Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade #72.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by PDF Pen 7 from Smile and Squarespace.

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

00:00:18 ◼   ► Hi Myke, how's it going?

00:00:20 ◼   ► Pretty well, pretty well.

00:00:21 ◼   ► We were just discussing on the live stream before that we're both drinking

00:00:25 ◼   ► caffeinated beverages today during the show, which is irregular, so expect a severe uptick

00:00:32 ◼   ► in energy around topic number one.

00:00:35 ◼   ► It's irregular for you, it's not irregular for me.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, because it's very early for you, isn't it?

00:00:40 ◼   ► It's Monday morning, I always have a cup of tea with me, very British, of course, as I

00:00:45 ◼   ► am.

00:00:46 ◼   ► I always have a cup of tea in the morning to prepare me and to energize me for upgrade.

00:00:52 ◼   ► upgrade.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And I'll take the American coffee in my Portland mug today.

00:00:57 ◼   ► That's fine. See? It's a little, you know, we're going across the Atlantic. It's only

00:01:02 ◼   ► fitting.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Talking about Atlantic and the UK, I bought muffins. English muffins.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Oh no! Okay, muffin vertical. Here we are, muffin vertical. It's very important.

00:01:14 ◼   ► When we were doing the online shopping, I said to Idina, "Can we put muffins in, please?"

00:01:20 ◼   ► they arrived this morning. I haven't eaten them yet. But I'm saying this to close Muffin

00:01:26 ◼   ► Gate now.

00:01:27 ◼   ► That's right. The circle has closed. Myke bought muffins.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Eventually I will eat the muffins, but you will not hear about my opinion.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Toast them, and yes. I'm out of muffins, so we're going to go to the store today, and

00:01:44 ◼   ► one of the things we will buy will be muffins. And that's good, because I miss them for my

00:01:49 ◼   ► breakfast. I'm going to toast them and put jam on them. Oh good, that's a nice one, that's

00:01:54 ◼   ► great. Yeah, it's all good. Jam on a muffin is wonderful. But apparently, as Twitter would

00:02:00 ◼   ► let me know, you say that biscuits, what you call biscuits, which are closer to scones

00:02:06 ◼   ► than the other biscuits, you say that they are superior to English muffins. Oh yeah,

00:02:13 ◼   ► buttermilk biscuits. So buttermilk biscuits, southern style buttermilk biscuits, are fantastic,

00:02:17 ◼   ► And there are many ways to eat them.

00:02:19 ◼   ► And I bake them myself here at home on many weekends.

00:02:23 ◼   ► And they're great, but they're fresh.

00:02:25 ◼   ► You know, fresh homemade anything out of the oven is going to be better.

00:02:28 ◼   ► And those southern biscuits are better.

00:02:31 ◼   ► The difference is that they're really only better right when they're hot and fresh out

00:02:35 ◼   ► of the oven.

00:02:36 ◼   ► And then, you know, when they cool off, they're not as good.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Whereas muffins are good because they're storable and they toast up very well and all that.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Biscuits are fantastic.

00:02:47 ◼   ► But uh, but, and if those of you, we'll put a, we'll put a link in the show notes to my

00:02:54 ◼   ► recipe for those.

00:02:56 ◼   ► I got it already, the little screenshot that you did.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Yeah, from out of Vesper.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, if you're somebody outside of the United States who doesn't even know, they're

00:03:03 ◼   ► kind of like scones, but they're not, they're not, uh, because they're moist and, uh, sort

00:03:09 ◼   ► of flaky layers and scones are a little kind of harder and drier and stuff.

00:03:13 ◼   ► But thus ends muffin gate.

00:03:16 ◼   ► Jason, would you say that early January is a quiet time for technology news?

00:03:21 ◼   ► No!

00:03:22 ◼   ► Well, the muffin conversation would indicate that maybe it is.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Let's move on to some follow up in regards to the 3.5mm audio jack.

00:03:33 ◼   ► We had a bunch of interesting tweets sent in to us, we picked out a few.

00:03:38 ◼   ► The first one is from @LeFrenchFab and they said "Replacing the 3.5mm jack and lightning

00:03:43 ◼   ► ports of a smart connector would be a way to waterproof an iPhone. What do you think

00:03:48 ◼   ► about that?

00:03:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, there are rumors that based on the teardown of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus

00:03:54 ◼   ► that Apple is already kind of experimenting with more water resistance in the iPhone design.

00:04:01 ◼   ► And I don't know enough about the design of the headphone jack to know whether it's

00:04:07 ◼   ► just always going to be a problem in terms of waterproofing a device, but it is a big,

00:04:12 ◼   ► know, hole in your phone that water can get into, so possibly. I'm not sure whether

00:04:18 ◼   ► the lightning port is better at that or not, because it is also, you know, it's also

00:04:22 ◼   ► a port and it's got a hole that water can get into.

00:04:25 ◼   ► So my super unknowledge about all of these things, having just looked at devices, like

00:04:31 ◼   ► potentially the lightning port is waterproof because the hole is, it ends, right? Because

00:04:36 ◼   ► the port just works via pins, so the pins will just connect and I guess you could seal

00:04:42 ◼   ► that all up quite nicely. Because there are phones that exist in the world, like Android

00:04:48 ◼   ► phones that are completely waterproof that don't always use little caps or whatever

00:04:53 ◼   ► over the sockets like the mini USB or whatever. So maybe it's possible, I don't know if

00:04:58 ◼   ► you have to have the smart connector to do that. There are claims that the current iPhone

00:05:03 ◼   ► is kind of waterproof, right? People were dropping them in bowls of water and stuff

00:05:07 ◼   ► like that.

00:05:08 ◼   ► The idea of the smart connector is if you have a smart connector, then there's nothing,

00:05:13 ◼   ► right? The smart connector is just a little magnetic—it's not even magnetic, but it's

00:05:17 ◼   ► just the three little dots. And then there's also a magnet—the dots aren't magnetic—on

00:05:20 ◼   ► the iPad Pro. And so theoretically, you are—there's nothing, right? And if you did a smart connector

00:05:28 ◼   ► and you did, if Lightning is waterproofable and if you did like, you could also do, there

00:05:35 ◼   ► are rumors about wireless charging, induction charging, then you know, there are ways to

00:05:42 ◼   ► make the phones more waterproof. So maybe? I don't know.

00:05:47 ◼   ► I don't know enough about what the smart connector can carry, but I would find it incredibly

00:05:52 ◼   ► surprising if the smart connector replaced both the 3.5mm jack and the lightning port

00:05:58 ◼   ► in the next device. I don't even think that the iPhone is going to get the smart connector

00:06:02 ◼   ► for some time if ever. It really feels like, currently, more of an iPad thing. It's to

00:06:09 ◼   ► connect big devices that require power physically to them. And I don't think that there is an

00:06:13 ◼   ► awful lot of stuff that you could really put an iPhone with. Maybe like a speaker, but

00:06:20 ◼   ► Bluetooth is kind of the way to go for that kind of stuff. And there's no magnets. There's

00:06:25 ◼   ► no magnets embedded in the iPhone. No, they could put one in though, right? Well, they

00:06:27 ◼   ► could, but then they're adding magnets and then what's the surface area of the magnet

00:06:31 ◼   ► if they're trying to make it a thinner iPhone? You know, you're reducing the amount of surface

00:06:35 ◼   ► area to magnetize something too. It's already kind of a curved side. It would be difficult.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Nico suggested, "Couldn't Apple combine Lightning and Bluetooth headphones into one set with

00:06:48 ◼   ► the new iPhone. They totally could, I just don't think that they're going to include

00:06:53 ◼   ► those. I mean you could maybe have a... Too expensive. Yeah, you could maybe have Bluetooth

00:06:57 ◼   ► and lightning right in one little package. That would be nice if they wanted to sell

00:07:01 ◼   ► some extra headphones. I expect that this is probably what they'll do with Beats. Sure.

00:07:09 ◼   ► You know, put a little lightning port in the headphones so you can charge them from the

00:07:13 ◼   ► phone which would be really nice actually to be able to do that. Like if, yeah because

00:07:18 ◼   ► one of my issues right now is I have battery anxiety with my Bluetooth headphones and if

00:07:25 ◼   ► there was a way to plug my headphones into my iPhone, take a bit of battery from my iPhone

00:07:31 ◼   ► and charge my headphones for another hour, that would be kind of sweet. I would like

00:07:35 ◼   ► that. You know like in the same way you charge the pencil. I would like that a lot, Jason.

00:07:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I think these are good ideas, interesting ideas. So, but I agree with you that it seems

00:07:48 ◼   ► unlikely that Apple would include a wireless headset in the box. There'll be a, you know,

00:07:54 ◼   ► cheaper pair of ear pods that'll be in the box with some sort of wired connection, you

00:07:59 ◼   ► know, presumably lightning if this happens.

00:08:01 ◼   ► If we get Bluetooth headphones in the box, the iPhone price just went up. Right? Like,

00:08:07 ◼   ► they've just put the price of the iPhone up. I'd be shocked. It's not happening.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Joe Steele wrote in, fake name, real person, "Did you guys mention lightning removing the

00:08:15 ◼   ► ability to charge and listen at the same time last week?" I might have missed it. I think

00:08:19 ◼   ► this is a good point. I don't know if we mentioned it except in passing, but this is one of the

00:08:22 ◼   ► use cases that's problematic if all you've got is a lightning port is people often will

00:08:27 ◼   ► be listening to their phone while it's charged and you would need to have wireless headphones

00:08:32 ◼   ► to do that in this scenario because if you've got lightning plugged in, you can't charge

00:08:38 ◼   ► at the same time, if that's your method of charging. And that happens to me all the time.

