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130: Ron Has a Pretty Sweet Job

 

00:00:00   [BEEP]

00:00:00   [♫ "The

00:00:29   - Mm-hmm. We are gonna be together in a few weeks time.

00:00:33   - We are. I was asked to return to your part of the world. And so we're gonna get together. Yeah,

00:00:45   I'm gonna be... So last fall, we saw each other and we did a special upgrade episode from Ireland

00:00:50   where I was doing... You attended UEL and I was attending UEL, but I was also a special guest of

00:00:58   the event. And what I was doing is interviewing participants in the event for something called

00:01:04   "Ool Radio," which is a podcast that I did. And it was just 20-minute interviews with

00:01:07   interesting people talking about what they, sort of the same subjects that they were talking

00:01:12   about at Ool. And we also did a clockwise from there. Anyway, they asked me to come

00:01:16   back and do more "Ool Radio" this time. And I said yes because I can't resist going back

00:01:22   to Ireland. I think this will be the fifth straight calendar year I've gone to Ireland,

00:01:26   is crazy because I'd never been before. And the fourth Oul. So we're gonna both be an

00:01:34   Oul, that's the starter, we will be back in Ireland together. And people should, I guess

00:01:41   we should plug Oul, 2017.ool.u-l-l.i-e. They have not asked us to in any way, but the fact

00:01:49   that this will be, what, the third time that we've recorded upgrade from Oul? I think that

00:01:55   we would both very much endorse this conference. It is my favorite conference that I go to.

00:02:00   All is very special and it's a special place and the lineup this year is maybe the best lineup

00:02:09   that I've seen at All before. So I'm super excited about it. I have a warm feeling in my heart to

00:02:18   look at the lineup and see how many Relay FM hosts there are. That makes me smile.

00:02:24   now. Yeah, OOL is amazing. If you're inclined, if you're thinking about doing it, I would

00:02:33   say yeah, you really should. Like, if you're thinking about it, I recommend that you actually

00:02:38   just go out and do it. So we'll put some links in the show notes. You should attend if you're

00:02:43   interested.

00:02:44   And you can see us, and we'll be there. And depending on timing, we've tended to record

00:02:49   upgrade from a hotel room, but you never know.

00:02:53   The old radio room was actually pretty great

00:02:55   and we had an audience for Clockwise

00:02:57   and I'm not sure what days I'm having access to the rooms.

00:03:00   We might be able to record upgrade just in the room

00:03:04   that's the podcast room.

00:03:06   So-- - Upgrade in front

00:03:07   of a live audience.

00:03:08   - Could be, it's possible.

00:03:10   That would be exciting, but if not,

00:03:11   we'll definitely be around and talking to people

00:03:14   and yeah, so check it out and we'll be there.

00:03:18   But, talking about being around, I'm going to flash everybody back to 2015.

00:03:24   If you remember back to then, I was going to Uhl, and it was this time of year, I think.

00:03:30   It was more of the spring, and they moved it to fall last year for a few reasons, but it's back in the spring.

00:03:37   2015, I made a point of stopping by the UK, which I couldn't do in 2016.

00:03:45   Since I'm going all that way, I wanted to visit my pals in the UK as well.

00:03:49   So that's happening again.

00:03:51   And we did a meetup in 2015 when I was there with me and Myke

00:03:56   at a place called the Big Chill House in Kings Cross.

00:03:59   And guess what? We are doing it again.

00:04:03   We're doing it again.

00:04:04   And we've done a couple of meetups there now, like we did one with Federico last year.

00:04:10   And a few other Relay FM hosts as well did a connected meetup.

00:04:13   I really like the Big Chill, they're very accommodating.

00:04:17   This time we're going for a slightly smaller room than before.

00:04:22   There are 50 tickets available.

00:04:24   We have to do tickets because we have a room booked with a maximum capacity.

00:04:28   So there are tickets.

00:04:29   They're free.

00:04:30   They're first come first served.

00:04:32   It's going to be on April the 5th, Wednesday April the 5th from 7.30 to 11pm as Jason mentioned

00:04:38   at the Big Chill house.

00:04:39   is a link in the show notes where you can get your Upgrade London Meetup tickets. We

00:04:45   are only mentioning this on the show for now because we want to make sure that Upgradians

00:04:49   get the first attempt at coming to this thing. Because ideally we would love it if it was

00:04:54   just upgrade listeners that came because you're all the best people and we want you to be

00:04:59   there. So Wednesday April 5th there's a link in the show notes to get your Upgrade London

00:05:04   Meetup tickets. So you want to find that, click the link, sign up and you'll be able

00:05:09   to come and hang out with me and Mr. Jason Snell for a couple of hours. It was so much

00:05:15   fun last time. I'm very excited to do it again.

00:05:18   It was. It was amazing. Somebody gave me cheese. Somebody gave me some manchego, which I left

00:05:23   behind. I just totally forgot about it. Well, I was carrying cheese around for hours and

00:05:29   then I left it somewhere and I don't even know where it is. Can I be honest, Myke? People

00:05:33   kept bringing us drinks.

00:05:34   It was crazy.

00:05:35   That may be the most alcohol I have ever had in one session.

00:05:39   [Laughter]

00:05:39   I remember thinking on the tube back to where I was staying, thinking,

00:05:44   "Well, drunk people on the tube is pretty much common in London, so I'm not worried about it."

00:05:49   I felt like I was fitting in, but boy, that was—people kept bringing us drinks. It was amazing,

00:05:55   and a great time, and I met a lot of great people. So hopefully people will come

00:05:58   and find us at the Big Chill. So sign up for the tickets.

00:06:01   Last time it was way less prepared and we didn't really do any preparation at all, and

00:06:06   this time I've decided we should.

00:06:08   I think that's good.

00:06:09   Literally they were shooing us out of the main area.

00:06:11   So many people came for the meetup that they were like, "We need to, you know, we have

00:06:16   an empty room upstairs, why don't we just shoo these people upstairs and that way it'll

00:06:20   be less intimidating in here for all of our other patrons."

00:06:23   And that was great, but you know, this time we wanted to plan ahead a little bit so we

00:06:27   have a room for us, which is nice, and they want us to, you know, we have to buy drinks

00:06:31   and things obviously because there's a so everybody buy drinks or buy us drinks. Well

00:06:37   maybe buy yourself drinks first.

00:06:38   Myke I don't endorse the everybody buy it. Maybe

00:06:41   like a small handful of people.

00:06:43   Chris No, that was so dangerous. It is a city I'm

00:06:47   not used to that I had to find my way back home to a place I don't normally live. It

00:06:50   was tough.

00:06:51   Myke I'll make sure you get home this time. Don't

00:06:52   worry.

00:06:53   Chris Thank you. Thank you, Myke. Thank you. I appreciate

00:06:55   it.

00:06:56   Myke I will say it starts at 730pm up until 11.

00:06:59   can come and leave whenever you want. You don't have to be there for the whole time.

00:07:01   We won't keep you present. Don't worry. But you can come and we're going to have a great

00:07:05   time. So I hope to see you there. I would like to address something. Uh, I'm sure you

00:07:11   received equal amounts of tweets and emails about this as I did because it has long been

00:07:19   known that both me and you enjoy pineapple on our pizza with pepperoni pineapple being

00:07:26   the preferred choice of both of us after you introduced it to me. It is the most important

00:07:30   things, yes. Some would say the official food of the Upgrade podcast is pepperoni pineapple

00:07:35   pizza. Well I did find out on Analog episode 100, which I got to participate in, that pizza

00:07:42   is your favorite food. It is. And this pizza is my favorite pizza, so really you are responsible

00:07:50   for my favorite food. Well you're welcome. Anytime. And basically we received a lot of

00:07:58   follow up and feedback about the fact that the president of Iceland, the country, said

00:08:03   that he would ban pineapple as a pizza topping if he could. So lots of people were telling

00:08:09   us even one of two things. This is an outrage or this proves that your pizza choice is bonkers.

00:08:19   which I would like to just say for the fact I don't care what you say, I love pineapple

00:08:25   on my pizza and it's amazing. So if you don't like it, that's fine, but we do very much.

00:08:32   What I really appreciated about the president of Iceland is that, although he explained

00:08:35   – also I have to laugh because one, um, one Upgradient wrote in to explain that it

00:08:40   was the president of Iceland, the country, not the frozen foods store.

00:08:45   That was why I said the country, because in the UK there is a frozen food store called

00:08:49   Iceland, and I just feel like it's worth just putting that into perspective, you know?

00:08:54   Yeah, it makes me laugh. Anyway, he said in a later follow-up after this caused a ridiculous

00:09:02   controversy. An international outrage, I would say.

00:09:05   Well that's true, because we're going to get to the Canadians. There was definitely some

00:09:09   across the North Atlantic there was some tension building, but he said he went on to make a

00:09:14   a point that although he doesn't personally prefer pineapple pizza and recommend seafood

00:09:19   pizza instead, that he, just because he's the president, he doesn't think presidents

00:09:23   should make a law that people should only do things that he likes. That's not, he's,

00:09:28   you know, people should be able to do what they like. He just says as a person, he doesn't

00:09:31   like that kind of pizza. He prefers the seafood pizza. And I thought that was a very nice

00:09:35   follow up for somebody who probably has better things to do with their time than talk several

00:09:41   times about pizza toppings so full good job president of Iceland. I will say I cannot

00:09:48   abide by somebody saying pineapple is not a good topping and instead saying seafood

00:09:53   is. Yeah. Seafood on a pizza? I cannot envision a fish pizza but I don't like fish I don't

00:10:00   like seafood in general then again he's in Iceland they're right there in the middle

00:10:04   of the ocean they probably really like their seafood there so that's fine whatever. And

00:10:09   It turns out, turns out, turns out the Hawaiian pizza, the pineapple, the pineapple and ham,

00:10:17   which is the traditional right, was actually invented in Canada.

00:10:21   Yes.

00:10:22   And Justin Trudeau, who is the Prime Minister of Canada, and is, I would say, a meme machine,

00:10:31   I think is pretty fair.

00:10:33   He came out and said on record that he stands by this delicious Southwestern Ontario creation

00:10:41   and that he is in fact Team Pineapple. So I'm wondering if maybe we should just move

00:10:46   to Canada, both of us, and we base upgrade from there now.

00:10:51   Well Canada's pretty great and it has something for both of us in that it is a unique mixture

00:10:59   of English and North American, United States culture.

00:11:04   It is sort of the place,

00:11:06   other than maybe like Bermuda or something,

00:11:08   it's one of the few places that is this combination

00:11:12   of my culture and your culture swirled together

00:11:16   with the unique Canadian culture,

00:11:18   but it has similarities with both of our homelands.

00:11:22   - It doesn't get any better than the money, right?

00:11:24   It's called dollars, but it has the queen on it.

00:11:28   - That's true.

00:11:29   And they have the looney and the tooney, which are coins.

00:11:33   And they have no pennies.

00:11:35   They have no pennies either.

00:11:36   There's lots of things to be said for Canada.

00:11:39   Here's the thing, Myke.

00:11:40   I am a Californian and I struggle with the idea

00:11:44   'cause pretty much all of Canada is pretty far

00:11:48   to the north from me.

00:11:50   And the weather is not so good.

00:11:54   If I must move to Canada,

00:11:55   I would probably choose Vancouver or Victoria, something on the west coast as a west coast

00:12:00   guy.

00:12:01   Alright, we'll move there.

00:12:02   But Canada's great.

00:12:03   So yes, upgrade world headquarters of the future in British Columbia.

00:12:08   Perfect.

