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Upgrade

14: The Marvel of the Buttermilk Biscuit

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 14.

00:00:12   Today's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Igloo, an internet you'll actually like,

00:00:17   MailRout, a secure, hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam,

00:00:21   and PDF-Pen Scan+ from Smile, the app for mobile scanning and OCR.

00:00:26   My name is Myke Hurley and by now you should know that my co-host is the one and only Mr.

00:00:31   Jason Snell.

00:00:32   I'm melting!

00:00:33   It's raining here in California.

00:00:38   It's still raining here in California, Myke.

00:00:41   How is it?

00:00:42   You need the rain.

00:00:43   You need the rain, Myke.

00:00:44   How do you feel about the rain, Jason?

00:00:45   Does it make you happy?

00:00:46   Does it make you sad?

00:00:47   Do you sing in the rain?

00:00:48   You know, I, I, uh, what I really like about the rain is that I don't have to go out in

00:00:51   it because I have no commute anymore.

00:00:54   this morning my wife took my son to school and I'm like, "You could drive." She's like,

00:00:58   "No, we're gonna walk it. It's closed." And then it just started pouring down rain. It was,

00:01:02   oh. But you know, it's good. We need the rain. Otherwise we will all die of thirst in the summer.

00:01:08   So it's good that we're getting it, but there's a lot of it in a very short amount of time here.

00:01:12   So I hope it keeps up, but it's just kind of cold and damp, and this storm is a lot cooler than the

00:01:17   last storm. So the last storm, our heater didn't even come on. It was just, it was a warm tropical

00:01:22   kind of storm that came in so it was you know pretty mild and this one's a little

00:01:28   bit colder so it's more kind of damp and unpleasant but you know I just stay I

00:01:32   just stay in inside that's my solution to the bad weather stay inside don't go

00:01:37   anywhere why would you anyway I have nowhere to go actually that's not true

00:01:42   I'm going to speak at a user group in Sacramento tomorrow so I actually have

00:01:45   to drive hopefully it won't I don't think it's gonna rain so much tomorrow

00:01:48   but I have to drive up there that's a that's more than an hour away so that'll

00:01:52   be that'll get me out I'll be out tomorrow. What's the topic of your

00:01:56   discussion? I'll let you know when I figure that out. And you're going

00:02:00   tomorrow? I'm going tomorrow that's right I just looked at the calendar today and

00:02:04   I was like oh yeah huh okay I'll you know it's it's a user group so they're

00:02:10   they're pretty forgiving and I have many things I can talk about I just I'll put

00:02:15   you know an outline and some slides together it'll be great it'll be fine.

00:02:19   There's a lovely picture of you on the MacNexus.org page.

00:02:23   Well googled, Myke. Well googled.

00:02:26   This is how I roll.

00:02:27   Mm-hmm. Yep, I'll be there tomorrow. If you're in Sacramento and listening to this, between

00:02:33   Monday December 15th and Tuesday December 16th, 2014, you could go and listen to me

00:02:39   talk there. That's like two people who are on this audience. But anyway, yeah, I'll be

00:02:43   there.

00:02:44   So I look forward to hearing about that.

00:02:48   Will there be video, Jason?

00:02:50   Are they gonna video you?

00:02:51   Somebody will video you from the back of an iPhone

00:02:53   and post it to YouTube.

00:02:54   - It's better when I can just be unvarnished

00:02:56   and say anything, anything.

00:02:59   - You should go and tell them why this year,

00:03:00   well 2015 will be the year of Linux.

00:03:02   You should go and tell them that.

00:03:04   - Linux on the desktop.

00:03:05   - Linux on the desktop, it's gonna happen.

00:03:07   It's gonna happen.

00:03:08   - It's inevitable.

00:03:09   - Mr. Jason Snell.

00:03:10   - Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:03:11   - Would you like to address some follow-ups,

00:03:13   some #AskUpgrade follow up.

00:03:16   - I would, I would.

00:03:17   #AskUpgrade is of course this, if this then that setup

00:03:23   that was recommended to us by a lovely listener.

00:03:26   And now when anybody tweets anything

00:03:29   with #AskUpgrade on the Twitter,

00:03:32   it's automatically put in a Google spreadsheet

00:03:35   for us to consult. - I have to say,

00:03:36   there has been some abuse of the hashtag, hasn't there?

00:03:40   - I, yes, we'll get to some of it.

00:03:42   I omitted some of it where people were saying,

00:03:45   what kind of shoes, which shoes should I wear this morning

00:03:48   and things like that.

00:03:49   We're not gonna do that, but we'll skim over those.

00:03:52   But it is kind of nice to have them all just sort of

00:03:54   sitting there in that spreadsheet.

00:03:55   - Oh, it is a fantastic idea actually.

00:03:59   - Yeah, I've heard from several people who are saying

00:04:01   they may do the same thing for their podcast,

00:04:03   just do the same thing, give it a hashtag

00:04:06   and then collect the results in a spreadsheet.

00:04:07   It's very, very clever.

00:04:09   - It's a very, very good idea.

00:04:10   So that's our meta follow-up.

00:04:13   First piece of follow-up is from listener Joe Steele,

00:04:18   not a real name.

00:04:19   And it is, "What is the official name for upgrade fans?"

00:04:24   - I like Upgraders.

00:04:27   - Upgraders.

00:04:28   All right.

00:04:30   - What do you think of that?

00:04:31   - It's not bad.

00:04:32   It's not bad.

00:04:33   It's an actual thing.

00:04:34   It could be an actual thing.

00:04:34   And I like the errs better than the e's.

00:04:36   Maybe that's a Trekkie and Trekker kind of thing,

00:04:38   but like, Upgraders, it just sounds like a person

00:04:41   who upgrades, which is much more reasonable.

00:04:43   Upgradeese is like, I'm a crazy person,

00:04:45   and love, I don't know, it just, it doesn't work for me.

00:04:48   So, I would go with Upgraders.

00:04:51   I suspect that perhaps our listeners may have some opinions.

00:04:56   They can always go to #AskUpgrade on Twitter.

00:05:00   - I have, I mean, I have the word upgradeese earmarked

00:05:03   for something else.

00:05:05   - Oh, good, good.

00:05:06   - So we won't call our listeners the upgradeese.

00:05:08   In the chat room we have suggestions for Upgradians, Upgradists, Updates.

00:05:16   I don't know why Upgraders...

00:05:18   Update is not the name of the show, people.

00:05:21   What?

00:05:22   Oh no.

00:05:23   Okay, anyway, so that's thank you Joe Steele for asking the question.

00:05:29   Until it's unseated as Champion, I think Upgraders is our current official name for the stars.

00:05:37   does our next upgrader have to say for today? Our next upgrader is listener Ben

00:05:43   who asks what should I have for breakfast now see this is what we were

00:05:49   talking about about the abuse of the ask upgrade hashtag you can't ask upgrade

00:05:54   anything just anything also because he sent this like five days ago so he's

00:05:58   still waiting for us to tell him what to have for breakfast listener Ben is in

00:06:02   deep trouble because we we only are answering them here on the show well and

00:06:06   And the answer...

00:06:07   If you're going to do exactly what we say, you know, then maybe, "Jason, what do you

00:06:12   think we should make Ben have for breakfast?"

00:06:14   Well, I mean, clearly the answer is waffles.

00:06:16   So he should have waffles.

00:06:17   Waffles.

00:06:18   And so Ben, I expect to see evidence of your Ask Upgrade influenced breakfast.

00:06:25   Yeah.

00:06:26   I made...

00:06:28   Sunday we had we had some nice people over to our house for for a little brunch and I

00:06:36   made biscuits which are not cookies which are not you know British biscuits they're

00:06:40   they're like southern buttermilk biscuits they're like a little bit like scones except

00:06:45   there's more moisture in them so they don't suck all the moisture out of your entire body

00:06:48   when you bite into one like a scone I like scones but they're dry man they're dry yeah

00:06:55   And I make those, and I actually make those more than waffles these days because I really

00:07:00   like them. I got a good recipe from Alton Brown, the TV chef/cook guy. He's not a chef,

00:07:06   he's a cook. And we had some of those, and that was really good, and some bagels and

00:07:11   some other stuff. It was, I would say, a successful brunch. We talked about podcasting a little

00:07:17   bit because that always comes up. Yeah, we had a good time. But biscuits are confusing,

00:07:22   I didn't mention it because they mean cookies in your world and that's not

00:07:27   what I made I didn't bake cookies. They're biscuits. They're very nice.

00:07:31   People who don't know, people outside the US who have never tried to make a

00:07:34   southern style buttermilk biscuit, they're pretty easy to make and and

00:07:39   quite tasty actually. You put jam on them, put many things on them. I put jam on

00:07:45   them. You can put maple syrup or honey. Anyway that's our that's our breakfast

00:07:48   vertical. Thank you listener Ben. So you do eat them more like scones than

00:07:53   cookies? Oh yes, yeah so they're, I mean it's mostly it's mostly flour and

00:07:58   baking powder and salt and then butter and buttermilk and and the way you the

00:08:07   way you make them is you you keep folding them over you fold fold of dough

00:08:11   over on itself like ten times or something like that and what it does is

00:08:15   that's creating layers. And so then you bake them, use a little, you know, cookie cutter,

00:08:21   basically. Or biscuit cutter, is that a thing? You know, those little molds that you can

00:08:28   make a cookie in a different shape, like Santa Claus cookie, or a circle cookie, or a square

00:08:32   cookie?

00:08:33   Yeah, they're cutters. Cookie cutters.

00:08:34   Cutters. Cookie cutters. So I use those and make the little round biscuits in a little

00:08:39   pan and you put it in the oven. And when they come out, because you fold the dough on top

00:08:44   of each other, you get these layers so that you can kind of pull them apart. They just

00:08:50   kind of fall apart and, you know, so you can just open it up in half and then put some

00:08:54   jam or butter or whatever honey on them and eat them and they're very good. They're tasty.

00:09:00   I recommend them. It's a—I started talking about biscuits on Twitter when I was making

00:09:04   them and people are like—all my international Twitter followers are like, "What are you

00:09:08   talking about?" And I realize people don't know around the world that the marvel of the

00:09:12   buttermilk biscuit, you should try it out. We'll put a link in the show notes, how about

00:09:16   that, to the recipe I use. I think I found it. Alton Brown Healthier Biscuits is the

00:09:21   one that I like. Healthier because they're not truly healthy. I can put it in. I know

00:09:27   how to put things in the show notes. I know, but I got it already. Okay. I'm magic like

00:09:32   I appreciate your powers as a host.

00:09:35   Anyway, so this is our cooking vertical.

00:09:43   There it is.

00:09:44   Well done.

00:09:45   Actually, I'm going to use, I'm going to move up another piece of feedback then because

00:09:50   this seems to be an appropriate time.

00:09:52   Listener Matt, or it may be former listener Matt, said, "Why not just change the theme

00:09:57   of the podcast to be about the life of the independent worker?

00:10:00   It seems it's headed that way anyway."

