Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 65.

00:00:15 ◼   ► I am your host, Jason Snell.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My co-host, Myke Hurley, is unavailable.

00:00:20 ◼   ► He is on assignment, I believe, stealing headphones

00:00:22 ◼   ► and microphones from Marco Arment's closet.

00:00:25 ◼   ► The show today brought to you by Linde,

00:00:28 ◼   ► an easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn mail route, a secure

00:00:32 ◼   ► hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam, and making light craft a daily ritual

00:00:38 ◼   ► to focus on what matters most. Joining me filling in for Mr. Myke Hurley is your friend

00:00:45 ◼   ► and mine, the internet's own Mr. Merlin Mann. Hi Merlin.

00:00:49 ◼   ► >>Hey Jason. >>Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it.

00:00:52 ◼   ► >>Hi. You know, just what time and what do I wear? I'm always ready. I'm honored. I'm

00:00:57 ◼   ► I'm honored to be here.

00:00:58 ◼   ► You're a busy man.

00:00:59 ◼   ► Mm.

00:01:00 ◼   ► This podcast doesn't really work.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Yeah, but you've got a lot of podcasts now.

00:01:02 ◼   ► No, don't tell them that.

00:01:03 ◼   ► I've told them.

00:01:04 ◼   ► I've convinced people that podcasting has worked.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Shh.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Tell the kid to cut that out.

00:01:08 ◼   ► It's very...

00:01:09 ◼   ► The kid!

00:01:10 ◼   ► Who's that?

00:01:11 ◼   ► Do you mean Myke?

00:01:12 ◼   ► Myke's very young.

00:01:13 ◼   ► He's the kid, yeah.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:16 ◼   ► It was Thanksgiving last week, and I wanted to...

00:01:17 ◼   ► I wanted to...

00:01:18 ◼   ► This is not really follow-up.

00:01:19 ◼   ► This is like calendar-based follow-up.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Follow-up to previous days.

00:01:22 ◼   ► This is follow-along.

00:01:23 ◼   ► Yeah, let's come up with another thing that'll stretch on Syracuse and MAD.

00:01:27 ◼   ► triple dagger yeah exactly right um thanksgiving do you have a uh i i was realizing when i was in

00:01:33 ◼   ► ireland a couple years ago for the old conference i i was in like um was that it or no i was in

00:01:38 ◼   ► ireland for an idg thing and it was october and i was sitting in the um i was sitting in the uh

00:01:44 ◼   ► the airport in dublin and there was christmas stuff everywhere and it was like late october

00:01:51 ◼   ► And I thought, "What happened here?" And then I realized, I think we're fortunate in the United

00:01:58 ◼   ► States to have Thanksgiving because it's like a firewall. It's a little porous, and it gets more

00:02:06 ◼   ► porous all the time, but it's like a firewall between us and Christmas. It's a good signal,

00:02:10 ◼   ► I think, that now, the next one up is Christmas. Now you can do it. And I don't know, I feel like

00:02:21 ◼   ► that has given me added appreciation for Thanksgiving.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Just that it's not only a nice holiday

00:02:26 ◼   ► where we think about what we're thankful for,

00:02:28 ◼   ► but it's like our last line of defense

00:02:30 ◼   ► against Christmas being a thing that happens year round.

00:02:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:02:34 ◼   ► I think the implicit five weeks

00:02:37 ◼   ► of Christmas holiday stuff is plenty.

00:02:39 ◼   ► It's perfect.

00:02:40 ◼   ► You have a big turkey dinner,

00:02:41 ◼   ► you know, you get another turkey dinner,

00:02:42 ◼   ► and then it's New Year's.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Boom, you're out.

00:02:44 ◼   ► But you know, most of what I know about Christmas

00:02:46 ◼   ► comes from what KOIT is playing.

00:02:49 ◼   ► 'Cause, you know, when KOIT starts playing Christmas music, it's all over.

00:02:51 ◼   ► You know, 'cause then my daughter makes us listen to Christmas music.

00:02:53 ◼   ► That's easy! What's K- what's KOIT's, uh, called?

00:02:57 ◼   ► K-O-I-T-96.5?

00:02:59 ◼   ► If it is, like, easy listening? Is it soft jazz? What's-

00:03:03 ◼   ► KOIT is, uh, is- is the music that, uh, you can play at work.

00:03:07 ◼   ► It's unobjectionable music year-round.

00:03:10 ◼   ► That's good.

00:03:11 ◼   ► And, uh, but also the seasonal islet Walgreens.

00:03:13 ◼   ► 'Cause then once we go to Walgreens a lot,

00:03:16 ◼   ► and when they move out the Halloween candy,

00:03:18 ◼   ► and they start moving in the Christmas stuff, you know, it's all over.

00:03:20 ◼   ► But I agree with you, I think it is a good firewall.

00:03:23 ◼   ► You know, I still feel like this is not going to fly with my kid,

00:03:26 ◼   ► but I still wish it was a little like the Olympics.

00:03:28 ◼   ► I think we should have like a big Christmas every four years.

00:03:32 ◼   ► And then the other three years, it should just be, you know,

00:03:35 ◼   ► maybe we just watch a little more TV for a week.

00:03:37 ◼   ► But that's it. It's just too much. It's just too much.

00:03:40 ◼   ► - Would it be in the summertime on alternating every two years?

00:03:43 ◼   ► - That's right. And cities would lobby to be the home of Christmas.

00:03:46 ◼   ► - That's nice.

00:03:47 ◼   ► I don't know. I mean, I enjoy it. I'm trying to let go and let God and just be more mellow

00:03:51 ◼   ► about the whole holiday thing. Actually, this is not a plug, or I guess it is, but the upcoming

00:03:56 ◼   ► episode of Reconcilable Differences with John Sirquissa and me, we talk about holidays.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And John is very healthy about it, and I get sad around holidays. And we talked about that.

00:04:08 ◼   ► So that'll be a fun way to kick off the holiday season for you.

00:04:10 ◼   ► That's nice. It's like a tradition. Well, you know, this weekend's Incomparable episode

00:04:14 ◼   ► was our tradition, which is to ruin things that people love about the holidays.

00:04:19 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:04:20 ◼   ► I haven't listened to it yet. Did you add another layer to the...

00:04:25 ◼   ► Well, let's just say that the Rankin/Bass 1964 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, while

00:04:30 ◼   ► having a heartwarming story of overcoming people's inability to accept differences,

00:04:41 ◼   ► that how you can be different and that's okay and you can and you should be

00:04:45 ◼   ► yourself which is it which is admirable in doing this it portrays the North Pole

00:04:50 ◼   ► Santa Claus the elves and all the other sort of North Pole culture as horrible

00:04:57 ◼   ► he's the worst kind of manager yeah he kind of he acts like he really he

00:05:01 ◼   ► respects everyone's skills but he doesn't and he'll totally undermine you

00:05:04 ◼   ► the first chance he gets yeah especially if your dad thinks you're kind of a jerk

00:05:07 ◼   ► I mean Rudolph gets gets I mean when Rudolph is born there's a scene where Donner his father basically says

00:05:15 ◼   ► Sees the red the glowing red nose and says well, it's over

00:05:19 ◼   ► It's like he's he's he's not like all the other reindeer and therefore his life is over which again

00:05:25 ◼   ► You know

00:05:26 ◼   ► This is the story Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is that is that they exclude him and then turns out that he's very useful and this

00:05:31 ◼   ► So suddenly he matters and I would stop and say wait a second

00:05:34 ◼   ► That's the only reason that Rudolph is is kept around is he might be some use at some point and then all is forgiven Rudolph

00:05:40 ◼   ► We've ruined your childhood by not letting you pet play the reindeer games

00:05:43 ◼   ► What I'm saying is we ruin that in that all that scarring the scarring made you stronger

00:05:48 ◼   ► Well, like Johnny Storm's mom says have you tried not being a mutant? Yeah

00:05:51 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah Rudolph basically is a mutant. That's what I realized when I was watching it is he's a

00:05:56 ◼   ► Basically about being gay. Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. Well and and her me the elf who wants to be a dentist

00:06:02 ◼   ► Oink, oink.

00:06:03 ◼   ► There you go, right there.

00:06:04 ◼   ► He pulls all of the embominal snow monster's teeth.

00:06:07 ◼   ► That still completely freaks me out.

00:06:09 ◼   ► That's messed up.

00:06:10 ◼   ► What's he going to do?

00:06:11 ◼   ► At that point, we're like, what is his life like?

00:06:13 ◼   ► After that, is he just gumming?

00:06:14 ◼   ► Glenn Fleischmann suggested he just gums the occasional elf at that point in the future.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Well, that's like somebody who aspires to be an oncologist, and their first thing is

00:06:23 ◼   ► they're really excited to tell somebody they have cancer.

00:06:26 ◼   ► It's like it's the worst part of being a dentist.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Now I am complete, professionally.

00:06:30 ◼   ► I have done that.

00:06:31 ◼   ► - Ham, hocks, and guitar strings.

00:06:33 ◼   ► - Anyway, so that's my, I like the holidays.

00:06:35 ◼   ► I just am very happy for them to have a cap.

00:06:39 ◼   ► And that's one of the things.

00:06:40 ◼   ► I like Thanksgiving.

00:06:40 ◼   ► I think it's a fun holiday.

00:06:42 ◼   ► I get to make a turkey.

00:06:43 ◼   ► I made a turkey.

00:06:44 ◼   ► It was great.

00:06:45 ◼   ► A little brine, the turkey, and roasted it.

00:06:47 ◼   ► - Oh, nice.

00:06:47 ◼   ► - It was all good.

00:06:48 ◼   ► And there's the side dishes, and Lauren's parents came,

00:06:51 ◼   ► and that was all great.

00:06:51 ◼   ► But I also like it because that's like the starting gun.

00:06:54 ◼   ► And so, you know, I'm not gonna crack out,

00:06:56 ◼   ► crack open the Christmas music in mid-November.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I'm not gonna do it.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Even when I want to, I'm like, "No, no, you know what? Let's defer it. It's going to be

00:07:06 ◼   ► more pleasant to play that Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown Christmas album. I'm going to

00:07:14 ◼   ► be playing it for the entire month, essentially continuously. So let's wait, and it'll be

00:07:18 ◼   ► all the sweeter when I can press play."

00:07:19 ◼   ► Well, you've got to tune. I'm pretty sure you can get KOIT where you live, and if so,

00:07:23 ◼   ► you'll be treated to an hourly playing of Christmas in San Francisco, which is the worst.

00:07:29 ◼   ► I think it's victim own and it's just it's just it's just terrible and something about

00:07:34 ◼   ► clam chowder in a bread bowl fisherman's wharf and that crazy chicka chicka Chinatown whoever

00:07:41 ◼   ► paid them to mention them in Christmas. Well happy holidays to all whatever your background

00:07:48 ◼   ► it's going to be cold and sad and we want to be there with you. Yeah it was it was pretty

00:07:53 ◼   ► spectacular this year here in here in Northern California I felt as if they just flipped

00:07:57 ◼   ► switch on November 1st and said, "All right, it's winter now." And in our absence of seasons,

00:08:01 ◼   ► it was literally like we had our summer period and then they flipped it and then it's like our winter

00:08:06 ◼   ► period, which I'll grant you, it's not particularly cold, it's not particularly wet, it's not like

00:08:10 ◼   ► other parts of the world. But it was funny this year that we just, there was one season for a

00:08:15 ◼   ► while and then you woke up the next day and it was like, "Oh, I guess we're in the other season.

00:08:19 ◼   ► We're in season B now." - Yeah, it finally feels like it

00:08:20 ◼   ► finally feels a little bit like fall. The weather's gotten so weird in San Francisco. I hate to be

00:08:25 ◼   ► to be that person who's always saying, "Oh, climate change," but like in the 16 years

00:08:29 ◼   ► I lived in this same house in western San Francisco, the weather has definitely changed.

00:08:34 ◼   ► It's definitely not as foggy and depressing all the time, and I think that's not a good

00:08:40 ◼   ► sign. But, you know, hey, it's Christmas.

00:08:43 ◼   ► It's Christmas.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Yay, jingle jangle.

00:08:45 ◼   ► That's right.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Chain rattle, chain rattle.

00:08:48 ◼   ► You don't have, you don't swap out your bell for like jingle bells during the holidays,

00:08:52 ◼   ► do you?

00:08:53 ◼   ► I moved the bell away, Jason. You know I moved the bell away.

00:08:55 ◼   ► You should have the jingle bells though that you can do that instead.

00:08:57 ◼   ► That would be very seasonal. I will do that.

00:08:59 ◼   ► Just as a thank you. I do have some actual upgrade follow up.

00:09:02 ◼   ► BOOOOM.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Follow up.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Follow up.

00:09:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Follow up.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Thank you. It's all sound effects now. So this is, um, Lister Sam wrote in about a comment

00:09:12 ◼   ► I made. We talked about the fuselage of Apple press releases and I was trying to remember

00:09:16 ◼   ► and I looked it up and it was 2008 where they made, essentially they had a product release

00:09:20 ◼   ► every week for about three months. And I think then they thought better of it. I don't know

00:09:26 ◼   ► why they did it. Maybe they thought it was just a rolling thunder was a good idea. Maybe

00:09:31 ◼   ► Steve Jobs put them up to it. I don't know the reason. But Lister Sam wrote in who works

00:09:35 ◼   ► in the auto industry and I thought this was actually kind of fun. He said, "Going a whole

00:09:39 ◼   ► week between press releases from one of the major companies is unheard of and would be

00:09:42 ◼   ► a sign of something seriously wrong." At the end of year, all hands meeting at one of the

00:09:48 ◼   ► major automakers, communication staff, the VP of Communications proudly proclaimed they

00:09:54 ◼   ► had published 500 press releases in 2013, a year in which there were only 251 working

00:09:59 ◼   ► days, meaning that for every work day, they released two press releases. And he sent a

00:10:05 ◼   ► link to an auto blog that posted a satirical story with the headline, "Ford Sends Out

00:10:11 ◼   ► 15 Millionth Press Release." And the lead is, "Ford Today Issued a Press Release,

00:10:15 ◼   ► saying it has reached its goal of sending out 15 million press releases.

00:10:19 ◼   ► So it could be worse, although that's a little different.

00:10:24 ◼   ► But the thing is, most of the Apple press releases in that era were substantial.

00:10:30 ◼   ► At least there was a brand new product.

00:10:33 ◼   ► At Macworld, we had to jump on that.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Clearly, this is a boy who cried wolf situation where, "Oh, another Ford press release.

00:10:41 ◼   ► It must be the afternoon."

00:10:42 ◼   ► Right. Well, the funny thing, I'd love to hear more about this from your position

00:10:47 ◼   ► inside an actual publication, but it seems to me that, you know, Apple in the

00:10:52 ◼   ► years that it's it's got a little more tight-lipped, I guess you could say.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Oh yeah. You know, you've talked about this in other places, the pretty

00:10:58 ◼   ► Steve days where there's all kinds of rumors floating around and they've

00:11:01 ◼   ► gotten so tight-lipped that now that's the official burning bush is like what

00:11:04 ◼   ► comes out on stage and what comes out in those press releases. But I think one of the,

00:11:08 ◼   ► I'm wondering if you agree with this, it seems to me like one of the interesting

00:11:11 ◼   ► things is what they choose to highlight and how they choose to frame it and

00:11:15 ◼   ► maybe by extension what they leave out that you wouldn't know if you didn't

00:11:20 ◼   ► read beyond the press release. Does that cover, does that change the way you cover

00:11:24 ◼   ► something when you look at it in context with like oh they're not mentioning oh

00:11:27 ◼   ► when they announce there's gonna be this upgrade to this particular product but

00:11:31 ◼   ► they're not talking about having more RAM or something. Do you do you end up

00:11:34 ◼   ► doing any kind of Talmudic interpretations? Well it's like it's like

00:11:37 ◼   ► like a tiered information system. And I have talked about this before where it's, you're

00:11:42 ◼   ► in this hermetically sealed keynote bubble where all the information you've got, I mean

00:11:47 ◼   ► you're on the internet, but if you're covering the event, you're not, you know, Tim Cook

00:11:51 ◼   ► isn't on stage talking and you're being like, "I'm going to read the tech specs on Apple.com.

00:11:57 ◼   ► I need to do that now." You don't do that. You're covering what's happening on stage

00:12:00 ◼   ► and then you're usually brought into the hands-on area and you're looking at the products there

00:12:03 ◼   ► and talking to people. But meanwhile, they've also dropped this load of information on their

00:12:08 ◼   ► website, not just the PR, but like the marketing pages. And so that's a tiered information

00:12:13 ◼   ► where you come out of the keynote knowing this stuff and having like, being some of

00:12:17 ◼   ► the only people who've touched these products that are not shipping for a few days or a

00:12:20 ◼   ► week or a month or whatever. But then there are the people who are not there who have

00:12:24 ◼   ► been scouring the internet to see what they say there. So the first thing you do is kind

00:12:28 ◼   ► of compare notes there and like what made it in, what was the spin in the keynote versus

00:12:32 ◼   ► what some of the details are. Sometimes those things will be interesting. They'll say,

00:12:36 ◼   ► "Oh, did you realize that there's no blue version of this thing?" And you'll be like,

00:12:41 ◼   ► "Oh, I didn't realize that. I assumed that all of the new products came in blue." And

00:12:45 ◼   ► they'll say, "No, no, it's only these few, and there's a surcharge for the blue model."

