Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 190.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Ace & Tate, and Slack.

00:00:16 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Jason Snell.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hello, Jason Snell.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hey, welcome back Myke Hurley, welcome back to the Upgrade program.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Thank you for taking the reins last week,

00:00:27 ◼   ► thank you to Merlin Man for filling in.

00:00:29 ◼   ► It was always a great time to listen to the two of you.

00:00:32 ◼   ► I appreciated how much you destroyed the format

00:00:35 ◼   ► that I worked so hard to keep in check on this show

00:00:38 ◼   ► by doing a 45 minute snow talk.

00:00:39 ◼   ► So that was great.

00:00:40 ◼   ► That was really, I really appreciated that.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I guess, as you said, Richard really made me laugh

00:00:46 ◼   ► when I was in the airport.

00:00:48 ◼   ► When the cat's away, I laughed a lot.

00:00:51 ◼   ► - I played the theme song,

00:00:52 ◼   ► kind of I used the wrong theme song at the wrong time

00:00:55 ◼   ► with the weird startup music

00:00:56 ◼   ► and I had sound effects toward the end.

00:00:59 ◼   ► - They were very good sound effects though.

00:01:00 ◼   ► So yes, it was a great, I always enjoy,

00:01:03 ◼   ► I love seeing what you do with Upgrades When I'm Away.

00:01:07 ◼   ► It is a wonderful, almost uncanny valley-like situation.

00:01:12 ◼   ► But let's do our #SnailTalk for this week

00:01:14 ◼   ► and it comes from Paul and Paul wants to know,

00:01:17 ◼   ► what is a typical word count when Jason writes an article

00:01:21 ◼   ► for a site like Macworld and how much time does it take?

00:01:25 ◼   ► This is an interesting question for me

00:01:27 ◼   ► and probably not for anyone else but me and Paul.

00:01:30 ◼   ► - Paul almost knows. - But I will tell you,

00:01:31 ◼   ► my target word count is 800 words.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And I'm almost always over that, although not always,

00:01:41 ◼   ► but when I'm writing something

00:01:43 ◼   ► and it's kind of coming in short and I can get it to 800,

00:01:46 ◼   ► I'm like, all right, that good.

00:01:47 ◼   ► I made it across the finish line.

00:01:48 ◼   ► - Is that target your personal target

00:01:51 ◼   ► or is that set by them?

00:01:52 ◼   ► - I think we talked about vaguely

00:01:53 ◼   ► how many words they wanted out of it at some point.

00:01:56 ◼   ► And it honestly, this goes back to when I was writing columns

00:01:59 ◼   ► in the magazine back in the day,

00:02:00 ◼   ► my column was about 800 words, 800 or 900 words.

00:02:03 ◼   ► And I feel like that is a good length in terms of,

00:02:06 ◼   ► being short but readable and being,

00:02:12 ◼   ► sort of what they're paying me and the amount of time.

00:02:15 ◼   ► There are things I write,

00:02:16 ◼   ► I think I've talked about this here before,

00:02:17 ◼   ► but there are things I write like that are short,

00:02:19 ◼   ► that are like, oh, that's a six colors thing.

00:02:21 ◼   ► I can post that as a short blog post

00:02:22 ◼   ► or that's a really long thing that I wanna,

00:02:24 ◼   ► I'll post myself on Six Colors

00:02:26 ◼   ► or it'll be something that I'll work as a freelancer

00:02:29 ◼   ► and somebody will pay me a lot more money for

00:02:31 ◼   ► that's really long and involved.

00:02:32 ◼   ► - I will say, I think one of your skills as a writer,

00:02:35 ◼   ► because I read a lot of your writing,

00:02:38 ◼   ► maybe more than an average person

00:02:40 ◼   ► because I've read what you write for this show, right?

00:02:43 ◼   ► So I consume-- - Yeah, exactly right.

00:02:44 ◼   ► - Basically everything.

00:02:46 ◼   ► And I think that you have a skill of being able

00:02:49 ◼   ► to give out a lot of information and not a lot of words.

00:02:54 ◼   ► And I think that's very valuable, especially to me,

00:02:57 ◼   ► because I don't like,

00:02:59 ◼   ► I don't want to read 10,000 words every week for the show.

00:03:02 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:03:03 ◼   ► - So I think you do a very good job of getting out the,

00:03:06 ◼   ► especially in the Mac quad columns.

00:03:08 ◼   ► I like those a lot actually, because they're,

00:03:10 ◼   ► as you said, they're pretty short,

00:03:11 ◼   ► but you give out a lot of information.

00:03:12 ◼   ► I think that's one of your talents.

00:03:14 ◼   ► - All right.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Well, thank you.

00:03:16 ◼   ► That's great.

00:03:17 ◼   ► I think there's a thing you can do in 800 plus, 800 to 1200 words in terms of it's substantial

00:03:25 ◼   ► enough, but also it's not a 2000 word, 4000 word, 6000 word thing.

00:03:32 ◼   ► And every now and then you will write a big thing and it's for a specific reason, but

00:03:37 ◼   ► I don't feel like you go overboard all the time.

00:03:41 ◼   ► But every now and then you're going to get a big review, or you're going to get like

00:03:45 ◼   ► a Federico Vittucci iOS review. Yeah, it's usually something like that. I love

00:03:49 ◼   ► reading it every year. I don't want to read it every week because I would lose

00:03:52 ◼   ► my entire life to just read it in books. And there's there's also stuff that is

00:03:56 ◼   ► that is only worth a couple hundred words in a picture or something like

00:04:00 ◼   ► that and that's not stuff that I'm gonna give, you know, Mac world is paying me to

00:04:04 ◼   ► do something substantial enough for them to promote so a 200 word thing I'm just

00:04:08 ◼   ► gonna put on six colors and be like you know this is for me I want it out there

00:04:12 ◼   ► there. You know, nobody's paying me for this. It's me doing this and getting it out there.

00:04:16 ◼   ► And then there's the ones that are a little more substantial. And so I actually kind of

00:04:19 ◼   ► hoard those topics too. I'll be like starting to write something and I'll be like, "Oh,

00:04:23 ◼   ► and this is probably my Mac World column this week because it is going to be, you know,

00:04:27 ◼   ► that whatever 800, 1,000 word worth of topic." And so in terms of how much time it takes,

00:04:34 ◼   ► that was Paul's other question. It really varies. I'd say that when I get started writing,

00:04:41 ◼   ► the words come out pretty quickly, like an hour maybe, maybe two hours. The issue is

00:04:49 ◼   ► not when the words come out quickly. The issue is all the time that precedes when the words

00:04:54 ◼   ► come out quickly.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Finding the words.

00:04:56 ◼   ► Where no words come out. Sometimes that is trying to figure out the topic, and some of

00:05:02 ◼   ► times it's I figured out the topic and I'm not ready to write. And that can take a bunch

00:05:05 ◼   ► of forms. It can take the form of me standing or sitting and staring at a screen and thinking,

00:05:10 ◼   ► I can't write this right now and then doing something else.

00:05:14 ◼   ► I was actually just talking to my wife over the weekend

00:05:17 ◼   ► about how, and this is gonna be probably a free agent's

00:05:19 ◼   ► topic in a month or so when David and I talk next,

00:05:23 ◼   ► about being able to identify early on

00:05:25 ◼   ► that I'm just spinning my wheels

00:05:27 ◼   ► and nothing's gonna result from it and walking away.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Because I'm never more frustrated as a worker,

00:05:35 ◼   ► not just as a writer, by staring at my screen for two hours

00:05:38 ◼   ► and feeling like nothing happened.

00:05:39 ◼   ► - Right, it's wasted time, isn't it?

00:05:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, so the key is after 15 minutes of doing that,

00:05:44 ◼   ► go, I know I need to write this story,

00:05:47 ◼   ► I gotta go do something else now.

00:05:48 ◼   ► 'Cause it's just, I can sit here,

00:05:51 ◼   ► sitting here and staring at the computer

00:05:53 ◼   ► for another hour or two is not going to actually

00:05:55 ◼   ► make the words come out, it's just gonna frustrate me.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Better to relocate somewhere else and then try again

00:06:02 ◼   ► to do something else and then come back to it.

00:06:04 ◼   ► So I need to be better about identifying that

00:06:06 ◼   ► because that happens.

00:06:07 ◼   ► And I know, having worked with a lot of writers

00:06:11 ◼   ► over the years, that one of the things that's going on

00:06:14 ◼   ► during that whole process is there are,

00:06:17 ◼   ► there are back, to use computer nerd terms, right,

00:06:19 ◼   ► there are background processes in your brain

00:06:22 ◼   ► that are working, that are chewing over,

00:06:24 ◼   ► that are thinking about the issues involved.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And then at some point, you get to the point

00:06:29 ◼   ► where you're ready to write.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And so doing something else is not just procrastinating,

00:06:35 ◼   ► although it looks like procrastinating,

00:06:37 ◼   ► it can actually be part of the process.

00:06:39 ◼   ► So that's my, I block out two or three hours

00:06:44 ◼   ► for my MacWorld column every week on Tuesday afternoon.

00:06:50 ◼   ► And using my, I do have a to-do item,

00:06:54 ◼   ► but I also have blocked out on my calendar,

00:06:56 ◼   ► I know you love this, Myke, some time for that.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And the goal there is to give myself some dedicated time

00:07:01 ◼   ► to sit there and get that column out

00:07:03 ◼   ► and to know that it needs to come out

00:07:05 ◼   ► and then not schedule my Tuesday afternoon

00:07:07 ◼   ► 'cause then when am I gonna write the column?

00:07:09 ◼   ► So I do block out two or three hours.

00:07:12 ◼   ► The actual time that I'm typing is probably only,

00:07:16 ◼   ► it's probably only an hour, maybe with a few breaks.

00:07:20 ◼   ► But it's not the sum total of the time that goes into it

00:07:25 ◼   ► and the brain power that goes into it,

00:07:27 ◼   ► if that makes any sense.

00:07:28 ◼   ► - If that makes perfect sense.

00:07:29 ◼   ► That's really good, I think there's a lot of stuff in there.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And if this type of discussion interests you,

00:07:34 ◼   ► you should listen to Free Agents, which is Jason's podcast with David's Box where they

00:07:38 ◼   ► get into this kind of stuff in a lot more detail. It's at relay.fm/freeagents. And I

00:07:43 ◼   ► want to thank Paul for sending in the question. If you would like to have a question answered

00:07:47 ◼   ► to open the show in the future, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk and

00:07:51 ◼   ► it may appear on a future episode. Jason, I have some upstream news for you.

00:07:55 ◼   ► All right. We're going to start off with something that

00:07:58 ◼   ► I saw in the Netflix app and I saw a story about it on Variety. Netflix have introduced

00:08:03 ◼   ► some 30 second previews in their mobile app that kind of look like Instagram stories.

00:08:09 ◼   ► So they're little trailers and you go into the app and you've got little circles and

00:08:12 ◼   ► you can tap on the circles and it will show you a trailer. They're only in portrait mode

00:08:16 ◼   ► which I found kind of weird because it crops stuff peculiarly. Like I turned my phone into

00:08:22 ◼   ► landscape and nothing happened. So they're really kind of really going for that Instagram

00:08:27 ◼   ► slash Snapchat style with these. And whilst they are a little bit peculiar I actually

00:08:33 ◼   ► think it's a really cool way to show this kind of content? Because people are used to

00:08:37 ◼   ► it now. Like you see the little circles of the little icons and you know what that means

00:08:41 ◼   ► and you tap it and you can flick through them. And I think it's an interesting way to present

00:08:45 ◼   ► trailers in a kind of, you know, 2018 style. Have you seen these at all?

00:08:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I have. I think they're super weird because this is content that's not made for

00:08:57 ◼   ► vertical. I assume that there's somebody whose job it is to put those

00:09:02 ◼   ► together and is trying to select images that work where you're just cutting off

00:09:09 ◼   ► like most of the picture and just keeping a little vertical thing. I expect

00:09:14 ◼   ► going into the future Netflix will create specific trailers with this in

00:09:19 ◼   ► mind right that would be my expectation but for now I guess they're just seeing

00:09:24 ◼   ► if it kind of works. So yeah, I think it's an interesting way to show this type of content

00:09:31 ◼   ► because if you're like creating something where people are going to choose to watch

00:09:35 ◼   ► your trailers, if that ends up working out, that's pretty powerful because that's not

00:09:38 ◼   ► typically how people consume this type of content. It's usually given to you maybe when

00:09:43 ◼   ► you don't want it, right? So I think that could be kind of cool.

00:09:46 ◼   ► If I were a movie studio, I mean, I know some movie and TV studios are doing this, although

00:09:51 ◼   ► I'm unsure how much of it is custom, but if I worked in promotion and marketing in a movie

00:09:55 ◼   ► studio, I would be instructing the people who cut the trailers to cut vertical trailers.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And that means some really weird stuff in terms of cropping images and finding scenes

00:10:10 ◼   ► that work vertically, but people are on their phones and their phones are in that vertical

00:10:15 ◼   ► orientation and even though they're probably not going to watch your movie or TV show in

00:10:21 ◼   ► in a vertical view on their phone while they're holding it, that's how they're holding it

00:10:25 ◼   ► to look at social media. So as weird as it is, I think it's just something that you need

00:10:33 ◼   ► to do.

