00:00:15 ◼ ► Bombas, and Ooni Pizza Ovens. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell.
00:00:20 ◼ ► Hello, Myke Hurley. I'm present. I'm here. I'm ready. This episode, it is the calm before the storm, right?
00:00:27 ◼ ► We've got a lot of stuff going on over the next few weeks. This is the last episode before
00:00:41 ◼ ► from Nathan, and Nathan asks, "Jason, on macOS, what is the alert sound that you use? Do you use ping,
00:00:48 ◼ ► pop, or purr?" You know? I... those are all sounds that you're allowed. I don't use any of them.
00:00:57 ◼ ► I don't use a default sound. I use a custom sound. We'll put a link in the show notes to my
00:01:03 ◼ ► article on Six Colors that I wrote about this, because you can make, like, custom audio files
00:01:08 ◼ ► and save them and then use them as your own beep. You don't need to use the system beeps if you
00:01:14 ◼ ► don't want to. And the backstory here is, when I was in... we're going a long way back here...
00:01:28 ◼ ► which allowed you to put... it was really kind of evil. This is by a guy named Bruce Tomlin.
00:01:46 ◼ ► it would play a sound when you started up, it would play a sound when you chose restart,
00:01:50 ◼ ► it would play a sound when you chose shutdown, it would play a sound if you put a disc in,
00:01:54 ◼ ► it would play a sound if you ejected the disc, it would play a sound on your beep, it would play a
00:02:00 ◼ ► sound when you clicked a key, it would play a sound if you... you could have it be like you
00:02:05 ◼ ► hit the delete key, it would play a sound. This is the kind of stuff that people did on their
00:02:09 ◼ ► computers before they had the internet. Oh yeah, oh man. You had this computer and the computer
00:02:14 ◼ ► could do things, but it was only things that you could do, so you just had to find stuff to do.
00:02:20 ◼ ► Yeah, so I had, like, a college girlfriend had Hal 9000 say, "My mind is going" every time she
00:02:32 ◼ ► shut her computer down, which is pretty funny. I had, um, this is going to say a lot about who I am,
00:02:40 ◼ ► um, when I ejected a disc for a period of time, you would hear William Shatner from his album,
00:02:48 ◼ ► The Transformed Man, from the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, shouting, "And she's gone!"
00:03:03 ◼ ► although, you know, if you don't eject discs that often, then you're like, "Oh yeah, right,
00:03:07 ◼ ► that was William Shatner, right?" But if you're doing it all the time, it will make you want to
00:03:11 ◼ ► murder. So, um, the answer though is one of the sounds that came with Soundmaster that you could
00:03:18 ◼ ► use, because it came with some sound files, because it was at that point non-trivial to
00:03:23 ◼ ► make your own sound files. I eventually bought this thing called the Mac Recorder, and that's
00:03:26 ◼ ► how I got the William Shatner thing in there and all of that. But it came with a bunch of sounds.
00:03:30 ◼ ► And one of the sounds that came with Soundmaster is a person's voice saying in kind of a monotone,
00:03:37 ◼ ► "Beep." Just saying the word "beep." And I thought that was hilarious, and I made it my beep sound.
00:03:44 ◼ ► And when I left Soundmaster behind, I got that sound, I extracted that sound, and that extraction
00:03:50 ◼ ► from my Mac in the 90s has been converted various times. When we went to OS X and you had to have it
00:04:02 ◼ ► sound since I was in college, and it still is my beep sound. It is a voice saying "beep." That's it.
00:04:08 ◼ ► That's my answer. Thank you to Nathan for that great question, which went into places no one
00:04:14 ◼ ► was expecting. If you would like to submit a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade,
00:04:20 ◼ ► just send out a tweet with the hashtag #SnellTalk, and it will be potentially included in a future
00:04:25 ◼ ► episode. Thank you to everybody that does that. So I wanted to follow up a little bit on how we
00:04:30 ◼ ► opened our show last week, talking about Black Lives Matter and a lot of the issues that are
00:04:35 ◼ ► occurring in the US and elsewhere, including the protests and stuff like that. And one of the
00:04:40 ◼ ► reasons I want to bring it up again this week is that Tim Cook posted an open letter on Apple.com
00:04:44 ◼ ► talking about his feelings in regards to the current situation regarding systemic racism.
00:04:50 ◼ ► It was on the front page, right? So like all really kind of good Apple open letters, right?
00:04:56 ◼ ► When they want you to see them, they put them on Apple.com. Tim doesn't do this as much as
00:05:01 ◼ ► Steve used to. I think, well, as well, Tim does them for like things that are important to the
00:05:08 ◼ ► world. Steve used to do them for kind of like spite, right? Like the flashlights and stuff.
00:05:19 ◼ ► But there was one part in it that I wanted to highlight specifically because I thought that
00:05:24 ◼ ► it was really important, and it put into words something that I think is useful to hear. So I'll
00:05:29 ◼ ► read the quote, which is, "This is a moment when many people may want nothing more than a return
00:05:34 ◼ ► to normalcy or to a status quo that is only comfortable if we avert our gaze from injustice.
00:05:39 ◼ ► As difficult as it may be to admit, that desire is itself a sign of privilege. George Floyd's death is
00:05:46 ◼ ► shocking and tragic proof that we must aim higher than a normal future and build one that lives up
00:05:51 ◼ ► to the highest ideals of equality and justice." And I think this part is really key because it
00:05:58 ◼ ► says something that is useful to bear in mind, which is that things are starting to happen,
00:06:04 ◼ ► right? And there are some wrongs starting to be righted and changes occurring. But it's important
00:06:11 ◼ ► to remember that we don't just accept those and think it's all good, right? Oh, great. These
00:06:23 ◼ ► - Exactly. Because that's not even the fix. It's not what the problem is. They're like a level
00:06:29 ◼ ► above, right? So we need to all pay attention to and remember how we're feeling now and find ways
00:06:37 ◼ ► to continue paying attention and making change going forward. And I'm doing that. I know we're
00:06:42 ◼ ► all doing that. And I encourage other people to think of it too. If there are a bunch of things
00:06:46 ◼ ► that change stuff, that's great. But that doesn't mean the problem is solved. And I really like the
00:06:56 ◼ ► - Thank you. I wanted to mention something related to this, which is HBO had a show that just was
00:07:03 ◼ ► canceled after a couple of seasons. It was Wyatt Cenac, who is a correspondent and writer at "The
00:07:08 ◼ ► Daily Show." He was actually on an episode of "The Flop House" at one point. I remember that
00:07:16 ◼ ► Fans of "The Flop House," Hallie Haglund was the head writer for that show, who was a regular on
00:07:22 ◼ ► "The Flop House" regular guest. She's one of the greatest voices in podcasting. I love Hallie so
00:07:26 ◼ ► much. So season one of "Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas," it was a half-hour news/comedy show in
00:07:37 ◼ ► the vein of "John Oliver Show" and "The Daily Show" and things like that. And it was on HBO.
00:07:43 ◼ ► It's actually a really nice show. It's funny. Wyatt Cenac's very funny. The set design is
00:07:50 ◼ ► awesome. The graphics are great. But in season one, their big takeout piece, if you think about
00:07:57 ◼ ► "John Oliver Show," they would do an intro piece and a little interstitial, and then they would do
00:08:02 ◼ ► a long piece at the end of the show. And season one is all about the police and police reform and
00:08:09 ◼ ► police brutality and all sorts of things that are the issues that we're all grappling with now.
00:08:16 ◼ ► And he tweeted last week and said, "Hey, HBO, wouldn't it be great if, since we covered this
00:08:24 ◼ ► entire issue in season one of 'Problem Areas,' you could make those available for everybody to see?"
00:08:29 ◼ ► And he just sort of did it idly. And HBO said, "Yes, you're right." And his whole show is on HBO.
00:08:37 ◼ ► At least, I don't know if it's worldwide or if it's just in the US, but there's a playlist.
00:08:47 ◼ ► for free on YouTube. And it's a funny show, but it's also a really good dive into that topic. And
00:08:55 ◼ ► because they spent all season talking about it, they get the opportunity to spend time on all
00:09:06 ◼ ► Lots of different angles that I thought were really good. So it's a good show. I recommend it.
00:09:16 ◼ ► about this, right? I think everyone should. And it's important to keep paying attention.
00:09:19 ◼ ► And we got great feedback from some listeners. And I thought it was really nice that we can try and
00:09:26 ◼ ► all come together on this. It's super important. Next week, it's draft time. The WWDC 2020 draft
00:09:33 ◼ ► will begin on next week's episode. So both me and Jason will be working hard over the next week,
00:09:45 ◼ ► I don't know. To do battle. I'm really excited. The draft is, I think, honestly, at this point,
00:09:55 ◼ ► - Which, that isn't a surprise to me, though, right? Like, for me, I love all the weird stuff
00:10:08 ◼ ► - I love that it's a little injection of normalcy into our weird world that we live in right now.
00:10:14 ◼ ► That it's like, oh, yeah, right. Remember drafts and Apple events? So I guess I got to start
00:10:21 ◼ ► planning my plan of attack. - It's the big one. I'm very excited. So that's going to be next week's
00:10:26 ◼ ► show. And the week after will be our post-keynote show. So it's all happening. - Yeah. What's that
00:10:31 ◼ ► going to be like? - I have a couple of coronavirus-related topics I want to just bring up really
00:10:37 ◼ ► quick about the way Apple is continuing to respond to COVID-19. Don't forget that's still out there.
00:10:47 ◼ ► Italy and Latvia have both launched apps that take advantage of the Exposure Notification API.
