Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► Apple went and ruined everything didn't they with Thursday event? I know

00:00:04 ◼   ► It was dead. He's gonna get everybody needs to listen to us cuz nobody's gonna get their ATP until Saturday

00:00:09 ◼   ► Yeah, so they just need to listen to us instead and then learn that they never need to listen to ATP again now they

00:00:16 ◼   ► Just put it lower than us in the priority list. That's what we're saying. Listen, this choose your podcast

00:00:21 ◼   ► choose wisely

00:00:23 ◼   ► We don't have the Jonathan Mann theme song yet yet. We don't need one. We have a Chris Breen original

00:00:29 ◼   ► This is true, we got the Breen original. I've had a rash of people who have discovered clockwise

00:00:34 ◼   ► in the last couple weeks since we've been on relay ask me if they can get a version

00:00:38 ◼   ► of the theme song. Because they want to use it as like an alarm clock sound or a ringtone

00:00:43 ◼   ► or something.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Oh, that is a good alarm clock sound.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And the beauty is Chris Breen posted all his theme songs at chrisbreen.com/music so you

00:00:50 ◼   ► can actually, you can download it and use it as a ringtone if you really want to.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Never set-

00:00:55 ◼   ► But that's just kind of funny.

00:00:56 ◼   ► alarm, your alarm to a podcast seems something that you enjoy because every time you listen

00:01:01 ◼   ► to the show you'll hate it immediately.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Myke, I still use one of the classic, we should save this for the show too, shouldn't we?

00:01:10 ◼   ► I use one of the classic sounds as my alarm clock when I'm traveling and I just did this

00:01:14 ◼   ► you know when I woke up at 5am in Montreal and I never change from xylophone because

00:01:20 ◼   ► I despise xylophone. Because now the sound of waking up confused and knowing that you've

00:01:26 ◼   ► got to get up on three hours sleep is... I'm up! I'm up! I'm up! What? What? Oh, xylophone.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Some of the newer ones are just horrible. They're so bad.

00:01:43 ◼   ► Oh, Salve.

00:01:45 ◼   ► But I won't do another one now because it will destroy that one too.

00:01:49 ◼   ► So I guess somebody wants to gently be wakened by the Clockwise theme.

00:01:53 ◼   ► I wish them well. They're gonna hate that music.

00:01:56 ◼   ► [Music]

00:02:04 ◼   ► Hello and welcome back to Upgrade on Relay FM.

00:02:08 ◼   ► This is episode number five.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Today's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Pilot and Dash.

00:02:16 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by your host, Mr. Jason Snell.

00:02:20 ◼   ► Hi Myke, how's it going?

00:02:21 ◼   ► I am very well sir, how are you?

00:02:24 ◼   ► Pretty good, I'm getting over some jet lag because I was in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

00:02:31 ◼   ► this weekend for the Singleton the final, as it turns out, Singleton conference.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Got to see a lot of great people, stay up later than I normally do, get up earlier than

00:02:40 ◼   ► I ever do for flights. And have some well I got up my for my flight back I had to get

00:02:47 ◼   ► up at 5 a.m. Eastern which is 2 a.m. Pacific so last night I was kind of sleep I told my

00:02:54 ◼   ► wife at like 5 30 I said I'm kind of not functioning entirely properly and she said you don't say

00:03:00 ◼   ► but I have a good night's sleep so I feel I feel more awake now. Good you'll break back

00:03:05 ◼   ► How do you deal with jet lag? Do you do okay with it?

00:03:09 ◼   ► I have... Welcome to the Jetlag Podcast by the way, everybody.

00:03:14 ◼   ► I have some strategies. What I did last night, like staying up until... I ended up staying up I think until about 9.30 last night.

00:03:22 ◼   ► Which is not my bedtime by any means, but is closer to it. Like a reasonable West Coast bedtime.

00:03:29 ◼   ► that's one of my strategies is the first day you get there you just gotta force yourself to stay awake until you get to like

00:03:36 ◼   ► as close as you can to normal bedtime

00:03:39 ◼   ► and then

00:03:42 ◼   ► Ideally, you know then you wake up the next morning and you're okay

00:03:45 ◼   ► I don't take any you know take any pills or anything for it

00:03:49 ◼   ► I just try to and I can't really sleep very well on planes. So like when I go to when I go to England

00:03:55 ◼   ► It's the same thing as like it's that's always an overnight flight and what I try to do is I can doze on the plane

00:04:00 ◼   ► Maybe but when I get there, which is inevitably like in the morning or midday

00:04:03 ◼   ► I just try to stay awake the whole day

00:04:05 ◼   ► even though I'm a zombie and then go to bed in the evening and

00:04:08 ◼   ► force myself to keep going back to sleep if I wake up in the night and

00:04:12 ◼   ► That's that's it and it works. Okay, but the weird thing about jet lag again. This is the jet lag podcast. Thanks for joining us

00:04:20 ◼   ► For me the weird thing is that wherever I am in the world when it gets to my wake-up time back home

00:04:25 ◼   ► That's when I get the wave of exhaustion that passes over me

00:04:28 ◼   ► it's like my brain is trying to flip the wake-up switch even though I'm already awake and

00:04:33 ◼   ► That leads to really weird

00:04:35 ◼   ► That's what that's when I feel like I just need to put my head down on the table and it'll be like 2 in the afternoon

00:04:40 ◼   ► or something

00:04:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm totally fine when I come over to the States because typically whenever I come to America

00:04:49 ◼   ► I'm coming for like an exciting reason, you know, like, "W-W-DC" or something.

00:04:53 ◼   ► So the first day, like, I can arrive having not really slept for like 20 hours and can

00:04:58 ◼   ► go like all the way into the evening and then I get myself into a great routine.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And then when I come home, um, I'm fine until typically the third night where I just do

00:05:08 ◼   ► not sleep.

00:05:09 ◼   ► Oh.

00:05:10 ◼   ► The delayed reaction.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I don't know why it is.

00:05:15 ◼   ► I find that flying west is easier than flying east.

00:05:18 ◼   ► I think that's a thing too.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Flying west, I have a much better time adapting

00:05:22 ◼   ► this direction, coming this way,

00:05:23 ◼   ► than going the other way.

00:05:25 ◼   ► And having worked for many years on a company

00:05:28 ◼   ► that had offices on the east and west coast,

00:05:31 ◼   ► we all compared notes about it,

00:05:32 ◼   ► and everybody seemed to agree.

00:05:34 ◼   ► The only difference, the advantage of somebody flying,

00:05:37 ◼   ► especially from the west coast to the east coast

00:05:38 ◼   ► of the United States is, they would all take the red eye,

00:05:42 ◼   ► and they'd be like, "Oh, you should just take the red eye,

00:05:43 ◼   ► I have this whole system."

00:05:44 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, when you don't live east,

00:05:47 ◼   ► you can't take the red eye because then you get there and it's 6 a.m. and you can't you

00:05:52 ◼   ► have nowhere to go but you can't go to the hotel because they won't be ready for you

00:05:56 ◼   ► until like 2 in the afternoon so what do you do now you're a zombie with bags standing

00:06:03 ◼   ► in a an airport somewhere or uh or on a street or in a starbucks or something that it's bad

00:06:11 ◼   ► it that doesn't don't don't do that so but flying west i find is generally pretty good

00:06:16 ◼   ► And yeah, if you pile into that that you're excited to be coming to the US and why wouldn't

00:06:20 ◼   ► you be, then yeah, that's nice.

00:06:24 ◼   ► So going to computer conferences on the East Coast is actually also helpful because those

00:06:28 ◼   ► are shifted.

00:06:30 ◼   ► Those are running on Pacific time, frankly, anyway.

00:06:33 ◼   ► So it's not so bad.

00:06:34 ◼   ► You can wake up late because everybody stays up late at those conferences.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Should we address some follow-up?

00:06:41 ◼   ► Oh, I never thought you'd ask.

00:06:45 ◼   ► What a relief. Yes, we have some follow-up. Let's see, last week we talked about, this

00:06:53 ◼   ► is follow-up to follow-up, last week we talked about Netflix, and two weeks ago we talked

00:06:56 ◼   ► about Netflix, and listener Nick had a helpful email that he sent that basically saying,

00:07:01 ◼   ► "Most deals that Netflix has for licensed content are flat fees." We talked about it

00:07:05 ◼   ► being, I said "we" there to shield myself from this, I talked about the idea that every

00:07:10 ◼   ► time you watched Orange is the New Black, you weren't watching some other movie and

00:07:15 ◼   ► Netflix was saving money and listener Nick says that's not true it's generally

00:07:19 ◼   ► just like it would be for a cable channel that you're paying for a window

00:07:23 ◼   ► in order to stream it and they're not paying per stream and and so it's not

00:07:28 ◼   ► like a Spotify scenario so thank you to listener Nick I still think the

00:07:34 ◼   ► discussion and argument we had around original content holds up though because

00:07:38 ◼   ► is, they may be paying for the rights, but...

00:07:41 ◼   ► It makes the math even harder, right?

00:07:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:44 ◼   ► But, you know, I guess over time Netflix just want to not...

00:07:47 ◼   ► In theory, I guess in ten years time, Netflix would prefer to just not have to pay anybody,

00:07:53 ◼   ► because they have like 30 shows that people love.

00:07:55 ◼   ► Well that's a little extreme, I mean HBO, you know, HBO licenses movies.

00:08:01 ◼   ► So they make their own TV shows and some movies, and then they license movies in the pay cable

00:08:06 ◼   ► window. So they're doing it but it's not like you get HBO, you know, HBO is not seen as

00:08:15 ◼   ► a purveyor of other people's stuff now, it used to be, now it's a purveyor of some movies

00:08:21 ◼   ► and also a whole bunch of originals and Netflix, I agree, I think Netflix wants to go in that

00:08:26 ◼   ► direction where, you know, part of this is Netflix being driven there. There was a time

00:08:31 ◼   ► when more movie studios were amenable to putting their stuff on Netflix, their newer stuff,

00:08:39 ◼   ► and they got worried because Netflix got so successful that I feel like Netflix is smart

00:08:44 ◼   ► to have this strategy of, you know, we don't want to just be the old moldy catalog of old

00:08:50 ◼   ► stuff, so we're going to be the old moldy catalog of old stuff plus a whole bunch of

00:08:54 ◼   ► originals. And that's not a bad product to say, you know, any old TV show you want and

00:08:59 ◼   ► and a whole bunch of movies that are like more than five years old and then all of this

00:09:02 ◼   ► great stuff. I mean that's not that different of a proposition than what HBO offers, which

00:09:07 ◼   ► is you know movies that have been out for a year and a half and are new stuff.

00:09:12 ◼   ► But what did people, I mean because we don't have HBO here or how is HBO right?

00:09:18 ◼   ► Yes sure. In the industry they call it HBO which I didn't even know and I think it's

00:09:22 ◼   ► just ludicrous but they call it that. They call that in fact the I think the shortcode

00:09:29 ◼   ► they use for HBO, Lynx is a pun on that too which nobody else is gonna get but yeah it's

00:09:36 ◼   ► weird.

00:09:37 ◼   ► That's what I think of that.

00:09:40 ◼   ► I know.

00:09:41 ◼   ► We don't get it so I don't really understand what the thinking is but what do people subscribe

00:09:47 ◼   ► to HBO for these days?

00:09:49 ◼   ► Are they subscribing just for like Game of Thrones and stuff or do they subscribe for

00:09:54 ◼   ► the movies too?

00:09:55 ◼   ► I have never ever been a pay cable person and I have HBO now and so I'm a sucker and I do it for

00:10:05 ◼   ► a few reasons. Game of Thrones is what got me in the door and last year we canceled after Game of

00:10:13 ◼   ► Thrones was over and this year we've kept it honestly number one reason we've kept it is

00:10:17 ◼   ► because I really like John Oliver's show and I don't want to say goodbye to it but the other

00:10:23 ◼   ► reason is that between On Demand and HBO Go we have access to the entire HBO

00:10:29 ◼   ► catalog which means that I can watch old HBO stuff like I still haven't seen the

00:10:35 ◼   ► last half of the last season of The Wire and we're watching that on on HBO Go.

00:10:40 ◼   ► I've never seen the last season. Yeah it's not great. I got like an

00:10:46 ◼   ► episode in. Yeah it's not. I got a bit bored. So my buddy Phil Michaels is a

00:10:51 ◼   ► a huge fan of The Wire and also comes from a newspaper background. He was pointing out

00:10:56 ◼   ► that The Wire usually is pretty good about like, there are no good guys and bad guys,

00:11:01 ◼   ► everybody's got issues, the bad guys that we would think of like the drug dealers and

00:11:04 ◼   ► stuff have things that make you identify with them and you understand why they're in this

00:11:08 ◼   ► situation. They're not sugar coating it, but you understand that. And then there are the

00:11:12 ◼   ► good guys, the cops and all that, and you realize that the system is broken and even

00:11:15 ◼   ► if the cops have good intentions, they're flawed people and all that. And then the last

00:11:18 ◼   ► Season of the Wire, it's sort of like his parable for when he worked at the

00:11:22 ◼   ► Baltimore Sun newspaper, and it's literally like some of these editors are

00:11:26 ◼   ► saints and they are doing God's work, and some of these corporate suits at the

00:11:31 ◼   ► newspaper are monsters and they're pure evil, and it's like that moment where you

00:11:35 ◼   ► felt like he was getting his, he was grinding his axe, and all of the nuance

00:11:39 ◼   ► of all the other parts of life that he had observed kind of fall away as he

00:11:44 ◼   ► gets really angry about the newspaper business, and it's very not like David

00:11:48 ◼   ► Simon to do that. So it's, it's, and as somebody in, in, in the media business, um, it's, it's

00:11:54 ◼   ► kind of hard to watch that like total decay of a newspaper. It's, I mean, it's hard to

00:11:59 ◼   ► watch total decay of Baltimore and all the other seasons, but that one hits close to

00:12:03 ◼   ► home in the sense that like these suckers who are working these jobs, I know these people,

00:12:08 ◼   ► I might be these people and that's, uh, yeah. Yeah. But it's, so that's what, that's why

00:12:12 ◼   ► people subscribe to HBO. I think is it's, it's like a sampler of movies. There's like

00:12:16 ◼   ► Movies that you forgot to rent,

00:12:17 ◼   ► you never got around to renting,

00:12:18 ◼   ► that have come back around again.

