Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► *BEEP*

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 22.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Today's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends at Igloo, an internet you'll actually like.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Hover, simplified domain management.

00:00:20 ◼   ► MailRoute, a secure hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam.

00:00:24 ◼   ► And Stamps.com, postage on demand.

00:00:26 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined as always by the one and only

00:00:30 ◼   ► Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Hello, Mr. Snell.

00:00:32 ◼   ► How are you today?

00:00:33 ◼   ► - Hello, Mr. Hurley.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I'm doing fine.

00:00:35 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:36 ◼   ► - I am very well indeed, sir.

00:00:37 ◼   ► I'm always happy to kick off my week

00:00:39 ◼   ► with an episode of Upgrade.

00:00:41 ◼   ► - Yes, it helps us mark time, doesn't it?

00:00:44 ◼   ► It's like the passage of the week.

00:00:45 ◼   ► So this is our Monday.

00:00:47 ◼   ► For me, it's our little Monday morning chat.

00:00:50 ◼   ► For you, it's Monday evening.

00:00:52 ◼   ► So, you know.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - I wish it was my Monday morning as well.

00:00:54 ◼   ► I think that would be really nice, but.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - We should do that sometime where I stay up late

00:00:59 ◼   ► and do like late on Sunday night and you're in Monday morning and we do a crazy...

00:01:05 ◼   ► that maybe not.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - That's not... you'd have to stay up really late. - Yeah I suppose I would.

00:01:11 ◼   ► - Actually no you wouldn't. If you stayed up till like 1am...

00:01:15 ◼   ► - No well that would be 9am. No you're gonna have to get up earlier than that,

00:01:19 ◼   ► Myke. I'm sorry. - Okay. - If this is gonna have to work I think I think you're

00:01:22 ◼   ► gonna have to get up at like 7. And I'll start... we'll start at

00:01:28 ◼   ► 7 a.m. your time 11 p.m. my time and we'll do it let's this sounds like a

00:01:31 ◼   ► terrible idea that we could most listless sleepy version of upgrade ever

00:01:36 ◼   ► we could totally do it we should do it I don't know what maybe for April Fools or

00:01:41 ◼   ► something I don't know why that would be April Fools but maybe I could pretend to

00:01:45 ◼   ► be you and you could pretend to be me or something like that it would be funny it

00:01:48 ◼   ► would be it would be funny and it would be interesting to see who we get in the

00:01:51 ◼   ► chat room for that although the incomparable brings out the night owls

00:01:54 ◼   ► because we record those very very late. I should mention since we're

00:01:59 ◼   ► talking about this, we should mention, I think we mentioned this in the

00:02:04 ◼   ► aftershow or in the during show when your internet died last week, but I'm

00:02:11 ◼   ► going to be visiting your land, your fair shores in March, which

00:02:18 ◼   ► means we're going to have to do a couple episodes of upgrade in person, which is

00:02:23 ◼   ► weird and exciting. It's gonna be wild. I'm excited about that. March 23rd we are

00:02:29 ◼   ► going to find someplace to do a podcast in London. I think probably the 23rd could

00:02:35 ◼   ► be the 24th but I think I think we should shoot for Monday because Monday

00:02:38 ◼   ► is our day and and then the following week the 30th we will both be in Ireland

00:02:43 ◼   ► for Ool and so we'll do a an episode from from Ool as well. I don't know maybe

00:02:49 ◼   ► we'll have a special guest who knows but uh that so that's exciting so we're going to do a couple

00:02:54 ◼   ► of these in person which is uh which is fine we've done podcasts in person before uh at least i you

00:02:59 ◼   ► know at wwdc but to do uh and we've talked in person at will last year and all sorts of things

00:03:06 ◼   ► but not this show so this show will be live and in person a couple of times in uh in march i hope

00:03:14 ◼   ► that we'll be able to do the show afterwards i hope that it's like you know we're not we're not

00:03:18 ◼   ► so so we don't love so much recording in person that we then just can't record

00:03:22 ◼   ► anymore just never makes it the same we'll see we'll see yeah we could ruin it

00:03:29 ◼   ► could all be ruined do we have some follow-up mrs. now we do a little bit

00:03:35 ◼   ► although some of it is a very very much a fundamental like question about

00:03:39 ◼   ► follow-up but before we get there we talked last week about the power of

00:03:42 ◼   ► YouTube, if you recall, and listener SpeccyClassics on Twitter wrote in to say, "Will Google be

00:03:52 ◼   ► remembered most for YouTube?" which I think we said, he said, he says, "I think StreetView

00:03:56 ◼   ► is more historically significant." I think that's an interesting point. I guess my problem

00:04:03 ◼   ► with that argument is although Street View is cool,

00:04:07 ◼   ► it's pretty replicable and YouTube,

00:04:13 ◼   ► you can build all the video services you want,

00:04:15 ◼   ► but YouTube's the winner, at least for now,

00:04:19 ◼   ► it is a culturally significant thing.

00:04:21 ◼   ► But I think Google is doing lots of things.

00:04:23 ◼   ► I think we've talked about this on this show before,

00:04:26 ◼   ► but I really believe that Google is well aware of the fact

00:04:30 ◼   ► that their business of doing text ads on the internet

00:04:33 ◼   ► is not gonna, you know, that and their search dominance

00:04:37 ◼   ► is not gonna last and it's not gonna be enough

00:04:40 ◼   ► to carry them into whatever the next tech transition is.

00:04:42 ◼   ► And so they're placing lots of bets

00:04:44 ◼   ► on lots of different technologies,

00:04:46 ◼   ► some of which are interconnected,

00:04:47 ◼   ► some of which are not at all,

00:04:49 ◼   ► because they wanna hit on one or two

00:04:51 ◼   ► of these world-changing things that will propel them

00:04:54 ◼   ► into whatever the next generation of technology is.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And, you know, I think making bets

00:04:58 ◼   ► on something like Street View and saying,

00:05:00 ◼   ► we're gonna blanket the, you know,

00:05:02 ◼   ► we're gonna organize all the information

00:05:04 ◼   ► about like what you see on a particular street.

00:05:06 ◼   ► I think that's great, obviously, self-driving cars

00:05:09 ◼   ► and robot things and other ways

00:05:13 ◼   ► that they will subjugate humanity.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Did I say that out loud?

00:05:16 ◼   ► Will come.

00:05:18 ◼   ► So I would actually place a bet that I suspect

00:05:22 ◼   ► there's probably something that Google will be remembered

00:05:25 ◼   ► for historically that has not even happened yet.

00:05:28 ◼   ► I think there's a decent chance

00:05:29 ◼   ► 'cause I think they're trying that.

00:05:30 ◼   ► I think they're actually trying to change the world

00:05:33 ◼   ► on a bunch of different fronts

00:05:34 ◼   ► because they're trying to find their next big thing.

00:05:36 ◼   ► And maybe they'll fail.

00:05:37 ◼   ► But I think unlike a lot of other companies

00:05:39 ◼   ► that were happy to protect the goose

00:05:42 ◼   ► that laid the golden egg until they died.

00:05:45 ◼   ► And they're like, "Oh, the goose is gone.

00:05:47 ◼   ► We're done. We're out of here, Radio Shack."

00:05:50 ◼   ► That they're trying to find the next big thing.

00:05:53 ◼   ► So who knows?

00:05:54 ◼   ► But right now I think YouTube

00:05:56 ◼   ► is just such a cultural phenomenon

00:05:58 ◼   ► to the current generation, the young 'uns like my kids,

00:06:04 ◼   ► that it's pretty powerful.

00:06:06 ◼   ► That was a good buy by Google to buy YouTube.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Google X, that's their entire division in which they

00:06:14 ◼   ► think about space elevators.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Doesn't sound threatening at all, does it?

00:06:18 ◼   ► The X, the most threatening of letters.

00:06:22 ◼   ► What letter should they have used instead?

00:06:25 ◼   ► I think not a letter would have been a good choice.

00:06:28 ◼   ► Call it like Google's special projects or Google Gold

00:06:32 ◼   ► or Google, you know, I don't know, awesome.

00:06:36 ◼   ► - Google future.

00:06:37 ◼   ► - Google volcano.

00:06:38 ◼   ► - No, that's worse.

00:06:41 ◼   ► - No, that is, you're right.

00:06:42 ◼   ► It's meant for bonanza.

00:06:45 ◼   ► So anyway, that's the YouTube follow-up.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Apple watch follow-up, but listener Sean wrote in to say,

00:06:51 ◼   ► "The watch may be to the iPhone

00:06:53 ◼   ► as the iPhone once was to the Mac.

00:06:55 ◼   ► It may become an independent device.

00:06:57 ◼   ► What are your thoughts?

00:06:58 ◼   ► I'm not sure whether Sean means iPad or iPod here.

00:07:04 ◼   ► The iPod was really subservient to the Mac and the PC.

00:07:08 ◼   ► And the watch is going to be subservient to the iPhone.

00:07:11 ◼   ► But the iPhone was never really subservient to the Mac.

00:07:14 ◼   ► You had to sync to put some stuff,

00:07:16 ◼   ► you know, to put some media on it.

00:07:17 ◼   ► But my bigger point was that it's not about

00:07:21 ◼   ► being subservient to another device.

00:07:22 ◼   ► It's that the iPhone or the Apple Watch

00:07:25 ◼   ► only works with the iPhone.

00:07:27 ◼   ► and it's never gonna work with Android phones,

00:07:31 ◼   ► let's just say that.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And I actually wrote, we talked about it

00:07:36 ◼   ► and then that actually spawned a piece on six colors

00:07:39 ◼   ► that I wrote last week about the same issue

00:07:41 ◼   ► about how the Apple Watch is an iPhone accessory

00:07:45 ◼   ► but the iPhone is so large

00:07:46 ◼   ► as we were talking about last week,

00:07:48 ◼   ► the iPhone is so successful that Apple can launch

00:07:52 ◼   ► an entire major part of their business

00:07:55 ◼   ► and have it only work with the iPhone

00:07:56 ◼   ► because they don't need it to work with Android phones.

00:07:59 ◼   ► They don't want it to, and they don't need it to.

00:08:01 ◼   ► The iPhone is so big, they can launch the entire Apple Watch.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Not to say that the Apple Watch won't eventually

00:08:07 ◼   ► have its own cellular connection

00:08:08 ◼   ► and lots of other stuff packed in it,

00:08:09 ◼   ► and you won't need an iPhone with it,

00:08:11 ◼   ► but I think you will always prefer to use it with an iPhone,

00:08:15 ◼   ► and they can do that 'cause the iPhone is so huge.

00:08:18 ◼   ► And it's so huge, especially in the market

00:08:20 ◼   ► that is the market for the Apple Watch,

00:08:22 ◼   ► which is the premium smartphone market.

00:08:24 ◼   ► So I think the Apple Watch will,

00:08:26 ◼   ► to answer Liz Nashon's question,

00:08:28 ◼   ► I think the Apple Watch will absolutely become

00:08:31 ◼   ► an independent device at some point.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Although I suspect it will be a lot less likely

00:08:35 ◼   ► that somebody who doesn't have an iPhone will use it

00:08:38 ◼   ► until the point where it's so powerful

00:08:39 ◼   ► that you don't even need an iPhone anymore, maybe.

00:08:42 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe.

00:08:44 ◼   ► But I think that right now,

00:08:48 ◼   ► it's interesting that Apple doesn't need to worry

00:08:50 ◼   ► about it being anything.

00:08:51 ◼   ► It's not like the iPod where the second generation,

00:08:54 ◼   ► they put in Music Match jukebox for Windows

00:08:57 ◼   ► and let it run on Windows,

00:08:59 ◼   ► and then did iTunes for Windows after that,

00:09:01 ◼   ► 'cause they had to get to the PC

00:09:02 ◼   ► for the iPod to be successful.

00:09:04 ◼   ► The Apple Watch doesn't need to reach anybody

00:09:06 ◼   ► but iPhone users to be successful,

00:09:07 ◼   ► and that's how powerful the iPhone is.

00:09:09 ◼   ► - In a quick piece of impromptu follow out,

00:09:13 ◼   ► this week's episode, or this past week's episode

00:09:18 ◼   ► of the talk show with John Gruber and MG Sigler

00:09:22 ◼   ► was the guest, they spoke a lot about kind of

00:09:25 ◼   ► the Apple Watch and how it, they call it like a moat

00:09:29 ◼   ► for the iPhone, I've never heard that term before

00:09:30 ◼   ► but it's quite smart, like it gets you in, you know,

00:09:32 ◼   ► and you can't, it's one of those things that kind of like

00:09:34 ◼   ► keeps you in the ecosystem, right,

00:09:37 ◼   ► because it's just something else that you have

00:09:40 ◼   ► that then means that you must continue to buy an iPhone.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And I just thought it was a really,

00:09:44 ◼   ► they just spoke a lot about this,

00:09:45 ◼   ► if you haven't listened to it you should.

00:09:46 ◼   ► I actually think that episode might be one of my favorites of this run. It's

00:09:51 ◼   ► just absolutely fantastic. It's a shame that we don't get to hear from MG so

00:09:55 ◼   ► much anymore I think. Yeah, yeah because he's off doing Google

00:09:58 ◼   ► Ventures stuff now but I always... people like to give MG a hard

00:10:03 ◼   ► time because yeah you know he could be abrasive and that's saying

00:10:08 ◼   ► that's understating it a little bit but he's a smart guy. He's a really smart guy.

00:10:12 ◼   ► There's a reason Google hired him.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:16 ◼   ► He's handling millions of dollars of Google's money.

00:10:18 ◼   ► I think that there's a good reason for that.

00:10:21 ◼   ► But yeah, it's a really good piece.

00:10:23 ◼   ► The more that we are getting closer to the Apple Watch,

00:10:27 ◼   ► the more excited I am getting about the product.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Like, you know, I keep seeing things pop up now,

00:10:33 ◼   ► like people are doing design mockups of what they think some apps could look like

00:10:37 ◼   ► and that kind of thing.

00:10:38 ◼   ► But just, you know, as we're getting closer to it,

00:10:40 ◼   ► closer to it and now we know that there's a kind of release date window

00:10:44 ◼   ► which means I'll probably be in an event within maybe the next six weeks or so.

00:10:48 ◼   ► I'm starting to get more and more excited about it. I am concerned that it

00:10:55 ◼   ► may be there may be a staggered release on this product but we'll wait and see.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Much more to be done there. Dan Morin and I have been working on a basically

00:11:06 ◼   ► FAQ story for the Apple Watch. We want to start on six colors because we

00:11:10 ◼   ► did one for Macworld on our last day at Macworld, but we want to do one for Six Colors so that

00:11:15 ◼   ► we can also then update it as we learn more information about it. And it's actually been

00:11:18 ◼   ► fun to comb through. Apple's released a huge amount of information about the Apple Watch.

00:11:22 ◼   ► I think even now a lot of people don't understand all of the details that are already public

00:11:28 ◼   ► knowledge about what is going on with the Apple Watch. So I'm hoping we'll post that

00:11:32 ◼   ► in the next week or two and then really looking forward to more information coming out about

00:11:36 ◼   ► it.

00:11:37 ◼   ► I hope that you get an invite.

00:11:39 ◼   ► That's what I hope.

00:11:40 ◼   ► - I hope so too.

00:11:42 ◼   ► I'm not taking it for granted.

00:11:44 ◼   ► I hope I do.

00:11:45 ◼   ► That would be nice.

00:11:45 ◼   ► Although the question is what's the invite to?

00:11:48 ◼   ► Because I don't think there's gonna be

00:11:49 ◼   ► an Apple Watch launch event.

00:11:51 ◼   ► So I hope they maybe contact me and have me review it.

00:11:55 ◼   ► - No, I think there will be another event.

00:11:59 ◼   ► I think that they haven't given

00:12:01 ◼   ► enough information publicly yet.

00:12:03 ◼   ► And I think the best way to do a lot of that

00:12:05 ◼   ► is to stand up on stage.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Like we haven't seen the demos from people that have made apps,

00:12:10 ◼   ► like which is something that they will want to show.

