Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Reel AFM, this is Upgrade, episode number 80.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by MailRoute, Backblaze, and ITProTV.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Good morning, Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hi, Myke, how you doing?

00:00:23 ◼   ► I'm very well, how are you, sir?

00:00:25 ◼   ► I feel closer to you for some reason this week.

00:00:28 ◼   ► We're closer in time.

00:00:29 ◼   ► in space?

00:00:30 ◼   ► >> Yes. No.

00:00:31 ◼   ► >> No?

00:00:32 ◼   ► >> Just time.

00:00:33 ◼   ► >> Okay. Maybe if I shift my chair ever so slightly.

00:00:35 ◼   ► >> Oh, yeah. I'll move to the... Well, no, it'll move me away from the microphone. But

00:00:40 ◼   ► yeah, this is that time when the United States has moved forward in time by an hour. And

00:00:48 ◼   ► so we're an hour closer to you because the United Kingdom has not yet moved forward in

00:00:52 ◼   ► time by an hour to British summertime. How long is it before you move your clock

00:00:59 ◼   ► ahead.

00:01:00 ◼   ► >> Two weeks.

00:01:01 ◼   ► >> Two weeks.

00:01:02 ◼   ► That's not too bad.

00:01:03 ◼   ► >> No.

00:01:04 ◼   ► >> But you have two weeks where everything on your calendar is topsy-turvy because the

00:01:07 ◼   ► Americans are closer to you.

00:01:09 ◼   ► >> It is nicer though because I do everything just a little bit earlier.

00:01:12 ◼   ► >> Huh.

00:01:13 ◼   ► >> I mean, I go to bed earlier too.

00:01:14 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:01:15 ◼   ► >> It's all good.

00:01:16 ◼   ► >> That's nice.

00:01:17 ◼   ► >> The upgrade ends are assembling.

00:01:19 ◼   ► >> They are.

00:01:20 ◼   ► They are.

00:01:21 ◼   ► It's happening.

00:01:23 ◼   ► >> So the hoodies and the t-shirts are arriving.

00:01:26 ◼   ► The Saturday seemed to be the big day where so many people got their upgrade hoodies.

00:01:31 ◼   ► I have a hoodie and a shirt in Memphis. I also have my others on the way. They are in

00:01:40 ◼   ► the UK, so I may have my merchandise for the next couple of weeks. Which means now that

00:01:46 ◼   ► the hoodie secret is out there. But we are not going to spoil it, because people are

00:01:51 ◼   ► still receiving them. If you want to know, it's possible to find, you know, if you look

00:01:56 ◼   ► through tweets to the upgrade account or tweets to me and Jason, look at the images coming

00:02:00 ◼   ► in, you will be able to see. Maybe in a couple of weeks time we can put some nice pictures

00:02:06 ◼   ► in the show notes, but not right now because I don't want to spoil the secret because everybody

00:02:10 ◼   ► on this side of the Atlantic doesn't have their hoodies yet.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Right, and yeah.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Do you have yours?

00:02:16 ◼   ► I do have mine.

00:02:17 ◼   ► They look like they came out really well, I'm very very excited actually.

00:02:20 ◼   ► did, it's funny, I actually, so I've had one, speaking of time travel, I've had one since

00:02:26 ◼   ► like December because they made a sample for us because this wasn't something that they

00:02:31 ◼   ► had done before at the Cotton Bureau and they had to get work with a partner who had the

00:02:35 ◼   ► embroidered patch and they had to get the hoodie, which is not something that we'd done

00:02:41 ◼   ► with them before and it's a specific make of hoodie that was one of their ones that

00:02:46 ◼   ► was available and it's actually my favorite heavy hoodie design. So they made me a sample,

00:02:55 ◼   ► so I've had that for a while. I wasn't quite right, there were a couple things we changed

00:02:58 ◼   ► based on the sample. But now I've got the real thing and it's very nice. So it's fun

00:03:03 ◼   ► to have that project be over and for people to be giving them. And yeah, I mean if people

00:03:07 ◼   ► want to post what the secret is, they are welcome to. I've heard from a lot of people

00:03:12 ◼   ► who just said they liked the secret and then didn't specify it and then one person did

00:03:19 ◼   ► have a picture of it. So, you know, it's out there if you want to look for it.

00:03:22 ◼   ► - The truth is out there. Last week was a great episode, you and Mr. John Siracusa.

