00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 236. Today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN,
00:00:16 ◼ ► Pingdom and Luna Display. I'm Myke Relay FM and I'm joined by Jason Six Colors. Hi Jason Six Colors.
00:00:22 ◼ ► It's great to be here Myke Podcasters. We only, we got this one chance, uh, I think we're
00:00:29 ◼ ► the first tech show in our little bubble to publish after Tim Apple, the Tim Apple situation.
00:00:34 ◼ ► So even though it's old news, we get to do it. And for the sake of people listening far into the
00:00:39 ◼ ► future, President Trump called Tim Cook Tim Apple during a... I think you mean Donald America.
00:00:56 ◼ ► frick that means. Uh, called him Tim Apple, there's a video, I'll put it a link to a Verge article.
00:01:01 ◼ ► And just in the best possible thing that could have happened, could have come out of this,
00:01:06 ◼ ► Tim Cook changed his Twitter name to Tim and the Apple logo. Uh, I love so much that Tim Cook
00:01:13 ◼ ► is trolling the President for like, I don't even really know what the gain is for that,
00:01:20 ◼ ► but I like very much that he's doing it. I think it's hilarious. Yep, yep, absolutely. Um,
00:01:26 ◼ ► John Oliver did a bit on his show on Sunday night that was, uh, suggesting there was a Photoshop of,
00:01:32 ◼ ► uh, of young Tim Apple, um, taking the company over from his father who founded it, you know,
00:01:39 ◼ ► Bob Apple or whatever. And it says, Oh, it's a family company. I don't know how, uh, you know,
00:01:55 ◼ ► just giants in the technology world, the Apple family, his sister Fiona, uh, chose to go into
00:02:05 ◼ ► as we, as we all know, I don't even know how that works, but that's it. Aloha Steve Apples. They,
00:02:12 ◼ ► they used to own a garage together. It's time we finished this and moved into #SnailTalk. And we
00:02:16 ◼ ► have a great question this week from Brent who asks, Jason, when you fly, do you prefer window
00:02:21 ◼ ► or aisle front, middle or back of the plane or any other preferences for the seat that you occupy?
00:02:27 ◼ ► Um, I think this is a great question, mostly because I actually have opinions. Yep. I was
00:02:34 ◼ ► just making some plane reservations and I realized I, uh, so first off I always prefer the window.
00:02:40 ◼ ► And the reason for that is I know that the aisle gives you access to the aisle and to the bathroom
00:02:47 ◼ ► without having to make your seat mates get up and all of that problem I have is my shoulders
00:02:52 ◼ ► are wide enough that if I sit on the aisle, big, uh, beverage carts will slam into my shoulders
00:03:01 ◼ ► occasionally. I just, it, it, that it happens either that or my knees are the problem. Oh,
00:03:07 ◼ ► interesting. Yeah. It's for me, it's my shoulders. And if, um, if not that, then it's, um,
00:03:14 ◼ ► then I'm repeatedly, uh, sort of touched on the shoulder by a flight attendant and told to move
00:03:21 ◼ ► inward in order to avoid slamming, which is nice, but it's not the best. I just don't like it.
00:03:26 ◼ ► Whereas at the window, I can just be at the window and there's a little space between me and the
00:03:30 ◼ ► window and it's great. Um, and, uh, in terms of where, like in the plane, I, um, it kind of
00:03:40 ◼ ► doesn't matter. Uh, I will sit as far forward as I can and get a, uh, window, but that's,
00:03:46 ◼ ► that's about it. Uh, these days, the way airplane seat reservations work, they start to charge you.
00:03:52 ◼ ► If I just bought some seats on a, I think United flight to my niece's high school graduation in May.
00:04:00 ◼ ► And, um, I usually don't fly United, but, um, but I, I did on this and it was hilarious because not
00:04:07 ◼ ► only do they have their economy, basic economy where you can't pick a seat at all, but the
00:04:12 ◼ ► regular economy fare, uh, blocks out a bunch of seats that are in the front half of the plane.
00:04:18 ◼ ► And they want you to pay a little bit extra for like a better seat, which I thought it's not,
00:04:22 ◼ ► literally, it's not any better except for the fact that it's closer to the front. And, um,
00:04:27 ◼ ► I'm not interested in that, so I'm not going to support that kind of business model. So I,
00:04:31 ◼ ► I picked one further back, but, uh, but yeah, I love, love the window. Um, I think more on the
00:04:36 ◼ ► right side of the plane too. I was just, uh, uh, when I was picking those seats, I realized that
00:04:40 ◼ ► I was gravitating toward the right side of the plane. I don't know why I don't have any reason
00:04:43 ◼ ► for that. Myke, what do you, where do you sit? So I have a few different considerations than you and
00:04:49 ◼ ► a few different perks as well. I fly transatlantic the majority of the time. So I have status with
00:04:55 ◼ ► British Airways, so I can always choose my seat whenever I want, right? That's one of the perks
00:05:00 ◼ ► that I get. I don't have to pay for it and I don't have to wait. I can choose it whenever I want.
00:05:04 ◼ ► And because I'm mostly flying transatlantic, I'm very typically in situations where people
00:05:09 ◼ ► will be sleeping. So I always choose a seat, which means that if I am sleeping, somebody doesn't have
00:05:16 ◼ ► to bother me. So I go for aisle seats in the middles. If I'm in one of, if I'm in like the
00:05:22 ◼ ► two, three, two type thing, because then the other person can just move like the other way. I always
00:05:31 ◼ ► try and make sure I come in the middle of the plane at an aisle so people don't need to climb
00:05:35 ◼ ► over me or wake me up if they want to get out of their seat. And the same that if I want to get up,
00:05:40 ◼ ► I don't have to move someone, right? So don't sit in the middle. It will sit on an aisle. It's kind
00:05:50 ◼ ► 12 hours at a time, right? Like you're starting to think about the sleep in and then how that
00:05:54 ◼ ► affects things. So that's typically what I do. I don't really care for window seats because they
00:06:00 ◼ ► trap me in. Yeah, I don't like being trapped, but I like getting rammed with a big heavy cart.
00:06:06 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. I have one on a knee on my last flight to San Jose. Woke me up. That was real bad.
00:06:12 ◼ ► It was real bad. Yeah, I just had a flight not too long ago where I ended up for, I think because the
00:06:18 ◼ ► flight was crowded, I ended up on the aisle and I was like, "Oh, well, the aisle, we'll do the
00:06:21 ◼ ► aisle. The aisle's fine." First thing you know, I'm getting slammed with a food cart or something.
00:06:27 ◼ ► And I thought, "Oh yeah, I can't." It was a reminder like, "This is why I don't do this.
00:06:36 ◼ ► So thank you so much to Brent for sending in that #snowtalk question. If you would like to submit a
00:06:44 ◼ ► question for the show, just send out a tweet with the #snowtalk and it may be given in consideration
00:06:57 ◼ ► Yeah. We said a lot of controversial things I thought last week, and I was actually surprised
00:07:03 ◼ ► we didn't get more angry emails, but we did get a few tweets about the TV license, mostly saying,
00:07:21 ◼ ► iPlayer or whatever of those things. Please just stop bugging me.'" And that you could do that,
00:07:26 ◼ ► and that they had done that, and that they wouldn't be bothered too much, except then somebody else
00:07:35 ◼ ► Yeah. There are a bunch of billboards. This came from Colin. One is, "Our database lists every home
00:07:46 ◼ ► Yeah. Or, "Our database is notified when a new TV is purchased. There's nowhere to hide."
00:07:50 ◼ ► Now, I think some of these ads are maybe a little older, but this is the point that I'm trying to
00:07:55 ◼ ► get at. The way that they tone everything makes me feel like it's just going to be more hassle
00:08:01 ◼ ► than it's worth. And I know people, I know friends who have tried to do this thing with a TV license,
00:08:10 ◼ ► because I was following up with people, the majority of people that told me all I had to
00:08:15 ◼ ► do is not pay it were people that didn't even live in the United Kingdom. Like, I'm super happy that
00:08:20 ◼ ► people know that this is a thing you can do, but trust me, try and do it, right? Like, this is my
00:08:25 ◼ ► point. Way to correct the English guy about things that happen in England, people who don't live in
00:08:30 ◼ ► England. This is, it is not as easy as you think to opt out of the TV license. Like, it really just
00:08:35 ◼ ► isn't. I wish... And even when you do, apparently they still do, like, bug you, and then they've
00:08:39 ◼ ► also got the signs up that are particularly threatening. Yeah. But anyway, I have to say,
00:08:51 ◼ ► on myself that people weren't quite as upset by some of our pronouncements. That's fine. I think
00:08:57 ◼ ► at this point, we scared away most of the people who can't get around to a high-risk way of thinking.
00:09:04 ◼ ► You know? That's good. Maybe we'll scare away some more people. I just, I figured there'd be a real,
00:09:07 ◼ ► like, face ID or touch ID partisan would pop in, or there'd be somebody who'd be really angry about
00:09:14 ◼ ► iOS apps on the Mac and all that, but you're right. Perhaps we've... Also, you know, people
00:09:18 ◼ ► who think that you should never click the skip intro button on Netflix. We had all of those hot
00:09:22 ◼ ► button issues, but it was not that big a deal, so that's fine. We scared those people away.
00:09:31 ◼ ► for tracking the changes coming to the potential entry-level iPad line, so the regular iPads.
00:09:37 ◼ ► Mac Otakara is reporting that the screen size of the next standard iPad is not yet finalized.
00:09:43 ◼ ► They are saying that they've heard from some suppliers who are stating it will be 10.2 inches,
00:09:47 ◼ ► and some are saying it will be 9.7. The way that I read this rumor, Jason, is not that it's not
00:09:52 ◼ ► decided, it's that there will still be two of them. There will be a new version, and then there will
00:09:57 ◼ ► be an old version, which is cheaper. That's what I think is going to happen. You think it will just
00:10:01 ◼ ► keep the sixth generation around and then also release like a seventh generation? Yeah. Or,
00:10:06 ◼ ► you know, at least keep the sixth generation in education. Right, right. That they're still making
00:10:13 ◼ ► the sixth generation, plus they're going to make a new seventh generation and whoever...
