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Upgrade

47: Trust Us, It's Doing Well

 

00:00:00   *Ding*

00:00:00   [Intro Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode number 47. Today's show is brought to you by Igloo and

00:00:15   intranet you'll actually like, Stamps.com, Postage On Demand and GoToMeeting. Make it easy to meet

00:00:21   with your team wherever you need to, wherever you are. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined

00:00:26   as always by your host of mine, Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:29   Now Myke, we're getting dangerously close to number 50 now.

00:00:33   Very, very close now.

00:00:35   Very close.

00:00:36   We're getting very close to one year of everything of Relay and then a couple of weeks later,

00:00:40   one year of upgrade.

00:00:41   Yeah.

00:00:42   It's a beautiful thing.

00:00:43   Yeah, pretty soon we will have time for reflection.

00:00:46   Probably not now, but soon.

00:00:48   So this time last year, were you still at IDG?

00:00:50   Oh yeah, yeah.

00:00:51   Yeah, so again, that's a couple of weeks away, isn't it?

00:00:55   Yeah, this is July. I think, so this time last year I was still at IDG and in fact it was probably a couple weeks from now that I got the word that everything was going well and that I was gonna go at that time.

00:01:12   That's coming up. That was a painful August and late August, early September. That was the worst. But yeah, so we're not quite there yet. Not quite at a year.

00:01:24   But look how far we've come. Look how far we've come. How about that? 46 episodes plus a few

00:01:30   minutes of episode 47 and we're here. We're doing great, I think. Talking about doing great,

00:01:36   you took the European countries quiz. I did. Somebody on Twitter said, "I think Jason should

00:01:44   take this quiz of European countries and see if he does any better than Myke did with the US states."

00:01:50   And not only did you do better than me, I think you did better than I would do taking this quiz.

00:01:55   Wow.

00:01:56   Because there are some countries on here that I don't know where they are on a map.

00:02:01   So basically, and we'll put a link in the show notes to the image I tweeted,

00:02:06   a screenshot I tweeted of doing it, somebody tweeted this and I just immediately responded

00:02:10   with "okay here it is" and I just did it right then, sitting on the couch on my iPad I did it.

00:02:15   And the problems that I, the ones that I missed, I actually, I got in my own head about the Baltics.

00:02:23   And I've been to Estonia. I know exactly where Estonia is. Latvia and Lithuania, you know,

00:02:28   I had it right. And then I said, "No, maybe it's this other way, which is the one that has got the

00:02:33   Kaliningrad going through it, the Russian enclave and, or exclave, I guess." And I switched them and

00:02:41   and I got those wrong so I got the two of the Baltics that I that I transposed

00:02:45   and I also transposed and my apologies to your girlfriend I transposed Romania

00:02:53   and what was the country I transposed it with? Bulgaria? Bulgaria yeah I just had

00:03:01   them I just had them reversed and then all of my other mistakes are because

00:03:06   when Yugoslavia broke up it broke up into like 90,000 different countries

00:03:11   so yep so yeah I genuinely think that yeah 39 is not only a great score it's

00:03:18   probably a better score than I would have gotten what what European countries

00:03:22   are the ones that baffle you oh most of Eastern Europe hmm like it all of the

00:03:28   kind of the same kind of one so I wouldn't know any of the ex Lucas

00:03:32   Yugoslavia countries place I got a few of them although I did I did put like I

00:03:37   I put Croatia and Slovenia on twice.

00:03:41   Because I was like, maybe this one?

00:03:44   Maybe this one?

00:03:45   Oh nice tactic, nice tactic.

00:03:46   It didn't pay off but it was a good idea.

00:03:49   Well I think it did pay off because I think I got them right and wrong so that they counted

00:03:53   for me but they also counted against the total.

00:03:56   But I got to some of them and I'm like, I don't even know.

00:03:58   I thought this one was Croatia but this can't be Croatia because then what's that?

00:04:03   And there are so, there are so many, like I like finding Kosovo on a map was, that was

00:04:09   just not, I, I, you know, I did get, and I, and I totally spaced on Montenegro.

00:04:15   I had no idea.

00:04:16   Um, I think, uh, yeah, those, those, I just totally, I totally blew some of those, but

00:04:21   I did get like, you know, I got Macedonia.

00:04:24   That was a good one.

00:04:25   Um, I, you know, I did, I did okay.

00:04:28   I did okay.

00:04:29   The East Eastern Europe is trickier.

00:04:31   It is trickier over there.

00:04:33   So like I would probably get the like the Nordic countries mixed up as well so I think

00:04:38   you did a good job getting those too.

00:04:41   Part of the advantage there is that I have been there.

00:04:43   Yeah see I've not been to a lot of Europe.

00:04:46   I've actually been to more of America I think.

00:04:50   And I've been to probably more of Europe than you then it's possible though you know you

00:04:54   at least could spot Romania on a map.

00:04:58   I hope so.

00:04:59   Having been there, you should probably do that.

00:05:03   But yeah, it was, yeah, that was kind of fun.

00:05:05   I have to say, I was kind of proud of myself.

00:05:08   I mean, 30 out of 39, I wish I was kicking myself

00:05:10   about Lithuania and Latvia, but,

00:05:13   and then I got to Yugoslavia.

00:05:15   It's just like, that's tough.

00:05:18   That's a lot.

00:05:19   Growing up learning geography, it was really simple

00:05:21   'cause it was just Yugoslavia.

00:05:23   And now it's not like it's just two or three,

00:05:26   it's like seven different countries.

00:05:28   Oh my god.

00:05:29   So that was harder, but I know where Greece is.

00:05:33   That's the important one.

00:05:34   - So let's take this conversation from the Earth,

00:05:40   from the countries on the Earth,

00:05:41   and propel it out into space.

00:05:43   - Into space!

00:05:45   - You and Steven got on the phone

00:05:47   and spoke about space for a while,

00:05:49   and it was put into our B-sides feed,

00:05:51   which is like extras. - On the pod phone.

00:05:54   - On the pod phone.

00:05:55   - It wasn't like an actual phone call where,

00:05:57   Hello? Steven there? Are we talking about space? It's not quite...

00:06:01   Let me get him for you, he's just outside.

00:06:03   It's not, "Shayden, your friend is here to talk about space!"

00:06:07   That would be an absolutely great way to start a podcast.

00:06:11   To call and have it be somebody's mom answers?

00:06:14   Yeah.

00:06:15   Yeah, sure.

00:06:16   "Your buddy's on the phone!"

00:06:19   That's a new kind of pod. The phone cast, the pod phone.

00:06:22   Yeah, we did. We talked for about 50 minutes about space stuff.

00:06:27   We regaled you with space stuff for so long

00:06:30   on two podcasts in the last couple of weeks

00:06:33   that we decided we would nerd out a little bit

00:06:35   about space on our own and posted it.

00:06:36   If people wanna listen to it,

00:06:38   you gotta go to the B-sides.

00:06:39   So that's what relay.fm/b-sides/12.

00:06:44   - Yeah, it'll be on the show this week as well.

00:06:47   - Yeah, so you can check that out.

00:06:48   And I've had a bunch of people say they liked it,

00:06:50   which was really great.

00:06:51   And I had a bunch of people say they would love for it

00:06:54   to be an actual podcast on relay

00:06:56   to which I say anything is possible and you know we couldn't contain ourselves

00:07:00   and that's why we did it we just thought it would be fun to try and see what

00:07:03   people thought and keep watching the skies yes there's a clock up there you

00:07:08   can keep watching it in the space I really enjoyed it I listen to it today

00:07:13   and it was good because you know I as I said to you both when you were bending

00:07:18   my ear off on this show and Stephen was doing the same on connected went during

00:07:23   the Pluto stuff. I have an interest in it that I've never really explored in any

00:07:30   way but like most nerds I'm just like interested in space especially this you

00:07:35   know Earth 2 planet which you spoke about a little bit that's the name I'll

00:07:39   give it because the name it actually has like Kevlar 4 2 2 B side or something I

00:07:46   I don't know.

00:07:47   - Kevlar/b-side/12 is the name of the planet.

00:07:51   (laughing)

00:07:52   - The quote, it's official name.

00:07:54   That's it, it's just not exciting or memorable.

00:07:56   So I liked hearing about that too.

00:07:58   So it was fun and people should go listen to it

00:08:00   and let Jason and Steven know what you think about it.

00:08:04   - Yeah.

00:08:05   Yeah, I think I would say we would love to talk

00:08:08   about space stuff more often.

00:08:10   And there's lots, we got lots going on in our lives.

00:08:13   So we'd love to hear what people think

00:08:16   if they liked it or not, and we'll go from there.

00:08:19   But it was fun to do, and it was fun to be able to do that with the relay B-side thing

00:08:24   and just say, "Well, let's just talk and we'll put it in the B-side feed and it'll just be..."

00:08:29   You know, that gave us some place to put it, which was nice.

00:08:31   So, yeah, check it out.

00:08:32   >> Yeah, that's something we should do more with.

00:08:34   I mean, we're not...

00:08:36   We don't really do a lot of the After Dark type stuff, because it's, you know, there

00:08:41   There tends not to be too much to actually go in there that is already in the shows.

00:08:47   But doing things like little specials and stuff, we should try and do more of that.

00:08:52   We're thinking of maybe doing a big Q&A thing for our one year anniversary, so that will

00:08:57   go in there and stuff like that.

00:08:58   So listen out for that in a couple of weeks time, because we're gearing up to our one

00:09:02   year anniversary now as we mentioned at the top of the show.

00:09:06   I just wanted to mention, I'm very excited, Jason, tomorrow my bank will be enabling Apple

00:09:10   pay so I can go buy as much Manchego as I like from Whole Foods if I really want to

00:09:14   do that.

00:09:15   Excellent.

00:09:16   I can go do that.

00:09:17   You do.

00:09:18   You want to do that.

00:09:19   You do.

00:09:20   I just bought some Manchego with Apple Pay yesterday.

00:09:21   So if that's the case I'm going to be out of the house tomorrow buying all sorts of

00:09:27   crazy cheeses from local stores.

00:09:31   With touchless, contactless payments.

00:09:34   Indeed.

00:09:35   So this is, this is, um, so neither of your banks have it at the official Apple Pay in

00:09:40   the UK launch, right?

00:09:42   Don't you have two banks?

00:09:44   Yeah, um, one of the banks, Barclays, was trying to do their own thing, and they've

00:09:50   now since rescinded on that, and they actually lost someone high up in the company, like

00:09:55   they got fired or something, like one of the chief executives or something.

00:09:59   I was gonna say, where they're high up, just hopefully they can wander through the building

00:10:02   and find them tell them to go down the stairs. I would hate to be lost high up in a bank

00:10:07   that would be terrible that'd be frightening. It would be horrible it happened to me a few

00:10:11   times and HSBC the other bank they that I use they were meant to be on launch day but

00:10:19   mysteriously have pushed the date twice but they are they have made official press releases

00:10:25   and such to say that tomorrow is their live date. So okay so wait so HSBC is going to

00:10:30   be the one that goes live first.

00:10:32   - Yeah, yeah.

00:10:33   - And then Barclays-- - Barclays don't have a date.

00:10:35   - Right, because they were the ones

00:10:36   who had their own thing

00:10:37   and so they really loved their own thing

00:10:39   and then, and now they're backtracking on that.

00:10:41   Well, I can't wait to hear what your Apple Pay experience

00:10:44   is like once you do start using it.

00:10:47   That'll be interesting, just different perspective

00:10:50   and also what stores have it.

00:10:52   It seems like they've made an effort

00:10:54   to get in a bunch of good,

00:10:56   have a bunch of good partners.

00:10:58   I know James Thompson keeps talking about

00:11:00   going down to his local Waitrose in Glasgow, which I've been in, and using Apple Pay, which

00:11:07   sounds very, you know, civilized and fun.

00:11:10   The partners thing is a little bit weird though, because Apple were promoting a select list

00:11:16   of partners that they're working with, but it should actually work on any contactless

00:11:20   terminal, which is basically every single major store in the country.

00:11:25   So it's a bit...

