00:00:29 ◼ ► because it's the Summer of Fun. Of course we do. We're planning, we're planning our attack for
00:00:42 ◼ ► At the moment it runs until mid-August. I think we're going to need a lot longer than that.
00:00:52 ◼ ► "Jason, where do you start reading a book? Do you look at the cover and all of the preamble,
00:01:03 ◼ ► I don't... okay. I start at the beginning and read to the end. And in terms of like the front matter,
00:01:13 ◼ ► I always want to have whatever, you know, I want to know what the setup is from the writer. So like
00:01:22 ◼ ► if there's a quote or something like that. I mean if it's like a list of acknowledgments,
00:01:29 ◼ ► And do I look at the cover? I mean, yeah, I've seen the physical object, or if it's a Kindle book,
00:01:35 ◼ ► I've at least ordered it. What I don't like about reading on the Kindle is sometimes it takes you...
00:01:40 ◼ ► it always takes you to the first page of the text, but you often will miss like the name of the
00:01:46 ◼ ► section or a quote that starts it or things like that. So I always sort of back up from the
00:01:51 ◼ ► beginning just to see if there's anything else there. But mostly it's pretty straightforward.
00:01:55 ◼ ► I will also say that I have a no maps policy. There are a lot of especially like fantasy novels
00:02:02 ◼ ► that have maps or genealogies in the back sometimes that happens too, or even in the front.
00:02:09 ◼ ► No maps, no genealogies. I'm not interested in your maps and genealogies. If you can't tell the
00:02:24 ◼ ► You do? Yeah, I do. You're like Harry in When Harry Met Sally, you gotta read the last line
00:02:31 ◼ ► in case something happens? No, it's because... I'm like, I get impatient or whatever, and it's
00:02:39 ◼ ► kind of like... the temptation is too strong to do it. Is this like differential privacy, where
00:02:46 ◼ ► you if you read the first line and the last line you can use AI to synthesize what happened in the
00:02:50 ◼ ► entire novel and you don't have to read it? It saves me the time of reading the books, yeah.
00:02:53 ◼ ► But like frankly, the last line so rarely gives away anything, right? Like it just, you know,
00:03:01 ◼ ► it doesn't really give anything away. There was a Harry Potter book, one of them, where it kind of
00:03:04 ◼ ► was like, oh whoops. But you know, I just, I feel better that way by doing it. But the real trick is
00:03:12 ◼ ► I don't read books, so I don't have to read the last lines. So there you go. Well yeah, that solves
00:03:18 ◼ ► that solves everything. And a lot of map fans in our chat room who are very angry with me, it was
00:03:23 ◼ ► like, look, I enjoy a fake map. I read the Strange Maps blog for a long time. A fake map, a fantasy
00:03:29 ◼ ► map, it's fun. Like I know where Mordor is, okay? I get it. For as much as people are angry at you,
00:03:35 ◼ ► it's like four times anger at me right now for the... Oh well, that's because you're a monster,
00:03:45 ◼ ► but they can't be essential. And when I haven't started the book yet, I'm not going to look at
00:03:50 ◼ ► the map. I'm not going to, I'm going to be like, oh right, oh wow, there's a map here. I better
00:03:53 ◼ ► get some geography lessons of this fantasy world before I start so I know where I am. It's like,
00:03:58 ◼ ► I don't want to do that. If I want to refer back later to the fantasy map, okay. I don't,
00:04:02 ◼ ► but I could. Why would anybody read the map before they read the book? I was thought the maps were
00:04:07 ◼ ► there for reference. Yeah, and even then I'm not a huge fan of it because like if you have to
00:04:13 ◼ ► consult a map, it, I think you failed as a writer. The genealogies are the one that really get me
00:04:18 ◼ ► though where it's, I was on a book episode of The Incomparable recently where people were talking
00:04:22 ◼ ► about how they had read the genealogy in order to understand how all the characters were related to
00:04:26 ◼ ► one another. And it was a book I enjoyed, but I said, no, are you kidding? No, I'm not going
00:04:31 ◼ ► to consult like reference material for the novel I'm reading. The storyteller really needs to do
00:04:37 ◼ ► their job in the novel and not say, oh, well, you don't know who this person is. Go look at the,
00:04:43 ◼ ► at the, at the back of the book. Also, I read it on a Kindle and so looking at the back of the book
00:04:48 ◼ ► is hard. If you would like to send in a possibly less controversial Snell Talk question. Just to
00:04:54 ◼ ► be clear, less controversial than where do you start reading a book where the clear answer is
00:04:59 ◼ ► at the beginning and then I go to the end and we both managed to mess that up. So, so thank you.
00:05:05 ◼ ► Thank you to our Snell Talk question. Thank you Arjun. #SnellTalk. You just send out a tweet and
00:05:10 ◼ ► it will be included in a list or you can use the command with the question mark Snell Talk in the
00:05:14 ◼ ► Relay FM members Discord. I have a very short article that I wanted to refer to, or at least
00:05:20 ◼ ► this is a short point from an article written at Bloomberg. Basically just stating Apple's current
00:05:27 ◼ ► policy for working from home. So as COVID-19 cases continue to spike throughout the world,
00:05:33 ◼ ► Apple has been re-closing retail stores. We've seen that like they opened a bunch in America,
00:05:37 ◼ ► closed them right down again. And now Apple are urging their retail employees to work from home
00:05:43 ◼ ► wherever possible. And you would say to yourself, how can a retail employee work from home? Apple's
00:05:49 ◼ ► created a kind of thing called a retail at home program where they're basically moving their
00:05:56 ◼ ► in-store retail stuff to online stuff, whether it be customer support or other services,
00:06:02 ◼ ► which are related to online. Because as you can imagine, Apple's need for online retail was
00:06:09 ◼ ► increased, right? Like everybody else, because if you can't go to the store, you've got to get the
00:06:12 ◼ ► stuff done somewhere. People are doing it online. So they're trying to remove people around for that.
00:06:18 ◼ ► And also they're not going to be doing a full return for US offices in 2020. So they do not
00:06:26 ◼ ► expect any point in 2020 to bring all of this stuff back to the office. I think this makes
00:06:31 ◼ ► sense for many reasons for lots of companies, but I think especially for Apple as a company that
00:06:37 ◼ ► wants to ensure that some people are able to be at the office. I think with a lot of companies,
00:06:42 ◼ ► it's like, we want some people to be back, so we'll bring those in. But for Apple, we spoke
00:06:48 ◼ ► about it before with the secrecy and the product design labs and stuff, that stuff has to be done
00:06:53 ◼ ► at Apple Park. So they want to keep everybody away to protect that small group to be able to be there.
00:06:58 ◼ ► CHUCK LYNNCZYK >> And they specifically said three months ago, because we're coming up to a new
00:07:10 ◼ ► efficient remotely and some were less efficient remotely. And if you're trying to bring people
00:07:15 ◼ ► back who are important for your business and are less efficient remotely, what you want to do is
00:07:26 ◼ ► bring them back and one, give them room to spread out and separate them perhaps much more than they
00:07:32 ◼ ► would have been otherwise. And two, put them in an environment where they're not running into a lot
00:07:38 ◼ ► of other people. It's not just the space. It's also like if there are 80 people in Apple Park or
00:07:43 ◼ ► 150 people in Apple Park versus like a thousand people in Apple Park, the chances of exposure
00:07:52 ◼ ► and things like that go way down as well. So that actually kind of makes sense. I would imagine the
00:07:56 ◼ ► people that have to be at Apple Park are going to come back to Apple Park and be spaced out,
00:08:05 ◼ ► MATT WILSON >> Yeah, I think that there's also a benefit to large companies being very upfront
00:08:11 ◼ ► with their employees if they've made these decisions, because it allows people to go to
00:08:14 ◼ ► other places. If your lease is being renewed and you only live in this city because you work in the
00:08:24 ◼ ► building which is close to it, maybe you could go back home for six months or something instead
00:08:29 ◼ ► and deal with it later on. You know what I mean? If you look at some of the larger cities where a
00:08:35 ◼ ► lot of tech companies are, rents are really high. And if you're only there because you work at the
00:08:41 ◼ ► company, then maybe giving you the ability to go somewhere else for a bit could be useful. So I
00:08:47 ◼ ► think it's good for companies to be pretty upfront about this stuff considering where we are.
00:08:50 ◼ ► CHUCK LYNN >> And who knows, maybe it will actually change Apple's corporate culture in some ways,
00:08:54 ◼ ► where some groups that were mandatory in person never go back to being mandatory in person.
00:09:02 ◼ ► CHUCK LYNN >> I hope so, because as somebody who knows people who work at Apple and has talked to
00:09:07 ◼ ► people who are hiring managers at Apple in the past, some of their groups, their insistence on
00:09:12 ◼ ► them being in person don't make any sense. And some of them do and some of them don't. And I'm
00:09:18 ◼ ► a big fan of distributed workplaces and I think you get better people who are happier and more
00:09:24 ◼ ► efficient and they can handle forcing them to move to an incredibly high cost of living place
00:09:30 ◼ ► is not necessarily for a job that doesn't need to be done there is not great. So I hope that they
00:09:37 ◼ ► I have a couple of acquisitions that Apple have made for Apple TV Plus or deals at least that
00:09:42 ◼ ► they've signed. They have signed a first look deal with Idris Elba. So there's not really much more
00:09:49 ◼ ► to say than that. So, you know, Idris at The Wire, Luther, he was in the Thor movies as well.
00:10:02 ◼ ► Juno Temple, Academy Award nominee June Squibb and Alicia Wainwright. This one was actually announced
00:10:10 ◼ ► by Apple themselves. They had the website that I love, which is Apple-TV-Plus-Press.apple.com,
00:10:18 ◼ ► which looks like a fake website, but is a real website that Apple run and maintain. They announced
00:10:23 ◼ ► this one rather than where most of our headlines come from sites like Deadline or The Hollywood
00:10:28 ◼ ► Reporter or Variety, but this one came up from Apple. The movie stuff is particularly interesting
00:10:36 ◼ ► because it seems to actually be doing pretty well for them. So we've mentioned Greyhound a bit
00:10:42 ◼ ► recently. A report from Deadline is stating from their sources that Greyhound is reportedly Apple's
00:10:49 ◼ ► largest opening weekend success larger than any of the series or anything else that they've done
00:10:55 ◼ ► before with apparently over 30% of the viewers of Greyhound being new to Apple-TV-Plus.
00:11:01 ◼ ► - Yeah, how about that? That's really interesting that it had that appeal. And although,
00:11:08 ◼ ► I mean, this was a father's day movie, so this was not like a summer blockbuster per se,
00:11:15 ◼ ► but it's got a big name and it's got kind of a potential for broad appeal and all of that. And
00:11:19 ◼ ► I think it's interesting that it did well and they have other things in the works that are more
00:11:25 ◼ ► likely to be blockbusters down the road. But this is encouraging and we've seen from Netflix and,
00:11:32 ◼ ► you know, and I just watched Palm Springs on Hulu, like films on streaming services is a driver of
00:11:43 ◼ ► - Switching gear to another company but on a similar vein. I wanted to just mention this
00:11:48 ◼ ► Netflix news that they are developing a spy series based on the Greyman book series. The reason I
00:11:56 ◼ ► thought this is interesting is because of how big they're going with it. So they're making a movie.