00:12:09   And we will be, and the upgrade world headquarters will, the commissary will only serve pepperoni

00:12:15   and pineapple pizza.

00:12:16   God that'd be incredible.

00:12:17   I could eat it every day.

00:12:19   I could eat it every day.

00:12:21   Until you die of pizza.

00:12:23   What a way to go. He died as he lived. He died doing what he loved.

00:12:30   Eating pizza. Eating pizza, yep.

00:12:33   So thank you Canada. Yeah, thanks. Canada's great. We love Canada.

00:12:38   This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Life as a freelancer can be a challenging

00:12:44   thing. Jason Snell is well aware of this. He hosts a podcast dedicated to it called

00:12:49   free agents, which you should go and listen to. And you actually just did an episode all

00:12:54   about invoicing and getting people to pay you. And in my opinion, there is no better

00:12:59   way than FreshBooks. FreshBooks has been designed from the ground up to work exactly the way

00:13:06   that people do these days with it being all based online. It is built to make you more

00:13:12   productive and organized whilst also letting you get paid quickly. The working world is

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00:13:21   self-employed. There are opportunities now that simply could not have existed before and Freshbooks

00:13:26   works tirelessly to make sure that their system is built to work the way that you do.

00:13:31   Freshbooks is super easy to use. You can get professional looking invoices created and sent out

00:13:36   in less than 30 seconds. You can integrate a myriad of online payment options with just a few clicks

00:13:41   and this is why Freshbooks customers get paid up to four days faster. I really love that you can go

00:13:46   into an invoice and see if it's been viewed by your client, if it's been printed by your

00:13:50   client. That stuff is really interesting and really informative so you don't have to play

00:13:55   guessing games or send out chaser emails. You can also actually have FreshBooks send

00:13:59   out automatic reminder emails for you if you want.

00:14:03   FreshBooks has a great notification system. When you log in, you'll be able to see exactly

00:14:07   what's changed with your business and what needs your attention. All of these features

00:14:11   are coupled with a beautiful design which focuses on simplicity and clarity, answering

00:14:16   the age old question of how is my business doing?

00:14:19   FreshBooks is offering a 30 day unrestricted free trial to listeners of this show. Go to

00:14:23   freshbooks.com/upgrade and enter upgrade in the how you heard about us section so they'll

00:14:28   know that you came to them from this show. I will just underscore how much I love FreshBooks.

00:14:33   We are fast approaching our 1000th invoice with FreshBooks at Relay FM. It really makes

00:14:39   our work a lot easier to manage. Thank you so much to FreshBooks for their support of

00:14:43   of this show and relay FM.

00:14:45   All right, so Jason, you went to spend a little bit

00:14:49   of time today talking about Uber.

00:14:52   - Yeah, you know, I don't wanna go like super deep down

00:14:55   in it because it's been out there,

00:14:58   the story's been out there for a while.

00:15:00   And I'd like to say, as we often do on the show,

00:15:02   that the folks over at Accidental Tech Podcast

00:15:06   covered it very well in episode 210.

00:15:09   It was covered in Rocket in episode 111.

00:15:12   There's some really good podcasts out there about it.

00:15:15   The story is a woman named Susan Fowler spent a year at Uber

00:15:20   and then left to go work at Stripe.

00:15:23   Where did she end up going?

00:15:24   Stripe. - She's in Stripe, yeah.

00:15:26   - And once she left Uber, she talked about her reasons

00:15:31   for leaving Uber and how super awful aspects of the job were.

00:15:36   I think it's interesting and important to note

00:15:41   that as John noted on ATP, that there are lots of reasons

00:15:45   you might not just immediately quit

00:15:48   when something bad happened to you at your job,

00:15:50   including liking your coworkers

00:15:52   and being really excited about the work you're doing.

00:15:56   And it's messy and it's complicated.

00:16:00   Although I think what says it all is the chapter

00:16:03   about Uber in ATP last week,

00:16:07   'cause Marco puts in the chapters now,

00:16:09   was Uber is horrible, which is, it's about it.

00:16:12   She was treated badly, she was harassed by managers

00:16:17   and there was retaliation against her

00:16:20   for reporting managers to HR.

00:16:22   And she was refused transfers

00:16:25   because of bad working conditions.

00:16:29   And just, it's a horror story, it's worth reading.

00:16:33   I think what's really amazing about it also

00:16:36   is that since it came out,

00:16:39   women who work in the tech industry have said,

00:16:42   "This is not unusual."

00:16:45   It might be on an extreme end,

00:16:47   but it's not like a one, you know, it's not a,

00:16:50   "Oh, one time this happened."

00:16:53   That's not what the case is.

00:16:55   But I wanted to talk about it.

00:16:58   I don't wanna retread a lot of what's been already covered

00:17:01   and covered probably better than I can

00:17:03   in places like Rocket and ATP.

00:17:05   But I wanted to talk about the HR angle here.

00:17:07   I wrote about this briefly on Six Colors too,

00:17:09   because human resources, you know,

00:17:12   I spent, you know, a long time managing people

00:17:16   in a large organization.

00:17:17   And over time that was a large group of people.

00:17:20   And I was on a management team where we had,

00:17:21   we talked to the HR people and we talked to the other,

00:17:23   the heads of other groups about what was going on

00:17:26   to a certain degree.

00:17:27   There's a certain degree that I'm sure happened

00:17:28   that was completely confidential

00:17:29   that I didn't get involved in 'cause it wasn't my group.

00:17:32   But I, you know, I got to see a lot over the years about it.

00:17:35   And that's the thing that struck me about Susan Fowler's story,

00:17:40   is about human resources.

00:17:41   Like, human resources-- also, my uncle

00:17:45   was the vice president of human resources for a large--

00:17:51   like a Fortune 500 company for Owens, Illinois,

00:17:54   Brockway, which is a glass and plastic manufacturer.

00:17:59   And he did union negotiations and all of that.

00:18:02   So I thought about HR stuff.

00:18:04   my wife worked in HR briefly. I mean, it's-- I've thought about this for a long time and

00:18:07   worked with HR people for a long time. And, you know, HR-- John mentioned some of this

00:18:12   on ATP. HR used to be the personnel department, first off. They used to just call it personnel.

00:18:16   And that's something that you might be able to kind of see that what HR is, is it's, you

00:18:23   know, it's an entity that works for the company, right? These people work for the company,

00:18:28   and their primary job really is to make sure that the company doesn't fall into legal trouble.

00:18:32   So their job is like to make sure that if you've got unions that you have to negotiate

00:18:37   the union contracts, but it's also things like here are the company rules and processes

00:18:41   and if you follow them and don't follow them and here are the benefits and we're going

00:18:43   to administer them. And when I say that the HR department works for the company, I mean

00:18:49   what I really wanted to say is a lot of people who are just workers and have an HR person

00:18:55   that they fill out forms with or talk to about issues they've got with their benefits and

00:18:58   and all that. You can, and HR people are, you know, almost all the HR people I've met

00:19:04   have been great people who legitimately care about the people who work for their company.

00:19:09   But when a company's culture is completely aligned with the idea that the employees are

00:19:16   important and that they want to be taken care of and they need to be protected if people

00:19:21   are breaking the rules or doing things that are bad, when the culture is aligned there

00:19:25   with those kinds of values, then HR really is a pretty healthy place that is about protecting

00:19:33   the interests of the employees and the company. And the best HR environments I've been in

00:19:40   have been like that. What gets bad is when there's a kind of broken corporate culture

00:19:47   suddenly some of the priorities are not really conducive to taking care of

00:19:55   your employees and it's much more about, you know, in the case of Uber, protecting

00:20:00   sort of unfireable people who are bad actors and shielding them from any

00:20:06   fallout from their bad behavior at the expense of other employees and what you

00:20:09   saw in Susan Fowler's story is literally HR people gaslighting an employee and

00:20:15   saying, "No, this has never happened before. This is a first time," when it turns out other

00:20:18   people had also reported this person for the same, you know, making passes at women who

00:20:25   reported to him. It was not a first time. And so, I mean, that's the truth of HR is

00:20:32   that if your corporate culture is broken or skewed in some way, HR is no longer necessarily

00:20:38   a refuge. And I know that there are HR people who get frustrated about that. I will say

00:20:42   the worst HR people I've ever worked with were people from a kind of broken culture

00:20:47   who I came to not trust. And in fact, I had managers in that group tell me not to trust

00:20:53   the HR people because they were almost like the enemy. And that was a sign of a culture

00:20:58   that was not, was messed up. So anyway, my big point here is I love HR people. When they're

00:21:07   in a healthy environment, they are great to work with as a manager and as an employee.

00:21:11   are very helpful people, they want to be helpful. I've worked with some wonderful

00:21:14   HR people over the years. But in a broken culture, things get really bad. And when

00:21:20   Travis Kalanick says, or Kalanick, yeah, Travis Kalanick says, "Oh no no no no,

00:21:25   this is against our culture. We're gonna get to the bottom of this." My takeaway is,

00:21:30   no, it is your culture, dude. It is your culture. Because for your HR department

00:21:35   to act this way, they must feel like the company's priorities are completely

00:21:40   broken and that comes from the company culture because otherwise they wouldn't

00:21:45   behave this way. I mean you worked in a big bank, you know, what's your

00:21:48   take on all of this? I was also a manager. You know, I had to deal with HR for many

00:21:54   different reasons, you know, when I had difficult employees or employees with

00:21:58   difficulties, you know, I had to work of HR, they had to work of HR. I had to work

00:22:02   of HR when I was going through some problems. I mean, really, I think in a

00:22:07   responsible company, a big company, the HR department should feel like an

00:22:11   independent organization. Like, they should feel like that they're an outside part

00:22:16   of the company because nobody should be able to put their hands in and mess

00:22:20   around in there. Right, and in an independent, yeah, they should feel

00:22:23   independent. Ultimately they do, they are trying to make sure that the

00:22:28   company is shielded from problems, but if you think about it, like in a healthy

00:22:32   culture, protecting the employees is part of the culture and therefore protecting the employees

00:22:40   by making sure people follow the rules also protects the company, right? That is,

00:22:45   and I've had that. I mean, I've had HR people who have defended employees about like, you know,

00:22:50   we shouldn't lay this person off, you know, like really serious and push back to push on the best

00:22:58   interests of the employees and say, you know, to management, you need to rethink the way

00:23:04   you're approaching this. And that's that in a healthy environment, that is absolutely

00:23:08   what it should feel like. But it's not like the independence is created into the group,

00:23:14   right? The group doesn't isn't fundamentally independent. It feels fair because the culture

00:23:19   has said we want to treat everybody fairly.

00:23:21   Like a good HR department should not feel like it's defending any individual except

00:23:28   for the rules, right?

00:23:31   Sometimes they'll work against people, sometimes they'll work for people, right?

00:23:34   Like employees, or sometimes they work for the managers, sometimes they work against.

00:23:38   It should always just be that their guiding principle is the rules, right?

00:23:42   That they're not necessarily going to go one way or another.

00:23:45   So if a company is doing stuff like this, the rules are either not clear enough or they're

00:23:51   not enforced or there are incentives to work against the rules for whatever reason.

00:23:58   It seems like from what has been said about Uber at this point that this isn't just one

00:24:04   bad person inside of the HR department, right?

00:24:08   Because there have been multiple stories of this type of stuff.

00:24:12   I mean, let alone all of the other things that Uber has done, right?

00:24:15   Right, like threaten journalists with spying and yeah, the list is long.

00:24:23   At this point, no matter what they think are the principles of the company, the employees

00:24:31   of the company are not following the principles that have in theory been set out.

00:24:37   What they're following is the leader.

