00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade Episode 300. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace,
00:00:16 ◼ ► DoorDash, and Carlton Bureau. My name is Myke Hurley. I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Mr.
00:00:22 ◼ ► Jason Snell, hello. Myke, how have the podcast authorities not shut us down? 300 episodes,
00:00:27 ◼ ► amazing. Imagine such a thing. I have a hashtag SnellTalk question for you, Jason. Okay. How's
00:00:32 ◼ ► the weather today? You know, it was foggy this morning, but it's cleared up and there's
00:00:38 ◼ ► blue sky out my window now. That was not the case even half an hour ago. So I think it's
00:00:42 ◼ ► going to be a nice day, not too hot, but not too cold. The reason I asked that question,
00:00:48 ◼ ► because we are, we're in a very celebratory mood today. It's going to be a lot of talking
00:00:52 ◼ ► about ourselves. The SnellTalk idea, in case you're newer around here, the idea that we
00:00:59 ◼ ► start the show with a question that typically comes from our audience. Today's question
00:01:17 ◼ ► a friend of mine, Matt, mutual friend of ours, said, why don't you ask different questions
00:01:26 ◼ ► And that's one of my favorite podcast chapter artworks is this one. Which, which Matt was
00:01:31 ◼ ► this? Matt Scharf. Oh, Matt Scharf. All right. Paper Matt. And so if you have never seen it
00:01:43 ◼ ► app, which does observe chapter artwork, apps like Castro, Pocket Casts, Overcast, the Apple
00:01:54 ◼ ► late night talk show, which is so great. And it has the little relay NBC logo, the iMac
00:01:59 ◼ ► NBC logo at the bottom. It's a really very good one by the wonderful Simon who does all
00:02:05 ◼ ► of our artwork, Forgotten Tale on social network. So yeah. Yeah. So yes, we are, we're celebrating
00:02:13 ◼ ► today. We're celebrating episode 300, Celebrate Upgrade. We've got some fun stuff to talk
00:02:24 ◼ ► The past week has only added more anguish and upset to the lives of people in and outside
00:02:31 ◼ ► of America, people who are already going through so much. You know, everybody is there's so
00:02:57 ◼ ► believe racism and police brutality should never be tolerated. Yep. And we want to make
00:03:01 ◼ ► this abundantly clear on this show right now, in the hope that adding more voices like ours
00:03:12 ◼ ► We're going to put a link in the show notes to some resources for how you can help with
00:03:17 ◼ ► Black Lives Matter causes and others. We want to have fun here today. And we hope that we
00:03:22 ◼ ► can continue to provide you with the escapism that you want. Right. But I feel like we had
00:03:36 ◼ ► Yep, absolutely. Let's do some upstream news. Upstream is where we talk about what's going
00:03:41 ◼ ► on in streaming media. We spoke about this last week. We touched on it last week a little
00:04:08 ◼ ► a Henson production, I think, and that's why they have the rights to sell to Apple. And
00:04:15 ◼ ► this is interesting because they are doing, I mean, they've got little shorts now. They
00:04:17 ◼ ► are doing full length episodes that they've ordered. This is something, you know, I feel
00:04:36 ◼ ► And I suggested something like, well, Battlestar Galactica because Ron Moore does For All Mankind
00:04:40 ◼ ► or something, but it's even more specific than that. It's if we're going to do something
00:04:45 ◼ ► that is a reference or a follow on or a reboot or something to a previous show, we could
00:04:59 ◼ ► they would bring back the archive. Here with Fraggle Rock, it's a revival. They're going
00:05:02 ◼ ► to get the Fraggle Rock archive. And there's another one that it sounds like is going to
00:05:13 ◼ ► Yeah. This is a quote from Vulture. Variety earlier this month reported that Apple landed
00:05:18 ◼ ► a deal to stream new episodes of Long Way Up, which is a follow up to the Ewan McGregor
00:05:23 ◼ ► led British travel series Long Way Round and Long Way Down. This is where Ewan McGregor
00:05:35 ◼ ► I guess so. I actually think it's like traveling. I don't know. Just traveling around the UK.
00:05:50 ◼ ► our original? We'll dive into the back catalog now. And that is actually it. So it's a change
00:05:56 ◼ ► in Apple strategy, but not really. Right. This is really saying it's all about our originals
00:06:01 ◼ ► and we will make strategic purchases to bolster our originals. And, and so we got all worked
00:06:19 ◼ ► bolster the, you know, the new shows. So it's all about like the new shows and then what
00:06:26 ◼ ► trails from them, what's ancillary material for them. So if they do a reboot of something,
00:06:32 ◼ ► like actually the one that comes to mind to me is Amazing Stories, right? They have Amazing
00:06:35 ◼ ► Stories. I would imagine that they've at least inquired about buying the streaming rights
00:06:41 ◼ ► to the whole Amazing Stories catalog because they have Amazing Stories as originals. And
00:06:47 ◼ ► that would be, uh, that's a follow on. They could do that. Yeah. That's to say, if this
00:06:55 ◼ ► yeah, I think we kind of was hoping, as you were saying that they were going to do maybe
00:06:59 ◼ ► some bigger stuff than this, as you say, by like adjacent content, um, like all of Battlestar
00:07:03 ◼ ► Galactica, right? It's a great one that you mentioned because there's tie-ins, the showrunners
00:07:14 ◼ ► a show that had previously been dropped from a network, they revive it and then get the
00:07:20 ◼ ► back catalog as well. Right. You want that. It's a natural kind of fit. I'm actually wondering
00:07:24 ◼ ► now why Apple didn't get the rights to Amazing Stories. Did NBC Universal just want to hold
00:07:28 ◼ ► onto those? Because it kind of makes too much sense that I feel like that is just a case
00:07:33 ◼ ► of just not doing it right. They didn't do it at launch because it would confuse things.
00:07:37 ◼ ► So, you know, it wouldn't surprise me then if that ends up happening because that would
00:07:41 ◼ ► make sense, right? Like, oh, I enjoy this. Remember the original? Oh, they're all here.
00:07:55 ◼ ► they can get the back catalog. Like that might be a change in direction for them. But we'll
00:08:03 ◼ ► gets canceled somewhere where they ask, well, what could you revive this? Could you bring
00:08:11 ◼ ► the show that I loved, which is now on Amazon Prime in the US. It's in other places around
00:08:17 ◼ ► the world. That show was canceled at Starz after 20 episodes and they shopped it around
00:08:23 ◼ ► and nothing came of it. And the executive producers now, there was a Reddit thread where
00:08:34 ◼ ► hat doesn't have a home there. The people at Apple look at it and go, actually, we really
00:08:38 ◼ ► like that. Can we get the rights to those 20 episodes and we'll buy another 20 and that
00:08:47 ◼ ► like you're taking somebody else's leavings, but sometimes it happens that it just doesn't
00:09:08 ◼ ► I mean, I expect that will definitely be the case, right? Save our show, Apple. Use your
00:09:16 ◼ ► I think this is what Scorsese said to them too. Killers of the Flower Moon, the upcoming
00:09:21 ◼ ► movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and who else is in it? Robert De Niro, of course, is coming
00:09:27 ◼ ► to Apple TV Plus now reported by many outlets including Deadline. It's expected to cost
00:09:33 ◼ ► between $180 and $200 million. I believe this is including the rights from Paramount and
00:09:38 ◼ ► to finish the movie. The movie will still be distributed by Paramount in theaters. This
00:09:43 ◼ ► is exactly the same as Netflix and the Irishman. Netflix bought it from Paramount to finish
00:09:56 ◼ ► but then they still got to put it in theaters, which is also important because then it puts
00:09:59 ◼ ► it up for award season. So, you know, Apple would want to do that anyway with this movie,
00:10:14 ◼ ► And Martin Scorsese movie probably going to get nominated for Oscars and now Apple will
00:10:25 ◼ ► And then we have the Yagadot Setzerstein and a new Apple TV+ series about the film legend
00:10:30 ◼ ► Hedy Lamarr. Quote from Variety, "Hedy Lamarr will follow the true story of the Hollywood
00:10:35 ◼ ► glamour girl spanning 30 years from Lamarr's escape from pre-war Vienna to a meteoric rise
00:10:43 ◼ ► War. The show will also go into Lamarr's life as an inventor, including one invention that
00:11:13 ◼ ► It premiered on Apple with two shows, I want to say two episodes. I watched the pilot and
00:11:19 ◼ ► I thought it was pretty fun. It's like a musical animated comedy thing and I thought it was
00:11:25 ◼ ► pretty good. So if you like musicals and you like Bob's Burgers or other animated stuff
00:11:34 ◼ ► it. And then I also watched the Mythic Quest, Raven's Banquet quarantine episode. And because
00:11:42 ◼ ► everybody was talking about it, it was really well done. I was very impressed. I think it
00:11:48 ◼ ► was – I mean, it was better than the Parks and Recreation one. And I love Parks and Recreation
00:11:53 ◼ ► and so it had a great nostalgia value to see them. But you could see the seams and like
00:12:03 ◼ ► awkward. And then this one felt solid. Like it felt like a real TV episode. It was very
00:12:12 ◼ ► well done. I read an article about how they did it where they apparently, you know, it's
00:12:20 ◼ ► a bunch of iPhones to shoot this. Can we get iPhones?" I think you're an Apple TV Plus.
00:12:29 ◼ ► only seen the first three, four episodes of the season. So I assume it spoils some things
00:12:38 ◼ ► recommend giving it a try. I think it was pretty funny. And I have, as a little sidebar,
00:12:58 ◼ ► long time. And they did a follow-on like episode basically, special. And it's an interactive
00:13:06 ◼ ► special. So it's an interactive sitcom special. And I liked it. It was really funny. But I
00:13:29 ◼ ► says, "Sorry, you can't watch this on this device. You need to go to a different device
00:13:48 ◼ ► me an email. I immediately got an email from Netflix having played that video saying, "Jason,
00:14:02 ◼ ► on your device because it is too old. Please consider a more modern device like a smart
00:14:30 ◼ ► just haven't gotten to it yet and they didn't really think about the fact that it was also
00:14:34 ◼ ► going to go to Apple TV people. Anyway, it turns out my TV set, which is a TCL, so it's
00:14:41 ◼ ► got Roku OS on it, the TV set has a Netflix app that does support interactive. So we watched
00:14:48 ◼ ► it on our TV set Netflix app because that's apparently more advanced than our Apple TV.
00:15:02 ◼ ► something about the app itself, their Netflix app on TV OS that they don't want to support.
00:15:07 ◼ ► It's on iOS, it works on iOS, and all you're doing, the interactive, is literally there's
00:15:10 ◼ ► just a menu and you go back and forth and then select one. There's no special interaction
00:15:24 ◼ ► was the part that really made me laugh because it was like, "You seem to be using something
00:15:29 ◼ ► very old that doesn't do cool things. Please upgrade your old Apple TV." It's like, "No,
00:15:40 ◼ ► - Last thing, Zane Lowe's Apple Music interview series is now a podcast. So this is the interview
00:15:45 ◼ ► series that he does on Apple Music Beats One. Wait, is it called Beats One? Beats One, right?
