Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [

00:00:12 ◼   ► 150. Today's show is brought to you by Blue Apron, Mac Weldon, and Encapsula. My name

00:00:18 ◼   ► is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Congratulations, Jason Snell, on 150

00:00:25 ◼   ► episode of Upgrade.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - Congratulations to you too, Myke. I think this means we've been doing this almost three

00:00:32 ◼   ► years.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - Wow. That's very impressive, isn't it?

00:00:36 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:00:37 ◼   ► - Time flies when you're having fun.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:00:40 ◼   ► I couldn't think of a good pun there, so I just went with the actual phrase.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Just the actual thing, sure.

00:00:46 ◼   ► I have a #SnellTalk question that I've been saving for a special occasion, and I have

00:00:51 ◼   ► deemed our 150th episode a special enough occasion.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Jason Snell, Christopher asks you, "Can you do an impression of Myke?"

00:01:01 ◼   ► Oh, I can.

00:01:05 ◼   ► I'm glad he made no value judgments.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Can you do a good impression of Myke?

00:01:09 ◼   ► What I should answer here is yes.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Yes I can. Thank you for asking, Christopher. Yes I can.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Moving on. Come on.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Hello, mate! This is a podcast where I decide whether to use my large iPad or my small iPad.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Very good. Very good. So, congratulations. This is a very good impression of me.

00:01:28 ◼   ► My better impression would be, "From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 150, brought

00:01:35 ◼   ► to you by the good people at..." Sponsor read here.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Was that a better impression? Or was it just a...

00:01:40 ◼   ► It was.

00:01:41 ◼   ► I think it was just different.

00:01:42 ◼   ► You don't have as many accents when you're doing the intro as you do later on.

00:01:46 ◼   ► But hello mate, this is a podcast about iPads and the people who love them.

00:01:51 ◼   ► I have spent the entire day today thinking about if you were going to ask me if I could

00:01:55 ◼   ► do an impression of you and I've can't.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Just FYI, I can't.

00:02:01 ◼   ► I thought about it and I can't make my mouth make the sounds.

00:02:07 ◼   ► I wasn't going to ask.

00:02:08 ◼   ► I'm not very good with any American accents.

00:02:11 ◼   ► The American accent is really difficult for me.

00:02:13 ◼   ► I think because my accent is so in the middle now in so many different ways that

00:02:18 ◼   ► I struggle with that one.

00:02:20 ◼   ► I can do a really good Cockney accent though.

00:02:23 ◼   ► So that's good to know.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

00:02:26 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question for our #snowtalkquestion segment, then

00:02:33 ◼   ► just tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk and we will get them.

00:02:36 ◼   ► and I would like to thank Christopher for his truly excellent quiz task question that

00:02:42 ◼   ► he sent in. #snelltalk. Mr Jason Snell, we have a selection of follow-up today. Our first

00:02:50 ◼   ► piece of follow-up comes in to us courtesy of Kerry. We have been speaking, people have

00:02:54 ◼   ► been asking us questions, do we think that there are going to be AirPods 2? Kerry has

00:02:58 ◼   ► written in with a potential thing that could spark AirPods 2 and that is Bluetooth 5. Could

00:03:06 ◼   ► carriers wrote in to say that Bluetooth 5 could be a good enough reason for Apple to update the AirPods because of some of the

00:03:11 ◼   ► enhancements and the advantages that the fifth version of Bluetooth has over the fourth spec.

00:03:20 ◼   ► So Bluetooth 5 could

00:03:22 ◼   ► significantly increase the range and speed of data transfer for AirPods and it also has built into the spec

00:03:29 ◼   ► more easy pairing of multiple devices and

00:03:33 ◼   ► Something that is in Bluetooth 5 which we spoke about in this show in the past

00:03:36 ◼   ► I believe is the fact that you can actually have one source going to multiple

00:03:42 ◼   ► outputs so you can have like say say you have Bluetooth 5 in an iPhone you could have it going out to two different speakers

00:03:50 ◼   ► I mean that could potentially help with AirPods stuff maybe I guess right because they're these two little different things

00:03:54 ◼   ► So Bluetooth 5 could it be a big improvement? It could increase the range which would be great, right?

00:03:59 ◼   ► So you could have your phone off in the house and you could be out right at the very back of the garden still using

00:04:04 ◼   ► your AirPods

00:04:05 ◼   ► but I

00:04:06 ◼   ► Don't what I think that this will be something that Apple will include in the next version of AirPods

00:04:11 ◼   ► But I don't think that it's gonna be anytime soon

00:04:14 ◼   ► My feeling on this would be that maybe the next iPhones get Bluetooth 5 chips in them

00:04:19 ◼   ► But that they would wait to talk about fantastic new AirPods features that Bluetooth 5 would enable

00:04:26 ◼   ► until maybe Bluetooth 5 has been around in iPhones for a little bit longer, you know, so like maybe we get like another edition of

00:04:33 ◼   ► iPhones with Bluetooth 5 in them before AirPods gain these features as well. What do you think?

00:04:39 ◼   ► I think, so I'm not a Bluetooth expert by any stretch of the imagination, but my gut feeling here, my

00:04:46 ◼   ► my knee-jerk response to this is

00:04:48 ◼   ► although Bluetooth 5 is an improvement, a lot of the improvements are things that Apple

00:04:55 ◼   ► probably doesn't care enough about to quickly turn around a new set of AirPods

00:05:01 ◼   ► and the features that it maybe cares a little more about might be features

00:05:06 ◼   ► Apple has already solved problems with with their overlay on Bluetooth 4 that

00:05:13 ◼   ► they put in with the with their special processor and all that. So like

00:05:18 ◼   ► functions built in to help with more easily pairing devices.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Apple's got that. Apple already built its own functionality for pairing, and it's built

00:05:31 ◼   ► a lot of stuff on top of Bluetooth 4 in order to do that, and they still work as standard

00:05:36 ◼   ► Bluetooth headphones, but they built that extra layer on top. And I'm not sure how much

00:05:42 ◼   ► Apple really cares about significantly increasing the range of AirPods. I mean, would they like

00:05:47 ◼   ► to do that eventually? Sure, why not? I definitely have that where I have my phone plugged in

00:05:53 ◼   ► in the kitchen and I walk to the back bedroom and things start to get a little bit spotty

00:06:01 ◼   ► because the phone is whatever that is 10-20 feet away. But and as for speed of data transfer

00:06:09 ◼   ► I think that's irrelevant so I think what I would say is I agree that eventually Apple

00:06:16 ◼   ► will update the AirPods to support the new standard and they'll take advantage of what's

00:06:22 ◼   ► better in it when they can, although for a while they're going to want it to be a

00:06:26 ◼   ► great experience like it currently is on older phones. I think that's also true.

00:06:31 ◼   ► They're going to not want to regress on the phones that don't have Bluetooth 5.

00:06:35 ◼   ► But I don't see enough here for this to be proof that Apple will be updating

00:06:45 ◼   ► them soon. I feel like they work great. Apple's happy with them. Apple's still, you

00:06:51 ◼   ► know, trying to make them fast enough to sell them now seems like not the time to

00:06:56 ◼   ► go back. I just don't see any need. Bottom line is I don't see a need and we

00:07:01 ◼   ► can throw up all sorts of new tech and say, "But there's new tech available."

00:07:04 ◼   ► Yeah, but what's the need? Does Apple need to update the AirPods right now? And they

00:07:09 ◼   ► don't. Are they working for new AirPods that will be better in

00:07:13 ◼   ► all sorts of ways? Because there are other ways that the AirPods could probably be

00:07:16 ◼   ► better too, not just supporting Bluetooth 5. If you view it from the functionality

00:07:21 ◼   ► side and figure like, "What do we pick up with Bluetooth 5? What could we put in with

00:07:25 ◼   ► our own special processor kind of stuff?" Of course they're working on that, but I have

00:07:31 ◼   ► a hard time seeing that when this product has only been out less than a year that they

00:07:35 ◼   ► would turn it around. So that still feels very much to me like a product for 2018 or

00:07:41 ◼   ► later. It feels like a new product. It feels like a great new product now. There's no need

00:07:46 ◼   ► to turn it around when they're still struggling to build it. Unless they change it because

00:07:50 ◼   ► they can they figured out a better way to build it but even then I think

00:07:53 ◼   ► they're not going to brand it or market it I think they would just do that

00:07:56 ◼   ► silent up update that I mentioned last week where maybe they make some

00:08:00 ◼   ► internal tech tweaks but it's still just air pods and they don't really talk

00:08:03 ◼   ► about that it's slightly different on the inside and unless you crack them

00:08:06 ◼   ► open you might not even be able to tell the difference.

00:08:09 ◼   ► There has been a Galaxy Note 7 fandom edition teardown at iFixit so they got

00:08:16 ◼   ► their hands on the refurbished and re-released Galaxy Note 7 that we spoke about a week or

00:08:25 ◼   ► two ago. And it turns out kind of exactly as we expected. They've torn it apart and

00:08:31 ◼   ► they can confirm and they have confirmed that the biggest difference in this model to the

00:08:34 ◼   ► previous one is that the battery is indeed smaller. It is 9% smaller in both wattage

00:08:41 ◼   ► and physical size, that's the only change. So they just made a small... Well, they also

00:08:47 ◼   ► did this thing for Korean cell networks to enhance the band reception for Korean cell

00:08:53 ◼   ► networks because that's where it's going to be sold mostly. But yeah, they did indeed

00:08:57 ◼   ► make the battery smaller. They used a different battery. It was exactly as we expected that

00:09:01 ◼   ► they would do, but now iFixit has gone ahead and confirmed it for us.

00:09:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, somebody we know was talking about

00:09:09 ◼   ► how they were sorely tempted to try and get one of these

00:09:12 ◼   ► imported in from Korea just because they wanted to have it.

00:09:15 ◼   ► And that's fandom in a nutshell there.

00:09:18 ◼   ► - This is why they did it.

00:09:19 ◼   ► - This is why they did it.

00:09:20 ◼   ► - And they got them.

00:09:21 ◼   ► And if they're confident that they're fine now,

00:09:24 ◼   ► I mean, by all accounts, it was a great phone, right?

00:09:26 ◼   ► So, you know, more power to them.

00:09:28 ◼   ► I look at this and think what might've been,

00:09:31 ◼   ► that this is just such an example

00:09:32 ◼   ► of pushing their product too far.

00:09:34 ◼   ► and that if they had released it as this,

00:09:38 ◼   ► they wouldn't have been able to make

00:09:39 ◼   ► quite the same battery claims, I guess,

00:09:41 ◼   ► but it would have been a safer phone

00:09:42 ◼   ► and they pushed it too hard.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And that will be the cautionary tale

00:09:46 ◼   ► of the Galaxy Note 7 forever in the smartphone business.

00:09:50 ◼   ► And I would imagine every single company

00:09:53 ◼   ► that is making a smartphone now has that on their list

00:09:56 ◼   ► of things not to do is what Samsung did with that product.

00:10:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, even if for a short time or however,

00:10:03 ◼   ► like this phone changed the entire smartphone industry.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Like you might not see it,

00:10:08 ◼   ► but literally every single company

00:10:11 ◼   ► is treating battery tech differently now

00:10:13 ◼   ► on the pure risk that this could happen to them.

00:10:16 ◼   ► - Either they're treating their battery tech different

00:10:18 ◼   ► or they reviewed their battery tech

00:10:20 ◼   ► to make sure that they were already taking standards

00:10:23 ◼   ► that Samsung wasn't, right?

00:10:24 ◼   ► Because it's probably like Apple

00:10:26 ◼   ► didn't look at their battery standards and go,

00:10:28 ◼   ► oh geez, that could have happened to us.

00:10:30 ◼   ► They probably were like, "That's why we don't do X, right?"

00:10:34 ◼   ► Is because of that.

00:10:35 ◼   ► But maybe not, maybe Apple was like,

00:10:37 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, you know, yeah, let's tighten this up."

00:10:40 ◼   ► But I'm sure there are some other companies

00:10:41 ◼   ► that are very much like,

00:10:43 ◼   ► "Yeah, we can't, we're lucky that that didn't happen to us.

00:10:47 ◼   ► "So we gotta step up our standards on that side

00:10:49 ◼   ► "or that's gonna be."

00:10:50 ◼   ► Plus, regulatory bodies are gonna be more aware

00:10:54 ◼   ► and reviewers are gonna be more aware.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Like everybody else is hyper aware of this area

00:10:59 ◼   ► to the point where I would say the next great smartphone tech failure won't be from a battery

00:11:05 ◼   ► almost certainly because everybody is looking at the batteries now. It will be somewhere

00:11:09 ◼   ► else.

00:11:10 ◼   ► I just feel like even if you work for Apple and you're very confident, you might just

00:11:14 ◼   ► go, "Can we just do one review?" You know, like someone sat down and just done a review

00:11:20 ◼   ► of the battery testing procedure just to doubly, doubly make sure that we're doing this the

00:11:24 ◼   ► way that we should be doing it. Because you just don't want to be the company that follows

00:11:31 ◼   ► this, right? You don't want to be the company that does it, you definitely don't want to

00:11:35 ◼   ► be the company that it happens to afterwards. Because there's no excuse now, right? There's

00:11:40 ◼   ► no excuse then, there's no excuse now. Very quick heads up. The very end of this show

00:11:46 ◼   ► we're doing a little bonus mic at the movies because I saw Spider-Man Homecoming this weekend

00:11:51 ◼   ► and I really want to talk about it and Jason is the perfect person to talk about it with.

00:11:56 ◼   ► So the very end of the show after Ask Upgrade this week will be a mic at the movies, Spider-Man

00:12:02 ◼   ► Homecoming and of course it will be full of spoilers. So just to let you know we'll play

00:12:06 ◼   ► the spoiler horn and everything but just so you know right at the very end of the show

00:12:10 ◼   ► today we're going to be talking about Spider-Man. It was World Emoji Day yesterday as we recorded

00:12:16 ◼   ► was July 17th. What a huge day for World Emoji Day. This is a three-year-old event

00:12:23 ◼   ► which was created by a friend of the show and creator of Emojipedia, Jeremy

00:12:28 ◼   ► Burch. He created World Emoji Day in 2014 and this year it picked up steam

00:12:35 ◼   ► incredibly. So many things were happening kind of around the world. It's fun to

00:12:42 ◼   ► follow Jeremy online because you've got to see him in all these different news

00:12:45 ◼   ► outlets for the day. It was huge. And one of the biggest things that happened in the

00:12:50 ◼   ► day is Apple unveiled a selection of the new emoji that will be coming later this year.

