Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 170.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Balance Open, Away, and Encapsula.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley.

00:00:18 ◼   ► I am joined by Jason Snell.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hello, Myke Hurley.

00:00:22 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:23 ◼   ► I'm very well, Mr.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Jason Snell.

00:00:24 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:25 ◼   ► Uh, well, it's a kind of a complicated story,

00:00:29 ◼   ► but uh... Jason nobody cares about it if it's complicated no one cares

00:00:33 ◼   ► especially because it's time for #SnailTalk

00:00:37 ◼   ► this week's snail talk question comes from Matthias and Matthias asks

00:00:40 ◼   ► what Apple watch watch face do you use

00:00:44 ◼   ► utility I still use utility which one is the utility face can you

00:00:50 ◼   ► describe it utility is the one that looks like my

00:00:53 ◼   ► old analog watch it's uh it's got the um it's got numbers and

00:00:58 ◼   ► hands on it. Does it have four complication spaces? It's got top left, top right, full

00:01:06 ◼   ► bottom and it's got the little tiny room for the date and the day inside the circle. And

00:01:12 ◼   ► it is actually, I had two Swiss Army brand watches that I wore before I got the Pebble,

00:01:19 ◼   ► before I got this. I found the Pebble the other day, more on that in a bit. And anyway,

00:01:26 ◼   ► I like it because it lets me drop those complications on there and it reminds me of my old watch

00:01:29 ◼   ► face and that's pretty good. I also have the Explorer face active and that's the one that

00:01:36 ◼   ► comes with the cellular watch. That's the one that has dots on it to tell you when you're

00:01:42 ◼   ► on the cellular network. And I will sometimes when I remember I'll swipe to that and that's

00:01:45 ◼   ► got like a phone button and activity button and it's sort of a I'm roaming around face.

00:01:50 ◼   ► So sometimes I will swipe to that when I'm out and about and thinking about it.

00:01:55 ◼   ► I have to say, I am disappointed in the evolution of watch faces.

00:02:04 ◼   ► I was very excited with the initial batch of watch faces and I thought, "Well, we'll

00:02:07 ◼   ► see where they go from here."

00:02:08 ◼   ► Whether they're third-party faces or not, we'll see where Apple takes this, and different

00:02:12 ◼   ► variations and more flexibility and all those things.

00:02:15 ◼   ► And that's basically not happened, which is really super disappointing.

00:02:18 ◼   ► They have added some animated faces that I'm never going to use.

00:02:22 ◼   ► I'm sorry Buzz Lightyear.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Never going to do that.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Never going to use a Mickey Mouse watch, which was there at the beginning, Minnie Mouse,

00:02:30 ◼   ► whatever.

00:02:31 ◼   ► It's, those are fine, and I don't dispute them, but like, I am a little frustrated that

00:02:35 ◼   ► there isn't more kind of flexibility in, and ability to move things around and add different

00:02:43 ◼   ► complications and stuff on the other watch faces, or variations on those faces.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Don't forget kaleidoscope.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Yeah, the fact that Explorer exists kills me because Explorer looks essentially the same as Utility.

00:02:55 ◼   ► It's slightly different, it's not as attractive, but it's close, it's in the ballpark.

00:02:59 ◼   ► And so Explorer has the little cellular dots in the background, but Utility doesn't. Why is that? Why can't... why?

00:03:07 ◼   ► I don't know, it's really disappointing. But anyway, for the most part, I am just using Utility.

00:03:13 ◼   ► I used a Siri watch face.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Oh really? I can't do that. It doesn't provide anything valuable for me.

00:03:23 ◼   ► It does for me. I like it. I wish it could do more and I hope that it will and I believe

00:03:28 ◼   ► that it will. I also wish I had space for one more complication. If I had space for

00:03:32 ◼   ► one more complication, this would be the perfect watch face for me. I like it. It gives me

00:03:37 ◼   ► information about stuff that's going on. And it also does a good job of like, it shows

00:03:41 ◼   ► me some little photo memories every day. I actually really like the Siri watch face.

00:03:45 ◼   ► I've been a big fan of it. I tried it out because I just wanted to see and then I never

00:03:50 ◼   ► changed. And I like it a lot.

00:03:53 ◼   ► I like that. I like having the hands. Something that I've always liked on. I have always liked

00:04:00 ◼   ► analog hands on digital watches. I think that's a hilarious idea and I think it's cool and

00:04:06 ◼   ► fun and I don't know why but I always have. I had a Casio digital watch at one point that

00:04:12 ◼   ► had little LCD hands that would move or move, light up as they went around and I thought

00:04:20 ◼   ► that was pretty cool. So I gravitate toward those but the Siri face just the data I feel

00:04:26 ◼   ► like it's not geared for somebody who with the data set that I've got apparently and

00:04:32 ◼   ► I keep seeing like calendar items that I don't care about and all that so I've just sort

00:04:35 ◼   ► of given it up.

00:04:36 ◼   ► care about your calendar items? Because the calendar items tend to be things...

00:04:42 ◼   ► okay this is a little sidebar. I have all-day events on my calendar sometimes

00:04:47 ◼   ► and boy things are really bad at interpreting those. Amazon is the worst.

00:04:52 ◼   ► My Echo Show in the in the kitchen just keeps saying "oh here's this event

00:04:59 ◼   ► at 12 a.m. that's still going on and going on all day" and it's like no it's

00:05:03 ◼   ► an all-day event. It's just a banner in the calendar app. Just let it be. And I find similar

00:05:09 ◼   ► things with a Siri watch face where it's like, I don't care about the... Because I'm not

00:05:13 ◼   ► rushing from place to place. I don't need my watch to remind me, "Oh, you've got a thing

00:05:16 ◼   ► at three and then another thing at four." That, I rarely have things like that. And

00:05:20 ◼   ► so instead it picks up this thing and like I'm looking at my watch all day telling me

00:05:25 ◼   ► you have a podcast at 7.30 PM. I don't care that I have a podcast at 7.30 PM. Tell me

00:05:30 ◼   ► at 7.30. And it just doesn't work for me. I get why, I am not the use case for it, I

00:05:36 ◼   ► guess is what I'm saying. But I don't find value in the stuff that it shows me there.

00:05:40 ◼   ► And therefore it's just clutter. It feels like, it's not the same as something like

00:05:45 ◼   ► with an ad banner at the bottom, like an app with an ad banner at the bottom, but it gives

00:05:49 ◼   ► the same effect to me, which is there's junk on it that I don't care about, that it's trying

00:05:54 ◼   ► to push at me, and I don't want to see it. And that's why I don't use the Siri face.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Okay. I mean, I understand, but for me, I have a computer on my wrist. I want it to

00:06:03 ◼   ► be the most computery that it can be, and I feel like Siri watch face is the most computery

00:06:08 ◼   ► that it can be. They should make like a command line watch

00:06:11 ◼   ► face. Yeah, just...

00:06:12 ◼   ► That just keeps on like doing a readout of the current time, and there's a little prompt

00:06:18 ◼   ► and you can, yeah. Bash.

00:06:19 ◼   ► That'd be super computery. Pound pound hash sign. Thank you so much to

00:06:24 ◼   ► to

00:06:37 ◼   ► Grady's voting is still open. It is open until the 14th of December. We have had hundreds

00:06:44 ◼   ► of submissions so far. I am very surprised at the sheer amount of submissions that we've

00:06:48 ◼   ► had and I found a relatively rudimentary but way that I'm happy with method of calculating

00:06:55 ◼   ► the responses because obviously this is an all text entry voting system which makes it

00:07:00 ◼   ► a little bit more tricky actually exponentially more tricky when it comes to tallying up the

00:07:06 ◼   ► the votes but I've been doing some spreadsheet work Jason and I think I have an option. So

00:07:11 ◼   ► I'll be able to collate some of these answers for us to give us rough estimations of the

00:07:15 ◼   ► most popular items. So that's going to be very useful for us when it comes to the upgradees.

00:07:20 ◼   ► I've also been starting to write down my personal nominations Jason. I'm pulling in my list

00:07:25 ◼   ► for the upgradees now. Upgradees fever is, we're actually in the upgradees season now.

00:07:31 ◼   ► This is a new thing. All of December is the upgrade season. We are deep within it.

00:07:35 ◼   ► culminating on the first of January with the release of the episode.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Exactly. So if you would like to take part in the upgrade-ies, the voting form will be

00:07:43 ◼   ► in the show notes. Please go complete it. You don't have to fill in every category.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Most people haven't, and that's great. Just fill in the things that you like, and it will

00:07:51 ◼   ► help us when it comes to awarding, I should say, our awards later on. Well, actually,

00:08:00 ◼   ► the beginning of next year. So I'm very excited about that.

00:08:04 ◼   ► There is a holiday tradition that has been accidentally created but now exists as a real

00:08:09 ◼   ► thing.

00:08:10 ◼   ► As so many traditions are.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Where I record a standalone Myke at the Movies episode with Tiffany Ahmet and this year we

00:08:19 ◼   ► discussed Empire Records which was one of Tiff's favorite movies.

00:08:23 ◼   ► I think I'm going to pick the next one we decided.

00:08:26 ◼   ► So you can go listen to that.

00:08:28 ◼   ► This is just yet another reason to subscribe to The Incomparable's Myke at the Movies feed

00:08:33 ◼   ► which is at the incomparable dot com slash mike.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Because not only do you get stand alone cut outs of every single mike at the movie segment

00:08:42 ◼   ► which includes everything on upgrade and analog, but also the occasional stand alone episode.

00:08:48 ◼   ► This is one of them.

00:08:49 ◼   ► So if you want to hear me and Tiff talk about Empire Records, you can do that.

00:08:53 ◼   ► You're coming up to the end of Firefly now.

00:08:55 ◼   ► We're actually, as we're recording this episode, tomorrow, me and Casey will be talking about

00:09:01 ◼   ► the movie, and then we're done. We have plans for something else, but I don't know if we're

00:09:05 ◼   ► going to need your help on that. But that's what we'll see. Everyone will see. We have

00:09:11 ◼   ► plans, but it's not media. It's not popular media is what we're going to do afterwards.

00:09:17 ◼   ► We have a little plan.

00:09:18 ◼   ► All right, that's nice.

00:09:21 ◼   ► So last, I think it was last year, there was a runner-up upgradey, or like an upgradey

00:09:28 ◼   ► runner-up was a Mac app by Marco Arment called Forecast. The only reason we didn't give

00:09:35 ◼   ► Forecast the upgradey for new Mac app last year was because it wasn't available to the

00:09:41 ◼   ► public. I felt like it wasn't fair, even though it was mine and your favourite new Mac app,

00:09:48 ◼   ► we couldn't really give an award to something that nobody could use. And I think we made

00:09:54 ◼   ► the right decision because almost a year later this app has finally made it out to the public.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And forecast is a podcast MP3 encoder with the ability to add in chapters and metadata.

00:10:09 ◼   ► If you are a podcast producer, I thoroughly recommend using forecast. Maybe more than

00:10:15 ◼   ► anything else, how fast it encodes MP3 files and why is that Jason?

00:10:20 ◼   ► Oh boy, it's because Marco, Marco Armit doesn't like software that doesn't use all the cores

00:10:30 ◼   ► of your computer.

00:10:31 ◼   ► That's basically it.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And I understand why.

00:10:34 ◼   ► If you have one of these like iStat menus or something like that where you can see how

00:10:38 ◼   ► your computer cores are being used, you'll find that so many things that you do that

00:10:44 ◼   ► are processor intensive are single threaded, which means they're just running on one core.

00:10:51 ◼   ► And so, yeah, they can run on the core that is the sleepiest and everything else can be

00:10:56 ◼   ► running on the other core and it gives you some boost in performance. So you have two

00:10:59 ◼   ► things going at once that can do that. But if you're doing something that takes like,

00:11:03 ◼   ► it's gonna take five minutes to do this thing or six minutes to do this thing and you sit

00:11:08 ◼   ► there for six minutes and you've got four cores, your mind says, I could do this in

00:11:14 ◼   ► a quarter of the time if it used all four cores. So why am I wasting my time? And then,

00:11:19 ◼   ► you know, you multiply that over all the time you do this thing and you're like, I'm sitting

00:11:22 ◼   ► here waiting for this thing to conclude for like five hours a year, 10 hours a year. That's

00:11:27 ◼   ► stupid. Marco is a software developer, so he can do something about it, which is parallelize

00:11:31 ◼   ► stuff. And so he took the lame MP3 encoder and built a system that basically dispatches

00:11:40 ◼   ► sections of your podcast audio to different iterations of LAME running on different cores

00:11:47 ◼   ► of your max processor. And as a result, it encodes much faster. That's not a feature

00:11:54 ◼   ► of the base encoder, it runs in a single. So Marco did the work to parallelize it basically.

00:12:00 ◼   ► And then on top of that, the funniest trick of all, which I think comes from the fact

00:12:06 ◼   ► that Marco thinks about a lot of this stuff from a kind of like behind the scenes almost

00:12:09 ◼   ► command line kind of perspective is when he wrote this Mac app, which is his first Mac

00:12:14 ◼   ► app, basically. On a standard app, you'd do all the work and then you'd press the button

00:12:20 ◼   ► and watch as it encoded, and that's not what happens on forecast. When you drag your file

00:12:25 ◼   ► in to the forecast window, it just starts encoding it in the background while you're

00:12:29 ◼   ► doing all the work of filling in the tags and all of that. And so generally, by the

00:12:34 ◼   ► the time you're done doing all the metadata, your encode time is zero because it already

00:12:40 ◼   ► did it. It did it in the background. Even if it's like a two hour long file, it's chopped

00:12:47 ◼   ► it up, sent it to all the cores and gotten it back. And now all you do is press save

00:12:51 ◼   ► and tell it where to save it and it's done.

00:12:54 ◼   ► My favorite thing about forecast is the auto filling that it does. As a person who produces

00:13:00 ◼   ► multiple shows, the fact that forecast, if you use a relatively similar file, like a

00:13:06 ◼   ► naming structure for your files, which I think most people tend to do. So like for example,

00:13:11 ◼   ► when I export the WAV file from Logic that has all the chapters in, because that's one

00:13:16 ◼   ► of the ways you can do it, one of the great things I love, you add all of the chapters

00:13:19 ◼   ► into the Logic project, which is what Logic calls as markers, so you add them into the

00:13:24 ◼   ► actual file in Logic, you export as a WAV file and it carries that data through, but

00:13:28 ◼   ► then when I open the application, when I open a forecast and put the upgrade file in, it

00:13:34 ◼   ► knows all the chapters are prefilled. But because I will call this one upgrade170, it

00:13:39 ◼   ► knows its upgrade, so it prefills the title, it prefills the episode number, it adds the

00:13:45 ◼   ► upgrade artwork in, and then any previously used chapter name, like #snailtalk and #askupgrade,

00:13:52 ◼   ► it prefills those with the artwork there too. And if I used links, then it would do that.

00:13:58 ◼   ► Like if I put in a link for Ask Upgrade, it would also put the link in that I want.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Yep. So that's what I love because I'm able to add more rich data with less time

00:14:07 ◼   ► because my biggest problem when it when when we were originally talking about

00:14:11 ◼   ► adding chapters into shows was the amount of extra time

00:14:15 ◼   ► it's going to take for me to do all of this stuff.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And then when me and Marco were talking about forecasts and I tried it out,

00:14:21 ◼   ► I was like, I can do this.

00:14:23 ◼   ► Still takes me more time,

00:14:24 ◼   ► but it doesn't take me as much time as the previously available tools.

00:14:27 ◼   ► - So that's why I use it as my level.

00:14:28 ◼   ► - Because you're building your chapters

00:14:29 ◼   ► while you're doing your edit,

00:14:31 ◼   ► which means it's right there,

00:14:32 ◼   ► as opposed to the other way,

00:14:33 ◼   ► which is you have to write down time code,

00:14:34 ◼   ► and then if something changes,

00:14:35 ◼   ► you have to change the time code,

00:14:36 ◼   ► or if you go to the end,

00:14:37 ◼   ► and then when you're exporting the file,

00:14:39 ◼   ► you have to go back through

00:14:40 ◼   ► and find where your markers were,

00:14:42 ◼   ► and then input the code.

00:14:43 ◼   ► And now with this approach,

00:14:45 ◼   ► you just, you know, you're like,

00:14:46 ◼   ► "Oh, this is a new segment."

00:14:48 ◼   ► You press the plus button,

00:14:49 ◼   ► a new marker drops into Logic,

00:14:51 ◼   ► and you give it a name,

00:14:53 ◼   ► and that name is even picked up by Forecast.

00:14:56 ◼   ► So yeah, it's all very clever.

