Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 2-3-4. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:14 ◼   ► Luna Display, Squarespace, and Green Chef. My name is

00:00:17 ◼   ► Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hello, Myke Hurley. How are you? I'm fine and dandy, my friend. How are you?

00:00:25 ◼   ► Uh, doing great, um, and I'm not going to tell you what the weather's like here.

00:00:29 ◼   ► You're just gonna have to guess. Well, it's probably similar. It's pretty

00:00:32 ◼   ► warm here today, actually, but nobody cares about that because it's time for a

00:00:35 ◼   ► #snowtalk question and today's comes from Tyler and Tyler asks the

00:00:40 ◼   ► simple three-word question, Jason, of "Bagged or loose leaf?"

00:00:45 ◼   ► Hmm, it's referring to groceries, obviously. Yeah, do you loose leaf your groceries?

00:00:49 ◼   ► Because you have a Nissan Leaf. Is that when you just throw the groceries inside?

00:00:53 ◼   ► You just let it roll around? That has happened where I've forgotten to bring

00:00:56 ◼   ► the shopping bags to the store and they're like, "I can charge you

00:01:01 ◼   ► extra and put these in bags," and I say, "You know what? Don't just put them in the

00:01:04 ◼   ► cart." I'm rolling loose leaf today. I'll do loose

00:01:08 ◼   ► leaf, grocery, and then, well, I did that one time

00:01:11 ◼   ► and I didn't bring the bags in the car, in the store, but I had them in the

00:01:14 ◼   ► car and I'm like, "You know what? I'll bag the groceries in the parking lot

00:01:17 ◼   ► and then do it that way." So that was that, it's like a

00:01:21 ◼   ► between loose leaf and bagged. Anyway, this question is actually... Well, it was

00:01:24 ◼   ► that one time when you had loose leaf cans rolling around in the back of the

00:01:27 ◼   ► car while we were recording an episode of Upgrade.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Yeah, sure. #CarCast, that's a deep cut for long-time upgrade listeners.

00:01:34 ◼   ► And if that was in the loose leaf, it would be a loose leaf leaf.

00:01:38 ◼   ► And when Tweedle beetles battle, it's a Tweedle beetle battle. Anyway, this is a

00:01:41 ◼   ► question about tea, and the answer is the tea robot that I

00:01:45 ◼   ► have that I love that's the Breville tea-making thing that

00:01:50 ◼   ► that automatically makes my tea in the morning and is great,

00:01:54 ◼   ► is a loose leaf thing. So you put the tea, you put a couple of scoops of the tea

00:01:58 ◼   ► in the in the little basket, and then it

00:02:01 ◼   ► automatically boils the water and puts the tea down in for three minutes or

00:02:04 ◼   ► whatever time you set, and then it pulls the water back,

00:02:06 ◼   ► or the the basket back out. And then if I'm traveling and stuff, then it's just

00:02:11 ◼   ► it's bagged because it's convenient. It's convenient,

00:02:14 ◼   ► and it's fine. So that's my answer. But I buy

00:02:18 ◼   ► tea, loose leaf tea, in bulk and use it in the tea robot.

00:02:23 ◼   ► The tea robot I have found by searching for your name

00:02:27 ◼   ► and tea robot, and I'll put it in the show notes.

00:02:31 ◼   ► It's very, very easy to find. It is one of my favorite

00:02:35 ◼   ► ridiculous gadgets because I love it because it means... Because making tea is

00:02:39 ◼   ► fussy, because if you leave the tea in the

00:02:41 ◼   ► water too long, it gets bitter and it's bad. And so what this thing will do is

00:02:45 ◼   ► heat up the water to whatever temperature you want, then put the tea

00:02:48 ◼   ► in the water for as long as you want, and then remove the tea from the water. So

00:02:52 ◼   ► you can basically wake up in the morning like I do and put water and

00:02:55 ◼   ► and tea, press a button and walk away, and come back whenever, 20 minutes later, an

00:02:59 ◼   ► hour later, and there's hot tea for you. It's pretty

00:03:02 ◼   ► nice, but you do have to buy a gadget for it.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Jason, I have just a very quick piece of follow-up

00:03:08 ◼   ► and some very quick upstream news as well today. We're just gonna

00:03:12 ◼   ► fire through this. So you were thinking more as is

00:03:15 ◼   ► the way, the upgrade cycle, right, which is either one of...

00:03:19 ◼   ► It typically goes this way. Jason writes something

00:03:22 ◼   ► and I think, "Hmm, that might be interesting to talk about on the show."

00:03:25 ◼   ► So we talk about it on the show and then Jason thinks about something on the show

00:03:28 ◼   ► and then writes another article that comes out of the upgrade.

00:03:31 ◼   ► It's like composting for ideas. Yeah. So you wrote an article on Macworld

00:03:36 ◼   ► kind of fleshing out a little bit more about the thinking behind your

00:03:41 ◼   ► thoughts on Apple moving more into the smart home product

00:03:45 ◼   ► business and a little bit about your great idea

00:03:49 ◼   ► of the Apple TV sound bar as well. So people can go and read that, but

00:03:54 ◼   ► is there anything more that you wanted to expound upon from last week?

00:03:57 ◼   ► No, I mean, it was a good conversation. It was a story that had been

00:04:00 ◼   ► sitting in my to-do list for a long time and

00:04:02 ◼   ► then we talked about on the show and that was enough of an impetus for me to

00:04:05 ◼   ► say, "Why don't I just turn this into an article?"

00:04:08 ◼   ► In writing the article, though, it went from originally as

00:04:11 ◼   ► conceived by me being kind of a pitch for the Apple TV sound bar,

00:04:15 ◼   ► which for those who didn't listen last week is a combination of a HomePod and

00:04:18 ◼   ► an Apple TV because I think there might be actually

00:04:21 ◼   ► a product there and I think that might be

00:04:23 ◼   ► interesting for Apple, but it was the larger point of

00:04:26 ◼   ► as Apple's competitors buy the other products in the

00:04:33 ◼   ► market, you know, that was my larger point was I feel like

00:04:36 ◼   ► we all the same arguments apply that Apple shouldn't get into the

00:04:40 ◼   ► smart home business necessarily because they're focused on bigger

00:04:43 ◼   ► they have bigger fish to fry basically they're focused on these enormous hit

00:04:46 ◼   ► products. That is all still reasonable.

00:04:51 ◼   ► The problem is that if their competitors buy up every other smart home gadget and

00:04:55 ◼   ► infrastructure tool that's out there so that

00:05:00 ◼   ► their customers, Apple's customers, can't get on the internet without passing

00:05:03 ◼   ► through a gateway controlled by their competitors,

00:05:06 ◼   ► that maybe Apple needs to start thinking about strategically

00:05:10 ◼   ► buying companies that are doing home tech

00:05:13 ◼   ► just to keep them, even if they just put them in a subsidiary,

00:05:17 ◼   ► just to keep them out of the clutches of Google

00:05:21 ◼   ► and Amazon especially and maybe Facebook. And I've kind of come around to that

00:05:28 ◼   ► feeling like maybe you need to be present here

00:05:32 ◼   ► because if you're Apple because your competitors are very much present there

00:05:37 ◼   ► and if they snap up every innovative company that's going

00:05:40 ◼   ► in here and like I know you don't want to make a wi-fi router Apple but

00:05:43 ◼   ► what if all the wi-fi routers are owned by the competition they're going to work

00:05:47 ◼   ► less well with your stuff and you know the priority is going to be

00:05:52 ◼   ► on your competition's products and also their business model so that's

00:05:58 ◼   ► the that's the long and short of it. I understand the argument of like bigger

00:06:02 ◼   ► fish to fry but they can fry as many fish as they want.

00:06:05 ◼   ► They can. They could fry a lot of fish. I think Apple is not built that

00:06:10 ◼   ► way historically like they don't hire a lot

00:06:12 ◼   ► of people. We see it right like they could have an enormous operation

00:06:17 ◼   ► but I think they believe that part of the magic of what they do is

00:06:21 ◼   ► that they keep it on the small side but like I said

00:06:23 ◼   ► you know maybe the answer they hired a new person to be in charge of their

00:06:27 ◼   ► smart home efforts right they hired a new person so the question was

00:06:30 ◼   ► what's his charter is his charter to like make a different home pot or

00:06:34 ◼   ► whatever or is it to do something to have a bigger

00:06:37 ◼   ► impact in this area and again does Apple have to make it all

00:06:41 ◼   ► no but Apple has a lot of money so another model would be for Apple to

00:06:46 ◼   ► invest in a bunch of these companies or maybe even buy these companies outright

00:06:50 ◼   ► and then just say no they're going to run out there it's fine. This is a model

00:06:54 ◼   ► Apple already employs let's me not forget

00:06:57 ◼   ► Beats right Beats is a separate company that seems to have its own marketing and

00:07:03 ◼   ► it's all of its own product development and they share with Apple

00:07:07 ◼   ► but there is nothing to stop Apple from having its kind of like alphabet moment

00:07:11 ◼   ► with Nest or you know like that they can have a

00:07:14 ◼   ► separate company that makes technology for the home that is

00:07:19 ◼   ► still owned by them and as Zach in the chat room is pointing out

00:07:22 ◼   ► FileMaker never forget never forget FileMaker but like

00:07:26 ◼   ► Beats is the better example here right if like that is a hardware company with

00:07:30 ◼   ► a different brand that Apple wholly owns but you could very

00:07:34 ◼   ► easily forget that they do and maybe they could do that for smart

00:07:38 ◼   ► home. Yeah I mean I think all options should be on the table but

00:07:40 ◼   ► if the argument is that Apple should never invest strategically

00:07:45 ◼   ► in keeping products that are innovative away from their competition

00:07:49 ◼   ► in the home especially and in the home infrastructure and smart home

00:07:53 ◼   ► markets because Apple culturally can't focus on

00:07:56 ◼   ► that many things at once then I think the answer is Apple's got a

00:08:00 ◼   ► lot of resources Apple doesn't need to focus its people on

00:08:03 ◼   ► it Apple could set a budget and set up a company with somebody in

00:08:07 ◼   ► charge of it to just either make investments or buy

00:08:11 ◼   ► companies and then allow them to run on their own.

00:08:14 ◼   ► There are lots of other models here but I do

00:08:17 ◼   ► just I had that moment where I thought is it really good that

00:08:21 ◼   ► Amazon bought Eero and that that the Google has bought

00:08:24 ◼   ► you know Google bought Nest back in the day and Dropcam and a whole bunch of

00:08:27 ◼   ► other things like is it is it good for Apple if Apple says you

00:08:31 ◼   ► know we're just gonna sit out and do HomeKit and HomeKit's

00:08:34 ◼   ► gonna be great and people are gonna support it

00:08:37 ◼   ► and meanwhile every company that makes something that is part of that

00:08:40 ◼   ► infrastructure gets bought by their competition. I'm not sure

00:08:44 ◼   ► that's a good thing for Apple even if Apple is right in saying

00:08:48 ◼   ► guys we don't you know we don't want to make a smart switch right like I get why

00:08:51 ◼   ► they don't although I think they could make one and

00:08:54 ◼   ► have big margins on it and sell it at the Apple store and make a lot of money

00:08:56 ◼   ► but that's another thing I mentioned in that

00:08:59 ◼   ► article but anyway I just I'm fascinated about where Apple stands currently

00:09:03 ◼   ► in the home smart home market and what that might mean in the long run

00:09:08 ◼   ► now that they've made this new hire what's his role is his role to really

00:09:11 ◼   ► expand what Apple does or is it his role to do what Apple's been doing

00:09:15 ◼   ► up to now which is kind of just I don't know having a lot of remove from

00:09:20 ◼   ► it doing some infrastructure stuff in terms of like HomeKit but otherwise

00:09:24 ◼   ► sort of saying we're not going to play here at all

00:09:27 ◼   ► so we have a quick piece of upstream news it was the Oscars last night

00:09:31 ◼   ► and Netflix have picked up a selection of Oscars

00:09:35 ◼   ► um yeah they did not get best picture for Roma which

00:09:39 ◼   ► they were clearly going for but they got maybe second best they got best uh

00:09:44 ◼   ► Afonso Cuarón the best director Oscar yep uh for for the movie Roma they also

00:09:49 ◼   ► won best foreign language film and best

00:09:52 ◼   ► cinematography three ain't bad for one movie it's not

00:09:56 ◼   ► bad they had I think one previous feature

00:09:59 ◼   ► Oscar before so this is this is they got three this year

00:10:02 ◼   ► they were hoping for best picture I am not an Oscar handicapper but I will say

