Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade Episode 181. Today's show is brought to you by Linode,

00:00:14 ◼   ► Squarespace, and PDF Pen from Smile. My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by Jason Snell.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hello, Jason Snell.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hello, Myke Hurley. It's good to talk to you again.

00:00:22 ◼   ► As always, I know that you are travelling this week, Jason, so I have a travelling-related

00:00:28 ◼   ► #snowtalkquestion for you and it comes from Eric.

00:00:31 ◼   ► And Eric says, "I left my AirPods in a hotel room because they were the same color as the

00:00:36 ◼   ► sheets.

00:00:37 ◼   ► What is the most expensive thing that you have lost on a trip?"

00:00:41 ◼   ► I like the sheet detail there because you can imagine the horror of like, "Oh, white

00:00:46 ◼   ► AirPods case, white sheets, you don't see them and then you leave."

00:00:50 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever lost anything particularly expensive.

00:00:52 ◼   ► I remember I was on a work trip and I left my… and I was in my 20s. I left my one belt

00:01:02 ◼   ► in the room. And I get home and I realize the belt is not there. And the person I was

00:01:07 ◼   ► rooming with, one of my coworkers, was still in the hotel room. So I just called him and

00:01:12 ◼   ► I said, "Can you find my belt?" It's probably… I told him where it was and he

00:01:19 ◼   ► said, "Nope." So that was that. I don't know whether he kept the belt for himself

00:01:24 ◼   ► or is not somebody who can pay attention to looking around a room, but I lost that belt.

00:01:31 ◼   ► But I have no good tech stories. I don't think I've lost anything particularly expensive

00:01:36 ◼   ► that I can recall on a trip, which is good. I'm a little obsessive about making sure

00:01:41 ◼   ► that we're packing everything up when we leave a hotel room especially.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I've never lost any technology. I've lost articles of clothing.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Right, right. I may have done that too. Every now and then, I have an article of clothing

00:01:56 ◼   ► that goes missing and I wonder if I left it somewhere, but I don't know for sure. I

00:02:02 ◼   ► can't confirm or deny.

00:02:03 ◼   ► You've never left a Kindle in a seat back pocket or anything like that?

00:02:10 ◼   ► My wife left a Kindle in a seat back pocket on her way back from Hawaii.

00:02:13 ◼   ► There you go.

00:02:14 ◼   ► That wasn't me. So I imagine yeah that they get that just happens constantly. I'm on the

00:02:20 ◼   ► Nintendo switch subreddit and there are constant postings about like Eva a I lost my switch on a plane or B

00:02:28 ◼   ► I just found a switch on a plane

00:02:30 ◼   ► They're like every day one of those two things and a lot of the time which is kind of awesome

00:02:33 ◼   ► They end up getting paired together

00:02:35 ◼   ► Which is so cool and you've been like there's updates to it and you see that all this person found it

00:02:40 ◼   ► Because there was another subreddit like reader and I love seeing that that's really fun

00:02:45 ◼   ► Here's my travel tip. I got a travel tip for you Myke, which is this

00:02:49 ◼   ► Don't put anything in the in the seat back pocket. Mmm, okay

00:02:54 ◼   ► Okay, don't do it put it back in your bag. Put it on your lap put it

00:03:00 ◼   ► You know next to you on the seat

00:03:02 ◼   ► Maybe although that's a little bit dicey don't put it in that pocket because you'll forget it if it's in that pocket

00:03:08 ◼   ► So just don't do it.

00:03:09 ◼   ► It solves that problem.

00:03:10 ◼   ► It's a little fence.

00:03:11 ◼   ► They slide down in the...

00:03:12 ◼   ► I once dropped on a plane the cap of my Apple Pencil.

00:03:16 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:03:18 ◼   ► It went down the seat and I couldn't find it.

00:03:21 ◼   ► And I was digging around for ages and as we landed it rolled out and hit my foot.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Which is kind of amazing.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I've had those too where little things that have fallen down and I have to ask for

00:03:32 ◼   ► the person behind to fish it out or I have to like try and find a way to get down between

00:03:37 ◼   ► the bulkhead and the seat if I'm in a window seat and all of that. Yeah, that's always

00:03:42 ◼   ► fun. But I just, this is why I keep my little carry-on bag that's under the seat in front

00:03:49 ◼   ► of me accessible and I just transfer my electronics in and out of that as I go rather than I know

00:03:55 ◼   ► it's convenient that there's that little pocket there but if you put it in the pocket, you're

00:03:59 ◼   ► going to forget it.

00:04:00 ◼   ► Will Barron - If you would like to send in a question to open up the show like Eric did,

00:04:04 ◼   ► send out a tweet into the planet with #SnailTalk and it will go into a

00:04:09 ◼   ► document that we can pull from later. It can be about literally anything you want,

00:04:12 ◼   ► however you would like for us to start the show, just send in a tweet with the

00:04:16 ◼   ► hashtag #SnailTalk. And moving to follow up, we have some of a little HomePod,

00:04:21 ◼   ► like little bits and bobs. I saw our good friend and your podcast co-host on

00:04:29 ◼   ► free agents, Mr. David Sparks, talk about using the HomePod as a Mac speaker. And I

00:04:35 ◼   ► saw that you were doing the same and I kind of wondered why and how that went for you.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Well, I mean, why is that every now and then you are at a device that is not the HomePod

00:04:46 ◼   ► and it would be nice if you could control it. And you actually can. You can control

00:04:50 ◼   ► it directly from iOS or Mac. There are, you know, you basically bring up the little panel

00:04:57 ◼   ► and control center, and it shows all of the remote controllable devices. And if you select

00:05:03 ◼   ► a remote controllable device, which is an Apple TV or a HomePod, you can pick a playlist

00:05:08 ◼   ► and start playing it and then switch away from it. And it'll go off and now it's doing its

00:05:13 ◼   ► own thing. That's not AirPlay. That's this remote control feature. And you can do that

00:05:18 ◼   ► on iTunes as well. You've got to have the latest versions, but it does work.

00:05:23 ◼   ► You can use it as a Mac output device too, right?

00:05:28 ◼   ► Sure.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Any AirPlay device can be set to do audio in the sound of System Preferences, the sound

00:05:36 ◼   ► pane, to do audio out to any AirPlay device.

00:05:40 ◼   ► And so you can do that.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Now AirPlay, one, remember, has a three-second delay.

00:05:44 ◼   ► So if you need it to be instantaneous audio, you will be disappointed.

00:05:49 ◼   ► it. Although I think QuickTime will sync up and iTunes will sync up like videos and things,

00:05:53 ◼   ► they'll put in the delay and they get them to sync up. But if you're doing something

00:05:58 ◼   ► that really requires immediacy like a podcast, that would be a bad idea. But yeah, it's

00:06:03 ◼   ► there. And that's, I mean, my example is that I have a little keyboard shortcut for

00:06:06 ◼   ► playing and pausing. You use your media keys on the Mac and you're listening to a HomePod

00:06:13 ◼   ► in the room that you're in on your Mac. If you've got that setting set to control

00:06:17 ◼   ► your HomePod and you press the play/pause on your media keys, guess what? The HomePod

00:06:22 ◼   ► pauses. Which if you are trying to take a phone call or need to focus or something like

00:06:27 ◼   ► that and your hands are on the keyboard is more convenient than telling the lady to stop

00:06:33 ◼   ► playing the music.

00:06:35 ◼   ► There you go. Jerry wrote in, and upgrady and Jerry wrote in to say that the podcast

00:06:42 ◼   ► playback from Apple podcasts on your iOS devices and the home pod they do actually sync up

00:06:48 ◼   ► so like if you were listening to this episode of upgrade and you're like at this point and you pause it and then ask your

00:06:55 ◼   ► HomePod to play the upgrade podcast it will pick this episode and start it from where you previously were

00:07:00 ◼   ► Which is good because otherwise that would suck so bad, right?

00:07:04 ◼   ► Like that would be so dumb and I'm really pleased that they've done that because it's great and I have done it with a few shows

00:07:09 ◼   ► Because it's cool. I like that I can just ask into the ether for my shows to play. It's

00:07:15 ◼   ► just a shame that I don't choose to use Apple Podcasts as my daily podcast app.

00:07:19 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's the right thing to do, and I'm glad that they've rolled this out. This

00:07:23 ◼   ► is obviously something that was being worked on. I think even though it got rolled out

00:07:26 ◼   ► to iOS as well, that it's linked to HomePod is great news. And if I used the HomePod a

00:07:35 ◼   ► lot, it would be a reason to consider starting to use Apple Podcasts as my podcast player,

00:07:42 ◼   ► but I don't anticipate using the HomePod for podcasts enough for me to switch to Overcast,

00:07:47 ◼   ► and I'm going to hold out hope that at some point there's media access in some other way

00:07:52 ◼   ► so that Marco Orment can write a plug-in for services on HomePod or that there's Siri

00:08:01 ◼   ► kit support for media playback so that you can link it to your iPhone or something like

00:08:05 ◼   ► that. In the base, which is Apple Podcasts, which is the most popular podcast client,

00:08:12 ◼   ► that is really great that they will let you pick up where you left off.

00:08:17 ◼   ► And we were talking about comparisons to the Google Home Max. YouTuber Austin Evans published

00:08:22 ◼   ► a great review of the HomePod and he compared it against the Google Home Max. And of course,

00:08:27 ◼   ► you know, a lot of the speaker stuff is subjective and it's like based upon what you like to

00:08:31 ◼   ► here in the speaker but Austin says that he feels that in comparison to the HomePod the

00:08:37 ◼   ► Google Home Max feels flat and this is partly because of the fact that it's just got one

00:08:43 ◼   ► direction whilst the HomePod has the multi-direction so it does a better job of filling the room

00:08:49 ◼   ► as well as just to his tastes sounding better it has more depth to the audio so it's again

00:08:54 ◼   ► this is all very subjective and you'll find people saying one thing and saying the other

00:08:58 ◼   ► thing and that's part of the problems with reviewing a product like this. It depends

00:09:03 ◼   ► on your personal tastes for how you like to hear audio, but that was just another one.

00:09:08 ◼   ► Austin also does great work anyway, but this is a good video where he kind of broke down

00:09:12 ◼   ► some of his opinions of the two devices in comparison to each other.

00:09:17 ◼   ► That sounds good. Myke, are you excited to talk about the details of how furniture is

00:09:25 ◼   ► finished?

00:09:26 ◼   ► No, I don't feel like I need to talk about that.

00:09:30 ◼   ► The HomePod leaves rings on some types of furniture.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And so do other devices apparently.

00:09:36 ◼   ► It's a shame that it happens.

00:09:39 ◼   ► I would be really really annoyed if this happened to me.

00:09:41 ◼   ► It didn't happen to me and such is life.

00:09:45 ◼   ► Like we're not dismissing this as like we don't think this is a problem, right?

00:09:51 ◼   ► Like it is a problem.

00:09:52 ◼   ► I just am not very interested in going into detail on this discussion.

