PodSearch

Upgrade

59: You Need Faster Fingers

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   from relay FM this is upgrade episode number 59 today's show is brought to you

00:00:14   by our friends over at lynda.com stamps.com go to meeting and pdf pen 7

00:00:20   from smile my name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr Jason Snell

00:00:24   Jason we will see each other in just a matter of days

00:00:28   It's just a few days away now. In just over, I would say probably in about, not 48 hours, but

00:00:35   58 hours we will be in the same place. We sure will. We're both going to be at the

00:00:40   Release Notes conference. We're not going to be recording upgrade live this time,

00:00:43   but I think we are going to be doing clockwise maybe? Right, clockwise. We'll do a clockwise

00:00:48   episode live from Release Notes probably Thursday since you're giving the keynote on Wednesday and

00:00:53   your mind will be blown maybe Thursday, but we will do a live clockwise, but not a live

00:00:58   upgrade this time. We'll be back here in, I think next Tuesday will be late by day because

00:01:04   of travel, but I think we'll be back here next week in our respective chairs.

00:01:08   - Yeah, but yeah, it's gonna be nice to go to the Reesenotes and I'm looking forward

00:01:13   to speaking.

00:01:14   - I'm going because it sounds like a good conference and I'm somebody who's got an independent

00:01:18   business now, so I'm actually interested in the business focus of that conference, but

00:01:21   I'm also going because the list of people who will be there including you

00:01:24   and Steven it's like a little impromptu relay meetup and that's it's nice to

00:01:29   see you guys in person so yeah we have fun yeah and and in fact one of our

00:01:34   listeners will be there too I know who's attending our friend from Cincinnati who

00:01:39   plays golf so I'm looking forward to some some listener meets that's kind of

00:01:43   awesome yeah I'm looking forward to it that I believe there's quite a few

00:01:47   listen is it gonna be this that's gonna be fun cool we should just follow up

00:01:50   Christian wrote in so last week we were talking about the speed of touch ID a

00:01:55   little bit and how it feels a bit more it just feels better to use it's faster

00:02:00   to use that kind of thing Christian wrote and he's a runner and actually

00:02:04   he's found that even after post run when he's all sweaty and he has sweaty hands

00:02:08   and fingers touch ID too is working for him which I thought was really

00:02:13   interesting and I wanted to see if you had any thoughts like do you think that

00:02:17   Apple have any of these use cases in mind when they do this kind of stuff?

00:02:23   Yeah probably I mean they certainly are aware that what the wet finger thing was

00:02:28   a problem right because there's nothing worse than having the slightly you know

00:02:30   slightly damp finger and you can't unlock your phone so I'm sure that was

00:02:34   something that they were thinking about I don't know whether they tried to solve

00:02:37   the wet finger problem or whether they were just saying we can make this thing

00:02:41   read better and faster and we've learned a lot in the last year of building Touch

00:02:45   ID and we can do a better job than the next time but I I can't if you're in

00:02:51   charge of Touch ID how can one of the things on your list not be the the the

00:02:56   wet finger problem it's got to be mm-hmm and also you know like the exercise

00:03:01   thing in general like the sweat side is interesting because of how much Apple

00:03:05   like push on the exercise and stuff now the Apple watch is around you know right

00:03:09   It's good that it works.

00:03:11   - So one of the things that we also got feedback,

00:03:15   we were talking about how do you do Apple Pay?

00:03:17   If it reads your finger too fast.

00:03:21   And lots of people wrote in to say, it's very simple.

00:03:24   You put your finger on the home button,

00:03:26   but don't push it in.

00:03:28   And then with your finger on the home button,

00:03:30   you double click the home button and Apple Pay slides out

00:03:33   and you use Apple Pay.

00:03:34   So that's the gesture there is,

00:03:36   You know, if you, if you put your finger on and press down, um, it's going to

00:03:41   unlock, but if you put your finger on and then go tap, tap it, uh, it goes to Apple

00:03:47   pay.

00:03:47   So good tip pro tip there.

00:03:49   Yeah, definitely.

00:03:51   Um, I still find it ends up unlocking the phone for me, but, uh, but yeah,

00:03:57   I don't know what I'm doing.

00:04:00   It works for me.

00:04:00   I think you need to be faster.

00:04:01   I mean, you need faster fingers to do that, but if you, if you just rested on

00:04:05   and then go doot doot. Totally works for me anyway.

00:04:09   Well there you go.

00:04:10   Uh, obviously we spoke about the magic devices last week, um, and I wanted to just address a

00:04:16   little bit more of that now that obviously we know more information. I know more information

00:04:20   about them anyway, and I don't, because I don't think we really spoke about the pricing. I don't

00:04:24   know if you knew what the pricing was going to be?

00:04:28   Uh, yeah, so I...

00:04:30   Let's see, I think I knew, but I didn't,

00:04:35   it wasn't on the spec sheet

00:04:36   and they mentioned it in the briefing

00:04:38   and I wasn't 100% sure that it was,

00:04:41   what I had down was right,

00:04:42   so I just decided to wait until they released them

00:04:45   and then could mention at that point what they cost.

00:04:49   So when we talked, I didn't wanna say it and get it wrong.

00:04:52   - Yeah, so it turns out that--

00:04:56   - Oh yeah.

00:04:56   Magic Mouse 2 is $79, the Magic Keyboard 2 is $99, and the Magic Trackpad is $129, which

00:05:06   is expensive.

00:05:08   Yeah.

00:05:10   That's really expensive.

00:05:11   The Trackpad is super expensive.

00:05:13   And it makes me think, if that's how much it costs, or if that's how much it costs and

00:05:18   you need those margins, should you do it?

00:05:23   Well, I mean, if you're Apple, here's the thing, they're going to include this in their

00:05:30   existing devices, so like the iMac, but, you know, the Mac Pro comes with input devices

00:05:37   too, so it's going to be the thing that's included with iMacs, basically, and if you

00:05:41   want to buy it as a separate thing, yeah, they're going to charge you a lot for it.

00:05:45   There are other options. I think that this is Apple being Apple and saying, "You want

00:05:50   something cheaper? Go buy something cheaper." This is the, you know, we don't make the

00:05:53   cheaper thing, we make the top-of-the-line thing. And I understand that. I think these

00:06:00   prices are a little surprising. At the same time, a lot of people are going to buy the

00:06:05   Magic Trackpad 2 even at $129. So that's the story of Apple, right? You look at the prices

00:06:13   and you're like, "Wow, it's good, but it's also a little bit pricey," and then they sell

00:06:18   a lot of them. So I'm a little surprised. I think there's a lot of tech in that trackpad

00:06:22   especially, the $99 keyboard.

00:06:24   You know, there are a lot of keyboards that are expensive.

00:06:27   That doesn't seem too unreasonable.

00:06:30   And if there's a big glass trackpad out there

00:06:33   that costs a lot less than that, I'd like to know about it.

00:06:37   I suspect that, you know, this is a high price,

00:06:42   but for the tech, not an unreasonable price.

00:06:46   And nobody's making you buy it.

00:06:48   I mean, I think that's the thing,

00:06:49   is that if this was a must have,

00:06:50   but then it would be different.

00:06:52   But it's, you know, if you want the full on

00:06:54   Apple glass trackpad experience on a system like a,

00:06:57   you know, like an iMac, this is what it costs.

00:07:01   And if you'd rather just have a mouse or a trackpad

00:07:04   or something, or a trackball or whatever,

00:07:06   you can just buy that from a third party if you want to,

00:07:08   if you're not satisfied with the prices that Apple provides.

00:07:12   So it is interesting there, you know.

00:07:15   Sometimes Apple makes products

00:07:16   that are a little aspirational.

00:07:17   They're higher tech than all the other products

00:07:20   out there on the market and that's purposeful but they're also higher priced and that's

00:07:23   definitely happening here.

00:07:26   And then of course we have the charging port on the bottom of the mouse, right? So when

00:07:29   you're charging it makes it unusable and a lot of people have been very upset about that

00:07:33   this week, citing it as a sign of poor Apple design, the death of Johnny Olive and the

00:07:43   upsetting of Steve Jobs' ghost. What do you think about this?

00:07:46   I don't know. I mean, I'm glad that I, my interest in mice is so low that I made the

00:07:54   tactical decision of reviewing quote unquote the mouse in my, as a footnote in my trackpad

00:07:59   review where I said, yep, there's a mouse because I just kind of don't care about mice.

00:08:05   I don't understand them. The fact that it doesn't, it doesn't have pressure sensitivity.

00:08:08   so he doesn't do Force Touch. You know, what's new about it? There's a whole lavish article

00:08:19   on Medium by Steven Levy about the amazing design decisions that went into making this

00:08:24   mouse and they changed the material of the feet and all this stuff and is it clicky enough

00:08:31   and things like that and that's, you know, it's fine. It doesn't interest me at all.

00:08:35   But it is a little fascinating that for whatever reason they just decided it was okay to put

00:08:41   the charger on the bottom and not try to engineer it for the to put the charger on the back

00:08:46   so that you could use it wired.

00:08:47   And I think it's a fair point to say that the other devices are engineered so that you

00:08:54   can use them while they're charging but the mouse isn't and why is that?

00:08:57   And there probably was a trade-off that they in the design process I'm sure that they had

00:09:03   this argument.

00:09:04   people who suggest that Apple doesn't consider all this stuff, which happens

00:09:10   all the time on the internet, that it's foolish, of course they considered it

00:09:15   and there was obviously an argument about it and I think at some point what

00:09:18   happened was somebody said, "look the chances that people need to use this

00:09:23   wired are almost zero, nobody needs to use this mouse wired and by moving it

00:09:30   here we get this other thing in our design. It makes this is the thing that's

00:09:36   keeping it from being clicky. This is the thing that's keeping it from

00:09:40   being lighter or whatever they prioritized and we can say you can very

00:09:44   much argue maybe that's the wrong priority but I'm sure that was the

00:09:47   argument and then the third part of the argument was probably if you look if you

00:09:51   plug this in for 30 seconds you can use it for until lunchtime so it's not that

00:09:55   big a deal.

00:09:56   You're not gonna stop doing your job because your mouse

00:09:59   ran out of battery, and we're going to have software to give you a warning saying you

00:10:03   should charge it tonight because it'll run out of battery tomorrow, and that's good enough.

00:10:08   And so that argument about putting it on the back and redesigning all of the other hardware

00:10:15   of the mouse around it so that they could charge it on the back rather than having kind

00:10:19   of a, you know, the whole thing on the back kind of floating as part of the mouse, that

00:10:24   the day, obviously. And the fact is that if they had engineered it the other way, people

00:10:31   might have said, "This is too big," or "It doesn't click well," or whatever. But we'll

00:10:38   never know. But I'm sure they had that argument internally. And this is the result, which

00:10:41   is, yeah, you can't use it when it's plugged in because the plugin's on the bottom, and

00:10:46   it does fast charge. So if you plug it in for a minute, you can use it the rest of the

00:10:49   day, basically, and then charge it overnight.

00:10:51   And I guess that makes sense, right? Like, you know, the fast charging thing, it's like,

00:10:56   well, there's your trade-off. Like, you know, it's like the idea of, we want to hide the

00:11:00   lightning bolt, we want to put it down here, okay, what can we do? Well, we can do this,

00:11:04   fine, that's a balance. Like, that's how I imagine that kind of, that design went through.

00:11:08   Yeah, yeah, I mean, you have to, there are trade-offs, right? And if you think about

00:11:13   the way that the mouse is designed, I don't feel like there's a really obvious thing at

00:11:20   the head of that mouse at the top of that mouse where,

00:11:23   well, why didn't they just put it right here?

00:11:26   I mean, it would have been a very different hardware design

00:11:28   if they'd put it there.

00:11:29   And at some point they decided

00:11:31   it just wasn't worth the trade-offs

00:11:33   that they were willing to make to put it there

00:11:35   for something that there's a very narrow use.

00:11:38   And basically they're saying,

00:11:39   look, if you want a wired mouse, go buy a wired mouse.

00:11:42   We're not making it.

00:11:44   And then secondarily, if you are worried about charging it,

00:11:49   don't be because you're gonna get a battery warning

00:11:51   like three days before it runs out of battery

00:11:53   and you need to charge it for 30 seconds

00:11:56   in order to use it until your lunch break

00:11:57   or until you go home.

00:11:59   And I think those are perfectly fine arguments.

00:12:03   I don't think it's a requirement

00:12:05   that you be able to plug in a mouse

00:12:07   and use it simultaneously,

00:12:09   but I see the point that Apple opens themselves up

00:12:12   for this sort of criticism.

00:12:14   I see it.

00:12:16   And in fact, I think what I would say is,

00:12:19   the PR spin on this was,

00:12:22   well, it charges on the bottom,

00:12:23   but you can charge it really fast.

00:12:24   That was the PR spin.

00:12:25   And maybe in Steven Levy's article,

00:12:30   which didn't have this in so far as I can tell,

00:12:32   maybe somewhere Apple should have said,

00:12:34   here's why it's on the bottom.

00:12:36   Here's the decision we made and why.

00:12:38   And they didn't.

00:12:39   And I know that one PR school of thought is

00:12:43   don't ever open yourself up for criticism,

00:12:45   don't call attention to something like this.

00:12:47   But it would be interesting to see how this would go

00:12:51   if they said, yeah, it's on the bottom,

00:12:53   but nobody's gonna care.

00:12:54   And what you get for it being on the bottom

00:12:56   is whatever the answer is there.

00:13:00   But they certainly didn't forget.

00:13:02   Go, oh, geez, where do we put the lightning port?

00:13:04   I guess it's gotta be on the bottom now.

00:13:06   That didn't happen.

00:13:07   But sometimes you read Twitter

00:13:08   and you feel like people are like,

00:13:09   ah, we got you, you forgot this.

00:13:11   Nope, they didn't forget it.

00:13:12   They just made a decision that opened themselves up to this

00:13:15   and sort of surprisingly, they didn't have a story beyond just,

00:13:19   "Well, you can charge it fast, so it doesn't matter."

00:13:21   - But as you did briefly mention, like, this is their own doing.

00:13:25   Like, the way that Apple always positioned themselves

00:13:29   as sweating every detail and all that kind of stuff

00:13:33   ends up in a scenario where they open themselves up

00:13:36   to this type of criticism, and...

00:13:38   - Right. So you almost need to blunt it, right?

00:13:40   You almost need to say, "Here's why we sweated this detail,

00:13:42   because this mouse is appreciably better

00:13:45   because we moved the plug to the bottom,

00:13:47   and tell that story, and it may or may not be true.

00:13:50   It's spin, of course, but it's interesting

00:13:52   that I don't think we've heard that story,

00:13:54   and that opens, that, that, along with their track record,

00:13:57   opens them up to that kind of criticism, totally.

00:13:59   - Yep.

00:14:01   So, you also did some testing with the Magic Trackpad 2

00:14:06   on some other Macs, rather than the iMac.

00:14:08   - (laughs) I did.

00:14:10   One of the interesting things

00:14:11   about the Magic Trackpad 2, unlike the mouse

00:14:13   and the keyboard, is that it says that it requires

00:14:16   a Bluetooth 4 Mac, which are not,

00:14:21   that doesn't go back that far, actually.

00:14:23   That's two or three years in most models.

00:14:27   The old, the old, she's greater Mac Pros don't support it.

00:14:31   Lots of older systems don't support it.

00:14:34   And so this is one of those things where people were saying,

00:14:37   "Oh, I really want it for my older iMac,

00:14:39   but my older iMac doesn't have Bluetooth 4.