00:12:57 ◼   ► And it also seems like in something which is also incredibly impressive that Emojipedia

00:13:02 ◼   ► was given some kind of exclusive on this because I mean I saw it on Emojipedia before I saw

00:13:07 ◼   ► it anywhere else even on Apple's PR newsroom. So that in and of itself is a pretty huge

00:13:14 ◼   ► achievement. I want to put this be some links in the show notes so you can go

00:13:18 ◼   ► and see them. Here's some examples that Apple gave for some of the emoji that

00:13:21 ◼   ► are going to be finding their way into our iPhones. I expect as with iOS 11. So

00:13:28 ◼   ► we're looking at woman with headscarf, bearded person, which I am of course

00:13:31 ◼   ► extremely excited about, breastfeeding, person meditating, elf, zombie and genie

00:13:39 ◼   ► as some of them and I think that there's multiple race and genders for these. Exploding head,

00:13:46 ◼   ► face vomiting, starstruck, crazy face, sandwich, coconut, t-rex and zebra. These are some of

00:13:52 ◼   ► the ones that we saw. Also known as zebra, in case you didn't understand me. I'm sure

00:13:58 ◼   ► you've taken a look at these new emoji, Jason, which really kind of stand out to you. Which

00:14:02 ◼   ► of these are you excited about?

00:14:08 ◼   ► I feel like we talked about this before because this is the new spec here.

00:14:13 ◼   ► We spoke about the spec. When the spec came out that included the names of these, we spoke

00:14:18 ◼   ► about the ones and the ones that Emojipedia had drawn up. But of course, this is Apple

00:14:22 ◼   ► showing off what they're actually going to look like on our iPhones.

00:14:28 ◼   ► So I mean, it's what we, it's basically what we expected. So I don't know if I have, like,

00:14:33 ◼   ► I like some of them better, I like the Elf and the Zombie better maybe than the Genie

00:14:35 ◼   ► a little bit, but it, you know, it's all, it's all more images in the lexicon, which

00:14:40 ◼   ► I think is great. And it's, you know, these are the apple emojis, so they are using apple

00:14:44 ◼   ► style, they are, in that way, they literally are what you would expect them to be, if you

00:14:49 ◼   ► imagined it. I think the bread on the sandwich is a little bit thick, but other than that

00:14:53 ◼   ► I'm okay.

00:14:54 ◼   ► I really like the four faces that they showed off, the smileys. I think they're all great.

00:15:00 ◼   ► These are all four that I wanted and from the designs, these are four that I will use.

00:15:05 ◼   ► Like the stars in eyes and the exploding head and the crazy face and the vomiting face.

00:15:11 ◼   ► I will use all of those and I'm excited about them. Especially the vomiting one and the

00:15:17 ◼   ► mind blown one. These are two that I've wanted anyway and they do a good job. These look

00:15:22 ◼   ► really great. I'm excited and I'm sure it will be a reason to push everybody into upgrading

00:15:28 ◼   ► their to iOS 11 later this year.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Well, as we've said before, emoji is an upgrade motivator. It just is. That's just like you

00:15:39 ◼   ► get the new emoji if you have, you feel left out, you fear of missing out if you get that

00:15:44 ◼   ► box with a question mark in it and realize you have to go up to iOS 11 in order to see

00:15:48 ◼   ► that emoji. It may seem silly that that would be a reason to update, but it doesn't really

00:15:52 ◼   ► matter it is and Apple knows it. I want to share an emoji frustration whilst

00:15:57 ◼   ► we're talking about emoji. Just a quick side. Slack, what are you doing? There are like

00:16:03 ◼   ► so many emojis still not officially supported in Slack. Like even of like the previous emoji

00:16:09 ◼   ► spec, like what was it like four or something. And it's literally a web app, although they

00:16:14 ◼   ► do make their own, do they make their own emoji? They do, they make their own emoji

00:16:20 ◼   ► thicker, right? And it can display emoji if you type them in, but like they are a company

00:16:25 ◼   ► that a massive part of their identity is based around emoji. Like the emoji reactions thing.

00:16:34 ◼   ► I want to be able to use all the new emoji in the emoji reactions thing and I can't.

00:16:39 ◼   ► And it's mind boggling to me that they haven't put this in yet. I can't work out what why

00:16:46 ◼   ► why this isn't there. They're not a small company, a company with a huge engineering

00:16:50 ◼   ► team as far as I'm aware. Come on Slack, put the emoji in. We're nearly to the next set

00:16:57 ◼   ► of emoji and they're still not all in there yet. Sort of that. That's my plea to Slack

00:17:02 ◼   ► right there. I wanted to do a bit of follow out, Jason,

00:17:06 ◼   ► before we move on today. For the Command D conference, which is happening on August 9th

00:17:12 ◼   ► in Santa Clara in the convention center there.

00:17:15 ◼   ► It is a conference focused on automation,

00:17:17 ◼   ► and I wanted to mention it because you're gonna be there.

00:17:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I will be there.

00:17:22 ◼   ► It is all about automation, macOS and iOS.

00:17:26 ◼   ► There will be a bunch of other people there

00:17:28 ◼   ► who are interesting talking about automation.

00:17:31 ◼   ► It's in Santa Clara.

00:17:32 ◼   ► If people wanna go, they can go to CMDDCONF.com.

00:17:39 ◼   ► This is sort of the South Segoian automation

00:17:42 ◼   ► on Apple platforms, independent conference

00:17:46 ◼   ► and tickets are available.

00:17:47 ◼   ► I will be there.

00:17:48 ◼   ► And in fact, I'm going to give you a little teaser,

00:17:50 ◼   ► which is my role is gonna be at the end of the event.

00:17:55 ◼   ► We're gonna do a live conversation with participants

00:17:59 ◼   ► in the day with some of the speakers about automation

00:18:03 ◼   ► and things like that.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And that is basically a live episode of upgrade

00:18:08 ◼   ► because we talked about our travel schedules

00:18:11 ◼   ► and how we have a lot of things going on this summer

00:18:15 ◼   ► that have made the, our sort of standard,

00:18:17 ◼   ► including this episode,

00:18:18 ◼   ► our standard recording day and time for upgrade

00:18:21 ◼   ► kind of up in the air a lot during the summer.

00:18:24 ◼   ► This is actually gonna be one of those

00:18:26 ◼   ► fill-in episodes of upgrade.

00:18:27 ◼   ► It's gonna be a live episode,

00:18:30 ◼   ► recorded on the ninth that we'll post the next week.

00:18:33 ◼   ► So if you don't get a chance to go to Santa Clara

00:18:36 ◼   ► and see it live, you will get to hear that conversation

00:18:39 ◼   ► I have with some of the people who are there

00:18:42 ◼   ► on upgrade that week, that following week.

00:18:45 ◼   ► - So go check it out.

00:18:46 ◼   ► That's commanddconf.com.

00:18:48 ◼   ► There'll be a link in the show notes

00:18:49 ◼   ► 'cause that's a really hard URL to say.

00:18:52 ◼   ► C-M-D-D-C-O-N-F.com.

00:18:55 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you in part by our friends

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00:20:50 ◼   ► So Jason, we've been talking about iPads recently and after last week's episode you

00:20:54 ◼   ► said to me, "Oh, I forgot to mention about cellular connectivity on the iPad." So this

00:20:59 ◼   ► is a new thing to you, right?

00:21:01 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I have tried it out in limited, like, sandbox maneuver, like buying a monthly

00:21:07 ◼   ► pass or a weekly pass or a daily pass, because—and I did write a whole article about, well, you

00:21:14 ◼   ► know, the flexibility you get when you buy a cellular iPad is the—you have this ability

00:21:21 ◼   ► to use it or not, tether it. For $130, you're buying yourself a lot of insurance in terms

00:21:28 ◼   ► of where you can use it and the connectivity. Yes, you can tether with a phone. So I had

00:21:37 ◼   ► a cellular iPad. I've had it for quite a while. I've had the cellular 12.9 since the 12.9

00:21:42 ◼   ► Pro came out. And what I didn't have until a few weeks ago was an iPad Pro with a SIM

00:21:52 ◼   ► card in it from my phone carrier. So what happened was our existing cellular plan, we

00:22:00 ◼   ► I think three months in a row, we went over the data limit. And so for a relatively small

00:22:06 ◼   ► amount of money, as it turns out, we switched to a different plan with a much higher data

00:22:10 ◼   ► a limit. And as a part of that, I said, you know, while we're doing this, maybe I should

00:22:15 ◼   ► go on the website and order a SIM card from them and put my iPad on their plan.

00:22:20 ◼   ► So you have one of these pooled plans, right? Yes. My entire family is using a shared pool

00:22:27 ◼   ► of data. And so for $10 a month more, this is an AT&T plan for $10 a month more and don't

00:22:33 ◼   ► email me about carriers. I'm not interested. We use AT&T for some very specific reasons.

00:22:37 ◼   ► in fact, including the fact that no other carrier

00:22:41 ◼   ► essentially works at our house.

00:22:43 ◼   ► So yeah, anyway, so for $10 a month, the iPad,

00:22:47 ◼   ► my iPad is now, I mean, like literally they started,

00:22:51 ◼   ► for free they send me this SIM card in the mail,

00:22:54 ◼   ► it shows up two days later.

00:22:56 ◼   ► For an extra $10 a month charge, my iPad now,

00:22:58 ◼   ► I pop the SIM card in, it's now sharing that pool of data.

00:23:02 ◼   ► And that's very different than saying,

00:23:05 ◼   ► oh geez, I don't have any data right here.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Can I, or I don't have any wifi right here.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Can I tether to my phone?

00:23:11 ◼   ► Can I open up the cellular interface and go to T-Mobile

00:23:16 ◼   ► and buy a chunk of data for today?

00:23:21 ◼   ► Oh, they want me to put in my credit card.

00:23:24 ◼   ► I don't, oh, and it failed.

00:23:27 ◼   ► All right, that's happened to me, right?

00:23:28 ◼   ► Now, it's just literally, it's just working.

00:23:31 ◼   ► So we were driving up to the long weekend

00:23:35 ◼   ► on the 4th of July weekend, and I was in the back seat

00:23:38 ◼   ► and my daughter and my wife were in the front seats.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And this is the kind of time where I would open my iPhone

00:23:44 ◼   ► and like check Slack and Twitter and things like that

00:23:46 ◼   ► and email.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And I thought to myself, oh, let's get out my iPad

00:23:50 ◼   ► like I do when I'm at home,

00:23:51 ◼   ► 'cause it's the same data pool.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And I was just sitting there using my iPad.

00:23:55 ◼   ► And at one point my wife noticed and she turned around

00:23:57 ◼   ► and she said, you love having that cellular data

00:24:00 ◼   ► in that iPad, don't you?

00:24:01 ◼   ► I said, "Yes, yes I do, I actually do."

00:24:04 ◼   ► Because again, could I have used my iPad

00:24:05 ◼   ► and tethered to my phone before?

00:24:07 ◼   ► Sure I could have, but did I ever?

00:24:09 ◼   ► No, I didn't because it was like,

00:24:11 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm not gonna get my iPad out

00:24:12 ◼   ► and tether it to the iPhone.

00:24:14 ◼   ► No, forget it, I'm just gonna use the iPhone here."

00:24:16 ◼   ► And that happened over the weekend too,

00:24:18 ◼   ► when we were traveling.

00:24:19 ◼   ► I was at the airport and they didn't have the free wifi,

00:24:24 ◼   ► they had the pay wifi and then we got on the plane,

00:24:27 ◼   ► but they were still boarding people

00:24:28 ◼   ► and I had my iPad would have dropped off a wifi network,

00:24:33 ◼   ► but it was still on the cellular network.

00:24:34 ◼   ► And it just, you know, this is the thing

00:24:39 ◼   ► that I didn't really get to experience before,

00:24:43 ◼   ► which is when all the data is pooled

00:24:45 ◼   ► and it's the same whether it's on your iPad

00:24:47 ◼   ► or on your iPhone, and you prefer the iPad

00:24:50 ◼   ► for certain things and you've got the iPad with you,

00:24:52 ◼   ► then you just don't worry about it anymore.

00:24:54 ◼   ► And I love that about it,

00:24:56 ◼   ► that $10 a month is worth it to me,

00:25:01 ◼   ► I've already seen, just to have that level of flexibility.

00:25:05 ◼   ► If I was paying more or paying as I went

00:25:09 ◼   ► and having to engage every time I wanted to use it

00:25:11 ◼   ► and sign up or buy credits or whatever,

00:25:13 ◼   ► I would feel different about it.

00:25:15 ◼   ► I will say this is not,

00:25:17 ◼   ► even though the iPad has an Apple SIM,

00:25:18 ◼   ► this is not the Apple SIM.

00:25:20 ◼   ► I got AT&T to send me a SIM first

00:25:22 ◼   ► because that was really easy and it was the SIM,

00:25:25 ◼   ► You basically, my carrier, I can just say,

00:25:27 ◼   ► "Send me a SIM for this tablet."

00:25:29 ◼   ► And they're like, "All right."

00:25:30 ◼   ► And then it's already on the account.

00:25:32 ◼   ► Literally all I did was pop it in.

00:25:33 ◼   ► And it goes, "Boop, AT&T, you're ready to go."

00:25:35 ◼   ► It knows who I am, it knows the account, I'm done.

00:25:38 ◼   ► The other thing is AT&T does something in the US

00:25:40 ◼   ► that's terrible, which is if you use an Apple SIM with AT&T,

00:25:44 ◼   ► it's permanently locked to AT&T from then on,

00:25:47 ◼   ► which is not cool.

00:25:49 ◼   ► And it's the only carrier, I believe, that does that.

00:25:52 ◼   ► Which means, yeah, if you've got one of those software SIMs

00:25:55 ◼   ► in the new iPad Pro, you can do it, but at that point, the software Apple SIM is locked

00:26:01 ◼   ► permanently and if you want another carrier, you have to use the SIM tray again, which

00:26:05 ◼   ► is why there's still a SIM card slot, even though there's an Apple SIM, because, yeah,

00:26:10 ◼   ► boo. So, anyway, that's my story.

