Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:17 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 156, brought to you this week by Eero,

00:00:24 ◼   ► smile and encapsula. I'm Jason Snell and I'm not just mocking Myke Hurley by reading his part of the show.

00:00:30 ◼   ► He's not here. He's on vacation and good for him. So instead of Myke Hurley, we are joined

00:00:37 ◼   ► by a very special guest. It's Mr. Merlin Mann. Hi Merlin. Hey Jason, thanks for having me on buddy.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Thanks for sitting in. I really appreciate it. It's very nice of you to do that. It's my pleasure.

00:00:47 ◼   ► How are things going up in your neck of the woods? Uh, pretty good. Pretty good. It's been hot. We've

00:00:51 ◼   ► We've had a heat wave here.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Super hot, but nobody cares about that because it's time for Snell Talk.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Oh yeah, right.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Well done, well done.

00:00:56 ◼   ► You've got a future in this business.

00:00:59 ◼   ► What is the Snell Talk question?

00:01:01 ◼   ► Do you have that there?

00:01:02 ◼   ► Well, people wanting to know things about Jason Snell can send things with the #SnellTalk

00:01:06 ◼   ► hashtag.

00:01:07 ◼   ► This week, Chris Lanza asks, "Second favorite cheese?"

00:01:11 ◼   ► Oh, I love cheese questions.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Is it stipulated for the record that Manchego bought at Whole Foods with Apple Pay as your

00:01:18 ◼   ► favorite cheese?

00:01:19 ◼   ► You know, it's not my favorite cheese. It's a great cheese, though.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I know, I know. They're going to rewrite the Wikipedia page now.

00:01:26 ◼   ► The podcast-pedia page. I like Manchego. It's very good.

00:01:31 ◼   ► But I feel like it's taken on a life of its own. I like lots of cheeses.

00:01:35 ◼   ► I am not the biggest cheese lover in my family. My wife is the cheese connoisseur.

00:01:40 ◼   ► I'm sort of second level. I learn from the master.

00:01:44 ◼   ► But cheddar, good sharp cheddar. I just love it.

00:01:48 ◼   ► love it love it love it. I had on my on my road trip I had um there was a there's a

00:01:53 ◼   ► chain of sandwich restaurants called Port of Subs which I'd never been to before. It's actually

00:02:01 ◼   ► pretty good despite the kind of hunt for Red Octoberish name. I would have liked to

00:02:09 ◼   ► eaten this sandwich in Montana. They may be in Montana, I don't know. I ate them in Nevada,

00:02:15 ◼   ► But they had a smoked cheddar on like a salami and turkey sandwich, it was really good too.

00:02:20 ◼   ► So I like cheddar a lot. And Gouda, which I never really got before, but I've been really getting

00:02:26 ◼   ► into Gouda lately, we had a barbecue chicken pizza on our road trip at, where was that? I think that

00:02:32 ◼   ► was in Tahoe. And it was a barbecue chicken pizza that had Gouda on it, which totally worked and was

00:02:39 ◼   ► awesome. And the next time I make a barbecue chicken pizza, I'm going to put Gouda on it

00:02:42 ◼   ► because despite the wrath of Syracuse, it will already be down upon me.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Yeah, that's no pizza. That's not canonical pizza.

00:02:49 ◼   ► No, but I don't care because it's so good.

00:02:52 ◼   ► So yeah, that's, I don't know which one of those would rank first and second and third or whatever.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Manchego is still really great though, so. But thank you, Chris.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Thank you, Chris. Chris, last name, un-withheld.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Let's do some follow-up. What do you say?

00:03:04 ◼   ► Pew, pew, pew.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Thank you. I wanted to mention to upgrade listeners, which if you're listening to this

00:03:11 ◼   ► the show, guess what? You are an upgrade listener. The membership bonus is up. This is relay

00:03:18 ◼   ► anniversary month, and if you are a supporter of relay, you get a bunch of bonus episodes

00:03:24 ◼   ► this time of year from all of the great shows. I just walked right into that. And you can

00:03:30 ◼   ► go to relay.fm/membership to find out more. But we have many, many, many bonus episodes

00:03:38 ◼   ► up. The upgrade bonus is once again an upgrade cortex crossover bonus. We're doing another

00:03:44 ◼   ► text adventure last year. We did the Six-Gun Showdown. This year it's Spooky Manor featuring

00:03:54 ◼   ► me as the parser, your computer, your Apple II, and Myke and CGP Grey are the players

00:04:01 ◼   ► arguing about what things they should enter, what commands they should enter into the computer

00:04:06 ◼   ► in order to navigate through a scary haunted or not maybe, who knows, house. A spooky house.

00:04:12 ◼   ► I haven't heard this one yet, but last year's was epic and your commitment to character

00:04:17 ◼   ► was really inspiring. Commitment is a strong word for being a... sometimes he's a computer,

00:04:24 ◼   ► other times he's a person who's trying for the game to not run off the rails. Much like CGP Grey.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, there you go. So that's mine, but it doesn't stop there because you and I, Merlin,

00:04:35 ◼   ► and we both have other podcasts on relay and that means we both have other

00:04:38 ◼   ► membership bonus things that are happening either they're up or they're

00:04:41 ◼   ► coming up soon what do you have for breakfast?

00:04:42 ◼   ► Yeah, these things are coming out like one a day it's crazy balls.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Well, I'm very happy to say for the second year in a row John Siracusa and I with our show we do

00:04:50 ◼   ► called Reconcilable Differences our member episode is up.

00:04:53 ◼   ► It is called Peak Idiot and it is a I think a very entertaining visit with Alex Cox

00:04:59 ◼   ► and Max Temkin from Cards Against Humanity with whom I do the Do By Friday podcast

00:05:04 ◼   ► And it's manic and funny, and it's serious and long-winded.

00:05:09 ◼   ► And I think if you like any of those shows,

00:05:11 ◼   ► you should check it out.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Because these things are just-- they're so good.

00:05:14 ◼   ► A lot of the shows, I love that they do something different,

00:05:17 ◼   ► mix it up a little bit.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And like Sir Q-Sus says, I mean, I'm

00:05:21 ◼   ► happy to have my show up there, but I really

00:05:23 ◼   ► enjoy all the other-- all the great shows.

00:05:25 ◼   ► It's really great.

00:05:26 ◼   ► You've got another one, though, don't you?

00:05:27 ◼   ► There's so many.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So Alex, by the way, and Savannah,

00:05:31 ◼   ► who do Roboism on Relay FM. They did, similar to what you did, a crossover with a different

00:05:36 ◼   ► podcast from outside of Relay. We did a Roboism robot or not crossover where they quizzed

00:05:44 ◼   ► me and John Siracusa about Elon Musk facts. So that's up as an extra for Relay members.

00:05:52 ◼   ► It's not a draft. It's a quiz. And John would point out, and I'm surprised he didn't point

00:05:57 ◼   ► this out during the episode that the format of the quiz which was basically each of us

00:06:02 ◼   ► got to answer separately and sort of not even decide who would answer first was questionable

00:06:09 ◼   ► in the sense that once I was ahead of Jon by one point I could have just kept guessing

00:06:12 ◼   ► the same thing he guessed and guaranteed my win which I didn't do. But I questioned the

00:06:17 ◼   ► game show structure of it but it was a lot of fun.

00:06:20 ◼   ► He's very competitive given that he's a good cop. Very competitive fellow.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. You know, he's a gamer. He's a game player. We did a free agents episode

00:06:30 ◼   ► that will be coming out on September 1st. David Sparks and I were in the same place

00:06:36 ◼   ► at the Masters of Automation conference a couple of weeks ago, and so we recorded a

00:06:40 ◼   ► couple episodes of free agents. The current episode that's out, which is about David's

00:06:44 ◼   ► sort of history and how he got where he is today, you know, going through law school,

00:06:48 ◼   ► going to a firm, and then going out on his own. It's really, if you ever wondered about

00:06:51 ◼   ► David's backstory. It's a great episode. But we also recorded a totally off topic like

00:06:57 ◼   ► the stuff that we do when we're not doing our jobs, things we do for fun, a lot of Star

00:07:02 ◼   ► Wars talk in there because David's a huge Star Wars fan. I think I mentioned Star Trek

00:07:05 ◼   ► at some point just to try to counterbalance it a little bit. So that's a good one. We

00:07:10 ◼   ► are going to do a download clockwise combo episode. I'm not quite sure when that's going

00:07:14 ◼   ► to happen. We're still trying to work that out between me and Steven Hackett and Dan

00:07:17 ◼   ► and Micah and Stephen Hackett and I have already recorded our Liftoff bonus episode where we

00:07:25 ◼   ► watched last year we watched Apollo 13 this year we watched Contact starring Jodie Foster

00:07:30 ◼   ► which is not not based in a true story as far as you know I don't think we contacted

00:07:37 ◼   ► aliens in the Clinton administration but you never know you're gonna get a tweet from Neil

00:07:42 ◼   ► - Neil deGrasse Tyson.

00:07:43 ◼   ► - Maybe, it's possible.

00:07:45 ◼   ► It's possible.

00:07:47 ◼   ► He's probably working on his book.

00:07:48 ◼   ► - It's made me really, I just want to say thank you

00:07:50 ◼   ► to everybody who has joined up.

00:07:51 ◼   ► I hear on the back channel things are going pretty well,

00:07:53 ◼   ► which makes me feel great, and I've gotten a lot of nice

00:07:56 ◼   ► little notes and toots from people to say that they went

00:07:59 ◼   ► and they signed up, I mean, for as little as $5 a month.

00:08:03 ◼   ► It's not simply to have my own pocket.

00:08:05 ◼   ► I like that it helps the whole network,

00:08:07 ◼   ► so I just wanted to say thanks to everybody

00:08:08 ◼   ► who's done that.

00:08:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:08:10 ◼   ► up for the All the Great Shows plan which supports all the shows on the network or if

00:08:15 ◼   ► you have one show like this one or one of the other ones that you really love, you can

00:08:20 ◼   ► support it directly and the money goes there. And a common question is if I sign up for

00:08:26 ◼   ► to support upgrade, do I get all of the specials? And the answer is yes, you get all the specials

00:08:30 ◼   ► for all the shows for this year and for last year. They're all in one feed. You get the

00:08:34 ◼   ► feed information when you sign up for a membership. So thank you. And that ends our pledge drop.

00:08:40 ◼   ► This is one thing also. We don't talk about this every week of the year.

00:08:43 ◼   ► This happens in pledge time and then we go away.

00:08:46 ◼   ► So, more hardware draft stuff though to talk about for follow-up.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I think this qualifies for follow-up.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Last episode was the Apple Hardware draft.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Me, Myke, Steven Hackett, John Siracusa, and Alex Cox drafted Apple Hardware.

00:09:03 ◼   ► And that was a fun episode. That totally could have been a membership member special.

00:09:07 ◼   ► but because, oh I didn't even do it, we're gonna do it right now, get ready everybody,

00:09:11 ◼   ► look at your overcast if you have a chance. Here we go, Merlin is here, therefore we are

00:09:17 ◼   ► continuing the upgrade Summer of Fun. Yeah? I choose Skeletor. That's right Merlin, you're

00:09:23 ◼   ► part of the Summer of Fun. Put some flip flops on Merlin, it's time. It's casual, mon. Yeah,

00:09:31 ◼   ► it's the Summer of Fun. One of the parts of the Summer of Fun was we did the hardware

00:09:35 ◼   ► because we were, I was traveling, Myke was traveling, we pre-recorded that episode,

00:09:38 ◼   ► couldn't have it be about anything timely. It was a lot of fun. Then we stuck

00:09:42 ◼   ► around and Professor Siracusa took us to school about Blade Runner.

00:09:45 ◼   ► That was good. That was good. You are really stuck on your position.

00:09:49 ◼   ► You, again, you stayed in character the whole time. You did not capitulate.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Which position is it? The one that Deckard's not a replicant or the one that's sleep-inducing?

00:09:56 ◼   ► Easy tax. No, your position that, you know, it's fine.

00:09:59 ◼   ► It's fine. That's what I get from you every time you talk about Blade Runner.

00:10:03 ◼   ► That's the classic Snell position, isn't it? It's like, "Meh, it's fine."

00:10:07 ◼   ► Do you like our owl?

00:10:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the owl's fine. It's fine.

00:10:11 ◼   ► It's fine, yeah.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Listener Jeffrey wrote in to say that Alex won his heart for taking the battery case,

00:10:19 ◼   ► which I thought was an odd pick, but Jeffrey thinks, "Great, I freaking love that thing," he said.

00:10:25 ◼   ► And now I have a friend. #highfive.

00:10:27 ◼   ► I'm envious. I get the big boy phone, so they don't make it for mine,

00:10:30 ◼   ► but the people who have it seem to really love it.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Yeah, you got the big boy phone so you've got the big boy battery.

00:10:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:36 ◼   ► You don't need a case.

00:10:38 ◼   ► I've been pretty happy with it, but like it's funny how that started out.

00:10:40 ◼   ► That was such a controversial release in so many ways.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Because, I mean, the big story was, "Oh, look at this, Apple's even admitting that their

00:10:47 ◼   ► battery sucks."

00:10:48 ◼   ► But, you know, it's a little dim and short-sighted, but, you know, anybody could use more battery

00:10:52 ◼   ► power.

00:10:53 ◼   ► I'm lousy with Jackery's.

00:10:55 ◼   ► I've got so many batteries all over the place that I use for everything, but like having

00:10:58 ◼   ► something on board like that can be really nice, especially if it's nicer to hold.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I hear that. I'm going caseless now. But, forget it. On the road trip, we had all

00:11:08 ◼   ► of our phones at various points were running out of battery life. Once you're away from

00:11:13 ◼   ► outlets all the time, then you have that moment of like, "Oh, no." You take it for granted

00:11:18 ◼   ► and then you get to see your battery life in action. And Lauren's phone is a, I think

00:11:23 ◼   ► it's an iPhone 6, and it's just getting long enough in the tooth now that it's having those

00:11:27 ◼   ► kind of conditions where it gets down to the low voltage and it starts to get confused

00:11:32 ◼   ► like I don't have any more battery power and then you plug it in for two minutes and it

00:11:35 ◼   ► says now I've got 30%.

00:11:36 ◼   ► That's what, is that what causes that? My wife had that with hers as well.