00:11:26   I'm gonna do some more testing on this, because I've never been able to really find a definitive

00:11:30   answer but my understanding is even it says this on Apple's website you know or

00:11:35   like you know any contactless any store that uses contactless but they're using

00:11:39   these partners I don't really get it so I'm gonna go and actually try that out

00:11:42   myself in some places that are like unofficial you know like I've seen

00:11:48   people use it in like bakeries and stuff just like if you have contactless yeah

00:11:52   you can try it and see if it works and a lot of times it will work and and

00:11:56   And sometimes the partners are a network

00:11:58   or a hardware provider.

00:12:00   And the individual store isn't a partner per se,

00:12:03   but they've turned on Apple Pay for their terminal

00:12:07   and so it works and they may not even know.

00:12:10   So it's worth a try.

00:12:11   I'm liking Apple Pay.

00:12:14   I mean, I have limited places where it's available

00:12:17   and then I go to some places and I see terminals

00:12:19   and I think, well, I could try this here.

00:12:22   I want it to be in more places

00:12:24   because I do find it really convenient.

00:12:25   There was a give and take that I had with Nevin Murgon

00:12:30   on Twitter where he was saying,

00:12:33   "Well, it's very obvious that Apple Pay is better

00:12:36   from the phone than from the Apple Watch."

00:12:38   Because for him, he preferred it that way.

00:12:41   My response was, "Well, I always use it with my watch

00:12:45   instead of my phone, always, because I think it's easier

00:12:48   to tap the little button," which also made him mad

00:12:53   'cause you don't tap a button, you push a button,

00:12:55   which I feel like if you do it a couple of times,

00:12:57   then you're tapping on the button.

00:12:58   That's how that works.

00:13:00   But he's a designer and thinks that you only tap

00:13:03   on a touchscreen, I guess.

00:13:04   So I, anyway, I push the little friend button

00:13:07   a couple of times and it's a double push, if you will.

00:13:12   And it brings up Apple Pay on my watch and I go boop.

00:13:15   And then the phone or the watch vibrates and I've paid.

00:13:20   I think it's really convenient.

00:13:21   I wish it was in more places.

00:13:22   I think this is the challenge

00:13:24   all this contactless stuff is that it's going to be a little while before it's everywhere so it's

00:13:28   hard to leave the house with only Apple Pay because depending on where you go you know this place will

00:13:34   have Apple Pay and this place won't so you end up bringing your wallet with you anyway but it's

00:13:39   still fun and convenient and all this time later I'm still really enjoying using it so I hope you

00:13:44   enjoy it. Yeah it is without a doubt the thing that is pulling America kicking and screaming

00:13:51   into the modern age of this stuff. So it's interesting but not surprising that Apple

00:13:56   was the company to do it. Google tried.

00:14:00   Yeah, well, yeah, and Google will benefit now because these things all work with Google

00:14:05   Pay. Do they call it Google Pay now? They changed the name of it.

00:14:08   Isn't it Android Pay?

00:14:10   Android Pay maybe from Google Wallet. But it's a pay and there's Samsung Pay and I don't

00:14:15   even know. There's many pays now. But they all do the same thing. So they benefit. All

00:14:19   other vendors, this is not an Apple-only technology, so all the, all of these terminals will support

00:14:25   those other, those other things too, but it really kind of took Apple to push it over

00:14:28   the edge. Yeah, it's fun. I, I enjoy it. I like, you know, like I said, my Whole Foods

00:14:34   by my house is the place where I use it the most because it's right there and we're always

00:14:37   going over there to get three things because it's the supermarket we can walk to in less

00:14:42   than five minutes. So that's when we, that's when we do it, but it's fun. I'm, you know,

00:14:46   I enjoy it. It feels like the future.

00:14:50   -Stuart has written in to give more advice on shuffling.

00:14:54   Jason, can you take this one before I tear my ears off?

00:14:58   -Yeah. This is gonna be the last one,

00:15:00   'cause we've got lots of people, even when we say things in the show,

00:15:04   we get people asking us if we know about the thing we said in the show,

00:15:07   which means I guess they just missed what we said in the show.

00:15:09   But I did want to mention this,

00:15:11   'cause I thought this was a bit of nice practical advice from Stuart

00:15:14   for me wanting to listen to songs from an artist

00:15:17   without adding them to my library using Apple Music.

00:15:19   And the answer is you go to the artist,

00:15:20   you tap on their top songs list.

00:15:22   If they have one, again, they don't all have them,

00:15:24   but if they do, it's a sort of like the ones

00:15:26   that get played or bought or whatever the most

00:15:28   in Apple's database.

00:15:30   If you play the first track there,

00:15:31   at that point, it will just play that list

00:15:33   of the top 10 songs from that artist.

00:15:35   There may be duplicates in there, that is a risk,

00:15:37   but it's not a bad approach.

00:15:39   If you really just wanna say,

00:15:40   "Hey, play me some things from this artist

00:15:43   I've never heard of but I'm intrigued by. So that's not a bad tip. So thank you, Stuart.

00:15:48   And thus ends our discussion of shuffling music in an artist in Apple Music.

00:15:53   This will only come up again if it is fixed.

00:15:57   If there is a development, yes.

00:15:58   Or, yeah, if there is a change in which makes Justin Jason happy. But other than that, never

00:16:03   again. Thank you to everybody that suggested something.

00:16:07   Listen to Adrian wrote in about the iPods and in regards to the iPod touch and Adrian has said time will tell but this seems like

00:16:14   The perfect gift of my daughter's birthday. She's 10 loves taking photos

00:16:18   She wanted to be able to carry around her music and she even recently wanted a Fitbit

00:16:22   The new iPod touch has the m8 processor and he went to mention that he loves to show

00:16:27   I have a couple of cousins around the same age both girls and

00:16:32   was there we had a family barbecue on the weekend and they both

00:16:37   Love their iPads. That is what they are big on

00:16:41   for many of the same reasons like for taking photos and stuff like that and there my uncle works for a

00:16:49   Telephone company a mobile phone company

00:16:51   So there are lots of phones in the house, but they both much much prefer their iPads

00:17:00   But I can see how for Adrien's daughter, there may be a little bit more specific use cases like

00:17:06   tracking her steps and activity, which is really cool that at that age she wants to do that.

00:17:10   I can see how the iPod touch could make sense for her in this scenario. I mean, that's the thing, right?

00:17:16   I think when we were talking last week, I don't think, and you know, we can be correct,

00:17:21   it is so much that we were saying we didn't understand the iPod touch's placement, but more like why,

00:17:28   especially the Nano still exists. I think the iPod Touch makes sense in some areas,

00:17:33   and I think primarily as a game console, but I do think that the iPad is still better for

00:17:39   like 90% of tasks than the iPod Touch.

00:17:43   Right, but this is a good example of taking pictures, carrying around music, and even

00:17:48   the sort of like steps and things like that. I wonder whether this is a common thing or

00:17:53   whether she's a real edge case, this 10-year-old girl, but it's possible. My son is 10 and

00:18:00   just about to turn 11, and he has my original iPad Mini and loves it, and that's the thing

00:18:06   that he uses all the time. He absolutely loves it. But again, he's not carrying it around

00:18:10   and taking pictures with it and putting it in his pocket, because his pocket wouldn't

00:18:14   hit it anyway. But it's just like for him, it's all about the games, and he likes the

00:18:20   bigger screen. And we're talking about as he goes off to middle school, we're talking

00:18:23   about handing down an iPhone to him just so that he's got something to contact us since

00:18:27   he's going to be walking a longer distance to get to school and he's going to be not

00:18:30   walked to school by us every day. So you know, he's going to be with his friends, but we

00:18:34   want to we want to have a lifeline there. So we want to have him be able to call. And

00:18:38   there's this question of is he going to just completely embrace the iPhone or is he going

00:18:41   to still use the iPad and he declared on sort of like unprompted to us the other day that

00:18:47   he thinks he'll probably still use the iPad even if he gets an iPhone because of the big

00:18:52   screen.

00:18:53   He likes playing games on the big screen and I think that's probably true but you know

00:18:57   the iPad is not for everybody so the iPod Touch gives you another another angle to it.

00:19:03   I think it really is a kid's device though.

00:19:07   Yeah I think so.

00:19:08   I do hear from people every now and then who have a cheap cell phone plan and feel like

00:19:15   they've got Wi-Fi pretty much everywhere they go.

00:19:17   The John Siracuses, if you will.

00:19:19   This is the John Siracuses of the world from a few years ago. Now he has his iPhone. But

00:19:25   yeah, just like John, who they look at the cost, you know, data plans aren't cheap. Now

00:19:30   the way data plans are structured is changing. And with family plans, it can actually be

00:19:36   not a bad deal. And if you've got a certain number of people on a plan already, it can

00:19:42   start to make more sense, like you might as well just get a phone or use a hand-me-down

00:19:46   phone, but there are people for whom that is not worth it, and that, you know, they

00:19:52   don't need data when they're out and about, and they've got a cheap phone, maybe prepaid,

00:19:57   that just gives them that lifeline when they're out and about, and that's enough.

00:20:01   And for now, I think that is still an interesting kind of sliver of the market, but I do think

00:20:07   that over time there will be plenty of other ways to get people on data or cheap and you

00:20:17   know we'll have to see. I think that's one reason there's no cellular iPod touch is that

00:20:21   I do think there's a class of people who would say well why should I get an iPhone all I

00:20:26   want is data and I actually thought about that is that if I were a woman or if I was

00:20:29   a man with a purse I could put it that way too if I had a big bag that I carried around

00:20:34   all the time, I wonder whether I would really need my iPhone at all. Because if I had a

00:20:38   cellular iPad mini, let's say, that might be enough. I mean, I don't take calls very

00:20:44   often. It's all texts and using data. So, you know, I think it'll be interesting to

00:20:50   see in the next five or ten years what happens with access to data for cheap, and, you know,

00:20:56   what do you pay for, and is there a way to get fairly cheaply—in the U.S., anyway,

00:21:03   is still an issue to fairly cheaply get access to a lot of data when you're out and about.

00:21:09   But right now I think that there is a class of people who are like, you know, just not,

00:21:13   it doesn't make sense to pay that monthly fee for a smartphone plan.

00:21:20   I actually have a question for you about plans and upgrading and stuff like that.

00:21:27   Oh, upgrading.

00:21:28   Upgrading, upgrading on upgrade.

00:21:30   Let's take our first break first, because we're still not out of the follow-up.

00:21:34   So we may as well take a break in the middle of the follow-up now, because I'm about to

00:21:38   bring in a mini topic halfway through.

00:21:40   So let's do that.

00:21:42   This week's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by GoToMeeting from Citrix.

00:21:46   Now I want you to think about when you're at work and think about all of the time and

00:21:50   money and hassle that goes into holding a meeting in your office.

00:21:53   So you have to book out a conference room that you want, which you might have to wait

00:21:57   six weeks to get because the building's so busy.

00:22:00   You need to make sure you can get everyone in the same place, so you need to sync calendars,

00:22:03   and then when you're syncing those calendars together, if that person's off on a meeting

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00:22:18   one dongle that you need for your MacBook which has the crazy USB-C. Then you need to

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00:24:16   So, my mom has an iPhone 5C,

00:24:21   which she upgraded from a 3G from about 18 months ago,

00:24:26   which was a happy day for everyone.

00:24:28   Her contract is up for renewal in about 10 days time,

00:24:35   and she wants a bigger phone.

00:24:37   She wants an iPhone 6, I think.

00:24:39   She said she wants a bigger phone,

00:24:41   but she doesn't want a phone as big as mine,

00:24:43   so I'm thinking iPhone 6.

00:24:45   Now, we are probably about six weeks away

00:24:49   from the new iPhones, I think, at this point.

00:24:51   Would probably be a fair assessment, right?

00:24:53   Middle of September, early September.

00:24:55   - Yep.

00:24:56   - Should I have her make her upgrade to an iPhone 6 now?

00:25:02   Or wait?

00:25:04   Now there's no point getting a 6S for her because she doesn't want to spend money.

00:25:10   And to upgrade to an iPhone 6 now in the UK, you can get it for pretty much next to free.

00:25:17   Which she signs another year on her contract.