00:12:51 ◼   ► And so you get those details, and you're like, "Oh, that's interesting. They didn't

00:12:54 ◼   ► mention that. I wonder why." And so you think about that. And then separately, then you

00:13:01 ◼   ► You get the product and you realize that there are all sorts of things in it that were not

00:13:07 ◼   ► mentioned and sometimes that can be good and sometimes that can be bad and then you're

00:13:10 ◼   ► comparing it with what sort of your expectations are and like what do they not talk about at

00:13:13 ◼   ► all and if you ask them about it, they have no answer for you.

00:13:17 ◼   ► And that is, that can be telling too.

00:13:19 ◼   ► So there's like little layers of information, the stuff that they want to tell you, the

00:13:23 ◼   ► stuff that is so important that it, because on stage a lot of stuff gets dropped because

00:13:27 ◼   ► there's not time and what you get is the narrative. And then there are the details that you can

00:13:32 ◼   ► get hands on and there are the details that they want to market in their marketing material.

00:13:37 ◼   ► And then there's the, you know, at the center of the egg, there's the or the onion, whatever

00:13:41 ◼   ► metaphor we're using here. It's probably a food metaphor. There's like the actual product

00:13:45 ◼   ► and then and so you have to like, you're calibrating around all of those different things. And

00:13:51 ◼   ► the differences there are often the most interesting parts of the story because it's like people

00:13:54 ◼   ► expected this, but it was not that.

00:13:56 ◼   ► It would seem kind of shocking when you come out and you're so focused on that experience

00:13:59 ◼   ► of being in the room and then, you know, obviously the experience of using this thing that you

00:14:05 ◼   ► learned about an hour ago and then coming out and finding out, probably in some cases,

00:14:09 ◼   ► that there's a big controversy already and you're like, "What?"

00:14:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:12 ◼   ► That must be really strange to walk into.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Did you realize that they killed the iPod Classic today?

00:14:16 ◼   ► No, there's no press release for that and they didn't mention it on stage, so I didn't

00:14:19 ◼   ► know that, which is also great when you do your podcast right afterward and people are

00:14:23 ◼   ► like, "What about this?"

00:14:24 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:14:25 ◼   ► on their site because I haven't read their site yet and there's a weird imbalance there.

00:14:29 ◼   ► But it can be useful.

00:14:30 ◼   ► You need five people to be caught up with all that stuff.

00:14:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't have a staff anymore is the thing, so that's trickier now than it was back in the day.

00:14:36 ◼   ► But it's interesting and you do look for the differences. That's definitely a part of it.

00:14:41 ◼   ► I'll tell you one thing that I think is a little weird.

00:14:43 ◼   ► Not weird exactly, but something that there's some strange holes I've noticed in what people do or don't know.

00:14:52 ◼   ► So you can call it tips and tricks.

00:14:54 ◼   ► But it's funny to me, like almost everybody,

00:14:57 ◼   ► I saw this today on Muni,

00:14:59 ◼   ► where you will see people still quitting apps.

00:15:01 ◼   ► And I'm not one of those people to say

00:15:02 ◼   ► you should never quit an app,

00:15:03 ◼   ► 'cause you can actually do sometimes need to quit an app

00:15:04 ◼   ► if it's like eating processor stuff or whatever.

00:15:06 ◼   ► But you know, on iOS, like everybody knows how to quit apps.

00:15:10 ◼   ► But like last week on Back to Work,

00:15:13 ◼   ► and this is not to single out Dan,

00:15:14 ◼   ► but Dan didn't know the contraction trick.

00:15:18 ◼   ► And I would never bother to tell most of my friends

00:15:21 ◼   ► contraction trick on iOS because I assume they've all known about it for years, but

00:15:25 ◼   ► I still meet people every day who are like, "You've got to be kidding me." You know

00:15:29 ◼   ► the trick where you do like W-E-L-L-L and it makes it into wheel?

00:15:33 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah, sure. Or you do W-O-N-T-T and it'll make won't.

00:15:38 ◼   ► But what's amazing is as soon as I mention that somewhere, all these people come out

00:15:42 ◼   ► of the woodwork and they're like, "I've been using this thing every day for years

00:15:44 ◼   ► and I never knew that." Or for example, I discovered, I think I mentioned this on Slack

00:15:48 ◼   ► one time, I still have not found a comprehensive list of every, when I say every Siri command,

00:15:55 ◼   ► I don't mean every iteration, but I have not found a comprehensive like KBase article on

00:15:59 ◼   ► the official list of everything you can do with Siri on iOS and everything you can officially

00:16:04 ◼   ► do.

00:16:05 ◼   ► And so a couple of things, I mean, one thing is they really want you to use Siri.

00:16:08 ◼   ► And I don't mean this as a slam, I just think it's interesting.

00:16:10 ◼   ► It's like, I'm kind of amazed there's not a place to go where they could say, "Hey,

00:16:14 ◼   ► you got a half a day to spend on this?

00:16:16 ◼   ► Here's where to get started learning this stuff."

00:16:18 ◼   ► or to learn the trick that we've all taught each other now

00:16:20 ◼   ► with Apple TV of saying like,

00:16:21 ◼   ► "Find the show Agent X," or whatever,

00:16:24 ◼   ► where you have to sort of give it a little bit of help

00:16:29 ◼   ► with keywords.

00:16:30 ◼   ► There's so many little bits of that stuff

00:16:32 ◼   ► that can over time really change your experience

00:16:35 ◼   ► that's not all out there.

00:16:36 ◼   ► So, I don't know, I always think it's really interesting

00:16:38 ◼   ► that there still very much is a place, I think,

00:16:40 ◼   ► for some of that tips and tricks stuff,

00:16:42 ◼   ► especially when one of these new things comes along.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Because I guess the larger point I'm trying to make

00:16:46 ◼   ► is that we all have a certain kind of tunnel vision

00:16:48 ◼   ► about what we know.

00:16:50 ◼   ► There may be people out there who could reel off

00:16:52 ◼   ► every chip set in every device,

00:16:54 ◼   ► but may not know how they can make a contraction

00:16:56 ◼   ► by typing an extra letter, you know?

00:16:58 ◼   ► - They seem, I suspect there is an initiative

00:17:01 ◼   ► somewhere at Apple to do more of this stuff,

00:17:04 ◼   ► and it seems like a no-brainer to me

00:17:06 ◼   ► because how-to content is very strong in general,

00:17:11 ◼   ► I can say, when you're writing about technology.

00:17:13 ◼   ► It does really well, it indexes well,

00:17:15 ◼   ► lives very well over time, people search for this stuff, they want to know how to use something,

00:17:19 ◼   ► they search on the internet. And you know who the number one website would be for any

00:17:23 ◼   ► how-to information about Apple products? The Apple.com, right? And so they do more of that

00:17:29 ◼   ► now, but I'm a little surprised that they haven't gotten to the point where the day

00:17:35 ◼   ► that the Apple Watch comes out, there isn't like a whole, you know, I mean, because they

00:17:42 ◼   ► have marketing pages but and unless they maybe feel like it's a failure if they

00:17:48 ◼   ► need to have it but it's not a failure it's just like people more more

00:17:51 ◼   ► directions of information more channels that you can you can reach if you need

00:17:55 ◼   ► help to have the ultimate help guide with a whole bunch of articles whether

00:18:01 ◼   ► it's like the knowledge base old style tech knowledge base or whether it's

00:18:05 ◼   ► something that's a little more friendly and feels like it's just oh this is the

00:18:08 ◼   ► the Apple.com help zone or whatever for Apple Watch.

00:18:11 ◼   ► And we posted 40 articles today about things you can do

00:18:14 ◼   ► with your Apple Watch.

00:18:15 ◼   ► And they've done a little bit of that,

00:18:16 ◼   ► but I feel like that would be a huge opportunity for them.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And that's, I mean, when they're,

00:18:22 ◼   ► like they've hired a bunch of people

00:18:23 ◼   ► that I used to work with, right?

00:18:24 ◼   ► And I'm a little surprised that there isn't more of that.

00:18:27 ◼   ► And it may be that some of my former colleagues

00:18:30 ◼   ► are doing some of that content,

00:18:31 ◼   ► but that was always our fear at Macworld,

00:18:33 ◼   ► was that the how-to stuff was really great.

00:18:37 ◼   ► And if Apple wanted to do it itself, the jig would be up

00:18:40 ◼   ► because they would dominate

00:18:42 ◼   ► because everybody would go to the source.

00:18:44 ◼   ► - Well, and to that point, though,

00:18:46 ◼   ► I think Apple has, over the years,

00:18:47 ◼   ► apple.com has become more and more of a mullet site,

00:18:51 ◼   ► you know, where you got the party in the front,

00:18:52 ◼   ► or the party in the back business in the front,

00:18:55 ◼   ► where it's, like for example,

00:18:57 ◼   ► when I put out a call on Twitter and say,

00:18:59 ◼   ► "Hey, does anybody know of a page

00:19:00 ◼   ► "that actually has a comprehensive list

00:19:02 ◼   ► "of every kind of thing that you can do

00:19:05 ◼   ► "with an example in Siri?"

00:19:06 ◼   ► And the best I found is a blog post from a blog I'd never heard of.

00:19:09 ◼   ► It's the most comprehensive thing I've found.

00:19:11 ◼   ► Now the thing is, what surprised me was, you know,

00:19:13 ◼   ► of course what people suggested was, we'll go to the page about Siri on Apple.com,

00:19:18 ◼   ► which you can do, which is beautiful, and the images move around and everything.

00:19:21 ◼   ► But it's a marketing page.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Not that that's bad, but you know, it gives you a few examples,

00:19:25 ◼   ► and as you scroll down, it gives you a few more examples.

00:19:28 ◼   ► The trouble is, the part where it becomes a mullet site is if you fall off the map

00:19:32 ◼   ► when you go into the support area or you go into the fora,

00:19:36 ◼   ► because it's not the friendliest experience in the world.

00:19:39 ◼   ► It's sometimes very difficult to find exactly what

00:19:43 ◼   ► it is you're looking for for the version of your OS.

00:19:46 ◼   ► And that's where it really does start

00:19:48 ◼   ► to feel a little bit like a Dell site or something.

00:19:50 ◼   ► And I don't know what the answer to that is.

00:19:51 ◼   ► As we all know, Apple's not the only company

00:19:53 ◼   ► in the world that has trouble with findability.

00:19:56 ◼   ► But I think for now, those sites are going to be very safe.

00:19:59 ◼   ► The super list of-- this will blow your mind

00:20:03 ◼   ► when you see these 516 things you didn't know you could do.

00:20:05 ◼   ► Here's one try this I mean I'm already seeing people on Twitter saying they didn't know about the contraction

00:20:09 ◼   ► Try this one and I had to mention this three different times on back to work before Dan knew what I was talking about

00:20:14 ◼   ► Hold down Siri and say open calendar hold down Siri and say open deliveries

00:20:19 ◼   ► And you will discover especially if you've got a success or success plus

00:20:23 ◼   ► That's actually faster than navigating to the icon

00:20:25 ◼   ► Yeah

00:20:26 ◼   ► Open the app for you in like less than a second and way faster than swiping down and typing the name of the app in search

00:20:32 ◼   ► Which has been my go-to I treat it like quicksilver

00:20:34 ◼   ► So anyway, not to be late with that, but still a lot of opportunities out there.

00:20:38 ◼   ► But you know, the thing in, I've heard you talk about this, a lot of my friends have

00:20:41 ◼   ► talked about this.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I tried to really dial down my blind anger and stabbing because, you know, it's, you

00:20:50 ◼   ► know, first of all, it's not very healthy to do that as an adult, but also you have

00:20:53 ◼   ► to always remember everybody's got a story about finding out how many people are actually

00:20:58 ◼   ► working on something at Apple.

00:21:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:01 ◼   ► I mean, it really is mind blowing.

00:21:02 ◼   ► I remember first hearing this about the team down in Menlo.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Oh, what was that nice guy?

00:21:06 ◼   ► Andy was the head of the Office team

00:21:09 ◼   ► down in Menlo on Microsoft stuff.

00:21:12 ◼   ► And you hear, like, there's five people at that time

00:21:14 ◼   ► working on Office for the Mac.

00:21:15 ◼   ► And you're like, you've got to be kidding me.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And then you hear, have you heard the story

00:21:18 ◼   ► about one guy that does, like, Wi-Fi connectivity test

00:21:23 ◼   ► and terminal and--

00:21:25 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I've heard-- - There's like one guy

00:21:26 ◼   ► doing five apps. - Yeah, I've heard that story.

00:21:28 ◼   ► Yeah, 'cause Dan Morin was writing about some app

00:21:30 ◼   ► that's a stock app that is not super well known but it's a

00:21:33 ◼   ► it's an app that is a very useful utility in OS 10

00:21:36 ◼   ► and he got the word that that was a guy

00:21:40 ◼   ► who did it. It's not a building, it's not a wing.

00:21:44 ◼   ► It's just that it's Bob basically and he had to... Bob from the terminal. They asked him to do

00:21:49 ◼   ► something else

00:21:49 ◼   ► and so it just sat there for a while because he was pulled off to work

00:21:54 ◼   ► on something else and it's like

00:21:55 ◼   ► yeah I then again there's there's like

00:21:58 ◼   ► apparently 40 people working on Twitter for Mac and Twitter mobile apps and nothing is

00:22:05 ◼   ► happening there, so maybe it doesn't matter, I don't know. Let's get through a couple more

00:22:11 ◼   ► follow-up items before we move into topics, because we got a lot of topics too. But I

00:22:16 ◼   ► don't want to read the first sponsor before I finish follow-up or I will feel ashamed,

00:22:19 ◼   ► so two more items. Listener Will wrote in and we were talking the other week about the

00:22:26 ◼   ► iPad Pro, which we're going to talk about in a little bit, and how, you know, I felt

00:22:30 ◼   ► like it's a progression in the metaphor and that some of the resistance Mac users have

00:22:35 ◼   ► to the idea that you could work productively on an iPad is because it's a different metaphor.

00:22:40 ◼   ► And we heard a lot of the same resistance from people who use command line computers

00:22:44 ◼   ► when the Mac first was introduced. And Lister Well made an interesting point, which is that

00:22:50 ◼   ► Macs have a command line now, but the iPad doesn't have a window and cursor system.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And what I'll say is that's an interesting point, but you're overlooking the entire classic

00:23:04 ◼   ► Mac OS era where there was no command line underneath the Mac.

00:23:07 ◼   ► We're spoiled as modern Mac users that just as a side effect of the fact that there's

00:23:14 ◼   ► Unix underneath as a decision that was made by Next back in the day, purely as a side

00:23:20 ◼   ► effect and I believe, I truly believe that they tried to minimize it as much as possible

00:23:24 ◼   ► and that if they could have completely hidden it and, you know, poured concrete into the

00:23:30 ◼   ► terminal and thrown it off into the water, they would have. We got it when OS X came

00:23:37 ◼   ► out, but the classic Mac OS had no command line. There was literally no command line.

00:23:41 ◼   ► You could run apps that kind of like faked a command line, but they weren't, they weren't,

00:23:45 ◼   ► they were just apps in the end.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Think about, you've talked about this before, think about arrow keys. Were there arrow keys on the first Mac?

00:23:52 ◼   ► No.

00:23:53 ◼   ► No, because they didn't want you to use the keyboard. They wanted you to use the mouse.

00:23:57 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. And the terminal would have been, that would have been a disaster because people would have been just like going back to the command line.

00:24:02 ◼   ► And that was why it was held over my head as a Mac user by people who use PCs with that classic, "I can type a couple of keys and delete everything on my hard drive."

00:24:12 ◼   ► Yeah, good for you.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:15 ◼   ► but that classic Mac era up until you know that first whatever 16 years of the Mac's existence

00:24:21 ◼   ► there's no command line at all that there was no secret command line that you could get to there's

00:24:27 ◼   ► literally nothing so it was a clean it was a pretty clean break and that's how the iPad feels

00:24:33 ◼   ► to me so yeah I mean and just to further to your point I don't know this will probably get into

00:24:39 ◼   ► is more with the iPad Pro and what makes an iPad Pro, what

00:24:43 ◼   ► is the pro part of that.

00:24:44 ◼   ► But you have to wonder what inflection point happens

00:24:49 ◼   ► for a couple things to happen.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Because there's several things that

00:24:51 ◼   ► would need to happen for us to see the kind of leap

00:24:53 ◼   ► that people are talking about, which, sure, we

00:24:56 ◼   ► could imagine a day where there's an iPad OS, where it

00:24:59 ◼   ► has something like windowing.

00:25:00 ◼   ► But in the meantime, I mean, even what they've got right

00:25:03 ◼   ► now, it's a little rough, like what

00:25:05 ◼   ► you can do with the slide over stuff.

00:25:07 ◼   ► And you're going to have to see an app market where people are

00:25:10 ◼   ► willing to put some resources into making the sort of apps--

00:25:14 ◼   ► I mean, it's a lot of Hakuna Matata,

00:25:16 ◼   ► music goes round kind of stuff.

00:25:17 ◼   ► In order for people to put more attention into the iPad,

00:25:21 ◼   ► they're going to start selling more iPads.

00:25:23 ◼   ► Don't you think?