00:14:41   And so I did try this.

00:14:43   I don't know, I've heard conflicting reports

00:14:45   about whether somebody who uses like a USB dongle,

00:14:49   like that does Bluetooth 4,

00:14:51   whether that would work or not.

00:14:53   I've heard, you know, some people can get stuff to work

00:14:55   with that and other people can't.

00:14:57   I have in my house, I used to have the access

00:15:01   to the Mac world lab, which when I was working at Mac world,

00:15:04   we had like so many old computers, oh my God.

00:15:08   but now I don't, I have access to my house.

00:15:11   And so I have a 2009 iMac that is on my daughter's desk.

00:15:16   I have a 2009 MacBook Pro that is in my,

00:15:21   it's right behind my desk here.

00:15:24   I've got a 2010, I think, no, 2011 MacBook here.

00:15:28   Anyway, I did try it on the MacBook Pro and the iMac.

00:15:32   So the iMac, I plugged it in and it didn't work.

00:15:36   I think maybe the cursor moved, maybe not even that,

00:15:39   but it was running Yosemite.

00:15:42   So then I upgraded it to El Capitan and then it worked.

00:15:47   I plugged it in thinking, well,

00:15:50   it's not gonna work with Bluetooth,

00:15:52   but if you plug the keyboard and the trackpad in,

00:15:55   they'll work over USB.

00:15:56   You can turn off your Bluetooth and they still work,

00:15:59   which is cool.

00:16:00   So they are wired in a way that the mouse is not.

00:16:05   Totally fair point.

00:16:06   So that worked and I was like, all right,

00:16:08   it worked with Force Touch, the whole thing worked.

00:16:12   That's pretty cool.

00:16:13   And then I unplugged the cable and it still worked.

00:16:17   And I don't, I have no explanation for this.

00:16:20   It still worked.

00:16:21   - Maybe it just like became friends and didn't wanna leave.

00:16:25   - It did not wanna leave with whatever the incompatible,

00:16:27   and it may be that the Bluetooth,

00:16:29   because it's not Bluetooth LE,

00:16:32   maybe the battery gets run down faster.

00:16:35   It may be that there's some sort of like sleep mode

00:16:38   that kicks in at some point and disconnects

00:16:40   that makes it a really bad experience.

00:16:42   I heard from somebody who tried on an older Mac to use it

00:16:45   and they said that it worked for a little while

00:16:46   and then it stopped working

00:16:47   and they couldn't get it to work again.

00:16:49   And it may be that this, since it's not supported,

00:16:52   there may be bugs that one of the reasons

00:16:54   it may not be supported is that they couldn't get it to work

00:16:57   to Apple satisfaction.

00:16:59   And so they just said, nope, it's not supported.

00:17:02   But what I've been saying,

00:17:06   and when I tried on the MacBook Pro, it was similar.

00:17:08   It worked as a track pad,

00:17:10   but without El Capitan, that's all it did.

00:17:14   It did a single click.

00:17:15   It wouldn't even do a two finger click.

00:17:17   So it was seeing it as a pointing device,

00:17:19   but not as a track pad, essentially,

00:17:23   not as anything more than just sort of moving a cursor

00:17:25   around and clicking.

00:17:27   But on that 2009 iMac, it was working

00:17:30   to its full capabilities, gestures, force touch,

00:17:34   the works when you're running El Capitan.

00:17:37   So, you know, the short version of this is,

00:17:40   if you've got an older Mac that doesn't appear

00:17:42   to be compatible with a Magic Trackpad 2,

00:17:44   but you really want a Magic Trackpad 2,

00:17:46   I would recommend ordering one and seeing if it works.

00:17:50   And if it doesn't work, send it back.

00:17:52   But it might work.

00:17:54   That's all I can really say is it might work.

00:17:56   it might not work. And I don't have anything comprehensive to say because I've only tried

00:17:59   it on two systems. But if you're running El Capitan and you plug it in, it might very

00:18:05   well work. So, and it might even work unplugged. But certainly, you know, I think you've got

00:18:09   a decent chance of it working if you keep it plugged in via USB. So if you want to give

00:18:13   it a shot, give it a shot and you'll find out. It also seems like the Bluetooth powers

00:18:20   down when it's plugged in and it runs over the cable, the data is over the cable. So

00:18:25   So even if you left Bluetooth on, I think maybe it would still work on USB mode.

00:18:30   And I heard from somebody who said that they were RF sensitive, they were sensitive to

00:18:34   radio frequencies, which I think they are not broadcasting when they're plugged in,

00:18:41   but I don't know that for sure.

00:18:42   So that's all I know.

00:18:44   But it's an expensive thing to just try out.

00:18:47   I guess you could return it.

00:18:49   Well, you need to return it.

00:18:51   That's it.

00:18:52   it needs to be something that you are able to return, right?

00:18:55   So, you know, whatever, check wherever you buy it.

00:18:57   If you're going to try this out, make sure that it's a place

00:18:59   that offers you, you know, a window in which to return it.

00:19:03   Go to the Apple store and I think Apple offers --

00:19:06   I think Apple offers a return policy of,

00:19:09   I don't even know what it is.

00:19:10   -I think it's 14 days is the standard one for Apple.

00:19:13   -Just to bring it back.

00:19:14   So, I think what you're risking is your time at that point.

00:19:18   If it doesn't work, you can always bring it back.

00:19:21   - All right, let's take a break

00:19:24   and we'll jump into some more false touch stuff.

00:19:27   - Yeah.

00:19:28   - 'Cause we're all about input devices these days.

00:19:30   - I guess so.

00:19:31   - That's what it's all about.

00:19:32   This episode is brought to you by lynda.com.

00:19:34   They are the online learning platform

00:19:36   that has over 3000 on-demand video courses

00:19:39   that are there to help you strengthen

00:19:40   your business technology and creative skills.

00:19:42   For a free 10-day trial,

00:19:44   you can visit lynda.com/upgrade.

00:19:46   That's L Y N D A dot com slash upgrade.

00:19:49   If you are looking to learn anything,

00:19:52   Lynda.com can help you.

00:19:54   And this isn't, you know, when I talk about Lynda.com,

00:19:57   I think people just expect I'm going to talk about software that you can use.

00:20:00   You know, you can learn how to use logic,

00:20:02   you can learn how to use Xcode,

00:20:03   or maybe you want to learn how to use a piece of hardware or something like that.

00:20:07   But they do a lot more than this.

00:20:10   So, for example, let's say you're getting into design.

00:20:13   With Lynda.com you can take courses on the foundations of colour and typography in design.

00:20:19   Or let's say you're looking to learn how to take photos,

00:20:23   photography is the new thing that you're after, it's the hobby that you're looking to partake in.

00:20:26   They can teach you about the software, they can teach you about that kind of stuff,

00:20:30   but it can also teach you how to light a subject properly, or how to do good portrait photography.

00:20:35   Lynda.com is for people that are looking to solve problems, people that are curious to stuff,

00:20:39   and the people who want to make things happen in their lives.

00:20:42   This can be, as I mentioned, software and hardware,

00:20:44   but it can also be some of the fundamentals that you need

00:20:46   to take that new hobby and take it to the next step

00:20:49   or to help improve you in your work

00:20:51   or to help improve you in your side business.

00:20:53   Whatever it is, then Linda.com can help you.

00:20:55   And they do this by giving you fantastically produced courses

00:20:58   that are taught by people who are absolute experts.

00:21:02   You can stream any of the thousands of video courses on demand.

00:21:05   You can stream them in any order that you like.

00:21:07   They have broken them all down into great bite-sized pieces so you can watch them in any order.

00:21:12   And you can even create and save playlists of these courses so you can customize your own learning path and share this with others as well.

00:21:18   You can watch on the go with an Android and iOS device so you can learn wherever you like.

00:21:23   You're not just tied to watching it on a PC or a Mac.

00:21:26   But you can also, when you do this, when you do watch in a web browser, you can

00:21:30   follow along with their great transcripts as well.

00:21:33   And you can also search these later to skip to a specific point in a video.

00:21:37   When you sign up for lynda.com your membership will give you unlimited access to training on hundreds of topics for one flat rate

00:21:43   Whether you're looking to become an industry expert you're passionate about a hobby or you just want to learn something new go ahead and visit

00:21:49   Ly NDA dot-com slash upgrade and sign up for your free 10 day trial

00:21:54   Thank you so much lynda.com for their support of this very show

00:21:59   Now Jason you wrote a piece on your lovingly titled

00:22:04   I think this is fantastic more color column on Mac world

00:22:07   I don't know if I've mentioned out in the show before but as a great little title for your

00:22:11   This is like an op-ed column

00:22:13   It's it seems mostly. Yeah, basically Mac world is paying me to

00:22:18   write things once a week in that space and

00:22:20   Susie came up with the the title more color, which is a nice play off of six colors and also off of the

00:22:28   Analysts always asking Tim Cook for more color during conference calls. So it's really good about

00:22:34   So, on your more color column this week, you spoke a little bit about the kind of underutilization

00:22:40   of Force Touch on the Mac, and maybe the interesting way how if you compare it to iOS, like iOS

00:22:46   is already swimming in Force Touch, but whilst it's been around on the Mac for longer, there

00:22:50   doesn't really seem to have been too much adoption?

00:22:55   Is that, am I fair to say that?

00:22:57   Yeah, I mean, there are so many issues here.

00:23:01   First, there's the issue of what do you call it, right?

00:23:04   And it was funny when the trackpad came out,

00:23:06   I was surprised that a lot of the feedback

00:23:08   I got from people was, "What do you mean Force Touch?

00:23:10   "Isn't it called 3D Touch now?"

00:23:12   No, it's not.

00:23:15   - They should have standardized.

00:23:16   They really should have.

00:23:17   And I know why they didn't.

00:23:19   I understand that, but I think it made more sense

00:23:21   to if they would have standardized.

00:23:23   - Yeah, I think the problem is that they,

00:23:26   my guess is they have standardized,

00:23:29   which is that 3D Touch is the new name.

00:23:32   And that my guess is, because again,

00:23:34   they could keep them as separate names, but it seems silly.

00:23:36   Even if they are different technologies

00:23:38   on different operating systems,

00:23:40   three different operating systems,

00:23:41   it seems silly to have two different brand names

00:23:44   for pressure sensitive things, right?

00:23:46   It seems silly.

00:23:47   So they obviously had Force Touch

00:23:49   'cause they put it on the track pad and in the watch

00:23:50   and now they've changed their mind

00:23:52   for I think, you know, maybe some good reasons.

00:23:54   It's, I think it's a better, clearer title, 3D Touch.

00:23:58   nice brand name and that's what it is now.

00:24:03   But I don't think they're gonna rebrand

00:24:06   the existing Force Touch until later.

00:24:09   And my guess with the Mac is that it's gonna be

00:24:11   until the next version of OS X,

00:24:13   at which point they will call it 3D Touch

00:24:16   and say, here are all these new features that it does.

00:24:18   'Cause the problem with Force Touch

00:24:20   is when they introduced it, it was just on the MacBook

00:24:22   and the 13-inch MacBook Pro that they revved

00:24:25   and now it's also in the 15

00:24:26   and now it's also in the trackpad.

00:24:27   But it was sort of added piecemeal,

00:24:28   It was in the middle of an OS cycle.

00:24:30   And surprisingly El Capitan didn't do anything

00:24:33   to advance it.

00:24:34   And so you end up in this weird state

00:24:37   where when 3D Touch came out on the iPhones,

00:24:39   Apple said, okay, here's how it works.

00:24:41   On icons it does this.

00:24:43   And in apps, you can do whatever you want,

00:24:46   but we built an API for Peak and Pop that you can use.

00:24:50   And we built it into a whole bunch of our apps.

00:24:52   And this is a good metaphor for this.

00:24:54   And on the Mac, they said,

00:24:57   good luck to developers.

00:24:59   And for their own part,

00:25:00   they basically wired it up to the three finger click

00:25:03   and added a few different demonstrations, basically,

00:25:08   like in QuickTime of variable speed, but not a lot.

00:25:11   In iMovie, there was a modification

00:25:15   where you'd get some haptic feedback

00:25:16   when you were snapping

00:25:17   or when you're dragging to the end of an item.

00:25:20   Some like demos and cool demos,

00:25:22   but not a lot more than that.

00:25:23   And in the intervening time,

00:25:25   I haven't used Force Touch

00:25:26   since I returned that review MacBook that I got

00:25:29   until this week.

00:25:31   And not much has changed.

00:25:34   The i, which we're gonna talk about in a second,

00:25:37   the iWork update that came out last week

00:25:40   actually does have some haptic feedback stuff in it,

00:25:44   but it's just kind of all over the place

00:25:47   and most third-party apps don't seem to support it.

00:25:50   And Apple's inconsistent and Apple's apps are inconsistent.

00:25:53   And it's just, it's striking to see that story

00:25:55   versus the story with 3D Touch, where it's very clear.

00:25:58   Now, 3D Touch is a lot easier

00:26:00   because there aren't alternate taps for iOS right now.

00:26:03   There's like a tap and I guess a long press, right?

00:26:07   And that's about it.

00:26:08   But on the Mac, you already have control click

00:26:10   or right click or whatever you wanna call it,

00:26:13   or two finger click.

00:26:14   And so what do you do?

00:26:17   You can't count on this being there.

00:26:19   And it seems kind of pointless to waste it

00:26:20   on just another gesture for the control click.

00:26:23   So they made it the three finger thing,

00:26:25   but the three finger thing is where you kind of stuff

00:26:27   everything that isn't important because most people

00:26:30   aren't gonna ever three finger click on something.

00:26:32   So it's kind of, it's just, it's all over the place.

00:26:35   It's not consistent.

00:26:36   The names don't match.

00:26:38   It just, it strikes me that they had an opportunity

00:26:41   to do this and clarify this with El Capitan and they didn't.

00:26:44   And we may all be waiting until the next version of OS X

00:26:47   before we get more clarity.

00:26:49   'cause I do think they need to do peak and pop

00:26:51   or something that's the equivalent of that on OS X.

00:26:54   And just like on iOS, it's not mandatory.

00:26:59   You can't expect it to be there

00:27:01   'cause there are lots of devices that don't support it.

00:27:03   But if you do have a device that supports it,

00:27:05   you know how it works and it works that way

00:27:07   in pretty much all modern apps.

00:27:10   And on the Mac, there's not much there.

00:27:14   There's just not that much there.

00:27:17   Yeah, I mean I wonder why they didn't create Peek and Pop for the Mac. Maybe because

00:27:23   Force Touch is less of a marketing thing on the Mac than it maybe is on iOS?

00:27:30   I don't know.

00:27:33   Or maybe, maybe, do you know like is the pressure sensitivity of the track pads

00:27:39   as good as the phone? It seems so right? Because you can do like the multiple

00:27:44   layer thing for the quick time moving around?

00:27:46   Yeah, seems so.

00:27:47   It's very interesting, like even if they wanted to keep the peak and pop stuff so it was more

00:27:54   sellable on the iPhone, right, so they come up with this great thing, they'll put it,

00:27:57   so they're like "oh we can do this but we're gonna put it on the iPhone because it makes

00:28:01   a nicer marketing message to introduce it there."

00:28:04   It's still strange that it hasn't come back to the Mac yet.

00:28:06   Maybe it will but you'd think that it maybe would have come with El Capitan.

00:28:10   Yeah that's what I think and I'm surprised that it didn't and maybe it's just that they

00:28:14   were not capable of getting it in to El Capitan.