00:26:12 ◼   ► So, I was going to say, I love Cell Connection on my travel iPad because it has an Apple

00:26:17 ◼   ► SIM in it, right? And for that reason, it makes a lot of sense to me because no matter

00:26:22 ◼   ► or where I am, I can just get a data plan.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So I've used it in Europe, I've used it in the US,

00:26:28 ◼   ► I've used it in the UK.

00:26:29 ◼   ► It takes a little while, it is slow,

00:26:31 ◼   ► that process of signing it up as you say,

00:26:33 ◼   ► and it can be a bit frustrating.

00:26:35 ◼   ► But I only ever get cell connection in the iPad

00:26:39 ◼   ► that I take out with me,

00:26:41 ◼   ► because I then have the flexibility

00:26:43 ◼   ► of being able to get connections wherever I am

00:26:46 ◼   ► without needing to go and buy a SIM card.

00:26:49 ◼   ► So I've been a big fan of it in the smaller of my iPads.

00:26:52 ◼   ► I got it in my 10.5, which is I'm pretty sure the iPad

00:26:56 ◼   ► that I'm gonna take with me on my long trip this year.

00:26:58 ◼   ► And I'll be able to just get as much data as I need

00:27:00 ◼   ► whenever I need it, and I really like it for that.

00:27:03 ◼   ► So it's perfect for me for traveling.

00:27:05 ◼   ► But if I had a situation like yours

00:27:07 ◼   ► where I had this like poor data plan, multiple SIMs,

00:27:09 ◼   ► I would totally have that when I'm at home as well.

00:27:11 ◼   ► Like that's great, like that's a great thing.

00:27:13 ◼   ► But with the amount of international travel I do,

00:27:15 ◼   ► the Apple SIM is perfect.

00:27:17 ◼   ► Like it's fantastic.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I absolutely love it.

00:27:20 ◼   ► And before the Apple SIM,

00:27:22 ◼   ► cellular connection in my iPad

00:27:23 ◼   ► never really made sense for me.

00:27:25 ◼   ► - Right, well in fact, I have on my old 12.9,

00:27:30 ◼   ► I have an Apple SIM,

00:27:31 ◼   ► it shipped with, the 12.9 shipped with a physical Apple SIM.

00:27:35 ◼   ► And on the new models, they have the Apple SIM built in.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And what that means is,

00:27:39 ◼   ► if you're in a situation like mine, on the new models,

00:27:42 ◼   ► you've got an AT&T SIM in the slot,

00:27:45 ◼   ► and you've got the Apple SIM.

00:27:47 ◼   ► and you can travel somewhere and you want a new carrier,

00:27:50 ◼   ► you use the Apple SIM.

00:27:51 ◼   ► - Well, that's interesting. - On the older model,

00:27:53 ◼   ► you would pop in an Apple SIM or somebody else's SIM,

00:27:56 ◼   ► which is a little less fun.

00:27:57 ◼   ► - That's cool though, that you've had the option.

00:28:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, and like I said,

00:28:02 ◼   ► I think that's the reason that the SIM card is there

00:28:03 ◼   ► is that they know that some carriers, AT&T,

00:28:07 ◼   ► might lock that Apple SIM never to be unlocked again.

00:28:12 ◼   ► So you gotta have both. - That's so dumb.

00:28:14 ◼   ► - It is, I don't know why they're doing it.

00:28:16 ◼   ► It's so hostile.

00:28:17 ◼   ► So egregious, like how dare you?

00:28:19 ◼   ► And nobody else is doing it.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Like they could say, oh, well, it's a security issue

00:28:22 ◼   ► or whatever, but it's like nobody else does that,

00:28:24 ◼   ► just AT&T as far as I can tell.

00:28:26 ◼   ► So maybe there are other mean carriers in other countries,

00:28:29 ◼   ► but my understanding is in the US that it's AT&T

00:28:31 ◼   ► that locks the Apple SIM.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Makes it forever in AT&T SIM.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Similar thing, I bought an unlocked iPhone

00:28:38 ◼   ► direct from Apple and EE locked that iPhone to them.

00:28:46 ◼   ► My carrier EE locked it, like they locked it to them.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Um, and I didn't know until I was already in America and trying to use another sim

00:28:55 ◼   ► that they'd done that.

00:28:56 ◼   ► And I remember I was, I don't know if I've ever been more mad a company than I was for

00:29:04 ◼   ► this because it was just like, this is my phone that I bought, but yet you think you

00:29:10 ◼   ► can lock it.

00:29:11 ◼   ► Like, I don't understand why you think that that's a thing.

00:29:13 ◼   ► And then I had to wait a week for them to do it.

00:29:15 ◼   ► But by the time I was at home, I made them pay me not a lot of compensation money, but

00:29:22 ◼   ► the over £150 that I did in roaming data, I didn't pay.

00:29:26 ◼   ► I took that complaint like further and further up the chain of command in their customer

00:29:32 ◼   ► service team until they wiped it for me.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Because I was like, there's no way I'm paying this.

00:29:35 ◼   ► I'm not paying this.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Like I had a SIM.

00:29:37 ◼   ► You wouldn't let me use it because for some reason you thought that it was okay to just

00:29:40 ◼   ► lock my phone that I paid for outright with my own money to your network when you have

00:29:45 ◼   ► absolutely no rights to do that in my opinion. Whether they do or they don't they ended up

00:29:51 ◼   ► bending to my angry will. So yeah I think that's incredibly obnoxious of a company to

00:29:59 ◼   ► think that they can do that. So I'm happy that Apple are seeing through this. I mean

00:30:04 ◼   ► honestly, honestly I wish that the iPhone could have an Apple sim. Like I wish they

00:30:09 ◼   ► could find a way to do that, I would be so happy if they could do that.

00:30:15 ◼   ► So as well as your revelations for, I've got such a big smile on my face right now, as

00:30:21 ◼   ► well as your revelations with cell connectivity on your iPad, over this weekend you sent me

00:30:28 ◼   ► a message and you asked me for my recommendations for to-do apps.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Now this has been a long running theme of the show in which I cannot fathom how you

00:30:41 ◼   ► are able to run all the things that you run being the busy man that you are using just

00:30:46 ◼   ► a calendar and the occasional reminder. Like you use no to do application, no like OmniFocus

00:30:53 ◼   ► or Todoist or things or anything like that. And really the reminders list that you have

00:30:57 ◼   ► is not like a huge thing. It's more like just a list of like a checklist of stuff that you

00:31:02 ◼   ► might want to do in the future, right? Like you have an idea for a thing, for an article

00:31:06 ◼   ► and you put it in reminders, if I remember correctly.

00:31:09 ◼   ► >> Yes. >> And so you sent me this message and you

00:31:13 ◼   ► asked about a to-do app. So I guess first off, what made this change in your mind?

00:31:22 ◼   ► >> Well, so I had a moment and some of this has to do with what, you know, what the business

00:31:27 ◼   ► of what we do is we think about how we use technology, right? That's part of what we

00:31:33 ◼   ► do. I don't go through life using my computer. Ideally, I don't go through life using my

00:31:39 ◼   ► computer, using my smartphone, using my tablet, right? And just kind of do my stuff, right?

00:31:45 ◼   ► I'm always working on this other level, which is, why did I do that? Why do I feel this

00:31:52 ◼   ► way? What's the motivating factor for behaving this way? Like, I try to analyze what I'm

00:31:56 ◼   ► doing because behind that is this idea of like, if this is an interesting insight, a

00:32:02 ◼   ► moment of insight, I should file this away because I probably could write about it at

00:32:06 ◼   ► some point. So that happens. That's a meta level on which I use technology that is because

00:32:12 ◼   ► I write about technology. So yeah, like that's impossible for me to get a new device and

00:32:16 ◼   ► just start using it for fun. I also have to open an Apple note and start writing down

00:32:23 ◼   ► all of my thoughts about what it s like to use it, right? Like, you know, if I get a

00:32:27 ◼   ► new phone, the first thing I do is go to Notes and start a new note that says like iPhone

00:32:33 ◼   ► 7 impressions and then I just start writing stuff down as it s happening to me, you know?

00:32:37 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. I literally have it happen where I do something or I have this moment where

00:32:43 ◼   ► I observe somebody in my family doing something and I m like, let me write that down. In my

00:32:47 ◼   ► reminder story ideas list, that s where I put it because it s like that s kind of an

00:32:51 ◼   ► interesting insight because you're looking for those insights anywhere you can. It's

00:32:55 ◼   ► a little bit like a writer of fiction having an idea and writing down their story idea.

00:33:01 ◼   ► It's very much like that where something will bubble up, you notice something. And if you

00:33:05 ◼   ► don't do this for a living, you don't have to do that, right? But I have to do that.

00:33:09 ◼   ► You have to do that because we talk about this stuff. So I had a moment last week where

00:33:15 ◼   ► I was going away for the weekend and had a bunch of stuff to do as I always do. And I

00:33:23 ◼   ► had a moment where I thought, wow, I have a real collection of things that need to be

00:33:27 ◼   ► done in a certain order. And I thought, you know, I'm not going to use a calendar to track

00:33:35 ◼   ► these things. Like there are some of them were on a calendar because it's like, you

00:33:40 ◼   ► need to post this on this day, or this is when you record this podcast, but there was

00:33:44 ◼   ► a collection of items. And I thought, "This is why people have to-do lists, is because

00:33:49 ◼   ► there's a collection of items." And while sometimes in my life I felt like I don't really

00:33:53 ◼   ► have a collection of items, I just have a series of milestones that happen every week.

00:33:59 ◼   ► In this moment, I felt like I could see the collection of items that needed to be on a

00:34:04 ◼   ► to-do list, which I normally can't see. So that was the moment where I said, "Oh, well,

00:34:10 ◼   ► If I'm ever gonna try a to-do list, this is probably the right time because I have things

00:34:16 ◼   ► to put on a to-do list.

00:34:18 ◼   ► So then I send you a Slack message and I said, "Okay, Myke, what should I use for my to-do

00:34:22 ◼   ► list?"

00:34:23 ◼   ► So are you feeling any increased pressure as well that's making you go down this route,

00:34:31 ◼   ► do you think?

00:34:32 ◼   ► Or...

00:34:33 ◼   ► I think not.

00:34:36 ◼   ► I think this is mostly because, you know, talking, talking about summer again, I think

00:34:43 ◼   ► that my usual schedule is not being, is not consistent right now because it's summer and

00:34:56 ◼   ► there's lots of people taking trips and things.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And so there's many moving parts.

00:35:01 ◼   ► And so things are sliding around on the schedule and there are things that, that in my brain

00:35:05 ◼   ► I could be like, "Oh, it's about the time of the month when I do this," or "On this

00:35:09 ◼   ► day I do this," that suddenly like, "No, you have to do it earlier," or "You can't do it

00:35:13 ◼   ► now, you have to do it later," or things like that, where there's enough stuff that's not

00:35:18 ◼   ► happening like a well-oiled machine that it's starting to get messier. And so for me, that's

00:35:22 ◼   ► sort of the pressure.

00:35:23 ◼   ► And your conception of time changes, which makes it more tricky to use and remember the

00:35:28 ◼   ► calendar, you know, because if you're on vacation or you're traveling, it can mess around with

00:35:33 ◼   ► kind of your internal clock a bit.

00:35:35 ◼   ► we're talking on a Tuesday but I know for the rest of this day I'm gonna think

00:35:39 ◼   ► it's Monday because I talked to you on Monday morning and we're talking on

00:35:42 ◼   ► Tuesday morning because I spent Monday morning in San Diego and that was great

00:35:45 ◼   ► but here we are that's gonna mess me up maybe for the rest of the week right but

00:35:51 ◼   ► certainly today because I'm gonna my brains gonna be thinking it's Monday

00:35:54 ◼   ► when it's not and if I'm internalizing everything based on that I'm gonna be in

00:35:59 ◼   ► trouble so so in to do is I put in a bunch of those things that are like

00:36:03 ◼   ► that collection of things I needed to do last week and put them on dates and all that. And

00:36:11 ◼   ► then I made some recurring events to try and get ahead of some of the things that also

00:36:17 ◼   ► would be a good example of, well, like to plan for download. And this is a good example

00:36:21 ◼   ► where it's sort of day-based, and so I could put that again on a calendar, but it would

00:36:26 ◼   ► seem really dumb. But it's like on Tuesday I want to make sure that we are working on

00:36:31 ◼   ► the guests and make sure we've got guests slotted for download. And on Wednesday, I

00:36:35 ◼   ► want to make sure that we've got the topics ready for download. And Thursday, we record

00:36:39 ◼   ► the show. I'm not so worried about that. There'll be a time in my calendar for when we record.

00:36:44 ◼   ► But there are some milestones, Tuesday and Wednesday, every week to get us to Thursday.

00:36:49 ◼   ► And those aren't really calendar events, right? They're just, "On Tuesday, you should do this

00:36:55 ◼   ► so that you're ready on Thursday." And so I put those in too. And so that's what I'm

00:37:01 ◼   ► trying right now is to get that and see how that works for me.

00:37:07 ◼   ► And so from a system perspective, you're setting up projects and stuff like that?

00:37:13 ◼   ► I have not set up projects yet because that is a premium feature and I'm not yet using

00:37:17 ◼   ► the, I think there's a premium trial that I can try, which I may do now that I'm back

00:37:21 ◼   ► from my long weekend.

00:37:22 ◼   ► I might turn that on because I want to get the most out of that.

00:37:25 ◼   ► I like the idea of the projects because that's something you and I have talked about before

00:37:29 ◼   ► that actually intrigued me.

00:37:30 ◼   ► That was part of my intrigue here was the ability to say, "Here are all the steps

00:37:36 ◼   ► that need to happen when a project happens."

00:37:39 ◼   ► So that when I make a new project, it sort of creates all the items that need to happen

00:37:43 ◼   ► as a part of that project.

00:37:45 ◼   ► And when I need to do that, I will try that.

00:37:48 ◼   ► But I'm not quite there yet.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Your download project could be really interesting, right?

00:37:52 ◼   ► Because there's like a bunch of things that you have to do, and some of them you can't

00:37:54 ◼   ► do until other things are done, right?

00:37:56 ◼   ► there are some interesting parts in that which could be fun.

00:38:00 ◼   ► - It could be, I'm not sure it's that complicated.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Like I said, I feel like in some ways,

00:38:05 ◼   ► these are the milestones, which is get the guests,

00:38:07 ◼   ► get the topics, do the show.

00:38:09 ◼   ► And it's a weekly show, so really it's just

00:38:12 ◼   ► get the guests every week, pick the topics every week,

00:38:15 ◼   ► do the show every week.

