434: Bob to Bob to Bob
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From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 434.
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Today's show is brought to you by TextExpander, Membafall and Fitbot.
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My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snow.
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Hi Jason Snow.
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Hi Myke Hurley, how are you?
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I'm very good, I have a hashtag Snow Talk question for you.
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Comes from Dudak who asks, "Who are you rooting for in the World Cup and who do you think
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- Oh, the World Cup just started.
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This is soccer, American soccer.
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It's the biggest event, sporting event in the world.
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And the US is in it, so I'm gonna root for the US
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because I'm an American.
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I will also be cheering on England, I think,
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'cause I always do that.
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And who do I think is going to win?
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- Oh, you know, I had a prediction
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and now I've forgotten what it was.
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It's, I'm gonna say just to doom them,
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I'm gonna say England.
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- Why would you do this?
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- To doom them.
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- Yeah, that's fun.
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- That's part of the doom.
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You gotta set the expectations high
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so that the defeat is crushing.
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Like that's how you gotta do it.
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- It's gonna be a rough day for you on Friday.
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- I mean, I could go to Argentina if you like, but like--
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- You can if you, I would prefer,
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Friday's gonna be a bad day, you know?
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- It's England versus the US.
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Well, the good news is, Myke, the good news is,
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I can't watch that match because Fox, the TV network
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that's carrying the World Cup in the US has decided
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that they need, they wanna keep it rolling.
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That's Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.
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They need to keep it rolling with the sports
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after the World Cup is over.
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And of course the World Cup is over fairly early
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here in the US because it's in Qatar.
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So they decided months ago, like six months ago,
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that what they would do is they would schedule
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a college football game right after England versus USA
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so they could keep the sports rolling.
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And they thought, fans of international soccer,
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what would they wanna see more than UCLA at Cal?
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And so I will not see that World Cup match
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because I will be driving to the stadium
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for the college football game
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that follows the World Cup match.
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- Incredible.
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So stay tuned, Americans, to watch me in a few layers of clothing watch a good football
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team play my football team.
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Even though it's Christmas, take off that red shirt, you know what I mean?
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Oh yeah, I mean, there was, well, we just went over the weekend to the Cal Stanford
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game, the big game.
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It was, well, I would say it was great.
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The first three quarters were not so great.
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The fourth quarter was great, great.
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It's actually the most fun I've had.
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It was essentially the reason that I go to sporting events is we had a mostly full stadium
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shouting at the top of their lungs while exciting things happened, and that hasn't happened
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at the California Memorial Stadium. That's fun. Kind of a long time. We had a great time,
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but of course there's lots of people in red. There were people sitting next to us in red
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because they're the Stanford fans there. The enemy finally appears from time to time, and
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you can say take off that red shirt to them all you like. They won't. They won't do it.
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Because they're doing it purposefully. Yeah. And they're there. Anyway, so yeah, we'll
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be back at that stadium on Friday for the last game of the season, and so I'm not gonna
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to see England vs the US, it's just as well.
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If you would like to send in a question of your own to help open the show, just send
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out a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk or use question mark snow talk in the Relay FM
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members discord, which you get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus, where you will
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get access to our wonderful Relay FM members discord.
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You will get longer ad-free episodes of Upgrade every single week in your podcast app of choice.
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It is just $5 a month or $50 a year.
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But we have a special promotion.
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From now until December the 17th, you can save 20% on an annual plan.
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You can find out more at GiveRelay.com.
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So you can do this as a gifting thing.
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We did this before.
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So maybe the holidays are coming up.
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You don't know what, you know, people want to buy you something.
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You don't know what to suggest them.
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Possibly some holidays on the horizon, you know?
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And you could say to that person in your life,
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"Go to giverelay.com and give me a gift for Upgrade Plus."
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- Oh, I see. - But what we're doing
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this time. - Not what I thought
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you were gonna do.
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I thought you were gonna go the other way.
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Go to somebody and say, "I gave you the gift of a podcast."
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But instead it's like,
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"I demand the gift of a podcast."
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- Jason, let's be real.
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No one's buying this for an unsuspecting person
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in their life, you know what I mean?
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- This is like a couple of weeks ago
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where you were talking about your slippers
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and I made the grownup decision to text Lauren
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with a link to your slippers and say,
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"This would be a thing you could get me for Christmas rather than buying them myself."
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This is a little like that, which is, "Oh, here's an idea!
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A podcast I like has a thing that you could buy and you could give to me."
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So, you know, go there.
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GiveRelay.com.
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But the thing that we're doing this time that's different to what we've done in the past,
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you could just do this yourself.
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If you go to GetUpgradePlus.com, sign up for an annual plan, and use the code 2023holidays
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check out 2023 holidays. You'll get 20% off your first year of an annual subscription to Upgrade Plus.
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Plans will renew at the full price after this year. We're telling you this in advance so if you
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don't want that you've got to turn off the auto renew but they will renew at full price otherwise
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but you can get an entire year of Upgrade Plus for $40 and that includes all the previous content,
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a bunch of members' content, access to our Discord, it's all available.
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Now, are the people who are Upgrade Plus subscribers now hearing this now?
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I mean, they can.
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Well, like in the episode.
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Does this count as an ad, or does this not count as an ad?
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You tell me.
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I don't know, I feel like since you could potentially, as a subscriber, give this as
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a gift, you should hear about it.
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Okay, see, there it is.
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Now, that's why you heard about it.
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if you're an Upgrade Plus subscriber.
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You heard that.
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- But also, if you're a subscriber,
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and next year you would like it to be cheaper,
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there are ways now you could make that happen
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for yourself, I suppose.
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- I suppose.
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It's gonna take some work.
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- Don't ask me for the logistics to that one.
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I don't know how that's gonna work.
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But you know, it's not impossible.
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- Hey, why don't you tell people about the Upgradies?
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- It's time to vote in the ninth annual Upgradies.
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Go to upgradees.vote.
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Voting will be open until December 12th.
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We've had hundreds of submissions so far.
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I can actually tell you, we had 288 people
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have filled out their nominations for the Upgraders.
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- Good start.
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- Which is a great start.
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But there's loads of time, but I want you to go there now.
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Go to upgradees.vote.
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You don't have to fill in every category.
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Just fill in the ones that you care about.
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Let us know what your favorite tech products,
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your books, movies, podcasts are.
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upgradees.vote, and we will be putting that one out there
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towards the end of December.
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I think December 26th, we have decided on,
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is going to be--
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- Right, but the deadline is gonna be quite a bit earlier
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so that we can compile.
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- Yes, it will be our Boxing Day episode.
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Also, really noticed a lot of people getting very excited
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about the favorite tech screw up category
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that we do every year, 'cause whoa, what a bonanza.
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- What could it be, right?
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- What a bonanza of things to choose from there.
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amazing, and then I had a question for you,
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which is, when we did the episode,
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did the Upgrades.vote go to the old form
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before it went to the new form?
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- Nope, nope.
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- Or was it just Twitter's-- - Just the Twitter brand.
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- So what you're saying is Twitter's content caching--
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- Mm-hmm, is poor.
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- Is not up to date.
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It always goes to the current voting, right?
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Like I just changed that, I did the DNS propagation stuff,
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and it may have just taken a little bit longer,
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but yes, Twitter was saying eighth,
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but if you actually went to Upgrades.vote,
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it would take you to the form for the ninth annual upgrades.
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- Well, Twitter finally got with the program, I guess,
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but it took a while.
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- Can you imagine that something was broken at Twitter?
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Can you imagine that?
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- I can't, I was shocked, shocked I say.
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- You've got some follow-up for us.
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- I have a little tiny bit of iPad follow-up
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that I wanted to throw in here.
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This is sort of like the continuing story of Stage Manager,
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which I guess it's sort of follow out from Connected
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because Federico keeps talking about
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the continuing story of Stage Manager.
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I just wanted to say a couple of betas have passed in 16.2
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where external display support is turned back on.
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And I didn't get to use the last beta,
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but the current beta I used for a few hours,
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one afternoon last week, plugged into my studio display.
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So I was running external display on my studio display.
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And I just wanted to do a quick report in.
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We'll see how it goes,
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and we'll talk about it probably more when it ships,
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but I'd say it's getting better.
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I didn't have any crashes while I was using it.
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And that was, as you know, from talking to Federico,
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that was a serious problem before,
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is you would kind of be going along
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and suddenly the little gear would appear
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and suddenly you'd be back at the lock screen
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and everything would be gone.
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And I haven't had any of those
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or didn't during this experience, which was nice.
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But, so it's better.
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It still feels like it's not all the way there, right?
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It is, there are still moments where I think,
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"Mm, why is it like this?"
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Or, "How can I get this thing to go to the right place?"
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And it's just not all the way there.
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My biggest frustration I find,
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and maybe this is 'cause I'm a weirdo
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in terms of how I use windows, but like right now,
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I have a window in the center of my screen.
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This is how I work.
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I have a wide 27-inch display, right?
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I don't want a window that wide.
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And honestly, the 27-inch display
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is right in front of my face, right?
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So when I'm working on a document,
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I want it front and center.
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And one of the problems that on the iPad
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that Stage Manager has is when you have two documents
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on screen, it really wants them to be side by side.
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And so I was working on a story using Stage Manager
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on the external display on the iPad.
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And I wanted to bring up a web browser
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and have it kind of be on the side
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so that I could look things up on the web
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and then paste things in and paste links
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and all of that stuff.
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And when I brought in Safari, what it did is say,
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oh, I know what you want.
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You want Safari on the left side
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and your document that you're working on on the right side.
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And that's not what I wanted.
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I want my document in the center.
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I don't wanna be looking to,
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I know this makes me sound like a very weird person,
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but like, I don't, I'm not interested in writing.
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Writing is hard enough without looking to the right.
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I just want it right in front of my eyes.
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I'll bring that Safari window forward when I want it
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and then it'll go behind, you know,
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overlap a little bit when I'm working here.
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And Stage Manager just doesn't want to do it.
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You either have to make that other window
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really, really huge so that Stage Manager
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can be moved kind of in front of it to the center,
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or you have to add a third window,
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like a proxy window, a fake window,
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an irrelevant window of some app you don't want to see
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so that you can have it on the right side
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and the Safari on the left side
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and then your window will be in the center.
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And it's just ridiculous.
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Like it's ridiculous.
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It is the system.
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And I know that this is an extreme version of the,
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I just wanna put my windows where I want them.
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Like, and again, I don't need it to be like,
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I wanna put it on this pixel or that pixel.
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But if I say, I'd like this window in the middle,
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it should let me put it there.
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And it just doesn't and it's maddening.
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So I hate that about it.
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And I hate that that leads to more window management
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because it's not letting me put my window
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where I want it to be.
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'Cause it thinks the optimal window configuration for me
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is side by side and it's not.
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- No, it's not. - It's not.
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- I have a bunch of like Moom shortcuts,
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like configured to put things in the middle in some way.
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Whether like just take the window at its current size
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and center it for me,
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or like I have like an optimized size
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that I want say for Safari or whatever.
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So I'm very much like you with that.
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I want the main thing in the middle,
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and there may be some stuff peeking out
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and I can select it if I need to for reference,
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but the main thing I'm working on
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right in the middle of the screen.
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- And there's usually an optimal size for that window
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and I don't want it,
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I actually usually don't even have it
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extend all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom,
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but definitely it's in the middle,
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taking up the middle third-ish.
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And Moom from ManyTricks is great at that.
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Some other apps, lots of other apps do that.
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That new Raycast app has a bunch of window management
00:12:50
◼
►
shortcuts built into it.
00:12:51
◼
►
There are lots of utilities that'll do this.
00:12:53
◼
►
Yeah, so anyway, it's very frustrating that that is not,
00:12:56
◼
►
that the operating system is basically like,
00:12:58
◼
►
we don't think you should have a window in the center
00:13:01
◼
►
unless there are two or zero windows on,
00:13:05
◼
►
like why would you think that?
00:13:06
◼
►
I have a great tip here, which is,
00:13:10
◼
►
I was frustrated and haven't been using this as much
00:13:13
◼
►
because when I do it, I have this thing about like,
00:13:14
◼
►
how am I gonna get a keyboard and a track pad hooked up
00:13:17
◼
►
to my iPad so that I can use them?
00:13:20
◼
►
And then I realized, with the help of a friend
00:13:22
◼
►
who suggested this,
00:13:24
◼
►
well, my Mac is still here, right?
00:13:26
◼
►
I'm just unplugging the display from the Mac
00:13:28
◼
►
and plugging it into the iPad.
00:13:30
◼
►
But the Mac's still sitting here, right?
00:13:32
◼
►
And so when I have the iPad all set up
00:13:34
◼
►
with external display,
00:13:35
◼
►
if I reach down to my trackpad that I use with my Mac
00:13:38
◼
►
and move it to the right, off the edge of the screen,
00:13:41
◼
►
guess what it does?
00:13:43
◼
►
Pops over into the iPad using universal control.
00:13:45
◼
►
At which point I can use my Mac still connected to my Mac,
00:13:48
◼
►
keyboard and trackpad to drive the iPad
00:13:53
◼
►
that's driving my external display.
00:13:56
◼
►
And it totally works.
00:13:57
◼
►
So that's hilarious.