00:14:57 ◼   ► It also remembers what, I have,

00:15:00 ◼   ► some of my podcasts are in different formats.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Some of them are mono, 64K BPS,

00:15:04 ◼   ► and some of them are stereo 96.

00:15:06 ◼   ► And it auto-fills that too.

00:15:08 ◼   ► It knows what podcast it is

00:15:11 ◼   ► and what settings you use for it.

00:15:14 ◼   ► So that you don't have that situation where it's like,

00:15:15 ◼   ► "Oh, it's set on 96, but I want this one to be 64."

00:15:18 ◼   ► It knows that too, which is pretty cool.

00:15:21 ◼   ► So yeah, it's, I mean, it's a niche product,

00:15:23 ◼   ► but if you're somebody who doesn't just listen

00:15:25 ◼   ► a podcast like this, but also sometimes makes them. You should check it out because it's

00:15:29 ◼   ► free and it's really good. It's got some issues in the UI. Marco built this tool for himself

00:15:38 ◼   ► and then eventually for his friends and, you know, UI polish in areas where it's not necessary

00:15:48 ◼   ► didn't get prioritized because it worked fine. So, you know, it may not look like some super

00:15:52 ◼   ► super fancy tool, but it is incredibly functional. So it doesn't need to look super fancy.

00:15:59 ◼   ► No, but I love it. It's fantastic. It's really great. Talking about really great apps that

00:16:05 ◼   ► I love very much. I've spoken about Carrot Weather like almost incessantly on this show.

00:16:10 ◼   ► So now every time there is a Carrot Weather update, I feel like I have to talk about it

00:16:14 ◼   ► again. And there's always good reason. So the Carrot Weather watch app just got revamped.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Not only is the Carrot Weather app one of my favourite iOS apps, the Carrot Weather

00:16:26 ◼   ► watch app I think is the best watch app.

00:16:29 ◼   ► It's the most functional, it has always worked really really excellently and continues to

00:16:34 ◼   ► get a lot of love from the carrot folk and I think it's fantastic.

00:16:38 ◼   ► So the watch app just got completely revamped, it's really customisable, it almost has, it's

00:16:43 ◼   ► like taken from the design conventions of the Apple Watch, you can add little elements

00:16:48 ◼   ► that look like complications inside of the app

00:16:51 ◼   ► and you can tap on them and they take you

00:16:53 ◼   ► to different elements.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Like you can tap on like a complication

00:16:57 ◼   ► and it will show you some additional weather information

00:16:59 ◼   ► depending on what you've tapped on.

00:17:01 ◼   ► It loads incredibly fast.

00:17:02 ◼   ► It's still independent from the iPhone.

00:17:04 ◼   ► It can talk now.

00:17:05 ◼   ► So one of the things that like a lot of people love

00:17:07 ◼   ► about Carrot weather is like it has the personality,

00:17:10 ◼   ► but the personality on the iPhone app

00:17:12 ◼   ► could speak to you if you wanted it to.

00:17:13 ◼   ► I turned that off because I don't need it to speak to me,

00:17:16 ◼   ► but I do leave the jokes in

00:17:17 ◼   ► I do find them funny. But now on I believe it's on watch OS 4 with the third generation

00:17:25 ◼   ► Apple watch or series 3 I should say, it does spoken forecasts when you open it it can speak

00:17:30 ◼   ► to you and it will have as much character as you decide on the phone so it can either

00:17:35 ◼   ► do the jokes on all the jokes and just speak to you or whatever. And I don't have an ultra

00:17:39 ◼   ► premium membership because I don't need the features that it gives you but if you have

00:17:43 ◼   ► because there's different tiers of subscription that you can pay, if you have the ultra premium

00:17:47 ◼   ► which is the top level which I think you need for weather underground you can get radar

00:17:51 ◼   ► on your watch which is wild so just tons of incredible new features I absolutely love

00:17:58 ◼   ► this app if you like weather or you want to know about weather I recommend Carrot Weather

00:18:02 ◼   ► it's so great it's good it's good and the watch app is really good that is now my that's

00:18:10 ◼   ► my complication my weather complication on my watch face me too speaking of that watch

00:18:13 ◼   ► because you can also customize that,

00:18:15 ◼   ► you can choose what you want.

00:18:17 ◼   ► It does a great job of what I like feels like temperature,

00:18:21 ◼   ► like that's what I wanna know.

00:18:23 ◼   ► And it does a great job of allowing you

00:18:24 ◼   ► to prioritize feels like temperature everywhere.

00:18:27 ◼   ► So my complication on my watch,

00:18:29 ◼   ► it has a little icon for the type of weather

00:18:31 ◼   ► and then the feels like temperature.

00:18:33 ◼   ► So yeah, I absolutely love this app

00:18:36 ◼   ► and recommend that you try it out if you haven't already

00:18:38 ◼   ► and the watch app is really great.

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00:21:06 ◼   ► A lot of holiday travel out there, Myke. A lot of people are going to be traveling for

00:21:11 ◼   ► the holidays.

00:21:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's getting cold out there. I don't know why that just popped into my head, but

00:21:16 ◼   ► there we go.

00:21:17 ◼   ► but sure, that works. Do you do any holiday? We just put together, it'll be next weekend's

00:21:25 ◼   ► show, we did a holiday traditions episode of The Incomparable, which was a lot of fun,

00:21:31 ◼   ► where we just talked about, literally that was just it, it's like stuff we do for the

00:21:35 ◼   ► holidays. Do you have any, are you preparing, do you decorate anything like in your house?

00:21:40 ◼   ► Do you have little things that you put up? What do you do?

00:21:42 ◼   ► This is our first year where we're spending a significant amount of time over the holiday season in this house

00:21:48 ◼   ► So we've owned this house for a year

00:21:50 ◼   ► But last year we spent like four days in December because we were traveling around so we are now buying

00:21:57 ◼   ► Decorations so we over the next couple of days we have like Christmas tree and all that sort of stuff coming up

00:22:03 ◼   ► I'm very excited because I'm gonna be able to hook up to a Wiimote which I've basically never used

00:22:08 ◼   ► so I'll be able to ask my various canisters to

00:22:11 ◼   ► Turn the lights on and off for the Christmas tree. I'm excited about that. Uh-huh that that is something which is bringing me lots of joy

00:22:18 ◼   ► And but all of my regular holiday traditions are going out the window this year as I'm gonna be spending my first

00:22:25 ◼   ► Christmas away from my family as I join a deenas family in Romania. Ah

00:22:29 ◼   ► So that's this is like a whole new one for me

00:22:34 ◼   ► So I have no real no traditions that I'm observing this year whilst also building some new ones. So that's good for us

00:22:41 ◼   ► Are you going to do a London Christmas?

00:22:46 ◼   ► - Kind of, yes.

00:22:49 ◼   ► So next weekend, all of my family are getting together

00:22:54 ◼   ► because basically this year, more than any other year,

00:22:58 ◼   ► the family's completely splintered

00:22:59 ◼   ► into all different places.

00:23:01 ◼   ► Like people go into other family homes, et cetera, et cetera,

00:23:04 ◼   ► and like other partners' homes.

00:23:05 ◼   ► And we have one group of the family

00:23:08 ◼   ► who's going abroad for Christmas this year.

00:23:10 ◼   ► And so we're getting together kind of next weekend

00:23:13 ◼   ► to do like the big Christmas dinner

00:23:15 ◼   ► we're all gonna have together.

00:23:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's good.

00:23:18 ◼   ► Okay, that's good.

00:23:19 ◼   ► We have, what do we have?

00:23:23 ◼   ► We haven't gotten a tree yet, although we are going to.

00:23:24 ◼   ► We're not going anywhere.

00:23:25 ◼   ► So we actually have delayed getting our tree a little bit

00:23:27 ◼   ► because we know that needs to last.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Back when we would visit,

00:23:31 ◼   ► especially if we like drive to Phoenix

00:23:33 ◼   ► and see my mom for Christmas,

00:23:35 ◼   ► we would get a tree really early

00:23:36 ◼   ► because basically we would be leaving before Christmas

00:23:39 ◼   ► putting the tree out. So it didn't need to last very long, but we wanted to last this

00:23:44 ◼   ► year so we're kind of waiting a little bit. And then the kids decorated and that's all

00:23:50 ◼   ► pretty good. My street, however, is totally obsessed. They have put up the oak tree next

00:23:56 ◼   ► to my window here, in fact, now has lights all over it, which is weird. But the people

00:24:02 ◼   ► are kind of aggressively adding lights to trees in the neighborhood. Is our tree next?

00:24:06 ◼   ► I don't know. It's a little bit scary. Well, it's like, no, no, it's more like, "Hey, we're

00:24:11 ◼   ► going to put lights in your tree, but it's not your tree. I don't care. It's on my street.

00:24:16 ◼   ► We're going to put lights in it now."

00:24:17 ◼   ► Right. Okay.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Okay.

00:24:19 ◼   ► So, it's like they're light-bombing. You know, they're just like throwing lights into everything.

00:24:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a little bit out of hand, but I do have, my tech angle here is the same thing,

00:24:31 ◼   ► I've got a HomeKit smart switch that's attached to our Christmas lights outside.

00:24:38 ◼   ► So now those are on a schedule with the regular outside lights.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And then on the inside, I've got another one of those switches for the Christmas tree lights

00:24:50 ◼   ► when we get those so that I can also tell various people inside canisters or phones

00:24:56 ◼   ► to turn on the holiday lights, which is fun, and I'm looking forward to that. And yeah,

00:25:03 ◼   ► I thought the next step, obviously, is to get some of those lights where you can actually

00:25:06 ◼   ► control what they do from an app, but I haven't gotten there yet. That's a little too far

00:25:12 ◼   ► for me, but other people, I think, are already there.

00:25:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have considered maybe, you know, those, like, those little strips, the light

00:25:21 ◼   ► strips.

00:25:22 ◼   ► - Oh, I've got some of those. I just got some of those. I'm not sure what I'm gonna deploy.

00:25:25 ◼   ► - Putting them in green and putting them in places.

00:25:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Well, I used to have smart bulbs outside

00:25:30 ◼   ► and they were red and green and now I don't.

00:25:33 ◼   ► Now I have regular bulbs out there.

00:25:35 ◼   ► So I thought about that,

00:25:36 ◼   ► about whether I should like maybe,

00:25:38 ◼   ► you know, go get some colored light bulbs

00:25:40 ◼   ► for the month of December or whether I,

00:25:42 ◼   ► I'm not that far ahead.

00:25:45 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure what I'm gonna do about that yet.

00:25:46 ◼   ► 'Cause it's not, the plain white bulbs

00:25:49 ◼   ► are not particularly festive

00:25:51 ◼   ► and I'm feeling like some serious,

00:25:54 ◼   ► There is an arms race going on outside my house, Myke,

00:25:57 ◼   ► and I don't really wanna participate in it.

00:25:58 ◼   ► At the same time, I also don't wanna be like

00:26:00 ◼   ► the lemon on the block.

00:26:02 ◼   ► So I don't know, we'll see,

00:26:04 ◼   ► which is ironic 'cause our house is yellow.

00:26:06 ◼   ► So we are the lemon.

00:26:08 ◼   ► - You already are the lemon.

00:26:09 ◼   ► There's nothing you can do about it.

00:26:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, but I don't wanna, yeah, exactly.

00:26:12 ◼   ► - So there is a specific topic today

00:26:16 ◼   ► that me and you are kind of avoiding.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Like, we're gonna talk about it,

00:26:19 ◼   ► but like we're not super-infused about it.

00:26:21 ◼   ► So we've got like a million other little things

00:26:24 ◼   ► we want to talk about today before we get to that one big topic. One of those things

00:26:28 ◼   ► was holiday traditions. The next one is The Kindle Oasis 2. So Jason, I assume you have

00:26:34 ◼   ► yours by now. We spoke about this weeks ago.

00:26:36 ◼   ► I do. Scott McNulty is not here to join us, unfortunately. Nor is Stephen Hackett, who

00:26:42 ◼   ► has one of these, too. I do have it. It's pretty good. I like it. The screen is bigger.

00:26:53 ◼   ► I guess that's nicer.

00:26:55 ◼   ► I'm just in one of these positions now

00:26:56 ◼   ► where since I often will buy like every Kindle

00:26:58 ◼   ► just because I wanna write about it.

00:27:01 ◼   ► But I haven't written about this one yet

00:27:02 ◼   ► 'cause I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it.

00:27:05 ◼   ► I think it's good.

00:27:06 ◼   ► It's waterproof, which I am very rarely in a position

00:27:09 ◼   ► where I need a waterproof Kindle, but that's nice.

00:27:11 ◼   ► - Read a book in the shower.

00:27:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like the old Kindle Oasis in shape,

00:27:16 ◼   ► but the old Kindle Oasis came with a battery case

00:27:19 ◼   ► that you would attach and it was small and thin.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And this one doesn't have any case,

00:27:23 ◼   ► but it's still got that kind of wedge shape where you've got a kind of grippy part and

00:27:26 ◼   ► then a thinner part. It weighs what most Kindles weigh. It's not super light and thin like

00:27:34 ◼   ► the first Oasis was. The screen is bigger, which is nice. It's the high-end Kindle, so

00:27:41 ◼   ► it's much more expensive than the Paperwhite. My feeling is most people should buy the Paperwhite.

00:27:47 ◼   ► I think the Paperwhite is great.

00:27:48 ◼   ► It's, it's a, that's the Kindle to buy.

00:27:52 ◼   ► The Oasis 2 is nice,

00:27:54 ◼   ► nicer than the Paperwhite in a few ways,

00:27:58 ◼   ► but they're different ways than the first Oasis.

00:28:00 ◼   ► And that's what's got me kind of perplexed here is that

00:28:04 ◼   ► I was expecting to react to this one and either say,

00:28:08 ◼   ► oh, it's clearly better or,

00:28:09 ◼   ► oh, it's not better than the Oasis 1.

00:28:12 ◼   ► And instead it's sort of like,

00:28:14 ◼   ► it's kind of better in some ways and not better in others.

00:28:17 ◼   ► and samey in others.

00:28:19 ◼   ► So I'm, you know, it's a nice high end Kindle.

00:28:22 ◼   ► If you're somebody who uses a Kindle all the time

00:28:24 ◼   ► and you've got a little extra money to spend,

00:28:26 ◼   ► it's, the screen is nice and it's big.

00:28:29 ◼   ► It is waterproof.

00:28:31 ◼   ► The back is aluminum back,

00:28:34 ◼   ► which is actually very nice, I think.

00:28:36 ◼   ► It's the, it certainly feels like the best materials

00:28:40 ◼   ► ever used in a Kindle, if that makes any sense.

00:28:43 ◼   ► And that it's not like a plastic-y Kindle.

00:28:45 ◼   ► It's a little bit nicer, but in the end,

00:28:50 ◼   ► unless you're a Kindle maniac, like maybe I am,

00:28:54 ◼   ► the best buy is a Paperwhite.

00:28:57 ◼   ► Paperwhite's an excellent, excellent device.

00:29:00 ◼   ► And this is my disclaimer part, which is to say,

00:29:04 ◼   ► why would you, my mom had this question for me,

00:29:06 ◼   ► which is why would you use a Kindle when you have an iPad?

00:29:13 ◼   ► And my answer is generally,

00:29:17 ◼   ► I like that the Kindle is a dedicated reading device.

00:29:20 ◼   ► When I'm holding the Kindle,

00:29:22 ◼   ► all I'm gonna do is read a book.

00:29:24 ◼   ► I'm not gonna get distracted by notifications on my iPad

00:29:27 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:29:28 ◼   ► And then I also like the screen.

00:29:30 ◼   ► I like that it's that E Ink screen

00:29:32 ◼   ► that feels like I'm looking at print

00:29:35 ◼   ► and not at a backlit device screen

00:29:39 ◼   ► like all the other devices that I use.

00:29:41 ◼   ► And I like that about it.

00:29:43 ◼   ► and you can get a Kindle Paperwhite for, I don't know,

00:29:46 ◼   ► is it 99.79?

00:29:47 ◼   ► It's not, it's cheap, relatively speaking,

00:29:51 ◼   ► and they last forever,

00:29:52 ◼   ► and the battery lasts forever, by the way.

00:29:55 ◼   ► So it has a lot going for it

00:29:58 ◼   ► if you're somebody who is,

00:29:59 ◼   ► somebody who reads a lot of books, basically.

00:30:01 ◼   ► I prefer, I try very hard never to read a book

00:30:04 ◼   ► on my iOS devices, and so every now and then,

00:30:08 ◼   ► I talk about stuff in the Kindle store,

00:30:10 ◼   ► and somebody on Twitter, and somebody reminds me,

00:30:12 ◼   ► oh, it's also on the iBook store.