00:10:01   And I talked to listener Matt about it.

00:10:02   And his point is, he's not an independent worker.

00:10:06   He's a guy in an office.

00:10:08   And he doesn't-- he--

00:10:10   and I totally understand this.

00:10:11   He's tired of listening to people

00:10:12   who are podcasters who don't have actual jobs talking

00:10:15   about what it's like to be them.

00:10:17   My response to former listener Matt

00:10:20   is that it's not going to be about that all the time.

00:10:22   It will be about that occasionally,

00:10:24   because you and I are both sort of new to this life.

00:10:25   And there are interesting wrinkles that come out of it.

00:10:28   But this is primarily going to be about technology.

00:10:31   And I say that after having talked about buttermilk biscuits

00:10:34   for five minutes.

00:10:35   And I believe in a previous episode,

00:10:37   I talked about Brussels sprouts.

00:10:41   That may also happen.

00:10:43   But we're going to-- we span-- we contain multitudes,

00:10:46   Lister Matt.

00:10:46   But I think it's fair to say--

00:10:49   and I hope you agree, Myke-- that this is about--

00:10:52   this show is about sort of like a few things.

00:10:54   It is about technology and how it affects our lives.

00:10:57   And we will talk about technology.

00:10:59   but it will also touch on other things that affect us,

00:11:04   both me and Myke.

00:11:06   Would you say that's about right?

00:11:07   - Yeah, I think what Upgrade isn't is a tech news show,

00:11:11   and I think that's what people wanted it to be maybe,

00:11:14   at least some people,

00:11:16   but it's definitely more, I think, now at least,

00:11:21   now that we've kind of found our groove, I think,

00:11:23   it's definitely more about the way

00:11:26   that technology affects us.

00:11:28   So when we talk about things like blogging and podcasting

00:11:33   and membership schemes and things,

00:11:35   they're like things that are happening in our lives

00:11:36   at the moment and we actually changed the description

00:11:38   of the show to fit it a little bit more.

00:11:40   'Cause I think whenever you start a show like this,

00:11:43   you have to let it adapt a little bit

00:11:45   and the fortunate and maybe unfortunate

00:11:47   in some ways about this show is because it has you on it.

00:11:52   So people are gonna come immediately.

00:11:57   - That is unfortunate.

00:11:58   - It's very unfortunate.

00:11:59   - You saw that one, you've really got something here.

00:12:01   - From episode one, there's gonna be

00:12:03   a relatively large audience,

00:12:04   so people get to see the adaption of the show,

00:12:08   'cause all shows go through this,

00:12:09   and it's helpful if you have a show

00:12:10   of a small audience at first,

00:12:12   so you can kind of find your groove,

00:12:13   and I think Upgrade has found its groove,

00:12:15   and it's more about things that affect us

00:12:19   with technology and trends and things like that,

00:12:20   and then obviously the huge stories we'll discuss,

00:12:23   but we don't go into the minutia every week,

00:12:26   and I think Connected does that a bit more,

00:12:28   Like we actually talk about in the past week,

00:12:30   this is something that's happened

00:12:31   or something like that, you know?

00:12:33   - Well, I think, I mean, look,

00:12:35   if there's something big that happens,

00:12:38   especially about Apple,

00:12:39   but really something big in technology,

00:12:40   we're gonna talk about it.

00:12:41   And what's happened the last few weeks, I think,

00:12:44   is we've done a lot of shows

00:12:46   where you've just left your job.

00:12:48   I left my job not too long ago

00:12:50   and nothing really has happened that's interesting.

00:12:53   So we talk about the things that are sort of on our mind

00:12:56   And on the tech news front, there wasn't a whole lot.

00:12:59   But I do also agree that I don't think

00:13:01   that just because something like a headline happened somewhere,

00:13:05   we would necessarily cover it for a couple of reasons.

00:13:07   One is, if we don't have anything particularly

00:13:09   interesting to say, I kind of don't want to give it time just

00:13:12   to say, oh, yeah, this thing happened.

00:13:14   And what do we think of it?

00:13:15   And every now and then-- it doesn't happen very often,

00:13:18   but every now and then when I'm listening to ATP,

00:13:19   that happens.

00:13:20   Where it's like, anybody have anything on this?

00:13:22   And then you hear John Syracuse go, nope.

00:13:24   And then it's like, OK, well, let's move on.

00:13:26   - And then Casey says good talk and then.

00:13:28   - Yeah, exactly, right.

00:13:30   And you know, also I do listen to a lot of tech podcasts,

00:13:33   so I have that other thought of if it's a minor topic

00:13:36   and it's been covered to death on another show,

00:13:39   I'm not sure I really wanna have us cover it to death

00:13:42   and say the exact same thing.

00:13:44   I mean, I don't, not everybody listens to every podcast,

00:13:47   but that's an aspect of it too.

00:13:48   So what I wanna do is reassure people

00:13:50   that this is not going to turn into quit, right?

00:13:54   That's not what we're doing here.

00:13:55   This is not about people working independently, but there are angles to that that will come

00:14:01   up because of the stuff that Myke and I are doing, and we will talk about them.

00:14:05   And when there is news about technology, we may take a little bit of a different tack

00:14:11   when we talk about it and think about like a different angle to it, because I would love

00:14:16   to be able to do that, to take a piece of news and say, "I wonder what this means for

00:14:21   X, or you know, instead of it just being like, "Hey, this happened. What do we think of the

00:14:26   specs of this new product?" And we'll see how it goes. That part remains to be seen.

00:14:33   But we, you know, that during the holiday period, a lot of tech companies are not really

00:14:37   releasing products. They're selling the products they already announced, and there are sales

00:14:40   and things like that. And it makes it more difficult to have a show that's just purely

00:14:45   focused on tech. And we don't want it to be purely focused anyway, but I will totally

00:14:48   admit that the balance the last few weeks was a little bit a little bit different than

00:14:54   I would say the average show would be but that's what an average is it's you know it's

00:14:59   over time and those two weeks I think are not you know they're they're they're a little

00:15:04   bit off the the normal formula but in the end I think it'll all balance out.

00:15:09   So now that we've spoken in length about the show.

00:15:12   That's the that's the self-analyzing vertical.

00:15:15   Yes.

00:15:16   Should we talk about Smile?

00:15:19   We should smile about Smile.

00:15:21   Because they're a friend.

00:15:22   They are.

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00:16:50   do so by going to Smilesoftware.com/upgrade. Thank you so much to Smile and PDF Pen Scan

00:16:56   Plus for helping support this week's episode of the show.

00:16:59   And a good friend, by the way, once an eagle 56 in the chat room says, "Will you ever crown

00:17:05   a best friend?" And the answer to that is, "If somebody would like to buy all of our

00:17:10   ad spots, yes."

00:17:14   And I will allow that.

00:17:15   Also best enemy available for the enemy discount.

00:17:19   Still nobody has contacted me about an enemy deal.

00:17:22   I like the idea. It would be like a hostile witness in a trial. Like, you know, they're

00:17:27   appearing under protest to tell you about their service or something. Or we would have

00:17:32   to bring in like a guest to read the ad because we would refuse to do it. It could be fun

00:17:37   if somebody wants to be our official enemy. I'm just saying. Anyway, let's see, we got

00:17:43   some more feedback, of course. Nice feedback from Upgrader Josh. Let's try that. Don't

00:17:50   overanalyze. Just do something that lets me give you money. Anything. Both of you. Which

00:17:56   is us talking about subscriptions versus ads and how we do it. And I appreciate that. It's

00:18:00   very nice to listener Josh just to say that and I'm sure we will find some way

00:18:04   for you to give us money at some point right you know but somewhere somehow

00:18:08   we'll find a way yeah you could buy stickers you could buy stickers you

00:18:13   could buy stickers I don't see any money from the stickers though so that's a

00:18:19   good way to give up great to support relay which is fine when we do a t-shirt

00:18:23   however, that would be a different story. All right, nice. Listener K. Lacoste, I

00:18:31   actually don't know what that listener's real name is. Do we... let me see if I can

00:18:35   look that up. This is good podcasting. Kevin, listener Kevin, Upgrader Kevin

00:18:42   says, "Can we make the What's Jason reading on Marvel Unlimited a weekly

00:18:48   vertical. PS reading on a mini question mark exclamation point I guess that's

00:18:53   in what an interrobang. Yeah I read comics on an iPad Mini and it's fine.

00:18:59   They're better on an iPad Air, yeah that's totally true, but on an iPad Mini

00:19:03   it's fine. Sometimes I will pinch and zoom, especially on two-page spreads

00:19:07   because those are really small, but I can do it. And as to what I'm reading on

00:19:12   Marvel Unlimited, I'm not sure if I'm reading anything right now. The most

00:19:14   recent thing that I read and enjoyed on Marvel Unlimited was the Infinity event from Jonathan

00:19:21   Hickman which is the Avengers and New Avengers and it's and I like it it's like a sci-fi

00:19:26   story I mean the nice thing about it is it's one it's one writer it's fairly self-contained

00:19:31   it's like 14 issues or something and it's in only two comics there are some tie-ins

00:19:37   but really you can read the two comics and it's a straightforward story and it's a really

00:19:42   Hickman has done some really strange things with the Avengers in telling these, this weird

00:19:47   sci-fi story about like collapsing parallel universes and stuff like that and it's really

00:19:54   interesting it's actually very much unlike most superhero comics and I like that I actually

00:20:01   grew up anybody who had episode 14 as when I would first mention the Micronauts on upgrade

00:20:07   you win. I grew up on sci-fi comics like The Micronauts that were, you know, not really

00:20:14   about superheroes. They were superhero-y, but it was mostly more like sci-fi concepts,

00:20:19   and Hickman's Avengers run has been like that, where it's got the usual superhero characters

00:20:24   in it, but they're dealing with kind of cosmic issues. A little like Guardians of the Galaxy

00:20:28   is more a sci-fi movie than a superhero movie. It's a little like that. And so I just read

00:20:32   that a couple weeks ago and really liked it. That's that vertical. Myke, have you read

00:20:37   any of that?

00:20:38   No.

00:20:39   Do you read comics?

00:20:41   Yes, but not right now. I downloaded Comixology to my 6+. I just want to see what it's going

00:20:51   to be like. I think, well, I definitely could only use the guided view.

00:20:54   That would be great in guided view though.

00:20:56   I don't really like guided view.

00:20:58   I don't like guided view either. I love that they did it and I think that it's great for

00:21:02   people who are not comic literate. I talk about my wife being kind of comic illiterate.

00:21:07   She's a librarian, she never grew up with comics though, she's a great reader, but reading

00:21:10   comics is a different kind of literacy. You've got to process the visual information really

00:21:14   differently than reading a book. And for somebody like her, I think guided view is great because

00:21:20   you don't have to figure out what panel to read next or where your focus needs to go.

00:21:25   That's great, but if you are literate in how to read a comic book page, it's awful, I think.