00:12:19 ◼   ► And you're like, "Oh, I'd like to see that."

00:12:21 ◼   ► And we do that.

00:12:22 ◼   ► We look on our DVR.

00:12:23 ◼   ► We just kind of go through the HBO listings and pick movies.

00:12:26 ◼   ► And then we've got them to watch.

00:12:28 ◼   ► And then the HBO Go has added that dimension

00:12:30 ◼   ► of like really being able to get the entire catalog

00:12:33 ◼   ► of old HBO shows and watch it.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And that's a good catalog.

00:12:37 ◼   ► It's not entire, but it's pretty close.

00:12:40 ◼   ► But it all started with just,

00:12:41 ◼   ► it was "Game of Thrones" for me, yeah.

00:12:43 ◼   ► - So I know people say like that the last season

00:12:45 ◼   ► the Wire is the bad one because you know the rest of it is incredible. If you haven't seen

00:12:51 ◼   ► the Wire by the way just commit to the first three episodes of season one.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Yeah it's like reading a book you can't just watch an episode it literally they stop and

00:13:01 ◼   ► you're like is that the end I guess because it's I don't know any of these characters

00:13:05 ◼   ► I have no idea what's going on in their lives. You got to keep watching because it really

00:13:09 ◼   ► is telling one story it's like a book and they don't really care if to give you a cliffhanger

00:13:13 ◼   ► at the end of an episode, they're just like, "Alright, keep watching." But it's great.

00:13:17 ◼   ► It's similar in that I've never seen Godfather 3, because I came to the movies late and a

00:13:22 ◼   ► friend of mine said, "Okay, watch 1 and 2 and pretend that the third one doesn't exist,"

00:13:27 ◼   ► and I've never seen it.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not that good.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:13:30 ◼   ► It's not, it's not, yeah, I don't recommend people, I would never encourage somebody who

00:13:35 ◼   ► hadn't seen The Godfather to watch the entire trilogy, I would say watch the first two movies

00:13:40 ◼   ► and then you can stop there. The third one is there and if you really find yourself wondering

00:13:44 ◼   ► what happens to Michael at the end of his life and who is going to assassinate the Pope,

00:13:52 ◼   ► whatever, then there's a movie for you and you can stare at Sofia Coppola's bottom lip

00:13:57 ◼   ► and wonder why she was cast because clearly she's not much of an actress. She seems to

00:14:01 ◼   ► be related to the director in some way. Yeah, I don't recommend that. So it's the same thing.

00:14:06 ◼   ► It's like, you know, except with The Wire, you have to go through the first four seasons

00:14:09 ◼   ► and then you're teetering on the brink, it's like, "Should I really watch this last season?"

00:14:15 ◼   ► And I haven't done it either. We're very slowly grinding through it because it's like, "Yeah,

00:14:18 ◼   ► it's not that great."

00:14:20 ◼   ► So he was very excited. My friend was very excited to be able to give me that piece of

00:14:24 ◼   ► advice. He was like, "Oh my God, you don't have to watch the last one!" He felt like

00:14:29 ◼   ► he had suffered for me.

00:14:31 ◼   ► Yes, and saved you. Well, he was introducing you, he was giving the go-ahead for two great

00:14:36 ◼   ► movies, two of the greatest movies.

00:14:38 ◼   ► and then also protecting you from the ill-advised late, there should be a word for that, the

00:14:45 ◼   ► ill-advised late sequel, you know, like years and years after, like what would be another

00:14:53 ◼   ► example of this?

00:14:55 ◼   ► Oh, I just had it and lost it.

00:14:58 ◼   ► There are other things like that where they go 20 years and then they say, "Hey, I've

00:15:01 ◼   ► got my, oh, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull," right?

00:15:06 ◼   ► an ill-advised late sequel. Like 20 years later they say "Oh I know, let's do another

00:15:11 ◼   ► one of those" and everybody's like "Yeah I remember Indiana Jones, let's do that" and

00:15:15 ◼   ► then the movie comes out and you're like "Oh that was a mistake."

00:15:18 ◼   ► I'm really hoping that the next Dumb and Dumber movie is not like that because there's a Dumb

00:15:22 ◼   ► and Dumber 2 happening right now right?

00:15:25 ◼   ► Oh yeah well there was already an off-brand sequel that the studio made without any of

00:15:30 ◼   ► the creative participants but now they're actually making a real one and you know sometimes

00:15:36 ◼   ► Sometimes those come off, although I love The X-Files and I never even watched that

00:15:40 ◼   ► second X-Files movie that came out, which I heard bad things about.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And the first one was not very good either, but ten years later they made another X-Files

00:15:48 ◼   ► movie and even though I like The X-Files, I just never saw it because I was like, "Do

00:15:51 ◼   ► I really want to experience that again?"

00:15:54 ◼   ► I love the idea of getting the old band back together and yet in practice more often than

00:15:59 ◼   ► not those are disastrous.

00:16:02 ◼   ► You've never done The Godfather on the incomparable, have you?

00:16:05 ◼   ► It's on the list, actually, and Syracuse is in, so we just have to do it. It'll happen.

00:16:12 ◼   ► It could just be you and him. It could just be him.

00:16:16 ◼   ► It could just be screen-specific commentary of The Godfather by John Syracuse. No, that'll

00:16:21 ◼   ► be good. I actually have been holding those in reserve. There was a time when they did

00:16:26 ◼   ► that Goodfellas episode of Five by Five at the movies, I kept thinking that they were

00:16:29 ◼   ► going to get to The Godfather, and they haven't, and I would love to do that. I also--Gruber

00:16:35 ◼   ► at Singleton, John Gruber was talking about Alien and I thought, you know, I should try

00:16:39 ◼   ► to do an Alien episode at some point too. So we'll get there. Because those are great

00:16:44 ◼   ► movies. Those are fantastic movies.

00:16:46 ◼   ► I would love to hear those episodes.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah, that's good stuff.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Well, at least the first and second one.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Wow, so this is the Jetlag and Movie podcast now, is it Myke?

00:16:56 ◼   ► That's what I'm going for. I'm pushing you in that direction. This was my real plan all

00:17:01 ◼   ► along.

00:17:01 ◼   ► It's an entire show about watching movies on airplanes.

00:17:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:17:06 ◼   ► - What else do we have in follow up?

00:17:08 ◼   ► - Okay, in follow up.

00:17:09 ◼   ► That was, believe it or not,

00:17:10 ◼   ► follow up item number one.

00:17:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:17:12 ◼   ► But we only, fortunately we only have two.

00:17:15 ◼   ► The next follow up item is,

00:17:18 ◼   ► so a couple episodes ago,

00:17:19 ◼   ► we talked about a certain feature

00:17:21 ◼   ► involving Apple's intelligent assistant technology

00:17:24 ◼   ► where you can speak a key phrase

00:17:26 ◼   ► and if it's plugged in and you have this feature turned on,

00:17:29 ◼   ► it will activate.

00:17:31 ◼   ► And we had fun with that a few weeks ago

00:17:34 ◼   ► and tried to make people's iPhones that were plugged in

00:17:38 ◼   ► and listening to the podcast do crazy stuff.

00:17:41 ◼   ► And people thought it was funny slash annoying,

00:17:44 ◼   ► but I felt we were like serving a good purpose.

00:17:46 ◼   ► That in pointing out one of the key flaws of this thing

00:17:49 ◼   ► is that it can be triggered by anyone,

00:17:52 ◼   ► including saying things that aren't even the key phrase

00:17:55 ◼   ► where you're calling the intelligent assistant.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Anyway, last week we had a sponsor that had an offer code

00:18:00 ◼   ► that was that key phrase.

00:18:02 ◼   ► - That I did that, I made that happen.

00:18:04 ◼   ► And I wasn't aware of that and then you said it

00:18:06 ◼   ► and you can actually hear me kind of groaning

00:18:09 ◼   ► in the background knowing that people

00:18:11 ◼   ► were gonna be upset by it.

00:18:12 ◼   ► And I'm sure that's a few--

00:18:14 ◼   ► - I was very proud of it, so I apologize.

00:18:16 ◼   ► - It was really funny, but also at the same time,

00:18:18 ◼   ► it definitely made some people angry.

00:18:20 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:22 ◼   ► And I think, I mean, I groaned slash laughed

00:18:26 ◼   ► 'cause I was like, I knew what was gonna come out of it,

00:18:29 ◼   ► but it was kind of funny.

00:18:30 ◼   ► And we don't wanna be known as the podcast

00:18:32 ◼   ► that does terrible things to your iPhone.

00:18:34 ◼   ► That would be not a great slogan.

00:18:36 ◼   ► Hey guys, here's a podcast you shouldn't listen to.

00:18:39 ◼   ► That's a bad idea.

00:18:41 ◼   ► So, you know, some people mad.

00:18:42 ◼   ► We heard from listener Brian who said,

00:18:44 ◼   ► guys, the fun ended long ago

00:18:46 ◼   ► and listener Joshua called us a name,

00:18:49 ◼   ► but then he apologized, which was nice.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Thank you listener Joshua.

00:18:52 ◼   ► And what we did on Twitter was ask for euphemisms

00:18:56 ◼   ► for that phrase which cannot be said

00:18:58 ◼   ► without triggering your iPhone to do something crazy.

00:19:02 ◼   ► And if we trigger the iPhone to do something crazy

00:19:04 ◼   ► in this episode, I swear it's not on purpose.

00:19:05 ◼   ► There are phrases you could come up with

00:19:07 ◼   ► that sound close enough that you can trigger it,

00:19:09 ◼   ► but we're trying not to do that.

00:19:11 ◼   ► The problem is we still wanna talk about this feature.

00:19:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, people send us other phrases that they've seen.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Like my girlfriend told me she was watching

00:19:22 ◼   ► Desperate Housewives and it just wouldn't stop

00:19:26 ◼   ► for the whole episode for some reason.

00:19:28 ◼   ► I don't know what they were saying,

00:19:30 ◼   ► on their show it just kept activating the intelligent assistant. Yes indeed I've heard

00:19:36 ◼   ► from several people every now and then somebody I think Glenn Fleischmann every time he accidentally

00:19:40 ◼   ► triggers it he sends me the phrase that he used which is kind of funny. But so we were looking for

00:19:47 ◼   ► and if you've got other if you're a listener and you've got other suggestions feel free to send

00:19:51 ◼   ► them in but we've got a great list here that we can consider. There were a lot of Ahoy! as listener

00:19:57 ◼   ► listener Lloyd suggested Ahoy Telephone. Listener Ted said Ahoy there, Babbage Machine. Listener

00:20:03 ◼   ► Daniel wants us to say Ahoy Susan. Strange.

00:20:06 ◼   ► That's a call to the Bionic podcast.

00:20:10 ◼   ► That's a Bionic, oh yeah. Ahoy there. So a lot of good Ahoys. I like Ahoy Telephone.

00:20:16 ◼   ► It's just so far out there. We had OK Glass, YouTube, Rick Roll from listener David. That's

00:20:22 ◼   ► pretty good. And many listeners just suggested we just say "Okay, Google" and ruin everything.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Which is just as bad, by the way.

00:20:29 ◼   ► Which is ruining everybody who's listening on an Android phone. Sorry about that. You

00:20:36 ◼   ► had it coming, quite frankly. You've been skating by as we've been saying that other

00:20:40 ◼   ► thing. Listener TJ, who is a fan of the West Wing, suggested we take a page out of Josh's

00:20:46 ◼   ► book and just shout "Donna!" I think anyone would understand that.

00:20:49 ◼   ► I don't think anyone would understand that.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Oh, the West Wing, no, you should watch.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Oh, Myke, gotta watch the West Wing.

00:20:55 ◼   ► - I don't know, this is something I struggled with

00:20:57 ◼   ► with House of Cards, is I don't really understand

00:21:00 ◼   ► American politics.

00:21:01 ◼   ► - Oh, the West Wing has nothing to do

00:21:03 ◼   ► with real American politics.

00:21:04 ◼   ► - Okay, great.

00:21:05 ◼   ► - The West Wing is like, they need a word for science fiction

00:21:10 ◼   ► that is not, there's no science involved,

00:21:12 ◼   ► but I guess fantasy is the word I'm looking for here.

00:21:14 ◼   ► It is fantasy.

00:21:16 ◼   ► It is a fantasy of how we wish the young, bright-eyed people

00:21:21 ◼   ► in our government would be, and how idealistic they would be,

00:21:25 ◼   ► and how fundamentally good they would be.

00:21:29 ◼   ► But it's great.

00:21:30 ◼   ► The dialogue-- that's a really fun show.

00:21:33 ◼   ► That's a lot of fun.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Do we have time for another Quick Assign?

00:21:36 ◼   ► Sure.

00:21:37 ◼   ► We have nothing but time.

00:21:38 ◼   ► I may fall asleep in the middle, but go ahead.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Talking about American politics and TV shows.

00:21:43 ◼   ► So when I was watching House of Cards,

00:21:46 ◼   ► because we didn't understand what Kevin Spacey's job was.

00:21:52 ◼   ► So he's the government whip, or he's chief government whip.

00:21:56 ◼   ► Yeah, the majority whip.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Majority whip, that's it.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And we didn't fully understand what that was.

00:22:01 ◼   ► So we were at the end--

00:22:05 ◼   ► we were going into the second season.

00:22:07 ◼   ► That was when it was on TV.

00:22:09 ◼   ► and we Googled for what is Kevin Spacey's job,

00:22:14 ◼   ► like Kevin Spacey's job in the House of Cards,

00:22:17 ◼   ► and we're given a spoiler.

00:22:18 ◼   ► - A spoiler, yes.

00:22:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, really, that sucked.

00:22:21 ◼   ► That really sucked.