00:25:24 ◼   ► It feels like it's more complex than just launching

00:25:26 ◼   ► a giant new OS and hoping it does everything in the world.

00:25:29 ◼   ► That's a lot of resources.

00:25:31 ◼   ► It is, although I think something

00:25:35 ◼   ► I wrote about in my iPad Pro review

00:25:37 ◼   ► was that it depends on how you look at it.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I think this is the challenge for Apple,

00:25:41 ◼   ► is do you look at this as a tiny fraction

00:25:45 ◼   ► of what the iPhone does, so we should focus on the iPhone,

00:25:48 ◼   ► or do you look at it as a business that sells

00:25:52 ◼   ► almost twice as many iPads as Macs a year,

00:25:54 ◼   ► and the same amount of revenue as the Mac,

00:25:57 ◼   ► and therefore probably deserves that level of attention?

00:26:01 ◼   ► - Right. - Even though it's the same OS

00:26:02 ◼   ► as the iPhone, you know, the iPad business

00:26:05 ◼   ► is the same size as the Mac business.

00:26:08 ◼   ► And do you think the iPad features in iOS

00:26:11 ◼   ► really get the same level of attention as Mac OS?

00:26:14 ◼   ► And I love OS X, and I use it every day.

00:26:16 ◼   ► But I get the distinct impression

00:26:19 ◼   ► that the Mac gets a lot of attention

00:26:21 ◼   ► because it's got a dedicated team,

00:26:23 ◼   ► and that the iPad doesn't get so much attention

00:26:25 ◼   ► because it's really all just part of iOS,

00:26:28 ◼   ► and the iPhone is always gonna take precedence there.

00:26:30 ◼   ► And iOS 9 is the sign that they seem to have walled off

00:26:35 ◼   ► some resources for iPad features, which they should,

00:26:38 ◼   ► because even if we say, "Oh, well, it's not the next smartphone because it was never

00:26:42 ◼   ► going to be that," and,

00:26:43 ◼   ► "Oh, it's sales are sluggish," which, yeah, there's no real iPad sales growth right

00:26:46 ◼   ► now.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Still, it's a pretty big business, and one of the reasons, one of the ways you get it to

00:26:51 ◼   ► grow, perhaps, is to focus more on it.

00:26:53 ◼   ► I don't know. You pointed out to me,

00:26:57 ◼   ► and it's in the show notes, that just because you can't access

00:27:00 ◼   ► your iPad's command line doesn't mean you can't do

00:27:04 ◼   ► Lots of interesting things with attaching to Mac interfaces and command line interfaces.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Yeah, this is a little bit random, but I just want to mention two quick things that can really...

00:27:15 ◼   ► If you are a power user on an iPad Pro, two things to look at. One is one of our favorite companies, Panic.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:22 ◼   ► It makes a really neat iOS app called Prompt that's a fantastic implementation of a terminal shell on your iPad or iPhone.

00:27:30 ◼   ► I don't have much need to use it, but when I do, I'm typically, just as with all panic

00:27:36 ◼   ► products, I'm really astonished with how well it works. Have you used Prompt before?

00:27:40 ◼   ► Yeah, Prompt and also Coda, which has the command line stuff built in. So you connect

00:27:46 ◼   ► to a remote system that has a command line, usually it's a Unix system, and you've got,

00:27:51 ◼   ► you're in, you're logged in, and you can do all that stuff.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Yeah, that could be something as simple as needing to change, I mean, I don't know, I

00:27:56 ◼   ► I haven't done web development in years,

00:27:58 ◼   ► but needing to change file permissions

00:28:00 ◼   ► or something like that, go create a new directory,

00:28:02 ◼   ► anything like, you know, there are certain kinds of things.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Jeff Veen always used to say,

00:28:05 ◼   ► if he ever had to do anything, you know,

00:28:07 ◼   ► involving like a ton of files,

00:28:09 ◼   ► he always felt like he was faster

00:28:11 ◼   ► at doing that with the terminal.

00:28:12 ◼   ► And that's the kind of mind you get.

00:28:13 ◼   ► It's not so different from deciding whether to use,

00:28:15 ◼   ► like, how do you decide?

00:28:16 ◼   ► Should you use a keyboard or a mouse?

00:28:18 ◼   ► Well, you use both, 'cause they're for different things.

00:28:20 ◼   ► So Prompt is a great way to look at,

00:28:21 ◼   ► but I wanted to also kind of cut the knot

00:28:23 ◼   ► by mentioning an app I like a lot called Screens,

00:28:25 ◼   ► which I'm sure you've got to be familiar with, right?

00:28:27 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:28:28 ◼   ► - So screens is a, check my terminology here,

00:28:31 ◼   ► but it's a VNC app and client that lets you,

00:28:36 ◼   ► you know, you can do this by just turning on,

00:28:39 ◼   ► oh, what's it called these days?

00:28:40 ◼   ► Is it still back to my Mac?

00:28:42 ◼   ► Can you basically turn on?

00:28:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is still back to my Mac,

00:28:44 ◼   ► or just screen sharing in general.

00:28:46 ◼   ► - Right, but what I like about this,

00:28:48 ◼   ► screens have some nice things,

00:28:50 ◼   ► especially if you're sharing multiple Macs.

00:28:52 ◼   ► There's all kinds of things you can configure

00:28:54 ◼   ► to have it remember.

00:28:55 ◼   ► And I tooted at the folks who make screens about a request.

00:28:58 ◼   ► And apparently, just for what it's worth-- well,

00:29:01 ◼   ► let me explain what this does.

00:29:02 ◼   ► If you've never used this before,

00:29:03 ◼   ► if you have screen sharing enabled on the Mac

00:29:05 ◼   ► that you want to get to, and you're

00:29:06 ◼   ► on your iPad in particular-- you can also

00:29:08 ◼   ► do this on your phone.

00:29:09 ◼   ► It's a little rough on a phone.

00:29:12 ◼   ► You have the ability to go in and basically just use

00:29:15 ◼   ► your Mac on your device.

00:29:17 ◼   ► You can do this from a Mac, or in this case,

00:29:19 ◼   ► you can do it-- doing it from an iPad Pro

00:29:21 ◼   ► is surprisingly not that bad to use.

00:29:23 ◼   ► If you've got to go in and do something where you need the interface and you're not real

00:29:26 ◼   ► comfortable with the terminal, the reason I mention it here is I believe it is rumored

00:29:30 ◼   ► that screens 4 will add a fantastic feature, which is the ability to automatically log

00:29:35 ◼   ► you in.

00:29:36 ◼   ► You won't have to enter, like, your good password over the VNC, that it'll be able to remember

00:29:41 ◼   ► that for you.

00:29:42 ◼   ► So, it's an app I like a lot.

00:29:44 ◼   ► It's one of those apps where it's almost like PDF pen, where, like, when I have to use it,

00:29:50 ◼   ► I'm usually really frustrated and when I use it, I really want that tool and it really, really works.

00:29:55 ◼   ► I've got one more piece of follow-up, but before I do that, let me tell you about one of our fine sponsors in this episode of Upgrade.

00:30:03 ◼   ► This is the job that, it's a heavy lifting that Myke usually does, but I'm going to do it.

00:30:07 ◼   ► And I can do that because I've actually used this product and I like it.

00:30:09 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade brought to you by lynda.com, the online learning platform, over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business technology and creative skills

00:30:19 ◼   ► for a free 10-day trial, visit lynda.com, that's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash upgrade. Now

00:30:26 ◼   ► lynda.com, basically if you can think about it, there's probably a course on lynda.com

00:30:32 ◼   ► that will teach it to you. And they get experts, they get experts in the field, they get experts

00:30:37 ◼   ► who actually have been involved in building the tools. This is not something, speaking

00:30:42 ◼   ► of things that Apple doesn't do, this is not something that Apple does, but some people

00:30:45 ◼   ► like experts on the Adobe software and I think Microsoft software are under embargo and build

00:30:53 ◼   ► all these courses and then the new version of creative suite comes out and there are

00:30:56 ◼   ► Linda dot com courses almost right away about them which is incredibly impressive. I took

00:31:02 ◼   ► a bunch of courses in using logic to edit podcasts because it's a music tool and although

00:31:07 ◼   ► I'm sort of self-taught with logic there are so many buttons that I am afraid to press

00:31:12 ◼   ► fear that I will do. I have gotten in some very very bad situations with logic

00:31:17 ◼   ► where I'm like, "Why are, why when I change this track does this track get louder?

00:31:22 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense to me. They're totally separate." Apparently I

00:31:25 ◼   ► pressed a letter on my keyboard at some point. Logic is really great about that, too.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Now you're ducking. It doesn't have modifier track or keys for everything.

00:31:33 ◼   ► Sometimes it's just like, "Oh, you press D." So the logic courses were really great

00:31:38 ◼   ► because those are people who actually know how to use it, and I was able to

00:31:41 ◼   ► to dive in and Lynda's .com courses, the way they work, they're really like chapterized

00:31:47 ◼   ► and stuff so you can sit back and watch a whole course on a subject or you can just

00:31:50 ◼   ► jump to the solution to your problem and I've used them in both contexts and I really like

00:31:54 ◼   ► that, that you can sit back and you're taking a course from an expert or you can use it

00:31:58 ◼   ► more like you would search the web for an answer to your problem. Instead, you can search

00:32:06 ◼   ► Linda's library and go to the lynda.com course on that subject and click and boom, you're

00:32:12 ◼   ► at the, you know, 20 minutes in or 15 minutes in where it's got the actual answer and it's

00:32:16 ◼   ► on screen and the experts showing you how it's done and I've had those moments numerous

00:32:21 ◼   ► times on lynda.com where I'm like, "Oh, it's so simple. A child could do it," but I was

00:32:26 ◼   ► completely incapable of doing it before I was able to see it in front of me. So this

00:32:31 ◼   ► This is all possible with lynda.com membership. You get the top experts. The videos are very

00:32:37 ◼   ► high quality. They have a whole studio. It's not these shaky cam videos that you might

00:32:42 ◼   ► find on YouTube. They've got course transcripts so you can follow along. You can save playlists

00:32:49 ◼   ► so you can save them for later if you don't have time now to watch video. You can customize

00:32:53 ◼   ► that and even share them with friends or co-workers. If you're on a team that's trying to learn

00:32:59 ◼   ► something, you can kind of curate a playlist, and you can even watch and download courses

00:33:04 ◼   ► to Android and iOS devices and learn wherever you are. So your lynda.com membership gives

00:33:10 ◼   ► you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics for one flat rate. Go to lynda.com,

00:33:17 ◼   ► l-y-n-d-a dot com slash upgrade and sign up for your free 10-day trial. That's l-y-n-d-a

00:33:22 ◼   ► dot com slash upgrade. Thank you so much to lynda.com for teaching me not to press the

00:33:27 ◼   ► the D key and logic and supporting upgrade.

00:33:30 ◼   ► Great service.

00:33:32 ◼   ► It really is.

00:33:33 ◼   ► This is just some amazing content there.

00:33:35 ◼   ► I like to, I like to go to the video that is most interesting to me.

00:33:38 ◼   ► Start with the one that even if it's over your head a little bit is most

00:33:41 ◼   ► interesting to you and if you, if you don't know what's going on, work backwards.

00:33:45 ◼   ► I mean, it's great cause you can go through them in order, but I also, I love

00:33:48 ◼   ► the idea, like you said, of how they break it down into pieces where it doesn't feel

00:33:51 ◼   ► like a death March, it doesn't feel like you're going to have to like sit here and

00:33:53 ◼   ► eat your vegetables, you can go and try to learn just the thing you want.

00:33:56 ◼   ► And then if you are confused about something because of the way they are so carefully broken up,

00:34:00 ◼   ► you will very likely be able to go, "Oh, what does ducking even mean?"

00:34:03 ◼   ► I will go back to this section where ducking was.

00:34:04 ◼   ► I had that moment where I was like, "Yes, adding compression to a sidechain.

00:34:09 ◼   ► That sounds really exciting. Let's do that."

00:34:11 ◼   ► I was kind of envisioning like a motorcycle with a sidecar or something.

00:34:16 ◼   ► And then I started listening to that and I was like, "Oh no, let's back up."

00:34:18 ◼   ► Because I was in too deep.

00:34:20 ◼   ► - Back, screech. - Back it up a little bit.

00:34:23 ◼   ► But yeah, great service.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Hey, my last piece of follow-out is John Syracuse and not approved, but it's to Reconcilable

00:34:31 ◼   ► Differences, your podcast with John, which you mentioned earlier, Episode 14. You guys

00:34:35 ◼   ► talk about fashion stuff and that got mentioned on ATP last week as well. I just wanted to

00:34:41 ◼   ► say it made me laugh, this idea of the John Syracuse, a paper doll, because a friend of

00:34:47 ◼   ► mine, my friend Andrea in college, used to refer to me as a paper doll.

00:34:53 ◼   ► your outfits are so diverse? No, because any outfit beyond my default appeared to be temporary

00:35:07 ◼   ► and uncomfortable. Like an appearance in court? So, basically, so Andrea was a friend of mine

00:35:15 ◼   ► the first couple years in college and then she transferred, and my family just visited

00:35:19 ◼   ► her on our summer vacation. We drove past where she lives and we dropped in and saw

00:35:25 ◼   ► her and her family. But for a couple of years, we're in the dorms together. So we saw each

00:35:30 ◼   ► other all the time and you're living with these people. So they don't just see you when

00:35:34 ◼   ► you're out in public because you're, you know, either there is no privacy, you could view

00:35:39 ◼   ► it that way, or you could view it as that the dorm floor is an extended family. But

00:35:43 ◼   ► But regardless, she discovered, being a very savvy person, that I was at home wearing shorts

00:35:52 ◼   ► and a t-shirt and probably no shoes, on the dorm floor anyway.

00:35:59 ◼   ► And so then she would see me with a collared shirt and a sweater and jeans or khakis walking

00:36:06 ◼   ► about or at a college function or something like, "Oh, the Dean's having a reception."

00:36:13 ◼   ► reception for the college and you're invited and you're going to come and like, all right,

00:36:17 ◼   ► fine. And she said, yeah, it's just like they just took that sweater and they just pressed

00:36:21 ◼   ► it over you temporarily. Like, yeah, totally legit. But the truth was that lurking underneath

00:36:26 ◼   ► it at all times was the default, which was the shorts and the T-shirt, which is totally

00:36:31 ◼   ► true, totally completely accurate.

00:36:32 ◼   ► - So embarrassing. Whenever I have to go anywhere, like I do a monthly comedy thing with Scott

00:36:36 ◼   ► Simpson and I'll put on a pair of pants that mostly don't have holes and I'll put on a

00:36:40 ◼   ► shirt with a collar and my daughter will say, "Daddy, why are you so fancy?" I'd be like,

00:36:44 ◼   ► "Fancy? I'm wearing blue jeans and a shirt." And I realize it's because I really do kind

00:36:48 ◼   ► of look like a hobo most days. That's the paper doll. Well, it was nice. What was his

00:36:52 ◼   ► name? David Galletly, I think his name was, was very kind to actually make a Photoshop

00:36:58 ◼   ► file where you can go and dress up John Siracusa however you want. It's every boy and girl's

00:37:04 ◼   ► dream.

00:37:05 ◼   ► He jumped on it fast, too, because our podcast, sometimes co-conspirator, Mr. Philip Mosolak,

00:37:12 ◼   ► was definitely working.

00:37:13 ◼   ► He posted some sketches of his own John Siracusa paper doll drawings in the Incomparable Slack

00:37:18 ◼   ► chat that were pretty funny, too.

00:37:21 ◼   ► So I feel for John.

00:37:22 ◼   ► He's like, "Stop drawing me!"

00:37:24 ◼   ► "SpongeBob, stop picturing me in underpants!"

00:37:30 ◼   ► But anyway, so paper doll, I feel you is what I'm saying.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I totally get it.

00:37:34 ◼   ► Totally get it. Are you a fellow? Are you a fellow non-combatant? Uh,

00:37:37 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, no I and what I realized is

00:37:42 ◼   ► that I had to embrace it that I I I fought it for a long time and felt guilty about it and

00:37:50 ◼   ► And I remember like in high school in high school, you know, I wore it was the 80s

00:37:56 ◼   ► I wore the I wore the the long sleeve button-up shirt with a sweater

00:38:01 ◼   ► that was sort of my thing and then but but even then I would be like I'd unbutton the the

00:38:07 ◼   ► The sleeves and roll them up because I couldn't bear it and you roll them up over the sweater

00:38:12 ◼   ► No, no, I would take off the sweater and roll up the sleeves or I'd push up the sweater sleeves

00:38:19 ◼   ► I can buy the rolled up sweater sleeve. No, no, no

00:38:22 ◼   ► Very troubling you'll ruin your sweater that way too. Absolutely, but I

00:38:27 ◼   ► Just I was I rebelled against it and then you go to work

00:38:31 ◼   ► and you're like, "Well, I gotta wear the work clothes."

00:38:34 ◼   ► And fortunately, being in both journalism and technology,

00:38:38 ◼   ► the dress code for those things on the West Coast,

00:38:40 ◼   ► not high, not for either of those, right?

00:38:43 ◼   ► So I got away with jeans from the beginning.

00:38:46 ◼   ► I wore jeans to work.

00:38:47 ◼   ► But I had button-up shirts, I had polo shirts.

