0:00:00*Music*
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 49.
0:00:13Today's show is brought to you by Hover, Simplified Domain Management, Stamps.com,
0:00:18Postage On Demand and GoToMeeting, where you can make it easy to meet with your team, wherever
0:00:23you need to, wherever you are.
0:00:27My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell.
0:00:31Hi Myke.
0:00:32How you doing, sir?
0:00:34Pretty good.
0:00:35It's been a while.
0:00:36Yeah, welcome back from your little trip.
0:00:38Thank you.
0:00:39We, you know, we recorded a little early and now we're recording a little bit late and
0:00:42in between I was gone for 10 days and we drove so, so far.
0:00:49We drove about 2,000 miles, which as Federico Fatici demanded a translation that's about
0:00:553200 kilometers round-trip and that's also 0.011 light seconds for aliens out
0:01:05there listening so good to know and I wrote a little piece that we can link to
0:01:10in the show notes about navigating using Apple Maps that because I did use Apple
0:01:16Maps the whole way partially because Google Maps kind of doesn't work right
0:01:20on iOS 9. My phone is running iOS 9. And I noticed some features that may be new
0:01:26features or slightly different features, certainly not features I noticed before.
0:01:29And it, you know, that was, it was useful in going down. We went down some country
0:01:33roads and back roads in in Northern California and Oregon and Washington. But
0:01:38we went all the way up to Seattle, north of, just north of Seattle, I think
0:01:42was our northernmost point, and then back down. So a lot of car time,
0:01:46time, a lot of car trip time.
0:01:51What's the bing bong sound?
0:01:55So somebody says that this actually happens in iOS 8 when you're not in Apple Maps, although
0:02:00we were in Apple Maps and we heard it for a while and then it went away, which was as
0:02:03we approached the intersection when you need to turn, my phone would just go bing bong
0:02:07if you needed to turn left and bong bing if you needed to turn right, which I thought
0:02:12was really cool and less annoying than the voice and then it stopped binging
0:02:19and bonging and we never got that sound back couldn't figure out how to get that
0:02:23back didn't know why it was there perhaps it was a mistake perhaps it was
0:02:27a bug but it was I found it kind of pleasant to turn off the voice and still
0:02:31have a little sort of audible notification that we were about to turn
0:02:35so that was that yeah and there was there are a bunch of like warning heavy
0:02:39traffic ahead alerts and an offer to reroute and the iOS 9 contextual searches for things
0:02:45like you know restaurants or gas stations or whatever those are good.
0:02:52Sure beats the old method of sort of opening Apple Maps and typing restaurants and hoping
0:02:56for something which was never just never worked.
0:03:00That was actually much better.
0:03:02So that combined with Yelp helped us identify places to eat kind of along the way.
0:03:07I did have somebody said something snide on Twitter about, "Well, you're lucky to be alive
0:03:11after you used Apple Maps for that long."
0:03:14And you know, without getting on too much over a rant, I'm really getting tired of it.
0:03:21There's people just making jokes about Apple Maps.
0:03:23Apple Maps is bad in some places and good in other places.
0:03:26But the sense of...
0:03:28Like, I've heard from some Waze users who really love it, and my father-in-law really
0:03:31loves it.
0:03:32I don't like it.
0:03:33From them, I get this sort of like--
0:03:36they're diehards.
0:03:37They love Waze.
0:03:38They've integrated into their lives.
0:03:39It's great.
0:03:39It doesn't work for me.
0:03:40I don't like Waze, but that's fine.
0:03:43My father-in-law is kind of obsessed with it.
0:03:47But it's especially the people who are like, well,
0:03:49everybody knows Google Maps is great and Apple Maps is
0:03:51terrible, so you should never use Apple Maps
0:03:54because it's terrible.
0:03:55Well, first off, the map data varies widely.
0:03:59And I've said all along that I live in the Bay Area.
0:04:01Apple actually did a very good job with the map data in the Bay Area because they live
0:04:05here and I think that it's probably much, I've heard from people, it's much, much worse
0:04:09depending on where you are in the country and in the world.
0:04:12That said, I was also driving back roads in rural Oregon and Washington and it worked
0:04:18just fine.
0:04:19I have also had Google Maps lead me wrong within a mile of the Google campus, like really
0:04:24wrong.
0:04:25So like driving into somebody's driveway and it thought it was a restaurant, kind of wrong.
0:04:29So you know, your map quality may vary, but I will say I spent 2,000 miles basically with
0:04:38Apple Maps running, and it was in iOS 9, and it was pretty good.
0:04:45So you know, your mileage literally may vary.
0:04:51Let's do some follow up.
0:04:52Yeah.
0:04:53So, the first piece comes from Matt this week.
0:04:57Matt wrote in to say, "After listening to the latest episode of Upgrade, I recommend
0:05:02that you guys read 'Hatching Twitter' by Nick Bilton."
0:05:05It's got a lot of insiders, he got a lot of insiders to talk to him, and what Matt learned
0:05:10was a lot about what happened in the early days of Twitter that he did not know about,
0:05:16and said that he actually came out of it respecting Ev a lot and without so much respect for Jack.
0:05:23Have you read this book?
0:05:24I haven't read it.
0:05:25No, it's been one of those things in my mind,
0:05:28especially recently, as we've been talking about this stuff,
0:05:31but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
0:05:34- All right, we'll put it on the list.
0:05:35- Yeah, I mean, you'd probably get through it quicker
0:05:38than I will if you say you're gonna put it on.
0:05:40- But I have so many books to read.
0:05:43I bought that Apple book that people recommended
0:05:48about the kind of like when jobs was gone time,
0:05:51and that's just sitting on a bookshelf.
0:05:53I have so many books to read.
0:05:55Plus, honestly, I don't relish reading books about the computer industry, non-fiction books
0:05:59about the computer industry, because I feel like my book time is...
0:06:02I like my book time to be my entertainment time and not my reading this for work time.
0:06:08And I read a lot of stuff on the web about computers and technology, but then to read
0:06:13books about the history of companies in the technology industry, it's a lot harder for
0:06:18me to gin up enough enthusiasm to do that.
0:06:21Sure.
0:06:22No, I get that.
0:06:23I totally get that.
0:06:24But just us both saying we'll put it on our lists,
0:06:27like even though my list has no books on it
0:06:29and your list has a ton of books on it,
0:06:32you're more likely to get to it before I do, I think.
0:06:34- Yeah, well that's probably true, but that's okay.
0:06:37- I might get an audiobook, maybe, we'll see.
0:06:39I'll think about it.
0:06:40We heard from a bunch of Tweetbot users
0:06:43and, you know, of others.
0:06:47- And others, so we talked about Twitter
0:06:48and we talked about the Twitter apps, you know,
0:06:51we have a nice note from listener Matt who said, different Matt, Matt2, Matt Beta. So
0:07:00Matt2 said he tried the iOS app from Twitter and said it was much better than he remembered
0:07:07it but I also saw like in my timeline today I saw Andy Bayo complaining about how slow
0:07:14the Twitter app was on his iPhone 5. You know, it's a problematic app and somebody else in
0:07:21Twitter timeline while I was on vacation so I don't even have the name said that
0:07:24that team has like 70 developers or something some ridiculous number of
0:07:28people developing the iOS app and maybe that's the problem is that they they it
0:07:37baffles me how bad Twitter's apps are and and and we talked about it quite a
0:07:41bit in the last show but yeah who knows I don't know what's going on there maybe
0:07:47with all the changes things will change we know that they just hired the
0:07:52developer of what some consider the best Android iOS or Android Twitter app to
0:07:59presumably work on the Android Twitter app but who knows we saw what happened
0:08:03with Tweety which was a great Mac Twitter app and iOS Twitter app.
0:08:07Yeah, Joaquim Vergé I'm gonna say he is the developer of Falcon which is by far
0:08:14and away the best of track for Android and has been for a long time.
0:08:18Yeah, there you go.
0:08:19He's been hired by Twitter.
0:08:20That could be good news, but I fear with their track record it's bad news that he'll disappear
0:08:24and nothing will happen and then in six months or a year he will leave being incredibly frustrated
0:08:30by whatever is bogging down.
0:08:33I don't know, politics, bad management, bad lack of vision.
0:08:37I don't know what's bogging it down.
0:08:39I also got a bunch of questions about why I think Twitter for Mac is bad.
0:08:45And I don't, the show isn't long enough for me to go into all the details.
0:08:49But I will say it crashes, it gets super slow and sluggish a lot of the time, it eats up
0:08:52disk space sometimes by saving just huge amounts of junk to a cache folder that doesn't need
0:08:58to be that huge.
0:09:01Clicking on a tweet will, I would say one time out of five will get you an action on
0:09:07the tweet above it or below it because it's just lost track of what tweet.
