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Upgrade

235: Don’t Be So Mean

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 235. Today's show is brought to you by Freshbooks,

00:00:14 ◼   ► Eero, and Luna Display. My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I'm Myke Hurley. How are you enjoying my country? I'm very well. I'm in Chicago, Illinois right now.

00:00:25 ◼   ► We'll talk about why in a minute, because right now nobody cares about that, because all they want

00:00:29 ◼   ► is our #SnowTalk question, which this week comes from Jonathan. And Jonathan wants to know, Jason,

00:00:34 ◼   ► when you make cereal, do you put the cereal in the bowl first or the milk in the bowl first?

00:00:40 ◼   ► This is a weird question, which is only appropriate, I suppose, so thank you, Jonathan.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Cereal first, then milk, because you need to use the cereal to gauge how much milk.

00:00:56 ◼   ► And if you put the cereal on the milk, the cereal just floats on the milk, and it doesn't tell you

00:01:00 ◼   ► anything. I feel like what I'm about to say is the type of thing that you should never say,

00:01:05 ◼   ► but I think people that put milk in first are monsters. Yeah, so I was gonna say, I know that

00:01:11 ◼   ► in England especially, there is the great debate about tea, about you do milk in first or not.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the same deal. Milk always goes in afterwards. Yeah, I usually put the milk in later.

00:01:22 ◼   ► You gotta use what's in the mug or the cup as the way to judge how much milk is required.

00:01:28 ◼   ► Yeah. It's simple. Right, because you can then add more milk and until it reaches the level.

00:01:33 ◼   ► If you put the milk in first and pour the cereal in, the milk's gonna spill out of the bowl,

00:01:37 ◼   ► right? Because the cereal lands in the milk and spills everywhere. That seems simple.

00:01:40 ◼   ► It could, or it's just gonna float on top of the milk, and then what have you done? You've just got

00:01:45 ◼   ► a cereal that you have to dig through to get to the milk. The idea there is the milk gets poured

00:01:50 ◼   ► over the cereal and it helps coat the cereal in the milk. Exactly. So it distributes the milk a

00:01:56 ◼   ► little more widely and then you can start. So yeah, that's my story. On this show, we share lots of

00:02:02 ◼   ► opinions about things and we get lots of responses. We talk about, again, like today, we're gonna talk

00:02:08 ◼   ► about what do we like more, touch ID or face ID. I guarantee the majority of feedback that we're

00:02:13 ◼   ► gonna get about this episode is people's feelings about the cereal or milk question. Or more broadly,

00:02:18 ◼   ► milk in first. Just in general, which should never happen. I will acknowledge the... I will

00:02:24 ◼   ► occasionally put the milk in first in my wife's tea, only because I'm lazy. And if you put the

00:02:29 ◼   ► milk in first and then put the tea in... It stirs it for you. You don't have to stir it.

00:02:34 ◼   ► It's still unacceptable. But it's not, yeah. But it was a bonus question from Jonathan.

00:02:40 ◼   ► "Jason, what is your favorite cereal?" I don't have a great answer here. As an adult,

00:02:45 ◼   ► I don't eat cereal very much. And when I do, it is some kashi, heart health. It's like little hearts

00:02:52 ◼   ► and circles that are... It's boring. Cereal is what I eat. When I eat it, I don't eat it a lot.

00:02:57 ◼   ► It's technically, some people say oatmeal is a cereal, which I don't think I would say it is.

00:03:01 ◼   ► It's close, but it's not the same. Oatmeal with some maple syrup, actually, in that. I like that.

00:03:07 ◼   ► And then my... But my all-time favorite, my childhood favorite, the go-to, the one that I

00:03:11 ◼   ► didn't get very often and I loved it when I got it. Cap'n Crunch. Cap'n Crunch. Loved it. Loved it.

00:03:17 ◼   ► I had Cap'n Crunch for the first time in Portland, XOXO. There's actually a top four episode,

00:03:23 ◼   ► which is the armenster show, where we ate cereal from a van and ranked them.

00:03:29 ◼   ► And I'm not in that episode, although you may hear me in the background. I was witnessing it from

00:03:33 ◼   ► behind the core group I was watching as all that happened. By the way, I have to correct you, Myke.

00:03:40 ◼   ► It's not Cap'n Crunch. Cap'n. It's Cap'n Crunch. Cap'n. Cap'n Crunch. C-A-P-apostrophe-N.

00:03:48 ◼   ► My favorite cereal is something which is very close to what is called Cinnamon Toast Crunch

00:03:54 ◼   ► in America, but in the UK, it is called Curiously Cinnamon, which I think is the best name for a

00:04:02 ◼   ► cereal that has ever existed. Curiously Cinnamon. How curious. From the people who brought you,

00:04:08 ◼   ► bizarrely, vanilla and strangely chocolate. That could not be more English. Okay, great. Good to

00:04:16 ◼   ► know. Good to know. I knew it was going to be a good name. I knew it was going to be one of the

00:04:19 ◼   ► brand names that is explained to an American and the American can't even understand what just

00:04:25 ◼   ► happened. Just what? Huh? So that was great. Thank you to Jonathan for sending in this

00:04:29 ◼   ► Snail Talk question. I'm going to have a classic here. You can send in a question of any kind to

00:04:33 ◼   ► open the show and if it's weird and wonderful enough, it may just be chosen. Just send in a tweet

00:04:38 ◼   ► with the hashtag SnailTalk. So I am in Chicago. The reason I'm in Chicago is because I made a

00:04:44 ◼   ► surprise appearance on Mac Power Users 472, which was recorded live in Chicago this weekend.

00:04:50 ◼   ► And I popped up during the show, as did Rosemary Orchard of Automators and we were guests on the

00:04:58 ◼   ► show. The reason that I did this is I just wanted to come out and support the guys because they,

00:05:03 ◼   ► you know, basically what happened was, Jason, I tell this story on the Mac Power Users episode.

00:05:07 ◼   ► I heard it. I heard it because I listened. Yeah. When Steven came on board with the show,

00:05:12 ◼   ► he sent me the first episode before it went up and I could tell how happy he was and I was so

00:05:16 ◼   ► excited for him that I just booked a plane ticket to Chicago. And then here I am. How often are you

00:05:22 ◼   ► in the US these days? You come to the US so often now. That is amazing. This year on average, I

00:05:28 ◼   ► think it's every six weeks. That's amazing. Well, that is a fun episode. And Steven tried out some

00:05:36 ◼   ► new podcast equipment, which is exciting. So that was also fun. Sounds great. And you got me looking

00:05:43 ◼   ► at USBC hubs because, well, I guess Rose got me looking at USBC hubs because they were in that

00:05:51 ◼   ► episode, they were talking about it. And I'm not making any purchases now, but I am intrigued by it

00:05:56 ◼   ► because of my iPad, because I don't have a Mac laptop with USBC on it, but I do have an iPad Pro

00:06:05 ◼   ► with USBC. And I'm intrigued by the idea of one of these hubs because there could be scenarios where

00:06:10 ◼   ► I want to charge and have devices connected, right? Wouldn't that be for podcasting and things like

00:06:15 ◼   ► that. But I decided I'm going to wait because I would really like to know Apple's intentions toward

00:06:22 ◼   ► USB devices in iOS going forward before I do that. I like the idea of buying a little box.

00:06:27 ◼   ► In fact, if they add support for, for example, reading the files off of an SD card that aren't

00:06:34 ◼   ► photos or videos, that's a great time to get a little hub that would give me maybe a headphone

00:06:40 ◼   ► jack and an SD card reader and some USB ports and all of that. I don't really need a VGA port or

00:06:46 ◼   ► something, but I do occasionally present to user groups and having those ports around might be good

00:06:51 ◼   ► too. So I'm interested, but it's entirely possible that many, many of those ports or

00:06:58 ◼   ► adapter thingies would be wasted on an iPad. And so I'm going to wait, but I am intrigued that

00:07:04 ◼   ► the state of the art and USBC hubs is progressing.

00:07:08 ◼   ► - I bought one of those hyper drives. So I backed it on Kickstarter. This is like a little thing

00:07:14 ◼   ► that's meant to hyper drive. I'm actually using one of their products right now for my MacBook Pro,

00:07:19 ◼   ► which I'm recording on. And you've seen them, they're like these, they're color

00:07:23 ◼   ► coded to basically match the laptops and they just plug into the side of the laptop. And it's like a

00:07:28 ◼   ► long strip of metal that has a bunch of plugs, a bunch of ports in it. Well, they created one

00:07:32 ◼   ► for the iPad, they had a Kickstarter campaign and mine's actually been shipped. So I may be able to

00:07:36 ◼   ► talk about that next week if it's of any interest, if the product is good. We'll see. But I backed

00:07:42 ◼   ► one of those because I just saw it, it's like, oh, it looks like a good product. And I'm hoping,

00:07:46 ◼   ► like you, that there'll be more support for USBC. We got some good feedback from

00:07:51 ◼   ► Upgrading Zvante about terminology for folding phones. Zvante suggests terminology that is used

00:08:00 ◼   ► in the world of origami. So they've got two names here, the Valley Fold and the Mountain Fold,

00:08:06 ◼   ► which are beautiful ways of describing it. So the Valley Fold is the Samsung because the screens go

00:08:11 ◼   ► in on themselves, right? So the fold is at the bottom. And the Mountain Fold is the Huawei because

00:08:16 ◼   ► it goes out on itself. So we've got Valley Fold and Mountain Fold. I'm going to try my best to try

00:08:21 ◼   ► and incorporate those going forward because I think that's a really great and tidy way of

00:08:25 ◼   ► describing the differences in the folding screens. Like when you say Valley and Mountain, it like,

00:08:31 ◼   ► visually, you can get an idea, right? Like screen on the inside, screen on the outside. So that's

00:08:36 ◼   ► really, really good feedback. And we're going to try and remember that going forward. That's way

00:08:39 ◼   ► better than Inny and Outty. It's this is why because I have no time. I have no time for that

00:08:45 ◼   ► description. It's not something that I want to be saying and it's not something that I will say. So

00:08:51 ◼   ► Valley Fold and Mountain Fold. So we're going to move into Upstream now. I had some great feedback,

00:08:55 ◼   ► Jason, from new Upgrading David Chen, who suggested that we every now and then explain

00:09:01 ◼   ► what Upstream is, which is a really good point. Upstream is a segment on upgrade where we talk

00:09:07 ◼   ► about the happenings in streaming media. So this is because this was actually this the idea for

00:09:12 ◼   ► this started in Chicago, like a year or two ago, when me and Jason were talking, we were talking

00:09:18 ◼   ► about Disney because they were kind of ramping up to do something. And we found that we both

00:09:22 ◼   ► really enjoyed talking about the kind of the happenings in streaming media, and especially

00:09:27 ◼   ► because it was becoming clear, and it's now abundantly clear that Apple, which is obviously

00:09:32 ◼   ► the company we focus on on upgrade, is getting into this world themselves. So we thought we would

00:09:37 ◼   ► prepare ourselves and prepare the Upgradients by talking about what's going on in the world of

00:09:41 ◼   ► streaming media. And that is what Upstream is all about. Right. And a ghost foretold that this will

00:09:46 ◼   ► one day be its own podcast in the future, but we're making no announcements. We don't,

00:09:49 ◼   ► you know, believe that necessarily. But the ghost, yeah, what will happen will happen in life in the

00:09:55 ◼   ► future. We don't know. But a ghost, we're big with ghosts is what I'm saying. Ghosts love Upstream.