00:16:05 ◼ ► did on the radio before this. The Zane Lowe interview was an important part of a new artist's
00:16:12 ◼ ► release. They would come on talk to Zane Lowe, talk about the album. This is now available
00:16:17 ◼ ► on Apple podcasts and everywhere. They've released it just as a podcast. It's not locked
00:16:42 ◼ ► do a quick search while we're sitting here, but I can't imagine that it is. I guess this
00:16:58 ◼ ► not on Spotify. It's worth checking. Definitely isn't there. But they can do it with the interview
00:17:08 ◼ ► this a long time ago. We said this when Beats One launched. This is great content that is
00:17:13 ◼ ► kind of being hidden in a place that people aren't expecting to find it. And so putting
00:17:22 ◼ ► is a clear change. This is clearly something new. This is Apple taking content that they
00:17:49 ◼ ► AFM show hosted by Jason Snell and Steven Hackett if they want to know more space stuff
00:17:56 ◼ ► That's right. We did a little live stream during the space launch over the weekend too,
00:18:07 ◼ ► had some weird audio issues because it's trying to be... It's one of those things where...
00:18:12 ◼ ► We see this a lot with the stuff that we do where we want complete control over everything.
00:18:16 ◼ ► And some apps try to be helpful and just do the right thing, but it gives you no control
00:18:22 ◼ ► over it. And so then you try to take it over, take control, and then that doesn't work.
00:18:27 ◼ ► So we fixed it all. There were some very weird audio switching issues that it had, but we
00:18:32 ◼ ► got there in the end. I learned a lot about it. There's things I would change, and there's
00:18:37 ◼ ► features that that app I wish would add. It's a very... Unlike every other live streaming
00:18:43 ◼ ► app I've used, it's really nice as a Mac app. It's a good app, but it's super limited in
00:18:49 ◼ ► what it can do right now. And so that's disappointing. Ecamm makes Call Recorder, which we use for
00:18:56 ◼ ► all our podcasts too. And Live as a live streamer, it's got a great interface for connecting
00:19:02 ◼ ► to the streaming service and giving you complete control over what you see. And I'm very impressed
00:19:14 ◼ ► the screen, and then there was a little picture in picture of our video capture of the Space
00:19:19 ◼ ► Launch. And it just... It can't do that. You can do the reverse, but you can't. You just
00:19:24 ◼ ► can't put video in a picture in picture box. And I emailed them and I said, "Am I wrong?"
00:19:46 ◼ ► And it is great and free and totally locked up my Mac and has crashed it on multiple occasions.
00:20:09 ◼ ► "Oh my God, this would be so great." But I need them to add like 10 features. And maybe
00:20:15 ◼ ► they will over time. I mean, EKM is like two guys, maybe a handful more. It's a very small
00:20:20 ◼ ► company, but it's a great app for what it does. It just doesn't do very much right now.
00:20:26 ◼ ► All right. This episode is brought to you in part by our very good friends over at Cotton
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00:20:49 ◼ ► fantastic stuff. Worked with them for so many merch options in the past for this show. All
00:20:54 ◼ ► of our merch has been done from Cotton Bureau for my other shows, and just so many wonderful
00:20:59 ◼ ► projects that we've worked with Cotton Bureau on. They're incredibly awesome to work with.
00:21:09 ◼ ► are excellent. I wouldn't want to use anybody else when it comes to printing t-shirts especially.
00:21:14 ◼ ► They've worked with other great tech podcasts and communities. They've printed stuff for
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00:23:04 ◼ ► Some are fun. We're going to work on it. We got kind of derailed as everybody did by what
00:23:08 ◼ ► was going on in the world, but we're talking about doing something. Also, we didn't feel
00:23:23 ◼ ► The summer of fun merchandise usually just comes to us in Fever Dreams and we just haven't
00:23:57 ◼ ► Perhaps it will be a specific day in May 2022, but as you and I said before we started the
00:24:01 ◼ ► show, although we tend to do an episode every single week for 52 weeks, it's possible we
00:24:08 ◼ ► could skip a week. It's never happened yet. Or that we would do an episode like a bonus
00:24:13 ◼ ► episode because of something like a secret Apple thing or something like that. You never
00:24:23 ◼ ► So this is also prep, I guess, because we're going to be in big draft season in two weeks'
00:24:41 ◼ ► So there's a message in a bottle. We're throwing it in the, I don't know, Apple Ocean Plus,
00:25:08 ◼ ► Okay. Do you want to go first? We're going to pick five things each that we expect Apple
00:25:37 ◼ ► All right, good. That's perfectly fair. I, with my first pick in the episode 400 draft,
00:25:44 ◼ ► I'm going to say between now and episode 400, Apple will have received an Oscar nomination.
00:26:02 ◼ ► It could be. Well, this year's Oscars, or I guess next year's Oscars are a real question,
00:26:21 ◼ ► So they get the credit just like Netflix screening a movie and then pulling it off and putting
00:26:26 ◼ ► it on Netflix. So I'm just going to throw it out there. I thought about other entertainment
00:26:34 ◼ ► nomination, but I want to go for the nomination because I think that's an interesting idea
00:26:53 ◼ ► it's more likely to win an Emmy than win an Oscar. But I'm going to go with Oscar nomination.
00:27:00 ◼ ► It sure is. Similar-ish, I'm going to predict that by 2022, Apple will have launched a services
00:27:26 ◼ ► Yeah, the services bundle for me is basically I'm Gene Munster in the television. You know,
00:27:32 ◼ ► like Gene would never let the Apple television go and I'm never going to let the services
00:27:40 ◼ ► easier for everyone. They'll make more money that way because people will, you know, where
00:27:45 ◼ ► they may have just had one, they'll be like, "All right, I'll pay an extra dollar a month
00:27:47 ◼ ► and get everything." A services bundle makes sense at a certain point that they would do
00:27:58 ◼ ► charge any money for Apple TV+, right? And Apple News+ or News whatever it's called has
00:28:10 ◼ ► the last year and at a certain point I think they're going to want to bring them together
00:28:17 ◼ ► I think that's a good choice. I mean, bundles work. That's why bundles exist. So if they
00:29:00 ◼ ► be a future pick, exactly what is going on with the ARM transition, but I feel like Apple
00:29:06 ◼ ► has just, they can't get rid of it. Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb. So I think
00:29:25 ◼ ► going to pick one of my stranger ones because that is a strange little pick. By 2022, they
00:29:39 ◼ ► I would expect it will be some kind of watch band line or case line, something like that
00:29:57 ◼ ► Yeah, but I think they will do something. Like that whole idea of we're going to continue
00:30:01 ◼ ► collaborating closely, I do not believe that that was true, but I think they're going to
00:30:15 ◼ ► a little bit fancy with some kind of glasses product, and maybe Jonny is there for something
00:30:20 ◼ ► like that, and they maybe try and be quite stylish there. I think that there is a possibility
00:30:35 ◼ ► I like how they have the Hermes Apple Watches, right? Which is like really, it's just a different
00:30:39 ◼ ► band and a different watch face, so like the Nike ones. They don't change the product in
00:30:44 ◼ ► any way, but I could imagine an Apple Watch Jonny Ive edition. I just think it could have
00:31:03 ◼ ► I'm going to say that you'll be able to develop iOS apps on the iPad by episode 400. That
00:31:08 ◼ ► only gives us two WWDCs, Myke, the one that's this month and the one next year, right? Because
00:31:13 ◼ ► there's another WWDC, presumably, in the summer of 2022, but we're not going to be there yet.
00:31:18 ◼ ► But I'm going to throw it out there. I think at some point they have to say, yes, you can
00:31:55 ◼ ► I kind of tipped my hand a little bit. I believe that by spring 2022, Apple will have launched
00:32:09 ◼ ► visor for home, you know, like, and they really just, again, like it's a prosumer product
00:32:31 ◼ ► And I think having some kind of at home mixed reality visor is like another step, right?
00:32:43 ◼ ► So when they eventually hit with Apple Glasses, it will be a success in the way that the Apple
00:32:54 ◼ ► Yeah. I had this on my list and was thinking of picking it because at some point they've
00:33:14 ◼ ► I'm going to say that in the next two years, Apple will be specifically targeted by a major
00:33:30 ◼ ► into law, but that there will be a big hubbub where somebody somewhere, maybe the Senate,
00:33:42 ◼ ► a big debate about whether they're going to pass a law that makes some of Apple's end-to-end
00:33:47 ◼ ► encryption and others, but Apple will be in the spotlight because of all the law enforcement
00:33:52 ◼ ► complaints about them. And there will be another big hubbub that will involve proposed legislation
00:34:04 ◼ ► much that's across party lines, I feel like there are definitely politicians on in both
00:34:10 ◼ ► parties in the US who want to look tough on terrorism and crime and think that a big tech
00:34:34 ◼ ► And I think if I'm following what you're saying, it's, it's an escalation of the stuff we've
00:34:37 ◼ ► seen in the past where, you know, there's been a lot of like a hand wringing about Apple
00:34:46 ◼ ► Right. Yeah. Right. Right. So what if there's a big debate about whether they're going to
00:34:50 ◼ ► pass a new piece of legislation and one of the debates is over this? I'm not saying that
00:34:58 ◼ ► that they will threaten at least to make some aspect of what Apple is doing with encryption
00:35:05 ◼ ► and other companies illegal, even though, as we know, you're basically breaking encryption
00:35:41 ◼ ► the Mac Pro. One of my things on my list was only the Mac Pro will remain on Intel, but
00:35:46 ◼ ► it could be broader than that. So yeah, the consumer Macs to ARM by 2022 spring. So iMac
00:35:56 ◼ ► Anything that has Pro in the name that runs Mac OS will probably remain on Intel or some
00:36:05 ◼ ► You're not predicting like all the Pro will be on Intel, right? You're leaving that out.
00:36:18 ◼ ► actually don't if they move to Intel, I don't think they'll stick. If they move to ARM,
00:36:22 ◼ ► I don't think they'll stick completely with Intel anyway. I think it's all up in the air
00:36:34 ◼ ► Okay. So you're, you're, this is, I think this is the boldest prediction of all. You're
00:36:46 ◼ ► Here's the thing, Jason, here's the thing. We have all thought, Oh, maybe that a transition
00:37:04 ◼ ► Cause it's a small box. It's, I would probably expect cheaper to make than the laptops. And
00:37:11 ◼ ► if they want to have some kind of like transition hardware that isn't a conspiracy theory of
00:37:20 ◼ ► I don't think this is going to happen, but no, you got to throw out your wild conspiracy
00:37:26 ◼ ► I love it. Absolutely. You know, I do that. I do that right on this show. Um, okay. For
00:37:30 ◼ ► my next pick, my last pick, I'm going to pick that Apple will be selling four different
00:37:36 ◼ ► products with the name AirPods full. All right. So AirPods, AirPods pro, the rumored AirPods
00:37:53 ◼ ► of AirPods. And I don't know what it is. I'm not saying what it is. It could be anything,
00:37:59 ◼ ► but I feel like I want to have some fun here, but I also want to say the brand expansion
00:38:07 ◼ ► So I guess if we're talking here that there will be four products for sale that have AirPods
00:38:13 ◼ ► and then something, right? Yes. Interesting. I, you know, I could imagine there's been a
00:38:17 ◼ ► lot of rumor of like AirPods light. Um, that could be a thing, right? Sure. I don't know.