00:38:16 ◼   ► It's three weekly to-dos essentially,

00:38:18 ◼   ► or two weekly to-dos and a calendar item

00:38:20 ◼   ► for when we schedule the recording, and that's it.

00:38:22 ◼   ► - Are you doing anything to categorize,

00:38:24 ◼   ► like to put the tasks into buckets?

00:38:27 ◼   ► - So I put, I did some categorization,

00:38:29 ◼   ► but I've gotta be honest,

00:38:30 ◼   ► the categorization feels like busy work to me.

00:38:32 ◼   ► And I sorta regret it,

00:38:34 ◼   ► and I think I'm gonna probably remove the categorization

00:38:37 ◼   ► because it's more work to categorize them.

00:38:39 ◼   ► This is when I used things several years ago,

00:38:41 ◼   ► I felt the same way,

00:38:42 ◼   ► which was it was fun to categorize things,

00:38:44 ◼   ► but I felt it was meaningless

00:38:45 ◼   ► because I'm never saying,

00:38:47 ◼   ► I'm not somebody who's like,

00:38:48 ◼   ► "Okay, I only wanna see what work I'm doing on X."

00:38:51 ◼   ► It's like, I have work to do.

00:38:53 ◼   ► it's comes from a bunch of different buckets.

00:38:54 ◼   ► I've got to do all of it.

00:38:56 ◼   ► So I feel no need to focus in on just show me

00:38:59 ◼   ► the relay stuff or just show me the incomparable stuff

00:39:01 ◼   ► or just show me the writing stuff.

00:39:03 ◼   ► I have to do all of them.

00:39:05 ◼   ► So I don't think that necessarily adds any value for me.

00:39:10 ◼   ► And that's something that I'm being wary of

00:39:11 ◼   ► as we've talked about.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Something I'm being wary of here is adding structure

00:39:15 ◼   ► like what you said about projects, like I can add structure

00:39:19 ◼   ► but if the structure doesn't give me any benefit,

00:39:22 ◼   ► I should not bother with it.

00:39:24 ◼   ► - Because this will be one of the things

00:39:26 ◼   ► that pushes you away from keeping it going.

00:39:29 ◼   ► - Exactly right, because the last thing I want

00:39:32 ◼   ► is to have that,

00:39:36 ◼   ► is to have all that stuff push me over the edge

00:39:41 ◼   ► of feeling like I'm doing more work

00:39:43 ◼   ► on maintaining my to-do list than I am doing the work.

00:39:47 ◼   ► - So I'll say, for as long as I used OmniFocus,

00:39:51 ◼   ► I never used any projects or anything like that.

00:39:53 ◼   ► When I switched to Todoist, I started doing it

00:39:55 ◼   ► and I'm happy that I do it now,

00:39:56 ◼   ► but the rest of my system is so baked in at this point

00:39:59 ◼   ► that adding that little bit of extra was fine for me.

00:40:02 ◼   ► But the reason I didn't do it was because I was concerned

00:40:05 ◼   ► for a long time that it would make it more frustrating

00:40:08 ◼   ► to add stuff in.

00:40:09 ◼   ► And from moving from Only Focus to Todoist,

00:40:12 ◼   ► it's way easier to add this stuff to Todoist,

00:40:14 ◼   ► which is why I started doing it anyway,

00:40:16 ◼   ► 'cause you can just add it all in text

00:40:18 ◼   ► and the natural language picks it all up.

00:40:21 ◼   ► Right, there it just like, you put like a little hash symbol

00:40:23 ◼   ► and then you start typing the name of your project

00:40:25 ◼   ► and it's pretty filled for you, right?

00:40:27 ◼   ► So that was why I started doing it there.

00:40:29 ◼   ► And I'm happy I do it for the benefits that I get,

00:40:31 ◼   ► but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it

00:40:33 ◼   ► if you're just starting out.

00:40:35 ◼   ► Like if you think it's gonna be a friction point for you,

00:40:38 ◼   ► then don't do it because it might then stop you

00:40:41 ◼   ► from keeping it going.

00:40:44 ◼   ► So I've recommended you try to do this

00:40:46 ◼   ► because one, it's an app that I use every single day

00:40:48 ◼   ► and I really like it, but also it's free.

00:40:52 ◼   ► Like you originally said to me,

00:40:53 ◼   ► oh, should I try OmniFocus?

00:40:54 ◼   ► And I mean, I can't recommend that you do that

00:40:57 ◼   ► because it's expensive to get in the door

00:41:00 ◼   ► if you're only gonna use it for a week, right?

00:41:02 ◼   ► 'Cause it's all paid up front and right.

00:41:04 ◼   ► I don't know if the OmniGroup have trials,

00:41:07 ◼   ► they might have trials now,

00:41:09 ◼   ► like using the subscription system,

00:41:11 ◼   ► but I don't know off the top of my head,

00:41:13 ◼   ► but really like as well,

00:41:14 ◼   ► I think that for the reasons that I switched from OmniFocus to Todoist, I think you would

00:41:19 ◼   ► enjoy all the stuff that you can do with their API, like tying it into stuff like Zapier

00:41:24 ◼   ► and IFTTT. If you get involved in this, I think you would get a lot of use out of that,

00:41:30 ◼   ► even if it is just tying it to your calendar, which you might find really useful. So if

00:41:36 ◼   ► the incomparable event is on your calendar, add a "edit the incomparable task to Todoist".

00:41:44 ◼   ► I can imagine that you might enjoy some of that sort of stuff. So that was why I recommended

00:41:48 ◼   ► Todoist to you.

00:41:49 ◼   ► All right, maybe, but again, I'm going to approach everything with like, I want this

00:41:54 ◼   ► to be as minimal effort as possible. And that goes back to, I feel like this is almost turning

00:41:58 ◼   ► into Cortex at this point, but I will say that, that for me, I'm putting on my maybe

00:42:05 ◼   ► CGP Grey, persnickety hat a little bit right now, which is, there is a level beyond which

00:42:13 ◼   ► it's not worth putting in the effort because it is wasteful

00:42:16 ◼   ► and I'm trying to be really attentive to the idea

00:42:20 ◼   ► that just because I can do something

00:42:22 ◼   ► doesn't mean that it will actually save me any time.

00:42:24 ◼   ► And it may be that my right to do list application

00:42:28 ◼   ► and system is incredibly minimal,

00:42:32 ◼   ► or it may be that I start minimal

00:42:34 ◼   ► and then there's a moment where I realize,

00:42:35 ◼   ► oh, you know what, I'm doing double entry here.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And if I can make this set up to do single entry,

00:42:40 ◼   ► that will actually save me time.

00:42:42 ◼   ► but I'm just very wary of falling down that pit

00:42:45 ◼   ► of becoming somebody who is a person

00:42:49 ◼   ► who maintains a to-do list and gets things done

00:42:52 ◼   ► because they're on the to-do list,

00:42:53 ◼   ► and that's not the point.

00:42:54 ◼   ► The to-do list is meant there to enable me

00:42:57 ◼   ► to do what I need to do, not the other way around.

00:42:59 ◼   ► And I do see that as a hole that people I know

00:43:04 ◼   ► have fallen into, and it doesn't work for me.

00:43:07 ◼   ► - I 100% agree with that.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And again, I'm not suggesting you do any of these things,

00:43:11 ◼   ► But if you're asking me for a recommendation, I would recommend Todoist because I want to

00:43:17 ◼   ► make sure that you are future-proofed if you decide that you want to pursue it further.

00:43:22 ◼   ► This is one of the reasons.

00:43:23 ◼   ► If you decide you want to continue down this route, then I recommend Todoist now because

00:43:29 ◼   ► it has those tools in case you want them in the future.

00:43:32 ◼   ► I have some real-time follow-up from CGP Grey who says, "Start with paper and pen.

00:43:40 ◼   ► You don't know what you need in an app until you've used the most basic of basic systems.

00:43:44 ◼   ► No, take my advice on this one.

00:43:46 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:43:47 ◼   ► Alright, don't listen to him.

00:43:49 ◼   ► Because I know--

00:43:50 ◼   ► Wait, are you steering me away from pens, Myke?

00:43:51 ◼   ► Myke, are you steering me away from using a pen?

00:43:54 ◼   ► I want you to use a to-do system.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I know you don't like paper and pen, so I recommend to-doists to you, right?

00:44:01 ◼   ► Alright.

00:44:02 ◼   ► Now, I know I had a-- because you invoked his name, I had a fear that he was listening

00:44:07 ◼   ► to this right now.

00:44:08 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:44:09 ◼   ► name of the appears. Don't you know what the old stories, the ancient stories about Gray?

00:44:13 ◼   ► Some follow up which he can, I may be out there somewhere in the live world.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:44:19 ◼   ► Because you said that, you know, putting on your Gray Pusnickety hat, he is as much as

00:44:23 ◼   ► me in the idea of automating this stuff, right? Because the idea being, it's the double entry

00:44:27 ◼   ► thing, if it's on your calendar and your to-do app can actually add it to your list, he's

00:44:33 ◼   ► sending me messages now, I can have it do that.

00:44:35 ◼   ► - I get that.

00:44:36 ◼   ► I just, I had my little internal voice of Gray say,

00:44:40 ◼   ► you know, what you, because when I think of him,

00:44:42 ◼   ► one of the things I think about him and it's trade I like,

00:44:44 ◼   ► is that he's very adamant about certain things.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Like he's the kind of person who's like,

00:44:49 ◼   ► no, if it can't do this, I'm not going to do it.

00:44:52 ◼   ► And I, that's sort of in the back of my mind about this.

00:44:55 ◼   ► It's like, I need to have that kind of hard rule of like,

00:44:58 ◼   ► it needs to serve me, I need to not serve it.

00:45:02 ◼   ► It needs to be as little work as possible

00:45:04 ◼   ► and gain benefit from me.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And I am not one of these, look,

00:45:08 ◼   ► if you're somebody who likes playing with productivity apps,

00:45:11 ◼   ► - I do. - More power to you.

00:45:13 ◼   ► I hate it, I don't want them in my life.

00:45:16 ◼   ► I only wanna use them at a remove

00:45:20 ◼   ► just to do the barest essential for me.

00:45:23 ◼   ► But I agree with you, I think pencil and paper

00:45:25 ◼   ► or pen and paper would not be a great choice for me

00:45:29 ◼   ► because I have so many recurring events

00:45:31 ◼   ► and I wanna be able to cross them off.

00:45:33 ◼   ► and I don't want to keep making a new list where I just write the same things from the

00:45:36 ◼   ► previous week again, right? So for me, having it be digital just so that I can say, look,

00:45:42 ◼   ► here are these steps in doing download and they're weekly and that is something that's

00:45:47 ◼   ► more effectively done on the computer than on paper, I think.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I recommend pen and paper for a lot of people that are starting at this point,

00:45:56 ◼   ► but like I just don't think that it is the best way for you personally. I mean, plus

00:46:01 ◼   ► as well, you know, when it's digital it's everywhere, it's on all your devices, right,

00:46:04 ◼   ► you don't have to do anything.

00:46:06 ◼   ► It's true, although I was a little reluctant about that, I have to say, because so much

00:46:09 ◼   ► of what I do is on my Mac that I have put Todoist on my iPhone and my iPad, and that's

00:46:16 ◼   ► good, but I was reluctant because it's sort of like, I kind of want it in the context

00:46:21 ◼   ► of sitting down at my desk and doing work. The reality is I've had a couple, well, the

00:46:25 ◼   ► reality is that I checked a couple final things as done on Friday afternoon and then shut

00:46:31 ◼   ► down my computer and the shutdown preceded the sinking of the data to Todoist. So over

00:46:36 ◼   ► the weekend I get this email from Todoist saying, "You have two things you haven't done!"

00:46:41 ◼   ► Interesting. "Panic!" And I'm like, "I did those things, what are you talking about?"

00:46:45 ◼   ► And then I downloaded Todoist on my iPhone so I could check those boxes again and be

00:46:50 ◼   ► like, "Silence. Be done." I say straight up, "Turn the email reminders off." Yeah, yeah.

00:46:56 ◼   ► But here's the thing that is interesting is that having it on my phone or my iPad does

00:47:00 ◼   ► allow me to go, one, it's like, "Oh yeah, do I need to do that today? Oh, I do." And

00:47:05 ◼   ► it also allows me to be like, "Oh, you know what I need to do?" and put it in right then.

00:47:09 ◼   ► It's the quick entry that makes it really useful.

00:47:11 ◼   ► So I kind of want it not in my life when I'm away from my working, but just like writing

00:47:15 ◼   ► down something to remember it later about like, "Here's an interesting story idea,"

00:47:19 ◼   ► having a thing where you realize you are owed something that you haven't put in your personal

00:47:23 ◼   ► tracker yet, and putting it down so that you can forget about it and know that it's going

00:47:27 ◼   ► pop up when you need it. I think that's good.

00:47:34 ◼   ► You know, my other criticism, and maybe it's something that this thing can do, but my other

00:47:37 ◼   ► criticism of it is that I have internally this concept of things that are due on a certain

00:47:42 ◼   ► day, but need to be addressed. Imagine this, like, you have to turn in your term. My kids

00:47:49 ◼   ► struggle with this. Kids, oh boy. Where it's like, you've got a huge project. It's going

00:47:54 ◼   ► to take, let's say, three full days after school to do. Four full days after school

00:48:00 ◼   ► to do. And what do my kids do? They're like, "Oh, that project is due Friday." And then

00:48:04 ◼   ► Thursday night they're like, "Oh my God, there's so much to do!" And it's like, "Yeah, this

00:48:09 ◼   ► is not the time to start the project. You should have started it sooner." So for me,

00:48:12 ◼   ► I'll have that where I'll like, I have a story to do, but this story's going to take more

00:48:15 ◼   ► time. It's going to take a week to do it. It's going to take several days to do it.

00:48:20 ◼   ► So I need to be reminded earlier that it's due. And that's a challenge that I have had,

00:48:27 ◼   ► at least in starting to use something like Todoist, where what I really want to do is

00:48:29 ◼   ► say this story is due on this day, tell me about it sooner. And its reaction seems to

00:48:36 ◼   ► be like, I'll tell you about it the day it's due. And it's like, okay, well then it's on

00:48:40 ◼   ► me to look ahead and see what's due several days out. You're a computer. You should be

00:48:44 ◼   ► able to tell me a week beforehand or five days beforehand, you have this thing that

00:48:50 ◼   ► needs to be done then that you need to start now. And it doesn't seem to have that conception.