00:08:44 ◼   ► When I'm in the car, when I'm in my car, I've got it paired to Bluetooth, but when I'm in

00:08:49 ◼   ► the car that my wife drives, it's paired to her phone and it gets kind of messed up if

00:08:53 ◼   ► it's also paired to my phone. And I've just got an AUX IN plug, and so I'll plug it in,

00:08:59 ◼   ► and then I'll also plug in the power when we're taking a long drive or something like

00:09:02 ◼   ► that. And this would not be possible with this setup. I would have to change how we

00:09:07 ◼   ► do that. And it is true, it is an added complication, the idea that if you have to plug your audio

00:09:13 ◼   ► device in via lightning, but you also want to charge your phone, there's only one lightning

00:09:19 ◼   ► port.

00:09:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not ideal.

00:09:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:23 ◼   ► So we'll see what happens there. Previously in the past, we have spoken about podcasting

00:09:29 ◼   ► and audio production tools, and I just wanted to draw attention to a couple that I know

00:09:33 ◼   ► that you've been using recently, which are new and are quite cool, I guess, for people

00:09:38 ◼   ► that are wanting to make podcasts and stuff like that. Jason, would you like to talk about

00:09:43 ◼   ► Chapters and Loopback?

00:09:44 ◼   ► Sure, so Chapters is an app that I don't know, I don't think it's been approved by the Mac

00:09:49 ◼   ► App Store yet.

00:09:50 ◼   ► Yeah, we can assume it'll be around within a week or so, but they have a website together

00:09:54 ◼   ► now.

00:09:55 ◼   ► But I, yeah, they've got a website and it's been submitted for approval, and I've used

00:09:58 ◼   ► a beta of it and basically you point it at an mp3 file and you can put in time

00:10:04 ◼   ► time code markers and then save out and it saves out the mp3 file with mp3

00:10:11 ◼   ► chapters embedded in it and so if you're using a podcast app that supports

00:10:16 ◼   ► chapters mp3 chapters your podcast will then have chapters and we talked about

00:10:21 ◼   ► this Overcast supports this now but there are limited numbers of tools I

00:10:26 ◼   ► I believe the ATP chapter markers are being made by Marco using a tool he built for himself,

00:10:31 ◼   ► but this is a public. Thomas Pritchard wrote it, he sent me a bunch of betas of it as he was working

00:10:38 ◼   ► on it. It is a publicly available tool. You bring your own MP3, drop it in, it reads the metadata

00:10:45 ◼   ► that you've already got in there, which is kind of nice. So it's not like you've got to re-tag your

00:10:48 ◼   ► MP3 and then you go through and say, you know, at eight minutes, 15 seconds, you know, here's the

00:10:53 ◼   ► the title, here's the link, and you build up a list and then you save it out and it

00:10:57 ◼   ► saves the MP3 with the data in it and then you upload that file. So if you're somebody

00:11:01 ◼   ► who is a podcaster who wants to do chapters but has no way to do MP3 chapters, look for

00:11:07 ◼   ► chapters, which is going to be in the Mac App Store. And I think it's going to be like

00:11:10 ◼   ► 20 bucks or something. It's not, you know, he's going to charge for it. But if you're

00:11:14 ◼   ► a podcaster who wants to embed chapters, it's probably worth it because I think there

00:11:18 ◼   ► are no other Mac tools that do that at this point.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Not that I've seen. Thomas has sent me betas for this but I've yet to actually check it

00:11:25 ◼   ► out. But it looks really good and it gets the Jason Snow stamp of approval so what more

00:11:30 ◼   ► do you need?

00:11:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean there are other, I will say I have used other tools.

00:11:36 ◼   ► Say it so have I.

00:11:37 ◼   ► As have you that are not publicly available and may or may not ever be. So I'm not just

00:11:44 ◼   ► using Chapters app but I have used Chapters app on a clockwise and on an incomparable

00:11:48 ◼   ► and as far as I can tell it works great. So it's nice to see a public tool for this because

00:11:56 ◼   ► you know tools that are private or in beta don't help everybody else. So it may be great

00:12:00 ◼   ► that I've got a chance to try some of those tools but it doesn't help anyone else. In

00:12:05 ◼   ► Chapters App I can say it's you know, assuming Apple approves it it'll be in the Mac App

00:12:09 ◼   ► Store and if not then I'm sure he'll put it up on his own. So one way or another you'll

00:12:12 ◼   ► be able to get it soon. So chaptersapp.com.

00:12:15 ◼   ► All right, and then also Loopback. What is Loopback?

00:12:20 ◼   ► Loopback is a new utility from our friends at Rogue Amoeba, makers of AudioHijack. I

00:12:26 ◼   ► talked to them a long time ago when they were beta testing AudioHijack. I asked them about

00:12:31 ◼   ► a few things. I said, "Can AudioHijack do this?" And it turns out this was definitely

00:12:35 ◼   ► not a feature that they had planned for AudioHijack, but they said that they had something else

00:12:40 ◼   ► in the works that would probably do it. Loopback is that tool. Basically, one of the things

00:12:44 ◼   ► I've talked about this before, it's surprising to me how rudimentary some of the Mac sound

00:12:50 ◼   ► subsystems are. It actually makes it not surprising that sound is so poorly handled on iOS in

00:12:56 ◼   ► terms of being able to record an input and record across multiple apps at once and all

00:13:01 ◼   ► of that, because even on the Mac it's kind of rudimentary. You can't natively in the

00:13:06 ◼   ► Mac say, "Record the audio from this app," or "Route the audio from this app to this

00:13:10 ◼   ► other app. It's just you can't. You need to add extra software to do that. Audio Hijack

00:13:16 ◼   ► is a good example of that. It'll do some routing and it'll also do recording. Loopback

00:13:21 ◼   ► is all about kind of routing audio from one device to another. What it does is, if you

00:13:25 ◼   ► plug any kind of recording device into your Mac or any output device to your Mac like

00:13:29 ◼   ► speakers, and you go to the sound preferences pane, you'll see in the output tab you'll

00:13:34 ◼   ► see all the output devices listed and in the input tab you'll see all the input devices

00:13:38 ◼   ► What Loopback does is it lets you create "new devices" in quotes that are not real, but

00:13:45 ◼   ► what they are is sounds coming from different places mixed by Loopback and then sent back

00:13:52 ◼   ► out.

00:13:53 ◼   ► So you can create, for example, a good example is Skype.

00:13:55 ◼   ► When I was building the Macworld podcast studio, we had a mixer with four microphones on it,

00:14:01 ◼   ► but Skype only ever takes track one from any audio device that you set as the microphone.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Yeah, we really, really unfortunately found that out whilst trying to record Connected

00:14:11 ◼   ► at WWDC last year.

00:14:12 ◼   ► Exactly, and Loopback would have solved your problem in one step.

00:14:18 ◼   ► So what Loopback you could do is you could create a new device, a new virtual device,

00:14:22 ◼   ► and put all four of the audio tracks, the audio from the four tracks on your mixer onto

00:14:28 ◼   ► track one of this virtual device.

00:14:31 ◼   ► literally just drag them over and drop them on one and then save it and check

00:14:37 ◼   ► the box and now that's a new input it's a new microphone you can use you select

00:14:43 ◼   ► it in Skype and now you're getting all four together and you can do lots of

00:14:47 ◼   ► other things like you can plug in two USB microphones and create one microphone

00:14:51 ◼   ► out of it that included the source for both so you could record them

00:14:54 ◼   ► simultaneously because one of the things that the Mac sound subsystem doesn't do

00:14:59 ◼   ► do is let you kind of aggregate devices in a clean way, and so you can do that with Loop

00:15:07 ◼   ► Back. Some of the stuff you can kind of do through Audio Hijack, but there's also some

00:15:12 ◼   ► stuff like Audio Hijack won't let you create a new virtual input. It'll let you route audio

00:15:15 ◼   ► to existing places, but Loop Back will let you create new channels for audio, including

00:15:23 ◼   ► things like saying "play GarageBand to Skype," which is not something that you could otherwise

00:15:28 ◼   ► do, and Skype picks up the input of what's coming out of GarageBand and suddenly the sound

00:15:34 ◼   ► is flowing across. So it's a pro tool, I think they're an introductory sale for $75,

00:15:41 ◼   ► but in the end it's going to be $100. But again, if you were somebody who keeps having

00:15:46 ◼   ► kind of crazy--and at Mackerel what we ended up doing is running a line out, basically

00:15:51 ◼   ► a headphone jack out of the back of the mixer, and running it into the little audio in on

00:15:57 ◼   ► the back of the old iMac that we were using. It's still using, I think they still do it

00:16:01 ◼   ► this way. And using that as the microphone for Skype. So Skype people were receiving

00:16:07 ◼   ► this weird mixer audio that was coming out of one of the headphone jacks and running

00:16:14 ◼   ► through a 3.5mm jack cable to that little mini jack input on the back of the iMac. It's

00:16:22 ◼   ► ridiculous, but that was the only way we could get them to hear what we were saying. So this

00:16:27 ◼   ► would solve that problem because you could just aggregate everything together. So yeah,

00:16:31 ◼   ► loopback, it's cool, it's a cool idea. It's, you know, it's not for everybody, but you

00:16:36 ◼   ► know, you'll know it if you need it because you'll have that moment where you're like,

00:16:38 ◼   ► "How do I do this?" And the only answer will be to get loopback or try something like Soundflower,

00:16:43 ◼   ► which does similar things, but that's an open source project that has been not developed

00:16:48 ◼   ► very well over the years. It's sort of on and off as many open source projects are,

00:16:53 ◼   ► and I find its interface to be almost impenetrable.

