent in in I'm not gonna make jokes about people who use mice if you use a mouse

01:20:41 ◼   ► great I have not used a mouse with my computer since the 1990s folks I don't I used a trackball

01:20:49 ◼   ► for many many years and I use a trackpad now. So surfaces that I use where my

01:20:55 ◼   ► trackpad is set as my surface and that's the keyboard tray on my desk and yeah

01:21:01 ◼   ► that's it. I have a wooden desk I very occasionally maybe like once or twice a

01:21:06 ◼   ► year will use a mouse which is usually just because of some kind of injury

01:21:11 ◼   ► thing I don't know nope but then I just use it directly on the desk I don't have

01:21:15 ◼   ► a mousepad. My desk is made of wood but you know it's wood in quotes because it's really

01:21:19 ◼   ► like particle board with a wood fake kind of cover on it I think. Mine's like IKEA I

01:21:24 ◼   ► mean I have no idea I mean they could be a small family living in there. It's pressed

01:21:28 ◼   ► it's sawdust pressed into the shape of wood and so technically wood but it's wood like

01:21:34 ◼   ► a pringle is a potato chip it's sort of that kind of wood but most furniture is like that

01:21:39 ◼   ► these days and I think my keyboard tray is that stuff too although it might be plastic

01:21:44 ◼   ► I'm not sure, but my desk is that, you know, IKEA-like wood surface.

01:21:49 ◼   ► It's got a nice fake wood grain on it, though.

01:21:51 ◼   ► It's very pretty, but I don't think it's real.

01:21:52 ◼   ► - Here's James's question.

01:21:54 ◼   ► "I have mixed feelings about the idea of AR glasses.

01:21:58 ◼   ► It would make things like turn-by-turn directions better

01:22:00 ◼   ► and could potentially, in some instances, make our lives better overall.

01:22:06 ◼   ► But how could people wearing AR glasses affect face-to-face interactions?

01:22:12 ◼   ► I think significantly, and this is my reservation with this stuff.

01:22:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I think significantly is true. I think change will change things that will happen.

01:22:23 ◼   ► I think all new technology changes aspects, right? Our aspects of our interaction now

01:22:28 ◼   ► when we have smartphones is different and you see people using their smartphones and

01:22:31 ◼   ► all of that, and that changes things. Having cars change things and having public transit

01:22:36 ◼   ► change things. But it is true. This is a heretofore not intervened by technology, not imposed

01:22:44 ◼   ► over our human experience, but now imposed through technology, where you are getting

01:22:51 ◼   ► jokes to tell to make you seem more interesting, facts that you're looking up, data about this

01:22:56 ◼   ► person, even if it's as simple as like, "Oh, that's your name. I forgot who you are, but

01:23:00 ◼   ► now I know." All of that stuff can be in there. And it does mean, as we knew with the Google

01:23:06 ◼   ► glass stuff like the distraction issue where now we know you're distracted if you're looking down

01:23:11 ◼   ► at your phone or your watch but with a heads up display are we going to know are they going to

01:23:16 ◼   ► people looking at you blankly but they're actually doing something else it makes that part that much

01:23:20 ◼   ► harder too yeah my concern is just like the apple watch was a step right and i know that there are

01:23:28 ◼   ► times where like and i still get this every now and then where like i'm you know things are coming

01:23:33 ◼   ► in and I'm just glancing and stuff and people are like it's not the it's moved away from

01:23:38 ◼   ► uh oh are you checking the time if you've got to be somewhere which is what we all initially

01:23:43 ◼   ► thought it was going to be but now it's just like what's going on like they know it's notifications

01:23:48 ◼   ► like why are you checking this stuff right so that that's the thing that I see and I've been

01:23:53 ◼   ► privy to and it's something that I have to pay attention to if I've got something literally

01:23:58 ◼   ► beaming into my eyeballs, like that is very different, right? Like how is that not going

01:24:03 ◼   ► to distract me? Like I don't, I just don't, this is my reservation with this. Like I do genuinely

01:24:09 ◼   ► believe that this could be a cool product. Like whilst it was wonky in a lot of areas,

01:24:14 ◼   ► I always thought Google Glass was kind of cool. Like some of the stuff that it could do

01:24:18 ◼   ► is kind of cool, right? As somebody who primarily navigates by foot, you know,

01:24:26 ◼   ► having turn-by-turn directions in front of my face for walking is fantastic, right?

01:24:32 ◼   ► So, because like, you know, it's not like when you're in a car and you can just mount the system

01:24:35 ◼   ► somewhere, right? Like you're kind of walking around staring at your phone. It's, it's, it's

01:24:40 ◼   ► like kind of awkward, but having it like right in front of your face is great, right? Like all that

01:24:44 ◼   ► stuff is great. But I think one of the reasons that Google Glass ended up not working out is

01:24:49 ◼   ► this exact thing because you can't hide it. You're wearing those, you're wearing those and everybody

01:24:55 ◼   ► knows and they're gonna react to you differently. Yeah, but imagine a world where everybody's

01:24:58 ◼   ► got them though, right? When everybody's got them, what does that mean? But that's it though.

01:25:03 ◼   ► I don't know. Because this is the, my feeling Jason is this awkwardness that people feel

01:25:09 ◼   ► I think could be the reason that we won't all have them. So I don't know. I wonder,

01:25:15 ◼   ► I was thinking about things like there's somebody you don't like and so you have them, you put

01:25:19 ◼   ► a Snapchat filter on them where they always look like a clown or their eyes bug out or

01:25:23 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:25:24 ◼   ► I mean, where you're mocking them in your visual field,

01:25:28 ◼   ► even though they don't know it.