00:21:32   It's a it's you do it because the screen's not big enough and so you have to do it and they built it because the iPhone

00:21:37   Original, you know early model iPhones were so small that there's no way you could read a comic on it

00:21:43   And they wanted to address that audience and it's great that they did but I can't I can't read in that format

00:21:48   I mean it makes I understand why they did it

00:21:51   Like it make this you say it makes sense and and I get why because you actually can't really read a comic on a phone

00:21:58   In any other way, I don't think it you just like sort of zooming in and panning around

00:22:02   But I don't like that I don't see the full panel.

00:22:07   I mean it is good because I have a bad habit

00:22:10   of opening a double page spread

00:22:11   and my eye is just flicking down to the bottom right corner

00:22:14   to see what's happening.

00:22:15   It's like I have that like,

00:22:17   you know like when somebody gets a book

00:22:20   and then they open it to the last page

00:22:22   and read the last line.

00:22:23   - Sure.

00:22:24   - I'm one of those sort of people, you know.

00:22:25   Like I see like a big action on the right hand side

00:22:28   and I just quickly look at it

00:22:29   before I've read everything on the left.

00:22:31   But I do prefer to be able to see the art in full.

00:22:35   And I know that at the end,

00:22:36   like when you get to the end of the page,

00:22:37   it will show you the whole page if you want it to,

00:22:40   rather than like, so it zooms into all the different panels,

00:22:43   so it's allowed you to read and it shows you the page.

00:22:45   I just don't think you get the same experience from it.

00:22:47   - Right.

00:22:48   And there's a narrative tension that's brought

00:22:49   and the artists and writers know it,

00:22:52   that you can see everything on one page,

00:22:54   but you can't see what's on the flip page.

00:22:56   And that defines the pacing and all of that.

00:22:59   But I do love digital comics.

00:23:01   I'm very happy that we now live in a world

00:23:03   where we have these beautiful color devices

00:23:07   that let us read comics digitally.

00:23:09   I think it's a great thing for the comics medium as a whole.

00:23:13   So that's What's Jason Reading on Marvel Unlimited this week.

00:23:17   Maybe I'll bring that back, we'll see.

00:23:19   If I read something interesting, I promise to mention it.

00:23:21   How about that?

00:23:22   - Great.

00:23:23   - Listener Mr. Villeneuve,

00:23:27   which I probably have mispronounced.

00:23:29   Yes, you're gonna get another correction now.

00:23:31   That's okay, we'll just keep going on this.

00:23:32   This is the badly pronouncing French things vertical.

00:23:35   We were talking about (laughs)

00:23:40   Chon Blanc, who I essentially called Shane Blanc,

00:23:44   not quite, but I might as well have,

00:23:45   let's just get it all wrong,

00:23:47   Chon Blanc, and you said it was like Mont Blanc, the pen,

00:23:50   to which our French listeners, upgraders said,

00:23:53   I know.

00:23:54   You don't pronounce the T and the C,

00:23:56   it's a Brit trying to correct an American

00:23:59   a French word and pretty funny so at least Mont Blanc. Yeah allow me to defend myself here.

00:24:05   Jean Blanc's name is not pronounced "blanc". That was why I did it and also because the

00:24:11   English pronunciation of Mont Blanc, the pen is Mont Blanc. I know that it's not okay but that's

00:24:18   how people say it. Pen vertical. I kind of went with that for you but yes I apologize to everybody

00:24:24   in a slightly neighboring country for my gross pronunciation of your beautiful mountain.

00:24:32   Mont Blanc. So the pen is pronounced Mont Blanc. No, well it shouldn't be but that's what everybody

00:24:39   says. Oh okay so it's a common pronunciation. It's a common pronunciation. Not the actual pronunciation.

00:24:44   Exactly. All right. Listener Adam has sent us a neat tweet with a link to imitation nerve

00:24:53   brain balls going cheap in what is that Spitalfields market? Spitalfields market, yep. This is

00:25:00   an interesting one. I know this shop. This is a chain shop called Tiger and the next

00:25:07   time that I see one I'm going to pop into one and buy myself a foam brain. Just for

00:25:13   this show. So I can kind of sit here and just look at the brain and feel inspired. That's

00:25:18   That's good.

00:25:19   We're deep in the phone brain vertical now because also listener Brian wrote in to say,

00:25:24   "Thank you for talking about the brain balls on upgrade.

00:25:26   I found this while cleaning my basement."

00:25:28   And he sent me a link to an eBay auction where he is selling his mint in bucks Nick and Nerf

00:25:36   foam brain ball starting bid $150.

00:25:40   Buy it now for $200.

00:25:41   So he wasn't aware that it was valuable until we talked about the brain ball and talked

00:25:49   about how they were going on eBay and now we're going to make listener Brian some money.

00:25:55   So good job listener Brian.

00:25:56   And to those out there who covet a mint inbox, a Nick and Nerf brain ball, it's on eBay from

00:26:04   listener Brian.

00:26:05   I think I want it.

00:26:07   I don't think it's worth it.

00:26:08   I think you should investigate that four pound tiger brain ball.

00:26:11   It's just made from a tiger brain.

00:26:14   Sorry, tigers.

00:26:15   The brain ball is like, you know, it's like a mythical object now.

00:26:18   Yeah, nobody has bid on the, on, on listener Brian's eBay.

00:26:23   Upgrader.

00:26:24   Brain ball right now.

00:26:25   Upgrader.

00:26:26   Upgrader Brian, sure.

00:26:27   Here's something I didn't know, that you can do financing on eBay now.

00:26:32   So it says price.

00:26:33   It's a bad idea.

00:26:34   Yeah, $200 or $34 for six months.

00:26:38   That is a horrible thing to do as a customer, fantastic thing to do as a business.

00:26:44   It's an easy way to help them sell the larger ticket items like a $200 brain ball.

00:26:51   Very interesting.

00:26:52   It's a bad idea.

00:26:53   Mm-hmm, horrible idea.

00:26:55   Well, unless you're eBay.

00:26:58   All right, I think we're done with follow-up, Myke.

00:27:01   I think we made it through.

00:27:03   Oh, bravo.

00:27:04   our next, our actual one, our first topic this week is inspired by Brian Hamilton

00:27:10   and his Ask Upgrade question. "How do you feel about giving software as a gift? I'd

00:27:15   like to give my friends iOS games as stocking stuffers." So we're going to talk

00:27:20   about this and we're going to talk about like kind of digital goods but an

00:27:22   interesting thing to do and you see I see a lot of companies do this now like

00:27:26   PlayStation and Microsoft especially with games is to create gift cards

00:27:33   for digital games. So there's a thing that we were joking about this on

00:27:38   virtual a couple of weeks ago that Nintendo is going to start selling

00:27:42   digital codes in actual 3ds boxes. So there are some games that they have that

00:27:49   are just digital but they will be sold in the actual box, not just as a card, which is

00:27:53   stupid because you kind of put in an empty... basically Nintendo is selling empty

00:27:57   boxes but it's a way to try and I think push people down the digital path

00:28:02   because the games that they're selling are only in digital form. But the reason I mention this is I

00:28:06   think that this is a good way to give digital gifts to people, is to give them a physical

00:28:11   object which allows them to redeem the gift. But of course you can't do that with apps,

00:28:15   so then the only thing you can do it for is a gift card, but if you want to give somebody a specific

00:28:19   app for a specific reason, like all of your relatives want to give them one password,

00:28:23   maybe Agile Bits should make one password gift cards, but I'm sure that's not as simple as

00:28:30   you'd think.

00:28:31   So can't you gift an app?

00:28:32   I think you can.

00:28:33   You can, but it's not the idea of the gifting, it's the fact that there's nothing physical,

00:28:38   and it's the physical thing I think that people want.

00:28:41   But yeah, you can gift apps, you can do that on iOS.

00:28:44   I still don't think you can gift iBooks, which is a really weird thing.

00:28:49   And only a couple years ago they changed it so you can gift Kindle books.

00:28:53   Although there are always challenges too where you want to give it at Christmas under the

00:29:00   the tree and they want to send them an email immediately saying redeem your

00:29:05   code and get your app. Oh you can gift an iBook now, real-time follow-up. Oh that's

00:29:10   good. So and this was my issue with Kindle books too is that is that you

00:29:15   couldn't I was sending Kindle book things on Christmas morning because I

00:29:21   couldn't queue it up I could buy it like a week in advance and they would get an

00:29:26   email a week in advance saying oh you got a Kindle book as a gift which is not

00:29:29   helpful. So I think it's really, I think it's really smart. I just did this, so I was putting

00:29:33   together my little gift packages that I send to all of the incomparable panelists, thanking

00:29:41   them for being on the show over the year. And it's just a little envelope with a couple

00:29:44   of things in it. And I wanted to put an Amazon gift card in, and then I realized that for

00:29:51   my Canadian panelist, I can't do that because it doesn't work on Amazon.ca. And Amazon is

00:29:57   very smart about this. Amazon lets you set a gift card for, or a gift certificate for

00:30:02   any value as a PDF that they mail to me and then I print and it actually is one of those

00:30:09   like four, it's got like folded over and then folded over again and now it looks like a

00:30:14   card even though it just came out of my printer.

00:30:16   I've done this before.

00:30:18   And that's really smart. And so I think there's something to this because it's so, I love

00:30:23   the idea in a way of saying, you know what, you should, not like Crossy Road because it's

00:30:28   free, but like Monument Valley. Like, if I want to give Monument Valley to somebody,

00:30:32   I know they haven't played it, but they've got an iPhone and I think they'll really enjoy

00:30:35   it, I should be able to give them something like one of those cards you get at Starbucks

00:30:41   or something, something that's got a code on it that is a redemption code for that game,

00:30:46   that whoever redeems it will, that'll be on their Apple ID, and I should be able to print

00:30:50   that out on a little card-like thing, like what Amazon did, and put that in an envelope

00:30:57   or put it in a bag with a giant amount. My daughter did this, she gave a friend a gift

00:31:01   card and it was in a huge bag with all of this tissue paper and at the bottom there

00:31:05   was a little gift card. It's kind of funny. You should be able to do that. The thing is

00:31:10   those software and ebooks and things can make really good gifts but they're completely intangible.

00:31:15   And even though it is kind of stupid to give somebody an empty box, at least the thought

00:31:21   counts and there's that moment of realization that you got them something and that you cared

00:31:26   about it.

00:31:27   And just saying, "An app will appear on your phone," like a U2 album, right?

00:31:34   Here it is.

00:31:35   Oh, it's an app.

00:31:37   That's no good and you can't do that anyway.

00:31:38   They've got to log in and sign in and accept it and all of that.

00:31:41   It's just not great.

00:31:42   just not a great gift-giving experience and it's too bad because it eliminates this whole

00:31:45   class of presents that especially tech nerdy people might want to give because they're

00:31:52   the ones who know all the cool apps and they want to tell their friends or their family.

00:31:56   It's a challenge. It's a real challenge.