00:16:55 ◼   ► So once you install Soundflower, it is incredibly difficult to uninstall Soundflower.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Yes.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:03 ◼   ► So loopback is much more straightforward.

00:17:04 ◼   ► And if you uncheck all the boxes, if you're like, "I wonder if loopback is slowing down

00:17:08 ◼   ► my system or doing other things that I don't want to my sound," you just uncheck the boxes

00:17:12 ◼   ► and loopback of the virtual inputs and they go away and then they're gone.

00:17:15 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:17:17 ◼   ► So definitely people should check it out if they are in need of a utility like that.

00:17:21 ◼   ► Oh, oh, oh, there's one more bit of follow-up I wanted to do, which is I got something wrong

00:17:25 ◼   ► last week, I said that I thought that Lightning currently could do analog audio out, and that's

00:17:30 ◼   ► not true. I actually got that mixed up from the speculation on an episode of ATP that

00:17:35 ◼   ► they thought that they could do, they could build analog audio out into Lightning, which

00:17:41 ◼   ► they could do but they haven't done. So it's possible that one thing that Apple could do

00:17:46 ◼   ► would be to update Lightning so that one of the things that it could do was send out analog

00:17:51 ◼   ► audio thereby preventing you from needing a DAC in the external audio device, a digital

00:17:58 ◼   ► to analog converter. Although, as Marco pointed out to me privately, Marco Arment from Podcasting's

00:18:04 ◼   ► ATP, the DACs are cheap, so it probably wouldn't be a big deal for most devices to have their

00:18:10 ◼   ► own DAC, although the one on the iPhone is pretty good, and so getting the analog signal

00:18:14 ◼   ► out from the iPhone might be preferable to having whatever DAC would be in your external

00:18:19 ◼   ► audio device. But anyway, that's about speculation and not fact, and I stated it as fact. So

00:18:23 ◼   ► I apologize. ATP is part of my reality, apparently.

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00:19:58 ◼   ► do apply my real signature every single time, which you can do with PDFPen.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Smile also has a bunch of great tutorials from the very talented Mr David Sparks.

00:20:06 ◼   ► These short videos will show you everything that you need to know about PDFPen 7 and they're

00:20:10 ◼   ► on Smile's website.

00:20:12 ◼   ► You can learn all about PDFPen at smilesoftware.com/upgrade.

00:20:16 ◼   ► PDFPen 7 and PDFPen Pro 7 require Yosemite and work beautifully on El Capitan.

00:20:22 ◼   ► And PDFPen for iOS is available from the App Store.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Smile for their support of this show.

00:20:28 ◼   ► You call it wake 'em and not whack 'em?

00:20:31 ◼   ► I don't know anymore.

00:20:32 ◼   ► I'm losing my voice a little bit.

00:20:34 ◼   ► I don't know if you'd notice that today, Jason.

00:20:36 ◼   ► No.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just a little bit croaky.

00:20:38 ◼   ► So, it's nothing to worry about.

00:20:42 ◼   ► You sound like a professional. Yeah, just as an aside to the listeners out

00:20:46 ◼   ► there, if anybody has any good resources for vocal exercises, please send them to me. I

00:20:52 ◼   ► would love to know. As the more I do this, Jason, the more worried I get about losing

00:20:59 ◼   ► my voice completely, and what would I do if that happened?

00:21:05 ◼   ► It is true. This comes up at conferences sometimes. I do have those moments where I realize that

00:21:12 ◼   ► if I'm planning to do a podcast the next day or something like that, like I kind

00:21:15 ◼   ► of need to actually watch my voice, which is a little weird because what would be

00:21:21 ◼   ► the impact of having a croaky voice the next day? But if you have to do podcasts

00:21:25 ◼   ► or presentations of some sort, it matters. It really does. It's weird. It's like

00:21:30 ◼   ► suddenly we've turned into singers, you know, "I need my tea with lemon before I

00:21:35 ◼   ► I can go on. I don't know how that happened. Crumb crisp coating.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Jason, talking about good audio for podcasting and things like that, you have done something

00:21:48 ◼   ► that would in theory ruin your audio. Yeah.

00:21:52 ◼   ► Would you like to demonstrate what you have done?

00:21:55 ◼   ► Uh, okay, sure.

00:21:58 ◼   ► That, ladies and gentlemen, is a horribly quick keyboard, which I'm sure Jason would

00:22:05 ◼   ► not be able to use during this show quietly.

00:22:08 ◼   ► What have you bought?

00:22:09 ◼   ► I'm very intrigued about this.

00:22:12 ◼   ► I don't know why I did it, but I've been intrigued by going back to mechanical switch keyboards

00:22:18 ◼   ► for a while now.

00:22:19 ◼   ► I have not spent a lot of time exploring it.

00:22:21 ◼   ► I used a Matthias Tactile Pro for a little while.

00:22:25 ◼   ► I have, um, I mean, I used back in the day and I do actually have an Apple

00:22:29 ◼   ► extended keyboard, although the ADB USB adapters are not particularly reliable.

00:22:33 ◼   ► And it's a little frustrating.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Um, the classic kind of battleship, but the thing is I like, um, I, so I always

00:22:41 ◼   ► thought maybe I should go back to a mechanical keyboard.

00:22:44 ◼   ► I've talked about how I don't like key travel, like short key travel on this, on

00:22:48 ◼   ► the show, like the Mac book keyboard.

00:22:49 ◼   ► And I thought, well, um, maybe someday I will explore that.

00:22:53 ◼   ► And actually Joshua Topolski, formerly of The Verge and Bloomberg, now doing mysterious startup things,

00:22:58 ◼   ► posted a tweet with a picture of this keyboard. And it was this little keyboard, had no 10 key,

00:23:06 ◼   ► no number pad. It was a super tiny keyboard. It didn't even have a function key row.

00:23:10 ◼   ► And it had like kind of different colored keys on it. And I looked at it and I was like, "Ooh,

00:23:17 ◼   ► "Ooh!" I was surprised to find myself really kind of intrigued by that, and I asked him what it was,

00:23:24 ◼   ► and I spent, you know, three months basically, four months not buying it, but just sort of

00:23:30 ◼   ► thinking about it. And I looked at some other mechanical keyboards. Matthias makes a mini

00:23:36 ◼   ► keyboard in a couple of different versions, because I didn't--I do all my pointing with my

00:23:42 ◼   ► trackpad on my the right side of my keyboard and I don't need a number pad

00:23:47 ◼   ► I don't want a number pad and all the number head pad does is push the trackpad further away from me

00:23:52 ◼   ► So I wanted I want something that is apparently we learned called 10 keyless

00:23:59 ◼   ► Okay, that's a keyboard term and and I looked at Matthias's mini tactile Pro and mini quiet Pro

00:24:06 ◼   ► Which are both ten keyless keyboards there. They're bigger

00:24:09 ◼   ► they've got a bigger bezel and they've got a function key row at the top and

00:24:12 ◼   ► and it's funny because they make a quiet one that is only in a PC layout and then

00:24:21 ◼   ► the loud one they make only in a Mac layout. Quiet is a is an interesting

00:24:27 ◼   ► word to use because it's not quiet. It's not it well it's much quieter than their

00:24:31 ◼   ► normal keyboards. It should be the quieter rather than the quiet. It's true

00:24:37 ◼   ► It's true. So I thought about those and I might yet get one of those

00:24:40 ◼   ► I don't know

00:24:41 ◼   ► But what I did was I actually got the same basically the same one that Joshua Topolski had which was a Leopold

00:24:46 ◼   ► FC 660 M. This is a

00:24:49 ◼   ► Korean I

00:24:52 ◼   ► Think it's a Korean. Well, it's made in Taiwan. I

00:24:55 ◼   ► Don't know whether the company is Korean or Chinese. I got it from

00:24:59 ◼   ► somebody in in

00:25:02 ◼   ► Korea on eBay because that seems to be the best place to get them is you buy them on eBay from somebody in Korea

00:25:07 ◼   ► And then they come to you. It's weird

00:25:09 ◼   ► And I've been using it for the last week, and it's uh it's interesting

00:25:14 ◼   ► I I bought some custom key caps because it comes with a windows keyboard layout so actually I had to change the you know

00:25:21 ◼   ► There's a system setting that you can set per keyboard which is pretty cool in os 10

00:25:25 ◼   ► it didn't used to be that way to flip the

00:25:28 ◼   ► Command and option keys to be the other way around which you need to do for a Windows keyboard

00:25:32 ◼   ► I bought some custom key caps. So I replaced the

00:25:36 ◼   ► Alt keys with actual keys that say command on them

00:25:41 ◼   ► I still have a Windows key. That's my option key

00:25:44 ◼   ► I need to get a blank key at the very least and and

00:25:47 ◼   ► Replace that so that I don't have to stare at the Windows logo because why why would I want to do that?

00:25:52 ◼   ► I do all the time. I have

00:25:55 ◼   ► Microsoft sculpt ergonomic keyboards and I have to look at the Windows logo.

00:25:58 ◼   ► You could do, but if I can get away to not do that, then I will choose that.

00:26:02 ◼   ► So I bought some custom keycaps for it, and it's just been kind of fun.

