Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 340.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, LinkedIn Jobs, and Literati Kids.

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

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hello, Jason Snow.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hello, Michael Hurley.

00:00:24 ◼   ► I have a #snowtalk question for you from Ryan.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Is it from me?

00:00:27 ◼   ► It's from Jason to Ryan.

00:00:30 ◼   ► No, it's not.

00:00:30 ◼   ► When can I turn the tables and we can do Myke talk?

00:00:33 ◼   ► Or sorry, Hurley talk.

00:00:34 ◼   ► #hurleytalk.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Whenever you want.

00:00:36 ◼   ► You know?

00:00:37 ◼   ► We can do it whenever you want.

00:00:38 ◼   ► All right.

00:00:38 ◼   ► I'll think about it.

00:00:39 ◼   ► This question comes from Ryan and Ryan says,

00:00:41 ◼   ► what apps do you run in your menu bar?

00:00:44 ◼   ► What does that mean?

00:00:45 ◼   ► Well, when you look up in your menu bar.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Yes.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Which I don't know if you know this, but the menu bar is at the top of the Macintosh screen.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Oh, like the Macintosh.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Yes.

00:00:54 ◼   ► The Macintosh operating system.

00:00:56 ◼   ► It has the thing on the top right hand side and this, and this way like little apps, little

00:01:01 ◼   ► app icons show in the menu bar.

00:01:03 ◼   ► What's up there?

00:01:04 ◼   ► Are they apps?

00:01:05 ◼   ► Are they all apps up there though?

00:01:06 ◼   ► That's what confuses me about this is what, what's what apps are in my.

00:01:10 ◼   ► See, I think some of them are right because I have some right that run with the apps closed.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Is the clock an app?

00:01:16 ◼   ► If I click on it, I get the, uh, the notification center.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I think people don't care that you had the clock there, right?

00:01:22 ◼   ► Cause everyone knows you got the clock there.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I think what people are looking for is like, what are the third party applications that

00:01:28 ◼   ► JSNL deems important enough to give that permanent real estate?

00:01:31 ◼   ► Okay, well I've got the control center again, not allowed to not have it.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Um, next to that I have, uh, the peak calc widget.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Very good widget.

00:01:42 ◼   ► It's new from peak calc.

00:01:45 ◼   ► It's a widget.

00:01:46 ◼   ► It lives in your menu bar, so you don't have to launch that whole giant, enormous, complicated

00:01:52 ◼   ► peak calc app and instead can just use it in the menu bar.

00:01:58 ◼   ► It's otherwise pretty much exactly the same.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Um, I have an app that I wrote about recently on six colors called home control.

00:02:08 ◼   ► It's up there.

00:02:09 ◼   ► That is an app that lets me, uh, change like home kit things with keyboard shortcuts on

00:02:15 ◼   ► my Mac.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Right.

00:02:16 ◼   ► So like I can turn on the floor lamp in my office with a like control escape or something

00:02:21 ◼   ► like that and it just turns on.

00:02:24 ◼   ► It's pretty great.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Uh, I have fantastic Cal, which is telling me that I have a zoom meeting right now.

00:02:30 ◼   ► Oh, that's this one.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Uh, I have a bunch of widgets from Swift bar, which is the app that I've written about that

00:02:37 ◼   ► lets you put little scripts in your menu bar.

00:02:40 ◼   ► So those individual items aren't apps.

00:02:42 ◼   ► There are little scripts I wrote, plugin scripts I wrote for Swift bar.

00:02:47 ◼   ► So I've got like the air quality outside, you know, at my, in my neighborhood and I've got the current temperature

00:02:54 ◼   ► and I've got how many people are listening on the live stream right now.

00:02:57 ◼   ► I've got all those in there.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And then I use bartender.

00:03:01 ◼   ► So that's all that's visible by default and then hidden away to the left.

00:03:06 ◼   ► If I move my mouse over there is some other stuff.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Dropbox time machine, um, downlink, which is the app that puts my puts the satellite picture on my desktop.

00:03:19 ◼   ► Um, keyboard maestro is over there and uh, that's about it.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Very nice.

00:03:26 ◼   ► It's a good collection.

00:03:27 ◼   ► So some of those are apps actually.

00:03:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Well, everything before the, uh, bartender fold as they call it.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Sure.

00:03:35 ◼   ► The only thing I have one password there.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Um, I also have Alfred in there and I don't know why that is in there.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Like why I have it on the top part.

00:03:43 ◼   ► So I'm now moving it to the, uh, the hidden part in bartender.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Yeah, there you go.

00:03:49 ◼   ► And there's a lot of junk in the hidden area.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:52 ◼   ► There's a lot of stuff that I just generally don't need to see.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Don't want to see.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Not interested.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Bartender is a indispensable, uh, application because there's just stuff that I really wished

00:04:06 ◼   ► wasn't in a menu bar and I can't get rid of it, but a bartender will let you do it.

00:04:11 ◼   ► If you would like to be like Ryan and help us open a future episode of the show, just

00:04:14 ◼   ► send in a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk.

00:04:16 ◼   ► It may be considered, or you can use question marks and they'll talk in the relay FM members

00:04:21 ◼   ► discord, uh, follow up.

00:04:23 ◼   ► People should go and check out episode 143 of liftoff, which features an interview with

00:04:30 ◼   ► Ron Moore, the creator for mankind with Jason Snell and Stephen Hackett.

00:04:34 ◼   ► I have listened to all of it up until the spoiler part, cause I actually haven't been

00:04:37 ◼   ► able to watch the first episode of four or mankind yet.

00:04:40 ◼   ► So I'm waiting for that, but it was very good.

00:04:43 ◼   ► A very good interview.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Uh, very interesting.

00:04:45 ◼   ► I could tell how excited you were in it, which was fun for me.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Mm hmm.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:50 ◼   ► Try to get my excitement there without, without asking him detailed questions about, you know,

00:04:54 ◼   ► Klingons or Cylons or you're going to start bringing up or any other thing that he's done

00:05:00 ◼   ► on television.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:02 ◼   ► I'm going to put some of the dependencies in each episode, you know?

00:05:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:05 ◼   ► In episode 17 of series three of Star Trek Discovery.

00:05:08 ◼   ► No, that's not...

00:05:09 ◼   ► That's where it ends for me.

00:05:10 ◼   ► That's where it ends for me.

00:05:11 ◼   ► That was as close as I could have gotten.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:15 ◼   ► No?

00:05:16 ◼   ► What did I do wrong there?

00:05:17 ◼   ► In, uh, in season five of The Next Generation, you indicate that Worf is, uh, going to inherit

00:05:23 ◼   ► his family's Klingon titles, but then in season six, you suggest that he has no claim to his

00:05:31 ◼   ► family lands back on Kronos, the Klingon home world.

00:05:35 ◼   ► How do you explain this inconsistency, Ronald D. Moore?

00:05:39 ◼   ► Is this an actual inconsistency that you know?

00:05:41 ◼   ► No, that's, I mean, there's probably something like that.

00:05:44 ◼   ► I mean, that's, that's the, those are your kind of a comic book guy, Star Trek nerd questions

00:05:48 ◼   ► that you would get asked him.

00:05:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:05:51 ◼   ► And, and be like, dude, I wrote that script in 1991 and that was a long time ago.

00:05:58 ◼   ► It's I was listening to, um, the flophouse this weekend and they were talking, it was,

00:06:03 ◼   ► it was one from a few weeks back about, uh, the etiquette of meeting somebody who was,

00:06:07 ◼   ► or working with somebody who was in a bad movie.

00:06:09 ◼   ► And they were talking to the guy who is the showrunner of Brockmire, which is a very good,

00:06:13 ◼   ► uh, TV comedy that I liked a lot.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And he was talking about how in Brockmire, he was working with Amanda Pete, who is in,

00:06:21 ◼   ► oh, uh, studio 60, uh, on the sunset strip and he asked her a question about it, uh,

00:06:28 ◼   ► sort of embedded in it being that it's bad.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And she was, uh, not aware that it was considered bad, uh, not, not really interested in hearing

00:06:37 ◼   ► that it was bad because she had such a good professional experience doing it.

00:06:42 ◼   ► And the point of it was like, what's the etiquette of, of talking to people about bad movies.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And, and, and I enjoyed the fact that the larger point of it is if you're an actor or

00:06:50 ◼   ► even a writer, it was a job and they paid you and you're going to evaluate it as like,

00:06:55 ◼   ► oh, I had that job for a year.

00:06:56 ◼   ► It was a good job.

00:06:57 ◼   ► In her case, it was, I got pregnant while doing the job and they, they really treated

00:07:02 ◼   ► me well.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And they were very professional about it.

00:07:05 ◼   ► And like all these things that are about your job, not about the end product, uh, that everybody

00:07:12 ◼   ► else knows about.

00:07:13 ◼   ► And I was thinking about that in the context of Ron Moore.

00:07:15 ◼   ► It's the, the, every science fiction convention is like, here's somebody who worked on an

00:07:21 ◼   ► episode of star Trek 50 years ago for literally for seven days.

00:07:27 ◼   ► Um, and 50 years ago, they're asked questions about what it was like.

00:07:33 ◼   ► It's like, do you remember a week you spent on a, on a temp job in 1967?

00:07:42 ◼   ► Like probably not, probably not.

00:07:46 ◼   ► I can't imagine what it is like to be in those environments and have to answer those types

00:07:52 ◼   ► of questions.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Like at conventions and stuff.

00:07:55 ◼   ► Anyway, Ron Moore, Ron Moore grew up as a huge fan of the original star Trek and then

00:07:59 ◼   ► ended up writing for star Trek, what next generation in deep space nine.

00:08:02 ◼   ► So he gets it.

00:08:04 ◼   ► He understands fandom.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Um, but I read an interview.

00:08:07 ◼   ► I didn't ask him about star Trek, but I read an interview when he was making the rounds

00:08:10 ◼   ► last week where somebody asked him about if he'd seen any of the modern star Treks.

00:08:14 ◼   ► And he was like, no, basically I'm real busy, but also I'm, you know, putting, you know,

00:08:21 ◼   ► he's trying to think about the stuff that he's doing.

00:08:25 ◼   ► And like he says, I'm, I'm doing science fiction shows like for all mankind.

00:08:29 ◼   ► I do not have the brain power to when I'm, when I'm doing something for pleasure, it's

00:08:33 ◼   ► going to not be science fiction.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Right.

00:08:36 ◼   ► Cause he's working in the, that's like the business right now.

00:08:39 ◼   ► So I thought that was funny also allows him to not insult.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Like if he says, yeah, I didn't like it.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Like, I mean, he's a working producer better than better to not comment best.

00:08:47 ◼   ► Not the other stuff.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Uh, but it was a lot of the conversation that, uh, you and Steven had with Ron, uh, before

00:08:55 ◼   ► you start talking about season two is kind of how he goes about making the parallel world

00:09:03 ◼   ► of for all mankind match up with the accurate world or angry with the accurate world.

00:09:09 ◼   ► And it was fascinating to hear his thought process, but also his excitement about space

00:09:15 ◼   ► stuff.

00:09:16 ◼   ► Um, I just thought it was really cool.

00:09:17 ◼   ► It was a very fun interview and he just sounded like a regular dude, right?

00:09:20 ◼   ► Like he just sounded like a nice guy like this.

00:09:22 ◼   ► So I can imagine it was a nice experience getting to talk to him too.

00:09:25 ◼   ► Yeah, it was.

00:09:26 ◼   ► He's not much older than I am.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Um, he's a little bit older, but not much older than I am.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And so he had a lot of the same experiences I did where you kind of missed the Apollo

00:09:32 ◼   ► moon landing era, but you had the skylab and space shuttle era and you can, given, given

00:09:39 ◼   ► that you can see why he sort of said.

00:09:41 ◼   ► It would be fun to tell the story of what happened if we all, you know, we kind of kept

00:09:46 ◼   ► going and kept pushing it instead of what really happened, which is that it all just

00:09:50 ◼   ► kind of slowed down and, and ground to a halt, which is, you know, unfortunately the legacy

00:09:55 ◼   ► of that era.

00:09:57 ◼   ► I found it kind of interesting that, and then when he was talking about that, you could

00:10:00 ◼   ► hear like a, like a twinge of sadness to it.

00:10:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:06 ◼   ► Like that.

00:10:07 ◼   ► And I can see now I can see like, Oh, one of the reasons he made the show is because

00:10:09 ◼   ► he wanted the space like exploration to continue.

00:10:13 ◼   ► So he just made a world in which it did exactly.

00:10:15 ◼   ► It's kind of fun.

00:10:17 ◼   ► So that's episode 143 of liftoff here on relay FM.

00:10:20 ◼   ► There'll be a link in the show notes, but you should go check it out.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And also if people are really liking for all mankind season two, Dan Morin and I are doing

00:10:27 ◼   ► a weekly podcast over on the incomparable episode by episode.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And those are dropping on the, on the Fridays when the episodes come out.

00:10:37 ◼   ► So what's the name of the 10 it's, it's not, it doesn't really have a name.

00:10:41 ◼   ► It's just in the TV podcast feed.

00:10:43 ◼   ► So it's, it's the for all mankind.

00:10:45 ◼   ► So if you know, you can go there and you'll see, if you go to the incomparable.com, you'll

00:10:49 ◼   ► see the for all mankind as one of the tiles of one of the episodes and you can just click

00:10:53 ◼   ► on it and there's, you can subscribe to directly to the forum and kind of eat if you want to.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Okay.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I'll, uh, I'll put something in the show notes.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:11:02 ◼   ► I know I can, I can, uh, I can do that.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:05 ◼   ► It's it's the incomparable.com/teevee/mankind.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Mankind.

00:11:10 ◼   ► All right.

00:11:11 ◼   ► That will be in the show notes.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Not the wrestler, Myke, not the wrestler.

00:11:15 ◼   ► McFaulie.

00:11:15 ◼   ► See?

00:11:16 ◼   ► Wrestling knowledge.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Last week.

00:11:17 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Last week.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Sort of.

00:11:19 ◼   ► You made a reference to, I don't even remember how this happened.

00:11:24 ◼   ► We were talking about Nintendo and how people say, well, maybe Apple's gaming strategy can

00:11:28 ◼   ► be like Nintendo.

00:11:29 ◼   ► And you're like, mm, Apple is not Nintendo.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And I said, no, it's not.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Cause they have no characters.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Including for many reasons, including that they don't have a, you know, decades of beloved

00:11:38 ◼   ► gaming intellectual property.

00:11:40 ◼   ► And I tried to imagine what that would even be.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And the best I could come up with was the adventures of dog cow and spinning rainbow

00:11:46 ◼   ► cursor in finder land.

