Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► from relay FM this is upgrade episode number

00:00:12 ◼   ► 99 today's show is brought to you by backblaze

00:00:15 ◼   ► and igloo my name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snell

00:00:20 ◼   ► from an undisclosed location somewhere in California

00:00:23 ◼   ► it's so hot Myke hi it's so hot how you doing oh good where

00:00:29 ◼   ► Where are you?

00:00:30 ◼   ► I drove south.

00:00:31 ◼   ► I'm in greater Los Angeles now and it's hot.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Boy it's hot.

00:00:36 ◼   ► My mother-in-law doesn't like to use air conditioning.

00:00:39 ◼   ► And Myke doesn't like it when you're recording.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Well that's true, that's true.

00:00:42 ◼   ► I do actually have a fan on, a ceiling fan on at the lowest setting and that is my way

00:00:48 ◼   ► of balancing, very important to balance in your life, balance between noise and dying.

00:00:55 ◼   ► also you know even if it's not really calling you too much you know it's there

00:00:59 ◼   ► so you're doing something so at least your brain is happy right thank you you

00:01:03 ◼   ► have some kind of comfort in knowing that you have attempted to keep yourself

00:01:07 ◼   ► cooler at least I at least I tried I have some follow-up for you Jason oh

00:01:12 ◼   ► good it starts with a couple of questions actually and they're both

00:01:15 ◼   ► surrounding comics many people enjoyed our comic discussion I have not yet read

00:01:19 ◼   ► any of those comics but I am going to oh good I just want yeah I'm think I'm

00:01:24 ◼   ► going to sign up for Marvel Unlimited, I think is what I'm going to do. I just haven't done

00:01:28 ◼   ► that yet. And I've got some trips coming up, so it will be good to have some entertainment

00:01:32 ◼   ► for those trips.

00:01:33 ◼   ► >> And in fact, somebody suggested to me that we do an incomparable episode that is just

00:01:39 ◼   ► reading recommendations for Marvel Unlimited after our conversation on Upgrade last week,

00:01:43 ◼   ► and I thought that's a great idea.

00:01:45 ◼   ► >> Yeah, because I bet more people have it than just you, right? So there will be more

00:01:48 ◼   ► suggestions and going into a little bit more depth about the stories than we did.

00:01:54 ◼   ► I guess. Well, right, and people who sign up for it, they're like, "Alright, now I've

00:01:58 ◼   ► got access to 10,000 comics, what should I read?" And you go, "I don't know," right?

00:02:03 ◼   ► It's like paralysis of choice. Yeah. But Darren asked, "Do you have any go-to websites or

00:02:10 ◼   ► podcasts that you read or listen to that give you the comic news that you want to look for

00:02:16 ◼   ► if you do at all?" It's funny because I actually did a presentation that I'd been working on

00:02:23 ◼   ► for a while and I gave it at the Yosemite conference this year by CocoConf. And it was

00:02:30 ◼   ► about ways, in part it was about ways the internet has failed us. And one of those ways

00:02:38 ◼   ► I feel like the example I give is the web is built to serve people who've got a lot

00:02:46 ◼   ► of enthusiasm for a subject. Like that's what the web is really, really good at and

00:02:51 ◼   ► whether it's TV shows or movies or comics or politics or technology, whatever it is,

00:03:00 ◼   ► the web has shown that it's really a great medium for reaching people who are very excited

00:03:05 ◼   ► about a subject. It's narrow niches of topics. The problem is that if you're not somebody

00:03:11 ◼   ► who's like super deep down excited about that topic, the web is actually I think kind of

00:03:16 ◼   ► bad for this stuff. It's bad if you're mildly enthusiastic about something. It used to be

00:03:21 ◼   ► like if you didn't care too much about computers but you wanted to be up to date, if you read

00:03:26 ◼   ► your local newspaper, right, there would be a computer columnist who would write once

00:03:30 ◼   ► a week about what was going on in computers and if there was a big news story there would

00:03:33 ◼   ► be a news story. But on the internet it's sort of like you either got nothing or you've

00:03:37 ◼   ► got kind of everything and I always use the comic books as an example because I am somebody

00:03:42 ◼   ► who likes comic books and I would read news about comic books but I am never going to

00:03:48 ◼   ► go to a comic book site every day and read the news. Just like never. It's never going

00:03:51 ◼   ► to happen because I'm not that, I just don't care that much about it. I'm mildly interested

00:03:56 ◼   ► but I'm not super deep down in it. So I don't have any on that level but I would say the

00:04:02 ◼   ► ones that I, the ones that I tend to look at when there's comic book news are comicbookresources.com

00:04:11 ◼   ► and newsarama.com which are again kind of overkill and not the greatest but they do

00:04:22 ◼   ► have information. Sometimes a Google news search on a subject. For a while I was just,

00:04:29 ◼   ► when it was unclear what was going to happen to Miles Morales the lead character in Ultimate

00:04:32 ◼   ► Spider-Man I would just occasionally do a Google news search for Miles Morales and see

00:04:37 ◼   ► what came up because I couldn't find any site that I wanted to just go visit and get

00:04:44 ◼   ► that information. The other one I throw out there is there's a blog on the Hollywood

00:04:48 ◼   ► Reporters site called Heat Vision that's got some good stuff in it and that's at

00:04:54 ◼   ► a higher level. It's comic book and superhero media news and since that's from THR, it's

00:05:01 ◼   ► got a lot of stuff on it right now because of Comic Con but it's a step back. It's

00:05:05 ◼   ► not as intense as an entire site. THR obviously is one of these sites devoted to covering

00:05:12 ◼   ► the entertainment industry and then they have this blog Heat Vision which is about superhero-ish

00:05:17 ◼   ► stuff and so that would be a recommendation I'd make too.

00:05:21 ◼   ► EH - Yeah I guess if you're looking for Comic Con news, right, The Hollywood Reporter is

00:05:26 ◼   ► probably the best place right now because that's kind of their intersection.

00:05:29 ◼   ► Chris Smith Yeah, I mean, The Hollywood Reporter, since

00:05:33 ◼   ► they cover film and TV and so much of Comic-Con these days is film and TV, they've done

00:05:37 ◼   ► a really good job. So, people may not know, I do a podcast on Fridays actually, that's

00:05:43 ◼   ► my Friday podcast, with Tim Goodman, who's the chief TV critic at The Hollywood Reporter,

00:05:48 ◼   ► it's called TV Talk Machine, and it's a lot of fun to do that with him and talk television

00:05:53 ◼   ► with him, and so I'm always paying attention to what's on The Hollywood Reporter website,

00:05:59 ◼   ► And they do some great coverage of, they had a lot of people down at Comic-Con, so yeah,

00:06:06 ◼   ► that would be another place I'd look, I think.

00:06:08 ◼   ► That's some good recommendations.

00:06:11 ◼   ► So it's like with me, right, I'm kind of that way with video games.

00:06:15 ◼   ► I love video games, but I don't check video game websites every day in the same way.

00:06:20 ◼   ► So what I do though, I just follow one or two news websites' Twitter accounts, just

00:06:28 ◼   ► so I get a little bit of the taste of the headlines.

00:06:31 ◼   ► That's a good idea. Yeah, the problem with some of those Twitter accounts is it's literally

00:06:34 ◼   ► every headline and I find that kind of overwhelming. But there are some where the… I have…

00:06:40 ◼   ► I actually… one of the things that I found is useful is having people… following people

00:06:44 ◼   ► who care about comics who I find interesting or who work in the business and who I find

00:06:50 ◼   ► interesting because then not only am I getting their kind of conversations here and there

00:06:54 ◼   ► on Twitter but I'm also seeing the links that they're tweeting and retweeting and that ends

00:06:59 ◼   ► up floating the most important stuff to the top.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Our next question comes from Michael and he asked if you had any suggestions for a comic

00:07:09 ◼   ► reader on OS X or Mac OS. Do you have any suggestions for that?

00:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I went back and forth with Michael on Twitter about this. Initially, he says don't

00:07:20 ◼   ► judge me. That's the end of his tweet and I misread it and thought he was talking about

00:07:23 ◼   ► IOS because something that I didn't really talk about this idea that there's DRM free

00:07:32 ◼   ► stuff and it's also you know these are also readers used for piracy but there are legitimate

00:07:37 ◼   ► reasons to do it if you've got a PDF of a comic there. There are comic companies who

00:07:42 ◼   ► will sell you DRM free stuff, Comixology will do it for all the non-Marvel or DC stuff.

00:07:46 ◼   ► Anyway, so on IOS I really like Chunky Comic Reader. On the Mac honestly the day the iPad

00:07:53 ◼   ► came out in 2010, I stopped reading comics on my Mac. I was doing it up to that point,

00:08:01 ◼   ► in fact I would just take my laptop and put it on its side so it was properly oriented

00:08:05 ◼   ► and read comics that way. I read a lot of comics that way, but the moment the iPad came

00:08:11 ◼   ► out that was the end. So it's been a long time but I did recommend to Michael the one

00:08:17 ◼   ► that I tended to use was called Comic Book Lover and there was also one called Simple

00:08:22 ◼   ► and I'd say check those out. I can't give you any testimony of how they are six years

00:08:28 ◼   ► later but comic book lover was the one that I used a lot back in the day.

00:08:32 ◼   ► Is that by Bitcartel? Yeah that's the one.

00:08:37 ◼   ► And this website is not…

00:08:41 ◼   ► Frozen in 2010 possibly. It still has the logo of universal application

00:08:47 ◼   ► as in… iPhone and iPad.

00:08:49 ◼   ► I've had.

00:08:50 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Oh no, no, you're right Mac, Intel and Power PC.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Yeah, even worse.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Yeah, because we're talking Mac.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, it's, so I wish I could give a better, if somebody does know of a really

00:09:01 ◼   ► amazing Mac comic reader, write in and we'll mention it on the next show because I honestly

00:09:06 ◼   ► don't know because I mean literally the moment the iPad was announced I was like, "Oh,

00:09:13 ◼   ► okay."

00:09:14 ◼   ► Like, because Comixology was already out for the iPhone at that point and I kept sort of

00:09:18 ◼   ► struggling with this idea of "well yeah you could read a comic on your iPhone but

00:09:21 ◼   ► that's such a small screen" and then when they announced the iPad I was like "okay

00:09:26 ◼   ► here it is" and that was it. I never went back.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Again, so I've gone to Simple Comic and it's taken me to one of those I guess share

00:09:35 ◼   ► where sites…

00:09:36 ◼   ► Like download sites? Yeah.

00:09:39 ◼   ► Yeah and I look at this and I'm like "I know we complain about the Mac App Store but

00:09:44 ◼   ► boy this is no way to get applications."

00:09:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:48 ◼   ► >> The iOS app store is so good because I don't have to deal with this stuff because

00:09:53 ◼   ► there are literally four links on this page with download buttons. Probably 75% of those

00:09:58 ◼   ► links will try and install malware on my computer.

00:10:00 ◼   ► >> Yeah, or they'll generate a bunch of pop-ups. There are lots of pieces of software that

00:10:06 ◼   ► you can get that are, you know, you get to the independent developer's website and they

00:10:10 ◼   ► offer a download. But definitely there were a lot of people who didn't have a lot of money

00:10:13 ◼   ► and they were doing this sort of out of love and they would use one of these sort of alternate

00:10:18 ◼   ► download systems to provide their bandwidth. And yeah, it was a terrible experience. I

00:10:25 ◼   ► always hated that when I would go to a website and I find a utility. It's like, "Oh, this

00:10:28 ◼   ► sounds like maybe this is a utility I want to try." And then I click on the download

00:10:31 ◼   ► link and it would be like, "We're going to take you to CNET download.com or whatever."

00:10:36 ◼   ► And I'm like, "No, no. Just give me the file."

00:10:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:40 ◼   ► It's, you know, I know there are a lot of problems with the Mac App Store and I wish

00:10:44 ◼   ► that there was a way to fix it and make everyone happy for everything, right?

00:10:48 ◼   ► But that, you know, I just remember going back to those days and it's terrible.

00:10:53 ◼   ► It's, it's, it's no, it's no bueno.

00:10:55 ◼   ► You went through a time machine, Myke.