00:10:02 ◼   ► Jason, do you want to kick off Upstream with this HBO news?

00:10:05 ◼   ► Yeah. So Richard Plepler, who actually has been on stage at an Apple event when they were rolling

00:10:13 ◼   ► out HBO Now on Apple TV, I believe he's been the CEO at HBO for a long time. And before that,

00:10:21 ◼   ► he worked in other jobs at HBO. He is out. He has quit at HBO. And this is part of a larger story.

00:10:32 ◼   ► So one guy losing his job is not necessarily a larger story, but there are major changes that

00:10:37 ◼   ► AT&T is performing at WarnerMedia. So they hired Robert Greenblatt, who was the head of Showtime

00:10:44 ◼   ► and NBC. He is now in charge of entertainment. He's basically the president of entertainment

00:10:50 ◼   ► at WarnerMedia. And that includes HBO as well as the Turner Networks, you know, TBS and TNT.

00:10:57 ◼   ► They've also done a reorg where a different executive is in charge of like the animation

00:11:05 ◼   ► stuff, Adult Swim and Cartoon Network and all of that. They put the sports stuff under Jeff Zucker,

00:11:10 ◼   ► who runs CNN. And basically what we're seeing here is that the Warner Brothers structure

00:11:17 ◼   ► and the Time Warner structure from back in the day was full of these little fiefdoms. So like there

00:11:23 ◼   ► were the Turner people and there were the HBO was its own little thing and Plepler ran it. And AT&T

00:11:32 ◼   ► is not interested in that. Like AT&T is like, this is not how we want this to be structured,

00:11:36 ◼   ► which is their prerogative and might even be right. I mean, I think it's worth having that.

00:11:42 ◼   ► Like organizations do get in weird structural things where there are reasons because of the

00:11:46 ◼   ► people that you've got or because of historical things that don't matter anymore. The new owner

00:11:50 ◼   ► comes in and says, this doesn't make any sense. It's their prerogative. They may be right.

00:11:54 ◼   ► It will lead to a lot of turnover and layoffs and all sorts of things like that. It may end up

00:12:00 ◼   ► making them a much better structured company going forward, but there's a lot going on there.

00:12:08 ◼   ► And then I think, and we talked about this on TV Talk Machine, my podcast with Tim Goodman from the

00:12:12 ◼   ► Hollywood Reporter last Friday. There is this sense that this is the end of HBO as we know it,

00:12:20 ◼   ► but we knew, you and I talked about it. We knew this was coming because the head, the AT&T guy

00:12:26 ◼   ► who was brought in to be in charge of WarnerMedia, he stood up in front of a crowd of HBO employees.

00:12:34 ◼   ► And this is John Stanky, the CEO of WarnerMedia who worked at Southwestern Bell and AT&T for a long

00:12:39 ◼   ► time, a phone company guy. He stood up and basically said, we need you to do more. HBO

00:12:47 ◼   ► can't be a boutique anymore. We want you to, we want quantity. Quality over quantity isn't going

00:12:54 ◼   ► to do it for us. We want quantity too. And at one point famously, and this is a presentation in front

00:13:00 ◼   ► of employees at HBO, Pletpler pointed out that HBO is profitable. And I totally get what he was doing,

00:13:06 ◼   ► which is he's trying to like pump up his employees a little bit and said, look, our business is good.

00:13:10 ◼   ► And so he says that and he's immediately undercut by Stanky who says essentially not profitable

00:13:15 ◼   ► enough. And it was like, okay, writing's on the wall here. AT&T now owns your business.

00:13:22 ◼   ► They don't care that you're a little profitable, boutique, critically acclaimed television thing

00:13:29 ◼   ► because they think, and this is the funny thing is they think that's going to be irrelevant

00:13:35 ◼   ► in the future of streaming media and that something of the size of HBO is not going to be

00:13:41 ◼   ► able to make it. And I don't know if they're wrong about that, right? But it is the case that this

00:13:48 ◼   ► was an organization that functioned pretty well, generated lots of very high quality,

00:13:55 ◼   ► critically acclaimed award-winning content, which everybody wants like Netflix wants that everybody

00:14:02 ◼   ► wants that that was profitable and successful, but maybe not the business that is exactly what

00:14:07 ◼   ► AT&T wanted and their response is to blow it up and like, okay, okay. You the owners, you bought

00:14:14 ◼   ► it. You can break it, but you may regret it, right? You may regret that decision because you're

00:14:20 ◼   ► taking an asset and taking everything potentially that it was good at out of it. And it doesn't have,

00:14:27 ◼   ► it doesn't retain its value. If you take HBO and you mash it up into little pieces and spread it

00:14:32 ◼   ► around your organization, it's not like the same amount of value spreads through your organization

00:14:37 ◼   ► necessarily. You could just have lost all the value of HBO, but this is what AT&T is doing

00:14:43 ◼   ► with modern media is they basically are taking it all apart and then putting it back together again.

00:14:47 ◼   ► So Plepler leaving HBO is symbolic in a way of just how much they're doing and Greenblatt coming in

00:14:56 ◼   ► and the other lieutenants kind of getting their areas that they've broken apart the old way that

00:15:01 ◼   ► they did business at this company. And, you know, cause they're serious about this. Like they want

00:15:06 ◼   ► that Warner media streaming service, especially to be a major player. And they also have to navigate

00:15:12 ◼   ► their existing, you know, cable brands and how they, how they move those forward. So

00:15:17 ◼   ► it'll be fascinating to watch, but I do feel like the HBO as we know it era is over,

00:15:25 ◼   ► you know, maybe we'll put the stake in the ground when the Game of Thrones finale airs or something

00:15:31 ◼   ► prepare yourself for a lot of think pieces about how the Game of Thrones finale is emblematic of

00:15:37 ◼   ► the end of the old HBO and the beginning of a new HBO.

00:15:41 ◼   ► - Steven Spielberg hates Netflix. - Apparently so.

00:15:47 ◼   ► - So Spielberg believes that movies coming from streaming services should only get as far as the

00:15:53 ◼   ► Emmys and not be in contention for Oscars. And he's going to be supporting some broad changes to

00:15:58 ◼   ► the Academy Awards that are happening soon. Well, that are going to be tried to be put into place.

00:16:04 ◼   ► And there's going to be discussions about changes to rules and he's going to be making this case.

00:16:08 ◼   ► So the case that Spielberg and others believe is that they feel that the playing field is

00:16:12 ◼   ► unfair when comparing the new studios to traditional studios. So the new studios being

00:16:18 ◼   ► your Netflixes, for example. They say the budgets can be way larger than traditional studios. Like,

00:16:24 ◼   ► for example, I think Roma's budget was like 50 million and some of the other movies in the

00:16:29 ◼   ► category, like the foreign film category were like 5 million. Spielberg believes and others believe

00:16:36 ◼   ► that these movies are not spending enough time in the theater. They're just spending the minimum

00:16:41 ◼   ► or maximum amount of time that they need to be able to be in contention. They're immediately

00:16:46 ◼   ► available worldwide, 24/7. I'm not 100% sure why this is a problem. And they don't respect the 90

00:16:52 ◼   ► day theatrical release window. These are the reasons why people like Steven Spielberg are

00:16:57 ◼   ► saying, "Oh no, they shouldn't be in contention for the Oscars." And I think this is bull. I think

00:17:02 ◼   ► it's absolutely ridiculous personally, because this is a bunch of people who believe that an

00:17:10 ◼   ► old way is the right way of doing things. And they're scared that the new people are coming in

00:17:14 ◼   ► and they're trying to beat them off. And I think what frustrates me the most about this is Spielberg

00:17:18 ◼   ► has his hand in many pies with these streaming companies already. And for some reason, he's now

00:17:24 ◼   ► trying to protect them from the Oscars. Like the Oscars are this magical thing that can't be

00:17:29 ◼   ► tarnished. When clearly the movie industry has changed so much since the Oscars began anyway,

00:17:34 ◼   ► and there's been so many other changes, this is just another change that this industry is going

00:17:38 ◼   ► to have to go through. That's right. This is somebody in his 70s who doesn't like change that

00:17:46 ◼   ► he sees in the world, but he was a beneficiary of the change. He wrought change in the movie industry

00:17:53 ◼   ► too. I mean, he created the modern blockbuster with Jaws, right? Like it's ridiculous. And from

00:18:00 ◼   ► a pure rules standpoint, because as a sports fan, I'm fascinated by how sports leagues change their

00:18:09 ◼   ► rules in order to try to change the product and make it more entertaining. And sometimes they

00:18:13 ◼   ► fail and sometimes they succeed. And there are always arguments about, well, we want to keep the

00:18:17 ◼   ► sanctity of what it's always been. And other people say, no, you need to change because what you've

00:18:22 ◼   ► got right now isn't good anymore. And this is a little bit like that, which is like, let's make

00:18:25 ◼   ► some arcane rule changes in order to really stick it to Netflix. And I think this is a challenge

00:18:34 ◼   ► because movies and television are basically the same now. Like the only, like literally,

00:18:41 ◼   ► I mean, there are differences, but like it's the same acting pool, it's the same talent pool.

00:18:46 ◼   ► The quality standard can vary across them, but it's pretty much equal. Like you have good and

00:18:52 ◼   ► bad prestige TV and prestige movies aren't really any different. All the players are the same.

00:18:58 ◼   ► And so you end up being in this arcane thing like is the Oscars, this is like Oscar saying,

00:19:03 ◼   ► we want to have a popular film category. Like really? Because you're basically creating the

00:19:09 ◼   ► most artificial of barriers in order to put things in the corner. And this is a good example of that

00:19:15 ◼   ► where it's like, oh no, it's like, I think I might've mentioned it last week. Somebody

00:19:21 ◼   ► referred to Roma as a TV movie the other week. And it's like, okay, that is a laugh, right? Like Roma

00:19:27 ◼   ► first off was a should have won best picture and probably didn't because people in the Academy

00:19:34 ◼   ► also feel like Steven Spielberg and don't like Netflix and the Academy of Odors are older.