00:48:57 ◼   ► There are ways in which you can set up different types of reminders to occur at different intervals

00:49:03 ◼   ► before but you kind of have to do that to the tasks. And you can also set up defaults

00:49:08 ◼   ► but they're not like multiple days before, it would be like 30 minutes before or an hour

00:49:12 ◼   ► before. Like there's a way to do some of this stuff, but maybe not to the level at which

00:49:17 ◼   ► you would like.

00:49:18 ◼   ► The way, the way, other way to do it is to say this story is due Friday is a reminder

00:49:22 ◼   ► for, is a to-do for Wednesday, which is dumb, but that's a way to do it. It's just, it's

00:49:27 ◼   ► something that I've come into where, where the concept of to-do items doesn't necessarily

00:49:31 ◼   ► follow from some of the stuff I do. Or you're breaking it up into start working on it now

00:49:36 ◼   ► and then finish working on it then, which is not quite the same.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Yeah, like what you can do, there is like a little alarm clock button and you can click that and you

00:49:44 ◼   ► can add reminders to tasks which can be like a week in advance or something and there's probably

00:49:49 ◼   ► ways to do this via their entry system, like their text entry system where you just type a command

00:49:54 ◼   ► something out a week before but yeah there's maybe not the flexibility to to do that automatically.

00:50:00 ◼   ► I mean one thing that I do and I think a lot of people that use these apps do to take advantage

00:50:04 ◼   ► of like the next seven days thing. I mean, so I spend quite, I spend an amount of time

00:50:09 ◼   ► every day. And again, this is very system heavy, I will agree, but I'm just saying like,

00:50:13 ◼   ► just so you know how I work my systems. I spend quite a lot of time in the seven day

00:50:19 ◼   ► thing, reviewing what's coming up, moving things around as necessary, picking off tasks

00:50:23 ◼   ► that can be done in advance, that kind of thing. But this again, this is very, this

00:50:28 ◼   ► is very late into you having a system, I think, before you would start thinking about it in

00:50:33 ◼   ► this way. The best thing for you to be doing right now is just to be putting things in

00:50:37 ◼   ► as they're coming to you, seeing how you're reminded, and refining if you're going to

00:50:41 ◼   ► turn this into a thing that you want to use in the long term.

00:50:44 ◼   ► Well, we'll see how it goes. I don't want to get anybody's hopes up. I have done this

00:50:49 ◼   ► before, and generally they go unused and abandoned in short order.

00:50:53 ◼   ► Which means it's not for you, and that's fine.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm giving it a go.

00:50:56 ◼   ► I'm just pleased you're trying, honestly.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:59 ◼   ► I worry about you Jason because I just don't understand. As I said it before,

00:51:05 ◼   ► like you're such a busy man, you're only getting busier. I just can't, I just think it can't be

00:51:13 ◼   ► good to keep all that stuff mostly floating out in the world like waiting for you to be like,

00:51:19 ◼   ► "Oh, it's Wednesday, I've got to do..." You know, I have found to have this system which I know has

00:51:27 ◼   ► got the stuff in, it just makes me feel better. And a lot of people I know are this way, you

00:51:31 ◼   ► might not be wired that way. And that's cool, because like, if you can deal with it your

00:51:35 ◼   ► way, like do with it your way. But like, I'm just hoping that this makes your working life

00:51:40 ◼   ► more comfortable in a way that you hadn't imagined yet. And that will make me very happy.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Yeah. And we'll see. I think, like I said, the reason that the calendar thing happens

00:51:51 ◼   ► is not because I am a lunatic who thinks that I can just make a bunch of events in all day

00:51:57 ◼   ► events in my calendar for every single item I need to do. That's not really it, but it

00:52:02 ◼   ► stems from the fact that a lot of the things I need to do are literally "be here at this

00:52:07 ◼   ► time" or "do this thing" I mean again, I do have some of those like "post this thing on

00:52:11 ◼   ► this day" it's calendar related but it's also what to do. So trying to make it, trying to

00:52:16 ◼   ► back out of that a little bit is one of the things that I'm hoping to at least try here

00:52:20 ◼   ► so that instead of looking at my calendar and saying "oh yes that thing is due next

00:52:24 ◼   ► Wednesday because there's an all day event that says it's due next Wednesday because

00:52:28 ◼   ► it's like a posting schedule. I put in something that backs it out and says make sure this

00:52:32 ◼   ► thing is ready to go. And you know that's so it's it's can I get those things to work

00:52:36 ◼   ► in concert with one another and there was something nice about and this is why I was

00:52:40 ◼   ► driven to do this the that next seven days view of being able to say I realize I need

00:52:45 ◼   ► to do this I don't need to do it right now but I do need to do it by this date and putting

00:52:49 ◼   ► it in the list so I can see it's coming up, but not what I have to do today so that I

00:52:54 ◼   ► do get that satisfaction of checking those boxes at the end of the day or as I go through

00:52:59 ◼   ► the day and saying, "I did all the things I needed to do today." But I want to be

00:53:03 ◼   ► wary about it taking too much time because that's not my goal. It's not a video game

00:53:08 ◼   ► that I play. It is just a blunt tool to try and get me to stay on track.

00:53:14 ◼   ► And that is 100% the right attitude to take.

00:53:17 ◼   ► If you have enjoyed this discussion and you do not listen to either Cortex or Free Agents

00:53:22 ◼   ► or Mac Power Users on Relay FM, there may be some shows that you may enjoy adding to

00:53:28 ◼   ► your list because they're shows that approach working and process and tools and the way

00:53:35 ◼   ► that we use them.

00:53:36 ◼   ► So there's a handful of different show suggestions for you if this type of thing is of interest.

00:53:40 ◼   ► All right, I think it's Ask Upgrade time.

00:53:42 ◼   ► But first, let me take a moment.

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00:54:49 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Encapsular for the continued support of this show and Relay FM.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Alright, Jason Snell, our first question this week comes from Dave.

00:54:58 ◼   ► Dave asked, with the proposed higher prices for the next iPhone, would it make sense if

00:55:04 ◼   ► AirPods came in the box?

00:55:06 ◼   ► What are your thoughts?

00:55:07 ◼   ► I don't know, I have to say I had never thought about this before, but if you're

00:55:11 ◼   ► gonna make a high-end iPhone that has, that costs a lot more money but is super

00:55:16 ◼   ► awesome and the like the best most cutting-edge thing Apple can provide, if

00:55:22 ◼   ► they, if you got like a jet black iPhone 8 or iPhone Pro with jet black AirPods

00:55:29 ◼   ► in the box, I don't know, that's actually a really fun idea. I'm not sure Apple

00:55:34 ◼   ► would do it just because those people have a lot of money and why would you

00:55:37 ◼   ► take an extra $150 out of their pocket in addition to their iPhone, but it's a fun idea

00:55:43 ◼   ► of saying this is the maxed out, totally awesomest iPhone ever, but they probably won't do it

00:55:50 ◼   ► because if you've got enough money to buy the high end iPhone, you've got enough money

00:55:54 ◼   ► to buy AirPods 2.

00:55:58 ◼   ► I think that this is the only time that it has ever made sense to bundle AirPods, right?

00:56:05 ◼   ► there is a potential high price but I still don't think it's gonna happen.

00:56:10 ◼   ► I think that this idea makes sense right now because we haven't seen the iPhone

00:56:16 ◼   ► so like giving it that high price tag we can justify it in our minds by saying

00:56:23 ◼   ► oh we get AirPods as well. Because I expect that this phone will tell

00:56:29 ◼   ► all these Apple will try to make it tell such a good story that will pay whatever

00:56:33 ◼   ► whatever the price is. And that they won't need to put AirPods in the box because the

00:56:38 ◼   ► phone's going to be so desirable that we'll pay whatever it's going to be. And then they

00:56:42 ◼   ► continue to make extra money. There's a couple of other thoughts I had on this. AirPods are

00:56:46 ◼   ► already hard enough for Apple to make. If they continue to have issues with production

00:56:51 ◼   ► of AirPods, they're not going to start holding up iPhones. And they're also struggling to

00:56:55 ◼   ► just sell enough of them anyway. So to make enough of them to sell, I should say. So why

00:57:00 ◼   ► I cut out like millions and put them right in the box?

00:57:04 ◼   ► - Your item in our, not to read verbatim

00:57:07 ◼   ► from the notes that we use to do the show,

00:57:08 ◼   ► but your item is perfect,

00:57:10 ◼   ► which is Apple doesn't need to put them in the box

00:57:11 ◼   ► so they won't.

00:57:12 ◼   ► That's it, that's exactly it.

00:57:14 ◼   ► Why do it?

00:57:15 ◼   ► And you're right.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Then you mean you have to have enough AirPods

00:57:18 ◼   ► to put in the box, even if people don't want them.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And bottom line, if Apple wants to sell you AirPods

00:57:24 ◼   ► and they want to sell you one.

00:57:26 ◼   ► But it's a fun idea.

00:57:27 ◼   ► I like that.

00:57:28 ◼   ► I like the fun idea. - Oh yeah.

00:57:29 ◼   ► like the super special edition special box iPhone that comes with all of the

00:57:35 ◼   ► goodies but I don't I don't think so. Including AirPods that you can't buy right

00:57:39 ◼   ► like black ones. Like I said the black ones yeah oh yeah no if you're gonna do

00:57:43 ◼   ► it if you're gonna do it you see all that you sell the black it's the black

00:57:47 ◼   ► iPhone Pro it only comes in black it's jet black it's got jet black AirPods

00:57:50 ◼   ► it's got jet black just like AirPods not EarPods but AirPods it's got a jet

00:57:56 ◼   ► black charger, jet black cables and it probably comes with both a USB-C and a

00:58:01 ◼   ► USB-A cable right and you just you just it is the edition right.

00:58:06 ◼   ► It almost reminds me of the original iPhone right the original iPhone came with tons

00:58:10 ◼   ► of stuff in the box. You got like a dock and everything right like it was

00:58:15 ◼   ► just like it felt like more of a big thing and I expect that they might go

00:58:20 ◼   ► down some of this route right with some of those other things that you mentioned

00:58:23 ◼   ► But I I don't think air pods will be one of them

00:58:25 ◼   ► I think we're multiple years away before air pods are included in the box one day

00:58:30 ◼   ► I believe they will but I don't think we're close to that day yet

00:58:32 ◼   ► Okay, no partly asked Jason and I wonder if you have any information about this from

00:58:39 ◼   ► the

00:58:41 ◼   ► the device that you bumped into somewhere in

00:58:43 ◼   ► San Jose well home pods be good for home cinema setups. Do you know anything about this? I?

00:58:52 ◼   ► I know enough to say no based on what my understanding is because it's a mono speaker with some different

00:59:00 ◼   ► speakers that try to separate things out based on frequency in order to feel like it fills

00:59:06 ◼   ► the room.

00:59:07 ◼   ► So if by good you mean can I pair it with an Apple TV over Bluetooth and have it play

00:59:13 ◼   ► my audio from my Apple TV?

00:59:20 ◼   ► maybe but Apple has said nothing about trying to make this into something that

00:59:25 ◼   ► would be considered a home theater or you know TV related thing and it's not

00:59:30 ◼   ► gonna like connect to your other devices I think so I I'm sure somebody will hook

00:59:37 ◼   ► an Apple TV up to a home pod and a TV screen and use it that way but I don't

00:59:44 ◼   ► think this is how Apple intends it to be used and it's not going to be able to

00:59:48 ◼   ► generate, again, could they use those speakers to try to generate some

00:59:52 ◼   ► directionality? They could, but when I asked the sand people, the Jawas who

00:59:58 ◼   ► were standing in the secluded glade on Tatooine about stereo versus mono,

01:00:03 ◼   ► what they said was, you know, basically it's mono. They're not trying to

01:00:09 ◼   ► take the stereo signal and do directionality with it. That might change

01:00:12 ◼   ► because I think it's all happening in the software, and they do have multiple

01:00:15 ◼   ► speakers in that pod, but I don't think that's what they're planning. They could get there.

01:00:20 ◼   ► It wouldn't shock me if down the road there was something that was, if this product does

01:00:26 ◼   ► well, that there was something that was a little bit more like the Sonos Playbar kind

01:00:30 ◼   ► of thing where it was actually intended to integrate the HomePod experience into your

01:00:35 ◼   ► home or the ability to place multiple HomePods in different places for a different sort of

01:00:39 ◼   ► surround effect, but that seems a long way off.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Our next question comes from Todd, last name withheld.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Should I do anything special with my photos.app library or on any of my devices

01:00:53 ◼   ► before turning on iCloud Photo Library for the first time?

01:00:56 ◼   ► Um, I think... Hi Todd. Aloha.

01:01:01 ◼   ► Um, I think you don't need to, although it's always good to have a backup of your photo library,

01:01:08 ◼   ► right? You should have a backup of your photo library.

01:01:11 ◼   ► So if you've got a backup of it, I think you're doing okay.

01:01:13 ◼   ► I don't think iCloud Photo Library is going to destroy your library.

01:01:16 ◼   ► I would say you turn it on and make sure that, um, that it's set to keep all your

01:01:20 ◼   ► photos locally, at least at the start, and then let it sync.

01:01:23 ◼   ► And I think it'll be fine, but I will just say more generally, um, always have a

01:01:28 ◼   ► backup.

01:01:29 ◼   ► Like I always had a backup on an external drive or a different computer in my

01:01:32 ◼   ► photos library, because you don't want to lose those photos.

01:01:35 ◼   ► And, and, you know, you just, you don't ever want to have put yourself in a

01:01:38 ◼   ► a situation where there's only one device that has your photo library on it.

01:01:42 ◼   ► So, but I don't think you need to do anything special. Just make sure you've got a backup

01:01:47 ◼   ► and then flip the switch.

01:01:49 ◼   ► Jim asked, "Should I reformat my external drive I use for Time Machine backups to the

01:01:54 ◼   ► new APFS? Will Time Machine backups run faster?"

01:01:58 ◼   ► I think, I think what we know about High Sierra is that they're not making any of these changes

01:02:07 ◼   ► right now in Time Machine, I would not be surprised if it happens eventually, right?