00:26:07 ◼   ► What I've learned is that I really love it for when I'm in the zone writing, just typing away

00:26:17 ◼   ► a lot. It really is great. It is, you know, you feel every key click, you can hear it,

00:26:25 ◼   ► uh, you're, you're, you're writing up a storm, you get some almost like it feels almost like

00:26:30 ◼   ► momentum or like you're, you're, you're, it's like horses galloping. It's just click, click,

00:26:36 ◼   ► click. You just, you're going, that's great. When I'm doing something like editing up,

00:26:39 ◼   ► editing a podcast or just kind of clicking around and looking at Twitter and looking

00:26:43 ◼   ► at Skype and doing occasional key clicks that are like clunk, clunk, clunk. It seems kind

00:26:48 ◼   ► of ridiculous. Like it's overkill for that. It's too much. I don't need feedback for those

00:26:52 ◼   ► sorts of things. Perhaps one day some geniuses will create a keyboard that is entirely artificial

00:26:59 ◼   ► like the Magic Trackpad 2 and you can set your sound and tactile levels per operation,

00:27:11 ◼   ► perhaps in the wonderful future we'll get there. But as it is, that's my thought,

00:27:15 ◼   ► is that I kind of like it, I kind of love it for writing, but when I'm just kind of

00:27:21 ◼   ► mousing around and then doing keyboard shortcuts, it seems like really overkill. That said,

00:27:27 ◼   ► since I've been using it, I went back, so I kept my little Logitech Bluetooth keyboard

00:27:31 ◼   ► for podcasting, because I do need a quiet keyboard while I'm podcasting, which is dumb,

00:27:37 ◼   ► But that is part of this story.

00:27:40 ◼   ► And I started typing on it and I thought, "Ew."

00:27:44 ◼   ► Suddenly I feel much less charitable toward that keyboard and I see what the mechanical

00:27:48 ◼   ► keyboard people see in them and have against the kind of mushy keyboards.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Because while I've been really used to the MacBook style, not the new MacBook, but the

00:27:57 ◼   ► kind of MacBook Air, MacBook Pro style, which is also in a lot of these Bluetooth keyboards,

00:28:01 ◼   ► of a sudden, I can see that they feel kind of weird and mushy compared to the mechanical

00:28:08 ◼   ► ones.

00:28:10 ◼   ► I understand the idea of the sound and how it makes you feel. Like if I ever, I mean,

00:28:16 ◼   ► basically all of the writing of any kind that I do these days is occurring on my iPad Pro

00:28:20 ◼   ► as many things are. And that makes a noise.

00:28:24 ◼   ► Oh, that's true.

00:28:26 ◼   ► the smart keyboard, right? Like, it's a... I don't think it's a satisfying sound, but

00:28:33 ◼   ► it makes a noise. And when I'm typing on it, like, I kind of like that sound. Like the

00:28:37 ◼   ► "tik tik tik tik" noise that it makes.

00:28:39 ◼   ► Just a little bit of... Yeah, I mean, this is all about degrees here. I did actually

00:28:43 ◼   ► attach this to my iPad Pro using a USB adapter, because it's a USB keyboard, it's not a Bluetooth

00:28:48 ◼   ► keyboard. And that was hilarious and weird, to have this clicky keyboard attached to an

00:28:56 ◼   ► iPad Pro. That was kind of maybe a bridge too far. But it worked. Totally worked.

00:29:04 ◼   ► So there you go. For all you people that like super clicky keyboards, Jason has got you

00:29:08 ◼   ► covered. Yeah, you can check it out. I'll let you

00:29:10 ◼   ► know what I think about it in the long run. Like I said, I'm feeling good about it as

00:29:13 ◼   ► a writing tool. It is kind of ridiculous because it is loud and it's very old school. I also

00:29:21 ◼   ► just love I love how it looks I love how small it is it's just this tiny tiny

00:29:26 ◼   ► thing it's got almost no bezel it's got no function key row and I used I

00:29:32 ◼   ► downloaded actually keyboard maestro which I used back like when it was a

00:29:36 ◼   ► first I think before Peter Lewis bought it way back when and and that's actually

00:29:42 ◼   ► a really great utility that I've known was really great but I've never used

00:29:46 ◼   ► personally in since very very early versions and that's been great because

00:29:51 ◼   ► it can do some mapping of keys to different things that I need on this

00:29:57 ◼   ► keyboard because it's not quite the keyboard I'm used to like the the the

00:30:01 ◼   ► tilde and single tick key that's usually in the upper left hand corner isn't on

00:30:06 ◼   ► this keyboard it's an that's where the escape key goes so I needed to map that

00:30:11 ◼   ► key like command of that key to the command tilde that you do to cycle

00:30:17 ◼   ► through windows a little stuff like that along with some more complicated stuff

00:30:21 ◼   ► that I've been playing with, so it's been fun to use Keyboard Maestro a little bit too,

00:30:25 ◼   ► which I haven't had reason to try for a while.

00:30:29 ◼   ► There you go. Beautiful.

00:30:32 ◼   ► Just after last week's episode, Apple dropped something upon us.

00:30:37 ◼   ► Almost during the episode.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Yeah, pretty much. And it's the iOS 9.3 preview. So at this point, there's probably not much

00:30:46 ◼   ► use in us going through what the 9.3 preview includes.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Well there's a, and I think this is the most interesting part of the story,

00:30:54 ◼   ► there's a page on Apple's website that details what is in iOS 9.3.

00:30:59 ◼   ► Yeah, which makes it different from being just a beta, right? It is a preview in that

00:31:03 ◼   ► Apple is

00:31:04 ◼   ► previewing it to the world, which is a new thing.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Is this the first time they've ever done this, like for a point release? I feel like

00:31:12 ◼   ► maybe yes?

00:31:14 ◼   ► I think outside of WWDC announcements, it's the first time that Apple has done a marketing

00:31:20 ◼   ► push for the initial developer release of an OS update.

00:31:26 ◼   ► And I think it's really smart.

00:31:30 ◼   ► They talked about this a bit on ETP last week, so it's worth people listening to that too.

00:31:33 ◼   ► I agreed with their thoughts about it there.

00:31:36 ◼   ► I think it's smart of Apple, because what happens is inevitable.

00:31:42 ◼   ► They release it just to developers, it's a beta, it's under NDA, and then within a couple

00:31:46 ◼   ► of hours all the rumor sites, all the other news sites that cover developer betas have

00:31:51 ◼   ► detailed everything that's in the betas and speculated about things that are, you know,

00:31:55 ◼   ► the next day it's speculated about things that are suggested in the betas, and it goes

00:31:58 ◼   ► on and on.

00:31:59 ◼   ► So if you're Apple, why wouldn't you own that?

00:32:02 ◼   ► If you know that people are going to cover it, why wouldn't you own that?

00:32:04 ◼   ► You're allowing the people who are reporting on developer betas to control the story of

00:32:11 ◼   ► your, not your major update that comes at WWDC, but your minor updates that come other

00:32:16 ◼   ► times that might have a few features in them. And if you're proud of those features, why

00:32:20 ◼   ► would you not make, it's not like they did a huge press blitz, but they did post a page

00:32:25 ◼   ► saying here's what's coming in iOS 9.3, here are these features and they'll be coming soon.

00:32:30 ◼   ► And it's very clear that the reason you do that is because they know people are going

00:32:33 ◼   ► to write about it as soon as it goes into beta, so they might as well get on top of

00:32:36 ◼   ► it and tell their own story. And that's smart marketing, that's smart PR. So that's what

00:32:41 ◼   ► they did. And I think it's really smart, but I feel like that is a new thing. That is,

00:32:45 ◼   ► to just jump out there like that, that's a new thing. And smart.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Do you think this signifies anything? So Dan and I talked about it on Clockwise, I think,

00:32:58 ◼   ► and the Six Color Secret Subscriber podcast too, but then Dan wrote a story about it on

00:33:05 ◼   ► Mac world and you know there was some interesting response to that because like

00:33:09 ◼   ► Mark Gurman was like oh this isn't new they have had notable dot releases

00:33:13 ◼   ► before but I think I think what's notable is that this is new features

00:33:16 ◼   ► that haven't been promised before that are being rolled into this version of

00:33:22 ◼   ► the OS instead of iOS version 10 and I think that that might be different than

00:33:27 ◼   ► we've seen before it might not be I saw a lot of people who are involved in

00:33:30 ◼   ► education saying the problem with iOS 10 is that the education cycle happens

00:33:35 ◼   ► earlier than that in terms of planning for education for the school year, and that if

00:33:39 ◼   ► they've got something that is announced in summer and ships in the fall, it's too late

00:33:43 ◼   ► for education. So taking the education feature of user logins, which is something that's

00:33:49 ◼   ► one of the banner features that's going to be in this 9.3 update, and pulling it forward

00:33:53 ◼   ► maybe is more about timing and doing some education updates earlier rather than waiting

00:33:59 ◼   ► all the way until fall, because they've got quite a battle with Chromebooks in schools.

00:34:04 ◼   ► So I think that might be part of it. What my speculation was, and I think Dan's speculation

00:34:09 ◼   ► is, I wonder if this is also a hint that Apple's going to be a little less monolithic with

00:34:14 ◼   ► the iOS updates and roll some features out throughout the year, including new features,

00:34:20 ◼   ► not just features that are promised but not yet delivered or attached to new hardware.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Because none of these things are attached to new hardware nor were they promised. Not

00:34:29 ◼   ► the new version of basically Flux that will get rid of the blue light on your device screen

00:34:37 ◼   ► at night, not the user login. These are things that are not things that we had heard about

00:34:43 ◼   ► before and now here they are. Or they're in the betas and they're coming.

00:34:48 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's slight precedent, right? In the last year, 18 months, there have been

00:34:56 ◼   ► updates to the devices that are relatively large things that have come with point releases,

00:35:02 ◼   ► right? So Apple Pay internationally, Apple Music and stuff like that.