00:11:40 ◼   ► It's a voltage thing. I went to the Yosemite Conference with a podcast listener who I believe

00:11:44 ◼   ► works on the Apple or at that point anyway worked on the Apple something about the iPhone

00:11:50 ◼   ► team that was involved with batteries and charging and things like that and he talked

00:11:53 ◼   ► to me about it and it's like this is one of the challenges with these chemical batteries

00:11:56 ◼   ► that we use in all these devices is they don't know like the real capacity they're measuring

00:12:02 ◼   ► the the power that's coming out of it and if the if that measurement is they try they

00:12:09 ◼   ► try their best right but that measurement is what it is and sometimes it can cause this

00:12:13 ◼   ► scenario where it looks like it's less drained than it actually is because the battery is

00:12:18 ◼   ► behaving different differently it also comes to that point where you if you've ever had

00:12:21 ◼   ► that where like the phone shuts off and you're like what is going on and then you turn it

00:12:24 ◼   ► back on and says, "Oh, I'm fine now," where what probably happened is that the phone tried

00:12:29 ◼   ► to use more power than the battery could give it. It went into emergency shutdown. And then

00:12:34 ◼   ► when you started to back up, whatever was the power drain is gone. And so then it's

00:12:37 ◼   ► like, "Oh, no, it's okay now." It's not as... Apple tries to cover up all of the... They

00:12:42 ◼   ► sand off all the rough edges because they think you don't want to be bothered by variability

00:12:47 ◼   ► of battery life. We're going to make it look like it's fine. Just like how when you charge

00:12:50 ◼   ► to 100%. It's not always at 100%, like they don't, because you can't keep feeding a battery

00:12:56 ◼   ► that is, it's not good to like let the battery drain down a tiny bit and then charge it back

00:13:00 ◼   ► up again. So when you plug in your phone, it gets to 100%, it actually lets it, it stops

00:13:06 ◼   ► charging and it runs down a little bit. And they've written the software so it says it's

00:13:12 ◼   ► at 100% even when it's not, because they don't want people concerned about it, but they want

00:13:16 ◼   ► to do the right thing. Everybody would complain like, "But I had it plugged in and it said

00:13:19 ◼   ► it's 95%, right? So they just, they sand that little rough edge down. But the problem is

00:13:25 ◼   ► that then when weird things happen, all those edges are sanded off, and as an owner of a

00:13:30 ◼   ► phone you're like, "What the heck is going on?"

00:13:32 ◼   ► Right, especially because that causes people such a panic. I mean, you post something on

00:13:36 ◼   ► the internet that shows your phone at 4% and if that's all anybody notices.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Yeah, well that's true too. There are people, they watch those status bars.

00:13:43 ◼   ► "I can see that your battery's running low!"

00:13:45 ◼   ► That's right, why would you reveal that to the world? You should keep that perfectly private.

00:13:49 ◼   ► It's a bad OPSEC. Todd wrote in, listener Todd, to say Stephen Hackett was close but

00:13:56 ◼   ► no one picked his favorite which was the 2003 17-inch PowerBook I Hate You All XOXO. See,

00:14:05 ◼   ► again, it's, you know, and he also said, "And no one picked a Newton? Shame, shame, shame."

00:14:12 ◼   ► I think no one picked a Newton because we picked good Apple hardware. Oh, snap, I said

00:14:18 ◼   ► Oh, and I have nothing particularly positive to say about the 17 inch power book other

00:14:24 ◼   ► than that, you know, it makes a great lunch tray, but you had one of those, right?

00:14:30 ◼   ► You sent me down memory lane with some of this follow up.

00:14:33 ◼   ► It's funny.

00:14:35 ◼   ► So I had, and I put this in your document, when I had my dot com job, I got, I believe

00:14:41 ◼   ► this is the one I got, I got an Apple PowerBook G3 400.

00:14:45 ◼   ► had the Lombard, where it had the little bays that you could have two batteries or one battery

00:14:51 ◼   ► plus a DVD player, you know, an optical drive. And I just, I sent you this link on everymac.com.

00:14:59 ◼   ► The thing weighed 5.9 pounds, which is three, approximately three of my MacBook adorable.

00:15:07 ◼   ► It was a beefy boy. And I loved it. I loved it so much. It was my first laptop that I

00:15:13 ◼   ► owned. I used to take the old, what are the ones, is it the PowerBook 100? I think you mentioned that

00:15:18 ◼   ► on the show. I used to bring that one home from work every night when I discovered the internet

00:15:22 ◼   ► and that was it was so amazing and plugging into the modem and all of that but I love my

00:15:27 ◼   ► Lombard but it was really it was getting very long in the tooth and then I eventually I got a

00:15:32 ◼   ► gig and I treated myself to the 17-inch PowerBook and it was really really big. What did that thing

00:15:41 ◼   ► way. Do you remember? I don't. It was pretty beefy. It was, yeah, I mean, the way it was

00:15:46 ◼   ► sold was essentially, it's a desktop computer that you can fairly easily carry from place

00:15:53 ◼   ► to place. Because it was, yeah, it was not, I mean, it was a 17-inch laptop. It was really

00:15:58 ◼   ► not meant to be, portability wasn't the point other than like moveability. So what we used

00:16:04 ◼   ► to call back in the classic Mac days, "luggability." I mean, I imagine we're going to get to this

00:16:10 ◼   ► in a bit, but it was such an interesting time where there was these different ends of the

00:16:14 ◼   ► spectrum. That was for somebody who said, "Well, I'm reluctant to get a laptop because

00:16:18 ◼   ► I need my big screen." And it definitely served that, but boy, it was a monster. I think I

00:16:25 ◼   ► finally, you know, I need to go and make sure all of the batteries are out. Because you

00:16:30 ◼   ► get the swelling batteries. We've got some very swelly batteries, especially the old

00:16:36 ◼   ► 12-inch G4, so those boys get real swelly. But, you know, I just think that was such

00:16:41 ◼   ► an interesting time. I'm glad they made it, you know? They were swinging for the fences

00:16:44 ◼   ► with that one.

00:16:45 ◼   ► This is always the question about Apple and what they make, that when they keep it super

00:16:51 ◼   ► simple everybody's like, "Ah, yes, Apple with its discipline and its limited product set."

00:16:56 ◼   ► And always with Steve's 2x2 grid, right?

00:16:58 ◼   ► Right, right. So that gets fetishized a little bit of like, "Oh, keeping it simple." But

00:17:02 ◼   ► But the downside of the super simple product grid, there's an upside, right?

00:17:05 ◼   ► The days before that grid, right, where there was like 10 different Performa systems with

00:17:11 ◼   ► different numbers and it was like super confusing and he wanted to simplify it down.

00:17:15 ◼   ► But if you get to that point, the downside of the simplified product grid is that if

00:17:21 ◼   ► you want, you know, if you can have any laptop you want as long as it's black, basically,

00:17:25 ◼   ► like there's only the one laptop and that frustrates people too.

00:17:29 ◼   ► But if Apple then says, "Well, here's what we're going to do. We're going to have a MacBook

00:17:33 ◼   ► Air and a MacBook and a 13-inch MacBook without Touch Bar and a 13 MacBook Pro with Touch

00:17:38 ◼   ► Bar and a 15 with Touch Bar," then people are like, "Oh, that's so confusing. You have

00:17:42 ◼   ► so many laptops. Where's the old Apple that was so focused and limited?" And it goes both

00:17:47 ◼   ► ways. I think having more choice is better. I think the challenge is that how much mental

00:17:54 ◼   ► energy is Apple focusing on the Mac right now, and do they really want—I feel like

00:17:58 ◼   ► they're already being kind of dragged reluctantly into building a Mac Pro and

00:18:03 ◼   ► a monitor for the Mac Pro and they've got the iMac Pro. So even though, and

00:18:08 ◼   ► they sell all these laptops, so much of the product line is laptops. But I do

00:18:12 ◼   ► wonder, like, how many Macs can we expect Apple to make today? Because I do

00:18:19 ◼   ► think that, yeah, the more Mac models you get, this is the argument for the Mac

00:18:23 ◼   ► Mini too. It's like, why does the Mac Mini exist? It doesn't sell particularly

00:18:25 ◼   ► well but it sort of sweeps up a whole bunch of people who are like I really

00:18:29 ◼   ► need to buy a Mac but and it answers a lot of those questions is like but I

00:18:33 ◼   ► can't because you say but Mac Mini will do that for you right like that it

00:18:36 ◼   ► solves that and you know that's that's good to do as long as Apple thinks that

00:18:41 ◼   ► it's worth their their time and their energy and their focus and I just feels

00:18:44 ◼   ► like that's not the case like it used to be

00:18:46 ◼   ► yeah the other thing is I mean obviously the times have changed so much has

00:18:50 ◼   ► changed you know this was we're talking about time here when so for example on

00:18:55 ◼   ► that PowerBook on my Lombard, I got, I think it was an Orinoco card, so you'd have this

00:19:00 ◼   ► kind of ungainly card sticking out if you wanted to have Wi-Fi when Wi-Fi became a thing,

00:19:06 ◼   ► which is kind of right around this time. But, you know, I think, not to feed the anger,

00:19:12 ◼   ► but I think if there's something that frustrates people, you look at somebody like, I think

00:19:15 ◼   ► Marco has addressed this really well in talking about, for example, trying to take your Mac,

00:19:21 ◼   ► maybe an extraordinary situation, but take your laptop somewhere where you want to be

00:19:24 ◼   ► be able to be connected to power and be able to record things, etc, etc, etc.

00:19:29 ◼   ► It's just that back then, I think it really was presented as, or it felt like it was presented

00:19:34 ◼   ► as, here's a trade-off, right?

00:19:36 ◼   ► So I went from, I had a G3, I had the Lombard, then I had the 17-inch, and then, in maybe

00:19:41 ◼   ► 2005 or 2006, I picked up the 12-inch, which I instantly fell in love with.

00:19:46 ◼   ► But they really were for different things.

00:19:48 ◼   ► And then I found, I bought somebody's used one after that.

00:19:50 ◼   ► I used to complain about this on MacBreak Weekly.

00:19:51 ◼   ► Like, why don't they keep making this amazing laptop?

00:19:54 ◼   ► But you understood that, hey, that 12-inch laptop was really--

00:19:57 ◼   ► that screen was crazy small.

00:20:00 ◼   ► But you had the benefit, right?

00:20:02 ◼   ► You had the benefit of now having

00:20:04 ◼   ► this ultra-portable thing that was actually fine for writing.

00:20:07 ◼   ► If you had to do a lot of graphic stuff, yeah,

00:20:08 ◼   ► you like that 17-inch.

00:20:10 ◼   ► I think the feeling now, at least with some old Max

00:20:12 ◼   ► Stahl words, who we may be shown our age

00:20:15 ◼   ► and how out of date we are, but that's the frustrating part,

00:20:17 ◼   ► is we feel like there is no truly high end, where

00:20:21 ◼   ► the sort of like Fry throwing your money at the camera,

00:20:24 ◼   ► like take my money I want to have all the ports like it's not Dell like you're

00:20:27 ◼   ► not gonna get that and I think that's what drives people a little crazy is that

00:20:30 ◼   ► as Marco I think aptly it was an episode of ATP where he talked about this even

00:20:34 ◼   ► if you do everything the right way you still can't do all the stuff and have

00:20:37 ◼   ► power it's like the the ecosystem is not where it needs to be to do anything

00:20:41 ◼   ► where you would want a laptop as portable device that that is a truly

00:20:45 ◼   ► able replacement for a desktop and I think that's what drives people crazy

00:20:49 ◼   ► that's it's funny you gave back the five inches there from the 17 to the 12 and

00:20:53 ◼   ► Listener Andrew wrote in to say, "I get not drafting of it, but not considering the 12-inch

00:20:58 ◼   ► PowerBook G4 as one of Apple's best?" Well, I considered it. It was on, I think, my long

00:21:03 ◼   ► list. Maybe I didn't mention that in the "Bring Out Your Dead" round at the end, but I love

00:21:06 ◼   ► the 12-inch PowerBook G4. I loved it so much. And, you know, I used those small... I used

00:21:12 ◼   ► the iBook, the white iBook and the black iBook and the 12-inch PowerBook. And that's why

00:21:19 ◼   ► I got the MacBook Air. I mean, and that's why I got the 11-inch MacBook Air, ultimately,

00:21:23 ◼   ► right? I love those little laps. That 12-inch PowerBook G4 was amazing at the time.

00:21:28 ◼   ► It felt pretty magical at the time. I was doing stuff with my pal Danny O'Brien at the time,

00:21:33 ◼   ► and I had my 17-inch, and he had that 12-inch, and he'd sit there on a chair in my house with this thing in his lap,

00:21:38 ◼   ► and I was just sending arrows at him. Like, I wanted it so much. I was like that tiny little...

00:21:43 ◼   ► And then I got it, and I loved it. It was perfect for writing. It was great for stuff like that.

00:21:47 ◼   ► That's just like that scene on Game of Thrones last night where there's the mountain and

00:21:53 ◼   ► Antirean Lannister are next to each other. It's just like that. 17 inch laptop, 12 inch

00:21:58 ◼   ► laptop right next to each other.

00:22:00 ◼   ► Exactly like that.

00:22:01 ◼   ► The contrast. Enjoy the contrast. Listener K. Lango wrote in to say, "Thanks Jason for

00:22:08 ◼   ► picking what you picked last. I was screaming it in my head when round three began," which

00:22:11 ◼   ► is, "That was my controversial choice of the laser rider." Which, it's just funny, I didn't

00:22:16 ◼   ► realize that people had forgotten how important that thing was. It changed the game. If you didn't live through it, you don't know. It changed the game.

00:22:22 ◼   ► Yeah, totally did. It's not just a printer. That's what caused desktop publishing to happen, basically. It was a huge deal.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, like, in our Mac lab at my college, circa 1988-89, you know, there was a bunch of SCs, and then there was, I feel like the SC30 wasn't out yet, but we had a higher-end one that could do more stuff, and the ability to run PageMaker on there,

00:22:45 ◼   ► and to graphically use those window shades to pull text down.

00:22:48 ◼   ► I mean, that's how my career, such as it is, began,

00:22:51 ◼   ► was desktop publishing and graphics.

00:22:53 ◼   ► I wasn't very good at it, but other people didn't do it.

00:22:55 ◼   ► I knew how.

00:22:56 ◼   ► But that would not have been the same without the LaserRider.

00:22:58 ◼   ► The LaserRider, that ability to just go print in a few seconds,

00:23:02 ◼   ► what you had on screen, gorgeously, what, 300 dpi?

00:23:06 ◼   ► I mean, it changed everything.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Yep.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Yep.

00:23:11 ◼   ► It's just one of those things where

00:23:12 ◼   ► it's so easy to overlook it now if you didn't live through it.

00:23:15 ◼   ► It changed the world. And we're doing a draft. I like to keep something in my back pocket

00:23:23 ◼   ► that's a little unusual, right?

00:23:25 ◼   ► It would remind people though, when you get the "you forgot" syndrome from people,

00:23:29 ◼   ► "you forgot." You know, you kind of go, "Well, you know, it's a draft. We can't

00:23:32 ◼   ► have all the things or it wouldn't be a draft."

