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Upgrade

434: Bob to Bob to Bob

 

00:00:00   [

00:00:08   Relay FM]

00:00:09   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 434.

00:00:13   Today's show is brought to you by TextExpander, Membafall and Fitbot.

00:00:17   My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snow.

00:00:19   Hi Jason Snow.

00:00:20   Hi Myke Hurley, how are you?

00:00:21   I'm very good, I have a hashtag Snow Talk question for you.

00:00:24   Comes from Dudak who asks, "Who are you rooting for in the World Cup and who do you think

00:00:28   will win?"

00:00:29   - Oh, the World Cup just started.

00:00:32   This is soccer, American soccer.

00:00:34   It's the biggest event, sporting event in the world.

00:00:38   And the US is in it, so I'm gonna root for the US

00:00:41   because I'm an American.

00:00:43   I will also be cheering on England, I think,

00:00:48   'cause I always do that.

00:00:49   And who do I think is going to win?

00:00:56   - Oh, you know, I had a prediction

00:01:00   and now I've forgotten what it was.

00:01:03   It's, I'm gonna say just to doom them,

00:01:08   I'm gonna say England.

00:01:09   - Why would you do this?

00:01:11   - To doom them.

00:01:12   - Yeah, that's fun.

00:01:13   - That's part of the doom.

00:01:14   You gotta set the expectations high

00:01:15   so that the defeat is crushing.

00:01:16   Like that's how you gotta do it.

00:01:18   - It's gonna be a rough day for you on Friday.

00:01:20   - I mean, I could go to Argentina if you like, but like--

00:01:22   - You can if you, I would prefer,

00:01:23   Friday's gonna be a bad day, you know?

00:01:25   - It's England versus the US.

00:01:28   Well, the good news is, Myke, the good news is,

00:01:33   I can't watch that match because Fox, the TV network

00:01:38   that's carrying the World Cup in the US has decided

00:01:40   that they need, they wanna keep it rolling.

00:01:43   That's Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

00:01:45   They need to keep it rolling with the sports

00:01:48   after the World Cup is over.

00:01:49   And of course the World Cup is over fairly early

00:01:52   here in the US because it's in Qatar.

00:01:55   So they decided months ago, like six months ago,

00:02:00   that what they would do is they would schedule

00:02:02   a college football game right after England versus USA

00:02:06   so they could keep the sports rolling.

00:02:07   And they thought, fans of international soccer,

00:02:10   what would they wanna see more than UCLA at Cal?

00:02:14   And so I will not see that World Cup match

00:02:16   because I will be driving to the stadium

00:02:19   for the college football game

00:02:20   that follows the World Cup match.

00:02:22   - Incredible.

00:02:23   So stay tuned, Americans, to watch me in a few layers of clothing watch a good football

00:02:29   team play my football team.

00:02:32   Even though it's Christmas, take off that red shirt, you know what I mean?

00:02:35   Oh yeah, I mean, there was, well, we just went over the weekend to the Cal Stanford

00:02:39   game, the big game.

00:02:40   It was, well, I would say it was great.

00:02:42   The first three quarters were not so great.

00:02:43   The fourth quarter was great, great.

00:02:45   It's actually the most fun I've had.

00:02:47   It was essentially the reason that I go to sporting events is we had a mostly full stadium

00:02:52   shouting at the top of their lungs while exciting things happened, and that hasn't happened

00:02:55   at the California Memorial Stadium. That's fun. Kind of a long time. We had a great time,

00:02:59   but of course there's lots of people in red. There were people sitting next to us in red

00:03:02   because they're the Stanford fans there. The enemy finally appears from time to time, and

00:03:09   you can say take off that red shirt to them all you like. They won't. They won't do it.

00:03:13   Because they're doing it purposefully. Yeah. And they're there. Anyway, so yeah, we'll

00:03:17   be back at that stadium on Friday for the last game of the season, and so I'm not gonna

00:03:21   to see England vs the US, it's just as well.

00:03:25   It's fine.

00:03:26   If you would like to send in a question of your own to help open the show, just send

00:03:30   out a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk or use question mark snow talk in the Relay FM

00:03:34   members discord, which you get access to if you sign up for Upgrade Plus, where you will

00:03:40   get access to our wonderful Relay FM members discord.