00:10:53 ◼ ► So these are now running, right? Like, they're available. I was actually talking to Federico
00:10:57 ◼ ► earlier. He's downloaded it and is using the one in Italy. It's the first person I know,
00:11:11 ◼ ► and the Italian notification app had detailed instructions about how to use it in English. I
00:11:16 ◼ ► thought that was very impressive. - Oh, that's really nice. I didn't think of that, but that's
00:11:19 ◼ ► a really good point. Still hoping that more people are going to take advantage of this. I've been
00:11:24 ◼ ► seeing some people talking over the last few days. It's a very good point. With everything that's
00:11:28 ◼ ► going on right now in the world on top of the coronavirus stuff, I think for certain people,
00:11:50 ◼ ► got these apps up and running. And then I also saw a report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg
00:12:03 ◼ ► So there's a couple of things that I'll just highlight. Some people started to return in May.
00:12:09 ◼ ► Apple is offering optional COVID-19 tests for those employees. They are requiring temperature
00:12:16 ◼ ► checks that people only work a few days a week in the office. They're enforcing social distancing.
00:12:21 ◼ ► One detail on this, which is interesting, I hadn't considered before. Only two people in an elevator
00:12:27 ◼ ► at a time. Elevators are like, "Oh, yeah, you're super close to people." So Elevators are going to
00:12:33 ◼ ► be a weird one for a while. And then Apple is also requesting their employees to wear masks
00:12:38 ◼ ► in the office too. So that's kind of what they're doing. There's nothing groundbreaking here.
00:12:47 ◼ ► she's a librarian. They returned to their workplace last week. And it was half the staff
00:12:56 ◼ ► at a time alternating half at home, half in the library, socially distanced, wearing masks.
00:13:01 ◼ ► It's not back to normal. It's back to a seriously modified kind of thing and trying to figure out
00:13:07 ◼ ► the best way to get some people back in the office without putting them at risk. So everybody's trying
00:13:19 ◼ ► increases in incidents of the virus. So everybody's just going to watch and hopefully do the right
00:13:26 ◼ ► things to not spread it around. There has to be some kind of level, right, that's in between
00:13:33 ◼ ► where we were before and where we've been for the last few months. Yeah, ideally you want to go from
00:13:39 ◼ ► complete shutdown to something that's safe but a little bit more open in order to kind of ride it
00:13:43 ◼ ► out, I think. Yeah, and everyone's got to work together on it. This is something that we're only
00:13:49 ◼ ► going to get through if we all pull together. So there's a lot of that going around right now.
00:13:53 ◼ ► Upstream, let's do some headlines in streaming media. Apple have hired Jim DiLorenzo away from
00:14:07 ◼ ► DiLorenzo is a sports person and they will be heading up sports for Apple TV+ according to
00:14:13 ◼ ► Peter Kufka. Yeah, so he was involved in a lot of Amazon's kind of, they've done some experimentation
00:14:21 ◼ ► with sports and with live sports and deals with sports. They did some, they've got some Premier
00:14:26 ◼ ► League deals in the UK. They've done some NFL deals in the US. And for this guy to go to Apple,
00:14:32 ◼ ► we, now I want to just not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but we had a conversation a few
00:14:37 ◼ ► weeks ago on Upstream about live sports as a potential target based on a different report for
00:14:43 ◼ ► Apple. And the idea that there are lots of sports rights that are coming up and there are a lot of
00:14:47 ◼ ► sports entities that are really excited about the idea that different streaming services are going
00:14:51 ◼ ► to lead to an even bigger kind of feeding frenzy where they're going to make even more money because
00:14:56 ◼ ► the streamers are going to want to get people to basically force them to subscribe to their stream
00:15:03 ◼ ► to get their live sports that they want. And that is potentially a big trend. This is also why all
00:15:09 ◼ ► the cable companies, the earlier part of the last decade, spent huge amounts of money for long-term
00:15:15 ◼ ► deals with a lot of sports properties because they were afraid that there would be cord cutting and
00:15:22 ◼ ► that their hedge against it was live sports. So live sports is one of those things that if you
00:15:24 ◼ ► don't care about sports, you know, you don't care about it. But for a large number of people,
00:15:29 ◼ ► live sports is one of the few levers that you can use to force people into a particular provider
00:15:37 ◼ ► because they have a favorite team or a favorite sport. And they, you know, it's one thing to say,
00:15:43 ◼ ► "Oh, well, there's this TV show I heard was good, but I'm not going to watch it." But if it's like,
00:15:46 ◼ ► it's your favorite team and now they're only over here. The power is enormous. And then also,
00:15:54 ◼ ► keep in mind that it's also like live TV versus on-demand. And that's a different profile because
00:15:59 ◼ ► you want to watch that live. So this is going to be, if the rush to create streaming services was
00:16:05 ◼ ► the story of the last few years, and now we're kind of in that era where everybody's kind of got that
00:16:09 ◼ ► and they're all going to be battling, I feel like the story of the next five years, at least in part,
00:16:14 ◼ ► is going to be over exclusive stuff like sports deals because that's one way that you get people
00:16:20 ◼ ► to sign up for Apple TV Plus is to say, "If you want to watch whatever it is, you have to sign
00:16:26 ◼ ► up for Apple TV Plus." I will also say, there is a positive here for consumers, which is some sports
00:16:32 ◼ ► stuff isn't accessible. Famously, and they just changed this, but in LA for the last few years,
00:16:40 ◼ ► most people in LA couldn't watch the Dodgers on TV because the Dodgers, the baseball team in LA,
00:16:45 ◼ ► by the way, they signed an exclusive agreement with one cable company and that cable company
00:16:51 ◼ ► tried to extort a big fee out of the other cable companies in LA and they had a dispute and many,
00:17:00 ◼ ► many, many people in LA just couldn't get their local team. Or the NFL package that lets you see
00:17:06 ◼ ► any NFL game live, not just the one that's being shown in your local market, was sold to DirecTV,
00:17:13 ◼ ► which is a satellite provider, so if you had cable, you couldn't see it. You literally had
00:17:17 ◼ ► to put a satellite dish on your roof if you wanted to see it. So we've seen companies use sports as
00:17:23 ◼ ► leverage to get people onto their platform before, but also a streaming service, the barrier is less.
00:17:32 ◼ ► You don't have to install hardware, it doesn't matter where you live, you can sign up for the
00:17:36 ◼ ► streaming service. So on that level, it's not great because it's like, "I don't want to sign
00:17:40 ◼ ► up for the streaming service that I don't actually want, but my favorite team is on it." I get that.
00:17:44 ◼ ► I do prefer, though, the idea that I can just sign up for a streaming service for the season and then
00:17:49 ◼ ► cancel it, then I need to install something on my roof or move to a place where the cable company
00:17:55 ◼ ► shows my team, because those are not great. So we've got to keep an eye on this because I think
00:18:00 ◼ ► it's very clear now that Apple is going to make a play for live sports. We talked about them buying
00:18:04 ◼ ► a catalog and old stuff, and maybe that's not their strategy, but their strategy is original
00:18:16 ◼ ► to head up a sports division, you at least have some plans to do something related to sports.
00:18:31 ◼ ► and you probably don't need a sports person for that part of the division. It's a different idea.
00:18:36 ◼ ► MATT: Yeah, and there's lots of different sports out there. I mean, there's the major sports in
00:18:40 ◼ ► America, but they're also the off-brand sports. So that's, do they sign a deal to do the NFL in
00:18:46 ◼ ► Europe? Do they sign a deal to do the, you know, Bundesliga in America, right? Like, there's a lot
00:18:52 ◼ ► of different angles to take here, but as when they hired those two guys from Sony to do original
00:19:00 ◼ ► programming, we knew they were going to do original programming, and this looks very much like
00:19:09 ◼ ► MATT and if they're able to even get the deals that they want, right? Like, they can have all the intention that they like, but maybe
00:19:24 ◼ ► because John Oliver got that, so they're going to have to wait for the next cycle of sponsorship for
00:19:29 ◼ ► MATT There's a new Apple TV+ show called "Dear...". It's been released. I hadn't heard about this.
00:19:37 ◼ ► I don't know if Apple had announced this one before now. It seems like it is probably a relatively
00:19:43 ◼ ► small production. It was influenced by their Apple Watch marketing campaign. Do you remember the ads
00:19:49 ◼ ► they did where they featured letters written by customers talking about how the Watch changed
00:19:54 ◼ ► their lives? This is particularly notable because two upgrade listeners have been featured in those
00:19:58 ◼ ► ads, which is a funny thing. This series features stars like Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Wonder, and Lin-Manuel
00:20:04 ◼ ► Miranda, and it features letters from fans whose lives have been impacted by these individuals.
00:20:10 ◼ ► So, I guess I haven't seen the show yet, but I can imagine what it is they read a letter and
00:20:15 ◼ ► talk about it. This feels, from a conceptual standpoint, a lot more akin to the stuff that
00:20:31 ◼ ► RYAN Yeah, just like from where the idea came from, it's not like the HBO level of... I mean,
00:20:40 ◼ ► the show, I bet, is really heartwarming and can be good, but I just mean from where the idea
00:20:47 ◼ ► came from doesn't really feel the same as, like, For All Mankind, right? It's a different level of
00:20:55 ◼ ► TV. This is less prestige TV, right, which is what they've been trying to do, it seems,
00:20:59 ◼ ► with their other stuff. I just found that interesting. I guess they just figured, like,
00:21:04 ◼ ► "Oh, we have these creators that we have these relationships with, we had this great idea,
00:21:10 ◼ ► why don't we just put these two things together?" It was just intriguing to me that, one, it came
00:21:26 ◼ ► MATT: Yeah, I agree. That's a weird one, but hey, you know, you need to... You're programming
00:21:33 ◼ ► a spread of stuff, right? To appeal to different audiences and all of that. Like, I get it. I get
00:21:37 ◼ ► it. It's not my cup of tea. RYAN And Netflix has purchased the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood.