00:31:58   The interesting, not interesting, but the annoying thing, it's completely different

00:32:02   to interesting, is like so say you want to gift somebody an app and you want to do it

00:32:06   as a Christmas present. You have to do it on Christmas Day, right, because they're going

00:32:10   to get the email. And it looks like you forgot. And and and uh,

00:32:17   CalSethGray in the chat room points out, and this is true, I actually did know this, now

00:32:20   you can queue your Amazon stuff. But when they first rolled out Amazon ebook gifting

00:32:26   as a concept, it was instantaneous. So it's getting better. But even then, yeah, it's

00:32:32   just like, oh I got an email that I got a present. Yay. It's not that exciting. I don't

00:32:40   this is this is it's it's a problem and then there's the hardware which is also

00:32:46   a problem because so much tech hardware is really expensive so unless you're

00:32:49   buying for somebody who you have a very large budget for it's your significant

00:32:55   other or a parent or a child or I don't know a boss that you really really

00:33:01   really want to impress that's also a problem with so many technology items

00:33:08   are you know computers and things which are I know there are those television

00:33:11   ads I don't know if you see them in in the UK where where there is like a

00:33:16   luxury car with a giant ribbon on it which just kills me yeah totally you're

00:33:20   gonna buy a car for a Christmas present that's totally gonna happen surprise we

00:33:23   got a new car my understanding is that only happens when somebody turns 16

00:33:27   that's what I learned from American TV yeah interesting yeah that could that

00:33:31   could be well they don't the car ads don't show the wife murdering the

00:33:35   husband for buying a car without telling her.

00:33:39   That happens after the commercial's over.

00:33:41   What the hell did you do?

00:33:43   But it's a similar thing where it's like,

00:33:46   those are big ticket items.

00:33:47   So you end up in this weird, if you're a techy person

00:33:50   or you're giving gifts to people in your life

00:33:52   who maybe rely, I think a lot of our readers,

00:33:55   readers, listeners, upgraders, rely,

00:33:58   they rely on our upgraders to be their kind of tech gurus,

00:34:03   their tech experts.

00:34:04   But what do you buy them?

00:34:08   An iPod case or iPhone case, iPad case?

00:34:13   That's what you're left with is very thin collection

00:34:17   of things that are hardware that aren't just ephemeral

00:34:20   and transient, mysterious download codes,

00:34:24   but aren't like a computer.

00:34:25   And it's a very thin slice of things

00:34:27   that are like 20 bucks or 50 bucks.

00:34:29   - Yep.

00:34:31   You know, accessories can be key for this kind of stuff,

00:34:34   but then it's still difficult to buy.

00:34:36   'Cause things like,

00:34:37   somebody was asking me about buying a present for a friend,

00:34:43   and they were saying, "Oh, I might get them,

00:34:45   what do you think about getting them an iPhone case?"

00:34:48   It's like, yeah, but that's really difficult

00:34:50   because people really care about these things

00:34:54   and they dig in and they wanna get the,

00:34:56   people choose something that matches personality

00:35:01   or fashion or tastes that are difficult things to buy.

00:35:04   But you can look at them all the time.

00:35:06   But there is another piece of real-time follow-up

00:35:09   from Upgrader Kyle who's on it today.

00:35:12   - You can queue iTunes stuff now too.

00:35:14   - You can.

00:35:15   - Which he didn't used to be able to do.

00:35:16   - Exactly. - Smart.

00:35:17   - He has reminded me though of another frustration

00:35:20   that I have with digital gifts.

00:35:22   'Cause it says right here on the screenshot

00:35:23   that he sent us.

00:35:25   Gift redeemable in the US store only.

00:35:27   That's really difficult for me

00:35:29   because I've tried to buy things for people before

00:35:31   and I can't do it.

00:35:32   So in the UK, I cannot gift you an app.

00:35:35   - This bugged me too, because I,

00:35:37   and again, maybe Lester Kyle will set me right,

00:35:40   but I went to amazon.com and tried to see

00:35:43   if I could get an Amazon Canada gift card.

00:35:45   And I couldn't.

00:35:47   I had to go to amazon.ca,

00:35:49   log in with my amazon.com account,

00:35:51   which works at amazon.ca, buy it there.

00:35:54   And that just seems sort of silly to me

00:35:56   that I have to do that.

00:35:58   If I'm giving a gift to somebody in the UK,

00:36:01   I should be able to gift them a UK version.

00:36:04   I should be able to pay the US price

00:36:06   and have it just attached to their iTunes account.

00:36:08   Why is it limited to the US store only?

00:36:10   It's stupid, stupid.

00:36:12   Maybe they're worried about fraud,

00:36:15   about people gifting things from a fake account

00:36:17   to a real account in order to bypass.

00:36:20   But you know, this regional restriction stuff

00:36:22   is really not, it's very 20th century

00:36:24   and we need to get over it.

00:36:25   So to see Apple furthering it in that way,

00:36:27   It's just, that's dumb.

00:36:29   - It's frustrating.

00:36:30   So we're talking about apps,

00:36:32   and we're gonna talk a little bit more about apps today.

00:36:35   So some actual technology topics coming up.

00:36:38   - Come back, Matt, come back, former listener Matt.

00:36:41   - Right after this break,

00:36:43   brought to you by our friends MailRoute.

00:36:46   Jason, please tell me all about MailRoute.

00:36:48   - Well, MailRoute, I've told you about before,

00:36:51   it is a service that filters out spam and viruses

00:36:55   and bounced emails and things like that,

00:36:57   so that by the time your email gets to you,

00:37:00   most or all of the junk has been taken out.

00:37:03   I've been using it for a couple of years now.

00:37:06   It works great.

00:37:07   I very rarely, I got a false positive the other day,

00:37:12   and it was the first one I had gotten in a long time.

00:37:15   And the way that works is once a day,

00:37:17   I get an email from MailRoute saying,

00:37:18   "Here are the messages we filtered."

00:37:20   And I look at it, I glance at it,

00:37:21   and there was one that was good.

00:37:23   And I can click on a link right in that email that says,

00:37:27   the one I used is W+R, which is whitelist,

00:37:31   whitelist plus, what does the R stand for?

00:37:33   You know, read or deliver, or maybe the D, W+D.

00:37:36   Anyway, one link that I click, and boom,

00:37:39   that person is whitelisted so that I will never filter out

00:37:41   for them again, and the mail is delivered.

00:37:44   And I'm in my mail client when I do that,

00:37:46   and immediately that message pops in to my inbox.

00:37:49   So, super easy when there is a false reading,

00:37:52   But I'm telling you, it doesn't happen very often.

00:37:55   It's really, really a solid service

00:37:58   at making the right decisions.

00:37:59   In fact, and this is not a paid endorsement,

00:38:02   but I noticed on Twitter this weekend

00:38:04   that Marco Arment was asking about spam filtering.

00:38:09   And I mentioned-- somebody actually said, well,

00:38:12   Jason said good things about him,

00:38:13   but maybe he was lying because they paid him.

00:38:16   And I said, no, I've actually been using it,

00:38:18   and it works pretty well.

00:38:20   And Marco reported back yesterday on Twitter,

00:38:23   he said, "I put mail route in front of my fast mail account

00:38:25   "a few days ago, spam has dropped to nearly nothing

00:38:27   "with almost no false positives."

00:38:30   And that's my experience too.

00:38:34   It's really cleaned out my mailbox.

00:38:37   So if you're a regular person, you can set it up

00:38:40   and it's super easy.

00:38:42   There's no hardware or software to install

00:38:44   because this all happens up in the cloud,

00:38:45   it's on their servers and then they pass the mail,

00:38:48   They filter it and then pass it on to your server.

00:38:50   So by the time it gets to you,

00:38:52   all the junk has been taken out, which is great.

00:38:54   Especially if you run your own server,

00:38:55   because then that junk never gets transferred

00:38:57   over your network, it never gets to you.

00:39:00   You never have to store it.

00:39:01   It's just not ever there, which is great.

00:39:03   And they have lots of great tools

00:39:05   for email administrators and IT pros.

00:39:08   They've got an API,

00:39:09   and they've got many different things they support.

00:39:11   LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, Outbound Relay,

00:39:14   and Myke's favorite, mail bagging.

00:39:15   - Mail bagging! - Mail bagging!

00:39:17   everything you want from people handling your mail.

00:39:19   So if you wanna remove spam from your life, like I did,

00:39:22   go to mailroute.net/upgrade.

00:39:25   You'll get a free trial,

00:39:26   and you'll get 10% off the lifetime of your account.

00:39:29   Not for a month or a year,

00:39:31   but for the lifetime of your account, 10% off mail route.

00:39:33   So if you're getting plagued by spam,

00:39:35   and you wanna find a solution that works on the server,

00:39:38   before the server, so you never have to see it,

00:39:40   you never have to filter it out on your desktop,

00:39:44   I highly recommend mail route.

00:39:45   and thank you to MailRoute for being our friend, a friend of Upgrade.

00:39:49   A friend indeed. Just before we get onto our next topic, can I actually mention a piece

00:39:53   of tech news that broke today? Oh yes.

00:39:56   Because it's quite important to me and I think it's interesting considering the difference

00:40:00   between the UK and the US on this type of stuff. So British Telecom, who have primarily

00:40:07   been a landline and internet provider for the last few years, moving into TV, they actually

00:40:13   started their own mobile network O2 many many years ago and then it's kind of

00:40:18   they span it off and it got bought by Telefonica and became independent. So BT

00:40:24   for many many years has not had a mobile presence. Now today, BT have confirmed

00:40:31   that they're in talks to acquire EE which is one of the new very large

00:40:35   networks in the UK. What two letters will they choose as their new name?

00:40:42   BEAT. E-B-E-T-B-E-T. Phone, home, phone, see? Oh, it's perfect. They should be E-T.

00:40:51   So E-E, which is abbreviated from everything everywhere, which is a company that came into

00:40:57   existence when T-Mobile and Orange merged here a few years ago and created E-E. So it's actually

00:41:06   now is actually an offshoot of Deutsche Telekom, the owners of T-Mobile in the US as well I

00:41:12   believe. Unless they've been bought, because I know there was talk about that.

00:41:17   No, they're still trying to unload them.

00:41:19   So the interesting thing is that there's a lot of things that are now going to happen

00:41:22   because like EE had Spectrum for different operators, so they gave out to 3 and other

00:41:30   network here, and Vodafone had an agreement with some other companies. So there's lots

00:41:35   of like weird things are gonna happen but the reason I bring this up is

00:41:38   because it's interesting because now it looks like there's enough movement and

00:41:43   shifting in the mobile markets here that we are getting less competition.

