Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Intro music]

00:00:09 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 120.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Casper, FreshBooks and Encapsula.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined, as I always am, by Mr Jason Snell.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hello Myke, how are you?

00:00:24 ◼   ► I am very well Mr Jason Snell, how are you sir?

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm doing just fine. Weathering the brutal weather conditions of December in the Bay Area.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Good luck with that.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Temperatures near or slightly below freezing. Shocking.

00:00:43 ◼   ► You don't want to do that, Jason. You need those hands to be limber, not to be cold.

00:00:49 ◼   ► You've got to be able to type out all the words.

00:00:52 ◼   ► I know for typing. I gotta get my typing figures nice and warm. Yeah, it's true. How are you? How

00:00:56 ◼   ► How is your home?

00:00:58 ◼   ► How is your new home?

00:01:00 ◼   ► Very good, actually.

00:01:01 ◼   ► We've completely moved in now.

00:01:02 ◼   ► We live here.

00:01:03 ◼   ► It isn't just a place that we own that we were sometimes visiting.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Like last week, I was still just visiting, but we moved in on Wednesday, we're settling

00:01:12 ◼   ► in.

00:01:13 ◼   ► It's a very stressful, very busy time, it turns out, moving into a home.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Funny.

00:01:19 ◼   ► It is funny how things like that work.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Well, what you should do is combine that with something like the holiday season to add a

00:01:24 ◼   ► little stress.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Is there a holiday season coming up?

00:01:27 ◼   ► Turns out, uh-huh.

00:01:29 ◼   ► This is, we came to the realization this weekend that we haven't bought any presents for anybody.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Shocker.

00:01:35 ◼   ► It's just not something I'm thinking about.

00:01:37 ◼   ► And people are saying to me, family members are saying, "Oh, what would you like for Christmas?"

00:01:40 ◼   ► It's like, I have no idea.

00:01:42 ◼   ► I don't know what I need in my life anymore.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Housewarming presents, I guess.

00:01:46 ◼   ► So I've just been asking everybody this holiday season for the most exciting of gifts, gift

00:01:51 ◼   ► cards and gift vouchers.

00:01:53 ◼   ► Oh, nice.

00:01:54 ◼   ► is I don't know what I need, but what I know I need is money, you know, because I need

00:02:00 ◼   ► to buy more things for the home. And I don't want to ask anyone for cash, so there's a

00:02:06 ◼   ► nice department store that I like which has lots of fancy little things in it that we're

00:02:10 ◼   ► gonna, we've asked for gift vouchers for, and then we'll go around and we'll buy like

00:02:13 ◼   ► spoons and towels and stuff.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Sure. Sure, I do. Well, you know, my tip to you if you're worried about giving gifts to

00:02:21 ◼   ► other people is, especially because of the configuration of the holidays this year, consider

00:02:27 ◼   ► "Happy New Year" gifts. That gives you an entire extra week. When you receive our Christmas

00:02:34 ◼   ► card this year, Myke, you'll find, and there were air quotes there that you couldn't see,

00:02:38 ◼   ► you'll find that it says "Happy New Year" and we were like, "Extra week."

00:02:43 ◼   ► Yeah, you just get a little bit more time. I don't know how popular it would be around

00:02:48 ◼   ► dinner table though. No gifts for anybody. I had considered buying things for the home

00:02:54 ◼   ► and dedicating them to people. Oh, well that's an interesting approach. You, thank you for

00:03:00 ◼   ► the top half of this blender. It is the Aunt May memorial couch that we've bought here,

00:03:07 ◼   ► so you'll be remembered forever, Aunt May. I don't have an Aunt May. No, Spiderman is

00:03:12 ◼   ► the one you're thinking of there. I don't know, my secret identity is out. Are you Spiderman,

00:03:17 ◼   ► Are you Spider-Man UK?

00:03:19 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:03:21 ◼   ► Oh, the Benger office is coming along though.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Okay.

00:03:25 ◼   ► I have furniture in here now.

00:03:26 ◼   ► What's changed in the box? What's changed in the office?

00:03:29 ◼   ► I have a chair, so I'm sitting down this week.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Good.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Because I was standing last week, and I didn't enjoy standing for the entire episode.

00:03:37 ◼   ► And I have storage.

00:03:39 ◼   ► So I have storage, I have this big storage cabinet. I went and been to IKEA a lot.

00:03:43 ◼   ► I have this like shelved storage cabinet for all of my pens and notebooks and little bits and bobs

00:03:47 ◼   ► Then I have a gaming center

00:03:50 ◼   ► I have all of my games consoles and board games and stuff and then I have like a general storage and I have drawers

00:03:56 ◼   ► I have a sticker drawer, of course. I have a cable drawer

00:04:00 ◼   ► and a power drawer all sorts of cables and things and I'm happy because it's all coming together and it is a

00:04:08 ◼   ► big difference to have a

00:04:12 ◼   ► dedicated place for me to be able to work in.

00:04:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:04:18 ◼   ► That feeling is really, really nice as opposed to just closing the door on the

00:04:25 ◼   ► bedroom and that being the place.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And once we get the remaining parts of our furniture, I have a small sofa being

00:04:32 ◼   ► delivered here for the office and then we have a larger sofa for the front room.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And once they're in, that's going to be really great because I like to do some

00:04:39 ◼   ► work outside of the office environment.

00:04:42 ◼   ► So like, you know, in the morning and stuff, as I'm booting up, I will work in the front

00:04:45 ◼   ► room on the big sofa, and then I have a sofa in here.

00:04:48 ◼   ► Because I like to be able to...

00:04:50 ◼   ► Because I'm an iPad worker, desks aren't really the best.

00:04:55 ◼   ► No, no, I keep thinking about that.

00:04:58 ◼   ► I keep thinking about one of these days, seeing if I can find...

00:05:02 ◼   ► I don't think they make them a little like a mounting arm for my iPad Pro so that I could

00:05:08 ◼   ► use it at the desk because I think that would be kind of fun, but they're not made for that.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Elevation Labs have just created a product called the Draft Table for iPad Pro. I'm very tempted

00:05:22 ◼   ► to try one of these because this would be how I could use it at a desk or a table more comfortably.

00:05:29 ◼   ► So I have a corner desk and I thought about having the large side of my desk be the iMac part and

00:05:36 ◼   ► And then the smaller part of the desk being the iPad area.

00:05:40 ◼   ► And this draft table thing looks really nice.

00:05:44 ◼   ► And I'm thinking about maybe trying to get one of these

00:05:48 ◼   ► and try it out.

00:05:48 ◼   ► But yeah, I do find that working on the sofa

00:05:53 ◼   ► is much nicer for using an iPad.

00:05:57 ◼   ► 'Cause you can recline and you can move around more easily.

00:06:00 ◼   ► The ergonomics of iOS devices, I think,

00:06:04 ◼   ► has yet to be fully discovered, right?

00:06:07 ◼   ► Like how people that work on them a lot

00:06:10 ◼   ► feel with them over time.

00:06:12 ◼   ► But one thing that I find for me

00:06:15 ◼   ► that at least makes me feel more comfortable

00:06:17 ◼   ► when I'm using my iPad is that I'm able to sit

00:06:21 ◼   ► in many different areas on many different types of chairs

00:06:24 ◼   ► and can make myself feel more comfortable that way.

00:06:26 ◼   ► And at least that's how I like to work.

00:06:28 ◼   ► So once everything's in, that's gonna be great.

00:06:30 ◼   ► But just right now, this is like my place

00:06:35 ◼   ► to record the shows and I was editing some video earlier

00:06:38 ◼   ► and I was responding to some emails

00:06:40 ◼   ► and I'm kind of setting it all up

00:06:42 ◼   ► and I have some charging stations going in place.

00:06:44 ◼   ► And I'm just very happy to finally have a dedicated

00:06:49 ◼   ► workspace to call my own.

00:06:51 ◼   ► It's a great feeling.

00:06:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a big deal to do that.

00:06:55 ◼   ► I, you know, when we set up the office here in the garage,

00:06:58 ◼   ► That was a big change for me to be able to not just

00:07:01 ◼   ► sort of steal space in the corner of the living room

00:07:03 ◼   ► or in the bedroom.

00:07:05 ◼   ► And yeah, I did my podcast recording in the bedroom.

00:07:07 ◼   ► I would do writing in the bedroom and like, that's fine,

00:07:11 ◼   ► except, you know, that's not a private space

00:07:15 ◼   ► in any real way and there's like stuff in there.

00:07:19 ◼   ► And so then there were interruptions and, you know,

00:07:21 ◼   ► and then you go to bed and you just, you didn't leave.

00:07:24 ◼   ► So that's not great either.

00:07:25 ◼   ► So yeah, that's great.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I have a piece of long-term follow-up for something we spoke about a very long time ago,

00:07:33 ◼   ► which was Amazon's drone delivery system.

00:07:36 ◼   ► I had no idea this was happening, but I saw some news over the end of last week

00:07:43 ◼   ► that Amazon have a trial, like a private trial going on in the UK,

00:07:49 ◼   ► with just a handful of customers, it's like two or three people right now,

00:07:53 ◼   ► where they're doing drone delivery.

00:07:55 ◼   ► with the idea that over the next few months they're gonna hope to expand this out to

00:08:02 ◼   ► they say dozens more people. So the reason this is happening in the United Kingdom

00:08:07 ◼   ► is that drone regulations are more favorable for what Amazon are trying to do here and there's two

00:08:13 ◼   ► two specific things that are beneficial. One is that the UK air regulation system

00:08:21 ◼   ► I'm trying to find what it's actually called but I can't find it but let's just call it

00:08:25 ◼   ► Let's call it the UK drone regulation system, that seems correct.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Sure.

00:08:29 ◼   ► That is allowed for drones to fly out of public eyeline, right, which is a great thing so you

00:08:36 ◼   ► don't have to see them or hear them because they can be flown commercially at that kind of altitude.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And that also one person can control multiple drones at the same time. Now, this is good for

00:08:49 ◼   ► Amazon, like their drones can sense and avoid obstacles, so they say that the safety is there.

00:08:55 ◼   ► But apparently the FAA, my understanding is they won't allow one person to control multiple drones.

00:09:00 ◼   ► So at that point it's kind of pointless for Amazon, right? Like you just have one person controlling one drone.

00:09:06 ◼   ► I don't know how much that's really gonna help them

00:09:08 ◼   ► other than just the speed and I don't think they care about the speed so much. The speed is for us. For them

00:09:15 ◼   ► it's delivering things without

00:09:17 ◼   ► with less human beings involved, less salaries to pay. I think that's Amazon's primary reason for doing this.

00:09:24 ◼   ► But the first order was for an Amazon Fire TV stick and a bag of popcorn and it arrived

00:09:31 ◼   ► 13 minutes after the order was placed by the person.

00:09:36 ◼   ► I think this is awesome.

00:09:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw that.

00:09:39 ◼   ► I saw that and the video, because Amazon was in the house and was at the launch site and

00:09:45 ◼   ► they had a drone following the drone, taking video of the drone.

00:09:51 ◼   ► But they're going over fields.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:54 ◼   ► And things like that.

00:09:56 ◼   ► So you got the sense too that this is in a not very densely populated region.

00:10:02 ◼   ► No, this is in a more rural area, and it looks like they're in a more rural area of the more

00:10:08 ◼   ► rural area.

00:10:09 ◼   ► They're in Cambridge in England.

00:10:12 ◼   ► And I think they've made the right choice.

00:10:14 ◼   ► This is a place, they have a distribution center nearby.

00:10:18 ◼   ► It's not very densely populated, so if there are any problems, it's less likely to injure

00:10:22 ◼   ► somebody and also their drone looks like it is covered in foam. So it looks more like

00:10:30 ◼   ► a flying foam box than anything else. But yeah, I think I'm excited about this. I remain

00:10:38 ◼   ► excited about this. I think that this will be a cool thing whenever Amazon are able to

00:10:45 ◼   ► do it. Have you changed your mind at all on this, Jason?

00:10:51 ◼   ► Well, okay, so as I recall, what I said at the time was that it seemed impractical. And

00:10:58 ◼   ► I continue to believe it seems impractical, but boy, they're spending a lot of time on

00:11:01 ◼   ► it. So I can see, again, in dense areas, I have a lot harder time seeing this, but I

00:11:07 ◼   ► could see this for delivery in less populated areas. This makes more sense to me for people

00:11:12 ◼   ► who live kind of out in the middle of nowhere to get things delivered to them that otherwise

00:11:17 ◼   ► they might not have access to than it does for people in dense areas. Like if you're

00:11:21 ◼   ► someplace where you don't have a nearby store, it's going to be a half an hour drive to find

00:11:27 ◼   ► a store and the store doesn't have very much in it. My sister-in-law lives in a place kind

00:11:30 ◼   ► of like that. Then I can especially see the value of providing access to something like

00:11:35 ◼   ► this. But at that level, I'm not sure that there are enough people to make it worth the

00:11:39 ◼   ► while of somebody like Amazon to serve them. So I just I'm wondering what the sweet spot

00:11:43 ◼   ► is it suburbs maybe where it's dense but not too dense so that there are lots of people

00:11:48 ◼   ► but there's also still sort of room to maneuver. I don't know. It's fun that they're trying

00:11:53 ◼   ► it and not just sort of poo-pooing it saying no let's try it maybe drones is a solution.

00:12:02 ◼   ► There is one last piece of follow-up today. The upgrade is still available for voting

00:12:07 ◼   ► in until the 23rd of December. That is when we're going to be shutting down the voting

00:12:12 ◼   ► for the third annual upgradees. We've had many many many responses so far. Over 350 people,

00:12:19 ◼   ► over 350 upgradeans have submitted their responses. You can go in, you can vote for the

00:12:24 ◼   ► choices that we have selected or you can select your own nominations for the categories and then

00:12:30 ◼   ► me and Jason will be going through it all and we will be using your votes as a way to help

00:12:36 ◼   ► inform the winners. As we mentioned before, I want to just make this very clear, this is not a

00:12:42 ◼   ► democratic process. Your votes as the Upgradians will be entered into helping me and Jason

00:12:49 ◼   ► make the decision as to which item, company, thing will take home each Upgrady in the category.

00:12:58 ◼   ► So I continue to be very excited for this year's Upgradies.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Please, please do that. We are so the morning Pacific time of Friday the 23rd really. So

00:13:11 ◼   ► if you're in the if you're in the US by the end of Thursday the 22nd please get your votes

00:13:15 ◼   ► in and then that show will air on January 2nd. Or as I said the first of the year by

00:13:21 ◼   ► which I mean January 2nd. I had one other piece of it's not quite follow up.

00:13:26 ◼   ► We're into the follow-up section.

00:13:29 ◼   ► I guess. I just wanted to mention, because we talk--it's one of those things that there

00:13:34 ◼   ► are people who read six colors and there are people who listen to this podcast and there

00:13:39 ◼   ► are people who do both. But I think if you're a podcast listener and you're interested in

00:13:43 ◼   ► how podcasts get made, you might be curious about this even if you're not a regular reader

00:13:47 ◼   ► of things written about technology on the internet. So we'll put a link in the show

00:13:52 ◼   ► notes. I did another editing video a couple years ago. I did a video where I captured

00:13:56 ◼   ► myself editing the incomparable and logic on my Mac just so that I had like a time-lapse

00:14:03 ◼   ► version I could do saying like here's how this looks, here's the whole process. And

00:14:08 ◼   ► I did that last week for an episode of Clockwise where I edited the whole episode on my iPad

00:14:13 ◼   ► Pro using Ferrite and I captured the whole thing and then I sort of annotated it and

00:14:21 ◼   ► most of it's in sort of time-lapse mode although I slow down at a few points to point out very

00:14:25 ◼   ► specific things that I'm doing. So if you are curious about what it looks like to edit

00:14:29 ◼   ► a podcast, especially edit a podcast on an iPad, you can check that out because I thought

00:14:35 ◼   ► that would be a useful document to have. So that's what it is.