00:10:57 ◼   ► I really did.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Seeing that universal logo and they had an OS X, I can't remember what version of OS

00:11:04 ◼   ► X it was, but the disc was black and it had the big black X and it was like a net.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Nebula behind it. Oh yeah. I remember all of that. That's the one where when you installed

00:11:15 ◼   ► it the first time it played like music and stuff. And that little movie and you were

00:11:18 ◼   ► flying through space. I mean, you know, because it especially is embedded in me because that

00:11:23 ◼   ► was when I jumped onto the Mac, right? My first Mac was an Intel iMac. So the universal

00:11:30 ◼   ► logo was important to me. That's true because otherwise it would be using Rosetta, right?

00:11:36 ◼   ► Yeah which sucked. Well it was really great if you had lots of

00:11:42 ◼   ► PowerPC software that you needed but if you just bought an Intel iMac for the first time.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Oh look they have a quote for me I think. Oh really?

00:11:51 ◼   ► I think on the Comicbook Lover website the tip two quotes, one of them is Andy and Ico

00:11:55 ◼   ► and one is from Macworld and I think with a capital W which isn't right, I think that's

00:11:59 ◼   ► me. I think I wrote that. Comicbook Lover is the iTunes for digital

00:12:03 ◼   ► comics. Yeah because it had a whole organizational

00:12:05 ◼   ► system in it too because let me let's be honest at that point all of the stuff was coming

00:12:10 ◼   ► from piracy but so you download a thousand issues of something and you'd want to be able

00:12:13 ◼   ► to organize your collection and stuff but it was yes version 1.7 is for Mac OS 10, 10.7

00:12:21 ◼   ► through 10.9 older versions available for 10.5 and 10.6 anyway that was the one that

00:12:28 ◼   ► I used and it was it was pretty good but I can't was is it good now I have no idea probably

00:12:35 ◼   ► not. I saw this fly by, you probably did too, Apple is going to be selling some Olympic

00:12:42 ◼   ► themed watch bands in the Rio Olympic area.

00:12:48 ◼   ► I didn't see this, I rely on you for all of my Apple watch band needs and you have

00:12:54 ◼   ► come through.

00:12:55 ◼   ► You got me, I got you. So they have a bunch of country flag of the nylon bands but you

00:13:00 ◼   ► only buy them in the Olympic Park in Rio. So these things are going to be very expensive

00:13:07 ◼   ► on eBay because there are some great looking ones in here. I am partial to Australia, Japan,

00:13:14 ◼   ► Jamaica, New Zealand, the UK and the Netherlands. They are my favourite ones. The USA one is

00:13:21 ◼   ► pretty good too actually.

00:13:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it's cute because they're not like putting the whole flag on there. It's like the colours

00:13:27 ◼   ► are of the flag and there's some where there's like some flags where there's basically a

00:13:31 ◼   ► primary color and a little tiny something in another color and what they're doing is

00:13:35 ◼   ► the little loop for the band is in that color and the band is in the primary color it's

00:13:40 ◼   ► very a very clever set of designs they're cute but only available in Rio which means

00:13:46 ◼   ► I like this idea it's just like with the with the pride band that they did it's they're

00:13:50 ◼   ► creating these special collector's item rarity yeah like I want one but I like that they're

00:13:57 ◼   ► doing it this way, if that makes sense. Like I want to be able to buy these, but I also

00:14:02 ◼   ► kind of like the fact that they're making them limited.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Right. Yeah.

00:14:08 ◼   ► So, there you go. If anybody sees these things on eBay, let me know. I might purchase one

00:14:16 ◼   ► or two, depending on if they're less than a gojillion dollars or something, which I'm

00:14:20 ◼   ► sure they will be. But do you know what else you can buy, Jason, to look really cool for

00:14:25 ◼   ► not a lot of money. Uh, what is that? A hat, Myke? You can buy a hat, but also a Six Colors

00:14:32 ◼   ► t-shirt. What? What? You can go now to our show notes. There will be a link to the official

00:14:40 ◼   ► Six Colors t-shirt. There are three color shirts with the beautiful 6C logo emblazoned

00:14:47 ◼   ► on it and the lovely six colors that have been picked from somewhere. I don't know where

00:14:52 ◼   ► they came from. Somewhere on the internet the six colors came from and you can wear

00:14:57 ◼   ► that logo on your body. I'm going to be buying one and I'm probably going to go for the Heather

00:15:02 ◼   ► Gray option there because I think that looks real cool.

00:15:06 ◼   ► So the shirt colors are all basically monochrome because the idea is that they're the six colors

00:15:12 ◼   ► and doing a six process color shirt is really expensive.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I know all about that.

00:15:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly right.

00:15:21 ◼   ► Every color adds--

00:15:22 ◼   ► - Done that a couple of times now.

00:15:23 ◼   ► - Every color adds to the problem.

00:15:26 ◼   ► So it's not the cheapest shirt

00:15:28 ◼   ► that I've ever put up on CODM Bureau, but it is--

00:15:31 ◼   ► - Every time I do one of these multiple color shirts,

00:15:35 ◼   ► like a six color shirt,

00:15:36 ◼   ► or I think we went even more for the connected shirts,

00:15:40 ◼   ► I say to myself, never again.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And then I do it again.

00:15:44 ◼   ► 'Cause it's so difficult to do this and to get it right.

00:15:48 ◼   ► because there's so many things happening.

00:15:50 ◼   ► But Cotton Bureau can do it.

00:15:52 ◼   ► We know they can do it because I was wearing

00:15:53 ◼   ► my beautiful ATP t-shirt yesterday

00:15:55 ◼   ► and that came from Cotton Bureau.

00:15:56 ◼   ► So I'm very excited to get one of these

00:15:58 ◼   ► because they do make great shirts, they do.

00:16:01 ◼   ► But it's just expensive to get them out of the US.

00:16:04 ◼   ► But such is life.

00:16:05 ◼   ► Sometimes you've got to go for the good stuff

00:16:07 ◼   ► and that's what we're getting.

00:16:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, they are, the shipping.

00:16:10 ◼   ► I talked to the Cotton Bureau guys

00:16:12 ◼   ► about international shipping.

00:16:13 ◼   ► They are aware of the issues.

00:16:15 ◼   ► - It's real difficult.

00:16:16 ◼   ► it's really difficult to get out of the stuff to work

00:16:19 ◼   ► yeah if you go through the you know they want to do customs and declarations and

00:16:22 ◼   ► values and things like that and it gets very expensive and it's too bad

00:16:26 ◼   ► but I decided to

00:16:29 ◼   ► go for the quality and they do make very good shirts so if you're not in the

00:16:32 ◼   ► US and you're looking at the shipping charges and thinking how awful it is

00:16:36 ◼   ► I would say

00:16:37 ◼   ► see if you can find some friends to go in on and ship them together or find a

00:16:42 ◼   ► friend in the US and have them get it for you and then

00:16:45 ◼   ► give it to you the next time they see you

00:16:50 ◼   ► or use it as packing material when they send you your Christmas present or

00:16:52 ◼   ► something i don't know

00:16:55 ◼   ► uh... i just saw uh...

00:16:57 ◼   ► i think fly by you may be interested in this it's a war street journal article

00:17:01 ◼   ► so

00:17:01 ◼   ► can't yet read i'll have to wait for the digests

00:17:04 ◼   ► uh... there is a rumor in the war street journal that

00:17:06 ◼   ► bob mansfield is going to be taking over apples car project

00:17:12 ◼   ► That's just popped up in the news right now.

00:17:14 ◼   ► - Big Bob.

00:17:15 ◼   ► - Big Bob, he's on special projects.

00:17:16 ◼   ► This is as special as it comes.

00:17:18 ◼   ► That man knows production.

00:17:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, remember when he retired

00:17:21 ◼   ► and then he came back and--

00:17:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:17:23 ◼   ► - I wonder what the story is there.

00:17:25 ◼   ► I wonder if he's just like, he can't help it.

00:17:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, what was it that he came back,

00:17:28 ◼   ► something happened and then he came back?

00:17:30 ◼   ► - Oh, they fired Papermaster, wasn't that it?

00:17:33 ◼   ► Didn't he get brought back when they fired Papermaster?

00:17:36 ◼   ► - What was it?

00:17:36 ◼   ► - The guy they hired from IBM.

00:17:38 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah.

00:17:39 ◼   ► What was it?

00:17:40 ◼   ► I knew it was a firing. I thought it might have been forstel but I'm going to go with

00:17:45 ◼   ► your memory there on that one.

00:17:46 ◼   ► Ben: Maybe that was it. I don't know but it was a yeah and he was like brought back

00:17:49 ◼   ► in from retirement and now yeah I don't know. We've talked about this before I think

00:17:54 ◼   ► you got at Apple people with a lot of money, senior people. We were driving we went Lauren

00:18:00 ◼   ► and I went to a concert in the South Bay right south of Cupertino in fact and we're driving

00:18:04 ◼   ► through this neighborhood and I said you know this is you know who lives here because these

00:18:08 ◼   ► these houses all probably cost two or three million dollars and they're not like mansions,

00:18:12 ◼   ► they're nice houses but in that part of the world the real estate is incredibly expensive

00:18:18 ◼   ► because you're so close to all of these Silicon Valley companies. And I was thinking

00:18:22 ◼   ► about that thing that we've talked about before where if you're a fairly senior person,

00:18:26 ◼   ► not even like an executive top level but a fairly senior person at Apple and you've

00:18:31 ◼   ► been there a while and you've had all the stock options and things like that plus your

00:18:35 ◼   ► salary and you know you could probably retire right you could probably just go do what John

00:18:46 ◼   ► Rubenstein wanted to do which was go I forget who it was one of those executives that was

00:18:52 ◼   ► like I'm just going to go to Mexico and live on a beach and you could do that probably

00:18:59 ◼   ► so Bob Mansfield always felt like maybe that was his story.

00:19:02 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a calling. They just can't let go of it, right? They just want to make this

00:19:06 ◼   ► stuff.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Right. And he might have had personal issues. He might have had kids in school or something

00:19:10 ◼   ► like that. I mean, people make decisions based on all sorts of factors that we don't even

00:19:13 ◼   ► see, where it's like, "Well, you know, the fact is I don't need to work right now, and

00:19:16 ◼   ► my kids are going to be moving out of the house in the next couple of years, so I want

00:19:20 ◼   ► to spend time with them." And then they go to college and you're like, "Hey, Tim, I don't

00:19:26 ◼   ► play golf, so can I come back to Apple?" I'm not saying that's what happened with Bob Mansfield,

00:19:31 ◼   ► I do think about that sometimes of like what happens when you're in a position where you're

00:19:36 ◼   ► uniquely qualified and connected to do something like work at Apple and build these famous

00:19:41 ◼   ► products that are changing the world or whatever. But you also have, so you've got all the money

00:19:48 ◼   ► that you realistically need and you've got these Apple connections and you've got your

00:19:51 ◼   ► personal life and all of that and like balancing those and do you throw away the Apple stuff?

00:19:56 ◼   ► Are you so obsessed that you will always do the Apple stuff because you love it and that's

00:19:59 ◼   ► who you are or are you in the middle sometimes and they're like yes but… and everybody

00:20:06 ◼   ► has to make their own decision. I'm sure there are people at Apple who have just left

00:20:08 ◼   ► with the money and gone away and are living on that proverbial beach in Mexico but I do

00:20:14 ◼   ► wonder about that. Somebody wrote an article about this, one of the analysts, I can't

00:20:19 ◼   ► remember who, about how Apple's number one problem was retention and I can see it, I

00:20:23 ◼   ► mean I totally can see it when you have that much success over that 10, 15 year period

00:20:28 ◼   ► uh, some of your people are probably gonna be like, "Hey, why am I working 80 hours

00:20:33 ◼   ► a week?" Yeah.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I just assume that, you know, you get, maybe you wanna leave 'cause you

00:20:42 ◼   ► get bored with the work and then they offer you something like building a car and then

00:20:45 ◼   ► you come back again, right? Like, that's how I look at somebody like Bob as well. Like,

00:20:50 ◼   ► maybe why did he leave the first time? Maybe he had just done all he wanted to do and then

00:20:54 ◼   ► they offer him something else, another special project, and he comes back again.