00:10:07 ◼   ► I'm kind of not surprised like the fact that Roma didn't win

00:10:11 ◼   ► makes me feel like there's a section of the academy

00:10:15 ◼   ► voting group that is just down on a Netflix movie winning

00:10:19 ◼   ► they did not want them to win yeah and it's a ranked choice

00:10:22 ◼   ► they they rank them all from top to bottom and so like it wouldn't surprise

00:10:26 ◼   ► me if there are a bunch of people who are like

00:10:27 ◼   ► I'm not even going to put a Netflix movie there was somebody in the in the

00:10:31 ◼   ► industry um in the last week and I forget who it

00:10:34 ◼   ► was maybe it was a theater owner but somebody actually referred to Roma as

00:10:37 ◼   ► a TV movie which I thought was like come on man come on but that was like there

00:10:41 ◼   ► are people who have that that are that angry about

00:10:45 ◼   ► Netflix playing in the Oscars at all because they feel like it's a

00:10:49 ◼   ► an assault on the livelihood of the of the movie industry

00:10:52 ◼   ► and so um it doesn't surprise me that it that it didn't win uh my gut feeling

00:10:58 ◼   ► being that that's why it didn't win by the way I saw Roma this weekend it's

00:11:02 ◼   ► spectacularly good I will say that is a very very very good

00:11:07 ◼   ► movie so I'm sort of sad that it didn't win

00:11:10 ◼   ► best picture um but uh I'm glad that it won what it did

00:11:13 ◼   ► but yes so Netflix the the Netflix wanting to win awards

00:11:18 ◼   ► uh story continues it's it's progressed but not maybe as far as they hoped

00:11:22 ◼   ► and our favorite spider-man into the spider-verse won

00:11:25 ◼   ► uh best best animation which is yeah that was really isn't that funny

00:11:30 ◼   ► I mean that's such a great story where everybody assumed that the winner would

00:11:33 ◼   ► be one of these other powerhouse animated movies um especially

00:11:37 ◼   ► like Incredibles 2 but there was like so many movies that there's a

00:11:40 ◼   ► prestige animated movie and there's like the winners in the category almost every

00:11:44 ◼   ► year and then into the spider-verse came out

00:11:46 ◼   ► and everybody said oh no this is one of the best movies of the year

00:11:49 ◼   ► uh this should totally win and it did which was which was really great to see

00:11:53 ◼   ► so I was happy about that too and I am I'll just I'll just make a shout

00:11:57 ◼   ► out a uh an elementary school friend of mine a childhood friend of mine

00:12:01 ◼   ► uh was up for best documentary short subject and he lost

00:12:07 ◼   ► but um his name was read on stage and what they do with the people who are in

00:12:12 ◼   ► the awards that are um they don't get a good seat they're

00:12:14 ◼   ► seated far away is they bring all the nominees up

00:12:17 ◼   ► they have these two little rows off to the left you might have seen them during

00:12:20 ◼   ► the show sometimes they didn't even have I saw

00:12:23 ◼   ► somebody tweeting about like why are there empty seats at the front of the

00:12:25 ◼   ► stage and the answer is well they're moving

00:12:27 ◼   ► the old uh nominee group out and the new nominee group in because that's

00:12:31 ◼   ► one way they tried to speed up the show is that you can't have people coming

00:12:35 ◼   ► from 90 rows back um anyway uh my friend sky was in the

00:12:39 ◼   ► front uh on the aisle front row when his category was announced and he

00:12:45 ◼   ► didn't win it but I was like oh that's sky that's great so the kid I played on

00:12:49 ◼   ► the playground at Columbia Elementary School and

00:12:52 ◼   ► in Columbia California was nominated and uh and was there and I got to see him

00:12:58 ◼   ► and they said his name and that was pretty awesome

00:12:59 ◼   ► so his movie was life boat but it didn't win

00:13:03 ◼   ► never mind but that's still great a nomination

00:13:06 ◼   ► that's pretty amazing I think that that'll take you some places

00:13:10 ◼   ► all right today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends

00:13:14 ◼   ► over at Green Chef. Green Chef is a meal delivery service that includes

00:13:19 ◼   ► everything that you're going to need to make delicious gourmet meals at home

00:13:24 ◼   ► that you will be able to cook and feel good about. Green Chef sends a wide

00:13:28 ◼   ► variety of organic ingredients and imaginative new recipes to your home

00:13:32 ◼   ► every week their meal plans include options for paleo

00:13:35 ◼   ► vegan vegetarian keto gluten-free omnivore and carnivore diets this is

00:13:40 ◼   ► what really sets Green Chef apart they are also the first USDA certified

00:13:44 ◼   ► organic meal delivery service every ingredient that Green Chef will

00:13:48 ◼   ► send you is thoughtfully sourced and its journey is tracked from planting to

00:13:52 ◼   ► plating the recipes include pre-made sauces

00:13:54 ◼   ► dressings and spices as well so you can get more flavor in your meals

00:13:58 ◼   ► with less time for you to work on Jason Snell I

00:14:02 ◼   ► understand that our friends at Green Chef sent you a box of lovely

00:14:06 ◼   ► ingredients yes we have been feasting upon the Green

00:14:10 ◼   ► Chef for the last couple of weeks

00:14:14 ◼   ► anyway the yes it's very good and I was I was really impressed

00:14:18 ◼   ► with the packaging one of the things that we noticed about the packaging is

00:14:20 ◼   ► that it's it is kind of uh sanely packaged there's

00:14:25 ◼   ► not a lot of plastic wrapping and stuff it's it's good ingredients

00:14:29 ◼   ► proportioned well and then also um I like that they used a lot of uh they

00:14:33 ◼   ► have like little paper shells and there's a minimum of plastic in the box

00:14:36 ◼   ► and I thought that was all pretty good too so

00:14:38 ◼   ► yeah and good and we've had some several good meals even

00:14:41 ◼   ► complaining children uh did not complain as much

00:14:44 ◼   ► I'm not gonna say didn't complain at all because that never happens but did not

00:14:47 ◼   ► complain as much so that was a win that's a win that's a big

00:14:50 ◼   ► win with Green Chef it's easy to maintain especially your diet and enjoy

00:14:54 ◼   ► exciting new options as well and anybody can be a cook with Green Chef's help for

00:14:58 ◼   ► 50 of your first box of Green Chef go to

00:15:02 ◼   ► greenchef.us/upgrade that's g-r-e-e-n-c-h-e-f dot u-s

00:15:09 ◼   ► slash upgrade that's greenchef.us/upgrade for 50 dollars

00:15:13 ◼   ► of your first box of Green Chef our thanks to Green Chef for their support

00:15:17 ◼   ► of this show and relay fm all right Jason Snell

00:15:21 ◼   ► it is mobile world congress right now and we just had

00:15:25 ◼   ► Samsung unpacked which is Samsung's kind of that's the branding for their events

00:15:29 ◼   ► that they do and some of the big trends coming out of

00:15:33 ◼   ► the Samsung event the s10 by the way I think it looks really cool but we're not

00:15:36 ◼   ► going to get into that today we're going to talk about foldables and

00:15:40 ◼   ► I would say at this point that is the name of the category now

00:15:44 ◼   ► foldables I don't think that was a thing that really existed before the last few

00:15:48 ◼   ► days there was like a lot of like oh folding phones foldable phones

00:15:51 ◼   ► they're called foldables now like phablets for phablets we have foldables

00:15:55 ◼   ► and we spoke about this a number of weeks ago as we were building up to

00:15:59 ◼   ► these events as kind of like would apple do this and what that might

00:16:02 ◼   ► look like that was on episode 229 so you can go and check that out there

00:16:08 ◼   ► if you want to get more details but I wanted to talk about the two

00:16:12 ◼   ► big phones that have been announced in the last week which is the Samsung

00:16:15 ◼   ► Galaxy Fold and the Huawei Mate 10 so Jason if you

00:16:19 ◼   ► will permit me I would like to talk about some of the specs

00:16:22 ◼   ► and some of the features of these two phones and then we can kind of compare

00:16:25 ◼   ► them a little bit with our thoughts on how they look and

00:16:27 ◼   ► how they seem to be acting so Samsung Galaxy Fold has two displays

00:16:32 ◼   ► there is a 4.6 inch display on the outside and then you

00:16:36 ◼   ► open it up to see a 7.3 inch display on the inside it has half a

00:16:40 ◼   ► terabyte of storage and 12 gigabytes of ram

00:16:43 ◼   ► 12 gigabytes of ram in a thing you're holding your hands

00:16:47 ◼   ► so much it has two batteries of course one in each side

00:16:51 ◼   ► and their hinge system is this like fancy

00:16:54 ◼   ► thing full of gears they showed this animation it looked

00:16:58 ◼   ► bonkers okay the Galaxy Fold has five cameras

00:17:01 ◼   ► it has three cameras on the outside and two cameras on the inside

00:17:06 ◼   ► and Samsung has also been doing some work with some large developers and

00:17:09 ◼   ► they've got some SDK information to enable

00:17:12 ◼   ► three app multitasking in the Galaxy Fold

00:17:15 ◼   ► it's going to be shipping in April April 26th

00:17:18 ◼   ► and it will cost 1980 dollars we'll get to the prices later because

00:17:24 ◼   ► that's like a whole separate discussion and nobody was allowed to touch it or

00:17:27 ◼   ► even see it off of the stage I believe there is which suggests that this is a

00:17:31 ◼   ► product that doesn't really quite exist yet like literally at the Samsung event

00:17:35 ◼   ► nobody saw it the only time people saw it with their

00:17:38 ◼   ► own eyes was basically on stage they have it in a case reminiscent of the

00:17:42 ◼   ► first iPhone on the show floor at Mobile World

00:17:45 ◼   ► Congress there you go there you go it's like the

00:17:49 ◼   ► original iPhone or the Mac Pro right which is

00:17:51 ◼   ► probably for say the same reason as those devices were

00:17:54 ◼   ► encased in glass because it's not done they've got a couple of months left to

00:17:59 ◼   ► finish the software don't touch it yeah and then we've got

00:18:03 ◼   ► the Huawei Mate 10 so this phone is a little thinner than

00:18:05 ◼   ► the Galaxy Fold it has a bigger screen and it folds more flat when closed

00:18:10 ◼   ► so the Galaxy Fold it kind of has like a small gap

00:18:14 ◼   ► towards the hinge when you close it up but it's not it's not as bad as our

00:18:17 ◼   ► friend the Royale Flex Pie of Cheese the biggest difference between the Mate

00:18:21 ◼   ► 10 and the Fold and this is where I think the the ideological war will be

00:18:26 ◼   ► waged over the next year or two the Huawei Mate 10 screen folds

00:18:32 ◼   ► outwards not inwards so it has one screen and it folds

00:18:36 ◼   ► outwards so the the Galaxy Fold it's kind of like a book where you open it up

00:18:40 ◼   ► and the screen's inside but the Huawei it folds in the opposite

00:18:43 ◼   ► direction so it's an eight inch OLED display when you fold it up you get a

00:18:48 ◼   ► 6.6 inch main display which is the one you're

00:18:52 ◼   ► using and then a 6.4 inch rear display on the back

00:18:55 ◼   ► and there is a grip section kind of reminiscent of the kindle oasis

00:18:59 ◼   ► which is where the cameras are so there's like a chunkier section that you

00:19:02 ◼   ► can hold on to and that's also where the the folded

00:19:05 ◼   ► side clips into it has like a latch it also

00:19:09 ◼   ► features half a terabyte storage only only has eight gigabytes of ram

00:19:13 ◼   ► and the Huawei Mate 10 will start at two thousand six hundred dollars

00:19:18 ◼   ► and shipping quote in the middle of this year

00:19:22 ◼   ► so these are two very different phones kind of in design they're doing the same

00:19:28 ◼   ► thing very very differently um do you have a

00:19:32 ◼   ► favorite of these design wise oh you're gonna set me up

00:19:37 ◼   ► here because i know we disagree on this so uh you're gonna set me up to go first

00:19:40 ◼   ► that's fine that's fine i could do it yeah i think i think no how much should

00:19:44 ◼   ► i overplay this no reasonable person will disagree with

00:19:47 ◼   ► me um that the uh i think the Huawei

00:19:52 ◼   ► one looks way better right but that you are in the consensus from people that