00:13:58
◼
►
I'd never even considered that.
00:14:01
◼
►
And it totally works.
00:14:02
◼
►
So that actually makes it a lot easier
00:14:04
◼
►
to plug my iPad into the screen
00:14:06
◼
►
'cause I don't have to worry about the input devices.
00:14:07
◼
►
They're just sitting there
00:14:08
◼
►
'cause they're part of universal control.
00:14:11
◼
►
So that was fun.
00:14:12
◼
►
And then my other observation for this quick bit
00:14:14
◼
►
of follow-up is I still love my iPad
00:14:16
◼
►
and use it as much as ever.
00:14:17
◼
►
I know that there's like this vibe out there of like,
00:14:19
◼
►
"Oh, well, those people who really liked their iPad,
00:14:21
◼
►
Apple Silicon happened
00:14:22
◼
►
and they're not as into their iPad anymore."
00:14:23
◼
►
I'm not really one of those people.
00:14:25
◼
►
I still love my iPad.
00:14:26
◼
►
Here's where Apple Silicon made an effect though,
00:14:28
◼
►
is it is absolutely true that once they came out
00:14:31
◼
►
with the Apple Silicon MacBook Air,
00:14:33
◼
►
that product was so good that what it made me do
00:14:39
◼
►
is it removed my reluctance to travel with an iPad
00:14:42
◼
►
and a MacBook Air.
00:14:44
◼
►
That the old Intel MacBook Air, I was like,
00:14:46
◼
►
You know, it's so much worse than my desktop Mac
00:14:50
◼
►
and an extra thing to carry that I'm not gonna bother.
00:14:54
◼
►
And I know that's a weird psychological thing,
00:14:56
◼
►
but like, it was a barrier to me.
00:14:58
◼
►
It was like, I don't like this thing.
00:15:00
◼
►
It's way behind the times.
00:15:01
◼
►
And it's another thing to carry.
00:15:04
◼
►
So I'm just gonna try to make do with my iPad.
00:15:07
◼
►
And with the Apple Silicon MacBook Air,
00:15:09
◼
►
and now I have the M2, that's over, right?
00:15:13
◼
►
Like the M2 is capable of doing anything.
00:15:15
◼
►
I know it's not as fast as my Mac Studio, but it is capable of doing anything I want
00:15:20
◼
►
And so I've just reverted to "I'm going to travel with the MacBook Air and my iPad."
00:15:25
◼
►
But what that has done is it has removed one level of pressure off of me, which was all
00:15:29
◼
►
of my attempts, desperate attempts, to get everything that I do on the iPad, everything
00:15:34
◼
►
I do to work on the iPad, right?
00:15:37
◼
►
And I just have given up on that.
00:15:38
◼
►
Like I've stopped trying to put the square peg in the round hole here.
00:15:43
◼
►
like the iPad is gonna be what it's gonna be.
00:15:45
◼
►
And when I travel with the iPad and the MacBook Air,
00:15:49
◼
►
90, you know, I am using,
00:15:50
◼
►
I'm not gonna give it a percentage.
00:15:52
◼
►
I'm just gonna say, I only am using the MacBook Air
00:15:55
◼
►
when I need to do a thing that the iPad can't do,
00:15:58
◼
►
like a podcast, but I travel with it now.
00:16:03
◼
►
So that's my report about where I am with this.
00:16:06
◼
►
It does take the excitement
00:16:09
◼
►
out of the external display support a little bit, right?
00:16:11
◼
►
because I've sort of, I'm no longer playing with the idea
00:16:16
◼
►
that I'm going all iPad some of the time, right?
00:16:20
◼
►
It's just like, that's not happening now.
00:16:23
◼
►
But anyway, it is getting better.
00:16:25
◼
►
It's still frustrating.
00:16:26
◼
►
And bottom line is, you mentioned "Moom."
00:16:29
◼
►
Like, I think bottom line, that is the way forward
00:16:31
◼
►
for stage manager on the iPad,
00:16:35
◼
►
is I think they need some more discrete window
00:16:39
◼
►
management controls that do things like what Moom does,
00:16:43
◼
►
where you can say, instead of just minimize
00:16:45
◼
►
or send this to the iPad or whatever,
00:16:48
◼
►
where you can say, put this in the center,
00:16:51
◼
►
put this on the left.
00:16:52
◼
►
Whether it's tiling, like what Windows does
00:16:55
◼
►
and like what Federico, I think, wants,
00:16:57
◼
►
or whether it's just sort of moving windows into places,
00:17:01
◼
►
we don't have to call it tiling, it's okay.
00:17:03
◼
►
You don't have to call it tiling if you don't want to.
00:17:05
◼
►
But having that ability to fairly quickly,
00:17:07
◼
►
with a shortcut or a keyboard shortcut or a gesture
00:17:11
◼
►
or something that you click down
00:17:12
◼
►
from the multitasking controls,
00:17:15
◼
►
a way to say this window to the center, please.
00:17:18
◼
►
And when they get that,
00:17:20
◼
►
I think it will be a much more usable thing.
00:17:22
◼
►
But right now, yeah, it's better, but still not great.
00:17:24
◼
►
- Just as like a, for me, like a,
00:17:29
◼
►
talking about this as like a line to draw, maybe,
00:17:31
◼
►
I'm so happy with my move to the Mac for work completely.
00:17:37
◼
►
I remain very happy with my decisions.
00:17:40
◼
►
I still use my iPad mini every day and I love it.
00:17:43
◼
►
And I use it for lots of things.
00:17:45
◼
►
Most of it is just consumption of various stuff
00:17:47
◼
►
which can be work, you know, like I'll check messages
00:17:50
◼
►
and all that kind of stuff.
00:17:51
◼
►
But I'm no longer sitting down
00:17:53
◼
►
and opening two Google Sheets side by side to do something.
00:17:57
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:17:57
◼
►
Like I've just, I've given up on that kind of stuff.
00:18:00
◼
►
For me, I'm just happier to get my MacBook
00:18:03
◼
►
and do it that way and it works much better.
00:18:05
◼
►
And these two devices now fit way better into my life
00:18:09
◼
►
when I decided to let them do the things
00:18:11
◼
►
that they are both best at.
00:18:13
◼
►
- Yeah, I'm doing more iPad stuff than you are,
00:18:15
◼
►
but it's definitely true.
00:18:17
◼
►
And now, especially that we're in the cooler months here
00:18:21
◼
►
and I'm in an unheated, I mean, I have a space here
00:18:23
◼
►
that I turn on in the week, but on the weekend, I don't.
00:18:26
◼
►
And so if I need to do something,
00:18:28
◼
►
having the MacBook Air and having it be a computer
00:18:31
◼
►
that I feel like is up to date and current
00:18:33
◼
►
and has all the stuff that I want to do my job.
00:18:36
◼
►
If I have to do something computery,
00:18:38
◼
►
something that's gonna be better
00:18:39
◼
►
with a computer than the iPad,
00:18:41
◼
►
I can fight through it on the iPad,
00:18:42
◼
►
or I could just go get the computer.
00:18:44
◼
►
Having that laptop out here in the cold, cold garage,
00:18:47
◼
►
I'll just come and get it and bring it in the house, right?
00:18:49
◼
►
Like, so it is, I'm much more inclined
00:18:52
◼
►
to pull that laptop in and use it in the house
00:18:56
◼
►
than I used to be because it's so much better.
00:18:59
◼
►
And that means fundamentally, necessarily,
00:19:02
◼
►
the iPad isn't, that threshold where I go,
00:19:05
◼
►
I'm not gonna do this on the iPad
00:19:06
◼
►
is a lot lower than it used to be.
00:19:08
◼
►
I used to force stuff like using Google docs,
00:19:11
◼
►
which is terrible on the iPad.
00:19:13
◼
►
I used to force more of that stuff.
00:19:15
◼
►
And now I reached that point and I'm like,
00:19:17
◼
►
I'm just gonna go get the MacBook Air.
00:19:18
◼
►
- Yep. - And that's fine.
00:19:20
◼
►
All right, this episode is brought to you in part
00:19:23
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►
Jason, let's do some upstream because something bananas is happening at Disney and I need
00:21:32
◼
►
you to tell me what's going on.
00:21:34
◼
►
Well, yeah, something wild. So the news is that on a Sunday night, Disney announced that
00:21:44
◼
►
they had fired their CEO, Bob Chapek, who succeeded Bob Iger, who was the longtime CEO
00:21:52
◼
►
of Disney. And they replaced Bob Chapek with Bob Iger. They brought the old Bob back. We're
00:21:59
◼
►
just Bob cycling here, right? It's like from Bob to Bob to Bob. We're bobbing along.
00:22:04
◼
►
Get all your Bob jokes out now, Killer Bob. You know, Bob Iger killed Twin Peaks. He canceled
00:22:09
◼
►
Twin Peaks when he was running ABC, where the killer on Twin Peaks was Killer Bob. Ironies!
00:22:15
◼
►
So what does this mean? A lot of people in the spring were like, "I don't know about
00:22:20
◼
►
this Bob Chaypick." Like, culturally, he's a parks guy. A lot of the people in the movie
00:22:26
◼
►
and TV part did not like him and did not like the restructuring he was doing, and he took
00:22:31
◼
►
creative people out of positions of authority. And if there's any place that this change
00:22:35
◼
►
is being hailed, it is in the creative community because he was not their guy and Bob Iger
00:22:40
◼
►
is their guy. So who Bob Iger totally understands the creative side of this in a way that Bob
00:22:46
◼
►
Chapek never did. However, in the spring, everybody was talking about that and about
00:22:50
◼
►
how how Chapek bungled the the issues in Florida where they had the don't say gay law and then
00:22:58
◼
►
He was quiet about it, and then he came out and apologized,
00:23:02
◼
►
which led to a conflagration with the governor of Florida.
00:23:05
◼
►
And it was this whole mess, and they're like,
00:23:07
◼
►
"Wow, he's not very good at this, is he?"
00:23:08
◼
►
- Couldn't have done it worse, right?
00:23:10
◼
►
Every single way that that was done,
00:23:12
◼
►
he chose the wrong option in every single possibility.
00:23:16
◼
►
- Could not, that was one of those things
00:23:17
◼
►
where he didn't just step on a rake, he stepped on two rakes.
00:23:20
◼
►
So it was not good.
00:23:22
◼
►
And you know, Che Pek has,
00:23:24
◼
►
Iger left the job right before the pandemic.
00:23:28
◼
►
And so, you know, Disney, all their parks shut down.
00:23:30
◼
►
Like it was tough.
00:23:32
◼
►
JPEG was given a difficult situation.
00:23:37
◼
►
And also a lot of the assumptions that Iger made
00:23:40
◼
►
in building up Disney+ have been proven to be,
00:23:43
◼
►
there's been a shift going on.
00:23:45
◼
►
That Netflix had a bad quarter last quarter
00:23:49
◼
►
and Wall Street was like,
00:23:50
◼
►
why are we spending so much money on streaming?
00:23:52
◼
►
It's time for it to make money,
00:23:53
◼
►
which I would argue is a little premature,
00:23:55
◼
►
but that's what's happened.
00:23:56
◼
►
And so look, a lot of headwinds, as we say, headwinds,
00:24:02
◼
►
And yet, in the spring, the Disney,
00:24:07
◼
►
and Chapek's contract was gonna expire in the fall.
00:24:10
◼
►
In the spring, Disney's board extended his contract
00:24:13
◼
►
for two years, which, while not a huge vote of approval,
00:24:17
◼
►
because it was for two years,
00:24:19
◼
►
could have been longer, it wasn't.
00:24:20
◼
►
- It was surprising at the time though, right?
00:24:22
◼
►
'cause I remember listening to Downstream
00:24:25
◼
►
and you and Julia were talking about like,
00:24:27
◼
►
before then, are they gonna keep him around at all?
00:24:32
◼
►
So it was a surprise that they kept him around.
00:24:35
◼
►
- There was a real question in the spring and summer
00:24:37
◼
►
whether they were gonna renew Chapek
00:24:40
◼
►
or whether this was the opportunity to walk away from him.
00:24:42
◼
►
And I think at the time the question was,
00:24:45
◼
►
well, if we fired him, who would we put in charge?
00:24:49
◼
►
And you know, Bob Iger is out there
00:24:51
◼
►
like he's doing some investments, he's sailing on a yacht,
00:24:54
◼
►
he's just having a good time.
00:24:56
◼
►
And I think they thought, you know what,
00:24:58
◼
►
how bad could it be?
00:24:59
◼
►
We're gonna re-up Chapek, we'll see how he does,
00:25:01
◼
►
we can pull the plug at any time.
00:25:03
◼
►
And then they found out how bad it could be.
00:25:06
◼
►
Meanwhile, in the background, and there was a story,
00:25:09
◼
►
Puck News ran a story, like last week,
00:25:11
◼
►
Matt Bellamy wrote a piece about how he had been hearing
00:25:16
◼
►
that Iger had been bad mouthing Disney privately.
00:25:21
◼
►
You know, and remember,
00:25:23
◼
►
Iger picked Chapek as his successor, right?
00:25:26
◼
►
But he did not like how it was going and he was saying so.
00:25:29
◼
►
And the piece was sort of like,
00:25:31
◼
►
this is really interesting just from a perspective of,
00:25:34
◼
►
you're probably not supposed to do this.