0:09:12That can be really awkward when you're trying to favorite something for later or retweet
0:09:15something or you're clicking to see a thread about a particular tweet and you get a thread
0:09:20about a tweet that was near it.
0:09:23It doesn't support the muting feature that they added.
0:09:25It doesn't support the quoted tweet format that they added.
0:09:29The list goes on.
0:09:30It's bad.
0:09:31And yet I use it because there are things in it that are great.
0:09:37And the reason that they're in there great and it's the notifications tab is the reason
0:09:41I use it.
0:09:42And the reason that it's only in that I use it and it's in there is because those aren't
0:09:45in the API for third parties to use.
0:09:47So I third parties cannot they can try to hack it but you know the Twitter app will
0:09:52show me when somebody favorites something when somebody retweets something.
0:09:55There's a lot of detail about what's happening on Twitter to the stuff that I am writing
0:10:00that I don't see unless I'm using the Twitter app.
0:10:03Does it do the like favorite a tweet you were mentioned in type stuff as well as on the
0:10:09iOS app?
0:10:10It doesn't do that.
0:10:12That's one of the many things that it doesn't yet do.
0:10:15The quoted tweet thing kills me now because that's the official way you quote a tweet
0:10:19in Twitter and it shows you the tweet that was quoted and Twitterrific on iOS has it
0:10:24and it's just not in the Mac app.
0:10:26I'm not sure if people are paying attention to the Mac app or not.
0:10:28Anyway, it's bad.
0:10:29Twitter for the Mac sounds a lot like using Tweetbot for iPad.
0:10:34Yeah, it's, yeah, yeah.
0:10:37And the thing is that the, um, I use Twitter on my Mac.
0:10:41I'm at my Mac a lot and I use Twitter on my Mac and there are no good options at this
0:10:46point.
0:10:47Twitter, the native Twitter app, the, the, the platform app is the best of a bad lot
0:10:53right now.
0:10:54I don't like Tweetbot for Mac.
0:10:55for Mac has not been updated in years and I don't really want to use the
0:10:59Twitter website. I'm not a fan of being forced into a web browser in order to
0:11:04use a social network. That's why I don't use Facebook very much is that I just
0:11:08don't go to Facebook and the idea of keeping a Twitter window open to the
0:11:13website in order to click around and see things it's just you know I like the
0:11:16keyboard shortcuts there's lots of reasons. Anyway so what a mess to
0:11:21restate the feedback we got and just say what a mess it's a mess I think that's
0:11:29enough on on Twitter follow-up for now we have more Twitter coming later about
0:11:33news because as we correctly predicted you the moment we talk about something
0:11:37and and save that episode for a few days then things start to happen we got we
0:11:45got a very nice piece of follow-up from a listener. Right, who will remain
0:11:53nameless. Yes, which is probably best in these kinds of scenarios. And they
0:12:00had something very nice to say and apparently they said that upgrade got
0:12:04them through a difficult time, which is a really nice thing to see. I think
0:12:07recently I think I've been kind of saying this kind of stuff on upgrade,
0:12:13sorry on analog this is upgrade hello Jason I have been getting a little bit
0:12:19jaded on certain parts of the internet as of late there are just some things
0:12:24that are grating on me a little and getting this kind of stuff it's very
0:12:28very nice to see to try and understand you have an impact on somebody's life
0:12:32and more than just an entertainment value but this person cited that my
0:12:37British accent my soothing British accent and Jason's vast knowledge and
0:12:43endless anecdotes which are actually I didn't realize but as soon as this person put it
0:12:47into context the two things that I love most about you in regards to this show.
0:12:51I like endless anecdotes can be read two ways by the way it can be read as a an endless
0:12:56stream of different anecdotes it can also be read as anecdotes that go on forever.
0:13:01I assumed the former for the listener and myself and and they said that those those
0:13:09things helped them get through a tough time and we are very sorry that the person went
0:13:14through that tough time and we're happy to have helped somehow.
0:13:17Yeah, that was very nice and I want to amplify your point which is there's a lot of, I have
0:13:24moments where I'm opening my web browser or like my email client or my Twitter app, whichever
0:13:31one I'm using that day, and I have a moment of like, well, let's see what nasty things
0:13:38somebody has sent or said, right? Like there's just like this feeling of like, well, let's
0:13:43wade in and you almost expect just the horrible negativity. And it's very nice. It's very
0:13:49easy to let negative things collect. And it's nice when you see something that's just a
0:13:56good story about a difficult situation, but it was a warm, fuzzy thing. So thank you to
0:14:02that listener.
0:14:03Yeah, I mean, there are, I get nice things said to me every day, as I'm sure you do too.
0:14:08Oh yeah, absolutely.
0:14:10But there's something that comes from a nice thing that's really out of the ordinary.
0:14:14Mm-hmm.
0:14:15And this was that.
0:14:16And this was that.
0:14:17For sure.
0:14:18Michael wrote in about obituaries.
0:14:21Obituaries!
0:14:22We'll put a link in the show notes to a nice New York Times story that I think, this is
0:14:26the one that I remember reading and couldn't come up with when we were talking about it,
0:14:30is about the pre-writing of stories, especially obituaries at the New York Times. So you can
0:14:37read more about it if you're interested in the subject of people writing these stories
0:14:42way ahead of time and the kind of euphemisms they use, like, you know, "We're updating
0:14:45your biographical information for our database." Yeah, we're writing your obituary. The other
0:14:54Another thing related to this was we got a nice thing, also from Michael, I believe,
0:15:01that was about - it was a good story and I didn't verify whether it's true, but I want
0:15:05it to be true so I'm just going to go with it.
0:15:09This part is true.
0:15:10The Mercury Music Prize was given out.
0:15:13It was given out to - well, I'm not going to spoil the story - it was given out.
0:15:19The BBC news announcer was reading the script, but when she got to the name of the winner
0:15:25of the Mercury Music Prize, instead of the actual name, it said "the XX," just sort of
0:15:32like as a placeholder.
0:15:35And so she sort of got flummoxed and apologized and said, "Well, they gave out the music prizes
0:15:39and moved on."
0:15:42And as Michael pointed out, had she been a little more clued up on her modern music,
0:15:45she would have realized that the prize winners that year were indeed indie pop band The XX.
0:15:50And that was the standard BBC News placeholder. Apparently, because we were talking about
0:15:56TK and other and heads and HED and DEC, D-E-K and things like that. So apparently this was
0:16:01like a conflict. I don't know if The XX is actually specifically named because of that
0:16:06phenomenon, or whether it was just a coincidence. But that's a funny moment where, you know,
0:16:12If you want really good publicity for your band or whatever in the news media, you might
0:16:21not want to call yourself like "Head TK" because that would be really confusing.
0:16:28We had some feedback in regards to Audition and Logic.
0:16:33Yeah, yeah, so we talked about this in the context of, we had I think a NASC upgrade
0:16:39about why Logic and not Audition.
0:16:44And one of the things I mentioned was, although I'm not opposed to the idea of subscription
0:16:49services for software, Logic was $200 and Adobe Audition was $20 a month.
0:16:55So very rapidly it would become much more expensive.
0:16:58And that that was something, if you're starting from zero, that would be something to take
0:17:01into account.
0:17:02Now somebody sent me a link, and again, I just was on vacation.
0:17:04Somebody sent me a link saying that you can still buy a standalone copy of Adobe Audition.
0:17:09I searched around and couldn't find out any information about that being true.
0:17:13If it is true, Adobe certainly doesn't want anybody to know about it.
0:17:15They want you to pay for Creative Cloud in order to get Audition.
0:17:20We did get a nice note from listener Brandon who said that that discussion of GarageBand
0:17:27and when do you switch to Logic and take the hit in terms of the learning curve is-- and
0:17:34comparing Logic to the other sound products that you could go to, audio editing, he's
0:17:38facing that with Aputure being dead and struggling to learn a new app that feels foreign and
0:17:44doesn't seem to offer anything significantly better than what he'd been productive in for
0:17:47so long. I'd say that's absolutely true. Aputure is going to work for a while so you could
0:17:51stay there, but this is the big difference, right? Like, if Logic was announced as being
0:17:56at the end of its life, I would start having that moment of like, "Well, pretty soon I'm
0:17:58going to have to switch and learn something new." Once you're using dead software for
0:18:03your livelihood. It's a very difficult situation and you have to you have to
0:18:07grapple with it as Brandon is doing now. I will say for people like Brandon who
0:18:13are used to using aperture I can't help with the learning curve. There are lots
0:18:17of great online training that can help with the learning curve but what I can
0:18:21say is the Adobe Creative Cloud photo bundle is by far the best deal that
0:18:26Adobe offers for $10 and I'm paying for this. For $10 a month you get
0:18:31Photoshop and Lightroom and I don't even use Lightroom and I consider $10 a month
0:18:39worth it for the latest version of Photoshop but you also get Lightroom
0:18:44it's the photography bundle and it's $10 a month it's actually a pretty great
0:18:47deal everything else they sell is much more expensive than that including
0:18:52audition all the other apps are sort of $20 per you can do I think it's 40 or 50
0:18:56dollars a month for everything in the in the suite but this bundle is a great
0:19:00deal at $10 a month so I will recommend that as something to try and but yeah
0:19:05learning curve after your software gets discontinued is awful and I feel for you
0:19:10Brandon I can't believe that Photoshop is only $10 a month I know right that
0:19:15doesn't seem right I feel like they missed off a zero yes they made a mistake
0:19:21I mean it is an annuity I mean you are you are paying $120 a year to Adobe for
0:19:28as long as you want to keep using Photoshop.