00:20:57 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe so. I mean, maybe he said, "I'm just kind of tired of the job that I--"

00:21:01 ◼   ► I mean, we'll never know, and I feel kind of bad because everybody's got their public

00:21:05 ◼   ► life and their private life. And, you know, but so that's what I would say is you do

00:21:12 ◼   ► wonder like, is that just a matter? Obviously, they think the world of him. And I never got

00:21:16 ◼   ► the sense that--I always got the sense like that he was leaving and they were sad, right?

00:21:21 ◼   ► And then he keeps coming back. So, I mean, I guess the door was always open there for

00:21:26 ◼   ► Big Bob. Episode 100 of Upgrade is coming next week

00:21:31 ◼   ► and the return of Myke at the Movies will be gracing your ears and we will be watching

00:21:35 ◼   ► Star Trek 2 The Wrath of Khan. I will be watching it over the next few days so I'm ready for

00:21:42 ◼   ► the episode and we just want to recommend it so you can too so you can listen along

00:21:47 ◼   ► as me and Jason shout Khan really loudly. Exactly.

00:21:52 ◼   ► I know that's the thing that happens in the movie.

00:21:54 ◼   ► Captain Kirk yells "Khan" at one point, it's true.

00:21:58 ◼   ► And I think if it's anything like Star Trek Into Darkness, people die.

00:22:02 ◼   ► But it's the other way around or something.

00:22:04 ◼   ► It's kinda like Star Trek Into Darkness, Myke, but kinda different.

00:22:08 ◼   ► We'll find out next week.

00:22:11 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Backblaze, the unlimited native backup

00:22:15 ◼   ► solution for your Mac and PC.

00:22:18 ◼   ► you can sign up for a 15 day free trial with no credit card required at backplays.com/upgradepodcast.

00:22:25 ◼   ► That's one of the funny things about our show. Sometimes sponsors already have /upgrade taken.

00:22:33 ◼   ► So we are /upgradepodcast. We didn't think of that. Didn't think of that. But the great

00:22:39 ◼   ► crew over at Backplays, they helped us with a great URL. As well as safely and securely

00:22:45 ◼   ► backing up all of your files, Backblaze gives you access to all of that data with their

00:22:49 ◼   ► iOS and Android apps. So you may know of Backblaze and you may know that they are a great online

00:22:54 ◼   ► backup service, but when you have a company that has all of your data, wouldn't it be

00:22:59 ◼   ► great if they could just give you access to those single files wherever you need it? That's

00:23:03 ◼   ► what their iOS apps can do. And I have done this in the past, I just opened the Backblaze

00:23:07 ◼   ► app because it's something that was maybe saved on my desktop or saved in my documents

00:23:11 ◼   ► files and not in Dropbox or something like that but I needed that file and you

00:23:15 ◼   ► can go into Backblaze and it will be there because Backblaze has already

00:23:18 ◼   ► backed it up from your system you just go in through the file system that they

00:23:22 ◼   ► have in their app and then you can grab it on iOS and Android and throw it out

00:23:25 ◼   ► to another application maybe numbers or word or something like that it's right

00:23:29 ◼   ► there they also have a web restore tool available for quick downloads of single

00:23:33 ◼   ► files as well I think that's so great and this is why they have restored over

00:23:37 ◼   ► 10 billion files. Lots of them are just single file restores.

00:23:44 ◼   ► As well as, let's say you lose everything and say something terrible has happened, which

00:23:52 ◼   ► can happen, and you need to restore everything. Sometimes it can take a while for internet

00:23:57 ◼   ► connections to download all the many terabytes of data you have, so backplays will also do

00:24:03 ◼   ► restore by mail, you can buy a hard drive from backblaze, they will fedex you all of

00:24:08 ◼   ► your data overnight, then all you need to do is return the drive within 30 days and

00:24:13 ◼   ► they'll refund you the cost of the drive. How great is that? Backblaze securely look

00:24:17 ◼   ► after 200 petabytes of data and you can see why because they think of everything. Backblaze

00:24:23 ◼   ► is a great offsite addition to local backups like external drives and time machine which

00:24:28 ◼   ► you should be doing.

00:24:35 ◼   ► are no gimmicks or additional charges it's just $5 a month for unlimited unthrottled offsite backup.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Plus if you are a developer or you need archives check out Backblaze B2 Backblaze Cloud Storage

00:24:48 ◼   ► for half a penny per gig per month. What a great deal. Upgrade listeners get a 15 day free trial

00:24:55 ◼   ► of Backblaze by going to backblaze.com/upgradepodcast and your personal backup will start at just $5

00:25:01 ◼   ► dollars a month for that unlimited unthrottled offsite backup. Make sure that you go to backplays.com/upgradepodcast

00:25:08 ◼   ► that's how they know you came from us and it also helps support the show. Thank you

00:25:11 ◼   ► so much to Backplays for their support of upgrade and Relay FM.

00:25:15 ◼   ► JEAN-MICHELLE COULTER>> Gotta use offline backup or online backup. You gotta do it.

00:25:19 ◼   ► You gotta...

00:25:20 ◼   ► MATT WILKINSON>> Offsite online.

00:25:21 ◼   ► JEAN-MICHELLE COULTER>> Offsite online.

00:25:22 ◼   ► MATT WILKINSON>> Offsite online.

00:25:23 ◼   ► JEAN-MICHELLE COULTER>> That's the one. Yeah. Because even having a time machine drive in

00:25:25 ◼   ► your house doesn't save you.

00:25:27 ◼   ► MATT WILKINSON>> Nope.

00:25:28 ◼   ► There's a flood or your house burns down.

00:25:29 ◼   ► There's offline on-site, right?

00:25:30 ◼   ► Would be the time machine.

00:25:32 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right.

00:25:33 ◼   ► That's right.

00:25:34 ◼   ► Which is great.

00:25:35 ◼   ► It's great to have a fast local backup.

00:25:36 ◼   ► You gotta have them both.

00:25:37 ◼   ► But you gotta have them both.

00:25:38 ◼   ► You really do.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Can you have online off-site and off-site online, off-line, off-line?

00:25:44 ◼   ► Anyway, Scrivener.

00:25:46 ◼   ► Scrivener for iOS is now out and you and Mr. Dan Morin wrote a little collaborative piece

00:25:52 ◼   ► last week kind of previewing it, which was kind of nice.

00:25:55 ◼   ► don't really see too many of those stories happen but I like that you guys

00:25:59 ◼   ► did that that was a lot of fun to see but it's now out. I felt very

00:26:03 ◼   ► Vatici-like, very Vatici-like with the "I've been using the beta for a

00:26:07 ◼   ► while and here's what I think." And let me tell you how it works. Yeah and Mr. Vatici, he is

00:26:13 ◼   ► diving deep into Scrivener as well for his iOS review. So we covered that a

00:26:20 ◼   ► a little bit unconnected but this was somebody who is coming to Scrivener for the first time

00:26:26 ◼   ► right that's what Federico was doing here and he was using it for a new project. So

00:26:31 ◼   ► I wanted to ask you how long have you used the Scrivener application in any of its forms?

00:26:39 ◼   ► Something like 10 years maybe 2006 something like that. Well I wrote so I wrote my first

00:26:48 ◼   ► First time I tried to do, first time I did National Novel Writing Month I wrote in BB

00:26:52 ◼   ► Edit and I outlined it on the outliner and then I discovered Scrivener.

00:26:57 ◼   ► I tried a bunch of different writing apps and the one that stuck was Scrivener and one

00:27:02 ◼   ► of the things I really liked, it worked the way that I wanted it to and one of the things

00:27:05 ◼   ► I really liked about it was that it has an outliner mode and a writing mode and they

00:27:09 ◼   ► are connected.

00:27:11 ◼   ► So instead of having it on the outliner over there and BB Edit over here with chapters,

00:27:15 ◼   ► item in my outline was itself the chapter and I could toggle back and forth and see

00:27:20 ◼   ► those notes at any point and that was pretty cool.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And so I wrote the first whatever 50, 60,000 words of my first novel manuscript in BVET

00:27:29 ◼   ► and then since then every novel and some of my OS X reviews and other long form reviews

00:27:36 ◼   ► I've done in Scrivener.

00:27:37 ◼   ► >> Okay, so obviously there's some changes here, so like differences for applications

00:27:43 ◼   ► that you use.

00:27:44 ◼   ► So is it just the big chunky things like novels and like maybe multiple maybe tens of thousands

00:27:52 ◼   ► of word articles I guess that you would write things that you feel like can be easily cut

00:27:57 ◼   ► up into chunks?

00:27:59 ◼   ► Yeah I mean the reason that I use Scrivener for this stuff is because it is a writing

00:28:03 ◼   ► tool that's also an organizational tool if it's something small I will just use

00:28:07 ◼   ► BB edit because that tends to be what I use. It's always open on my Mac. I'll use that.

00:28:17 ◼   ► But Scrivener adds this layer of support for what goes around the document. So like I said

00:28:26 ◼   ► there's an outline view and those outline items are themselves text documents. So you

00:28:32 ◼   ► end up with what Federico I assume is doing and what I did with, I actually sent him a

00:28:38 ◼   ► screen shot of my mountain lion review or something like that where I said, essentially

00:28:45 ◼   ► I put down all the major features of the OS in this outline so it's like okay what do

00:28:50 ◼   ► I need to cover? I need to cover these, these, these, these, these. And then each of those

00:28:55 ◼   ► little items in the outline you open them in Scrivener, you click on them and you're

00:29:01 ◼   ► in the text view and you can begin writing your notes or writing your article and then

00:29:06 ◼   ► they all kind of roll up into one document if you wanted to. But there's also like

00:29:12 ◼   ► a research folder where you can dump PDFs and images and weblinks and other notes that

00:29:18 ◼   ► you've taken and so you can, there's even like a cork board view if you're somebody

00:29:23 ◼   ► who works like that in terms of organization. It also means that as I'm writing the story

00:29:26 ◼   ► if I think that the sections are in the wrong order I can just drag around and reorder the

00:29:30 ◼   ► the sections and they just reorder because it's easy to do that. So that's the value

00:29:37 ◼   ► that it adds. It adds a lot of tools to manage complex projects. You can tag your documents,

00:29:47 ◼   ► I was going to say chapters but they don't have to be chapters, with things like on the

00:29:50 ◼   ► novel that I'm revising now I've got a first draft tag on all the chapters and when I'm

00:29:54 ◼   ► finished with a pass I have a revised draft tag that I put on them and you can see the

00:30:00 ◼   ► difference at a glance, it's color-coded, you know, lots of stuff like that. So that's

00:30:06 ◼   ► the thing that puts it over the top for me as a tool to use for some projects is that

00:30:11 ◼   ► it's that, it's, you know, it's adding structure and tools that are much more often required

00:30:18 ◼   ► on a big long-term project than they are on something short.

00:30:22 ◼   ► So you, as someone who's used the Mac OS version for such a long time, what makes the iOS version

00:30:30 ◼   ► stand out for you? What of the iOS version, if anything, stands out? This could be good

00:30:36 ◼   ► or bad, I guess.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Well, the iOS version, one of the things that stands out about it, I mean, they've... Literature

00:30:44 ◼   ► and Latte, the company that makes Scrivener, has tried very hard for a few years now to

00:30:52 ◼   ► do an iOS version, and there's a whole story about, you know, they've gone through at least

00:30:57 ◼   ► two developers and it just didn't ever happen and finally the guy who wrote Scrivener for

00:31:02 ◼   ► the Mac just decided I'm going to do this and he wrote the Scrivener for iOS. Because

00:31:08 ◼   ► it's coming from this product that's been around for a decade the fact is that it is

00:31:16 ◼   ► they couldn't just release Scrivener Lite. I think they could have and maybe should have

00:31:20 ◼   ► considered releasing a Scrivener document like viewer and basic app five years ago,

00:31:26 ◼   ► years ago.

00:31:27 ◼   ► Cuz this application has been in development for like what? Seven years? Eight years?

00:31:35 ◼   ► I mean the iOS app alone has been in development for a very long time and it's just kind of.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Yeah maybe about five or six right? Cuz they started talking about this when the iPad was

00:31:43 ◼   ► new.

