00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade Episode 251. Today's show is brought to you by Astro Patch Studio,
00:00:21 ◼ ► Summer of Fun! My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by my surfing partner in crime, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi Jason Snell.
00:00:28 ◼ ► Uh, hang loose, dude. It's the Summer of Fun. It most certainly is. The Summer of Fun still starts
00:00:34 ◼ ► the same way as every episode of Upgrade does with our hashtag SnellTalkQuestion. This one comes from
00:00:39 ◼ ► Shaker Ben who asks, "How many hours has Smart Speed saved you in Overcast? Ben is up to 289
00:00:47 ◼ ► hours, which is a lot of saved hours. So Jason, how many hours have you saved by listening to
00:00:52 ◼ ► podcasts in Overcast with the silence all being removed and sped up when needed?" Overcast tells
00:01:00 ◼ ► me that I've saved 121 hours, which is great. I will point out I don't have a commute so I
00:01:08 ◼ ► definitely don't have as much of a podcast load as a lot of people do. I'm skeptical that I didn't
00:01:13 ◼ ► lose numbers, lose hours along the way there somewhere, but 121. I'm up to 180, which is a lot
00:01:20 ◼ ► of hours. It's many hours saved. Yeah, well I mean the seven and a half days for you and five
00:01:26 ◼ ► days for me. So I guess thanks to Mark Armand for saving us many days out of our lives or really
00:01:30 ◼ ► just packing in more podcast episodes. That's pretty much how that works. Thank you so much to
00:01:35 ◼ ► Ben for that SnellTalkQuestion. You can submit a question for a future episode of the show. Just
00:01:39 ◼ ► send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk and it may be picked for a episode in the future. Summer
00:01:46 ◼ ► related questions would be, I would appreciate those as we are in the summer of fun right now.
00:01:51 ◼ ► So anything summer related send it in and I'll be happy to see those. We have some follow up today
00:01:57 ◼ ► Jason. Mark wants us to share our current home screens, which I feel is only fair considering
00:02:04 ◼ ► the mess that we caused many upgradients over the last week. I'm sure you saw as I did many people
00:02:11 ◼ ► changed their home screen to the official upgrade home screen, which is kind of amazing and I
00:02:18 ◼ ► apologize to all of those people for having to have done that. I had to change my home screen
00:02:25 ◼ ► to take the screenshot in the show notes of our home screen that we picked and then I had to
00:02:31 ◼ ► change it back because I wasn't going to leave it there. That would be just a bad idea. I appreciated
00:02:36 ◼ ► you doing that for the show notes last week. It had to be done. We had to show people what it looked like.
00:02:51 ◼ ► I'm just looking at it now. I don't know if I do. I think I've managed to turn off all of my
00:03:03 ◼ ► little notification bubbles. Maybe not messages. You just took that with messages and I might have
00:03:09 ◼ ► a few. You have apps that I just don't use, which is amazing. So many. Time-ary, Discord,
00:03:16 ◼ ► Evernote, Airtable, PipeDrive, Narwhal. So Airtable and PipeDrive, they are like business tools,
00:03:24 ◼ ► right? They're like sales tools. Narwhal is my right app. You got to drive those pipes.
00:03:28 ◼ ► You got to drive the pipes. And then I use Discord for some stuff. Evernote for some stuff as well.
00:03:34 ◼ ► Time-aries, my time tracking. You use any list, which I know is like a grocery list thing, right?
00:03:43 ◼ ► Did I never use that? You use Apple Maps. TestFlight on the home screen is an interesting choice, I think.
00:03:48 ◼ ► You know, I was going to bring it up last week and I decided that, you know, most people are not like
00:03:54 ◼ ► me and have lots of betas. But I have lots of betas, so I keep TestFlight out there, yeah.
00:04:01 ◼ ► Yeah, you don't have a... There are... I have... All of the questions that I have for you
00:04:09 ◼ ► are not really about the home screen, but it's more just like, why do you use that app over
00:04:18 ◼ ► Apple Maps is very good. That's what they say. I've heard that before. That is what they say.
00:04:24 ◼ ► We mentioned... Actually, we want to give another gift to the Upgradients as we were in the summer,
00:04:34 ◼ ► Yeah, this came up. I was taking that screenshot last time and I scaled up our Summer of Fun art,
00:04:44 ◼ ► So I have been using the desktop wallpaper on my iPad for the last few days, and it makes me very
00:04:50 ◼ ► happy because it feels very summery. So whenever I open my iPad, it's like this beautiful summer
00:04:56 ◼ ► backdrop for me. So you can get those in our show notes too. If you want to go get those,
00:05:02 ◼ ► it should be in your podcast app of choice or at relay.fm/upgrades/251 is this week's episode,
00:05:10 ◼ ► and you can get the wonderful Summer of Fun wallpapers for free just for being a wonderful
00:05:20 ◼ ► I wanted to give a quick reminder for something. We are doing a big fifth anniversary relay.fm live
00:05:35 ◼ ► a couple of days beforehand, and we're going to be doing a big live show with a bunch of relay.fm
00:05:40 ◼ ► hosts that are going to be coming in and we're going to be doing a big variety show. Jason Snell
00:05:54 ◼ ► It's on August 22nd, and I will put a link in the show notes so you can buy a ticket and come out.
00:05:59 ◼ ► We are working to try and make this the best possible show it can be, and I'm very excited
00:06:03 ◼ ► about it. I think that you will really like it if you can make it out. We're going to be doing
00:06:08 ◼ ► big, wonderful live show with lots of surprises, wonderful fun things. You can get tickets for
00:06:24 ◼ ► which has been taking a many, many week break over the WWDC period, but I have a couple of things
00:06:30 ◼ ► that I want to talk to you about today. One of them is JJ Abrams. JJ Abrams is apparently nearing
00:06:44 ◼ ► would assume, Apple and NBC Universal as well, about securing a multi-year partnership, which
00:06:50 ◼ ► will be a first look at any project that Bad Robot, his production company, works on. A first
00:06:55 ◼ ► look is basically like a first right of refusal, right? If you're working on something, we want
00:07:00 ◼ ► to be able to take it first. I'm not sure, and you might know, this half a million dollars must
00:07:06 ◼ ► have at least a minimum amount of content attached to it though, right? Yeah, I'm sure. Well, so it's
00:07:14 ◼ ► producing, right? And I'm sure they will get, well, I mean, the idea is that they get a first
00:07:20 ◼ ► look. So I'm not sure whether there's a minimum or not. Maybe there's a minimum and then there's
00:07:25 ◼ ► an opt-out or something like that. It's contract details. But the way it works is basically they
00:07:30 ◼ ► are given, you know, any show that they are developing and producing, they're offering to,
00:07:39 ◼ ► for this TV show, we're developing all of that." And what that means is that if JJ Abrams wants
00:07:46 ◼ ► to develop something for, and they think it's really good and WarnerMedia is not interested
00:07:52 ◼ ► in it, it doesn't die. They get to shop it somewhere else and do it. But yeah, you'd think
00:07:56 ◼ ► that if you're WarnerMedia, you'd want to protect yourself against JJ Abrams deciding, "Well, thanks
00:08:01 ◼ ► for the half a billion dollars. Now I'm going to make a bunch of things you don't want to buy."
00:08:05 ◼ ► If the next six years of stuff from Bad Robot is all crap, then like... Because he had this deal
00:08:13 ◼ ► with Paramount. So he was in a deal with Paramount. In 2006, he made this deal with them, which is,
00:08:20 ◼ ► again, a multi-year deal for $55 million. It's very different. It's a hugely different amount
00:08:31 ◼ ► which was one of the movies in the Cloverfield thing, Paramount just said, "We don't want that."
00:08:39 ◼ ► - Yeah. Also, the producing versus directing, but also Paramount made that deal with JJ Abrams.
00:08:46 ◼ ► And he did... Because he did a couple of Star Trek movies and he has been producing the Mission
00:08:51 ◼ ► Impossible franchise. But at the same time, as a director, he went off and made... Now it's going
00:08:56 ◼ ► to be two Star Wars movies for Disney. So I think that that's a challenge in this. It's like,
00:09:02 ◼ ► presumably in the negotiations there, in addition to the big pile of money, is some structure here
00:09:12 ◼ ► in terms of... Obviously, they're going into it thinking that his company is going to primarily
00:09:17 ◼ ► supply WarnerMedia with content and that that's the idea here. But there have to be... In any
00:09:23 ◼ ► creative business, there have to be places where if you create a show... This happens on TV now,
00:09:29 ◼ ► where somebody creates a show for that company's network and they pass on it and it goes to a
00:09:36 ◼ ► competitor's network. And that's weird, but you went through all the trouble to develop the show,
00:09:41 ◼ ► you want to sell the show. And if the home team isn't buying, you go to the other team.
00:09:47 ◼ ► - It is unclear as to whether this deal will allow him to continue making his own... Directing
00:09:54 ◼ ► feature films for other companies, right? So if Disney come knocking again, I would expect for
00:09:58 ◼ ► this amount of money, it will probably lock him in. - What's unclear to me is, based on the coverage,
00:10:06 ◼ ► is whether this locks him in as a director or just as a producer. Because he is a prolific producer
00:10:15 ◼ ► wouldn't even think of, that JJ Abrams' name is never really connected with. Like Westworld is a
00:10:19 ◼ ► good example of that. That series is a... JJ Abrams' name is on it as an executive producer. He didn't
00:10:25 ◼ ► make Westworld and yet it is part of that kind of machine. And there are lots of shows that come out
00:10:32 ◼ ► of Bad Robot. So I think that's the question is, how much is this about getting JJ Abrams as a
00:10:39 ◼ ► writer and a producer and then as a director? And it's not impossible that his role as a director
00:10:47 ◼ ► is more... Is separate from it. Like that he might get brought in... Like Star Wars is a good example
00:10:54 ◼ ► where it's like, "We need you to direct this. Can you do that?" And he's like, "All right."
00:10:58 ◼ ► But yeah, if I were WarnerMedia, I would look at what happened with his Paramount deal and say,
00:11:03 ◼ ► "We gotta do something." And again, it's probably structured that we have to provide you with
00:11:09 ◼ ► a certain amount of work. We have to say yes to a certain number of projects guaranteed
00:11:13 ◼ ► because otherwise you could get in a situation if you're JJ Abrams where you can't do anything
00:11:19 ◼ ► you wanna do because they won't make any of the movies you wanna make. And that's not good either.
00:11:26 ◼ ► So that's part of that. It's fascinating. I don't think I would wanna be an entertainment
00:11:30 ◼ ► industry lawyer, but it is fascinating to see how you negotiate the structure of what ends up being
00:11:36 ◼ ► at the bottom a creative process because those two things don't really fit together, in my mind
00:11:41 ◼ ► anyway. Like you're trying to build a contract that says you will write a good movie. And it's
00:11:49 ◼ ► and maybe one of the reasons that the money is so different from... I mean, 2006 to now,
00:12:05 ◼ ► it's also the fact that there are all these different suitors because we're in a different
00:12:09 ◼ ► market now. - That also ties into what I was gonna say, which is that you would expect that
00:12:13 ◼ ► WarnerMedia actually need more content than Paramount did because they have a streaming
00:12:19 ◼ ► service to fill and putting JJ's name on a bunch of stuff will probably do well for them like it
00:12:24 ◼ ► did for Apple. - And he has a good track record of making stuff. I mean, again, you focus on
00:12:28 ◼ ► JJ Abrams and not Bad Robot and you miss... Bad Robot has been producing so many TV shows
00:12:34 ◼ ► and having Bad Robot drive that stuff into WarnerMedia's various cable channels and their
00:12:40 ◼ ► streaming service is... It's an engine that is generating lots of content and they want...
00:12:45 ◼ ► They need engines generating content like that for their stuff to work. And likewise, so does
00:12:52 ◼ ► Apple, so does Disney, so does Universal, like everybody. And that's why there were multiple
00:12:57 ◼ ► suitors for JJ Abrams and Bad Robot. So yeah, it's a combination, but it is kind of breathtaking to
00:13:03 ◼ ► think about getting paid a half a billion dollars to make movies and TV shows for one company
00:13:09 ◼ ► just as an exclusive deal. That's pretty spectacular. - David in the chat mentions a good
00:13:15 ◼ ► point that is worth clarifying that half a billion would be consumed quickly as a budget. This is not
00:13:22 ◼ ► a budget. This is not like when Apple put a billion dollars aside to make stuff. This is like, here's
00:13:28 ◼ ► a bag of money so we can give you more money to make things, right? Like this is not a half a
00:13:34 ◼ ► billion dollars that they're putting aside for JJ Abrams to make TV shows. - This is a signing bonus.