00:14:39 ◼   ► >> You know what I would love? I'm fascinated by the video. And the reason that I would

00:14:44 ◼   ► love this is because I want to get better with using something like Ferrite is to see

00:14:49 ◼   ► what you're doing.

00:14:50 ◼   ► I, you know, I gave some thought to setting up like a camera behind me, taking, uh, looking

00:14:58 ◼   ► at my hand gestures and stuff while I was editing it and sync it with the capture. And

00:15:03 ◼   ► I may do that at some point, but for this one, I didn't have the time or, you know,

00:15:08 ◼   ► will to do that.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Yeah. No, I get that because that's a, that's quite a production.

00:15:13 ◼   ► It's a complicated setup to do. Well, I mean, I, I've got, I've got a, you know, tall tripod

00:15:17 ◼   ► that I can put over my shoulder. But it means that I need to hold the iPad steady instead

00:15:23 ◼   ► of like you were saying. You can kind of shift it around and be comfortable with it. I would

00:15:29 ◼   ► have to make sure of the angles and all that. It's just more complicated but I may do that

00:15:33 ◼   ► at some point because what you can't see in an iOS video is the hand gestures and things

00:15:38 ◼   ► like that that are happening behind the scenes.

00:15:41 ◼   ► All right, this week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Encapsula.

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00:16:42 ◼   ► And when you're thinking about it, you run a website, you run it some sort of property

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00:16:48 ◼   ► These services are great, but if they're closed over important periods of time, especially

00:16:52 ◼   ► if you own a store, you know, like people are buying things over Christmas, you want

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00:16:57 ◼   ► And you also want to make sure that if you've got any problems, that you've got somebody

00:17:01 ◼   ► to talk to and a 24/7 support team at Encapsula will do that for you. As a listener of this

00:17:06 ◼   ► show you can get one whole month of service for free. All you need to do is go to Encapsula.com/upgrade

00:17:12 ◼   ► that's I-N-C-A-P-S-U-L-A.com/upgrade this is where you'll find out more and claim your

00:17:19 ◼   ► free month. Thank you so much to Encapsula for their support of this show and Real AFM.

00:17:27 ◼   ► Okay, so it is Monday the 19th of December today.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Today is the day in which people are able

00:17:36 ◼   ► to get their hands on AirPods.

00:17:38 ◼   ► They are available in very limited supply

00:17:41 ◼   ► in Apple retail stores,

00:17:42 ◼   ► and many people are receiving deliveries today.

00:17:45 ◼   ► My AirPods are out for delivery right now.

00:17:47 ◼   ► They may even arrive before the end of the episode.

00:17:51 ◼   ► But some people out there in the world,

00:17:54 ◼   ► the lucky few have had them for longer than that.

00:17:57 ◼   ► And Jason Snell, you are one of those people.

00:17:59 ◼   ► - I am.

00:18:01 ◼   ► - There he goes, clicking his little case.

00:18:03 ◼   ► - My little floss case thing.

00:18:05 ◼   ► - So I wanna know, when did you get the AirPods?

00:18:08 ◼   ► How much time did you have to spend with them?

00:18:10 ◼   ► - I got them, I wanna say Thursday.

00:18:13 ◼   ► I just stuck one in my ear.

00:18:15 ◼   ► - Oh, nice. - You probably couldn't

00:18:16 ◼   ► hear that. - Nope, didn't hear it.

00:18:17 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:18:18 ◼   ► - I'm not using them for this podcast.

00:18:20 ◼   ► I got them, yeah, I wanna say Thursday

00:18:22 ◼   ► and have been using them, you know, on and off ever since,

00:18:25 ◼   ► walking the dog and stuff like that, and cooking,

00:18:28 ◼   ► doing the dishes, all that sort of thing.

00:18:32 ◼   ► So yeah, spending time with them.

00:18:34 ◼   ► - Now you're an interesting case for these

00:18:35 ◼   ► because you use very specific type of headphones

00:18:38 ◼   ► most of the time, don't you?

00:18:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I'm usually using,

00:18:41 ◼   ► well, it's less true than it was.

00:18:43 ◼   ► I usually use in-ear monitors,

00:18:48 ◼   ► so they're, you know, they custom silicone things

00:18:52 ◼   ► shape to the shape of my ear that they go in. So they're like they block the sound and

00:18:56 ◼   ► all of that. For being out in the world, I have a pair of Bluetooth headphones that are

00:19:03 ◼   ► basically earbuds. They're sort of canal phones, but they don't go in very far. They're the

00:19:09 ◼   ► Bluebird or yeah, Bluebuds, Jaybird Bluebuds, something like that. And they're fine. They're

00:19:16 ◼   ► you know, they're traditional, they've got a cord between them, right? That's a big difference that

00:19:22 ◼   ► the earpods have over those kinds of things. The earpods are in this new category where there are

00:19:28 ◼   ► a handful of products now where each individual earbud is its own thing. So I've been using those

00:19:33 ◼   ► the Bluebuds out in the world for walking the dog and running and things like that for the last

00:19:39 ◼   ► year plus. I kind of got them because I wanted a set of Bluetooth headphones to test with iOS

00:19:45 ◼   ► and with the watch and stuff like that and so that I've been using those so I have not

00:19:49 ◼   ► been using my you know block out all the sound so I can't hear when that person is coming

00:19:54 ◼   ► up behind me to run into me with their bicycle yeah I haven't been I haven't been doing that

00:19:59 ◼   ► for a while now so that's my you know so it wasn't as big of a transition to go to these

00:20:05 ◼   ► as it would have been if I hadn't been using the other Bluetooth headphones.

00:20:10 ◼   ► use these for a few days and I have a lot of specific questions for you but one thing

00:20:15 ◼   ► that I'm wondering about is have you kind of really understood why Apple decided to

00:20:23 ◼   ► make these as two separate earbuds unconnected?

00:20:26 ◼   ► Oh yeah, oh yeah. I mean this is, I will get into this when I'm, this is great because

00:20:30 ◼   ► I haven't written my review yet so these, thank you for working, this is like my little

00:20:35 ◼   ► review therapy here.

00:20:36 ◼   ► So we're workshopping.

00:20:37 ◼   ► We're working for all these points with me.

00:20:38 ◼   ► We're workshopping.

00:20:39 ◼   ► stopping. That happens from time to time. Well, the Bluebuds. So the Bluebuds are really

00:20:44 ◼   ► nice Bluetooth headphones. They're not cheap. And you have two configurations you can wear

00:20:51 ◼   ► them in. You can either wear them where the, you know, they go in your ears and the little

00:20:56 ◼   ► cable that connects them that's got a clicker on it dangles down in front of you almost

00:21:02 ◼   ► like a necklace or something.

00:21:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, and this is the same as JBirds newer ones like the X2 and the X3.

00:21:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, this is how you have to do it. They're one unit, so they have to be,

00:21:12 ◼   ► even though the little things are in your ears, they're not really wireless in the sense that

00:21:15 ◼   ► there is a wire running between them. So you can do that, and then, and what I found when I started

00:21:21 ◼   ► doing that was, and we talked about it on the show, is that they bounced around and it was kind

00:21:25 ◼   ► of annoying, and if I ran, they really bounced around and it was super annoying. And a listener

00:21:31 ◼   ► to upgrade said, well, I mean, that's why they ship that little plastic clip with it

00:21:35 ◼   ► is so that you can basically fold the cable back on itself until it's very short, and

00:21:42 ◼   ► then you wear them behind your head, and you adjust it so that they're basically, you plug

00:21:47 ◼   ► them into your ears, and then they run behind your head and connect, and there's no slack.

00:21:54 ◼   ► It's all just, you know, there's nothing to bounce around because it's just sort of like

00:21:57 ◼   ► sitting on the back of your head. And I moved mine to that configuration and was a lot happier.

00:22:02 ◼   ► Now there are downsides to that, which is the button is now behind your head, the microphone

00:22:06 ◼   ► is behind your head, so if somebody calls you, you can't really talk to them using this

00:22:09 ◼   ► approach. But for activity, especially running, but even walking, it made it feel a lot more

00:22:16 ◼   ► like I didn't have this wire bouncing around. But, you know, so that was better, but it

00:22:22 ◼   ► It still had drawbacks and that's the bottom line is that the most natural way to have

00:22:30 ◼   ► wireless headphones is to have them not, or wireless earbuds anyway, is to have them not

00:22:37 ◼   ► connected to each other.

00:22:40 ◼   ► Because you think wireless, you're thinking, "I stick something in this ear, I stick something

00:22:43 ◼   ► in that ear, and that's it."

00:22:44 ◼   ► Not "I stick something in this ear and that ear with a cable connecting them."

00:22:48 ◼   ► It makes a big difference, it really does.

00:22:50 ◼   ► You see, I don't know if I would have ever imagined this design.

00:22:54 ◼   ► And I've never used headphones like this.

00:22:56 ◼   ► You know, I've always used headphones that either have a piece of plastic in between

00:22:59 ◼   ► them or a cable connecting them.

00:23:02 ◼   ► Like this wouldn't have been what I would have ever imagined Apple's Bluetooth headphones

00:23:09 ◼   ► to really be.

00:23:10 ◼   ► You know, I was expecting something that would have like a little cable and we spoke about

00:23:14 ◼   ► this a long time ago that you don't plug and you plug it into a lightning port, you know,

00:23:17 ◼   ► and you charge it that way.

00:23:19 ◼   ► That's what I always thought, and maybe it's because I've never used a Bluetooth earbud

00:23:24 ◼   ► before like that, so I didn't maybe understand the shortcomings of, the frustrations of still

00:23:30 ◼   ► having a cable.

00:23:32 ◼   ► But the problem is, what you gain in upside presents new downsides, and I guess the new

00:23:38 ◼   ► downsides is they're easier to lose, right?

00:23:41 ◼   ► I mean, they've got to be, surely, easier to lose.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Certainly.

00:23:47 ◼   ► I mean, there are two of them.

00:23:49 ◼   ► So your chance of misplacing one of them goes up

00:23:52 ◼   ► because now you have to keep track of two.

00:23:54 ◼   ► I saw somebody on Twitter today say that like literally

00:23:57 ◼   ► they dropped one of the AirPods down the drain first thing.

00:24:02 ◼   ► I mean, you do have to be careful with them.

00:24:05 ◼   ► I had, I dropped one, I forget where I dropped one,

00:24:08 ◼   ► but I dropped one and I thought, wow, that would have been,

00:24:10 ◼   ► oh, it was while I was picking up my dog's poop.

00:24:13 ◼   ► And I dropped one of them and it went,

00:24:16 ◼   ► It didn't go in the poop, everybody.

00:24:17 ◼   ► It's okay.

00:24:18 ◼   ► But it went, but it went in the tall grass.

00:24:20 ◼   ► It went in the tall grass and I had to like search around in the tall grass.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Um, but the good news is they don't, they don't.

00:24:28 ◼   ► We can come back to this maybe, but they don't fall out.

00:24:30 ◼   ► Uh, on the drop of a hat, they actually don't fall out very much at all.

00:24:35 ◼   ► If, I mean, basically I was falling, I had things falling out because I was

00:24:40 ◼   ► bumping them, not because they just naturally wiggled out of my ears.

00:24:44 ◼   ► So that's a difference.

00:24:45 ◼   ► But yes, there is more of an opportunity to lose them than if they're tied together,

00:24:50 ◼   ► because then you've got one long, you know, headphone object instead of two little tiny

00:24:56 ◼   ► floating earbud objects.

00:24:59 ◼   ► So yeah, that is true.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And when I think about when the headphones or earphones fall out for me, funnily enough,

00:25:09 ◼   ► the time when it happens the most is when I might be on public transport and somebody

00:25:13 ◼   ► catches their arm on the cable.

00:25:15 ◼   ► So, like, a lot of the time when I may lose an earbud, actually, it wouldn't happen

00:25:22 ◼   ► for that reason.

00:25:24 ◼   ► And that goes, that connects to the reason that they don't fall out.

00:25:26 ◼   ► I mean, I think the big change here in terms of, like, the physics of headphones is that

00:25:34 ◼   ► without the cables pulling down, whether you're thinking of a different set of wireless headphones

00:25:39 ◼   ► that are connected to one another, or if you're thinking about a set of wired headphones,

00:25:44 ◼   ► the cable stretching down or stretching across is exerting a force and these earpods don't

00:25:54 ◼   ► have the cable. So they don't have that downforce that's trying to pull them out of your ears

00:25:59 ◼   ► along the length of that whole cable going down to wherever the cable is connected. And

00:26:03 ◼   ► it makes a difference. It makes a big difference in terms of feel and in terms of comfort with

00:26:10 ◼   ► the stability of them, that they stay put in a way that I've never found Apple earbuds

00:26:17 ◼   ► to stay put before.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Yeah, this isn't necessarily something that I would have assumed either, right? That the

00:26:24 ◼   ► cable is presenting some kind of force?

00:26:27 ◼   ► No, no, I mean it is, but I never would have thought that it was a substantial enough thing

00:26:33 ◼   ► to make a dramatic difference in the feel of the earbuds in your ears and the likelihood

00:26:37 ◼   ► that they're going to fall out.

00:26:39 ◼   ► But it's interesting that that's clearly a thing and I've put in the show notes a gif

00:26:43 ◼   ► that you created that you posted on Twitter of you shaking your head side to side.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Oh good.

00:26:48 ◼   ► And they wouldn't, they didn't come out.

00:26:49 ◼   ► And it's a great gif of you.

00:26:52 ◼   ► So many reasons, it's just fantastic.

00:26:56 ◼   ► I make gifs on the internet now.

00:26:57 ◼   ► That's what I do.

00:26:58 ◼   ► That's my job now.

00:26:59 ◼   ► It's your gob now I think.

00:27:01 ◼   ► Isn't that how it works?

00:27:03 ◼   ► Sure.

00:27:04 ◼   ► So it looks like there is an element of… because it doesn't look like they've changed

00:27:10 ◼   ► the design too much, right?

00:27:13 ◼   ► They look just like ear pods.

00:27:15 ◼   ► Oh yeah, the in-ear next to your ear part is exactly the same as far as I can tell in

00:27:21 ◼   ► terms of the shape.

00:27:22 ◼   ► But they're lighter, I guess, and they have less force being applied to them, which means

00:27:26 ◼   ► that they're more likely to stick in the ear, which is great.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And I guess, you know, the heaviest part is what's resting inside of her ear.

00:27:34 ◼   ► So I guess that's why they're sticking in, so that's interesting.

00:27:38 ◼   ► What do you think about the size of them?

00:27:40 ◼   ► Because every time I look at a picture, the stems look weird.

00:27:45 ◼   ► They look weird to me.

00:27:48 ◼   ► I guess it takes some getting used to.

00:27:50 ◼   ► That's, I mean, I sort of feel like that's a problem for other people.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Because you don't see them.

00:27:57 ◼   ► an interesting way to look at it. It's like other people have to look at them but you

00:28:01 ◼   ► don't have to because they're in your ears and you can't see them there but they are

00:28:08 ◼   ► noticeably different because the beams or whatever you want to call them the long part

00:28:15 ◼   ► is thicker than a cable running to a pair of ear pods. But, you know, it's, I don't

00:28:27 ◼   ► know, it just is different. It's not dramatic, but it is, it's definitely different. And

00:28:33 ◼   ► they have to have that, you know, that extension part down, that's where the microphone is,

00:28:38 ◼   ► you know, but, and you need something to hold on to. I mean, that's really the part that

00:28:42 ◼   ► you grab and pull it out of your ear too using that part there. But it's going to take some

00:28:49 ◼   ► getting used to for people who have never seen them before. They're going to be like,

00:28:54 ◼   ► "Oh, that looks different. You don't have cables running out of your ears. You just

00:28:56 ◼   ► have these things that stop." And that's what they look like, right? They look like they're

00:29:00 ◼   ► beginning to progress down like a cabled version would and then there's no more cable after

00:29:05 ◼   ► that.