01:02:14 ◼   ► I would not be surprised if Time Machine backups run are dramatically improved by APFS someday,

01:02:26 ◼   ► and it might not even be in next year's release. It could even be in an interim release where

01:02:33 ◼   ► they turn that on. Like, they don't want to do it now. They're going to get APFS out there

01:02:36 ◼   ► on the Mac now and then they're going to do a Time Machine update that is not

01:02:40 ◼   ► necessarily a part of what comes after High Sierra. So I think it will

01:02:45 ◼   ► happen, it's inevitable, because APFS appears to be basically built for it for

01:02:49 ◼   ► those who don't know and don't listen to Accidental Tech Podcast and haven't

01:02:52 ◼   ► talked about file systems.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Ding! The idea here is that Time Machine does a lot of weird stuff with hard links

01:03:02 ◼   ► on a hard drive in order to reference files that didn't change, and there's a

01:03:05 ◼   ► bunch of stuff in APFS including these instant snapshots that basically let the file system

01:03:11 ◼   ► say these files are the same as these files. They're the same and they don't have to deal

01:03:18 ◼   ► with it so there's not as much churning on the disk for stuff like that. It only tracks

01:03:21 ◼   ► what's changed. So I think it does have some potential advantages there and it has a lot

01:03:28 ◼   ► of potential advantages for on-device time machine that they are building in now where

01:03:32 ◼   ► in terms of tracking changes in your files in the short term. But for running on a backup,

01:03:41 ◼   ► the answer is not yet, but maybe someday. I wouldn't go ahead and jump to APFS on your

01:03:46 ◼   ► backup drive now, because as far as I have heard, it doesn't do anything yet.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think you can do it. So on Connected this week, Steven gave a complete overview

01:03:58 ◼   ► of High Sierra, as he's seen it so far.

01:04:01 ◼   ► Hi, Sierra.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Hi, Sierra.

01:04:03 ◼   ► We were talking about Time Machine

01:04:04 ◼   ► and it seems like from what he was saying,

01:04:06 ◼   ► it will back up stuff from APFS drives,

01:04:10 ◼   ► but it will, like from volumes,

01:04:12 ◼   ► but it will back them up to HFS+ still.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Like it won't back them up to APFS,

01:04:16 ◼   ► so I don't actually think you can.

01:04:18 ◼   ► Interesting, yeah.

01:04:19 ◼   ► So this is the thing is, my guess is that yeah,

01:04:22 ◼   ► they're building a version of Time Machine

01:04:24 ◼   ► that takes full advantage of APFS

01:04:26 ◼   ► because it is like APFS was built in part

01:04:29 ◼   ► to do better Time Machine backups, right?

01:04:31 ◼   ► it's very clear that that was one of the ideas behind this whole thing. And they will get

01:04:35 ◼   ► there, but they're not there yet.

01:04:37 ◼   ► I think that's the right move.

01:04:39 ◼   ► So just wait.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Yeah, just wait. There's no time.

01:04:41 ◼   ► They will be -- time machine backups, I think, are going to be awesome once APFS and time

01:04:46 ◼   ► machine work together. I think it's going to be a much more efficient system than the

01:04:49 ◼   ► hack that's in place now where, you know, the time machine backup starts up and you

01:04:52 ◼   ► hear the disks start to go click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click,

01:04:55 ◼   ► click, click, click. All right. Not so much anymore. That'll be good.

01:05:00 ◼   ► Michael has asked, I've been wearing a steel Apple Watch since the launch but I've only

01:05:04 ◼   ► ever met one other person with one. Have you seen many in the wild?

01:05:08 ◼   ► So I would say, even at WWDC, only a handful of the steel. I see way more of the various

01:05:16 ◼   ► models of sport. I think it's clear that that one is the most popular, like the aluminium

01:05:21 ◼   ► ones and all the different aluminium colours. And I don't think that it's necessarily just

01:05:25 ◼   ► for price. I expect it's for price for many people. But like for me and for many people

01:05:30 ◼   ► that I know, it's a taste thing. Like, I just prefer the way the aluminium ones look. And

01:05:36 ◼   ► I know a bunch of people that have the steel ones. Steven has one. I think Federico did.

01:05:41 ◼   ► I don't know if he still does.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Lauren has one. Lauren's Apple Watch is a stainless.

01:05:46 ◼   ► And I guess I know it's like a different thing, different taste thing, but I would say that

01:05:49 ◼   ► I definitely see way more of the aluminium than the steel.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Yeah, oh sure, because it's cheaper and it looks great. I mean, mine's aluminum and I

01:06:01 ◼   ► think it's beautiful. I have the aluminum black in my series too, and I love it. I really

01:06:06 ◼   ► love it. Yeah, when I was getting Laura in her Apple watch, I asked her to like, we looked

01:06:11 ◼   ► at the Apple store and like, what did she like in terms of just the look of it, because

01:06:18 ◼   ► it was basically a birthday present for her.

01:06:20 ◼   ► And I wanted to, I knew that if it was just on price,

01:06:26 ◼   ► she would get the aluminum one

01:06:28 ◼   ► because the stainless one costs more.

01:06:31 ◼   ► And, but so I tried to take it out of the equation

01:06:34 ◼   ► and just sort of gauge her feelings about the look of it.

01:06:37 ◼   ► And she really liked the stainless.

01:06:39 ◼   ► I would not have bought the stainless for myself

01:06:42 ◼   ► if price were no object, honestly,

01:06:44 ◼   ► because I don't like how it looks on me

01:06:47 ◼   ► as much as I like the black aluminum. But she liked the stainless so we got the stainless

01:06:52 ◼   ► for her. But I think I would imagine that it's scales, you could probably do a chart

01:06:59 ◼   ► of sales if you were inside Apple in terms of stainless versus aluminum and it's probably

01:07:05 ◼   ► proportional to the price delta.

01:07:10 ◼   ► And finally today, Sana asked, "Would you want a future version of the 12.9 inch iPad

01:07:15 ◼   ► Pro to have a larger screen in the same physical size or a smaller body with the same screen

01:07:23 ◼   ► size. So basically we want the screen to go to the edges with the size being the same

01:07:28 ◼   ► or do we want the bezels to come in around the screen.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Imagine a bezel-less 12.9 iPad Pro. What do you imagine? The existing shape with the bezels

01:07:41 ◼   ► out and replaced by screen or the existing screen with the bezels pushed

01:07:46 ◼   ► in so the iPad is smaller. Mm-hmm. What do you think? Easy answer for me. I want

01:07:52 ◼   ► the dimensions of the iPad to be smaller without sacrificing the screen. A bigger

01:07:56 ◼   ► screen would be nice but my biggest problem with the 12.9 is that it's kind

01:08:01 ◼   ► of a load. It is a big thing and so for me I'm not gonna give up my 12.9

01:08:07 ◼   ► and switch to the 10.5 as nice as the 10.5 is. So I would love it if my 12.9 got a little

01:08:14 ◼   ► bit smaller.

01:08:16 ◼   ► I want the opposite.

01:08:19 ◼   ► I knew you would. I knew it.

01:08:22 ◼   ► I would want my 12.9 to stay the same size, even the same weight, but the screen to get

01:08:27 ◼   ► bigger. This is because I am the multi-pad person. I live the multi-pad lifestyle. I

01:08:33 ◼   ► have a home iPad and an outdoors iPad. So my outdoors iPad is the small one. And if

01:08:38 ◼   ► I'm going to have an iPad at home, I want it to be as big as it can be and still be

01:08:42 ◼   ► movable around the house. And so like a potential like, I don't know, like 14 inch, 15 inch,

01:08:47 ◼   ► maybe screen in the same part size, right, would be, oh my God, I would love it, right?

01:08:53 ◼   ► It would only be better for me. So that's where I would like to go. But if we got the

01:08:57 ◼   ► other version, I would also still be happy, right? Like I would also still be happy with

01:09:01 ◼   ► but my ideal situation would just be a bigger screen, because I would love that.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Yeah, makes sense. And I think that may be the more mainstream opinion, honestly. For me,

01:09:10 ◼   ► I want the bigger screen than the 10.5, but I would like it to be as compact as possible,

01:09:15 ◼   ► because it is a little bit... But I see the appeal of a larger screen. It's just for me,

01:09:19 ◼   ► I think I would go the other way. Okay, so after this break, we are going to talk about

01:09:25 ◼   ► Spider-Man Homecoming with an extra special mic at the movies, but before we do, let me take a

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01:11:41 ◼   ► Blue Apron, a better way to cook. So let the spoiler horn ring out.

01:11:48 ◼   ► We are about to talk about Spider-Man Homecoming, which I saw this weekend.

01:11:52 ◼   ► Jason, of course, has an episode of The Incomparable Up, which will undoubtedly be better than

01:11:58 ◼   ► whatever Spider-Man related nonsense I'm about to spew, because I haven't taken any notes

01:12:05 ◼   ► when watching the movie, as I would usually do during a mic at the movies, so this is

01:12:08 ◼   ► purely based upon me seeing this a couple of days ago.

01:12:11 ◼   ► But I just wanted to talk about some of the things that I was excited about.

01:12:15 ◼   ► I said this before on the show, Spider-Man is and has always been my favorite superhero.

01:12:20 ◼   ► I got Spider-Man fatigue with the Andrew Guy food Spider-Man movies. I just saw the first

01:12:25 ◼   ► one of them and I'd kind of, I'd seen it too many times by then and I was just getting

01:12:31 ◼   ► sad about it honestly because I love Spider-Man and I felt like he wasn't being treated well

01:12:36 ◼   ► enough. Because he's such a great hero, right? And appeals to so many people. One of the

01:12:43 ◼   ► of reasons that Sony picked them up and wouldn't let him go, right? And they kept trying to

01:12:47 ◼   ► do it because, you know, at least those first ones, the first ones with Tobey Maguire, they

01:12:52 ◼   ► were great, right? Like Spider-Man 1 and 2?

01:12:54 ◼   ► Yes. They were.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Really great movies. You know, I think really, you know, set the stage for the ability to

01:12:59 ◼   ► Marvel to do what they've done because these Spider-Man movies were such a success.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Those original Spider-Man movies, because we just did a podcast about, it's not out

01:13:10 ◼   ► about Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. And Batman and Robin came out like three years before

01:13:15 ◼   ► Spider-Man. This is Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. And Batman and Robin is literally like the stake

01:13:19 ◼   ► through the heart of superhero movies. And then Spider-Man is the reinvigoration of superhero

01:13:24 ◼   ► movies. And you could make a strong argument that Sam Raimi's Spider-Man is the movie that set the

01:13:31 ◼   ► template and kicked off a modern wave of good superhero movies that we're still kind of living

01:13:38 ◼   ► in. You could argue it. It's not necessarily something that I would, I think it's debatable

01:13:45 ◼   ► but I think that it's possible, certainly that it did that. Those first two Spider-Man

01:13:49 ◼   ► movies are very good. Spider-Man 2 is frequently cited as one of the very best superhero movies

01:13:55 ◼   ► ever made.

01:13:56 ◼   ► Steve - Yeah, I mean, even Spider-Man 3 which wasn't as good was still, it was still pretty

01:14:01 ◼   ► good. But it was okay. It was definitely the weaker of the three that had some really bad

01:14:07 ◼   ► moments in it but wasn't like an overall disaster but like it just had some some really dumb

01:14:12 ◼   ► parts I think it was an overall disaster.

01:14:15 ◼   ► Okay. Maybe you've seen it more recently than me right like maybe this is what it is and

01:14:20 ◼   ► I'm looking at this with rose-tinted glasses but the number one thing that I was worried

01:14:25 ◼   ► about and probably my number one favorite thing of this movie is they were just like

01:14:29 ◼   ► origin story what origin story there's literally a line where Peter's friend Ned says to him

01:14:37 ◼   ► "Dude, you were bitten by a radioactive spider."

01:14:40 ◼   ► And he's like, "Yeah, I was.

01:14:41 ◼   ► "Well, maybe get me that spider."

01:14:43 ◼   ► And he says, "The spider's dead, dude.

01:14:44 ◼   ► "Like, leave it alone."

01:14:46 ◼   ► - And so is Uncle Ben.

01:14:47 ◼   ► - And there's no Uncle Ben.

01:14:48 ◼   ► There's really literally a line where he says,

01:14:51 ◼   ► "After all that May has been through,

01:14:54 ◼   ► "I don't wanna burden her with this."

01:14:56 ◼   ► And that's it.

01:14:56 ◼   ► That's the, you know, she's there.

01:14:57 ◼   ► There's no uncle, and she's there alone, but that's it.

01:15:00 ◼   ► It's not in there.

01:15:02 ◼   ► And I, as a lifelong, there will be purists who'll be like,

01:15:05 ◼   ► "But that's the core of the character."

01:15:06 ◼   ► Like, as a lifelong Spider-Man fan, good call.

01:15:10 ◼   ► I don't need to see it again. - Yeah, no more, no more.

01:15:12 ◼   ► - We don't need it.

01:15:13 ◼   ► And instead, his origin story is essentially

01:15:17 ◼   ► that he was in "Civil War II," or "Civil War,"

01:15:19 ◼   ► which we all saw, "Captain America Civil War."

01:15:21 ◼   ► - Do you know I haven't seen it?

01:15:22 ◼   ► I don't know why.

01:15:24 ◼   ► I thought I'd seen it.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Right? (laughs)

01:15:28 ◼   ► - The good news is, it's a good movie, I liked it a lot,

01:15:30 ◼   ► but the good news is, Myke,

01:15:31 ◼   ► that the Spider-Man part gets recounted here

01:15:33 ◼   ► at the beginning of "Spider-Man" oncoming.