00:35:08 ◼   ► That's why they weren't the minor releases, that's why they got the whole point.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. So there's been more of that happening, but what makes this one different

00:35:16 ◼   ► is that we didn't know about any of this stuff until the beta came, which that's the new

00:35:22 ◼   ► part of this right is that it is unannounced so what do you think this

00:35:28 ◼   ► says for WWDC do you have any kind of feeling about whether we're gonna get

00:35:33 ◼   ► 9.5 or are we gonna get 10 if you're reading the tea leaves what would you

00:35:38 ◼   ► say is gonna happen here my gut feeling is that is that we'll get 10 because

00:35:42 ◼   ► that's how Apple has done it every single time before so why not but you

00:35:46 ◼   ► know this made me at least stop and think what would it be like if what they

00:35:50 ◼   ► did was announce iOS 9.5 and said actually what we're gonna do is we're

00:35:54 ◼   ► gonna we're gonna do 9.5 now and we're gonna release it you know soon and then

00:35:59 ◼   ► in the fall you'll see 9.6 and then in the spring you'll see 9.7 and that we're

00:36:05 ◼   ► gonna we're gonna do some some individual releases over time we've got

00:36:09 ◼   ► everything worked out now we've got we can push updates to everybody

00:36:13 ◼   ► automatically we can push updates to developers automatically we can push

00:36:16 ◼   ► them to the beta testers automatically and then we can push them to the users

00:36:19 ◼   ► automatically. We don't need to be in this monolithic cycle where we're changing everything

00:36:23 ◼   ► once a year. We can break it down a little further. They could totally do that, and I

00:36:26 ◼   ► think that's interesting. Will they do that? I don't know. I mean, it seems more likely

00:36:32 ◼   ► that they won't because that would require them to change their ways, but I'm kind

00:36:36 ◼   ► of interested by it just because I wonder sometimes if that would be a better way to

00:36:42 ◼   ► roll out features and make the process for developers and users a little smoother, just

00:36:47 ◼   ► sort of spread out the OS development over the course of many months. They could also

00:36:53 ◼   ► do iOS 10 and still have sort of more impressive updates in the interim before the next year

00:37:02 ◼   ► at WWDC. They could still use WWDC as the stake in the ground where they make some bigger

00:37:07 ◼   ► changes, but also not have it be that if a feature doesn't get in, it has to wait a year,

00:37:13 ◼   ► which is sort of what it's been like for most features up to now. I don't know, what do

00:37:17 ◼   ► you think?

00:37:18 ◼   ► I think that we may see WWDC as the starting point of this occurring from iOS 10 onward,

00:37:28 ◼   ► and that they are putting 9.3 out now as an example, like trying to set the stage. So

00:37:36 ◼   ► basically from 10 we may see a change. I actually do think that at 10, and I'm just going to

00:37:43 ◼   ► throw this out there, I think that there will be a change in the naming convention for iOS.

00:37:49 ◼   ► At a certain point the numbers get too high, and 10 feels like a better time to change

00:37:54 ◼   ► that than 20, because why would you change it at any other point?

00:37:58 ◼   ► So if you're going to change it, you may as well go for it now.

00:38:01 ◼   ► I wonder if they're, you know, they probably will give it the numeral 10 if they're going

00:38:05 ◼   ► to give it anything, but I think we may see some kind of change.

00:38:08 ◼   ► Because like for example, Google from a branding perspective, they're able to put out smaller

00:38:14 ◼   ► updates to the OS but give it a brand new name because they just go over letter every

00:38:18 ◼   ► time and they give it a candy name.

00:38:21 ◼   ► But Marshmallow was a smaller update than KitKat and whatever L was, I can't remember.

00:38:30 ◼   ► It was actually a smaller update.

00:38:31 ◼   ► Lollipop.

00:38:32 ◼   ► Lollipop, that's it.

00:38:33 ◼   ► But it still had the branding of a full number.

00:38:36 ◼   ► So I think we may see Apple go that route, you know, as they have shown us that they

00:38:41 ◼   ► can do and do with OS X.

00:38:44 ◼   ► I personally think we're going to see something there.

00:38:46 ◼   ► But I also believe that we're going to see a change in the way that OS updates are pushed

00:38:53 ◼   ► out.

00:38:54 ◼   ► And I think that they will be more staggered, more staged, which I assume internally for

00:38:58 ◼   ► Apple will mean that things can maybe stay in the oven a little bit longer, which would

00:39:02 ◼   ► benefit everybody.

00:39:04 ◼   ► so I do really hope that this is the case and because there will be a marketing risk

00:39:08 ◼   ► for not doing big number releases at WWDC every year, I hope that they're able to

00:39:13 ◼   ► do some marketing magic to make it look better than it is and personally I think that giving

00:39:20 ◼   ► them names rather than numbers will help that.

00:39:22 ◼   ► So, I think those are good points. I do think it's possible. I think this is one of those

00:39:30 ◼   ► those things that I mean who can tell for sure being on the outside but it would seem

00:39:33 ◼   ► to me that going to a cycle like this might might be better in terms of the features that

00:39:39 ◼   ► are ready get in and the features that aren't ready can go next time and and just my gut

00:39:45 ◼   ► feeling is and again it's just a gut feel so it could be wrong but is that changing

00:39:49 ◼   ► everything once a year in one monolithic update and then doing bug fixes for year seems like

00:39:55 ◼   ► that would be more dramatic and fraught than changing, you know, having a bigger change

00:40:02 ◼   ► once a year and then a bunch of smaller changes at a few, you know, or not a bunch, but like

00:40:06 ◼   ► three more smaller changes, let's say quarterly updates or three updates a year. It just seems

00:40:12 ◼   ► like that would be more sensible and comfortable for everybody. It means developers don't have

00:40:17 ◼   ► to invest all their time all summer long on adopting all the new features of the OS. Apple,

00:40:23 ◼   ► So the arguments against this are, there are a few of them. You mentioned one, which is

00:40:26 ◼   ► marketing. There's also the argument about WWDC's value being you roll out all the

00:40:31 ◼   ► new platforms there and then the developers get them. Taking the second one first, I think

00:40:35 ◼   ► what we saw with the Apple Watch development, which although it didn't, you know, it

00:40:39 ◼   ► didn't go well because there were issues with the platform not being very strong, they

00:40:42 ◼   ► were able to roll out the Apple Watch SDK and all of that and developers got that and

00:40:47 ◼   ► they didn't need to be at WWDC. And most developers aren't at WWDC, right? So yeah,

00:40:52 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't think that the marketing thing is an issue to how you market to developers.

00:40:56 ◼   ► It's how you market to the general public.

00:40:58 ◼   ► Let me take these separately.

00:41:00 ◼   ► So the developer issue I think is not an issue.

00:41:02 ◼   ► I think the fear that, well, if you don't introduce all your new features at WWDC, the

00:41:06 ◼   ► developers, you aren't communicating well with the developers, it's already been shown.

00:41:10 ◼   ► Apple has lots of other means to communicate with developers.

00:41:13 ◼   ► They've done a good job with it.

00:41:14 ◼   ► I don't think that's the problem.

00:41:16 ◼   ► Marketing is the issue.

00:41:18 ◼   ► And I would dispute what you said.

00:41:20 ◼   ► I am not sure that Apple needs marketing about an OS update and I'm really not sure that

00:41:29 ◼   ► they need marketing about an OS update three months before it happens.

00:41:33 ◼   ► So the marketing issue I don't think is what anybody needs or what people think they need.

00:41:40 ◼   ► The problem now is if Apple do not do a full number release at WWDC there will be stories

00:41:48 ◼   ► written in the general press about how Apple is slowing down, Apple's failing. That's

00:41:53 ◼   ► the problem that they're in, right? Because then these things, they leak into the minds

00:41:57 ◼   ► of the general public. I think that's where—that's the only reason I think that this problem exists,

00:42:03 ◼   ► and it's not necessarily an accurate one, but that's not the point. That's not the

00:42:08 ◼   ► thing to worry about, right? It's how things are perceived, which is the issue.

00:42:12 ◼   ► I so I see what you're saying if I'm if I'm Apple I

00:42:17 ◼   ► Would if I'm at Apple I would advocate for the fact that

00:42:22 ◼   ► And this is a family podcast so I won't use the phrase that I would probably use in the meeting

00:42:27 ◼   ► Which is I don't think those kind of criticisms matter. I think that's chattering. I think that's inside baseball stuff

00:42:34 ◼   ► I think that the most important part in terms of marketing their products is when the new products the new hardware comes out and

00:42:41 ◼   ► And I think it would be much better to have these key features highlighted when you roll

00:42:48 ◼   ► out the new iPhone every year, which people really pay attention to, than this event that's

00:42:53 ◼   ► super technical and it's geared toward developers, but there's this little PR angle that's

00:42:59 ◼   ► in it too, where you're talking about a new version of software that's got some

00:43:02 ◼   ► very particular features and isn't going to ship for three months.

00:43:05 ◼   ► It is something that's a big deal for our audience and that maybe, yeah, the financial

00:43:11 ◼   ► analysts who are always writing about how Apple is doomed, you know, they may behave

00:43:17 ◼   ► even worse if it's taken away from them. But I think for the general public, it's

00:43:21 ◼   ► the worst event Apple does every year because it's not tangible, usually. There usually

00:43:28 ◼   ► isn't a product that comes out of it. And OS updates are kind of, you know, they're

00:43:33 ◼   ► very much this intangible thing. It's like, "Oh, there's going to be a feature.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Well, do I get it now? No, you don't get it until September or October. Oh, well, why

00:43:40 ◼   ► do I care?" So I could totally see Apple saying, "We're going to take a step back and not

00:43:47 ◼   ► make as big a deal about OS betas at WWDC and instead build our, you know, extol the

00:43:55 ◼   ► virtues of our hardware and the software features that come with them when we launch the hardware."