00:12:13 ◼   ► We don't really know much about battery life.

00:12:15 ◼   ► It would be really good maybe to show off some more of the customization options.

00:12:19 ◼   ► I think that an event would benefit the product quite a lot,

00:12:24 ◼   ► and I'd be surprised.

00:12:26 ◼   ► I don't see them doing an Apple Watch event.

00:12:28 ◼   ► It is possible that what they'll do is try to time some other product launch,

00:12:33 ◼   ► that maybe that MacBook Air that we've talked about

00:12:37 ◼   ► a little bit or some other product launch

00:12:40 ◼   ► that they, or that iPad Pro Plus, whatever,

00:12:45 ◼   ► maybe they find some other product

00:12:47 ◼   ► and do an event around that that's timed to be a week or two

00:12:52 ◼   ► before the Apple Watch is going to come out.

00:12:54 ◼   ► And that's when they do the reveal and they're like,

00:12:57 ◼   ► "Oh, let's talk more about what's going on

00:12:59 ◼   ► "with the Apple Watch.

00:13:00 ◼   ► "It's gonna ship on this date," and all of that.

00:13:02 ◼   ► But I think that they would need to,

00:13:03 ◼   ► I don't think they could just manufacture

00:13:04 ◼   ► another Apple Watch event.

00:13:05 ◼   ► I think it needs to be part of something bigger.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And so maybe that's it.

00:13:10 ◼   ► If they can get their ducks lined up on that,

00:13:13 ◼   ► that might work.

00:13:16 ◼   ► And yes, I hope I continue to get invited

00:13:19 ◼   ► to all sorts of Apple events.

00:13:20 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:13:22 ◼   ► You never know with them.

00:13:23 ◼   ► I'm not taking it for granted,

00:13:24 ◼   ► but they've been very kind to invite me

00:13:25 ◼   ► to at least one event as Mr. Six Colors.

00:13:28 ◼   ► So, although I'm everywhere, Myke.

00:13:31 ◼   ► I'm all over the place.

00:13:32 ◼   ► We'll get to some of this later, but I've got a thing,

00:13:35 ◼   ► I think today on tidbits and I have a thing in iMore

00:13:40 ◼   ► and I may actually in the next few weeks

00:13:44 ◼   ► make a return engagement as a freelance writer

00:13:47 ◼   ► on a strange obscure site called Macworld.

00:13:51 ◼   ► So I'm getting around, I'm getting around, I'm around.

00:13:56 ◼   ► I'm a visible presence in this industry apparently,

00:13:59 ◼   ► not just on podcasts like yours.

00:14:01 ◼   ► I love the idea of Gibby writing for Magwell again.

00:14:04 ◼   ► There's just something about that that's so beautiful.

00:14:08 ◼   ► - I'm actually contractually barred from working for them

00:14:11 ◼   ► until later this month.

00:14:13 ◼   ► So we'll see if I pop up after that.

00:14:16 ◼   ► But I'll leave that as cliffhanger.

00:14:18 ◼   ► We have one more piece of follow-up,

00:14:21 ◼   ► which is actually about follow-up.

00:14:23 ◼   ► - Naturally.

00:14:24 ◼   ► - 'Cause we talked about follow-up last week.

00:14:30 ◼   ► and the issues around how you structure follow-up

00:14:34 ◼   ► in a podcast.

00:14:35 ◼   ► And listener Nash wrote in and said,

00:14:37 ◼   ► "I'd be much more interested in your podcast

00:14:39 ◼   ► "if it wasn't focused so much on follow-up.

00:14:41 ◼   ► "I skip most episodes because of it," sad face.

00:14:45 ◼   ► And I actually talked to listener Nash.

00:14:47 ◼   ► I did a little back and forth with him on Twitter

00:14:49 ◼   ► and he said, "I really like ATP."

00:14:51 ◼   ► And I said, "You know, they do a lot of follow-up too."

00:14:52 ◼   ► He said, "Yes, that's my least favorite thing about it."

00:14:54 ◼   ► I'm like, "All right, well."

00:14:56 ◼   ► So I thought that was interesting

00:14:57 ◼   ► that that's a person who doesn't like follow-up.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I've always said that I like the idea of doing follow-up

00:15:01 ◼   ► on this show because my other shows don't have it.

00:15:04 ◼   ► Upgrading and Jeff also wrote in, and he suggested,

00:15:07 ◼   ► I heard this from a few people, you could,

00:15:09 ◼   ► I actually suggested this back in the day for Hypercritical,

00:15:12 ◼   ► you could do two sessions, right?

00:15:13 ◼   ► You could do a follow-up show

00:15:16 ◼   ► and then you could do the topic show

00:15:18 ◼   ► and you could release them both as sort of sub episodes.

00:15:23 ◼   ► So there'd be episode 21.1 and then there'd be episode 22.

00:15:27 ◼   ► I'm not sure what problem that solves

00:15:29 ◼   ► other than the fact that people wanna ignore feedback

00:15:31 ◼   ► could not listen.

00:15:34 ◼   ► At that point, you could put it at the end.

00:15:36 ◼   ► I think that, you know, it adds complexity and podcasting.

00:15:41 ◼   ► I found the simpler you make it,

00:15:44 ◼   ► I'm trying lots of weird complex things

00:15:46 ◼   ► with podcasting as experiments,

00:15:47 ◼   ► but you know, it turns out that I think simplicity works best

00:15:50 ◼   ► saying, subscribe to this

00:15:52 ◼   ► and you will listen to a show every week

00:15:53 ◼   ► is the simplest thing to do.

00:15:55 ◼   ► There's also some technical issues

00:15:56 ◼   ► And I'd be interested what you think about this, Myke,

00:15:58 ◼   ► but I mean, there's a fundamental issue,

00:16:00 ◼   ► which is we do a show with sponsors.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And if you get a sub show, do you not sponsor that?

00:16:06 ◼   ► Do you have that be sponsored separately?

00:16:08 ◼   ► Are people listening to show A and not show B?

00:16:11 ◼   ► It gets messy in a way that this is messy

00:16:14 ◼   ► in the sense that we've got a bunch of different segments,

00:16:16 ◼   ► but it's not necessarily messy

00:16:19 ◼   ► from a management perspective of the listener,

00:16:22 ◼   ► because there's just one show to listen to.

00:16:24 ◼   ► I don't know. It's, it's, I think there's no good answer here that pleases everybody.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Um, I've thought about, we talked about putting it at the end. We could do that. Uh, I don't

00:16:35 ◼   ► know. What do you think?

00:16:37 ◼   ► I think follow up at the end of the show is weird because you've probably already made

00:16:41 ◼   ► more mistakes during the show, which would also need to be followed up on and you don't

00:16:44 ◼   ► have that follow up yet. Um, so it feels like quite, I don't know, like, so you've completed

00:16:51 ◼   ► episode 20 and then the corrections for episode 20 come at the end of episode 21, where you

00:16:56 ◼   ► as an individual are now more informed before that point.

00:16:59 ◼   ► So I feel like that there are some weird things there and I see why we do it in this way.

00:17:07 ◼   ► I think this is reiterating what I was saying last time.

00:17:11 ◼   ► There is no way of doing this structurally that will please everyone.

00:17:16 ◼   ► So if we want to continue doing it, which we do, because I do think that it's an interesting

00:17:20 ◼   ► an important part of the show, then I think doing it the way that we do it now is best

00:17:24 ◼   ► because it's like the standard practice. If we started doing something else, you're probably

00:17:29 ◼   ► going to upset more people than we would by doing it another way. And the idea of having

00:17:36 ◼   ► additional episodes, like the amount of problems that that would bring...

00:17:41 ◼   ► Oh yeah. It adds complexity. Too much complexity, I think.

00:17:45 ◼   ► The show episode numbers and the website pages won't match anymore.

00:17:49 ◼   ► Right.

00:17:50 ◼   ► be a nightmare.

00:17:51 ◼   ► I, I, yeah, I totally agree. I think fundamentally, I mean, we need to be, we need to not overdo

00:17:57 ◼   ► it with follow-up, because then the show is, like, literally, and I felt like Hypercritical

00:18:02 ◼   ► would occasionally do this, where it was eating its own tail, like, the show was not about

00:18:05 ◼   ► new topics anymore, the show was always about what they talked last week and other reactions

00:18:10 ◼   ► to that. And you wanna, you wanna modulate that, you wanna, you wanna prevent that from

00:18:14 ◼   ► going overboard. Also, the fact is, follow-up often is not about reading letters, although

00:18:20 ◼   ► I did some of that last week, which I probably should have summarized more, but it's—these

00:18:24 ◼   ► are other topics, these are revisiting topics. So like us talking a little bit about the

00:18:28 ◼   ► Apple Watch today, that was really a topic. It was follow-up that led to a topic. And

00:18:34 ◼   ► this is likewise follow-up that leads from a topic. Anyway, I think what I would say

00:18:38 ◼   ► is it's a young medium, this podcasting thing. We're always thinking about this stuff. I

00:18:43 ◼   ► appreciate the feedback. I know Myke appreciates the feedback too. And then

00:18:45 ◼   ► Myke and I talk about this all the time. Myke's got a lot of shows. I got a lot of

00:18:49 ◼   ► shows. We think about the right way to do this all the time. And so I, you know, I

00:18:55 ◼   ► appreciate the feedback and we're gonna keep doing follow-up in the show but

00:18:59 ◼   ► we'll try to, you know, we'll see how it goes. We're definitely talking about all

00:19:04 ◼   ► the different ways we can possibly handle it. So, you know, I love and I love

00:19:07 ◼   ► getting the feedback. So keep on sending it. You can hashtag #AskUpgrade. You can

00:19:11 ◼   ► tweet at me or Myke or you can tweet at underscore upgrade FM if you like.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Or send us email.

00:19:18 ◼   ► One of the frequent complaints that we do get on the show is that we talk about podcasting a lot

00:19:23 ◼   ► and we're doing and not only we're doing it now I'm doing it more right now but I

00:19:27 ◼   ► think the reason for that is is because of how invested we both are with the

00:19:34 ◼   ► medium and it's interesting I think for us because you said it because we me and

00:19:39 ◼   ► Jason we do talk about podcasting and this show from a technical and

00:19:45 ◼   ► production perspective a lot when we're not recording and and I think it's

00:19:49 ◼   ► because we are both trying to build parts of our business and our livelihoods

00:19:53 ◼   ► on it so naturally that is going that is going to be a prevailing topic on this

00:19:59 ◼   ► show along with we how we talk about and we have spoken about like what it's like

00:20:03 ◼   ► to be an independent worker working on the internet I think podcasting is

00:20:08 ◼   ► always going to be a thread that that goes across this. But we're going to talk

00:20:14 ◼   ► about a little later on something you wrote on Six Colors which kind of crossed

00:20:20 ◼   ► the line between podcasting and writing. But just a quick question on that. Do you

00:20:25 ◼   ► ever get complaints that you write about writing?

00:20:30 ◼   ► No, no, I very rarely, or writing about podcasting. It's not for everybody. I think the difference

00:20:40 ◼   ► is you can just skip a story that you don't like. Whereas one of the things with the podcast

00:20:45 ◼   ► medium is you can't just skip to the next topic because that would require chapter markers,

00:20:51 ◼   ► every time, and all prominent podcast apps to support them and a lot of extra work into

00:20:57 ◼   ► marking the chapters, and even then a lot of these conversations are free-flowing. But

00:21:02 ◼   ► I do think that's part of it, is you just ignore it. And a podcast, I think people aren't

00:21:07 ◼   ► in a position to just skip to the next thing, and so there's a responsibility there. In

00:21:11 ◼   ► any linear medium, there's a bigger responsibility there. I get a lot of feedback from people

00:21:16 ◼   ► saying, "I love it when you write about the tools you use, or how you write things, or

00:21:19 ◼   ► how you put together a podcast." I think some people want to know because they're trying

00:21:23 ◼   ► to do it themselves, and some people want to know because they're fascinated by behind-the-scenes

00:21:27 ◼   ► stuff, just in general about how things get put together. And I think in our audience,

00:21:32 ◼   ► we get that a lot. A lot of the people who listen to this show and read the sites we

00:21:37 ◼   ► read and all of that are people who like to understand how things work and how things

00:21:41 ◼   ► are put together. And so that creates a curiosity whether or not they're actually going to do

00:21:46 ◼   ► that stuff themselves. But I mean, like, seriously, that photo that I posted with the orange brain

00:21:51 ◼   ► and everything else that was on my desk, everybody wanted to know what the stuff was on my desk

00:21:55 ◼   ► and how I used it. They wanted to know that. I thought, "It's just my desk, it's stupid,

00:21:58 ◼   ► who cares?" And they're like, "No, we want to know." And so there's curiosity. And sometimes

00:22:03 ◼   ► that can lead to good story fodder too. So, I don't know. Something I was going to mention

00:22:08 ◼   ► in Ask Upgrade that I'm going to throw out there now, which is we did get feedback from

00:22:12 ◼   ► a particular listener who said, "How much time do you spend each week discussing podcasts

00:22:17 ◼   ► during podcasts?" Basically, we answered a listener question about podcasts. This particular

00:22:22 ◼   ► listener didn't want to hear it. Which is so funny because we really had a good chat

00:22:27 ◼   ► about that. Yeah well and and what's really funny is that you know he didn't want to hear

00:22:31 ◼   ► it but it was at the request of another listener so he's basically saying I don't care if somebody

00:22:36 ◼   ► else wants to hear it I don't want to hear it so don't do it. That's fine but what you

00:22:41 ◼   ► just said is exactly what my response was which is we're technical people we talk about

00:22:46 ◼   ► technical issues involved in working in a new medium that seems valid as a topic this

00:22:51 ◼   ► This podcast isn't about podcasting, nor is it about working at home, but I think those

00:22:55 ◼   ► are topics that can come up from time to time, and that's okay.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Also, this is where I want to talk about that.

00:23:02 ◼   ► I don't talk about that on any of my other podcasts.

00:23:04 ◼   ► I don't have, I don't talk about how to make podcasts on Clockwise or Incomparable or Total

00:23:08 ◼   ► Party Kill, right?

00:23:09 ◼   ► I don't do it there.

00:23:11 ◼   ► But if I think there's an appropriate thing to talk about on upgrade, I will.

00:23:15 ◼   ► And I do aspire to discuss technical topics on upgrade, including things like making podcasts.

00:23:21 ◼   ► So you know, if it's not, this podcast doesn't turn into that, but we are going to talk about

00:23:26 ◼   ► that from time to time as one of the many topics.

00:23:29 ◼   ► And if that is too much, then that's fair enough.

00:23:33 ◼   ► But in the great words of Dan Benjamin, "Sorry to lose you as a listener."

00:23:38 ◼   ► But that's just, we're going to talk about it as one of our topics.

00:23:41 ◼   ► This show does have a focus on new media, which I might put into the description.

00:23:44 ◼   ► Sure.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Because we spoke about YouTube last week.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Right.

00:23:48 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:23:49 ◼   ► New media.

00:23:50 ◼   ► Right, let's take a quick break and we're done with follow-up.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Ding!

00:23:53 ◼   ► Yeah, we did it in about 25 minutes this week, so it's not too bad.

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00:25:50 ◼   ► Okie dokie, so Mr. Jason Snell.

00:25:53 ◼   ► - Yes sir.

00:25:54 ◼   ► - We have a brand new app.

00:25:56 ◼   ► We spoke about this a couple of weeks ago

00:25:58 ◼   ► about how the Photos app had been removed mysteriously

00:26:03 ◼   ► from the Apple website.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Whilst I was playing conspiracy theorist,

00:26:07 ◼   ► I believe that you did say they could just be getting ready

00:26:10 ◼   ► to do something, and they did.

00:26:13 ◼   ► - Yep, that made me look good, didn't it?

00:26:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like a crystal ball over in California,

00:26:19 ◼   ► over there.

00:26:20 ◼   ► - Amazing, well, we're breathing the same air,

00:26:22 ◼   ► drinking the same water as the people from Apple.

00:26:24 ◼   ► So maybe that gives me a little leg up on that.