00:38:37 ◼ ► you possibly can because it's a huge hit. So over your headphones, yes. Some other kind
00:38:42 ◼ ► of, you know, some other over ear behind ear open, whatever, like keep making them, keep
00:38:49 ◼ ► making them make a little wireless charging pad for AirPods. Fine. Do it. Whatever. Anything.
00:38:56 ◼ ► All right. My last pick. I have a couple that I want to share with you after, you know,
00:39:02 ◼ ► like in, you know, in our extras, but I will say that by 2022 Apple will have staggered
00:39:08 ◼ ► their iPhone release schedule and will be releasing multiple phones a year that are new.
00:39:14 ◼ ► All right. Um, so that means not just by staggered, you don't mean just like October and November
00:39:19 ◼ ► after one announcement. No, I think they will do a spring and a fall iPhone event. That's
00:39:30 ◼ ► I think that they will then start spreading it out. You know, cause like the rumors say,
00:39:33 ◼ ► we're going to get four new iPhones in September. I don't think that that will keep happening.
00:39:43 ◼ ► hit twice. Um, and I don't mean like the SE here, right? Like this isn't what I'm talking
00:39:49 ◼ ► about. Um, but, but I believe by 2022 there will be new iPhones twice a year. Okay. That's
00:40:09 ◼ ► Samsung. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, I think we've had this conversation about pot, the possibility
00:40:22 ◼ ► nice to have that be spread out a little bit? I just, I keep wondering what happens in the
00:40:27 ◼ ► fall event. Do you release the iPhone 13 pro and not the iPhone 13? Do you have to uncouple
00:40:42 ◼ ► but it's not better than the existing pros that gives you six months to release the new
00:40:46 ◼ ► pros. I don't know. Yeah. I don't really know how it will look, but I it's, it's, this is
00:40:51 ◼ ► purely based on the fact that I can't imagine them releasing four phones every September
00:41:11 ◼ ► Intel max left no Mac mini update. AirTags will ship. Apple will ship a wireless charging
00:41:19 ◼ ► accessory. Hmm. Back to the dog that bit them. Um, the easy they're going to release the
00:41:27 ◼ ► AirPods studio over your headphones. I decided that was too easy. They begun assembling iPhones
00:41:31 ◼ ► in a country that isn't China, an additional country that isn't China. They've announced
00:41:53 ◼ ► design officer. Oh, I like those. The chief design officer one, I think would be important
00:41:59 ◼ ► because it could allow them to add some diversity to their executive page. And they think that
00:42:05 ◼ ► they should do that at some point, you know, they can look for somebody who doesn't look
00:42:09 ◼ ► like the rest of the executives then in there. Right. Um, and maybe they are doing that.
00:42:17 ◼ ► it has been over the last many, many years. But so we'll see. But yeah, there was a couple
00:42:21 ◼ ► in there that I thought were interesting. I think make a lot of sense, which is especially
00:42:30 ◼ ► about spreading out the, uh, creation of their products and manufacture their products to
00:42:49 ◼ ► been rumors about Vietnam potentially being an assembly point. Um, yeah, I think there,
00:42:56 ◼ ► I think that they're definitely attached to China, but they don't want to be completely
00:43:00 ◼ ► stuck where China holds the key to all their products. Oh, you know what you just said,
00:43:18 ◼ ► be made in the U S in the future because they're opening a factory and it's all connected.
00:43:23 ◼ ► But yeah, it was Vietnam. It's all connected. We are going to do a massive ask upgrade.
00:43:28 ◼ ► We got so many wonderful questions from the upgrade Ian's about a lot of meta stuff about
00:43:32 ◼ ► the show. Um, and that's what we're going to do for the rest of the episode. I couldn't
00:43:40 ◼ ► just to say about the draft, we'll come back to it, right? Like I, I will put a note in
00:43:45 ◼ ► my to do app. Like we will score this draft by episode 400. Like it's, it's going to happen.
00:43:50 ◼ ► So that, that will be a lot of fun. Uh, this episode is brought to you by Doordash. You've
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00:44:52 ◼ ► home cooking, maybe you're getting in a rut. Absolutely. We just did this on Friday with
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00:45:43 ◼ ► know? Oh yeah. So we'll celebrate by turning over to the upgrade against now. Yeah. Questions
00:46:14 ◼ ► And both me and Jason remember having conversations over iMessage about this show, but both of
00:46:21 ◼ ► our messages in the cloud backups or whatever only they cut off in September of 2014. So
00:46:34 ◼ ► around that time. There's something about that time where neither of us have our backups
00:46:38 ◼ ► before then of our messages. So all of those conversations would have been happening probably
00:46:55 ◼ ► when we were starting out and we had one other name suggestion that came from a long list
00:47:09 ◼ ► I think for me, upgrade was definitely the winner of those. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I'm pleased
00:47:19 ◼ ► because the point of the name and, and this is something that I think has come up a few
00:47:36 ◼ ► and then you had set back to upgrade and iconic as the ones you liked the best, which I knew
00:47:40 ◼ ► what the others were. What you, what you wrote to me was, I think we're leaning toward upgrade,
00:47:47 ◼ ► but it gives the impression of showing that it's better than what you're currently doing
00:47:50 ◼ ► on this topic. Are you happy with that? Maybe it was the intention because personally I
00:47:55 ◼ ► like it because of that as it sends a strong message, but just wanted to make sure you'd
00:47:58 ◼ ► considered it. And the answer is it was absolutely my intention as just a little portion of an
00:48:07 ◼ ► elbow to my former employers to have my podcast that I went out and did on my own be an upgrade
00:48:14 ◼ ► over my previous job. And I will, if I haven't said that before publicly, I will say it now.
00:48:30 ◼ ► not that it's better than every project you were doing. Of course the wonderful Clockwise,
00:48:37 ◼ ► Clockwise art in that email thread as we were trying to work on a new version of Clockwise.
00:48:47 ◼ ► funny that you're like, are you sure you want to, this leaves an implication. I'm like,
00:48:50 ◼ ► yes it does. All right. Yeah. So it's a great name. It's a great name because it's a thing.
00:48:56 ◼ ► It's a tech word. It means something in terms of always kind of moving forward and there's
00:49:08 ◼ ► word, which is very hard, right? To find that word that somehow kind of ties in. And so
00:49:26 ◼ ► clicking into a window for upgrade podcast and we're first beating out those punks over
00:49:30 ◼ ► at life hacker. Yeah. What are they thinking? Uh, um, Zach and the discord, the relay FM
00:49:40 ◼ ► members discord, by the way, which you should become a relay FM member support this show.
00:49:52 ◼ ► the relay FM members discord, which is a wonderful live chat as well while we stream the show
00:49:56 ◼ ► live. But you can also ask your ask upgrade questions right in the discord and they get
00:50:08 ◼ ► to be on Twitter. So Zach asked, uh, why is there a 128 K max start up beep at the beginning
00:50:20 ◼ ► it is the original Mac startup chime. Um, my first Mac was a Mac SE and it had the same
00:50:31 ◼ ► a startup sound when we got the theme music. Um, I felt like the theme music was, I like
00:50:38 ◼ ► the theme music a lot. Um, we did make one change. I had it be more guitar and less synthesizer.
00:50:43 ◼ ► And sometimes when I'm editing the show instead of Myke, I put it back to the wacky wacky
00:50:48 ◼ ► or synth version, which is what makes it even weirder. You wanted more guitar, but you use
00:50:53 ◼ ► the synth one way or the other. I was afraid that it was a little too cheesy for our primary
00:50:57 ◼ ► theme song, but once it was the primary theme song, having the weirdly cheesy synth version,
00:51:08 ◼ ► at Apple now. Um, but, uh, thank you to Chris for doing that theme song. So great. Uh, but
00:51:16 ◼ ► I felt like it needed a start and I thought, well, how about a startup chime? And I played
00:51:20 ◼ ► with it and that was what I came up with was the original Mac startup chime followed by
00:51:25 ◼ ► the music starting was like, really, I thought that sounded great. So it was really just
00:51:34 ◼ ► chime because like if the, if the upgrade music had started with a, with a big flourish,
00:51:39 ◼ ► I would not have done it, but it didn't, it sort of like started slowly and then built.
00:51:44 ◼ ► And so I wanted that, that kind of gating thing at the beginning. So it really was just
00:51:47 ◼ ► kind of a creative process of kind of following why I was feeling the way I was about how I wanted
00:51:52 ◼ ► the show to sound. And I edited, we should mention this again. I edited episode one because we had to,
00:51:57 ◼ ► it was under embargo for an iPhone review embargo episode one was, and you were on holiday. So we
00:52:03 ◼ ► recorded that episode, uh, like the weekend before, and then, uh, I edited it and posted it.
00:52:11 ◼ ► So I was making those decisions about like the theme song. You hadn't even heard the theme song.
00:52:17 ◼ ► I had not heard the theme song at all before the first time I heard it was when it was released
00:52:27 ◼ ► And, and, and so as a part of that process, and I've done a million other podcasts, right? I've
00:52:33 ◼ ► been thinking about creatively, like, how do I want this to start? And it doesn't sound right
00:52:36 ◼ ► like this. And there were no rules. We were just figuring it out. And I thought startup beep
00:52:44 ◼ ► synth version versus the guitar version is it does let us play with it and do things like have
00:52:54 ◼ ► There was a time that I can't remember why, but we did a different chime every week for a while.
00:53:04 ◼ ► or maybe it was somebody asked a question about the startup chime and then we started messing
00:53:08 ◼ ► with the startup chime. I don't know. I think it may have been the first summer of fun before
00:53:11 ◼ ► we had the theme. Uh, yeah, right. So we, we had a folder full of those. And then what we asked Chris
00:53:16 ◼ ► for was we wanted to do the surf guitar summer of fun version of the upgrade theme. And I
00:53:21 ◼ ► specifically asked him to have it start with that little slidey guitar thing. Like you'd hear in a
00:53:26 ◼ ► David Lynch movie or something like that. And it's perfect. So he's emulating the startup chime.
00:53:33 ◼ ► We'll come back to that in a second. And we will get back to that in a second. So anyway, that's,
00:53:36 ◼ ► that's the idea of the chime. Uh, it is retro, which I like. It says something about Apple on
00:53:41 ◼ ► the Mac, but also we just felt like appropriate and then we can mess with it, which is also great.
00:53:53 ◼ ► Yes, because Apple TV plus has a startup chime. It's hilarious. Whoever thought of that,
00:54:00 ◼ ► bless your heart that, that Apple TV plus shows start with a startup chime. It's the best. It's
00:54:06 ◼ ► great. The question answer of this question is Zach, Zach Knox, who is important in upgrade law,
00:54:18 ◼ ► one for this episode. There will be one in a couple of weeks for the WWC draft is that creates
00:54:22 ◼ ► those. And Zach also helped me develop, uh, the upgrade website, um, uh, upgrade ease.com, which
00:54:28 ◼ ► is the hall of fame. So Zach helped me build that in, in the sense of like Zach built it. There's
00:54:33 ◼ ► the help is Zach did it. Um, and I helped with, with, with, by doing everything. Yeah. And Zach
00:54:41 ◼ ► is also a mod in the, uh, in the discord and the members discord. Um, another question from the
00:54:46 ◼ ► discord comes from Molly's and I moved this one up in the document for obvious reasons.