00:21:43 ◼ ► RYAN There's a bunch of details in this, but I guess the point is, they can now show their movies
00:21:48 ◼ ► in a theater, they can now get into the Oscars. MATT Yeah, so this is a beautifully restored
00:21:53 ◼ ► historic theater. It was built in the '20s, I want to say, and about 10 years ago, an organization
00:22:05 ◼ ► undisclosed sum to Netflix. I hope they made some money on this. I think that that would be great,
00:22:14 ◼ ► it seems like, I mean, how often... Netflix does have movies a lot, though, right? Like,
00:22:19 ◼ ► this could literally be the Netflix movie theater, where if you want to see a Netflix movie,
00:22:23 ◼ ► you can go to the Netflix movie theater, which is the Egyptian, and it also means that every single
00:22:28 ◼ ► movie that they show there will have a qualifying run for the Academy Awards, which is sort of the
00:22:32 ◼ ► point, although I think it's a fun idea. MATT Wouldn't it be cool if you could see movies for
00:22:39 ◼ ► RYAN That would be cool. Like, sign up and get a ticket and all of that, but I like the idea
00:22:43 ◼ ► that... And you know, you got to pay for popcorn or something. But I also like the idea of going to
00:22:49 ◼ ► filmmakers about Netflix and saying, "Yes, Netflix is buying this, and this is going to be a Netflix
00:22:55 ◼ ► original, but we will have at least our one theater. We'll have a theatrical run. If you
00:23:05 ◼ ► RYAN Exactly right. Like, do that, and then it appears on Netflix, too, but we also did that.
00:23:11 ◼ ► It's interesting. I wonder if they're going to do any... Because it was retrofit to do revivals and
00:23:16 ◼ ► old prints and stuff like that, if their plan is to program the theater but also have it in their
00:23:22 ◼ ► back pocket to screen movies, or if it's literally going to become Netflix's Egyptian Theater and
00:23:27 ◼ ► it's just, you know, it's the lovebirds this week. MATT So it's actually a bit of both. So
00:23:33 ◼ ► they... The company American Cinematheque, the organization that bought the theater to restore
00:23:44 ◼ ► RYAN Oh, good. So there you go. MATT Their own content, and then Netflix will also be...
00:23:48 ◼ ► RYAN So the revival... Yeah, because they can play, like, nitrate film and stuff there,
00:23:52 ◼ ► which is super rare and old and flammable. So that's great. So basically, Netflix has a venue
00:23:58 ◼ ► that they can use when they want to put something in for a award competition, but otherwise, it's
00:24:02 ◼ ► also still going to be a venue, because it's a huge, classic movie house for classic movies.
00:24:10 ◼ ► That's awesome. But yes, Netflix is... Everybody... Soon, every streaming service will own a
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00:25:42 ◼ ► actually need to make some pizza dough this week so that we can have more pizzas. And the thing
00:25:45 ◼ ► about it is I've been cooking in my oven on a pizza stone for a couple of decades now. It's
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00:27:51 ◼ ► to have the opportunity really to talk about wishes without there being competition involved.
00:28:02 ◼ ► focus on the platform that could be argued and I believe deserves the most love this year,
00:28:08 ◼ ► which is iPad OS because it's the newest platform if you're going to consider it that, right? Like
00:28:14 ◼ ► it's a brand new platform and the iPad has a lot of places that it can gain to give it,
00:28:21 ◼ ► to really make it what it should be and what people want it to be. Yeah, I think the truth is that
00:28:25 ◼ ► the iPad has this really interesting combination of being a fairly young platform and also have a
00:28:33 ◼ ► very ambitious platform. And so even though Apple Watch is a younger platform and iPhone is not that
00:28:39 ◼ ► much older, like first off the iPhone took the brunt of the focus of iOS development for a long
00:28:45 ◼ ► time and the watch is not quite as ambitious in a lot of ways. There's not to say that there aren't
00:28:51 ◼ ► things that could be improved about the watch because it absolutely could be, but I look at
00:28:56 ◼ ► the iPad specifically and I think it's this combination where Apple is really trying to
00:29:02 ◼ ► make it a more professional platform on the iPad Pro end and it just seems like there's the most
00:29:09 ◼ ► space for them. Of all of Apple's platforms, it's the one that I look at and say, "I could write a
00:29:16 ◼ ► list a mile long of things that you should do on this platform." And they can't do them all,
00:29:26 ◼ ► So I put a link in the show notes to an actual wish list that you spoke about. Macworld and also
00:29:34 ◼ ► there's an episode of App Stories that I enjoyed recently where Federico and Joan went through
00:29:38 ◼ ► theirs and I'm kind of putting a lot of that stuff, some of my own thoughts together and
00:29:42 ◼ ► we'll just talk about a few key areas that could see some love and we would love to see.
00:29:57 ◼ ► that we have really great cursor support on iPadOS now. It's rock solid, super thought well from the
00:30:04 ◼ ► ground up. It's got basically all the features that you would want. I'm super happy with it.
00:30:09 ◼ ► I don't have any real improvements that I would want from the cursor, but the keyboard is an area
00:30:15 ◼ ► that could see some additional love and care like the cursor got. We have great keyboard options,
00:30:21 ◼ ► the hardware keyboards are great. The fact that we can connect USB keyboards, Bluetooth keyboards,
00:30:26 ◼ ► you can go wild with it. I think it would be great to see the keyboard more embraced across the
00:30:31 ◼ ► entire system. So allowing us to have keyboard shortcuts and stuff like that, but more than the
00:30:37 ◼ ► shortcuts that we have inside of applications. Right? Yeah, I want user assignable keyboard
00:30:45 ◼ ► shortcuts. And right now you can do that, but only with the modifier keys. And there's a very small
00:30:50 ◼ ► number of things that you can choose. So like you can re-modify the globe to be the escape key or
00:30:54 ◼ ► something like that. It's a nice start, but given that Apple's two iPad keyboards don't have a
00:31:01 ◼ ► function row, I really want at the very least, like minimum Apple needs to let me assign keyboard
00:31:09 ◼ ► shortcuts for media control and screen brightness and on the magic keyboard backlight brightness.
00:31:16 ◼ ► Like there need to be keyboard shortcuts. If they're not the function keys, which they're not
00:31:22 ◼ ► because they don't exist, they need to go somewhere. And I'd actually like it to be more
00:31:26 ◼ ► than that. I'd actually like Apple to allow you to assign all sorts of other functions to system-wide
00:31:32 ◼ ► keyboard shortcuts. And I know that that's complicated, but this is a major iPad OS update.
00:31:36 ◼ ► So now's the time to do it and put down the rules of like, what happens if an app wants to have a
00:31:43 ◼ ► particular shortcut, but it's been assigned? Do they mark off a certain set of keys and say,
00:31:48 ◼ ► don't use these in your apps or something like that? Or, you know, there's not like there isn't
00:31:52 ◼ ► complexity here, but the Mac handles it. And I use those assignments on the Mac all the time. I don't
00:32:00 ◼ ► actually adjust my media controls with function keys. I use different keyboard shortcuts that I've
00:32:05 ◼ ► been using for a long time. So I would really like it if Apple would in some way expand to have
00:32:12 ◼ ► system-wide keyboard shortcuts that are user assignable. And then on top of that, yes, I would
00:32:16 ◼ ► also like to be able to assign those to shortcuts, right? So that I could also have some sort of
00:32:21 ◼ ► automation that I can just fire off with a keyboard shortcut. But even if it was the minimum of like,
00:32:25 ◼ ► you press the globe key, you can set it so the globe key is a function key, and then the numbers
00:32:31 ◼ ► become function keys. So I could do, you know, globe six, adjust the volume or whatever they are,
00:32:38 ◼ ► right? So I feel like that's the, it's great that they brought the cursor support essentially forward
00:32:43 ◼ ► from iOS 14 in order to get it out the door for this new product, but like the keyboards still
00:32:48 ◼ ► aren't, you know, there's been no movement there. So that's like the easiest thing, not necessarily
00:32:55 ◼ ► to implement, but the easiest thing to look at and say what's lacking, especially when you've got a
00:33:00 ◼ ► brand new keyboard and trackpad product like they do is the keyboard's not as functional as it
00:33:04 ◼ ► should be. - Yeah, and there are so many areas you could go with it, and it can be purely hidden to
00:33:12 ◼ ► most users, right? Like this could just be a very much pro user thing, and that's great. - Off by
00:33:20 ◼ ► default. - Yep, give us some of those, right? Like this is something that Greg Federighi,
00:33:25 ◼ ► I think he spoke about with Federico on the interview last year when at WWDC on AppStories,
00:33:32 ◼ ► where I think he was talking a little bit about, and I think maybe he spoke about this too
00:33:37 ◼ ► on the talk show, just about the idea that some things can be discoverable easily by the user,
00:33:42 ◼ ► and some things aren't, and it's fine to have both. - Although I would argue that holding down the
00:33:47 ◼ ► globe key and then pressing numbers is even sort of discoverable, or at least easily teachable. I
00:33:53 ◼ ► don't know why that's not a default for the smart keyboard and the magic keyboard, that if you
00:33:58 ◼ ► tap and hold, you hold down that globe key, and then you can quickly adjust volume and stuff like
00:34:03 ◼ ► that. I don't know why they didn't do that, but here we go. Friend of the show, Gee Rambo, did a
00:34:09 ◼ ► whole Twitter thread that was great, where he basically mocked up an interactive emoji picker
00:34:13 ◼ ► for iPadOS, because one of my frustrations with emoji input, especially if you're using a keyboard,
00:34:19 ◼ ► but in general, it's not a very good emoji picker. There are lots of emoji now, and it's hard to find
00:34:25 ◼ ► the one that you want. And he did a beautiful example of using essentially the emoji keyboard
00:34:31 ◼ ► shortcut from macOS to bring up a picker where you can then type in the name of the emoji and
00:34:37 ◼ ► select it and have it automatically insert where you're typing. And that's absolutely how it should
00:34:43 ◼ ► work, especially with a keyboard on iPadOS. So we'll throw that in there too as a keyboard
00:34:47 ◼ ► improvement. Emoji input ought to be way easier than it is now. So talking about keyboard
00:34:53 ◼ ► shortcuts, let's talk about actual shortcuts, the application itself. It's almost a meme at
00:34:58 ◼ ► this point, but folders and organization and shortcuts would be a wonderful thing at this point.