00:38:53 ◼   ► And, you know, ten years in, I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans,

00:38:58 ◼   ► And I realized this is essentially what I wore to kindergarten.

00:39:02 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:39:04 ◼   ► And this is my default.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And the jeans are only because people would make fun of me if I wore, uh, like, a pair of, like, sweat shorts to work.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Which is what I would have preferred to do.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Yeah, when you're playing at that level.

00:39:16 ◼   ► And now you work in your own garage, so sky's the limit.

00:39:18 ◼   ► That's right. On, uh, this—well, now that we're in, uh, in Season B here in California,

00:39:24 ◼   ► I usually will wear pants out here.

00:39:27 ◼   ► here but in season A it's shorts, absolutely, during season A. So yeah, paper doll, it's

00:39:33 ◼   ► a true thing. You have to admit it. Now John is very special about this because John essentially

00:39:38 ◼   ► just has, like Steve Jobs with the turtlenecks, John's just got the rugby shirt.

00:39:44 ◼   ► -He's the king of rugby, yeah, no question. -Yeah. But for me, just a kind of shirt.

00:39:48 ◼   ► -I feel bad. He was a very good sport about it. I was not trying to take the Mickey out

00:39:53 ◼   ► of him and I was just kind of playfully jostling but I should have realized knowing how Syracuse,

00:39:59 ◼   ► how viral the John Siracusa product is, I should have known that this would happen but

00:40:03 ◼   ► I apologize because I did not mean to make him an object of scorn but people love him.

00:40:07 ◼   ► What are you going to do?

00:40:08 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not scorn. It's love, right?

00:40:09 ◼   ► Oh, it's affection. People want to see him look like an angry professor. Like, who wouldn't

00:40:12 ◼   ► want to see that?

00:40:13 ◼   ► It's true. Hey, we should talk about the Apple TV.

00:40:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:17 ◼   ► We had Joe Steele on a couple weeks ago and he was very grumpy and we got a lot of feedback

00:40:21 ◼   ► saying, "Wow, that guy's grumpy."

00:40:22 ◼   ► - "This is upgrade, everybody's gonna get all mad, I forgot."

00:40:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:40:25 ◼   ► "Oh, that's right, everyone gets mad when you're honest."

00:40:27 ◼   ► Ah, that's right.

00:40:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, it's a hard thing, it's tricky.

00:40:31 ◼   ► - So let's skip the discussion of setup.

00:40:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:40:34 ◼   ► - I think we beat that one to death.

00:40:36 ◼   ► It's not that good, it's not that good.

00:40:39 ◼   ► Some people had not as bad a condition as I did,

00:40:42 ◼   ► where I was told-- - And their passwords suck.

00:40:44 ◼   ► - "Go to a computer."

00:40:45 ◼   ► I had that again, I had that again.

00:40:47 ◼   ► I let my iTunes match subscription lapse,

00:40:50 ◼   ► because I'm an Apple Music subscriber right now.

00:40:52 ◼   ► And I love iTunes Match, but there's no point in having it

00:40:56 ◼   ► and Apple Music, as far as I can tell,

00:40:58 ◼   ► as long because Apple Music includes the ability

00:41:01 ◼   ► to scan and upload things, I believe.

00:41:04 ◼   ► If not, I'll be turning it back on.

00:41:06 ◼   ► - Jason, I hate to admit, I've tried to learn it,

00:41:09 ◼   ► and I'm still so confused about what does what.

00:41:12 ◼   ► All I know is I get a pop-up now

00:41:14 ◼   ► that I've reached my limit on iTunes Match.

00:41:16 ◼   ► Every time I open iTunes, it tells me--

00:41:18 ◼   ► - They said by the end of the year,

00:41:19 ◼   ► to fix the limit but they haven't yet. But my point is not about that particular rabbit hole

00:41:23 ◼   ► to go down it. I specifically decided to let it lapse, figuring this would uncover whether I need

00:41:29 ◼   ► it or not. And then, like, I mean, I've got all my music. I can just re-up if I need to. But the

00:41:35 ◼   ► point was that I ran into the same thing I ran into with my Apple TV setup where I got an email

00:41:38 ◼   ► from Apple that said, "Your iTunes match subscription is about to lapse. If you would like to

00:41:44 ◼   ► to renew it go to your computer and launch iTunes and renew iTunes match

00:41:52 ◼   ► didn't it I mean but I remember right it's something like it was like

00:41:55 ◼   ► implying your your credit card was weird or something wasn't it giving you some

00:41:59 ◼   ► kind of flag about so on Apple TV it was it asked me for my security code on my

00:42:04 ◼   ► credit card and I can't decide whether that was because the the something in

00:42:09 ◼   ► the back end information about the credit card changed or they hadn't

00:42:12 ◼   ► verified it in a certain amount of time or what, or because I have more security turned

00:42:16 ◼   ► on in my account. I don't know the reason, but it said, you know, "You need to go to

00:42:21 ◼   ► your computer, to iTunes, click on your account, then click on 'Edit Account Information,'

00:42:29 ◼   ► and then enter in your security code," which seemed kind of a bit far. But I had the same

00:42:34 ◼   ► idea when I saw the iTunes Match thing, which just kind of blew me away. See, here we are

00:42:38 ◼   ► not talking about set up by talking about said it but but I feel like

00:42:42 ◼   ► Apple as a maker of the iPhone should probably never send an email that says

00:42:46 ◼   ► go to your computer

00:42:48 ◼   ► when it actually raises a a question I can't believe I hadn't thought of before

00:42:52 ◼   ► a what do you do if you don't have a computer now well

00:42:55 ◼   ► find a friend I mean honestly I mean I'm asking honestly like to me

00:42:58 ◼   ► Apple TV is up there as one of the

00:43:02 ◼   ► potentially one of the gateway devices right the kind of thing I can I like an

00:43:04 ◼   ► iPhone or a an iPod

00:43:06 ◼   ► is the kind of thing where you all give us a crowd i think i think they figure

00:43:09 ◼   ► you know what i did match you probably a computer because you you you've read

00:43:12 ◼   ► your files and all that and apple t_v_ figure you probably got a computer

00:43:16 ◼   ► somewhere and if you don't you probably don't even have an apple i_d_ right a

00:43:19 ◼   ► you know so if you if u

00:43:21 ◼   ► if you're you get into this word that weird circumstance then you've probably

00:43:25 ◼   ► got a computer i can see it it's just

00:43:27 ◼   ► to be told you're on this device no no go to a computer which used to be like

00:43:31 ◼   ► all right well yeah that's where i go because uh... what else where else would

00:43:34 ◼   ► go and the answer now is well I could go to my phone or my iPad. Anyway the setup it was

00:43:39 ◼   ► mixed bag. But now that it's up and running I've been I've been using it a lot. Have you

00:43:45 ◼   ► been using it a lot? Yeah absolutely. Yeah I'd love to talk about that. I mean it's always

00:43:50 ◼   ► fun to talk about the stuff as soon as it comes out but the way you really learn whether

00:43:53 ◼   ► you like it or not is using it for a while so yeah I would love to talk about that. Yeah

00:43:57 ◼   ► I have the um so for me I've been fairly positive about it. I still get frustrated by the track

00:44:04 ◼   ► pad sometimes. I, I, where, where it goes, also when I first started it like has to detect

00:44:13 ◼   ► that the remote is there so I'm like clicking and, and swiping furiously and nothing's happening

00:44:17 ◼   ► and then it goes connected and then it goes and it swipes everywhere. I'm like no, stop,

00:44:22 ◼   ► no. But, but things that I liked about it like I've got Plex running on it which is

00:44:27 ◼   ► a lot of fun because I used to have files that needed to be, that were not in a supported

00:44:31 ◼   ► format for the Apple TV. And I realize what's happening with Plex is that the Plex server

00:44:34 ◼   ► is basically transcoding it to something that the Apple TV will play, but I don't have to

00:44:38 ◼   ► do it, and I think that's kind of nice.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. Plex is the killer app for me, and it is, um, well, it's funny. As the

00:44:46 ◼   ► Apple TV previous editions got a little long in the tooth, I found myself, my affections

00:44:52 ◼   ► moving more to the Amazon Fire TV, um, which is tough competition for Apple, to be honest,

00:44:58 ◼   ► because it is blazingly fast.

00:45:01 ◼   ► And Plex, if you have a Plex server running

00:45:05 ◼   ► on a pretty fast Mac and you're using Amazon Fire TV,

00:45:09 ◼   ► to go from zero to something is so much faster

00:45:12 ◼   ► on Amazon Fire TV.

00:45:14 ◼   ► I have to say, and I'd love to mention this

00:45:16 ◼   ► just a little bit, even today it's so much faster.

00:45:18 ◼   ► To go from everything is off to everything is on

00:45:21 ◼   ► to stuff is running.

00:45:22 ◼   ► You know, the basic John Sira, he's a test.

00:45:23 ◼   ► How long does it take to go from nothing being on

00:45:26 ◼   ► to me watching the show I want to watch?

00:45:28 ◼   ► So that's, I got really spoiled with the Fire TV.

00:45:31 ◼   ► I was able to look past some of the interface stuff.

00:45:34 ◼   ► But you know, now, however many weeks in,

00:45:36 ◼   ► I mean, there's a lot I really do like about it.

00:45:39 ◼   ► But that, what I like about it has come from

00:45:42 ◼   ► a somewhat forceful retraining,

00:45:43 ◼   ► sort of similar to how I'm trying to use my iPad Pro,

00:45:47 ◼   ► is kind of forcing myself to say,

00:45:49 ◼   ► look, hey, how does this thing want to be used?

00:45:51 ◼   ► Instead of like, what do I expect it to do?

00:45:53 ◼   ► That seems like a pretty smart approach.

00:45:55 ◼   ► When you get, you know, in this case,

00:45:57 ◼   ► fairly different interface with some cues. I'm talking here about Siri. They

00:46:01 ◼   ► really want you to use Siri on this thing. And so that's really what I've

00:46:04 ◼   ► been trying to spend my time on. Yeah, and I'd be going any direction you want.

00:46:09 ◼   ► There's a lot I mean there's a lot I like about the Siri part, a lot that's

00:46:12 ◼   ► frustrating. The remote continues to drive me a little crazy for the same

00:46:17 ◼   ► boring reason as ever, which is it is difficult to tell which end is which.

00:46:20 ◼   ► I've gotten to where I do sort of automatically look. Is the long

00:46:24 ◼   ► button on the right. Okay, yes, then I have it in the right direction because that means

00:46:27 ◼   ► the volume is on the right.

00:46:28 ◼   ► I do the shiny test when I'm picking it up. It's laying on the table. Is it the shiny

00:46:35 ◼   ► one? Touch the shiny part. The shiny part won't mess you up by being the touch, the

00:46:40 ◼   ► track pad. So pick it up by the shiny part. That's my test.

00:46:45 ◼   ► But I'm forever, I mean, still, I'm forever scrubbing. And luckily, scrubbing doesn't

00:46:50 ◼   ► go until you hit the button but I still find myself scrubbing all over the screen just

00:46:55 ◼   ► like putting the thing down or picking it up or moving it or honestly just even like

00:46:58 ◼   ► having it on the couch you know there's like these glancing blows but there is a lot I

00:47:02 ◼   ► like it's a very 1.0 thing.

00:47:04 ◼   ► I think you put this really well you said you can't really think you really need to

00:47:08 ◼   ► think of this as a 1.0 because it's such a rethinking it looks a lot the same but so

00:47:13 ◼   ► much is different under the hood and so much is different with what Siri will mean to how

00:47:17 ◼   ► we use this. So I'm trying to be sanguine about that and take that as my approach of

00:47:22 ◼   ► like learning how to adapt to how this thing wants to be used. And even then it's a little

00:47:28 ◼   ► tricky sometimes, but I'm generally happy, I think.

00:47:33 ◼   ► If you're watching a video and you accidentally swipe on the trackpad, is there a button to

00:47:38 ◼   ► press that like undoes it and just makes it go away and it continues to play? Can you

00:47:42 ◼   ► menu out of that?

00:47:44 ◼   ► I think menu, see this is, I thought I had this.

00:47:47 ◼   ► - I haven't done it 'cause I'm too terrified.

00:47:49 ◼   ► - I know, I know, 'cause you're gonna lose your place

00:47:50 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:47:51 ◼   ► And then of course there is also,

00:47:52 ◼   ► unlike the third generation,

00:47:55 ◼   ► this one has a strange sense of place.

00:47:57 ◼   ► It used to be that whenever you menued out of an app

00:47:59 ◼   ► and then went back to that app, you start at the top,

00:48:02 ◼   ► and now you end up on the detail page of wherever,

00:48:05 ◼   ► say you were on a detail page for a show inside of Plex,

00:48:07 ◼   ► that's where you go back to.

00:48:09 ◼   ► So now you have to menu inside the app.

00:48:12 ◼   ► It's a different paradigm

00:48:13 ◼   ► that takes some getting used to.

00:48:14 ◼   ► But I, so, I, at first I got really confused

00:48:17 ◼   ► because, that's my style.

00:48:19 ◼   ► I got really confused because I kept scrubbing accidentally

00:48:21 ◼   ► or causing something to happen just by glancing blows

00:48:24 ◼   ► on the touch pad.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Then I heard from somebody, well actually don't sweat that

00:48:27 ◼   ► because as long as you don't press the button

00:48:30 ◼   ► after you scrub, it won't start playing at that point.

00:48:33 ◼   ► And then I feel like I heard somebody say

00:48:35 ◼   ► if you hit menu at that point, it'll go away.

00:48:39 ◼   ► But, like I've hit menu, I feel like I've hit menu

00:48:41 ◼   ► when I've done that and gone out of the show.

00:48:43 ◼   ► I feel like maybe like flipping up and down.

00:48:46 ◼   ► Basically, I'm pissing on a spark plug to quote "WarGames."

00:48:48 ◼   ► I would just try anything just on the pad

00:48:50 ◼   ► to see if it makes the interface go away.

00:48:53 ◼   ► But I don't actually know the official way

00:48:55 ◼   ► to get out of that.

00:48:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I had a few cases where I pressed the buttons

00:48:59 ◼   ► and I'm sort of like nothing is happening

00:49:00 ◼   ► and then everything is happening,

00:49:01 ◼   ► which suggests that something is lagging there,

00:49:04 ◼   ► which this is pretty impressive hardware.

00:49:05 ◼   ► It probably shouldn't do that,

00:49:06 ◼   ► but you could probably chalk some of that up

00:49:08 ◼   ► to the fact that it is buggy and new

00:49:11 ◼   ► and presumably they're working on that, one would hope.

00:49:15 ◼   ► But I definitely have had those instances

00:49:18 ◼   ► where it feels a little laggy.

00:49:21 ◼   ► The Siri search has been kind of nice.

00:49:23 ◼   ► I have the Fire TV Stick,

00:49:24 ◼   ► and so I don't have the microphone remote on Fire TV.

00:49:29 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:49:30 ◼   ► - So this was my first experience with the kind of TV.

00:49:33 ◼   ► Well, I mean, we've got an Xbox,

00:49:35 ◼   ► but the Xbox voice control stuff is,

00:49:39 ◼   ► I don't even want to try it

00:49:40 ◼   ► because it's such a, it's really annoying.

00:49:42 ◼   ► 'Cause it's sort of like,

00:49:44 ◼   ► (sighs)

00:49:46 ◼   ► Microsoft wants you to interact with it

00:49:47 ◼   ► in a very particular way,

00:49:48 ◼   ► and I just wanna play a game or something,

00:49:51 ◼   ► and I just have never even bothered to spend time with it,

00:49:54 ◼   ► 'cause it just seems really annoying to me.

00:49:57 ◼   ► But with the Siri thing, I've been sitting on the couch

00:50:00 ◼   ► and thinking, I could go to the movies,

00:50:04 ◼   ► and I could type in something with search,

00:50:06 ◼   ► but I don't need to do that.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Let's hold this down and do it.

00:50:09 ◼   ► And I have enjoyed that.

00:50:12 ◼   ► I have enjoyed being able to say,

00:50:13 ◼   ► we were looking for a movie just the other day.

00:50:15 ◼   ► And I pressed the button and said,

00:50:19 ◼   ► show me the movie The Lion in Winter,

00:50:21 ◼   ► and it jumped right there, which I was pretty happy with.

00:50:25 ◼   ► I thought that was a pretty good feature.

00:50:26 ◼   ► - It's pretty good.

00:50:27 ◼   ► It gets a little bit tripped up on,

00:50:29 ◼   ► what's the word, homonyms,

00:50:31 ◼   ► which is understandable, understandable.

00:50:32 ◼   ► But I've had good luck with, I mostly use it for,

00:50:37 ◼   ► My daughter really likes the Adele song "Skyfall" from the movie.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And I let her watch a few minutes of the beginning of "Skyfall" because it's not horribly violent.

00:50:45 ◼   ► But I really like the credits sequence.

00:50:46 ◼   ► I just say, you know, hit the button and say, "Find 'Skyfall.'"

00:50:50 ◼   ► And it's pretty good at that.

00:50:51 ◼   ► It pulls it right up.

00:50:52 ◼   ► Movies?

00:50:53 ◼   ► Pretty good.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Because with a movie, if you think about the hierarchy, here's the hierarchy mostly.

00:50:59 ◼   ► Is you say, you know, find whatever, the exorcist or whatever.