00:11:49 ◼   ► And then probably even 20 minutes at the episode publishing, Justin Hamilton created a browser

00:11:53 ◼   ► based game called the adventures of dog cow and spinning rainbow cursor and finder land.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Unbelievable.

00:11:59 ◼   ► It's a silly little Mario type game.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:04 ◼   ► The ground is the, is the Aqua scroll bar from early OS 10.

00:12:08 ◼   ► And then the platforms are little Aqua scroll bars too.

00:12:11 ◼   ► And you're a, you're a dog cow, but there's your friend, the little spinning rainbow cursor

00:12:14 ◼   ► is right above you and it fires off like a bolts to attack the windows logos that are

00:12:20 ◼   ► coming at you.

00:12:22 ◼   ► And you want to collect a lot of G3 IMAX.

00:12:24 ◼   ► So obviously that clearly how else would you make it?

00:12:29 ◼   ► It's incredible.

00:12:30 ◼   ► I've been linking the shout outs and go check it out.

00:12:32 ◼   ► Justin would have been a hit flash game in, in 2005.

00:12:36 ◼   ► Let's talk about some upstream stuff.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Apple got a bunch of things going on.

00:12:39 ◼   ► So Apple and skydance, we're going to be partnering on a multi year film and TV deal.

00:12:46 ◼   ► So this deal brings with it the movies, luck and spellbound, which were both set for the

00:12:53 ◼   ► theater, but that was obviously changed.

00:12:56 ◼   ► And the beginning of my understanding from a report and deadline is that this report,

00:13:01 ◼   ► sorry, this, this deal started the process of what would eventually become this overall

00:13:08 ◼   ► deal with skydance to work with Apple on multiple projects.

00:13:14 ◼   ► Going forward, these will be exclusive to Apple.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Obviously not everything skydance does, but they will be things that are exclusive to

00:13:21 ◼   ► them.

00:13:22 ◼   ► You know, they're not like, Hey, do you want this movie we made?

00:13:23 ◼   ► Uh, there's a TV series that they're working on called the search for wandler, which is

00:13:28 ◼   ► based on a book.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Um, John Lasseter is going to serve as producer on all films and shows under this deal.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Now we had spoken about this previously because it was rumored that they might be working

00:13:40 ◼   ► together when these two films were being shopped to Apple and that there might be something

00:13:45 ◼   ► going on.

00:13:46 ◼   ► And we'd brought up at the time that this could be of concern to people because John

00:13:51 ◼   ► Lasseter has a check of parts of sexual misconduct while at Disney and Pixar.

00:13:55 ◼   ► And we were wondering how would this be dealt with?

00:13:58 ◼   ► And the way it's been dealt with is that he's going to be a producer and executive producer

00:14:04 ◼   ► on the product on all the projects.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Yep.

00:14:07 ◼   ► So if you want to check out a longer conversation about this, uh, we spoke about it a little

00:14:11 ◼   ► bit episode three, three one.

00:14:14 ◼   ► There are going to be lots of people with lots of very valid and upset opinions about

00:14:18 ◼   ► this.

00:14:19 ◼   ► I'm sure.

00:14:20 ◼   ► Uh, it's an intriguing thing that they're going into, but this is the way it's going

00:14:23 ◼   ► to be like John Lasseter is high up at skydance and Apple's made the deal with them and he's

00:14:27 ◼   ► going to have his hands in everything.

00:14:30 ◼   ► We talked to this whole issue through in three 31 so people should check that out if they

00:14:35 ◼   ► would like, if they did not hear us talk about it.

00:14:38 ◼   ► The Apple TV app is now available on Chromecast.

00:14:41 ◼   ► This landed just in time for For All Mankind.

00:14:45 ◼   ► This was previously announced in December.

00:14:46 ◼   ► We did touch on it, but now it is available as of last week.

00:14:51 ◼   ► It works via Google TV, which I didn't know about until today when I started looking into

00:14:56 ◼   ► this for the show.

00:14:58 ◼   ► Google TV is basically the Apple TV app, but on Chromecast.

00:15:04 ◼   ► So Google have created an app which collects together content from companies and shows

00:15:10 ◼   ► you them like all in one view, right?

00:15:12 ◼   ► And all of your other Chromecast apps and services can plug into it and Google TV acts

00:15:17 ◼   ► as a kind of front for it.

00:15:19 ◼   ► So that, you know, this is a little thing that they have.

00:15:23 ◼   ► Google has had many, many, many, many, uh, television based things, right?

00:15:29 ◼   ► So they did like, and this is, and that the way that they're doing it now, it's just,

00:15:34 ◼   ► it's just to bundle it into Chromecast, which is probably good because people like Chromecast

00:15:39 ◼   ► and people haven't liked any of Google's other things.

00:15:42 ◼   ► Right.

00:15:43 ◼   ► So you need Chromecast with Google TV and then inside there will be an Apple TV.

00:15:47 ◼   ► It's like a little nesting dolls, but if you, you can get the Chromecast and Chromecast,

00:15:50 ◼   ► my understanding is much more, uh, widely available than a lot of other alternatives

00:15:55 ◼   ► to Apple TV hardware.

00:15:57 ◼   ► So, um, it, it should be more available in some countries where they don't have alternatives.

00:16:04 ◼   ► Um, and yeah, and in fact, even I think Apple TV channels is available.

00:16:08 ◼   ► So like the nesting dolls continue, right?

00:16:10 ◼   ► You've got Chromecast with Google TV, with Apple TV, with Apple TV channels.

00:16:15 ◼   ► If you really want to keep going down the stack that is available to you.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Apparently.

00:16:19 ◼   ► Um, it's interesting, it's like $50 to Chromecast with Google TV and it does 4k does HDR Dolby

00:16:28 ◼   ► vision.

00:16:29 ◼   ► You know, this is like a $50 way to get into the best way that you can watch this content

00:16:34 ◼   ► produces.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's just like, this is what the Apple TV does 4k HDR Dolby vision.

00:16:39 ◼   ► So, you know, just to refer back to what we were talking about a week or two ago, uh, it

00:16:45 ◼   ► makes again, the case for the Apple TV difficult.

00:16:48 ◼   ► You get a remote with buttons on it.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Uh, you know, it's like the whole thing.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Imagine.

00:16:53 ◼   ► Uh, Apple also had a big day.

00:16:54 ◼   ► They unveiled their 2021 content slate as part of the television critics association

00:16:59 ◼   ► winter press tour.

00:17:00 ◼   ► Um, I'll put a link in the show notes to, uh, Apple's kind of press release, but there

00:17:04 ◼   ► was a lot that they announced.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Um, lots of new shows and movies.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Some we knew about some we didn't, uh, some featuring more information than we use some

00:17:13 ◼   ► featuring more costs than we knew.

00:17:15 ◼   ► There's too much to go through.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Honestly, uh, there's a lot of a list names.

00:17:18 ◼   ► Um, as part of this whole slate of programming, uh, I think one of the things that was most

00:17:23 ◼   ► interesting to me and to others is some teasers at the foundation series.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Um, which is I think probably going to be their next like top tier show.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Um, you know, if you look at like see a morning show and for all mankind, they're, they're

00:17:39 ◼   ► definitely starting the hype for foundation early, but there was some fun little details

00:17:44 ◼   ► that come out.

00:17:45 ◼   ► So mythic quest is back on May 7th, which I'm excited about and was surprised that it's

00:17:50 ◼   ► that it was kind of like we didn't know anything.

00:17:53 ◼   ► And then it's like two months away.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Uh, Ted lasso season two is going to be in the summer.

00:17:58 ◼   ► Also very pleased about that.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And the morning show is returning in the summer.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Now that is way later than they expected.

00:18:05 ◼   ► Right?

00:18:06 ◼   ► Like you can, I mean, we've spoken about this before, but that it was impacted by COVID

00:18:09 ◼   ► stuff and they went and rewrote a lot of stuff and now it's coming in the summer.

00:18:13 ◼   ► Like this, I think morning show was supposed to be out by now.

00:18:17 ◼   ► You would expect, right?

00:18:18 ◼   ► Um, so moving it all the way to the summer, I think is an effect of them going back and

00:18:22 ◼   ► redoing some of the show, but I'm pleased for that.

00:18:25 ◼   ► It would be more relevant again.

00:18:26 ◼   ► So I'm excited.

00:18:27 ◼   ► I'm excited about it.

00:18:28 ◼   ► I really enjoyed the morning show.

00:18:30 ◼   ► So I'm looking forward to more.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:32 ◼   ► We're in an interesting period where content is starting to roll out.

00:18:36 ◼   ► That is, was made during the pandemic.

00:18:42 ◼   ► And like during either like light parts of the pandemic or, you know, like last summer

00:18:48 ◼   ► and fall and like, it's interesting now.

00:18:50 ◼   ► Cause you're like, well, is this a pre pandemic thing or is this a, is this a during pandemic

00:18:54 ◼   ► thing?

00:18:55 ◼   ► Like, uh, it's fascinating to see because it's getting hard to tell.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Right.

00:18:59 ◼   ► And some things I was struck by, um, in, Oh, what show was I watching that, uh, Oh, in

00:19:06 ◼   ► WandaVision there is a reference to quarantine in the latest episode.

00:19:12 ◼   ► And I had that moment of like, they shot, I think they shot most of this before the

00:19:17 ◼   ► pandemic, but they obviously didn't shoot all of it and made some changes.

00:19:22 ◼   ► And there's going to be, we're going to be dealing with a lot of that.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Um, I think this year where we're going to see stuff and, and wonder, you know, they

00:19:29 ◼   ► won't probably tell us, but like wonder what, what was the story behind this?

00:19:32 ◼   ► Did they stop halfway?

00:19:33 ◼   ► Did they shoot this all before?

00:19:34 ◼   ► Did they shoot this all during like, it's interesting to watch that and try to imagine

00:19:41 ◼   ► it will be able to tell by people's haircuts.

00:19:43 ◼   ► Well, actually that's the funny thing is that they have continuity people who that's all

00:19:46 ◼   ► they do, right.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Is match what you look like in another scene because they do shoot everything, get shoots

00:19:52 ◼   ► out of order.

00:19:53 ◼   ► Anyway, it just doesn't usually shoot like movies shoot out of order over the course

00:19:57 ◼   ► of sometimes months and they, they get everything to, to sync up.

00:20:01 ◼   ► But you know, if you do it over a year, you can make the haircuts probably match better

00:20:08 ◼   ► than you can make.

00:20:09 ◼   ► So if somebody gained or lost, you know, 15 pounds or something like that, that would

00:20:14 ◼   ► be more visible, but I don't know, looking forward to it.

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00:21:57 ◼   ► So we're going to talk about keyboards and track pads now.

00:22:01 ◼   ► So we have something to talk about with Bridge because you wrote a little article about Bridge

00:22:07 ◼   ► and some stuff that they've got going on with a beta version of iOS.

00:22:11 ◼   ► But there's also a Jason Snell story time that we want to get to before that.

00:22:15 ◼   ► My wife is a children's librarian.

00:22:17 ◼   ► Normally she does the story time in this house, but I also sometimes have story time.

00:22:22 ◼   ► For my pals, my upgrading pals.

00:22:25 ◼   ► I just want to, I went to the Apple store again.

00:22:27 ◼   ► It's one of those stories, Myke, where I leave the house.

00:22:30 ◼   ► It's very exciting when I leave the house happens almost never went to my local Apple

00:22:35 ◼   ► store because I decided to embrace the butterfly keyboard Apple service program.

00:22:46 ◼   ► Okay.

00:22:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:22:48 ◼   ► I don't know if you've done this, but Apple has this program for people who have the butterfly

00:22:54 ◼   ► keyboard on their laptop.

00:22:56 ◼   ► If it's four years or less from when your laptop was originally purchased, Apple will

00:23:06 ◼   ► take it in, check it out.

00:23:09 ◼   ► If it's got like keyboard problems, repeated dropped letters, stuff like that, which I

00:23:14 ◼   ► think is basically everyone, but Apple insists is just a small percentage.

00:23:20 ◼   ► So Lauren's MacBook air 2018 model has a butterfly keyboard, obviously.

00:23:26 ◼   ► And she said to me, I don't know, a year ago, six months ago, I was like, are you having

00:23:34 ◼   ► keyboard issues?

00:23:35 ◼   ► She says, yeah.

00:23:36 ◼   ► And you know, it's okay.

00:23:37 ◼   ► The, the, the, you know, letters double a lot.

00:23:40 ◼   ► And I'm like, that's not, you are, it's not okay.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Those are issues.

00:23:44 ◼   ► I downloaded unshaky, which is this little utility that like tries to sense when a letter

00:23:50 ◼   ► is pushed multiple times in a very short time window and basically ignores the additional

00:23:57 ◼   ► presses, which is very clever as a workaround to try to solve some of these issues.

00:24:02 ◼   ► And when last time I checked, it said like unshaky has solved thousands of these mistaken

00:24:07 ◼   ► presses, right?

00:24:08 ◼   ► But the bottom line is it's a butterfly keyboard and it's got a lot of these issues that are

00:24:12 ◼   ► famous for the butterfly keyboards.

00:24:14 ◼   ► Apple has a program and I thought, well, before it expires, I should, she uses this laptop.

00:24:20 ◼   ► I should probably actually take advantage of the fact that Apple has a keyboard service

00:24:25 ◼   ► program.

00:24:26 ◼   ► Now she, in the pandemic, she's mostly been using it at her desk and I got her a stand

00:24:30 ◼   ► and pulled out one of my many keyboards that I have.

00:24:34 ◼   ► I have lots of keyboards in my, in my office and a track pad, and she's mostly using it

00:24:39 ◼   ► that way now, but she still will use it in other places.

00:24:42 ◼   ► And her using a good keyboard only magnifies how bad the base keyboard is.

00:24:47 ◼   ► So I decided to do the thing.

00:24:50 ◼   ► I went online, it says, go to the genius appointment list for your local store, if you've got a

00:24:56 ◼   ► nearby store, and I signed that up.

00:24:59 ◼   ► And they're like, all right, come in tomorrow afternoon.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And I go to the mall and put on my mask and it's an outdoor mall because it's California.

00:25:11 ◼   ► And there are two lines.

00:25:12 ◼   ► There's the genius line and there's the picking up products line.

00:25:15 ◼   ► I wait in the genius line for five or 10 minutes and I get called into the store.

00:25:20 ◼   ► The store has been completely remade where there's basically just, you can't get into

00:25:25 ◼   ► the store.

00:25:26 ◼   ► You can get into this sort of, it's almost like a little lobby area they've created.