00:30:14 ◼   ► And I'm like, oh, right, the iBook store,

00:30:15 ◼   ► 'cause I just don't buy books on iBooks

00:30:17 ◼   ► because I don't wanna read on my iPhone or my iPad.

00:30:21 ◼   ► And if you do, that's fine.

00:30:22 ◼   ► I mean, for a lot of people,

00:30:24 ◼   ► it doesn't make sense to have a separate device,

00:30:26 ◼   ► but I really like having that as a separate device.

00:30:29 ◼   ► - The Kindle Paperweight is $119.

00:30:32 ◼   ► And then there's a regular Kindle, which is 79.

00:30:35 ◼   ► - Now, I don't think that's,

00:30:36 ◼   ► I think that may be with the special offers turned off,

00:30:39 ◼   ► which you probably should do.

00:30:41 ◼   ► But if not, then they put it on sale all the time.

00:30:44 ◼   ► That's the, oh no, it's 119 with special offers.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Dang, well, wait for it to go on sale then I say,

00:30:51 ◼   ► or buy the certified refurbished one for 99 then.

00:30:55 ◼   ► That's too high.

00:30:55 ◼   ► They often are going on sale.

00:30:58 ◼   ► I would not get the cheap Kindle.

00:31:00 ◼   ► There is a cheap Kindle and that I don't recommend,

00:31:04 ◼   ► which, oh, and now that's up to 80.

00:31:06 ◼   ► They must've been putting them on sale

00:31:07 ◼   ► when I looked a couple of weeks ago,

00:31:09 ◼   ► when it was like Black Friday and all of that.

00:31:11 ◼   ► and now they're back up, I predict they'll come back down.

00:31:14 ◼   ► I predict there'll be another sale at some point.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And that's what you should look for if you're buying them

00:31:19 ◼   ► 'cause Amazon does put those on sale

00:31:21 ◼   ► and you don't wanna spend 119 when you can spend 99

00:31:25 ◼   ► for a Kindle Paperwhite, but like the Oasis starts at 249.

00:31:29 ◼   ► It's a lot more and does it really provide $150 more?

00:31:34 ◼   ► Nah, I don't think so.

00:31:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, it seems like there's like a lot of choice now

00:31:44 ◼   ► and in a way that the movie hasn't been before and-

00:31:47 ◼   ► - They still sell the Kindle voyage.

00:31:49 ◼   ► They must've made a lot of those

00:31:50 ◼   ► 'cause I don't know why that product exists.

00:31:52 ◼   ► Like I don't, it's not, I mean, if I have,

00:31:54 ◼   ► if I struggle to find a difference

00:31:56 ◼   ► between the Oasis and the Paperwhite,

00:31:58 ◼   ► the voyage in between for 199 is,

00:32:01 ◼   ► it's like, it's very vaguely better than the Paperwhite,

00:32:05 ◼   ► but not really and it's not even that different.

00:32:08 ◼   ► It's got like, you can squeeze the sides to change the page,

00:32:11 ◼   ► which is not a fun thing.

00:32:13 ◼   ► I mean, that's the best thing about the Oasis honestly,

00:32:15 ◼   ► is that it has physical page turn buttons,

00:32:17 ◼   ► which are the best.

00:32:19 ◼   ► But yeah, anyway, the long story short,

00:32:23 ◼   ► regardless of the price,

00:32:24 ◼   ► and you should look to see if Amazon puts it on sale,

00:32:26 ◼   ► or if you can pick up a reefer,

00:32:28 ◼   ► but if you're looking for a new or to try a Kindle,

00:32:31 ◼   ► Paperwhite is the, it's the right answer,

00:32:34 ◼   ► because it's so good,

00:32:35 ◼   ► and it's the next to lowest priced one.

00:32:39 ◼   ► The lowest price one doesn't have the lighting on it.

00:32:42 ◼   ► It doesn't light itself, which is a really great feature

00:32:44 ◼   ► because sometimes it's dark where you are

00:32:47 ◼   ► and if you wanna read and turning on a light

00:32:50 ◼   ► to read on an electronic device is dumb.

00:32:53 ◼   ► - Hey, Jason, do you wanna talk about your office?

00:32:57 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:32:58 ◼   ► - I do.

00:32:59 ◼   ► I do, we got a lot of little topics,

00:33:02 ◼   ► a lot of little things to talk about

00:33:04 ◼   ► before we talk about the other thing,

00:33:06 ◼   ► which we will talk about, so we'll get there.

00:33:11 ◼   ► I do, this is like kind of like follow out to Free Agents 35

00:33:14 ◼   ► which posted last week where David Sparks and I talked

00:33:16 ◼   ► about all sorts of things going on in our lives.

00:33:18 ◼   ► And it's sort of the new format for that show

00:33:22 ◼   ► where we were alternating between kind of like issues

00:33:24 ◼   ► that have come up in the last month with an interview.

00:33:27 ◼   ► And I mentioned this there, I set up my office,

00:33:31 ◼   ► you know, I set up my office what, four years ago,

00:33:33 ◼   ► three and a half years ago, something like that. A long time ago, when I still had a

00:33:39 ◼   ► job and was commuting a lot of the time, and it was sort of under the premise of being

00:33:45 ◼   ► a home office, and then it turned into my full-time office. And I don't know if this

00:33:49 ◼   ► has happened with you, with your office yet, but you make guesses about what you're going

00:33:56 ◼   ► to do, because you've literally never worked in the space before, right? Like when you're

00:34:01 ◼   ► making your decisions about MegaOffice, to use your term for it, that I guess I'll just,

00:34:07 ◼   ► everybody knows what it is, MegaOffice, you never worked in it. You were making decisions

00:34:14 ◼   ► and being like, all right, let's see how this goes. There's a leap of faith that happens

00:34:18 ◼   ► there, right? And I don't know if this has happened for you yet, but after being here

00:34:22 ◼   ► for three years, I know more about what I need and how I work and the stuff that collects

00:34:30 ◼   ► and what I used to do my job than I did when I had never done it before, which seems logical,

00:34:36 ◼   ► right? So I've come to that. Are you thinking about that? Are there things going on in your

00:34:41 ◼   ► office where you're like, "I don't know. I don't know if this is right," or where you

00:34:45 ◼   ► find that maybe decisions you made you're now questioning?

00:34:48 ◼   ► >> Yes. I haven't got any solutions yet because we still got other just like house decoration

00:34:54 ◼   ► stuff. So there's like, I thought that I had really good storage, but there's like a bunch

00:34:59 ◼   ► of things that aren't in the good storage solutions so like I clearly need more right

00:35:04 ◼   ► like that I haven't I haven't completely nailed that down yet plus I have a bunch of stuff

00:35:08 ◼   ► I need to get rid of like eBay put things on eBay and stuff like that so I'm kind of

00:35:14 ◼   ► in the new year I'm gonna do a bit of a clean out and then a kind of a restructuring and

00:35:17 ◼   ► it's gonna get I'm also kind of putting it on hold a little bit because at some point

00:35:22 ◼   ► within the next six months I'm gonna be buying a gaming PC well actually I want to build

00:35:28 ◼   ► the gaming PC. So then I'm gonna have to do some pretty serious office changes to

00:35:35 ◼   ► accommodate a whole other computer coming into the room. So yeah that's gonna

00:35:41 ◼   ► I'm kind of holding off a lot of big changes for that because I have a corner

00:35:44 ◼   ► desk so it could just go on the other corner of the desk right and I think it

00:35:48 ◼   ► will work pretty well but then I need to work out like everything that's currently

00:35:52 ◼   ► on that part of the desk where does that go and kind of like start a shuffling

00:35:55 ◼   ► process down, but I'm saving a lot of that until the moment when I decide to buy the

00:36:00 ◼   ► PC because I think it's gonna change a lot of what goes on in here.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Have you talked about the gaming PC somewhere where I just haven't listened yet?

00:36:09 ◼   ► I've made reference to it mostly on remaster, where I've come to the decision that I'm

00:36:13 ◼   ► doing it, and there's a couple of reasons for it.

00:36:17 ◼   ► So one is just like, I have dabbled in game streaming and have quickly come to realise

00:36:25 ◼   ► that the Mac is terrible for streaming no matter how you decide to do it.

00:36:30 ◼   ► It's just, it just doesn't work.

00:36:32 ◼   ► I have a great little box that Elgato makes called the HD60S, which I can, because I want

00:36:38 ◼   ► to stream my Nintendo Switch games, right?

00:36:40 ◼   ► But there are problems with the software where I get a delay in my headphones of my own voice

00:36:45 ◼   ► if I want to do any narration and there is absolutely no way to stop that from happening.

00:36:49 ◼   ► But that doesn't, that's not how it works on the PC. It's fine on the PC. I want to,

00:36:54 ◼   ► I want to get a good VR rig. I want to get an Oculus Rift. And so that's my only option,

00:37:01 ◼   ► right. And there's games like Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, which is one of the biggest

00:37:05 ◼   ► games of this year that I haven't been able to play because it's not on PlayStation. It's

00:37:11 ◼   ► not on Mac. It's on PC and soon on Xbox. So yeah, I have decided I'm gonna build, I'm

00:37:20 ◼   ► actually gonna build a gaming PC.

00:37:22 ◼   ► All right, well I mean that's a fun project and I think that there's discussion to probably

00:37:27 ◼   ► be had from it on multiple of your shows.

00:37:29 ◼   ► It's gonna span everything when I'm doing it because it's gonna probably take up quite

00:37:32 ◼   ► a lot of my life for a little bit. So yeah.

00:37:35 ◼   ► Yeah, one of the things that I did when I put Bootcamp on my iMac was, one of the reasons

00:37:41 ◼   ► I did it is because we were trying to figure out how to use Twitch to live stream Total

00:37:45 ◼   ► Party Kill. And it's very difficult to do that on a Mac to do all the different things

00:37:54 ◼   ► you need to do. And there are lots of solutions for it on the PC. So I thought about doing

00:38:00 ◼   ► it that way and I decided not to. And we went with sort of another approach to doing our

00:38:03 ◼   ► live streams and all of that. But I definitely got a moment where I got to kind of peer in

00:38:09 ◼   ► And even with the tools that we've got to do podcasting,

00:38:12 ◼   ► which actually I think make it easier to do that sort of

00:38:16 ◼   ► thing now, you know, games on the Mac are not,

00:38:21 ◼   ► like I just, I want to play Life is Strange

00:38:25 ◼   ► Before the Storm, the prequel to Life is Strange.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And Life is Strange is actually on Steam

00:38:29 ◼   ► and works on the Mac,

00:38:30 ◼   ► but the prequel has not been ported to the Mac yet.

00:38:33 ◼   ► And that was one of those moments of like, well, I'll reboot,

00:38:36 ◼   ► I guess I'll reboot into Windows for this one,

00:38:38 ◼   ► which I can do and I just did that for one of the games that we played for the incomparable

00:38:41 ◼   ► and I will probably do it again. But once you're, you know, I can play like general

00:38:49 ◼   ► games on that, on the iMac in Windows, but for stuff that's at the cutting edge, it's

00:38:57 ◼   ► not gonna, like the harder you push it, the more it's not the right solution to use bootcamp.

00:39:02 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, yeah, I just bumped up against enough edge cases

00:39:05 ◼   ► in this year where I've realized that I just don't,

00:39:09 ◼   ► I just, I have to do this.

00:39:11 ◼   ► If I wanna continue down this road,

00:39:13 ◼   ► then this is a decision that I have to make.

00:39:16 ◼   ► - And, okay, and the Oculus Rift makes a lot of sense,

00:39:19 ◼   ► 'cause I was gonna say, you know,

00:39:20 ◼   ► you could also just get an Xbox,

00:39:22 ◼   ► and you could also get, do you have a PSVR?

00:39:26 ◼   ► - Yes, I have a PSVR and I have an Xbox,

00:39:28 ◼   ► but none of that solves the streaming problems.

00:39:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true.

00:39:31 ◼   ► All right, okay.

00:39:33 ◼   ► All right.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Well, I look forward to more,

00:39:35 ◼   ► that was an unexpected gaming PC reveal that happened.

00:39:40 ◼   ► That's fascinating.

00:39:42 ◼   ► So I don't have anything that exciting to reveal.

00:39:46 ◼   ► I went to Ikea.

00:39:47 ◼   ► So congratulations to me.

00:39:49 ◼   ► I didn't see any monkeys in coats there, unfortunately.

00:39:54 ◼   ► Every time I go to Ikea, I look for a monkey in a coat.

00:39:56 ◼   ► There's never a monkey in a coat.

00:40:00 ◼   ► That's if we, if, I wonder if the guy who does the ATP references, uh,

00:40:04 ◼   ► Twitter account listens to this podcast. Cause that's a reference. Anyway,

00:40:07 ◼   ► I got two, I got two. I got it by the way. Good. I got, I got two. Um,

00:40:11 ◼   ► thanks Casey. Good job, Casey. Um, the, uh,

00:40:16 ◼   ► I got two Ikea storage things that are like these eight, you know,

00:40:19 ◼   ► eight square shelf cube things. Uh, yeah, the Calex.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Yeah. My, my office is full of them. Oh, okay. Well I have two Calex,

00:40:28 ◼   ► calixes, cali-ci, I have two of them.

00:40:33 ◼   ► And I also got some little baskets,

00:40:35 ◼   ► little bins for some of them.

00:40:36 ◼   ► I may get more of those.

00:40:38 ◼   ► And because I discovered that I needed more storage,

00:40:41 ◼   ► that I had sort of stuffed into my one piece

00:40:45 ◼   ► of I can't furniture I've got behind me

00:40:47 ◼   ► in ways that were like inaccessible and not ideal.

00:40:50 ◼   ► And then behind, literally behind the curtain,

00:40:54 ◼   ► because I have a curtain as you've seen,

00:40:56 ◼   ► dividing my office, dividing my garage into two parts,

00:40:59 ◼   ► my office and the sort of like storage.

00:41:03 ◼   ► There's a giant metal like storage shelf, storage rack,

00:41:07 ◼   ► and there's bikes parked behind it and other stuff.

00:41:10 ◼   ► And it's like, that's the storage part.

00:41:12 ◼   ► And then there's the work part.

00:41:14 ◼   ► And behind the curtain in my office

00:41:17 ◼   ► were a couple of plastic bins overflowing

00:41:20 ◼   ► and sort of on the side leaning up against the wall,

00:41:22 ◼   ► overflowing with stuff.

00:41:25 ◼   ► old tech, like old music players, and old, uh, like there's a Slingbox or two back there,

00:41:35 ◼   ► and the old Wii is back there, um, there's some like rock band instruments back there,

00:41:41 ◼   ► and a giant ball of cables. Like literally every cable I own tangled together in a giant ball.

00:41:52 ◼   ► It's a rat king.

00:41:53 ◼   ► It is the rat king of cables, and I untangled it this weekend.

00:41:59 ◼   ► That was what I did.

00:42:00 ◼   ► The whole weekend?

00:42:01 ◼   ► I untangled it.

00:42:02 ◼   ► Because I now have a place to store stuff and put it in little bags and put it in little

00:42:07 ◼   ► baskets because one of the nice things about what my family does is we try not to waste

00:42:13 ◼   ► stuff.

00:42:14 ◼   ► So you have a big plastic bin that used to feed the dog or whatever, and you rinse it

00:42:19 ◼   ► out and you're like, "Oh, I can store stuff in there."

00:42:22 ◼   ► it's not really appropriate, but it exists already, so we might as well use it. And I've

00:42:27 ◼   ► got a couple of chef's carts that we used to use in our kitchen, and so I use them and

00:42:30 ◼   ► I have stuff on them now, and they're not appropriate. They've got like grills on the

00:42:36 ◼   ► shelving instead of that being flat, so you try to put like a computer or a cable or something

00:42:41 ◼   ► and little bits fall through, and it's just not appropriate for it. But we have it, so

00:42:46 ◼   ► I try to use it. And with the IKEA stuff, it's like, all right, I actually am going

00:42:49 ◼   ► to store things that are valuable in a way that is appropriate. But the result of the

00:42:55 ◼   ► old way was the Rat King of wires. So now that they have a home that they can go in,

00:43:01 ◼   ► I untangled the Rat King. That's how I spent my Sunday. Most of Sunday was several hours

00:43:09 ◼   ► was untangling cables. And I have found an amazing selection of cables, Myke. Myke, do

00:43:17 ◼   ► Do you need any spare HDMI cables? I have all of them.

00:43:22 ◼   ► I'll take a couple. I mean, I'm good for that.