00:31:44 ◼   ► Yeah and it just yeah there was a whole series of bad things that happened essentially that

00:31:50 ◼   ► prevented them from getting it out. So anyway when they finally decided, when he finally

00:31:55 ◼   ► decided he was going to do it. It's not a light version. For a 1.0 that's the thing

00:32:02 ◼   ► that surprises me about the iOS version is that it's got a lot of depth, a lot of features.

00:32:07 ◼   ► It's got gestures and it's got not all the features of the Mac or there's also a Windows

00:32:13 ◼   ► version but a lot of them. And yeah, there's a few things that I use in the Mac version

00:32:20 ◼   ► that aren't in the iOS version, but it's basically almost entirely there, and that's

00:32:26 ◼   ► the thing that impresses me about it. Out the gate is, it was a long wait, but what

00:32:31 ◼   ► you get is the real thing, and not a sort of pale imitation of the real thing.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Are there any situations where you can imagine that you would choose the iOS version of Scrivens

00:32:46 ◼   ► to do your work in over the Mac version now?

00:32:50 ◼   ► mean, the reason is that I have an iOS device with me and not a Mac, right? I think that's the

00:32:55 ◼   ► reason. And as we've talked about on this show, we don't, you know, I'm trying not to take my

00:33:03 ◼   ► Mac with me when I travel. It happens occasionally, but like my goal is not to bring an iPad, an iPhone

00:33:09 ◼   ► and a Mac with me when I go on a flight. My goal is to leave the Mac behind and just use the iPad

00:33:14 ◼   ► and the iPhone. That should be enough. And it isn't always, but it often is. And that's

00:33:22 ◼   ► the reasoning. I mean, we were talking before the show started. I did bring my laptop with

00:33:28 ◼   ► me for a few different reasons this week, and I'm using it right now. But it often

00:33:34 ◼   ► needed to do a lot of software updating when I opened it to prep it for this trip because

00:33:38 ◼   ► I just don't, you know, when I leave my desk and I'm in the rest of the house or

00:33:42 ◼   ► I'm outside at home I'm generally not using a laptop anymore, I'm using an iPad.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And so in all those circumstances when I've got the iPad that's what I want to do is

00:33:53 ◼   ► I want to be able to work on my novel revision in Scrivener on the iPad. And up to now I

00:33:59 ◼   ► haven't been able to do that. If I didn't have a Mac with me the novel revision stuff

00:34:02 ◼   ► was not going to happen. So now it can.

00:34:05 ◼   ► So it's not so much that you would maybe be sitting at home and be like, "Oh I'm

00:34:09 ◼   ► going to pick up the iPad because Scrivener is better here or whatever, but what it's

00:34:14 ◼   ► done is it's allowing you to take that novel work with you on the go.

00:34:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's fair to say. I don't think they're particularly… unless there's

00:34:24 ◼   ► some very specific things. I mean, for the most part, it's just both versions work

00:34:29 ◼   ► and it's what tool do you want to use, which is how it should be, I think.

00:34:33 ◼   ► Okay. That's cool then. Well, at least now you've got it, right? That's the good

00:34:36 ◼   ► So now, would you have just not done anything? Like if you were away right now, like you

00:34:42 ◼   ► are, maybe a year ago, and you had the desire to work on the novel, would that have just

00:34:48 ◼   ► been "Well I can't do this"?

00:34:50 ◼   ► Uh, pretty much. Although they did have this weird export feature where basically every

00:34:55 ◼   ► time you saved out of, or quit out of Scrivener for the Mac, it could optionally build a bunch

00:35:01 ◼   ► of text files in Dropbox and that if you edited those then when you launched the Mac app again

00:35:09 ◼   ► later it would pull in the text file from Dropbox. It was really not a good system.

00:35:15 ◼   ► It worked but you know and I didn't do that. I mean that's the bottom line is that no one

00:35:21 ◼   ► of the things about and I know writers who switched from Scrivener to other things specifically

00:35:25 ◼   ► because this because they wanted to be able to access it on the iPad and they couldn't

00:35:29 ◼   ► and that is the thing that they have really, they're going to have to deal with is that

00:35:33 ◼   ► by not having this app for five years they have lost some customers and they may not

00:35:39 ◼   ► get any of those customers back or they may not get many of them back. And that's, you

00:35:44 ◼   ► know, I feel bad for them but that's, I can't blame the writers if you have to have access

00:35:49 ◼   ► to your novels on your iPad for the last five years, there's no way you could keep using

00:35:54 ◼   ► Scrivener for that because it just was not the way to do it, but now you can. So for

00:36:00 ◼   ► me I was not prompted at any point to give up and switch from Scrivener, it just never

00:36:08 ◼   ► got to that point for me. But it's been more difficult since I've stopped traveling

00:36:12 ◼   ► with the laptop so much because now I don't have access to that stuff at all.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Oh, now you do.

00:36:17 ◼   ► I do now. It's great. In the chat room Dave asked a couple of questions that I thought

00:36:25 ◼   ► I would, he asked me if I could compare Scrivener to Ulysses. It's hard to do that. He says

00:36:30 ◼   ► curious about both of them. They're too expensive just to try out to see. Do they not have demo

00:36:34 ◼   ► versions? I think maybe they do have demo versions on the Mac that you could try anyway.

00:36:40 ◼   ► And I haven't used Ulysses enough lately to compare them. It's been a while. I used Ulysses

00:36:46 ◼   ► early on and it was one of the tools that sort of fell by the wayside when I discovered

00:36:52 ◼   ► Scrivener because Scrivener worked better for me. But Ulysses has come a long way since

00:36:55 ◼   ► then and they've done some amazing things. Their iOS version is really good. What I've

00:37:00 ◼   ► seen of it but I haven't used it enough to do a deep comparison. And then Dave also

00:37:04 ◼   ► asked something that is similar to what Federica Vittucci asked me which is, "What's the

00:37:08 ◼   ► format like and can I write in Markdown?" And the answer is basically that it's a

00:37:15 ◼   ► style text format. I think technically on the inside it may all be RTF. I'm not sure.

00:37:23 ◼   ► But you know, I don't use the styles. I actually write in Markdown and that's what I told Federico

00:37:29 ◼   ► because he writes in Markdown. It's got some Markdown support. I actually wish it was better.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I think this is one of those things that ultimately Federico will probably give feedback to Keith

00:37:38 ◼   ► at Literature and Latte about. A feature that Federico would use and that I would probably

00:37:44 ◼   ► use would be to build an HTML page, a single page using Markdown, but all I do now is I

00:37:53 ◼   ► just copy the project out in text and run it through Markdown and it works great, it

00:37:58 ◼   ► works just fine. And it will also compile out of its format into lots of different formats,

00:38:05 ◼   ► into PDF and into Microsoft Word and various manuscript submission formats and things like

00:38:11 ◼   ► so it's got a bunch of features. The idea is you work in Scrivener and then you can

00:38:14 ◼   ► build, you know, you can build ebooks or you can build PDFs or you can build Word files

00:38:22 ◼   ► or you can build HTML and there are a bunch of different formats that you can export.

00:38:26 ◼   ► But it's also a package and I believe on the inside if you really, because some people

00:38:30 ◼   ► care about this although I think it's not practical for most people, I think if you

00:38:33 ◼   ► open up the Scrivener package what's inside are files. Like you can open them and there

00:38:38 ◼   ► you will find text in them and that I think they may be RTFs but that's all they are

00:38:42 ◼   ► they're not it's not some monolithic confusing binary file format it's a package which

00:38:48 ◼   ► with a bunch of stuff in it including text files or RTF files.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Whilst we're talking about writing on the iPad you just got your hands on one of those

00:38:57 ◼   ► Razer keyboards. I did. The new iPad Pro Razer mechanical keyboard. Oh yes. I'd like to

00:39:04 ◼   ► to ask you a few questions about it. People can go and read your little review that you

00:39:09 ◼   ► put up and it's in our show notes. But I wanted to ask you just how mechanical is this

00:39:15 ◼   ► Razer mechanical keyboard that they have apparently built for the iPad?

00:39:19 ◼   ► Tim Well it's mechanical. It is. They built a

00:39:24 ◼   ► mechanical key switch. It does the thing where you push it down and it does the little pop

00:39:29 ◼   ► kind of thing. I mean it is, they say it is the thinnest mechanical keyswitch ever. And

00:39:35 ◼   ► this is, Razer is a company that makes gaming keyboards and mechanical keyboards are very

00:39:40 ◼   ► popular not just with people like me who like clicky keyboards but they're very popular

00:39:43 ◼   ► with gamers too. They like the feel of them, they like the responsiveness of them. So they

00:39:49 ◼   ► wanted to make one for mobile and then they wanted to make an iPad Pro. And it's for the

00:39:54 ◼   ► The 12.9, they haven't even done a 9.7 version. This is for the 12.9 using this and it's

00:40:00 ◼   ► a surprisingly thin deck basically that's got this keyboard on it and it's very clicky

00:40:10 ◼   ► although honestly when I put my headphones in I discovered that, you know, because there

00:40:17 ◼   ► are two aspects of any mechanical keyboard. There's the feeling, the tactile when you're

00:40:21 ◼   ► typing, and there's the what you hear, the oral. Like taste and smell, right, they kind

00:40:29 ◼   ► of go together to make an effect. So you put your headphones in and you can't hear the

00:40:33 ◼   ► keyboard anymore and it still feels different and it's got an interesting tactile feel,

00:40:40 ◼   ► but you lose a lot of the effect of it because I think it's a much clickier keyboard in

00:40:45 ◼   ► terms of sound than it maybe feels dramatically different from something like the Logitech

00:40:51 ◼   ► create keyboard but it does it does have a feel I mean if you're if you're

00:40:56 ◼   ► somebody who loves mechanical keyboards and just has dreamt of having a

00:41:00 ◼   ► mechanical keyboard for your iPad this one for if you've got a 12.9 iPad Pro

00:41:05 ◼   ► this one is that like this is it this is your choice at this point for you which

00:41:11 ◼   ► is more important in a mechanical keyboard the sound or the feeling I

00:41:16 ◼   ► I would say the feeling is more important.

00:41:20 ◼   ► So this maybe doesn't tick that box well enough.

00:41:24 ◼   ► Well in mobile situations, so I've got a couple things about mobile.

00:41:28 ◼   ► One is in mobile situations I've usually got my headphones in.

00:41:31 ◼   ► If I'm out and about I'm usually cranking on something and I've got my headphones

00:41:35 ◼   ► in with music on so I can't hear the keyboard anyway.

00:41:39 ◼   ► When I'm sitting at my desk on my Mac with my clicky keyboard that I've got, that Leopold

00:41:44 ◼   ► mechanical keyboard that I have that's wacky and I love it. I hear it because I don't usually

00:41:51 ◼   ► work with headphones unless I'm podcasting in which case I'm using a much quieter keyboard.

00:41:57 ◼   ► And I like the clicky sound then. So it's not like it doesn't have an effect but in

00:42:01 ◼   ► a mobile context I think it's much less important than the feel. And I will point out too that

00:42:08 ◼   ► let's pause for a moment and reflect about the mobile context because we're talking about

00:42:13 ◼   ► a loud clicky keyboard that you're taking out into the world. And I will just say to

00:42:22 ◼   ► any prospective buyers of the Razer keyboard that do you want to be the person at Starbucks

00:42:31 ◼   ► who's in the corner disturbing everyone with your loud clicky keyboard? Because in a mobile

00:42:37 ◼   ► context you are going to be inflicting your noise on other people and maybe you do want

00:42:43 ◼   ► to be that person or maybe you think it s not a big deal. That s fine. But for me, I

00:42:47 ◼   ► ve never really thought about my keyboard noise when I go out in public and I m working

00:42:51 ◼   ► somewhere. But with this keyboard, I totally would and I wouldn t feel great about it.

00:42:57 ◼   ► So. So that s not so good, right? To make you kind of conscious of it. Yeah, I mean,

00:43:05 ◼   ► and again, that s me, right? I mean, most people might not care. They might listen and

00:43:09 ◼   ► like "ah this is fine, nobody's gonna know, there's music playing at the cafe and people

00:43:14 ◼   ► are talking and this is just, and people are working on computers and then there'll be

00:43:17 ◼   ► some clicky sounds" and it's not like it's like blasting clickiness but it is a noticeably

00:43:25 ◼   ► clickier keyboard than every other keyboard that's on somebody's laptop or whatever.