00:13:39 ◼ ► I mean, maybe not entirely that. There may be like rates about like we get a certain number
00:13:44 ◼ ► or that, but it's basically we're giving you half a billion dollars to have the exclusive right
00:13:51 ◼ ► to your stuff for the next however many years. - Which is crazy. It's crazy. And one of the
00:13:59 ◼ ► reasons I wanted to talk about this today is this is another type of thing that we're now going to
00:14:05 ◼ ► start seeing more of, I think. These big names being tied up with companies. - Yeah. Greg Berlanti,
00:14:12 ◼ ► who did Riverdale, did all the superhero shows on the CW. He has a deal with Warner Media. I mean,
00:14:19 ◼ ► that stuff was all with Warner Media already, but now it's like $300 million to him to produce more
00:14:23 ◼ ► content. Netflix has their deal with Ryan Murphy and their deal with Shonda Rhimes, right? Like
00:14:29 ◼ ► these are the big producers that you want to just give them money and say, just make all your stuff
00:14:36 ◼ ► for us. - This is like what Apple and Oprah have. - Yeah, it's true. I mean, what we haven't seen
00:14:41 ◼ ► Apple do is sign somebody like JJ Abrams who has a production company and has made a lot of
00:14:49 ◼ ► fiction content. That hasn't happened yet. It may at some point. I think Apple needs to,
00:14:54 ◼ ► Apple's working at a disadvantage now because they don't have a track record, because they don't even
00:14:57 ◼ ► have a service yet. And so if you're JJ Abrams, even if Apple offered the same money, you're sort
00:15:03 ◼ ► of like, well, you know, what's it going to be? Are they going to back out? Are they going to
00:15:09 ◼ ► change their mind at some point? - I don't want to be tied into a service that has a thousand
00:15:13 ◼ ► subscribers. - Yeah, exactly right. Even if you're paying me half a billion dollars to do it,
00:15:18 ◼ ► what does that mean? So yeah, it's a fascinating kind of decision-making process for the companies
00:15:27 ◼ ► and for these creators. But the key thing is, again, it's not a guy who writes a TV show,
00:15:32 ◼ ► who's getting this money. It's a guy who has a company full of producers who have been generating
00:15:40 ◼ ► TV material, not only working with writers, but also then putting the shows together and movies
00:15:47 ◼ ► too. And if you look at "Bad Robot," it's more than just sort of like from the mind of JJ Abrams.
00:15:52 ◼ ► It's a whole lot of stuff. And the people inside "Bad Robot" other than JJ Abrams kind of come and
00:15:57 ◼ ► go, but they're also very talented people there who come there and produce a show. And that's
00:16:03 ◼ ► what the money is doing. "Mission Impossible" is a good example where JJ Abrams directed a "Mission
00:16:08 ◼ ► Impossible," but my understanding is that JJ Abrams continues to get a producer credit. And "Bad
00:16:14 ◼ ► Robot" produces the "Mission Impossible" movies with Tom Cruise. And it's like they are part of
00:16:18 ◼ ► that process. And that's, again, that's not as we focus on the people, and it's a little more than
00:16:25 ◼ ► that. It's a production deal, so it's about all of "Bad Robot." But it does mean that, you know,
00:16:29 ◼ ► JJ has an idea and JJ's writers that JJ likes, who he brings in to work on projects, like it's
00:16:35 ◼ ► all kind of coming from that. JJ Abrams, by the way, an enormous Apple nerd, Big Mac fan, just
00:16:42 ◼ ► he's one of us. I will point that out. Whether you like or dislike his work, I will say he's one of
00:16:48 ◼ ► us. He really is. He sent me an email at one point back in the day from his AOL account. That's how
00:16:53 ◼ ► long ago it was. He is definitely an Apple guy. Hi, JJ, if you're listening. That's right. Hi to
00:16:59 ◼ ► JJ. Myke, realistically, it's going to be like, "Hi to JJ's dad," right? Something like that.
00:17:05 ◼ ► JJ's cousin. Something like that. That's fine. It all works for me. Okay. Adam Sandler and Jennifer
00:17:11 ◼ ► Aniston's new movie on Netflix, "Murder Mystery," broke Netflix viewing records. 30.9 million
00:17:16 ◼ ► households saw the movie in the first three days. Netflix only counts a view if 70% of the movie has
00:17:22 ◼ ► been seen. So this isn't even people that started the movie and bailed on it. I remember, I don't
00:17:30 ◼ ► know if we spoke about this, but we may have, Adam Sandler's deal with Netflix was kind of laughed at
00:17:36 ◼ ► because it's like, "Why? This is why!" Because a lot of people have watched it. This is a movie
00:17:43 ◼ ► that probably would not have garnered this kind of audience in theaters. And I think this, the reason
00:17:49 ◼ ► I brought this to discuss a little bit today is because I think this is one of the things that
00:17:52 ◼ ► makes streaming different. I think people are more willing to try something out than they are if they
00:17:57 ◼ ► had to go and pay for a movie ticket. Oh, for sure. For sure. This is, in fact, there's an
00:18:03 ◼ ► argument to be made that movies that are, it used to be movies went in theaters and you went to see
00:18:09 ◼ ► movies and you just needed to be kind of interested. But in today's world, you really need the movie
00:18:16 ◼ ► to be an event, to go see a movie in the theater for a lot of people. And there's a whole class of
00:18:21 ◼ ► movies that are good movies. I'm not saying this movie is good or bad. It's apparently, you know,
00:18:26 ◼ ► it didn't get great reviews, but Adam Sandler movies don't. But you can have a good movie
00:18:31 ◼ ► that, but you're like, oh, it's a little romantic comedy or something like that. Like, I watched
00:18:36 ◼ ► a Netflix movie. I watched Always Be My Maybe, which is a romantic comedy on Netflix. We watched
00:18:43 ◼ ► that last weekend and, you know, it was fine. But it's one of those things that I could,
00:18:47 ◼ ► I cannot imagine going out to the movie theater to see a small budget to mid-budget romantic comedy.
00:18:58 ◼ ► and you would pick them out, right? Except the truth is these are the movies that you might have
00:19:03 ◼ ► seen 20 years ago in the movie theater, but we have so much entertainment at home now that you
00:19:08 ◼ ► need to have. One of the reasons why Marvel has been so successful is because spectacle and events
00:19:14 ◼ ► sell at the box office. It's not just that Marvel movies have driven, you know, small movies out of
00:19:20 ◼ ► the movie theaters. In part, it's that the movies that work today in movie theaters, they get lots
00:19:27 ◼ ► of people out of their houses where they've got a nice TV and an infinite selection of content on
00:19:33 ◼ ► Netflix. The way you get those people out is by having this like big thing that you want to see
00:19:38 ◼ ► on a big screen and everybody's talking about it. And if you don't go see it, you're going to be
00:19:42 ◼ ► behind. And I feel like that's where we are. So we look at something like Adam Sandler and Jennifer
00:19:46 ◼ ► Aniston doing a kind of wacky European murder mystery. Like, are people going to go to the movie
00:19:52 ◼ ► theater and see that? Maybe not, but if it pops on Netflix, and this is literally a movie I didn't
00:20:03 ◼ ► that other movie. And I was like, huh, murder mist. Is that, is that Jennifer Aniston with
00:20:08 ◼ ► Adam Sandler? And it was, and I was like, okay, I'm not, I'm totally not going to watch that movie,
00:20:13 ◼ ► but I saw it there. And the fact that Netflix with just the algorithm, just their interface
00:20:27 ◼ ► that's the power of Netflix. In three days, right? Yeah. Three days. Nobody heard about it,
00:20:34 ◼ ► but it showed up on your Netflix and you're like, oh, Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston,
00:20:39 ◼ ► click, watch a movie. That's the power of Netflix. And then those, again, it's like, those were the
00:20:45 ◼ ► 31 million people who watched basically the entire movie. I'm sure that there are many more millions
00:20:50 ◼ ► of people that were like, I don't like this after 20 minutes. I just turned it off. Sure. And it's
00:20:56 ◼ ► kind of, it's absolutely wild. It's a, this is, this is one of those things where it's like,
00:21:01 ◼ ► this is very different this time. Like we've moved into a very different time again. And
00:21:05 ◼ ► as you say, right, this is not a marketing budget that drove this. This was Netflix's algorithm.
00:21:09 ◼ ► And that is kind of incredible that they are able to push those kinds of numbers just based on their
00:21:16 ◼ ► own internal marketing at this point. It's, it's really wild. Yeah. And it shows that, I mean,
00:21:20 ◼ ► Netflix did, did the deal with Adam Sandler and everybody laughed at it, but obviously worked for
00:21:25 ◼ ► Netflix because they made another deal with Adam Sandler. And I think, you know, I don't want to
00:21:30 ◼ ► call Adam Sandler a business genius or something, but maybe he has an awareness of his appeal and
00:21:38 ◼ ► the kind of stuff he wants to make. Talk about somebody very different from JJ Abrams in a lot
00:21:42 ◼ ► of ways, but still having to make some creative decisions about yourself in this landscape.
00:21:47 ◼ ► And maybe Adam Sandler looked at it and said, you know, the kind of stuff I want to make,
00:21:50 ◼ ► I am not allowed to make because it won't work in the movie theater. And if I do get something
00:21:55 ◼ ► to the movie theater, it's a real crap shoot about whether it'll even work. And Netflix is coming to
00:22:00 ◼ ► me and saying, we will bankroll your next four movies and just put them on Netflix. And when
00:22:05 ◼ ► he does that, he finds that there's an audience for that. And he realizes, okay, why would I not
00:22:11 ◼ ► keep doing this? This is where my right. And that's interesting because there's an ego thing there
00:22:16 ◼ ► where it's like, am I just a guy who makes made for TV movies now you could view it that way if
00:22:19 ◼ ► you wanted to, but you could also view it that the kind of movie you want to make is not any longer
00:22:26 ◼ ► something that could possibly survive in a movie theater, but Netflix audiences kill it. Like sure.
00:22:38 ◼ ► theaters to see it. And he did. And he did. And that's maybe part of the problem. Oh God, Click
00:22:45 ◼ ► is one of the worst movies I've ever seen in my entire life. I hate that movie, but I love some
00:22:49 ◼ ► of his, you know, like his earlier stuff or at least did at the time. You're happy as Gilmore.
00:22:53 ◼ ► You're, uh, yeah, you're, I don't even remember what all those movies are. Anyway, it's, it's,
00:22:57 ◼ ► uh, I think it's interesting. Uh, I would love, I should probably look at, there's probably an
00:23:03 ◼ ► article about it, but like the thought process that goes into saying, you know what, I know it
00:23:06 ◼ ► doesn't seem glamorous to be in a movie deal with Netflix, but it's the right thing to do. And the
00:23:13 ◼ ► truth is a lot of these smaller movies, um, are not going to be seen by anybody in a movie theater.
00:23:20 ◼ ► They might be, they might get an art house release or something like that. But for, for a lot of
00:23:24 ◼ ► movies at the, at these that aren't these giant blockbusters streaming services may be their best
00:23:30 ◼ ► place to be, to be seen, which is important for, uh, Netflix because they want to, you know,
00:23:36 ◼ ► provide content to their subscribers. And it's important for the creators who want their movies
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00:24:36 ◼ ► because I don't really know what's going on with the protection of those connections. So I,
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00:24:45 ◼ ► ExpressVPN that I have. If you ever use public wifi and want to keep the bad guys away from
00:24:56 ◼ ► protect your online activity today. Find out how you can get three months free at expressvpn.com/upgrade
00:25:19 ◼ ► which is an interesting decision. We'll dig into that a little bit, but I want to talk about
00:25:30 ◼ ► because we've actually not really spent a ton of time talking about this version of macOS.
00:25:35 ◼ ► Because it's been, I know you've had to spend some time with it, right? And kind of really
00:25:40 ◼ ► kind of dig in and there's a lot of things that we can't really know yet and we'll get into that.
00:25:44 ◼ ► But off the bat, I wanted to kind of get a feeling from you if you're surprised by anything. Are
00:25:50 ◼ ► there any features in Catalina that you're enjoying that maybe you hadn't spent a bunch
00:25:55 ◼ ► of time thinking about until you started using them? I don't know. I mean, you're right. It's
00:26:00 ◼ ► only been a few weeks since we did the initial thing. So I have been thinking about all of those
00:26:08 ◼ ► things. But yeah, I'd say having screen time available. I'm not surprised by much of anything,
00:26:16 ◼ ► but seeing this stuff on the Mac and being like, "Oh, this is a thing that I couldn't do on the
00:26:21 ◼ ► Mac up until now." You can probably answer this question for me then. Does screen time on the Mac
00:26:26 ◼ ► count information from non-App Store apps? I don't know. Okay. Because screen time was basically
00:26:36 ◼ ► useless when I only have a device on a beta. Right. Okay. Yeah, I understand that. That makes
00:26:41 ◼ ► sense. I hope that it does. Remember last summer, screen time really didn't work until basically the
00:26:45 ◼ ► end of the summer when we got everything on. Are you using the App Store version of BB Edit or not?
00:26:50 ◼ ► I'm not. Right. Well, then it's in your screenshot, so it is counting that. That's good.
00:26:54 ◼ ► There you go. BB Edit was the question because when I saw it in your screenshot in your article
00:26:58 ◼ ► on six colors, I was like, "Ooh." Because I expected you were probably not using the App
00:27:03 ◼ ► Store version because that's what I really wanted. Because for me, if screen time is only picking up
00:27:16 ◼ ► I agree with you. It would have been silly, but I didn't want to think one way or the other until
00:27:21 ◼ ► I knew. And I guess there's like, what are some of the things that you do like the most? So not
00:27:27 ◼ ► necessarily what surprised you, but like it's basically worked out being what you wanted. Like,
00:27:41 ◼ ► Yeah, it is much better than having it in the sidebar. That's a catalyst app that actually
00:27:50 ◼ ► is fine. It does what I need it to do, and that's very clever. The biggest feature of it is going to
00:27:57 ◼ ► be that finding a device that's not on a network by spotting it through other Apple devices,
00:28:04 ◼ ► which is this very weird feature that requires a lot of security stuff so that it's not an invasion
00:28:09 ◼ ► of privacy that Apple has built. This is going to be one of those features that nobody thinks
00:28:13 ◼ ► about until they need it. And then they will tell all of their friends about how happy they were,
00:28:17 ◼ ► that they got their iPhone from the back of that taxi, right? Like this is going to be one of those
00:28:22 ◼ ► things that we don't necessarily feel the effects of for a while. And then there'll be all these
00:28:26 ◼ ► stories, right? Or like you'll hear from a friend of yours or like someone will say, "Oh, I lost my
00:28:30 ◼ ► laptop." Like, you'll be like, "Oh, well, I can tell you how you can find it." Right? Like, I think
00:28:34 ◼ ► it's going to be one of those real feel-good things, but it will take a while for people to
00:28:38 ◼ ► feel the effects of it. So the iPhone in the taxi is not a great example because it's on a network
00:28:46 ◼ ► and, you know, right? It's on a network and it's, uh, and it knows where it is. Although,
00:28:54 ◼ ► uh, I will say that if you get the, uh, you know, it's, it's a device that's not on a network is the
00:28:59 ◼ ► problem and doesn't know where it is. Um, and those devices will now be able to send out their
00:29:03 ◼ ► little Bluetooth beacon and, um, other devices just need to be nearby. And those devices are
00:29:09 ◼ ► on the network and know where they are and they see it. And then therefore, you know where your
00:29:13 ◼ ► device is. And so it's going to be lost laptops and iPads. I think more than anything else. Yeah.