00:12:01 ◼ ► It's they're putting over $200 million into it. They have signed the Russo brothers to direct it.
00:12:08 ◼ ► This is the Russo brothers' first movie since Avengers. They have Ryan Gosling in the lead role
00:12:14 ◼ ► with the hopes of turning this into a franchise where Gosling will star as the Greyman in multiple
00:12:21 ◼ ► movies with Chris Evans as the quote unquote villain for this movie. Basically all of the
00:12:29 ◼ ► reporting is saying that Netflix are trying to build a James Bond-like franchise. I think of it
00:12:44 ◼ ► I just mentioned TV and film. I look at this and I think, great, Netflix is going to spend a huge
00:12:49 ◼ ► amount of money. They're going to have big stars. They're going to promote the heck out of it. It's
00:12:53 ◼ ► going to be a major motion picture action adventure tent pole kind of thing running on Netflix. Great.
00:13:07 ◼ ► and we're talking about Netflix, which is both, I look at this and I think, okay, I get it. You're
00:13:14 ◼ ► spending $200 million and you're going to make a big blockbuster movie and you're going to put it
00:13:17 ◼ ► on your surface. If this is a franchise going forward, what's the right way to play it? And
00:13:25 ◼ ► I don't have an answer here, but I'm just saying what's the right way to play it? Because you could
00:13:28 ◼ ► do another one of these every two or three years and it would be like a Bourne or a James Bond.
00:13:41 ◼ ► could you do something more like, think about how BBC did Sherlock with Cumberbatch, where it was
00:13:48 ◼ ► like, all of those were like 90 minute long episodes. They're basically movies, but shorter
00:13:58 ◼ ► than two, two and a half hours, like so many theatrical movies. And they would do a handful
00:14:03 ◼ ► of them. And I look at this and I think, okay, well, if you want this to be a franchise Netflix,
00:14:07 ◼ ► is your next step, wait three years and get another movie for $200 million or is your next
00:14:13 ◼ ► step, you know, work up a two or three scripts and have two or three shorter runtime movies
00:14:22 ◼ ► that roll out over time because it allows you to, and I don't know the answer. Maybe the answer is
00:14:29 ◼ ► no, making people wait two years and then having a big blowout is the right way to do it. And I'm not
00:14:34 ◼ ► saying they should turn Ryan Gosling's spy franchise for Netflix into a TV show, but I'm
00:14:40 ◼ ► saying with streaming, there's like a middle ground, right? Like they could do, they could
00:14:44 ◼ ► break the rules of like, well, no, no, this is a feature. And, oh, well, this is a TV show.
00:14:49 ◼ ► You could, if you're Netflix, try to get a little creative and play with the space that's in between
00:14:56 ◼ ► those things. Cause I see no reason why they couldn't spend, you know, $200 million or $250
00:15:03 ◼ ► million on making, you know, two and the Russo brothers know about making two part movies, right?
00:15:09 ◼ ► Cause they just did it with Avengers. But even if they were standalone stories, like maybe,
00:15:15 ◼ ► maybe that would give you a better return or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it's all about a huge
00:15:19 ◼ ► marketing blitz for a giant thing and everybody comes to watch that and then they go away for
00:15:23 ◼ ► two years. I just wanted to ask the question, cause I think it's interesting that there are
00:15:26 ◼ ► there are things in between what we think of as film and TV. And if you're ever going to explore
00:15:33 ◼ ► that a streaming service like Netflix is where you could do it. I say, I agree with your concept,
00:15:38 ◼ ► but I think for this specific project, I, for some reason, like the idea of it being a movie,
00:15:44 ◼ ► I can just call it a movie and being a big, like quote unquote, summer blockbuster, like Netflix's
00:15:50 ◼ ► attempt at a summer blockbuster. And also I would assume for similar reasons, like they maybe want
00:15:55 ◼ ► it, they're going to put all this money into it. Maybe they want to pick up some movie awards,
00:16:00 ◼ ► right? Which Netflix doesn't have so many of those. Yeah, but they could, but if they, again,
00:16:04 ◼ ► if they structured it, if they had two good story ideas, they could make two 90 minute movies with
00:16:10 ◼ ► two good story ideas and release them a year apart. And it would be more movies. I think they may do
00:16:16 ◼ ► that after the first one. So like if the first one works, for sure. You know, of course I'm not,
00:16:20 ◼ ► I'm, I'm not talking about the first one. I'm saying sort of like, if you, if this is a
00:16:23 ◼ ► franchise and you're going to continue it, how do you replicate it? Because the James Bond model,
00:16:28 ◼ ► the Bourne model is every few years you make a big Hollywood blockbuster, but you're Netflix.
00:16:33 ◼ ► You don't have to do it that way if you don't want to. You could release somewhat smaller
00:16:37 ◼ ► movies that were still super big, especially if you need to schedule Ryan Gosling, right?
00:16:42 ◼ ► Schedule him to shoot two of them back to back and roll them out over successive years. And you've got
00:16:46 ◼ ► a, a new gray man movie and you'd call it a movie, but it would be every year instead of every two
00:16:53 ◼ ► or three years. And is that a different model? I don't know. It's I'm just fascinated by the
00:17:05 ◼ ► I looked at this and I thought, how do you build a franchise going for a film franchise on Netflix?
00:17:11 ◼ ► And what are your options? Cause I think they've got a lot of different options and, and maybe the
00:17:15 ◼ ► creators, right? Maybe the Russo brothers and Ryan Gosling and whoever else is producing this,
00:17:19 ◼ ► maybe it ends up being in their lap of, of where do they go next? And do they have a big idea that
00:17:25 ◼ ► requires two hours or do they have something that has a natural break in it where like Avengers
00:17:29 ◼ ► Endgame or an Avengers infinity war, you could actually like play into the fact that there's a
00:17:35 ◼ ► delay between and leave everybody hanging. It's up to them creatively to decide, but they've got,
00:17:41 ◼ ► I like that they've got the options in a way that the old kind of, it has to be a major motion
00:18:04 ◼ ► which means that it is a streaming service from a cable company, which is interesting because we view
00:18:08 ◼ ► streaming service as sort of the future. And you can cut the cord from your cable company
00:18:15 ◼ ► your TV provider, your traditional linear TV provider. And so what does it look like if you,
00:18:21 ◼ ► if it's a streaming service from the linear TV provider? And the answer is I got it free because
00:18:26 ◼ ► I have Comcast cable, which is I think just such a cable company move, right? They're like, oh yeah,
00:18:34 ◼ ► cord cutters, you just buy it and you got our streaming service. Great. There's a free tier.
00:18:39 ◼ ► And then there's like a $5 a month tier that is Peacock premium. And then there is a $10
00:18:58 ◼ ► - Is that? I feel like we didn't know that, right? Cause we were calling it Peacock plus before,
00:19:02 ◼ ► which was the joke. - Yeah. I wasn't aware of it. It may have been out there, but I wasn't aware of
00:19:08 ◼ ► it until it launched and I clicked because I have Peacock premium. And what I found is that if I
00:19:12 ◼ ► would like to make the ads on Peacock go away as a Comcast subscriber, I can pay $5 a month
00:19:19 ◼ ► to upgrade to Peacock premium plus. And then I don't see the ads. And for everybody else,
00:19:41 ◼ ► premier league content. So NBC has the premier league in the US. This is football/soccer,
00:19:59 ◼ ► - Yeah. No, but it's English football. Cause it's literally, it's the English premier league.
00:20:03 ◼ ► It's only England and like sometimes a team in Wales. It's not even Scotland. They have
00:20:08 ◼ ► their own league. And I assume Northern Ireland has their own league, but I don't know. Anyway,
00:20:19 ◼ ► I think last year, two years ago, they took all the games that were not on their network or on
00:20:25 ◼ ► their cable channel, NBC Sports Network. And they put it on a streaming service called NBC Sports
00:20:31 ◼ ► Gold, which costs $65 a year. And what they've done is they put all of that stuff into Peacock.
00:20:38 ◼ ► So, or Peacock Premium. And so what that means is essentially that I get all the soccer matches now
00:20:48 ◼ ► And so that's kind of interesting. So they're pushing a lot of their sports stuff that they
00:20:54 ◼ ► used to have on these like more esoteric niche services. And they're just pushing them into
00:20:59 ◼ ► Peacock, which I think is the right thing to do, right? They want to load up on the content in
00:21:04 ◼ ► Peacock and have, that's the product they want to sell to people. So they pushed all their soccer
00:21:08 ◼ ► stuff in there. It's got a few features that I really like that other streaming services and
00:21:13 ◼ ► other apps have tried, but I like that they're giving it a go. They have this thing called
00:21:18 ◼ ► channels. That's not like Apple TV channels or Amazon channels. This is like television channels.
00:21:26 ◼ ► So it's a live stream channel. I have suspicions that they developed this technology because they
00:21:33 ◼ ► were going to launch with the Olympics this summer, which ended up not happening. But the idea there
00:21:38 ◼ ► that they would have these live, various live stream channels of different things happening
00:21:41 ◼ ► at the Olympics. And they don't have that, but they do have things. So there's like, there's a
00:21:46 ◼ ► Jimmy Fallon channel where it's just different tonight's show with Jimmy Fallon shows streaming
00:21:51 ◼ ► endlessly. Like there's a Bob Ross channel, The Painter. That's a good idea. Right? So you just
00:21:57 ◼ ► flip on, if you want to be calm and relax, you flip on the Bob Ross channel and it's just endless
00:22:01 ◼ ► streaming Bob Ross. There's an 80s rewind channel. It's got a bunch of 80s like comedies and
00:22:06 ◼ ► detective shows and stuff. There's an office channel. So you just flip it to the office
00:22:11 ◼ ► and it's episodes of the office forever. Fox did this for a while with their Simpsons app. They had
00:22:19 ◼ ► a Simpsons app where you could just stream and it was endless stream of the Simpsons too. So I think
00:22:24 ◼ ► it's a, I think it's a clever idea. And it's good for sports. Like they're using this for the soccer
00:22:29 ◼ ► stuff now. They use the channel interface for that. That's where you're watching the live
00:22:32 ◼ ► soccer match is you flip to that channel for that showing that match. So that's an interesting idea.
00:22:38 ◼ ► Tries to get to the thought of maybe sometimes you just want to kind of dial in a particular thing
00:22:44 ◼ ► and then just not fiddle with the interface. Like there's no autoplay or anything. It's just
00:22:50 ◼ ► literally, it just plays forever. I think that's an interesting thing to try. They have a bunch of,
00:22:55 ◼ ► or they've got some original content, but it seems kind of cobbled together from various parts
00:22:59 ◼ ► of the universal NBC empire. They've got this show, Brave New World. It sounds very much like
00:23:06 ◼ ► premium. Although there is a show that I like AP bio, which was a sitcom on NBC and they written,
00:23:14 ◼ ► this is the story we talked about a while ago and got some good laughs out of it, which is that
00:23:17 ◼ ► NBC canceled it and then a Peacock saved it. And then there was a real question of like,
00:23:22 ◼ ► why did you not just come? Hello? Like have a conversation about maybe we should put this on
00:23:28 ◼ ► that. That's not how they did it. They just canceled it. And then they saved it from themselves.