00:28:17   It's strange knowing that the Force Touch

00:28:22   was going to extend to anybody who wants to buy

00:28:26   this Magic Trackpad 2,

00:28:28   that that wouldn't be something they would consider

00:28:30   and that it was in all their new generation laptops now.

00:28:35   But again, yeah, maybe they weren't ready.

00:28:40   maybe the 3D touch stuff on iOS was being baked separately

00:28:45   and until it got kind of locked in the Mac people,

00:28:50   it would be very hard.

00:28:51   They could have done it, but the other way to do it

00:28:53   would be like, okay, we're gonna unify our pressure,

00:28:56   sensitive stuff.

00:28:57   We're gonna unify it all.

00:28:58   It's all gonna behave the same way.

00:29:00   And we're gonna put those in the iOS release in El Capitan.

00:29:02   And probably what they said was, you know what?

00:29:04   We're just gonna do it in iOS.

00:29:06   And once we figure it out in iOS and do it there,

00:29:08   then OS X can do it next year.

00:29:10   And that's probably what happened.

00:29:11   What's weird is the hardware is there now

00:29:14   and was there before the iOS hardware was out.

00:29:17   So I don't know, I mean, I don't have a problem

00:29:20   with force touch as a concept on the Mac.

00:29:23   There are moments where I,

00:29:25   what I would say is there are moments

00:29:26   where I think this would be a really nice place

00:29:29   if I could do an alternate click.

00:29:30   This would be a really nice place

00:29:31   if I could do a force click that brought up a,

00:29:36   that executed a script

00:29:37   or that brought up a contextual menu that was different

00:29:40   from the usual two finger click contextual menu.

00:29:43   It happens every now and then that I think

00:29:45   this might be a good place for it.

00:29:47   And you know, they just, it's not there.

00:29:50   I think one of the reasons is because

00:29:52   how many developers are spending all their time

00:29:55   using a device that's got one of these track pads in it.

00:30:00   More now, more soon at least, I think,

00:30:03   because they will get this device

00:30:05   and they will be able to explore it more than maybe

00:30:08   if they're just using a MacBook Pro.

00:30:09   'Cause even, I mean, I know developers use MacBook Pros

00:30:12   a lot, but are they using them as their main systems

00:30:14   and are they using them as their main systems

00:30:15   without like an external mouse and keyboard?

00:30:19   It's probably a smaller percentage.

00:30:20   So I think this Magistrack Pad 2 could go a long way

00:30:23   to increasing the number of third-party developers

00:30:25   who are at least aware of Force Touch on the Mac.

00:30:30   Whether they'll do anything with it, I don't know.

00:30:32   but it's just kind of not being used consistently

00:30:35   and Apple could lead the way here

00:30:37   like they did on iOS with 3D Touch

00:30:38   and they really haven't.

00:30:41   - I think that it also speaks to the platform advancement

00:30:44   because I understand the idea of Mac developers

00:30:47   not having Magic Trackpad to test on

00:30:50   but so many iOS developers were implementing

00:30:53   Force Touch before they had the devices, right,

00:30:55   to get it out on day one.

00:30:57   I just think it speaks to the platforms a little bit more

00:31:00   that on iOS you want to make sure you've got the latest and greatest because it's potentially

00:31:05   more of a benefit than having the latest and greatest on the Mac?

00:31:09   It's true, it's true, and there's more active development happening on iOS than on the Mac,

00:31:14   but that all said, there are people who make their living on the Mac as developers and

00:31:20   --

00:31:21   But it certainly seems like those developers aren't really making their money from the

00:31:25   App Store and I think the reason that iOS developers race is because they'll get the

00:31:31   App Store features if they have the new stuff in, right?

00:31:35   So if we think about some of the companies that we know, like OmniFocus or James Thompson

00:31:41   who develops Peacock, they do direct sale and obviously they move that way and they

00:31:49   seem to...

00:31:50   I mean there are a couple of developers that I wanted to bring to mind because they're

00:31:53   always putting the new stuff in right but I know that James was like he goes

00:32:00   crazy trying to get all the iOS stuff in mind the same way the OmniFocus and the

00:32:04   Omni group guys do because on the I guess on iOS it's more important if you

00:32:08   can get that like made for iPhone 6 feature oh yes right awesome right right

00:32:14   I know I was looking in there right the moment the moment that they had that up

00:32:17   I was looking in there seeing well you know what are the new apps that Apple

00:32:20   has said these use the features of iOS 9.

00:32:23   - 'Cause you wanna test them.

00:32:24   - But yeah.

00:32:25   - This doesn't exist really on the Mac.

00:32:28   I mean, does anybody really look in the Mac App Store

00:32:30   for anything?

00:32:31   Does anyone browse it?

00:32:32   Like I never browse the Mac App Store.

00:32:34   I browse the iOS App Store like a couple of times a week.

00:32:38   - I did use it last week for this.

00:32:41   And I went to the search box in the Mac App Store

00:32:43   and I typed force touch and there were no responses.

00:32:49   there were no search results.

00:32:51   - But it feels like there's gotta be an app in there

00:32:52   somewhere that has false touch in the description,

00:32:54   but it's just not finding them.

00:32:55   - You would think, but either way it's not good.

00:32:57   (laughs)

00:32:58   - Yeah, exactly.

00:32:59   - Either way that is a really, really bad sign.

00:33:01   So, I don't know, I mean, I wanna say though

00:33:04   that Apple's got the right approach on iOS to this,

00:33:06   which is, we're gonna show you how you use this,

00:33:09   and we're gonna build it in.

00:33:10   And they didn't build it in everywhere,

00:33:11   and we can complain like control center should have it,

00:33:13   and there's lots of stuff that should probably have it

00:33:15   that isn't there, but lots of Apple's apps have it built in,

00:33:18   and they are generally using the peak and pop metaphor

00:33:22   and they supplied an API

00:33:23   so that developers didn't have to build

00:33:25   peak and pop themselves.

00:33:26   They just use what Apple built

00:33:28   and it works like you'd expect.

00:33:31   And that's good, that's smart.

00:33:33   And on Mac OS, on OS 10,

00:33:38   they have examples and there's APIs and all,

00:33:42   but it's not like they don't have the unified approach

00:33:44   that they brought to iOS.

00:33:46   And I guess I understand it on one level,

00:33:48   but it just seems bizarre to me

00:33:49   that they would bring out the hardware

00:33:50   and have the software kind of not be hooked up very well.

00:33:54   I mean, it works, but what is it for?

00:33:57   And El Capitan could have made that case

00:34:00   and it didn't make that case.

00:34:02   So it's just now that I've got this Force Touch trackpad

00:34:05   sitting here, this Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad 2,

00:34:08   what can I use it for?

00:34:10   And I'm sure there will be some things

00:34:12   that'll be coming out now that this product exists.

00:34:15   I think it will help.

00:34:17   And I'm sure that there will be some really nerdy utilities

00:34:21   that will let you bind strange behaviors to a Force Touch.

00:34:26   But it's just not, you know, it's just,

00:34:29   it's disappointing that it's not further along.

00:34:32   I will say, and we can get to this more in a minute,

00:34:35   some of the stuff in the iWork update I'm intrigued by,

00:34:39   that's using the haptics rather than the Force Touch.

00:34:42   It's interesting that Apple has gone that way with iWork,

00:34:47   and that may encourage some developers

00:34:49   to use that feature a little bit more.

00:34:51   - Let's put a pin in that.

00:34:52   We'll come back to iWork in a moment,

00:34:53   but just before we get off this topic,

00:34:56   are there, you know, you are a Mac user primarily, right?

00:35:01   You use the Mac way more than iOS, don't you?

00:35:03   - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:35:05   Is there any feature that you can think

00:35:08   that you would really like to see

00:35:10   with full touch on the Mac?

00:35:11   Like, is there any part of the OS or any part of Apple's apps or outside of Peek and Pop

00:35:16   or any third-party apps that you see as like, "I really, really want to have false touch

00:35:20   here for X reason"?

00:35:21   Well, for me, a lot of it is about it's a productivity boost.

00:35:25   Is there something that I need to do with a keyboard shortcut or going to a menu that

00:35:30   I need to do right here, something I could select and then do?

00:35:33   And the problem is, this is one of the problems with the UI is a lot of that stuff is on the

00:35:39   contextual menu already.

00:35:40   So why do you need an additional context?

00:35:43   And what I would say is there are cases where the contextual menu is very general and I

00:35:48   want something incredibly specific.

00:35:50   And that's why I mentioned, you know, the idea of something that takes a script or runs

00:35:55   an automator action or something like that where I could bind it directly to a script

00:36:00   or I could bind it to a quick pop-up menu of like three things that I could choose from

00:36:05   instead of the big full-on contextual menu that I normally get.

00:36:08   That would be an example.

00:36:10   I can imagine something like Logic having the ability to do a force touch on something

00:36:15   in order to get a separate set of controls.

00:36:18   What I would really love to do, because you know with Logic you can set your clicks, can't

00:36:24   you, to be different tools.

00:36:25   So you can choose two tools, right?

00:36:27   So you can have left click and right click effectively as different tools.

00:36:30   I would love to be able to have force touch as a third tool.

00:36:34   Yeah, sure.

00:36:35   It'd be great, right?

00:36:36   Because why not?

00:36:37   I would love that.

00:36:38   even better ways to zoom and pan.

00:36:43   I feel that there's some stuff there for the Pro apps

00:36:45   that could be really interesting.

00:36:47   I just wonder what could come out of the more consumer stuff

00:36:51   outside of Peek and Pop, which as we said,

00:36:53   should really, really be there now,

00:36:55   especially in like messages and stuff like that.

00:36:57   I would really like to see that.

00:36:59   - Yeah.

00:37:00   - Whilst we're talking about Peek and Pop,

00:37:01   totally different thing, but I just wanted to mention this

00:37:03   'cause it's been on my mind and it just popped into my head.

00:37:06   Peek and Pop--

00:37:07   Did you peak it first?

00:37:08   I did and it was popped in.

00:37:10   I really like it on iOS but I have one problem how in like, let's say you're in messages

00:37:17   and you have a link and you can peak the link and if you pop it, it doesn't pop into place,

00:37:25   the app like Safari slides in from the side, I really wish it wouldn't do that.

00:37:29   I wish it would just pop it in because like in Tweetbot for example, I don't know if Twitterrific

00:37:34   has peak and pop.

00:37:36   thing it's using Safari View Controller. But it just pops into place. Yeah. But with, it's

00:37:41   something like messages on mail, it opens the Safari app and it's like you're peaking

00:37:46   it, oh this looks nice, you pop it and it goes, and it just flaps, and I just wish it

00:37:49   wouldn't do that, I wish it would just open it. In a world with Safari View Controller,

00:37:54   which is the new thing in iOS 9 that basically lets apps have Safari inside them and it's

00:37:58   like full on Safari and then there's that done button that you can, you know, and there's

00:38:02   UI issues there that they seem to be working out. Apple's apps should probably use it,

00:38:09   right? Yeah, because it's nicer. It's a nicer experience.

00:38:11   Because then you never leave the app that you're in, but instead all of Apple's apps

00:38:15   go from messages or mail or whatever and open the full Safari instead of using Safari View

00:38:20   Controller. I think that's a really interesting argument that, you know, if I want to use

00:38:24   Safari I'll be using Safari, and if I want to open this in Safari I can do that, but

00:38:30   the default should probably be just open this page here,

00:38:33   and then when I'm done, I'll continue on with messages.

00:38:35   - Because that action, like the idea of opening

00:38:39   the extra app, it breaks the UI flow of peak and pop.

00:38:44   Because when it pops in, it opens another app

00:38:47   and then loads it again.

00:38:48   - Yeah, it's no, I never really considered that,

00:38:53   but you're absolutely right that there is,

00:38:56   that it's actually bad, I would say bad user experience.

00:38:59   Like if you're in mail, why would it not flip up a,

00:39:04   and this goes in general, I think,

00:39:07   why would it not flip up a Safari View Control?

00:39:09   I mean, I'm sure there's a whole big argument there,

00:39:11   but I do wonder with some of these,

00:39:13   if it perhaps is just that that's not how it's been done

00:39:16   in the past.

00:39:17   And I wonder, did that argument happen

00:39:19   or was it more like, look, too much,

00:39:22   we're not gonna debate Safari View Controller in mail,

00:39:24   we're just gonna ship it the way it's always been.

00:39:27   But wouldn't it be?

00:39:27   I think there's an argument to be made

00:39:29   that it would be, it's always a better user experience.

00:39:31   And again, I'm not saying that this is true.

00:39:33   I'm saying it's a, there's an argument to be made

00:39:35   that it's always a better experience

00:39:37   to stay in the app you're in

00:39:38   when you click a link to a webpage,

00:39:41   bring up the Safari view controller in iOS 9.

00:39:44   And then when you're done, you dismiss it

00:39:45   because you're in Facebook or you're in,

00:39:47   well, they don't use it, but you're in mail,

00:39:50   you're in messages, you're not in Safari.

00:39:53   And it would actually reduce the number of times

00:39:56   you'd have to see that little thing in the corner

00:39:57   that says go back to the app you were in before.

00:40:01   - And like if you think that, you know,

00:40:02   the majority of people probably use third party apps

00:40:06   mostly, right?

00:40:07   Or like at least we do, we use third party apps

00:40:10   more than Apple's apps.

00:40:12   We end up in a world where Apple seems to be doing

00:40:14   the weird thing rather than the third parties, right?

00:40:17   By not using Safari View Controller.

00:40:19   - Yeah.

00:40:21   - It's just something that it's been bugging me.

00:40:24   So I'm pleased that I remember to bring it up.

00:40:26   But we should talk about the iWork update, but before we do that, Jason, could you please

00:40:29   thank Stamps.com for sponsoring this week's episode?

00:40:32   Indeed, Stamps.com is one of our sponsors this week, and I've been using it.

00:40:37   I've actually been using it a lot the last couple of weeks.

00:40:40   Most of us, especially if you're in a small business, you're trying to find more time

00:40:44   to get things done, and trips to the post office, and waiting in line, and having them

00:40:49   weigh your packages, and having to get postage and drop things in the box and all that.

00:40:54   just it's a hassle and the world we live in with our computers and printers and things

00:41:00   mean you don't have to do this anymore and that's enabled by Stamps.com. With Stamps.com

00:41:05   you can buy and print official US postage. It's not anything weird. It is official, approved

00:41:10   by the US Postal Service postage right from your computer and printer. They will send

00:41:15   you a digital scale. It automatically calculates the exact postage you need. It's great. There's

00:41:19   a browser plugin, it's crazy. And you know, it's a USB scale and you put a box on it or

00:41:25   a thick envelope and in the web page form for Stamps.com, it like puts in the weight

00:41:33   immediately. It's crazy. It's kind of like, all right, I'll move on. I keep expecting

00:41:39   to have to put in the weight and say, no, it's already in there because there's a browser

00:41:42   plugin that does it. It's very cool. So it all happens right there, automatically calculated.

00:41:47   You don't have to spend time going to the post office.

00:41:49   You can do it from your desk with Stamps.com.

00:41:51   You print the postage you need.

00:41:53   You put it on a letter or a package.

00:41:55   You know, you can tape it on.

00:41:56   They've got some, you know,

00:41:57   they've also got some like sticker forms available,

00:41:59   but you can also just print it on paper and tape it on.

00:42:02   And that's it.

00:42:03   Hand it to the mail carrier when they come to your door

00:42:06   and they'll take it away and you're done.