00:19:38 ◼   ► But you know, are we really going to take an award show and make it entirely about preserving

00:19:45 ◼   ► the theater owners business model that's falling apart? And is there really, well, we, this is a

00:19:53 ◼   ► celebration of art, but only art that appears in certain places for certain durations of time. Now

00:19:59 ◼   ► they may go down this path, right? Cause the, the con kind of film festival went down this path.

00:20:04 ◼   ► But it seems like a mistake to me. I mean, Netflix went to the trouble of screening Roma in theaters

00:20:12 ◼   ► more, I think more theaters than they had to and longer than they had to.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And it, and it got a lot of applause from critics who said this, you should go see this in the

00:20:23 ◼   ► theater, even though it's on Netflix because it's beautiful. I just, I feel like this is,

00:20:28 ◼   ► is completely misguided. So I I'm with you. This is, this is, it's sad to have a, such a

00:20:33 ◼   ► renowned director become an old man yelling at a cloud. But that's what this is.

00:20:39 ◼   ► And BBC and ITV are set to launch BritBox in the UK. This is a streaming service that is currently

00:20:45 ◼   ► available in the US, which houses BBC and ITV's content. They're looking to launch it in the UK

00:20:51 ◼   ► now for about five pounds a month. So in the UK, we actually already have on demand services for

00:20:55 ◼   ► the both of these channels. So they have like the BBC iPlayer and ITV now. So you can go on and you

00:21:01 ◼   ► can get access to this content for a set period of time. BBC is, there's no ads, but the content's

00:21:07 ◼   ► only there for say like a month or something. And ITV now it's like a similar thing. Or it's

00:21:12 ◼   ► ITV Hub, I think it's called, sorry. Similar deal. Like you can go on, there's tons of ads,

00:21:17 ◼   ► tons of ads on their content. But you can watch it for a set period of time. And then so the BritBox

00:21:24 ◼   ► service would be adding what, you know, box sets, right? Like full seasons of television shows,

00:21:29 ◼   ► which you can't get on the BBC. Nobody buys DVDs anymore. So this is a streaming service that you

00:21:34 ◼   ► can, instead of buying DVDs, you pay for the streaming service and you get it. Which is

00:21:38 ◼   ► particularly interesting for the BBC because a lot of their stuff isn't even available on iTunes to

00:21:43 ◼   ► buy. So I don't know why that's the case. I'm a little bit annoyed about this, to be honest.

00:21:47 ◼   ► I pay a TV license and that TV license goes to funding the BBC. So now what I pay the TV license,

00:21:55 ◼   ► which is money that I pay, and now I have to pay five pounds a month to get the content as well.

00:22:00 ◼   ► Well, to get the content after it's gone off of its broadcast window.

00:22:04 ◼   ► I have many issues with the TV license anyway.

00:22:06 ◼   ► You don't get to, well, okay, but I just want to be clear here. You don't get to walk into a,

00:22:11 ◼   ► do they have HMV anymore? I don't know. You don't get to walk into a store somewhere and

00:22:14 ◼   ► just pick up a BBC DVD box set and walk out with it because you're a license holder.

00:22:18 ◼   ► No, but there's, but it's like, TV license is fine for the iPlayer, but it's not,

00:22:24 ◼   ► but then they don't keep any of the content and then I would have to pay more. I mean,

00:22:27 ◼   ► the problem I have with the TV license in the UK is it's effectively treated like a tax.

00:22:31 ◼   ► You can not pay it, but if you don't pay it, you get harassed. They send you letters and they come

00:22:38 ◼   ► to your home. But I never watch BBC content, but I just don't do it. I watch Netflix and I watch

00:22:46 ◼   ► Amazon stuff. We don't even have our television plugged into an aerial. It doesn't receive a

00:22:51 ◼   ► picture because we just watch everything online. But I have to pay the TV license because otherwise

00:22:56 ◼   ► they try and make my life hell. So I have this whole issue, but yes, you are completely right.

00:23:00 ◼   ► - I think this is a fascinating thing though, because I think the TV license,

00:23:04 ◼   ► I'm sure that there was a really good reason why they built the licensing system in the UK, but

00:23:08 ◼   ► as an American, I've always been fascinated by that and kind of, I find it bizarre because it's

00:23:15 ◼   ► the worst case scenario of somebody saying, "I only want to pay taxes on the services that I use."

00:23:20 ◼   ► And you can't do that, right? Because everybody will then be opting out of every other part of

00:23:26 ◼   ► it that they, like, "I don't drive, I just walk. So I don't want to pay any of the highway taxes

00:23:29 ◼   ► anymore." Well, no, you can't. You pay the taxes and it goes into a big pool and then

00:23:35 ◼   ► theoretically it comes out and is used for things, some of which are for you and some of which aren't,

00:23:39 ◼   ► but it's for the common good. And that's the thing about this is this strikes me as being like,

00:23:43 ◼   ► there were cranky people who are like, "I don't watch television. I don't own a television. Why

00:23:47 ◼   ► must I pay for the BBC?" They're like, "All right, fine. We'll make it this thing where it's a

00:23:51 ◼   ► license and only people who own TVs will pay it, which is almost everybody, but not you, sir,

00:23:55 ◼   ► not you." It's like, why? I'm sure there are lots of great historical reasons why it exists,

00:24:00 ◼   ► but it should just be part of your taxes. And the government should say, "We will use some portion

00:24:08 ◼   ► of taxes to fund the BBC because it is the gem of Britain's cultural contributions to the world in

00:24:14 ◼   ► the last 100 years." And that's probably enough. - I would be happier with that, right? Like,

00:24:18 ◼   ► if it was just a tax. Like, my problem is like, you treat it like it's a thing you can choose,

00:24:24 ◼   ► well, and because it's public and it's funded by the public, I agree with you. I think it's

00:24:30 ◼   ► really sleazy of them to window content produced by the BBC directly because in the UK, right?

00:24:38 ◼   ► Like, I feel like if the BBC made it with the British license fee money,

00:24:45 ◼   ► it should probably stay on streaming on iPlayer basically forever. Not for things they buy the

00:24:52 ◼   ► rights to and stuff like that, but for the things that they own and that the license fee paid for,

00:24:57 ◼   ► there is a really strong argument to be made that artificially windowing it so that they can resell

00:25:03 ◼   ► it to you later is crappy. - Yes, you have hit the exact thing of why does it annoy me? Because it's

00:25:09 ◼   ► like, I'm paying for the content to be produced, and then I can watch it online for free, but only

00:25:15 ◼   ► for 30 days. Oh, you missed episode one? Well, you actually now can't get it. Like, I've had stuff

00:25:20 ◼   ► like that where it's like, oh, you missed an episode? Well, you can't buy it anywhere. You

00:25:24 ◼   ► can't watch it now. So what am I doing then? But anyway, I just find this five pounds a month isn't

00:25:29 ◼   ► expensive particularly, but it's like it's hiding on top. - Right, and I like the idea that

00:25:35 ◼   ► theoretically they had a reason to put effort into doing things like DVD releases of old TV shows

00:25:45 ◼   ► and restoring things and getting bonus material and all sorts of other stuff like that when they

00:25:50 ◼   ► had a DVD sales stream and the DVD sales streams are going away and the Blu-ray sales streams.

00:25:56 ◼   ► And I think that's really what they're trying to do here is like, give us a place where people who

00:26:01 ◼   ► want this old stuff can get it and we can have the money so that we can put the old stuff out

00:26:09 ◼   ► because a lot of the old stuff doesn't just appear, right? They've got to actually spend

00:26:12 ◼   ► money to get it on. I saw a whole presentation about this, about the people who restore the

00:26:17 ◼   ► Doctor Who episodes and it's kind of amazing how much technical effort goes into that.

00:26:23 ◼   ► But yeah, I hear you that this is cool in the sense that there's a lot of content that's not,

00:26:29 ◼   ► that's from Britain, that's not available in Britain and it's good that it will be available

00:26:34 ◼   ► now. I think it's fascinating that BBC and ITV who are direct competitors in the UK.

00:26:38 ◼   ► - I can't, I couldn't believe this because I didn't really know anything about BritBox.

00:26:42 ◼   ► I thought companies, there was a company that was buying the content. It is wild to me that

00:26:47 ◼   ► the two main networks who are in direct competition joined together to make this service and then

00:26:51 ◼   ► launch it in the UK. - But it was for America and Canada and it was just like whatever.

00:26:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's so weird. - And then rolling it out in the UK. But they want to compete with

00:26:59 ◼   ► Netflix is basically the answer. - They do. Yeah. It's weird. We'll see. We'll see. How about I end

00:27:04 ◼   ► up signing up for a year. - Now I'm going to get a lot of angry people who explain why the license

00:27:08 ◼   ► fee is the best way to go. I just feel like, those kinds of tax schemes bother me when it's

00:27:15 ◼   ► sort of like, I don't use that so I don't want to pay for it anymore. It's like, well,

00:27:19 ◼   ► you know, if that would be a really, you say that now, but if every road you drive on is a toll road

00:27:28 ◼   ► because nobody wants to pay or, you know, every service you use is you have to pay for that,

00:27:35 ◼   ► even though it's a government service because nobody wants to pay for that thing, but they

00:27:38 ◼   ► want to pay for this other thing. Like at what point is that ridiculous? And I would argue when

00:27:44 ◼   ► you have a separate license for owning a television set or as we now know, Myke, right, a device that

00:27:51 ◼   ► can view televised content. - Yep. Wow. - Like if you want to watch the BBC on a phone, you need to

00:27:58 ◼   ► pay for a license, which is bananas. - Yeah, it asks you. It's silly. Like the way it does it,

00:28:01 ◼   ► so fun. It's like, do you have a TV license? You have to say yes or no. That's it. It's so weird.

00:28:06 ◼   ► Let's take a break and thank FreshBooks for their support of this show. FreshBooks are out there to

00:28:11 ◼   ► try and help freelancers save time because of FreshBooks' amazing tools like being able to

00:28:16 ◼   ► very quickly and easily send out invoices, track your expenses and get paid online. FreshBooks has

00:28:21 ◼   ► reduced the time and hassle for their over 10 million customers to take care of their paperwork.