00:23:34 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right. Maybe we didn't forget it. So when people write in and say, "I

00:23:38 ◼   ► can't believe you didn't pick," which happens with every single draft that I've

00:23:42 ◼   ► done right there's only two possible responses and one is well we just didn't

00:23:47 ◼   ► get to it you're right that was that was a great thing it was on maybe somebody's

00:23:50 ◼   ► list and we just didn't get to it the other response is oh we didn't forget

00:23:55 ◼   ► like I know you wanted us to pick that one but we don't we don't like like the

00:24:01 ◼   ► Newton is one of those where I guess John might have picked the Newton at

00:24:03 ◼   ► some point the Newton is interesting in some ways was like in all Apple history

00:24:06 ◼   ► of hardware made by Apple would I ever pick a Newton it's like picking an

00:24:10 ◼   ► eight-track player it's like you remember that fondly but do you remember

00:24:13 ◼   ► really actually having to have an eight-track player as the way you listen

00:24:17 ◼   ► to the music it was the worst I've angered all eight Newton fans thank you

00:24:22 ◼   ► very much to everyone for listening I have two Newton's I have two Newton's in my

00:24:25 ◼   ► house did a kiss product they should I should put them together one of them is

00:24:30 ◼   ► in a little leather leather zip-up case and now the mother of dragons yeah let's

00:24:37 ◼   ► Let's take a break from follow up and let me tell you about a sponsor.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Yes, because Myke is not here.

00:24:43 ◼   ► I will tell you about Eero.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Never think about Wi-Fi again.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Eero has created the dream Wi-Fi set up a fast reliable connection throughout your house,

00:24:52 ◼   ► even your backyard.

00:24:54 ◼   ► Now is the best time to get on board with Eero as they've just released their new super

00:24:57 ◼   ► slick second generation devices.

00:24:59 ◼   ► I have them here.

00:25:00 ◼   ► They are powering the Snellhouse Wi-Fi right at this moment super easy to add them in using

00:25:06 ◼   ► the Eero app and my network stayed up as I was adding in devices and then removing other

00:25:12 ◼   ► devices it was pretty great. It's a tri-band second generation model and they also have

00:25:17 ◼   ► the Eero beacon which lets you build a Wi-Fi system that's perfectly tailored for your

00:25:21 ◼   ► home. I got a box that had one of the main Eero base stations and two of the beacons

00:25:27 ◼   ► which communicate to the base station and extend very easily without any fiddly setup

00:25:32 ◼   ► extend your Wi-Fi around your home. So now the Wi-Fi camera and the smart light bulb

00:25:38 ◼   ► that I have kind of in an extended far front of the house get solid Wi-Fi. I never knew

00:25:43 ◼   ► that I would need to extend my Wi-Fi base station for a light bulb, but this is where

00:25:48 ◼   ► we are in 2017. The new second generation Eero includes a third 5 GHz radio, so it's

00:25:55 ◼   ► twice as fast as before. This lets you do more than ever. Whatever your Wi-Fi needs,

00:25:58 ◼   ► Eero has the power to blanket your whole home and fast reliable Wi-Fi. It sits flat on any

00:26:03 ◼   ► surface plug it into the wall with the included power adapter and you're ready to connect

00:26:06 ◼   ► your Eero either with Ethernet or wirelessly. New Eero also includes a new Thread Radio

00:26:11 ◼   ► which is going to let you connect to low power devices such as smart home devices. And the

00:26:17 ◼   ► new Beacon you plug it into a wall that's it it expands coverage. It's got a little

00:26:22 ◼   ► nightlight with an ambient light sensor so it will also be a nightlight plus extend your

00:26:27 ◼   ► your Wi-Fi and that works great. Can I join in and endorse on this? I don't want to interrupt

00:26:32 ◼   ► you. It's your show. Join. I was just gonna say people some people don't like the night

00:26:35 ◼   ► lights. They like I like we like to turn that off. You can turn LEDs on. We are all in on

00:26:39 ◼   ► the era lifestyle. They were kind enough to send me this the second generation one. It

00:26:43 ◼   ► took about 15 minutes to set up and I really really like it. I do this really dumb compulsive

00:26:49 ◼   ► thing where when it occurs to me, all sometimes I'll be laying in bed as I do and I'll pop

00:26:53 ◼   ► open the app and I'll go in I'll just go test the Wi-Fi and you just go test the

00:26:57 ◼   ► Wi-Fi and then today here's the crazy thing I'm in my bedroom I'm two beacons

00:27:00 ◼   ► away from the actual source of internet and I was getting 130 megabits down in

00:27:05 ◼   ► my bedroom I don't have I don't have files this is with just cable town but

00:27:10 ◼   ► we were getting like 130 down with two beacons away from the actual source if

00:27:15 ◼   ► you can also go in what I love this is so anal you do not need to do this but

00:27:19 ◼   ► you can go in and it shows you all of the devices that are currently on your

00:27:23 ◼   ► network and all the devices that were recently on your network. So my

00:27:27 ◼   ► sister-in-law was at the house this weekend and I saw that her phone was on

00:27:30 ◼   ► there and so we you know I go in I give it an emoji I give it a nice name and if

00:27:34 ◼   ► I ever see something on there that seems super weird I can block it. I love

00:27:38 ◼   ► the app it's so rare in this age of terrible internet security cameras don't

00:27:43 ◼   ► get me started but in this era it's so nice to see an app that actually really

00:27:48 ◼   ► works and is working for you it's making sure that everything is working even

00:27:52 ◼   ► when you're not using it. This is a great product. And you said two beacons away. I

00:27:55 ◼   ► think that's the thing that if you're somebody who has is skeptical of the

00:27:59 ◼   ► idea that you aren't just getting your Wi-Fi from an Ethernet wired base

00:28:03 ◼   ► station that all of these extenders are are bad, right? That used to be the case.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Extending a Wi-Fi with an unwired connection that was just a

00:28:10 ◼   ► repeater used to be pretty janky. I did that for a little while and it was not

00:28:15 ◼   ► really reliable and these these beacons from Eero, it's new tech. They have

00:28:21 ◼   ► multiple radios so they're talking to each other on one band while the Wi-Fi

00:28:24 ◼   ► is on a different band and the speeds are impressive. So if you've got a hard

00:28:30 ◼   ► to wire house where you're not going to be able to run Ethernet or power line or

00:28:33 ◼   ► anything like that to other parts of the house you can chain the beacons together

00:28:36 ◼   ► and actually get good Wi-Fi where you need it which is pretty great. Especially

00:28:39 ◼   ► since now we do have these connected home devices that are in our backyards

00:28:42 ◼   ► or front yards or whatever and are on Wi-Fi and they need now you need a Wi-Fi

00:28:46 ◼   ► signal where you may never be but there's a device there that needs to get

00:28:50 ◼   ► on your Wi-Fi. So the new Eero system starts at $399 that gets you one

00:28:54 ◼   ► second-generation Eero plus two beacons to put throughout your home. That's

00:28:58 ◼   ► everything you need to get started. Listeners to upgrade can get free

00:29:00 ◼   ► overnight shipping. To the US or Canada go to Eero.com. That's E-E-R-O.com. Use the

00:29:06 ◼   ► promo code "upgrade" for free overnight shipping. Thank you to Eero for their

00:29:11 ◼   ► support of upgrade. Thanks for the help, Merlin. That was nice.

00:29:14 ◼   ► My pleasure. It's a good product. Yeah, a little bit of a guest endorsement.

00:29:18 ◼   ► They didn't tell us to say that. That's because it's the summer of fun.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Oh, I'm hearing my flip-flops. Let's... you take them off now and put the sand between your toes.

00:29:28 ◼   ► Just visualize Hawaii. So topic number one, I think, should probably be that it's the end of

00:29:37 ◼   ► August, which means September, which is a big month for Apple stuff. It's just around the corner.

00:29:41 ◼   ► It means people like you are dying for something to finally talk about.

00:29:44 ◼   ► I know, like it's the month, it's the, I think we said back in June, I said this feels like August

00:29:50 ◼   ► at some point, this feels like an August story to Myke because there's that, after WWDC you get into

00:29:56 ◼   ► this sort of like there's some rumors and all that but really you're kind of putting it in cruise

00:29:59 ◼   ► control for the betas of the of the OS and you know there's going to be a hardware event in the

00:30:04 ◼   ► fall and the OS's will get finalized and all that will happen and here we are at the end of August

00:30:08 ◼   ► and invitations to a new Apple event could come out at any moment. They haven't come

00:30:14 ◼   ► out as we record this, but they really could come out now or maybe now or maybe now, sometime

00:30:21 ◼   ► in the next couple of weeks. There was a French website called Mac Forever that a few days

00:30:29 ◼   ► ago reported that they thought the event was going to happen on September 12th, and I was

00:30:33 ◼   ► like okay but I don't really know anything about this site but a slightly

00:30:37 ◼   ► more reputable organization today confirmed that September 12th date and

00:30:42 ◼   ► that was the Wall Street Journal so I think it's more likely that it'll happen

00:30:46 ◼   ► the journal reported though that was kind of interesting that they basically

00:30:50 ◼   ► were like they want to do it at the Steve Jobs theater on the new Apple

00:30:53 ◼   ► campus but they don't know if they're going to be able to do that or not and

00:30:56 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure they know where they're going to have that event if it's going

00:31:00 ◼   ► to be in two weeks, right? I think they probably know, but maybe the journal Source doesn't

00:31:06 ◼   ► know that. It's also possible, my guess is what they did was at some point, as they

00:31:12 ◼   ► always do, they probably reserved some dates at a venue or even venues and plotted them

00:31:18 ◼   ► out on the calendar, like, you know, we're going to take September the 6th here and we're

00:31:23 ◼   ► going to take the 12th here and maybe even like we'll take the 19th at this venue and

00:31:28 ◼   ► might have been the same venue or maybe some different venues because I'm sure they weren't

00:31:33 ◼   ► counting on the Steve Jobs Theater being ready. Like they probably have to hedge that. So, but now

00:31:39 ◼   ► with two weeks to go, like at some point if they're if they're going to be at the Flint Center

00:31:43 ◼   ► or at the McHenry Convention Center or at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco where

00:31:49 ◼   ► they've been the last two, they're going to have to start like building stuff, right? Because they

00:31:54 ◼   ► don't just take the building as it is. They erect like demo areas and it depends on which

00:32:02 ◼   ► the venue is, but for the Flint Center and for the Bill Graham, like the Yerba Buena

00:32:07 ◼   ► events that they've done in the past, they've actually built up their own structures around

00:32:13 ◼   ► the venue in order to get exactly what they want. Presumably the Steve Jobs Theater gives

00:32:18 ◼   ► them all of the stuff that they normally have to build, they get to have complete control,

00:32:22 ◼   ► their property, right? But since these other places, that's not the case, I think we'll

00:32:28 ◼   ► see pretty quickly here that either they're going to be somewhere else and they've got

00:32:33 ◼   ► to do the build or they really are going to do it on the Apple Park campus, which that

00:32:38 ◼   ► would be exciting. If that was our first view of the Apple Park campus was the iPhone event

00:32:44 ◼   ► this fall, that would be awesome. But it sounds like, you know, at least this reporting can't

00:32:49 ◼   ► pin it down. All it could do is say they'd like to have it there. And I have no doubt

00:32:53 ◼   ► that they would like to have it there. I just don't know if they're going to manage it.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and I just don't have any information about this, but I would have to, I guess,

00:33:01 ◼   ► guess that they would not want the first high-profile event at the theater named for Steve Jobs

00:33:08 ◼   ► to go anything but flawlessly. I do wonder about that. Like, I had the thought of, do

00:33:13 ◼   ► you want, I get wanting to make your big splash iPhone event, the first event at the Steve

00:33:18 ◼   ► Jobs Theater. I also wonder like would you be better off with a slightly lower

00:33:23 ◼   ► profile event like an October event where you announce some minor stuff or

00:33:29 ◼   ► a or a you know a spring event where you announce some new max or whatever would

00:33:34 ◼   ► that be a better time to do a dry run at that theater rather than because the

00:33:40 ◼   ► iPhone event is the big event like the most people care about it it's the one

00:33:44 ◼   ► that generates the most web traffic it generates the most video streams it is

00:33:47 ◼   ► the biggest attendance in terms of like press and VIP attendance the WWDC keynote is bigger

00:33:54 ◼   ► but that's because they're all the developers who are at the conference there but like the

00:33:58 ◼   ► iPhone event is the big event and so it's going to put all the stress maximum stress

00:34:06 ◼   ► on this new venue and the infrastructure the networking infrastructure like everything

00:34:12 ◼   ► at the new campus. So, I don't know, maybe they're going to go for that, but that's a

00:34:19 ◼   ► big one if that's what they do, to have the first event be this high-profile big event.

00:34:24 ◼   ► So I feel like if I had to guess at this point, given that I have yet to even talk to somebody

00:34:30 ◼   ► at Apple who has moved into the new Apple Park campus, I know they're moving people

00:34:35 ◼   ► in but I keep running into people or chatting with people who are probably going to move

00:34:39 ◼   ► there, we're like, "Oh yeah, we haven't moved there yet." Now that's been a month or so,

00:34:43 ◼   ► but it's like, I don't know. My gut feeling is that if I had to pick, I'd say it's more

00:34:49 ◼   ► than a 50% chance that they will be somewhere else. I know they really want to do it. I'm

00:34:54 ◼   ► sure they really want to do it. And it's great if they do, but it is like high stakes for

00:35:00 ◼   ► a brand new facility. They must have supreme confidence. And it just, it feels like, I

00:35:07 ◼   ► I don't know. We're getting down to the wire here. But if they set a date, they must have

00:35:11 ◼   ► confidence or they've decided to not go with it. That's the funny thing because I figured

00:35:16 ◼   ► like if they're doing it on their own campus, they don't need to set the date, right? They

00:35:20 ◼   ► could say, "Well, it turns out we're not going to do the 12th. We're going to do the 19th

00:35:23 ◼   ► or we're going to do the 26th." They could do that. They're free to do that if it's on

00:35:27 ◼   ► their campus. They can pick a date. All of these old rules about venues, outside venues

00:35:33 ◼   ► are gone because they control that site. It's completely theirs. They can call an event

00:35:39 ◼   ► there on the drop of a hat. I mean that's not really true because there's still lots

00:35:41 ◼   ► of event prep they have to do even if it's an on-campus event, but they control everything

00:35:48 ◼   ► about it in a way that they don't when it's the Flint Center or Bill Graham or something

00:35:52 ◼   ► like that. So I don't know, but if it's the 12th, that's like the last two years it's

00:35:55 ◼   ► been the Wednesday after Labor Day. This puts it back to where it was three years ago, which

00:35:58 ◼   ► is the Tuesday, the second week in September, which I think is a better time. All the rumors

00:36:07 ◼   ► are that they're going to load up. I mean, it's going to be one of those packed events

00:36:10 ◼   ► again because there's a rumor that there's a next generation Apple Watch, there's a 4K

00:36:14 ◼   ► Apple TV, of course there's the new iPhone, which sounds like we may be seeing three new

00:36:20 ◼   ► models, including the high-end OLED model that has been rumored so much, and then the

00:36:26 ◼   ► OS launches presumably would happen then too. So there's just a huge swath of stuff. It's

00:36:31 ◼   ► hard, they like to fit that in two hours, right? But that's a packed event. That is

00:36:36 ◼   ► the packed event if they're doing all of that. Plus possibly like HomePod update, I don't

00:36:42 ◼   ► know. There's a lot going on. That could be a huge thing.