00:19:56 ◼   ► i've been seeing online i think most people prefer

00:19:58 ◼   ► the look of the Huawei phone yeah yeah and i've got lots of reasons why i mean

00:20:02 ◼   ► i think the Galaxy Fold like uh when it's in its folded configuration i

00:20:06 ◼   ► think it looks way stranger than the the Huawei phone does weird that

00:20:10 ◼   ► it's like super skinny and the display is like in the middle and

00:20:14 ◼   ► you can't even call it a bezel because it's so huge like the bezel that goes

00:20:18 ◼   ► around the screen it does look really weird it's very

00:20:20 ◼   ► thick and the way they've engineered it it is um

00:20:24 ◼   ► it's thick and the folding part like it doesn't quite

00:20:27 ◼   ► touch um you know because it can't fold completely flat

00:20:31 ◼   ► and so it's got this kind of space that's like

00:20:35 ◼   ► the hole in the donut yeah that is very strange why has the space but it's way

00:20:40 ◼   ► more uniform and way smaller like the gap in between

00:20:42 ◼   ► what Huawei has done has they've made that grip section which reminded me of

00:20:46 ◼   ► like the grip on my kindle oasis is actually kind of like

00:20:48 ◼   ► this too but what they've done is the grip

00:20:50 ◼   ► is not just a grip and a place where your sensor bar

00:20:54 ◼   ► is but it's also there so that when you fold

00:20:58 ◼   ► the phone back around itself um it the the screen comes level

00:21:03 ◼   ► basically to the grip and so you create this

00:21:07 ◼   ► um like sort of sandwich instead of the donut

00:21:11 ◼   ► that's it i prefer the sandwich to the donut hole is what i'm saying mike

00:21:14 ◼   ► and this is we're gonna have to find better words to describe these products

00:21:18 ◼   ► as the foldable uh ideological wars continue

00:21:23 ◼   ► so i okay i prefer the the design of the fold and i know i'm in the minority

00:21:29 ◼   ► and i have a few things for this i think that the mate 10

00:21:32 ◼   ► looks less premium um if you've seen any pictures of this

00:21:35 ◼   ► the hinge is super weird looking i think compared to the uh folds hinge i think

00:21:42 ◼   ► that the galaxy fold is a more premium looking product in in

00:21:47 ◼   ► general we need to come back to that because i

00:21:49 ◼   ► feel like every single early folding phone is just going to be a game of hide

00:21:53 ◼   ► the hinge right like how do we deal with the fact

00:21:55 ◼   ► that we've got to have this weird superstructure

00:21:58 ◼   ► to make our uh display not crumple exactly and i think that samsung has

00:22:04 ◼   ► done a better job of like building it as part of the design and

00:22:09 ◼   ► making it attractive like they're even allowing customization of the color of

00:22:12 ◼   ► the hinge on the phone where huawei i think it's

00:22:16 ◼   ► more a little bit rough and ready right like it's kind of looks like a

00:22:20 ◼   ► inner tube or something i could see it's like a super strange looking design to

00:22:24 ◼   ► me but the overall product probably does

00:22:27 ◼   ► look better on the huawei but i'm thinking about like if i'm

00:22:30 ◼   ► gonna own one of these i'm thinking about like the long-term usability

00:22:34 ◼   ► and uh i was watching a youtube video from super saff and he pointed out like

00:22:39 ◼   ► how durable are these displays gonna be because they're made of plastic because

00:22:43 ◼   ► glass can't fold yet i don't know if it ever will be able

00:22:46 ◼   ► to or there'll be something in the middle but like if the screen's on the

00:22:49 ◼   ► outside always is it likely to get scratched

00:22:54 ◼   ► i don't know well that that's one of the the things

00:22:58 ◼   ► the market may and long-term use by people will

00:23:02 ◼   ► reveal but you're right like one of the fundamental differences we can talk

00:23:05 ◼   ► about the look and feel here one of the fundamental design choices that samsung

00:23:08 ◼   ► made that huawei did not make is adding a second screen and folding the

00:23:13 ◼   ► big screen in on itself to theoretically protect it from the

00:23:17 ◼   ► environment whereas huawei is completely in on the idea

00:23:21 ◼   ► that your entire phone is going to be exposed to the world as

00:23:25 ◼   ► a screen like the front of the screen like we make a big deal about like oh

00:23:29 ◼   ► apple did glass on the front and back of their phones now you can scratch or

00:23:33 ◼   ► break but like the huawei it's literally your

00:23:35 ◼   ► screen all the way around and that means that you've got twice the surface area

00:23:40 ◼   ► exposed to the world in terms of scratches you can't literally can't lay

00:23:44 ◼   ► it down on a table on its back because it has no

00:23:48 ◼   ► back really it's all screen and you know

00:23:52 ◼   ► samsung i gotta say samsung has a little bit of

00:23:55 ◼   ► home field advantage here right because they've been building these screens

00:23:58 ◼   ► and they uh have experience with them probably that nobody else has

00:24:03 ◼   ► this is why i look at it i'm like oh okay like i know like samsung we're not

00:24:07 ◼   ► gonna we're not gonna open it to the world

00:24:09 ◼   ► right they know samsung knows that so like my other thing on this as

00:24:14 ◼   ► well of like kind of having a preference for the for the

00:24:17 ◼   ► samsung line is i believe if any company is going to make this

00:24:21 ◼   ► work samsung will be the company to make it work

00:24:25 ◼   ► because they have a history of making really weird

00:24:32 ◼   ► phones and turning them into products that make sense down the line

00:24:37 ◼   ► like the note line right when the first note came out it

00:24:41 ◼   ► seemed ridiculous but they eventually not only have made that a great product

00:24:46 ◼   ► but have pushed a lot of smartphone design towards what the original note

00:24:50 ◼   ► did in the first place right like if you just look at screen size as one

00:24:53 ◼   ► of the bigger things right that was the first big phone and now all

00:24:58 ◼   ► phones are that big i would probably i mean i haven't looked

00:25:00 ◼   ► this up but i bet most regular phones now are bigger than the original note

00:25:04 ◼   ► was the screen size yeah probably but so my thinking is

00:25:08 ◼   ► like the fold has some real awkwardness about it which i think is that that

00:25:14 ◼   ► front screen but when they eventually get to like fold two or fold three where

00:25:19 ◼   ► they can tighten the gap up and make that front screen

00:25:22 ◼   ► a more regular looking phone and then have the open screen in the in the middle

00:25:27 ◼   ► i think that it will become a much more compelling product

00:25:30 ◼   ► um i mean let alone the fact that huawei have

00:25:33 ◼   ► significant issues trying to sell their products worldwide worldwide right now

00:25:37 ◼   ► like you will not be able to buy the huawei mate 10 in america like you just

00:25:40 ◼   ► won't be able to do that so that's gonna hold them back a little

00:25:44 ◼   ► bit irrespective of it um one of the bigger one of the big

00:25:47 ◼   ► issues um and one of the things that i'm interested to see how it'll eventually

00:25:51 ◼   ► play out is creases creases in the screens you can see them

00:25:54 ◼   ► like if you look at videos and gifs and images

00:25:57 ◼   ► you can see like the the the galaxy fold has kind of a real thin line that goes

00:26:03 ◼   ► down the middle and the huawei has like a book spine

00:26:07 ◼   ► basically it looks like that goes down the middle

00:26:10 ◼   ► this is just going to be another one of those things that it's going to look

00:26:13 ◼   ► real bad in these first ones but they're gonna they will eventually

00:26:16 ◼   ► get there the same with software you know you mentioned like nobody's

00:26:19 ◼   ► really allowed to touch these devices yet

00:26:22 ◼   ► um huawei are letting people touch it today but they're not really allowed to

00:26:25 ◼   ► use it um the software is going to be an

00:26:27 ◼   ► absolute dumpster fire for a while even when it comes out it's going to be

00:26:31 ◼   ► janky as hell because this is like fundamentally a different experience

00:26:38 ◼   ► to any phone that's come before right and like

00:26:41 ◼   ► again i also have faith in samsung's ability just because of their size and

00:26:46 ◼   ► scale as a company to be able to get more companies on board

00:26:50 ◼   ► and like they they mentioned like whatsapp and office and and like google

00:26:56 ◼   ► working with them on making the kind of they call it app

00:26:59 ◼   ► continuity where you have you're looking at it on the front screen

00:27:03 ◼   ► and you open it up and then it's in a bigger view

00:27:05 ◼   ► and i think it looks really cool i will say jason you can probably tell

00:27:09 ◼   ► i'm really excited about this trend i don't think that either of these phones

00:27:15 ◼   ► are like what this is gonna be oh no no you gotta start somewhere right yeah and

00:27:20 ◼   ► i feel like as well these two devices are a lot better than i expected the

00:27:25 ◼   ► first foldables to be like i was expecting them to look way

00:27:29 ◼   ► more like the royale flex pi than these devices right well i was

00:27:33 ◼   ► gonna say um you i'm glad you mentioned look because

00:27:37 ◼   ► these devices will ship and it's going to be like a disaster right like they're

00:27:41 ◼   ► going to have all sorts of things wrong with them

00:27:42 ◼   ► and that's part of the process i don't think anybody is uh

00:27:45 ◼   ► people who act shocked are silly people that you shouldn't pay attention to when

00:27:49 ◼   ► they when it turns out that there are all sorts of issues with these

00:27:51 ◼   ► first-generation foldables because uh that's going to happen but uh but uh

00:27:55 ◼   ► as you pointed out like they they look they look better than then again in two

00:27:59 ◼   ► years we'll look at these and we'll be like

00:28:00 ◼   ► wow those were terrible yeah like look at those ridiculous hinges can you even

00:28:04 ◼   ► believe they're creases yeah now we have this magic foldable glass

00:28:07 ◼   ► that nobody knew that we existed there's a really nice we put in the show notes

00:28:10 ◼   ► there's a really nice um link to a thread on twitter by

00:28:13 ◼   ► stephen sinofsky who of course worked at microsoft and has lots of very smart

00:28:16 ◼   ► things to say about technology on twitter um and he he links in it to a different

00:28:20 ◼   ► thread he did like i don't know a couple months ago about foldable phones but his

00:28:24 ◼   ► point and it's a point that i made in a in a mac world or no a tom's guide column

00:28:28 ◼   ► a while back too um you know talking about apple in in the

00:28:31 ◼   ► context of this too it's like uh what what sinofsky says is very much

00:28:35 ◼   ► what we've been saying um it's early days these first products are going to be

00:28:38 ◼   ► ridiculous um there's a software issue i mean he

00:28:42 ◼   ► knows this from having been at microsoft uh when they

00:28:45 ◼   ► were trying to put a touch interface in like part of the issue here too is like

00:28:48 ◼   ► what's google going to do with android and where is it going to bend over

00:28:52 ◼   ► backward to help uh its vendors with stuff like this because it does do that

00:28:56 ◼   ► sometimes remember it came out with like ways of doing notches and and and stuff

00:29:00 ◼   ► oh i 100 believe that one of the next that android q

00:29:04 ◼   ► one of its things will be supporting uh flexible displays

00:29:08 ◼   ► like like like they did in in pi with notches

00:29:12 ◼   ► like they built exactly a bunch of notch support exactly so

00:29:15 ◼   ► so but it's still an open question of like where do they throw

00:29:19 ◼   ► do they throw their weight behind what samsung is doing where there's like a

00:29:22 ◼   ► single screen that becomes two screens or do they put effort into something

00:29:26 ◼   ► because if they think that what huawei is doing has merit

00:29:29 ◼   ► um they could for example um build it so that you can more easily

00:29:36 ◼   ► put um you know different status information

00:29:39 ◼   ► on the front and back of the screen when folded or something like that right like

00:29:42 ◼   ► there are things they could do or they could be like no we're not going to

00:29:44 ◼   ► support that like when it's folded we're just going to put status on the front

00:29:46 ◼   ► and there's nothing on the back and forget it right like they could

00:29:49 ◼   ► it's sort of like going to be interesting to see what their

00:29:52 ◼   ► where they place their bets in terms of their resources that they're putting in

00:29:55 ◼   ► and and because again if we don't really know how these foldable phones are going

00:29:59 ◼   ► to work ultimately if you're google you you know you're

00:30:02 ◼   ► probably not going to be able to support every possible configuration

00:30:06 ◼   ► so you may make some bets and that will be interesting to see

00:30:09 ◼   ► and then sinosky's other point that i thought was really good is something

