00:00:17 ◼ ► Bombus, and TextExpander from Smile. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined, as always,
00:00:27 ◼ ► Hello, Myke Hurley. It's good to be here for the Summer of Fun. It's July. Can you feel
00:00:31 ◼ ► it? It's July. I can feel it. Jason, we promised on our last episode some super special guests
00:00:44 ◼ ► about today. First off, these are both Relay FM hosts who I have multi-decades of history
00:01:01 ◼ ► Hello. It's nice that you invited the old people here on the show. I'm glad to be here.
00:01:28 ◼ ► the host of the Material podcast here on Relay FM, as well as a regular panelist on MacBreak
00:01:33 ◼ ► Weekly and a visitor to WGBH Boston's public radio. Hello. Do I get it all right there,
00:01:40 ◼ ► Yeah, I talked for half hour about technology on NPR here in Boston, but once a weekend,
00:01:47 ◼ ► it usually comes out pretty much okay. I do gesture a lot with my hands, even though it's
00:01:55 ◼ ► Oh, it's, you know, just calm down. I've been in the audience for that, so that's pretty
00:01:59 ◼ ► good. That's a nice thing. So we have my pals who I have known since the '90s here, and
00:02:08 ◼ ► Jason, can I say my usual line? It's traditional. I've known Jason for so long that he is the
00:02:17 ◼ ► It's true. It's true. That was back when we were still learning what a web browser was.
00:02:24 ◼ ► So we're going to talk about Apple and the many transitions in Apple's history, but before
00:02:34 ◼ ► We should. Just because we have guests, we do not issue from tradition around here. It's
00:02:42 ◼ ► go with a #SnellTalk question from Gordon, and I was looking through our list and I was
00:02:57 ◼ ► your favorite app that you still use regularly that dates back to the pre-OS 10 days? Mine
00:03:07 ◼ ► I actually do have a few answers. I'm wondering if perhaps I should defer to my guests if
00:03:18 ◼ ► you have favorite apps from the olden times? I do, actually. I like Graphics Converter.
00:03:23 ◼ ► I still use it. Graphic Converter, pardon me. I still use it, but I startled James Thompson
00:03:27 ◼ ► when I met him about a year ago and I said, James, I really love Drag Thing. And he was
00:03:32 ◼ ► like, really? As in, that's been a long time and that's a 32-bit app. I don't use it all
00:03:38 ◼ ► the time, but I use it on a laptop that I have because that's how I like to see my icons.
00:04:00 ◼ ► I feel like there's one that Jason and I both absolutely adore and as a sign of my friendship,
00:04:05 ◼ ► I should leave that for Jason. I had you go first for a reason. I got another one in my
00:04:14 ◼ ► which is the, BB Edit is a program, technically a programmer's text editor, but it has been
00:04:35 ◼ ► code I typed into a BB Edit document to create that formatting. And up until fairly recently,
00:04:41 ◼ ► it was what I wrote every single one of like two or three weekly columns on because it's
00:04:45 ◼ ► a text editor. It gets out of your way. It's 100% reliable. It is fine tuned, extremely
00:05:05 ◼ ► pleased. I'm also pleased that it's sort of like when you have that rice cooker that you've
00:05:11 ◼ ► used since college, that it's like, "Okay, everything's okay. This is definitely my MacBook
00:05:26 ◼ ► Yeah, I wrote a column last week where I referred to BB Edit as the app of Theseus in that it
00:05:31 ◼ ► has gone through so many transitions, as we're going to talk about here, that there's nothing
00:05:36 ◼ ► left from what was there at the start. But it's also never had one of those schisms where
00:05:42 ◼ ► there's a new version and it's completely incompatible with the old version and doesn't
00:05:45 ◼ ► do what the old version did. It's never done that. It's always just kind of kept evolving
00:05:52 ◼ ► Rather than that simile, I would use the old Japanese wooden temple. I said, "This temple
00:06:02 ◼ ► every time a piece of wood rots out, we replace it. So basically, it's nothing in that older
00:06:07 ◼ ► than 50 years. And it's like, but it's always been this temple. It's always been there.
00:06:18 ◼ ► to change a command and say, "You know what? Let's turn this into a coffee house. And it'll
00:06:22 ◼ ► be like a coffee house with like a wine bar on it." And then they had to go back to being
00:06:34 ◼ ► is essentially doing the same thing with the same author. And that's Default Folder from
00:06:38 ◼ ► St. Clair Software, which I remember downloading as shareware in college. And I still use it.
00:06:48 ◼ ► it at one point a few weeks ago and thought to myself, "Hey, you know, there's something
00:06:52 ◼ ► Default Folder doesn't do." I actually had an idea for a feature in Default Folder. And
00:06:57 ◼ ► I emailed John, the developer of Default Folder, and said, "Could you do this? Is this possible?
00:07:03 ◼ ► Am I missing this feature?" And I had one of these stranger things. It does happen occasionally
00:07:13 ◼ ► my feature implemented. Okay. And it's great. And the nice thing is that I've heard from
00:07:24 ◼ ► Default Folder saying that they actually wanted that feature and are glad that it's there.
00:07:29 ◼ ► So that's nice. But Default Folder, for those who don't know, lets you set when you choose
00:07:35 ◼ ► open or save in a document in any app, you can set what the default folder is that you're
00:07:40 ◼ ► saving into and you can set it per app. You can override it. There are a bunch of things
00:07:44 ◼ ► where you can click on like a finder window that's behind and it will switch to that finder
00:07:47 ◼ ► window. And a new feature you may not be aware of is it can now actually use a script to
00:07:54 ◼ ► determine based on current conditions where you want to save something. It's a new feature.
00:08:05 ◼ ► I didn't even know that this thing was still in existence and I've got the webpage open.
00:08:16 ◼ ► Thank you so much to Gordon for the hashtag Snell Talk question. I'm pretty proud of my
00:08:25 ◼ ► For our panel here today. You can always send in a question for us to open an episode of
00:08:27 ◼ ► Upgrade with the hashtag Snell Talk. So Jason, you mentioned transitions. Transitions is
00:08:33 ◼ ► one of the big discussion points that we're going to talk about today because Apple are,
00:08:39 ◼ ► we've been talking about this over the last couple of weeks as we move into Catalina with
00:08:48 ◼ ► platforms as well as looking at the introduction of iPadOS. There is a lot of stuff going on
00:08:53 ◼ ► right now. I mean, that's not even beginning to mention the fact that we could be moving
00:08:58 ◼ ► from Intel to ARM in the near future. So as a way to kind of provide maybe a little bit
00:09:04 ◼ ► of context and background for these upcoming transitions, it might be a good idea to look
00:09:09 ◼ ► at the past because Apple has been through many transitions from personnel to architecture
00:09:27 ◼ ► We are really more of a council really. Yes, that's right. We were consulting with those
00:09:38 ◼ ► you become a witness to history. Sometimes it's boring history, sometimes it's exciting
00:09:51 ◼ ► up and down the street. And I feel like that gives us a perspective that, again, I don't
00:10:04 ◼ ► now and then we go through one of these transitions and I realize I'm talking to somebody like
00:10:14 ◼ ► the transition to PowerPC or the OS9 to OS10 transition or any of these other transitions.