00:44:00 ◼   ► I think that argument can be made.

00:44:03 ◼   ► I understand your argument and I think that it's true.

00:44:07 ◼   ► That would be the downside of abandoning the huge monolithic software release.

00:44:13 ◼   ► But as you said, you could also market the small release and say, "This is the year

00:44:19 ◼   ► of El Capitan.

00:44:22 ◼   ► This is the year of the mountain lion," or whatever back in the day, and you'll see

00:44:28 ◼   ► some stuff across the year instead of it all being dropped in a load over the summertime

00:44:33 ◼   ► and shipped in September.

00:44:35 ◼   ► I completely agree with you and I take the view that it is possible to manage this and

00:44:40 ◼   ► put a good spin on it, but the way that I look at it, that is a risk though still, right,

00:44:45 ◼   ► because you can assume everything but you never know how people are going to react.

00:44:49 ◼   ► I personally believe that it is that risk that we're not sure factor, which is what

00:44:56 ◼   ► could be potentially holding them up internally from making a change like this. But I think

00:45:02 ◼   ► that it is more than possible for Apple to deal with this and put it in those terms.

00:45:08 ◼   ► But I think that it's something worth watching, and I do think it's going to happen post-10,

00:45:15 ◼   ► but it will be interesting to see what they do at number 10.

00:45:19 ◼   ► It's actually logical, in fact. You could make the argument that 10 is a great place,

00:45:24 ◼   ► you alluded to this earlier, 10 is a great place to say we've reached a milestone, here's

00:45:30 ◼   ► how we're going to handle this going forward. Even if the analysts look back and go, "Oh,

00:45:35 ◼   ► you know, 93 was kind of a hint in this direction," that maybe that would be something that they

00:45:40 ◼   ► would do. I don't know. I mean, we're just guessing here, but I think you're right in

00:45:43 ◼   ► saying, if you're going to change the way that you handle operating system stuff, then

00:45:49 ◼   ► doing it on a number, on a big number like 10 is not a bad way to do it. I also, again,

00:45:55 ◼   ► I wouldn't put, I think there's a percentage chance that they just punt about dealing with

00:46:00 ◼   ► the number 10 for a year and say, "We're going to do 9.5 and it's going to be awesome

00:46:05 ◼   ► and it's going to have all these features and, you know, and then we'll do, you know,

00:46:10 ◼   ► we'll do some other updates over the course of the year and not, and just not call it

00:46:14 ◼   ► 10. I think that that still could happen, although, you know, I think it's less likely.

00:46:20 ◼   ► I think the most likely thing is to expect what we've seen, which is new number.

00:46:24 ◼   ► >> Well, one of the things that seems strange to me about this is why did they put a new

00:46:29 ◼   ► user feature, an unrequested user feature like night shift in 9.3 and not hold it over

00:46:34 ◼   ► for 10? >> Good question.

00:46:36 ◼   ► >> I can't work -- I can't wrap my head around that one. Like, the education stuff, throw

00:46:42 ◼   ► it in 9.3, bug fixes and changes and some of the other stuff that they've done in 9.3,

00:46:48 ◼   ► that's fine because that fits with a point release, right?

00:46:52 ◼   ► Oh, here's a bunch of stuff.

00:46:54 ◼   ► It's things that we're putting in, little bits and bobs and here you go, take that.

00:46:59 ◼   ► And oh, if you're in education, this is what you get for 9.3, this is really great.

00:47:04 ◼   ► But night shift is something that's cool.

00:47:06 ◼   ► I like it a lot.

00:47:09 ◼   ► been a bit of hubbub about Flux but that was nowhere even near like a mass market amongst

00:47:15 ◼   ► tech nerds right like yeah this is not something that everybody uses and or wanted. Additions

00:47:23 ◼   ► to Notes, News and Health would have and CarPlay would have been enough for 9.3 from a user

00:47:29 ◼   ► focus I'm really perplexed about what putting something like Night Shift into iOS 9.3 means

00:47:37 ◼   ► for WWDC. So I've got a theory. My theory about why

00:47:41 ◼   ► they did it is that there was this very minor in our community hubbub about Flux and somebody,

00:47:49 ◼   ► my theory is that, and this is based on no information, is that somebody at Apple said,

00:47:53 ◼   ► "Well, why don't we do that?" And maybe even some engineer said, "Well, actually,

00:47:58 ◼   ► we did do that. It's not implemented all the way yet, but we're working on that and

00:48:03 ◼   ► that's on the roadmap. And maybe they're saying, "Well, let's put it in 9.3. If it's close

00:48:10 ◼   ► and you think it's fairly simply done, maybe we should just put it into 9.3 rather than

00:48:14 ◼   ► holding it for the fall again." Or maybe there's an attitude like, "Well, we want these feature

00:48:21 ◼   ► updates to be a little more substantive than they've been in the past, and that's a pretty

00:48:23 ◼   ► good feature to pull forward. It's fairly simple. We could implement that fairly quickly.

00:48:28 ◼   ► Maybe we're already working on it. Let's pull that forward." My guess is that it may

00:48:32 ◼   ► have been pulled forward because it became part of the conversation a little bit and

00:48:37 ◼   ► Apple thought that there was some maybe even good PR to be done by saying look how great

00:48:41 ◼   ► we are in you know making our mobile devices gentler on your eyes and that's a little

00:48:48 ◼   ► a nice little feature. So I've got some those are my kind of theories about it is

00:48:53 ◼   ► that is that you know it's some combination of those things. It's a fairly small feature

00:48:58 ◼   ► it was probably already being discussed and it would be something that could be slipped

00:49:01 ◼   ► into a small version like this rather than, you know, waiting to roll it out to everybody

00:49:06 ◼   ► in September.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I can totally see that. The thing that I just find so strange about it

00:49:13 ◼   ► is iOS 9 was not a big release, really. There actually wasn't a ton in it. There was lots

00:49:20 ◼   ► for the iPad, but that was kind of it. And I wonder what the next version will bring,

00:49:28 ◼   ► is, I'm interested to see, are we going to get a lot again, or is it going to be not

00:49:35 ◼   ► so much? And if it's not so much, then why did they put a user feature in now? You know?

00:49:41 ◼   ► Night shift also is funny because it is really simple. Like, it's a switch.

00:49:45 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's a nice little thing, right? And it's just a thing you can see, it's a

00:49:49 ◼   ► thing you can demonstrate. But what interests me about it is that it's super simple, and

00:49:54 ◼   ► I look at it and I immediately think like you could tie this to Do Not Disturb, you

00:49:59 ◼   ► could put it on Mission Control, or is that what it's called?

00:50:04 ◼   ► Control Center.

00:50:05 ◼   ► Control Center, the thing you flip up from the bottom, you can put a button there to

00:50:08 ◼   ► toggle it on and off.

00:50:09 ◼   ► None of that was done, right?

00:50:10 ◼   ► It's just, it's kind of off in the display settings and it's there and you can turn it

00:50:14 ◼   ► on if you want to.

00:50:15 ◼   ► So it's not like it couldn't, it could be a lot more integrated into the system than

00:50:19 ◼   ► it is.

00:50:20 ◼   ► So, for 9.3 it looks like, unless they add features, it seems most likely that for 9.3

00:50:26 ◼   ► it's going to be this super simple feature, like it's there if you want it.

00:50:29 ◼   ► And maybe it gets more integrated into the system down the road.

00:50:32 ◼   ► So that's kind of interesting too, that it does seem to be a very simple implementation

00:50:37 ◼   ► to get it in the system.

00:50:39 ◼   ► Driven now, people will say, "Well, why not just let Flux into the App Store or let Flux

00:50:43 ◼   ► distribute it?"

00:50:44 ◼   ► I think this goes to the core of the OS, is that there's stuff that Flux does as an app

00:50:50 ◼   ► is just that Apple just cannot allow a lot an app to do that there's no public

00:50:55 ◼   ► API for controlling this stuff and they don't like the way that flux I mean flux

00:51:01 ◼   ► is acting on the entire display whether it's running or not basically it's

00:51:05 ◼   ► pretty invasive and I'm pretty sure that the engineers at Apple said we cannot

00:51:10 ◼   ► allow that app and it does too much but this is the sort of thing that needs to

00:51:14 ◼   ► be tackled by the system this is a system feature you know not only should

00:51:18 ◼   ► it be a system feature but it needs to be a system feature rather than being

00:51:22 ◼   ► done by a third-party app and I I strongly agree with that that this this

00:51:27 ◼   ► is something flux exists because the OS is haven't cared about this not because

00:51:32 ◼   ► it should be a third-party app that does it so I don't know it's interesting

00:51:38 ◼   ► we're reading the tea leaves again but it does seem like apples you know apples

00:51:41 ◼   ► trying some different stuff and that web page is the best example of it because

00:51:45 ◼   ► that is them getting out in front of the story and saying this is an update

00:51:47 ◼   ► that's coming you know basically stealing the thunder of the sites that

00:51:53 ◼   ► got to make some hay reporting on the details of the first developer beta.