00:42:07   And you didn't go to the post office.

00:42:08   Now, Stamps.com is a service, costs $15.99 a month,

00:42:11   but you don't have to make any long-term

00:42:13   multi-year commitments like postage meters require.

00:42:15   There are no markups on postage.

00:42:16   In fact, you can get postage discounts with Stamps.com.

00:42:19   So it's really a no brainer.

00:42:20   I've been using it a lot.

00:42:22   We won, so the incomparable won the Parsec Award,

00:42:25   which is a sci-fi podcasting award for the second time,

00:42:28   which is pretty awesome,

00:42:30   because really once you win one award,

00:42:32   you're an award winner forever.

00:42:33   It's a beautiful thing.

00:42:35   Just need one, but we've got two Parsecs now.

00:42:37   So they have neat little trophies with stars on them,

00:42:41   and you can get, you can,

00:42:44   I bought trophies for all the panelists on the incomparable.

00:42:46   So they sent them to me in a big box,

00:42:49   giant box full of trophies.

00:42:50   So I had to send those out.

00:42:52   And I actually went to the post office once

00:42:53   and got a bunch of their prepaid,

00:42:55   well, they're not prepaid, they're standard boxes.

00:42:58   And stamps.com works with that.

00:42:59   So I was able to go into the stamps.com interface

00:43:01   and say, okay, I'm using the postal service box.

00:43:04   Here's who I'm sending it to.

00:43:05   It calculates all the postage, it prints the label.

00:43:07   I put the label on the box.

00:43:08   And then again, my letter carrier comes to the door

00:43:12   and I can hand them a stack of boxes

00:43:13   and say, take these away.

00:43:14   And that's for their flat rate.

00:43:15   I have also sent some things where it's just a cardboard box from my garage, wrap it up,

00:43:20   weigh it, put in the dimensions, and hand it to the postal worker when they come to

00:43:25   my door.

00:43:26   Pretty great.

00:43:27   You can sign up for Stamps.com right now.

00:43:30   Please use this promo code, upgrade, the name of the show you're listening to, for this

00:43:33   special offer.

00:43:34   You'll get a four-week trial of Stamps.com.

00:43:36   And there's a $110 bonus offer, including postage and a digital scale.

00:43:41   So don't wait.

00:43:42   Go to Stamps.com before you do anything else.

00:43:44   on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in the word "upgrade" at stamps.com

00:43:49   and enter "upgrade." Thank you to stamps.com for sponsoring Upgrade this week.

00:43:55   So we finally got some updates to pages, numbers, and Keynote across the board.

00:44:02   Yeah.

00:44:03   So we got iOS and OS X updates. I know that people hate it when you say things are late,

00:44:11   right, but this was late.

00:44:13   You know, 'cause it's like,

00:44:14   "It's not late until Apple says it's late."

00:44:17   This was late, right?

00:44:18   Why would they not have had these ready to go

00:44:21   when the new phones shipped or when iOS 9 shipped?

00:44:24   Like, they were late.

00:44:26   Right, is that fair to say, Jason?

00:44:29   - Yeah, on the Mac side, the same thing, right?

00:44:31   On the Mac side, the apps hadn't been updated in ages

00:44:34   and didn't get updated with El Capitan or iOS 9,

00:44:39   but they did get updated.

00:44:40   - Yeah, they're here now, which is great.

00:44:43   - This was a topic on Clockwise at one point,

00:44:45   which was like concern that Apple,

00:44:47   did Apple need to care about iWork anymore?

00:44:50   Now that, you know, Microsoft is on iOS with good apps

00:44:55   and Google's got good apps on iOS.

00:44:57   You know, iWork is, iWork originally was sort of a hedge,

00:45:00   like you can be productive on the iPad,

00:45:02   but now there's so many ways to be productive,

00:45:04   but they did finally update it.

00:45:06   So full credit to them.

00:45:07   It added a lot of features,

00:45:09   some of which are kind of embarrassing,

00:45:10   like backward compatibility with old versions,

00:45:12   where it used to be like,

00:45:13   you had to keep the old version around.

00:45:15   And like when you installed the new version,

00:45:17   it would move the old version into a folder,

00:45:19   but keep it there because if you had old files,

00:45:22   they wouldn't open in new versions, which is so bad.

00:45:25   But they added support for older versions.

00:45:29   And there's some other cool stuff in there.

00:45:32   It's funny that it took this long,

00:45:34   but I'm glad they're here because for those people,

00:45:37   I hear from a lot of people who rely on iWork,

00:45:39   I love Keynote and I use that. I'm giving a presentation at a user group

00:45:43   tomorrow and I'm going to use Keynote. PowerPoint is a lot better than it used

00:45:46   to be but Keynote is my presentation tool of choice. And I actually use

00:45:51   numbers a lot to make charts because I think that the charts and graph stuff in

00:45:56   numbers is very pretty. That's why I use numbers because I don't fully

00:46:03   understand everything that Excel can do and I like the way that the numbers

00:46:08   charts look. If I have to make anything to send to somebody, like you know like

00:46:12   sometimes I make like proposals for sponsorship, right? So someone will say

00:46:17   you know I have this much budget what do you want to do with that? And I'll put

00:46:20   together a nice looking document in pages and numbers which is what I really

00:46:24   like to use them for. I mean I do use Microsoft products quite a lot but I

00:46:31   tend to use them because people send me Microsoft files, right? They send me Word

00:46:36   files and stuff but it's it's not where I necessarily go. I personally just the

00:46:42   OS X first UI of the iWorkSuite makes the most sense to me. Well I learned back

00:46:50   when the charting tools in Excel for the Mac were really awful I learned how to

00:46:56   numbers came out and they were pretty and I learned how to use it and now my

00:47:00   understanding is that the the chart generation stuff in Excel is a lot

00:47:03   better than it was I don't know if it's as good as numbers but it's a lot better

00:47:06   than it was. The charts output can be made a lot prettier, but it's too late. I've learned

00:47:10   how to use numbers. Numbers make pretty charts, and so I'm happy to use that. And like I said

00:47:16   about Keynote, one of the funny things that they did do on the Mac side here is they support

00:47:22   haptic feedback for—I think it's snapping to guides when you're in some of these apps,

00:47:28   so it's really interesting. I'm not sure whether I like it or not. Well, I kind of like it.

00:47:32   I think it's kind of interesting that in addition

00:47:35   to the visual like snap, when you're moving to something

00:47:38   and it's trying to show you alignment possibilities.

00:47:40   So it gives you, it drops the, it's not even snapping.

00:47:44   It's dropping an alignment guide

00:47:46   when you move it into proper alignment.

00:47:48   I guess it does snap a little bit.

00:47:49   And that's great for lining things up.

00:47:52   It's a great feature, but now you get this faint

00:47:55   kind of like bump when that appears.

00:47:59   So it's almost like you can feel the location positions

00:48:04   for an item as you're dragging it around on the canvas,

00:48:07   which is kind of fun.

00:48:09   So when we were talking about the Force Touch track pads

00:48:13   earlier, I should say that this is an interesting bit

00:48:16   of haptic feedback that they built into,

00:48:19   I was using it on numbers earlier today,

00:48:21   and it's kind of cool.

00:48:22   And an interesting different kind of interaction,

00:48:27   you know, feedback model. Like it's in addition to the visual now you've got a little bit of feel on

00:48:32   that on that otherwise unremarkable glass surface. Now you actually are kind of feeling a texture

00:48:39   in the app that you're using which is uh that's actually uh pretty cool. That's bringing the

00:48:43   whimsy via Force Touch. It is a little bit. That's not a bad thing. I think that is a good thing.

00:48:50   It's what Apple's good at. Like what you've just explained there, it's not needed right, but it's

00:48:55   nice that it's there.

00:48:58   - Yeah, I mean, what are those alignment guides for?

00:49:02   They're to give you feedback that you may be,

00:49:05   you know, you sort of snapped to a place

00:49:07   that might be exactly where you need to be.

00:49:09   And then, you know, and then when you move it a little bit,

00:49:14   here I'm doing it right now,

00:49:16   you get this little boop, little thing that says,

00:49:18   oh, now you're in alignment.

00:49:20   And it may drive some people crazy,

00:49:22   but I think it's kind of a neat idea

00:49:24   to just, what if we had the ability to do,

00:49:27   to give more feedback than visual?

00:49:29   Now we do, with this haptic little buzzer in the track pad,

00:49:34   we can give people a little jolt.

00:49:38   I would use that, like iMovie,

00:49:40   having that thing that tells you

00:49:41   when you're at the end of a drag,

00:49:42   I could totally see that in Logic.

00:49:44   I would love to see that in Logic,

00:49:45   where when I was moving things around,

00:49:47   I got a little bit of haptic feedback

00:49:48   to go with dragging things,

00:49:50   or opening, expanding, or contracting clips.

00:49:54   I think that would be a, again, it's just another reminder.

00:49:56   Sometimes you're dragging and you're not paying that close attention and you're getting a

00:50:00   little feel in addition to something on screen.

00:50:03   I don't know.

00:50:04   Is it, you know, it's new.

00:50:06   It's a new interaction for me and I don't know how useful it is but I like the idea

00:50:11   of trying.

00:50:13   As someone who's just been putting together a presentation in Keynote, I am in the snap

00:50:17   to alignment camp.

00:50:19   I like how it does that because I cannot align things by my eyes.

00:50:24   Oh, that's one of my favorites.

00:50:26   I mean, in Keynote and in Numbers, it's one of my favorite features, the fact that you've

00:50:31   got this ability to...

00:50:35   I can't eyeball centering something to save my life, right?

00:50:40   But it'll just do it.

00:50:41   It'll be like, "Yep, now it's centered."

00:50:42   Okay, good.

00:50:43   Good feedback.

00:50:44   Thanks, App.

00:50:45   app. But yeah, like for what's new in Keynote, I just opened it and it's got, you know, SplitView

00:50:51   support for El Capitan, Open Keynote 08 and 06 presentations. Yeah!

00:50:56   I can't believe, I just can't believe that that was a thing, that you couldn't do that.

00:51:01   It's kind of crazy. I mean, it's not like it was years and years ago, but it just is

00:51:05   kind of crazy to me that it doesn't work. On iOS, basically it's, you know, it got all

00:51:13   of the iOS 9 stuff right it got yeah split view slide over listen 3d touch

00:51:18   stuff all the stuff that you want but one of the things that didn't happen

00:51:23   which I was hoping would happen would be better collaboration tools with the web

00:51:27   yeah which came out of the web client I guess is no longer called the beta yeah

00:51:33   they're saying that they're doing more with it and then I mean I can't remember

00:51:36   off my head but Apple has this big chart that I'll put in the put in the show

00:51:40   And they say they're doing more, but it's still the idea, which is just crazy to me,

00:51:47   of if you want to collaborate with somebody, you download their version that they share

00:51:52   with you, then you make your own changes to it.

00:51:55   Like it just doesn't make any sense.

00:51:56   You can't do any collaboration.

00:51:59   And I think if you can't do collaboration like the Google Drive stuff, you can't say

00:52:05   you do any.

00:52:06   I feel like they're in the place that I think Microsoft was a while ago, which I think Microsoft

00:52:10   is now in a better place where you've got multiple people open on a document and they

00:52:14   lock it at like for word, it's like at the paragraph level. And that's what you want

00:52:20   is you start with it being a serial collaboration, which is like we've done in Microsoft. That

00:52:25   was what their story was for a long time was like, we've got, we've got collaboration.

00:52:29   Everybody can take a turn. It's like, okay, well, what if I want to collaborate simultaneously

00:52:35   with somebody on a long document where they're in this chapter and I'm in this chapter? What

00:52:38   What about then?

00:52:39   Nope.

00:52:40   Doesn't work, right?

00:52:41   And now I think it does in Microsoft stuff, it definitely does in Google stuff.

00:52:45   But you know, Apple's got some work to do there.

00:52:47   And I think you can do that all on the web, right?

00:52:49   But not in the apps.

00:52:51   Yeah.

00:52:53   And that's the crazy thing.

00:52:55   There is an amount of it that you can do on the web, but the fact that you can't...

00:52:59   Because when I probably should have prefaced that and said, "It's about the apps for me,"

00:53:02   which is important.

00:53:04   And the fact that you can't do the stuff in the apps is crazy to me.

00:53:08   Like I've seen Dropbox look to be doing something, right?

00:53:12   They've got their thing called Paper.

00:53:14   Paper, sure, why not?

00:53:16   Because everyone can have an app called Paper.

00:53:19   And we should call the Real AFM app Paper.

00:53:21   Paper, everything.

00:53:22   Paper for Real AFM.

00:53:23   Paper FM.

00:53:24   Yeah, new show, Paper.

00:53:26   It's just all the old shows.

00:53:29   that they haven't currently got an app working and they're saying maybe at some point but

00:53:35   there's no, doesn't really seem to be concrete plans that's being reported right now that

00:53:39   they have an app.

00:53:40   And it's like you've got to have an app.

00:53:43   Like you just do.

00:53:45   Like if you're making a tool like this, people are only going to be able to adopt it for

00:53:50   collaboration if they can use it everywhere.

00:53:53   Which is why, you know, some people don't like Google Docs but it's why it's irreplaceable

00:53:57   for me.

00:53:58   tried some other services. Have you ever heard of Quip, Jason? Yes. So me and

00:54:04   Federico tried to use that for a while but the overall experience was

00:54:09   relatively inconsistent but it was at least doing everything that you

00:54:14   needed. You could do collaboration on the web and you could do collaboration in

00:54:18   the apps and it was all live and that's the exact sort of stuff that you need to

00:54:22   be doing. I think if you want something like this, if you want to say you have a

00:54:25   a document collaboration tool like this, it has to be able to be cross-platform and running

00:54:31   live everywhere.

00:54:32   Yeah, I agree with you. I think we should give some credit to the fact that the iWork

00:54:40   collaboration stuff is much more functional than it used to be.

00:54:44   Yeah, oh, it's way better than it was.

00:54:46   Back when it asked you to take action.

00:54:47   Yeah, I mean, there is an episode of The Prompt, I'll put it in the show notes, this is going

00:54:52   Deep Catalog, but where we tried to use it to plan that episode and it was just

00:55:00   it was horrific. It was so bad and it has gotten way better but it's still lacking

00:55:06   in so many of the things that we found it lacking in then.

00:55:10   Oh man, yeah, that was a good that is one of my favorite episodes of The Prompt

00:55:14   because you guys just get more angry as it goes.

00:55:17   Yeah and the take action was because there was a there was a dialogue I can't

00:55:20   remember what the dialogue said, but it only had one option, and the option was take action.

00:55:23   Take action. No, it's come a long way since then. It is a much more functional thing.

00:55:28   I'm glad they took the beta label off of it. But you're right. I think you need to be able

00:55:32   to collaborate in apps, and it needs to be real time. And that just needs to be how it is,

00:55:37   because people do document collaboration. That's how the world works these days.

00:55:40   And it's not serial, especially on large documents. But even on small documents,

00:55:47   You'll have a lot of people in there and Google, you know, Google set the bar here and everybody

00:55:51   else has to match it on that point.

00:55:54   >> All right.

00:55:56   We still have -- we're doing Back to the Future Part II like at the movies at the end of the

00:56:00   six episodes.

00:56:01   So why don't we do some Ask Upgrade now to ease us into a very exciting Myke to the Movies

00:56:08   I think.

00:56:09   >> Let's do it.

00:56:10   But first, would you like to tell people about our Ask Upgrade sponsor, Myke?