00:54:51 ◼ ► Of all the bad things going on in the world, I miss the summer of fun and the relaxing worry free
00:54:55 ◼ ► musical notes that accompany it. Could you play the theme music for me just this once, please?
00:55:00 ◼ ► Yes. I will definitely play that theme music for you because we were just talking about it. So
00:55:04 ◼ ► that's going to play right now. Speaking of the summer of fun. Oh, that felt good. Right. I feel
00:55:20 ◼ ► like I just was on the beach. It's going to start in a few weeks. So I'm looking forward to that.
00:55:25 ◼ ► Don't know what we're going to do yet, but that's the fun. That's that is the fun. That's where the
00:55:29 ◼ ► fun comes from. And after WWDC, we decided that the summer of fun can't begin until WWDC is over.
00:55:35 ◼ ► Yeah. And depending on how action packed WWDC is, it will either start the episode after or the
00:55:40 ◼ ► episode after that. So we'll see, it depends on how much stuff there is to talk about. We may have
00:55:45 ◼ ► to usher it in like at the end of our WWDC recap episode, we may have to like usher it in and say,
00:55:51 ◼ ► yeah, we now like, like when one Antonio Samoranch stood on the podium at the Olympics and said,
00:55:56 ◼ ► I now declare these Olympic games open. We'll do that. But for the summer of fun, it's a deep cut
00:56:02 ◼ ► one Antonio Samoranch. I hope people recognize how deep that cut is. Anyway. And again, thanks to
00:56:07 ◼ ► Chris Breen for that music and all the music, the draft music, the upgraded music, Chris composed
00:56:12 ◼ ► them all. And then he does all the variations and, um, it's, they're great and he's a great sport and
00:56:17 ◼ ► it's a fun, uh, you know, he's, he basically does the theme song of all of my podcasts. So thank you
00:56:23 ◼ ► to Chris for all the theme songs, all the brain themes. Uh, I assume a different Chris asked,
00:56:30 ◼ ► tell us about some personal accomplishments and milestones that you've each achieved outside of
00:56:34 ◼ ► upgrade over the course of these 300 episodes. I have four and they're pretty big. Uh, I made
00:56:46 ◼ ► like a self-employed podcast. It went up. Great. Started. Um, I have grown a company around all of
00:56:53 ◼ ► this relay. FM has grown into the thing that is today. Uh, I got married and bought my first home
00:56:58 ◼ ► over the course of these episodes. Life stuff. Big, big stuff. Yeah. But you're in a very
00:57:05 ◼ ► different place than you were for episode one. Yeah. Um, I, episode one occurred a week after I
00:57:21 ◼ ► because I came over from a Mac user to Mac world and essentially, uh, other than some, you know,
00:57:31 ◼ ► an internship at my local newspaper and some food service jobs summers at college, it was my first
00:57:38 ◼ ► job and it was my only job and upgrade one came out when I left it like a week before to go do
00:57:48 ◼ ► question Mark, like start a website. And there was no gap. There was no like, well, I'm going to
00:57:54 ◼ ► take some time off and think about it because the iPhone event happened the week that I left IDG and
00:57:59 ◼ ► I got the phone and was under embargo and that we all know that's the biggest week of our year in
00:58:05 ◼ ► terms of listener interest and reader interest. So we had to go right then. So we had to do upgrade
00:58:11 ◼ ► one right then we had to launch six colors right then. So no break. And on the precipice, my wife
00:58:17 ◼ ► and I had been taking walks for a couple of years talking about like, how long are we going to give
00:58:20 ◼ ► this? Is this going to work? What are the risks? How are we going to survive? We don't have any,
00:58:25 ◼ ► uh, health insurance. We're going to have to pay for that. All these things that were going on.
00:58:29 ◼ ► So what's happened in the intervening 300 episodes is I'm still doing that. It worked. So that's,
00:58:35 ◼ ► that's the biggest one for me is that I went from my first job and the sort of quote unquote safety
00:58:41 ◼ ► of a corporate job that I was burned out on and hating for the last year or two that I was there
00:58:46 ◼ ► to a job that I love that I do from my house, which everybody does a job from their house now,
00:58:51 ◼ ► it seems, but I, I, I have been doing it all of this time, um, building up six colors. Um,
00:58:57 ◼ ► I sent my daughter off to college, then she came back because of the pandemic, but we did send her
00:59:02 ◼ ► off and that was a big thing. And I'll put in there, um, this is not quite outside of upgrade
00:59:07 ◼ ► or not. I got to do a bunch of amazing live events and it's not just like the upgrade live events,
00:59:12 ◼ ► but it's like the relay live events. And that means a WWDC and the relay fifth anniversary
00:59:18 ◼ ► event where I got to host the family feud. And, and you know what, uh, if you don't already know
00:59:24 ◼ ► this about me, um, being in front of a live audience, I love it. I love it. I don't get
00:59:29 ◼ ► stage fright. I love it. So that has been amazing for my life too. But I would say the biggest thing
00:59:36 ◼ ► is, yeah, I was going out on my own and had zero expectation of whether I was going to be able to
00:59:45 ◼ ► **Mark asked, how did you become aware of each other? What was the first time you met in person?
01:00:02 ◼ ► We'll get to that. We'll get to that in a minute. Uh, you know, it's just like, maybe it's
01:00:11 ◼ ► I have to admit, I, for a project that I have not announced yet, I've been looking through a lot of
01:00:16 ◼ ► old issues of, uh, of Mac world and Mac user and seeing things that I've written or I know I worked
01:00:22 ◼ ► on about things that I consider ancient history. And I think to myself, geez, like, wow. Yeah.
01:00:30 ◼ ► I used to read Mac world magazine, you know, I used to read the website. Um, and then when
01:00:34 ◼ ► social media was a thing, I was been following Jason. The first time that we spoke was in, uh,
01:00:45 ◼ ► I found the email that I sent to him. Yep. I found it too. And I wanted to read the topics
01:00:55 ◼ ► there's one for the time capsule. Yeah. The new iPad one week on, and it would be great to know
01:01:01 ◼ ► your opinions having seen it at the event. If you're able to talk about it, I don't know what
01:01:05 ◼ ► iPad, like that's just an iPad. That would have been the third year of the iPad. Maybe that was
01:01:10 ◼ ► the, like the retina first retina iPad in March, 2012. I don't know. Uh, second thing was Twitter
01:01:24 ◼ ► Do you have any idea what that is? Uh, I just, um, I just searched for it and it's posterous
01:01:32 ◼ ► at posterous on Twitter. A poster is no longer in surface. Posterous was a simple blogging
01:01:38 ◼ ► platform started in May, 2008. It's supported integrated and automatic posting to other social
01:01:49 ◼ ► thanks for killing posterous. My word. I now remember this cause the logo looked like a
01:01:55 ◼ ► post-it note. Wow. Look at that. That's how time flies, I suppose. And also the up-ground upcoming
01:02:02 ◼ ► angry birds space game. Are we excited or do we have red bird fatigue? They were the things that
01:02:08 ◼ ► we spoke about and you said, sounds great. So I was very happy to, I still am sort of like that
01:02:14 ◼ ► where I will sometimes get emails from people who are like, Hey, would you like to be on my podcast?
01:02:18 ◼ ► And I try to say yes. Right. Because even that, you know, you never know. I don't say yes because
01:02:23 ◼ ► you never know when you're going to be working for that person with that person for 300 episodes.
01:02:27 ◼ ► But more like, why not? Like it's nice. It helps if they want it. It's nice that they thought of
01:02:32 ◼ ► me and all of that. So I, yeah, that was, I remember nothing about that. Other than I do,
01:02:38 ◼ ► I do remember doing it. I remember sitting in the podcast studio at IDG and recording that,
01:02:44 ◼ ► but that's like, I don't remember anything we talked about. No. And the first time we met was,
01:02:52 ◼ ► I mean, we'd by that point, um, after that point, I had you on my various shows multiple times.
01:03:00 ◼ ► Right. Um, we'd met, uh, I guess the first time we met was at a Mac world party at WWDC.
01:03:09 ◼ ► Oh yeah. So we, we had a party at WWDC for several years. Cause Mac world was in San Francisco,
01:03:20 ◼ ► a lot of them are at Apple or in the Silicon Valley. Right. But Mac world was in San Francisco,
01:03:26 ◼ ► downtown. We were a little bit of a hike, right? It was like six blocks or something to get there
01:03:29 ◼ ► up a hill. It's not easy. You have to work for it a little bit, but we were proximate enough that I
01:03:34 ◼ ► thought, and we had a nice terrace like that we could do a party on. So we did one for a few years
01:03:40 ◼ ► and I, I made up the guest list, which was weird for me. I hadn't done that before. And so I
01:03:45 ◼ ► invited sort of everybody I knew, um, which included all sorts of sort of Apple related
01:04:05 ◼ ► do you want to come to the Mac world party? And I was like, Oh my God. Cause I knew about the Mac
01:04:09 ◼ ► world party because when people would go to WWDC, they would take pictures from the little terrace
01:04:14 ◼ ► and they'll post them online. It's like, if you were someone who's just following along with this
01:04:18 ◼ ► stuff from home, as I was up until that point, I knew this part, he existed. And then a few
01:04:23 ◼ ► years later we co-hosted it really. FM co-hosted the pie. Yeah. I think that was the last time it
01:04:27 ◼ ► happened after I left actually, which was really funny. Cause I got to go back there and be like,
01:04:32 ◼ ► yeah, I'm with these guys. We put you on the guest list. So you obviously weren't on the guest list
01:04:37 ◼ ► and I just invited you at the last minute. And I said, yeah, we got room. Come on over.
01:04:40 ◼ ► Yep. Don't say it like that. You just, you just figured that I wouldn't be there, you know, and
01:04:44 ◼ ► then you saw me, you saw that I was in town and you were like, Hey, come over. Yeah. That was
01:04:48 ◼ ► pretty good. It's a lot of pressure making a guest list. I don't know that many people. So it's like,
01:04:53 ◼ ► who am I going to? And then it's always like, Oh, I forgot. Oh, you're in town, please come
01:05:01 ◼ ► true story. Every year, Damon Wayans would arrive and it was always like Naomi Pierce brought him.
01:05:06 ◼ ► I think that I think that's how that worked and I don't know how that happened. And yeah, those
01:05:11 ◼ ► are, those are fun thing. Uh, Jorvik in the relay from discord asked, what was the most surprise
01:05:17 ◼ ► that you have been by one of your co-hosts opinions or purchases? Uh, mine was when you told me you
01:05:23 ◼ ► used a calendar as your task manager. It's a classic. I was very upset about that. As I,
01:05:28 ◼ ► as I explained myself, I feel like you got a little less irate about it. Yeah. Because I kind
01:05:35 ◼ ► of like built up the, the idea of blocking time to work on tasks. Yeah. But it still was, yes,
01:05:42 ◼ ► it's still very much offended you. I do kind of have some task managers that I sort of use now,
01:05:46 ◼ ► although I still do block out time and find it very effective to say, in fact, now that,
01:05:50 ◼ ► now that to do a support is inside fantastic Cal, I will have, I have a recurring to do that is at a
01:05:55 ◼ ► time on the week to write my Mac world column and I check it off and it's like two P on Tuesdays,
01:06:02 ◼ ► right? The Mac world column. So it's still in the calendar, but it's also a thing I can check off.