00:09:57 ◼   ► I wanted to at least mention it, but I think I agree with you that if this is a known thing

00:10:04 ◼   ► and manufacturers just don't care, because obviously people have reported that there

00:10:09 ◼   ► are other electronic products that have these silicone feet and they leave marks on some

00:10:13 ◼   ► kinds of wood and some finishes. And if that's true and nobody has ever cared or said anything

00:10:20 ◼   ► before. I mean, it goes back to something we've said a couple of times here, which

00:10:23 ◼   ► is Apple's huge and everybody's paying attention to what Apple does. And so, no,

00:10:28 ◼   ► it's not fair, I suppose, that a Sonos One does this and nobody cares and a HomePod does

00:10:35 ◼   ► this and everybody freaks out. But it doesn't change the fact that if you're the manufacturer

00:10:40 ◼   ► of the product and you're aware that this can happen, that you should probably get out

00:10:44 ◼   ► in front of it and actually educate people rather than just slide it into the market.

00:10:49 ◼   ► The only other thing I've got is an anecdote, which I was thinking of when this was all

00:10:51 ◼   ► going on, which is I had a friend who went to UC Santa Cruz and their mascot is the banana

00:10:57 ◼   ► slug, which is a little slug found in the woods. They're quirky at UC Santa Cruz.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And she gave me a silicone glow-in-the-dark banana slug as a souvenir. And I put it on

00:11:10 ◼   ► my bookshelf. And I came back like a month later, I was moving things around on the top

00:11:16 ◼   ► of the bookshelf and discovered that the silicone glow-in-the-dark banana slug had basically

00:11:22 ◼   ► like melted into the bookshelf.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:11:26 ◼   ► And it had completely removed the finish in a shape of the banana slug on the top of the

00:11:33 ◼   ► bookshelf.

00:11:34 ◼   ► Wow.

00:11:35 ◼   ► And in fact, not too long ago, this is a bookshelf I've had since I was a kid and I don't

00:11:39 ◼   ► know, well, it was actually a long time ago, maybe five or 10 years ago, I actually refinished

00:11:43 ◼   ► that bookshelf myself.

00:11:45 ◼   ► I know I don't seem like a particularly handy person because I'm not, but I did. I sanded

00:11:49 ◼   ► it down. We took out all the finish. I sanded it down. I tried to get as much of the banana

00:11:54 ◼   ► slug shape out as possible. I resurfaced it. I refinished it. And guess what? If you know

00:12:04 ◼   ► and you look, you can still see the shape of a banana slug on the top of that bookshelf.

00:12:09 ◼   ► So I am no stranger to the fact that silicone can behave very strangely with other kinds

00:12:16 ◼   ► of materials. But beyond that, yeah, I mean, there are apparently many podcasts where people

00:12:22 ◼   ► talk for a long time about furniture finishes and all of that. And I feel like that's enough

00:12:28 ◼   ► for us to say is that if Apple tested this and was aware of it, I know it's maybe not

00:12:33 ◼   ► fair and that other devices do it. But if they're aware, I would like Apple to step

00:12:38 ◼   ► up and be more proactive about it like they were with things like scratches, micro abrasions

00:12:42 ◼   ► and things on iPhones. But also, I think we all have to be aware that this is the consequence

00:12:50 ◼   ► of Apple being so huge as a company and has captured so much of the imagination that anything

00:12:57 ◼   ► that happens with an Apple product that anybody has a complaint about will instantly be magnified

00:13:01 ◼   ► to the worst thing in the world. And that's also true.

00:13:04 ◼   ► I have a couple of pieces of follow-out. The first, if you enjoy our Myke at the Movies

00:13:08 ◼   ► segments, every now and then a friend will say to me, "Hey, Myke, I want to watch a movie

00:13:13 ◼   ► with you." And then we do little standalone episodes that go into the incomparable feed

00:13:18 ◼   ► at the incomparable.com/mike. Well, this time the friend of mine who came to me was Dan

00:13:22 ◼   ► Provost, of Studio Neat, an authority considered podcast and relay FM. And me and Dan watched

00:13:28 ◼   ► 1992's A Few Good Men, which I will not say whether I liked or did not like the movie

00:13:36 ◼   ► because I think that's part of the fun, but it's a great discussion including a real

00:13:40 ◼   ► weird 10-minute tangent at the end where we talk about those masterclass course things.

00:13:45 ◼   ► Have you seen those? Have you ever seen those like huge celebrities teaching you about screenwriting

00:13:49 ◼   ► or cooking or whatever called masterclass? We talk about those as well because that's

00:13:53 ◼   ► like a whole thing at the end of the episode.

00:13:55 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:13:56 ◼   ► I won't ask if you liked it or not, but I will ask, could you handle the truth?

00:14:02 ◼   ► Do you know what?

00:14:04 ◼   ► When that moment happened, I was like, "Oh, that's that movie!"

00:14:08 ◼   ► That's where that's from, yeah.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Uh-huh.

00:14:10 ◼   ► I didn't know.

00:14:11 ◼   ► That's what I thought.

00:14:12 ◼   ► I didn't know.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Because everyone knows that line, you know?

00:14:14 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

00:14:15 ◼   ► I guess we should also mention there is another mic at the movies on this podcast coming soon.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And if you want to study for that, you should watch Aliens.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Yep, Aliens.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Jason convinced me after my horrific fear of watching Alien that Aliens was not so scary

00:14:31 ◼   ► and more actiony. And I think we're going to talk about that on March 5th, but we'll

00:14:36 ◼   ► confirm that probably next week. But yeah, March 5th we're going to watch Aliens, which

00:14:40 ◼   ► is the sequel to Alien, which I have been told is not as scary by many people actually,

00:14:45 ◼   ► not just you.

00:14:46 ◼   ► It's an action movie and not a horror movie primarily. There's scary bits in it, but

00:14:50 ◼   ► it is a James Cameron movie. We watched the Terminator movies. It is an 80s sci-fi action

00:14:56 ◼   ► movie in that kind of vein. So I think you'll get a very different feel from it.

00:15:00 ◼   ► Good, because I'm a little scaredy-cat and I don't need more scary monsters. Thank you

00:15:04 ◼   ► very much. I also wanted to do a little bit of promotion for a new show on Real AFM that

00:15:09 ◼   ► I'm co-hosting called Playing for Fun. It is a show between me and Tiffany Almond where

00:15:15 ◼   ► we talk about video games that we love. Now I really really want people to go and try

00:15:20 ◼   ► this show out because we think it's different to a lot of video game shows, it's different

00:15:27 ◼   ► to a lot of podcasts. We only pick games that we both love and we only talk about the things

00:15:33 ◼   ► that we love in those games. We don't talk about the bad stuff, we don't talk about criticisms,

00:15:39 ◼   ► we don't even really review the games.

00:15:41 ◼   ► It's just two best friends that enjoy something

00:15:45 ◼   ► and they just talk about the things that they enjoy.

00:15:48 ◼   ► We're looking at doing an episode every month.

00:15:49 ◼   ► The first episode is about Super Mario Odyssey.

00:15:52 ◼   ► The reason I really want people to go and check it out is

00:15:55 ◼   ► we are obviously trying to be very positive in the show

00:15:59 ◼   ► and I've heard from so many people that have listened

00:16:03 ◼   ► that they really, really enjoyed it.

00:16:05 ◼   ► So I think that this is a show that people will like.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Maybe even if you don't care about video games.

00:16:11 ◼   ► I hear this with the pen addict every now and then.

00:16:13 ◼   ► We have a lot of pen addict listeners that don't like pens.

00:16:15 ◼   ► I just like to hear two people just talk about

00:16:17 ◼   ► something that they love, which is a little bit quirky.

00:16:19 ◼   ► So, also playing for fun has the,

00:16:23 ◼   ► sorry to everybody else in Relay FM,

00:16:24 ◼   ► the best artwork and the best music

00:16:26 ◼   ► that we've ever put together.

00:16:28 ◼   ► It's absolutely wonderful.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Oh, by the way, if you have the Relay FM app

00:16:34 ◼   ► installed on your devices, we have a sticker pack

00:16:37 ◼   ► and there is a sticker of an animated Myke and Tiff high-fiving, which is so good.

00:16:43 ◼   ► So that's in there if you haven't checked out the sticker pack in a while.

00:16:47 ◼   ► We've got a couple of extra ones in there.

00:16:48 ◼   ► So please go and check out Playing for Fun.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Just listen to the first episode and it might be something you like,

00:16:54 ◼   ► it might be something you don't like, but I have a sneaking suspicion

00:16:57 ◼   ► that I think that a lot of people will like this show

00:16:59 ◼   ► because we're trying our best to just make something happy and nice.

00:17:03 ◼   ► And stay tuned for the new show, Playing for Fun or Not, in which I talk to John Siracusa

00:17:11 ◼   ► about what's wrong with all the games that you like.

00:17:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:15 ◼   ► I feel like I'm going to hear a lot from John.

00:17:20 ◼   ► I've already heard a few little bits here and there.

00:17:22 ◼   ► Nothing is so perfect that it can't be criticized, Myke.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Turns out.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Remember that.

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00:19:20 ◼   ► There you go. That's the Jason Snell seal.

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00:19:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

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00:19:39 ◼   ► It's a picture of a seal giving a thumbs up, which is interesting because they don't have

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00:19:48 ◼   ► Alright, it's time for Upstream.

00:19:50 ◼   ► Surprisingly to everybody, Carpool Karaoke has been renewed for a second season.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Well, congratulations to them.

00:19:57 ◼   ► It feels like nobody was really excited about it.

00:20:00 ◼   ► It was a critical flop and I can't imagine it got a lot of eyeballs, but it's been renewed

00:20:06 ◼   ► for a second season.

00:20:07 ◼   ► My only thinking on this is they can get a second season of Carpool Karaoke together

00:20:13 ◼   ► and up and going quicker than they can get any of their other deals up and going. So

00:20:17 ◼   ► they're just going to have some stuff that's there.

00:20:20 ◼   ► I will float a theory. My theory is that if you are launching a video service, one of

00:20:28 ◼   ► the things that you're going to need, we've talked about it a little bit, is a catalog.

00:20:33 ◼   ► And what the people watching Carpool Karaoke today are doing it through Apple Music, it's

00:20:39 ◼   ► not the same.

00:20:40 ◼   ► It's not the same thing.

00:20:42 ◼   ► So I feel like maybe you get the show spun up, maybe they like it internally, maybe they

00:20:47 ◼   ► think it's going to have some appeal once they get it in front of other people.

00:20:52 ◼   ► It's not that expensive.

00:20:53 ◼   ► So you keep it rolling, and it means that when you launch your Apple Video service,

00:20:58 ◼   ► you're already going to have one and probably two seasons of Carpool Karaoke ready to watch

00:21:03 ◼   ► watch, and it adds more to their catalog. So, you know, and the theory is maybe when

00:21:08 ◼   ► people are signing up and trying out the Apple Video service, those people will then try

00:21:12 ◼   ► out the show and like it. And so, why not keep it around to fill up the catalog and

00:21:19 ◼   ► to, you know, potentially catch the eye of people who are signing up. That's my theory.

00:21:26 ◼   ► So I mean, I would expect that also they've done a lot of the groundwork for this show.

00:21:31 ◼   ► So it's probably cheaper for them to just renew this and let it run and do another season

00:21:37 ◼   ► than having to like maybe try and find something else. You never know, they might be able to

00:21:40 ◼   ► turn it around. We'll see.