00:43:30 ◼   ► >> So it's part case, part keyboard, right? You get the mechanical keyboard but there's

00:43:35 ◼   ► also a case which has like a kickstand. How do they work together? I know that they can

00:43:41 ◼   ► be detached. What is that like? Do you have to have the case on for the keyboard to work?

00:43:46 ◼   ► >> No, so it's a Bluetooth keyboard and they say that with the backlighting on it'll last

00:43:51 ◼   ► about 10 hours and with the backlighting off, so it's a backlit Bluetooth keyboard. With

00:43:55 ◼   ► the backlighting off, they say it'll last like a thousand hours or something.

00:43:59 ◼   ► >> It's 600. >> That's okay. It's a long time, right?

00:44:02 ◼   ► It might as well be a thousand if it's 600, right?

00:44:04 ◼   ► Because it doesn't matter.

00:44:07 ◼   ► Just leave the backlight off and you could just use it forever.

00:44:11 ◼   ► So the, because it's Bluetooth, people, I've talked to some people who are like, "Oh,

00:44:17 ◼   ► I'm really disappointed it doesn't use a smart connector."

00:44:19 ◼   ► It's like, "Okay."

00:44:20 ◼   ► Advantage of the smart connector is that it is providing power so you don't have to charge

00:44:25 ◼   ► it.

00:44:26 ◼   ► I heard somebody say, "I can't," like somebody said, "I don't want to use a Bluetooth keyboard

00:44:31 ◼   ► because Bluetooth keyboards are unreliable.

00:44:35 ◼   ► And I meant to respond, I don't think I ever responded to that person,

00:44:38 ◼   ► but like, I don't know where you are or what you're doing,

00:44:43 ◼   ► but I've never found Bluetooth keyboards to be unreliable.

00:44:46 ◼   ► I type really fast.

00:44:47 ◼   ► That sounds to me like somebody who plays games.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Maybe so. Well, if you're playing keyboard-based games on your iPad Pro,

00:44:56 ◼   ► I guess use a smart connector keyboard, but come on, no.

00:45:00 ◼   ► No, but that sounds to me like somebody who has Bluetooth prejudice because they play

00:45:04 ◼   ► first person shooters.

00:45:05 ◼   ► It's possible.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And I'm not sure if they're really that unreliable for games, but it's just one

00:45:11 ◼   ► of those things that is why when you go to the Razer website, everything has cords.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Ah, see, that makes sense.

00:45:20 ◼   ► Well, my bigger point is, I don't think there's a major, because I've heard people

00:45:27 ◼   ► say, "Oh well, one of the disadvantages of using this keyboard versus that keyboard

00:45:32 ◼   ► is that this is smart connector and that's Bluetooth and smart connector is better."

00:45:35 ◼   ► Like, okay, why? Why is smart connector better? And in my opinion, smart connector is better

00:45:40 ◼   ► because you never have to charge it. Smart connector, because Bluetooth works fine. And

00:45:46 ◼   ► if you've got a Bluetooth keyboard that can last tens or hundreds of hours, maybe

00:45:50 ◼   ► it really doesn't matter. The other advantage I suppose is that if you're using a smart

00:45:58 ◼   ► connector you actually have to have a physical connection with the iPad and you don't have

00:46:02 ◼   ► to do that with Bluetooth and so this this Razer case even though so it's got a back

00:46:08 ◼   ► plate that you kind of clip on the iPhone or the iPad and it's like a little case on

00:46:13 ◼   ► the iPad and it's got a kickstand, a metal kickstand which seems fairly sturdy and rugged

00:46:20 ◼   ► and then the keyboard comes out, but you can just pull the keyboard off and it just comes

00:46:24 ◼   ► off. So one of the things I like about the way that this keyboard works is that you can

00:46:30 ◼   ► put the iPad up and you can put the keyboard down further, which is ergonomically better.

00:46:34 ◼   ► You could type with the keyboard in your lap and the iPad up on a table or a desk and it

00:46:40 ◼   ► works just fine. What I don't like about it is that it doesn't work as a laptop.

00:46:46 ◼   ► I think that for, depending on how you work, if you find yourself always working at a table

00:46:52 ◼   ► or a desk, this is not relevant. If you find yourself working where you're seated somewhere

00:46:58 ◼   ► and the device is in your lap, there's a class of these products that it's just not going

00:47:05 ◼   ► to work because it doesn't work like that. This is that. It needs its kickstand on a

00:47:11 ◼   ► surface in order to hold the screen up. The screen won't stay up. The iPad won't stay

00:47:15 ◼   ► up on its own. And that's the Logitech does that, I think Zag makes one that does that,

00:47:20 ◼   ► but this one won't do that. And for me, that honestly is like the biggest deal breaker

00:47:25 ◼   ► about all of this. Although there's also the weight, because this is a very, I would

00:47:31 ◼   ► say, well made, it feels pretty sturdy product, but it is a 2.1 pound product.

00:47:41 ◼   ► So I struggled to put that into context when you said 2.1 pounds. It's like I don't know, you know, I don't really know what that is, right?

00:47:50 ◼   ► My 9.7 inch iPad could weigh 2.1 pounds. Like I don't really think of the weight like that. But then you did put it into context so beautifully when you said the whole thing.

00:47:59 ◼   ► So the iPad and the case will then come in at 3.7 pounds. In other words, it's heavier than the 13 inch retina MacBook Pro.

00:48:07 ◼   ► I know the weight of a MacBook Pro and I don't want my iPad feeling that heavy because my

00:48:12 ◼   ► 12.9 inch iPad with the smart keyboard is too heavy for me.

00:48:17 ◼   ► It's too heavy, it's heavier than I would like it to be, right?

00:48:22 ◼   ► I want it to be lighter than that.

00:48:24 ◼   ► So the idea of it now being heavier than my MacBook is breaking part of the reason why

00:48:29 ◼   ► I like my iPad in the first place.

00:48:33 ◼   ► I agree with you and I think that for me, I mean I feel that way about the Logitech

00:48:38 ◼   ► Create too. And the Logitech Create is 1.6 pounds so it's lighter than this although

00:48:42 ◼   ► that's the weight of the iPad Pro. So the Logitech Create just doubles the weight of

00:48:46 ◼   ► the iPad Pro. This more than doubles it. And my feeling is like, okay you've turned this

00:48:55 ◼   ► into a laptop. Now I wrote a piece in Macworld about this. It's like the iPad is not a

00:48:58 ◼   ► a laptop. The iPad, and I like typing on an iPad, but it's not a laptop. And the more

00:49:03 ◼   ► you make it like a laptop, I think the worse it is. At that point you should just get a

00:49:08 ◼   ► laptop if that's really what you want.

00:49:09 ◼   ► As you said, one of the reasons that this is even worse than a laptop is you can't

00:49:15 ◼   ► actually put it on your lap because the kickstand isn't really comfortable for that. Like

00:49:19 ◼   ► the smart keyboard, it's not perfect, but it works.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. I don't think the smart keyboard is particularly stable in your lap

00:49:28 ◼   ► either. But it can do the job. I've done it. Yeah. I do it every day. The Logitech

00:49:34 ◼   ► Create is very good at that but again it's doubling the weight and it's hard to get

00:49:39 ◼   ► that thing in and out of the case. At least this one and I believe the Zag case is like

00:49:45 ◼   ► this too and I haven't used the Zag case yet so I can't say but I believe because

00:49:49 ◼   ► that one's a Bluetooth case it comes off. So at least you can take these and pull the

00:49:54 ◼   ► keyboard away and pick up the iPad and use it like an iPad in a heavy case, but like

00:49:59 ◼   ► an iPad and hold it in your hand and ditch the keyboard for a little while. The Logitech

00:50:06 ◼   ► One, it snapped in there and you've got to unsnap it and pull it out to get it out

00:50:10 ◼   ► of the laptop configuration. And you know, Serenity Caldwell swears by that thing because

00:50:16 ◼   ► she uses it all the time for writing and I get it. Again, if that is your priority, it

00:50:24 ◼   ► can work for you. But for me, yeah, one of the joys of using an iPad all the time is

00:50:29 ◼   ► that I can just pick it up and I've got an iPad. And then I can plop it down somewhere

00:50:34 ◼   ► in like a stand with a Bluetooth keyboard and then I can type a little bit. But then

00:50:38 ◼   ► I can pick it up and just walk away with it. And a lot of these cases make them more encumbered

00:50:45 ◼   ► and make that more painful to get to that point and at some point it crosses over and

00:50:50 ◼   ► I think this is not what I want in my iPad experience because as you said then it's

00:50:56 ◼   ► a laptop and it's not a good laptop.

00:51:00 ◼   ► The iPad is a great device in so many different ways but it's not a laptop.

00:51:04 ◼   ► It doesn't have a pointer, there's no trackpad or anything like that.

00:51:09 ◼   ► What makes it good is that it's light and that you can carry it around without a keyboard

00:51:14 ◼   ► and then add a keyboard if you want and if you make it too complicated to add that keyboard

00:51:19 ◼   ► and keep it on there then you're losing the other part of being an iPad.

00:51:23 ◼   ► I'm not going to get one of these. I mean I was mildly interested but you know in the

00:51:28 ◼   ► same way that you say that REN swears by the Logitech Create, I swear by the smart keyboard.

00:51:33 ◼   ► I love that thing. Because I have a keyboard on my iPad all the time and it's easy and

00:51:39 ◼   ► it also is the case.

00:51:41 ◼   ► I expressed a lot of skepticism about the smart keyboard and I like the 9.7 more than

00:51:47 ◼   ► the 12.9 because it is so much lighter.

00:51:51 ◼   ► Yeah, the 12.91 is an incredible amount of material.

00:51:56 ◼   ► But after a while of living with all of these, it is funny that I'm back to saying that

00:52:06 ◼   ► the smart keyboard is a pretty good option for a lot of people.

00:52:10 ◼   ► I feel like if you want to have your keyboard with you all the time, at this point the smart

00:52:14 ◼   ► keyboard is probably the best option.

00:52:17 ◼   ► And as for me, what I prefer to do is bring a Bluetooth keyboard and a stand.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And that doesn't work for everybody.

00:52:30 ◼   ► It depends on where you're going and what you're doing.

00:52:33 ◼   ► For a while I was just using my old origami workstation stand that I got from my original

00:52:39 ◼   ► iPad still works, got to say, still works just fine. But I think the smart keyboard,

00:52:47 ◼   ► yeah it's looking better all the time now because I've seen some of these other options

00:52:51 ◼   ► and I'm not sure, I see why you pay the price you pay for the thinness and the lightness

00:52:55 ◼   ► even though it is a little bit bulky because when you get a lot thicker and a lot heavier

00:53:02 ◼   ► it's worse and I don't like how those keys feel but, oh I didn't even mention the other

00:53:07 ◼   ► thing about the Razer is that it uses a different key layout. It's not the standard kind of

00:53:11 ◼   ► key layout that people expect from like a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air. The arrow keys are

00:53:18 ◼   ► in a different configuration. The up arrow key is actually between the shift and the

00:53:22 ◼   ► slash. How weird is that? The command key is not wide. It's a standard key width. There's

00:53:28 ◼   ► a lot of things like that and the problem there is just you got to get used to key layouts

00:53:33 ◼   ► and if this is not the only keyboard you're using, especially if you're using a lot of

00:53:36 ◼   ► Apple products, this one's always going to be weird because you're using the other products.

00:53:40 ◼   ► You get used to it if it's the only keyboard you ever use, but is that? How many people

00:53:44 ◼   ► is that? And honestly, that was the thing that made me decide I didn't want to use

00:53:49 ◼   ► this keyboard anymore. More than anything else, it was that, which is, okay, it's

00:53:54 ◼   ► a nice keyboard and all, but this layout is just terrible. I can't do it. I can't

00:53:59 ◼   ► do it.