00:35:05 ◼ ► I would take filters on color or tags or whatever. They're like, "No, no, no, folders are old, man.
00:35:12 ◼ ► Now every shortcut can have a color," and it already does, "and a tag, and then you can filter
00:35:16 ◼ ► on those." That's fine. Just give me an organizational principle of some sort so I don't
00:35:21 ◼ ► have this giant list of shortcuts that's just kind of in a big bin, which is what it is now. And I
00:35:26 ◼ ► don't even have that many compared to people like Federico. But yes, and larger than that,
00:35:32 ◼ ► beyond folders, it's things like if you make shortcuts, if you come up with a really clever
00:35:37 ◼ ► chain of 10 items that does a thing and you're like, "Wow, I could use this in a different
00:35:48 ◼ ► you literally can't select all those items and duplicate them. You can't select them all and
00:35:53 ◼ ► then option drag or whatever or copy them and then paste them. It can't be done. The only way you can
00:35:58 ◼ ► really do it is if you're making a new shortcut, you can duplicate the old shortcut in order to
00:36:02 ◼ ► get all of those things and then build your new shortcut around it. It's ridiculous. So,
00:36:08 ◼ ► you know, that's the kind of thing. Also, sharing should be easier. I'm glad they have sharing
00:36:12 ◼ ► because for a while, I think in betas it was gone, but you have to go into the settings and then flip
00:36:17 ◼ ► this super scary sounding switch. It's like, "Danger! People can run things on your iPad.
00:36:22 ◼ ► It's scary." I wish that that was a friendlier kind of thing. And also the one that kills me
00:36:29 ◼ ► and has killed me since the beginning, since it was an app called Workflow, which is, you know,
00:36:35 ◼ ► I appreciate the transparency of when you tap on a shortcut. It opens the shortcuts app and shows you
00:36:41 ◼ ► every single step scrolling by really fast as it runs the shortcut. That's great. I want a little
00:36:47 ◼ ► switch that says, "I don't need to see this. Just run it. I don't need to see the source code of my
00:36:53 ◼ ► apps as I use them scrolling past." Right? Like, I don't need that. So having the ability to,
00:36:59 ◼ ► as a user option, not show all the details of the shortcut as I'm running it, but just do the thing
00:37:06 ◼ ► that I want to do. Yeah, that's why I really love the widget because if you can activate something
00:37:11 ◼ ► from the widget, there's just a little progress bar that fills up and it just does the thing.
00:37:15 ◼ ► I agree. It's the fastest way to run a shortcut, honestly. Oh, trust me, I have built shortcuts
00:37:22 ◼ ► that are meant to be run from a widget. And when you run them by pressing play, even if you run
00:37:27 ◼ ► them, tapping on them in shortcuts versus pressing play while you're in the list, like the scrolling
00:37:33 ◼ ► by thing, it's way slower, right? Because it's going to have to display all the code as you're
00:37:40 ◼ ► going. It's like, "I don't need to see that. I just don't." So I hope that we've, in the life cycle of
00:37:45 ◼ ► shortcuts, there was like the, "Hey, we're now part of Apple. Let's do the basic things to run and
00:37:50 ◼ ► ship with the system." And then the next step was, "We're going to make the language of shortcuts
00:37:55 ◼ ► simpler by having kind of nouns and verbs." Great. That was last year. This year, I'm hoping that
00:38:01 ◼ ► it's the kind of user interface consolidation step that happens where they get, in addition to,
00:38:08 ◼ ► hopefully, keyboard shortcut activation, the ability to just make it easier to make and
00:38:12 ◼ ► organize these things. Yeah. I would like automation to be pushed a little bit further.
00:38:24 ◼ ► That's a great one. For example, if I say to shortcuts, "Oh, hey, every time you see an item
00:38:32 ◼ ► on this calendar, run this shortcut." So then every time I sit down to record a podcast, I've
00:38:39 ◼ ► already got everything set. It's already running all my time as my phone's already on, do not
00:38:43 ◼ ► disturb because it's looking at the calendar for me. And doing those things, you can have it
00:38:50 ◼ ► be really slow to start. Stuff like calendar events, email, things that Apple can control
00:38:55 ◼ ► to a degree if you want to take baby steps into this. But allowing shortcuts to really operate
00:39:01 ◼ ► and work on its own whilst also not telling me, "Don't give me a notification that I have to tap
00:39:07 ◼ ► or whatever to make it work." Just take that next step and go a bit further. I mean, and while we're
00:39:12 ◼ ► also talking about shortcuts, before I forget, give me shortcuts on the Mac too, please. I would like
00:39:16 ◼ ► that. Yeah, sure. I will also say recurring events is a thing that shortcuts really lacks right now.
00:39:22 ◼ ► The idea, and I see that people ask, "Can I do this thing where a shortcut waits for this thing
00:39:27 ◼ ► to happen and then acts?" And the answer is no, you can't. You can't with a very limited set of
00:39:33 ◼ ► things. You can't say, "I have a shortcut that checks for a status of something. And if the
00:39:38 ◼ ► status is true, it does something. And I want that to fire off, it's what on a computer we would call
00:39:44 ◼ ► like a cron job or something. I want to fire it off every half hour. Or I want to fire it off
00:39:49 ◼ ► every 15 minutes between the hours of this. Or I want it to fire off every four hours. Or I want
00:39:54 ◼ ► to fire it off at two and four and 6 p.m." I have these home automations that are incredibly detailed
00:40:03 ◼ ► and I can only run them one time a day. I can say like, "At 3 p.m., do this." And that's really bad
00:40:11 ◼ ► because you can't even duplicate home automations. So I can't duplicate it and make another one at 2
00:40:15 ◼ ► p.m. and another one at 1 p.m. But it's just, ugh. So stuff like that that makes really,
00:40:21 ◼ ► for automations to work, sometimes you do need automations that can repeat and check for a status
00:40:27 ◼ ► of something. Or even better yet, be fired off, as you say, fired off when something happens, which
00:40:43 ◼ ► CHUCK LAMBERT >> I am not as angry about multitasking interface than as other people are.
00:40:54 ◼ ► Like, my big one is the clarity over keyboard focus and having better keyboard, to go back
00:41:01 ◼ ► to keyboards for a bit, you know, better keyboard multitasking. So the idea that I could not only see
00:41:08 ◼ ► which app, if I'm in split view, is active and that my keyboard, my key commands are going to go to,
00:41:13 ◼ ► but also to be able to toggle between them. So it's like, "Oh, I'm over in Safari right now. I
00:41:20 ◼ ► want to be in Notes," you know, and do something to get over there. And you can't really do that
00:41:30 ◼ ► I don't like the multi-window thing that is built. And if they want to do a rethink of multitasking,
00:41:35 ◼ ► I'll welcome it. Like, I would love to see it. I don't think multitasking is great right now. But
00:41:41 ◼ ► maybe I'm just trying to compromise and be realistic about it and say, "I really want them to
00:41:47 ◼ ► fix some of the very annoying things about it." But if they've got a new concept for it, I'm all
00:41:54 ◼ ► ears. I'm ready to hear it. MATT PORTER >> Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's iOS 14. I would expect
00:41:59 ◼ ► some refinements in iOS 14. But if Apple truly are working on an overhaul of the system,
00:42:05 ◼ ► I think that that is further down the line. I do genuinely expect there to be some things that
00:42:13 ◼ ► are tidied up or highlighted in different ways. But I don't expect there to be a big sweeping
00:42:19 ◼ ► change. It just seems like it's not now, honestly. And that would be such a large thing
00:42:26 ◼ ► that I could even imagine them kind of like what happened with a bunch of things that we got in the
00:42:33 ◼ ► first iPad OS and the cursor support of like, this was supposed to be in 14, but they've ended up
00:42:39 ◼ ► pushing it because it's too large. You know, and the rumors, the thing we're going to talk about
00:42:43 ◼ ► next, which is like changes to the home screen, was apparently going to be in 13, but they pushed
00:42:47 ◼ ► it because it's so large. I would be really surprised to see Apple make significant changes
00:42:52 ◼ ► to the home screen and multitasking in the same release. I think they would pick one and do that.
00:42:59 ◼ ► It would surprise me to see all of that change in one, because that's at that point, you basically
00:43:05 ◼ ► feel like you're using a completely different operating system to the one that you had before,
00:43:09 ◼ ► might be a bit too much. One of the things that you can sometimes see with Apple is that they
00:43:15 ◼ ► will bring a suite of features in because they're all kind of like connected. So you'll be like,
00:43:20 ◼ ► well, why did they add this? Oh, it's because they also added this. And there's an item that's
00:43:25 ◼ ► later on our list, which is about the famous sort of, what if they support an external display? So
00:43:30 ◼ ► you can put a big screen attached to an iPad. And now that you've got keyboard and mouse support,
00:43:35 ◼ ► you don't have to just mirror it. You can just run your app on that. And I actually run into this
00:43:41 ◼ ► sometimes when I'm using my 12.9-inch iPad Pro in a vertical orientation, which is, I sometimes
00:43:50 ◼ ► think, why can't I just run apps at top and bottom instead of side to side? Why can't I do that?