00:30:12 ◼   ► about apple which is you know everybody's gonna say apple's behind but

00:30:15 ◼   ► apple and i i would argue maybe google with their hardware as well had the

00:30:20 ◼   ► great advantage of sitting and watching these other companies spend all this

00:30:23 ◼   ► money and also let's let's be clear is apple

00:30:26 ◼   ► building foldable iphones inside apple as prototypes to try

00:30:30 ◼   ► and figure out what the right way to do it is

00:30:32 ◼   ► they undoubtedly they have been doing that for years now years

00:30:35 ◼   ► they've been they've been doing as soon as they could get like these screens

00:30:38 ◼   ► from samsung for like crazy amounts of money just so they

00:30:42 ◼   ► could prototype with them sure bought them right like yeah every time samsung

00:30:45 ◼   ► comes up with anything you know apple's buying it

00:30:48 ◼   ► right like okay let's just get this screen and see what we can do with it

00:30:51 ◼   ► because you'd be silly not to and apple also has an advantage that

00:30:54 ◼   ► sinosky points out which is apple actually is further along in terms of

00:30:58 ◼   ► dealing with these larger screens because apple has the advantage

00:31:01 ◼   ► of having introduced the ipad nine years ago and having it be successful

00:31:06 ◼   ► and having it have lots of apps that run on it whereas

00:31:10 ◼   ► android has not had as great a success with that and so there's a little more

00:31:15 ◼   ► work to do there so apple's got some advantages as well

00:31:18 ◼   ► because of the ipad to go into a larger foldable device so

00:31:22 ◼   ► i think that um apple's not behind even though pundits will probably say

00:31:27 ◼   ► that that they are watching closely and making and will make

00:31:30 ◼   ► their move and as sinofsky points out like apple is the

00:31:34 ◼   ► ship it when it's ready at volume and uh is the sort of seal of approval on the

00:31:40 ◼   ► market in a sense it's like oh okay mom and dad are here now right like

00:31:44 ◼   ► now we're now it's gotten serious because we've exited the throwing things

00:31:48 ◼   ► against the wall to see what sticks mode now apple can go too early and they can

00:31:53 ◼   ► go too late but they're generally they've generally historically been

00:31:57 ◼   ► pretty good about hitting it pretty close to on the nose

00:32:00 ◼   ► um in fact i think the the large phone thing was a

00:32:04 ◼   ► counter example where their um philosophy

00:32:07 ◼   ► of what made a good iphone got in the way of the reality of the market but we

00:32:10 ◼   ► we've seen through patent filings and things that apple has been

00:32:13 ◼   ► on this idea for a long time um in fact it wouldn't surprise me if they

00:32:19 ◼   ► were prototyping foldable iphone designs before they were foldable screens

00:32:23 ◼   ► ready for them like just as a test of what would we do

00:32:27 ◼   ► with this just to get out in front of it and i

00:32:30 ◼   ► think uh i think this category like look this

00:32:33 ◼   ► category could be a loser you know in the end and this is why i

00:32:37 ◼   ► want to say this as fascinating as this is from just a pure tech enthusiasm

00:32:41 ◼   ► perspective of like oh my god this is like a science fictional product

00:32:44 ◼   ► that's come to be reality i think there is truth in the fact that

00:32:48 ◼   ► this is all being driven by the idea that with

00:32:50 ◼   ► oled technology you have the ability to make flexible

00:32:54 ◼   ► screens and once you're at that point everybody

00:32:57 ◼   ► says oh flexible screens that means we can make

00:33:01 ◼   ► foldable smartphones so let's make those it's not motivated by

00:33:07 ◼   ► a desire necessarily at least not primarily motivated by a desire in the

00:33:12 ◼   ► market for a foldable phone it's more like the technology lets us do

00:33:15 ◼   ► this and this is this is where apple secret sauce comes in honestly and i know

00:33:20 ◼   ► at this point apple's not a secret everybody knows about apple and there

00:33:22 ◼   ► are lots of companies trying to do ways and things in the way

00:33:25 ◼   ► that apple does and that includes huawei and samsung they're trying to figure this

00:33:30 ◼   ► out they do it in public apple does it in

00:33:32 ◼   ► private but i i think the larger point here is

00:33:35 ◼   ► the the magic moment in technology whether you're apple or someone else

00:33:40 ◼   ► is that moment when you can take what technology is possible

00:33:46 ◼   ► and use it to create a product that serves

00:33:50 ◼   ► a need or solves a problem and right now i think we can see that

00:33:56 ◼   ► there is a problem which is that people like bigger screens

00:34:00 ◼   ► but at some point i think the perception is

00:34:04 ◼   ► they won't fit in your pocket like people like bigger screen phones

00:34:08 ◼   ► they might like tablets some people love tablets but a tablet won't fit in your

00:34:12 ◼   ► pocket and maybe that's the thing the problem

00:34:15 ◼   ► this solves i i don't want to leave i don't want to

00:34:19 ◼   ► close off the possibility that that is not a problem and that

00:34:22 ◼   ► nobody wants this because i think it's at least a

00:34:25 ◼   ► possibility so i'm not ready to go 100 and say this is our this is our foldable

00:34:30 ◼   ► future it may be further off than we think

00:34:33 ◼   ► because in the end this may be so costly have so

00:34:36 ◼   ► many issues and solve a problem that is not perceived as a problem by most of

00:34:40 ◼   ► the market that it's just not going to be a big deal

00:34:42 ◼   ► but it might and i think if you're somebody at apple

00:34:46 ◼   ► who's working on this stuff and filing patents for the last three or four years

00:34:49 ◼   ► that's the debate right which is like how can we do this in a way that

00:34:52 ◼   ► makes sense and that people are delighted by because it

00:34:56 ◼   ► makes their experience better because right now a lot of this stuff is very

00:35:00 ◼   ► much like hey i've got a screen that can fold let's

00:35:02 ◼   ► make a phone that can fold around it and that doesn't that doesn't

00:35:06 ◼   ► say anything about the people who want to buy it it just says we have

00:35:09 ◼   ► cool tech let's stick it in a product and

00:35:12 ◼   ► that's the for the the that's the difference between the art and the

00:35:15 ◼   ► science here and that's why i think you and i are so fascinated by this is

00:35:19 ◼   ► like how do you how we don't know how wide the chasm is we

00:35:23 ◼   ► don't know whether somebody's going to be able to jump

00:35:25 ◼   ► across it uh whether it's going to happen i'm going to take this metaphor a

00:35:28 ◼   ► little bit further whether it's going to happen now or

00:35:30 ◼   ► whether or it's going to take years and we're going to have to bring in some

00:35:33 ◼   ► heavy equipment to build a bridge across this chasm or if it's

00:35:36 ◼   ► simply unbridgeable because nobody wants to go over there

00:35:38 ◼   ► and we don't know and samsung and huawei don't know and

00:35:42 ◼   ► apple doesn't know and google doesn't know but

00:35:45 ◼   ► um this tech is here now so everybody's going to give it a shot in

00:35:50 ◼   ► their own way and we'll see and that to me that is one of the most

00:35:54 ◼   ► entertaining things about following technology because this could be

00:35:59 ◼   ► transformative or it could be nothing we don't know we don't know i wanted to

00:36:04 ◼   ► just touch on the price angle real quick before we move on because these

00:36:07 ◼   ► these are expensive right they're starting at 1980

00:36:10 ◼   ► 1,980 but like or or the or what is it 2,600 for the other one so yeah

00:36:17 ◼   ► yeah that's i really am intrigued as to why the prices are so different

00:36:21 ◼   ► like are getting samsung willing to take more of a hit on it i don't know

00:36:25 ◼   ► um but it may i mean is anyone surprised like it's two

00:36:32 ◼   ► smartphones stuck together essentially right is what's going on here that

00:36:36 ◼   ► especially when you look at like the samsung they're doubling up a lot of

00:36:39 ◼   ► components and i just wanted to like you know the

00:36:42 ◼   ► cutting edge right there's a lot of uh a lot of like the design and the the

00:36:47 ◼   ► rnd is going into this cost um and it will come down over time but i

00:36:52 ◼   ► just wanted to mention like it's so you got 512 gigabytes of

00:36:56 ◼   ► storage right the 10s max at 512 gigabytes of storage

00:37:01 ◼   ► is 1449 dollars which is 500 cheaper

00:37:06 ◼   ► than the folding phone that doesn't seem like a bit as big a difference as i

00:37:11 ◼   ► would have expected um so you know i just wanted to mention

00:37:15 ◼   ► that like because i i've been talking about this online and people like oh

00:37:19 ◼   ► apple will make it cheaper i don't think they will yeah i think i

00:37:22 ◼   ► think you're right in fact this is if we know anything look at the iphone 10 the

00:37:25 ◼   ► iphone 10 brought in new tech that allowed apple to

00:37:28 ◼   ► charge 300 more than they previously charged for their phones

00:37:32 ◼   ► right that's essentially what they did so it's not at all

00:37:36 ◼   ► far-fetched to look at something like folding phone technology and say well

00:37:39 ◼   ► when apple does make a folding iphone that is one that they're going to charge

00:37:42 ◼   ► 500 more for yep because otherwise don't get the folding

00:37:46 ◼   ► phone like you have to pay more there's more tech in here costs more

00:37:49 ◼   ► um i'll also point out early generation stuff that does what no stuff did before

00:37:56 ◼   ► like is expensive the original mac cost 2500 which in today's money is 6200

00:38:04 ◼   ► for that little original mac it was a it was really expensive

00:38:08 ◼   ► and it took a long time for the mac to come down in price

00:38:12 ◼   ► and that's just that's that original tech like you're paying the people who

00:38:16 ◼   ► buy a two thousand dollar folding samsung phone are doing it because they want to

00:38:20 ◼   ► be on the super cutting edge and maybe

00:38:23 ◼   ► don't care about the fact that it's not practical

00:38:26 ◼   ► and are willing to pay for it and you know good luck to those

00:38:30 ◼   ► people but right now like as you say of course it's going to be

00:38:35 ◼   ► massively expensive because as well samsung and huawei do not expect to sell

00:38:39 ◼   ► a lot of these they they don't right like this is probably something that's

00:38:44 ◼   ► really difficult to make and they're probably not going to make

00:38:46 ◼   ► that many of them and they probably don't expect to sell that many of them

00:38:49 ◼   ► but that's not the point of the first one the first one is like let's get it

00:38:53 ◼   ► out there let's see what people think about it

00:38:56 ◼   ► let's actually do something for all of the research and development that we put

00:39:00 ◼   ► into it and then move ahead all right today's show

00:39:04 ◼   ► is brought to you by lunar display now i love my lunar display

00:39:08 ◼   ► it's fun like lunar display is almost like a foldable display for your mac i

00:39:13 ◼   ► guess you could just you know lg did this jason they're

00:39:15 ◼   ► bringing out a case which has a second display

00:39:18 ◼   ► that's the the way they're dealing with the foldable display thing you can just

00:39:21 ◼   ► buy a case for your lg display lg phone and it's just a

00:39:25 ◼   ► second display and i think that's their that's their

00:39:28 ◼   ► answer just solved solved it's all taken care of but lunar

00:39:32 ◼   ► display is the hardware solution it turns your ipad into a wireless display

00:39:35 ◼   ► for your mac meaning you'll have a second display

00:39:38 ◼   ► that is super portable with basically zero lag and stunning image quality

00:39:42 ◼   ► i use my lunar display every single day now

00:39:45 ◼   ► because i am somebody who loves to work on the ipad but i totally understand

00:39:50 ◼   ► that sometimes the apps that i use just won't let me do things the way that i

00:39:53 ◼   ► want to do them so now i can just open my lunar

00:39:56 ◼   ► display which is attached to a mac mini which sits in my office

00:39:59 ◼   ► and i can take care of what i need to take care of and get it done

00:40:02 ◼   ► like sometimes i want to be able to access like a full version of a web

00:40:06 ◼   ► browser like say like youtube or something

00:40:08 ◼   ► the youtube creator app and you trying to use youtube on the ipad is just

00:40:12 ◼   ► a disaster they just won't let it happen so i just open up lunar display and i

00:40:16 ◼   ► can go into the youtube creator studio and get what i need done

00:40:19 ◼   ► what i love about lunar display for me personally is that i basically have mac

00:40:23 ◼   ► os as an app on my ipad but it can be used for way more than

00:40:26 ◼   ► that you can use it for extra screen real estate where you're sitting at your