00:28:27 ◼   ► When you send an invoice, when you email a client an invoice for FreshBooks, they will show you

00:28:32 ◼   ► whether that invoice has been opened. They'll show you whether that invoice has been printed. And

00:28:36 ◼   ► every single time somebody goes back to look at that invoice, you can see the trail there. So it

00:28:41 ◼   ► puts an end to those guessing games of did they get it? Did they not get it? You don't need to

00:28:46 ◼   ► send those awkward emails because with FreshBooks, you have that information in front of you. And

00:28:50 ◼   ► talking about awkward emails, if you ever have to send out emails to people and say, hey, you know,

00:28:55 ◼   ► you've passed the time that we set for the invoice, like you're late on the payment, could you please

00:28:59 ◼   ► send it to me? You don't even need to do that because FreshBooks can automate late payment

00:29:03 ◼   ► email reminders for you if you want that. So you can spend less time chasing those payments

00:29:08 ◼   ► and more time being focused on the thing that it is you actually want to do. If you're listening

00:29:13 ◼   ► to this and you've still not tried out FreshBooks, please, please, please give it a go. If you ever

00:29:17 ◼   ► send invoices to anyone, trust me, FreshBooks are the best. I have been using FreshBooks for

00:29:22 ◼   ► nearly five years now, and I wouldn't try anywhere else. FreshBooks are offering an unrestricted 30

00:29:28 ◼   ► day free trial for listeners of this show with no credit card required. All you have to do is go to

00:29:33 ◼   ► freshbooks.com/upgrade and enter upgrade in the how did you hear about us section. Our thanks to

00:29:39 ◼   ► FreshBooks for their support of this show and relay FM. So we actually have a little bit more

00:29:45 ◼   ► upstream related news. This is in regards to a report about Apple. So this was in the New York

00:29:53 ◼   ► Post today, basically stating that Apple executives are meddling too much in the content that's being

00:30:00 ◼   ► produced. Now, we've heard this being said before, but this article has a bunch of quotes from some

00:30:06 ◼   ► sources in the TV industry that I think are particularly interesting to discuss. So I'm

00:30:10 ◼   ► going to read a couple of these quotes to you. So this comes from the New York Post.

00:30:14 ◼   ► Right. And that's a good disclaimer, by the way, the New York Post, which is a tabloid newspaper

00:30:18 ◼   ► that is, and this is a poor, I would say this is kind of a poorly written story, but it's worth

00:30:23 ◼   ► evaluating the quotes that they've got. Agents and producers can't stop griping about how difficult

00:30:29 ◼   ► Apple is to deal with, citing lack of transparency, lack of clarity and intrusive executives,

00:30:34 ◼   ► including Tim Cook, the CEO. That doesn't surprise me though, right? Like of course, they're not

00:30:40 ◼   ► going to be transparent. And of course, they're not going to be clear because that's Apple's way.

00:30:45 ◼   ► They're not going to tell, I'm not saying this is right, but like this part isn't a surprise to me.

00:30:52 ◼   ► They're not going to tell the TV executives when the service is launching. They're not going to do

00:30:55 ◼   ► that because that's not what Apple does. There's obviously going to be friction here that is

00:31:00 ◼   ► unsurprising that there would be friction between the, in fact, the story says at the end,

00:31:08 ◼   ► and one of their sources says this too, which is like Silicon Valley's culture is different. And

00:31:15 ◼   ► Netflix was like this when they started too, because they were a Silicon Valley company

00:31:19 ◼   ► and they were secretive and this is Apple, which is even more secretive. So like,

00:31:24 ◼   ► of course there are culture clashes on the information front. Of course there are.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Will Barron Family friendly is happening again. So another quote, Tim Cook is giving notes and

00:31:33 ◼   ► getting involved that a producer has worked with Apple. One of the CEO's most repeated notes is,

00:31:38 ◼   ► don't be so mean. The sources said, funnily enough, I can see Tim saying that.

00:31:43 ◼   ► Like I can see that. Um, I want to talk about this quote, but we'll get to that in a minute.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Um, but I have a little bit more. So, uh, they're making big changes, firing and hiring new writers

00:31:54 ◼   ► as a lack of clarity on what they want. A lot of the product is not as good as they hoped it to be.

00:31:59 ◼   ► He said also Apple want a positive view on technology to be displayed in their shows.

00:32:06 ◼   ► Yeah. So, um, a couple of notes here, the classic note of why is somebody talking about this, um,

00:32:14 ◼   ► to the New York post. And it feels to me very much like somebody is kind of, um,

00:32:20 ◼   ► disgruntled about like the firing writers thing really set me off of like,

00:32:26 ◼   ► this sounds like a producer on a show that was having some problems and that they made

00:32:31 ◼   ► some creative changes and that this person is upset about them. And that doesn't necessarily

00:32:35 ◼   ► mean that that was a bad move or a good move. It just is a person who's upset about them. And

00:32:40 ◼   ► it feeds into the narrative that Apple is, uh, more hands-on here. It's bad. It's trouble for

00:32:45 ◼   ► Apple because the reputation, uh, of Apple in the, uh, entertainment industry is going to affect who

00:32:54 ◼   ► is willing to make deals with them. So, uh, you can be sure that everybody who's involved in making

00:32:59 ◼   ► shows for Apple is going to talk to their friends and colleagues about what the experience is like,

00:33:03 ◼   ► and that will make it harder for Apple to produce, um, shows with top flight talent. If they,

00:33:11 ◼   ► if the, the response is that it was a nightmare that said, if it's not surprising given how many

00:33:16 ◼   ► shows that they funded, that, um, there might be some shows that have been troubled and that Apple

00:33:24 ◼   ► has looked at and said this, we are not satisfied with the quality of this. I'll just, I'll, I'll

00:33:29 ◼   ► invent an example here that might not be at all. But since we talked about Steven Spielberg earlier,

00:33:33 ◼   ► what if their amazing stories deal came through and they looked at the scripts for that, that were

00:33:37 ◼   ► being generated and they're like, no, no, this is not, this is bad. And maybe it was bad or maybe

00:33:42 ◼   ► they're meddling and it was perfectly fine. Um, I'm not surprised that there might be a note that

00:33:47 ◼   ► Apple is not interested in doing, um, doing black mirror. Right. Right. Which is specifically that,

00:33:53 ◼   ► but again, um, there are issues about who's going to work with Apple. I also get like every network

00:34:01 ◼   ► and, and, you know, Netflix is a little different cause Netflix is sort of everything now, but like

00:34:06 ◼   ► every T if you look at TV networks, you know, they have. Tones and they have personalities,

00:34:13 ◼   ► the best of them do where you get a sense of if I'm watching a show from these guys,

00:34:18 ◼   ► it's going to have this sensibility. If I watch shows from these guys, it's going to have this

00:34:21 ◼   ► sensibility and I don't think it's wrong for Apple to say, here's what we want to be. We want to be

00:34:27 ◼   ► optimistic and we want to be, um, you know, we don't want people to, you know, we don't want this

00:34:33 ◼   ► thing that's mean and we want to be positive about the future and things like that. That's okay

00:34:38 ◼   ► to a point, right. But beyond the point, it ends up being the enemy of good television. And that's

00:34:45 ◼   ► the push and pull. Like, um, as a Star Trek fan, one of the things that happened when they brought

00:34:50 ◼   ► back Star Trek for the next generation was Jean, Jean Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek had this

00:34:54 ◼   ► sort of like over the, over the course of the 15 years, since he had done the original Star Trek or

00:34:59 ◼   ► 20 years had, had created this almost kind of cult-like sense around him of like this

00:35:04 ◼   ► view of the future where in the future, humanity is perfect and there's no conflict and, uh, and

00:35:08 ◼   ► there's no money and everybody gets along. And then the writers were like, how am I supposed to

00:35:12 ◼   ► write a drama where there's no interpersonal content conflict between the characters and

00:35:16 ◼   ► everybody's perfect? Um, and the answer was, uh, they, they couldn't and the show wasn't very good

00:35:22 ◼   ► until he was no longer closely involved. And that's the, that's the flip side of this, right.

00:35:27 ◼   ► Is like, is Apple trying to flatten the content out so much that it's going to be uninteresting

00:35:32 ◼   ► or is Apple just exerting, um, some really high level comments about what they want the,

00:35:39 ◼   ► the direction of the, of the service to be. Um, so this could be good. It could be bad because,

00:35:46 ◼   ► you know, it could just be somebody who's been out of shape that their, that their show got

00:35:50 ◼   ► the thumbs down. I have a question though. I don't have an answer to this. It's just a question.

00:35:54 ◼   ► If you are paying for the content to be made, do you get a say? Should you get a say?

00:36:02 ◼   ► I feel like this isn't unique to Apple. Like I can only imagine financial backers have always done

00:36:09 ◼   ► this stuff when it comes to movies and TV. Like if you're paying for it and you have some thoughts

00:36:15 ◼   ► on it, you're going to give them and probably they're going to have to be integrated or you're

00:36:21 ◼   ► going to have to deal with talking the financial backer down, right? Like, I feel like this can't

00:36:27 ◼   ► be something that is completely unique. As you said, the article even cites that Netflix

00:36:32 ◼   ► struggled with this initially. I feel like this isn't, I feel like this is a fun story to write,

00:36:38 ◼   ► you know, and it, and it does enforce what we kind of thought was going to happen,

00:36:43 ◼   ► but I can only assume you could write this kind of thing about any movie that's ever been made.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Yeah, probably so, or at least a lot of them. I think, I think this story, so this story is

00:36:54 ◼   ► problematic because it's, it's very hard to judge. It feeds into existing narratives. It's from the

00:37:00 ◼   ► New York Post, which I don't find a particularly reliable news source and their tabloid. They are

00:37:06 ◼   ► going to hype it up as much as they can. That said, there is probably some truth in here.

00:37:12 ◼   ► It does reinforce the narrative that Apple may be putting a little bit too much control over this,

00:37:16 ◼   ► and that the narrative is that Apple doesn't understand how you make good television,

00:37:20 ◼   ► and Apple doesn't care, which means they're going to get the television they want,

00:37:23 ◼   ► but it might not be good. That said, there are high-level executives who they hired,

00:37:29 ◼   ► who are TV development executives, who are running this service, and one would hope that they're,

00:37:35 ◼   ► they're being some sort of a buffer, but you don't know.

00:37:40 ◼   ► That's why they were hired, right? Like you would assume that Tim Cook and/or maybe Eddy Q knew that

00:37:47 ◼   ► for them to do this, they needed a buffer. They needed someone who could, people who could take

00:37:52 ◼   ► what they thought and translate it and vice versa, right? Otherwise, Eddy would have just done this

00:37:57 ◼   ► forever, right? They tried it and it didn't work. When they were really hands-on, you would assume,

00:38:03 ◼   ► in Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps, those shows did not work. So you would assume that these

00:38:08 ◼   ► executives are smart enough to be like, "Oh, if we're going to do this seriously, we actually

00:38:12 ◼   ► need people who can sit in the middle of this and manage it for us." Also, the idea here that

00:38:16 ◼   ► what you said about like, "If it's my money, I get to have some say," they're trying to figure out

00:38:22 ◼   ► what this thing is, and they've got creative people making shows for a product they don't

00:38:28 ◼   ► know what the product is. They have so much on the line with this, right? Exactly. They spend a lot of

00:38:33 ◼   ► money and Apple are control freaks, right? They want it to be exactly what they want. You've got

00:38:38 ◼   ► a producer who maybe has gotten a brief, but then they see a script and they're like, "This is a

00:38:42 ◼   ► little bit off of what we were talking about," and there's some feedback there. I think that's kind

00:38:46 ◼   ► of natural. I get that it could be frustrating, but they do get a say. I think the post story

00:38:52 ◼   ► makes this like, "Many notes from Apple executives seeking family-friendly shows." Well, that might

00:38:58 ◼   ► literally be, "This goes past our standard that we're setting. This pushes it too far.