00:24:41   And it seems like that that's not going very well.

00:24:44   I hear so many people say that everyone that works at Uber is terrible, and I don't agree

00:24:48   with that, because they're obviously not.

00:24:50   You know, like—

00:24:51   No, Susan Fowler would deny that, right?

00:24:53   Exactly.

00:24:54   Because she said she loved a lot of her co-workers and the projects that they were working on

00:24:57   were fascinating and interesting, right?

00:24:59   She's not saying it's awful, you know, 100%.

00:25:03   saying that this aspect of it was untenable and it's cultural and it's huge.

00:25:08   Yeah, but what is very clear is that there are people that are being treated terribly.

00:25:15   Either they're being sexually harassed or they're being bullied or there's a myriad

00:25:19   of problems that have to be fixed if this company is going to continue.

00:25:23   The sexual harassment is incredibly offensive and has understandably gotten a lot of the

00:25:28   attention here, but the thing as a manager of many years, the thing that struck out at

00:25:34   me the most was the retaliation. Like, at one point in her story, literally, the HR

00:25:39   person says, "Well, you're going to get a bad review because you reported this guy,

00:25:42   and that's just going to happen, and we're going to deal with it." And that is incredibly,

00:25:49   I mean, that's illegal. And that goes back to something that I've heard a few people

00:25:54   which is if the HR department's job is to protect the company from being sued, this

00:25:59   group did a really bad job because that's like a fundamental, like responding to reports

00:26:03   of sexual harassment with retaliation is literally the "how big would you like the check to be"

00:26:07   moment in terms of the law. That's amazing that they can show and they admitted that

00:26:12   they were going, there was going to be retaliation against her for reporting this incident. It's

00:26:17   amazing. But that's how broken this culture was, is that even something like that of protecting

00:26:22   the company wasn't as high up on the list as protecting these people who were bad actors

00:26:29   and allowing them to continue doing it. That is a completely broken culture.

00:26:32   I just really struggled to get my head around how there is clearly such a focus on women

00:26:37   in technology right now, right? It is a thing that is being spoken about. There are so many

00:26:43   pushes to try and make these environments better. I cannot understand how a company

00:26:47   as big as Uber can let something like this happen. Like, I just cannot understand how

00:26:52   you can still, at this point, have a culture that has not ironed this stuff out. Like,

00:27:00   this shouldn't be happening. There should be no push on the HR department to act this

00:27:06   way. They should be pushed the other way. They should be pushed to overact in the other

00:27:11   way.

00:27:12   healthy corporate culture, the HR people say, "Oh my god, did you see what just happened?

00:27:19   That guy needs to go."

00:27:20   - Because we cannot face that type of public relations, right? Like, they must know.

00:27:27   - Well yeah, but also just from an HR perspective, it's like, you have to have the healthy PR

00:27:31   aside. I mean, the management should be supportive of it for a lot of reasons, right? To defend

00:27:35   their employees and protect their employees and have a positive work environment, and

00:27:38   not have this be an issue where it's a huge PR problem if it comes out.

00:27:42   Yeah, of course I don't mean this like, "this shouldn't happen just for PR." Like, what

00:27:46   I mean is like, it should never happen, but especially right now, right? Like, these things

00:27:50   should not be done, they should be dealt with appropriately, but in the culture that we're

00:27:55   in right now, like the climate that we're in right now, like, you have to overact these

00:28:01   things to try and stomp them out, right? Yeah, and the, again, I have a hard time imagining

00:28:07   how this situation happened because the HR people I worked with would not take any crap.

00:28:14   Like the years that I worked at Mac publishing, Macworld, and in my early days at PC World,

00:28:21   Macworld combined too. I mean, I would talk and there would be a lot of back and forth.

00:28:27   Like Kate, my HR person, she was a fierce defender of doing what was right and the rules

00:28:32   and of the people, and she would push back against the management team. Ultimately, if

00:28:37   the president of the company said, "This is what we're going to do," she would need to

00:28:41   do it, or I guess quit if it was something outrageous, but there was that kind of relationship.

00:28:46   And what I see in these Uber reports is that HR did not have that relationship. Either

00:28:51   HR didn't care and it had already been made clear that their number one priority was keeping

00:28:56   this great talent no matter what they did. And if they acted like awful people, it didn't

00:29:00   matter. Or they had just decided that they couldn't fight it anymore, that anybody who

00:29:06   would take a stand and say, "This is unacceptable. These are not the kind of practices that any

00:29:10   modern business should ever do," that they were essentially told to leave or they had

00:29:17   to leave because they were not being listened to. Because that's the healthiest moment here,

00:29:21   is, right? The HR person should say, "We got to get this guy out." And yeah, okay, if it

00:29:26   truly is somebody's first time, I can see the argument that like, "Okay, we're going

00:29:32   to take this person and we're going to give them training and we're going to, you know,

00:29:36   give them, put them on probation and we're going to check in with them and all of that.

00:29:41   We could argue that point about do you just instantly fire somebody for certain offenses

00:29:45   versus other offenses or do you give them a second chance? But if you do give them a

00:29:49   second chance in some way, you know, opportunities to retaliate and, you know, having other things

00:29:56   happen, you know, then even with a second chance, that second chance should be on a

00:30:00   like thin ice and they should be gone and the HR department should be patrolling that,

00:30:05   right? But none of that seems to have happened here and in fact it's the reverse where they're

00:30:08   defending the bad actor and it's just baffling to me because the HR people I worked with

00:30:14   would, I mean, they would push back on way more gentle things in terms of, you know,

00:30:21   anything involving the employees. They were always like devil's advocate at least for

00:30:24   the employees, like what if we did this, you shouldn't do that, did you think about this

00:30:29   aspect that will happen if we change this policy?" Like, that's—that was my experience

00:30:33   with my HR people, and it was great. I mean, sometimes it was annoying, right? Because

00:30:36   you're like, "Oh, I have this great idea," and they're like, "That's not gonna work because..."

00:30:39   But that's their job, is to do that. And at Uber, it's just, yeah, it's baffling to me

00:30:43   that how broken did it have to be. It's not like they said, "We're gonna hire evil HR

00:30:48   people. Whoa, get the evil people here. We want evil HR here." That's not—either it's

00:30:54   people who are, like, willing to do whatever because they're working for a big company

00:30:57   and they'll do whatever or they're so beaten down that they just will follow orders. It's

00:31:04   just baffling to me because I think most HR professionals would just be aghast at some

00:31:08   of this behavior. It's amazing.

00:31:10   Yeah, basically, you know, this shouldn't be happening anymore. Companies need to be

00:31:15   more responsible. I don't know if and how Uber can show that, but they need to show

00:31:24   it.

00:31:25   a theory about why this happens in a lot of, and it doesn't, it's not a like why sexual

00:31:29   harassment happens, but like why so much of this stuff goes un undocumented, unpunished

00:31:35   and all of that. My theory is that in a lot of these tech companies, they are young and

00:31:41   they, they are founded and run by people who don't actually know what the rules are or

00:31:47   don't care what the rules are. In fact, maybe they got where they are by ignoring what the

00:31:51   rules are. I mean, that's the whole Uber corporate culture, right? It's just do it and not worry

00:31:55   about it and don't worry about the rules. Who cares about the rules?" And maybe there's

00:32:00   something in that, that like the way these cultures get built is totally deformed because

00:32:05   it's entirely focused on startup growth and high performers and things like that. And

00:32:12   that like anything goes, you will work way more hours than anybody should be asked to

00:32:16   work because startup. And our high performers who do that are incredibly valuable and we

00:32:21   we want to give them incentives to do it because startup.

00:32:24   And then you get to that point where you've got

00:32:28   an HR department because you have to,

00:32:29   because somebody said, no, you need to hire HR

00:32:31   because you can't, you know,

00:32:33   you actually need to pay these people and have policies

00:32:35   and all of those things and do payroll.

00:32:37   And they're like, all right, we'll hire some HR people,

00:32:39   but they're never integral to the company.

00:32:41   They just get in the way and they are to be batted away

00:32:44   whenever the startup mentality kind of floods in.

00:32:47   Now that might be an excuse.

00:32:49   I'm not a good one.

00:32:50   I'm just trying to understand why it might happen at a startup like Uber has been. Why

00:32:56   did it get so broken? Maybe that's one of the reasons. That doesn't really excuse all

00:33:00   the established corporate cultures where this happens. Like if you're Apple and you've been

00:33:05   around for decades, this should be over. And my understanding is old tech companies have

00:33:13   these same problems too. So I don't know. What are the priorities here? It's frustrating.

00:33:18   it's frustrating. I think at the point where you have to hire HR people you can't do that stuff

00:33:22   anymore. You know like you can't break people, you can't push people, you know like it right?

00:33:27   Yeah obviously, obviously that the things that Susan was talking about in her piece should never

00:33:33   be allowed anywhere but like at least some of the things that you're talking about like over pushing

00:33:37   your employees, making them work every hour that ever happens like at the point where you're at

00:33:42   the size where you need to hire HR like you just can't you just can't do that anymore. Yeah and

00:33:46   And clearly, for whatever reason, they didn't bend to that.

00:33:50   - I would argue that maybe Silicon Valley cultural

00:33:52   in general is broken or deformed to a certain degree

00:33:56   where not just things like sexual harassment

00:34:01   or failing to hire women

00:34:04   and people who aren't white for jobs,

00:34:09   beyond that to just basic employee care,

00:34:14   Like the idea that I think a lot of Silicon Valley is built on hire somebody in their

00:34:19   early 20s, work them to death until they burn out, discard them.

00:34:24   They get money that they haven't spent because they haven't lived their life, they've just

00:34:28   been working and then they go off and do something else with the money.

00:34:32   But you know, you work them and break them and throw them away and continue again.

00:34:36   And a lot of Silicon Valley companies, that is the business model.

00:34:39   Yeah, I mean, you name checked Apple a moment ago, like from all reports I've ever heard,

00:34:44   still like this? Yeah, yeah, certainly in some groups. I think not all groups are like

00:34:48   that but any core product groups and all of that, yeah, there's this expectation that

00:34:51   we will work you, in a lot of companies including Apple, we will work you to death basically.

00:34:57   You don't have a life. You work for us. We pay you. You can't do anything with the money

00:35:01   but we pay you. And then at some point people are like, and we know people like this, I've

00:35:05   talked to people like this at Apple conferences, like at some point they're like, "I'm not

00:35:09   going to do this anymore," and they go on and they do something else with a more reasonable

00:35:14   work schedule. And I would say that this is a broken part of Silicon Valley culture because

00:35:21   the attitude there is, why pay an older worker who wants to have a family and a life for

00:35:28   40 hours a week or 50 hours a week when I can pay a lot less to a 20-something and they'll

00:35:33   work 60 hours a week? And I would say that that's kind of immoral because you're exploiting

00:35:40   you're younger workers, discriminating against people who have lives, and you're just, you

00:35:46   know, you're billion dollar companies that are cheapened out because you've got, you've

00:35:50   got kind of cheap labor that you're exploiting. And then at some point that I feel like that

00:35:55   is broken and that people should be allowed healthy company culture includes the fact

00:36:00   that people should not have to work a 60 hour week. But Silicon Valley culture, that is

00:36:05   incredibly common. That's gross.

00:36:06   I mean, I've worked in those industries. I know people like advertising is really

00:36:11   bad, banking is really bad, like still, you know, like these aren't nowhere near

00:36:15   startups, right? And they work people to the bone.