00:10:20 ◼ ► And I realize, oh, you know, a lot of people don't have the context of what Apple has done
00:10:36 ◼ ► was a self-contained item. It was the original Mac and then the 128 and, you know, it became
00:10:42 ◼ ► the 512 and there was a plus and the SE. But there was that moment where Apple made a box
00:10:56 ◼ ► a little bit later, color Macs were out, but I hadn't used any of them. I remember that
00:10:59 ◼ ► first time that I used a Mac that was capable of conceiving of colors and used, you know,
00:11:10 ◼ ► Yeah, particularly because one of the reasons why there are a lot of reasons why a lot of
00:11:20 ◼ ► you couldn't word process a document longer than nine pages, okay. But it really did look,
00:11:25 ◼ ► it didn't look like any other computer. It looked like as intended an appliance, a friendly
00:11:29 ◼ ► little pal that's on your desk. And when you had to transfer, it was interesting to finally
00:11:38 ◼ ► react to a Mac that was a box with a TV looking screen on top of the box. And it was because
00:11:47 ◼ ► that's what all computers since that I'd ever used looked like. And not only that, but it's
00:11:52 ◼ ► felt like the face that I'd been looking at for the previous X number of years was this
00:11:57 ◼ ► like 500 pixel wide black and white Bloxy face. And when you're looking at a color image,
00:12:08 ◼ ► has never ever not had a beard suddenly comes back from vacation and he shaved. And it's
00:12:13 ◼ ► like, I know that's still Doug, but this is a very weird form of Doug that I'm going to
00:12:19 ◼ ► Well, and for most people, the screen got bigger because you could attach a radius display
00:12:36 ◼ ► bigger image, you were looking at a color image. And of course, the big deal of expansion,
00:12:41 ◼ ► those little handle held Macs could be expanded in sort of weird and kludgy ways. They even,
00:12:54 ◼ ► Mac two, it was meant to be expanded. You open it up and there were slots and you didn't
00:13:11 ◼ ► of the Mac in the earliest days was that it was this appliance. Ironically, I mean, this
00:13:16 ◼ ► is sometimes I think the iPad is similar to the concept of the original Mac. That's why
00:13:26 ◼ ► I want this to be just a thing that you carry around and you don't feel that it's super
00:13:35 ◼ ► so many Apple products are for being not quite what everybody expects from the category.
00:13:41 ◼ ► And it was all in one. It was had had a mouse. It was strangely shaped all of these things.
00:13:53 ◼ ► you. Do you want you want a computer box that you attach things to? We can give you that
00:14:03 ◼ ► was somebody who was entering the Mac through that little nine inch diagonal screen, black
00:14:08 ◼ ► and white screen, which I think about it now and I can't even believe what a wide world
00:14:13 ◼ ► it opened up to me in that teeny tiny little square, a little rectangle. But it did. And
00:14:19 ◼ ► then and then Mac two. Yeah, we had a at my college newspaper, we had a Mac two. And eventually
00:14:25 ◼ ► we had a Mac two f x, which was pretty I remember how it sounded because the hard drive ticked
00:14:38 ◼ ► all that it was still that nine inch screen. I used to encounter Mac twos in unexpected
00:14:42 ◼ ► places. Once the Mac two came out, I saw it on a trade show at a supercom a supercomputer
00:14:47 ◼ ► trade show of all things as a front end to a very large computer doing data visualization.
00:14:52 ◼ ► And I saw it at an office in IBM because we have to figure out how this Mac thing works.
00:15:00 ◼ ► and obviously Apple did this intentionally. They did all the things that you have to do
00:15:09 ◼ ► is with that other computers are. And it felt like that gave people permission to acquire
00:15:14 ◼ ► Macs, even if they weren't going to make them their primary computer. It was a computer
00:15:18 ◼ ► that could live in the same environment with other kinds of machines. Yeah, I think the
00:15:28 ◼ ► a freshman in college and I used to hang out in like the graduate school's graphics lab,
00:15:40 ◼ ► literally it was a table with Mac two boards like just all wired together that they were
00:15:44 ◼ ► writing code either. I don't know if they were developing code for it for Apple or whether
00:16:08 ◼ ► really was a moment where Apple was realized that they weren't going to get to that they
00:16:14 ◼ ► weren't going to get them back to that stage where it's so affordable that everybody can
00:16:17 ◼ ► buy one. It's not going to be like the Apple two where families could sort of afford to
00:16:21 ◼ ► have one in the house as the home computer that was always they were never going to get
00:16:25 ◼ ► to that price point. So the only if they couldn't go down, they had to go up and really sell
00:16:45 ◼ ► that case clip it was a couple of these displays it was literally like a spring clip that you
00:16:52 ◼ ► would clip onto the CPU to get at the address lines. Some of them you send them I think
00:17:02 ◼ ► professionally soldered in stuff. So the ability to simply unplug this plug in that you're
00:17:07 ◼ ► good it felt like it wasn't a bad transition but it really was like the hippie gets the
00:17:11 ◼ ► haircut and doesn't like switch to a three-piece business suit but realizes that perhaps I
00:17:25 ◼ ► do get to witness this thing you don't realize when you haven't lived through much of it
00:17:32 ◼ ► now to talk about it but it's not like there weren't other transitions that happened in
00:17:36 ◼ ► the early days of the Mac. System 6 to System 7 was an enormous one back when like there
00:17:46 ◼ ► it was this whole complicated thing and System 7 really was a dramatic change but I want
00:17:51 ◼ ► to forward a little bit to a time when I actually was at Mac user so in my the beginning of
00:18:03 ◼ ► which I edited called ask Dr. Power Mac and it was literally just Stefan Somoji who worked
00:18:10 ◼ ► at Mac user back then reassuring people about how terrifying the 68,000 to Power PC processor
00:18:20 ◼ ► transition was going to work and for those who don't remember those olden days but maybe
00:18:25 ◼ ► if you remember the Intel transition was a similar thing where there were computers with
00:18:29 ◼ ► new chips and old software written for old chips and Apple did I think a tremendous job
00:18:37 ◼ ► in that era of figuring out a way to translate the instructions for those old apps so that
00:18:48 ◼ ► 68,000 series and you brought it over to a Power Mac and it ran and it was a little slower
00:18:56 ◼ ► sometimes depending on the computer you were coming from but it actually ran and it that
00:19:02 ◼ ► was I would say the biggest certainly was the first one I saw but it was a big hardware
00:19:08 ◼ ► transition it was one of the first that Apple had to do on that front and the lesson I took
00:19:19 ◼ ► would end up being surprised that it wasn't as bad as they thought that I don't know if
00:19:23 ◼ ► you have if you have different recollections of that Power PC transition but I just remembered
00:19:31 ◼ ► painful as we feared. I think so and I think for somebody out there who was buying Macs
00:19:39 ◼ ► maybe not a Mac user reader but somebody was out there buying Macs they weren't thinking
00:19:42 ◼ ► about it in the same way or to the same extent that we were and Apple at the same time that
00:19:47 ◼ ► they made the when they made the Power PC transition they transitioned to vastly different
00:19:52 ◼ ► hardware so it wasn't like well your LC will now run a PPC chip it was here's the Power
00:20:08 ◼ ► there was a less there was less of a requirement that you be involved in it unless you were
00:20:14 ◼ ► just super curious about it or maybe you had a specific piece of software that wasn't going
00:20:19 ◼ ► to work but I don't even remember a lot of that it seems like that was a relatively smooth
00:20:27 ◼ ► humans most civilians they didn't really notice a difference they just noticed I think that
00:20:33 ◼ ► eventually they noticed that some of their software was running slowly and some of their
00:20:37 ◼ ► software was running super well and it didn't didn't really realize they didn't really realize