00:41:50   That's why I bring this up because I find it very interesting because if you look

00:41:53   if you can kind of read the tea leaves and see that this is gonna break up a

00:41:57   bunch of agreements which may mean that maybe there's more shifting that's going

00:42:02   to happen. I just find it interesting because as companies are merging, because

00:42:08   you know EE were merged from two companies and now they're going to BT and

00:42:12   that could break up some other agreements which might mean that some

00:42:15   other companies have to maybe work together more closely. It's moving us I

00:42:20   think towards the US model. Even though we will probably never, as long as

00:42:25   there's a couple of providers, we'll be better because we don't have areas that

00:42:30   won't ever be serviced by one network like I know that you guys have you know

00:42:35   so there are parts of America where it's like you just can't get like there's not

00:42:38   that many though I mean there is usually some competition in every market in the

00:42:43   US. It is just I see this stuff and it concerns me a little bit as these

00:42:51   companies are ballooning. Oh yeah. You know like BT now offers television and

00:42:56   and they actually have quite a comparable television package

00:43:00   compared to Sky TV and Virgin TV here.

00:43:04   Like BT are buying up a lot of the sports games

00:43:07   to kind of block Sky out.

00:43:09   So they're buying up a lot of football

00:43:11   to get people to join BT TV.

00:43:14   It's just interesting 'cause they're definitely learning

00:43:16   from Comcast and like AT&T.

00:43:20   - Well that's not good.

00:43:21   That can't be good.

00:43:22   - No, it's not good.

00:43:23   I mean, the good thing that we always have

00:43:25   the European Union for this stuff. They are very, at least seemingly, pro-consumer.

00:43:32   You know, like always trying to slap people on the wrists. Whether

00:43:36   rightly or wrongly, you know, like how they try and have jurisdiction over

00:43:40   Google, Microsoft, which works to some instances, it is at least we always have

00:43:45   them to try and protect us. This deal may not go through.

00:43:51   Regulators may say no you cannot do it, but actually there's something

00:43:54   interesting to bring up because I think it's a sort of change in the tide.

00:43:58   It's not, you know, competition. I'm less concerned about wireless because although

00:44:03   those are huge companies and will behave badly, at least they're battling each other. Having

00:44:09   competition even if it's, I mean, it's better when there's somebody like T-Mobile in the

00:44:13   US that is, essentially has nothing to lose and so their entire, their deals aren't always

00:44:19   great but they try very hard to be different, the whole un-carrier branding that they use.

00:44:24   The idea there is that they will offer things that the other carriers just don't want to

00:44:28   offer, like unlimited data plan.

00:44:31   And that's interesting.

00:44:32   It helps when you've got a competitor like that that's hungry and willing to do that

00:44:36   in order to get customers.

00:44:39   The big problem in the U.S. is the internet, wired internet, broadband internet market,

00:44:47   which until wireless internet can provide a really serious competitor.

00:44:51   I know you use your wireless Internet for the show.

00:44:56   Until that happens, you know, my choices of fast Internet at my house are Comcast.

00:45:01   That's it.

00:45:02   That's it.

00:45:03   I had DSL before, which is AT&T lines, and I was able to use a reseller for that, but

00:45:08   there are no—Comcast doesn't have to resell their lines to other providers.

00:45:16   It's theirs to control.

00:45:17   And as a result, there's really no competition in my area.

00:45:20   no fiber here and so it's Comcast or slow internet those are my choices well

00:45:26   I choose Comcast because I have no choice I have to choose it to do what I

00:45:33   do so that's the worst but you know the few the less competition there is the

00:45:37   worst it is for everybody so my condolences yeah welcome to come well

00:45:41   welcome to cable town it does concern me it really does concern me that we're

00:45:46   gonna end up moving towards that but we'll see. Anyway so I mentioned apps so

00:45:51   you recently posted as part of your extended gift guide coverage on

00:45:55   sixcolors.com your favorite things for iOS apps yes and you put some some

00:46:01   choices in there I must say you're quite behind on inquisitive but that's a

00:46:06   another issue for another day. I am so well I because I'm not commuting anymore

00:46:12   I am picking and choosing inquisitive episodes and then putting them manually in my playlist.

00:46:18   So I've been meaning to listen to Guy for a while now and I just haven't had the chance.

00:46:22   That's okay. I will let you off on this one instance.

00:46:26   Also I wanted to make sure that it was in there so I reordered my playlist so that there

00:46:30   would be interesting things in there, in that screenshot.

00:46:33   Thank you. Thank you for saving my ego. Although if I wouldn't have seen anything I would have

00:46:37   just presumed you'd listened to all my shows so you know it works. It works one way or

00:46:40   another.

00:46:41   really, there are not enough dishes for me to wash

00:46:44   to listen to all the podcasts I wanna listen to.

00:46:46   It is a challenge in my life.

00:46:47   - It is so weird that I listen to more shows now

00:46:50   than I did before and I don't know how that's happening.

00:46:52   - I don't know how that's possible.

00:46:54   - I don't know what I'm doing.

00:46:55   But basically, something that you picked out in this post

00:47:00   is the fact that you are currently using

00:47:04   replacement apps to Apple's first party apps

00:47:08   quite frequently. - Yeah.

00:47:09   I don't know how it happened.

00:47:10   And I wanted to give you kind of an idea of what my sort of situation is like as well.

00:47:17   So you can kind of see how I'm doing with that stuff.

00:47:20   Oh yeah.

00:47:21   Nice.

00:47:22   So like you, I use mailbox for mail.

00:47:27   There are just some things that initially I wasn't too sure about with mailbox.

00:47:31   I don't advise using mailbox for calendars.

00:47:33   It's really bad at calendars.

00:47:34   What did I say?

00:47:35   You said you use mailbox for mail, which is exactly as intended.

00:47:39   should use mailbox for mail and not any other reason. Try not to use it to

00:47:43   take like pictures and stuff. No it's the worst replacement for the camera app you

00:47:47   could imagine. Every time you want to take a picture you have to make a new

00:47:51   message and then say insert photo and then say make a new photo and it's just

00:47:55   it's it's unintuitive yeah. So I really I really like mailbox like some of the

00:48:00   stuff that I was initially not sure about I've actually come to love like

00:48:04   you know how you can say say to mailbox tell me about this message in three days

00:48:08   time or something like that. Yes, yes. And one of the reasons I've actually come to love it is

00:48:12   because I now use Mailbox on the Mac too. Yes. Because if you use an app outside the Mailbox

00:48:18   ecosystem, things start to get a bit weird. Right, because the apps, the Mailbox apps,

00:48:25   will know that that message needs to boomerang back into your inbox, and they will do that if

00:48:30   they're running, but the, you know, if you're not using an app that does that, they won't know.

00:48:35   And you can see those messages, those special mailboxes,

00:48:39   they're visible as like IMAP mailboxes,

00:48:42   but really you need to buy in for it to work

00:48:44   because you need the apps to all know

00:48:47   that if you said, I wanna see this message tomorrow,

00:48:49   that it's now tomorrow and here's that message again.

00:48:52   - But quite simply, my favorite feature of mailbox

00:48:54   is the manual reordering that you can do of your messages.

00:48:59   - Huh, I never use that feature.

00:49:02   - Oh, I love it, I love it.

00:49:04   So instead of something that's like four messages down

00:49:06   that I know I need to do today,

00:49:07   I just drag it up to the top and it gets done.

00:49:11   I kind of treat my emails sometimes

00:49:14   like a little bit of a to-do list.

00:49:15   I know that that makes people like,

00:49:17   it makes their toenails curl.

00:49:19   - No, that's, I totally do that.

00:49:21   - But I think that's what Mailbox is actually built to do.

00:49:24   You know, it actually also has to do functionality

00:49:27   built right in like lists.

00:49:29   But there's just certain things that it does

00:49:31   that I really like.

00:49:32   I have a real hate-hate relationship with Apple's Mail,

00:49:36   just in general, especially on the desktop.

00:49:38   It's like, just makes me wanna cry every time I use it.

00:49:41   And I think that Mailbox is a really interesting app

00:49:46   and it's a lot of good stuff.

00:49:48   I think I maybe go a step further than you, Jason,

00:49:50   in that I use Chrome for my web browsing.

00:49:53   - You do go a step further than me.

00:49:55   I still use Safari for that.

00:49:56   - And it's 'cause I use Chrome on the desktop

00:49:58   for many reasons.

00:49:59   - And I use Safari on the desktop.

00:50:01   So if I was using Chrome on the desktop,

00:50:02   would my wife uses Chrome on the desktop and so she uses Chrome on her phone too.

00:50:06   I think that you know it makes sense to have all those things tied together

00:50:09   because they kind of share information. But I am also a big Fantastical user as

00:50:15   well like like you. I think that might be all I can necessarily think of I mean

00:50:21   obviously I use obviously but I do use Overcast and not the official podcast

00:50:24   app. I use Beats Music not music although that kind of is first party.

00:50:29   - Yeah, well, I just, I remember when the first app replacements came out, replacing

00:50:36   Apple stock apps, I thought, "Oh, well, you know, this is esoteric and weird and for super

00:50:40   nerdy people who have super nerdy needs and it's great that they're making these things,

00:50:43   but come on, you know, Apple's..."

00:50:45   And there was the question about whether Apple would even allow those things to continue

00:50:48   because they duplicate existing functionality and they got over that and it hasn't been

00:50:52   a big deal.

00:50:53   But I just realized when I was making my list this year that, you know, three of the items

00:50:57   on my list of apps I use a lot that are not, you know, that are third-party apps are replacements

00:51:03   for stock Apple apps, you know, Overcast for podcasts, Fantastic Al for Calendar, you know,

00:51:09   and Mailbox for Mail. So I don't know how that happened, but I don't—and I don't know

00:51:15   if that's a sign of really good, mature third-party apps that are really well thought out or whether

00:51:23   it's a bad sign that Apple's apps are making me want to abandon them for

00:51:28   third-party apps. I'm not sure whether I'm an outlier there and those are very...

00:51:33   I think it's becoming more and more prevalent that people are using these

00:51:38   and you know what a really interesting thing to look at which I hadn't thought

00:51:41   of we could we could try and see what the what people are doing is home screen

00:51:45   dot is they have a most popular top apps don't they? You know I posted a

00:51:52   homescreen.is tweet and I like deleted it within 20 minutes because I was

00:51:56   everybody on my Twitter stream was criticizing my choices. I saw that

00:52:00   actually. I just deleted it I said forget it. Yeah it's and it was not it was a

00:52:05   messy home screen it's actually much better now than it was I ever since I

00:52:09   migrated to the iPhone 6 I it kind of was a disaster and I was like I need to

00:52:13   I need to take care of this and I just hadn't done it but but still that was

00:52:17   one of those really nice Twitter moments where I'm like hey here's my home screen

00:52:20   and everybody's then like, oh, well, let me criticize all of your bad choices.

00:52:23   Thank you.

00:52:24   So I just deleted the tweet.

00:52:26   Forget it.

00:52:27   So they don't show the stock Apple apps on this screen, but it does give a good indication.

00:52:32   So for example, 12% of home screen is people use mailbox.

00:52:38   11.47% use inbox, the Google app.

00:52:43   17% have Fantastical.

00:52:46   That's a big number.

00:52:47   I mean, obviously this is skewed.

00:52:49   - These are nerds.

00:52:50   - These are nerds.

00:52:52   But it gives a good indication

00:52:53   'cause you've got 14% use Gmail.