00:29:20 ◼ ► Um, but what about as the photos guy? I'm sure you have you actually spent time with your real
00:29:25 ◼ ► photos in the new photos app? Oh yeah, I have. I have. Um, it's, uh, again, it's a lot of the
00:29:32 ◼ ► details that I have to dive into. And I spent this time, I had to look at everything in Catalina. So
00:29:38 ◼ ► I'm impressed with Apple's continued efforts to use machine learning technology to unearth photos
00:29:44 ◼ ► in giant photo libraries because they've clearly decided, and I think they're right and Google has
00:29:49 ◼ ► done the same thing that everybody's photo libraries are huge and they're disorganized,
00:29:54 ◼ ► not organized. And that's the thing that machine learning is. It should be really good at is
00:29:58 ◼ ► recognizing events, recognizing people, recognizing content, and then floating things up to the top.
00:30:03 ◼ ► So it's a much more attractive interface. I would say, uh, these big, you know, big pictures,
00:30:09 ◼ ► it's dropping duplicates. It's trying to drop stuff that it doesn't think is relevant. You can
00:30:13 ◼ ► show them if you want, but they're dropped by default and the default views. If you look at a
00:30:17 ◼ ► year, it's going to show you stuff that happened around this time in every year. So it's sort of
00:30:21 ◼ ► anniversaries of things. Um, it will float and autoplay, uh, without sound, I believe video and,
00:30:29 ◼ ► uh, that you take as well. So that some of them are, it's kind of delightful. And I've got a
00:30:33 ◼ ► screenshot in my review about it. Uh, you know, kind of delightful. These, uh, little, little, uh,
00:30:39 ◼ ► you know, there's like a dance thing that my daughter did and you can see her, you know,
00:30:43 ◼ ► dancing in this little square and they use machine learning to do things like find the faces and the
00:30:48 ◼ ► prominent objects in photos and crop appropriately so that it actually like looks good. This preview
00:30:55 ◼ ► looks good and it's not just sort of like the weird middle of a photo. So, um, I'm encouraged
00:31:01 ◼ ► by it, but you know, again, I need to spend a lot more time with it and see what the downsides of
00:31:06 ◼ ► this are. Uh, it is a totally new yet again, a new photos interface. It's really sort of like the
00:31:11 ◼ ► second makeover they've given it in the last few years. Is there anything else that feature wise
00:31:16 ◼ ► that you're, that you're excited about before we talk about catalyst? So security is something that
00:31:22 ◼ ► I'm actually excited about that Apple keeps, Apple is trying to find a way and we've talked about
00:31:26 ◼ ► this before. Apple is trying to find a way to let the Mac be open while also being secure. And so
00:31:33 ◼ ► what it's doing is it's a few things. It's doing a bunch of sort of like app checking changes that
00:31:39 ◼ ► by default are going on, like the gatekeeper that used to check when you launched an app for the
00:31:46 ◼ ► first time. Uh, it now checks periodically, not just the first time. Um, it is looking for a thing
00:31:54 ◼ ► called a notarized app. Oh, I remember this. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's gonna, you basically,
00:32:01 ◼ ► you're supposed to sign your app with Apple. Um, and Apple doesn't have a approval there,
00:32:06 ◼ ► but you sign it and what it, Apple does a basic scan of it. Basically the cryptographic signature
00:32:11 ◼ ► means if that app gets tampered with, you remember when like, um, transmission, the BitTorrent client
00:32:17 ◼ ► got, uh, altered so that there was spyware inside it on the download. That would be something that
00:32:23 ◼ ► would fail if it was signed because the signature check would fail. Right. It has been modified
00:32:31 ◼ ► after that. Okay. Is this something that allows Apple to, can they turn off an app from their
00:32:36 ◼ ► side? Yes. It means they can turn off an app and not just a developer, which is currently what they
00:32:40 ◼ ► do. So they could, if there was an app that got out, that was bad, the developer could alert Apple
00:32:45 ◼ ► or Apple could, could notice it and, and kill that app. And it would just, it would just die and it
00:32:50 ◼ ► wouldn't run anymore. So they're doing a bunch of stuff like that. And again, it's stuff that's
00:32:54 ◼ ► happening with the default and you can turn it off. And Apple has said, um, in a few places,
00:33:00 ◼ ► you know, their intention is not for you to not be able to run a piece of software you want to run,
00:33:05 ◼ ► but you may need to turn off security features to do it in the end, which I'm okay with that,
00:33:09 ◼ ► that, uh, that handoff. Um, so there, there are those security features. They separated the system
00:33:14 ◼ ► volume into this read only partition that mounts not on your desktop, um, but in the system folder,
00:33:23 ◼ ► uh, system slash system slash volumes. And then there's a hard drive in there. It's weird. Uh,
00:33:28 ◼ ► and it's read only. And the idea there again is that weird files don't get inserted into the
00:33:34 ◼ ► system stuff because that is a security problem. So there's a bunch of stuff like that. Um,
00:33:40 ◼ ► and then another thing that I think is interesting is that some from like a user stability standpoint,
00:33:47 ◼ ► there's this snapshot feature now where once you're on Catalina, let's say that they roll out
00:33:53 ◼ ► 10 15 one and it breaks something in your system. The way that Apple has got it set up. Now you can
00:33:59 ◼ ► boot into recovery and you can go back to your snapshot that it took before you ran the update.
00:34:05 ◼ ► It's very windowsy. It's a great feature, but it reminds me of like, cause Myke, like windows has
00:34:10 ◼ ► had this feature for a long time, right? That like you do something and just bone your system
00:34:15 ◼ ► and then you can go back and fix it again. The reason I love though is because it's funny for
00:34:21 ◼ ► me to think cause Apple's had this problem, right? Where like they put out a software update,
00:34:26 ◼ ► things go wrong. This now allows users to fix those problems on their own side, right? Where
00:34:33 ◼ ► you can be like, take me back to before that time, which I think that's good. I think it's a good
00:34:38 ◼ ► thing to have. Yeah, I think so. Uh, it is, I, what I find most interesting about is that it
00:34:47 ◼ ► suggests that Apple is planning perhaps to use this technology for something more like a time machine
00:34:54 ◼ ► thing, but this is a, you know, a full on snapshot that's happening and APFS has that feature. So,
00:35:00 ◼ ► you know, it is, it is good to have it, but it's a very specific instance where you have a regret.
00:35:06 ◼ ► I think it would be interesting if you could do this as a, certainly as a local snapshot feature
00:35:11 ◼ ► to have the ability, if something bad happened on your system to roll it back to an arbitrary time,
00:35:16 ◼ ► like think of a time machine for local content only, uh, separate from the time machine that
00:35:23 ◼ ► you're doing to an external drive. I think where time machine goes from here is a broader discussion
00:35:27 ◼ ► because they haven't updated in a while, even though they put these features in and, you know,
00:35:31 ◼ ► you could assume that a better time machine is coming. But I also wonder sometimes about
00:35:41 ◼ ► but at the same time they do it for iOS. I don't know. Um, I want to ask you actually about,
00:35:56 ◼ ► like what did you duct tape, uh, SSD to the back of a laptop? Uh, yeah. How did that go for you?
00:36:09 ◼ ► booting off of the SD onto my iMac pro and it was a warm day and I wanted to go outside.
00:36:14 ◼ ► And so I took my wife's Mac book air and shut it down and booted from the external. And after a
00:36:22 ◼ ► software update and turning off security feature, not allowing external boot drives, I had to do a
00:36:29 ◼ ► bunch of that stuff. I got it to boot and then I was like, uh, going to carry it around. And I
00:36:33 ◼ ► thought, I'm not carrying this around. It's got the system folder on it. I'm just gonna,
00:36:37 ◼ ► I'm going to pop it right out and it's gonna, it's gonna crash and it's gonna be bad. And
00:36:44 ◼ ► tape it on and I couldn't find any painters tape, couldn't find any masking tape, couldn't find any
00:36:48 ◼ ► gaffers tape. Uh, but I had, uh, some, some duct tape and I thought, well, at least this will be
00:36:53 ◼ ► funny. And it was so sorry. It was just for during the day. And by the time Lauren got back from work,
00:37:00 ◼ ► I had already untaped it and wiped off all of the sticky stuff. And it was as if it had never
00:37:06 ◼ ► happened. Um, before we talk about catalyst, I want to talk about the music app because I think
00:37:15 ◼ ► in contrary to a lot of the things that I have seen, you seem to be very unhappy with the music
00:37:21 ◼ ► app where most people that I've spoken to about it say that it is great. And I want to get into
00:37:28 ◼ ► that a little bit because there was always this question we asked, uh, Marco asked it on ATP as
00:37:34 ◼ ► well of like talking about the breakup of iTunes. Could it be one of those situations where you
00:37:39 ◼ ► don't know what you got till it's gone and you seem to be pretty upset with the music app, right?
00:37:43 ◼ ► Well, so the music app is iTunes, but they have definitely redesigned the music and the Apple TV
00:37:50 ◼ ► app to look like more like iOS apps. And, and I think, uh, so the podcast app is a catalyst app,
00:37:58 ◼ ► but what they've done is they've tried to unify the design and they have taken design hints from
00:38:02 ◼ ► iOS. So this is one of those cases where it's a, you know, so much fear was, uh, focused on the
00:38:11 ◼ ► fact that catalyst apps were going to come to the Mac and not be Mac like, and not enough fear was
00:38:17 ◼ ► maybe focused on what if Apple just decides that even apps that have been on the Mac for more than
00:38:24 ◼ ► a decade should look more like their iOS counterparts regardless of the origin of them.
00:38:29 ◼ ► And that's really what happened with, uh, with iTunes when they turned it into the music and
00:38:33 ◼ ► the TV app is that they ripped some features out that I use every day, which is a bummer.
00:38:38 ◼ ► And they make some made some interface decisions that I think make sense on iOS and don't make
00:38:43 ◼ ► sense on the Mac. So I'm not impressed with it. I mean, it's fine. It still plays my music library.
00:38:51 ◼ ► It still plays my Apple music stuff, which is not surprising. You know, it's, it still does most of
00:38:56 ◼ ► what it did before, but you know, I had a, I use column view, which used to be the default on
00:39:03 ◼ ► iTunes back in the day so that I could very quickly jump to an artist and then filter through their
00:39:08 ◼ ► albums and maybe pick a couple albums and shuffle through them. And that you just can't do that
00:39:13 ◼ ► without column view. Um, and, uh, the music app, like the music app on iOS doesn't have this
00:39:20 ◼ ► concept. So they, they, they made the column view disappear completely. It was already hidden by
00:39:25 ◼ ► default, but you could make it visible and now it's just gone. And that was a major way that I
00:39:29 ◼ ► listened to music from my library. You know, in terms of picking out an album or a couple albums
00:39:34 ◼ ► to listen to, they have an album view, although it's funny by default, you search the album view
00:39:39 ◼ ► by finding an artist, not an album. That's kind of silly, isn't it? And then you have to scroll
00:39:46 ◼ ► through all the albums to find the album you want. And then you can play an album. Oh boy, I remember
00:39:50 ◼ ► column view. I was like, I couldn't visualize it, but now I found it. It's the like genres, artists,
00:39:55 ◼ ► albums at the top of the window. And then you can click them to filter, which I admit is a kind of
00:40:01 ◼ ► an old view, but I used it all the time. I listened on my Mac to iTunes music every day. And I use the
00:40:07 ◼ ► column view all the time when I want to listen to exactly what I want to. And the problem is like,
00:40:13 ◼ ► you can kind of approximate this by going in the album view and going to an artist and then
00:40:17 ◼ ► picking the albums you want to listen to and then add them to UpNext. But UpNext has weird rules
00:40:21 ◼ ► where like a shuffle happens within the thing that you are playing now and you add things to it.
00:40:27 ◼ ► And depending on how you add things to it, they don't get shuffled. They just get pushed off to
00:40:31 ◼ ► later. So there's a lot of weird things where it takes more steps and it doesn't quite do what I
00:40:36 ◼ ► actually want it to do. So I don't know. It's just one of those things that I'm not surprised they
00:40:41 ◼ ► took it away, but it's a feature that I used and this makes this app less functional. They're
00:40:46 ◼ ► basically trying to make it more like the iOS app by removing features. The one that from a
00:41:05 ◼ ► just like it is on the iPad. You tap the lyrics button and the lyrics slide out into the window,
00:41:14 ◼ ► covering the content of the window, which is completely logical when you're using a single
00:41:19 ◼ ► window interface like an iPad. But on the Mac, it's sort of like, why did you do that? Why have
00:41:25 ◼ ► you covered up my content with your list? I have an enormous... Can you make the window larger?