00:21:43 ◼   ► Irrespective of bad reviews, Cloverfield Paradox pulled in 5 million viewers in the first seven

00:21:48 ◼   ► days on Netflix. If you remember, this was the show, this is the movie I should say,

00:21:52 ◼   ► that Netflix launched in a big surprise during the Super Bowl. 5 million in seven days seems

00:21:58 ◼   ► like a good number but it's worth comparing to Bright which was the Will Smith alien police

00:22:04 ◼   ► movie on Netflix which also received bad reviews. That netted 11 million viewers in its first

00:22:12 ◼   ► I think couple of weeks so that is a big difference. However it is worth noting that Bright is

00:22:17 ◼   ► one of Netflix's biggest successes to date according to Variety. So I don't know they

00:22:23 ◼   ► they paid a lot of money, I think like 50 million for Cloverfield Paradox, but it was

00:22:28 ◼   ► a great marketing move, so maybe it was worth it in the end. Five million is not nothing,

00:22:32 ◼   ► you know, so…

00:22:33 ◼   ► It's a good stunt and it gives them… either they can learn not to ever do that again or

00:22:39 ◼   ► it gives them an idea of what a baseline is and then they can try again. And keep in mind,

00:22:44 ◼   ► it's still being marketed and it's got name recognition and it stays in Netflix's

00:22:50 ◼   ► catalog, so people will keep watching it. And I'll put the footnote here. These are

00:22:53 ◼   ► Nielsen ratings because Nielsen is trying desperately to provide people measurements

00:22:58 ◼   ► of what Netflix does because Netflix does not provide its own ratings and doesn't need

00:23:01 ◼   ► to. So this is an estimate based on a panel sample put together by Nielsen. But I'm not

00:23:08 ◼   ► surprised that Bright did better than Cloverfield, given Will Smith, quite frankly.

00:23:12 ◼   ► Will Smith. Yeah. I mean, that's a very good point. Will Smith is an international huge

00:23:17 ◼   ► draw like a more remain so probably for many years to come. Amazon, YouTube, Verizon and

00:23:22 ◼   ► Twitter are currently in bidding for NFL Thursday night streaming rights. Facebook was in the

00:23:28 ◼   ► running but pulled out. I think Twitter had this last year, right? Was it Twitter or was

00:23:33 ◼   ► it Amazon or did they split it? I know that they've both done some of this stuff in the

00:23:37 ◼   ► past but they're all currently in the running to get some of the streaming rights for Thursday

00:23:41 ◼   ► night football.

00:23:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not super exciting in the sense that it's not like they're not broadcasting

00:23:49 ◼   ► it. In fact, this is a rights package that's being split multiple ways where it's on

00:23:53 ◼   ► the NFL's cable channel, then it has a broadcast partner which is going to be Fox this year,

00:23:59 ◼   ► I think. And then there's a streaming partner, so it's not exclusive at all. In fact,

00:24:05 ◼   ► it'll be shown on cable and broadcast and streaming. So still, it's something worth

00:24:10 ◼   ► experimenting with.

00:24:11 ◼   ► And we go from live sports to sports drama. Apple is developing a show based on the life

00:24:17 ◼   ► and career of NBA star Kevin Durant. It will be called Swagger, produced by Brian Gazer

00:24:24 ◼   ► and Ron Howard's Imagine Television. This feels like an EdiQ joint.

00:24:30 ◼   ► It does. It's Brian Grazer, by the way, but you know, nobody cares, except his family.

00:24:35 ◼   ► it. It's a… Hi to the grazers. It does feel very much like the… We're going to do a…

00:24:43 ◼   ► What was it? Dr. Dre docudrama 2. Whatever. I'm not a big NBA fan. I think Kevin Durant

00:24:51 ◼   ► is an interesting guy. What I would say is this goes to a lot of what we're talking

00:24:58 ◼   ► about making sure that Apple's service isn't just a bunch of sci-fi shows. So here we go.

00:25:04 ◼   ► We've got a show that is about the life of a black man.

00:25:10 ◼   ► It appeals to sports fans, presumably.

00:25:14 ◼   ► It does a lot of things that a lot of these other shows probably don't do in terms of

00:25:18 ◼   ► appeal.

00:25:19 ◼   ► So diversifying Apple's offerings is a good thing to do.

00:25:23 ◼   ► I think it's a smart move.

00:25:24 ◼   ► Even if this is not a show that I'm super interested in because I don't really care

00:25:28 ◼   ► about the NBA. I think it's important for Apple to try and have a spread of stuff in

00:25:35 ◼   ► the pipeline so that Apple Video has broad appeal. And so this is another one of those.

00:25:42 ◼   ► The whole life of an active player does feel a little weird to me, but at the same time,

00:25:51 ◼   ► the NBA fan base is strong. It's easy to view this and just assume it's something

00:25:58 ◼   ► silly and ego boosting, but it's also entirely possible that this has got some really great

00:26:02 ◼   ► people behind it and it's going to be great. So, good for Apple to keep on adding different

00:26:09 ◼   ► pieces of this puzzle because they want to have lots of different stuff on offer and

00:26:14 ◼   ► not just like we were worried about. Well, what we have is we have lots of diversity

00:26:19 ◼   ► here. There's the sci-fi show from J.J. Abrams and there's a sci-fi show from Steven Spielberg

00:26:25 ◼   ► and there's a sci-fi show from Ron Moore, those are totally different white guys with

00:26:29 ◼   ► sci-fi shows, so what do you want? And instead, no, they're going to do a lot of different

00:26:34 ◼   ► stuff. It's good.

00:26:38 ◼   ► And also Facebook is creating an eight-episode docuseries about NASCAR star, Daryl "Bubba"

00:26:43 ◼   ► Wallace Jr. Bubba is famous for being the first African-American person to drive in

00:26:48 ◼   ► the Daytona 500 since 1969, and this series follows and has followed his story into doing

00:26:54 ◼   ► This is part of a push that Facebook is doing for their platform Facebook Watch

00:26:59 ◼   ► which they're really trying to develop a lot of content for. For example people

00:27:04 ◼   ► know that I'm a wrestling fan. They have worked with the WWE to create a weekly

00:27:08 ◼   ► episodic show that's been going on for the last couple of months which has been

00:27:12 ◼   ► pretty interesting but I've not been able to watch it because Facebook Watch

00:27:15 ◼   ► isn't available outside of the US right now which is bonkers. I don't understand

00:27:19 ◼   ► why like if you're creating your own content you would only you would read

00:27:23 ◼   ► and restrict it, it doesn't make any sense, like what are the rights you'll make in it.

00:27:27 ◼   ► So that's really weird, it's very, very weird. But the WWE, I mean, just going into specifics,

00:27:33 ◼   ► they have been rebroadcasting it for their outside of the US viewers on their own streaming

00:27:38 ◼   ► platform, which is really strange. But yeah, so that's something that Facebook is doing

00:27:42 ◼   ► as well. I will say just before we get out of this segment, and there are absolutely

00:27:46 ◼   ► zero spoilers, but Black Panther is awesome. I saw it this weekend.

00:27:49 ◼   ► I look forward to it. I've been traveling so I haven't had a chance to see it.

00:27:53 ◼   ► I think you're going to love it.

00:27:54 ◼   ► So I'm looking forward to it.

00:27:55 ◼   ► So yeah, it's a really, really great movie.

00:27:56 ◼   ► I don't need to be the person to tell you that, right?

00:27:58 ◼   ► Like I think everybody is universally saying this, but you don't even need to be a superhero

00:28:04 ◼   ► movie fan to like this movie.

00:28:05 ◼   ► So it's great.

00:28:06 ◼   ► Yeah, me and Idina went to see it yesterday and we really liked it.

00:28:10 ◼   ► So it was great.

00:28:12 ◼   ► All right, so Twitter has killed their Mac app, which is very interesting.

00:28:18 ◼   ► They posted two tweets, which is funny to me that they posted two tweets.

00:28:22 ◼   ► like can't you just put us all in one tweet but like whatever. They're saying we're focusing

00:28:26 ◼   ► this is this was buried in the Friday news cycle we're focusing our efforts on a great

00:28:31 ◼   ► Twitter experience that's consistent across platforms so starting today the Twitter for

00:28:36 ◼   ► Mac app will no longer be available for download and in 30 days will no longer be supported.

00:28:42 ◼   ► For the full Twitter experience on the Mac visit Twitter on the web. Now I don't necessarily

00:28:47 ◼   ► want to go into a ton of detail about this specific thing, but kind of like a way that

00:28:53 ◼   ► - what this could potentially mean. But like, there are so many problems with this announcement,

00:29:01 ◼   ► like for example, we're focusing on efforts on a great Twitter experience that's consistent

00:29:05 ◼   ► across platforms. I don't know if you need to remove an application to do that. I mean,

00:29:11 ◼   ► You may as well just say we only use the web everywhere, right?

00:29:15 ◼   ► That's silly.

00:29:16 ◼   ► Well, that's exactly right.

00:29:18 ◼   ► They're not removing their Android and iOS apps so far as I can tell.

00:29:22 ◼   ► They're just removing their Mac.

00:29:23 ◼   ► Do they have a Windows app?

00:29:24 ◼   ► There is a Windows 10 app.

00:29:25 ◼   ► I would not put money on it surviving, but it's possible because Windows has a touch

00:29:32 ◼   ► component on a lot of the...

00:29:35 ◼   ► And it's a Windows 10 app.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Maybe they feel like it's basically their mobile experience, so it's a touch experience.

00:29:40 ◼   ► But I also wouldn't put money on it surviving either because what the heck is going on here?

00:29:45 ◼   ► It's sad.

00:29:46 ◼   ► This is, you know, they bought Tweety and then they kind of ripped that apart and made

00:29:51 ◼   ► this Twitter Mac app that was, I used it for a very long time, but it was lagging behind

00:29:57 ◼   ► for a long time.

00:29:58 ◼   ► It didn't get support for the longer tweets that everybody else did.

00:30:03 ◼   ► The tweet that they sent out themselves, you know, it's doublespeak.

00:30:07 ◼   ► all ridiculous. It's focusing on a consistent pla--first off, consistent doesn't mean good.

00:30:15 ◼   ► It just means that it's consistent. Also, I laughed when you said they killed it because,

00:30:21 ◼   ► I mean, you could argue that the time of death was called the body hit the floor or whatever.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Was it already dead? Pretty much already dead before this. And it's a shame. It's another

00:30:35 ◼   ► example of Twitter's sort of mismanagement of everything it does.

00:30:40 ◼   ► But fortunately, Mac users who want to use Twitter in an app can still use Twitterrific

00:30:45 ◼   ► and Tweetbot.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Those still survive for now unless Twitter decides that it really just wants to push

00:30:50 ◼   ► everybody off of the Mac and into a web page.

00:30:55 ◼   ► But Twitter's, you know, I complained about it.

00:30:58 ◼   ► I basically referred to Twitter's web experience as garbage.

00:31:01 ◼   ► And I heard from people who were like, "It's fine for me," which is like, "I'm glad

00:31:04 ◼   ► it's fine for you. It's terrible for me. I would not use Twitter remotely as much as

00:31:10 ◼   ► I do if I had to just open Safari and go to Twitter.com. I don't like anything about

00:31:19 ◼   ► how the Twitter web experience works. I hope I don't ever have to try.

00:31:25 ◼   ► So, Twitterific is currently on sale at $7.99 for the Mac. You can also buy Tweetbot for

00:31:32 ◼   ► the Mac. They're both really good apps. It is worth noting, because I remember this,

00:31:36 ◼   ► I haven't seen a lot of people talk about this. I assume it's just not been worth mentioning,

00:31:40 ◼   ► but I mean, we spoke about Twitter 4.0 for the Mac on episode 70 of Upgrade, because

00:31:47 ◼   ► this was an application that Twitter had made by a third-party development studio, if you

00:31:53 ◼   ► remember. And then they kind of put it out into the world.