00:20:43 ◼ ► that what they were running was 68,000 Motorola software in emulation and some were being
00:20:49 ◼ ► transitioned into Intel native apps and that's exactly how well Apple did it it's this could
00:21:01 ◼ ► in any large moment of transition if you can if you can do everything you can so that they
00:21:05 ◼ ► don't notice anything even though there's a titanic change happening under the floorboards
00:21:10 ◼ ► that's exactly the way to do it so sometimes I think in principle it's always a good idea
00:21:17 ◼ ► to inform people and tell people and make sure things are done out in the open but oftentimes
00:21:23 ◼ ► I find myself over explaining a transition or over explaining a concept that I when I'm
00:21:36 ◼ ► all because it's gonna it's gonna affect the lives of everybody working at Apple who is
00:21:41 ◼ ► gonna have to work on this and make sure that it works properly but if they do their jobs
00:21:46 ◼ ► okay you're just gonna notice that some of your some of your apps are gonna be slow some
00:21:59 ◼ ► goes to the user and at if executed properly Apple does provides the tools and the infrastructure
00:22:08 ◼ ► and the developers are able to do their updates and you know if it all goes well the user
00:22:14 ◼ ► doesn't notice anything right like that is the goal is you know here's a new update and
00:22:19 ◼ ► we mentioned you know BB Edit earlier here's a new update and and they don't need to know
00:22:30 ◼ ► wants to use the thing and and if if the developers get the tools to do their updates properly
00:22:41 ◼ ► Yeah it's it's you have to get a column out and maybe it'll pop into my mind that oh my
00:22:50 ◼ ► something else like actually nobody who actually reads this is going to notice nobody who reads
00:22:55 ◼ ► this is should care and maybe you're just going to be scaring people into thinking that
00:23:02 ◼ ► And that process was made easier by the fact that Apple was so involved in making PowerPC
00:23:07 ◼ ► a chip that they could use for their computer their operating system and it wasn't like
00:23:18 ◼ ► hardware side than that and so that made it easy for them I mean it doesn't diminish what
00:23:36 ◼ ► that year's MacHack developer conference which was which was WWDC before Apple thought to
00:23:47 ◼ ► hotel with a in Dearborn Michigan with about 200 300 like super super hardcore developers
00:23:53 ◼ ► including many who work for Apple and got here so much opinion and so much talking about
00:24:03 ◼ ► hardware maybe and they were banging on it and trying to figure out how to make it work
00:24:13 ◼ ► as happy about this as they're trying to assuage the any guilty feelings but the that the users
00:24:19 ◼ ► It's interesting when we talk about chip transitions and we'll talk about in our next segment I
00:24:41 ◼ ► the AIM Alliance and that goes back to a thing that has been part of Apple's DNA since the
00:24:47 ◼ ► beginning which is trying to go its own way and so going from the Motorola 68000 to the
00:24:52 ◼ ► PowerPC it was very much like we're going to go to this new chip architecture that we're
00:25:08 ◼ ► they ended up just taking chips off the shelf from Intel and as we think about Apple going
00:25:19 ◼ ► yeah we've been let down again maybe we should take more control over this so I definitely
00:25:24 ◼ ► am seeing parallels there but but Myke has reappeared so maybe it's time for us to take
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00:27:31 ◼ ► I wrote in our notes the the CEO transitions it is definitely a thing but most people don't
00:27:37 ◼ ► think of most of them because there was sort of the you know John Scully came in and Steve
00:27:55 ◼ ► and just before he passed away he handed the keys to Apple to Tim Cook but you know CEO
00:28:06 ◼ ► editor at Mac or at Mac user back in the day watching the that parade of problematic CEOs
00:28:13 ◼ ► walk through and you know it was sort of like well maybe Michael Spindler will be the answer
00:28:29 ◼ ► with a person with a strong philosophy definitely transitioning to him and away from him are
00:28:37 ◼ ► moments that you can draw a line and and and at least try to intuit what what they brought
00:29:03 ◼ ► how Steve Jobs got imported into the organization because it was based on the next OS so the
00:29:16 ◼ ► a funeral with an OS 9 box in it and put it down below the stage the iMac transition which
00:29:26 ◼ ► were standards on the Mac and basically kick them to the curb and said we're just going
00:29:30 ◼ ► to do USB now then a little bit later the Intel transition and and I think from a developer
00:29:36 ◼ ► standpoint one of the things that also happened is as a part of the OS 10 transition there
00:29:41 ◼ ► was really this transition to Apple's own tools which were based on next tools and this
00:29:52 ◼ ► OS 10 and Intel transitions all the stuff that was happening with like CodeWarrior from
00:30:03 ◼ ► away because Apple wanted you on its own development tools so Steve Jobs did all of that and I
00:30:15 ◼ ► Steve Jobs is the advantage of having somebody like Steve Jobs who knew the company well
00:30:20 ◼ ► but was outside the company and felt no ownership in current products I feel like in some ways
00:30:36 ◼ ► we're gonna kill the Newton and we're gonna kill OpenDoc and we're going to move to this
00:30:45 ◼ ► case we need to dump the PowerPC and we're gonna get rid of Mac serial and SCSI and like
00:30:56 ◼ ► Apple came out and the Mac I think came out stronger for it yeah absolutely I think the
00:31:09 ◼ ► as opposed to think of it as a company that makes this product line they make the Newton
00:31:17 ◼ ► he did I think was simply here is what we are here to do and we're not gonna do anything
00:31:29 ◼ ► entire Mac product line into a grid of two boxes by two boxes we are going to have portable
00:31:35 ◼ ► Macs we're going to have desktop Macs the Macs can be either consumer grade or professional
00:31:51 ◼ ► out there they try doing everything that didn't work so let's focus on the stuff that we can
00:31:56 ◼ ► do and you're absolutely right about the iMac being important too not simply because of
00:32:03 ◼ ► the fact that they made so many groundbreaking changes like the first computer to absolutely
00:32:09 ◼ ► commit to USB and absolutely commit to optical drives but remember that this came at the
00:32:16 ◼ ► tail of so many indistinguishable unremarkable beige boxes and Apple had gone from being
00:32:30 ◼ ► saw at Sears Roebuck that didn't look really any different or any more exciting than anything
00:32:46 ◼ ► a big handle deep into the back of it so you can pick it up and carry it some places but
00:32:49 ◼ ► it's going to be like it was inflated out of latex and it's going to be colors so freaky
00:32:55 ◼ ► we have to invent new names for them and it was so influential just from industrial design
00:33:01 ◼ ► that you could buy waffle makers in a range of iMac colors not from Apple of course but
00:33:12 ◼ ► a statement to the world especially to investors and people who are supposed to support the
00:33:20 ◼ ► if you didn't always necessarily invest in their hardware that thing is back we are not
00:33:31 ◼ ► I think it's worth pointing out that those transitions toward Steve Jobs and toward the
00:33:41 ◼ ► bloody when they were happening and Apple had started to go to clones because it seemed
00:33:55 ◼ ► to survive just making all the hardware itself OS 10 what became Mac OS 10 took a lot of
00:34:02 ◼ ► years because even though that was based on Next Step early on it was four years before
00:34:09 ◼ ► they I think three or four years before they actually got an OS out there the iMac okay
00:34:18 ◼ ► thing and I don't think anybody who said that was particularly enamored of the old Apple
00:34:24 ◼ ► specific ports it was just that it was unclear to people that that was the direction that
00:34:31 ◼ ► was needed that they needed to go and so while as I say in hindsight it all was it all was
00:34:45 ◼ ► important as we're praising a lot of this stuff is that then as now Apple has the ability
00:35:02 ◼ ► much have to buy an external floppy drive because good luck good luck storing your data