00:25:20   Because all the phone companies know that they need to be getting rid of their stock

00:25:25   now.

00:25:26   So they're driving the prices down.

00:25:28   She could probably upgrade for free or she could just sell her 5C to a gazelle-like company

00:25:34   We have here called Mazuma Mobile and pay off the contract fee.

00:25:38   There is a good chance, right, depending on how it works out,

00:25:41   that she could do it to a 6S as well when they come out.

00:25:43   She might get enough money, but I don't know.

00:25:46   I'm just wondering. She doesn't need the most recent,

00:25:49   so I'm not sure whether to wait to see what happens,

00:25:54   but like there could be, they could stop selling the 6 altogether.

00:25:57   We don't know what's going to happen.

00:25:59   And then she might have to spend the money that she doesn't want to have to spend.

00:26:02   So I'm in a bit of a struggle because I'm, you know, I'm looked at to get this decision

00:26:07   right for her.

00:26:08   So I'm not sure what to do.

00:26:10   Well I think, so it remains to be seen what happens with this because this is not quite

00:26:17   an iPhone mix like we've seen before from Apple because you've got the 6 and the 6 plus.

00:26:22   It remains to be seen what's going to happen in terms of what's the phone that is in the

00:26:28   US it's you know $99 down or $100 down.

00:26:30   It's the 99, 199, 299.

00:26:33   So it remains to be seen, is there going to be a last year's model of the 6 down 100?

00:26:41   Is that going to happen with the 6 Plus as well?

00:26:42   Are they going to have old ones of those?

00:26:44   Or are they going to do something where, I mean, there are some reports from an analyst

00:26:48   today saying that there's not going to be a four-inch iPhone with last year's stuff

00:26:53   this fall.

00:26:56   His track record's okay.

00:26:57   Maybe, maybe not.

00:26:58   And maybe it will be next year.

00:26:59   Maybe it doesn't exist at all.

00:27:00   talked about that in previous shows. Yeah, because he's saying this guy is Timothy

00:27:05   Akuri, he's saying there's nothing in the supply chain, which is a pretty good, if he's right, I mean, that's a really good indication.

00:27:13   If he's right, and it's not unreasonable for Apple to say, "Look, we are gonna do

00:27:16   that phone, but we don't need to do it in the fall when we're making all these big

00:27:19   sales and it's our biggest quarter. Why don't we just, we don't need to launch,

00:27:22   like with the iPod Touch, do we really need to launch all of these products

00:27:26   simultaneously? Do that one in the summer, do this next one, you know, in the winter,

00:27:30   after the holidays, that's not unreasonable.

00:27:33   But if they don't do that, then the question is,

00:27:35   what's that $99 product?

00:27:36   Is that the 5S for another year?

00:27:38   Does that 5S go down?

00:27:39   Is there a 6, but not a 6+ maybe?

00:27:42   Does the 6 go down $100 and then the 6S is above it?

00:27:47   Is that what they do?

00:27:48   I bring this up because I feel like that's sort of

00:27:51   your mother's question here is,

00:27:52   if there's going to be in a few weeks,

00:27:58   that six is going to be $100 less,

00:28:01   or the equivalent in UK prices, right?

00:28:04   Is that a better deal than what she's being offered now?

00:28:09   And if that's a better deal, then maybe she should wait.

00:28:12   But if the six just goes away,

00:28:15   and it's replaced by the six S,

00:28:17   and now it's more expensive than what she would do right now.

00:28:19   - This is my problem.

00:28:20   - Then, so that will, so that, and that's, yeah,

00:28:24   that's the trick.

00:28:26   Since she doesn't need the, you know,

00:28:28   doesn't necessarily need the features

00:28:30   of a six versus a six S, I guess I would say

00:28:32   if she can get a really good deal now, it's probably fine.

00:28:36   But we don't know that piece, right?

00:28:40   Because normally I would say that, look,

00:28:42   in mid September, that iPhone six, base iPhone six

00:28:47   is gonna go down $100.

00:28:50   The question is, are they gonna limit it to one size?

00:28:52   Is that gonna be, you know, the 16?

00:28:54   Is that enough for her?

00:28:56   There's lots of other questions in there too, but--

00:28:58   - Oh yeah, she only needs a 16.

00:29:00   She doesn't put anything on her phone at all.

00:29:02   - 'Cause so if, I mean, if that phone exists,

00:29:03   I have a hard time believing that all sixes

00:29:06   are just gonna vanish on September 18th or whatever of,

00:29:10   you know, when the new iPhones are released.

00:29:14   It seems like, it seems like we're so close now

00:29:18   that she could probably benefit from waiting

00:29:20   unless the deal that her carrier is willing to cut her

00:29:26   on the 6 is really good. If it's really good then maybe it's worth taking it.

00:29:32   Because obviously, like you said, they're motivated to move them out

00:29:37   because they know that this is a tough time to sell a

00:29:41   new iPhone to somebody because everybody knows that the new ones are coming.

00:29:45   But some people don't care, right? Some people don't care that the new ones are coming.

00:29:48   So maybe that's your mom's case and that if she can get a good deal now maybe that's enough.

00:29:52   Like it's possible to get an iPhone 6 right now,

00:29:57   16 gigabyte on a pretty good plan.

00:30:00   So say like 30 pounds, 35 pounds a month,

00:30:04   and you just pay 100 pounds upfront, which is excellent.

00:30:09   So it's a great deal.

00:30:10   And it's everything she needs as well.

00:30:13   - See that's the thing is I would say

00:30:14   it's that there's not something that nerds should do,

00:30:18   but that a regular light use person like your mom

00:30:23   is not one of those computer nerd people.

00:30:28   And that's a pretty good deal.

00:30:29   And she doesn't need to worry so much about

00:30:32   future proofing, oh, well, if you wait six weeks,

00:30:36   then you'll have a phone that will be slightly better

00:30:40   in three years or something like that.

00:30:41   I'm not sure that it matters or that the new features

00:30:44   that are coming are gonna be things

00:30:45   that she cares so much about that it's worth her waiting.

00:30:48   then again, and see I'm doing it now too, I'm going back and forth,

00:30:52   then again it almost never hurts to wait, especially if the wait's only six

00:30:56   weeks.

00:30:56   So really, to me it's sort of like how badly does she want something new?

00:31:01   This is what I mean, this is always what I say when people say "should I upgrade?" is do you

00:31:04   need to upgrade or can you wait?

00:31:05   If you can wait, wait, because there will always be something good,

00:31:09   something better coming later, but at some point you just need to buy something

00:31:12   and so you should buy it when you need to buy it.

00:31:15   Ugh. My feeling right now is probably to just wait. But I don't know. Maybe I wait and if it ends up costing her more, like I make her wait and if it ends up costing her more then I just cover the difference. I think that would be fair for everyone. So I'll probably take the gamble on waiting.

00:31:41   Yeah, I think that might be good. If she's willing to wait, I think it's probably worth waiting.

00:31:47   It's just that really tough time of the year for these kinds of decisions.

00:31:51   Because it's like we're weeks away, but yet we have literally no idea what's gonna happen.

00:31:57   Yeah, we don't.

00:31:59   Like at this family barbecue, somebody, one of my family members asked me,

00:32:05   "What's the new iPhone gonna have?" And I'm like, "I don't know."

00:32:09   People expect me to know? I don't know, like I can guess, but nobody knows.

00:32:16   But people think that I'm messing around when I say that. They expect that I know exactly what's going to happen.

00:32:23   You must get this constantly.

00:32:25   Yeah, people think that I know everything about what's coming and it's like, nope.

00:32:29   They don't talk to me about stuff like that. No.

00:32:33   Where we are right now, we really don't have a sense for what's happening.

00:32:38   - I know, isn't that funny?

00:32:39   Isn't that funny that there's nothing,

00:32:40   well, I mean, Mark Gurman just got back from vacation.

00:32:43   So, let's see what happens tomorrow.

00:32:46   He's gonna check in with all his sources

00:32:48   and we're gonna get all the details the next week

00:32:51   'cause he's been on vacation.

00:32:52   He's powering up for the next round.

00:32:54   But we've heard a lot of talk about haptic stuff.

00:32:57   So, force touch and haptics built in, I think, makes sense.

00:33:02   Better camera makes, always makes sense,

00:33:05   always better camera. - Foster.

00:33:08   blah, blah, blah.

00:33:09   - Yeah, you know, yeah, faster.

00:33:10   Maybe it'll have more RAM like the iPad Air 2 has.

00:33:14   You know, stuff like that.

00:33:17   It's the 6S, right?

00:33:19   It's not the 7.

00:33:22   And so it's the talk in the TikTok metaphor, maybe?

00:33:27   - Who knows?

00:33:28   50/50 chance of getting that.

00:33:30   - Let's just say, sure, yeah.

00:33:32   So that's the, you know, if we define the Tik

00:33:35   as advancing to a whole new model with a different look and the talk as

00:33:39   meaning

00:33:40   the incremental update within the specs and size of the old model

00:33:45   that's the, you know, it's the S is what I'm saying so it's not going to be

00:33:49   as

00:33:50   big a jump

00:33:51   because the big jump happens every couple years

00:33:53   because the buying cycle right now is every couple years

00:33:57   so after we spoke last week uh...

00:33:59   about iPods you went and threw an SSD into a iPod Classic

00:34:04   or just as an iPod as it was called at the time.

00:34:07   - Yeah, well, it's the fifth generation iPod.

00:34:08   So I refer to it as the iPod Classic

00:34:10   and I had somebody say, well, actually,

00:34:12   that's the fifth generation iPod video

00:34:14   that you're referring to there,

00:34:16   which is I have, you know, fair point,

00:34:18   except I think we have to refer to those

00:34:21   as all as the iPod Classic at this point,

00:34:23   because Apple, and I pointed that person to the Wikipedia,

00:34:27   the Wikipedia page for iPod Classic,

00:34:30   which includes all of the classic iPod models

00:34:32   back to the original.

00:34:33   It's the thing we think of as the classic iPod,

00:34:36   which in its last generation was called the iPod classic.

00:34:39   Anyway, it's the big one with the spinning hard drive in it.

00:34:43   And I saw that Otherworld Computing

00:34:46   was offering this product that was a flash drive upgrade

00:34:50   for the fifth generation iPod

00:34:53   and sixth generation iPod classic.

00:34:55   And so I said, I'd like to check that out.

00:34:58   Can you send me one?

00:34:59   And they sent me one and I installed it myself,

00:35:02   which was a little scary.

00:35:03   I have never cracked an iPod open before

00:35:05   to do something like that.

00:35:07   And I was using a how-to article from the web

00:35:11   and it did me pretty well until the point

00:35:12   where I need to install their adapter

00:35:15   and then I didn't know which way to put it.

00:35:17   Fortunately, this was like one of the first ones

00:35:19   that they were selling and they've now

00:35:21   posted their how-to video,

00:35:22   which shows very clearly the one mistake that I made.

00:35:25   So I basically had to take it all apart a second time

00:35:27   and flip the thing around.

00:35:28   I had the cable in backward.

00:35:30   And to my surprise, it worked fine.

00:35:33   I closed it back up and now I've got this thing

00:35:35   that is much lighter because there's no spinning,

00:35:38   big metal spinning hard drive in it.

00:35:40   Instead, there's just a little compact flash memory adapter

00:35:43   with a, or what, SD adapter.

00:35:45   It's a little flash memory adapter with an SD card in it,

00:35:49   with like 128 gig SD card in it.

00:35:52   So I went from 60 of spinning disk

00:35:55   to 128 of not spinning and lighter and not gonna crash.

00:36:00   crash, and the way the iPods work, you just plug it into iTunes and it installs its own

00:36:06   software on the device and puts your music on it, and now I have my entire purchase music

00:36:11   library, because like all these products, it's not compatible with Apple Music, but

00:36:15   my entire purchase music library now is on there. It doesn't take any time to spin up

00:36:19   because there's nothing to spin. It's not going to crash. That's a 10-year-old iPod,

00:36:24   so that drive was going to die at some point. It lives in my car's glove compartment attached

00:36:29   to the car stereo.