00:31:57 ◼   ► or they bought it and then they paid somebody to update it. It's unclear.

00:32:02 ◼   ► But this was like a whole separate thing. They had a Mac app which sucked and was really

00:32:06 ◼   ► like dying. Then they introduced this new one which was new but missing a lot of features

00:32:11 ◼   ► and then it kind of just never got updated. So it's a bit of a nightmare. TweetDeck still

00:32:16 ◼   ► exists that's still a Twitter property. Anyway, this is all just a set up. A conversation

00:32:22 ◼   ► I want to have with you about what if anything this says about the Mac as a platform. So

00:32:29 ◼   ► in your opinion, is it a concern that a company like Twitter would pull Mac app support? Like

00:32:36 ◼   ► does it signal something?

00:32:38 ◼   ► Yeah, oh absolutely. I mean what the message here is it's not worth developing a custom

00:32:46 ◼   ► app for non-mobile platforms. That's how I read it, is it's still worth it to build iOS

00:32:53 ◼   ► apps and Android apps because the app experience is so good and you want to be on the screen,

00:33:03 ◼   ► on the home screen with your icon and all of that. You want to participate in that,

00:33:06 ◼   ► so you will. But that on the desktop, if you're one of these services especially, you know,

00:33:14 ◼   ► You've got your website, just kick everybody to the website.

00:33:17 ◼   ► People on Macs can just load it in their web page in their browser and it's fine.

00:33:22 ◼   ► Now I disagree with that but that is the truth that if you're paying for a custom app to

00:33:30 ◼   ► develop it and keep it up to date and you look at how many people use…

00:33:35 ◼   ► I mean everybody who uses a Mac probably uses a smartphone or at least a huge percentage

00:33:39 ◼   ► of them.

00:33:40 ◼   ► And I think their argument is, "Look, mobile is where stuff is being consumed.

00:33:43 ◼   ► is where we get the best return on our investment, the Mac is a very small platform. Why would

00:33:48 ◼   ► we spend the time on it? You can just use the web." And the Mac ends up falling back

00:33:51 ◼   ► into this kind of give-up zone where it's just not worth it and you go to the lowest

00:33:59 ◼   ► common denominator, which is the web.

00:34:00 ◼   ► And, you know, we're mentioning the Windows app. You know, I don't know how good it

00:34:05 ◼   ► is, but that's probably going to stick around because it's on their universal platform.

00:34:10 ◼   ► If it does, that's going to be the reason is that it is kind of a mobile app because

00:34:14 ◼   ► it's a Windows 10, you know, with the – it's not a traditional desktop app like the Mac

00:34:20 ◼   ► app was.

00:34:21 ◼   ► It's also apparently available on HoloLens, which I kind of love the idea of that.

00:34:26 ◼   ► You know, you're just reading Twitter and your big glasses in the sky.

00:34:30 ◼   ► That seems like a fun thing to do.

00:34:32 ◼   ► That's the future, Myke.

00:34:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Twitter pushed into your face constantly and you can read it on the fridge.

00:34:36 ◼   ► It's in the cloud if you're outside looking up at a cloud.

00:34:39 ◼   ► I guess the other problem with this, going back to the Mac, is it also signals something

00:34:45 ◼   ► to users as well, right?

00:34:47 ◼   ► If you've bought your Mac and you go to the Mac App Store and you look for the Twitter

00:34:52 ◼   ► app and there isn't one, do you think that for a user of the Mac, do you think that that

00:34:58 ◼   ► says something too?

00:35:00 ◼   ► Like you're like, "Oh, why isn't it here?"

00:35:02 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I think it says something, but you could argue the same thing about Facebook,

00:35:08 ◼   ► There's no Facebook app for the Mac.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Facebook is a website that has a mobile app, and that's sort of the paradigm.

00:35:15 ◼   ► What happened with Twitter is that this has to do with Twitter's history.

00:35:18 ◼   ► Twitter became successful in a lot of ways on the backs of third-party apps, which they

00:35:24 ◼   ► then pushed to the side and said, "No, no.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Our website and our app are the most important."

00:35:30 ◼   ► But the third-party Twitter clients is a big thing in the early development of Twitter,

00:35:35 ◼   ► huge part of the early development of Twitter.

00:35:38 ◼   ► Facebook never did that, right? Facebook never thought of itself that way. Facebook was a

00:35:41 ◼   ► website and then they built their own mobile app to go with their website. And so, you

00:35:48 ◼   ► know, I think part of it is just it's a function of where these services started.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Nobody or at least not very many people think that Facebook is worse off because they don't

00:36:00 ◼   ► have a, you know, a Mac app. What would the Facebook for Mac app be? It's actually kind

00:36:06 ◼   ► weird to think about it because Facebook does sort of feel like a website to me a little

00:36:10 ◼   ► more than Twitter does where it feels like a messaging service. But you know, I don't

00:36:15 ◼   ► know. It's services like this, I mean, it's a fair question about do they need to have

00:36:21 ◼   ► a native client. And for me, like people complain about Slack being this Electron app. So it's

00:36:26 ◼   ► basically like a web app wrapped in a little app wrapper. But Slack has made the effort

00:36:30 ◼   ► of putting it in an app wrapper and I don't mind that. I know some people, it really bothers

00:36:37 ◼   ► them, but it's like, "I'm very glad I have a Slack app." I wouldn't use Slack as much

00:36:41 ◼   ► on my Mac if I had to just open web pages in my web browser that were showing Slack

00:36:47 ◼   ► instances. First up, my web browser is like a multi-tool. So if I want to keep Twitter

00:36:53 ◼   ► around, this is always the thing where people use Fluid or apps like that to make single

00:36:58 ◼   ► site browsers, which are like little browser apps you click on and it just loads one webpage.

00:37:03 ◼   ► I always found those really weird to use and I never really liked them. I don't like

00:37:07 ◼   ► that. If I have to go to your, remember to go to your website, I'm not going to keep

00:37:11 ◼   ► your website open all the time. Sorry Facebook. Then I forget to go there because it's not

00:37:17 ◼   ► in my site, it's not in my use. I'm looking at what apps I'm running and things that

00:37:21 ◼   ► are in the menu bar and things like that. I know that there are apps that will do that

00:37:24 ◼   ► with Facebook notifications and things like that. Facebook's just never been as important

00:37:28 ◼   ► to me so that I haven't cared about it so much. But Slack's a good example where the

00:37:34 ◼   ► presence of an app makes a difference in my geography at least when I'm using the Mac.

00:37:40 ◼   ► I don't want to have to remember to either… You keep a window open. I don't want that

00:37:46 ◼   ► window… I'm not somebody who keeps windows full of tabs open. I keep windows open when

00:37:51 ◼   ► I'm working on them in the browser. I don't leave them open. You can't really minimize

00:37:57 ◼   ► them because if you minimize them and then you click a link somewhere else, it automatically

00:38:02 ◼   ► opens up that minimized window and loads a new tab, which is also infuriating. And so

00:38:09 ◼   ► I basically stop using those sites regularly and just go when I'm reminded, "Oh yeah, Facebook

00:38:15 ◼   ► is a thing that exists when I'm on my Mac. So I think there's a—at least as one Mac

00:38:23 ◼   ► user, I can say that there's a level of brain space occupied by apps that are not

00:38:33 ◼   ► occupied by web pages. And so that—for me, that's the difference.

00:38:37 ◼   ► You mentioned Electron. And a lot of our mutual friends get really upset about Electron apps.

00:38:45 ◼   ► Why is that? Like, what is Electron? And why do people get so mad about Electron apps on the back?

00:38:52 ◼   ► I think I am not a web developer, so I'm not comfortable saying much more than saying Electron is a framework to develop web apps, basically.

00:39:01 ◼   ► It's one framework, and it allows you to create something that's got kind of app-like functionality,

00:39:09 ◼   ► and then you wrap it in an app wrapper but it's using web based technologies to build

00:39:18 ◼   ► that thing.

00:39:19 ◼   ► So it's like non-native feeling applications is what mostly comes out of it.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Well, it depends on your definition of what is native. Some stuff feels real. There are

00:39:35 ◼   ► There are apps, there are web apps with wrappers that always felt like I was literally, you

00:39:39 ◼   ► know, if you scroll a little too fast or in the wrong place, you reveal that you're really

00:39:45 ◼   ► in a web browser, right?

00:39:47 ◼   ► And that never is a good feeling as a Mac user, I would say, to suddenly realize that

00:39:51 ◼   ► this is all just kind of a lie.

00:39:53 ◼   ► But the big place you see it is in things like the preferences and the menu bar where

00:39:57 ◼   ► there's nothing because all your preferences and controls are actually like in the window

00:40:04 ◼   ► that's because it's actually a web page. But I don't know. I mean, it's... I don't

00:40:13 ◼   ► get as upset as some people do about this because I think there are different classes

00:40:16 ◼   ► of apps and if a web-based app in an app wrapper works more or less like a desktop app, I'm

00:40:24 ◼   ► probably fine with it. If you tried to give me Final Cut Pro in a web browser, I would

00:40:30 ◼   ► probably revolt.

00:40:31 ◼   ► Because I think a lot of people get concerned about stuff like Electron and Twitter killing

00:40:40 ◼   ► Mac apps as like that there's a problem with the platform, right?

00:40:45 ◼   ► If people are not developing native applications for the Mac is an indication that the Mac

00:40:52 ◼   ► is dying, right?

00:40:53 ◼   ► I think that is the fear.

00:40:57 ◼   ► And I would say, I don't think I would phrase it as that the Mac is dying, but the Mac is

00:41:06 ◼   ► a very small computing platform and it's smaller now than iOS, Android, and Windows,

00:41:18 ◼   ► right?

00:41:19 ◼   ► So it's, if you're going to choose, and mobile is so important and growing, and so

00:41:25 ◼   ► So if you're going to choose, you're going to choose mobile first off.

00:41:28 ◼   ► And at that point, it's iOS and Android.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And the web browser is right there.

00:41:33 ◼   ► A lot of these things have web services.

00:41:36 ◼   ► There's an argument that to build a custom Mac app, you need to build it because you

00:41:41 ◼   ► have a clear benefit in building a native app.

00:41:44 ◼   ► And not everything is going to have a clear benefit to having a native app.

00:41:48 ◼   ► And if your market isn't so large that it's worth it just because you have so many customers

00:41:53 ◼   ► who will be happier, if the market's not that big, then I understand the business decision

00:41:58 ◼   ► there. I don't think it necessarily means that all Mac apps are going away and that

00:42:02 ◼   ► the Mac is dying, but I do think that it shows that in the priority list, the Mac is way

00:42:08 ◼   ► down versus especially mobile.

00:42:11 ◼   ► So let's talk about Project Marzipan as a refresher for those maybe not keeping track.

00:42:18 ◼   ► Project Marzipan is a rumoured project that will allow developers of iOS apps to port

00:42:31 ◼   ► their applications for the Mac.

00:42:42 ◼   ► Would the ability for developers of iOS apps to be able to bring their applications to

00:42:48 ◼   ► Mac, is that better or worse for this perception problem?

00:42:53 ◼   ► It's a good question. I don't know. I think porting, I think the problem with it

00:43:03 ◼   ► is that depending on how it would be done, it might feel not like a Mac app. I would

00:43:08 ◼   ► hope that the way that it would work is that Apple was designing it so that the pitch is

00:43:13 ◼   ► going to be you can make a great iOS app and a great Mac app without as much extra work.