00:25:36
◼
►
Well, it turns out it sounds like Iger basically
00:25:40
◼
►
was so frustrated by what he was seeing at Disney
00:25:42
◼
►
that he started to say things about it
00:25:44
◼
►
because I think he wanted to either precipitate a change at Disney, maybe bring himself back,
00:25:51
◼
►
maybe that wasn't part of the calculation, maybe he was positioning himself to be ready
00:25:55
◼
►
to actually come back and be willing to come back. The hiring announcement for Bob Iger
00:26:00
◼
►
said he'll do it for two years, and over those two years he really needs to groom a successor
00:26:05
◼
►
so that he can step away after two years. Now, Bob Iger's been talking about retirement.
00:26:10
◼
►
He talked about it a long time, he kept putting it off. When he finally did it, he stayed
00:26:14
◼
►
as the chairman for a little while, and then he went away and now he's back again. So will
00:26:20
◼
►
he really retire in two years? Will they have somebody that they will be confident will
00:26:26
◼
►
be a better fit than Chapek was? Who knows? But it's a big deal. However, I will say,
00:26:34
◼
►
people who are expecting it to go back to the way it was, the territory has changed.
00:26:39
◼
►
The terrain around streaming has changed. And Julia and I have been talking about this
00:26:43
◼
►
on downstream every two weeks, and we will do it again next week, and that'll be a heck
00:26:48
◼
►
of a show. The terrain has changed because of what happened with the Netflix results
00:26:53
◼
►
and what Wall Street's expectations are. And the terrain has changed in the fact that the
00:26:59
◼
►
linear TV rights, the cable TV rights that have been a huge infusion of money for Disney
00:27:04
◼
►
through ESPN primarily, are going down and streaming is not coming up as fast.
00:27:09
◼
►
Like, Iger's not in the place that he would have been in early 2020.
00:27:13
◼
►
It's a very different business now.
00:27:15
◼
►
And while I think he's going to repair the relationships that Disney has with the talent
00:27:22
◼
►
in Hollywood and that Hollywood's going to feel better about it, I think Iger, if you
00:27:27
◼
►
expect Iger to go and reverse everything that Chapek is doing, let's keep in mind, one of
00:27:31
◼
►
the reasons Chapek failed is that Chapek was handed Bob Iger's strategy and the world changed
00:27:38
◼
►
and Chapek didn't react well.
00:27:40
◼
►
And it's gotta be that, that Iger is sitting out there
00:27:43
◼
►
watching the world change and seeing what,
00:27:45
◼
►
what Chapek is reacting to and saying, no, no, no, no, no,
00:27:47
◼
►
that's not how you do this.
00:27:49
◼
►
And now he's gonna put that presumably into practice.
00:27:52
◼
►
But this is a real flail on, on the Disney boards part.
00:27:54
◼
►
- I assume that, that like, Iger has a plan.
00:27:59
◼
►
I don't know if he's right, right?
00:28:00
◼
►
But like, my, I would assume that like,
00:28:03
◼
►
he has been feeding this idea to someone, right?
00:28:07
◼
►
that like, no, I've got a plan here.
00:28:10
◼
►
Like I can, I know what we need to do.
00:28:13
◼
►
- Yeah, or basically like,
00:28:14
◼
►
this is not what they should be doing.
00:28:15
◼
►
I'll tell you what they should be doing.
00:28:16
◼
►
And finally, the Disney board last week
00:28:18
◼
►
basically came to him and said, Bob, come back.
00:28:21
◼
►
And he's, and would you come back?
00:28:23
◼
►
Here's what we'll give you if you come back.
00:28:25
◼
►
And he was like, yeah, okay, I'll come back.
00:28:27
◼
►
I got a plan.
00:28:28
◼
►
We're gonna make this work.
00:28:29
◼
►
So I would recommend that people not expect
00:28:32
◼
►
that this is a big reset button
00:28:33
◼
►
and big bad Bob Chapek is gone
00:28:35
◼
►
and therefore Disney's not gonna have problems.
00:28:37
◼
►
'cause Disney got problems.
00:28:38
◼
►
They're gonna be okay, right?
00:28:39
◼
►
Like this is something Julia and I talked about last week.
00:28:42
◼
►
Our episode last week was literally titled,
00:28:44
◼
►
"Disney's Gonna Be Okay."
00:28:46
◼
►
Which is like, oh my goodness, what happened?
00:28:48
◼
►
But the fact is Disney did exactly what they planned
00:28:51
◼
►
on doing, which is they spent a lot of money
00:28:53
◼
►
to get subscribers and they got subscribers.
00:28:55
◼
►
Most of these streaming services are not growing
00:28:57
◼
►
very fast at all.
00:28:58
◼
►
And yet Disney subscription base is really growing.
00:29:01
◼
►
It has grown a lot.
00:29:03
◼
►
That part of it has totally worked.
00:29:05
◼
►
The strategy was spend a lot of money and get subscribers.
00:29:08
◼
►
They did it.
00:29:09
◼
►
The problem now is Wall Street's like,
00:29:11
◼
►
"Stop spending so much money, you need to make a profit."
00:29:13
◼
►
And Disney's like, "All right, well,
00:29:14
◼
►
I guess we'll raise prices everywhere
00:29:15
◼
►
and we'll lay people off and we'll tighten the belt."
00:29:18
◼
►
Like that aspect of what Wall Street wants is not changing.
00:29:22
◼
►
So don't expect the reset button to be hit on that front.
00:29:26
◼
►
But I do think the relationships with Hollywood will change.
00:29:29
◼
►
And I think you're gonna end up with a guy who is not only,
00:29:31
◼
►
I mean, he is one of the most effective CEOs of our era.
00:29:35
◼
►
and he's got, Iger has lots of ideas.
00:29:38
◼
►
He's got a tough job ahead of him
00:29:42
◼
►
and it's gonna be a lot harder
00:29:43
◼
►
than the last time he was sitting in that chair.
00:29:45
◼
►
The situation has worsened considerably.
00:29:47
◼
►
So it'll be a different Disney
00:29:51
◼
►
and I have great enthusiasm for Iger coming back
00:29:56
◼
►
mostly because I think Chapek was a money guy
00:29:59
◼
►
who didn't understand the business
00:30:02
◼
►
and its relationship with its customers.
00:30:04
◼
►
I think he was all about the parks
00:30:06
◼
►
and grinding money out of people going to parks.
00:30:08
◼
►
And I think he showed that he was bad at politics,
00:30:11
◼
►
bad at working with his employees,
00:30:13
◼
►
and bad at working with Hollywood.
00:30:15
◼
►
And while being a money guy is like part of being a CEO,
00:30:19
◼
►
if you're the CEO of Disney and you're bad at politics
00:30:21
◼
►
and bad at your own employees,
00:30:23
◼
►
and bad at Hollywood, you should not be the CEO.
00:30:28
◼
►
And Iger is good at all those things.
00:30:29
◼
►
Now, again, no guarantee of success here,
00:30:32
◼
►
but if anybody was gonna succeed,
00:30:34
◼
►
It's Iger. I think the big thing to watch with him is he needs to bring people back or in who he trusts
00:30:41
◼
►
and who he thinks have the talent to replace him.
00:30:45
◼
►
Because he is going to need, he's in his early 70s, he is going to need a replacement.
00:30:50
◼
►
The board would like it in two years, so we'll see.
00:30:53
◼
►
But really fascinating. I thought it was a huge surprise, mostly because they gave
00:30:58
◼
►
Chapek that vote of confidence with the extension. I thought they would let him go longer
00:31:03
◼
►
and figure this out, but obviously the board
00:31:05
◼
►
has just lost complete faith in him
00:31:06
◼
►
and Wall Street sort of lost faith in him.
00:31:08
◼
►
And everybody likes Iger,
00:31:10
◼
►
so they're gonna let him take a crack at it.
00:31:12
◼
►
- This is a wild story.
00:31:14
◼
►
Like this is-- - It is, I could not--
00:31:15
◼
►
- It's a nonsense. - I could not believe it
00:31:17
◼
►
when I saw it. - Yeah.
00:31:18
◼
►
- I was recording a podcast last night
00:31:20
◼
►
and it came over and I just, I reread it,
00:31:24
◼
►
I clicked on the link, I made sure that it was
00:31:26
◼
►
from a Twitter account that seemed legit
00:31:29
◼
►
and not a fake Twitter account.
00:31:30
◼
►
I was like, "How could this be true?"
00:31:32
◼
►
but it was in the Wall Street Journal and it was on Variety
00:31:34
◼
►
and it was on the Hollywood Reporter.
00:31:35
◼
►
I'm like, I guess this is happening.
00:31:37
◼
►
And like, I understand it, but I just, you know,
00:31:40
◼
►
it's like a baseball team re-upping its manager
00:31:44
◼
►
on a two-year contract and then three months
00:31:46
◼
►
into the season firing him.
00:31:47
◼
►
It's like, why did you, like,
00:31:51
◼
►
has the situation changed so much in the last few months?
00:31:53
◼
►
And I think the answer is the situation got a lot worse
00:31:56
◼
►
and Bob Iger, I suspect, got more willing to come back.
00:32:01
◼
►
- I think that's the key genuinely.
00:32:03
◼
►
Without Bob Iger wanting to do this,
00:32:08
◼
►
they would stay with Jay Pack
00:32:10
◼
►
because what else are they gonna do?
00:32:12
◼
►
- Yeah, hard to find a...
00:32:14
◼
►
I think that's absolutely true.
00:32:16
◼
►
Yes, I know there are a lot of people out there,
00:32:17
◼
►
but I'm not sure there's anybody else out there right now
00:32:20
◼
►
who could take on the mantle of Disney CEO
00:32:25
◼
►
and execute the way that the board wants them to.
00:32:27
◼
►
I don't, I think anybody else coming in--
00:32:29
◼
►
- And the way Wall Street wants to.
00:32:30
◼
►
- And even if somebody, well yeah,
00:32:33
◼
►
the board generally sort of wants what Wall Street wants,
00:32:35
◼
►
but yeah, even though,
00:32:37
◼
►
you could hire somebody maybe better than Chapek,
00:32:41
◼
►
but if you're bringing somebody in from the outside,
00:32:43
◼
►
they're gonna have a whole period of time
00:32:45
◼
►
where they're gonna have to get up to speed
00:32:46
◼
►
and they're gonna make their own mistakes
00:32:47
◼
►
and they have to learn from them.
00:32:49
◼
►
And like, I could see the thought process
00:32:51
◼
►
and we just, no, no, what we really need to do
00:32:53
◼
►
is develop a CEO, but we don't want Bob Chapek to do it
00:32:55
◼
►
'cause we don't like him and we wanna get rid of him.
00:32:57
◼
►
And it's like, ah, here's the plan,
00:33:00
◼
►
bring back Bob Iger, he totally gets our business,
00:33:02
◼
►
and task him with also finding that person
00:33:05
◼
►
and bringing them up to speed so that they can step in,
00:33:08
◼
►
this time for sure, 'cause again,
00:33:09
◼
►
he did that with Bob Chapek.
00:33:11
◼
►
Although I wonder sometimes about the level of confidence
00:33:14
◼
►
he truly had in Bob Chapek versus that he was sort of told,
00:33:17
◼
►
like, no, it's gotta be him,
00:33:18
◼
►
and now it's more clearly part of his job to cultivate--
00:33:21
◼
►
- Now it's like, this is the guy,
00:33:23
◼
►
can you work with him please?
00:33:25
◼
►
Right, like maybe.
00:33:26
◼
►
Like one of the things that I think really sings
00:33:29
◼
►
why they would go with Iger is clearly Disney needs to undergo some form of changes now,
00:33:34
◼
►
like some kind of strategy change again to appease everyone that needs appeasing. So
00:33:40
◼
►
Iger has the relationships within Disney where people will trust him and work with him in
00:33:45
◼
►
a way that it seemed maybe Che Peck did not have. So if the new strategy is coming from
00:33:52
◼
►
Bob Iger, people might be more willing to make it work inside of Disney, right?
00:33:56
◼
►
I think that's also true.
00:33:57
◼
►
And that goes back to his politics
00:33:59
◼
►
and being good with the employees
00:34:00
◼
►
and being good with Hollywood, right?
00:34:01
◼
►
I mean, they may cut back severely
00:34:03
◼
►
on what they're spending on Disney Plus stuff too.
00:34:05
◼
►
But if you've got a guy who's got the good relationships,
00:34:07
◼
►
there's gonna be a higher level of trust
00:34:10
◼
►
than there was with a guy who was viewed
00:34:11
◼
►
as the money guy with a chainsaw.
00:34:13
◼
►
Even if some of the moves are the same or it's similar,
00:34:17
◼
►
they're going to be received better by coming from Bob Iger
00:34:20
◼
►
than they would have been coming from Bob Chapek.
00:34:22
◼
►
And that is right, like Bob Iger is gonna come in and say,
00:34:24
◼
►
"Look, we've got some reality here,
00:34:26
◼
►
but I get what you're going through.
00:34:27
◼
►
And I get the impression that Bob Chapek was like,
00:34:30
◼
►
"Dotty, send a memo that their budget is cut."