01:15:34 ◼   ► I mean look I've seen the trailer so like I've also already seen it. I don't honestly

01:15:40 ◼   ► I think because I've seen the trailer. I thought I'd seen the movie. Yeah

01:15:44 ◼   ► I don't know why this had happened to me because I've seen all of them, right? I think it's a movie

01:15:49 ◼   ► I haven't seen Doctor Strange and I haven't seen civil also a good movie

01:15:53 ◼   ► But like they're on my list and so I'm gonna watch time time to get to those. Yes, absolutely

01:15:57 ◼   ► Well something was very exciting to me

01:15:59 ◼   ► This is the first Marvel movie that Idina has seen other than actually I say other than the two Guardians of the Galaxy

01:16:05 ◼   ► All right, and we left this and she was like I would watch some more. I'm like great. There's loads of them

01:16:11 ◼   ► We'll go back to Iron Man right and so yeah, I think we're gonna maybe actually it was out you should watch dr.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Strange with her I think I think she would like that I like that movie a lot. Okay good

01:16:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I know again like I I have only not seen it because I haven't seen it not because I don't want to if that

01:16:26 ◼   ► make sense right and it doesn't require any real knowledge of any Marvel stuff

01:16:31 ◼   ► unlike this totally does this was why I'd taken her to see Guardians of the

01:16:36 ◼   ► Galaxy and took her to see this movie because I figured Guardians of Galaxy

01:16:39 ◼   ► especially because I knew that but also even though I knew there would be some

01:16:42 ◼   ► crossover with spider-man that it wouldn't we weren't gonna see the

01:16:46 ◼   ► Avengers all popping up for the entire movie where I had to explain like 15

01:16:49 ◼   ► characters to her right right she's interested now in seeing the next

01:16:54 ◼   ► Avengers movie because she liked Spider-Man, she liked Guardians of the Galaxy, she likes

01:16:58 ◼   ► the idea of those characters all being in a movie together. Well, I'm like, well, we're

01:17:01 ◼   ► going to have to watch more. Like if you want to go and see that movie next year, you really

01:17:06 ◼   ► need more backstory. So we're considering going through some of them. But so whilst

01:17:10 ◼   ► we didn't get an origin story, we did get really good parts of the movie of him learning

01:17:15 ◼   ► his capabilities of Spider-Man. Because and this is all hidden up in the suit, right?

01:17:20 ◼   ► Like he knows how to be Spider-Man, he knows how to shoot webs, he knows how to climb walls,

01:17:24 ◼   ► what he doesn't know is what this suit can do for him right and I like how

01:17:27 ◼   ► even throughout the whole movie like he's going through this because the suit

01:17:33 ◼   ► continues to get more powerful the suit gets more abilities so he learns more

01:17:38 ◼   ► and it's done in a really great way which I really liked and the whole

01:17:42 ◼   ► Karen voice this is something that's new to me I don't recall well anything that

01:17:48 ◼   ► I any comics that I've read and this may be something that exists in some part of

01:17:53 ◼   ► of the the comic book lore. I don't know of of Spider-Man having a Jarvis-like assistant.

01:18:00 ◼   ► I assume that somewhere throughout the whole Iron Man like thing there is a there is a there is a

01:18:06 ◼   ► brief moment in the comic book lore where where Peter Parker gets a Tony Stark designed suit which

01:18:13 ◼   ► they call the Iron Spider that this is kind of hinting at but not really the same at all. I think

01:18:19 ◼   ► I think the idea here is that movie viewers know that Iron Man has a suit that talks to

01:18:26 ◼   ► him.

01:18:27 ◼   ► And so if you're going to have Spider-Man be given a suit by Tony Stark, there is this

01:18:32 ◼   ► assumption that maybe it's an Iron Man suit essentially, which is what they play with

01:18:36 ◼   ► when the kid hackers, which is a little bit ridiculous, disengage all the safety protocols

01:18:42 ◼   ► and turn on the full span of the suit.

01:18:44 ◼   ► But I don't recall reading a story like this.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Although I really, my favorite thing about them having Tony Stark build him a suit is

01:18:50 ◼   ► it explains how he could get a suit that looks so good because that's never really well explained

01:18:53 ◼   ► in Spider-Man lore.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And it allows that, in Civil War they explain like he's got special, instead of wearing

01:19:00 ◼   ► goggles he's got these eye holes that can telescope and things like that.

01:19:05 ◼   ► But what that does, that little trick, is it allows the movie Spider-Man suit to do

01:19:09 ◼   ► what the comic book Spider-Man suit does, which is his eyes on his mask are expressive.

01:19:15 ◼   ► makes sense in the comics but when you try to do that in real life action it

01:19:22 ◼   ► doesn't work like the physics of it doesn't work it's all about like

01:19:25 ◼   ► comic-book artists adding expressivity to spider-man's mask and so in this they

01:19:31 ◼   ► get it because they say it's a you know it's a special high-tech suit that can

01:19:36 ◼   ► adjust the eyes based on what Peters doing inside the suit which is you know

01:19:41 ◼   ► whatever, it's tech explanation, you know, for magic things that happen, but in the end it allows,

01:19:46 ◼   ► it gives them the freedom to style the face of Spider-Man and have it be expressive even when

01:19:53 ◼   ► he's in the suit, and it looks great. So that's a reason for it. The, yeah, the AI thing is not

01:20:00 ◼   ► really taken from anywhere, but it's good because it shows he's totally out of his depth, and it's

01:20:06 ◼   ► useful in the story because it gives him at several points when he's alone it gives him

01:20:10 ◼   ► someone to talk to. That's one of the reasons I really liked it and you know it I think they added

01:20:16 ◼   ► just a different dimension which I just really enjoyed it I thought it was a really smart

01:20:20 ◼   ► addition. I think the the iron spider suit is what is what Tony has for him at the end of the movie

01:20:27 ◼   ► right like that's what that is. It's like a super souped up um yeah super souped up suit. Because

01:20:36 ◼   ► 'cause it's also got the bigger golden spider on it, right?

01:20:39 ◼   ► Which he, in the comics, I believe he gets like,

01:20:42 ◼   ► after Civil War, right, when they kind of align.

01:20:45 ◼   ► - Yes, or during, I think it's maybe even

01:20:47 ◼   ► during the Civil War or right before,

01:20:49 ◼   ► and it's one of the reasons that Peter aligns with him

01:20:51 ◼   ► in the comics. - He gives him

01:20:53 ◼   ► the cool suit.

01:20:54 ◼   ► - So it sounds like that in the previews

01:20:57 ◼   ► for that new Avengers movie, that this is,

01:21:00 ◼   ► that's where they're going with that,

01:21:02 ◼   ► like Tony trying to soup up what Spider-Man does.

01:21:06 ◼   ► But I like that, in fact, at the end of the movie,

01:21:09 ◼   ► one of the great things that happens is

01:21:12 ◼   ► when Peter rejects Tony's,

01:21:14 ◼   ► like we're gonna have you move into the Avengers complex

01:21:16 ◼   ► and just not be a student anymore

01:21:20 ◼   ► and not be living at home with Aunt May

01:21:22 ◼   ► and I'll give you this super high-tech suit

01:21:24 ◼   ► that he leaves.

01:21:26 ◼   ► And I like that because

01:21:28 ◼   ► we haven't even mentioned Michael Keaton yet,

01:21:29 ◼   ► but I like that Michael Keaton, you know,

01:21:33 ◼   ► he gives that speech that's a really great speech

01:21:35 ◼   ► about like, these guys don't care about us,

01:21:37 ◼   ► we're the little guy, and he's not wrong.

01:21:39 ◼   ► He's not wrong, he's a great villain speech

01:21:41 ◼   ► because it is not like you listen to it and go,

01:21:46 ◼   ► he's a madman.

01:21:47 ◼   ► It's like, oh, I see why his worldview

01:21:49 ◼   ► leads him to do what he does, which is a great,

01:21:51 ◼   ► that's what I want from a villain is,

01:21:53 ◼   ► I want a villain who makes sense.

01:21:55 ◼   ► So he says that, and then when Peter turns down Tony,

01:21:57 ◼   ► I cannot help but think of the echo of the vulture speech,

01:22:01 ◼   ► which is, you know, these guys,

01:22:03 ◼   ► you're not like these people, you belong back in Queens.

01:22:08 ◼   ► And I like that he gets his sort of regular suit back

01:22:11 ◼   ► at the end.

01:22:12 ◼   ► So he still gets like what Tony gave him originally,

01:22:14 ◼   ► but not the super high-tech tricked out Avengers thing

01:22:17 ◼   ► that he had on display at the press conference.

01:22:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, he's gonna need that with Thanos, right?

01:22:24 ◼   ► You'll need it, but right now he does.

01:22:25 ◼   ► - Right, not yet.

01:22:26 ◼   ► as Tony I love that Tony did it the friendly neighborhood spider-man like I

01:22:30 ◼   ► like the way they work that in that was real nice I like that a lot

01:22:34 ◼   ► let's touch on Michael Keaton just one I mean amazing right of course the guy

01:22:39 ◼   ► you know everybody knows for a career renaissance right now right which I guess

01:22:43 ◼   ► started with Birdman yeah you know he's got you know he's one of those those

01:22:49 ◼   ► actors that like later in life has found a new level of success every villain is

01:22:53 ◼   ► the hero of their own story and you see it with Michael Keaton. He is a hero. He takes

01:22:58 ◼   ► the injustice of having the government and Tony Stark take away his business and he uses

01:23:04 ◼   ► the alien tech that he scrounged to build a new business and buy a nice house and take

01:23:08 ◼   ► care of his family and then he reacts when the family is threatened. And he gives that

01:23:14 ◼   ► speech. He is the hero of his own story. His motivations are reasonable. He is as realistic

01:23:21 ◼   ► a villain as you're ever going to find in a superhero movie.

01:23:24 ◼   ► And I love it.

01:23:25 ◼   ► Doesn't really feel like an intrinsically bad person.

01:23:29 ◼   ► He's just a guy who does some things that are questionable, but the motives are decent.

01:23:33 ◼   ► He's made some bad decisions in the name of taking care of his family.

01:23:38 ◼   ► He kills someone by accident, right?

01:23:40 ◼   ► Like he kills an guy by accident.

01:23:41 ◼   ► Yeah, he does.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Which is kind of funny.

01:23:43 ◼   ► But he doesn't seem too broken up about it, though, to be honest.

01:23:45 ◼   ► I know, because he's like, "Well, what are you going to do?"

01:23:48 ◼   ► And then like, you know, he, because Peter saved his daughter's life, he won't kill him,

01:23:54 ◼   ► right?

01:23:55 ◼   ► Won't kill him.

01:23:56 ◼   ► He's like, I'm going to let this go.

01:23:57 ◼   ► Just don't come for me.

01:24:01 ◼   ► And you know, he's like, the plane doesn't have any humans on it.

01:24:05 ◼   ► And he knows that, right?

01:24:06 ◼   ► Like the plane that he hijacks.

01:24:08 ◼   ► And then obviously right at the end of the movie, he effectively tries to save Peter's

01:24:12 ◼   ► life because he saved his.

01:24:15 ◼   ► Like, good man put in a bad situation does some bad things.

01:24:19 ◼   ► Right?

01:24:20 ◼   ► And that's what I really loved about the character is this is not normal because even in usual

01:24:25 ◼   ► superhero movies, even if it's a regular person, which is how it tends to be now, that gets

01:24:30 ◼   ► put into some kind of situation or something happens to them, they just become evil.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Right?

01:24:35 ◼   ► And then that's just how they deal with their stuff.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Right?

01:24:38 ◼   ► Liz, I want to talk about Liz because you tweeted something that intrigued me.

01:24:44 ◼   ► I knew it would get you.

01:24:46 ◼   ► You knew it was going to come for me.

01:24:49 ◼   ► You compare Liz to Diane from Say Anything, and I would like you to expand on that a little

01:24:54 ◼   ► bit.

01:24:55 ◼   ► Okay, so the background story is that the people who wrote this movie, including John

01:25:00 ◼   ► Francis Daley, who played Linda Cardellini's little brother in Freaks and Geeks, which is

01:25:04 ◼   ► kind of amazing, and Martin Starr, who is one of the other geeks in Freaks and Geeks,

01:25:09 ◼   ► is in this movie as the science teacher.

01:25:11 ◼   ► And of course, the connections are amazing

01:25:15 ◼   ► 'cause of course James Franco was in "Freaks and Geeks"

01:25:17 ◼   ► and he was Harry Osborn in the earlier "Spider-Man" movies.

01:25:19 ◼   ► And Linda Cardellini from "Freaks and Geeks"

01:25:22 ◼   ► is Hawkeye's wife in "Age of Ultron".

01:25:27 ◼   ► Oh, the connections are amazing.

01:25:28 ◼   ► And one of the screenwriters of this movie

01:25:30 ◼   ► is the kid brother.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Anyway, they said that they modeled this movie

01:25:35 ◼   ► after a John Hughes movie, especially "The Breakfast Club".

01:25:39 ◼   ► And you can totally see it.

01:25:40 ◼   ► like the group of kids in the high school,

01:25:43 ◼   ► like the girl who we end up discovering is MJ.

01:25:48 ◼   ► - Where everyone in my screening was like,

01:25:50 ◼   ► "Oh!" when that happened.

01:25:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, but she's so Ally Sheedy kind of,

01:25:55 ◼   ► and you got the popular girl,

01:25:57 ◼   ► and you got the kind of bully,

01:25:59 ◼   ► and I mean, it is very,

01:26:01 ◼   ► they said they were inspired by 80s movies,

01:26:04 ◼   ► and I can feel it.

01:26:05 ◼   ► And in fact, some of the reviews I've read,

01:26:06 ◼   ► I don't entirely agree with this

01:26:07 ◼   ► because I really liked all of it,

01:26:09 ◼   ► but some of the reviews have said it's a fine superhero movie,

01:26:12 ◼   ► but it's a great high school movie.

01:26:15 ◼   ► And I can see where they're coming from

01:26:16 ◼   ► because the high school stuff really lends,

01:26:18 ◼   ► it makes this more than just another superhero movie.

01:26:21 ◼   ► There is this whole other layer

01:26:23 ◼   ► that is exactly what you want out of a Spider-Man movie

01:26:25 ◼   ► in my mind is that other layer of his life

01:26:28 ◼   ► as a regular high school student

01:26:29 ◼   ► and how does he balance them

01:26:31 ◼   ► and how does being Spider-Man kind of mess

01:26:32 ◼   ► with his regular life.