00:23:32 ◼ ► It's so weird. So I'll watch that cause that's coming back this fall. And that's an original
00:23:38 ◼ ► that they're presumably just producing like they did for the network, except it's going to be on
00:23:42 ◼ ► Peacock instead. And I think a twist that will be fun when it happens is that Jimmy Fallon,
00:23:47 ◼ ► Seth Meyers, late night shows, which, you know, they record those at like five in the afternoon
00:23:58 ◼ ► They are going to be released at eight Eastern. So in prime time. So if you're a fan of a late
00:24:03 ◼ ► night talk show and you don't want to stay up and watch it in late night, you can watch it
00:24:06 ◼ ► much earlier, like three and a half hours earlier on Peacock. However, they're not doing that yet
00:24:13 ◼ ► because of COVID-19. In fact, Fallon just went back to his studio last week, but it's with a
00:24:25 ◼ ► instead of 1130 is a bit much right now. So that will, they say that will happen in the future,
00:24:32 ◼ ► but I think that's an interesting idea too. The idea that, you know, they've got this original
00:24:35 ◼ ► content that they've built up for linear broadcast. So it's like, well, that's got a time slot. It's
00:24:42 ◼ ► 1130 and eight o'clock is for, you know, dramas or sitcoms or reality shows. And with Peacock,
00:24:51 ◼ ► NBC can say, or, or it's for Jimmy Fallon or it's for Seth Meyers, like whatever, whatever you want
00:24:55 ◼ ► to watch at eight o'clock at night or nine o'clock at night, go right ahead on Peacock. So interesting.
00:25:02 ◼ ► We'll see how that goes when they, when they try it out. And I got to use the apps. I use the iPad
00:25:07 ◼ ► app and I use the Apple TV app for Peacock. I was frustrated by the Apple TV app because they're
00:25:13 ◼ ► doing that thing so many, not as much as, as before. I think, I think this is, is I think
00:25:18 ◼ ► every Apple TV app developer has this great idea that they're going to reinvent how video works on
00:25:23 ◼ ► the Apple TV. And then they realize that they probably should stop fighting it and just do what
00:25:28 ◼ ► Apple does. But you know, here it is again, Peacock, like doesn't really use the UI conventions of
00:25:35 ◼ ► other Apple TV apps. So you kind of have to learn how to use it, which is super annoying.
00:25:40 ◼ ► I did find a funny quirk, which is in their movie interface on Apple TV. They have like movies that
00:25:50 ◼ ► I mean, you can click through and you can see it for all of them, right? But on the top level,
00:25:58 ◼ ► where it's just the tiles, it'll be like Jurassic Park, 80%. Jurassic Park 2, also a movie.
00:26:04 ◼ ► Jurassic Park 3, yup, this is a movie. Or The Matrix, 98%. The Matrix 2, 64%. And The Matrix 3
00:26:17 ◼ ► "Don't show it if it's a bad review. We want them to click." Like, all right, okay, we can do that.
00:26:21 ◼ ► A bigger interface problem is that they don't have dates on the episodes. It doesn't say like
00:26:28 ◼ ► when this episode dropped. And that makes it hard to tell, is this week's, is this new?
00:26:34 ◼ ► Or is this today's? Is this today's Jimmy Fallon or yesterday's Jimmy Fallon? I don't know.
00:26:43 ◼ ► - Right, well, this is an example where it's the worst, right? But actually, and it's worse than
00:26:49 ◼ ► that because they also sort their seasons with the first episode of the season at the top,
00:26:55 ◼ ► which means if you want to get to the, if you use that navigation to get to Jimmy Fallon or
00:26:59 ◼ ► Seth Meyers, you have to go in and scroll endlessly to the bottom because the most recent episode is
00:27:06 ◼ ► at the bottom of the list. It's season whatever episode 125 or something. So there's some clear
00:27:15 ◼ ► mistakes here where they, you know, I don't know. It's not as well thought as it should be. And
00:27:20 ◼ ► again, coronavirus related stuff and they were planning on the Olympics and they've had to
00:27:26 ◼ ► scramble and I get all of that, but there's like a lot of questionable decisions in here. I imagine
00:27:31 ◼ ► they'll work it out as they go. - Coronavirus isn't the reason that you slit your episodes that
00:27:36 ◼ ► way. - Well, no, but I'm saying that their development team could have been quite disrupted
00:27:41 ◼ ► by it, right? Like, and they ended up having to ship something that was not as far along as they
00:27:45 ◼ ► would have liked because they had to send their people home. And, you know, I'm willing to give
00:27:50 ◼ ► them a little bit of a break because their entire strategy had to change because the Olympics got
00:27:54 ◼ ► moved and presumably their development team got sent back to their houses. But yeah, it's a great
00:28:02 ◼ ► example of somebody making a very simple UI decision saying, "Oh yeah, we'll just sort the
00:28:07 ◼ ► episodes this way," and not thinking through what that meant in terms of something like a talk show
00:28:13 ◼ ► where, like, because I went there and I was like, "Oh, I hear Jimmy Fallon went back to the studio
00:28:18 ◼ ► this week. I want to see that episode." And I couldn't tell what episode it was, when it was
00:28:24 ◼ ► from, and when I went to get the definitive answer, which was to look in the list of episodes,
00:28:30 ◼ ► it was at the very bottom of a very long scrolling list, which, you know, this is all fixable, but
00:28:35 ◼ ► it's dumb. So it's a work in progress, Peacock Premium, and when, if there's a show that I'm
00:28:41 ◼ ► actually going to watch on it, like AP Bio, when that comes back, I'm going to watch the
00:28:45 ◼ ► English soccer on it now, but when AP Bio comes back, I might sign up for Peacock Premium Plus
00:28:51 ◼ ► so I don't have to see their stupid ads. - This episode is brought to you by Mint Mobile,
00:28:57 ◼ ► the folks who can cut your wireless bill to $15 a month with their futuristic approach to wireless.
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00:29:22 ◼ ► little bit, and that's what Mint Mobile is here to do. Mint Mobile provides the same premium network
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00:30:00 ◼ ► You can also use your own phone of any Mint Mobile plan. Keep your same phone number or your existing
00:30:06 ◼ ► contacts, and just ditch your old wireless bill and start saving with Mint Mobile. Jason,
00:30:11 ◼ ► I believe that Mint sent you a care package that included a SIM. I want you to just ask what that
00:30:16 ◼ ► experience is like. Yeah, it actually reminded me of my very nice experience I had when I would
00:30:21 ◼ ► travel to Ireland or the UK, and I used a prepaid wireless there, and it comes in a little—it's like
00:30:27 ◼ ► a little credit card kind of thing, and it's got a SIM card, and the SIM card is perforated at the
00:30:34 ◼ ► different sizes of SIM card, which for a modern iPhone, you want the smallest of those sizes.
00:30:39 ◼ ► Oh, that's good. Yeah, so you can—if you've got an older phone that's got a bigger one,
00:30:42 ◼ ► you perforate it at a different place, and it goes in that tray, SIM tray. So it's very clever,
00:30:48 ◼ ► and I put it in an iPhone that was actually—it's actually my iOS 14 test iPhone, and so popped it
00:30:56 ◼ ► in there and went to their website and put in the little code that's on the back of the card,
00:31:00 ◼ ► and it goes great, and then the carrier shows up, Mint Mobile shows up on the iPhone. It was
00:31:05 ◼ ► super easy to do, and they have an app too, but I actually just use their website, and you put in
00:31:10 ◼ ► the code on the card, and that's it. Now, if you're moving your phone, you do—there's a little bit
00:31:14 ◼ ► more to do in order to move your phone number. In this case, they just generated—they told me—they
00:31:19 ◼ ► said, "Where are you?" and then they generated a phone number based on my area code, which was
00:31:36 ◼ ► should I have made it some, you know, like a New York area code or something so I could be like—
00:31:42 ◼ ► Yeah, oh, that's right, or Hawaii, right? Aloha means you're calling me on my Mint Mobile phone,
00:31:48 ◼ ► but I didn't do that. I just have a 415 because that's the area code of record here in the Bay
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00:32:06 ◼ ► now. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com/upgrade. Our thanks to Mint Mobile
00:32:12 ◼ ► for their support of this show and all of Relay FM. We knew it was coming, and it is here. Apple
00:32:19 ◼ ► News Plus audio stories. There was a few things related to Apple News in the audio department that
00:32:27 ◼ ► happened in the middle of last week. The most interesting one is their podcast, which we'll
00:32:33 ◼ ► talk about in a bit, but I'll give everybody the rundown of what they're doing here. Apple News Plus
00:32:40 ◼ ► audio stories is available. It was available with iOS 13.6, which I expect will be the final point
00:32:47 ◼ ► released to iOS 13, but who knows at this point? You never know. You never know. Around 10 stories
00:32:53 ◼ ► per week... Oh, sorry. It's 20. Around 20 stories per week are going to be professionally narrated
00:33:01 ◼ ► by professional voice actors, as Apple has said. Voice actors. You can switch between reading and
00:33:09 ◼ ► listening at any point. If you're reading an article that has the narration, you can choose
00:33:14 ◼ ► to pick it up as audio or vice versa and go back to where you were in the story, which is just
00:33:19 ◼ ► nicely done. Didn't have to do that. I don't think that was required, but that's good functionality.
00:33:23 ◼ ► US only for the moment, which is peculiar to me because Apple News Plus is only available in
00:33:31 ◼ ► three markets, or four markets, which is US, UK, Australia, and Canada. I don't understand why they
00:33:37 ◼ ► haven't made it available everywhere. I would understand if there's maybe some publications
00:33:43 ◼ ► that they only have in one market, but surely there is a crossover for at least some of them.
00:33:49 ◼ ► Considering everybody is paying the same amount if they're a subscriber, I don't understand why
00:33:55 ◼ ► they wouldn't have either A) made it available or B) it's only four markets. You don't have an option
00:34:04 ◼ ► for everyone. That's just a weird wrinkle in this to me. I think that it potentially shows
00:34:13 ◼ ► that Apple's hesitancy with anything News Plus related because it really seems like it's not
00:34:21 ◼ ► gone the way that they wanted. That's peculiar. I find that strange. Especially because Apple News
00:34:34 ◼ ► art workers in the show, but they came from a WNYC show to this. They are known as producing
00:34:48 ◼ ► That's available everywhere except, well not except, but in the Apple News app. It's only
00:35:03 ◼ ► So I think there's some elements to that, which we'll get to in a minute as to why that's the
00:35:08 ◼ ► case. Apple News has also been added to CarPlay, which makes sense to support the audio features
00:35:14 ◼ ► that they've added. And then the last component of the Apple News Plus stuff is a new focus on
00:35:20 ◼ ► local news. It's currently in a handful of major US markets and features "a diverse collection
00:35:27 ◼ ► of local publishers, including a major newspaper in each region covering sports, culture, dining,
00:35:34 ◼ ► weather, politics," that kind of stuff, which is local to those areas. There is still going
00:35:39 ◼ ► to be curation from Apple News editors, and there'll be an element of personalization for
00:35:44 ◼ ► everybody. What do you think about the local news pivot? It's an interesting idea. I have the same
00:35:51 ◼ ► concerns I've always had about Apple News Plus, which is that I'm not sure it solves the problem
00:35:59 ◼ ► of how you fund journalism. Modern journalism has lots of issues of how the money comes in now that
00:36:08 ◼ ► they're not getting, newspapers especially, are not getting the money that they used to from
00:36:12 ◼ ► advertising and print classified ads and things like that. And it's been a decades-long issue for
00:36:20 ◼ ► local journalism. And I think that Apple News Plus, there are scenarios where Apple News Plus
00:36:25 ◼ ► could help. I'm not sure if they've got it here, because it sounds like they're basically making
00:36:30 ◼ ► a partner. So in the Bay Area, it seems to be that the San Francisco Chronicle is their partner.