00:10:17 ◼ ► I think it would be super strange that there are suppliers that think that there are orders coming,
00:10:22 ◼ ► but they're still debating it. Everything we know about Apple is like, they don't leave it.
00:10:26 ◼ ► It's not like they're just still trying to work it out. This is a product that is apparently coming
00:10:30 ◼ ► sooner rather than later. This iPad will also reportedly keep Touch ID and the headphone jack.
00:10:36 ◼ ► So basically like the current ones that are in this generation. I don't think this is much of
00:10:41 ◼ ► a surprise. I don't know if I'd necessarily spent too much time thinking about Touch ID versus Face
00:10:47 ◼ ► ID, but I'm not surprised that Face ID wouldn't make its way into this line, right? You got to
00:10:52 ◼ ► differentiate between the high end and the low end somehow, and that's a perfectly reasonable way to
00:10:57 ◼ ► do it. And as our friend Zach in the chat room points out, not finalized when it's supposed to
00:11:04 ◼ ► be shipping is kind of just patently ridiculous, which is why I think your theory, which is there
00:11:08 ◼ ► must be... They must actually be planning on continuing to manufacture the old size as well
00:11:13 ◼ ► as the new size is... I think the only explanation if these reports are true, because there's no way
00:11:19 ◼ ► that they're like making supply deals and then they're like, "I don't know." We're not sure.
00:11:31 ◼ ► All right, so let's move into Upstream where we talk about the happenings in streaming media.
00:11:35 ◼ ► We can say goodbye to the Disney Vault. CEO Bob Iger told shareholders that Disney Plus,
00:11:41 ◼ ► at some point fairly soon after launch, will carry films that traditionally have been kept in a vault
00:11:46 ◼ ► and brought out basically every few years. This is in a report from The Verge from a shareholder
00:11:58 ◼ ► that they would create this artificial scarcity with their films, which as a parent, let me tell
00:12:03 ◼ ► you, it's the worst. It's the worst. Now, what you do get is you get like grandparents or even
00:12:08 ◼ ► potential grandparents buying... I knew somebody who literally bought every single Disney VHS release
00:12:15 ◼ ► because they wanted to get everything while it was out of the vault so that when their child
00:12:20 ◼ ► had children, and this was somebody in their 20s, basically, when their 20-something child
00:12:26 ◼ ► had children, that the grandma would be able to provide a video library of every Disney movie.
00:12:32 ◼ ► And there was a whole buying strategy and hoarding these movies. Of course, in that case,
00:12:37 ◼ ► you know what happened, which is by the time the kid was ready to watch Disney movies, everybody
00:12:41 ◼ ► moved on to DVDs. And she had all these VHS tapes like, "Hmm, that's not so good." But it's
00:12:48 ◼ ► infuriating because when I was... My daughter got really into Sleeping Beauty when she was little,
00:12:54 ◼ ► and Sleeping Beauty was in the vault. And I'll just say it, you know what I did? I found a friend
00:13:02 ◼ ► who had Sleeping Beauty on DVD, and I made a copy of it. I ripped the DVD and made a copy of it
00:13:14 ◼ ► anywhere. And it was infuriating. Now, three years later, they came out with the Blu-ray,
00:13:17 ◼ ► and I bought the Blu-ray. I'm not sure we ever watched the Blu-ray of it, but I bought it
00:13:22 ◼ ► because I had copied somebody's thing. But it's stupid. So when they announced they were doing
00:13:31 ◼ ► the service, this was immediately what I thought, which was, "Well, this is the answer to the Disney
00:13:35 ◼ ► vault," is instead of the Disney vault as a strategy to get people to hoard Disney movies
00:13:43 ◼ ► and create this artificial demand for them by withholding them for no reason other than
00:13:49 ◼ ► to withhold them, that instead it becomes... The Disney vault becomes an inducement to subscribe
00:13:57 ◼ ► to Disney Plus because all of the movies, the only place that you can stream those movies are on
00:14:04 ◼ ► Disney Plus. And I think that's really smart. I wonder tangentially, there are some other
00:14:09 ◼ ► kind of treasure troves of movies that are not available on streaming that I wonder if somebody
00:14:13 ◼ ► will back up a truck full of money to, let's say, Studio Ghibli, where all the Hayao Miyazaki
00:14:23 ◼ ► movies are not available on streaming. And I think that's because Miyazaki... Yeah, I know, right?
00:14:33 ◼ ► to make them digitally available in any way. You can't even buy them digitally after you get the
00:14:36 ◼ ► discs. But that would be another example where there's a little treasure trove that maybe at
00:14:41 ◼ ► some point somebody will spend and use as a motivator. But the Disney vault, they own it.
00:14:51 ◼ ► it's a brilliant strategy because you're basically saying, "Hey, you're a parent. You love Disney
00:14:55 ◼ ► movies. You wanna show them to your kids. Pay for Disney Plus and you get all of them." Like,
00:15:05 ◼ ► Captain Marvel, which is out now and smashing records left and right, that will be the first
00:15:10 ◼ ► Disney Plus exclusive as well, which is super interesting. So if you wanna get it digitally
00:15:17 ◼ ► and probably in 4K, I bet they'll still sell it on iTunes, but only in 1080. If you want it on 4K,
00:15:24 ◼ ► I think that there is a question about the vault idea that it remains to be seen where Disney's
00:15:34 ◼ ► movies end up in the long run. Like, will they be available? I assume they'll continue to be
00:15:40 ◼ ► available on like Blu-ray and 4K and probably a la carte on other services, but it's possible that
00:15:48 ◼ ► they will withhold some of those too in order to create a vault-like kind of thing where it's like,
00:15:55 ◼ ► "Well, you can't get it anywhere else. That one right now, but you can get it on Disney Plus."
00:16:09 ◼ ► - Yeah, 'cause I have some 4K Disney stuff, but I think it's 4K on other platforms and not on
00:16:20 ◼ ► it's just in HD. That's it. It's not in 4K. It's not in HDR. They've done this for a while now,
00:16:27 ◼ ► like the actual Marvel Marvel movies, right? There are Marvel-related movies, right? Like the
00:16:38 ◼ ► - Yeah, so if it comes from Disney, they've just not been doing it, which I'm portraying.
00:16:42 ◼ ► - So it is very frustrating. So that is a question. Like, there are other vault-like strategies that
00:16:48 ◼ ► they can do that are not quite the same, and that's interesting. I don't know if we've heard
00:16:53 ◼ ► of Disney Plus is gonna do 4K HDR. I would assume it does, although probably they'll do like Netflix
00:16:59 ◼ ► and say you can pay more and get the 4K HDR version and all of that as part of it too. It'll be
00:17:05 ◼ ► interesting to see how they do it, but this is a huge asset for them, so it's not surprising that
00:17:09 ◼ ► they would deploy it because they want people to pay for this thing, and that's a great motivator.
00:17:12 ◼ ► Like every Disney movie, including stuff that's been out of circulation, maybe not every because
00:17:17 ◼ ► they've got some that they don't want anyone to see anymore because of the racism, but mostly.
00:17:29 ◼ ► over on Six Colors because of a quote from one of media's Robert Greenblatt, so the guy in charge,
00:17:34 ◼ ► "Netflix doesn't have a brand, it's just a place that you go to get anything. It's like Encyclopedia
00:17:39 ◼ ► Britannica. That's a great business model when you're trying to reach as many people on the
00:17:43 ◼ ► planet as you can." Now a lot of articles that I've seen about this quote from Greenblatt,
00:17:49 ◼ ► frame this as him throwing shade at Netflix and being like, "Ah, Netflix is just a place where
00:17:55 ◼ ► you go to get anything. They don't do anything specific. They're just a bunch of stuff."
00:17:58 ◼ ► But you wrote something on Six Colors, which seemed a little bit more in defense of this quote.
00:18:04 ◼ ► Yeah, I think a lot of people love to point and laugh at clueless executives who don't understand
00:18:09 ◼ ► about technology and all of that. And I think they totally misread what Greenblatt was saying here,
00:18:18 ◼ ► which is something that we've talked about before. I've written about it before, and it's the idea.
00:18:25 ◼ ► So Greenblatt's the new guy in charge, which is why, as we said last week, the HBO guy left,
00:18:30 ◼ ► and they're making a bunch of changes as AT&T takes over WarnerMedia. But his point here,
00:18:37 ◼ ► it's actually related to what we've talked about Apple and about Apple's strategy and the
00:18:42 ◼ ► reputation it's gotten in certain circles. That New York Post article we talked about last week
00:18:48 ◼ ► is directly applicable, which is people who are kind of bent out of shape because Apple,
00:18:52 ◼ ► who is spending billions of dollars on this content, is trying to set some standards for
00:18:57 ◼ ► what they want for their content. The don't be so mean thing is the idea of, when we look at Apple's
00:19:04 ◼ ► video stuff, what's the personality of that? It needs to have a personality. Ideally, any of these
00:19:12 ◼ ► services need to have a personality. They need to say, "Here's what kind of vibe you're going to get
00:19:16 ◼ ► from this." It's family-friendly. Disney, for example, is not going to do, almost certainly,
00:19:22 ◼ ► Marvel stuff on Disney Plus, that is, with the content of the Netflix shows, which was basically
00:19:29 ◼ ► rated R-level. I don't think Disney Plus is going to have any rated R-level content on it because
00:19:33 ◼ ► it's the Disney brand. That stuff will go on Hulu. It won't go on Disney Plus, I think,
00:19:38 ◼ ► almost certainly. So what's Apple's personality? And they seem to be, "Don't be so mean," a little
00:19:46 ◼ ► more positive. We had that story about wanting to be able to show it in Apple stores. So
00:19:52 ◼ ► you know, network TV level, maybe, in terms of standards and practices, and maybe a little more
00:20:08 ◼ ► And that's their prerogative. They have the money. I think there's marketing value in it, too,
00:20:13 ◼ ► because you need your product to mean something. Like, "What do I get when I sign up for Apple?"
00:20:17 ◼ ► You get these kinds of shows. It's helpful. HBO has a perspective. It is not necessarily
00:20:26 ◼ ► as simple as, "It's for families," but HBO has a... There's a feel for what an HBO show is.