00:52:55   Now if you assume that most people

00:52:57   probably don't have Gmail inbox and mailbox

00:52:59   on their home screen,

00:53:01   you may be looking at about half

00:53:03   use not the Apple Mail app potentially.

00:53:07   And so it's just looking at this data is quite interesting.

00:53:12   17% of people have Chrome,

00:53:14   which is maybe higher than I would have expected to.

00:53:17   So you can kind of get from this

00:53:18   that there is some, there's quite a lot of movement

00:53:21   in people wanting to use third-party apps.

00:53:25   I mean, I've just remembered,

00:53:26   you said about when the first third-party apps,

00:53:31   the first-party replacements came out.

00:53:33   Obviously, there was a time where Apple would reject apps

00:53:36   because it was, "This is a mail app

00:53:39   "and you have all the mail you need,

00:53:41   "what's wrong with you?"

00:53:41   - Duplicates existing functionality.

00:53:43   - Which was crazy.

00:53:45   I think it was a podcast app was the first one

00:53:47   that got that rejection, or at least the first one

00:53:50   that I remember.

00:53:51   - Right, 'cause you could sideload podcasts already

00:53:53   using iTunes, so why would you ever need a podcast app?

00:53:56   - Exactly.

00:53:56   - I think it's interesting that Twitter,

00:53:58   the Twitter app, Federico will be happy to hear this,

00:54:00   the Twitter app is on 35% of home screens on homescreen.is,

00:54:05   and Tweetbot is only on 29%.

00:54:08   - And it's the only other Twitter client there, isn't it?

00:54:11   - Apparently so.

00:54:12   - Twitterrific isn't there.

00:54:12   - It's not there.

00:54:13   - Your darling, Twitterrific, your darling, something.

00:54:14   - Yes, I love it, I love it.

00:54:16   I like it on the iPhone.

00:54:17   I gave up on it on the Mac and I love it on the iPad.

00:54:21   I think it's great on the iPad.

00:54:22   - So obviously, at WWDC 2014,

00:54:26   a bunch of things happened that we didn't expect

00:54:29   would happen, right?

00:54:30   Like keyboards, for example.

00:54:33   Will we ever see the ability

00:54:39   to add your own third party replacement

00:54:44   instead of the Apple app?

00:54:46   So when I click a button to email someone,

00:54:49   can it open mailbox instead of mail?

00:54:52   - I think it might happen eventually.

00:54:56   - It's like a low hanging fruit thing, right?

00:54:59   It's like you can imagine it's all a whiteboard

00:55:02   and they're waiting until they need to fill an amount

00:55:04   of check, like, you know, we have X amount of features,

00:55:07   we kind of need a couple more.

00:55:09   Why don't we just put this one in too for OS X?

00:55:11   - I think the question is,

00:55:12   when does the user experience harmed more by the fact

00:55:15   that people have these apps that do the same thing

00:55:17   as the Apple apps.

00:55:19   And when they tap on something,

00:55:20   they expect it to go to the apps they're using

00:55:23   and it doesn't, it goes to the Apple apps.

00:55:25   When does that experience become more of a problem

00:55:29   than the problems that are generated

00:55:31   by having lots of dialogue boxes that pop up

00:55:34   that say, "I'm not your default.

00:55:36   "Would you like to make me your default?

00:55:37   "Don't ask, ask again later," et cetera, et cetera,

00:55:40   like they do on the desktop,

00:55:41   or another confusing potentially preference

00:55:46   in the settings app,

00:55:47   like the notification center preferences.

00:55:49   And I would argue that,

00:55:52   I mean, Apple knows about what apps people are using.

00:55:54   I would argue that we are at the point now

00:55:57   where it's probably an improvement,

00:56:00   a net improvement to the experience

00:56:03   to let people set the defaults,

00:56:05   as long as the choice to set the defaults is well-designed.

00:56:10   but that's a question is would it be well designed

00:56:12   or would it be really annoying?

00:56:13   If they, and that may be exactly what Apple's thinking

00:56:16   is we could do this now,

00:56:19   sort of like the old copy and paste debate, right?

00:56:21   We could do this now, but it would be crappy.

00:56:23   It would literally be,

00:56:25   you appear to be launching this web browser,

00:56:27   but Safari, Chrome, but Safari is set as your default.

00:56:29   Would you like me to change that?

00:56:31   And you don't want that.

00:56:32   That's actually kind of a lousy experience,

00:56:34   especially if you get it all the time.

00:56:36   So it may be that Apple's like not philosophically opposed

00:56:40   to this idea, but wants to do it in a way where most users

00:56:43   are not going to get bugged by it.

00:56:46   'Cause it bugs me when I try to share something

00:56:49   or click on a link, like a calendar link,

00:56:51   and it takes me to calendar instead of Fintastical,

00:56:53   or a mail link that takes me to mail instead of mailbox.

00:56:56   That bugs me.

00:56:57   It makes me avoid certain features in the operating system

00:57:01   because they're not gonna do

00:57:02   what I actually want them to do.

00:57:04   - So this is something that, another thing that

00:57:08   - Upgrader Kyle has pointed out who is quite literally

00:57:11   on fire today, I think.

00:57:12   - We should just call him.

00:57:13   Let's call him, let's get him on the show.

00:57:16   - Is that you can actually click a button,

00:57:17   which I didn't see. - Well, actually.

00:57:19   - So it allows you to view all of the apps this week.

00:57:23   I mean, 'cause what we were looking at before

00:57:24   was apps this week, not apps overall on homescreen.is.

00:57:27   With Apple's apps included.

00:57:29   And then it kind of becomes a different story.

00:57:33   Like 63% of people have mail.

00:57:36   - Well, sure.

00:57:37   Where is that button?

00:57:40   Oh, view with Apple's apps.

00:57:41   Oh, look at that.

00:57:42   63% of mail.

00:57:45   77 have Safari, 86 have phone.

00:57:49   So take that people who don't like the phone app.

00:57:54   It's still there.

00:57:55   It's interesting.

00:57:57   39% have Google Maps.

00:58:00   36% have Apple Maps.

00:58:03   Wow.

00:58:04   - I don't know why people are using Apple Maps.

00:58:05   and like 38% of people have notes.

00:58:08   What is going on here?

00:58:09   Come on guys.

00:58:10   - Myke, Myke.

00:58:12   - Yeah.

00:58:13   - Is notes on my home screen?

00:58:16   No.

00:58:17   Notes is on my, I think my second screen.

00:58:20   - Do you use the notes app?

00:58:22   - I do.

00:58:23   - What do you use it for?

00:58:25   - The number one thing I use it for

00:58:27   is when I am watching a movie or a TV show

00:58:30   for the incomparable and I need to take notes

00:58:32   about what I'm seeing so I can refer to it later

00:58:35   when I'm doing the podcast.

00:58:38   That's what I use the Notes app for.

00:58:39   'Cause it has no features, it syncs to my Mac,

00:58:45   so I can call it up here.

00:58:47   That's what I do.

00:58:48   That's all I use it for.

00:58:49   I think almost entirely.

00:58:51   If I launch it on my Mac today, let's see what's on there.

00:58:54   I have a thing that I needed to read to my son

00:58:57   that I had in Gmail and I couldn't find in Mailbox.

00:59:01   That's the one thing that really bugs me about Mailbox

00:59:03   that its search isn't very good. So I had that in here and then it's an

00:59:08   incomparable note, an incomparable note, an incomparable note, incomparable,

00:59:12   incomparable, incomparable, yeah that's it's all it's all notes from me sitting

00:59:17   and watching a movie and and flipping open my iPad and typing a couple of

00:59:20   things about something that I'm watching. I can see why you deleted the the tweet

00:59:28   because now I just want to discuss with you Notes apps. Yeah, yeah. I had Notes app

00:59:36   on the home screen. Yeah, I'm sure that upset quite a lot of people like it's... I had it on the home screen.

00:59:40   Upsetting me a little bit, but... It's now on my second screen. I'm trying to think though, like, what

00:59:46   app can can do that as well as that app, and maybe SimpleNote? Maybe? But isn't it

00:59:52   overkill for me to install a third-party app just to do the occasional Notes

00:59:56   while I'm watching an incomparable thing, when I've got that app installed on my phone

01:00:01   and my Mac already, and that's all I'm doing, all I'm using it for. It's like, I use it

01:00:06   so seldomly that even if there is something better, I get no benefit out of it being better,

01:00:11   because I don't use it for anything else. It's that literally that I use Vesper more

01:00:16   for notes that I actually want to file away and look at later. I don't use notes for that.

01:00:21   Notes is the while I'm watching a Doctor Who episode and I want to write down things that

01:00:24   that I want to talk about on the podcast.

01:00:26   That's what I use it for.

01:00:28   - Okay.

01:00:29   Yeah.

01:00:30   Do you think that when and if the Vespa Mac app comes

01:00:34   that you might change your mind?

01:00:36   - I think it will be more,

01:00:39   I think I would probably use it more.

01:00:40   - Yeah.

01:00:41   - If it was, if I had access to it on my Mac, then I do.

01:00:45   I just, I literally do use it as the place,

01:00:47   like, you know, like it was designed for.

01:00:50   I use it as the place where I squirrel away things,

01:00:52   where I'm just, I'm somewhere and I'm like,

01:00:53   I'll write that down and remember to look for it later.

01:00:56   I just really cannot stand that paper texture.

01:00:59   Oh, well yeah, it's terrible.

01:01:01   And I know that's not necessarily a reason not to use the app,

01:01:05   but it does, it makes me feel unwell.

01:01:09   I don't really know why it's there, I don't get it.

01:01:12   Like, why? Why now? Are you still doing it?

01:01:17   Like, reminders, I can't even go close to that application

01:01:23   about it make, you know, oh, so bad.

01:01:26   Why do you click the things and then the cards scroll up?

01:01:30   Do you use the reminders app at all?

01:01:32   - I do.

01:01:33   - Do you use it frequently, Jason?

01:01:34   - I do.

01:01:37   It's where I put all of my story ideas for six colors.

01:01:41   - Okay.

01:01:42   - It's funny, I think what I'm finding here

01:01:43   is that what I'm using different apps for

01:01:45   is different tasks.

01:01:46   So rather than having like one app

01:01:48   that has a bunch of categories

01:01:50   and I put different notes in different categories,

01:01:52   I just put all my story ideas and reminders

01:01:54   and some to-dos that are sort of like work to-dos

01:01:57   of like, you need to do this today.

01:01:58   And a few ideas are in there.

01:02:00   And then I use Notes app,

01:02:02   but just for the incomparable notes.

01:02:03   And I use Vesper for something different than that.

01:02:05   And I use Grocery IQ for shopping lists.

01:02:10   Sort of single task apps instead of having a...

01:02:14   I'm really bad at the fiddly filing system thing

01:02:16   of like, I'm gonna tag this with this

01:02:17   and put it in this category and all that.

01:02:19   I just, I never do that.

01:02:20   So instead, my categorization system, in some ways,

01:02:23   seems to be what app I put it in.