00:25:29 ◼   ► That's got a bunch of like teller windows or a friend of mine described it as being

00:25:33 ◼   ► like going to a racetrack.

00:25:34 ◼   ► It's the place where you place the bed at the racetrack it's or in a cartoon or a movie

00:25:39 ◼   ► about racetracks.

00:25:40 ◼   ► So like there's a little window with a person behind it that you're directed to.

00:25:45 ◼   ► And I say keyboard service program, it's already on my thing.

00:25:49 ◼   ► And she asked me a lot of sort of unnecessary questions about my laptop while she's wiping

00:25:52 ◼   ► it down with little moist towelettes.

00:25:57 ◼   ► But you know, it went pretty quickly because I know the answers.

00:25:59 ◼   ► - They wiped it down in front of you?

00:26:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, she wiped it down before she even like opened it up.

00:26:03 ◼   ► And I don't even know why she opened it up.

00:26:04 ◼   ► It's like, this is the keyboard service program.

00:26:06 ◼   ► It's got double characters all over the place.

00:26:08 ◼   ► And please just do the thing with the keyboard service program.

00:26:11 ◼   ► And have you backed it up?

00:26:13 ◼   ► Yes, all of that.

00:26:14 ◼   ► But it went pretty quickly after all of that.

00:26:18 ◼   ► And she did after the wipe down and I went back home

00:26:22 ◼   ► and she's like, well, we'll, you know, our tech will analyze it

00:26:24 ◼   ► and then we'll call you.

00:26:25 ◼   ► And I'm like, why would that happen?

00:26:27 ◼   ► Like, we all know what's going on here.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Well, I got a call probably five minutes after I got back home

00:26:33 ◼   ► from somebody saying keyboard service program.

00:26:37 ◼   ► So we're gonna mail it out to the place where,

00:26:40 ◼   ► and it'll be like 10 days.

00:26:42 ◼   ► And I said, okay, great.

00:26:46 ◼   ► Do that.

00:26:47 ◼   ► - Did I offer you anything?

00:26:49 ◼   ► Like, so 'cause here's my thinking on this, right?

00:26:52 ◼   ► For a lot of people, this is their computer, right?

00:26:56 ◼   ► So if you do this, you have no computer for two weeks.

00:27:00 ◼   ► - Yes, indeed.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Indeed, yeah.

00:27:04 ◼   ► And they, you know, I don't think they offer you a loaner.

00:27:07 ◼   ► I don't think they do.

00:27:08 ◼   ► I certainly didn't get offered one.

00:27:11 ◼   ► I don't think they can.

00:27:12 ◼   ► And yes, that's a problem.

00:27:13 ◼   ► And that I think suppresses the use of this sort of process.

00:27:17 ◼   ► - 'Cause I know with some stuff like AppleCare,

00:27:20 ◼   ► they'll basically, especially they've been doing it

00:27:22 ◼   ► more recently, they will, you know,

00:27:24 ◼   ► you give them your cloud information

00:27:26 ◼   ► and they'll take like a hold

00:27:28 ◼   ► and they'll send you a device, right?

00:27:31 ◼   ► And then you just send them back the other one

00:27:34 ◼   ► and they will refund you or whatever.

00:27:37 ◼   ► And once again, not ideal

00:27:39 ◼   ► because you've got to have the money just sitting around.

00:27:43 ◼   ► You're at least with, you know,

00:27:44 ◼   ► you haven't got no phone for two weeks or whatever.

00:27:47 ◼   ► - And this is a 2018 model,

00:27:49 ◼   ► so they don't make it anymore or anything like that.

00:27:51 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:27:52 ◼   ► I agree with you.

00:27:53 ◼   ► I think that given that this is essentially a product recall,

00:27:56 ◼   ► it would be awfully nice

00:27:57 ◼   ► if they offered something like that, but they don't.

00:27:58 ◼   ► - Although it'd be kind of torture for anyone doing it

00:28:00 ◼   ► 'cause it'd be like, here's a brand new MacBook Pro

00:28:03 ◼   ► and it's so amazing.

00:28:04 ◼   ► And then in two weeks time, you have to give it back.

00:28:07 ◼   ► - Mail it back.

00:28:08 ◼   ► David in the Discord points out quite rightly

00:28:11 ◼   ► that the reason that they do the little quick kind of check

00:28:14 ◼   ► before they tell you, yep, keyboard program,

00:28:16 ◼   ► we're gonna send it out,

00:28:17 ◼   ► is they wanna make sure it works and isn't busted.

00:28:20 ◼   ► And you know, that it basically is a functioning laptop

00:28:24 ◼   ► for all sorts of other reasons

00:28:25 ◼   ► before they put you in the keyboard program.

00:28:27 ◼   ► But in my case, it's a perfectly fine laptop

00:28:29 ◼   ► that has a butterfly keyboard.

00:28:31 ◼   ► That's its core flaw.

00:28:34 ◼   ► By the way, the next day I got a phone call,

00:28:36 ◼   ► which was really funny, a voice call,

00:28:38 ◼   ► and I decided to answer it

00:28:39 ◼   ► because I've gotten a couple of these calls

00:28:42 ◼   ► from unknown numbers in California

00:28:44 ◼   ► that have actually been related to Apple Store

00:28:47 ◼   ► and Apple stuff.

00:28:48 ◼   ► So I'm like, all right, let's just see.

00:28:50 ◼   ► I'll take a chance.

00:28:51 ◼   ► It's probably a spammer, but let's give it a shot.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And it was a person, a live person who said,

00:28:56 ◼   ► this is so-and-so with Apple.

00:28:59 ◼   ► And just letting you know about your laptop

00:29:02 ◼   ► that's been sent in for the keyboard service program

00:29:05 ◼   ► that due to extreme weather in the United States,

00:29:08 ◼   ► it's gonna face delays.

00:29:09 ◼   ► It'll probably take us a little bit longer to look at it

00:29:11 ◼   ► than we might've thought.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And I'm like, okay.

00:29:13 ◼   ► So, you know, we'll take it.

00:29:15 ◼   ► And I'm like, fine.

00:29:17 ◼   ► This is one of those things where I don't,

00:29:19 ◼   ► it's nice that it's a real human being

00:29:21 ◼   ► and not like a, just a recording,

00:29:24 ◼   ► but I have nothing to say to them.

00:29:26 ◼   ► It's like, all right.

00:29:27 ◼   ► I'm like, thank you for telling me.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Fine, really.

00:29:30 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:29:31 ◼   ► And I did get one, something similar to that

00:29:33 ◼   ► a couple of days before about my appointment

00:29:36 ◼   ► that was from a real person,

00:29:37 ◼   ► but was just, they let the voicemail.

00:29:39 ◼   ► So I'm in the system, the Apple system now,

00:29:44 ◼   ► and that laptop is gone to who knows where

00:29:47 ◼   ► to do who knows what, right?

00:29:51 ◼   ► Like, meanwhile, back at home, I should say,

00:29:54 ◼   ► Lauren is currently using, as we speak, in fact,

00:29:57 ◼   ► my M1 MacBook Air.

00:29:59 ◼   ► That was an interesting issue

00:30:01 ◼   ► 'cause I had this moment where I realized

00:30:02 ◼   ► this is probably gonna take more than,

00:30:04 ◼   ► or it could, before I had gone there,

00:30:06 ◼   ► could take more than a couple of days, right?

00:30:09 ◼   ► This is probably a longer kind of outage.

00:30:12 ◼   ► So I backed up her MacBook Air to Time Machine,

00:30:17 ◼   ► to new fresh Time Machine backup.

00:30:20 ◼   ► I got an external drive that I have, an external SSD,

00:30:26 ◼   ► that I formatted and I downloaded the Big Sur installer

00:30:29 ◼   ► and installed Big Sur on it.

00:30:31 ◼   ► And then I restored her Time Machine backup

00:30:36 ◼   ► to the external drive running Big Sur.

00:30:39 ◼   ► So basically she's booted off of an external drive

00:30:43 ◼   ► on an M1 MacBook Air that is essentially a backup,

00:30:47 ◼   ► a replication of her computer.

00:30:49 ◼   ► And probably when it comes back,

00:30:50 ◼   ► she'll just, I'll migrate her back and it'll be on Big Sur

00:30:55 ◼   ► 'cause she was on Catalina or Mojave or something like that.

00:30:57 ◼   ► And doing, cloning a Big Sur drive is problematic

00:31:02 ◼   ► and having it be bootable anyway.

00:31:04 ◼   ► The old school way would have been to just clone her drive

00:31:08 ◼   ► and then boot off of it.

00:31:09 ◼   ► But the M1 Macs only run Big Sur and they're Apple Silicon,

00:31:13 ◼   ► so it's more complicated than that and all that.

00:31:14 ◼   ► So in any event, it works.

00:31:17 ◼   ► I've got it booted off of an external drive.

00:31:20 ◼   ► It's basically her computer updated to Big Sur

00:31:24 ◼   ► as far as she can see running on that external drive.

00:31:27 ◼   ► And it will do the job for her in the meantime.

00:31:31 ◼   ► And yeah, she's gonna get a Big Sur upgrade out of it

00:31:35 ◼   ► because I think after working on it

00:31:37 ◼   ► for probably more than a week,

00:31:39 ◼   ► she's probably not gonna wanna just go back

00:31:41 ◼   ► even if her drive is still intact.

00:31:43 ◼   ► She's probably not gonna wanna go back to her hard drive

00:31:46 ◼   ► as it existed two weeks ago.

00:31:47 ◼   ► So the question that remains is what will happen

00:31:53 ◼   ► to this laptop when it comes back?

00:31:55 ◼   ► What's gonna happen to it?

00:31:56 ◼   ► And I know that probably a lot of our listeners

00:31:58 ◼   ► have been through this, but just I haven't been,

00:32:02 ◼   ► so I wanted to at least talk about it.

00:32:04 ◼   ► By the way, this program covers,

00:32:06 ◼   ► and I'm gonna quote here, eligible MacBook, MacBook Air,

00:32:08 ◼   ► and MacBook Pro models for four years

00:32:10 ◼   ► after the first retail sale of the unit.

00:32:12 ◼   ► So basically, if you have a butterfly keyboard laptop

00:32:16 ◼   ► and you bought it in 2017, let's say,

00:32:20 ◼   ► time is running out if it hasn't run out already

00:32:22 ◼   ► for you to do this program.

00:32:24 ◼   ► And I would say if your keyboard's weird

00:32:26 ◼   ► and you have a way to keep doing whatever it is you're doing

00:32:31 ◼   ► before this time runs out, you should do this program,

00:32:36 ◼   ► because Apple gave you a keyboard

00:32:39 ◼   ► that it acknowledges doesn't work right,

00:32:41 ◼   ► you should probably take advantage of the program

00:32:43 ◼   ► while you can, problem being,

00:32:46 ◼   ► do you need to actually do things

00:32:48 ◼   ► with a computer in the interim

00:32:49 ◼   ► and who knows how long it'll be?

00:32:50 ◼   ► - Putting in there.

00:32:52 ◼   ► - So this is one of the things that's the great mystery.

00:32:54 ◼   ► I believe, depending on your model,

00:32:56 ◼   ► they're swapping the keyboard with something different,

00:33:00 ◼   ► but I'm unclear whether all of these models

00:33:03 ◼   ► are getting the kind of final form

00:33:05 ◼   ► of the butterfly keyboard,

00:33:10 ◼   ► where they did, again, it's still a butterfly keyboard,

00:33:11 ◼   ► but they put different kind of stuff

00:33:14 ◼   ► on the switches and stuff to improve materials.

00:33:16 ◼   ► - What did I say, improved materials?

00:33:17 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a great phrase.

00:33:19 ◼   ► - But I'm unclear if the improved materials

00:33:21 ◼   ► are even compatible with the older models.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Like, can the 2018 Air that my wife has,

00:33:27 ◼   ► does it get the improved materials or does it just get--

00:33:29 ◼   ► - Good name for a band, improved materials.

00:33:32 ◼   ► - The improved materials?

00:33:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw them open at the Fillmore.

00:33:36 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:33:37 ◼   ► - I vaguely remember that there's some models

00:33:38 ◼   ► that can get the improved materials and some that can't.

00:33:41 ◼   ► And this is the part that's frustrating, right,

00:33:45 ◼   ► is if your bad butterfly keyboard gets replaced

00:33:48 ◼   ► with another bad butterfly keyboard,

00:33:50 ◼   ► it's presumably still gonna go bad.

00:33:54 ◼   ► It's just gonna start back--

00:33:55 ◼   ► - It's like resets the clock on it, right?

00:33:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:33:58 ◼   ► It resets the clock is exactly right.

00:34:00 ◼   ► So, what a mess.

00:34:03 ◼   ► I would say it doesn't feel particularly generous to me

00:34:06 ◼   ► that Apple sets the four-year clock on this too.

00:34:09 ◼   ► 'Cause what they're really saying is

00:34:12 ◼   ► after you've had a laptop for four years,

00:34:14 ◼   ► if the keyboard, which is your only input method

00:34:17 ◼   ► if you wanna use it as a laptop,

00:34:18 ◼   ► is totally busted and doesn't work right, too bad,

00:34:20 ◼   ► you had your four years.

00:34:22 ◼   ► Seems strange to me.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, not particularly generous.

00:34:28 ◼   ► It's nice that they've got this program,

00:34:30 ◼   ► and you could argue that it's good

00:34:32 ◼   ► that they've got the program.

00:34:33 ◼   ► Of course it is, but also they've got these keyboards

00:34:36 ◼   ► that are really unreliable and not great.

00:34:40 ◼   ► But I will say also just it's another reminder

00:34:44 ◼   ► that although like when we were talking

00:34:46 ◼   ► about the Apple report card, everybody's like,

00:34:48 ◼   ► "Yay, the butterfly keyboards are finally gone."

00:34:51 ◼   ► They're not, they're not, because until May of 2020,

00:34:57 ◼   ► Apple was still selling butterfly keyboard laptops,

00:35:04 ◼   ► which means this program will presumably be in effect

00:35:08 ◼   ► until the middle of 2024,

00:35:11 ◼   ► when the last butterfly keyboard laptop

00:35:15 ◼   ► has its four year date since it was initially sold at retail.

00:35:19 ◼   ► So you could argue that we're gonna be living

00:35:23 ◼   ► with the butterfly keyboard until at least 2024.

00:35:26 ◼   ► Anyway, I'll report back on when this thing gets back,

00:35:31 ◼   ► whenever that is, I don't know if it's in a pile of snow

00:35:33 ◼   ► in Texas somewhere or where it is

00:35:35 ◼   ► or what's going on with it,

00:35:36 ◼   ► but it's been interesting to go through it,

00:35:40 ◼   ► and I'm very glad that we have the luxury

00:35:42 ◼   ► of having a laptop that I can basically use

00:35:46 ◼   ► as the replacement for this in the meantime.