00:29:06 ◼   ► I remember, I expect I'm going to have the exact same feeling about wearing these in

00:29:11 ◼   ► public as I did when I got my first iPhone and my first Apple Watch. The kind of uncomfortable

00:29:18 ◼   ► feeling of people are going to be looking at me and they're going to either think that

00:29:23 ◼   ► that thing is weird or they're going to know what it is and they're going to keep looking.

00:29:29 ◼   ► Because you won't miss these things, I don't think.

00:29:31 ◼   ► I had the same feeling walking the dog, the same exact feeling, which is I'm on the dog

00:29:37 ◼   ► path. I'm like, you know, if somebody knows what these are, they will, you know, they

00:29:42 ◼   ► will spot that I've got them and know that I have the new Apple AirPods. And that will

00:29:48 ◼   ► happen for a little while because this is kind of -- it's not new tech, but because

00:29:52 ◼   ► it's from Apple, it will be much more broadly seen tech than --

00:29:55 ◼   ► It's new enough, like the idea of earphones that are not connected.

00:30:01 ◼   ► But you know, the idea that, yeah, I just wanted to make that point that these aren't

00:30:06 ◼   ► first, right? There are others out there that do this, but this is going to be the one that

00:30:11 ◼   ► most people will have the first interaction with.

00:30:13 ◼   ► Yeah, this is going to be widely adopted and the others are not.

00:30:16 ◼   ► Exactly. Exactly. And popularized by Apple. And so that's going to change, you know, if

00:30:21 ◼   ► you get these, you're going to have those conversations with people like, "Oh, are those

00:30:25 ◼   ► earphones? Are those Apple earphones? How does that work? There's no cord." You know,

00:30:29 ◼   ► Plus you will be spotted as like you've got one of those.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Just like when the Apple Watch came out it was like that too.

00:30:35 ◼   ► And when you had an iPod with iPod headphones it was like that too.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Like all of these scenarios where you get something that's kind of new looking and you

00:30:42 ◼   ► wear them out in public that you're going to get that.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Some people are going to recognize it.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Other people will not notice at all because a lot of people don't notice things.

00:30:52 ◼   ► We'll talk about Star Wars later.

00:30:54 ◼   ► When I, whenever I leave the house, I take my ear pods with me. They're always just,

00:31:02 ◼   ► they just go in my pocket. So I'm ready at a moment's notice to listen to something

00:31:06 ◼   ► if I want to, because that's just the kind of person that I am. I assume many of our

00:31:10 ◼   ► listeners are exactly the same, right? Who would want to listen to street sounds when

00:31:13 ◼   ► you could be listening to Jason Snell talk about Star Wars, right? Why would you do that?

00:31:18 ◼   ► Why would you ever do that?

00:31:20 ◼   ► carrying that little case more or less convenient because it's definitely more

00:31:26 ◼   ► bulk than a coiled pair of headphones but it's also not a mess of

00:31:31 ◼   ► wires in your pocket. Yeah well I you described it perfectly right there

00:31:36 ◼   ► which is it's more bulk than just stuffing some headphones in your pocket

00:31:42 ◼   ► although I guess an argument could be made that since it's this little you

00:31:46 ◼   ► a little plastic packet, you have more awareness of where it is.

00:31:52 ◼   ► Where sometimes I'm like, "Oh, I still have my headphones in my pocket.

00:31:56 ◼   ► Like oh, I didn't mean to bring those with me."

00:31:59 ◼   ► With this, you're like, "Okay, I know where it is.

00:32:01 ◼   ► I know where my headphones are.

00:32:02 ◼   ► They're in my bag, they're in my pocket, they are wherever they are."

00:32:06 ◼   ► But it is more bulk and a little more weight, but they don't get tangled.

00:32:11 ◼   ► It's just different.

00:32:12 ◼   ► You don't have to take your headphones out of your pocket and then untangle them first.

00:32:16 ◼   ► you just open the little box and pop them out.

00:32:18 ◼   ► Right?

00:32:19 ◼   ► Like that's one of the big differences.

00:32:21 ◼   ► Now this case, in case people don't know, I mean it's been a while really since we've

00:32:24 ◼   ► spoken about these in much depth.

00:32:27 ◼   ► The little case also has a battery in it and it charges the AirPods.

00:32:33 ◼   ► It's so difficult to keep AirPods and AirPods right in my brain.

00:32:37 ◼   ► The battery inside of the case charges the AirPods when you put them inside.

00:32:43 ◼   ► What is the battery life like on the AirPods themselves?

00:32:48 ◼   ► As them singularly and together and also when you combine the case, how does that all look?

00:32:53 ◼   ► Because it's a big picture of these three different things, isn't it?

00:32:56 ◼   ► Each individual AirPod has a battery life and then also the case does as well and they

00:33:01 ◼   ► work together.

00:33:03 ◼   ► Yes.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Apple's quoting five hours on a charge and I think that's about right.

00:33:09 ◼   ► I've used them some and I was looking at some other reviews

00:33:12 ◼   ► like Susie at Macworld posted her review today

00:33:15 ◼   ► and said that she would run them for five hours

00:33:18 ◼   ► and they'd still have 10%, 15% battery life.

00:33:21 ◼   ► That seems about right.

00:33:23 ◼   ► And then there's the case and then you can top up your charge

00:33:27 ◼   ► by sticking them back in the case, which is nice

00:33:31 ◼   ► because I think the idea there is

00:33:36 ◼   ► that you're probably not just having your headphones stuck in for more than five hours

00:33:41 ◼   ► straight. I mean, this is, uh, this was a conversation I think on maybe on ATP. I think

00:33:48 ◼   ► I remember Casey talking about this and it's the same thought of like, you know, at some

00:33:52 ◼   ► point for a few minutes, you're going to be able to take your, your headphones out or

00:33:57 ◼   ► you're going to need to take your headphones out and interact with another human being.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Even if it's just eating your meal on the plane, right? There's probably something that you could do without those headphones in.

00:34:09 ◼   ► And the way that the... it's kind of interesting because of the way that the product is made, you would always put it in the case.

00:34:15 ◼   ► Because they're so small, right?

00:34:17 ◼   ► Exactly. You don't...

00:34:19 ◼   ► You're not just gonna leave them.

00:34:20 ◼   ► Yeah, although, I mean, when you talk about carrying around the case, the other thing is if you're not...

00:34:24 ◼   ► But if you're not gonna be using them for more than five hours, you could also just

00:34:29 ◼   ► stick them in your pocket and not carry them in the case. You could do that, and that would

00:34:33 ◼   ► probably be okay. But if you stick them in the case for 15 minutes, Apple says that's

00:34:37 ◼   ► three hours of battery life. I didn't get to test that scientifically, but I would just

00:34:42 ◼   ► -- one of the challenges for me was most of the time I would just naturally, when I was

00:34:46 ◼   ► done listening to them, pop them in the case. And so without concerted effort to drain the

00:34:51 ◼   ► the battery, you know, they would immediately charge back up. And the next time I used them,

00:34:55 ◼   ► they were back at 100%. And then the case itself has a little lightning connector on

00:34:59 ◼   ► the bottom. So you plug it in to a lightning cable, you know, the same lightning cable

00:35:03 ◼   ► you plug into your iPhone or your Magic Trackpad or whatever, you just plug that in and it

00:35:09 ◼   ► charges back up. And Apple says that you can get more than 24 hours of playtime if you

00:35:16 ◼   ► walk away with the AirPods and the case fully charged, you've got more than 24 hours of

00:35:23 ◼   ► play time before you have to connect it to get more power.

00:35:28 ◼   ► And how does it work on a battery indicator's perspective? Like, how am I notified of low

00:35:34 ◼   ► battery on either the AirPods or the case?

00:35:38 ◼   ► Well, so the case has a little light that goes on that tells you charging status. Are

00:35:48 ◼   ► they charged? Are they charging? And which is one of those little green amber things

00:35:55 ◼   ► that colorblind people have a hard time seeing. So that's awesome.

00:35:59 ◼   ► And it's just a light that says something who knows what it says.

00:36:02 ◼   ► I take them at their word that it must mean something.

00:36:05 ◼   ► Anyway, the device will tell you what the battery level is.

00:36:10 ◼   ► Your iPhone will tell you, your Mac will tell you

00:36:14 ◼   ► what the battery level is of the AirPods

00:36:16 ◼   ► when you've got them in the AirPods.

00:36:18 ◼   ► And when they are down to like 10% battery or something,

00:36:22 ◼   ► they make a little sad noise.

00:36:25 ◼   ► It's like, ooh.

00:36:26 ◼   ► - Do they pop up a notification on the connected device

00:36:29 ◼   ► like an Apple Pencil does?

00:36:32 ◼   ► When you open the charger near the device,

00:36:37 ◼   ► it slides up a little thing that tells you

00:36:39 ◼   ► what the current status of the charger and the AirPods are.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - But from your use,

00:36:44 ◼   ► you've not seen like 20% battery remaining or whatever.

00:36:47 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, you get that notification.

00:36:50 ◼   ► You can see the battery remaining in the headphones

00:36:54 ◼   ► on the Mac and on iOS.

00:36:55 ◼   ► - And then it shows up in the little widget

00:36:57 ◼   ► and stuff like that, right?

00:36:58 ◼   ► The little widget that's in iOS.

00:36:59 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:37:00 ◼   ► I don't know if I've connected them to my,

00:37:02 ◼   ► I see that one on my iPad more,

00:37:04 ◼   ► and I'm not sure if I've connected them to my iPad.

00:37:06 ◼   ► I did connect them to my Mac,

00:37:07 ◼   ► and toggled them back and forth,

00:37:10 ◼   ► and it all just gets picked up automatically

00:37:12 ◼   ► on modern iOS devices and Macs because of iCloud.

00:37:16 ◼   ► So I didn't need to repair.

00:37:18 ◼   ► As soon as I paired them with my phone,

00:37:20 ◼   ► they automatically showed up on my Mac.

00:37:25 ◼   ► - How did you find that that was just absolutely seamless?

00:37:28 ◼   ► I mean, I found that to be that way

00:37:30 ◼   ► with the PowerBeats, or no, the Solo 3,

00:37:33 ◼   ► or whatever they're called, the Beats Solo 3s.

00:37:36 ◼   ► I assume you have to be running--

00:37:37 ◼   ► - Seamless.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - OS X, iOS X, and Sierra, I assume.

00:37:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, behind, so if you're using older operating systems

00:37:45 ◼   ► or non-compatible hardware,

00:37:47 ◼   ► then you have to do a Bluetooth pair, basically,

00:37:50 ◼   ► which is you press the button on the back of the little case

00:37:53 ◼   ► and it shows up as a Bluetooth device and you pair it.

00:37:57 ◼   ► And then in that scenario, I think the way it works

00:38:00 ◼   ► is that if it's actively playing to one device,

00:38:03 ◼   ► it doesn't want you to hijack it,

00:38:06 ◼   ► but if you take them out

00:38:07 ◼   ► and then wait five seconds or something like that,

00:38:10 ◼   ► it knows that they're not being actively used,

00:38:12 ◼   ► then you can connect from the other device.

00:38:14 ◼   ► I actually paired them with a Nexus 5X Android phone,

00:38:18 ◼   ► and they worked, again, worked just fine.

00:38:21 ◼   ► The double tap gesture in that scenario is just play/pause.

00:38:26 ◼   ► If there's no secret sauce, that's what they've done.

00:38:29 ◼   ► It's just, they're just Bluetooth headphones

00:38:31 ◼   ► and there's a double tap for play/pause.

00:38:34 ◼   ► - And you don't have to do the little pairing button thing

00:38:39 ◼   ► when you originally set it up, right?

00:38:41 ◼   ► - Right, I open the box and it says,

00:38:44 ◼   ► "Hey, I found some AirPods.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Some AirPods, do you want me to connect them?"

00:38:50 ◼   ► Or something, I took a screenshot of it.

00:38:52 ◼   ► But it's very much what you'd expect from that experience,

00:38:57 ◼   ► which since Apple has laid its own stuff

00:39:00 ◼   ► on top of the standards,

00:39:02 ◼   ► it allows Apple to write lots of fancy/cute UI

00:39:07 ◼   ► that says things like, you know,

00:39:11 ◼   ► AirPods with a big button that says connect,

00:39:15 ◼   ► and that's it, and then X.

00:39:18 ◼   ► So you can be like, nope, don't want those,

00:39:20 ◼   ► or you can go, yeah, sure, and that's it.

00:39:22 ◼   ► That's it.

00:39:24 ◼   ► - Okay. - That's the whole thing.

00:39:25 ◼   ► That's pretty standard then and then for everything else it works perfectly, right?

00:39:29 ◼   ► So you get like the standard Bluetooth pairing as normal and then you get the

00:39:32 ◼   ► special Apple pairing system with the W1 chip for iOS and macOS devices.

00:39:38 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:39:40 ◼   ► So it's, it's just, yeah, if you're on a device whose hardware and software

00:39:44 ◼   ► supports the sort of secret layer, you get the super easy connection,

00:39:48 ◼   ► pairing, syncing stuff.

00:39:49 ◼   ► And then if you're on hardware that doesn't support that, then you kind of go

00:39:52 ◼   ► back to press the button start going to pairing mode you know pair the device

00:39:57 ◼   ► but you know it still works. Fair enough. What about the control of audio? Can you

00:40:09 ◼   ► talk to me a little bit about what is going on there kind of a standard and

00:40:13 ◼   ► what you can change? Sure the so they've got this accelerometer built into them

00:40:21 ◼   ► And the idea there is that there are, what are the gestures?

00:40:25 ◼   ► So if there's no clicker, right?

00:40:26 ◼   ► There's no volume up, no volume down,

00:40:28 ◼   ► no clicker for play/pause or triple tap.

00:40:32 ◼   ► You can't do any of those things.

00:40:34 ◼   ► So there are basically two gestures

00:40:37 ◼   ► that you can do with these things.

00:40:39 ◼   ► And one of them is take one out of your ear,

00:40:42 ◼   ► which is a gesture.

00:40:43 ◼   ► It's a user interface gesture.

00:40:44 ◼   ► And it's actually one of the things

00:40:46 ◼   ► that I think is the most clever about these headphones

00:40:50 ◼   ► is number one gesture, play/pause is take one out of your ear. Works great and put it

00:40:58 ◼   ► back in, continues to play.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And to clear up something, it only plays music if you've already paused music. The music

00:41:08 ◼   ► doesn't begin as soon as I put ear pods in my ear for the first time in the morning.

00:41:12 ◼   ► Exactly, right. It's just like, yeah, that's right. It behaves more or less like you'd

00:41:19 ◼   ► expect headphones to behave, which is if you pause something and then you, you know, within

00:41:25 ◼   ► a reasonable amount of time in that context, even if it's, you know, minutes, pop it back

00:41:29 ◼   ► in, it starts to play again. But in the morning, you know, if you wake up and put them in and

00:41:34 ◼   ► they connect for the first time, they don't just start playing whatever is randomly playing

00:41:37 ◼   ► on your iPhone. You need to tell it to start playing something. But it is in that interim

00:41:43 ◼   ► state, like I was walking down the—this has always happened with my Bluetooth, the

00:41:48 ◼   ► buds, which was, you know, I'm walking down the path with the dog and somebody's coming

00:41:51 ◼   ► the other way and I want to, if they say something to me, I want to hear what they're saying

00:41:54 ◼   ► and not just have podcasts blaring over them. And that used to be like, I'd reach back behind

00:42:00 ◼   ► my head to find the clicker, or I would use my Apple watch or I'd pull my phone out of

00:42:04 ◼   ► my pocket, but something to pause and, and, and I would take the ear bud out, right? And

00:42:10 ◼   ► with the, with the AirPods, I just take one of them out as I'm walking by the person.

00:42:15 ◼   ► and if they talk then I can hear them and if they don't talk and we walk past them I

00:42:19 ◼   ► just pop it right back in and that's it that's my entire interface gesture.

00:42:23 ◼   ► So that pauses both ears right like both ears get paused and you take one out.

00:42:28 ◼   ► But you can listen with just one ear right you can just you can if you want to play with

00:42:35 ◼   ► just one and it just powers one.