00:43:27 ◼   ► All of them. I'm shocked. Like, last time I bought HDMI cables, I'm like, "Why did I

00:43:32 ◼   ► do that?" I have, like, ten. I don't know. I have a long one, I have short ones. That's

00:43:40 ◼   ► the problem. I think last time I bought HDMI cables, I bought longer ones because these

00:43:42 ◼   ► are all a little bit short, but I've got two ADB to USB adapters for old keyboards.

00:43:53 ◼   ► I have an ADB keyboard. Oh no, you can't have those. I have two USB to serial adapters.

00:44:04 ◼   ► What else do I have? I have an HDMI to DVI video cable. That's a good one.

00:44:11 ◼   ► You took an overnight stay in Donkleton, didn't you?

00:44:15 ◼   ► - I went to the source.

00:44:17 ◼   ► I went to City Hall of Donkleton.

00:44:19 ◼   ► - You went into the mines, the Donkleton mines.

00:44:22 ◼   ► - I found, I now have a Ziploc bag

00:44:25 ◼   ► full of USB dock connector items.

00:44:28 ◼   ► I got Donkles in there, I got cables in there.

00:44:31 ◼   ► I found two iPod or iPhone dock connector USB cables

00:44:36 ◼   ► still wrapped.

00:44:40 ◼   ► You know you gotta send those too, right?

00:44:42 ◼   ► Like we have a mutual friend who will just take this package.

00:44:45 ◼   ► You just put them all in a big, manila envelope

00:44:48 ◼   ► and direct them straight to Memphis.

00:44:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Well, I mean, you never know

00:44:52 ◼   ► when you're gonna need a dock connector cable.

00:44:54 ◼   ► I actually have had friends who are like,

00:44:56 ◼   ► "Oh, we have this old iPod we still use

00:44:58 ◼   ► attached to this thing, but our dock connector broke

00:45:01 ◼   ► and now what are we gonna do?

00:45:02 ◼   ► Our dock connector cable broke."

00:45:03 ◼   ► And I'm like, "I gotcha.

00:45:05 ◼   ► I'll send you one."

00:45:06 ◼   ► Well, it turns out I got like seven of those,

00:45:08 ◼   ► including two that have never been used.

00:45:10 ◼   ► So those are in a little bag.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Would you like a USB cable?

00:45:15 ◼   ► I have about a hundred of them.

00:45:17 ◼   ► I have USB to mini, I have USB to micro,

00:45:19 ◼   ► I have USB to A to USB B.

00:45:22 ◼   ► That is the largest pile

00:45:24 ◼   ► 'cause they're in piles sort of by kind here.

00:45:27 ◼   ► I have a lot of extension cords.

00:45:29 ◼   ► I have a lot, I have so many power adapters.

00:45:34 ◼   ► I have approximately a thousand of the little tiny cubes

00:45:39 ◼   ► that you only get in the United States

00:45:40 ◼   ► that are the little USB adapters for the iPhone.

00:45:43 ◼   ► And I have approximately 500 of the bigger ones

00:45:47 ◼   ► like the one that you get in your box in the UK.

00:45:50 ◼   ► That's the little bit bigger power block.

00:45:53 ◼   ► I have so many of those.

00:45:54 ◼   ► So those are in a box.

00:45:56 ◼   ► - I can imagine you would have

00:45:57 ◼   ► an extraordinarily large amount of iPhone and iPod

00:46:02 ◼   ► and iPad charging related items.

00:46:05 ◼   ► - I got five AirPods here.

00:46:06 ◼   ► I mean, the EarPods, not AirPods.

00:46:08 ◼   ► I only have the one ear pods.

00:46:10 ◼   ► Five ear pods, I can't tell them apart.

00:46:12 ◼   ► I don't know the word for ear pod because I don't use them,

00:46:15 ◼   ► but I have them.

00:46:17 ◼   ► I have many of them.

00:46:18 ◼   ► I have five of those.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Occasionally my daughter uses those.

00:46:20 ◼   ► So I just kind of hold onto those

00:46:21 ◼   ► until she breaks her headphones.

00:46:23 ◼   ► I'm like, well, use these.

00:46:25 ◼   ► And that's great.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I don't know what else.

00:46:28 ◼   ► There's some out there.

00:46:28 ◼   ► - We need to do an entire inventory of your cables.

00:46:31 ◼   ► - No, no, no, no, no.

00:46:32 ◼   ► But I just want to tell you the last one

00:46:34 ◼   ► that was really exciting is FireWire.

00:46:36 ◼   ► I have a catalog of FireWire items.

00:46:38 ◼   ► FireWire 800, FireWire 800 to FireWire 400,

00:46:44 ◼   ► FireWire 400 to i-Link, which is the Sony FireWire plug

00:46:49 ◼   ► that was only on like Sony cameras and Sony PCs.

00:46:52 ◼   ► I have, you know, FireWire Thunderbolt adapters.

00:46:57 ◼   ► It's an amazing, I had no idea I was so invested

00:47:01 ◼   ► in FireWire, but I think basically every time

00:47:03 ◼   ► you bought a device that had a FireWire plug on it,

00:47:06 ◼   ► They included a cable and I had a bunch of hard drives over the years that I used as

00:47:09 ◼   ► backup drives and most of the drives are gone, long gone, but the cables remain.

00:47:15 ◼   ► You're going to want to throw out a cable.

00:47:17 ◼   ► You might need a cable later.

00:47:18 ◼   ► So I got lots of these cables that my computers don't even have FireWire on them anymore.

00:47:25 ◼   ► Thank goodness for the Thunderbolt FireWire adapter, which is the only way I was able

00:47:28 ◼   ► to check the two hard drives I did find to see what the heck was on them.

00:47:32 ◼   ► So yeah, it was quite a day, and there's still cables laying around here.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Surprisingly fewer ethernet cables than I thought.

00:47:40 ◼   ► I'm just going to say, I totally applaud your reduce, reuse, recycle attitude, but you can

00:47:49 ◼   ► 100% throw away the Firelight cables.

00:47:51 ◼   ► You can get rid of those now, and that's fine.

00:47:54 ◼   ► They're gone.

00:47:55 ◼   ► No one needs them.

00:47:56 ◼   ► I actually have a few devices that still have them, but here's the next step actually in

00:48:01 ◼   ► this process is, with HDMI and the FireWire,

00:48:05 ◼   ► it's gonna be one of these census things,

00:48:07 ◼   ► which is like, all right,

00:48:08 ◼   ► this is kind of not something I need,

00:48:10 ◼   ► like FireWire, this is an outmoded technology,

00:48:12 ◼   ► it's not coming back.

00:48:14 ◼   ► But every now and then, there's like,

00:48:16 ◼   ► oh no, now I suddenly need this thing.

00:48:18 ◼   ► So you keep one, maybe two,

00:48:21 ◼   ► if there's something slightly different about them.

00:48:24 ◼   ► The other five, they need to go away.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Because I do not need a selection

00:48:31 ◼   ► of firewire cables. That is not a thing that I need. So, yeah, anyway, it's a work in progress,

00:48:39 ◼   ► but the, oh, and I threw away all of the telephone cords. I had started telephone cords, like

00:48:45 ◼   ► from phones that are plugged into walls. Those are all gone, and I have a bunch of composite

00:48:52 ◼   ► video cables, and I'm like, wow, like, you know, old analog, like you hook your VCR up

00:48:57 ◼   ► to your tube TV. I still have a lot of those that are no longer in existence. So yeah,

00:49:05 ◼   ► it was exciting, but the good news is a lot of old tech is going to the computer recycling,

00:49:11 ◼   ► and I guess, or Memphis, to the Stephen Hackett library.

00:49:14 ◼   ► - To the Museum of Hackett.

00:49:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, he might need to hook some stuff up. Who knows?

00:49:20 ◼   ► - He always does. My understanding is he's coming by some more rare items for his collection.

00:49:26 ◼   ► So uh, you might need some strange cables sometime in the near future.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Oh Myke I got it, I got it, we can tie all these topics together.

00:49:33 ◼   ► I got it.

00:49:34 ◼   ► This is how I decorate the tree in front of my house.

00:49:38 ◼   ► An ADB cable!

00:49:39 ◼   ► Is with firewire cables!

00:49:44 ◼   ► There you go.

00:49:45 ◼   ► They're like tinsel!

00:49:46 ◼   ► Who needs tinsel?

00:49:47 ◼   ► Who needs it?

00:49:48 ◼   ► Tinsel's for suckers.

00:49:49 ◼   ► What you need is a rat's nest of cables.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Yeah but you know what's gonna happen is somebody's gonna walk up to the tree and be like "you

00:49:52 ◼   ► got an adapter for this?"

00:49:55 ◼   ► I'm just going to plug a hard drive into your Christmas tree.

00:49:58 ◼   ► Well, they should. They should do that. I look forward to downloading their data.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Jason, I want to maybe try and introduce a new recurring segment. Not weekly, but frequent

00:50:08 ◼   ► recurring segment to the show. And this is all going to be based upon the reaction to

00:50:12 ◼   ► the segment, which is podcast tips. Purely because I would say at this point, it is fair

00:50:19 ◼   ► to say that even though me and you have just spent 20 minutes talking about cables found

00:50:23 ◼   ► in the back of a drawer in your office. We are expert podcasters.

00:50:27 ◼   ► In a rat king. In a rat king, Myke. No drawers were involved.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Sorry. How about there, right? Inside of a chef's trolley or something, he said. I don't

00:50:36 ◼   ► know. Jammed in there. But I would say that by this point, purely based on the amount

00:50:40 ◼   ► of stuff that we produce, we've done our 10,000 hours. We are podcast experts. So I figured

00:50:46 ◼   ► that we could maybe try and help aspiring podcasters, as I'm sure many of our audience

00:50:51 ◼   ► are, into maybe spreading their wings a little bit and answering some questions. We get them

00:50:57 ◼   ► from now on then. This is purely because we had an Ask Upgrade question that came in from

00:51:00 ◼   ► somebody called Finn and I thought we could just answer it here and maybe expand upon

00:51:04 ◼   ► it a little bit. So Finn asked, "Can you do an explainer about how you record a podcast

00:51:10 ◼   ► with hosts who are geographically separated?" And again, this is something that me and Jason

00:51:14 ◼   ► are experts on because every single one of the podcasts that we record are done this

00:51:19 ◼   ► So, it is actually, from a technological perspective, extremely simple. It's what

00:51:27 ◼   ► happens afterwards that can make it a little bit tricky. And funnily enough, I would say for me as

00:51:31 ◼   ► well, because this is the way when I started podcasting, this is the exact same methods,

00:51:36 ◼   ► but I couldn't, it took me a while to work it out on my own about how to do this. Like,

00:51:42 ◼   ► for whatever reason, it didn't lock into my mind very quickly about what the logical way to do this

00:51:48 ◼   ► to be. So record over Skype or FaceTime, audio, whatever would be your preference.

00:51:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, literally you can record, you can use a tool that lets you and your guests

00:52:01 ◼   ► or co-host or whoever else you're talking to let you hear each other. I mean, it could

00:52:05 ◼   ► literally be a telephone call if you wanted it to be. Because, as we're going to explain

00:52:11 ◼   ► in a moment, it actually kind of doesn't matter what that is. You want it to sound good for

00:52:15 ◼   ► your own edification, but ideally no one will ever hear the contents of the actual voice

00:52:23 ◼   ► over IP call.

00:52:24 ◼   ► David: Because what you want to do is you want to have a way to record yourself locally,

00:52:30 ◼   ► and every computer has free options available to this, which are top of the range, right?

00:52:36 ◼   ► So on the Mac you can use QuickTime and it's perfect, it's rock solid. Or on Windows, you

00:52:43 ◼   ► you can use something like Audacity. You can just go ahead and go for that. That will work

00:52:50 ◼   ► really great for you. And then you want to be able to have some kind of application that

00:52:56 ◼   ► can record the conversation that you're having. I use Skype and we use Skype and I have for

00:53:03 ◼   ► many years used a wonderful application by a company called Ecamm. They make a product

00:53:09 ◼   ► called Core Recorder for Skype. They also make a Core Recorder for FaceTime as well.

00:53:14 ◼   ► So you could do both either or. And these applications are super simple. They sit as

00:53:19 ◼   ► like an additional window to the application. They have with themselves a bunch of settings

00:53:24 ◼   ► and then a great tool for extracting the audio. So when me and Jason are talking,

00:53:29 ◼   ► I'm using Core Recorder to record our conversation. And then when we're done,

00:53:35 ◼   ► I export our conversation from CoreRecorder. So I have a file which is the audio of this call.

00:53:41 ◼   ► I also have a file which is my recording. I actually also use Ecamm for this but you can

00:53:47 ◼   ► use something like QuickTime if you want to. And then Jason sends me a recording of his file

00:53:53 ◼   ► and Jason uses AudioHijack which you can also use to do all of the core recording as well because

00:53:59 ◼   ► AudioHijack can do that. So you end up with three files. You have a recording of the actual

00:54:04 ◼   ► conversation over Skype or FaceTime, which is done with one of the core recording apps or Audio

00:54:08 ◼   ► Hijack, and then you have the local files for every participant, and for me and Jason, that's two.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Then you drop it into your editing app. Do you want to take over from here, Jason?

00:54:17 ◼   ► Uh, sure. You drop it into GarageBand is a good example for Mac users because it's free,

00:54:24 ◼   ► and what you do is you put in your audio and the call audio, and ideally those were recorded at the

00:54:30 ◼   ► at the same time so they are matched up

00:54:33 ◼   ► in terms of sort of they started at the same time.

00:54:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, do a countdown, like a lot of my shows

00:54:37 ◼   ► they do a three, two, one,

00:54:38 ◼   ► and then everybody presses record countdown,

00:54:40 ◼   ► we do that a lot.

00:54:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, that gets it close.

00:54:42 ◼   ► And then what you do is, and you drop in the other person

00:54:45 ◼   ► or people's audio files, and then you line them up

00:54:47 ◼   ► so that they're all, because they might not be

00:54:50 ◼   ► at exactly the same time, you wanna match them up.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And that's the nice thing about having a reference file,

00:54:55 ◼   ► is that if you've got a reference recording

00:54:57 ◼   ► of the conversation over Skype or wherever,

00:55:00 ◼   ► and you can match, you can line up their audio

00:55:03 ◼   ► to what it was as you heard it.

00:55:07 ◼   ► And at that point, ideally, and sometimes there's drift,

00:55:11 ◼   ► sometimes you need to like cut the file in the middle

00:55:14 ◼   ► and slide it over a little bit

00:55:16 ◼   ► because it's running a little bit slower

00:55:18 ◼   ► 'cause computer clocks don't always run at the same speed,

00:55:20 ◼   ► believe it or not.

00:55:21 ◼   ► But ideally what you wanna end up with

00:55:24 ◼   ► is a situation where you can delete

00:55:25 ◼   ► your recording of the phone call

00:55:28 ◼   ► and all that's left are the microphones

00:55:30 ◼   ► that were recorded locally by all the participants.

00:55:34 ◼   ► At which point, ideally, it sounds like

00:55:37 ◼   ► you're all in the same room together

00:55:38 ◼   ► because nobody is using a Skype connection

00:55:42 ◼   ► that can go in and out.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Now, you can use the Skype connection

00:55:45 ◼   ► if somebody doesn't record.

00:55:47 ◼   ► That's one of the nice reasons it exists

00:55:48 ◼   ► is that it's kind of a backup

00:55:50 ◼   ► in case somebody has a recording failure.

00:55:52 ◼   ► You at least have a recording of their voice,

00:55:54 ◼   ► but it will sound better if you use all the local recordings

00:55:58 ◼   ► and just use the phone call for reference.

00:56:01 ◼   ► And at that point, you know,

00:56:03 ◼   ► the internet's no longer involved, right?

00:56:04 ◼   ► At that point, all the audio is just the audio

00:56:07 ◼   ► that happened on the computer when you were recording.

00:56:10 ◼   ► - So it's therefore the highest quality that it can be.

00:56:13 ◼   ► So it works really well,

00:56:15 ◼   ► and you match up the audio visually in your editing app,

00:56:19 ◼   ► so you can match up the waveforms.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Like that's kind of the way,

00:56:23 ◼   ► don't do it by listening,

00:56:24 ◼   ► do it by matching up the waveforms,

00:56:25 ◼   ► and then you'll be able to get a great kind of mix there.

00:56:28 ◼   ► And as Jason says, you wanna go through the audio file

00:56:31 ◼   ► and just make sure that everyone's staying on track

00:56:33 ◼   ► because it can drift backwards and forwards.

00:56:35 ◼   ► That's just a case of making a cut

00:56:36 ◼   ► and moving things around a little bit.