0:19:30But that one's worth it.
0:19:32If it was $20 a month,
0:19:33I would probably consider going elsewhere.
0:19:35But for $10 a month, I didn't even hesitate.
0:19:37I said, is Photoshop worth $120 a year?
0:19:40To me, given all the things I do with it,
0:19:42the answer was absolutely yes.
0:19:44And so that was not, it was not a problem.
0:19:47- I mean, I never use it.
0:19:48I mean, I have a version of Pixelmator
0:19:51that I bought a year or two ago that does the job for me
0:19:54because I find Photoshop to be too confusing
0:19:57too complex for what I need it for and I vary I'm probably open pixelmator a couple of times a year.
0:20:04Ah sure and I've got Acorn and I like it but I have been using Photoshop since like I was in
0:20:11college and it just it I I know all those tools I know how it works and so having it around
0:20:19and I what I discovered was that my retina iMac the the version of Photoshop that I have
0:20:24in a box doesn't support retina and that was the moment where I thought, "Okay, well, I'm
0:20:29gonna pay for it then.
0:20:30I'm gonna pay for the new version because it'll actually use the retina pixels on my
0:20:33display."
0:20:34And I haven't regretted it.
0:20:36You would be burning your eyes trying to look at the older version with that beautiful display.
0:20:43Indeed.
0:20:45Last piece of...
0:20:46This is actually the last piece of follow-up/the first piece of follow-out this week.
0:20:51week is the one year anniversary of Real AFM as Jason mentioned before the show
0:20:56which is also episode 50 of Upgrade and episode 100 of Clockwise which is...
0:21:01It's a big week. So beautiful. It is indeed a very big week and we are, me and Stephen,
0:21:06are going to be doing a live streamed Q&A at 1.15 p.m. Eastern Time on August
0:21:1418th which is our one year anniversary. We would love your questions for that Q&A
0:21:20you will be able to hashtag, use the hashtag #RelayQA and I'm putting a
0:21:26blog post in our show notes as well this week so you can see that.
0:21:31We will be offering it on demand I guess in our B-sides feed which I'll also
0:21:38put a link to in our show notes in case you've not seen it before. In that
0:21:42B-sides feed at the moment you will find the special where Jason and Steven spoke
0:21:46about space for about an hour. If you want to listen to that you should because
0:21:50it's fun. But we'll be taking some questions. We'd love it if you could
0:21:54contribute with any questions or anything you'd like to know about Real
0:21:58AFM as we celebrate our one year anniversary. And that is one of a few
0:22:02little things we have planned for next week to celebrate. Nice. So you can do
0:22:08that. Right, should we take our first break for this week's episode? I think
0:22:12That's a great idea.
0:22:13- Excellent.
0:22:14This week, this show is brought to you by our friends
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0:24:49- Yay.
0:24:52- So you mentioned Twitter, we spoke about Twitter.
0:24:55- Let's talk about Twitter more.
0:24:57- Because it ended up, we were very right
0:25:00in our feeling that we were right to cover this last week.
0:25:05- Oh man, we hit it at just the right time,
0:25:09as it turned out.
0:25:10We were worried our timing was off,
0:25:11but it turned out to be on.
0:25:13- Because I wanted to talk about them
0:25:14because there was a lot of interesting stuff going on,
0:25:17but I was concerned, as you heard from listening to Charles,
0:25:20I was concerned that by recording it in advance,
0:25:23some stuff might have happened.
0:25:24Some stuff has happened, but luckily,
0:25:26not really too much in the time
0:25:28that has been an issue for us.
0:25:29So we were talking about Jack and whether we thought Jack was the right move for CEO.
0:25:36Right, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, CEO of Square, former CEO of Twitter.
0:25:44Yes.
0:25:45Just to set the table there.
0:25:47And he has expressed an interest and acting CEO of Twitter, right?
0:25:51He's the interim acting CEO of Twitter.
0:25:53He is I-CEO.
0:25:55Yeah, but somebody said, somebody within Twitter said,
0:25:58well we don't consider this to be a position that can be filled by somebody who is doing
0:26:02other things which was this code for like Jack you got to quit square if you want the
0:26:06job and Jack's response was something like well I'm not going to quit square and I do
0:26:11want the job I think. So the question was going to be well what happens now and we got
0:26:18some of that last week while I was in the car. So tell me what happened last week. Chris
0:26:23Sacker, who we also spoke about last week. We cited his post about about about what
0:26:28Twitter should do next strategically with its product. And who has been... people
0:26:33have suggested that this post may have been the reason that got Dick Costolo
0:26:41fired basically or was the reason Dick Costolo stepped down or whatever was the
0:26:45reason Twitter gave. Sacker issued a selection of tweets, the most important
0:26:52being that he believes that Jack should be CEO. Adam Bain, who is the current COO, I
0:27:02believe, should become president. And Ev Williams should become chairman of the board. That's
0:27:14his overall feeling. So you should have Jack as CEO, Adam Bain to president and COO, and
0:27:21Ev should become executive chairman of the board.
0:27:24This was Sakha's overall feeling.
0:27:26There's many tweets, I linked to her TechCrunch article
0:27:29that has links to them in there.
0:27:32But basically he thinks, like for whatever reason,
0:27:36Sakha believes that this is the right move.
0:27:39He thinks that Dorsey is the one with the product vision
0:27:43to be able to go in and do that again.
0:27:45And I just listened to the talk show with John Gruber
0:27:49and his guest Matthew Panzareno,
0:27:50when they talk about this as well.
0:27:51It's also a good listen if you are interested in this topic,
0:27:54which I hope you are
0:27:55because you're listening to us right now.
0:27:57(laughing)
0:27:58- That's right.
0:27:58That's right.
0:27:59If you're not interested in this topic,
0:28:00you should have forwarded to the next,
0:28:02well, we don't have chapter markers yet,
0:28:04but you should forward to the next bit about Google
0:28:09and not be here.
0:28:11So if you are interested,
0:28:13then you should probably read that article.
0:28:16- So when they're--
0:28:18- A little table of contents,
0:28:19index happening in the middle of the show there, indexing. It's not a vertical, really,
0:28:24it's more like a meta feature of the podcast where I appear in a future-- Myke, in a future
0:28:30beta what we'll do is there'll be a sound, there'll be like a ding sound or a bing bong
0:28:33perhaps, and then a German voice will appear because I just have decided it will be a German
0:28:39man, and he will say-- he will explain the structure of the rest of the show.
0:28:43- You are effectively the clippie of this podcast now, you know that, don't you?
0:28:47You appear to be doing a podcast.
0:28:50Can I help you with that?
0:28:51You appear to be in your first of two topics.
0:28:54Can I help you?
0:28:56So I think at this point, whether or not Jack is actually good for the role or the right
0:29:02person for the role, there is now a lot of public opinion swelling that he's at the right
0:29:07choice and Chris Sacker doing what he's done is now painting investor opinion.
0:29:15which is part of his game all along, I think.
0:29:17- Yep.
0:29:18Yes.
0:29:19What a great way of putting it.
0:29:21- But I will say, I think Saka is legitimately a believer
0:29:25in the power of Twitter and the potential of that company.
0:29:28And like we said on the last show,
0:29:30I really do believe that Jack Dorsey cares about Twitter
0:29:34and has some feelings about what Twitter could do better.
0:29:37And like I said, I don't know the personalities
0:29:39and I don't know the inside of how Twitter is working
0:29:42and how it's broken.
0:29:43So I can't say, I'm not gonna be one of those people that says,
0:29:46well, he should totally get the job because, you know, reasons,
0:29:49because, uh, it's way more complicated than that.
0:29:51There may be somebody who's a much better choice.