00:42:38 ◼   ► And it routes mono audio to that one instead of stereo.

00:42:42 ◼   ► It's very interesting.

00:42:43 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it is, it's pretty clever. So that's gesture number one, and

00:42:47 ◼   ► gesture number two is using the accelerometer. If you tap twice on the

00:42:52 ◼   ► device, on either earbud, it will trigger, by default, Siri, and you can also

00:42:59 ◼   ► set that in the Bluetooth settings to trigger nothing or play/pause.

00:43:05 ◼   ► So you can have two play/pauses. I mean, that's probably how I'm going to set it up,

00:43:09 ◼   ► honestly have it as be play pause as well because I don't really I don't

00:43:15 ◼   ► really want to talk to Siri honestly to to change songs and change volume I will

00:43:22 ◼   ► either feel for buttons or I'll use my Apple watch I was thinking it every now

00:43:29 ◼   ► and then you see these these these little things which show a disconnect

00:43:32 ◼   ► inside of Apple and I think that some of the changes of the Apple watch with the

00:43:37 ◼   ► AirPods coming out shows that like it now more than ever do we need to be able

00:43:42 ◼   ► to get quick access to music controls on the Apple Watch and I was thinking why

00:43:47 ◼   ► why can't there be a two-pane control center on the Apple Watch one is all of

00:43:52 ◼   ► the little buttons that they have and then one is audio. I can't work that out.

00:43:57 ◼   ► Like on iOS. I hope that that's something that they then bring back

00:44:02 ◼   ► again because it's it that will be the best way I think to control the AirPods

00:44:07 ◼   ► bots is just to tap the playpoles there to use the crown to put volume up and down.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Go off, see what I'll be doing for volume controls is reaching for my phone if it's

00:44:16 ◼   ► nearby and using it there or I'll open the thing on the Apple Watch.

00:44:20 ◼   ► I don't want to say Ahoy telephone volume down.

00:44:25 ◼   ► I don't want to do that.

00:44:27 ◼   ► You don't have to say Ahoy telephone because you double tap.

00:44:29 ◼   ► So it's double tap volume down.

00:44:30 ◼   ► But I think this is exactly it.

00:44:33 ◼   ► I think that the biggest flaw in the AirPods is, is Siri or to put it another way is reliance

00:44:45 ◼   ► on Siri, like reliance on Siri as like the place that you just dump. We don't want to

00:44:52 ◼   ► do it. So let's just have Siri do it. You kind of put all of your complexity, all of

00:44:57 ◼   ► your edge cases, everything else just gets dumped into Siri. And there are a few problems

00:45:03 ◼   ► with that. Part of it is, yeah, you know what? If I'm sitting on the subway and I want to

00:45:11 ◼   ► make the music louder, I'm not going to double tap on my ear and say, "Volume up!"

00:45:15 ◼   ► - But as you point out, not that you even could if you wanted to, because Siri doesn't

00:45:20 ◼   ► work without an internet connection. - And that's the other part of it. So first

00:45:24 ◼   ► there's the whole thing also that Siri still really wants you to look at the

00:45:27 ◼   ► screen and so you know it doesn't help if you ask Siri something on those

00:45:32 ◼   ► things and they're like look what I found for you like look where where am I

00:45:35 ◼   ► looking at like to be it's not helpful but but yeah you you mention it there

00:45:41 ◼   ► which which is if you're on the subway and you're somewhere where there isn't

00:45:43 ◼   ► an internet connection it doesn't work and this baffles me because they built

00:45:48 ◼   ► voice control into iOS way before they built Syrian and voice control was

00:45:52 ◼   ► really dumb. Voice control had a very limited feature set but it let you

00:45:56 ◼   ► control your media playback, it let you control music and stuff. It let you call

00:46:00 ◼   ► people.

00:46:01 ◼   ► Yeah, it let you call people in your address book, it would scan your address

00:46:04 ◼   ► book and it would know what those names were and it would know what was

00:46:08 ◼   ► in your music library and it would like it would be able to do it was a

00:46:12 ◼   ► rudimentary kind of thing before there was Siri to do voice control but the way

00:46:16 ◼   ► it works now if you lose your internet connection it doesn't go back to voice

00:46:19 ◼   ► control. It goes nowhere. And so if you are somewhere without an internet

00:46:24 ◼   ► connection, you're out in the country somewhere and you're running and you say

00:46:27 ◼   ► you double tap volume louder, it can't help you. It won't do it and that's

00:46:33 ◼   ► really dumb because the device should be able to do that. But take it back a step

00:46:36 ◼   ► which is this is also a design decision to say all we're going to do is play

00:46:41 ◼   ► pause and punt to Siri. And I think that's a mistake. I think

00:46:46 ◼   ► that is the biggest flaw in these things is, okay, you've got that accelerometer in there.

00:46:51 ◼   ► Maybe you need more gestures, or maybe you did need a button on it, or maybe you needed

00:46:55 ◼   ► some other kind of touch interface, or maybe you need the ability to differentiate since

00:47:00 ◼   ► most people will be listening to both ears. Maybe you need the ability to have a different

00:47:04 ◼   ► gesture in your left ear than your right ear. I know that's wacky and most people wouldn't

00:47:08 ◼   ► do it, but for some, the ability to have your next track on the left and your play/pause

00:47:14 ◼   ► on the right or something like that. It would be more gestures. It would be more ways of

00:47:19 ◼   ► controlling this thing without having to open a watch or open a phone, which is, I think,

00:47:24 ◼   ► the ideal here. And right now, it's vocabulary as awesome as the take the earbud out to pause

00:47:32 ◼   ► and then put it back into play is that is such a great feature. That is a really amazing

00:47:37 ◼   ► sort of real world connected UI gesture. I really like it. I think it's super smart,

00:47:43 ◼   ► the you know or double tap and do everything else like yeah no like if I

00:47:49 ◼   ► want to make my volume a little louder double tap and shout volume loud just

00:47:53 ◼   ► seems dumb I like I would like another it oh if there was only something to do

00:47:59 ◼   ► or to advance to the next track or to skip ahead or anything like that also

00:48:03 ◼   ► series control of other media apps is more limited so if you're not listening

00:48:09 ◼   ► to the music app, you're more limited in what you can do, although you can still control

00:48:14 ◼   ► like system volume and things like that. I don't know. It's an amazing piece of tech

00:48:19 ◼   ► and I think the answer to why it punts so much to Siri is probably that they were really

00:48:26 ◼   ► limited in what they were capable of doing with this product because it is packing so

00:48:30 ◼   ► much tech into so many places and there's probably not room to create some sort of button

00:48:34 ◼   ► or touch surface or all that, but even if the accelerometers were separately programmable

00:48:42 ◼   ► or supported a triple tap or supported a single tap, although a single tap might like, they

00:48:48 ◼   ► might have to discard all of those because it's too prone to error, but a double tap,

00:48:53 ◼   ► you can get that. But then let's do a triple tap, and again, most people won't triple tap,

00:48:58 ◼   ► but that could be something. I don't know. That's the limitation here, because while

00:49:03 ◼   ► the Apple Watch is not a bad remote for this, it is, you know, you do have to wake it up

00:49:09 ◼   ► and press the dock button and make sure that you're tapped into the "Now Playing" and then

00:49:14 ◼   ► you can spin the volume control. Also, by the way, watchOS update, that lets you perhaps

00:49:19 ◼   ► optionally just, at the watch face, spin the crown to change the volume on your audio device.

00:49:27 ◼   ► How about that? That would be nice. I would love that. But even so, you know, that is

00:49:31 ◼   ► relying on an Apple Watch. So, you know, not everybody's gonna have one of those. The Apple

00:49:37 ◼   ► Watch is a mandatory AirPod accessory. I would bet the people that are buying AirPods right

00:49:42 ◼   ► now, there's probably quite a lot of them also on an Apple Watch. Sure, sure, but you

00:49:47 ◼   ► want this to be, I mean, there are way more people with iPhones than there are with Apple

00:49:51 ◼   ► Watches. This is a much, you know, there's a less expensive product, it's got a broader

00:49:54 ◼   ► audience. Ultimately there will be, I think, more AirPods out there than Apple Watches.

00:49:59 ◼   ► I do think that.

00:50:00 ◼   ► - So overall, what's your take on this?

00:50:04 ◼   ► Have Apple delivered?

00:50:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's a really good product.

00:50:10 ◼   ► I mean, I really do.

00:50:11 ◼   ► I think this is for people who've been groaning

00:50:15 ◼   ► and grousing a lot about Apple's direction

00:50:18 ◼   ► and has Apple lost it and what is Apple focused on?

00:50:21 ◼   ► I look at this and I think this is the kind of product

00:50:25 ◼   ► that we expect from Apple.

00:50:27 ◼   ► And although it's got flaws,

00:50:28 ◼   ► Like I just went on about for five minutes about like punting to Siri.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Cause I think Siri, you know, there are lots of issues there.

00:50:34 ◼   ► The fact is they work really well.

00:50:38 ◼   ► The play pod, the most important gesture, which is the play

00:50:40 ◼   ► pause gesture works perfectly.

00:50:43 ◼   ► They stay in sync.

00:50:44 ◼   ► I had over the course of many hours of listening, I had a couple momentary.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Out of sinks where we're like on a podcast where a voice would get slightly

00:50:55 ◼   ► echo-y for like half a second and then go back. That happened like twice in hours and

00:50:59 ◼   ► hours and hours and it was momentary. It was like a little blip basically. So in keeping

00:51:04 ◼   ► these two devices in sync in your ears so that your brain, you know, your brain will

00:51:09 ◼   ► sync audio from the left ear and the right ear pretty well up to a point and then beyond

00:51:13 ◼   ► that point it gives up. And whatever Apple is doing to make sure that those audio streams

00:51:18 ◼   ► are running in parallel, it worked very well. So very effective, some amazing technology

00:51:23 ◼   ► packed into these things. They sound pretty good. I had forgotten, you know, I think I'm

00:51:29 ◼   ► still blaming the ear pods for the sins of the original Apple earbuds because I went

00:51:36 ◼   ► back to ear pods and I listened to them. At some point I bought better headphones, right?

00:51:40 ◼   ► So I stopped bothering to listen to ear pods, but for this I went back and listened to ear

00:51:46 ◼   ► pods and they sound very similar to the sound of the air pods. They may sound exactly the

00:51:52 ◼   ► the same for all I know, but I don't want to say that. To me, they sound basically the

00:51:56 ◼   ► same. And it sounds pretty good. I was surprised at how good. I threw songs that I know really

00:52:03 ◼   ► well that have lots of bass on them, that have sort of sneaky bass on them, that have

00:52:09 ◼   ► lots of range, and I was surprised. I mean, if somebody's super finicky and can only listen

00:52:15 ◼   ► to music with high-end headphones, then they're gonna not love these because they're not gonna

00:52:23 ◼   ► love anything that sounds like this. But I would say even me with my more expensive headphones

00:52:30 ◼   ► that I've been buying since I was driven away from the really cheap, lousy iPod headphones

00:52:35 ◼   ► in the beginning, I was impressed. I would listen to music on these happily. I think

00:52:42 ◼   ► are good enough, you know, for most people. Like, Apple's never going to be able to please

00:52:47 ◼   ► everybody. We've been talking about that for the last month or two, but they have chosen,

00:52:51 ◼   ► you know, the vast, I think, majority of people who care about this stuff, who listen to music

00:52:59 ◼   ► and podcasts and things on their iPhone, will be made happy by this product. So, yeah, I

00:53:04 ◼   ► think in the end it's pretty terrific, even though it's definitely got some flaws. I'm

00:53:08 ◼   ► impressed and having spent some time with some of the competition I am similarly impressed

00:53:15 ◼   ► because like I'm happy that I've spent a year walking around with the Jaybird headphones

00:53:21 ◼   ► because that has given me perspective on how much nicer it is to not have that cord running

00:53:25 ◼   ► between them.

00:53:26 ◼   ► David: Next week I will say what I think of them.

00:53:29 ◼   ► Tim: Yeah we didn't get the call during the broadcast.

00:53:32 ◼   ► David; Nope.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Tim; Yeah they haven't been delivered and even if they had been delivered you couldn't

00:53:36 ◼   ► actually use them. So I am looking forward to your to a second opinion in our special

00:53:41 ◼   ► Boxing Day episode next week. That'll be fun.

00:53:45 ◼   ► And this is as somebody who uses EarPods every day.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Right. Well, see, that's the thing is that you have this experience and I don't. Oh,

00:53:53 ◼   ► one other thing people kept asking me, does it hurt when you wear them in your ears after

00:53:57 ◼   ► a while? And I had two answers to that, which is one, everybody's ears are different. It's

00:54:03 ◼   ► the truth. Everybody's ears are shaped differently. Everybody's going to have a different reaction.

00:54:07 ◼   ► So if my ears hurt or don't hurt, it doesn't say anything about if your ears will hurt

00:54:11 ◼   ► or don't hurt. My personal experience is that the first time I went out with them to walk

00:54:16 ◼   ► the dog, after a while, my right ear started to hurt. But what I realized is I actually

00:54:25 ◼   ► needed to reset the AirPod a little bit. It was kind of straight up and down, and I kind

00:54:32 ◼   ► of tilted it so that the little beam at the bottom of it was pointing more toward my neck

00:54:36 ◼   ► instead of like straight down at the ground. And that's it just it I was like oh this is

00:54:42 ◼   ► may not be set sitting right in my ear and so I just repositioned it to what felt like

00:54:46 ◼   ► a more comfortable position. I've been wearing them in that position since and have not had

00:54:51 ◼   ► any more problems. So I think some of that was I you know essentially I was wearing it

00:54:56 ◼   ► it wrong. But I found a comfortable spot and they haven't bothered me.

00:55:02 ◼   ► This week's episode is also brought to you by our friends over at FreshBooks. So let's

00:55:08 ◼   ► imagine this. I'm sure many of you feel this way. You're racing against the clock. You're

00:55:12 ◼   ► trying to wrap up the 17 projects you have, especially at this time of the year, prepping

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00:57:33 ◼   ► OK, let's talk about battery life

00:57:37 ◼   ► on the laptops, the Apple laptops on the MacBooks.

00:57:42 ◼   ► So there is mixed reports

00:57:45 ◼   ► about the battery life of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.

00:57:49 ◼   ► They vary wildly.

00:57:51 ◼   ► Some people say it's the best ever.

00:57:53 ◼   ► Some people say it's fine.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Some people say this is an unmitigated disaster.

00:57:58 ◼   ► There could be a million reasons why that's happening.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Quite frankly, nobody knows why the battery life is varying so much.

00:58:06 ◼   ► There are many theories, you know, there are theories about

00:58:09 ◼   ► about graphics, cards and processors.

00:58:13 ◼   ► cards. Here we go. Myke's out. We definitely have the external graphics cards in the MacBook

00:58:19 ◼   ► Pro. There's a great conversation about this in the MacBook Pro.

00:58:22 ◼   ► Is that a new bus slot? Is that a new bus or a PCI?

00:58:24 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it's the Express one.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Or an Express card slot.

00:58:29 ◼   ► Depending on whether you have the integrated or dedicated... I'm ruining this. I can never

00:58:35 ◼   ► remember the difference between...

00:58:37 ◼   ► Integrated and discrete.

00:58:38 ◼   ► See, 'cause those words say that makes, anyway.

00:58:41 ◼   ► There are different graphics cards in the MacBook Pros

00:58:45 ◼   ► and some people think that depending on what the load is,

00:58:48 ◼   ► it's running that way.

00:58:49 ◼   ► There is some thought in all of the things

00:58:51 ◼   ► that macOS does now, especially with stuff like photos,

00:58:54 ◼   ► and all of the things that it does in the background,

00:58:56 ◼   ► the same things that destroy your iOS's battery life

00:58:59 ◼   ► on the first day, right?

00:59:01 ◼   ► But there seems to be persistent and unknown issues

00:59:05 ◼   ► with these computers.