00:43:19 ◼   ► And not you can click a couple of boxes and your iOS app shows up on the Mac because that's

00:43:25 ◼   ► a very different kind of thing.

00:43:26 ◼   ► And that may be the reality regardless of what Apple says, but I would imagine that

00:43:30 ◼   ► Apple would rather pitch it as being you get to your stuff that would go over here now

00:43:35 ◼   ► Now it comes over here and you can have a real menu bar and that would be nice to see

00:43:40 ◼   ► them do it that way.

00:43:41 ◼   ► It's a question of how much work people would put in and if they would put in the

00:43:44 ◼   ► work.

00:43:45 ◼   ► I mean, I think it is a good question about whether Twitter would bother to take their

00:43:53 ◼   ► iOS app and bring it back to the Mac for all the reasons we've already said.

00:43:59 ◼   ► Facebook might be the same way.

00:44:01 ◼   ► Although, who knows?

00:44:02 ◼   ► Facebook might have a different calculation and say, "This is great.

00:44:04 ◼   ► can get on the Mac in a way that gives us more access to those people in Notification

00:44:10 ◼   ► Center and whatever when they're at their desks. So let's do it." But they might

00:44:15 ◼   ► also just make the same decisions that Twitter has made basically and say, "It's not

00:44:18 ◼   ► worth it to us to do that." But as a Mac user, there is the risk that all of a sudden,

00:44:25 ◼   ► you're basically, "Yay, you get more apps, but boo, they all look like iOS apps that

00:44:29 ◼   ► have just been ported to the Mac." And what's better for the Mac in the long run? I don't

00:44:33 ◼   ► know, I feel like there are a lot of apps that need to be native Mac apps, but if something

00:44:38 ◼   ► like Marzipan lets iOS developers get to the Mac more easily with things that are decent,

00:44:44 ◼   ► then maybe that's a good thing. It does make you ask, "What's the future of the

00:44:50 ◼   ► Mac?" and "Is Apple heading to a place where," as we have talked about many times

00:44:55 ◼   ► before that there is a kind of a hybrid that ends up being the final destination for Apple

00:45:01 ◼   ► users where you have things that look, there's one OS and if you're in a desktop or laptop

00:45:09 ◼   ► context it feels more like the Mac but in the end it's just one OS. This would be

00:45:15 ◼   ► a step in that direction too I'm afraid.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Because it's going to be great if you could get like overcast for the Mac right or I don't

00:45:23 ◼   ► know like I'm looking at my phone right now.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean lowering the barrier to get apps that are not worth building entirely for the

00:45:35 ◼   ► Mac on their own, but would be worth building, you know, doing a little bit of extra work

00:45:41 ◼   ► to bring them over from iOS to the Mac. I think that's a nice idea and we can think

00:45:46 ◼   ► of some apps that could do it. The question is how many of those are there? How high is

00:45:52 ◼   ► that bar? How much do any of these iOS developers care about opening up the Mac as another market

00:45:57 ◼   ► market for them. And I think that's a serious question. Is the Mac just too small a market

00:46:04 ◼   ► or is the power of Apple's platforms and saying, "Look, this gets you across all

00:46:08 ◼   ► the Apple platforms." Is that enough to put in the extra time and money to do it?

00:46:12 ◼   ► Because there's something where I use a bunch of applications that have a Mac app,

00:46:17 ◼   ► something like Fantastical or Airmail, and I can't imagine that they would continue

00:46:25 ◼   ► to build the Mac app still. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a lot of more indie developers

00:46:33 ◼   ► kind of retire their Mac apps in favor for the one true cross-platform application.

00:46:37 ◼   ► Well, I think what I would say is if this is done right by Apple, what it would allow

00:46:43 ◼   ► something like Flexibits to do with Fantastical is build one Fantastical that would still

00:46:50 ◼   ► feel like the Mac version on the Mac, but it would be easier for them to develop it

00:46:56 ◼   ► because they would be using a lot more of the same stuff as on iOS, right? That's

00:47:01 ◼   ► the ideal. It's not a, you know, the scary one is iWork, right? Where Apple had iWork

00:47:11 ◼   ► for Mac and then they moved to sort of a unified iWork that synced and that was similar on

00:47:19 ◼   ► iOS and Mac. And from the Mac users perspective, it was a huge feature regression, right? A lot of

00:47:25 ◼   ► things just stopped working. They disappeared. Features vanished because it was kind of a new

00:47:30 ◼   ► version of the iWork apps. That's the fear is that if you get Fantastical trading their separate Mac

00:47:37 ◼   ► and iOS versions for this new kind of combo version that from the perspective of the Mac user,

00:47:42 ◼   ► you just lost all of these features. And now it seems weird and like you've got an iOS app in a

00:47:49 ◼   ► a window.

00:47:50 ◼   ► I was also thinking about photos as another example where it is maybe more of an iOS app

00:48:00 ◼   ► in its feel and execution than a Mac app and it does some really weird stuff on the Mac.

00:48:05 ◼   ► The fact that you can't really easily, in most applications you can't drag a photo from

00:48:11 ◼   ► photos into another application and it's like well, why though?

00:48:17 ◼   ► That would be my personal concern is that these applications whilst feeling native would

00:48:22 ◼   ► have these things to them which clearly indicate that they are a marzipan app.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And then my kind of feeling on that would be with the people that hate Electron applications,

00:48:35 ◼   ► are they not just going to feel the same about marzipan applications?

00:48:41 ◼   ► And what are the further implications of something like that?

00:48:45 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe. I mean, I don't think your average Mac user looks at photos and says,

00:48:51 ◼   ► "Oh my God, this is not a Mac app." It's got quirks, but that comes back to what I

00:48:57 ◼   ► was saying before is that's about how it's implemented by Apple and then by the developers,

00:49:02 ◼   ► and there'll probably be a wide variety of them. But from Apple's perspective, the

00:49:07 ◼   ► other thing, and I'd say I got to be honest, from a user perspective too, one of the advantages

00:49:12 ◼   ► of this is that when you go to your Mac from your iOS device, and remember there are way

00:49:17 ◼   ► more iOS devices than there are Macs in service, but then you go to a Mac and you use photos

00:49:23 ◼   ► or you use pages or you use numbers and it's kind of familiar. It's not the same, but

00:49:29 ◼   ► it's kind of familiar.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Right, and is that more important really in the long run that the applications have to

00:49:33 ◼   ► Apple?

00:49:34 ◼   ► To Apple?

00:49:35 ◼   ► Even more familiarity than ever before, right? Across the entire suite.

00:49:38 ◼   ► Yep.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:40 ◼   ► I think that is more important to Apple, to be honest.

00:49:45 ◼   ► When you look at something like this rumor of Project Mars Japan, do you think that this

00:49:49 ◼   ► is a likelihood?

00:49:50 ◼   ► Do you think that this is where Apple is going to go with Mac development?

00:49:56 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:49:57 ◼   ► I honestly don't know.

00:49:58 ◼   ► I mean, I think one of the great mysteries, because they have so many choices in front

00:50:01 ◼   ► of them, I think one of the great mysteries we have is what is happening with iOS, Mac,

00:50:07 ◼   ► and the future of Apple's platforms.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Because we've been saying for a while now, they're one company trying to do two separate

00:50:15 ◼   ► consumer platforms at scale.

00:50:18 ◼   ► Let's leave tvOS and watchOS aside for a minute because they're kind of iOS and kind

00:50:23 ◼   ► of not.

00:50:24 ◼   ► But just Mac and iOS.

00:50:26 ◼   ► One of those is really hard, as we're probably going to talk about in a little bit.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Two of them is even harder.

00:50:33 ◼   ► And so you start to say to yourself, "All right, we built up all this user base, all

00:50:37 ◼   ► these developers on the one side.

00:50:39 ◼   ► How do we make it easier for them to be on the other side too?

00:50:41 ◼   ► How do we lower the barriers there?

00:50:43 ◼   ► How do we make them more similar?

00:50:46 ◼   ► And I think that's a natural thing.

00:50:48 ◼   ► I don't see how Apple can keep the Mac and iOS as separate as they are now in the long

00:50:56 ◼   ► run.

00:50:57 ◼   ► That doesn't mean that I'm saying that fundamentally the Mac is going to go away

00:51:00 ◼   ► or just become kind of an iOS hybrid.

00:51:03 ◼   ► But I think regardless of what Apple chooses, they're going to need to make the flow back

00:51:09 ◼   ► and forth easier because it just makes sense. It simplifies a lot of things if they're able

00:51:16 ◼   ► to do that. But they do have those decisions to make that are incredibly hard decisions,

00:51:20 ◼   ► momentous decisions, and maybe they've made them and this is part of the slow cranking

00:51:24 ◼   ► toward there. Or maybe they haven't and they're leaving their options open. Like we said,

00:51:29 ◼   ► can you imagine a future version of either iOS or a next generation operating system

00:51:33 ◼   ► because iOS is even 10 years old now, of something that looks like iOS when it's on a tablet

00:51:41 ◼   ► or a phone and looks like the Mac when it's on a desktop or a laptop. And, you know, is

00:51:49 ◼   ► that better than just maintaining Mac OS code base and iOS code base for them to get there?

00:51:55 ◼   ► And does that happen in two years or five years or 10 years? And, you know, that is

00:52:00 ◼   ► why they pay the Apple vice presidents the big bucks, I think, because that's a hard

00:52:06 ◼   ► question.

00:52:07 ◼   ► Yeah, you mentioned about the issues of developing for all these platforms and that actually

00:52:13 ◼   ► leads into another report from Mark Gurman talking about Apple slowing down its software

00:52:19 ◼   ► development cycle, which we're going to talk about in just a second after we thank Squarespace

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00:53:44 ◼   ► Make your Linux move, make your Linux website. So it has been reported by Mark Gurman that Apple

00:53:52 ◼   ► is going to be moving their software development to a two-year cycle rather than a one-year

00:53:58 ◼   ► cycle. I think he specifically calls out iOS but it could as easily be everything. What

00:54:07 ◼   ► this means is not that Apple will be releasing versions of iOS every two years, that they

00:54:14 ◼   ► will be continuing to release versions of iOS every year but internally they will have

00:54:19 ◼   ► more flexibility over what features get included and which don't because features will be developed

00:54:24 ◼   ► over a two year cycle and if they can make it for one year they'll be included, if not

00:54:28 ◼   ► there's more time to develop for them.

00:54:32 ◼   ► Taking this as red, let's just take this as what the case is going to be, Jason do you

00:54:39 ◼   ► think that slowing down development like this and extending it to a two year development

00:54:45 ◼   ► cycle is a good thing, a possible thing, do you think that this is going to be going on

00:54:50 ◼   ► inside of Apple and do you think it's going to be good for them?

00:54:52 ◼   ► Sounds like they're already doing this, right?

00:54:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:56 ◼   ► I mean, we've seen this, not only things like, we heard about iOS features for iPad

00:55:05 ◼   ► for iOS 10, right?

00:55:09 ◼   ► And then we heard, well, okay, they're not going to ship in 10, but they may ship a little

00:55:13 ◼   ► bit later and they ended up shipping at 11.

00:55:15 ◼   ► So I feel like this has already been going on.

00:55:17 ◼   ► At least we have some examples of Apple sort of having things.