00:40:30 ◼   ► desk and getting stuff done maybe when you're traveling and you're

00:40:32 ◼   ► using a laptop and you need a second display with you you can even just

00:40:35 ◼   ► plug it in over usb rather than using the wi-fi

00:40:39 ◼   ► connection at home and you can have your lunar display

00:40:42 ◼   ► working and ready to go right there it's so simple to set up

00:40:45 ◼   ► and you're going to love that extra screen real estate lunar display

00:40:49 ◼   ► supports external keyboards it supports the ipad smart keyboard and

00:40:53 ◼   ► apple pencil as well and touch interactions it basically turns

00:40:57 ◼   ► your mac into a touchscreen device and the all-new liquid video engine with

00:41:01 ◼   ► lunar display brings significantly reduced latency

00:41:03 ◼   ► and faster screen refresh rate a faster screen refresh rate than ever before i

00:41:07 ◼   ► absolutely love it listeners of this show can get a 10

00:41:10 ◼   ► exclusive discount on lunar display just go to l-u-n-a-d-i-s-p-l-a-y.com

00:41:17 ◼   ► and use the promo code upgrade at checkout that is lunar display.com promo

00:41:21 ◼   ► code upgrade at checkout to get your 10 off go there right now

00:41:26 ◼   ► upgrade your setup you're gonna love it thanks to lunar display for their

00:41:30 ◼   ► support of this show and all of relay fm all right so uh mark german had a report

00:41:37 ◼   ► about marzipan um do you know what i found interesting

00:41:40 ◼   ► about this report i know it's just german's name

00:41:42 ◼   ► um yes report which is different uh i'm starting to think jason

00:41:46 ◼   ► that there's something about where the information is coming from

00:41:50 ◼   ► and who's writing the reports and then kind of how the reports

00:41:54 ◼   ► feel at bloomberg like i haven't put my finger on it yet but like

00:41:58 ◼   ► this one's pretty concise but anyway uh basically

00:42:01 ◼   ► the thing to take away from this is a timeline

00:42:04 ◼   ► of marzipan and for the refresher marzipan is ios apps running on the mac

00:42:10 ◼   ► this was project sneak peek shown off at wwdc last year

00:42:14 ◼   ► which brought with it the news app and the home app onto the mac

00:42:18 ◼   ► for very ios e apps so this is the timeline

00:42:21 ◼   ► at wwdc 2019 developers will get the tools that they need to help them port

00:42:25 ◼   ► ipad apps to the mac in wwdc 2020 this support will extend for

00:42:30 ◼   ► iphone apps and then wwdc 2021 the ability to merge

00:42:35 ◼   ► iphone ipad and mac apps into a new universal app for customers to buy what

00:42:41 ◼   ► do you think of that timeline jason does that

00:42:42 ◼   ► max does that like pass the sense check for you

00:42:46 ◼   ► yeah i i think so right like obviously apple has said that in 2019 developers

00:42:51 ◼   ► are going to get tools to do this um i'm a little bit baffled by

00:42:57 ◼   ► the iphone in 2020 um you know we only have like two sentences

00:43:03 ◼   ► from mark german on this so everybody is trying to extrapolate here

00:43:06 ◼   ► um best i can come up with because like again i think of iphone apps and i think

00:43:12 ◼   ► well you know i could get a little iphone app in a window on my mac and

00:43:14 ◼   ► that would be fine i think what apple's thinking here

00:43:17 ◼   ► is they're thinking about laptops because that's two-thirds of the mac

00:43:21 ◼   ► are laptops and they're thinking about having something that can fill the

00:43:27 ◼   ► screen not that it has to fill the screen but i

00:43:29 ◼   ► think they're thinking about it that way and the problem with the iphone

00:43:32 ◼   ► as any ipad user knows is that iphone apps don't work right they

00:43:36 ◼   ► are you know they're orientation locked and they're scaled and they're

00:43:40 ◼   ► they're weird and i think maybe that's what apple is

00:43:44 ◼   ► is talking about here but i'm a little bit strange like support would be apple

00:43:48 ◼   ► added for iphone i don't know why apple wouldn't just say

00:43:52 ◼   ► look iphone apps run in a in a little window

00:43:56 ◼   ► and uh if you want to make a universal app you want to make an app that runs on

00:43:59 ◼   ► i ipad and mac you need to add that i'm not quite

00:44:03 ◼   ► sure why there's an interim step where they say

00:44:06 ◼   ► oh now we're going to add support unless it's some other technological

00:44:11 ◼   ► um update that apple is doing that makes iphone

00:44:14 ◼   ► apps scale better like you know what i mean like

00:44:19 ◼   ► tools that make the iphone apps more kind of intelligently

00:44:23 ◼   ► scale or they're thinking about some other kind of multitasking interface

00:44:26 ◼   ► that allows them to be i'm just i'm a little bit i'm a little

00:44:29 ◼   ► bit baffled by that but it may just be like tools to make people who have

00:44:32 ◼   ► iphone apps get them to run on ipad and mac

00:44:35 ◼   ► more quickly more easily than any anything else because so i i that's a

00:44:40 ◼   ► that's a that's a question mark for me like what

00:44:43 ◼   ► is that what 2020 is all going to be about they're going to do presumably

00:44:46 ◼   ► 2020 will also be about lots of improvements to the marzipan

00:44:50 ◼   ► stuff that drops in 2019 and maybe they're anticipating that that's going

00:44:53 ◼   ► to be a more painful conversion um also 2020 the suggestion is that

00:44:57 ◼   ► that's when the arm max start to appear so maybe

00:45:00 ◼   ► there's like enough going on in 2020 that they're like this is all we're

00:45:03 ◼   ► going to do for now and then in 2021 we end up with the idea

00:45:08 ◼   ► of you know these these end up getting converged together

00:45:10 ◼   ► where you can build them in a single binary and they can basically be on

00:45:14 ◼   ► on any of the you know on the mac app store the ios app store maybe the app

00:45:18 ◼   ► stores come together in some way um and that makes sense so it's not a lot

00:45:22 ◼   ► of new stuff here it feels a little bit more

00:45:25 ◼   ► like this is kind of apple's um rollout strategy in terms of some

00:45:29 ◼   ► milestones like so that they can constrain what the um

00:45:34 ◼   ► what the work is for 2019 like they know there's going to be more work required

00:45:37 ◼   ► in 2020 and 2021 so they're they're setting their agenda for what's

00:45:42 ◼   ► going to fit into 2020 which 2019 which presumably they have now

00:45:45 ◼   ► right like yeah wwc coming in uh you know kind of soon

00:45:51 ◼   ► at this point i mean i know it's four months away

00:45:54 ◼   ► but uh it's coming soon three it's all yeah it's almost three months away so

00:45:58 ◼   ► um so yeah i i i'm a little bit baffled by some of the details here but

00:46:04 ◼   ► it's not surprising this is going to be we've said it this is a many years

00:46:08 ◼   ► process of trying to unify the application

00:46:10 ◼   ► platforms you know is it three years probably more like five years to get to

00:46:15 ◼   ► a very different place where there's a unified

00:46:18 ◼   ► apple application platform which doesn't necessarily mean that the mac

00:46:21 ◼   ► application uh platform will go away but that they

00:46:25 ◼   ► the the new one is this unified uh thing across ios and mac so if

00:46:33 ◼   ► ipad apps come to the mac there is a question

00:46:37 ◼   ► about if any changes will be made to the mac to make ipad apps feel more

00:46:44 ◼   ► at home and this is an article that you wrote about a couple of weeks ago and

00:46:48 ◼   ► we've been saving this topic and it's kind of

00:46:50 ◼   ► perfectly dovetails with this marzipan uh extension of the marzipan rumors so

00:46:56 ◼   ► you pose the question in a mac wall column

00:46:58 ◼   ► what if apple uses mac os 10.15 to further unify the interfaces of its

00:47:05 ◼   ► platforms so let's not say and what we're not

00:47:09 ◼   ► saying here is this is the unification but what if it

00:47:13 ◼   ► was a little bit more like when apple did that back to the mac event

00:47:17 ◼   ► where they introduced a bunch of ios-like designs to applications on the

00:47:22 ◼   ► mac so like is it a sensible path to

00:47:26 ◼   ► consider that marzipan might work a little bit more easily

00:47:31 ◼   ► if the operating systems share some common design elements at least

00:47:36 ◼   ► yeah and i think marzipan is not necessarily even the reason you do it

00:47:40 ◼   ► but i think the reason you do it is that apple wants consistency across its

00:47:45 ◼   ► product lines and marzipan is a symptom of the fact that apple has

00:47:49 ◼   ► decided that it wants much more

00:47:53 ◼   ► similarity between mac and ios products than maybe it has had

00:47:57 ◼   ► before and you're right the mac to the mac was a great example of like no we

00:48:00 ◼   ► want to make the um the mac have stuff that's going

00:48:05 ◼   ► to be familiar to ios users there are way more ios users than mac

00:48:08 ◼   ► users right so there's a huge advantage for apple

00:48:11 ◼   ► and having max feel more like ios and i know that makes mac

00:48:15 ◼   ► users uncomfortable and i am one of them you know a mac user i'm not super

00:48:19 ◼   ► uncomfortable because i like ios too i think

00:48:21 ◼   ► i think apple's theory is most mac users like ios and

00:48:25 ◼   ► you know and ios users would be more comfortable on the mac if it was more

00:48:28 ◼   ► like ios therefore they should push in that direction and

00:48:32 ◼   ► so marzipan is an example where the app platform comes over but

00:48:35 ◼   ► this article was like do you also at this point start to say

00:48:40 ◼   ► there's stuff in the mac that is not really

00:48:43 ◼   ► anything like um ios and maybe it could be more like ios are there other

00:48:48 ◼   ► features that we could make a little more

00:48:51 ◼   ► you know apple like more like unified across just because

00:48:55 ◼   ► it's better if people don't say well wait a second your apple why is

00:48:59 ◼   ► why do you do it this way on this device and this way on the other device

00:49:02 ◼   ► which i think is a strong argument like oh yeah we shouldn't do that

00:49:05 ◼   ► we should probably be these all these devices should probably be as similar as

00:49:09 ◼   ► possible in terms of the language they use the

00:49:11 ◼   ► interfaces they use to do certain things so i tried to imagine it and this is one

00:49:15 ◼   ► of those things where it's like all the things that will infuriate

00:49:17 ◼   ► long time mac users if they're in the next version of mac os

00:49:21 ◼   ► right like what did you do why is it like this now

00:49:24 ◼   ► but it kind of makes sense to do it that way

00:49:29 ◼   ► okay i keep coming back to something that continues to be a surprise to me it

00:49:33 ◼   ► was even more so this year when we look at the upgradees and we try

00:49:37 ◼   ► and think of mac apps and what makes a mac app mac like and like even

00:49:42 ◼   ► this year we awarded audio hijack the upgrade

00:49:46 ◼   ► because it was the probably the most new uh well like the most mac like app we

00:49:51 ◼   ► could think of and that was pulling from a pretty small

00:49:57 ◼   ► selection for us i think of apps that were even new

00:50:01 ◼   ► or being heavily updated um i feel like that

00:50:04 ◼   ► you know it's unfortunate especially people that care about it

00:50:08 ◼   ► but the time of being a mac like app is is changing and there are just not

00:50:15 ◼   ► many of them anymore no the the we are in an era where um

00:50:19 ◼   ► there are mac apps that are go-to apps for mac users

00:50:23 ◼   ► and they will continue to be made and updated

00:50:26 ◼   ► but there's not a lot of investment into new apps on the platform

00:50:30 ◼   ► there is you know there there are some here and there

00:50:33 ◼   ► but there's not a lot because um you know priority one is ios priority two is

00:50:39 ◼   ► probably android priority three is a web app to get you everywhere else

00:50:43 ◼   ► maybe priority four is windows and there's mac at priority five for a lot of

00:50:47 ◼   ► companies that's the truth of it is mac and windows are not really high

00:50:51 ◼   ► priorities but ios and android are and so you know the mac being

00:50:57 ◼   ► maintenance of the existing rich apps that are out there and then an

00:51:03 ◼   ► influx of new stuff that um that comes over from ios i mean

00:51:06 ◼   ► that's the idea that's the idea plus again i'll point out

00:51:09 ◼   ► like if you love the iphone and the ipad apple should have an in on you as a