00:51:05 ◼   ► And so a page comes up, a detailed page comes up for the movie and then the options I think

00:51:10 ◼   ► are things you've bought or can buy on iTunes, Hulu and Netflix.

00:51:16 ◼   ► And is HBO on there as well, Showtime?

00:51:18 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:51:20 ◼   ► I think maybe HBO is on there.

00:51:21 ◼   ► I don't see them on there much, but for us it's usually Hulu and Netflix.

00:51:25 ◼   ► And so for a movie it's actually pretty great.

00:51:27 ◼   ► A movie is very simple and they do that very well.

00:51:30 ◼   ► I think that part I don't really have much qualm with.

00:51:33 ◼   ► I think they've done great.

00:51:34 ◼   ► TV shows are complicated in a lot of ways on the TV, I think.

00:51:38 ◼   ► Because one of the things is-- and this is not Apple's fault.

00:51:40 ◼   ► So you say, for example, you say, find Doctor Who.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And it's going to guess what you mean.

00:51:46 ◼   ► And if it's something-- Doctor Who's maybe not a great example.

00:51:48 ◼   ► But if it's confused about what you're looking for,

00:51:50 ◼   ► you'll get the little pop-up at the bottom where it'll say,

00:51:52 ◼   ► well, which one of these is it that you want?

00:51:54 ◼   ► It could be a movie, it could be TV, whatever.

00:51:56 ◼   ► Not a problem, really.

00:51:57 ◼   ► But you hit the right Doctor Who, you go to it.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And it gets real complicated because there's

00:52:01 ◼   ► different seasons available in different places.

00:52:03 ◼   ► and then you need to drill down into that.

00:52:06 ◼   ► And then candidly, I've bought a lot of TV

00:52:08 ◼   ► on Apple iTunes Store.

00:52:11 ◼   ► I find the interface for going through seasons

00:52:12 ◼   ► of a TV show actually worse than it was before.

00:52:15 ◼   ► The horizontal scrolling thing is pretty rough,

00:52:19 ◼   ► where we had to get to a Walking Dead from this season.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And just in fairness, you can say, for example,

00:52:27 ◼   ► find Doctor Who season nine.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And it pretty reliably will pull up season nine.

00:52:32 ◼   ► But the interface is not, it's a weird side-scrolling, isn't it?

00:52:34 ◼   ► Like a right to left where you go through season after season after season?

00:52:37 ◼   ► I think so.

00:52:38 ◼   ► That's a little rough, but I think there's room that they could improve that.

00:52:42 ◼   ► But this, you know, that we can't get past, we should not overlook the miraculous part

00:52:46 ◼   ► that the Siri stuff actually does work.

00:52:47 ◼   ► Saying, you know, I can't say this one enough, you know, go forward 30 seconds, what did

00:52:52 ◼   ► she just say?

00:52:53 ◼   ► That stuff really does work and we actually use it a lot.

00:52:57 ◼   ► The, um...

00:52:58 ◼   ► For scrubbing.

00:52:59 ◼   ► Yeah, the thing that I tripped it up with, like you said, it's homonyms, it's things

00:53:05 ◼   ► that are words that sound like other words, so to speak, where I was asking for "You're

00:53:11 ◼   ► the worst," and I think I offended Siri.

00:53:15 ◼   ► I don't know how to do that.

00:53:16 ◼   ► I think Siri thought that I was decrying Siri and all that she stands for, but I was just

00:53:21 ◼   ► wanting to watch the TV show "You're the Worst."

00:53:23 ◼   ► So I rephrased it as something like, "Show me the TV show, you're the worst," and then

00:53:29 ◼   ► she got it.

00:53:30 ◼   ► But it took that extra little, "Let's add some verbiage to give you more information

00:53:35 ◼   ► about what I'm actually searching for," which you don't do when you're typing it, because

00:53:40 ◼   ► you know what you're searching for, but you have to give it a little spin in order sometimes

00:53:44 ◼   ► for it to understand what you're saying.

00:53:46 ◼   ► And then the frustrating thing is that you can't use it in enough places yet.

00:53:52 ◼   ► I mean that actually is funny which is it's such a great feature.

00:53:55 ◼   ► I use it so much on the phone for Apple Music.

00:53:58 ◼   ► And there's no music connection in Apple TV. It's madness because I actually tried to do that the other night.

00:54:03 ◼   ► I wanted to play a playlist and on my phone I can do it with, you know, I can just call out, shuffle this playlist and boom it's done.

00:54:10 ◼   ► It's just not there yet.

00:54:11 ◼   ► Well yeah, something I said to Jim a few times on the Down Ripple Report show we do is I love, how do I put this?

00:54:20 ◼   ► I love the catalog and I love the service, but all the different ways of using it are

00:54:24 ◼   ► each one is more perplexing than the last to me.

00:54:26 ◼   ► So I almost always, I'm like an old man.

00:54:28 ◼   ► I always end up just going and searching for something and then finding it.

00:54:31 ◼   ► Because then once I'm there, I have no idea how do I locate what album this is on?

00:54:34 ◼   ► Is the album available in America?

00:54:36 ◼   ► Why is Skyfall not available on this collection?

00:54:38 ◼   ► That's really weird.

00:54:39 ◼   ► You know, there's all these kinds of things that I do end up doing that searching a lot.

00:54:43 ◼   ► And I think I will use that tons once it's available on Apple TV.

00:54:48 ◼   ► But again, back to our earlier point, doesn't this potentially go to show more of what we

00:54:53 ◼   ► talked about before?

00:54:54 ◼   ► The silos and the resource constraints?

00:54:56 ◼   ► I'm just guessing there was a meeting at some point where they said, "You know what?

00:54:59 ◼   ► It's not going to be ready.

00:55:00 ◼   ► The Siri integration is not going to be there for Apple Music on day one."

00:55:03 ◼   ► And it's, this is, I mean, there's been so much speculation and I don't think anybody

00:55:08 ◼   ► knows the truth who's talking, but there's been a lot of speculation that this perhaps

00:55:13 ◼   ► is a side effect of the strange route that this product took to being available, where

00:55:19 ◼   ► rumor has it that a lot of this stuff was done a long time ago, relatively speaking,

00:55:24 ◼   ► and has sat on the shelf because they wanted to make deals. And so there's a lot of speculation

00:55:28 ◼   ► about was the software--

00:55:31 ◼   ► You're saying basically that team got moved somewhere else.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Right. I mean, that's the speculation. And I've heard nothing direct to confirm or deny

00:55:37 ◼   ► that, but I've heard rumors that one of the problems with this product as it currently

00:55:42 ◼   ► exists is that it didn't have your usual kind of through line where the whole team was working

00:55:46 ◼   ► on it and they finished it and they shipped it, but that it sort of like got stalled.

00:55:50 ◼   ► I'm not sure whether it got stalled and what they considered finished or not, and it may

00:55:55 ◼   ► very well be that it got finished and then it sat there for a while. And the only reason

00:56:00 ◼   ► that I keep bringing that up as a possibility is it explains things like why Apple Music

00:56:05 ◼   ► Integration isn't there and why iCloud Photo Library isn't there.

00:56:10 ◼   ► That's so strange. Because those are both initiatives from 2015.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Yeah. And I had somebody say to me,

00:56:18 ◼   ► "Oh well, you know, iCloud Photo Library is new." It was announced

00:56:21 ◼   ► publicly in like March. And

00:56:24 ◼   ► it's been, and the first version of it shipped with the OS update in

00:56:29 ◼   ► April, I think it was, maybe May. It was a while ago.

00:56:32 ◼   ► It's been public for a long time, so even the people working on the Apple TV,

00:56:35 ◼   ► theoretically,

00:56:36 ◼   ► would have heard about it a long time ago. And yet there's nothing in there.

00:56:39 ◼   ► there's photo stream and shared stuff, but that's not iCloud photo library.

00:56:43 ◼   ► But that's a major new like cloud initiative from Apple and the product

00:56:47 ◼   ► doesn't support it out of the box.

00:56:48 ◼   ► That's, you know, there may be reasons, but it just, it's weird.

00:56:52 ◼   ► And, and Apple music the same way.

00:56:53 ◼   ► It's like, this is Apple's huge push into music.

00:56:56 ◼   ► The subscription service, they've spent so much effort pushing it.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And, and although there is an Apple music app on this device, which is

00:57:03 ◼   ► great because the old device didn't have it, which was also weird.

00:57:07 ◼   ► But so it's great that the apps there, but it's it lacks the Siri integration that the TV and movies

00:57:13 ◼   ► have which and that the phones have, which is just it's one of those things of like, I don't know why

00:57:19 ◼   ► this would be that they wouldn't have have built this into this product. It would seem to be on the

00:57:23 ◼   ► list of features that would just have to be there on day one. And there's got to be a story there

00:57:28 ◼   ► that we'll never hear. But it's just a little baffling. And again, you can you can look at that

00:57:33 ◼   ► two ways. You can say, look, it's a one point oh product. It'll get better. They'll work on it. And

00:57:37 ◼   ► And then you can also look at it as, you know,

00:57:39 ◼   ► right now it means that product is not as good

00:57:41 ◼   ► as it should be, because right now,

00:57:43 ◼   ► those features aren't there.

00:57:45 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:57:46 ◼   ► - It's a weird product.

00:57:48 ◼   ► It's weird because there's so much interesting

00:57:50 ◼   ► and good about it, and then there's so much

00:57:51 ◼   ► that's kind of baffling.

00:57:52 ◼   ► And I haven't, there hasn't been an Apple product

00:57:55 ◼   ► in a while that's had this mix of both of those things.

00:57:59 ◼   ► - Well, you know, gosh, what's the phrase

00:58:02 ◼   ► from the Christopher Nolan movie, you know, "The Prestige"?

00:58:05 ◼   ► Like there's the promise and the prestige

00:58:07 ◼   ► and you know, there's all the parts.

00:58:08 ◼   ► But the funny part is with Apple,

00:58:10 ◼   ► they are so good at figuring out this idea for something

00:58:13 ◼   ► that if and when implemented well,

00:58:17 ◼   ► will make a demonstrable improvement in how you work

00:58:20 ◼   ► or how much you enjoy using those devices.

00:58:22 ◼   ► It just seems like, and I don't mean to beat up,

00:58:25 ◼   ► but it does seem like at a certain point,

00:58:26 ◼   ► it's funny how scattered the implementation can be.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Because when they're on stage talking about it,

00:58:33 ◼   ► I mean, part of the reason that people like us

00:58:35 ◼   ► are so, like, such sad sacks sometimes

00:58:37 ◼   ► is 'cause we bought it.

00:58:38 ◼   ► We bought the promise.

00:58:40 ◼   ► We bought the idea of, like,

00:58:41 ◼   ► what this effect is going to be.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Now we wanna see it.

00:58:44 ◼   ► And so when you get something like the photo stuff,

00:58:46 ◼   ► photos are very personal to people.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Music, man, Jim Dalrymple takes his music

00:58:50 ◼   ► extremely seriously.

00:58:51 ◼   ► More than maybe might be sane,

00:58:53 ◼   ► but, like, that really means a lot.

00:58:55 ◼   ► I mean, our friend Steven has been having some problems

00:58:57 ◼   ► this weekend with losing some photos.

00:58:59 ◼   ► Like, you know, those things mean a lot.

00:59:02 ◼   ► And so it seems like a natural fit, as you say,

00:59:05 ◼   ► to like, when you flip this thing on,

00:59:07 ◼   ► you get a first run experience,

00:59:08 ◼   ► you've put in all of your data,

00:59:09 ◼   ► how great would it be to have your,

00:59:11 ◼   ► put in your Apple ID information,

00:59:13 ◼   ► and like you instantly see pictures of your kids,

00:59:15 ◼   ► you instantly see the movies that you bought,

00:59:17 ◼   ► you know, all those kinds of things.

00:59:18 ◼   ► So when we, you know, kind of piss and moan

00:59:20 ◼   ► about the first run experience on this,

00:59:22 ◼   ► it's partly that I can very easily imagine

00:59:25 ◼   ► how what feels like a relatively,

00:59:28 ◼   ► I don't wanna make it sound easy,

00:59:29 ◼   ► I know single sign-on is not easy,

00:59:31 ◼   ► But there's a part of me that thinks,

00:59:32 ◼   ► like this thing is gonna be a real banger,

00:59:35 ◼   ► especially when that stuff gets settled.

00:59:37 ◼   ► And let's be honest, you know,

00:59:39 ◼   ► there's still this part of me that thinks

00:59:41 ◼   ► the Apple Music announcement still felt so weird

00:59:45 ◼   ► to me on stage. - Oh, so weird.

00:59:46 ◼   ► - And it really felt like, in my gut,

00:59:48 ◼   ► I think they wanted to announce, guess what?

00:59:50 ◼   ► Cable TV is coming to your living room,

00:59:53 ◼   ► but it's not gonna come from a cable.

00:59:54 ◼   ► And I think it didn't work out on time.

00:59:56 ◼   ► I don't know, it's just my gut, it's just my gut,

00:59:59 ◼   ► 'cause that felt like such a weird presentation.

01:00:01 ◼   ► Imagine this box replacing coaxial cable for your TV.

01:00:05 ◼   ► Suddenly, you look at it really differently.

01:00:09 ◼   ► When that piece gets on there, we

01:00:10 ◼   ► might look at this thing very differently,

01:00:11 ◼   ► and this interface might make a lot more sense.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Do you know what I mean?

01:00:14 ◼   ► I've said for a long time that you should never

01:00:16 ◼   ► buy a product based on the promise of what it might add

01:00:19 ◼   ► later in terms of features.

01:00:20 ◼   ► And that comes from a history of buying things,

01:00:22 ◼   ► and they say, no, no, no, it's going to do that later.

01:00:24 ◼   ► And it turns out that that gets delayed,

01:00:25 ◼   ► and then it turns out that they're

01:00:26 ◼   ► going to do a new version of the hardware that has it,

01:00:28 ◼   ► and that the old version might get it later,

01:00:30 ◼   ► and then the old version doesn't get it.

01:00:32 ◼   ► That happened so many times, I cannot tell you how many times.

01:00:34 ◼   ► You can never say, oh well, I'm sure this will be upgradeable

01:00:37 ◼   ► later to this other thing that they say that they're doing.

01:00:40 ◼   ► You really need to judge it based

01:00:41 ◼   ► on what the product is today.

01:00:42 ◼   ► The only reason I don't do that to a great extent

01:00:45 ◼   ► with the Apple TV is that this is very clearly Apple's TV

01:00:48 ◼   ► platform probably for the next five years,

01:00:51 ◼   ► some version of this.

01:00:52 ◼   ► So I do think most of this stuff is coming.

01:00:55 ◼   ► I think as people who talk about Apple

01:00:58 ◼   ► and try to figure out what Apple's doing

01:00:59 ◼   ► and where it's going because we like the products

01:01:02 ◼   ► because we think it's important

01:01:03 ◼   ► because we think this is one of the ways

01:01:05 ◼   ► that the industry changes and that our futures change.

01:01:08 ◼   ► There are lots of reasons why we talk about

01:01:11 ◼   ► and analyze and criticize what Apple does.

01:01:13 ◼   ► This product is particularly interesting because of that

01:01:16 ◼   ► because I think it is the worst case scenario in some ways

01:01:20 ◼   ► about all the different tendrils about Apple's ambition

01:01:25 ◼   ► and about Apple's limitations

01:01:27 ◼   ► and it's all mushed up together.

01:01:29 ◼   ► So Apple's ambition is to have this totally mind-blowing TV service that doesn't require

01:01:35 ◼   ► TV anymore, but they haven't been able to make the deals.

01:01:37 ◼   ► And their ambition is to have this amazing music service, but they couldn't get that

01:01:42 ◼   ► implementation on all their devices, so the Apple TV doesn't have it yet.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And their ambition with the photo library is to have it be that your photos are accessible

01:01:51 ◼   ► everywhere and it just syncs to the cloud and it just works and it's great, but they've

01:01:55 ◼   ► had problems with that.

01:01:57 ◼   ► And you know, the way that they're structured, sometimes I wonder that you were talking about

01:02:04 ◼   ► the silos, sometimes I wonder about, obviously, parts of this business work incredibly well

01:02:09 ◼   ► and are incredibly efficient, and some of them appear to be not able to run that fast.

01:02:15 ◼   ► And we talked about it a lot in the context of hardware versus software.

01:02:18 ◼   ► But I think it's also true of the online services stuff where, you know, sometimes you get so

01:02:23 ◼   ► so used to the way that Apple's supply chain works and their hardware design works where

01:02:27 ◼   ► I think you could very easily argue that they're better than anyone at the world at it by far,

01:02:33 ◼   ► like way out in front of everyone else. We know that they can be, but again, times of

01:02:37 ◼   ► confusion, right? It's like you guys have talked about this in lots of different places,

01:02:41 ◼   ► how odd it is that there'll be the announcement that something's coming and then like an announcement

01:02:47 ◼   ► about when you can order it in the future and then the announcement about when it will

01:02:50 ◼   ► actually arrive and that is mysterious because they do control at some point

01:02:57 ◼   ► they controlled all those dates but I feel I feel like what you're yeah I

01:03:01 ◼   ► think that is sometimes a symptom of the fact that Apple is so ambitious on the

01:03:05 ◼   ► hardware side and they're trying so many new things that sometimes they you know

01:03:09 ◼   ► they're they're out on the cutting edge and sometimes they get bitten by a

01:03:12 ◼   ► problem and they're like oh man we gotta do that but I but still in the end like

01:03:17 ◼   ► the build quality of their hardware is really good.

