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Upgrade

272: Double Secret Vice President of Keyboards

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 272. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom, Linode, and Freshbooks.

00:00:16   My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell.

00:00:20   Hello, Myke Hurley. I am in California. No longer in New York. No longer holding a microphone and looking out the window at the streets of

00:00:29   Manhattan. I'm just, uh, just in my garage. Nobody cares about any of that, Jason. It's #SnellTalk time and the question comes from Jack today.

00:00:39   Jack says, "Do you have an on-air light outside of your room that you switch on when you record?"

00:00:44   I don't. I have thought about it. I realized I could probably do it. I could probably set something up involving like a smart light or a smart switch and do that.

00:00:55   But the truth is, other than for the sheer drama of it, I actually think it would be less effective than my current thing, which is that I have a little plastic

00:01:03   doorknob hanger thing, like you would get at a hotel to say "do not disturb," that I had printed up that says "podcasting in progress."

00:01:14   And it goes on the outside of the door and that is the cue to my family not to come in under any circumstances.

00:01:21   And I actually made a bunch of them and sent them to friends one year, a few years ago, and people use them for the same purpose.

00:01:27   It's a nice low-tech way of saying, "Please don't come in here unless, you know, unless there's an emergency. You should text me or whatever because I'm actually recording right now."

00:01:36   - Yeah, mine is purely if my office door is closed, then I'm working on audio, whether I'm recording or editing.

00:01:46   But basically, text me or open the door. - Very carefully. - Very carefully.

00:01:54   So I have to have two steps for mine because I will also, especially when there's people at home, like, you know, kids after school or on a break or whatever,

00:02:08   or even on a holiday sometimes when I'm working in here, sometimes I'm closing the door to provide some sound separation.

00:02:15   And because I need to focus. And that is the cue to be like, you know, don't interrupt me, you know, don't bug me.

00:02:26   But if the thing's not hanging on the door, you can come in because we've got, like, you know, if you're doing the laundry or you need to get something out of one of the cupboards, you can do that.

00:02:34   But it's more of a signal of, like, if I'm working and the door is open, I am inviting people to walk in and ask me questions.

00:02:42   And then there are times when I'm writing where it's like, I got to close the door because I don't want you.

00:02:46   I'm not open to interruptions right now. So I have that middle step. - Yeah.

00:02:52   I want to thank Jack for sending in that question. If you would like to ask a question to open the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk and yours may be picked for the future.

00:03:02   Jason, do you know what time it is? - Is it merch time? - It is merch time. - Oh, I got it.

00:03:10   We have a new Dungletown tee. You can support your local sports team, the Dungletown Butterflies.

00:03:16   Yes, there's a great debate that I want out there about what sport that they play, but we're not going to define it now. It is a local sports team.

00:03:23   I know that Simon, the designer of the shirt, and you have decided what the sports team is, but I would say it's whatever, you know, you want it to be.

00:03:31   It is we are extending the Dungletown universe. The Dungletown Cinematic Universe is extending further with the addition of a sports team.

00:03:39   I would actually like to hear what the Upgradients would like the sports team to be in their minds.

00:03:44   I want small obscure sports personally, because I think that that's funnier, but maybe there's some good puns that we haven't quite stumbled across.

00:03:53   So we have a regular tee and a Raglan tee, which is a baseball tee, so it's like the three-quarter sleeves.

00:03:59   I reckon like the brain ball one, just me and Jason will own the Raglan tees. - That's fine. - But I want that one, so that's why that one's available.

00:04:07   But we have lots of wonderful colors in the regular Dungletown butterflies tee.

00:04:12   I'm sure you can get the joke, but we're obviously referencing the butterfly keyboard, having recently departed from the MacBook Pro.

00:04:20   We are also bringing back due to popular demand the original Dungletown tees in both orange and navy.

00:04:26   The orange is the first time the oranges come back. We brought the navy back sometime earlier in the year, but the orange is back.

00:04:33   And it is the season, so upgrade hoodies are back too. We haven't had those around for a while.

00:04:39   All of this is available until December 4th. Go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com and you can grab yourself some wonderful Dungletown merch.

00:04:50   - For the holidays. - For the holidays. - Just put it under the tree. Sure. - Yeah, sure. Why not?

00:04:54   You know, that's how some people want... I mean, who doesn't want wonderful Dungletown merch?

00:04:58   This is a good t-shirt line we have going on for us here, I think, the Dungletown stuff. I think it's a lot of fun.

00:05:04   So you can get those at upgradeyourwardrobe.com and also you should follow the upgrade twitter account, which is _upgradefm

00:05:11   because we will be giving away some codes for free t-shirts over the next couple of weeks.

00:05:16   So if you want to get those, you can do it. We're not going to make you work like John Siracusa, like to guess a frame of a movie.

00:05:23   Jason, if you want to come up with something, you can. But my typical thing is, here is a code, guess a missing character, the t-shirt is yours.

00:05:31   But if you would like to play a more elaborate game, less complicated than the frame game...

00:05:37   - Okay, we'll talk about it. - I will allow that. You should follow us, _upgradefm, and you can grab yourself maybe a code.

00:05:45   Maybe you'll be lucky enough to get a code. But everybody should go and buy these.

00:05:48   We also have a very small amount of pins in stock as well, but this is a very small amount, a very limited edition, the upgrade pin.

00:05:57   So go buy it now. Jason, we need to answer a question about why the episode was late last week.

00:06:07   About our subterfuge and whether we're just liars who lie.

00:06:10   People think that we're big stinky liars who lie. But I actually was traveling last week.

00:06:15   Our episode would have been delayed regardless, or I wouldn't have been on it.

00:06:19   Or you wouldn't have been on it. I would say that we originally were planning that I would get a guest.

00:06:26   And then it turned out that I was going to New York, and then we decided instead you demanded to be on that episode because how could you miss it?

00:06:35   But when we said that Myke was traveling and so we were going to record _upgrade,_ as soon as Myke got back home, that was absolutely the truth.

00:06:44   We just didn't mention the other part, which is that I was also going to be in New York right then.

00:06:48   There were no lies. There were no lies told.

00:06:51   No lies detected, no.

00:06:52   No lies told because I actually was traveling and so therefore wasn't around a Monday to record.

00:06:59   We told the truth. No lies were told.

00:07:00   It's true. In fact, on that night, I actually mentioned to somebody who asked, I said, "Well, we've recorded our episode, but it's very, very late where Myke is, so he's going to get up in the morning early and post it."

00:07:12   Also true.

00:07:13   I actually do want to give some follow up about last week's episode.

00:07:16   I don't care if anybody cares about this, but I want to talk about it anyway.

00:07:19   Last Wednesday, I clocked in 13 hours of working time in one day.

00:07:24   I was editing our episode for five hours from 7 a.m. to get it up in time because I cared about it, right?

00:07:33   Like no one made me do that.

00:07:35   I wanted to do it because it was an episode that was important to us and I wanted to put it together because again, like Rick is saying in the chat room,

00:07:42   the interview that you did with Shruthi was so good, I wanted the rest of the episode to be the best it could possibly be.

00:07:48   And I also, when we get these opportunities to hopefully be able to provide news to you, like breaking news, I want the episode to be as good as it can be because hopefully also we get some new upgrade ends coming along as well.

00:08:01   That's also nice.

00:08:02   I laughed.

00:08:04   So I was at the airport when the embargo dropped and my plane was very slightly delayed and it was perfect because I was able to be on the internet when the embargo dropped, check everything out, answer some questions.

00:08:18   I did laugh though because I immediately got the push notification for ATP, which we usually record and release on very different parts of the week, but we did a simultaneous release.

00:08:29   And I knew Marco was at the venue on that day, but I just didn't think about like, of course he's going to get the boys together and do a flash episode for posting at the embargo time.

00:08:42   So that was pretty fun.

00:08:43   I got to listen to that on the flight, which was great.

00:08:47   And thank you for all your hard work.

00:08:50   Yeah, Tuesday was a big day.

00:08:51   There was a lot going on on Tuesday.

00:08:52   That was a, that was one of those days where you get to the end of it because after we recorded the episode, I then got some dinner and very relatively quickly and then, um, and then edited the interview portion.

00:09:06   To get that to you so that when you woke up in London, you would be able to process that further and put it in the rest of the episode that you were editing.

00:09:16   And that was one of those days where I got to the end of the day and, um, my wife called, um, and she was like, so, so you.

00:09:22   You have time, uh, time to talk tonight.

00:09:25   And I was like, like my, I said, I'm, I'm trying to put my stuff in my bag so that I can get up in the morning at six in the morning, Eastern time and go to the airport.

00:09:35   And I'm having trouble putting objects in a bag.

00:09:38   I should probably go to bed now.

00:09:41   So yeah, I, it was a busy day, but it's all worth it.

00:09:43   Right.

00:09:44   Like that's a great, it's a great opportunity.

00:09:46   It was fun to, uh, to talk to the people and got to see Phil Schiller and, uh, you've got a new product and we got to do that interview and put it all together and drop something in embargo, which is awesome.

00:09:57   So yeah, it was all good.

00:09:58   It was, uh, it was, it was fun.

00:10:00   And then, uh, and then I, I, I came home and how was that?

00:10:04   Uh, next week, Myke at the movies was starting off the holiday season with the best holiday movie Die Hard.

00:10:11   Yeah.

00:10:12   Next week.

00:10:12   So go watch Die Hard.

00:10:14   Go watch Die Hard.

00:10:15   People, what a shame to go watch Die Hard.

00:10:18   Mm hmm.

00:10:19   Great movie.

00:10:19   So sorry for you.

00:10:20   Such a good movie.

00:10:21   This is, again, rare Myke at the movies that we've both seen it, but we both just really want to talk about it.

00:10:26   That's going to be the end of next week's episode.

00:10:29   We'll be devoted to talking about Die Hard.

00:10:31   Uh, a couple of items of follow-up.

00:10:34   Uh, Apple, according to Mark Gurman, is reportedly still looking at bundling services or at least leaving the options open.

00:10:42   Contracts with publishers for Apple news plus have a provision in them that Apple will allow to, uh, will allow for them to bundle Apple news plus with other services.

00:10:51   So it's not a huge thing.

00:10:52   So it's not a topic.

00:10:53   It's merely a piece of follow-up, but I just thought it was worth noting that the idea of the bundle is still around.

00:10:59   I actually want to talk about Apple news plus with you at some point in the near future.

00:11:05   Kind of to just, uh, catch back up on that.

00:11:08   Because there's been some interesting news about like, or just like some rumblings about the fact that no one's using it, but we'll talk about that another time, I think.

00:11:17   Um, but yeah, they're still looking at bundling.

00:11:20   I still, I still think it's going to happen.

00:11:22   I just don't know when.

00:11:23   Yeah.

00:11:25   And, uh, Jason, I'm sure you're very excited because I saw this go by on Twitter a couple of days ago.

00:11:30   Kevin MacLeod tweeted that I can't read the entire tweet because I would have to censor myself.