00:55:21 ◼   ► And then recently it's been Apple having things that are announced that they don't ship, like

00:55:26 ◼   ► messages, iMessages in the cloud.

00:55:32 ◼   ► There have been a bunch of others that ship later.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Apple Pay Cash is another example.

00:55:37 ◼   ► And so I think that this is healthy.

00:55:40 ◼   ► I think this is, as Steven Sinofsky, who used to run Windows, wrote a tweet storm that became

00:55:47 ◼   ► a Medium post, he views this as being this giant machine that Apple has had to build

00:55:52 ◼   ► in order to ship consumer software at massive scale.

00:55:56 ◼   ► This is the machine correcting and reacting to the issues that are going on, and then

00:56:03 ◼   ► you adapt and it takes time, but you adapt as you go.

00:56:08 ◼   ► And it seems really prudent to me, doesn't it?

00:56:11 ◼   ► The idea that, yeah, if something's not ready, don't ship it.

00:56:15 ◼   ► And I also think it is a recognition that the world we live in today is very different

00:56:20 ◼   ► in terms of mobile platforms than it was five years ago.

00:56:23 ◼   ► There was a time when it felt like Apple and Google were in an arms race and if one of

00:56:31 ◼   ► them didn't react to the other's moves, it would be all over.

00:56:38 ◼   ► And I feel like that is not true anymore, that Apple is going to be here and Google

00:56:44 ◼   ► is going to be here.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Android is not going anywhere.

00:56:46 ◼   ► iOS is not going anywhere.

00:56:48 ◼   ► So it feels almost like a disarmament, de-escalation sort of thing, that the priority now is not

00:56:59 ◼   ► throw as many new features in as possible to keep up with the other guy.

00:57:03 ◼   ► It is do the things you need to do strategically, plan in advance, make sure that the things

00:57:08 ◼   ► you want to do, like Face ID is a great idea, make sure those happen, but also have the

00:57:15 ◼   ► flexibility to drop things out and push them back because we're no longer on the kind of

00:57:19 ◼   ► footing we used to be, if you're Apple you say this, in terms of having to drive this

00:57:25 ◼   ► stuff in there.

00:57:26 ◼   ► And now our scale has gotten to the point where the bugs that we used to be able to

00:57:31 ◼   ► kind of just whistle and keep moving on about, we can't anymore because we're too big

00:57:37 ◼   ► and as I mentioned earlier when we were talking about furniture finishing, everybody is paying

00:57:42 ◼   ► attention. We're huge. The smallest issue is going to get called out and so your priorities

00:57:49 ◼   ► have to change. And so I think this is healthy. The details of Gherman's story, I mean it

00:57:57 ◼   ► It sounds like that's, you know, he says that's what's going on internally.

00:58:00 ◼   ► We've seen hints of it already and externally we may never hear about it.

00:58:05 ◼   ► Externally it may just still be the same process of here are our features and some of them

00:58:08 ◼   ► don't ship right away and the features that got pushed to iOS 13 or whatever, you know,

00:58:13 ◼   ► we just don't hear about those.

00:58:15 ◼   ► That may have already been the case and will continue to be the case and it will be hard

00:58:19 ◼   ► to actually see it from the outside.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Apple may not change its outside messaging about this at all.

00:58:25 ◼   ► They may not say, "Oh, we're slowing down development and we're working on bug fixes."

00:58:30 ◼   ► They may just not do…

00:58:32 ◼   ► Right?

00:58:33 ◼   ► I mean, there's no reason they have to sell, "Hey, did you know that our software has

00:58:37 ◼   ► bugs and that we're fixing them?"

00:58:39 ◼   ► Like, is that their marketing message?

00:58:41 ◼   ► Probably not.

00:58:42 ◼   ► We'll come back to that in a second, but there's something I wanted to mention.

00:58:45 ◼   ► You said about how, like, iPad software development feels like it's been on a two-year cycle.

00:58:51 ◼   ► I think you're right, but I would expect, especially looking at this Goemon report,

00:58:57 ◼   ► that that wasn't necessarily accepted as a good thing, where maybe now internally in

00:59:03 ◼   ► the company, they're allowing for things to take longer instead of things being late and

00:59:09 ◼   ► held back. I think that things not being completed in time was maybe being frowned upon, where

00:59:15 ◼   ► it now is maybe being a little bit more encouraged as a "let's take time to get this right as

00:59:21 ◼   ► as opposed to rush for the release.

00:59:23 ◼   ► Well, I'm reminded of my reaction to the multitasking features in iOS 11, which was

00:59:30 ◼   ► to feel like, "Oh, this feels really polished.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Like it's very well thought out."

00:59:36 ◼   ► And there are criticisms of the multitasking in iOS 11 that some people have, but it felt

00:59:42 ◼   ► like part of a larger whole and all these different aspects of it.

00:59:50 ◼   ► The multitasking screen, the dock, a bunch of different stuff went into that.

00:59:56 ◼   ► And I think of it now and I think, well, what would it have looked like if they had pushed

01:00:01 ◼   ► and gotten it into iOS 10 or iOS 10.2?

01:00:06 ◼   ► And maybe it would have been the same, but maybe it would have not been.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Maybe it would have been a little more haphazard, a little less kind of really well integrated

01:00:16 ◼   ► and thought out because they were rushing to get it in a particular version. And maybe

01:00:21 ◼   ► that feature benefited from getting kicked all the way back a year, if that's indeed

01:00:26 ◼   ► what happened. That was sort of what we were hearing, but it may or may not be true. So

01:00:32 ◼   ► I'm okay with it. I'm really okay with Apple saying, "We have our priorities, but

01:00:37 ◼   ► we're also not going to ship something that's no good." And I think that's also an acceptance

01:00:43 ◼   ► of this reality like I mentioned that Steven Stonofsky talked about, which is the fact

01:00:48 ◼   ► is Apple standards have to change because of the size. It's not just because of the

01:00:54 ◼   ► scrutiny put on them, although that's part of it, but because of the size of their market

01:00:59 ◼   ► and the size of the platforms that they're supporting. The iOS is enormous and things

01:01:05 ◼   ► that you could get away with nine years ago, seven years ago, you can't get away with

01:01:10 ◼   ► anymore. From this year or this past year, this past 12 months, Apple was taken a hit

01:01:18 ◼   ► publicly, you know, from a perception perspective about software quality. And this, you know,

01:01:25 ◼   ► ranging from root bugs to autocorrect issues to the battery problems to, you know, there's

01:01:34 ◼   ► been a bunch of different things, right, that have occurred. There's been delays on software

01:01:38 ◼   ► things like messages in the cloud and you would expect that one of the reasons

01:01:43 ◼   ► that they're changing their internal practices is because their external

01:01:46 ◼   ► perception has changed and they're starting to get a bit of a reputation

01:01:49 ◼   ► for things being a bit less than perfect. Now the last time that I can really

01:01:57 ◼   ► remember like a big perception kind of on a mainstream perspective of this was

01:02:02 ◼   ► Apple Maps with iOS 6 or whatever it was you know the people will be like oh

01:02:08 ◼   ► "Oh, we're really mad about Apple Maps,"

01:02:10 ◼   ► and people were very upset.

01:02:11 ◼   ► And this obviously led to Forstall

01:02:17 ◼   ► being ousted at the company.

01:02:18 ◼   ► When you think about it, are we at that kind of stage?

01:02:23 ◼   ► Is public perception so bad that some kind of

01:02:26 ◼   ► execution needs to occur?

01:02:29 ◼   ► 'Cause that's kind of what happened to Forstall, right?

01:02:31 ◼   ► - No, no.

01:02:33 ◼   ► - They kind of, I'm just saying,

01:02:34 ◼   ► that's kind of what they did to him.

01:02:36 ◼   ► But, you know, we're not at that stage?

01:02:38 ◼   ► Oh, first off, I don't think a public execution of somebody firing of somebody to solve a

01:02:43 ◼   ► problem is ever, ever solves a problem.

01:02:45 ◼   ► Oh, I'm not saying it solved the problem, but like just from like, they did it, right?

01:02:49 ◼   ► They kind of were like, you know, they had to make a big apology for maps and then Forstall

01:02:53 ◼   ► was ousted.

01:02:54 ◼   ► So, yeah, you, you, I don't believe that that's what happened.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Okay.

01:02:59 ◼   ► But, but, bottom line, I don't think that's what happened.

01:03:01 ◼   ► I think what happened is that they wanted to get rid of Scott Forstall because of lots

01:03:05 ◼   ► of reasons. And then if you believe the reports, he was asked to publicly apologize or whatever

01:03:11 ◼   ► for maps and refused. And at that point they're like, "We really got to get rid of this guy,"

01:03:16 ◼   ► and they got rid of him.

01:03:17 ◼   ► Okay. Maybe my memory is a little bit wrong on that one.

01:03:19 ◼   ► I don't think Apple sacrificed Scott Forrestal in order to – because there was a maps debacle.

01:03:25 ◼   ► I think Apple maybe used the maps thing as the last straw or whatever to just get rid

01:03:31 ◼   ► of a guy they wanted to get rid of. But my read on that is you get rid of somebody like

01:03:35 ◼   ► Scott Forstall because Tim Cook or other people around at the senior levels have decided that

01:03:41 ◼   ► they don't want to work with that guy anymore.

01:03:44 ◼   ► So there's a power move and he's out.

01:03:45 ◼   ► And I think that's what happened.

01:03:48 ◼   ► I don't think this is like that at all.

01:03:53 ◼   ► I think this is stuff that emerges from having a complicated 10-year-old, longer in many

01:03:58 ◼   ► base's code base for your operating system and a huge platform and trying to scale. And

01:04:05 ◼   ► it's a very hard problem, as Sinofsky pointed out, and that they have to be better and they

01:04:12 ◼   ► have to make changes. And the challenge with some of this stuff is we can't see the changes.

01:04:16 ◼   ► We've said it all along, Apple's hardware is way ahead of their software right now,

01:04:21 ◼   ► and they need to do better. So, ultimately, I don't think there's anything we can

01:04:26 ◼   ► can see from the outside that will let us know whether there are particular people at

01:04:30 ◼   ► Apple who are doing a bad job or whether this is more about culture and is a more systemic

01:04:36 ◼   ► problem.

01:04:37 ◼   ► And so, I can't say anything about Craig Federighi.

01:04:39 ◼   ► For all I know, Craig Federighi is the guy who has been trying to get people to change

01:04:43 ◼   ► the way Apple does software for ages and nobody's listened to him.

01:04:48 ◼   ► Or perhaps he's the one who's been standing in the way and has been the impediment and

01:04:53 ◼   ► has had to be told to change.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Or perhaps it's way more complicated and it's somewhere in the middle.

01:04:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:05:00 ◼   ► I honestly don't know.

01:05:01 ◼   ► But my gut feeling is it's a huge organization and probably a lot of it is cultural.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Changing cultures is hard.

01:05:10 ◼   ► As somebody who had to change a print magazine culture and try to drag them into the web,

01:05:17 ◼   ► even when you get everybody to agree, everybody agrees and then they go back to their desk

01:05:21 ◼   ► and proceed to do what they always did without changing anything.

01:05:25 ◼   ► That is human nature.

01:05:26 ◼   ► So I think – and that was just a small magazine staff.

01:05:30 ◼   ► This is an enormous software effort.

01:05:31 ◼   ► It's a huge deal.

01:05:32 ◼   ► And so that's my gut feeling about this is that they're trying to change the culture.