00:20:37 ◼ ► WarnerMedia and its streaming service is an empty box without a label on it, right? What is that?
00:20:45 ◼ ► What is that? It's a corporation. It's like Warner Brothers. We've heard about that, and
00:20:48 ◼ ► Looney Tunes. And the people have some associations with Warner Brothers and Warner in general from
00:20:55 ◼ ► the old days. But what is the WarnerMedia streaming service? What does it mean? And I think that's
00:21:01 ◼ ► what Greenblatt's saying here is... First off, he's like, "Don't talk about us compared to Netflix,"
00:21:14 ◼ ► is like the Encyclopedia Britannica, Netflix buys all kinds of content. And other than maybe Amazon,
00:21:22 ◼ ► I don't think there's anybody out there who is currently at a point where they could be that.
00:21:26 ◼ ► They can say, "Our streaming service is for everybody, and we spend $15 billion a year."
00:21:31 ◼ ► Maybe they'll dream of ending up there, but right now, that's what Netflix does. They are making
00:21:36 ◼ ► things around the world. They're making things for kids. They're making things that are super
00:21:50 ◼ ► when he says it doesn't have a brand, he doesn't mean nobody knows who Netflix is. He's saying,
00:21:55 ◼ ► "Netflix doesn't stand for a narrow-focused thing that's trying to target an audience."
00:22:00 ◼ ► Netflix is for everyone. That's been their strategy, and that's why they're so dominant.
00:22:04 ◼ ► Netflix is this enormous cultural force. And I think he's also saying, "Please don't compare
00:22:09 ◼ ► us to Netflix, because we don't have that budget. We're not going to spend that money. Instead,
00:22:13 ◼ ► we're going to try to create our own brand that is going to reach a certain audience that we're
00:22:19 ◼ ► targeting with content that we think they will like, that will resonate with them. And that's
00:22:25 ◼ ► what we're doing." And I think that's what he's saying here. I think he's very specifically saying,
00:22:30 ◼ ► "We are going to come up with a personality, and we're going to try to reach these people.
00:22:33 ◼ ► And we can't be Netflix." And it allows when they launch this thing and people are like, "Well,
00:22:38 ◼ ► let's compare them to Netflix." He's already sown the seeds here of, "No, no, no, you can't compare
00:22:47 ◼ ► And we aren't that. We're not trying to be that." And the fact is, nobody, other than, like I said,
00:22:52 ◼ ► maybe Amazon with Prime Video, nobody's in a position to even pretend to try to do what
00:22:58 ◼ ► Netflix is doing. And finally today, MacRumors is reporting that Apple and Roku are currently
00:23:05 ◼ ► finalizing negotiations to add AirPlay 2 support to their devices via way of a software update.
00:23:11 ◼ ► GABLER>> There it is. There it is. We were talking about this when they made those first CES
00:23:15 ◼ ► announcements, right? Like, gotta be that other shoe to drop. Looks like it's gonna happen,
00:23:20 ◼ ► according to these reports, AirPlay 2 in Roku TVs, like mine, and also in Roku streaming boxes. And
00:23:29 ◼ ► what this does is it gets AirPlay, which means it gets Apple's TV service and all of Apple's
00:23:36 ◼ ► video content onto any TV for what, 20 bucks, 30 bucks, for the lowest end of the Roku boxes,
00:23:47 ◼ ► assuming that they are going to be covered by this, which we'll have to see. I bought my mom
00:23:51 ◼ ► a Roku, a little Roku streaming, I would call it a stick, but it's actually more like a, it looks
00:23:56 ◼ ► like one of those little infrared receivers, except it's a whole Roku thing for 30 bucks, 29 dollars,
00:24:04 ◼ ► at Walmart when I was visiting her. And, you know, it's basically invisible. And like, that
00:24:10 ◼ ► is the thing that Apple needs to have in the market so that they have access to all these
00:24:15 ◼ ► TVs for relatively cheap for people to watch their streaming service. And I think the beauty of this
00:24:21 ◼ ► is it shows they're more concerned about services revenue than hardware revenue, and it actually
00:24:25 ◼ ► frees them to not make a cheap-ish Apple TV if they don't want to, because they don't need to.
00:24:32 ◼ ► Like, Apple TV has all these other features, and if all you want to do is beam your Apple TV shows
00:24:39 ◼ ► from your iPhone to your TV, you can just buy a Roku thing for 30 bucks and it'll be fine.
00:24:44 ◼ ► - And as we said a million times, but this just for me is like, if it's coming on Roku,
00:24:49 ◼ ► it's going to be on the Fire TV stick too. - Probably. I mean, Apple and Amazon have had,
00:24:54 ◼ ► seem to have resolved many of their differences, and they're tech giants and they go back and forth
00:24:59 ◼ ► about it, whereas Roku is not a tech giant and therefore is, Roku really would love to support
00:25:06 ◼ ► whatever Apple is doing, I'm pretty sure, right? It increases the value of their product, but
00:25:10 ◼ ► I would be shocked. Yeah, I would be surprised anyway if Apple and Amazon didn't ultimately
00:25:17 ◼ ► make a similar deal. - Yeah, it's valuable to Roku because they have the possibility of creating the
00:25:22 ◼ ► cheapest AirPlay 2 box that you can get, right? Like that's their selling point there, right?
00:25:27 ◼ ► - And then you're in Roku's ecosystem on the TV when you're there. - Which is valuable for them.
00:25:46 ◼ ► - Yeah, because if you're Amazon, you don't want Apple to king-make Roku, right? - Right, and
00:25:53 ◼ ► AirPlay 2 seems like the best way forward because then it gets away from all of those problems that
00:26:01 ◼ ► are a problem on the Apple TV for Amazon, which is purchases on device and stuff like that.
00:26:06 ◼ ► If you just do the AirPlay 2 stuff, you don't have to worry about any e-commerce, any logins,
00:26:16 ◼ ► cut that Apple wants to take of every purchase on their devices. - And AirPlay 2, as the method here,
00:26:23 ◼ ► is beneficial to Apple's core business because it means you have to have an iOS device. You can't
00:26:28 ◼ ► just sign up, right? Like for Apple TV and use it with another device, use it just on whatever stick.
00:26:35 ◼ ► You have to be able to beam it from something, which is what they ultimately want everybody to
00:26:43 ◼ ► Probably not, but does it fit with Apple's core business? Yeah, it does. So I would be surprised,
00:26:50 ◼ ► I mean, we're expecting an Apple event here in a couple of weeks. Depending on how the news goes
00:26:58 ◼ ► most wonderful drafts of all time, so I'm very excited for that. So, you know, maybe Roku finds
00:27:03 ◼ ► its way into the draft. So, because I can imagine a slide where Apple says, "Hey, this is all these
00:27:09 ◼ ► sticks we're working with." - All these partners. - All the great partners. - There's got to be
00:27:14 ◼ ► that, right? Well, we'll draft it, but there's got to be a slide that says where this is available,
00:27:20 ◼ ► where this is going to be available, and it's going to be all the Apple devices and all our
00:27:23 ◼ ► partners. - Yep, so we'll see. All right, today's episode is brought to you in part by ExpressVPN.
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00:28:57 ◼ ► their support of this show and Relay FM. So we're going to do some kind of extended follow-out and
00:29:03 ◼ ► build upon a topic from ATP last week. The episode was titled "The MacBook Hierarchy of Needs,"
00:29:12 ◼ ► and John Siricusa presented an interesting thought process of looking at the potential next entry in
00:29:20 ◼ ► the MacBook Pro line and ranking via a list of priorities like the Maslow hierarchy of needs,
00:29:28 ◼ ► about what are the most important features and what are the ones that you must have for the
00:29:36 ◼ ► laptop for that product to be a viable product for you. So you wrote about this on Six Colors
00:29:43 ◼ ► and I kind of liked your take on it. And I want to kind of do this in two different ways because
00:29:48 ◼ ► we both use laptops but not to the level that the ATP guys use their laptops. So I think
00:29:55 ◼ ► maybe our needs will be slightly different, we'll see, but I also wanted to pivot this a little bit
00:30:04 ◼ ► into what it would take, what our hierarchy of needs are for an iOS laptop, which is the famous
00:30:11 ◼ ► iBook created by Jason Snell. And so I figured that we could maybe kind of split it in two,
00:30:16 ◼ ► maybe to see if there's any differences between those two things. So I kind of broke this down
00:30:21 ◼ ► into a few different lists, right? So for a MacBook Pro, considering what people want from it,
00:30:27 ◼ ► and also looking at the upcoming rumors, I think the things that we kind of have to pick from are
00:30:32 ◼ ► like an increased screen size, and if that's important to you, ports, keyboard reliability,
00:30:38 ◼ ► power. So I also wondered like Intel and ARM, is that like a thing that you can that you care about
00:30:44 ◼ ► at this stage? Is a new design important to you as a reason to buy a laptop, battery life, cellular,
00:30:50 ◼ ► and maybe MagSafe? So those are the kinds of things that I was thinking about as well, looking at what
00:30:54 ◼ ► you wrote on Six Colors. So for you, when it comes to a MacBook or MacBook Pro, where does the kind
00:31:00 ◼ ► of the line start to get drawn? Well, I think the thing that I found valuable in having this
00:31:07 ◼ ► sort of thought experiment is the idea that there are the things that you can't change that are
00:31:15 ◼ ► fundamental to the product, and that they have to be at the top of the hierarchy, right? It's a
00:31:20 ◼ ► little bit like saying you need to, you know, you need to have food and clothing and shelter,
00:31:32 ◼ ► the foundations, right, that everything else needs to be built on. And it speaks to the issues
00:31:39 ◼ ► that people have had with Apple's laptops the last few years, because I think the keyboard is
00:31:44 ◼ ► a great example. Like only one company makes Mac laptops, obviously, it's Apple. So if you want to
00:31:51 ◼ ► use Mac OS, you need to buy their hardware. And at this point, other than the very, very, very old
00:31:55 ◼ ► 999 MacBook Air, they all use essentially the same keyboard, which is the keyboard that they
00:32:01 ◼ ► introduced in to the MacBook in 2015. And it has now spread across the entire line. And it's been
00:32:08 ◼ ► modified a few times. And some people have some problems with it. And I wrote a piece like two
00:32:12 ◼ ► years ago about how part of the problem that Apple is having in terms of blowback from MacBook Pro
00:32:18 ◼ ► users and MacBook users in general, is the fact that they have, they're cornered, they have nowhere
00:32:23 ◼ ► to run. There's no alternative unless they leave the platform entirely, right? If Apple made like
00:32:30 ◼ ► a Pro laptop and a consumer laptop, and the Pro laptop had a different keyboard, and that's what
00:32:35 ◼ ► everybody was hoping, right? Everybody was hoping after the Magic Keyboard 2 came out, that the new
00:32:43 ◼ ► MacBook Pros would use that keyboard and not the MacBook keyboard, because the MacBook keyboard had
00:32:47 ◼ ► been optimized for thinness, and on a MacBook Pro, you could presumably afford a little more travel.