00:11:38   That the Catalina beta has added the column browser back to the music app.

00:11:43   That would be great.

00:11:44   They, they just pulled it out because they thought nobody cared and I care and apparently other people care and it apparently is back.

00:11:53   I am not on the beta, so I don't know, but that would be great.

00:11:55   Cause I'd use the column browser all the time to zero in on a, on a, you know, a custom kind of shuffle of a couple of albums or whatever.

00:12:03   And, uh, I hope it's, I hope it's back because why not?

00:12:06   It's all coming up, Jason.

00:12:09   I, I guess, I don't know.

00:12:11   I think it's weird that they would bring it back, but, um, who knows?

00:12:16   Maybe they, maybe they are responding to the criticism of, of, uh, removing a feature from the app that was fine and didn't need to be removed and wasn't on by default.

00:12:25   And I don't know, but that's a feature I use and I have missed it since I switched to Catalina.

00:12:31   So I would love to have it back.

00:12:32   Should we do some upstream?

00:12:34   Yeah, there's a lot to talk about.

00:12:36   So we should.

00:12:37   There is.

00:12:38   All right.

00:12:38   So, uh, Disney have announced that the four by three aspect ratio of the Simpsons will be coming to Disney plus in 2020.

00:12:47   So this was after a lot of people are upset that it was the 16 by nine version, right?

00:12:53   And they just cropped it.

00:12:54   So Disney has said that they're going to be in 2020, they're going to have more new, more new features in the applications.

00:13:01   And one of them is going to be like viewing options.

00:13:04   And so that will allow you to change on the fly between four by three for the first 19 seasons, which are in four by three, um, or 16 by nine.

00:13:13   And obviously the rest will be 16 by nine.

00:13:15   So they're bringing that back.

00:13:16   Yeah, that's a, it's good.

00:13:19   Our, uh, our friend Todd Faziri will be happy.

00:13:22   He's been talking about this on Twitter.

00:13:24   Um, I feel like this shows what behind the scenes, what a scramble it is to get something as massive as Disney plus launched and how many people are involved.

00:13:36   And even though they've got the, you know, we saw the login issues, like it's hard to get a service like of this scope up and running and they definitely have had issues.

00:13:46   This is a weird one because the content existed on the Simpsons app, the FX X.

00:13:51   Which is ever since ever app, which is now dead.

00:13:53   But the content was there.

00:13:54   They let you choose aspect ratio.

00:13:56   And so for Disney to make a statement saying, Oh, you know, we, we made a decision because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but we'll give people options in early 2020.

00:14:06   Um, I kind of wish they wouldn't make that statement about like, well, we made the decision, blah, blah, blah, because it's nonsense.

00:14:13   They, they should have just said, we didn't think about this or we weren't able to.

00:14:19   Get both versions available in time to launch the service because of, you know, they could make an excuse or they could even tell the truth and say, it's probably like we couldn't build our app to support multiple aspect ratios of a show out of the box.

00:14:35   And so we have waited for a software update or something like that, but anyway, that's good.

00:14:40   There are other animated shows that are similarly affected is my understanding on Disney plus where there's stuff that is in 16 by nine.

00:14:48   And it's sort of squashed and stretched and stuff.

00:14:50   So, so, well, I bet not movies, but there's a lot of TV that they, uh, that they, they squashed and stretched.

00:14:58   So I hope they figure this out over time and get things back to, um, original aspect ratios, or at least let people have options.

00:15:06   I personally, I feel like something like the Simpsons should probably just be shown at four by three, cause it was made in four by three and the jokes work in four by three.

00:15:14   And I know that that doesn't fill your widescreen TV, but you know, too bad.

00:15:19   There's I don't, I don't think cropping out.

00:15:23   I think cropping out information that was there for the filmmakers as a choice so that you can miss the jokes is not great.

00:15:31   Well, I think have the choice, but it should default to the original.

00:15:35   Right.

00:15:36   At that point, you might as well just not have it.

00:15:37   I just, you know, I get the idea, but like the care, let me put it this way.

00:15:42   If, if you really went back and made 69 by nine versions of the Simpsons that actually worked and you went shot by shot and all of that, which would take forever.

00:15:49   Cause there's 30 seasons of it.

00:15:52   Um, I would be okay with that, but, uh, and that's what they did with the wire.

00:15:56   There've been some other shows like that, but if you're, if you're just going to kind of slap it together, I don't think you should make it available.

00:16:03   I think that that's a mistake to have a it's widescreen, but it slapped together.

00:16:07   Um, but anyway, I I'm glad that something is going on here. And so, uh, congratulations to Disney.

00:16:14   They win the, uh, McLunkey award for this week.

00:16:17   10 million customers.

00:16:22   Disney has reported a signing up for Disney plus in the first day.

00:16:28   So they may have had problems did not matter.

00:16:31   Yeah, I'm unclear on, is that really the first day or does that include everybody who signed, who like signed up?

00:16:37   I'm sure it's 10 million by the end, but no, it doesn't, in my opinion, it doesn't matter.

00:16:42   Like 10 million people's a lot of people.

00:16:44   And they did not, you know, it's, it's huge.

00:16:47   It's huge.

00:16:48   Oh, speaking of McLunkey, I will say, I, you know, apparently having those 4K HDR, uh, special, special, special, extra special editions of star Wars ready to go.

00:16:59   Um, it was a thing that they were, that was a closely guarded secret.

00:17:02   I think it's really telling about how people feel about George Lucas continuing to mess around with his movies that Disney isn't making a big deal about that for the first time, 4K HDR versions of the original star Wars movies are available.

00:17:15   Yep.

00:17:15   You know, like that would, you'd think that would be a marketing point, but, um, I think it shows you just how embarrassing they are.

00:17:20   And I'll point out that the special editions are older now than the.

00:17:23   Then the original movies were when they did the special editions. So like, why do we need a star Wars now a document of nineties computer graphics?

00:17:32   Is that what we want?

00:17:34   Our view of star Wars to be, is that it's a movie from the seventies with graphics from the nineties.

00:17:39   I just don't, Disney needs to do something about it.

00:17:42   And I look at their embarrassment about this and their unwillingness to heavily promote the fact that these things are new additions, uh, maybe as a good sign that they know.

00:17:53   I figure at this point, you know, I will commit half heresy here.

00:17:57   I figure at this point, you either go back to the originals or redo all the special effects again.

00:18:02   Yeah.

00:18:03   No, I think that, I think those are the two options.

00:18:04   In fact, I would say, I think you should do both.

00:18:06   I think you should restore the original and the ultimate collector's restoration of as this movie, as good as it could possibly be, but basically the 1977 version.

00:18:17   And that's, that's your, uh, put it in the vault, most important, like historic document and you can clean it up, but don't change stuff in it.

00:18:26   Like don't change the content like George Lucas did.

00:18:28   And then if you want to make a version for modern audiences that uses all of the most modern techniques and all of that, like I believe these versions were going to be the ones that were going to do a three D rerelease.

00:18:40   They actually went down that road for a little while where they were going to do a, a three D back when three D was huge in movie theaters.

00:18:47   Um, they were going to build three D versions of this and release into the theaters and they were going to use this version as the basis for that.

00:18:53   So we'd get three D McClunky.

00:18:55   Um, but with that off the table, you know, maybe, maybe the answer is yeah.

00:19:00   Yeah.

00:19:01   I would be okay with that.

00:19:02   Like at this point, the special editions have been around for so long that if you wanted to re-specialize them with modern tech, I'd be okay with that.

00:19:10   But if, if they're just going to sit there parked with, with this kind of 1990s tech, um, I don't think it's worth it.

00:19:19   I think you'd be better off restoring the original and walking away.

00:19:22   Because I would expect that a lot of the effects look better in the original than they do in like, cause you can see the realness of it, right?

00:19:30   1970s, um, no 1977 Star Wars has a lot of like bad mats and things just because it was, it was so new.

00:19:37   I've never seen, you know, never seen the originals.

00:19:39   I've never seen them.

00:19:40   I've only ever seen the special editions, right?

00:19:42   Oh yeah.

00:19:42   Okay.

00:19:43   Yeah.

00:19:43   Right.

00:19:43   Right.

00:19:44   Yeah.

00:19:44   You've seen the special editions of the movies, but not the, yeah.

00:19:47   I, yeah, they don't, I mean, the first one doesn't look, doesn't look great.

00:19:51   It was groundbreaking, but it was also, you know, they were trying to figure it out and I get why George Lucas wanted to clean that up, but there's cleanup.

00:19:57   And then there's what if we insert this scene where, where, where a job at the hut is talking to Han Solo.

00:20:02   Like, no, how about we change?

00:20:04   So, uh, Han doesn't shoot first.

00:20:06   No, no, no.

00:20:09   Anyway, maybe that'll happen now that George is out and his editions are out, or maybe they'll just let it sit the way it is now because otherwise they're going to get more headlines of George Lucas complaining about how they've ruined his movies.

00:20:20   I don't know.

00:20:20   I think he did a good job.

00:20:23   It'd be fun.

00:20:23   It'd be kind of funny.

00:20:24   Wouldn't it really, if he, if he made that kind of complaint, just like, didn't you do it yourself anyway?

00:20:29   Uh, so that's Disney plus Jason, if you been watching, I just, uh, out of interest, do you have any early impressions on Disney plus content?

00:20:37   Um, I have only watched, well, I mean, I watched the McClunky scene had absolutely happened.

00:20:44   Um, and, and that, uh, that version of star Wars, it looks great.

00:20:48   It looks great, but it's the special edition, so I'm not really that interested in them.

00:20:51   Um, and the only thing that I've watched all the way through has been the Mandalorian, which is the original star Wars series, which I've liked, which is not what I expected at all, but I've really enjoyed it.

00:21:05   And it definitely, so Dave Filoni, who is one of the producers of the animated star Wars series is one of the producers of it.

00:21:12   And it has a little bit of, of that influence, I think, in the way that the storytelling does, it's very, uh, interesting, very visual.

00:21:22   Um, I thought episode one was okay.

00:21:25   Um, and I thought episode two was fantastic.

00:21:28   So I'm, uh, I'm excited to see the rest of it.

00:21:30   I look forward to seeing it in March and I'm super happy that everybody's tweeting spoilers all the time.

00:21:35   Great.

00:21:35   Can't wait to know everything about it before I get to see it.

00:21:38   Thanks Disney.

00:21:39   Yeah.

00:21:40   According to the Wall Street Journal and Variety, ex-HBO boss, Richard Plepler, who has come up many times in Upstream, is in talks with Apple to sign an exclusive production deal.

00:21:51   Plepler is currently said to be working on building a small team of people to create a boutique production company, and Apple wants to be their exclusive client.

00:21:59   This is a big deal.

00:22:01   Yeah.

00:22:01   I mean, Plepler is very respected.

00:22:03   He sort of built the prestige HBO that people see, uh, and, and know about that is sort of being dismantled as it's turned into something different by AT&T.