00:56:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, the alternative to this that's coming,

00:56:42 ◼   ► and I think will, you know,

00:56:44 ◼   ► if depending on the size of the conversations

00:56:46 ◼   ► that you're having, it might be a nice alternative

00:56:49 ◼   ► are things using WebRTC,

00:56:50 ◼   ► which is the real-time communication web protocol.

00:56:55 ◼   ► Safari was updated to support it,

00:56:56 ◼   ► but doesn't support it quite the same way that Chrome does.

00:57:00 ◼   ► And as a result, these services don't yet,

00:57:02 ◼   ► as far as I can tell, support Safari, hopefully someday.

00:57:06 ◼   ► But for now, you'd use Chrome and you can go,

00:57:09 ◼   ► there are two of them, Cast and Zencastr.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Cast is at TriCast, that's T-R-Y-C-A dot S-T.

00:57:16 ◼   ► It's a very clever domain.

00:57:18 ◼   ► And Zencastr is Z-E-N-C-A-S-T-R dot com, I believe.

00:57:24 ◼   ► And these both, basically you log in and you send a link

00:57:29 ◼   ► and they have paid and free tiers,

00:57:32 ◼   ► and you send a link to your fellow participants

00:57:33 ◼   ► and they also go there with Chrome.

00:57:36 ◼   ► And then you're having a conversation

00:57:39 ◼   ► and you can all hear each other.

00:57:41 ◼   ► And what happens in the background is the web app

00:57:44 ◼   ► is actually doing that recording locally on your computer

00:57:47 ◼   ► and then uploading it to a server.

00:57:50 ◼   ► So what's nice about it is that it eliminates

00:57:54 ◼   ► a lot of the fiddliness of you gotta record your own end,

00:57:57 ◼   ► and then you gotta take the file,

00:57:59 ◼   ► and you've gotta get it to the other person and all of that.

00:58:03 ◼   ► With these, that all happens within the web app.

00:58:05 ◼   ► There are some downsides to that.

00:58:06 ◼   ► They're not as good at putting together a whole group

00:58:10 ◼   ► and massaging the audio as Skype is.

00:58:12 ◼   ► Skype has actually built a whole infrastructure about this,

00:58:14 ◼   ► and these are all just doing it inside a browser.

00:58:17 ◼   ► And so it's a lot harder.

00:58:18 ◼   ► But for two or three people,

00:58:19 ◼   ► it can be a really effective way to do a podcast.

00:58:21 ◼   ► And this is how I do the TV Talk Machine podcast

00:58:24 ◼   ► with Tim Goodman every week,

00:58:25 ◼   ► because then all he has to do is log in

00:58:27 ◼   ► and I press the buttons and in the end,

00:58:29 ◼   ► I get a file that's a locally recorded file

00:58:31 ◼   ► from his computer and he has to do nothing.

00:58:34 ◼   ► - And you also get the merged file too, right?

00:58:37 ◼   ► So like these tools, they replicate everything.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Like they do all of it.

00:58:43 ◼   ► - That's it.

00:58:44 ◼   ► And then one last thing, which is Antony Johnston,

00:58:49 ◼   ► who does podcasts on the incomparable a lot and is a professional comic book

00:58:54 ◼   ► writer, video game writer, he wrote the comic that graphic novel that atomic

00:59:00 ◼   ► blonde the movie was based on Anthony. A man of many talents including he set up

00:59:06 ◼   ► podcastguestguide.com just one word podcastguestguide.com which is a great

00:59:13 ◼   ► site if you're a podcaster to send to people who have never done a podcast

00:59:16 ◼   ► before to tell them what to do to be a good podcast guest, what software to use, how to

00:59:21 ◼   ► record, how to send the file, all of those things and so I highly recommend it.

00:59:27 ◼   ► So there you go, there's a podcast tip for you. I hope that that is of some use for you

00:59:33 ◼   ► Finn. If you are interested, this kind of thing is interesting to you hearing us talk

00:59:37 ◼   ► about sort of stuff, tweet your podcast questions with the hashtag #askupgrade. If you totally

00:59:42 ◼   ► hate this tell me if you totally love this tell me and then I can gauge people's opinions

00:59:47 ◼   ► like but there we go so we can know for the future if this is of interest to people. Alright

00:59:51 ◼   ► it's about time that we spoke about Apple's bad week.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Yes I hope there isn't a bug that prevents maybe like iOS just suddenly at this point

01:00:02 ◼   ► restarts and you can never actually hear us talk about a bug that might happen and maybe

01:00:08 ◼   ► we'll see let's cross our fingers. This episode is brought to you by Balance Open a free

01:00:12 ◼   ► free open source Mac app for checking Coinbase. Coinbase is a popular market for cryptocurrencies

01:00:17 ◼   ► like Bitcoin and Ethereum and BalanceOpen is the best open source digital wallet to

01:00:21 ◼   ► help you keep track of everything. If you have been paying attention to the internet

01:00:25 ◼   ► over the last couple of weeks you will have seen the stories about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is

01:00:29 ◼   ► at an unprecedented high right now which is of course turning more people's attention

01:00:33 ◼   ► to it and if this is something you are interested in Coinbase is a great place to keep this

01:00:38 ◼   ► this

01:00:53 ◼   ► more

01:01:12 ◼   ► and

01:01:32 ◼   ► want to talk about this and kind of my feeling for this is not that I think it doesn't

01:01:36 ◼   ► deserve to be talked about, to be spoken about. I just think that at this point, I personally

01:01:41 ◼   ► don't feel like I have a lot to bring to this conversation. But we need to, I think

01:01:48 ◼   ► we should, for the pure case of cataloging this as a thing that happened, we should talk

01:01:54 ◼   ► about it on this show.

01:01:55 ◼   ► Let me preface that too by saying that, you know, one of the challenges here, this is,

01:02:00 ◼   ► we criticize Apple all the time.

01:02:02 ◼   ► This is not the issue,

01:02:03 ◼   ► 'cause there's always this like, why didn't you?

01:02:05 ◼   ► Every now and then we don't talk about something for,

01:02:07 ◼   ► like we didn't think about it

01:02:08 ◼   ► or we didn't think it was important.

01:02:09 ◼   ► So it was like, why didn't you mention this?

01:02:11 ◼   ► You're trying to hide the truth.

01:02:13 ◼   ► And it's like, the problem with this story

01:02:15 ◼   ► is that it has lots of real world ramifications

01:02:19 ◼   ► and yet when you back it up,

01:02:21 ◼   ► you don't have to back it up very far to enter a black box,

01:02:25 ◼   ► which is Apple software processes.

01:02:27 ◼   ► And, you know, ATP, the excellent hall of fame upgradey tech podcast, ATP, those

01:02:35 ◼   ► three guys are professional software developers and they, they had a very

01:02:41 ◼   ► good discussion last week about this, but even they are a little bit, you

01:02:45 ◼   ► know, stymied they're kind of guessing because as much as this affects people,

01:02:53 ◼   ► Like in the end, all we can do is say,

01:02:58 ◼   ► and we're gonna talk more about this,

01:02:59 ◼   ► but I feel like it all comes back to,

01:03:01 ◼   ► I hope this stops.

01:03:03 ◼   ► I hope they don't do this anymore.

01:03:04 ◼   ► Whatever happened, I hope they learn about it

01:03:06 ◼   ► and they fix it.

01:03:07 ◼   ► Whatever the root causes are,

01:03:09 ◼   ► I hope they realize that that was bad

01:03:13 ◼   ► and they need to do something else

01:03:14 ◼   ► because once you're talking about,

01:03:16 ◼   ► I mean, like we're not software developers.

01:03:17 ◼   ► So first off there's that, right?

01:03:18 ◼   ► But even beyond that,

01:03:21 ◼   ► to software development,

01:03:23 ◼   ► maintaining giant operating system code bases

01:03:26 ◼   ► with millions of users, billions of users maybe,

01:03:30 ◼   ► with,

01:03:31 ◼   ► in a large organization,

01:03:35 ◼   ► with different code coming from different places.

01:03:37 ◼   ► Like, that's not something

01:03:40 ◼   ► more than a handful of companies do.

01:03:44 ◼   ► It's incredibly complicated.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And I'm not using that as an excuse.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Apple made some, you know, has a real black eye

01:03:52 ◼   ► about its software quality right now and deservedly so.

01:03:55 ◼   ► My point is, I don't know, you know,

01:04:00 ◼   ► I don't know enough about that.

01:04:01 ◼   ► I don't understand enough about that complexity

01:04:04 ◼   ► to parachute in and say, oh, well, it's obvious,

01:04:06 ◼   ► just fix this thing.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Like, this is a complex process.

01:04:10 ◼   ► This is the kind of thing that people who spend years

01:04:13 ◼   ► inside the organization might be able to have ideas

01:04:18 ◼   ► about what they can do or an organization similar to it.

01:04:23 ◼   ► But one of the things that makes me reluctant

01:04:25 ◼   ► to talk about it in great detail beyond the,

01:04:28 ◼   ► how it affects users and how it makes us feel

01:04:33 ◼   ► is because anybody who's just driving by

01:04:37 ◼   ► and offering Apple a solution to this issue,

01:04:40 ◼   ► I can guarantee you should shut up

01:04:43 ◼   ► because they don't know.

01:04:45 ◼   ► I almost guarantee you.

01:04:46 ◼   ► unless it's like Steven Sinofsky or somebody,

01:04:50 ◼   ► like somebody who worked at Microsoft

01:04:52 ◼   ► on huge things like this in software development.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Like there's a very small number of people

01:04:57 ◼   ► who actually know all the details

01:04:59 ◼   ► and can make educated statements

01:05:02 ◼   ► about what might be wrong on this,

01:05:04 ◼   ► because it's so complicated.

01:05:06 ◼   ► And I don't wanna be one of those people

01:05:08 ◼   ► because that's the equivalent of being the person who says,

01:05:11 ◼   ► "Add a feature to your software.

01:05:13 ◼   ► I'm sure it'll only take you a couple of hours."

01:05:16 ◼   ► where they have no idea and that just they've been exposed as having no idea. So I'm really

01:05:21 ◼   ► reluctant to get into the what could Apple do to make this better because I feel like it is going

01:05:26 ◼   ► to be esoteric. It is going to be something that requires deep knowledge of how Apple's whole

01:05:31 ◼   ► software development environment, the people who work on it, the way they work, the way they're

01:05:37 ◼   ► managed. It's going to depend on all of that. That's what impacts this and we don't know that.

01:05:42 ◼   ► So all in the end, and this is kind of unfulfilling because in the end, software is really hard

01:05:49 ◼   ► to talk about in that way other than what the result was and how it makes us feel.

01:05:55 ◼   ► So I guess that's what we're going to talk about is the result and how it made us feel

01:05:58 ◼   ► because that's all that we're left with basically.

01:06:00 ◼   ► Because basically all me and you can say, which is what we feel, is please don't do

01:06:04 ◼   ► this again.

01:06:05 ◼   ► This needs to stop, right?

01:06:07 ◼   ► There needs to be a way.

01:06:08 ◼   ► And we can talk like we did last week about kind of oogie feelings, which is like it feels

01:06:12 ◼   ► like there's, you know, there's more attention that needs to be paid. I mean, I can say here's

01:06:18 ◼   ► my solution, which is from the outside, I look at this and worry that Apple is running

01:06:25 ◼   ► itself as a small company when it's really not because they like to think of themselves

01:06:30 ◼   ► as a small company. And what I want to say is you've got lots of money. You're Apple

01:06:36 ◼   ► people. People actually might want to work for you who are talented people hire more

01:06:41 ◼   ► of them if that solves the problem. But I'm also aware of the mythical, what is it,

01:06:47 ◼   ► mythical million man month or whatever that that the premise that twice the

01:06:51 ◼   ► developers doesn't make your software project twice as efficient, it makes it

01:06:55 ◼   ► half as efficient. I get it. You're throwing money and people at problems is

01:06:59 ◼   ► not always the solution. I worry that Apple runs lean, which is admirable, but

01:07:08 ◼   ► to a fault in the case of what they're trying to do here but I don't know that

01:07:15 ◼   ► might not be it at all

01:07:16 ◼   ► we're already armchair quarterbacking again right like right I literally all I

01:07:21 ◼   ► can say is that I I worry that maybe I know enough about some Apple culture to

01:07:27 ◼   ► worry that maybe they that that philosophy of being really careful with

01:07:35 ◼   ► adding headcount and adding people in certain places and being really conservative about

01:07:43 ◼   ► how they spend their money, which is admirable in a lot of ways. I worry that that's a contributing

01:07:47 ◼   ► factor here when this is a company that has all the money in the world, but I think the

01:07:51 ◼   ► answer is if they just throw money at the problem and solve it, I would think that they

01:07:56 ◼   ► would have done that already. So that can't be it.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Alright, I'm going to speed through a breakdown of these two bots.

01:08:03 ◼   ► So last Tuesday, developer Lemmy Orhan-Ergin tweeted about a potential security hole, and

01:08:10 ◼   ► actually was a pretty serious security hole in Mac OS, which allowed you to access the

01:08:15 ◼   ► root super user account without a password.

01:08:19 ◼   ► So my understanding of this, Jason, is it allowed anybody to go to basically any Mac

01:08:24 ◼   ► that didn't have the super user account

01:08:27 ◼   ► already activated with a password,

01:08:28 ◼   ► create it or just access it, right?

01:08:31 ◼   ► And this could be at any point,

01:08:33 ◼   ► the Mac could be in a logged out state even.

01:08:35 ◼   ► - You gotta be running High Sierra.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And not the beta is my understanding, not the beta,

01:08:40 ◼   ► but like 10.13.0 or 10.13.1, I think.

01:08:45 ◼   ► And my MacBook Air was in this, it was running 10.13.1.

01:08:51 ◼   ► And so I tried it and it totally works.

01:08:53 ◼   ► like I was able to go to system preferences

01:08:56 ◼   ► and click the lock to unlock

01:09:00 ◼   ► so I could make changes to the system preferences

01:09:02 ◼   ► and log in as root with no password and press okay.

01:09:06 ◼   ► And it said, you know, and it rejected that.

01:09:08 ◼   ► And then I did it again and everything unlocked.

01:09:12 ◼   ► - This is about as bad as a security hole that can be,

01:09:14 ◼   ► right? Like it was terrible.

01:09:16 ◼   ► - I can think of worse ones because worse ones

01:09:19 ◼   ► would allow you to remote.

01:09:21 ◼   ► And apparently it was only if you had like

01:09:24 ◼   ► screen sharing turned on or you would have to have

01:09:26 ◼   ► turned on other things.

01:09:28 ◼   ► But then apparently like if you had screen sharing

01:09:30 ◼   ► turned on and somebody connected your IP

01:09:33 ◼   ► and you know, they would have to go through

01:09:34 ◼   ► if you don't have a firewall or something,

01:09:35 ◼   ► you're just on an IP address on the internet,

01:09:37 ◼   ► they would be able to log in as root with no password.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And I think actually do screen sharing, which is bad.

01:09:43 ◼   ► So it's, I'd say it's bad, about as bad as it gets

01:09:45 ◼   ► in terms of like local device security.

01:09:48 ◼   ► 'Cause it's like literally if somebody can type

01:09:49 ◼   ► on your computer, they have access to everything,

01:09:51 ◼   ► they don't need your password.

01:09:54 ◼   ► Apple apologized? Which was very peculiar to see. They used the word "apologize".

01:10:02 ◼   ► I was wondering about this. Will they say publicly in press releases "we are sorry"?

01:10:08 ◼   ► I wondered if they would do that. You can correct me if I'm wrong, Jason, but Apple

01:10:14 ◼   ► doesn't apologize for things.

01:10:16 ◼   ► - I think this is a class of thing

01:10:20 ◼   ► that they have apologized before about.

01:10:21 ◼   ► When it's a like a major problem,

01:10:23 ◼   ► they will come out and say,

01:10:24 ◼   ► "We're sorry, a major security problem."

01:10:26 ◼   ► They will do that.

01:10:27 ◼   ► So I wasn't surprised.

01:10:28 ◼   ► 'Cause this reaches that level where,

01:10:31 ◼   ► yeah, you better be sorry.

01:10:33 ◼   ► I mean, it is that level.

01:10:35 ◼   ► So I wasn't surprised.

01:10:36 ◼   ► - Which they gave to Jason is,

01:10:39 ◼   ► "We greatly regret this error

01:10:40 ◼   ► and we apologize to all Mac users,

01:10:42 ◼   ► both for releasing with this vulnerability

01:10:44 ◼   ► and for the concern it has caused.

01:10:46 ◼   ► Our customers deserve better.

01:10:48 ◼   ► I love that line.

01:10:49 ◼   ► We are auditing our development processes

01:10:51 ◼   ► to help prevent this from happening again.

01:10:53 ◼   ► Apple released a patch within 24 hours.