00:03:29 ◼   ► - Oh, thanks. That's right. Yes, you were not here. So this is the second time. It is

00:03:36 ◼   ► really topsy-turvy. We did that on a Sunday night with Jon instead of you. That was fun.

00:03:43 ◼   ► It's always fun to talk to Jon. I don't talk to Jon one-on-one very often, other than when

00:03:48 ◼   ► we're talking about robots or not. We only do that every few months.

00:03:52 ◼   ► I had many things. I was many times during the show screaming at the--screaming at my

00:03:58 ◼   ► phone. I'm sure you were. That's part of the joy of you not being on, is I get to say things

00:04:03 ◼   ► and I can hear your future screams.

00:04:07 ◼   ► But there was, so I could pick up many of the things, especially the last segment of

00:04:12 ◼   ► things you can't talk to Myke about.

00:04:15 ◼   ► Especially the phone portion, but we won't go into that right now.

00:04:19 ◼   ► But there was something I couldn't let go, which was a very, it was a passing comment.

00:04:23 ◼   ► It was a passing comment in a, you know, looking down the nose from Mr. Syracuse or Mr. Snell.

00:04:31 ◼   ► I believe it was John that said, but you wholeheartedly agreed, but the idea that the iPad Pro does

00:04:38 ◼   ► not do well as a television.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Correct.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Okay.

00:04:43 ◼   ► So...

00:04:44 ◼   ► I'm glad we agree about this, Myke.

00:04:46 ◼   ► This is the statement that you made, and I need to address that statement because I couldn't

00:04:51 ◼   ► disagree with you more.

00:04:53 ◼   ► I will list my feelings about this.

00:04:56 ◼   ► So, one, the screen is nice and big, and it looks great.

00:04:59 ◼   ► I will not take it from anyone.

00:05:00 ◼   ► It's not as great as a 50 inch plasma, but it's a really nice screen.

00:05:05 ◼   ► And when you hold it close enough to you, it's nice and big.

00:05:07 ◼   ► You know, it's like the perspective thing.

00:05:09 ◼   ► It looks good.

00:05:09 ◼   ► The speakers are really good on it.

00:05:11 ◼   ► I love the speakers.

00:05:12 ◼   ► I was listening to a podcast today on my iPhone and I switched over to my iPad.

00:05:18 ◼   ► And the difference is so incredible.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Those four speakers are fantastic.

00:05:21 ◼   ► But here's one of the other things that I think make it good.

00:05:25 ◼   ► It has all the apps that you want.

00:05:26 ◼   ► It has more apps on it than the Apple TV does for content.

00:05:30 ◼   ► right, looking at you Amazon. They're all on there so I think that makes it a good

00:05:35 ◼   ► TV device and I think the main thing though, the main reason why I think that

00:05:39 ◼   ► the iPad Pro is a good TV is because it depends on the device that you're

00:05:42 ◼   ► looking for. Like I know what a big screen experience is like, there are

00:05:46 ◼   ► times that we choose to do that, like we were just watching House of Cards and we

00:05:49 ◼   ► watched the majority of episodes of House of Cards on the big TV because it

00:05:54 ◼   ► was a like a big spectacle thing but there were some that we watched in bed

00:05:57 ◼   ► because we tend to prefer the comfort me and Adina I'm talking about my lovely

00:06:03 ◼   ► lady friend we like to be in bed when we watch TV and the best way for us to do

00:06:09 ◼   ► that is with the iPad Pro it's better than trying to fit a 50 inch TV into bed

00:06:13 ◼   ► with us and it looks the screen is great the speakers are great it is a good TV

00:06:19 ◼   ► so that is my feeling no matter what you say what John says that is that's the

00:06:26 ◼   ► the truth.

00:06:27 ◼   ► So what you're saying is Myke was right.

00:06:30 ◼   ► No, it's more John and Jason were wrong.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I get it.

00:06:35 ◼   ► So the ergonomics of it, I think, is what I have a problem with.

00:06:40 ◼   ► And maybe, you know, these kids today with their iPads in bed watching TV, it's fine.

00:06:45 ◼   ► But whenever my wife or I see a video that we want to share when we're getting up in

00:06:53 ◼   ► the morning or going to bed at night like, "Oh, there's this funny..." A lot of times

00:06:57 ◼   ► in the morning it's like, "Did you see this funny video?" or "Did you see this movie trailer?