00:22:13   And this is a, this is his next act is apparently he wants to create a production company and Apple's like, why don't we just, it's funny.

00:22:23   Cause it's like, rather than like being an Apple employee, the way he wants to structure it.

00:22:27   And I think this, there are probably good reasons to do this is build a production company and then sign an exclusive deal with Apple.

00:22:33   Yeah.

00:22:33   For what he produces.

00:22:35   So that after that deal is over, he could renegotiate, he could go somewhere else, whatever, but he would, you know, it's, it's potentially Apple just saying, you know, we want.

00:22:44   To buy your, your output of whatever shows you're producing and keeping in mind that Apple right now does not produce its own shows.

00:22:51   It's starting to gear up to do that.

00:22:53   Like, cause that's the next step.

00:22:55   But right now, if you watch these shows, like, um, a good example for all mankind is Sony.

00:23:00   It's actually the, the, the studio that the people who run Apple TV plus.

00:23:04   Used to work for and Sony's producing that show.

00:23:07   So, you know, there are existing studios producing Apple's content.

00:23:11   One of the next steps is for Apple to produce it themselves, which they are doing too, but at the same time.

00:23:17   Yeah.

00:23:17   And then, and then PLEPLER, PLEPLER is sort of like a little hybrid, but it's like, it's a production company that Apple would have the output of.

00:23:25   And that's, you know, that's, that's another aspect of their strategy.

00:23:31   So yeah, interesting.

00:23:32   And finally, Gary Oldman has been cast in a new Apple TV plus show.

00:23:37   It's an adaptation of a book series called Slough House.

00:23:40   It will be called Slow Horses and is about a group of British MI5 agents who serve in a quote, dumping ground department of the intelligence agency.

00:23:49   It's being written by former Veep writer, Will Smith.

00:23:52   So I expect this is going to be a comedy based on the description and who's writing it.

00:23:57   But I actually don't know that to be the case, but that is my expectation.

00:24:02   This is going to be Oldman's first recurring role on a TV show ever.

00:24:05   He's, he's done guest appearances.

00:24:07   This will be the first time he will be starring in a regularly appearing TV show.

00:24:11   I would say that this will probably be a combination, right?

00:24:14   Like a show like Barry.

00:24:16   Right.

00:24:18   Is a good example of a show that is both funny and serious.

00:24:22   Killing Eve is a little bit like that too, right?

00:24:24   Like that it's a combination of kind of maybe espionage and stuff like that with comedy because this is the dumping ground.

00:24:32   Same joke as the office, UK version of the office, right?

00:24:37   That Slough House, the idea there is that Slough is not a particularly pleasant thing, pleasant place in England.

00:24:46   It's just like a dumpy suburb.

00:24:49   I'm saying nothing on this.

00:24:52   I'm just going to let you keep doing that.

00:24:54   No, right?

00:24:54   I mean, that, cause that's where the office is set in the UK is Slough.

00:24:58   And it's, you know, you're just kind of out on the outskirts and, and the purpose of it is to say, you know, these, these are MI5 agents, but they're working in Slough, which suggests to you that they are, they are, they are parked in an, in a, in a location that is not glamorous.

00:25:14   And, uh, I get it is what I'm saying.

00:25:17   So that could be, yeah, that could be fun.

00:25:18   I have high hopes for this.

00:25:20   Yeah.

00:25:21   Cause Gary Altman, very funny in a dry way.

00:25:23   I think it's gonna be a very interesting project.

00:25:26   Yeah.

00:25:27   Yeah.

00:25:27   So Apple, you know, continues their renewing shows.

00:25:30   They're buying new shows, they're premiering more stuff.

00:25:32   There's a lot going on.

00:25:34   Like the Apple TV machine continues to roll.

00:25:37   By the way, I'm continuing to love For All Mankind.

00:25:39   Oh my God.

00:25:40   So the latest episode was really great.

00:25:42   So I'm also really, really enjoying the morning show.

00:25:44   Yeah.

00:25:45   I'm, I'm way behind on that, but, uh, cause Lauren and I are going to watch that together.

00:25:50   I think, and we've been watching other stuff.

00:25:51   We've been watching, you know, Watchmen and Mandalorian and things like that.

00:25:55   But, um, and I've watched four episodes of See Now and, uh, despite thinking the premise

00:25:59   is ridiculous and thinking that the show looked questionable in the trailers, kind of like it.

00:26:05   Okay.

00:26:06   I like it.

00:26:06   I will never go back to it, but I'm pleased you like it.

00:26:09   I do.

00:26:10   I've watched a couple more episodes of Dickinson too, and it still holds up.

00:26:12   Like that show is very weird and funny.

00:26:14   I would just say that if the violence in See, uh, put you off a little bit, uh, it's good

00:26:19   that you stopped when you did because not, not every episode is violent, but there is

00:26:23   an episode where Jason Momoa, uh, kills a lot of guys in a brutal way.

00:26:29   And, uh, yeah, yeah, I can't do that.

00:26:31   But, uh, for mankind, I think is my favorite.

00:26:35   Right.

00:26:35   Yes, for sure.

00:26:36   The most recent episode, last Friday's episode, I was sweating by the end of it.

00:26:41   Very good.

00:26:43   Yeah.

00:26:43   I'd say my favorite, my favorite show running right now is Watchmen, but that is a close

00:26:48   second.

00:26:49   We're going to start watching that.

00:26:50   We're going to watch the Watchmen.

00:26:52   It's weird.

00:26:54   Yeah, but I think I'd like it.

00:26:55   I have a lot of fondness for the graphic novel, so I think it's worth it.

00:27:00   All right, so let's take our first break and thank Pingdom for their support of this show.

00:27:05   Holiday shopping season, Boxing Day, Black Friday, all of these big dates are all around

00:27:09   the corner.

00:27:10   I'm going to be looking for some good deals.

00:27:11   I'm looking for deals on a new television, actually.

00:27:13   I think I would like to upgrade my TV.

00:27:16   And that's something I'm keeping my eye out right now is because we have Black Friday

00:27:20   in the UK for some reason.

00:27:21   That doesn't completely make sense to me.

00:27:23   It's just like an arbitrary day for us because there is no Thanksgiving that falls before

00:27:28   Black Friday, but we have it anyway.

00:27:30   And even now, it's kind of funny.

00:27:31   This is the first time I've seen this.

00:27:33   Companies are already doing their Black Friday deals now, which it's just like, what are

00:27:38   we doing?

00:27:38   It's just sales in November.

00:27:40   Anyway, but when I'm shopping online, there's little worse than having a shopping cart fail.

00:27:44   I don't want that.

00:27:45   You know, for a website to be suddenly unavailable.

00:27:48   I don't want that.

00:27:48   And if you're selling something, you really don't want that.

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00:27:55   for you.

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00:28:20   first invoice.

00:28:21   So thanks to Pingdom for their support of this show and RelayFM.

00:28:24   Thinking about getting one of the LG TVs, Jason.

00:28:27   Interesting.

00:28:29   Because they have AirPlay and stuff and HomeKit and all of that.

00:28:33   And I've heard that the web OS is actually a pretty good interface.

00:28:36   So I've seen some good deals in those.

00:28:39   I'll let you know.

00:28:39   I'll let you know what I go with, but I think I will be buying one before the end of the

00:28:43   year.

00:28:44   So you're going full, big, 4K, HDR, Smart TV?

00:28:48   We've got a 42-inch TV right now and we have way more space than...

00:28:53   As soon as we bought it, we was like, "Oh, we could have gone bigger."

00:28:57   Fill it with TV.

00:28:58   Yeah.

00:28:59   Well, we have a very large TV cabinet, right?

00:29:02   So we could very easily go up to 50, 55 and it would be good.

00:29:06   So yeah, I think we're going to go with the LG one, but I haven't decided which one yet.

00:29:11   There's a couple of different ones in 2019 models.

00:29:14   I would like to know what people recommend, actually.

00:29:16   And also TV shopping is the worst thing in the world because the names are impossible.

00:29:21   Yes.

00:29:23   It's so difficult.

00:29:24   Anyway, this is not what we're here to talk about.

00:29:26   Now, nobody wants to talk about that.

00:29:27   Nobody wants to hear that.

00:29:29   16-inch MacBook Pro.

00:29:30   Let's talk about it some more.

00:29:31   So we have some follow-up and then I want some more from you because I know you have

00:29:35   more to say.

00:29:36   The first thing, of course, we need to talk about the keyboard.

00:29:39   The thing everyone was waiting for, iFixit ripped it apart.

00:29:42   iFixit have confirmed in their teardown that the scissor switches in the new keyboard seem

00:29:47   almost identical to those in the Magic Keyboard.

00:29:51   So much so, they are interchangeable between the products.

00:29:54   Like parts are interchangeable.

00:29:56   They've made some advancements, but effectively you can move the keys from one to the other.

00:30:01   The clips that attach to the keycaps, from the keycaps to the switches, also appear to

00:30:06   be reinforced now.

00:30:07   This makes them stronger, but also therefore easier to remove or repair.

00:30:11   So it's effectively the same keyboard with some slight modifications.

00:30:15   But if you still had concerns, right, that like, oh, maybe it's influenced by or close

00:30:21   to, no, it's basically the same keyboard mechanism, which is good news, I think.

00:30:26   Yeah, yeah.

00:30:29   I mean, we didn't know last week, like, inspired by the Magic Keyboard what that actually meant,

00:30:35   but it sounds like it's, you know, strongly influenced by the Magic Keyboard.

00:30:40   Which is what you want.

00:30:41   And you wrote an article over on Macworld, right, in your column on Macworld.

00:30:48   And there was something that you spoke about called the "Ive Doctrine" because I think

00:30:52   you called it Jobs' Law, right?

00:30:54   It's Jobs' Law, but, you know, it extended beyond Steve Jobs.

00:30:59   I think Steve Jobs and Johnny I've collaborated on it, honestly.

00:31:02   And then Johnny kept it going.

00:31:03   So effectively, this is Johnny's thing.

00:31:05   The idea of always thinner, always lighter, always removing.

00:31:09   Yeah, and my point there, and we talked about it a little bit, I think, on last week's

00:31:13   show, but there was so much going on there.

00:31:15   And I wanted to kind of get it down in writing.

00:31:18   It's the idea that, you know, this isn't like Apple has said, oh, we've completely

00:31:22   changed our approach.

00:31:23   It's just that I keep getting these little signals from Apple, from its behavior and

00:31:27   from things they say in their marketing and when they're talking to the press and all

00:31:31   of that, that they're changing their priorities just a little bit.

00:31:37   And it comes back to that same idea, which is that the implication has got a little out

00:31:42   of control, right?

00:31:43   Like that they ended up saying, well, we're going to solve for thinness and lightness,

00:31:47   and then we'll see what we can do about the rest of it.

00:31:50   And, you know, to paint the picture even more broadly, it's like we made it about design

00:31:56   more than we made it about what the customers want.