00:22:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, he's a member of the House of Representatives,

00:22:24 ◼   ► I think, or is he a senator?

00:22:26 ◼   ► I think he's a member of the House of Representatives,

00:22:28 ◼   ► and then he's just got a senior position in the party.

00:22:31 ◼   ► I think that's how that goes.

00:22:32 ◼   ► And then later he has a different job,

00:22:33 ◼   ► but again, I got spoiled about that too.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Oh, in the OK Google vein, there's also Hey Cortana.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Thanks, now we've ruined the two people

00:22:44 ◼   ► who are listening on a Windows phone.

00:22:45 ◼   ► - Thank you, Kyle.

00:22:46 ◼   ► - Thank you, listener Kyle.

00:22:49 ◼   ► Listener Timer Koala Singh suggests G'day Koala.

00:22:52 ◼   ► To which I would say if we could address

00:22:56 ◼   ► every listener individually by name, that would be great.

00:23:00 ◼   ► But I think that technology is beyond us.

00:23:03 ◼   ► Sorry, Steve.

00:23:05 ◼   ► See now a listener named Steve is like,

00:23:07 ◼   ► oh my god they did it

00:23:10 ◼   ► and everybody else doesn't know

00:23:12 ◼   ► we're talking to you roger

00:23:14 ◼   ► that's right

00:23:16 ◼   ► uh...

00:23:18 ◼   ► uh... a summons to she who shall not be named listener alexanne

00:23:23 ◼   ► uh... hello guv'na we're into the britishisms now

00:23:27 ◼   ► that's a good one cheerio pip pip guv'na

00:23:30 ◼   ► listener floree and listener gabe

00:23:32 ◼   ► listener scott had a good one which is from star trek four where scottie picks up the

00:23:35 ◼   ► mouse of the Mac and says "Hello computer!"

00:23:39 ◼   ► Listener Benjied going Radiohead with "Okay computer" and listener Carlos had a really

00:23:44 ◼   ► good one which is "Hey pretty lady"

00:23:47 ◼   ► So do you have a winner from this list?

00:23:54 ◼   ► I like "Hello computer" and I also like "Ahoy telephone"

00:23:58 ◼   ► I really like "Ahoy telephone" because I think it's the closest while still being far

00:24:05 ◼   ► enough away? Yes. Let's go over Hoy Telephone. Okay, a Hoy Telephone. There it is. It's the

00:24:10 ◼   ► official upgrade synonym, euphemism for "Attention Apple intelligent agent, I would like to speak

00:24:18 ◼   ► with you now." Perfect. Anyway, so we'll try very hard not to say that thing again, but

00:24:26 ◼   ► we can't guarantee it because it might just pop out. We're not going to try to troll your

00:24:32 ◼   ► iPhones purposefully. If it happens, it's an accident.

00:24:36 ◼   ► If another device gets this feature or if the feature is upgraded, we may use its product

00:24:42 ◼   ► name. To put those two words together, we will try our darndest not to do that anymore.

00:24:51 ◼   ► The upgrade podcast apologizes for any inconvenience caused.

00:24:58 ◼   ► With that, let's take a quick break to thank our first sponsor for this week's episode,

00:25:03 ◼   ► and that is our friends at Dash.

00:25:07 ◼   ► Dash is a super cool website that lets you quickly create real-time custom dashboards.

00:25:13 ◼   ► So these dashboards are all created in the web browser, and they allow you to get a visual

00:25:16 ◼   ► overview of important data for maybe your website, your business, or even your life.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Dash allows you to pull in data from a variety of different sources around the web.

00:25:26 ◼   ► They have dozens of pre-built widgets for services like AppFigures, Google Analytics,

00:25:30 ◼   ► GitHub, Twitter, Chartbeat, Pingdom and so many more.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And if you want to start to get geeky on your own, you can display your own custom data

00:25:37 ◼   ► in Dash.

00:25:38 ◼   ► They have an API that allows you to share data from Dropbox or the web and create custom

00:25:43 ◼   ► widgets like graphs and line charts etc.

00:25:46 ◼   ► So Dash is a web app and the great thing is that it allows you to pull in all of this

00:25:52 ◼   ► data from different parts of the web so maybe you want to have your, like, I have set up

00:25:57 ◼   ► a Relay FM dash where I have our information from our Twitter account, so I see the @mentions

00:26:03 ◼   ► coming in to the Twitter account.

00:26:05 ◼   ► I also have our GitHub issues in there so we can keep track of what's going on there,

00:26:10 ◼   ► so for our changes to the site that we're making.

00:26:13 ◼   ► I have Google Analytics information sitting in there too, so I can see all in this really

00:26:19 ◼   ► pretty dashboard interface. How many people are on the site? I can take a look at traffic.

00:26:24 ◼   ► Oh, I also have the iTunes podcast directory top charts in there as well. So I can see if,

00:26:29 ◼   ► I can see when upgrade shoots up the charts every week. I'm able to see that too. It's a really nice

00:26:35 ◼   ► way of just being able to all in the web browser, see a bunch of awesome information. It's a good

00:26:40 ◼   ► sort of homepage. I leave it as a tab so I can go in and just take a look at that sort of stuff

00:26:44 ◼   ► all in one go. The pricing model for Dash is a lot like GitHub if you've ever used it.

00:26:49 ◼   ► So everyone gets unlimited public dashboards so you can set up as many public dashboards as you

00:26:54 ◼   ► like and this data is shared live with the Dash community. But if you upgrade to their

00:26:59 ◼   ► Pro account for $10 per month you also get unlimited private dashboards too. So these

00:27:03 ◼   ► are just for you to see and this may be where you put personal information or private information

00:27:08 ◼   ► like Google Analytics stuff for example. However, Dash is currently running an awesome limited time

00:27:12 ◼   ► promotion for listeners of this show. If you sign up for a free account today at thedash.com

00:27:18 ◼   ► that's t-h-e-d-a-s-h dot com you'll also get one private dashboard in addition to your free

00:27:25 ◼   ► account's unlimited public dashboards as well. There's no credit card required and you'll keep

00:27:30 ◼   ► your private dashboard forever. So that's a fantastic offer you should be taking a violent

00:27:34 ◼   ► job. You'll get it for free you just need to go and sign up. So go sign up right now at thedash.com.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Dash for supporting this show and all of Relay FM.

00:27:44 ◼   ► That's thedash.com because as we discovered if you go to dash.com you will learn about

00:27:49 ◼   ► soap.

00:27:50 ◼   ► I mean you can also learn about soap and then go to thedash.com.

00:27:53 ◼   ► It's really kind of up to you how you want to do that.

00:27:55 ◼   ► You can create your own dashboard that features measurements of soap.

00:27:59 ◼   ► If that's something that you're really interested in maybe you have a soap company.

00:28:03 ◼   ► It's good clean fun Myke.

00:28:07 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:28:09 ◼   ► Get out.

00:28:11 ◼   ► Ahoy, telephone.

00:28:13 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:28:15 ◼   ► Oh, Jason, tell me about Singleton.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Singleton?

00:28:21 ◼   ► What would you like to know? Singleton is, um...

00:28:23 ◼   ► Well, I'm so sad that I didn't get to go.

00:28:25 ◼   ► It was, uh, me and Stephen

00:28:27 ◼   ► were talking last week about

00:28:29 ◼   ► "Oh, we'll definitely go to Singleton next year."

00:28:31 ◼   ► Well, no.

00:28:33 ◼   ► No, because Guy English has ruined it

00:28:35 ◼   ► for everybody. Yeah, I mean, Guy and his compatriots have been doing this conference for, this

00:28:46 ◼   ► was the fourth year in Montreal and the last three years at the Neligan Hotel in the old

00:28:50 ◼   ► town in Montreal. And I went the last three years, I didn't go the first year. And it's

00:28:55 ◼   ► in the line of these indie Mac, you know, theoretically they're developer conferences,

00:28:59 ◼   ► although honestly these are not the kind of conferences, somebody gave me some grief last

00:29:05 ◼   ► year when I referred to these as developer conferences, Singleton and OOL, they're like,

00:29:10 ◼   ► it's not really a developer conference. And I think that person's conception of what a

00:29:12 ◼   ► developer conference was is like, you go there and learn about how to program things better.

00:29:18 ◼   ► That's totally not what it's about. It's meant to be more like an inspirational conference

00:29:21 ◼   ► for people who are in the business of Apple, who are in the business of Apple software

00:29:27 ◼   ► usually and so a lot of programmers and designers and other people too.

00:29:35 ◼   ► But it's really the community of Apple people.

00:29:38 ◼   ► And while there are big names there, there are also lots of other fantastic people who

00:29:42 ◼   ► I don't see very often but I follow on Twitter or I exchange with, you know, tweets with

00:29:49 ◼   ► on a regular basis.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And unlike WWDC where the scale is kind of totally insane and maybe you see somebody

00:29:56 ◼   ► at a big loud party somewhere. This is a couple hundred people. So it's and you know it's a you

00:30:03 ◼   ► get there on Friday afternoon and there's an opening session Friday night where there are

00:30:07 ◼   ► drinks and a speaker and then the next you know in the next two days there are there are

00:30:16 ◼   ► presentations until early basically Sunday afternoon and there's a dinner on Saturday night and

00:30:23 ◼   ► I think everybody goes to, there's a bar nearby,

00:30:26 ◼   ► everybody goes there, they kind of cordon off part of the bar

00:30:30 ◼   ► and everybody is chatting and then you come back for dinner,

00:30:32 ◼   ► they've set up a really nice banquet in the hall.

00:30:35 ◼   ► It's a really nice thing.

00:30:36 ◼   ► And there are other events like this.

00:30:38 ◼   ► I mentioned Ool, Ool in Ireland is a great example

00:30:41 ◼   ► of a similar kind of thing where there's,

00:30:43 ◼   ► these are being made by Apple nerds

00:30:45 ◼   ► and so they really care about like,

00:30:47 ◼   ► this is not a corporate mass produced kind of conference.

00:30:50 ◼   ► most of these conferences are just done by regular people

00:30:54 ◼   ► who wanted to do a great conference

00:30:55 ◼   ► and the handouts are good and the badges are nice.

00:30:59 ◼   ► XOXO is like this too,

00:31:01 ◼   ► where it's, you know, these are indie conferences

00:31:03 ◼   ► for people in these related communities

00:31:07 ◼   ► and they're labors of love.

00:31:09 ◼   ► And I think that's the reason

00:31:10 ◼   ► there won't be another Singleton

00:31:11 ◼   ► is that it is a labor of love.

00:31:13 ◼   ► And I think that Scott and Luke and Guy

00:31:16 ◼   ► looked at the time they were putting in and said,

00:31:18 ◼   ► "You know, we don't need to do this again."

00:31:20 ◼   ► 'Cause it is, I know it is just a huge amount of effort

00:31:23 ◼   ► to do and the quality is fantastic,

00:31:26 ◼   ► but there's a reason that most of the like profitable

00:31:29 ◼   ► big corporation conference events are, you know,

00:31:32 ◼   ► in a generic hotel and have generic, you know, chairs

00:31:36 ◼   ► and generic catering and all of these things

00:31:40 ◼   ► is because they're focused on their profit margin

00:31:43 ◼   ► in a way that these people are doing it

00:31:45 ◼   ► for as long as they can as a labor of love,

00:31:47 ◼   ► but at some point they can't do it anymore.

00:31:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can't imagine as much money in this game.

00:31:53 ◼   ► - I don't, I was telling my wife about it last night

00:31:56 ◼   ► and I said, remember when, right after we were married

00:31:59 ◼   ► and I spent an entire summer writing a book

00:32:02 ◼   ► or half a book about like running a server on a Mac,

00:32:05 ◼   ► which was really great to do in the iOS

00:32:08 ◼   ► or in the OS 8 era, you know,

00:32:10 ◼   ► like that's a really terrible server,

00:32:12 ◼   ► but I wrote a book about it.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And what I said to her was, remember when I did that,

00:32:20 ◼   ► when we calculated out how many hours I had spent

00:32:22 ◼   ► writing half that book and compared it to the advance

00:32:24 ◼   ► that we got and we never earned out of our advance,

00:32:26 ◼   ► I would have been better off working at minimum wage

00:32:30 ◼   ► somewhere like working at McDonald's in terms of money.

00:32:33 ◼   ► I would have earned more money than the time I put in.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I think these conferences are like that.

00:32:38 ◼   ► They may make some money for the conference people,

00:32:42 ◼   ► but that isn't factoring in how much time they put into it.

00:32:46 ◼   ► And I think once you do that, you realize that,

00:32:48 ◼   ► I am sure that Guy and Scott and Luke

00:32:52 ◼   ► could use their time in better ways

00:32:54 ◼   ► in terms of profitability, in terms of supporting themselves

00:32:58 ◼   ► and also let's just,

00:32:59 ◼   ► these are an enormous amount of work to pull off at all.

00:33:02 ◼   ► And so then you're exhausted and your productivity suffers

00:33:06 ◼   ► for several months while it's going on

00:33:08 ◼   ► and in the aftermath of it.

00:33:09 ◼   ► And I love that they put themselves out there

00:33:13 ◼   ► and made this amazing conference what it is,

00:33:15 ◼   ► but I totally get why they would not wanna do it again.

00:33:18 ◼   ► 'Cause unless you really,

00:33:20 ◼   ► I'm sad that it's not gonna happen,

00:33:22 ◼   ► but I totally understand it 'cause I really felt,

00:33:24 ◼   ► you could tell how hard they worked on it.

00:33:26 ◼   ► - Well, when you go to these conferences, why are you going?

00:33:32 ◼   ► - I go, I mean, I go to see the people, that's number one.

00:33:37 ◼   ► I go to see the people.

00:33:38 ◼   ► And then the talks are interesting and stimulating

00:33:41 ◼   ► and make you think and you get perspectives

00:33:46 ◼   ► that you might not stop and think

00:33:48 ◼   ► if you're just kind of putting your head down

00:33:50 ◼   ► and working on the stuff you're working on.