00:34:34
◼
►
Like, I really, and I know that's probably
00:34:36
◼
►
a little bit unfair, but that was the impression that I got,
00:34:39
◼
►
is that one of these guys was a real corporate guy
00:34:42
◼
►
who didn't connect with those people.
00:34:44
◼
►
And then the other guy is a corporate guy,
00:34:47
◼
►
but also gets them or makes them feel like he gets them.
00:34:52
◼
►
And like in a creative business,
00:34:54
◼
►
and Julie and I have talked about this a lot,
00:34:55
◼
►
Like it's a creative business, right?
00:34:57
◼
►
It's both those words.
00:34:58
◼
►
It's creative and a business.
00:35:00
◼
►
And if you say, Disney's not creative, it's a business.
00:35:03
◼
►
You gotta run it like a business.
00:35:04
◼
►
Like you can't, it is a creative business.
00:35:06
◼
►
You can't run it like it's all creative
00:35:08
◼
►
and not a business either.
00:35:09
◼
►
You have to do both.
00:35:10
◼
►
And Chapek a lot of the time felt like
00:35:12
◼
►
he just didn't get that part of it,
00:35:14
◼
►
which is why we said earlier,
00:35:16
◼
►
despite all these other things
00:35:17
◼
►
that are maybe good about Chapek,
00:35:19
◼
►
like he's the wrong person to run a business like that.
00:35:22
◼
►
I was listening to the Chitagory Daily Update today,
00:35:26
◼
►
and Ben had some quotes from audio,
00:35:30
◼
►
because I was into the podcast version, from Bob J. Peck.
00:35:33
◼
►
And I haven't really paid much attention to the guy,
00:35:35
◼
►
but it was particularly-- I know things he's done,
00:35:38
◼
►
but I've not really heard him speak before.
00:35:40
◼
►
And I was really struck by--
00:35:43
◼
►
this is at the Wall Street Journal Tech Conference.
00:35:46
◼
►
The way he was referring to Disney fans,
00:35:49
◼
►
it kind of felt like he was dismissing them
00:35:52
◼
►
or like talking down on them.
00:35:54
◼
►
It kind of like, they and like, it didn't feel right.
00:35:57
◼
►
Like, you know, it's like they kind of make it
00:36:00
◼
►
a part of their identity, like to be a Disney fan.
00:36:02
◼
►
And it kind of, I don't know, it didn't feel like the way
00:36:05
◼
►
that the Disney CEO should talk about fans of Disney.
00:36:08
◼
►
It kind of felt a little bit like talking down to them
00:36:13
◼
►
and like they'll do whatever I want them to.
00:36:15
◼
►
It was very strange.
00:36:16
◼
►
It sounded strange to me.
00:36:17
◼
►
And I think a lack of understanding
00:36:19
◼
►
of the Disney audience, right?
00:36:22
◼
►
I think that's what it comes down to is like,
00:36:25
◼
►
it's like somebody coming in and saying,
00:36:26
◼
►
"Oh, I'm in charge of Star Wars now.
00:36:27
◼
►
I don't get what those Star Wars people like,
00:36:29
◼
►
or I'm in charge of Star Trek now.
00:36:30
◼
►
Trekkies, you know, they like stuff, whatever."
00:36:32
◼
►
And it's like, no, you kind of need to get it.
00:36:34
◼
►
You kind of need to get who your audience is
00:36:37
◼
►
and not consider them kind of weirdos that we can exploit.
00:36:40
◼
►
And I always come back to the fact that
00:36:42
◼
►
I think your least effective executives are ones
00:36:45
◼
►
who don't see your customers as people
00:36:46
◼
►
who are really engaging with your content or your product
00:36:49
◼
►
and that that engagement matters,
00:36:51
◼
►
and instead see them as bags of money walking around
00:36:54
◼
►
ready to be monetized, right?
00:36:56
◼
►
And I think Bob Chapek was a big bag of money
00:36:58
◼
►
monetizing guy.
00:37:00
◼
►
And it's not that Bob Iger doesn't care about business
00:37:05
◼
►
and making money, but I feel like he had a better touch
00:37:09
◼
►
on understanding why their business is the way it is.
00:37:13
◼
►
- Why are people willing to give us money, right?
00:37:16
◼
►
Like that's the important part.
00:37:17
◼
►
Like as Disney CEO, you need to understand,
00:37:20
◼
►
people are willing to give you money
00:37:22
◼
►
because of everything that they believe in you
00:37:24
◼
►
and what you do and what you represent to them,
00:37:28
◼
►
not just because they really love the Star War, right?
00:37:31
◼
►
Like it means something to them.
00:37:33
◼
►
And like, you've got to understand that.
00:37:35
◼
►
- Are they Wookiee heads?
00:37:36
◼
►
I don't know, whatever.
00:37:37
◼
►
Just charge them more for that thing.
00:37:40
◼
►
- While we're in Upstream, by the way,
00:37:42
◼
►
which is probably worth mentioning,
00:37:44
◼
►
that Apple has announced some of the details
00:37:47
◼
►
around the Major League Soccer stuff.
00:37:50
◼
►
- You had a really good article about this in Six Colors
00:37:52
◼
►
and I was genuinely surprised at how deep the partnership is
00:37:57
◼
►
between Apple and Major League Soccer.
00:38:02
◼
►
So I'll run through a few details.
00:38:04
◼
►
- It's a lot, yeah.
00:38:05
◼
►
- So Apple and Major League Soccer will be working together
00:38:08
◼
►
to produce the broadcast of every match in the season,
00:38:11
◼
►
including cup games.
00:38:12
◼
►
There will be some that will be simulcast,
00:38:14
◼
►
so they'll be available on other services,
00:38:16
◼
►
probably like the big, important games.
00:38:18
◼
►
- Yeah, like ESPN or something.
00:38:20
◼
►
- Yeah. - Exactly.
00:38:21
◼
►
- Some of them will be free on Apple TV and Apple TV+,
00:38:24
◼
►
but if you want all of them, you need the MLS season pass.
00:38:29
◼
►
This will be $15 a month or $99 a year.
00:38:33
◼
►
There is a discount for TV+ subscribers.
00:38:35
◼
►
If you subscribe to Apple TV+, you still have to pay.
00:38:37
◼
►
It's $12.99 a month or $79 a year.
00:38:40
◼
►
- And you don't have to pay
00:38:41
◼
►
If you aren't an Apple TV+, I saw some people saying,
00:38:44
◼
►
"I can't believe I gotta be a subscriber
00:38:45
◼
►
and then subscribe."
00:38:46
◼
►
And it's like, you don't.
00:38:48
◼
►
You don't have to pay for Apple TV+,
00:38:49
◼
►
you can just pay $99 and get the whole season.
00:38:52
◼
►
- But as we mentioned before,
00:38:53
◼
►
if you're a Major League Soccer season ticket holder,
00:38:55
◼
►
this is free for you, which I still think is incredible.
00:38:57
◼
►
Like I think that is such a cool thing to do.
00:39:00
◼
►
Now, there was a article in the Athletic
00:39:03
◼
►
that you linked to as well in your piece,
00:39:05
◼
►
talking about how Apple are working very fast
00:39:07
◼
►
to get everything placed for the launch in February.
00:39:11
◼
►
One of the things that I found fascinating
00:39:13
◼
►
is that Major League Soccer and Apple
00:39:15
◼
►
are setting the schedule together of the games.
00:39:20
◼
►
- Yeah, the goal here is to create,
00:39:23
◼
►
I think that there was a desire to do this
00:39:27
◼
►
from the MLS side to sort of standardize their game schedule,
00:39:32
◼
►
but that one of the things probably pushing against it
00:39:36
◼
►
was their media partners who have slots on different days
00:39:39
◼
►
that they want to fill, right?
00:39:40
◼
►
If you're ESPN, what you want is,
00:39:43
◼
►
I've got college football on this day,
00:39:46
◼
►
or I've got basketball on this day.
00:39:47
◼
►
And then we're like, oh, well,
00:39:48
◼
►
we'll put the soccer on this day.
00:39:49
◼
►
And if you're MLS and you're like,
00:39:51
◼
►
but we don't play games on that day,
00:39:52
◼
►
your media partner comes to you and says, yeah, you do.
00:39:56
◼
►
And you do, like, how else can you do it?
00:40:00
◼
►
So what they're doing here is they're trying to set up
00:40:04
◼
►
a thing where they've got slots on,
00:40:06
◼
►
I think it's like Wednesdays and Saturdays and the evenings.
00:40:10
◼
►
and then they'll have like showcase game
00:40:13
◼
►
Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon.
00:40:15
◼
►
But they're like gonna set it up that way.
00:40:16
◼
►
And then everything else is sort of like the rolling through
00:40:19
◼
►
on the day where there'll be matches on Wednesday
00:40:22
◼
►
and they'll all start at 7.30 local time.
00:40:24
◼
►
So some of them will start Eastern,
00:40:25
◼
►
some of them will start Pacific
00:40:26
◼
►
and they'll move across the country in between.
00:40:28
◼
►
And that is all part of their planning
00:40:31
◼
►
that they're doing with Apple, yeah.
00:40:33
◼
►
- And also product placement is part of the deal.
00:40:35
◼
►
This is a quote from you.
00:40:36
◼
►
Not only will teams be equipped with iPads,
00:40:39
◼
►
Referees will wear Apple watches
00:40:41
◼
►
and the VAR video review system
00:40:43
◼
►
will be based on Apple devices.
00:40:45
◼
►
An Apple TV logo will also appear
00:40:48
◼
►
on the sleeve of every team's jersey.
00:40:50
◼
►
- Yeah, I had somebody commented
00:40:52
◼
►
that I thought was very clever,
00:40:53
◼
►
which is like one of the values in this is product placement.
00:40:57
◼
►
Like this is not just Apple paying for the TV rights.
00:41:02
◼
►
It's also Apple, you know,
00:41:07
◼
►
Apple's essentially a sponsor of the league.
00:41:09
◼
►
They're gonna be on every,
00:41:10
◼
►
the sleeve of every team in the league.
00:41:13
◼
►
So there's lots of other stuff going on here
00:41:16
◼
►
that is not just the rights deal that's going on with them.
00:41:20
◼
►
And yeah, the VAR was a funny one.
00:41:24
◼
►
Like it sounds like that's a challenge
00:41:27
◼
►
to get the VAR stuff, the video review.
00:41:29
◼
►
It's like the replay, instant replay for Americans.
00:41:32
◼
►
Up to code with what they wanna do.
00:41:37
◼
►
with what they want to do, but they're gonna try, right?
00:41:41
◼
►
'Cause they want it to be like all Apple everywhere.
00:41:44
◼
►
I wonder if this might set a bad precedent for Apple
00:41:48
◼
►
of like how much control they would get
00:41:50
◼
►
from a sports partner.
00:41:52
◼
►
I know they're gonna get this everywhere.
00:41:54
◼
►
- Which brings us to our last item in downstream,
00:41:56
◼
►
which is a really quick one, which is the athletic
00:41:57
◼
►
also did a very good piece about NFL Sunday ticket.
00:42:00
◼
►
- This is your show, this is upstream.
00:42:01
◼
►
- Sorry, upstream.
00:42:02
◼
►
We're going upstream.
00:42:03
◼
►
We're paddling upstream right now.
00:42:07
◼
►
- Yeah, go on, tell me what's happening with Sunday Ticket.
00:42:09
◼
►
I feel like this is going forever.
00:42:10
◼
►
- I mean, I don't have to, I can just tell people
00:42:11
◼
►
to listen to it on downstream next week
00:42:13
◼
►
if they really want to.
00:42:13
◼
►
Okay, NFL Sunday Ticket, Apple is negotiating
00:42:16
◼
►
with the NFL about this.
00:42:18
◼
►
This is the out of game, out of market live game streaming.
00:42:23
◼
►
DirecTV currently has this.
00:42:25
◼
►
This is taking time that the NFL thought
00:42:29
◼
►
that there would be a deal and the reports are basically
00:42:32
◼
►
Apple and the NFL are both used to getting the upper hand,
00:42:37
◼
►
and so they're kind of clashing on the deal.
00:42:41
◼
►
It sounds like basically the Apple is frustrated
00:42:44
◼
►
because of the limitations that the NFL
00:42:46
◼
►
has placed on this deal.
00:42:47
◼
►
It doesn't cover international,
00:42:49
◼
►
'cause they already have a product for that called NFL Plus.
00:42:52
◼
►
It only covers out of market local.
00:42:55
◼
►
So if you bought this package and you live in San Francisco,
00:43:00
◼
►
you can't watch the game on Fox,
00:43:02
◼
►
that's on Fox on channel two in the Bay Area market,
00:43:06
◼
►
because that's blacked out,
00:43:07
◼
►
because you need to watch it on channel two
00:43:09
◼
►
to protect the local TV channel.
00:43:13
◼
►
And if you can't get it via some other means,
00:43:15
◼
►
you can't watch it.
00:43:16
◼
►
And that is, Apple doesn't like that,
00:43:19
◼
►
but they have presumably other contracts with Fox and CBS.
00:43:23
◼
►
There's also this feeling like,
00:43:26
◼
►
NFL keeps putting games on other time slots.
00:43:29
◼
►
They are playing in Europe.
