Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:09 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 280. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:14 ◼   ► Hullo, ExpressVPN and Booz Allen. My name is Myke Hurley. I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi Jason Snow.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hi Myke Hurley, how are you? I'm fine and dandy, my friend, fine and dandy. I have a hashtag SnowTalkQuestion.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Comes from James this week and James wants to know, "Jason, what is your favorite gluten-free beer?"

00:00:31 ◼   ► Oh my, well this is a very targeted question, isn't it? So it is, you're the man, you're the man with the answer.

00:00:36 ◼   ► For those who don't know, it's a long story that I don't enjoy at all, but at the advice of my doctor,

00:00:44 ◼   ► I have been told to not have gluten in my diet anymore. It's a lot, I don't even want to get into it.

00:00:52 ◼   ► People ask me, "Do you feel better?" Because it's been like seven months now that I've done gluten-free.

00:00:55 ◼   ► I was like, "No, that's the problem. I have no symptoms." But they told me that I'm allergic to it.

00:00:59 ◼   ► So okay, great. Just stop drinking regular beer, start drinking beer brewed with weird, weird, weird grains.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And I have tried a bunch of different ones, although a lot of people on Twitter were suggesting ones that are not available in California,

00:01:14 ◼   ► which doesn't really help me. I'll look for them when I travel. But something I did find that was available in California

00:01:18 ◼   ► actually comes from Canada, comes from Montreal. It is the hilariously named Glutenburg Brewery.

00:01:24 ◼   ► I would drink this beer because the name is so good.

00:01:26 ◼   ► It's great, and they have these little pint cans with the kind of German writing on them that say "Glutenburg."

00:01:33 ◼   ► Anyway, the Glutenburg Stout is my favorite style of beer, and the Glutenburg Stout is good. It's not great.

00:01:41 ◼   ► It's not nearly as good as some of my favorite Stouts back when I could have gluten, but it's good.

00:01:48 ◼   ► And they have a Gose, which is a kind of a light beer with sort of citrusy things in it.

00:01:56 ◼   ► That's great, like legitimately great. Like, I would drink that whether or not I had a gluten thing, because it's really good.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And so those are the two that I think are my favorites. I have tried others.

00:02:13 ◼   ► And I will share a last little bit of trivia about this, which is I've gotten a lot of people saying,

00:02:20 ◼   ► "Have you tried these beers where they brew them normally and then they use this clarifying enzyme that removes the gluten from them?"

00:02:28 ◼   ► Which, like, Omission does that, and the Stone gluten-free beer does that.

00:02:33 ◼   ► And the answer is, technically those aren't gluten-free. They have gluten in them.

00:02:37 ◼   ► They are very low in gluten because of the enzyme, but there are still traces of gluten.

00:02:42 ◼   ► And if you're somebody who's just sort of like on a diet, you can do that.

00:02:46 ◼   ► But if you're somebody who is supposed to have zero gluten in their diet, you can't drink those beers.

00:02:52 ◼   ► They're not really gluten-free. You need to drink a beer that's not brewed with wheat or barley.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I guess that it's the same as like non-alcoholic beer, right?

00:03:02 ◼   ► There's still like a tiny amount of alcohol left because you can only remove so much of it, right?

00:03:08 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't know what the rules are for that or whether it's an acceptable level or not,

00:03:13 ◼   ► but since this is technically an allergy, you're not supposed to increase the thing that you're allergic to.

00:03:19 ◼   ► I don't—like, it's not good for me to just have a little bit of peanuts in the same way that it is for me to have lots of peanuts.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Like, just don't eat the peanuts.

00:03:25 ◼   ► What we do, Myke, with this peanut beverage is we make it with peanuts,

00:03:31 ◼   ► and then we have a chemical that removes most of the peanuts.

00:03:34 ◼   ► And you're like, "You know what? I am not going to have that.

00:03:36 ◼   ► I've got to draw the line right there."

00:03:38 ◼   ► Anyway, I have been drinking a lot in terms of alcohol anyway.

00:03:42 ◼   ► I can drink wine, and I've been drinking more cider, but just to get my alcohol content—

00:03:48 ◼   ► Cider's good. Cider's good. There's lots of great options for cider.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't want to give up beer entirely.

00:03:54 ◼   ► So anyway, there's your gluten-free beer talk.

00:03:56 ◼   ► I endorse Glutenburg. Thank you, Canada. Thank you, Quebec.

00:03:59 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a #snowtalk question like James did,

00:04:02 ◼   ► just send out a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk, and it may be included in a future episode.

00:04:06 ◼   ► I have a couple of quick items. Well, one item for follow-up.

00:04:09 ◼   ► We've got something to say about it.

00:04:10 ◼   ► I ordered one of the Brydge Pro Plus keyboards.

00:04:13 ◼   ► I ordered one for my 11-inch.

00:04:15 ◼   ► I believe I should get it within the next few weeks.

00:04:18 ◼   ► I think they started shipping in February.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:20 ◼   ► So yeah, that's the one that I can see myself more frequently using the trackpad,

00:04:27 ◼   ► because my larger iPad, I do tend to use just at home.

00:04:31 ◼   ► So I use it, as I spoke about last week, with like a mouse in a stand.

00:04:35 ◼   ► But my 11-inch, I treat more like a laptop, right?

00:04:40 ◼   ► Like it is my travel iPad.

00:04:41 ◼   ► It's like the one that I would take with me when I go work anywhere or I'm traveling anywhere.

00:04:46 ◼   ► So I can imagine wanting the integrated trackpad more there.

00:04:49 ◼   ► But yeah, so I ordered the 11-inch model.

00:04:51 ◼   ► All right. Interesting.

00:04:52 ◼   ► I have hopefully a review unit coming off the assembly line.

00:04:58 ◼   ► I only used the prototype, so I'm curious to see what they tweak.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Because the prototypes, you know, they're not quite right.

00:05:04 ◼   ► The firmware is not quite right.

00:05:06 ◼   ► And even like the tension in the mounting clips and stuff is not always quite right.

00:05:12 ◼   ► So I'm looking forward to seeing what a fully functional Brydge Pro Plus is like sometime soon.

00:05:17 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:05:18 ◼   ► Oh, I wouldn't mind a review unit for my larger one, though.

00:05:21 ◼   ► Oh, sure.

00:05:21 ◼   ► You know, it's great when they send you stuff.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Yeah, they have been pretty good about that stuff, though, in the past.

00:05:26 ◼   ► But I'm really excited about it because, you know, as I said last week,

00:05:31 ◼   ► I really am a proponent for even the mouse support in its current form.

00:05:35 ◼   ► I know that there are features that are lacking.

00:05:38 ◼   ► And I know that yourself, right, you think that it's maybe not that great.

00:05:42 ◼   ► But I really value it now.

00:05:45 ◼   ► So I would like to have that option more readily available to me.

00:05:50 ◼   ► So I'm really excited about it.

00:05:51 ◼   ► I mentioned you in my Not By Name in my Macworld story.

00:05:55 ◼   ► I think last week where I said that I wanted Apple.

00:05:59 ◼   ► It was sort of keying off of what we talked about last week,

00:06:01 ◼   ► the idea that the mouse support should be better, but there's a lot you can do.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And then it might lead to Apple potentially doing something more than the smart keyboard

00:06:12 ◼   ► for the iPad Pro.

00:06:13 ◼   ► If you could do better touch support or point device support, you could then put a pointer

00:06:19 ◼   ► controller of some sort on a smart keyboard, and that would be better for Apple.

00:06:23 ◼   ► But one of the things I mentioned in passing is there's lots of different kinds of accessibility.

00:06:27 ◼   ► And I mentioned you Not By Name and just said that there's somebody I know who has,

00:06:31 ◼   ► you know, like RSI issues.

00:06:34 ◼   ► And, you know, having pointing device for that person so they don't have to reach up

00:06:39 ◼   ► and touch the screen, that's like a legitimate reason to do this kind of thing.

00:06:44 ◼   ► So you have a perfectly legitimate use of it.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Whereas for me, I feel like when I try to use the mouse,

00:06:51 ◼   ► I feel like I'm doing more harm to my arms than good.

00:06:55 ◼   ► But everybody's body is different.

00:06:57 ◼   ► - Yeah. Yeah.

00:06:58 ◼   ► It's like, you know, if I use a mouse for too long, then it can cause me trouble.

00:07:01 ◼   ► I just have to rotate my input methods.

00:07:04 ◼   ► And that's why I really like having this as an option.

00:07:06 ◼   ► All right. So should we do some upstream, Jason?

00:07:10 ◼   ► Now I feel like I'm in a really good place for upstream.

00:07:12 ◼   ► - Ladies and gentlemen, now live from Beverly Hills,

00:07:16 ◼   ► it's upstream hosted by Myke Hollywood Hurley.

00:07:21 ◼   ► - That's a very good intro for upstream.

00:07:24 ◼   ► And it's not a joke.

00:07:25 ◼   ► I am sitting right now located in Beverly Hills, high in the hills of Beverly Hills.

00:07:30 ◼   ► That's where I am right now, Jason.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And I wanted to say that it's very funny driving around here,

00:07:35 ◼   ► this kind of part of Beverly Hills, LA, these kinds of areas,

00:07:40 ◼   ► because there are billboards for TV shows everywhere.

00:07:44 ◼   ► They are everywhere.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Like every billboard is a television show.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And that is, I mean, I know you see advertising for this type of stuff in all big cities,

00:07:53 ◼   ► but it feels very different here.

00:07:55 ◼   ► It feels much more like oppressive.

00:07:56 ◼   ► - Well, it's a company town.

00:07:58 ◼   ► It's an industry town.

00:07:59 ◼   ► - Yes, it is.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:08:00 ◼   ► I mean, we drove past like the Fox lot and stuff like that.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Is it Century City?

00:08:05 ◼   ► So like we've driven through there and we've seen some of that stuff when we was in a taxi.

00:08:09 ◼   ► But what I like is a lot of the billboards at the moment say,

00:08:12 ◼   ► "For your consideration," which is funny.

00:08:14 ◼   ► They're appealing to the Academy.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Come on Academy, give us the awards.

00:08:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:08:18 ◼   ► So speaking of which you got to be in Beverly Hills in Hollywood, let's say more or less,

00:08:23 ◼   ► for this morning's, as we record this, Academy Award nominations.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Did you?

00:08:29 ◼   ► - I'm reporting live.

00:08:31 ◼   ► - Academy, I don't know.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Did you get any nominations yourself?

00:08:35 ◼   ► - Still waiting.

00:08:36 ◼   ► I'm still waiting to see.

00:08:37 ◼   ► They told me to call me.

00:08:38 ◼   ► So I'm waiting on that one.

00:08:39 ◼   ► - My bad news, the ones for this year are already out.

00:08:41 ◼   ► So don't hold your breath.

00:08:43 ◼   ► - Oh, that's unfortunate.

00:08:43 ◼   ► - You're going to have to wait at least one more year for your Oscar nomination.

00:08:46 ◼   ► - I'll keep working on it.

00:08:47 ◼   ► But Netflix, as you would assume, are leading the Academy Award nominations because they

00:08:53 ◼   ► produce the most movies of all of the streaming companies that we talk about, right?

00:08:57 ◼   ► Like, you know, Amazon, Apple, they have some, but Netflix really, and especially in 2019,

00:09:05 ◼   ► really pushed with movies, original movie content.

00:09:08 ◼   ► They have 10 nominations for The Irishman and Marriage Story as well received a bunch.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And these are the two movies, I think, that have occupied the vast majority of the water cooler

00:09:20 ◼   ► conversation, right?

00:09:21 ◼   ► Like, I feel like I've seen a lot of people talking about these.

00:09:23 ◼   ► I've only seen The Irishman, which I am predisposed to love this movie because Martin

00:09:32 ◼   ► Scorsese's movies are among my very favorite movies of all time, especially when they feature

00:09:38 ◼   ► De Niro and Pesci, right?

00:09:40 ◼   ► Like, they are absolutely my favorites.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And so I actually really enjoyed The Irishman.

00:09:47 ◼   ► It is not, you know, it is not Goodfellas.

00:09:49 ◼   ► Like, Goodfellas, it is not.

00:09:51 ◼   ► - Right.

00:09:51 ◼   ► - But it is a very, very good movie.

00:09:53 ◼   ► The special effects in that movie where they're doing a lot of aging, it's really impressive,

00:09:59 ◼   ► but I still can't help but notice it all the time.

00:10:03 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:10:03 ◼   ► - Because I'm aware of the truth.

00:10:05 ◼   ► And so I find it distracting still, even though this was like, you could fool me.

00:10:11 ◼   ► And there are points where I was definitely fooled watching this movie thinking that like,

00:10:15 ◼   ► "Oh, this is Joe Pesci now, but no, this is like Joe Pesci what he would have looked like

00:10:18 ◼   ► 15 years ago."

00:10:19 ◼   ► Like, it is very, very impressive.

00:10:21 ◼   ► This is the most impressive of that technology, use of that technology that I've seen, but

00:10:25 ◼   ► I still can't help but be aware of it.

00:10:28 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:10:29 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I get it.

00:10:31 ◼   ► That's always the debate with de-aging and with virtual characters.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Like, I was just listening over the weekend to the Flop House guys were on,

00:10:40 ◼   ► or Elliott Kaelin anyway, was on the Star Wars Minute a couple months ago, and they were

00:10:44 ◼   ► talking about Rogue One, and they were talking about the Peter Cushing double that they used

00:10:49 ◼   ► there.

00:10:50 ◼   ► And it's that great debate of like, if people don't know, you may not notice, you may let

00:10:57 ◼   ► it go by you, and then other people know.

00:10:59 ◼   ► And once you know, you kind of can't not see it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that

00:11:05 ◼   ► it might be on us for looking forward or for being like, "I'm so aware of this actor that

00:11:10 ◼   ► I'm aware.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I'm aware if I'd never seen this actor before, I wouldn't know whether they had been maybe

00:11:15 ◼   ► aged up or aged down or whatever, but instead I know exactly what these actors look like

00:11:20 ◼   ► at various phases of their life."

00:11:21 ◼   ► And it's a challenge.

00:11:22 ◼   ► - Can I ask you about this actually?

00:11:24 ◼   ► 'Cause there's also a really interesting, it's called like, In Conversation With on

00:11:29 ◼   ► Netflix.

00:11:29 ◼   ► It's just like a 25-minute DVD extra basically of Pacino, Pesci, De Niro, and Scorsese sitting

00:11:37 ◼   ► down and they're talking about the movie.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And they talk about this technology a lot and they touch on the idea of, you know, like,

00:11:46 ◼   ► if we didn't have this technology, we wouldn't be able to do this movie and we'd have to

00:11:50 ◼   ► have somebody younger come in and we'd have to teach them to be like us and like, like

00:11:54 ◼   ► to act like us.

00:11:55 ◼   ► - Right.

00:11:55 ◼   ► - And they were like, "That doesn't work the same way."

00:11:57 ◼   ► And I kind of wonder, what is your, this is maybe a little bit of a hot button issue,

00:12:01 ◼   ► I don't know, but what is your general feel on this type of technology, this like de-aging

00:12:04 ◼   ► technology?

00:12:05 ◼   ► Do you think that it is like holding back younger actors?

00:12:08 ◼   ► Because my kind of feeling on this is like, I understand that argument where they're like,

00:12:12 ◼   ► "Oh, if you're using all this technology to make people younger or older, you are holding

00:12:18 ◼   ► back the roles from other people."

00:12:20 ◼   ► But my, I understand that, but I feel like these days there are more opportunities for

00:12:25 ◼   ► more movies than there's ever been before.