00:33:52 ◼   ► And that's why I said they're kind of inspirational

00:33:54 ◼   ► and why I like them even though they're not,

00:33:56 ◼   ► if they were about code, I wouldn't be interested

00:33:58 ◼   ► because I'm not a programmer.

00:33:59 ◼   ► And that kind of conference is good.

00:34:03 ◼   ► If I wanted to go, like now that I'm doing six colors

00:34:05 ◼   ► and I'm doing all this coding,

00:34:07 ◼   ► If there was like a conference locally that was learn how to do better CSS and JavaScript,

00:34:11 ◼   ► I'd be like, oh, maybe I should go to that and learn something.

00:34:14 ◼   ► But this is not, that's not what this is.

00:34:15 ◼   ► This is inspirational.

00:34:16 ◼   ► This is people talking about what it's like to think like a designer, to navigate business

00:34:21 ◼   ► issues in this area, to think about interacting with Apple and what that is, and even big

00:34:27 ◼   ► picture stuff like how we define our identities as professionals in this business, in this

00:34:33 ◼   ► world.

00:34:34 ◼   ► that seems kind of fuzzy, but that can all be really inspirational, make you think about

00:34:38 ◼   ► your own life and your own career choices and your own trajectory. And a lot of the

00:34:42 ◼   ► people at these conferences are people who are running their own businesses or are working

00:34:47 ◼   ► in relatively small businesses. And so, yeah. So the content is good, but it's also just

00:34:53 ◼   ► the people. I mean, when else do you end up in a place where you're there in a room with

00:34:59 ◼   ► Marco Arment, John Gruber, Brent Simmons, he wasn't there this time, I think, but he's

00:35:03 ◼   ► been there before, you know, Manton Reese was there, I mean, Dan Morin was there, Serenity

00:35:08 ◼   ► Caldwell, Renee Ritchie, Christina Warren, like on the media side, so it's like these

00:35:14 ◼   ► designers, Jesse Char was there, Rich Segal who does BB Edit was there, Adam and Tanya

00:35:20 ◼   ► Angst, John August, that was pretty awesome, I got to meet John August, the screenwriter

00:35:26 ◼   ► who follows me on Twitter and I was blown away when I found that out and then I got

00:35:33 ◼   ► to say hi to him and chat with him briefly and that was pretty cool. So just a great

00:35:38 ◼   ► collection of people. So part social and part inspirational I would say.

00:35:43 ◼   ► So I mean I've been to a couple of these types of things.

00:35:46 ◼   ► Well we met and talked for a while, I mean I think we had a couple of like hour-long

00:35:49 ◼   ► chats at OOL last year and that's a very similar kind of thing so I know you experienced it

00:35:54 ◼   ► there. Yeah when you, when I've heard people explain

00:36:00 ◼   ► Singleton it sounds very similar to the OOL experience. I mean an OOL was a

00:36:05 ◼   ► no-brainer for me because it was an island so it was easy for me to get to.

00:36:09 ◼   ► Funnily enough wasn't that much cheaper than me going to something like XOXO

00:36:13 ◼   ► because of the exchange rates. So it's quite interesting. The flights are

00:36:20 ◼   ► cheaper but the overall experience it's not it ends up not being that much

00:36:23 ◼   ► different. But I've been to XOXO as well and I go I mean I go to these sort of

00:36:29 ◼   ► things for the same sort of reasons as you really.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I mean, and I think for me, they're really important to network as much as that can

00:36:38 ◼   ► be a bad thing, but this is basically to build relationships with people that I

00:36:43 ◼   ► would love to work with like yourself.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Right?

00:36:46 ◼   ► You know?

00:36:47 ◼   ► Uh, and also like I learned this from the first time that I went to WWDC.

00:36:51 ◼   ► It changed my career in this sort of industry because I got to meet so many

00:36:56 ◼   ► people and there is when you when you work with people and you work with them

00:37:00 ◼   ► online in some manner you it does change the dynamic once you actually meet in

00:37:07 ◼   ► person there is still that like once you have that in-person meeting totally it

00:37:11 ◼   ► changes the way that you're able to work together in the future and I found it

00:37:15 ◼   ► just so useful and also as well is I have so many friends that I do not get

00:37:20 ◼   ► to see like I just don't get to see them and when we when there are things like

00:37:24 ◼   ► this, I get to see as many people as I can, as many of my friends as possible in a very

00:37:29 ◼   ► short space of time.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And meet new people. I mean, I invariably meet somebody who I know only from

00:37:38 ◼   ► Twitter who I'm like, "Oh, you're from the internet." And it's nice. It's nice to do

00:37:46 ◼   ► that. It's always good to see these people coming together and not just being on the

00:37:51 ◼   ► internet. It has value. And you know, I am not one of those people who stays out until

00:37:57 ◼   ► 2 a.m. in bars and does the drinking thing, which is definitely an aspect that is somewhat

00:38:03 ◼   ► problematic I would say of tech conference culture. There's a certain amount of socializing

00:38:10 ◼   ► that is done where people are staying out until five in the morning and drinking heavily.

00:38:16 ◼   ► I'm not a heavy drinker. I will enjoy a beer and some wine, but at all I was up until two

00:38:24 ◼   ► one morning, like everybody was. I was using the jet lag in my favor there. But it didn't

00:38:30 ◼   ► feel like it was, I mean, people weren't falling down or anything. It wasn't like everybody

00:38:34 ◼   ► was drunk at 2am, it's just everybody was up at 2am and chatting. But as somebody who

00:38:40 ◼   ► is not going to close down a bar somewhere, I find it completely valuable that people

00:38:44 ◼   ► in the lobby for all hours and we went out for meals with people and for me to see also

00:38:53 ◼   ► my colleagues, Dan and Serenity both, who live on the East Coast and I don't get to

00:39:00 ◼   ► see them on a regular basis anymore because we don't work together anymore and so they're

00:39:04 ◼   ► not flying out for work things.

00:39:06 ◼   ► So seeing them was really nice too.

00:39:08 ◼   ► So now that Singleton's over, what conferences do you have your eye on?

00:39:14 ◼   ► Where can people get the Jason Snow experience in person?

00:39:17 ◼   ► Well so the guys who do OOL, Paul and Dermot, were at Singleton this year and they were

00:39:26 ◼   ► kind enough to invite me and Guy English to come back to OOL which is at the end of March

00:39:32 ◼   ► of next year and that will be somewhere in Ireland at an undisclosed location.

00:39:38 ◼   ► They haven't announced where it's going to be yet,

00:39:39 ◼   ► but it's not going to be in Dublin proper.

00:39:41 ◼   ► It's going to be out in the countryside somewhere

00:39:43 ◼   ► like it was last year,

00:39:44 ◼   ► which is actually a huge amount of fun and beautiful.

00:39:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:39:48 ◼   ► - And that, I think we're going to do what we did last year,

00:39:51 ◼   ► which we're going to host a talk show basically

00:39:54 ◼   ► in the evening, interviewing the speakers for the next day.

00:39:58 ◼   ► And we learned a lot last time.

00:39:59 ◼   ► I think it was good last time

00:40:00 ◼   ► and it got better as it went along.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And we were actually all kind of huddled up

00:40:04 ◼   ► and talking about ways to make it better again next year.

00:40:07 ◼   ► And I love that conference.

00:40:08 ◼   ► If you're somebody who can get to Ireland fairly easily.

00:40:11 ◼   ► So especially if you're in the UK or elsewhere in Europe,

00:40:14 ◼   ► but even if you're on the East coast,

00:40:16 ◼   ► that is a beautiful conference.

00:40:17 ◼   ► And they really,

00:40:19 ◼   ► they try to have an Apple level attention to detail

00:40:23 ◼   ► and like their product,

00:40:26 ◼   ► right down to like when you check in

00:40:28 ◼   ► and what the badge is and what the box looks like.

00:40:30 ◼   ► And my little avatar that I use on Twitter

00:40:33 ◼   ► is an original illustration.

00:40:34 ◼   ► They commissioned illustrations of all of the speakers at UL

00:40:38 ◼   ► and made, this illustrator made them.

00:40:41 ◼   ► And then they printed them on card stock

00:40:43 ◼   ► and put them in the boxes of the individual speakers.

00:40:45 ◼   ► It's crazy.

00:40:47 ◼   ► It's crazy.

00:40:48 ◼   ► And they had that, they really sweat it.

00:40:50 ◼   ► Like we were saying, these people who do these conferences,

00:40:53 ◼   ► these indie conferences really sweat the details.

00:40:55 ◼   ► So I'll be at that one.

00:40:56 ◼   ► That'll be great.

00:40:57 ◼   ► I won't be at Mackerel next month, but I'll be at UL.

00:41:02 ◼   ► - Should we talk about that now?

00:41:03 ◼   ► because we have it a little bit later in the show but...

00:41:05 ◼   ► I suppose we should.

00:41:07 ◼   ► So what's happening?

00:41:08 ◼   ► Or what has happened?

00:41:11 ◼   ► Uh... yeah.

00:41:13 ◼   ► It's gone.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Macworld Expo.

00:41:15 ◼   ► So IDG announced today as we record this, Tuesday the 14th, that Macworld Expo is on

00:41:20 ◼   ► hiatus and there will not be an event in 2015.

00:41:24 ◼   ► I think I would probably put money on the fact that there will be nothing that resembles

00:41:30 ◼   ► what we think of as MacWorld Expo or even the last few years of MacWorld iWorld again,

00:41:35 ◼   ► that would be my gut feeling, is that I don't see how they're going to do anything with

00:41:40 ◼   ► this. They may spin out a conference or something and call it MacWorld or iWorld or something

00:41:44 ◼   ► like that. That might happen. And they're keeping their MacIT conference, which they

00:41:49 ◼   ► started a few years ago and ran in parallel with MacWorld Expo and so people didn't, a

00:41:54 ◼   ► lot of people didn't know about it. But there was a professional conference that you paid

00:41:57 ◼   ► a lot of money to go to that ran piggybacked with Macworld Expo, and that's continuing.

00:42:02 ◼   ► But Macworld Expo as we know it is over. And it's sad, but I got to say it's not surprising.

00:42:08 ◼   ► After all of the other changes at IDG this year, including so many of us leaving in September

00:42:14 ◼   ► and the budgets being very different than they used to be, and Pat McGovern, the founder

00:42:18 ◼   ► of IDG, who cared very much about the trade show presence, he passed away earlier this

00:42:23 ◼   ► year. I think that had an effect on a lot of what's been going on at IDG now that there's

00:42:26 ◼   ► there's a new board of directors in charge.

00:42:29 ◼   ► So I'm not surprised at all by it

00:42:32 ◼   ► when Paul Kent, who has been running it

00:42:34 ◼   ► and done just a fantastic job running this event

00:42:36 ◼   ► through incredible changes, losing Apple.

00:42:40 ◼   ► None of that was his fault.

00:42:41 ◼   ► He's been trying to make the best of it all along

00:42:44 ◼   ► and make it the best event it could be

00:42:46 ◼   ► in incredibly difficult circumstances,

00:42:48 ◼   ► trying to find ways to be relevant.

00:42:51 ◼   ► But he told me a few days ago,

00:42:53 ◼   ► can I give you a call at 10 a.m. on the 14th?

00:42:57 ◼   ► And I was like, sure.

00:42:59 ◼   ► And I'm thinking to myself,

00:43:00 ◼   ► this is gonna be the call where he says,

00:43:01 ◼   ► I've just sent you an email with our statement

00:43:03 ◼   ► and we're shutting it down.

00:43:04 ◼   ► And that's essentially what I got.

00:43:06 ◼   ► So I mean, the writing was on the wall,

00:43:08 ◼   ► but what a year, that brand, not a lot left of it now.

00:43:13 ◼   ► - I still cannot believe that Macworld continued at all

00:43:18 ◼   ► after Apple left.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Like the fact that they did it for so many years

00:43:23 ◼   ► incredible? Well, you know, I think the truth, the sad thing is, I think Apple's

00:43:30 ◼   ► presence there wasn't necessary, but like I think that show was really vibrant and

00:43:38 ◼   ► I always thought the Apple booth was not interesting at all. I just, I never

00:43:41 ◼   ► thought the Apple booth at Macworld Expo was interesting because it was just kind

00:43:45 ◼   ► of here's the, here's some Apple products, or I mean it was just not, and Apple was

00:43:49 ◼   ► right. That's kind of like the Apple Store experience. Everything else around it was

00:43:54 ◼   ► the cool stuff of like every people that you couldn't see at your local Apple Store. But

00:44:00 ◼   ► what Apple did do in part on the trade show floor was provide that anchor. Like Apple's

00:44:05 ◼   ► here and everything else is swirling around Apple. But the Steve Jobs keynote thing was

00:44:11 ◼   ► the other big thing. For a lot of people, Amac World Expo was always the Steve Jobs

00:44:15 ◼   ► keynote and when Apple pulled out that you know they pulled out of doing a

00:44:18 ◼   ► keynote too, which is understandable because they can call an event whenever

00:44:23 ◼   ► they want and you know they're gonna have one later this week too, but for a

00:44:28 ◼   ► lot of people especially press covering the event they would fly in go to the

00:44:31 ◼   ► Apple thing and then leave for maybe blast through the show floor on their

00:44:35 ◼   ► way out. So for them Macworld Expo was Apple's presence at it and you saw

00:44:38 ◼   ► that in the coverage of Macworld Expo. So I always think Apple's impact

00:44:44 ◼   ► when it left it didn't need to be that way and I would actually argue that if

00:44:49 ◼   ► Apple had kept doing its booth and not doing a keynote I don't think it would

00:44:53 ◼   ► change the trajectory very much. Trade shows are kind of over. Big trade shows

00:44:58 ◼   ► and if you're a big company like IDG that's doing all these big trade shows

00:45:01 ◼   ► let me tell you, you know, there are two ways to make money from a trade show. You

00:45:05 ◼   ► get people to pay a lot of money for a conference badge and/or you get

00:45:09 ◼   ► vendors to pay a lot of money for booth space and the booth thing is hard and

00:45:14 ◼   ► and getting harder, especially for consumer products.