00:39:02 ◼   ► Dial it back a little bit." Tim Cook is giving notes. It's possible that Tim Cook is literally

00:39:10 ◼   ► writing things down on scripts and saying, "Don't do this," although I'm really skeptical about

00:39:14 ◼   ► that. My guess is that it's notes on big concepts or on where they draw the line on certain things

00:39:21 ◼   ► in terms of the tone they want to set. The story says, "Oh, well, Cook has been seen on the set of

00:39:27 ◼   ► this show that they're doing in Vancouver Sea," which I think is the Jason Momoa show that has got

00:39:33 ◼   ► an enormous budget. It may be the most expensive TV show ever produced is the rumor that I'm hearing.

00:39:39 ◼   ► Well, of course he would go to the set, but that doesn't mean he's giving notes on the set.

00:39:45 ◼   ► That's not the same. I don't know. He's giving feedback on agent set of Cook. Oh, of course.

00:39:51 ◼   ► So this could be good. Again, this could be bad. Tim Cook could literally be saying,

00:39:56 ◼   ► "I don't want you to say that bad word, Jason Momoa, on the set of Sea in Vancouver," but

00:40:02 ◼   ► probably not. That's probably not happening, but it could be, and that would be bad.

00:40:05 ◼   ► But it's funny, the idea of him visiting the sets. Of course he is. Of course he is.

00:40:10 ◼   ► He's paying for it, and that's fun. Who wouldn't do that?

00:40:13 ◼   ► They want to launch this thing, and they want to be proud of what they launch. If you've got a dog,

00:40:17 ◼   ► they know they're going to get beaten up if there's a lousy show that they launch with.

00:40:23 ◼   ► The stakes are high, but at the same time, they also hired the professionals to do this job.

00:40:26 ◼   ► That's the thing that makes me a little more queasy. Should Tim Cook or Eddie Q or somebody

00:40:34 ◼   ► else be giving notes, or should it just be the TV execs? I think ultimately there's going to be

00:40:38 ◼   ► some stuff. It's not going to be everything. They're not going to be looking at scripts,

00:40:43 ◼   ► but every now and then they're going to see something and they'll have a view on it.

00:40:46 ◼   ► It's also possible that they're good cop, bad copping them here. I don't know that for sure,

00:40:51 ◼   ► but when I think about Ehrlich and Van Amburg, the guys that they hired from Sony to do this.

00:40:57 ◼   ► The guys that they bought. They purchased them from Sony.

00:41:00 ◼   ► Well, Sony sells Walkman, and they still sell Walkman, and they also sell TV executives,

00:41:05 ◼   ► apparently. Anyway, those guys, they rolled out their money and then they hired those guys away

00:41:09 ◼   ► from Sony. It's possible that those guys are... That Tim Cook has basically said, "This is Tim.

00:41:18 ◼   ► I can be the bad cop," kind of thing. Where it's like literally they use Apple as the bogeyman to

00:41:25 ◼   ► say, "Hey, friend, Ron Moore, we have some notes about this. Oh, Apple. Tim Cook made it clear to

00:41:35 ◼   ► us that this is a line we shouldn't cross." Even if they feel that themselves, there may be some

00:41:40 ◼   ► of that, but we have a great relationship, but don't blame us. That happens. As a parent,

00:41:47 ◼   ► I can tell you, you definitely can do the good cop, bad cop thing. It's a technique.

00:41:52 ◼   ► Maybe there's some of that going on where Apple is the bogeyman and they're used as a kind of like,

00:41:59 ◼   ► "Oh, well, Tim's got his standards, but I'm working with you. I'm on your side and we'll

00:42:04 ◼   ► work it out." That's also possibly what's going on here. It's fine. I think every time we talk

00:42:09 ◼   ► about this too, we get people who say, "Who's to say that a show that's family-friendly or

00:42:13 ◼   ► don't have swearing or nudity or ultra-violence is fundamentally a bad show?" Some people don't

00:42:18 ◼   ► want to watch that stuff. I totally agree with that. The thing that we always say is,

00:42:22 ◼   ► there are a lot of people in Hollywood who want to make shows where they can do whatever the

00:42:26 ◼   ► hell they want. We don't always get to do whatever the hell we want, but if you're an A-list person

00:42:33 ◼   ► who everybody wants to hire and Netflix doesn't care about the content of the show as long as it's

00:42:39 ◼   ► good. They don't care about the nudity and the violence. Have you ever followed one of Netflix's

00:42:44 ◼   ► Twitter accounts? They swear on the Twitter accounts. Netflix's brand is that there's no

00:42:50 ◼   ► limits for the stuff that they'll produce. If you're an A-lister, it's just easier to work

00:42:57 ◼   ► with somebody who is not going to bug you about items in your script that they think are too mean.

00:43:03 ◼   ► That's the deal here. Not that there can't be great content that doesn't have nudity and violence

00:43:10 ◼   ► and bad words. That's not the issue. All right, so let's talk a little bit about Marzipan.

00:43:17 ◼   ► All right, gear shift. I think it was last week or the week before there was the Mark Gorman report

00:43:23 ◼   ► kind of setting out the three-year plan that we're going to see. The Marzipan, you could call it.

00:43:29 ◼   ► Oh boy, the grand three-year marzipan. So Steve Trouton Smith has written a couple of blog posts.

00:43:38 ◼   ► Well, I don't even know if you could call them blog posts. They're more like...

00:43:41 ◼   ► They're like tech notes.

00:43:42 ◼   ► Yes, they're wild because he's basically built some tools and exposed some stuff to enable iOS

00:43:49 ◼   ► developers right now to bring their apps over to the Mac in some form, which is using the technology

00:43:56 ◼   ► that is in Mojave that allows Apple to do it. So Apple have news and home and stocks and the voice

00:44:03 ◼   ► recording app. And so there is some underlying technology in the current shipping version of

00:44:08 ◼   ► Mojave, which allows these iOS apps to run on the Mac and through some incredible digging and kind

00:44:14 ◼   ► of reverse engineering, which is way over my head, Trouton Smith has created some tools. So of course,

00:44:21 ◼   ► James Thompson now has a working version of Marzipan Peacock. So James has taken the iOS

00:44:28 ◼   ► version of Peacock and has put it onto the Mac. And he posted a bunch of tweets of him doing this.

00:44:34 ◼   ► I'll put some in the show notes. And James says, and I think this is a really interesting point.

00:44:38 ◼   ► So this is something that he was tweeting. So this is just a proof of concept. I have no plans

00:44:42 ◼   ► to replace the current Mac version as soon as Marzipan is available. I'll only do it if and

00:44:47 ◼   ► when the app is better than the current native Mac one, because James has a Mac version of Peacock

00:44:54 ◼   ► that is running right now. And I'm wondering, Jason, do you think that that specific point is

00:44:59 ◼   ► going to be something we hear a lot of? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think this is the balance

00:45:06 ◼   ► that Mac developers who have existing Mac apps are going to have to deal with. The idea of,

00:45:11 ◼   ► I've been maintaining two different apps, which share code, but there's an iOS version and a Mac

00:45:16 ◼   ► version. And wouldn't it be great to have it just be one, but if I do this now, these things are not

00:45:22 ◼   ► going to be there and that's no good. And they're playing around with the Marzipan that is shipped

00:45:30 ◼   ► last fall and is not supposed to be used. So you can't really judge it for what it lacks because

00:45:37 ◼   ► there's a reason Apple didn't ship it to anybody else. And Steve Trotton Smith has figured out how

00:45:40 ◼   ► to make it work anyway. And it's fascinating just to look at it and see what the details are and the

00:45:46 ◼   ► the work you need to do in certain areas to add things to a toolbar or add pop-ups and how the

00:45:50 ◼   ► menu, you know, how you add menu items and things like that. But it's fun to see the details because

00:45:56 ◼   ► we're getting a little bit of a preview of what it might look in a final version, but you have to

00:46:00 ◼   ► make that decision. Like, do I want to take features away, take functionality away from my

00:46:04 ◼   ► users on the Mac just to make my life easier? I would hope that most people who are doing Mac apps,

00:46:09 ◼   ► especially long-standing Mac apps, will choose not to do that until there's probably a point where

00:46:15 ◼   ► the balance shifts. And it may not be possible with the new version that comes out. The first

00:46:20 ◼   ► wave may be apps that don't exist on the Mac or that are bad on the Mac. That's the other thing.

00:46:27 ◼   ► James actually has been doing Peacock on the Mac forever, like literally forever for as long as

00:46:34 ◼   ► I've known him. But there are also apps out there that are very much like, "Oh, I guess we'll do a

00:46:40 ◼   ► Mac app," and the Mac app doesn't really stand up to the iOS app. And those will be easier choices,

00:46:46 ◼   ► right, to say, "We can just put this on the Mac and we can solve this problem and it'll save us a lot

00:46:52 ◼   ► of effort." Plus, there will be iOS apps that can't come to the Mac right now. And Overcast is

00:46:57 ◼   ► an example we use where, you know, that moment where you realize, "Oh, Marco can write Overcast

00:47:04 ◼   ► for the Mac now because he doesn't have to write a Mac app. He can take his iOS app and just make it

00:47:08 ◼   ► a Mac app." That's exciting. But for James, I mean, I would say Marzipan will be a success

00:47:16 ◼   ► when developers look at it and say, "Yes, I can take my iOS app and make it as good or better

00:47:22 ◼   ► than my Mac app." But that may be a while. - I do think as well there could be, there's like a

00:47:28 ◼   ► good enough point, right? Like, I know you're right, that for a lot of people, for a lot of

00:47:36 ◼   ► people, that tipping point is going to be when it can be better. But I think for also another huge

00:47:41 ◼   ► bunch of people, it will be when it can be close enough. Like, when it can at least offer the

00:47:46 ◼   ► functionality that you need. It might not be as good as the Mac version currently is, but if it

00:47:51 ◼   ► allows you to be able to really streamline your development, maybe it will work better. And whilst

00:47:57 ◼   ► I know there's going to be a lot of frustration for people during this time period, I do think

00:48:03 ◼   ► that there is a better future for the Mac on the other side of this. It's going to shake up a lot

00:48:09 ◼   ► of what people think Macs are and what they look like and how they act, but it's going to breathe

00:48:15 ◼   ► a bit of life into the platform, I think. Like, new fresh life, which is going to be exciting.