00:35:50 ◼   ► And that is a luxury and I totally admit that,

00:35:53 ◼   ► and that's one of the challenges with even like,

00:35:55 ◼   ► well, Apple's got a program, so that's fine.

00:35:57 ◼   ► If you've got to give away your only computer

00:35:59 ◼   ► for an unknown amount of time so that its keyboard works,

00:36:03 ◼   ► that's not great, right?

00:36:04 ◼   ► That's not great.

00:36:05 ◼   ► - Has Lauren expressed any kind of opinion

00:36:07 ◼   ► on the M1 MacBook Pro, MacBook Air?

00:36:11 ◼   ► - No, other than to say,

00:36:14 ◼   ► am I gonna feel like my computer is really bad

00:36:18 ◼   ► when I get it back?

00:36:20 ◼   ► And I think the answer is no,

00:36:21 ◼   ► and I think the answer is no really,

00:36:22 ◼   ► because although this is an M1 MacBook Air,

00:36:24 ◼   ► it is also booted off of an external USB drive,

00:36:28 ◼   ► and therefore external drives are not the fastest.

00:36:32 ◼   ► - You've basically leveled it out.

00:36:35 ◼   ► - Trying, I'm trying, don't make it look too good.

00:36:37 ◼   ► But there is a possibility that she'll get hers back

00:36:39 ◼   ► and be like, this laptop is garbage, get me a new laptop.

00:36:43 ◼   ► I'm like, all right, well, you know, if it comes to that.

00:36:46 ◼   ► - So, Brydge, we've spoken about Brydge

00:36:50 ◼   ► for a long time on this show.

00:36:51 ◼   ► We were both long-time users of Brydge.

00:36:53 ◼   ► - But not in about a year, funny how that happened.

00:36:57 ◼   ► - Because Apple released the Magic Folio,

00:37:00 ◼   ► oh my gosh, Magic Keyboard.

00:37:02 ◼   ► I really struggle with the name of that product,

00:37:05 ◼   ► because there are so many other products

00:37:06 ◼   ► that have existed throughout history called Magic Keyboard.

00:37:09 ◼   ► - And indeed, the most important part

00:37:11 ◼   ► of the Magic Keyboard is the trackpad.

00:37:13 ◼   ► - Is the trackpad.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So I really wish that they would have given it

00:37:17 ◼   ► a completely different name than the one that they gave.

00:37:19 ◼   ► - Magic Keyboard, yeah, and when I write about it,

00:37:21 ◼   ► I have to say Magic Keyboard for iPad.

00:37:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, is that what they call it, Magic Keyboard for iPad?

00:37:26 ◼   ► Or is it just Magic Keyboard?

00:37:27 ◼   ► - Well, it's Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro

00:37:29 ◼   ► is initially what they called it,

00:37:30 ◼   ► but now one of them is Magic Keyboard

00:37:32 ◼   ► for iPad Pro and iPad Air, because it fits both.

00:37:36 ◼   ► It's, hmm.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - But really, as you say, the identifying feature

00:37:40 ◼   ► of the Magic Keyboard is the trackpad.

00:37:42 ◼   ► - Yes, that's right.

00:37:44 ◼   ► - Because they have had lots of keyboards before.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Some of them were smart.

00:37:49 ◼   ► So we stopped talking about Brydge products

00:37:54 ◼   ► because of the introduction of the Magic Keyboard,

00:37:56 ◼   ► because we had loved Brydge for years,

00:37:59 ◼   ► because it basically turned our iPads into laptops,

00:38:02 ◼   ► it had great adjustability,

00:38:03 ◼   ► and put a keyboard right there front and center.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Then when Apple released their product,

00:38:08 ◼   ► they put a trackpad on it,

00:38:09 ◼   ► which was exactly what you wanted.

00:38:11 ◼   ► We were speaking about it in the time, right?

00:38:13 ◼   ► There was all this space at the bottom of the Brydge keyboard

00:38:15 ◼   ► where my wrists went, and it would be lovely

00:38:17 ◼   ► if there was a trackpad there, and we hoped it could happen.

00:38:19 ◼   ► - And they make them for Windows tablets.

00:38:22 ◼   ► They make a Brydge keyboard with a trackpad.

00:38:24 ◼   ► - And we were hoping they would do it,

00:38:26 ◼   ► and this is the funny thing, is they did do it

00:38:31 ◼   ► before the Magic Keyboard,

00:38:35 ◼   ► because they were taking advantage of the--

00:38:38 ◼   ► - Assistive touch.

00:38:39 ◼   ► - There we go, the assistive touch cursor.

00:38:41 ◼   ► But by the time that Brydge had got that product

00:38:45 ◼   ► to the point where it was ready to ship,

00:38:48 ◼   ► Apple dropped the second shoe

00:38:50 ◼   ► and released the full-on cursor support

00:38:54 ◼   ► and the Magic Keyboard.

00:38:56 ◼   ► So at that point, we kind of moved on.

00:38:59 ◼   ► But also, unfortunately for Brydge,

00:39:02 ◼   ► the Brydge Pro Plus, which was the product that they released

00:39:06 ◼   ► was a very bad product to use

00:39:10 ◼   ► because of some limitations around what they could do

00:39:14 ◼   ► with the trackpad.

00:39:15 ◼   ► So you reviewed the original one.

00:39:17 ◼   ► As a refresher, it was basically that they had to kind of

00:39:20 ◼   ► emulate a mouse rather than let it be a trackpad,

00:39:24 ◼   ► is that right?

00:39:25 ◼   ► - Right, that's my understanding,

00:39:27 ◼   ► is that the iPad and iPadOS didn't support

00:39:32 ◼   ► Bluetooth trackpads, it supported Bluetooth mice.

00:39:37 ◼   ► And so they were faking trackpad support,

00:39:42 ◼   ► but the trackpad was really sort of behaving like a mouse.

00:39:45 ◼   ► And there were lots of limitations.

00:39:46 ◼   ► And so when I tried it, it didn't do multi-touch gestures.

00:39:50 ◼   ► The two-finger scroll was really janky.

00:39:53 ◼   ► Cursor movement wasn't precise.

00:39:56 ◼   ► It just wasn't very good.

00:39:58 ◼   ► And this was with the cursor support,

00:39:59 ◼   ► 'cause I remember writing about it in that window

00:40:01 ◼   ► where the cursor support came out,

00:40:03 ◼   ► but the Magic keyboards hadn't shipped yet.

00:40:06 ◼   ► Remember, they announced it, but they weren't out yet.

00:40:08 ◼   ► It was in the early days of the pandemic.

00:40:10 ◼   ► They weren't quite out yet.

00:40:12 ◼   ► And it was clearly not good enough.

00:40:16 ◼   ► And it pained me to write that article

00:40:18 ◼   ► because I've liked their keyboards for so long,

00:40:20 ◼   ► and I've written about how much I liked their keyboards.

00:40:23 ◼   ► And then I used their trackpad and basically said,

00:40:26 ◼   ► this isn't good enough.

00:40:27 ◼   ► Like I wouldn't use this.

00:40:28 ◼   ► I would rather not use a trackpad

00:40:30 ◼   ► than use this trackpad.

00:40:32 ◼   ► It just wasn't not good enough.

00:40:33 ◼   ► And then you get the Magic keyboard.

00:40:35 ◼   ► And the Magic, 'cause the question was hanging out there,

00:40:37 ◼   ► like, well, what will the Magic keyboard feel like?

00:40:39 ◼   ► And the answer is exactly like the Magic trackpad

00:40:43 ◼   ► on laptops and desktops.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Like, exactly.

00:40:45 ◼   ► It is the full Apple trackpad experience.

00:40:50 ◼   ► So basically at that point,

00:40:53 ◼   ► I stopped using the Brydge keyboard

00:40:55 ◼   ► and I just used the Magic keyboard for iPad

00:40:58 ◼   ► because it had the good trackpad.

00:41:01 ◼   ► And also the keys were good.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Although, arguably I think the Brydge keyboard

00:41:05 ◼   ► ergonomically is better.

00:41:09 ◼   ► I think the keyboard is as good or better.

00:41:12 ◼   ► The laptop feel is nice.

00:41:15 ◼   ► It definitely is shaped like a laptop.

00:41:19 ◼   ► You can move the hinge like a laptop.

00:41:21 ◼   ► It's got a broader range of-

00:41:22 ◼   ► - More traditional range of viewing angle, I could say.

00:41:28 ◼   ► - Right, then the Magic keyboard,

00:41:29 ◼   ► which has obviously got the kind of multi-fold design

00:41:32 ◼   ► and it hovers over the keys and stuff.

00:41:35 ◼   ► It's a different kind of feel.

00:41:36 ◼   ► They got function row, so you can do brightness and stuff

00:41:39 ◼   ► that is not on Apple's keyboards for iPad.

00:41:42 ◼   ► There are all sorts of reasons, but bottom line was,

00:41:45 ◼   ► but this one's got a good trackpad,

00:41:47 ◼   ► so I'm gonna use this one.

00:41:49 ◼   ► And it's been like that until basically last week.

00:41:53 ◼   ► - So the 14.5 beta came out.

00:41:58 ◼   ► With the ability for companies like Brydge

00:42:02 ◼   ► to have an improved experience, right?

00:42:04 ◼   ► - So Brydge isn't talking about it.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Nobody's talking about it.

00:42:13 ◼   ► But you can read between the lines,

00:42:15 ◼   ► which is something happened in this iPad OS beta

00:42:20 ◼   ► that allows them to do a trackpad.

00:42:23 ◼   ► And it's not quite, Logitech has their case

00:42:28 ◼   ► for the iPad Air that has a trackpad,

00:42:33 ◼   ► but it's smart connector based.

00:42:37 ◼   ► So if I put two and two together,

00:42:41 ◼   ► I guess what I'm saying is that obviously

00:42:43 ◼   ► smart connector based trackpad input was working before,

00:42:46 ◼   ► but for Bluetooth based trackpad input

00:42:50 ◼   ► for a non-Apple trackpad,

00:42:53 ◼   ► I guess this, I don't know if it's that

00:42:55 ◼   ► or if it's a device that's doing both keyboard

00:42:58 ◼   ► and trackpad as one Bluetooth device,

00:43:01 ◼   ► but something is going on where they literally

00:43:04 ◼   ► require the latest iOS, iPad OS beta

00:43:08 ◼   ► in order for this to work.

00:43:09 ◼   ► So clearly that's a very strong indicator

00:43:12 ◼   ► that they literally could not do this

00:43:13 ◼   ► until Apple did something inside the operating system

00:43:16 ◼   ► that we don't know what it is.

00:43:18 ◼   ► But they do now have a, you can sign up

00:43:21 ◼   ► for getting on their test flight

00:43:22 ◼   ► and their test flight is for an app

00:43:24 ◼   ► that is a firmware updater,

00:43:26 ◼   ► and you have to be on the latest iPad OS beta,

00:43:30 ◼   ► and you run the firmware updater

00:43:32 ◼   ► and your Bridge Pro Plus keyboard gets a firmware update

00:43:37 ◼   ► that makes it behave like a trackpad

00:43:42 ◼   ► instead of like a mouse,

00:43:44 ◼   ► pretend mouse that's actually a trackpad.

00:43:47 ◼   ► And it basically behaves the same

00:43:50 ◼   ► as the Logitech product does,

00:43:53 ◼   ► except it's Bluetooth instead of smart connector.

00:43:55 ◼   ► Basically behaves the same way,

00:43:57 ◼   ► which it surprised me 'cause I did a lot,

00:44:01 ◼   ► Myke, I spent a lot of time last week

00:44:03 ◼   ► looking at my hands.

00:44:05 ◼   ► Have you ever really looked at your hand, man?

00:44:07 ◼   ► Seriously though, I would say this to anybody,

00:44:13 ◼   ► look at, stop for a second when you're using your trackpad

00:44:18 ◼   ► and look at it and look at where your fingers are.

00:44:21 ◼   ► You'll be like, I do that?

00:44:22 ◼   ► 'Cause I discovered all sorts of very quirky finger motions

00:44:26 ◼   ► that I've completely internalized

00:44:28 ◼   ► that I built up over decades of using trackpads,

00:44:32 ◼   ► including using my thumb to click,

00:44:34 ◼   ► which is clearly because Apple used to have the button

00:44:37 ◼   ► underneath the trackpad.

00:44:39 ◼   ► And so you click it with your thumb

00:44:40 ◼   ► and I've never stopped clicking with my thumb.

00:44:43 ◼   ► It just happens on the bottom of the trackpad now.

00:44:46 ◼   ► So, and I do this thing where I've got my thumb on there

00:44:50 ◼   ► and then I move with my index finger

00:44:53 ◼   ► and then I, before the index finger is even done moving,

00:44:57 ◼   ► I lay my thumb back down and then once it stops, I click.

00:45:01 ◼   ► It's this very, I videoed myself doing mousing gestures

00:45:06 ◼   ► to try and figure out what was going on.

00:45:08 ◼   ► And what I learned while doing all of this sort of stuff

00:45:12 ◼   ► is the bridge trackpad and the Logitech trackpad

00:45:17 ◼   ► have limitations that are not on Apple's magic trackpad

00:45:23 ◼   ► or the trackpad in the magic keyboard for iPad.

00:45:27 ◼   ► So that's interesting, right?

00:45:30 ◼   ► Like there's not a universal,

00:45:31 ◼   ► it turns out one of the things I learned

00:45:33 ◼   ► is Apple's really good at trackpad firmware

00:45:35 ◼   ► and they have, there's a lot of secret sauce

00:45:37 ◼   ► in the magic trackpad.

00:45:39 ◼   ► And the one that really got me

00:45:40 ◼   ► is I do a lot of two finger scrolling

00:45:43 ◼   ► with my two fingers down vertically

00:45:49 ◼   ► and that works great on the magic trackpad.

00:45:54 ◼   ► On the bridge and the Logitech trackpads,

00:45:57 ◼   ► doesn't, it doesn't see them.

00:45:59 ◼   ► And in fact, you have to kind of rotate until,

00:46:02 ◼   ► you have to be less than 45 degrees horizontal

00:46:06 ◼   ► for it to see the two finger scroll.

00:46:08 ◼   ► - That's like really weird.

00:46:11 ◼   ► - Isn't it weird?