01:05:37 ◼   ► They're trying to find ways to do things differently so that they can alter how they

01:05:42 ◼   ► put their software together in order to reduce some of the problems that everybody who's

01:05:50 ◼   ► out here using their software has noticed.

01:05:51 ◼   ► I'd just like to state for the record that I don't think that Craig Federighi should

01:05:56 ◼   ► be publicly fired. I'm merely asking the questions today. Because I see people talk

01:06:02 ◼   ► about this a lot, right? That like, because of these bug problems, that Tim Cook needs

01:06:09 ◼   ► to resign, or Craig Federighi needs to leave, or Eddy Cue needs to be fired. We spoke about

01:06:16 ◼   ► this a while ago on Connected, about like, "Oh, should Eddy Cue be fired because of

01:06:20 ◼   ► X and the answer that we came to was no, that's silly, right? Like, it's not how this stuff

01:06:25 ◼   ► works.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Exactly right. But people, you know, it's something that happens in the press and with

01:06:30 ◼   ► fans of things. It happens in sports too. It's the same way. It happens in lots of

01:06:34 ◼   ► other areas. I would, my advice to anybody out there who reads anybody who says the solution

01:06:39 ◼   ► to this is this person that needs to be fired and the person saying it has no, you know,

01:06:44 ◼   ► doesn't actually work at that company and doesn't know anything about them is I wouldn't

01:06:48 ◼   ► attention to it because that's just somebody reacting emotionally from a position of zero

01:06:54 ◼   ► knowledge and they're just, you know, you always find, "Well, I only know the names

01:06:59 ◼   ► of four people at Apple and this is the name of the person who's attached to software

01:07:04 ◼   ► and I have a bug that makes me angry so he should be fired."

01:07:06 ◼   ► But the reason that I brought up Scott Forstall in that question is I think that that is what

01:07:13 ◼   ► what people point to, right? That they're like, "Well, they did it before…" You

01:07:18 ◼   ► know, like, I think that is an example that people use.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Tim Cynova And I think that's not accurate. I think

01:07:24 ◼   ► that… Here's the parallel I would make, which is I get the sense that Forstall had

01:07:29 ◼   ► a… did not fit what he believed was not a cultural fit for what a bunch of other leaders

01:07:35 ◼   ► at Apple believed.

01:07:36 ◼   ► Geoff - After Steve Jobs.

01:07:37 ◼   ► Tim Cynova And so… after Steve Jobs died. So they made

01:07:39 ◼   ► the change. So what I would say about somebody like Craig Federighi, and this is just completely

01:07:44 ◼   ► theoretical is, if Apple decided culturally that Craig Federighi was the impediment to

01:07:53 ◼   ► Apple changing its approach with software and making it better in this way, that he

01:07:59 ◼   ► believed it was the wrong approach and pushed back on it, and everybody else who had power

01:08:03 ◼   ► within Apple believed it was the right approach, then he would leave, right? He would either

01:08:07 ◼   ► leave or he would be fired because he would be standing in the way of what they wanted

01:08:13 ◼   ► to do. But there's no evidence that that's true, right? Like, my guess is that he – it's

01:08:19 ◼   ► more likely that he either is supportive of this or realizes that the way that they thought

01:08:28 ◼   ► they should do software isn't working and they need to make changes, which is what I

01:08:32 ◼   ► think any good manager should be doing, is always paying attention to what they're

01:08:37 ◼   ► doing and finding out how can we do this better.

01:08:39 ◼   ► So that's my gut feeling about this is that I think it's rare that you get in a situation

01:08:44 ◼   ► where somebody just stands up and says, "No, you'll have to fire me."

01:08:52 ◼   ► More likely it's, you know, is this person a cultural fit or is this person working against

01:08:55 ◼   ► us?

01:08:56 ◼   ► Or there's a power struggle of some kind.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And I don't get any sense of that now.

01:09:00 ◼   ► I get the sense that Apple Software Organization is recognizing, like Steven Sinofsky says,

01:09:05 ◼   ► there are issues and that they have to change huge processes in order to be better.

01:09:09 ◼   ► So Mark Gurman's article is very good. It's almost classic Mark Gurman reporting because

01:09:15 ◼   ► there's a lot of really interesting little details including pretty detailed lists of

01:09:20 ◼   ► what's in and what's out for iOS 12 and what might be held off to iOS 13. So I recommend

01:09:26 ◼   ► that people go read the article but there was one part that I wanted to just get your

01:09:30 ◼   ► take on, which is that Mark Gurman reports that new iPad features, including multiple

01:09:36 ◼   ► instances of applications running side by side, will be held off now until 2019 to make

01:09:42 ◼   ► sure that it's done right. And I wanted to see what your opinion of that was.

01:09:46 ◼   ► Well, this is the classic thing with stories like this, and this is what I've been saying

01:09:51 ◼   ► all along about human nature, which is we all want Apple to slow down and not do as

01:09:57 ◼   ► many new features in order to not have bugs and unreliability.

01:10:01 ◼   ► We also want new features all the time though, don't we?

01:10:04 ◼   ► But we want new features, absolutely.

01:10:08 ◼   ► And I will guarantee you that the same people who write screaming, panicky stories about

01:10:14 ◼   ► how Apple software quality is terrible and look at this latest bug and all of that will

01:10:21 ◼   ► write stories saying when iOS 12 is announced saying "Yawn, Apple announces boring operating

01:10:28 ◼   ► system update with no good new features." Same people will say the same things. And

01:10:33 ◼   ► those are contrary, right? Those you can't actually do both.

01:10:36 ◼   ► I think as a user of Apple's products, it's okay to want both. I think it's okay to want

01:10:44 ◼   ► it, but I also think that maybe you just don't get upset if one goes awry for a bit. I think

01:10:50 ◼   ► it's fine. Because they've set our expectations at this point, right? Like of new whiz-bang

01:10:56 ◼   ► things every single year and if that slows down a little bit, right? Like I think that

01:11:01 ◼   ► it's okay for people to be like, "Oh man, it's not as good as it used to be." But to

01:11:05 ◼   ► kind of then just try and get used to it is my feeling on this.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, people want all sorts of things they can't have. So this is the truth of it.

01:11:17 ◼   ► It's okay to want everything and not pay for anything, but in reality you can't.

01:11:23 ◼   ► So I'm totally fine if there's going to be really great iPad features next year.

01:11:30 ◼   ► So that means that at that point history will then show every two years you get really good

01:11:35 ◼   ► iPad features.

01:11:37 ◼   ► The only thing that I want from iOS 12 then is something that I didn't feel like we got

01:11:43 ◼   ► in iOS 10 was refinement and slight improvements to the stuff introduced in iOS 11. So I would

01:11:52 ◼   ► like to see that we don't just wait two years for everything iPad, that they will make some

01:11:58 ◼   ► tweaks maybe in some polish and some refinement to what we got last year, this year, and then

01:12:04 ◼   ► big new features the year after that.

01:12:05 ◼   ► I think that's actually one of the strongest arguments about Apple slowing down its software

01:12:09 ◼   ► process a little bit is if you observe what Apple does, a lot of what it does

01:12:15 ◼   ► with software is throw out a big new thing and then walk away for a long time

01:12:20 ◼   ► and then make major changes. Like it seems like in a lot of cases Apple's

01:12:26 ◼   ► development is, again I can't say what the inside is actually like, but it sure

01:12:30 ◼   ► seems like the incentive is placed on the big splash and not on incremental

01:12:38 ◼   ► change. Now, that's not universal. Every group is different because clearly the people working

01:12:42 ◼   ► on Logic and Final Cut are doing incremental change. Like, they keep releasing new versions

01:12:48 ◼   ► with bug fixes and refinements throughout the year, and it's great. But there are other

01:12:53 ◼   ► apps that we all know or segments of the system where it ships and then literally nothing

01:12:59 ◼   ► changes for two years. And I would much rather honestly Apple take a little more time so

01:13:05 ◼   ► so that they can ship something and then refine it a little bit. And that's less exciting

01:13:10 ◼   ► than a brand new feature. But having a feature that worked okay for six months suddenly work

01:13:15 ◼   ► great for the next year, that's good. So I would endorse that too. And that's, again,

01:13:22 ◼   ► going to be less exciting than a whizzy new feature, but maybe makes you happier about

01:13:26 ◼   ► using your Apple product.

01:13:29 ◼   ► So I think that it's going to be telling this year. I'm interested to see how the next couple

01:13:35 ◼   ► of years go. What I would honestly like to see is a kind of flip flop between iPhone

01:13:40 ◼   ► and iPad and that's kind of a way that you do your two year. iPhone, iPad, iPhone, iPad

01:13:46 ◼   ► year over year. That's what I would love to see as an iPad user. I'm keen to see how this

01:13:51 ◼   ► goes. There will always be new features and I guess it's just about how they get implemented

01:13:57 ◼   ► and refine over time and that's how we'll see if there is any truth to this, I guess,

01:14:01 ◼   ► or if we'll see how it actually performs. Because there is always the risk that the

01:14:05 ◼   ► exact same thing that happens now will happen then, but it's on a two-year cycle instead

01:14:11 ◼   ► of a one-year cycle. It's still a cycle and do you end up in time with the exact same

01:14:17 ◼   ► problems? And it's only a short-term fix. We'll wait and see.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Yeah, and we may never know. I mean, that's the truth of it is we may never... If Apple

01:14:25 ◼   ► suddenly has fewer bugs, did they solve it? Or did they get lucky and they were just unlucky

01:14:32 ◼   ► before? Like if our favorite feature isn't included, would it have been or would it not

01:14:37 ◼   ► have been? We won't know, other than maybe secret Mark Gurman sources telling us things.

01:14:44 ◼   ► And so, and it will take time. So it's frustrating for people who want immediate answers about,

01:14:50 ◼   ► Well, did it happen? Did they win? Did we lose? What happened? We may not know.

01:14:54 ◼   ► But yeah, go read Komen's Report. There's some really interesting little tidbits in

01:15:00 ◼   ► there.

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01:16:52 ◼   ► All right, Mr. Jason Snell, it's time for #AskUpgrade. So our first question is from

01:16:59 ◼   ► Andrew. Andrew wants to know how do you avoid talking over each other on Skype when recording

01:17:04 ◼   ► a podcast? So I've got a little secret for you Andrew.

01:17:07 ◼   ► It's a good question Andrew.

01:17:08 ◼   ► We do it constantly. Oh you just did it to me then. This is what the show would sound

01:17:12 ◼   ► like if I didn't edit it. We edit those out. So when me and Jason talk over each other

01:17:17 ◼   ► we edit it out. Me and Jason are particularly bad at this for two reasons. One reason is

01:17:25 ◼   ► there is a bigger delay in Skype between me and Jason because of how far we are away from

01:17:30 ◼   ► each other. So there's more of a delay. Jason is consistently talking over me now just to

01:17:35 ◼   ► give you that full experience. The other thing is me and Jason both suffer from the editor's

01:17:43 ◼   ► dilemma in that we are both editors of the shows that we produce. So if we are speaking

01:17:53 ◼   ► and the other person starts speaking, what will typically happen is we both complete

01:17:57 ◼   ► our entire sentences knowing that the editor will fix it. Is that fair to say? I know I

01:18:03 ◼   ► do this and I feel like you probably do the same, right? We just finish the points.