00:32:58 ◼ ► if you want the different keyboard, get our other model." It's like, literally, this is the only
00:33:01 ◼ ► keyboard you can buy. And that's why I keep thinking like, for things that are fundamental,
00:33:06 ◼ ► you need to make careful decisions. Like an SD card slot is not fundamental. Like, it's a nice
00:33:11 ◼ ► to have, but in the end, you can buy a little dongly thing that will give you an SD card slot,
00:33:18 ◼ ► right? But you can't pull the keyboard out and put in a new keyboard. You can't pull the screen off
00:33:23 ◼ ► and put in a new screen. And, you know, and you can't like drill a hole and add a couple of ports,
00:33:29 ◼ ► right? So there are parts that are integral to the laptop. And that's where you have to start. So in
00:33:34 ◼ ► my mind, that's where it has to start. And something like the keyboard, Apple needs to make
00:33:37 ◼ ► decisions about that keyboard, I think, that make it more broadly appealing, because nobody's going
00:33:44 ◼ ► to have an alternative. Nobody's going to have a choice of something different. If they're going to
00:33:48 ◼ ► truly design one keyboard for every laptop they make, it needs to be appealing to everyone, or at
00:33:55 ◼ ► least inoffensive to everyone, which I think the old keyboard was. And the new keyboard, there are,
00:34:01 ◼ ► it definitely has its adherence. But I think that the challenge there is that you're making,
00:34:05 ◼ ► if you make a keyboard and a certain percentage, let's say a quarter of your user base hates it,
00:34:11 ◼ ► they have no recourse. Like they have nowhere to go. And that's not good. I think that's not good
00:34:17 ◼ ► if you're Apple and you're the single supplier and you're basically saying everybody who likes our
00:34:21 ◼ ► operating system has to like this keyboard, because this is all you're ever going to get.
00:34:26 ◼ ► I think that that's not great. So for me, it all starts with the keyboard. I thought the ATP guys
00:34:31 ◼ ► brought out a great point, which is for the pro laptops, getting to one-to-one on, so it's not a
00:34:37 ◼ ► scaled display, because right now the default view is scaled. And so it's not as clear, it's not ideal
00:34:43 ◼ ► like on a pro laptop, having that display be, you know, unscaled default, I think is a good
00:34:55 ◼ ► And then all of the other stuff, I mean, I have to ask myself this question as I was listening
00:35:01 ◼ ► to them and as I was writing my thing, which is, I wonder if part of why I found traveling with an
00:35:07 ◼ ► iPad and working on an iPad so attractive is that an iPad is basically a screen without a keyboard
00:35:15 ◼ ► and it lets me supply whatever keyboard pleases me. And there's some truth in that, right? Because
00:35:21 ◼ ► I like the bridge keyboard and the bridge keyboard. And I even like the smart keyboard folio,
00:35:27 ◼ ► although not as much as I like the bridge. I've been using that a lot because the bridge
00:35:31 ◼ ► keyboard for the new iPads isn't out. And you know, I'm really missing my bridge keyboard.
00:35:36 ◼ ► I'm dying for the keyboard. Yeah, right. Right. But that's a difference with the iPad is that you
00:35:41 ◼ ► can supply your own keyboard and MacBook and MacBook Pro users can't do that. So I wonder
00:35:48 ◼ ► about that too. So for me, that's where it all goes. I think MagSafe is one that's interesting
00:35:52 ◼ ► to throw in there because while there are magnetic adapters that you can plug into a USB-C port,
00:35:57 ◼ ► it's kind of hacky and, you know, or kludgy. Ideally, you know, I would love to see Apple say,
00:36:10 ◼ ► invented this new connection type, which is magnetic. So it's a breakaway or something."
00:36:14 ◼ ► I would kind of love that. But, you know, that is a good example of something that is probably
00:36:21 ◼ ► ideally integrated into the hardware and not something that you can just use an escape valve
00:36:26 ◼ ► of a dongle. So for me, whilst I appreciate the importance of a reliable keyboard, I'll
00:36:35 ◼ ► ask you, by the way, keyboard, reliability or feel or both? Like what is, what are you basing?
00:36:40 ◼ ► Do you have to have a good keyboard? Do you have to have a reliable keyboard? What's the limit?
00:36:45 ◼ ► - I think the core issue here is reliability, right? Because the people cannot like the
00:36:51 ◼ ► keyboard. I think you can get used to it. Everybody can get used to everything. I would like them to
00:36:56 ◼ ► make some different priority decisions on the actual feel of the keyboard. It does feel like
00:37:00 ◼ ► they something designed for the MacBook. And then they basically forced everybody else who didn't
00:37:05 ◼ ► need those constraints to also adopt it. But I also understand that like, you know, not everybody's
00:37:10 ◼ ► a fragile flower like me who looks at that keyboard and is like, "I don't like it. I can
00:37:15 ◼ ► use it, but I don't like it." I would like to think that Apple wants a keyboard that appeals to more
00:37:20 ◼ ► people rather than is used begrudgingly. But I feel like the core problem they've got and that
00:37:26 ◼ ► they've tried to address multiple times now is the fact that it's getting a reputation for being
00:37:32 ◼ ► unreliable. That like people have stories and they tell other people about that time that their
00:37:37 ◼ ► space bar stopped working and they were told to, you know, get a can of compressed air or take it
00:37:42 ◼ ► into the Apple store. And that's not good. Like I think that is the thing that will threaten their
00:37:48 ◼ ► sales figures the most is getting a reputation for unreliability. - So I will buck the trend.
00:37:57 ◼ ► The keyboard is not the most important part to me personally for a MacBook Pro. We're going to talk
00:38:03 ◼ ► about this later on, but I use my MacBook Pro five times a year probably, right? It's when I'm
00:38:08 ◼ ► recording away from home. That's when I use a MacBook. And for me, the biggest thing that I
00:38:17 ◼ ► would want to see to make me want to buy a new one would be the reintroduction of a USB, a regular
00:38:23 ◼ ► USB port, because that's the thing that is most important to me. I don't use the keyboard, right?
00:38:29 ◼ ► I'm not sitting and typing on it. Like it's really, it is just a machine to allow me to get
00:38:35 ◼ ► to all of the software that I need to edit and all that kind of stuff. And I have some sticky keys.
00:38:41 ◼ ► I have Marco's original MacBook Pro, the one where he first had a problem. I think it's got like a,
00:38:47 ◼ ► the E key will get stuck. I have that. I bought it from him. So like this keyboard came to me with
00:38:53 ◼ ► already having an issue. It's not something that is that important to me because I'm really just
00:38:58 ◼ ► using it as a, like an audio production machine and using dongles. And like I use this like
00:39:04 ◼ ► hyperdrive dongle, which only has one USB-C port because when I bought it, I think I bought it for
00:39:11 ◼ ► a different machine than the one that I have. But anyway, and so it's not, it doesn't sit exactly
00:39:17 ◼ ► how I would like. It gets a little bit wobbly and I don't like that. I would just like to be able to
00:39:21 ◼ ► plug my audio interface in with USB and just leave it at that. That's what I would like to be able to
00:39:26 ◼ ► do. Uh, but I don't have an option to do that right now. You can just get a USB-C to USB-A
00:39:32 ◼ ► cable, right? Or is it the number of ports that's the issue? I have, I could get one of those cables
00:39:37 ◼ ► and it would be great, but also I just think just the number of ports is an issue. Like it really
00:39:41 ◼ ► restricts me. Um, cause I also need the SD card, right? So I'm still going to need a dongle for
00:39:47 ◼ ► that because if I'm recording without the laptop, which happens too when I'm traveling, I then need
00:39:52 ◼ ► something for the SD card too. So like the removal of all of the ports that came away, whilst there
00:39:57 ◼ ► are some fixes, they're all fixes and I don't really care for them. Like what I want is the
00:40:02 ◼ ► ports back. Do I think I'll get it? No, but that's why I'm not assuming I'm going to buy a new MacBook
00:40:07 ◼ ► Pro, right? But that's where the line is drawn for me, uh, personally is to see some more, some of the
00:40:14 ◼ ► more frequently used ports come back to the line. That's what I would like, but I'm an outlier
00:40:19 ◼ ► because I don't use a Mac laptop the way that most people use Mac laptops. I mean, the touch bar issue
00:40:25 ◼ ► is, is, you know, here too, right? Because you get the more ports on the touch bar models,
00:40:38 ◼ ► So that's, that's a question going forward. I don't want that. I don't want the cost of that
00:40:43 ◼ ► for what I'm doing, right? Like, you know, it's too much and I don't need a touch bar because again,
00:40:50 ◼ ► I wouldn't be able to effectively use the touch bar because I wouldn't, I'm not used to it. My,
00:40:54 ◼ ► my, I'm act as an ever touch bar. And so I'm not going to get in a touch bar based workflow on a
00:41:00 ◼ ► laptop that I use so infrequently, you know, I tried using a Mac book for a while. Like I
00:41:05 ◼ ► used the Mac book for a while for this. And it just, it just can't deal with, with the pro apps
00:41:10 ◼ ► very well. Like it was a point where using the pro apps, like final cut or logic plugged in the
00:41:18 ◼ ► battery would be draining. So that was why I moved back to a Mac book pro, polo Mac book. And that
00:41:25 ◼ ► was perfect for me, like the size and thickness and the weight and stuff. That's what I want,
00:41:30 ◼ ► but it just can't handle what I need from those machines when I'm traveling, which is a shame.