00:43:57 ◼ ► Oh, that's a very good point. Right? So that, well, and this is the thing is then I look at my
00:44:04 ◼ ► giant, you know, iMac screen here and I think about a big screen, maybe not this big for an
00:44:09 ◼ ► iPad as an external display. And I think, well, if you're going to do external display support,
00:44:14 ◼ ► are you going to force people to only run one or two apps side by side left and right? Or would
00:44:21 ◼ ► you maybe let people cut up the screen a little bit differently? And I could probably make a case
00:44:26 ◼ ► that that would be, you know, if you're going to do external display support, maybe you add the
00:44:30 ◼ ► ability to have some more, some sort of different ways to organize your multitasking, but not,
00:44:36 ◼ ► not necessarily a total multitasking overhaul as much as a, you know, we're going to let you
00:44:42 ◼ ► subdivide the iPad screen top and bottom and on external displays, you're going to be able
00:44:48 ◼ ► to subdivide it a couple of different ways. So you could run four things at once or two things
00:44:52 ◼ ► at once or whatever it is. I could maybe see that, but I agree with you that it seems that would be a
00:44:58 ◼ ► lot in a period where I think they're going to want to not bite off more than they can chew right now
00:45:04 ◼ ► to redesign the home screen and multitasking does seem like a lot. I will touch on the external
00:45:09 ◼ ► display support thing. I would really like that personally, like to be much more than it is now,
00:45:14 ◼ ► whether it's like a second screen. They got all the pieces now. You can literally dock your iPad
00:45:19 ◼ ► to a docking station with a keyboard and a mouse and run the apps and have it all work and make
00:45:23 ◼ ► sense. So I would be honestly, I would be shocked if this isn't in there because everything they did
00:45:31 ◼ ► in the last cycle enabled this. So why, why not do it? Unless they feel like there are some serious
00:45:38 ◼ ► multitasking issues and they don't want to deal with those right now. Because I guess I would get
00:45:42 ◼ ► that, but yeah, it's time. Not everybody's going to want to do that. Again, the whole story of the
00:45:48 ◼ ► iPad is about it being a flexible computing device and Federico uses it in a bunch of different ways
00:45:55 ◼ ► and I use it in some different ways. And one of the ways that he uses it that I don't is docked.
00:45:59 ◼ ► But right now the docking experience at a desk is not great to an external monitor and they could
00:46:07 ◼ ► fix that pretty. And then that just expands the number of use cases for the iPad. If you do that,
00:46:11 ◼ ► you can now, you know, you got your keyboard and trackpad, you've got it as a touch tablet,
00:46:15 ◼ ► you got it with the Apple pencil, and now you've got it at a desk with a big monitor. That's great.
00:46:18 ◼ ► Fantastic. And so then the home screen changes, um, stuff like widgets, documents. I would really
00:46:24 ◼ ► love to see the iPad OS home screen become a mix between the best of iOS and the best of macOS.
00:46:33 ◼ ► Like the ability to have app icons, but then also folders from files just on the desktop and then
00:46:41 ◼ ► some interactive, really usable widgets that I can use basically elements of applications without
00:46:48 ◼ ► opening the application. Like I would love a text entry box for my to do manager and my calendar
00:46:54 ◼ ► just on the home screen. Right. So I can just enter those in and really make the iPad OS
00:47:00 ◼ ► home screen much more of a destination to do things than just a place to open applications.
00:47:07 ◼ ► That's what I would like to see. That's great. And you could see how they might do that by sort of
00:47:12 ◼ ► expanding what a widget is capable of so that it's just, it's more, you can, you can do more with
00:47:18 ◼ ► widgets than, you know, now that, especially now that you can put widgets, it's only last year that
00:47:23 ◼ ► you could put widgets on the home screen. So that was a start. Yeah, it was definitely a start, but
00:47:28 ◼ ► it's not enough. Right? Like this should take some serious rethinking and some of it should find its
00:47:33 ◼ ► way to the iPhone too. You know, this, this model of, of these grids of applications that are forced
00:47:41 ◼ ► to fit in a certain way and they cannot be adapted like that, that model, I think is time for a
00:47:47 ◼ ► change. It's been long enough that we've had that. And there are real useful things you could do.
00:47:53 ◼ ► It's not just change for the sake of change, but there could be significant improvements
00:48:03 ◼ ► I mentioned the files kind of like adding maybe files or documents to, to the home screen.
00:48:19 ◼ ► I was just going to say that the files app, like I don't even think I have a list this year
00:48:30 ◼ ► My request for the files app is it needs to work. It needs to work better. It's, it's unreliable.
00:48:36 ◼ ► It's messy. It just needs love. It needs to be better. It feels slow. And, and you know,
00:48:42 ◼ ► when you use finder, you just feel like you're in control of the file system. When I use files,
00:48:48 ◼ ► I feel like I am using the file system, but dragging it through molasses. Like everything
00:48:54 ◼ ► is more slow. Everything needs more taps. You know, you end up with these weird windows that
00:48:59 ◼ ► pop up and stuff, stuff stops working. Yeah. Things just are completely unreliable. And then
00:49:04 ◼ ► you don't know how to get there and you have to remove like a server and add it back in and you
00:49:09 ◼ ► drag things from one place to another, hoping they'll copy. But there is often no feedback
00:49:20 ◼ ► instances than others. Like if you're just on your iPad, dragging to different folders,
00:49:25 ◼ ► it's pretty straightforward, but if you're using a network or a cloud or something like that,
00:49:30 ◼ ► it's just a mess. And so I'm glad they added all those features last year. It's great. Thank you.
00:49:35 ◼ ► Just make it better. Just make it more reliable. I just want to rely on it and have it work with
00:49:40 ◼ ► all of my stuff. And I know where the files are and I know I can add a favorite that is a folder
00:49:45 ◼ ► on my server and it stays there and doesn't vanish sometimes. And so that I can never use favorites.
00:49:51 ◼ ► That's been a case favorites in the files apps been broken for years now. So yeah, better. How
00:49:57 ◼ ► about that better? Just make it better. Has gotten consistently better every year, right? From not
00:50:02 ◼ ► having it to having it and then having the improvements. But it started at such a low point.
00:50:08 ◼ ► There's still is so much more needed for this part of the operating system, which is a very
00:50:13 ◼ ► important part of the operating system. Um, I'm happy that it exists, but I definitely want
00:50:24 ◼ ► any significant Apple made pro apps? Well, my expectations will be revealed in the draft next
00:50:30 ◼ ► week, Myke, but I don't know. I, you know, part, part of me once, um, a sign, like I'm not going
00:50:39 ◼ ► to use X code or, you know, alternate name for iPad based development tool on, I'm not going to
00:50:46 ◼ ► use it, but I, I would welcome it. I would welcome it. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't have to be
00:50:51 ◼ ► final cut. It doesn't have to be logic. It could be X code or X code for iPad, which is a subset.
00:50:58 ◼ ► Yada, yada, yada. I just want to see Apple make a commitment to pro apps instead of what they
00:51:06 ◼ ► currently have, which is garage band and I movie and Swift playgrounds, right? Like if you believe
00:51:14 ◼ ► your platform is pro, why are your pro apps not on it? So I hope they will make the commitment
00:51:20 ◼ ► to at least one of those, but if I had to put money down, well, we'll see next week. But right
00:51:25 ◼ ► now my, I just, I, I, it hasn't happened yet, so I'm really pessimistic about it, but I hope I'm
00:51:32 ◼ ► wrong. Um, in my Mac world story, I mentioned the terminal too, which is, I know it's wild.
00:51:36 ◼ ► That one was a surprise to me. And people are like, well, you can't do that because of security.
00:51:41 ◼ ► It's like, I don't know. I mean, there's ISH, which is a, which is a third party, uh, app that,
00:51:47 ◼ ► that basically has emulating a PC and it's got a sandbox and it's got access to the file sandbox.
00:51:53 ◼ ► So you can see files on the file system, but, and then you're running, you know, Unix commands
00:51:59 ◼ ► inside it. Like Apple could build a terminal, which would be very helpful for a lot of developers,
00:52:06 ◼ ► actually. Um, that was secure inside iPadOS if they wanted to. And it's like, well, why not do
00:52:13 ◼ ► that? Like I have so many things that I do on my Mac that are running little shell scripts or little
00:52:18 ◼ ► Pearl scripts or, or a little, you know, whatever they are and, and then little Unix commands.
00:52:23 ◼ ► And they're great. And I'd use them in shortcuts on the iPad if I could. Um, but the only way to
00:52:29 ◼ ► do that now is to actually go to a remote server via SSH and do it there and then take the data
00:52:34 ◼ ► back, which is not so great. So, um, sure. I just thought I'd pile that on of like, show me you're
00:52:41 ◼ ► serious. That's really, I don't even want to request specifics here. I really just want Apple
00:52:46 ◼ ► to show us that they're serious about the iPad as a professional platform in whatever form they
00:52:51 ◼ ► choose. Whatever. Take your pick, whatever. Yeah. This is the, I don't think I want these.
00:53:00 ◼ ► I don't think we're going to get the one that I want, which is logic, right? Not yet, but I do
00:53:06 ◼ ► feel like it's time to show your hand a little bit with one of them. Right. It is exactly that.
00:53:19 ◼ ► demonstration is. It can be symbolic. It could literally be, we plan to bring, uh, you know,
00:53:27 ◼ ► by the time you developers are in San Jose next year for WWDC, um, there'll be an app that you
00:53:35 ◼ ► can use to build apps on your iPad. Right. That's all. Or, or we intend to ship versions of logic and
00:53:42 ◼ ► final cut by the end of the year, like whatever, whatever the demonstration is, just give us a
00:53:47 ◼ ► demonstration that you believe in this platform that you are the steward of. Um, I also want to,
00:53:54 ◼ ► my personal, this is not a pro app, but my personal frustration is that the health app isn't on iPad.