01:03:21 ◼   ► Greg Canig did that post about how people don't understand

01:03:24 ◼   ► that Apple is probably the company that's best in the world

01:03:27 ◼   ► at aluminum, like at aluminum.

01:03:29 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:03:30 ◼   ► - Oh, right, that was a great post, yeah.

01:03:32 ◼   ► - Like machining aluminum and all that.

01:03:34 ◼   ► And so there are all these areas where I would say

01:03:36 ◼   ► that Apple is an A or A+ kind of company.

01:03:39 ◼   ► The problem with that is that Apple is so ambitious

01:03:41 ◼   ► that they're also doing, unlike most companies,

01:03:43 ◼   ► they're also doing the software stuff

01:03:45 ◼   ► and the services stuff and all this other,

01:03:48 ◼   ► and making deals with content companies.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And those parts of the business,

01:03:52 ◼   ► not A to A+ level work a lot of the time.

01:03:56 ◼   ► And I think that's a really interesting problem for them

01:04:00 ◼   ► of like, how do you get the other parts of your business

01:04:02 ◼   ► to be able to run at the pace of the hardware?

01:04:05 ◼   ► 'Cause the hardware is there.

01:04:07 ◼   ► And I feel sometimes like the hardware

01:04:08 ◼   ► is dragging the software along

01:04:11 ◼   ► and the services aren't even dragging anymore.

01:04:15 ◼   ► They're just, sometimes they're just by the side of the road.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:04:19 ◼   ► You probably need to do a break here, huh?

01:04:21 ◼   ► I do.

01:04:21 ◼   ► I do.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Let's talk, let's talk about mail.

01:04:23 ◼   ► Hey, tell me about something you like.

01:04:24 ◼   ► Let's talk about mail route.

01:04:26 ◼   ► How about that?

01:04:27 ◼   ► And I, and I've got a little bit of a hashtag ask upgrade to happen in the middle

01:04:32 ◼   ► of the mail route ad, which is listener Myke, uh, wrote in Mr.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Myke Hurley wrote in to say, can you please say mail bagging?

01:04:39 ◼   ► So when, when we just pay attention, Merlin, that's what I'm saying.

01:04:42 ◼   ► I will.

01:04:43 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by MailRoute. Email, very important to all

01:04:47 ◼   ► of our daily lives. We get a lot of it. I certainly get a lot of it. And I've got a

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01:08:55 ◼   ► entertained by the subject lines. Do you have any more about Apple TV before we go on?

01:09:00 ◼   ► You know, just a general observation. Not really. It can be short, but I was on a

01:09:09 ◼   ► show with our friend Andy Anotko talking about Project Runway. I was talking about one of the

01:09:12 ◼   ► things I always notice on Project Runway is that no matter how great the design

01:09:16 ◼   ► idea, let's start with the beginning.

01:09:19 ◼   ► No matter how great somebody is,

01:09:21 ◼   ► or thinks they are at what they do,

01:09:23 ◼   ► no matter how great their design is,

01:09:24 ◼   ► no matter how good they are at cutting patterns,

01:09:26 ◼   ► like what really matters is how that thing fits

01:09:29 ◼   ► on the model when they go down the runway.

01:09:31 ◼   ► And like no matter how great all those ideas were

01:09:33 ◼   ► along the way, and I'm always watching the person

01:09:36 ◼   ► who's had a lot of experience with making a garment

01:09:39 ◼   ► look good on a specific person.

01:09:41 ◼   ► And you know, this is kind of a cheaty way

01:09:43 ◼   ► to watch Project Runway, but the people who are fast

01:09:46 ◼   ► making a design that fits well, they don't have to be the most creative in the world

01:09:49 ◼   ► as long as their implementation is flawless. And that's the thing is that's what's weird

01:09:53 ◼   ► about this when you think about what Tim Cook brought to Apple in terms of operations. It's

01:09:57 ◼   ► like I just feel like there isn't as much sense of the garment looking great on the

01:10:02 ◼   ► model on runway day. And that's the part that gives me the fear just a little bit. And I

01:10:06 ◼   ► just want to clarify I have no intention of ever using anything but Apple stuff. I love

01:10:10 ◼   ► the Apple idea. I love the Apple thing. I like my Apple stuff. But you know, you get

01:10:15 ◼   ► you get the fear a little bit sometimes

01:10:16 ◼   ► 'cause it feels like,

01:10:18 ◼   ► like there are the times where you feel like

01:10:19 ◼   ► this isn't really up to sort of what I expected

01:10:21 ◼   ► or what I would hope for,

01:10:23 ◼   ► but then sometimes with things like iCloud

01:10:25 ◼   ► or like some of the occasional disasters,

01:10:27 ◼   ► it just makes you think like,

01:10:29 ◼   ► you know, are they still making sure

01:10:31 ◼   ► this is the best that it could possibly be

01:10:33 ◼   ► and using their expertise to make something

01:10:35 ◼   ► that is polished on runway day.

01:10:37 ◼   ► And that's the times where you get that accumulation of like,

01:10:41 ◼   ► and I have to say with the Apple TV,

01:10:42 ◼   ► I still think it's very promising.

01:10:44 ◼   ► I think it's extremely promising.

01:10:45 ◼   ► I bet there's tons they can do with software,

01:10:47 ◼   ► tons they can do with relationships

01:10:49 ◼   ► that are gonna make this a better device.

01:10:50 ◼   ► It's certainly got the firepower.

01:10:52 ◼   ► Like for example, it's ironic to me that

01:10:56 ◼   ► the slowest thing on my Apple TV

01:10:59 ◼   ► is waking from sleep, stow, and starting a movie.

01:11:03 ◼   ► It still is appallingly slow for Apple stuff

01:11:07 ◼   ► where it's not for stuff from Netflix and Hulu,

01:11:09 ◼   ► which seems so weird to me.

01:11:12 ◼   ► I used to think it was just me,

01:11:13 ◼   ► But the beauty part is with a device like that, there is still so much hope for them

01:11:16 ◼   ► to make it great.

01:11:17 ◼   ► So I don't know if you take the analogy, but that's when people like old men like us are

01:11:22 ◼   ► like, "Mm, mm, mm."

01:11:23 ◼   ► I think it's because we feel like, gosh, when we've seen them execute so many things so

01:11:28 ◼   ► well, we all look at the first iPhone and go like, "How did they ever pull that off?"

01:11:32 ◼   ► And that's kind of what we're hoping for each time.

01:11:33 ◼   ► If anything, it's an overabundance of optimism about what Apple's capable of that makes us

01:11:38 ◼   ► kind of pick nits about the hem on the finished garment.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Well, in tech nerd circles, it's very easy to say because we a lot of times know what goes into making this stuff.

01:11:49 ◼   ► And I mean, I heard this, that was one of our reactions when Joe Steele was complaining about the Apple TV.

01:11:53 ◼   ► Somebody actually gave a piece of feedback, which was about how they feel bad for the people who worked really hard on the Apple TV at Apple.

01:12:02 ◼   ► Which is like, well, yeah, I totally, we're not saying people are bad people, but criticizing the product isn't saying that somebody's bad.

01:12:11 ◼   ► but sometimes you have to criticize. Sometimes the product deserves criticism. And I think

01:12:17 ◼   ► it's very easy for us to come up with excuses or reasons or just set the bar so high in

01:12:22 ◼   ► terms of the level of difficulty that you can say, "Look, you really shouldn't criticize

01:12:26 ◼   ► that they worked really hard." Or, "You really shouldn't criticize it. Do you know how complicated

01:12:30 ◼   ► it is?" Do you know what--

01:12:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, when's the last time you made an Apple TV?

01:12:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, that is the best piece of fallacy is that--

01:12:38 ◼   ► Is that all you do all day is complain about what other people do?

01:12:41 ◼   ► The only person who can review movies is Martin Scorsese.

01:12:45 ◼   ► He's the only guy.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Right, right, right.

01:12:47 ◼   ► Nobody else is allowed to review movies except if you make them.

01:12:50 ◼   ► So my point is you can make all those excuses.

01:12:54 ◼   ► And there's truth inside them.

01:12:56 ◼   ► It is true that oftentimes what Apple is trying to do is extra complicated, whether it's on

01:13:02 ◼   ► the hardware or the hardware-software integration or on the services.

01:13:05 ◼   ► A lot of times Apple is incredibly ambitious with what it does, and it's important to not

01:13:09 ◼   ► lose sight of that. But at the end of the day, you are absolutely right. In the end,

01:13:14 ◼   ► it's about the product and the product experience. And it doesn't matter if it was hard for them

01:13:19 ◼   ► to do it. It does not matter if they're doing things that nobody's ever tried before. Because

01:13:25 ◼   ► if the experience is bad, it's a bad product. It doesn't matter what the degree of difficulty

01:13:30 ◼   ► It's not Olympic diving, right? It doesn't matter. Is the product good? Does it work?

01:13:35 ◼   ► Does it do what you promised? Does it meet expectations? No matter who set them, does

01:13:40 ◼   ► it meet reasonable expectations? Perhaps it doesn't meet unreasonable expectations.

01:13:44 ◼   ► That happens with Apple a lot. That's one way that Apple is treated unfairly. But, you know,

01:13:49 ◼   ► saying, "Well, the reason the Apple TV isn't, you know, maybe it deserves to be criticized,

01:13:56 ◼   ► but you gotta understand it was a small team and they got pulled off of it a year ago and

01:14:02 ◼   ► because they wanted to make these deals that fell through and boy that Les Moonvis he's

01:14:06 ◼   ► tough negotiator and so everything's getting slowed down and okay all that's true and it's

01:14:10 ◼   ► interesting but in the end that's not an excuse the product still has to deliver what they're

01:14:15 ◼   ► what they wanted to deliver and and and I I agree with you I think the Apple TV actually

01:14:19 ◼   ► has a lot of potential and there's a lot of good in it but in the end you know it you're

01:14:24 ◼   ► right it's about how it fits on the runway and that's how a product should

01:14:27 ◼   ► that's how products should be judged all products should be judged that way yep

01:14:31 ◼   ► speaking products you want to I've been I am still using the iPad Pro I still

01:14:38 ◼   ► haven't decided whether I'm gonna buy one this is my Apple review unit that

01:14:41 ◼   ► I'm gonna have to give back maybe next week I don't even I've got a look about

01:14:44 ◼   ► when they want it back which is gonna make me sad and I'm just wondering what

01:14:48 ◼   ► what what you've thought we've been talking about this in the whole Apple

01:14:51 ◼   ► podcast sphere and blogger sphere and all of those things bloggers for you're

01:14:55 ◼   ► not a word by the way that word not a thing not a thing what do you think about

01:15:00 ◼   ► about this giant iPad I've been listening in I've been listening I bought

01:15:04 ◼   ► one when it came out and I got my pencil yesterday I've been playing or Friday I

01:15:09 ◼   ► should say been playing with it you got the Apple pencil the Apple pencil okay

01:15:12 ◼   ► because you got a caution people don't take a real pencil and write on the

01:15:15 ◼   ► Apple on the I oh no you're gonna want to go ahead and definitely not do that

01:15:18 ◼   ► no don't it's like it's like writing with a permanent marker on a whiteboard

01:15:21 ◼   ► Don't do it.

01:15:22 ◼   ► But I'll tell you, man, every time I just think about like a little kid like getting

01:15:26 ◼   ► the wrong end of that thing and just like, I live, I still live in fear of screens getting

01:15:30 ◼   ► torn up.

01:15:31 ◼   ► But, you know, to be honest, my, my, my reactions are very similar to a lot of other people's

01:15:37 ◼   ► for a reason, I think.

01:15:38 ◼   ► And my reactions are, first of all, the first words out of my mouth, anytime anybody talks

01:15:43 ◼   ► about it, it's so big.

01:15:45 ◼   ► It's so much bigger than you think.

01:15:46 ◼   ► It really, really is really, really big.

01:15:49 ◼   ► And even, I think I mentioned this to you somewhere,

01:15:52 ◼   ► maybe on Slack, is just that I keep using it

01:15:55 ◼   ► and keep wanting to make myself use it.

01:15:58 ◼   ► My original idea was to do like a serenity

01:16:00 ◼   ► and like say like, okay, can I make myself

01:16:02 ◼   ► do almost everything on this

01:16:04 ◼   ► except what I absolutely can't do on this?

01:16:06 ◼   ► And I have to tell you, I found it incredibly challenging.

01:16:08 ◼   ► I was very excited to have this new thing,

01:16:11 ◼   ► but I suddenly felt a lot of friction

01:16:12 ◼   ► about the bigness of this to where even four days into it,

01:16:16 ◼   ► I'm not proud of this statement,

01:16:17 ◼   ► I found myself still falling back to using my iPad Air 2 more often because it felt so

01:16:22 ◼   ► much easier to use in my hands.

01:16:25 ◼   ► But with that said, I mean, I do think again, this is a product that could have a very bright

01:16:29 ◼   ► future.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I think the good parts of using this, I mean, I finally thought, "Oh gosh, I haven't watched

01:16:37 ◼   ► a movie on this yet.

01:16:38 ◼   ► I should do that."

01:16:39 ◼   ► So I fired up Mad Max and I was frankly blown away with the speakers, with the way it looked,

01:16:45 ◼   ► especially with, my God, the quality of sound.

01:16:47 ◼   ► So much separation, so loud without being distorted.

01:16:51 ◼   ► This is the first iPad, or first iOS device I've had

01:16:54 ◼   ► that I could, without using a Bluetooth speaker,

01:16:56 ◼   ► I could just listen to while doing the dishes,

01:16:58 ◼   ► which is really saying something.

01:17:00 ◼   ► So that experience is great.

01:17:01 ◼   ► Comics, I mean, gosh, I'm guessing you've looked

01:17:04 ◼   ► at comics on it. - I have.

01:17:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's one of the rare things

01:17:06 ◼   ► where I'll turn the brightness all the way up

01:17:08 ◼   ► and just, it's the first time I feel like

01:17:11 ◼   ► I prefer to read a physical comic

01:17:14 ◼   ► just because I like seeing the whole page.

01:17:16 ◼   ► This is the first time that I've really felt comfortable

01:17:18 ◼   ► reading in full page view

01:17:20 ◼   ► and not feeling like I'm missing anything at all.

01:17:23 ◼   ► - It actually even makes reading a two-page spread

01:17:27 ◼   ► in landscape readable, which is crazy.

01:17:30 ◼   ► - It's totally doable.

01:17:31 ◼   ► It's difficult to share with somebody

01:17:32 ◼   ► what this actually looks like,

01:17:33 ◼   ► 'cause if you put up a photo,

01:17:34 ◼   ► you're not really seeing it in context.

01:17:35 ◼   ► But all kinds of stuff,

01:17:37 ◼   ► like I have to say, anything involving maps.

01:17:39 ◼   ► My daughter loves to, when we're on a car trip,

01:17:41 ◼   ► she likes to follow along on the map

01:17:43 ◼   ► and flip around in 3D view and look at all the buildings

01:17:45 ◼   ► and stuff like that and look at the Pacific Ocean

01:17:47 ◼   ► for a long time, which is an odd kid.

01:17:49 ◼   ► But that stuff's all really fun.

01:17:50 ◼   ► I guess I'm still struggling to figure out

01:17:53 ◼   ► where this belongs and who it's for,

01:17:56 ◼   ► but I wanna just stipulate.

01:17:57 ◼   ► I love it and I wanna love it,

01:18:00 ◼   ► but I can't quite figure out where it goes in my life.

01:18:04 ◼   ► I really want it to go somewhere,

01:18:06 ◼   ► but there's no use I've found for it yet

01:18:09 ◼   ► where this will be my first thing

01:18:12 ◼   ► that I pick a lot of the time.

01:18:13 ◼   ► And that's an odd place to be, especially given how much,

01:18:16 ◼   ► I mean, I spent some dough on this thing.

01:18:17 ◼   ► I wanna love it.

01:18:19 ◼   ► I just haven't really quite found the place.

01:18:20 ◼   ► And I feel like a lot of people's reactions mirror that.

01:18:24 ◼   ► A lot of people say, "I love this.

01:18:26 ◼   ► "I know this is gonna be great for somebody else.

01:18:27 ◼   ► "I'm trying to figure out how it's great for me.

01:18:29 ◼   ► "I feel like I don't deserve this pencil.

01:18:30 ◼   ► "Like, this is obviously like for real artists."

01:18:33 ◼   ► Like, everybody wants to love this thing,

01:18:34 ◼   ► but we're still struggling

01:18:36 ◼   ► with some of the limitations of it.

01:18:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

01:18:40 ◼   ► I think some of it is that we have to get out of our,

01:18:43 ◼   ► it takes a bit to,

01:18:46 ◼   ► we've seen this with a lot of these Apple products lately,

01:18:48 ◼   ► especially the MacBook, we saw this,

01:18:50 ◼   ► the iPhone 6 Plus, we saw this,

01:18:52 ◼   ► which is, there is a, I think, a very human tendency

01:18:56 ◼   ► to be disappointed when a product is not for you,

01:19:01 ◼   ► especially if you're a fan of a company and its products

01:19:03 ◼   ► and you like their products,

01:19:05 ◼   ► that when they release a product that does not speak to you,

01:19:08 ◼   ► that you get, you're a little disappointed, right?