00:35:14 ◼ ► way to end an argument saying well are you going to switch to Windows no okay well then
00:35:28 ◼ ► didn't have to buy the one machine that this one company was pushing on you and yes they
00:35:34 ◼ ► were eventually proven right but there's so but I don't think that in a competitive Apple
00:35:39 ◼ ► was at the size that it was at the time and they were and users really did have options
00:35:45 ◼ ► they would not only a certain percentage of them would have chosen to buy computer that
00:35:52 ◼ ► is as cool but also impractical as the original iMac also the original iMac was one of the
00:35:58 ◼ ► of a product line right like the the transition was slow enough that like the pro users weren't
00:36:09 ◼ ► they'd it happened over time so the the higher part other parts of the market didn't have
00:36:14 ◼ ► to respond as immediately but you're both right it was really tumultuous time and sometimes
00:36:20 ◼ ► I look back on it and I think well the advantage of having somebody like Steve Jobs in charge
00:36:24 ◼ ► is that he would be like he'd say well I know this is gonna bother people but I don't care
00:36:29 ◼ ► and they'll get over it whereas Microsoft in that era seemed despite all of their power
00:36:34 ◼ ► they were petrified that their product would be rejected by their users and not incorrectly
00:36:40 ◼ ► because we saw you know over the next 10 years that Microsoft tried to introduce larger changes
00:36:47 ◼ ► to their ecosystem and they were generally just rejected by their user base so you know
00:36:57 ◼ ► that is a problem for them well an Apple spent before Steve Jobs came back and after he did
00:37:11 ◼ ► could say as Andy pointed out look we're the Mac you have the advantage of this user interface
00:37:16 ◼ ► that is comfortable that is likable that is something somebody who hates Windows can be
00:37:29 ◼ ► emotional response to Apple that Windows users do certainly not have with with Windows devices
00:37:45 ◼ ► they're for people who I I really just want something where I get in and I begin to the
00:37:50 ◼ ► driveway I turn the key it starts up it gets me to work safely and then at five o'clock
00:37:59 ◼ ► really can't tell the difference between this $18,000 car you're showing me and this $38,000
00:38:04 ◼ ► car you're showing me despite the fact that the $38,000 car is much more innovative and
00:38:09 ◼ ► as much more cool stuff in it so Windows people are not are fickle that way because they're
00:38:25 ◼ ► their job to do something that are that makes me think wow I don't know if they should have
00:38:31 ◼ ► let people into the new Spaceship Campus before the industrial adhesives and the carpet had
00:38:36 ◼ ► finished off gassing because that was a really odd choice they just made that product you
00:38:46 ◼ ► it is you know whenever I'm evaluating something that Apple does there's this moment of like
00:38:51 ◼ ► well I like that they did it we'll see like the MacBook if we take the the 12-inch MacBook
00:38:57 ◼ ► as an example like and the original MacBook Air was like this too where it's sort of like
00:39:02 ◼ ► well I this is an opinionated product design they've made some very clear decisions and
00:39:07 ◼ ► trade-offs that other people would not necessarily make and it leads to a product that's very
00:39:12 ◼ ► interesting and depending on your priorities could be exactly what you're looking for or
00:39:29 ◼ ► know it turned out that it was in the right direction but wasn't all quite there and they
00:39:33 ◼ ► need to take another stab at it before they really got it right and they finally did get
00:39:45 ◼ ► stopped working and shut down its course but they did get there eventually and with the
00:39:49 ◼ ► MacBook it's the same way like you know among a bunch of other products people love that
00:39:56 ◼ ► not appropriate but but at the time it's very hard to say is it do I just not like this
00:40:02 ◼ ► keyboard or is this keyboard a disaster and you can't tell I could tell except for only
00:40:19 ◼ ► tough one Myke should we take another break I think that sounds like a great idea today's
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00:42:28 ◼ ► about before we we do the tech industry pivot and talk about where we go from here is a
00:42:41 ◼ ► as the transition from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook it precedes it a little bit but I think that
00:42:46 ◼ ► it's all kind of of a kind in this late model Apple that we we deal with now where we've
00:42:54 ◼ ► got you know those of us who wrote about Apple and and and use Apple stuff in the 90s like
00:43:00 ◼ ► the default mode then was that Apple was doomed I have a t-shirt that says I've been a Mac
00:43:06 ◼ ► user since Apple was doomed and boy those were dark days like Mac user which we've mentioned
00:43:11 ◼ ► several times where we all wrote and edited and and did you know went to parties and things
00:43:16 ◼ ► like that and he didn't get to go to the parties because he was freelancing remote but we had
00:43:34 ◼ ► their loss so that they didn't both take a bath and then you know within six months they
00:43:43 ◼ ► that was it it was a dark time Apple was falling apart and then over the next decade you know
00:43:50 ◼ ► we got the iMac we got the iPod and then ultimately we got the iPhone and the story of this decade
00:43:58 ◼ ► is really that Apple is no longer the doomed you know misunderstood edge case niche product
00:44:06 ◼ ► vendor for the for the you know the small group who cares about it and more that Apple's
00:44:19 ◼ ► coincides to the perception of Apple is the Mac becoming Apple is the iPhone because that's
00:44:29 ◼ ► leading to the success of the iPhone and you know my friend Greg Noss who I went to college
00:44:32 ◼ ► with so I've known him even longer than I've known you both he said to me a few years ago
00:44:37 ◼ ► you know I remember Apple being that that company that was like it was kind of adorable
00:44:42 ◼ ► because they've tried so hard and now they're like the Death Star they they own everything
00:44:49 ◼ ► and can afford everything and they're everywhere and you can't get away from them and isn't
00:44:55 ◼ ► it funny to in 15 years have gone from death's door to Apple being seen as the you know not
00:45:02 ◼ ► the underdog at all but one of the one of the the big guys one of the big dogs I suppose
00:45:07 ◼ ► it's interesting when you hang out with civilians as much as I do because back in the day when
00:45:42 ◼ ► a cultural force and it frankly more lately is getting sort of wrapped up with a lot of
00:45:48 ◼ ► the negativity of tech in general it is very very different and it's so weird to have been
00:45:53 ◼ ► in this sort of weird underdog place where you were going hey I like my team I like being
00:45:59 ◼ ► part of this sort of scrappy upstart and what are they going to do next to no really Apple's
00:46:04 ◼ ► the one that cares about your privacy they're not as bad as the other guys whoever those
00:46:13 ◼ ► Yeah it's when you grow up with Apple as I did and I'm sure you guys did like with Apple
00:46:29 ◼ ► building these computers and that's sometimes a hard thing to get rid of in your mind when
00:46:42 ◼ ► huge giant they take big steps and they disrupt every every situation that they walk in simply
00:46:52 ◼ ► by being there and this was and it was really hard to remember a day when the only time
00:47:01 ◼ ► that I've ever directly confronted another tech journalist to tell him specifically that
00:47:09 ◼ ► his reporting was completely out of line and unworthy of him was a major major reviewer
00:47:16 ◼ ► who I think he major major columnist who reviewed the I think was meant in the first titanium
00:47:21 ◼ ► power book and if it was a 1200 word review 300 words were about the the what the actual
00:47:41 ◼ ► this much money on a platform that won't be around in a year from now and now they would
00:47:46 ◼ ► you dare tell they can they can keep they can keep any product they want alive for however
00:47:57 ◼ ► corporation to be able to control its own destiny and Apple is one of the few companies