00:41:30 ◼ ► Yes. And then it still slides in. Oh, that's... It doesn't slide out. It's like a drawer that only
00:41:36 ◼ ► slides in because on an iPad, where would it go if it slid out? It's like a question of like,
00:41:40 ◼ ► what's outside the universe? It's not possible. What happened before time? How much time was there?
00:41:46 ◼ ► There wasn't time, right? It's a big picture question. If you've got a full-screen iPad app
00:41:50 ◼ ► and then a drawer slides out, where does it go? It can't... There's nothing out there. But on the
00:41:56 ◼ ► Mac, it's a window. It's floating in space. You could just stick that content out there. Or what
00:42:01 ◼ ► they did in iTunes is they had a little popover and you could dismiss it and all that. It's not a
00:42:06 ◼ ► huge thing, but I looked at it and I was like, this is an iOS design decision that's being brought to
00:42:11 ◼ ► the Mac. And I'm not sure I like it just because the context of the Mac does not require that kind
00:42:17 ◼ ► of a compromise. But yeah, there it is. One of the things that I find interesting about
00:42:21 ◼ ► these decisions is this is a Mac app. That's what I find so interesting about it is like,
00:42:28 ◼ ► I get it if a catalyst app does this. There's a logic to it. They want them to be consistent.
00:42:34 ◼ ► It doesn't matter. And this is the truth is it doesn't matter how it's built. It doesn't matter
00:42:39 ◼ ► how it's built. It matters what they want it to look like and how they want it to behave. And
00:42:44 ◼ ► Apple is saying, we want... We were all like, oh, it turns out it is iTunes. We're saved.
00:42:53 ◼ ► They remade iTunes to look like the music app from iOS. It may not be, but we're going to make
00:43:01 ◼ ► design decisions that are iOS design decisions on the Mac. And that's just how it's going to be.
00:43:06 ◼ ► And I do think that this is Apple saying, essentially, we think we're going to redefine
00:43:13 ◼ ► what a Mac app is like. And the answer is it's like an iPad app. I mean, like that was everybody's,
00:43:17 ◼ ► you know, not everybody, but that was a fear was that the Mac was going to inherit kind of like
00:43:22 ◼ ► design decisions that were made in a different context. And this is a good example of exactly
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00:44:30 ◼ ► astropad.com right now. Go there right now and check it out. Our thanks to AstroPad Studio for
00:44:35 ◼ ► their support of Upgrade and all of Relay FM. So let's talk about Catalyst. So Catalyst,
00:44:44 ◼ ► previously Project Sneak Peek, previously Mazapan. This is the project in Catalina of allowing for
00:44:52 ◼ ► iPad apps or apps that were developed with the iPad in mind to run on the Mac. So there are some
00:45:00 ◼ ► examples from Apple. There are new ones and there are old ones. Has anything happened to the old
00:45:16 ◼ ► it doesn't look like it but my understanding is that behind the scenes Apple is trying to take
00:45:23 ◼ ► them and I'm unclear on whether this is in the current betas or if it's happening this summer.
00:45:29 ◼ ► But what happened with those apps last time is they're basically hand built for this thing that
00:45:40 ◼ ► Catalyst framework. So in theory this is all like these have now been built using the current tools
00:45:49 ◼ ► instead of the kind of hacks that they had to do last time. So they've been updated in the sense
00:45:56 ◼ ► that they apparently are using the modern Catalyst system to build them now instead of whatever they
00:46:01 ◼ ► had to do to get them to run last year. However, when you look at them they don't look any
00:46:05 ◼ ► different and in fact in some places they've regressed like there was an open Safari item.
00:46:10 ◼ ► I was, will be on the talk show with Jon Gruber. We recorded it late last week. It's not out yet as
00:46:17 ◼ ► we record this but probably soon so if you want to hear another two and a half hours of me talking
00:46:22 ◼ ► watch for that. But Jon pointed out that there's a file menu item called open in Safari that got
00:46:28 ◼ ► added to the news app and in Catalina beta it's gone. So it's like weird did they go back to an
00:46:34 ◼ ► older version of the code and then are they going to push it forward? It's kind of unclear. The one
00:46:38 ◼ ► I go to immediately is the automations tab in a home app to look and see if the date picker has
00:46:44 ◼ ► changed from the little spinny thing that is from iOS and at least as of this beta the answer is no.
00:46:51 ◼ ► Which I don't know. It's frustrating to me that Apple has apparently just slept on these apps and
00:47:00 ◼ ► that spinning wheel for date picker and time picker it's really bad. Like find, it was very
00:47:08 ◼ ► clear a year ago it was really bad. Find an alternative to make it a better Mac app and they
00:47:14 ◼ ► apparently at least as of now have not done that. So we'll see. You know again I can say just like
00:47:19 ◼ ► I did last year I hope they fix this by the end of the summer but we're here a year later and they
00:47:23 ◼ ► haven't done it. So it's unfortunate that there was a time when we expected that the Apple apps
00:47:29 ◼ ► on the platform would be the exemplars of the platform and I don't think they are. I, you know,
00:47:36 ◼ ► my gut feeling is that these old ones anyway are just kind of weird and not very good. The new ones
00:47:43 ◼ ► are better and show a lot of potential to be better but I'm disappointed that Apple hasn't
00:47:48 ◼ ► gone back and brushed up the old ones because like news for example and home and I'm sure all of them
00:47:55 ◼ ► could use a little bit of love to make them a little more Mac appropriate than they are.
00:48:00 ◼ ► Will Barron Before we move away completely from talking about the older apps, the sneak peek apps,
00:48:06 ◼ ► there was a CNET report claiming that Craig Federighi had told them that the older apps
00:48:11 ◼ ► would be improved and they used some quotes of things that I have heard Craig Federighi
00:48:16 ◼ ► mention in other places like in his interview of Federighi calling app stories and in the
00:48:22 ◼ ► episode of the talk show where they were kind of talking about, and I'll read this quote actually,
00:48:28 ◼ ► that we've looked at the design and features of some of those apps, the older apps and said
00:48:32 ◼ ► we can make this a bit more of a Mac experience through changes that are independent of the use
00:48:35 ◼ ► of catalyst but are just design team decisions and he kind of was saying that like oh you know
00:48:40 ◼ ► it wasn't the underlying frameworks of why they work that way or why they maybe seem weird but
00:48:44 ◼ ► they were design decisions but then the CNET article also has a quote saying well they said
00:48:49 ◼ ► have a quote saying wait for the public beta we're still tuning everything up that's where it gets
00:48:53 ◼ ► really good. Now from your perspective you've been using the public beta and you're still unhappy but
00:48:59 ◼ ► have seen changes. Well I'll be clear I'm using beta 2 but that's my understanding is that's the
00:49:04 ◼ ► public beta. Okay so that's what you've been told though right? Like yeah that's what I've been told
00:49:08 ◼ ► and I also can say my impression is that CNET maybe took these statements that were also largely
00:49:15 ◼ ► what Craig said on stage to John Gruber and interpreted them more than is there. Yep. It's
00:49:20 ◼ ► my understanding is that this is really this is really is it better is it worse it does feel a
00:49:25 ◼ ► little bit like Craig Federighi is kind of throwing the design team under the bus. I was a little
00:49:29 ◼ ► uncomfortable with the way that he was talking about that. Yeah he's kind of saying hey those
00:49:33 ◼ ► things because he's bragging on catalyst and on his engineers for catalyst and saying you know
00:49:38 ◼ ► those things that you point to in those apps and say they're not Mac like those aren't faults with
00:49:43 ◼ ► catalyst those are just terrible design decisions. Yeah it kind of felt a little bit like he was
00:49:48 ◼ ► bringing an internal debate out into public right which was super weird because like all right let's
00:49:53 ◼ ► just imagine that it is nothing to do with the underlying framework but was just design decisions
00:49:59 ◼ ► all right but like find a different way to say that to everybody else like it was very strange
00:50:05 ◼ ► it was very very strange to hear but it is just interesting that like they didn't there is a line
00:50:12 ◼ ► coming from someone inside of Apple which is saying that like all this stuff can be changed
00:50:22 ◼ ► Trout and Smith has found examples and has been tweeting about these of both messages and
00:50:27 ◼ ► shortcuts having catalyst versions and he has found this stuff in the beta of Catalina so the
00:50:35 ◼ ► current beta the developer beta that's available Steve has found evidence and has been able to get
00:50:41 ◼ ► something to run on his local system which is messages written with the catalyst framework
00:50:50 ◼ ► this seems very weird right like why is this in there to a point where it can be launched but is
00:50:59 ◼ ► not something that Apple seems to be shipping or have spoken about yet the frameworks are in there
00:51:10 ◼ ► necessarily mean they may be needed in other places or it may be that they were intending
00:51:14 ◼ ► on building those apps but they aren't ready to build them yet but the pieces are in there
00:51:18 ◼ ► it's unclear I would be surprised if shortcuts gets added as an app midstream in the Catalina
00:51:30 ◼ ► right like but messages is a bigger one though right messages is but my understanding is what
00:51:35 ◼ ► they're doing is they're embedding parts of messages via catalyst in the messages app the
00:51:40 ◼ ► messages app is a hybrid app basically where there are some new things in it that are coming from
00:51:44 ◼ ► catalyst plus they're keeping the existing code base so you know I don't know I think it's
00:51:51 ◼ ► interesting that they're doing that but I think that that is more just a curiosity and that what
00:51:55 ◼ ► they told this is what they intend to ship so all this other stuff is a sign that this is stuff
00:52:00 ◼ ► that's maybe floating around but is not intended to ship that's that's what it looks like for me
00:52:04 ◼ ► but I will I guess I'll kind of I want to get your view on it do you think that Apple is going
00:52:12 ◼ ► to ship a lot of catalyst apps or are they now maybe putting their focus on SwiftUI instead
00:52:17 ◼ ► uh you know catalyst is a vitally important bridging technology for Apple because it allows
00:52:26 ◼ ► their entire base of iOS developers to reach Mac OS and allows Mac OS to get an influx of
00:52:34 ◼ ► stuff from iOS it means that all those developers who built up the skill of developing on iOS
00:52:42 ◼ ► apps over the years can now write software for the the Macs that they use every day to write that
00:52:46 ◼ ► software I think it's going to be I think it's going to be really good for that I think that
00:52:51 ◼ ► there's going to be iOS code around for a long time this you know UI kit code around for a very
00:53:02 ◼ ► SwiftUI and Swift in general is the future like this is where as you know we heard Josh and Wylie
00:53:11 ◼ ► talk about what last week there are two weeks ago two weeks ago this is the future this is Apple
00:53:20 ◼ ► thinks that this is like how apps are going to be built going forward for you know decade plus
00:53:24 ◼ ► but catalyst has to be good enough to be parked somewhere and I'm not sure it is yet we'll see
00:53:33 ◼ ► how this fall goes but like catalyst is important because Apple wants people to be able to use their
00:53:39 ◼ ► UI kit code across their platforms and then starting now start building things that they can
00:53:46 ◼ ► use SwiftUI to build but if catalyst doesn't work right it's not one of these things where it's like
00:53:51 ◼ ► well we'll abandon catalyst and go to SwiftUI because the whole point is that the the the UI
00:53:57 ◼ ► kit stuff should be portable and come along with for compatibility reasons so what's the priority
00:54:02 ◼ ► who knows how Apple prioritizes things I would think that they're both important right now
00:54:10 ◼ ► but that one of them will become less important over time and the other will become more important
00:54:16 ◼ ► over time and you know SwiftUI will be more important over time but catalyst you know I
00:54:23 ◼ ► think catalyst has more work to be done because they need to be able to make that stuff unless
00:54:29 ◼ ► it's unless it's complete it's it's too important to be able to get that stuff to work everywhere
00:54:35 ◼ ► but it's also just a it's important to view it at this point as a transitional thing it's meant
00:54:40 ◼ ► to provide that compatibility. So what about the new apps then so podcasts you kind of already
00:54:46 ◼ ► mentioned find my but do they feel better than the old apps in a significant way? They do they're
00:54:53 ◼ ► better I think again I'm not sure that these are the platform exemplars I would be I would be
00:54:58 ◼ ► I wonder if we're gonna see you know I'd almost bet that we'll see better Mac apps from third
00:55:04 ◼ ► parties. I feel like it is a little bit not unfair is not the right word but we are not getting the
00:55:11 ◼ ► full picture of what this technology will enable because Apple isn't shipping a lot of their own
00:55:17 ◼ ► apps but I get kind of getting more of the feeling that it's not really for them it's for third
00:55:23 ◼ ► parties to do it right and there is a problem in talking about catalyst now because we haven't seen
00:55:30 ◼ ► the other shoe has not dropped and it's a big shoe. This is why it's important for Apple to build
00:55:37 ◼ ► apps that are platform exemplars right? No I agree with that like I 100% agree with that but they
00:55:42 ◼ ► haven't really haven't yes yeah yeah so that doesn't mean it can't be done they just haven't
00:55:49 ◼ ► done it. I want to put in the show notes as well a great article that John Voorhees wrote
00:55:54 ◼ ► Mac stories today kind of trying to because there seems to be like a lot of the general discussion
00:56:05 ◼ ► this point in the episode talking about the bad stuff but there is a lot of promise but
00:56:24 ◼ ► retweeting from people who are saying here I'm working on this thing and here's what it looks
00:56:27 ◼ ► like now and we'll have to be the judge of that in the end but it is I think there's a lot of
00:56:33 ◼ ► potential there but in the end does it come off I don't think we can judge it as a success or a
00:56:38 ◼ ► failure yet based on all this you know like the podcast app is fine like it's great and I
00:56:47 ◼ ► I realize that that is sort of damning with faint praise but like after Mojave it's praise like the
00:56:53 ◼ ► podcast apps a real app and it works it's got bugs but I fully expect those bugs to be fixed
00:56:58 ◼ ► they are funny bugs like you click on a list and then you click on another item in the list they
00:57:03 ◼ ► just all select the each item you click on selects it doesn't like move your selection you can't do
00:57:08 ◼ ► things like if you select multiple items and you hit delete or command delete it doesn't do
00:57:13 ◼ ► anything you have to delete things by clicking on a little little circle and choosing delete item
00:57:18 ◼ ► one at a time which again is an iOS interface thing that one they better fix that but that's
00:57:25 ◼ ► a problem that's not just limited to the podcast app there are other apps that are like that too
00:57:30 ◼ ► in fact the podcast app I think lets you let you control click or right click on an item and you
00:57:39 ◼ ► get that same contextual menu that's in the little disk with the three dots whereas the photos app
00:57:45 ◼ ► I believe only has the little three dot thing and if you if you control click or right click
00:57:50 ◼ ► it does nothing which is very not Mac like although I have to ask what's Apple's plan here is Apple's
00:57:56 ◼ ► plan here that alternate clicks because I could see both arguments one argument is on Macs you
00:58:02 ◼ ► have this alternate clicking interface that you don't have on iOS so on Macs you have to
00:58:09 ◼ ► make all the menus of alternate things visible or untappable otherwise you can't ever discover them
00:58:14 ◼ ► you could argue that it's also bad to discover them on the Mac so maybe maybe they should do
00:58:24 ◼ ► Apple knows what the what they want this to be like if the if the truth is contextual menus
00:58:29 ◼ ► by via control click are just too hard Apple judges for regular people to understand then
00:58:35 ◼ ► that little lozenge that provides a contextual menu should start showing up everywhere but
00:58:43 ◼ ► I don't know that it's not everywhere and you're still control clicking in some places but not in
00:58:48 ◼ ► other places and it's just it's it's it's not surprising since we're going through this
00:58:53 ◼ ► transition because I think Apple is still figuring out where they want to take it and they're not
00:59:10 ◼ ► Where you're tapping and holding right which is similar to what you could say with a click and
00:59:15 ◼ ► hold or a or a two finger click on a trackpad on the Mac so what does that mean in terms of how
00:59:22 ◼ ► Apple views discoverability of things that are basically invisible until you do a special gesture
00:59:26 ◼ ► I don't know I I'm not seeing a lot of consistency I guess is what I'm saying but but to wind it back
00:59:33 ◼ ► the podcast app is is is fine and its functionality that is fairly complex and that wasn't on the Mac
00:59:41 ◼ ► before because the iTunes version of podcast was really the thing they built in 2005 and it is not
00:59:48 ◼ ► good and the the new podcast app is better and find my is a perfectly nice app but you still have
00:59:53 ◼ ► you know again these are simple apps too and it's funny that Apple doesn't seem to have succeeded
01:00:01 ◼ ► maybe they attempted they don't seem to have succeeded in rolling out a complex system app
01:00:07 ◼ ► that uses catalyst. It is worth noting that as of right now I'm recording the public bet is of iOS
01:00:15 ◼ ► 13 and iPadOS have also been released but Jason had pre-knowledge of Mac OS right yes I was able
01:00:26 ◼ ► to spend so much time talking about it today exactly I assume I assume that they would probably
01:00:31 ◼ ► drop them all at once although it does seem awfully early for these versions to be there but
01:00:38 ◼ ► so talking about public beta is actually in general they're a better thing to install than
01:00:47 ◼ ► developer betas and a lot of people will put the iPad stuff on because they're excited about it
01:00:52 ◼ ► should anybody be installing the Catalina public beta like why would you want to do this?