00:10:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's actually becoming more and more important because I

00:10:36 ◼   ► know that when I'm holding my phone, I guess I'm more likely to watch something if I then

00:10:42 ◼   ► don't have to turn my phone to the side as well. It's already in front of me, it's just

00:10:46 ◼   ► easier to consume it that way. It's less of like a break. I reckon you're more likely

00:10:50 ◼   ► to get to me if you're just putting it in front of my face in a way that my phone is

00:10:54 ◼   ► already there. There's something about that where that works for me because I'm already

00:11:00 ◼   ► doing it. My phone's already in landscape. Apple did some ads on Instagram for their

00:11:07 ◼   ► HomePod thing and they were trying to get you to turn to the side to watch it and it

00:11:12 ◼   ► just doesn't work. This is not how the medium is. Instagram and Snapchat, they're in portrait

00:11:18 ◼   ► and that's how they should say, and I think this is an interesting way of giving that

00:11:21 ◼   ► kind of content in this format. Amazon have announced that they have 100 million Prime

00:11:27 ◼   ► members worldwide. This is pretty significant, Jason, right?

00:11:31 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it's significant for a couple of reasons. One is it's a big number, even

00:11:36 ◼   ► though we don't know, like, how many of those people are Prime. Like, Prime is such a big

00:11:40 ◼   ► product, and in the context of Upstream, we're talking about Prime Video, but Prime is such

00:11:43 ◼   ► a huge product. There's such a huge percentage of people in the US. For example, this is

00:11:47 ◼   ► a worldwide number, but in the US who are Prime subscribers, it's a big, big product.

00:11:54 ◼   ► One piece of it is Prime Video. I don't know if Amazon has ever revealed what percentage

00:11:59 ◼   ► of Prime users are…

00:12:01 ◼   ► - Like active customers of the video product.

00:12:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, users of Prime Video on a monthly or weekly or whatever basis, right? I don't

00:12:09 ◼   ► think they've necessarily said that. And it may be 50%, it may be 5%. I don't really

00:12:14 ◼   ► know, but it's still a big number. And of course, it's also a big deal because Amazon

00:12:18 ◼   ► doesn't talk numbers very often. They talk in relative terms. They'll either say that

00:12:24 ◼   ► it's twice what it was or that they set a record or something like that or it's grown

00:12:29 ◼   ► or it's had its biggest year ever or whatever. This is why we make fun of Jeff Bezos and

00:12:34 ◼   ► say that charts without numbers on them, where it's just bars that have no labels, are Bezos

00:12:40 ◼   ► charts, but here it is, a real number, 100 million. They're happy to share that because

00:12:46 ◼   ► it's a really nice, really big number.

00:12:47 ◼   ► I find this number particularly interesting when you compare to Netflix. Netflix currently

00:12:52 ◼   ► have 125 million paying customers. Now, that is significantly more than Amazon's 100 million,

00:13:01 ◼   ► and it is significantly more still when you assume how many people of those 100 million

00:13:05 ◼   ► watched the Prime content.

00:13:08 ◼   ► And I think this really puts into context

00:13:11 ◼   ► how big Netflix is in this arena, right?

00:13:16 ◼   ► Like I think this really shows it.

00:13:17 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, Amazon Prime, you know,

00:13:20 ◼   ► Amazon Prime is a product that's available

00:13:23 ◼   ► in different places, I think, with different features,

00:13:25 ◼   ► whereas Netflix can get into a country.

00:13:27 ◼   ► All they have to do is have video content in that country.

00:13:30 ◼   ► So they're not comparable in a lot of different ways, right?

00:13:35 ◼   ► Like they're very different products,

00:13:37 ◼   ► and yet at the same time, they do compete,

00:13:41 ◼   ► even though they have different ways that they roll out,

00:13:45 ◼   ► and obviously Prime is way more than just the video product.

00:13:49 ◼   ► But it is interesting to compare them.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And I'm not sure whether I look at this and say,

00:13:56 ◼   ► isn't it amazing that Amazon has built

00:13:58 ◼   ► this kind of all-inclusive thing?

00:14:00 ◼   ► Or whether I look at this and think,

00:14:02 ◼   ► I wonder if Netflix should,

00:14:05 ◼   ► I wonder if a Netflix subscription

00:14:09 ◼   ► should start bundling in other things.

00:14:12 ◼   ► That was the other thought I had is,

00:14:15 ◼   ► is there value in, I mean, 'cause the subscription,

00:14:17 ◼   ► I mean, then again, the brilliance of it

00:14:19 ◼   ► is that Netflix doesn't need to bundle in anything else.

00:14:21 ◼   ► You're just buying it for the video.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Whereas Amazon, you know,

00:14:24 ◼   ► you're not just buying it for the video.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Amazon's trying to make this much, you know,

00:14:28 ◼   ► more complete buy where you get access

00:14:31 ◼   ► to all sorts of stuff.

00:14:32 ◼   ► And so you may buy it just for the video,

00:14:35 ◼   ► you may buy it just for the shipping

00:14:37 ◼   ► or some combination thereof.

00:14:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that is interesting about Netflix, right?

00:14:42 ◼   ► 'Cause, but it's like then when you even go into that,

00:14:44 ◼   ► it's like, well, they can make you pay

00:14:46 ◼   ► and they are making these 125 million people pay

00:14:48 ◼   ► for just that.

00:14:50 ◼   ► - Just video. - Just video.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Whilst Amazon are like, Amazon's video product

00:14:55 ◼   ► is a free gift on the side of your Prime membership.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And it's like, it's really interesting again,

00:15:00 ◼   ► when you look at that and you're like,

00:15:02 ◼   ► Their businesses are so different, but yet the same.

00:15:05 ◼   ► One of the things that makes this industry

00:15:08 ◼   ► so fascinating right now.

00:15:09 ◼   ► - And when we roll Apple into this,

00:15:13 ◼   ► this is one of the big questions that people have a lot,

00:15:16 ◼   ► which is-- - How are they pitching it?

00:15:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, what does Apple do here?

00:15:20 ◼   ► How do they sell it?

00:15:21 ◼   ► And I've had a bunch of people ask,

00:15:24 ◼   ► what about Apple Prime?

00:15:26 ◼   ► And we've touched on that before,

00:15:28 ◼   ► but that idea like would Apple offer a subscription bundle

00:15:33 ◼   ► kind of or service that is more all inclusive

00:15:36 ◼   ► where you get like you get unlimited iCloud

00:15:40 ◼   ► and all Apple's video service and Apple music.

00:15:44 ◼   ► And it's all rolled together.

00:15:46 ◼   ► - And news that's been rumored.

00:15:47 ◼   ► - Oh right, where it's the texture thing that they bought

00:15:50 ◼   ► where it's like and access to all of these subscription

00:15:53 ◼   ► websites in Apple news and you pay a single annual fee

00:15:56 ◼   ► for the whole thing all inclusive.

00:15:58 ◼   ► And would they do that rather than say,

00:16:00 ◼   ► we're gonna charge you for iCloud storage

00:16:02 ◼   ► and we're gonna charge you for music

00:16:03 ◼   ► and we're gonna charge you for video

00:16:04 ◼   ► and we're gonna charge you for texture,

00:16:06 ◼   ► Apple News, whatever.

00:16:07 ◼   ► The advantage is it's super simple to just have one thing.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And even if you don't take advantage of all of the things,

00:16:18 ◼   ► if you take advantage of enough of the things

00:16:20 ◼   ► to make it worth it for you, then it has done its job,

00:16:23 ◼   ► which is I think Amazon's approach.

00:16:25 ◼   ► So, and Netflix only has the one service.

00:16:28 ◼   ► They've got some different tiers,

00:16:29 ◼   ► but it's only the one service.

00:16:30 ◼   ► So Apple coming in, you know, Apple right now,

00:16:33 ◼   ► every service that it offers is different

00:16:36 ◼   ► and it's separately billed.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And so I get my bill for Apple Music.

00:16:39 ◼   ► And I mean, it's all coming from Apple,

00:16:41 ◼   ► but I get an invoice that says Apple Music

00:16:43 ◼   ► and I get another one that says iCloud storage, right?

00:16:46 ◼   ► And I think it's a fair question

00:16:49 ◼   ► that probably some people with MBAs

00:16:52 ◼   ► have been doing a lot of research on inside Apple, right?

00:16:55 ◼   ► for like what the best strategy is for Apple here.

00:16:58 ◼   ► Because on one level, like having a new video service,

00:17:02 ◼   ► which they could offer,

00:17:02 ◼   ► Amazon actually will let you buy Amazon video only

00:17:05 ◼   ► if you really want to.

00:17:06 ◼   ► But it is something,

00:17:11 ◼   ► talk about subscription fatigue and things like that.

00:17:13 ◼   ► If you're an Apple ecosystem person,

00:17:15 ◼   ► it's awfully easy to just say, yes, just Apple,

00:17:18 ◼   ► just charge me once a year for this membership.

00:17:23 ◼   ► and I just get all the Apple things

00:17:25 ◼   ► and then I can walk away.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Versus like what percentage of people would buy each one

00:17:32 ◼   ► and is that more revenue?

00:17:34 ◼   ► Do they offer both?

00:17:35 ◼   ► It's gonna be interesting to see

00:17:38 ◼   ► 'cause Apple's got some really tough decisions to make

00:17:41 ◼   ► about this stuff.

00:17:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, and we had a good question actually

00:17:44 ◼   ► from Upgrading James and he asked,

00:17:48 ◼   ► do you think that the TV shows that Apple is developing

00:17:50 ◼   ► will be for sale individually on iTunes

00:17:53 ◼   ► or just a part of their streaming service.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Like this is another part of it, like, huh,

00:17:57 ◼   ► well, they're gonna do that.

00:17:58 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:17:59 ◼   ► - I think they will do what Netflix does

00:18:02 ◼   ► and what Amazon does with this stuff, with their own stuff,

00:18:06 ◼   ► which is at some point it will be for sale.

00:18:09 ◼   ► If you look like Stranger Things is available on Blu-ray.

00:18:13 ◼   ► - Right, right, right.

00:18:13 ◼   ► - Like after a substantial delay, that stuff gets resold.

00:18:20 ◼   ► that's gonna be my guess about it,

00:18:24 ◼   ► is that rather than it being like the new episode

00:18:26 ◼   ► of this Apple show drops,

00:18:28 ◼   ► and two days later it's available a la carte from iTunes,

00:18:32 ◼   ► it's possible they'll do that,

00:18:33 ◼   ► but my gut feeling is they'll wait until like six months

00:18:36 ◼   ► after the whole season has run,

00:18:38 ◼   ► and then it'll be available as a Blu-ray,

00:18:41 ◼   ► or a download, or both.

00:18:44 ◼   ► But who knows?

00:18:45 ◼   ► - You think they'll do Blu-ray?

00:18:46 ◼   ► - I think, well, that's the trend.

00:18:48 ◼   ► That's the trend is that there is an ancillary market

00:18:50 ◼   ► of people who want to own this stuff and it's money.

00:18:53 ◼   ► And so like the fact that Netflix does it,

00:18:55 ◼   ► I think is telling, right?

00:18:57 ◼   ► - Right.

00:18:58 ◼   ► - Like not just the shows that Netflix licenses,

00:18:59 ◼   ► but the like, I mean,

00:19:01 ◼   ► I think "Stranger Things" is a great example.

00:19:03 ◼   ► "Stranger Things" is available on Blu-ray season one.

00:19:05 ◼   ► Like, why is that?

00:19:07 ◼   ► I think it's getting people excited about it.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And it's also, there's people who are not on Netflix who,

00:19:12 ◼   ► or it's people who are on Netflix

00:19:13 ◼   ► and really want to give them more money

00:19:15 ◼   ► for the full quality version with extras.

00:19:17 ◼   ► It's like, okay, that's an extra business.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And if you're so committed to not giving Netflix money

00:19:24 ◼   ► that you won't subscribe and then just watch Stranger Things,

00:19:27 ◼   ► you'd rather just give them money separately for a Blu-ray,

00:19:32 ◼   ► then I think if you're Netflix, you're like,

00:19:34 ◼   ► all right, just give us money, whatever.

00:19:36 ◼   ► You can choose how you wanna give us money

00:19:38 ◼   ► because one, Stranger Things Blu-ray is gonna be the cost

00:19:42 ◼   ► of buying Netflix for a month

00:19:43 ◼   ► and watching Stranger Things, right?

00:19:45 ◼   ► So it's kind of a different market.

00:19:47 ◼   ► So I think that's what will probably happen.

00:19:49 ◼   ► But we'll see. I mean, I have a question in the US about whether there'll be Star Trek Discovery on Blu-ray,

00:19:53 ◼   ► because CBS All Access really wants people to watch Star Trek Discovery.

00:19:57 ◼   ► And I've heard people say they're waiting for video because they're not going to subscribe to CBS All Access,

00:20:02 ◼   ► which again, is a little bit weird because you could just buy the streaming service for a month and watch it.

00:20:10 ◼   ► But that's not what they want to do.