00:26:27 ◼   ► Yeah, so it turns out they were removing

00:26:29 ◼   ► all those references to the Photos app,

00:26:31 ◼   ► like coming later and very vague things

00:26:35 ◼   ► because they were going to drop a beta of the Photos app

00:26:38 ◼   ► and give it much more detail.

00:26:40 ◼   ► And that's what they did.

00:26:41 ◼   ► released a beta of 10.10.3 which includes the new Photos app and they

00:26:47 ◼   ► briefed some people, Verge and Wired and Chris Breen and Macworld and a few

00:26:54 ◼   ► other people about it in advance and released it to anybody with a

00:26:59 ◼   ► developer account on Thursday I think. So yeah now we've got a

00:27:05 ◼   ► development version at least of this new Photos app and an idea when it's coming

00:27:09 ◼   ► which is spring, they said,

00:27:13 ◼   ► and presumably whenever 10.10.3 is ready to go.

00:27:16 ◼   ► - So have you tried it out yourself?

00:27:21 ◼   ► - I have.

00:27:22 ◼   ► - What has the experience been like?

00:27:25 ◼   ► How did you get your photos into the app to start with?

00:27:29 ◼   ► I'm interested.

00:27:30 ◼   ► - Well, I imported my personal iPhoto library, I think,

00:27:39 ◼   ► and that imported okay.

00:27:41 ◼   ► And then I tried to import a larger iPhoto library

00:27:46 ◼   ► and that didn't go as well.

00:27:51 ◼   ► It crashed, it tried to convert it

00:27:53 ◼   ► and then I gave up after a while and it was not great.

00:27:57 ◼   ► So I ended up taking those photos

00:27:59 ◼   ► and just exporting them as originals and dragging those in.

00:28:03 ◼   ► And that worked.

00:28:04 ◼   ► And there are a bunch of different ways.

00:28:06 ◼   ► I mean, it's a development version.

00:28:07 ◼   ► So it's definitely got some import hiccups still

00:28:10 ◼   ► that they're gonna have to work on.

00:28:12 ◼   ► But you know, it's fast.

00:28:16 ◼   ► And that's like the number one thing

00:28:18 ◼   ► that iPhoto never was, is fast.

00:28:21 ◼   ► It's even, you know,

00:28:22 ◼   ► when you've got tens of thousands of photos,

00:28:23 ◼   ► you wanna be able to scroll through.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And it feels very much like the iOS version

00:28:27 ◼   ► of the Photos app.

00:28:28 ◼   ► It's got that view of like,

00:28:30 ◼   ► where it's trying to break it up into sort of locations

00:28:32 ◼   ► you've been over a small span of time.

00:28:34 ◼   ► So it'll say, you know, your home

00:28:37 ◼   ► and this place you went on February 7th through 8th,

00:28:42 ◼   ► and then they'll have photos there.

00:28:43 ◼   ► And it tries to, you know, it's very familiar

00:28:46 ◼   ► if you've used the iOS Photos app,

00:28:48 ◼   ► but it's also got a lot of the same power.

00:28:50 ◼   ► It's got smart albums.

00:28:51 ◼   ► It's got editing tools that are, I think, pretty good.

00:28:57 ◼   ► They've got simple editing tools

00:28:59 ◼   ► and they've got complex editing tools

00:29:00 ◼   ► and they've got some sort of preset tools

00:29:02 ◼   ► that are in between.

00:29:04 ◼   ► I think that's all good.

00:29:05 ◼   ► The banner feature here is the iCloud syncing stuff though,

00:29:08 ◼   ► that it's gonna use your iCloud photo library.

00:29:13 ◼   ► And in fact, there's a setting in it

00:29:15 ◼   ► that lets you say basically,

00:29:17 ◼   ► I don't need to keep these files on my Mac.

00:29:20 ◼   ► At which point, it's unclear what happens.

00:29:24 ◼   ► There are a bunch of mysteries about this app

00:29:26 ◼   ► that we have to investigate.

00:29:27 ◼   ► Like when you import your photos,

00:29:29 ◼   ► It says your disk space doesn't get used up.

00:29:34 ◼   ► But if you delete the old photos

00:29:39 ◼   ► from the old iPhoto library,

00:29:41 ◼   ► I believe it still has them,

00:29:43 ◼   ► which makes me wonder if it's doing some really weird

00:29:46 ◼   ► like linking thing.

00:29:48 ◼   ► I don't know quite what it's doing.

00:29:50 ◼   ► So that's weird.

00:29:51 ◼   ► And then when you set up the iCloud photo syncing,

00:29:54 ◼   ► it says, when you say,

00:29:56 ◼   ► "I don't need to keep originals on my Mac."

00:29:59 ◼   ► it doesn't say it's going to delete all of them off your Mac.

00:30:02 ◼   ► It says it may delete them if there's not enough room,

00:30:06 ◼   ► which is completely mysterious.

00:30:08 ◼   ► It's like, how does it know whether there's enough room?

00:30:10 ◼   ► And if it's got 40 gigs worth of photos

00:30:12 ◼   ► and I want to use that 40 gigs for something else,

00:30:15 ◼   ► can I tell it to go away?

00:30:17 ◼   ► How does that work? - Well, this is kind of like

00:30:19 ◼   ► what, there's some stuff on iOS where this happens, right?

00:30:22 ◼   ► So you have like, do you remember that thing

00:30:25 ◼   ► when the apps would clean themselves?

00:30:28 ◼   ► Do you remember that?

00:30:29 ◼   ► when an iOS app would suspend because it was removing data

00:30:31 ◼   ► from the inside.

00:30:32 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:30:33 ◼   ► - Because your phone doesn't have a lot of space

00:30:34 ◼   ► on it anymore, so it starts to get rid of data

00:30:37 ◼   ► that's kind of like in limbo.

00:30:40 ◼   ► So maybe they're doing something like that.

00:30:41 ◼   ► Maybe it's like if you need,

00:30:43 ◼   ► if you're getting close to your disk space

00:30:45 ◼   ► and the system wants to free up like five gigabytes

00:30:48 ◼   ► of photos, they just remove the five gigabytes of photos

00:30:52 ◼   ► that you haven't looked at in three years.

00:30:54 ◼   ► - Right.

00:30:55 ◼   ► - And you just get like really compressed thumbnails

00:30:57 ◼   ► or something.

00:30:58 ◼   ► - That's my theory, yeah, is similar,

00:31:00 ◼   ► which is I think what's happening is that there's a cache.

00:31:03 ◼   ► And it's like the iTunes cache,

00:31:05 ◼   ► where when you are using iTunes in the cloud

00:31:09 ◼   ► and you double click on a song to play it, it downloads it.

00:31:12 ◼   ► It doesn't just stream it, it downloads it

00:31:14 ◼   ► in the background while it's playing it

00:31:16 ◼   ► to a cache folder on your hard drive.

00:31:18 ◼   ► And that cache folder, it'll sit there,

00:31:20 ◼   ► so you're not redownloading.

00:31:21 ◼   ► If you listen to that song a few times,

00:31:22 ◼   ► it's not gonna redownload it.

00:31:24 ◼   ► But obviously there's a mechanism

00:31:25 ◼   ► where if there needs to be disk space,

00:31:27 ◼   ► either whether the system demands it

00:31:29 ◼   ► or whether iTunes every now and then just cleans it up,

00:31:31 ◼   ► that cache stuff gets wiped.

00:31:33 ◼   ► And I think that's what's happening here is that

00:31:36 ◼   ► iPhoto or a Photos app is considering those cached

00:31:40 ◼   ► once they're up in the cloud

00:31:42 ◼   ► and that it can get rid of them at any point.

00:31:44 ◼   ► I don't know the exact mechanism

00:31:46 ◼   ► and whether it's app based or it's system based.

00:31:48 ◼   ► It'd be nice if it was system based.

00:31:49 ◼   ► 'Cause like I said, if I've got a podcast

00:31:52 ◼   ► that's got 80 gigs of, or okay, maybe that's too many,

00:31:56 ◼   ► 20 gigs worth of space and I need that space.

00:32:00 ◼   ► And the photos app is using space that I need,

00:32:03 ◼   ► does it go away or do I have to do something

00:32:07 ◼   ► to make it go away?

00:32:08 ◼   ► I think that's the unclear part here,

00:32:09 ◼   ► but ideally it would just go away at that point.

00:32:11 ◼   ► 'Cause once everything's up in the cloud,

00:32:13 ◼   ► that's the beauty of this scenario

00:32:16 ◼   ► is if you don't have the disc space

00:32:17 ◼   ► and I don't have any computers that have enough disc space

00:32:19 ◼   ► to hold the, other than on an external drive

00:32:23 ◼   ► to hold all my photos now,

00:32:24 ◼   ► I just don't have any computers

00:32:26 ◼   ► 'cause they're all SSD computers.

00:32:28 ◼   ► So I'd like to be able to manage my photos on my Macs

00:32:31 ◼   ► without having to have 600 gigs of storage

00:32:36 ◼   ► devoted to photos,

00:32:37 ◼   ► 'cause I want that stuff out in the cloud,

00:32:39 ◼   ► I'm willing to pay to have that stuff up in the cloud.

00:32:42 ◼   ► And that's the promise here.

00:32:44 ◼   ► So we'll see whether it delivers,

00:32:46 ◼   ► but that's the promise and I'm excited about that

00:32:49 ◼   ► because I would like to have access

00:32:51 ◼   ► my entire photo library from any device. I just don't want to have to manage the

00:32:58 ◼   ► storage of that because that's a lot of that's a lot of stuff and and and right

00:33:02 ◼   ► now I do have this Mac Mini with the Drobo attached to it and that's where

00:33:06 ◼   ► those photo libraries live which is great except I don't you know we don't

00:33:10 ◼   ► use the Mac Mini it's like a server basically and so if my wife or or I want

00:33:15 ◼   ► to pull out some old photo it becomes this whole thing to do that and what I'd much rather

00:33:23 ◼   ► is even if we kept all the files on that computer I want access to the whole library from elsewhere

00:33:29 ◼   ► quickly and easily and that's the promise of photos is that if we do this right it'll

00:33:34 ◼   ► all be up in iCloud it'll be on all our phones and iPads and our Macs even if they don't

00:33:39 ◼   ► have the originals they can get them when we need them so that's exciting.

00:33:43 ◼   ► I think one of the fundamental problems though with the system,

00:33:46 ◼   ► like whilst it's trying to be helpful, ambiguity in photo storage is a real problem.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Like the idea of, "We'll just take care of it, don't worry, some of your photos will go away

00:34:00 ◼   ► and then they'll come back again when you need them."

00:34:02 ◼   ► Like that is quite ambiguous as to how they're going to manage that.

00:34:06 ◼   ► You know, it's kind of like up to an engineer's decision over what photos are kept and not kept.

00:34:12 ◼   ► kept and the problem with that is if there's a problem or you lapse in

00:34:17 ◼   ► payment and don't realize and then your storage gets cut, where do your photos go

00:34:22 ◼   ► then? Because if they're not locally on the machine because that's 20 gigabytes

00:34:27 ◼   ► of photos from 1954 that you uploaded, right, because you don't look at those a

00:34:31 ◼   ► lot but they're really important family photos that you want to keep. If

00:34:37 ◼   ► If they're gone and you don't back up locally, or the local backup that you do is like a

00:34:44 ◼   ► super duper clone, so it's just cloning what's physically on the machine, they're gone forever,

00:34:50 ◼   ► potentially at that point, right?

00:34:53 ◼   ► I expect Time Machine will be enhanced to deal with this in some way, but if you don't

00:34:57 ◼   ► back up that way, you might be in for a bit of a problem.

00:35:02 ◼   ► It seems to me that what Apple has done with the Photos app is said, "Look, if you want

00:35:06 ◼   ► every file you need to check this box and then every file will be there and if

00:35:10 ◼   ► you don't you check this other box and then it won't. So it's on you basically.

00:35:14 ◼   ► And that's on you and so for me the way I will probably set this up if I decide

00:35:19 ◼   ► that this is good enough and we're gonna use it everywhere in our family what I

00:35:25 ◼   ► will do is that Mac Mini that's got the giant Drobo giant hard drive attached to

00:35:29 ◼   ► it will have it set to have all of them so I'll have a hard drive with all the

00:35:36 ◼   ► originals on it and that one will get backed up. But if I didn't have that I

00:35:40 ◼   ► would be putting yes, I would be putting my trust in Apple to not lose my data.

00:35:45 ◼   ► And the fact is Apple needs to get that right, right? I mean this is not

00:35:52 ◼   ► something you can get wrong. Apple has to get that right even if people do, they

00:35:58 ◼   ► don't get to say "well you check the other box, you take your chances, we lost

00:36:03 ◼   ► your photos, sorry, oops, you should have backed them up." This is not set up to

00:36:07 ◼   ► work like that. This is set up like they are gonna have your photos, and, and period.

00:36:12 ◼   ► That they will have your photos, and so they better be rock, it better be rock

00:36:17 ◼   ► solid. But I feel that way about like, you know, my online backup. My online backup

00:36:22 ◼   ► service better have my files, right? What if they screw up and my backup goes away

00:36:27 ◼   ► somehow? Well then I'm in big trouble if I have a crash, and that's just something

00:36:31 ◼   ► that, you know, at some point you are putting yourself in their hands, or if

00:36:36 ◼   ► you really are concerned, you create your own backup. And in that case you'd have

00:36:40 ◼   ► one system with this "keep all the originals on this Mac" setting set. And I

00:36:45 ◼   ► would do that, like I said, on a different Mac. But what I'd like is on my Mac

00:36:48 ◼   ► that's got an SSD in it to have access to all those photos when I want to from

00:36:54 ◼   ► the cloud, but not actually have to use the storage space on this Mac, because I

00:36:58 ◼   ► I don't want to do that.

00:37:01 ◼   ► - One of the things that's come out of the Photos app release

00:37:05 ◼   ► through people digging through the code as they tend to do,

00:37:09 ◼   ► Steve Trouton Smith is always an absolute,

00:37:13 ◼   ► like he's like a miner, you know?

00:37:15 ◼   ► Like he just gets in there and he's just like digging in

00:37:17 ◼   ► and he's finding things all the time,

00:37:19 ◼   ► like with his pickaxe, his development pickaxe.

00:37:23 ◼   ► People have found something called UX Kit.

00:37:25 ◼   ► Can you explain to me what this is

00:37:27 ◼   ► why this is potentially significant.

00:37:29 ◼   ► - So UXKit is something that was used,

00:37:34 ◼   ► it's a private framework,

00:37:35 ◼   ► so it's only supposed to be used by Apple.

00:37:37 ◼   ► And it's in 10.10.3 and photos.

00:37:42 ◼   ► And okay, without getting, this is,

00:37:46 ◼   ► welcome to build and analyze.

00:37:48 ◼   ► This is, I am not a developer,

00:37:50 ◼   ► so take that for what it's worth.

00:37:53 ◼   ► The frameworks that developers use to build iOS apps

00:37:56 ◼   ► are something called UIKit.

00:37:58 ◼   ► And that doesn't exist on the Mac.

00:38:01 ◼   ► There's something called AppKit

00:38:02 ◼   ► that you use to build apps on the Mac,

00:38:04 ◼   ► but it's not the same as UIKit.

00:38:05 ◼   ► And a lot of the muscles that iOS app developers

00:38:10 ◼   ► have built up using UIKit are not available on the Mac.

00:38:15 ◼   ► So it makes iOS developers,

00:38:18 ◼   ► people very familiar with iOS,

00:38:20 ◼   ► building Mac apps, it makes it harder.

00:38:21 ◼   ► And developers have tried to find ways to bridge this.

00:38:25 ◼   ► The icon factory spent a lot of time

00:38:26 ◼   ► trying to find ways to bridge this so that they could bring Twitter-ific iOS

00:38:31 ◼   ► codebase to the Mac. And it seems like with the Photos app, Apple has done it.

00:38:36 ◼   ► Where Apple is taking, has built this UX kit which is, which it seems from the

00:38:41 ◼   ► people who are investigating this that it's sitting on top of AppKit. That it's

00:38:44 ◼   ► bringing some of the controls that you're used to in UIKit over to the Mac.