01:06:15 ◼ ► based system, but I was also coming from a place where I was over scheduled. I was in lots and lots
01:06:19 ◼ ► of meetings at IDG. Yeah. And the only way I could get things done was by blocking off time. And so
01:06:24 ◼ ► it came out of that, I think too, where I'd be like, I'm going to write my column now two to four
01:06:30 ◼ ► don't schedule me for anything during this period, because like some of those people could see my
01:06:35 ◼ ► calendar and they'd see free free time and they'd pop things in there. So I would block them with
01:06:40 ◼ ► space for me to do other things. For me, part of it, and it still gets me from time to time
01:06:48 ◼ ► is your casual description of how you've got two iPads that you use for different tasks.
01:06:52 ◼ ► It's still, I don't even know what it is about that. It's just, it always strikes me as like
01:06:58 ◼ ► two iPads, but it just, it's always the multi-pad lifestyle originally hit me as being kind of wacky.
01:07:05 ◼ ► I don't know. I get why you do it, but it is wacky. Also, I would say, at several points,
01:07:12 ◼ ► I just forget how much younger you are than I am. And it comes up sometimes with Myke at the movies,
01:07:16 ◼ ► like famously, I heard from a lot of people about you not understanding that save the whales was a
01:07:24 ◼ ► for being resonant because save the whales was a thing. And you're like, what whales? They're fine.
01:07:28 ◼ ► It's like, wow. Okay. You're right. You did not actually live through that. And I had forgotten
01:07:35 ◼ ► or my favorite moment where I felt like I was a million years old is when you, when I talked
01:07:39 ◼ ► about crowded house with you, my favorite band and you said, Oh, my mom loved crowded house. We
01:07:44 ◼ ► had the greatest hits CD. I thought, yep, that's it. My favorite band is the band that your mom
01:07:50 ◼ ► likes. I liked them too, but, uh, yeah, but it was a, it was a happy childhood memory of music
01:07:56 ◼ ► your mother played. I was like, okay. Yeah. So that's it for me. You're only as young as you
01:08:02 ◼ ► feel Myke. Then maybe I feel older. You feel younger. We're somewhere around the same age.
01:08:06 ◼ ► I don't know how I'm feeling right now. We all feel old now. We're all a hundred years old.
01:08:14 ◼ ► Sam in a discord asked, uh, what have you accomplished with the show that you're most proud
01:08:20 ◼ ► of? Um, also the flip side, what would you want to improve or change in the future? Um, I think one
01:08:28 ◼ ► of my things that I am the most proud of is the upgrades. I love it. Um, it was one of those things
01:08:35 ◼ ► where I think when, when I first proposed it, you were a little bit like, here goes Myke with one of
01:08:40 ◼ ► these wild ideas. Yeah. Right. And also keep in mind, it was like literally episode like 10 or
01:08:45 ◼ ► something. We hadn't even been doing the show for a year. Yeah. I think we did it. Didn't we do the,
01:08:50 ◼ ► and it was the first, it was the first annual remember. I was very, I was very opposed to that
01:08:56 ◼ ► because, uh, it's not, there's no such thing as a, as a first annual episode 16 was the upgrade
01:09:02 ◼ ► is for 2014. The first ever upgrade is, is what I demanded that we call it. Yeah. But then I was
01:09:08 ◼ ► right. It did become an annual tradition. I love it. It's, it's grown into something that like I
01:09:14 ◼ ► genuinely look forward to every single year and like think a lot about. And it's really something
01:09:19 ◼ ► that I love. Um, so I'm happy that we do that in the things of what would you want to improve or
01:09:23 ◼ ► change in the future? I would like to do some more in depth topics that take more time to research and
01:09:31 ◼ ► stuff like that. I don't really have ideas for what they could be, but it's just something that
01:09:35 ◼ ► has been on my mind. Well, we did that one segment a little while ago that was kind of like the big
01:09:39 ◼ ► picture kind of thing where we tried to just disconnect a little bit from the week in week out
01:09:45 ◼ ► and kind of zoom back and talk about the big picture. And that's a thing that I think fits
01:09:49 ◼ ► with our format and yet is furthering it in a way that is good. What about you? For me, I would say
01:10:04 ◼ ► review of this, all of that for years now. I think it was a milestone when I got a call from Apple PR
01:10:11 ◼ ► specifically because of upgrade. Yeah, that's nice. And it's that Colleen Novielli, uh,
01:10:19 ◼ ► interview that I did in New York City. That was an invite that I got not because I was the guy who
01:10:27 ◼ ► writes about Apple stuff for Six Colors, but because they wanted me to interview somebody
01:10:33 ◼ ► and they felt and they felt that upgrade was a good fit for a Mac. It was an iMac, right?
01:10:41 ◼ ► For an interview about a new Mac. And I thought this is a real milestone that our show is the
01:10:50 ◼ ► reason that I'm getting this call from Apple and not my writing. So that was a big one for me. And
01:10:58 ◼ ► it's happened since then, right? But for me, that was a real milestone of upgrade. That upgrade was
01:11:05 ◼ ► taken seriously and part of Apple's launch plan for this product. And that was unusual and good.
01:11:12 ◼ ► And on the flip side, I always want us to keep searching for other trends like with Upstream,
01:11:20 ◼ ► where we, what I'm really happy about Upstream is that we started talking about Apple's strategy and
01:11:26 ◼ ► the other streaming media stuff long before there was anything. And I felt like we did a good job
01:11:33 ◼ ► covering it as it came into reality. And it did also mean that at that moment where Apple TV+
01:11:41 ◼ ► launched, not only were we there with this whole history of talking about it, and so we really knew
01:11:46 ◼ ► what the history was and what they were trying to do, but I feel like our listeners were super
01:11:52 ◼ ► well-educated about what was going on. And I would see it on Twitter sometimes where I'd see people
01:11:57 ◼ ► who very clearly had listened to upgrade and were like, "Oh, well, Apple's doing it because of this."
01:12:01 ◼ ► And I'm like, "That's awesome." It's not just about us. Look at how cool we are that we talked
01:12:06 ◼ ► about this years in advance, but it's also like we talked about it with the listeners. And so when
01:12:10 ◼ ► that happened, all the upgradians are like, "Yeah, okay. I've been following it. I know what's going
01:12:14 ◼ ► on," which is awesome. So I'd love to continue watching for opportunities to do stuff like that.
01:12:20 ◼ ► The things that strike us as interesting that are maybe a little longer term, and we plant the seed,
01:12:30 ◼ ► John in the Discord asked, "What was the most unexpectedly delightful thing to happen on the
01:12:36 ◼ ► show?" It is for me when Jason and Federico nearly killed me on air in episode 26 of Upgrade,
01:12:47 ◼ ► where we started the show, the show began, we were talking beforehand, and then it turned out
01:12:53 ◼ ► that Federico was sitting in the studio with Jason because it was after the Apple Watch,
01:12:58 ◼ ► Apple event where Federico went out. And I emitted a noise which can only be described as a man's
01:13:06 ◼ ► brain just breaking. I will play a clip now so you can hear that in case you've never heard that
01:13:12 ◼ ► episode. He got an invite. We'll talk about that on Connected. That's a whole big story. I'm looking
01:13:18 ◼ ► forward to Connected this week, actually. Or we can talk about it now if you want, Myke.
01:13:45 ◼ ► Yeah, so the story there is that that was where the first time any of us met Federico, right?
01:13:56 ◼ ► I mean, all of us Americans who go to Apple events knew who he was, but we'd never seen him in person.
01:14:04 ◼ ► And so that was great. He's very tall. And that was my memory. It's like, oh, he's very tall, this
01:14:10 ◼ ► gentleman. We went out to lunch with a few of us and then went back to the Macworld studios because
01:14:20 ◼ ► I had to do the thing. And it was very much like a collaboration of wouldn't it be funny if you just
01:14:25 ◼ ► came on the podcast and you'd be a guest, but also you'd blow Myke's mind. And then what we decided
01:14:31 ◼ ► to do is not mention it to you and have him sit there silently until that moment when he spoke
01:14:37 ◼ ► and blew your mind. Because there was also before the show, I was complaining about him to you
01:14:43 ◼ ► because he wasn't answering my text messages. The reason he wasn't answering the text messages is
01:14:48 ◼ ► because he was with you getting rid of the scammy. Yes. Which happened. I would say my most delightful
01:14:56 ◼ ► thing that happened is that we had this dumb idea, one of my dumb ideas for Upgrade Christmas Special,
01:15:03 ◼ ► holiday special. It was the Christmas Carol. It was episode 225. And the idea there, the very
01:15:15 ◼ ► concept on Upgrade? And it was like, we'll talk to Steven about the past. We'll talk to Rosemary
01:15:21 ◼ ► about the present. And we'll talk to Federico about the future. And I felt like that was,
01:15:27 ◼ ► that was a good set of guests and it would be a fun kind of thing. And Federico representing kind
01:15:33 ◼ ► of the iPad and other things that are going on looking at Apple would be like a good future goes
01:15:38 ◼ ► to future Apple. What I didn't expect was that Federico would do the entire episode in character
01:15:46 ◼ ► as himself coming back from the future to reveal all the details of everything that happened in the
01:15:51 ◼ ► future. And it's amazing, like amazing. And I tried to do the past thing with Steven and it
01:15:58 ◼ ► fell apart very quickly, but Federico was incredibly committed to the role. Yeah. I didn't
01:16:03 ◼ ► want Steven to stay there because it was going to be us. It was going to be the same bit, except we
01:16:07 ◼ ► would be surprising, surprising Steven with facts of the present. And we're all aware of the facts
01:16:12 ◼ ► of the present. So I thought that would be kind of boring, but Federico was committed to the bit
01:16:17 ◼ ► in a level of detail that I never expected. And he went to a lot of very weird places. And that was,
01:16:27 ◼ ► - Yeah. If you've not heard that episode, that's one really worth listening to. I'll put it in the
01:16:31 ◼ ► show notes. - It's bananas. And then more broadly, the back and forth with us and the audience about
01:16:37 ◼ ► ideas like, you know, upgradians as a term, which was brought by the listener, dongle town,
01:16:43 ◼ ► and the whole kind of like spinning out of where dongle town is. And it's, you know, it's summer
01:16:49 ◼ ► of fun connotations and it's sports connotations and things like that has been very fun. And then
01:16:55 ◼ ► even some bits that we did that we then discarded later for new dumb bits that always happens,
01:17:01 ◼ ► like verticals. We had verticals for a while, which are segments essentially, but we were joking
01:17:05 ◼ ► about them and calling them verticals because that's an industry term and we don't do that
01:17:09 ◼ ► anymore, but that was a fun thing for the first 40 episodes or whatever. So that's, I love that back
01:17:14 ◼ ► and forth of sort of silly bits that recur for a while. - Well, 'cause some of the verticals just
01:17:18 ◼ ► became part of the show, so then they just became part of the show, like "Ask upgrade," for example.