00:07:00 ◼   ► Why don't you look at it?" And then it becomes this thing where you're kind of holding it

00:07:03 ◼   ► out and both people are trying to see it, but nobody's at quite the right angle and

00:07:07 ◼   ► you got to kind of hold the iPad there in order to get it or maybe you try to fit it

00:07:10 ◼   ► in like an angle that's right. And like last night we watched Last Week Tonight with John

00:07:17 ◼   ► Oliver before going to bed and we have a TV. It's not a 50-inch plasma, but we have a TV.

00:07:23 ◼   ► It is attached to the wall in our bedroom and I was able to turn on the TV and turn

00:07:29 ◼   ► it to HBO and watch Last Week Tonight and I didn't have to hold anything.

00:07:32 ◼   ► But we're not holding though.

00:07:34 ◼   ► It was big.

00:07:35 ◼   ► It's got a stand.

00:07:36 ◼   ► So where does it…

00:07:37 ◼   ► We just put it down.

00:07:38 ◼   ► So you have it in a stand on…

00:07:39 ◼   ► So I have it in the keyboard cover.

00:07:41 ◼   ► Okay.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And then we just, we put it in the middle of us.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Okay.

00:07:46 ◼   ► Is that not, is that not tilty or tenuous?

00:07:48 ◼   ► Is it, is it not going to like flop over?

00:07:51 ◼   ► does unless one of us is moving around like a crazy person. Like if one of us stands up,

00:07:55 ◼   ► right, there might be enough... This sounds so weird.

00:07:58 ◼   ► So remember to stay very still while watching TV.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Not very still! See, now you're putting words in my mouth, Snail, and I will not accept

00:08:05 ◼   ► that. It stays up perfectly fine on its own. We never have problems of it falling over.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Also our cat would just come along and push it over. That also would happen. That also

00:08:15 ◼   ► would absolutely happen because he thinks iPads are cat thinks iPads are the least cat

00:08:21 ◼   ► like thing in the world, which means he must rub on them all the time in order to get them

00:08:26 ◼   ► to be more cat like and smell more like a cat. So the iPads, the corners of our iPads

00:08:32 ◼   ► are just a target for him. So he would, he would knock it over if we even tried something

00:08:37 ◼   ► like that. But I don't know, even if it's like down and I, it's great that that, that

00:08:41 ◼   ► comfortable watching it that way. But I don't -- I'm comfortable watching an iPad as a TV

00:08:47 ◼   ► if it's just me, but I'm not -- I don't find it comfortable to watch a show with my wife

00:08:54 ◼   ► in, you know, whether we're in bed or on the couch or whatever with the iPad because it

00:08:59 ◼   ► just -- it doesn't feel comfortable to me.

00:09:01 ◼   ► >> MATT PORTER, MD No, I understand that.

00:09:02 ◼   ► >> JEAN, it works for you. That's great. But I think that's where Jon and I are both coming

00:09:05 ◼   ► from is that while it's a -- while you can do it, for us it's like that would be a last

00:09:10 ◼   ► resort, not a preference. >> Yeah, no, I get it, because it's definitely

00:09:16 ◼   ► a different strokes thing, but I just wouldn't allow the sweeping statement to be unanswered,

00:09:23 ◼   ► so there is my answer. >> Yeah, I'm surprised that that was what

00:09:26 ◼   ► you complained--actually, I'm not. I knew you would complain about that. Last week's

00:09:31 ◼   ► episode was a series of things that we just discussed gleefully, things that I know that

00:09:36 ◼   ► you would not--that you would object to. >> I got it. Don't worry, I got it. You know,

00:09:40 ◼   ► know, the whole pizza discussion, I just don't have the time. We'd be spending the entire

00:09:47 ◼   ► episode with me arguing.

00:09:49 ◼   ► Well, yeah, you and I are, well, I mean, John is just John. John's gonna have his take on

00:09:53 ◼   ► pizza. You and I are much more aligned on pizza than... That felt very much like a robot

00:09:58 ◼   ► or not conversation where I get in this mode where I'm just trying to probe John and find

00:10:02 ◼   ► out what his own rules are. And that, you know, that's sort of my objective there is

00:10:08 ◼   ► not to prove him wrong because he's not wrong or right. It's just his worldview. I'm trying

00:10:15 ◼   ► to get at his worldview, but I don't share it obviously because I make pizza that is

00:10:20 ◼   ► pizza and I make pizza that is something else by his definition, and so be it.

00:10:27 ◼   ► this weekend we're making pizza. Me and Dini would decide we're gonna make pizza this weekend.