00:46:12 ◼   ► And now if all trackpads ever required you to be

00:46:16 ◼   ► at 45 or less and not at 90 degrees,

00:46:19 ◼   ► I would have trained myself a long time ago

00:46:23 ◼   ► to not do that, right?

00:46:24 ◼   ► And I think this is the key here is

00:46:29 ◼   ► can you train yourself to do,

00:46:34 ◼   ► retrain yourself to use the trackpad in a way

00:46:38 ◼   ► that is not the way you use it with the Apple trackpad?

00:46:41 ◼   ► The answer is absolutely yes.

00:46:42 ◼   ► It's sort of a subset of motions

00:46:44 ◼   ► that these trackpads support,

00:46:45 ◼   ► not just the bridge, but the Logitech.

00:46:48 ◼   ► But I do find it fascinating, right?

00:46:50 ◼   ► Like it revealed a level of secret sauce

00:46:53 ◼   ► that I wasn't aware was there in Apple's firmware.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And so this new trackpad firmware, it's pretty good.

00:47:01 ◼   ► And I would say it's pretty good,

00:47:03 ◼   ► but there are gonna be little quirks

00:47:04 ◼   ► where you're gonna say,

00:47:05 ◼   ► "I need to move my fingers slightly differently

00:47:08 ◼   ► in order to do this than I would on a magic trackpad."

00:47:11 ◼   ► And it's almost half the price of the magic keyboard.

00:47:16 ◼   ► So there's lots going for it.

00:47:19 ◼   ► But the bottom line is also that

00:47:21 ◼   ► if you want the best trackpad experience on an iPad,

00:47:25 ◼   ► the magic keyboard is the answer

00:47:27 ◼   ► because it does have that secret sauce

00:47:29 ◼   ► that the third party device is not just the bridge,

00:47:33 ◼   ► but the Logitech one that was sort of blessed by Apple,

00:47:37 ◼   ► even that one doesn't have all the secret sauce.

00:47:40 ◼   ► - I kind of don't understand what the point of that is.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Like if they are holding it back

00:47:46 ◼   ► from being as seamless as it could be.

00:47:49 ◼   ► - I think it's a question of

00:47:52 ◼   ► what is Apple's responsibility as a platform owner

00:47:57 ◼   ► to the makers of third-party accessories, right?

00:47:59 ◼   ► - Like if I get Bluetooth trackpad

00:48:03 ◼   ► made by whatever technology company

00:48:06 ◼   ► and attach it to my Mac,

00:48:07 ◼   ► I don't think I would have these same kind of issues.

00:48:11 ◼   ► - I don't know, I think maybe you would.

00:48:12 ◼   ► - Or a mouse or something.

00:48:14 ◼   ► - Well, but a mouse is gonna behave like a mouse.

00:48:15 ◼   ► I think you might.

00:48:16 ◼   ► I think what this reveals is that Apple considers

00:48:20 ◼   ► some level of the intelligence

00:48:21 ◼   ► that it's putting into its trackpad firmware

00:48:24 ◼   ► to be proprietary,

00:48:26 ◼   ► and that it really does want the best trackpad experience

00:48:29 ◼   ► to be on Apple hardware.

00:48:30 ◼   ► - And for all we know,

00:48:32 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause I don't know this,

00:48:33 ◼   ► I don't know if you know this,

00:48:35 ◼   ► Bridge might be able to make their experience better.

00:48:37 ◼   ► Like they might have to do some stuff with their firmware

00:48:40 ◼   ► where they can get it closer.

00:48:41 ◼   ► - That's absolutely true,

00:48:43 ◼   ► and I don't wanna reveal too much,

00:48:45 ◼   ► but I used a few different versions of their firmware

00:48:49 ◼   ► in TestFlight before they announced this.

00:48:52 ◼   ► And there's certainly power that they have

00:48:55 ◼   ► and control that they have.

00:48:57 ◼   ► But what struck me is there may be limitations

00:48:59 ◼   ► that are just limitations on anybody who's not Apple.

00:49:02 ◼   ► And obviously Apple has not only the resources

00:49:08 ◼   ► to fine tune this firmware and a huge user base,

00:49:12 ◼   ► but it's really also that they've been refining this stuff

00:49:16 ◼   ► for decades, right?

00:49:19 ◼   ► Like the first trackpad on a PowerBook was in the 90s.

00:49:26 ◼   ► They had had a long time,

00:49:28 ◼   ► and with the original Magic Trackpad

00:49:30 ◼   ► and with the second Magic Trackpad,

00:49:32 ◼   ► and the fact that two thirds, three quarters of the Macs

00:49:34 ◼   ► they sell are all laptops, so they've all got trackpads.

00:49:37 ◼   ► Like Apple's been at the trackpad game

00:49:40 ◼   ► and satisfying lots of customers

00:49:42 ◼   ► and finding lots of quirks probably

00:49:45 ◼   ► in how people use their fingers on a trackpad

00:49:47 ◼   ► for a long time.

00:49:49 ◼   ► So they should have secret sauce.

00:49:51 ◼   ► And they could potentially share that with others,

00:49:54 ◼   ► but I think they could also just not.

00:49:57 ◼   ► And I don't know whether it's a technical thing

00:50:00 ◼   ► or it's a decision on their part,

00:50:04 ◼   ► but it's something that I hadn't really expected

00:50:07 ◼   ► when I went into this.

00:50:09 ◼   ► I assumed that a trackpad was a trackpad,

00:50:11 ◼   ► and that's not true.

00:50:13 ◼   ► I mean, we already knew,

00:50:15 ◼   ► also I'll say the software update thing,

00:50:16 ◼   ► like you can use a Magic Trackpad too via Bluetooth

00:50:21 ◼   ► with an iPad, and you don't need the latest public beta

00:50:24 ◼   ► of iPad OS, right?

00:50:26 ◼   ► So Apple's trackpad works great via Bluetooth,

00:50:31 ◼   ► whereas the bridge trackpad needs a software update,

00:50:34 ◼   ► an OS update to work via Bluetooth.

00:50:39 ◼   ► Why is that?

00:50:40 ◼   ► I think in the end it's the same thing,

00:50:42 ◼   ► which is home field advantage of Apple as the platform owner

00:50:45 ◼   ► and they're pouring more of that secret sauce in there,

00:50:49 ◼   ► which is their stuff is the best stuff on their platform

00:50:54 ◼   ► and they like it that way.

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00:52:39 ◼   ► of this show at Relay FM.

00:52:41 ◼   ► Got a couple of Mark Gurman reports.

00:52:44 ◼   ► These are small reports.

00:52:46 ◼   ► I think we could maybe come up with a name.

00:52:47 ◼   ► They're like Gurman lights or something.

00:52:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:52:51 ◼   ► - Well, Gurman bites.

00:52:52 ◼   ► Gurman-- - Gurman bites.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Mark bites. - Yes, mini Gurmans.

00:52:56 ◼   ► - Apparently Apple is working on a magnetically

00:52:59 ◼   ► attached battery pack for iPhones with MagSafe.

00:53:03 ◼   ► This has been in development for a year.

00:53:05 ◼   ► There's been stumbling blocks as there always is.

00:53:07 ◼   ► The key difference here is that this product

00:53:10 ◼   ► is not a case as we've seen in previous years,

00:53:13 ◼   ► just a battery pack with MagSafe on it

00:53:15 ◼   ► and you put it on and it charges up.

00:53:18 ◼   ► The report also references that plans

00:53:20 ◼   ► for reverse wireless charging on iPhones

00:53:23 ◼   ► as a potential feature has been put on

00:53:26 ◼   ► what seems like an indefinite hold.

00:53:29 ◼   ► So this is the idea.

00:53:29 ◼   ► So this is like two little things in one here,

00:53:31 ◼   ► but the second part is that you could charge

00:53:34 ◼   ► your AirPods on the back of your iPhone.

00:53:36 ◼   ► It was a thing that we all thought,

00:53:37 ◼   ► well, many of us thought that they would add

00:53:39 ◼   ► and seems like they're not.

00:53:40 ◼   ► But what do you think about this MagSafe battery pack?

00:53:45 ◼   ► - I don't know, what I've heard is that

00:53:47 ◼   ► it's not very efficient, that this kind of

00:53:50 ◼   ► charging technology is not very efficient

00:53:52 ◼   ► and so you'd be better off with a battery pack

00:53:55 ◼   ► that you plug in.

00:53:56 ◼   ► But that said, it's part of the MagSafe ecosystem, right?

00:54:01 ◼   ► Attach this thing and I think there are others out there

00:54:03 ◼   ► that do this already.

00:54:05 ◼   ► - I think some companies make like Qi charging battery packs.

00:54:09 ◼   ► Right, like that is a thing that you can get.

00:54:11 ◼   ► But I guess one of the benefits that you would get

00:54:13 ◼   ► with MagSafe of course is that you don't have to be

00:54:17 ◼   ► delicate with it, right?

00:54:18 ◼   ► Like if you're just Qi charging on a thing,

00:54:20 ◼   ► you've got to like hold that thing all together

00:54:22 ◼   ► and make sure it doesn't come off.

00:54:24 ◼   ► But with MagSafe, it's going to attach.

00:54:26 ◼   ► - It's attached and aligned and maybe you can even

00:54:30 ◼   ► put it in your pocket and it will stay attached.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And yeah, I am not a big battery pack person.

00:54:37 ◼   ► I'm no Alex Cox, for example, who lives with a battery pack.

00:54:42 ◼   ► But I think it's fine and I think Apple should be doing this.

00:54:45 ◼   ► This is a continuation of Apple's whole thing with MagSafe,

00:54:48 ◼   ► which is they're not just rolling out an iPhone feature,

00:54:51 ◼   ► they're rolling out a sort of constellation of accessories.

00:54:56 ◼   ► Right, accessories from Apple, accessories from third parties

00:54:59 ◼   ► and they've had success with their battery packs

00:55:02 ◼   ► in the past, battery cases.

00:55:04 ◼   ► So why not do this too?

00:55:06 ◼   ► It'll be undoubtedly more expensive than any alternative,

00:55:10 ◼   ► but also it'll be the one from Apple.

00:55:12 ◼   ► So people will buy it.

00:55:14 ◼   ► - It will be baked into the system.

00:55:15 ◼   ► Like I always liked the battery cases.

00:55:17 ◼   ► - Secret sauce, Myke.

00:55:18 ◼   ► - Oh my word, how many more times do you,

00:55:20 ◼   ► how many more times do you think you can conceivably get

00:55:23 ◼   ► that into today's episode?

00:55:24 ◼   ► Like if you're not forcing it?

00:55:26 ◼   ► Couple more? - We're talking about Apple.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Apple is, I mean, what's the secret sauce gonna be?

00:55:30 ◼   ► I think that's the whole game plan.

00:55:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:33 ◼   ► - I have used the battery cases for the last couple

00:55:37 ◼   ► of iPhones.

00:55:38 ◼   ► I don't have obviously any need to get a battery case

00:55:43 ◼   ► or pack for my current iPhone because usually I would use

00:55:47 ◼   ► these when I was traveling.

00:55:49 ◼   ► I reckon I might be able to get this entire life cycle

00:55:53 ◼   ► of my iPhone without any kind of battery pack or case on it.

00:55:57 ◼   ► But this is a interesting method of doing it.

00:56:01 ◼   ► Again, I mean, I've mentioned this before.

00:56:04 ◼   ► I'm not super into wireless charging as a technology.

00:56:08 ◼   ► It kind of, I don't know, things get hot and stuff.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Like I'm always hearing about Apple's always having problems

00:56:15 ◼   ► with these products, keep catching fire.

00:56:17 ◼   ► You know, like those in in Goemann's report,

00:56:20 ◼   ► they said like, oh, in these early stages,

00:56:21 ◼   ► they were having overheating reliability issues

00:56:24 ◼   ► with this product.

00:56:25 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, I'm not surprised.

00:56:27 ◼   ► Everything seems to go wrong when Qi charging is introduced.

00:56:30 ◼   ► So the only thing that's one's for me.

00:56:32 ◼   ► I'm a way away from being a Qi charging person.

00:56:34 ◼   ► I still charge the good old way with a cable.

00:56:37 ◼   ► But everybody else that I know,

00:56:40 ◼   ► including everybody else in my household loves MagSafe,

00:56:43 ◼   ► but it's just not my thing.

00:56:44 ◼   ► Plus I'm a PopSocket person, which is another big reason.

00:56:46 ◼   ► - Right, oh boy.

00:56:47 ◼   ► - It's incredibly difficult to try and make that all work out.

00:56:51 ◼   ► - I have the MagSafe wallet.

00:56:52 ◼   ► I bought a MagSafe wallet.

00:56:54 ◼   ► - You did?

00:56:55 ◼   ► - I did, I like it.

00:56:56 ◼   ► - Huh, okay.

00:56:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I like it.

00:56:58 ◼   ► Instead of having to put my phone and my wallet

00:57:01 ◼   ► in my pocket, I put my phone with my wallet in my pocket.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Well, those rare instances where I go outside.

00:57:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, you see, I just have to also have a feeling

00:57:10 ◼   ► of like you lose one, you lose both, you know?

00:57:12 ◼   ► - Oh, I mean, that's okay.

00:57:16 ◼   ► Yes, I suppose that's true.

00:57:18 ◼   ► - And 5G, forget about it.

00:57:22 ◼   ► It's time for 6G.

00:57:23 ◼   ► Apple has engineers working on their own

00:57:25 ◼   ► radio system for 6G. - We're doing all the Gs.

00:57:27 ◼   ► More Gs.

00:57:29 ◼   ► - Apparently Apple have decided they wanna be ahead

00:57:32 ◼   ► of the curve when it comes to 6G.

00:57:34 ◼   ► And, but this is a sign of what's coming to them

00:57:36 ◼   ► in the future anyway, that they are not going

00:57:39 ◼   ► to be using partner products for modems and radios.

00:57:42 ◼   ► - You know why, Myke?

00:57:43 ◼   ► You know why Apple wants to build--

00:57:45 ◼   ► - I would love to know why, tell me.

00:57:46 ◼   ► - 'Cause they want to put in their own secret sauce.

00:57:48 ◼   ► - Oh, look at that.

00:57:49 ◼   ► You did it.

00:57:50 ◼   ► I'm proud of you, really.

00:57:51 ◼   ► 'Cause it was so soon and it's still legitimate.

00:57:54 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:57:55 ◼   ► - But this was, you know, you remember from the Qualcomm

00:57:57 ◼   ► story and then Apple buying up Intel's modem division.

00:58:00 ◼   ► They are moving this way anyway.

00:58:02 ◼   ► 6G is about 10 years away.