0:29:54Um, but what I would say is somebody who cares about Twitter needs to be in
0:29:58charge of Twitter, somebody who is willing to make big changes and fix what
0:30:03has been broken and get this company that's product has been really complacent
0:30:07for too long, uh, moving in some direction, um, somewhere and, you know,
0:30:12we might not all even like the direction it goes, but it needs to go somewhere because
0:30:16it just seems mired and has been mired for the last few years. And Jack Dorsey does seem
0:30:21to care about it. And so, you know, I would rather have somebody like Jack Dorsey than,
0:30:27you know, Dick Costolo. And, but he might not be the best choice, but he's definitely
0:30:32a high profile choice as the co-founder and as being, you know, mooted for the job by
0:30:36people who probably know better than we do about the details.
0:30:41So I think now that now this public opinion is swelling I think that Jack is the right
0:30:48person I think that part of it is people just like the beauty of the story.
0:30:53Well sure it's that Steve Jobs story right founder returns he was kind of kind of kicked
0:30:58out he's brought back in you know again all of us on the outside people who don't have
0:31:04inside knowledge of Jack of Twitter of the what you know what happened when Dick Costolo
0:31:09was there, what's going on with the product, all of these product people left. That's the
0:31:14other thing that happened after we recorded that episode is that even when we recorded
0:31:19it I know at least one product person had left but then it was reported that like three
0:31:23more product people at Twitter had left that week. It was like this exodus of people from
0:31:29Twitter and so you know something needs to happen but we don't know unless you're one
0:31:35of the people who knows the inside, it's all just a guess. You know, it's, it's, none of
0:31:40us really know unless you're on the inside.
0:31:45I think that just what is, I think, clear at the moment, to me anyway, is that whether
0:31:52Dorsey is the right man to solve the problems, I think he is the right man to be there to,
0:32:02or the right person, I should say,
0:32:04he's the right person now to be there
0:32:07to help do a public image reset from Costolo's time.
0:32:12And we talk about Costolo in bad terms,
0:32:18neither of us really know how much control he had.
0:32:22However, it was under his time that things went really bad.
0:32:26But the best we can do is just be like,
0:32:29Well, he may have been who was put in place
0:32:34to be the person at the time.
0:32:35He may have never been the right person or the wrong person
0:32:38and that may not have been his fault decision
0:32:41or anything like that.
0:32:42However, that all we know is what we can see
0:32:45and all we could see was that the product became worse
0:32:48during the time that he was CEO.
0:32:50- Yeah, yeah.
0:32:51And that it, that they seem to miss a lot of opportunities
0:32:55and kind of lose their way
0:32:57in terms of what they were doing, that they made some tough decisions early on that were
0:33:03unpopular but could have been mitigated by having results from those decisions, and a
0:33:09lot of those results never seemed to come.
0:33:12And yeah, but we -- right, we don't know.
0:33:14What we do know is the outcome, right?
0:33:16We know what Twitter has not done over the last few years.
0:33:21That much is clear.
0:33:22That, you know, it's pretty clear that they've missed a lot of opportunities the last few
0:33:27years. So something else that happened really interestingly I think yesterday
0:33:32as we record this on Monday the... It's Tuesday. Oh it happened on Monday the
0:33:3910th. Yeah when we should have been recording but weren't. So Dorsey spent
0:33:45$875,000 to buy 31,000 shares in Twitter and he sent out a tweet which was had a
0:33:53a picture or had a link to his SEC filing and the tweet just said investing
0:33:59in Twitter's future. So he bought a massive chunk of stock. Now he already
0:34:05owns a massive chunk of stock anyway and this is actually a small amount compared
0:34:11to the overall amount of stock that he owns already but this came at a time
0:34:18where over the last, he owns 22 million shares and he bought another 31,000 so
0:34:26yeah not huge. It's symbolic. But it's exactly it. It was the symbol because
0:34:33over the last couple of weeks since the earnings call Twitter's stock has just
0:34:39been tumbling and they are now below IPO level. I think they IPO'd at $40 a
0:34:49share something like that and now they're at like they're in the mid to
0:34:55high 20s region at the moment and so this is kind of there have been a lot of
0:35:02people talking this week who's gonna buy them. A lot of people have been pointing
0:35:06at Google and we'll talk about that in a minute but lots of people have been
0:35:11trying, have been eyeing up potential companies to buy Twitter so I think that
0:35:16what Dorsey is trying to show here is that he believes in the company and
0:35:21wants the company to remain so he's putting his money where where his mouth
0:35:24is. Yeah that's the symbolism of it is that companies that are going that are
0:35:31falling apart people are selling their shares so they can get they can cash out
0:35:34before it all falls apart.
0:35:36And he's sending a signal like,
0:35:37"I'm investing in Twitter's future."
0:35:39It does feel like he's also sending a signal saying,
0:35:41"I wanna be a part of Twitter's future."
0:35:43Right?
0:35:44- Oh, 100%.
0:35:44Yeah, this is as much a PR move for Jack as a CEO,
0:35:49as it is him believing in it.
0:35:54Like I think you can hold those two things as exclusive,
0:35:58but they are mutually exclusive.
0:36:00Like they are, these are things
0:36:02that he believes both of these, in my opinion. It is a PR move to try and show that he's
0:36:08the right visionary for the role, but also he is genuinely saying that he believes in
0:36:14it and wants it to stick around.
0:36:17Yeah. Yeah, I guess we'll see what happens. Something is happening at Twitter, right?
0:36:22Change is happening at Twitter. It's happening right now. We've seen it. There may be jockeying
0:36:27for position, it may not be exactly what we expect, but we know, and with those departures
0:36:35too, we know that there's a lot of change happening there. And I gotta say, again, as
0:36:40an outsider, I think it's good because it's change. Because what Twitter has been doing
0:36:46has not been working. So change it up, you know, and hopefully they will make good decisions
0:36:51and they will change it in good ways, but they gotta change it.
0:36:55Yeah, I think that this is the...
0:36:59I continue that I think that Dorsey's the right person because I think that they need
0:37:05a CEO that has a name to them.
0:37:11Promoting another type like Costolo who is not known to the wider community is probably
0:37:18a bad move, especially when now they need to be able to attract talent to head up some
0:37:24of their C-level positions, I guess.
0:37:26Yeah, it's a major platform company and the job of the CEO isn't just to be, you know,
0:37:33isn't to be the strategist in some ways.
0:37:35The job is to build a team that can execute on the strategy and formulate the strategy
0:37:40and you know, that's a job, that's a big job and so I don't feel like you need somebody
0:37:46big because of PR reasons because it needs to be recognizable and send a message to the
0:37:49shareholders.
0:37:50may be true too. I think the big thing is you need somebody who is of a stature in Silicon
0:37:58Valley that they are going to be able to build a team and recruit people and get a really
0:38:03good team in place and energize the people who are already there and they need to know
0:38:08the landscape. So I think that's the most important thing is if you've got somebody
0:38:11who nobody ever heard of, that's the danger there is that this is the captain of the ship
0:38:17and you need somebody like when Yahoo hired Marissa Mayer, right? I mean, you want somebody
0:38:22that people know and who's worked with lots of good people all over the industry and that's
0:38:29what you want in a job of a CEO of a company as important as Twitter.
0:38:33Should we take a break? I think that's a good idea.
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0:41:26Hooray. So alphabet,
0:41:31This was one of the most surprising tech news stories I've ever seen, I think.
0:41:39Basically, okay, so people are saying Google renamed themselves to Alphabet yesterday,
0:41:47which isn't technically what they did.
0:41:51They created New Google, which is run by a company called Alphabet.
0:41:57Google. This is gonna get real complicated real fast. Okay yeah I will
0:42:03refer to from here on out we will refer to it as old Google and new Google. Okay.
0:42:08So old Google no longer exists. Now old Google was a company which owned all of
0:42:16the things that you know of as Google. Search, apps, owns Android, YouTube, Nest
0:42:24all of those things, that company's gone away.
0:42:28What stands in its place is Alphabet.
0:42:30Alphabet owns the new Google,
0:42:33which is now going to be run by new CEO Sundar Pichai,
0:42:38which we'll get to in a minute.
0:42:39Alphabet itself is going to be run by CEO Sergey Brin
0:42:44and Larry Page as president.
0:42:48And Alphabet is a collection of companies,
0:42:51the largest of which is the new Google.
0:42:53So for example--
0:42:55This is a separation of sort of like Larry and Sergey's
0:42:58big playground, which is Google.
0:43:01And now what we've got is Larry and Sergey's big playground
0:43:04is Alphabet.
0:43:05And one of the things in the playground is Google.
0:43:08What a great way of putting it.
0:43:09Right?
0:43:10Because we've always heard about Larry and Sergey are like,
0:43:13oh, we've got big ideas and crazy things that we're
0:43:15going to do.
0:43:15And we're going to buy this, and we're going to integrate that,
0:43:17and we're going to invest in this.