00:48:18 ◼   ► So anyway, using Steve's tools, James was also doing some stuff with resizing the windows,

00:48:25 ◼   ► which I found very interesting. So he had the full iPad view, and then he could shrink it down,

00:48:31 ◼   ► and when he got it into a certain size, it kind of snapped into the iPhone-like split screen view.

00:48:37 ◼   ► So like the skinny split screen view on an iPad. And this just makes me wonder,

00:48:42 ◼   ► what is this iPhone delay about? Like, why? So, Germin said that we're going to get this year will

00:48:50 ◼   ► be iPad apps, and then next year is iPhone apps. And I just feel like that makes it even more

00:48:55 ◼   ► confusing to me. Like, imagine if you can do this, right? Like, if you shrink the window, it just

00:49:01 ◼   ► switches over to your split screen view, right? So it's using the size classes, and once you hit a

00:49:06 ◼   ► different size class, if your iPad app observes it, it's just going to show the different size.

00:49:11 ◼   ► And it makes me question the iPhone thing. I think you just answered your question. I was going to

00:49:15 ◼   ► say this is a conspiracy theory, but I don't even think it counts as a conspiracy theory.

00:49:19 ◼   ► What makes something an iPad app and an iPhone app a universal app is its ability to be displayed in

00:49:27 ◼   ► different sizes. And I feel like what Apple may be doing here is, and this is the conspiracy part of

00:49:36 ◼   ► it, is saying, if you can't be bothered to make your app work at different sizes, it can't run on

00:49:42 ◼   ► the Mac because the Mac users demand the ability to resize apps. And if you use the size classes

00:49:47 ◼   ► and you've got it working on the iPad and the various different sizes of iPad, you're going to

00:49:51 ◼   ► be able to do it. And use it almost, I mean, through the lens of quality for users and user

00:49:58 ◼   ► expectations, basically crack the whip a little bit on developers who have not bothered to develop

00:50:03 ◼   ► an app that goes beyond the iPhone. Like, right? Like, this is your motivator. Like, you really

00:50:10 ◼   ► need to do that now. Like, this is the platform. You need to do it. We're not going to have a

00:50:16 ◼   ► situation where Mac users have this little thing that's shaped like an iPhone and can't be resized.

00:50:20 ◼   ► It's like, no, we're not going to do that. That may be the motivator here. Not a technical thing.

00:50:24 ◼   ► - But that's not going to change in theory, right? From year one to year two. And that's why it's

00:50:30 ◼   ► confusing to me. Like, what is going to happen in that time period for the iPhone apps to be good?

00:50:35 ◼   ► - What may happen is that they give a warning this year that says apps aren't going to be in the app

00:50:40 ◼   ► store if they don't do size classes next year. - Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. All right.

00:50:45 ◼   ► - Now we've got a conspiracy theory. - I get you. Yeah. It's not that iPhone apps

00:50:49 ◼   ► will be available. It's all apps will be available because all iPhone apps are universal. Oh, boy.

00:50:55 ◼   ► All right. Maybe that's it. Maybe that is it. Who knows?

00:50:58 ◼   ► - Like, if you think about it, it's kind of amazing that Apple has allowed this to go on

00:51:02 ◼   ► where you can design these apps that will resize in the various sizes of iPhone but won't go beyond

00:51:08 ◼   ► that. And I could totally see them saying, you know, part of being on our platform now is having

00:51:13 ◼   ► the ability to have your apps dynamically resize for all sorts of different screens. And you need

00:51:19 ◼   ► to do that. Just like bottom line, you have to do that. - And if that happens, that's not only good

00:51:25 ◼   ► for the Mac. That's bloody good for the iPad. - Good for the iPad too. Yeah.

00:51:28 ◼   ► - I mean, it makes sense to me. I understand, you know, you may think, oh, my app is for iPhone.

00:51:35 ◼   ► It shouldn't, it wouldn't work very well on the iPad, et cetera, et cetera. I get that. But,

00:51:40 ◼   ► boy, that would be great, like, for users that you would be able to use these apps on all devices.

00:51:47 ◼   ► And again, I also understand the complexities of business models. And then you're offering one app

00:51:51 ◼   ► where you could have two apps to get all of it. But as a user, I would love that very much. And

00:51:58 ◼   ► then, you know, maybe this is where all the subscription stuff needs to play in more seriously.

00:52:02 ◼   ► - But I like, this is why I like what Steve Trattensmith is doing because he's,

00:52:08 ◼   ► yes, he's looking at Mojave marzipan, which don't have the Mojave marzipan, by the way,

00:52:13 ◼   ► it's made with sand. But he is giving us a view into what this is going to be like for developers

00:52:22 ◼   ► at a time when Apple doesn't want to talk about it. And so I find that that has a lot of value.

00:52:27 ◼   ► And his posts, which we will link to, are extremely technical. So if you're not a developer,

00:52:34 ◼   ► you will probably find, especially the one that's got all the giant code in it, to be hard to

00:52:40 ◼   ► understand. But the idea where he shows sort of like, here's how you take a basic thing and use

00:52:46 ◼   ► his tool called marzipanify to get it running on the Mac based on the iOS, you know, I think

00:52:54 ◼   ► simulator builds. And then the work you need to do as a developer to take it further so that it

00:53:01 ◼   ► becomes something that feels more Mac-like and that Apple has already in the marzipan that ships

00:53:06 ◼   ► in Mojave built those tools in. And presumably those will only get better. And that's what I

00:53:12 ◼   ► found fascinating about this is we get a little bit of a view into how Apple is building this system

00:53:18 ◼   ► that it's going to roll out this year in three months and say, this is how you build unified

00:53:23 ◼   ► apps on Mac and iOS and have them be Mac apps. Because I agree with you, I think this is

00:53:30 ◼   ► ultimately going to be good for the Mac because the alternative is completely static, like nothing.

00:53:37 ◼   ► And this is better than that. So yeah, so thanks to Steve Trout and Smith for doing these articles

00:53:44 ◼   ► and for inventing this marzipanify tool. And thanks to James Thompson for finally taking a

00:53:49 ◼   ► day and turning off system integrity protection on his iMac and building a Mac version of iPad or of

00:53:56 ◼   ► PCALC from the iPad version because that's fun. So you have to do you have to turn a system in.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I think you I think you do. That sounds terrifying. I don't even know what that means,

00:54:05 ◼   ► but it sounds really scary. It's meant to. Yeah, I guess that's the point, right? If you don't want

00:54:12 ◼   ► someone to turn something off, give it like a horrifyingly scary name. Alright, today's show

00:54:16 ◼   ► is also brought to you by our friends over at Luna display. They are the makers of the only hardware

00:54:21 ◼   ► solution that will turn your iPad into a wireless display for your Mac, meaning that your second

00:54:26 ◼   ► display that was super portable can be with you anywhere and have basically zero lag and amazing

00:54:31 ◼   ► image quality. Setting up extra screens is a fiddly affair, but Luna display couldn't be easy.

00:54:36 ◼   ► You just plug in a lovely little dongle into your Mac and you're good to go. Everything works over

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00:54:45 ◼   ► or train or an automobile, you can just use a USB to connect them together. And you'll be able to

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00:55:48 ◼   ► is Luna display.com and the promo code upgraded checkout for that 10% off. Thanks to Luna display

00:55:55 ◼   ► for their support of this show and all the relay FM. So let's talk about touch ID and face ID,

00:56:03 ◼   ► because the Galaxy S10, the reviews are out. Some of the reviews are out. There's actually

00:56:08 ◼   ► no embargo on the S10. So people can publish their reviews whenever they want to. And so there's been

00:56:14 ◼   ► a couple of reviews for the touch sensor and a couple of reviews against the touch sensor.

00:56:21 ◼   ► So we spent a little bit of time last week on connected, me and Federico talking about the

00:56:25 ◼   ► technology that is going into the S10. So this is a very different type of technology. It's called

00:56:32 ◼   ► ultrasonic fingerprint scanning. So the fingerprint sensor is embedded in the screen and it uses sound

00:56:39 ◼   ► waves to detect the fingerprint and unlock it. So what that means is you don't need to have any kind

00:56:46 ◼   ► of button or any kind of sensor. It's embedded into the screen. So you can just put it right

00:56:50 ◼   ► there behind the screen. And unlike some of the other in-screen fingerprint technology,

00:56:54 ◼   ► you don't need to shine any lights on it. You can actually unlock the phone while the phone screen

00:56:59 ◼   ► is off. So it's pretty cool. But there has been some reviewers that do not like this. And there's

00:57:06 ◼   ► been some reviews that do like this. And I find that particularly interesting. So I've already

00:57:10 ◼   ► a couple of quotes for you and we'll have links to these in the show notes. So Brian Chen at the

00:57:14 ◼   ► New York Times says, "My bumpy experience with the print sensor found up one conclusion. Face

00:57:19 ◼   ► recognition is a more convenient method for unlocking phones and Samsung is behind Apple

00:57:24 ◼   ► in this area." Samsung does have face recognition stuff, but it's not very good. And Dan Seifert at

00:57:30 ◼   ► The Verge says that the fingerprint sensor is not as fast or reliable as the traditional

00:57:35 ◼   ► capacitive fingerprint scanner on the back of the S9. "The target area for the reader is rather

00:57:39 ◼   ► small and I had to be very deliberate with my finger placement to get it to work." But then

00:57:44 ◼   ► I've seen a bunch of YouTube reviews. So from Jonathan Morrison at TOD Today, who shows you

00:57:48 ◼   ► can see it super fast and reliable. And Marques Brownlee MKBHD says that it is convenient. You

00:57:54 ◼   ► can unlock it when the screen is off. He shows some phones side by side and the S10 is unlocking

00:57:59 ◼   ► faster than them. It works with wet hands. I don't understand what's happening here. I'm seeing a lot

00:58:04 ◼   ► of conversation happening on Twitter between journalists. What it looks like is either there

00:58:12 ◼   ► are hardware quirks or this technology works better for some people than others. - And you

00:58:18 ◼   ► can throw into that personal preference too. - Yes, 100%. - My feeling here, listening to lots

00:58:25 ◼   ► of people talk about it and seeing lots of people write about it, is that they are... That some

00:58:32 ◼   ► people like fingerprint scanners more and some people like face ID more. And it's not a 100%

00:58:42 ◼   ► like, "Oh, this is better." And I would argue part of that is resistance to change. I'm sure there

00:58:50 ◼   ► are people who prefer putting digits into their phone than doing touch ID. Those people are...