00:56:13   >> I would love to.

00:56:14   And this week, that is GoToMeeting.

00:56:16   I want you to take a moment, think about all the time that it takes for you to try and

00:56:21   arrange a meeting in your workplace.

00:56:23   You have to think about getting everyone in the same place at the same time, which means

00:56:27   coordinating.

00:56:28   Say you've got seven people, you've got to coordinate seven calendars, and you've got

00:56:31   to make sure that everybody agrees to a meeting because they need to check their calendars

00:56:35   and you need to check your calendar and everybody needs to see how long it's going to take them.

00:56:38   And then once you finally get everybody's time available, then you need to try and book

00:56:42   a meeting room somewhere, which can be horrific.

00:56:45   I remember in my old job, I would get to this stage and it would be like, well,

00:56:48   there are just no meeting rooms available for two weeks.

00:56:50   So well, this isn't useful at all.

00:56:52   This is what you need GoToMeeting for.

00:56:55   This is a better way to meet people.

00:56:58   You can meet your clients and coworkers online with Citrix GoToMeeting.

00:57:02   It's the smarter way to meet because GoToMeeting makes it easy for you to meet

00:57:07   with your team or with anybody whenever you need to, wherever you are.

00:57:12   It makes it super simple.

00:57:14   you can access go to meeting meetings from any computer tablet or smartphone

00:57:18   without travel expenses or even needing to think about the hassle of travel.

00:57:22   Anybody can join by clicking the link no signups no speed bumps you just send out

00:57:27   the link to your team maybe you can put it in the calendar invite super super

00:57:30   simple everyone can join in and you can even turn on your webcam and with HD

00:57:34   quality video it's like everyone's in the room together. You can even share

00:57:38   your screens to present review and get feedback all in real time and you can do

00:57:42   from wherever you want you could even be wearing your pajamas if you like. With GoToMeeting everyone

00:57:46   sees what you're seeing so you and your team can get on the same page and get going quickly. It is

00:57:52   time that you stop wasting time with the crazy logistics of arranging meetings. Go and sign up

00:57:57   for GoToMeeting today. You can try it out for free for 30 days there's nothing to lose. Just go to

00:58:03   GoToMeeting that's G-O-T-O meeting dot com and click try it free there's a big button at the front

00:58:09   you just hit that right at the top and you'll have your first meeting up and running in minutes.

00:58:14   Let's go to meeting.com for your free 30 day trial. Thank you so much to GoToMeeting for

00:58:19   their support of Upgrade and AskUpgrade. What do you imagine is happening when you make that sound?

00:58:28   Lasers. Yeah, because I imagine it like the lasers like coming down to the stage, right?

00:58:33   I don't know what stage, but the stage that we're doing this show. The AskUpgrade stage.

00:58:38   Paul wants to know, are the new iMacs available with the VESA mount option?

00:58:42   Yes, I looked it up Paul, yes they are. And if you go, so because there's no Apple store anymore

00:58:50   online, it's just the Apple website, if you try to buy an iMac, so you go to the like buy this iMac

00:58:57   kind of page, there is, if you scroll down there's a paragraph basically that says,

00:59:03   these are also available in a visa mount option and if you click that then you get to buy them

00:59:08   with that. So yes they are available they don't it's not you know they don't make it a mainstream

00:59:12   thing but they know that some people want to mount them on an arm or on a wall or something instead

00:59:16   and so they are still available that way and as with the last versions I believe it's the same

00:59:21   story which is it's one or the other it's no longer an adapter kit you either get it without

00:59:26   a foot or you get it with a foot and those are your only choices so I will put in a word for this

00:59:31   If you're somebody who plans on using your iMac at like a desk,

00:59:35   consider it. I did it. I have my iMac on an arm, and it's nice. I can, it's adjustable. I can push it

00:59:42   away. I can pull it closer. I can tilt it. I can lift it up or put it lower down toward the desk.

00:59:48   I've got an adjustable desk. It's a sit-stand desk, so that's nice because I can adjust my

00:59:52   iMac too. And the iMac floats on the desk, so I have access to my whole desktop. So it does mean

00:59:58   that yes when I'm done with it and I want to give it to somebody else I'm going to have to find a

01:00:02   VESA mount stand for it because it's now permanently you know not with an iMac foot but

01:00:10   I'll deal with that those are available and I'll deal with that when I get there but I'm really

01:00:15   glad that I got it on the VESA mount version and put it on an ARM instead so think about it.

01:00:22   So I can't do this with the Mac that I bought?

01:00:26   You can't?

01:00:29   No because I didn't buy a VESA one so you can't like convert them right?

01:00:34   No somebody makes like an arm that has a clamp that grabs onto the foot but it's not no no it's

01:00:41   it's no it's actually it's really very funny to look at and you know you got to do what you

01:00:49   what you gotta do, but no, it's no.

01:00:51   - Under no circumstances am I doing that.

01:00:53   That seems like a horrifically bad idea.

01:00:55   - You're in or you're out.

01:00:57   You gotta embrace the mounting arm thing or not.

01:01:00   And I did, and I fretted about it

01:01:02   when I bought my 5K iMac last year, I fretted about it,

01:01:05   but I've been really happy with it.

01:01:08   And I was actually already using this arm

01:01:10   for a Dell monitor, like a 27 inch Dell monitor

01:01:14   that I was using to dock my MacBook Air.

01:01:17   And it supported the weight.

01:01:20   I looked at the specs

01:01:20   and it supported the weight of the iMac.

01:01:22   And so I just took the Dell monitor off

01:01:24   and put the iMac on and it's been a year

01:01:26   and it has served me well.

01:01:28   So I've got clamped.

01:01:29   Yeah, I've got the monitor arm clamped

01:01:31   to one part of my desk

01:01:32   and I've got a microphone boom arm clamped

01:01:35   to the other part of the desk,

01:01:35   but it works really well.

01:01:37   And it keeps my desktop clear, which is nice.

01:01:40   I can move things in and out and I can, you know,

01:01:42   it's good.

01:01:43   I recommend it if you're somebody who,

01:01:47   you know, who is in a work situation or a home office situation where you might be better off with it on an arm somewhere instead of just sitting on a desk.

01:01:58   Real time follow-up, CGP Grey is very angry at you right now.

01:02:03   Oh is he?

01:02:04   Well, it won't be the first time.

01:02:06   I assume he wanted the VESA mount option now, but has now put himself in a situation where he can't.

01:02:11   But knowing Grey, he'll just buy another one.

01:02:14   He's mad at me for bringing information.

01:02:16   - That's what I think so.

01:02:18   - Okay. - I think so.

01:02:19   - It is available.

01:02:20   Is Paul a pseudonym for CGP Grey?

01:02:24   (laughing)

01:02:25   Lister Paul, is that you Lister Paul?

01:02:28   (laughing)

01:02:30   - Maybe, maybe, maybe that's what the P stands for.

01:02:33   - Apple does not make it easy for you.

01:02:35   You have to go to apple.com/imac and click the buy button,

01:02:38   which you know, again, it takes you to this weird thing

01:02:41   that oh, it's not an online Apple store,

01:02:43   except it's apple.com/shop, right?

01:02:45   but no, no, no.

01:02:47   And there they've got all of the,

01:02:49   look at all of the 21 inch models,

01:02:51   look at all the 27 inch models.

01:02:52   And then right below that it says,

01:02:54   looking for an iMac with a built-in VESA mount adapter?

01:02:56   Question mark.

01:02:57   What's the answer?

01:02:59   Well, you must click to find out.

01:03:01   And when you click, it's the same page, essentially again,

01:03:03   except with the VESA mount versions.

01:03:06   - I think Gray is very upset

01:03:08   that we didn't give him this information last week.

01:03:10   I think that's-

01:03:11   - Cancel your order and order again.

01:03:13   Do it, do it.

01:03:15   Join the visor.

01:03:17   Oh but it's being delivered tomorrow.

01:03:20   So is mine actually I think it's gonna arrive.

01:03:23   It will definitely arrive whilst I'm away.

01:03:26   So I'm very much looking forward to getting it all ready because especially as we won't

01:03:30   be recording on the Monday that gives me more time to get everything ready and I will be

01:03:35   able to talk about what the life with a 27 inch retina iMac is like for me.

01:03:40   Oh nice.

01:03:42   Benjamin would like to know, is there a way to instantly pair the Magic Keyboard to an

01:03:46   iOS device like you can with a Mac?

01:03:49   Nope.

01:03:50   You still have to go through there and type in this thing and do this thing.

01:03:53   Yeah, it'll bring it up and it'll say like Magic Keyboard and you'll tap it in iOS and

01:04:00   then it pairs and then it's a Bluetooth keyboard.

01:04:02   But there's no magic because it would need to be like a lightning to lightning cable

01:04:06   or something and I don't think they bothered.

01:04:09   that yeah no just Bluetooth pair it it's fine so I have a question so yeah well a

01:04:17   question to me actually hashtag ask up ask yourself on upgrade I got that wrong

01:04:22   this person's name is Michael but it's not me asking myself a question Michael

01:04:26   okay no what ergonomic keyboard I use because I mentioned this and I I use the

01:04:34   Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard. I will put a link in the show notes to

01:04:39   Marco's review to this because one it gives you the details you need and two

01:04:42   Marco was the one that recommended this to me. It does not have a Mac layout it

01:04:50   is a Windows layout but you can go in and you can actually in keyboard

01:04:56   preferences you can change it to PC so it kind of just works right yeah so I

01:05:01   I change it to British PC because I have a British version here. Do you know the difference,

01:05:06   some of the differences between US and British keyboards? If you've ever seen a British keyboard,

01:05:10   you probably have, right?

01:05:11   I have. So on my visits to the UK, and I think maybe I saw this on, it might have even been

01:05:20   yours, but on somebody's laptop in the US, but certainly when I was in the UK, I was

01:05:24   looking at somebody's keyboard and I had a moment of like, "Wait, wait, wait. What is

01:05:30   because you think "oh yeah we speak the same language it's all fine" and you

01:05:34   guys don't have our keyboard. No. We have a vastly superior keyboard with a

01:05:39   beautiful key that we call the return key which functions as the enter key and

01:05:45   it's this upside down boot shape it's glorious. That's weird. And also we have

01:05:52   things like above the two is quotation marks and the @ symbol is above the

01:06:00   comma. Just little things like that. That's wild. And I have a pound key. Well,

01:06:10   you should. Yeah, so I can very easily go hashtag crazy without needing to know a

01:06:16   keyboard shortcut. Not pound as in currency. British pound. Oh, you have

01:06:21   an actual like number sign. Yeah, yeah we have that it's on the keyboard. That's so

01:06:28   strange. I love it I'm a big I love my I love my UK keyboard but yeah I so I use

01:06:33   the Microsoft sculpt I like it a lot I think at some point in the future I want

01:06:38   to talk about this type of stuff a little bit more because I am having some

01:06:43   severe wrist pains right now and I want to I'm trying out a bunch of different

01:06:48   input devices so I want to talk about these. Right now I am using a Wacom for everything.

01:06:55   So I want to talk about this a little bit more maybe in a future episode as this is

01:06:59   something that is finding its way into my life but luckily I have lots of friends like

01:07:04   Mr Siracusa who give me great advice of books and things to check out. So maybe we'll talk

01:07:10   about this in a future episode but I do really like the Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard. It's one

01:07:15   of those ones that puts a hole in the middle of your keyboard and kind of slumps everything

01:07:19   towards it.

01:07:20   Yeah, I can't use those, but they're better for a lot of people who have ergonomic problems.

01:07:25   Yeah, my problem is I can't use the others. It's best of a bad lot.

01:07:30   It's funny, people were talking about the extended keyboards on the — that Apple's

01:07:34   keyboard doesn't have — it's tenkeyless, I was told, by I think maybe Marco Arment,

01:07:39   actually. It might have been CGP Grey. Tenkeyless is the proper term, which is a ridiculous

01:07:44   term.

01:07:45   - I like that word, it's ridiculous.

01:07:47   - You know, it doesn't have the extra stuff on the side.

01:07:51   But one of the reasons I like the really small keyboard,

01:07:54   not small key caps, the key caps are full size,

01:07:56   but something like the new Magic Keyboard that is just,

01:08:00   it doesn't have a number pad or anything like that.

01:08:02   One of the reasons I like that is that it gets

01:08:03   my trackpad closer to my keyboard.

01:08:08   And I like that because that's less sort of like

01:08:10   spreading out that I have to do with my wrists.

01:08:14   It's all just sort of right in front of me.

01:08:16   And instead of having this very little used thing,

01:08:18   since I'm right-handed especially,

01:08:20   little used thing that sits between the keys that I type on

01:08:23   and the track pad that I use for moving around on screen.

01:08:27   So I like that.

01:08:28   I know that for some people,

01:08:30   I also grew up using an Apple II

01:08:31   that didn't have a 10 key.

01:08:33   And so I learned how to type numbers

01:08:35   on the horizontal number row instead.

01:08:39   And I know that if you learned to use a keypad,

01:08:41   then it's like death to not have it.

01:08:44   But I didn't learn on that and so it didn't matter to me.

01:08:48   - Yeah, the sculpt is tenkeyless,

01:08:50   but it comes with a little tenkey additional thing,

01:08:54   which is great, which you can put next to it.

01:08:56   Which I like that, 'cause working in finance and banking

01:09:00   as I did for so long, I am so fast on a tenkey.

01:09:04   - Oh, I bet.

01:09:05   - It's ridiculous.

01:09:05   - Sure.

01:09:06   - It's one of those things where I don't even know

01:09:08   where the keys are, but my hand does.

01:09:11   you know, anyway.

01:09:13   I'm gonna go with Masaj wrote in to say

01:09:19   that he's considering buying a 5K iMac

01:09:22   with eight gigabytes of RAM

01:09:23   and later swapping it with a 32 gigabytes to save money.

01:09:27   So there's a couple of questions about this.

01:09:28   Does it affect warranty?

01:09:30   Which manufacturer should I pick?

01:09:31   And did I consider doing this?

01:09:33   So Jason, do you know the answers to the first two?

01:09:35   Does it affect your warranty?

01:09:36   And it doesn't anymore?

01:09:38   - The 27, no, it, it, it,

01:09:40   the 27 inch iMac has a RAM door on the back.

01:09:41   You open the door and you put in RAM

01:09:43   and it doesn't affect your warranty

01:09:45   because it's a user serviceable feature.

01:09:48   It's built to let users do that.

01:09:51   So I believe the 27 inch iMac has four slots.

01:09:55   So I think it ships with, what, it ships it,

01:10:00   does it ship with two, four gig or four?

01:10:04   I think it's two, four gig and I have 16.

01:10:06   I think I just bought it with a 2.4 and then added two more 4 gig modules.

01:10:13   So I have 16 gigs of RAM.

01:10:15   I think Stephen said to me, because I got the 16, but he said he thinks it's two eights,

01:10:20   so I can still put more in as well.

01:10:23   I recommend Crucial for RAM.

01:10:26   I've used them in the past.

01:10:28   The prices are really good.

01:10:30   They're really good in the UK and the US because they have a UK supplier.

01:10:34   They also supply in the UK.

01:10:36   I've always used that stuff, I've always been happy with it whenever I've done this stuff.

01:10:39   So I recommend Crucial.

01:10:41   Because they also have guides as well for how to upgrade this stuff, which is really

01:10:46   useful.

01:10:47   So I've used them in the past.

01:10:48   I don't know if you have anybody else that you'd recommend for RAM?