00:36:35 ◼ ► The Chronicle is presumably getting money for this. And then they're backfilling with other
00:36:40 ◼ ► stuff, you know, sports blogs for the region's sports, and other local blogs and things.
00:36:54 ◼ ► benefit local news, but I'm not sure this is it. I'm not sure that this really solves anything,
00:37:08 ◼ ► But in terms of who's supporting the reporting that's going into generating the data sources
00:37:13 ◼ ► for the curation, I'm not entirely sure. This is something I half-joked about in a previous
00:37:18 ◼ ► episode about how if Apple really cared about local journalism, it should fund local journalism.
00:37:25 ◼ ► I'm not sure this is the way, you know, based on what we know about Apple News Plus especially,
00:37:38 ◼ ► more actively fund local journalism and then have that result pour into Apple News Plus.
00:37:46 ◼ ► But they aren't doing that. And I understand there are business reasons why that may not work for
00:37:56 ◼ ► benefit from being the hub of content at the center of the Bay Area regional for Apple News
00:38:03 ◼ ► Plus. So file it under the same thing as all the other stuff, which is I'm having a hard time
00:38:10 ◼ ► seeing how Apple News Plus benefits publishers. I think it's at least like something else to try,
00:38:18 ◼ ► like in a way that maybe a lot of local news agencies do not have good monetization strategies.
00:38:42 ◼ ► they probably have a subscription plan for access. They probably have a paywall on a subscription
00:38:46 ◼ ► plan. I'm not sure getting your local people to sign up for Apple News Plus and get your newspaper
00:38:52 ◼ ► that way is remotely as good as getting them to sign up for you directly. - Well, that's always
00:38:58 ◼ ► like that's the same in every instance. - That's Apple News Plus, which is why I've said before,
00:39:04 ◼ ► and I'm actually kind of serious here is the solution to good local news is somebody needs
00:39:11 ◼ ► to put money into good local news. And if Apple thinks that Apple News is a strategic thing,
00:39:16 ◼ ► and I would actually argue that if Apple felt like one of the ways that it wanted to leave the world
00:39:22 ◼ ► better than it found it was by informing its people about what's going on in their regions,
00:39:41 ◼ ► ones or new ones in order to generate content that feeds into Apple News Plus. But what they're doing
00:39:47 ◼ ► is they're trying to kind of like have existing organizations subvert their own business model
00:39:52 ◼ ► for Apple's model, which is really rigged to benefit Apple. And I don't think it works. So
00:39:58 ◼ ► that's the problem I have with it is that there is a solution to be had here, but it doesn't seem
00:40:03 ◼ ► like Apple is actually trying to solve it. And this doesn't feel to me, it feels better than what
00:40:07 ◼ ► they were doing before, but I'm not sure it actually solves any of the fundamental problems
00:40:10 ◼ ► with Apple wanting to insert itself as a middleman between the publishers and the readers.
00:40:19 ◼ ► is there like a good business case to doing that funding local news? Like what will Apple get out
00:40:27 ◼ ► of it? I mean, I could say if Apple funded local news, it would get content out of it for Apple
00:40:35 ◼ ► News, and the Apple News content could be very good, local and national and regional news. But
00:40:40 ◼ ► it would also be saying, we're also improving the quality of journalism in the United States,
00:40:45 ◼ ► let's say, because everything they do for Apple News seems to be just in the United States.
00:40:48 ◼ ► But it would have to be kind of a long game, kind of a, you know, we're going to do this because
00:40:54 ◼ ► it's right, and we're going to figure it out as we go, and we're going to build a business here.
00:40:57 ◼ ► And honestly, Apple News Plus is not that. Apple News Plus is a somewhat cynical aggregation play
00:41:03 ◼ ► for Apple, where they want to take a big chunk of money off the top and figure that the accumulated
00:41:10 ◼ ► glow of being inside an Apple app is going to benefit these news sources. And while most of
00:41:16 ◼ ► these news sources don't have very good apps and don't have very good websites, Apple News isn't a
00:41:21 ◼ ► very good app either. So, you know, just to call it what it is, this is Apple trying to sneak money
00:41:27 ◼ ► out of a market that is dying and desperately trying to find a new business model. And it feels
00:41:33 ◼ ► to me and has felt all along a bit like what Apple's trying to do is claim that they're coming
00:41:38 ◼ ► in to save journalism. But what they really want to do is pull money out of the reader's pockets
00:41:46 ◼ ► and not share much of it with local journalism. And that's why Apple News, that's why I think
00:41:53 ◼ ► All right, let's talk about Apple News today, which is the podcast, because that's maybe even
00:41:58 ◼ ► more interesting to me. And you, we've been talking for a long time, what are Apple going
00:42:02 ◼ ► to do in the podcasting space? We mentioned the Zane Lowe interview series, and that was something
00:42:08 ◼ ► they were bringing over. But that was like a half step. This is a full on step. This is a brand new
00:42:13 ◼ ► show daily, right? Like, so this is a big production. Now, we're wondering how are Apple
00:42:21 ◼ ► going to do this type of content? Are they going to make exclusive content and be like Spotify?
00:42:26 ◼ ► Are they going to embrace the open web and give it to everybody? Let's say it's a little bit in
00:42:32 ◼ ► the middle. Apple are saying this is available on Apple podcasts. That's the only place that they're
00:42:37 ◼ ► going to say it. That's not a surprise to me, right? That even if Apple made something that
00:42:42 ◼ ► was available everywhere, that when they promote it, when they talk about it, they say it's on
00:42:47 ◼ ► Apple podcasts. I mean, why not? Because so much of the podcast ecosystem just says that anyway,
00:42:53 ◼ ► at the moment, right? Like, I don't have any issue personally with them choosing to market
00:43:00 ◼ ► their show as saying it's on Apple podcasts. But it is not exclusive to Apple podcasts. As it
00:43:06 ◼ ► stands right now, it's not the only place you can get it. It is searchable and subscribable in every
00:43:12 ◼ ► third party app that I've tried. Pocket Casts, Overcast, Castro. You can search for Apple news
00:43:17 ◼ ► today, find it, subscribe, you get the episodes because it is based on RSS. Apple have done a
00:43:26 ◼ ► little work to obscure the feed. It's not in like the usual places that you would find it when you
00:43:32 ◼ ► subscribe in the podcast app or iTunes or whatever. But it is based on an open RSS feed. Third party
00:43:40 ◼ ► apps have been able to add it to their directories. You can subscribe and you can listen. So they may
00:43:48 ◼ ► not want to encourage you to listen to apps that aren't Apple podcasts, but you can, which I think
00:43:54 ◼ ► is a pretty good compromise personally, because they're not warping what it is to be a podcast,
00:44:19 ◼ ► I don't know to what degree they're hiding the RSS feed here, but like they shouldn't try to hide.
00:44:27 ◼ ► Thanks for it. And I've seen reporting from lots of people that like the RSS feed is not in the
00:44:33 ◼ ► typical place in the Apple podcast direction. Like it's possible to get the feeds out and you
00:44:37 ◼ ► kind of can't do that. Okay. Well, I mean, that's my only, my only real complaint is that if they
00:44:43 ◼ ► are also making this available to other podcast apps, there should be some link somewhere. If
00:44:47 ◼ ► there is then great, there should be some link somewhere on their website when they're talking
00:44:51 ◼ ► about this, where maybe it's a footnote, which is, you know, or any other podcast app using this feed,
00:44:58 ◼ ► but they're primarily promoting Apple podcasts because, you know, step one is, yeah, it's not
00:45:03 ◼ ► just an Apple podcast. Great. Step two is you should probably not try to hide it in the, you
00:45:09 ◼ ► know, in the bathroom, uh, behind a locked door in a filing cabinet with a sign on the door that
00:45:15 ◼ ► says beware of the leopard leopard. That's a reference. Um, right. Where it's like, no, no,
00:45:21 ◼ ► uh, it is on Apple podcasts secretly. It's also elsewhere is not a great look. I think that they
00:45:27 ◼ ► should, should, like I said, put it in a footnote somewhere. Don't try to hide it. Yeah. I would
00:45:31 ◼ ► prefer them to do that, but better than, than wiring it into Apple podcasts and then not having
00:45:36 ◼ ► it be available in any other app. Yes, absolutely better than that. And that's kind of one of the
00:45:40 ◼ ► very conceivable things that we expected them to do. Right. But I am actually really happy with the
00:45:46 ◼ ► fact that they have done whatever work they needed to do to create a podcast, which is delivered via
00:45:52 ◼ ► RSS. They did that now this, this didn't happen like within a week, like Apple node had been doing
00:45:57 ◼ ► this for a while. They could have very easily made the whatever, not, but they very well conceivably
00:46:03 ◼ ► could have done whatever they needed to do to make this exclusive to them. But they didn't do that.
00:46:08 ◼ ► Um, you know, I saw a lot of technology outlets reporting on this saying it was exclusive to
00:46:12 ◼ ► Apple podcasts, which kind of irked me a little bit. Cause like it wasn't hard to do the work
00:46:18 ◼ ► to see that that wasn't the case. Um, but people just kind of read the press release and then just
00:46:23 ◼ ► report it on it that way. Like that kind of stuff frustrates me. I find in a lot of technology press
00:46:29 ◼ ► to reporting on the podcast industry to be pretty bad, honestly, uh, which is just a little beef that
00:46:35 ◼ ► I'm picking here for no, no particular reason. Um, but there's a lot of like, we got a press
00:46:40 ◼ ► release. We're just going to say what the press release said and move on when I feel like it
00:46:44 ◼ ► could, this stuff could be, should be covered a little better, a little more nuance. Anywho,
00:46:49 ◼ ► I listened to the podcast itself. Jason. It's actually pretty good. Like I, uh, I enjoyed the
00:46:56 ◼ ► variance of the topics. It is too us focused for me. Um, especially because this is this like,
00:47:03 ◼ ► isn't region locked. You can get it anywhere. I would love to see them build it out a little more.