00:45:16 ◼   ► It's a little bit different

00:45:17 ◼   ► if you're getting a whole bunch of enterprise technology

00:45:20 ◼   ► buyers in a room somewhere,

00:45:22 ◼   ► but that's a hard business to be in.

00:45:23 ◼   ► And I think the conference was never gonna be enough

00:45:29 ◼   ► on its own.

00:45:30 ◼   ► I think that like the way that,

00:45:33 ◼   ► and IDG World Expo was never our company.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Macworld Magazine and website were always

00:45:38 ◼   ► in a different part of IDG.

00:45:39 ◼   ► So I don't know anything about their finances, honestly,

00:45:42 ◼   ► but my impression is the way they ran that business

00:45:45 ◼   ► and the scale of that business,

00:45:48 ◼   ► that they needed the trade show to be successful,

00:45:50 ◼   ► that the conference on its own, it was never gonna be,

00:45:53 ◼   ► well, let's just not worry about the trade show

00:45:55 ◼   ► and just do a great conference in San Francisco every year.

00:45:57 ◼   ► I just, it was never gonna do it.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And that's why I say maybe at some other scale,

00:46:03 ◼   ► they might try to bring back a Macworld conference

00:46:05 ◼   ► at some point, but I doubt it.

00:46:08 ◼   ► I think the Mac IT thing is something

00:46:10 ◼   ► that maybe they can take and do other things with.

00:46:12 ◼   ► They're competing against Neil Tichton,

00:46:15 ◼   ► who does the Mac Tech Conference,

00:46:18 ◼   ► and this puts them sort of right up against each other.

00:46:21 ◼   ► But yeah, it's too bad.

00:46:23 ◼   ► It's too bad, but that's a tough business to be in.

00:46:27 ◼   ► That's a brutal business, trade shows in general.

00:46:30 ◼   ► I mean, like we said,

00:46:31 ◼   ► conferences are a hard business to be in anyway.

00:46:34 ◼   ► And then you throw in the trade show part,

00:46:36 ◼   ► and it is amazing that they lasted as long as they did.

00:46:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it felt like I guess,

00:46:40 ◼   ► I guess there was like part trade show,

00:46:43 ◼   ► part like fun time, you know, like social.

00:46:46 ◼   ► - Well, they were trying to make a Comic-Con.

00:46:48 ◼   ► That's what they were really trying to do

00:46:49 ◼   ► is make a Comic-Con.

00:46:50 ◼   ► And the problem with that is they,

00:46:54 ◼   ► I mean, I still think that that was a pretty good idea,

00:46:58 ◼   ► but you know, they just couldn't make it work.

00:47:02 ◼   ► It's too bad 'cause I feel like in technology enthusiasm,

00:47:05 ◼   ► not just gaming, like they do the E3 show in LA

00:47:07 ◼   ► that's a gaming show. I feel like in technology enthusiasm there's something

00:47:12 ◼   ► there. Like there could be an event that gets that or or or geek culture there

00:47:18 ◼   ► could be an event that that hits that and you see it New York Comic Con just

00:47:22 ◼   ► finished and it actually was larger than San Diego Comic Con. Just huge events

00:47:28 ◼   ► celebrating geek pop culture and technology stuff I think that still has

00:47:33 ◼   ► resonance is in its its part in the culture and so I don't know maybe if

00:47:39 ◼   ► they bring if they ever bring like a comic-con they move WonderCon to LA if

00:47:44 ◼   ► they ever brought a comic-con back to San Francisco I wonder if they should

00:47:47 ◼   ► try to have some digital technology kind of stuff in it too so that people because

00:47:52 ◼   ► I do think there's some subculture that really ought to be served somehow by all

00:47:58 ◼   ► of this and I look at the success of comic book and you know comic book

00:48:02 ◼   ► sci-fi pop culture conventions and they are really successful. They are growing

00:48:08 ◼   ► and I think there is an event model that should work for this sort of thing but

00:48:13 ◼   ► what what Macworld Expo was was just not it even though they tried. I think that

00:48:17 ◼   ► was I kept telling Paul Kent be Comic-Con but I don't think he could ever

00:48:21 ◼   ► really get the support for it to be you know full out Comic-Con and maybe it

00:48:25 ◼   ► wouldn't have worked monetarily. I think one of the things that makes two other

00:48:29 ◼   ► things that make Comic-Con great are cosplay and huge announcements of big movies and I

00:48:35 ◼   ► don't think you can have either. I don't think that there is an either of those at something

00:48:40 ◼   ► like Macworld. Well I think it's too limited and you remain, the company that's got all

00:48:45 ◼   ► of the attention isn't there anymore, right? So if you did something that was sort of like

00:48:49 ◼   ► more tech focused but it wasn't just Apple, it was broader and you could have somebody

00:48:56 ◼   ► from Google or Facebook or Microsoft. You could have some speakers who actually might

00:48:59 ◼   ► even announce things. You might be able to do it, like I said, I think maybe as part

00:49:05 ◼   ► of a larger thing. I'm actually kind of half serious. Like if there was, San Diego and

00:49:09 ◼   ► New York Comic Con don't need to get any bigger, but if there was like, the cultures aren't

00:49:14 ◼   ► that far off of each other. I wonder if you did something in the Bay Area and had that

00:49:20 ◼   ► as an aspect of it. I don't know. I don't know. There's something there, but you're

00:49:24 ◼   ► it's not like Marvel and DC you know didn't come and make any announcements

00:49:29 ◼   ► and that that would be less less interesting and yeah nobody's wearing a

00:49:35 ◼   ► costume of an Apple - although that would be something to see I should have

00:49:38 ◼   ► had more cosplay at Macworld Expo that would've been great if you think about

00:49:41 ◼   ► it when Apple was at Macworld it was probably more like comic-con in that

00:49:46 ◼   ► aspect like people go to comic-con to watch Marvel's whole H presentation like

00:49:52 ◼   ► so maybe people were coming to see the Steve Jobs keynote like it was that idea and then it lost that.

00:49:58 ◼   ► Yeah in the in the um it totally lost that that halo and like I said it took the oxygen out of

00:50:05 ◼   ► the room because you know that then you knew the big mover in the space was focused on making big

00:50:10 ◼   ► news there and it that was a gave it enough weight that drew people to it. In the chat room little

00:50:15 ◼   ► real-time follow-up um I had a couple people ask about CES or NAB and what I'd say is you know CES

00:50:21 ◼   ► despite the C in its name is not a consumer show. It's a trade show. It's a trade show. It's a trade

00:50:27 ◼   ► trade show. It is for... I mean we all go as media people. Oh I hate CES. I'm so glad not to have to

00:50:32 ◼   ► ever go to it again. But it's the worst. But media people go but you know its primary purpose is for

00:50:40 ◼   ► distributors of products to find what products to distribute. I mean I think a regular person

00:50:51 ◼   ► maybe now can get a badge but it is not a show for regular people. It is not a celebration of culture

00:50:59 ◼   ► or anything. It is like miles, I'm gonna let my little tainted viewpoint here, miles and miles of

00:51:05 ◼   ► knockoff tech products from companies you've never heard of that are desperately trying to get

00:51:13 ◼   ► some sucker to say yes if you build this I'll distribute it in my Radio Shack stores and

00:51:19 ◼   ► I just, hmm. And then NAB, that's a pro show. That's a pro show. That is for people who are

00:51:24 ◼   ► professionals who do this for a living, do video for a living. And that's a different thing.

00:51:29 ◼   ► You know, Macworld was a consumer show. That was what it was. And that's a challenge because pros

00:51:37 ◼   ► come and say, I've got a reason to buy a $5,000 video camera. And consumers are like looking for

00:51:44 ◼   ► an iPhone case. And you know, it's a lot harder to make your money back if you're a software

00:51:48 ◼   ► developer saying, "Buy my app, it's $2," and then buying a booth for $10,000 and finding

00:51:54 ◼   ► a way for that to be profitable.

00:51:56 ◼   ► Right, we've still got some stuff that we want to cover today.

00:52:00 ◼   ► I want to take a moment to thank our second sponsor for this week's episode, and that

00:52:04 ◼   ► is our friends over at Pilot.

00:52:07 ◼   ► They're back to sponsor another episode of Upgrade, and you should definitely know about

00:52:11 ◼   ► them.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Pilot is a design and development studio founded in 2009.

00:52:16 ◼   ► They are known for creating fantastic products for startups and enterprise clients across

00:52:21 ◼   ► iPhone, iPad and the web.

00:52:22 ◼   ► With a team of 50 designers, developers, producers and product directors in Berlin, London and

00:52:29 ◼   ► their head office in Poland, they are ready and waiting to help you on your next product

00:52:34 ◼   ► and to bring it to life.

00:52:35 ◼   ► Pilot can either help you build a great team around you that you can work with and interact

00:52:39 ◼   ► with every day, or if you want, they can set you up with a producer who can take care of

00:52:44 ◼   ► all this stuff for you so you have one point of contact and that's who you deal

00:52:47 ◼   ► with on a day-to-day basis. Pilot works with both clients from all around the

00:52:52 ◼   ► web, small brands and big brands like Lonely Planet, Macmillan or just you know

00:52:57 ◼   ► small startups. It doesn't matter, no project is too big or too small. Some

00:53:02 ◼   ► startups they've worked with have been backed by world-class investors and

00:53:06 ◼   ► accepted as top accelerators such as Y Combinator. So you can see that the

00:53:10 ◼   ► quality of Pilot's work can help companies shine even in the toughest and most

00:53:15 ◼   ► competitive environments. Pilot even make products of their own like Tapes. Tapes

00:53:22 ◼   ► is an awesome little Mac app that allows you to quickly and easily capture and

00:53:26 ◼   ► share screencasts and so if you want to go to their website, I believe it's

00:53:32 ◼   ► ustapes.com. Yeah, ustapes.com. You'll see a little product that they've

00:53:37 ◼   ► created themselves you can see the kind of quality of item that they put out

00:53:41 ◼   ► into the world. If you are looking for a first-class team of designers and

00:53:45 ◼   ► developers who sweat the little details check out pilot.co. Thank you so much to

00:53:50 ◼   ► Pilot for their continued support of Upgrade and Relay FM. And we should

00:53:55 ◼   ► specify you can have more than one word in your name and still be a sponsor on

00:53:59 ◼   ► Upgrade. Yeah. Just not this week. And if you do want to sponsor Upgrade, which you

00:54:05 ◼   ► definitely should be doing. Yes. Go to relay.fm/sponsor. It is,

00:54:10 ◼   ► considering mine and Jason's recent decisions, it's incredibly important that

00:54:15 ◼   ► you do this. We should talk about that at a future, in a future show

00:54:19 ◼   ► about the fact that you are about to be just as unencumbered with a

00:54:24 ◼   ► commute as I. Uh-huh, we should definitely do that. Yeah, but not today.

00:54:30 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:54:31 ◼   ► Okay, so, going back to Singleton for a moment.

00:54:36 ◼   ► - Okay, I don't wanna go back, it's a long way,

00:54:38 ◼   ► it's a very long flight.

00:54:39 ◼   ► - Just hop over, we can stay here, we can telecommute,

00:54:44 ◼   ► I guess.

00:54:44 ◼   ► There was a talk that you kind of, you covered,

00:54:50 ◼   ► you're at the scene reporting live for six hours

00:54:54 ◼   ► of Rich Segal of Barebone Software,

00:54:57 ◼   ► He gave a presentation about leaving the Mac App Store.

00:55:00 ◼   ► - Yes, he did.

00:55:03 ◼   ► - What was, tell me a little bit about what happened.

00:55:06 ◼   ► What was the talk framed around?

00:55:08 ◼   ► Was this the subject of the talk?

00:55:09 ◼   ► And then how did that kind of play out in the room?

00:55:12 ◼   ► - Well, Rich, so Rich Siegel has been doing BBIA

00:55:19 ◼   ► for like 20 plus years.

00:55:21 ◼   ► And one of the things I love about him

00:55:25 ◼   ► is that he is a really thoughtful guy.

00:55:26 ◼   ► He does not do a whole lot of yelling and stomping

00:55:30 ◼   ► and he's really careful.

00:55:34 ◼   ► And his presentation was about why BB Edit

00:55:39 ◼   ► is leaving the App Store.

00:55:41 ◼   ► And the way he framed it was,

00:55:44 ◼   ► let me list all the reasons we're not leaving the App Store.

00:55:47 ◼   ► And then he gave about 20 minutes of all of the pain points

00:55:51 ◼   ► of having an app in the Mac App Store.

00:55:53 ◼   ► And there are so many,

00:55:55 ◼   ► And people have heard a lot of them.

00:55:57 ◼   ► I mean, there are complaints about

00:56:00 ◼   ► about Apple taking a 30% cut.

00:56:03 ◼   ► Although Rich said, look, you know, they're serving it,

00:56:06 ◼   ► they're doing all the credit card transactions,

00:56:07 ◼   ► they're handling all the taxes.

00:56:08 ◼   ► There are lots of things you get for that.

00:56:10 ◼   ► And he says, he actually thinks it's a pretty good deal.

00:56:12 ◼   ► He's not a fan of the complete severing of the relationship

00:56:15 ◼   ► between the developer and the customer

00:56:16 ◼   ► where it's their Apple's customer.

00:56:18 ◼   ► You don't even know who they are.

00:56:19 ◼   ► There are marketing challenges,

00:56:25 ◼   ► having to control when things drop in the App Store

00:56:29 ◼   ► and setting things ready to go can be difficult.

00:56:33 ◼   ► The submissions guidelines are problematic,

00:56:35 ◼   ► sandboxing your app,

00:56:37 ◼   ► BBS has a bunch of command line tools

00:56:39 ◼   ► that come along with it

00:56:40 ◼   ► and they had to make that available as a separate download

00:56:43 ◼   ► for Mac App Store customers to download from their website

00:56:45 ◼   ► and install because they couldn't put it in the install

00:56:48 ◼   ► 'cause it's not allowed and stuff like that

00:56:50 ◼   ► where they have to overhaul features.