01:19:10 ◼   ► this is, oh, this is not for me.

01:19:13 ◼   ► It's like a clip show of a TV show or something.

01:19:15 ◼   ► It's like, well, I've already seen all the episodes.

01:19:17 ◼   ► I know this by heart.

01:19:18 ◼   ► I don't need to see this anymore.

01:19:19 ◼   ► I don't need a, you're doing a special

01:19:21 ◼   ► explaining how "Doctor Who" works.

01:19:22 ◼   ► Well, I've seen all the episodes.

01:19:24 ◼   ► I don't need to do that, right?

01:19:25 ◼   ► But that happens, with Apple stuff,

01:19:28 ◼   ► it certainly happens where the MacBook comes out

01:19:30 ◼   ► and people are like, I don't know,

01:19:31 ◼   ► I don't want this, it's stupid.

01:19:32 ◼   ► It's like, well, maybe it's not for you.

01:19:34 ◼   ► - Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

01:19:35 ◼   ► - And the iPhone 6 Plus, it's huge, it's stupid.

01:19:38 ◼   ► Well, maybe it's not for you.

01:19:39 ◼   ► And the iPad Pro is a little bit like that,

01:19:43 ◼   ► where because there's an iPad and an iPad Mini,

01:19:46 ◼   ► I mean, it's one of three products in this product line.

01:19:48 ◼   ► It doesn't need to be for everyone.

01:19:50 ◼   ► Plus, the iPad itself is not necessarily for everyone.

01:19:53 ◼   ► So it's for a very particular market.

01:19:56 ◼   ► It doesn't need to be, we all talk about it.

01:19:58 ◼   ► It's been the discussion of the month

01:20:01 ◼   ► because it's the Apple product of the month.

01:20:03 ◼   ► So we're all talking about it.

01:20:04 ◼   ► But in the end, it's not gonna be this product

01:20:07 ◼   ► that everybody's using.

01:20:08 ◼   ► It's a product that some small subset,

01:20:10 ◼   ► and we don't know how small or how big,

01:20:12 ◼   ► but it's still gonna be a subset of people

01:20:13 ◼   ► who are gonna use it, 'cause it's just iPad users,

01:20:15 ◼   ► and it's just the ones who wanna use the big screen.

01:20:17 ◼   ► For me, when I think about giving it back

01:20:20 ◼   ► and then what I do after that,

01:20:22 ◼   ► because I have this unique case where Apple gives me one,

01:20:25 ◼   ► and I get to have it for three weeks or a month,

01:20:29 ◼   ► and I have to give it back.

01:20:30 ◼   ► So for me, I get to use it for a while and think,

01:20:33 ◼   ► do I wanna buy one of these?

01:20:35 ◼   ► And I'm coming around to the idea that I may actually want to buy one of these.

01:20:41 ◼   ► And the reason would be because although it is not as comfortable to use in some

01:20:49 ◼   ► circumstances as the iPad Air, because yeah, when I wake up in the morning and

01:20:54 ◼   ► I'm drinking tea and checking Twitter and Slack, um, it's kind of large and unwieldy

01:21:02 ◼   ► and it's harder and I can't thumb type and stuff like that that I could do on

01:21:05 ◼   ► my iPad Air or my iPad Mini. But when I attach a keyboard to it and I'm standing

01:21:12 ◼   ► in my kitchen writing a story... It's kind of magic. Having that big screen makes a difference.

01:21:18 ◼   ► Doing that in editorial and having it... I can't tell you, Jason, I know you are a

01:21:23 ◼   ► famously ridiculously fast typist, but I'm an okay typist. I mean, I'm an okay

01:21:28 ◼   ► like 50, 60 words a minute typist, but everything changed for me when I learned...

01:21:32 ◼   ► I don't even know what they're called. I think it... I don't know if it's even Emacs

01:21:35 ◼   ► related, but like the ability to use the arrow keys and like option and command.

01:21:40 ◼   ► Keyboard shortcuts, yeah. But I mean you know it's what's weird I think a lot of

01:21:44 ◼   ► people may still not know about these. So I'm trying to the only way of course

01:21:47 ◼   ► what is the only way to do this. So like option left and right arrow takes you a

01:21:51 ◼   ► word at a time. Option shift arrow lets you select and so forth up and down left

01:21:57 ◼   ► and right and then you can do things like you know option option down and up

01:22:01 ◼   ► to get to the end of lines and so forth. I can't tell you what these commands are

01:22:05 ◼   ► All I can tell you is that I learned them and when I learned them everything changed

01:22:09 ◼   ► I wish you could find a link for them because really if you just spend

01:22:12 ◼   ► Even like a couple evenings learning this everything will change for you, and I'm persuaded

01:22:17 ◼   ► There are people who came up in the Mac community that may not know this

01:22:20 ◼   ► It's a little bit nerdy and what's great is I open editorial

01:22:23 ◼   ► I have this little logitech keyboard, and I'm flying I am flying through everything

01:22:27 ◼   ► This is a perfect writing machine in so many ways, but but when you're using it with again

01:22:34 ◼   ► So the KarmaSuck side of it, there's no way to use this keyboard comfortably.

01:22:38 ◼   ► I mean, when you're holding it in landscape, which is how I would hold it to look at almost everything that I use day-to-day,

01:22:44 ◼   ► it feels improbably large, and my little tiny girly thumbs can rarely make it to J and K without causing tendonitis.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Well, you can't hold it up and type comfortably on it.

01:22:57 ◼   ► I'm a lazy man, Jason. I like to lay in bed and look at my iPad. And it's pretty challenging.

01:23:02 ◼   ► Well, it's a little bit like, imagine holding your laptop up by the keyboard part and then trying to type.

01:23:12 ◼   ► That's a really good way to put it, actually.

01:23:14 ◼   ► Because it's basically the same size. It's slightly smaller, but you wouldn't do that. It would be really bad.

01:23:19 ◼   ► And then, sideways is just ridiculously large.

01:23:21 ◼   ► Right, but if you put it on your lap, it's not so bad.

01:23:27 ◼   ► But the thing is, a lot of times, most times, I'm not sitting there with my iPad in my lap

01:23:32 ◼   ► looking down at the screen in my lap.

01:23:35 ◼   ► I'm holding it with my hands, and then I want to key in something.

01:23:39 ◼   ► And yeah, maybe I should start using dictation more, although that is just going to annoy

01:23:43 ◼   ► my wife when I'm sitting there and she's still waking up and I'm like, "Ha ha, that is a

01:23:48 ◼   ► funny tweet that I am responding to now.

01:23:49 ◼   ► Beep."

01:23:50 ◼   ► I am laughing out loud.

01:23:51 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Smiling face emoji.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Smiling face, smiling face.

01:23:54 ◼   ► Top hat emoji.

01:23:55 ◼   ► - Top hat emoji.

01:23:57 ◼   ► So, yeah, that's when I'm in that moment of like,

01:24:02 ◼   ► "Oh, this isn't so great.

01:24:04 ◼   ► "Maybe I can prop it up on my knees and I can do that."

01:24:07 ◼   ► It's not as good, whereas the iPad Air,

01:24:09 ◼   ► and certainly the iPad Mini,

01:24:10 ◼   ► I could navigate that pretty easily.

01:24:12 ◼   ► But my feeling is, maybe that's worth the trade-off

01:24:16 ◼   ► for the fact that I, that big screen in a lot of contexts

01:24:19 ◼   ► is really amazing, and I feel like for split view

01:24:24 ◼   ► and slide over, it's a lot nicer to do that,

01:24:28 ◼   ► and maybe could replace my laptop for when I'm traveling.

01:24:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, so this is something I talked about

01:24:34 ◼   ► on the show with Dower and Pohl,

01:24:35 ◼   ► but I bought this for a couple really silly reasons.

01:24:38 ◼   ► One is it was a little bit of an impulse buy,

01:24:41 ◼   ► where I realized it was midnight and I could buy one,

01:24:43 ◼   ► and I thought, you know what, I'll buy this, what the heck.

01:24:44 ◼   ► I'll be, see now, Myke Hurley, he actually returns things.

01:24:48 ◼   ► I don't know, I say I'm gonna return it, but I rarely do.

01:24:50 ◼   ► But I thought, you know, I'll try this.

01:24:51 ◼   ► But you know, honestly, the impulse,

01:24:53 ◼   ► that lie underneath this was I felt like in a way

01:24:58 ◼   ► that I can't really describe,

01:25:00 ◼   ► this might be a new kind of device.

01:25:02 ◼   ► It might not be, it's a gamble, right?

01:25:04 ◼   ► It's a gamble.

01:25:05 ◼   ► But like, I think there's,

01:25:06 ◼   ► I feel like I'm talking about this all the time,

01:25:08 ◼   ► so forgive me if I'm repeating myself,

01:25:10 ◼   ► but there are kinds of technology, hardware and software,

01:25:13 ◼   ► that are very focused on what we can do now

01:25:15 ◼   ► that replicates what we've done in the past.

01:25:17 ◼   ► And there's another kind of software and hardware

01:25:19 ◼   ► that represents what we're not even sure we understand,

01:25:22 ◼   ► stuff we may not exactly understand now,

01:25:24 ◼   ► but we won't realize for two or three years in the future

01:25:28 ◼   ► that that's what we wanted to do all along.

01:25:30 ◼   ► And Apple has been improbably good at getting that right.

01:25:33 ◼   ► Do you know what I mean?

01:25:34 ◼   ► Like they have been awful good at going like,

01:25:36 ◼   ► you know what, you're not actually gonna need

01:25:37 ◼   ► that floppy drive.

01:25:38 ◼   ► You know what, you're not actually gonna need

01:25:40 ◼   ► that ethernet port.

01:25:41 ◼   ► So who knows what part of that is chicken and egg.

01:25:43 ◼   ► But I just wanna say for what it's worth,

01:25:45 ◼   ► unlike the Apple TV, the Apple TV I got

01:25:47 ◼   ► because I wanted a faster version of stuff

01:25:49 ◼   ► that I do all the time, it's an appliance to me.

01:25:51 ◼   ► If it's a sexy appliance, that's great,

01:25:53 ◼   ► but it's still an appliance.

01:25:54 ◼   ► But something, you know, a little tickle in my gut

01:25:56 ◼   ► said that this iPad Pro, and I still believe this,

01:26:00 ◼   ► could be something special and different.

01:26:01 ◼   ► So I'm really gonna try and stick with it.

01:26:04 ◼   ► You know, and maybe I'm a ding-a-ling

01:26:05 ◼   ► for spending that dough on it,

01:26:06 ◼   ► but I really do feel like this is gonna be the beginning

01:26:09 ◼   ► of something interesting, if not big,

01:26:13 ◼   ► and I kinda wanna be there.

01:26:14 ◼   ► I'm usually the technology naysayer who's saying like,

01:26:17 ◼   ► "Oh, this thing doesn't run bash, meh."

01:26:19 ◼   ► But like in this case, I'm excited about it.

01:26:21 ◼   ► I'm gonna make myself stay excited about it

01:26:23 ◼   ► until I figure it out.

01:26:24 ◼   ► Because I do think, I think there's something in this

01:26:27 ◼   ► that could be special.

01:26:28 ◼   ► - I agree.

01:26:29 ◼   ► Now the pencil, I'm not gonna buy one of those.

01:26:32 ◼   ► But-- - For real?

01:26:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm not gonna buy one of those.

01:26:34 ◼   ► - It's pretty neat.

01:26:35 ◼   ► - It's not my, it's just not my thing.

01:26:37 ◼   ► I just, I'm just, I was so happy to be free of the day

01:26:40 ◼   ► of taking handwritten notes and I can't draw.

01:26:44 ◼   ► My handwriting is awful.

01:26:47 ◼   ► Although I did use OneNote and it was able to OCR my words and make them searchable.

01:26:52 ◼   ► And I suppose that if I was frequently in a conference room taking notes on a pad of

01:26:58 ◼   ► paper, I would do that.

01:27:00 ◼   ► But when I was in those meetings back in my days at IDG, I would just have my iPad or

01:27:05 ◼   ► my laptop or my phone and Notes app open.

01:27:08 ◼   ► And I would just type them on that.

01:27:10 ◼   ► And I would much rather do that than write with a pen.

01:27:12 ◼   ► So it's just not for me.

01:27:14 ◼   ► So that part of it is not for me.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Right.

01:27:16 ◼   ► is, I mean, it is also that I want my kid to have access to these things.

01:27:20 ◼   ► If, you know, whenever it's reasonable and affordable, I'd like her to have the chance

01:27:24 ◼   ► to use this stuff too, where, I mean, everybody was really, when they did their field trip

01:27:30 ◼   ► to the Apple store, everybody was really impressed with how much she was able to do with the

01:27:33 ◼   ► Apple equipment really easily, which makes me feel good.

01:27:37 ◼   ► Because she has pretty much open exposure.

01:27:39 ◼   ► If it's games and stuff, we dial it back.

01:27:41 ◼   ► But like if she ever wants to open up paper, the app paper, and like draw, that's totally

01:27:45 ◼   ► fine.

01:27:46 ◼   ► is I also want her like you know it isn't just like a celebrity and prestige

01:27:51 ◼   ► you know FOMO thing of like oh I was there when this began it's more like

01:27:55 ◼   ► these if these are the tools that end up being similar to the tools she'll use in

01:27:58 ◼   ► the future I'm okay making that investment because what she does with

01:28:01 ◼   ► that pencil will be way more interesting maybe 20 years from now than what I'm

01:28:05 ◼   ► doing right now but it is it is it is weird but I'm do you think I'm being

01:28:10 ◼   ► crazy do you think we're being crazy to see do you think we're reading too much

01:28:15 ◼   ► into this? Possibly. I honestly don't know. I think I really believed it. The day I got

01:28:22 ◼   ► it I was like, first of all, wow, this thing's really big. But then the other part of me,

01:28:26 ◼   ► I kept going like, I wonder if I'm just being a delusional fan boy. I think it's the tech.

01:28:30 ◼   ► Well, this is often the challenge here is trying to think about, I had people ask me

01:28:36 ◼   ► things like for the Apple watch, people are like, are you going to get an Apple watch?

01:28:39 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Guys, I write about Apple for a living. Of course I'm going to get an Apple Watch.

01:28:46 ◼   ► It's my job to get an Apple Watch. So don't let my answer influence you in any way."

01:28:52 ◼   ► I was like, "Well, if Jason's getting an Apple Watch, he must think it's good." No,

01:28:55 ◼   ► I'm going to get an Apple Watch because it's my job to get an Apple Watch. I'll tell you later,

01:28:59 ◼   ► after I use it, if I think it's good. But my business is to do this and try this stuff.

01:29:07 ◼   ► So you've got to step back from that. So on one level, I think we are crazy in the sense that we are,

01:29:12 ◼   ► we talk about this stuff and write about this stuff, and then we're also enthusiastic people

01:29:16 ◼   ► who are trying to see, because we're going to talk to others about it, we're trying to see what it

01:29:20 ◼   ► might be used for, right? I want to be able to use this thing enough to answer the question

01:29:25 ◼   ► when somebody says, "Should I get one?" Which I'm going to reply with, "What would you use it for?"

01:29:31 ◼   ► Because you really have to ask that. It's not just a yes or no, but I want to be able to do that,

01:29:36 ◼   ► that and that's going to require time with it. And when I wrote a piece about that Federico

01:29:42 ◼   ► Vitici linked to, which I thought was funny because it was sort of written for him, which

01:29:46 ◼   ► is about how I realized that I've been using the Mac a long time and that using the iPad,

01:29:51 ◼   ► one of the reasons you would reject it is because it doesn't do things the way you do

01:29:54 ◼   ► them on your Mac. And we Mac users, we built up all these muscles about like how to do

01:29:59 ◼   ► things, you know, TextExpander does this and my AppleScript does this and my Automator

01:30:02 ◼   ► service does this." And that's all great, although you may not use all that stuff as

01:30:07 ◼   ► much as you think, but it's still a change, and it's different to go to the iPad. But

01:30:12 ◼   ► I feel like us, especially as people who write and talk about this stuff, need to make the

01:30:17 ◼   ► effort to get outside ourselves and think about, you know, "It's not just about me.

01:30:23 ◼   ► It's about, you know, what would people use this?" And it's hard, you know, it's hard

01:30:27 ◼   ► to do that. But so I feel like some of it is just science experiment kind of time, which

01:30:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I realize we don't have time today,

01:30:35 ◼   ► but that's what leads me to the ultimate question here,

01:30:38 ◼   ► which is when you're thinking about what you're gonna get

01:30:41 ◼   ► or what you wanna suggest to other people,

01:30:44 ◼   ► I talk about crazy times.

01:30:48 ◼   ► I feel like this might be one of the most confusing times

01:30:50 ◼   ► for deciding what array of Apple products

01:30:53 ◼   ► to have in your life.

01:30:54 ◼   ► - Times of confusion.

01:30:55 ◼   ► - Times of confusion.

01:30:56 ◼   ► Thank you, Tim Goodwin.

01:30:57 ◼   ► But I feel like there's never been quite

01:31:00 ◼   ► the kind of breadth of selection, but also like,

01:31:04 ◼   ► I might have, I had this in the little show note thing,

01:31:06 ◼   ► like the ridiculous calculus that you have to go through,

01:31:11 ◼   ► what did I say actually, to think about the combination of...