00:47:08 ◼ ► Uh, but it so far has been pretty us focused. Uh, the stories that they get into in detail
00:47:16 ◼ ► are in Apple news. So they, they do a kind of like a headline rundown at the start where they
00:47:22 ◼ ► don't particularly talk about any specific news story, but they'll cover, like they'll talk about
00:47:28 ◼ ► briefly like what's going on in the world. But then they, they link to and talk about the stories
00:47:34 ◼ ► that they talk about in depth. They, they link to Apple news stories, which makes sense. It's
00:47:38 ◼ ► like a vertical integration. You can tell they've hired professionals across the board. It is
00:47:44 ◼ ► entertaining. It's informative and it's produced well, in my opinion, they use a lot of audio clips
00:47:49 ◼ ► and they mixed in really well. Um, they do that typical, like, uh, mainstream podcast sound design
00:47:55 ◼ ► of there always being music playing, but I don't like that, but they do a good job of it. I think,
00:48:01 ◼ ► um, like it's not, it's not really in your face, but there is a little bit of that in there where
00:48:07 ◼ ► they have music interstitials and they have sometimes music beds and they're not constant,
00:48:12 ◼ ► but they're there. Right. But I think that the sound design is good. I think that they've done
00:48:22 ◼ ► supposed to be recording in that they're not. Right. And, uh, so I've been, I follow both of
00:48:28 ◼ ► the hosts on Twitter now and they've been posting like lots of pictures of, uh, of how, of like
00:48:34 ◼ ► their setups and stuff, which I think is fun. You know, in general, I'm, I'm kind of just pleased
00:48:40 ◼ ► that they are allowing Shimita and Duarte to be public figures that produce the show and they,
00:48:49 ◼ ► they actually have interactions with each other. Like they're not just reading news stories. Like
00:48:53 ◼ ► it feels like there is an actual personality to the program, which I think is important.
00:49:00 ◼ ► And I'm pleased that they are doing that because I don't think I could have told you that's exactly
00:49:06 ◼ ► what Apple would have done if I would have known this project was going to exist. Right.
00:49:10 ◼ ► Yeah. It's not the Apple, old Apple approach, which would have been nameless, faceless,
00:49:16 ◼ ► you know, again, kind of extruded from out of Apple here as a product. And instead it's,
00:49:21 ◼ ► this is a product that needs personalities and, and that it's going to live or die based on that.
00:49:26 ◼ ► And, and it's Apple is the brand, but you know, that's not how a podcast that was not driven by
00:49:32 ◼ ► personalities like that would not be a successful podcast. So it's, they they've hired people who
00:49:37 ◼ ► know what they're doing clearly here. It was really interesting to me that they basically
00:49:41 ◼ ► wholesale hired a team from WNYC. I find that to be very smart, honestly, like just, just get some
00:49:50 ◼ ► people that know what they're doing. If you want to do this, like don't rebuild the wheel, right?
00:49:54 ◼ ► Let them do this. And I can tell you as somebody who has worked in the media for a long time,
00:49:59 ◼ ► that, um, Apple coming to you and in the media, so economically pressured as we've been saying
00:50:06 ◼ ► all along here, it's, it's a, has been a tough couple of decades in the media and you have the
00:50:10 ◼ ► world's richest company roll in and say, uh, we want to set this up and we'll hire you.
00:50:26 ◼ ► being hired by a giant company to do essentially what you already do is that's pretty, that's a
00:50:34 ◼ ► pretty sweet deal. It's kind of hard to turn that down. So it's, it's, it's not surprising that they
00:50:38 ◼ ► were able to kind of go in and just hire those people away. It's also probably the right thing
00:50:41 ◼ ► to do. You're right. Because that's the kind of content they want. Yeah. Don't just, if you can
00:50:46 ◼ ► find people that are already doing it, then go for that. I think it makes sense. I'm going to keep
00:50:50 ◼ ► this in my rotation. I, and I've been, I listened to a couple of episodes so I could be prepared for
00:50:55 ◼ ► the show, but today's I was like, I want to hear about that. It was about John Lewis. And I was
00:51:01 ◼ ► like, I don't, I don't, I feel like I haven't had much exposure to him as being someone from the
00:51:05 ◼ ► United Kingdom, but like, I'm kind of aware of him and some of the stuff that he's done. But I was
00:51:10 ◼ ► like, no, I would like a little bit more background. And it gave me that. Uh, so I'm going to keep the
00:51:15 ◼ ► show around and, uh, I, I've, cause I have genuinely been enjoying it. So I actually think
00:51:20 ◼ ► that they've done a very good job and I'll at least say that I'm happy that they didn't go for
00:51:26 ◼ ► the complete like bad timeline with how Apple would produce, uh, like podcasts of their own. So,
00:51:34 ◼ ► you know, like, you know what I mean? Like this isn't completely locked down. It's locked down
00:51:38 ◼ ► a little bit, but it's locked down in a way that I'm personally comfortable with like market it
00:51:42 ◼ ► however you want, but just let me get it the way that I want and don't completely ruin what open
00:51:47 ◼ ► RSS is all about. And I'm, I'm pleased that they've taken that, um, they've taken that,
00:51:54 ◼ ► that slant on it for now, at least that they continue that way. Yeah. This episode is brought
00:52:01 ◼ ► to you by our friends over at Pingdom. Today's internet users expect a fast web experience,
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00:53:24 ◼ ► So Mr Jason Snell, it is time for our Summer of Fun topic today. We've been talking quite a bit
00:53:35 ◼ ► about macOS Big Sur recently and we are this time, and next time actually, we're going to talk about
00:53:40 ◼ ► Big Sur during the Summer of Fun because it's a fun operating system. But along with the vast
00:53:50 ◼ ► colleagues have been talking about, Apple also completely changed the typical sounds you hear
00:53:57 ◼ ► when using the operating system. So considering this is a podcast, which is an audio medium,
00:54:03 ◼ ► why don't we review those sounds? Yeah, this would be less useful if I wrote a story about this on
00:54:10 ◼ ► six colors, right? Yes. Like let me describe how the sounds have changed and you can picture it in
00:54:17 ◼ ► your mind or listen to it in your mind, how you imagine this. Or we could use a medium like a
00:54:24 ◼ ► podcast and actually play the sounds. So for the record, these are found in /system/sounds and
00:54:38 ◼ ► Yep, yep. So /system/sounds is where your beeps are and then you can do custom beeps like my voice
00:54:45 ◼ ► that says beep from Soundmaster. I think that's user directory library sounds, I think is where
00:54:53 ◼ ► you put those. But the defaults are in /system/sounds and then the other sound effects are found in that
00:55:00 ◼ ► long chain that's down in components, coreaudio.component, and that's where you get things
00:55:04 ◼ ► like emptying the trash. Those live in there. Now there's been lots and lots of sounds that
00:55:18 ◼ ► then let's go for it. All the ones that I could find. Oh okay, fine. So we're going to start with
00:55:22 ◼ ► the beeps and then we're going to move on to a few. Not a lot of the /system/sounds have changed
00:55:27 ◼ ► but some of the most obvious ones have but Apple has redone all the beeps and what's really
00:55:32 ◼ ► interesting in my research for this is Apple has redone all the beeps without changing their file
00:55:38 ◼ ► names but they have changed the names in the sound control panel which is super weird, right? So they
00:55:45 ◼ ► have... What does that mean? Yeah, so I'll give you an example. Okay. So there used to be an alert
00:55:52 ◼ ► called pop. If you go to system preferences and click on sound and choose an alert sound,
00:55:56 ◼ ► there used to be an alert called pop. It's now... And the file, the corresponding file in
00:56:29 ◼ ► You're asking yourself why not just rename the files and have those names appear rather than
00:56:45 ◼ ► using the old... Rather than changing presumably the system preferences app somehow to map new
00:56:51 ◼ ► names to old file names and my answer is I don't know. I guess they had a reason. I can only assume
00:56:58 ◼ ► that there's some compatibility thing, right? Or like it's hard coded into something somewhere and
00:57:02 ◼ ► it was just... Yeah, if you've got an app or a script or something that says play the sound file
00:57:07 ◼ ► pop, it'll play it even though now in the UI it says bubble. That's hilarious. But I don't know if
00:57:14 ◼ ► I write a script and say play bubble. Will it play pop or will it fail? I don't know. Something to
00:57:21 ◼ ► check in the betas I guess. So are we gonna... We're gonna compare the old to the new? Is that
00:57:27 ◼ ► how we're gonna do this? We are. We are gonna do that. Thank you. Are you ready? Yeah. All right.
00:57:32 ◼ ► So we're gonna start with Catalina and this is a sound called basso and it will be followed by
00:57:42 ◼ ► Big Sur where basso has been renamed mezzo. Ready? Yeah. Here's basso. How'd that sound?
00:57:52 ◼ ► That's my error sound. Okay, get ready for basso mezzo. Oh no. No, that's not the same.
00:58:01 ◼ ► It's mezzo now. It's not basso anymore. It's mezzo. Because what I like about basso is in my mind my
00:58:06 ◼ ► computer is going ah. Right? That's what I like about basso. Now it's going ah. You see, I don't
00:58:11 ◼ ► like that. Can you play it at one again for me? Get basso. Mezzo. No, I don't like it. For some
00:58:19 ◼ ► reason mezzo sounds like the older sound. That one sounds like it came from like the 80s or something.
00:58:27 ◼ ► I don't like that one. All right, should we move on? Yeah. I mean, I kind of agree with you that
00:58:35 ◼ ► the use of basso is to get your attention is like oops something bad happened and the new one's like
00:58:39 ◼ ► like I guess it sort of sounds sad trombone like a little bit but yeah it's not aggressive enough I
00:58:45 ◼ ► think. All right, here's a sound called blow except in Big Sur it's called breeze. Okay.
00:58:53 ◼ ► So they're related. Some of these are related. Yeah. Where it looks like they're having fun
00:58:59 ◼ ► like basso and mezzo, blow and breeze. Others don't make any sense at all. So anyway, here's
00:59:04 ◼ ► blow in Catalina and here's breeze in Big Sur. Oh, that's much nicer. You like that? Yeah.
00:59:14 ◼ ► I like the breeze. Less of blowing on the on a bottle. Yeah. Which is what blow definitely is.
00:59:20 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't really like the blow sound very much but I actually really like the breeze sound. I
00:59:25 ◼ ► think that's just a good sound. That's a good interface sound. All right, so that's a thumbs up.
00:59:30 ◼ ► That's a thumbs up. Okay, so they're one for two now. One up, one down. Just to confirm,
00:59:36 ◼ ► these sounds, do they all have a place in the operating system or you just choose for your error
00:59:44 ◼ ► sound? I think you choose for your error sound. Although there may be apps that play them as well.
00:59:51 ◼ ► Right, but these are all available to you and in certain instances you might hear one or the other.
00:59:55 ◼ ► I mean, and there are some that are specific that we'll get into later on, but the error sounds
01:00:00 ◼ ► mostly like you can choose them. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, here we go.
01:00:06 ◼ ► This is this one is called bottle not to be confused with blow. Now maybe this we understand
01:00:11 ◼ ► why they renamed these, although not why they renamed them only in one place and not in the
01:00:15 ◼ ► files themselves. This is the Catalina bottle and then it'll be followed by pebble, which is what
01:00:20 ◼ ► bottle is now called in Big Sur. Bottle, pebble. I like that because pebble sounds like you're
01:00:29 ◼ ► dropping a stone into the water and it sounds quite like bottle but it's better. But more.