00:10:32 ◼   ► And the ingredients that I have requested are pepperoni and pineapple, so I will be

00:10:38 ◼   ► making a pepperoni and pineapple pizza this weekend, so look forward to follow up on that

00:10:42 ◼   ► on next week's show on the Pizza Cast!

00:10:44 ◼   ► I think the Supreme Court--pizza vertical--the Supreme Court of Pizza has left an opening

00:10:51 ◼   ► for us with the approval, the sort of limited approval of the Hawaiian pizza and the approval

00:10:57 ◼   ► of pepperoni as a topping. I feel like we're so close to getting that passed through. You

00:11:01 ◼   ► know, I don't know quite how we will, I think our society will have to change to accept

00:11:07 ◼   ► that you could replace him with pepperoni and it's still valid pizza.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Well, see this is the thing, right? So a lot of John's reasoning was based on the fact

00:11:15 ◼   ► that he was judging New York pizza?

00:11:17 ◼   ► Yeah, well that's exactly it.

00:11:19 ◼   ► So this is Mill Valley pizza.

00:11:23 ◼   ► And you are?

00:11:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it's California pizza.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Well, I mean, John would agree with you.

00:11:28 ◼   ► He's like, "Yeah, California."

00:11:29 ◼   ► Again, like he said, California.

00:11:31 ◼   ► You guys could do all sorts of crazy things out there.

00:11:35 ◼   ► I can't really answer that with anything other than, "Yeah, I suppose so."

00:11:39 ◼   ► Like make weird pizza that tastes good.

00:11:42 ◼   ► So listeners of this show, I think, should go straightaway after hearing this and listen

00:11:46 ◼   ► to episode 310 of Mac Power Users. You joined David and Katie to talk about your first year

00:11:55 ◼   ► as an independent publisher.

00:11:57 ◼   ► - And David's first year.

00:11:59 ◼   ► - Of course, yes.

00:12:00 ◼   ► - It really is more of David's anniversary than mine. Mine's a little, it's almost coming

00:12:05 ◼   ► up a year and a half now, but for David, it is his first anniversary of being out on his

00:12:09 ◼   ► own. And that was the motivating factor for that interview was the, I thought that for

00:12:14 ◼   ► for Katie because she had a career change too, but it's not the same sort of thing.

00:12:19 ◼   ► She's just doing a different firm kind of thing. But for me and David, it was very similar

00:12:26 ◼   ► to the conversations we've had over lunch for the last five years. He and I have both

00:12:33 ◼   ► been talking about this subject, and this time we did it for MacPower users.

00:12:37 ◼   ► So I have that queued up and I'm very excited to listen to an audiobook right now for Cortex.

00:12:44 ◼   ► So I have to finish that. But as soon as that is finished, this is my next listen.

00:12:51 ◼   ► You're listening to an audiobook for Cortex. Is that another strange 1990s self-help book

00:12:55 ◼   ► that has been disavowed and disclaimed but yet is still available on audio?

00:13:00 ◼   ► I made the choice this time and chose Creativity Inc.

00:13:03 ◼   ► Oh, okay. Well, that's fine.

00:13:06 ◼   ► Because I've wanted to listen to that or read that book for a while, so.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Oh, you can listen to the incomparable episode afterward.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Did you do an episode about that?

00:13:14 ◼   ► We did.

00:13:15 ◼   ► That's where I know I've heard it.

00:13:16 ◼   ► I've listened to that before, and I knew I heard it somewhere.

00:13:20 ◼   ► That's it.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And that was it.

00:13:22 ◼   ► Because you guys were, I remember now, because there are things that happened, and I'm like,

00:13:24 ◼   ► "I'm sure I've heard this before.

00:13:25 ◼   ► What podcast discussed this?"

00:13:27 ◼   ► It was you.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Look at that.

00:13:29 ◼   ► So yeah, I'll put that in the show notes too, and I will re-listen to that, having heard

00:13:33 ◼   ► the book.

00:13:34 ◼   ► I'm enjoying it.

00:13:35 ◼   ► it so I'll be talking about that on the next episode of Kotex if you want to tune in you can feel free to.

00:13:40 ◼   ► I also, last piece of follow-up which is something that's happening in my life right now,

00:13:48 ◼   ► I made my first order with Amazon Prime now today. Is it coming by drone? Is it being dispatched by

00:13:54 ◼   ► drone? This is why we mentioned it right? This is why I brought it up because we spoke about that

00:13:58 ◼   ► drone discussion many many weeks ago and basically what it was is it was kind of my original kind of

00:14:05 ◼   ► of thinking about the drone was ordering video games.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Yeah, you were going to have a video game in a box delivered by a drone.