00:31:59   And I mentioned in the article, it's that old thing about how, if you ask people what

00:32:04   they want in the early 20th century, they'd say, I think I mentioned this last week, faster

00:32:08   horses.

00:32:08   And it's like, aha, but what they really wanted is a car.

00:32:10   It's like, yes, but that attitude can also go to being really bad because you are, it

00:32:20   gives you license to ignore your customers and what they want.

00:32:23   And it's not always a car that you have.

00:32:26   It's sometimes it's like some kind of ramshackle, you know, gadget that is worse than a horse,

00:32:34   right?

00:32:34   And you're like, wait, I know I want, I just want the horse because the horse is reliable.

00:32:37   I was like, aha, but I have not a car, but a soapbox racer that is pulled by a, you know,

00:32:44   a rabbit.

00:32:46   Like, no, that's not what I want.

00:32:49   Right.

00:32:49   But it's different, but it's not what I want.

00:32:52   And so that's the danger of doing the faster horses thing is that you can, I think it builds

00:32:58   up a dismissiveness of customer needs.

00:33:01   And while I don't think that Apple should ever be guided by focus groups in the sense

00:33:06   of please tell us what we should do next.

00:33:08   I do think that there is an important part of this, which is listening to customers.

00:33:12   And if you listen to like Phil Schiller's interview that he did, if you, any communication

00:33:18   from Apple over the last couple of years about this has kept on talking about their customers,

00:33:24   their pro customers, especially.

00:33:26   And I feel like that is again, one of those signals that they are, they realize they,

00:33:32   they went too far.

00:33:32   And, and as it was described to me last week, like the goal of the MacBook pro 16 was to

00:33:40   emphasize the power and the battery life and that the thinness and lightness would be what

00:33:47   they could be again.

00:33:49   They want them to be as thin and light as possible, but they would be what they could

00:33:52   be given the constraints of the needs of the customers.

00:33:55   And that is kind of a subtle difference in priority, but it's enormous because I think

00:34:04   it goes to the very specific problem Apple has had with some of its products the last

00:34:10   few years, which is, you know, saying that our design priority is more important than

00:34:17   your priority as a product user, which is just, which you know, you could argue maybe

00:34:21   as a consumer product, that that's the right emphasis maybe to a certain extent, but certainly

00:34:28   for professional tools, it's the wrong emphasis.

00:34:30   And just like every signal they keep sending, the fact that they talk about the research

00:34:35   they did on the keyboard, which to me very strongly implies that they didn't do, they

00:34:40   didn't make that effort for the butterfly keyboard, that it was much more of a, now this

00:34:44   may not be true, but the leaving it hanging there is the implication that the butterfly

00:34:48   keyboard was really just something that was put together with a very small group of people

00:34:53   and was sort of focused on the design or on the desires for it to be thin and that they

00:34:57   weren't really thinking seriously about how people used it.

00:35:01   And that's why they got in this mess.

00:35:02   Yeah, and it was also worth note, right, like there is a trend, right, they did the same

00:35:09   thing to the iPhone, right, like the iPhone got bigger and thicker and heavier.

00:35:13   Yes, right, there is, that is also the case, right, that the iPhone this year didn't get

00:35:20   thinner and lighter, and that was a choice they made because, and what we got out of it,

00:35:27   right, was the improved battery life across the board.

00:35:30   Yep.

00:35:31   And that's a, because here's the thing, I mean, you can see it if you're a product person

00:35:35   inside Apple and you say to the people, to the designers, let's say, who are like, always

00:35:43   thinner and lighter, that's our watch word, we're always shooting for thinner and lighter,

00:35:45   first thing we do when we think about a new product, thinner and lighter, and then you

00:35:49   raise your hand as a product person, you're like, our customers want more battery life,

00:35:52   period.

00:35:54   They want more battery life, it's the number one thing, we don't do a good enough job of

00:35:57   battery life, and you keep squeezing the battery out of the product.

00:36:00   It's got to stop.

00:36:02   And at some point, somebody at Apple somewhere who has authority said, you know, they're

00:36:09   right, you need to listen to them.

00:36:10   You can't, you can't make that your top priority.

00:36:14   It's still important, but if we're making our product worse because of the battery,

00:36:21   so it's like, look, it's worse, but it's lighter.

00:36:24   Like, it's not, that's not right, you gotta, you gotta stop that.

00:36:28   So again, sort of a subtle thing, but I think it speaks to the idea that perhaps there were,

00:36:34   and the easy narrative is there are designers out of control or something like that.

00:36:38   I think it might even be more complicated than that, having worked in a large organization,

00:36:41   not nearly as large as Apple, I will tell you that even in an organization our small,

00:36:45   like you get corporate culture, and you probably experienced at the bank, there become things

00:36:50   that are like truisms, they're like, they're just, this is how it is, this is what we do,

00:36:56   and I experienced this firsthand, literally if the person in charge of the whole thing

00:37:02   says, don't do it that way anymore, we don't do it that way anymore, that's no longer the rule,

00:37:07   everybody nods and agrees and goes back to their desks and then continues to follow that rule,

00:37:12   because it's just completely baked into the culture.

00:37:16   And so if I had to guess, my guess is that the Jobs' Law, Ive's Law, from a period,

00:37:22   or Ive doctrine, from a period where it was super important for Apple to strive to be as thin and

00:37:27   light as possible, because there was a period where that was absolutely the case, that it got

00:37:32   baked in to the point where they're still doing it and they're hurting their products because of it,

00:37:38   and that somebody has to really shake it up and say, no, no, no, you've taken this too far,

00:37:43   we need to do this differently. And if I had to guess, it's something that's probably more

00:37:47   like that, which is not as dramatic a story, but still shows that somebody in a position of

00:37:54   authority kind of has shifted the priority list a little bit, and I think the customers will benefit.

00:38:00   You know, talking about that, Jonathan Morrison, who has a TOD today on YouTube, he had two

00:38:07   interviews, exclusive interviews, I think, on video at least with Phil Schiller.

00:38:10   We'll talk about the main one in a minute, but he published a second one,

00:38:15   which was like just a clip of talking very briefly about the 14-inch MacBook Pro.

00:38:20   It wasn't included in the main video because obviously Schiller didn't answer that question.

00:38:24   Morrison asked, he didn't answer the question, he cut it out of the main video, but Schiller

00:38:29   took this and kind of spun it into a different narrative about Apple not caring about pro

00:38:36   customers. And in that, he reiterated that they made design decisions internally to focus on

00:38:44   making all of their pro products, right? This was the round table, right? So like they had

00:38:48   the round table and they decided that they were going to make all of their pro products,

00:38:52   even though they had started to just focus on notebooks only and leaving the desktops away,

00:38:56   they were like, no, we're going to do all of this and we're going to do it all at the same time.

00:38:59   And I thought that that was interesting because it kind of felt like he was almost referring to

00:39:10   debates being had inside of Apple, right? And I think it's like a similar kind of thing. It's like

00:39:16   there were debates about thinness and lightness and then they moved to the pro idea and then the

00:39:22   pro idea said, you know what? Those things are in conflict, right? And I mean, I've said it in this

00:39:30   interview, he talks about like, you know, people on podcasts and stuff like that. Yeah. I think

00:39:36   that was a shout out to that in a minute, you know, but I think, I think the truth is that,

00:39:42   they're connected in the sense that I don't, I don't generally believe that somebody in a

00:39:47   position of authority at Apple hears somebody complain on a podcast or read somebody

00:39:51   complaining on the internet about a product and goes, you know, I've been convinced that I did

00:39:56   it all wrong. I think more likely what happens is the person who's been arguing that point

00:40:02   uses that as fuel, right? And says, see, see, they agree with me in the internal debate that's going

00:40:09   on. Yeah. So like there was a couple of things that Phil said. He said like, the more you appreciate

00:40:16   these products, the more we want to do. And then said the best input is positive. The best criticism

00:40:20   is constructive. And I kind of was like, yeah, okay, but I have a counterpoint. It kind of

00:40:29   felt like what he was saying was give us a break. Like it takes us time to work on stuff. Yeah. But

00:40:34   if you want us to give us a break, you have to be more open at the same time. So like people let off

00:40:42   about the Mac Pro when we found out there was one coming, right? Exactly. You could have told us

00:40:48   that you were working on changes to the MacBook Pro keyboard, but you didn't. That's right. So if

00:40:53   you then can continue to release more and more laptops with the same keyboard and if people don't

00:40:59   like it, they're going to keep criticizing it. Right. And so like, I, and I get, I get from a

00:41:05   human standpoint, the idea that you do a keyboard, everybody screams bloody murder. It doesn't work

00:41:11   right. Um, people don't like it and it's unreliable. And you immediately inside have a meeting. Let's

00:41:16   say this happened. I don't know if it happened, but let's say it happened where they're like,

00:41:20   Oh boy, we blew it with this keyboard. We're going to do two tracks here. We're going to design a new

00:41:25   keyboard that is that people like, and we need to fix this thing in the meantime, as quickly as

00:41:30   possible to make it more reliable. Um, and then you spend the next three years having people beat

00:41:36   you up over the keyboard and there's nothing worse, right? Then you've already recognized

00:41:41   the problem. Yeah. You've already recognized the problem. You've already started to take steps to

00:41:45   fix it. And then people are beating you up saying, why, you know, why won't you listen to us that

00:41:50   this is a problem? And, and why would that be so painful? Because Apple has a policy that they

00:41:55   will not discuss anything that they're doing before they release the product with the very,

00:41:59   very limited, uh, exception of the Mac pro where they did that thing. Um, two and a half years ago,

00:42:06   still hasn't shipped by the way I did the math there. It's like, it's like 30 months between

00:42:11   them saying that they were going to do it and them actually shipping. It's amazing. Uh, more than two

00:42:16   years. So, uh, so yeah, like I get Phil Schiller saying, you know, these things take time. Um,

00:42:22   but if, but, but if we don't know that you're changing, I mean, is the, is the alternative

00:42:31   to say, well, you don't like the keyboard, just say nothing and sit around and hope that within

00:42:35   five years, the keyboard changes like that. No, because we don't actually know whether Apple has

00:42:41   heard our criticism of them. And in fact, you could argue that keeping up the criticism is the

00:42:48   thing that keeps the pro the, the, um, the change prioritized, right? Like if there wasn't another

00:42:54   round of laptops where Apple got beat up about the keyboards even more and another round of articles

00:42:58   saying, don't buy this laptop, um, would, if those didn't exist, would the forces inside Apple who

00:43:05   thought that the keyboard was fine, regain the upper hand and say, look, why are we doing this?