00:41:36 ◼ ► So, you know, I think that based upon what you want is typical to what most people want. And
00:41:42 ◼ ► I'm a bit of an outlier when it comes to the Mac book. So why don't we just go into complete
00:41:46 ◼ ► outlier territory, an iOS laptop. Now what diff, what could change here? What is important to you
00:41:55 ◼ ► in this mythical product? Where does the line get drawn? I'm assuming this line would be a little
00:42:01 ◼ ► bit higher. There would need to be more things that it would need if we look at where iOS based
00:42:13 ◼ ► oh, I mean, I'm struggling with the thought of given what Apple has said about the future of iOS
00:42:17 ◼ ► and Mac OS. I, I am now finding it hard to believe that this product will ever exist. Then instead,
00:42:23 ◼ ► it's going to be a more Mac iOS, like Mac laptop. But, you know, I think there are open questions
00:42:32 ◼ ► there about just how iOS, like they're going to make the Mac and the big questions are things like
00:42:37 ◼ ► touch support. Would they consider making a convertible where, you know, you could flip it
00:42:43 ◼ ► around and make it more tablet, you know, tablet mode and then have it be more in the laptop mode
00:42:49 ◼ ► or would they just ever consider making a more, you know, hardened keyboard option for the iPad
00:42:58 ◼ ► Pro themselves rather than just these covers, something that's more like what Microsoft offers,
00:43:03 ◼ ► where they've got some other keyboard options. I don't know. I don't know. So, so that's for me,
00:43:10 ◼ ► that that's where I kind of run aground on the iOS laptop ideas that I'm, I'm feeling like Apple
00:43:16 ◼ ► has just basically said, if you want, if you like iOS and you want a laptop, travel forward in time,
00:43:22 ◼ ► a couple of years and look at and buy a Mac laptop because it'll run all your iOS apps and also do
00:43:29 ◼ ► the things that a Mac can do. And that's great. I think the truth is that my, my favorite thing
00:43:43 ◼ ► when I want to, because a lot of what I do with the iPad, I don't need a keyboard. And then I
00:43:47 ◼ ► attach a keyboard when I need it. And when you travel with a Mac laptop, the keyboard's always
00:43:52 ◼ ► attached. And I, I'm not sure that is going to change in, in the future that I'm not sure Apple
00:43:58 ◼ ► is ever going to let, you know, make a product that basically feels like an iPad, but is actually
00:44:05 ◼ ► a laptop. But I think that that's, that's part of it, right? So like for you, any product that Apple
00:44:11 ◼ ► were to possibly make or make available for others to make in the future would need to include this
00:44:19 ◼ ► like convertibility factor. So like, imagine if, so for me, like where I would want to draw the
00:44:26 ◼ ► line at making, uh, my iPad more like a laptop is track pad support, right? Like that's the most
00:44:32 ◼ ► important part of it for me, right? Like if we want to, if we want to continue pushing iOS to be
00:44:38 ◼ ► more like a laptop, I would like to be able to use a track pad and could embed that into a keyboard.
00:44:42 ◼ ► So like that's super important. Although I am kind of coming around to your idea that like,
00:44:46 ◼ ► if there was ever the ability for iPads to support these things that we wouldn't want some company to
00:44:52 ◼ ► come along and be like, all right, you got to keep it in this case now all the time, like the ability
00:44:56 ◼ ► to be able to separate it is still really important. And I think that drawing the line with
00:45:00 ◼ ► those two things, I think really helps push iOS to be more like a laptop without making it.
00:45:12 ◼ ► that I hadn't really thought of before, but I'll put it out there now, which is if my choice was
00:45:18 ◼ ► you can get an iPad that acts like a laptop, if you snap it into a case that makes it into a laptop,
00:45:26 ◼ ► or you can just use a Mac laptop at that point, I just use a Mac laptop. Like I, I, I, I deal with
00:45:41 ◼ ► about, uh, how, cause Federico is very much a, I prefer iOS kind of guy. I am a, I like iOS. Sure.
00:45:49 ◼ ► And I like iOS and I like the Mac. I prefer what the iOS devices shapes get me. And if I have to,
00:45:58 ◼ ► this is why I don't like, I haven't liked any of the cases like Logitech made a case for the iPad
00:46:03 ◼ ► where you basically snap it into this thing and it becomes a MacBook air. And then you have to kind
00:46:08 ◼ ► of snap it back out every time you want to use it as a tablet. And like, if I wanted my iPad to
00:46:13 ◼ ► permanently turn into a laptop, I just use a real laptop at that point. Like I'd rather just use a
00:46:18 ◼ ► Mac book air or a Mac book pro, because the reason I like the iPad is because a lot of my uses are
00:46:26 ◼ ► without the keyboard and I can ditch it. And I have a very light little tablet to hold. So for,
00:46:31 ◼ ► for me, uh, you know, beyond a certain threshold, like I'm not interested anymore. So a convertible
00:46:36 ◼ ► something, um, you know, I would be great. Like I just, I really love the fact that I can use a
00:46:42 ◼ ► keyboard on my iPad when I need to and only when I need to, because that makes it a much better
00:46:47 ◼ ► device because I only use the keyboard. I only have to use the keyboard some percentage of the
00:46:52 ◼ ► time. And it's not a huge percentage. Yeah. 5%, 10%. I don't know. Yeah. I agree with you there.
00:46:56 ◼ ► Cause it's like the smart keyboard I can keep, I keep it on cause it's fine. There's the folio.
00:47:04 ◼ ► which hopefully it will be sometime in the next few months when I'm, I would and did take my iPad
00:47:11 ◼ ► out of the bridge keyboard quite a lot because that's too much at that point, like a fixed
00:47:16 ◼ ► thing, which I can't really do anything with that adds weight and thickness. It's like, no, I don't,
00:47:21 ◼ ► I don't want this on all the time. And the ability to just be able to take it out and put it back on
00:47:25 ◼ ► again was really good. It's one of my favorite things about that. But that is, I think super
00:47:29 ◼ ► important when thinking about iOS as a laptop, it's like, or iPads as a laptop is not losing
00:47:35 ◼ ► inherently what makes an iPad an iPad. Like saying like, oh, well, you know, it's like an iPad,
00:47:40 ◼ ► but we've just fixed it into this screen now, like into this case. And that's just how it is.
00:47:44 ◼ ► That's not so fun. Like that's it, it loses something and being able to like still pop it out
00:47:51 ◼ ► and do what you need to do and then pop it back in and it's back to being more of a traditional
00:47:56 ◼ ► laptop form factor is a little bit more kind of enticing than the idea of just completely changing
00:48:03 ◼ ► what that form factor is all about. So there you go, the iPad iOS laptop hierarchy of needs.
00:48:11 ◼ ► We'll go with that. Thanks, thanks, John. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by our friends
00:48:18 ◼ ► over at Luna Display, the makers of the hardware solution that turns your iPad into a wireless
00:48:23 ◼ ► display for your Mac. This means you have a second display that's super portable with basically zero
00:48:28 ◼ ► lag and stunning image quality. So talking about iOS and the Mac and coming together and moving
00:48:34 ◼ ► apart, I was having some fun over the weekend working on a little project in Pixelmator. And I
00:48:41 ◼ ► use Pixelmator on iOS a bunch. But there were some tools and also some font based stuff that just
00:48:47 ◼ ► wasn't working for me on iOS. Because basically if the font you're trying to use is not already
00:48:53 ◼ ► pre-installed on iOS, it can get real weird even if you try and install it with one of the apps
00:48:57 ◼ ► that install stuff. So what did I do? I opened Luna Display, which is I have my Luna Display
00:49:02 ◼ ► plugged into my Mac Mini. Then I could use Luna Display from the Mac on my iPad using the Apple
00:49:08 ◼ ► Pencil. And it works flawlessly. It's super smooth. It looks fantastic. I can zoom in, zoom out,
00:49:14 ◼ ► and I feel like I'm in complete control. I'm not feeling like I'm in this like weird hybrid mode.
00:49:19 ◼ ► It's using the Apple Pencil and the keyboard and my fingers. It basically is making my iPad a touch
00:49:26 ◼ ► screen like Mac basically. It's wonderful. It's like a complete extension to my Mac. This is what
00:49:32 ◼ ► Luna call the Luna Display and I completely agree. And I was able to get what I needed done by using
00:49:37 ◼ ► Pixelmator on my Mac instead of on the iOS. I love Luna Display because it's enabling me to be able
00:49:43 ◼ ► to do these things without then needing to go and turn on a Mac and all that kind of stuff. And I
00:49:48 ◼ ► could just be wherever I am and it's not breaking my workflow. But this isn't all that Luna Display
00:49:57 ◼ ► maybe when you're traveling, even if you don't have a Wi-Fi connection available, you can just
00:50:01 ◼ ► plug in Luna Display and then you can plug in your iPad and your Mac over USB. And then right there,
00:50:06 ◼ ► you have extra screen real estate at your disposal. The all new liquid video engine added to Luna
00:50:11 ◼ ► Display brings significantly reduced latency and an even faster screen refresh rate. The listeners
00:50:17 ◼ ► of this show can get an exclusive 10% discount on Luna Display. Just go to L-U-N-A-D-I-S-P-L-A-Y.com
00:50:26 ◼ ► and enter the promo code upgrade at checkout. That is LunaDisplay.com and the promo code upgrade at
00:50:31 ◼ ► checkout to get your 10% off. Go there right now and upgrade your setup. You're gonna love it.
00:50:37 ◼ ► Trust me on this one. Our thanks to Luna Display for their support of this show and all of Relay FM.