00:36:31   And yeah, so it was pretty cool.

00:36:33   And so if you're somebody who has a classic iPod

00:36:37   of the fifth or sixth generation,

00:36:38   which like I said, is basically made in the last 10 years

00:36:41   of the big one and the hard drive has died

00:36:45   or you want more space,

00:36:46   I think it's actually a pretty cool option.

00:36:47   So, you know, it's funny that we were just talking

00:36:49   about old iPods and then I was working on this story.

00:36:54   So those both happened the same week.

00:36:56   So anyway, the link to the six colors post

00:36:58   will be in the show notes,

00:36:59   But yeah, I was pretty impressed.

00:37:01   It's not, you gotta be comfortable cracking open an iPod,

00:37:06   but if you are capable of doing that sort of thing,

00:37:11   of installing, you gotta work with some little things.

00:37:16   You gotta have good eyesight or good glasses.

00:37:20   But I got it to work.

00:37:22   It took me like half an hour once I figured out

00:37:24   what I was doing wrong because I didn't have the access

00:37:27   to the video that they posted now.

00:37:28   Yeah, big iPod now, in the car.

00:37:31   - Nice.

00:37:34   - Yeah.

00:37:35   - It's weird to me that you plug it in

00:37:36   and it installs the software itself.

00:37:37   Like how does it know that it's an iPod?

00:37:39   - Well, no, I think so.

00:37:41   I think the, well, it looks at the drive and says,

00:37:45   my software isn't on this drive, right?

00:37:47   If you put in a new disc,

00:37:49   whether it's a spinning disc or this adapter,

00:37:50   it goes, oh, I don't know what this is.

00:37:52   But these things are designed to connect to iTunes, right?

00:37:55   So you connect it to iTunes, just to USB to your Mac, running iTunes.

00:38:00   And you do a software restore.

00:38:03   And it puts the software on.

00:38:04   I think it downloads the latest version from Apple.

00:38:07   Puts the iPod software on, lets you sync your music, and you're up and running.

00:38:11   That's how they're made to work, basically, is when there's a blank drive, they just want

00:38:14   to phone home to the Mac and to iTunes, and then they restore.

00:38:18   That's interesting.

00:38:20   That's very interesting to me.

00:38:22   one of those things that maybe my fundamental level of understanding of computing is failing

00:38:27   me, but it's like I just, if the drive's empty, I'm just a little bit like, "How does it know?"

00:38:31   It's computer magic, kids. That's how it knows.

00:38:34   Yeah, it's magic. There's an elf that lives inside the iPod.

00:38:37   Last piece of follow-up today.

00:38:38   Oh my God.

00:38:39   Well, I mean, you know.

00:38:40   Mini, we're doing, these are like mini topics almost at this point.

00:38:44   We took a break in the middle of the follow-up.

00:38:46   We did. For some topics.

00:38:47   Put a topic and a sponsor in there. You know, it was very, very, very broken up today. We

00:38:51   spoke about Touch ID over wireless and listener Shep wrote in with some

00:38:58   indication that this may be possible. Shep says "Apple have already implemented

00:39:02   HomeKit encryption standards that require that accessories use

00:39:07   bleeding-edge 3072 bit keys and curve 25519" whatever that is "which is an

00:39:15   elliptical curve for signatures and key exchange which should be definitely be

00:39:18   sufficient for transferring and confirming touch ID information so

00:39:22   maybe is possible in a wireless device. Basically, whilst me and Jason don't have

00:39:26   any clue what that means, it sounds like that there is some kind of encryption

00:39:31   standard being used with HomeKit to identify that you are the person that

00:39:36   you say you are with the device that you have, right? So it's I assume what's

00:39:40   happening is the HomeKit devices are authenticating via your iPhone which is

00:39:44   unlocked by you to do these things. So if that's the case and if this stuff works

00:39:50   that way it's not too far a stretch to imagine that a touch ID sensor could

00:39:59   send a "yes this is the person" notification over to a device. There's an

00:40:06   elf that lives inside. Yeah and he shouts over "hey hey!" This one's okay let this

00:40:11   one through! I like this guy! He's got a friendly face!

00:40:15   Anyway, I appreciated this note and I put it in the show notes because basically what

00:40:19   Shep's saying is look, Apple's already pushing on a lot of encryption stuff for HomeKit and

00:40:25   perhaps that means that you could even do something like Touch ID for opening, you know,

00:40:32   for unlocking your computer or whatever or even kicking off an Apple Pay session if Apple

00:40:36   pay was baked into a version of OS X via a future Magic Trackpad that had touch ID or

00:40:44   something in that.

00:40:46   Maybe that's possible even though we were skeptical about it.

00:40:48   Maybe it is or maybe it's just going to be something that's going to be limited to wired

00:40:53   like trackpads on laptops.

00:40:55   And that, I mean, really laptops are Apple's focus.

00:40:58   Two-thirds at least of the Mac sold are laptops.

00:41:02   It's maybe verging up to three quarters at this point.

00:41:04   So this may not be an issue, even though I'm using an iMac, you know, most of Apple's users

00:41:09   are using laptops, and so putting a Touch ID sensor on the laptop wouldn't require wireless

00:41:15   anything.

00:41:16   So maybe that's where they're going with it if they go that direction.

00:41:18   >> I was looking at my Magic Trackpad today and looked at the little battery compartment,

00:41:24   you know, the little circular battery compartment, and thought, "A Touch ID sensor would fit

00:41:28   really nicely on there."

00:41:30   That was what I saw when I was using my Magic Trackpad today to edit.

00:41:34   podcast as I do two-handed one magic trackpad and one mouse because I am a

00:41:38   magician. That's how I work. Yes, one of the two. Apple Watch sales. So we're into another

00:41:46   mini topic now. So I know that you had had some annoyance over the way that some of

00:41:54   the Apple Watch stuff was being spoken about in the last couple of weeks about

00:42:00   there was like a New York Times piece where somebody was basically trying to

00:42:04   say that because Facebook don't have an app it means that Apple watches aren't

00:42:08   selling and then there's been reports backwards and forwards about how Apple

00:42:13   watches have been sold and then we had the earnings report. Now the earnings

00:42:17   report which came out last week, Apple's Q3 results, didn't break down watch sales

00:42:24   but did give an indication that watches are selling effectively and you wrote a

00:42:30   great piece for Macworld talking about some of the big key learnings from the

00:42:35   Q3 earnings. So what do you think about Apple Watch sales now past an earnings

00:42:40   report? Yeah so lots to unpack here I did complain about this New York Times

00:42:50   story that was in advance of the Apple Watch sales and basically was saying you

00:42:57   know it's hard for me not to look at this and read it as that the editor at

00:43:02   the New York Times in charge of tech said Apple financials are coming we need

00:43:06   a story that previews them find an angle and the angle was oh developers are

00:43:13   unsure about how they're gonna develop Apple watches and that means that people

00:43:17   are waiting to buy Apple watches until the developers of their favorite apps

00:43:20   support it which I think is a ridiculous premise that people are not buying Apple

00:43:24   watch because they're not sure whether Facebook will be on it I think that's

00:43:27   It's just, I think that is not, no, I don't believe that at all.

00:43:31   People are not buying them for a reason, you know, if they're not buying them.

00:43:34   But I also don't buy that that is in the buying decision.

00:43:39   Lack of apps seems unlikely to be a reason.

00:43:41   I mean, maybe lack of a very specific thing, like, I need an Apple Watch, but I needed

00:43:45   to do this, but I don't think it's sort of like, why isn't there a Facebook app?

00:43:48   And somebody pointed out, you know, Facebook didn't do an iPod, iPad version of Facebook

00:43:54   for years.

00:43:56   very careful with what they do, and quite rightly so. I linked to Marco Arment's piece

00:44:01   about ripping up the first version of Overcast on the watch and doing it again, and now there's

00:44:06   going to be WatchOS 2. I mean, there are lots of reasons why developers might want to wait

00:44:10   and see and figure out the best uses. I think a Facebook app full stop on the Apple Watch

00:44:15   is a terrible idea, because there's too much in Facebook, and that they'd be better. Yes,

00:44:20   a Facebook Messenger app, maybe? That makes sense. And maybe there's a very focused Facebook

00:44:25   that does this, but it doesn't do all these other things. But this idea that like, oh,

00:44:29   well, it should be pretty simple. They should just drop all Facebook on an Apple Watch app.

00:44:32   It's like, that would be terrible. That would be a terrible thing. So don't do that. And

00:44:37   they haven't. So good for them. But so I think it was a kind of a ridiculous story. And I,

00:44:44   you know, Brian Chen used to work for me and I like him. And I am not one of those people

00:44:48   who thinks that there are a lot of people who are very critical of a lot of the things

00:44:51   that he writes, and I actually think that that's overly harsh, but in this case, I think

00:44:57   this is a story that makes this link to Apple Watch sales and app developers, and it's lazy,

00:45:05   and it's a bad story. The bigger issue now is how many Apple Watches did Apple really

00:45:11   sell? As far as we can tell, it looks like they are the most successful smartwatch ever.

00:45:17   not a big surprise. But when it comes to details, basically what Apple says is, "Trust us, it's

00:45:23   doing well."

00:45:24   What do you think about this?

00:45:26   That's all I say. It's, well, you know, so Tim, what Tim Cook says is, "It's not a matter

00:45:34   of not being transparent, it's a matter of not giving our competition insight on a product

00:45:39   that we worked hard on." Okay.

00:45:41   That seems, I mean, hmm, okay, okay.

00:45:45   I've been thinking about this, Jason.

00:45:47   (laughing)

00:45:48   And I have an opinion which is probably

00:45:51   gonna be a little bit unpopular,

00:45:53   but I've been thinking about it and I'm annoyed about this.

00:45:55   I think that this is a real kinda

00:46:00   big city answer, like it's a...

00:46:03   (laughing)

00:46:04   I don't, I think that they were just concerned

00:46:08   about potential failings and that because Tim

00:46:13   basically staked his legacy on this product,

00:46:16   I think that he and everybody else around him

00:46:19   decided that they didn't want it to look like a failure

00:46:23   if it was a failure and that they would take,

00:46:26   because you can, they can later start reporting it, right?

00:46:30   But after they start reporting it, they then can't hide it.

00:46:33   But before they report it for the first time,

00:46:36   they can hide it, right?

00:46:37   If it doesn't sell well and then they're like,

00:46:40   we're gonna start reporting this in other now,

00:46:42   then it looks worse than if they do it

00:46:44   the other way around.

00:46:45   - There is a middle ground here,

00:46:48   which is the, we are gonna report it on our own terms.

00:46:52   And this is what they do with things like app sales

00:46:54   and even things like iOS device overall numbers.

00:46:59   There are numbers that aren't in the balance sheet

00:47:02   that they do know.

00:47:03   And then what they do is they release a press release

00:47:05   saying Apple celebrates sale of 2 millionth Apple Watch.

00:47:10   And you're like, okay.

00:47:11   And that's not a lie.

00:47:14   When they do that, it'll be the real number,

00:47:16   but it will be this timed release.

00:47:18   And then everybody else is like, okay, now what?

00:47:21   And then you wait to hear how long is it until they say,

00:47:24   do they say it at 3 million or 4 million or 5 million?

00:47:28   And everybody waits.

00:47:28   So that's the middle ground where they do things

00:47:31   to disclose, but they do it on a time schedule

00:47:34   that isn't quarterly and that makes it,

00:47:36   that casts the product in their own,

00:47:40   the best light possible.

00:47:41   And I think that is an option for them.

00:47:43   I think it's interesting

00:47:45   that they haven't shared the numbers

00:47:47   and it may be that they feel like it's lower than they'd

00:47:53   like, although they say it exceeded their expectations,

00:47:56   but we don't know what their expectations are.

00:47:57   And that's a funny game where you can also

00:47:59   have really conservative expectations

00:48:02   while you secretly think it's gonna be three times that

00:48:04   And then it turns out to be one and a half times that.

00:48:06   And you say, well, it exceeded my expectations,

00:48:08   but didn't really,

00:48:09   'cause you didn't really think it was gonna be that low.

00:48:11   That's possible.