00:58:55 ◼   ► Interesting. But I'm sure there were some, right? Where it's like, "I don't want to do the thing

00:59:01 ◼   ► where I touch the thing and hold my thumb there. I just put in the code and I go." There's gonna be

00:59:05 ◼   ► some of that. But I do believe that beyond that, there are things ergonomically, like some people

00:59:11 ◼   ► have issues with... Maybe their face ID scanning doesn't work as well. Maybe their face has

00:59:18 ◼   ► something that makes it less liable to lock or more unreliable. Maybe they have a particular

00:59:25 ◼   ► gesture that they got really comfortable with, like putting their finger or thumb on their phone

00:59:30 ◼   ► as they're taking it out of their pocket so that as soon as it's up, it's working. Whereas with

00:59:35 ◼   ► face ID, you have to lift it up and then it scans you and then it opens. I vastly prefer

00:59:43 ◼   ► face ID to touch ID, but at the same time, there's also a false dichotomy here because you could

00:59:53 ◼   ► offer both if you wanted to. Apple theoretically could use this technology, this ultrasonic scanner

00:59:58 ◼   ► technology, to put a fingerprint scanner under their screen and have face ID and let you choose.

01:00:05 ◼   ► There are also some choices Apple made with face ID that are really annoying, like the

01:00:10 ◼   ► double tap Apple Pay button thing, which I don't like and it doesn't feel necessary.

01:00:17 ◼   ► - That is one of the things for me that really, really makes me miss, I should say, touch ID.

01:00:23 ◼   ► The way that all of the Apple Pay interactions are done. So I've been traveling this week,

01:00:28 ◼   ► so I've been getting lifts everywhere and stuff. When the Apple Pay thing comes up and I've got a

01:00:33 ◼   ► double tap and then look and wait for the animation, that's so much more cumbersome and slow than touch

01:00:38 ◼   ► ID used to be because the touch ID, you just touched it and it was done, right? That was it.

01:00:43 ◼   ► Because what is the action of me now reaching to press that side button? That is all I would have

01:00:48 ◼   ► needed to do is one of those taps and then it would have been completed. So this is like every

01:00:54 ◼   ► time using Apple Pay, every time you're buying something from the store, I use Apple Pay a lot

01:00:59 ◼   ► in London and it's much more frustrating to have to get the face ID stuff to work than it would be

01:01:06 ◼   ► with the touch ID because touch ID has just got to be in my hand. I don't have to have it in a

01:01:11 ◼   ► perfect view and when I'm walking through a train station, I'm not necessarily that keen or like

01:01:17 ◼   ► that it's not as easy for me to just put my phone in front of my face as it would have been before

01:01:21 ◼   ► to just touch the home button. I love face ID, it is amazing technology and it mostly works great

01:01:27 ◼   ► but it does still need ideal conditions. This device or this technology to be the best that

01:01:34 ◼   ► it should be, really this seems quite simple to me. If I can see my phone, it should see me.

01:01:39 ◼   ► That's what I want, right? If I am within arm's reach of my phone and I can see it,

01:01:46 ◼   ► I want it to be able to see me rather than me needing to position myself or position the phone

01:01:52 ◼   ► in such a way that it will unlock. Now I know that this stuff is like that idea is probably still

01:01:57 ◼   ► far away if it ever comes but that's the ideal and I feel like touch ID met its ideal, right?

01:02:06 ◼   ► And I think this is one of the things that makes people struggle with it. Touch ID got as good as

01:02:12 ◼   ► that can be. Face ID is not as good as it could be and I think this is where maybe there's some

01:02:19 ◼   ► people that are a little bit unhappy with it. Ideally, Jason, I would like to have both

01:02:23 ◼   ► technologies in an iPhone. Yeah, I can see that. I mean, I don't miss touch ID at all but I get...

01:02:32 ◼   ► I think this is a 100... You mentioned it already, you said it's personal preference.

01:02:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's right. It's not saying that face ID is bad. I love face ID. On my iPad,

01:02:41 ◼   ► it's incredible. I have no problems with it at all but on my iPhone, it's not perfect and some

01:02:47 ◼   ► of the interactions that I frequently made with my iPhone was made worse by face ID.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Another point that Brian Chen made in his New York Times review is that when you talk to the

01:02:59 ◼   ► vendors about the security of these different techniques, it seems like face ID is way more

01:03:08 ◼   ► secure, that it's much harder to break than a fingerprint scanner. But we may be arguing about

01:03:17 ◼   ► ridiculously secure versus impossibly secure and that for most people it doesn't matter.

01:03:22 ◼   ► I do think though that what is really motivating, I think especially Chen but both those reviewers

01:03:30 ◼   ► who didn't like it, the Verge reviewer too, is this perception that using cameras and dot

01:03:39 ◼   ► projectors to scan your face is a good technology that Android phones and Samsung phones have not

01:03:47 ◼   ► bothered to implement. And basically Brian Chen's point was basically like, "Come on, Samsung,

01:03:54 ◼   ► just copy Apple." And I think that's not necessarily do away with the fingerprint scanner

01:03:59 ◼   ► as much as it is the face scanner that Android has is this ridiculous photo compare thing where

01:04:04 ◼   ► you can put a mask on or put a picture of somebody in front of the camera and it'll unlock. It's

01:04:09 ◼   ► really insecure. It's far less secure than the fingerprint scanner. And I think that's part of

01:04:14 ◼   ► the conversation here is literally just this face unlock feature that is kicking around is a joke.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And if you want to offer face unlock, you need to do the real thing, which is what Apple is doing

01:04:27 ◼   ► and not this really bogus thing that you're doing. But I agree in an ideal world, and of course,

01:04:33 ◼   ► each one of these things costs, costs in size and space and money, but that having multiple

01:04:41 ◼   ► authentication options available would be a good thing in the end because I do think I'm starting

01:04:48 ◼   ► to get the sense that there really are just people who prefer one and not the other. And now that

01:04:52 ◼   ► we've lived with it for a little while, it's not as much about, "I don't want to go to something

01:04:58 ◼   ► new. I'm familiar with the old." And quite honestly, the thing about the Samsung thing is

01:05:02 ◼   ► it's invisible. That's the amazing thing about it, right? Is that you just put your finger on

01:05:06 ◼   ► the screen and it unlocks. And we talked about that for Apple iPhones. They were trying that

01:05:10 ◼   ► for a long time and they decided not to bother with it and just to skip ahead to face ID. But

01:05:14 ◼   ► there is an argument to be made that we may have learned that it's better to have both. And if that

01:05:20 ◼   ► is the case, then Apple has to make a decision. - Technology, it looks super cool and also enables

01:05:26 ◼   ► other things. So Samsung's displays look amazing right now because they have those little, basically

01:05:32 ◼   ► the cutouts for the cameras, but you get bigger displays and there's no notch, right? If you don't

01:05:37 ◼   ► like the notch, you're going to be stuck with it on the iPhone for a long time because of face ID.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Samsung doesn't have to do that. - Yeah, but then again, if you're somebody who uses this,

01:05:47 ◼   ► as our chat room is pointing out right now, if you have gloves, for example, like face ID is great

01:05:55 ◼   ► and touch ID is the worst. - Yeah, of course. - That's a great example. - If you have your face

01:05:58 ◼   ► covered because it's also cold, well, you're still screwed, aren't you? Like I totally get the glove

01:06:03 ◼   ► idea, but there are many things, right? That go one way or another. And like there are pros for

01:06:10 ◼   ► touch ID and pros for face ID and there are cons of each. I will say one thing that has been,

01:06:14 ◼   ► this is like completely personal experiencing, which has been so strange. I gave my mom an iPhone

01:06:19 ◼   ► XR for Christmas. She has never complained to me about face ID and I can't believe that.

01:06:24 ◼   ► I was like very concerned about moving my mom from touch ID to face ID. No complaints, which I,

01:06:32 ◼   ► you know, that is a big win for me because I was like, this is going to be, that was the thing I

01:06:37 ◼   ► was mostly worried about, so this is going to be a disaster because she was so used to touch ID. She

01:06:41 ◼   ► had her iPhone 6 for years, a long time, right? Since the iPhone 6 was new up until last year.

01:06:46 ◼   ► But she seems to have gotten on board with face ID because it does work very well, right? - It does.

01:06:52 ◼   ► - But as I said, I think it is a personal preference thing. I would like to see both.

01:06:57 ◼   ► I actually think, you know, whilst I get the idea of like Apple would never bring back that

01:07:01 ◼   ► technology because Apple never go backwards, like I get that point. I don't know. I feel like there

01:07:07 ◼   ► could be some real, I feel like you could spin it as a benefit, consumer choice because the

01:07:12 ◼   ► technology is better. I don't think that is completely out of the question. - You could also,

01:07:16 ◼   ► this is just a wild idea I'm throwing out there, you could also use this to differentiate high-end

01:07:21 ◼   ► and low-end and put this technology under, you know, under your iPhone, you know, maybe not 10R,

01:07:28 ◼   ► but your SE or something like that and be like, it's just got touch ID in the screen.

01:07:33 ◼   ► And it would allow you to get rid of the buttons without having to add the whole face ID sensor

01:07:37 ◼   ► stack and you can make a cheaper phone. Maybe there's something there too, but I agree on the

01:07:40 ◼   ► high-end stuff. Why not load it in and just say, yeah, you get it all and you can use it either

01:07:45 ◼   ► way. I do think though, your point points out to ways that face ID is implemented on iOS that could

01:07:51 ◼   ► be better like that. Again, to come back to the Apple pay thing, like I get that Apple wants all

01:07:58 ◼   ► these verifications to go through by clicking the side button, but I'm with you. I think it's

01:08:04 ◼   ► really annoying. I'm sure that they've got reasons. I'm sure they're like, well, no,

01:08:07 ◼   ► clicking a hardware button makes you not miss tap and buy something you won't and all that. But like

01:08:12 ◼   ► it feels so much worse than the old approach where you just put your finger on the home button

01:08:20 ◼   ► and you were done because you were both biometrically authenticating and approving.

01:08:26 ◼   ► And now you have to, you know, now it kind of happens backward and I don't know, it's,

01:08:31 ◼   ► it feels like to me like it could be better. And that's an area of friction in face ID that wasn't

01:08:35 ◼   ► there before. All right. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Eero.

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01:11:54 ◼   ► And it's time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions. And Jason, any lasers?

01:12:00 ◼   ► Oh, there was a delay on the lasers because they were clearly very powerful today.

01:12:06 ◼   ► The lasers were the last couple of weeks were gearing up for a giant laser explosion apparently.

01:12:13 ◼   ► That was already good.

01:12:14 ◼   ► Sorry to all fans of this stupid ask upgrade lasers who wrote in to complain that I did not give

01:12:20 ◼   ► the lasers out.

01:12:21 ◼   ► That's not stupid. I won't accept that. I won't accept that for one moment, sir. Not one moment.