00:59:08 ◼   ► So there has been an update to Sierra,

00:59:10 ◼   ► which has maybe improved battery life for some of these with some bug fixes.

00:59:16 ◼   ► But what it has also done is take away the time remaining from the battery

00:59:23 ◼   ► indicator.

00:59:27 ◼   ► So previously you click the battery indicator in the menu bar and it would show

00:59:31 ◼   ► you the percentage and how long is left of the battery.

00:59:36 ◼   ► So using your battery, using your MacBook now,

00:59:39 ◼   ► at the current rate you're using it,

00:59:41 ◼   ► you would get two hours of battery life,

00:59:43 ◼   ► or you might get 10 hours of battery life.

00:59:45 ◼   ► That has been removed for all laptops now.

00:59:48 ◼   ► Now, there are many schools of thought

00:59:52 ◼   ► as to why this thing is being removed.

00:59:54 ◼   ► There are people that are claiming,

00:59:56 ◼   ► I mean, again, I don't know enough

00:59:58 ◼   ► about the internals of this,

00:59:59 ◼   ► but there are people that are claiming

01:00:00 ◼   ► that the API is wrong and has been wrong for years

01:00:04 ◼   ► and is unreliable, but no matter what the reason,

01:00:09 ◼   ► the timing is terrible.

01:00:13 ◼   ► This goes back to some other things

01:00:17 ◼   ► that have been knocking around recently,

01:00:20 ◼   ► as to Apple making decisions that seem peculiar

01:00:25 ◼   ► from a PR perspective, with the other being designed

01:00:28 ◼   ► by Apple in California.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Everybody was upset about the MacBook,

01:00:34 ◼   ► and like where the focus of the Mac was.

01:00:36 ◼   ► And then they released the $300 photo book.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Now everybody's upset about battery life.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Apple have removed the time remaining

01:00:44 ◼   ► from the MacBook battery life indicator.

01:00:47 ◼   ► This just seems strange.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Now, what it looks like,

01:00:51 ◼   ► and my feeling on this is what is actually happening here,

01:00:54 ◼   ► is the way that Apple will fix the battery life

01:00:56 ◼   ► is to remove the battery indicator.

01:00:58 ◼   ► This is the fix for now,

01:01:01 ◼   ► is like they can't get a handle on it.

01:01:04 ◼   ► It may be that the combination of the battery not being great plus the API not being as

01:01:09 ◼   ► clear as it could be makes the situation seem even worse than it already is, so the band-aid

01:01:15 ◼   ► solution is to remove that functionality.

01:01:18 ◼   ► Have I done a decent job of at least summing it up and giving my own opinion?

01:01:23 ◼   ► Because there is definitely that in there.

01:01:24 ◼   ► My own opinion is in there.

01:01:25 ◼   ► I think you did.

01:01:26 ◼   ► I think you did.

01:01:27 ◼   ► I think the, that is, that is, it's very easy to connect the dots and see it that way, which

01:01:34 ◼   ► is, "Oh, so you got a problem with our battery life. Well, now you won't know it. So good

01:01:40 ◼   ► luck." I think...

01:01:41 ◼   ► Well, you don't know don't hurt you.

01:01:44 ◼   ► Yeah. I think the reality is that the battery life indicator has been progressively less

01:01:52 ◼   ► accurate over time and somebody at Apple got frustrated that they were being called out,

01:02:00 ◼   ► either that they were being called out or the more charitable thing would be that customers

01:02:04 ◼   ► were confused by this battery life indicator that was increasingly, especially on the new

01:02:10 ◼   ► MacBooks, really not accurate. And, you know, like you said, there are a lot of theories.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I think the reality is, and last week's ATP did a good job of going over a lot of these

01:02:20 ◼   ► issues in detail and they know the difference between discrete and integrated.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Yeah, if you want to listen to people that know the difference between those two things,

01:02:28 ◼   ► don't listen to me. Don't listen to Myke, but listen to John

01:02:32 ◼   ► and Marco and Casey. I really try. There are just some things

01:02:36 ◼   ► that I don't care enough about. You gave it a go. I get it. When ATP talks

01:02:45 ◼   ► about programming languages. That's when I pass out and hit my head. So anyway, the theory

01:02:53 ◼   ► that I subscribe to is that Apple has been doing a whole lot of work over the last many

01:02:58 ◼   ► years to improve power efficiency on Mac laptops in a lot of ways that make it so that when

01:03:06 ◼   ► things aren't cranked up to 100% and the fan is going and it's using all the cores and

01:03:12 ◼   ► it's encoding video or whatever. When it's doing that, it's got to have that ability

01:03:17 ◼   ► to go up to the highest point of performance and do that. But when it's not doing that,

01:03:24 ◼   ► over time it's much more aggressive, and the chip designs are like this too, much more

01:03:27 ◼   ► aggressive at cranking everything down in order to save power. The challenge with that

01:03:32 ◼   ► is if you've got a test that is basic web browsing or whatever, depending on how that

01:03:37 ◼   ► test is built, it may be revealing a battery figure in terms of time that is real but is

01:03:50 ◼   ► now continues to diverge more and more from how much battery life does this thing have

01:03:56 ◼   ► if I use it at 100% efficiency, if I'm encoding a video or something like that. Because it

01:04:01 ◼   ► may have been that back in the olden days, I'm just going to make up numbers now, but

01:04:05 ◼   ► back in the olden days, that Mac laptop that you had would encode video at 100% CPU on

01:04:15 ◼   ► battery for an hour and die. But if you did general web browsing, you could get two hours.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And then over time, suddenly encoding video still took an hour before it killed the battery,

01:04:30 ◼   ► but general web browsing took three hours because they were more efficient with general

01:04:33 ◼   ► web browsing kind of shutting down all the power difference between high mode and low

01:04:38 ◼   ► mode. And the theory goes that now we've reached a point where they have progressed so far

01:04:44 ◼   ► with this and shaved battery out of these systems that they still will claim, you know,

01:04:49 ◼   ► "Oh, 10 hours of web browsing," but now that full-on, 100% using everything is maybe not

01:04:56 ◼   ► even an hour, maybe it's less than an hour. And that's a problem, right? Because that's

01:05:01 ◼   ► how you get wild swings in estimates because if you're encoding a video or editing a podcast

01:05:07 ◼   ► or whatever, at that moment that thing is going to say, "Oh God, you've got 40 minutes

01:05:11 ◼   ► left." But if you're just like looking at a file in Microsoft Word, it's going to say,

01:05:18 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, you got seven hours left." And those could be with the same percentage of battery.

01:05:23 ◼   ► And so Apple's argument would probably be, "Does this do anybody any good to have a time

01:05:30 ◼   ► estimate that is not, and it's not even an estimate, like the language was "remaining

01:05:36 ◼   ► time" colon a time. It was categorical. Right? So my reaction to this was, why didn't you

01:05:45 ◼   ► just change the string to say "estimated remaining time"? Because the idea is, I don't know how

01:05:54 ◼   ► many people took that as "I have exactly one hour and fifteen…" It was always like

01:06:00 ◼   ► "Time is a much better indicator of time than percentage points."

01:06:07 ◼   ► Okay, I agree with you and yet the iPhone doesn't have a time indicator.

01:06:12 ◼   ► Right, but I hate that. I wish it did have an estimated time remaining, right? Because

01:06:17 ◼   ► there are times where I'm using my iOS devices and it says like "35%". I have no idea

01:06:23 ◼   ► what that means. So the challenge is how do you communicate a number when it's not really

01:06:29 ◼   ► one number because it depends on how you use it in the future. And the answer would be,

01:06:34 ◼   ► so right, right, that theoretically if you went in low power mode and really refrained

01:06:39 ◼   ► from using your phone a whole lot, you could get five hours out of that 20%, but if you

01:06:46 ◼   ► are playing Mario Run, then it's going to kill that battery in an hour or half an hour.

01:06:54 ◼   ► And those are wildly different numbers for Pokémon Go, wildly different numbers for

01:06:58 ◼   ► the same thing. The answer, honestly, and this is the core of my criticism of Apple

01:07:03 ◼   ► for doing this, and maybe they'll bring it back at some point with this sort of thing

01:07:06 ◼   ► done is, the other way to do this would be to make your number better. Not just say estimated

01:07:12 ◼   ► time remaining or whatever, which you could do rather than just say "remaining time" colon

01:07:17 ◼   ► number. Make it better. Like, profile the user. Know what they're doing. Have that number

01:07:24 ◼   ► be based on your standard usage pattern. Provide some intelligent analysis of how people use

01:07:30 ◼   ► the laptop. If you're somebody who always is using general web browsing, then use, know

01:07:36 ◼   ► that and use that as the guess. If you're somebody who 10% of the time that they use

01:07:40 ◼   ► it's at 100% CPUs and the other 90% it's not, use that as the basis. Will it be a perfect

01:07:46 ◼   ► number? No, it won't be. But it could be a better number and it could be useful for people.

01:07:50 ◼   ► And Apple is in the business of simplifying technology, right? This goes back to what

01:07:54 ◼   ► you were saying. The time is a better estimate of time than battery percentage. It is, because

01:07:59 ◼   ► it's the actual measurement. And this computer, hopefully, or phone, or tablet, should be

01:08:06 ◼   ► smart enough to not know for sure, yes, you might do something completely unexpected.

01:08:13 ◼   ► You might do something where, "Oh, now that I'm on battery power, I'm going to encode

01:08:18 ◼   ► this Blu-ray." It's like, "What? Why would you do that?" "Oh, well, okay, I'll do it

01:08:22 ◼   ► until my battery runs out." That could happen, but your computer could take its best shot,

01:08:27 ◼   ► and I think the conventional wisdom anyway is that that number that was until it was

01:08:33 ◼   ► removed in the menu bar was not really that, it wasn't good enough of a number, and so

01:08:41 ◼   ► your choices are make the number better or remove it and run away, and Apple chose to

01:08:47 ◼   ► remove it and run away for now, and that's too bad.

01:08:49 ◼   ► But I think, you know, the bigger issue here is, I think, is the timing of that.

01:08:57 ◼   ► If this has been a known problem for a long time, then it shouldn't have been done now,

01:09:03 ◼   ► Even if you wanted to do it, now is not the right time to do it.

01:09:07 ◼   ► My guess is that the reason why this happened is because it was exacerbated by the new laptops

01:09:15 ◼   ► and they were getting not just dinged in the press but also they were getting support issues

01:09:20 ◼   ► where people were saying something's wrong with my laptop, it says I have seven hours

01:09:24 ◼   ► of battery left and then the battery dies in one.

01:09:27 ◼   ► And that bubbles up through the chain and somebody somewhere at Apple is like I told

01:09:31 ◼   ► you that stupid number is always wrong, why do we even have it?" And at some point somebody

01:09:36 ◼   ► in a position of authority said, "Look, let's just take it out." And it probably wasn't,

01:09:41 ◼   ► I would in fact, I would guess it probably wasn't somebody saying, "People are complaining

01:09:45 ◼   ► about the amount of time that our batteries last on these laptops. Let's remove the number."

01:09:50 ◼   ► I don't think it was that, but you're right, the impression is, "Oh geez, people don't

01:09:54 ◼   ► like our laptop battery number. Let's take out the readout." Right? And that looks, it

01:09:58 ◼   ► looks terrible. Sure.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Sure.

01:10:00 ◼   ► Here's the thing though, right?

01:10:01 ◼   ► Even though, like I said, time is a better indicator of time than percentage points,

01:10:07 ◼   ► people can still understand how numbers work.

01:10:11 ◼   ► Is the percentage indicator better than the time indicator from an API perspective?

01:10:17 ◼   ► Because that number is still going to tick down.

01:10:19 ◼   ► And if people are losing 40% of battery life in an hour, they still know that's a problem,

01:10:26 ◼   ► right?

01:10:27 ◼   ► - Right, I think, well, yeah, sure.

01:10:30 ◼   ► That has to be part of the issue is,

01:10:34 ◼   ► look, I would say, here, let's pull back for a minute

01:10:39 ◼   ► to a little bit broader picture.

01:10:40 ◼   ► And this could be something for the WWDC wishlist.

01:10:43 ◼   ► It's like a Mac wishlist item, which is,

01:10:45 ◼   ► for all of Apple's talk about bringing mobile technology

01:10:50 ◼   ► to the Mac and improving it,

01:10:52 ◼   ► whether it's features that are also on iOS,

01:10:54 ◼   ► or whether it's, you know, the things like the touch bar,

01:10:57 ◼   ► or better power management.

01:10:59 ◼   ► There are places where I think Apple could do

01:11:02 ◼   ► an even better job with this, right?

01:11:05 ◼   ► And hasn't, and the two that come up now are,

01:11:10 ◼   ► and again, ATP talked about this last week,

01:11:13 ◼   ► low power mode, which is a much better system-wide

01:11:17 ◼   ► conceptual framework for sometimes I need

01:11:22 ◼   ► to save battery power.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Whether it's apps saying, here's what I wanna do,

01:11:27 ◼   ► or whether it's the user gets to say,

01:11:29 ◼   ► please put this in low power mode

01:11:31 ◼   ► and let me last as long as possible,

01:11:32 ◼   ► even if that cranks down,

01:11:34 ◼   ► even if it turns off the discrete graphics

01:11:36 ◼   ► and all of that, let me do that.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And then the other one we've talked about before here,

01:11:39 ◼   ► which is cellular versus wifi.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Like having the ability to be like,

01:11:44 ◼   ► be aware that I'm on a limited, a metered network

01:11:48 ◼   ► and not do all this stuff in the background.

01:11:50 ◼   ► With power saving, it would be,

01:11:52 ◼   ► I'm not gonna analyze a thousand photos

01:11:55 ◼   ► for mountains and horses right now,

01:11:57 ◼   ► because I'm trying to save power.

01:11:59 ◼   ► And some of that may be going on in the background,

01:12:01 ◼   ► but I think there's a lot of skepticism about that,

01:12:04 ◼   ► that maybe they've taken their eye off the ball

01:12:06 ◼   ► of some of that stuff.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And in terms of percentage versus time,

01:12:11 ◼   ► I guess what I would say is, I get the argument who says,

01:12:14 ◼   ► "Well, I look at that time and I use,

01:12:16 ◼   ► "I know that that's not the real number,

01:12:17 ◼   ► "but I use that as a gauge about what my current

01:12:20 ◼   ► "sort of battery drain is, and like at this rate of drain,

01:12:23 ◼   ► "it'll be over by then."

01:12:24 ◼   ► But people watch the percentage and do the same thing.

01:12:28 ◼   ► People do that.

01:12:29 ◼   ► I think it's incumbent on Apple to do a better job of communicating

01:12:33 ◼   ► how much time you're going to get out of your phone or your laptop

01:12:36 ◼   ► than they maybe do now.

01:12:38 ◼   ► And that's across the board, right?

01:12:39 ◼   ► Like you said, maybe 86% battery is not a helpful indicator,

01:12:46 ◼   ► and that they'd be better off saying,

01:12:48 ◼   ► here's how much time we think you have with the battery.

01:12:51 ◼   ► You could also argue that most people don't even

01:12:53 ◼   ► to see anything.

01:12:54 ◼   ► They just want to see the battery symbol and know when it's halfway and that's the level

01:12:58 ◼   ► of granularity that they really need is, "Oh geez, I need to charge."

01:13:01 ◼   ► And some, you know, everybody's different.

01:13:02 ◼   ► People are going to use it for different things.

01:13:04 ◼   ► But it just frustrates me because it seems like this is something where Apple could do

01:13:07 ◼   ► a better job providing information for the user and instead what has happened is they've

01:13:11 ◼   ► just removed a feature.

01:13:12 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I don't like that.