01:00:38 ◼ ► Yeah, more texture, more nuance. I agree. I think that's actually a nice thing about it.
01:00:47 ◼ ► Yeah, I like that. That's a good one. That's a good sound. All right, that's a like. Okay,
01:00:54 ◼ ► Apple's up two to one now in the new sound derby. This turns into a different kind of game than I was
01:01:02 ◼ ► expecting but I'm enjoying it. Okay, this is a sound called frog except in Big Sur it's called
01:01:10 ◼ ► jump. That kind of makes sense, right? So here's frog. This is a good one and here's jump.
01:01:18 ◼ ► Oh, no, that's not enough. There's not enough noise there. I don't particularly like frog,
01:01:29 ◼ ► right? It's fine. I don't particularly like it but there's just not enough noise in jump. It's
01:01:36 ◼ ► too short. I like frog. I actually use frog in one of my scripts to say the script is done
01:01:41 ◼ ► and I've used it another. I use it a lot because it's really not obtrusive. I'm worried that jump
01:01:52 ◼ ► is so not obtrusive as to have become invisible. I think that that's a similar problem with mezzo.
01:02:05 ◼ ► alert sound work if you aren't actually alerted by it. If an alert sound falls in the forest
01:02:14 ◼ ► but there was nobody around to hear it, right? That's the problem. Sure. Yeah, that could be.
01:02:21 ◼ ► All right, this is a sound called funk. However, breaking news here. Breaking news in Big Sur. It's
01:02:47 ◼ ► Okay, that's too much more. Too much more. Okay. Funk I feel like is a pretty classic one.
01:02:53 ◼ ► Right? I feel like I hear maybe funk is mine. Yeah, funk is mine. I use funk for an alert one,
01:02:59 ◼ ► my typical alert sound. There was one that I said already that I used for. I must use it
01:03:04 ◼ ► somewhere else because I hear it a lot. But funk I've just looked now. That's the sound that I hear
01:03:19 ◼ ► They've added a little bit. It's sort of a single blip versus this like little mini music
01:03:27 ◼ ► composition. And as with frog, I kind of just want it to be a blip. So we got a dislike for that. Uh
01:03:35 ◼ ► oh. Apple's down now two to three. Uh oh. It's not trending well. Okay, we're moving on to a
01:03:43 ◼ ► sound called glass, which has been renamed crystal in big sur. So from glass to crystal,
01:03:52 ◼ ► you can see the family resemblance. Here they are. Good. Yeah. Yep. It retains the good part of
01:04:02 ◼ ► glass, but makes it sound more modern. As Joe Steele in the discord says, more expensive sound.
01:04:09 ◼ ► And I would agree. It sounds like crystal was a more expensive sound. Yeah. We fancied that,
01:04:14 ◼ ► that glass sound up. I like that it is, I never really liked that glass sound and it's because
01:04:20 ◼ ► it's, it's maybe a little too unpleasant and, and, and jarring. But then again, I also leave the room
01:04:26 ◼ ► when somebody else's emptying the dishwasher. Cause I find those sounds really unpleasant.
01:04:30 ◼ ► And crystal is better because it's a little less of that, a little less jarring, I think.
01:04:37 ◼ ► And it's more expensive. It's more expensive name. All right. Here, here is one that I really enjoy
01:04:42 ◼ ► what Apple did with the naming system because it's a sound called hero. And in big sur,
01:04:55 ◼ ► let's the name naming convention. Let's see what they did to the sound. Let's see what they did to
01:05:00 ◼ ► the sound. Here they are. Ooh. Ooh. Can I hear those again? Okay. All right. So it's basically
01:05:09 ◼ ► the same sound, but there's a little prelude to the sound. I didn't know that alert sounds needed
01:05:14 ◼ ► a little, a little percussive roll in, but I think I like it. Here we go. Ooh. Bloop. I like that one.
01:05:24 ◼ ► I do too. It's a little saucy. It's a little personality. It's like, "Hey, you know that hero
01:05:31 ◼ ► sound. Well, I'm going to jazz it up a little bit." It's kind of got like an island feel to it.
01:05:48 ◼ ► like you took hero to the Caribbean and now it's heroin. Yeah. Okay. Our next one is called Morse,
01:05:56 ◼ ► like Morse code. Yep. And it has been replaced with a sound called ping. No, pong. Oh, sorry.
01:06:09 ◼ ► Next one is called ping and there's also a pop. There are these names. I mean, I don't want to be
01:06:15 ◼ ► the person at Apple who has to name sounds. Okay. Cause it's hard. And then people like us make fun
01:06:21 ◼ ► of them, but still it is worth making fun of. Okay. So it's Morse, which becomes pong, not to
01:06:25 ◼ ► be confused with ping, which became something else. And we'll get to that. Here is Morse
01:06:29 ◼ ► followed by pong in Big Sur. Okay. Play those again. It's a little more poppy. I actually
01:06:45 ◼ ► It's still not a good, like it's for me, like it's not a great sound, but it is better than the one.
01:06:52 ◼ ► did you improve these sounds? For some people. Uh, so, okay. All right. Now we're going to move
01:06:57 ◼ ► on to ping, which is not pong and has been renamed sonar also by the way, sonar, not to be confused
01:07:03 ◼ ► with submarine, which is a totally different sound. This is ping. It has become sonar. I
01:07:31 ◼ ► That was there for you. No, I don't want more Medso. There was an error. Um, okay. Here we go.
01:07:46 ◼ ► I am going to say I dislike it. So we're going to, we're going to make this a split decision.
01:07:52 ◼ ► Right. Um, I like the purity of the ping. It is just, it is just a tone and I don't think you need
01:07:58 ◼ ► to bubble it up with like a, with like, I don't, I don't need that. So here's what I'll say then.
01:08:04 ◼ ► I prefer ping, but I don't dislike sonar. So maybe we could, but maybe we could call that dislike
01:08:12 ◼ ► though, because I like the sound that it had before. All right. So you, you prefer the old
01:08:17 ◼ ► sound. I prefer the old sound, but it's not like with some of them where I dislike the new one,
01:08:23 ◼ ► but I think that it is a regression because I think ping is a better sound. So we'll say,
01:08:29 ◼ ► we'll say we'll just call that dislikes. We don't have to create another scoring category.
01:08:41 ◼ ► These are all names of sounds, but this is the sound formerly known as pop, which has become
01:09:11 ◼ ► points that I think you don't need to just dress necessarily dress up a sound, but sometimes it is
01:09:16 ◼ ► either delightful or it like goes from being something you'd miss to something you might
01:09:20 ◼ ► actually notice. Yeah. I'm not really sure why anybody would use the pop sound. It's too,
01:09:34 ◼ ► Okay. So, uh, if you're scoring at home, uh, thank you. It's six to four in favor of Apple's new sounds.
01:09:47 ◼ ► We need to talk about this one from a cat to a chicken, apparently, or is someone doing
01:09:53 ◼ ► something terrible to a cat? I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean, maybe we'll find out in the sounds,
01:10:12 ◼ ► the sound that I didn't even know was called per, but I like it. It's like, uh, I like per.
01:10:20 ◼ ► I get it's funny really because there are, there are sounds that I sometimes hear on my computer
01:10:28 ◼ ► and I like, I know some of these sounds, so, but I don't know where I'm hearing them, but I guess
01:10:32 ◼ ► that's what you're saying, that some app is using it as an alert. Yeah. Yeah. I think I much prefer
01:10:38 ◼ ► per to pluck. Oh yeah. Pluck, pluck sounds like somebody hit a golf ball. Pluck honestly sounds
01:10:48 ◼ ► quite similar to, um, I think it's pebble. The one where it's dropping in the water. Uh huh.
01:10:58 ◼ ► That's this one. Yeah. Not super similar, but they sound, yeah, they, they both sound to me
01:11:08 ◼ ► like dropping a ball into something or whatever. Yeah. I don't like that one. Okay. We're going to
01:11:14 ◼ ► move on to Sosumi now. Sosumi is a beep sound with a, or at least name for a beep sound with a
01:11:20 ◼ ► legendary history because there was a lawsuit from Apple records to Apple computer because
01:11:28 ◼ ► when Apple was founded, they ended up having to reach an agreement with the Beatles about Apple
01:11:33 ◼ ► records, Apple music, uh, involved basically saying they wouldn't get into music and sound
01:11:38 ◼ ► related things. And of course, as the computer evolved, they very much did that. And there were
01:11:42 ◼ ► some lawsuits. Ultimately Apple basically bought them out and that's why there's Apple music and
01:11:47 ◼ ► stuff like that now is Apple basically wrote a, my understanding is a huge check to the,
01:11:51 ◼ ► the Beatles estates, uh, and Apple records to do this. Um, but the joke was that they put this
01:11:58 ◼ ► sound in there as a reference to that by naming it. So Sue me, but they spelled it. So Sue me.
01:12:03 ◼ ► So this is a classic, very old Mac reference. Um, but what are they? And they left the name.
01:12:09 ◼ ► So Sue me continues to be the name, but they changed the sound. So you're going to hear
01:12:14 ◼ ► Catalina Sussumi and then big sir. Sue me. Sue Sue Sue me. Big sir. Sue me. So studio. Here we go.
01:12:45 ◼ ► I don't like it. I like the last half, which is a, like you can hear as a modernized version of the
01:12:56 ◼ ► one that it's replacing, but I don't know why it does that part of the star. I don't like the part
01:13:01 ◼ ► of the star. I feel like just a modernized version of Sussumi would have been better rather than
01:13:08 ◼ ► trying to change it. Yeah. They put a little too much, a little too much action on something that
01:13:14 ◼ ► was fine. All right. When we're going to move on to submarine, which is one that I've used a lot
01:13:21 ◼ ► and it has been replaced with something called submerge. See what they did there. Here we go.
01:13:37 ◼ ► well, I was just as surprised as you that this is what this was. I use submarine sometimes.
01:13:42 ◼ ► It's a very stereo sound, by the way. It does a left, right pan kind of thing that submerged
01:13:47 ◼ ► doesn't do so much. Um, I think this is funny cause they backed off of the like reverb and stuff
01:13:53 ◼ ► that's in submarine and they've like simplified it with submerge, which I think is funny since they
01:13:57 ◼ ► said that, Oh, that we changed the sounds because modern Mac sound systems and it's a more immersive
01:14:02 ◼ ► kind of thing. But in this case, they kind of went away from the, uh, like super skeuomorphic,
01:14:08 ◼ ► I guess, sound to something that's much more, um, almost like a, like a very simple alert tone.
01:14:15 ◼ ► Um, and I'm not sure I, not sure I like it. Not sure I like it. I'm going to play it again,
01:14:19 ◼ ► just so we can ponder a little more. The originals better. Yeah. I appreciate the simplification
01:14:28 ◼ ► there, but I like the original. Okay. Apple is we're tied now. Six, six. Okay. We have one last
01:14:37 ◼ ► alert and then we're going to move on to some system sounds. We have a handful of system sounds.