01:12:25 ◼   ► First question comes from Todd. Todd wants to know, do you think the Apple TV service will have

01:12:32 ◼   ► a skip intro feature? And a bonus question to this, do we skip the intros on TV shows and Netflix?

01:12:38 ◼   ► Oh, Todd, Todd, I, how shall I put this? I sometimes skip the intros.

01:12:47 ◼   ► I do.

01:12:47 ◼   ► If it's a show I watch a lot.

01:12:50 ◼   ► If I'm binging a TV show, I'm not going to watch the intro every single time. If I'm watching four

01:12:55 ◼   ► episodes of a show in a row, I don't need to see the opening credits every time. I'm so sorry.

01:12:59 ◼   ► I agree with that.

01:13:00 ◼   ► For people that that upsets, but like, come on.

01:13:02 ◼   ► For people who are in the credits, like Todd is.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean like, but you know, it, it, it also depends if the show has like a really good opening.

01:13:09 ◼   ► So like when we watched True Detective, the first season, binged the whole thing,

01:13:13 ◼   ► but the opening was so good. I'd watch it every time. Some shows like House of Cards,

01:13:18 ◼   ► Oh my God. House of Cards is opening is the worst thing in the world.

01:13:21 ◼   ► This is what I was going to say is it is not just about binging for me. Cause I don't do, I do. I am

01:13:27 ◼   ► of course, as, as some people know, a big fan of the slow binge, which is you watch like an episode

01:13:32 ◼   ► of the day. Slow binge. I've never heard you say that before. Oh yeah. That's I talk about it on

01:13:37 ◼   ► TV, Talk Machine all the time. Big fan of the slow binge. I am not somebody who's going to sit down

01:13:40 ◼   ► and watch four episodes of a show in a row. It's just never going to happen. I have other things

01:13:44 ◼   ► going on in my life, but I will, I will watch one or two and then like watch another one the next

01:13:49 ◼   ► day and another one the next day. And that's what I call the slow binge. I recommend it. In fact,

01:13:54 ◼   ► sometimes I will slow binge like two or three things at once. So I assemble a little lineup

01:13:58 ◼   ► of shows and I watched one episode of each every night. It's great. Anyway, be that as it may,

01:14:03 ◼   ► I think the other issue is what you hit on, which is some intros are good and some are long and

01:14:10 ◼   ► boring and I don't need to see them again. And that varies from show to show. There are shows

01:14:14 ◼   ► that I love that have boring intros, but there are also shows that have great intros and I watch it

01:14:19 ◼   ► every time and it gets me in the mood for the show. It really depends. Like I don't skip the

01:14:23 ◼   ► Game of Thrones intro, right? Because I love it. The music gets me excited and they show different

01:14:29 ◼   ► things on the map every time that they're little Easter eggs and like, that's great. But there are

01:14:34 ◼   ► other shows where, you know, it's the same every time and it's kind of long and it's really boring

01:14:38 ◼   ► and I don't particularly love the music and it doesn't get me into the show. And, um, and I,

01:14:44 ◼   ► I don't bother like, uh, Travelers on Netflix, which is a show I really like. Um, and that is

01:14:50 ◼   ► an opening sequence that I really don't like and it's super boring and I don't watch it. So, yeah.

01:14:54 ◼   ► J-Raff asks, do you think that an Airplay 2 dongle is still on the horizon for Apple? So this would

01:15:01 ◼   ► allow you to watch, uh, content from your device, like a Chromecast, for example. We spoke about

01:15:06 ◼   ► that before. Uh, well, I never thought it was definitely on the horizon, right? There was a

01:15:12 ◼   ► report that Apple was considering it, which is the weakest of Apple rumors. But we also spoke about

01:15:17 ◼   ► the fact that we thought it could happen, right? That we thought that it made sense. This was

01:15:21 ◼   ► before Apple announced all of the TV integrations that it did.

01:15:24 ◼   ► M- Exactly, exactly. So my hope is that they will do something. Um, I'm not sure Airplay 2 dongle is

01:15:31 ◼   ► the way to go. I would really like it if they would just do a low cost thing that actually ran.

01:15:35 ◼   ► J-Raff asks, I would much prefer a cheaper, much, much cheaper Apple TV, like a Fire TV stick,

01:15:40 ◼   ► but I don't think it's going to be that if they do it. I think they're more likely to do a,

01:15:44 ◼   ► have your iPhone send something. M- Yeah, it could be, it could be. So I think this

01:15:47 ◼   ► is a possibility. It also depends on how, what deals they're making with a third party hardware,

01:15:52 ◼   ► because what if Airplay 2 just shows up everywhere? Then they don't need to do it.

01:15:56 ◼   ► Because then, then you can literally just go buy a Roku box for, for 25 bucks.

01:16:00 ◼   ► J- Yeah. Or if they just do what they did with Samsung with more people. So like the

01:16:04 ◼   ► Amazon Fire TV stick gets Apple TV and you know, he just moves on from there.

01:16:08 ◼   ► M- Either way, whether it's Airplay 2 or the, or TV app stuff. Um, but they,

01:16:14 ◼   ► they're going to need to make that with third party hardware manufacturers, right? Not just TV people.

01:16:17 ◼   ► J- Yeah, exactly. M- Because, because it doesn't matter if Apple offers an Airplay 2 dongle or a

01:16:23 ◼   ► cheap Apple TV, if you can point at an Amazon Fire stick or a Roku, you know, little $35 Roku thing,

01:16:30 ◼   ► and say you can get it there, then Apple doesn't need to make it.

01:16:33 ◼   ► S- Our next question comes from Dan. Dan says, "I have a mid 2012 non-retina MacBook Pro with

01:16:39 ◼   ► four gigabytes of RAM and a spinning disk hard drive. It's getting pretty slow, but I don't

01:16:43 ◼   ► want to buy a new one just yet. It's only used for the homework for the kids. Would an SSD be

01:16:49 ◼   ► enough to boost its performance or would more RAM be the thing to give it a significant boost?"

01:16:53 ◼   ► I feel like an SSD, right? I feel like an SSD is probably going to be the thing you'll notice the

01:16:58 ◼   ► most. J- Storage is usually the limiting factor. I think an SSD is going to help you more. I think

01:17:05 ◼   ► in almost any case, an SSD from a spinning disk is going to help you the most.

01:17:09 ◼   ► S- Yep, I think so too. You know, it is an old machine, so it's still going to feel old in

01:17:15 ◼   ► places, but that, putting that, putting that SSD in it will be good. Didn't you do this? You do

01:17:20 ◼   ► this like your mom's laptop or something? J- Yeah, and then I sold it to a college student. Yeah,

01:17:24 ◼   ► I took her laptop and I pulled the old drive out of it. I put in, I did put in some more RAM,

01:17:28 ◼   ► but I also put in an SSD and it ran way better then because it was, even though it was an older

01:17:34 ◼   ► laptop, it was running on an SSD and it felt way faster. S- Oh, look at that. I just found

01:17:39 ◼   ► it on six colors, so I'll put it in the show notes so people can see that for reference too if they

01:17:42 ◼   ► want. J- Nice, good times. S- Nicholas asks, do you feel that the battery in your new iPad

01:17:46 ◼   ► Pros drains faster than the older ones? If so, could it be the Apple Pencil draining the battery

01:17:51 ◼   ► faster as it's constantly attached? I don't have noticed any battery changes. J- Me neither. S- And

01:17:56 ◼   ► I don't, and the Apple Pencil's battery would not be big enough to take a significant drain.

01:18:00 ◼   ► So if you're having issues, maybe you should take it and have Apple look at it. My iPad Pro

01:18:08 ◼   ► still gives me as much power as the old one did. So if you're seeing significant changes,

01:18:14 ◼   ► then maybe you need to get that checked out. And Gary asks, which would be better for video

01:18:19 ◼   ► editing? A 12.9 inch iPad Pro or a 13 inch MacBook Pro? The 15 inch is beyond my budget.

01:18:24 ◼   ► J- Well, at this point, I think my answer is the MacBook Pro because as much as I like the iPad

01:18:30 ◼   ► Pro, I think the MacBook Pro has- S- It has more options for software. J- Has tried and true video

01:18:36 ◼   ► editing options on there, and that's what you should go with. I would love to be able to say

01:18:40 ◼   ► that the iPad Pro is a straight up, well, either choice or pick between the two. But while there

01:18:49 ◼   ► are video editing apps on the iPad, I think you should get a MacBook Pro for video editing. I

01:18:54 ◼   ► wouldn't video edit on the iPad at this point. S- Maybe one day, but if you make that decision

01:19:00 ◼   ► right now, that choice is a MacBook Pro for sure. J- I think so. S- All right, that wraps it up for

01:19:05 ◼   ► this week's episode of Upgrade. Thanks so much to our sponsors, FreshBooks, Eero and Luna Display,

01:19:10 ◼   ► but mostly thank you for listening. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer at the

01:19:14 ◼   ► end of the show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade, and then maybe we'll be

01:19:19 ◼   ► included for a future episode. But if you want to help open the show, the hashtag #SNELtalk is the

01:19:24 ◼   ► best way to do that. You can find us online. Jason is @jsnel, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter, and he's over

01:19:31 ◼   ► at SixColors.com and TheIncomparable.com. Find me on Instagram. I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E. I'm on

01:19:37 ◼   ► Twitter there as well, too. You can find this show and many others at relay.fm/shows. I'm sure there

01:19:44 ◼   ► will be something else that you can pick. Jason, I know you host a download here on Relay FM. What

01:19:49 ◼   ► do you think is going to be coming up on download this week? J- Oh, whatever happens this week will

01:19:55 ◼   ► be on download this week. We don't even know yet because it's all about what happens this week.

01:19:59 ◼   ► I love that. This is the mystery, the mystery of technology news. But then what you will find on

01:20:05 ◼   ► download is not just Apple, you'll find stories about the whole technology industry. J- We spent

01:20:10 ◼   ► a lot of time on Android phones the last two weeks. S- Yeah, as you would, right? Mobile World

01:20:15 ◼   ► Congress, all that kind of stuff. So if you're looking to find out more about not just the

01:20:20 ◼   ► foldable phones, that's where you'll be able to find it. There on download here on Relay FM.

01:20:24 ◼   ► Thanks so much for listening and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:20:29 ◼   ► You know, if we were a Netflix show, this is the moment where the credits would zip into the

01:20:33 ◼   ► into the corner and start counting down to play another show.

01:20:35 ◼   ► J- Five, four, three, two, one.

01:20:36 ◼   ► S- But I don't like it. I don't want to skip the credits.

01:20:39 ◼   ► J- One. It's over.

01:20:39 ◼   ► S- Bye, Myke.

01:20:41 ◼   ► J- Bye.