00:56:52 ◼   ► Their whole product, Yojimbo,

00:56:53 ◼   ► they basically had to pull out of the Mac App Store

00:56:55 ◼   ► 'cause they couldn't get the syncing to work with iCloud

00:56:57 ◼   ► and they had to write their own syncing system

00:57:00 ◼   ► and do it on their own.

00:57:02 ◼   ► And then there's the tool chain,

00:57:04 ◼   ► which is like all the issues with building apps

00:57:08 ◼   ► and getting them to verify and be signed properly

00:57:11 ◼   ► and there are bugs involving that,

00:57:13 ◼   ► but everything's gotta be signed

00:57:14 ◼   ► to be submitted to the Mac App Store.

00:57:15 ◼   ► And then you submit it and he told the story

00:57:18 ◼   ► about how after a week they checked

00:57:20 ◼   ► 'cause they realized they had not heard anything

00:57:22 ◼   ► either way from Apple about the submission.

00:57:24 ◼   ► And it turned out that their submission

00:57:29 ◼   ► had silently crashed the submission tool.

00:57:32 ◼   ► And so nothing happened,

00:57:33 ◼   ► like literally just nothing happened.

00:57:34 ◼   ► And Apple was like, "Oh yeah, yeah,

00:57:37 ◼   ► you just killed the tool."

00:57:38 ◼   ► And so we lost that.

00:57:41 ◼   ► And so then they had to resubmit it and work with Apple

00:57:43 ◼   ► and make sure that it didn't crash Apple's tools.

00:57:45 ◼   ► So we listed all these things

00:57:48 ◼   ► and what was really great about it is he said,

00:57:52 ◼   ► I mean, it was clear as he was going that these are,

00:57:54 ◼   ► this is this accumulation of problems.

00:57:56 ◼   ► He said, the problem is a lot of these things happen

00:57:58 ◼   ► right at the most pressure filled part

00:58:02 ◼   ► of being a software developer,

00:58:03 ◼   ► which is what he likened it to max Q,

00:58:05 ◼   ► which is that term when there's the most atmospheric stress

00:58:10 ◼   ► on a flying vehicle.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Like when I went to the space shuttle launch,

00:58:12 ◼   ► I mean, there's a moment of max Q where,

00:58:14 ◼   ► and it's not actually the fastest point

00:58:17 ◼   ► because the higher up you go, the thinner the air is.

00:58:19 ◼   ► There's that moment where you're going fast

00:58:22 ◼   ► in thick atmosphere, and that's like the biggest pressure point. And he said, "Look, MaxQ for

00:58:27 ◼   ► developers is when you're about to ship your product, because you've got to line up your

00:58:31 ◼   ► PR, and you've got to crush bugs, and you're planning everything, communicating with your

00:58:35 ◼   ► customers about the updates and the upgrade paths and all that stuff." And he said, "The

00:58:39 ◼   ► problem is so many of these things are at that point, where we're already under pressure."

00:58:46 ◼   ► And then he took a step back, and this is one of the things I really like about Rich

00:58:49 ◼   ► Siegel, what he didn't say is, "So, you know, this is Apple's fault, Apple ruined it for

00:58:55 ◼   ► us, we're out." Instead, what he said is, "Look, we looked at the stress and saw what..."

00:59:01 ◼   ► and Barebones is a very small company, it's mostly rich and a few employees, but... and

00:59:08 ◼   ► what he said is, "This is bad for my quality of life. Like, this is causing a lot of stress,

00:59:13 ◼   ► it's causing a lot of working through the weekends, it's causing a lot of extra work

00:59:18 ◼   ► and stress in my life for not enough benefit. And so in the end, the reason we're leaving

00:59:25 ◼   ► the Mac App Store is not because Apple is bad, because Apple has screwed up all these

00:59:29 ◼   ► things. Apple can do what it wants. It's like, it's not them, it's me. It's essentially what

00:59:33 ◼   ► he said is, we looked at it and said it's not worth it for us. And I thought that was

00:59:37 ◼   ► a good way to frame it because it doesn't come across as we should be in there, but

00:59:41 ◼   ► they blew it and so now we're out of here. We're taking our ball and going home. It was

00:59:44 ◼   ► very much like for us in our situation with our company, with our product, we did the

00:59:50 ◼   ► calculation and he's speaking to a bunch of developers who, and so I think underlying

00:59:55 ◼   ► this is him saying to everybody else, "You should consider whether it's worth it for

00:59:58 ◼   ► you." And it might be, and he gave a few reasons why for certain apps, Mac App Store is probably

01:00:04 ◼   ► worth it to stay, but for him personally, he did the math and it wasn't worth it. So

01:00:11 ◼   ► I think what makes this interesting is that four years ago we didn't really know how the

01:00:16 ◼   ► Mac App Store was going to go, and I think a lot of Mac developers were really excited

01:00:19 ◼   ► about the prospect that the GoGo iOS App Store was going to come to the Mac and apps were

01:00:25 ◼   ► going to be huge.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And I think we all thought that, and it hasn't been as big a thing as I think we expected

01:00:31 ◼   ► it to be, and a lot of developers have found frustration with these issues of giving up

01:00:36 ◼   ► control.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And it's understandable why Apple might want them to give up control, but in the end a

01:00:40 ◼   ► a lot of them I think have decided, or at least some of them, have decided it's not

01:00:46 ◼   ► worth giving up that control. So in the end, BBEt is just going to go back to being sold

01:00:51 ◼   ► on barebones' website and anybody who bought on the Mac App Store can pay an upgrade price,

01:00:56 ◼   ► that's the standard upgrade price to upgrade to the new version outside the App Store.

01:01:01 ◼   ► And on the Mac App Store, they'll keep selling little utilities and games and all the stuff

01:01:05 ◼   ► that continues to fill the App Store and probably won't make much of a dent on that kind of

01:01:10 ◼   ► momentum but you know it I definitely saw a lot of people nodding right so I

01:01:16 ◼   ► know that there are frustrations here and you know hopefully Apple will

01:01:20 ◼   ► address them. Rich definitely said it's not like I'm saying I'll never be back.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Things could change and it could be worth it again but right now the in the

01:01:28 ◼   ► in the balance it's not worth it and you know what would make it worth it I would

01:01:33 ◼   ► say if the Mac App Store was incredibly successful at selling his app that would

01:01:37 ◼   ► make it more worth staying. So I think the implication here is also that his app, which

01:01:42 ◼   ► is a higher priced professional app, didn't really get a lot of benefit either from being

01:01:47 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store. And so that is part of that equation too.

01:01:54 ◼   ► Clearly this is an important developer, at least in our world, who's kind of putting

01:02:03 ◼   ► there stake in the ground and saying we don't we just don't want to do with this

01:02:07 ◼   ► anymore do you think that this is do you think this is the sign of a bigger

01:02:11 ◼   ► problem or do you think that this is something that is particular to

01:02:14 ◼   ► barebones?

01:02:17 ◼   ► No I mean these problems exist and I think Rich's point is it's not going to

01:02:23 ◼   ► be enough of a problem for some and it's going to be plenty of a problem

01:02:29 ◼   ► for others. Rich's tools are complicated and they use Unix integration and

01:02:34 ◼   ► therefore they're professional tools and it's a bigger problem. But these are the

01:02:38 ◼   ► same issues that App Store, iOS App Store developers deal with a lot of

01:02:43 ◼   ► times, that Apple's backend tools aren't very good, problems in the toolchain.

01:02:46 ◼   ► There are lots of rules in the App Store that are frustrating and

01:02:50 ◼   ► inconsistently applied that harm the product experience. And again,

01:02:57 ◼   ► And there are two sides to that.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Apple's also looking out for customers and saying, "Look, we don't think we want to let

01:03:01 ◼   ► you do this for good reasons sometimes."

01:03:04 ◼   ► But the way that the rules often get applied can be really frustrating, where a feature

01:03:08 ◼   ► can be perfectly fine and then somebody else sees it and says, "Sorry, this feature isn't

01:03:12 ◼   ► fine," even though it was already approved.

01:03:14 ◼   ► Now we've decided that we're not going to approve it.

01:03:20 ◼   ► The App Store is a constant frustration for developers, and in most cases it's worth it.

01:03:26 ◼   ► I think Rich was saying Mac developers have the luxury of saying it's not worth it and

01:03:31 ◼   ► taking their ball and going home. iOS developers don't have that luxury at all. So what do

01:03:38 ◼   ► you do? You hope that Apple changes its ways a little bit and fixes some of these issues.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And I think Rich, I think people pay attention to these sorts of things and I'm sure people

01:03:49 ◼   ► at Apple know what he said and maybe that'll affect some change and maybe it won't. And

01:03:56 ◼   ► Rich's, the way he gave his talk was really good because, you know, he didn't come out,

01:04:01 ◼   ► it didn't come out as an attack and it was really sort of just a pretty cold like laying

01:04:06 ◼   ► out of what the issues are and saying for us we couldn't make it work. So I think somebody

01:04:12 ◼   ► from Apple could pick up the phone and talk to Rich about it and they would be in a pretty

01:04:15 ◼   ► good place because he wasn't, you know, kicking and screaming and taking his ball and going

01:04:20 ◼   ► home as much as just saying, "Look, I just did the math and it doesn't work for us."

01:04:24 ◼   ► And that allows somebody from Apple to come to him, theoretically, and say, "We're sorry

01:04:28 ◼   ► you feel that way. You know, what can we learn from this experience that can make our products

01:04:33 ◼   ► better?" And I hope that happens. Our products for developers, I suppose. This is one of

01:04:39 ◼   ► the challenges is Apple has such finely crafted products for consumers. On the developer side,

01:04:43 ◼   ► Yeah, not so much. It's kind of more frustrating and a mess for developers.

01:04:47 ◼   ► Do you feel that we just go around in circles with this? Like especially the Mac App Store?

01:04:52 ◼   ► Well, I would say it comes in cycles, because the App Store is better than it was.

01:04:57 ◼   ► I mean, they have improved a lot of stuff, but there's still stuff to improve, so you get the waves of frustration.

01:05:02 ◼   ► And some of this is, you know, after four years, Rich has written about App Store problems and iCloud problems for a while now.

01:05:11 ◼   ► is nothing new, but this is sort of the latest story. And you know, they decided a long time

01:05:17 ◼   ► ago to do this. I think he just decided that since he was speaking at Singleton, it would

01:05:20 ◼   ► be a good opportunity to kind of go through their thought process about why they did it.

01:05:25 ◼   ► You mentioned iOS a moment ago. I saw an interesting exchange between Paul Haddad from Tapbots and

01:05:33 ◼   ► Russell Ivanovich from Shifty Jelly. Yes. Where Paul was linking to your post and saying,

01:05:40 ◼   ► I wonder how many iOS devs would leave the App Store if it was a practical choice?

01:05:45 ◼   ► Like if they could do it basically because they can't.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Now Russell who obviously also develops for Android, and there's a conversation that continues

01:05:52 ◼   ► but I just thought his response was interesting was like everyone would like to but nobody

01:05:58 ◼   ► would and his reason that he, well his reasoning for saying this is that with Android you can

01:06:05 ◼   ► distribute your applications on your own but nobody does it unless they have a clear reason

01:06:09 ◼   ► which means they cannot be in the store. Right, I mean my understanding is that

01:06:13 ◼   ► the Android, that the Google Play Store is not as difficult to navigate as the

01:06:18 ◼   ► as the iOS App Store is. The restrictions are less and the freedom for apps to do

01:06:23 ◼   ► things is greater, so that's one reason why nobody does it. But I anticipate that

01:06:29 ◼   ► it would be kind of like it is with the Mac App Store now, which is lots of stuff

01:06:33 ◼   ► would be in the in the iOS App Store still because it's easy and normal

01:06:36 ◼   ► people are not going to go outside it and flip that switch that says allow

01:06:39 ◼   ► third-party apps to be installed by other sources, right? Most people wouldn't

01:06:43 ◼   ► do that if that was there, but probably a market of more complicated things that

01:06:47 ◼   ► really require full access would spring up, but it would never be the mainstream.

01:06:52 ◼   ► I think that's probably true. So, you know, I think they're

01:06:56 ◼   ► right. I know a lot of developers would love to try, but it would never be

01:07:02 ◼   ► the main way that people got stuff. It would be for, you know, just

01:07:06 ◼   ► like on the Mac App Store, there are some apps that just can't be in

01:07:09 ◼   ► them in the Mac App Store and those are good apps and so if you want them you

01:07:13 ◼   ► have to go outside and so you do if you want to get like a hard drive cloning

01:07:18 ◼   ► utility like like super duper or carbon copy cloner you don't think you can do

01:07:23 ◼   ► those in the Mac App Store because they require full disk access and breaks all

01:07:27 ◼   ► the security protocols so you go out and buy that on your own but but I think I

01:07:32 ◼   ► think he's got a point that that it might be a little different because of

01:07:38 ◼   ► the way Google Play filters versus the way Apple does, but yeah it would be

01:07:43 ◼   ► very hard to go out on your own. Russell carries on and he says he loves Google

01:07:48 ◼   ► Play one hour from submit to distribution. And I know people who've

01:07:53 ◼   ► been waiting weeks for their updates to get through the Mac or to the iOS App Store.

01:07:58 ◼   ► And you can distribute betas through the App Store to

01:08:03 ◼   ► users as well which is a really interesting thing to test your application at scale.

01:08:08 ◼   ► So Apple added that in iOS 8 and everybody was really excited because they bought TestFlight.

01:08:14 ◼   ► And one of the fine print things is if you want to distribute it outside of your little

01:08:19 ◼   ► core group to a larger beta group, it has to go through AppReview.

01:08:24 ◼   ► They have to approve it.

01:08:25 ◼   ► Which is insane.

01:08:26 ◼   ► Your betas have to be approved by Apple, which is completely insane.

01:08:30 ◼   ► So yeah, yeah.

01:08:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, there are issues here.