00:38:49 ◼   ► Not all of them, it's not a total replacement, but the idea is it could

00:38:53 ◼   ► potentially grease the skids for iOS developers who want to make Mac apps and use their iOS

00:39:00 ◼   ► code or maybe it's just their skill set. It's kind of unclear. Different developers can

00:39:04 ◼   ► disagree. Brent Simmons wrote a piece where he says, "I don't think anybody's ever going

00:39:07 ◼   ► to use this except Apple." And it's not a complete solution here. It might be useful

00:39:15 ◼   ► for people in very limited ways. And then I saw another developer who replied to Brent's

00:39:18 ◼   ► thing and said, "Yes, but those limited ways would be really great if we had access to

00:39:23 ◼   ► easier ways to build this stuff that's a lot more like we like we know from iOS.

00:39:27 ◼   ► So it's intriguing because this is the first time Apple's let this thing

00:39:32 ◼   ► out of the box, out of Cupertino, and developers' ears all

00:39:37 ◼   ► perked up because they've been wanting something that's more iOS-like on the

00:39:42 ◼   ► Mac so that they could apply their skills in similar ways. Because again

00:39:47 ◼   ► this is not the same as saying, you know, it's gonna run iOS apps. That's not what

00:39:51 ◼   ► this is but it is a ways of developing

00:39:53 ◼   ► Mac software that are more like ways of

00:39:56 ◼   ► developing iOS software and developers

00:39:59 ◼   ► would be excited about that so if it WWDC

00:40:02 ◼   ► this year Apple were to announce hey we

00:40:04 ◼   ► have this thing called UXKit and now you

00:40:05 ◼   ► guys are going to be able to use it too

00:40:07 ◼   ► in 10.11 you know we're using it now

00:40:12 ◼   ► in photos

00:40:13 ◼   ► shhh don't tell anybody but you guys will all get

00:40:15 ◼   ► it with 10.11 it'll be official then and

00:40:18 ◼   ► here's the documentation and start

00:40:19 ◼   ► learning how to use it and you can apply

00:40:20 ◼   ► your iOS skills on the Mac, they would be excited about that. Brent Simmons says, "I

00:40:24 ◼   ► don't think that's going to happen." Other people think that it might, or maybe that's

00:40:27 ◼   ► wishful thinking, but I think as Mac users that's very exciting because the easier it

00:40:33 ◼   ► is for these iOS developers to bring software to the Mac because it works more like the

00:40:40 ◼   ► way they're thinking, the better it is for Mac users because there'll be either more

00:40:46 ◼   ► Mac apps or better Mac apps. I think that could be a good thing. So anyway, that's an

00:40:50 ◼   ► interesting like super nerd trivia about the Photos app is that it seems to be built using

00:40:55 ◼   ► UXKit, which my guess is the internal developers at Apple who built the Photos app on iOS built

00:41:00 ◼   ► the Photos app on Mac and they wanted to apply same story. They wanted to apply some of that

00:41:05 ◼   ► knowledge and work to the Mac app and they built a framework that is more iOS-like on

00:41:14 ◼   ► top of the Mac frameworks.

00:41:16 ◼   ► seems logical to me to do this because it's like it just feels like you should

00:41:21 ◼   ► try and find ways to bridge the gap a bit because I'm sure it's easier to do

00:41:27 ◼   ► it this way like iOS to the Mac rather than the other way around

00:41:30 ◼   ► right naturally but like to make more iOS-y apps on the Mac would enable people

00:41:37 ◼   ► who make iOS apps to be able to make Mac apps easier right and in doing that it

00:41:45 ◼   ► it makes the ecosystem better.

00:41:46 ◼   ► As Apple is pushing the integration between OS X and iOS,

00:41:51 ◼   ► we have handoff and continuity and stuff like that,

00:41:53 ◼   ► I think it makes sense that you would enable your developers

00:41:57 ◼   ► to do the same thing.

00:41:59 ◼   ► Like Mark has spoken on ATP about an overcast Mac app

00:42:04 ◼   ► and the struggles in potentially doing that.

00:42:08 ◼   ► And I would expect, not that he would necessarily do it,

00:42:11 ◼   ► it would make it easier for him to make a Mac app if there was some tools and frameworks

00:42:16 ◼   ► that were more similar to iOS, to the point where you could reuse code, basically.

00:42:22 ◼   ► Yeah, and again, even if you couldn't reuse all your code, if you could reuse some of

00:42:26 ◼   ► it because you understand the way that drawing tables works in iOS and now you've got a way

00:42:31 ◼   ► that does that on the Mac, that would be good. That would make it easier. So, you know, again,

00:42:37 ◼   ► I wrote a story about it really quickly because I saw some people on Twitter getting really

00:42:40 ◼   ► excited about it as they discovered this and it would be exciting for some developers if

00:42:47 ◼   ► this happens so it's kind of a neat story. It'll be interesting to see Steve Trout and

00:42:52 ◼   ► Smith will continue to dig through it and find what all the... I mean that'll happen

00:42:56 ◼   ► especially since the Mac is not locked down like iOS is. They can reverse engineer this

00:43:02 ◼   ► and use those tools if they really want to. The problem is it's a beta OS and if things

00:43:08 ◼   ► change in the next beta, everything they do will break, but you know certainly I

00:43:11 ◼   ► love it when people play that, you know, they're doing the detective work to

00:43:15 ◼   ► figure out what's going on with Apple and hoping that this is a sign that this

00:43:20 ◼   ► is something that they'll be given eventually themselves because if it's

00:43:23 ◼   ► good enough for Apple and Apple's trying it with and developing it perhaps with

00:43:27 ◼   ► this Photos app in mind. Also the other thing that I had several people

00:43:33 ◼   ► talked about including Grouper and it's funny Dan Morin and I with the day

00:43:36 ◼   ► before we're talking about the same thing which is could you use the same

00:43:40 ◼   ► approach to create a music app on the Mac instead of iTunes that would be

00:43:46 ◼   ► interesting too. Yeah there's been quite a bit of discussion about that

00:43:51 ◼   ► recently we were talking about it on connected in regards to the fact that

00:43:54 ◼   ► Apple were looking at not using beats right so that they're looking at

00:44:00 ◼   ► creating a brand new streaming service that takes from both like at the point

00:44:04 ◼   ► that you do that, if you add that to iTunes, which is the logical thing,

00:44:09 ◼   ► iTunes will start to implode upon itself. So the idea that maybe this

00:44:15 ◼   ► will finally be the key for what people have been wanting Apple to do for years

00:44:20 ◼   ► is to uncouple iTunes from itself and have a music app and an iPhone or an

00:44:27 ◼   ► iOS focused app that has the App Store in it. Maybe just call it the App Store

00:44:32 ◼   ► app or whatever and it manages your iPhone? You just look at you just look at

00:44:36 ◼   ► iOS that and I had people say well iTunes does so much how could you how

00:44:41 ◼   ► could you do that well look at iOS there's a music app there's a videos app

00:44:44 ◼   ► there's an iTunes app and there's an App Store app. Well the Mac's already got the

00:44:48 ◼   ► App Store app you could very easily have an iTunes app that was literally

00:44:52 ◼   ► storefront and syncing and then music and videos are videos could essentially

00:44:59 ◼   ► be a rebranded version of even the QuickTime app with a little more UI.

00:45:03 ◼   ► Or they could do something new again, but QuickTime 10

00:45:07 ◼   ► is already weird enough that they could just keep going down that road if they wanted to.

00:45:11 ◼   ► And then there's the music app, and you do a much better

00:45:15 ◼   ► dedicated music player that's got the subscription service integrated, and it's got the

00:45:19 ◼   ► music integrated. I think that would be the way to go. And then

00:45:23 ◼   ► I also hear from people who are like, "But what about on Windows? What would they do on Windows?" Well, I'm not sure

00:45:27 ◼   ► they care and if iTunes just continued to be floating around as a dog on

00:45:31 ◼   ► Windows whereas there was this super awesome new generation of apps on the

00:45:34 ◼   ► Mac I think that's okay honestly I think that's I think Apple would think that

00:45:39 ◼   ► was okay I don't think they're gonna turn off Windows compatibility but if the

00:45:43 ◼   ► experience of interacting with your media I mean this is this is core system

00:45:47 ◼   ► level media playback right music on the Mac is iTunes and the Mac cannot be held

00:45:53 ◼   ► back because we've got to do it on Windows. Forget that. That is ridiculous. That is not

00:46:01 ◼   ► the way you've got to play this game. The iTunes for Windows can continue to be there

00:46:07 ◼   ► and be kind of crappy and whatever, but it needs to not be the thing that holds back

00:46:12 ◼   ► the Mac. And when you're seeing the trend with the Mac and iOS, where it's now not an

00:46:19 ◼   ► it's calendar and it's not address book it's contacts this is the direction

00:46:23 ◼   ► they're going is all these things are gonna match up and you've got the

00:46:26 ◼   ► service on iOS and the service on the Mac and they're not identical apps but

00:46:29 ◼   ► they've got the same names and the same functions and if you go down that path

00:46:32 ◼   ► then absolutely they're going to need to get to a place where there is a music

00:46:36 ◼   ► app and a videos app and an iTunes app that's the store and I think that is

00:46:42 ◼   ► what's going to happen I think it's just a question of when and I hope it's soon

00:46:45 ◼   ► because iTunes is not... I use iTunes every day to listen to music and it is

00:46:50 ◼   ► not very good. If you look at iTunes 12 it's kind of like that. It's like they

00:46:55 ◼   ► siloed all these things and then put them together. In a tab. Yeah, which is so

00:47:01 ◼   ► weird but that's kind of what it's like. It's like five different apps in iTunes now.

00:47:05 ◼   ► It's very peculiar but the Windows argument I don't think it holds up

00:47:08 ◼   ► because Windows... iTunes for Windows existed for iPods and then for iPhones.

00:47:15 ◼   ► both of which you don't need a computer for anymore.

00:47:20 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:47:21 ◼   ► I think they want to keep it around,

00:47:23 ◼   ► but I don't think they need to invest anything in it.

00:47:25 ◼   ► And I don't think that it needs to hold them back

00:47:27 ◼   ► with what they do on the Mac.

00:47:28 ◼   ► - There's no, there would be no reason

00:47:30 ◼   ► to create music.app for Windows, but they may do,

00:47:34 ◼   ► they might do something because like there's talk

00:47:37 ◼   ► of them making an Android app of this music.

00:47:41 ◼   ► - Well, there's a Beats Android app.

00:47:42 ◼   ► So I think they wanna keep that around

00:47:45 ◼   ► because there's a Beats Android app.

00:47:47 ◼   ► I think they wanna keep that around

00:47:48 ◼   ► as a subscription service, but yeah, maybe so.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Maybe so, I just have a hard time believing

00:47:53 ◼   ► that Apple's gonna let the Mac get held back

00:47:55 ◼   ► because they have some sort of imaginary obligation

00:48:00 ◼   ► to providing parody on Windows.

00:48:02 ◼   ► That's not gonna happen.

00:48:03 ◼   ► - I agree with you.

00:48:04 ◼   ► I don't think it will.

00:48:05 ◼   ► Let's talk about a couple of things

00:48:07 ◼   ► that you've written this week.

00:48:08 ◼   ► But before we do that,

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00:49:48 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Igloo for supporting this show and all of Real AFM.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Okie dokie.

00:49:55 ◼   ► So one of your new ventures is you, I believe, were the the inaugural person on iMore's

00:50:06 ◼   ► like back page column.

00:50:07 ◼   ► Yes, so if you wonder where the back page of a website is, it's apparently on Friday

00:50:14 ◼   ► and on iMore.

00:50:15 ◼   ► So yeah, Renee and Serenity asked me to do a, I think I'm going to be doing them fairly

00:50:21 ◼   ► regularly until they tell me they don't want me anymore.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And so I kicked it off.

00:50:26 ◼   ► So they asked me to write an op-ed piece and Serenity gave me some specific ideas, which

00:50:32 ◼   ► I thought was great because a lot of what I've been writing lately is like completely

00:50:36 ◼   ► wide open, what the heck am I going to write about today kind of stuff, which is interesting.

00:50:43 ◼   ► But I like that the tables have turned and Ren's now your boss.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Yeah, oh sure.

00:50:48 ◼   ► She's hiring you for work now.

00:50:50 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

00:50:51 ◼   ► She pays me.

00:50:52 ◼   ► And it's an interesting, it's interesting.

00:50:57 ◼   ► Although it's funny working with people

00:50:58 ◼   ► that I've worked with on and off for years,

00:51:01 ◼   ► you get that funny moment of like relief,

00:51:04 ◼   ► which I'm glad they're relieved and not driven crazy.

00:51:07 ◼   ► They're like, "Oh yeah, you know how to do this."

00:51:09 ◼   ► Instead of, "Boy, it's a lot of work.

00:51:11 ◼   ► I gotta edit this guy and all that."

00:51:12 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh yeah, this is good.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Good, thanks."

00:51:16 ◼   ► Right?

00:51:17 ◼   ► It's just like a relief that I'm not causing them trouble.

00:51:19 ◼   ► But yeah, so she has some suggestions, which was great

00:51:22 ◼   ► because that's kind of a nice challenge.

00:51:24 ◼   ► And I was able to come up with something

00:51:27 ◼   ► that kind of fit within the themes that she was looking for.

00:51:29 ◼   ► And that was a lot of fun.

00:51:30 ◼   ► So I wrote this piece called Apple and the Agents of Change,

00:51:33 ◼   ► which I like to refer to as Marvel's Apple's Agents of C.H.A.N.G.E.

00:51:38 ◼   ► - No.

00:51:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:41 ◼   ► - It's coming soon to nowhere.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, Apple and the Agents of Change,

00:51:46 ◼   ► which is about, you know,

00:51:47 ◼   ► Wren wanted me to write about changes in my life

00:51:50 ◼   ► and changes at Apple and could I find ways to connect those?

00:51:52 ◼   ► And I tried to do that.

00:51:55 ◼   ► - So people should go read the piece,

00:51:57 ◼   ► it will be in the show notes which are in your podcast app

00:52:00 ◼   ► or relay.fm/upgrades/22.

00:52:03 ◼   ► - Except for Monty Ashley, my friend,

00:52:05 ◼   ► who does not read show notes, but we'll get to that.

00:52:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, we'll get to that as well.

00:52:11 ◼   ► So this is a really interesting piece

00:52:12 ◼   ► and one of the things that you're talking about

00:52:14 ◼   ► is like Apple have no fear and have in the past

00:52:17 ◼   ► had no fear to just move forward.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And one of the great, you picked out a couple of great things.

00:52:22 ◼   ► I really liked the anecdote that Steve basically effectively threw away all of

00:52:27 ◼   ► the nostalgia things that Apple were keeping around.

00:52:29 ◼   ► They had like a company museum.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Yes.

00:52:32 ◼   ► And, and he basically said, get it away.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And they send it all off to Stanford to be kept by, you know, whoever in whatever

00:52:39 ◼   ► department keeps Silicon Valley history troves at Stanford university.

00:52:44 ◼   ► But he got it out of the building.

00:52:45 ◼   ► He was like, get it away.

00:52:46 ◼   ► The other like, Oh, look, we're going to save this.

00:52:48 ◼   ► and we got all these old Macs and all Apple IIs

00:52:49 ◼   ► and all this documentation.

00:52:50 ◼   ► He's like, "Get it away."

00:52:52 ◼   ► I imagine him saying that like he was allergic to it.

00:52:55 ◼   ► Like literally, "Get it away from me, ah!"

00:52:57 ◼   ► That, you know, yeah,

00:52:58 ◼   ► that's one of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes

00:53:01 ◼   ► because it just says everything about his approach

00:53:04 ◼   ► to the past versus the future.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Like, very focused on the future,

00:53:09 ◼   ► doesn't care about the past.

00:53:11 ◼   ► So that was his thing.

00:53:12 ◼   ► - They, you know, this is something

00:53:14 ◼   ► that Apple were very frequently criticized for, right?