00:48:01 ◼ ► that absolutely controls its own destiny it does not do anything it does not want to do
00:48:06 ◼ ► and conversely anything that it does not do they could do it if they wanted to if they're
00:48:14 ◼ ► Right and I would argue getting just a little bit to what I said before about them sort
00:48:24 ◼ ► Apple whatever the merits of their approach to privacy and user information whether you
00:48:33 ◼ ► have mistrust for them they operate in a slightly different way than other companies who are
00:48:38 ◼ ► in that same in the same business and I think that there is a tendency for people politicians
00:48:44 ◼ ► particularly to say here are all the bad actors here are all the actors that we want to regulate
00:48:50 ◼ ► and Apple's included because Apple is a big dog not so much to do with what Apple is actually
00:48:55 ◼ ► doing or how they're doing it but because they are they are not at all a scrappy underdog
00:49:04 ◼ ► many people think of when they're trying to you know wrangle this big thing called tech
00:49:13 ◼ ► So when we do the tech industry pivot which we're about to do I think these are the these
00:49:17 ◼ ► are the things to keep in mind it's sort of like Apple is going through transitions now
00:49:21 ◼ ► and we'll be going to them soon possibly in a different place as Andy said as a company
00:49:28 ◼ ► at the height of its powers that can do whatever it wants essentially in terms of spending
00:49:34 ◼ ► money for certain and also this is a company whose priorities are different as well over
00:49:41 ◼ ► half of its revenue comes from a single product line and it's not the Mac it's the iPhone
00:49:52 ◼ ► something like catalyst catalyst is on one level a developer technology that users don't
00:49:59 ◼ ► necessarily need to care about but it is Apple's attempt to figure out a way to get all of
00:50:06 ◼ ► the work that's been done building software for iPhone and iPad to benefit the Mac because
00:50:12 ◼ ► the Mac uses an incompatible method of developing apps there's Swift and Swift UI behind that
00:50:19 ◼ ► which is the way to create a new method of writing software that is more easily deployable
00:50:24 ◼ ► across all of Apple's platforms down the road and another one that I'll throw in there is
00:50:29 ◼ ► this rumored transition at least in part to Mac's running ARM processors designed by Apple
00:50:35 ◼ ► like the ones that are in iOS devices and I think that is what struck me when Andy said
00:50:40 ◼ ► you know they can spend money to do what they want one of the transitions we haven't talked
00:50:45 ◼ ► about but it feeds into this idea of the Mac transition to ARM is Apple transitioning to
00:50:50 ◼ ► designing its own processors for the iPhone and the iPad where originally was taking things
00:50:57 ◼ ► kind of off the off the shelf ARM designs and now it's got this that that's a case where
00:51:07 ◼ ► it controls completely as opposed to having to rely on a partner like Intel that has proven
00:51:12 ◼ ► to be problematic in terms of their capability to drive their technology forward so you know
00:51:18 ◼ ► we have that here we have Apple at the height of its powers making these these transitions
00:51:23 ◼ ► and we don't know how they're going to turn out because we don't have the power we have
00:51:27 ◼ ► the power to look in the past from our vantage point on this corner but we don't know what
00:51:36 ◼ ► I would love to know what you both think about like the the transitions that are in process
00:51:50 ◼ ► Apple obviously their position in the marketplace and the amount of money that they have is
00:51:54 ◼ ► what makes it possible for them to control their destiny in that way they couldn't have
00:52:02 ◼ ► the power PC alliance they couldn't have done that when they were putting Intel processors
00:52:06 ◼ ► into max which were a very small portion of the computer market overall but now they can
00:52:12 ◼ ► and it totally makes sense that they do and and frankly I don't unless the chips end up
00:52:16 ◼ ► being a bad fit for max unless catalyst and Swift UI don't work in terms of making apps
00:52:29 ◼ ► production so to speak and being able to design those chips can only go wrong if they make
00:52:33 ◼ ► some catastrophic mistakes yeah I'm I'm I'm really excited about the switch to ARM I don't
00:52:40 ◼ ► I don't at this point understand if I don't understand how Apple could make ARM processors
00:53:13 ◼ ► on that operating system and every other API that that developers are using and so when
00:53:19 ◼ ► you when you a generic solution is never going to be as efficient as a bespoke one so when
00:53:25 ◼ ► you have a generic Intel processor as amazing as these things are they are not specifically
00:53:31 ◼ ► tuned to run iPad OS and they're not specifically tuned to run on a phone when you have a CPU
00:53:38 ◼ ► that's designed for augmented reality when it's designed for the exact type of ways that
00:53:58 ◼ ► Intel notebooks so I'm really keen to see how they can design a Macbook a consumer level
00:54:08 ◼ ► stuff but also what new features they can introduce the operating system and the hardware
00:54:13 ◼ ► that takes advantage of that level of intimacy as far as the other stuff it's I'm I haven't
00:54:20 ◼ ► seen a lot of evidence externally that Apple is as passionate about the Mac as they are
00:54:26 ◼ ► about their iOS devices and internally I also don't feel as though I've heard a lot from
00:54:40 ◼ ► Apple can be at developing technology I don't think they feel as though they express that
00:54:44 ◼ ► through the Mac I feel as though they express that through their mobile devices and I think
00:54:53 ◼ ► on how much thought and how much work they've done in making this amazing new Macintosh
00:54:57 ◼ ► it's usually about and look how great this is going to be for at developing content and
00:55:19 ◼ ► that oh and by the way if you want to bounce off a Mac copy of that app by all means do
00:55:23 ◼ ► that and won't have you won't be running in a virtual virtual iPad it will actually have
00:55:28 ◼ ► drop down menus and stuff I hope that it's to make sure that if a developer invests time
00:55:36 ◼ ► thought and creativity and developing something for one platform they could apply a new fresh
00:55:47 ◼ ► Objective-C if they didn't learn Objective-C or learn how another set of API's for user
00:55:52 ◼ ► interface works so I'm a little bit hesitant about it but it looks like a very very impressive
00:56:10 ◼ ► Mac first person still think the Mac is the easier system to use not because it's simple
00:56:28 ◼ ► through hoops and that doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with iOS it means iOS is still
00:56:32 ◼ ► growing and developing and evolving and there's lots of room for that to happen so that's
00:56:37 ◼ ► where their energy is going to be and I'm not saying that's right as somebody who would
00:56:42 ◼ ► prefer to see the Mac continue to grow and develop and evolve I'd like to see them evolve
00:56:46 ◼ ► together but I think it's natural that making iOS do as much as the Mac can do and finding
00:56:52 ◼ ► it finding ways for it to do more and different things in the Mac can do is kind of where
00:57:02 ◼ ► going to continue to be wowed from here on out and I've said before I think the the arm
00:57:07 ◼ ► chip thing is is a no-lose situation for them it'll be interesting to see how they do that
00:57:24 ◼ ► really in their infancy there's just there's like so much out there I feel like sometimes
00:57:28 ◼ ► it's hard to see more than the thing you want in the next year the little feature that would
00:57:32 ◼ ► make your life better but I feel like in iOS because there are so many new technologies
00:57:37 ◼ ► that really haven't become usable in a practical everyday sense because there's so many that
00:57:43 ◼ ► are still out there growing that I think they still have the ability to surprise and amaze
00:57:51 ◼ ► an invisible transition that happened a couple of years ago and Myke and I have talked about
00:58:05 ◼ ► as long as it could float it would be alive but that you know it and its user base would