00:51:59 ◼   ► I mean the reason we read the tea leaves on this stuff is because Apple do things

00:52:04 ◼   ► a very specific way pretty much all of the time so when they do something

00:52:10 ◼   ► different it is like a pause for thought right you're like huh what are you doing

00:52:15 ◼   ► here. This is a new one. Set up and pay attention. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and they've been doing

00:52:18 ◼   ► that a lot lately. This is, this is, Apple was very understandable for a long time. They

00:52:24 ◼   ► went in cycles, they had the rules, you could see what the rule book is, and there is definitely

00:52:29 ◼   ► a culture at Apple today that is questioning some of the rules, and why do we have to do

00:52:34 ◼   ► it the way that it's always been. And some of that is Tim Cook instead of Steve. Some

00:52:38 ◼   ► of that is Katie Cotton, the head of communications, leaving. There are new people in positions

00:52:45 ◼   ► of authority and I think they're questioning some of the old assumptions.

00:52:48 ◼   ► This one, I have to say, no matter what it means for Apple's long-term software development,

00:52:51 ◼   ► I think this was such a good idea to get out in front of it.

00:52:55 ◼   ► If you're Apple, why are you letting 9to5Mac and MacRumors write stories introducing new

00:53:03 ◼   ► features that are coming to your operating system?

00:53:05 ◼   ► Why?

00:53:06 ◼   ► Why are you doing that?

00:53:07 ◼   ► We don't live in a world where developer betas are a secret.

00:53:10 ◼   ► They're not.

00:53:11 ◼   ► You know they're not a secret.

00:53:12 ◼   ► So why pretend that they don't exist until…

00:53:15 ◼   ► I know it would be better if you could just deliver the features on the day of and communicate

00:53:20 ◼   ► them, but you can't.

00:53:21 ◼   ► So get out in front of it.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Take control of your own story.

00:53:24 ◼   ► And I think it's great that they did.

00:53:25 ◼   ► It's super smart.

00:53:26 ◼   ► Should have done it a long time ago, but you know what?

00:53:30 ◼   ► They did it.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And I think it's a really smart move for them.

00:53:35 ◼   ► Is there anything else in 9-3 you wanted to talk about?

00:53:39 ◼   ► I wanted to ask you…

00:53:42 ◼   ► I've gotten reports that people who use the Apple Pencil are very unhappy with the first

00:53:46 ◼   ► developer beta of 9.3. Have you tried it with your Apple Pencil?

00:53:49 ◼   ► Sure have. And I wrote a little thing on my Tumblr blog just voicing my frustrations.

00:53:57 ◼   ► And I want to make this very clear because I just do. I fully understand that this is

00:54:04 ◼   ► a beta. I fully understand that there could be bugs. I get all of that.

00:54:08 ◼   ► This could be a bug.

00:54:09 ◼   ► This could be a bug, this could be a change in direction, whatever it is is different.

00:54:14 ◼   ► So now the Apple Pencil on 9.3 no longer is able to scroll UI lists and interact with

00:54:24 ◼   ► the UI as a replacement for a finger.

00:54:27 ◼   ► It only works to draw and write.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Now this is a big change in the way that this is working.

00:54:34 ◼   ► Of course it is potential for a bug, but because this is so disruptive to me, I wanted to talk

00:54:41 ◼   ► about it and bring it up just to kind of voice my concern.

00:54:46 ◼   ► That if this is a change in the way that the Apple Pencil interacts with the iPad, I think

00:54:52 ◼   ► Apple is making a big mistake.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Because currently in 9.3, there is nothing to suggest any change to the Apple Pencil to

00:55:01 ◼   ► make it, to give it any extra benefit. There is nothing that removing this function is

00:55:08 ◼   ► allowing me to do. That may be Apple's plan, but as I say, all I can do is say what I'm

00:55:14 ◼   ► seeing and what I'm seeing is now it has been decided that they don't want people to be

00:55:20 ◼   ► scrolling UI and using their iPads as pen input devices. So that is a concern to me

00:55:29 ◼   ► if that is the way it's going to be going forward because I don't know why they would

00:55:36 ◼   ► stop that other than a "You mustn't use our device in this way." And that is a concern

00:55:43 ◼   ► for me. It seems like a bad user experience in the sense that you have to mode shift.

00:55:47 ◼   ► You have to take the pencil out of your hands and do things and then put the pencil back

00:55:50 ◼   ► in your hands. Yeah. Where oftentimes you're just switching. You're going "I'm going

00:55:53 ◼   ► to tap this and scroll this and then I'm going to draw." I have two theories. One

00:55:57 ◼   ► is that this is a bug. Okay, three theories. One is it's just a bug. One is what they're

00:56:02 ◼   ► trying to do is give developers the opportunity to decide whether they want to ignore pencil

00:56:09 ◼   ► input for things that are not drawing and that this is the kind of emergence of that

00:56:13 ◼   ► and then it'll get fixed. And the third theory would be that it's going to be a setting that

00:56:18 ◼   ► allows the system to determine whether you want to lock out UI interactions for pencil

00:56:24 ◼   ► and only use it for drawing.

00:56:25 ◼   ► Because I can see where some people might say,

00:56:28 ◼   ► God, the pencil drives me crazy.

00:56:30 ◼   ► I'm just trying to draw with it.

00:56:32 ◼   ► Why does it keep trying to do these UI things?

00:56:34 ◼   ► So I don't know whether that's true or not,

00:56:36 ◼   ► but I could see how that might be.

00:56:37 ◼   ► So those are my theories is that this is, you know,

00:56:40 ◼   ► that this is not Apple saying,

00:56:41 ◼   ► no, you'll never use your pencil as this,

00:56:43 ◼   ► but that more likely it's either a bug

00:56:44 ◼   ► or they're trying to do something that gives

00:56:47 ◼   ► either the system or the developers a little more control

00:56:49 ◼   ► of whether that non-drawing input can be ignored or not.

00:56:53 ◼   ► That's my theory. - Yeah, I would hope

00:56:54 ◼   ► that either of those is true, as opposed to just no.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Because that's my thing, right?

00:56:59 ◼   ► Like if there's a benefit, if there is some reason

00:57:02 ◼   ► that this is being stopped, then that would be great,

00:57:05 ◼   ► but that definitely isn't the case right now.

00:57:09 ◼   ► I would even call for Apple to put a toggle

00:57:12 ◼   ► for this in accessibility.

00:57:13 ◼   ► Because I think that there is a good use case

00:57:17 ◼   ► for accessibility here as well.

00:57:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree. - It definitely is for me

00:57:21 ◼   ► because for RSI and things like that,

00:57:23 ◼   ► is way more comfortable for me to use the pen input.

00:57:27 ◼   ► That is my gut feeling, is this is a side effect of them trying to do something different,

00:57:34 ◼   ► and that in future betas we'll see it. But you're right, if this was in the final product,

00:57:39 ◼   ► you would be right to scream bloody murder about it, but it's a beta, so on one level

00:57:43 ◼   ► we want to disclaim it, on another level we want to kind of draw attention to it in case

00:57:48 ◼   ► is happening in Apple. People at Apple don't know. You filed a radar, right?

00:57:54 ◼   ► I didn't file a radar, but somebody else filed a radar. I sent feedback through the feedback

00:58:00 ◼   ► app that comes on the device, which I believe goes into radar.

00:58:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:58:06 ◼   ► But, you know, I got a lot of that people telling me, "You should file a radar," for

00:58:11 ◼   ► people that hadn't actually read what I'd written in the post, which I specifically

00:58:15 ◼   ► said I put the radar number that somebody else had filed and sent to me.

00:58:20 ◼   ► Very nice.

00:58:21 ◼   ► And then I filed my own feedback.

00:58:23 ◼   ► So yeah, look, I understand how this stuff works, right, but I wanted to bring it up

00:58:27 ◼   ► because I also understand how that stuff works as well.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Sometimes you have to kind of make a little bit of noise for people to understand what

00:58:36 ◼   ► the issues are.

00:58:37 ◼   ► It's very interesting.

00:58:38 ◼   ► So I'm going to wait and see on that one.

00:58:40 ◼   ► It's a shame.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Some people said to me to roll back, right?

00:58:44 ◼   ► Oh, you should roll back to 9.2 if this is a big problem for you.

00:58:47 ◼   ► But I don't want to do that because if it's going to go away, I need to start getting

00:58:50 ◼   ► used to it at some point.

00:58:52 ◼   ► So maybe that time will be now.

00:58:53 ◼   ► And plus rolling back is a nightmare.

00:58:57 ◼   ► All right, let's move on to Ask Upgrade.

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01:00:08 ◼   ► This allows anybody to add a store to their Squarespace site.

01:00:11 ◼   ► We use that at Relay FM to sell stickers and t-shirts

01:00:14 ◼   ► at our official store, which you can get to

01:00:17 ◼   ► by going to relay.fm/store.

01:00:19 ◼   ► We use Squarespace for that.

01:00:20 ◼   ► They have great integrations that we can plug in.

01:00:23 ◼   ► So for example, we have integration with Stripe,

01:00:26 ◼   ► so we can actually take payments.

01:00:28 ◼   ► I love all of that stuff.

01:00:29 ◼   ► I think that it's fantastic that Squarespace do all of that

01:00:32 ◼   ► because it makes it just like a great one-stop shop

01:00:35 ◼   ► for people that want to be able to build a fantastic website.

01:00:39 ◼   ► If you sign up for a year, you will also get a free domain name allowing you to choose

01:00:44 ◼   ► exactly what you want your site to be called.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month and you can sign up for a free trial today

01:00:52 ◼   ► with no credit card acquired by going to squarespace.com and then when you decide to sign up for a

01:00:57 ◼   ► plan, make sure that you use the offer code UPGRADE.

01:00:59 ◼   ► Not only will you be showing your support for this show, you'll get 10% off your first

01:01:03 ◼   ► purchase as well.

01:01:04 ◼   ► If you get one of their annual plans, you'll get a great discount.

01:01:06 ◼   ► Thanks so much to Squarespace for their support of this show and Relay FM.