01:10:56 ◼   ► They also stated that they would force this update

01:10:58 ◼   ► onto the user's machines, that they're running High Sierra.

01:11:02 ◼   ► They would just update it for them,

01:11:03 ◼   ► which is the second time they'd done this,

01:11:05 ◼   ► you were saying, I believe?

01:11:06 ◼   ► - That's right.

01:11:07 ◼   ► There was a bug in NTP, the Network Time Protocol Demon,

01:11:11 ◼   ► that was discovered.

01:11:13 ◼   ► It was an open source,

01:11:14 ◼   ► but it was discovered and there is a,

01:11:19 ◼   ► Apple has a way of pushing software updates

01:11:21 ◼   ► without your interaction if you've got auto updates

01:11:26 ◼   ► turned on and it doesn't require a restart,

01:11:29 ◼   ► which was true with the NTP error

01:11:31 ◼   ► and it was true with this one.

01:11:32 ◼   ► So they were actually able to,

01:11:34 ◼   ► there was an update released and you could update to it,

01:11:37 ◼   ► but if you were running 1013.1 and updated to it,

01:11:41 ◼   ► or it didn't update it, it would do it.

01:11:43 ◼   ► it would update in the background,

01:11:46 ◼   ► just sitting there and get rid of this bug

01:11:49 ◼   ► because they consider it that serious.

01:11:52 ◼   ► - So then very embarrassing, egg on their face,

01:11:57 ◼   ► you know, not a good look.

01:11:59 ◼   ► - And just to mention the other things that happened were,

01:12:02 ◼   ► I mean, this release was like,

01:12:04 ◼   ► some people stayed up all night to do this bug push out.

01:12:08 ◼   ► And there was a short term solution to, you know,

01:12:11 ◼   ► enable the root user using the directory utility and then give it a password and then that solved it.

01:12:17 ◼   ► But they did push out this update. Apparently it then led to people who had file sharing turned on

01:12:23 ◼   ► that the file sharing turned off and you had to do a different thing to work around that,

01:12:28 ◼   ► which is why they don't usually push out a bug fix in less than 24 hours because there are side

01:12:33 ◼   ► effects that they didn't go through their testing process. So that made people complain because,

01:12:37 ◼   ► but at least people didn't have unfettered root access to your computer, but still it was a thing.

01:12:41 ◼   ► It also turns out that if you had a Mac running 10.13.0 and you did this update and then you

01:12:51 ◼   ► thought, "Well, you know, I ought to just update to the latest version," and then update

01:12:54 ◼   ► it to 10.13.1, it undid the fix.

01:12:59 ◼   ► Oh my God.

01:13:01 ◼   ► So that wasn't great.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Again, one of the side effects of fixing this fast, I suspect.

01:13:05 ◼   ► You can't test everything, right?

01:13:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Yeah, that's ideally everybody should be on 10.13.1 with a patch applied.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Like me, not on 10.13 at all.

01:13:20 ◼   ► Or not on 10.13 at all.

01:13:22 ◼   ► In which case you would not have this problem.

01:13:25 ◼   ► So egg on the face, terrible, not good look.

01:13:28 ◼   ► It was kind of all resolved by Wednesday.

01:13:30 ◼   ► Then late on Friday, December 1st, it was discovered and seemed to be pushed out via

01:13:35 ◼   ► some channels that there was a bug in iOS 11 that was causing springboard crashes when

01:13:44 ◼   ► a local notification triggered on the device on December 2nd.

01:13:48 ◼   ► So if you had an app like a weather app or like dew which is an app that I love or maybe

01:13:54 ◼   ► a workout app something that would trigger not a push notification from a cloud like

01:13:58 ◼   ► a message but something you'd set maybe like a to do app or something like that.

01:14:03 ◼   ► If one of these notifications triggered, you could end up in a reboot loop. So the phone

01:14:09 ◼   ► would just keep rebooting every time the notification triggered, right? You would reboot the device.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Is this some, what was this some kind of, why was this happening? Do you know?

01:14:19 ◼   ► So it sounds like there is a bug in iOS 11 and actually in Mac OS as well that is related

01:14:28 ◼   ► to the calendar that I think these are related. So earlier that day I got an

01:14:34 ◼   ► email from Rob Griffiths who I used to work with at Macworld saying, "Are you

01:14:37 ◼   ► seeing in the Mac OS logs, console logs, this error like every fraction of a

01:14:44 ◼   ► second in the log called that says month 13 is out of bounds?" Which you can logic

01:14:50 ◼   ► that one out, right? Month 13 is out of bounds means somebody's getting to the

01:14:54 ◼   ► the 12th month of the year and trying to go up 30 days

01:14:57 ◼   ► and finding month 13 instead of flipping over

01:15:00 ◼   ► to the next year and the system is like,

01:15:03 ◼   ► no, no, there is no month 13

01:15:05 ◼   ► unless I've been informed otherwise

01:15:07 ◼   ► and throwing that out there.

01:15:08 ◼   ► And I think they've gotta be related.

01:15:10 ◼   ► I don't know that for sure, but that's my gut feeling

01:15:12 ◼   ► is that this is the same bug, which is on the,

01:15:16 ◼   ► once you get into December, there are calculations

01:15:19 ◼   ► that are made at a system level like by that apps call

01:15:23 ◼   ► say, "What's the next date?"

01:15:27 ◼   ► Some date function and there's something wrong, there's a bug in there, that's

01:15:31 ◼   ► making it go to month 13 instead of going to month one of the next year.

01:15:36 ◼   ► So my guess is that this is all related and there is a bug in the core code

01:15:40 ◼   ► somewhere that did this and it turns out that that bug then causes the

01:15:48 ◼   ► springboard, the home screen basically on iOS, to reload because it's like, "Oh,

01:15:54 ◼   ► that's a bad error. I need to reload because something bad happened." And so

01:15:59 ◼   ► you've got probably, it looks like, a bug triggering a state in a

01:16:04 ◼   ► different app that was not anticipated or was anticipated for good reasons but

01:16:09 ◼   ► now is being triggered for bad reasons. So that's what I think is

01:16:13 ◼   ► going on here. The next result is that, yeah, the springboard crashes and you can end in

01:16:21 ◼   ► a reload/reboot loop, which is bad. And it was fixed in 11.2, apparently?

01:16:28 ◼   ► - Yes, so Apple released 11.2 early, is what it looked like.

01:16:32 ◼   ► - And like, late on Friday night? - Friday night, yeah.

01:16:36 ◼   ► - 11.2 was probably supposed to go out today. - It was supposed to go out during the show,

01:16:42 ◼   ► Apple Pay cash apparently just got activated as we're doing this show. So that's when it

01:16:49 ◼   ► should have dropped. It should have dropped about now.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Because the Apple Pay cash, so this is the being able to send Apple Pay to each other

01:16:57 ◼   ► and having Apple Pay cash in your wallet, that was called out in the release notes like,

01:17:01 ◼   ► "Oh, this includes this!" Which is kind of funny because it didn't, and it also said

01:17:06 ◼   ► that for me and it doesn't because it's not in the UK. It's only in the US right now.

01:17:11 ◼   ► so that was kind of funny. I think that was a case of like, it's wrong, but we just got

01:17:15 ◼   ► to push it out, so they put it out on Friday. So when I woke up on Friday, I woke up to

01:17:19 ◼   ► a bunch of messages for people telling me to do this. So the first thing I did on Friday

01:17:23 ◼   ► morning before I did anything else was update all my devices. So this didn't happen to me

01:17:28 ◼   ► because I updated everything. 11.2 also featured something else that I want to mention, which

01:17:33 ◼   ► is the fixing of another autocorrect bug. So everybody knows the "i" which turned into

01:17:38 ◼   ► to the question mark and the box, right?

01:17:40 ◼   ► But there was another autocorrect bug,

01:17:42 ◼   ► which impacted less users, but was still a problem,

01:17:46 ◼   ► where it was changing it to IT, I.T.

01:17:50 ◼   ► Now, this is the second autocorrect bug.

01:17:54 ◼   ► - Dan and I talked about this

01:17:56 ◼   ► on the Six Colors Secret podcast last week.

01:17:58 ◼   ► That's like, this happens to me all the time.

01:18:00 ◼   ► And it's funny 'cause Casey talked about it

01:18:02 ◼   ► on ATP last week too,

01:18:03 ◼   ► where I have things corrected to just bizarre things.

01:18:06 ◼   ► I have words capitalized that should never be capitalized,

01:18:09 ◼   ► but suddenly they're capitalized.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Some of them go away if you keep typing.

01:18:14 ◼   ► If you don't stop because you see a bug or a typo,

01:18:18 ◼   ► you keep typing and it like goes back and it's like,

01:18:21 ◼   ► oh, I see, and it'll actually de-correct it or something,

01:18:25 ◼   ► which is also weird because then you are motivated

01:18:28 ◼   ► to keep typing, even though you see an error

01:18:31 ◼   ► in the hopes that it will get retroactively corrected.

01:18:34 ◼   ► But I've also seen exactly what is described here.

01:18:36 ◼   ► Well, not this particular correction,

01:18:38 ◼   ► but a correction like it where I typed a totally valid,

01:18:41 ◼   ► incredibly common word and it got corrected

01:18:43 ◼   ► to something completely bizarre.

01:18:45 ◼   ► And like, why did that happen?

01:18:48 ◼   ► - So this is the second time since iOS 11 was released

01:18:52 ◼   ► that Apple have had to fix an autocorrect bug

01:18:55 ◼   ► via an iOS software update.

01:18:58 ◼   ► So I'm just gonna state on the record

01:19:00 ◼   ► that I believe that Apple's approach for autocorrect being,

01:19:05 ◼   ► my understanding of how it's working now is it's the differential privacy stuff and core ml is

01:19:11 ◼   ► creating via machine learning a new system for autocorrect i think that is clearly the wrong one

01:19:17 ◼   ► because they are spreading like viruses and because apple refuses to have any of this stuff

01:19:23 ◼   ► live in the cloud their only way to fix it is via software update which is arcane and ridiculous in

01:19:29 ◼   ► in my opinion, but you have to update the software of the device to fix an autocorrect

01:19:34 ◼   ► bug. I think that it is wild. I don't see any of these because I use Gboard. I've been

01:19:42 ◼   ► meaning to recommend Gboard to Casey but I figured he would just do a Casey thing and

01:19:46 ◼   ► say something about Google so I haven't bothered to do it. So Casey if you're listening to

01:19:50 ◼   ► me now, the Gboard autocorrect is better than Apple's. It just is. One of my favourite things

01:19:56 ◼   ► about Gboard is you know if you're meaning to press space and maybe you do a full stop

01:20:02 ◼   ► or you do an N and maybe you do a bunch of those, it can work out an entire sentence

01:20:07 ◼   ► typed that way, which the Apple keyboard cannot do. Like if you're typing and putting Ns instead

01:20:13 ◼   ► of spaces, like the iOS keyboard can maybe separate two words. I've had like four or

01:20:18 ◼   ► five words separated by the Google keyboard, like it is way better for this stuff. And

01:20:23 ◼   ► It's a third-party keyboard so it comes with all the problems that third-party keyboards come with but it's vastly superior

01:20:28 ◼   ► But my point is other operating systems like with Google

01:20:32 ◼   ► They keep all this stuff in and I'm sure in a list that they can just update on their end

01:20:35 ◼   ► The having to update these things via iOS software updates. This will not scale has happened twice in two months

01:20:43 ◼   ► This is monthly currently

01:20:45 ◼   ► This is not this is not a good thing because all it's doing is until you push that update out

01:20:49 ◼   ► People are getting more and more frustrated with the thing that they are doing most on their phones

01:20:54 ◼   ► Which is typing and texting you ask if the word it and the word like the use I is

01:21:01 ◼   ► Getting screwed up like this is not good Apple like because this went when the I came out like I was thinking to myself

01:21:07 ◼   ► How many more are there?

01:21:10 ◼   ► Right, like there must be more of these but we just don't see them and it turns out yes because the it one wasn't as frequent

01:21:18 ◼   ► but I just think it's ridiculous.

01:21:19 ◼   ► I think they need to clearly change course on this.

01:21:22 ◼   ► I know what I want them to do.

01:21:24 ◼   ► It's not what they will do, but this clearly isn't working.

01:21:26 ◼   ► But anyway, going back to these bugs, these issues, right?

01:21:31 ◼   ► The iOS 11 reboot bug and the root issue.

01:21:34 ◼   ► I mean, what does it say about Apple, right?

01:21:38 ◼   ► Like, does it say anything specific?

01:21:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Like we said this, we don't know.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Like, are they struggling?

01:21:43 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:21:44 ◼   ► Was it bad luck?

01:21:44 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:21:45 ◼   ► Is it embarrassing for them?

01:21:46 ◼   ► Yes, right?

01:21:47 ◼   ► to those questions, we don't actually know. It's easy to say, "Oh, software quality is bad."

01:21:51 ◼   ► All that kind of stuff that you can say all that. But my kind of point, my thinking on this,

01:21:57 ◼   ► is none of that actually matters. The reasons don't matter. The reasons this happened,

01:22:02 ◼   ► bad luck, bad software practices, none of that matters. What matters is that in the space of

01:22:08 ◼   ► three days, Apple had two huge PR problems. Because I would expect that they were giving

01:22:16 ◼   ► statements to everybody that they could about this stuff because they needed their customers

01:22:20 ◼   ► to know.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Like this is one of the worst types of problems where you have a problem that is really bad

01:22:26 ◼   ► for you but you actually can't hide it.

01:22:29 ◼   ► You have to tell as many people as possible about it because these are problems so bad

01:22:35 ◼   ► that you have to have them fixed and the only way to fix them is to force your customers

01:22:40 ◼   ► to do a thing.

01:22:41 ◼   ► And like, so it doesn't matter how it actually happened,

01:22:46 ◼   ► it matters how it's perceived,

01:22:47 ◼   ► and the perception right now, I would expect, is not good.

01:22:51 ◼   ► Especially because most people, most general users

01:22:55 ◼   ► that I have interacted with, including me,

01:22:57 ◼   ► to a point, are hesitant of updating iOS devices quickly.

01:23:02 ◼   ► Because for the past couple of years,

01:23:04 ◼   ► there have been like horrible bricking errors

01:23:07 ◼   ► that seem to happen on occasion.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Right, so like, if a big update comes out,

01:23:11 ◼   ► leave it a few hours right like I just want to see like is everyone okay like

01:23:16 ◼   ► is the general consensus that this thing is installing okay before I install it

01:23:19 ◼   ► and this is me right like I know so many people that like just won't update for

01:23:23 ◼   ► months because they don't want to break their devices and now it's like now

01:23:27 ◼   ► there are more problems right and it doesn't matter what the actualities of

01:23:30 ◼   ► it are right where like there is a problem in the already installed version

01:23:34 ◼   ► and the update actually fixes it that's not the point the point is that Apple

01:23:39 ◼   ► customers and just general people

01:23:41 ◼   ► that have an interest in technology,

01:23:43 ◼   ► which is basically everyone on the planet now,

01:23:45 ◼   ► know that Apple had two really bad flaws

01:23:48 ◼   ► in their software in the last week.

01:23:52 ◼   ► It's not good.

01:23:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, you called it a PR problem,

01:23:55 ◼   ► and it is that, but I would say

01:23:56 ◼   ► it's a public perception problem,

01:23:59 ◼   ► because this erodes Apple's perception

01:24:03 ◼   ► as a supplier of reliable products.

01:24:06 ◼   ► And that's hard.

01:24:08 ◼   ► Perception of your company is hard to change

01:24:13 ◼   ► and you can't control it if you're a company like this.

01:24:16 ◼   ► You can't, you can try, but it's very hard.

01:24:20 ◼   ► And unfortunately, this is the kind of thing

01:24:25 ◼   ► that gives you a reputation of being unreliable.

01:24:29 ◼   ► And I agree with you.

01:24:30 ◼   ► I actually think the release of, was it iOS 7

01:24:35 ◼   ► that was the radical?

01:24:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, Se7en was the one that started it

01:24:39 ◼   ► because when iOS 7 came out,

01:24:41 ◼   ► people realized that everything they think

01:24:44 ◼   ► about their phone can change overnight, right?

01:24:46 ◼   ► Like that was the one where like people were upset

01:24:49 ◼   ► because it was completely new.

01:24:50 ◼   ► And if you didn't want that,

01:24:52 ◼   ► you didn't know it was gonna happen to you.

01:24:54 ◼   ► - And this is the thing is that's exactly right.

01:24:56 ◼   ► There are so many people,

01:24:58 ◼   ► how many millions of people reacted with shock

01:25:02 ◼   ► to the iOS 7 update and said,

01:25:06 ◼   ► I am terrified of Apple updating my phone.