01:13:15 ◼   ► You know, I keep bringing this up but it's like stickers in iMessage on the iPad in split

01:13:23 ◼   ► where drag and drop stop what like do you could drag an image you could drag a

01:13:28 ◼   ► sticker but if you're in split-screen it wouldn't drop on the message so the way

01:13:32 ◼   ► they fixed that problem was to just no longer allow you to even drag them as I

01:13:36 ◼   ► guess it's not fixed it you know I've not fixed this like you don't fix

01:13:41 ◼   ► something by removing it that's not a fix we fix the engine in your car we

01:13:48 ◼   ► took it out is that okay it's not a problem anymore because it's not in

01:13:52 ◼   ► there. I don't know. I don't know. I'm happy we have a balance this week. I mean, I know

01:13:58 ◼   ► there is like a general consensus right now that Apple commentary is grumpy and I feel

01:14:05 ◼   ► it and I'm frustrated that I'm frustrated now. I'm like at a point where I don't want

01:14:10 ◼   ► to keep doing this. So I'm happy we got to talk about something cool like the AirPods

01:14:15 ◼   ► today. But I just think that where we are right now in Q4 of 2017, I mean, maybe I'm

01:14:22 ◼   ► I'm going to give some little spoilers for the upgrade, but you can see it in the voting.

01:14:27 ◼   ► One of the nominees, well, a lot of the nominees for the most disappointing products this year

01:14:31 ◼   ► include the products that Apple has released, but they are also in the best products of

01:14:35 ◼   ► the year category.

01:14:36 ◼   ► And I think that is a real kind of feeling right now.

01:14:42 ◼   ► The iPhone, I love my iPhone 7, but it still disappoints me because it didn't really give

01:14:53 ◼   ► me that much to be honest and it took away a lot.

01:14:58 ◼   ► I feel like the balance was still there but iPhones don't usually take away but the iPhone

01:15:04 ◼   ► 7 did and it gave me some great features but that's been a weird one.

01:15:10 ◼   ► So we were in a weird mood, I think, in September, you know, coming off of the iPhone announcement

01:15:16 ◼   ► and then it just kind of just snowballed because there was just nothing for the Mac.

01:15:21 ◼   ► And what there was wasn't good enough for the situation Apple would allow them to get

01:15:27 ◼   ► in.

01:15:28 ◼   ► So I think that's why I think genuinely we're in a winter of discontent right now.

01:15:32 ◼   ► That is where a lot of Apple commentary is because it has been a very weird final quarter

01:15:38 ◼   ► of the year for Apple product releases.

01:15:41 ◼   ► - All right, we got all that pent up.

01:15:43 ◼   ► Everybody was frustrated, everybody's wanting news,

01:15:47 ◼   ► and then it came and it was not the release of tension

01:15:51 ◼   ► of like, "Oh, thank God, now everything's fine."

01:15:53 ◼   ► Instead it was, well, and again,

01:15:56 ◼   ► I think I said this at the time, but it's like,

01:16:00 ◼   ► the problem was not that there was sort of a mixed reaction

01:16:04 ◼   ► to Apple's products that they announced in the fall.

01:16:06 ◼   ► The problem was that it was a reaction made by a group that has been desperate for anything,

01:16:15 ◼   ► and it magnified the importance of this one set of announcements, where if there were

01:16:20 ◼   ► four others of similar level in the past 12 months or 18 months, it wouldn't have mattered

01:16:26 ◼   ► so much. It would have been like, "Well, you know, this is good, this is bad," all that.

01:16:29 ◼   ► But it was such a, everybody's interest was escalated and it enhanced the reaction.

01:16:38 ◼   ► And it has left everything in a little bit of a weird place.

01:16:41 ◼   ► It's one of the bad side effects of complete Q4 product releases from Apple.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Waiting and doing everything in the final quarter.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Hopefully we're going to see some stuff in the spring for the iPad.

01:16:58 ◼   ► This is my problem now.

01:16:59 ◼   ► Like I wasn't too frustrated about the Mac stuff, right?

01:17:03 ◼   ► Like I could see the frustration,

01:17:05 ◼   ► but I ended up getting what I wanted,

01:17:07 ◼   ► which was the MacBook and I'm happy with that.

01:17:09 ◼   ► But I can see why it frustrates people.

01:17:11 ◼   ► The spring better give me some good iPad stuff

01:17:16 ◼   ► or I'll be very frustrated.

01:17:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, that would be scary

01:17:19 ◼   ► if the spring comes and there are no new iPads

01:17:22 ◼   ► or if the iPads are not.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Like there's no iOS update

01:17:27 ◼   ► and we spend another six months or a year

01:17:30 ◼   ► with the terrible app switcher and all that.

01:17:32 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, get ready for that one.

01:17:34 ◼   ► - Because then it will be six months of,

01:17:35 ◼   ► will we even get anything?

01:17:36 ◼   ► We didn't get anything in 10.

01:17:39 ◼   ► - So if she was on the other foot then.

01:17:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, me and Federico were talking about this

01:17:43 ◼   ► and connected a couple of weeks ago.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Like if you're an iPad Pro user, it's been just as bad,

01:17:49 ◼   ► right, like with there not being anything that you want.

01:17:53 ◼   ► So like, it's just been a funny thing to think about.

01:17:57 ◼   ► Alright, it's nearly time for Ask Upgrade and a mini Myke at the Movies segment at the

01:18:02 ◼   ► end of this week's show. But before we do that, let me take a moment to thank our friends

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01:19:06 ◼   ► Snell? I don't think you do! In both the summer and the winter we used to have issues where

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01:20:27 ◼   ► code upgrade terms and conditions apply. Thank you so much to Casper for their support of

01:20:33 ◼   ► this show. Time for Ask Upgrade.

01:20:38 ◼   ► Steven asks, how do you manage your media libraries and what software do you use to

01:20:41 ◼   ► to do so. I've got so much invested in iTunes but I really do not like it. I don't have

01:20:47 ◼   ► a media library anymore. I use streaming services."

01:20:51 ◼   ► Yeah, that's sort of my answer too. I do have an iTunes library and that's got my stuff

01:20:59 ◼   ► that I bought and downloaded but so much of what I do now is just using Apple Music in

01:21:04 ◼   ► my case.

01:21:05 ◼   ► "I have a hard drive that has a bunch of movies on it, has a bunch of music on it, just in

01:21:10 ◼   ► folders that had kind of moved from device to device over the years and I didn't put

01:21:16 ◼   ► that on my iMac when I got it because at that point I was into all the streaming services.

01:21:21 ◼   ► I use Netflix, I buy things on iTunes but I just delete them when I'm done with them

01:21:25 ◼   ► because you can just download them or play them straight from the iTunes apps on any

01:21:29 ◼   ► of the devices. I use Apple Music, I use Netflix, I use Amazon Prime. I don't want, especially

01:21:37 ◼   ► in the age of SSDs, I don't want a media library anymore.

01:21:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I keep mine on my server

01:21:44 ◼   ► that's got lots of storage,

01:21:45 ◼   ► but my increasing lack of use of it

01:21:50 ◼   ► and my not caring about it so much,

01:21:52 ◼   ► where I used to care about it a lot

01:21:54 ◼   ► and maintain it and all that,

01:21:57 ◼   ► that suggests to me that it's not a priority

01:22:00 ◼   ► and perhaps not long for this world.

01:22:02 ◼   ► I do have, like, I use the Amazon uploader to basically,

01:22:06 ◼   ► I spent whatever $20 a year or something to upload or match.

01:22:10 ◼   ► It's the Amazon equivalent of iTunes match.

01:22:13 ◼   ► My whole library, because I don't wanna pay

01:22:16 ◼   ► for a separate music streaming service for like the Echo.

01:22:21 ◼   ► And so I've got basically that makes my MP3 library,

01:22:26 ◼   ► my iTunes library available on the Echo.

01:22:28 ◼   ► So if I wanna play an album that I own, I can do that

01:22:32 ◼   ► because the Prime Music is really limited.

01:22:34 ◼   ► And so that expands what's available on the Echo.

01:22:37 ◼   ► I was just listening to, out in the kitchen last night,

01:22:41 ◼   ► my wife did a shuffle of Beatles songs

01:22:44 ◼   ► and that all came out of the upload from the library.

01:22:47 ◼   ► So, and Sonos, when I'm using Sonos,

01:22:51 ◼   ► one of the options there is also sort of like your library.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And so I have the option through that player

01:22:59 ◼   ► to either play from Apple Music or play from Sonos.

01:23:03 ◼   ► or there are other services.

01:23:04 ◼   ► I'm not using Spotify, I'm using Apple Music.

01:23:06 ◼   ► But yeah, so it is,

01:23:08 ◼   ► I don't really like it.

01:23:12 ◼   ► And I wouldn't say,

01:23:13 ◼   ► I think the beauty of the streaming services

01:23:15 ◼   ► is that you don't have to manage your media libraries.

01:23:18 ◼   ► Like I'm more concerned about managing my playlist,

01:23:20 ◼   ► like making playlists of things I wanna listen to.

01:23:22 ◼   ► But when you kind of cut ties more or less

01:23:26 ◼   ► and just let yourself be one with the streaming service,

01:23:31 ◼   ► you kind of leave all the media management behind and there's a lot to say for that.

01:23:37 ◼   ► Building on this, Stepan, I assume this is a different person.

01:23:40 ◼   ► It is a different person but it's Stephen and Stepan both wrote in about why they hate

01:23:45 ◼   ► iTunes which I think is cool.

01:23:46 ◼   ► iTunes is a joke in 2016, how do you see its future?

01:23:50 ◼   ► It still seems somewhat essential with restores and fast upgrading of iOS devices and management

01:23:56 ◼   ► of media.

01:23:58 ◼   ► What do you think Jason?

01:23:59 ◼   ► has been an often spoken about thing like when is iTunes gonna be broken up

01:24:04 ◼   ► or when is iTunes gonna be remade like do you think that the iTunes store has

01:24:10 ◼   ► this Phoenix from the flames moment within it? I'm a little worried that the

01:24:19 ◼   ► answer to this is very much like the answer to so much of what we've been

01:24:23 ◼   ► talking about the last few months which is how much does Apple care about the

01:24:27 ◼   ► Mac. Because, you know, iOS is so important to Apple. Is Apple really, for the people

01:24:35 ◼   ► who are consuming music and video on a Mac today, how many people are doing that versus

01:24:43 ◼   ► an Apple TV or an iOS device? In terms of Apple's priorities, it's sort of like iTunes

01:24:48 ◼   ► for Windows. It's sort of, I have to ask the question, like, does Apple think it's good

01:24:54 ◼   ► enough, like not good, but good enough that they don't need to invest in it? Are they

01:24:59 ◼   ► really going to make a TV app for the Mac or are they just going to say, "Well, forget

01:25:02 ◼   ► it. We don't care." Don't get me wrong. I hope that Apple will make a proper music app

01:25:07 ◼   ► that's a better Mac app for Apple Music and a better video app that lets you see movies

01:25:17 ◼   ► and TV on the iTunes store and maybe separates out device, wired device sync and stuff, wired

01:25:24 ◼   ► and wireless device sync. But if I had to guess, you know, there's somebody in Apple

01:25:28 ◼   ► making the argument that that's an edge case and that everybody's moving to the cloud,

01:25:34 ◼   ► everybody's using iOS devices for streaming stuff, and it's just not a big enough market.

01:25:40 ◼   ► It works, and let's keep it working, but let's not make a major investment into transforming

01:25:44 ◼   ► iTunes. It is what it is on the Mac. Let's just leave it there. And based on what's happened

01:25:50 ◼   ► with iTunes the last couple of years, that seems accurate because there's nothing. It

01:25:56 ◼   ► continues to exist. And on top of that, there's not a lot of competition. So I don't feel

01:26:04 ◼   ► like Apple is having its lunch eaten by anybody else on the Mac. So there's even less of a

01:26:11 ◼   ► reason for them to care. That's depressing.

01:26:15 ◼   ► - It is, but I think it's true.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Donovan asked, "I would love to hear your thoughts

01:26:20 ◼   ► "on what is considered to be a standard mic recommendation,

01:26:23 ◼   ► "the Blue Yeti for somebody getting started podcasting."

01:26:26 ◼   ► I still recommend the Blue Yeti.

01:26:27 ◼   ► I used the Blue Yeti for many years.

01:26:29 ◼   ► And the reason that I recommend it

01:26:31 ◼   ► is it is a really good all-in-one package.

01:26:34 ◼   ► It's not the best sound quality.

01:26:37 ◼   ► It's difficult to mount to a shock mount.

01:26:39 ◼   ► So like if you, it comes in,

01:26:40 ◼   ► it comes with an integrated stand.

01:26:42 ◼   ► If you put it on the table, it's fine.

01:26:43 ◼   ► But if you bump into the table,

01:26:45 ◼   ► that's going to really come into the microphone.

01:26:47 ◼   ► So you have to be careful with it.

01:26:48 ◼   ► Don't like wrap your hands on the table,

01:26:50 ◼   ► like, you know, just stop playing with the table

01:26:52 ◼   ► and you'll be fine.

01:26:53 ◼   ► But what the Yeti comes with, I love,

01:26:57 ◼   ► you know, it comes with the ability

01:26:59 ◼   ► to plug some headphones in

01:27:00 ◼   ► so you can monitor the microphone.

01:27:01 ◼   ► So you can listen to your own voice as you're talking,

01:27:04 ◼   ► which is very important.

01:27:05 ◼   ► So you can understand, you know, the volume levels,

01:27:07 ◼   ► but also to help you improve your podcasting voice.

01:27:12 ◼   ► It has gain controls right on there,

01:27:14 ◼   ► you can control how loud the microphone is. It has a mute switch, a hardware mute switch

01:27:19 ◼   ► built right into the device and it also has the four different modes that it can do. It's

01:27:27 ◼   ► set up to either record just you or record you and a person sitting in front of you,

01:27:32 ◼   ► to record you and maybe one or two people sitting next to you or to record four people

01:27:37 ◼   ► around a table or something like that. Honestly, it does a pretty good job of all of those.

01:27:44 ◼   ► So for like $110 it is on Amazon right now, for me, my recommendation is you would be

01:27:51 ◼   ► hard-pressed to find a better all-rounder than the Blue Yeti.

01:27:57 ◼   ► And I always, I used the Yeti for years and I always recommended it to people who were

01:28:02 ◼   ► getting started.

01:28:04 ◼   ► I don't anymore.

01:28:06 ◼   ► So you might be hard-pressed, but I am not.

01:28:10 ◼   ► I have switched to recommending the Audio-Technica ATR2100 USB.

01:28:17 ◼   ► We put that, we can put a link in the show notes to my story on Six Colors about a podcast

01:28:22 ◼   ► studio for under $100, but the ATR2100 USB, you know, it's got a, it's got an on/off switch

01:28:30 ◼   ► that serves as a mute switch.

01:28:33 ◼   ► It is more readily mountable on, it's a lot smaller, it's a lot less heavy.

01:28:39 ◼   ► It comes with its own tripod and mic clip.

01:28:41 ◼   ► It's also fairly compatible with some relatively cheap

01:28:45 ◼   ► sound isolator.

01:28:49 ◼   ► What is it that keeps you from bumping?

01:28:52 ◼   ► You just said it's shock mounts, shock mounts, right?

01:28:55 ◼   ► So it's much more compatible with stuff like that.

01:28:59 ◼   ► It's got its own headphone jack.

01:29:00 ◼   ► It's got its own volume level.

01:29:01 ◼   ► It's not, you know,

01:29:04 ◼   ► it's mute switches isn't as nice as the Yeti.

01:29:06 ◼   ► Its volume adjustment is not as nice as the Yeti,

01:29:09 ◼   ► but it's small and light and more compatible

01:29:11 ◼   ► with shock mounts and more compatible with windscreens.

01:29:14 ◼   ► 'Cause it's because it's smaller,

01:29:16 ◼   ► you can just buy a cheap windscreen.

01:29:17 ◼   ► - So that's the little phone that you put over the top

01:29:19 ◼   ► of the microphone to stop the like the plus.

01:29:22 ◼   ► - Popping the P's and all that.

01:29:23 ◼   ► And it's often available for between 35 and $50 on Amazon,

01:29:28 ◼   ► certainly, so it's cheaper.