00:48:12   It's also possible that the production problems

00:48:14   that they had have complicated this so much

00:48:17   that they kinda don't wanna talk about it right now.

00:48:19   And they, like he said,

00:48:23   he said it was untrue that there was a peak of sales

00:48:26   and then it went down,

00:48:27   which is that one report that we got from that company

00:48:29   that like mines people's emails

00:48:31   and which is an insane business model.

00:48:35   And what they said is they were higher in June

00:48:40   that they had gone up, but that too is unclear.

00:48:47   - Nobody knows what that means.

00:48:48   - Because it could mean that the sales went up

00:48:51   because they were unable to charge people

00:48:52   for watches that hadn't shipped yet.

00:48:55   And they very slowly started to ramp.

00:48:57   And so what we're seeing in those sales numbers going up

00:49:00   is not demand going up, but it's the ramp going up.

00:49:03   At the same time, it's also disingenuous to say that,

00:49:06   oh well, it had a lot of initial sales

00:49:08   and then it dropped off, I guess it's a flop,

00:49:10   because brand new product, brand new category

00:49:12   preannounced by six months,

00:49:14   of course there's going to be a huge peak

00:49:17   of people buying at the moment it goes on sale,

00:49:19   and then it's gonna have to settle down

00:49:20   to an actual reasonable number.

00:49:22   So both of the numbers are suspect.

00:49:23   So we really don't know, other than Apple saying,

00:49:26   again, it's better than we thought,

00:49:29   we're very excited about the holiday.

00:49:30   I think, I thought the most intriguing thing they said was,

00:49:33   by looking at the customer experience

00:49:36   and what people are saying,

00:49:37   that we're really excited about the holidays.

00:49:42   Like I think what he said was,

00:49:43   we've learned a lot about the Apple Watch buying experience

00:49:47   and we're convinced that the watch is going to be

00:49:48   one of the top gifts of the holiday season.

00:49:50   So what that says to me,

00:49:52   is maybe that in their research about who's buying this,

00:49:55   they feel bullish on the fact

00:49:57   that it's going to break through past the like super excited

00:50:00   tech buyers to a broader audience in the holidays,

00:50:03   which I think is a reasonable premise,

00:50:06   but it doesn't really get us any closer to knowing

00:50:08   other than that the other category went up

00:50:11   by a little less than a billion dollars

00:50:13   and both Luca, the CFO and Tim Cook said,

00:50:18   Apple watch sales were way beyond that.

00:50:21   So we've got a few metrics of like how much greater it is,

00:50:25   But in the end, I made a chart last week of this,

00:50:28   of total Apple Watch sales.

00:50:29   And it's like, it's a bar with no number and no,

00:50:34   it's what we call a Bezos chart,

00:50:36   the Jeff Bezos charts from Amazon that there's,

00:50:39   look, the bars look great,

00:50:41   but we won't tell you what they mean.

00:50:42   It's a little like that.

00:50:43   We're in this really hazy situation

00:50:45   where Apple kind of doesn't wanna talk about it,

00:50:47   which is a little bit suspicious to me.

00:50:49   I feel like Apple is really good at blowing its own horn

00:50:52   and it sort of didn't do that here.

00:50:54   But at the same time, it is this new category

00:50:58   and they are undoubtedly by far

00:51:02   the most successful smartwatch ever already.

00:51:05   But what does that mean for the future?

00:51:08   And does it mean anything?

00:51:11   It's just a whole lot of hazy stuff

00:51:13   and not a lot of tangible information

00:51:16   about the watch right now.

00:51:18   - Yeah, I think just as I've been talking about it

00:51:20   and thinking about it,

00:51:21   I think I'm finding myself as frustrated with this

00:51:23   as I get with Jeff Bezos.

00:51:25   And the Kindle graphs that mean nothing.

00:51:28   Where it's like, yeah, no, there definitely was money.

00:51:31   So they're like, oh, there was loads of money.

00:51:33   But it's more money than you think there is money.

00:51:36   Like that's kind of the answer, right?

00:51:37   Where it's like, oh, the money went up,

00:51:39   but other things in that category went down.

00:51:42   So it's even more than you think.

00:51:43   We're just not gonna tell you.

00:51:44   Like it's like, either do it or don't do it.

00:51:47   And I just, I do feel like that just the reason for this

00:51:51   was they were just a little bit like,

00:51:53   we're not sure how this is gonna go,

00:51:55   so why don't we just play our cards

00:51:58   to our chest for a while?

00:51:59   - Yeah, and it did lead to a very funny moment

00:52:04   for me anyway, where in order to pump up

00:52:08   how well the watch was doing,

00:52:10   they said, well, that other category,

00:52:12   but you know that includes iPods, and those suck.

00:52:14   Those are falling through the floor.

00:52:16   So, you know, don't just assume that it's just even there,

00:52:20   'cause I assure you some of those other categories,

00:52:22   like iPods and accessories, man, those were down,

00:52:26   those stunk.

00:52:26   So it's like they're throwing other stuff,

00:52:29   you know, out into the street because they wanna be like,

00:52:33   yeah, but the watch was doing great.

00:52:35   So yeah, they were shifty.

00:52:36   I think that's the bottom line here is they were shifty.

00:52:38   They're not ready to talk about it yet.

00:52:40   And how much of that is that they're not ready to,

00:52:44   they don't feel proud enough of the information now,

00:52:48   how much of that is strategic.

00:52:50   I don't know, but it is interesting that they're being kind of shifty about it and they don't

00:52:56   want to disclose and they don't have to because, I mean, the fact is, if Apple could, they

00:53:00   wouldn't do quarterly reports and tell you about how many phones they're selling either,

00:53:04   but they have to because they're a public company.

00:53:06   So it's like this is our chance to see facts about Apple's business that Apple would rather

00:53:12   not share.

00:53:13   Why do they have to tell us how many phones they sold and they don't have to tell us how

00:53:16   many watches they sold?

00:53:18   - Well, they make decisions about their main,

00:53:20   I think it would be very difficult for a public company

00:53:22   to have its most popular product

00:53:24   not be broken out in their financial lines.

00:53:27   But they have some latitude there.

00:53:29   For a brand new product category like this,

00:53:31   they've just put it,

00:53:32   it's just like the iPods have been sort of sucked back

00:53:35   into other now because it's just not relevant

00:53:36   and they did that.

00:53:37   But it's hard, they've got to recalculate

00:53:39   all of their finances when they put in a new category.

00:53:43   But they did it for the iPad, right?

00:53:44   And they haven't done it for the watch yet.

00:53:46   and they might, they might do a restated earnings

00:53:51   and put it in with, put a watch category on its own

00:53:54   next year, they might do that, they might not.

00:53:57   It is sort of an iPhone accessory,

00:53:59   so maybe they prefer to just to keep it that way.

00:54:02   But so they have some latitude,

00:54:04   but they do need to report about the structure

00:54:06   of their business to their investors.

00:54:09   And, you know, I do believe that if they had their druthers,

00:54:13   they wouldn't, you know, that's Apple.

00:54:16   but they have to say, they have to tell us some things, but they don't have to tell us everything.

00:54:19   I'm upset about something else. Oh, yes? But we can talk about that after this break.

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00:57:24   Okay Jason so this is something that I've been toying about discussing but it's got

00:57:31   to the point now where I want to talk about it, which is ad blockers and Safari content

00:57:35   blockers.

00:57:36   So...

00:57:37   And this is a little bit of follow-out in a way, isn't it?

00:57:39   Yeah, because you and Mr. Gruber had a great discussion about this on the talk show last

00:57:44   week.

00:57:45   Really fantastic episode talking about, like, the business that goes into these companies,

00:57:50   you know, and kind of web advertising, how horrible it's become, and why some of that

00:57:55   worked.

00:57:56   And you gave some of the great insight of working at a company like IDG, which I always

00:57:59   love whenever you're on a talk show there are always these great discussions

00:58:03   I just find them so fascinating where you and John talk about this with both

00:58:07   of your experience having worked in the web for so long. A lot of people are

00:58:11   upset about this for varying different reasons and a lot of it seems to be

00:58:16   focused towards the verge because I mean it previously it was focused on iMore

00:58:22   right that was where this conversation started then it became a bit of a hot

00:58:27   button issue. Neil I Patel wrote an article which definitely holds some

00:58:33   merit about why the mobile web sucks and this basically crossed the bar that like

00:58:39   the barrier between complaining about websites and ads and also complaining

00:58:44   about this Safari is the new IE thing. So Neil I was was you know in the post he

00:58:49   says about how the verge is part of a problem and ad networks are a bit of an

00:58:54   issue and he talks about more though about how different platforms supporting

00:58:59   different things and phones and tablets are worse off than the desktop in this

00:59:04   scenario. What this did was make a bunch of people lash out against the Verge for

00:59:11   their position on this and there are lots of studies done and lots of

00:59:15   statistics done. Some correct, some otherwise about how long it takes the

00:59:21   Verge's articles to load. I saw again a great post linked by Nilay in retort to

00:59:30   this. So basically the Verge, people saying how long it takes like it takes

00:59:33   30 seconds for the Verge to load, 263 HTTP requests, it fetched over 9.5 megabytes

00:59:39   of data for that was for that article that Nilay was using to

00:59:43   complain about the mobile web, right? So saying you're saying this but look how

00:59:47   terrible your website is. Then in retort to this I'm basically giving the whole

00:59:50   story here. Then in retort to this, uh,

00:59:53   Neil I tweeted a link to a forum post from one of Vox media's people where they

00:59:58   said, where they said, well, you were not on a mobile,

01:00:02   and if you were loading it on mobile, it would have only been like six megabytes,

01:00:06   which was still a ridiculously large amount.

01:00:09   And they, they, he admits to the fact that it is still bad. It's not as bad,

01:00:13   but it's still bad. And you know,

01:00:15   that seems to be the biggest, the basis of their argument here is yes, we know,

01:00:18   we know we suck but we don't suck as bad as you think we suck yeah and then saying

01:00:22   that saying that they're getting better and they've had other focuses the

01:00:30   different websites launch stuff like that they're a company and they're

01:00:33   saying they have different priorities this is now becoming a priority so we

01:00:40   at the moment there's a lot of talk about this and now there is a lot of

01:00:47   discussion about people installing ad blockers. And I saw Marco was tweeting

01:00:55   about this and wrote in a link post that he is installing an ad blocker and I'm

01:00:59   seeing many other people that I follow on Twitter do this and people saying that

01:01:02   they're looking forward to the Safari content blocker things so they can

01:01:06   finally fix the issues that they're seeing on mobile. So what I wanted to

01:01:12   talk about is how I feel about this situation.

01:01:16   Relay your feels, Myke.

01:01:18   I'm going to.

01:01:19   This makes me very uncomfortable

01:01:22   because I feel bad for the people that work at these sites

01:01:26   because where we are now is basically a lot of people

01:01:34   crying foul against these websites and saying that,

01:01:38   you know, it's time for this to die.

01:01:41   seeing a lot of this kind of thing. And that advertising on the web needs to be

01:01:45   burned down to the ground and restarted and that kind of thing. And I understand

01:01:51   this and I mean I get as frustrated as many people do about web ads. They do suck

01:01:57   in a lot of ways but I'm just there's just something that I'm not comfortable

01:02:00   in that people saying that it needs to change completely because for things to

01:02:05   change I don't like the idea of the collateral damage of this being the

01:02:09   livelihoods of people that have no say in how the advertising is served because

01:02:13   fundamentally that's what it is and you know because basically by saying you

01:02:17   want this to go away and to die it's gonna kill off a bunch of websites a

01:02:21   bunch of websites that are reputable or it's going to cut the profits of a bunch

01:02:24   of websites which ultimately means people will lose their jobs and the

01:02:28   thing is it's like it's not their fault it's not even the company's like the

01:02:32   website company I don't even think it's like the verge and I am or it's not

01:02:35   their fault, this is just the market that they're in. And I admit that my current

01:02:40   form of employment is the reason that it's swaying my opinion this way because

01:02:45   we work on advertising here. I think the feeling about podcast advertising is

01:02:49   very different. I mean people get annoyed at it because it's advertising in and of

01:02:54   itself and some people just hate advertising. But I don't think it's

01:02:57   hated as much as web advertising because it's less intrusive, you can skip it if

01:03:01   you want to, and we try and do our best to pick advertisers. It's one of the

01:03:06   reasons that now at Relay FM we do all of our own advertising because we can

01:03:10   choose who we want, right? So there are ad networks but we don't use them.