00:12:28 ◼   ► But it's like, it's a bit of a weird, it's like a weird thing that's happening right

00:12:32 ◼   ► now, but I don't know if it's necessarily having that negative effect.

00:12:36 ◼   ► - So two things, one is I feel like the history of film from the very beginning is about pushing

00:12:43 ◼   ► technology to tell stories in different ways.

00:12:45 ◼   ► - Because they talk about like, "Oh, we could have just used makeup."

00:12:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and there are, there's some great, like people should follow Todd Vizziero

00:12:52 ◼   ► on Twitter.

00:12:52 ◼   ► He posts out some great stuff.

00:12:53 ◼   ► There's a video of like how they did this shot in a silent movie in the like '20s, I

00:12:59 ◼   ► think, where there's like a mirror.

00:13:02 ◼   ► And I mean, it is for a hundred plus years, movies have been about fakery in order to tell

00:13:12 ◼   ► the story they want to tell.

00:13:13 ◼   ► So I think it's funny when people are like, "Oh, there's too much of this CGI or too much

00:13:18 ◼   ► of this de-aging happening now.

00:13:19 ◼   ► Like I want to see it the way, first off, you don't, a lot of it you don't even know.

00:13:24 ◼   ► Like I want to see this movie that doesn't use it, that's really great."

00:13:26 ◼   ► And it's like, that movie totally uses it too.

00:13:29 ◼   ► You just don't know because you're not looking for it again to get back to like, if you don't

00:13:33 ◼   ► know to look for it, you may not even notice that it's there.

00:13:35 ◼   ► But also it's the history of film that they do this.

00:13:38 ◼   ► There is no point where you could legitimately draw a line and say, "Well, this far, but

00:13:42 ◼   ► no further."

00:13:43 ◼   ► I think that this is just how it is.

00:13:45 ◼   ► They're always trying.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Some of it works, some of it doesn't.

00:13:47 ◼   ► The tech keeps getting better.

00:13:49 ◼   ► And then we find something new to complain about because the thing that we used to complain

00:13:52 ◼   ► about is now so good that we all just kind of take it for granted.

00:13:55 ◼   ► So that's one thing.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And then the other thing is you talk about opportunity for, are there not opportunities

00:14:00 ◼   ► for younger actors because of de-aging technology?

00:14:02 ◼   ► And it actually makes me chuckle a little bit because the truth is Hollywood is famous

00:14:07 ◼   ► for discarding older people because everybody needs to be young.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Oh yeah, good point.

00:14:12 ◼   ► That's a very good point.

00:14:13 ◼   ► I would say there's plenty of opportunity for young, beautiful people.

00:14:16 ◼   ► And that if some-

00:14:17 ◼   ► There's now, with this technology, more opportunity for older actors.

00:14:19 ◼   ► For older, you know?

00:14:21 ◼   ► I mean, seriously.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Now I do have those moments where I was reading articles about the Irishman and I was thinking,

00:14:25 ◼   ► I'm not-

00:14:27 ◼   ► Like, maybe you do want to do more body doubles.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Maybe this is something that people learn over time is that you can de-age people, but

00:14:36 ◼   ► you can't de-age the old man body.

00:14:38 ◼   ► You could de-age his face.

00:14:38 ◼   ► They actually had this conversation.

00:14:40 ◼   ► It was fascinating.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Yeah, because it's like De Niro can't bend like he used to.

00:14:44 ◼   ► They were saying, there were times where they had to stop.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Like, Scorsese was like, "No, like, Bob, you are supposed to be 20 years younger.

00:14:52 ◼   ► You need to walk down these stairs more quickly."

00:14:54 ◼   ► Like, and it seemed to be quite difficult for them.

00:14:56 ◼   ► It's like they had to push themselves physically more than they normally would because there

00:15:01 ◼   ► are times where they have to act like they're 45, not 75.

00:15:04 ◼   ► So maybe they end up with more-

00:15:07 ◼   ► Maybe these are all lessons that are learned and that in the end, they're like, "Okay,

00:15:10 ◼   ► we're going to do this scene with a body double and face replacement.

00:15:14 ◼   ► And we're going to do this scene where you're just standing there, where we're just going

00:15:18 ◼   ► to use you entirely and de-age you."

00:15:20 ◼   ► And those are all, as weird as that sounds, those are all tools.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Those are all paint brushes in the tool kit of the artist.

00:15:29 ◼   ► They're all colors of the palette, whatever metaphor you want to use.

00:15:32 ◼   ► They are all tools that can be used to make the final result look right.

00:15:38 ◼   ► And maybe they learn over time that some of the physical acting of older actors who need

00:15:43 ◼   ► to be de-aged need to be-

00:15:44 ◼   ► Some of the physical acting needs to be done by a body double instead, and they'll figure

00:15:49 ◼   ► it out.

00:15:49 ◼   ► But I'm not worried about Hollywood discarding young, pretty actors.

00:15:53 ◼   ► I'm not.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Anyway, getting back to the note at hand, I lost my body and Klaus, who I've nominated

00:16:01 ◼   ► for the animated feature.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Yeah, so two of the five, I think, nominations for best animated feature are Netflix animated

00:16:08 ◼   ► features.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Frozen 2 didn't get nominated, by the way.

00:16:10 ◼   ► Woof!

00:16:10 ◼   ► I watched Klaus over the holidays.

00:16:14 ◼   ► It's a cute movie.

00:16:15 ◼   ► The animation is beautiful, and the story is fine.

00:16:20 ◼   ► Like, it's a funny little movie.

00:16:22 ◼   ► It's actually pretty good, actually.

00:16:23 ◼   ► Like, for an animated feature which includes no property that I've ever heard of before,

00:16:29 ◼   ► right?

00:16:29 ◼   ► Like, I actually think it did a good job of creating something pretty original.

00:16:33 ◼   ► I'm going to give my endorsement, by the way, in this category for a movie called Missing

00:16:36 ◼   ► Link, which a lot of people missed.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Which is a-

00:16:38 ◼   ► It's actually a stop motion animation movie.

00:16:41 ◼   ► So it's in the style of, like, Aardman, but it's not.

00:16:43 ◼   ► It's actually the guy who did-

00:16:45 ◼   ► Oh, what was his previous movie?

00:16:47 ◼   ► Para Norman and Coraline.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Coraline, yeah, sure.

00:16:51 ◼   ► And Para Norman, which is a-

00:16:52 ◼   ► If you have kids, you know about Para Norman.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Anyway, but Missing Link, really good, really good.

00:16:57 ◼   ► It's like, it's a movie about a Sasquatch who's adorable.

00:16:59 ◼   ► It's great.

00:17:00 ◼   ► So Netflix has the most nominations.

00:17:05 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:17:06 ◼   ► You've been listening to us talk about it on an upstream.

00:17:09 ◼   ► You probably are not too surprised.

00:17:10 ◼   ► This was inevitable, really.

00:17:13 ◼   ► Another angle that you may have not been surprised by, because you've been listening to us, is

00:17:18 ◼   ► one of the nominees is American Factory.

00:17:21 ◼   ► And that's notable because essentially that's the Academy inviting Barack and Michelle Obama

00:17:25 ◼   ► to the Oscars, because that's the- literally the first release from Higher Ground Productions

00:17:31 ◼   ► to Netflix as part of their deal with Netflix, and it got nominated for Best Doc.

00:17:35 ◼   ► This one missed me.

00:17:36 ◼   ► I had no idea that this stuff had even begun.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Like, I was waiting to hear about the fact that they had things on the way.

00:17:42 ◼   ► I've not heard anything about this at all.

00:17:45 ◼   ► So, yeah, there you go.

00:17:48 ◼   ► And congratulations, Amazon Studios.

00:17:51 ◼   ► They got one nomination.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Hey, they got a nomination, though.

00:17:55 ◼   ► What did they get the nomination for?

00:17:58 ◼   ► Les Misérables, I think.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Okay, okay.

00:18:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Good for them, I suppose.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:18:04 ◼   ► But still, Netflix, this is the- I think it's interesting because we had these conversations

00:18:09 ◼   ► about how the movie industry's like, "Well, I don't know about Netflix.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Should we change the rules?"

00:18:14 ◼   ► Remember Steven Spielberg's like, "Change the rules so Netflix can't be nominated."

00:18:17 ◼   ► And you know what happened next?

00:18:18 ◼   ► They got 24 nominations.

00:18:20 ◼   ► So, here we are.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Also, I feel at this point, Spielberg, look at who's working with Netflix.

00:18:25 ◼   ► You can't ignore them anymore.

00:18:26 ◼   ► Yeah, that's okay.

00:18:27 ◼   ► When they were new movies from up-and-coming directors, you can try and use your clout

00:18:31 ◼   ► to ignore people.

00:18:32 ◼   ► But when Scorsese's making a movie which is nominated for Best Picture and it comes from

00:18:37 ◼   ► Netflix, you have to ignore where it's coming from now because the establishment is now

00:18:41 ◼   ► moving into the streaming services.

00:18:43 ◼   ► So, there's nothing you can do about it, right?

00:18:45 ◼   ► Like, I feel like at this point, you have to accept it.

00:18:46 ◼   ► For sure.

00:18:47 ◼   ► To your point about the people like Martin Scorsese making these movies, I think there's

00:18:52 ◼   ► an argument- we may have made it at the time when Spielberg was complaining about this.

00:18:55 ◼   ► Like, there's an argument to be made that given the kind of movies that get put in theaters

00:19:01 ◼   ► these days, there's a whole class of movies sort of like these mid-level movies and more

00:19:06 ◼   ► prestige movies that don't get much time in theaters.

00:19:09 ◼   ► And so, I think Netflix and Amazon and Apple and whoever else is funding stuff for their

00:19:16 ◼   ► streaming services.

00:19:17 ◼   ► Like, movies are getting made and seen that would otherwise not get made and seen.

00:19:21 ◼   ► And that's-

00:19:21 ◼   ► Look at Adam Sandler, right?

00:19:24 ◼   ► Like, these movies on Netflix, millions of people are watching them.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Strong counterargument there, Myke.

00:19:29 ◼   ► Well, you know what I'm saying, though, right?

00:19:31 ◼   ► But if that's what people enjoy, if that's what they want to see, let them see it.

00:19:34 ◼   ► But people wouldn't see those movies in those numbers if they were in cinemas.

00:19:39 ◼   ► So, like, this is just allowing for people to be seen.

00:19:41 ◼   ► I do want to see uncut gems, though, right?

00:19:43 ◼   ► Like the Adam Sandler movie where he's the jewelry dealer.

00:19:45 ◼   ► Okay.

00:19:46 ◼   ► That looks interesting.

00:19:47 ◼   ► That looks like an interesting movie.

00:19:48 ◼   ► We've taken this way further than we expected.

00:19:52 ◼   ► Let's take a break and we'll come back and do more upstream.

00:19:53 ◼   ► What about that, Jason Stan?

00:19:54 ◼   ► Okay.

00:19:55 ◼   ► All right.

00:19:56 ◼   ► Today's episode is brought to you by Hello.

00:19:59 ◼   ► Hello, making insanely comfortable buckwheat pillows.

00:20:01 ◼   ► I don't know if you've ever tried a buckwheat pillow.

00:20:03 ◼   ► It's very different to regular fluffy pillows because it really supports your head and neck

00:20:07 ◼   ► in a way that no other pillow can.

00:20:09 ◼   ► It doesn't collapse under the weight of your head like traditional pillows because it's

00:20:14 ◼   ► filled with what are called buckwheat holes.

00:20:16 ◼   ► This is like, it almost feels to me kind of beanbag-y like, but it stays cool and dry

00:20:23 ◼   ► unlike feather or foam pillows.

00:20:25 ◼   ► There's no warmth or humidity that gets contained within them.

00:20:28 ◼   ► You don't have to flip to the cool side of the pillow.

00:20:30 ◼   ► It's always cool.

00:20:32 ◼   ► And also you can adjust the pillow to be the exact size that you want because you can remove

00:20:37 ◼   ► and add the filling very easily.

00:20:39 ◼   ► People have been sleeping on buckwheat pillows for years.

00:20:42 ◼   ► They're popular all over the world.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I am in a hotel right now.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I do not have my Hello pillow and I miss it greatly.

00:20:49 ◼   ► I use one pillow at home, right?

00:20:53 ◼   ► My Hello pillow when I'm traveling, I use like two or three to give me the kind of support

00:20:56 ◼   ► that I want.

00:20:57 ◼   ► I absolutely love my pillow and I miss it whenever I'm not sleeping on it.

00:21:02 ◼   ► Hello pillows are made in the USA with quality construction and materials.

00:21:05 ◼   ► The certified organic case is cut and sewn for durability and the buckwheat is grown

00:21:10 ◼   ► and milled in the US as well.

00:21:12 ◼   ► You may be curious to try one of these right now.

00:21:14 ◼   ► You should be and you can if you want to.

00:21:16 ◼   ► You can sleep on it for 60 nights and then if Hello isn't right for you, you can just

00:21:20 ◼   ► send it back for a refund.

00:21:21 ◼   ► Go to HelloPillow.com/upgrade right now to get your own buckwheat pillow.

00:21:26 ◼   ► That's HelloPillow.com/upgrade.

00:21:31 ◼   ► If you buy more than one, they have a special discount.

00:21:33 ◼   ► You can get up to $20 off depending on the size you opt for.

00:21:37 ◼   ► They have fast free shipping with every order and they also donate 1% of all profits to

00:21:42 ◼   ► the Nature Conservancy.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Give it a try if you love it, you keep it.

00:21:46 ◼   ► If you don't, just send it back.

00:21:47 ◼   ► That's HelloPillow.com/upgrade.

00:21:49 ◼   ► And thanks to Hello for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:21:52 ◼   ► So talking about awards, we spoke about the Golden Globes last week.

00:21:56 ◼   ► You've gone Hollywood, Myke.

00:21:57 ◼   ► There's more upstream.

00:21:58 ◼   ► You've totally gone Hollywood.

00:22:00 ◼   ► It's all Hollywood.

00:22:01 ◼   ► All upstream all the time.

00:22:02 ◼   ► Special Hollywood correspondent Myke Hartley, one week only.

00:22:04 ◼   ► Billy Crudup.

00:22:05 ◼   ► He played, um, what is his name?

00:22:08 ◼   ► That creepy guy in the morning show.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Corey Ellison in the morning show.

00:22:12 ◼   ► He is my favorite character in that show and the critics agreed because he picked up the

00:22:16 ◼   ► best supporting actor at the Critics' Choice Award.

00:22:19 ◼   ► I believe that was last night.

00:22:20 ◼   ► This is Apple's first award for any of their TV+ things.

00:22:23 ◼   ► It was their only nomination that they received and Crudup took home the gong, which is great,

00:22:29 ◼   ► right?

00:22:29 ◼   ► I think he deserves it.

00:22:30 ◼   ► It's a really, I saw Carolina Milanese on Twitter yesterday.

00:22:33 ◼   ► Completely agreed with her.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Like it's wild to watch a character who at one moment you absolutely hate and then the

00:22:38 ◼   ► next moment you're completely cheering for like just moment to moment.

00:22:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it is legitimately great, weird performance, a weird character.

00:22:48 ◼   ► He's so slimy at the beginning and you're like, Whoa, who is this guy?

00:22:51 ◼   ► And then you see him do things where you're like, Oh, I kind of like what this guy did.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Wait a second.

00:22:55 ◼   ► This is the really creepy slimy guy.

00:22:57 ◼   ► And it's just like, it's fascinating.