00:36:45 ◼   ► You get that feeling when you watch it. I mean, they feel like they're becoming more

00:36:49 ◼   ► and more propulsive in how quickly they move through them. Where like the last one, I guess

00:36:54 ◼   ► from Dob Dob was when it just felt like it was almost breathless how quickly they were

00:37:00 ◼   ► moving through it. There's so much stuff it's kind of like the news cycle, am I right? Where

00:37:03 ◼   ► there's so much stuff that almost would have been its own event at one point that now becomes

00:37:06 ◼   ► like a few words on a slide. It's crazy. And stuff gets knocked out and announced early

00:37:10 ◼   ► which is something that I actually do expect that to happen in the next couple of weeks

00:37:13 ◼   ► too is that we're going to start getting some things that just get announced. Yeah, 4K Apple

00:37:18 ◼   ► TV, I mean that I think that's something that probably doesn't need a huge amount of stage

00:37:23 ◼   ► Well, I think if they're really pushing the power of the Apple TV and they want to reset

00:37:28 ◼   ► the narrative, which is currently like Apple stuff is overpriced and not as good and they're

00:37:32 ◼   ► way behind in losing market share, I think you want it on stage if you're trying to change

00:37:37 ◼   ► the game. It allows them to bring like, bring Disney and Netflix and who knows who else

00:37:44 ◼   ► on stage to say, "Yeah, we've got all this HDR 4K content that we're making available

00:37:49 ◼   ► iTunes or on our service that'll be on the Apple TV. I feel like when Myke comes back

00:37:54 ◼   ► and we play keynote draft, that's going to be one of the draft items is like, you know,

00:38:00 ◼   ► an entertainment industry executive extols the virtues of Apple TV with their new content

00:38:07 ◼   ► on stage. That's the thing. If somebody from ABC comes out there, if Disney comes out there

00:38:11 ◼   ► and says, "For the first time anywhere, we're going to put 4K movies of Disney movies on

00:38:15 ◼   ► iTunes." Right, it becomes a little bit of a MacGuffin in some ways. But just hearing

00:38:18 ◼   ► people talk about seeing 4K. I think Myke talked about this, but seeing 4K in person,

00:38:23 ◼   ► it sounds a little bit like VR, where you can describe it and you can analogize it,

00:38:26 ◼   ► but like watching somebody use VR is not super persuasive. And with the 4K, it's like seeing

00:38:31 ◼   ► that 4K on a TV that you're watching in the room is apparently really quite a thing. And

00:38:37 ◼   ► I just don't know how well that's going to play in a non-analogized way.

00:38:42 ◼   ► Well, yeah, how do you show off HD on an SDTV? You can't. You really can't. How do you show

00:38:46 ◼   ► color on a black and white TV. You can't do it. So I agree it's a hard sell, but I feel

00:38:51 ◼   ► like they'll probably put their shoulder into it a little bit because they want to plug

00:38:57 ◼   ► this stuff. But you're right, as a consumer, it's hard. The truth is I've got a 4K TV.

00:39:02 ◼   ► I've got a 50-inch 4K TV. And I think it's too small and too far away from our couch

00:39:06 ◼   ► for me to really notice the difference. I do watch stuff in 4K on it, and granted it's

00:39:12 ◼   ► Netflix so it's really compressed but the 1080 stream is really compressed on

00:39:15 ◼   ► Netflix too and maybe it looks better maybe that's just a placebo I think the

00:39:21 ◼   ► reality is that 4k matters most if you're somebody who has a very big TV

00:39:26 ◼   ► and that's a slice of the market that cares but it's a relatively limited

00:39:31 ◼   ► slice of the market the HDR stuff might actually be more interesting because

00:39:35 ◼   ► that's what I hear yeah yeah it's in you know I guess eventually it's gonna

00:39:40 ◼   ► to depend, I guess, more and more stuff is pushing this content out, but like as of now,

00:39:44 ◼   ► we have a 1080p TV that's badly in need of replacement, but like I deliberately do not

00:39:50 ◼   ► sit too--I'll sit a lot closer to the screen for watching a Pixar movie from Apple than

00:39:55 ◼   ► I will for watching, say, Game of Thrones, because it's very disappointing to sit close

00:39:59 ◼   ► to the TV for that.

00:40:00 ◼   ► You go, yeah, you go blind.

00:40:01 ◼   ► That's what I was supposed to tell you.

00:40:02 ◼   ► They're compression.

00:40:03 ◼   ► They're compression on--

00:40:04 ◼   ► You go blind if you sit too close to the TV.

00:40:05 ◼   ► HBO's compression is rough.

00:40:06 ◼   ► It's bad.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Yeah, well, compression--mhm.

00:40:09 ◼   ► is not good. I mean, when you sit too close to a TV, and do this if you haven't, like,

00:40:14 ◼   ► if you've got a digital source of any kind, walk up close to your TV and look at the compression

00:40:22 ◼   ► because it's pretty staggering. You can't sit too close because it's meant to fool you

00:40:27 ◼   ► from at least a little bit of a distance. That's sort of the point.

00:40:30 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks like a JPEG from, you know, 10 years ago.

00:40:33 ◼   ► But the HDR stuff, I think, the idea that you can get blacker blacks and brighter brights

00:40:37 ◼   ► and that there's more dynamic range across the picture is something that's going to pop

00:40:41 ◼   ► out more. And so you put 4K+ HDR together and the message, you know, part of, is this

00:40:46 ◼   ► a conspiracy to sell more television sets? Totally, because 3D didn't work and the HD

00:40:52 ◼   ► revolution is over. Everybody's already got HD now, so they got to move on to the next

00:40:56 ◼   ► thing and 4K HDR is the latest attempt by the TV industry to sell you a new television

00:41:04 ◼   ► set and some people will get a lot out of it but it's not we're never gonna see I think

00:41:09 ◼   ► in our probably in our lifetimes unless there's like a headset thing that that ends up being

00:41:14 ◼   ► amazing but it's gonna be a while before we see something that's as dramatic a jump as

00:41:18 ◼   ► SD to HD for the regular average everyday viewer where they're like oh yeah now I got

00:41:24 ◼   ► a widescreen TV with HD it looks way better after that all of this stuff is way more incremental

00:41:29 ◼   ► And I'm excited about it because I do kind of care more than the average person is.

00:41:33 ◼   ► It cares about it. But even, even I, with my 4k TV, look at this and like, yeah.

00:41:38 ◼   ► You're also going to get into this as a whole other, you know, kettle of fish,

00:41:42 ◼   ► but then you're going to get into like, I, you, I, uh,

00:41:45 ◼   ► I just recently reached your point where I got the letter from Comcast.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Oh yeah. Like you've downloaded a terabyte and you need to pay a lot more money.

00:41:55 ◼   ► You just got to, that's your first freebie. But like after this, you know,

00:41:58 ◼   ► that it's going to be real interesting because suddenly all of the providers of

00:42:03 ◼   ► that pipe I mean that's gonna get real interesting when even like up so I

00:42:07 ◼   ► imagine it's even a fairly small number of their audience starts getting the

00:42:11 ◼   ► work you're talking about a very very very large file at that point but yes

00:42:14 ◼   ► anyway yeah and that's yeah it's a they're still gonna want your money

00:42:20 ◼   ► you're just gonna pay it to different people for different things but they're

00:42:22 ◼   ► still gonna get their money if they if you want to watch this stuff and yeah

00:42:25 ◼   ► 4k streams. The 4k streams use more the high efficiency video codec stuff so

00:42:29 ◼   ► they are better than a comparable you know MPEG4 stream but still

00:42:36 ◼   ► it's a higher bitrate and I think we can all agree it's Times of Confusion. Times of

00:42:41 ◼   ► Confusion, well said. We should mention the iOS 11 beta there's new beta today

00:42:45 ◼   ► in fact. I didn't see it. I'm recording this a couple hours later usually they released during the show

00:42:50 ◼   ► but they released it right before the show this time. I was traveling with

00:42:57 ◼   ► my iPad running iOS 11. I love iOS 11. You're on iOS 11 too, right?

00:43:02 ◼   ► Yeah, look at that developer beta 8 is out. I have it on two iPads but not my phone because I'm not a crazy person.

00:43:08 ◼   ► I did that this last week. I realized if I'm going to write about iOS 11, I need to

00:43:13 ◼   ► finally bite the bullet and put it on my phone.

00:43:14 ◼   ► Well, I mean, I bet it's pretty far along. Well, you know what it was? It was just

00:43:18 ◼   ► cost benefit of, you know, am I likely to see, I mean, this is so obvious, but it's

00:43:23 ◼   ► worth saying because there are people who will go out and like it's a different era,

00:43:27 ◼   ► they will just go out and put stuff on their device.

00:43:28 ◼   ► Well, that's your phone.

00:43:29 ◼   ► Like you're not going to, if your kid falls down a well, you don't get the call, you're

00:43:32 ◼   ► going to be bummed.

00:43:33 ◼   ► But, um, I have been loving iOS 11.

00:43:36 ◼   ► I'm not even doing that much with the drag and drop, but there's so much, there's so

00:43:40 ◼   ► few things that I hate and a lot of things that I just really, really, I love having

00:43:44 ◼   ► a ton of apps down in that little doc thing.

00:43:47 ◼   ► I love that. I wish they bring back easier now playing controls because I live in Overcast

00:43:52 ◼   ► all day long and the big swipe to get to Overcast is still kind of a bummer, but being able

00:43:57 ◼   ► to control the Apple TV with one click from the control center is so boss.

00:44:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I added, I just customized the control center on my phone since I went to 11 on my

00:44:08 ◼   ► phone and that's pretty amazing. Like, I got to remove some stuff that I don't care about,

00:44:14 ◼   ► launching the Apple calculator it's like I'm not gonna use your calculator but

00:44:18 ◼   ► you must feel like Captain Kirk you got it all right there right I got low I got

00:44:21 ◼   ► low energy mode here I got I got the wallet I got I got screen recording I

00:44:26 ◼   ► got I got home kit it's all it's all there and of course the flashlight which

00:44:30 ◼   ► now has a little little scaly thing so you can like step it up and down just

00:44:34 ◼   ► right that's very nice very nice I love it love it yeah are you on the TV OS beta

00:44:39 ◼   ► No. I did that just for poops and giggles and I haven't noticed much except for

00:44:46 ◼   ► there's two things I've noticed both of which I like. One is you know auto

00:44:50 ◼   ► switching to dark mode but one my daughter discovered this weekend is you

00:44:56 ◼   ► know how like you're watching something and if you just kind of lightly brush

00:44:58 ◼   ► the area the mousing area you get a pop up with the scrubber. Yeah. If you

00:45:04 ◼   ► lightly do that again it shows you the current time and the time that what

00:45:08 ◼   ► you're watching will be finished, which is really nice for bedtime reasons. You don't

00:45:11 ◼   ► have to do any arithmetic. It's really cool. No math. That's cool. I did that today with

00:45:15 ◼   ► Faithful Findings. I was able to see it in 935. Faithful, the greatest ending of a movie

00:45:20 ◼   ► ever will come. Oh boy. Faithful Findings. I wonder, yeah. That's one of those flophouse

00:45:28 ◼   ► movies that I've actually seen. I know, it's one of the very, very few that I've seen.

00:45:30 ◼   ► It's very dramatic when he's on the steps of the Supreme Court giving his speech. Well,

00:45:34 ◼   ► Well, what you have to understand is that he's hacked in, he's got all the documents,

00:45:37 ◼   ► and he's discovered all of the secret government and corporate secrets.

00:45:41 ◼   ► Dear listeners, all I have to tell you is don't watch "Fateful Findings."

00:45:44 ◼   ► What?

00:45:45 ◼   ► Just don't do it.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Oh, you're so wrong!

00:45:47 ◼   ► Oh my god, Snow was wrong, pound sign!

00:45:49 ◼   ► Oh no, this is one of the great movies.

00:45:50 ◼   ► If nothing else, treat yourself.

00:45:52 ◼   ► Go search on YouTube "Fateful Findings End" and treat yourself to arguably the greatest

00:45:57 ◼   ► ending to a movie of all time.

00:45:58 ◼   ► See, Merlin, I have really enjoyed watching "Fateful Findings," but I want to just, when

00:46:01 ◼   ► somebody who's complete innocent and stumbles on it, I want deniability. I want to be able

00:46:07 ◼   ► to say, "I told you not to watch it."

00:46:09 ◼   ► It's so nice to watch, because people say things like, "I'll let the cat out of the

00:46:11 ◼   ► bag." This is the challenge for this week's Do by Friday, and people always say similar

00:46:15 ◼   ► things where they're like, "Oh, I'm not into bad movies." And I say, "Oh, sweetheart, this

00:46:20 ◼   ► is not a bad movie."

00:46:21 ◼   ► Bless your heart.

00:46:22 ◼   ► This is way more, and they go, "Oh, is this like The Room?" I'm like, "No, The Room is

00:46:24 ◼   ► so much more competent than this."

00:46:26 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:46:27 ◼   ► This is like if an alien got a fax...

00:46:28 ◼   ► If an alien got a fax--

00:46:29 ◼   ► If an alien got a flophouse, described it that way.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Right.

00:46:33 ◼   ► This is as if a movie was made by someone

00:46:35 ◼   ► who's never seen a movie.

00:46:37 ◼   ► Should I have more shots of people's shoes?

00:46:39 ◼   ► Yes.

00:46:40 ◼   ► Oh, the shoes.

00:46:41 ◼   ► The shoes.

00:46:42 ◼   ► Watch for the shoes.

00:46:43 ◼   ► And you do watch "Fateful Findings,"

00:46:44 ◼   ► and I'm not saying you should.

00:46:45 ◼   ► Oh, you should.

00:46:45 ◼   ► Watch for the shoe shots.

00:46:46 ◼   ► There are so many shots of people's shoes.

00:46:48 ◼   ► Oh, so much blood dripping and shirts

00:46:51 ◼   ► hitting the ground with a thud.

00:46:52 ◼   ► We should probably put that in show notes.

00:46:54 ◼   ► That episode of "The Flophouse" is unimpeachably

00:46:56 ◼   ► one of the great flophouse episodes.

00:46:58 ◼   ► One of the greatest final judgments ever, I think.

00:47:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's amazing.

00:47:04 ◼   ► And I think that's still on Amazon.

00:47:06 ◼   ► I think you can just go watch Flay.

00:47:07 ◼   ► - To tell you a secret, I could not, it used to be on,

00:47:10 ◼   ► but I don't know if it's on Amazon,

00:47:12 ◼   ► but there is a version on the site

00:47:15 ◼   ► that rhymes with Shmoo Tube.

00:47:17 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, good.

00:47:18 ◼   ► All right, well.

00:47:20 ◼   ► - I don't want Neil to pull it.

00:47:20 ◼   ► Don't pull it, Neil.

00:47:21 ◼   ► This is important. - Give Neil your money.