01:02:25   I updated my home screen on homescreen.is

01:02:30   to be more acceptable now.

01:02:31   Notes isn't on it anymore.

01:02:35   - I'm very intrigued about the way you use your phone now.

01:02:40   (laughing)

01:02:43   - What does it mean, Myke?

01:02:44   I, yeah, I'm intrigued by it too,

01:02:46   'cause I have no idea what I'm doing.

01:02:48   I just, I don't know.

01:02:50   I don't know, I don't use my phone as much

01:02:53   as I think a lot of people do,

01:02:55   because I use it more when I'm out of the house,

01:02:58   which I'm not as much anymore.

01:03:00   When I'm in the house, and like in the house house,

01:03:05   and not in my office, I'm usually,

01:03:07   my iOS device is that iPad mini.

01:03:09   That's what I will look at for email and Twitter

01:03:11   and things like that.

01:03:12   The phone is when I'm out and about,

01:03:15   more than anything else.

01:03:16   So the use cases are pretty different.

01:03:19   I want to park that there for just a moment.

01:03:22   - Put it in the parking lot.

01:03:23   - Yeah, I want to come back to that.

01:03:24   And maybe we can discuss your home screen a little bit too.

01:03:29   'Cause I'm looking at it now.

01:03:31   And I'll update mine, Jason, so you can see it.

01:03:34   So you can see it too, if you'd like.

01:03:37   But before we do that, I'll just take a moment to thank

01:03:40   our third friend for this week.

01:03:42   And that is Igloo.

01:03:44   They are the intranet you'll actually like.

01:03:46   Igloo's intranet works on any mobile device,

01:03:48   including the new iPhone, the iPhone 6 Plus, the iPhone 6, or the Nexus 6 too.

01:03:52   Maybe this is a device that you'll be getting this holiday season

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01:05:35   - And a good friend.

01:05:38   - They are a good friend indeed.

01:05:39   So I've just taken a new screenshot

01:05:42   and I'm gonna go to the home screen app if I can find it.

01:05:45   So I'm gonna try and activate a spotlight search.

01:05:48   Oh, the spotlight search worked, that's nice.

01:05:50   And do I want to, oh, I do need to sign in

01:05:56   so I can update it right here.

01:05:58   It's uploading, Jason, as we speak.

01:06:01   So, what I wanna talk to you a little bit about now

01:06:05   is the way that you use your iOS device.

01:06:08   Because I'm very interested

01:06:09   because of the way you described it,

01:06:11   because I don't think it's normal.

01:06:12   I think that--

01:06:13   (laughing)

01:06:14   No, no, no, I didn't mean it like that.

01:06:16   That sounded really bad.

01:06:17   I mean, I don't think it's like how people

01:06:20   tend to use these devices now.

01:06:22   You know, in the way that you say it's my on the go device,

01:06:25   which I don't think is necessarily the way

01:06:27   that a lot of people use their phones.

01:06:29   Like me, I use it for so much all day, every day.

01:06:33   Even when my Mac is in front of me,

01:06:34   I'm using my iPhone for stuff,

01:06:36   because I prefer to use my iPhone for stuff.

01:06:39   - I used to do that.

01:06:40   I used to do that until the iPad came out.

01:06:43   And the iPad changed that behavior.

01:06:45   I used to prefer using my iPhone over my Mac

01:06:49   for so many things when the iPhone first come out

01:06:52   before the iPad came out.

01:06:53   In that period, I realized I was using my,

01:06:55   I used to have my laptop like around the coffee table

01:06:58   and things like that.

01:06:58   And even when it was sitting there kind of closed,

01:07:00   I would just use my phone.

01:07:01   It was just easier.

01:07:02   The apps were better than using a webpage,

01:07:04   but the iPad has supplanted it.

01:07:06   When I'm in my house, you know,

01:07:08   unless I have the iPhone in my pocket

01:07:11   and the iPad is like, I don't even know where it is

01:07:13   and all I wanna do is look and see what's going on

01:07:15   on Twitter, it happens, but it's very rare.

01:07:17   Usually I will go to the iPad instead.

01:07:20   When I'm in the house.

01:07:22   - I've just put my home screen in the chat room.

01:07:24   So I can-- - I'm looking at it.

01:07:26   - Take the onslaught from the upgraders as we speak.

01:07:31   - Yes.

01:07:32   - Okay, so see, the thing is I have never been an iPad guy.

01:07:35   I mean, I've always had iPads,

01:07:37   but they never seem to stick for me,

01:07:42   which is strange.

01:07:44   I kind of, I have like a--

01:07:46   - I don't think it's normal, Myke.

01:07:47   - I don't think it's normal.

01:07:49   It isn't normal, because a lot of people love their iPads

01:07:52   and they use them when they're at home,

01:07:53   but I've just never been able to get them to stick.

01:07:56   I didn't mean to call you abnormal, Jason.

01:07:58   - No, that's okay.

01:07:59   No, you may be right.

01:08:00   You may well be right, Myke.

01:08:02   You wouldn't be the first, you won't be the last.

01:08:06   So you are not a heavy iPhone user then, fair to say?

01:08:11   - No, I mean, if I'm going anywhere,

01:08:16   I obviously have my iPhone with me.

01:08:18   I'm always listening to,

01:08:19   that is where I listen to all my podcasts.

01:08:22   So if I'm doing the dishes or something,

01:08:23   I will put in my headphones on my iPhone

01:08:26   and do the dishes listening to podcasts.

01:08:28   If I'm driving somewhere, it's connected via Bluetooth

01:08:31   and I'm listening to podcasts.

01:08:33   And if I'm out and about,

01:08:36   out at walking down the street

01:08:39   and need to see what's going on on Twitter

01:08:41   or something like that,

01:08:41   absolutely all of those things happen.

01:08:44   It's just that if I'm in the house

01:08:48   and the iPad is around,

01:08:50   I will use the iPad, not the phone.

01:08:53   That's really the distinction.

01:08:57   And I'm not out as much as I used to be.

01:09:00   - Right. - That's also true.

01:09:02   - Okay, so it's interesting because my iPhone usage,

01:09:06   it's not the same, you know, 'cause I am in front of my Mac

01:09:09   more than I, obviously Windows never in front of my Mac

01:09:12   in my corporate job, but I do find myself using my iPhone

01:09:16   an awful lot still to do things like if I want to read

01:09:20   RSS feeds, I use my iPhone.

01:09:23   Quite a lot of the time if I want to read Twitter,

01:09:25   I use my iPhone because I prefer the experience.

01:09:28   I mean, I do have a really big iPhone, which--

01:09:31   That is, I think, part of the reason why I don't use my iPad Mini so much anymore.

01:09:35   I've spoken about that before.

01:09:38   But I prefer to read things on that device in my hand rather than on the Mac.

01:09:44   So you know how people say reading something digitally has a different feel to it than

01:09:48   when you read a book?

01:09:50   I feel that way about my phone.

01:09:53   So reading something on the desktop feels impersonal.

01:09:58   And then when I read on my phone, it's in my hand, and I'm manipulating it with my thumb,

01:10:03   and it feels more real, I think.

01:10:07   I agree with that to a certain point.

01:10:10   In fact, I have it happen often now.

01:10:12   This is one of the ways that I use Handoff, is if I'm sitting here at my desk and I've

01:10:16   got my iPad or my iPhone with me, and it's time for me to take a break, using one of

01:10:21   the Mac apps I wrote about, BreakTime, saying you should get up because you've been sitting

01:10:24   down for half an hour.

01:10:26   I will often use a handoff at that moment

01:10:29   to take whatever webpage is up in front of me

01:10:32   and I'll just flip it open to the iOS device

01:10:35   and read it there and I prefer that.

01:10:37   I think I agree with you there.

01:10:38   Or I send it to Instapaper and I read it on my Kindle,

01:10:42   one of those things.

01:10:43   But I do, I see what you're saying there.

01:10:46   For me, the text input thing bothers me.

01:10:50   I'm just not, I'm a very, very good typist

01:10:55   and I'm not a very good iPhone keyboard person.

01:10:58   So I don't mind reading Twitter on the iPhone,

01:11:02   although the Mac Twitter app has that great notification tab

01:11:06   where it shows who favorited and retweeted and stuff

01:11:12   that the iPhone version doesn't have.

01:11:15   Or Federico loves the iOS version of Twitter.

01:11:20   I don't love it so much.

01:11:21   So I do some of that on the Mac

01:11:24   because I think that's actually a preferable interface for it.

01:11:27   I don't know.

01:11:29   Everybody's use cases are different.

01:11:30   You have the big phone, so you really do have lots of reasons

01:11:34   why you would gravitate toward that,

01:11:37   and that makes sense to me.

01:11:38   -I think it really has changed even more my device usage,

01:11:44   the 6 Plus, than I maybe expected.

01:11:48   Like, I don't have any desire to upgrade my iPad for a while,

01:11:52   I know I spoke about the iPad Air 2 which seems really nice and because there's this part of me

01:11:56   That's like you could work from an iOS device like more often if you really wanted to

01:12:00   But then I do get I get that feeling where I if I'm gonna sit down and do some like, you know

01:12:05   Big work stuff. I kind of want my Mac for that

01:12:09   I feel like I'm yeah still chained in that way that I agree Federico isn't

01:12:14   But I do feel like you can if I'm gonna start doing some spreadsheet work, I'm gonna start doing some

01:12:20   writing stuff. I want to have a keyboard in front of me so at that point, you know, I didn't even have an iPad with a

01:12:26   keyboard

01:12:27   or I grabbed the Mac and I'm always going to grab the Mac because

01:12:30   there are things, some of the stuff that I use, the stuff that I use extensively like Google Docs,

01:12:36   it works better on the Mac than it does on iOS devices.

01:12:38   So for me that still makes a lot more sense to do that.

01:12:43   But I think that at the moment the 6 Plus and the Mac are, you know, my MacBook Pro

01:12:49   like a perfect pairing. But I think it's interesting to hear the way that

01:12:56   you are with that. Do you think it's maybe because, I mean I know you said like

01:12:58   commuting and stuff stopped, but do you think that you're, you know, you're a Mac

01:13:02   guy at heart? You know, you're still a desktop guy?

01:13:06   No, I don't know. I mean the fact that I'm a very, very, very fast typist means the

01:13:13   physical keyboard thing is always gonna have a lot of weight for me because I

01:13:18   I can be more productive on a physical keyboard.

01:13:22   Now I could attach a physical keyboard to an iPad

01:13:24   or even an iPhone if I really wanted to.

01:13:26   And sometimes I might do that.

01:13:28   I find lots of value, but like I said,

01:13:31   I'm finding the value in the iPad

01:13:33   a little more than the iPhone.

01:13:34   And I don't know why that is.

01:13:36   I mean, obviously, if I had to choose one,

01:13:38   I'd probably choose the iPhone only

01:13:39   because I'm not gonna carry an iPad

01:13:41   around everywhere I go in public, right?

01:13:43   It's not gonna happen.