00:36:18   Yeah, companies want to get as much out of their employees as they can, as they

00:36:22   can get away with for as little as they can pay them. That is a part of

00:36:25   the part of the deal. And, you know, I do think that that is beyond a certain

00:36:30   point that is broken because I'm skeptical of how effective people are after a certain

00:36:40   point and whether that's actually useful or not, but also I think it's immoral to burn

00:36:46   people out and know you're burning them out just because. Look, if you want to work more,

00:36:50   that's fine, but culture is where you literally can't not work. It's broken. And I would argue

00:36:57   that once you're at that point in your corporate values that it's not a big

00:37:02   jump from there to all these other things because you've already got an HR

00:37:06   group that is essentially not defending its people because it knows that it's

00:37:10   its workers because it knows that these kinds of things are just part of the

00:37:13   game. You have already established your fundamental lack of respect for the

00:37:17   people that you pay money to and that sort of starts seeping into everything

00:37:22   and then you just start to forget what should be basic human values, which is clearly, as

00:37:29   we've seen here, where Uber is right now, and they have to have to fix it. Like, they

00:37:34   just have to fix it. And, you know, the press has been on them, thankfully, in such a harsh

00:37:42   way that they're making a bunch of statements and they've been, what do they get, like a

00:37:46   former US Justice or something, like, in to start looking at it for them?

00:37:51   That's the Attorney General. One of the Obama Attorney Generals is investigating it. And

00:37:56   yeah, we'll see.

00:37:57   I mean, I can't, and it's going to be like a public leave, like it's going to be like

00:38:01   a public report, right? That they'll publish about this?

00:38:04   Yeah, we'll see. We'll see.

00:38:05   I can't imagine how that's going to look for them.

00:38:08   Yeah.

00:38:09   They just got to fix it because this, this really isn't where we should be. And we should

00:38:15   be at this point trying harder and harder to bring people of all backgrounds and genders

00:38:22   into these companies and making them feel safe.

00:38:26   How are we still at this point?

00:38:30   I hope there's some change.

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00:39:54   My entire mind right now is occupied thinking about Friday. Because on Friday the Nintendo

00:40:04   Switch is released.

00:40:06   Ahhh

00:40:07   I have some switches on pre-order.

00:40:11   I have multiple machines pre-ordered.

00:40:14   Because I have suffered in the past, Jason, from pre-ordering things that don't arrive when they're supposed to.

00:40:21   So I have a small handful of pre-orders from different places.

00:40:26   And if I get all three of the pre-orders, I already know what I'm doing with the other two consoles.

00:40:31   I won't be keeping them.

00:40:33   I'll be selling one onto a brother and then the third one.

00:40:36   either onto a friend or I'm gonna be putting it on eBay.

00:40:39   - Sure.

00:40:40   - Are you at all interested in the Nintendo Switch?

00:40:43   - I'm interested in it.

00:40:47   I made the decision not to pre-order it.

00:40:49   Part of that, and forgive me if you've heard this before,

00:40:54   but part of it is console creep.

00:40:57   - Yeah, this is a total thing.

00:40:59   Yep, 100%.

00:41:00   - You know, I have a Wii U, which I like.

00:41:04   I bought mostly from Mario Kart,

00:41:05   but there are a bunch of great games on it.

00:41:06   My kids were playing Mario Kart 8 the other day.

00:41:09   I'm not sad that I bought it.

00:41:11   If it had been completely incompatible

00:41:13   with all of our old Wii games,

00:41:15   I would have been sad that I bought it

00:41:16   'cause there are not that many Wii U games out there

00:41:18   and now it's a kind of a dead platform,

00:41:19   but we had a Wii with all those Wii games

00:41:22   and it's compatible with all of them.

00:41:24   So like this weekend, my family and I played

00:41:28   Beel's Rock Band, which is a Wii game.

00:41:31   And we still have all the instruments still work on the Wii U

00:41:34   and it works on the Wii U and it's great.

00:41:36   Plus then we can flip over and do Mario Kart 8

00:41:38   and that's a Wii U game and it's got the high quality.

00:41:41   So my point is the Wii U for me had value

00:41:44   because it was replacing a box, right?

00:41:47   - It was an upgrade. - And one of the things

00:41:48   that, yeah, oh.

00:41:50   But it's not a, it's not a,

00:41:52   it's, I'm keeping a level number of consoles

00:41:55   in my house, right? - Yeah.

00:41:56   - But like the Xbox One, which we have,

00:41:59   I still have an Xbox 360 in a different room, why?

00:42:02   because sometimes my son wants to play those Xbox 360 games

00:42:05   and the games he likes never got that compatibility thing

00:42:09   that Microsoft talked about, but really didn't deliver on,

00:42:11   where you could download, you know,

00:42:13   Xbox One compatible versions of Xbox 360 games.

00:42:16   His games that he played never--

00:42:18   - That's a slow moving, but continually moving process.

00:42:21   - Yeah, there may be more now,

00:42:22   but it's one of those things

00:42:23   where I've just kept the 360 around because why not?

00:42:26   And we have the TV that's out here actually in my office

00:42:29   that he will come in here sometimes

00:42:31   and play on the 360 and it's great.

00:42:33   But again, now there's another console.

00:42:35   I have a PlayStation 3 and an Xbox 360 in this room,

00:42:39   and then I've got a Wii U and an Xbox One

00:42:42   in the living room.

00:42:43   - There's a lot of games in the smell zone.

00:42:45   - So that's my feeling about the Nintendo Switch is,

00:42:49   I'm intrigued by it, but it's another box in our house.

00:42:54   And I realize this is a box you can pick up

00:42:55   and carry in your hands and do other things with.

00:42:57   And it looks cool and I'm looking forward to it.

00:43:00   And since we are a Nintendo Wii kind of house,

00:43:03   in the sense my kids have grown up with a Wii

00:43:05   and then the Wii U and it's part of their childhood

00:43:10   and they still have fondness for that stuff.

00:43:12   And my son has a DS as well.

00:43:15   I feel like we will probably get one at some point

00:43:18   and that probably it'll be my son kind of demanding it.

00:43:23   And given that he will be able to play it on the TV

00:43:25   and just walk away with it and play with it,

00:43:29   without taking over our living room. I'll probably get there, but, um, and the stuff looks good,

00:43:35   you know, and that's where you're going to be able to get the latest Mario stuff and, and,

00:43:38   and Zelda and all the Nintendo stuff. But I'm holding back a little bit. I'm, I tend not to be a

00:43:45   first buyer of any consoles and, and there's just my fundamental frustration with more box clutter

00:43:51   in like, I don't have a PS4. Why don't I have a PS4? It's like, I don't want another box. I'm

00:43:56   intrigued by the PS4 with the VR and all of that and yet I don't have a PS4 because where am I

00:44:02   going to put that? I mean I've already got a huge stack of boxes in my living room it's too many

00:44:07   boxes already. As you say luckily the Switch is has a very small footprint it's very small and so

00:44:13   that you know it's good for if you have a unit like it obviously isn't your problem but for many

00:44:17   people like if your problem is how am I going to fit another console like it fits nicely into your

00:44:23   your existing arrangement. However, Nintendo at this point are doing people in your position

00:44:29   a favour, which is doing a disservice for a lot of the people that are buying the Switch

00:44:34   immediately is that there's like four games. And this is the same for many consoles, right?

00:44:42   But they also don't even have a lot of ports available of old stuff. Like it's very slim.

00:44:48   However, what they have already done is they have a good runway of games that will lead

00:44:52   up to the holiday season. Which I expect the plan is that they are going to be selling

00:44:58   it now, a bunch of games will come out, they'll drop the price at the holidays, and you'll

00:45:02   be able to get a great bundle with the new Mario and have Mario Kart on it and it'll

00:45:06   have Zelda on it, Splatoon, you know.

00:45:09   And you can see Splatoon, which is such a great game. So I think that it's a very smart

00:45:16   roll out because they're rolling it out in, you know, it's not even spring yet. And you

00:45:20   with Nintendo we've seen it over the years there are always huge availability problems.

00:45:25   Like I remember trying to get a Wii and it was really hard.

00:45:28   Yeah the Wii was a unique case. It was a combination of Nintendo were trying to see if they could

00:45:37   constrain reliability, this is what you believed. But then also it was a massive hit. So it

00:45:43   was unfortunately a double header right?

00:45:46   - And you know, when I tried to get an Xbox One,

00:45:49   which was after launch by quite a bit,

00:45:51   it was still kind of hard to get them.

00:45:53   Like I find the consoles can be hard to find

00:45:56   and hard to buy.

00:45:57   - Look at what it's like when you try and buy an iPhone.

00:45:59   You know, you want to buy one immediately,

00:46:00   you wait for a month.

00:46:01   Like it's that kind of idea, right?

00:46:03   - So I think this is smart on Nintendo's part,

00:46:07   because they're not like what Apple has become,

00:46:09   where they drop a huge,

00:46:11   they're manufacturing them all the time

00:46:13   and then they announce the product

00:46:14   and they drop a huge amount of them

00:46:15   and they can fulfill a lot of their demand.

00:46:16   Although even Apple, as we know with the seven plus

00:46:19   could not fulfill demand at all

00:46:22   into the whole first quarter of 2017.

00:46:26   But this gives Nintendo time to launch the platform,

00:46:29   get people including their developers

00:46:31   used to what the platform is,

00:46:33   and ramp up production, gauge demand.

00:46:36   And so when you hit the holidays,

00:46:38   when people might buy these,

00:46:39   and that might be when we buy ours,

00:46:40   although, and my son's birthday's in August,

00:46:42   so maybe that's a thing too, I don't know.

00:46:44   But at that point, they should be available,

00:46:46   and there will be more games for them,

00:46:48   and it will all start to make sense.

00:46:50   So that's my kind of applause to Nintendo.

00:46:53   Like if they do this right, when they hit the holidays,

00:46:56   anyone who's gonna be able to want a Switch

00:46:58   will be able to get one, and it'll have great games,

00:47:00   and they'll be happy.

00:47:02   And that's the way you do it.

00:47:03   You don't wanna frustrate people by creating sort of,

00:47:06   you know, accidentally or purposefully this scarcity

00:47:09   where it's hard to get.

00:47:10   It's like, no, no, no.

00:47:11   You want people to be able to go to Amazon and say,

00:47:12   give me a Nintendo Switch and have it come two days later.

00:47:15   I think this is part of the reason they've done it, because March is a terrible time

00:47:18   to release a games console. There is no good reason to do it.

00:47:22   It's a soft launch in a way, right? Including the catalog, which is very small. It's really

00:47:26   a soft launch, and I think that's fine. I think it's fine, because really, when do they

00:47:31   want to be at full speed with this thing? Holiday quarter.

00:47:34   Yeah. Because Nintendo have a lot of work to do to try and encourage outside developers

00:47:39   to make games for their platforming again. And they're doing, they've got some interesting

00:47:43   deals in place like the next FIFA game will be available on the Switch and that is something

00:47:47   that has not happened on Nintendo consoles for a long time especially when it looks like

00:47:51   it's going to be the full game which is also something that hasn't happened for a very

00:47:55   long time. Even on the Wii, you know, console makers would release these weird or watered

00:48:00   down versions of these games.

00:48:02   I mean, why do I have an Xbox One? It's because, it's because I wanted, I mean I had an Xbox

00:48:06   360 because I wanted to play Destiny, you know, my son wants to play Overwatch. These

00:48:12   are titles that are not on Nintendo's platforms and it's frustrating.

00:48:18   There's still going to be a lot of that.