00:20:12 ◼   ► And so, you know, my gut feeling is they will, in advance of Season 2 coming out,

00:20:16 ◼   ► release that on Blu-ray because they'll be able to kind of pump it up and say, "This

00:20:20 ◼   ► is, you know, isn't it exciting? This is that you can watch this now and then you can subscribe

00:20:23 ◼   ► and later when you decide you love it." I don't know, but I think that's the most likely

00:20:28 ◼   ► scenario. But they could leave it all subscribe only, stream only, and they could turn around

00:20:35 ◼   ► and say, "Sure, you can buy it a la carte," because the money you're spending on that

00:20:37 ◼   ► one show a la carte, if you watch the whole season, will be essentially the equivalent

00:20:41 ◼   ► of the money you spent subscribing to the service for several months. And so I'm not

00:20:46 ◼   ► sure it's a good deal but it's there if you want it.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And the last thing that I wanted to just point people towards this is a good reference. IndieWire

00:20:54 ◼   ► put together an article that details all the rumors and information currently known about

00:20:59 ◼   ► Apple's upcoming TV service. It also includes a list of all series in development. So I

00:21:04 ◼   ► just thought this was I saw it came across my radar and I like that this exists because

00:21:10 ◼   ► it is they are so many TV shows that are in development and scripts in development that

00:21:15 ◼   ► it's good to have somewhere where they're all written down. This is very useful for

00:21:19 ◼   ► me. So I figured I would put it in the show notes and you can see it there. I think they're

00:21:23 ◼   ► kind of updating this as it goes along. So it's a good little resource.

00:21:28 ◼   ► My former colleague Jason Cross has a similar story that they update all the time at Macworld

00:21:36 ◼   ► about that, where they list all of the Apple shows.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Oh, cool. I will find that. I'll put that one in there, too. Yeah, thank you very much

00:21:43 ◼   ► for that. That's good. Okay, so should we take a break? Yeah, sounds good. I want to

00:21:48 ◼   ► talk about a new sponsor, Jason, that I'm very excited about. It's Ascentate. Ascentate

00:21:53 ◼   ► is the company that makes eyewear for every side of you. Sometimes for glasses, whereas

00:21:58 ◼   ► you can get a bit stuck in the rut. You know, you go for the same style all the time. You

00:22:02 ◼   ► know, you maybe don't branch out very much because you think, oh, you know, I don't want

00:22:05 ◼   ► to, I want to go too wild with this. You know, glasses are expensive and I have to go and

00:22:10 ◼   ► try them on. You don't need to do any of that. It can be awkward to try on new styles

00:22:13 ◼   ► in the store. That's why you need Asentate. Their frames are designed in Amsterdam. They

00:22:18 ◼   ► use fantastic materials with a sharp eye for detail. In select countries you can try at

00:22:23 ◼   ► home for free with their home try on service. You pick 4 frames and they will mail them

00:22:28 ◼   ► to you letting you try them on in the comfort of your own home. And because Asentate value

00:22:33 ◼   ► fairness you can get frames including prescription lenses for as little as £98. I found a few

00:22:40 ◼   ► Ascent Tape myself like a year ago because I was looking for a home try on service here

00:22:44 ◼   ► in the UK and I picked out a few of their frames and got them sent to me and I fell

00:22:49 ◼   ► in love with them and I now own five pairs of Ascent Tape glasses and then they reached

00:22:55 ◼   ► out because they wanted to get their message out on a wider basis and they came to the

00:23:00 ◼   ► show and like we want to sponsor you and I was like great because I have your glasses

00:23:02 ◼   ► on my face right now. I love the home try on because you get them in the post, you just

00:23:07 ◼   ► and

00:23:21 ◼   ► as

00:23:38 ◼   ► and blush colour and I love them and I may have never bought them if I was just buying

00:23:44 ◼   ► them without being able to try them on.

00:23:48 ◼   ► Whether you need new prescription glasses or sunglasses please go and check out Ascentate's

00:23:52 ◼   ► Frames today. That's Ascentate.com/upgrade that is A C E A N D T A T E.com/upgrade there

00:24:00 ◼   ► will be a link in the show notes and don't forget you might be able to get your 4 favourite

00:24:04 ◼   ► frames delivered straight to your door with their home try on service so you can see how

00:24:08 ◼   ► your frames will look in real life and get the opinion of your friends and family. Go

00:24:11 ◼   ► to aceandtate.com/upgrade right now. Our thanks to Ace and Tate for their support of the show.

00:24:16 ◼   ► I upgraded, I changed my avatar everywhere because I wanted to show off my fancy new frames.

00:24:23 ◼   ► So if you want to see what these glasses look like on my face, you can go to Twitter. I love it when,

00:24:28 ◼   ► this is just a slight aside now, but I love it when a company will reach out to you and like,

00:24:33 ◼   ► we want to support the show. It's like, oh great, because I've been using your product for years.

00:24:37 ◼   ► It makes it very easy to do that, so I was really excited when they reached out.

00:24:41 ◼   ► So go check them out.

00:24:42 ◼   ► That's cool.

00:24:43 ◼   ► Especially if you're in Europe.

00:24:44 ◼   ► People are always saying to me, "Oh, we need European sponsors."

00:24:47 ◼   ► It's a company based in Europe.

00:24:48 ◼   ► They ship everywhere in Europe.

00:24:49 ◼   ► They do home try-on in Europe.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Go check them out.

00:24:52 ◼   ► You've got to prove your point, Europeans.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Come on.

00:24:55 ◼   ► And it's ace and tate, not like asymptote, which is from geometry.

00:25:01 ◼   ► I don't understand that, but yes, ace and tate.

00:25:04 ◼   ► It's math.

00:25:05 ◼   ► Maths, right?

00:25:06 ◼   ► It's maths.

00:25:07 ◼   ► It's maths.

00:25:08 ◼   ► Sorry, that's right.

00:25:09 ◼   ► It's math.

00:25:10 ◼   ► It's mathematic.

00:25:11 ◼   ► So, Tim Cook had an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago, and he was

00:25:18 ◼   ► quizzed about the notion of iPad and the Mac merging together.

00:25:24 ◼   ► And there's a few quotes from Tim that I want to read, Jason, and then we can kind

00:25:27 ◼   ► of talk about this in a little bit more detail.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Does that sound good?

00:25:30 ◼   ► All right.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Yep.

00:25:32 ◼   ► So there's a few things from this article.

00:25:33 ◼   ► These are quotes from Tim.

00:25:34 ◼   ► We don't believe in sort of watering down one or the other.

00:25:37 ◼   ► One of the reasons that both of these products are incredible is because we push them to do what

00:25:46 ◼   ► they do well and if you begin to merge the two you begin to make trade-offs and compromises.

00:25:52 ◼   ► So maybe the company would be more efficient at the end of the day but that's not what it's about.

00:25:57 ◼   ► It's about giving people things that they can use to help them change the world or express their

00:26:02 ◼   ► passions or express their creativity. So this merger thing that some folks are fixated on,

00:26:07 ◼   ► I don't think that's what users want. It was also disclosed or mentioned in this article that Tim

00:26:13 ◼   ► uses a Mac in his office and an iPad at home and when he's traveling. So what does this all say?

00:26:22 ◼   ► Now, you know, we talk about this stuff all the time, right? You can say, and it's easy to say,

00:26:26 ◼   ► I think, oh, you know, you're looking at this article and you're picking it apart and trying

00:26:30 ◼   ► trying to find meaning in it. But at the same time, the CEO of the biggest company in the

00:26:35 ◼   ► world, every time he says something, it means something, because otherwise he just wouldn't

00:26:40 ◼   ► say it. So all of these quotes, Apple PR are deciding that he's going to give this approach

00:26:47 ◼   ► for a reason. They're trying to make a statement of some kind. So what is that statement? So

00:26:52 ◼   ► you can pick it apart, start looking into it. What is he saying? What is he not saying?

00:26:56 ◼   ► between the lines. I think it's pretty, you know, all signs point towards increased

00:27:04 ◼   ► convergence of these two products and two systems, the Mac and iOS. So what, and Jason,

00:27:10 ◼   ► when you read the stuff that Tim says, what does it say to you? Do you think he's saying

00:27:15 ◼   ► that we will continue to have distinct products and distinct OS's always and forever?

00:27:20 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know. This is the mystery of Tim Cook's statement is, is he

00:27:25 ◼   ► saying this because this continues to be Apple's actual policy, actual philosophy? Is he saying

00:27:32 ◼   ► this because Apple has said this before and they're not at the point where they're willing

00:27:37 ◼   ► to change what they say, right? Which is different, right? He could be saying this because he

00:27:44 ◼   ► knows internally this is exactly what's happening right now. Or he could be saying this because

00:27:48 ◼   ► this has been the company line and if he changes it, it's an announcement. And so until they

00:27:53 ◼   ► change it they're going to just keep it the way it is because this is the toaster

00:27:57 ◼   ► fridge basically this is the you know we're gonna we're gonna do these two

00:28:00 ◼   ► things and they're great and you can see it and what he says is like both of them

00:28:04 ◼   ► are great they're brilliant they're you know amazing at what they do and so we

00:28:08 ◼   ► want to keep them doing the best thing and and that's that's Apple's official

00:28:12 ◼   ► policy is we want to make the best product for the best use case and iOS is

00:28:17 ◼   ► the best use case over here and Mac is the best use case over there. And you

00:28:23 ◼   ► know I think that the fact that he said this and he was asked right so he

00:28:30 ◼   ► he couldn't refuse to answer and he didn't want to make news but at the same

00:28:35 ◼   ► time he also did repeat this which carries some weight that just because

00:28:42 ◼   ► it's a new statement that is restating what they've said all along and that

00:28:45 ◼   ► maybe that means that philosophically they're, you know, remaining consistent on the inside.

00:28:51 ◼   ► I kind of have a hard time believing it. I think this is more, you know, this is the

00:28:59 ◼   ► official line and he's going to say it until the point where the official line changes.

00:29:04 ◼   ► And if you look closely, you know, what the underlying philosophy here is giving people

00:29:11 ◼   ► things that they can use to help them change the world. There is an overarching kind of

00:29:17 ◼   ► thing that you could argue is, what he's really saying is, what we do is not what you are

00:29:26 ◼   ► going to expect us to do, but it's going to be with our underlying philosophy. You could

00:29:32 ◼   ► also really read this, I mean, I feel like there's a couple of ways to read this. It's

00:29:38 ◼   ► so baffling for me. Like, the statement is kind of baffling for me because this is the—and

00:29:41 ◼   ► if you're listening and you're like, "Why is it baffling?" You just don't want to hear

00:29:44 ◼   ► Tim Cook say the Mac's gonna stick around and basically not change and iOS is gonna

00:29:49 ◼   ► stick around and basically not change. And that's kind of not what I'm saying, but I

00:29:53 ◼   ► feel like, you know, the scenario where Apple continues making Macs that don't change very

00:30:02 ◼   ► much and don't have touch screens and that the Mac does what it's been doing all along

00:30:09 ◼   ► and that iPads and iPhones keep doing what they have all along, I'm not entirely convinced

00:30:16 ◼   ► that that is a successful way forward for them because, you know, and maybe I'm wrong,

00:30:24 ◼   ► maybe nobody wants a touchscreen laptop, right? And the Mac OS as it's currently constituted

00:30:31 ◼   ► can't do touch screen, right? They need to make major interface changes to the Mac to

00:30:36 ◼   ► support a touch screen on the screen if they want to go that route. And they haven't yet.

00:30:40 ◼   ► They don't believe, they've said, "Oh no, we tested it. It's no good." But Microsoft

00:30:45 ◼   ► has had a lot of success, and I think even Google has had some success with devices that

00:30:50 ◼   ► are more traditionally computery and that have touch screens on them. And Apple has

00:30:55 ◼   ► had great success with devices with touch screens on them. And touch interfaces are

00:30:58 ◼   ► a whole generation of people have grown up on touch interfaces. So I look at the

00:31:02 ◼   ► Mac as it is today and I think I don't see how this is a product that can

00:31:07 ◼   ► remain viable in the long run if it doesn't change pretty

00:31:12 ◼   ► dramatically to be more like a modern computing device like a touch-based

00:31:18 ◼   ► thing. It could stick around as a legacy product, but if it does that then you

00:31:25 ◼   ► have the whole other question which is, is it blocking the growth of iOS? Like, if they

00:31:30 ◼   ► truly believe that the Mac needs to be the Mac, does the iPad, does the iOS also get

00:31:39 ◼   ► to be what currently we think of as a Mac? Do they get to push into the laptops and push

00:31:44 ◼   ► into the desktops too? Or does Apple say, "No, no, no, no, we're gonna keep them apart."

00:31:48 ◼   ► And I think, my gut feeling is that they can't do that.

00:31:53 ◼   ► They can't do that.

00:31:54 ◼   ► So in the end, either they overlap,

00:31:56 ◼   ► at which point we've got Mac laptops and iOS laptops,

00:32:00 ◼   ► and maybe an iOS desktop that is not an iMac,

00:32:03 ◼   ► but it's kind of like an iMac, but it doesn't run iOS,

00:32:06 ◼   ► and the Mac continues the way it has been going.

00:32:09 ◼   ► Or maybe Apple redefines what the Mac is.

00:32:13 ◼   ► And I think this is a possibility

00:32:15 ◼   ► that the Mac is a legacy and pro level platform.

00:32:20 ◼   ► And it keeps kind of migrating upward

00:32:25 ◼   ► to the point where the people who buy a Mac

00:32:27 ◼   ► are buying an iMac Pro or a Mac Pro or a MacBook Pro

00:32:32 ◼   ► or maybe a high-end iMac.

00:32:35 ◼   ► But it starts to just kind of like be about that existing

00:32:42 ◼   ► product category and the users who can't switch to iOS.

00:32:46 ◼   ► And it just becomes a narrower and narrower thing.