00:58:04 ◼   ► So I expect that before 6G is even a thing,

00:58:06 ◼   ► Apple's using their own 5G modems

00:58:08 ◼   ► and maybe the iPhone 14 or something.

00:58:11 ◼   ► - Right, right. - So, you know,

00:58:13 ◼   ► this is definitely in their future.

00:58:16 ◼   ► - We should take bets about what year AT&T

00:58:21 ◼   ► will declare their latest 5G technology as 6G.

00:58:27 ◼   ► - I reckon it's like four or five years away.

00:58:32 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:58:32 ◼   ► - Because if 6G is 10 years away,

00:58:35 ◼   ► I could imagine them about halfway through

00:58:37 ◼   ► that period of time, it will become spoken about more

00:58:40 ◼   ► and they'll just be like, here we go, 6G time.

00:58:42 ◼   ► - In 2026.

00:58:43 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:58:44 ◼   ► - What better time than 26 for 6G?

00:58:47 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:58:48 ◼   ► - Except it won't be 6G.

00:58:49 ◼   ► It'll be AT&T.

00:58:50 ◼   ► - Well, AT&T, we'll call it that.

00:58:51 ◼   ► - 5G, branded as 6G.

00:58:54 ◼   ► - So what does AT&T call 5G?

00:58:56 ◼   ► They call it 5G and then 4G is 5GE, is that how it works?

00:58:59 ◼   ► - Oh, I think they call it like 5G Plus or something.

00:59:04 ◼   ► I don't even know.

00:59:05 ◼   ► I don't have 5G.

00:59:06 ◼   ► I don't have it because it would require me

00:59:08 ◼   ► to go on a much more expensive plan

00:59:11 ◼   ► and also I don't leave my house.

00:59:12 ◼   ► So I don't know. - Yeah, it's not needed

00:59:13 ◼   ► for now.

00:59:14 ◼   ► - I guess technically I have AT&T, so I do have 5G.

00:59:17 ◼   ► It's just not really 5G.

00:59:19 ◼   ► - You have AT&T's 5G, which is the real 5G

00:59:22 ◼   ► as we know it to be.

00:59:23 ◼   ► - If you say so. - It's the one

00:59:24 ◼   ► that's everywhere.

00:59:26 ◼   ► This is a non-Mark Gurman report.

00:59:28 ◼   ► I saw this reported on MacRumors.

00:59:30 ◼   ► I've seen a bunch of websites reporting on this too.

00:59:34 ◼   ► There's a claimed leaked image

00:59:36 ◼   ► showing the design of AirPods 3.

00:59:38 ◼   ► This has come from a website called 52audio.

00:59:41 ◼   ► Now obviously we can't corroborate the reliability

00:59:44 ◼   ► of these images, but they do seem in line

00:59:46 ◼   ► with rumors from Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo

00:59:49 ◼   ► on what Apple's next AirPods could feature

00:59:51 ◼   ► and potentially look like.

00:59:53 ◼   ► Now what I want to do just for the purpose

00:59:56 ◼   ► of this discussion is just assume

00:59:58 ◼   ► that this image is correct, right?

01:00:00 ◼   ► 'Cause I think it just makes it more interesting

01:00:02 ◼   ► for discussion for us to just,

01:00:03 ◼   ► let's just take as read that the images

01:00:05 ◼   ► that are in this article are correct.

01:00:08 ◼   ► And this is what the next AirPods are gonna look like.

01:00:09 ◼   ► - I'm very skeptical about these, but okay.

01:00:13 ◼   ► - Well, we can talk about that skepticism

01:00:15 ◼   ► even in the idea of these being real or not

01:00:18 ◼   ► because it's about the product itself.

01:00:20 ◼   ► Because I think there is a potential

01:00:22 ◼   ► that it could go this way.

01:00:22 ◼   ► The key design detail that is shown here

01:00:25 ◼   ► that we're talking about is that the AirPods 3,

01:00:27 ◼   ► so it would be the addition to the standard AirPods,

01:00:31 ◼   ► the revision to the original design,

01:00:33 ◼   ► is that they're basically going to look

01:00:35 ◼   ► just like AirPods Pro.

01:00:37 ◼   ► So much smaller, we have the in-ear silicone system,

01:00:41 ◼   ► so the earphones go in your ears.

01:00:43 ◼   ► And if they do this, this is a big departure

01:00:47 ◼   ► from the current AirPods design,

01:00:48 ◼   ► which I think would make a lot of people pretty upset

01:00:51 ◼   ► because not everyone likes the in-ear headphones.

01:00:55 ◼   ► - Well, okay, so my skepticism here is also not just

01:01:02 ◼   ► what's the source, but also what are AirPods Pro

01:01:08 ◼   ► if these are AirPods?

01:01:10 ◼   ► What's the difference?

01:01:11 ◼   ► Because this looks very much like Apple's going

01:01:13 ◼   ► to do new AirPods, their AirPods Pro.

01:01:20 ◼   ► How are these differentiated from AirPods Pro?

01:01:23 ◼   ► What's left?

01:01:24 ◼   ► - So, 52 Audio claimed that these AirPods 3

01:01:27 ◼   ► feature the pressure-believing system that AirPods Pro have,

01:01:31 ◼   ► so they've got, like, it equalizes the pressure.

01:01:34 ◼   ► But it seems like that's it, so it doesn't seem like

01:01:36 ◼   ► this active noise cancellation in it.

01:01:39 ◼   ► We assume probably no transparency mode,

01:01:42 ◼   ► and so let's imagine that that's what it has for now.

01:01:45 ◼   ► - But they do have the touch control indentations

01:01:49 ◼   ► in these renders or images or whatever they are,

01:01:52 ◼   ► so that's a feature.

01:01:53 ◼   ► So noise cancellation is the difference

01:01:55 ◼   ► between AirPods and AirPods Pro?

01:01:57 ◼   ► - I think that that would probably be safe to assume

01:01:59 ◼   ► would be the thing.

01:02:01 ◼   ► - All right.

01:02:02 ◼   ► - So that might be it, right?

01:02:03 ◼   ► - So they're basically just lesser AirPods Pro.

01:02:05 ◼   ► - But isn't that, so, you know, on that, though,

01:02:11 ◼   ► isn't that the Apple thing to do?

01:02:14 ◼   ► To, like, make AirPods quote-unquote better

01:02:18 ◼   ► and then make AirPods Pro better still?

01:02:20 ◼   ► - It is.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I think the question, and maybe where we're getting hung up,

01:02:24 ◼   ► is this concern that AirPods and AirPods Pro

01:02:27 ◼   ► don't fit the same, and that people for whom AirPods fit

01:02:31 ◼   ► are going to be sad because the new AirPods don't fit them.

01:02:36 ◼   ► Now, I'm reminded that when AirPods Pro came out,

01:02:39 ◼   ► Apple made a big deal in the launch of saying,

01:02:46 ◼   ► this is all based on our research into the shapes of ears

01:02:50 ◼   ► worldwide, and it's a much better shape

01:02:53 ◼   ► that's compatible with more ears than our old AirPods.

01:02:57 ◼   ► So that might be their premise,

01:02:59 ◼   ► is that AirPods should be shaped like AirPods Pro

01:03:03 ◼   ► because it's a better shape that fits more ears.

01:03:06 ◼   ► It will be a real bummer for the people

01:03:09 ◼   ► for whom AirPods Pro don't fit comfortably, but AirPods do.

01:03:13 ◼   ► - So I love my AirPods Pro, but--

01:03:16 ◼   ► - Me too.

01:03:17 ◼   ► - My left one falls out all the time.

01:03:20 ◼   ► Doesn't matter what size tip I use, doesn't matter.

01:03:24 ◼   ► And my left ear has always been the ear

01:03:27 ◼   ► that has bothered me with these types of headphones.

01:03:30 ◼   ► And AirPods Pro are not uncomfortable for me

01:03:32 ◼   ► like others are, but the left one just doesn't stay in.

01:03:34 ◼   ► This never happened with standard AirPods.

01:03:38 ◼   ► They never fell out, but the left one falls out.

01:03:40 ◼   ► So maybe my ear canal is misshapen or whatever,

01:03:43 ◼   ► but this is the thing, right?

01:03:44 ◼   ► So some people don't like it,

01:03:46 ◼   ► and for some people it just doesn't work, like for me.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Now if that annoyed me enough, I would stop using them.

01:03:52 ◼   ► But I find the transparency and noise cancellation features

01:03:54 ◼   ► to be so good and the touch sensitivity

01:03:57 ◼   ► on the stalks of the things to be so good

01:04:00 ◼   ► that I'll take it, right?

01:04:01 ◼   ► It's like fine, I will use it.

01:04:03 ◼   ► But I would be surprised if, not surprised,

01:04:08 ◼   ► I would be, I think, a little bit disappointed

01:04:11 ◼   ► if this was the only option.

01:04:14 ◼   ► - Have you tried some other ear tip kind of thing

01:04:18 ◼   ► on your left ear for AirPods Pro?

01:04:20 ◼   ► - Foam is fine.

01:04:21 ◼   ► Sony Silicon I have the issue with.

01:04:23 ◼   ► If I use foam tips, they're fine,

01:04:25 ◼   ► but I just don't really like foam tips.

01:04:28 ◼   ► - Have you tried Federico's thing

01:04:30 ◼   ► where you put the foam under the silicone

01:04:33 ◼   ► and so it's providing the kind of like the push

01:04:36 ◼   ► that foam does? - I haven't tried that.

01:04:37 ◼   ► No, I haven't tried that.

01:04:38 ◼   ► - Federico really made some company's day by-

01:04:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, by writing about that, yeah.

01:04:44 ◼   ► Writing that and talking about it on connected.

01:04:46 ◼   ► But that might be something to try.

01:04:49 ◼   ► As an aside, there's a company that I use

01:04:52 ◼   ► that makes custom silicone ear tips

01:04:55 ◼   ► that I use for my headphones.

01:04:57 ◼   ► And they offered a version that works for AirPods Pro.

01:05:01 ◼   ► And I thought, well, that's really interesting.

01:05:06 ◼   ► It turns out it's literally an in-ear tip

01:05:10 ◼   ► and then there's this thing sticking out

01:05:14 ◼   ► that is where you put the AirPod.

01:05:15 ◼   ► And they really expect you to walk around

01:05:18 ◼   ► with AirPods Pro just sort of bouncing around

01:05:21 ◼   ► on the outside of your ears.

01:05:24 ◼   ► - Oh. - If they're with

01:05:25 ◼   ► a little hole, it's so bad. - So they didn't make

01:05:27 ◼   ► a little connector to go into the plasticy thing,

01:05:30 ◼   ► like the little clip-in? - No.

01:05:31 ◼   ► - Oh, that's a real shame. - It's really bad.

01:05:34 ◼   ► - That's so hilarious.

01:05:35 ◼   ► That must be so uncomfortable too.

01:05:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not, it's really bad.

01:05:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, they bungled it. - So now, basically now

01:05:42 ◼   ► I've got a pair of earplugs. (laughs)

01:05:45 ◼   ► They're very nice earplugs.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Just, you can snip off the little outside part

01:05:49 ◼   ► and it's a very nice earplug.

01:05:51 ◼   ► Take it to concerts when I go to concerts again.

01:05:54 ◼   ► - I could easily imagine them changing the design

01:05:57 ◼   ► and I think they should change the design,

01:05:59 ◼   ► like the overall physical shape and size and look

01:06:02 ◼   ► to look like AirPods Pro because they're the cooler ones.

01:06:05 ◼   ► But I just think it would be a shame to remove

01:06:09 ◼   ► the plastic ear design that they had before, you know?

01:06:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I get it.

01:06:18 ◼   ► I mean, Apple is not afraid to do that

01:06:20 ◼   ► and I can tell you that if this is what they do,

01:06:23 ◼   ► they will absolutely say that these are shapes

01:06:26 ◼   ► that are more compatible with more ears.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And that the removable tips, if they've got

01:06:33 ◼   ► the same removable tip design, they'll say,

01:06:34 ◼   ► and the removable tips help you get a better fit

01:06:37 ◼   ► and more people are gonna be able to use,

01:06:39 ◼   ► have access to AirPods than before.

01:06:41 ◼   ► But it will fundamentally, even if that's completely true,

01:06:44 ◼   ► there will be people for whom the new AirPods won't fit

01:06:47 ◼   ► that the old ones did.

01:06:50 ◼   ► And that's, the question here is,

01:06:52 ◼   ► is Apple trying to make a product line of headphones

01:06:54 ◼   ► for people who have different desires,

01:06:56 ◼   ► like one that goes in your ear and one that sits in,

01:06:59 ◼   ► outside your ear and one that goes over your ear?

01:07:01 ◼   ► Or are they following their other instinct,

01:07:03 ◼   ► which is to sort of make everything uniform?

01:07:06 ◼   ► And yeah, I'm with you.

01:07:08 ◼   ► I would rather see Apple spread out

01:07:11 ◼   ► their headphone design choices for ergonomic reasons

01:07:15 ◼   ► than have it all be sort of like,

01:07:16 ◼   ► well, we only make one AirPod shape and this is it.

01:07:19 ◼   ► - So I will ask you now,

01:07:23 ◼   ► do you think they will do this with silicone in-ears

01:07:26 ◼   ► on AirPods, the future version of AirPods 3?

01:07:29 ◼   ► Do you think that that is what Apple will do?

01:07:31 ◼   ► - I think it's the most likely scenario is they will,

01:07:36 ◼   ► because they'll be so proud of this design

01:07:40 ◼   ► that they came up with for AirPods Pro

01:07:42 ◼   ► that they're gonna wanna roll it back.

01:07:44 ◼   ► And there might even be some savings

01:07:46 ◼   ► in having the AirPods and AirPods Pro

01:07:48 ◼   ► be kind of the same for a lot of this.

01:07:51 ◼   ► So I think there's a chance that it's not true.

01:07:54 ◼   ► I really do, but I think if I had to pick one,

01:07:58 ◼   ► I would pick that it's true.

01:08:01 ◼   ► I think that it will be too.

01:08:03 ◼   ► And I hope that they have transparency mode.

01:08:07 ◼   ► - Well, I'll tell you, if it's got the air flow path,

01:08:13 ◼   ► then there's some degree of transparency already, right?

01:08:20 ◼   ► Like that's letting air in from the outside.

01:08:22 ◼   ► - I don't know if you've ever used AirPods Pro

01:08:24 ◼   ► and just turned it off,

01:08:26 ◼   ► 'cause you can turn transparency and noise canceling off

01:08:29 ◼   ► as like an offsetting.

01:08:30 ◼   ► And that is too isolated for me.

01:08:32 ◼   ► It's a natural isolation to that.