01:10:52   I don't think I have any particular brand that I would recommend.

01:10:55   Okay, so I would say Crucial.

01:10:56   I don't know if other people will be upset about that.

01:10:59   I haven't considered doing this.

01:11:00   I decided to just go with 16, just put 16 in there because it wasn't massively more

01:11:04   and I figured I just want to get it put in and have it delivered to me and I can put

01:11:08   more in later if I need it but I don't see myself needing more than 16 for a while.

01:11:13   Like 16 for me is really good, that's really hefty.

01:11:16   I have 16 in the Mac Pro and I'm never in a scenario where I'm like "oh we should just

01:11:20   have more RAM" it's just not a thing that I feel I need.

01:11:24   I feel like now that there are, at least with some of the stuff that I'm doing, there are

01:11:28   bottlenecks in other places and RAM isn't going to help it.

01:11:32   So you know, that's that.

01:11:34   And Hakon asked "Which 3D touch setting do you use?"

01:11:38   So I'm assuming that he means in the accessibility preferences.

01:11:42   I've turned mine down all the way to the most sensitive, like the softest.

01:11:46   Have you changed it on your iOS twice?

01:11:49   Yeah, I think mine's in the middle.

01:11:52   I think mine's still the default in the middle.

01:11:54   Standard.

01:11:55   Yeah.

01:11:56   Alright.

01:11:57   Yeah, I mean I like it at the softest level, personally, but I have found that I very easily

01:12:03   trigger it off when I mean to long press.

01:12:06   And I think that that might be because it's at the softest level.

01:12:11   So I think that is it for Ask Upgrade, which means it's time to discuss Back to the Future

01:12:16   Part 2 for a special Myke at the Movies and we will reiterate in a moment why we're doing

01:12:21   this one and what makes it different.

01:12:23   But before we do that, let me take a moment to thank our sponsor for Myke at the Movies

01:12:27   this week and that is The Great Smile and PDF Pen 7 for the Mac.

01:12:31   PDF Pen is the ultimate all-purpose PDF editor and now SMILE offers 10 great tutorials from

01:12:38   the very talented and lovely Mr David Sparks, also known as Max Sparky, host of MacPal users

01:12:43   on here, Relay FM.

01:12:45   Each of the videos that David has produced are around 2-4 minutes long and they will

01:12:52   teach you how PDF Pen 7 can help you do a ton of things like apply markup, annotate

01:12:57   or add signatures to a PDF, fill in PDF forms.

01:13:01   It also teaches how to use iCloud and Dropbox to sync PDFs with PDF Pen for iPad and iPhone.

01:13:09   How you can touch up images, perform OCR to convert scanned documents to usable text and

01:13:14   correct and redact text.

01:13:17   These courses will help you really understand all of the amazing things you can do with

01:13:21   PDF Pen.

01:13:22   There are even some additional courses to highlight how you can take advantage of the

01:13:25   additional features of PDF Pen Pro 7.

01:13:29   I've watched David's screencasts, I've watched some of these videos as well.

01:13:32   He's fantastic at this.

01:13:34   If you've been considering PDFPen or you're interested in it, just go and watch these

01:13:39   videos.

01:13:40   They'll be at Smilesoftware.com/upgrade and he will be able to show you exactly how to

01:13:44   use this stuff.

01:13:46   If anything, just to hear David's great voice.

01:13:48   He has a great voice, he's really good at this stuff, he's great at teaching, he's going

01:13:52   to help you understand how to use this stuff.

01:13:54   And I just wanted to add to all of this, I love PDFPen.

01:13:57   mentioned earlier about needing word documents sometimes people send me word

01:14:02   documents that I need to sign. It's like what am I gonna do here? Do I need to print this?

01:14:08   But like no. What I do is I open it in PDF pen and then I can sign it and I can

01:14:15   even export it back out as a Word document again or a PDF. It is so cool. I

01:14:19   love it for that. It saves my bacon every week where I get sent these documents

01:14:24   that I need to sign and do stuff with.

01:14:27   PDFPen really just makes it super, super simple for me.

01:14:30   You can learn more about PDFPen from Smile

01:14:32   at Smilesoftware.com/upgrade

01:14:35   where you'll also be able to watch those videos.

01:14:36   PDFPen 7 and PDFPen Pro 7 require OS X Yosemite,

01:14:41   but are also ready for El Capitan.

01:14:44   Thank you so much to Smile

01:14:45   for sponsoring this week's episode of Upgrade.

01:14:49   So we mentioned this before,

01:14:51   but we're doing Back to the Future Part 2 this week.

01:14:53   It's a departure from the usual format of Myke at the Movies

01:14:57   because I have seen this movie.

01:15:01   - Yes.

01:15:02   - Not only have I seen this movie,

01:15:03   it is one of my favorite movies.

01:15:05   But considering this week actually on Wednesday

01:15:08   is the day that Marty flies into the future,

01:15:13   it felt like a fitting Myke at the Movies to do.

01:15:18   - Absolutely, couldn't be more timely.

01:15:20   - So there's a bunch of stuff this week.

01:15:22   for a movie made in 1990.

01:15:23   (laughing)

01:15:25   - 1989, so it even fits in the usual 80s rule.

01:15:29   - Okay.

01:15:32   - At least that's what IMDb tells me.

01:15:34   So again, we're not breaking rules here.

01:15:36   - All right, 1980, yeah, November 1989, you're right.

01:15:38   - There you go.

01:15:39   So you have done an incomparable about Back to the Future?

01:15:44   - About all the movies.

01:15:45   It's a pretty old one, it's number 41,

01:15:47   but people can check that out.

01:15:49   This was back when the incomparable did much broader topics.

01:15:54   - Yes, back when I didn't realize

01:15:56   that we would be nearing 300 episodes.

01:15:59   - Let's talk about movies today.

01:16:01   - Seriously, we did an episode about Joss Whedon,

01:16:03   like all, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer,"

01:16:05   I could do 10 episodes about Buffy alone.

01:16:08   And we did one episode,

01:16:09   there was this, "Everything Joss Whedon has done."

01:16:11   Yeah, smart.

01:16:13   We didn't know what we were doing.

01:16:14   But yes, we did a live episode

01:16:17   in the Macworld podcast room,

01:16:19   which got increasingly stuffy as it goes.

01:16:22   So we get a little punchy at the end,

01:16:23   but it was like me and Dan Frakes and Lex Friedman

01:16:25   and Serenity and Dan, I think that was who the crowd was,

01:16:29   but it's number 41, it's called,

01:16:31   but your kids are gonna love it.

01:16:32   So you can check that out.

01:16:33   - And this is, you know, this is a great week

01:16:37   'cause this week there is stuff everywhere

01:16:39   at "But Back to the Future."

01:16:40   Like there are lots of things,

01:16:42   there are lots of companies

01:16:42   that are bringing out all some stuff.

01:16:45   I'm really excited for what the week's gonna bring.

01:16:47   as a massive fan of this series.

01:16:50   I love Back to the Future.

01:16:53   Back to the Future and Back to the Future 2

01:16:54   are in my top list of movies of all time.

01:16:58   I love these movies so much.

01:17:00   Back to the Future 2 was always my favorite as a kid

01:17:03   because of the 2015 scene.

01:17:06   There was something about it,

01:17:08   it just grabbed me and I loved it so much.

01:17:11   Over time though,

01:17:15   Part one and part two have jostled,

01:17:16   which is my favorite of the series,

01:17:18   and I'm gonna talk about a little later on why that is,

01:17:21   because it was only up until about six months ago

01:17:26   that I always thought that part two was my favorite,

01:17:28   and I think that Back to the Future I is my favorite now.

01:17:33   - That's a good choice.

01:17:35   - And I'll talk about what it is.

01:17:36   There's a specific part that anybody that knows the movie

01:17:39   probably knows what I'm referring to.

01:17:41   But we should do as we always do,

01:17:43   kind of go through this chronologically. I don't have as detailed notes as usual

01:17:47   because I know this movie so well, right? I didn't really think it was necessary.

01:17:51   And plus I want to talk a little bit more kind of about the movie and kind of

01:17:56   in the way that it has influenced a bunch of things and how interesting it

01:18:01   is to me now watching it with the context of it was talking about right

01:18:06   now. Right. Which I like. But I did want to mention a listener Tom sent in a link

01:18:12   to an Amazon.com listing for the 30th anniversary trilogy box set that they're selling and there's

01:18:20   a video that you can watch which is an ad for it and it's very very clever because they

01:18:25   are basically saying in the ad to show you the future that we would have had if Marty

01:18:34   and the doc hadn't messed with it. So what they're saying is like we don't have all the

01:18:38   stuff that's in this because they messed with the timeline. I thought that was very clever.

01:18:44   I like that. I wonder if listener Tom is Tom Wilson who plays Biff in Back to the Future.

01:18:51   Probably. We'll just say it is. We'll say it. Tom, last name withheld. That's head canon

01:18:56   right there. That is my head canon, yeah, that's right. So, again, right, so one of

01:19:03   the consistent themes that I'm going to talk about for what I love about this movie is

01:19:06   the way that it is intertwined with the first movie.

01:19:10   And I love that this movie begins

01:19:14   with the end scene of the first movie,

01:19:17   which obviously they re-shot

01:19:18   because the actress that plays Jennifer didn't renew.

01:19:23   Like she didn't come back.

01:19:25   - For some reason, yeah.

01:19:26   Lauren and I were talking about this

01:19:29   when we watched this last night.

01:19:30   And she says, "Well, given how little she has to do

01:19:33   "in this movie," and it's Elizabeth Shue

01:19:35   they get to replace her. It's got to be that she wasn't available because even if they

01:19:40   decided oh no she's not a very good actress and now we need her she's basically not in

01:19:44   the movie. I think it was money related. So it must have been something like that. Yeah

01:19:49   which I believe is the same for Crispin Glover as well. Yeah Crispin Glover well he's also

01:19:53   a weirdo so he may just have not wanted to come back but he definitely didn't come back.

01:19:58   First movie made a lot of money and then they see you know Steven Spielberg is lining up

01:20:02   to produce this, you know, two movies back to back. They shot two and three together.

01:20:08   And I could see how somebody might try to hold out for a bigger payday. I could sort

01:20:13   of see that. I think it hurts the movie because I really love the original. And this is a

01:20:22   recreation of it here. Instead of it really being the same scene as the previous movie,

01:20:27   It's this not quite the same because it's Elizabeth Shue and she's got like a wig to

01:20:34   match the girl from the other movie and her hair is really weird.

01:20:38   I don't know, it's too bad because I have so much goodwill because of loving the first

01:20:43   movie so much and the opening scene, it feels a little sour to me because it is absolutely

01:20:48   a re-recorded version.

01:20:52   It's almost like you're watching kind of the stage version of Back to the Future here at

01:20:56   the beginning.

01:20:57   I love it for that and you because I love that they just did.

01:21:00   I just love that they did it.

01:21:01   I just love because they didn't even need to do it.

01:21:04   Right.

01:21:04   Cause they start this movie with no explanation.

01:21:07   Like you had to have seen Back to the Future one.

01:21:09   So they could have just as easily started with them in the car, right?

01:21:12   Like in the future, having just gone, you know, or start with Biff looking

01:21:16   up as the DeLorean flies away.

01:21:18   But they recreate that scene, which I, I mean, I can see why you wouldn't like it.

01:21:22   For the reason that you mentioned, it's a very good point, but I love it because of

01:21:25   that and like one of my long-running theme one of the things that are I'm

01:21:30   gonna mention it now because we're talking about it now but I think Back to

01:21:33   the Future 2 is the most sequel-y sequel ever in all of the right ways it is like

01:21:37   the most perfect sequel because it like reuses elements and scenes from the

01:21:42   first movie and is completely intertwined of it like it is for me I

01:21:46   think a fantastic achievement of editing the way that they put this together I

01:21:51   I agree there's some amazing stuff in here. I would say yeah we'll get to it. I think you're right Biff

01:21:59   Biff is the reason this scene is is replayed because you need to see that he's-

01:22:03   They have to have him look up and see and see them all go away but it could have started there if you

01:22:08   know they could have done that way. Yeah it's it's fine. A conversation we had last night was

01:22:14   the at the end of Back to the Future it's a joke it's a great ending they say goodbye to the

01:22:21   of the dock, Marty's back, everything's okay, he's with his girl, they're gonna go to the

01:22:26   lake or whatever, it's all great. And then there's a great joke that ends the movie,

01:22:31   which is he returns, he's gotta go to the future, they're gonna be married and their

01:22:35   kids are in trouble, and where we're going we don't need roads, and it flies and it's

01:22:39   the end, it's like "Yeah, that was the greatest ending ever!" And then you do a sequel and

01:22:43   you're like "Oh man, well, we gotta pick it up from there." And it's interesting that

01:22:47   I feel the movie kind of struggles for the first half hour because it's trying to live

01:22:52   up to the joke at the end of the first movie. And I'm sure it, you know, it would have been,

01:22:58   they could have told a better story from the beginning if they didn't have to kind of hit

01:23:04   all the notes that are mentioned in that last scene. Because it's just kind of funny that

01:23:08   they, they, by making such a great last scene of the first movie, they, they made their

01:23:12   jobs for the sequel much harder. Because you have to deal with Jennifer and you have to

01:23:18   deal with Biff. You have to deal with the kids, there have to be kids, the kids have

01:23:22   to be involved and they have to be in trouble. And that's sort of like, they might have made

01:23:27   different choices, but they have to live up to the joke from the first, which is a great

01:23:30   joke at the end of the first movie. And it just changes the trajectory because they have

01:23:34   to live up to it.

01:23:36   then we get the fantastic theme the Back to the Future theme which I love so much

01:23:43   it's great beautiful who scored this? It's Alan Silvestri I think? yes you're right

01:23:49   you're right so Silvestri yeah it's John Williams esque in a way but it's

01:23:54   Alan Silvestri but it's got that same kind of soaring orchestral you know it

01:23:59   if you've seen the Back to the Future movies you know that theme so obviously

01:24:04   we go to the future right in what is one of my most favorite... We're in 2015! Yes the impossible future of

01:24:16   2015 and this is probably I mean it's mainly for nostalgic reasons but this is

01:24:23   my favorite scene of any movie ever because as a since being a little boy I

01:24:30   I have just been obsessed with this scene. I love this scene when they arrive in the future

01:24:35   Mainly that the scene from when Marty walks out into Hill Valley into the town square. That's what I love

01:24:42   I love that scene so much

01:24:44   Before that hilarious to me how they just put Jennifer in the trash, right? She's just

01:24:51   We don't want you now, yeah, we don't want you in the movie

01:24:56   So we're gonna put you to sleep and stick you over here with the garbage. It's great. We'll get you but and not leave you in

01:25:01   the car and

01:25:03   Because Biff is gonna steal it so or whatever the reason is, but it's just it's oh because you need to be kidnapped

01:25:08   It's so bad because again, they don't they don't need her but she was in the first movie or at the end of the first movie

01:25:14   So they've got to do something with her and that's not the only time this happens. They dump her on the front porch later - oh

01:25:19   It's not it's not good. But then yeah, but then the doc has to go

01:25:25   He's gonna delay Marty's son so that Marty can take his place and he basically says and actually this is a laugh-out-loud

01:25:31   Funny joke, which is he says Marty you need to you look just like your son now

01:25:37   you need to go out there go to the go to the 80s diner and

01:25:41   Buy yourself a Pepsi. Here's a 50

01:25:45   Yeah, that kills me. That just kills me. Here's a 50. Yeah. It's a very subtle joke, but it's excellent

01:25:54   I'm drinking a Coke Zero right now, not a Pepsi Perfect, but I'm sure from the perspective of 30 years ago, both are equally ridiculous.