00:48:20   There is. I think Nintendo's always going to have that where they're not going to have

00:48:24   the triple-A titles and all of that, but if Nintendo can do what they do well, which is

00:48:30   their stuff especially, and they've got this really interesting design where it is a handheld

00:48:34   and a console in one, then they have a chance to reach people who don't really care about

00:48:42   the AAA games, and also to be a second console for people who've got a Playstation or an Xbox

00:48:46   One, but also want to get the Nintendo stuff. Because it's such a different product, I think

00:48:50   it actually feels better to buy something like the Nintendo Switch, because it's not

00:48:53   yet another plastic box under your TV, like the Playstation and the Xbox.

00:48:58   Also, if and when they go all in on it being the only Nintendo platform, that's going to

00:49:05   be a big thing for them.

00:49:07   Because then they get people that want the handheld, they get all the DS stuff, Pokemon,

00:49:14   the next Pokemon game will hopefully be available for the Switch only.

00:49:17   If they do that, then they will be making a big statement.

00:49:20   As of right now, Nintendo is not claiming the death of the 3DS line.

00:49:26   However, there are also not a lot of games coming out for the 3DS.

00:49:30   It may go on, I mean they still sell, my son got one for his birthday, like they're old,

00:49:35   but there's a huge catalogue and people love them and it's great for kids, especially,

00:49:39   it's like, you know, your kid might not have a phone, but they've got a DS and it's great.

00:49:46   But I think, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

00:49:53   fact that it's a handheld makes it a different kind of product and I like that about it,

00:49:59   that it's a little bit of both.

00:50:00   -With inbuilt two-person multiplayer, you know, you can split the controller in half,

00:50:05   give one person, you know.

00:50:06   -Yeah, split the controls. It's got some control innovation like on the Wii, which is great,

00:50:11   that because it's portable, it makes it easier to do a LAN party essentially, which, you

00:50:15   know, you can't do. I think about that a lot with, like, console games that I've got where

00:50:19   it's like, "Well, I can't bring my console," I mean, you can, but who does, "to your friend's

00:50:23   and then you need another TV and all of that. And there are a lot of games that have network

00:50:26   multiplayer but they don't, they won't do split screen in person multiplayer. And with

00:50:31   a Switch you just bring your Switch with you to another friend's house and you can play

00:50:36   together easily which is really great. And then you know the other thing I like about

00:50:40   it? No disc. Yeah. Cards. It's all on cards. Basically, yeah, memory cards. And what's

00:50:50   What's great about that is the games that need to install.

00:50:54   Yep.

00:50:55   Just pop them in and you play.

00:50:56   Yep.

00:50:57   Which is not the way it is in the modern world.

00:50:58   So yeah, I'm super excited about this.

00:51:01   If you want to hear me and Federico and Shaheed continue to just go crazy over this thing,

00:51:07   you go check out remaster 29.

00:51:10   We've made the joke that we're all kind of, especially me and Federico are basically nesting

00:51:14   for this thing right now.

00:51:16   Like we're setting up the area where it's going to go in.

00:51:18   the space where it's gonna go yep making sure we've got all the accessories we

00:51:22   want and I've labeled the input on my TV switch it's ready to go it's that plug

00:51:27   we'll plug it right in there yeah sure yes you're ready we're very I'm very

00:51:30   very excited about this I said this on the show and I'm making a I'm planning

00:51:35   on making a YouTube video kind of focused around this idea but I love

00:51:40   Apple but I don't love Apple as much as I love Nintendo interesting my nostalgia

00:51:46   and love for Nintendo goes back my entire life. My earliest memories are playing NES games.

00:51:52   Some of my very earliest memories are playing various Nintendo games with my brother or

00:52:00   watching him play Nintendo games when I was like three years old. This is a company that has been

00:52:06   with me throughout my entire life. They're a company that like it doesn't matter how many

00:52:09   mess ups they make like I'm always convinced that they'll pull it out of the bag and I really want

00:52:16   the Switch to be a success because they need it and I need it if I want them to continue.

00:52:21   So yeah Nintendo is the company that I love the most it's not the company that I pay the

00:52:25   most attention to because you know honestly that one of the reasons that remaster exists

00:52:30   is because me and Federico or like the reason that me and Federico have a video game podcast

00:52:36   it's the third iteration of this show is because we just want a place to talk about video games

00:52:41   and mostly that's Nintendo because it's the we we are quite similar in that regard to like our

00:52:46   entire lives Nintendo has been a part of it, where Apple has maybe been for the last 10

00:52:50   years, but like our entire lives Nintendo has been a massive part of that. So please

00:52:57   let the Switch be amazing.

00:52:58   And for me, Nintendo is a part of my children's lives, and so for them it's been a part from

00:53:05   the beginning, and for, and I'm sure my son who loves video games would say, you know,

00:53:11   was playing Wii games is where he got his start, but for me it's just as a parent. It's

00:53:17   that thing. I completely skipped the original Nintendo generation. The Wii was the first

00:53:23   Nintendo device that I ever got because I went from the Atari 2600 to not playing video

00:53:29   games again until the PS1, and so I skipped all over that. However, my brother-in-law,

00:53:35   I would visit, Lauren and I would visit her parents' house and her brother's 15 years

00:53:40   younger and he was a NES kid and so like I learned about you know Mario and and what

00:53:52   else did he play Kirby all of that stuff so because he's he's only a little bit older

00:53:58   than you so yeah it's it's a I get it I get it even though it's just not for me for me

00:54:05   know, the Atari 2600 was incredibly formative, and then, you know, the Apple

00:54:10   stuff. But I get why people are attached to Nintendo, and I think that that's one

00:54:14   of the great things about... that's why Nintendo's still around, and that's why it

00:54:17   has the power that it has, is that it has a personality in a way that, you know,

00:54:22   honestly, like, Xbox and PlayStation have... sort of have personalities, kind of, but

00:54:26   when they're battling over AAA titles, I mean, they do exclusives and stuff, but

00:54:31   why do they even have to do exclusives? It's trying to differentiate at all between them.

00:54:36   Whereas Nintendo, there's no, again, for right or for wrong, for good and for ill, Nintendo

00:54:41   there's no mistaking that it is what it is. It is not like the others. And that's, I mean,

00:54:49   how similar does that sound to how we talk about Apple? It's a similar kind of feeling.

00:54:53   Like when I watched that Nintendo Switch presentation, the live presentation they did, I thought

00:54:57   myself, well one, it's a little weird, but two, it is the most Apple-like presentation

00:55:02   I've ever seen from another company in the sense that they're just like, their whole

00:55:07   attitude seemed very similar to Apple.

00:55:10   So transitioning back to the company and their Apple.

00:55:14   Speaking of Apple.

00:55:15   Last week we were talking about San Jose and we were talking about the Apple Campus and

00:55:18   wondering whether there will be any events at the Apple Campus and we weren't sure when

00:55:22   the thing was opening and then a couple of days afterwards we found out that Campus 2

00:55:27   be opening in April but it now has a name it will not be called campus 2 which would

00:55:32   have been the worst name ever because campus 2 electric boogaloo I guess the name for campus

00:55:41   2 is now apple park yes apple park do you know I don't like it I it doesn't doesn't

00:55:47   roll off the tongue very nicely for me there's too many p's too closely together but apple

00:55:53   Apple Park is, I don't know, I wonder if we're gonna start calling it the park, like, you

00:55:59   know, the loop, if it'll be like that.

00:56:02   Maybe, maybe.

00:56:03   Apple Park, it does feel a little bit like a stadium, it also I think makes it harder

00:56:06   for Apple to sponsor, like, by naming rights for a stadium somewhere, because it'd be Apple

00:56:10   Park.

00:56:11   You think they would ever do that, though?

00:56:12   They would have to do Apple Stadium, I guess.

00:56:14   It seems unlikely.

00:56:16   They, a few people noted that it's, it may be, either accidentally or purposefully, a

00:56:22   of a cap to Xerox Park, which was the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, which is famously

00:56:29   where Steve Jobs went and saw the Alto, I think it was.

00:56:33   Yeah, I wondered that, and I kind of came to the conclusion that it must be, because

00:56:40   when they were talking about the name, if this ever came up, they would have gone, "Well,

00:56:43   that's kind of like Xerox Park, right?" Like, they would have at least—someone would have

00:56:47   like tweaked that beforehand. So if they didn't name it like because of that, I'm sure they

00:56:51   they spoke about it and like, "Oh yeah, that's kind of nice."

00:56:53   - They should have called it Campus 2 with the brackets from the Apple 2. That's what

00:56:58   they should have done. - Oh no.

00:57:00   - But Apple Park is, I think it's fine. I think we'll get used to it. I think it's like

00:57:04   changing PowerBook to MacBook. I think we'll get used to it and it'll be fine.

00:57:06   - Oh, we sure will. We sure will. It's not a bad name. I just don't, I like the way it

00:57:10   looks when it's written. I don't like how it sounds when I try and say it.

00:57:15   - Yeah, fair enough. - Which isn't necessarily a reason that they

00:57:18   should call it something else. It's going to take over six months to move the 12,000

00:57:23   people that are going to be occupying the park. There is still some construction though

00:57:28   that's going to continue all the way through to the summer, so it's not 100% done, but

00:57:33   you can move people in and still work on a few parts of it.

00:57:36   Yeah, there's so much landscaping and stuff going on too. I imagine a lot of the work

00:57:40   is going to be landscaping and things that will continue because if you look at the pictures

00:57:44   of it. The center of the ring is just enormous landscaping, and it's all landscaping. And

00:57:50   then the outside of the-- I mean, there's so much-- I mean, the other reason to call

00:57:54   out a park is that it looks like a park with buildings in it. There are trees and fields

00:57:59   and things all over this thing. And that was part of the design plan from the beginning.

00:58:05   So I think that's appropriate. Keep in mind, too, I had a couple people ask what happens

00:58:10   to Infinite Loop, and the answer is Apple has so many people in Cupertino and around

00:58:14   there. In fact, I believe they basically filled up Cupertino and they've started renting space

00:58:19   in like San Jose nearby just because they've run out of Cupertino space. Apple will be

00:58:23   able to move people from the Loop, presumably all of the people in the Loop will be moving

00:58:27   to Apple Park, I don't know that for sure, but they'll have that space. Well, they've

00:58:31   got so many other people in other buildings in Cupertino that they will be able to put

00:58:34   those groups together where they're probably far-flung. We talked about that on a previous

00:58:38   show that they may be in different areas, those groups will be able to come together

00:58:41   in one place in the loop. Then what happens is the disparate groups that are out there

00:58:46   in all these office parks around Apple and Cupertino, they will get to move to other

00:58:53   parts together and get more of the facilities together instead of being scattered. And yes,

00:59:00   in the end, there will probably be some square footage in some parts of Cupertino or over

00:59:06   in San Jose that they will drop, but it will be like, if you've ever been to Cupertino,

00:59:11   you may have noticed this, and if you haven't done it, you should do it sometime. When you

00:59:14   get off the freeway, you get off 280, you turn right, if you're coming from San Francisco,

00:59:19   and the loop campus is on the left, and you can turn in there, and you make the left turn

00:59:27   on Mariani, and it becomes Infinite Loop. What you may not know, if you're focused on

00:59:32   the majesty that is Infinite Loop, there's where the icon garden used to be. Does it

00:59:36   really go all the way around? Yes it does. Look at all the parking lot that's full of

00:59:40   electric cars. There they are. But as you're coming down Mariani, approaching the entryway

00:59:45   to the loop, on the right side, there are all these other office buildings. Those are

00:59:49   all Apple. That's where that anechoic chamber that they demoed during an antenna gate, it's

00:59:55   across the street. It's not even in the loop, it's across the street. And then if you don't

00:59:59   make the turn on Mariani and you just drive down, what is it, Steven's Creek Boulevard?