0:43:19And then there was like the Google
0:43:20that is search engine and Android.
0:43:22And what this does that I really like is separate those.
0:43:26So they're not like independent of each other.
0:43:30The playground, Google's in the playground,
0:43:32but like we no longer have this concept
0:43:34where there's like, there's Google
0:43:35and then there's like the Googly part of Google.
0:43:39Now we have Alphabet
0:43:40and then Google is one of the things in Alphabet.
0:43:43- Yep, so for example, Sundar Pichai,
0:43:45who is the CEO of the new Google,
0:43:47will, he will actually report into the CEO of Alphabet,
0:43:52which is bright, which is weird for a CEO to report to someone.
0:43:56Well, I mean, CEOs report to the board, right?
0:43:59I mean, yeah.
0:44:00And so in this case, they're--
0:44:01and they're actually my president of--
0:44:04back at IDG, reported to the CEO of the parent company.
0:44:08This is a--
0:44:09I mean, that's how it works.
0:44:10These are like divisions.
0:44:12These are wholly owned and operated companies
0:44:16within a portfolio.
0:44:17And so that's the structure, which is-- actually,
0:44:18it's kind of nice, right?
0:44:19Sundar is the, you know, is the CEO of Google and needs to make the decisions about what Google
0:44:25does and Google is a very clearly like, this is your territory, you run this and then the big boss
0:44:31instead of having a board, they may have a board but I, you know, basically the the they answer to
0:44:35Larry and Sergey, which is that that's good. I think that's clear. There is still some weirdness
0:44:43though in what is part of the new Google? Yeah. So like some of the stuff they took
0:44:49out so they took out Nest which why now when you look back you can see why they
0:44:56didn't rename some of the companies they bought more recently. Yeah well Nest yeah
0:45:01I feel like that was always their intent was not to subsume it into Google and
0:45:05they wanted Nest and the Nest brand to continue and they wanted their home
0:45:08efforts to be around Nest and there was always that confusion I think we talked
0:45:12about it during the Google I/O keynote aftermath was this confusion about the home networking
0:45:21stuff that Google is putting forth that's going to be a part of Android and then what
0:45:24the Nest home networking program is. Are they the same? Are they not the same? Why would
0:45:31they not be the same? That one makes a lot of sense. I think actually it will be great
0:45:37for Nest because then Tony Fidell runs Nest. And he reports to Larry and Sergey. He has
0:45:44nothing to do with Sundar, and he can make his own way, and he can start counteracting
0:45:52the complaints from people saying, "Why would I want to buy home products from Google, and
0:45:59they're going to take all my information and feed them into Google?" Because now he can
0:46:02say, "Nope, that's not our business. That's not why we're here. We don't give any of that
0:46:05to Google, that's not our company. And that's good. That's like that's that and
0:46:10that may have been true before but it's clearer now that Nest is Nest and not
0:46:15Google. But then parts like the Google Ventures and Google Capital are now just
0:46:21ventures and capital. They're gonna be part of Alphabet. X, Google X is now X
0:46:26Labs. Right, which is the crazy, that's the crazy far-out stuff you know robots and
0:46:32and self-driving cars and things like that.
0:46:35- And then Google Fiber is now just Alphabet Fiber
0:46:40or just Fiber?
0:46:41- I think that's one of the questions is,
0:46:42are these gonna be rebranded?
0:46:43Is Google Ventures gonna become Alphabet Ventures
0:46:46or is it just going to be Google Ventures
0:46:47and it's not part of Google, it's Google Ventures
0:46:51and it's a different thing.
0:46:51I think there's some questions over time.
0:46:53- That'd be madness if they did that.
0:46:55- Well, I think, yeah, I think it would be much better
0:46:58if it was Alphabet Ventures, Alphabet Capital
0:47:00and we started thinking of Alphabet as the thing
0:47:02But they, you know, Larry and Sergey have said, you know, that Alphabet is not necessarily
0:47:06a consumer-facing brand.
0:47:07If that's true, maybe Google Ventures will come up with its own name, you know, that's
0:47:12not Google Ventures, that's some other, you know, indecipherable Silicon Valley venture
0:47:18capital company name.
0:47:20I don't know.
0:47:22That part I don't know.
0:47:23Yeah.
0:47:24And so...
0:47:25Have you ever had the Alphabet fiber cereal?
0:47:29It's not very good.
0:47:31Never heard of it.
0:47:32alphabet fiber? I've had alphabeti spaghetti. It's not real, I just made it up but it sounds
0:47:35like cereal. It's very high in fiber, it's brand, but shaped in the shape of letters.
0:47:42Alphabet fiber. Or just alphabeti spaghetti. Okay. If it's whole grain, then it would be
0:47:47alphabet fiber. Spaghetti. So, YouTube and Android are remaining part of Google. This
0:47:57I don't understand. Well, YouTube I understand because YouTube is an advertising play, you
0:48:02know. It's all about the video advertising. And so that makes sense to me that it's part
0:48:08of Google because, and it's so tightly integrated now, even though they're trying to unwind
0:48:12it a little bit, in the end it's about programmatic advertising and what is Google but advertising
0:48:17at this point. But like, YouTube has had its own CEO for a long time. That's like something
0:48:22that I find so it's just very I actually weirdly more understand Android being a
0:48:28part of Google then YouTube being part of Google which is funny because I think
0:48:32you're the other way around. Some of some of this might be about the way that
0:48:39they're technically intertwined and some of this may be about their feeling about
0:48:44the directions these businesses are going in and you know I don't know
0:48:48because again not on the inside but I look at this and think you know they may
0:48:52say look, Google as a search engine text ad product, that's kind of going to fade away
0:48:58eventually, but you know, it's going to move to video and what's video? Well, it's YouTube
0:49:02and we've got YouTube and they're all part of the same thing and they're all part of
0:49:05the same infrastructure and even though users see them as different products and they're
0:49:09actually you know, they've made that more separate, you don't need it, I think you don't
0:49:13need the Google login to post hateful comments on YouTube anymore.
0:49:18That's for sure.
0:49:19they're splitting those apart. They may view that as being essentially the same business,
0:49:27that like this part of the business and this part of the business are different, but they're
0:49:29not that different, they really go together. In a way, and Android is the same question,
0:49:35it's like, I look at that and think, well, Android is, I agree with you, kind of weird
0:49:40to be part of Google at the same time, though, why does Android exist? Why does it exist?
0:49:51It's free, right? I mean, they put huge amount of engineering resources in it and they give
0:49:55it away. Why do they do that? It's because they want to capture a percentage of the market
0:50:00that they can use as part of Google's strategy for advertising. Because they never want to
0:50:06live in a world where Apple dominated or Microsoft dominated mobile advertising because they
0:50:09could be locked out and now they can't be locked out because they give this
0:50:13thing away and then and they're integrated into it. Well by that standard
0:50:19Android absolutely is part of Google and if you separate an Android into Android
0:50:24Incorporated wouldn't that be weird to have this company that just created this
0:50:29thing that they gave away and was always operated at a massive loss because the
0:50:34whole goal was to make profits happen somewhere else. So I think it fits. Also I saw somebody
0:50:43on Twitter say that this is just a big tax thing. This is all about things like taxes
0:50:51and maybe saving on taxes and also being able to kind of like send messages to investors
0:50:58and the public about how profitable the core part of Google is versus the playground. But
0:51:04I don't, I am not a tax attorney, a corporate tax attorney, so I don't know about that conspiracy
0:51:10here.
0:51:11It doesn't seem right to me because it's all going to be owned by Alphabet in the same
0:51:14way that it was all owned by Google.
0:51:17Yeah, yeah, I mean, it may be structured differently, who knows, but I love it from a clarity standpoint
0:51:23though.
0:51:24I mean, I've said on this show many times and on other shows and I've written about
0:51:26it, I have for a long time talked about the two Googles, right?
0:51:30There's the Google that is what we know as Google, what we think of as Google, which
0:51:35is search and Android and YouTube.
0:51:39And then there's what I just called earlier the playground.
0:51:42It's the stuff where Larry and Sergey are trying to imagine what the next big things
0:51:48are and use the money from search advertising to fund investment in these other crazy areas,
0:51:58figuring that they may be able to control the future of the car or the future of robots
0:52:02or the future of biotech or whatever it is, the bets that they're placing.
0:52:08And so there's this really down to business money making run by lawyers, hard to work
0:52:13with company that's called Google.
0:52:16And then there's the big ideas company.
0:52:19And then you throw in acquisitions like Nest and you're like, okay, I don't even know,
0:52:22is that in the box?
0:52:23Is that out of the box?
0:52:24What's that about?
0:52:26And now I feel like this is much clearer that there is this huge engine of money that is
0:52:36driven by advertising, which is Google.