01:03:17   So that's how I feel about this, and there is just this feeling to

01:03:25   me which makes me uncomfortable of the idea that this means people's livelihoods

01:03:29   go away and that makes me feel uncomfortable.

01:03:33   So that's how I feel, Jason.

01:03:34   - I get it.

01:03:36   A couple things that I wanted to mention

01:03:39   based on what you were saying there.

01:03:41   One is I get the feeling that you feel bad

01:03:46   for people who are going to be affected by this.

01:03:48   And I share that, I mean, I lived this, right?

01:03:52   I lived this.

01:03:53   Everybody who worked at Macworld,

01:03:54   and I think still, but I can't speak to that

01:03:56   because I'm not on the inside anymore.

01:03:59   everybody who worked at Macworld and IDG in general,

01:04:01   you know, the Macworld staff really,

01:04:05   they hated the increasingly crappy ads

01:04:09   and pre-roll videos and intercept ads and popover ads

01:04:14   and all of these things that kept getting added.

01:04:16   And so you feel bad for them.

01:04:17   And yet, you know, at the same time, the ad blocker thing,

01:04:21   you're losing all those ad impressions.

01:04:24   And those are ultimately the way

01:04:25   that their salaries get paid.

01:04:28   So you can feel bad for them.

01:04:29   At the same time, there are lots of professions

01:04:34   and industries that change because technology changes

01:04:39   and because people's habits change.

01:04:40   And this is like, I feel bad for the steel workers.

01:04:45   I feel bad for the people who used, for the milkmen,

01:04:52   but we don't have milkmen anymore.

01:04:55   You can feel bad for them, but also say,

01:04:58   I feel bad for the milkman, but I bought a refrigerator and my life is better because

01:05:02   I brought a refrigerator."

01:05:04   And you can feel bad for them without saying, "I'm going to hope that everybody forgoes

01:05:09   this inevitable progress, this inevitable change, because otherwise it'll hurt people

01:05:15   we like and we'll feel bad."

01:05:16   That just sort of, I think you can't fight it and you can still feel bad about it, but

01:05:22   that's not enough.

01:05:23   think that one of the parts of the story here is that this is an example of the web, not

01:05:29   -- it's not any one person's fault, but this is the problem of web advertising, that the

01:05:35   web was built as this thing that you had to give away for free, everything was free, and

01:05:40   that it became very difficult to make businesses out of it, especially as the web became successful

01:05:46   and the other traditional, older kind of businesses that funded a lot of this stuff went away

01:05:51   because the web finally kind of ate their lunch

01:05:53   and took all their ad revenue away.

01:05:55   And the world of advertising on the web,

01:05:58   it's been this vicious cycle where there's,

01:06:02   people stop paying attention to the ads

01:06:04   so they add more junk.

01:06:05   And then people stop paying attention to the ads

01:06:07   so they add more junk and there's more junk.

01:06:08   And then people stop wanting to read the sites

01:06:10   because there's too much junk

01:06:11   or people download an ad blocker.

01:06:13   And so I think there's an inevitability here too

01:06:16   of this the current world of web ads falling apart

01:06:20   for all but the biggest publishers,

01:06:23   because the prices go down and the junk goes up

01:06:29   and people are, and the technology gets more savvy

01:06:32   to block that stuff.

01:06:33   And I think it may not be something that we can say,

01:06:38   I wouldn't choose this.

01:06:39   I feel like it's just going to happen,

01:06:41   that the way that advertising on the web works right now

01:06:45   is just broken.

01:06:50   and I'm not sure how it gets fixed or if it gets fixed.

01:06:54   The shame of it is--

01:06:55   - I don't agree with you there.

01:06:56   I have to-- - Okay, go ahead.

01:06:58   - In the idea of we don't choose this,

01:07:00   people are choosing.

01:07:01   Ad blockers are not an organic thing, right?

01:07:05   It's not a thing that happens to your computer.

01:07:08   People are now making the choice

01:07:10   that they want these websites to make this money.

01:07:13   - What I'm saying is the websites are complicit

01:07:17   because the websites are filling their pages with junk

01:07:19   and making them hard to load.

01:07:20   And if you load a webpage on mobile,

01:07:22   sometimes you've got like multiple things

01:07:24   overlaying the content that you have to try and tap

01:07:26   and then you tap them.

01:07:27   And it takes you away from that page

01:07:29   to the thing that's being advertised instead.

01:07:31   And you get really frustrated and you go back.

01:07:32   All that is happening.

01:07:34   - I also do hate this stuff.

01:07:35   - That's what you can't control.

01:07:36   That's what you can't control is that that's where the web,

01:07:39   the world of web advertising is pushing.

01:07:41   How do we make money off of people on mobile?

01:07:43   There are way more people on mobile than on desktops,

01:07:45   but we can't make money there.

01:07:46   How do we do that?

01:07:47   And they keep pushing and pushing

01:07:49   and degrading the experience on desktop and on mobile, which I think does drive people

01:07:54   to get frustrated and drives the development of content blockers and ad blockers, and that's

01:07:59   part of what's going on here. So I do think that's part of it. And, you know, the web

01:08:05   brought this on itself because of the way that it's been built all along, you know,

01:08:10   and the fact that the reaction to this stuff is, "Let's put more junk on the pages."

01:08:14   That this is sort of—we've reached this point that it's very difficult. There's

01:08:17   There's a huge competition. I mean, I always cite Ben Thompson here from Stratechery and

01:08:22   his writing about the smiling curve in publishing, where you either go for volume or you go for

01:08:27   a very small but dedicated audience. And all the publishers that are caught in the middle,

01:08:32   you know, they've got lower and lower ad rates. They keep trying to add more ways to

01:08:36   make money to scrape by. And it feels like something that just can't be solved, that

01:08:41   it will just keep going down until a point where you, you know, you're, you can't have

01:08:46   a business anymore, unless you're on one end of the curve or the other. And that's the

01:08:51   scary part is the people we like who make good content who are in the middle, who are

01:08:56   not writing for BuzzFeed, right, but they're also not daring Fireball, what happens if

01:09:01   the web, the way that the web works is not sustainable, whether or not there are content

01:09:05   blockers? Because I would actually say the content blockers are a reaction to this race,

01:09:09   But this is happening anyway, because everybody wants to pour more junk onto pages because

01:09:14   the CPMs keep going down, which is the ad rates, basically, cost per thousand to display

01:09:21   an ad. Those just keep going down. So it's tough. It's a—I'm not sure where this goes

01:09:27   other than that I do think there will be a crack-up at some point. And you already, when

01:09:32   you talk to people—and I've seen it, people we know are talking about, "What do you do

01:09:38   to do, you know, to do a membership or something like that, that support. Maybe it's not a

01:09:44   Patreon, maybe it is, maybe it's some other kind of membership, but those things, people

01:09:48   are floating those things around. And one of the reasons is because, you know, what's

01:09:53   going to happen with advertising? Is advertising enough on its own? And yeah, podcast advertising

01:09:58   is a little bit different. I feel it's sort of a shame. Back in the day, like the early

01:10:02   days of computer magazines, the ads were great. Like people were excited to look at the ads

01:10:06   because it brought them information. And the web, I think, has trained a whole generation

01:10:09   to just despise everything advertising, because the web ads are generally so bad. And I think

01:10:14   podcast advertising is a lot better. But some people don't even want that, because, like

01:10:20   I said, I think that some people are just allergic to advertising in general. But I

01:10:24   think that's one of the things that the pod-- they haven't figured out how to screw up podcast

01:10:28   advertising and make them awful yet. And some of that is just because technically it's very

01:10:31   hard to do that because, you know, podcasts, you know, are, are, are, the way they're delivered

01:10:37   and, and processed is so different from the web that, um, it's a lot harder to mess it

01:10:42   up, which is, I'm sure there's some startup out there right now that's trying to ruin

01:10:45   podcast advertising too and make it awful.

01:10:47   >>Oh, there are many, I hear from them.

01:10:50   >>I'm sure you do. Um, but, uh, there's, uh, you know, their, their powers are, are less

01:10:56   than they are on the web. On the web, their powers are great. Those, those people to ruin,

01:11:00   everybody's experience with more advertising.

01:11:03   I think a lot of this comes from my general nature of why can't we all be nice to each

01:11:08   other?

01:11:09   Oh, I agree.

01:11:10   You know, that's my general nature is like, why do we, you know, why do we have to hurt

01:11:15   people, you know, like that kind of feeling.

01:11:16   And I always get a little bit upset about this kind of stuff.

01:11:19   But this is, this was always the case with Macworld, where Serenity would be like, you

01:11:24   know, Serenity often got the brunt of this because she was sort of manning the letters

01:11:27   account at Macworld and she would say, you know, she would get these people who are just

01:11:33   brutally angry about the stuff that was going on on the site and, you know, she would agree

01:11:39   with that too. That's the challenge here is the people who are doing the content often

01:11:43   agree, but at the same time this is the stuff that pays the bills and unless their business

01:11:47   finds another way forward, it's just, yeah, it's a difficult situation. I have never run

01:11:52   an ad blocker for the same reason, which is I feel like then I'm I feel like I

01:11:57   want to support the sites that I like and I want to support their

01:12:02   sponsors because I want them to have a business that works. At the same time, I

01:12:05   do think that you could argue that a lot of these businesses have really

01:12:11   abused that connection that we've got with the people who make the

01:12:16   content in order to do lots of things, not just annoy you, but track you in

01:12:22   order to keep the lights on. And again, yay, keep the lights on, but at

01:12:26   some point do you have to say, "This is unacceptable." And if you say, "This

01:12:31   is unacceptable," do you stop patronizing the site versus running an ad blocker?

01:12:34   Which is what I've always said, is like, "Look, if you don't like it, maybe you should

01:12:38   just not look at their site, not look at it with an ad blocker." But that's a hard

01:12:41   argument to make. It's just, you know, it's just funny to me that it's like, the

01:12:46   start of the show we were talking about what happened at Magworld and like how

01:12:50   sad it was but it's like if we keep going down this road there's gonna be

01:12:55   many more days like that? Yes. Oh, undoubtedly. It makes me uncomfortable. It

01:13:01   makes me really uncomfortable because I like the websites. I go to websites that

01:13:07   I like, you know, that's where I go. Yeah I know. And I don't want to go away. And

01:13:13   And the other problem is if every website you like

01:13:17   in the Mac space said, "We can't make it with advertising,

01:13:22   "but we're gonna do a membership thing,

01:13:24   "and we were asking you for $50 a year,"

01:13:27   that's great, except how many people are going,

01:13:30   how many, even if you're really deep into this

01:13:33   and you really love this, how many of those can you have?

01:13:35   How much are you going to pay?

01:13:37   Are you gonna pay $500 a year to 10 websites

01:13:42   order to support them. I think there's a limit to that too, and that's my

01:13:48   fear in all of this, is that the fact is the web has created this broad

01:13:54   canvas for anybody to reach an audience, and so a lot of people have, and that

01:13:59   we're about to enter a phase where it turns out that we have too many

01:14:05   people doing this. Not that they aren't good at their job and not that people

01:14:08   don't want to read them, but that there's no way we can get a big enough audience

01:14:12   to either make money on ads or generate enough support direct from readers/listeners in order

01:14:20   for them all to keep doing what they're doing as their livelihood. And that's scary because

01:14:25   that is, I mean, in journalism, since I've been doing journalism, it's been very clear

01:14:30   that it is a troubled industry, right? And we always joke about like, this is like sending

01:14:35   somebody to journalism school is a little bit like telling somebody to enter a valuable

01:14:40   career being a steel worker, right? It's like, well, wait, that is not an industry you necessarily

01:14:44   want to go into because it's kind of fading away and that would be a bad bit of career

01:14:48   advice. But sometimes this is one of those cases where I start to think about that even

01:14:52   more and think, you know, it's possible. And things could change dramatically and a lot

01:14:58   of people are going to make it through, but it is possible that in this population of

01:15:03   people we like who write stuff we like or do podcasts that we like, that in five years,

01:15:10   half of them are not doing it anymore because they can't make it work. And that's scary,

01:15:15   but that may be financially, economically, that may happen. And sometimes when I see

01:15:21   my colleagues in the computer journalism industry, the tech journalism industry going to work

01:15:27   in PR or going to work behind the scenes for a company, you know, those are examples of

01:15:34   that. We don't read things by Chris Breen anymore because he's working at Apple. We

01:15:40   We may read things by him, but we wouldn't know it because his name isn't on it.