00:53:17 ◼   ► "Oh, you're making me buy that $25 dongle peripheral cable again."

00:53:21 ◼   ► Because that is an example of them wanting to move forward and move ahead.

00:53:27 ◼   ► And so it's a very interesting thing.

00:53:29 ◼   ► So when I was reading this piece, and I really don't want to be that guy, okay?

00:53:33 ◼   ► So I'm just saying that upfront, okay?

00:53:35 ◼   ► I don't want to be that guy, but I'm going to be that guy.

00:53:36 ◼   ► - You are that guy, but you didn't want to be.

00:53:39 ◼   ► All right.

00:53:39 ◼   ► - The examples that you give are examples of things that Steve did, right?

00:53:43 ◼   ► Because that's the history.

00:53:44 ◼   ► However, and I know that you go in and you talk about

00:53:48 ◼   ► like the what would Steve do type thing

00:53:51 ◼   ► and how he effectively asked, please don't do that.

00:53:54 ◼   ► But do you think that Apple will remain this way

00:53:57 ◼   ► without Steve?

00:53:58 ◼   ► Do you think that one of the prevailing things

00:54:00 ◼   ► that the culture will be to continue moving forward

00:54:02 ◼   ► or as John Roderick would say,

00:54:03 ◼   ► to keep moving and get out of the way?

00:54:06 ◼   ► - I do, I said that in the piece

00:54:08 ◼   ► that I think one of the greatest gifts that Steve Jobs gave

00:54:11 ◼   ► to his future Apple executives was the,

00:54:16 ◼   ► you know, the corporate culture that Steve Jobs built

00:54:20 ◼   ► wasn't here are the things that I like, do these things.

00:54:23 ◼   ► It was a way of thinking about this, how they do business

00:54:28 ◼   ► and a way of thinking about change and changing your mind

00:54:34 ◼   ► and analyzing what's coming down the road

00:54:37 ◼   ► and making good decisions about the products they make

00:54:40 ◼   ► but also not being afraid to cannibalize their own business,

00:54:44 ◼   ► lots of things like that.

00:54:45 ◼   ► And I feel like it gives them in some ways

00:54:47 ◼   ► kind of carte blanche to change what Steve would have wanted.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And now eventually they're gonna get past that.

00:54:55 ◼   ► It's gonna be so far away

00:54:56 ◼   ► that you're not gonna be able to hold up a Steve Jobs quote

00:54:59 ◼   ► and say, "Uh-uh, Steve said you shouldn't do this."

00:55:02 ◼   ► But right now they're in it, right?

00:55:04 ◼   ► They're in the let's do a watch,

00:55:08 ◼   ► let's do an eight inch tablet, let's do,

00:55:11 ◼   ► you know, all sorts of things,

00:55:12 ◼   ► let's do a music streaming service,

00:55:14 ◼   ► let's buy a company for a lot of money

00:55:16 ◼   ► and do a music subscription streaming service,

00:55:18 ◼   ► which Jobs wasn't into.

00:55:19 ◼   ► 'Cause Jobs doesn't have the opportunity

00:55:21 ◼   ► to look at the data that we have today and change his mind,

00:55:26 ◼   ► which is what he did all the time.

00:55:28 ◼   ► So I think they've got as good a chance,

00:55:30 ◼   ► I've said this before,

00:55:31 ◼   ► I think they've got as good a chance as anybody does

00:55:34 ◼   ► to succeed at this,

00:55:37 ◼   ► because that was instilled in the culture

00:55:40 ◼   ► and because they built Apple University

00:55:42 ◼   ► to try and continue to instill those approaches

00:55:45 ◼   ► into the people who work at Apple.

00:55:47 ◼   ► They might or not make it.

00:55:49 ◼   ► It's not gonna mean that they're not gonna make mistakes.

00:55:53 ◼   ► They absolutely are.

00:55:54 ◼   ► But I think that they are escaping from the paralysis

00:55:58 ◼   ► of not knowing what to do 'cause Steve isn't around.

00:56:02 ◼   ► And I think it's a healthy thing for any company to have

00:56:06 ◼   ► or anybody to have of saying,

00:56:08 ◼   ► "Look, change is going to happen.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Let's be the ones who make it

00:56:11 ◼   ► and not the ones who resist it."

00:56:13 ◼   ► And I think that is one of Apple's great assets.

00:56:16 ◼   ► In addition to all of the things about their supply chain

00:56:19 ◼   ► and their product design philosophy

00:56:21 ◼   ► and all those things we talk about a lot,

00:56:22 ◼   ► I think one of the Apple strengths

00:56:25 ◼   ► is having this culture of not being,

00:56:30 ◼   ► not waiting around for somebody else to do it,

00:56:31 ◼   ► not protecting their investment,

00:56:33 ◼   ► not killing that goose that lays the golden egg,

00:56:35 ◼   ► but instead trying to be the agents of change.

00:56:38 ◼   ► - And one other thing that I was interested in this,

00:56:41 ◼   ► 'cause it just got me thinking,

00:56:42 ◼   ► 'cause you mentioned a couple of ways

00:56:44 ◼   ► that Tim is carving his own Apple,

00:56:45 ◼   ► and I think that that is so clear.

00:56:48 ◼   ► The decisions that he has been making

00:56:50 ◼   ► are so different but still kind of the same,

00:56:52 ◼   ► but you mentioned the acquisition of Beats is a huge one,

00:56:56 ◼   ► and some of the different changes

00:56:59 ◼   ► that they're making in products,

00:57:00 ◼   ► like bigger iPhones, if they do a stylus,

00:57:02 ◼   ► it's another big thing that I think

00:57:04 ◼   ► that they should think about,

00:57:06 ◼   ► and if they do it in the right way, it's appley,

00:57:08 ◼   ► but it was not necessarily Steve Jobs-y.

00:57:11 ◼   ► So, and you also mentioned like,

00:57:14 ◼   ► I can't remember what it's called now,

00:57:15 ◼   ► but like the employee giving program.

00:57:18 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, the philanthropy,

00:57:19 ◼   ► the matching program that just wasn't there,

00:57:22 ◼   ► it was, the philanthropy stuff wasn't on Jobs' radar,

00:57:24 ◼   ► and that was one of the first things Tim Cook did,

00:57:26 ◼   ► which was reversing something that either Steve Jobs,

00:57:29 ◼   ► I don't know if he had forbade it, but he didn't do it,

00:57:31 ◼   ► and it was an easy one for Tim Cook to be like,

00:57:34 ◼   ► Yeah, we're doing that now.

00:57:35 ◼   ► - So do you think that some of these things

00:57:37 ◼   ► make Tim Cook's Apple maybe a better Apple?

00:57:40 ◼   ► - It's tough to say better.

00:57:45 ◼   ► I think it has the potential to make them better.

00:57:47 ◼   ► I think really what we're talking about is

00:57:50 ◼   ► you're losing all of the things that made Steve Jobs great

00:57:55 ◼   ► because he's gone.

00:57:58 ◼   ► But he spent a decade trying to instill those things

00:58:03 ◼   ► in the culture and again, you know, Apple University is meant to continue doing that.

00:58:10 ◼   ► So hopefully you keep at least the way of approaching the world that Steve Jobs had

00:58:17 ◼   ► in the company culture. You're not gonna have the hold up a product and use it for a little

00:58:23 ◼   ► bit and make lots of keen observations about what's wrong with this product and why it

00:58:30 ◼   ► sucks and why we need to do better. You're gonna lose that. But you've got

00:58:33 ◼   ► people who work with Steve Jobs, people who've been trained in this approach, who

00:58:36 ◼   ► could individually have aspects of what he was good at. So okay, you maybe you

00:58:42 ◼   ► lose, you know, you lose a lot of product taste and maybe you make that up by

00:58:48 ◼   ► having a bunch of other people who have good taste too, but are in different

00:58:52 ◼   ► areas. So you put that all together. Does that company match the

00:58:58 ◼   ► Apple with Steve Jobs? No, it doesn't. It might come closer than you might think because

00:59:02 ◼   ► there are a lot of people who would say, "Well, without Steve Jobs, they're doomed." No, there

00:59:05 ◼   ► are a lot of talented people at Apple. But what you do gain, and I don't know whether

00:59:09 ◼   ► it's enough to make it as good or better or what, but what you do gain is a variety of

00:59:15 ◼   ► perspectives from all those people as opposed to the perspective of Steve. And Steve had

00:59:20 ◼   ► blind spots. Steve absolutely had blind spots. And I say that as somebody who from the outside

00:59:27 ◼   ► would look at some of what his decisions were and be like, "Why do they do that?" And I

00:59:33 ◼   ► said this for a while that I didn't think Apple TV and Apple's approach to TV on iTunes

00:59:39 ◼   ► made a lot of sense because I had this sneaking suspicion that Steve Jobs just didn't like

00:59:42 ◼   ► TV and didn't care about it, and so it was a blind spot for Apple. I feel like the streaming

00:59:47 ◼   ► service thing, the subscription service thing, Steve Jobs had his way of consuming music,

00:59:52 ◼   ► that was buying albums. And he was a child of the 60s, so buying albums was his thing,

00:59:58 ◼   ► and so he could get behind electronically buying albums, but to get to singles, to get

01:00:02 ◼   ► to streaming was a lot harder for him. And that blind spot is gone because Steve's gone.

01:00:07 ◼   ► So you eliminate Steve's blind spots because through diversity now you've got a bunch of

01:00:13 ◼   ► different people who have different takes on all this stuff, and hopefully they're working

01:00:18 ◼   ► in a framework where this can lead to good decisions being made where you don't have,

01:00:23 ◼   ► ideally you don't have one person somewhere who's like, "No, I don't care about it, we're

01:00:26 ◼   ► not doing it," which I think Steve had that kind of power. He was such a strong personality

01:00:32 ◼   ► that if he really loved album art, everybody was going to prioritize engineering things

01:00:37 ◼   ► that showed off album art, like CoverFlow and that iPad music app, the original iPad

01:00:42 ◼   ► music app. And I would argue that was always one of my pet peeves, is that Steve really

01:00:47 ◼   ► loved album art and I think it's stupid and that bad UI led from the decision of showcasing

01:00:52 ◼   ► album art. But I don't think album art as a concept is stupid. I think over—Apple

01:00:57 ◼   ► totally overemphasized it, and I suspect that's because Steve really liked it and liked to

01:01:02 ◼   ► talk about it and they wanted to please him. So in the end, do I think Apple is a better

01:01:07 ◼   ► Apple than before? You know, I don't know how you measure that. I would say they're

01:01:12 ◼   ► different and they have the opportunity to not have the blind spots that were there when

01:01:16 ◼   ► you have one personality driving so much of what they did.

01:01:20 ◼   ► My girlfriend just got a new MacBook Pro and one of the things that I have been tasked

01:01:27 ◼   ► to do is to give her some tips and tricks as to how to use it.

01:01:32 ◼   ► She has used Macs but only really used them for work and so now this is her personal computer

01:01:38 ◼   ► as well.

01:01:39 ◼   ► And I was showing her column view in Finder because I said to her it's the best way to

01:01:44 ◼   ► to move around Finder, in my opinion.

01:01:48 ◼   ► Do you agree or disagree with that?

01:01:50 ◼   ► - I hate column view.

01:01:53 ◼   ► Steve Jobs loved column view,

01:01:55 ◼   ► 'cause it's the next browser view, but I hate it.

01:01:58 ◼   ► - What do you use?

01:02:00 ◼   ► - List.

01:02:01 ◼   ► - Okay, so I like column because it's also list,

01:02:06 ◼   ► but you can get more on the screen,

01:02:07 ◼   ► and I like 'cause it shows you your path, so anyway.

01:02:11 ◼   ► But that's my preferred.

01:02:13 ◼   ► but I noticed that cover flow is still in Finder.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And basically the way I explained it to her is like,

01:02:19 ◼   ► this is only good now for looking at pictures,

01:02:21 ◼   ► but even then it doesn't make any sense to use thumbnails.

01:02:24 ◼   ► And I cannot understand why it's still in Finder.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Like I just can't see who's using it.

01:02:29 ◼   ► Like why?

01:02:29 ◼   ► - No, it's like a memorial to Steve Jobs.

01:02:31 ◼   ► It's like Steve loved this, let's keep it in there.

01:02:33 ◼   ► No, it's terrible.

01:02:33 ◼   ► And you're right, even the great thing

01:02:35 ◼   ► about the current Finder is that you can set things

01:02:38 ◼   ► to icons and have them be sorted

01:02:40 ◼   ► and have them have very large icons.

01:02:42 ◼   ► and that's great for a folder full of pictures.

01:02:45 ◼   ► And they're sorted and arranged properly

01:02:49 ◼   ► with big preview thumbnails as the icons.

01:02:54 ◼   ► It's great.

01:02:55 ◼   ► I don't know why you would ever use CoverFlow View.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Now we're gonna get some follow up

01:02:58 ◼   ► of somebody who loves CoverFlow.

01:03:00 ◼   ► - If you have a real reason for using it, I wanna hear it.

01:03:05 ◼   ► I'm interested now.

01:03:06 ◼   ► Right, so should we just,

01:03:09 ◼   ► let's just quickly touch on this other piece that you wrote

01:03:11 ◼   ► I think that is an interesting one called "Nobody's Listening." What

01:03:17 ◼   ► was the intention of this article that you wrote? Well I was struck by

01:03:22 ◼   ► the fact that Marco Arment got a firestorm of coverage for him saying

01:03:28 ◼   ► that Apple might have some software quality problems when he'd been saying

01:03:33 ◼   ► that and his colleagues on ATP had been saying that forever. And then he wrote an

01:03:40 ◼   ► article about it and that one went, people went nuts over that. And I was

01:03:44 ◼   ► fascinated by that. I mean it's obvious on one level. It's like, well, people don't

01:03:48 ◼   ► listen to podcasts. But I think it's true, I think Marco would even say, he's

01:03:52 ◼   ► suggested as much on Twitter, that more people listen to ATP than read his blog.

01:03:57 ◼   ► So what's the story? And the answer is, well, it got me thinking about audiences.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Because the ATP audience hearing them talk is listening to them, it's listening

01:04:08 ◼   ► to them for all their episodes.

01:04:10 ◼   ► It's all in the context of what they're talking about.

01:04:12 ◼   ► You get the history, you know who these guys are,

01:04:14 ◼   ► you know what they're talking about.

01:04:15 ◼   ► Whereas Marker writes a piece there.

01:04:17 ◼   ► First off, he's probably, he's admitted,

01:04:19 ◼   ► he sort of dashed it off.

01:04:20 ◼   ► He's probably thinking in the context of ATP.

01:04:23 ◼   ► These are conversations that we've all had on his podcast,

01:04:27 ◼   ► on other podcasts, on other Mac sites,

01:04:29 ◼   ► other Apple related columns, whatever.

01:04:32 ◼   ► We've talked about this stuff.

01:04:33 ◼   ► So he writes this thing saying,

01:04:34 ◼   ► "Look, I think this is a problem and it's bugging me."

01:04:35 ◼   ► And he uses some language that he regrets later.

01:04:37 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:04:38 ◼   ► But the difference is that that's really shareable.

01:04:42 ◼   ► And somebody who is not in the audience

01:04:46 ◼   ► and doesn't understand the context can read that

01:04:49 ◼   ► or can have it passed to them.

01:04:51 ◼   ► And then it blows up and it blows up

01:04:53 ◼   ► because there's a completely different audience

01:04:55 ◼   ► that's now coming into contact with it

01:04:56 ◼   ► and doesn't have any context.

01:04:59 ◼   ► I think that's interesting about this collision of mediums,

01:05:02 ◼   ► but it also, as somebody who does a lot of podcasts,

01:05:04 ◼   ► it made me think about the fact that

01:05:07 ◼   ► like I said, nobody's listening.

01:05:09 ◼   ► People are listening, but it is a podcast or a medium

01:05:14 ◼   ► that is kind of walled off from, and this is good and bad,

01:05:19 ◼   ► walled off from viral sharing.

01:05:23 ◼   ► It's bad because it means that a podcast clip

01:05:26 ◼   ► can't go viral like a YouTube clip can.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Certainly not easily.