01:00:04   is that street? How would I know? I don't know. I wasn't asking myself. I wasn't asking

01:00:10   you. If you drive down that street, just look at the signs on the road of all of the office

01:00:16   buildings as you pass them. They all have Apple logos on them. It's a company town.

01:00:23   It is packed. We think of Apple as taking place at the Loop, but the Loop is a tiny

01:00:28   fraction of the office building space that they've got in Cupertino. And so with the

01:00:35   park, they'll move the loop people presumably to the park, maybe not all of them, then there'll

01:00:41   be a whole thing. So I think the loop's not going anywhere because it's like another nice

01:00:47   campus. I think Apple would probably prefer to have the loop than to have just random

01:00:51   office buildings in Cupertino. And then they'll rearrange their other thing. So it's a mammoth

01:00:57   task for facilities people. There's somebody working very hard, a lot of people working

01:01:02   really hard in their facilities group to do it, and I find it fascinating, but I don't

01:01:05   think the loop is going to go anywhere. In fact, it'll be that building behind an IHOP

01:01:11   in San Jose that they drop. Like, "Well, fine, we didn't need that. Our lease is coming up

01:01:17   and we're not going to need that space, so we're going to drop it." They'll probably

01:01:19   also keep some space around and either allow themselves to spread out a little bit or keep

01:01:24   some space open for growth because that's been a challenge for them too is where do

01:01:28   you put people if you've rented all of the available business space in Cupertino.

01:01:34   Some cool statistics about Apple Park. The ring-shaped building, so the main building,

01:01:39   houses 2.8 million square feet of space. It features the largest curved panels of glass

01:01:46   in the world. I feel like Apple keep doing this. They keep getting the largest pieces

01:01:50   of glass? How much more glass?

01:01:54   One day there will be a book about how Apple revolutionized the curved glass industry.

01:02:02   The campus will run on 100% renewable energy.

01:02:06   Yeah, there's solar panels on everything, and then they've also got their big solar

01:02:11   park down the coast that they get all the power from.

01:02:15   there will be a cafe, I should say,

01:02:19   and an Apple store opens to the public, which is great.

01:02:23   - This is a huge thing that people have made the pilgrimage

01:02:27   to Infinite Loop and there's the new,

01:02:30   it used to be the company store,

01:02:31   now it's just the little Apple store

01:02:32   that's in Infinite Loop 1 or next to Infinite Loop 1.

01:02:35   And there's a little parking lot there for people to come

01:02:37   and it's always very busy and it's a little bit weird.

01:02:40   - It's so hostile feeling.

01:02:42   - Yeah, it feels like you shouldn't be there, right?

01:02:44   So they're gonna do a visitor center essentially,

01:02:46   where you're gonna be able to come to the Apple,

01:02:49   the new Apple Park campus and park

01:02:51   and there'll be a cafe and an Apple store.

01:02:53   And it'll probably be--

01:02:55   - This is such a great thing that they've done

01:02:58   because they need to admit it.

01:02:59   You need to admit that people idolize your company

01:03:03   to the point that they just wanna come and see it.

01:03:05   And you can't create a building like that

01:03:09   and not let people come and see it.

01:03:11   Like otherwise make a nondescript building.

01:03:13   Infinite Loop doesn't look amazing.

01:03:15   It's just a cluster of buildings.

01:03:18   It's a circular, you know, you can drive around it.

01:03:20   It's not really amazing looking.

01:03:23   This thing is maybe some of the most interested in architecture

01:03:26   on the planet today.

01:03:28   You hire these people to make a beautiful building,

01:03:31   let people come and see it.

01:03:33   And if they do come and see it,

01:03:34   get them a cafe to come and sit in for half an hour

01:03:38   before they have to leave again.

01:03:39   Because at Infinite Loop, you go there,

01:03:41   You will go into the Apple store. You probably buy something because they have stuff that you can't get anywhere else

01:03:46   I some pens by the parents buy a t-shirt you take a picture with the sign and then you leave

01:03:50   Yep, and so it's kind of a little bit underwhelming

01:03:52   So I'm really excited that they're doing this and I'm so happy that it will be open before

01:03:57   WWDC because I can then go and see it and it's way easier to get to it probably

01:04:03   You know, you could take a taxi now. You don't have to hire a car, right?

01:04:08   Because it's so far it was so far away from from downtown San Francisco. So yeah, I'm excited about this

01:04:13   I think that it is a great addition a welcome addition

01:04:16   The theater where we assume Apple will be doing some product on valings in the future will be named the Steve Jobs Theatre

01:04:25   Which is a fitting name

01:04:27   It has 1,000 seats and is comprised of a 20 foot tall glass cylinder because of course it is with a metallic

01:04:34   carbon fiber roof. The theater has been built on top of a hill which overlooks meadows and the main

01:04:40   building. And the way it works it's on top of a hill but that's also like it's down in the earth

01:04:45   like you will enter the the entryway the lobby um is this is this cylinder and then my understanding

01:04:53   is then you go down into the auditorium so it's down from the campus but still above

01:05:02   other stuff. Yeah, yeah, so it's no but but what I'm saying is when you enter the auditorium,

01:05:07   like the auditorium isn't isn't tall, the auditorium is in is down in the ground. You go

01:05:12   down like a staircase or something. Yeah, yeah, the order when you're sitting in the auditorium,

01:05:16   you're not overlooking outside, like you can't get distracted by by a bird flying by or something.

01:05:21   No, you're descending into the descending into the earth there, which actually is how the town hall

01:05:25   works, right? You enter at ground level and then and then you are at the top of the auditorium and

01:05:31   and it goes down and that's where it'll be.

01:05:33   Steve Jobs Theater is really great.

01:05:34   Pixar has a Steve Jobs building

01:05:37   and that's how they honored him.

01:05:38   I wondered for a long time if they were gonna refer to this

01:05:41   as the Steve Jobs Campus.

01:05:42   I think it's better this way that there is the--

01:05:45   - That would be too much.

01:05:46   - That they don't have to invoke Steve

01:05:48   every time they talk about where they're going.

01:05:51   But like, I'm going over to Steve's place, it's weird.

01:05:55   But the Steve Jobs Theater, like what are people,

01:05:58   what people remember about Steve Jobs?

01:06:00   like his presentation. So to name the theater after him, it's perfect. It is the perfect

01:06:05   combination of not having to be, like you said, too much, but honoring him with a building

01:06:11   on the campus. And not the big ring building, but this place where all the press comes and

01:06:15   they're going to say, "Apple announced at the Steve Jobs Theater in this event," and

01:06:19   that's great.

01:06:20   - And they'll get to say on stage, they'll be like, "In this building that is dedicated

01:06:23   to Steve, like we own the other products that we think."

01:06:25   - Yeah, "Welcome to the Steve Jobs Theater." Absolutely.

01:06:28   I think it's nice. I think they did it well. I assume that they obviously, again, like

01:06:32   Steve Jobs' campus was on the table, and I'm also pleased that they found a more fitting

01:06:38   tribute because naming the entire campus after him is maybe too much.

01:06:44   So let's talk scale for a second.

01:06:46   Yep.

01:06:47   Because, and I will put a link in the show notes to this tweet that I found. This is

01:06:52   from Sky1Ron is Ron Servi he is the traffic reporter for KCBS in San Francisco.

01:06:59   Perfect person to take this picture. He takes some spectacular Bay Area pictures. You should,

01:07:04   if you like pictures of the Bay Area you should follow Sky1Ron because he's up in the air

01:07:10   flying around the Bay Area all the time. Wow, he really does. Yeah, I'm looking at his feed

01:07:14   now. It's amazing. In fact, one day I was sitting in bed drinking my tea and looking

01:07:19   a twitter and I saw a picture of Marin County from Sky1Ron and the funny thing is I had

01:07:24   just heard an airplane go over my house and it was totally him. That was when he was taking

01:07:29   that picture. It was pretty funny.

01:07:30   That's a plane, not a helicopter.

01:07:32   No it's a plane. It's an airplane.

01:07:33   That's interesting.

01:07:34   Well the barrier is really huge so he needs a plane to get around to all the different

01:07:39   - it's a pretty large region so he flies his little plane around to all of the freeways

01:07:44   and stuff to see the congestion and things like that.

01:07:47   Ron has a pretty sweet job, doesn't he?

01:07:49   That's a pretty good job. What do you do if you're gonna fly a tiny plane around San Francisco

01:07:54   and take photos of it?

01:07:55   And every 10 minutes I'm on the radio saying where there's a backup. And that's it. That's

01:08:00   what he does.

01:08:01   Every 10 minutes?

01:08:02   Traffic and weather together every 10 minutes.

01:08:04   I assumed you're in the rush hour, right? Not like all day.

01:08:06   AM 740. Well, they do traffic and weather together every 10 minutes. They don't have

01:08:11   Sky 1 Ron on, I think, except during the commutes.

01:08:14   Okay, because then it became a terrible job.

01:08:16   - Yeah, so I'm like, I'm up all day, I can't go away,

01:08:19   I'm trapped.

01:08:20   No, when it's really foggy, they put him in a car sometimes,

01:08:22   that's extra sad.

01:08:23   Like I just am driving around in traffic.

01:08:26   So anyway, this picture that he tweeted,

01:08:28   which you'll see I replied to him and said,

01:08:30   you don't have to call it Campus 2 anymore,

01:08:32   now you can call it Apple Park.

01:08:34   And this was taken on Steve Jobs'

01:08:36   what would have been his 62nd birthday.

01:08:37   I like this picture because of one thing,

01:08:39   which is the scale.

01:08:40   Like the auditorium looks like an outhouse,

01:08:45   it looks like a water tank.

01:08:46   It is dwarfed in comparison to the giant ring.

01:08:51   That ring, I think we're all gonna go there

01:08:55   and be blown away by the scale of it.

01:09:00   I think from the outside, you're barely gonna be able

01:09:03   to tell if you're standing next to it that it's curved

01:09:06   because it's so huge.

01:09:08   And then the inside, which we are imagining,

01:09:10   I always kind of imagine the inside of Infinite Loop

01:09:14   where there's kind of a little park in there

01:09:16   and tables and pathways and that's where Cafe Max kind of opens out onto. And this thing

01:09:22   is huge. I mean, you could put a baseball stadium on the inside of this if you wanted

01:09:27   to. It's just, it is staggering. So anyway, it's a great picture and the scale of it just

01:09:32   blows me away. Like, this is a big, thousand seat auditorium that Apple's going to open

01:09:37   up to the press and it is like if the main building is a wheel it's like I don't even

01:09:46   know it's like it's not the hubcap it's like a little bolt that holds the wheel on it's

01:09:51   so tiny.

01:09:52   David: Yeah that seems kind of incredible.

01:09:55   Myke: Yeah.

01:09:56   David; Like I've been there's a building in Romania called the Palace of the Parliament

01:10:00   or People's House and it's the second largest administrative building in the world after

01:10:06   the Pentagon. And I imagine seeing campus 2 or Apple Park, the ringed building would

01:10:14   be kind of like this where you kind of walk up to this building or you arrive at this

01:10:17   building and it's bigger than you can see, right? Like you can't see the edges of it,

01:10:25   right? Like it's so large, the ends of it just pass outside of your field of vision.

01:10:32   And I imagine it's going to be a similar kind of thing to that because this building is

01:10:36   just massive.

01:10:37   It has an area of 365,000 square meters, which is just, it's massive.

01:10:47   It's like I'm doing like a conversion to feet now.

01:10:51   Oh my, I can't even work that out.

01:10:53   It's really big, really big is the answer.