00:50:53 ◼ ► No, no, I'm not. But I do want to kind of state my case on this whole little thing because
00:51:00 ◼ ► you wrote an article a few weeks ago on Six Colors about your current setup for podcasting
00:51:07 ◼ ► with an iPad Pro which got Federico pretty excited and Federico Vitticci has now kind of
00:51:14 ◼ ► bought some of this hardware so he could replicate it himself for various reasons. Federico mostly
00:51:19 ◼ ► because he spends some time in the summer at a different location to his home and would prefer
00:51:25 ◼ ► not to have to take his Mac with him. So he's been doing some experiments as well which has brought
00:51:32 ◼ ► him kind of to the similar place that you have and use because basically he's using what you
00:51:39 ◼ ► didn't tell him to do but he took it as you were telling him to do in the post. So I want to get to
00:51:46 ◼ ► this a little bit but before we get to kind of my feelings on this I want to talk about your approach
00:51:52 ◼ ► so kind of a couple of things. Why do you do this? Under what circumstances do you do this? And what
00:51:57 ◼ ► are you using right now to make podcasting on iOS work for you? So here the goal is okay I'm going
00:52:06 ◼ ► to see my mom and then I'm going to LA. I'm on this trip for about a week and I've got to do
00:52:11 ◼ ► podcasts while I'm gone. I've got like three podcasts at least that I have to do and I'm
00:52:15 ◼ ► thinking can I do this with just my iPad because normally I would just travel with my iPad but
00:52:20 ◼ ► there's this question like can I do this with just my iPad or do I need to bring my MacBook Air which
00:52:25 ◼ ► I was kind of resolved to just bring my MacBook Air along and literally only use it to record
00:52:30 ◼ ► podcasts because I'm going to bring my iPad along and I'm going to use it because that's my primary
00:52:35 ◼ ► thing and I would even write on it because it's got the nice screen and I've got a keyboard and
00:52:39 ◼ ► it's fine but I thought I might need to bring my old MacBook Air with me just for the podcast stuff
00:52:45 ◼ ► because it's got audio hijack and it's got you know call recorder and all of those things on it
00:52:51 ◼ ► and then I thought okay can I figure out a way to do this without that because that would be
00:52:56 ◼ ► I wouldn't need to bring the laptop it is shaped like a laptop it's got to fit in a bag I got to
00:53:03 ◼ ► take it out of security I got to do all these things and my question was like is there something
00:53:08 ◼ ► I can do that will not require me to bring all sorts of you know extra hardware at which point
00:53:14 ◼ ► I should just bring the laptop and I managed to get it to work and and what I did was add one box
00:53:21 ◼ ► I brought my USB interface that I use to record which weighs you know less than a pound and that's
00:53:29 ◼ ► it like I brought one extra box and is inherently easier to pack than a laptop is yes yeah because
00:53:36 ◼ ► it's a it's a it's not quite a cube but it is a little rectangular thingy it's it's easy to pack
00:53:41 ◼ ► throw it in a in a bag or carry on or whatever and it's powered by a USB plug so I don't have to bring
00:53:47 ◼ ► like my macbook air is an older one so I have to bring its magsafe power adapter because that's how
00:53:54 ◼ ► it only way it charges I also throw out there that my my my daughter travels with a laptop
00:54:00 ◼ ► and my my but my mom doesn't have a laptop anymore she just has an ipad so I don't even have that like
00:54:07 ◼ ► emergency safety net that I sometimes do when I travel where it's like well at least there's a
00:54:10 ◼ ► mac around if I need it like nope there's not going to be a mac around when I'm in the desert
00:54:15 ◼ ► there's no macs so the desert of macs just cactus no no macs in the desert yes right that's true
00:54:24 ◼ ► good point good point so what I figured out is that I could add one box and I could do this
00:54:29 ◼ ► because the goal here is I want to be able to when I'm doing a podcast I want to be able to speak into
00:54:35 ◼ ► a microphone and hear my own voice returned to my ears because that's very important in terms of did
00:54:42 ◼ ► I get the volume right am I popping my peas all of those sorts of things and I want to hear you
00:54:46 ◼ ► right or whoever is on the other end of the podcast I need to hear both because I need to
00:54:50 ◼ ► hear what you're saying otherwise this is just a one I mean it's a very bad podcast if we can't
00:54:55 ◼ ► hear each other and also I want to hear you through your podcasting microphone so that's
00:55:02 ◼ ► that's another piece of it right so so um I want to hear both I want to send you the my high quality
00:55:07 ◼ ► microphone and not some sort of like laptop microphone or ipad microphone or earbud microphone
00:55:12 ◼ ► I want you to get the one I'm talking into because that's going to make me sound the clearest and then
00:55:18 ◼ ► number three is I need to be able to record my voice and that's important because then I need
00:55:23 ◼ ► to send you the file or whoever you know I need to have a file of my voice at full quality and so
00:55:29 ◼ ► what I ended up doing was using the zoom voice recorder plugging my microphone into that and I
00:55:37 ◼ ► realized that it's got a it's got an you know an out port a line out plug that I could plug into
00:55:44 ◼ ► my usb interface and then I could plug that into my ipad and the ipad pro with usb-c it works fine
00:55:51 ◼ ► and at that point you're hearing my my voice come through via usb as if it was plugged into my
00:55:57 ◼ ► microphone it's just that it's not it's plugged into my voice recorder that's plugged into my
00:56:02 ◼ ► microphone and by adding that additional layer because unfortunately the zoom won't run as an
00:56:11 ◼ ► audio interface and record onto a an sd card so if it could do both I would only need it but it
00:56:18 ◼ ► can't do both so and my goal here was not to buy new hardware I was just using existing hardware
00:56:23 ◼ ► and cables that I already owned because I was trying to say my goal for myself was can without
00:56:28 ◼ ► buying anything can I make this work and I could with existing hardware as far as I know there is
00:56:33 ◼ ► nothing that you even can buy so there are products by sound devices the company that makes the usb
00:56:39 ◼ ► pre-2 that you're using called the mixpre series and they record simultaneously onto a sd card
00:56:47 ◼ ► whilst also outputting over usb but they do not work with ios yeah I have heard mixed responses
00:56:53 ◼ ► some people have gotten them to work with ios some people have not I you know that's not great right
00:56:58 ◼ ► like next response even contacted sound devices support and they sound and they said they have
00:57:03 ◼ ► absolutely no plans to support this officially so if it does work I wouldn't rely on it because it
00:57:10 ◼ ► could break um at any point who knows but so I mean and it is worth noting because it does when
00:57:15 ◼ ► you look at the image it looks like you have a lot of stuff on your desk but honestly it's one more
00:57:20 ◼ ► box than one more box you're currently using so exactly like for for this for the typical setup
00:57:26 ◼ ► it's not it's not that much now so this is kind of kind of how it works the problem is when you get
00:57:33 ◼ ► into all the the trouble points it is two twofold one no software backup right of audio recording
00:57:40 ◼ ► and two the file transfers so the software backup thing is kind of nothing you can do about that
00:57:46 ◼ ► that's an ios thing we'll get to that in a minute but the file transfers what are you doing for that
00:57:50 ◼ ► because you end up with files on an sd card right yeah and it's the same thing I've talked about it
00:57:54 ◼ ► before um kingston makes a little box that's a little wi-fi a thing with an sd card slot and a
00:58:00 ◼ ► usb plug on it and basically they have an app that runs on ios and if you attach a hard drive or plug
00:58:06 ◼ ► in an sd card to that little box it it's a wi-fi box so you connect to it via wi-fi it's its own
00:58:12 ◼ ► little base station you open their app and it shows you all the files of the whatever device
00:58:18 ◼ ► is attached including the sd card and then you just copy them over um which is it's silly but
00:58:26 ◼ ► that is the most effective way i've found to transfer things off of an sd card that aren't
00:58:36 ◼ ► by any if you attach an sd card directly via an adapter to uh to an ipad pro so instead you use
00:58:42 ◼ ► this third-party app and it transfers the files over fairly fast and then i get about editing
00:58:48 ◼ ► in ferrite which i did i did an episode of download where you know i collected all the files and
00:58:52 ◼ ► in and i had to i was going to the airport so i had to do it in about half an hour and i
00:58:56 ◼ ► i did it it was fine and i have federico he bought a weston digital thing called the my passport
00:59:02 ◼ ► wireless pro and does the same thing and yeah but he can use it with an app that he uses called
00:59:09 ◼ ► i think file explorer so it actually shows up in files for him over a network which is kind of cool
00:59:13 ◼ ► that's nice yeah so he's been so federico's been playing around with this too um he even
00:59:18 ◼ ► surprised me on an episode of remaster by by using all this gear surprise and amongst our friends i
00:59:26 ◼ ► am i am considered to be a curmudgeon on this point but i have i have feelings about it which
00:59:35 ◼ ► is why i think that this is not a good option if it is what you are considering to be the only way
00:59:44 ◼ ► you're going to record so to try and break that down a little bit i think that this option is
00:59:50 ◼ ► risky because you can only get one recording output right you are just recording to the sd
00:59:56 ◼ ► card and when we're on our max again whilst it's only software i'm always recording in two places
01:00:02 ◼ ► because things can die so having two recordings going at the same time whilst both in software
01:00:08 ◼ ► is great and there is no way to do this on ios right now because of the way the audio is handled
01:00:13 ◼ ► on ios so my feeling that because of the i think there is an additional level of complexity that
01:00:20 ◼ ► comes with this really you were able to work this out because you really understand how this goes
01:00:25 ◼ ► right like and it took you some time as well to get it kind of to the to the place this is not
01:00:30 ◼ ► the first iteration of this setup that you've had sure but it's the first one that actually
01:00:34 ◼ ► replicated my experience as a podcaster yeah yeah uh which is a which was a nice a nice point i
01:00:40 ◼ ► mean like it took you even some time as somebody who does understand this stuff to kind of get to
01:00:45 ◼ ► the point where you were like okay i found the setup right yeah and with all of these things you
01:00:50 ◼ ► know whenever you say only an ipad what it really means is only an ipad and all the boxes that you
01:00:54 ◼ ► need to attach in order to make this work right there's no only here the ideal would be that i
01:00:59 ◼ ► would be able to take my microphone and either through an interface or if it's a usb microphone
01:01:03 ◼ ► directly plug it into my ipad pro and do a podcast and have all of the recording things happen