00:03:43   You will get longer ad-free episodes of Upgrade every single week in your podcast app of choice.

00:03:50   It is just $5 a month or $50 a year.

00:03:53   But we have a special promotion.

00:03:57   From now until December the 17th, you can save 20% on an annual plan.

00:04:03   You can find out more at GiveRelay.com.

00:04:05   So you can do this as a gifting thing.

00:04:07   We did this before.

00:04:08   So maybe the holidays are coming up.

00:04:10   You don't know what, you know, people want to buy you something.

00:04:12   You don't know what to suggest them.

00:04:16   Possibly some holidays on the horizon, you know?

00:04:18   And you could say to that person in your life,

00:04:20   "Go to giverelay.com and give me a gift for Upgrade Plus."

00:04:24   - Oh, I see. - But what we're doing

00:04:25   this time. - Not what I thought

00:04:26   you were gonna do.

00:04:27   I thought you were gonna go the other way.

00:04:29   Go to somebody and say, "I gave you the gift of a podcast."

00:04:31   But instead it's like,

00:04:32   "I demand the gift of a podcast."

00:04:34   - Jason, let's be real.

00:04:35   No one's buying this for an unsuspecting person

00:04:38   in their life, you know what I mean?

00:04:40   - This is like a couple of weeks ago

00:04:41   where you were talking about your slippers

00:04:43   and I made the grownup decision to text Lauren

00:04:47   with a link to your slippers and say,

00:04:48   "This would be a thing you could get me for Christmas rather than buying them myself."

00:04:52   This is a little like that, which is, "Oh, here's an idea!

00:04:55   A podcast I like has a thing that you could buy and you could give to me."

00:04:59   I get it.

00:05:00   Okay.

00:05:01   So, you know, go there.

00:05:04   GiveRelay.com.

00:05:05   But the thing that we're doing this time that's different to what we've done in the past,

00:05:08   you could just do this yourself.

00:05:10   If you go to GetUpgradePlus.com, sign up for an annual plan, and use the code 2023holidays

00:05:17   check out 2023 holidays. You'll get 20% off your first year of an annual subscription to Upgrade Plus.

00:05:24   Plans will renew at the full price after this year. We're telling you this in advance so if you

00:05:29   don't want that you've got to turn off the auto renew but they will renew at full price otherwise

00:05:33   but you can get an entire year of Upgrade Plus for $40 and that includes all the previous content,

00:05:40   a bunch of members' content, access to our Discord, it's all available.

00:05:45   Now, are the people who are Upgrade Plus subscribers now hearing this now?

00:05:52   I mean, they can.

00:05:53   Well, like in the episode.

00:05:55   Does this count as an ad, or does this not count as an ad?

00:05:58   You tell me.

00:05:59   I don't know, I feel like since you could potentially, as a subscriber, give this as

00:06:03   a gift, you should hear about it.

00:06:05   Yeah, sure.

00:06:06   Okay, see, there it is.

00:06:07   Now, that's why you heard about it.

00:06:08   if you're an Upgrade Plus subscriber.

00:06:09   You heard that.

00:06:11   - But also, if you're a subscriber,

00:06:13   and next year you would like it to be cheaper,

00:06:17   there are ways now you could make that happen

00:06:19   for yourself, I suppose.

00:06:21   - I suppose.

00:06:22   It's gonna take some work.

00:06:23   - Don't ask me for the logistics to that one.

00:06:26   I don't know how that's gonna work.

00:06:27   But you know, it's not impossible.

00:06:30   - Hey, why don't you tell people about the Upgradies?

00:06:33   - It's time to vote in the ninth annual Upgradies.

00:06:35   Go to upgradees.vote.

00:06:37   Voting will be open until December 12th.

00:06:40   We've had hundreds of submissions so far.

00:06:43   I can actually tell you, we had 288 people

00:06:46   have filled out their nominations for the Upgraders.

00:06:48   - Good start.

00:06:49   - Which is a great start.

00:06:51   But there's loads of time, but I want you to go there now.

00:06:53   Go to upgradees.vote.

00:06:55   You don't have to fill in every category.

00:06:58   Just fill in the ones that you care about.