00:43:32
◼
►
They've added the, you know,
00:43:33
◼
►
they've got the Thursday night and the Monday night,
00:43:34
◼
►
and they've added some Saturdays late in the year,
00:43:36
◼
►
and there's all sorts of other things.
00:43:37
◼
►
There's three games on Thanksgiving.
00:43:39
◼
►
So there's a feeling that the NFL has devalued
00:43:42
◼
►
Sunday ticket a lot by putting all these restrictions on it
00:43:46
◼
►
and that that frustrates Apple.
00:43:47
◼
►
And that Apple wants also the freedom to invent stuff.
00:43:51
◼
►
And the way that Apple works is sort of like,
00:43:53
◼
►
we set what the rules are,
00:43:54
◼
►
and then we do whatever we want within the rules.
00:43:57
◼
►
And the NFL is like, no, we set the rules
00:44:00
◼
►
and that's all you can do.
00:44:02
◼
►
And that there's a fundamental like cultural issue
00:44:05
◼
►
between them where the NFL only wants this.
00:44:07
◼
►
And that's why the Sunday Ticket
00:44:08
◼
►
has never been the best fit for Apple.
00:44:10
◼
►
It's just what's available for them
00:44:12
◼
►
because it's a repackaging of existing content
00:44:17
◼
►
under other contracts.
00:44:19
◼
►
And so it's tough to make that your own.
00:44:22
◼
►
And I think Apple is chafing at that,
00:44:25
◼
►
but they're still talking.
00:44:26
◼
►
I think the thing to remember above all else is the only reason that the NFL has not rolled
00:44:32
◼
►
this into NFL Plus, their existing package, and just sold it themselves and eliminated
00:44:37
◼
►
the middleman is that they know that there's a deep-pocketed tech company out there who
00:44:42
◼
►
will overpay for it because they want to build either a subscriber base or an addressable
00:44:49
◼
►
market because DirecTV overpaid for Sunday Ticket for years.
00:44:52
◼
►
They overpaid and they knew they overpaid.
00:44:54
◼
►
But they overpaid because they knew to get Sunday Ticket, you had to call up DirecTV
00:44:58
◼
►
and have them install a satellite dish on your roof.
00:45:02
◼
►
And at that point, you're probably going to cancel your cable and use DirecTV as your
00:45:07
◼
►
TV provider.
00:45:08
◼
►
And so it was a way to acquire new subscribers for them.
00:45:12
◼
►
And so they overpaid for Sunday Ticket, and Sunday Ticket never really made back that
00:45:15
◼
►
money, but they knew they were getting people to put satellite dishes on their roof.
00:45:19
◼
►
Well now it's 2022, we're talking about 2023 for this, what they're trying to do is find
00:45:24
◼
►
somebody who will overpay so that they will do what Apple and Amazon have been trying
00:45:28
◼
►
to do, which is force people who are not yet streaming to start streaming. Amazon's had
00:45:34
◼
►
great success with Thursday Night Football doing this, and Apple will presumably try
00:45:38
◼
►
to do more of this with MLS than they tried with Major League Baseball. Sports is a way
00:45:43
◼
►
to get people who are resistant to signing up for streaming or plugging something into
00:45:48
◼
►
their TV or learning how their TV works in order to find that app that's already on their
00:45:53
◼
►
TV to get them over the hump. And if Apple or Amazon is willing to overpay, the NFL would
00:45:59
◼
►
rather do that, right? Why eliminate the middleman to make less money when the middleman will
00:46:05
◼
►
pay me more? And it doesn't matter to the NFL if it doesn't make sense to their business
00:46:10
◼
►
because they're playing a different game, the NFL just cashes the checks. So that's
00:46:13
◼
►
what's going on and it's still out there. There's a feeling that by the time the Super
00:46:17
◼
►
Bowl rolls around in February, this deal has to be done. And while Apple is in first position
00:46:23
◼
►
in this negotiation, they say that there are definitely,
00:46:26
◼
►
Amazon and Google with YouTube are both circling as well
00:46:31
◼
►
as potential suitors for this.
00:46:34
◼
►
- Huh, I mean, I understand they have YouTube TV,
00:46:38
◼
►
but I didn't think, I did not know they were in the running
00:46:41
◼
►
for this or were even interested,
00:46:43
◼
►
but why not, I guess, right?
00:46:46
◼
►
- I think technically it would be,
00:46:47
◼
►
I don't know if it would even be YouTube TV.
00:46:49
◼
►
It would probably just be YouTube
00:46:51
◼
►
and it would be a package that you would buy
00:46:53
◼
►
and watch or I doubt they would force you to pay
00:46:56
◼
►
for the YouTube TV product to do it, but who knows?
00:47:00
◼
►
Like again, this is all speculation at this point
00:47:04
◼
►
from informed sources, but anyway,
00:47:05
◼
►
it's a good piece in the athletic by Daniel Kaplan.
00:47:08
◼
►
And when Apple or someone else makes a deal,
00:47:12
◼
►
we'll let you know here on Upstream,
00:47:15
◼
►
a segment on the Upgrade program.
00:47:16
◼
►
- This episode of Upgrade is brought to you
00:47:21
◼
►
by a good friends member for the easiest way
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to sell memberships to your audience used by the biggest creators on the web, you can
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generate sustainable recurring income while diversifying your revenue stream with Memberful.
00:47:33
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You will have heard us even on this episode talking about the Relay FM membership program
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and Upgrade Plus. Memberful is the platform that we use to power that program. They make
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it so incredibly easy for us to offer bonus content to our members, generate an extra
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00:47:52
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we have here at Real AFM. We have been using them for years. We're talking about the coupon
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code that we're doing, right? So we can give people discounts on the annual plans. This
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is all done in Memberful. Very easy for this to do. We can keep track of how many people
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have redeemed it. It's really good. They've got fantastic metrics that we can keep track
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of everything, of everything, right? So we can see how plans are performing. It's really
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incredible stuff and they are a fantastic partner for us. We're so happy and if you
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relying on advertising or other means of income. Memberful makes it incredibly easy to diversify
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We do this as well.
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You can publish your paid newsletter content to a Memberful hosted members only website
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Go there now and check it out, it could be the start of something exciting.
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Our thanks to Memful for their support of this show and Relay FM.
00:49:32
◼
►
So I had a bunch of smart home follow up stuff from the last episode.
00:49:37
◼
►
I wanted to talk about a few little bots.
00:49:39
◼
►
Awesome follow up from the Upgradients, so good.
00:49:42
◼
►
I've got a bunch on Twitter, so many emails,
00:49:44
◼
►
some in Discord, really great.
00:49:46
◼
►
One of the big things that I mentioned
00:49:49
◼
►
was about using Acara products, so A-Q-A-R-A.
00:49:54
◼
►
There were products that I was interested in,
00:49:55
◼
►
but their hub was showing up as a alarm system
00:49:59
◼
►
in the summary fields in HomeKit.
00:50:02
◼
►
HomeKit now has those little pills at the top, right?
00:50:04
◼
►
So it shows you like a glance how many lights are on.
00:50:07
◼
►
It will also show you some information about sensors,
00:50:10
◼
►
security stuff.
00:50:11
◼
►
And I'm using a security system
00:50:13
◼
►
from a company called Abode
00:50:15
◼
►
that are very like hooked into HomeKit.
00:50:17
◼
►
And even if my alarm was set,
00:50:21
◼
►
it was showing that like on the summary section
00:50:23
◼
►
that it was disarmed because the Acara hub wasn't set.
00:50:26
◼
►
And it didn't make any sense to me
00:50:27
◼
►
to have the Acara hub be a security system.
00:50:30
◼
►
I didn't need it for that.
00:50:32
◼
►
So a bunch of people wrote into me
00:50:33
◼
►
about ways that you could, by checking and unchecking a bunch of settings, get it to
00:50:39
◼
►
not show. This has been unreliable for me, where sometimes it wasn't showing as a part
00:50:45
◼
►
of the security system, and sometimes it was, it was very strange. But what I'm actually
00:50:50
◼
►
going to do is take a suggestion from Lex, who wrote in, to say that what they're doing,
00:50:57
◼
►
they have an alarm system and they have the Akara stuff, is to with automations link them
00:51:05
◼
►
So if my alarm system sets to arm, set the Akara hub to arm, and then it will just visually
00:51:11
◼
►
show the way that I want but actually makes no change to the system because I'm not using
00:51:17
◼
►
any of Akara's alarm stuff.
00:51:19
◼
►
This is probably the route that I'm going to go down just because Akara's stuff is really
00:51:24
◼
►
good and really cheap compared to other people.
00:51:27
◼
►
They have tons of censor stuff and I think I want to continue using some of their products.
00:51:32
◼
►
Some of their products are really ingenious.
00:51:34
◼
►
They're not things I think I want to use but they have these two products.
00:51:38
◼
►
They have one which is a device that you can attach to curtains on a curtain rail to open
00:51:44
◼
►
the curtains.
00:51:45
◼
►
It's this little robot basically that just pulls the curtains open.
00:51:52
◼
►
And similarly if you have regular blinds that you pull with a chain or a cord, they have
00:51:56
◼
►
this thing that you can put over the top of it and it will make your regular blinds smart
00:52:01
◼
►
They have very ingenious stuff at Okara.
00:52:04
◼
►
So I want to continue using some of their things.
00:52:06
◼
►
They have these leak sensors, these are the ones that I was interested in, so much cheaper
00:52:10
◼
►
than the other stuff that I found that was HomeKit enabled.
00:52:13
◼
►
The same for temperature sensors and stuff.
00:52:16
◼
►
I'm talking the difference between like £19 and £60 with competitors.
00:52:22
◼
►
And I don't really want to pay that much.
00:52:24
◼
►
Plus I got, someone recommended that I get one of their cameras.
00:52:28
◼
►
They have the Acara G2H camera, which also acts as a hub.
00:52:32
◼
►
It was still being inconsistent as to wherever it shows up as an alarm,
00:52:36
◼
►
but I did get one of these.
00:52:38
◼
►
And now I'm kind of, I actually really like having cameras in home
00:52:42
◼
►
kit, like just in the home app.
00:52:44
◼
►
and so their cameras are also really good and fairly priced
00:52:48
◼
►
and so I think I'm kind of in on the Cara
00:52:50
◼
►
and I'm just gonna make it work with my security system.
00:52:53
◼
►
And I might end up with like,
00:52:57
◼
►
'cause you know how this stuff is,
00:52:59
◼
►
Abode is just a company that I like their alarm system
00:53:01
◼
►
and all that kind of stuff, they have cameras,
00:53:03
◼
►
but the Abode cameras do not work in HomeKit.
00:53:07
◼
►
So I can use Abode cameras and they'll be in the Abode app
00:53:12
◼
►
and then I could have a Cara cameras
00:53:14
◼
►
and I actually think I'm okay with that divide. There's some like, getting cameras
00:53:20
◼
►
certified to work in the home app seems to be a particularly difficult prospect, which
00:53:26
◼
►
is why it is impossible to find a wireless video doorbell that works in homekit.
00:53:34
◼
►
find one. It drives me mad. At least I cannot find one here in the UK. Some products exist
00:53:39
◼
►
in other markets. So I might end up with a slight split there about what my cameras are
00:53:45
◼
►
looking at but I actually kind of like just, if I'm in the home app, just having a quick
00:53:49
◼
►
view into maybe an inside and outside camera as well as having the camera system that's
00:53:56
◼
►
tied into my alarm system as well. So we'll see. But basically the Acara stuff I'm going
00:54:04
◼
►
to continue going down that road just because some of their products are interesting and
00:54:08
◼
►
I can set up some automations to kind of set and unset them correctly.
00:54:13
◼
►
I also got a bunch of recommendations for HomeKit YouTubers to follow. There was one
00:54:17
◼
►
person whose videos I started watching and found really enjoyable. It's a guy called
00:54:21
◼
►
Shane Watley and he did actually, had just published a video, it's like 35 minutes long
00:54:26
◼
►
of going through his entire home and showing all the stuff that he set up and I like it.
00:54:32
◼
►
I like it a lot.
00:54:34
◼
►
He does a lot of stuff that's not necessarily digging into Home Assistant and Homebridge,
00:54:39
◼
►
and I don't want to do that.
00:54:41
◼
►
I want to keep things as simple as possible while still using just the regular apps.
00:54:47
◼
►
I don't want to go down the Home Assistant/Homebridge route, and I know people will tell me why
00:54:51
◼
►
it's so great, but it's not a thing that I want to do.
00:54:56
◼
►
Every time I watch people talk about this, it's about five minutes before they show me
00:55:01
◼
►
me a GitHub page. I'm like, you see, now you've gone too far. I'm not interested.
00:55:07
◼
►
Right? Yeah. That's like me with soldering, right? Yes. And it's completely
00:55:12
◼
►
understandable. It's just a certain level at which I'm ready to check out and
00:55:16
◼
►
that's it. Like, I want to be able to do everything in apps, right? As soon as I
00:55:22
◼
►
have to go into a config file, you've lost me. This is adding in a
00:55:27
◼
►
a level of weirdness that can occur that I don't want.
00:55:30
◼
►
But I'm very much enjoying setting all this stuff up.
00:55:34
◼
►
And I'm again, like looking at some of these products
00:55:38
◼
►
and seeing how like matter future could be helpful to me.