00:58:12 ◼ ► just kind of like get older and fade away and a couple years ago they seem to have made
00:58:18 ◼ ► an internal transition where they said okay instead what we're going to do is we're going
00:58:22 ◼ ► to bring the Mac kind of into the fold in terms of our product development and our software
00:58:32 ◼ ► It is the idea that SwiftUI will let you build apps that will run on the Mac you'll be able
00:58:36 ◼ ► to do a version that will run on iPads and Apple watches and you know wherever else you
00:58:46 ◼ ► from and and other kind of things where they seem to have changed their tune a little bit
00:58:51 ◼ ► which I find kind of fascinating because you know the story of this current era of technology
00:58:56 ◼ ► really is about sort of what cards you've been dealt and so from Microsoft's perspective
00:59:12 ◼ ► future from Windows and so we see touch interfaces on Windows and we see convertible PCs which
00:59:37 ◼ ► of it's like why I also have this thing over here but this is not our strategy our strategy
00:59:46 ◼ ► approach this kind of thing because they they're approaching I think maybe the same thing from
00:59:55 ◼ ► build from there and I am fascinated by the idea that I really wonder what they thought
01:00:07 ◼ ► used to but it's still going to be part of the of the whole picture when the alternative
01:00:25 ◼ ► end it means the Mac will survive a lot longer but it may not be what we think of as the
01:00:30 ◼ ► I think the problem is that you look at what's been happening in Windows hardware and software
01:00:39 ◼ ► and how they've created entirely new categories of laptops and how what Google has done with
01:00:44 ◼ ► Chrome OS which was it was as laughable and funny and ridiculous a product as the original
01:00:51 ◼ ► Mac was but it felt it feels like it's it's it felt this it made the same trajectory where
01:01:03 ◼ ► and and in many ways it's actually outperforming for me stuff that I've stuff that I've got
01:01:14 ◼ ► OS what is better about my Mac today than it was five years ago and are they doing incredible
01:01:21 ◼ ► new form factors like like a two-in-one yoga style convertible where I can actually tent
01:01:27 ◼ ► it up and use it just as a as a display with the keyboard out of the way no I will have
01:01:31 ◼ ► they done really incredible user interface revolutions and tweaks like no mostly they've
01:01:37 ◼ ► taken mostly when they add new features during the keynote they mentioned how they are now
01:01:52 ◼ ► I have to say that it's a very frumpy looking and frumpy behaving operating system at this
01:02:02 ◼ ► improvements to architecture so it's not as though it's been stagnant but I can't remember
01:02:06 ◼ ► the last time there was something about the operating system that got me really excited
01:02:20 ◼ ► all the time yeah and on the Mac it's the Mac and it's and it's it's fine but I do wonder
01:02:33 ◼ ► Mac and the I like Apple doesn't make a convertible right they make an iPad with a keyboard case
01:02:48 ◼ ► are tinkering in the middle zone and because of these these barriers that Apple has formed
01:02:52 ◼ ► between their product lines they're just sort of isn't something there and it's I feel like
01:03:14 ◼ ► of bad ideas slash heresy I don't know yeah and even even the new hardware that they have
01:03:32 ◼ ► the previous Mac mini though the computers that have had problems have been the laptops
01:03:36 ◼ ► where they've actually tried to innovate in some way or move move people forward in terms
01:03:41 ◼ ► of their expectations of laptops and there are there have been a lot of problems whether
01:03:45 ◼ ► you talk about the keyboard or whether you talk about the balance of ports I don't feel
01:03:49 ◼ ► like Apple is having a good experience with laptops and the computers that they do seem
01:04:03 ◼ ► I don't think that Apple is embarrassed about the Mac I don't think that they're trying
01:04:06 ◼ ► to ignore it I just think that you can always tell when somebody is passionate about something
01:04:12 ◼ ► and somebody is simply responsible about something where they definitely I think that Apple is
01:04:16 ◼ ► passionate about the about iOS I think that they are they've got their egos invested in
01:04:22 ◼ ► it that this is what we haul out to show people how we are doing something that no one else
01:04:26 ◼ ► could possibly do and this is being done as well as anybody can possibly be doing it if
01:04:30 ◼ ► not better Mac is like and we have a laptop and works really really well it's very very
01:04:40 ◼ ► not going to point to that to say when they when they invite someone into their rec room
01:04:44 ◼ ► that's not the display case they lead people to they lead people to the display case of
01:04:52 ◼ ► yeah all right I want to do before we go I have a special upstream topic that is something
01:04:58 ◼ ► that I've been holding for a while and I think that you would be perfect people to talk to
01:05:07 ◼ ► of course I am of course I am I'm playing the role of the listener the advanced listener
01:05:21 ◼ ► running out the episode don't worry today's episode is brought to you by Lumen 5 snappy
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01:05:30 ◼ ► producing content of any kind this is probably something you should be thinking about right
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01:06:18 ◼ ► which is why they have a library of millions of media files for you to use I have always
01:06:28 ◼ ► you see like a big publisher they've turned an article into a video and they're sharing
01:06:33 ◼ ► it because I've always figured like oh this must take hours to make because it seems like
01:06:40 ◼ ► this stuff is really well produced so when Lumen 5 got in touch and they gave me a demo
01:06:44 ◼ ► of their platform and I made a video of my own I was like blown away at how easy it was
01:06:48 ◼ ► because it would be too difficult to be able to spend hours in a video editing production
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01:07:31 ◼ ► beginning and now it's at the end it's because it's a special summer of fun everything's wild
01:07:42 ◼ ► and it's been sitting in our show document for a long time but I think it is a fun topic
01:07:57 ◼ ► he was my he was the PC World Editor in Chief when I was the Mac World Editor in Chief he
01:08:03 ◼ ► linked to a story about why 2.7 million Americans still get Netflix DVDs in the mail what Harry
01:08:12 ◼ ► done being readily readily available but I've been gravely disappointed and I you know I
01:08:23 ◼ ► incomparable this comes a lot up a lot where we do episodes about like last week on this
01:08:27 ◼ ► show we talked about Kiki's Delivery Service which is not available for streaming it is
01:08:34 ◼ ► not available for digital purchase you have to buy the blu-ray or the DVD that's how you
01:08:48 ◼ ► of print or going out of print like my friend Monty Ashley always talks up Scarecrow video
01:08:53 ◼ ► in Seattle which is basically not just a video store but a museum of film and TV and other
01:08:59 ◼ ► video things there's just so much stuff that's not available on Netflix or another screen
01:09:03 ◼ ► streaming service and I'm starting to wonder if if you're not on streaming if you're just
01:09:10 ◼ ► lost and Miyazaki again is an example a lot of classic movies a lot of great old TV shows
01:09:15 ◼ ► a lot of movies that don't have a clear rights holder stuff from Broadway there's so many
01:09:20 ◼ ► things some of it is caught up in rights issues but it becomes really difficult when I want
01:09:28 ◼ ► to talk about a movie or a TV show and everybody says well I can't I can't listen to that episode
01:09:32 ◼ ► I can't listen to your conversation because I can't click one button and watch whatever
01:09:48 ◼ ► I'll also mention as an aside I actually saved a bunch of VHS tapes from my teenage years
01:09:54 ◼ ► of primarily of David Letterman shows and found out that by the time I had a setup where
01:10:02 ◼ ► I was going to digitize those and put them up somewhere that all of them were basically
01:10:06 ◼ ► on YouTube already and thanks to the guy named Don Giller who basically has digitized Don