0:52:39And then there's all the other stuff.
0:52:40And all the other stuff is the speculative stuff that is in the playground, is in Larry
0:52:45and Sergey's playground.
0:52:47And that includes Nest, which I think is a bet on smart home technology, is essentially
0:52:52what that is.
0:52:53a bet about investing in the future of something just like the self-driving cars are, just
0:53:00with a product so it's a little closer to reality than something like the self-driving
0:53:04cars are. So I like that. This is them making clear that Google is not one thing and that
0:53:10there are at least two and maybe many more parts of Google that have totally different
0:53:16purposes. So I like that about it too because that's been true. It's always been true and
0:53:21And yet people got confused, they're like, "Why is a search engine building self-driving
0:53:25cars and investing in robots and hiring all the robot engineers?"
0:53:29The answer is the search engine wasn't doing that.
0:53:32That was Larry and Sergey who want to invest in robots and self-driving cars and not the
0:53:39poor people working on the search engines and on Android who don't get to play with
0:53:43robots, they just have to work on their software.
0:53:45So now that's Sundar's part of the business.
0:53:48He can worry about it.
0:53:50There's one thing that I wonder about this, that this decoupling of Google from everything
0:53:56else makes me think that Alphabet could make more Facebook-like acquisitions where they
0:54:04buy a company because they think it's interesting, or for whatever reason, but then it doesn't
0:54:10have to, like it can do a similar thing to Google, but it doesn't have to be rolled into
0:54:15Google.
0:54:16Well Nest, Nest is the model for this.
0:54:18Nest, I really believe that Google looked at Nest,
0:54:21that Larry and Sergey looked at Nest and said,
0:54:24"I really like what they're doing.
0:54:27Tony Fidele is really brilliant.
0:54:30They could probably change the world
0:54:32if they weren't struggling as a startup
0:54:34and got a huge influx of cash.
0:54:37Why don't we just buy them and give them some money
0:54:40and let them really blow people away with their technology?"
0:54:43I think that's the story of them buying Nest.
0:54:46So they could do that again.
0:54:48And you're right, I think this gives Google the freedom
0:54:50to acquire things that are core to Google,
0:54:52and it gives Alphabet the freedom to acquire things
0:54:55that are not core to Google, but that are like good bets,
0:54:58and that go beyond the ventures thing, right?
0:55:01'Cause ventures, they could just invest in something,
0:55:04but this is like buying it, just outright.
0:55:08This is not a good example, but if they said,
0:55:11"Oh, we get it now, TiVo is really great.
0:55:14"We're just gonna buy TiVo."
0:55:16And there wouldn't be the question of like,
0:55:17like how does TiVo fit in with Google?
0:55:18The answer is, well, no, we just bought it
0:55:20because we wanna do something.
0:55:21You know, we want it to do whatever TV things.
0:55:25Like I said, it's a bad example,
0:55:26but just to pick a company, that could happen, right?
0:55:29That kind of thing could happen.
0:55:31And it doesn't get all muddied in,
0:55:34what does that mean for Google?
0:55:35Like it's not, it doesn't mean anything for Google.
0:55:37If Google buys it, you'll know it's Google buying it.
0:55:39If Alphabet buys it, you'll know it's not Google buying it.
0:55:43- So a lot of people are asking the question,
0:55:46Could Alphabet buy Twitter now?
0:55:48[laughter]
0:55:51Sure they could.
0:55:53Sure.
0:55:54They really could.
0:55:55It would not shock me if you saw Alphabet make some...
0:56:02You know, this happens a lot, where companies buy other companies because they don't want their competition to get them.
0:56:08Not because... I mean Nest, I feel like in some ways that's what Nest was.
0:56:12Nest was. Yeah that's what I meant by the Facebook model as well like Facebook
0:56:17Instagram or whatsapp to protect Facebook. To protect Facebook right yeah
0:56:21yeah Facebook wanted Instagram not because Facebook needed Instagram to be
0:56:24in Facebook but because Instagram needed to not belong to their competitors. Yep
0:56:29and also like but the different one though is Oculus, Zuckerberg bought
0:56:35Oculus because he missed out on mobile like that was his reason like was he
0:56:40He bought Oculus because Facebook missed on mobile and they should have been ahead of
0:56:44mobile so he bought what he thought was the next big thing.
0:56:48He bought the leader in that so he bought Oculus, which is very smart.
0:56:51No, that's a great, Oculus is a great example of somebody's going to snap this up and we
0:56:57think it's big and you know if anybody's going to own it it's us.
0:57:01But in sometimes, I think smart business people look at acquisitions and realize that the
0:57:08The dream of taking some amazing product and integrating it into your product is a little
0:57:13bit false, and that really you've got two choices, which is you can swallow it whole
0:57:20and break it up into pieces and hopefully use the pieces, and that means the technology,
0:57:24the patents, the people, to build something good for your core business.
0:57:31Or you realize this thing works because of the way it's structured, and we just want
0:57:37it to stay around and we can help it be better and we can integrate it a little bit like
0:57:42I feel like those are more realistic acquisition scenarios and that the second one doesn't
0:57:48really happen unless you are a company with just money coming out your ears which you
0:57:52know Facebook, Google, Apple, those companies actually they could just buy whatever. Most
0:58:00companies like are much more tactical and Apple actually behaves I think more like a
0:58:03small company that tactically buys things. It's rare that they make a huge purchase.
0:58:08And we'll have to see how the Beats acquisition goes in the long term, right? I mean, this
0:58:11is one of those arguments, is in the end, did Apple get much out of Beats other than
0:58:17breaking it down, you know, breaking the music service down to its constituent parts and
0:58:21trying to integrate it into iTunes, and that may turn out to be, you know, not much. Or
0:58:27it may turn out to be something good, but it may turn out to be nothing, because it's
0:58:30hard to integrate those things. But there's this whole scenario of like, let's just buy
0:58:35it and keep it over there. And then, you know, it'll be friendly to us because we own it.
0:58:41And if one of them wins, we've already, we got both. Like, you know, you're hedging your
0:58:47bets.
0:58:48Instagram, Oculus is a good bet on the future. Instagram is a great hedge against your competition
0:58:52taking this thing that is great and and using it to compete with you. That's a great example
0:59:01of that where Facebook's like, well, what what is one of the things that is incredibly
0:59:05powerful for our service? It's photos. What's a danger? Well, Instagram is really great
0:59:09for photos too. Well, if we buy Instagram and kill it, that doesn't solve anything.
0:59:15And if we buy Instagram and integrate into Facebook, that doesn't really solve anything.
0:59:19we could just buy Instagram and make the links with Facebook really good and let Instagram
0:59:23be great on its own. And that's alphabet is structured like that. It's totally structured
0:59:28like that. So could they buy Twitter if they think that that Twitter is a good idea that
0:59:34just needs to be under new management and and have more cash to fulfill their vision,
0:59:40then maybe so it's a public company. So it gets complicated. I worry that the Twitter
0:59:46Twitter is just too far down the road. There's been too much water under the bridge for Twitter
0:59:52to be something that could get sucked in. I think Twitter would have to be laid pretty
0:59:56low. I think that confidence in it in the stock market would have to decrease and for
1:00:02it to be something where somebody would want to pick it up and say, "Well, we think we
1:00:06can rehab this and there's good stuff here." And Twitter doesn't seem to be in that place
1:00:10right now.
1:00:11So, Alphabet, it's crazy. It is crazy. I think it's very exciting though.
1:00:19Oztamir in the chat room said, "I'm still waiting to see if the next acquisition will
1:00:22pay off for Apple." That's a great example of something that's just getting broken down
1:00:27and absorbed. And in the end, you know, Apple is as much next -- Apple's technologies are
1:00:33like, basically next technologies more than their Apple technologies from that period
1:00:38anyway. But I'm with you. Alphabet, I think it's a great idea and we'll see how they put
1:00:43it into practice. But I just like the clarity of it. I like that, I mean, look, Google conspiracy
1:00:49theories will always exist, but it feels like there's some clarity of communication. Like
1:00:54this is what Google is now and this is what Google is not now. And so when you hear a
1:00:59story about the crazy self-driving cars or investing in robots or building an army of
1:01:05drones or whatever, to have that not be Google, I think it's good. I think it's good to be
1:01:12clear that that's not Google. That is Larry and Sergey building drones as part of their
1:01:19private army.
1:01:20And I genuinely believe that they will want to be as not involved in Google as possible.
1:01:26Like, just so boring, go away, I want to go to the moon. And I think that's where they
1:01:32are.