00:32:48 ◼   ► - That is bad for that slice of Apple's market, right?

00:32:51 ◼   ► Like if you're just building this platform

00:32:54 ◼   ► that just gets more expensive and more legacy over time.

00:32:58 ◼   ► - Well, it doesn't necessarily have to be more expensive.

00:33:00 ◼   ► I mean, the argument would be that there are probably

00:33:02 ◼   ► not a lot of pro users and developers

00:33:05 ◼   ► who are building on a MacBook.

00:33:06 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

00:33:08 ◼   ► And so for you to say, well, look,

00:33:09 ◼   ► If you want to do this work, we've got these systems that'll do it.

00:33:15 ◼   ► So it wouldn't necessarily be just the iMac Pro.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Maybe it's like the 5K iMac is there, and maybe even a 4K iMac.

00:33:21 ◼   ► But the way they view it is, we're not even going to try.

00:33:24 ◼   ► They're already starting down this route, but they still have the MacBook Air.

00:33:27 ◼   ► But at some point, they could just say, we're not even going to try to make this anything,

00:33:31 ◼   ► but it's a professional platform.

00:33:32 ◼   ► It's for people who have existing software and needs that an iOS device can't fulfill.

00:33:37 ◼   ► they kind of redefine it upward and and some of that might be money but I don't

00:33:43 ◼   ► think it's necessarily saying you you can't buy into the Mac and let's just

00:33:46 ◼   ► spend five grand because there'll be a MacBook Pro right but that that's one

00:33:51 ◼   ► way to do it like I mean if they don't want to fuse things together but there

00:33:57 ◼   ► are these rumors that they're trying to at least fuse kind of the development

00:34:00 ◼   ► thing together and that's the other way that I read this cook thing is like I

00:34:04 ◼   ► I don't know, does what he's saying,

00:34:07 ◼   ► if their plan is to keep the Mac around,

00:34:10 ◼   ► but to kind of add an iOS-like compatibility layer

00:34:14 ◼   ► on top of it, or an app compatibility layer on top of it,

00:34:17 ◼   ► is that different than what he's saying?

00:34:19 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:34:20 ◼   ► - I think that fits within what he said, right?

00:34:23 ◼   ► Like, the idea of the two of them gaining features

00:34:26 ◼   ► from each other still keeps them separate

00:34:28 ◼   ► until they don't exist,

00:34:30 ◼   ► till either of them don't exist anymore,

00:34:32 ◼   ► which is my personal pet theory, right?

00:34:34 ◼   ► which is that the iPad and the Mac get closer and closer together until neither of them

00:34:40 ◼   ► exist anymore because there's something that replaces both of them, right? Which is it's

00:34:44 ◼   ► not them merging, it's just this is the next thing. And you would hope, you would really

00:34:49 ◼   ► hope that Apple is working on that, right? Because keeping iOS and the Mac around indefinitely

00:34:56 ◼   ► forever, that's not moving forward, right? That's not creating the next evolution in

00:35:02 ◼   ► that's not the next major operating system, right? You would hope that they are pushing

00:35:07 ◼   ► both of these systems to the maximum and it could be argued that they're dropping the

00:35:13 ◼   ► ball in a couple of key places for both of them, right? That people would like. So, I

00:35:20 ◼   ► mean, my kind of view on this is what I think that is going on, which is being supported

00:35:28 ◼   ► in part by some of the theories is what's happening here, is that we're going to see

00:35:32 ◼   ► more consistency between the two devices,

00:35:34 ◼   ► between the two classes of device,

00:35:36 ◼   ► then some huge changes for the Mac, right?

00:35:39 ◼   ► Like if the Mac moves to ARM,

00:35:40 ◼   ► and then they continue to push that product forward

00:35:42 ◼   ► and they continue to push the iPad forward.

00:35:44 ◼   ► I think that we're in kind of a setup period, right?

00:35:48 ◼   ► For something to-

00:35:50 ◼   ► - Set up for a transition.

00:35:51 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:35:52 ◼   ► - Right, because the rumors about transitions,

00:35:53 ◼   ► but there's no transitions yet.

00:35:54 ◼   ► It's a setup for a transition

00:35:55 ◼   ► other than the like 64-bit transition

00:35:57 ◼   ► that is sort of ending.

00:35:59 ◼   ► And then a new transition will happen.

00:36:01 ◼   ► I think I've been thinking about this Marsupan thing,

00:36:04 ◼   ► the idea of like adapting, you know,

00:36:07 ◼   ► iOS apps to run on the Mac.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And I do think there was a piece this week

00:36:11 ◼   ► and I don't have a link, maybe we can look it up.

00:36:13 ◼   ► - I'll find it.

00:36:14 ◼   ► - To somebody, it was in praise of the menu bar.

00:36:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay, I'll find this, I've seen this.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - I think Gruber linked to it.

00:36:22 ◼   ► And the idea was that like one of the defining features

00:36:25 ◼   ► of the Mac is the menu bar,

00:36:26 ◼   ► but one of the powerful things about the menu bar

00:36:28 ◼   ► that it reveals everything an app can do. And it reveals all the keyboard shortcuts,

00:36:33 ◼   ► which is also very clever. But it reveals everything. And as a kid who grew up using

00:36:37 ◼   ► command line computers, the menu bar was a revelation because when you were using the

00:36:44 ◼   ► command line, I mean, there was just a lot of guessing. Like, I wonder what this does.

00:36:47 ◼   ► I wonder what this does. And there would be some features that unless you happen to read

00:36:50 ◼   ► back on Unix, at least there are manual pages. Back in my early computers, there were no

00:36:55 ◼   ► manual pages or help pages, so there will be commands you just weren't aware existed,

00:36:59 ◼   ► or you knew you could do it, but you didn't know exactly how you had to word it. And then

00:37:03 ◼   ► the menu bars happen. Menu bar, you just click around and you're like, "Oh, here's everything

00:37:08 ◼   ► that it does in one place."

00:37:09 ◼   ► And if you don't see it, just search for it, right? That's one of my favorite things to

00:37:12 ◼   ► help the way you can search the menu bar.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Yeah, one of the greatest things they added is searching the menu bar in the help menu.

00:37:18 ◼   ► So when we talk about Marzipan, like, and we talk about Apple saying, "These things

00:37:22 ◼   ► should be true to themselves. And we talk about Apple's philosophy saying that we

00:37:28 ◼   ► think that a laptop form factor that requires a lot of touching of the screen

00:37:32 ◼   ► is not a good interaction model. And I'd agree with that as somebody who sticks

00:37:36 ◼   ► my iPad in that that bridge keyboard that makes it basically into a laptop

00:37:40 ◼   ► temporarily. I don't want to have constant touchscreen interaction, right?

00:37:50 ◼   ► occasional touchscreen interaction is fine, but I don't want it to be constant.

00:37:53 ◼   ► It's less good than if I'm holding the tablet in my hand to have it at the end

00:37:57 ◼   ► of the keyboard, right? So put all that together. Mix all that together. Is it

00:38:02 ◼   ► possible that one of Apple's marzipan kind of approaches is that your iOS app,

00:38:11 ◼   ► when you update it to support this new framework that lets it run on the Mac,

00:38:15 ◼   ► that it gains a menu bar.

00:38:20 ◼   ► - Or an iOS equivalent,

00:38:22 ◼   ► or like not some, I don't think it would look like the same,

00:38:24 ◼   ► right, but like what would it be on iOS, right?

00:38:27 ◼   ► - But what if it is?

00:38:29 ◼   ► What if they say above a certain,

00:38:31 ◼   ► in certain configurations with a keyboard attached

00:38:33 ◼   ► or a keyboard and a pointing device attached,

00:38:36 ◼   ► which we think of as on a MacBook,

00:38:39 ◼   ► like in the Mac context,

00:38:41 ◼   ► the apps become a little more Mac-like, right?

00:38:45 ◼   ► This is my secret hope for Mazapan, by the way. My secret hope is that if you can go

00:38:51 ◼   ► one way, you can go the other. Well, right, right. So this is my thought,

00:38:55 ◼   ► is that if you say, "Hey iOS developer," you're going to develop something that can

00:38:59 ◼   ► run on a MacBook. And you can get a menu bar. And you can get cursor support. And all of

00:39:05 ◼   ► these things that a Mac person has. And maybe, and this is a maybe, but if you're at the

00:39:10 ◼   ► point now where touch-enabled apps are coming over to the Mac, it might also be the time

00:39:15 ◼   ► that you let the Mac respond to touch events in those apps. Maybe. Maybe it's time. But

00:39:21 ◼   ► – leaving that aside for a moment – it also potentially means that on your 12.9-inch

00:39:25 ◼   ► iPad Pro, when a keyboard is attached, the – or when a keyboard and a pointing device

00:39:32 ◼   ► are connected to it –

00:39:33 ◼   ► - Smart keyboard of a trackpad.

00:39:35 ◼   ► says "oh you've got that now, well I'll show you a menu bar" right? I mean it

00:39:41 ◼   ► could go both ways and is that, and I know this is it's super weird but on

00:39:46 ◼   ► another level it's actually not because it's all about context, is that not

00:39:52 ◼   ► within what Tim Cook said which is Apple's going to have one way to build

00:39:57 ◼   ► apps and let them scale to appropriate interface context depending on the

00:40:02 ◼   ► device being used and if you're running Mac OS but you can run the same app as

00:40:06 ◼   ► you run on iOS and it behaves in a slightly different way not because

00:40:10 ◼   ► you're running Mac OS but because you're running on a laptop with a keyboard and

00:40:14 ◼   ► a trackpad then I don't know I mean that is that gets you a lot of the goodness

00:40:22 ◼   ► of unifying the platforms without technically unifying the platforms I

00:40:29 ◼   ► - I would love to be able to use Logic on my iPad.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Not because I wanna move my edit.

00:40:35 ◼   ► - I would love to be able to use Ferrite on my Mac.

00:40:38 ◼   ► - Sure, right?

00:40:39 ◼   ► Like, you know, I get that 100%.

00:40:41 ◼   ► But like, it's not because I wanna turn

00:40:43 ◼   ► all of my work over to it,

00:40:45 ◼   ► but just so like, if I need it, then I can do it.

00:40:48 ◼   ► Like, so if I need to edit something on a plane,

00:40:50 ◼   ► then I don't have to bring my MacBook Pro with me anymore.

00:40:52 ◼   ► Right, like--

00:40:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm unclear about whether Marzipan

00:40:54 ◼   ► will truly be a solution to let Mac developers

00:40:58 ◼   ► move to iOS as much as it is. Because I think the pressure is to get iOS developers to run

00:41:04 ◼   ► the Mac.

00:41:05 ◼   ► - But this could be the first step to it though, right? It starts to build the bridge that

00:41:11 ◼   ► doesn't currently exist. And if you build that bridge, how powerful can it become? And

00:41:19 ◼   ► that is, again, this is my idealized future, right? This is what I want. I want to be able

00:41:26 ◼   ► to have one OS on all of my devices.

00:41:30 ◼   ► That's what I personally want.

00:41:32 ◼   ► - And it is a dream, right?

00:41:33 ◼   ► But all of these things start with a dream

00:41:36 ◼   ► and then they go from there.

00:41:37 ◼   ► And I can hear people saying, but what about,

00:41:39 ◼   ► especially our friends who are developers, right?

00:41:41 ◼   ► It's like, oh, but can you imagine all the con,

00:41:43 ◼   ► you have to change the context

00:41:45 ◼   ► and now you have a menu bar and do you have a touchscreen

00:41:48 ◼   ► and how does a cursor fit in versus sensing for touch

00:41:50 ◼   ► and all of these questions, a lot of questions.

00:41:53 ◼   ► That's why it's a hard thing

00:41:55 ◼   ► and why anything, any solution in Apple builds

00:41:57 ◼   ► will be incredibly complicated.

00:41:59 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:42:00 ◼   ► - And is why it's- - And will have its problems.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - And will take several years to go through a transition.

00:42:05 ◼   ► That said, as I recall,

00:42:08 ◼   ► a lot of these same comments were made

00:42:09 ◼   ► when there was only one iPhone screen size.

00:42:12 ◼   ► And they talked about making a bigger iPhone.

00:42:15 ◼   ► - And then the iPad. - Right?

00:42:16 ◼   ► - Right, you know.

00:42:17 ◼   ► - And the iPad was in there too.

00:42:20 ◼   ► And what happened was Apple said,

00:42:23 ◼   ► for a couple of years at WWDC actually, you should really start looking at this approach

00:42:28 ◼   ► that we're taking in terms of size classes because, and they didn't say it, but everybody

00:42:34 ◼   ► knew at the moment they started talking about it at WWDC that what it meant was there are

00:42:38 ◼   ► going to be different sized iPhones and your apps need to, building an app specifically

00:42:46 ◼   ► for one size and then adding on another specific size design is not tenable on the long term.