01:00:57 ◼ ► I think not yep I think you need to be a developer who like if you want to build a catalyst app you
01:01:08 ◼ ► need to be basically running it in Catalina I think if you're somebody like me who's writing
01:01:13 ◼ ► about it you need to be there even I am not in there with my primary system I'm in there with an
01:01:18 ◼ ► external if you want to play around that's a good way to do it is create a partition or put it on an
01:01:23 ◼ ► external drive but it's beta software it's buggy it's weird it's you know it's okay it didn't
01:01:30 ◼ ► destroy anything but it's also beta software and it's weird and I would wait and let it shake out
01:01:36 ◼ ► if you can possibly wait the nice thing about the Mac is that you can put it on an external
01:01:39 ◼ ► and boot into it which obviously on an iOS device you're stuck once you're there more or less so
01:01:48 ◼ ► I think it's more likely you could do it you want to play around with the new stuff and then reboot
01:01:52 ◼ ► into your safe comfortable home in Mojave. Oh I should also mention I speaking of installing being
01:01:59 ◼ ► why it's a bad idea to install betas on your iOS devices I did that this is this is actually kind
01:02:06 ◼ ► of follow out to connected last week which you weren't on but David Sparks filled in for you
01:02:11 ◼ ► and David and Federico spent a lot of time talking about iOS while Steven did I don't know accounting
01:02:18 ◼ ► and what I wanted to say about it is that Federico talked about the the iOS beta and said well I
01:02:26 ◼ ► installed it and it's pretty it's pretty good on my iPad on the iPhone it's bad but it's pretty good
01:02:31 ◼ ► on my iPad but I but he has to write and then and then and I'm like oh this sounds pretty good maybe
01:02:36 ◼ ► I should do it and then he said but you shouldn't do it he says to the listeners you shouldn't do it
01:02:40 ◼ ► because it's a beta and it's unstable and it has weird things in it and you shouldn't do it he has
01:02:46 ◼ ► had some horrific iCloud problems yeah yeah so I thought to myself okay all right Federico you're
01:02:52 ◼ ► right you're right I won't I won't install it and then he said unless you're writing about this for
01:02:56 ◼ ► a living in which case you should install it and I went oh okay all right Federico yes yes I will
01:03:01 ◼ ► install it and then I came home and I installed it on my main iPad so my main iPad is now running
01:03:04 ◼ ► the iOS 13 beta it's the only cyst primary device that I have that I'm I'm putting on there but
01:03:13 ◼ ► Federico's right like I'm gonna write about it and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do it on my phone
01:03:18 ◼ ► because I just don't see the need to do that but on my iPad I I think it's been worth it because
01:03:23 ◼ ► once you're on the thing that you actually live with you learn a lot more and I learned a lot more
01:03:27 ◼ ► in the first 24 hours than I had in the previous two weeks because I was actually living with it
01:03:31 ◼ ► that said face ID is unreliable the shortcuts widget doesn't work right like I mean there's
01:03:37 ◼ ► all sorts of things that don't work right because it's a beta of course they don't work right I'm
01:03:42 ◼ ► not holding anybody responsible except myself but it is one of those things that now I'm in the
01:03:47 ◼ ► position to say what Federico said which is unless this is your job to write software for this or
01:03:53 ◼ ► to write about this don't do it it's just not don't do it yet it'll be there it'll be much better
01:03:59 ◼ ► later this summer I really want to do it though I haven't done it I haven't got the bait I haven't
01:04:04 ◼ ► got any betas on any it's your job to talk about it Myke you can totally do it if you want to yeah
01:04:08 ◼ ► I just don't got also you've got multiple iPads you've got multiple iPads so you could pick us at
01:04:12 ◼ ► a sacrificial iPad I just haven't been able to decide which one I want to sacrifice that's hard
01:04:18 ◼ ► that's a real Sophie's choice there for you because I have the one that I use the most or I have the
01:04:23 ◼ ► one that I use when I travel and neither of those feels like the right one to do it on right because
01:04:30 ◼ ► you know you don't want to have problems when you're traveling because it's true if you have
01:04:36 ◼ ► something catastrophic it's difficult to fix it but then if it's bad I'm going to be putting on
01:04:40 ◼ ► the one that I use every day so I just haven't been able to decide I was think I was kind of
01:04:45 ◼ ► waiting for beta 3 for developer beta 3 and I do tend to prefer the developer beta to the
01:04:51 ◼ ► public beta myself because the developer beta tends to have more fixes in it but it's also
01:04:56 ◼ ► probably more unstable but as of right now I mean we don't know what what the public beta is we're
01:05:03 ◼ ► I guess you'd assume it's beta 2 right developer beta 2 so I think so I mean they had me review
01:05:09 ◼ ► straight from the developer second developer beta they didn't have me download something else so my
01:05:13 ◼ ► guess is that it's either that build or it's close to that build it seems it just seems premature I
01:05:20 ◼ ► honestly I'm surprised when they said July I really thought that they were going to take it
01:05:24 ◼ ► uh take it a little bit slower with the public betas and here we are uh June 24th it is weird
01:05:31 ◼ ► so why did they do this like why is it today they said July why have they done it on June 24th
01:05:47 ◼ ► at least a week earlier than they said they would that just seems very peculiar to me it's a
01:05:52 ◼ ► you know we talk about things that an apple like apple delivering something before they said they
01:05:57 ◼ ► would I mean I expected the developer bait would come out on like July 29th right because they said
01:06:04 ◼ ► July so they've given themselves the entire month I assumed it would be early in July but that they
01:06:09 ◼ ► were going to push it off a little bit and they were going to give themselves some breathing room
01:06:13 ◼ ► and then it turns out they didn't give themselves any it's like it's like the kind of promise you
01:06:17 ◼ ► make to yourself we're like oh this time I'm not going to eat that ice cream I'm going to leave it
01:06:22 ◼ ► there I'm only going to eat half that ice cream and then you eat the ice cream right it's like
01:06:26 ◼ ► the policy decision and then there's the it's like a new year's resolution oh no no no no no we're
01:06:30 ◼ ► gonna wait we're gonna wait this year we're gonna be patient this year and then they're not patient
01:06:34 ◼ ► that seems to be what happened the answer the thing that Shoshara said in the chat I hope is
01:06:38 ◼ ► the reason is that the earlier they release it the more time they had to fix things that is the
01:06:42 ◼ ► logical thing right my guess is that they structured this that they did they did a build back in
01:06:48 ◼ ► probably May that was the developer conference build and that their next targeted build was
01:06:56 ◼ ► a public beta candidate and they've been running that public beta candidate internally and it
01:07:02 ◼ ► looked pretty good remember at WWDC we heard from a bunch of people who said oh this beta is a is a
01:07:07 ◼ ► disaster wait for the next one the next one is good so they even at WWDC I think people were
01:07:14 ◼ ► using a beta that they felt was in much better shape that might be these betas and then they
01:07:18 ◼ ► rolled them out to developers last week and it seems to have gone well so that's my guess
01:07:25 ◼ ► is that they they gave themselves enough time that if beta 2 was unstable they could not release it
01:07:33 ◼ ► as a public beta and just do another cycle and get to a better place and that this beta turned out to
01:07:38 ◼ ► be so stable that there was no reason not to put it out that's going to be my that's my inside
01:07:44 ◼ ► baseball theory about what happened is that they were giving themselves time to fix an unstable
01:07:49 ◼ ► beta and it turns out that this one is actually pretty good so the next one will be a disaster
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01:10:31 ◼ ► our thanks to butcher box for their support of this show and all of relay fm and it is time for
01:10:36 ◼ ► some hashtag ask upgrade questions don't forget it is the summer of fun so today's episode is going
01:10:44 ◼ ► to feature a mic at the movies segment of kiki's delivery service which we'll be talking about
01:10:48 ◼ ► after we finish hashtag ask upgrade today our first question today comes from thea and thea wants to
01:10:54 ◼ ► know i have to produce a short run podcast for an organization i volunteer with i can edit with a
01:10:59 ◼ ► 10.5 inch ipad pro or an imac is ferrite my best software option for ease of learning and cost
01:11:06 ◼ ► i won't it won't be an income earner so i'm shying away from buying something like logic jason as
01:11:13 ◼ ► somebody who is well more versed in the variety of editing programs than i am i would love to know
01:11:19 ◼ ► what you think about this ferrite is the best deal in podcast editing tools what about garageband
01:11:25 ◼ ► garageband is fine if you want to be on on the mac i don't like it for podcast everything on
01:11:30 ◼ ► on either platform honestly but it's better on the mac than it is on ios for podcast editing
01:11:35 ◼ ► it's free it's got that going for it but um you kind of have to fight it it wants to do music so
01:11:42 ◼ ► it wants to put like echoes on your voices and stuff like that so you have to you have to fight
01:11:47 ◼ ► it more um if you are open to the idea of editing podcasts on an ipad especially like the 12.9 inch
01:11:53 ◼ ► ipad pro uh and if you've got especially if you've got a pencil but even if you don't you've got a
01:11:57 ◼ ► bluetooth keyboard like i i have edited many podcasts on ferrite using nothing but my hands
01:12:03 ◼ ► right not using a keyboard not using the pencil i think it's i think it is the best value in
01:12:09 ◼ ► uh podcast editing software again yes garageband is free but ferrite will not get in your way like
01:12:15 ◼ ► garageband does so if you're willing to spend time working on an ipad i think it's the right choice
01:12:19 ◼ ► and it is you can try it out i think it's free to try and then there are features that you can
01:12:23 ◼ ► buy so you can also give it a try and see what you what you like and what you don't and and again all
01:12:29 ◼ ► in i think it's like 20 or 25 bucks it's it's it's nothing because logic is hundreds of dollars
01:12:33 ◼ ► um i will also recommend to thea to listen to episode 200 of upgrade uh where we just talk
01:12:40 ◼ ► about how we produce podcasts let me talk about return on investment for a podcast episode
01:12:45 ◼ ► that one has been great for me because anytime anybody because i get this question a lot as i'm
01:12:49 ◼ ► sure you you do like i have this question about how to make a show or this question this question
01:12:54 ◼ ► i just send people that url it's in the url that i can easily remember because it was episode 200
01:12:59 ◼ ► it's brilliant i just send it to people all the time and i'm very happy that i have a resource
01:13:02 ◼ ► that i can point people to of like we spoke for nearly two hours about how we make shows
01:13:08 ◼ ► go crazy so yeah yeah oh also um speaking of ferrite i will say there was a nice thread from
01:13:14 ◼ ► canis at wuji juice that makes ferrite that about when we can expect ferrite on the mac and the
01:13:20 ◼ ► answer is don't hold your breath because he wants to do it right and he wants to do a lot of he
01:13:27 ◼ ► needs to do a lot of ios 13 updates first and and it's a good it is the most inspiring disappointing
01:13:36 ◼ ► twitter thread i've seen in a long time in the sense that i really want it now right but what i
01:13:42 ◼ ► like about the thread and why i find it inspirational is he's got his priorities in order he's like i
01:13:46 ◼ ► got to do this thing where they're changing stuff in ios 13 and that's got to be my top priority
01:13:50 ◼ ► i want to make sure that the ios version is solid and then come you know come the fall maybe i'll
01:13:56 ◼ ► work on the the mac version as well and make sure that that is also done appropriately it's a it's
01:14:01 ◼ ► a really nice uh sort of just work in progress twitter thread that he that he posted and uh
01:14:07 ◼ ► i'm excited with the idea of ferrite being on my mac because although i am great at using logic and
01:14:13 ◼ ► i like logic i like the idea of being able to move my projects back and forth between my mac and my
01:14:19 ◼ ► ipad and i can't do that right now i have to commit to one or the other bartech asks recent dropbox
01:14:26 ◼ ► changes have made the product overly complex for what i need which is a simple storage and sync
01:14:30 ◼ ► solution for my large library of documents i found icloudrive to be buggy and not quite suited for
01:14:35 ◼ ► straight syncing in the past do you think that i'll be able to replace dropbox when ios 13 comes out
01:14:41 ◼ ► uh i didn't even mention but there's the new folder folder sharing thing in icloudrive which
01:14:48 ◼ ► is a big feature for some people where that was like one thing that was really keeping them on
01:14:51 ◼ ► dropbox dropbox yeah i don't love the idea of the dropbox i understand it but dropbox has gotten
01:14:57 ◼ ► its business model is is appealing to enterprise to giant enterprise clients and so they're like
01:15:02 ◼ ► we've put google docs and you know all this other stuff inside dropbox in slack right and we're
01:15:07 ◼ ► running it's a it's the app has like all this stuff in it that is beyond what i want as somebody
01:15:14 ◼ ► who uses it for collaboration but i don't use it for slack and i don't use it for for uh for google