01:25:29 ◼   ► Like there's all sorts of bad usage of this,

01:25:32 ◼   ► or maybe that's good if it's a really bad person

01:25:34 ◼   ► and you don't want to deal with them, but you have to.

01:25:37 ◼   ► But it's a complete change in human interaction.

01:25:41 ◼   ► - Maybe if you could actually help me remember

01:25:42 ◼   ► people's names, 'cause I forget names at the time,

01:25:43 ◼   ► so that'd be nice.

01:25:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, but completely.

01:25:45 ◼   ► I think in the end, everybody will use it differently

01:25:49 ◼   ► because of course people are people,

01:25:50 ◼   ► that there will be like, people will, we will understand that there's a certain lightness

01:25:55 ◼   ► of an AR interface overlaid on the world when you're talking to somebody that may be, and

01:26:02 ◼   ► of course these things are going to be able to detect when you're talking to somebody.

01:26:05 ◼   ► So it may go into a mode when you're talking to somebody that you've set that reduces everything.

01:26:11 ◼   ► Maybe even just saying it, that everything else around them darkens so that you're focused

01:26:19 ◼   ► just on them, right? Like, they could do that too. There's lots of things you could do,

01:26:24 ◼   ► but other people will want to be like checking their email or whatever is the future email

01:26:28 ◼   ► that comes in AR while they're talking to somebody and just be alerted when they say

01:26:33 ◼   ► something interesting or have a transcript of what they've said up to then so that if

01:26:37 ◼   ► you didn't hear what they said you can quickly read the transcript and then respond to it.

01:26:40 ◼   ► I mean, all that stuff is going to be to play for and I think in the end I think we'll all

01:26:45 ◼   ► figure it out and it'll be okay but that doesn't necessarily mean that human interaction won't be

01:26:51 ◼   ► completely changed by something like that in a world where everybody's got AR in their vision

01:26:55 ◼   ► all the time. That's going to be a while. Like there's going to be this really ugly transition

01:26:59 ◼   ► phase but ultimately if that's the world then it'll yeah it'll be a really different world and

01:27:03 ◼   ► the way we interact with people face to face will be totally different. I mean we did all get used

01:27:08 ◼   ► to smartphones, right? That was a huge change because we had the entire internet available

01:27:17 ◼   ► to reach us. This wasn't a thing that existed before. The idea of the push notification,

01:27:23 ◼   ► right? When that became a thing, the push notification, someone being able to reach you

01:27:28 ◼   ► via any method, either personal or application from wherever you are, that was a huge change,

01:27:35 ◼   ► I think, in social interactions and just smartphones in general.

01:27:39 ◼   ► And by and large, I think we've adapted to that.

01:27:43 ◼   ► People have understood certain etiquettes around that.

01:27:46 ◼   ► And my hope would be that if these things exist, maybe there is a thing where if you're

01:27:51 ◼   ► sitting down to somebody with dinner, you take them off.

01:27:55 ◼   ► And that's just how you live your life.

01:27:57 ◼   ► But I don't know.

01:28:00 ◼   ► Then there's the other awkward problem with people like me and you who wear eyeglasses.

01:28:03 ◼   ► would be integrated into our eyeglasses and then what do we do? So we have a lot to work

01:28:09 ◼   ► out before this can become a thing. But I think if any company has the track record

01:28:17 ◼   ► to show that they can try and get some of this way, it's Apple, right? I believe that

01:28:22 ◼   ► if anyone's going to get close to doing this in a way that is conscious of the people that

01:28:27 ◼   ► are around you, it's probably them.

01:28:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:31 ◼   ► If you have any questions you would like to hear us answer at the end of the show, you

01:28:34 ◼   ► can just send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and we collect some out to read

01:28:38 ◼   ► every episode.

01:28:39 ◼   ► Thank you to everybody who has submitted one for this week.

01:28:42 ◼   ► If you want to hear us talk about literally anything at all, there's a wide range of topics

01:28:46 ◼   ► going to Ask Upgrade.

01:28:47 ◼   ► Just send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and we will talk about it on a future episode.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Yeah, and if you've got any podcasting questions, we're collecting them now because we're going

01:28:57 ◼   ► to pre-record a whole podcasting episode as a special episode. So in the next couple of

01:29:03 ◼   ► weeks, it's a great time for you to do that at #AskUpgrade.

01:29:06 ◼   ► If you want to find our show notes for this week, go to relay.fm/upgrades/192. That's

01:29:11 ◼   ► where they live on the web. But I'm hoping that the podcast app that you use should display

01:29:15 ◼   ► them in all of their glory to you. So you can go and read along and pull in some extra

01:29:20 ◼   ► information based upon the stuff that we've spoken about. There's a lot of great stuff

01:29:23 ◼   ► in there today, including all of Jason's weird Amazon links for 3D accessories.

01:29:29 ◼   ► They're all in there.

01:29:30 ◼   ► 2D.

01:29:30 ◼   ► 3D, 2D, 4D maybe even.

01:29:32 ◼   ► But it is a secret one.

01:29:33 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:29:34 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason online, he is over at sixcolors.com and the

01:29:38 ◼   ► incomparable.com.

01:29:39 ◼   ► He is @jasonel on Twitter, J S N E double L.

01:29:42 ◼   ► I am @imike, I M Y K E.

01:29:44 ◼   ► This show is a part of Relay FM.

01:29:46 ◼   ► Both me and Jason host many wonderful shows at Relay FM.

01:29:49 ◼   ► Just go to relay.fm/shows to find more there.

01:29:53 ◼   ► I want to thank StoryWorth, Simple Contacts and Eero for their support of this show.

01:29:58 ◼   ► And we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:30:02 ◼   ► Y'all come back now, you hear?

01:30:03 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:30:07 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]