00:42:54 ◼   ► You need to build these apps that adapt. And that's the world we live in now, and it's

00:42:57 ◼   ► fine, right? It was work for the developers, yes, absolutely, but it's fine now. In fact,

00:43:02 ◼   ► you could argue it's great now, or at least very good now, because you can buy an iPhone

00:43:07 ◼   ► or iPad of various sizes and all the apps work. And they work what is the developer

00:43:12 ◼   ► basically has deemed appropriate for that device shape. And this is a dramatically

00:43:17 ◼   ► bigger extension of that, but it is kind of an extension of that. And that's

00:43:22 ◼   ► why I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I do think it's worth having

00:43:25 ◼   ► that imagination about it because it is one of the options here. It's not, "Oh, I'm

00:43:31 ◼   ► going to get an iOS app on my Mac and it's going to be weird and it's going to

00:43:34 ◼   ► look like a dashboard widget or something and I'm going to have to

00:43:37 ◼   ► click and put my mouse as kind of pretending to be a finger and there's no

00:43:40 ◼   ► menu bar because it's an iOS app. That could be the solution. It's not a really

00:43:45 ◼   ► great one. Or it could be Apple sort of saying, "Here's how your

00:43:49 ◼   ► app changes in that context to behave more like a Mac app." And if they do that

00:43:56 ◼   ► right, and if developers are capable of doing that without

00:43:59 ◼   ► killing themselves with work over all that goes into it, it's

00:44:04 ◼   ► messy and there'll be issues. I don't know. That actually sounds pretty cool, the

00:44:10 ◼   ► idea that there's one app platform that will scale all the way from a small iPhone to a

00:44:16 ◼   ► giant iMac. I think that would be, that's the dream. And again, it starts with the dream

00:44:21 ◼   ► and then the details are where it gets messy.

00:44:25 ◼   ► The dream includes all of the power of these devices. This dream does not include dumbing

00:44:30 ◼   ► something down, right? Like that's not what we want, right? Like I want to get like logic

00:44:36 ◼   ► anywhere, right? And it runs on my iPhone all the way up to my Mac and it's just as

00:44:40 ◼   ► good, right? You know, that's because that's a dream, right? That it seems impossible.

00:44:43 ◼   ► And if you think to yourself, that's ridiculous how lo- how could Logic run on an iPhone and

00:44:49 ◼   ► all the way up to a big iMac? I can tell you, having used Ferrite, which for podcast editing

00:44:55 ◼   ► anyway is as good as Logic or better, that you can use Ferrite on an iPhone. It's cramped,

00:45:02 ◼   ► you can totally do it. And I can use logic on my 27-inch iMac Pro. And they are essentially

00:45:09 ◼   ► the same for my uses. I admit that, you know, if you're a music producer, doing something

00:45:15 ◼   ► on an iPhone would be hard, but there's not a lot of space there. But the iPhone's got

00:45:20 ◼   ► a lot of power. So it's not unreasonable to think that you can have apps with serious

00:45:27 ◼   ► power that are not toy apps that could scale from small to large when it's

00:45:31 ◼   ► appropriate right because it may also be that you're like yeah below a certain

00:45:34 ◼   ► size like this can go to an iPad but it can't go to an iPhone it's just there's

00:45:38 ◼   ► not enough room for our interface like okay fair enough then that would be a

00:45:42 ◼   ► that would be a different choice but you know if the developer of ferrite could

00:45:46 ◼   ► just pick up the Mac that would be great too and then that would mean that my

00:45:52 ◼   ► projects would sync and I could use the same projects on both sides which I

00:45:56 ◼   ► can't now because I either am in Logic or I'm in Ferrite and that would be cool. So

00:46:02 ◼   ► you know I don't know again this is the this is this is all I know we've come so far from

00:46:06 ◼   ► Tim Cook talking in Australia but this is all part of this kind of like where does Apple

00:46:12 ◼   ► go from here what gets unified is it the whole product line just a little part.

00:46:17 ◼   ► This is the discussion of like the next two or three years right like this is the key

00:46:24 ◼   ► that I think is going to keep coming up time and time again is like, where are these products

00:46:29 ◼   ► going? Because it does feel like we are getting close to a point of inflection, like that

00:46:34 ◼   ► something is going to happen.

00:46:37 ◼   ► And as a Mac user, as somebody who uses a Mac every day, it is the device that I use

00:46:43 ◼   ► the most. You know, and I get referred to a lot as one of the iPad guys, right?

00:46:49 ◼   ► Yeah, you get put in the list of me in Federico now.

00:46:52 ◼   ► with you and Federico, right? And it's because I'm a big believer in the iPad as a productivity

00:46:55 ◼   ► device, but I sit at my iMac most of the day. That's what I do. I'm a Mac guy. I'm also

00:47:00 ◼   ► an iPad guy. Again, I'm team both, like I like to say. I think they're both great. The

00:47:04 ◼   ► like Tim Cook actually apparently claims to be like travels with an iPad, works at his

00:47:09 ◼   ► desk on a Mac. I'm that guy.

00:47:10 ◼   ► I don't imagine him ever sitting at a Mac, by the way.

00:47:14 ◼   ► He doesn't ever sit down at his desk. He's always moving. That's my theory.

00:47:17 ◼   ► When does he ever get time to sit in his desk?

00:47:19 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:47:20 ◼   ► - I don't know. - Constantly,

00:47:21 ◼   ► and he's taking his iPad with him.

00:47:23 ◼   ► - You gotta think that there's some PR person

00:47:25 ◼   ► who's like, "Tim, Tim, we put an iPad,

00:47:28 ◼   ► iMac on your desk, just say you've got an iMac on your desk."

00:47:30 ◼   ► - A what now? - All right, I'll say it.

00:47:32 ◼   ► - What is that?

00:47:33 ◼   ► Do we still make those? (laughs)

00:47:35 ◼   ► - Hello, computer, is this mouse?

00:47:37 ◼   ► What is this?

00:47:38 ◼   ► - He pushes it off the desk trying to launch Slack, right?

00:47:41 ◼   ► Like he just pushes it off. - Why does the touchscreen

00:47:43 ◼   ► not work?

00:47:44 ◼   ► Not a touchscreen.

00:47:45 ◼   ► So as a Mac user, what I wanna say is,

00:47:50 ◼   ► I don't want the Mac to,

00:47:53 ◼   ► and all the things about the Mac that I love

00:47:55 ◼   ► that are not fulfilled by iOS,

00:47:57 ◼   ► I don't want those to go away.

00:47:59 ◼   ► I also don't want the Mac to become

00:48:02 ◼   ► a completely static backwater where nothing is happening.

00:48:06 ◼   ► And I gotta say, over the last five years, longer,

00:48:11 ◼   ► the Mac has felt that way.

00:48:14 ◼   ► - It feels like it's slowing, right?

00:48:16 ◼   ► Like that, you know, it's in quicksand.

00:48:19 ◼   ► - My last few years at Macworld,

00:48:20 ◼   ► we would do the Eddy Awards and we would talk about Mac software especially. It was like,

00:48:26 ◼   ► oh boy, like it was hard to come up with and then on my own doing Six Color stuff and doing

00:48:32 ◼   ► the upgrade-ies, right? Sometimes you look at the Mac stuff and you're like, huh, what

00:48:37 ◼   ► is even here?

00:48:38 ◼   ► - This year we completely threw out any picks for ourselves for newcomer Mac apps on the

00:48:45 ◼   ► We needed 100%-- it was like we changed the entire way we do it because we needed suggestions

00:48:51 ◼   ► because between the two of us we couldn't come up with like six or seven new good Mac apps.

00:48:57 ◼   ► We needed to crowdsource it and we got them but between the two of us we struggled.

00:49:01 ◼   ► Yeah, it's-- so this is what I'm saying is I-- you know, we're already there to a certain degree

00:49:08 ◼   ► where the Mac-- like Apple's investments in the Mac with the exception of maybe something like

00:49:13 ◼   ► like the Touch Bar have been iOS compatibility

00:49:17 ◼   ► of various features to certain degrees, right?

00:49:19 ◼   ► Not entirely, but to certain degrees.

00:49:22 ◼   ► And just kind of keeping it running.

00:49:23 ◼   ► And then some of their apps,

00:49:24 ◼   ► like Logic keeps getting updates

00:49:26 ◼   ► and Final Cut keeps getting updates.

00:49:27 ◼   ► And there are third-party apps out there that we love

00:49:29 ◼   ► that keep getting updates.

00:49:30 ◼   ► But there's not a lot of new stuff

00:49:32 ◼   ► 'cause if you're gonna develop an app on Apple's platforms,

00:49:35 ◼   ► you're gonna develop it for iOS.

00:49:37 ◼   ► You're gonna develop it for iOS in most cases.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Not entirely, like Panic has withdrawn some stuff

00:49:42 ◼   ► from iOS and is focusing on the Mac where they've got a good existing business.

00:49:47 ◼   ► But I'm just saying, as a Mac user, I want the stuff I get out of the Mac and the Mac

00:49:52 ◼   ► in general to continue, but I also would like it to be a vibrant platform that will continue

00:49:56 ◼   ► into the future.

00:49:58 ◼   ► And I'm not sure keeping it like it is on maintenance mode is a great, you know, does

00:50:06 ◼   ► not augur well for the future.

00:50:09 ◼   ► I mean, let me be kind of blunt here as a long-time Apple platform person. I don't want

00:50:15 ◼   ► to turn around in five or ten years and discover that the only way I can do my job is to buy

00:50:20 ◼   ► something that runs Windows, right? I don't want that. I don't want the Mac to just fade

00:50:25 ◼   ► away into irrelevance, and I don't want iOS to be boxed in and not allowed to become more

00:50:34 ◼   ► powerful so it can fulfill a lot of the things that I do on the Mac right now.

00:50:39 ◼   ► And that is that to me that's the core Apple challenge is how do you reconcile those two

00:50:45 ◼   ► things because what you don't because you hand your competitors a lot of space in which

00:50:50 ◼   ► to operate if you seed part of the market to your your legacy platform which you've

00:50:57 ◼   ► put on maintenance mode.

00:51:00 ◼   ► And that doesn't seem very Apple like to me.

00:51:03 ◼   ► I'd like to believe that what we're seeing now is the calm before the storm, right? It's

00:51:10 ◼   ► the quiet period where they can't talk about it yet, but—because they're Apple—but

00:51:16 ◼   ► that they are working on what the path forward is. And so we all sit around going, "What's

00:51:22 ◼   ► gonna happen? What's gonna happen?" And they know, or they're figuring it out. And,

00:51:26 ◼   ► you know, hopefully soon—and it may not be soon, it may be another year or two—we

00:51:32 ◼   ► a better idea about that. But I don't want to, you know, and again, maybe the Microsoft

00:51:39 ◼   ► experience will just be amazing and I'll be like, "Alright, well I guess if I want to

00:51:42 ◼   ► use a computer going forward, I'll just, it'll run Windows." But I'd rather not. I'd rather

00:51:48 ◼   ► not.

00:51:49 ◼   ► You mentioned about, you know, if we're going to find out about this, we have to, you know,

00:51:54 ◼   ► we need to wait for Apple to speak about it, and it looks like that is becoming more and

00:51:58 ◼   ► more of a realisation that if you want to hear about Apple stuff you have to wait for

00:52:03 ◼   ► Apple to tell you and we're going to talk about why after this break. Today's show is

00:52:07 ◼   ► brought to you by Slack, a collaboration hub that lets you organise your team's work in

00:52:12 ◼   ► easily searchable channels. You can use Slack for projects, for interests, for teams, for

00:52:17 ◼   ► your office and when you do you're going to know that all of the right people are always

00:52:22 ◼   ► in the loop because you can set up great little channels and talk with everyone individually,

00:52:25 ◼   ► you can talk in large groups, small groups, direct messages, everything.

00:52:29 ◼   ► You have all the relevant information you need in one place and it's all easily findable

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00:52:37 ◼   ► You can onboard them quickly, they can be introduced, you can set up information and

00:52:41 ◼   ► contact stuff.

00:52:42 ◼   ► It's so, so simple to do.

00:52:44 ◼   ► Slack will help you dramatically reduce the number of emails that you need to send and

00:52:48 ◼   ► help you streamline your team's communication.

00:52:51 ◼   ► In a nutshell, this is what makes Slack so incredible for me.

00:52:54 ◼   ► I can't even imagine the amount of email I have not had to send because I use Slack

00:52:59 ◼   ► every day.

00:53:00 ◼   ► Like I cannot even fathom how me and Jason would get this show done.

00:53:05 ◼   ► Like I just, because if it was coming in an email it would just get lost amongst all of

00:53:11 ◼   ► the other hundreds of messages that I get every day or however many emails I receive

00:53:16 ◼   ► a day.

00:53:17 ◼   ► A lot of it is junk, a lot of it I need to look at and it all just gets mixed into a

00:53:21 ◼   ► a

00:53:40 ◼   ► I open Slack, are you free to speak right now? And they say yes and I just call them.

00:53:44 ◼   ► Like why? I don't need to go anywhere else. They've got it all there. Real time messaging,

00:53:48 ◼   ► file sharing, searchable archives, all in one easy to use app. You can drag and drop

00:53:53 ◼   ► with files so you can share them with people and use the apps that you already use like

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00:54:02 ◼   ► on iOS and Android and Mac and everything. And on the web you can always pick up where

00:54:07 ◼   ► you left off no matter where you are or what device you're using. To learn more about

00:54:11 ◼   ► Slack, head to slack.com. That is S L A C K dot com. Thanks so much to Slack for their

00:54:17 ◼   ► support of Relay FM and for giving me and all of us an easy way to communicate every

00:54:21 ◼   ► single day. If you're not yet using Slack with your team, try it. Slack.com. Slack.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Where work happens.