00:51:16 ◼   ► customer to get you if you want a laptop or a desktop to buy one of theirs

00:51:20 ◼   ► but the advantage there is that their um their devices on the mac side

00:51:27 ◼   ► are reminiscent of ios so that there's a familiarity there

00:51:30 ◼   ► that kind of doesn't exist right now um and so

00:51:34 ◼   ► that was that was my thought with this list was like you know multitasking

00:51:40 ◼   ► things i've already got full screen and and split view but like could you do a

00:51:43 ◼   ► slide over idea where you you dock an app and you

00:51:46 ◼   ► you can you swipe it out with your trackpad or whatever from the side and

00:51:49 ◼   ► it slides out and you click on something and then you

00:51:51 ◼   ► you slide it away that would be a familiar thing for ipad users or

00:51:55 ◼   ► um like uh making notification center more ios like making control center

00:52:02 ◼   ► uh which is currently what we call icons on the right side of the menu bar

00:52:07 ◼   ► like making that more explicitly control center

00:52:10 ◼   ► and having a different interface for it than is than is currently there now that

00:52:13 ◼   ► will break a lot of long-standing kind of mac

00:52:17 ◼   ► uh you user interface conventions but i kinda i can see it i can see apple

00:52:23 ◼   ► saying actually we're going to change what the

00:52:25 ◼   ► menu bar is and what the status bar is with the icons and we're going to make it

00:52:31 ◼   ► uh more you know refined and more ios like

00:52:35 ◼   ► and then the big one is the touch screen thing which i keep talking about touch

00:52:40 ◼   ► screens and i i don't know for sure that apple

00:52:42 ◼   ► will do them but if again to back up and say i'm an ipad user

00:52:46 ◼   ► and iphone user and now i want to get a laptop or a desktop

00:52:49 ◼   ► and i want to ideally you know apple would be where i would go because i'm

00:52:53 ◼   ► comfortable with apple's platforms but then i see apple's laptop and it doesn't

00:52:56 ◼   ► it's not a touch screen and it doesn't look anything like

00:52:59 ◼   ► anything that i use on on iphone and ipad and in fact the windows

00:53:03 ◼   ► laptops that are out there and the windows desktops that are out there are

00:53:07 ◼   ► more like it in the sense that they have a big you know have a touch interface

00:53:12 ◼   ► that is at least sort of familiar um it's not a completely different

00:53:16 ◼   ► interface to me so i you know again i look at that and i

00:53:20 ◼   ► say adding touch to the mix uh with the marzipan

00:53:24 ◼   ► apps not as the primary interaction method

00:53:26 ◼   ► but as an interaction method i think it's got to be on the table

00:53:31 ◼   ► so i assume this is not in your mind a huge redesign

00:53:35 ◼   ► of mac os or a new operating system this is like

00:53:39 ◼   ► something again i brought it up earlier but something more like when

00:53:44 ◼   ► they brought some ios design to the mac a while ago

00:53:48 ◼   ► i think that's it i think the idea here is to incrementally update mac os

00:53:55 ◼   ► to be more like ios i and when they've said we're not merging them together i

00:54:00 ◼   ► believe them but they are i think you know pushing the

00:54:05 ◼   ► application platform together and perhaps

00:54:08 ◼   ► pushing a lot of the interface conventions together i think what apple

00:54:11 ◼   ► means when it says they're not merging them together is

00:54:14 ◼   ► there is probably not going to be a day it five years from now sometime in the

00:54:18 ◼   ► 2020s where apple is going to say i'm sorry you can't run bb edit anymore

00:54:24 ◼   ► right just or or maybe audio hijack right no you can't run a classic

00:54:30 ◼   ► uh mac os app only stuff that comes from ios will run

00:54:35 ◼   ► anymore like i don't think that is where they're going

00:54:39 ◼   ► at least in the medium term maybe in the long i mean long term everything changes

00:54:43 ◼   ► but i i would imagine at that point they

00:54:45 ◼   ► would have provided ways for apps like bb edit to to

00:54:51 ◼   ► adopt new technologies because bb edit was a literally a classic mac os app

00:54:55 ◼   ► and it over the course of a decade plus they you know they very slowly moved

00:55:03 ◼   ► onto the new systems that apple was building and apple provided a way for

00:55:06 ◼   ► them to do it and that was true with a lot of those classic mac apps there were

00:55:09 ◼   ► ways to come across and now bb edits never gone

00:55:13 ◼   ► away it's never been non-functional but it it very slowly evolved to use modern

00:55:18 ◼   ► features so that may happen something like that but

00:55:20 ◼   ► i that's how i read when apple says we're not going to

00:55:24 ◼   ► merge the operating systems is that they're going to make it so that the

00:55:28 ◼   ► operating systems have as much in common as possible

00:55:31 ◼   ► but that they understand that there's a subset of the mac market that wants the

00:55:37 ◼   ► stuff that ios doesn't provide and that their their choices are going to

00:55:40 ◼   ► be to just keep that around or to provide it on ios so it doesn't

00:55:44 ◼   ► matter and you know i think that's a long-term plan long-term goal

00:55:48 ◼   ► but it could also be that they're like yeah you know we're never going to do

00:55:51 ◼   ► the terminal on ios and that's fine because we'll

00:55:54 ◼   ► we'll keep it on the mac and you can use it there but um but i think

00:55:58 ◼   ► likening this to back to the mac is the right way to say it which is

00:56:00 ◼   ► this is a progression of things that will be added to the mac

00:56:04 ◼   ► to make it more in parity with ios and more familiar for people

00:56:12 ◼   ► and like i get it again i think there is a very strong argument maybe the

00:56:16 ◼   ► strongest argument is apple's products should feel like one

00:56:21 ◼   ► another on a certain fundamental level and because of the history of where the

00:56:24 ◼   ► mac came from and where ios came from they don't now apple mentioned last year

00:56:28 ◼   ► at wwdc that one of the things that they've been working on

00:56:32 ◼   ► and continue to work on is this effort that is almost invisible to users

00:56:37 ◼   ► which is to get the subsystems of the mac and ios

00:56:41 ◼   ► back in parity because essentially they forked off of

00:56:45 ◼   ► mac os 10 in 2007 when they built the iphone and they've

00:56:50 ◼   ► been drifting apart and they're trying to push those back

00:56:53 ◼   ► together and i think marzipan is a reason why

00:56:56 ◼   ► but i think also that's the idea like it's better if everything is just more

00:57:00 ◼   ► consistent if the way that all apple's products work is it has

00:57:06 ◼   ► has things in common it also saves them a lot of effort to not be maintaining

00:57:10 ◼   ► you know these completely separate code bases if they can

00:57:14 ◼   ► so it's not it's not a complete merger but it is that

00:57:18 ◼   ► gradual seeping in of more and more ios conventions and you know i think they

00:57:25 ◼   ► could do it badly and they could do it well i don't think it's a fundamentally

00:57:28 ◼   ► bad idea and i think there's some benefit in

00:57:31 ◼   ► saying just like an ipad as an ipad user like having synced up the iphone and

00:57:35 ◼   ► ipad behavior in the last updates i don't love the

00:57:40 ◼   ► control centers in the top right corner everywhere because i don't love that

00:57:42 ◼   ► interaction but i like that it's in the same place on

00:57:46 ◼   ► both my ipad my iphone and it wasn't before

00:57:49 ◼   ► when you mentioned bb edit something popped into my head which was like

00:57:54 ◼   ► huh i don't remember bb edit appearing in the app store and it

00:58:00 ◼   ► was on stage at wwdc right like that was one of the apps

00:58:03 ◼   ► transmit appeared a little while ago office

00:58:06 ◼   ► as well and as of an hour ago there was a software update to bb edit

00:58:12 ◼   ► which sandboxes the app so it's moving to the app store so like

00:58:17 ◼   ► that this is the foot this is the step they needed to go through right it was

00:58:20 ◼   ► to it's progression right sandboxed app but

00:58:22 ◼   ► it was just like oh yeah okay i forgot about that and so yeah it looks like

00:58:26 ◼   ► it's still coming i guess because they've gone through that

00:58:29 ◼   ► my understanding with some of those announcements is that they announced

00:58:31 ◼   ► that they're going to do it but that some of the behind the scenes and then

00:58:34 ◼   ► not just bb edit but also like the panic apps is

00:58:36 ◼   ► um that it requires changes in mac os to allow them to ask for certain

00:58:42 ◼   ► powers that they weren't and this is the this is the effect of

00:58:45 ◼   ► policy change on software which is they had to apple had to say okay we're

00:58:50 ◼   ► gonna allow apps to ask for more permission but then

00:58:53 ◼   ► they have to build in to the operating system the permissions

00:58:57 ◼   ► and the requesting of them it's not just a policy decision it's like a policy

00:59:01 ◼   ► decision that then is an implementation issue in

00:59:04 ◼   ► the os so my understanding about you know panic and bb edit and other apps

00:59:08 ◼   ► like that that were called out in june uh is that some of those features

00:59:13 ◼   ► were in the shipping version of um of uh of mac os 10.14

00:59:20 ◼   ► but some of them were not some of them were in a

00:59:23 ◼   ► a later release and i i was always unclear about whether that meant 10 15

00:59:28 ◼   ► or whether that meant 10 14 2 or 10 14 3 but uh i definitely got the word even

00:59:35 ◼   ► last june that like not all of those apps weren't all going

00:59:38 ◼   ► to be able to go on the app store immediately because it wasn't just an

00:59:40 ◼   ► issue of oh well they'll ship mohavi and then we'll be ready to go it was an

00:59:44 ◼   ► issue of they got to ship these particular things

00:59:47 ◼   ► that we need and then we can be in the app store again so it was kind of a

00:59:50 ◼   ► statement of a principle but that's also a great a

00:59:53 ◼   ► great sign right that and that's a good example of

00:59:55 ◼   ► of what i was saying before about bb edit too which is like the world

00:59:59 ◼   ► may not change overnight it may be a slow progression but i do believe that

01:00:02 ◼   ► apple is kind of committed to allowing these apps that that people

01:00:07 ◼   ► need to continue to exist they may just you

01:00:10 ◼   ► know there may just be continually every year a little

01:00:13 ◼   ► bit of drift that has to happen and that i think that happens in software anyway

01:00:16 ◼   ► right like there's even if it's not a a global thing where

01:00:20 ◼   ► you know that your company is going from point a to point b

01:00:22 ◼   ► your platform vendor you know platform vendors do

01:00:26 ◼   ► still make changes every year that software developers have to

01:00:29 ◼   ► deal with so it's it's a little bit different but not

01:00:33 ◼   ► necessarily enormously different all right we should do some hashtag

01:00:37 ◼   ► ask upgrade questions to finish off today's episode but the

01:00:40 ◼   ► first let me thank our friends over at squarespace with squarespace

01:00:43 ◼   ► you can easily create a website for your next idea you can make your next move

01:00:48 ◼   ► with squarespace no matter what type of website you want

01:00:50 ◼   ► to make squarespace has the tools that you're going to need they have the

01:00:53 ◼   ► functions they have the features and it's all

01:00:55 ◼   ► in one there's nothing to install or patch or upgrade squarespace

01:00:59 ◼   ► is a all in all in one solution it is a thing you can go to squarespace you can

01:01:04 ◼   ► set up a website you can get a domain name you can

01:01:06 ◼   ► customize award-winning templates you can add a store if you want to

01:01:09 ◼   ► you can have everything backed up the 24/7 customer support

01:01:12 ◼   ► it is super easy to get a website started and it's super fun to customize

01:01:16 ◼   ► i've built many squarespace websites over the years i have many more in my

01:01:20 ◼   ► future that i will build for other projects that i want to work on

01:01:23 ◼   ► and i love squarespace with squarespace i've never had to learn

01:01:27 ◼   ► how to make a website from scratch because they have all of the tools that

01:01:30 ◼   ► i need everything is in a way that i

01:01:32 ◼   ► understand and they're always adding new stuff

01:01:35 ◼   ► like when i started using squarespace it didn't have online store functionality

01:01:38 ◼   ► didn't have domain name registration these are things that they've added over

01:01:41 ◼   ► time as they understand what their customers want

01:01:44 ◼   ► i really love squarespace and i recommend it to anybody that needs it we

01:01:47 ◼   ► built our wedding website on squarespace last

01:01:50 ◼   ► year and it's super easy to do and they had

01:01:52 ◼   ► all of the page structure in a way that you want like they have actual wedding