01:10:57   And I wonder, I wonder like how, how it scales up to like what, what the new

01:11:01   canvas building is going to be like.

01:11:03   But yeah, I imagine it's going to be kind of like that.

01:11:04   Uh, what do you think the first event in the Steve Jobs theater will be?

01:11:09   Well, we talked about this last week about WWDC.

01:11:12   I think the best answer is probably the iPhone event.

01:11:15   Uh, because that allows them to, I don't, I'm not sure when the theater will be

01:11:19   ready and there's the access in and there's all this construction going on.

01:11:22   It would seem logical that maybe it would be that event, uh, because that's Apple's

01:11:27   biggest event and to hold it there if they feel they can hold it there. I mean, I guess

01:11:31   that's the question is, is they've been holding those events in places like Bill Graham and

01:11:36   do they want to do all their events on campus now? And is that going to be, you know, the

01:11:39   thousand seats is going to be the only, that's the only event venue for Apple ever. That'll

01:11:45   be interesting to see because it's still not as big necessarily as a giant theater that

01:11:52   they could rent somewhere, but it's theirs,

01:11:56   and they don't have to like spend days in San Francisco

01:11:59   doing setup and stuff, right, and build out.

01:12:02   They can just do it at their, they own it.

01:12:05   They can spend weeks before the event making it perfect

01:12:07   because they'll be, they control the space.

01:12:10   So I think that's something to watch is,

01:12:12   does Apple do all their events there from now on?

01:12:15   Is it good enough capacity for that?

01:12:18   But if I had to guess, I'd say the iPhone,

01:12:21   because that seems to be the, um, it gives them some construction time and, uh, symbolically

01:12:27   I think it's good to have their biggest thing be there.

01:12:29   So I just did some calculations. Oh good.

01:12:32   Uh, it's 2.6, I think. Oh no wait, it's 260,128 square meters.

01:12:41   Okay. And, uh, so yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's

01:12:45   still smaller than the palace of the parliament, which isn't surprising. Basically, you know,

01:12:49   I will put a link in the show notes to the Palace of the Parliament, the People's House.

01:12:54   It's a building with a very interesting history. I should do this, we should do this on NGeniust.

01:13:01   I'm going to put this in for our NGeniust channel because I have some stories about

01:13:06   this building. Yeah, so that might actually be kind of fun. But yeah, I wonder if it would

01:13:10   be the iPhone just because a thousand, I have way more than a thousand people go to that

01:13:15   event, right?

01:13:16   Yeah, oh it's four million square feet by the way, Myke. By my calculations, the palace

01:13:22   of the parliament, four million square feet.

01:13:23   There you go.

01:13:24   That's a lot. A lot of feet.

01:13:26   Yeah, a lot of feet. It's really many, many feet. But yeah, do you think that they would

01:13:30   do it and just scale back the amount of people?

01:13:34   I don't know. I honestly don't know. I think it's not something I really thought about,

01:13:40   but that's a good question. Like, what's the purpose of the Steve Jobs Theatre? Is it to

01:13:45   prevent Apple from having to rent out a space for smaller events that would have

01:13:52   been in that theater in San Jose, the California theater, or in the Yerba Buena

01:13:57   Center, like, or Town Hall, which was too small. Is that what it's for,

01:14:03   or is it for everything? And if it's for everything, or maybe everything except

01:14:09   WWDC keynote, where you've got that in San Jose and you might want to have that

01:14:12   that happen in San Jose. If it's for everything, that probably means that something like the

01:14:19   iPhone event is not going to have quite as expansive a guest list as it usually does.

01:14:24   So that'll be the thing. Will they do the iPhone event in another big venue, but every

01:14:30   other event in the Steve Jobs Theater? I don't know. It's a really interesting question,

01:14:34   and it sort of depends on what Apple feels like they get out of the turnout to those

01:14:39   events and if it's worth it for them because like I said it's way more convenient to have

01:14:44   it be in the place that they completely control for all time.

01:14:47   - Yep.

01:14:48   - As opposed to, you know, as opposed to having to rent. Yeah, I mean, people don't know,

01:14:52   like I've talked to people who worked on on events for Apple, like the the amount of planning

01:14:56   that goes into those is enormous. When they do Bill Graham, Civic Auditorium, they spend

01:15:00   like a week building or more building out their demo rooms and things like it's not,

01:15:07   don't just like sweep up the floor the day before and put on a show. Like it's

01:15:11   an enormous, enormous undertaking to convert those venues because Apple wants

01:15:16   them the way they want them. The same with the same with Yerba Buena theater

01:15:20   where they built the whole like outside demo building basically as a temporary

01:15:25   structure because they wanted it the way they wanted it. This gives them that

01:15:29   ability themselves. So the question is just the big events with big capacity. Do

01:15:35   they scale those back, but everything else, like, it's a no-brainer. And for those, it

01:15:40   might still be worth it just to have them have complete control over the venue.

01:15:43   Yeah. Yeah. I wonder where they'll go. We'll see. I mean, we'll see maybe if they want

01:15:50   to do it sooner, right? There might be an event before then, they might be able to do

01:15:53   it there. Otherwise, they'll probably will keep it to the iPhone.

01:15:55   Yeah. Especially, you know, it is, I mean, if Apple

01:15:58   do want to play it that way, you know, the anniversary, 10-year anniversary year of the

01:16:02   iPhone.

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01:18:17   It's time for some Ask Upgrade, Mr. Jason Snell.

01:18:20   - Yeah, all right, let's do it.

01:18:22   - Jack asked, does old technology actually get slower

01:18:25   or just our expectations in software demand more speed?

01:18:28   - That's a big one.

01:18:31   You know, this is the feeling like, you know,

01:18:35   oh, my phone keeps getting slower.

01:18:37   Well, no, of course the old tech doesn't actually get slower.

01:18:39   What happens is that the software gets updated.

01:18:42   One, its software gets updated

01:18:45   and the software updates are tested

01:18:47   on newer pieces of hardware,

01:18:49   and so they add more stuff in there,

01:18:53   and the new pieces of hardware run it acceptably,

01:18:56   and they often don't really test it on the older stuff,

01:18:59   and so the older stuff feels like it's gonna slow down.

01:19:02   Also, the new stuff is faster,

01:19:04   and so if you go from one to another,

01:19:05   yes, it feels slower,

01:19:08   because now there's something that's much faster,

01:19:10   and it's a combination of those things.

01:19:12   But I would argue like, yeah, so it's a combination.

01:19:16   I think that's exactly right, Jack.

01:19:18   Expectations in software.

01:19:19   You could use like, I could still write on a Mac,

01:19:24   an original Mac.

01:19:26   I could still write on a PowerBook 160

01:19:28   that I used in the 90s.

01:19:30   Absolutely could, absolutely could.

01:19:32   Because in the end, it's like Microsoft Word

01:19:35   on those things.

01:19:36   It will let me type words as fast as I can type them.

01:19:39   And that's really all I need.

01:19:40   It's all the other stuff.

01:19:41   "Oh, but I want to have a retina display and I want to be able to record audio and cloud

01:19:45   sync all of my files and have a..."

01:19:48   And then you start making the list of all the things that you really have to have that

01:19:50   have nothing to do with putting words down, and that's where all the power goes.

01:19:54   Yep.

01:19:55   Could not have put it better myself.

01:19:59   Sey asked, "What was the first technology purchase you can remember spending your money

01:20:05   on or what is your all-time favorite?"

01:20:07   Jason?

01:20:08   First, I mean, so I'm gonna say the Mac SE, I had, to be fair, I had my money that the way my parents saved for college for me, essentially they gave me a bank account and said, "This is the money we saved for you for college."

01:20:27   And that was it. So like, I could spend it on things that weren't college, but then I wouldn't be able to afford to go to college, which is an interesting approach.

01:20:36   And I was super paranoid about it and I just didn't spend money out of that account for anything.

01:20:42   But I used it to buy a Mac SE. That was the thing.

01:20:45   And I think I bought a hard drive upgrade for it at some point, which was huge because hard drives were very expensive.

01:20:53   But that Mac SE was the time where I felt like I was first exerting my own financial control to buy something for me.

01:21:01   In terms of something that was like money I earned myself for technology, I'm

01:21:10   not sure it would have been, you know, after I started working at MacUser and

01:21:14   it would have been like a mid, you know, mid-90s, early to mid-90s

01:21:18   PowerBook probably. So I will take this question as like the first money

01:21:25   that I earned because I know what that exactly went on.

01:21:30   - Oh yeah, do it.

01:21:31   - That was my entire first paycheck

01:21:35   from when I worked at the bank,

01:21:38   I spent on the white plastic MacBook.

01:21:41   - Oh.

01:21:42   - It was my entire paycheck,

01:21:43   but it was fine because I had absolutely no commitments

01:21:48   at that point financially, so like it didn't matter.

01:21:50   All I needed was to be able to just continue to get to work

01:21:53   At that point, I could walk to work.

01:21:56   So I took my entire paycheck

01:21:59   and I bought the white plastic MacBook, which was awesome.

01:22:01   I already had an iMac at that point,

01:22:03   but I went and bought the white plastic MacBook

01:22:07   and I loved that thing.

01:22:08   I really, really loved it.

01:22:10   I couldn't afford the black one because it was more money.

01:22:13   - It was more money, yeah it was.

01:22:14   - I think at that time as well, I wanted the white one.

01:22:17   Like, white Apple was still cool.

01:22:19   You know, white Apple products were still cool,

01:22:22   you know, at that point.

01:22:23   They weren't, but okay. Sure they were. iPods were still white at that time.

01:22:28   It's true. The black one was cooler, but I'm not saying what was cooler, I'm just

01:22:33   saying the white one was still cool. Okay. I always prefer the way that the

01:22:39   white one looks to the black one, personally. That was just my aesthetic at the time.

01:22:43   #MykeWasWrong. Mm-hmm. J. Lilly asked, "Is there a non-Apple

01:22:48   charger for the 12 inch MacBook. So yes and no. Because the 12 inch MacBook is USB-C,

01:22:57   it can be charged in theory by any USB-C charging device. There are battery packs that will charge

01:23:06   it, like external batteries. You can get any cable and plug it in and to any wall plug.

01:23:12   but you will have varying levels of success based upon like the voltage that the charger that you're

01:23:18   using can output so just check that basically you want to make sure that you can have something that's

01:23:23   got kind of the right voltage that can can power the thing i don't know exactly what those specs

01:23:28   are and i don't want to lead you down a path the good thing is the new um the macbook is the least

01:23:35   power required of any of the USB-C laptops so it's the easiest to find a charger for it.

01:23:42   That would be compatible but the answer short answer is yes the long answer is you might need

01:23:48   to do a bit of research but yes there are. It comes with a 29 watt USB-C power adapter so if

01:23:54   you bought a USB-C power adapter that could put out 29 watts or more then you could you can charge

01:24:00   the MacBook with it.

01:24:01   - Mm-hmm, you'll be fine.

01:24:02   - Which is, I mean, one of these sort of unsung things

01:24:05   about going to USB-C is Apple had the patent or whatever

01:24:09   on MagSafe, and so every MagSafe thing was either a hack

01:24:13   or it had to come through Apple and be approved,

01:24:15   and for a long time, maybe most of the time,

01:24:18   Apple did not do that.

01:24:19   And now, it all goes.

01:24:22   You don't have to have a battery

01:24:25   that your power cable plugs into and then goes to MagSafe.

01:24:28   Like you said, you can just have a battery pack

01:24:29   that plugs in via USB-C.

01:24:31   It's wide open now for charging USB-C MacBooks.

01:24:36   - Yep, definitely.