00:43:10   Like there's an argument to be made that until you actually commit to this thing and maybe until you

00:43:15   ship it, that you got to keep the pressure on. So while I understand the human cost of being like,

00:43:19   and, and that, and Phil Schiller is totally right. Like people on the outside don't know actually how

00:43:25   Apple works. There's a lot. I see it. You see it. There's a lot of like assumptions about things

00:43:29   that are going on inside Apple that are, that I look at. And I think that is almost certainly not

00:43:33   how this is going down inside Apple. Right. But people have, they like to believe in a

00:43:37   conspiracy theory or they like to believe whatever they want to believe. But while I get all of that,

00:43:44   the solution is change how you communicate to the outside world. And I get why you don't want

00:43:49   to do that. I get why you don't want to say, Oh, um, we're still selling these laptops,

00:43:54   but the keyboards are really bad and we're going to be fixing them. Like I get that,

00:43:57   but there may be an artful way to do it. Maybe not, maybe you're too afraid of it,

00:44:02   but maybe there's an artful way to do it to say we've heard the complaints and they finally did

00:44:06   it with this product. But like we've heard the complaints and, um, we're confident they could

00:44:11   have said a year ago, we're, we've heard the complaints were confident that the new keyboard

00:44:15   design that we just released is far more, um, uh, robust and will, will continue to work,

00:44:22   which they did sort of say. And then you could, you could say, we also are aware that there are

00:44:27   a lot of people who don't like this particular style of keyboard. And we have, we have heard you

00:44:34   and we are working on the next generation of keyboard. Now I know that is like,

00:44:38   not what Apple is ever supposed to do. You could do it again. It's a rule.

00:44:44   That's part of the culture. You could change it. Yeah. Like I understand why they don't like,

00:44:51   I get it, but like, this is one of those things where like, I don't think you can have your cake

00:44:56   and eat it too. Yeah. Right. You can't say we want people to be positive, but we're also going

00:45:01   to keep secrets from you. Like it doesn't like the positivity changed around the pro market for

00:45:07   Apple when they were open. Yeah. I mean, there, there have been plenty of cases like the talk show

00:45:12   and places like that. There have been plenty of cases where Phil Schiller to a very narrow,

00:45:18   let's face it in influential, but narrow audience could have said, and again, breaking Apple's rules,

00:45:26   but for a purpose could have released a lot of stress on this issue by saying, look, we know that

00:45:33   we know that a lot of people don't like the keyboard. We're aware of it. Suffice it to say

00:45:38   that the next keyboard will be different. And I'm not going to say any more than that, but we hear

00:45:42   you. That's all that you would really have to say is we hear you and we are making changes, but I

00:45:48   have nothing to announce beyond that right now. That would be a big step for them. They could take

00:45:53   that step. And this is the thing that we get from Apple a lot, which is the, our hands are tied kind

00:45:59   of thing when their hands aren't tied. When they, they, you know, it's like, well, you know, we,

00:46:04   we just can't say anything about future products. Sorry. I wish we could, but we can't. The truth is

00:46:10   they can, they can change the rules. It's their, it's their rules. So, so I get, so I mean, what

00:46:17   I'm saying, not to, I don't want to beat up on, on Phil Schiller here because like I get the other

00:46:20   part of it, I get how frustrating it can be and how some of the stuff that gets thrown at them

00:46:26   is not based in reality. It's just based in frustration or an imaginary view of how Apple

00:46:32   works when it actually doesn't work that way at all. But there is another aspect of it,

00:46:37   which is just like, you know, don't be so mean. Why do you keep harping on this stuff? It takes

00:46:42   us time. And some of that could be solved by Apple changing its own behavior and, and disclosing more

00:46:48   to its customers about what it's planning on doing. And, you know, perhaps without disclosing

00:46:54   everything, but just enough to say, we hear you, your, your, you know, your criticisms are

00:46:59   understood and we're working on addressing them in the future. And in the meantime, buy our laptops.

00:47:06   And if they're terrified that nobody's going to buy their laptops, because there was a very narrow

00:47:11   signal that there would be new keyboards, uh, eventually then, you know, I guess you get what

00:47:17   you get. The question on that is, because I mean, I don't know, but if you have everybody talking

00:47:25   about the laptop keyboards being useless, right. Or that they will break all the time by the same

00:47:32   outlets who would report on there being a change in the keyboard, which one gets you more or less

00:47:39   customers? Exactly. And I would say over time, disclosure will get you more sales because here's

00:47:46   the truth of it. If Apple had been more open about this, uh, it would not have to do like,

00:47:53   Apple is going to have issues of people asking, do I trust Apple's keyboard for years now? Yeah.

00:47:58   For years now on laptops, Apple laptops are going to be, um, and I'm not saying it's fair. I'm just

00:48:03   saying it's going to happen. Consumer reports is going to write a snide piece about Apple laptops

00:48:08   that all have the butterfly mechanism or all have the new mechanism, the magic keyboard. And they're

00:48:12   going to be like, well, we really don't know anything about Apple keyboard reliability because

00:48:16   their last keyboard was so unreliable. And that's like, it's gonna, it's gonna be there and they're

00:48:21   going to have to deal with it. And they're gonna have to deal with the, just the buzz in the

00:48:24   background of like, I heard that Apple, Apple's keyboards were bad. No, no, this is the good

00:48:29   keyboard. Oh, I don't know. I just, I heard they were bad. And you could have nipped that in the

00:48:33   bud. Maybe you would have paid for it in terms of some lost sales, but perhaps it would have been

00:48:38   better for you in the long run. I don't know. It's a hard, it's not easy. Like this is why

00:48:42   Phil Schiller gets paid the big money, but, um, it's, it's, it's a choice they could make

00:48:48   and they've chosen not to. And this is so complaining about the result of the choice they

00:48:52   made is I guess they're welcome to, they're welcome to try, but, uh, I don't buy it.

00:49:00   All right. We have more to say on the MacBook Pro, but let's take our second break. Thank Linode for

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00:50:45   their continued support of this show and Relay FM. So we didn't talk about this last week. It's a very

00:50:52   Myke and Jason topic, I think. So it's worth maybe talking about now. Okay. Another new laptop,

00:50:58   no touch screen. So maybe the MacBook Pro isn't the product to do this with anyway,

00:51:04   but it does feel more like Apple is putting their stake in the ground on this and they have Macs,

00:51:10   they have tablets. One is touch screen, one isn't. And that's that. And, uh, Phil Schiller,

00:51:17   we mentioned he did an interview with Morrison and the main video, they basically spoke about this a

00:51:22   little bit where Schiller was saying that like, we have these two products. We have the best post.

00:51:27   The Mac is like the best personal computer in its standard form. The iPad is the best tablet that

00:51:32   you can buy. And it was kind of like, we're going to run those two things the way that we think that

00:51:36   they should be. And in my mind, it's kind of just like, well, that means no touch screen. Do you

00:51:41   think it's time to give up on the idea of a touch screen MacBook? Uh, you know, I think I listening

00:51:49   to Phil Schiller talk about it and you know, there's always the Steve Jobs. We're never going

00:51:54   to do an iPod video, whatever. Nobody wants an iPod with video. Um, but I have a hard time listening

00:52:03   to what Phil Schiller said and not read it as being pretty clear that Apple views the Mac as

00:52:13   defined by traditional input methods. Like, and that they may, they may noodle around the,

00:52:21   the edges, right? There's a, there's the touch bar and there's the track pad, right? Those are

00:52:28   touch interfaces, but they're not up on the screen, up on the main screen. And, and the way he said

00:52:33   it, I mean, he defined it absolutely correctly. Like the idea that this is a traditional kind of

00:52:37   mouse trackpad keyboard interface. It it's two planes that are perpendicular to each other.

00:52:42   There's the one that has stuff on it. And then there's the surface where you're doing your

00:52:46   interface. And that is a very, very traditional computing thing. It's been like this since the

00:52:53   early nineties in terms of laptops. Um, and that Apple views the Mac line as the place where

00:53:02   you get that. And when he, when Jonathan Morrison asked him about like the iPad and, and all of that,

00:53:09   he said, you know, we do have a touch screen device and it's the iPad. And that's where that,

00:53:17   you know, that's, that's what that product is for. And, you know, again, he may be just saying all

00:53:23   the talking points that are there until the thing gets pulled off of the product that is not either

00:53:28   those things in there because what, what did you just do? But I don't know. It feels an awful lot

00:53:33   like this is pretty clear Apple policy rather than just being a, a head fake. And, and it's him

00:53:41   saying what, I mean, I gotta be honest, they have been very consistent on this point for a very long

00:53:47   time, which is the Mac is a traditional computing environment. And while they have tried things to

00:53:53   make it more interesting, um, they're, I think they believe rightly so that the Mac users are

00:54:01   traditional. And the last thing Mac users want is for you to introduce new weird stuff into their

00:54:06   computer, because the reason they like the Mac is because it's a computer, not because it's a

00:54:10   touchscreen tablet, convertible, whatever it's because it's a computer and they've been using

00:54:14   a computer for a long time, or they like the shape of the computer. And, you know, my kids,

00:54:19   my kids are both, both born this century and they both have laptops that they use as their primary

00:54:25   device, not iPads. So, although I love my iPad, um, you know, I, and I don't think I, I'm sure

00:54:33   that the age distribution varies widely, but still some people just want that shape and that

00:54:40   experience. And while I can make an argument that adding touch to the equation, in addition to the

00:54:45   traditional would be a nice combination. Um, I think Apple just feels like, um, if they want to

00:54:51   innovate and do weird stuff that's in this new paradigm, they're going to do it on the iPad side

00:54:56   and that the Mac really is there to be stable and reliable. And, you know, which is the irony of

00:55:00   doing that keyboard. I think maybe that's a little lesson to them of like, you, you even push the

00:55:05   keyboard too far. So you can push the touch bar too wide, narrow that touch bar too. It's like,

00:55:10   you went too far back off a little bit because if you, if you introduce too much change into the

00:55:15   Mac, uh, what you're going to get is people saying, well, why do I even have a Mac anymore? Like,

00:55:20   it's not, I use the Mac. I think they really believe people use the Mac because it is a

00:55:25   traditional computer. That is what it has going for it. If you break that, why would you even

00:55:31   do that? Like these people could use an iPad today if they wanted to, and maybe they do,

00:55:36   but when they use the Mac, they're using it because it's the Mac. So, uh, I just, I, I walk

00:55:41   away from this thinking that if there's going to be a weird laptop-y like thing with a touch screen

00:55:46   from Apple, again, it's going to be an iOS device. It's not going to be a Mac because the Mac, I, I

00:55:54   think they've just defined the Mac as what it is. And, and, and while they will make those changes

00:55:58   around the edges a little bit, like the touch bar, like in the end, they just don't believe

00:56:03   that the Mac should be more than what it is. I think that there's still a possibility for

00:56:12   something, right? That's like the form factor of a laptop. More hopeful than me, but okay.