01:01:55 ◼   ► templates and you can choose a wedding template

01:01:58 ◼   ► and enable and disable the pages that you want and customize them

01:02:00 ◼   ► super easy to do you can find out just how fun and simple it is to build your

01:02:04 ◼   ► own website with squarespace by signing up

01:02:06 ◼   ► for their free trial at squarespace.com upgrade there's no credit card required

01:02:11 ◼   ► it's a full trial you can go in and you can customize your heart's content and

01:02:15 ◼   ► build your website out the way that you want and then when you're ready to

01:02:17 ◼   ► launch it to the world their plans start at just 12 dollars a

01:02:20 ◼   ► month but you can get 10 percent off your first purchase of a website or

01:02:24 ◼   ► domain with the offer code upgrade at checkout

01:02:27 ◼   ► once again that is squarespace.com upgrade and the code upgrade to get 10

01:02:31 ◼   ► percent off your first purchase and to support this show our thanks to

01:02:35 ◼   ► squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode of upgrade

01:02:38 ◼   ► squarespace make your next move make your next website

01:02:42 ◼   ► so our first hashtag ask upgrade question

01:02:45 ◼   ► comes from norista who would like to know jason

01:02:49 ◼   ► can they get a two-minute user review of the bedit sleep monitor

01:02:53 ◼   ► sure um i bought one i'm gonna write it up at some point

01:02:56 ◼   ► this is apple owns this company this is an example of apple buying a company and

01:03:00 ◼   ► yet keeping its uh product kind of on the outside

01:03:03 ◼   ► it's not apple branded or anything they just did a new version

01:03:06 ◼   ► you can buy it in the apple store right like you can it's not like one of those

01:03:10 ◼   ► ones where they're like ah we'll just run it down until it's done

01:03:12 ◼   ► like no this is like just a brand that they own it's interesting yeah it's

01:03:17 ◼   ► interesting so i um i bought it because i was kind of

01:03:20 ◼   ► curious and i like the idea of sort of logging

01:03:23 ◼   ► when am i getting a good night's sleep and not and am i getting

01:03:26 ◼   ► am i waking up in the middle of the night and all these things it's a little

01:03:29 ◼   ► pad that you put on your mattress basically and it's got

01:03:33 ◼   ► a usb cord that comes out and you plug that in

01:03:37 ◼   ► and on the on the plug end is basically like a bluetooth thing and then you have

01:03:41 ◼   ► to connect it to a device um what they want you to do is connect it

01:03:44 ◼   ► to your iphone and then it syncs the health data with all of your other

01:03:47 ◼   ► health data and from your apple watch and all of that

01:03:49 ◼   ► and monitors your your uh your sleep and it has to be by your bed

01:03:54 ◼   ► in in range of the the bedit dongle because you're doing

01:03:57 ◼   ► bluetooth le to connect to the sensor and get the data and collect it and it

01:04:03 ◼   ► also actually uses the phone microphone uh to do snoring

01:04:07 ◼   ► monitor so it listens and it logs when there's

01:04:10 ◼   ► snores um so you can see how much snoring you

01:04:13 ◼   ► did in the night as well which i think is pretty clever um i i

01:04:18 ◼   ► i like it i don't love it one of my big problems with it is

01:04:21 ◼   ► speaking of ipad apps and iphone apps it does not work it does not have an ipad

01:04:27 ◼   ► app it really wants you to use your iphone

01:04:29 ◼   ► and you know what that means that means it is making a fundamental assumption

01:04:32 ◼   ► that you sleep with your iphone next to your bed

01:04:35 ◼   ► i i don't i don't and so i paired it with my ipad

01:04:40 ◼   ► but that means that my ipad is not connected to all of my

01:04:43 ◼   ► fancy home data and the health data right to health can it

01:04:47 ◼   ► exactly and yeah that's what i meant and uh and that's not great

01:04:51 ◼   ► and uh and i'm have to use it in the blown up

01:04:54 ◼   ► ipad compatibility mode which is all which is dumb because they don't have a

01:04:57 ◼   ► proper ipad do you have to leave the app open all night well so it it is using a

01:05:03 ◼   ► background task to do the uh snore monitoring and

01:05:08 ◼   ► talk to the l bluetooth le thing so you have to have

01:05:12 ◼   ► run it and not have it be killed which i haven't had a problem with

01:05:16 ◼   ► if you kill the bedded app and go to sleep

01:05:21 ◼   ► it won't log you though it has to it has to have been launched

01:05:24 ◼   ► it's like probably the last thing you do before you go to bed is is open it and

01:05:28 ◼   ► then you like can go back to your home screen and

01:05:30 ◼   ► close it and then it will just run in the back which is not great

01:05:32 ◼   ► it should it should just work and it doesn't and that part that part bugs me

01:05:35 ◼   ► it's a little like it should be more like the apple watch

01:05:38 ◼   ► where it just they they get to talk to each other and i think maybe that is an

01:05:41 ◼   ► effect of it being owned by apple but not apple proper

01:05:44 ◼   ► that they're not allowed to do that um but the the fact that i have to use my

01:05:49 ◼   ► ipad and that my ipad is not part of the great health

01:05:52 ◼   ► database i'd like to be able to sync it across

01:05:55 ◼   ► all my devices and stuff and that's not i think i think you can do so that's

01:05:59 ◼   ► silly if you put the better app on your iphone

01:06:03 ◼   ► and like have an account can then the phone not write the data to health or is

01:06:06 ◼   ► it like has to be where it's performed i don't think yeah i don't think it it

01:06:10 ◼   ► travels that's annoying i haven't tried that but i don't think

01:06:13 ◼   ► that travels and i i think this is just a fundamental problem where like i mean

01:06:16 ◼   ► maybe they discovered most people sleep with their phone next to their bed but i

01:06:19 ◼   ► don't i i have my phone on a charger in the

01:06:21 ◼   ► kitchen because i have an ipad and so i don't need my phone

01:06:25 ◼   ► i have my ipad instead so that's that's weird but anyway that's there's the

01:06:28 ◼   ► short review of the bed-at-sleep monitor it is

01:06:30 ◼   ► i i think it works pretty well and i think it's very clever and i i was just

01:06:34 ◼   ► curious about how it would work in terms of monitoring

01:06:36 ◼   ► my my sleep and when i go to bed and when i wake up and am i getting a good

01:06:40 ◼   ► night's sleep and am i waking up in the middle of the night

01:06:42 ◼   ► and you know all of that seems to work pretty well after a day or two i got

01:06:45 ◼   ► used to the feeling that the pad was there i and now

01:06:49 ◼   ► i just ignore it i don't even notice that it's there

01:06:54 ◼   ► so dominic asks with the rumored wireless charging coming to the airpods

01:06:58 ◼   ► combined with the uh rumor that we spoke about like the

01:07:02 ◼   ► iphone being able to charge like samsung's doing this so the s10 you

01:07:06 ◼   ► can take the galaxy buds and put them on the back of the phone

01:07:09 ◼   ► and they charge up it's like bilateral charging is the phrase so dominic wants

01:07:13 ◼   ► to know do we think that the next airpods could be the first

01:07:16 ◼   ► portless product from apple

01:07:20 ◼   ► i think not this version no but maybe version three i feel like that

01:07:28 ◼   ► the airpods are probably the product i can imagine

01:07:32 ◼   ► going all wireless first i mean let's not include the apple watch because

01:07:36 ◼   ► technically the apple watch doesn't have any ports in it and the

01:07:40 ◼   ► apple pencil yeah i mean i think it's like those are

01:07:45 ◼   ► the apple pencil yes that 100 works but i get dominic's question of like

01:07:50 ◼   ► a product that has a port having it removed i think that's probably a better

01:07:54 ◼   ► way to think about it so you know and again it's like let's the

01:07:58 ◼   ► apple pencil i think we're gonna we're just gonna

01:08:00 ◼   ► pull out from this conversation because like yes it had a lightning port but you

01:08:04 ◼   ► plug it in to something it was it's always been a

01:08:07 ◼   ► little bit of an outlier even though let's just say the next

01:08:10 ◼   ► the next yeah all right there you go thank you so uh the next one but can you

01:08:15 ◼   ► imagine like what can you imagine this happening with the airpods i think it's

01:08:19 ◼   ► it feels inevitable to me but not with the next one

01:08:22 ◼   ► yeah i i it's going to be a while because you're going to need to sell it

01:08:25 ◼   ► you you're going to want to sell it to people who don't have a you know don't

01:08:29 ◼   ► have to buy a wireless charger and don't have a phone like

01:08:32 ◼   ► even if the next generation of iphones can do wireless charging of devices like

01:08:36 ◼   ► the samsung s10 can like that's not your own that's not your whole

01:08:41 ◼   ► market that is slow charging coming from the phones so you wouldn't want to

01:08:47 ◼   ► charge like you'd have to like leave it overnight on the back of the phone it

01:08:50 ◼   ► doesn't make sense oh you leave it on a qi charger like

01:08:52 ◼   ► it's it's uh it's less than ideal but i think that it makes sense for this

01:08:56 ◼   ► product to go that way in the future um but i

01:08:59 ◼   ► don't think we're there yet i think i think the money of people who

01:09:04 ◼   ► don't have wireless chargers is more important to apple

01:09:08 ◼   ► than making a super cool thing without a port that requires

01:09:11 ◼   ► another accessory in order to charge it and they're not going to put a charger

01:09:15 ◼   ► in the box with it so that's yeah i think it's going to be

01:09:18 ◼   ► a while james asks do you think apple will continue to update the imac pro

01:09:23 ◼   ► after the new mac pro is released i do i think the imac pro is going to

01:09:29 ◼   ► stick around i think it won't get an update

01:09:32 ◼   ► you know super often but i think that there's

01:09:35 ◼   ► i mean you could argue that the imac pro is more

01:09:40 ◼   ► uh is what apple wanted to make i was just gonna say this

01:09:44 ◼   ► it is worth remembering the imac pro is the computer that apple will not force

01:09:47 ◼   ► to make that was the one they decided to make

01:09:50 ◼   ► and they were basically forced to make the mac right i mean the argument is

01:09:53 ◼   ► that maybe they have changed direction now and therefore

01:09:55 ◼   ► since they're making a mac pro they don't need an imac pro but

01:09:58 ◼   ► um i think apple will watch the sales figures because i think the argument is

01:10:03 ◼   ► strong that you don't need a mac pro and you could just use an imac pro but if

01:10:09 ◼   ► everybody who's in that market buys a mac pro with an external monitor and the

01:10:13 ◼   ► imac pro sales falter then maybe they could maybe they

01:10:17 ◼   ► would stop doing it i would also argue that um i feel like

01:10:20 ◼   ► the imac pro is also pointing a direction for the future of the imac

01:10:24 ◼   ► in terms of removing all spinning storage space and redesigning the

01:10:28 ◼   ► the fans and all of that so um i i think that there's some

01:10:32 ◼   ► you know it's not impossible that the ipad pro will disappear but or i mean

01:10:35 ◼   ► the uh sorry the uh imac pro will disappear but i think it's

01:10:39 ◼   ► it's less likely and um that it's more likely that apple really

01:10:44 ◼   ► does believe that the imac is the ideal desktop and that they're

01:10:48 ◼   ► uh they'll continue to push it but but you know who knows

01:10:51 ◼   ► who knows but um i think i think in the end the sales will tell

01:10:54 ◼   ► um we don't know whether apple's opinion about this has changed but i do

01:10:58 ◼   ► i do want to point out that yes apple initially

01:11:02 ◼   ► thought the imac pro could just replace the mac pro and they may still feel

01:11:06 ◼   ► that it's the real you know product that's going to sell well

01:11:09 ◼   ► um but imac pro sales will tell

01:11:14 ◼   ► tom asks how do you record and publish the show so quickly do you just get it

01:11:18 ◼   ► in one take with no editing i don't understand the no take question

01:11:22 ◼   ► as such but i do understand why people ask this

01:11:27 ◼   ► because we do publish upgrade pretty quickly upgrades usually published

01:11:31 ◼   ► kind of within 90 minutes of us stopping recording

01:11:35 ◼   ► right and the way that we do that is i edit the show immediately

01:11:39 ◼   ► and the way that i kind of take stock of what needs to be edited is during our

01:11:45 ◼   ► conversation i'm writing down time codes of all of

01:11:48 ◼   ► the things that i need to go back and fix and this includes

01:11:51 ◼   ► when we mess stuff up or when we cross talk over each other quite excessively