01:01:10 ◼   ► Squarespace, booty beautiful.

01:01:11 ◼   ► All right, so ask upgrade, Jason, it is time.

01:01:17 ◼   ► John would like to know which Apple TV model did you purchase

01:01:22 ◼   ► and how much space do you have left?

01:01:25 ◼   ► So I went with a 32 gigabytes.

01:01:27 ◼   ► I have no idea how much space I have left.

01:01:29 ◼   ► I know it would be a lot because I don't install a lot of stuff on it.

01:01:33 ◼   ► I have the same answer as you. I bought the cheapest Apple TV for, and I don't know how much space I have left, and I kind of don't care, because that's not how I use it.

01:01:45 ◼   ► I don't want to manage the space on it, and it hasn't been a problem up to now. But I don't have a lot of stuff on it. I have, you know, ten apps or something like that.

01:01:53 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's not an issue.

01:01:55 ◼   ► Sorry, Jon. We just kind of are not paying attention to it and trying not to care.

01:01:59 ◼   ► I don't put anything on it, right? So I can't imagine it's ever going to be an issue.

01:02:03 ◼   ► Well, he says, there could be things, but the way that

01:02:07 ◼   ► tvOS is built right now, like, I'm not going to be downloading catalogs of

01:02:11 ◼   ► video and games, right? It's all built to not really do that.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Well, video doesn't even get stored. It would be the app data.

01:02:19 ◼   ► And, yeah, I haven't noticed anything there.

01:02:23 ◼   ► Nope, not me. I don't spend a lot of time playing Apple TV games. I mean, mostly I'm using the Apple TV

01:02:27 ◼   ► TV for purchased stuff iTunes purchase stuff and Plex that's mostly what I'm

01:02:36 ◼   ► using it for right now I didn't know you a Plex user Mac you know I've got so

01:02:41 ◼   ► yeah I mean it's Casey's fault but I can I actually have it on a on a server that

01:02:48 ◼   ► is also running iTunes and those files are you know I can add them to iTunes

01:02:53 ◼   ► and they show up there but the nice thing is if they're not in the night

01:02:56 ◼   ► compatible format they still show up in

01:02:57 ◼   ► Plex and it sort of saves a step if you

01:03:00 ◼   ► have a file that you just drop on there

01:03:03 ◼   ► you don't have to get in the right

01:03:04 ◼   ► format and add it to iTunes Plex just

01:03:06 ◼   ► sees it and updates its library so it's

01:03:09 ◼   ► I'm sort of shifting to that just

01:03:12 ◼   ► because I was doing a lot of effort to

01:03:13 ◼   ► get things in iTunes format for watching

01:03:16 ◼   ► on my TV on an Apple TV and now I don't

01:03:19 ◼   ► have to because Apple TV runs the Plex

01:03:21 ◼   ► app and that works. Okay next up we have Brian. Have you tried

01:03:28 ◼   ► Cloud Magic email for Mac yet? If so, what do you think of it? I put this in because

01:03:33 ◼   ► I've had a lot of people ask me. Cloud Magic is an iOS app that has recently made its debut

01:03:38 ◼   ► on Mac. I haven't tried it. I actually have never tried Cloud Magic. And it sounds so

01:03:46 ◼   ► I hate that brand name. I just don't like it. And their whole branding doesn't really

01:03:53 ◼   ► excite me very much. So I've not tried Cloud Magic. And I know that it's like, don't judge

01:04:00 ◼   ► a book by its cover type scenario, but the reason brands exist is because people do judge

01:04:04 ◼   ► books by their cover. But more than anything, really, the reason that I haven't tried it

01:04:10 ◼   ► out now is I'm really happy with Outlook on iOS and these days I am doing about 95% of

01:04:19 ◼   ► my email on iOS.

01:04:20 ◼   ► So I haven't felt the desire to make any change.

01:04:23 ◼   ► I wasn't really that interested in Cloud Magic for iOS so I'm not going to switch over for

01:04:28 ◼   ► Mac.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I'm using Airmail on my Mac and that's doing a pretty good job of what I need it to do

01:04:34 ◼   ► whenever I am at my Mac doing email, but the majority of the time I am using Outlook on

01:04:40 ◼   ► iOS, on my iPhone and my iPad as my predominant email app.

01:04:48 ◼   ► Same for me, I haven't tried it. The Mac version looks very much like a Gmail interface. Maybe

01:04:52 ◼   ► I should try it only because I'm using Mailplane, which is a Mac wrapper around Gmail, and that's

01:04:58 ◼   ► what I use on the Mac and then on iOS. I am also using Outlook right now, but you know,

01:05:03 ◼   ► something that I every so often I will get in a phase where I will have a bunch

01:05:06 ◼   ► of email clients and I will try them all out and and then use one for a while I'm

01:05:12 ◼   ► in the cruise phase with outlook right now where that's what I'm using but at

01:05:17 ◼   ► some point I will look around again and I'll check it out but right now I haven't

01:05:23 ◼   ► it's not time. Nicholas would like to know what our favorite condiments are I

01:05:30 ◼   ► I like ketchup a lot and if it would count maybe maple syrup depending on

01:05:37 ◼   ► what I'm eating it's very rare except for bacon that I would use those

01:05:42 ◼   ► condiments on the same thing I don't use them at the same time but bacon I have

01:05:46 ◼   ► with ketchup and with maple syrup depending on what is surrounding the

01:05:50 ◼   ► bacon I don't feel like maple maple syrup is a is a condom yeah that's why I

01:05:54 ◼   ► wasn't sure about that one but baby you could you could argue it and we could

01:05:58 ◼   ► start condiment or not. I don't want to do that. A limited series podcast. And I would

01:06:05 ◼   ► actually agree with you. Ketchup is my favorite condiment, without a doubt. Ketchup makes

01:06:11 ◼   ► almost everything better. It goes with so many things. I know you get a little tomato

01:06:16 ◼   ► savory, you get some vinegar action going in there, a little sweet on top of it. It's

01:06:21 ◼   ► great. Perfect. There are many great condiments, don't get me wrong. Yeah, all the great condiments.

01:06:25 ◼   ► Ketchup is the king of condiments.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And Richard would like to know, this is a meta question, and I quite like this, how

01:06:31 ◼   ► many questions on average do you get for Ask Upgrade on a weekly basis?

01:06:37 ◼   ► I would say that we get probably about 30 questions a week, maybe, I feel like that's

01:06:41 ◼   ► a good number, maybe between like 20 and 30.

01:06:45 ◼   ► But the participants vary quite a lot, it's not always the same people, which I do really

01:06:50 ◼   ► like.

01:06:51 ◼   ► always, you know, don't forget if you ever have questions and even follow up for the

01:06:55 ◼   ► show, you just tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and we get them. And as Jason pointed out

01:07:00 ◼   ► in our document here, in the last two weeks we've been getting way more muffin-related

01:07:05 ◼   ► things on the #AskUpgrade hashtag than usual questions.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I think we got fewer questions and comments than usual because everybody was really focused

01:07:15 ◼   ► on Muffin Gate. And also, Nicholas, I see what you're doing here. You're trying to create

01:07:19 ◼   ► a condiment vertical. And you may have succeeded, we'll have to see. But I see the game you're

01:07:24 ◼   ► playing, "Oh yeah, you gotta think two moves ahead with these upgrade listeners." They're

01:07:28 ◼   ► smart. They're smart.

01:07:30 ◼   ► Devious upgradians.

01:07:31 ◼   ► I know.

01:07:32 ◼   ► Yesterday evening, I can't remember how this came up, but I think Adina said something about,

01:07:41 ◼   ► "Oh, upgradians happen only once a year." And I was like, "No, no, darling. The upgradies

01:07:46 ◼   ► happen once a year. Upgradients are our listeners. And it just made me realize just how complicated

01:07:51 ◼   ► over time the naming conventions have become. But how dearly I love them.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah, we are the secret society of Upgrade. We should have like a seal, a secret seal

01:08:04 ◼   ► for the secret society.

01:08:05 ◼   ► Oh, you do say, huh?

01:08:08 ◼   ► Mmm.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Mmm.

01:08:10 ◼   ► That's foreshadowing.

01:08:11 ◼   ► Indeed.

01:08:12 ◼   ► What if we did?

01:08:13 ◼   ► [GASP]

01:08:14 ◼   ► secret, you don't even know what it is. We do.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. If you want to find links

01:08:21 ◼   ► for today's show, go to relay.fm/upgrade/72. I want to thank again Smile and Squarespace

01:08:29 ◼   ► for sponsoring this week's show. If you want to find us online, you can head on over to

01:08:32 ◼   ► sixcolors.com where you'll find Jason. Jason also hosts a couple of great podcasts on Relay

01:08:38 ◼   ► I.F.M. as well as this one and they are Lift Off and Clockwise and of course you can find

01:08:44 ◼   ► a cavalcade of shows over at TheIncomparable.com. If you want to find me online you can head

01:08:50 ◼   ► on over to Twitter I am @imike and I am the host of many shows and the fine Relay FM that

01:08:56 ◼   ► works at Relay.fm and you'll find a bunch of great shows there, all the great shows

01:09:00 ◼   ► as some would say. I want to thank you all for listening as always and we'll be back

01:09:06 ◼   ► next week with another episode of Upgrade. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:09:11 ◼   ► [typing]

01:09:12 ◼   ► Bye Myke!

01:09:13 ◼   ► Is that you typing goodbye?

01:09:14 ◼   ► [typing]

01:09:16 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:09:19 ◼   ► [ Music ]

01:09:25 ◼   ► [ Silence ]