00:56:17   I don't mean that there will be a touch screen on a Mac, right? As we know it now, but I think that

00:56:23   there is still enough change possible in the future for products in that form factor that

00:56:28   something might happen. Right? That like, I feel like the idea of an ARM laptop still is up in the

00:56:34   air as to what that might look like, especially as things like SwiftUI exist, right? And it's like,

00:56:40   as UI paradigms start to move. I think it's very difficult to put touch screen on the Mac, on

00:56:45   macOS, but it might not be so much again in the future. Cause we don't, we really don't know what

00:56:51   an ARM laptop could look like, right? Like what it will be like, what will it run? Right? Like

00:56:57   we, would it run macOS as we know it, or will it be something a little bit more hybrid? I don't

00:57:03   think we're going to see touch screens on Macs as we know them, but I don't rule out Apple releasing

00:57:09   something in that form factor that has a touch screen. I'm just starting to think that, I'm

00:57:13   starting to think that by far the most likely scenario, if you want to envision a touch-based

00:57:20   laptop-ish device that has more pro capabilities and, you know, better file management and command

00:57:28   line and who knows what else. I'm starting to think though that the better bet is that Apple

00:57:32   will continue to progress the pro features on iPadOS over time. I agree. Then it is that Apple

00:57:39   is going to take the Mac and continue to sort of like iOSify it. I think that was the point of

00:57:45   iPadOS, right? Like I think that's the point. Yeah. So I am in agreement with you on that. And

00:57:50   I wouldn't rule out Apple releasing something that was iPadOS in a laptop form factor. Like,

00:57:55   I still think there's a possibility of that. They totally could do that. If they think that

00:58:00   there is something to be gained there, whether it's against Chromebooks or whether, you know,

00:58:05   they may think that the smart keyboard is enough. You'll notice that the smart keyboard has come to

00:58:09   every iPad now, um, except the mini, like the smart keyboard is everywhere. So they know it's

00:58:15   important. They may think that's enough. Um, I think they could do more there because I think

00:58:20   that the soft keyboard is not always enough and that they could build something that's either a

00:58:24   laptop or convertible that runs iOS. The pieces are in place now to do a lot of this stuff.

00:58:29   Um, it's just a matter of, of philosophy and will and whether they think there's a market there.

00:58:35   We'll see. But yeah, I think the Mac OS is not going to get touch screens anytime soon. So I

00:58:41   want to ask you any more thoughts about the device? Like, have you tried using it on a plane,

00:58:46   for example? What's the size like in general? How is it holding up? Like,

00:58:50   so I had it in my bag on the plane and there's just no way like, yeah, there's no, maybe if you're in,

00:58:55   in, in business class or first class or something, but I was in coach and the guy in front of me was

00:59:00   reclined and it wasn't going to happen. Didn't even try. Um, my iPad was a tight fit as it was.

00:59:07   So yeah, it's, uh, what I said before, I think is, you know, when I view it as a mobile iMac pro,

00:59:15   I feel like it makes a lot of sense, but it's huge and it's not for me. Like I,

00:59:21   I always gravitated towards smaller laptops. I never was going to be the audience for this

00:59:28   in terms of size. I totally get why if you want a big screen and lots and lots of power,

00:59:32   it is fantastic. It's the perfect thing for you, but you know, I've gone a different direction

00:59:38   where I've got a powerful desktop and then I, at this point, um, when I'm not at my desk,

00:59:44   I'm basically not even on the Mac and that's just how it is for me. But when I do have a Mac laptop,

00:59:49   it's the 11 inch chair, not this enormous 16 inch laptop. So I, um, you know, I'm,

00:59:55   I'm not the audience for this product. It is every time I pick it up, it's huge. But I felt that

01:00:00   about all of the large Apple laptops over, over history as I pick it up and I think, Oh my God,

01:00:04   this thing is a lunch tray. It is enormous. So, um, you know, it is a pro Mac that you can carry

01:00:13   around with you. And it has a keyboard that is much better than the keyboard that it replaces

01:00:16   and a physical escape key and inverted T keys and et cetera, et cetera. It's a, it's a very

01:00:22   impressive, you know, portable with an asterisk, uh, pro Mac. I have one more thing that, that has

01:00:30   struck me because I don't own a touch bar Mac. Like we have laptops in our house, but they're

01:00:36   all Mac book airs and the touch bar. I don't hate the touch bar. Like some people hate the touch

01:00:42   bar, but I love the touch bar. And I think what bothers me the most about the touch bar is not

01:00:47   that it exists. It's that if you had asked me what I thought the touch bar would become when it was

01:00:58   introduced three years ago, I would have said, well, you know, what's going to happen is Apple's

01:01:05   going to iterate the software side of it. And it's going to be much more functional in three years.

01:01:09   And the fact is there are minor changes to the touch bar software, but it's not good enough. Like

01:01:15   that that's the bottom line here is that we could debate the touch bar as an input device, but let's

01:01:20   leave that aside for a moment. Whoever's in charge of the touch bar software in Mac OS.

01:01:25   Um, you know, again, I don't want to say, I don't want to characterize their situation,

01:01:31   but I will say either they're not getting the resources to, to take it where they want, or

01:01:37   they've done a bad job of executing because the touch bar should be integrated into the system

01:01:41   far more than it is now. You should be able to customize that touch bar in so many ways that are

01:01:46   not hoping that a particular app has an edit touch bar function. You should be able to do more system

01:01:52   wide stuff and customize it. And I know there are third party apps that basically hack the touch bar

01:01:56   to do that, but like the touch bar, if you're going to have it, it just should be a lot better

01:02:02   than it is. And that, that I think it's lost sometimes in the hold a bit about the keyboard

01:02:07   and about the escape key, but let's take a moment to ponder just like how well integrated is the

01:02:14   touch bar into the Mac experience. And if you're in a particular app that is super well integrated,

01:02:20   fair enough. But like system-wide, I feel like I have a bunch of stuff in my menu bar,

01:02:26   you know, that I'm using. I've got, I've got keyboard shortcuts. I keep thinking

01:02:30   I would really like more control over what goes in the touch bar. And the fact that the Mac by

01:02:35   default just doesn't provide anything really just sort of control strip and what's in a particular

01:02:40   app. And even there, I feel like it's backslid because you used to be able to see the quick

01:02:46   actions and now they're like hidden under a button. I just, that's the thing that struck me

01:02:52   having not used a touch bar in earnest in a little while is that it's not any different really. And

01:02:58   it's just disappointing that it, they introduced this thing three years ago. We've had two Mac OS

01:03:03   ups and updates in the meantime, and the touch bar is not appreciably better than it was.

01:03:08   - And not only like that there has been two updates to Mac OS, there's been like multiple

01:03:15   versions of this machine that has the touch bar. So like they could have updated either at any

01:03:22   point and they've updated it really at no points. - Well, I feel like ultimately what should happen

01:03:28   is that it's a Mac OS feature. It's a hardware thing, but it's a Mac OS feature and the Mac OS

01:03:33   should embrace it. And I get the like, well, oh, it's new and we don't really know. And so

01:03:39   for Mojave, we're gonna just kind of lean back and not worry about it too much. Okay.

01:03:47   Or for High Sierra maybe, but then there's Mojave and then there's Catalina. So it's really three,

01:03:53   right? It's like at some point you need to, if you're gonna ship this thing on your pro laptops,

01:03:59   you should probably embrace it and really do some good stuff to integrate it and have more

01:04:06   power user kind of control over the system on these pro laptops. Instead, it's just like, meh,

01:04:12   it's got a context per app view and it's got this little control strip that's not extensible and

01:04:18   that's it. It's like, I don't know. Anyway, that's the thing that struck me that surprised me because

01:04:24   I don't really spend a lot of brain power, a lot of cycles on the touch bar because it's not in

01:04:30   my life. And other than like when I brought up the, what's the name of it, the new feature in

01:04:37   Catalina that puts it on the external display. God, I can't even remember that now. Sidecar.

01:04:42   Then I was like, oh, look, it's the touch bar. Oh, I remember the touch bar. But with this laptop,

01:04:50   I have gotten to spend a little more time with the touch bar and it's just, it's just let me down.

01:04:54   It's like, oh, I wonder what it does now. Could I do this? Could I do? No, I can't do that. Can't

01:04:58   do that. Can't do that. I can go to logic and I can customize it there in logic. Great. I can do

01:05:05   some minor customization at the control strip. Great. Take Siri button off because I'll hit it

01:05:10   accidentally if I don't. That's about it. It's too bad. But overall though, the laptop's great.

01:05:17   Yeah. I mean, it is. Would you like to carry an iMac Pro with you wherever you go? Now you can.

01:05:22   Yeah. Cause that was something that I was seeing Marco, like he was posting a bunch of tweets about

01:05:28   this and stuff. Like it will do a lot of the most heavily intensive stuff, like build overcast or

01:05:34   whatever about as quickly as these iMac Pro would. That is wild. Right. Yeah. I mean, I hope there's

01:05:41   an iMac Pro update at some point when there are new Xeons to put in it, but yeah, that's right.

01:05:46   Right. I hope that they update the 13 inch. And he's got the 10 core. So he's got a faster iMac

01:05:52   Pro than I do. I really do hope that they update the 13 inch at some point. I would like that

01:05:58   machine in my life. It's only a matter of time. Only a matter of time. Yeah, for sure. So you

01:06:02   wanted to give some follow out actually to moving on to a different topic, which is Apple's AR

01:06:07   glasses. Cause we spoke about this last week on connected. Um, I will give a summary about

01:06:13   what it is we're talking about and what we touched on because you told me you wanted to expand on it

01:06:17   a little more. So in summary, according to the information, which is a website with a funny name,

01:06:22   when you say out loud, Apple held a meeting for over a thousand employees that laid out their

01:06:27   plans for AR and VR over the next few years. Uh, they discussed a roadmap, a product roadmap that

01:06:34   stated they would have a mixed reality device. Think something like HoloLens in 2022, that would

01:06:39   be used for stuff like games and virtual meetings and video at home, right? It would be a home

01:06:43   device. Then they would have in 2023 AR glasses that you'd be wearing on your face out in the

01:06:49   walk in the streets, walking the streets, like you would have, you know, like probably an accessory

01:06:53   to the iPhone. Like the Apple watch is an accessory to the iPhone right now. And as we were talking

01:06:58   about this, me and Federico and Steven touched on the, the uncomfortable idea of having a device

01:07:04   strapped to our faces that we cannot get away from that has all of our apps on it and stuff like that

01:07:09   and information coming in and it's in front of our eyes the whole time. And this was particularly

01:07:13   troubling to us considering that there is a quote from the information that says that Apple

01:07:18   apparently believe that these glasses, this product could replace the iPhone within a decade.

01:07:23   So that's kind of the outline of it. Yeah. And I think, I mean, you guys expressed some skepticism,

01:07:30   which I think is good. You then questioned yourselves and said, are we becoming old men

01:07:35   who are like, nah, there's never these kids with their glasses. It's like, and that I think that is

01:07:41   a good, we don't know the answer, right? We don't know if, if, if you are, and I, I'm somebody who

01:07:46   was always fighting that impulse. Like never the moment that you express disinterest in something

01:07:53   because it's new, you're in real trouble. Like you're, you're at that point, you are, yes,

01:07:57   you're just an unreceptive old person who is going to kind of fade into irrelevance. It's not,

01:08:01   it's bad for people in our business, but I think it's always worth that question, right? Like,

01:08:05   am I resistant to this because it's new or because it's dumb? Like it's a healthy question to ask

01:08:10   yourself. I think you guys had a good conversation about how we're currently in a position where

01:08:17   we're all debating sort of like do our phones and does the ability to have all this information in

01:08:21   front of us is, does it have deleterious effects on our personal relationships and our relationship

01:08:26   with society? Like there's a lot of good questions there. And then if we're having that now with

01:08:31   phones, what happens when you're just wearing glasses? And, and as Federico said, right now I

01:08:38   can just not look at my phone and not look at Twitter, but if Twitter is in my eyes, what do

01:08:43   I do? Do I just close my eyes? And I thought that was great. Like literally, yes, just close your

01:08:48   eyes and say, I'm taking a little break from Twitter right now by not looking at anything.