01:14:41 ◼ ► This is tink, which has been renamed in big Sur boop from tink to boop, everybody from tink to
01:14:51 ◼ ► boop. Here we go. I mean, there's not a lot to go on. No, it feels now it feels like we're,
01:14:59 ◼ ► there's some sort of psychological exam that we're going through. I mean, I prefer boop,
01:15:04 ◼ ► I guess, cause it's just a more pleasant sound. I agree with you actually that it is less ear
01:15:09 ◼ ► splitting and annoying. Whereas tink is so high pitched that it makes me want to, you know,
01:15:21 ◼ ► neither would I, but, but tink suffers from that. Like you would never hear this problem and boop is
01:15:28 ◼ ► at least a little bit more, um, noticeable, but they didn't really go very far away to create boop.
01:15:42 ◼ ► although they do have file names. I find that the file names don't always describe what's actually
01:15:46 ◼ ► happening when they're played. We can talk about that if you want, but, but I'm going to just
01:15:52 ◼ ► introduce them by their names, their file names, and then you can judge just how they, regardless
01:16:30 ◼ ► they're not necessarily bad. That one is just bad. Like it doesn't sound good at all. Not up for
01:16:38 ◼ ► that. Yeah. I'm with you. I don't, I don't agree. And that drag to trash sound is like, it feels
01:16:43 ◼ ► iconic. I know. Well, they did something to the icon. Um, by the way, if they change any of these
01:16:51 ◼ ► sounds before it goes final, we are taking full credit. Okay. Yeah. You and me. A little packed.
01:16:56 ◼ ► Who else is going to do this? No one else now. We got there first. Yeah. I think nobody else was
01:17:01 ◼ ► ever going to do this, but definitely we got there first. It's only the kind of thing, ridiculous
01:17:13 ◼ ► What? So, so empty trash used to be like the rustling of trash or like you were crumpling
01:17:26 ◼ ► I don't know what that, no, I don't like that one either. Yeah. I don't, I don't appreciate that. I
01:17:34 ◼ ► feel like, and I appreciate that I've been hearing this one for like a couple of decades now, but it
01:17:41 ◼ ► does have a kind of crumpled up garbage feel to it. And this it's like, there's some crumpling
01:17:48 ◼ ► there, but also like, what is that clunk? Like, what is your trash? Is it a door to the trash bin?
01:17:55 ◼ ► I understand how they're going from one to the other, right? Because they've removed the, like,
01:18:00 ◼ ► this sounds like it's going into a trash, like waste paper basket. Yeah. Right. But the problem
01:18:08 ◼ ► is the crumple and the door close are happening simultaneously, which wouldn't happen, right? You
01:18:13 ◼ ► can't crumple up your trash and, and close the bin door simultaneously, or your trash won't go in the
01:18:20 ◼ ► bin. So I have some logic problems with this sound is what I'm saying. I have some questions about
01:18:25 ◼ ► the continuity. I don't like it. Yeah, no, I don't like it. I don't like it. Okay. We're going to move
01:18:30 ◼ ► on to something that this is, this is a little weird. So there's a sound called grab, which is
01:18:36 ◼ ► named after the utility that I think no longer exists. That was the screenshot utility in OS
01:18:42 ◼ ► 10 for a very long time that nobody used, but it was there from the very beginning. And then there's
01:18:47 ◼ ► a sound called screenshot. And this is basically the new default sound when you take a screenshot.
01:18:54 ◼ ► So the files are actually different files, but this is we're going from the old default to the
01:19:27 ◼ ► No, they haven't. So why did they do that? Uh, that I think you've asked a very important
01:19:44 ◼ ► it's like, what's the point of the screenshot sound like sounding like a photo being taken
01:19:50 ◼ ► from a film camera? Like there's no point in the same as like, you know, I know why. So what I
01:19:55 ◼ ► say is I know why the camera has that noise. Like the cameras are supposed to make that noise in
01:20:00 ◼ ► certain regions of the world. Like it's actually a legal requirement, but the screenshot isn't a
01:20:05 ◼ ► camera. Exactly. I mean, and neither does really the, I don't think the camera has to make that
01:20:12 ◼ ► exact sound, right. It can make any sound. I like the noise if that's what we're judging it on.
01:20:18 ◼ ► Yeah. I, I, I think I prefer it. I'm, I'm torn about this cause as a, as a media computer tech
01:20:24 ◼ ► media person, I take a lot of screenshots. And so that, that, that sound is like an old friend to me
01:20:29 ◼ ► at the same time. It doesn't make any sense and it's kind of unpleasant. And the new sound
01:20:33 ◼ ► indicates that you've taken a screenshot. Uh, so I'm going to say, I like it, uh, change is hard,
01:20:41 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. And Myke, that brings us to our last sound. This sound, this finally was called volume
01:20:47 ◼ ► mount, but I think of it as the volume network volume dismount sound. Uh, maybe I'm getting that
01:20:53 ◼ ► wrong, but anyway, this is a sound that changed that involves external drives on your Mac.
01:20:58 ◼ ► Right. Yeah. Wait. Okay. Yeah. I hear that noise a lot. Yeah. I think that's the noise when I drag
01:21:08 ◼ ► my external drive to the trash and it ejects, I get this. Yeah. I hear that. Or like when you
01:21:14 ◼ ► drag something somewhere else in the system. Yes. James isn't saying the chat room. It's the copy
01:21:20 ◼ ► finish sound. Ah, it's the copy finish. Well, it's called volume mount. Okay. So I don't know why,
01:21:26 ◼ ► but it changed. And now it sounds like this. Can I get those again? Like one after the other? Sure.
01:21:36 ◼ ► And I don't know, again, there may be some confusion here where they've, they've kept the
01:21:39 ◼ ► name the same and changed where you hear it, but this is the volume out sound. I like that one more.
01:21:48 ◼ ► Yeah. The old one is like you shot your file with a laser and it's dead now. Yeah. And the new one
01:21:55 ◼ ► is like, it's moved. It's like transported itself, you know? Yeah. I like that one. Well,
01:22:01 ◼ ► I have some good news for Apple sound designers because like has beaten dislike, but it was nine
01:22:07 ◼ ► to eight. So half of your new sounds we like. The good news is you won. The bad news is it was by
01:22:13 ◼ ► one point. Hmm. Okay. So I think overall, like, even though we're pretty close to like, dislike,
01:22:21 ◼ ► I would say that I think overall the sounds are good, but I think the problem is that sometimes
01:22:27 ◼ ► the replacements are not good. Right? Like I think that's something we can agree on that like
01:22:32 ◼ ► there are actually more good sounds than there are bad sounds, maybe even nine to eight,
01:22:38 ◼ ► but in some places the sound that it, the new sound isn't a good replacement for the old sound.
01:22:44 ◼ ► Right. I think that is, that is more of a, uh, an issue there, I guess. Yeah. That's what we're
01:22:49 ◼ ► measuring is was it an improvement? And, um, cause I, I agree. I think that there are a bunch of
01:22:54 ◼ ► these sounds that are fine, but, um, we felt like eight of them were not improvements on the old
01:23:00 ◼ ► sound. Yes. Yeah. It's it's tricky because change, I mean, that's one of the things I'm trying to
01:23:06 ◼ ► fight here is like, I took a screenshot on, on big Sur and heard that sound and I thought, Oh no,
01:23:11 ◼ ► no, no, no. What did you do? What did you do? And I've had to think about it and like, okay,
01:23:15 ◼ ► do I really like the old sound or is the old sound familiar? And the answer is it's familiar and I
01:23:20 ◼ ► don't like it and I'm okay with the change. And likewise, that volume mount sound, I think the
01:23:24 ◼ ► new one is better. The old one is very familiar and, but then the empty trash sound. Um, I don't
01:23:31 ◼ ► think the new one is a better sound. So, but it's hard to unravel our, our history with the, with
01:23:37 ◼ ► using the Mac from being, from seeing these new sounds. But you know, that didn't stop us, did it?
01:23:43 ◼ ► No, Stephanie didn't. This episode is brought to you by express VPN. It's fair to say we all
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01:25:04 ◼ ► VPN for their support of this show and all of Relay FM. Should we do some hashtag ask upgrade
01:25:11 ◼ ► questions? #askupgrade. Oh, it's the lasers, huh? Is that what that was? Yeah, I was trying.
01:25:18 ◼ ► Very nice. I liked it. I don't know if we're going to make that a permanent stay, but...
01:25:23 ◼ ► No, we're not. We're definitely not. Good, good. First question comes from Paul. Do you think with
01:25:29 ◼ ► Apple Silicon hardware updates, do you think that we're going to see more frequent or regular updates
01:25:35 ◼ ► than we've seen for the Mac in the past few years? I think they're not going to have to wait for
01:25:40 ◼ ► Intel, right? So that's good. My guess is that we're going to see an annual cycle for most Apple
01:25:44 ◼ ► products and maybe some of them will be 18 months or two years, just like with the iPhone. Look at
01:25:48 ◼ ► the iPhone and the iPad. There's a new iPhone every year. There's a new iPad sort of... There
01:25:52 ◼ ► are different iPad models throughout the year. iPad Pro seems to be on an 18 month cycle. I would
01:25:58 ◼ ► imagine there will be some regular cycle like that and the ones that Apple feels the need to revise,
01:26:03 ◼ ► they will revise. I think the real question is if they come out with a new processor in the
01:26:07 ◼ ► fall on the iPhone, when does it hit the other products and is it right away or do they choose
01:26:12 ◼ ► to roll those out? They can't release every new product at the same time, right? They have to
01:26:16 ◼ ► stretch it out because they can't release all their products in the fall. They can't do it.