01:26:01   Pepsi are releasing Pepsi Perfect this week. I know, I know. Like in very limited numbers. Like 3,000 of them for 50. I think it's $50.

01:26:08   I think it's 50. It will cost you 50 to get a Pepsi Perfect.

01:26:11   I wish I could get my hands on one easy. I want to buy everything that comes out this week.

01:26:15   I'm hoping and praying and praying that Nike release on general release the shoes. The self-lacing shoes?

01:26:23   They don't even need to be self-lacing. They just need to look like that, the boot shoes.

01:26:28   Because they did them for charity, didn't they, a few years ago? I think so. They did,

01:26:31   and they were like a thousand dollars. So Marty walks out and here it is, the world

01:26:36   of tomorrow, which is a wonderful moment of like, well, what's the future going to be

01:26:40   like? And here it is. It's bright and sunny and there's a movie theater that's showing

01:26:45   Jaws 14 or whatever it is. 19. Now it's really personal or something like that? It's really,

01:26:52   Really personal.

01:26:53   Yeah, really, really personal.

01:26:55   So I wanted to just, I have a list here of some of the key advancements that 2015 brings

01:27:02   and I would like us to assess them.

01:27:04   Yes.

01:27:05   All cars are flying.

01:27:08   Well most cars are flying and they're selling conversions for your old wheelies to be flying

01:27:14   cars.

01:27:15   That's actually an ad that I think Biff is involved somehow in the automotive industry

01:27:19   at this point, right?

01:27:20   Oh, there's Goldie Wilson.

01:27:21   Oh it's Goldie the Third, that's right, and they're doing the conversions of your old wheeled cars to be the flying cars.

01:27:28   3D movies, which funnily enough in 2015 are maybe not as popular as they were in earlier years, but they are there, right? So that's one.

01:27:37   Now this is the weird one, right, is my assumption. You're gonna have to explain this to me. The Cubs.

01:27:42   The Cubs, sure. So there's a great gag in the movie where, and it's during Wednesday during the day,

01:27:50   which is not right, because it's news alert that the Cubs have won the World Series.

01:27:56   And World Series games are played at night. Not in the future.

01:28:01   Even on the weekend, but so they missed the cynicism of that. But it's an announcement,

01:28:08   maybe it's just delayed. They won the night before. But it's, the Cubs have won the World

01:28:14   Series. Also, the World Series isn't going to be for another week because they've stretched

01:28:20   out the playoffs a lot longer since 30 years ago. But the joke is the Cubs, the Chicago Cubs in

01:28:27   Major League Baseball are one of the original National League teams. They've been playing

01:28:33   since the early 20th century, since the National League came into being until in like 1902

01:28:40   or something like that. And they haven't played in the World Series since 1945, and they haven't

01:28:48   won the World Series since 1908, I believe. So yeah, so the joke is the Cubs won the World

01:28:58   Series. So that's joke number one, because the Cubs haven't even been in the World Series

01:29:02   in all this time. What's interesting is the Cubs are currently in the National League

01:29:06   Championship Series against the Mets. So there is, as we record this, there is still a chance

01:29:10   the Cubs will be in and maybe even win the World Series in 2015. Wouldn't that be amazing?

01:29:17   The other joke is that they beat Miami. And there's a picture of like an alligator. So

01:29:22   they're like the Miami Gators or something. And this is funny, and I had to explain this

01:29:26   to my kids last night, because there's a major league team in Miami now, the Miami Marlins.

01:29:32   in the National League like the Cubs so they couldn't meet in the World Series, but it

01:29:35   is there. The joke is in 1985 or 1989 when this movie came out, there was no Major League

01:29:43   Baseball team in Florida. So that's a joke that has come true and made it less funny

01:29:50   because it's like against Miami. Well, that's in the wrong league, but yeah, that's a team,

01:29:54   but it wasn't a team in 1989. So there's a couple little baseball jokes there. And what's

01:29:59   funny is the writer of this movie is a St. Louis Cardinals fan who are actually the enemies

01:30:04   of the Chicago Cubs and he was saying how when the Cubs and the Cardinals were playing

01:30:09   in the previous round of the postseason here, he was saying, "Well, I would really rather

01:30:14   the Cardinals win, but if the Cubs win, I'll look like a genius." So that's still active

01:30:19   as we record this.

01:30:21   Havoline goes into cars.

01:30:23   Isn't that just like oil or something?

01:30:29   Yeah, it's some kind of thing.

01:30:32   Yeah, I was struck that there's still sort of a gas station.

01:30:35   There's like a robot gas station and all of that.

01:30:38   I was a little surprised that they hadn't like made them nuclear cars or electric cars or something like that.

01:30:43   The way I take this is it's alternative fuel.

01:30:46   And so I give it a tick because we now have electric.

01:30:50   so we'll you know a half-tick. All right. Bionic implants is another one. Yeah. Um we I don't think

01:30:58   we have those. Well we have a lot we have lots of you know we have people with cochlear ear implants

01:31:03   and they're working on like artificial retinas and there are people with very sophisticated

01:31:07   prostheses and things like that they don't have like because with Biff it's like his he's got

01:31:12   bionic or grif or whatever his bionic implants are on the on the fritz and he's like yeah he's

01:31:17   like a cyborg practically and it seems normal.

01:31:23   Hoverboards.

01:31:24   Hoverboards.

01:31:25   So there is a thing called hoverboards now but it's not the same thing.

01:31:29   No.

01:31:30   It's just a smart marketing thing I suppose.

01:31:33   Yes.

01:31:34   Yeah.

01:31:35   It's the right time if you're gonna have a product call it a hoverboard.

01:31:37   We don't have...

01:31:38   It's kind of interesting but you know.

01:31:39   Flying cars and floating skateboards are not things that we have.

01:31:45   games that you don't control with your hands. That's all we know, but it's what the kids

01:31:50   mention.

01:31:51   I love that scene where they're in the 80s diner, which I have to say actually I think

01:31:54   they nailed... There's an article I read this week that said that they knew even when they

01:32:00   were making the first movie, they knew they were making a bit of 80s nostalgia that Back

01:32:04   to the Future is itself very 80s, aggressively 80s in a way that you wouldn't do if you were

01:32:11   trying to make it sort of a little more timeless, but that they knew that since the movie was

01:32:15   about looking at the 50s with nostalgia, that making the 80s be heightened was actually

01:32:20   a good idea because then you get the contrast. And I think as time goes on, it also becomes

01:32:26   about, you know, about 80s styles and it becomes its own period piece. And I thought that was

01:32:32   interesting. They nail in Back to the Future II, they nail the 80s diner. Like, yeah, there's

01:32:38   stuff that's not in there, but like the sign is very 80s, it's like I think they did from

01:32:45   the perspective of 1989 they did a pretty good job of saying this is really 80s. And

01:32:51   one of the things in there is a video game thing where Marty plays it and it's a shooter

01:32:56   thing, which is totally a preview for Back to the Future Part III, which there are several

01:33:01   of in this to set that up, but the kids are disgusted that you have to hold the controls

01:33:06   and stuff which is very you know connect and stuff like that that's I think that's a good

01:33:11   one.

01:33:13   And the last one that I wanted to point out was when and this comes up later in the movie

01:33:17   as well when the clock tower guy approaches Martin and asks him to donate money to the

01:33:21   to save the clock tower he has a tablet like device in his hand with a fingerprint reader

01:33:25   on it to debit the money it's Apple Pay is what I'm gonna go with there.

01:33:30   It's Apple Pay except that he's got his own terminal instead of like Marty's.

01:33:36   A personal device.

01:33:37   Yeah, right, exactly right, or something that a person would tap.

01:33:41   Instead it's just put your thumb on it, which, so it's not quite, but close.

01:33:46   The cab is the other one.

01:33:47   The cab when Biff gets a cab ride to Marty's house, is that it?

01:33:55   Yeah, I think so.

01:33:56   And it's like $130 or something is the cab fare because that's the running gag of everything's

01:34:00   being all the inflation that's happened, which didn't happen actually. But the cab driver

01:34:06   has, essentially, it's like a wireless pay terminal like you used to see and still sometimes

01:34:11   see in cabs. A lot of them have them built in now, or they use smartphones. But that's

01:34:17   a totally like, that's the technology. The only difference is that he thumbs the price

01:34:22   instead of like, again, tapping a smartphone or running a card. They did a good job with

01:34:28   that.

01:34:29   I mean, I love all of it. I love everything about this scene. I love it all.

01:34:33   What they don't get is like computers and the internet.

01:34:38   Yeah. Or smartphones or anything. Nothing.

01:34:40   Well, that's exactly it. Smartphones, the internet, there's still... Another thing that

01:34:44   made me cackle throughout this movie is its reliance on the newspaper. Although, to be

01:34:48   fair, USA Today is still being published.

01:34:51   Yeah.

01:34:52   And if you're in one of our fine American hotel rooms, you may receive the USA Today

01:34:56   at your door whether you want it or not. So there is a 2015 USA Today edition. I wonder

01:35:03   if they'll have a special logo on Wednesday.

01:35:05   I hope they do, just a wrap. They just do like a wrap around the paper. That would be

01:35:10   really cool.

01:35:11   But that would be funny.

01:35:13   Universal should pay for that.

01:35:15   But there are newspapers as information sources and it's a motif, you know, they needed it

01:35:22   in the 50s too, but it's just kind of funny that that's the thing. Just like we joke about

01:35:26   this on the incomparable we were talking about the Flash TV show and how one of the plot

01:35:31   points in the first episode of the Flash so I'm not really spoiling anything it's in the

01:35:34   very first episode but there's a new there's basically a newspaper from the future and

01:35:39   I could tell that they really wanted it to be a newspaper front page but the producers

01:35:44   knew it and it's supposed to be from like 2025 or something and the producers like this

01:35:49   kind of can't be a newspaper can it so it's like a web page from the future it's like

01:35:53   a newspaper site from the future, which I'm not sure how that would work.

01:35:58   Like does the HTML change when the timeline shifts?

01:36:02   I don't know how that works.

01:36:03   How far in the future?

01:36:04   I think it's 10 years in the future.

01:36:06   I still say you could go with newspapers.

01:36:08   You could still go with newspapers.

01:36:09   Yeah, but it's just, I think they like hedged it.

01:36:12   It looks kind of like a newspaper, but it also looks sort of digital and it's the same

01:36:16   thing.

01:36:17   So anyway, there are newspapers used throughout and the information technology kind of revolution

01:36:20   is the thing that most sci-fi stuff trying to project our future didn't see. Although

01:36:26   I did, so when Biff and his crew come in and are harassing Marty Jr. and Marty and then

01:36:32   later when they're having the hoverboard chase and all that, I did turn to my daughter who

01:36:36   is 14 and say "Wow, teenagers in 2015 are awful." And she was like "yep."

01:36:45   My main annoyance with the first act of this movie is the exposition.

01:36:50   Like for example, when Biff is telling Marty, who Biff believes to be Marty McFly Jr, Marty's

01:36:59   kid, about the fact that you know your dad, Marty McFly Sr, who flushed his life down

01:37:05   the toilet.

01:37:07   Every character has explained to them what their parents are like, and later on when

01:37:11   there in the McFly home and Lorraine is explaining to Marty's daughter about the

01:37:21   fact that you know you remember? As you know already daughter your father had

01:37:28   this history and on that day when he had that accident and he broke his hand and

01:37:33   that really changed the you know this is I mean people call this the as you know

01:37:36   Bob phenomenon right which is like dialogue that is just a clunker because

01:37:40   it's exposition, you're telling somebody who already knows things that they don't need

01:37:44   to hear because the audience needs to hear it, and yeah, there's a whole lot of that

01:37:49   in, because they're doing all that. Look, I like their projections of the future. I

01:37:57   think that's fun, even though I don't love the beginning of this movie, I think that

01:38:01   part is fun. But it becomes very clear, I think, when you step back a little bit, that

01:38:08   The first like 40 minutes of this movie is really dedicated to putting all the pieces

01:38:15   in place so that they can go back and play with the original movie.

01:38:19   And you know, when they get to that point it's kind of great.

01:38:26   But they do a lot of work to get it set up first and it's not as fun to watch the setup

01:38:31   as it is to watch it pay off.

01:38:33   They gotta do it and I think they do it the best way that they can but it is kind of annoying

01:38:37   Like they try, you can see they're trying hard like to set it up so they can deliver the exposition.

01:38:42   They're trying really hard.

01:38:44   Yeah but there's no way around it. If you're gonna do it you just gotta do it.

01:38:47   This scene, so this is in the cafe 80s scene when this exposition begins but this is also when

01:38:53   another long-running theme in this movie begins which I think is great. They do a really really

01:38:57   good job with the special effects to show the same actor in the same scene twice. Whilst watching

01:39:03   this movie there is no scenario where it doesn't look real to me? No, I mean you

01:39:09   can tell that it's locked down camera and all those things but Robert Zemeckis

01:39:13   I mean if there's one thing that is all part of Robert Zemeckis' career it is

01:39:17   trying to creatively use technology and you know we can argue that Zemeckis

01:39:22   sometimes seems to make movies because he wants to use the technology rather

01:39:28   than using them to solve solve problems. Like Polar Express for example. Well right exactly

01:39:34   and when you know like there's a scene in Contact where Forest Gump is the biggest example

01:39:44   he followed these movies with Forest Gump which where they put Tom Hanks into historical footage

01:39:48   right and that was that was that was what that movie was this movie is all about split screen

01:39:55   multiple actors or same actor playing different roles

01:39:58   Yeah

01:39:59   And there's a scene with Biff old Biff and young Biff in a car where where the camera is panning and they're handing things back

01:40:05   To each other and you can tell it's like on one level

01:40:09   It's really showy like look I handed this book to him where you're like that you're showing off on another level

01:40:13   It's like how did he hand that book to him and that and and and it makes it seem more real at the same time

01:40:20   as it's sort of calling out that it's being clever but

01:40:23   But anyway in contact he did it something similar where he's like panning through glass that isn't there anymore or through a mirror and stuff like

01:40:29   That he does this in his movies, but it's very impressive here

01:40:32   And then when you talk about the different actors Michael J Fox his performance as the other members of his family is

01:40:40   Incredible like when he plays Marty McFly jr. It's it's like a different person. I find anyway

01:40:48   That I can watch this and I know who is who

01:40:52   just by the way that they act. I think she does a great job of it.

01:40:56   Yeah, yeah. I mean they're very brief and it's got a little of a gimmicky

01:41:01   feel like it's, you know, the clumps or something like that. I don't know. It's

01:41:05   like, "He'll play every part!" But it's a gag and it's obviously him,

01:41:10   but they're differentiated. I mean, they're very broad characters.