01:13:44   But it's a great home device.

01:13:46   and it fits in that slot for me.

01:13:50   I don't, I do more now on my Mac than I did before,

01:13:53   but that's because it's this awesome iMac

01:13:57   and it's right in my house and you know,

01:13:59   it's great to do that.

01:14:00   But I think a lot of it comes back to the keyboard thing

01:14:03   that I'm not very good at typing on my iPhone,

01:14:06   even with the custom keyboards.

01:14:08   And I'm very good at typing on this Bluetooth keyboard

01:14:12   I have here.

01:14:13   So for me, that means a lot in terms of my productivity,

01:14:18   and that is my productivity.

01:14:20   Also, I'm really pretty fast at typing on an iPad

01:14:22   with my thumbs on the iPad Mini.

01:14:24   I'm pretty fast at that.

01:14:26   And it's just when I get to the iPhone

01:14:27   that I'm really not very good.

01:14:29   It's a hard--

01:14:32   I make too many mistakes.

01:14:33   I spend a lot of time correcting mistakes

01:14:36   because the autocorrect doesn't do a good enough job.

01:14:39   And yeah, it's a little frustrating.

01:14:41   But I love my iPhone.

01:14:43   Don't get me wrong.

01:14:43   I just, there are things that I would prefer to do elsewhere.

01:14:46   But I don't think it's a Mac thing.

01:14:47   I think it's a keyboard thing.

01:14:50   I would love, I've said that before,

01:14:52   I would love to be able to travel

01:14:53   with just my iPad and not my Mac.

01:14:56   But there are some realities about podcast stuff,

01:15:00   especially where the way iOS does audio,

01:15:04   you don't have the ability.

01:15:05   I can't do that right now, unfortunately.

01:15:08   And so I travel with a Mac

01:15:11   and I use it when I need Mac-y things,

01:15:13   but I don't use it for stuff that is better on the iPad.

01:15:17   - What do you think of workflow?

01:15:21   So this new app that's come out, which is very,

01:15:25   which is an iOS app,

01:15:26   and it's focused on trying to create workflows,

01:15:29   and it's a bit like Automator for iOS.

01:15:32   Now, how do you feel about and use,

01:15:34   and if you do use an app like this,

01:15:35   'cause it's very much an iOS power user app.

01:15:39   - Yeah, I'm excited.

01:15:39   - I'm excited about it.

01:15:42   Again, if you took the podcast stuff out of the equation,

01:15:47   I would be really happy using my Bluetooth keyboard

01:15:52   and my origami case and an iPad

01:15:55   and traveling with that and writing with that,

01:15:57   writing with that in cafes

01:15:59   and writing with that at my in-laws house

01:16:01   and at my mom's house and whatever.

01:16:02   I would do that and I would use editorial,

01:16:06   which has got some great workflow stuff in it

01:16:08   and I would use workflows.

01:16:10   And I'm very excited about the idea

01:16:13   of doing more power user things on iOS.

01:16:16   For me, what it comes back to is,

01:16:19   in the end, I always have a Mac available

01:16:20   because I have to because of this podcasty thing we're doing

01:16:24   which there are workarounds, but they're really terrible.

01:16:27   Like literally for me to do a podcast next week

01:16:30   when I'm in Arizona, without bringing a Mac with me,

01:16:33   I would need to talk to you on one iOS device while recording my microphone on a different

01:16:43   iOS device because you can't do both.

01:16:47   And that's not cool.

01:16:49   And then if I was editing the show myself instead of you editing it, I could do that

01:16:53   too.

01:16:54   It would take a lot longer, but I could totally do that.

01:16:56   There's a great app for iOS that is a multitrack editor that really does work.

01:17:03   and on the iPad Air 2, it super really works,

01:17:06   but it would take a little more time,

01:17:07   but it could be doable.

01:17:08   It's just not all there yet.

01:17:10   So that's what holds me back.

01:17:11   But on the writing and productivity side,

01:17:14   I mean, Federico has shown us that

01:17:16   you can do amazing things with this.

01:17:17   And I'm really excited about that

01:17:19   because an app like Workflow

01:17:20   tries to make it a little simpler.

01:17:22   You don't have to necessarily be quite as daring

01:17:27   and iOS daredevil like Federico Medici is

01:17:31   in order to do some of this stuff.

01:17:32   So I think it's great.

01:17:34   I'm a big believer in iOS as a platform to get work done.

01:17:38   But again, I'm more on the iPad side

01:17:40   and I realize people are kind of down on the iPad right now.

01:17:43   But I think it's only through things like workflow

01:17:45   that the iPad becomes so useful

01:17:46   that it legitimately can be a replacement for a laptop.

01:17:51   - Because there are some things that you can do

01:17:53   with this app, which are incredible,

01:17:55   and they don't feel as hacky as trying to do things

01:18:00   URL schemes that Federico has really championed for the last couple of years, using apps like

01:18:08   Drafts and Launch Engine Pro, which are fantastic apps, but they are a little bit more kind

01:18:12   of if you want to do some interesting stuff, you've got to get in there and start typing

01:18:15   some stuff, which is not very accessible. And then you've got something like Workflow,

01:18:20   where it's just like you can just drag and drop the things you want to do, and it kind

01:18:23   of all makes sense.

01:18:24   Sure. Editorial has some of that too, and I really like that about editorial. The drag

01:18:28   and drop sort of widgets like Automator on the Mac that it's not going to give you every

01:18:32   solution but it lets you build, you know, it's going to be, it's going to be, you know,

01:18:37   TextExpander and Keyboard Maestro have bigger audiences, more addressable audiences than

01:18:45   AppleScript because it's just, it's too nerdy and those are simple and this is the same

01:18:52   thing with workflow or the workflows that are in editorial where, you know, people who

01:18:56   are not comfortable with code can still get things done. And I'm not somebody who's comfortable

01:19:01   with Ruby code, right? I'm not going to do that. Or JavaScript code even.

01:19:05   I feel exactly the same. I've been playing a lot with workflow, and it's the first one

01:19:12   of these types of apps that I've really felt in control of, because I don't understand

01:19:18   and haven't taken the time to really try and learn a lot of the craziness that you can

01:19:23   do with chaining these apps together using URL schemes and things

01:19:28   like that. I've toyed with it and played around with it in the past, but this

01:19:31   is an app that allows me to really dig in and try out some interesting

01:19:37   things. So I've put links to Workflow and editorial in the

01:19:42   in the show notes. Most of the apps that I think we've spoken about you can kind of

01:19:46   get to them via our home screens. Too many apps to get to put in the

01:19:52   show notes today I think. One that I will put in actually is Break Time that you

01:19:57   mentioned. Because I've been thinking about this, not thinking I need to do

01:20:01   this. I need to get up and walk around more because I have some back problems

01:20:06   and I think that this is exactly the type of thing. It's so easy to lose track

01:20:12   of time. It's so easy to lose track of time. And with Break Time I've discovered

01:20:15   that. That I turn it on and say you know let me know in 30 minutes and then it

01:20:18   comes on I'm like no no no no no I just turned that on there's something wrong.

01:20:21   you know 30 minutes passed and you just stared at a computer while sitting in a

01:20:25   chair unmoving other than your fingers for that entire time that's bad for the

01:20:30   rest of your body and yeah so it's it's a it's it's great I mean there are lots

01:20:35   of apps that do this I'm sure that there are others that are also really good

01:20:38   this is the one that looked kind of looked the best and had the best set of

01:20:42   features to me it's pretty cheap and I like it the Mac App Store.

01:20:46   downloading it right now. So yeah, so that turned out a different way than I

01:20:52   expected but I thought it was quite an interesting discussion. There's still so

01:20:55   much that we wanted to talk about today but we can we can save those for next week.

01:20:58   Exactly, we've got two more shows this year so we have time to do some more

01:21:02   holiday technology topics if we want to as well as a best of the year whether we

01:21:08   do that next week or the week after. I'll be traveling but I'll bring

01:21:14   that computer, I'll bring my MacBook Air and my microphone with me and we'll still have

01:21:18   our conversations. You're not going anywhere, your family's all right there, right?

01:21:22   Yeah, yeah, I'll be. We're recording, like, if you want to check the schedule at the moment,

01:21:26   there are some shows that are moving around. There will be episodes of everything over

01:21:31   the next couple of weeks, but the days are slightly moving. I think pretty much the only

01:21:36   day we won't be recording over the next, like, over these seeing weeks is probably Christmas

01:21:41   day I think. Your commitment to this network has failed. Shame on you not recording on

01:21:49   Christmas Day. I have failed you all and I apologize and check the schedule if you can

01:21:56   forgive me. Check the schedule. And I hope Renegade, Upgrady and Matt enjoyed all of

01:22:03   our tech talk this week. I hope he's back. I hope so too. I hope a friend has told him

01:22:08   a friend to come back maybe somebody from smile or mail route or igloo maybe

01:22:14   maybe that's how it works thank you to all of those people thanks indeed as

01:22:19   well that was a nice little wrap up if you'd like to find us on the internet

01:22:23   the what if you'd like to surf the the information superhighway to locate me

01:22:29   and Jason then I go to a couple of places relay.fm is where you'll find

01:22:33   this show and a bunch of other shows I'm gonna find the show notes for this

01:22:37   week's episodes relay.fm/upgrade/14. You type that in the box at the top of

01:22:44   your Netscape Navigator to get there. Exactly or any any sort of web

01:22:48   communications platform. Oh yeah, Mosaic. Probably. I am @imike on Twitter

01:22:55   @imike and Jason is @jsnell and he writes the fantastic

01:23:00   sixcolors.com, which gets better every day, Jason.

01:23:05   And I think that you stepping away from the corporate life

01:23:10   has benefited us all greatly.

01:23:13   And I don't think that you get told that enough

01:23:16   and you should be told that more.

01:23:17   And I hope that you feel that you made the right decision too

01:23:20   because it feels that way for the rest of us.

01:23:23   - I was on Mac Power Users, it'll be out next week.

01:23:26   And they said the same thing to me.

01:23:29   it was very nice to say, I feel like we get more Jason now

01:23:31   and that's good.

01:23:33   And I really appreciate that.

01:23:36   Again, I hope that I can keep doing it

01:23:38   'cause I love what I'm doing right now.

01:23:41   I hope that I can make the financial part of it work,

01:23:45   but in terms of what I'm doing

01:23:46   and I'm certainly very busy, but I'm loving it.

01:23:48   So I'm glad people are enjoying

01:23:51   that they get more of me now

01:23:53   that isn't spent time in meetings

01:23:54   or talking to human resources

01:23:55   or talking about laying people off,

01:23:57   but instead it's just like writing stories and doing podcasts. So, yay!

01:24:02   And we will be back next time. Thank you very much to all the Upgraders for listening. Don't

01:24:07   forget #askupgrade if you'd like to ask us a question or you can send us follow up via

01:24:15   any means that you would like. Carrier pigeon is preferred. We'll be back next time. Until

01:24:21   then, goodbye. Ahoy, telephone!

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