01:01:10 ◼ ► on the ipad like they do on a mac and that's not possible no and that that is what makes me kind of
01:01:18 ◼ ► like uncomfortable like all traveling setups include risks right because like when i travel
01:01:24 ◼ ► with a macbook pro and a zoom recorder things can go wrong because i don't use it enough i'm using
01:01:28 ◼ ► dongles right like but i can still use multiple apps and i'm still like pretty convinced that
01:01:34 ◼ ► what you are hearing from me is going all through the software so like what you are hearing as long
01:01:39 ◼ ► as i've set things up correctly which i do know how to do right in software like you're going to
01:01:43 ◼ ► hear me correctly so i just feel like if you're traveling or there are extenuating circumstances
01:01:49 ◼ ► that prevent you from using a regular setup this is fine because all traveling setups come with
01:01:56 ◼ ► potential pitfalls but i think as your only setup this is not how you should be recording podcasts
01:02:03 ◼ ► like you're adding too many potential risk points in um and i it's just not at the moment set up to
01:02:10 ◼ ► be a permanent solution like the mac is the best place for this stuff right now in my opinion but
01:02:16 ◼ ► if you have to use it fine but i i don't think that this is the right thing for always right now
01:02:24 ◼ ► that is my kind of feeling on this yeah i uh i i think i think one of the reasons i do this is
01:02:31 ◼ ► because i don't want to travel with a laptop if i can help but one of the reasons i do this is
01:02:35 ◼ ► also to explore the current state of the art and just remind myself of all the places where ios
01:02:40 ◼ ► as everybody who has been using an ipad pro since they were announced has said where ios fails us
01:02:48 ◼ ► and this is a this is a great example of that where in so many ways ios is just not capable
01:02:52 ◼ ► of doing all these things that we in our particular niche have come to rely on and i'm sure other
01:02:57 ◼ ► people in other niches can say similar things and other people in still other niches can say
01:03:02 ◼ ► completely different things like oh no it's all resolved now but on the podcasting side it's not
01:03:06 ◼ ► resolved because of the way ios handles sound and um access to the microphone and access to recording
01:03:12 ◼ ► via an app and all of those things and as a result you're left with this kind of uh weird work around
01:03:19 ◼ ► kind of scenario but that said like federico i i had that feeling of like can i get away with
01:03:24 ◼ ► not bringing a mac because i'd like to if i'd like to not bring that laptop if there's another way
01:03:30 ◼ ► with existing stuff i didn't want to spend money on uh on a new approach with lots of boxes but
01:03:37 ◼ ► the net result was that my bags were lighter because i did this than they would have been if
01:03:41 ◼ ► i had brought my macbook air and it's power adapter but you're right you lose some of your
01:03:46 ◼ ► backup i would say actually one of my big fears was we record these podcasts and especially with
01:03:52 ◼ ► guests who are not as uh as established as we are people who don't have all the stuff sometimes
01:03:59 ◼ ► their recordings fail sometimes they record the wrong microphone or they press the wrong button
01:04:03 ◼ ► and that's the part that like if i if i knew i was doing a podcast with somebody who didn't own skype
01:04:10 ◼ ► call recorder on the mac because you're using that recording of skype do you exactly now there are i
01:04:15 ◼ ► talked to somebody who said that there are some ways to work around that but i think that i think
01:04:19 ◼ ► that basically um that is part of the risk you take when you do this is that is that you need
01:04:25 ◼ ► you're relying on someone else so i like for download i relied on steven who i knew was using
01:04:30 ◼ ► call recorder to provide me with a call recorder file that i could use to sync everything up um
01:04:37 ◼ ► because i couldn't provide that myself so there's a lot there's a lot that you give up to do this
01:04:41 ◼ ► the only advantage is that i didn't have to bring my laptop with me and i got to write an article
01:04:44 ◼ ► about it so you know that was good but it's not it's not good enough for regular use that's the
01:04:50 ◼ ► truth of it and i think that goes back to the core issue here which is that uh there's stuff that that
01:04:54 ◼ ► as much as uh we like ipads and we like ios there's stuff that ios um especially on the software side
01:05:00 ◼ ► just is not capable of doing right now and i hope that apple addresses some of these issues so like
01:05:05 ◼ ► looking at the software there are options available that you can just take a usb microphone plug it
01:05:10 ◼ ► into your ipad and go you know apps like anchor and zoom and ringer these are applications that
01:05:18 ◼ ► provide calling interfaces and will do recordings for you um do what experience do you have of these
01:05:24 ◼ ► i know you've played around with some of them yeah um there are challenges like anchor does a thing
01:05:30 ◼ ► where they they have in their podcast recording app they have a guest mode where you can bring
01:05:36 ◼ ► people in but they have to be on ios devices um you can't be i don't know i don't know if they do
01:05:42 ◼ ► android but you can't be on like a mac or a pc because you need the app so that's no good um
01:05:49 ◼ ► zoom is a tool that i use for some podcasts especially on the incomparable these days it's a
01:05:54 ◼ ► it's a business teleconference app but it it has some features like it will record um it will do
01:06:00 ◼ ► cloud recordings of people and it will let you actually record multiple um people on different
01:06:05 ◼ ► tracks which is also really good um everybody has to have zoom they that's available on all
01:06:10 ◼ ► platforms and if i if i absolutely had to only travel with an ipad and do a whole bunch of
01:06:15 ◼ ► podcasts with a lot of people like i do with the incomparable i would probably do it all through
01:06:20 ◼ ► zoom um and then the another option is ringer which is another for pay teleconferencing service
01:06:30 ◼ ► and they have a uh they have a tier that's not cheap but they have a tier where um you can
01:06:36 ◼ ► connect to people on um on computers or on ios devices or android devices i think and it will
01:06:45 ◼ ► record your voice and it will record all the other people and you can get those files afterward
01:06:52 ◼ ► and edit them so there are some but they're limited and some of them are limited by platform
01:06:57 ◼ ► and some of them are limited in terms of their functionality and you know and i pay for zoom so
01:07:03 ◼ ► i don't actually mind that but like um some of them record locally some of them don't they just
01:07:08 ◼ ► have a cloud recording so it doesn't sound it's not as good quality but it's better than nothing so
01:07:13 ◼ ► i don't know i feel like uh the challenge here is that it's asking everybody to get yet another app
01:07:18 ◼ ► and you have to standardize and everybody has to get download that app or go to that web website
01:07:23 ◼ ► and that just makes it more complicated but it's possible it's getting closer but this is the catch
01:07:29 ◼ ► is that basically you have to count on somebody's app who has anticipated all of your needs you
01:07:34 ◼ ► can't connect a few apps together like we do on the mac and say well i'm using audio hijack and
01:07:38 ◼ ► i'm using skype and i'm using call recorder and now i've got everything and i'm you know i've
01:07:43 ◼ ► built a whole system up and ios just kind of doesn't let you do that yep and that's it that's
01:07:48 ◼ ► the key part that's what i'm waiting for for this is like i want to be able to on ios route my audio
01:07:53 ◼ ► to multiple apps and have it record that's what i want and i know that about audio bus i know that
01:07:59 ◼ ► it's this thing called audio bus which in theory that you're doing this on ios but nobody uses it
01:08:04 ◼ ► no no way perhaps you're using it barely any recording apps other than garage band are using
01:08:09 ◼ ► it like it seems to be a musician's tool um yeah it's not being yeah we hear we hear about it every
01:08:14 ◼ ► time and and it's one of those things where it's like well theoretically this could happen it's
01:08:18 ◼ ► like well that's great but um the problem is that the these it's not being supported by the apps
01:08:24 ◼ ► that need it and you know they're not going to support it and the way you need to do this is you
01:08:29 ◼ ► need to have a system-wide thing that lets an app like audio hijack say i want to grab the audio and
01:08:35 ◼ ► let it instead of saying the the author of every single app has to opt in and support this very
01:08:40 ◼ ► specific thing in order to do this it's just it's not realistic so um you know there there's
01:08:46 ◼ ► definitely always a will actually uh involving audio bus that is like it's just it's right there
01:08:51 ◼ ► but it's like yeah but it's not practical and it's not being used in in any of the apps that we would
01:08:55 ◼ ► choose and so that's why i think apple needs to to uh you know let more than one app can look at the
01:09:01 ◼ ► microphone at once for example as just one simple example and maybe look at the overall system audio
01:09:07 ◼ ► as well and if i could have an app that could record my microphone and on one side of a stereo
01:09:13 ◼ ► file and everybody else on the other side while i was using some other app um this problem would
01:09:19 ◼ ► be solved actually i want to mention there are some great tools that let you record podcasts
01:09:24 ◼ ► in browsers um zen caster and cast i use cast every week the problem is that they require
01:09:30 ◼ ► chrome on the desktop and they don't work on mobile on ios because ios has safari and apple
01:09:43 ◼ ► of years um but according to the developers of these apps it's still not enough for them to
01:09:48 ◼ ► support safari so i was hoping that that might be a solution is to use one of these web apps
01:09:54 ◼ ► because they will record locally and then send your file up over the internet and uh it's very
01:09:59 ◼ ► clever because i can with non-technical people i can just say go to this url in chrome and we'll
01:10:04 ◼ ► do a podcast and i get a file from them and they didn't have to do anything except go to a url
01:10:09 ◼ ► great but it doesn't work on ios so because it doesn't work in safari so that's not an option
01:10:15 ◼ ► either oh well oh well today's episode is also brought to you by our friends over at pingdom
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01:11:35 ◼ ► move into #askupgrade now and jason there is a theme to the majority of today's ask upgrade
01:11:42 ◼ ► questions let's see if it plays out if you can see what the theme is as we move through okay okay
01:11:47 ◼ ► first question comes from ben what do you think of including iMessage for android or windows as a
01:11:52 ◼ ► part of apple's subscription service options in the future i think it's possible i think it's not
01:12:03 ◼ ► you know it's it's more engineering that they have to do i think that it's more likely that
01:12:09 ◼ ► they might build something i don't know i don't know i mean i think they could because it would
01:12:14 ◼ ► be certain you're part of our ecosystem in terms of services and if you've got an android device