00:54:00 ◼   ► with. Yeah. Alright, this episode is also brought to you by Igloo. Work is no longer

00:54:08 ◼   ► a location. Teams can be together half a world away, right? So me and Jason, for example,

00:54:14 ◼   ► we work across from each other on the other side of the Earth. There are so many people

00:54:18 ◼   ► doing this these days. And Igloo is a modern intranet designed to keep everyone on the

00:54:24 ◼   ► same page no matter where they are located. You can share files, have conversations in

00:54:29 ◼   ► real time and do it all while still being able to use the apps that you currently use.

00:54:35 ◼   ► Apps like Box, Google Drive and Skype. Igloo brings everything together and creates a single

00:54:40 ◼   ► destination that lets you focus on your work. Put simply, Igloo is an intranet you'll actually

00:54:47 ◼   ► like. Try it out today at iglosoftware.com/upgrade. Thank you so much to Igloo for their support

00:54:53 ◼   ► of this show and Relay FM.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Jason Snell, it is or has been Comic Con, which is as we discussed last week, is why

00:55:01 ◼   ► you are now in the greater LA area because Comic Con has been gone.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Yes, I'm headed to San Diego now that it's over. Yay!

00:55:13 ◼   ► So I think that we actually always do this on this show. I think it's probably the

00:55:16 ◼   ► third time we've done this, is to actually talk about some of the stuff that happened

00:55:20 ◼   ► at Comic Con. Just real briefly.

00:55:23 ◼   ► Okay.

00:55:24 ◼   ► I just wanted to get your opinion on three trailers and one piece of news.

00:55:29 ◼   ► So the first up is the Wonder Woman trailer.

00:55:32 ◼   ► So I'll put links to these in the show notes.

00:55:35 ◼   ► If you haven't seen the trailers, there's YouTube links there.

00:55:37 ◼   ► I recommend that you go watch these if you're interested.

00:55:42 ◼   ► So I wanted to get your feeling about this Wonder Woman trailer.

00:55:45 ◼   ► So Wonder Woman will be the first superhero movie with a female title lead, right?

00:55:54 ◼   ► Marvel to punch. I haven't seen Batman vs Superman so I you know I haven't

00:56:00 ◼   ► really gotten a feel for Wonder Woman until now. This is not the movie I was

00:56:05 ◼   ► expecting Wonder Woman to be it kind of looks like Captain America right because

00:56:10 ◼   ► it's set in maybe the 40s or the 50s like maybe the 30s I can't really work

00:56:14 ◼   ► out when it's meant to be exactly. I was looking like it might be World War One.

00:56:20 ◼   ► Yeah, do you know what? I think you might be right there, actually. It is set during

00:56:25 ◼   ► a war in the past. We're getting confirmation in the chatroom that it was World War I. This

00:56:31 ◼   ► looks very much to me like it could be DC's Captain America.

00:56:36 ◼   ► Well, yeah, I think, and it harkens back to those of us who grew up when the Wonder Woman

00:56:43 ◼   ► TV show was on. That was set in the past.

00:56:47 ◼   ► I don't really have a lot of knowledge of Wonder Woman. I've never really been too far

00:56:52 ◼   ► into DC other than Batman. So Wonder Woman has always been on the periphery for me. I've

00:56:57 ◼   ► been more focused on the Marvel stuff in my life. But it's interesting to hear that. I

00:57:02 ◼   ► guess they were using Wonder Woman in the same way that Marvel used Captain America,

00:57:07 ◼   ► right? As a way to kind of draw up some slightly American propaganda during wartime stuff,

00:57:13 ◼   ► I guess.

00:57:14 ◼   ► Yeah I think that's not... Wonder Woman's legacy actually is fascinating and not honestly

00:57:21 ◼   ► entirely for a family show. But I actually watched a play about the guy who created Wonder

00:57:28 ◼   ► Woman. Interesting guy. Inventor of the lie detector.

00:57:33 ◼   ► I am blown away by all of this information you're throwing at me right now.

00:57:39 ◼   ► So when she has the magic lasso that makes people tell the truth is written by the guy

00:57:43 ◼   ► guy who invented the lie detector. I think the trailer looked good. I do agree it's

00:57:48 ◼   ► got a Captain America vibe. I think that's a good thing. I really like the Captain America

00:57:52 ◼   ► movie. So the idea is that since she's from a mythical land, you know, she's basically

00:57:58 ◼   ► an immortal and so we first meet her here. She's, you know, it's a long time ago

00:58:05 ◼   ► and there's a story set long ago and I think that's interesting. We've already met

00:58:10 ◼   ► her in the Batman/Superman movie and she's gonna be in Justice League but we've got

00:58:14 ◼   ► her here sort of like telling her story without those other characters in the way.

00:58:20 ◼   ► What is the actress's name?

00:58:21 ◼   ► Uh, Gal Gadot?

00:58:24 ◼   ► That's it, yeah.

00:58:25 ◼   ► She's, most of the reviews of Batman vs Superman, which I haven't seen either, say

00:58:30 ◼   ► that she's really good in it, that she's like, they wanted everybody, they wanted more

00:58:34 ◼   ► Wonder Woman in it.

00:58:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean the trailer, like she seemed real convincing like in everything that she

00:58:39 ◼   ► was doing, I had no idea Chris Pine was going to be in this movie. That is weird to me.

00:58:44 ◼   ► Yeah, he's Steve Trevor, who he's the, again, a character who was also in the TV

00:58:48 ◼   ► show. Yeah. But honestly, like, I watched this and I was like, I watched that movie,

00:58:53 ◼   ► like I'm interested in this movie, more interested than I am to see Batman vs Superman,

00:58:59 ◼   ► I think. Sure. She seems like a good, strong lead. She looks like Wonder Woman to me, I

00:59:06 ◼   ► guess. Oh yeah, I think they did a good job. They've

00:59:08 ◼   ► been trying to make a Wonder Woman movie for a long time. Joss Whedon wrote a screenplay.

00:59:14 ◼   ► They've been trying for a long time. It's good to see because she's one of the things

00:59:18 ◼   ► that DC really does have over Marvel is that DC's got a woman superhero in their Trinity.

00:59:26 ◼   ► In the top tier of DC heroes are Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Those are the three

00:59:33 ◼   ► DC superheroes at the top and they have tried and it's just never happened and now it's

00:59:40 ◼   ► going to happen and it looks good. The art direction looks good. Yeah, it looks good

00:59:47 ◼   ► to me. I think good job. A couple years ago DC's movie line up at Comic Con made everybody

00:59:55 ◼   ► roll their eyes and be like, "Really? Are you doing this? This seems like you're just

00:59:58 ◼   ► desperately trying to catch up with Marvel." And after Batman vs. Superman didn't do that

01:00:03 ◼   ► well they definitely have made a bunch of changes in who's in charge and who's got

01:00:07 ◼   ► to say and all that and I think you're seeing it here with this that they're doing it

01:00:12 ◼   ► on the fly but everybody seems much more optimistic about what they've got coming down the

01:00:17 ◼   ► pipe than they did a year or two ago.

01:00:19 ◼   ► On that comment then, Justice League, so Wonder Woman will be joining Ben Affleck, Batman,

01:00:25 ◼   ► Superman who's played by…

01:00:27 ◼   ► Henry Cavill?

01:00:28 ◼   ► along with the Flash, Aquaman and another character? Cyborg. Okay I never have heard

01:00:38 ◼   ► or seen that character I don't think. And Aquaman is Jason Momoa who you may know

01:00:43 ◼   ► as Khal Drogo from Game of Thrones and he yeah he that was they had so they had a

01:00:49 ◼   ► clip they had like some sample clips from it wasn't quite a trailer but it

01:00:53 ◼   ► was like a montage for Comic Con. It looked like a trailer to me I don't know. Yeah it

01:00:58 ◼   ► It was kind of… trailer-ish. Yeah, trailer-esque. Mention what you just said about the changes.

01:01:05 ◼   ► This is a Zack Snyder movie. Uh, yeah, well, is it? It is. He's directing

01:01:12 ◼   ► it. The rumors are that Zack Snyder's creative control over this franchise is slipping away.

01:01:17 ◼   ► Right, okay. Because of Batman v Superman and that while

01:01:20 ◼   ► he's directing it, apparently, he's now an employee more than he was before as a creative

01:01:26 ◼   ► and that famously the rumor is that Ben Affleck has assumed more creative control over the

01:01:33 ◼   ► franchise and uh cause he was mad at how Batman vs Superman did and what was in it and uh

01:01:42 ◼   ► this is so my understanding is that Justice League has gone on some through some creative

01:01:46 ◼   ► changes and that they're really trying to get across here that it's not going to be

01:01:50 ◼   ► as dark and grim as Batman vs Superman. It didn't look like it. It had lots of comedy

01:01:54 ◼   ► and what we saw and I guess they chose those scenes specifically to prove that it's a lighter

01:01:59 ◼   ► tone right? Yeah I mean they also invited like a bunch of journalists to go see stuff

01:02:04 ◼   ► being shot and I think they're really trying to get across the point that they're making

01:02:09 ◼   ► some changes but like the scene with Batman in the flash was pretty funny I thought that

01:02:13 ◼   ► was a that was a an especially amusing bit although I loved all the Aquaman stuff too

01:02:17 ◼   ► Aquaman who famously is just the butt of jokes as this blonde haired dude in an orange jumpsuit

01:02:23 ◼   ► who lives in the ocean and talks to fish and the Jason Momoa Aquaman stuff was really cool

01:02:29 ◼   ► actually and I thought was funny and cool.

01:02:31 ◼   ► He is badass, right? Like I'm scared of that guy. You know, big tattooed guy with the long

01:02:36 ◼   ► hair, like a Thor looking character to me. You know? Like a big mythical being. I've

01:02:44 ◼   ► I've got to say this trailer collection of scenes tickled my fancy. I like the look of it.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Interestingly Superman, I don't recall any Superman part in this trailer at all.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Well I believe that you and I, and again we're on the verge of spoiling things, but there are reasons

01:03:08 ◼   ► plot-wise that Superman does not appear in this stuff.

01:03:12 ◼   ► And I don't know what they are. You don't know what they are. We haven't seen the movie, but okay.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I know what they are, but it's fine. It's fine. But that's why. I think maybe after Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman,

01:03:24 ◼   ► I think maybe not mentioning Superman in the Justice League trailer is fine. Like, let's show off some of the other stuff we've got.

01:03:31 ◼   ► and the Ben Affleck Batman is newer to us and I like that take on Batman too. I am intrigued

01:03:40 ◼   ► by the idea of this, you know, it's a little bit different movie Batman where he's like

01:03:49 ◼   ► been doing the job for a while and is now. Yeah, I like that.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Looks like, it does look like DC are getting their act together with this one. I think

01:04:00 ◼   ► I think it still might be a little bit too late for them, but we'll see what happens.

01:04:03 ◼   ► No, I mean it's never too late, and Marvel's going to have challenges too, even though

01:04:07 ◼   ► it seems like they're rolling now. There's always opportunity, the value in these iconic

01:04:12 ◼   ► characters that they own. Their first, like I said, their first swipe at this two or three

01:04:19 ◼   ► years ago when they announced it, on the heels of Man of Steel, and I'm on the record as

01:04:25 ◼   ► being a not a fan of Man of Steel, I think I really dislike the last half of that movie.

01:04:31 ◼   ► And so when they made all these announcements and like we're doubling down on Zack Snyder

01:04:34 ◼   ► and we're going to do all this and I thought, oh no, this is oh no, this is going to be

01:04:38 ◼   ► badly. And I have to say I got that one right. And because, you know, I could have been totally

01:04:44 ◼   ► wrong and everybody could have embraced that thing. But I looked at the last half of Man

01:04:48 ◼   ► of Steel and thought this is a mistake. And my reaction to that seems to have been lots

01:04:52 ◼   ► of people's reaction to Batman vs Superman and they changed it up and they have a much

01:04:58 ◼   ► structure that's a little more like what Marvel has been doing and it will probably

01:05:04 ◼   ► serve them well and they've got these characters that are so iconic that yeah, I think so.