01:08:34 ◼   ► - You have to get an application through review,

01:08:36 ◼   ► which could mean, I guess means no critical bugs.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Well, I'm sorry, but that's something that happens.

01:08:42 ◼   ► - It's data.

01:08:43 ◼   ► - You know, that was a real surprise to see,

01:08:47 ◼   ► and it's something that's surprising me,

01:08:48 ◼   ► and they've not changed it since.

01:08:50 ◼   ► I can see why Apple are doing it,

01:08:52 ◼   ► because there will be people that take advantage of it.

01:08:56 ◼   ► However, there are currently people that take advantage

01:08:58 ◼   ► of some of the enterprise distribution stuff, so--

01:09:00 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:09:01 ◼   ► you kind of just have to embrace it because if you want developers to use

01:09:04 ◼   ► these tools

01:09:06 ◼   ► you need to give them something where there's no option. Like if you

01:09:09 ◼   ► want people within the ecosystem, if you want your developers to really do it,

01:09:13 ◼   ► give it to them.

01:09:13 ◼   ► Otherwise people are going to continue using HockeyApp, which is great.

01:09:17 ◼   ► I mean, it's good because hockey didn't go out of business.

01:09:21 ◼   ► That was the concern, that it would just be it for them. Every time people

01:09:25 ◼   ► say "has Apple Sherlock X?"

01:09:27 ◼   ► Usually, Sherlock looks much more like the exception

01:09:31 ◼   ► that proves the rule that whenever Apple does a feature,

01:09:35 ◼   ► it is a simple narrow feature.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And there are always rooms around the margins

01:09:44 ◼   ► for the people who want more control.

01:09:46 ◼   ► And yeah, so HockeyApp is gonna continue

01:09:49 ◼   ► as long as Apple's got things like

01:09:51 ◼   ► you have to get approval to get a beta,

01:09:54 ◼   ► then HockeyApp's gonna have a place.

01:09:56 ◼   ► And yeah, yeah, so it's a funny thing.

01:10:01 ◼   ► I find it, Apple's changing in a lot of ways

01:10:05 ◼   ► and a lot of areas.

01:10:06 ◼   ► And I think one of the things that's going on here

01:10:08 ◼   ► is a lot of people are hoping

01:10:09 ◼   ► maybe this will be a way that Apple will change

01:10:11 ◼   ► and we'll just have to see.

01:10:13 ◼   ► I'm not really encouraged by the fact

01:10:15 ◼   ► that somebody made the decision

01:10:17 ◼   ► that betas have to go through app review.

01:10:19 ◼   ► 'Cause that's just stupid, that is stupid.

01:10:21 ◼   ► Why, that murders that feature, that feature is dead.

01:10:24 ◼   ► who will use that feature? It's stupid. To put your beta through AppReview.

01:10:30 ◼   ► What developer is going to want to sit on a beta while somebody looks at it?

01:10:33 ◼   ► Plus AppReview is not even... is backed up by weeks already.

01:10:39 ◼   ► And that goes back to Apple.

01:10:41 ◼   ► Any significant change also needs to go for review.

01:10:45 ◼   ► Why would you do that?

01:10:48 ◼   ► Well I think, and this is a scale problem with Apple, it's like, look Apple if you want to be

01:10:52 ◼   ► complete control freaks and improve everything in your store because you

01:10:54 ◼   ► really want that level of curation, great. Don't make your developers wait two

01:10:59 ◼   ► weeks. Right? Do one or the other. And for a while it hasn't been a problem.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Right now it's a problem because of iOS 8 being released that there was a

01:11:07 ◼   ► huge backup. So they should probably hire more people to do app review.

01:11:14 ◼   ► One, I think that would be a good idea. And two, asking developers to put their

01:11:19 ◼   ► beta apps through AppReview seems just ludicrous to me. But oh well, because we were all really

01:11:24 ◼   ► excited at the idea that you could associate 100 Apple IDs or whatever it was, 1000 Apple

01:11:28 ◼   ► IDs? I don't know. A decent number of Apple IDs, not device IDs, with your beta process

01:11:36 ◼   ► and then send the betas out and then the shoe dropped, which is, oh, and we need to approve

01:11:39 ◼   ► your betas for that. Which is too bad, because I mean, the other thing that's going on here

01:11:45 ◼   ► if people don't know, is that an account can be associated with 100 UD IDs to do betas.

01:11:51 ◼   ► And those are individual device IDs, which means like a few weeks ago when everybody

01:11:55 ◼   ► got an iPhone 6, all of their devices changed. And you can only have 100 devices associated

01:12:03 ◼   ► with your account for beta testing, and when you remove a slot, it stays there for a year.

01:12:10 ◼   ► So it was really exciting when they said, "Look, forget that, associate with Apple IDs

01:12:16 ◼   ► instead."

01:12:17 ◼   ► But the beta clearance thing is dumb.

01:12:20 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Every time a new device comes out, it's terrible for testers and developers because either

01:12:31 ◼   ► you plan for it, which means you can't have many testers in the first place, or you've

01:12:35 ◼   ► not planned for it and then you can't do any more testing because everybody buys new phones.

01:12:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it must be like a paranoid reaction to the idea of, of, um, the beta approval

01:12:45 ◼   ► must be like, oh, well then they can, they can, they're essentially selling it. They're

01:12:49 ◼   ► broadly making it available and we need to check and make sure that there is malware

01:12:52 ◼   ► or something like that. And it's like, you know, it's a beta, it's a beta, it's not in

01:12:56 ◼   ► the store. It is being controlled by a developer. You know who the developer is. They know,

01:13:03 ◼   ► they have a relationship with the developer that they know where they're getting a beta.

01:13:06 ◼   ► I just, I don't see.

01:13:09 ◼   ► So this is one of those areas where I'm disappointed

01:13:11 ◼   ► to see that Apple hasn't changed.

01:13:13 ◼   ► That is a prime level of paranoia to suggest

01:13:16 ◼   ► that we're gonna check everybody's betas

01:13:18 ◼   ► and approve them before launch.

01:13:19 ◼   ► It just seems unnecessary to me.

01:13:21 ◼   ► I don't see why, I don't see who needs to be protected there.

01:13:24 ◼   ► They're all consenting adults, should be fine.

01:13:26 ◼   ► - elephant in the room, there is an Apple event this week.

01:13:33 ◼   ► Yes, as we speak we're less than 48 hours from an Apple event.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Fantastic that you're going.

01:13:42 ◼   ► I am going. I got an invitation. That was a real question was

01:13:47 ◼   ► are they gonna want to invite the guy who doesn't work at Macworld to an Apple event?

01:13:51 ◼   ► And they invited me, which is very nice, so I will be there.

01:13:54 ◼   ► I'm very pleased for you, very pleased for us as well.

01:14:00 ◼   ► You can't come, you were not invited, Myke.

01:14:03 ◼   ► I try. But we can talk about it afterward on our show that's leverally placed on Mondays

01:14:08 ◼   ► usually so that we can be right before Apple events. Although this is a Thursday event

01:14:12 ◼   ► so it's not so bad. Yeah so we'll be discussing it on Monday. Yes. But you're going to be

01:14:18 ◼   ► covering the event live for Six Colors right? I, in some form I will be covering it, I will

01:14:27 ◼   ► be there, I will write things, I will tweet things. I'm trying, so we used live blog software

01:14:33 ◼   ► at Macworld, we'll use CoverLive, and it was part of a like a multi-thousand dollar

01:14:37 ◼   ► contract to use them and most of the live blog platforms are like that. There used to

01:14:43 ◼   ► be like a free tier and then like a cheap tier and now the way that the pricing works

01:14:48 ◼   ► essentially if I got a whole bunch of people, if thousands of people were like "oh Jason's

01:14:52 ◼   ► still live blogging, we'll go there" I would get a bill for thousands and thousands of

01:14:56 ◼   ► dollars which I am not going to pay. So then they put me in prison, so that doesn't work.

01:15:03 ◼   ► Don't go to prison for live blogging, Jason.

01:15:06 ◼   ► I know, live blogging is its own prison.

01:15:11 ◼   ► I've been looking for open source live blogging software, there's not very much of it and

01:15:14 ◼   ► it's not very good.

01:15:17 ◼   ► So much live blogging software is just polluted with, I mean nobody does live blogging anyway

01:15:20 ◼   ► so it's been polluted with all these other features of like, you know, Twitter streams

01:15:24 ◼   ► and weather and scores and other stuff like that, I don't even know.

01:15:29 ◼   ► It's not a very good market.

01:15:31 ◼   ► I found a thing that's a hosted service that's free which just gives me the heebie-jeebies

01:15:36 ◼   ► because I don't know who these people are, I don't know how they're making money, I don't

01:15:40 ◼   ► know why they offer it.

01:15:42 ◼   ► It seems to work, so I'm probably going to embed it on Six Colors and try to live blog

01:15:47 ◼   ► from it, but I'm going to make no guarantees that it'll actually work and I may end up

01:15:52 ◼   ► going back to just having a post that I update every now and then and post things on Twitter

01:15:58 ◼   ► because I don't have a lot of faith in,

01:16:02 ◼   ► I would really like something that is reasonably priced

01:16:04 ◼   ► that I could pay for and feel like this,

01:16:07 ◼   ► I'm paying for a service.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Unfortunately, my choices now are this thing that's free

01:16:11 ◼   ► or things that cost thousands of dollars.

01:16:12 ◼   ► So I'm gonna probably go with a thing that's free,

01:16:15 ◼   ► hope it doesn't crash, hope it doesn't, I don't know,

01:16:19 ◼   ► inject really weird ads in the middle of the coverage

01:16:22 ◼   ► or something and we'll see, we'll see how it goes.

01:16:25 ◼   ► - Who's gonna throw this out there?

01:16:27 ◼   ► a dedicated Twitter account and just embed that on the page?

01:16:32 ◼   ► I do have a dedicated Twitter account can I just embed that

01:16:36 ◼   ► like a stream from that and would it update automatically?

01:16:39 ◼   ► I bet it would. Well I'll look into that. Storify's got

01:16:43 ◼   ► a live blog feature now that I was really excited about and then I read

01:16:46 ◼   ► that it's part of the Storify,

01:16:48 ◼   ► you guessed it, enterprise level of service and I'm not gonna...

01:16:52 ◼   ► maybe someday. I aspire to have the budget for the enterprise level account

01:16:57 ◼   ► but I don't. I'm sure you could just embed

01:17:00 ◼   ► your Twitter stream on the page in some way. I did create a Six Colors live blog

01:17:05 ◼   ► account. There you go, see, just go with that. So I'm still experimenting with that and there is this

01:17:11 ◼   ► there is this live blog platform embed that did work so I might do that

01:17:16 ◼   ► we'll see, we'll see, but people should go on the day of the event, go visit

01:17:20 ◼   ► SixColors.com I'll be there, I'll write some things about it

01:17:23 ◼   ► during probably and then after. I do love that Gruber just sits there with his

01:17:27 ◼   ► pencil and his

01:17:28 ◼   ► Field Notes notebook and writes things down and doesn't have to type

01:17:32 ◼   ► and just gets to experience it and consider it

01:17:35 ◼   ► but I don't know. I feel like I need to break this to you

01:17:40 ◼   ► you don't have to do this. You know that now right? You don't have to do this.

01:17:45 ◼   ► This is what I'm saying is I could be like Gruber and just sit there with a

01:17:48 ◼   ► notebook and a pencil as

01:17:49 ◼   ► like as analog as possible and just ponder

01:17:53 ◼   ► what it all means. And I'm considering that as an option too, but I kinda, I don't know,

01:18:00 ◼   ► I think I would kinda miss it if it went away. They are live streaming it apparently, so

01:18:06 ◼   ► that takes the pressure off a little bit. I don't know what I'm gonna do.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Why would you do it? Surely your intentions are different to what they were at Macworld.

01:18:15 ◼   ► I type really fast, and so it's an advantage I have over people, and I do have an audience

01:18:19 ◼   ► of people who remember that I do a live blog of Apple events and so I could do it and a

01:18:24 ◼   ► lot of the things that I've been doing now are me asking the question like is this the

01:18:28 ◼   ► thing I want to keep doing and over time I imagine that some of the things that I decided

01:18:32 ◼   ► yes I do want to keep doing it I'll be like oh nah let's not do that and this is the first

01:18:36 ◼   ► one where I'm really I really don't know whether the right thing to do is do a live blog as

01:18:40 ◼   ► it happens just because why not and people people who will see six colors who might not

01:18:46 ◼   ► otherwise know that it exists but we'll find out, oh Jason has a live blog and he's doing

01:18:50 ◼   ► that on his site. I didn't know he had that site. Maybe there's some possibility there.

01:18:56 ◼   ► If I do it, I'll let Dan Morin, we'll dial in and do some color commentary which would

01:19:02 ◼   ► be nice because he's not going to be there and that's going to be sad. I don't know.

01:19:08 ◼   ► So I'm still, it's still up in the air. I may give it a try, I may get frustrated and

01:19:13 ◼   ► decide I'm gonna go all pencil or at the very least I'll do some tweeting but that might

01:19:19 ◼   ► be the live blog. I can do it there's just that question of do I really wanna play that

01:19:26 ◼   ► game or not. It's hard to give that up though I mean I've done them all for a long time

01:19:30 ◼   ► but it's also a lot of work and you do miss stuff because you're too busy typing and uploading

01:19:36 ◼   ► pictures and stuff. Talking about playing games, predictions? Can I ask you some predictions?

01:19:43 ◼   ► What do you think that we're going to see?

01:19:46 ◼   ► Well, the rumors are all out there that there's going to be new iPads

01:19:50 ◼   ► and there's going to be a ship date or probably just shipping Yosemite

01:19:57 ◼   ► and then there'll probably be some new Macs.

01:19:59 ◼   ► That will be part of the Mac story is Yosemite

01:20:02 ◼   ► and some new systems that are going to ship with Yosemite.

01:20:05 ◼   ► The big rumor is that there'll be a retina iMac, which is very exciting.

01:20:08 ◼   ► I'm interested to see what form that takes.