00:22:59 ◼   ► He is fascinating to watch in that show.

00:23:01 ◼   ► So deserved, I think.

00:23:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so too.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Apple will be presenting at the TV Critics Association Press Tour on January 19th.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Here we are.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Here we go.

00:23:12 ◼   ► We talked about this last summer.

00:23:14 ◼   ► This is the Death March with cocktails as dubbed by my TV Talk Machine pal, now retired TV

00:23:20 ◼   ► critic, Tim Goodman, where all the TV writers come and for like two weeks, there's a summer

00:23:28 ◼   ► and a winter press tour and the networks and the streamers and everybody else will do the

00:23:32 ◼   ► cable and broadcast and streaming.

00:23:35 ◼   ► They will do days where they bring in the shows that are launching or coming back and

00:23:41 ◼   ► the writers and the cast and there are panel interviews and there's cocktail receptions

00:23:47 ◼   ► and set visits and it's this whole dog and pony show.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And the idea here is you're doling out information and getting the media to pay attention to

00:23:57 ◼   ► the stuff that you want to shine a PR spotlight on.

00:24:02 ◼   ► And our question was, would Apple come down off the mountaintop and go to the Death March?

00:24:10 ◼   ► And here's your answer.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Winter press tour, they're going to be there.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Yep, which is I think the way that I know I fell in the sub, that we agreed on this is

00:24:18 ◼   ► that they would get into this because there are things in this industry, they can try

00:24:22 ◼   ► to avoid them as much as they want, but they need to try and be involved.

00:24:26 ◼   ► If they want to take the awards, they also have to play the game.

00:24:29 ◼   ► And this is part of the game.

00:24:30 ◼   ► There's schmoozing of all sorts, but it is definitely, I think, primarily a PR rollout

00:24:38 ◼   ► setting where they can get like, and if you're a TV writer, not just

00:24:43 ◼   ► necessarily a critic, but a writer in general, you do, you load up your notebook with stuff

00:24:47 ◼   ► and like you, so you listen to the producers of some show that's launching in April, talk

00:24:52 ◼   ► about their motivation and what they're planning and all of that.

00:24:56 ◼   ► And you put that in the notebook and some people might write stories about it or live

00:24:59 ◼   ► tweeted at the time.

00:25:00 ◼   ► But what happens is then April comes around and you're writing your story about that

00:25:04 ◼   ► show and now you've seen it and all of that.

00:25:06 ◼   ► And you empty out your notebook and you say, oh, well, I talked to this person and that's

00:25:09 ◼   ► all coming from the press tour.

00:25:11 ◼   ► That so there's, it's a big kind of concerted between the TV critics and the networks to

00:25:19 ◼   ► get their, like this PR thing.

00:25:21 ◼   ► And then they all go back to wherever they're from and they've been downloaded with the

00:25:26 ◼   ► marketing spin of the networks.

00:25:29 ◼   ► And news breaks here and they announce casting and they announce renewals and there's all

00:25:32 ◼   ► sorts of other stuff that happens here.

00:25:34 ◼   ► So it will be fascinating to see what level, that's the next question, right?

00:25:37 ◼   ► What level will Apple disclose?

00:25:39 ◼   ► Will Apple play this game like everyone else or will Apple be more reluctant because Apple

00:25:45 ◼   ► as a company, if not their TV division so much, but as a company has that kind of culture.

00:25:49 ◼   ► So I guess we'll see how open they are.

00:25:51 ◼   ► Do they feel like HBO?

00:25:52 ◼   ► They seem to be playing the HBO song, like literally HBO stopped playing that song and

00:25:57 ◼   ► they're like, we will play that song now.

00:25:59 ◼   ► So maybe we'll also hire your player guy on stage with everybody.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Yeah, who knows?

00:26:04 ◼   ► Funnily, maybe it's interesting, they're the only company named on this day.

00:26:09 ◼   ► So it's January 19th.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:11 ◼   ► So in the kind of schedule.

00:26:12 ◼   ► That's not surprising.

00:26:14 ◼   ► There's a lot of times there's like a company will take a day, sometimes more than one day

00:26:18 ◼   ► to do their events.

00:26:20 ◼   ► So like there's Apple day and people will come and Apple will have a whole thing and

00:26:24 ◼   ► they'll serve people lunch probably and they'll do their whole dog and pony show and they'll,

00:26:27 ◼   ► it'll be interesting to see what they're promoting too because as we talked about, there's the

00:26:31 ◼   ► stuff we know that is probably not coming back to the fall.

00:26:35 ◼   ► So will they talk about the morning show or for all mankind or will that be like completely

00:26:39 ◼   ► off the table and they're going to be talking about whatever their next wave of programming

00:26:42 ◼   ► is that's this spring.

00:26:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:26:45 ◼   ► Interesting.

00:26:46 ◼   ► In theory, it will be stuff that we don't know about because by then they won't have

00:26:52 ◼   ► a lot left on the slate to talk about that's actually we know about dates for.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:57 ◼   ► So we might find out stuff like Amazing Stories, right?

00:27:00 ◼   ► Like when is that coming?

00:27:02 ◼   ► Because this is a winter press tour, so they'll have a summer press tour presumably in August.

00:27:05 ◼   ► So it really is sort of like what is on their agenda between now and July, August.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Oprah pulls out of the documentary focused on sexual assault that we spoke about last

00:27:14 ◼   ► week.

00:27:14 ◼   ► She was the executive producer on the project, but in a statement given to the Hollywood

00:27:18 ◼   ► reporter, she says that she's decided to pull out and therefore cancel the agreement to

00:27:22 ◼   ► air this on Apple TV Plus.

00:27:25 ◼   ► This is a quote from Oprah.

00:27:26 ◼   ► First and foremost, I want it to be known that I unequivocally believe and support the

00:27:29 ◼   ► women.

00:27:30 ◼   ► Their stories is said to be told and heard.

00:27:32 ◼   ► In my opinion, there is more work to be done.

00:27:33 ◼   ► And it's become clear, though, that the filmmakers and I are not aligned in that creative vision.

00:27:38 ◼   ► So something happened with the kind of the way that this movie documentary was coming

00:27:43 ◼   ► together to the point that Oprah decided to pull out.

00:27:47 ◼   ► I think it's going to be very interesting when this movie eventually does come out to

00:27:51 ◼   ► see why, like what happened.

00:27:53 ◼   ► I think it will be pretty obvious.

00:27:55 ◼   ► So this was focusing on an executive in the music industry who has been accused of sexual

00:28:01 ◼   ► assault.

00:28:02 ◼   ► And that was going to be the documentary was going to be about following the victims.

00:28:06 ◼   ► But now Oprah is pulled out.

00:28:08 ◼   ► So again, one of these things where the story sort of reflects on Apple, even though it's

00:28:12 ◼   ► sort of been put down a layer by having it be Oprah and the creative differences.

00:28:18 ◼   ► It's classic Hollywood statement.

00:28:19 ◼   ► And who knows what it means?

00:28:21 ◼   ► But it does mean that she's basically said, I'm out.

00:28:23 ◼   ► And that means Apple is also out of this documentary.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Apple released a trailer for Mythic Quest.

00:28:29 ◼   ► This was the video game company comedy show.

00:28:33 ◼   ► This trailer looks great.

00:28:36 ◼   ► Like it is a it looks like a lot of fun.

00:28:38 ◼   ► It's more of what I wanted from this and less of what I expected it to be.

00:28:43 ◼   ► Like I expected it to just be like a you know, because we were super strange about like,

00:28:48 ◼   ► why is Ubisoft involved in this?

00:28:50 ◼   ► And it seems super weird, but it looks pretty funny.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And it looks like they do maybe touch a little bit on some of the difficulties of working

00:28:57 ◼   ► in video game development.

00:28:58 ◼   ► Like that's even in the trailer, there's references to like working all night and that kind of

00:29:03 ◼   ► stuff.

00:29:03 ◼   ► So I'm very intrigued about this now.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I think it's going to be pretty I have high hopes now.

00:29:08 ◼   ► It's got a I was going to say a Silicon Valley kind of vibe, but I actually think it has

00:29:13 ◼   ► a little bit more of a Veep kind of vibe the the trailer.

00:29:16 ◼   ► But that's not to say that again, Apple is trying to be HBO, but it's got that kind of

00:29:22 ◼   ► feel to it.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it looks like a lot of fun.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Like there's it seems like it's got a great cast and it's got an interesting feel to it.

00:29:30 ◼   ► I'm intrigued to see if that like it joins over to the show.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Like does it does it marry up?

00:29:34 ◼   ► But yeah, it looks great.

00:29:36 ◼   ► And finally, the Apple TV app is coming to LG, Sony and Vizio TVs this year.

00:29:41 ◼   ► So currently at the moment, the Apple TV app itself exists on Samsung TVs and then other

00:29:47 ◼   ► TVs have AirPlay 2 functionality.

00:29:49 ◼   ► But Apple did reference that other manufacturers would also be getting the smart TV app.

00:29:54 ◼   ► And by the end of the year, this is all announced of a CES, LG, Sony and Vizio TVs will be getting

00:30:00 ◼   ► it.

00:30:00 ◼   ► If you have one of these TVs, each manufacturer has like different cut off times as to what

00:30:05 ◼   ► TVs will get it.

00:30:06 ◼   ► But this is a continuation of Apple rolling out their content to as many places as they

00:30:11 ◼   ► can possibly put it.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it continues.

00:30:14 ◼   ► This is the answer to the question is loud and clear.

00:30:16 ◼   ► Apple wants the TV app to be everywhere.

00:30:18 ◼   ► Should we talk about so what kind of on this topic list?

00:30:21 ◼   ► Let's move over a little bit and talk about services in general.

00:30:24 ◼   ► We spent obviously a lot of time talking about services over the last couple of years because

00:30:28 ◼   ► Apple's been focusing on it a lot.

00:30:30 ◼   ► But they put out a press release on New Year's Day celebrating their successes.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Was it New Year's Day?

00:30:37 ◼   ► No, it's just like last week.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:30:39 ◼   ► And they basically said, we have a quote, App Store customers, so this is people in the

00:30:44 ◼   ► App Store, spent a record of $1.42 billion between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve,

00:30:50 ◼   ► which is a 16% increase.

00:30:51 ◼   ► And the biggest day, I think, was $386 million on New Year's Day, which is a 20% increase.

00:30:57 ◼   ► So they kind of also use this press release as a wrap up of kind of where Apple are with

00:31:02 ◼   ► services right now.

00:31:04 ◼   ► It's just like promotion for all the stuff that they're doing.

00:31:06 ◼   ► But you look at these numbers and you can it's just more evidence of why exactly Apple

00:31:12 ◼   ► is pushing the way that they have been into services.

00:31:14 ◼   ► They are able to make more and more and more money without selling a proportional amount

00:31:19 ◼   ► of devices.

00:31:19 ◼   ► These numbers, if you look at how many iPhones were sold in 2019, if you just looked at that

00:31:26 ◼   ► number compared to last year, you'd be like, they probably won't make as much money because

00:31:30 ◼   ► they're not making as many iPhones.

00:31:31 ◼   ► But it doesn't count the fact that all of the iPhones existing out there right now can

00:31:36 ◼   ► still buy apps, can still sign up for TV+.

00:31:39 ◼   ► They just put like the install base is getting larger and larger.

00:31:42 ◼   ► And that's what Apple capitalizing on.

00:31:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the I mean, I did a piece last week, which we should probably talk about

00:31:48 ◼   ► about services and wearables.

00:31:50 ◼   ► But you can you can see it.

00:31:53 ◼   ► We're in entry 2020.

00:31:54 ◼   ► And three years ago, Apple set itself this goal.

00:31:58 ◼   ► They said they wanted to double its services revenue by 2020.

00:32:02 ◼   ► And they will blow past that because their services revenue in 2016 was 26 billion.

00:32:10 ◼   ► So double that.

00:32:12 ◼   ► That's 52, right?

00:32:14 ◼   ► Well, in 2019, it was already 46.

00:32:16 ◼   ► So they would actually have to slow severely slow down services growth to not make that

00:32:22 ◼   ► target.

00:32:22 ◼   ► And it's just it's it's an enormous part of their business.

00:32:27 ◼   ► The services and wearables put together back in 2015 was about 15% of their business.

00:32:35 ◼   ► And now it's 30 and going up.

00:32:39 ◼   ► So, you know, that's gone from being kind of like a nice small part of the Apple business

00:32:45 ◼   ► to a third almost of the Apple business.

00:32:47 ◼   ► Yeah, in that article that you wrote, I like to use you were looking at it and basically

00:32:50 ◼   ► said that since going back to 2015, every single quarter there has been a double digit

00:32:56 ◼   ► percentage growth over the year over year quarter.

00:32:58 ◼   ► So they are growing massive amounts.

00:33:01 ◼   ► Yeah, that's we talk about iPhone slowing down, right?

00:33:04 ◼   ► If you go back to our early shows of upgrade, you can talk about us being amazed at the

00:33:08 ◼   ► year over year iPhone growth.

00:33:10 ◼   ► And that was iPhone was in this explosive growth growth phase, which it's not in anymore.

00:33:14 ◼   ► And so it's very profitable, but it's not growing a lot.

00:33:17 ◼   ► But you look at services and wearables, by the way, but starting with services, it has

00:33:23 ◼   ► been four years now for like five years growing at double digits per quarter year over year,

00:33:30 ◼   ► which is that's a lot.

00:33:32 ◼   ► It's a lot.

00:33:33 ◼   ► That's my point is it's a lot in 2012.

00:33:36 ◼   ► They made 15 billion on services.

00:33:40 ◼   ► And in 2019, they made 46 billion in services.

00:33:44 ◼   ► That is a lot of growth.

00:33:47 ◼   ► And one of the great things I think for Apple is the fact that services revenue, unlike

00:33:52 ◼   ► their products, is not going to be as affected by seasonal changes.

00:33:57 ◼   ► So they're likely to make more money over the Christmas period, right, as they sell

00:34:01 ◼   ► more iPhones or whatever.

00:34:02 ◼   ► But then that those spikes should bring the average higher because people sign up for

00:34:08 ◼   ► these multi subscription things.

00:34:09 ◼   ► And yeah, you'll get some people canceling every now and then.

00:34:12 ◼   ► But if you just sold a bunch more funds, you just bring up the average and then it keeps

00:34:16 ◼   ► going like it just keeps growing and growing and growing in theory, as long as they're

00:34:19 ◼   ► making people happy and you're paying monthly or quarterly or annually.

00:34:22 ◼   ► Or whatever you are for these subscriptions, which means the money just keeps flowing in.

00:34:25 ◼   ► It's not seasonal at all.

00:34:26 ◼   ► I mean, again, they obviously will at some point reach a saturation, but they've probably

00:34:31 ◼   ► got quite a way ahead of them, which means, you know, like the iPhone, there will be a

00:34:35 ◼   ► point where there has to be something else, right?

00:34:36 ◼   ► Because services will stop growing.

00:34:38 ◼   ► But you can see they have a lot of opportunity here because there's many ways to kind of

00:34:46 ◼   ► like, like on this pump, right?

00:34:48 ◼   ► Like you can not only try to convince existing customers and new customers to sign up for

00:34:55 ◼   ► whatever service, you can also create more services, which they've obviously been doing,

00:35:00 ◼   ► right?

00:35:01 ◼   ► Like you can give people reasons to sign up for iCloud and they did that, right?

00:35:06 ◼   ► Like you can give people reasons to give you money to get their news, but then you can

00:35:10 ◼   ► also create gaming subscription services.

00:35:13 ◼   ► You can create television content, right?