01:26:22 ◼ ► But I imagine we're going to be in a scenario where the new processor year starts in the fall
01:26:27 ◼ ► with the iPhone and then for the next year, you're going to see variants of that chip in all of their
01:26:32 ◼ ► other devices. So in the end, I mean, some of these products have gotten to the point where
01:26:38 ◼ ► they're sort of annual updates already and I imagine that'll continue and then there are some
01:26:42 ◼ ► lower priority products that won't be. But for the ones where it matters, yeah, I think if they're
01:26:48 ◼ ► already releasing a new chip for the iPhone every year, why would they not use that opportunity in
01:26:53 ◼ ► that cycle to have a version of that for all of their other products too? So I think it will be
01:26:58 ◼ ► more regular and it may or may not be more frequent, but it will be more regular because
01:27:04 ◼ ► Apple controls it and Intel Apple couldn't control. Yeah, I think that I pretty much agree
01:27:12 ◼ ► with everything you said there, right? Like I think that we will see more frequent updates
01:27:17 ◼ ► but no matter what we do see, it will at least be on a schedule that Apple have decided for
01:27:23 ◼ ► themselves by and large, right? That maybe one of the biggest things was the fact that they needed
01:27:29 ◼ ► to wait for Intel or they even had features that they wanted to add but they couldn't because of
01:27:34 ◼ ► Intel as well, right? So I think that we're going to see a more, maybe more consistent for Apple
01:27:40 ◼ ► schedule than what we've seen over the last few years especially. Yeah. Rajeev asks, "Does iOS 14
01:27:47 ◼ ► include a Find My widget like the one in iOS 12 or added of iOS 12? I checked and there isn't a
01:27:54 ◼ ► new Find My widget on iOS which I thought was peculiar. I don't remember if, does Big Sur have
01:28:03 ◼ ► a Find My app? I think it does, right? Yes, yes. Oh, well, Catalina has a Find My app. Catalina added
01:28:11 ◼ ► the Find My app, okay, because I remember like on Mojave and before, the only way that you could use
01:28:17 ◼ ► Find My Friends was through the widget in the notification center. Yeah. But I find not having
01:28:24 ◼ ► a Find My widget to be peculiar, it may be that like a Find My widget isn't that useful with the
01:28:30 ◼ ► way that widgets are built, like it wouldn't be able to update quickly enough. I think that's
01:28:34 ◼ ► exactly it, is that the, you know, they could add a Find My widget that like showed people's faces
01:28:41 ◼ ► and then you tap to launch it and it will show you that and maybe they will in a future beta. I bet
01:28:46 ◼ ► you could make a shortcut that did that maybe, but thank you for looking. So I would maybe say
01:28:51 ◼ ► like a Find My widget might be really nice when they have their own devices or that API for devices
01:28:57 ◼ ► to tie in. So you could like have a little icon of a device and you tap it and it will either make
01:29:03 ◼ ► a sound or go to that, the little tag, right, that's being searched for. But yeah, but it is
01:29:10 ◼ ► it is a peculiar omission to have nothing because now there will be no widget anymore where there
01:29:17 ◼ ► was one before and that feels strange. Maybe it'll come back. It's beta. Sam asked, "Do you think Mac
01:29:24 ◼ ► developers will be getting on board with the new design for Big Sur as well as the work needed to
01:29:29 ◼ ► support Apple Silicon?" Yeah, and I think Sam's implication here is if they're busy doing Apple
01:29:33 ◼ ► Silicon support, will they prioritize that over the design? They inherit a lot of the design,
01:29:39 ◼ ► it's not quite the same, but like there is a default, like the default window of old looks
01:29:45 ◼ ► different in Big Sur. It also looks wrong, like it's centered instead of left aligned and like
01:29:50 ◼ ► it's not, it clearly is not right for the Big Sur design. I do think that Apple Silicon support
01:29:58 ◼ ► is going to come first and then UI support will come after that and it depends on how easy it is
01:30:05 ◼ ► this summer for them to convert their apps to Apple Silicon. If it's easy, then that gives them more
01:30:09 ◼ ► time to support other features or make it look good using the new design. But I think that will
01:30:14 ◼ ► always come second and you know, it's going to be your typical thing where some apps come out with
01:30:20 ◼ ► new design support immediately and others kind of lag behind and that's the way of things.
01:30:26 ◼ ► But there will be, you'll be able to tell because the new design is different enough that it's not,
01:30:32 ◼ ► again, not like the old one will look like old windows, it'll just look like the more generic
01:30:38 ◼ ► version that isn't, you know, that it's sort of center and the toolbar is below and things like
01:30:43 ◼ ► that. Whereas the new ones will feel very, very new, but everybody will get on board eventually.
01:30:47 ◼ ► I think, I think though Apple Silicon is the priority there. The design is going to wait.
01:30:51 ◼ ► You got to make sure your app runs and runs natively before you worry about UI conventions.
01:30:55 ◼ ► Yeah, that is important. I do hope that developers will do the additional work at some point.
01:31:05 ◼ ► So the apps look and feel at home. I mean, that's always the case. You want to fit the platform
01:31:10 ◼ ► design, right? So you always want to do that. I think maybe more so than iOS though, I think
01:31:16 ◼ ► that there will be apps that people will use frequently on Big Sur that will take a long time,
01:31:21 ◼ ► if ever, you know, just because that there are maybe more, legacy is not the right word,
01:31:27 ◼ ► but applications that are maybe just in maintenance mode on the Mac because it's an older platform.
01:31:32 ◼ ► I don't know. I, but I hope that we'll see a lot of, a lot of applications do what they need to do
01:31:38 ◼ ► to make that work and to feel good. Charlie asked, do you think that Microsoft will create
01:31:44 ◼ ► original TV content like Apple and Amazon? So my initial thought to this is that Microsoft
01:31:50 ◼ ► seems to be playing a different game. And then I realized that was a good pun because like quite
01:31:55 ◼ ► literally Microsoft's entertainment stuff is Xbox, right? They are, they make games. And I think that
01:32:01 ◼ ► that is a big enough business for them that requires a lot of focus and is already on the
01:32:06 ◼ ► outside of the rest of their company to a degree. Um, I don't imagine we will see Microsoft in this
01:32:14 ◼ ► business for a long time, if ever, because they have a whole entertainment thing. They've tried
01:32:20 ◼ ► and failed to take some of their Xbox content and turn it into, um, TV shows and stuff before.
01:32:24 ◼ ► Yeah, they were going to do a halo TV show and stuff and they pulled the plug on all that stuff.
01:32:28 ◼ ► So I think they've, I think they've been there. Uh, they've been there, didn't do it right. Like
01:32:32 ◼ ► they've learned their lesson. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think that's a,
01:32:35 ◼ ► I don't think such a Nadella thinks that's a focus for them. I think there was like a Microsoft TV
01:32:40 ◼ ► product thing at one point too. Oh sure. I mean, they've tried all sorts of different things there,
01:32:44 ◼ ► but in the streaming world, it seems pretty far out of what Microsoft would be interested in doing.
01:32:52 ◼ ► You know, there's stuff you can do there. And I think they have done some stuff, but anyway,
01:32:56 ◼ ► it's, this is not a case of like what Apple's doing. No, and that's, and that's over. They,
01:33:01 ◼ ► I think they've regretted everything they've done and aren't going to do it going forward.
01:33:05 ◼ ► I would say it's highly unlikely. Uh, Coshak asks, would you personally prefer a watered down
01:33:24 ◼ ► or I use to edit some podcasts. I think it is everything. It has every feature that I need as
01:33:29 ◼ ► a podcast editor. Logic's a music app. And my, my guess would be that if logic went on the iPad
01:33:36 ◼ ► instead of the garage band, which is sort of based on logic, but if they did logic on the iPad,
01:33:40 ◼ ► their primary focus will be music features. So we might be able to use it and that might be nice.
01:33:45 ◼ ► But my guess is that any place where it's falling down on the iPad versus the Mac is going to be on
01:33:52 ◼ ► things that podcasters use because their goal is going to be to make it a music composition and
01:33:58 ◼ ► editing tool for, you know, for musicians to build and produce songs. So we might be able to use it.
01:34:05 ◼ ► Whereas ferrite is a podcast editing app. Ferrite just does exactly what I need. And so a Mac version
01:34:11 ◼ ► of that is going to be exactly what I need. So I, I would choose the product that is designed
01:34:22 ◼ ► but that I occasionally can use sneakily because it's better than the other alternatives. If that
01:34:27 ◼ ► makes any sense, like, uh, right. Apple, Apple is aware that podcasters use logic, but it doesn't
01:34:43 ◼ ► experience that I'm used to on my iPad. So I didn't have to re-learn a new tool, but I don't
01:34:48 ◼ ► think I agree with you. Like if Apple made logic for the iPad, they would probably, well, they
01:34:54 ◼ ► probably best if they, they streamlined the project, like the product in some way, which
01:34:59 ◼ ► could remove things that I'm used to, even though I'm a pretty surface level user. But anyway,
01:35:05 ◼ ► Right. Cause you're not the priority, right? So they could remove some things that are like
01:35:08 ◼ ► not big deals to their audience that kill your use of it because they're not thinking about you.
01:35:13 ◼ ► Like they could get rid of markers or something. Who knows? Right. Um, but what, what I,
01:35:18 ◼ ► what I think is that when, if and when ferrite comes to the Mac, that's probably when I will
01:35:32 ◼ ► I hope I'm not stepping out of, out of turn here, but I think the developer of ferrite has said
01:35:38 ◼ ► that they are, that he's investigating catalyst and the Mac and wants to do it. But I think there
01:35:45 ◼ ► have been no statements beyond that. And it hasn't happened yet, which would lead me to believe that
01:35:49 ◼ ► since it hasn't happened yet, it probably won't happen until the big Sur era. Right. Because if,
01:35:54 ◼ ► if it had been something that could have been done for the version of catalyst that's in Catalina,
01:35:58 ◼ ► we would have it now. So I suspect it's going to be if, if we get that much hoped for Mac version
01:36:04 ◼ ► of ferrite, it'll probably be, uh, this fall at the earliest and maybe later than that. But I, I
01:36:09 ◼ ► I'm with you. I feel like the value of being able to round trip between iPad and Mac for podcast
01:36:17 ◼ ► editing is, um, is a big deal. So for me too, cause I'm used to logic and use the logic on the
01:36:23 ◼ ► Mac all the time now. Um, but if I can take my projects and move them, just move them to the iPad,
01:36:40 ◼ ► I, for a tool like this, I would want personally to have a, at least catalyst version of it.
01:36:54 ◼ ► I want my audio editor to be an iOS port running. Like, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about
01:37:01 ◼ ► that. I would need to see a lot more about exactly how that's going to work. You know what I mean?
01:37:06 ◼ ► Yeah. But I feel like I would prefer something built for the platform that it's on if I'm going
01:37:10 ◼ ► to be producing my shows in it. Yeah. There are keyboard things, but you know, you got, um, it's
01:37:15 ◼ ► got a, uh, a project based approach where it's like all in there, the app bundle. And so there's
01:37:21 ◼ ► going to be questions of like, how do you get things in? I'm sure, I'm sure it will run on
01:37:25 ◼ ► Apple Silicon, right under iPad, iOS version. It'll just run. I'm not sure that's I'm with you.
01:37:31 ◼ ► I think that that's the beauty of catalyst. And I honestly, I think that developer is so
01:37:35 ◼ ► careful and considerate when it, when, when they're building features that, um, they wouldn't
01:37:44 ◼ ► be satisfied with just chucking out the iPad version. So I would hope that may also be a
01:37:50 ◼ ► motivator. Like, no, no, no, no, please don't run the iPad version on your Mac run this catalyst
01:37:54 ◼ ► version instead. Also, a lot of us are still using computers that are not going to be able to run,
01:37:58 ◼ ► um, those apps. Cause we're on Intel for a while, especially podcast editors. We've got our,
01:38:04 ◼ ► you know, iPad, iMac pros and stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I, I, I do think that it's less
01:38:10 ◼ ► likely I would get anything out of logic on the iPad, although I would like to see it then cattle,
01:38:15 ◼ ► then a catalyst version of ferrite. And lastly, this question comes from stitch does summer fun
01:38:21 ◼ ► come with all waving motions, I guess almost in like a muppet like fashion. Uh, for me,
01:38:27 ◼ ► it is just leaning back and shouting in the upwards direction. So I don't destroy my microphone
01:38:33 ◼ ► and your ears in the process. Yeah. I think part of the fun of the summer of fun shout is that it's
01:38:37 ◼ ► at a distance cause we're shouting up into the rafters and I, I similarly I'm sort of turning and
01:38:42 ◼ ► shouting upward and that's what it is. So I, I, I just did it and you just did it and I didn't,
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