01:10:29 ◼ ► of staff need a clip they come to Don Z there was a documentary about bathrooms over Broadway
01:10:35 ◼ ► I think it was but about the Letterman writer who did all the who did all the the record
01:10:45 ◼ ► called Dave's Record Collection would have like really weird institutional and business
01:10:48 ◼ ► musicals they had clips from the show that they got they could only get from Don Z that's
01:10:59 ◼ ► blog and there's a New York Times piece about it that he has done this it is amazing of
01:11:05 ◼ ► course technically copyright violation right it's not he doesn't have a copyright on any
01:11:10 ◼ ► of this stuff and yet he's the one who is making sure that it doesn't fade into oblivion
01:11:15 ◼ ► because NBC doesn't care especially about the stuff you know that maybe David Letterman's
01:11:20 ◼ ► production company cares a little bit more maybe not I don't know but NBC for the early
01:11:24 ◼ ► stuff he doesn't care I'm reminded of another story I read in the New York Times back in
01:11:40 ◼ ► he would write on little cards and he passed away like five years ago and his wife is still
01:11:54 ◼ ► and less used and she's trying to find someone who will take it away and I look at that story
01:11:58 ◼ ► and I think this the other part of it is sure one person can make a ridiculous effort to
01:12:03 ◼ ► save stuff for the future but in the end when they go away for whatever reason they pass
01:12:09 ◼ ► away they decide they don't want to do anymore what happens to this stuff and I don't know
01:12:14 ◼ ► I just find it I just find it kind of disturbing that in this yes we are in an era of plenty
01:12:18 ◼ ► where there is more great television being made than ever before and there's a huge amount
01:12:22 ◼ ► of content accessible to all of us with the click of a button I do wonder about all the
01:12:28 ◼ ► stuff that's falling through the cracks yeah that's absolutely true it's I do believe the
01:12:34 ◼ ► copyright is important I believe that copyright paying the people who create stuff is important
01:12:39 ◼ ► I don't believe that you should be a Johnny no wanna pay and just simply say well because
01:12:42 ◼ ► I can get this on on a bit torrent that means that there's no reason for me to pay for this
01:12:48 ◼ ► blu-ray or to pay for this HBO subscription I don't I don't believe that at all however
01:12:53 ◼ ► there is there are a couple of ethical ethical exceptions I think that there are so many
01:13:12 ◼ ► they did a production at Lincoln Center of the comedy Shakespeare's the comedy of errors
01:13:17 ◼ ► and it was like all vaudeville like all juggling all all all wire walking funny as hell amazing
01:13:25 ◼ ► and it aired on PBS is live at Lincoln Center once because again it was a it was an actual
01:13:32 ◼ ► production and they did a special like live airing of it according to the rules of course
01:13:42 ◼ ► it's on YouTube parts one and part two well I'll include the links to them and when you
01:13:55 ◼ ► posted it did anything wrong they did something important and noble because this thing would
01:13:59 ◼ ► have died it would nobody would know it exists if not for the fact that someone someone stole
01:14:03 ◼ ► it and Smirnjakov Karamazov Sam Williams was a was a friend of mine one of the original
01:14:10 ◼ ► members the Karamazov's and he was actually very he was actually very very pleased that
01:14:15 ◼ ► DVD copies VHS copies were becoming DVD copies and I think he passed away just as YouTube
01:14:30 ◼ ► this and so it's it's amazing to me that how ephemeral this content can be even something
01:14:37 ◼ ► as impressive as the Flying Karamazov brothers doing the comedy various I would I don't want
01:14:41 ◼ ► to recommend it to people I want to people to be able to click a link and actually watch
01:14:46 ◼ ► Where to begin I I've collected classic films forever and I love them and I have watched
01:14:58 ◼ ► the streaming services to see what and what what was and wasn't available the thing about
01:15:01 ◼ ► a lot of classic movies is they are just plain out of print there are extremely complicated
01:15:06 ◼ ► rights issues having to do with the fact that the companies that made the films have been
01:15:10 ◼ ► bought and sold and merged and you know concatenated and the whole thing and so I if you if you
01:15:28 ◼ ► the kind of quality that would it would need for streaming release there are people who
01:15:34 ◼ ► are out there you know doing the Lord's work restoring films or facilitating the restoration
01:15:39 ◼ ► of films finding films in foreign countries reels of film and taking them to the USA UCLA
01:15:45 ◼ ► film archive and saying hey could you please help us restore this oh if you raise the money
01:15:48 ◼ ► we'll do that and then they take them back to the rights holder and they say well we've
01:15:51 ◼ ► done this really cool restoration of your film could we now strike a DVD well no because
01:15:57 ◼ ► either the rights are contested or the people who own the film don't feel there's a financial
01:16:02 ◼ ► incentive for them to do it even if a lot of the work has been taken care of so basically
01:16:06 ◼ ► what I've done is behave like a little squirrel and every time I see something that I want
01:16:10 ◼ ► I keep it and it can be DVDs it can be I've you know I've DVR'd thousands of movies from
01:16:16 ◼ ► Turner classic movies because that's my preferred that's a lot of the stuff I like is from there
01:16:21 ◼ ► and and you will be shocked at what's on TCM that's not on video because apparently there
01:16:32 ◼ ► TV but not streamed because that's not in the contract not stream nor put onto DVD yeah
01:16:37 ◼ ► and sometimes what will happen is TCM will show a movie and you'll think oh well that's
01:16:49 ◼ ► you going to play it they say well we're gonna have rights to it again in five years because
01:16:53 ◼ ► even even for showing it on cable the rights don't necessarily continue so it's it's and
01:16:58 ◼ ► I that I guess has a lot to do with why I've had a mistrustful relationship with streaming
01:17:03 ◼ ► and I've always believed that instead of having every streaming service so I could have access
01:17:07 ◼ ► to everything I wanted in theory that I was just gonna take subscriptions to the streaming
01:17:12 ◼ ► services that had what I wanted now and never assume that I was going to be able to watch
01:17:16 ◼ ► it ever again and I think that's the only healthy way to behave for what I want especially
01:17:23 ◼ ► in light you know look what's going to happen later this year we have Warners who killed
01:17:33 ◼ ► they're now going to create some sort of giant bundle thing because they want to leverage
01:17:36 ◼ ► the back catalogue that's still saleable the you know the far more current movies so if
01:17:47 ◼ ► might not and I just never assuming that something is going to be available tomorrow that you
01:17:51 ◼ ► saw today is the only way I can you know continue to enjoy movies yeah absolutely those blog
01:17:58 ◼ ► posts constantly like what's coming off Netflix this month right like and then where does
01:18:08 ◼ ► love so much that I don't want to ever lose access to them and that's why so often that's
01:18:13 ◼ ► why I buy a lot of DVDs and I buy a lot of Blu-rays because I don't want to lose access
01:18:18 ◼ ► to airplane I don't want to ever lose access to John Woo the killer okay I don't want to
01:18:31 ◼ ► the wonderful 4k restoration one of my favorite movies ever and let's also talk about Babylon
01:18:44 ◼ ► to actively not care not not care about they actively are disinterested in it they actively
01:18:49 ◼ ► are saying we could if you if you take this quarter maybe this quarter move it from this
01:18:59 ◼ ► Babylon five to be available to people they would not even take that they may break the
01:19:26 ◼ ► much no matter what is streaming in your web browser it's a browser plug-in and you click
01:19:30 ◼ ► on this button and it does everything for you it'll figure out from what service you're
01:19:34 ◼ ► streaming from and capture and find the original mp4 file and just download it to a file and