01:17:28 ◼ ► - The internet's friend Casey asked, "What is the biggest pinch yourself moment?" I think I had two
01:17:34 ◼ ► that immediately jumped out to me. One was the Colleen Novielli interview that you mentioned
01:17:39 ◼ ► earlier. Colleen was the first Apple guest that we'd had. We've had a few since, but that was like,
01:17:43 ◼ ► really? Whoa, okay, right? Like when you were telling me all that stuff about like, they want
01:17:48 ◼ ► to bring me in for our show, like it was amazing. And then also in episode 56, John Gruber linked to
01:17:55 ◼ ► the show and mentioned that "Upgrade" was a favorite show of his, which again, if you go back to Myke
01:18:01 ◼ ► going all the way back in his history as like a 15-year-old boy reading tech news on the internet,
01:18:07 ◼ ► you know, I've always really respected John Gruber. And I didn't, I don't really think I knew that he
01:18:12 ◼ ► listened to the show at all at that point. And then when he linked to the episode, which is a
01:18:30 ◼ ► one of his favorite podcasts, which really meant a lot to me. Yeah, very generous of him to say that.
01:18:35 ◼ ► And that was a fun episode too. For me, it's similar. When they started regularly mentioning
01:18:44 ◼ ► "Upgrade" on Accidental Tech Podcast, which is the one tech podcast I listen to every single week,
01:18:52 ◼ ► I try to listen to others, but that's the one that's at the top of my list. That's why it's
01:18:56 ◼ ► a Lifetime Achievement Award winner. Yeah, and it kept happening. That's the part that gets me,
01:19:01 ◼ ► is that they mention it once and I'm like, "Wow, that's great. That's awesome that they're talking
01:19:06 ◼ ► about that." But they do, they cite us a lot. And it's every time I, I mean, they mentioned my name
01:19:12 ◼ ► sometimes in passing. I'm like, "But it's so weird to listen to one of your regular favorite podcasts,
01:19:18 ◼ ► and then somebody just casually mentions your name on the podcast and then they go on." And I kind of
01:19:24 ◼ ► haven't gotten over that of like, "What? But, huh? Where'd that come from?" Kind of disconcerting,
01:19:29 ◼ ► but also a lot of fun. So that's, for me, that has honestly been it, is I know those guys. So it's
01:19:34 ◼ ► not like, "Oh, I can't believe they noticed me." I know those guys, but they don't need to talk
01:19:40 ◼ ► about other podcasts on their podcast. They don't need to say nice things. They don't need to cite us
01:19:43 ◼ ► or say, as Marco has done several times, you should really, and Casey and John too, you should
01:19:48 ◼ ► really listen to this week's episode of "Upgrade." Marco does that all the time, even now. And it's
01:19:53 ◼ ► just, it's very nice to say, "They really covered this well. You should go listen to that." Not only
01:19:59 ◼ ► is that good because they have a big audience and they're sending people to listen to us, but I'm
01:20:04 ◼ ► honored by that. That's because it's a podcast that I listen to. I don't need to go listen to
01:20:08 ◼ ► "Upgrade" though, because I've already heard it. All right. We have more Ask "Upgrade" from the
01:20:13 ◼ ► Upgradients to go, but before we do, let me thank our final sponsor, and that is Squarespace. You can
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01:22:10 ◼ ► accomplished with the show that you would like to in the future? This is bouncing on something
01:22:14 ◼ ► you mentioned earlier. We've done some live stuff for this show. I want to do a large live show for
01:22:19 ◼ ► upgrade. I thought about what it would take to do a live upgrade at WWDC in the past. It would
01:22:28 ◼ ► be difficult if we wanted to keep it on Monday and if we wanted to do how we usually do it,
01:22:34 ◼ ► which is right after the keynote, but maybe one day. But even if it's not WWDC, I want to do a
01:22:40 ◼ ► large live show one day. We talked about before all of this was going on, we talked about doing
01:22:45 ◼ ► something. We did one show in Chicago that was a live upgrade. That was really great. And we filled
01:22:54 ◼ ► the Cards Against Humanity theater. And it was luckily enough was a draft week. Yeah. And a
01:23:01 ◼ ► draft I lost because I was caught in the lights. I was just so dazzled by the lights and the audience.
01:23:09 ◼ ► right? Like just, you know. I was off my game, Myke. I was just too feeling the love and off
01:23:16 ◼ ► my game. You were just picking joke picks to make the audience laugh, right? Oh man, kind of, but
01:23:21 ◼ ► also just bad judgment. Anyway, I know you won that one fair and square. But yes, I would love
01:23:27 ◼ ► to do that too. That would be really great to do a proper upgrade again in front of an audience.
01:23:33 ◼ ► And one day we'll have audiences again and we'll do that. And Zach asks, Zach's got another question
01:23:40 ◼ ► in. Do you find that the more segmented nature of upgrade helps you in producing the show compared
01:23:45 ◼ ► to looser format shows that you also make? Yeah. It's a yes and no for me. Really? Why and no?
01:23:53 ◼ ► So yes, because I can kind of like, we've got this, this and this to do. It helps me with
01:23:59 ◼ ► timing of the show. Like I know how long the segments are going to be and we can, you know,
01:24:04 ◼ ► like especially with Ask Upgrade, if there isn't a lot of news, we always have this world that we can
01:24:08 ◼ ► come back to to help with topics. Stuff like that is great. But sometimes if I want to have a
01:24:16 ◼ ► segment in a show, I may have to work harder to find news for it. That's true, right? It does.
01:24:21 ◼ ► It creates an assignment. And this is something we'll come back to. I think later on there's a
01:24:26 ◼ ► question that's similar to this, but when you're making a podcast, right? So we did episode one.
01:24:30 ◼ ► We then did an episode every single week and now we're at 300 of them. This is the secret of doing
01:24:36 ◼ ► something like this or publishing back in the day, publishing a magazine or doing a website, right?
01:24:42 ◼ ► It's like, it's a treadmill. You're not creating a single thing. You're creating a whole system
01:24:46 ◼ ► that you then need to stay on forever until you stop doing it. And that means that every time you
01:24:53 ◼ ► do something, you have to look at it, not as this would be fun, but as this will be fun, but I'm
01:25:00 ◼ ► also committing to a certain amount of work forever until I discard this thing. And that's
01:25:05 ◼ ► always the bit that gives me, and I think you, an appropriate amount of hesitation about committing.
01:25:12 ◼ ► Not that we don't commit to things because we do, but that you got to be sure because it will create
01:25:25 ◼ ► there, you've got a limited amount of work that you can commit. So you got to make the right
01:25:28 ◼ ► decisions about it. I will also mention, I had never, I'd done a lot of podcasts. I had done,
01:25:42 ◼ ► cause the incomparable is at like 515 or something now. So 200 some episodes of the incomparable,
01:25:50 ◼ ► but I'd never had a podcast of my own where there was the same hosts every week. There was
01:25:57 ◼ ► continuity. There was follow-up comparable is different panels every week. So you can't really
01:26:07 ◼ ► to schedule feedback. Like people be like, I don't like what John Syracuse has said. I mean,
01:26:10 ◼ ► who are we kidding? Nobody would ever say that about John Syracuse. I don't know. I don't like
01:26:14 ◼ ► what Steve Lutz said about this movie and Steve's not there that week. So I can read the comment,
01:26:21 ◼ ► but like, there's nobody to answer it except me. And I didn't make that. Like, there was no,
01:26:26 ◼ ► the incomparable I've said this many times is a show that I love and I've done it for 10 years
01:26:31 ◼ ► almost now. And it's great. It is a catalog of what not to do in a podcast like the, the there's
01:26:37 ◼ ► panels are too big. There's too many different rotating panelists. So there's no continuity.
01:26:44 ◼ ► I finally can do that tech podcast. You know, like all those other tech podcasts where we talk
01:26:49 ◼ ► and we're the same every week and we can do follow-up and there's continuity because people
01:26:53 ◼ ► listen last week and this week and it's the same people. And so that's one of the reasons that I
01:26:57 ◼ ► love the segments in upgrade is because I never got to do that on any other podcast. And it's
01:27:04 ◼ ► so much fun to have that as a change of pace from a lot of the other things that I do. So,
01:27:14 ◼ ► I will send you links for upstream during the week, like, here's something that happened.
01:27:18 ◼ ► And that's, and so I do like that. I wouldn't want our show to just be segments every week. Right?
01:27:24 ◼ ► Like I think the, the, the big gap in the middle where it's just sort of like topics go here
01:27:29 ◼ ► is very important for us to be relevant week to week and to not feel like it's super programmed
01:27:35 ◼ ► and like a radio show or something where we have a format and we hit it every week. And then we're
01:27:39 ◼ ► just filling, you know, filling blocks of time with product. And I that's too much. That's too processed.
01:27:55 ◼ ► But I do, you know, saying about follow-up was funny to me. I remember how excited you were
01:28:01 ◼ ► about follow-up. Oh man. We had to, over time, I had to like reign you in because you, you would
01:28:08 ◼ ► happily do an hour of follow-up. Oh yeah. Right. And so, you know, I had to let you get it out of
01:28:13 ◼ ► your system. No other podcasts would do an hour of follow-up, Myke. No, no other popular Apple-themed
01:28:19 ◼ ► tech podcasts spend most of their show on follow-up. Let's just say I didn't want to do an
01:28:23 ◼ ► hour of follow-up. But you're right. Thank you. Thank you for saving me from myself. Yeah. Fair enough.
01:28:27 ◼ ► It wasn't good for upgrade. Yeah. But early on it was absolutely, it was like catnip. It's like,
01:28:32 ◼ ► oh my God, we have follow-up. We have continuity. Let's lean into it. And then we got our,
01:28:36 ◼ ► it's there when we need it. And it's a nice thing. And I love that there's that conversation that
01:28:43 ◼ ► goes back and forth about stuff like that. I love it. But I also am not going to eat up the whole
01:28:48 ◼ ► show with it anymore, which is, which is good. There are some shows, many episodes where we don't do it.
01:28:54 ◼ ► Like, like this one. We just didn't have any follow-up today. There was nothing because we
01:28:58 ◼ ► watched everything correct last time. That's why. Rob in the Discord asked if you could give a
01:29:03 ◼ ► message to yourselves before episode one, what would it be? Well, for me, it's, this will be exactly
01:29:09 ◼ ► what you hope it is. Oh, that's nice. Oh, Jason. That's nice. Yeah. Oh, that got me. Oh boy.
01:29:19 ◼ ► I wasn't expecting that. It's in the show notes, I guess. I didn't read it though. Ah, that's good.
01:29:27 ◼ ► Spoilers. I said that, that, so, cause mine's different, that this show is going to exceed
01:29:35 ◼ ► every possible goal you could set for yourself. And so I, I, that, that means a lot to me that you
01:29:42 ◼ ► said that. Well, we hadn't, we'd spoken a few times, but we hadn't done something this expansive together.