00:55:41
◼
►
So, but yeah, I'm still trying my best to keep things
00:55:45
◼
►
as home kit as possible, but yeah, we'll see.
00:55:50
◼
►
Yeah, the wireless camera stuff
00:55:54
◼
►
and wireless doorbell stuff of home kit, still far off.
00:55:57
◼
►
but doorbells are one of the things that's coming to matter,
00:56:00
◼
►
I think next.
00:56:01
◼
►
So at some point it will get fixed with me.
00:56:03
◼
►
- Well, like I said, my, a while ago,
00:56:05
◼
►
I have these Arlo cameras and they integrate with HomeKit,
00:56:08
◼
►
even though they're not HomeKit secure video
00:56:10
◼
►
or anything like that.
00:56:10
◼
►
And at least they do show up and theoretically I can,
00:56:13
◼
►
I do, they don't work.
00:56:16
◼
►
They're not as responsive as I would like them to be
00:56:20
◼
►
So like if I tap on a camera in HomeKit,
00:56:21
◼
►
there's a bit of a weight before they spin up.
00:56:24
◼
►
And that's because they aren't streaming video all the time.
00:56:27
◼
►
they're based on sort of either your demand
00:56:29
◼
►
or motion sensing for them to spin up and start recording.
00:56:32
◼
►
So they're not perfect, but I've got a few of them
00:56:36
◼
►
and they're okay.
00:56:37
◼
►
And it's kind of nice to see them in HomeKit.
00:56:39
◼
►
I mean, theoretically, my house is so small,
00:56:41
◼
►
like so many of these smart doorbell,
00:56:43
◼
►
smart camera things are like,
00:56:44
◼
►
"Oh, smart doorbell, that's so cute."
00:56:47
◼
►
I mean, just tap on the door, literally tap on the door
00:56:50
◼
►
and you can hear it everywhere in the house.
00:56:52
◼
►
There's no, the door, like kids,
00:56:55
◼
►
trick-or-treaters this year were confused
00:56:58
◼
►
'cause there was no doorbell.
00:57:00
◼
►
I was like, "Guys, this house is real small.
00:57:02
◼
►
We don't need a doorbell, and so we don't have one."
00:57:05
◼
►
- I have two reasons I would like a video doorbell.
00:57:07
◼
►
One is we have a front garden
00:57:10
◼
►
with kind of like a little pathway.
00:57:13
◼
►
And so if somebody was to knock, say, we wouldn't hear them.
00:57:16
◼
►
And the, like, there's like an external gate,
00:57:21
◼
►
and that's where I want to put a video doorbell.
00:57:22
◼
►
The other thing is- - That makes sense.
00:57:23
◼
►
for when I'm not home, right?
00:57:26
◼
►
Like somebody rings them to the Lobo package
00:57:28
◼
►
when I'm not home and I can give them some kind of direction
00:57:30
◼
►
as to where to put the package or not.
00:57:32
◼
►
Like that's what I want it for.
00:57:35
◼
►
- I'm never not home.
00:57:36
◼
►
So I've got no use for this.
00:57:40
◼
►
The other, my only thing, it's only 20 bucks,
00:57:42
◼
►
but like the only other thing is
00:57:43
◼
►
I don't really want another hub
00:57:44
◼
►
and this car stuff looks really interesting,
00:57:47
◼
►
but it is like, and then you gotta get the Zigbee hub
00:57:50
◼
►
for 25 bucks and plug it in somewhere.
00:57:52
◼
►
Well, what I do like about them is that they build hubs into other products.
00:57:57
◼
►
Like, their cameras are hubs.
00:58:00
◼
►
Are hubs, okay.
00:58:01
◼
►
And I think that that's kind of fascinating.
00:58:04
◼
►
It's like a very smart way to do it.
00:58:07
◼
►
Like, you need a hub, but we're finding ways to put our hubs into other things you might want.
00:58:12
◼
►
And so for me, you know what you just mentioned about the Arlo cameras?
00:58:16
◼
►
I'm kind of like building this, I think like a two-tier system of security camera in my mind for the home, right?
00:58:22
◼
►
that like the abode system is for like the important cameras,
00:58:26
◼
►
right? Like it's, you know, I have it set up to the siren thing.
00:58:31
◼
►
It's got the, like the backup, the battery backup.
00:58:35
◼
►
It's got the professional monitoring that whole deal. Right.
00:58:38
◼
►
So like that is the urgent stuff, but I would like maybe a couple of cameras,
00:58:42
◼
►
maybe pointing outside or whatever that I basically use as just snapshots in the
00:58:47
◼
►
home app. Like I'm not looking for necessarily the live video from them,
00:58:51
◼
►
but that I could open the home app and get like,
00:58:53
◼
►
oh, there's these three cameras.
00:58:55
◼
►
And just like, what was it like 10 minutes ago?
00:58:57
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:58:58
◼
►
Like that kind of idea rather than like the urgent part.
00:59:02
◼
►
So like kind of that's how I'm starting to like map it out
00:59:05
◼
►
in my brain.
00:59:05
◼
►
Just I'm having so much fun with smart home stuff right now.
00:59:08
◼
►
I'm like, I'm like in it to win it over here is great.
00:59:11
◼
►
- It's good. Well, you got a home.
00:59:12
◼
►
- Please keep sending me all of your suggestions.
00:59:14
◼
►
I want all of them.
00:59:15
◼
►
Today I haven't set them up yet,
00:59:18
◼
►
but the Hue Christmas lights arrived today.
00:59:21
◼
►
- Wow, yeah.
00:59:23
◼
►
- I'm excited to look at this.
00:59:24
◼
►
- I have not taken that plunge yet
00:59:26
◼
►
about the Christmas lights.
00:59:27
◼
►
I ought to consult with Lauren
00:59:29
◼
►
and see what she wants to do with that.
00:59:30
◼
►
- I'll let you know.
00:59:31
◼
►
I think I'm gonna unbox them today
00:59:33
◼
►
and I'll text you and I'll let you know
00:59:35
◼
►
if they're good or not.
00:59:36
◼
►
Maybe I'll send you some pictures.
00:59:38
◼
►
- Okay, cool.
00:59:39
◼
►
- You had a story for me.
00:59:42
◼
►
You told me you said Michael got a story for you.
00:59:44
◼
►
- Yeah, we got to create a little home segment here
00:59:47
◼
►
because you had your home follow-up
00:59:50
◼
►
and I have my story, just a little story.
00:59:52
◼
►
I really wanna tell this story mostly because I feel like
00:59:56
◼
►
we say it a lot and a lot of the podcasts
01:00:00
◼
►
that are like ours say it a lot,
01:00:01
◼
►
where we bring up something like the Lutron-Casada stuff
01:00:04
◼
►
and mention, "Oh, it's rock solid, it's rock solid."
01:00:06
◼
►
And like, I've done that
01:00:07
◼
►
and I know Marco has done that on ATP and like, we say it.
01:00:11
◼
►
And I just wanna say, when we say it, we mean it.
01:00:14
◼
►
And I'm gonna give you an example of what happened
01:00:16
◼
►
in my life that makes me think about this,
01:00:20
◼
►
which is I had a networking failure a week ago yesterday.
01:00:23
◼
►
I woke up on Sunday morning in no internet.
01:00:28
◼
►
And I come out to the garage and it's cold
01:00:31
◼
►
and I'm just awake and I'm like, what is going on?
01:00:36
◼
►
And it doesn't seem like the lights are on
01:00:39
◼
►
on my router or my fiber router,
01:00:44
◼
►
my wifi router or my fiber router,
01:00:46
◼
►
which are right next to each other.
01:00:47
◼
►
I'm like, what's going on here?
01:00:50
◼
►
And I figure out eventually that what happened is at 3 a.m., my cyber power,
01:00:57
◼
►
uninterruptible power supply, which previously appeared in episode 269 of
01:01:01
◼
►
Upgrade as "Beep, beep from far away."
01:01:04
◼
►
The UPS that beeps forever when the power goes out to tell you that the power is
01:01:11
◼
►
out, which you probably already figured out, its battery officially died.
01:01:16
◼
►
I don't know what causes that.
01:01:17
◼
►
I don't know, I mean, I know battery degradation,
01:01:19
◼
►
but at some point the UPS internal monitors were like,
01:01:24
◼
►
oh, this battery's gone.
01:01:25
◼
►
And so it did what you would think it would do logically,
01:01:28
◼
►
which is cut off power immediately to all the outlets
01:01:32
◼
►
on the thing that is there to keep things running.
01:01:35
◼
►
I know it beeps, it could just start beeping,
01:01:39
◼
►
but no, instead it just cut the power off to those outlets.
01:01:44
◼
►
- That seems like the thing.
01:01:47
◼
►
- I don't understand.
01:01:47
◼
►
Look, there is a philosophy in a lot of power strips
01:01:50
◼
►
that are surge protectors
01:01:51
◼
►
that when the surge protection is gone,
01:01:53
◼
►
they turn off because that's the way you can't ignore it.
01:01:55
◼
►
They like say, no, no, you can't use this anymore.
01:01:58
◼
►
It's a surge protector and it's not offering protection.
01:02:00
◼
►
So you can't use it anymore.
01:02:02
◼
►
But this thing, I don't understand it.
01:02:05
◼
►
'Cause yeah, you would think that
01:02:07
◼
►
if it was having a problem with the battery,
01:02:08
◼
►
it should beep and say, battery problem, not goodbye power.
01:02:13
◼
►
- So you still had power to the house.
01:02:17
◼
►
- Oh yeah, power didn't go out.
01:02:19
◼
►
- But the UPS died, so it decided to,
01:02:23
◼
►
it's like, if I'm going down, you're coming with me.
01:02:27
◼
►
- Is it, so it's feeling.
01:02:28
◼
►
- Yeah, yeah.
01:02:29
◼
►
So what this meant was essentially my wifi router,
01:02:33
◼
►
the Eero routes all the traffic inside my home network.
01:02:35
◼
►
It does all of the network address translation stuff
01:02:40
◼
►
for like my server and my other things
01:02:43
◼
►
that are accessible from outside.
01:02:44
◼
►
It's doing all of that.
01:02:45
◼
►
The Eero does that.
01:02:46
◼
►
And that's because the Eero has some features
01:02:48
◼
►
that the fiber router from AT&T does not have.
01:02:52
◼
►
I tried, I tried a lot.
01:02:54
◼
►
I couldn't get it to work where I wanted to
01:02:57
◼
►
use the same URL to access my home server
01:03:00
◼
►
from inside my network and outside my network.
01:03:01
◼
►
It didn't work.
01:03:02
◼
►
Frustrating.
01:03:04
◼
►
I learned a lot about Hairpin NAT.
01:03:08
◼
►
Anyway, AT&T's fiber.
01:03:10
◼
►
- Yeah, again, a thing that you should just nope out of,
01:03:12
◼
►
Myke, if you hear about it.
01:03:12
◼
►
Hairpin that, don't, no, don't do it.
01:03:16
◼
►
So I'm using the Aero instead for all of that.
01:03:18
◼
►
And it's been fine.
01:03:19
◼
►
But just keep in mind, what this means is
01:03:21
◼
►
if for four or five hours,
01:03:23
◼
►
the Aero that routes everything in and is the DHCP server
01:03:26
◼
►
and is everything from my home LAN is down
01:03:29
◼
►
and my fiber connection is down.
01:03:31
◼
►
I finally figure it out.
01:03:33
◼
►
I pull out another power strip.
01:03:34
◼
►
I plug it in.
01:03:35
◼
►
I pull the UPS out.
01:03:37
◼
►
I plug the stuff in.
01:03:38
◼
►
the lights come back on, the network comes back on.
01:03:42
◼
►
We have the internet in the house now.
01:03:48
◼
►
And this is when we talk about Lutron, Caseta
01:03:51
◼
►
and other things that have like,
01:03:52
◼
►
and probably a car is like this too,
01:03:54
◼
►
have their own hub with their own radio backhaul.
01:03:57
◼
►
And then it attaches to your local network,
01:03:59
◼
►
but like they can talk amongst themselves
01:04:01
◼
►
and they can talk using the base.
01:04:05
◼
►
And then the base talks to the rest of the network,
01:04:07
◼
►
but they can work without the network being there.
01:04:11
◼
►
This is the kind of stuff we're talking about
01:04:12
◼
►
because that outage on a Sunday morning
01:04:15
◼
►
rippled through my house and its smart home stuff
01:04:18
◼
►
for the whole week.
01:04:21
◼
►
The whole week.
01:04:22
◼
►
It wasn't like, "Oh, now nothing works
01:04:26
◼
►
and I need to reboot everything."
01:04:27
◼
►
Everything worked for a while.
01:04:28
◼
►
I suspect that there was a networking thing going on
01:04:31
◼
►
where there were like DHCP leases
01:04:33
◼
►
that were, it was gliding on the old ones from the Eero
01:04:36
◼
►
and then they timed out
01:04:38
◼
►
and the Eero didn't interact with them right.
01:04:40
◼
►
I don't know, I'm not a network manager,
01:04:43
◼
►
nor should I have to be.