01:15:19 ◼ ► docs so um my my hope is that dropbox will be judicious with what it does and that that if
01:15:27 ◼ ► you're just using it on this other level that it won't ruin that product but it might because it's
01:15:32 ◼ ► clearly not the focus i'm very hesitant to the idea that just because a company adds something
01:15:36 ◼ ► that they're changing everything that you use like right i think a lot of the current freaking out
01:15:41 ◼ ► about dropbox is maybe a little bit more than is necessary but like the product at its core is
01:15:47 ◼ ► still the same yeah the signs are there that their priorities have come have shifted kind of away from
01:15:53 ◼ ► this this audience that includes people like us to the enterprise um and that could be a bad sign or
01:16:00 ◼ ► it could be nothing and people do freak out about dropbox there are a lot of people who freak out
01:16:03 ◼ ► about dropbox because of the kernel extensions it uses in order to patch the file system so that it
01:16:09 ◼ ► can behave the way it wants to by the way there's a whole new system to do that in mac os catalina
01:16:16 ◼ ► that ideally will solve a lot of these problems by allowing google google drive and dropbox and
01:16:24 ◼ ► one drive to write to that new file system api in mac os catalina and it may even be related to the
01:16:34 ◼ ► one in ios 13 which is pretty cool i'm not sure about that but um so so it may be the dropbox and
01:16:39 ◼ ► all these other file providers get better in catalina because they will be updated to use
01:16:43 ◼ ► this new system that's a better system that would be cool um but you know this question is about
01:16:48 ◼ ► icloud drive icloud drive is fine it's got some bugs um although i haven't been bothered by them
01:16:54 ◼ ► in a while so it feels like maybe it's getting better oh my god you still have them i am a
01:17:00 ◼ ► i feel like i'm of a increasingly smaller group of people but i have so many problems with files on
01:17:07 ◼ ► my ipad where like oh yeah sure i'm trying to use like i'm trying to use numbers and it just spins
01:17:14 ◼ ► on like a 60k numbers same same that that absolutely happens to me too yes oh yeah i was
01:17:19 ◼ ► i was thinking of it in a mac context but this question is also about ios and yeah in ios right
01:17:23 ◼ ► now um i i have lots of problems with with i with icloud drive where files that are very small just
01:17:32 ◼ ► never come over and you're stuck and you have no feedback also i have problems with dropbox and
01:17:39 ◼ ► ios 13 where um they get out of sync where the files app doesn't really know what's in dropbox
01:17:45 ◼ ► and you have to go to the dropbox app which negates the point of having dropbox show up in
01:17:48 ◼ ► the files app again again some hope with ios 13 that drop mark dropbox on ios may be better
01:17:55 ◼ ► my guess is that dropbox on ios is not going to get as ruined as dropbox on the mac potentially
01:18:00 ◼ ► by all of these business changes they're making but i i agree with you apple's got to clean up
01:18:11 ◼ ► so basically the answer to the question bar tech is it's too early to tell yeah yeah maybe
01:18:18 ◼ ► maybe but you may not need to it's really very much like you may not need to because dropbox
01:18:23 ◼ ► might be okay you may not be able to because the buggy stuff that's in icloud on in the files app
01:18:29 ◼ ► may still be there i wish i had an answer we are watching these betas too this is the funniest
01:18:35 ◼ ► thing about the summer with betas is you've got all your little pet bugs that drive you
01:18:40 ◼ ► crazy and you get these versions of it and you're like did they fix it and you don't know it's a
01:18:45 ◼ ► crapshoot you have no idea whether this little bug was fixed eight months ago or whether they
01:18:51 ◼ ► are not even aware that it exists i don't know i like the idea of pet bugs that drive you crazy
01:18:57 ◼ ► yeah that's that's fun for me because it's like a little pet bug it's like oh you're driving
01:19:01 ◼ ► this could be a plot of a plot of a totoro movie uh on the last episode in our app draft um i
01:19:08 ◼ ► mentioned threes as an app that got put onto the home screen because i still play all the time and
01:19:13 ◼ ► forgo wants to know what is my high score for somebody who plays the game a lot actually my
01:19:18 ◼ ► high score is not massive compared to some of the scores that i've seen it's 63 657 that is my
01:19:24 ◼ ► highest score in threes i uh beat your high score in uh you did yeah you sent me you sent me a
01:19:32 ◼ ► screenshot of that i did i marked it up you circled it circled where you were circled where i was did
01:19:37 ◼ ► a little arrow thanks much appreciated kevin wants to know what are the chances that apple gets back
01:19:47 ◼ ► differently both times but that's just my life referencing home for routers an opportunity to
01:19:53 ◼ ► grow services revenue via subscriptions similar to aero and additional privacy controls so this
01:19:58 ◼ ► was shown off on stage at wbc and as one of the things that's getting added to homekit is support
01:20:04 ◼ ► for routers and they showed a bunch of products including aero as one that's going to be added
01:20:08 ◼ ► into this system my feeling on this is the fact that they have added this support into homekit is
01:20:13 ◼ ► more of a reason that apple will not be getting back into the router game because they are
01:20:17 ◼ ► blessing a bunch of companies uh with from a security standpoint basically feels that way to
01:20:23 ◼ ► me feels that way to me that this is a apple is going to build it's going to work with router
01:20:27 ◼ ► developers on features rather than build their own thing because this by by drawing that like cause
01:20:34 ◼ ► and effect apple would then make light bulbs which they're not going to do i would love apple to see
01:20:41 ◼ ► networking hardware and vpn as a business opportunity to expand their privacy and security
01:20:48 ◼ ► brand but my guess based on reading the tea leaves is that they've decided it's a can of worms they
01:20:56 ◼ ► don't want to open and that they're better off working with vpn providers and router providers
01:21:01 ◼ ► and just not getting not setting foot in that area because while it would be a good fit for them
01:21:09 ◼ ► to vpn everything and have the most stable and secure router for your home and all of those
01:21:15 ◼ ► things i think maybe this is a case where they they survey the landscape or no like that's kind
01:21:21 ◼ ► of a lot for us to take on we don't need to there's plenty of options out there we're fine
01:21:26 ◼ ► personally i'm happier with them providing tools like homekit than building their own hardware so
01:21:31 ◼ ► then i can still choose what i want yeah but still benefit from the security stuff like that i i find
01:21:37 ◼ ► that to be a better trade-off for what i want to do uh dimitar says you keep mentioning how you like
01:21:42 ◼ ► to use uh how you want to have widgets on your ipad visible all the time but i really want to
01:21:47 ◼ ► know what widgets do you use and that is a good question because i know i've been saying it a lot
01:21:51 ◼ ► like i'm really excited to have widgets on my own on my home screen so i should which i mentioned
01:21:56 ◼ ► the widgets that i use every single day so i use the shortcuts widget um i use the widget for
01:22:01 ◼ ► time re fantastic gal and cal zones and todoist i use those widgets every single day and the
01:22:18 ◼ ► yeah but shortcuts is the big one because not only is that um i use shortcuts but you can run them
01:22:26 ◼ ► from the widget it is the fastest way to look to run a bunch of shortcuts is with the widget that
01:22:34 ◼ ► is a pro tip yeah um andrew asks what case or cover do you use of your ipads when you're not
01:22:41 ◼ ► using the bridge keyboard i don't use anything because if it's not in the bridge keyboard it's
01:22:47 ◼ ► only ever out of it for a little while and i'll either have it in my stand the clear look stand
01:22:51 ◼ ► that i use clear look of a k um or i don't use any case at all i use i'm finding myself using the
01:23:00 ◼ ► apple smart cover folio whatever they call it the one without the keyboard yeah a lot because it's
01:23:09 ◼ ► super thin and light and i use that a lot and then i'll put it in a keyboard case or a stand if i
01:23:16 ◼ ► want but i i i've sort of fallen back to just give me a little thing that covers it yeah yeah i i use
01:23:24 ◼ ► it not in the bridge keyboard so infrequently right that i don't feel like i need to have a
01:23:29 ◼ ► case on it and i actually then just enjoy having the super thin and light ipad in my hands in those
01:23:34 ◼ ► times um so i just haven't used the case at all in those circumstances um i did want to mention
01:23:40 ◼ ► they did send me a press release for this but i'll just mention it i didn't ask me to but i will
01:23:45 ◼ ► the the bridge keyboards are in stock now because i know before they were doing pre-orders so if
01:23:49 ◼ ► you've heard about one if you've heard us talk about one of these before and haven't got them
01:23:57 ◼ ► i'm still very very happy with my bridge keyboard i absolutely love them on both of my ipads and i'm
01:24:03 ◼ ► really really happy with it so it still gets a big like after months of using it that's still
01:24:08 ◼ ► thoroughly recommended from me so yep if you are interested all right that is a hashtag ask
01:24:14 ◼ ► upgrade you can always send in uh questions for the show to send out a tweet with the hashtag
01:24:18 ◼ ► ask upgrade and we are going to move into our summer fun topic for this episode which is talking
01:24:24 ◼ ► about the miyazaki movie kiki's delivery service but before we do let me thank our final sponsor
01:24:28 ◼ ► of this week's show and that is pdf pen 11 from our friends at smile pdf pen and pdf pen pro are
01:24:34 ◼ ► the ultimate pdf viewing and editing apps for the mac you can add headers and footers along with
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01:25:04 ◼ ► phone so you may have forgotten about this feature it was introduced with mahave i think where you
01:25:09 ◼ ► can use your iphone's camera for an app on your mac so you can take a piece of paper use the camera
01:25:21 ◼ ► and scan that into pdf pen on the mac which is awesome you also have the ability to add
01:25:32 ◼ ► pen on all of my devices on my mac on my ipad on my iphone all the time probably every day it was
01:25:38 ◼ ► one of my most used and favorite applications if you spend any time working with pdfs you need pdf
01:25:44 ◼ ► pen 11 so go to smile software.com podcast right now that is smile software.com podcast and you can
01:25:50 ◼ ► find out more about pdf pen 11 our thanks to pdf pen from smile for their support of this show and
01:25:57 ◼ ► all of relay fm so jason is our summer of fun topic for this episode summer of fun we're going
01:26:04 ◼ ► to be doing the mike at the movies kiki's delivery service yes um i don't know if this was particularly
01:26:10 ◼ ► a summer movie but it was we did total roll last time so it felt right to i feel like you want to
01:26:15 ◼ ► induct me into mizuki movies now if it was i do i do and if you if it's windy where you are in
01:26:21 ◼ ► the summertime then it's perfect because it's all about the wind and there's rain too there's rain
01:26:26 ◼ ► as well you know sometimes there is yeah the weather the weather is is a major i would say mike
01:26:32 ◼ ► that the major uh uh antagonist in kiki's delivery service is the weather okay we'll get to that we'll
01:26:41 ◼ ► get to that all right um i want to talk about as i usually do with mike at the movie segments is what
01:26:48 ◼ ► i kind of thought before i watched the movie this this movie so kiki's delivery service which is
01:26:55 ◼ ► another miyazaki movie we you know you we spoke about totoro last time um i knew nothing about
01:27:01 ◼ ► this movie um i know that people love it but i didn't know about this episode as much as i knew
01:27:09 ◼ ► about totoro right like totoro is just like that's just a character you know right because you see
01:27:14 ◼ ► the soft toys everywhere or like it's just part of kind of um pop culture in general i think the
01:27:19 ◼ ► totoro character and kiki's delivery service at least for me doesn't have a thing like that where
01:27:26 ◼ ► i would be familiar with something in the movie having never seen the movie yeah sure i agree
01:27:33 ◼ ► i agree it does not have that kind of iconic pop culture uh character that you see in a stuffed
01:27:41 ◼ ► animal or something like that or that everybody talks about and that is it's just it's not that
01:27:49 ◼ ► i have seen it i don't know countless number of times 10 15 like lots of times um and it's the
01:27:57 ◼ ► first miyazaki movie i saw okay um i first heard about miyazaki by the review of uh this movie when
01:28:05 ◼ ► it was released in the us and it was um so it was reviewed on like uh the cisco and ebert show which
01:28:14 ◼ ► was the movie weekly movie review show um and they were huge boosters of it and it was literally a
01:28:19 ◼ ► thing i'd never heard of i thought that was interesting roger ebert put it on his best movies
01:28:23 ◼ ► of the year list at the end of the year and that surprised me so i i suppose probably the first
01:28:27 ◼ ► time i heard about it was watching their best of the year episode in whenever 1990 what 1989 19
01:28:37 ◼ ► i don't know when it was when it came out in the us um late 80s early 90s in the us yeah and uh
01:28:45 ◼ ► i i was like oh well that's interesting and i don't think i saw it for another five or ten
01:28:49 ◼ ► years or whenever i think i didn't see it until it came out on on home video in the us which was
01:28:54 ◼ ► in the late 90s um but it became it's delightful i i was i was enchanted the first time i saw it and