01:15:46   We don't know, my friend John Seth, who's the executive editor of Macworld for many

01:15:51   years, he's working at Apple now, and so he's not working on this stuff day to day.

01:15:57   And the list goes on.

01:16:00   Somebody like Brad Mullen, who wrote about mobile for ages at a whole bunch of different

01:16:03   sites is doing PR now.

01:16:07   That always happened, but I do wonder if there is a reckoning coming where we're going to

01:16:14   do this.

01:16:15   And I don't think ad blockers—ad blockers are not going to be—I don't think we're

01:16:18   going to look back and say, "Oh, content blockers killed the web and everybody lost

01:16:22   their jobs."

01:16:23   It's just part of this much bigger issue, I think.

01:16:25   But I think you're right to be concerned about it, because it's a big deal, and it's

01:16:29   going to be—it's going to get worse before it gets better, I think.

01:16:32   It just makes me sad.

01:16:35   I agree.

01:16:36   I hope, you know, we're all trying to find ways, you know, including us, right? I mean,

01:16:40   I'm certainly trying to find a way to make it without being in the position that Macworld

01:16:47   is in, where they've got, you know, pre-roll ads and lots of tiles everywhere and things that slide

01:16:53   in over your page and stuff like that. I would-- that Six Colors has, like, a text ad and a post

01:17:00   a week and a little tiny deck ad and that's it. It's like incredibly lightweight because

01:17:06   as a reaction to all of that. But you know I'm also not at the point now where I think if I can't

01:17:12   make more money at six colors I'm gonna have to go you know start applying for jobs at tech

01:17:19   companies. I'm not at that point so it's easy for me to do that but what if I was at that point?

01:17:24   What are my options then? That's scary.

01:17:26   - Yep. I want to get a job, Jason.

01:17:29   - Yeah, I hear ya.

01:17:31   - Yeah. I'm gonna get too sad. How about we, uh,

01:17:34   whilst advertising is still good in this game, how about we stop and take one and then do some Ask Upgrade?

01:17:39   - Yeah, you know, podcast advertising is, uh, is really nice, and one of the, one of the things is you can have a,

01:17:44   it's a little more personal and hopefully it's different every time.

01:17:47   Um, so this, this Ask Upgrade is about our friends at Stamps.com who are back.

01:17:53   We've told you about Stamps.com before. The idea here is if you're a small or medium-sized business,

01:17:59   you probably do a lot of shipping and mailing. And the old way of doing stuff, the old way of

01:18:07   businesses shipping and mailing is with a postal meter. But, you know, there's been a revolution in

01:18:13   this stuff just like there has been in so many different bits of technology. You can get the

01:18:17   mailing and shipping done without leaving your desk using Stamps.com. It never closes, unlike

01:18:22   the post office, you don't have to wait in a line, unlike the post office, you can actually buy and

01:18:26   print your postage from your computer and your printer, and then you just hand it to your friendly

01:18:32   letter carrier when they come by or drop it in a mailbox, and that's it. So businesses pay $15.99

01:18:38   a month, that's it. There's no long-term requirement, there's no multi-year commitment, that's

01:18:42   something that postage meters generally require. They also don't mark up your postage, in fact you

01:18:47   you can get discounts with Stamps.com. So if you would like to try this out for your

01:18:51   business here's what you should do. Use the promo code UPGRADE for this special offer.

01:18:56   You get a no risk trial and there's a $110 bonus offer that includes a digital scale

01:19:01   so you can get exact postage. It's a USB, a little nice USB scale that you get and up

01:19:07   to $55 of free postage. So don't wait, go now Stamps.com, click on the microphone on

01:19:14   on Stamps.com at the top of the homepage

01:19:16   and type in upgrade the show you're listening to right now

01:19:19   at Stamps.com and enter upgrade for the special deals.

01:19:24   But I've used Stamps.com quite a bit

01:19:26   and it is so great, I've talked about it before.

01:19:30   I work in my garage, I don't get out as much as I used to.

01:19:35   When I do get out of the house though,

01:19:36   you know what I don't wanna do?

01:19:38   I don't wanna go to the post office

01:19:39   and Stamps.com means I don't have to go there.

01:19:42   I can go somewhere nicer, like I can go next door

01:19:44   from the post office to Whole Foods

01:19:47   and buy Manchego or peanut butter.

01:19:49   And thank you Stamps.com for allowing me

01:19:53   to just swerve past the post office

01:19:55   and move on to someplace happier.

01:19:57   Stamps.com.

01:19:59   - Stamps.com, thank you Stamps.com.

01:20:02   Listen to Alan Rotin.

01:20:03   Listen to Alan has an iMac with a Fusion Drive in it.

01:20:09   And he finds that it grinds, pulses,

01:20:11   or simply feels like he's running on a stupid old slow spinning disk from 2003.

01:20:16   So, let's say that Alan could upgrade to a new iMac and he has $4,000 to spend on the

01:20:26   new 5K iMac.

01:20:27   So he's running an older iMac version where I think the Fusion Drive was just introduced

01:20:31   in the previous model and he's running that one.

01:20:34   So let's say in this scenario that Alan has come across this money, he's still stuck with

01:20:39   the decision of either a 1 terabyte SSD or a 3 terabyte Fusion Drive. What does he do?

01:20:49   What does he do? I am a believer in SSD. I know it's not as much storage space but I

01:20:57   feel like for your boot drive I think the best. Fusion Drive I've heard mixed things,

01:21:02   some people like it, some people hate it. I would go all SSD and if you need storage,

01:21:08   If you need like lots of external storage, I would say get a NAS, you know, network attached

01:21:13   storage device, or get a big external drive of some kind and offload your projects to

01:21:21   that when you're done.

01:21:22   So I've got a Mac mini server with the Drobo attached to it, actually about four feet away

01:21:27   from me, and an SSD on my iMac.

01:21:30   So I just use the SSD on my iMac and I store all my files on the big drive when I'm done.

01:21:36   I think that's the best combination and you have to look and see whether that fits in your budget,

01:21:41   but personally I want my storage that's on my Mac to be SSD at this point. It's just

01:21:49   that is the number one thing whenever I use a computer that still has the spinning disk in it,

01:21:54   even if it's a fusion drive, it is painful compared to the pure SSD. So that's my recommendation is

01:22:01   I think people should buy SSDs for their internal storage,

01:22:06   and then if they really need a lot of external storage to get a network-attached drive

01:22:11   and just put it on their network and they can do it that way,

01:22:13   or get an external drive you can attach when you need it,

01:22:16   or leave it attached all the time,

01:22:18   but know that that's the slower storage that just is just for kind of offloading when you're not using it.

01:22:24   Does that work for you, Myke?

01:22:25   Yeah I have a 512 SSD in my Mac Pro and it isn't a problem but I'm finding myself every

01:22:33   now and then going in and needing to delete stuff you know. So I've been thinking about

01:22:37   getting a Drobo for a while and it's on my long term shopping list you know maybe maybe

01:22:41   around tax season get rid of some of that money and so I think I'm going to do that.

01:22:48   Just to store stuff long term like audio files can get quite big

01:22:52   depending on what you're working with. And at the moment I'm like deleting

01:22:56   all the project files and I probably don't need them for that long but it

01:23:00   would just be nice I think to have something where I could just store stuff

01:23:04   long term. The great thing is like we have, Steven has a bunch of storage space

01:23:10   and we have some storage space with Mac Mini Cola and we have everything just

01:23:15   automatically download there for storage so it's not like a pressing issue. Like

01:23:19   Like all our shows are archived, you know, on our stuff that we have elsewhere.

01:23:24   But I wouldn't mind having something here.

01:23:26   It's just not pressing so I haven't gotten around to it yet.

01:23:30   But in all honesty, like for the machine that I work on, 512 gigabytes is fine, really.

01:23:37   I'm not putting movies on this, I'm not putting music on this.

01:23:40   Like it's just work files and it does a good enough job.

01:23:44   But I agree with you.

01:23:46   I did once have to go from SSD back to a spinning hard drive and it's one of the most horrible

01:23:51   things that I've ever done and I had to work on that Mac Mini for years.

01:23:57   And now I just, you couldn't, you could not make me do it.

01:24:01   I have the 512 gigabyte SSD in my iMac and it is plenty of space given that I am not

01:24:10   storing all the stuff that when I'm done with a project I move it.

01:24:14   The nice thing about having all that external storage space

01:24:17   is that I, yeah, I listened to you talk about,

01:24:19   I don't need my logic projects, I can just get rid of them.

01:24:21   And it's like, well, a lot of the relay stuff is so timely.

01:24:25   It's most valuable now.

01:24:29   And I mean, yeah, people might go back

01:24:30   and listen to some episodes from the past,

01:24:32   but it's mostly about the present.

01:24:33   Whereas incomparable stuff, I occasionally will go back

01:24:36   and I'll do a best of, or I'll do a special edit

01:24:39   of something and all of that.

01:24:40   And so I now keep all of those,

01:24:42   I'm actually keeping all of my logic files right now,

01:24:45   but those are the ones that are more timeless

01:24:48   that I wanna save it because I've actually had it come up

01:24:50   where somebody said, you know, what about this thing?

01:24:53   Or, you know, it's a best of the year thing.

01:24:55   And somebody's talking over somebody else,

01:24:57   but I can like isolate their track.

01:24:58   And I do that because I've got this, you know,

01:25:01   big raid with a giant amount of hard drive space.

01:25:05   And it's great.

01:25:06   And yet my Mac with the 512 SSD is super fast.

01:25:11   and it's a great combination if you can make it work

01:25:14   in your budget to have external storage.

01:25:17   That's the way to go.

01:25:19   - Yep, I'd go completely.

01:25:21   Right, Andrew asked, "With Apple Music

01:25:26   that is added to your library,

01:25:27   can you burn it to a CD to get around DRM

01:25:29   and have a permanent copy?"

01:25:31   I don't know the answer to this,

01:25:32   but I'm just gonna say no, you can't do that.

01:25:35   That's my feeling, I don't even feel like I need to check.

01:25:40   Yeah, it seems unlikely, doesn't it? I don't actually know. This was the old way you got around DRM, right?

01:25:50   Mm-hmm.

01:25:50   Was you burned--you went to a playlist and then burned it as a CD.

01:25:56   Do you remember that era, Myke? Do you remember that?

01:25:58   Oh, 100%, Jason. I did that all the time.

01:26:00   Yeah, you'd want to get your friend the new album that you were listening to that you'd bought on iTunes,

01:26:07   So you'd burn them a CD on a CD-RW so they could give it back to you.

01:26:13   And then there would be no DRM for them, you wouldn't need to authorise their computer,

01:26:18   and they'd be good to go.

01:26:19   Yeah, so my guess is no.

01:26:21   But I don't know.

01:26:23   Yeah, I did some quick searching.

01:26:25   I haven't burned a CD in so long that, yeah.

01:26:28   I haven't got a computer that could.

01:26:31   Although I have an external drive that I use.

01:26:33   I do have one of those and I can't remember why I bought it but I bought it

01:26:38   relative... oh I remember I remember I had to make a CD for a funeral and it was

01:26:44   like yeah it was like well we needed the music and there was no other way to get

01:26:48   it and the the funeral home would only take a CD so I had to spend 80 pounds to

01:26:53   get a CD drive to make one CD man future so yeah that's the reason that I have

01:27:01   one and it's but I always forget that I have it because I never need it for

01:27:05   anything. Who uses CDs today man? Crazy. Crazy town.