01:41:14   This is one of the problems I have with this future stuff is that it's

01:41:19   so it's so broad all of it is so broad Marty senior is a loser and Marty jr. is

01:41:26   an idiot and you know it is it is it is what it is but and every time I watch

01:41:34   this movie I always forget and always take great joy in Marlene McFly so

01:41:39   Marty's daughter I always forget that Michael J Fox dresses up as a young girl

01:41:45   in this movie and every single time it just I just burst into into laughter

01:41:49   because he does it's so funny like just the way that he like she like saunters

01:41:54   down the stairs and looks around like when they go to the home later on it

01:41:57   just it gets me every time I love it but before we leave the the clock tower area

01:42:03   um I do love about this movie that it is throughout that they reenact scenes from

01:42:09   the first movie so like they reenact the chase and and you know later at the end

01:42:15   of the movie they reenact the manure going into Biff's car I love that I

01:42:20   think this is why I sound like it's the most sequel-y sequel yes yeah I mean

01:42:24   the hoverboard chase is a is a reenactment he exactly down to grabbing

01:42:28   the you know grabbing the back bumper of a floating car in this case right and

01:42:31   then Biff says there's something like so this is old Biff right who was Biff back

01:42:36   in you know back in the past it's the older guy there's something very

01:42:39   familiar about this. Yeah. Which is great. Yeah, I agree, I agree. Oh, here's a future

01:42:46   thing. The McFlyer house is controlled with fingerprint entry and voice to turn on the

01:42:51   lights. It's HomeKit, Jason. Yeah, and we hear computer voice a lot for voice interaction,

01:42:57   but it sounds like Stephen Hawking's voice instead of like Siri or something like that,

01:43:03   but it is. There's voice control. Although I did laugh that they have a smart door, but

01:43:07   has no doorknob which is it's funny because you know it makes it more

01:43:12   futuristic but really no doorknob. Why do you need a doorknob? But I mean they do

01:43:16   that so Jennifer can't escape right? Yes exactly. That's why that's there and

01:43:20   obviously fax machines. Yes the fax machines are hilarious. Marty is fired by

01:43:25   fax and they arrives all over the house which is just so funny and then we get

01:43:31   into so you know at this point we're let's just say we're back in 18.5 now

01:43:36   right? So they've done everything they need in 2015, we go back to 85.

01:43:40   Right, but it turns out that Biff has changed the timeline, so they go back to a dark, terrible,

01:43:45   dystopian 1985. Marty can't believe it's 1985, but it is.

01:43:51   This is the bit of the movie that over time has tainted the way that I feel about Back

01:43:55   to the Future 2. It's too dark.

01:44:00   It's way too dark, it goes on way too long, it's really unpleasant. I mean, they're setting

01:44:06   up the stakes of "oh my god I can't believe it" but it goes it is so dark and it is so long and

01:44:11   this is a movie where we're supposed to be having fun and like I guess it all it all it really

01:44:15   should be is like "oh no they changed it things are wrong Biff's in charge now um my dad is dead

01:44:20   I gotta go back" it does that there are elements which they can do and it's fine but the fact that

01:44:26   there are kids driving around shooting everyone you know that's not needed the whole town is a

01:44:31   a wasteland and and Marty's I mean Marty's mom is a recurring motif in

01:44:36   these movies and so to see her with the plastic surgery and all of that but it

01:44:40   goes on so long and there's that painful like argument where she completely you

01:44:45   know basically Biff says but I won't pay money to your kids and they'll be

01:44:49   destitute and she says okay well I'll stay and it's your problem where it's

01:44:52   this is like horrible abusive relationship and it's like guys yeah

01:44:55   yeah, okay, but this is supposed to be a fun movie and it's not fun. I agree with you,

01:45:03   I think that is the worst segment of this movie. It didn't need to be this. Once the

01:45:08   timeline is messed up and Biff messed it up to benefit himself, that's all we need really,

01:45:14   I think.

01:45:15   There are still some good parts in this act, I guess this is the second act, right?

01:45:20   Yeah.

01:45:21   But there are still some good parts in it but the overall feeling of it is not...

01:45:24   It's sticky.

01:45:25   - It's icky.

01:45:26   - You know, this is where we get

01:45:27   the alternate 1985 explanation, which I love.

01:45:30   I love that scene.

01:45:31   And I like the kind of, the chase, right?

01:45:34   So once Marty is on to Biff, like I like that part, right?

01:45:38   So when he's there,

01:45:40   they're having that confrontation in the room.

01:45:42   - Right, right.

01:45:42   - And then they chase, he chases him up to the roof

01:45:44   and then he jumps off the roof and he's on the DeLorean.

01:45:46   - Yeah, I feel like that could have been the whole thing,

01:45:48   was Marty and Doc come and Doc's gotta go check out his house

01:45:54   and Marty sees that Biff is in charge, confronts Biff.

01:45:58   Biff's like, "Oh, geez, they warned me you would be coming."

01:46:02   And he sees his mom and it's all horrible.

01:46:04   And he goes to the roof and Doc picks him up

01:46:06   because Doc's found out that his timeline has changed too.

01:46:09   And they go to the past.

01:46:10   It could have been, I think it could have been a lot shorter

01:46:12   and a lot less unpleasant.

01:46:13   'Cause it's really unpleasant.

01:46:14   And I get that they're trying to make them have reasons

01:46:17   why they have to go and change the past to be right.

01:46:19   Although really just changing it back to being right

01:46:22   is reason enough.

01:46:23   but to have us all have to squirm.

01:46:25   - Oh, because your dad's dead.

01:46:26   - Yeah, because your dad's dead,

01:46:28   because Biff's in charge and he's awful, right?

01:46:29   I mean, that's all it really takes.

01:46:32   And yeah, it's kind of unpleasant.

01:46:34   But you know what the good thing about this segment is?

01:46:37   When it ends, this movie just goes into hyperdrive.

01:46:43   Once they get to the fifties, this is fantastic.

01:46:47   This is my favorite.

01:46:51   I would say this is my favorite segment

01:46:52   of the Back to the Future franchise is when they're playing around inside of the first

01:46:58   movie because I love the first movie and this is what they've been setting up and boy it

01:47:03   pays off even without Crispin Glover so they have to use his footage from the first movie

01:47:07   I think that really works because they seamlessly blend kind of the footage from the first movie

01:47:11   with the second in a way that that first scene didn't and so the and the whole rest of the

01:47:16   story takes place during the other movie how great is that? It is genius and it's something

01:47:21   that so many like cartoons and stuff have tried to touch on since right and you know

01:47:27   you've seen different like ways that this has been done.

01:47:29   There have been other takes, Doctor Who has done a little bit of this but not but this

01:47:32   is just to take an iconic film and with many of the same actors a few years later because

01:47:38   they know it's already iconic go back because it's a time travel story and be able to mess

01:47:43   with it. I mean it is a it is a rare kind of thing to be able to do this and and they

01:47:48   do it. For all my complaints about the first part of this movie, this part is just, it's

01:47:52   so delightful.

01:47:53   Yeah, it's, I love it. I think it's just spectacular.

01:47:56   So great.

01:47:57   You know, when I talk about the technical achievement, this is it. Like, and the editing

01:48:02   and all of the work that must have gone in to do this, it's really, really, really superb.

01:48:06   Yeah, the sound and you've got, you've got statues of dialogue from the previous movie

01:48:10   happening in the background. There's that scene where Marty is in the principal's office

01:48:13   and he hears the, you know, "Hey, you get your damn hands off her from Crispin Glover"

01:48:18   the first movie happening outside and he turns around there's a moment where Marty sees himself

01:48:21   and he's like whoa this is so you know and and and and Doc has the interaction where

01:48:26   he hands the wrench to or the screwdriver to the wrench to himself yeah and and it's

01:48:32   just that's all that's all just great stuff yeah and I do love the the scene in the in

01:48:38   the principal's office that's just a good scene right when Marty's trying to hide and

01:48:41   he gets his hand crushed and has to like silently scream yeah and yeah and then you know the

01:48:46   punch that punching scene it's outside of the window it's woven back in so well

01:48:50   yeah he goes over the the top of the stage when he's playing Johnny B. Goode

01:48:55   the you know yeah I mean literally he's crawling through the film as we go it's

01:49:02   amazing fantastic and then they have a hoverboard and car chase again right

01:49:07   which is a final great final action set piece which ends in Biff going into

01:49:13   manure. More manure? More manure. And you know this is why I wrote down the most

01:49:17   sequel-y sequel ever and I just think it's perfect. And so and you've got the

01:49:21   chance to do the time travel movie what what do you and again I'm gonna come

01:49:27   back to Doctor Who because the the run the current era of Doctor Who with

01:49:32   Steven Moffat in charge he's a very smart man who's been working in TV for a

01:49:36   long time and he's been a lifelong Doctor Who fan and he is he has told

01:49:39   it's obvious he had a list that he built up over his lifetime of stories you could tell with time travel.

01:49:45   All the different ways that time travel could be involved.

01:49:47   And historically, Doctor Who was sort of, you take the time machine somewhere and have an adventure.

01:49:51   But with Steven Moffat, it's been adventures where the time machine is a part of the action.

01:49:55   And I think about that because that's what happens in Back to the Future 2.

01:49:59   And at the end, it's a super clever, great cliffhanger kind of moment that could only happen in a time travel franchise.

01:50:07   is the DeLorean gets hit by lightning and disappears, and Marty is stranded in the 50s,

01:50:15   and you wonder, "Oh my God, what's going to happen? What happened to Doc?" And a car drives

01:50:19   up and a guy gets out, and he gives him a letter, and he says, "We've had this letter

01:50:23   for 70 years. I'm from Western Union." And it's a letter from Doc from the Old West that's

01:50:28   been waiting for him for 70 years. They said, "They said you would be here." There's actually

01:50:33   an episode of Doctor Who that's just like this. They said you would be here. We had

01:50:38   a bet about it and Doc's in the past. But it doesn't change the cliffhanger, which is

01:50:44   what happens now? And so he goes and then we get our final little, so that's a great

01:50:48   little wrinkle. And then we get the final little moment where we play with the first

01:50:52   movie, which is Marty goes back to the future at the end of the first movie. Doc is there

01:50:57   to help when the lightning hits the clock tower. The fire trails are on the street.

01:51:02   is like, "Yes, I've sent Marty back to the future," and immediately Marty appears and

01:51:05   goes, "Doc, I need your help," and he goes, "Gah!" So great. There's only one man who

01:51:10   can help me now.

01:51:12   And it's Great Scott, right? Great Scott passes out.

01:51:15   Great Scott, and he passes out. But it's such a moment of like, I don't even know how you

01:51:19   solve this, and the answer is you go talk to Doc. And that means that we end the movie,

01:51:24   even though we've set up the sequel, the second sequel, we end the movie doing what the movie

01:51:29   did best, which is play with something that we know very well from the first movie, which

01:51:34   is that we've never seen Doc's perspective on what happens when Marty goes back to the

01:51:39   future, right? Because we just go back with Marty, and now we get to see it, and it turns

01:51:43   out what happens next to Doc is Marty from the future confronts him. That's great. So

01:51:49   great. But the other thing that I don't like is how much of the third movie they show at

01:51:53   the end. Like, they spoil the entire movie by showing what's coming up next. So it was

01:51:57   unprecedented essentially to shoot these two sequels simultaneously and now they do that

01:52:05   all the time. I was just reading an article about the Hunger Games, you know, the Mockingjay

01:52:09   part one and two was all shot together and then released as two movies. Well that's what

01:52:13   they do with Back to the Future and as a result they had both scripts, they seeded it with

01:52:17   all these hints about what was coming, but I think they were worried that people can

01:52:22   be angry that it ends on a cliffhanger even though I think it's really fulfilling as a

01:52:25   a film but it ends on a cliffhanger and they wanted to show people what they were going

01:52:30   to do next just so that they, I mean there's no dialogue but they show a whole lot of stuff

01:52:34   that's old Westy. Yeah, in hindsight it could be less and give away less but they, I think

01:52:41   they were really worried and the studio was really worried about how people were going

01:52:45   to go out of the theater. Are they going to give good word of mouth about this movie if

01:52:49   there's no promise, you know, if it ends on a cliffhanger? So they wanted to give everybody

01:52:52   like a glimpse of what the third movie would be like. Yeah and I'm not I don't

01:52:57   doesn't bother me that they did it it's just how much they show they show too

01:53:00   much of the stuff that ends up being the cliffhanger like you know they they kind

01:53:05   of end up showing that there's like a way out for them it ruins the movie that

01:53:09   you know but I mean it's unfortunate I haven't seen Back to the Future part

01:53:14   three in a while I need to go and watch that yeah I'm gonna we're gonna we're

01:53:18   gonna watch that too that that one was shot in my hometown oh really yeah

01:53:22   Yeah, the train in Back to the Future 3 is the Sierra Railroad, which is Jamestown, California,

01:53:30   which is about four miles from where I grew up, and five, it's not a lot, very short distance,

01:53:36   it's in the Sonora area, and they built all that, the Old West set up, it burned down

01:53:40   like 15 years ago or something like that, but they built that Old West set out there

01:53:43   because there's a little portion of the grasslands out there where the train runs by and it's

01:53:50   not really visible from the highway and there are no, there are basically no structures

01:53:54   visible so it's a really good double for the Old West. So they shot it.

01:53:58   >>Oh, interesting.

01:53:59   >>They shot it there and the whole cast and crew were in town for a couple weeks and then

01:54:02   they shot a bunch of other like Westerns on it until it burned down. They, it was used

01:54:06   again and again as a, as an Old West set because they had it.

01:54:10   >>So I want to sum up and say that I continue to love this movie. Still one of my favorites.

01:54:16   time I see it I just continue to love it. This would be my favorite if it wasn't for

01:54:23   that, if the alternate 1985 wasn't so dystopian. That is something that really ruins it for

01:54:30   me because it puts too much stress in a fun movie. And it wasn't, I didn't realize this

01:54:37   until I watched it recently with Idina, it was her first time seeing it and she said

01:54:41   she just didn't like the movie at all because of that because it really brought her down

01:54:47   and I hadn't seen it from that perspective before and it might be why when I was younger

01:54:53   I always forgot that that scene was in the movie maybe I was like blanking it out or

01:54:56   something but yeah other than that I think other than that I actually do consider this

01:55:02   to be a perfect movie there is so much about it that I love and what I love about movies

01:55:07   I just think it does such a great job and I'm really happy that we covered it today.

01:55:12   And I encourage everyone to if they have listened to this obviously I would expect a massive

01:55:18   amount of people that are listening to this have seen this movie go watch it again it's

01:55:22   the right time to do it.

01:55:23   Yeah it is and what I would just say is I think half of this movie is is incredibly

01:55:27   good and half of it I could really live without and fortunately it's right down the middle.

01:55:33   So watch the first part because it's got some amusing things to say about what 30 years

01:55:37   ago thought 30 years from then would be since we're living in it. The middle part is really

01:55:42   dark and unpleasant and then the last part is fantastic. And we should also say if you're

01:55:46   listening to this on upgrade you should also look if you enjoy us talking about movies

01:55:51   you should go to the incomparable.com/mike for the Myke at the Movies feed where you'll

01:55:57   find edited together just the movies parts of various relay podcasts where Casey and

01:56:03   I watch movies with Myke.

01:56:04   Yep, so you can and then you can listen to them in the future and this will appear in

01:56:07   that feed in about a month.

01:56:09   Yeah.

01:56:10   Which it feels about right.

01:56:11   So if you want to catch links for that and everything else we've spoken about in this

01:56:15   week's episode head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/59.

01:56:19   If you want to find Jason online he's at sixcolors.com and @jsnell on Twitter.

01:56:23   I am @imike.

01:56:24   I M Y K E. Thank you so much to Smile, GoToMeeting, stamps.com and Linda for supporting this episode

01:56:31   And most importantly, thank you for listening.

01:56:34   Watch out for the hoverboards. It is that time.

01:56:37   Bye bye, everybody.

01:56:38   Great Scott!

01:56:40   I cannot love you more than I love you right now.

01:56:44   [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:56:48   [MUSIC PLAYING]