01:08:54   And the idea that the rumored feature here of like, if you're, if you're pulling up AR information

01:08:58   while you're talking to somebody, your glasses dim, which reminded me of something outside of,

01:09:02   or from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the, there were glasses in the Hitchhiker's Guide to

01:09:06   the Galaxy that if anything threatening was in your vision, it would just darken so that you

01:09:11   couldn't see the threatening thing anymore. Great, a great feature. But the thing, the thing that,

01:09:16   that I stumbled on in that, in that segment, which is a really great segment. And I recommend that

01:09:21   I listened to it while I was raking leaves. You can do that or something else. It's whatever you

01:09:25   want. Is the moment where you guys talked about something that also came up on ATP,

01:09:30   which is this idea of why does every company have to do everything? And like, why does Apple

01:09:34   want to do this? Maybe Apple could just not do this. And I get it. And yet at the same time,

01:09:42   I think this is the way you have to follow this, which is if it's possible that AR

01:09:50   glasses replace, not just necessarily the phone, but like replace all other devices, because

01:09:58   one application for AR in a perfect world is, you know, any screen in your life can be an augmented

01:10:06   reality screen in the, in the future, on an infinite timescale, right? Like I'm sitting

01:10:11   in front of this iMac Pro 27 inch display right now. But if I was wearing AR glasses and they

01:10:16   had a virtual 27 inch display, you know, it's just replaced my computer, or at least my computer's

01:10:23   display. So like the, if you're thinking long-term, the threat, if you're a dominant player in

01:10:29   computers and phones, is that these things are going to be the replacement for that. And that

01:10:34   if you're not there, then you're going to have either be way behind or you're going to completely

01:10:40   miss the window to be in this area. I think that's one of the motivators for Microsoft,

01:10:44   because they missed phones. It's the same for Facebook as to why they bought Oculus,

01:10:48   because they missed mobile. Right. And, and for Google as well, and for Apple. And so the way I

01:10:55   would phrase, from an Apple perspective, the way I would phrase like, why would Apple do this?

01:11:00   I think the answer is really, because what if this is big and it's just Google and Facebook?

01:11:10   I think that's the, I mean, the ultimate answer is not necessarily that Apple looks at the computing

01:11:16   environment of 2030 and says, cause keep, keep in mind, we're not, you know, we're, we're what,

01:11:23   12 years out from the iPhone now. So we don't even need to say 2040, but like,

01:11:30   what, what is the computing environment of 2030 or 2032? And if this is the thing in 2030,

01:11:40   do we want it to just be our competitors or do we want it to be us? I don't think it's necessarily

01:11:45   an endorsement of it. And I know this is a, this is a funny thing where, you know,

01:11:49   if you're a company that believes that this product category is going to make the world worse,

01:11:54   but it's also going to cannibalize your existing product category. What are you going to do? As a

01:12:00   core, as a corporation, what are you going to do? Are you going to say, man, we're going to sit this

01:12:03   one out and just, uh, like counter money and, uh, serve an older population that rejects it and

01:12:08   fade away from irrelevance. And the answer is that won't actually happen. What will happen is you'll

01:12:13   all get fired and replaced with people who will do it. Um, or, or you just kind of embrace it now.

01:12:18   I, and I think if you're Apple, maybe you think knowing what we know and knowing what we know

01:12:24   about Facebook and maybe even Google, if we're a participant in this, and if we're leading this,

01:12:31   it gives us influence over what these products are like potentially. And so it gives us the ability

01:12:40   and our values to kind of steer this a little bit and say, here's how, like the thing about the

01:12:46   glasses dimming, right? It's a weird, dumb example, but I think what it says is Apple is trying to

01:12:53   think of the social impact of devices like these and, and unlike something like Google Glass, right?

01:13:00   Which ran into these issues and was a, a teachable moment. Um, think through all these issues and try

01:13:07   to find ways to build the product with those issues in mind to make them less corrosive to human

01:13:15   interaction. But it's a hard, it's a hard problem because they can't say we'll sit this one out

01:13:20   because what if this is the next big thing that what if this is literally we've said in our

01:13:25   lifetimes, like the iPhone is the biggest product ever, but like, what if this is the next iPhone?

01:13:29   Finally, the Apple watch was not the next iPhone, but what if this, these things that you wear on

01:13:33   your head and you don't even need to carry any other device ever, and it's your entertainment

01:13:39   system and it's your communication system and it's your work system and whatever else. If that's the

01:13:43   thing, can you as a tech company not play in that field? You have to. So I just think it's a

01:13:52   difficult, it's a difficult thing because if you're Apple, you're looking at a not only saying our

01:13:56   future may rely on this thing, it may not, it may not be anything, but you're also saying, do I want

01:14:04   a world? If we sit it out, then it's a world that's dominated by who? Facebook and Google? Like,

01:14:10   that's not a better world.

01:14:12   It's difficult, right? Because I agree with all of the stuff that you're saying there, but I think

01:14:18   like my wider thing that I'm thinking about is I just don't, I just, I'm just not sure that I'm

01:14:26   sure that this is something we should be doing anyway. I'm not sure. And that's the awkward part.

01:14:33   I think that is very perceptive because I think, and I think asking those questions is important

01:14:40   and I would, again, this is why I think having people who are working, even though they're

01:14:47   working for companies that are motivated by the future of their profits, I do think that there

01:14:54   are different values in different companies and Apple has shown the last few years that they're at

01:14:59   least concerned about the impact of technology on human relationships and interactions and that with

01:15:05   things like screen time, they are, they are trying to exert at least a little bit of control on this.

01:15:12   And again, I think you could, you could say, yeah, but they still want you to buy a phone. They just,

01:15:18   you know, you can use a list, but they still want you to buy it. It's totally true. But, you know,

01:15:23   I, I would like some companies involved in this, like, I mean, heaven help us if the future of

01:15:29   human interaction with technology is defined by Facebook, right? Like I don't want to live in that

01:15:35   world. So if Apple is, is Google better than that? I think they are a little bit. Is Apple better than

01:15:41   that? I think they are. They may not be saints, but I think they're better. I think I would rather

01:15:46   have a company that is, we talked about Apple's priorities earlier today. I would rather have a

01:15:52   company that, that at least struggles with putting the customer first and worrying about the customer

01:15:59   experience for a product that is going to completely potentially like take over our senses

01:16:05   and how we interact with the whole world, large and small. I would like a company that cares more

01:16:12   about that stuff playing in that, in that thing. I would say Microsoft too actually cares about that

01:16:16   to a certain degree and that's good. But, you know, that, that I feel like these, if this takes

01:16:24   off, it will, it will be because it was inevitably the right thing to do. It may just crash and burn

01:16:29   and people may reject it and it may be another 50 years before they try it again. But I feel like

01:16:34   I want Apple to be involved even if the result is a product category that I'm a little squeamish

01:16:39   about right now. -Should we do some Ask Upgrade? -Yeah, it's a good idea. -All right. Today's Ask

01:16:44   Upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at FreshBooks. FreshBooks can help you save time when

01:16:49   it comes to invoicing, expense tracking, getting paid online. If you ever send invoices to anybody

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01:18:16   And if they ask, how did you hear about us? Say on the Upgrade Podcast. Thanks to FreshBooks for

01:18:21   their support of this show and Relay FM. So our first hashtag #AskUpgradeQuestion this week

01:18:27   comes from Nate and Nate says, I'm new to podcasting, but I'm recording solely at the moment

01:18:32   from even my 10.5 inch iPad Pro or in some cases, my iPhone 11. Other than using AirPods as a

01:18:37   microphone, what is a better solution for me? First off, I think maybe the iPhone microphones,

01:18:43   I haven't tested this, but I think maybe the iPhone microphones might be better than your

01:18:46   AirPods. I would expect it probably is. The iPhone microphone is really good. Like built-in microphone,

01:18:51   like literally open voice memos and press record and talk into your iPhone. I've got better on the

01:18:57   11 as well. Like they did work to make the microphones even better as well. So that may be

01:19:02   like, I've done that. I've recorded things in a pinch. I'd record an ad when I was in Hawaii

01:19:07   and I just did it on my iPhone and it sounded really good. So beyond that, I'd recommend the

01:19:17   Audio Technica, the ATR 2100 USB, which is sort of my go-to mic that I recommend to people. It's not

01:19:23   that it doesn't have its issues, but it is relatively cheap in the US right now on Amazon.

01:19:29   I am seeing it for $62.30, right? So it's not too expensive. It will work as an analog mic using an

01:19:37   XLR cable, but it also just has a USB and you can plug it in. So you could get a USB cable and,

01:19:43   or it comes with a USB cable and then you get a USB lightning adapter for use if you are also

01:19:48   occasionally using it with your iPhone. Was that the microphone you used last week? That is the

01:19:52   microphone I used last week. It's got a headphone jack on it so you can hear the other person and

01:19:56   you can hear your own voice a little bit. And it's a good price. Like again, it's not the best

01:20:02   microphone in existence, but for the price and for what it does, it's pretty good. So, and I recommend

01:20:11   that. Give it a shot. Your 10.5 iPad Pro means what? Is that, that's, it's an iPad Pro, so it's

01:20:21   USB-C. So yeah, you can get a couple of cables if you need to. Right? Is that a USB-C or is that a

01:20:27   lightning? No, the 10.5 inch is lightning. That's lightning. Okay. Well, so yeah, what you want is a

01:20:30   USB lightning adapter to use with it. Which you can get, I don't think that's too expensive. I

01:20:37   don't know. I think you can probably pick one up. No, Apple sells that. And I would recommend you

01:20:41   get the one that's got the additional power because for some USB devices, I'm not sure if the

01:20:45   ATR needs it, but you use the lightning plug on the adapter to give it extra power and then that

01:20:51   powers the devices. But the ATR may not need it. It is a good theoretical or hypothetical from Mark.

01:20:58   What job title is missing from Apple's leadership organizational chart? In other words,

01:21:04   what position should they create to fix one or some of Apple's recent problems?