01:29:30 ◼   ► All of these are reasons why I think it's probably

01:29:34 ◼   ► the best choice now.

01:29:35 ◼   ► And the other reason is in sound tests,

01:29:38 ◼   ► it's generally better at handling echoey rooms.

01:29:42 ◼   ► It doesn't have some of the nice features

01:29:44 ◼   ► that Myke mentioned that the Yeti has,

01:29:46 ◼   ► like the two across feature, which I really like,

01:29:48 ◼   ► which is if you and a friend do a podcast together

01:29:50 ◼   ► in person, you can put the Yeti on the table

01:29:52 ◼   ► and both of you sit on opposite sides of it.

01:29:54 ◼   ► And it is set up that it will record sort of you

01:29:56 ◼   ► on one side and them on the other side.

01:29:58 ◼   ► And it ends up sounding pretty nice,

01:30:01 ◼   ► but the Yeti is not so great in echoey rooms and the ATR 2100 is much better in echoey

01:30:11 ◼   ► rooms. I also think the ATR 2100 is hard to get in outside the U.S., hard to get in the U.K.

01:30:15 ◼   ► Is that true? I can't find it on Amazon right now. Yeah, but it's and it may have a different name in

01:30:21 ◼   ► the U.K. but I think it's, that's my recommendation now and you should check out that podcast studio

01:30:27 ◼   ► for under $100 because I mentioned the accessories, getting a windscreen and a shock mount and

01:30:32 ◼   ► maybe a mic stand to replace. Although the 2100 actually comes with a mic stand. So it's

01:30:38 ◼   ► pretty full featured for cheap. So I think for most people who are looking for a relatively

01:30:44 ◼   ► low cost entry into podcast microphones, that might be my choice today instead of the Yeti.

01:30:49 ◼   ► You have asked, if a genie appears and gives you the ability to listen to a podcast which

01:30:58 ◼   ► is recorded one year into the future, but you could listen to it today, what show would

01:31:04 ◼   ► it be, Jason?

01:31:07 ◼   ► It would be the weekly direct from Tim Cook's office tell you everything that's going

01:31:13 ◼   ► on at Apple and what he's thinking about what Apple's doing podcast that he's going

01:31:16 ◼   ► to launch in 2017.

01:31:17 ◼   ► Oh, that sounds like fun.

01:31:19 ◼   ► like 22 of that. I can't wait. I would listen to the connected year review

01:31:26 ◼   ► episode so we're going to record that tomorrow so next year's one of those

01:31:30 ◼   ► because then I'll find out about the entire year's technology stories and

01:31:34 ◼   ► then I can start putting bets on it and then I can I can start to run Mill

01:31:39 ◼   ► Valley and I don't think you want to I don't think you want to like cross your

01:31:44 ◼   ► own timeline though that could be dangerous you're hearing yourself and

01:31:48 ◼   ► And what if you're not on that episode, Myke? What if you're gone and you're like, "Oh,

01:31:51 ◼   ► what happened to me? Why am I not on the Year in Review episode of Connected for 2017?"

01:31:55 ◼   ► Well because I already knew everything and put all the bets on one million and millions

01:31:58 ◼   ► of dollars and I don't need to be on the show anymore.

01:32:01 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:32:02 ◼   ► Alright, so that has concluded Ask Upgrade for this week, so we will now fire off the

01:32:08 ◼   ► spoiler horn as we are about to discuss Star Wars Rogue One.

01:32:14 ◼   ► So if you are still listening to us right now, you have made the decision that you want

01:32:24 ◼   ► to hear me and Jason talk about Star Wars Rogue One, so if you are spoiled at this point,

01:32:30 ◼   ► that is not our fault.

01:32:32 ◼   ► I listened to the Incumbre War, episode 331, where you and Tony and Monty and Ren and John

01:32:39 ◼   ► Syracuse spent some time talking about the movie having pretty much just seen

01:32:44 ◼   ► it I saw it on Thursday night me too and I think that on the whole I echo a lot

01:32:53 ◼   ► of the feelings that you have and that many of the the the cast of characters

01:32:57 ◼   ► on the incomparable do so this false awakens this was not I agree I didn't

01:33:04 ◼   ► cry during Rogue One. I didn't feel like I needed to cheer during Rogue One. I was

01:33:12 ◼   ► not overcome with emotion. I don't know if the movie attempted to do that in the

01:33:19 ◼   ► same way. I don't know. But my emotion didn't just come from nostalgia. I had

01:33:24 ◼   ► genuine feelings and emotions for Rey and for Finn. I was really caught up in that story

01:33:32 ◼   ► in a very different way. So I mean I don't know what the difference was there

01:33:38 ◼   ► honestly but it didn't feel like that for me and I'll wait to see how

01:33:44 ◼   ► episode 8 makes me feel right because if episode 8 makes me feel just the way

01:33:49 ◼   ► that Rogue One made me feel kind of emotionally then I'll realize it was

01:33:53 ◼   ► just because I was so freaking excited for Star Wars to come back right?

01:33:56 ◼   ► because that may have been what it was. I couldn't stand the CGI characters. Tarkin

01:34:05 ◼   ► and Leia. Leia was an abomination. Tarkin was okay, but the Leia face at the end, it

01:34:12 ◼   ► just looked like Final Fantasy. Like, she did not look like a real person at all to

01:34:17 ◼   ► me.

01:34:18 ◼   ► So I've asked a bunch of people if they noticed the CGI, you know, and it's not like they're

01:34:24 ◼   ► pure CGI. I think they have body doubles and then they did a face replacement and the face

01:34:29 ◼   ► replacement is a CGI face replacement. I think that's how they did it. I asked a bunch of

01:34:33 ◼   ► people about this, including my family. And I can tell you, my family members did not

01:34:38 ◼   ► notice that Tarkin was a CGI character. And I think this is where we are now. I think

01:34:43 ◼   ► this was as impressive a bit of work as you could have to get to the point where people

01:34:50 ◼   ► who didn't know Peter Cushing from Star Wars and know that that's Peter Cushing and know

01:34:57 ◼   ► that he's been dead for 20 years or whatever and all of that who just are watching a Star

01:35:03 ◼   ► Wars movie and not paying as close attention to some details as as some nerds are. I think

01:35:10 ◼   ► this was probably the the Tarkin was probably good enough for most of them to not notice

01:35:16 ◼   ► at which point job done, right? Although you could argue, and this would be my argument,

01:35:21 ◼   ► that anybody who cares that it looks exactly like Peter Cushing, those are the people who

01:35:27 ◼   ► are going to notice that it's not. And hiring a lookalike to do it, somebody who looks kind

01:35:34 ◼   ► of like him like they did with Wayne Pegram in Star Wars Episode III, maybe would disappoint

01:35:41 ◼   ► fans in a different way because it's not Peter Cushing, but at the same time it would also not be

01:35:45 ◼   ► not be a synthetic character. Leia, I think everybody liked the idea of it even though

01:35:54 ◼   ► they knew that that was not because they know what Carrie Fisher looks like now. They know

01:35:58 ◼   ► that that's not her, that's her from back then. So they were tweaked onto that being

01:36:02 ◼   ► synthetic in a way that they weren't with Tarkin. So I feel like they came a long way,

01:36:06 ◼   ► right? Unsuspecting people didn't really notice. But if you look closely, which all the nerds

01:36:10 ◼   ► were looking closely. It took me out of the movie entirely. I couldn't even tell you what

01:36:16 ◼   ► is said in those scenes because I was completely taken out of it by the fact that that was

01:36:20 ◼   ► a synthetic character made to look and sound like Peter Cushing.

01:36:24 ◼   ► I will say that it just for the record did not pop into my mind that he was dead. That

01:36:31 ◼   ► wasn't it for me. It didn't really cross my mind. It wasn't in the front of my mind that

01:36:37 ◼   ► Peter Cushing was dead. Like Star Wars for me is so out of time as to when it was made.

01:36:46 ◼   ► I don't really think about the fact that the people in that movie are like 40 years old.

01:36:51 ◼   ► Like it doesn't really because it's just been this like thing. So I obviously if I think

01:36:56 ◼   ► about it rationally the guy of that age will not be alive now. But that that wasn't my

01:37:01 ◼   ► feeling. It wasn't that I felt like I was looking at a dead man. I just knew I wasn't

01:37:05 ◼   ► looking at a human being and I could tell immediately and I don't know if it's because

01:37:10 ◼   ► I play more video games, right? So you can see this because what it is is it is nuance

01:37:17 ◼   ► of movement. As he was walking, he was walking like a video game character. Like, and it

01:37:23 ◼   ► was the movement more than the facial expressions that really destroyed it for me because he's

01:37:29 ◼   ► ever so slightly kind of just floating. Like it just looks weird. Like there is not as

01:37:33 ◼   ► much expressive movement in him it is by far the best sustained CGI I've seen you

01:37:40 ◼   ► know like I saw somebody mentioned in Ant-Man Michael Douglas like that was

01:37:46 ◼   ► incredible but probably easier to do because they could use Michael Douglas

01:37:51 ◼   ► right exactly and then just de-age him exactly I assume that makes it easier

01:37:55 ◼   ► but and Robert Downey and Civil War is the same way yeah I haven't seen it yet

01:38:00 ◼   ► Oh, yeah. There's a flashback. I mean, that's not a spoiler. Like, it's just, yeah. Robert

01:38:06 ◼   ► Downey was also in movies in the 80s and they used some footage of that to build a face

01:38:10 ◼   ► replacement to make him younger. Yeah. I think they just used too much of him. A couple of

01:38:15 ◼   ► scenes with him not moving would have been fine. That's my feeling about it is I think

01:38:19 ◼   ► because John Syracuse was going on about how he thought it was a mistake and I was like,

01:38:23 ◼   ► you know, I thought it was great when it was his reflection in the glass and then he turns

01:38:27 ◼   ► around and says something. That's really cool. But then he's like, somebody said, I think

01:38:34 ◼   ► he's in this more than he's in Star Wars. I'm like, yeah, that's, I think I felt like

01:38:36 ◼   ► it was too much. Like they were, they were like, look, we can do this. Let's do a lot

01:38:39 ◼   ► of it. And it's like, could you, you know, maybe only use him when he, when the absolutely

01:38:43 ◼   ► necessary would have been better. It's, it is an impressive achievement. It is, but it

01:38:46 ◼   ► still didn't work for me because I knew and I, it took me out of the movie and ideally

01:38:51 ◼   ► that wouldn't be the case. And whether it's that he's dead or just that he's, I mean,

01:38:56 ◼   ► That movie was 45 years ago, 40 years ago, I don't even know how many, 50 years ago?

01:39:03 ◼   ► 50 years ago.

01:39:04 ◼   ► He obviously is, but that wasn't what I was thinking at the time.

01:39:07 ◼   ► 40 years ago.

01:39:08 ◼   ► You know, so, but believe it or not, the character that I could pay, that really, so when Tarkin

01:39:16 ◼   ► was there, I was like, "Oh, okay."

01:39:18 ◼   ► But I could appreciate the technical achievement, so it didn't upset me.

01:39:22 ◼   ► But I was like, hmm.

01:39:23 ◼   ► And they really wanted this to be the movie that leads into Star Wars, right?

01:39:25 ◼   ► and having him there and having Darth Vader there makes that the case.

01:39:29 ◼   ► And the Leia one was such a short thing where I was like, "Ugh, you did not do a good job."

01:39:33 ◼   ► But do you know what above me the most? Vader.

01:39:37 ◼   ► I hated that scene.

01:39:40 ◼   ► Darth Vader is three things. He is movement, costume, and voice. The movement didn't look

01:39:46 ◼   ► right and the voice sounded like an old man.

01:39:49 ◼   ► Well...

01:39:50 ◼   ► Because he's an old man and I think they should have how many millions of people in the world can do a good Darth Vader impression

01:39:57 ◼   ► Yeah, like I don't know why I think it's hard use James Earl Jones

01:40:01 ◼   ► I think it's hard to I think it's hard to not make a movie with Darth Vader and not

01:40:05 ◼   ► Have James Earl Jones do it. It just every line of dialogue sounded unconvincing to me

01:40:12 ◼   ► It didn't it didn't that didn't bother me at all. Yeah, I was really surprised that nobody brought that up

01:40:17 ◼   ► Although going back to Star Wars

01:40:20 ◼   ► I think the Vader body movement in Star Wars is weird too that part of the challenge with Darth Vader is that Darth Vader in Star Wars is very different from Darth Vader and the Empire Strikes Back and return the Jedi. He looks different. He moves differently. It's a it's a very different performance and they and they kind of matched it and

01:40:36 ◼   ► Matched it wrong. I know why they did it

01:40:40 ◼   ► But I think they should have given us the Vader everybody knows like having dress in the appropriate dress for the time

01:40:47 ◼   ► but the movement he just looked a bit timid and

01:40:51 ◼   ► And like when you're coupling that with the the echoes of the Imperial March in that big lava castle

01:40:57 ◼   ► It all didn't work. Like this is clearly a very intimidating guy, but the movement was unsure

01:41:04 ◼   ► But it was the voice for me. I like really didn't like it at all

01:41:08 ◼   ► I love that scene at the end though where he's uh, he arrives and

01:41:12 ◼   ► Star Destroyer destroys all those ships and then he gets on board the ship and he kills all those guys in the funny hats

01:41:17 ◼   ► Yep, I was great. I'm gonna see the movie again, obviously

01:41:20 ◼   ► I genuinely think that that will probably become one of my favorite Star Wars scenes of all time. It was fantastic

01:41:27 ◼   ► I think the whole space battle is amazing. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah the two

01:41:31 ◼   ► I mean I'll get we'll get to the Star Destroyer smashing into each other in a minute

01:41:34 ◼   ► but like that that scene where he's just like just hacking and slashing and it's like

01:41:40 ◼   ► This doesn't we don't see this very often, but this is what it would be like

01:41:44 ◼   ► He is an evil man, and he has a job to do and his job is to get that disc

01:41:50 ◼   ► So yeah

01:41:51 ◼   ► He will just kill everyone that gets in his way and he doesn't care about it as that is the kind of like the anger

01:41:56 ◼   ► That and that kind of brutality

01:41:59 ◼   ► That isn't in a lot of Star Wars because of the time

01:42:02 ◼   ► but would be there today as we now see it right because

01:42:07 ◼   ► Movies just tend to be more

01:42:09 ◼   ► violent than they were then and I liked that I liked that scene because it was very convincing

01:42:14 ◼   ► for me if he would have just been walking through that corridor and just force pushing everybody

01:42:18 ◼   ► out of the way like you know like just ah just get out of my way no he's gonna be killing some

01:42:23 ◼   ► guys trying to get that thing because that's how important that was to Darth Vader right like

01:42:28 ◼   ► that is his job to save the empire he's just been put in this role right like he's his first role

01:42:35 ◼   ► on the job and so he's gonna go he's gonna go kill some fools with the funny hats yeah and I love that

01:42:41 ◼   ► that led straight in by the way like that you get the white walls like I loved all of that like the

01:42:47 ◼   ► fact that it went straight into it but the the space battles in this movie were my favorite thing

01:42:52 ◼   ► because they are some of the best that they've ever had so whatever it was then the decisions

01:42:57 ◼   ► that they've made but like there are some things like everything in space was incredible like the

01:43:02 ◼   ► the moment when the light was hitting the ships and it hits the Star Destroyer

01:43:06 ◼   ► you know like it's like it's like the Sun or whatever is casting over them

01:43:10 ◼   ► that was just a beautiful scene but when the two Star Destroyers smash into each

01:43:14 ◼   ► other when the X-wings hit the the force field and just like smash and skid in

01:43:18 ◼   ► and skid across the yeah because the easy thing to do which is have them

01:43:23 ◼   ► explode right like that's the easy thing to do like but they came up with

01:43:28 ◼   ► something new which makes way more sense which is like this is just like hitting

01:43:31 ◼   ► a wall, right? So you're just going to skid across it. I really like that. The performances

01:43:42 ◼   ► were mostly good. Is it KS20 or K2SO? Yeah, something like that. Clear standout performance,

01:43:53 ◼   ► like by a country mile. Oh, it's so good. The CGI, the character design is great, the

01:44:00 ◼   ► physical movement of him is great and the voice is great and that was Alan

01:44:03 ◼   ► Tudyk and and he he was a motion capture performer as that so he was on the set

01:44:08 ◼   ► in the motion capture performing that that character. Yeah that was just a

01:44:13 ◼   ► fantastic character. I really I really enjoyed Felicity Jones as Gynaso. What

01:44:21 ◼   ► I really liked about it is her look like she had a great just like a great look

01:44:27 ◼   ► look like that she was she was a convincing like rebel you know like though in the same

01:44:35 ◼   ► way that that Rey was like you just could look at her and believe that she could super

01:44:41 ◼   ► handle herself right like she just had that look about her which I really liked I did

01:44:46 ◼   ► not enjoy Cassian, Diego Luna I just did yeah that performance I did I didn't really think

01:44:52 ◼   ► he brought a lot to it. Forest Whitaker was incredible and Donnie Yen played a character.