1:01:33give me money. I think that's kind of it, right, with Google. It's like, look, we built
1:01:38a machine, accidentally at Stanford, we built a machine that prints money. Keep writing
1:01:45the checks, folks. Sundar, keep it going, we'll check in, love what you're doing, love
1:01:50the product, don't get me wrong, love the product, but just keep writing the checks
1:01:55so that we can go play over here and this stuff and change the future. You're not about
1:01:58the future, except in your little area, you're about making us money. It will be interesting
1:02:04to see how that goes over with people who work at Google, that there's that, you know,
1:02:08that that Google is no longer this entity that is, you know, anything can happen. It's,
1:02:13you know, Google, new Google is we're about this. Maybe that's good. That's a focusing
1:02:21thing, but it does sort of change things. And I do think that the attitude is very much
1:02:24like just keep giving this money so that we can invest in more self-driving cars.
1:02:28And I love me some Sundar Pichai. I think he's awesome. Yeah I think he's a
1:02:34smart guy and I think you know having that gives some clarity too doesn't it
1:02:39it's like all the stuff here is you that's it like that's you it's you talk
1:02:45to us we're your bosses up here but that is your business not Android not Google
1:02:50not YouTube, all of it. If it's in Google, it's yours. Make it good.
1:02:57That's great. And send the checks. Because we got to buy some new
1:03:02self-driving cars. Doesn't hurt to have a non-white guy as a CEO of one of the
1:03:07big three tech companies as well. I feel like, well, yeah, one more, right?
1:03:14Because we already have Satya Nadella. Of course we do, yeah. Right? So, in fact,
1:03:19for probably a conversation for another time but I'm sure some tech magazine or
1:03:26even general interest magazine or website you know probably like a Time
1:03:31magazine cover that everybody goes Time magazine still being published but but
1:03:34will be somebody will do a big feature or takeout or what does it all mean
1:03:37thing about this being another chapter in the rise of non-white workers,
1:03:50especially Asian workers in Silicon Valley, to even more positions of
1:03:55prominence. And you know Sundar Pichai is another example of that, Satya Nadella
1:04:02is an example of that. And you know that has been, the workforce has been
1:04:07composed in the Silicon Valley workforce has been, if there's diversity from the white
1:04:13people in it, there are lots of Asian people who from all over Asia, from all the way from
1:04:19India to China and Japan in the valley, but now we are seeing them increasingly in these
1:04:27prominent positions. And it's just interesting. It's like maybe it took time for that to all
1:04:35just kind of like keep rolling but I think it's great to see and and so now
1:04:41we have Sundar in charge of Google I think I think it's a yeah he's a smart
1:04:45guy he's she's sharp guy and I think he will benefit from having clarity over
1:04:50his domain now yep no doubt thank you send him a tweet did you see the tweet I
1:04:57did see the tweet congratulations on your promotion oh and then he was like
1:05:02Thanks, thanks man.
1:05:04You know, there is this part of me that does really love that like
1:05:08Microsoft is run by a guy of Indian descent.
1:05:14Actually, yeah, both Nadella and Pachai were both born in India.
1:05:19So then you have the leader of Google was born in India
1:05:24and then the leader of Apple is openly homosexual. I think it's fantastic.
1:05:29I love that. I just think that is such a great thing that even five years ago we may have
1:05:35found to be strange, right? To hear, like really?
1:05:38Well Silicon Valley diversity is problematic in a lot of ways. A lot of ways. But at least
1:05:45we can point to a major gay executive, a couple major Indian executives. If you want to throw
1:05:54in Yahoo, you've got a major woman executive and HP has had a woman CEO and there's some
1:06:02of that's going on.
1:06:05And you're right, five years ago, well, five years ago it was Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer
1:06:10and Steve Jobs, right, in those parts, in those roles.
1:06:13>> Yeah, and like you know, we're saying about we know that diversity isn't great, like we
1:06:18know that.
1:06:19know that is a thing that I think 2015 will be remembered for is people
1:06:25realizing a lot of this stuff like actually truly realizing it but one of
1:06:29the ways it gets better is from the top and also the I know it will be very easy
1:06:37to say well this is going to be business as usual as Google because in the end
1:06:41it's still you know it's Sundar and it's still Larry and Sergey running the
1:06:44running the show from above I don't know this is this is different than Tim Cook
1:06:49taking over at Apple and this is different than Satya Nadella taking over at Microsoft,
1:06:54but both of those gentlemen showed that they were not afraid to make change in how their
1:07:00company had done things over the long term. And I think their companies have benefited
1:07:05from it. And it will be interesting to see what happens at Google, but I would say it's
1:07:13more likely than not that Sundar will be able to do this. This will give him, he's been
1:07:17invested in power with this title and he's been giving clarity about what his business
1:07:21is. And I think you'll see Google maybe make moves that they would not have made before
1:07:27when they were this amorphous mass of things and who's in charge of what division. I think
1:07:32we may see a much more clarity in Google now and coming from letting Sundar make some decisions
1:07:40about what they're going to do and what they're going to focus on that were harder to make
1:07:43before when it was this bigger thing and kind of unwieldy.
1:07:46Should we do some Ask Upgrade?
1:07:49We should.
1:07:50Jason, who is bringing Ask Upgrade to the people this week?
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1:09:58click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in "upgrade". That's
1:10:02Stamps.com, click on the microphone, enter "upgrade". Thank you so much to Stamps.com
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1:10:13to the people.
1:10:14To the people. Power to the people!
1:10:19So talking about those powerful people, first off Andrew would like to know, "Any thoughts
1:10:26Jason having been independent for about a year how is the outlook
1:10:30are your business and personal economics sustainable at their current
1:10:34uh rate? I think I want to talk about this more in mid-september
1:10:39when um when it's been a year but the short version is
1:10:43um I'm having a good time uh the economics seem to be fine
1:10:50um it is not quite the mix economically than I that I expected I
1:10:55I have some stuff that is less money than I thought and other stuff that's more money
1:10:59than I thought.
1:11:02Not commuting is great and doing this show and other podcast stuff has been a great addition.
1:11:08I really enjoy having part of my life be doing podcasts, not just for fun but actually as
1:11:14part of my job.
1:11:16And so that's my thought about it.
1:11:19What about you, Myke?
1:11:20Independent for about a year next week.
1:11:22Well actually no, no it's we actually I think I quit my job after you.
1:11:29Well you did but you started Relay before so okay well you know how are you a little
1:11:34quick super quick status report on you how's it how's your outlook?
1:11:40Things are really good I mean I make a lot more money just in general which is fantastic
1:11:46and you know if the money is one of the things and that is a big thing for me but I am happy
1:11:51I mean the things that I am unhappy about are like just not issues really.
1:11:58And any of the things that I tend to be unhappy about in my life tend not to be work now.
1:12:04Which is, you know, I think that's rare for most people and definitely rare for me having
1:12:08looked over the last five years of my life.
1:12:11I am very happy.
1:12:12My main problem is just trying to balance my time and I've been making some steps along
1:12:19that road recently but I've got some other things coming up that are going to take that
1:12:23away again so I'm just trying to balance things out a bit better to try and better understand
1:12:29where my time is going, where my money is coming from and just trying to build not a
1:12:36better work-life balance per se but a better balance in my work.
1:12:42Yeah, I'm having the exact same issues now which is now I've reached the point where
1:12:46I have to make some decisions about what do I spend my time working on because I'm fortunate
1:12:52in that I have more potential work than I can do. So I need to choose. I need to make
1:12:59smart decisions about what I do and what I say no to, where I choose to put my time,
1:13:03and then how I structure my time. And that's all going on. So that's a whole other level
1:13:08beyond the basic level, which is, you know, "Oh God, is this going to work? Am I not going
1:13:13to have any money, am I going to have to start applying for jobs anywhere because I just,
1:13:20you know, I can't pay my mortgage payment. That's not been the case, but that leads to
1:13:26that other level, which is how do I structure this, how do I make these decisions, you know,
1:13:31what do I spend my time on, what do I not spend my time on.
1:13:34>> Yep. So, next up we have a question from John, and this is a Twitter-based question.
1:13:42John asks if Twitter turned off its feed to the third-party clients that turn off
1:13:46the API and 100% as of the first of January 2016 do you think this would be
1:13:54a catalyst for people to leave I think no yeah we've already seen attempts like
1:14:03when app.net came about it was because Twitter was becoming extremely hostile
1:14:10and was becoming even more so and we all tried it we all used it and we all went
1:14:18back to Twitter even though nothing changed so I believe people would just
1:14:23get used to the official clients and would complain and moan as much as
1:14:28possible until Twitter actually made some changes that others would want to
1:14:33see but I just don't see it happening quite simply because the reasons that
1:14:42other services like app.net didn't stick is because it's not just us anymore and
1:14:48I think for most of the tech nerds that are on Twitter they probably follow a
1:14:55bunch of people in their lives or people that they admire or respect that wouldn't
1:14:59move because they already use the first-party clients, so it's just not a problem.