01:25:08 ◼   ► I can tell you, I have people in my family

01:25:11 ◼   ► that that is absolutely true of.

01:25:13 ◼   ► To this day, I have people in my family

01:25:15 ◼   ► who will see me and say,

01:25:18 ◼   ► months after releases have come out,

01:25:19 ◼   ► and say, should we do this update?

01:25:21 ◼   ► Can we do it now that you're here?

01:25:23 ◼   ► I don't wanna, basically it's like,

01:25:24 ◼   ► I don't wanna update my phone alone.

01:25:26 ◼   ► - I just updated my mom's phone yesterday.

01:25:29 ◼   ► - It's because of iOS 7.

01:25:30 ◼   ► I'm not kidding.

01:25:31 ◼   ► And that tells you something about how long

01:25:33 ◼   ► these perceptions can last.

01:25:35 ◼   ► I was seven again we can argue it was extreme they've dialed it back it was

01:25:40 ◼   ► ultimately to move in a new direction was probably a good idea in terms of the

01:25:44 ◼   ► design but it was such a radical change and it really upset people and it was

01:25:48 ◼   ► just like yeah let's update to the next version whoa what what happened here and

01:25:53 ◼   ► that made people feel like not they didn't trust apple and its software

01:25:59 ◼   ► updates anymore and it takes a long time to win people back and what I'm saying

01:26:03 ◼   ► is this is another ding on Apple.

01:26:05 ◼   ► This is, oh, Apple software isn't reliable.

01:26:08 ◼   ► You know what, Apple is gonna have to deal

01:26:11 ◼   ► with what Microsoft has dealt with,

01:26:12 ◼   ► which is a lot of people rolling their eyes

01:26:14 ◼   ► at what they do.

01:26:15 ◼   ► And rightly or wrongly,

01:26:16 ◼   ► and I said this is super complex stuff,

01:26:18 ◼   ► but you get a reputation

01:26:20 ◼   ► and your reputation sits over you.

01:26:24 ◼   ► And it's like a cloud.

01:26:26 ◼   ► It's a smelly cloud, right?

01:26:29 ◼   ► And you can't, as a company,

01:26:31 ◼   ► you can try to like wave it away,

01:26:33 ◼   ► but like there's only so much you can do.

01:26:36 ◼   ► And so that's the thing here is no matter

01:26:38 ◼   ► whether this is a systemic issue inside Apple

01:26:41 ◼   ► that has led to lots of problems,

01:26:42 ◼   ► and it's something that the management

01:26:44 ◼   ► of the software development group has pretended

01:26:48 ◼   ► to care about, but hasn't really done the hard things

01:26:51 ◼   ► that need to be done to do this.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Or whether this is something that is just emergent

01:26:57 ◼   ► from a complex system and happens to hit at bad times

01:27:01 ◼   ► in bad ways and has nothing to do with what's going on internally from the outside, doesn't

01:27:09 ◼   ► matter. Like, because this is a hit to Apple's reputation. So if you're an executive inside

01:27:15 ◼   ► Apple involved in software development, let me tell you, you, your, your bad week is just

01:27:21 ◼   ► beginning, right? I would think, I think the only, if, cause, cause think about us as outside

01:27:28 ◼   ► observers. Now put yourself in the shoes of Tim Cook. Tim Cook's not a software development guy,

01:27:35 ◼   ► not even a little bit, not even a little bit. He is a supply chain guy and he's a big picture

01:27:42 ◼   ► product guy in the sense as to what extent he's a product guy, it's about the final widget,

01:27:47 ◼   ► right? The experience, right? How deep down does he go in knowledge about the details of the

01:27:54 ◼   ► the software development systems.

01:27:57 ◼   ► - Probably similar to me in you, right?

01:27:58 ◼   ► Like in our level, we understand,

01:28:01 ◼   ► but don't get the detail.

01:28:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, he's gonna get briefings

01:28:05 ◼   ► from Craig Federighi and he's gonna be talking,

01:28:07 ◼   ► he's gonna have conversations with Phil Schiller

01:28:09 ◼   ► and they're gonna talk about it, right?

01:28:10 ◼   ► But it's not, and we don't generally get,

01:28:13 ◼   ► the only briefing we get with Craig Federighi

01:28:15 ◼   ► is when he's on the talk show, right?

01:28:17 ◼   ► So, but still, it's like, if I'm in that position,

01:28:21 ◼   ► all I can do is turn to the people who are in charge

01:28:24 ◼   ► and be like, you gotta explain why this is going on

01:28:26 ◼   ► 'cause this is killing us.

01:28:28 ◼   ► And we've done this before and you've said,

01:28:30 ◼   ► no, no, we're on it.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Where are we?

01:28:33 ◼   ► Because this has got to stop.

01:28:35 ◼   ► Like, what can we do, right?

01:28:36 ◼   ► It's gonna be one of those conversations of like,

01:28:38 ◼   ► talk to me, explain to me again

01:28:40 ◼   ► why we're in this situation.

01:28:42 ◼   ► So if you're in senior software management at Apple,

01:28:46 ◼   ► this is the beginning of probably many bad weeks to come.

01:28:49 ◼   ► Merry Christmas, everybody,

01:28:50 ◼   ► because when it gets out into the world like this

01:28:53 ◼   ► and it hurts Apple,

01:28:54 ◼   ► I was actually really disappointed with,

01:28:58 ◼   ► I mean, I wasn't disappointed with the guys on ATP last week

01:29:02 ◼   ► but the conversation that took place about how,

01:29:06 ◼   ► you know, they had heard from a lot of people about like,

01:29:07 ◼   ► who's gonna get fired over this,

01:29:09 ◼   ► this is a firing offense. - I know, so ridiculous.

01:29:11 ◼   ► - I'm incredibly offended by this idea that,

01:29:14 ◼   ► about like people losing their jobs,

01:29:17 ◼   ► talking about people losing their jobs in general,

01:29:18 ◼   ► especially if you don't know what their jobs are,

01:29:20 ◼   ► who they are, or all the underlying issues

01:29:24 ◼   ► that might lead to something happening.

01:29:25 ◼   ► It's just so easy for people to talk lightly

01:29:28 ◼   ► about people losing their livelihood.

01:29:30 ◼   ► I find it really distasteful.

01:29:32 ◼   ► - There are scenarios in which Craig Federighi

01:29:36 ◼   ► could be fired over this.

01:29:38 ◼   ► If he had made a decision, and everyone was like,

01:29:40 ◼   ► "Craig, please don't do this," and he's like,

01:29:42 ◼   ► "No, I am doing this," and then it literally attacked me.

01:29:45 ◼   ► - I'm holding you hostage, right?

01:29:48 ◼   ► But it's highly unlikely that it's anything.

01:29:50 ◼   ► This has gotta be a systemic issue.

01:29:51 ◼   ► - Just because something bad happened

01:29:53 ◼   ► doesn't mean someone has to be fired.

01:29:56 ◼   ► - Exactly right.

01:29:57 ◼   ► - We don't need to stage executions in town squares.

01:29:59 ◼   ► - Exactly, stuff like this.

01:30:00 ◼   ► - No, I would go so far as to say

01:30:01 ◼   ► that just because something went wrong,

01:30:03 ◼   ► if you fire somebody 'cause you need to have somebody gone

01:30:06 ◼   ► because something bad happened, you're a bad manager.

01:30:10 ◼   ► And that's a bad company and you shouldn't work there,

01:30:12 ◼   ► which is what John Saracusa said, because he knows.

01:30:15 ◼   ► He's seen stuff like that.

01:30:16 ◼   ► That's bad, that's bad.

01:30:17 ◼   ► headhunting in order to send a message to people. It's really gross and bad. But this

01:30:23 ◼   ► is not to say that, like I said, it's going to be a painful time for people in that group.

01:30:29 ◼   ► Yeah, many people are going to be raked over many coals, right? Like that's going to happen.

01:30:34 ◼   ► Why do we do it this way? How can we do it better? There are going to be people in there

01:30:37 ◼   ► said I told you and you didn't listen to me. That's also going to happen because we also

01:30:41 ◼   ► think of Apple as this monolith and they all march in formation. And that's totally not

01:30:45 ◼   ► true. Like, I talk to people at Apple, inside Apple, all the time who say, "I saw that you

01:30:52 ◼   ► wrote that thing about this thing that we do that you don't like. I agree with you.

01:30:56 ◼   ► That was great because it got people to pay attention. Keep writing articles like that."

01:30:59 ◼   ► I get that all the time. Because there are people inside Apple who are dissenters who

01:31:03 ◼   ► are like, "We shouldn't do it this way." And then somebody else higher up in the chain

01:31:07 ◼   ► said, "No, no, we're going to do it this way." And the only way they get them to listen is

01:31:10 ◼   ► by having outside people say, "Apple's making a mistake here." And then their boss comes

01:31:14 ◼   ► to them and says, "Why are we doing this?" They're like, "Oh, okay, fine. Maybe we should

01:31:18 ◼   ► do that after all." Well, there's going to be a lot of internal recriminations going

01:31:23 ◼   ► on and I hope they find, ultimately, I hope they find this as a solvable problem. That's

01:31:30 ◼   ► what worries me the most is that this is so complex that in the end they rearrange the

01:31:35 ◼   ► deck chairs, not to get too dramatic, but that they make changes and say, "Well, let's

01:31:40 ◼   ► see if that does anything." Like, literally, that...

01:31:43 ◼   ► - This isn't solvable.

01:31:44 ◼   ► You can't solve people from making mistakes,

01:31:48 ◼   ► but what you can do is make changes to your processes

01:31:50 ◼   ► to stop these kinds of mistakes from as easily occurring.

01:31:53 ◼   ► Like that's all it is, right?

01:31:55 ◼   ► - Or decrease the, you know,

01:31:57 ◼   ► I think the most you could hope for is to say,

01:31:59 ◼   ► all right, we took this approach.

01:32:01 ◼   ► I see now the downside to this approach.

01:32:06 ◼   ► - In the light of day.

01:32:07 ◼   ► - Let's, we could fix it by doing this or that,

01:32:09 ◼   ► and then we'll pick one and we'll try to do it.

01:32:11 ◼   ► It could also be, I mean, again, it could be that what

01:32:16 ◼   ► somebody like Craig Federighi or somebody else lower down

01:32:18 ◼   ► who we don't know and we don't see and we don't talk to,

01:32:20 ◼   ► says, well, I told you, we need to hire more this,

01:32:25 ◼   ► we need to hire more testers,

01:32:26 ◼   ► we need to hire more OS engineers,

01:32:28 ◼   ► we need to hire a Q&A staff,

01:32:29 ◼   ► we need to split these groups in a different way

01:32:32 ◼   ► than they're organized right now.

01:32:33 ◼   ► Something like that, where they're like, oh yeah, okay,

01:32:36 ◼   ► well, you warned me and this happens, so let's do it,

01:32:38 ◼   ► let's make it happen.

01:32:39 ◼   ► 'cause Apple can do, from a money,

01:32:42 ◼   ► and I would argue people standpoint,

01:32:44 ◼   ► Apple can kinda, Apple, maybe not do whatever they want,

01:32:47 ◼   ► but they can do a lot.

01:32:48 ◼   ► The issue is not, "Well, we'd like our software

01:32:51 ◼   ► "to be better, but we just can't

01:32:52 ◼   ► "because we are a poorer company,

01:32:54 ◼   ► "there's little moths flying out of their pockets,

01:32:57 ◼   ► "we got no money, what can we do?"

01:32:58 ◼   ► - Resil's strapped.

01:32:59 ◼   ► - Apple is one of the most powerful companies in the world.

01:33:02 ◼   ► They got billions and hundreds of billions of dollars

01:33:04 ◼   ► in cash.

01:33:05 ◼   ► They can do it if they have the will

01:33:10 ◼   ► and if their structure allows them to.

01:33:12 ◼   ► And those are big ifs.

01:33:14 ◼   ► But yeah, that's my hope is that this is something

01:33:18 ◼   ► that can be mitigated and fixed

01:33:20 ◼   ► by making changes to what they're doing.

01:33:22 ◼   ► My fear is what you said, which is that it can't,

01:33:25 ◼   ► that it's just an emergent thing

01:33:27 ◼   ► and that they're not sure why,

01:33:30 ◼   ► I mean, they'll nail down why this specific thing happened,

01:33:33 ◼   ► but that doesn't necessarily mean

01:33:34 ◼   ► that they can find the antecedent of like,

01:33:36 ◼   ► what in our structure made this thing emerge?

01:33:39 ◼   ► And if we change this, what do we change it to?

01:33:43 ◼   ► And does that make it better or worse?

01:33:45 ◼   ► And it may be that they look at all that

01:33:46 ◼   ► and they're like, we don't know,

01:33:48 ◼   ► because these are incredibly complicated things.

01:33:50 ◼   ► So, and changing a thing might solve this,

01:33:54 ◼   ► but then cause another problem.

01:33:55 ◼   ► That's the thing is you're always fighting the last war,

01:33:59 ◼   ► the last problem, you're fixing that last problem

01:34:01 ◼   ► and you may be creating new problems.

01:34:03 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:34:04 ◼   ► I'm even hesitant to say what a lot of people have said,

01:34:08 ◼   ► which is what we need here is a snow leopard.

01:34:12 ◼   ► What we need here is Apple to focus on fixing bugs

01:34:14 ◼   ► and not doing new features, to which I'll point out,

01:34:18 ◼   ► some of these are the same people who complain

01:34:22 ◼   ► when Apple doesn't do enough new things.

01:34:24 ◼   ► - Let's remember 2016, shall we?

01:34:26 ◼   ► Right, like the idea of saying I want no features

01:34:29 ◼   ► means everyone's just gonna be mad again.

01:34:31 ◼   ► Like the thing is, here's the thing, right?

01:34:33 ◼   ► like you have to do both fix bugs and release new features.

01:34:37 ◼   ► I don't care if it's not possible,

01:34:39 ◼   ► it's what you gotta do, it's what they're trying to do.

01:34:40 ◼   ► That's the only option, that's the only option.

01:34:43 ◼   ► There is not an option of we'll be so happy

01:34:45 ◼   ► if they only do this because like in the same breath

01:34:49 ◼   ► you'll hear the Mac is not being taken care of,

01:34:53 ◼   ► no one's paying any attention to the Mac

01:34:55 ◼   ► and please just fix bugs on the Mac.

01:34:58 ◼   ► - I can do you one better.

01:35:00 ◼   ► Think back a couple of weeks to HomePod being delayed

01:35:03 ◼   ► and people being like, "Whoa, what is wrong at Apple?

01:35:05 ◼   ► What are the problems at Apple?

01:35:06 ◼   ► Why did HomePod get delayed?

01:35:08 ◼   ► What is Apple doing?

01:35:09 ◼   ► Why did they announce it and then not do it?"

01:35:10 ◼   ► All of those questions, right?

01:35:12 ◼   ► And we talked about it, I think,

01:35:14 ◼   ► in much more reasonable tones here,

01:35:15 ◼   ► but I would lay odds that HomePod didn't ship in 2017

01:35:20 ◼   ► because it wasn't good enough.

01:35:26 ◼   ► And because there were bugs, there were software problems.

01:35:30 ◼   ► And so they pushed it out.

01:35:32 ◼   ► That's an example of Apple doing the right thing

01:35:35 ◼   ► and not shipping a product that was buggy.

01:35:38 ◼   ► Apple Pay Cash running late is probably an example of that.

01:35:41 ◼   ► The iMessage Cloud Sync thing,

01:35:45 ◼   ► imagine if they had just shipped it

01:35:47 ◼   ► and it ate your messages and was a disaster, right?

01:35:50 ◼   ► And they didn't ship it

01:35:51 ◼   ► because obviously it wasn't of a production level quality.

01:35:56 ◼   ► So these bugs got through,

01:35:59 ◼   ► but there is obviously at least some change at Apple

01:36:03 ◼   ► in terms of pulling things out of the lineup

01:36:06 ◼   ► if they aren't good enough,

01:36:07 ◼   ► which I think should be applauded,

01:36:09 ◼   ► but obviously there are underlying things still happening

01:36:13 ◼   ► that, and you know what?

01:36:14 ◼   ► Stuff like this is gonna happen.

01:36:15 ◼   ► It's gonna happen in any complex system.

01:36:17 ◼   ► I appreciate that they fixed it,

01:36:19 ◼   ► but I think it's worth saying they need to do better

01:36:22 ◼   ► and it erodes their reputation further

01:36:25 ◼   ► every time one of these things happens.

01:36:27 ◼   ► and fair or not, doesn't really matter why it happened,

01:36:30 ◼   ► it still erodes their reputation.