01:26:34 ◼   ► But the movie that I haven't seen cited

01:26:37 ◼   ► because it's not a John Hughes movie and I just suddenly realized when we were

01:26:40 ◼   ► when I was editing The Incomparable, in fact, not even when we were talking about it,

01:26:43 ◼   ► I made a reference to Say Anything in the movie or in the podcast and didn't

01:26:48 ◼   ► take it the next step, which is Liz is like Diane Court in Say Anything

01:26:54 ◼   ► in the sense that Diane in Say Anything loves her dad, her dad takes care of her,

01:26:59 ◼   ► and she doesn't have a mom, in this case Liz has a mom, but loves her dad,

01:27:04 ◼   ► dad takes care of her and everything in Diane's house is less than $10,000 in value because

01:27:11 ◼   ► his dad is a tax cheat and an embezzler and he gets sent to prison. And Liz lives in a

01:27:19 ◼   ► nice house and I made the joke on The Uncomparable that it's a nice house but everything in it

01:27:23 ◼   ► costs less than $10,000 because Michael Keaton is a criminal, right? And gets put in the

01:27:29 ◼   ► pokey at the end of the movie. And that was that moment when I went, "Oh yeah, talk about

01:27:33 ◼   ► another reference intentional or not, but I had that moment where I thought Liz is a

01:27:39 ◼   ► brain, she's not a social outcast like Diane is, but she's a brain, she's the captain of

01:27:44 ◼   ► the academic decathlon team that wins the national championship, right? And it's the

01:27:48 ◼   ► most important thing in her life. So although she's beautiful and looks like she would probably

01:27:53 ◼   ► be the most beautiful person at the Arts and Magnet School, she's still a nerd, really,

01:27:59 ◼   ► And her dad is somebody she loves and who takes care of her, but is actually a criminal

01:28:04 ◼   ► and lets her whole family down while he thinks he's taking care of the family.

01:28:08 ◼   ► And the immediate reference I got was to Diane from Say Anything because it felt like the

01:28:12 ◼   ► same sort of story.

01:28:14 ◼   ► So yeah.

01:28:15 ◼   ► You're right.

01:28:16 ◼   ► And I really, as you can imagine, I love the Liz character, right?

01:28:19 ◼   ► Because in my brain...

01:28:21 ◼   ► It's the sport of the future.

01:28:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:24 ◼   ► You mentioned character Michelle, who at the end of the movie says she goes by MJ, which

01:28:29 ◼   ► just just so good and also just like the attitude of that character is not Mary Jane and she is not

01:28:36 ◼   ► red hair right like I love that I love all of that I love everything they're doing there.

01:28:40 ◼   ► The message they're sending is you think you know about Spider-Man's stock characters but you don't

01:28:46 ◼   ► we're gonna do some different stuff and don't don't don't expect what you know don't expect a

01:28:52 ◼   ► red-headed girl to walk in and say face it chapter tiger you just hit the jackpot it's not gonna

01:28:57 ◼   ► happen. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's great. I like the mix with the Miles Morales story

01:29:03 ◼   ► arc with the inclusion of the Ned character. Yeah, because Ned is basically basically

01:29:08 ◼   ► Gank from Miles Morales' story, which is a slightly portly

01:29:14 ◼   ► Asian teenager who is his friend and confidant and knows that he's Spider-Man.

01:29:18 ◼   ► That is right out of the Miles Morales storyline, and it's a great

01:29:22 ◼   ► character and it's great to give him a confidant. And of course at the end, Aunt

01:29:25 ◼   ► May finds out he's Spider-Man too. And this is, that's, that's all right out of the Ultimate

01:29:28 ◼   ► Spider-Man stories about Peter and Miles. And I think that's great because Peter on

01:29:33 ◼   ► his own only knowing, as the only person who knows he's Spider-Man, is kind of boring.

01:29:37 ◼   ► I don't really want him to be known by everybody, but having a bunch of people who know him

01:29:44 ◼   ► and support him leads to better drama, I would say, and a more modern take on it. If you

01:29:49 ◼   ► think about Ultimate Spider-Man or something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, having, you

01:29:53 ◼   ► know team spider-man is a I think a better approach to it and the constant

01:29:58 ◼   ► I mean throughout is great right Marisa Tomei fantastic haunt me Donald Glava

01:30:04 ◼   ► played a great role in the movie yeah he's in two scenes and after the first

01:30:08 ◼   ► scene I was really sad that he wasn't coming back and then he came back for a

01:30:11 ◼   ► great scene where he just wants to get home with his groceries and he's been

01:30:14 ◼   ► webbed to his car yeah and and he gives a nice lecture to to spider-man where

01:30:19 ◼   ► he's like you need to be better at this part of your job because he's a kid and

01:30:22 ◼   ► he has no idea what he's doing.

01:30:24 ◼   ► And the Easter egg there is that Donald Glover's character

01:30:28 ◼   ► that he's playing is, and the reason that he's

01:30:30 ◼   ► in the first scene trying to get some sort of like

01:30:34 ◼   ► thieving equipment, he doesn't want weapons,

01:30:37 ◼   ► he wants like things that let you stick to walls and stuff,

01:30:40 ◼   ► is because his character is in the Marvel canon

01:30:43 ◼   ► known as the Prowler.

01:30:44 ◼   ► He's Aaron Douglas, I think I wanna say his name is.

01:30:47 ◼   ► He's the Prowler, and at one point he mentions to Spider-Man

01:30:51 ◼   ► in that second scene. You're from Queens? My nephew lives in Queens. His nephew is Miles

01:30:57 ◼   ► Morales.

01:30:58 ◼   ► That is awesome.

01:30:59 ◼   ► Yeah, a little tidbit. A little Easter egg.

01:31:01 ◼   ► That's really interesting. Do you reckon I'm going to do something with that?

01:31:04 ◼   ► I don't know. Who knows? Some things are just Easter eggs and if they go with them…

01:31:08 ◼   ► I think the interview I read with the screenwriters basically said, they're like, "Did you

01:31:12 ◼   ► have a plan for the second movie?" and putting these things in there and they're like,

01:31:15 ◼   ► "You know what? Is there going to be a second movie? Are we going to work on the second

01:31:20 ◼   ► movie, what do they want from the second movie? I get the impression that you put in that

01:31:24 ◼   ► stuff as potential threads or fun Easter eggs and you just shrug. I don't think there's

01:31:29 ◼   ► a master plan yet. Now, this movie having done very well, maybe they will bring these

01:31:33 ◼   ► writers back and maybe they will pick up some of those threads, but I don't think they wrote

01:31:37 ◼   ► this with a plan for what the second of these Spider-Man movies would be. I don't think

01:31:43 ◼   ► so. I do think that is a fun tip of the cap to Miles Morales and I like that. Plus, they

01:31:49 ◼   ► the Ned character is right out of Miles' story, which is fun.

01:31:53 ◼   ► >>ANDREW Yeah, and I also just thought that Jon Favreau

01:31:55 ◼   ► and Robert Downey Jr. played their parts perfectly without overshadowing Tom Holland. I think

01:32:01 ◼   ► that they fit into the story well.

01:32:02 ◼   ► >>DAVID These are the--how many dads does he have,

01:32:06 ◼   ► since he doesn't have a dad? He has Jon Favreau, who is sort of his babysitter more than a

01:32:12 ◼   ► dad, but he gives--he's the one he's trying to get approval from. Robert Downey Jr. is

01:32:17 ◼   ► this remote dad who he can't get to. And then he's got Michael Keaton, who's his villain

01:32:25 ◼   ► dad who wants to –

01:32:26 ◼   ► -He has a villain dad, he has money dad, he has babysitter dad.

01:32:30 ◼   ► -Yeah, it's interesting.

01:32:31 ◼   ► -Teacher dad.

01:32:32 ◼   ► -And in the end, despite what we've seen from the beginning, which is being starstruck

01:32:37 ◼   ► by Robert Downey Jr., by Tony Stark, he goes back home. And I like that. I like that choice,

01:32:45 ◼   ► maybe not everything is the Avengers even if he will totally be in the next

01:32:49 ◼   ► Avengers movie like the idea that he's not going to be become a Tony Stark's

01:32:54 ◼   ► like superhero university enrollee number one right he's going to go let be

01:33:01 ◼   ► a regular kid and live a normal life and be Spider-Man and he makes that choice I

01:33:05 ◼   ► really like that too but downy is downy is good and it is a funny gag when when

01:33:10 ◼   ► he when when Pepper Potts opens the door and it turns out there was a press

01:33:14 ◼   ► conference and it wasn't a test and that was pretty funny because I assumed it was a test

01:33:19 ◼   ► and just as Peter did but I do think there was maybe a little too much Downey like maybe

01:33:24 ◼   ► the scenes could have been shorter in the last scene where it's just him and Pepper

01:33:28 ◼   ► it was unnecessary we talked about this on the incomparable but and I got a sense from

01:33:32 ◼   ► it that a little bit of insecurity from Sony and and from Marvel frankly that they needed

01:33:39 ◼   ► a lot of Downey in the movie in order to prop it up and make it feel like a Marvel movie

01:33:43 ◼   ► And in the end, they didn't, but they didn't know that.

01:33:46 ◼   ► I can see the feeling of necessity, just to like really drive home the point that this is

01:33:53 ◼   ► a different Spider-Man and Spider-Man is now a part of this world. And like, you know, ideally,

01:33:58 ◼   ► have a few different characters. Why do you think Chris Evans is in it a bunch, right? Like,

01:34:02 ◼   ► just, you know, just do what you can to show that Spider-Man is a part of this world.

01:34:08 ◼   ► And the plot is about garbage left over from the Avengers, Battle of New York,

01:34:11 ◼   ► right? That's in there at the beginning as a fairly easy, like with the Daredevil and

01:34:15 ◼   ► other Netflix TV shows that have that as a backdrop of, "We're down on the ground in

01:34:20 ◼   ► New York City, but remember when there was this thing, remember the fallout from when

01:34:26 ◼   ► they had this battle in the middle of New York." They continue to mine that without

01:34:28 ◼   ► you really needing to know the continuity other than there was a disaster and a bunch

01:34:32 ◼   ► of alien garbage got left everywhere.

01:34:34 ◼   ► Yeah, like I mean there was this one fight one time

01:34:37 ◼   ► That was so many years ago and like the the Iron Man 3 built on it, right?

01:34:43 ◼   ► Like this movies built on it as you say like the dead of us like is all building on it

01:34:46 ◼   ► It's kind of funny in a way that like and I mean I haven't seen it

01:34:49 ◼   ► But I'm only gonna assume that agents of shield is partly based on the fact that there was this fight in New York

01:34:54 ◼   ► like it is kind of funny like when you think about

01:34:56 ◼   ► superhero movies in general about the fact that there are always fights in New York and there was just this one this one time and then

01:35:04 ◼   ► like so many more movies are pulling from it. Like if you think of the DC universe,

01:35:10 ◼   ► New York has been like, destructed like a billion times over by now.

01:35:14 ◼   ► It's not even New York. It's like Metropolis and Gotham and whatever, it's sort of a fictionalized

01:35:19 ◼   ► but yeah.

01:35:20 ◼   ► Oh yeah, of course. But yeah, anyway, I'm thinking like the Superman movies, right?

01:35:23 ◼   ► Like they just keep getting, Metropolis just keeps getting flattened. Which is kind of

01:35:28 ◼   ► funny.

01:35:29 ◼   ► So yeah, this is a quick thing, like when we left the movie and Dina was like, "We

01:35:33 ◼   ► should see Wonder Woman 2. I'm assuming that this is a good choice, right? People seem

01:35:39 ◼   ► to really like that movie. Because I just said to her, you know, I wasn't initially

01:35:44 ◼   ► enthused to see it because everything else I've seen from the DC universe I haven't enjoyed.

01:35:50 ◼   ► Would you recommend Wonder Woman?

01:35:52 ◼   ► Yes. Yes, unabashedly, and you don't need to know anything about... Here's what you

01:35:57 ◼   ► need to know about other DC movies before you see Wonder Woman. Bruce Wayne met Wonder

01:36:02 ◼   ► woman once and she had a picture of people from World War I. That's it. You didn't really

01:36:10 ◼   ► need to know that because it's in the opening sequence but that's it. Literally the one

01:36:14 ◼   ► thing you need to know is immediately recapped and the rest of the movie happens and you

01:36:18 ◼   ► don't need to know.

01:36:20 ◼   ► Yeah because initially I just naturally assumed I wasn't going to enjoy it because I hadn't

01:36:23 ◼   ► enjoyed any of the other post-good Batmans, you know, like past that Batman trilogy, you

01:36:33 ◼   ► know, I didn't like Superman, Man of Steel, yeah, so I just figured I just wouldn't enjoy

01:36:39 ◼   ► it but it seems like that Wonder Woman's at least broken that curse for the time being.

01:36:46 ◼   ► Alright so, I think that wraps up this week's episode, Jason.

01:36:50 ◼   ► I think so. I think so. Little bonus mic of the movies.

01:36:53 ◼   ► I feel like it's a good thing for episode 150.

01:36:56 ◼   ► Yeah, why not?

01:36:58 ◼   ► Because this is just a, you know, it's a big number.

01:37:00 ◼   ► Yes.

01:37:02 ◼   ► I just want to take a moment to thank all of our listeners.

01:37:04 ◼   ► I think that Upgrade, I'm very proud of the show

01:37:08 ◼   ► and the work that we put into it and

01:37:12 ◼   ► it continues to grow and evolve and change in ways that make me happy.

01:37:16 ◼   ► And I'm excited about, you know, as time goes on and

01:37:19 ◼   ► we add more funny segments and we have our recurring annual episodes and stuff like that.

01:37:25 ◼   ► Like I'm really proud of this show and I'm really proud of how it's grown over time and you know,

01:37:29 ◼   ► so whether you've been here since the beginning or you came as part of the show along the way,

01:37:34 ◼   ► thank you for listening to the show. We really couldn't do it without you being here because

01:37:39 ◼   ► otherwise there'd be nobody to listen. And also, you know, thank you to everybody for their

01:37:43 ◼   ► participation every week, you know, the hashtag Snail Talk, hashtag Ask Upgrade. I never have to

01:37:48 ◼   ► like fight to get that stuff through right like it's always there there's always stuff for me

01:37:52 ◼   ► every week um so thank you to everybody that is a part of the show as well by by their participation

01:37:58 ◼   ► and Jason thank you uh for being here with me every week it's it's a real pleasure well

01:38:05 ◼   ► likewise I'm I'm very glad this was the I was telling somebody this story not too long ago that

01:38:09 ◼   ► that was one of the uh decisions I made first when I knew I was leaving my old job was I wanted to do

01:38:16 ◼   ► a podcast in this format and with Relay starting up, it felt like the obvious thing to do would

01:38:25 ◼   ► be to do that podcast with you at Relay and that has been borne out as a very good decision.

01:38:32 ◼   ► So thank you.

01:38:33 ◼   ► Thanks to our sponsors this week, Blue Apron, Mac Weldon, and Encapsula. You can find Jason

01:38:37 ◼   ► online. He is @Jason now on Twitter, JSNELL. He's over at SixColors.com as well and TheIncomparable.com.

01:38:45 ◼   ► I am @imike, I M Y K E. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jsus now. Goodbye!

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