01:45:00 ◼   ► Forest Monk. Yeah I can't, I actually can't say that. What is his name? Is it Chut?

01:45:06 ◼   ► Yeah I'm not gonna even try. Mads Mikkelsen also great and a lot of the kind of the the small

01:45:13 ◼   ► actors I really enjoyed. There's like you know like the kind of the ragtag group but there were

01:45:18 ◼   ► some that were like you know especially Diego Luna I really didn't enjoy him and

01:45:25 ◼   ► and that was a shame my feeling on this is like this is this is what the prequels

01:45:31 ◼   ► should have been like this is what this is a prequel like this is a prequel then

01:45:37 ◼   ► this is like made a good Star Wars prequel Myke this is how I feel about

01:45:42 ◼   ► about this. It's like, this is a movie which is just setting up the big ones, right? And

01:45:50 ◼   ► that's maybe what the prequel should have been, because it had everything the prequels

01:45:54 ◼   ► had to deal with, which was a story we already know.

01:45:58 ◼   ► Yeah, right, and it's Darth Vader, the Darth Vader we know, not the Darth Vader we get

01:46:02 ◼   ► in the prequels, who is super disappointing in my mind. This is the scary Darth Vader,

01:46:07 ◼   ► like, yeah, he's scary.

01:46:09 ◼   ► moving the Vader thing it's like the you know like people say the problem with

01:46:12 ◼   ► the prequels is we knew what was gonna happen right but we knew what was gonna

01:46:15 ◼   ► happen in this movie that they would get the plans but they did something that

01:46:20 ◼   ► was unexpected which I loved which is that they killed everyone everybody dies

01:46:26 ◼   ► and that is everybody dies it's a great way to end this movie because it's like

01:46:32 ◼   ► that makes sense no one should have lived through that and the whole and it

01:46:38 ◼   ► makes way more sense for the continuation of the story that the success was built upon

01:46:42 ◼   ► the people that sacrificed. And it makes so much sense.

01:46:46 ◼   ► - Yes, I think it is, it's really dangerous. I mean, prequels are dangerous because you're

01:46:52 ◼   ► playing with people sort of, it's not just the canon, it's what we call the head canon.

01:46:57 ◼   ► It's sort of like the world you build up to fill in the blanks. If the prequel disputes

01:47:03 ◼   ► that, you can end up in a really weird bit of cognitive dissonance where you're like,

01:47:06 ◼   ► No, no, no, I didn't really expect that.

01:47:08 ◼   ► I think this movie does such a good job of making,

01:47:12 ◼   ► kind of intensifying feelings that you have for "Star Wars"

01:47:16 ◼   ► because you get, like,

01:47:19 ◼   ► 'cause the MacGuffin in "Star Wars" is the plans.

01:47:21 ◼   ► It's the Death Star plans.

01:47:23 ◼   ► Leia puts them in R2-D2, he gets jettisoned to Tatooine,

01:47:26 ◼   ► he finds Ben Kenobi, they have to travel to Alderaan,

01:47:30 ◼   ► it gets blown up, they go to the Death Star, they escape,

01:47:33 ◼   ► they take the plans back to Yavin, you know,

01:47:35 ◼   ► and they use the plans to blow up the Death Star, right?

01:47:37 ◼   ► That is the entire movie of Star Wars is about these plans

01:47:41 ◼   ► and the ramifications of them.

01:47:42 ◼   ► And now we know the people who sacrificed their lives

01:47:47 ◼   ► to get the plans out.

01:47:49 ◼   ► Now we know them.

01:47:50 ◼   ► And I feel like that makes a difference.

01:47:53 ◼   ► We see how close at many points the plans come from,

01:47:57 ◼   ► you know, not getting to their destination,

01:47:59 ◼   ► including by Darth Vader,

01:48:00 ◼   ► cutting a bunch of people up with lightsabers.

01:48:02 ◼   ► I think that's all good.

01:48:03 ◼   ► And if you want to take it this way, we also,

01:48:06 ◼   ► they also do a very clever thing about how could it be

01:48:09 ◼   ► that the Death Star has this flaw that lets you go

01:48:12 ◼   ► to one thermal exhaust port

01:48:13 ◼   ► and shoot one proton torpedo down them.

01:48:16 ◼   ► - Just fantastic retcon.

01:48:18 ◼   ► - The answer is one of the chief engineers

01:48:20 ◼   ► of the Death Star tried to leave

01:48:22 ◼   ► because he hated the empire and the empire found him,

01:48:25 ◼   ► killed his wife, his daughter disappears,

01:48:28 ◼   ► he's dragged back into service and he has,

01:48:30 ◼   ► and the movie doesn't, you know,

01:48:31 ◼   ► you have to work this out for yourself,

01:48:33 ◼   ► but it's like, he has three choices.

01:48:35 ◼   ► He can let them kill him.

01:48:38 ◼   ► He can collaborate with them.

01:48:40 ◼   ► That's it, right?

01:48:43 ◼   ► So what's his third choice?

01:48:44 ◼   ► His third choice is act like you're collaborating with them

01:48:46 ◼   ► while you are undermining them from within.

01:48:48 ◼   ► And that's what he chooses to do.

01:48:50 ◼   ► And he does it for years and he doesn't see his daughter

01:48:53 ◼   ► and his wife is dead.

01:48:54 ◼   ► But in the end, like the hero of that movie

01:48:56 ◼   ► is Galen Erso, it's Mads Mikkelsen,

01:48:59 ◼   ► because he is the guy who makes the flaw

01:49:03 ◼   ► and then gets the plans,

01:49:06 ◼   ► that gets the info about where the plans are

01:49:08 ◼   ► so they can find the flaw to the rebellion.

01:49:11 ◼   ► And it all keys off because the empire

01:49:15 ◼   ► and that guy Krennic was doing what empire people do,

01:49:20 ◼   ► which was treating people badly and being cruel to people.

01:49:24 ◼   ► And in this case, killing his wife

01:49:27 ◼   ► and taking him away from his daughter

01:49:29 ◼   ► because they need him to work on this on the on the Death Star and that is the inhuman

01:49:34 ◼   ► immoral act that causes the Empire to fall. That's pretty cool from this movie. We get

01:49:40 ◼   ► all of that. I think that the script writer who came up with that they had a real Eureka

01:49:46 ◼   ► moment that day. It really works like it makes sense because up until this point it has always

01:49:52 ◼   ► been like a pardon the pun a hole in the plot. Why does the Death Star have a hole?

01:49:58 ◼   ► - It's like, how stupid could they have been?

01:50:01 ◼   ► Right, but it's like, no, they weren't stupid.

01:50:04 ◼   ► - Yeah. - It was a trick.

01:50:06 ◼   ► - And it's, you know, everybody's gonna have

01:50:07 ◼   ► their own take on it, but for me, it's like,

01:50:08 ◼   ► that was the art of it, is that it feels like

01:50:10 ◼   ► a good way to address it, rather than it being some dumb,

01:50:13 ◼   ► like, well, actually, what you find is that

01:50:16 ◼   ► empire construction techniques require the,

01:50:18 ◼   ► no, it's not like that, it's, you know what?

01:50:20 ◼   ► The guy in charge of the Death Star tried to quit,

01:50:23 ◼   ► and they killed his wife and made him,

01:50:24 ◼   ► and forced him to do it, and so he said,

01:50:26 ◼   ► screw you guys, I'm gonna make a flaw in the Death Star

01:50:28 ◼   ► and make sure the rebellion knows about it

01:50:29 ◼   ► so that they can stop this weapon before it destroys

01:50:31 ◼   ► more than one, two, three planets.

01:50:33 ◼   ► I'm gonna do what I can.

01:50:35 ◼   ► And I buy that, I love that.

01:50:37 ◼   ► I really appreciate that that's where we ended up,

01:50:40 ◼   ► is that I accept that, canon accepted.

01:50:43 ◼   ► - Like it works because all that the rebel,

01:50:48 ◼   ► all of the empire think the rebels are doing

01:50:51 ◼   ► is stealing the Death Star's plans, right?

01:50:54 ◼   ► Which is more than enough of a reason to try and stop them.

01:50:58 ◼   ► But they don't know that the plans contain a flaw in them, but that doesn't matter,

01:51:04 ◼   ► because it's convincing enough that the rebels would just want them anyway.

01:51:08 ◼   ► Well, you know what's funny is you could argue that--and I want to see the movie before

01:51:14 ◼   ► arguing this further--but you could argue that Krennic, right, when he kills all the

01:51:22 ◼   ► engineers and all of that and he's on the outs, right? He's been displaced by Tarkin,

01:51:27 ◼   ► he's been told to go away by Vader, basically, and he goes to the planet where the plans are.

01:51:36 ◼   ► And given what all is going on there and what Galen Erso says about how he was the one who betrayed

01:51:45 ◼   ► them. He might have an inkling that this is a bigger deal, he might, but nobody will listen

01:51:52 ◼   ► to him and he dies with everyone else, so it doesn't matter, right? I kind of like the

01:51:59 ◼   ► idea that maybe Krennic is figuring it out that there's a bigger issue that Galen Erso

01:52:04 ◼   ► has done something really bad with the Death Star. I'm not sure the movie supports that,

01:52:09 ◼   ► but if not, then my headcanon will support that. But, you know, in the end, Krennic's

01:52:13 ◼   ► been told to pound sand literally because it's a sandy planet where they put the whoever

01:52:19 ◼   ► we said there's something comparable whoever decided that the storage tapes would all be

01:52:23 ◼   ► located on a sandy beach that person deserves a medal they were looking for a for a retirement

01:52:29 ◼   ► place what a great setting another great setting right I think we got this in in in episode

01:52:36 ◼   ► seven we got some incredible settings like with the water and stuff and what a great

01:52:40 ◼   ► place to have a battle.

01:52:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:52:43 ◼   ► Yeah, it was really good.

01:52:45 ◼   ► So I say like I'm there are parts of

01:52:47 ◼   ► this movie that I didn't like, but I

01:52:48 ◼   ► liked it. It was a very good action

01:52:50 ◼   ► movie set in the Star Wars universe.

01:52:52 ◼   ► Yeah, but it wasn't what I considered

01:52:54 ◼   ► to be a Star Wars movie.

01:52:55 ◼   ► And this is it, right?

01:52:56 ◼   ► They call it a Star Wars story.

01:52:58 ◼   ► Right. And there's no crawl and they

01:53:01 ◼   ► didn't have the usual song.

01:53:02 ◼   ► Right. Like there's all of this stuff

01:53:04 ◼   ► is like this is

01:53:06 ◼   ► with the types of things, you

01:53:08 ◼   ► know I loved by the way all the old Star Wars stuff coming back all the the look

01:53:12 ◼   ► and the design and the old stormtroopers all great love to see all of that and it

01:53:17 ◼   ► was done so well but yeah it's like this is a really great movie well this is a

01:53:22 ◼   ► this is a good movie within the Star Wars universe I expect the Han Solo

01:53:28 ◼   ► movie to be like this I expect the Boba Fett movie to be like this like good

01:53:31 ◼   ► movies in the Star Wars universe like like the Marvel movies yeah that was a

01:53:36 ◼   ► a good Iron Man movie but it ain't no Avengers right like it's the same kind of idea I think.

01:53:43 ◼   ► Yeah I think I think that's probably right that you've got your standalone movies that

01:53:45 ◼   ► are kind of like connected in the Marvel sense they're connected but they're not part of

01:53:49 ◼   ► the main through line of story you know Doctor Strange was like that Ant-Man was like that

01:53:55 ◼   ► Guardians of the Galaxy is sort of like that where you know whereas the Avengers and Civil

01:53:58 ◼   ► War and all of that that's the like the ongoing story that they're telling and this other

01:54:02 ◼   ► of just sort of ties in. This is a little bit like that. I gotta say, I look at a movie

01:54:06 ◼   ► like this and think, "I would like to see more movies like this in the Star Wars story

01:54:11 ◼   ► every other year" kind of thing, because I would really hate it if the "every other year"

01:54:15 ◼   ► kind of thing literally was just, "Hey, remember that character you liked from a long time

01:54:19 ◼   ► ago? This is when they were younger." or "Here's another adventure they had." I actually like

01:54:24 ◼   ► the idea that this movie is "People We Don't Know." It is very closely tied into "People

01:54:28 ◼   ► we do know and the setting of a movie we know, but I do like that. I hope they have the freedom

01:54:36 ◼   ► and creativity to do some stories set in the Star Wars universe that are not, you know,

01:54:42 ◼   ► young Han Solo, young Chewbacca, young Boba Fett, whatever.

01:54:46 ◼   ► - Star Wars babies. - Yeah, exactly right. I would like some other

01:54:50 ◼   ► kinds of movies. It's such a rich universe and you can have a lot of fun with it. And

01:54:54 ◼   ► here they made a war movie. There are other kinds of movies they can make too.

01:54:57 ◼   ► I want to see a like a romance-led movie which actually reminds me that I hate sand

01:55:03 ◼   ► it's so rough and coarse and oh not that kind of romance I didn't like the

01:55:08 ◼   ► romance that blossomed at the end of the movie ever it felt force yeah the bit

01:55:13 ◼   ► barely and barely there yeah if it felt like maybe there was some deleted scenes

01:55:17 ◼   ► it definitely felt like it was just like forced in and then was like hinted at

01:55:23 ◼   ► and then was blatant and then was hinted at again I didn't I didn't I didn't think

01:55:26 ◼   ► that landed very well. But good movie and I'm going to see it again.

01:55:30 ◼   ► If you want to find our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/120.

01:55:35 ◼   ► We'll be back next week on Boxing Day for a holiday extravaganza.

01:55:39 ◼   ► And then the week after that will be the broadcast of the prerecorded

01:55:44 ◼   ► Upgrady's. It feels like a real award show. I know, right?

01:55:48 ◼   ► We're prerecording it in case anybody does anything wild.

01:55:51 ◼   ► So we can't let that be put on air.

01:55:54 ◼   ► If you want to find our show notes for this week,

01:55:56 ◼   ► I've already told you where to go.

01:55:57 ◼   ► If you want to support our sponsors, you should do.

01:55:59 ◼   ► And I want to take a moment again to thank

01:56:01 ◼   ► Casper Freshbooks and Encapsular for that.

01:56:03 ◼   ► Go to sixcolors.com and the incomparable.com

01:56:06 ◼   ► for Jason's work outside of his fantastic shows

01:56:09 ◼   ► at Relay FM, of which there are more,

01:56:10 ◼   ► Clockwise and Liftoff and Free Agents.

01:56:12 ◼   ► You should go listen to those.

01:56:14 ◼   ► Jason is @jsnell, J-S-N-E-double L on Twitter.

01:56:17 ◼   ► I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:56:19 ◼   ► Until next time, say goodbye, Mr. Snell.

01:56:22 ◼   ► - All the great shows.

01:56:24 ◼   ► It's better than screaming.

01:56:25 ◼   ► It is.

01:56:27 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:56:31 ◼   ► [ Music ]