01:31:15 ◼   ► - Size, screen, weight, capacity, input, price?

01:31:20 ◼   ► - Size, screen, weight, capacity, input, and price,

01:31:24 ◼   ► with my basic theory being that most Apple people

01:31:26 ◼   ► tend to focus on having two devices,

01:31:28 ◼   ► But it's like Heisenberg or something.

01:31:31 ◼   ► Anytime you're gonna pick one of those,

01:31:33 ◼   ► it has a giant effect on what else you use.

01:31:35 ◼   ► Do you wanna have a MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro

01:31:38 ◼   ► and a 6S Plus?

01:31:39 ◼   ► Well, probably not, unless you're just being fancy.

01:31:42 ◼   ► How do you pick complementary things?

01:31:44 ◼   ► And how do you decide which things

01:31:45 ◼   ► you're gonna do what things on?

01:31:47 ◼   ► How much do you need to know what you're gonna do with that

01:31:48 ◼   ► before you buy it?

01:31:49 ◼   ► And maybe you said this,

01:31:51 ◼   ► actually I think it was Gruber that said this,

01:31:53 ◼   ► but you think about how unusual it is that

01:31:58 ◼   ► It used to be that you could say, "Hey, I want the nicest, I want the best one of these

01:32:02 ◼   ► there is, which should I buy?"

01:32:03 ◼   ► Well, go buy the most expensive one.

01:32:05 ◼   ► I don't think that's, I agree with my friends who say that's not true anymore.

01:32:08 ◼   ► I'm not sure that the iPad Pro is the best iPad for everybody by a long shot.

01:32:12 ◼   ► Ditto the MacBook Pro.

01:32:13 ◼   ► Do you really, do you want all of that?

01:32:15 ◼   ► I mean, there's, I think there's a lot of nuance to deciding how you're going to buy

01:32:20 ◼   ► and thank goodness there's people like you that are out there and trying it out and can

01:32:23 ◼   ► say like, "Here's who this is good for and why."

01:32:27 ◼   ► Times of confusion.

01:32:28 ◼   ► - You're right, well this is, I kind of mentioned this before, it's the shift that Apple has had from the, you know, you can get an iPhone.

01:32:38 ◼   ► To, would you like the iPhone 5, would you like the iPhone 6, would you like the iPhone 6 Plus, would you like the iPhone 6S, would you like the iPhone 6S Plus?

01:32:47 ◼   ► They're all available, right?

01:32:49 ◼   ► - I'd love to have a 5S, but guess what? All you can get is 32 gigs.

01:32:54 ◼   ► Okay, now I'm thinking about space. Where do my photos go? Oh, it depends. Are you going

01:32:57 ◼   ► to have them? You know, it's so once you actually really start pulling that thread, it's so

01:33:02 ◼   ► much more complex than you realize. And it isn't really just about saying I want a big

01:33:06 ◼   ► screen and a little screen. There are trade offs to every single one of these. And in

01:33:10 ◼   ► order to get the most out of these devices, you have to be very canny about how you pair

01:33:13 ◼   ► them. Yeah, I think it's a it's an interesting thing that we it says something about about

01:33:19 ◼   ► us that because I wrote a piece about this about the Apple watch where I

01:33:23 ◼   ► became completely paralyzed about what Apple watch to buy because there were so

01:33:28 ◼   ► many different options involving well these bands are available for these

01:33:31 ◼   ► models it's like an SAT problem and yeah and they're on a train going 20 miles an

01:33:36 ◼   ► hour to Chicago but the orange bands are on the train headed for San Francisco so

01:33:40 ◼   ► it is Johnny has five millenies loops but finally from a consumer psychology

01:33:47 ◼   ► perspective it's good business because people want choice. But for some people

01:33:52 ◼   ► it's this tyranny of choice that is like "I can't decide what to do!" And

01:33:58 ◼   ► those kind of are battling. I think in the end, is it better that there's

01:34:03 ◼   ► an iPad Mini, an iPad Air, and an iPad Pro than if there was just a single

01:34:07 ◼   ► one-size-fits-all iPad? Yeah, it's totally better, but it makes it more complicated

01:34:11 ◼   ► to decide which one to buy. So that's the trade-off. I would not go

01:34:15 ◼   ► back to a world where there was literally just the iPad Air and there

01:34:18 ◼   ► wasn't a mini and a pro. I don't want to live in that world because it's

01:34:21 ◼   ► better that we've got these choices but I wrote 1500 words for Macworld last

01:34:25 ◼   ► week about the five iPad models that are available now and who should buy what

01:34:31 ◼   ► right because there's also the Air original and the mini 2 that are still

01:34:35 ◼   ► being sold right so with each one of those you're not just thinking about

01:34:38 ◼   ► price you're thinking about screen you're talking about size

01:34:42 ◼   ► Remember, you gotta carry two of those.

01:34:43 ◼   ► Are you gonna carry two of those devices when you travel?

01:34:45 ◼   ► Well, I don't know, let me think about it.

01:34:46 ◼   ► Okay, what about the capacity?

01:34:48 ◼   ► Like it really, and the RAM,

01:34:49 ◼   ► like what you wanna do with this,

01:34:50 ◼   ► it all really starts to matter.

01:34:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, so I would say for people who write about

01:34:55 ◼   ► and talk about Apple products for a living,

01:34:58 ◼   ► on one level, it's great because we always said this,

01:35:01 ◼   ► when there are times of confusion,

01:35:03 ◼   ► when customers have questions and they're seeking advice,

01:35:07 ◼   ► whether it's how to use something or what to buy,

01:35:09 ◼   ► they look to the media, basically.

01:35:13 ◼   ► And these days, they're looking to their peers

01:35:15 ◼   ► on the internet and all that,

01:35:16 ◼   ► but that's still media of a sort.

01:35:17 ◼   ► They're looking for help, and that's a great opportunity

01:35:20 ◼   ► to talk about this stuff and write stories about it

01:35:22 ◼   ► and all of that.

01:35:23 ◼   ► But it also is that, it's tough, because like I said,

01:35:28 ◼   ► you also wanna personalize the recommendations.

01:35:31 ◼   ► And that's the thing that I have the hardest problem with

01:35:33 ◼   ► when we're talking about buying advice,

01:35:34 ◼   ► is people say, "Should I buy the Apple Watch?"

01:35:36 ◼   ► Or, "Should I buy an iPad?"

01:35:39 ◼   ► And I can't say yes to any of that.

01:35:43 ◼   ► - That's like saying, should I buy a condo?

01:35:45 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:35:46 ◼   ► - It depends, it depends, it depends.

01:35:46 ◼   ► - Should I invest in real estate?

01:35:49 ◼   ► Well, is it in Detroit?

01:35:52 ◼   ► Or is it in Hawaii?

01:35:54 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's something to keep in mind

01:35:59 ◼   ► because I think a lot of times this does get really

01:36:01 ◼   ► reductive where people are like,

01:36:02 ◼   ► oh, the new Apple stuff is stupid,

01:36:04 ◼   ► don't buy anything from Apple.

01:36:06 ◼   ► It's like, all right, well, that's dumb.

01:36:08 ◼   ► there are people for whom an Apple product is probably the wrong call, right?

01:36:13 ◼   ► And certainly specific Apple products, but maybe even all the Apple products.

01:36:17 ◼   ► - For example, if you've never used a tablet, I mean, the thing is,

01:36:21 ◼   ► you hear from people who love having a tablet, you're not going to hear as much

01:36:24 ◼   ► on a regular basis from people who had a tablet and didn't like it.

01:36:28 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:36:29 ◼   ► There's a kind of a false positive in that way.

01:36:32 ◼   ► So, like, you might want to go out and get one of those cheapy...

01:36:35 ◼   ► Well, I'm not saying to do this, but, you know, you might want to pick one

01:36:37 ◼   ► up cheaper used or borrow a friend's for a weekend or something to find out if it's really

01:36:41 ◼   ► for you. Because and again making that leap to retina like the difference between a retina

01:36:46 ◼   ► iPad and a regular iPad like once you see that you don't want to go back. It's hard

01:36:50 ◼   ► to downgrade in some ways once you've got enough stuff that you're relying on having

01:36:53 ◼   ► a one terabyte drive. I don't mean to beat this into the ground. I just mean that I think

01:36:57 ◼   ► that when we think about these things there's so many different angles to consider rather

01:37:02 ◼   ► than just like oh go buy the most expensive Apple thing because it really does depend.

01:37:05 ◼   ► Hi, I'm Jason. I'll be your personal shopper.

01:37:07 ◼   ► Hi, Jason.

01:37:09 ◼   ► Have you brought your essay about what you plan on doing with your Apple products?

01:37:14 ◼   ► The summer that my grandma died was the worst summer ever.

01:37:17 ◼   ► Okay, that's not the essay that I intended, but we can go with it.

01:37:21 ◼   ► What kind of things did your grandma like to do with her computer?

01:37:23 ◼   ► My grandmother was a very sweet lady, and she...

01:37:27 ◼   ► Boy, how'd you do on essays? Were you good on essays?

01:37:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I was good on essays.

01:37:32 ◼   ► - It was the worst kind 'cause I thought I was good at essays.

01:37:34 ◼   ► - Oh no. - It was the worst.

01:37:35 ◼   ► - That's not, no, I was good at essays except, you know.

01:37:38 ◼   ► - And meeting poor people made me think about my life.

01:37:42 ◼   ► - A callback here is I was good at essays,

01:37:45 ◼   ► but you know what I wasn't good at

01:37:46 ◼   ► was writing out the essays legibly.

01:37:49 ◼   ► And for whenever I would have something

01:37:51 ◼   ► that like an in-class essay or like the AP English exam,

01:37:56 ◼   ► you know, you had to write it, hand write it.

01:37:59 ◼   ► Oh my God, it was the worst.

01:38:01 ◼   ► Because I write slowly and semi-neatly or quickly and illegibly.

01:38:08 ◼   ► And so I had to slow myself down when I'm writing the essay, and it was just very painful.

01:38:12 ◼   ► But I was good at essays.

01:38:13 ◼   ► But, you know, I'm a writer.

01:38:15 ◼   ► I get paid to write things.

01:38:17 ◼   ► It's not surprising that I was pretty good at writing essays.

01:38:19 ◼   ► Well, I like the way that sounded.

01:38:20 ◼   ► That was very noble.

01:38:22 ◼   ► I'm a writer.

01:38:23 ◼   ► It's what I do.

01:38:24 ◼   ► I write.

01:38:25 ◼   ► It's what I do.

01:38:26 ◼   ► People pay me to write things, so is it surprising that I was good at writing things?

01:38:29 ◼   ► You brag about it all the time.

01:38:30 ◼   ► Just go ahead and drop it.

01:38:31 ◼   ► - What's your correct words per minute?

01:38:33 ◼   ► - On typing? - Yeah.

01:38:34 ◼   ► - It's not bragging, it's just a fact.

01:38:36 ◼   ► It does not make me a better person

01:38:38 ◼   ► that I can type 110 words a minute.

01:38:40 ◼   ► - Sick burn.

01:38:41 ◼   ► - What it means is that my hands have become like claws

01:38:45 ◼   ► because I'm incapable of writing things.

01:38:48 ◼   ► When I had to sign something at the orthodontist firm,

01:38:52 ◼   ► 'cause my daughter's getting braces,

01:38:53 ◼   ► and they're like, "Sign here,"

01:38:55 ◼   ► and I'm like, "Signing with pen, hmm."

01:38:58 ◼   ► - Interesting.

01:38:59 ◼   ► And we were talking about cursive the other day, and I realized that I don't know any of the cursive letters except the ones that are in my name.

01:39:05 ◼   ► I've forgotten all the rest of them, because I know how to do my signature. That's it. That's it.

01:39:09 ◼   ► So what I'm saying is yes, I type 110 words a minute, and my hands have devolved into cave claws.

01:39:16 ◼   ► Ah, amazing.

01:39:18 ◼   ► Because I can't write things anymore with pencils.

01:39:21 ◼   ► Well, have me back again. We have so much to talk about.

01:39:24 ◼   ► Before we go, are you ready for some—

01:39:26 ◼   ► - No, no, I'm just saying as far as the meat topics,

01:39:29 ◼   ► I said there's a lot of meat topics.

01:39:30 ◼   ► I gotta hear about this Ask Upgrade from this week.

01:39:32 ◼   ► - We gotta do some Ask Upgrade before we go,

01:39:33 ◼   ► but yes, I would love to have you back sometime.

01:39:35 ◼   ► That would be awesome.

01:39:36 ◼   ► I always, I'm afraid to ask you on things

01:39:38 ◼   ► because I feel like you're busy.

01:39:39 ◼   ► - You like to deploy me tactically.

01:39:40 ◼   ► - Well, I feel like you're a busy guy.

01:39:41 ◼   ► This is the thing I discovered,

01:39:43 ◼   ► 'cause this was true with you and with Andy and Natko

01:39:46 ◼   ► and some other people I know where they're like,

01:39:48 ◼   ► "Why don't you ever ask me on your podcast?"

01:39:49 ◼   ► I was like, "I figure you're like too big for a podcast

01:39:52 ◼   ► and too busy."

01:39:53 ◼   ► So and now you got it like all the other podcasts because you got the podcast with John Roderick

01:39:58 ◼   ► You got the podcast with Dan Benjamin

01:39:59 ◼   ► You got the podcast with John, Syracuse and you got the podcast with Jim Dalrymple am I missing any podcast?

01:40:03 ◼   ► Oh, you got the podcast with Max Timken where you're talking about the top chef a show. I've never seen yeah

01:40:08 ◼   ► Yeah, but I'm always available for you. You know that I know that my only goal in life is to eventually be amusing on the

01:40:14 ◼   ► Incomparable it's it's the one show where I feel like I'm consistently not up to my game

01:40:18 ◼   ► It's not it's not accurate at all those are some of the best episodes that you're on oh god

01:40:22 ◼   ► I try so hard I think about I'm up at night you know I'm like Harry Potter

01:40:25 ◼   ► under the blanket doing doing spells

01:40:27 ◼   ► yeah that's what he's doing let's do it's about a sponsor give a sponsor for

01:40:32 ◼   ► ask upgrade do ask upgrade this week lasers is brought to you by making light

01:40:39 ◼   ► we've had them on before they actually just sent me some candles making light

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01:41:27 ◼   ► every morning. Merlin, do you have a morning kind of like the ritual you get up and you

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01:41:31 ◼   ► I get up, I curse the day, I have some coffee, but I could use some candles. I'm not gonna

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01:44:02 ◼   ► and #AskUpgrade.

01:44:06 ◼   ► Upgrading Michael wrote in to demand that we list our top holiday season.

01:44:13 ◼   ► This is very specific. Top holiday season breakfast foods or meals.

01:44:17 ◼   ► Oh man, I don't think I have four.

01:44:20 ◼   ► I don't know if I've got a top four breakfasts, let alone holiday season breakfasts.

01:44:26 ◼   ► You make a mean biscuit though.

01:44:27 ◼   ► I do make a mean biscuit. A buttermilk biscuit. Not the, you know, British cookie kind of biscuit.

01:44:34 ◼   ► Oh, the makes-a-

01:44:34 ◼   ► but the southern buttermilk biscuit, I do that. I do a good waffle. I did a waffle this weekend.

01:44:42 ◼   ► And for actually on Christmas morning a lot of times I will make cinnamon rolls.

01:44:50 ◼   ► That it's the Alton Brown cinnamon rolls you make them.

01:44:54 ◼   ► That's right where you put out put a beer can in it?

01:44:56 ◼   ► No, you don't put a beer can.

01:44:58 ◼   ► That's just the chicken?

01:45:00 ◼   ► I used a wine bottle to roll it out though because I didn't have a rolling pin. So I

01:45:05 ◼   ► just used a wine bottle, which totally works by the way. Wine bottle, great as a rolling

01:45:11 ◼   ► pin.

01:45:12 ◼   ► It's a baking hack.

01:45:13 ◼   ► It is. It's a baking life hack. But I made that and that's really great. You bake it

01:45:17 ◼   ► the night before and then they rise overnight and you bake them in the morning and that's

01:45:21 ◼   ► pretty good. My kids love those. I'd make those more, but those are a lot harder to

01:45:24 ◼   ► make than buttermilk biscuits, let me tell you. That's my holiday breakfast.

01:45:28 ◼   ► - I'm gonna Kobayashi Maru this,

01:45:30 ◼   ► because all of ours involve takeout food.

01:45:32 ◼   ► I mean, there aren't that many,

01:45:34 ◼   ► our special occasion foods are often more like stuff

01:45:36 ◼   ► from the neighborhood that we'll get.

01:45:38 ◼   ► There's a dim sum place nearby, we like to get dim sum,

01:45:40 ◼   ► sometimes not too much,

01:45:41 ◼   ► not the healthiest food in the world.

01:45:43 ◼   ► There's a place that has Irish food

01:45:46 ◼   ► that we refer to simply as Irish breakfast,

01:45:48 ◼   ► that's kind of a special thing for us.

01:45:51 ◼   ► And you know, that's mostly takeout things.

01:45:54 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of what we make at home that's special.

01:45:57 ◼   ► My wife and my daughter will make cookies sometimes

01:46:00 ◼   ► and things like that.