01:29:00 ◼ ► have uh have enjoyed it every time we we talked about we did a miyazaki episode of the incomparable
01:29:05 ◼ ► and then we've gone back and we've done episodes about every miyazaki movie uh one by one not we
01:29:10 ◼ ► haven't gotten to all of them but we've done a bunch and i think this was the first one we did
01:29:14 ◼ ► for that and uh yeah i just uh that was so so i also have a relationship with it where when i
01:29:20 ◼ ► first saw it i didn't have kids and then i had little kids and then bigger kids and the bigger
01:29:25 ◼ ► kids and the bigger and so like every time i watch it and when i watch it with them they have
01:29:29 ◼ ► different memories because they've always you know it's been around for their whole life so they've
01:29:33 ◼ ► reacted to it in different ways over time and you know likewise i've been uh i i'm now even though
01:29:39 ◼ ► kiki is young when she leaves home you know i am now at the point where my daughter is going to
01:29:43 ◼ ► leave home to go off to college this fall and so it has yet another kind of set of colors to it as
01:29:48 ◼ ► the parents at the beginning say you know say goodbye to her and she flies off on her broom
01:29:53 ◼ ► on her mom's broom not the broom she made i did find that bit actually at the beginning like a
01:29:58 ◼ ► little bit it was like interesting and sad but i don't want to talk about the beginning of the
01:30:02 ◼ ► movie just yet because i have a lot to say about it i just kind of wanted to uh wrap it i watched
01:30:08 ◼ ► the english dub version which came from you because it's impossible to find these movies
01:30:14 ◼ ► you have to buy them on disc is basically how you have to do it uh john saracusa disapproves of you
01:30:18 ◼ ► watching the english dub i approve i think it's a good dub i think it's very good that's my preferred
01:30:22 ◼ ► way of watching it i have watched it uh with subtitles it is an interesting different experience
01:30:27 ◼ ► and it's always fun for me again like kirsten dunst plays kiki i like that these movies very
01:30:32 ◼ ► very young kirsten dunst exactly they have these people that become like mega stars later on like
01:30:38 ◼ ► we had uh was it one of the olsons played uh the character in toto but anyway um so it's like super
01:30:45 ◼ ► interesting uh no it was um dakota fanning right it's dakota fanning yeah yeah yeah um so i i would
01:30:52 ◼ ► say on the whole i will kind of give my spoiler for how i what i thought about this movie i did
01:30:57 ◼ ► not like this as much as toto but i did enjoy it i think it's missing something that toto has
01:31:05 ◼ ► for me uh what that might be it uh that i and i have some more thoughts about that later on
01:31:17 ◼ ► well it's kind of similar in this movie into this movie yes they're very similar in in that
01:31:22 ◼ ► they're kind of episodic and there's no no villain essentially the stakes don't exist like they're so
01:31:27 ◼ ► low until something happens right like there are no stakes in this movie until the dirigible is
01:31:34 ◼ ► is in trouble right all of the other stakes are just like super simple regular life stuff which
01:31:40 ◼ ► is the same as total row or it's like little things are happening until the young girl goes missing
01:31:46 ◼ ► right and then the stakes that's when the stakes of the movie but it's like the last 30 minutes of
01:31:50 ◼ ► the movie right other than that they're both sort of like sets of short stories and there's a little
01:31:55 ◼ ► more of a character i mean there's character arcs kiki definitely has a character arc she's
01:32:04 ◼ ► similar and i i would say the other thing in this is that and and i find that people are split about
01:32:10 ◼ ► like toto row and kiki a toto row is cuter and it's like because it's got the it's got all the
01:32:17 ◼ ► it's got adorable little kid and it's got all the fun little little toto rows and i i think toto row
01:32:23 ◼ ► is a cuter movie whereas kiki's delivery service is a coming of age movie and yes even though
01:32:30 ◼ ► there's magic in it you know it is basically the magic of of kiki's flying on a broomstick and uh
01:32:38 ◼ ► her talking cat and that's that's what the magic is talking cat what uh and and so that that is
01:32:45 ◼ ► it's just it's a different it's a different flavor for sure than toto i also i find toto row to be
01:32:50 ◼ ► just so weird and also so remote even though there are people around they're kind of off in
01:32:54 ◼ ► in nowhere and kiki is a movie about her finding her way in a city so there are a bunch of people
01:33:00 ◼ ► around and she's she's um you know learning about that too so the the texture of it is very different
01:33:05 ◼ ► and i think that may be why they they um they feel different and different people have their
01:33:09 ◼ ► favorites uh it also may be that i just came to kiki first and so i i love it and then i saw toto
01:33:15 ◼ ► and i was like oh that's great too this is one of the things that i was wondering it's like do
01:33:18 ◼ ► do i love toto more because i saw it first like i wonder if that might be it where um going into
01:33:25 ◼ ► this movie i had a greater expectation and understanding of what i was going to be seeing
01:33:30 ◼ ► you know like i knew it was going to be like super chill and like slice of life which this is like
01:33:35 ◼ ► when i say there's no stakes obviously these things are important to the character but like
01:33:38 ◼ ► in the grand scheme of making a dramatic movie um you know getting wet in a delivery it's not like
01:33:46 ◼ ► huge right it's not like huge blockbuster stakes but uh but so i feel like i had a better feeling
01:33:54 ◼ ► of that's what this movie's gonna be like going into this one where in toto everything was a
01:33:59 ◼ ► surprise and as i spoke about last time as well right like i kept waiting for the thing and was
01:34:06 ◼ ► like oh is that gonna be bad is that gonna be bad and where in this movie i was kind of letting it
01:34:11 ◼ ► wash over me more because i figured i have a better understanding of what's going to happen
01:34:17 ◼ ► towards the end of this movie here like looking at the cards that are being dealt um so it was
01:34:22 ◼ ► very different so one thing i absolutely loved about this movie was how they spend no time
01:34:29 ◼ ► establishing that witches exist i think that is fantastic it's kind of just like within like the
01:34:36 ◼ ► first five lines of the movie you basically know all of the backstory and exposition for the fact
01:34:41 ◼ ► that there are witches exist and at the age of 13 they go out on their own for a year to train
01:34:45 ◼ ► it's like there is nothing more than that and i kind of love that because it's like well this
01:34:50 ◼ ► isn't at all what i was expecting uh and i think that that is a really fun way to set up something
01:34:57 ◼ ► that is so kind of wild is just to spend no time dealing with it except for the fact that you now
01:35:03 ◼ ► know everything you need within like two minutes yeah and her mom is a you know potion witch or
01:35:08 ◼ ► whatever and this is just a coming of age thing and it's there and also the theme of the movie
01:35:12 ◼ ► is there from the very beginning which is uh at 13 witches at 13 they go out on their own and it's
01:35:18 ◼ ► you know this is the you know it is it is an age that 13 14 this is when uh young you know this is
01:35:26 ◼ ► when girls become women basically in many many many cultures for lots of reasons including
01:35:32 ◼ ► biological reasons right and that's that's not said in this but like that's part of this is
01:35:36 ◼ ► kiki is going from being a girl to being a woman and this is what witches do they go out on their
01:35:41 ◼ ► own and they find their way and it is it is like literally being a witch means you have a coming of
01:35:46 ◼ ► age adventure because you leave home and find your fortune and uh and all the parents can do is say
01:35:52 ◼ ► well remember when you know we we were that young and then and then they have to just let them go
01:35:57 ◼ ► because she has to do it on her own yeah i couldn't help but think of pokemon um because this is
01:36:02 ◼ ► basically what happens in pokemon like you hit a certain age and then like you're a child but
01:36:06 ◼ ► you're just sent out into the world right like off you go you've got to go and grow up now and like it
01:36:12 ◼ ► it was just like a funny thing to me to be like oh yeah this is like what happens with pokemon
01:36:16 ◼ ► trainers they go out into the world um the i kind of love how geographically ambiguous that city is
01:36:24 ◼ ► it's like kind of london kind of paris in japan labeled as hawaii it's like it's not it's going on
01:36:30 ◼ ► and it's not so it is uh that's an interesting read on it so the truth is it's northern europe
01:36:37 ◼ ► it is not meant to be japan even though it's for a japanese audience it's meant to be northern europe
01:36:41 ◼ ► okay um but when she's looking at the map there are hawaiian place names i don't even there are
01:36:47 ◼ ► they're not there's so much nonsense writing because there's also like there's there's the
01:36:52 ◼ ► name of the shop which is kind of nonsense and it's all you'll see there's there's umlauts and
01:36:56 ◼ ► stuff in it so the story is that miyazaki and his collaborators uh went to sweden and they went to
01:37:02 ◼ ► they spent time in stockholm and they spent time in visby which is a little town on the island of
01:37:07 ◼ ► gottland in the baltic sea i've been to both of those places all right let me tell you when i
01:37:12 ◼ ► watch this movie i'm like oh yeah i see it like it's a very stockholm it's very based on stockholm
01:37:18 ◼ ► and the more pastoral stuff is visby yeah there was like double decker buses and the london
01:37:28 ◼ ► amsterdamish and and yeah but also stockholm yeah yeah so there's just like a bunch it was like
01:37:32 ◼ ► really fun for me like this place is everywhere so he's delivery service he miyazaki wants it to be
01:37:38 ◼ ► said in in a you know uh indeterminate but like he wanted that northern european kind of vibe
01:37:48 ◼ ► in japan or in a magical world that is very much like japan but but kiki is different in that way
01:37:54 ◼ ► and and yes that it is hilarious that so much of it it's got uh you know roman letters that maybe
01:38:00 ◼ ► japanese audiences can read maybe they can't uh but it doesn't matter because they're mostly
01:38:04 ◼ ► nonsense and they're just meant to be like you know sending the message that this isn't japan
01:38:08 ◼ ► it was just really fun it's like what where is this place right because yeah it was like so when
01:38:14 ◼ ► they're looking at the map there was there were some places i'm sure that i saw like haliakala
01:38:19 ◼ ► which is like a mountain in maui that's listed on the map and it's like what is going on it was kind
01:38:25 ◼ ► of one of my favorite things is where is this movie now like i really liked that that was that
01:38:30 ◼ ► was a lot of fun for me um the i guess the the the putting the delivery service into kiki's delivery
01:38:37 ◼ ► service is she becomes a livery person because she can fly and the whole idea is witches have
01:38:44 ◼ ► to find out what their role is going to be yeah i really liked that the way that kind of like
01:38:50 ◼ ► which is a dealt with in this movie it isn't necessarily what you would expect like when
01:38:56 ◼ ► you don't really know what you're going into most people are kind of like ambivalent to it
01:39:02 ◼ ► and then some people think that it's really exciting but everybody is very aware of the
01:39:07 ◼ ► fact that witches exist and they're not like hesitant towards it in any way which is especially
01:39:13 ◼ ► weird because it is established that there are not many yeah well i mean she ends up in that in that
01:39:18 ◼ ► city and she's like hey do you guys have witches here and they're like no we haven't had witches
01:39:21 ◼ ► here you know in hundreds of years or whatever like that she's like that's great and that's it
01:39:26 ◼ ► and it's kind of fascinating to me again just as like uh here's like a hallmark of this type of
01:39:31 ◼ ► movie that that is not the thing like every other movie would be about making it the thing of like
01:39:38 ◼ ► she's persecuted and then has to like save a child in the town and then she is uh accepted but like
01:39:44 ◼ ► there is no requirement for her acceptance even though she is a clear outsider and she goes
01:39:51 ◼ ► through that right like she feels it herself but her kind of feeling of being an outsider
01:39:56 ◼ ► has kind of got nothing to do with the fact that she's a witch she's just a young girl trying to
01:40:00 ◼ ► fit into a new place right and and it's very it's just like a super interesting thing where it's
01:40:05 ◼ ► like every time you think you know what this movie is going to be when you apply typical maybe western
01:40:11 ◼ ► movie ideals or just like typical movie ideals in general uh you are surprised by the fact that it
01:40:17 ◼ ► is not that it is way smaller right like everything is is smaller yeah there's no whole like story arc
01:40:24 ◼ ► about how there's discrimination against witches and it's just not her being a witch is a curiosity
01:40:29 ◼ ► it's almost like it's a personality quirk right it's that she does that has this cool thing she
01:40:33 ◼ ► can do it's like her her skill but it's not that's not any any more than that other than the fact she
01:40:38 ◼ ► has to wear the dress the black dress but other than that and it's like that so there's other
01:40:42 ◼ ► little things like that i enjoy when when gg gets left in the house right and i really enjoyed the
01:40:49 ◼ ► animation of gg the cat sweating when the dog is coming near them i thought that was kind of