00:54:30 ◼   ► So I mentioned about it getting trickier and trickier for Apple to share stuff. That is

00:54:37 ◼   ► because they are cracking down again on leakers. Now we spoke about this a while ago. Back

00:54:44 ◼   ► in June of last year, funnily enough about a year ago, June 26th, we had an episode of

00:54:52 ◼   ► the show where it leaked out that Apple were starting their global war on leakers. It was

00:54:58 ◼   ► a huge outline article. Do you remember this one, Jason? They spoke about the establishing

00:55:04 ◼   ► of their kind of secrecy team, the global security team inside of Apple. And at that

00:55:12 ◼   ► time, we spoke a little bit about like, why do people do this? Why do people leak? And

00:55:17 ◼   ► it's still going on. I mean, as we know, right, like every single week, we're talking about

00:55:21 ◼   ► a new report that comes from somewhere about something, right? We're just talking about

00:55:25 ◼   ► marzipan. All that stuff came from reports, typically from Mark Gurman, who in horrifically

00:55:30 ◼   ► amazing irony is the person reporting on this leak about the memo of leaking. Which is just

00:55:38 ◼   ► like my brain twists from the irony of this. Apple sent out an internal memo warning their

00:55:43 ◼   ► employees to stop leaking to the press. This memo was posted by Mark Gurman on Blueberg.

00:55:50 ◼   ► And I think I can see why this happened specifically because I'm sure that this stuff really upsets

00:55:55 ◼   ► some people when they see things like this and it kind of turns them towards becoming

00:56:01 ◼   ► that person. But anyway, I'm going to give you some details from this leaked memo.

00:56:08 ◼   ► In 2017 Apple caught 29 individuals leaking information. 12 of those people were arrested,

00:56:15 ◼   ► which is a surprise.

00:56:18 ◼   ► I can, you know, you can see how it's like a trade secrets

00:56:21 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff.

00:56:22 ◼   ► But it was interesting to me to see Apple

00:56:24 ◼   ► specifically calling this out in the memo.

00:56:27 ◼   ► They're like, 12 people were arrested

00:56:29 ◼   ► and none of them will get jobs again

00:56:30 ◼   ► because we'll make sure that never happens.

00:56:32 ◼   ► It's like, oh, okay.

00:56:35 ◼   ► In this memo, Apple cited a selection of instances

00:56:38 ◼   ► specifically in which information

00:56:40 ◼   ► had been leaked from employees.

00:56:41 ◼   ► For example, Federighi telling employees

00:56:43 ◼   ► that some iOS features will be delayed.

00:56:45 ◼   ► This is the discussion about the two year cycle that's come up recently.

00:56:50 ◼   ► Apple found and fired this person.

00:56:52 ◼   ► You also remember that after the HomePod leak, just before the iPhone X came out there was

00:56:58 ◼   ► a leak of the gold master of iOS 11.

00:57:01 ◼   ► This had within it the name iPhone X, right?

00:57:04 ◼   ► Remember we were calling it iPhone X for a week and also had features like Animoji and

00:57:09 ◼   ► stuff like that.

00:57:10 ◼   ► was leaked out just before Apple unveiled the iPhone X. Apple found and fired this person.

00:57:18 ◼   ► The member also has a quote from Greg Joswiak saying, "We want the chance to tell our

00:57:22 ◼   ► customers why the products are great and not have this done poorly by someone else." This

00:57:28 ◼   ► is what Apple tell their people inside. I mean, I can kind of understand this, right?

00:57:33 ◼   ► They don't want stuff to leak because they have a story. They have a marketing story.

00:57:36 ◼   ► That's the whole, that's why they do it the way they do it, is they want to tell

00:57:41 ◼   ► the story on stage and have that be the first time you understand it because when little

00:57:44 ◼   ► bits leak, it becomes a conversation about things that Apple doesn't want it to be

00:57:49 ◼   ► a conversation about.

00:57:50 ◼   ► They want to control the story.

00:57:53 ◼   ► They never want the phone to be called the iPhone X because it's called the iPhone

00:57:58 ◼   ► X and the longer people get to call it the X before it's unveiled, the harder it gets

00:58:03 ◼   ► for people to understand it's actually called the iPhone X.

00:58:06 ◼   ► I'm going to read a little creepy quote from this memo.

00:58:12 ◼   ► It was interesting to read and I get it but it's interesting.

00:58:16 ◼   ► In many cases, leakers don't set out to leak.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Instead, people who work for Apple are often targeted by press, analysts and bloggers who

00:58:25 ◼   ► befriend them on professional and social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and begin

00:58:30 ◼   ► to pry for information.

00:58:32 ◼   ► While it may seem flattering to be approached, it's important to remember that you're

00:58:37 ◼   ► getting played. What do you think of that?

00:58:42 ◼   ► I don't have a problem with this statement. I think that's probably true, right?

00:58:46 ◼   ► It's like, it is true. If you're a scooper, if you're someone who

00:58:49 ◼   ► wants inside info, you befriend people who have inside info. And if you are watching

00:58:56 ◼   ► people or you talk to somebody you know and they say, "Oh, this person's working on that

00:59:01 ◼   ► project," and then you try to befriend them. This is, I mean, happening online in the old

00:59:06 ◼   ► days it would be like bars at the bar right yeah but it is yeah this is what

00:59:14 ◼   ► happens do you get why I say it's creepy like it just when it's written down like

00:59:18 ◼   ► this it's see it may it like it makes me feel uncomfortable like because I

00:59:22 ◼   ► obviously I know this stuff happens but when you write it down when you put it

00:59:26 ◼   ► out like put it in black and white it feels kind of like in situ us a little

00:59:30 ◼   ► bit well the the the important thing to keep in mind here is that this is

00:59:35 ◼   ► is management telling employees to not leak information.

00:59:40 ◼   ► And so it's a statement from management.

00:59:45 ◼   ► What I would say is they wanna scare their employees

00:59:50 ◼   ► and they want them to be like everybody.

00:59:52 ◼   ► - It's definitely not like this for everyone, right?

00:59:55 ◼   ► - All your friends in the press that you have are playing.

00:59:58 ◼   ► They're all playing, "Nothing is real, only love Apple.

01:00:02 ◼   ► All your friends do not love you.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Only Apple loves you.

01:00:05 ◼   ► Only talk to your people who work at Apple.

01:00:07 ◼   ► Never talk to your friends outside of Apple.

01:00:10 ◼   ► Just love Apple.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Stay inside Apple Park, stay inside the circle, right?

01:00:13 ◼   ► - Don't trust anybody.

01:00:14 ◼   ► - It's management, it's management, that's fine.

01:00:16 ◼   ► What I would say is there's so much gray in this.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It's not a black and white issue.

01:00:22 ◼   ► There are lots of people,

01:00:25 ◼   ► there was a Twitter thread about this

01:00:26 ◼   ► that I was going back and forth with people,

01:00:27 ◼   ► including Serenity Caldwell about this.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Like a lot of us know people at Apple who we know, who are not like we're not

01:00:37 ◼   ► like befriending them because they know something. And you know what?

01:00:41 ◼   ► Information passes back and forth. Are those leaks? A lot of times they're not

01:00:46 ◼   ► leaks. A lot of times it's actually beneficial to Apple to have Apple

01:00:49 ◼   ► employees who have friends in the press so that when a story comes up about like

01:00:54 ◼   ► let's say the iPhone battery situation for example or a or an encryption

01:00:58 ◼   ► situation and there's somebody you know and I'm not saying this is anybody in

01:01:02 ◼   ► particular or me or anything like that but there's somebody you know and they

01:01:05 ◼   ► and they say well you know this is actually what's going on here and you

01:01:10 ◼   ► never say that you were told that by Apple but you can write with more

01:01:14 ◼   ► confidence about something knowing that that's actually accurate because a

01:01:18 ◼   ► person who's in the know told you that was that approved by PR maybe but

01:01:22 ◼   ► probably not because again I also don't believe that like your friends at Apple

01:01:26 ◼   ► are just there to manipulate you. They're not really your friends, members of the press.

01:01:32 ◼   ► They're just there to tell you things Apple wants you to know. That's also a little bit

01:01:35 ◼   ► much, right? There can be a lot of paranoia here. A lot of stuff gets passed back and

01:01:39 ◼   ► forth that's useful. I've had conversations that a year later some story came up where

01:01:44 ◼   ► information that I had been told, again, just chatting about information, not about new

01:01:49 ◼   ► future products, but like how stuff works at Apple informed what I was able to write

01:01:54 ◼   ► about and I'd be like, "Oh, this is like that thing that we talked about a couple of years

01:01:58 ◼   ► ago so I already know their philosophy about this." Like, that's all good, right?

01:02:04 ◼   ► Well, like, I've had conversations with people where it's excited conversation. We're talking

01:02:11 ◼   ► and they're excited about what they're working on and I'm excited to hear it and I keep my

01:02:14 ◼   ► mouth shut. Sure, but that's also true. I mean, if you're

01:02:17 ◼   ► not in the scoop business, right, then, which not a lot of people are.

01:02:21 ◼   ► Can I tell you, I read this stuff and I'm so happy that I don't ever try and break a story.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I'm not interested.

01:02:27 ◼   ► My gosh, like when I look at something like this and when you see something like this and

01:02:31 ◼   ► there's still more to come on this, right? Like that, we want to talk about quotes and stuff from

01:02:35 ◼   ► this, but if this is your business, like leaking, if it gets harder and harder, like what are you

01:02:41 ◼   ► going to do? Like if they shut this down, what do you do? And Mark Gurman is a good reporter and

01:02:49 ◼   ► this is he's doing his job and unless he does a great job unless he's really like inducing people

01:02:57 ◼   ► to break the law which is i think where it crosses over into into an issue um still though i have to

01:03:03 ◼   ► say from a personal career choice decision the i it's not an area i ever really wanted to be in

01:03:10 ◼   ► of like breaking breaking scoops because you're you're you get you're basically getting people

01:03:14 ◼   ► your information is coming from people who are violating uh an agreement they made you may not

01:03:18 ◼   ► not have induced them to do it, but in the end it is all coming from that. And if this

01:03:24 ◼   ► memo is to be believed, right, like it's costing people their jobs and some of them are getting

01:03:30 ◼   ► charged with crimes. And like I never wanted to be a person where, because this is accurate,

01:03:37 ◼   ► like you can build a career on scoops. Mark Gurman has done that so far, right? And the

01:03:42 ◼   ► result is potentially, I would assume some of the people he built his career on lost

01:03:47 ◼   ► their jobs and maybe got charged with crimes.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And it's like, he's just doing his job.

01:03:52 ◼   ► And they're the ones who had the secrets

01:03:53 ◼   ► and chose to leak them.

01:03:55 ◼   ► They made a bad decision, but that's not a,

01:04:00 ◼   ► I just would not want that to be my job.

01:04:03 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:04:04 ◼   ► - I just, personal decision, I don't want that in my life.

01:04:07 ◼   ► I don't wanna know that that person I talked to

01:04:09 ◼   ► got fired because they talked.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Even though it was their decision

01:04:12 ◼   ► and they were supposed to keep secrets and they failed

01:04:14 ◼   ► and it is their personal failing.

01:04:17 ◼   ► But, you know, and I get Apple's point, which is don't do that.

01:04:20 ◼   ► We want to scare you as much as possible.

01:04:21 ◼   ► There will be, we have a whole security team.

01:04:23 ◼   ► We are investigating you.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Um, unless you're doing the, you know, the, the secret meeting at the parking

01:04:29 ◼   ► lot, uh, and your, everything's encrypted and, you know, you, you cover your tracks

01:04:34 ◼   ► perfectly, you're going to get caught.

01:04:36 ◼   ► And that, that, you know, that's, that's a game Apple should be playing, I suppose,

01:04:40 ◼   ► because they, they don't want their people to leak information.

01:04:44 ◼   ► It's very hard in a free and open society to really prevent information from leaking,

01:04:49 ◼   ► ultimately, including memos about confidentiality and not leaking, because those leak too.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Of course they do.

01:04:55 ◼   ► And they know they're going to leak.

01:04:56 ◼   ► They know they do.

01:04:57 ◼   ► There's no company-wide dispatch from Apple that doesn't come out, or any other company

01:05:03 ◼   ► that matters.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Because that's too many people, right?

01:05:05 ◼   ► Like, one of the things about Apple is like—

01:05:06 ◼   ► It's company-wide.

01:05:07 ◼   ► Everybody got it.

01:05:08 ◼   ► Who are the suspects?

01:05:09 ◼   ► All of them.

01:05:10 ◼   ► Right?

01:05:11 ◼   ► groups of people about certain things, but a company-wide memo goes to everyone.

01:05:17 ◼   ► Everybody's got it. Everybody's a suspect.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Global Security's digital forensics also helped catch several employees who were feeding

01:05:27 ◼   ► confidential details to a blogger at 9to5Mac.

01:05:31 ◼   ► Hey, Mark Gurman.

01:05:32 ◼   ► Specifically called out.

01:05:34 ◼   ► I said Mark Gurman's sources were good, right? I mean...

01:05:38 ◼   ► So John Gruber kind of dug into this a little bit and was kind of referring to something

01:05:43 ◼   ► that they were talking about. So in this article they referenced that global security found

01:05:50 ◼   ► some like one of these people who was leaking stuff was talking about AirPods and there

01:05:55 ◼   ► was an article that Mark Gilman wrote about nine months or so before AirPods were released

01:05:59 ◼   ► about AirPods whilst he was at 9 to 5 Mac and the previously mentioned person who was

01:06:05 ◼   ► fired for leaking the Federighi meeting was also a Mark Gurman story at Bloomberg. I think

01:06:10 ◼   ► it is very clear here that Apple is calling out people that are leaking to Mark Gurman.