00:47:23 ◼   ► Whatever. - Yeah.

00:47:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, all right.

00:47:27 ◼   ► before we move on you want to talk about

00:47:30 ◼   ► we're doing all this tea leaf reading we're doing all this criminology

00:47:33 ◼   ► I can make this very short because this is something I think about a lot

00:47:37 ◼   ► I'm just curious because this is the time of year

00:47:39 ◼   ► when you know I like to give you a little bit of stick about this stuff

00:47:41 ◼   ► because this is your job and that's what I do is get people stick

00:47:44 ◼   ► but you know you come through this summer of

00:47:47 ◼   ► summer of fun where you don't get a lot of Apple news and then the news starts

00:47:51 ◼   ► kind of spinning up

00:47:52 ◼   ► and you start getting the purported leaks

00:47:55 ◼   ► And everything goes a little crazy. I think we're even has a name for this, but it's a crazy time of year when there's so much ludicrous stuff that's getting so much traffic and you know, we're idiots and we will click on it. So my question to you, Jason Snell is silly season silly season. That's it. When you're thinking about this stuff. I mean, obviously you want to cover what's out there because that's that's your deal. But I'm just like, when do you think I'm calling it Apple tea leaf reading or Kremlin ology? When, how and for whom is this kind of guesswork the most useful

00:48:25 ◼   ► apart from the fact that we just enjoy it as a fun thought exercise, like, when do you,

00:48:31 ◼   ► for whom especially, do you think this stuff is most useful? Is that a well-formed question?

00:48:37 ◼   ► Like, when is this guesswork useful to people?

00:48:39 ◼   ► Well, this, I'm going to take you back in time for this, because I get to do that either

00:48:44 ◼   ► right, which is, I remember back in the day, if you go back, you may remember this too,

00:48:49 ◼   ► there was, back in the day, there was a newspaper, basically, weekly newspaper called Mac Week.

00:48:55 ◼   ► You can get a free subscription. If you said you were somebody who bought stuff for your

00:48:58 ◼   ► company, they give you a free subscription.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Right. Well, and that is the key is, is it was controlled CERC, which meant that it was

00:49:05 ◼   ► free, but you had to prove that you had this amazing demographic, which is that you bought

00:49:10 ◼   ► lots of IT equipment basically. And that was because that was the target. And then the

00:49:14 ◼   ► advertisers would want to reach those people. And that was the whole business model. And

00:49:18 ◼   ► that's why it was free. You could not buy it. It was not available on the newsstand.

00:49:22 ◼   ► you had to qualify as a power buyer.

00:49:25 ◼   ► And that I always was fascinated

00:49:27 ◼   ► 'cause I worked at the same company,

00:49:29 ◼   ► but I worked at Mac user at the time.

00:49:30 ◼   ► And then later at Mac world that Mac week,

00:49:33 ◼   ► the whole premise was the reason that they reported on Apple,

00:49:36 ◼   ► what Apple was doing and other companies

00:49:38 ◼   ► in the tech industry, especially around Apple in advance,

00:49:42 ◼   ► why they would get leaks,

00:49:43 ◼   ► why they would say here's what's coming next.

00:49:45 ◼   ► The premise was that it was for those qualified buyers

00:49:51 ◼   ► have a big budget to be aware of what's coming and plan their purchases accordingly. That

00:49:58 ◼   ► was the foundation upon which this entire thing was built. Now we know that lots of

00:50:03 ◼   ► the people who subscribe to Mac Week lied about what was on their card because they

00:50:08 ◼   ► wanted to know what Apple was doing for fun, basically. Like they were following a –

00:50:14 ◼   ► It's like sports.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Yeah, it's like following a drama, following a soap opera or something. It's like a narrative.

00:50:18 ◼   ► It's peaking at the back of a book.

00:50:20 ◼   ► It's rumors about what happens in the next Star Wars movie.

00:50:23 ◼   ► It's that kind of thing.

00:50:24 ◼   ► I want to know what happens next.

00:50:27 ◼   ► And that was a portion of what drove that.

00:50:30 ◼   ► And I always felt, and I never worked there, so I'm sure people who worked at MacWeek would

00:50:33 ◼   ► probably tell you, "No, there really were people."

00:50:37 ◼   ► The core audience of that publication was people who actually did have huge budgets

00:50:41 ◼   ► and cared about what Apple was doing next so that they could plan, "I'm not going to

00:50:44 ◼   ► buy these Macs today because there's a new Mac coming in two months and I'm

00:50:48 ◼   ► gonna wait for that or there's a new technology they're putting FireWire in

00:50:51 ◼   ► the Macs so I don't want to buy these old Macs with you know whatever crappy

00:50:55 ◼   ► wire is not fire full I want to buy the FireWire Macs so you wait a couple of

00:50:59 ◼   ► months and you buy the FireWire Macs. I get that but I feel like and that that

00:51:03 ◼   ► can work on an individual basis. I'm thinking of buying a new iMac I don't

00:51:07 ◼   ► want to buy it today I want to buy it when the new one comes out in two months

00:51:10 ◼   ► like there is a value there. So there's some of that. It's not so much of your

00:51:15 ◼   ► buying decision, it's your not buying decision. Right. So if there's about to be

00:51:19 ◼   ► a revolution, like I'm always asking Syracuse like when is the right time for

00:51:22 ◼   ► getting which kind of TV. A TV, yeah. Because that's a really big

00:51:26 ◼   ► investment and if you're some kind of an IT operation and you're gonna be getting

00:51:29 ◼   ► all these seats and these new licenses and all this kind of stuff like it's a

00:51:33 ◼   ► good to know that like you say if this is going to have the wire that's

00:51:36 ◼   ► fire like I will wait for that. Yeah, exactly right. So I think I think there's an aspect

00:51:41 ◼   ► to that, but let's be honest, like we are we are also in the entertainment business

00:51:48 ◼   ► and it's weird to think of it that way, but it's show business, not show friend. I think

00:51:54 ◼   ► I think we oh man, I have a story about that. I'll share it later. I think you know, a lot

00:52:01 ◼   ► of people who listen to these podcasts and all that we care about this stuff. We love

00:52:03 ◼   ► it and we want to know what's coming next and Apple is the perfect company to

00:52:06 ◼   ► talk about that because they are secretive and they do interesting weird

00:52:10 ◼   ► stuff and they surprise us or they try to surprise us and that's why there's a

00:52:14 ◼   ► whole industry of reporting on Apple stuff that still happens like in advance

00:52:18 ◼   ► these rumors and things like that because Apple is the company that's

00:52:21 ◼   ► conducive to that is everybody who is interested in this stuff doing it

00:52:25 ◼   ► because they have a direct financial responsibility

00:52:29 ◼   ► no a lot of the listing and this is true for me too is because it's entertaining

00:52:33 ◼   ► It is more than that. A lot of our people do work in the computer industry. They are

00:52:37 ◼   ► the people who their friends come to and say, "What should I buy?" And they want to be informed.

00:52:41 ◼   ► That's all true. But the Kremlinology stuff, especially about what Apple's doing next,

00:52:46 ◼   ► you know, it's not just about being a very savvy institutional buyer of Macintoshes,

00:52:52 ◼   ► right? It's not. It's not. It is also about, "I want to know what's next. You know, I want

00:52:56 ◼   ► to know. Tell me now. Tell me now." And Apple fights that and says, "No, we want to make

00:53:00 ◼   ► the splash when we want to make it. We want to tell you the story when we're ready to

00:53:03 ◼   ► tell you that story and that's why they're, you know, doing their doubling down on secrecy

00:53:07 ◼   ► and all of that. And that's fair enough. I mean, it's part of their marketing to be secret

00:53:12 ◼   ► and have these surprises. And I would argue it's probably part of their marketing even

00:53:18 ◼   ► though they don't choose to do it this way. I think it benefits them that there's a buzz

00:53:22 ◼   ► about their stuff in advance and that people are buzzing about their products for months

00:53:26 ◼   ► before they get announced. I think that benefits them too, ultimately, as long as too much

00:53:30 ◼   ► doesn't get leaked. I think it helps them that they get months and months and months

00:53:34 ◼   ► of, "Oh, this might be a new feature in the new iPhone." I think that's good for them.

00:53:38 ◼   ► So I think that's the truth of it is. The Kremlinology stuff is fun, and it can be informative,

00:53:45 ◼   ► especially in a "what not to buy" kind of thing, "What am I waiting for?" But we shouldn't

00:53:49 ◼   ► pretend that part of it is just not, "We all want to peek at what's coming in the next

00:53:56 ◼   ► chapter."

00:53:57 ◼   ► like any little kid by, say, December 20th is going to start rooting around. You know

00:54:05 ◼   ► what I'm saying? Like even if you want to be, if you're, see I'm the kind of person,

00:54:08 ◼   ► I like being surprised. My daughter is constantly trying to tell me surprises for things that

00:54:12 ◼   ► I'd like to be surprised about when it actually happens. But you fight that impulse, but eventually

00:54:16 ◼   ► you're going to start rooting around and seeing if there's like a view master waiting for

00:54:19 ◼   ► you somewhere. You know what I'm saying?

00:54:22 ◼   ► In the chat room we got a comment about "useful for developers to get an idea for the next

00:54:27 ◼   ► iOS release." But the thing there is that that's the most boring release of all, right?

00:54:33 ◼   ► iOS and Mac OS. Unless there's a specific like interim release, like we all get the

00:54:37 ◼   ► -- we know WWDC is going to happen in June and they're going to release the final in

00:54:40 ◼   ► September.

00:54:41 ◼   ► That's a June thing. That's when you make a _DavidSmiths ad is in June, I think.

00:54:46 ◼   ► So, you know, I think keeping that in mind is important that it's not the, I guess, financial

00:54:53 ◼   ► institutions like the Wall Street Journal covering financial perspectives of this, that

00:54:57 ◼   ► would be the other argument here, is knowing more about where Apple is going affects the

00:55:02 ◼   ► investment and the stock price and people who are concerned about, you know, their investors

00:55:06 ◼   ► in Apple and they want to know where the company is going. And that is an argument that I don't

00:55:10 ◼   ► make a lot because I am not an investor in Apple, I am not a financial journalist, I

00:55:14 ◼   ► I do not pay attention to Apple's stock price.

00:55:18 ◼   ► I don't cover the company as an investment.

00:55:20 ◼   ► I cover it as a maker of products.

00:55:22 ◼   ► And so for me, I don't care about that.

00:55:25 ◼   ► But that is another aspect of this is you're an investor

00:55:28 ◼   ► and you're trying to get every last little bit of information

00:55:31 ◼   ► in advance about what Apple's doing because that affects

00:55:35 ◼   ► how you invest in Apple.

00:55:38 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:55:39 ◼   ► But I think the bulk of it is we just

00:55:41 ◼   ► want to know what the new toy is.

00:55:43 ◼   ► I'm not here to yuck on a yum.

00:55:44 ◼   ► I think it's fun too. It is important to remember that it's not that you not turn it,

00:55:49 ◼   ► that one, not you, but that the consumer of this not use it to fuel a rage machine.

00:55:55 ◼   ► That's the part where it gets a little silly. Silly season gets silly for me is when people

00:55:59 ◼   ► take speculation about speculation and then that becomes this sort of tribal thing where you're

00:56:04 ◼   ► like there's really nothing of any consequence. It's like imagine like fantasy football but it's

00:56:09 ◼   ► fantasy football of like football that doesn't even exist yet. It's like how can you even

00:56:13 ◼   ► speculate. There is definitely a human nature thing. I had this come up about something

00:56:18 ◼   ► I think on the incomparable where a movie or TV project was announced and my immediate

00:56:25 ◼   ► thought was, "Oh, that's really clever. That could be good." Now, you never know. It could

00:56:29 ◼   ► be good, it could be bad, but it could be good. And somebody responded to me and said,

00:56:34 ◼   ► "No, that's terrible. What a terrible idea. It's going to be like this and it's going

00:56:38 ◼   ► to be really bad." And my response was, "You just invented the worst possible scenario

00:56:43 ◼   ► and then took it as proof that it was bad." But it's like, you came up with the bad idea.

00:56:50 ◼   ► You did a little thought exercise where you think about what if somebody was doing this

00:56:53 ◼   ► for the worst possible reason. That's all I'm going to say about that.

00:56:55 ◼   ► Yeah, but that's not necessarily the case. I think that's human nature in some ways is

00:57:00 ◼   ► to crank up the outrage machine. And you get a rumor and you imagine the worst and then

00:57:06 ◼   ► attack that as why are they doing the worst and sometimes it is the worst

00:57:10 ◼   ► right I mean that does happen but sometimes it's not and that's I just

00:57:15 ◼   ► think it's our human nature sometimes to to jump to this conclusion that the face

00:57:18 ◼   ► the face recognition thing with the new iPhone is a good example of that. And Gruber and I

00:57:22 ◼   ► talked about I was on the talk show last week with Gruber we talked about this

00:57:25 ◼   ► quite a bit and I know Myke and I have talked about it here and and on both

00:57:30 ◼   ► shows said the same thing which is you can look at the face ID rumors and say

00:57:35 ◼   ► "Oh boy, is that really gonna work or is it gonna be bad?" But I think it's a mistake

00:57:40 ◼   ► if you just jump to the conclusion that it's gonna be bad. Touch ID was the same way, "Oh,

00:57:44 ◼   ► this is gonna be janky. Nobody's gonna believe this. It's not gonna work." And I look at

00:57:49 ◼   ► that and think that biometric stuff is so core to what Apple does that if they're doing

00:57:54 ◼   ► it it's because they got it right. And that's not me saying everything Apple does is great

00:57:58 ◼   ► and we should just love everything Apple does. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying

00:58:01 ◼   ► is sometimes Apple pushes things that are not quite right and they're but they're not

00:58:05 ◼   ► key like the like the the portrait mode or right in the in the six plus success plus

00:58:11 ◼   ► where it kind of was in beta or it wasn't even there and in the first release it's like

00:58:17 ◼   ► it wasn't a core feature it was nice but it wasn't super core this is core to the product

00:58:22 ◼   ► I feel like it's so so important that if it if it wasn't working it would not ship like

00:58:29 ◼   ► literally they would not do it. It can't be bad. Or they have ruined their most important

00:58:35 ◼   ► product if it's bad. So, but you see people out there who immediately see a rumor about

00:58:42 ◼   ► something like that and they say, "Oh, well, this is going to be terrible, of course."

00:58:45 ◼   ► It's like, "Okay, I guess you can think that, but I don't think the evidence is that way."

00:58:49 ◼   ► And that's human nature. I just think that we all tend to do that from time to time about

00:58:53 ◼   ► something when we're not particularly enthused about it, right? That happens.

00:58:58 ◼   ► Well, thank you for your answer. I am satisfied with my care.

00:59:01 ◼   ► All right. Don't watch "Fateful Findings" or do. There'll be a link in the show notes.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Don't miss. I think you misspoke. You missed. You forgot "Fateful Findings."