01:05:10 ◼   ► We'll see how the appetite in general for superhero movies in the movie going population

01:05:15 ◼   ► goes over time. People may get sick of it but they haven't yet so maybe they won't.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Moving on to Marvel, there were lots of little pieces of news and little bits shown like

01:05:28 ◼   ► Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which is the best title for that movie. There were little

01:05:33 ◼   ► bits and bobs. But a couple of things I wanted to pick out. We have the second trailer for

01:05:37 ◼   ► Doctor Strange, which shows a lot more of the movie. Benedict Cumberbatch still blows

01:05:42 ◼   ► my mind that he's going to be in a Marvel movie, assuming the role of Doctor Strange.

01:05:47 ◼   ► This looked very Inception-esque with the special effects, which I think is great.

01:05:51 ◼   ► I think that's a really interesting way to show this character who has the ability to

01:05:55 ◼   ► kind of manipulate time, space, and dimensions.

01:05:59 ◼   ► I think that that works really well for that.

01:06:01 ◼   ► I don't know why they made him speak like an American.

01:06:07 ◼   ► I think that might be a mistake.

01:06:10 ◼   ► It's weird.

01:06:11 ◼   ► It's not a good accent.

01:06:13 ◼   ► Actually let me reframe that.

01:06:15 ◼   ► it might be a good accent, it might be fine. The problem is, it's coming out of Benedict

01:06:19 ◼   ► Cumberbatch's face.

01:06:20 ◼   ► I know, I know, it seems wrong doesn't it?

01:06:22 ◼   ► He may have the most convincing American accent of all time, but if you've ever seen him

01:06:26 ◼   ► in anything, it's not going to be right. It's like the Hugh Laurie house problem,

01:06:32 ◼   ► right? You know, if American people hear Hugh Laurie they think that everything has exploded

01:06:38 ◼   ► because his voice is not coming out correctly.

01:06:41 ◼   ► Right, because all of America knows him as an American.

01:06:45 ◼   ► Yep, when he's not. There was lots of stories that I always enjoyed when I did interviews

01:06:49 ◼   ► that go onto chat shows and people had no idea, like they were like "What on earth

01:06:53 ◼   ► is he doing?" that they thought he was putting on a fake accent. But yeah, I've got to

01:06:56 ◼   ► say this looks interesting. It looks maybe a little bit more focused towards adults.

01:07:04 ◼   ► It looks quite complex of a movie, which would maybe make sense why they bring Benedict in.

01:07:10 ◼   ► And the whole magic and stuff like that. I mean, it is, this is Marvel having had so

01:07:14 ◼   ► much box office success that they are willing to experiment and try some things in movies.

01:07:19 ◼   ► They're going deep into the catalog now. Yeah. And try things that are outside. Like, magic

01:07:23 ◼   ► is not a thing that they've done like magic superhero movies before. But that's what,

01:07:27 ◼   ► Dr. Strange is a magic guy. He's not a, he's not a flying around and with a cape. Well,

01:07:32 ◼   ► he has a cape I guess, but he doesn't fly like super guy, right? He, instead he, he

01:07:37 ◼   ► uses his hands and goes "woo" and casts magic spells and stuff.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Yes, exactly. He's sorcerer supreme.

01:07:43 ◼   ► Because if you look at Marvel, right, they've done everything on planet Earth. Then they

01:07:47 ◼   ► went to space and that was an incredible success.

01:07:49 ◼   ► Right?

01:07:50 ◼   ► Then they took a bet on an unknown character in Ant-Man and it was an incredible success.

01:07:54 ◼   ► So they're like "well, we could just turn anything to gold. What else have we got? Doctor

01:07:57 ◼   ► Strange? Bring him out." And I know that Doctor Strange is a big character to, like...

01:08:02 ◼   ► To comic people, yeah.

01:08:03 ◼   ► But I don't think that he's as well known outside of that.

01:08:06 ◼   ► I mean, you could argue Iron Man was a similar situation when the original came out.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Nobody knew who Iron Man was.

01:08:14 ◼   ► But now they're doing it with Doctor Strange and I think what they learnt from Ant Man

01:08:19 ◼   ► is why don't we just get a Hollywood star and put him in the role or her in the role

01:08:25 ◼   ► and that automatically draws attention to the property.

01:08:30 ◼   ► And I think they definitely did that with Paul Rudd and Ant-Man.

01:08:34 ◼   ► I don't know if it would have worked if they would have maybe got somebody who was

01:08:38 ◼   ► less known to play that character.

01:08:41 ◼   ► So I think they are definitely learning everything and anything they need to do to make any of

01:08:47 ◼   ► their movies a massive success.

01:08:49 ◼   ► I will say this about Marvel is that since this is a… whether you like these movies

01:08:54 ◼   ► or not, they have changed a lot of the rules in how Hollywood works because they've made

01:08:59 ◼   ► so much money and money talks. And one of the things I like about Marvel's approach

01:09:05 ◼   ► is that they do for a disciplined cash machine, they take chances and I don't look, I have

01:09:19 ◼   ► not yet looked at a Marvel movie and said, "That's just lazy." And it's the whole

01:09:26 ◼   ► cash grab, right? I don't think they've done that yet.

01:09:30 ◼   ► Matt: They clearly have rules internally, right? That they must be following with this

01:09:36 ◼   ► stuff so they're not just churning things out. They must have some kind of quality guidance.

01:09:42 ◼   ► And I wouldn't be surprised if that comes from Marvel, right? The Marvel part of Marvel

01:09:47 ◼   ► Studios.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Well, it's Kevin Feige, or whatever, is the

01:09:50 ◼   ► guy who's in charge of Marvel Studios and he reports, I believe, to the head of Disney

01:09:56 ◼   ► film. In fact, he doesn't report to the guy who runs Marvel proper anymore.

01:10:02 ◼   ► Jared Polin Oh yeah, I forget how that will mix up.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Pete

01:10:03 ◼   ► that will mix up. But they have some discipline. It's not to say that every Marvel movie's

01:10:09 ◼   ► going to be good. That's probably, you know, like with Pixar, it's like, "No, that's

01:10:14 ◼   ► not true." But I think they have a process that really works and I like that they do

01:10:20 ◼   ► not have every movie seem like it's like every other movie. In fact, you could argue

01:10:24 ◼   ► that what they're really trying to do here is build out a bunch of characters that aren't

01:10:28 ◼   ► Avengers because the Avengers are a lot more samey than, and I think it doesn't serve

01:10:34 ◼   ► them well, it's like, oh it's another Iron Man, Captain America Avengers movie. Those

01:10:40 ◼   ► can start to feel a little bit like haven't we just seen them all before? So introducing

01:10:44 ◼   ► these other characters and going to other places, doing magic, doing sci-fi, I think

01:10:50 ◼   ► that's, it's just been very smart for them to do that. And they've made so much money

01:10:53 ◼   ► that they really, they also, they've got more latitude to do that.

01:10:59 ◼   ► So we mentioned Wonder Woman. Marvel is finally working on a female-led movie, right? Captain

01:11:08 ◼   ► Marvel? Which is another one, Captain Marvel, not very well known.

01:11:13 ◼   ► No. And they have got Brie Larson, they announced

01:11:18 ◼   ► is going to be playing Captain Marvel. Any thoughts on this?

01:11:22 ◼   ► Well, let's just say she's a, anytime that you can get an Oscar winning actress, or Oscar

01:11:30 ◼   ► winner in general.

01:11:31 ◼   ► I forget that.

01:11:32 ◼   ► Yes.

01:11:33 ◼   ► To lead your movie, your superhero movie.

01:11:37 ◼   ► That's how it's changed, right?

01:11:38 ◼   ► I think you're doing okay.

01:11:39 ◼   ► That's how it's changed.

01:11:40 ◼   ► I think you're doing okay.

01:11:41 ◼   ► She was in Room, she won the Oscar.

01:11:43 ◼   ► I think, yeah, I think you're doing okay.

01:11:46 ◼   ► This is an example too of a character who has been around at Marvel for a long time,

01:11:52 ◼   ► Carol Danvers, and then there was a previous Captain Marvel who was a man because most

01:11:57 ◼   ► of the superheroes back then were men and she was Ms. Marvel and then that character

01:12:01 ◼   ► of Captain Marvel died and it's one of the rare comic book deaths that has stuck.

01:12:08 ◼   ► But there are also like intellectual property issues and Captain Marvel is a name that Marvel

01:12:12 ◼   ► loans and there was a whole lawsuit with DC and predecessors of DC and it's a

01:12:18 ◼   ► whole sordid story but basically this is one where they they picked up the Captain

01:12:22 ◼   ► Marvel stuff and they and they handed it to this to Carol Danvers and and that

01:12:29 ◼   ► has that was a quite a few years ago now and that has gone really well and there

01:12:33 ◼   ► there have been some really great runs of Captain Marvel in the comics and it

01:12:37 ◼   ► it became suddenly it became like almost a natural that she would be the and there's

01:12:42 ◼   ► I wonder what the movie is going to be about but like the story there is that she was like

01:12:46 ◼   ► a pilot and some iterations she's been a spy and then she gets these powers it could be

01:12:53 ◼   ► an interesting she so sometimes she's a cosmic sort of superhero almost any Guardians of

01:12:57 ◼   ► the Galaxy kind of vein and sometimes she's more earthbound so it'll be interesting to

01:13:02 ◼   ► see what they do with it but it's a fun character and so it's good to see that they that they

01:13:06 ◼   ► got an award-winning actress to play it, that's fantastic.

01:13:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, this is great news and I'm looking forward to that one as well just because

01:13:16 ◼   ► it's something different.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Man, like Marvel movies, it's almost like its own film industry now.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Oh, it is.

01:13:24 ◼   ► I mean, this is the… well, like, look at what's happening with Star Wars now.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Star Wars, where there's a movie every year.

01:13:32 ◼   ► This is the new model.

01:13:33 ◼   ► Star Wars, there's a new movie every year.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Pixar, there's a new movie every year.

01:13:36 ◼   ► Marvel, there's like two new movies every year. This is the model. I mean, they're

01:13:42 ◼   ► trying to do that with DC. They're trying to do that with Harry Potter, where they're

01:13:47 ◼   ► doing this new cycle of Harry Potter movies, the, what is it, Fantastic Creatures and Where

01:13:52 ◼   ► to Find Them or whatever that is. This is the franchising, it really is like turning

01:14:00 ◼   ► the movies into a series of installment like TV shows almost. And it s all because, you

01:14:07 ◼   ► know, essentially because the Avengers made a billion dollars. Everybody was like, Oh,

01:14:14 ◼   ► let s do that. Do we have any of those superheroes lying around? Anybody got anything? Let s

01:14:19 ◼   ► get them bring them out here, franchise them. Because Star Wars is the same way, right?

01:14:23 ◼   ► Where it s not just that they re making new Star Wars movies. It s they re making a new

01:14:26 ◼   ► Star Wars movie every year for the foreseeable future.

01:14:30 ◼   ► And this is… And the Star Wars cinema universe.

01:14:33 ◼   ► Exactly. Exactly. And in their case, they've got this anthology thing where they're going

01:14:37 ◼   ► like with Rogue One, they're going back in time, whereas Marvel, everything is sort

01:14:40 ◼   ► of happening simultaneously other than like the first Captain America movie. But it's

01:14:46 ◼   ► sort of fascinating to see. It's not… Andy Anocchio and I talked about this a little

01:14:50 ◼   ► bit on an incomparable a while ago. It's not really a movie anymore, right? Like the

01:14:55 ◼   ► Avengers it's not really a movie it's an installment in a series in a shared

01:14:59 ◼   ► universe and if you're somebody who wants some of these things are not going

01:15:03 ◼   ► to be feel remotely like standalone movies Ant-Man did and Guardians of the

01:15:07 ◼   ► Galaxy did but something like Captain America Civil War what is that it's not

01:15:12 ◼   ► a movie as we think of it it's something different because it's an installment

01:15:15 ◼   ► that requires knowledge it's much more like an episode of a TV show and if you

01:15:19 ◼   ► haven't watched the other other episodes it won't be as impressive to you but

01:15:24 ◼   ► But that's, you know, it's working, right?

01:15:28 ◼   ► I mean, at least financially it has been very successful.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Audiences have responded to this and so we'll see where it takes us.

01:15:35 ◼   ► But I think the concern for people in the movie industry is that everything else is

01:15:40 ◼   ► swamped by these franchises.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Like nothing else is what's left.