00:53:59 ◼ ► Like I still don't understand it. Like I use my iPad all the time for stuff and I want to look
00:54:05 ◼ ► up health data. And I actually, there are a couple of devices that I would probably rather attach to
00:54:10 ◼ ► my iPad via Bluetooth that are health devices and log the data there rather than use my phone
00:54:15 ◼ ► because of just where my iPad is in my house versus where I keep my phone. And, uh, the health
00:54:21 ◼ ► app just isn't, isn't there. I don't understand it. I want, I mean, I actually want the health
00:54:25 ◼ ► app on the Mac too. I think that that the health app needs to be on all of Apple's platforms and
00:54:29 ◼ ► I'm kind of baffled about why it isn't. So I'll throw it in there too. And look, no iPad wishlist
00:54:35 ◼ ► will be complete from the two of us who are asking for better support and the system level for audio.
00:54:45 ◼ ► we've detailed it before. It's pretty basic. They need, they need an audio API. You need to be able
00:54:51 ◼ ► to record different things in different apps. I would love anything that would enable something
00:54:55 ◼ ► like audio hijack to exist on iPad, but failing that I would like to be able to be on Skype on the
00:55:02 ◼ ► iPad and also have a recording app open recording my microphone. And ideally also recording Skype
00:55:08 ◼ ► two separate tracks at the same time. Like audio was built very simply for the iPhone in the early
00:55:16 ◼ ► days and has not been touched and they, they gotta do it. They gotta do it. They won't. We'll be,
00:55:21 ◼ ► we'll be left behind again, but, um, we're going to keep beating that drum until they hear it.
00:55:27 ◼ ► Cause drums make sound. So that's our wishlist. It will be super interesting to see how many of
00:55:31 ◼ ► those pop up next week in the draft. Yes. And how many we're so despairing about that we're not
00:55:36 ◼ ► going to bother picking them because we know Apple's not going to do it. All right. This
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00:57:34 ◼ ► which is a little surprising to me. I mean, we've dabbled in talking about gaming on this
00:57:38 ◼ ► show every now and then. Uh, but I think that there is a known wide disparity, uh, between
00:57:44 ◼ ► the two of us with video games. I'm much, much more of a gamer than you are. So I want to know
00:57:51 ◼ ► what it, what is the frame of this conversation today? What do you want to talk to me about gaming?
00:57:56 ◼ ► Well, two things struck me back when I said, we should talk about this. And one of them is you
00:58:01 ◼ ► recommended, um, round guard a while ago when we were talking about Apple arcade games. And,
00:58:07 ◼ ► um, I have been playing that a lot. Good. Um, or at least a lot, a lot for me, I really enjoy it.
00:58:13 ◼ ► I recommend it. It's a, it's a lot of fun. Um, and I was thinking about why that game stuck with me
00:58:22 ◼ ► and what other games have stuck with me and what do they have in common and what does that say
00:58:26 ◼ ► about what appeals to me when I'm looking for a game to play. And then the other piece of data
00:58:32 ◼ ► is all of my friends talking about animal crossing. Yeah. And playing that and selling fruit
00:58:41 ◼ ► on their islands and stuff for bells. Um, which is very similar to when all of my friends were
00:58:49 ◼ ► talking about Stardew Valley. Yep. Arguably animal crossing is a bigger deal than Stardew
00:58:53 ◼ ► was at that time, but it's a similar thing. They're similar ish games as well. Right there,
00:58:59 ◼ ► you're tending to your stuff and you're making transactions and you're earning stuff and all of
00:59:04 ◼ ► that. And, um, I, in a moment of self-reflection, uh, while I was thinking of why I, uh, Roundguard
00:59:11 ◼ ► appealed to me, I also asked myself, why do, why does hearing what people are doing in animal
00:59:17 ◼ ► crossing, um, completely repel me. Okay. Okay. And turn, turn me off and be like, wow, I don't
00:59:24 ◼ ► want to do that. Cause literally, literally I hear people talk about animal crossing and I think
00:59:32 ◼ ► it sounds like a lot of work. It sounds like a game where you have to do work. And I think to
00:59:38 ◼ ► myself, I don't want to do work. I do enough work. I don't want to do more work. I don't want to
00:59:44 ◼ ► grind on things. And I think that there is truth in the fact that there are a lot of games where
00:59:50 ◼ ► the whole idea is that you grind, you do this and then this and then this, and you get a thing.
00:59:59 ◼ ► Wow. Okay. They're all jobs of some kind. Like some people are little balls that bounce around
01:00:04 ◼ ► in a dungeon. Yeah. Like a Roundguard. They're just trying to make their gold, you know,
01:00:08 ◼ ► like in Roundguard, they're just trying to make their gold. You know, like if you play a racing
01:00:11 ◼ ► game, that's someone's job. They're just a racing driver, you know, it's all someone's job. Okay.
01:00:16 ◼ ► All right. I'm okay. That's good. What, so, so what are the games? So we'll, we'll get into like
01:00:21 ◼ ► the commonality of the games that I like, but what are the games that you like? Just so we're clear
01:00:25 ◼ ► about what you like and what I like and how they're different. So my gaming habits fall into
01:00:31 ◼ ► like two and a half areas. So the big kind of my, my main, uh, favorite type of game are large open
01:00:41 ◼ ► world games that you have tons to do, typically in such a way that you can make your own games within
01:00:48 ◼ ► the game. So examples of these include Zelda Breath of the Wild, Stardew Valley, Grand Theft Auto,
01:00:53 ◼ ► the Pokemon games and Animal Crossing. These are these large open world games where there is
01:01:00 ◼ ► typically a structure, but you can also kind of veer off and do things in your own order,
01:01:05 ◼ ► in your own path. In my opinion, Breath of the Wild is the very, very best game for this in the
01:01:12 ◼ ► sense that you can quite literally run into the castle that features the final boss as your first
01:01:18 ◼ ► action in the game if you want to. Like I've never played a game like that. You know, you can play a
01:01:22 ◼ ► game like a Grand Theft Auto game, they shut off parts of the world. You have to get to a certain
01:01:27 ◼ ► point before they open them up. Um, but that's, that's like my main type of game because I really
01:01:32 ◼ ► love to have a thing that the game developers presented to me as my path. But also if I want to,
01:01:37 ◼ ► I can go and spend time doing this other thing so I can approach the game how I want. My other large
01:01:43 ◼ ► area of gaming is mobile games that you can just pick up and put down with infinite replayability.
01:01:47 ◼ ► And some of my favorites here are Peggle, which is one of my very favorite games of all time.
01:01:52 ◼ ► Uh, Roundguard is heavily influenced by Peggle. Um, other examples of threes, Flip-Flop Solitaire,
01:01:58 ◼ ► the Altos games, both Adventure and Odyssey, and Hold Down. Um, I also like some, uh, puzzle and
01:02:06 ◼ ► sports games that are kind of on larger platforms. I was thinking of stuff like Portal, the Tony Hawk
01:02:11 ◼ ► games, Need for Speed and Burnout. That's like my half category. Um, but my, the main games that I
01:02:18 ◼ ► gravitate towards are the open world games and the infinite replay, infinitely replayable mobile
01:02:24 ◼ ► games. Yeah. So for me, the ones that you mentioned second are the ones that are the one, are the one,
01:02:31 ◼ ► they work for me. They work for me. So Groundguard, Altos Odyssey, I played Altos Odyssey, got, uh,
01:02:36 ◼ ► maxed out top level on that. Flip-Flop Solitaire, I still play a lot. Um, Mini Metro and Mini
01:02:42 ◼ ► Motorway. Those are, um, those are both games that I enjoy a lot. I played Portal and Portal 2 all
01:02:48 ◼ ► the way through and that's, I'll come back to that, but I think that they, um, that that's even similar
01:02:52 ◼ ► in some ways. And what they all have in common is that you can invest a lot of time in these games,
01:02:57 ◼ ► but the way you do it is in a series of short sessions with a beginning and an ending. And I
01:03:04 ◼ ► really like that. I was actually thinking about back when I played first person shooters a lot,
01:03:15 ◼ ► And, and back in the day, the stories in, in the early days of first person shooters were more
01:03:21 ◼ ► level-like, where you would like be on a level and then you'd solve it and then you'd move on.