00:59:09 ◼   ► Oh, okay. All right. Let's take a break. We have more to talk about.

00:59:12 ◼   ► But first, I want to tell you about our next sponsor.

00:59:15 ◼   ► This episode of "UPGRADE" brought to you in part by TextExpander from our friends at SMILE.

00:59:19 ◼   ► You can communicate smarter with TextExpander.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Use it to power through repetitive communication by standardizing and improving those written replies you send every day.

00:59:27 ◼   ► "Boy, I need to do this." I have a couple of replies that I find myself typing from

00:59:31 ◼   ► memory in email like once or twice a week, and I know that if like a year ago I just

00:59:38 ◼   ► sat down and set up a TextExpander macro for that, I would be able to save so much time.

00:59:43 ◼   ► I need to do that. Because you can recall all your best and most frequently used words,

00:59:47 ◼   ► create a keyboard shortcut, TextExpander pulls in the phrase or sentence or letter that you

00:59:52 ◼   ► need an email sign off an introductory greeting a fillable template there's so

00:59:57 ◼   ► many different things you can do with it it can format dates it autocorrect

01:00:00 ◼   ► spelling it'll search your entire company's collected knowledge with a few

01:00:04 ◼   ► letters and a hotkey you can collaborate more efficiently in tools like slack

01:00:08 ◼   ► using text snippets you automatically press the tab key and your web browser

01:00:13 ◼   ► and email so your workflows even are quicker like it'll just kind of like pop

01:00:17 ◼   ► you from place to place very easy to create text snippets even within your

01:00:21 ◼   ► web browser. So there's so many reasons you can save time by using TextExpander. And you

01:00:27 ◼   ► can try it for 30 days for free on the Mac, iPad, iPhone, or Windows by going to textexpander.com/upgradefm

01:00:36 ◼   ► to start your free trial today. Thank you to TextExpander for the support of this show.

01:00:42 ◼   ► For instance, this entire conversation about TextExpander, if podcasts were like computers,

01:00:48 ◼   ► I could put it in a little macro and all I would have to say is "TE" and the whole

01:00:55 ◼   ► ad would come out.

01:00:56 ◼   ► But podcasts don't work like that, so we can't do that.

01:00:58 ◼   ► Or you could be like me and you got tired of misspelling your own name.

01:01:02 ◼   ► Oh!

01:01:03 ◼   ► And now I don't do that so much anymore because I used to type "Melrin."

01:01:05 ◼   ► I would type "Melrin."

01:01:07 ◼   ► I always type "Jase-no."

01:01:09 ◼   ► You're a very fast typist.

01:01:13 ◼   ► The um, the um...

01:01:14 ◼   ► That's what I hear.

01:01:15 ◼   ► That's what people tell me.

01:01:16 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I'll lose that stick again.

01:01:18 ◼   ► -SDATE, I can't even tell you how many times a day when I'm doing stuff, especially in

01:01:23 ◼   ► text files, SDATE is short date for me, so that'd be, you know, 2017.

01:01:26 ◼   ► -Just pops it right out.

01:01:27 ◼   ► -Yeah.

01:01:28 ◼   ► -Nice.

01:01:29 ◼   ► -Bloop!

01:01:30 ◼   ► -And it's the best.

01:01:31 ◼   ► You will feel like you have boxing gloves on your hands once you start using this app

01:01:35 ◼   ► and you go somewhere that doesn't have it.

01:01:37 ◼   ► It feels crazy.

01:01:38 ◼   ► You want it to be everywhere.

01:01:39 ◼   ► It's the best.

01:01:40 ◼   ► -We should talk about, there was news last week about CrashPlan getting rid of their

01:01:46 ◼   ► online backup product and trying to migrate people to their small business product and

01:01:53 ◼   ► other people use Backblaze, some people aren't doing online backup at all. There was a good

01:01:58 ◼   ► conversation last week, this is I guess follow out on ATP. Yeah, it was a very good conversation.

01:02:03 ◼   ► Every time I thought to myself, "Oh, they didn't mention this," then they mentioned

01:02:06 ◼   ► it. It was like they really did a good job, so I think people should listen to that. One

01:02:12 ◼   ► of the things I liked was Marco talking about—he gave like a cautionary tale, and I feel like

01:02:20 ◼   ► it's not necessarily like that he was practicing everything he preached, but he wanted to have

01:02:25 ◼   ► all of us—I think a lot of us computer nerdy people have a pack rat tendency, which is,

01:02:32 ◼   ► you know, "I'm gonna save this file because you never know," or "I'm gonna rip this

01:02:36 ◼   ► Blu-ray or DVD because I want to have all my movies or Blu-rays on my server and I might

01:02:42 ◼   ► as well start now?" And Marco was basically saying, you know, every byte that you upload,

01:02:47 ◼   ► depending on what you're using, it could cost you in time, it costs you in money, and do

01:02:51 ◼   ► you really need it or is it readily available? Like iTunes, if you've bought it on iTunes,

01:02:56 ◼   ► it's streamable, you know, you don't need to have a copy that you also convert and save

01:03:01 ◼   ► or something like that. And I thought that was good. I thought because, and I find myself,

01:03:05 ◼   ► you know, I resemble that remark a little bit, but I thought about that like when you've

01:03:09 ◼   ► got terabytes and terabytes of storage, it's just easy to never delete anything, and that's

01:03:13 ◼   ► great, but at some point I think you have to realize, like, maybe there's a tier of

01:03:20 ◼   ► stuff that I have that I don't need at all, and I should delete it. And then there's another

01:03:25 ◼   ► tier of stuff that I have that it's okay that I've got it, but I don't need to back it up

01:03:31 ◼   ► because it's easily replicable from somewhere. It's got to be in there somewhere, right?

01:03:38 ◼   ► And I think, again, that's not a very mindful thing to say, but that's my beef.

01:03:43 ◼   ► So anyway, to listen to that ATP, I found it very thought-provoking, because it really

01:03:47 ◼   ► got me thinking about the way that I do stuff.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And it was really sobering to me, because it feels like in the age or era of post-Drobo,

01:03:59 ◼   ► post-DropBox, our storage options have gotten very diverse.

01:04:04 ◼   ► it's I think about where I was whenever super duper first came out and super duper I mean I'm not a

01:04:10 ◼   ► technologist but super duper essentially will take a given hard drive whether that's your Mac or

01:04:16 ◼   ► whatever and turn it into like a DMG so and it does it's a backup app and you can give it rules

01:04:21 ◼   ► about what to do do you want to replace this do you other utterly do you want to just update it

01:04:25 ◼   ► but I used to be I used to have that I eventually had a shell script that was doing it for me and

01:04:31 ◼   ► maybe it's a launch DE thing, where automatically every night it was moving between two different,

01:04:37 ◼   ► I'm not putting this well, I had two different DMGs. For the sake of argument let's say odd and

01:04:42 ◼   ► even number of days, and each night it would update to that one. So if I had some kind of

01:04:47 ◼   ► dumb thing I didn't realize, I still had an update from two days ago, probably overkill,

01:04:51 ◼   ► but the truth was I did not have unlimited storage space, so I had an extreme amount of redundancy

01:04:57 ◼   ► locally and I was great about it. And then, yeah, you know what, I also had a reminder

01:05:01 ◼   ► to go in and test them periodically. Not that often, but at least, you know, your backups

01:05:04 ◼   ► are only as good as what you can actually restore. The time machine comes along, Dropbox

01:05:08 ◼   ► certainly comes along, you get a, you get a, you get a "nause" as I like to say. You

01:05:12 ◼   ► get these, these devices and I think it made me a little more careless. I think I don't,

01:05:17 ◼   ► on the one hand, I don't think about it because I don't have to economize. I tend to go like,

01:05:23 ◼   ► meh, just throw a bunch of stuff on there. But there's a cost to that. It's not a cost

01:05:26 ◼   ► in money, it's a cost in clutter, it's a cost in certainty, for one thing. Like, when I

01:05:32 ◼   ► used to be wired a lot more tight about this stuff, and I think it's time for me to revisit

01:05:37 ◼   ► that. I mean, not least because do you really want to have that much of your stuff in that

01:05:41 ◼   ► many places if you don't need it?

01:05:42 ◼   ► Yeah, and the fallout tends to happen now that I've got, because I've got the Drobo

01:05:48 ◼   ► and it's got like huge amounts of space and so I I don't need to do this and I

01:05:52 ◼   ► have I have movies and TV shows and stuff for sure and some of those are

01:05:57 ◼   ► probably unnecessary and I have gotten lacks at it I've got podcast stuff too

01:06:01 ◼   ► and this is a case where I've tried to apply a little bit of discipline where

01:06:06 ◼   ► my podcasts that are not time that are not timely I want to save those files

01:06:13 ◼   ► because I do occasionally go back and take like do a special version of an old

01:06:17 ◼   ► and comparable and I save the files and I can actually like clean it up and I pull the ads out

01:06:23 ◼   ► and I put it out as a new version or something like that like years after it's been out there.

01:06:28 ◼   ► So I'll do those. But like this show or TV Talk Machine or Clockwise back in the day or Download,

01:06:35 ◼   ► like I save those files because in the moment if something is wrong I need to go back to them

01:06:41 ◼   ► and then they sit there forever basically in my archive and they don't need to sit there

01:06:47 ◼   ► unless it's a special episode or something, they really just should die. And I thought

01:06:51 ◼   ► about setting up like a Hazel script or something to just like, look, if there's a download

01:06:56 ◼   ► episode for more than a month ago, just wipe it out because there's no point in keeping

01:07:01 ◼   ► it. Right. And where the, the rubber meets the road to me is not the free space on my

01:07:07 ◼   ► on my raid array. It's when we start talking about online backup, which is why the crash

01:07:13 ◼   ► plant thing came up, which is that's unlimited online backup, which is great. But when you

01:07:16 ◼   ► got terabytes and terabytes and terabytes, even on a fast internet connection, it takes

01:07:20 ◼   ► basically forever. And I realized that one of the things I should probably do is start

01:07:25 ◼   ► prioritizing like, what stuff really needs to get backed up and what stuff doesn't. I

01:07:31 ◼   ► actually did this a few weeks ago with Crash Plan, actually, where I started to say, you

01:07:35 ◼   ► know what, I'm not going to back up the clockwise folder and the download folder and the TV

01:07:39 ◼   ► Talk Machine folder, because I'm keeping some episodes around there. But those episodes

01:07:45 ◼   ► are done, I'm done with those projects, I'm probably never going to go back to those files.

01:07:50 ◼   ► If I lose my server, I don't care about losing those files. Other files I care about, but

01:07:56 ◼   ► those I don't. But if you don't have a current accounting of what all you're backing up,

01:08:01 ◼   ► it becomes a little bit, like I ran into this with kid photos, where I've got kid photos,

01:08:06 ◼   ► some are on the Drobo, some are on Dropbox, some are here. I've been pretty good about

01:08:09 ◼   ► But I started starting in 2007 because I had all this space.

01:08:14 ◼   ► I just started going, "Meh, it's here somewhere.

01:08:16 ◼   ► "It's gotta be here somewhere."

01:08:17 ◼   ► And sometimes it's five copies of this one subset

01:08:21 ◼   ► of the first six months of her life,

01:08:22 ◼   ► but we've got periods where I feel like

01:08:24 ◼   ► I should probably have more photos from this era,

01:08:25 ◼   ► and I'm not even sure where to start looking.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Like, am I gonna go and pull out these

01:08:30 ◼   ► four naked hard drives with a rubber band around them

01:08:33 ◼   ► and just start going through all of these on the Drobo?

01:08:34 ◼   ► I mean, there's a cost, and then that creates anxiety,

01:08:37 ◼   ► and then now you don't trust your stuff.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Well, the last thing you want to do is, what if I throw this hard drive away?

01:08:42 ◼   ► It looks like there's nothing on it, but what if this is actually the only copy that's still

01:08:46 ◼   ► in existence of those baby photos?

01:08:47 ◼   ► Yeah, that'll dog you forever.

01:08:49 ◼   ► And so then you end up just holding on to everything forever until you can't read it

01:08:54 ◼   ► anymore.

01:08:55 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:56 ◼   ► It's so sobering.

01:08:57 ◼   ► Like, I am a fan of, I know there are many apps that do this, but I like DaisyDisc.

01:09:03 ◼   ► So there are many apps out there that will allow you to get a, usually like somewhat

01:09:06 ◼   ► graphical look at a given hard drive to see what files are on there, and the special benefit

01:09:13 ◼   ► of apps like this or other ones, and I'm sure you can reel off other ones, is that it gives

01:09:17 ◼   ► you this viewport to say, "Okay, let me go show me my drive," and then you go into your

01:09:22 ◼   ► home directory, and then you say, "Oh, so the biggest thing here is the one with my

01:09:26 ◼   ► name on it." Well, that makes sense. I go into there. The biggest file in here is Library.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Well, that's weird. I go into Library, I drill down further, and I realize, "Oh my gosh,

01:09:35 ◼   ► I've got iTunes backups of a device that I haven't used in two years. It might blow your mind

01:09:40 ◼   ► to know how much of your drive is being eaten up with stuff that you really, really, really don't

01:09:45 ◼   ► need again. And if you treat all of that as being as important as the weekly podcast episode you

01:09:50 ◼   ► just put out and will never listen to again, like that's a good time to reflect. Yeah, I will say

01:09:55 ◼   ► that all of their talk about media and like, "Do you really need that media?" did remind me of

01:10:03 ◼   ► something that we've also I think talked about before which is these streaming services like you

01:10:07 ◼   ► can't count on them if there's something you really love and you want to have access to you

01:10:11 ◼   ► can't count on them I happened I was sick like a couple of months ago and is sick in bed and I

01:10:19 ◼   ► decided I was going to look for Stargate SG-1 which is a one of my comfort food shows I love

01:10:24 ◼   ► that show especially the first like five years of it just love that show great sci-fi fun show and

01:10:30 ◼   ► And I realized it was only streaming on Hulu, which I have, and then I started to play an

01:10:34 ◼   ► episode and it was this like 4x3 like episode, which you know you'd think that's an older

01:10:40 ◼   ► show it probably was shot in 4x3.

01:10:42 ◼   ► But no, I have the DVDs of the first four years of Stargate and they're all widescreen.

01:10:46 ◼   ► They shot that show in widescreen.

01:10:47 ◼   ► It was on Showtime.

01:10:48 ◼   ► It was in HD way before a lot of shows were and it was in widescreen way before a lot

01:10:52 ◼   ► of shows were.

01:10:53 ◼   ► And I realized, oh my God, my DVDs that are in a box in my garage are way better quality

01:10:59 ◼   ► than what's available. And I actually went and I ripped all of those. And that's an example

01:11:02 ◼   ► where that's a show that I had the DVDs, but I just assumed that I didn't need them anymore

01:11:10 ◼   ► because it was streaming. And the fact is it's only streaming on one service and what's

01:11:13 ◼   ► on that service is not very good. And this has happened with like with Buffy where it's

01:11:17 ◼   ► gone from one place to another or it's disappeared. Doctor Who, you know, it goes off of one service

01:11:22 ◼   ► and moves to another or maybe it doesn't for a while.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Bob's Burgers was all up on Netflix and now it's gone.