00:35:15 ◼   ► Like there are more ways for them to affect this area of this revenue than there was for

00:35:23 ◼   ► the iPhone.

00:35:23 ◼   ► And look, don't get me wrong.

00:35:25 ◼   ► We were talking about this last week.

00:35:27 ◼   ► They're probably trying to do this with the iPhone too, right?

00:35:29 ◼   ► Oh, you want four or five iPhones?

00:35:30 ◼   ► Let's just do it, right?

00:35:31 ◼   ► Make all the iPhones, right?

00:35:33 ◼   ► Like it's a similar kind of model.

00:35:34 ◼   ► You give everyone everything, but it's probably easier to do this with services than it is

00:35:40 ◼   ► for them to just keep making iPhones.

00:35:42 ◼   ► Well, you could buy, everybody is going to use one iPhone.

00:35:44 ◼   ► There's very rarely that somebody has the night phone and the day phone, right?

00:35:48 ◼   ► But services are, I mean, theoretically infinite.

00:35:53 ◼   ► They're not because there are only so many that you would want and there's only so much

00:35:57 ◼   ► money in your pocket, but you can have more than one.

00:36:01 ◼   ► So Apple sells an iPhone to everybody.

00:36:03 ◼   ► Everybody's got an iPhone.

00:36:05 ◼   ► How many services can they have on it?

00:36:06 ◼   ► They can have more than one.

00:36:07 ◼   ► They have two or three or four or five or six.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And you might roll your eyes at that because at some point it becomes exhausting.

00:36:12 ◼   ► But if Apple offers 15 services and you only want four of them, they still sold you four

00:36:17 ◼   ► services, right?

00:36:18 ◼   ► So that's, this is why they're doing it.

00:36:22 ◼   ► And my point of my article too was to do a fun chart and also to point out like, this

00:36:27 ◼   ► is why they talk about services and wearables, right?

00:36:30 ◼   ► This is why.

00:36:31 ◼   ► You can see it.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I had made the year by year chart before, so that was my new chart of the week basically.

00:36:38 ◼   ► And you can see why.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And you can be skeptical.

00:36:43 ◼   ► You can not like what it says about Apple as a company.

00:36:45 ◼   ► I think there's lots of criticism about these strategies that you and I have talked about

00:36:50 ◼   ► over the years, but the money, like you cannot argue the numbers.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Look, this is why they're doing it.

00:36:58 ◼   ► And you know, they're a profit-seeking company.

00:37:01 ◼   ► This is why they're doing it.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Yeah, the wearables part is fun.

00:37:05 ◼   ► So the category, right, is called wearables, homes, and accessories, but it's basically

00:37:09 ◼   ► all wearables and wearables is two products, AirPods and Apple Watch.

00:37:13 ◼   ► That's what's driving this.

00:37:14 ◼   ► It's not HomePod, right?

00:37:15 ◼   ► Like it's not silicone cases or whatever else they put in accessories.

00:37:19 ◼   ► These are the two things.

00:37:21 ◼   ► You look at the charts that you put together and it's really interesting to see how there

00:37:26 ◼   ► was, you know, kind of in like, there was a nice little bump, right, that happened with

00:37:30 ◼   ► the Apple Watch.

00:37:31 ◼   ► They sold a bunch of Apple Watches and then it was relatively flat, right?

00:37:35 ◼   ► Like it wasn't really doing a lot.

00:37:36 ◼   ► And then in 2017, this category exploded, which is probably AirPods, right?

00:37:42 ◼   ► Like I would look at this, this growth and it's like, oh yeah, that's AirPods.

00:37:46 ◼   ► So, yeah, you have so many people that want to buy these products that already own your

00:37:50 ◼   ► iPhones and they become this fashion thing and a meme thing.

00:37:54 ◼   ► And it just went wild.

00:37:55 ◼   ► I think the, I think you can't undersell the Apple Watch because the Apple Watch, the Apple

00:38:01 ◼   ► Watch, no, I mean, I think it's more than that.

00:38:03 ◼   ► I think in 2015, which was really the first year of the Apple Watch, they showed four

00:38:07 ◼   ► straight quarters.

00:38:08 ◼   ► It was like 49, 61, 62 and 30 percent growth year over year.

00:38:11 ◼   ► That is everybody buying an Apple Watch Series 1.

00:38:15 ◼   ► Year 2, that was something that was hard to live up to, that first initial, the initial

00:38:20 ◼   ► spike of a brand new product.

00:38:22 ◼   ► And so they had three quarters in a row where that category went down year over year because

00:38:27 ◼   ► you had to do that.

00:38:29 ◼   ► But since then, that category has grown way faster than services has.

00:38:36 ◼   ► It's been, you know, in the more than 20 percent growth year over year every quarter, all but

00:38:43 ◼   ► one have been more than 30 percent and the last two have been both around 50 percent

00:38:48 ◼   ► growth year over year.

00:38:49 ◼   ► I think it's both the continued momentum of the Apple Watch and AirPods.

00:38:55 ◼   ► I think together, I think it really is a one-two punch.

00:38:58 ◼   ► I think they're both because Apple Watch, they don't disclose sales figures, so we have

00:39:01 ◼   ► to guess.

00:39:02 ◼   ► But it seems like Apple Watch had a huge spike.

00:39:05 ◼   ► They tailed off a little bit and they have been killing it since then on Apple Watch

00:39:09 ◼   ► sales.

00:39:10 ◼   ► If you take Tim Cook at his word and occasionally he throws out a superlative of like, oh, this

00:39:14 ◼   ► is our best and whatever.

00:39:16 ◼   ► But I think the Apple Watch is a big part of this.

00:39:18 ◼   ► But I think you're right that AirPods is a huge driver as well.

00:39:24 ◼   ► And this is why so as much as we talk about services, this is why if I'm Apple, I am,

00:39:30 ◼   ► you know, very highly prioritizing any other wearable product, not only in the long term

00:39:36 ◼   ► with that, you know, they're supposedly working on air glasses and all that.

00:39:39 ◼   ► But this is the search through the couch cushions.

00:39:43 ◼   ► Like, what else can we do?

00:39:44 ◼   ► Like, do we want to do in-ear AirPods with noise canceling?

00:39:47 ◼   ► Yes, we do.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Are there other like this is why I think that it that they absolutely will make over-ear

00:39:52 ◼   ► AirPod headphones, headphones, right?

00:39:54 ◼   ► Because how could you not?

00:39:56 ◼   ► How could you not?

00:39:56 ◼   ► I was I was really sure that they were going to do this.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Look at how successful the AirPods have been.

00:40:03 ◼   ► If I'm in charge of AirPods, you just like like I said, until they usher me out because

00:40:07 ◼   ► I don't work at Apple, I'm like, what other things can we AirPod?

00:40:10 ◼   ► Like, do them all, do them all.

00:40:12 ◼   ► It's all wildly successful.

00:40:14 ◼   ► Keep doing that.

00:40:14 ◼   ► I'd start to believe that all because we haven't seen them yet.

00:40:17 ◼   ► They probably won't do them.

00:40:19 ◼   ► But now I'm back in the camp of, yeah, they're going to do it because they're silly not

00:40:23 ◼   ► to.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Why would you not just do it?

00:40:24 ◼   ► Like, just do it.

00:40:25 ◼   ► Why not?

00:40:26 ◼   ► Like even if they're essentially Beats headphones, except with a slightly different sound profile

00:40:30 ◼   ► and they're white, like still and more expensive because it's Apple.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Just do it.

00:40:34 ◼   ► Yeah, they don't care about Beats and like they don't care about Beats in that way.

00:40:39 ◼   ► Like they have because Beats just takes the technology and makes their version, right?

00:40:43 ◼   ► And then they make an AirPods version.

00:40:45 ◼   ► And Beats is a brand that has an audience.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Apple is a brand that has an audience and there are people who will buy Apple over-ear

00:40:50 ◼   ► headphones that would never buy Beats over-ear headphones.

00:40:52 ◼   ► And that's just I know that that doesn't make sense.

00:40:54 ◼   ► Vice versa.

00:40:55 ◼   ► It's true.

00:40:55 ◼   ► And vice versa.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:40:57 ◼   ► We are back on that train here.

00:40:58 ◼   ► Like they're going to, at least I am, head pods.

00:41:00 ◼   ► So over-ear headphones with, I don't know, like better, more kind of encompassing now

00:41:05 ◼   ► noise cancellation.

00:41:06 ◼   ► But it doesn't matter what the features are, right?

00:41:08 ◼   ► Just make it because then you can make more millions and millions and millions of dollars

00:41:12 ◼   ► from people.

00:41:13 ◼   ► AirPods Max.

00:41:14 ◼   ► AirPods Max.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Just massive.

00:41:15 ◼   ► I like this quote as well from your article that in 2015, these two categories combined

00:41:20 ◼   ► with 16% of Apple's total business in the last quarter, it was 30% and continuing to

00:41:26 ◼   ► grow.

00:41:26 ◼   ► So, you know, like we could be 2022, 2023, maybe a few more years.

00:41:31 ◼   ► 50% of the business could be this.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I don't believe it'll, it's going to take a long time for it to get there.

00:41:38 ◼   ► It could.

00:41:40 ◼   ► It could.

00:41:41 ◼   ► But I think that we are definitely about to enter a period where a third of Apple's business

00:41:45 ◼   ► is services and wearables.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:48 ◼   ► I mean, it depends where they're going, right?

00:41:50 ◼   ► Like I'm still so conflicted about AR glasses, right?

00:41:54 ◼   ► Like I really am conflicted about it.

00:41:56 ◼   ► I don't, I just don't know if I get it, but if that is a product that they make and it

00:42:02 ◼   ► makes sense in the way that the Apple watch made sense, like that's just, it's just going

00:42:05 ◼   ► to continue to pump that line, you know?

00:42:07 ◼   ► But I'm not, I'm not convinced about that yet.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Like I think the jury is, is and should be out on the idea of something to put on my

00:42:15 ◼   ► face to connect to my iPhone.

00:42:18 ◼   ► Not sure.

00:42:19 ◼   ► Apple's next earnings are on January 28th.

00:42:21 ◼   ► I'm really excited for these ones because I want to see what the iPhone did.

00:42:27 ◼   ► Like I'm really keen.

00:42:29 ◼   ► I like to talk about all of this stuff now because it sort of sets the stage for what

00:42:34 ◼   ► happens in that holiday quarter, which will get reported on January 28th.

00:42:37 ◼   ► How well did the iPad or the iPhone do in the holiday quarter?

00:42:41 ◼   ► Where are the other businesses now?

00:42:42 ◼   ► And what's the next stage of services and wearables?

00:42:45 ◼   ► And we will, we will hear that in two weeks.

00:42:48 ◼   ► So the Apple arcade revenue will begin.

00:42:51 ◼   ► I suppose so.

00:42:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:53 ◼   ► So they, they won't, they don't break that out, but they, if it did well, they'll say,

00:42:57 ◼   ► Oh, and Apple arcade exceeded our expectations by, you know, they'll say some superlative

00:43:02 ◼   ► about it.

00:43:02 ◼   ► That's what they do.

00:43:03 ◼   ► If they, if they say something superlative, if they have something to say that's superlative,

00:43:07 ◼   ► they will say it.

00:43:07 ◼   ► Otherwise they won't.

00:43:09 ◼   ► So like Apple news plus also exists, you know, it's a remains a product in our lineup.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Or they'll, or they do that thing where they're like, we are really pleased with Apple

00:43:18 ◼   ► news plus, which is great and offers all these things.

00:43:21 ◼   ► It's like, okay.

00:43:22 ◼   ► And how's it doing?

00:43:24 ◼   ► It's great.

00:43:25 ◼   ► We love it.

00:43:26 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:27 ◼   ► All right.

00:43:27 ◼   ► You didn't say how well it's doing, but okay.

00:43:29 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:43:30 ◼   ► We'll read the tea leaves, but that's a couple of weeks away.

00:43:33 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by express VPN.

00:43:35 ◼   ► We know that if VPN can protect your privacy and security online, but it can also help

00:43:40 ◼   ► you take your content consumption to the next level by unlocking things that could be restricted

00:43:45 ◼   ► to you in other countries.

00:43:46 ◼   ► Or if you're away like me and you want to watch stuff on Netflix in the UK, but you

00:43:50 ◼   ► can't, cause it's not on Netflix in the U S you can use express VPN to help you do that.

00:43:55 ◼   ► You just fire up express VPN, change your location to where you want it to be refresh

00:43:58 ◼   ► Netflix.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And that is it.

00:44:00 ◼   ► I am also a big fan of the Japanese television.

00:44:02 ◼   ► So terrace house and they drop it.

00:44:05 ◼   ► It's on Netflix, but they drop it in chunks in the UK, but in Japan, they put every episode

00:44:09 ◼   ► up every week.

00:44:10 ◼   ► And the last episode of the most recent chunk was a massive cliffhanger that I couldn't

00:44:16 ◼   ► wait months for.

00:44:17 ◼   ► So I opened express VPN, changed my location to Japan and watch the next episode to satiate

00:44:22 ◼   ► my cliffhanger.

00:44:23 ◼   ► So that's great.

00:44:24 ◼   ► Express VPN, high trip address.

00:44:25 ◼   ► So you can control where you want sites to think you're located and you can choose from

00:44:29 ◼   ► over a hundred different countries.

00:44:31 ◼   ► So there are hundreds of VPNs out there, but express VPN is ridiculously fast, which you

00:44:35 ◼   ► want when you're watching shows, no buffering, no lag, and you can stream in HD express VPN

00:44:40 ◼   ► is also compatible with all of your devices, phones, media, console, smart TVs, and more.

00:44:45 ◼   ► So you can watch what you want wherever you want.

00:44:47 ◼   ► If you go to expressvpn.com/upgrade right now, you can get three months extra for free.

00:44:53 ◼   ► So it's three extra months of express VPN for free.

00:44:55 ◼   ► Bus by going to expressvpn.com/upgrade to support this show, watch what you want and

00:45:01 ◼   ► protect yourself as well.

00:45:02 ◼   ► A thanks to express VPN for their support of this show and relay FM.

00:45:06 ◼   ► So Jason, I wanted to check in with you because we spoke in the summer about you upgrading

00:45:11 ◼   ► your office, painting the wall orange.

00:45:14 ◼   ► Operation office five.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Yes.

00:45:17 ◼   ► There you go.

00:45:18 ◼   ► How's it been going for you?

00:45:19 ◼   ► Well, I got good news and bad news.

00:45:21 ◼   ► Oh, no.

00:45:22 ◼   ► The bad news is that, uh, to reference back to your, to an episode from two years ago,

00:45:26 ◼   ► episode 170, the rat king of cables, it's back.

00:45:31 ◼   ► The rat king of cables has been, has grown, has regrown because over two years, you know,

00:45:36 ◼   ► you got a cable, you put it somewhere and that's how it starts.

00:45:40 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm speaking to you now from a room that has a lot of, uh, I, I've begun the process

00:45:46 ◼   ► of kind of upturning all of these boxes that have cables in them and then going through

00:45:49 ◼   ► the cables one by one and putting them in the USB pile and the HTMI pile and the ethernet

00:45:54 ◼   ► pile and all of that.

00:45:55 ◼   ► So that then I can organize them, reorganize them and try to find, you know, get them back

00:46:00 ◼   ► in their place.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Cause I had a moment where I needed a particular USB cable.

00:46:03 ◼   ► Um, and I couldn't find one.

00:46:05 ◼   ► I was like, Hmm, this is not great cause you know, then it's searched through the rat king

00:46:09 ◼   ► of cables or just buy a new one on Amazon.