01:08:35 ◼   ► And I don't feel comfortable

01:08:37 ◼   ► and wouldn't feel comfortable being out in the street

01:08:39 ◼   ► with that isolation level.

01:08:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, covering up your ears with headphones

01:08:46 ◼   ► makes a difference that the earbuds don't do.

01:08:48 ◼   ► So absolutely.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

01:08:52 ◼   ► I don't know what they're gonna do,

01:08:53 ◼   ► because you would think

01:08:55 ◼   ► that if you can put it in transparency mode,

01:08:57 ◼   ► then you're basically doing noise canceling, right?

01:09:01 ◼   ► Like is that hardware any different?

01:09:02 ◼   ► It's the same hardware.

01:09:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:09:05 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:09:06 ◼   ► My skepticism about this report

01:09:09 ◼   ► is that it looks an awful lot

01:09:10 ◼   ► like it's just sort of a rebadging of some AirPods Pro

01:09:14 ◼   ► and saying these are the new AirPods.

01:09:16 ◼   ► And that could very easily just be a lazy goal

01:09:20 ◼   ► of getting attention for a fake rumor.

01:09:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree with you.

01:09:26 ◼   ► And I wouldn't have included this at all

01:09:27 ◼   ► if reliable people like Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo

01:09:32 ◼   ► have said things that are similar to this, right?

01:09:35 ◼   ► There's a lot of detail we don't know,

01:09:37 ◼   ► but the idea of them moving towards this one type of design

01:09:42 ◼   ► seems possible.

01:09:44 ◼   ► - Seems possible.

01:09:45 ◼   ► I would probably advocate against it

01:09:48 ◼   ► saying that the canal phone market and the earbud market

01:09:52 ◼   ► are as different as the earbud market and the headphone,

01:09:57 ◼   ► over-ear headphone market are different, right?

01:10:00 ◼   ► Canal phones, I love them.

01:10:02 ◼   ► I love sticking little headphone things in my ears.

01:10:06 ◼   ► It's great.

01:10:07 ◼   ► But some people hate it and I get it.

01:10:10 ◼   ► I get that.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And so why would you not give those people,

01:10:13 ◼   ► I don't care how much better it is,

01:10:15 ◼   ► having people have to stick the silicone tip

01:10:18 ◼   ► of an earphone in their ear canal,

01:10:20 ◼   ► like that's a deal breaker for a lot of people.

01:10:22 ◼   ► And as you point out, there's also a safety issue

01:10:24 ◼   ► if it's covering up their ability to hear their surroundings.

01:10:28 ◼   ► So I would advocate against it,

01:10:30 ◼   ► but it doesn't mean they won't do it.

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01:12:21 ◼   ► Let's do some #AskUpgrade questions.

01:12:24 ◼   ► Brans asks, "To avoid confusion between Apple TV, the app

01:12:29 ◼   ► and Apple TV Plus, the service and Apple TV, the hardware,

01:12:33 ◼   ► what would you rename the Apple TV hardware

01:12:36 ◼   ► if there was a next generation coming?"

01:12:38 ◼   ► I guess the first question is, would you or should they

01:12:43 ◼   ► rename Apple TV?

01:12:44 ◼   ► - Well, yeah. - To something else.

01:12:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's really confusing,

01:12:47 ◼   ► but I think that they can't go too far away.

01:12:50 ◼   ► I liked Ben Thompson and John Gruber came to this idea

01:12:54 ◼   ► of like call it Apple TV arcade or something

01:12:56 ◼   ► if you're gonna focus on games.

01:12:58 ◼   ► - Right.

01:12:59 ◼   ► - Give it some differentiator just because Apple TV app,

01:13:03 ◼   ► Apple TV Plus service,

01:13:04 ◼   ► if there's a lot of Apple TV going on here,

01:13:07 ◼   ► give it something to differentiate it.

01:13:09 ◼   ► I guess technically it's the Apple TV 4K is what it's called,

01:13:13 ◼   ► but that's not, I don't know.

01:13:15 ◼   ► I don't have a good answer.

01:13:16 ◼   ► I would say what's its focus and give it a name

01:13:20 ◼   ► that reflects that focus. - Apple TV Pro.

01:13:22 ◼   ► - So it could be Apple TV Pro, it could be Apple TV Home.

01:13:27 ◼   ► If it's got home features, it could be Apple TV Arcade.

01:13:30 ◼   ► If it's, they're gonna try to pitch it for Apple Arcade

01:13:33 ◼   ► and bundle it with a controller or something like that.

01:13:36 ◼   ► But it would be nice if they stuck a modifier on it.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Sure would be nice.

01:13:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would like a modifier for that,

01:13:41 ◼   ► but realistically I would like a brand new name

01:13:44 ◼   ► so I don't have to say the first two words,

01:13:47 ◼   ► but the likelihood of that occurring is very slim.

01:13:49 ◼   ► - It's very low.

01:13:50 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause I don't wanna have to get to word three

01:13:53 ◼   ► before you know what one I mean.

01:13:55 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:13:56 ◼   ► - But that's just-- - Oh, there isn't a third word.

01:13:58 ◼   ► Well then I know what you mean.

01:13:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, if the third word is completely unrelated.

01:14:01 ◼   ► - Apple TV.

01:14:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:14:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, like Ryan's saying in the chat, just call it ITV.

01:14:09 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:14:10 ◼   ► - That was the original name. - I was acknowledged.

01:14:11 ◼   ► - In case you didn't know that,

01:14:13 ◼   ► but they faced issues with the ITV company here in the UK.

01:14:18 ◼   ► - Indeed.

01:14:19 ◼   ► - So they call that Apple TV.

01:14:20 ◼   ► And I believe, you can correct me if I'm wrong,

01:14:23 ◼   ► was the first product to get the Apple logo name.

01:14:27 ◼   ► - I think you might be right.

01:14:31 ◼   ► And very clearly that was a Steve Jobs thing, right?

01:14:33 ◼   ► Where Steve Jobs was like, "Oh, it's ITV, whatever."

01:14:35 ◼   ► And they're like, "We can't call it that."

01:14:37 ◼   ► But I do think it may be prom,

01:14:39 ◼   ► was a, if not the example, a very prominent example

01:14:43 ◼   ► of Apple deciding that using I in front of everything

01:14:46 ◼   ► was something they should stop doing

01:14:48 ◼   ► and then brand everything Apple,

01:14:51 ◼   ► followed by a generic with something they should start doing.

01:14:54 ◼   ► - I stood for internet TV.

01:14:57 ◼   ► Internet pad.

01:14:58 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:14:59 ◼   ► - Richard asks, "What are your thoughts on Clubhouse,

01:15:04 ◼   ► especially as a compliment and/or evolution of podcasting?"

01:15:08 ◼   ► - You have an opinion about Clubhouse, Myke?

01:15:11 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, of course I do.

01:15:13 ◼   ► You know I do.

01:15:15 ◼   ► I wanna point people to a tweet that I very much enjoy

01:15:18 ◼   ► from friend of the show Lex Friedman,

01:15:20 ◼   ► which said, "Saying Clubhouse's podcast

01:15:23 ◼   ► is like saying parties are plays."

01:15:26 ◼   ► And I just thought it was,

01:15:27 ◼   ► it so beautifully encapsulates my feeling

01:15:30 ◼   ► about Clubhouse disrupting podcasting.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Now, I see a lot of people saying,

01:15:37 ◼   ► like getting upset about this because they say,

01:15:39 ◼   ► "I as a podcast producer take umbrage to this

01:15:43 ◼   ► because my podcast is so lovingly edited with music,"

01:15:47 ◼   ► and et cetera, et cetera, right?

01:15:48 ◼   ► Like and then people equate this idea of like,

01:15:52 ◼   ► oh, people that make highly produced podcasts

01:15:55 ◼   ► and people when they hear that

01:15:57 ◼   ► think it has to have music underneath it.

01:16:00 ◼   ► But I would say that what we do is still highly produced.

01:16:02 ◼   ► They're heavily edited.

01:16:04 ◼   ► And it's not the editing part for me

01:16:08 ◼   ► that is why podcasts and Clubhouse are different.

01:16:13 ◼   ► It's just because it's audio

01:16:16 ◼   ► that you listen to on your phone

01:16:18 ◼   ► doesn't mean that it's a podcast,

01:16:20 ◼   ► nor that it will necessarily take people's time

01:16:22 ◼   ► away from podcasting.

01:16:24 ◼   ► It's like Apple Music is not podcasts,

01:16:28 ◼   ► but they're both audio I listen to on my phone.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I find it strange how especially it seems like

01:16:33 ◼   ► this happens a lot in Silicon Valley

01:16:35 ◼   ► and especially when anything's VC related.

01:16:37 ◼   ► Everything has to be something else.

01:16:41 ◼   ► It has to disrupt something that already exists.

01:16:43 ◼   ► It has to be a better version of something we already have.

01:16:48 ◼   ► And I don't know why it has to be that way.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Like it is perfectly valid to say that Clubhouse

01:16:54 ◼   ► is a new thing that exists and will be its own thing.

01:17:00 ◼   ► And isn't that a better thing to say than to be like,

01:17:04 ◼   ► oh, this is now gonna kill podcasting.

01:17:07 ◼   ► It's like Twitch doesn't kill YouTube videos.

01:17:10 ◼   ► But that's what's going,

01:17:12 ◼   ► it's like that's how I think of it.

01:17:14 ◼   ► Like YouTube videos are by and large

01:17:16 ◼   ► these highly produced things that take a lot of time

01:17:19 ◼   ► and effort to put together and they're concise

01:17:22 ◼   ► and they've been a lot of preppers gone into them.

01:17:24 ◼   ► And then you have Twitch streaming,

01:17:25 ◼   ► which is typically more free form.

01:17:28 ◼   ► There's less work that goes into it beforehand.

01:17:30 ◼   ► There's no work that goes into it

01:17:32 ◼   ► after the recording is done.

01:17:33 ◼   ► And it's just there and you can have it on in the background.

01:17:36 ◼   ► Like that is the comparison.

01:17:38 ◼   ► Like Clubhouse is to Twitch that podcasts are to YouTube.

01:17:41 ◼   ► And so that's what's going on.

01:17:43 ◼   ► It's like, it's the same medium, it's audio,

01:17:46 ◼   ► but they're different.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Like the only things that are similar

01:17:49 ◼   ► is that it's people talking.

01:17:50 ◼   ► It's like conversations aren't disrupting podcasting.

01:17:55 ◼   ► And so I just don't understand why we have to have these,

01:18:01 ◼   ► oh, this is the discourse that like Clubhouse

01:18:03 ◼   ► is now shaking the ground of podcasting.

01:18:06 ◼   ► It's not gonna happen, right?

01:18:08 ◼   ► But Clubhouse can be its own thing,

01:18:10 ◼   ► which is very successful.

01:18:12 ◼   ► And I hope that it does for people, like it's a new medium.

01:18:17 ◼   ► I don't feel any draw to it myself

01:18:19 ◼   ► either as a creator or consumer.

01:18:22 ◼   ► I have an account, I've checked it a few times.

01:18:24 ◼   ► I've listened to 10 minutes of one Clubhouse.

01:18:27 ◼   ► I don't think it's for me.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I think as a creator, I don't have anything

01:18:33 ◼   ► I feel like I could bring to Clubhouse

01:18:36 ◼   ► that I wouldn't just have as part of one of my many shows.

01:18:40 ◼   ► Like why would I do a thing on Clubhouse?

01:18:43 ◼   ► That is content, which I would produce

01:18:48 ◼   ► in the medium for podcasting.

01:18:49 ◼   ► But I'm keeping my mind open.

01:18:52 ◼   ► Like I always think back to Instagram and Instagram stories.

01:18:54 ◼   ► I didn't use them for a while.

01:18:56 ◼   ► I had accounts, but I didn't really use them.

01:18:58 ◼   ► But then I did 'cause then it like

01:19:00 ◼   ► found a place in my life for it.

01:19:02 ◼   ► So I'm not like saying for me,

01:19:04 ◼   ► oh, I'm never gonna use Clubhouse nor do I care about it.

01:19:06 ◼   ► It's kind of just right now,

01:19:08 ◼   ► I don't know what I would want it for.

01:19:10 ◼   ► But that doesn't mean it's not good.

01:19:11 ◼   ► I just don't think it's for me right now.

01:19:14 ◼   ► But the main thing I wanted to get across is

01:19:16 ◼   ► I don't understand why people have to say

01:19:21 ◼   ► that this is now coming off the podcasting

01:19:24 ◼   ► 'cause I just don't see the line there.

01:19:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would say only in the broadest sense,

01:19:29 ◼   ► which is people have a limited amount of time in general

01:19:32 ◼   ► and a limited time to listen to audio in particular.

01:19:36 ◼   ► And that is everything competes with everything else

01:19:39 ◼   ► in the broad way and in the narrow way.

01:19:42 ◼   ► If you have X amount of audio time,

01:19:45 ◼   ► then listening to music, listening to podcasts,

01:19:47 ◼   ► listening to Clubhouse, listening to the radio,

01:19:52 ◼   ► listening to audio books, that's all in that bucket

01:19:54 ◼   ► and you can't do all of them.

01:19:56 ◼   ► And then more broadly,

01:19:57 ◼   ► there's only so many hours in the day.

01:19:59 ◼   ► In a more specific way, I agree with you.

01:20:02 ◼   ► It feels like a very different medium.

01:20:04 ◼   ► It's social conversation.

01:20:06 ◼   ► There's a broadcast aspect to it.

01:20:08 ◼   ► I think in the end,

01:20:10 ◼   ► one of the things that I'm most skeptical of

01:20:13 ◼   ► is these live talk shows on Clubhouse

01:20:15 ◼   ► because that to me sounds like early days of television

01:20:19 ◼   ► putting a stage show on television, right?

01:20:21 ◼   ► Where it's like, that's not what this medium is.

01:20:23 ◼   ► This is a social medium where people can talk

01:20:27 ◼   ► and have conversations and somebody's in there

01:20:29 ◼   ► trying to turn it into essentially a call-in show

01:20:32 ◼   ► from the radio or a live podcast stream like the one we do.

01:20:36 ◼   ► And is that Clubhouse to have an audience

01:20:39 ◼   ► on an exclusive service

01:20:41 ◼   ► that you have to give them your information

01:20:43 ◼   ► and set up an account and then you can go in

01:20:44 ◼   ► and you can listen to a bunch of other people talking live?

01:20:48 ◼   ► Like, is that disruptive in any way?

01:20:49 ◼   ► I would say no.