1:15:06And I know I don't want to be checking two services.
1:15:09So I think that the only way that people switch away is if it dies, completely dies.
1:15:17Yeah, I agree.
1:15:20I find great value in third-party clients, and I use a third-party client on iOS, but
1:15:25I agree with you that realistically pretty much everybody would just switch.
1:15:28if somebody says, "Well, no, I wouldn't," I would just stop. It's like, "All right,
1:15:31well, I know that especially some class of tech nerds who've got a third-party client
1:15:36that they really rely on would get really angry and they would leave, and some of them
1:15:39might never come back, but others would." For me, you know, the thing that would kill
1:15:43it for me and make it very hard for me to use Twitter is if they killed, like, the Mac
1:15:49client, if they just killed it and said, "Just use the website," that would make it very
1:15:55hard for me, although I would just, you know, again, I would just go on using IOS, I suppose,
1:16:01at that point. But I don't think that's going to kill Twitter. We are, you liken this to,
1:16:10you alluded to the idea that we would just kind of go to the official client and complain.
1:16:14Sometimes I wonder, probably not, but I wonder sometimes if the nerdiest people with the
1:16:19most attention to detail and the most technology knowledge, if they were using the official
1:16:24Twitter clients, would Twitter feel more pressure and get more feedback to make their products
1:16:30better? Probably not, but I do think that there's a whole class of users who would be
1:16:37really persnickety and finicky and they're power users and they really want Twitter to
1:16:40be better and they're using third-party clients. And if they were forced into the app, I do
1:16:46wonder if perhaps Twitter would be like, "Oh, wow, people are really complaining about this
1:16:51feature and now people are just like "forget it I'll just use this other app that does
1:16:55it." But this comes back to what we were talking about last time as well which is pick something
1:17:01Twitter. I feel like the current situation with third parties with these tokens and all
1:17:05of that, it's an untenable, it feels like a transitional thing and yet it was done by
1:17:11a group that is no longer basically running Twitter. So I feel like Twitter needs to decide
1:17:16something. Are you a service that has third-party clients that offer alternatives? If you are,
1:17:24give them access to in the API to all of your features. If in as we said in exchange for
1:17:31showing your ads or whatever you have to do, whatever you have to do. If you're not, then
1:17:36maybe you should just say we're going to close the door because we're in this really weird
1:17:41situation where, as nice as Twitterific is, as much as people love Tweetbot, they have
1:17:47limited futures because of the token thing, and limited features because there are all
1:17:53these Twitter features that do not work on third-party clients because they're not in
1:17:57the API. So, which is it, Twitter? I feel like that is the most important thing because
1:18:03right now we're in this weird limbo state, so I don't want them to turn off the feed
1:18:08to third party clients, I would actually like them to go the other direction and say, "You
1:18:10know what? Third party clients, help us as a service. Go ahead and make them and make
1:18:16them good as long as you follow our rules." But if they're not going to do that, I kind
1:18:22of feel like they should just go the other direction because this limbo state is not
1:18:25useful for anyone.
1:18:27Yep, 100%. So Frank asked, "How long do you recommend podcasters keep session files like
1:18:37logic files or GarageBand files after releasing how do you handle this?
1:18:42We're gonna get some really different answers. So how do you handle this Myke?
1:18:47I keep them for a time period until my hard disk starts to fill up and then I
1:18:56go in and delete the oldest few months. Because for me so many of my shows are
1:19:05are topical. Yeah, yeah. And they just don't need anything done to them after a certain period of
1:19:12time. I would imagine you'd keep them behind the app forever. Maybe I should do that. I think you
1:19:20should. I actually have them saved on a different part of my system so that I have all of the others
1:19:24go into just a, like just a folder I call podcast scratches, and it just lives there.
1:19:32yeah i feel like if it's something that could live um longer i think i talked about this before uh
1:19:38that you should keep them around i keep everything because i've got this drobo that's got a billion
1:19:43terabytes in it and so it's uh you know i've got the space for them so i save them all um
1:19:49i would imagine that eventually i will start deleting old you know old clockwise's and old
1:19:56uh the episodes of upgrade that i've added are less um it's less likely i'm ever going to need
1:20:03to go back to the masters for any of those you know even if you do a best of um you can pull
1:20:08from the mp3 file and it sounds fine and and you know i and i don't honestly don't anticipate that
1:20:14i would do that very much for incomparable because those things last and i'm always pulling things
1:20:19out for for the end of year recap shows and things like that i keep those around and that allows me
1:20:24to do things like I generated our Star Wars you know episode 2 and episode 3
1:20:30episodes I I generated new versions of them you know a few months after we
1:20:36posted them with you know the like as a special version and total party kill I
1:20:41did like an audiobook version of one of our seasons and I was able to do all of
1:20:45that because I kept the Masters around but you know so so somewhere between
1:20:50until your hard drive I mean really it's until your hard drive fills up I think
1:20:53is a good answer, but it's more important if it's something that you might actually
1:20:59need access to later. And some stuff is timeless and some stuff is timely. Like, I would throw
1:21:05away all my old clockwise's tomorrow if I needed to, but I'm not going to throw away
1:21:08the incomparable radio theater because I still go back. I actually will still open up radio
1:21:13theater things. I was doing this the other day because I already have the intro music
1:21:17for a certain recurring thing, and I can just copy it out of Logic and paste it into a new
1:21:21project and I get all of the volume and all of the tracks and they're all in the
1:21:26right sequence so it's great to have that kind of stuff around but for timely
1:21:32stuff it's a lot less important. And Chalakan asks finally today do you think
1:21:38Apple will sell curated watch faces on the App Store? This is a really good one
1:21:45I'm curious about what what you think. Eventually yes they will. Will they do it
1:21:50anytime soon? I don't think so. Maybe version 3 or 4?
1:21:57Yeah, right now watch faces for Apple Watch feel like
1:22:01they're like, you know, the apps that are on your Mac
1:22:05or on your iPhone that only update when the OS updates.
1:22:09That's what the watch faces are. It's like they're in the OS. They're part of
1:22:11the OS. If they want to add new watch faces they will add them in the OS.
1:22:15I do think that at some point, yeah, they will have to, but I don't think it'll
1:22:19it'll be soon. Certainly, I mean, watchOS 2, we know what's in it and that's, you know, watch
1:22:25faces built by third parties are not one of the things that's in it. So I think it's inevitable,
1:22:31I think there'll be an approval process, but I think it's more likely that we'll see kind of like
1:22:37new watch faces show up from Apple over time than, you know, with software updates.
1:22:46it's going to be a long time before we we see more of that in the in the uh like in an app store kind
1:22:51of model so i agree with you mike i mean we're getting some with watchos too but not nearly enough
1:22:59there should be a couple more like what they're doing just a couple of photo faces
1:23:02and you can add a photo face of your own right now the strategy is look if you want to customize
1:23:08these these faces with um with complications we'll let you do that that's that's where you the the
1:23:15developers get in. And I think that's, I think it's fine, honestly, I think it's
1:23:21fine. I would like to see more faces on a more variety of faces from Apple and I
1:23:25hope that comes, but I can understand them being really cautious with such a
1:23:29new platform about something as key as the watch face. I get it.
1:23:34Yeah it doesn't bother me, I mean sure would I like to see some of my favorite
1:23:37UI designers create great-looking user interfaces for the watch face? Sure. Do I
1:23:44I need it? No, because in all honesty like the the utility face that I use is
1:23:51really great looking and I changed the color on it every time I change my watch
1:23:54band and it makes me happy like that's all I really need I don't need one in
1:23:58that to be honest. Right so that's about it for this week if you would like to
1:24:04find our show notes you can go ahead and visit relay.fm/upgrades/49
1:24:10If you want to find Jason online he is @jsnell on Twitter and he writes over at sixcolors.com
1:24:17and hosts many other great podcasts on the incomparable.com and of course is the host
1:24:22of Clockwise on Relay FM as well.
1:24:25I am @imike and I host a whole host of other shows at Relay FM like I am on Connected and
1:24:34I'm also on Analog, Cortex, Virtual, Quiztiff, probably missing one or two.
1:24:40I've definitely done that, I've definitely missed some.
1:24:43But, anyhow, that's how it goes.
1:24:45On with the pen addict, there you go.
1:24:46Now, never mind, I'm just going to move on from here.
1:24:49Thanks again to our sponsor this week, our sponsors this week, Stamps.com, Hover, and
1:24:55GoToMeeting.
1:24:56If you enjoy the show, please go and support them.
1:24:59And we'll be back next week.
1:25:01Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.
1:25:03Goodbye Jason Snell.
1:25:06Oh, look at that.
1:25:08Least rag!
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