00:46:13 ◼   ► It's so sad to do.

00:46:14 ◼   ► I like, I know I have this cable, but I can't find it.

00:46:17 ◼   ► So I'm just going to buy another one.

00:46:18 ◼   ► That's a bad idea.

00:46:19 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm, I've reached that step now where I I'm trying to pull all this stuff out.

00:46:23 ◼   ► And I found a bunch of old stuff in a box.

00:46:25 ◼   ► I literally had a box that I filled with stuff from my desk at IDG five years ago, brought

00:46:32 ◼   ► home and never opened, um, that I opened last week.

00:46:36 ◼   ► So I found a lot of really great old stuff.

00:46:37 ◼   ► I was sending a bunch of pictures to Steven Hackett of like, you get a load of this.

00:46:41 ◼   ► Look at these two newtons that I have.

00:46:43 ◼   ► Look at this BOS CD-ROM that I've got, uh, all sorts of just wild old stuff that's in

00:46:50 ◼   ► there.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Um, but I have to figure out like what of that is salvageable and what of that should I dump?

00:46:55 ◼   ► And so I I'm, I'm in the de-cluttering process.

00:46:59 ◼   ► There's also a lot of stuff.

00:47:00 ◼   ► The garage is also our sort of storage room for the rest of the house.

00:47:02 ◼   ► So there's a bunch of stuff that needs to go to the, um, the Goodwill or, or to the

00:47:07 ◼   ► dump depending, or the electronics recycling.

00:47:09 ◼   ► So I'm, I'm in midstream on that, which means that my office is much messier than I would

00:47:15 ◼   ► like, but, um, I, I have made a bunch of changes.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Um, I mentioned on this show as part of our ongoing conversation with ATP about lighting

00:47:24 ◼   ► and Marco's many, many lights that he has that I was feeling it that on a, on particular

00:47:29 ◼   ► dark winter days, it's not sunny today, so it's great.

00:47:32 ◼   ► But on dark winter days and nights, um, that my one floor lamp in here is not quite enough.

00:47:39 ◼   ► Um, and I was debating what to do, get another floor lamp, um, get some, some other lamp

00:47:45 ◼   ► that I could like shoot onto the wall so that the orange wall is sort of lit up.

00:47:49 ◼   ► That would be nice.

00:47:50 ◼   ► And I ended up, um, and I think I like it and I think I'm going to keep it is I had a

00:47:55 ◼   ► hue light strip, a Phillips hue light strip, the little, um, led strip lighting.

00:48:00 ◼   ► Um, and I put it on the frame of my window, so it's like shining up toward the ceiling

00:48:08 ◼   ► and also against the wall.

00:48:09 ◼   ► And this is the, my wall that I painted orange and I kind of liked it.

00:48:13 ◼   ► I left it there for a while and I kind of liked it.

00:48:15 ◼   ► So I bought, um, some extensions of that and now it's on the top and the bottom of that

00:48:21 ◼   ► window frame.

00:48:22 ◼   ► It's just stuck on the, on the window frame and that's pretty good.

00:48:25 ◼   ► So I don't think, and it means I don't have a floor lamp, um, cluttering that part of my

00:48:30 ◼   ► office that I have to keep moving out of the way to go anywhere.

00:48:32 ◼   ► It's just attached on the wall.

00:48:34 ◼   ► So I think I'm going to go with that and that gives me that extra little kind of hit

00:48:38 ◼   ► of, uh, of light, especially in, in dark times when I need a little bit more brightness.

00:48:43 ◼   ► Um, and it shows off that orange wall, which makes me happy.

00:48:46 ◼   ► Um, and that's a smart thing so I can put it on.

00:48:49 ◼   ► I've got a smart switch at the doorway that is actually a smart light switch that's actually

00:48:54 ◼   ► turning on my floor lamp, which is plugged into one of those little smart outlets.

00:48:58 ◼   ► And so now I have it wired up so that I can turn that on.

00:49:00 ◼   ► I can turn on the, the, uh, the hue lights on the wall.

00:49:03 ◼   ► Um, so, you know, I, I'm doing that.

00:49:06 ◼   ► I have some video lights that I use when I'm doing, you know, when I'm shooting videos

00:49:10 ◼   ► or doing live stream of, of something.

00:49:12 ◼   ► And then I, I'm actually ordered some more mounts to mount more of them up on the ceiling

00:49:16 ◼   ► because the great thing about having those lights on the ceiling is that they're not

00:49:20 ◼   ► somewhere else on the floor.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Like they're out of the way, there's no tripod, there's no, you know, there's none of that.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And, and it's a great place to store those lights.

00:49:29 ◼   ► And then I can just either on smart switches so I can just turn them on whenever I am recording.

00:49:34 ◼   ► So I'm doing a bunch of that kind of stuff.

00:49:36 ◼   ► And, uh, like John Syracuse, I prepared the way, um, but I'm not getting a Mac pro.

00:49:40 ◼   ► I just bought a new, um, uninterruptible power supply because after the power outages this

00:49:46 ◼   ► fall and also hearing John and Steven Hackett talking about getting these like tower UPS,

00:49:53 ◼   ► they look like a tower computer almost.

00:49:56 ◼   ► And all my UPS is I've got two are like big fat, thick power strips.

00:50:00 ◼   ► And I thought, Oh, actually that is exactly what I, what I want and need for this right

00:50:05 ◼   ► where my computer's plugged in.

00:50:07 ◼   ► So I haven't, I have one of those now to a big UPS.

00:50:09 ◼   ► And the best thing about it is that it's got a silence button on it.

00:50:12 ◼   ► So when the power goes out and I need to use it in order for my lamp to work, I won't have

00:50:17 ◼   ► beeping coming to me endlessly from the garage like I did in October.

00:50:21 ◼   ► These UPS is like, I get it, but I don't know if I want this like massive thing, right?

00:50:27 ◼   ► Like a big computer sitting under my desk.

00:50:29 ◼   ► It seems like so much.

00:50:30 ◼   ► Well, mine is sitting against the wall.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Right.

00:50:33 ◼   ► It's not under my desk and I've got, I've got a whole, that's another thing I did is

00:50:36 ◼   ► I've got a bunch of cable organization that I've been doing where I've got, you know,

00:50:40 ◼   ► I'm trying to tie the cables together and reduce the number.

00:50:43 ◼   ► I actually bought a new, like a USB three hub so that I can extend, I can run one USB

00:50:49 ◼   ► cable down off the desk and then have a bunch of stuff plugged in, kind of stuck under the

00:50:54 ◼   ► desk, including the one that runs to the, to the UPS so that it can talk to the UPS.

00:51:02 ◼   ► And and then it extends.

00:51:03 ◼   ► I've got a little thing that goes all the way toward the wall and then there is where

00:51:07 ◼   ► the UPS is.

00:51:08 ◼   ► I don't see it, but this new, this UPS is tall and not wide like the other one is.

00:51:12 ◼   ► So it's actually kind of less intrusive and you know, if your power goes out, your computer

00:51:18 ◼   ► doesn't die, which is nice.

00:51:19 ◼   ► I had the cyber power, um, CP 1500 PF CLCD.

00:51:24 ◼   ► CP 1500 CP F let's see.

00:51:27 ◼   ► Yup.

00:51:28 ◼   ► I see it.

00:51:29 ◼   ► Look at that.

00:51:30 ◼   ► Look at that thing.

00:51:31 ◼   ► Wow.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:33 ◼   ► It seems like so much.

00:51:34 ◼   ► How much, how, how long would, do you know how long your computer would last plugged

00:51:36 ◼   ► into this thing?

00:51:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:51:38 ◼   ► We can find out, but not right now.

00:51:39 ◼   ► No, I don't want you to do it right now.

00:51:40 ◼   ► Oh, it turns out only 20 seconds.

00:51:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:42 ◼   ► And you have it.

00:51:43 ◼   ► I mean, cause I never really understood how this works, but you have it set up or do you

00:51:49 ◼   ► have it set up that it can talk to Mac OS?

00:51:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:53 ◼   ► So people don't know this, I think, but, uh, these UPS has have USB on them.

00:51:58 ◼   ► Um, and they often come with like windows software and some of them have Mac downloads,

00:52:05 ◼   ► but I'm always very skeptical.

00:52:06 ◼   ► You don't actually need software, special software on the Mac for these things.

00:52:09 ◼   ► If you plug them in via USB and go to the energy saver pain in system preferences, there's

00:52:15 ◼   ► a UPS thing and you can configure it to like, you know, your Mac knows when it's on UPS,

00:52:21 ◼   ► knows what the battery status of the UPS is.

00:52:23 ◼   ► It's like, like a laptop battery.

00:52:25 ◼   ► It's aware of all of that.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And you can say, you know, after five minutes on the UPS shut down, or if the UPS only has

00:52:31 ◼   ► five minutes left shut down, or if the UPS reaches 10% of its battery shut down, you

00:52:36 ◼   ► can, you can do all of that stuff from right within system preferences.

00:52:39 ◼   ► You don't need any special software to do that.

00:52:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks really cool.

00:52:43 ◼   ► That kind of stuff.

00:52:44 ◼   ► But I see I want, I wanted to hear all of this from you today because I'm in just like,

00:52:50 ◼   ► I'm in such office limbo right now, Jason, because I want to do so much stuff that I

00:52:55 ◼   ► want to do to my office, but also at the same time, I want an office outside of my home,

00:53:00 ◼   ► which is like a whole of a big thing that I'm looking at because we live in a two bedroom

00:53:06 ◼   ► apartment and you know, if, if our life goes the way that we want over the next few years,

00:53:13 ◼   ► I need to give that room up.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And so I can't, and so like, I'm in this real limbo, right?

00:53:19 ◼   ► Like what to do?

00:53:20 ◼   ► We don't have another room.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Like we don't have a garage.

00:53:22 ◼   ► We live in an apartment.

00:53:23 ◼   ► It's like I am looking kind of for an office outside of home, which is like, it's holding

00:53:28 ◼   ► me back from making too many significant changes to my home office.

00:53:31 ◼   ► Like I don't want to redo the whole thing and then rip it all out again.

00:53:35 ◼   ► But there are, there are little things that I can do that I can also take with me, right?

00:53:40 ◼   ► Like if, if I get an office outside of my home, right?

00:53:42 ◼   ► Like if I buy a UPS, I can still take that with me.

00:53:45 ◼   ► Sure.

00:53:46 ◼   ► But yeah, so I, I'm in a little bit of limbo myself right now, which is just like the worst.

00:53:50 ◼   ► It's a challenge.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And you, and you've got to think about the expenses of, of an office versus the expenses

00:53:56 ◼   ► and inconvenience of doing something like selling your place and buying a place with

00:54:02 ◼   ► another room, right?

00:54:03 ◼   ► Which you could do, but is incredibly inconvenient, right?

00:54:07 ◼   ► That is obviously something that we will want to do at some point in our lives, right?

00:54:10 ◼   ► But we don't, we don't want to even think about moving for like another two or three

00:54:14 ◼   ► years.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:16 ◼   ► So you're in limbo.

00:54:17 ◼   ► We have like a, like a mortgage is in a contract, like a fixed term contract.

00:54:20 ◼   ► So you don't want to break it because then you'd lose your breaks, all that kind of nuts.

00:54:24 ◼   ► I recommend that you just, uh, you know, go work in a big glass cube.

00:54:29 ◼   ► Bad for audio.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Yes.

00:54:31 ◼   ► Big glass cubes.

00:54:32 ◼   ► Little bit, little bit, little bit bad, bad for audio.

00:54:33 ◼   ► That is true.

00:54:34 ◼   ► You got to worry about the audio, uh, because that's your job.

00:54:37 ◼   ► Like the problem I've had is like trying to find office space where we live is very, very

00:54:44 ◼   ► difficult because I, I have also have like particular needs.

00:54:47 ◼   ► I can't work in a shared office, right?

00:54:49 ◼   ► Like I can find a desk in a shared office super easy, but cannot find private offices

00:54:55 ◼   ► very easily.

00:54:56 ◼   ► I had a friend who ended up working, there was a law firm that had rented out a building

00:55:02 ◼   ► and they had extra offices and he ended up working there.

00:55:07 ◼   ► He basically sublet an office inside this.

00:55:10 ◼   ► So it was like before there was WeWork, there was, Hey, we have an extra office.

00:55:15 ◼   ► Does somebody want to use this?

00:55:16 ◼   ► And you know, that's, uh, you know, I don't know if that would be your best bet or, or

00:55:21 ◼   ► not to just see how do you find them?

00:55:25 ◼   ► And like I found an office and that, and I've, I've even gone to see it and thought it was

00:55:29 ◼   ► really great, but the letting company is not responding to my emails.

00:55:36 ◼   ► It's like, I want to lease this office.

00:55:37 ◼   ► Will you please let me lease this office?

00:55:40 ◼   ► And they're just like ignoring me.

00:55:41 ◼   ► It's like, I don't understand what's happening.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Like I want to give you the money that you're looking for.

00:55:47 ◼   ► It's very, it's very confusing to me.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Uh, but that's, I'm, you know, that's kind of where I am right now.

00:55:53 ◼   ► Like I had this whole plan of like, Oh, doing a bunch of stuff to redo the office, but now

00:56:00 ◼   ► I'm in a little bit of limbo, but there are things that I still want to do.

00:56:04 ◼   ► So like I spoke about it last time, right?

00:56:06 ◼   ► Like I want to, um, make my kind of second desk more of a, uh, fixed iPad writing desk,

00:56:14 ◼   ► you know?

00:56:15 ◼   ► So I'm still looking at stuff like that.

00:56:16 ◼   ► I'm still trying to work that out myself.

00:56:18 ◼   ► I actually want to talk about keyboards in a minute.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Um, cause that's kind of like a place where I am in my life right now is looking at keyboards.

00:56:26 ◼   ► We've all been at the keyboard part of their life, but I'm also at the same time still

00:56:30 ◼   ► looking for just general inspiration as, you know, I've been, we would, again, we spoke

00:56:34 ◼   ► about this when we were together, I've been working out of that office now for three years

00:56:39 ◼   ► and it was put together in a way that is very different to how it's used now.

00:56:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:56:48 ◼   ► Like my initial conception, you built your office just as I built my office sort of speculatively

00:56:51 ◼   ► saying, well, what, what, what would I do if I had this office?

00:56:54 ◼   ► And then you use it for three, four or five years and you're like, okay, this is not quite

00:57:00 ◼   ► what I, you know, I made, I made some guesses and some were right and some were wrong and

00:57:05 ◼   ► it's not quite how I work now.

00:57:06 ◼   ► And then you have to, and that's what my kind of project has been about is making some revision,

00:57:11 ◼   ► like getting a new desk.

00:57:12 ◼   ► Cause like that, that was a, I thought buying that relatively cheap, very small, uh, sit

00:57:17 ◼   ► stand desk was a good idea at the time.

00:57:19 ◼   ► And I guess it was, but having sat at it for five years, it's not the right desk for me.

00:57:24 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:57:25 ◼   ► And you're still happy with the desk that you have?

00:57:26 ◼   ► Oh, I love it.

00:57:27 ◼   ► I mean, it's the, cause it's the, it's like the re reclaimed hardwood, uh, desk top and

00:57:32 ◼   ► you know, this one's got multiple settings so that it remembers like my standing position

00:57:36 ◼   ► and my sitting position and stuff, which the other one did not.

00:57:39 ◼   ► Um, it's uh, yeah, it's really nice.

00:57:41 ◼   ► And because of the size that actually I can tuck more stuff underneath the desk.