01:12:18 ◼ ► you can get your stuff on there but is that a priority for them do they really think that that's
01:12:22 ◼ ► going to move the needle in terms of services revenue or is it just going to be kind of an
01:12:26 ◼ ► afterthought for people who happen to have an android device while also paying are android
01:12:31 ◼ ► users going to line up to pay for some apple service just to get a blue bubble and how many
01:12:39 ◼ ► so i'm skeptical about that but it's not impossible i don't think it's impossible i don't think it
01:12:45 ◼ ► would be like i don't even know if it's necessarily something that like you would pay for just but
01:12:52 ◼ ► would be a reason for people that don't use apple devices to sign up for a potential content bundle
01:13:00 ◼ ► right like you pay for apple tv and we have this apple tv you have for android let's imagine and
01:13:05 ◼ ► apple music for android and you also get iMessage too um it could be could be good it could also you
01:13:10 ◼ ► know it's a platform thing i i figure iMessage for other platforms feels like a kind of if like a
01:13:19 ◼ ► emergency release valve or something right like a break glass in case of emergency type situation
01:13:31 ◼ ► well we could also do this that's kind of how i look at that yeah but you you have to the problem
01:13:37 ◼ ► is that you have to build it like you have to get a team to build iMessage for another platform
01:13:43 ◼ ► which is not going to be easy right like of course it's not going to be easy um but that that's you know we'll
01:13:49 ◼ ► see and i think it could happen i think maybe at a certain point apple might just do it especially
01:13:56 ◼ ► when you look at some of the stuff that facebook's now talking about that they're going to do right
01:14:01 ◼ ► that facebook's going to make this uh end-to-end encrypted chat platform right and i can kind of
01:14:06 ◼ ► imagine i was listening to the vergecast this week and i think dita bone brought this up
01:14:14 ◼ ► stick a thumb out at facebook and just be like well here is the truly end-to-end encrypted model
01:14:23 ◼ ► right like his as a kind of like a privacy thing maybe um and i could potentially see that as an
01:14:28 ◼ ► option just as like a kind of a way to stick a fork in the ground or whatever sure i'm making a
01:14:35 ◼ ► lot of really weird broken floors here yeah but you kind of get what i'm saying right i think i
01:14:41 ◼ ► think the challenge is a real cost analysis of how much is it going to cost for us to build and
01:14:46 ◼ ► maintain a secure app on other platforms for this stuff and do we really want to do that you know
01:14:54 ◼ ► is that going to get us subscribers and subscription revenue that is material but um i think it's i
01:15:01 ◼ ► think it's possible like they could sell it as you know you get all this this great apple suite of
01:15:05 ◼ ► features all on android too they could they could do that i just i don't know i don't know it's it's
01:15:12 ◼ ► a i'm a little skeptical of it but they could certainly do it if they if they did them the the
01:15:16 ◼ ► calculations and decided it was a good idea chris asks with apple's move towards services do you
01:15:22 ◼ ► think apple will put stuff like news tv music and books in the browser or will they remain locked
01:15:29 ◼ ► into apps i think this is a great question i feel like this is more um likely than building android
01:15:42 ◼ ► or windows apps right like we've already seen on windows with icloud that what they've done is said
01:15:47 ◼ ► oh if you're on a device that is not your usual device and might not even be a mac um we have a
01:15:54 ◼ ► web interface for you and then they build a web interface and everybody can use the web interface
01:15:59 ◼ ► so if you are on android or windows or whatever we don't care there's a website or on somebody
01:16:06 ◼ ► else's mac and you need to log in and check something you can do that and that's fine i think
01:16:12 ◼ ► that's a more likely scenario will it you know will they i don't know maybe maybe um i would
01:16:20 ◼ ► hope they would actually i think this would be a good one for them to do because it it is the
01:16:24 ◼ ► release valve right which is if you have no other way to do this you can just log in on our website
01:16:29 ◼ ► and read that news or watch that tv show or play that music arthur asks apple music or spotify i
01:16:39 ◼ ► now have apple music included with verizon so i'm deciding whether to cancel my spotify and go all
01:16:44 ◼ ► in on apple music i think it depends on the features you're using right because spotify's
01:16:52 ◼ ► selling point for a lot of people is the playlist that they make right so like discover weekly and
01:16:58 ◼ ► stuff like that which are apparently very very good and and i hear a lot of people compare them
01:17:03 ◼ ► to apples and apples are getting better but they're still not great and still not maybe as
01:17:08 ◼ ► good as what spotify is doing if you use features like that you may not be as happy but if really
01:17:14 ◼ ► all you're doing is listening to just the your like a library of music that you're putting
01:17:22 ◼ ► together right you listen to your favorite artists or albums i don't see why you wouldn't
01:17:26 ◼ ► go for apple music if it's now free for you basically because they all have the same library
01:17:32 ◼ ► like all these services have the same library it's just the bits on top like for example if you're
01:17:38 ◼ ► also using some of like spotify's features for controlling music on other devices using the
01:17:44 ◼ ► spotify app well you're not going to get that on ios apple music doesn't do this as well right like
01:17:50 ◼ ► if you're using you're like sending it out to echoes and to to sonos devices like whilst
01:17:56 ◼ ► apple's getting better with airplay too so this stuff is a little bit lower locked down there
01:18:04 ◼ ► that way yeah and you can still play that stuff on some of those devices so i don't know mike i can't
01:18:10 ◼ ► get if if i get apple music for free and i have to pay for spotify i'm going to use apple music
01:18:15 ◼ ► because why would i pay for spotify well i 100% agree i use apple music like i pay for apple
01:18:20 ◼ ► music apple music's just more integrated of ios i don't use spotify's features and i have home
01:18:25 ◼ ► pods so apple music for me right like i really think it just comes down to the fact if you're
01:18:31 ◼ ► using spotify like features that are specific to spotify that are outside of just the songs
01:18:35 ◼ ► and stuff you're playing then maybe you're best off sticking with spotify even if it is free for
01:18:40 ◼ ► you but if all you're doing is just listening to a library of music you've compiled i don't think it
01:18:44 ◼ ► really matters where you go um kleezy asked asks what are the pros and cons of apple releasing
01:18:52 ◼ ► apple podcasts for android i don't think it's maybe as much of a lock-in as ios for iMessage
01:19:04 ◼ ► i i can kind of imagine it but it would require them to um view podcasts super strategically for
01:19:11 ◼ ► them and they they have shown no signs yet of doing that where like where they they say no
01:19:17 ◼ ► actually we want to take advantage of we want to leverage our power in the podcast world to make
01:19:23 ◼ ► money like if they were to announce and we've seen no rumors of this at all but if they were to
01:19:28 ◼ ► announce that they're going to do what spotify is doing and create a whole bunch of like exclusive
01:19:32 ◼ ► podcasts that are only on apple and they're only for like apple music subscribers or apple whatever
01:19:38 ◼ ► services that are forthcoming subscribers to do that and that their delivery mechanism for that
01:19:43 ◼ ► was going to be that they're going to make a great podcast app on android and give it away and it's
01:19:48 ◼ ► and and they're going to use their their strength as a podcast provider to feed people into their
01:19:55 ◼ ► services then i could see it but they've shown no interest in that so far i think it would be
01:20:02 ◼ ► popular believe it or not if it was good because um the the podcast app market on android is really
01:20:11 ◼ ► fractured and google's taken a couple swings at it but even their current podcast app which is kind
01:20:16 ◼ ► of like a fake sub app of the google app is not great there are not to say there aren't good
01:20:22 ◼ ► android podcast apps there are podcast uh pocketcast is on android and it's great but um i think that
01:20:29 ◼ ► apple might have an opportunity there if they if they were going to make something of it but i'm
01:20:33 ◼ ► not sure we have seen any evidence that apple is interested in being anything but passive when it
01:20:39 ◼ ► comes to podcasting yeah i think the apple podcast could be successful on other platforms because of
01:20:52 ◼ ► podcasters you hear it all the time get it on apple podcasts like you just say that because
01:20:58 ◼ ► it's the biggest player and if you have something more mainstream your percentage of of apple
01:21:04 ◼ ► podcast listeners is massive right like for for like mainstream shows not shows like ours
01:21:09 ◼ ► mainstream shows it is huge right it's a big big big part of the pie so it seems like just over time
01:21:16 ◼ ► like a lot of like the celebrity driven shows or the kind of like you know your murder shows they
01:21:21 ◼ ► all just talk about like apple get it on apple podcasts because that's kind of just like the the
01:21:26 ◼ ► place for it and so then if you're not on ios you hear get out on apple podcasts and if you don't
01:21:33 ◼ ► know you're like well i can't get it then right yeah so i think that could be an interesting way
01:21:39 ◼ ► to play it because they are so strong with uh the marketing messages and asking i think a lot of
01:21:45 ◼ ► these people to use the marketing messages and stuff like that so i think that it works for that
01:21:49 ◼ ► reason um and it could be interesting it would i think it'd be kind of cool if they did do that to
01:21:54 ◼ ► be honest but we'll see google podcast doesn't seem that great i've used it a bit it does not
01:21:59 ◼ ► seem that great so no not yet anyway they seem to be talking a big game um but i'm i don't know if
01:22:06 ◼ ► the result has been that great so far all right so that i think wraps up this week's episode of
01:22:13 ◼ ► upgrade thank you so much to pingdom and lunar display and express vpm for their support of this
01:22:18 ◼ ► show uh you can find out more about this episode by going to relay.fm upgrade 236 but all the
01:22:24 ◼ ► show notes should be in your podcast player of choice we hope but if they're not you can go and
01:22:29 ◼ ► find them there jason is online at the incomparable.com and six colors.com he is at j snell j s n e double
01:22:36 ◼ ► l on social media platforms like twitter and instagram and i am i mike i m y k e you can follow
01:22:43 ◼ ► me uh in many places you just whatever social network you use just type that in and if something
01:22:49 ◼ ► pops up just follow it it's fine it's not gonna be a problem you'll find i'm sure something
01:22:53 ◼ ► interesting will be there even if it's not me uh thanks so much for listening and we'll be back next
01:22:58 ◼ ► time maybe with a draft if there is an apple event announced between now and then there will be a