01:24:39   All right, Dario asks,

01:24:42   what is your and Jason's view on iPhone cases?

01:24:46   - Wow, so my view overall is that if you like a case

01:24:52   because it affects the grippiness of the phone

01:24:55   or because you can tuck stuff in it

01:24:59   or whatever the reason is, or you drop your phone all the time and you've been saved by

01:25:02   a case, then you should do it. Do what feels right for you. I think it's a very personal

01:25:08   decision. For me, I never used a case until the 6 because the 6 felt slippery like a bar

01:25:16   of soap. So for the 6 and 6S, I used the same black leather Apple case, and that made it

01:25:23   grippier. And with the 7, I've got the jet black, and it's grippy enough that I am now

01:25:28   caseless again? I think I have used a case since the 4 because I got a free case.

01:25:33   The bumper. The bumper is the best case that Apple's ever made by the way. Like the

01:25:41   struggles that that we have had in this house to try and find something like a

01:25:46   bumper for adena's iphone 6 that was that was a tough time because we I

01:25:52   fought very difficult like very hard to find one for the five right because most

01:25:56   and they look like bumpers but they have the plastic back on them, right? But she loved

01:26:00   the bumper so we found one, I ended up finding one, I think it was like Spigen or that company

01:26:05   that made that. But no such thing exists that we could really find for the 6 because the

01:26:11   phone's just not built that way to support a case of that kind. She wasn't very happy

01:26:14   about that but she does like her, she has one of the silicone cases. I am an Apple silicone

01:26:20   case person. I like Apples cases. I think that they over time the quality is improved

01:26:27   of them and like the quality of it right now is pretty good. I did accidentally kind of

01:26:31   like break mine the other day. It's got like a like a winner in it like a little crack.

01:26:35   So I got a little crack in it. So I'm just trying to ignore that for the time being because

01:26:40   I don't really want to buy another case right now. I'm not even sure if I have one for the

01:26:45   I used to have a few for the 6s+ but for the 7+ I don't have any because it has the new

01:26:54   hole right so I'd have to buy a new case which I might do. I'm going to see if I can hold

01:26:57   out right for when they do new watches because when like new watch bands because they bring

01:27:01   out new case colours. They should hopefully be in the coming month so we'll see if they

01:27:06   do that. I'm a case person just really for grippiness and for added protection especially

01:27:12   with the big phone it has the ability to jump out of my hand so I like to have that added

01:27:17   protection because I don't buy AppleCare. So yeah I am a case person. And then on a

01:27:22   similar vein Brian asked what our thoughts were on the wallet iPhone cases that carry

01:27:27   cards and cash. I don't like these. I think they add even more bulk to the device. I'm

01:27:34   not a fan of these personally. I have I saw when I was in LA the other weekend I saw somebody

01:27:40   who had a wallet case that looked really nice. It was the first one of those I'd seen in

01:27:46   a while that I thought was just like it was super thin. It had room for a couple of cards.

01:27:51   I also I think that they're depending on how you use your iPhone having a have one of those

01:27:56   cases that is front and back so it's got a little you know you flip it open so it's got

01:28:02   a cover on the front of your iPhone. I think depending on how you use your iPhone that

01:28:05   can be a really nice thing if you've got like a leather case with a that it goes in so it's

01:28:09   like your iPhone is your wallet, but it's got a couple of cards in it. My daughter keeps

01:28:13   a couple of cards tucked in the back of her case, which is I think really useful. Um,

01:28:17   but I think they're just tucked in. I think there's not, it's not built for a wallet.

01:28:21   Yeah. I know people that put like emergency cash, just take the case off, put like a couple

01:28:25   of bills and then close it up again. Right. But I'm with you. I feel like I use my phone

01:28:30   in my pocket all the time when I don't need to carry around cards. And, uh, so for me,

01:28:36   I'd rather just have a second module of thing

01:28:40   that I bring with me when I need cash and cards

01:28:42   and the rest of the time,

01:28:44   I can bring my wallet when I need my wallet

01:28:46   and otherwise I just bring my phone.

01:28:47   And I have a little tiny thin wallet.

01:28:49   So like it's not a big, super thick John Syracuse

01:28:52   a size wallet.

01:28:53   So that works better for me,

01:28:56   but it depends on if you're always leaving the house

01:28:59   with your phone and your cards and your cash,

01:29:03   then it makes sense.

01:29:03   Again, personal decision more than anything.

01:29:06   - Yeah, like when I'm at home, you know, most of the time,

01:29:10   I really don't need that.

01:29:11   - You really don't.

01:29:12   - I just don't need it.

01:29:14   - I'm fascinated by both of these things being like,

01:29:16   what's your view and where do you stand?

01:29:18   'Cause I feel like Dario and Brian are trying,

01:29:21   I see you, Brian Hamilton,

01:29:23   are trying to get us to like proclaim what is right or wrong.

01:29:29   And we're not those kinds of people.

01:29:32   - No, I would never say something is right.

01:29:35   - Okay.

01:29:36   I am not that kind of person.

01:29:40   Do what is right for you.

01:29:41   I don't think they're fundamentally good or bad.

01:29:44   Do what's right for you.

01:29:45   - That was a joke, but Myke was right.

01:29:47   It's not about fundamentals.

01:29:49   It was about factual correctness.

01:29:51   That's where it began.

01:29:52   And people think that it's about

01:29:54   me having fundamental decisions,

01:29:56   but it began with I made a proclamation

01:30:00   that Apple would unveil the iPad Pro alongside the iPhone,

01:30:03   and nobody believed me.

01:30:04   and then I kept fighting about it,

01:30:07   and it ended up that I was right,

01:30:09   and that was where it came,

01:30:10   but now it's been kind of morphed into this like,

01:30:13   ideological debate when, you know,

01:30:16   that's kind of not where it started.

01:30:17   - Right.

01:30:18   - It's just what Myke is right or wrong about,

01:30:20   like factually.

01:30:21   - Remember when the rumor was

01:30:22   that it was gonna be the iPhone 6 Math?

01:30:24   And it was because somebody had seen the six

01:30:27   and the A+ symbol and had translated that to Math?

01:30:31   - Good, I do remember that.

01:30:34   good times. That person was not right. Kevin wants to know, this is harkening back to another

01:30:41   discussion today, what are our favourite Nintendo franchises? For me it is Mario. Mario is my

01:30:46   favourite Nintendo franchise, like the standard Mario platformer game. Yeah, Mario Kart. That's

01:30:54   a great one. That's mine. Mario Kart is brilliant. I'm not kidding when I said that the thing

01:30:58   that pushed me over into buying a Wii U was Mario Kart 8, because like we had played Mario

01:31:02   cart on the Wii, Mario Kart Wii forever and ever and ever and when I realized that there

01:31:07   was a new Mario Kart coming out on the Wii U and it was compatible with all my old Wii

01:31:10   stuff too, I was like yeah let's do that because that I can't wait and it's a great game. It's

01:31:14   just such a great game. Yeah when does Mario Kart 8 Deluxe come out for the Switch? Because

01:31:21   I want to know if I'll have it when we see each other. I feel like that's also a concession

01:31:28   a little bit to the fact that a lot of people never did get the Wii U is like, "Well, okay,

01:31:33   if you get a Switch, you can play Mario Kart 8 plus some extra stuff."

01:31:37   Myke G

01:31:48   Unfortunately, it's the end of April.

01:31:50   say we're also going to record an episode of Upgrade Live in London, probably in MegaOffice,

01:31:55   which is very exciting, on a Tuesday, probably, because I'll be jet-lagged on the Monday,

01:32:02   and that seems like a bad idea to do a podcast right after I step off of an international

01:32:07   flight.

01:32:08   So...

01:32:09   - Yeah, that was on the table, and I immediately vetoed that.

01:32:13   - But I'm gonna be...that means I'm gonna be at your house, I'm gonna see MegaOffice,

01:32:16   I'm going to be able to see that Nintendo Switch and I don't know what else, what other

01:32:20   wonders will await me in Myke's house.

01:32:24   I'll line up a set of things to show you.

01:32:27   Like when you're in school and your friend was coming over for the first time and you

01:32:32   would line up all of the things you wanted to show him, that's what I'm going to do for

01:32:35   you.

01:32:36   You're going to get to see all my cool stuff.

01:32:39   And Matt asked today, finally, if Apple could bring one Pro Mac app to the iPad this year,

01:32:44   which one should they do? I'm not going to answer which they should do, I'm going to

01:32:48   say which one I want and it would be logic.

01:32:53   Fair enough. I would probably consider using logic, although, you know, Ferrite does everything

01:33:02   I need in a logic-like way, and so I don't feel like I need to move on to something else.

01:33:09   I heard you talking to Marco and you said that Ferrite, you tried it again and it didn't

01:33:14   I don't really understand this. I spent an hour trying to just cut a track, just trim it.

01:33:21   I couldn't work it out and I couldn't find the answer in the guides. Maybe I'll sit, I'll just,

01:33:28   I'll have to sit down with you and just step you through it myself. What I want is an application

01:33:33   that's a relearn, right? That's why I want logic. Like I just want an app that has all the same

01:33:38   keyboard shortcuts. I don't know why the Ferrite developer hasn't used the keyboard shortcuts from

01:33:45   an app like Logic. GarageBand and Logix are also similar. That's true, and I don't use Ferrite with

01:33:50   a keyboard. So I feel like, you know, maybe there should have been. The gesture UI just didn't gel

01:33:57   with me. All right, so I would say that I would take Logic mostly, I think, for compatibility

01:34:03   reasons. Right now the problem I have with editing things in Ferrite is that they can only be

01:34:08   in Fair Write, and if I start editing a project in Logic and then need to go on the road,

01:34:12   I can't take it with me. So having Logic there for compatibility reasons would be great.

01:34:18   I see the appeal of Final Cut, right, where like the iPad Pro has a lot of capability.

01:34:23   It could be a pretty great video editor beyond what iMovie has.

01:34:28   - Final Cut should be the one that they do. But it's not the one that I would want the

01:34:32   most.

01:34:33   - Yeah, and then Xcode is an interesting question.

01:34:36   I think that there's so much baggage with Xcode.

01:34:39   I'm gonna make a wacky prediction,

01:34:41   which is I don't think Xcode will ever come to the iPad.

01:34:44   I think Apple will do a development environment

01:34:47   for the iPad, but I don't think it'll be Xcode per se.

01:34:51   Maybe they'll call it that. - I think they'll call it Xcode.

01:34:53   - They might call it Xcode,

01:34:54   but it's not gonna be Mac Xcode.

01:34:56   It is gonna have so many different limitations

01:34:59   in the ways it works because the platforms are so different.

01:35:02   I just, I think that, and because it is Xcode, I don't know.

01:35:06   They may not call it that.

01:35:08   They may call it something completely different.

01:35:09   We'll see.

01:35:10   - It depends what the priority is.

01:35:12   Like if what they're trying to do is move people,

01:35:15   then they'll call it Xcode.

01:35:16   But if they're trying to like,

01:35:18   say that they've got a new way of doing things,

01:35:21   they'll give it a new name.

01:35:22   You know? - Yeah.

01:35:24   - 'Cause it really depends. - Swift code.

01:35:25   - Swift code.

01:35:27   X-Swift.

01:35:28   Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode

01:35:30   of

01:35:46   Incapsula and Blue Apron. Again, if you want to come and hang out with us in London on

01:35:53   April the 5th, then you want to go and hit the link in the show notes and you can do

01:35:58   that. Thanks so much for listening as always and we'll be back next time. Until then,

01:36:04   say goodbye Mr Snell. Goodbye everybody!

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