01:18:07 ◼   ► I think that happens. A lot of times what happens is that I've got one more point

01:18:11 ◼   ► to make and because there's a little bit of a lag and you are, you know, it's your

01:18:15 ◼   ► job on this podcast to sort of move us on to the next topic. I think the most common

01:18:19 ◼   ► one is that you start doing a transition to the next topic and I have one last thing to

01:18:23 ◼   ► say and by the time I get that out you've already started talking and then you have

01:18:28 ◼   ► to stop and that happens a lot and that has to do with the delay and also just the way

01:18:32 ◼   ► it's structured. You can't see me raising my hand or something like that and that all

01:18:37 ◼   ► just gets taken out. But yes, it does happen too that I was listening to a director talking

01:18:44 ◼   ► about the difference between directing and editing and what they said was that there's

01:18:48 ◼   ► There's none.

01:18:49 ◼   ► And that the idea is that when you're shooting, you are thinking about how you, what you shoot

01:18:53 ◼   ► gets edited.

01:18:56 ◼   ► And that is true, right?

01:18:59 ◼   ► And so when we do podcasts, I think there's, to a certain degree, there's that too, because

01:19:02 ◼   ► we know how it will come out in the end.

01:19:05 ◼   ► And so you just roll with it.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And I find that actually when we're recording podcasts a lot with other people where they

01:19:12 ◼   ► like, they stop and then apologize and then say, "Well, what I was going to say is…"

01:19:17 ◼   ► and then they continue. And I can tell when it's somebody who has a lot of experience

01:19:21 ◼   ► and probably editing podcasts as well because they know not to do that because it'll just

01:19:28 ◼   ► get edited out. It's fine. Just keep going.

01:19:32 ◼   ► Chris Willis The next question comes from Robin. With series

01:19:36 ◼   ► apparent AI shortcomings surfacing again, for how long do you think Apple will keep

01:19:42 ◼   ► adding small improvements to Siri before going for a major overhaul from the ground up. Is

01:19:51 ◼   ► that even a realistic scenario to be hoping for at this point? So do you think that they're

01:19:56 ◼   ► going to keep adding incremental improvements to Siri year on year, or do you think at some

01:20:01 ◼   ► point they're just going to rebuild it?

01:20:05 ◼   ► I hate to give this answer, but I don't know enough about how Siri is built to answer it.

01:20:10 ◼   ► I think Apple does improve Siri incrementally, but unless I knew how it was made, I can't

01:20:17 ◼   ► say whether the best thing for them is going to be to do a tear down and an overhaul or

01:20:23 ◼   ► whether that is unrealistic and that the way they are going to do all Siri improvements

01:20:28 ◼   ► is by swapping in and out little blocks.

01:20:31 ◼   ► The beauty of Siri as a service is it's in the cloud.

01:20:36 ◼   ► They can just change it all the time and it should be able to get better all the time.

01:20:40 ◼   ► What Amazon does is like have you sign up for a newsletter and every week they tell you what they've added to Alexa.

01:20:46 ◼   ► And Apple doesn't do that with Siri. So they don't communicate what's going on with Siri as much.

01:20:53 ◼   ► But I hope they just keep iterating. I hope they just keep on cranking out new versions with new improvements all the time.

01:21:01 ◼   ► That's what I want to see. And then just have Siri get better.

01:21:04 ◼   ► So, next question from Kyle.

01:21:08 ◼   ► How do you decide between taking notes on your iPad with your Apple Pencil and using

01:21:12 ◼   ► a real pen and notebook?

01:21:14 ◼   ► I like the idea of a nice pen and paper, but also the idea of having everything saved and

01:21:18 ◼   ► synced digitally.

01:21:19 ◼   ► So I'm just going to take this one, Jason.

01:21:21 ◼   ► Yeah, this one's you.

01:21:23 ◼   ► Yep.

01:21:24 ◼   ► So my feeling is just about, honestly, like, do I need this in other places?

01:21:29 ◼   ► So if I'm, for example, taking a call where I feel like I'm going to need some notes that

01:21:34 ◼   ► I might want to get to later, I will use my Apple Pencil because then I use an app called

01:21:39 ◼   ► Notability for this mostly and then it will be on my iPhone, it will be on my other iPads,

01:21:44 ◼   ► it's easy to get to. If I'm just kind of on a call which is not that important or I'm

01:21:48 ◼   ► just kind of taking some quick notes for something or scribbling something or just trying to

01:21:52 ◼   ► get some thoughts kind of crystallised then I'll mostly use pen and paper for that because

01:21:57 ◼   ► it's not that important for me to get to that data later on. So it's purely a case of do

01:22:02 ◼   ► Do I think I'm going to need this again?

01:22:05 ◼   ► And if the answer is yes, then I will use my Apple Pencil for that.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Okay, Dave asks, "Do you think sound engineers will craft specific mixes for the HomePod

01:22:14 ◼   ► to maximize the impact of its spatial processing?"

01:22:19 ◼   ► My gut answer is I sure hope not.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Why is that?

01:22:24 ◼   ► Why is that?

01:22:25 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know.

01:22:26 ◼   ► Well, first off, the HomePod is doing all that processing.

01:22:32 ◼   ► So I guess what you're really saying is do you keep playing your music on the HomePod

01:22:38 ◼   ► until it sounds really good and then you release it for that?

01:22:41 ◼   ► But it's mono and does it…

01:22:44 ◼   ► Bottom line is if the HomePod is a wildly successful product and it is the biggest way

01:22:49 ◼   ► that everybody listens to music in their homes, then maybe.

01:22:53 ◼   ► But I don't think that's going to happen.

01:22:55 ◼   ► It would need to be successful enough for people to start auditioning their music on

01:22:58 ◼   ► a HomePod to make sure it also sounds good on HomePod, but I don't think that's going

01:23:03 ◼   ► to happen.

01:23:04 ◼   ► And the problem is it's software, so Apple can change how the HomePod processes audio

01:23:10 ◼   ► whenever it wants with software updates.

01:23:13 ◼   ► So I don't think it would be wise either, but I don't think it will happen.

01:23:20 ◼   ► And Matthew asked, "Why do you think that HomePod can't make FaceTime audio calls?"

01:23:25 ◼   ► Well, it kind of can, right?

01:23:27 ◼   ► Like you just have to start them on your phone first.

01:23:30 ◼   ► Am I right in that?

01:23:31 ◼   ► Yeah, you can't initiate calls from, of any kind, from the HomePod, which I don't understand

01:23:38 ◼   ► why that's true.

01:23:39 ◼   ► If you can have it do messages, but you can't initiate calls.

01:23:42 ◼   ► I could do that on my iPad.

01:23:44 ◼   ► Like I can make FaceTime calls or phone calls I should say from my iPad because it just

01:23:51 ◼   ► uses the phone.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Yes, and from my Mac.

01:23:53 ◼   ► I can do that from my Mac too so why not from the HomePod.

01:23:55 ◼   ► I guess maybe just not ready or maybe they are holding that because they want to have

01:24:01 ◼   ► that when the HomePod is more capable of understanding different people with different identities

01:24:06 ◼   ► if they're working on something for that with different Apple IDs.

01:24:09 ◼   ► But it's frustrating the fact that you've got some data that's coming from the phone

01:24:13 ◼   ► and requires you to have your phone present, but then something like this. It's what

01:24:17 ◼   ► we said last week, which is I kind of want the HomePod to act like my phone does in my

01:24:23 ◼   ► car and it doesn't. There are a lot of these things that it just won't do, like kicking

01:24:28 ◼   ► off a call hands-free.

01:24:32 ◼   ► And lastly today, Kapila wants to know, "What are your favorite things to eat that have

01:24:36 ◼   ► ginger in them?"

01:24:37 ◼   ► I like this question. This is so specific. I enjoyed it. So Jason, what do you like to

01:24:42 ◼   ► eat that has ginger in it? Well, I like everything with ginger in it,

01:24:47 ◼   ► so I find it very hard to choose. The things I like most with ginger in them are ginger.

01:24:55 ◼   ► So candy ginger, pickled ginger. I like both of those. Those are amazing. I like ginger

01:25:02 ◼   ► beer and ginger ale. I like ginger cookies. I like ginger, I don't even know. I like it

01:25:09 ◼   ► in everything. I basically like it in everything. So I don't know if I could even pick a thing.

01:25:14 ◼   ► I like it. There's a marinade that we make that has ground ginger in it. At Christmas

01:25:20 ◼   ► I make ginger cookies and gingerbread and ginger cake and things like that. It's just

01:25:26 ◼   ► the best. I love it.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I picked two very specific things that are my favorite things to eat that have ginger

01:25:31 ◼   ► in them. I love ginger like you do. I don't know if it's as much, but everything that

01:25:36 ◼   ► you listed. I love all of those things. But my two favorite things of GingerIn are the

01:25:41 ◼   ► ginger molasses cookie that you can get from Blue Bottle.

01:25:44 ◼   ► Right, which I make every holiday. Yeah, you make them too. They are wonderful.

01:25:50 ◼   ► There is nothing in this world so simple that I love more than getting a New Orleans coffee

01:25:55 ◼   ► from Blue Bottle whenever I'm in New York or San Francisco. And I believe they are opening

01:26:00 ◼   ► one in San Jose. I hope that it's open before WWDC. I'm very happy. Even though social policy

01:26:04 ◼   ► It was great.

01:26:05 ◼   ► I do love these things.

01:26:06 ◼   ► So it's a New Orleans coffee, which is their ice coffee, with the ginger molasses cookie

01:26:11 ◼   ► from Blue Bottle.

01:26:12 ◼   ► They're fantastic.

01:26:13 ◼   ► My other thing is chicken teriyaki.

01:26:14 ◼   ► I make a very good chicken teriyaki and ginger is one of the key components for the teriyaki

01:26:19 ◼   ► sauce.

01:26:20 ◼   ► So there you go.

01:26:21 ◼   ► Yes.

01:26:22 ◼   ► If I had to pick, it would be – and again, this is not something with ginger in them.

01:26:25 ◼   ► It would be candied ginger and pickled ginger.

01:26:27 ◼   ► I just would eat those and do eat those just straight up.

01:26:32 ◼   ► Mm, good stuff.

01:26:34 ◼   ► So that's it. If you want to send in questions for us at the end of the show, you can always

01:26:38 ◼   ► use the hashtag #askupgrade for that. With the exception of Capilo's question, as you

01:26:43 ◼   ► can tell, askupgrade questions tend to be more technical, but every now and then I like

01:26:46 ◼   ► to end on a food question, typically because we record this show at my dinner time. So

01:26:52 ◼   ► I get really hungry and I figure that, you know, I like to end on some food questions

01:26:56 ◼   ► to go set me up to make myself something to eat. So that's that. If you want to find our

01:27:01 ◼   ► show notes for this week you can go to relay.fm/upgrades/181. Thanks again to PDFpens, Squarespace and Linode

01:27:08 ◼   ► for their support of this show. You can find Jason's work at sixcolors.com and the incomparable.com

01:27:13 ◼   ► for his pop culture podcasts and Jason hosts many shows about tech and creativity and working

01:27:19 ◼   ► and space at relay.fm. You can go to relay.fm/shows where you can find a list of all of the great

01:27:25 ◼   ► products that we have available to you, including my new show Playing for Fun, which I would

01:27:31 ◼   ► really love if you could check out. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye,

01:27:36 ◼   ► Jason Snow.

01:27:37 ◼   ► Goodbye, Myke Hurley.

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