01:20:11 ◼   ► that would be our first retina Mac desktop. And as somebody who has thought

01:20:17 ◼   ► about eventually getting a retina display for my desk someday, I never

01:20:25 ◼   ► really imagined it would be an iMac but I listen to that and I think "well it's

01:20:29 ◼   ► probably gonna be really expensive" but I'm looking forward to seeing what

01:20:33 ◼   ► they do if they do a retina iMac and then I'm hoping that maybe the Mac Mini

01:20:37 ◼   ► will get bumped as well and but we got a there was a story this week in

01:20:43 ◼   ► Recode John Pekowski put to bed the rumor that the much rumored retina

01:20:48 ◼   ► MacBook Air would would come at this event that's not going to happen so I

01:20:54 ◼   ► mean my predictions are that the rumors will probably be true because they

01:20:57 ◼   ► usually are and and then I hope the Mac Mini gets a bump although it's possible

01:21:02 ◼   ► that won't happen till next year because Intel's in the middle of a chip

01:21:05 ◼   ► transition right now but I would really like to buy a Mac Mini and I'm not gonna

01:21:10 ◼   ► buy the one that's two years old so that's just me being selfish.

01:21:15 ◼   ► New iPads, okay, what is in a new iPad? Like what are we gonna see? Like are we

01:21:25 ◼   ► just gonna see the same form factors with what NFC in them? Touch ID?

01:21:31 ◼   ► Touch ID for sure. NFC is in the phones this year so if it's like Touch ID we would get

01:21:35 ◼   ► that in the iPads next year. I think there's a lot less need for Apple Pay. Right now the

01:21:39 ◼   ► NFC stuff is just Apple Pay. So how many people are paying with their iPad for something?

01:21:45 ◼   ► So something I've seen people say, and it's a reason but I don't know if I buy it, which

01:21:51 ◼   ► is that people could use them for point of sale terminals. I don't know if that's enough

01:21:59 ◼   ► of a reason to do it. I feel like it's... Oh, and they need the software and... I don't

01:22:05 ◼   ► know. Yeah, I feel like that's not really a world that Apple necessarily needs to get

01:22:10 ◼   ► into. I feel much more positive about the Touch ID stuff. I think there's a great question

01:22:16 ◼   ► about whether they go, you know, if there's an iPad Pro at some point, probably not at

01:22:21 ◼   ► this event, and what happens with the Mini. I love my iPad Mini. The iPad... it'll be

01:22:27 ◼   ► really interesting to see what they say about the iPad because iPad sales have slowed. They

01:22:33 ◼   ► are not growing anymore. And I think people are wondering what's the role that a tablet

01:22:39 ◼   ► plays in people's lives now because you don't buy a new one every year or two. They have

01:22:45 ◼   ► a longer life and we've got bigger phones now and we've got lighter laptops and where

01:22:51 ◼   ► does the tablet fit? And I think it would be interesting to see what Apple says about

01:22:55 ◼   ► the iPad, just what the words are. Normally, I mean, there'll be an investor call, the

01:23:01 ◼   ► analyst call the next week where we'll all read the tea leaves about what Tim Cook says

01:23:04 ◼   ► there when they say, "Can you give me a little more color about the iPad?" And he'll say,

01:23:08 ◼   ► "This is Tim. Yeah, we like the iPad." And that'll be... I just reenacted it for you.

01:23:13 ◼   ► You don't need to listen to the call now.

01:23:14 ◼   ► It's pretty good actually.

01:23:15 ◼   ► But I want to see that, right? I want to see what they say because then if you're into

01:23:19 ◼   ► Apple Kremlinology, most of the Kremlinology about Apple is stupid, but that kind of stuff

01:23:25 ◼   ► where it's like when like when Tim Cook said wearables is an area of interest for us, right?

01:23:30 ◼   ► It's like they do table setting. They're going to talk about the iPad and try to put it in

01:23:35 ◼   ► a favorable light of like, here's what we think the iPad is going for. And maybe they'll

01:23:40 ◼   ► just come out and say, oh, the iPad is great. Everybody loves it. It's awesome. It keeps

01:23:43 ◼   ► selling a lot. Here's some new ones. Goodbye. But they may say, they may have a take on

01:23:49 ◼   ► like what role tablets play and why the iPad, I mean, it'll all be why the iPad is so great,

01:23:54 ◼   ► they may have an interesting insight into their philosophy about what they're

01:23:58 ◼   ► trying to do with this product line and that that could be really interesting so

01:24:02 ◼   ► I would look for that because I feel like everybody's looking a little bit

01:24:04 ◼   ► more for a raison d'etre for there's some French for Montreal about of the

01:24:10 ◼   ► iPad and of tablets in general because there's been this hubbub about like

01:24:13 ◼   ► tablets have not taken off like smartphones did which is not surprising

01:24:17 ◼   ► but it's true and so what we know what do they say about the iPad I would look

01:24:22 ◼   ► I would look for that. And, uh, and you know, as a Mac guy, I'm encouraged by, you know,

01:24:27 ◼   ► I want to see what they have to say about the Mac too, because that's all it's always nice when they

01:24:30 ◼   ► do an event and there's a, there's Mac stuff at it that doesn't happen that often. And this'll be,

01:24:35 ◼   ► we'll get that cause we'll get Yosemite and we'll get some new, new Mac news. And I, and we can take

01:24:41 ◼   ► a bet about whether they boast about the thinness of the, of the iMac, which is the most pointless

01:24:46 ◼   ► statistic ever, because you don't actually like carry an iMac anywhere. So it doesn't really need

01:24:51 ◼   ► to be that thin. We can make it super thin on the edge, just the edge. Yeah, of course.

01:24:56 ◼   ► So thin it'll cut you, don't move it, just leave it there. Look how thin the keyboard is.

01:25:02 ◼   ► And it's at Apple's campus this time, so that'll be kind of fun to go on Thursday morning to Apple's

01:25:08 ◼   ► campus, and I will report back, Myke, I'll report back to you about what's going on afterward.

01:25:13 ◼   ► I'll let you, I'll give you a call maybe next Monday, and we'll break it all down then.

01:25:20 ◼   ► But I'm looking forward to going and I'm really glad that they invited me, because I made

01:25:26 ◼   ► no assumptions about that, but it'll be cool to be there, even though I'm not at Macworld

01:25:30 ◼   ► anymore.

01:25:31 ◼   ► Don't forget, listeners, we may be late by Monday, but we will have a guy who's touched

01:25:36 ◼   ► the hardware.

01:25:37 ◼   ► Don't forget that.

01:25:38 ◼   ► That's what we get in JSON.

01:25:40 ◼   ► Hands on.

01:25:41 ◼   ► I hope so.

01:25:42 ◼   ► Hands on with JSON Snell.

01:25:43 ◼   ► You know, they may say, "Oh, JSON, we're glad you got here," but you can't go in the hands-on.

01:25:47 ◼   ► You have to just get that.

01:25:48 ◼   ► That's for real media people.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Actually you can just stand outside and look through the window. Just through the window and you can

01:25:54 ◼   ► you can breathe on the window if you like but nothing more than that.

01:25:57 ◼   ► Last thing, any reason for Thursday do you think? Thursday seems like a strange day

01:26:03 ◼   ► these days. It's quite late in the week and I don't know.

01:26:08 ◼   ► I don't know. They may have been concerned about the people traveling over the Canadian

01:26:16 ◼   ► Thanksgiving weekend which was last weekend. That's a real stretch Jason. I know I honestly don't know

01:26:24 ◼   ► it's it's and they're doing their corporate results the following week so I I don't I don't know I

01:26:30 ◼   ► think they just I I don't get it maybe somebody had a somebody's kid had a piano recital on the

01:26:35 ◼   ► Tuesday so they moved into Thursday I really I have no idea I this is where my apple Kremlinology

01:26:40 ◼   ► falls in the in the tank is because with it being the best idea you know but being on campus

01:26:46 ◼   ► It could be any time.

01:26:47 ◼   ► They could do it Monday at midnight.

01:26:49 ◼   ► It doesn't make a difference.

01:26:51 ◼   ► I hate to say it, but it's possible that Tim Cook or another senior executive had a speaking

01:26:55 ◼   ► engagement somewhere in China or Europe or something on the Tuesday, and they're like,

01:26:59 ◼   ► "Gah, we should do it that week.

01:27:00 ◼   ► That's a perfect week, but we can't."

01:27:02 ◼   ► And they said, "Well, we could do it Thursday."

01:27:03 ◼   ► It could be something that pedestrian, I have to say, where it's like that's the day where

01:27:07 ◼   ► we have no other encumbrances, but it's not Friday when nobody's paying attention.

01:27:13 ◼   ► got to be Tuesday Wednesday or Thursday and we can do that Thursday but I don't

01:27:16 ◼   ► know I don't know or maybe the Yosemite people were like no every day counts

01:27:20 ◼   ► please give us till Thursday to ship the golden master number five maybe one sorry

01:27:26 ◼   ► one very very last thing this will be the last thing sure sure Myke there's

01:27:30 ◼   ► been a lot of public complaint about iOS 8 recently and stability and things like

01:27:36 ◼   ► that do you think Apple will address anything like this at all at the event

01:27:39 ◼   ► or do they just pretend like nothing's happening?

01:27:43 ◼   ► - Seems unlikely, although they may,

01:27:45 ◼   ► if they do it, it's gonna be,

01:27:47 ◼   ► oh, and this is the thing I think they will roll out,

01:27:49 ◼   ► is I think they'll roll out Apple Pay,

01:27:51 ◼   ► 'cause I said that was coming in October,

01:27:52 ◼   ► or they'll say they're rolling it out,

01:27:54 ◼   ► and they'll say, "Oh, iOS 8 is great, people love it."

01:27:58 ◼   ► Right, 'cause they'll always say that,

01:27:59 ◼   ► look how many people have downloaded it.

01:28:02 ◼   ► But they might say, and we've got a new version,

01:28:05 ◼   ► iOS 8.1, that will be coming out next week,

01:28:08 ◼   ► and it'll enable Apple Pay,

01:28:09 ◼   ► and it'll also address some issues

01:28:12 ◼   ► that our customers have had,

01:28:13 ◼   ► and aren't we great?

01:28:14 ◼   ► I mean, they may do it like that.

01:28:16 ◼   ► That would be a way to address

01:28:18 ◼   ► that there are some issues without dwelling on it

01:28:21 ◼   ► and kind of spinning it positively by saying,

01:28:24 ◼   ► you know, add Apple Pay, which is awesome, right?

01:28:27 ◼   ► So it wouldn't surprise me

01:28:28 ◼   ► if there's some announcement like that,

01:28:29 ◼   ► but that's how they would phrase it.

01:28:30 ◼   ► They're not gonna apologize for bugs.

01:28:32 ◼   ► That almost never happens.

01:28:36 ◼   ► But I think that's a scenario where they might address

01:28:39 ◼   ► iOS 8 by talking about 8.1 and explaining that maybe

01:28:43 ◼   ► it's got some fixes in it as well.

01:28:46 ◼   ► I want to buy some things with Apple Pay.

01:28:49 ◼   ► So there's a whole show about that.

01:28:51 ◼   ► Me telling you the story of me buying peanut butter

01:28:53 ◼   ► with Apple Pay.

01:28:54 ◼   ► - I want to hear what the experience is like.

01:28:56 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:28:57 ◼   ► All right, maybe next week.

01:28:59 ◼   ► And I'll get my Kindle in the next week or two too.

01:29:01 ◼   ► So we still got that.

01:29:02 ◼   ► Shine on Kindle dreamers.

01:29:03 ◼   ► It's going to happen.

01:29:05 ◼   ► It's gonna be like John Siracusa talking about his TiVo, it's gonna be Jason talking about

01:29:08 ◼   ► his Kindle.

01:29:09 ◼   ► Woo!

01:29:10 ◼   ► Stay tuned, that show will happen, it'll be episode 94 in two years.

01:29:15 ◼   ► Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Yes.

01:29:18 ◼   ► If you want to catch the show notes for this week's episode of Upgrade, take yourself,

01:29:22 ◼   ► point your web browser over at relay.fm/upgrade/five.

01:29:27 ◼   ► If you would like to stay tuned to Jason's incredible coverage, or not, upcoming over

01:29:34 ◼   ► at sixcolors.com and he has a little button there where you can press Apple Event and

01:29:39 ◼   ► it will take you straight to the dedicated Apple Event page.

01:29:42 ◼   ► It's so professional.

01:29:43 ◼   ► Indeed.

01:29:44 ◼   ► That's all teach.

01:29:45 ◼   ► I got an email from our friend Federico Vittice who said, "Jason," I'm going to do my Federico

01:29:51 ◼   ► Vittice now, "Jason, you need to have a page for the event on your site."

01:29:57 ◼   ► And I said, "That's a good idea Federico," and I made a page.

01:30:00 ◼   ► So all hats off to Federico.

01:30:02 ◼   ► And there's also a Yosemite page there because I anticipate I will have lots of things to

01:30:05 ◼   ► say about Yosemite too.

01:30:07 ◼   ► So these are my experiments with when you build a site entirely yourself, you have that

01:30:11 ◼   ► moment of like, "Oh yeah, I should have a page for that.

01:30:14 ◼   ► How do I do that?"

01:30:15 ◼   ► But it's there.

01:30:17 ◼   ► So thanks to Federico for suggesting it.

01:30:19 ◼   ► That guy's an entrepreneur.

01:30:21 ◼   ► He's always thinking.

01:30:23 ◼   ► There's no off on his switch.

01:30:25 ◼   ► He's just always on.

01:30:26 ◼   ► And if you would like to catch Jason on Twitter, he is @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.

01:30:32 ◼   ► I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:30:35 ◼   ► Thanks again to our sponsors for this week, Dash and Pilot.

01:30:38 ◼   ► You wanna go and check those guys out.

01:30:41 ◼   ► We'll be back next time.

01:30:42 ◼   ► Bye-bye.

01:30:43 ◼   ► - Ahoy, telephone.

01:30:44 ◼   ► [ Music ]