01:04:44
◼
►
So my automation stopped working at some point,
01:04:48
◼
►
which leads me to believe that my Apple TV got confused
01:04:51
◼
►
and or my devices that were trying to look
01:04:53
◼
►
to the HomeKit hub couldn't.
01:04:56
◼
►
And when I looked at home,
01:04:57
◼
►
at one point when I looked at home,
01:04:59
◼
►
it was like, you know,
01:05:01
◼
►
it was not there or there were two of them.
01:05:03
◼
►
It got real weird, right?
01:05:06
◼
►
And so my automation stopped working.
01:05:07
◼
►
So like the lights didn't come on in my backyard.
01:05:10
◼
►
I'm like, what is going on here?
01:05:12
◼
►
The outside light smart outlet,
01:05:16
◼
►
which is on wifi, stopped working at some point
01:05:18
◼
►
until I unplugged it.
01:05:19
◼
►
I think that was on Sunday, unplugged it and replugged it.
01:05:23
◼
►
And then it worked fine.
01:05:24
◼
►
But then the automation stopped working.
01:05:26
◼
►
And so then it didn't go on and I thought,
01:05:27
◼
►
do I need to unplug it and replug it?
01:05:29
◼
►
But no, no, they were working now.
01:05:31
◼
►
It was just that the automation stopped.
01:05:34
◼
►
and I have a dehumidifier in our bedroom
01:05:37
◼
►
and I think it turned on and then never turned off
01:05:42
◼
►
and I had to go turn it off.
01:05:44
◼
►
- What were these automations set by, HomeKit?
01:05:46
◼
►
- HomeKit automations, yeah.
01:05:48
◼
►
It's to turn the lights on at a certain time
01:05:50
◼
►
after sunset and then turn it off at 1130
01:05:52
◼
►
and turns the front light on
01:05:54
◼
►
and then leaves it onto a certain time and turns it off
01:05:56
◼
►
and it turns the dehumidifier around during the day
01:05:57
◼
►
and then turns it off.
01:05:58
◼
►
It's a whole set of timers essentially.
01:06:01
◼
►
Those stopped working.
01:06:02
◼
►
the outside smart outlets stopped working.
01:06:05
◼
►
My weather station data logger,
01:06:07
◼
►
which is literally just an ethernet thing,
01:06:10
◼
►
it's plugged in to the ethernet.
01:06:13
◼
►
The data logger is attached to the little console
01:06:16
◼
►
that talks to my weather station.
01:06:17
◼
►
They have their own little radio connection that they share.
01:06:20
◼
►
And then the data logger is the thing that's like,
01:06:22
◼
►
it trails out of the console and it's an ethernet plug
01:06:24
◼
►
and you plug it in.
01:06:25
◼
►
It stopped working.
01:06:28
◼
►
And then, and I thought it had died
01:06:30
◼
►
and I ordered a replacement.
01:06:32
◼
►
And then it started working and then it stopped working
01:06:34
◼
►
and then it started working and it was sporadic.
01:06:36
◼
►
And that was very mysterious because as far as I could tell,
01:06:40
◼
►
I could still sort of see it,
01:06:42
◼
►
but it wasn't talking to my Mac mini
01:06:45
◼
►
in the closet in my son's bedroom, that is my server.
01:06:49
◼
►
So that was very mysterious.
01:06:52
◼
►
Homebridge at one point during the week,
01:06:54
◼
►
not on Sunday morning, mind you,
01:06:56
◼
►
at some point during the week,
01:06:58
◼
►
Homebridge got very confused.
01:07:01
◼
►
So I had to, and I, and had to be restarted.
01:07:03
◼
►
I had already restarted my Mac mini at this point,
01:07:06
◼
►
I believe a couple of times,
01:07:07
◼
►
but I had to then re-restart Homebridge inside of it
01:07:10
◼
►
because all the Homebridge devices stopped being visible
01:07:13
◼
►
or, you know, seen by HomeKit.
01:07:14
◼
►
At one point, I tried to turn on my lights
01:07:18
◼
►
when the lights weren't working on the outside.
01:07:20
◼
►
And I thought that it was the,
01:07:22
◼
►
that they needed to be unplugged and replugged,
01:07:24
◼
►
the little light switch for the smart light,
01:07:26
◼
►
for the lights outside.
01:07:28
◼
►
I, it was because I was pressing up and down
01:07:31
◼
►
on the little Philips Hue remote
01:07:35
◼
►
that I have on the wall by the outside door
01:07:38
◼
►
that I used to turn those lights on and off using HomeKit.
01:07:41
◼
►
Turns out the Hue switches had stopped working.
01:07:47
◼
►
Again, this is later in the week.
01:07:49
◼
►
- This is catastrophic. - The Hue switches
01:07:49
◼
►
stopped working.
01:07:51
◼
►
So then I have to go and find,
01:07:52
◼
►
I have to play the game of where exactly
01:07:54
◼
►
did I tuck my Hue hub?
01:07:58
◼
►
- Is it in Julian's bedroom or is it in a,
01:08:01
◼
►
it turns out it's actually in the center of my living room,
01:08:05
◼
►
you know, thing that the TV is on.
01:08:07
◼
►
It's back behind there with a hub
01:08:09
◼
►
and a bunch of other stuff.
01:08:10
◼
►
So I had to go in there and pull it out
01:08:11
◼
►
and find the power plug and unplug it and replug it.
01:08:14
◼
►
And then guess what?
01:08:15
◼
►
Oh, the Hue stuff came back.
01:08:16
◼
►
And this was this rolling chaos throughout the week.
01:08:21
◼
►
So what have we learned here?
01:08:24
◼
►
One is as much work as it is,
01:08:27
◼
►
If part of your network goes down,
01:08:28
◼
►
if your router goes down,
01:08:29
◼
►
I guess what you need to do is literally go to everything
01:08:31
◼
►
that's got a plug that's a home thing on your network
01:08:34
◼
►
and you need to unplug it all and replug it in
01:08:36
◼
►
after you get the router back up.
01:08:38
◼
►
Because apparently they're all just ticking time bombs
01:08:42
◼
►
until you get to that point.
01:08:44
◼
►
This is, I just wanna restate,
01:08:45
◼
►
this is why relying on WiFi and products
01:08:48
◼
►
that just use your LANs IP network is bad
01:08:52
◼
►
because they're bad and they are unreliable
01:08:56
◼
►
because the network protocols were meant to be administered
01:09:01
◼
►
by people working at universities
01:09:03
◼
►
who have technical staffs to do this sort of thing,
01:09:06
◼
►
not in your home where you're the technical staff
01:09:08
◼
►
and why stuff like the Lutron thing
01:09:10
◼
►
where it's got its own radios and network really does work.
01:09:13
◼
►
It's why I feel like the thread aspect of matter
01:09:17
◼
►
is really interesting because the idea
01:09:19
◼
►
that maybe we don't need to trust the wifi
01:09:22
◼
►
and there are other ways for us to talk to one another
01:09:25
◼
►
is the right way forward.
01:09:27
◼
►
Like try to not have it be on your home IP network
01:09:31
◼
►
and your home wifi if you can avoid it,
01:09:34
◼
►
because it's reliable until it isn't,
01:09:37
◼
►
and then it doesn't work anywhere.
01:09:39
◼
►
And then, and then another next point,
01:09:42
◼
►
even when something works pretty well for a while,
01:09:46
◼
►
then it fails and it's super frustrating
01:09:48
◼
►
'cause you end up in the situation where you're like,
01:09:50
◼
►
well, wait a second, it's worked for a year.
01:09:52
◼
►
Why did it stop working?
01:09:53
◼
►
And it's very hard to debug why it is not working now.
01:09:58
◼
►
And I will just point out that like,
01:10:00
◼
►
this is also why you should never ever subject anyone
01:10:03
◼
►
in your home to smart home anything,
01:10:07
◼
►
unless you have signed up to be the red alert IT manager
01:10:12
◼
►
who is going to troubleshoot it immediately when it breaks.
01:10:16
◼
►
Which also means as a corollary,
01:10:18
◼
►
do not do this to your family who does not live with you.
01:10:23
◼
►
because you are on the hook to figure out their home network at a distance or go there and fix it.
01:10:30
◼
►
Because I, at least I'm in this house and can do the troubleshoot. I didn't like doing the
01:10:34
◼
►
troubleshooting all week, Sunday morning and then the rest of the week, but at least I was here to
01:10:38
◼
►
do it. And my final bullet point here is, bottom line is, this stuff's still not good enough. It's
01:10:45
◼
►
just not there yet. It's fun to play with, but it's way too brittle. And I appreciate the fact
01:10:52
◼
►
that I think the matter standard is actually meant to deal with a bunch of these issues,
01:10:57
◼
►
but it's been a while. It's been a few years since I had a cascade of failures like I had this week.
01:11:03
◼
►
I love my smart home stuff, and it really has improved aspects of our house. But I'll also
01:11:08
◼
►
point out that when the lights didn't go on in the backyard or I couldn't control them from the
01:11:12
◼
►
switch that I have inside, the lights in my living room were never a problem because they're Lutron
01:11:19
◼
►
on caseta lights, they have a physical switch on the wall
01:11:22
◼
►
that controls them and there is a remote control
01:11:25
◼
►
that we have in the living room to control them
01:11:27
◼
►
that uses radio, its own radio frequency
01:11:30
◼
►
to talk to its own devices and so it all still worked
01:11:35
◼
►
as the rest of the stuff broke.
01:11:36
◼
►
So that's my story, Myke, that's my story.
01:11:39
◼
►
Don't have hubs, don't have networks, I guess,
01:11:42
◼
►
is the lesson to take from this.
01:11:44
◼
►
- This episode is brought to you by FitBard.
01:11:48
◼
►
Between balancing your work life, family life and everything going on in your life, it can
01:11:52
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be hard to make fitness a priority.
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What you need is a program that's going to work with you, not against you.
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That's why you need Fitbod.
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Fitbod has an algorithm that's going to learn about you and your goals and your training
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It also learns from the way you do the workouts in their app to make sure they continue to
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customise things.
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so you're not going to be overworking part of your body, it makes sure that they balance
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They have HD video tutorials of every exercise in the app shot from multiple angles so you'll
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It's super great, I love how it integrates with my Apple Watch so once I have learned
01:12:43
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the exercises and I'm familiar with some of the ones they are asking me to do, I can
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just use my Apple Watch to keep advancing to the next exercise in the program they set
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up for me on that day.
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Personal fitness is not just about competing with other people, I think it's not about
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that at all.
01:13:09
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What really sticks is when you can find something that works just for you.
01:13:13
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So Fitbod does a ton of work to make sure that the plans that they create for you, they're
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That is 25% of your membership at fitbud.me/upgrade.
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Thanks to Fitbud for the support of this show and Relay FM.
01:13:50
◼
►
It is time for some #AskUpgradeQuestions to finish out today's episode.
01:13:55
◼
►
The first comes from Jambo who asks If Apple does launch a consumer VR product,
01:14:01
◼
►
do you have any thoughts on what they would call their VR "world"?
01:14:06
◼
►
metaverse is unlikely to be used as a name. This question got me thinking, Jason, just in general,
01:14:12
◼
►
that there are so many branding opportunities for Apple when it comes to this VR headset, right?
01:14:21
◼
►
So you've got the headset itself, what is that going to be called? What is the operating system
01:14:28
◼
►
going to be called? What is their kind of like home area, you know, like when you put it on
01:14:34
◼
►
and you see things, like what is that going to be called?
01:14:37
◼
►
Like, you know, the area that you're in where maybe you can create apps,
01:14:41
◼
►
like, you know, Oculus give you like this little home that you're in
01:14:44
◼
►
and you can see stuff and or maybe there's an office environment.
01:14:47
◼
►
And then if they do have any kind of virtual worlds or collaboration apps,
01:14:52
◼
►
there's names for them there. Do you have any thoughts on these?
01:14:54
◼
►
Like, I don't think we could try and name them, but there's a lot to do, right?
01:14:58
◼
►
There is a lot to do. I mean, it sounds at least based on Mark Gurman's reports
01:15:02
◼
►
that it's gonna probably be Reality Pro or Reality One
01:15:06
◼
►
for the headset that the operating system
01:15:07
◼
►
is at least called Reality OS.
01:15:09
◼
►
And if they're gonna put reality
01:15:10
◼
►
in the name of the product,
01:15:10
◼
►
they'll probably put it in the OS too.
01:15:13
◼
►
The home area is a good question, right?
01:15:15
◼
►
Is that just the home, Apple home, reality home,
01:15:18
◼
►
real reality, reality pro, reality pro max?
01:15:20
◼
►
I don't know.
01:15:21
◼
►
- Ultra home.
01:15:22
◼
►
- And then collaboration apps.
01:15:24
◼
►
What I keep thinking though,
01:15:25
◼
►
is that a lot of this branding is wherever possible
01:15:27
◼
►
is gonna be inherited from the iPhone
01:15:29
◼
►
because they want to keep the linkage
01:15:30
◼
►
with the rest of their platforms.
01:15:32
◼
►
So like collaboration,
01:15:33
◼
►
I think they're gonna call collaboration
01:15:35
◼
►
and SharePlay is gonna be called SharePlay and all of that.
01:15:39
◼
►
But you're right, there is some opportunity.