00:07:00   Let us know what your favorite tech products,

00:07:02   your books, movies, podcasts are.

00:07:04   upgradees.vote, and we will be putting that one out there

00:07:08   towards the end of December.

00:07:10   I think December 26th, we have decided on,

00:07:13   is going to be--

00:07:14   - Right, but the deadline is gonna be quite a bit earlier

00:07:16   so that we can compile.

00:07:17   - Tabulate.

00:07:18   - Yes, it will be our Boxing Day episode.

00:07:20   Also, really noticed a lot of people getting very excited

00:07:24   about the favorite tech screw up category

00:07:27   that we do every year, 'cause whoa, what a bonanza.

00:07:29   - What could it be, right?

00:07:30   - What a bonanza of things to choose from there.

00:07:33   amazing, and then I had a question for you,

00:07:35   which is, when we did the episode,

00:07:38   did the Upgrades.vote go to the old form

00:07:41   before it went to the new form?

00:07:42   - Nope, nope.

00:07:43   - Or was it just Twitter's-- - Just the Twitter brand.

00:07:45   - So what you're saying is Twitter's content caching--

00:07:47   - Mm-hmm, is poor.

00:07:48   - Is not up to date.

00:07:49   - Correct.

00:07:50   It always goes to the current voting, right?

00:07:53   Like I just changed that, I did the DNS propagation stuff,

00:07:57   and it may have just taken a little bit longer,

00:07:58   but yes, Twitter was saying eighth,

00:08:00   but if you actually went to Upgrades.vote,

00:08:03   it would take you to the form for the ninth annual upgrades.

00:08:06   - Well, Twitter finally got with the program, I guess,

00:08:08   but it took a while.

00:08:09   - Can you imagine that something was broken at Twitter?

00:08:12   Can you imagine that?

00:08:13   - I can't, I was shocked, shocked I say.

00:08:16   - You've got some follow-up for us.

00:08:18   - I have a little tiny bit of iPad follow-up

00:08:20   that I wanted to throw in here.

00:08:22   This is sort of like the continuing story of Stage Manager,

00:08:26   which I guess it's sort of follow out from Connected

00:08:30   because Federico keeps talking about

00:08:32   the continuing story of Stage Manager.

00:08:34   I just wanted to say a couple of betas have passed in 16.2

00:08:39   where external display support is turned back on.

00:08:42   And I didn't get to use the last beta,

00:08:45   but the current beta I used for a few hours,

00:08:49   one afternoon last week, plugged into my studio display.

00:08:52   So I was running external display on my studio display.

00:08:57   And I just wanted to do a quick report in.

00:09:00   We'll see how it goes,

00:09:01   and we'll talk about it probably more when it ships,

00:09:03   but I'd say it's getting better.

00:09:06   I didn't have any crashes while I was using it.

00:09:09   And that was, as you know, from talking to Federico,

00:09:11   that was a serious problem before,

00:09:13   is you would kind of be going along

00:09:14   and suddenly the little gear would appear

00:09:16   and suddenly you'd be back at the lock screen

00:09:18   and everything would be gone.

00:09:20   And I haven't had any of those

00:09:22   or didn't during this experience, which was nice.

00:09:24   But, so it's better.

00:09:26   It still feels like it's not all the way there, right?

00:09:29   It is, there are still moments where I think,

00:09:31   "Mm, why is it like this?"

00:09:33   Or, "How can I get this thing to go to the right place?"

00:09:36   And it's just not all the way there.

00:09:38   My biggest frustration I find,

00:09:40   and maybe this is 'cause I'm a weirdo

00:09:41   in terms of how I use windows, but like right now,

00:09:44   I have a window in the center of my screen.

00:09:47   This is how I work.

00:09:49   I have a wide 27-inch display, right?

00:09:51   I don't want a window that wide.

00:09:54   And honestly, the 27-inch display

00:09:55   is right in front of my face, right?

00:09:57   So when I'm working on a document,

00:10:00   I want it front and center.

00:10:02   And one of the problems that on the iPad

00:10:07   that Stage Manager has is when you have two documents

00:10:11   on screen, it really wants them to be side by side.

00:10:16   And so I was working on a story using Stage Manager

00:10:19   on the external display on the iPad.