01:05:30 ◼   ► It's good in the sense that when we're having conversations

01:05:34 ◼   ► on podcasts, it's to an audience that really,

01:05:37 ◼   ► I think generally understands a context

01:05:40 ◼   ► that is richer and broader than somebody

01:05:44 ◼   ► who comes to an article on a website

01:05:46 ◼   ► because they did a Google search

01:05:47 ◼   ► or because somebody linked to it on Twitter.

01:05:50 ◼   ► Because there's no context then.

01:05:51 ◼   ► You get your loyal audience

01:05:53 ◼   ► and then you've got this audience that knows nothing

01:05:55 ◼   ► about you, is never gonna read anything by you again,

01:05:57 ◼   ► has dropped in to see this thing.

01:05:59 ◼   ► And if you've got comments on your website,

01:06:00 ◼   ► well then leave a nasty comment

01:06:02 ◼   ► like a bag of flaming poop on your door

01:06:05 ◼   ► and then they're gone and they never come back.

01:06:07 ◼   ► So I was just struck by that.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And so I wrote this thing that's about like,

01:06:11 ◼   ► we like to think that audiences are monolithic,

01:06:13 ◼   ► but they're not.

01:06:14 ◼   ► There are lots of different kinds of audiences

01:06:17 ◼   ► and different stuff you do reaches them in different ways.

01:06:20 ◼   ► We can't assume that everybody listens to the podcast

01:06:22 ◼   ► and reads the websites.

01:06:23 ◼   ► We can't assume people read the show notes

01:06:25 ◼   ► because Monty Ashley says he listens to 10 podcasts a week

01:06:29 ◼   ► and has never once looked at show notes before.

01:06:32 ◼   ► I told the story about the guy who won our incomparable

01:06:35 ◼   ► iTunes review contest and I couldn't find him because he didn't read our Twitter account

01:06:39 ◼   ► and he didn't read the show notes. And until I put a thing at the beginning of an episode

01:06:43 ◼   ► that said, "Please, if you're this person, write to me," and then he immediately wrote

01:06:47 ◼   ► to me because he listened to the show. That's all he did. All that other stuff interacting

01:06:51 ◼   ► on Twitter that we think of as being our audience is with a little chunk of our audience. The

01:06:56 ◼   ► chat room is a little chunk of our audience. So I was just thinking about that, about how

01:07:01 ◼   ► we think of audience, it's so easy to think of audience as monolithic, and it's really

01:07:04 ◼   ► not like not even close. You linked to a dig article called "Is This Thing On?" where

01:07:12 ◼   ► they talk about the fact that audio content doesn't get shared in the

01:07:19 ◼   ► same way like and and this led me to I was thinking a lot about this and it's

01:07:23 ◼   ► not something I've done anything about because I haven't got a good answer for

01:07:26 ◼   ► it but I was thinking about this a lot when we were thinking about Relay and I

01:07:31 ◼   ► I have my own little story about this, which I don't know if I've ever told before, so if we've got a minute I would like to tell it.

01:07:37 ◼   ► Sure.

01:07:38 ◼   ► I interviewed John Roderick on Command Space, and one of my most favorite episodes that I did.

01:07:46 ◼   ► It was the second time I interviewed him.

01:07:48 ◼   ► And there was a quote that a lot of people were sharing from the article.

01:07:57 ◼   ► And Marco even wrote a little piece on his blog where he quoted it, he transcribed it.

01:08:04 ◼   ► And it was about the kind of the idea of the quote and Marco titled the kind of the clip

01:08:11 ◼   ► that he wrote, "We're just flipping through index cards." And he was talking about like the way that

01:08:16 ◼   ► you create things and like being creative. And it was just such an interesting like,

01:08:22 ◼   ► Obviously Roderick was going through a time where he was thinking about how you create

01:08:27 ◼   ► and where you put things and really it was kind of it blew my mind as it did for a lot of people.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Like you know so it was it was just this really interesting quote and I was watching Marco's link

01:08:39 ◼   ► getting shared a lot but it didn't change the listener numbers of the episode.

01:08:44 ◼   ► So people were tweeting about it like there was a musician I wish I could remember what band it was

01:08:51 ◼   ► he was from. I might be able to find it actually and I'll report back on some real-time follow-up

01:08:57 ◼   ► in a moment but like he even tweeted it and again I don't know how he came across it. I think he may

01:09:02 ◼   ► have linked to Marco's piece as well and it was it was just very peculiar but what it showed to me is

01:09:08 ◼   ► it's just the way in which people will find something is the way that they will just they

01:09:13 ◼   ► will just consume it and they're happy with that you know. Very very very peculiar. And the dig

01:09:20 ◼   ► It's funny, I wrote a piece and quoted Marko from an ATP episode, and it was the same thing

01:09:24 ◼   ► where I felt like on one level I was kind of getting this statement by Marko out into

01:09:29 ◼   ► a wider world, because I went through the trouble of, as I do every week, it's not trouble,

01:09:34 ◼   ► but I went through the effort, the time involved to listen to ATP and then think, "Oh, that's

01:09:40 ◼   ► really interesting. I want to write about that, but I need the context." So I wrote

01:09:45 ◼   ► down a couple paragraphs that Marco had said on ATP, and then I wrote a thing quoting it,

01:09:50 ◼   ► and then commenting on it. And I did have that moment of thinking, this is like moving

01:09:55 ◼   ► this medium to this different place, where if that was something controversial, this

01:10:02 ◼   ► is what would get passed around, because people didn't listen to the episode, but they can

01:10:05 ◼   ► pass this around. And that's what that Digg article is pointing out, which is there is

01:10:08 ◼   ► no way to make a viral video from podcast audio right now that's standard and commonly

01:10:13 ◼   ► And as a result, like I said, podcasts are great in that they have this context shared with them.

01:10:19 ◼   ► They are bad in the sense that it's much harder to get a cool little two-minute bit

01:10:24 ◼   ► shareable unless you

01:10:28 ◼   ► transcribe it. And you're not going to transcribe a whole podcast,

01:10:31 ◼   ► so it ends up being you transcribe this little bit. And most people are never going to do that for like a viral whatever,

01:10:37 ◼   ► and so it just is lost.

01:10:40 ◼   ► And I don't know what, I don't know what, you know,

01:10:43 ◼   ► like I said, I don't know if there is a solution

01:10:46 ◼   ► other than the fact that there really should be

01:10:47 ◼   ► a really awesome web embeddable audio player

01:10:50 ◼   ► that follows a similar kind of format

01:10:53 ◼   ► to what YouTube videos do

01:10:55 ◼   ► where you can link to a particular time code.

01:10:57 ◼   ► That would be really nice.

01:10:58 ◼   ► I understand there's some technical limitations there,

01:11:00 ◼   ► but that would be great.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Failing that though, yeah, it's,

01:11:04 ◼   ► I love podcast audiences 'cause they're so loyal,

01:11:06 ◼   ► but the downside is that there is such a,

01:11:09 ◼   ► It's like a little pocket universe off to the side of the web.

01:11:13 ◼   ► And until somebody writes something down,

01:11:15 ◼   ► like what Marco did when he wrote that story

01:11:17 ◼   ► and stepped in it a little bit, but he wrote that.

01:11:19 ◼   ► That was perfectly in context of his podcast.

01:11:22 ◼   ► But to the web, it's like no other context ever existed.

01:11:27 ◼   ► It was like, oh, now he's really had it.

01:11:29 ◼   ► Well, no, he's been talking about this for months,

01:11:32 ◼   ► but that's not how it read.

01:11:34 ◼   ► It's funny, funny world.

01:11:36 ◼   ► - It was Adam Lazarra of "Taking Back Sunday."

01:11:39 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:11:40 ◼   ► - So there you go.

01:11:41 ◼   ► - Real time follow up there.

01:11:43 ◼   ► Anyway, it is funny that we think about people

01:11:46 ◼   ► who listen to podcasts and then people who read websites

01:11:48 ◼   ► and people who are on Twitter

01:11:49 ◼   ► and people who are in the chat room

01:11:51 ◼   ► and you know, and those people are great.

01:11:54 ◼   ► People who read footnotes.

01:11:55 ◼   ► I had a footnote in my piece that said,

01:11:56 ◼   ► I also love people who read footnotes.

01:11:58 ◼   ► But you know, it's not everybody.

01:12:03 ◼   ► And it's important to, if you're making content

01:12:05 ◼   ► on the internet, it's important to keep that in mind.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And if you're somebody who loves podcasting like I do,

01:12:09 ◼   ► it's one of the peculiar things about the medium

01:12:12 ◼   ► is that it is walled off so that you can get this tempest

01:12:15 ◼   ► in a teapot that happened when Marco wrote this thing

01:12:18 ◼   ► that to a podcast listener was like not news.

01:12:21 ◼   ► - Jason, who is presenting Ask Upgrade for us this week.

01:12:28 ◼   ► - #AskUpgrade is brought to us this week

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01:13:32 ◼   ► We are using Stamps.com for this show,

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01:13:39 ◼   ► It is probably sitting in a melting puddle of snow

01:13:42 ◼   ► on his front doorstep right now.

01:13:44 ◼   ► I hope not, but there's really no place in Boston

01:13:47 ◼   ► that isn't just covered with snow right now.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So Dan, let me know if you get my thing that I sent you,

01:13:52 ◼   ► and I'm preparing some other stuff to fulfill.

01:13:54 ◼   ► I've got some stickers and t-shirts and things like that,

01:13:56 ◼   ► and so it's been fun to use that as the fulfillment center

01:14:00 ◼   ► instead of what normally happens, which is my wife

01:14:02 ◼   ► and I keep like making lists of things we have to go to the post office to do.

01:14:06 ◼   ► We haven't had to do that because we've got a Stamps.com scale and we've got the Stamps.com

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01:14:53 ◼   ► mysterious soon to Myke.

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01:14:57 ◼   ► Jason.

01:14:59 ◼   ► - #AskUpgrade.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Listener Aaron says, "Jason and Myke,

01:15:03 ◼   ► "what is your thought about the news regarding Pebble

01:15:06 ◼   ► "and their new operating system and hardware?"

01:15:09 ◼   ► Have any thoughts about this?

01:15:11 ◼   ► This came in as we were doing the show last week.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Pebble announced new operating system

01:15:16 ◼   ► and hardware on the way.

01:15:17 ◼   ► - The thing that I actually found the most interesting,

01:15:21 ◼   ► I mean, I saw that and great

01:15:23 ◼   ► because we are both Pebble users.

01:15:24 ◼   ► New hardware, I'm not too fussed about.

01:15:26 ◼   ► I'm not gonna buy a new Pebble, because I will replace my Pebble with an Apple Watch.

01:15:31 ◼   ► I'm sorry, Pebble people, but I will do that.

01:15:35 ◼   ► The thing that I found the most interesting is that they sold over a million.

01:15:41 ◼   ► And they made a little infographic, and I'm gonna try and find the infographic.

01:15:49 ◼   ► But basically they sold a million Pebbles faster than Apple sold a million iPods.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Which I know is like a thing where it's like, well, you know, there are so many different

01:15:58 ◼   ► factors as to why that could have happened and why it didn't, like why it didn't, why

01:16:01 ◼   ► it didn't.

01:16:02 ◼   ► However, I just think it's really cool.

01:16:04 ◼   ► I just think it's a really cool statistic.

01:16:06 ◼   ► They sold that, you know.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Oh, here we go.

01:16:09 ◼   ► I've got it from the website now.

01:16:11 ◼   ► Pebble sold 1 million smartwatches after its first seven quarters.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Apple sold 977 iPods after its first seven quarters.

01:16:21 ◼   ► So I think it's interesting.

01:16:22 ◼   ► I'm happy for them.

01:16:24 ◼   ► I think it's amazing. - Yeah, I am too.

01:16:26 ◼   ► We talked about this before a little bit.

01:16:28 ◼   ► I feel like there is room in the market at this point

01:16:32 ◼   ► for a nice low-end smartwatch with long battery life.

01:16:37 ◼   ► I feel like they should not try to compete

01:16:40 ◼   ► with the Android smartwatches or the Apple Watch.

01:16:43 ◼   ► They should be a notch down.

01:16:44 ◼   ► They should add some fitness features and all of that,

01:16:46 ◼   ► but if they can be cheaper and have that week-long,

01:16:49 ◼   ► or even if it's like three or four day long battery life,

01:16:52 ◼   ► I think that's their best.

01:16:54 ◼   ► I think that's their best approach going forward.

01:16:56 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't think, it's a little company.

01:16:58 ◼   ► I don't think they're gonna be able to keep up

01:16:59 ◼   ► with Samsung and Motorola and Apple.

01:17:02 ◼   ► But I think that there's a place for them.

01:17:04 ◼   ► As an iPhone user, they're really limited

01:17:07 ◼   ► in what they can do with the iPhone.

01:17:09 ◼   ► Their Android features are much better

01:17:11 ◼   ► than their iPhone features because the OS supports more.

01:17:15 ◼   ► And let's be honest, the Apple Watch is gonna be the thing

01:17:20 ◼   ► that Apple connects really well.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And I don't think that stuff's gonna be available

01:17:24 ◼   ► to other watchmakers.

01:17:26 ◼   ► So I think the jig is up once the Apple watch is out.

01:17:28 ◼   ► And yeah, but that said,

01:17:30 ◼   ► I don't have anything against the Pebble.

01:17:32 ◼   ► And in fact, I'm wearing it right now.

01:17:33 ◼   ► I have been wearing this Pebble most days for two years.

01:17:38 ◼   ► I got it two years ago.

01:17:39 ◼   ► I think like today, two years ago.

01:17:41 ◼   ► And for what I paid for it on Kickstarter,

01:17:45 ◼   ► having this as my watch for the last two years,

01:17:47 ◼   ► totally worth it.

01:17:48 ◼   ► It tells the time.

01:17:50 ◼   ► It does some other neat things,

01:17:51 ◼   ► but it's a fun bit of technology that tells the time.

01:17:56 ◼   ► And yeah, am I gonna replace it

01:17:57 ◼   ► when the Apple Watch comes out?

01:17:58 ◼   ► Almost certainly.

01:18:00 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:18:01 ◼   ► - Like I have a Relay FM watch face

01:18:05 ◼   ► that friend at the show Rob Lewis built.

01:18:07 ◼   ► And every time I look at my watch,

01:18:09 ◼   ► I see like a Relay FM-style watch face.

01:18:12 ◼   ► And it's like, that's just so cool, you know?

01:18:15 ◼   ► I love that that's the case.

01:18:16 ◼   ► And it will be a shame for that sort of stuff

01:18:21 ◼   ► because it is maybe a little bit more fun

01:18:23 ◼   ► than the Apple Watch will be because it's kind of different.

01:18:26 ◼   ► But I am, as you said earlier,

01:18:28 ◼   ► I'm very, very excited about the Apple Watch.

01:18:30 ◼   ► 'Cause the Pebble was kind of onboarded me to that.

01:18:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, there won't be any custom faces

01:18:36 ◼   ► in the Apple Watch at launch,

01:18:37 ◼   ► but I think it's only a matter of time

01:18:40 ◼   ► before there's a developer kit

01:18:41 ◼   ► that allows for custom watch faces.

01:18:44 ◼   ► It'll happen. - Definitely.

01:18:45 ◼   ► a definite thing. It'd be crazy not to eventually do it. It kind of is very surprising to me

01:18:50 ◼   ► that there won't be custom watch faces at launch. It seems like such a logical thing

01:18:54 ◼   ► to do, but...

01:18:55 ◼   ► I think they want to control the look of the experience because the fact is with the Pebble

01:18:59 ◼   ► there were lots of custom watch faces from the beginning that were lousy. And so, you

01:19:04 ◼   ► know, I think Apple doesn't want their watch to look junky. I think they want to have like

01:19:10 ◼   ► total control and be really happy with the refined faces that are available.

01:19:16 ◼   ► So I feel like that's like step one is we're gonna make some good faces, you're gonna use

01:19:20 ◼   ► these faces.