01:15:47 ◼   ► What other movies are being made if everything is in a franchise?

01:15:52 ◼   ► So that's our Comic-Con thoughts for this year. So we should do some Ask

01:15:57 ◼   ► Upgrade to round out the episode. Let's do it. Kim asked, "Any general thoughts on

01:16:02 ◼   ► purchasing refurbished Apple products? If I do decide to go ahead, should I get

01:16:07 ◼   ► AppleCare?" I bought refurb Apple stuff before. Okay, I've never done it so why

01:16:15 ◼   ► did you do it? It's cheaper. I mean I know that's the main reason that people would

01:16:19 ◼   ► do it. I just wondered if there was any other kind of reasoning to it. But yeah, it is cheaper.

01:16:23 ◼   ► I mean, you get the full warranty. How much cheaper is it? Oh, it's not as much as buying

01:16:29 ◼   ► somebody's used thing, but generally what it is is it's parts that have come, things

01:16:32 ◼   ► that have been returned, and they will put them back together and send them back out.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Or something somebody returned or something that, you know, the screen was defective,

01:16:45 ◼   ► but the rest of it is fine, and they replace the whole unit and then they go and they put

01:16:48 ◼   ► a new screen on it and it's stuff like that that comes with a full warranty. I haven't

01:16:53 ◼   ► had any problems. I've only bought a few but I haven't had any problems. It's a way to

01:16:57 ◼   ► get a little bit of a break on something that's still got Apple's full warranty and then I

01:17:02 ◼   ► think at that point your AppleCare decision is your usual AppleCare decision which is

01:17:06 ◼   ► do you want it, weigh the issues there. You're going to, I would say if the act of buying

01:17:14 ◼   ► refurbished is the thing that pushes you over the edge to getting AppleCare, you probably

01:17:18 ◼   ► just miss the point of buying the refurbish, which is that it's cheaper. So if you're making

01:17:22 ◼   ► it more expensive on top of that, you should just get a new one. But if you're somebody

01:17:27 ◼   ► who always buys AppleCare, then that's fine, or never buys AppleCare, then it's fine. But

01:17:31 ◼   ► Apple is standing by those systems. They're just coming from a different place, so they

01:17:37 ◼   ► can't sell them as brand new, because it was something that was in somebody's hands at

01:17:42 ◼   ► some point and then brought back to Apple.

01:17:46 ◼   ► So I don't know the answer to this question, but I thought it might be just interesting

01:17:49 ◼   ► to discuss.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Oz is referencing CallKit in iOS 10, which is the ability for voice over internet applications

01:17:58 ◼   ► like Skype and GoToMeeting to kind of appear as phone apps, right?

01:18:04 ◼   ► They get the full screen calling notification stuff.

01:18:07 ◼   ► They look basically like a dialer.

01:18:09 ◼   ► You can choose to call someone by default via one of those applications rather than

01:18:13 ◼   ► FaceTime or by phone call.

01:18:15 ◼   ► Oz was wondering if the VoIP applications could use the favorites list to bypass Do

01:18:21 ◼   ► Not Disturb in the same way that you could do that with the phone. Jason, do you have

01:18:26 ◼   ► any idea if this is a possibility?

01:18:31 ◼   ► I have no idea. It's an interesting idea. Like, it's Do Not Disturb, you can say whether

01:18:37 ◼   ► it's in my favorites list or whatever like that, but I don't know if they can tie into

01:18:42 ◼   ► that or not, if it's attached to the address book and all of that. It would be a nice feature

01:18:45 ◼   ► I would say to Oz, that might be worth filing a using feedback assistant or filing a radar,

01:18:51 ◼   ► if you can do that, to suggest that.

01:18:55 ◼   ► Yep. Yeah, I have no idea, but I thought it was a thing that's worthwhile bringing up

01:19:00 ◼   ► because I could see it being as easily missed as added, if that makes sense.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Right.

01:19:06 ◼   ► But it's something that I think should be there if we're going to start treating voice

01:19:10 ◼   ► over internet applications so much like the phone. It should get features like that, like

01:19:16 ◼   ► do not disturb integration. Zach wanted to know, he asked, "I'm starting a podcast with

01:19:23 ◼   ► a friend of mine. Is there anything that you wish you knew when you were starting out that

01:19:27 ◼   ► you know now?" So let me give some advice to my younger self and they're in turn to

01:19:33 ◼   ► you Zack. Technology failures are inevitable. Your hardware will fail, your software will

01:19:41 ◼   ► fail, things will go wrong. You cannot prepare for all of them, you will learn from them.

01:19:47 ◼   ► They will cause you to break out profusely and sweat as you try and fix the issue after

01:19:53 ◼   ► the fact. Just understand that they're going to happen. It doesn't mean that you don't

01:19:57 ◼   ► know what you're doing because you actually kind of don't know what you're doing, but

01:20:02 ◼   ► But it doesn't mean that you are not smart enough to be able to deal with it.

01:20:06 ◼   ► It just happens.

01:20:07 ◼   ► And it happened to me many times.

01:20:08 ◼   ► I'm sure it's happened to Jason many times.

01:20:11 ◼   ► Podcasting can be tricky in some instances.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Just learn from them.

01:20:14 ◼   ► They're learning experiences.

01:20:16 ◼   ► As you're just starting out, you'll learn some stuff that you can take later.

01:20:20 ◼   ► It also takes time to lock a format in to really kind of know the flow of you and your

01:20:26 ◼   ► co-hosts.

01:20:27 ◼   ► So just give that some time to grow and you'll be happy that you'd kind of do it and you

01:20:32 ◼   ► learn and you move forward.

01:20:35 ◼   ► It does take some time to learn how to use all of the software that you're going to need.

01:20:40 ◼   ► GarageBand is easier but it's still tricky in places.

01:20:43 ◼   ► Logic Pro X is a nightmare of user interface.

01:20:46 ◼   ► All of this stuff takes time but don't worry about putting the time in.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Putting the time in will be good for you and once you start one podcast you will inevitably

01:20:54 ◼   ► want to do more.

01:20:55 ◼   ► Just look at me and Jason.

01:20:56 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:20:57 ◼   ► Pete: Let that be a cautionary tale.

01:21:00 ◼   ► Geoff, off screen Yes. They are my kind of tips, I guess, to

01:21:03 ◼   ► somebody looking to start a podcast. I encourage people to do it. I think it's a lot of fun.

01:21:08 ◼   ► Pete Yeah. Yeah, and it's all learning. The hardware

01:21:11 ◼   ► and the software, both. It's just, but get started. I mean, I think that's, I think that's

01:21:17 ◼   ► it is that you do have to go through it and try it out and my only piece of advice would

01:21:23 ◼   ► probably be to just do it and don't worry about what hardware you've got and what

01:21:28 ◼   ► software you've got. Start making things and you'll figure it out. But don't not

01:21:33 ◼   ► do it because you feel like you're not ready or you can't do it at a level of quality

01:21:38 ◼   ► that you want or that you're not sure what it's going to be, what the finished product

01:21:44 ◼   ► is going to be like. Don't let any of that stuff get in your way. Just start and then

01:21:48 ◼   ► you'll figure it out.

01:21:49 ◼   ► And Chris wanted to know if either of us still listen to Beats 1.

01:21:53 ◼   ► I don't. I don't listen to it at all.

01:21:56 ◼   ► I've remembered why Beats 1 was very exciting to me, and I liked a lot of it,

01:22:02 ◼   ► but then I remembered why I don't listen to the radio.

01:22:06 ◼   ► Which is?

01:22:08 ◼   ► It's not always the music I want to listen to.

01:22:11 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not always the way.

01:22:13 ◼   ► What's so good about these music streaming services is they can and do learn your tastes,

01:22:17 ◼   ► your tastes and they will give you playlists of music to listen to that are

01:22:22 ◼   ► kind of your taste so be in your style a lot of the time. Apple music does a

01:22:26 ◼   ► decent enough job of this for me that I like it and I know people love Spotify

01:22:31 ◼   ► Discover weekly monthly hourly but I don't use Spotify I use Apple music and

01:22:36 ◼   ► nine times out of ten when I go to the for you section there is a playlist I

01:22:40 ◼   ► can pick to listen to. It typically is songs that I know and maybe some other

01:22:44 ◼   ► stuff as well but I do like that so it does a good enough job for me that's

01:22:50 ◼   ► what my radio is in 2016 Zane Lowe I love you but I'm afraid I do not listen

01:22:56 ◼   ► to Beats 1 anymore because they just play stuff that I'm not interested in

01:22:59 ◼   ► listening to and then I'm wondering why I'm listening to it always the way with

01:23:04 ◼   ► me and radio same way so you know worldwide same thing they play songs I

01:23:10 ◼   ► don't want to hear. So I, and you can't, you can't fast forward. So I,

01:23:15 ◼   ► I don't listen to it. Um,

01:23:16 ◼   ► I discovered in the first week of Apple music, the, um,

01:23:20 ◼   ► a list playlists, which is a, uh, in genre curated,

01:23:25 ◼   ► 50 songs in every genre. They agree. It's up and it's updated.

01:23:30 ◼   ► And I love that. And so like for me, it's the alternative a list.

01:23:35 ◼   ► I listened to that playlist.

01:23:37 ◼   ► I've discovered so many new bands and bands I'd never heard of and songs that I love,

01:23:44 ◼   ► and I've created my own little selections from the A-list playlist that anything that

01:23:49 ◼   ► I really love that I discover there, I drag it over and so then I keep those. So I've

01:23:53 ◼   ► got this kind of ro-- I mean, you know, 50, so they come in and they go off over time,

01:23:59 ◼   ► but the ones that I really love I now have also built up this other playlist with those

01:24:03 ◼   ► songs on it. And I've discovered albums from those artists and followed them through.

01:24:08 ◼   ► Like there was a song by the 1975 called "Someone Else" I think that I really liked that felt

01:24:18 ◼   ► very Tears for Fears-y, maybe with a little bit of, at one point it sounds almost Rick

01:24:24 ◼   ► Astley-like, but it's so '80s, so steeped in the '80s. And I really liked it and I

01:24:29 ◼   ► said, "Oh, let me check out this band." And the 1975, every other song they make basically

01:24:35 ◼   ► doesn't sound like that, but I actually really like a lot of their songs, so that was a great

01:24:40 ◼   ► example of a fun discovery that I was able to follow, and because it's a music streaming

01:24:43 ◼   ► service I was able to go and just immediately listen to other stuff by that artist. And

01:24:50 ◼   ► I've done that a bunch of times with the alternative A-list, so that's my radio, because I can

01:24:58 ◼   ► put the A-list on shuffle and if there's a song I like I'll heart it or I'll add it to

01:25:02 ◼   ► a playlist and if there's a song I don't like I just go next and it takes me to the next

01:25:07 ◼   ► song and nobody talks. I don't want to hear them talk. I don't want to hear the news,

01:25:13 ◼   ► I don't want to hear music news, I don't want to hear where some band is playing, I just

01:25:16 ◼   ► play the music. So, yeah.

01:25:20 ◼   ► I discovered one of my favorite albums of the year via that way as well which

01:25:27 ◼   ► was Leon Bridges. I don't think I ever would have picked that out but it's an

01:25:31 ◼   ► incredible album. I think it's called Coming Home. It's superb and I thoroughly

01:25:36 ◼   ► recommend it and I would never have found it unless it was suggested to me

01:25:40 ◼   ► then that way so it does work. The music discovery stuff may be a little bit

01:25:44 ◼   ► better than the radio. Sorry radio. Thank you so much for listening to this week's

01:25:48 ◼   ► episode of Upgrade you can find our show notes today at relay.fm/upgrade/99

01:25:55 ◼   ► and if you want to find Jason online he is @jasnell needs it sixcolors.com

01:26:01 ◼   ► I am @imikeimyke thanks again to igloo and backblaze for supporting this week's episode

01:26:07 ◼   ► thank you for listening as always next week we're back with episode 100

01:26:11 ◼   ► and we'll be discussing along with some other things I assume

01:26:14 ◼   ► Star Trek 2, The Wrath of Khan.

01:26:17 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Live long and prosper.

01:26:21 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:26:24 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]