01:36:32 ◼   ► - So you gotta do it all or you do nothing.

01:36:34 ◼   ► Turns out we had some stuff to say,

01:36:37 ◼   ► but it was more the big picture.

01:36:39 ◼   ► I mean, what I was like, I just don't want,

01:36:41 ◼   ► I didn't want to talk about the minutia of each of the bugs,

01:36:44 ◼   ► but we had to because it's the only way

01:36:47 ◼   ► to friend that conversation.

01:36:48 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:36:49 ◼   ► - So let's hope that next week everything's hunky-dory.

01:36:52 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I guess it will be of us.

01:36:54 ◼   ► It's definitely not in Apple Park.

01:36:56 ◼   ► It's not hunky dory there right now.

01:36:58 ◼   ► I feel really bad for everyone

01:37:00 ◼   ► who has to walk into those doors, right, Monday morning

01:37:03 ◼   ► and just like, oh, it happened again.

01:37:05 ◼   ► Congratulations, everyone.

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01:38:27 ◼   ► and relay FM and hashtag ask upgrade Joe Steele wants to know we've had quite a few people ask

01:38:35 ◼   ► us this question are you going to watch Home Alone 2 lost in New York this year?

01:38:40 ◼   ► we have no comment on this question other than to say stay tuned for the upgrade Christmas special

01:38:48 ◼   ► Yep, we're doing something wild, kids. Something that they say you should never do. We're

01:38:53 ◼   ► going to do it at Christmas, on Christmas. Sam wants to know, "Why didn't Apple make

01:39:01 ◼   ► the pencil compatible with the iPhone X? It's the perfect pocket notepad." So I have

01:39:05 ◼   ► two thoughts on this. One, the current Apple pencil would suck on the iPhone X because

01:39:09 ◼   ► it's way too big, the proportions are nightmarish. And I believe that one day we will find a

01:39:17 ◼   ► phone that Apple makes that has a stylus. I do believe that that might be a later iPhone

01:39:24 ◼   ► 10 looking phone. I believe one day there will be a phone called the iPhone Pro which will have a

01:39:30 ◼   ► tiny Apple pencil. I still think Apple are going to do that because it's just a way to just charge

01:39:35 ◼   ► more. If you're thinking about Apple strategy, keep having things on the top end. It's what the

01:39:40 ◼   ► iPad Pro is all about. It's what the iPhone 10 is all about. Once this current design trickles it,

01:39:45 ◼   ► Well, okay, but they have things, right?

01:39:47 ◼   ► Like they have pro devices where the ASPs are higher.

01:39:50 ◼   ► - I was thinking it might be like,

01:39:52 ◼   ► if they do a, there are rumors about an iPhone 10 Plus.

01:39:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, right?

01:39:59 ◼   ► Like that will become the real high end.

01:40:01 ◼   ► And then you could maybe have another version of that one,

01:40:04 ◼   ► right, which could have a pencil attached to it.

01:40:06 ◼   ► That's my thinking.

01:40:07 ◼   ► - My understanding is that the Apple Pencil,

01:40:09 ◼   ► there are some very specific engineering things

01:40:11 ◼   ► you have to do to support the Apple Pencil

01:40:13 ◼   ► in terms of the refresh rate,

01:40:14 ◼   ► in terms of being able to detect that pencil on the screen,

01:40:17 ◼   ► it's not just throw it in a touch screen, right?

01:40:20 ◼   ► And so for the iPhone 10,

01:40:21 ◼   ► which is already kind of reaching

01:40:23 ◼   ► to the edge of Apple's capabilities,

01:40:26 ◼   ► throwing in pencil support and the attendant cost

01:40:29 ◼   ► and who knows what else

01:40:31 ◼   ► that would have been involved in doing that,

01:40:33 ◼   ► that I can see why they didn't bother.

01:40:35 ◼   ► But I totally am on this, I agree.

01:40:37 ◼   ► I think Apple Pencil support

01:40:39 ◼   ► on larger screened iPhones should happen.

01:40:42 ◼   ► I do agree the pencil is the wrong,

01:40:43 ◼   ► the current pencil is the wrong size for it and the iPhone X is still kind of small,

01:40:49 ◼   ► although you could do it in an iPhone X Plus kind of thing would certainly be perfect for that.

01:40:54 ◼   ► But it might take a little while, even the first one of those if it exists might not support it,

01:40:58 ◼   ► just because I don't know all the details, but there are technical details about the screen

01:41:03 ◼   ► and what you need to do to support the pencil that are an added bit of complexity. And the iPhone X

01:41:09 ◼   ► was the literally the first OLED iPhone right there was a lot of display

01:41:12 ◼   ► complexity already I think that that was not something they wanted to to to try

01:41:17 ◼   ► this time out but I think it'll happen I do I believe it Lee asked which

01:41:22 ◼   ► chichar

01:41:22 ◼   ► Which Qi chargers do you recommend? There are so many on Amazon it's making my head

01:41:26 ◼   ► hurt. Do you have any recommendations?

01:41:30 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, the, the uh, oh which one is it? The Mophie.

01:41:36 ◼   ► Mophie... what is it called? I've got it right here, Boost Up. The Mophie Boost Up. The box

01:41:42 ◼   ► is behind me because I don't use it. I'm not, I'm not really, I don't really like wireless

01:41:48 ◼   ► charging.

01:41:50 ◼   ► - I'm using it all the time now 'cause we've got two of them

01:41:53 ◼   ► on the table where we leave our phones.

01:41:58 ◼   ► And what really sent me over the edge

01:42:00 ◼   ► is Lauren started to use it.

01:42:02 ◼   ► She was like on her eight, she was like,

01:42:03 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, this is great, I'll just lay it there."

01:42:05 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Well, that's interesting."

01:42:06 ◼   ► And I'm doing that too now, quite honestly,

01:42:08 ◼   ► 'cause I just drop it there when I go to bed.

01:42:11 ◼   ► - Oh wait, the Belkin's called the Boost Up,

01:42:13 ◼   ► which is what I have, and that's fine.

01:42:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, don't do that.

01:42:17 ◼   ► Get the Mophie oneness better.

01:42:18 ◼   ► - Why?

01:42:20 ◼   ► - The Mophie one is lower and it's more kind of tacky.

01:42:24 ◼   ► So the phone is much less likely to like slide off.

01:42:26 ◼   ► I find that I have them both

01:42:28 ◼   ► and I like the Mophie one a lot better.

01:42:30 ◼   ► There are gonna be way more ones of these that come out.

01:42:33 ◼   ► - It's just called the Mophie wireless charging base.

01:42:37 ◼   ► - There that's the one that's which,

01:42:39 ◼   ► that's the one I would recommend right now.

01:42:41 ◼   ► - Okay, so I have the boost up.

01:42:43 ◼   ► It has a little rubber thing on it and I don't know.

01:42:45 ◼   ► I'm just not, I just don't, I just know.

01:42:48 ◼   ► I'll tell you, I'm much more inclined to like it now

01:42:50 ◼   ► that I've had the Mophie one,

01:42:51 ◼   ► 'cause the Mophie one's way better than the Belkin one.

01:42:53 ◼   ► Just the, it's a, IKEA makes one too,

01:42:56 ◼   ► but the Mophie and the Belkin one also support

01:42:58 ◼   ► the faster charging that is in iOS 11.2.

01:43:01 ◼   ► And a lot of the other ones don't support that.

01:43:05 ◼   ► So I've also heard good things about,

01:43:06 ◼   ► I think there's a Samsung one that's an upright.

01:43:08 ◼   ► - Samsung do a bunch.

01:43:09 ◼   ► Yeah, they do an upright one.

01:43:11 ◼   ► - And I know the people who like keep their phone

01:43:13 ◼   ► at their desk and they want it kind of like upright

01:43:15 ◼   ► so that they can see it,

01:43:17 ◼   ► which I don't like that, like one of those Samsung ones,

01:43:20 ◼   ► but I haven't tried those.

01:43:22 ◼   ► - No, neither have I.

01:43:23 ◼   ► I actually don't even know which one it is,

01:43:25 ◼   ► but there are a lot of options.

01:43:25 ◼   ► - I would stick with the real brand, by the way, to Lee.

01:43:29 ◼   ► I would stick with the real brand.

01:43:30 ◼   ► I've heard questionable things

01:43:33 ◼   ► about some of the other chargers that are out there

01:43:36 ◼   ► that have not necessarily burst into flames,

01:43:40 ◼   ► but you're dealing with electrical stuff here,

01:43:42 ◼   ► so I would maybe stick with a brand-proof.

01:43:45 ◼   ► - Brands you know, brand names.

01:43:46 ◼   ► That's what you want.

01:43:47 ◼   ► Brian wants to know, "I've been having performance issues

01:43:49 ◼   ► "on my iPhone 6S since iOS 11

01:43:52 ◼   ► "and am considering a clean install.

01:43:54 ◼   ► "What are the risks and do you think it will work?"

01:43:57 ◼   ► So the risks are there is a possibility,

01:44:00 ◼   ► a very strong possibility,

01:44:01 ◼   ► if you are doing a clean install

01:44:03 ◼   ► that you will lose data or some description

01:44:05 ◼   ► from an app or game that you like.

01:44:07 ◼   ► 'Cause if you're going straight clean,

01:44:09 ◼   ► the only stuff that's gonna get synced over

01:44:10 ◼   ► is apps and games and stuff

01:44:12 ◼   ► that use some kind of syncing engine.

01:44:14 ◼   ► If they don't, well, that's that, right?

01:44:16 ◼   ► like you're gonna lose that.

01:44:17 ◼   ► So take stock of that, do any exports that you can do,

01:44:20 ◼   ► check that the most important things to you

01:44:22 ◼   ► have some kind of syncing component.

01:44:24 ◼   ► Do you think it will work?

01:44:26 ◼   ► I mean, if you're having battery issues,

01:44:28 ◼   ► it is the thing that is maybe most likely

01:44:30 ◼   ► to make a difference if anything will, but you never know.

01:44:33 ◼   ► - Performance issues.

01:44:35 ◼   ► Battery issues are battery issues,

01:44:36 ◼   ► and the battery is, you know,

01:44:38 ◼   ► that's a physical hardware problem.

01:44:40 ◼   ► Performance issues, I think it might work

01:44:43 ◼   ► because I did this with my mom's phone and it worked.

01:44:47 ◼   ► So I would actually recommend the first thing you do

01:44:50 ◼   ► is back up your phone and do a wipe and then restore

01:44:54 ◼   ► because that might solve it.

01:44:56 ◼   ► - And then you won't have as many problems.

01:44:58 ◼   ► - And then if that doesn't solve it,

01:45:00 ◼   ► then wipe it again and just set it up from scratch

01:45:03 ◼   ► and try it that way.

01:45:04 ◼   ► But I put my mom on, she had a 5S

01:45:11 ◼   ► and I put her, we ended up with a spare 6.

01:45:15 ◼   ► That's Lauren's old phone.

01:45:16 ◼   ► And I put, that's the one that I opened up

01:45:18 ◼   ► and put a new battery in, 'cause the battery was dying.

01:45:21 ◼   ► And, you know, 6 performance on iOS 11

01:45:23 ◼   ► is really something to be desired.

01:45:25 ◼   ► But that was a clean, that was a backup from a wiped 6.

01:45:30 ◼   ► And the speed wasn't great, but it was okay.

01:45:34 ◼   ► It was not what Lauren experienced on that phone

01:45:38 ◼   ► with, when she was on it.

01:45:40 ◼   ► which leads me to believe that maybe there's something

01:45:42 ◼   ► to this idea that there's stuff that is wiped out

01:45:47 ◼   ► by a clean install on a wiped phone that is present.

01:45:52 ◼   ► I hate the idea that there's like, you know,

01:45:55 ◼   ► if you wanna make your phone go faster, erase it,

01:45:57 ◼   ► and then it's reinstall from the backup,

01:45:59 ◼   ► but for these very slow older phones, it might be true.

01:46:04 ◼   ► And if not, then I would try moving on

01:46:06 ◼   ► to the complete clean install

01:46:07 ◼   ► and see if that makes a difference.

01:46:09 ◼   ► because it might.

01:46:10 ◼   ► - There's one other thing that has happened for me before,

01:46:12 ◼   ► which I'll recommend.

01:46:14 ◼   ► Adina had an iPhone 4 and it was just horrible.

01:46:19 ◼   ► I set her up with iCloud photo library and moved,

01:46:23 ◼   ► this was years ago, but I moved,

01:46:24 ◼   ► she was saving all of her photos on her device.

01:46:27 ◼   ► So I moved those out to the cloud,

01:46:29 ◼   ► did a bunch of backups for her,

01:46:30 ◼   ► removed a bunch of stuff and gave her a lot more free space.

01:46:32 ◼   ► The phone ran a lot better with a lot more free space.

01:46:35 ◼   ► So if you're kind of maxing it out,

01:46:37 ◼   ► that could be something else to try as well.

01:46:39 ◼   ► give yourself a bit of free space, it might help.

01:46:41 ◼   ► I don't know why it did, but it did.

01:46:43 ◼   ► Tony asks, "My 2011 MacBook Pro is really bugging me

01:46:48 ◼   ► to upgrade to High Sierra.

01:46:49 ◼   ► Is there any way to stop those notification messages?"

01:46:52 ◼   ► Jason, do you know?

01:46:53 ◼   ► - I think the way you do it is to go to App Store

01:46:59 ◼   ► and like control click on the update and say hide update.

01:47:09 ◼   ► that makes it go away.

01:47:11 ◼   ► And the other thing I think you might be able to try

01:47:16 ◼   ► is just go in your apps folder

01:47:19 ◼   ► and delete the installer for High Sierra.

01:47:21 ◼   ► - Oh, that's-- - I don't know 100%.

01:47:24 ◼   ► I don't know 100%, but you should be able to,

01:47:26 ◼   ► for Apple system updates,

01:47:27 ◼   ► you can actually like go in and say, hide this update,

01:47:29 ◼   ► and then you never see it, it doesn't bug you anymore.

01:47:31 ◼   ► That might work, but it's really annoying.

01:47:33 ◼   ► And I did a quick Google search

01:47:35 ◼   ► to try and find a definitive way,

01:47:36 ◼   ► and I don't think I found it, so try those two.

01:47:38 ◼   ► - What really annoys me is that you can't turn off

01:47:41 ◼   ► the notifications for the App Store.

01:47:43 ◼   ► Like, I just don't want them,

01:47:46 ◼   ► like the notifications to pop up on the right hand side.

01:47:49 ◼   ► Like they're not in notification center on the Mac,

01:47:51 ◼   ► like they're not in notification center preferences.

01:47:53 ◼   ► And I find that-

01:47:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's no App Store app

01:47:56 ◼   ► in the notifications preferences, which there should be.

01:47:59 ◼   ► - There should be, and I find it a little bit egregious,

01:48:02 ◼   ► honestly, and like I'm good.

01:48:05 ◼   ► Like I leave the badge number, right?

01:48:07 ◼   ► like

01:48:26 ◼   ► what are the move goals that we have to achieve every day, I will start Jason. Mine is 400

01:48:32 ◼   ► calories. So 400 is what my Apple watch wants me to do every day based upon my podcaster's

01:48:38 ◼   ► lifestyle of sitting at home. Yep, mine too. 400? Okay, we've learned that this is what

01:48:46 ◼   ► the sit-at-home podcaster will have. 400 move goal, 30 minute exercise goal. Yeah. Okay,

01:48:53 ◼   ► Okay, so there you go, 400.

01:48:55 ◼   ► And now we will be getting tweets

01:48:57 ◼   ► for the next seven days at least,

01:48:59 ◼   ► with people saying 400, and mine is 9 million.

01:49:04 ◼   ► So I'll look forward to those.

01:49:06 ◼   ► So I wish congratulations to all of our healthy listeners.

01:49:10 ◼   ► If you would like to find,

01:49:12 ◼   ► if you'd like to ask us any questions,

01:49:14 ◼   ► use the hashtag #AskUpgrade on Twitter,

01:49:16 ◼   ► and we'll be able to pull those in

01:49:18 ◼   ► for another future episode.

01:49:20 ◼   ► Thank you to everybody that submitted a question

01:49:21 ◼   ► for

01:49:38 ◼   ► week's episode at relay.fm/upgrades/170. Thanks again to our fine sponsors this week,

01:49:45 ◼   ► Away, Balance Open and Encapsular. But most of all, thank you for listening, we'll be

01:49:49 ◼   ► back next time and we'll both be recording on Pacific Time. Until then, say goodbye Jason

01:49:54 ◼   ► Snow.

01:49:55 ◼   ► Goodbye everybody.

01:49:56 ◼   ► [MUSIC]