01:06:16 ◼   ► Right? Yeah, I think so.

01:06:18 ◼   ► And that is real, like just, like I don't even really know what to say about it. Right?

01:06:25 ◼   ► And I completely agree with you. Like I don't look at this and think, oh, Gurman is responsible

01:06:32 ◼   ► here because he isn't. He is doing his job and you're right, the people at Apple, they

01:06:39 ◼   ► sign contracts, they sign NDAs. You don't walk into this company and think, "Oh, I

01:06:44 ◼   ► can leak things and it will be totally cool if they find out." Everyone knows and it's

01:06:50 ◼   ► just so strange. When you see stuff like this, you're like, "Well, why does it get out

01:06:55 ◼   ► then?" We spoke about this before. People get disgruntled, people are excited, people

01:06:59 ◼   ► think that they want to change things and this is the way that they do it, right? But

01:07:04 ◼   ► these are the consequences and it gets us into this like really awkward, just really

01:07:10 ◼   ► awkward territory of what comes next from it.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I suspect he will lose sources, but I suspect some people will still be, this

01:07:22 ◼   ► leads the side like why do people leak things, right? There's the official leaks, right?

01:07:26 ◼   ► do happen from time to time, but there's also just these unofficial leaks that happen.

01:07:30 ◼   ► Why do people do it?

01:07:31 ◼   ► Sometimes they're disgruntled.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Like, we've talked about that before.

01:07:34 ◼   ► Always ask yourself, who's the source?

01:07:35 ◼   ► And this type of thing, in a strange way, disgruntled more people, I would expect, right?

01:07:41 ◼   ► Like there were probably more people that will be disgruntled now.

01:07:44 ◼   ► It can, although I'd say that a lot of these product things don't come from disgruntled

01:07:48 ◼   ► employees.

01:07:49 ◼   ► I think disgruntled employees, what you get is, "Apple killed this project," right?

01:07:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:53 ◼   ► MacBook, the MacBook was meant to be better and they chose the bad MacBook. Do you remember

01:07:58 ◼   ► that story?

01:07:59 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly right. And that was obviously somebody who worked on it and was really angry

01:08:02 ◼   ► that their thing didn't get picked, right? And that's a thing that happens. But a lot

01:08:06 ◼   ► of this is people, and we talked about this a lot in episode 147, you can go back and

01:08:11 ◼   ► listen to it, but a lot of this is people who are just really excited that they know

01:08:15 ◼   ► somebody that nobody else knows. And then once you've got that, it's sort of like, I

01:08:20 ◼   ► mean, just psychologically, I feel like they, um, the, the joy you get about

01:08:26 ◼   ► knowing a secret for some people is only when you tell it.

01:08:29 ◼   ► And I think there is a, uh, an ego boost and a, some, you know, pleasure that

01:08:37 ◼   ► people get about seeing a big story break and have all of us in the Apple

01:08:43 ◼   ► world talking about it and every, and like maybe even influencing the company's

01:08:47 ◼   ► stock price because Bloomberg covers it.

01:08:49 ◼   ► and Mark Gurman's at Bloomberg, so he's wired into,

01:08:52 ◼   ► you know, his information goes to all the investors.

01:08:55 ◼   ► It's a huge deal, right?

01:08:57 ◼   ► And you're that employee at Apple who told Mark Gurman

01:09:01 ◼   ► on Telegram this one fact about what was going on.

01:09:06 ◼   ► And that employee is like, "Ooh, I made the world move

01:09:11 ◼   ► with just my little scrap of information."

01:09:14 ◼   ► And that's why those people leave.

01:09:14 ◼   ► - And there is no doubt in the world that that is exciting.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Like that is an exciting thing for people.

01:09:20 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, and the argument is,

01:09:21 ◼   ► for some people it's not, for some people it is,

01:09:24 ◼   ► I mean, it is exciting, I suppose, for everybody,

01:09:25 ◼   ► but for some people it's like, it's not worth the cost.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Like instead you do your job

01:09:29 ◼   ► and you wait for the product to get announced.

01:09:30 ◼   ► And then you, you know, then you say, you know,

01:09:33 ◼   ► we worked on this really hard.

01:09:34 ◼   ► Like I remember, jury, Michael Jurowitz,

01:09:38 ◼   ► who works at Apple, after the iPhone 10,

01:09:41 ◼   ► I saw him at the iPhone 10 event.

01:09:43 ◼   ► And he, did he tell me at the event?

01:09:46 ◼   ► I don't think so. Maybe he just tweeted about it afterward. I don't remember.

01:09:49 ◼   ► I don't want to get him in trouble, but it was after the event,

01:09:51 ◼   ► so it didn't matter. But he revealed that, you know,

01:09:54 ◼   ► like he'd been working on,

01:09:55 ◼   ► I think like hardware software integration on the iPhone 10 for the last year or

01:10:00 ◼   ► something like it was his baby in a lot of ways, like parts of that product,

01:10:03 ◼   ► like that was his life for the previous year. Plus.

01:10:06 ◼   ► And he, you know, presumably he didn't say anything.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Like he kept it quiet and then, and then they announced the product.

01:10:16 ◼   ► and then he got to be one of those people who said, "Yeah, I worked on that and I'm

01:10:18 ◼   ► really proud of it." And for some people that's enough, but obviously for some people that's

01:10:22 ◼   ► not enough. And to go beyond that I think would require a level of psychological examination

01:10:27 ◼   ► of each individual person to find out quite why they need that extra hit of being the

01:10:32 ◼   ► one who made the story happen that made people talk about this. And so yeah, I imagine some

01:10:40 ◼   ► sources will dry up and others will just, when we talk about that kind of psychology,

01:10:45 ◼   ► not going to be able to help themselves. They'll keep at it. They'll find other

01:10:49 ◼   ► ways to communicate more secretly and they'll be more careful about it and there will continue

01:10:53 ◼   ► to be leaks. Maybe fewer leaks, but there will continue to be leaks.

01:10:57 ◼   ► David Eppleston But reading this memo in full, I recommend

01:11:03 ◼   ► because it is enlightening. It is just a very, very interesting thing to read all of the

01:11:10 ◼   ► ways that it is written, it's just a really kind of fascinating thing to look at. I enjoyed

01:11:19 ◼   ► it but it also creeped me out at the same time because it is meant to scare people and

01:11:24 ◼   ► I can see how it makes people feel on edge because I was a bit like "Oh god, I hope

01:11:29 ◼   ► I'm never responsible for anything like this". It's kind of wild, really wild.

01:11:34 ◼   ► Alright, starting to do some #AskUpgrade but today I want to thank our friends at Square

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01:13:14 ◼   ► Alright, Mr. Jason Snell, are you ready to do some #AskUpgrade?

01:13:18 ◼   ► Oh, let me have it, Myke.

01:13:21 ◼   ► First one comes from Michael today. Michael gets all the lasers.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Oh, the lasers got me.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Oh no, well, I'll have to answer this one then. Which users do you think make Apple

01:13:29 ◼   ► happier? Those who live primarily in first party apps or those who take full advantage

01:13:35 ◼   ► of app store apps? So if you're in first party apps, you're in the Apple ecosystem as much

01:13:40 ◼   ► as possible, you're using all of the stuff that they make, but if you use third party

01:13:44 ◼   ► apps, maybe Apple again in some of that 30% cut, maybe they're offering more choice so

01:13:49 ◼   ► they get higher customer satisfaction. What do you think Jason? Do you think that Apple

01:13:52 ◼   ► have a preference for where they want their customers to sit when it comes to taking advantage

01:13:56 ◼   ► of apps on their systems?

01:13:58 ◼   ► Yeah, while I appreciate the the thought

01:14:00 ◼   ► Experiment here. I have to just say yes, they make them they make Apple happy. I don't think I don't think

01:14:06 ◼   ► And obviously this these are extremes

01:14:09 ◼   ► So there's a whole spectrum of how much you're living in the primary and how much you're living in

01:14:13 ◼   ► In in third-party apps, but I think Apple is cool with all of it

01:14:17 ◼   ► I think first off if you're on Apple's platform, that's pretty much a winner for Apple

01:14:21 ◼   ► And yes

01:14:22 ◼   ► I think Apple would prefer that you pay for Apple music rather than using Spotify and

01:14:26 ◼   ► maybe use Apple services and not Google services but you know there are also

01:14:31 ◼   ► people who are subscribing to replacement apps for Apple stuff and

01:14:36 ◼   ► that Apple does have kind of a cut of that too and it makes the platform

01:14:38 ◼   ► sticky just as well so I think I think Apple's okay with it either way I'm sure

01:14:45 ◼   ► Apple would be you prefer you not to use like all Google services on your iOS

01:14:49 ◼   ► devices but in the end only slightly because in the end they just want you on

01:14:53 ◼   ► iOS.

01:14:54 ◼   ► They want to sell the devices first.

01:14:57 ◼   ► For a long time to come, that's going to remain the primary focus.

01:15:00 ◼   ► I know services is a growing business for them, but by and large, they just want you

01:15:04 ◼   ► to buy their computers.

01:15:05 ◼   ► That's where they make the most of their money.

01:15:10 ◼   ► Another Michael wrote in, we actually have, I've just realized, Jason, completely accidentally,

01:15:15 ◼   ► we have three questions from three Michaels today.

01:15:18 ◼   ► How fun is that?

01:15:19 ◼   ► Interesting.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Michael, great people.

01:15:21 ◼   ► All the Michaels.

01:15:22 ◼   ► All the great Michaels.

01:15:23 ◼   ► "I live a post-PC life, presenting around the world."

01:15:27 ◼   ► So fancy.

01:15:28 ◼   ► "With my 12.9 inch iPad Pro, and the use of lots and lots of dongles.

01:15:32 ◼   ► I normally use my iPhone or Apple Watch as the remote, because Keynote can do this, but

01:15:37 ◼   ► when the room has poor Wi-Fi, this doesn't work very well.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Is there a presenting remote that you know of that would work?"

01:15:44 ◼   ► We both did a bit of searching on this, and found dubious claims of iOS compatibility.

01:15:51 ◼   ► There seem to be clickers on Amazon that I found that say they work with the iPhone and

01:15:55 ◼   ► they could, they might, but I've never used one, so I don't know. But if you're in a connectivity

01:16:02 ◼   ► poor environment where you can't use iPhone remote for keynote or something like that

01:16:08 ◼   ► and you have to have a clicker, I don't know. If somebody out there listening has used a

01:16:15 ◼   ► a clicker with iOS that was not another iOS device, let us know, because that would be

01:16:23 ◼   ► a good thing to have, right? And maybe such a thing exists. Again, there are claims, but

01:16:31 ◼   ► I can't verify the claims, so who knows.

01:16:33 ◼   ► We have some real-time follow-up in the chat room from Rosemary saying that David's box

01:16:40 ◼   ► talks about a device by Satechi.

01:16:44 ◼   ► And so I'm gonna put two links in the show notes.

01:16:47 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, the Satechi Bluetooth

01:16:49 ◼   ► smart pointer mobile presenter.

01:16:51 ◼   ► There is a, David, this is from 2013.

01:16:54 ◼   ► So this is a long time ago and it's just a Bluetooth device.

01:16:57 ◼   ► - I have found episode 420,

01:16:59 ◼   ► blaze it, episode of Mac Power Users.

01:17:04 ◼   ► - It's timely, very timely.

01:17:06 ◼   ► So what you're saying, Myke?

01:17:07 ◼   ► - I'm saying nothing is what I'm saying, Jason.

01:17:09 ◼   ► do not walk me into this, I will not accept it.

01:17:12 ◼   ► But David recommends the Satechi Aluminium Wireless

01:17:17 ◼   ► Presenter Point of Remote Control.

01:17:19 ◼   ► I've put two links in the chat room,

01:17:21 ◼   ► one to my power users, one to this device.

01:17:23 ◼   ► - Obviously these products do exist,

01:17:25 ◼   ► so that's your solution is find a Bluetooth clicker

01:17:27 ◼   ► that supports iOS and enjoy it Michael.

01:17:31 ◼   ► Michael number three.

01:17:32 ◼   ► - Josh has written in, I have an issue with another one

01:17:35 ◼   ► with the all-in-one iPad Life.

01:17:38 ◼   ► How do you start a sentence without a capital letter?

01:17:41 ◼   ► Now, this seems like such a simple thing,

01:17:45 ◼   ► but iOS loves to capitalize things, right?

01:17:48 ◼   ► And I think you can turn this off, like everywhere,

01:17:52 ◼   ► in keyboard settings.

01:17:54 ◼   ► But one thing that I do, this works with a lot of apps,

01:17:58 ◼   ► not Google Docs, but it works with a lot of apps.

01:18:00 ◼   ► If you're using an external keyboard,

01:18:02 ◼   ► if you just hit the shift key before you start typing,

01:18:04 ◼   ► it won't capitalize the letter automatically.

01:18:07 ◼   ► With Google Docs, this is gonna, I hate saying this

01:18:11 ◼   ► 'cause this makes everyone that uses a Mac so happy.

01:18:14 ◼   ► The way that I do it with Google Docs is like,

01:18:16 ◼   ► if I'm typing URL, I'll just type the H key twice

01:18:19 ◼   ► and then drop back one and delete the capital letter

01:18:21 ◼   ► and carry on.