00:57:46 ◼   ► And so I can do talking about cable management, like I can attach, I actually, at one point

00:57:51 ◼   ► have, I've, I've given some thought to, uh, I bought the drive, I bought a Samsung SSD.

00:57:56 ◼   ► I've given some thought to, um, putting like Velcroing the drive under the desktop as my

00:58:02 ◼   ► backup drive, as my like super duper clone drive.

00:58:06 ◼   ► Although since my iMac is visa mounted, um, I can actually just, there's like a little

00:58:12 ◼   ► space in the visa mount where the drive goes.

00:58:15 ◼   ► Like I don't even need to attach it.

00:58:17 ◼   ► It just kind of like sits there and it's completely invisible to me and it's just directly attached

00:58:22 ◼   ► by USB-C to the, to the iMac.

00:58:24 ◼   ► I, uh, I just stuck my Samsung SSD drive that I use for my time machine, but with Velcro

00:58:30 ◼   ► onto the back of the, of my iMac Pro.

00:58:33 ◼   ► I don't care.

00:58:34 ◼   ► That's how it lives.

00:58:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree.

00:58:36 ◼   ► But I thought about putting stuff under the desk and I do have, like I said, I have a

00:58:39 ◼   ► hub under there and I bought a metal shelf for my, um, my USB audio interface.

00:58:45 ◼   ► And so I don't even see it anymore.

00:58:47 ◼   ► It's down there and I, it's accessible, but like it's not on my table anymore.

00:58:52 ◼   ► And I may do that with a mute switch at some point too, and just like trying to clear some

00:58:56 ◼   ► of the junk off the desk, but I am, I'm happy with the desk.

00:58:59 ◼   ► I have, by the way, I have, um, I have two points of additional follow-up.

00:59:04 ◼   ► One is USB follow-up.

00:59:05 ◼   ► I guess this is follow out.

00:59:07 ◼   ► There's been this, there's a bug happening in Catalina and none of us have been able

00:59:10 ◼   ► to pin it down.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Casey Liss has talked about it on ATP a little bit.

00:59:14 ◼   ► And I've seen it too, where something is going on and I think it's USB.

00:59:19 ◼   ► I don't think it's actually Bluetooth.

00:59:21 ◼   ► I think it's USB and I think the Bluetooth is on the USB bus.

00:59:26 ◼   ► That bus headache for dongle town.

00:59:28 ◼   ► No, that bus is driving away from dongle town and it's on fire.

00:59:32 ◼   ► I bought a, a new DVD drive to use to do like, you know, I, I back up my DVDs and put them

00:59:41 ◼   ► on a Plex server, which is great.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Cause then I don't have to fish out the DVD and fish out the Blu-ray to watch something.

00:59:47 ◼   ► I can just kind of like, it's very easy then to put it on my TV using the Apple TV app

00:59:51 ◼   ► or even side load it to my iPad and take it on a trip, whatever.

00:59:56 ◼   ► So I bought a new one of those.

00:59:58 ◼   ► And so I was at a point where I was ripping a Blu-ray, doing a podcast.

01:00:05 ◼   ► So there's a USB audio interface there and super duper launched and was that new Samsung

01:00:09 ◼   ► SSD.

01:00:10 ◼   ► It was doing a clone, a backup to my SSD.

01:00:15 ◼   ► Those are all USB tasks, right?

01:00:18 ◼   ► And my USB audio interface started cutting out.

01:00:22 ◼   ► My track pad started getting jumpy because it wasn't plugged in and then I plugged it

01:00:26 ◼   ► in and it was, it was okay after that.

01:00:28 ◼   ► But my Bluetooth mode track pad was getting jumpy.

01:00:31 ◼   ► The the ripping procedure on the Blu-ray disc failed.

01:00:39 ◼   ► And I thought, what is happening here?

01:00:41 ◼   ► And then I stopped the super duper clone and ejected and unplugged the drive and I turned

01:00:47 ◼   ► off the Blu-ray drive and I unplugged and replugged the USB audio interface and then

01:00:53 ◼   ► I didn't have any problems.

01:00:54 ◼   ► And I thought to myself, something, there's a bug here somewhere because I did not see

01:00:58 ◼   ► this before Catalina.

01:00:59 ◼   ► It's like it got overloaded somehow, right?

01:01:01 ◼   ► Yeah, something is happening where the USB bus is getting overloaded by something.

01:01:06 ◼   ► It is unable to prioritize all of these things and it has dropouts and the dropouts can result

01:01:13 ◼   ► in dropped audio from a USB interface or a drop that leads to a failure from a Blu-ray

01:01:20 ◼   ► drive or jittery, potentially it's related to jittery input from keyboards and mice.

01:01:30 ◼   ► And I think it's all because of that backup that was going on.

01:01:35 ◼   ► So this is similar to what Casey has seen.

01:01:38 ◼   ► If somebody from Apple out there who knows about USB stuff, like I'd love to know more

01:01:44 ◼   ► about this or tell you more about it.

01:01:47 ◼   ► But you know, USB was broken in, what was it, Sierra maybe or Hi Sierra.

01:01:54 ◼   ► There was a release of OS X a few years ago where USB was really broken and we all kind

01:01:58 ◼   ► of like couldn't move our podcast machines to it because it became really unreliable.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And it very slowly got more reliable.

01:02:07 ◼   ► But something happened with Catalina and it's back to being kind of not reliable, at least

01:02:12 ◼   ► under load.

01:02:13 ◼   ► So that's a real bummer because that kind of like puts back a lot of my ideas about

01:02:17 ◼   ► chaining things for USB and doing a local direct super duper backup instead of just

01:02:22 ◼   ► using the network.

01:02:23 ◼   ► And you know, because I have to not have my USB audio interface for podcasts be unreliable.

01:02:28 ◼   ► So like, oh, you can't record any podcasts when any other USB devices are attached is

01:02:33 ◼   ► not a great look.

01:02:35 ◼   ► So I have that update.

01:02:36 ◼   ► So Casey, if you're out there, you're not alone.

01:02:40 ◼   ► And my other update is a power outage update since we're talking about my office and so

01:02:44 ◼   ► that's what this segment is about.

01:02:45 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:02:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I can understand now a little bit more.

01:02:49 ◼   ► I've forgotten about the rolling power out.

01:02:51 ◼   ► That's one of the reasons you probably are thinking so much about UPS and are maybe a

01:02:56 ◼   ► little bit more sensitive to it because you've lived the life of multiple days.

01:02:59 ◼   ► We had the three day outage and the UPS isn't going to protect you from a three day outage,

01:03:03 ◼   ► but it will at least give you a little bit of battery to finish.

01:03:06 ◼   ► But it just at least will make you, this whole thing will make you think about power a little

01:03:10 ◼   ► bit more.

01:03:11 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

01:03:12 ◼   ► So after the outages, we looked into doing rooftop solar with a battery backup because

01:03:19 ◼   ► with that on a sunny day, you could basically, the power could go out for a few days and

01:03:24 ◼   ► you could still have power in your house, which would be great.

01:03:26 ◼   ► But you also have other additional benefits for that, right?

01:03:28 ◼   ► Like your power bill will get cheaper.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:03:31 ◼   ► You'll be using more renewable energy.

01:03:32 ◼   ► Like there are lots of benefits for solar.

01:03:34 ◼   ► Yeah, but losing power for three days was the impetus to be like, okay, we should really

01:03:37 ◼   ► do this.

01:03:38 ◼   ► And then I looked into it and it turns out we have a, you know, please do not send advice.

01:03:43 ◼   ► By the way, I'll just say that now because I know I'm going to get advice from people

01:03:46 ◼   ► who don't know all the details about this.

01:03:50 ◼   ► But here's the thing.

01:03:53 ◼   ► I have a 20 plus year old roof, which doesn't leak, which is great.

01:04:00 ◼   ► However, technically that roof is getting toward the end of its life.

01:04:04 ◼   ► And everybody I talked to about solar said, well, you really have to replace the roof

01:04:08 ◼   ► if you're going to do solar because otherwise the roof's going to fail and you're going

01:04:11 ◼   ► to have to de-install all of your panels and then reinstall them on the new roof.

01:04:16 ◼   ► And that's no good.

01:04:17 ◼   ► So we really advise that, you know, you need a relatively recent roof.

01:04:21 ◼   ► Start with a fresh roof.

01:04:22 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:23 ◼   ► So because the damage is way worse if you have panels on top.

01:04:26 ◼   ► So guess what?

01:04:27 ◼   ► That takes a project that was already really going to be expensive when we got a child

01:04:32 ◼   ► in college and another one going to college soon and said, take that number that you were

01:04:37 ◼   ► already wincing at and thinking you might not be able to afford, but you could probably

01:04:41 ◼   ► grit your way through it.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Now add $20,000 to it at least.

01:04:45 ◼   ► And at that point I was like, no, I'm not going to do that.

01:04:49 ◼   ► So the rooftop solar is off.

01:04:51 ◼   ► Maybe after I have to replace my roof, I'll think about it again.

01:04:54 ◼   ► But I had a moment where I thought, okay, it's inconvenient not to have power for a

01:04:58 ◼   ► few days.

01:04:59 ◼   ► But when I think about a project that would cost, I mean, a lot, let's just say a lot

01:05:05 ◼   ► of money all told versus finding ways to make the pain of an occasional outage less painful

01:05:14 ◼   ► and then just rebuying the groceries that spoiled in the refrigerator.

01:05:18 ◼   ► It's like, I can't really justify it that way.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Like there are reasons to get solar.

01:05:24 ◼   ► But in the end, because of our particular circumstance, I just don't think we can afford

01:05:28 ◼   ► the scale of it, having to replace the roof and then do solar and then get the battery.

01:05:34 ◼   ► It's a lot.

01:05:35 ◼   ► So the moment I made that decision of like, we're not going to do that and that all that

01:05:41 ◼   ► money that we were going to spend is not being spent.

01:05:44 ◼   ► I was like, oh, I can spend a small amount of money on a few things to make life a little

01:05:49 ◼   ► easier if we do get an outage.

01:05:51 ◼   ► So the first thing I did was I actually bought this thing called a power bank, which is like

01:05:56 ◼   ► a giant UPS.

01:05:59 ◼   ► I bought one from Goal Zero.

01:06:01 ◼   ► I bought the Yeti 1000.

01:06:04 ◼   ► You plug it in and it's a giant battery and it charges.

01:06:08 ◼   ► And then when the power goes out, you can use it.

01:06:12 ◼   ► You can't like run a giant appliance on it, but there are certain things in our house

01:06:15 ◼   ► that we could run off of this thing.

01:06:18 ◼   ► And they also sell a solar panel that charges it in like 20 hours or something like that.

01:06:25 ◼   ► So it would be, and I'll explore it because you can get a second panel for it and then

01:06:30 ◼   ► charge it faster and all of that.

01:06:33 ◼   ► So I'm going to buy that.

01:06:35 ◼   ► I just bought that.

01:06:37 ◼   ► So we'll have more power available to us in a giant battery to get us through like at

01:06:42 ◼   ► a very low level with some of the stuff in our house.

01:06:45 ◼   ► And that's a start.

01:06:47 ◼   ► And I'll look into some other stuff too.

01:06:49 ◼   ► I'm not sure I really want to buy a gas generator because for lots of reasons like having to

01:06:54 ◼   ► have a gas can and oil and it's noisy and smelly and like I'd rather not go down that

01:07:00 ◼   ► route.

01:07:01 ◼   ► But anyway, all that stuff is kind of back open just because I'm not going to spend 50

01:07:05 ◼   ► or $60,000 at least on a solar project because I don't have that money to spend.

01:07:12 ◼   ► I'm not going to do that.

01:07:13 ◼   ► So instead I just bought a giant battery.

01:07:15 ◼   ► So a lot of batteries come into my house, Myke.

01:07:17 ◼   ► Lots of batteries.

01:07:19 ◼   ► All the great batteries.

01:07:20 ◼   ► Can we talk about keyboards?

01:07:22 ◼   ► Let's do it.

01:07:23 ◼   ► There comes a time in every person's life when they must make the walk of the travel.

01:07:29 ◼   ► Sorry.

01:07:30 ◼   ► The travel to the keyboards.

01:07:31 ◼   ► The listen to the Cortex, the Cortex and Stay got to me.

01:07:35 ◼   ► So it just started as like a couple of questions through Ask Cortex and then some follow up

01:07:41 ◼   ► was sent to me.

01:07:42 ◼   ► Now I am like deep into mechanical keyboard land.

01:07:47 ◼   ► So I currently own two mechanical keyboards.

01:07:51 ◼   ► I own a WASD keyboard, which I really like.

01:07:54 ◼   ► It was the first one that I bought and I learned a lot.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Like I learned that what switch I like, I like Cherry Brown switches because they still

01:08:01 ◼   ► got some clickiness, but it's not a lot of force.

01:08:03 ◼   ► It's like the least amount of force to apply.

01:08:06 ◼   ► So it doesn't really cause me any strain in my hands, right?

01:08:10 ◼   ► Because like, you know, you can really go for it.

01:08:12 ◼   ► And plus I don't want it to be too loud.

01:08:13 ◼   ► I just like a little noise.

01:08:15 ◼   ► I liked the WASD keyboard because you could basically customize every single key to be

01:08:20 ◼   ► the color that you wanted.

01:08:21 ◼   ► And I got like some wild colors, but I bought a keyboard without arrow keys.

01:08:27 ◼   ► I wasn't really paying attention.

01:08:28 ◼   ► I didn't really think about it.

01:08:30 ◼   ► And I hate that.

01:08:32 ◼   ► I love the keyboard and it's possible to use arrow key that you can hold down a little

01:08:36 ◼   ► function key and use, I think it's like the I, J, K and L, I think.

01:08:44 ◼   ► So it's like instead of the arrow keys, like on the keyboard, which is fine, but it just

01:08:48 ◼   ► doesn't work properly for me.

01:08:51 ◼   ► But I do love that keyboard.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Then I bought an Ergodex keyboard, which is a split mechanical keyboard.

01:08:57 ◼   ► So that splits in half, which is like the keyboard that I use on my Mac all the time,

01:09:01 ◼   ► which is the Microsoft Sculpt, right?

01:09:03 ◼   ► Like it has the split in the middle, which is, it feels good to me.

01:09:06 ◼   ► And the Ergodex keyboard is really nice, but I'm really trying to get used to it because

01:09:11 ◼   ► a lot of the keys are unprinted and you are supposed to assign, you could use like this

01:09:16 ◼   ► web tool and then you have to like plug it into your computer and like you flash the

01:09:21 ◼   ► firmware.

01:09:22 ◼   ► You assign what you want the keys to do, which is fine because you can kind of customize

01:09:27 ◼   ► it the way that you want, but I can then not remember all the keys do, which is a problem

01:09:33 ◼   ► of its own.

01:09:34 ◼   ► And there's ways to fix that, like buying different key caps, right, to replace the

01:09:39 ◼   ► blank keys, which is good.

01:09:42 ◼   ► But then I'm into the key cap world, right?

01:09:44 ◼   ► Where now I'm like, where do you buy key caps?

01:09:46 ◼   ► And I see a lot of key caps that I really like the look of, but then there are these

01:09:49 ◼   ► like group buy things and it's like they're just sold out or it's like you'll wait for

01:09:52 ◼   ► like six months.

01:09:53 ◼   ► It's like a whole thing.

01:09:54 ◼   ► And then you, and then I asked you what keyboard you're using and you're using the Keychron

01:09:59 ◼   ► keyboard.