01:11:27 ◼   ► It's on Hulu now. My daughter is getting reacquainted with Bob's Burgers, which she loves now, because

01:11:32 ◼   ► I said, "Oh no, we've got a Hulu account. You can log into that too and watch that,"

01:11:36 ◼   ► because she loves that show. So that is part of it that I will point out. If you've got

01:11:39 ◼   ► a beloved movie, don't count on that streaming service being there. Don't count on it. If

01:11:46 ◼   ► you buy it on iTunes or you buy it on Blu-ray or whatever, at least you'll have access to

01:11:49 ◼   ► it for more or less forever. But on Netflix, it could just go away. So that's one of the

01:11:56 ◼   ► reasons why I do rip some stuff and why I have those Stargate episodes now on my Drobo

01:12:02 ◼   ► is because I realized I had those discs and it was way more convenient. Like Lost, I have

01:12:08 ◼   ► all the Blu-rays of Lost. Lost is on Netflix in HD. It's beautiful. I never need to go

01:12:12 ◼   ► back to those Blu-rays again until it disappears from Netflix, at which point. Or until I want

01:12:16 ◼   ► to take it on a flight because I believe ABC stuff is not downloadable on the Netflix app.

01:12:21 ◼   ► I think you can only stream the ABC stuff. So if I wanted to be on a plane and watch

01:12:25 ◼   ► Lost I would want to go to the Blu-rays and rip copies of that to load on my iPad. So

01:12:30 ◼   ► there are reasons, right? But I do feel like it's messier now and there are a lot of cases

01:12:34 ◼   ► where our old habits, our old instincts of "I've got to save this, I've got to save all

01:12:38 ◼   ► this stuff" are probably not necessary anymore because so much of that stuff is just, you

01:12:46 ◼   ► know a couple of clicks away.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Yep. Talk about times of confusion. Yeah, indeed, indeed. Well, I am, it's funny that

01:12:53 ◼   ► ATP episode also because they kind of talked themselves into the fact John

01:12:57 ◼   ► pointed out that CrashPlan is offering the small business plan and it's a great

01:13:01 ◼   ► deal. It's a discount for existing users and I did buy a year of Backblaze to try

01:13:06 ◼   ► it out again. It's been a while since I used Backblaze, but I also upgraded my

01:13:09 ◼   ► CrashPlan account to the new account because I have that my one big my Mac

01:13:15 ◼   ► server with the big Drobo attached to it is the most important thing that I want

01:13:19 ◼   ► backed up and so backing up a single device even under that small business

01:13:24 ◼   ► plan it is technically it is for my small business right my podcasts and

01:13:28 ◼   ► things I write and all of that the media not so much but the podcast archives are

01:13:32 ◼   ► actually my small business so I did that too so and I the other thing I did when

01:13:38 ◼   ► this is going on is I downloaded Arc, which is the backup app that uses like you bring

01:13:46 ◼   ► your own data with it. And my thought there was, you know, I've got almost a terabyte

01:13:50 ◼   ► on Dropbox that I don't use and almost a terabyte on OneDrive that I don't use. So I'm now doing

01:13:56 ◼   ► a second set of backups.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I thought when I used Arc, it was, this must have been a million years ago, it was just

01:14:01 ◼   ► for Amazon, I feel like.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Oh no, it's got all of them. It's got many, many different services. So it can back up

01:14:08 ◼   ► to Dropbox and then I just have my Macs that are on Dropbox. I just uncheck that folder

01:14:14 ◼   ► and now it's backing up a set of my podcast archive of a little less than a terabyte to

01:14:22 ◼   ► those cloud services because I've got the space and I've been thinking about doing that

01:14:26 ◼   ► for iCloud Drive too, but if you're not doing it already, even if you have a big hard drive,

01:14:31 ◼   ► you might want to go in and do a DAISY disk or similar and then do yourself a favor and

01:14:35 ◼   ► do some selective sync because remember that like if you're sharing folders with

01:14:38 ◼   ► people you will inherit their packrat tendencies as well so if there's like raw

01:14:43 ◼   ► episodes of shows that you don't need to have access to and you can just go and

01:14:46 ◼   ► flip that off without actually deleting it. Yeah exactly right exactly right I'm

01:14:51 ◼   ► gonna remove this Game of Thrones episode from the uncomfortable transfer

01:14:55 ◼   ► folder right as we're talking because that's an example of that. There you go.

01:14:58 ◼   ► It's just gonna sit in there forever and that was last week's episode of Game of

01:15:00 ◼   ► Thrones I wasn't even here to do it so they they used a shared Dropbox folder

01:15:04 ◼   ► to save it now it's just sitting there taking up space on everybody's hard drive.

01:15:07 ◼   ► Well not anymore. Ancient history. I want to talk about my road trip but before

01:15:12 ◼   ► that let's talk about one more sponsor it's Encapsula. These are website

01:15:17 ◼   ► security tools and a content delivery network that makes any website safer,

01:15:21 ◼   ► faster, and more reliable. Not to be all spooky and scary but every day websites

01:15:27 ◼   ► of all sizes are attacked criminals use giant botnets to scrape website contact

01:15:31 ◼   ► They try to break into databases and bring sites down with denial of service attacks.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Encapsula's network holds three terabits per second of on-demand scrubbing capacity.

01:15:41 ◼   ► That's a lot of scrubbing and can process 30 billion attacks per second.

01:15:45 ◼   ► I wonder if they've got the scrubbing bubbles there.

01:15:47 ◼   ► Remember the scrubbing bubbles?

01:15:48 ◼   ► I sure do.

01:15:49 ◼   ► They were adorable.

01:15:50 ◼   ► They were so cute.

01:15:51 ◼   ► This is why Encapsula's network has successfully defended some of the largest website attacks

01:15:55 ◼   ► on record.

01:15:56 ◼   ► If you are attacked, Encapsula's powerful CDN ensures that your content is still delivered

01:16:01 ◼   ► to your customers and delivered fast. You don't want people bailing out on your site

01:16:05 ◼   ► because somebody is attacking you somewhere. With Encapsula, those customers would have

01:16:09 ◼   ► no idea something bad was happening because their CDN is making sure your content is getting

01:16:14 ◼   ► to them. You can see attacks as they happen on the Encapsula dashboard that helps you

01:16:18 ◼   ► adjust your security policies right on the fly. As a listener to upgrade, you can get

01:16:22 ◼   ► one whole month of service from Encapsula for free. All you need to do is go to Encapsula.com/upgrade.

01:16:29 ◼   ► That's I-N-C-A-P-S-U-L-A dot com slash upgrade.

01:16:34 ◼   ► This is where you can find out more about Encapsula's service and also claim that free

01:16:38 ◼   ► month trial.

01:16:39 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Encapsula for keeping so many websites safe and secure and their

01:16:43 ◼   ► support of this show and all of Relay FM.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Tell me about your trip.

01:16:47 ◼   ► This sounds so exciting.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I just wanted to talk about my trip a little bit.

01:16:50 ◼   ► We did more than 2,000 miles in the minivan in 11 days.

01:16:55 ◼   ► It's a lot of driving.

01:16:57 ◼   ► Wow.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Where did you go to? We went to Tahoe and then we went to Salt Lake City and then we went to Park City and then we went to just near Idaho Falls, Idaho for the total solar eclipse.

01:17:14 ◼   ► For people who want to hear me talk in some more detail about the eclipse, there's an episode of Liftoff where Steven and I both went to places in the path of the total eclipse and that was pretty awesome.

01:17:25 ◼   ► awesome, especially awesome was the fact that I realized my family, my family loves me and

01:17:30 ◼   ► goes along with the wild ideas I have, like let's go see the solar eclipse two days drive

01:17:37 ◼   ► away, you know, and make it a road trip because they seemed really impressed with the total

01:17:44 ◼   ► solar eclipse and I realized it was great. Like my kids said it was one of the most amazing

01:17:48 ◼   ► things they've ever seen. They were legitimately like, they're both teenagers now as of last

01:17:54 ◼   ► week when we were on the road trip my son turned 13. So they're both teenagers and they

01:17:58 ◼   ► dropped all kind of teenager skepticism or cynicism or anything and they were both just,

01:18:03 ◼   ► you know, there were tears, there were there was shouts, and there was that is the most

01:18:08 ◼   ► amazing thing I've ever seen, which is great. But the I had to I had to say, part of what

01:18:13 ◼   ► I realized is, I don't know what they were expecting. And it sounds like what they were

01:18:17 ◼   ► expecting is that their father was dragging them along thousands of miles for something

01:18:21 ◼   ► that was just going to be kind of okay. Oh, so you ended up doing good expectation management.

01:18:26 ◼   ► I guess I set a low bar because they leaped right over it. It's another one of Dad's donkey

01:18:32 ◼   ► drills. Yeah, it's another one of these. Well, I think from my daughter's perspective, it's

01:18:36 ◼   ► like, "Oh honey, we're going to go outside and watch the lunar eclipse." And like, "Look,

01:18:41 ◼   ► the moon is red." And she's like, "Yeah, great, it's red." This is a big pattern in parenting.

01:18:45 ◼   ► I'm realizing this is a big pattern in parenting. You don't realize how disappointing you are

01:18:49 ◼   ► to your family until they are genuinely happy about something where the reaction is basically,

01:18:54 ◼   ► "Well, that didn't suck as much as I expected." And you're like, "Hey, I'm trying here."

01:18:58 ◼   ► This wasn't one of your stupid wild goose kit chases. This was actually good.

01:19:03 ◼   ► Yeah, okay. So I may never be able to top the total solar eclipse, but I did nail it,

01:19:08 ◼   ► and they were all very grateful that I said that we needed to do it. But I did have that moment.

01:19:13 ◼   ► I think it goes back to like we had an eclipse here a few years ago that was like 50% or 60%

01:19:18 ◼   ► or something and you know we drag the kids out onto the street and we got pinhole cameras

01:19:22 ◼   ► and we're we're looking and it's like look there's all there's a shape in the sun and

01:19:26 ◼   ► all the all the shadows are weird and they're like oh yeah that's kind of cool can i go

01:19:30 ◼   ► back inside now where it's like it's not that it's dumb but it's just like it's a science

01:19:35 ◼   ► thing and it's okay but it's not like a dramatic anomaly but it's not that weird there's a

01:19:40 ◼   ► pretty good nova uh this past week about the eclipse though i think very rapidly produced

01:19:45 ◼   ► Nova about the this particular eclipse and they talked to this guy who's a big eclipse chaser

01:19:50 ◼   ► And he describes exactly what you're saying which is like it's all the difference in the world even if you see a

01:19:54 ◼   ► And like if you're at the angle where the moon like mostly covers the Sun and there's a little bit of a ring

01:20:01 ◼   ► It's not the same. No, no, it's not the real deal

01:20:04 ◼   ► 99.5% total is

01:20:07 ◼   ► More dramatic than 50% right but not not that much more once you get a hundred percent

01:20:13 ◼   ► it is a completely different event because and this is the this is the moment with my daughter where I don't know when the penny

01:20:20 ◼   ► Dropped but like 15 or 10 minutes before totality

01:20:23 ◼   ► We're talking about you know, it's getting colder and it's getting darker and she says wait

01:20:29 ◼   ► It's gonna be dark like night and I say yeah like yeah the Sun gets covered

01:20:36 ◼   ► There's no sunlight. We are in darkness like nighttime

01:20:40 ◼   ► you'll be able to see stars." And that was the moment where she's like, "Oh." Like, she finally got it.

01:20:45 ◼   ► It was things were getting weirder and weirder and we got to that moment.

01:20:48 ◼   ► She's like, "Oh, I see now." And then things were super exciting after an hour of really boring kind of like, "Dad,

01:20:54 ◼   ► why did you drag us up here? I'm cold. Why are we here? We came a long way.

01:20:58 ◼   ► Slept in a tent. Why are we doing this?" And then everything got magical.

01:21:02 ◼   ► But it just it took her final realization that yeah, Total Eclipse is not like other eclipses because the Sun goes out

01:21:10 ◼   ► Completely you can see the shadow rushing towards you and then you stare at where the Sun used to be and it's not there anymore

01:21:15 ◼   ► That was great. Um, and we took a family, you know, we took a family road trip, too

01:21:20 ◼   ► So we got we stayed in different places with varying degrees of good and bad internet

01:21:24 ◼   ► We blew through our cellular data cap because that was a that was an interesting post you had on that

01:21:30 ◼   ► I wish you'd have me back to talk about this

01:21:31 ◼   ► I know we don't have time today

01:21:32 ◼   ► But I think there's a real art to traveling with your family and how you choose to prepare and set up in different kinds of locations

01:21:39 ◼   ► how to learn from your own mistakes and be less of a dummy because it can really make all the difference.

01:21:44 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's worth talking about at least a little bit. This is, um, for me, you know, my lessons, well, first off, my lesson was, uh,

01:21:52 ◼   ► truck stops in the middle of nowhere in Nevada now have every adapter and cable you can possibly buy for any electronic device because you're not the only one

01:22:00 ◼   ► who is out in the middle of nowhere in the desert in Nevada on the interstate and realizes that you're missing a cable that you need so that your son can continue to play on his Nintendo Switch, like me.

01:22:08 ◼   ► It's not like the 90s where you have to go to the other part of town to get a SCSI 50 adapter.

01:22:13 ◼   ► No, there's a wall of just arcane adapters at the truck stop right next to the, like, the jerky.

01:22:20 ◼   ► Yeah, over by the erectile dysfunction pills. They've got everything you need. It's all there.

01:22:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it was more by the jerky.

01:22:26 ◼   ► Maybe that's our 7-Eleven. But yeah, it's amazing. Our 7-Eleven has lightning cables.

01:22:31 ◼   ► That is a world I never would have predicted.

01:22:33 ◼   ► Yeah, so that was something. The other lesson I learned is when the rental says it has Wi-Fi,

01:22:41 ◼   ► that's not a guarantee that they have internet. Wi-Fi may not go anywhere, because we went

01:22:46 ◼   ► into one place and it's like, "Oh yeah, we got Wi-Fi," and it was like DSL and every

01:22:49 ◼   ► 30 minutes it cut out.

01:22:51 ◼   ► When I read that, I was, "Oh, I fell for you." And there's also so many things. The rental

01:22:55 ◼   ► that we had in New England, it just went out at one point, and I'd had some drinks, my

01:23:02 ◼   ► family gone to bed and I said you know what I'm gonna troubleshoot this and I

01:23:05 ◼   ► went in and I did what I would do I did the whole process it was like conflict

01:23:09 ◼   ► capture for the internet I went in and did the entire like process of

01:23:12 ◼   ► elimination like oh that's interesting so they had the presence of mind to get

01:23:15 ◼   ► this particular thing and they've got a separate Wi-Fi router and all that I

01:23:19 ◼   ► thought it could be any of these things I went through all the passwords that

01:23:22 ◼   ► usually work on those things and they didn't work but like you're right you

01:23:25 ◼   ► like they you can say you know what there's not even a law you're allowed to

01:23:28 ◼   ► say there's Wi-Fi even if it doesn't work very well yeah it's true and you

01:23:31 ◼   ► - That changes the event.