01:18:22 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:18:23 ◼   ► So a lot of apps and also the keyboard setting

01:18:26 ◼   ► in the settings app now have,

01:18:28 ◼   ► this is one of my favorite features in iOS 10 I think,

01:18:31 ◼   ► is there's a hardware keyboard setting.

01:18:34 ◼   ► and you can turn off autocorrect and autocapitalization

01:18:38 ◼   ► for hardware keyboards.

01:18:39 ◼   ► - So it's possible to like straight up turn it off,

01:18:41 ◼   ► but if you want it to be there sometimes,

01:18:44 ◼   ► like 90% of the time hitting the shift key first

01:18:47 ◼   ► will stop that.

01:18:48 ◼   ► And as you mentioned, there are a bunch of apps.

01:18:51 ◼   ► - As a long time keyboard user,

01:18:52 ◼   ► I have turned off auto everything on my keyboard

01:18:55 ◼   ► for Mac and for iOS, 'cause it's like, I can do it.

01:18:59 ◼   ► I can do it just fine.

01:19:00 ◼   ► I don't need your help operating system.

01:19:03 ◼   ► I will type the letters and they will appear on the screen

01:19:06 ◼   ► and that's all I need.

01:19:07 ◼   ► I don't need auto capital.

01:19:08 ◼   ► I will use the shift key when I wanna use the shift key.

01:19:11 ◼   ► So that's my solution is turn it all off

01:19:15 ◼   ► if you've got a hardware keyboard.

01:19:16 ◼   ► If you've got a software keyboard, yeah.

01:19:18 ◼   ► You gotta do the counterintuitive press,

01:19:20 ◼   ► unpressing of the space bar or of the shift key

01:19:24 ◼   ► in order to get it to work, which it's fine.

01:19:27 ◼   ► - Unless you suffer from the affliction

01:19:29 ◼   ► of spelling blindness like me,

01:19:31 ◼   ► then it's probably best to keep the autocorrect on.

01:19:34 ◼   ► Our third and final Michael has written in to ask,

01:19:40 ◼   ► what iOS apps would you be excited to see come to the Mac?

01:19:44 ◼   ► Michael was personally excited at the prospect

01:19:47 ◼   ► of a native YouTube app for his MacBook Pro.

01:19:50 ◼   ► - Which I find funny 'cause I don't have

01:19:51 ◼   ► the YouTube app installed and I just use the web.

01:19:54 ◼   ► I use the web interface on iOS.

01:19:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't like it.

01:19:57 ◼   ► That's interesting, I don't like the web interface.

01:19:58 ◼   ► I like the iOS app.

01:20:01 ◼   ► So what would you like to see?

01:20:02 ◼   ► What iOS apps would you like to see on the Mac?

01:20:04 ◼   ► - Well, I wrote an article about this,

01:20:06 ◼   ► which is I think what he's referencing on Macworld.

01:20:09 ◼   ► It's probably more than 800 words.

01:20:11 ◼   ► And a lot of them were apps that support picture-in-picture

01:20:14 ◼   ► because there are a bunch of,

01:20:16 ◼   ► on Mac, they throw you to their website

01:20:19 ◼   ► and then they use, often it's Flash,

01:20:22 ◼   ► and you can't put that picture-in-picture.

01:20:25 ◼   ► And so you have to watch it in the browser.

01:20:27 ◼   ► And I hate that.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I want it picture-in-picture on the Mac too,

01:20:30 ◼   ► because that's supported and it's great.

01:20:31 ◼   ► So like, MLB at bat, which you can kind of hack

01:20:34 ◼   ► with a bookmark lit to get it,

01:20:36 ◼   ► 'cause now it's doing HTML5 video,

01:20:38 ◼   ► but like HBO Go, my Xfinity cable app,

01:20:41 ◼   ► I was watching a baseball game in a window

01:20:43 ◼   ► and it had to be a Chrome window running flash

01:20:46 ◼   ► instead of just like in a picture in picture view,

01:20:48 ◼   ► which I would have preferred.

01:20:50 ◼   ► Some of my smart home devices,

01:20:51 ◼   ► like I've got these Arlo video cameras

01:20:54 ◼   ► and there's an app for that.

01:20:55 ◼   ► And on the desktop, again, I have to use Chrome and flash

01:20:58 ◼   ► and it's annoying.

01:21:00 ◼   ► And I know they've got an HTML5 capable,

01:21:02 ◼   ► you know, a standards-based video thing

01:21:05 ◼   ► 'cause they got an app.

01:21:07 ◼   ► Some social media stuff,

01:21:08 ◼   ► like I really like that Twitter has apps.

01:21:12 ◼   ► That's why I got into Twitter is that I have Twitter.

01:21:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, no bad app. - I use it as an app.

01:21:16 ◼   ► And I would, honestly, I would probably,

01:21:18 ◼   ► I don't know if I would today,

01:21:20 ◼   ► but like I'd be more inclined to use Facebook

01:21:22 ◼   ► if I had a Facebook app than just the Facebook website.

01:21:25 ◼   ► That's the reason I use Twitter more than Facebook

01:21:27 ◼   ► is that Twitter has an app and Facebook doesn't.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna leave a browser window open with Facebook,

01:21:32 ◼   ► nor am I going to remember on a regular basis

01:21:34 ◼   ► to open a browser window and load Facebook.

01:21:37 ◼   ► And so I just don't look at Facebook very often.

01:21:39 ◼   ► So an app would help there.

01:21:41 ◼   ► And then we mentioned it earlier,

01:21:42 ◼   ► like a Ferrite recording studio, love that on the Mac.

01:21:46 ◼   ► I'd love that.

01:21:47 ◼   ► I might switch my podcast editing to it

01:21:49 ◼   ► if it was on the Mac as well.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Overcast, shout out to Casey Liss.

01:21:54 ◼   ► That'd be a good one.

01:21:57 ◼   ► And then I would say the home app,

01:22:00 ◼   ► because there's no HomeKit support on the Mac to this day.

01:22:04 ◼   ► So I would like the home app to be there.

01:22:06 ◼   ► And I'll leave you with games,

01:22:10 ◼   ► like Alto's Adventure and Flip Flop Solitaire.

01:22:13 ◼   ► - Right, like more games in theory could come to the Mac

01:22:15 ◼   ► and there's no harm in that, right?

01:22:17 ◼   ► Like just having them there, that'd be kind of cool.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Like, especially something like Alto,

01:22:20 ◼   ► you just grab a little controller

01:22:21 ◼   ► and could play a great iOS game on the Mac if you wanted to.

01:22:24 ◼   ► Like why not?

01:22:25 ◼   ► put it on Apple TV, why not on the Mac? I also, for me, not even so much like apps that

01:22:30 ◼   ► don't currently exist, but I have a bunch of apps that are cross platform and they get

01:22:35 ◼   ► out of sync from inconsistency. Like different features are on different platforms. Something

01:22:42 ◼   ► like, you know, like airmail and tweetbot and fantastical. They're all really great

01:22:46 ◼   ► iOS apps and really great Mac apps, but they have different features on each platform.

01:22:51 ◼   ► I would like it all to have the same.

01:23:09 ◼   ► and

01:23:29 ◼   ► and one thing I mentioned is that on my iPads I have automatic app downloads.

01:23:35 ◼   ► So if I download an app on one iPad it downloads on the other.

01:23:38 ◼   ► But I don't have this on my iPhone and I don't have app updates on anything except my small

01:23:44 ◼   ► iPad.

01:23:45 ◼   ► And the reason for this is I just like to see release notes.

01:23:49 ◼   ► If I get app updates sometimes I want to see what's changed and I like to look at the release

01:23:55 ◼   ► Notes and I don't want my iPhone to be full up of apps because that's where I download

01:24:00 ◼   ► most of the apps in the initial place. Like if I download an app on my iPad, it's because

01:24:04 ◼   ► I want it specifically for my iPad. I typically don't want it on my iPhone as well. So it's

01:24:08 ◼   ► just my own little way of doing it. Do you have any of the automatic updates or download

01:24:13 ◼   ► stuff turned on?

01:24:15 ◼   ► I think I have automatic updates turned on and I do not have automatic downloads turned

01:24:21 ◼   ► on because I generally will download something on one device for a reason and then I hate

01:24:26 ◼   ► it when it just shows up on my iPad because I don't want it there.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Typically you would make a separate choice to download the iPad app I find anyway.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's right.

01:24:35 ◼   ► And then finally today Noel wrote in and asked, "What is a great simple audio player for

01:24:40 ◼   ► the Mac?

01:24:41 ◼   ► I'm looking for an app that can serve as my default app for audio files so I can get

01:24:45 ◼   ► one step closer to abandoning iTunes."

01:24:49 ◼   ► I have no answer for this.

01:24:51 ◼   ► I don't think that you have an answer for this.

01:24:53 ◼   ► And this is interesting to me.

01:24:55 ◼   ► - I use iTunes every day and I don't have a problem with it.

01:24:57 ◼   ► I think as a music player,

01:24:58 ◼   ► which was what it was designed for, it's fine.

01:25:01 ◼   ► And I don't think because it has such a footprint,

01:25:04 ◼   ► there have been other audio player apps

01:25:07 ◼   ► that have been released for the Mac.

01:25:08 ◼   ► And none of them really last so far as I know,

01:25:11 ◼   ► because the iTunes is just too big a presence on the Mac.

01:25:15 ◼   ► So I just don't think it's gonna happen.

01:25:17 ◼   ► There may be some out there

01:25:18 ◼   ► that probably really compromised.

01:25:19 ◼   ► If somebody wants to make one available, you know,

01:25:23 ◼   ► that they love, then that's great.

01:25:25 ◼   ► But I've seen a few and they just never seem to catch

01:25:28 ◼   ► because iTunes is just too huge.

01:25:30 ◼   ► - It's like what, you could use an app like QuickTime,

01:25:32 ◼   ► but it lacks so many features that it would just be

01:25:34 ◼   ► more of a pain in the butt than anything else.

01:25:37 ◼   ► - If you're just like playing an audio file

01:25:41 ◼   ► that you wanna play, I don't know,

01:25:43 ◼   ► you could open that in QuickTime Player,

01:25:45 ◼   ► you could open that in-- - DLC.

01:25:46 ◼   ► I do a lot of previews just using Quick Look.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Like literally I will just select the file

01:25:51 ◼   ► and press the space bar and let it play.

01:25:54 ◼   ► And as long as I'm not using the finder for something else,

01:25:56 ◼   ► it'll just keep playing.

01:25:57 ◼   ► So I'll do that a lot too.

01:25:58 ◼   ► - Quick Look is an incredibly important part

01:26:01 ◼   ► of my podcast production workflow.

01:26:03 ◼   ► A Quick Look everything.

01:26:05 ◼   ► - That's where I check a lot of things

01:26:06 ◼   ► to make sure they sound okay.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Like last week where I had the monster truck segment,

01:26:10 ◼   ► where we had the echoes,

01:26:11 ◼   ► I exported that out and I found a bug in Logic

01:26:14 ◼   ► where even though the echo came up

01:26:16 ◼   ► and then went back down again,

01:26:17 ◼   ► a large portion of the show

01:26:20 ◼   ► had the big monster truck echo on it.

01:26:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:26:23 ◼   ► And so I had to re-export the file.

01:26:26 ◼   ► - I'm so pleased you found that.

01:26:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, right?

01:26:29 ◼   ► Right, well that's, I mean, that's why I checked.

01:26:31 ◼   ► - Monster back.

01:26:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's right.

01:26:34 ◼   ► From Relay FM, mm, mm, mm, mm, right.

01:26:36 ◼   ► So we didn't do that.

01:26:37 ◼   ► So, but that was just a quick look preview

01:26:39 ◼   ► where I was scrubbing through, making sure it sounded okay.

01:26:42 ◼   ► And I didn't.

01:26:43 ◼   ► Noel, we can't help you, but maybe an Upgrading can.

01:26:46 ◼   ► So out there in the Upgrading universe,

01:26:49 ◼   ► if you had no other simple audio player

01:26:52 ◼   ► that can just play some music files, let us know,

01:26:54 ◼   ► and then we can tell Noel.

01:26:55 ◼   ► So that's it.

01:26:56 ◼   ► If you wanna send in your questions for us to answer

01:26:58 ◼   ► at the end of the show,

01:26:59 ◼   ► just send that tweet into the universe

01:27:01 ◼   ► with the hashtag #AskUpgrade,

01:27:03 ◼   ► and you can trust that we will find it.

01:27:05 ◼   ► And it may be included on a future episode of the show.

01:27:08 ◼   ► I wanna again thank our sponsors this week,

01:27:10 ◼   ► Squarespace, Ace & Tate, and Slack

01:27:12 ◼   ► for

01:27:27 ◼   ► at

01:27:48 ◼   ► you there. I am @imikeyke on Twitter. Don't forget to go to SixColors.com for Jason's

01:27:55 ◼   ► writing as well. All over the internet. We span the internet with our entertainment products.

01:28:03 ◼   ► Sure. #snowtalk. #askupgrade for questions on the show. Thanks to everyone for everything

01:28:10 ◼   ► they continue to send in to us every week. You make us feel loved. You are the best.

01:28:13 ◼   ► And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:28:17 ◼   ► Bye, Myke Hurley.

01:28:18 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:28:21 ◼   ► [ Music ]