01:21:09   So like on the executives page on apple.com? Yeah. I was thinking maybe just like ahead of

01:21:16   like user experience, i.e. somebody to oversee everything to try and stop bugs. Right? So you

01:21:24   don't have somebody in charge of software. You can still have that, but then somebody who is in

01:21:29   charge of like, how old does this work? Like quality assurance, you know, like, what is it

01:21:34   called? What is it called in software? There is a QA, I think it is QA. Quality assurance. Yeah,

01:21:40   that's what it is. Quality assurance. That's what they should have. So that would be like,

01:21:47   yeah, vice president of bugs, vice president of user experience. I would say user experience

01:21:52   as the name for it because that sounds better than like vice president of solving the buggy stuff.

01:21:58   Yeah. Okay. We could have a double secret vice president of keyboards. Maybe we already do.

01:22:05   You know, one of the VPs is out there and like Deidre O'Brien, she's like, I hate this keyboard,

01:22:11   fix it. You know? And then the double secret VP of keyboards appears.

01:22:14   You know, that person was in your office the whole time. The whole time. Didn't even know.

01:22:19   And you know why? Because they don't have very much travel so you can't spot them.

01:22:23   I kept thinking of like an official like head of product, but my understanding is that this is

01:22:32   kind of, this is actually what COO Jeff Williams is kind of, is owner of product like at a high

01:22:39   level. Cause I feel like that's the thing that we always have talked about is like there's software

01:22:43   and there's hardware, but who is the person who says this is the product, right? I mean,

01:22:51   failing a complete sort of division based system where there's a Mac, head of Mac and head of

01:22:56   iPhone and head of iPad, which I know they do have some people who are, who fit those roles,

01:23:00   but like at a high level, maybe saying that, you know, it's not hardware and software. Those people

01:23:05   are on there too, but like officially had a product. But again, I think maybe the COO is

01:23:09   that. The only other thought I had was separating internet services from entertainment. That if,

01:23:16   as you're expanding your TV and music deals, especially TV and film, but also music,

01:23:21   that maybe what you want to do is, is have somebody who is essentially the head of your studio.

01:23:29   And that may be how this ends up getting put out is that they do build their own studio. They'll

01:23:32   have a studio head and that won't be the same as the head of Apple TV plus, but it will be a studio

01:23:38   head. But I just, it was another thought I had is maybe you take internet services where it's a

01:23:45   job that's more about things like iCloud and stuff like that. Maybe even financial services in there

01:23:51   and separate that from the person who's a Hollywood executive who's that's their job is a

01:23:56   entertainment industry executive. Um, sorry to Eddie Q, but like Eddie Q has inherited a lot of

01:24:03   this stuff, but does that really make the most sense or should there be an entertainment industry

01:24:06   person on Apple's page? I should have said this earlier in the variety, uh, article about Pueblo

01:24:13   said that apparently one of the reasons he was considering Apple was that him and Eddie Q

01:24:16   were friends. Oh boy. Actually, that was funny. Like Eddie, you did it. You did it boy. You did

01:24:21   it. You finally did it. Good work Eddie. So apparently they became friends during the HBO

01:24:27   deal that Apple did. Look, I mean, Eddie Q maybe would be that person because he's such a schmoozer

01:24:34   now. In which case, in which case, what if we put somebody else in charge of iCloud and all other

01:24:42   web based services that Apple is offering and say that's also important. Because there is apparently

01:24:49   right, like Eddie is good at deals, right? Like he apparently he is good at doing deals, right?

01:24:55   I E he's a good schmoozer, right? So that is probably more needed, definitely more needed in

01:25:01   the entertainment arm of Apple services division. The head of iCloud could be somebody else at this

01:25:06   point. Probably is honestly, but at least it's not listed on the page. Probably so. Anyway,

01:25:11   good question. Mark Rick asks in the era of Catalina and Apple music, how do I get music

01:25:17   that I've purchased from other places like band camp onto my Mac and iPhone? This is not

01:25:22   a problem. So if you have Apple music, then that means you have iTunes match built in,

01:25:29   which means what you do is you take your MP3s from band camp and you add them on the Mac to the music

01:25:35   app and they will sync. That's it. They will sync using iTunes match and they'll be part of your

01:25:42   music library. You don't use Apple music. You would be sinking directly from the finder to your iPhone

01:25:48   and you would add them to your music library and set in the finder. You'd set music sync that way,

01:25:55   but you can still do that in the era of Catalina and Apple music. And I think people don't know,

01:26:00   or a lot of people don't know iTunes match, which was a separate product is a feature in Apple music.

01:26:06   You can literally upload and you know, anything that's in your music library, if it doesn't match

01:26:12   and get automatically added, it will upload it and keep it on Apple servers and go to all of your

01:26:18   devices. And I have lots of stuff that is not on Apple's catalog that I have and it's all in there.

01:26:25   - And Chris asked finally today, "Jason, as you use the MacBook Pro during your review period

01:26:32   right now, what thoughts do you have in regards to your switch to the iPad versus this laptop?"

01:26:38   - I mean, I said this earlier, but I have no regrets about it. Like this new laptop,

01:26:46   I would never under any circumstances have bought. I'd have to decide.

01:26:49   - I thought this, this was not your thing anyway, right? Like it's too big, it's too heavy.

01:26:53   - It's too big. It's too big. It's not for me. I would have to be in a situation where I didn't

01:26:58   have another computer and was doing this for all of my, you know, audio work and all of that. But...

01:27:05   - You were using it as like a multipurpose, like home and on the road machine, right? Which is,

01:27:11   makes sense for a lot of people. - Even then, I generally

01:27:14   gravitated toward the smaller laptop. - Yeah, 'cause I guess as long as it had

01:27:18   a good power, right? Like as long as you could soup it up enough, you could still use it in both

01:27:23   circumstances and you'd still benefit from more portability on the road, right? If it was the 13.

01:27:29   - Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. When I managed to, I had a, for a long time,

01:27:34   I just had the top of the line 11 air. So it was like an i7. And again, not super fast, but

01:27:41   faster than you'd think and very small. And so, I mean, my point there is that if I can survive on

01:27:46   an 11-inch screen, I don't need the 15-inch, 16-inch in this case screen. I could get by with

01:27:54   a smaller one as long as it had the power that I needed. But as it is, I mean, I don't use laptops

01:28:03   for mobile and I do still occasionally travel with my 11-inch air for very particular technical

01:28:09   reasons, but that's about it is if I need something that I just have decided is safer if I do it on a

01:28:14   Mac, usually it's podcast related. It's usually this podcast, in fact. So yeah, I don't, I think

01:28:22   it's a great laptop, but like my life now is big Mac desktop and iPad and I'm just fine with that.

01:28:29   - You like big Macs sometimes. - Well, as long as I don't have to carry them,

01:28:34   that's the thing is that my iMac can be as big as it needs to be. Because I don't carry it around

01:28:39   with me. It just sits on the end of the little arm and hangs in the air and I don't do, you know,

01:28:46   I don't carry it. Whereas with a laptop, I was trained more than a decade of walking to and from

01:28:52   the bus stop on this end and in the city every single day with a laptop in my bag, I was very

01:28:59   much interested in having that laptop be as small and light as possible. - It makes me feel like

01:29:04   a fuddy duddy, like an old fuddy duddy. But when I talk about this, but that 11-inch MacBook Air,

01:29:11   what an incredible machine that thing was. - Yeah. - I have one, used it as my only computer for years,

01:29:20   years, loved it. It was absolutely fantastic machine. Such a, just like good in every single

01:29:26   possible way. And what one of the things that made it so good is the machine that it replaced,

01:29:31   right? Like the 11 and 13 replaced the original Air, which basically sucked. And then the 11

01:29:38   got better every time they updated it, just got so much better than the previous version for years,

01:29:44   right? Like, just like a fantastic machine. - Well, the 12-inch MacBook Air today is not that much

01:29:50   bigger than the 11-inch Air, or I mean, sorry, the 13-inch MacBook Air of today is not much bigger

01:29:55   than the 11-inch Air because they brought in the bezels and all that. It's actually a little deeper,

01:29:58   but it's not very much wider at all. And so let's see if they fix the keyboard. - That's the machine

01:30:05   I want, right? You know, I was saying earlier, like, oh, I would love a 14-inch MacBook Pro.

01:30:11   I would, but what I would like most to replace my current MacBook Pro, my 13-inch MacBook Pro,

01:30:17   is a 13-inch MacBook Air with the butterfly keyboard, because it has the power that I need

01:30:22   and it would have the keyboard that I want. But what's most important for me is portability,

01:30:27   because when they do update the 13-inch, if they do go to 14 inches, it will be bigger and it will

01:30:34   be heavier than the MacBook Air. And I don't want that. What I want is portability and enough power,

01:30:40   you know? So what I really want is an updated MacBook Air with a new keyboard. That's what I

01:30:45   would like personally for my limited use of a laptop, which is a few trips a year where I'm

01:30:51   recording. But the thing is, the times that I'm recording tend to be some of the most important

01:30:57   shows that I will do in a year. So I need to have a laptop which is powerful that I can rely on,

01:31:02   you know? It's like the WWDC shows, like the WWDC episode of Upgrade, which is like one of the most

01:31:08   important episodes we do every year, is recorded on whatever laptop I have and then edited on the

01:31:12   same laptop. So I need some power and performance, but I also don't want it to be big and heavy. Like

01:31:18   the MacBook Pro is big and heavy for me for what I would prefer, as thin and light as possible. So

01:31:24   I hope that they do update that MacBook Air with the new keyboard at some point. That'd be nice.

01:31:30   All right, that's it for this week's episode. If you'd like to send in a question for us to

01:31:35   talk about at the end of the show, #AskUpgrade, we'll do that. Just tweet with that hashtag and

01:31:40   it could be included in a future episode. Thank you to everybody that does this.

01:31:43   It's really, really appreciated from us. I have a good backlog of questions right now,

01:31:48   but I always want more, so please send them in. Don't forget, we'll be watching Die Hard next week

01:31:54   and talking about it after Ask Upgrade at the end of the show in the Myke at the Movies segment,

01:31:59   so make sure you follow along and watch that over the next week. Thanks to Freshbooks, Linode,

01:32:04   and Pingdom for their support of this show. If you want to find Jason's work online, go to

01:32:08   SixColors.com and he is @JSNEL on Twitter, JSNEL. Jason hosts many shows here on Relay FM and on the

01:32:17   Incomparable as well. If you want to get more Jason in your ears, that is the way to do that.

01:32:21   I'm Myke, I am Y-K-E, and you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, places like that with that

01:32:27   handle. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. Don't forget,

01:32:31   upgradeyourwardrobe.com to buy some wonderful Dongletown merch, some Upgrade podcast merch

01:32:37   until December 4th. We'll be reminding you a couple of more times, so you don't forget to buy

01:32:43   that. I'll take the Casey List roll right now, you know, like don't forget. Don't forget, that's what

01:32:48   Casey says, and Casey's right, don't forget, if you want to buy the merch, go buy it now. We've got

01:32:52   a good snappy URL for you, upgradeyourwardrobe.com. You can't forget that one because you want to

01:32:58   upgrade your wardrobe. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Justin Snow. Goodbye, Myke Early.