01:19:21 ◼   ► And then step two will be okay, you can do custom faces through the App Store and we'll

01:19:25 ◼   ► have to approve them, etc, etc.

01:19:27 ◼   ► I think it will happen, but I'm not too surprised that they didn't have it happen up front because

01:19:32 ◼   ► I feel like that's like totally an Apple's wheelhouse of we want to control this.

01:19:36 ◼   ► And I see why, because a junky face on that watch does not do them any good.

01:19:42 ◼   ► I was just reminded by Joe Steele in the chat room that there will be a Mickey Mouse watch

01:19:46 ◼   ► face.

01:19:47 ◼   ► There will be.

01:19:48 ◼   ► And so I questioned that one, but I understand.

01:19:54 ◼   ► The Jacob Holt wrote in to say, "What do you think of the doom of Radio Shack and is Best

01:20:00 ◼   ► Buy next?"

01:20:03 ◼   ► I don't really have an opinion.

01:20:04 ◼   ► I would say to the second part of the question, yes.

01:20:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:20:10 ◼   ► Eventually, all of those stores will go away.

01:20:14 ◼   ► The age of the dedicated electronics retailer

01:20:19 ◼   ► has already ended.

01:20:21 ◼   ► And the ones that are left

01:20:22 ◼   ► are kind of just there on inertia.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Like Best Buy tried to launch in the UK

01:20:26 ◼   ► and they opened a bunch of stores

01:20:28 ◼   ► and I think they were closed, all closed within a year.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Like there is just not a need anymore

01:20:33 ◼   ► for something like this to exist

01:20:34 ◼   ► when every other big store sells electronics

01:20:38 ◼   ► as well as online.

01:20:39 ◼   ► We only have one of these types of stores left in the UK

01:20:45 ◼   ► and the one that's left is like the company that owns it

01:20:49 ◼   ► basically bought up over time like the three major companies

01:20:53 ◼   ► like so there's, what we have at the moment

01:20:55 ◼   ► is a company called Currys PC World

01:20:58 ◼   ► and basically there was a company called Currys,

01:21:00 ◼   ► a company called Dixons.

01:21:01 ◼   ► Dixons was where the terrible Apple retail guy came from,

01:21:05 ◼   ► you remember that?

01:21:06 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And PC World.

01:21:07 ◼   ► So they were the three. - And PC World.

01:21:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, they were the three that we had.

01:21:10 ◼   ► And then Currys bought Dixons and then bought PC World

01:21:13 ◼   ► and became Currys PC World.

01:21:15 ◼   ► So, I say this to say like, they are going away

01:21:20 ◼   ► and there's kind of only ever space for one of them

01:21:23 ◼   ► because people will still maybe need one,

01:21:26 ◼   ► but that need will go away soon as well

01:21:29 ◼   ► because Walmart and Target,

01:21:31 ◼   ► they will hold all the TVs and computers that you need in some instances. And then you've

01:21:35 ◼   ► got companies like Apple who the best place to go and buy Apple products is in the Apple

01:21:39 ◼   ► store and Microsoft is trying to do the same. So there you go. This is experience stores

01:21:43 ◼   ► will remain but these big box retailers will go away.

01:21:46 ◼   ► I think you're right. In fact I wonder sometimes if you might not see TV manufacturers do something

01:21:53 ◼   ► similar where they've got like a little experience store where you come and look at the 4k TVs

01:21:57 ◼   ► and have something like that. But generally yeah a lot of this is going to be online or

01:22:00 ◼   ► it's gonna be in other retailers and it's gonna go away Radio Shack is to be

01:22:06 ◼   ► credited for surviving as long as it did because it kept having to try and

01:22:10 ◼   ► reinvent itself and so because it was a store for radio ham radio hobbyists

01:22:15 ◼   ► that's how it started it was crazy and over time it adapted they were one of

01:22:20 ◼   ► the leading computer manufacturers in the early days of the PC with the TRS-80

01:22:25 ◼   ► and they adapted again to be a cell phone store, and in fact the fact that Sprint is interested in buying up a bunch of their stores tells you the story there.

01:22:35 ◼   ► These are located in places where having a cell phone store sort of makes sense, but as a dusty electronic hobbyist kind of thing, that stuff is on the internet.

01:22:46 ◼   ► the internet and in fact I I would never go to one here because we actually have

01:22:49 ◼   ► an electronics hobbyist store that has so much more stuff than Radio Shack

01:22:55 ◼   ► because it's like the place to go and it's bigger and it's the people who are

01:22:59 ◼   ► there are like totally into all of the technology and they know all of it and

01:23:04 ◼   ► at Radio Shack it was like a guy who didn't know anything I've been into

01:23:09 ◼   ► Radio Shack three times in the last like five years or ten years and it's to buy

01:23:13 ◼   ► their little they had a little battery operated clip-on microphones that were

01:23:16 ◼   ► pretty good and so if like I was somewhere and I and I didn't have the

01:23:21 ◼   ► microphone I forgot it or something this just happened in San Diego when I was

01:23:24 ◼   ► down there for Comic Con and I needed another microphone I thought oh I'll go

01:23:28 ◼   ► to Radio Shack and I bought one that's it can't keep them in business buying a

01:23:32 ◼   ► microphone every four years so you know it's amazing they stayed in business as

01:23:36 ◼   ► long as they they did and and yeah they it's time time to go and I think retail

01:23:42 ◼   ► is just changing. This is yet another way that retail is changing. Samsung opened

01:23:47 ◼   ► one of those experience stores in a Westfield Mall here, which is a quite a

01:23:52 ◼   ► large Westfield Mall on the on the Olympic site, so where the Olympic Park

01:23:55 ◼   ► is, a place called Stratford here. They recently closed it. It didn't do very well for them.

01:24:00 ◼   ► No. It was huge. It was so dumb. But there you go. We have one more which is a list

01:24:07 ◼   ► to Chris wrote in to say, Jason, how, sorry Myke, hopefully it'll be in the UK soon, how

01:24:13 ◼   ► frequently do you use Apple Pay? And my answer is, Chris, you know I don't leave the house

01:24:18 ◼   ► very much, right? I don't, I used to go into San Francisco every day, and I don't now.

01:24:27 ◼   ► I'm in my little town here, there are lots of days where I don't get into a car. And

01:24:32 ◼   ► so as a result, I don't use Apple Pay that frequently, I use it every time I go to Whole

01:24:35 ◼   ► foods and I used it at the World Series to buy a hot dog. But every time I go to Whole

01:24:40 ◼   ► Foods I pay with it because that's the place I go to, it's right by my house and they had

01:24:44 ◼   ► Apple Pay and so I use it every time I go to Whole Foods. But that's it, I have not

01:24:49 ◼   ► used it elsewhere but I'm not sure I'm the best example. It does mean that sometimes

01:24:54 ◼   ► I find myself having left the house with only my iPhone feeling like I could go to Whole

01:24:59 ◼   ► foods if I wanted to even though I forgot my wallet because I can pay with my iPhone.

01:25:05 ◼   ► We have a Starbucks that just opened next to the Whole Foods and I can pay with the

01:25:10 ◼   ► Starbucks app at the Starbucks. So I could now leave the house without a wallet and do

01:25:13 ◼   ► okay for myself. Goodbye some manchego, get a hot chocolate at Starbucks, just have a

01:25:19 ◼   ► grand old time before I had to come home.

01:25:23 ◼   ► The wallet adventures of Jason Smale.

01:25:25 ◼   ► Oh man, Whole Foods is not enough.

01:25:27 ◼   ► You gotta go to Starbucks too.

01:25:29 ◼   ► There's a Bank of America in there I could take out.

01:25:30 ◼   ► So, oh no, I need my wallet for, see?

01:25:33 ◼   ► Apple Pay.

01:25:34 ◼   ► Anyway, that's how I use Apple Pay

01:25:35 ◼   ► is to buy generally beer, peanut butter

01:25:40 ◼   ► and mini Ola Tangelos at Whole Foods.

01:25:44 ◼   ► - I'm surprised.

01:25:46 ◼   ► I am surprised that we don't have Apple Pay yet.

01:25:48 ◼   ► I thought we would have had it by now.

01:25:50 ◼   ► But alas, no.

01:25:53 ◼   ► I know that I will use it a lot though,

01:25:55 ◼   ► because I use contactless payment on my debit card,

01:25:59 ◼   ► basically every time I use my debit card.

01:26:01 ◼   ► So there we go.

01:26:03 ◼   ► I expect that I will be a big user of Apple Pay,

01:26:08 ◼   ► if and when it launches.

01:26:11 ◼   ► - All right.

01:26:12 ◼   ► I think that brings to an end Ask Upgrade for this week,

01:26:17 ◼   ► which means we're left with one more segment.

01:26:20 ◼   ► - Special segment.

01:26:22 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:26:23 ◼   ► Who is bringing to us this week, Jason, Movies with Myke?

01:26:28 ◼   ► - That's what we're calling it this week.

01:26:29 ◼   ► Movies with Myke is brought to you by MailRoute.

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01:27:29 ◼   ► Mail bagging, that's right.

01:27:31 ◼   ► - I felt bad for you when you read the ad

01:27:34 ◼   ► on the incomparable.

01:27:35 ◼   ► You sounded so sad with mail bagging.

01:27:37 ◼   ► - You weren't there to shout mail bagging.

01:27:39 ◼   ► - I will let you know that I did make a noise

01:27:41 ◼   ► when you said it.

01:27:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:27:45 ◼   ► - Mail bagging.

01:27:46 ◼   ► Anyway, this is all part of the glory that is mail route.

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01:28:03 ◼   ► It is simple and effective.

01:28:05 ◼   ► There's no reason not to try it.

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01:28:15 ◼   ► That's mailroute.net/upgrade.

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01:28:22 ◼   ► Mailbagging, yay!

01:28:24 ◼   ► And thank you, Mailroute, for sponsoring Movies with Myke.

01:28:29 ◼   ► [imitates trumpet]

01:28:30 ◼   ► - I was very surprised at how much positive feedback

01:28:35 ◼   ► we received about the Movies with Myke segment

01:28:37 ◼   ► from last week.

01:28:40 ◼   ► - Lots of positivity.

01:28:42 ◼   ► - People were happy about it.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Now, I don't want to do this every week,

01:28:47 ◼   ► but I would like it to be a recurring segment

01:28:50 ◼   ► if you are happy with that.

01:28:53 ◼   ► - I think so.

01:28:54 ◼   ► I think maybe we should even pick a frequency.

01:28:57 ◼   ► I think every week is probably asking a bit much,

01:29:00 ◼   ► but I have enjoyed movies with Myke

01:29:03 ◼   ► and we should definitely do it more, I think.

01:29:06 ◼   ► - Well, considering we're talking about "Real Genius" today,

01:29:10 ◼   ► I don't know, we'll see if you enjoy movies with Myke.

01:29:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I enjoy movies. - It's your favorite movie.

01:29:15 ◼   ► - I enjoy, it's not my favorite movie,

01:29:16 ◼   ► it is one of my favorite movies and it is uh I enjoy movies with Myke regardless of

01:29:23 ◼   ► the outcome because it's fascinating because not only do we like you it is fascinating

01:29:28 ◼   ► to to use you in this experiment to see what about these movies that you haven't seen before

01:29:33 ◼   ► I wonder one bit of a hashtag ask upgrade regarding this which was just can we have

01:29:37 ◼   ► Myke watch a movie every week please and the answer is no not every week but some weeks

01:29:43 ◼   ► maybe. And this week. Maybe once a month and we decide like a X week of the month.

01:29:48 ◼   ► I think that's a good way to do it. Yay! Maybe the first Monday, something like

01:29:53 ◼   ► that. I think that would be fun. We should do that. And I like the idea of it

01:29:57 ◼   ► being obviously a movie that I have never seen before, typically a classic

01:30:01 ◼   ► movie. Let me be your guide to a movie you haven't seen. It's a real genius.

01:30:08 ◼   ► 1985 comedy directed by Martha Coolidge called "Real Genius" starring Val Kilmer.

01:30:14 ◼   ► So I have some... my notes are written chronologically and I'm probably just

01:30:18 ◼   ► gonna go through them like I did last time, but I think I want to start this

01:30:23 ◼   ► week with my overall impressions of "Real Genius." And let me start... let me start by

01:30:29 ◼   ► saying the difference between "Real Genius" and "The Princess Bride," which we

01:30:33 ◼   ► talked about last week, is the... "Real Genius" is one of my favorite movies and I

01:30:38 ◼   ► feel a great deal of affection to it. It is also very much an 80s movie. The

01:30:43 ◼   ► Princess Bride I feel is a classic that I like it but I also would subject

01:30:50 ◼   ► people to that much earlier in the relationship than I would subject them

01:30:55 ◼   ► to real genius because I feel like Princess Bride is something that can be

01:30:59 ◼   ► appreciated by all ages and and over the course of you know many years it's just

01:31:04 ◼   ► become a classic and I have a great deal of affection for it. Real genius I love

01:31:07 ◼   ► I love it personally, but I think it's got more issues,

01:31:12 ◼   ► and it is much more of its time.

01:31:14 ◼   ► So I think that's just to compare and contrast here

01:31:17 ◼   ► with The Princess Bride.

01:31:20 ◼   ► I wouldn't file them under the same category in terms of--

01:31:24 ◼   ► even though they're both movies from the '80s.

01:31:26 ◼   ► So that's my opening statement.

01:31:28 ◼   ► And people should listen to either the incomparable episode

01:31:31 ◼   ► or the defocused episode that you did about Real Genius

01:31:34 ◼   ► to hear more about why you love the movie.

01:31:36 ◼   ► And I actually do wanna talk about that, but not yet.

01:31:38 ◼   ► I wanna get to that part shortly.

01:31:41 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:31:41 ◼   ► This is Movies with Myke, so you know, you're Myke.

01:31:45 ◼   ► - I'm running the show. - So there you go.

01:31:46 ◼   ► Go for it.

01:31:47 ◼   ► - I didn't hate this movie.

01:31:49 ◼   ► - All right, okay.

01:31:51 ◼   ► That's what John Siracusa said.

01:31:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, no, no, I think I'm gonna be better than him.

01:31:55 ◼   ► I didn't love this movie, but I did really like it.

01:31:58 ◼   ► There were parts of it that I didn't like

01:32:00 ◼   ► and there were parts of it that I really liked.

01:32:02 ◼   ► - Ooh, I'm fascinated now.

01:32:04 ◼   ► So together, I liked this movie.

01:32:07 ◼   ► But there was like a part of it like in the middle,

01:32:10 ◼   ► it felt like I was fighting through the movie.

01:32:13 ◼   ► And there are parts at the start which I get to

01:32:15 ◼   ► which I found very confusing.

01:32:16 ◼   ► But overall, I did actually enjoy it.

01:32:20 ◼   ► So let me, we will now walk through the plot.

01:32:23 ◼   ► - All right.

01:32:24 ◼   ► - Which I thought was such a terrible way of doing it.

01:32:25 ◼   ► People seemed to like it.

01:32:26 ◼   ► We'll walk through a plot and I'll give my kind of feelings

01:32:28 ◼   ► as we went through.

01:32:29 ◼   ► So the opening sequence has like that traditional

01:32:32 ◼   ► '80s opening sequence, but it's super long, so long, with really weird music.

01:32:38 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it's "You Took Advantage of Me," which is a jazz song, and the idea there,

01:32:44 ◼   ► I never even thought about this until like a year ago, I hadn't even thought of this,

01:32:47 ◼   ► that it's really, the song is called "You Took Advantage of Me," and the point is that

01:32:52 ◼   ► they're taking advantage of the college students in the movie.

01:32:55 ◼   ► The professor and the government are taking advantage of them, but it's this weird, you

01:33:01 ◼   ► Now, my son says, you can tell when a movie's really old

01:33:04 ◼   ► 'cause all the credits are at the beginning

01:33:06 ◼   ► and he's so right.

01:33:07 ◼   ► And this is like that.

01:33:08 ◼   ► They've got the jazz and then like pictures of diagrams

01:33:11 ◼   ► of like scientific diagrams and that goes on forever.