01:40:55 ◼ ► hilarious uh that i really like that but then that is all resolved so quickly it's like oh i thought
01:41:01 ◼ ► there was going to be more than it's just like oh she just went and she had to like negotiate with
01:41:06 ◼ ► the artist lady uh to get the cat doll back and then she just then nothing happens to the dog the
01:41:13 ◼ ► dog just helps them do the trade and then that's it's dealt with i i i know i keep talking about
01:41:19 ◼ ► it but like that's that's what i do enjoy in these movies is them playing with my idea of idea of
01:41:25 ◼ ► where they're going um it's it's a lot of fun for me because it's so different i really enjoy it
01:41:31 ◼ ► i'd say it's almost more lifelike too in the sense that life is really just sort of a sequence of
01:41:35 ◼ ► small stories of things that happen and you don't see that a lot in movies where they build up this
01:41:41 ◼ ► whole kind of story arc of like oh this thing at the beginning is going to mean something at the
01:41:44 ◼ ► end and it's not it's not like that there's certainly stuff that comes back just like in life
01:41:48 ◼ ► you meet somebody and then you go see them later and that stuff happens but it's shaped it's not
01:41:53 ◼ ► shaped like we've been trained to expect are there any parts of this movie that are particularly
01:42:01 ◼ ► meaningful or stick out in your mind like when you think of this movie i so it's funny i think my
01:42:08 ◼ ► the part that sticks out for me the most is the old lady with her uh assistant who uh at one point
01:42:18 ◼ ► is is pretending to ride the broom because she's an enthusiast for flying things way too excited
01:42:22 ◼ ► about the dirigible disaster super excited about that she can't she can't believe that it's a yeah
01:42:29 ◼ ► it's a weird character but and then there's the nice old lady and they uh she wants to bake a
01:42:35 ◼ ► herring and pumpkin pot pie for her uh for well sweden uh for for her her granddaughter for her
01:42:43 ◼ ► birthday but the oven isn't working and kiki you know helps her to build the fire and all that and
01:42:48 ◼ ► then they bake it but then it's late and it's raining and she gets it there and i really love
01:42:52 ◼ ► in that it's so sad but it's that scene where the the girl comes to the door and it's actually one
01:42:56 ◼ ► of the girls who hangs out with the boys who um who are seen throughout the movie and sort of
01:43:02 ◼ ► hang out with tombo the the the the kid who likes kiki and and is trying to build a flying machine
01:43:07 ◼ ► because he can't fly and she can which is a cute little character thing but anyway she comes to the
01:43:12 ◼ ► door uh this girl and she's like oh it's one of grandma's stupid pies um and and uh closes the
01:43:19 ◼ ► door and kiki just says how can they be or no it's the cat says how could they be related because the
01:43:25 ◼ ► lady is so nice and her granddaughter is so awful and i just that always has stuck with me that in
01:43:30 ◼ ► some ways there are so few villains in this movie but one of the big villains other than the weather
01:43:35 ◼ ► in kiki is this ungrateful granddaughter like the the the nice old lady has tried really hard and
01:43:41 ◼ ► kiki's really helped her to get this give her this present and she doesn't care um and i just thought
01:43:46 ◼ ► it's just kind of bittersweet and interesting and uh and that's a funny line about how how could she
01:43:51 ◼ ► possibly be related to that nice old lady it's great that that's strange but that sticks with me
01:43:57 ◼ ► i think more than that and the fact that when she first takes off at the beginning of the movie
01:44:00 ◼ ► and then later in the movie this happens again i love the animation where she's bumping against
01:44:05 ◼ ► the trees at the beginning and later on when she's trying to fly she ends up kind of like coming up
01:44:09 ◼ ► against buildings and kicking off with her legs like it feels very dreamlike in a way and and and
01:44:16 ◼ ► also so much work to animate that that uh those little details where she's kind of brushing against
01:44:22 ◼ ► things and kind of throwing out an elbow or putting down a foot in order to not crash into something
01:44:27 ◼ ► as she's kind of tenuously flying around those are those are sort of the two things that really
01:44:31 ◼ ► stick with me when i think about this movie yeah i like that whole scene well i like the whole thing
01:44:36 ◼ ► when she's like trying to to relearn to fly right and she's like running down that mountain
01:44:40 ◼ ► not mountain like the hillside hillside and she's like falling into the ditch and stuff but yeah
01:44:45 ◼ ► when when she then takes that and i figure it's like part that she uh is trying to like get the
01:44:51 ◼ ► confidence and also that the broom is weird right that she's just kind of like can't control it
01:44:56 ◼ ► because it's not like a regular broom for her um which i like i did actually kind of laugh to
01:45:01 ◼ ► myself that it's like oh witches can fly with any broom turns out it's just got to be a broom and
01:45:08 ◼ ► then i'm starting to think in my brain of like all right so why what what is it about brooms right
01:45:13 ◼ ► like i kind of like that thought it's like oh any broom can fly they just don't necessarily fly when
01:45:18 ◼ ► she's looking for a broom or i know she's looking for a broom this time there's a guy standing in
01:45:22 ◼ ► the street with a ladder and i thought yeah try that can you fly a ladder yeah yeah give it a shot
01:45:30 ◼ ► it's just anything anything really she's like just a wood a wooden object i don't know maybe
01:45:35 ◼ ► there was there's a mop at one point and i thought i thought uh could you just fly a mop maybe i
01:45:40 ◼ ► don't know if it's not wet is it too heavy if it's wet i mysteries of kiki yeah uh tombow needs to
01:45:46 ◼ ► get some chill that's my my my reading on tombow tombow needs to just get some chill this boy who
01:45:54 ◼ ► likes you is hanging out outside the bakery in the rainstorm he's a little intense yeah he he needs
01:46:02 ◼ ► with just like everything about him needs to get he needs to get some chill he does a decent job
01:46:07 ◼ ► when she brings the bread uh when sono like kind of hashes a devious plan she like brings the order
01:46:13 ◼ ► to him and then he's more of like a regular person but up until that point it's like dude just just
01:46:18 ◼ ► calm down a little bit like and you might be okay here which is kind of hilarious yeah well and the
01:46:25 ◼ ► whole bakery family kind of thing you mentioned of sono like she's pregnant and her husband is the is
01:46:30 ◼ ► the strong silent type he doesn't he just kind of grunts and doesn't really say anything and uh they
01:46:35 ◼ ► offer her the place to stay and she works in the bakery and also delivers stuff and it's just uh
01:46:40 ◼ ► it's just kind of homey and and and nice and sweet and it when she meets her it's that it's a great
01:46:46 ◼ ► little meeting scene where the baby has left its pacifier behind and kiki says oh i can deliver it
01:46:51 ◼ ► and that shot i love that shot so much she takes the the pacifier and then she just runs to the the
01:46:57 ◼ ► the wall and jumps over it and then the bakery lady is like like oh no she's just jumped to her
01:47:03 ◼ ► death and then she looks over and just a little little witch is flying away it's like i love that
01:47:08 ◼ ► that's great um i also love the importance of that pacifier right like everything it's too important
01:47:16 ◼ ► like she's screaming down the mountain right like like the hillside i keep calling it a mountain and
01:47:21 ◼ ► it's just like it's it's really funny to me that's like i'm just gonna it's like such a big thing
01:47:25 ◼ ► that has to be dealt with yeah the fact is there is another pacifier just like it at home but she's
01:47:30 ◼ ► gonna scream the whole way home that's what's gonna happen there but as a as a parent i can say
01:47:35 ◼ ► that now but at the time it's still like oh no that baby it's like the biggest threat in the world is
01:47:41 ◼ ► oh no that baby doesn't have a pacifier if we don't get it back to that baby in five minutes
01:47:45 ◼ ► it'll explode exactly that's how it's treated it's like uh it just has to be done but you know it's
01:47:51 ◼ ► just a sad baby that left something behind to the bakery a question for you yeah do do you think that
01:47:58 ◼ ► kiki ever hears gg talk again okay so on the incomparable we spent a long time debating why
01:48:09 ◼ ► the cat stops talking and whether the cat ever starts talking again a long time and i think it's
01:48:14 ◼ ► purposeful in the movie to realize that nobody else can hear gg anyway i just thought gg was
01:48:20 ◼ ► talking cat not the witches can talk to black cats and because it's more than the talking
01:48:27 ◼ ► all of the cat's mannerisms change when it finds a mate right so it's not just that she doesn't have
01:48:37 ◼ ► the same powers anymore gg just becomes like a regular cat and yeah it's like and then because
01:48:48 ◼ ► then there's this whole question of like did she ever even lose her powers in the first place like
01:48:51 ◼ ► she may have just been dealing with a crisis of confidence and gg becoming a real cat or making
01:48:57 ◼ ► a choice to be a real cat rather than a magic cat uh kind of threw her off base so what is your
01:49:11 ◼ ► and so that makes it even more complicated um i'll i'll complicate it further mike in the original
01:49:20 ◼ ► disney english dub with phil hartman the cat talks again at the end oh gosh okay and miyazaki
01:49:28 ◼ ► actually was like nope nope nope nope nope and so the version that that you saw and that is available
01:49:35 ◼ ► now on video in with english-speaking countries they actually took out a lot of the stuff they
01:49:42 ◼ ► added in to make it more match what miyazaki went and and the cat doesn't talk again at the end so
01:49:49 ◼ ► miyazaki says it's it he doesn't want you to hear the cat talking at the end i think the implication
01:49:53 ◼ ► is that uh not so much because the cat is like has is has found a mate and is having kittens
01:50:01 ◼ ► a little black and white kittens uh and i think it's that she's grown up that that i think is the
01:50:08 ◼ ► right interpretation anybody can have it i think it's that it's the coming of age it is literally
01:50:15 ◼ ► part of the coming of age is that when you become an adult which you are not your child self anymore
01:50:23 ◼ ► and the child self talks to the cat but the adults don't that and and it's just all of the parts of
01:50:29 ◼ ► things of of growing up and we had a whole deep debate about this and the incomparable but that's
01:50:34 ◼ ► that's where i come down is that i at this point is that i think it's it's just she's grown up and
01:50:40 ◼ ► so she doesn't hear the cat anymore okay i you know what i think that that that matches that
01:50:47 ◼ ► makes a lot of sense to me because the mannerisms of gg don't change at the end of the movie again
01:50:54 ◼ ► like still looks like a cat right not like a character um so yeah i think okay yeah i think
01:51:02 ◼ ► that makes sense yeah but it is it is an interesting little little quirk of the movie that you think
01:51:08 ◼ ► that she's losing contact with the cat because she's losing contact with her powers but it's
01:51:11 ◼ ► really something bigger which is that she's she's got to find her uh self-confidence and grow into
01:51:18 ◼ ► the woman that she needs to be and she goes off and has her little walkabout with the uh with the
01:51:23 ◼ ► artist out in the forest which is a nice callback that the artist comes and gets her and that's uh
01:51:28 ◼ ► i forget her name ursula maybe but it's uh jenny garofalo in the dub and uh they go out and she
01:51:34 ◼ ► talks about how she had trouble drawing uh and then she went through this creative period where
01:51:40 ◼ ► she uh she figured it out and then she was able to be creative again and and and gives that advice
01:51:45 ◼ ► as somebody who went through it and i think that's all really good so i think that in the end you
01:51:49 ◼ ► know the crisis of confidence is really just part of the growing up part of of kiki's journey
01:51:55 ◼ ► i like this movie a lot i didn't enjoy it as much as toto ro but that's not to say i didn't enjoy it
01:52:02 ◼ ► i just have a favorite i think um out of the two and i look forward to the next um miyazaki movie
01:52:11 ◼ ► that you sent me jason so okay so i i will i will caution you i think these are the two best ones
01:52:16 ◼ ► that's fine and i i think that there are not i'm not sure there's another miyazaki movie that's
01:52:21 ◼ ► quite like these two this is my favorite miyazaki the other miyazaki movies have some of them are
01:52:29 ◼ ► really kind of psychedelic and some of them are very much more traditionally plotted which is not
01:52:34 ◼ ► to say that they aren't great but they are uh they are a little less of this kind of um what if we
01:52:41 ◼ ► made a movie without a much of a plot and no bad guys and it was just a story a nice story about
01:52:47 ◼ ► people living their lives in interesting ways with magic uh i'm not sure there are other movies that
01:52:53 ◼ ► are quite like this other than maybe ponio which is about a fish and is super weird but we'll get
01:53:01 ◼ ► to that another time all right if you want to find the show notes for this week's episode you can go
01:53:06 ◼ ► to relay.fm upgrade slash two five one we have some great summer of fun episodes planned over
01:53:14 ◼ ► the next few weeks with some very special guests so you can look out for those i'm excited about
01:53:19 ◼ ► our next few weeks of summer of fun episodes um i want to thank again our wonderful sponsors for
01:53:24 ◼ ► this episode astropad studio express vpn butcher box and pdf pen 11 from smile you can find jason