01:03:26 ◼ ► And those work better for me because there's a beginning and an end, but the, the network play
01:03:32 ◼ ► was the stuff that I loved or on a, on a console, if you've got something similar where it's just
01:03:37 ◼ ► two people sitting there and you're playing a game and then there's a winner, because there's
01:03:41 ◼ ► a beginning and there's an end. And if you have more time and more inclination to keep playing,
01:03:45 ◼ ► you say, you want to go again? All right, let's go again. As opposed to kind of the open-endedness
01:03:51 ◼ ► of it. Like I'm playing Life is Strange 2 right now, which, um, although it has episodes and all
01:03:58 ◼ ► of that, it feels very much like a long open-ended story. And at some point I just have to say,
01:04:04 ◼ ► I can't play this anymore right now. I'm going to put it down. And that's not as appealing to me as
01:04:10 ◼ ► doing a run in Alto's Odyssey or playing a level or a whole playthrough of Roundguard and getting
01:04:17 ◼ ► to a point and saying, okay, I'm going to stop here or it's over now. And so for me, there's
01:04:22 ◼ ► something about like having to have a beginning and an end so I can, I can pick it up, I can play
01:04:26 ◼ ► it and then there's an end where I can walk away. And, you know, although I do enjoy the Syracusean
01:04:34 ◼ ► artsy-fartsy games that are two, three, four hours long, sometimes longer, like Life is Strange 2 is
01:04:40 ◼ ► an example of that, the original Life is Strange, which I really liked, but it's harder for me to
01:04:44 ◼ ► get into them and to find time for them. And that's the other piece of this, right, which is
01:04:48 ◼ ► the iPad is my primary game platform. And the reason for that is I can play on the iPad anywhere
01:04:56 ◼ ► and I don't interfere with other people. And when I'm playing on the computer, I have to come out
01:05:02 ◼ ► into the garage and turn on the computer and sit here in my chair and play a game with the door
01:05:07 ◼ ► closed probably, right? And on a console, I'm like in the middle of the living room playing on a
01:05:13 ◼ ► console, which means that if anybody else wants to be in the living room or do anything in the living
01:05:17 ◼ ► room, they've got my game in the way, which I don't like. It's, I would much rather it just be
01:05:24 ◼ ► me and my game. So the iPad is perfect for that because I can play on that iPad on the couch,
01:05:31 ◼ ► on the bed, in the hammock, like outside, like anywhere I can play. And that's the other piece
01:05:40 ◼ ► of it is just being able to pick it up and play it at any point rather than having to like carve out
01:05:45 ◼ ► dedicated time. Because I think in my life, Lauren and I were talking about this yesterday, I think
01:05:50 ◼ ► we don't like the idea of, okay, I'm going to not spend time with you now and go off for a few hours
01:05:57 ◼ ► and play a game. And so we don't do that. But I think, and I don't have an answer here, but I
01:06:04 ◼ ► think psychologically the big thing for me is having some feeling of kind of completion in a
01:06:12 ◼ ► short period of time. And it's okay if you're building to something, right? Because Altos,
01:06:18 ◼ ► you are building to doing all of those different tricks and getting to the top level. And then
01:06:22 ◼ ► Roundguard, you're trying to get not only to win and to ideally win with a maximized amount of gold,
01:06:27 ◼ ► but also to gather all the relics, right? Like there are long-term goals, but they're all
01:06:38 ◼ ► you know that game's not going to last more than five minutes, 10 minutes. And so you play it and
01:06:43 ◼ ► then you're done and you move on with your life. It's just as interesting because the way that you
01:06:49 ◼ ► describe it would like kind of suggest that your gaming habits are more quote-unquote casual, but
01:06:56 ◼ ► you don't play games exclusively that are considered casual games, right? Because you do
01:07:05 ◼ ► play successfully much larger games that quote-unquote gamers play, right? Games like a Portal,
01:07:16 ◼ ► - Because again, Portal, my real limitation with Portal was that I had to play it on a computer.
01:07:22 ◼ ► And so I had to carve out the time, but the actual game worked for me because you play a level and
01:07:26 ◼ ► you solve it. And then you say to yourself, "Do I want to do another level?" And if the answer is yes,
01:07:32 ◼ ► you play another level and then you walk away, which is great. So that Portal is a good example
01:07:36 ◼ ► where I thought, okay, it's not entirely about the context of like where I'm playing. And as somebody
01:07:43 ◼ ► pointed out in the Discord, it's absolutely intriguing to me, this idea that is gaining steam
01:07:57 ◼ ► - So you can play it somewhere else. It's like, I would love, and I don't think PlayStation 4 does
01:08:03 ◼ ► this with the iPad, but like, I'd love to play that Spider-Man game and I have it. But I don't
01:08:08 ◼ ► think I'm gonna, again, go to the room with the PlayStation, turn on the TV, sit down, get out the
01:08:14 ◼ ► controller, all that. Like, maybe there's a way to make that a little more, I don't know if it's
01:08:19 ◼ ► casual, just kind of drop in, but there's definitely something there. And it just, it struck me, like,
01:08:24 ◼ ► why are there games that I like? And there are other games that my friends talk about that I'm
01:08:27 ◼ ► like, wow, I never wanna do that. I never, I literally never wanna play Animal Crossing.
01:08:32 ◼ ► I'm just not, it sounds terrible to me. And I know, I'm not saying that it's bad. I'm saying
01:08:37 ◼ ► that I know within myself that that game does not push the right buttons. That it's not for me.
01:08:44 ◼ ► - Right. There are ways to do this with the PlayStation 4, but they're not super simple.
01:08:50 ◼ ► I think really a big part of the next generation of consoles will be enabling stuff like this,
01:08:56 ◼ ► I think. I think this is gonna be one of the big things for the next version of the Xbox and the
01:09:01 ◼ ► PlayStation is the cloud play stuff, because that's gaining much more steam, no pun intended.
01:09:12 ◼ ► - When Julian was playing Breath of the Wild the first time through, it was on the Wii U. And
01:09:18 ◼ ► he would just sit in the corner of the living room while we were watching TV and play Breath
01:09:22 ◼ ► of the Wild on the Wii U controller. And that was literally, he's streaming it to the first party
01:09:30 ◼ ► controller and playing it on the handheld. And then eventually, he gets, we've got it on Switch
01:09:55 ◼ ► - The idea of like, I don't really wanna spend 10 hours this weekend doing a thing on my own.
01:10:04 ◼ ► - There will be now, like, so the big games for me these days, they are events in that,
01:10:10 ◼ ► like there'll be a few games a year where I will put that time in, but I'm not gonna do it every
01:10:14 ◼ ► day, right? Or every week even. And what I do like, there are games like Stardew and like Animal
01:10:21 ◼ ► Crossing that me and Nadina play together, right? We both play the game, right? So that I like a lot
01:10:27 ◼ ► because then I can put, we can put more time into a game because it's a game that we both enjoy,
01:10:32 ◼ ► but she doesn't enjoy all the games that I enjoy. So I will pick a few games a year where I'm like,
01:10:37 ◼ ► right, I am gonna choose that because this game is that important to me. But it means that I play
01:10:42 ◼ ► less games overall because I'm less likely to dip into an unknown quantity, right? Like a new game,
01:10:48 ◼ ► a new shooter that I've not tried. I don't, I wanna see, you know, or like, it's getting mixed
01:10:54 ◼ ► reviews. So I won't bother. Where before I'll be like, well, maybe I'll like it. Let me give it a
01:10:58 ◼ ► go. I want a new game. So I do that way less than I used to for that reason. But I do still like to
01:11:05 ◼ ► attack these large games more than you do because it is more important to me. So I will find the
01:11:13 ◼ ► time, but it's way less time for a similar reason to you. Yeah. The idea of spending hundreds of
01:11:18 ◼ ► hours on a game, it just turns, it turns me off. And, and which is why I will do for me, it's the
01:11:25 ◼ ► artsy fartsy Syracuse. I like games that I will play a few times a year, but I want somebody to
01:11:31 ◼ ► recommend something and say, this is a good one. Let's do it. And it's like, okay, I'll put in five
01:11:34 ◼ ► or 10 or 20 hours on that one, but I'm only going to do that a couple times a year. And the hundreds
01:11:39 ◼ ► of hours, again, if you want me to play a game for hundreds of hours, what you need to do is be
01:11:44 ◼ ► sneaky like Alto's Odyssey and have it be a bunch of short bursts that I love so much that I just
01:11:51 ◼ ► keep playing it all the time in short bursts, because what I'm not going to do, and this is the
01:11:57 ◼ ► truth. It's what you said. I'm, I'm not going to carve out five hours to go play a game by myself.
01:12:05 ◼ ► It just, I live in a house with three other people and it's not going to happen. And I'm not saying
01:12:11 ◼ ► that that's bad if you do that, dear, dear listener. I'm just saying the way my life is
01:12:16 ◼ ► configured, it's never going to happen. And I cannot tell you how many times I have bought a
01:12:20 ◼ ► game or a console in a game saying, I'm going to play this. I'm so excited and I've never played
01:12:25 ◼ ► it. I bought, I bought Destiny and played for about five hours during the beta and then it launched.
01:12:34 ◼ ► And I, it launched the week of an Apple event, by the way, launched the week that the iPhone launched
01:12:40 ◼ ► and I never played it after that. I literally never played it. I bought the Spider-Man game
01:12:44 ◼ ► for PS4 because I love Spider-Man and that game got such great reviews. And what happened is I
01:12:49 ◼ ► had it for two months in secret and played it for about two hours. And then my son got it for his
01:12:55 ◼ ► birthday and played through the entire game in less than a week. And now it's just sitting again.
01:13:04 ◼ ► - Yeah. I really hope that you do sometimes, for some reason, find yourself playing that game
01:13:10 ◼ ► because I know you would love it. - I know I would. I know. I know. And also I'll throw in
01:13:16 ◼ ► there something that is something I saw on Twitter this week, which is In Defense of Easy Mode.
01:13:28 ◼ ► well, I know that there are hard modes where it's challenging and all that, but I'm never gonna
01:13:35 ◼ ► want that challenge in a game like that. Give it to me in easy mode. Let me enjoy the story. Let me
01:13:40 ◼ ► do the basics that are required to make it feel like I accomplished something. But yes, I admit
01:13:45 ◼ ► it. I want a super easy mode where I can feel like I'm Spider-Man without actually having to have the
01:13:51 ◼ ► reflexes of a spider because I don't. - Then you should set that game to easy mode. I started
01:13:57 ◼ ► playing the game and bumped it down. I don't remember what I started it at, but I do this,
01:14:05 ◼ ► And it's too punishing to me. It's like, well, no, I'm gonna bump this down so I can actually
01:14:09 ◼ ► play through. And maybe when I get a bit better at the game, I'll bump it back up again. I like games
01:14:14 ◼ ► that allow you to make the change rather than set it once and not being able to change it.
01:14:20 ◼ ► So that can be, that's a pro tip to people. Games are for enjoying. And if you find yourself being
01:14:26 ◼ ► punished by it, just change the difficulty level and you might enjoy it more. Some people want the
01:14:31 ◼ ► challenge and like more power to you if you do, but not everybody does. All right, let's do some
01:14:37 ◼ ► hashtag ask upgrade questions to round out this episode. Thank you for bringing that topic, Jason.