01:11:55 ◼   ► um i go back and then go and fix all of that stuff and publish it

01:11:59 ◼   ► um i like upgrade to go out as quickly as possible

01:12:03 ◼   ► i don't know why i feel that way but i always have um

01:12:06 ◼   ► i kind of i pride ourselves on the ability to do it well

01:12:10 ◼   ► it's very timely yeah it is very timely and that that's part of it is that we

01:12:14 ◼   ► can get the we can catch the monday evening commute

01:12:17 ◼   ► in the us um and we're talking about stuff that's going on right now so um

01:12:23 ◼   ► i think there's an advantage in that like anytime like atp

01:12:28 ◼   ► um there tends to be what a day and a little bit gap between episode

01:12:33 ◼   ► recording and release they record on a wednesday night it usually goes out

01:12:36 ◼   ► friday morning i think yeah sounds about right um and you know

01:12:40 ◼   ► that sometimes that bites them sometimes that

01:12:43 ◼   ► bites them because news happens after they record

01:12:46 ◼   ► and before they release and i really like the idea if

01:12:50 ◼   ► at all possible of um of getting the show out

01:12:55 ◼   ► immediately because then it's out and it's of the moment

01:12:58 ◼   ► and it's about what's happening right now and if something happens tomorrow

01:13:01 ◼   ► well of course we didn't cover it because we already released our episode

01:13:05 ◼   ► and then we just have to deal with it um incomparable i record way in advance

01:13:09 ◼   ► and although i don't do a uh a super heavy edit on that most of the

01:13:13 ◼   ► time i do spend you know several hours with it usually

01:13:16 ◼   ► because they're way more people two people

01:13:18 ◼   ► podcasts are also way easier to edit and then sometimes you have shows that are

01:13:21 ◼   ► much more topical and are a heavier edit is more appropriate

01:13:25 ◼   ► and cortex is an example of that where you and gray you know are not super

01:13:28 ◼   ► timely and you guys um sweat that a lot more

01:13:32 ◼   ► plus your session i believe is a lot less

01:13:36 ◼   ► you know free flowing whereas ours is pretty close to the final

01:13:40 ◼   ► yeah it's like atp sounds better i think than our show some of the like a lot of

01:13:46 ◼   ► time because marco is really going in and like fine tuning it

01:13:50 ◼   ► sure they've also got three people so they got more cleanup to do yep

01:13:53 ◼   ► but i do think that this show does sound really good and we take

01:13:56 ◼   ► a lot of efforts in making that work the best that we can but

01:14:00 ◼   ► it's different so like it takes me probably about an hour

01:14:03 ◼   ► an hour an hour a bit depending on the episode to

01:14:07 ◼   ► to edit this and publish it if i edited this show the same way that i edit

01:14:11 ◼   ► cortex which is i think closer to what marco does

01:14:15 ◼   ► we'd be looking at maybe four hours and that's not really

01:14:19 ◼   ► the way that i want to do it because that means i couldn't get it out the

01:14:21 ◼   ► same day because we we start recording at my 5 p.m so and it

01:14:25 ◼   ► changes the um it changes the dynamic of the the show

01:14:28 ◼   ► it becomes a show where you're spending four hours a week on editing instead of

01:14:32 ◼   ► one or one and a half and you know the like i

01:14:34 ◼   ► said the incomparable i put in time like that because i've got a large panel and

01:14:37 ◼   ► because they're often a lot of kind of content decisions that

01:14:40 ◼   ► i've got to make um it varies from show to show i've also got weekly podcasts

01:14:44 ◼   ► that i do where there's almost no editing

01:14:46 ◼   ► and uh you know that it's the it's the choices you make

01:14:49 ◼   ► that because it is it is a cost to go through and part of the

01:14:53 ◼   ► the calculation is how much can i improve this

01:14:57 ◼   ► versus how much time am i spending on it because you could

01:15:01 ◼   ► spend four hours every monday evening not having your dinner and editing

01:15:05 ◼   ► upgrade how much better would it be and the answer is not a lot better

01:15:08 ◼   ► because it's there are only the two of us

01:15:11 ◼   ► and we mostly do it pretty much straight through and there are just

01:15:14 ◼   ► a few little nips and tucks here and there and so you could spend more time

01:15:17 ◼   ► but why yeah most of the differences would get

01:15:20 ◼   ► out of that not many people would notice yes which is the beauty of of fixing

01:15:26 ◼   ► like when i do a podcast with eight people on it and i edit it so it's like

01:15:28 ◼   ► wow nobody ever interrupted everybody and

01:15:31 ◼   ► everyone let everyone finish and it's like yeah that didn't happen

01:15:34 ◼   ► right like i made it seem like that but it wasn't like that but with this

01:15:39 ◼   ► it's not um i i think nobody would notice at all

01:15:42 ◼   ► because it would be little examples of crosstalk or little nips and tucks here

01:15:46 ◼   ► it would be it i think it would not be worth your

01:15:48 ◼   ► time quite frankly now rick allen in the chat

01:15:52 ◼   ► is asking another question uh rick wants to know if i listen to

01:15:55 ◼   ► the final version i don't anymore because

01:15:59 ◼   ► all right so like i feel like i'm dooming myself on this one

01:16:04 ◼   ► i trust my editing now um because i cannot remember the last time

01:16:11 ◼   ► i made a mistake in a show that i had to go back and fix it

01:16:15 ◼   ► because i edit so much that i know my process

01:16:19 ◼   ► and i know how to do it and i've built in enough checks and balances

01:16:24 ◼   ► you know into the way that i edit and like different checks that i'll do to

01:16:27 ◼   ► the file before it goes out um that most people would think that i

01:16:32 ◼   ► i've lost my mind sometimes with some of the checks that i do because i but these

01:16:35 ◼   ► are all checks based upon mistakes i've made in the past sure and

01:16:40 ◼   ► it becomes a uh it becomes a like a safety net like i will check i

01:16:44 ◼   ► don't listen to the shows back that i edit because i again i

01:16:48 ◼   ► don't have that kind of time and i'm fairly confident in my workflow

01:16:53 ◼   ► but do i open the final export and look at the

01:16:56 ◼   ► waveform yes i do because what if there's a big gap or

01:17:00 ◼   ► something weird that exported wrong i can see it and then i can go in and fix

01:17:05 ◼   ► it and that does happen from time to time

01:17:06 ◼   ► um forecast which i use and you use to encode mp3

01:17:10 ◼   ► marco actually built in a uh a silent sensor and it will actually

01:17:16 ◼   ► say warning there's a three second long silence

01:17:19 ◼   ► at 24 minutes in the file and that's a nice little safety net although i would

01:17:23 ◼   ► see that in the in the waveform so there's some of that but

01:17:25 ◼   ► um yeah in a 90-minute podcast i don't spend 90 minutes listening back to it

01:17:29 ◼   ► when you edit it you can listen to some of it enough to spot check it but

01:17:32 ◼   ► it's more of a spot check than it is anything else

01:17:35 ◼   ► yeah so that's that's podcast editing for you folks

01:17:39 ◼   ► uh maybe i tell one last little thing on this because i like talking about it and

01:17:43 ◼   ► then maybe we'll wrap up on this so because of the way that me and jason

01:17:48 ◼   ► edit and because of the way that we both know

01:17:51 ◼   ► i'll edit the show we have this funny little thing that

01:17:53 ◼   ► happens that you'll only notice if you listen to the show live

01:17:57 ◼   ► which i refer to as like the editor's prerogative

01:18:02 ◼   ► uh or like kind of like the the the kind of the fortune of people that edit shows

01:18:07 ◼   ► so both me and jason know that if because we remove crosstalk we'll pick

01:18:13 ◼   ► the best thing that's said so if me and jason are talking over each

01:18:18 ◼   ► other and sometimes you will hear us say i

01:18:21 ◼   ► can make entire points for like maybe five or ten seconds sometimes if

01:18:26 ◼   ► the two of us just talking yeah and we both know that i will go back

01:18:30 ◼   ► and pick the best one of those but this is something that typically

01:18:35 ◼   ► people that edit podcasts do way worse to each other because we are both

01:18:40 ◼   ► safe in the knowledge that i will fix it later on

01:18:43 ◼   ► and i think it's just this funny thing that we do but this is totally how

01:18:49 ◼   ► you get used to the way that a show is edited so

01:18:53 ◼   ► with cortex i very frequently will take another shot at saying something if i

01:18:58 ◼   ► kind of messed it up in a way that doesn't really happen when

01:19:02 ◼   ► i record this show because my brain is like in a different

01:19:05 ◼   ► mode because there's way more of like what i'm saying will be

01:19:10 ◼   ► committed to the audio unless something terrible happens where if i know i have

01:19:13 ◼   ► the safety net of like mike in the future will listen to this

01:19:16 ◼   ► and he'll fix it then i will allow myself to kind of flub

01:19:20 ◼   ► and then be like okay let me redo that and say it again but the funny thing

01:19:23 ◼   ► that happens with this show is me and jason just talk over each other

01:19:28 ◼   ► and then move on knowing that i'll fix it later on which is just kind of fun

01:19:31 ◼   ► you'll pull it apart or you'll find out that one of us

01:19:34 ◼   ► didn't need to make that noise because it was right like you may and that's

01:19:37 ◼   ► editor's prerogative and i do that too i do a lot on the incomparable of like

01:19:40 ◼   ► uncovering jokes and sometimes two people make the same joke and i'm like

01:19:44 ◼   ► that one's better and i'll just make a decision it's like sorry other person

01:19:47 ◼   ► you also made that joke and nobody's going to hear it now

01:19:50 ◼   ► but that's just how it has to be and that's that's also a part of it i did

01:19:53 ◼   ► make a new year's resolution of a sort this year which is if

01:19:58 ◼   ► because i default to what you described about um

01:20:02 ◼   ► our show which is to just let it go it's live for the most part and you fix

01:20:05 ◼   ► egregious things later i did make a little bit of a new year's

01:20:08 ◼   ► resolution to do a little bit more of the can we stop

01:20:13 ◼   ► because that was wrong just because what i was finding is that i

01:20:17 ◼   ► know something was wrong i let it go because i don't want to create an edit

01:20:20 ◼   ► point and make more work for you and then we spend a week having people

01:20:24 ◼   ► complain that we got something wrong so i have tried to do a little bit more of

01:20:27 ◼   ► that because but i still think that there's

01:20:29 ◼   ► value in it being the default because if you don't think of it that way

01:20:32 ◼   ► what happens with cortex is exactly what happens which is suddenly

01:20:35 ◼   ► every five minutes you're stopping to say can i rephrase that let me do that

01:20:38 ◼   ► again and then you've got a whole list of edits

01:20:41 ◼   ► and then you have to be sure that you edit it diligently otherwise you're hey

01:20:45 ◼   ► way wait let me every down on atp someone will

01:20:48 ◼   ► rephrase something and it'll get through the edit and they'll be like oh

01:20:51 ◼   ► you missed that one right and it's like i'd rather not do that but sometimes you

01:20:54 ◼   ► have to sometimes you do all right should we

01:20:57 ◼   ► should we redo that part jason do you want to just read that whole

01:21:01 ◼   ► question it's not gonna get any better so let's just go with that one all right

01:21:05 ◼   ► thanks everybody for submitting their questions this week you can ask

01:21:08 ◼   ► questions of us with the hashtag ask upgrade and then we'll go into a

01:21:12 ◼   ► document for us to pull from later on and if you want to open the show

01:21:16 ◼   ► you can use a hashtag snell talk for that one to ask some some random

01:21:21 ◼   ► question that may find its way into a future episode

01:21:24 ◼   ► and if you want to find jason online you can go to six colors dot com and the

01:21:27 ◼   ► incomparable dot com jason is at j snell on twitter you can

01:21:31 ◼   ► find me on at imike i m y k e and you can find this show

01:21:36 ◼   ► many other shows above me and jason host over at relay.fm

01:21:40 ◼   ► you can maybe find something new there to pick up for your commute for your

01:21:44 ◼   ► dishwashing time your lawnmower time whatever it is that you do

01:21:48 ◼   ► when you listen to podcasts there's something else there for you i'm sure

01:21:51 ◼   ► thanks again to green chef lunar display and squarespace

01:21:55 ◼   ► for their support of this show and we'll be back next time until then

01:21:59 ◼   ► say goodbye jason snow you're gonna edit this part out right yeah 100

01:22:07 ◼   ► [ Music ]