01:23:33 ◼   ► - You're on vacation and my kids have learned

01:23:38 ◼   ► to download videos from Netflix and YouTube Red and stuff

01:23:42 ◼   ► before they go, which is good.

01:23:45 ◼   ► But I wanted to watch "Game of Thrones"

01:23:47 ◼   ► on that first Sunday night and we were at the DSL place

01:23:50 ◼   ► and I ended up, I think I turned on Wi-Fi assist.

01:23:54 ◼   ► So I think basically I downloaded that episode

01:23:56 ◼   ► or I streamed that episode on cellular

01:23:58 ◼   ► and that's what blew out our cellular plan.

01:24:00 ◼   ► but we wanted to watch the show.

01:24:02 ◼   ► And yeah, you're on vacation, you don't need internet.

01:24:05 ◼   ► But at the same time,

01:24:07 ◼   ► sometimes that's what enables you to take the vacation

01:24:09 ◼   ► is that you're gonna be able to stay in touch

01:24:11 ◼   ► at least a little bit.

01:24:12 ◼   ► The irony of it, and I told this to Gruber last week,

01:24:15 ◼   ► is since we were staying in the summer at places

01:24:17 ◼   ► that are ski resorts in the winter for the most part,

01:24:20 ◼   ► Park City and Tahoe, we were both staying in ski resorts,

01:24:24 ◼   ► the cellular connection is great

01:24:25 ◼   ► because skiers are there for the day

01:24:28 ◼   ► or maybe they're there for the weekend.

01:24:30 ◼   ► The Internet connection in the condos

01:24:34 ◼   ► doesn't really matter so much.

01:24:35 ◼   ► It's sort of like when you're on the slopes,

01:24:36 ◼   ► you want to be able to check your email on the --

01:24:38 ◼   ► I don't understand that, but that is a big deal

01:24:41 ◼   ► among cellular carriers, is to, like, cover the ski slopes,

01:24:44 ◼   ► have the data. -Oh, interesting.

01:24:46 ◼   ► -It's something they do. Like, AT&T, I think,

01:24:47 ◼   ► has coverage at every California ski resort at this point

01:24:50 ◼   ► or all but one, something like that.

01:24:52 ◼   ► And I'll tell you, the cellular connectivity

01:24:54 ◼   ► at these places was amazing.

01:24:56 ◼   ► The problem was that we were already in our cap for that.

01:25:00 ◼   ► But we didn't-- even at the volcanic butte in eastern

01:25:04 ◼   ► Idaho, we had LTE with a couple of ours.

01:25:08 ◼   ► So it was never an issue.

01:25:10 ◼   ► So that was an amazing kind of living in the future moment.

01:25:13 ◼   ► And if I had not been speed rated by AT&T,

01:25:17 ◼   ► I would have been even more marveled about it.

01:25:19 ◼   ► But we'd spent our 10 gigs for the month, and we're done.

01:25:23 ◼   ► I think it takes a savvy--

01:25:24 ◼   ► for a family trip, vacation, whatever you want to call it,

01:25:27 ◼   ► especially any kind of a car trip,

01:25:28 ◼   ► it takes a canny combination of managing expectations

01:25:33 ◼   ► and happy self-talk.

01:25:36 ◼   ► So we got to our place, and it was like, this is fine.

01:25:39 ◼   ► This is fine.

01:25:40 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, the TV's a big CRT with nothing really

01:25:45 ◼   ► on it.

01:25:45 ◼   ► And the serious thing didn't really--

01:25:47 ◼   ► I had a VHS TV combo.

01:25:49 ◼   ► Oh, we had DVDs.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Oh, we can finally watch that Sherlock Holmes movie.

01:25:52 ◼   ► We never wanted to see.

01:25:54 ◼   ► But then we did the happy self-talk and we said, "Oh, you know, happy self-talk.

01:25:57 ◼   ► We don't need that.

01:25:58 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Yeah, we don't really need to watch Sherlock just because that's what we want to watch."

01:26:02 ◼   ► But then, a funny thing, we opened a little panel to play a Blu-ray, or a DVD rather,

01:26:08 ◼   ► and they had some kind of, like, because I had done a visual inspection and gone like,

01:26:13 ◼   ► "Eh."

01:26:14 ◼   ► I'd done the heads-up display like, "Buh-duh-buh-duh-buh-duh," like scan, scan, crappy TV, crappy little

01:26:19 ◼   ► crummy Sony DVD player.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Guess what?

01:26:23 ◼   ► It occurred to me to change not the input but on the menu to go and see just to like

01:26:29 ◼   ► look around.

01:26:30 ◼   ► And it turned out that their DVD player was an internet connected device and they were

01:26:35 ◼   ► logged into Netflix and Amazon Prime and you can get YouTube and it was all suddenly we

01:26:41 ◼   ► didn't have to do happy self-talk anymore.

01:26:43 ◼   ► It was like, "Oh, oh my God, we can totally watch Sherlock now."

01:26:47 ◼   ► Well, that's how lame we were, but it made the vacation more fun.

01:26:50 ◼   ► Okay, before we go, I have one last travel story I want to tell.

01:26:53 ◼   ► - No, please, lay it on.

01:26:54 ◼   ► - So we're in Park City.

01:26:57 ◼   ► So we stayed a couple nights by the University of Utah

01:27:00 ◼   ► in Salt Lake City, it was very nice.

01:27:01 ◼   ► We're going to Park City because Lauren's parents

01:27:05 ◼   ► are on a trip to Yellowstone,

01:27:07 ◼   ► and that was separately scheduled,

01:27:10 ◼   ► but it turned out that we were basically gonna be able

01:27:12 ◼   ► to intersect for a couple of days,

01:27:13 ◼   ► and it was during my son's birthday, which was great.

01:27:16 ◼   ► So we're gonna stay, we got a place together

01:27:19 ◼   ► in Park City for a couple of days.

01:27:22 ◼   ► I don't think we would have stayed five days in the Salt Lake City, Park City area otherwise,

01:27:26 ◼   ► but it was good timing with them, so we did it.

01:27:30 ◼   ► And Lauren's mom made the reservation, but it doesn't matter.

01:27:32 ◼   ► I think it was VRBO or something like that.

01:27:34 ◼   ► It's one of these places that this is what you do now is, unless you want to stay in

01:27:37 ◼   ► a hotel, you go to one of these places where there are condos and ski condos and things

01:27:42 ◼   ► like that.

01:27:44 ◼   ► And she got a place and it looked great.

01:27:47 ◼   ► And we all shared the information about how to get there and the code and all that.

01:27:52 ◼   ► So we pull up and they're about 30 minutes behind us because they're coming from a totally

01:27:55 ◼   ► different direction.

01:27:58 ◼   ► And I've got the code and I open the code because they say, "Well, you can park in the

01:28:01 ◼   ► driveway, but the driveway is kind of small, so you want to put in the code and park one

01:28:05 ◼   ► car in the garage."

01:28:06 ◼   ► So I put in the code, garage door opens, there's a car in it.

01:28:08 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:28:09 ◼   ► And I think, "Huh, car with Tennessee license plate."

01:28:13 ◼   ► Like, oh no.

01:28:15 ◼   ► Interesting.

01:28:16 ◼   ► So I look at Lauren and we're like, "There's a car in that. That's not great." Well, let's

01:28:22 ◼   ► see what happens. So we go in the door and it's big steps up because this is an area

01:28:27 ◼   ► that gets a lot of snow. So all of them are sort of like living floors above the main

01:28:32 ◼   ► level, I think, in case you need to dive out a window if there's a lot of snow. I don't

01:28:37 ◼   ► know. I don't understand snow.

01:28:38 ◼   ► Do a shining. Do a shining. Go out that high window.

01:28:41 ◼   ► Yeah, you got to have the second floor available because the first floor might just get totally

01:28:45 ◼   ► snowed in and then you got to dive out the second floor window. Anyway, so walk in at

01:28:51 ◼   ► the base and Julian actually starts walking up the steps and the door at the top of the

01:28:56 ◼   ► steps is open and we say, "Hello?" And a very nice Southern lady from Tennessee

01:29:05 ◼   ► --

01:29:06 ◼   ► Well, there were already Tennesseans in there.

01:29:07 ◼   ► -- appeared at the top of the stairs.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:29:11 ◼   ► They're the owners. They had apparently at least thought that they had blocked out the

01:29:18 ◼   ► month of August from their rental company. Meanwhile, apparently the rental company didn't

01:29:24 ◼   ► know, had a mistake. We don't really know because we got all their stuff. And, you know,

01:29:30 ◼   ► it was just one of those moments of like, this is the problem with the, I don't even

01:29:36 ◼   ► know what you call it now, the...

01:29:37 ◼   ► That's the problem with a lot of things, Jason. It's the problem with codes. It's the modern

01:29:41 ◼   ► house-sharing economy. Yeah. Is all of a sudden we're a thousand miles from home and it's

01:29:49 ◼   ► late afternoon because we've actually been doing things to keep ourselves entertained

01:29:55 ◼   ► in Salt Lake City in order to get to, after checking out of the hotel, in order to get

01:29:59 ◼   ► to the point where we can drive to Park City and check in. And all of a sudden there's

01:30:04 ◼   ► a lady and her little dog from Memphis, so maybe she knows Stephen Hackett, although

01:30:09 ◼   ► I mentioned Stephen Hackett and she claimed not to know him. I mean, how many people are

01:30:12 ◼   ► going to be in Memphis, Tennessee, really? Exactly. And, yeah, she was the owner and

01:30:18 ◼   ► her husband was asleep upstairs. Oh boy. So she couldn't have been nicer. She got us drinks.

01:30:23 ◼   ► She got us cookies. We sat in the back. They had a croquet set out on the lawn in the back.

01:30:28 ◼   ► It was a very nice lawn. It was a very nice deck. They had a hot tub. It was very nice.

01:30:32 ◼   ► In other words, the place we were supposed to stay, well selected, beautiful place.

01:30:37 ◼   ► What was the resolution?

01:30:38 ◼   ► Did they leave or you left?

01:30:39 ◼   ► Calls were made to all of the people involved.

01:30:43 ◼   ► And the resolution was about an hour later after playing a game of croquet and playing

01:30:47 ◼   ► with her little dog and eating some cookies, an hour later, they had booked us at a condo

01:30:56 ◼   ► that was not right by downtown park city, but was kind of out of town about a mile and

01:31:00 ◼   ► a half. And I mentioned this because you mentioned before about like the Happy Talk.

01:31:06 ◼   ► Yeah. So we get... This is fine. So we get to the Happy Talk place and that was it. It was like,

01:31:12 ◼   ► "Oh, this is as generic a ski condo as there could be. It's made for skiers. It's not particularly..."

01:31:22 ◼   ► Which is code for you're not going to spend that much time carrying what the room is like.

01:31:26 ◼   ► Well, yeah, it was fine, but it was like it has no nice touches. It's really so you can pack in

01:31:30 ◼   ► and a bunch of skiers who were going on a ski vacation. And it was fine, right? Like,

01:31:34 ◼   ► I think if we had gotten there first, maybe it wouldn't have been that bad, but it was

01:31:37 ◼   ► like, the lady's place was so nice and she gave us cookies. And so there was a lot of

01:31:42 ◼   ► happy talk at that place. But you know, at the same time, it was also not sleeping in

01:31:46 ◼   ► the van. So we'll take it. But it just, it was a, it was a funny moment, magnified by

01:31:52 ◼   ► the fact that about two hours after we got there, a guy walked in the front door and

01:31:57 ◼   ► said, "Hello?" Oh, no way! Twist! Turns out! And I thought, "Oh no. Oh no." And he said,

01:32:05 ◼   ► "Oh no, Bob the owner said that I could come by because I'm looking for a long-term rental.

01:32:09 ◼   ► I didn't know there would be anybody here." And we said, "Well, until about two hours

01:32:12 ◼   ► ago neither did we." And we all had a good chuckle and he looked around and made some

01:32:17 ◼   ► small talk and left and then nobody interrupted us the rest of the time. And the moral of

01:32:22 ◼   ► story is the alfalfa field we stayed at in Idaho, nobody was in that spot. We got to

01:32:27 ◼   ► pitch our tent there and nobody tried to make us move.

01:32:30 ◼   ► Magnifique. Wow, I'm glad you made it back. That sounds like a hell of a trip.

01:32:33 ◼   ► It was a great trip. It was a great trip. But that was a funny moment. Nice, very nice

01:32:38 ◼   ► lady. Can't recommend the nice lady from Tennessee who gave us drinks and ginger cookies. She

01:32:44 ◼   ► was great. I would love to stay at her house sometime, but I prefer that she...

01:32:48 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe she's not there. Her husband's not sleeping there. That'd be a nice place

01:32:51 ◼   ► to stay. We were there for an hour, by the way. Husband sleep the whole time.

01:32:54 ◼   ► Because he's a happy sleeper. That sounds like some kind of a jam up. He might be dead.

01:32:59 ◼   ► He might. Geez, I hope not. She seemed very nice, though. They all seem nice, Jason. Well,

01:33:04 ◼   ► Merlin, thank you so much for being on Upgrade this week. Well, thanks for having me, buddy.

01:33:08 ◼   ► It's a pleasure. I enjoy your show very much. I really appreciate that. We will be back,

01:33:12 ◼   ► by the way, Myke, who's on assignment on vacation right now, will be back

01:33:17 ◼   ► next week we're gonna do that episode I believe a little late I think it'll be

01:33:21 ◼   ► we'll drop it on Wednesday next week and if the rumors are true I think that's

01:33:27 ◼   ► the draft I think that's gonna be the upgrade keynote draft if the rumors are

01:33:31 ◼   ► indeed true and we get a an announcement of an event on the 12th then that's

01:33:35 ◼   ► gonna be the upgrade keynote draft so I look forward to that that is good that

01:33:39 ◼   ► could be that could be big stuff big stuff very exciting so as always I want

01:33:45 ◼   ► to thank our sponsors of course, Encapsula, Eero and Smile, makers of

01:33:50 ◼   ► Texas Expander, and you can always get our show notes relay.fm/upgrade/156

01:33:59 ◼   ► for this episode. You also, there's a link on there. I am @jstel on

01:34:04 ◼   ► Twitter. Merlin is @hot_dogs_ladies on Twitter by the way if you'd like to

01:34:08 ◼   ► reach Merlin. And we'll be back next week or at least Myke and I will be back next

01:34:13 ◼   ► week and Merlin thank you again so much for being here thank you welcome home

01:34:16 ◼   ► thank you we'll see you next week everybody bye bye

01:34:21 ◼   ► ♪ I love you, I love you ♪

01:34:25 ◼   ► [Music]

01:34:28 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]