01:10:00 ◼   ► And now I'm looking at those and they look really interesting and they have a Kickstarter

01:10:03 ◼   ► campaign coming up for another new one that they're making.

01:10:06 ◼   ► I am like deep into this.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Mechanical keyboards are just like a great thing to follow on Instagram.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Like I follow a ton of just like these companies making tiny keyboards and little key caps.

01:10:20 ◼   ► It's just like beautiful.

01:10:21 ◼   ► It's somebody, the reason that this got to me is someone said, this is probably would

01:10:25 ◼   ► satiate Myke in the way that pens does.

01:10:28 ◼   ► And it's very similar to like the type of pens that I buy.

01:10:33 ◼   ► You can get exactly what you want and you can have them made in certain ways and they're

01:10:36 ◼   ► all nice and colorful in the ways that you want.

01:10:39 ◼   ► That's where I am.

01:10:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:42 ◼   ► Yep.

01:10:43 ◼   ► Yep.

01:10:44 ◼   ► So I've been there.

01:10:45 ◼   ► I've been where you are.

01:10:48 ◼   ► The like part of the exploration is figuring out what you like and what you don't like.

01:10:54 ◼   ► So like I got a WASD keyboard and because they do let you order custom key cap sets.

01:11:01 ◼   ► You can order your keyboard with custom key caps, but you can also just like get custom

01:11:05 ◼   ► printed key caps and they are good and they have like a, you can build your own key layout

01:11:10 ◼   ► in Illustrator and then put it in there and they will print them out and they will send

01:11:14 ◼   ► them to you.

01:11:15 ◼   ► So that you can spend a lot of money on that stuff and that's fun.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Although what I learned is that the keyboard from them that I bought, it's got the, it's

01:11:24 ◼   ► got, it's wider because it's got the arrow keys and like the home and end keys and they're

01:11:28 ◼   ► off to the side.

01:11:31 ◼   ► And this is why I say it's important to learn what you like because I've learned I don't

01:11:35 ◼   ► like that.

01:11:36 ◼   ► I want a much narrower keyboard than that.

01:11:38 ◼   ► So I don't use that keyboard at all essentially at this point, but I do use that, the keyboards

01:11:45 ◼   ► that I told you about and actually, you know, I've been using a couple of them.

01:11:51 ◼   ► The Keychron K2, I think.

01:11:54 ◼   ► And there's another one that I've been using that's very similar and you know, so that's

01:11:59 ◼   ► your first step, right?

01:12:00 ◼   ► Is like you said, oh, this little keyboard is really great.

01:12:02 ◼   ► And then you got it and you're like, oh, there's no arrow keys.

01:12:04 ◼   ► And I've had people send me keyboards and they're like, this looks great.

01:12:07 ◼   ► You'll love this.

01:12:08 ◼   ► And I look at it and like, no arrow keys, deal breaker.

01:12:09 ◼   ► And they're like, but you can use a modifier key.

01:12:11 ◼   ► It's like, nope, nope.

01:12:12 ◼   ► I have learned this about myself that I am not there.

01:12:16 ◼   ► So you're getting there, right?

01:12:17 ◼   ► Part of this journey for you is learning what not to do with your keyboard.

01:12:22 ◼   ► Do you have anything else you've learned from that journey or do we just know about the

01:12:27 ◼   ► arrow keys?

01:12:28 ◼   ► The arrow keys is the main thing that I've learned.

01:12:31 ◼   ► My love of RGB remains.

01:12:33 ◼   ► I love RGB.

01:12:34 ◼   ► I just think it's amazing.

01:12:35 ◼   ► I love to just have my keyboard lit up in a bunch of weird and wild colors and ErgoDEX

01:12:39 ◼   ► has that.

01:12:40 ◼   ► And I just, it's just fun.

01:12:41 ◼   ► I just like the fun of it, right?

01:12:43 ◼   ► Like to look down at my keyboard, sometimes it's like, there's a rainbow there.

01:12:47 ◼   ► It's like, oh, how lovely.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Right?

01:12:49 ◼   ► Like I like that kind of thing.

01:12:50 ◼   ► And I've, I've also learned that like, this is, it's like just this fun little thing.

01:12:54 ◼   ► Cause I can end up, I really, ultimately what I want to do is, is build a keyboard.

01:13:00 ◼   ► Cause like you can really go with this.

01:13:03 ◼   ► And I think that would be a fun thing to aim towards one day, like getting all the parts

01:13:08 ◼   ► and building one.

01:13:09 ◼   ► And that it's like a whole different thing.

01:13:11 ◼   ► Right.

01:13:12 ◼   ► But, uh, I'm, I am enjoying going down this rabbit hole.

01:13:15 ◼   ► So I'm basically saying this like upgradience.

01:13:18 ◼   ► If you have things that you think I should be looking at in the custom keyboard world,

01:13:22 ◼   ► the mechanical keyboard world, please tweet them at me because I would like to see them.

01:13:27 ◼   ► All right.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Um, so the other keyboard that I like is the Vortex Race 3, which I wrote about, um, which

01:13:31 ◼   ► is similar.

01:13:32 ◼   ► It's got, I think real cherry switches, whereas the, um, Keychron is, uh, Gateron.

01:13:36 ◼   ► They're like knock off cherry switches.

01:13:37 ◼   ► They don't feel quite as good, but they're good.

01:13:39 ◼   ► My other recommendation.

01:13:40 ◼   ► So WASD is great because you can get them to make anything for you.

01:13:44 ◼   ► Um, I recommend, uh, Reddit, the mechanical keyboard subreddit.

01:13:50 ◼   ► Um, there's stuff in there that is good.

01:13:53 ◼   ► I recommend, um, Massdrop mechanical keyboards.

01:13:58 ◼   ► That's one of the group buy things, but there are key sets that come up on there that are

01:14:02 ◼   ► really great if they match the keyboard that you're using.

01:14:05 ◼   ► And so I think I keep an eye on that and I've ordered a couple of things from Massdrop,

01:14:09 ◼   ► uh, in mechanical keyboards.

01:14:12 ◼   ► Um, eBay, believe it or not, there's a lot of mechanical keyboard stuff on eBay.

01:14:16 ◼   ► I've been trying to find it.

01:14:17 ◼   ► There's a really good store on eBay, but I can't find its name right now.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Um, that, that sells a bunch of different, um, keyboard layout stuff and their, their

01:14:30 ◼   ► storefront is on eBay, but I can't find their name right now.

01:14:34 ◼   ► But if you search for, uh, whatever kind of things you're looking for, you will find a

01:14:38 ◼   ► lot of key caps and stuff.

01:14:39 ◼   ► If you search for...

01:14:40 ◼   ► I found a lot on Etsy as well.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:42 ◼   ► I just, I didn't buy anything, but I was just like poking around.

01:14:44 ◼   ► Especially if you're looking for custom key caps.

01:14:47 ◼   ► Um, there are a lot of custom key caps on, uh, on eBay.

01:14:54 ◼   ► And uh, and then yeah, Instagram, uh, as, as mentioned by Joe Steele in the chat room,

01:14:59 ◼   ► uh, there are a bunch of keyboard companies that are on Instagram.

01:15:02 ◼   ► So you can follow Pimp My Keyboard, which I've ordered from and Joe linked to Originativ

01:15:07 ◼   ► Co on, um, on, uh, Instagram.

01:15:12 ◼   ► So there's, there's a bunch you can fall down deep, deep, deep down that rabbit hole if

01:15:15 ◼   ► you want to.

01:15:16 ◼   ► I, I am not looking for keyboards right now.

01:15:20 ◼   ► I've got two really good keyboards that basically, um, that I love.

01:15:25 ◼   ► I will probably at some point here, feel that pull of like, could I get another color set

01:15:32 ◼   ► and replace the key caps because that's fun.

01:15:35 ◼   ► Um, I think I, I, I, um, was writing on my iPad this week with the Vortex Race 3, which

01:15:42 ◼   ► is why I actually couldn't find that, that cord.

01:15:44 ◼   ► I was trying to find like my USB-C to micro USB to hook this because it's not a Bluetooth

01:15:52 ◼   ► keyboard.

01:15:53 ◼   ► It's just a wired keyboard and I couldn't find one.

01:15:54 ◼   ► I, I finally found an adapter and I use that instead.

01:15:57 ◼   ► It feels great though.

01:15:58 ◼   ► It's a really great keyboard and it looks great.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Um, but, and I like its key caps better than the, the ones on the, the Keychron, which

01:16:08 ◼   ► of course immediately makes me think maybe I could get new key caps for the Keychron

01:16:11 ◼   ► and then it's like, man, don't do that to yourself, but maybe we'll see.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Oh, I'm just looking at loads of stuff now.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I really like this is all for me.

01:16:21 ◼   ► This is all Joshua Topolsky's fault because he tweeted out a picture of this micro keyboard

01:16:26 ◼   ► that he had with this amazing, weird, yellowy old school layout and I was like, what is

01:16:31 ◼   ► that?

01:16:32 ◼   ► And he said, here's the rabbit hole.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Enjoy.

01:16:34 ◼   ► That was the end for me.

01:16:35 ◼   ► That was, that was, the result is that I got a keyboard that I really like.

01:16:39 ◼   ► So you know, it's, it's not bad.

01:16:41 ◼   ► All right.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Today's show is also brought to you by Booz Allen.

01:16:43 ◼   ► Modern, modernizing for the future is a challenge, especially for large organizations.

01:16:47 ◼   ► You may need to integrate legacy systems with new technology.

01:16:50 ◼   ► You may need to incorporate AI and analytics to work more efficiently and make fast decisions.

01:16:54 ◼   ► And everyone needs new ways of thinking to move to what's next, whether for government

01:16:58 ◼   ► or commercial goals.

01:16:59 ◼   ► Booz Allen understands and they're helping some of the world's largest organizations

01:17:03 ◼   ► to modernize.

01:17:04 ◼   ► They understand the missions of government and industry and they need, and they need

01:17:08 ◼   ► to adapt to constant change.

01:17:10 ◼   ► They provide open source solutions so clients can integrate innovation from anywhere, whether

01:17:14 ◼   ► from visionary startups or major contractors.

01:17:17 ◼   ► Plus they're helping clients power new technologies with analytics because security is everybody's

01:17:22 ◼   ► priority.

01:17:23 ◼   ► They're helping to integrate their capabilities of intelligence grade cybersecurity.

01:17:26 ◼   ► With Booz Allen integration means putting you in control of innovation.

01:17:31 ◼   ► Integrate innovate, get it done with Booz Allen.

01:17:33 ◼   ► Learn more at Booz Allen dot com slash relay.

01:17:35 ◼   ► That is Booz Allen dot com slash relay.

01:17:37 ◼   ► We want to thank them for their support of the show.

01:17:39 ◼   ► Should we do some hashtag ask upgrade questions?

01:17:42 ◼   ► Let's do it.

01:17:43 ◼   ► Is that the lasers just shut out the letters on the Hollywood sign.

01:17:46 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:17:48 ◼   ► It looks terrible over there.

01:17:49 ◼   ► Greg asks, how do you sync your audio when you both record separately?

01:17:53 ◼   ► I've been thinking about doing a podcast of a friend, but wondering how you sync the show

01:17:56 ◼   ► up for easy editing.

01:17:58 ◼   ► First off, first and foremost, episode 200 of upgrade, right?

01:18:03 ◼   ► Right.

01:18:04 ◼   ► That's the index, like a little footnote there.

01:18:05 ◼   ► Always listen to that.

01:18:06 ◼   ► We talk in detail about how we do podcasts, but I'll give you the short version, which

01:18:09 ◼   ► is both of you record your end, but one of you ideally is recording your end and maybe

01:18:15 ◼   ► both of you and the person on the other end on a separate file or a separate track.

01:18:20 ◼   ► And the easiest way to do this is to use Skype call recorder from Ecamm software with Skype.

01:18:25 ◼   ► Easiest way to do it.

01:18:26 ◼   ► You can use audio hijack.

01:18:27 ◼   ► There are lots of other tools.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Skype call recorder will record your voice and the other person's voice on separate tracks.

01:18:34 ◼   ► You can export them later.

01:18:36 ◼   ► And that's great because if you're recording your voice and the other person's voice at

01:18:40 ◼   ► the same time, you can lay those down in your editing, you know, in garage band or logic

01:18:44 ◼   ► or fair ride or wherever you want.

01:18:45 ◼   ► And then you get your friend's file and you line your friend's file up.

01:18:48 ◼   ► So it's exactly making the sounds at exactly the same time as the one that you recorded

01:18:53 ◼   ► on your computer.

01:18:55 ◼   ► You can visibly see it and then you've got that reference.

01:18:59 ◼   ► So the reference track, whether it's just one person or multiple people, the reference

01:19:02 ◼   ► track is the most important thing.

01:19:05 ◼   ► You can do a three to one clap kind of thing.

01:19:08 ◼   ► But I don't think you need to.

01:19:10 ◼   ► And the other tip I'll use is when you're lining up tracks to get them to match.

01:19:14 ◼   ► If you don't have a reference track, people start recording at all sorts of times, but

01:19:18 ◼   ► they tend to all end recording at the same time.

01:19:21 ◼   ► So line up the end, not the beginning, but that's the way.

01:19:26 ◼   ► And then there are syncs you can do.

01:19:27 ◼   ► And if there's drift in the recording where they're lined up at the beginning and then

01:19:31 ◼   ► by the end, they're off by a little bit, you just kind of snip and slide it a little bit

01:19:34 ◼   ► halfway through and get it to be close.

01:19:38 ◼   ► But the short version is just have a reference track and line up your files to that.

01:19:41 ◼   ► And my additional tip is don't just line it up once because it's called audio drift.

01:19:48 ◼   ► So the audio can get out of sync again later on, depending on how long you record.

01:19:53 ◼   ► So keep the Skype reference track in your audio project.

01:19:57 ◼   ► And as you're editing through, make sure that it's continuing to match, you might need to

01:20:00 ◼   ► adjust it a little bit here.

01:20:02 ◼   ► This is something that you and I do differently.

01:20:03 ◼   ► I don't keep the track in there.

01:20:05 ◼   ► But what I do is after I lined it up at the beginning, I go to the end and hear if it's

01:20:08 ◼   ► lined up.

01:20:09 ◼   ► And if it's not lined up, what I'll do is I'll go through maybe every 15 or 30 minutes,

01:20:14 ◼   ► I'll split the clip and line it back up, and then move ahead and then split it again and

01:20:19 ◼   ► line it back up and deal with the drift that way.

01:20:22 ◼   ► But once I've got it where I feel like everybody's matching the reference track, I delete the

01:20:27 ◼   ► reference track because I don't want to deal with it.

01:20:28 ◼   ► Like I don't want to account for it.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Either way.

01:20:31 ◼   ► The reason I keep the reference track is in case I mess up something in the edit and get

01:20:35 ◼   ► it out sync myself, which I have done many times.

01:20:38 ◼   ► And then that keeps it in there so I can then get it back into sync again, but it doesn't

01:20:41 ◼   ► matter.

01:20:42 ◼   ► However you edit it, edit it your way, but that's the way that you do it.

01:20:46 ◼   ► That's the way that we make sure that we line things up is that we keep the reference track.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Plus it's good to have in case something goes wrong with somebody's audio.

01:20:53 ◼   ► And then you also, I mean, you have Skype recording.

01:20:57 ◼   ► Gary wants to know what was your top song from 2019 in your Apple Music replay?

01:21:02 ◼   ► Okay, so I went and looked at this.

01:21:04 ◼   ► And my number one song was a song called "My Honest Face" by Inhaler, which is a fun song.