01:29:49 ◼ ► No. And we were taking a chance, right? We were taking a chance. And, and, and I was like, I think
01:29:54 ◼ ► Myke's the guy. I think this is, this is the thing we can do. And I'd listen, I mean, you'd listen to
01:29:58 ◼ ► me and I'd listen to you, but that's not the same. No. And you know, like, if this works, this is what
01:30:04 ◼ ► it will be like, and that is what it is like. So thumbs up, Myke. Thank you. Um, Molly's asked,
01:30:11 ◼ ► what is the most listened to episode so far? I didn't know the answer to this. I had to go check it.
01:30:17 ◼ ► And I was both surprised and pleased. Um, episode 249, which is, uh, the episode the week after WWDC
01:30:28 ◼ ► last year featuring just, uh, Josh Sheffer and Willie Hodges from Apple discussing Swift UI and Catalyst
01:30:42 ◼ ► I, I just figured that maybe the WWDC episode that week would have been more because they're typically
01:30:48 ◼ ► one of our biggest episodes of the year. So that was kind of cool. Also, we, we debated a lot about
01:30:52 ◼ ► how we couldn't, you know, my interview with Josh and Wiley was later in the week and we're like, do
01:30:57 ◼ ► we, we can't wait because we have to do the post episode or post keynote episode. Do we put out
01:31:04 ◼ ► another episode? Do we hold it? Is Apple okay with giving us this interview and then having a sit on
01:31:09 ◼ ► it for four days? I wish they were, which was nice. It turned out that I think that interview,
01:31:16 ◼ ► which was about like deep tech stuff about Swift UI and Catalyst, uh, but trying to make it
01:31:21 ◼ ► understandable for a broader audience, you know, it was, it was a real tight rope for me. I was
01:31:25 ◼ ► really kind of like, how am I going to do this? And I think it turned out fine, but it, um,
01:31:30 ◼ ► lesson learned is by getting it out of WWDC week and letting it breathe a little bit so that people
01:31:40 ◼ ► were kind of like done with the WWDC podcast, they're going home or they, if they never left
01:31:50 ◼ ► I think it got more attention because we waited a little bit. So that was an interesting lesson.
01:31:56 ◼ ► Cause also don't forget that WWDC week, every tech podcast had someone from Apple on it. Like
01:32:02 ◼ ► all of the large shows had guests, right? Like it was a bunch of relay shows that had them. And in
01:32:08 ◼ ► the kind of extended universe, um, like lots of people had Apple, uh, employees as guests. So
01:32:15 ◼ ► I don't know if we would've got as much attention on the episode. So it was, uh, hindsight worked
01:32:20 ◼ ► out great. Yeah. And I, I use a lot of, uh, plugins to make, remove the street noise and the echo from
01:32:25 ◼ ► that one. Uh, this is actually closely followed by episode two, two 37, which we mentioned for
01:32:32 ◼ ► the third time, which was the episode of Colleen Novielli, which also had a draft in it. That was
01:32:37 ◼ ► a massive episode. Yeah, that was, um, right. So, so that was the first episode where Apple PR
01:32:43 ◼ ► basically said, we would like you to be, we would like a person on your podcast. It was like, wow.
01:32:47 ◼ ► Um, and cause that was, they hadn't done that, but they did with Renee Richie one time,
01:32:52 ◼ ► like that was it. There was very little precedent for it. And, and so that was a big thing. And yes,
01:33:01 ◼ ► recorded actually a big chunk of the show with me at home. And then I flew to New York and then did
01:33:07 ◼ ► the interview. And then we did that segment. It was this whole, and we had to pretend like
01:33:11 ◼ ► I was in Romania. Oh my God. Yeah. It was, it was a huge production challenge, but, uh,
01:33:17 ◼ ► so I'm glad people listen to it. Yeah. I recorded with you at like three in the morning or something
01:33:26 ◼ ► Enoch in the discord asked, how do you get your, thank you for this compliment, superb news,
01:33:31 ◼ ► a lot of research. I all week I, uh, I use RSS now I used to use Twitter and stuff like that.
01:33:38 ◼ ► But use RSS now, uh, I have a bunch of sources that I'll be checking. And if I see any tweet
01:33:44 ◼ ► that comes up, I, what I do is I just save all the links from RSS or from Twitter or whatever
01:33:49 ◼ ► to an Apple note. And then on Monday morning, I sit down and go through all of the links I've
01:33:54 ◼ ► collected. Um, and we'll read through them and see what I think is right for the show and put them in.
01:34:00 ◼ ► I wonder if there's a future goal. And I don't know what this is. So we'll just, we'll,
01:34:06 ◼ ► we'll talk about this later, but like, I wonder if we could build a system where you and I are
01:34:11 ◼ ► throwing links into a document somewhere in a, in a fairly straightforward way, or, you know,
01:34:17 ◼ ► maybe you should share your Apple note with me. I could do that. Yeah. And I could put things in it
01:34:20 ◼ ► too. Cause I, right now I just paste them in Slack from time to time and a lot of them, I just let
01:34:23 ◼ ► them go past. So. Well, one big, one good source for me is like, I just look at what you've posted
01:34:29 ◼ ► on six colors. That's what you're interested in. I mean, I certainly, that gives us fodder,
01:34:34 ◼ ► right? Anything that I'm writing during the week is something that we can talk about. Although,
01:34:38 ◼ ► except for the ones that we talk about at first, and then I write about it. Cause it was like
01:34:41 ◼ ► really good. And we had a good conversation. Like I'm going to make that a story for the people who
01:34:45 ◼ ► don't listen to podcasts to read, which is part of that magic of having a podcast. Um, for me,
01:34:52 ◼ ► I want to, I want to thank Myke on the podcast for doing that work because we do the show on Sunday
01:34:58 ◼ ► morning or Monday morning, Pacific time, not Sunday morning, Monday morning, Pacific time.
01:35:03 ◼ ► Sometimes I will pop into the document over the weekend, but you know, it's the weekend.
01:35:07 ◼ ► Sometimes on Sunday, I'll be thinking about something. I'll go in there. I'll see if there's
01:35:11 ◼ ► anything in the document. I might add some things in. It's like, I want to talk about this,
01:35:16 ◼ ► but really I spend like an hour or two before we start doing the show, after I wake up on Monday
01:35:23 ◼ ► morning, looking at the document and thinking about what we're going to do. And so often the
01:35:29 ◼ ► document is just done on Monday morning because Myke has done it on Monday, uh, UK time. And so
01:35:37 ◼ ► the structure and the shape of the document is so much of that is just Myke's work. So thank you for
01:35:42 ◼ ► doing that every week. I help sometimes a lot of times I don't. So thank you. This is, um,
01:35:48 ◼ ► something me and Steven were talking about on our new, uh, podcast backstage, which is for
01:35:54 ◼ ► relay FM members, where we talk about kind of like how to start a podcast and we're talking about
01:36:00 ◼ ► like having co-hosts and stuff like that and preparation. This is just like a thing where,
01:36:04 ◼ ► we need to have a document together. And I, the type of person that I am, I need lots of
01:36:12 ◼ ► notes for shows. I like to have lots of notes. And I think that you don't need as much as I do
01:36:18 ◼ ► is in the sense of an outline. Um, I get the sense that you could come to the show with some
01:36:23 ◼ ► basic talking points, but not to the level that I put together, not to the level that you put
01:36:27 ◼ ► together. That's probably true. But I mean, when, when I was doing download, like that was,
01:36:32 ◼ ► I had to build those show notes every week and it's a lot of work. It is. So thank you for doing
01:36:37 ◼ ► it. Yeah. But it's just kind of the case of like, I would, I need it. So I have no problem doing the
01:36:42 ◼ ► majority of the work. Like I feel like I, I need it maybe more than you do, but Sal asked, how many
01:36:47 ◼ ► hours do you actively spend preparing for an episode? How far in advance and how detailed
01:36:51 ◼ ► is the show outline? So that document that Jason was talking about, it takes me about 90 minutes
01:36:56 ◼ ► every Monday morning to put together. Um, the amount of detail differs from week to week. But
01:37:01 ◼ ► as I said, there's like, there's a lot of research collection happening throughout the week. And
01:37:06 ◼ ► I might have an idea for a topic like Jason does, and I might go into my Apple note and make some
01:37:10 ◼ ► like a, a bulleted list of things that I want to touch on and then expand on it. But that's,
01:37:15 ◼ ► that takes me, uh, around 90 minutes every Monday morning to put together. And that includes like
01:37:21 ◼ ► getting all the upgrade questions and picking the ones that I want to do. Cause like, I don't know
01:37:25 ◼ ► if it's, if we've really made it clear before, but we get lots and lots of questions and I pick
01:37:30 ◼ ► the ones that I think are best for each episode and all that kind of stuff. So, and then I wake
01:37:33 ◼ ► up and somewhere, you know, I will look while I'm having my tea in bed in the morning, but basically
01:37:38 ◼ ► I try to be at my desk around eight and I spend an hour going through the show doc and that's where I
01:37:43 ◼ ► will, um, make sure that I have answers for ask upgrade questions. If there's a question or a
01:37:49 ◼ ► Snell Talk topic that I think is not going to do it for me, I'm not going to give a good answer. I
01:37:54 ◼ ► will flag those and I'll say, Myke, I need a different Snell Talk question or I'll, I'll mark
01:37:59 ◼ ► a, an ask upgrade as, as a crossed out and we shouldn't do it. Um, I'll go through the show
01:38:04 ◼ ► document as well. Sometimes there's a, how, what do we think about this? And then there'll be an
01:38:08 ◼ ► MH. I think about this this way. And then that's the end of it. And I'm like, okay. And then I'll,
01:38:13 ◼ ► I'll add in a little bit of a note. I could just jump in during the show, but I try to add a little
01:38:17 ◼ ► bit of a note of like, here's what I will probably say in, in just a very simple way of like, this is,
01:38:22 ◼ ► this is what you should talk about here, self. Um, and, and we'll put it together that way.
01:38:31 ◼ ► Exactly right. That's the beauty of it. So, uh, we also, uh, sometimes I will make bigger
01:38:39 ◼ ► creative decisions, which is always problematic when it's an hour before we're going to record.
01:38:43 ◼ ► Sometimes I will say to Myke, I don't know about this topic, or I think we're, I think this is too
01:38:48 ◼ ► much, or I would like to talk about this. Sometimes I'll insert things and Myke will be like, wow,
01:38:53 ◼ ► that's a whole thing. I said, yeah, but I want to talk about it. A lot of times we'll end up
01:38:57 ◼ ► having a conversation then or right before we start recording where we'll be saying, um, the
01:39:02 ◼ ► show may be too long. Uh, sometimes it happens during the show too. We'll be like, let's take
01:39:07 ◼ ► this out and do it next week. Um, sometimes I'll come in before and I'll be like, this is too much.
01:39:12 ◼ ► And he'll say, let's make it a follow-up item or a mini topic instead of making it a full segment.