00:10:21   And I wanted to bring up a web browser

00:10:23   and have it kind of be on the side

00:10:25   so that I could look things up on the web

00:10:27   and then paste things in and paste links

00:10:29   and all of that stuff.

00:10:30   And when I brought in Safari, what it did is say,

00:10:33   oh, I know what you want.

00:10:34   You want Safari on the left side

00:10:35   and your document that you're working on on the right side.

00:10:38   And that's not what I wanted.

00:10:39   I want my document in the center.

00:10:42   I don't wanna be looking to,

00:10:44   I know this makes me sound like a very weird person,

00:10:46   but like, I don't, I'm not interested in writing.

00:10:50   Writing is hard enough without looking to the right.

00:10:52   (laughing)

00:10:53   I just want it right in front of my eyes.

00:10:56   I'll bring that Safari window forward when I want it

00:10:58   and then it'll go behind, you know,

00:11:00   overlap a little bit when I'm working here.

00:11:03   And Stage Manager just doesn't want to do it.

00:11:05   You either have to make that other window

00:11:06   really, really huge so that Stage Manager

00:11:10   can be moved kind of in front of it to the center,

00:11:13   or you have to add a third window,

00:11:15   like a proxy window, a fake window,

00:11:17   an irrelevant window of some app you don't want to see

00:11:21   so that you can have it on the right side

00:11:23   and the Safari on the left side

00:11:25   and then your window will be in the center.

00:11:27   And it's just ridiculous.

00:11:28   Like it's ridiculous.

00:11:30   It is the system.

00:11:31   And I know that this is an extreme version of the,

00:11:35   I just wanna put my windows where I want them.

00:11:37   Like, and again, I don't need it to be like,

00:11:39   I wanna put it on this pixel or that pixel.

00:11:41   But if I say, I'd like this window in the middle,

00:11:44   it should let me put it there.

00:11:47   (laughs)

00:11:49   And it just doesn't and it's maddening.

00:11:51   So I hate that about it.

00:11:53   And I hate that that leads to more window management

00:11:56   because it's not letting me put my window

00:11:58   where I want it to be.

00:11:59   'Cause it thinks the optimal window configuration for me

00:12:02   is side by side and it's not.

00:12:04   - No, it's not. - It's not.

00:12:05   - I have a bunch of like Moom shortcuts,

00:12:08   like configured to put things in the middle in some way.

00:12:12   Whether like just take the window at its current size

00:12:14   and center it for me,

00:12:16   or like I have like an optimized size

00:12:19   that I want say for Safari or whatever.

00:12:21   So I'm very much like you with that.

00:12:23   I want the main thing in the middle,

00:12:26   and there may be some stuff peeking out

00:12:27   and I can select it if I need to for reference,

00:12:30   but the main thing I'm working on

00:12:31   right in the middle of the screen.

00:12:32   - And there's usually an optimal size for that window

00:12:34   and I don't want it,

00:12:35   I actually usually don't even have it

00:12:37   extend all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom,

00:12:39   but definitely it's in the middle,

00:12:40   taking up the middle third-ish.

00:12:42   And Moom from ManyTricks is great at that.

00:12:45   Some other apps, lots of other apps do that.

00:12:47   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

00:15:19   to do.

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   - Yep.

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00:21:24   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,

00:24:00   for Chapek.

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.

00:30:27   Yeah.

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.

00:37:39   It's great.

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.

00:37:49   - Yes.

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.

00:41:43   - Yeah.

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.

00:42:05   (laughing)

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.

00:46:33   - YouTube?

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,

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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

00:51:04   together.

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

00:52:00   blinds.

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

00:56:19   in general.

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.

01:02:26   - Yeah.

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.

01:03:41   Great.

01:03:42   We have the internet in the house now.

01:03:45   Hooray.

01:03:46   Accept.

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.

01:04:20   (laughing)

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.

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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   - So good.

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   during the Black Friday time.

01:21:25   So it feels like a good time to do it.

01:21:27   But I have some old original AirPods

01:21:29   and I'm gonna try these

01:21:31   'cause I don't know if she's gonna like it.

01:21:33   - Right, don't buy her something

01:21:35   if you can get her to try it.