01:15:40
◼
►
Like what do you call the metaverse
01:15:42
◼
►
if it's not the metaverse?
01:15:43
◼
►
You've got to call it the, again,
01:15:45
◼
►
reality verse, reality pro, Apple reality reality.
01:15:50
◼
►
I don't know.
01:15:51
◼
►
It's a good question.
01:15:51
◼
►
There's a lot of branding that goes on here.
01:15:53
◼
►
I am a little concerned,
01:15:54
◼
►
given some of Apple's recent product names
01:15:56
◼
►
about the branding of this stuff.
01:15:59
◼
►
but I think they're gonna try to keep it simple.
01:16:02
◼
►
And I don't know if skeuomorphism applies to language,
01:16:07
◼
►
but I feel like that's probably
01:16:08
◼
►
what they're gonna wanna do is call things
01:16:12
◼
►
what they are in the real world or use real world ideas.
01:16:16
◼
►
So if you think about like the desktop on the Mac,
01:16:19
◼
►
that kind of idea of saying, when you're at home,
01:16:23
◼
►
you're at home or you're in the living room
01:16:27
◼
►
or you're at the front door or something like that.
01:16:32
◼
►
That would be my guess is that they're gonna try
01:16:34
◼
►
to apply real world concepts to this rather than saying,
01:16:38
◼
►
"Oh, we're in the metaverse now.
01:16:40
◼
►
You're in a science fiction landscape
01:16:42
◼
►
that's floating around you."
01:16:44
◼
►
I think Apple is going to go as far in the direction
01:16:48
◼
►
of reality as possible in terms of its naming and metaphor.
01:16:52
◼
►
Could be wrong, but that's my intuition.
01:16:55
◼
►
- I've got to say about metaverse,
01:16:57
◼
►
I was just watching the most recent season of Mythic Quest,
01:17:01
◼
►
and like, the writing's great still.
01:17:04
◼
►
Like, they've got people that know gaming.
01:17:07
◼
►
- Have you started it too?
01:17:09
◼
►
- I've seen the first two, yeah.
01:17:10
◼
►
- Yeah, that's where I am, the first two.
01:17:12
◼
►
- Great, great, legitimately great.
01:17:14
◼
►
- So good. - Great, great, great show.
01:17:15
◼
►
- And like, Ayan is just so metaverse and web three,
01:17:19
◼
►
and it's really funny.
01:17:20
◼
►
It's very, very funny.
01:17:22
◼
►
- Yeah, yep, good stuff.
01:17:24
◼
►
Savva asks, "Does anyone know what happened
01:17:27
◼
►
to all of the rumors of AirPods
01:17:29
◼
►
getting support for lossless audio?
01:17:31
◼
►
It seemed like it was a whole bunch of speculation
01:17:33
◼
►
just disappeared."
01:17:35
◼
►
- Well, Apple, when they announced AirPods Pro 2,
01:17:38
◼
►
they said that it enables complete,
01:17:41
◼
►
like a much higher ability to do bandwidth from devices.
01:17:46
◼
►
And they never explained what they were doing with that
01:17:49
◼
►
or if they were doing anything with it.
01:17:50
◼
►
So I consider to believe,
01:17:53
◼
►
I continue to believe that there is functionality
01:17:58
◼
►
in the AirPods Pro 2 that will support
01:18:03
◼
►
either higher bit rate or lossless audio,
01:18:06
◼
►
and that they haven't enabled it yet in software.
01:18:10
◼
►
And why are they waiting?
01:18:12
◼
►
Maybe the software doesn't work.
01:18:13
◼
►
Maybe it is something that we're waiting for
01:18:18
◼
►
also rolling out like AirPods Max 2
01:18:22
◼
►
that also supports it.
01:18:24
◼
►
And then they can say,
01:18:24
◼
►
and now both of these things support this new,
01:18:27
◼
►
amazing thing we've got.
01:18:29
◼
►
I don't know that detail.
01:18:30
◼
►
It's also possible, yes, technically that they,
01:18:32
◼
►
this is a feature that they put in there,
01:18:33
◼
►
but they actually, turns out they can't use it.
01:18:35
◼
►
It doesn't work reliably.
01:18:36
◼
►
And so they're not gonna talk about it,
01:18:37
◼
►
except they did talk about the increased bandwidth.
01:18:40
◼
►
So that's weird.
01:18:42
◼
►
So I feel like it's hanging out there
01:18:44
◼
►
and it probably does exist,
01:18:45
◼
►
but it doesn't, it's not being used right now.
01:18:47
◼
►
It's a little bit like the,
01:18:49
◼
►
the old U1 chip when it was announced,
01:18:50
◼
►
which is like, this is a thing that you can use
01:18:54
◼
►
for AirDrop, I guess.
01:18:55
◼
►
And it was like very clear,
01:18:56
◼
►
if you know about Ultra Wideband,
01:18:57
◼
►
what it was going to ultimately be used for,
01:18:59
◼
►
but they weren't ready yet.
01:19:00
◼
►
It's a little like that.
01:19:01
◼
►
- Or could just one of those things where like
01:19:03
◼
►
that additional bandwidth does not allow for support
01:19:05
◼
►
for lossless audio, but people heard
01:19:07
◼
►
it has additional bandwidth, like as a rumor
01:19:09
◼
►
and thought that meant lossless audio.
01:19:12
◼
►
- Yeah, but what are they,
01:19:13
◼
►
here's the problem with that theory.
01:19:15
◼
►
And I think it could be right,
01:19:16
◼
►
but why did they talk about the additional bandwidth
01:19:19
◼
►
and then not explain in any way what it might be used for.
01:19:23
◼
►
They never said.
01:19:24
◼
►
- Yeah, you're right.
01:19:24
◼
►
You're completely right, completely right.
01:19:26
◼
►
But it's just like, hey, we do this.
01:19:27
◼
►
- It might not be lossless, right?
01:19:29
◼
►
It also might be enhanced in some way
01:19:31
◼
►
where it's a higher quality thing
01:19:32
◼
►
that's coming out of the lossless.
01:19:34
◼
►
They're encoding the lossless audio on the fly
01:19:35
◼
►
to a much higher bit rate.
01:19:37
◼
►
So it's a much higher quality stream,
01:19:39
◼
►
but not truly lossless.
01:19:41
◼
►
That could be, or it could be that they've got,
01:19:43
◼
►
you know, Apple lossless streaming working in the background
01:19:46
◼
►
but they're not ready to enable it yet.
01:19:49
◼
►
- Could be. - Could be.
01:19:50
◼
►
Andrew asks, "Do you think Apple will make
01:19:53
◼
►
USB-C wired ear pods?"
01:19:57
◼
►
- Yes. - Yeah?
01:20:00
◼
►
- I do. - Kind of got to, right?
01:20:03
◼
►
- Yeah. - There has to be
01:20:05
◼
►
some kind of wired, even if you don't sell a lot of them,
01:20:08
◼
►
people do still want that, I guess, so why not make it?
01:20:11
◼
►
- I think they will.
01:20:12
◼
►
I mean, maybe, I don't know the dynamics of the,
01:20:15
◼
►
you know, the manufacturer of those things,
01:20:18
◼
►
but like they made the lightning ear pods.
01:20:20
◼
►
I don't know why they wouldn't make the USB-C ear pods
01:20:24
◼
►
just to have them around as a real base thing
01:20:26
◼
►
for people who don't want to buy wireless headphones,
01:20:29
◼
►
but want to attach headphones to their iPhone.
01:20:32
◼
►
Like, yes, I do.
01:20:34
◼
►
- Saw my mom this morning and she turned to me and said,
01:20:39
◼
►
"I think I want some of those AirPods."
01:20:42
◼
►
And I was like, "Oh, okay, mother.
01:20:44
◼
►
"Fine, all right, we can help you out with that."
01:20:46
◼
►
Like I have a, I'm not sure if she's gonna like it.
01:20:50
◼
►
So we're gonna start out, so don't tell her,
01:20:52
◼
►
I'm gonna buy her a new iPhone this year.
01:20:54
◼
►
I'm gonna get her an iPhone 13.
01:20:56
◼
►
She had my 10R.
01:20:58
◼
►
- Right, right.
01:20:59
◼
►
- And she's struggling at the moment with the earpiece.
01:21:02
◼
►
She can't, it's kind of failing on her a bit.
01:21:05
◼
►
But just in general, I think it's time
01:21:06
◼
►
for an upgrade for her.
01:21:08
◼
►
I'm gonna get her a 13 'cause that's good for her.
01:21:11
◼
►
She doesn't need a 14, so we're gonna get her an iPhone 13.
01:21:15
◼
►
and you could probably buy it during the Apple,
01:21:17
◼
►
I've got a shopping period thing right now.
01:21:19
◼
►
I think you get like a $50 gift card or whatever,
01:21:21
◼
►
50 pound gift card if you do it
01:21:23
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during the Black Friday time.
01:21:25
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So it feels like a good time to do it.
01:21:27
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But I have some old original AirPods
01:21:29
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and I'm gonna try these
01:21:31
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'cause I don't know if she's gonna like it.
01:21:33
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- Right, don't buy her something
01:21:35
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if you can get her to try it.
01:21:37
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- Exactly, she doesn't use any kinds of earphones
01:21:39
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right now at all.
01:21:40
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It's something she wants to do
01:21:41
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when she's on the bus to work
01:21:44
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and she wants to know what's listening to music which is just interesting. It's like
01:21:47
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just an interesting thing. It's like this has never been a thing you've expressed before.
01:21:50
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So I was like alright I'm going to give you my old AirPods and you can start with those
01:21:54
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and let me know if you like them and then we can get some regular ones but yeah it's
01:21:58
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just like a funny thing that happened to me today.
01:22:01
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David asks "One thing I haven't heard discussed much about the lock screen changes in IOS
01:22:05
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16 is the removal of the volume slider along with the playback controls. Do you miss it
01:22:11
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or have you even noticed?
01:22:13
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I like it as an indicator of volume level
01:22:15
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and a quick way to control volume on screen
01:22:17
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if I'm not holding my phone.
01:22:18
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- I hadn't noticed 'cause I use the button
01:22:23
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to adjust the volume. - Same.
01:22:25
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Never noticed.
01:22:26
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I'm a button boy.
01:22:27
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This is the reason I included this question
01:22:31
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is I didn't know that they'd removed the volume slider.
01:22:34
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So one thing I will say with the lock screen,
01:22:39
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I've found myself multiple times not something I haven't before accidentally skipping forward
01:22:44
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in what I'm listening to.
01:22:46
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Maybe I'm touching something that I didn't mean to or whatever but that's been happening
01:22:50
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But in general I like that nail playing more.
01:22:53
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I found it to be much more reliable with suggestions for restarting podcasts and stuff.
01:22:59
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It was not very reliable with that before.
01:23:01
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But while we're talking about volume buttons, I am a big fan of the volume control on AirPods
01:23:08
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I love having a volume control just there on the AirPods.
01:23:12
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- Way better than pressing,
01:23:13
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like reaching into my pocket
01:23:14
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and pressing the buttons or whatever.
01:23:15
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Like I really like it.
01:23:17
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You gotta like get the gesture down.
01:23:21
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Like it takes a little bit of practice
01:23:22
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to kind of get it right.
01:23:24
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But once you get it right, very good.
01:23:26
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- I have those moments where I'm listening
01:23:28
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and I wanna adjust the volume and I think,
01:23:29
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oh boy, I'm gonna need to go get my phone
01:23:30
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or pull my phone out of my pocket or whatever.
01:23:32
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And then I realized, oh, wait a second.
01:23:34
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And then you do that little thing.
01:23:35
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And it's, yeah, it's really nice.
01:23:38
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as is fun from Zach in the Discord,
01:23:40
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the volume indicator comes back on the lock screen
01:23:42
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if you're air playing something.
01:23:45
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- Then that just makes it weird, right?
01:23:47
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Like if you sometimes have it, why did you get rid of it?
01:23:50
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That's funny. - Yeah.
01:23:51
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- That's very funny.
01:23:53
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- Yeah, I would, what I would say is you probably,
01:23:56
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it probably should be there,
01:23:57
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even though we are not using it.
01:23:59
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I think that it's nice to have it there
01:24:01
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and I think you can afford the space on that one.
01:24:03
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- I think so too, I think so too.
01:24:05
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If you would like to send in a question
01:24:26
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If you'd like to find Jason online, you can go to SixColors.com. He is @JSNEL on Twitter.
01:24:33
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Do you want to talk about Twitter and Upgrade Plus? I want to talk about it on Upgrade Plus
01:24:38
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again. I think I have to do that. It's just too much fun to not talk about it right now.
01:24:41
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It's absolutely wild over there. I am @imyke. I'm going to be away for a couple of weeks
01:24:48
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now. I'm going on vacation. Jason's lined up a couple of very exciting guests for the
01:24:51
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show so you can look out for those over the next couple of weeks. And don't forget to
01:24:55
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go to Upgradies.vote to cast your nominations for the Upgradies, the ninth annual Upgradies
01:25:02
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Awards. We'll be back next week. Until then.
01:25:06
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- Well, he'll be back next week. Until then.
01:25:09
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- Have a good vacation, Myke. Say goodbye.
01:25:13
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- Bye, everybody.
01:25:14
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[MUSIC PLAYING]