01:19:41 ◼ ► I use this on stuff that is on YouTube that maybe shouldn't be on YouTube I do that all
01:19:51 ◼ ► of the producers as in a in a comedy about how about a disease that turns people temporarily
01:20:04 ◼ ► with with new cast of characters if you don't so at some point someone's gonna notice who
01:20:09 ◼ ► some algorithm run by a movie studio is gonna notice the thing is up there and it's gonna
01:20:13 ◼ ► disappear and that's what I'm glad that not only did I watch this I also click that button
01:20:22 ◼ ► have an ethical problem with it and the irony is that Warner Brothers at least at the moment
01:20:27 ◼ ► notwithstanding what I said about their streaming service they have been one of the better ones
01:20:31 ◼ ► about back catalog and companies like Fox companies like Paramount have I mean I'm talking
01:20:36 ◼ ► about really ancient back catalog but even the Babylon 5 thing surprises me and I'm not
01:20:40 ◼ ► in that loop and they've restored all sorts of crazy TV series from the 70s and 80s it's
01:20:45 ◼ ► a politics because it wasn't made by the core TV business it was made by their syndication
01:20:49 ◼ ► arm and therefore the core TV business doesn't want anything to do with it that's the story
01:20:53 ◼ ► there but you're right I have been thinking for a long time and I know I've talked about
01:21:02 ◼ ► somewhere because I do think there's a niche streaming service that could be successful
01:21:10 ◼ ► serving older movies and older TV shows but we aren't there we live in a world where all
01:21:17 ◼ ► the money is going toward creating more original content for new services and the rest of it
01:21:22 ◼ ► is just sort of like floating out there but I do really believe that and I want to believe
01:21:26 ◼ ► it maybe I'm wish casting a little because it does I feel like we didn't learn the lesson
01:21:32 ◼ ► of every previous transition to a new medium or to a new storage medium or transmission
01:22:07 ◼ ► was fans taping shows off of off of off air on VHS or beta or even before that fans taping
01:22:14 ◼ ► the audio using just audio cassette tapes is the reason any of that stuff survives so it's
01:22:18 ◼ ► very similar to today's YouTube kind of kind of thing and you know but in the end are we
01:22:24 ◼ ► not there already that that a lot of the stuff is going to just fade away and unless you
01:22:33 ◼ ► and nothing frustrates me more than coming up with a great movie or TV show to talk about
01:22:37 ◼ ► on the incomparable for example and realizing we can't talk about it because nobody can
01:22:52 ◼ ► well be invisible. I talked to a guy for one of my parallel shows about right about the
01:22:56 ◼ ► time that the the Warner streaming service stuff happened last year and we were talking
01:23:08 ◼ ► did you get some of the films you had because they were really incredibly rare incredibly
01:23:12 ◼ ► hard to find he said well the way I got access to see them was I know a lot of collectors
01:23:20 ◼ ► could view the movies and decide whether they went in the festival and then he had to present
01:23:35 ◼ ► that it took them to resolve all the rights there were a couple that he didn't eventually
01:23:39 ◼ ► they didn't at all get to show this is TCM they've got a team of lawyers that does nothing
01:23:42 ◼ ► but rights issues but he still couldn't get those shown and he's got another list which
01:23:46 ◼ ► if he ever does this festival again he's going to add and so it's it's it's incredibly difficult
01:24:19 ◼ ► you see oh wow where is it like no it's lost oh wow so it's so I have to go to a university
01:24:28 ◼ ► It's the nitrate film and it's also that people didn't see their value and a lot of copies
01:24:36 ◼ ► when the silent transition happened are gone or partially gone and that's the the restoration
01:24:45 ◼ ► that go out and they say I want to restore this movie and they scour collectors all over
01:24:58 ◼ ► of money and we got the UCLA film archive to actually do the painstaking digital restoration
01:25:03 ◼ ► and that's the only reason this thing is available on DVD or Blu-ray and then it's you know don't
01:25:08 ◼ ► not even to mention things like showing theatrically which is a whole separate thing you know revivals
01:25:18 ◼ ► all seen a hundred times or those of us who pay attention to classics have seen a hundred
01:25:22 ◼ ► times it's really hard to get those restorations that are theatrical quality. Also the danger
01:25:32 ◼ ► Times piece about the universal audio archive fire where all the master recordings were
01:25:44 ◼ ► letting it out to the world is that if you keep it in the vault you might lose the master
01:25:47 ◼ ► but at least you will have saved something but if you keep it in the vault and then the
01:26:09 ◼ ► forever and and that is I mean Shelley you mentioned about finding movies in weird places
01:26:27 ◼ ► don't know about that one it might have been and then I would bet it was front page because
01:26:38 ◼ ► bad takes and the movie that everybody had been watching as a fan a film fan for 50 years
01:26:46 ◼ ► found it and that's great because you know but that was also sheer luck and I mentioned
01:27:01 ◼ ► and those film canisters survived the purge and that's also ridiculous and and luck and
01:27:11 ◼ ► a point of frustration that we live in this world of plenty and yet there's all this stuff
01:27:15 ◼ ► that for legal reasons for intransigent owners of the content reasons are languishing and
01:27:24 ◼ ► I don't want to live in a world where if it's not available on streaming it doesn't exist
01:27:35 ◼ ► heritage this is our culture and it disappears unless it is honored unless it is preserved
01:27:39 ◼ ► just as we say it's it's it's it's it's distressing but there is another piece of hope in here
01:27:46 ◼ ► in that even 10 years ago I don't think anybody could have imagined the power that would be
01:27:52 ◼ ► in the hands of just individual really motivated fans the ability to create an HD version of
01:28:01 ◼ ► the original release cut of Star Wars Episode IV that just from all we have our crappy 35
01:28:23 ◼ ► of cuts and then the scholarship of oh actually this is this doesn't have the original crawl
01:28:29 ◼ ► the original crawl didn't have the series title on it and the ability to have this actually
01:28:34 ◼ ► come almost I would say with the color grading and everything a really commercially grade
01:28:39 ◼ ► 1080 blu-ray type of release of the original Star Wars that has not been modified or messed
01:28:45 ◼ ► with with a with with future cuts and yep it's illegal nope there's no there's no there's
01:29:16 ◼ ► people were transmitting initial people were transmitting single movies on single VHS tapes
01:29:23 ◼ ► and old-time radio shows on single half-hour cassettes and now you can put dozens and dozens
01:29:29 ◼ ► and hundreds of radio shows onto a blu-ray disc and transfer it easily you have YouTube
01:29:39 ◼ ► archived offside and all that stuff but you do have the capability of moving large enough
01:29:44 ◼ ► volumes of stuff around that it makes it's possible for an individual collector to amass
01:29:53 ◼ ► I just upgraded my four terabyte NAS I'm sorry my eight terabyte NAS to a larger NAS because
01:30:04 ◼ ► and DVDs that I've ripped I didn't think I'd run out of space four years ago but I'm running
01:30:09 ◼ ► out of space and now I have to back up that as well because if this ever went away I would
01:30:28 ◼ ► We kind of have that and sometimes what I'll do to watch a movie is I'll just hit random
01:30:33 ◼ ► it's the greatest feeling in the world because I know everything on there is something that
01:30:58 ◼ ► when I rip a CD to not only say this look this is Joyce Dinanato's picture on the front
01:31:05 ◼ ► of the CD it says Joyce Dinanato and the title of the album the fact that she did one one
01:31:18 ◼ ► Well I think we've reached the end of this very special episode this has been a fun conversation
01:31:46 ◼ ► at the sky about old movies and that it pleases me to being able to do that and old Max too.
01:32:28 ◼ ► Thank you so much to our wonderful sponsors of this week's episode Lumina 5, Bombas and