01:39:21 ◼ ► this doesn't feel right. This doesn't feel like what we should be doing. So there's some of that,
01:39:25 ◼ ► but a lot of that is happening in the, in the hour before. And it makes me feel bad on one level
01:39:30 ◼ ► because I am swooping in at the end of Myke's process and then second guessing him, but it is
01:39:34 ◼ ► also a collaboration between us. So it's like, I never want to do something that Jason doesn't want
01:39:39 ◼ ► to do because then we're not going to have the conversation. It's just going to be me monologuing.
01:39:43 ◼ ► Like if there's a topic you're interested in and this is not a criticism, this is how I would be
01:39:48 ◼ ► too. It's like, I don't want to, if there's a topic that I have nothing to say on, then I have
01:39:52 ◼ ► nothing to say on it. And so I like, and honestly, like I cannot think of any time where we have not
01:39:59 ◼ ► torn up part of the show document where it hasn't worked out for the best. I agree. And we'll go
01:40:03 ◼ ► back and forth. Sometimes we will really disagree and we will go back and forth on where, what the
01:40:07 ◼ ► right solution is, but we always end up with a good solution that is the, that turns out to be
01:40:13 ◼ ► the best one for the finished product. Also, I, you know, I don't, the other part of it is time
01:40:19 ◼ ► wise. Like I don't want us building the show on Friday because stuff happens on over the weekend
01:40:23 ◼ ► and Monday. I don't really want to commit to working. I get, I work enough on the weekend
01:40:29 ◼ ► already. So I don't want to commit to having Sunday be the day that the upgrade document
01:40:34 ◼ ► gets built. And as a result, your, your workday starts on Monday morning and you have that day
01:40:38 ◼ ► while I'm sleeping to build the show doc. So that's sort of how it happens. I was thinking
01:40:43 ◼ ► back, like, I don't even remember when we started doing upgrade on Mondays at 9 AM Pacific. I don't
01:40:51 ◼ ► even remember when we started doing that because you had a job at first. So at some point we,
01:40:56 ◼ ► we settled on this regular time for streaming and stuff like that. But I don't even remember that.
01:41:04 ◼ ► Yeah. It would have been Mondays at some time. Yeah. And the first episode of course was,
01:41:08 ◼ ► was prerecorded. So we, we didn't even know. So anyway, that's, that's the answer is that
01:41:13 ◼ ► this thing that you listen to every week, um, you know, we don't just make it up as we go along,
01:41:21 ◼ ► A friend of the show, Brian in the relay fan members discord asked upgrade is a very consistent
01:41:27 ◼ ► show recorded and edited and posted at largely the same time every week. What advice do you
01:41:35 ◼ ► Who is hard, like it's a lot of work, right? Like if you, if you do things the way that we do them,
01:41:45 ◼ ► it's going to take you all day. Right. Like, cause again, so I say it takes me 90 minutes to prep.
01:41:59 ◼ ► 60 to 90 minutes editing and posting the show. So like upgrade is Monday. Like it's the day,
01:42:06 ◼ ► you know? Um, so the thing about the editing and releasing on the same day is it's, it's a
01:42:13 ◼ ► difficult thing to do. And it's something I can do because I have a lot of experience in editing.
01:42:20 ◼ ► The way that upgrade is edited is whilst we are recording, I have a pen and paper in front of me
01:42:25 ◼ ► and I am noting time codes of all of the things that I need to edit. These can be when me and Jason
01:42:31 ◼ ► are talking over each other excessively. Um, I don't cut out all of that cause I don't think
01:42:36 ◼ ► that all of that should be cut out in a show like ours. Like there can be a little collision. It's
01:42:40 ◼ ► like, it's a little bit, there's a, there's a, there's a right amount of it. Yeah. Thank you.
01:42:45 ◼ ► And I feel like I'm, I do the right amount of editing on there or there'll be like production
01:42:49 ◼ ► notes where it's like, all right, we didn't do that part, right? We had to take that out. Or
01:42:52 ◼ ► like someone, someone like Jason goes to get some tea, which happened in this episode and I'll edit
01:42:56 ◼ ► around that or the audio clips that I put in this episode, I write the times down and I'll put them
01:43:00 ◼ ► in. So that cuts down my editing time because if I edited this show the way that I edit say cortex,
01:43:08 ◼ ► where that's my heaviest edit, I listened to the entire show and edit it as I'm going, like
01:43:12 ◼ ► listening back. That takes me about, say it's like three hours to every hour. And that means upgrade
01:43:20 ◼ ► would not get put out on the same day. So, you know, it, this show is typically around 90 minutes
01:43:27 ◼ ► long. It takes me about an hour to edit that, which is great. I'm working on, which I've not
01:43:33 ◼ ► talked about, but I'll at least mention here, I'm hoping to do a, an online course about podcast
01:43:37 ◼ ► editing. That's my hope. And this keeps coming up. And I think it's a really important point about
01:43:44 ◼ ► the spectrum of editing of a podcast. You can not edit and you can super, super detail edit.
01:43:50 ◼ ► And the truth is you have to choose based on your need. So for upgrade, this is a perfect example,
01:43:57 ◼ ► upgrade gets an edit. Cortex gets a detailed edit. Upgrades edit is more than just posting it live,
01:44:03 ◼ ► but it's kind of assembly based with a little bit of cleanup. So it's, I do similar with the
01:44:10 ◼ ► incomparable. I probably do a little more detailed than upgrade, but not a lot where I have notes
01:44:15 ◼ ► about where we messed up or things I need to take out. And I do that part and things I need to put
01:44:20 ◼ ► in and I'll do that. And then I will scan through looking for over-talking which on the incomparable,
01:44:27 ◼ ► there's a lot of it because it's a big panel. Oh, I also do do that, but there's just not as much.
01:44:30 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, that's what you, when you were talking about over-talking, I mean, it's very much the same
01:44:33 ◼ ► kind of thing where it's like, if I interrupt or there's a false start, we both start talking at
01:44:36 ◼ ► once. You clean that up, but you don't have to listen to the whole show to do that. You can
01:44:40 ◼ ► actually look in your editing app at the wave forums and say, oh, they're talking at the same
01:44:45 ◼ ► time there. Let's listen and see what's broken there. But it, so it's a, it's an edit, but it's
01:44:50 ◼ ► not the heavy edit. And, you know, it comes back to, if you want to release, record, edit and
01:44:54 ◼ ► release on the same day, you're going to make a decision about where you land on that spectrum
01:45:00 ◼ ► in order to get the show out. So if I was, I don't want to say if I was more like Grey,
01:45:10 ◼ ► Upgrade needed to be made at the level of detail of Cortex, for reasons, we would do it,
01:45:16 ◼ ► but then Upgrade couldn't come out the day that we record it. And I will, I really, really like
01:45:23 ◼ ► that Upgrade comes out the day we record it because we talk about the issues of the, of the day,
01:45:29 ◼ ► and the longer you let a topic, topical podcast sit, the more likely it is to be invalidated by
01:45:34 ◼ ► events, right? So we want to put it out. And so we made that decision. So I think that's my big
01:45:40 ◼ ► advice here is yes, it's hard. Consistency is really important. I thank you for mentioning,
01:45:45 ◼ ► Brian, that Upgrade is consistent. I'm a real believer that podcasts are more successful when
01:45:50 ◼ ► they're consistent. And then you, if you want to be consistent like that, you need to find
01:45:56 ◼ ► where the right place on the editing spectrum is for you to be able to be consistent and be happy
01:46:03 ◼ ► with the final product. And that's hard, but that's sort of what we've settled on here.
01:46:11 ◼ ► >> Yeah, like for me, it's, it's, you know, that it wouldn't be terrible if we put Upgrade out on
01:46:20 ◼ ► Tuesday morning, but the problem is I wouldn't be able to have it done by Tuesday morning,
01:46:25 ◼ ► right? Because I do lots of shows, I have lots of things going on. I would like Cortex,
01:46:32 ◼ ► we record and then put the show out like four days later because I can't do all that editing in one
01:46:40 ◼ ► day. I have to break it up because either I don't have the time or it can be bad for my RSI to do
01:46:46 ◼ ► that amount of editing in one day. It just wouldn't like basically if we, if I wanted to, if we wanted
01:46:52 ◼ ► to do a Cortex style edit, which is like really going through and picking it all out, like,
01:46:56 ◼ ► you know, every time one of us repeats a word, cutting it, which is, I do that, right? Like,
01:47:06 ◼ ► >> Yeah. And that's no good for this podcast. That's not, whereas Cortex, it's fine. And that's
01:47:12 ◼ ► also our time works for us here. You were recording early. It's late. It's in the evening where you
01:47:17 ◼ ► are, but you still have some time that you can work on Monday evening to do it. If you need to
01:47:21 ◼ ► pass it to me, which sometimes happens because you have to go somewhere or, you know, you have
01:47:26 ◼ ► other commitments and you'll pass it to me, I've got all day to do it. I don't take all day. I do
01:47:31 ◼ ► it in a couple of hours right after just as you do, but I've got all day to do it, which is if you
01:47:36 ◼ ► look at something like ATP, they record late in the evening. And there have been times when Marco
01:47:43 ◼ ► has edited that podcast immediately following when he has to get on a plane the next morning
01:47:47 ◼ ► or something like that. But for the most part, like the incomparable, you record late in the
01:47:51 ◼ ► evening and then you edit it later. Right. And that works for them because that recording time
01:47:58 ◼ ► works for them. Upgrade's advantage is that we get out sooner and we only have two hours where
01:48:14 ◼ ► upgrade's getting out of date. And I hate that. I hate it. And so that's why we get it out as fast
01:48:20 ◼ ► as we can, but whilst maintaining a quality level. >> Whereas in contrast, I just posted an episode
01:48:25 ◼ ► of the incomparable this weekend that we recorded like four weeks ago. So, you know, different kinds
01:48:32 ◼ ► in different places. >> All right. So that wraps it up for this episode. Thank you so much to
01:48:35 ◼ ► everybody who sent in a #askupgrade question. You can do that by tweeting out with the hashtag
01:48:40 ◼ ► askupgrade or if you're in the Relay FM members discord, use the question mark askupgrade and you
01:48:44 ◼ ► can submit a question that way. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode, an Edny episode you
01:48:50 ◼ ► have listened to. Obviously we're in a very celebratory mood today for episode 300. So we
01:49:00 ◼ ► tuning in every week that you tune in and for supporting us by buying our merchandise, by being
01:49:06 ◼ ► a member, by sharing the show with people. It means the world to us that we get to produce this
01:49:11 ◼ ► show for all of you and to have seen it grow over time and for there to be more Upgradients like it.
01:49:16 ◼ ► So it's really a wonderful thing. So thank you so much for tuning in. I will say thank you, Jason,
01:49:21 ◼ ► as always, for being a part of this with me. It really has mean the world to me. >> Thank you,
01:49:27 ◼ ► Myke. It all worked out, didn't it? >> It sure did. You can find Jason online. He's @jasonel,
01:49:31 ◼ ► J-S-N-E-L-L and at sixcolors.com and the incomparable.com. I am iMyke, I am Y-K-E. Thank
01:49:37 ◼ ► you to our sponsors for supporting this week's episode, Cotton Bureau, DoorDash and Squarespace.
01:49:42 ◼ ► And we'll be back next week. Well, next week is going to be a regular episode. Then it's all going