01:20:52 ◼   ► I would say that there's probably something

01:20:53 ◼   ► really interesting about making this an easy to use way

01:20:56 ◼   ► to listen to live audio because we know that's hard.

01:20:59 ◼   ► Like we do a live stream for this podcast,

01:21:01 ◼   ► but a fraction, a tiny fraction of our listeners listen live

01:21:06 ◼   ► and we love them.

01:21:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, and nor would we wanna bring this to Clubhouse

01:21:09 ◼   ► because then we're not using Clubhouse

01:21:11 ◼   ► for what Clubhouse is for,

01:21:13 ◼   ► which is having conversations and bringing people in.

01:21:16 ◼   ► - And didn't have, if we did this podcast on Clubhouse

01:21:18 ◼   ► and didn't have other people talking about it,

01:21:20 ◼   ► if we didn't turn it into a phone-in show,

01:21:22 ◼   ► then it's not Clubhouse, right?

01:21:23 ◼   ► It's just a podcast stuck on Clubhouse,

01:21:25 ◼   ► which I would think is bad, right?

01:21:28 ◼   ► Like, I don't think that's using what it's,

01:21:30 ◼   ► that would be us trying to change it

01:21:32 ◼   ► into something that it's not.

01:21:33 ◼   ► What it is, is it viable or not?

01:21:37 ◼   ► It's hard to tell, honestly.

01:21:39 ◼   ► It's kinda hard for me to see right now through the haze

01:21:44 ◼   ► that is the stink that is caused

01:21:46 ◼   ► by the worst in tech industry bro culture,

01:21:49 ◼   ► which is coming off of Clubhouse in waves.

01:21:53 ◼   ► Like it feels very much like we've disrupted,

01:21:56 ◼   ► Silicon Valley's disrupted the world with Clubhouse

01:21:58 ◼   ► and then you look at it and you're like,

01:22:00 ◼   ► oh, it's talk radio.

01:22:01 ◼   ► I see, or, oh, it's Discord.

01:22:03 ◼   ► It's literally Discord,

01:22:07 ◼   ► except this company owns it and owns your information

01:22:10 ◼   ► instead of you signing up for Discord.

01:22:13 ◼   ► So I have a great deal of skepticism

01:22:15 ◼   ► for how Clubhouse has emerged,

01:22:18 ◼   ► because I feel like to some degree,

01:22:20 ◼   ► it is tech industry hype,

01:22:24 ◼   ► and what's the reality of it?

01:22:27 ◼   ► And if there's something there, what is it?

01:22:30 ◼   ► And it strikes me that as a place,

01:22:34 ◼   ► a social graph for live conversations,

01:22:37 ◼   ► it seems interesting to me.

01:22:39 ◼   ► As a, like Lex said, a party, right?

01:22:44 ◼   ► A party is not a play.

01:22:48 ◼   ► And Clubhouse is not a podcast.

01:22:50 ◼   ► It's different and they serve different purposes.

01:22:53 ◼   ► And I don't think plays are gonna kill parties

01:22:56 ◼   ► and I don't think parties are gonna kill plays.

01:22:59 ◼   ► You use them for different things.

01:23:01 ◼   ► If a play and a party are going on at the same time,

01:23:05 ◼   ► you have to choose which one you wanna go to.

01:23:06 ◼   ► That's always gonna be the case.

01:23:07 ◼   ► You only have a limited amount of time.

01:23:10 ◼   ► But looking at Clubhouse,

01:23:13 ◼   ► setting my skepticism aside,

01:23:17 ◼   ► I feel like the whole thing that it enables

01:23:20 ◼   ► is for people to be part of a conversation.

01:23:25 ◼   ► And that's a very different thing

01:23:26 ◼   ► than what we do on a podcast.

01:23:31 ◼   ► - But again, it's a very valid thing of its own.

01:23:35 ◼   ► And it seems like it's really gaining traction

01:23:37 ◼   ► in a lot of communities.

01:23:38 ◼   ► Now, it was in this weird beta,

01:23:41 ◼   ► I mean, at the moment, right?

01:23:43 ◼   ► But I'll get back to it in a second.

01:23:45 ◼   ► The beta is all very VCE.

01:23:47 ◼   ► But it seems like,

01:23:48 ◼   ► I log in and I look at what's happening.

01:23:50 ◼   ► And it seems like there's lots of different types

01:23:52 ◼   ► of communities that are using Clubhouse now.

01:23:55 ◼   ► But for me right now, it feels like a fad.

01:23:58 ◼   ► Now, all things that are new, feel like fads,

01:24:02 ◼   ► and then they catch on.

01:24:03 ◼   ► And this one may catch on.

01:24:05 ◼   ► But right now, it still feels fad-like to me.

01:24:08 ◼   ► I'm happy for it to continue.

01:24:13 ◼   ► I don't need to be right or wrong.

01:24:15 ◼   ► I'm not saying it is a fad.

01:24:16 ◼   ► I just get that feeling from it.

01:24:18 ◼   ► It's very buzzy right now.

01:24:20 ◼   ► But I'm not sure this attaches in the long term,

01:24:25 ◼   ► like something like a Instagram.

01:24:29 ◼   ► I'm just not sure about this as a long-term medium

01:24:34 ◼   ► that people will keep wanting to consume.

01:24:43 ◼   ► And continue to want to create.

01:24:48 ◼   ► - My skepticism is also because I have,

01:24:50 ◼   ► at least not yet witnessed what the secret sauce is,

01:24:54 ◼   ► hi Myke, that makes Clubhouse more powerful

01:24:58 ◼   ► than literally every other tool that exists

01:25:01 ◼   ► that does voice conversations.

01:25:03 ◼   ► Is it the social layer?

01:25:05 ◼   ► Because you've been able to open up chat rooms

01:25:08 ◼   ► and even audio chat rooms for a very long time.

01:25:12 ◼   ► So is it just that they've made it easier

01:25:14 ◼   ► to connect people socially? - It's easy.

01:25:15 ◼   ► It's really easy. - And easier to jump in?

01:25:18 ◼   ► Yeah, but is that enough that it becomes the only one?

01:25:21 ◼   ► 'Cause there's the feature argument too,

01:25:23 ◼   ► which is if all they're doing

01:25:26 ◼   ► is putting a nicer interface on that,

01:25:28 ◼   ► then literally every other social media will copy it.

01:25:32 ◼   ► And that's gonna be hard for them.

01:25:35 ◼   ► But I also will say, are we transforming

01:25:40 ◼   ► into a world where, boy, in the 2020s,

01:25:41 ◼   ► what people are really gonna be doing

01:25:42 ◼   ► is jumping in audio chat rooms and waiting their turn

01:25:46 ◼   ► to have conversations with other people?

01:25:49 ◼   ► Maybe, but that's been available on the internet

01:25:54 ◼   ► for a while now and people do use it.

01:25:58 ◼   ► Is this different enough that this is the thing

01:26:00 ◼   ► that makes it catch fire?

01:26:01 ◼   ► Maybe it is, I don't know.

01:26:02 ◼   ► As you said, it doesn't intersect with my interests either.

01:26:10 ◼   ► I'm on the record, I actually found it when Larry King died,

01:26:14 ◼   ► I found this article that I wrote

01:26:16 ◼   ► about Larry King's show on CNN 20 years ago

01:26:19 ◼   ► that basically was me explaining, I hate call-in shows.

01:26:23 ◼   ► I hate them, I hate them.

01:26:25 ◼   ► As a viewer, as a listener, I hate them.

01:26:27 ◼   ► I don't really wanna hear the random people on the phone.

01:26:31 ◼   ► I tune into an interview show to hear the interview

01:26:34 ◼   ► and then they're like, "Let's take some calls,"

01:26:35 ◼   ► and I tune out.

01:26:38 ◼   ► I'm not interested in the calls.

01:26:39 ◼   ► I'm just not, sorry, not.

01:26:42 ◼   ► So, and that other people are and that's fine,

01:26:45 ◼   ► but it's got a whiff of the call-in show on here.

01:26:48 ◼   ► It doesn't really work for me.

01:26:49 ◼   ► But as a social medium where people get to step up

01:26:51 ◼   ► to the mic and talk and if that is content that is good

01:26:55 ◼   ► and that people really like being a part of it

01:26:57 ◼   ► when they're listening and also when they're talking,

01:26:59 ◼   ► then there might be something here.

01:27:00 ◼   ► I do wonder if it's the social media glue

01:27:04 ◼   ► and the easy interface that's the thing

01:27:06 ◼   ► that this isn't just gonna get knocked off

01:27:08 ◼   ► like literally everywhere

01:27:09 ◼   ► and there won't be anything left on Clubhouse.

01:27:11 ◼   ► But I'm open to it.

01:27:13 ◼   ► I never wanna be somebody who looks at something new

01:27:17 ◼   ► that comes along and say, "Oh, well, that's dumb."

01:27:20 ◼   ► But Clubhouse is something that I look at

01:27:21 ◼   ► with a great deal of skepticism

01:27:23 ◼   ► because I'm not entirely convinced that this is something

01:27:25 ◼   ► that a lot of people want,

01:27:27 ◼   ► that they can do in a sort of a unique way.

01:27:29 ◼   ► And in terms of the original question,

01:27:30 ◼   ► which is about the evolution of podcasting,

01:27:32 ◼   ► I come back to that same thing,

01:27:34 ◼   ► which is if they can solve things that make it hard

01:27:39 ◼   ► for people to listen to podcasts that stream live

01:27:43 ◼   ► and give feedback,

01:27:44 ◼   ► if they can make it easier for podcasts

01:27:45 ◼   ► to bring on listeners to ask questions live

01:27:49 ◼   ► and stuff like that and then archive it.

01:27:51 ◼   ► So because most people don't wanna listen live,

01:27:53 ◼   ► they wanna listen later,

01:27:55 ◼   ► live is a very narrow thing and then it's gone.

01:27:58 ◼   ► Like if they can solve a bunch of those problems,

01:28:00 ◼   ► could it become like a way better way to do live podcasting

01:28:04 ◼   ► than currently exists?

01:28:06 ◼   ► Yeah, sure, there's a lot of possibility there, but--

01:28:09 ◼   ► - There's a lot of people that have--

01:28:10 ◼   ► - I got a lot of skepticism. - Clubhouses

01:28:11 ◼   ► are gonna turn their Clubhouses into podcasts.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And because that-- - Oh, for sure.

01:28:17 ◼   ► - The medium, that's the method,

01:28:18 ◼   ► is how you get a larger audience that way.

01:28:20 ◼   ► - And that would be my argument about the people

01:28:23 ◼   ► who are doing Clubhouse as a talk show

01:28:25 ◼   ► ultimately doing it wrong,

01:28:29 ◼   ► because that sounds like they're basically importing

01:28:31 ◼   ► something from another medium into this

01:28:34 ◼   ► and then potentially in order to monetize it,

01:28:37 ◼   ► exporting it back out to where it should have been.

01:28:40 ◼   ► And that's not great.

01:28:43 ◼   ► - Brandon asks, "Do you think Apple ever ramp up

01:28:49 ◼   ► "the tactility of macOS with the Tactic Engine

01:28:52 ◼   ► "like they have on the iPhone?

01:28:54 ◼   ► "All of the little bits of contextual feedback

01:28:56 ◼   ► "are one of my favorite details of the iPhone,

01:28:58 ◼   ► "and I can't help but hope it arrives

01:29:00 ◼   ► "as part of future M-series hardware refreshes."

01:29:04 ◼   ► - I don't think this will happen

01:29:05 ◼   ► because I think Apple already tried this on the trackpad,

01:29:10 ◼   ► and nobody really uses it, and it's not very good.

01:29:13 ◼   ► And I think part of it is that it's indirect input

01:29:16 ◼   ► instead of direct input.

01:29:17 ◼   ► And although they did the thing where you're dragging

01:29:20 ◼   ► over something and you get a little buzz on the trackpad,

01:29:23 ◼   ► it's not the same as when you're using your hands

01:29:27 ◼   ► on the screen.

01:29:29 ◼   ► There's something about the indirectness of it

01:29:31 ◼   ► that I think doesn't really translate.

01:29:33 ◼   ► - It's like a hand-eye coordination thing, maybe.

01:29:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like it's more likely

01:29:36 ◼   ► that they're just gonna remove a bunch of the vibration stuff

01:29:40 ◼   ► from the trackpad and leave it.

01:29:42 ◼   ► I mean, it does have the fake click.

01:29:44 ◼   ► The fake click is a vibration, so there is that in there.

01:29:47 ◼   ► But I don't do the fake audio click,

01:29:49 ◼   ► but the buzz when you click is--

01:29:51 ◼   ► - Well, I turned off the fake audio click

01:29:53 ◼   ► after "Lost Week's Show."

01:29:54 ◼   ► - But it still does a little quick vibration.

01:29:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I love that.

01:29:57 ◼   ► That is the click because it's not actually clicking.

01:30:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I hadn't thought of that until you said that

01:30:01 ◼   ► 'cause my initial thought was like,

01:30:02 ◼   ► yeah, I mean, I really love the Taptic stuff too.

01:30:05 ◼   ► I would love to have more of that in the Mac.

01:30:06 ◼   ► But you're right, I think what makes it nice

01:30:09 ◼   ► is that it feels like I'm seeing a thing happening

01:30:12 ◼   ► under my finger, like that's how it feels.

01:30:15 ◼   ► Like I'm moving the switch.

01:30:16 ◼   ► I can see my finger move the switch

01:30:18 ◼   ► and my finger feels the switch moving.

01:30:20 ◼   ► I don't feel as connected to the pointer on my screen.

01:30:24 ◼   ► - No. - It's interesting.

01:30:25 ◼   ► Maybe it's just to just look like a fake finger, right?

01:30:27 ◼   ► That's what we all want.

01:30:28 ◼   ► No, don't do that.

01:30:29 ◼   ► Interesting.

01:30:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I'm skeptical that that will happen

01:30:34 ◼   ► because of that, because it's indirect

01:30:36 ◼   ► and I don't think the effect works that well.

01:30:38 ◼   ► And although I like the Taptic Engine stuff

01:30:40 ◼   ► on the iPhone a lot, I'm not sure.

01:30:43 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause I've tried it.

01:30:44 ◼   ► I've tried it with like Logic and GarageBand

01:30:46 ◼   ► and stuff on the Mac and it just doesn't work for me.

01:30:47 ◼   ► It just doesn't.

01:30:48 ◼   ► Maybe it could be implemented then better,

01:30:50 ◼   ► but my feeling is like they built that in already

01:30:53 ◼   ► to the Magic Trackpad and it doesn't, nobody cares.

01:30:57 ◼   ► - If you'd like to send in a question

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