01:27:09   Yeah.

01:27:09   John would like to know and I would love to know this and now that John has

01:27:15   pointed it out Jason I really hope you can help.

01:27:16   I have an answer.

01:27:17   I hoped that you would. Why do OS X keyboard shortcuts highlight their menu bar in blue like the

01:27:24   specific item where they live in the menu bar when it's pressed? So for

01:27:28   example if you are in Tweetbot and you press ctrl+N it will open the new the

01:27:35   box for the new tweet which is also underneath under the tweet menu in the

01:27:40   Tweetbot menu bar. Alright so it highlights it in blue the word tweet in

01:27:44   the menu bar as if to show you "hey it came from here" why does that happen?

01:27:49   Well I mean the answer is it is the idea is if you know a keyboard shortcut but

01:27:55   you don't know where its corresponding menu item is,

01:28:00   it's telling you.

01:28:01   That's really the answer.

01:28:03   The idea is to tie the keyboard to the menu bar,

01:28:06   which sometimes is useful if you're like,

01:28:08   well, I know what the shortcut is to make text bold,

01:28:11   but I don't know what it is to make it an underline

01:28:13   or a strikethrough.

01:28:14   If you press the text bold,

01:28:16   you'll see that it's in the style menu or whatever.

01:28:19   And you'll say, oh, well, that must be where it is.

01:28:22   And then you can go up and you can look for it.

01:28:24   But that is the reason why it does that,

01:28:26   is it's trying to make the connection

01:28:29   that the keys that you type are actually menu commands.

01:28:33   And then the counterpart is that the command

01:28:36   shows you the key you can type in the menu.

01:28:38   So it's a convention from the beginning of the Mac,

01:28:43   and so it remains, and sometimes it can be useful,

01:28:46   but it's also there just to tie those two things together.

01:28:49   - Okay.

01:28:50   I mean, it kind of makes sense.

01:28:51   That kind of makes sense.

01:28:53   but it's, there is a part of me that feels like

01:28:57   that is a remnant from a bygone era.

01:29:01   - Also, I'd say what it does is it's indicating to you that,

01:29:06   it's indicating to you that your key was heard, right?

01:29:14   Because you might not always see

01:29:17   in the interface something changes.

01:29:19   Like if I'm sitting at a cursor

01:29:22   and I choose Command + B to start typing in bold text.

01:29:26   There's no bold text yet.

01:29:28   So how does it know, did my key get read?

01:29:30   Did it hear me?

01:29:32   And by flashing in the menu bar,

01:29:34   you've got a visual indicator

01:29:36   that your keyboard shortcut was heard.

01:29:38   So that's the other reason.

01:29:39   - Funny thing is I don't see the menu bar

01:29:41   very often anymore.

01:29:42   'Cause I run a lot of my apps in full screen.

01:29:45   - Yeah.

01:29:47   - You know? - Same on you.

01:29:48   - Hey. - That's fine.

01:29:49   Didn't you write a piece about full screen?

01:29:52   Like on why it's good or was that Dan?

01:29:55   - No, no, no.

01:29:57   No, it's funny, I wrote a thing about how I think

01:30:01   split view makes full screen more useful.

01:30:05   - Yeah, that's what I was going for.

01:30:07   I'm kind of, I'm twisting your words there a bit.

01:30:09   - Well, and Macworld did too,

01:30:11   'cause my piece was very much like,

01:30:13   hey, split views got a lot of problems

01:30:14   that Apple needs to fix

01:30:15   'cause the metaphor is kind of broken.

01:30:17   And the headline is like,

01:30:19   I split for you will make things great.

01:30:20   I'm like, well, that's not what I said.

01:30:22   - I haven't read that piece yet.

01:30:24   That's why I thought you said it.

01:30:25   - Oh, the headline is much more positive

01:30:27   than the actual article is.

01:30:29   - By the way, I only noticed like yesterday

01:30:32   that your article is called "More Color"

01:30:34   and that's fantastic.

01:30:35   Your series is called "More Color" your column.

01:30:38   - That was Susie Oakes's idea and it's great

01:30:40   'cause it not only references six colors,

01:30:42   but I couldn't stop laughing on the analyst call

01:30:44   because they're always asking Tim Cook

01:30:47   for more color about this or more color about that

01:30:49   in the results.

01:30:51   And Tim Cook at one point actually said,

01:30:53   in terms of more color on this other thing,

01:30:55   and it just made me laugh.

01:30:57   - So that's a really great name for the column.

01:30:59   - Yeah, it is.

01:31:00   Yeah, Susie, great suggestion by Susie.

01:31:03   - And finally, a question from Will,

01:31:04   going back to something we were talking about

01:31:05   a little bit earlier.

01:31:07   Will asks, "With US carriers dropping the subsidy model,

01:31:10   "should Apple rethink iPhone price points

01:31:12   "to offset sticker shock this fall?"

01:31:14   So my supplementary question to you, Jason,

01:31:16   is I didn't notice this happening, is this happening?

01:31:19   - It's starting to happen.

01:31:21   Really what's happening is that carriers are changing

01:31:23   from the subsidy model to what they're calling financing.

01:31:27   I think essentially the difference is that with financing,

01:31:32   you pay the extra money for two years,

01:31:35   you pay the 199 or whatever the price is with financing.

01:31:39   And after two years, your bill goes down.

01:31:43   Instead of what has been happening,

01:31:45   which is completely insane.

01:31:46   And I do think drives phone sales,

01:31:49   which is your subsidy is baked into your bill.

01:31:54   And if you use an iPhone for four years, instead of two,

01:31:59   your bill doesn't go down.

01:32:01   So you really are motivated to upgrade

01:32:03   as soon as you're out of your subsidy,

01:32:06   because you're essentially paying your subsidy,

01:32:08   whether you use it or not.

01:32:09   So you might as well use it

01:32:11   and pay the 199 or whatever,

01:32:13   and get a new phone because your bill's not gonna go down.

01:32:16   With this approach, your bill goes down.

01:32:18   So you pay an extra whatever, $20 a month

01:32:21   until two years is over and then your bill goes down.

01:32:25   - Yeah. - Which is great.

01:32:27   So I think it's interesting.

01:32:28   I think it's unlikely at this point

01:32:31   that Apple will rethink its price points

01:32:34   because it is by far the most important product

01:32:38   in Apple's product line

01:32:39   and it's doing really well and growing.

01:32:41   And I'm not sure Apple feels like it needs to,

01:32:44   it needs to change the prices.

01:32:47   But it is true, if we got to the point where people were,

01:32:51   I think what it's gonna take is I think it's gonna,

01:32:54   the more we abandon subsidies,

01:32:57   the more people are going to see the full price.

01:33:02   And that is going to lengthen the upgrade cycle.

01:33:08   It's gonna make people reluctant to pay

01:33:11   for that phone every two years.

01:33:12   - Even if they will pay less money overall,

01:33:16   which is probably accurate.

01:33:18   - Yeah, absolutely. - Seeing that number

01:33:20   is the problem.

01:33:21   - Seeing having to pay $600 for your phone,

01:33:27   even though in the end, over the course of two years,

01:33:30   your bill is less because you're not paying the subsidy,

01:33:33   it's still just buying psychology,

01:33:36   it is harder to say, yay, I'm gonna go pay $550

01:33:41   for the new iPhone.

01:33:42   Also, it takes it off of the calendar.

01:33:45   Then it's just, when do I wanna buy a new iPhone?

01:33:48   And it's no longer your phone company saying,

01:33:52   look, you're basically paying for it anyway,

01:33:54   you might as well get it, it's 199.

01:33:56   Now it's more, hey, you can get one whenever you want,

01:34:00   it's 599.

01:34:02   And so, yeah, well, I think when there's a feeling

01:34:07   that sales are going to start lagging because of the price,

01:34:13   because people are now seeing the full price,

01:34:15   that would be when it would happen.

01:34:17   But I think everybody involved in this transaction,

01:34:21   actually, well, even the consumers,

01:34:23   even though it doesn't make sense financially,

01:34:25   it makes sense emotionally for consumers.

01:34:27   I think everybody benefits by having it say 199.

01:34:31   So I think, you know, the change will be the finance model,

01:34:36   like I said, and the idea that after you've got your phone

01:34:39   for two years, your bill just goes down

01:34:41   until you get a new phone, and then your bill goes back up

01:34:44   for the two year period that you're paying it off.

01:34:47   That may remain.

01:34:49   I think it's there for a reason,

01:34:53   and although it's not necessarily the best deal,

01:34:55   the best deal would be to just buy your phone.

01:34:57   And the more they make it easy for you to just walk in,

01:35:00   I would rather do that.

01:35:01   I would just rather walk in and pay the full price

01:35:02   and walk out and have my bill be less

01:35:04   because I know in the end, that's a better deal.

01:35:06   But I think most people don't react that way.

01:35:10   And that's why it is the way it is.

01:35:11   And I think that'll probably continue.

01:35:13   But if it does tail off,

01:35:14   if we do start seeing a whole lot more people

01:35:17   just paying full price for the phone,

01:35:19   and if it has an impact on the upgrade cycle,

01:35:22   that's when I think you might start seeing

01:35:24   Apple feel some pressure to make the sticker price less.

01:35:28   So we have actually had this model in the UK for a year or two, but I didn't fully understand

01:35:34   it from the way that the question was asked.

01:35:36   And it's led to a couple of different things.

01:35:38   So the way that it's pitched here is maybe slightly different.

01:35:43   The idea being that you pay one amount of money, but it pays for two different things.

01:35:48   You pay for your contract and you pay for your phone, your handset.

01:35:54   And once you finish paying for your handset, you can upgrade to another one.

01:35:58   So you can do a free upgrade or if you want to keep on the contract period or extend the

01:36:02   contract or you can pay again for another one and then we put it back into your contract

01:36:08   again.

01:36:09   So you take out another handset payment and you're keeping the bill.

01:36:13   And one of the things this is doing is it's benefiting customers in one way which also

01:36:17   benefits the phone companies.

01:36:20   So people may take two, three year, four year agreements, so they're keeping their price

01:36:25   pan low but they can still upgrade sooner because they pay their handsets off over a

01:36:32   year.

01:36:33   Does that make sense?

01:36:34   So people are still changing their phones every year but they're locked into longer

01:36:38   term contracts which benefits the company but also keeps people's price plans cheaper

01:36:44   because the longer you take it out the cheaper it is.

01:36:45   So there is this weird thing where it's like a kind of a benefit for both sides.

01:36:51   Like if you're happy enough with the price and the service that you get from your phone

01:36:55   company, you end up being able to upgrade on a more frequent ratio, like more

01:37:02   frequent time period, so. Right, right, I think we'll see more of that. I

01:37:06   think the US market, this is what's happening now, is they're

01:37:10   realizing they need to try some different approaches here. That's the

01:37:14   advantage too of having a lot of competition in wireless, is that wireless

01:37:19   companies are willing to make you a deal and give you a better deal if you'll stay

01:37:23   with them and that's good. That's one of those cases where the

01:37:28   consumer has an advantage is they're afraid that you're gonna switch to the

01:37:31   other guys and that gives you know that motivates them to make a better deal.

01:37:36   Yep. All right so I think that brings us to the end of this week. I think so.

01:37:42   If you want to find our show notes for today's episode head on over to relay.fm/upgrade/47

01:37:49   That's where you also find a link to Steven and Jason's little little space conversation

01:37:54   Which I think you should go and listen to if you haven't already

01:37:56   Thanks again to our sponsors this week stamps calm igloo and go to meeting if you want to support this show

01:38:03   Go support our sponsors. It's a great way go check them out

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01:38:18   to

01:38:32   Jason L. J-S-N-E-L-L and he writes over at SixColors.com. Go and check out Jason's site

01:38:39   and click all of his ads as well. Why don't you do that if my sadness has reached you

01:38:45   today. And thank you so much for listening, thank you Jason for joining me as always and

01:38:50   we'll be back next time. To an end. Say goodbye Mr Snell.

01:38:53   Goodbye everybody.

01:38:53   [MUSIC]