01:21:37   - Exactly, she doesn't use any kinds of earphones

01:21:39   right now at all.

01:21:40   It's something she wants to do

01:21:41   when she's on the bus to work

01:21:44   and she wants to know what's listening to music which is just interesting. It's like

01:21:47   just an interesting thing. It's like this has never been a thing you've expressed before.

01:21:50   So I was like alright I'm going to give you my old AirPods and you can start with those

01:21:54   and let me know if you like them and then we can get some regular ones but yeah it's

01:21:58   just like a funny thing that happened to me today.

01:22:01   David asks "One thing I haven't heard discussed much about the lock screen changes in IOS

01:22:05   16 is the removal of the volume slider along with the playback controls. Do you miss it

01:22:11   or have you even noticed?

01:22:13   I like it as an indicator of volume level

01:22:15   and a quick way to control volume on screen

01:22:17   if I'm not holding my phone.

01:22:18   - I hadn't noticed 'cause I use the button

01:22:23   to adjust the volume. - Same.

01:22:25   Never noticed.

01:22:26   I'm a button boy.

01:22:27   This is the reason I included this question

01:22:31   is I didn't know that they'd removed the volume slider.

01:22:34   So one thing I will say with the lock screen,

01:22:39   I've found myself multiple times not something I haven't before accidentally skipping forward

01:22:44   in what I'm listening to.

01:22:46   Maybe I'm touching something that I didn't mean to or whatever but that's been happening

01:22:49   to me.

01:22:50   But in general I like that nail playing more.

01:22:53   I found it to be much more reliable with suggestions for restarting podcasts and stuff.

01:22:59   It was not very reliable with that before.

01:23:01   But while we're talking about volume buttons, I am a big fan of the volume control on AirPods

01:23:06   Pro 2.

01:23:08   I love having a volume control just there on the AirPods.

01:23:11   - I agree.

01:23:12   - Way better than pressing,

01:23:13   like reaching into my pocket

01:23:14   and pressing the buttons or whatever.

01:23:15   Like I really like it.

01:23:17   You gotta like get the gesture down.

01:23:21   Like it takes a little bit of practice

01:23:22   to kind of get it right.

01:23:24   But once you get it right, very good.

01:23:26   - I have those moments where I'm listening

01:23:28   and I wanna adjust the volume and I think,

01:23:29   oh boy, I'm gonna need to go get my phone

01:23:30   or pull my phone out of my pocket or whatever.

01:23:32   And then I realized, oh, wait a second.

01:23:34   And then you do that little thing.

01:23:35   And it's, yeah, it's really nice.

01:23:38   as is fun from Zach in the Discord,

01:23:40   the volume indicator comes back on the lock screen

01:23:42   if you're air playing something.

01:23:44   - Huh.

01:23:45   - Then that just makes it weird, right?

01:23:47   Like if you sometimes have it, why did you get rid of it?

01:23:50   That's funny. - Yeah.

01:23:51   - That's very funny.

01:23:53   - Yeah, I would, what I would say is you probably,

01:23:56   it probably should be there,

01:23:57   even though we are not using it.

01:23:59   I think that it's nice to have it there

01:24:01   and I think you can afford the space on that one.

01:24:03   - I think so too, I think so too.

01:24:05   If you would like to send in a question

01:24:07   for

01:24:26   If you'd like to find Jason online, you can go to SixColors.com. He is @JSNEL on Twitter.

01:24:33   Do you want to talk about Twitter and Upgrade Plus? I want to talk about it on Upgrade Plus

01:24:38   again. I think I have to do that. It's just too much fun to not talk about it right now.

01:24:41   It's absolutely wild over there. I am @imyke. I'm going to be away for a couple of weeks

01:24:48   now. I'm going on vacation. Jason's lined up a couple of very exciting guests for the

01:24:51   show so you can look out for those over the next couple of weeks. And don't forget to

01:24:55   go to Upgradies.vote to cast your nominations for the Upgradies, the ninth annual Upgradies

01:25:02   Awards. We'll be back next week. Until then.

01:25:05   - Nope.

01:25:06   - Well, he'll be back next week. Until then.

01:25:09   - Have a good vacation, Myke. Say goodbye.

01:25:12   - Bye.

01:25:13   - Bye, everybody.

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