01:21:10 ◼   ► I sent...

01:21:11 ◼   ► I sent it to a bunch of my friends who like U2.

01:21:15 ◼   ► So like John, Syracuse and Merlin.

01:21:17 ◼   ► And I said, Whoa, these guys sound like they've listened to those early U2 albums as much

01:21:23 ◼   ► as we have.

01:21:25 ◼   ► Only yesterday in preparation for this podcast did I look up who Inhaler is and was amused

01:21:33 ◼   ► to know that this band that sounds a lot like early U2, their lead singer is Bono's son.

01:21:40 ◼   ► So I'm sure he's heard a lot of U2 and sounds a lot like Bono because it's Bono's son.

01:21:49 ◼   ► I had no idea.

01:21:52 ◼   ► But if you like, you know, Boy and War and the early U2, check out "My Honest Face" by

01:21:58 ◼   ► Inhaler.

01:21:59 ◼   ► It is like a tribute to early U2.

01:22:01 ◼   ► It sounds great.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Jason, that's hilarious.

01:22:03 ◼   ► I had no idea.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Now my number two in the list was "Bags" by Clara, which is actually my favorite song

01:22:09 ◼   ► of 2019.

01:22:10 ◼   ► But she didn't make it to number one for some reason because I guess I played that song

01:22:15 ◼   ► "My Honest Face" a lot too.

01:22:18 ◼   ► My favorite song is "Overnight" by Maggie Rogers, which I mean, this song was my number

01:22:27 ◼   ► one but like my top 10 songs of the year is just full of Maggie Rogers.

01:22:32 ◼   ► Like her album is just incredible.

01:22:34 ◼   ► It's just unbelievable.

01:22:35 ◼   ► I have a Maggie Rogers story here, which is also really funny that I just realized on

01:22:40 ◼   ► Friday.

01:22:41 ◼   ► So on Friday, I was listening because I keep playlists of like my favorite songs of the

01:22:45 ◼   ► year.

01:22:46 ◼   ► And Friday, I was listening to "Love You for a Long Time" by Maggie Rogers.

01:22:50 ◼   ► And I thought, I really love this song.

01:22:52 ◼   ► I need to look up Maggie Rogers and see what other stuff she's got because maybe I should

01:22:56 ◼   ► listen to other stuff from her.

01:22:57 ◼   ► And I found first off one of my favorite things that happens in the streaming music era, where

01:23:01 ◼   ► I'm picking up songs here and there just based on their appearances and various playlists

01:23:05 ◼   ► is I discover later, not that they're related to somebody from U2, although sometimes that

01:23:10 ◼   ► happens, but I discover later that I've actually liked several of this person's songs, but

01:23:15 ◼   ► didn't know it was the same person.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And that's always a great sign.

01:23:17 ◼   ► Like after the fact, it's like, "Oh, this person's music really works for you.

01:23:20 ◼   ► You should explore them further."

01:23:22 ◼   ► And that's happened to a bunch of artists.

01:23:23 ◼   ► And I found with Maggie Rogers that in addition to "Love You for a Long Time," she had the

01:23:28 ◼   ► song "Light On," which was also in the playlist because I really liked that song, at which

01:23:33 ◼   ► point I finally read up on her history and discovered that viral video where she plays

01:23:38 ◼   ► her song "Alaska" for Pharrell Williams and he starts to cry because it's so good and

01:23:43 ◼   ► he has nothing to teach her about being a musician other than keep doing what you're

01:23:48 ◼   ► doing, which was really great.

01:23:49 ◼   ► So I've added her album now to my library and I'm going to listen to it.

01:23:54 ◼   ► So she's great.

01:23:56 ◼   ► The album that she put out, I think it was last year, it was at the very end of 2018,

01:24:01 ◼   ► but "Heard It in a Past Life" is just absolutely wall-to-wall incredible.

01:24:06 ◼   ► Like if you have not listened to that album, you should listen to that album because it

01:24:11 ◼   ► is absolutely fantastic.

01:24:13 ◼   ► It's a great example too of somebody she was born, she grew up in rural, like tidal Maryland

01:24:21 ◼   ► and spent a lot of her formative life with, she was born in 1994, she's pretty young,

01:24:28 ◼   ► around folk music and she was like a banjo player.

01:24:31 ◼   ► And then she comes to NYU and is in their creative arts program, basically their music

01:24:39 ◼   ► program, the Clive Davis School.

01:24:41 ◼   ► And you can hear her folk music background in her music, but it's modern music.

01:24:48 ◼   ► She is synthesizing this classic kind of folk music and then taking it to a completely different

01:24:53 ◼   ► place, which is what makes somebody a great musical artist.

01:24:55 ◼   ► So yeah, it was great that I saw her in your list here because I just was digging in on

01:25:00 ◼   ► her on Friday because I like her a lot.

01:25:04 ◼   ► My other, like the top list is also dominated by Vampire Weekend's most recent album, which

01:25:08 ◼   ► I absolutely loved.

01:25:10 ◼   ► It features Danielle, I think it's Danielle Heim from the band Heim, who's also one of

01:25:16 ◼   ► my favorite, like she's on like three or four of the songs.

01:25:18 ◼   ► I didn't know that, I'll have to check that out because I like Heim.

01:25:20 ◼   ► That album is like, it's an absolute return to form for Vampire Weekend, Far From the

01:25:25 ◼   ► Bride is the name of the album.

01:25:27 ◼   ► That was my most listened to album of the year.

01:25:30 ◼   ► It's funny how time works.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Most of the songs are Maggie Rogers, but I'm listening to the album.

01:25:36 ◼   ► But yeah, they were my two favorite albums of last year.

01:25:40 ◼   ► I also loved False Alarm by Tudo Cinema Club.

01:25:43 ◼   ► So there's more recommendations for you if you want them.

01:25:46 ◼   ► Marcello asks, "Do you use multiple volumes in your internal Mac boot disk, one for system,

01:25:53 ◼   ► other for documents or whatever, or do you just use one big volume?

01:25:57 ◼   ► And are there any pros or cons to one method over the other?"

01:26:01 ◼   ► After reading about, I forget who it was now, somebody's approach to photos, I actually

01:26:09 ◼   ► have finally embraced APFS.

01:26:13 ◼   ► And so I have, well, first off, one for system, one for documents.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Catalina means that you have a volume for system.

01:26:21 ◼   ► Like Catalina enforces that you have a volume for system.

01:26:24 ◼   ► It's called the name of your volume, space, dash, space, system, I think.

01:26:30 ◼   ► Like that's, everybody gets that now in Catalina.

01:26:35 ◼   ► But I also have an APFS volume called Photos that has a maximum size.

01:26:42 ◼   ► And the idea here is that all these APFS volumes share space.

01:26:46 ◼   ► You don't have to like commit 10 gigs over here and then you don't get that 10 gigs anywhere

01:26:51 ◼   ► else.

01:26:52 ◼   ► They all share space, which is great.

01:26:55 ◼   ► But you can enforce a quota.

01:26:57 ◼   ► And what that means is I've got my photo library set to only download what it needs.

01:27:03 ◼   ► It's not syncing the whole library because it won't fit on my SSD.

01:27:08 ◼   ► But as it's downloading what it needs, it's waiting until it gets to a certain percentage

01:27:12 ◼   ► before it starts deleting stuff.

01:27:14 ◼   ► So it'll fill up a lot of your drive before it'll start deleting stuff.

01:27:17 ◼   ► And the tip that I got from somebody who I can't remember now, sorry about that, is make

01:27:23 ◼   ► a photos volume, give it a quota, a maximum size it can be.

01:27:26 ◼   ► And then when it reaches near 10% of that, it'll start deleting files and it won't expand

01:27:32 ◼   ► to fill all the space on your hard drive.

01:27:35 ◼   ► And so I am doing that.

01:27:36 ◼   ► And that's the first time I've done something like that.

01:27:38 ◼   ► But that's it.

01:27:39 ◼   ► I don't do a lot of partitions.

01:27:41 ◼   ► I generally just kind of want everything in one place.

01:27:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't do anything like that.

01:27:47 ◼   ► I feel like I would start to lose track of where everything was being kept and then it

01:27:51 ◼   ► would just become more of a problem.

01:27:52 ◼   ► I would say that now with APFS, this is a great time to do that if you're a kind of

01:27:56 ◼   ► person who wants to do these partitions because they don't steal the space.

01:28:01 ◼   ► And that's huge, right?

01:28:02 ◼   ► Again, you don't want to have this, "Oh God, why did I make that partition 50 gigabytes

01:28:09 ◼   ► because I really could use another 30 gigabytes now and it's over there, it's empty, but I'm

01:28:14 ◼   ► over here."

01:28:15 ◼   ► Like APFS, that doesn't happen.

01:28:17 ◼   ► So it's much more kind of free, but I never did because I don't need more places to look

01:28:23 ◼   ► for stuff.

01:28:24 ◼   ► And in the end, it's one logical volume.

01:28:25 ◼   ► So it doesn't, it's literally one disk.

01:28:28 ◼   ► So it kind of doesn't matter.

01:28:30 ◼   ► But with a photos thing, I'm trying that and that's actually pretty cool.

01:28:33 ◼   ► All right.

01:28:34 ◼   ► And our final question today comes from Brian.

01:28:37 ◼   ► Do you use your left modifier keys or right modifier keys more often?

01:28:41 ◼   ► And do you think it aligns with your general handedness?

01:28:44 ◼   ► Oh, Brian, Brian.

01:28:46 ◼   ► I told Brian on Twitter, this was a good question and I have a little bit of a weird answer

01:28:49 ◼   ► too.

01:28:50 ◼   ► I discovered that I always use the left command key.

01:28:57 ◼   ► Always.

01:28:58 ◼   ► I never use the right command key.

01:28:59 ◼   ► The right command key, the right control.

01:29:02 ◼   ► Somebody was talking because there was a keyboard, back to keyboards.

01:29:03 ◼   ► There was a keyboard that didn't, what was it?

01:29:06 ◼   ► It was, they had moved, oh, it was, there was a keyboard that had a little tiny command

01:29:12 ◼   ► key or control key and they had moved it.

01:29:14 ◼   ► Like one was only on one side and not the other.

01:29:17 ◼   ► And I realized the first moment I use this keyboard, I can't use this keyboard because

01:29:22 ◼   ► this keyboard prioritizes this right command key or control key or whatever, and not the

01:29:27 ◼   ► left one.

01:29:28 ◼   ► So I do everything I do.

01:29:30 ◼   ► And as somebody pointed out in this Twitter thread, all the good stuff like command S,

01:29:33 ◼   ► command Q, command A, those are all over there on the left side of the keyboard anyway.

01:29:38 ◼   ► And yeah, if I want to print something, my left thumb goes down on the command key and

01:29:42 ◼   ► my right index finger or middle finger goes on the P. I do not switch to the right command

01:29:49 ◼   ► key and then with my right hand do command P. I can't explain it.

01:29:53 ◼   ► I can't explain anything about how I type.

01:29:55 ◼   ► I'm a self taught typist.

01:29:56 ◼   ► I type fast, but I don't type conventionally.

01:29:59 ◼   ► I just pot myself.

01:30:00 ◼   ► It's not a system you learn.

01:30:02 ◼   ► It's a system I made up and I can't explain the command key other than maybe it goes back

01:30:08 ◼   ► to when I had an Apple II and there was like the open Apple key and the closed Apple key

01:30:11 ◼   ► and they were different.

01:30:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:30:13 ◼   ► The answer is my left thumb does it all.

01:30:17 ◼   ► So I was trying to pay attention to what I'm doing.

01:30:21 ◼   ► And the only, the only like real patterns that I'd learned is that I use the left command

01:30:24 ◼   ► key most often.

01:30:26 ◼   ► The reason that I think I do this is because most of the shortcuts that I want to use command

01:30:31 ◼   ► for are located on the left side of the keyboard.

01:30:34 ◼   ► So like command A, command C, command B. That's where all the good ones are.

01:30:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:38 ◼   ► Right.

01:30:39 ◼   ► So like I'm used to doing that and I use the right shift key the most because a lot of

01:30:43 ◼   ► the time when I'm using shift, I'm selecting things and the arrow keys are on the right

01:30:47 ◼   ► hand side.

01:30:49 ◼   ► So they're the only two that I've noticed that like I was using those consistently in

01:30:53 ◼   ► that way.

01:30:55 ◼   ► I use the shift on the, on the left side most of the time.

01:30:58 ◼   ► I think there are times if I'm, I think if like I'm capitalizing a letter on the left

01:31:03 ◼   ► side, maybe I use the right shift key, but for the most, like using arrow keys to select

01:31:08 ◼   ► stuff, I don't use like a finger of my right hand to hold down shift while I also use my

01:31:12 ◼   ► right hand for the arrow keys.

01:31:13 ◼   ► I do not do that.

01:31:14 ◼   ► I, I'm using the right hand for the arrow keys and the left hand for the shift key.

01:31:18 ◼   ► This is surely there have been like a graduate student thesis written on, on keyboarding

01:31:24 ◼   ► methods, right?

01:31:25 ◼   ► Where they just photograph people using their keyboards and come up with like what the different

01:31:29 ◼   ► populations are about that.

01:31:31 ◼   ► But it's a great question, Brian, because it's, it's super weird, right?

01:31:34 ◼   ► It's and I don't think it even has to do with left-handed or right-handed because I'm right-handed

01:31:38 ◼   ► and you're left-handed and we both use the left command key.

01:31:41 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:31:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:43 ◼   ► I, when I saw this question, I was like, that's a silly question, Brian.

01:31:45 ◼   ► Nobody does that.

01:31:46 ◼   ► And then I was like, paid attention to it.

01:31:48 ◼   ► I was like, oh, I do.

01:31:49 ◼   ► I have ways that I work.

01:31:51 ◼   ► So great question, Brian.

01:31:53 ◼   ► Brian Hamilton.

01:31:54 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:31:55 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode, send out

01:31:58 ◼   ► a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade, and it will be sent into a list, which may be

01:32:03 ◼   ► included later on.

01:32:04 ◼   ► I want to thank our sponsors again for the support of the shows, ExpressVPN, Hello and

01:32:09 ◼   ► Booz Allen.

01:32:10 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason online, he is @jasonel, J S N E double L. I am @imike, I M Y K E.

01:32:16 ◼   ► This show is a part of Relay FM.

01:32:18 ◼   ► You can find this show and many more at relay.fm/shows.

01:32:21 ◼   ► You can find Jason's writing online at sixcolors.com.

01:32:25 ◼   ► And of course, Jason hosts shows over at the incomparable.com as well.

01:32:29 ◼   ► So you can get your fix for all of the pop culture stuff that you love in your life.

01:32:33 ◼   ► There is something at the incomparable for you.

01:32:37 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back next time.

01:32:40 ◼   ► I think we have a special episode planned for next time, right?

01:32:43 ◼   ► I don't know if we want to give it away, but we can tease it.

01:32:46 ◼   ► We're working on something fun for the next week.

01:32:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I think we're in serious danger of doing a draft next week with a special guest.

01:32:54 ◼   ► There is no Apple event that we're aware of.

01:32:55 ◼   ► No, this is a historical draft.

01:32:57 ◼   ► Out of canon.

01:32:58 ◼   ► But we'll be back next time.

01:33:00 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye Jason Snow.

01:33:01 ◼   ► Goodbye Myke Hurley.

01:33:02 ◼   ► Enjoy Hollywood!

01:33:03 ◼   ► Thank you!

01:33:04 ◼   ► [Music]

01:33:19 ◼   ► [Music]