01:14:42 ◼ ► That went into places I wasn't expecting. That was really fun. This episode is brought to you by
01:14:47 ◼ ► Pingdom from SolarWinds. While you've been listening to this show, how would you know if
01:14:52 ◼ ► you were having troubles with your website? Would you know if your customers couldn't click that
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01:15:37 ◼ ► you want to know when you're having problems with your website. Your website is there for people to
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01:16:14 ◼ ► from SolarWinds for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, we'll finish this episode
01:16:20 ◼ ► off with some #AskUpgrade questions. The first one this week comes from Kevin. Kevin wants to know,
01:16:27 ◼ ► will there be a running score update of the episode 400 draft after each Apple announcement
01:16:33 ◼ ► or is the time capsule sealed? I personally would like to not think about it until episode 400.
01:16:43 ◼ ► Me too. And then have a reveal and just I'm going to forget what we even picked. I have. I've
01:16:48 ◼ ► already forgotten. I can confirm to you right now I have forgotten what has been picked.
01:16:52 ◼ ► So if people want to track it, they're welcome to, but I'd actually rather not know. So like
01:16:57 ◼ ► if something happens that one of us picked, I'd actually rather not even know that we picked it.
01:17:02 ◼ ► I just want to wait 100 weeks and be surprised. Yep. We do need people to let us know as episode
01:17:09 ◼ ► 400 approaches just to make sure that we're remembering that we need to check that back
01:17:14 ◼ ► because I also do not guarantee that I will remember. I do have a note in my task manager,
01:17:20 ◼ ► but still, if it pops into your mind or maybe you're listening to this show like at weird times,
01:17:26 ◼ ► people do that, right? They listen to current episodes and go back to old ones. Maybe just by
01:17:30 ◼ ► luck you're around episode 397 or something. Just in real time, just let us know that there's a draft
01:17:37 ◼ ► that we need to redo. Alex asks, "With Apple not having the ability to have in-person time
01:17:42 ◼ ► with developers this year, do you think that iOS 14 could see more focus on the iOS system apps,
01:17:49 ◼ ► this way making developers not having so many things to learn?" Yeah, I think that's a great
01:17:55 ◼ ► point. It will be interesting to see. We've already been thinking that if you look at the
01:18:01 ◼ ► cadence of Apple software releases, this year was a kind of cataclysmic software release cycle,
01:18:08 ◼ ► and then the previous year was a quiet one where they kind of fixed stuff, and then the previous
01:18:12 ◼ ► year was a, again, terrible buggy release cycle. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if the goal with
01:18:19 ◼ ► iOS 14 and with the next version of macOS as well is less reliance on new features and more on
01:18:26 ◼ ► stability and getting things working okay. And that would also mean not unveiling a bazillion
01:18:32 ◼ ► new APIs to developers for whatever the new thing is. I'm sure there will be some, but being kind of
01:18:39 ◼ ► developers, especially after last year where they spent all summer kind of dealing with bugs and are
01:18:44 ◼ ► still not even, there's still people out there who are working on Catalyst apps, and there's going to
01:18:49 ◼ ► be a new version of Catalyst presumably, and they haven't shipped their apps yet. So taking it easy
01:18:56 ◼ ► on that front and instead focusing on some other stuff. I mean, I assume that SwiftUI and maybe
01:19:02 ◼ ► Catalyst will get a bump because they need it, but I could also see this being a year where Apple
01:19:08 ◼ ► retrenches a little bit and kind of focuses on fixing bugs and upgrading its own built-in apps,
01:19:13 ◼ ► and that would be okay. Yeah, definitely. I think I would quite like to see that myself.
01:19:27 ◼ ► The bezels have got to come in. I think the iMac design, as nice as it is, the bezels are enormous,
01:19:36 ◼ ► and we live in a world where all the bezels are shrinking and the iMac needs to do that. And I
01:19:43 ◼ ► know people are like, "Oh, well, yeah, but it's a desktop computer. Who cares?" And indeed, who
01:19:47 ◼ ► cares how thin it is? And yet they made it thinner too. But I do think that bringing it in so that
01:19:53 ◼ ► it's more just a screen floating in front of you and not a screen with a big black rectangle around
01:19:57 ◼ ► it and then a big silver rectangle below it, to make that less has to be a design goal. And then
01:20:06 ◼ ► I want the spinning disks out. And it may be that the next iMac even is an ARM Mac, but if not,
01:20:23 ◼ ► But those are my top things, is bring the bezels in and get rid of spinning disk support forever.
01:20:29 ◼ ► The visual design is the big thing for me. I mean, I would also like to see something like Face ID,
01:20:38 ◼ ► but I think they're pretty committed now to the floating screen. I'd like to see them try to do
01:20:42 ◼ ► something like the G4 iMac, right, where there's like a base that has the fancy, you know,
01:20:47 ◼ ► computery stuff in it. And then the screen is just this floating object. That would be pretty awesome.
01:20:54 ◼ ► But I doubt it. I doubt they're going to do that. All right. Next question comes from a block and
01:21:00 ◼ ► they ask, "Are you aware of any family-friendly solutions to share and manage sensitive information
01:21:05 ◼ ► such as social security numbers or billing account numbers, not just text, but documents or files as
01:21:10 ◼ ► well?" I think 1Password for families is a great option for this. I use it for this stuff.
01:21:22 ◼ ► is 1Password. We have a family account and the, you know, all sorts of documents and stuff,
01:21:30 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, it's a great thing for it because it's not, it can be numbers and logins and that
01:21:37 ◼ ► kind of stuff, but you can also have scans of stuff, images, like I shared, like, passport
01:21:42 ◼ ► images and stuff like that in there. Like, you can get all kinds of great stuff in that. So,
01:22:17 ◼ ► Right. There you go then. Kevin asks, "How is Jason's wife Lauren's..." That's a funny sentence.
01:22:24 ◼ ► iPhone. "How is Lauren's iPhone 10 battery issue?" Kevin had the same issue, but it broke the cellular
01:22:33 ◼ ► I went on Apple's website for support and said the battery expanded and they said, "Okay, send it in."
01:22:41 ◼ ► And they said, "It looks to me like this is a covered issue and we're not going to charge you."
01:22:47 ◼ ► And I sent it in and they sent it, but they sent, I mean, they didn't send it back, right? They sent
01:22:53 ◼ ► a different iPhone 10 with the same specs because I think that's how they do it is they send that
01:22:59 ◼ ► right back to you and then they put the other one in the queue to be refurbed and sent out to someone
01:23:03 ◼ ► else. So we didn't get charged, which I think is only right since it was their battery that expanded
01:23:10 ◼ ► and pushed everything out of the iPhone. So I don't know what method that Kevin used here, but
01:23:29 ◼ ► literally their battery doing damage to the phone and they did. I didn't even have to pay for the
01:23:38 ◼ ► And finally today, Jared asks, "What combination of Twitter and RSS do you use, if any?
01:23:47 ◼ ► I'm using RSS more than I used to. I'm using NetNewsWire, the new open source version of
01:23:55 ◼ ► NetNewsWire, primarily on my iPad with a limited number of stuff that I'm subscribed to. And it is
01:24:03 ◼ ► the first time I've used RSS regularly in a long time. But I use that sort of like at a certain
01:24:09 ◼ ► time of day, like in the morning or in the evening where I'm sitting down and I want to look and see
01:24:14 ◼ ► what I can read, whereas Twitter kind of comes and goes throughout the day. So breaking news
01:24:20 ◼ ► and things from sources that are not my go-to sources happen on Twitter, and then my go-to
01:24:25 ◼ ► sources happen a couple of times a day in NetNewsWire. And that is also where I do things
01:24:30 ◼ ► like compile links for Liftoff. Like I've got a bunch of space RSS feeds in there and those will
01:24:36 ◼ ► get shared out of there into the Liftoff Tumblr and things like that. They'll come from there.
01:24:42 ◼ ► But Twitter is more breaking news and sources that are outside my usual set. What about you?
01:24:49 ◼ ► Exactly the same. So I use RSS now and I use Reader. But the idea of like I have stuff in
01:25:02 ◼ ► for good news for me for shows. So I really like that I have that there as like this is where I
01:25:10 ◼ ► know I can go to get information if I'm looking for it. And I will check it maybe once a day,
01:25:15 ◼ ► once every two days for me, depends on what shows that I'm recording at a time. And then I will use
01:25:20 ◼ ► Twitter for that exact stuff, right? Like breaking news, other sources, getting different types of
01:25:25 ◼ ► information. And also like news sources that aren't necessarily like, I know I'm going to have to have
01:25:32 ◼ ► checked this one to make sure that I'm prepared for a show. Yeah, so yeah, very, very similar,
01:25:37 ◼ ► very similar. All right, so I think that's it for this week's episode. You can send in Ask
01:25:43 ◼ ► Upgrade questions with the hashtag #AskUpgrade on Twitter. Or if you're a RealAFM member in the
01:25:48 ◼ ► RealAFM members Discord, just use the command question mark Ask Upgrade. And you can have them
01:25:53 ◼ ► ask there. The great thing about that is they can be longer than a tweet if you want to. So
01:25:58 ◼ ► we thank everyone who is a RealAFM member, who is part of the RealAFM members Discord as well.
01:26:02 ◼ ► That's great. We're doing everything we can to make that even more and more exciting as time
01:26:06 ◼ ► goes on. We have some stuff coming up real soon on that one. So next week's episode is going to be
01:26:12 ◼ ► the draft episode, which we're so excited about. We're going to be working diligently on getting
01:26:19 ◼ ► that one prepared for you. If you want to find us online, there's a few places to do that. On
01:26:24 ◼ ► Twitter, Jason is @JasonL, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can find Jason's work
01:26:30 ◼ ► over at sixcolors.com, the incomparable.com. And Jason is the host of many shows here at RealAFM,
01:26:36 ◼ ► as am I as well. Thanks so much to Pingdom, Bombas and Ooni for their support of this show and also
01:26:43 ◼ ► to our RealAFM members as well, who also helped make this show happen. And to you, our listeners,