01:33:16 ◼   ► And then you've also got then the crossbow segment

01:33:21 ◼   ► where there's the spaceship that fires a laser

01:33:25 ◼   ► and the guys around the room and the Pentagon.

01:33:27 ◼   ► That's also, so you've got like a long opening

01:33:30 ◼   ► and then you've got this long kind of prologue.

01:33:34 ◼   ► - The prologue is fine, but like the opening sequence,

01:33:37 ◼   ► like the music is just weird.

01:33:39 ◼   ► Like I get the point, but like it doesn't fit

01:33:41 ◼   ► with the movie at all. - It doesn't fit

01:33:42 ◼   ► the rest of the movie at all.

01:33:43 ◼   ► I don't even think of that when I think of the movie.

01:33:47 ◼   ► It's just, it doesn't fit at all.

01:33:48 ◼   ► You just skip it.

01:33:49 ◼   ► - 'Cause one of the things I really loved in this movie

01:33:52 ◼   ► is the music, because it is--

01:33:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, it should be, the opening should be

01:33:57 ◼   ► like a wide shot of Pacific Tech, a crane shot,

01:34:01 ◼   ► slowly panning down as some really '80s song

01:34:05 ◼   ► from the soundtrack plays.

01:34:06 ◼   ► We'll say, since Brian Adams is on the soundtrack,

01:34:09 ◼   ► we could say that.

01:34:10 ◼   ► Maybe, or like ROCK in the USA, whatever,

01:34:14 ◼   ► something like that, something very '80s on the soundtrack,

01:34:17 ◼   ► and it would just be like, like Ghostbusters is,

01:34:19 ◼   ► real genius, and then fade out the name of the movie,

01:34:23 ◼   ► and we move down to discover what's happening in the quad.

01:34:26 ◼   ► that's probably how this movie should start, and instead it doesn't. It starts with a

01:34:31 ◼   ► jazz number over scientific diagrams.

01:34:34 ◼   ► And it's like, before the scientific diagrams, it's like cave drawings?

01:34:38 ◼   ► Yes, oh yeah, well it's the progression of, from cave drawings and like Michelangelo and

01:34:45 ◼   ► all the way up to like, uh, uh, uh, specs of lasers and military things. It's the history

01:34:52 ◼   ► of "it doesn't fit, it doesn't fit, I don't know." I think somebody got assigned to the

01:34:58 ◼   ► job by the studio of making a title sequence and this is what they came up with and that

01:35:04 ◼   ► nobody cared. So let's not talk about that anymore, I agree with you. I am going to check

01:35:08 ◼   ► the box there, yes, Myke, it is not a good opening credit sequence.

01:35:13 ◼   ► - Everything about the prologue, I love, I love it. It's because it's like "we're in

01:35:17 ◼   ► space and it's like oh we're in space and then it's like really dark room of

01:35:22 ◼   ► people sitting in a triangle they must be super evil and it's like I love it I

01:35:26 ◼   ► love it because it's so one of my favorite things about this movie is how

01:35:32 ◼   ► they they waste no time in telegraphing things to you it's like this is how that

01:35:39 ◼   ► you need to feel about these people and we're gonna make you feel it and I

01:35:43 ◼   ► I really like it. It's like lasers from space, no way! And then it's like when the guy, one of the

01:35:49 ◼   ► guys is like, "Oh, I don't want nothing to do with this." It's like, what does it think we'll have to

01:35:53 ◼   ► liquidate him? Liquidate him! Oh no, we'll have to liberate him. And then the guy says, "Liberate? You

01:35:59 ◼   ► mean liquidate?" And he goes, nods, "Yes." Because it's kind of like, yeah, you're gonna kill him.

01:36:04 ◼   ► It's just, it's great. They're evil. Well, there's the line, there's the line where they're like,

01:36:10 ◼   ► "Okay, well, we'll watch this movie about blinding techniques and then we'll have some

01:36:13 ◼   ► lunch."

01:36:14 ◼   ► And then it's like, in another example of it, then we go to the first time that we see

01:36:22 ◼   ► our hero.

01:36:23 ◼   ► Yes.

01:36:24 ◼   ► And it's Chris, right?

01:36:26 ◼   ► I don't know how...

01:36:27 ◼   ► Chris Knight, yeah.

01:36:28 ◼   ► Chris Knight, yeah.

01:36:29 ◼   ► Played by Val Kilmer.

01:36:30 ◼   ► I forgot that.

01:36:31 ◼   ► So we see, and then he's like wearing a head bopper, right?

01:36:35 ◼   ► And bunny slippers.

01:36:36 ◼   ► It's like, "This guy must be crazy!"

01:36:38 ◼   ► You know, you kind of, it's like another example of like,

01:36:40 ◼   ► this guy's mad, okay, so you're gonna see that

01:36:43 ◼   ► from the way that we're presenting him.

01:36:45 ◼   ► So it was kind of silly,

01:36:47 ◼   ► but it's like the same sort of idea, right?

01:36:48 ◼   ► They are making sure that you know

01:36:51 ◼   ► everything you need to know about these people

01:36:52 ◼   ► by looking at them.

01:36:54 ◼   ► One of the things I noticed

01:36:56 ◼   ► that I found quite distracting at the start is,

01:36:58 ◼   ► the cuts, like the edits are really abrupt,

01:37:01 ◼   ► especially in like the first third of the movie.

01:37:04 ◼   ► There's lots of like really sharp edits

01:37:07 ◼   ► with very differing like diegetic sound.

01:37:12 ◼   ► Look at me.

01:37:13 ◼   ► So it's like you're at one point you're hearing like

01:37:17 ◼   ► we're quietly in an office.

01:37:20 ◼   ► Now we're at a party, now we're in a bedroom.

01:37:22 ◼   ► So it's like just these real sharp changes to the audio

01:37:26 ◼   ► and it was quite frustrating to watch I think.

01:37:29 ◼   ► There are also some questionable word choices

01:37:32 ◼   ► especially at the start of the movie

01:37:35 ◼   ► which don't need to be said.

01:37:37 ◼   ► I don't wanna repeat the word.

01:37:39 ◼   ► It's not a bad word, but it's like clearly

01:37:41 ◼   ► they got clearance for a certain word

01:37:43 ◼   ► and they kept using it.

01:37:44 ◼   ► - So we talk about this in the episode in the "Indie Focused"

01:37:47 ◼   ► and in fact play a game called

01:37:52 ◼   ► "Certain Word for Anatomy or Montage"

01:37:56 ◼   ► which is how many of the one word are used

01:37:59 ◼   ► versus how many montages are in the movie.

01:38:01 ◼   ► And it goes back and forth.

01:38:02 ◼   ► It's a battle throughout the movie.

01:38:03 ◼   ► And yes, at the time when I saw this movie

01:38:06 ◼   ► for the first time, I thought, they say that word a lot.

01:38:09 ◼   ► Why are they saying that word and no other,

01:38:11 ◼   ► there's like no, there's no swearing in this movie.

01:38:14 ◼   ► There's just the one anatomical reference

01:38:16 ◼   ► that gets made repeatedly.

01:38:18 ◼   ► And as far as I can tell, yeah, they had a,

01:38:22 ◼   ► that was their dispensation is, you can say that one word,

01:38:24 ◼   ► but you can't go beyond that.

01:38:26 ◼   ► All right.

01:38:28 ◼   ► But it does, it seems like the movie's

01:38:29 ◼   ► a little overly obsessed with the single word.

01:38:32 ◼   ► But like the three or four times it is used,

01:38:34 ◼   ► two of them are so weird and really out of context.

01:38:38 ◼   ► Like, doesn't make any sense.

01:38:40 ◼   ► Like, can you use it to knock a nail into a--

01:38:43 ◼   ► - Hammer a section spike through a board.

01:38:46 ◼   ► - Like, why are you saying this?

01:38:49 ◼   ► No one's ever used that phrase.

01:38:51 ◼   ► Anyway, very peculiar.

01:38:54 ◼   ► William Atherton. - I agree with you.

01:38:55 ◼   ► - William Atherton is my favorite 80s villain

01:38:58 ◼   ► 'cause he's just so slimy.

01:39:00 ◼   ► So this is, I think this is his pinnacle.

01:39:05 ◼   ► I think he's great in "Die Hard" and "Ghostbusters,"

01:39:08 ◼   ► but I think he has more to do.

01:39:10 ◼   ► And he's so great at being so slimy.

01:39:13 ◼   ► Here he is like the slimy Carl Sagan, right?

01:39:15 ◼   ► He is Mr. Famous Scientist guy, and he is just a weasel.

01:39:20 ◼   ► He's exploiting his grad students.

01:39:22 ◼   ► He's trying to put one over on the government.

01:39:26 ◼   ► He's having sex with the government,

01:39:28 ◼   ► with the general's daughter.

01:39:30 ◼   ► I mean, he is just the worst and the best

01:39:33 ◼   ► 'cause it's so great to watch him work.

01:39:35 ◼   ► - And I agree, like I love his character,

01:39:39 ◼   ► especially in "Ghostbusters" as well.

01:39:40 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:39:41 ◼   ► - Because there's something about him

01:39:43 ◼   ► where he just plays the guy that you wanna hate

01:39:45 ◼   ► so fantastically, but you're right, in this movie,

01:39:48 ◼   ► he's one of the star roles, where in the other movies,

01:39:51 ◼   ► he's kind of just like the annoying thing.

01:39:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, he pops in to bother you and then he pops out again.

01:39:56 ◼   ► - And like he's used in those movies

01:39:58 ◼   ► to kind of advance the story a bit more,

01:40:00 ◼   ► but in this he is actually the story.

01:40:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, he's essentially the antagonist in the movie,

01:40:07 ◼   ► even though there is this weird laser plot

01:40:10 ◼   ► with the government that comes and goes,

01:40:13 ◼   ► you know, really he's the bad guy throughout.

01:40:16 ◼   ► - So we kind of have two heroes.

01:40:18 ◼   ► So we've mentioned Chris, and then we also have Mitch,

01:40:22 ◼   ► who would seem at least maybe in the first half

01:40:26 ◼   ► of the movie to be your hero,

01:40:28 ◼   ► but it kind of goes backwards and forwards a bit,

01:40:30 ◼   ► which I like that.

01:40:31 ◼   ► There's like, there's two heroes to this movie.

01:40:34 ◼   ► And I think that's pretty cool.

01:40:35 ◼   ► Like you don't really, I can't think of many movies

01:40:37 ◼   ► where you see that so much.

01:40:39 ◼   ► And they're both very different,

01:40:40 ◼   ► but you root for them both.

01:40:41 ◼   ► And they don't, there's never a moment where they fight,

01:40:45 ◼   ► which is, would be such an easy thing to do.

01:40:47 ◼   ► And it would usually be the middle part

01:40:49 ◼   ► of this kind of movie.

01:40:50 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:40:51 ◼   ► - They get upset at each other and they move away,

01:40:53 ◼   ► but that doesn't happen.

01:40:55 ◼   ► - No, I mean, he gets a little,

01:40:58 ◼   ► He gets mad when he gets taken to the pool party

01:41:01 ◼   ► and gets yelled at, but he's more just frustrated

01:41:05 ◼   ► and leaves, but you're right.

01:41:06 ◼   ► There's that like, in act two, you would have the moment

01:41:09 ◼   ► where they, in a romantic comedy,

01:41:11 ◼   ► that's where they break up and then they realize

01:41:13 ◼   ► they're meant for each other.

01:41:14 ◼   ► In a buddy comedy like this,

01:41:16 ◼   ► you would imagine that they would have that moment,

01:41:18 ◼   ► but instead what happens is each of them

01:41:20 ◼   ► has their moment of despair,

01:41:22 ◼   ► where the other one talks them out of it.

01:41:25 ◼   ► And that's how they do it instead,

01:41:26 ◼   ► They both despair for their own futures and their own lives, and the other one says it's a moral imperative,

01:41:33 ◼   ► you know, we'll get back at them, but you can't let this affect you.

01:41:36 ◼   ► So that's—you're right, it's neat that that's how they end up doing it, is instead they're—they both—

01:41:42 ◼   ► the world causes them trouble, and the other one, the counterpart, says, "We'll get through this."

01:41:48 ◼   ► I love when Mitch is first introduced to, like, the rest of the—I don't know what you call them,

01:41:54 ◼   ► like the laser group, the science group.

01:41:56 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:41:57 ◼   ► - And like they're all--

01:41:58 ◼   ► - Laser group, that's good, yeah.

01:41:59 ◼   ► - They're already like, they're bothering him,

01:42:02 ◼   ► but then it's just--

01:42:03 ◼   ► - Well, it's like a 14 year old kid

01:42:05 ◼   ► has been brought into these graduate students

01:42:06 ◼   ► and told he's in charge of you now,

01:42:08 ◼   ► because he's a genius and you guys are only,

01:42:11 ◼   ► you know, you're last year's geniuses.

01:42:13 ◼   ► - But what I love is they're having problems with the laser

01:42:16 ◼   ► and Mitch just turns a dial and he fixes it.

01:42:20 ◼   ► It's like, he's a genius, he turned the dial.

01:42:22 ◼   ► - He's a genius.

01:42:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:42:24 ◼   ► And it's just, again, it's like another thing to show you,

01:42:27 ◼   ► this guy's really smart, okay, you turn the dial.

01:42:30 ◼   ► - And these other guys are kind of jerks

01:42:33 ◼   ► and don't really know what they're doing.

01:42:35 ◼   ► - They're like nerd jocks, which is really weird,

01:42:37 ◼   ► but that's kind of--

01:42:38 ◼   ► - Well, this is a whole movie where it's all nerds

01:42:42 ◼   ► in Caltech, essentially, Pacific Tech is Caltech.

01:42:45 ◼   ► And one of the funny things about the movie is,

01:42:48 ◼   ► it came out around the same time as a movie

01:42:50 ◼   ► like "Revenge of the Nerds" or "Weird Science."

01:42:53 ◼   ► But in this movie, it's not like stereotypical,

01:42:57 ◼   ► like nerds in a world with nerds and jocks and stuff.

01:43:00 ◼   ► It's like, they're all super smart people.

01:43:02 ◼   ► And then there's the social stratifications

01:43:04 ◼   ► like inside the super smart people group.

01:43:07 ◼   ► So you're, but you're right.

01:43:08 ◼   ► There are like the humorless jocks who try to haze this kid

01:43:13 ◼   ► 'cause finally they've got somebody that they can beat up on

01:43:16 ◼   ► this 14 year old kid, 15 year old kid.

01:43:18 ◼   ► - I really like Jordan's introduction.

01:43:21 ◼   ► She's one of, if not my favorite character of the movie,

01:43:24 ◼   ► because she's so peculiar.

01:43:26 ◼   ► And you guys kind of talk about this.

01:43:29 ◼   ► She's not really sexualized in any way.

01:43:31 ◼   ► You've spoken, I think you were talking about

01:43:33 ◼   ► something defocused.

01:43:34 ◼   ► And where later she becomes a love interest,

01:43:37 ◼   ► it's not, she seems kind of like on level footing,

01:43:40 ◼   ► and where some of the other women in the movie

01:43:42 ◼   ► are a bit dim.

01:43:43 ◼   ► - This is not a strong movie

01:43:46 ◼   ► in terms of women's roles.

01:43:50 ◼   ► but there are signs in it of,

01:43:54 ◼   ► I wanna say of the director,

01:43:55 ◼   ► 'cause this movie was directed by a woman,

01:43:57 ◼   ► that there are some signs in it,

01:43:59 ◼   ► and Jordan is a really smart, strong character.

01:44:01 ◼   ► She's not there to be anybody's girlfriend,

01:44:03 ◼   ► although she is kind of swept into a romance element

01:44:06 ◼   ► with Mitch later.

01:44:08 ◼   ► She's their equal.

01:44:10 ◼   ► It's never questioned that she doesn't belong

01:44:15 ◼   ► at Pacific Tech, and she's actually kind of brilliant

01:44:17 ◼   ► and can't sleep and knits a sweater overnight

01:44:20 ◼   ► and does all this other crazy stuff.