00:14:13 ◼   ► That was exactly what I did today, but we're prime now.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Because there's a game out now called The Division, it's the new Tom Clancy game based

00:14:21 ◼   ► on Tom Clancy stuff.

00:14:23 ◼   ► I don't even know if they're books anymore.

00:14:27 ◼   ► I've been seeing great things from it from some friends, Federico's got it, he says he

00:14:30 ◼   ► really enjoys it, so I decided I wanted it.

00:14:33 ◼   ► And it would be, in my situation, quicker for me to order it by Prime Now than try and

00:14:38 ◼   ► download it.

00:14:39 ◼   ► It's like a 36GB game.

00:14:42 ◼   ► So I ordered it and just as we started recording I heard a thunk downstairs so it's come through

00:14:47 ◼   ► the letterbox.

00:14:49 ◼   ► So I'll be playing it today.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Now where I live we don't have the within one hour Prime Now.

00:14:55 ◼   ► I didn't know this existed but there is a kind of a second tier of it where it's the

00:14:59 ◼   ► same day.

00:15:01 ◼   ► So I ordered this at like 11am this morning and it arrived at 3 o'clock and my delivery

00:15:06 ◼   ► window is between 2 and 4 and in the app once it's dispatched you can track the person in

00:15:11 ◼   ► real time.

00:15:12 ◼   ► It really is kind of terrible and brilliant at the same time, you know.

00:15:18 ◼   ► These things kind of, the fact that they exist feels so bad that like you know I ordered

00:15:23 ◼   ► a video game today and somebody brought it to me from a warehouse and put it through

00:15:26 ◼   ► my letterbox but I love that it exists for the exact same reason.

00:15:31 ◼   ► I've never used it because Mill Valley is not in, although we have pizza, it is not

00:15:37 ◼   ► in.

00:15:38 ◼   ► Have you checked it recently?

00:15:39 ◼   ► It's not in, I checked it last week.

00:15:40 ◼   ► Oh God.

00:15:41 ◼   ► We are not listed in Prime now.

00:15:43 ◼   ► I have the app, I keep looking, but we haven't gotten coverage.

00:15:48 ◼   ► It really is kind of cool.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I mean they have a limit, I think it's like 40 or 50 pounds you have to spend, which makes

00:15:52 ◼   ► sense to me.

00:15:53 ◼   ► Like if I was ordering like a bottle of milk that would be just atrocious to have this

00:15:58 ◼   ► person bring to me.

00:15:59 ◼   ► But it's really cool for this kind of thing. It didn't cost me anything more as a Prime

00:16:04 ◼   ► member to have it delivered today. So it's a big thumbs up from me, so I know what I'm

00:16:09 ◼   ► going to be doing once the show's over.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Interesting. Playing a video game or ordering more things on Prime now?

00:16:14 ◼   ► Both.

00:16:15 ◼   ► All right.

00:16:16 ◼   ► Playing the game of ordering things.

00:16:18 ◼   ► They should call it Prime soon if you don't get it in an hour.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Yeah, Prime at some point.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Less catchy. Prime today. Later today.

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00:18:55 ◼   ► I say about the livestream, which is really cool, they do like what we do, they stream

00:18:59 ◼   ► all of their content live, they have a chat room so people can check it out, and then

00:19:02 ◼   ► they turn those courses, they edit them down and turn them into videos.

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00:19:29 ◼   ► try it out for free for seven days plus 30% of the lifetime of your account. Thank you so much to

00:19:34 ◼   ► ITProTV for the support of this show. adding to the catalog of uh American versus British things

00:19:42 ◼   ► that we sometimes detail on this show it's Pi Day today. Do you know about Pi Day? 3.14. Right,

00:19:49 ◼   ► except in Britain it would be 1.4.3, which is not pi unless pi has changed, unless the

00:19:57 ◼   ► rules of mathematics are changed in England, which I don't think they have. And this is

00:20:00 ◼   ► sup in the chatroom pointed out that actually if you round pi to four decimal points, that's

00:20:07 ◼   ► 3.1416, which is, again, in American nomenclature, that's today.

00:20:12 ◼   ► >> There's ultimate pi day.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess, except only when you do the funny ordering that we do here in America

00:20:21 ◼   ► that Casey List doesn't like.

00:20:22 ◼   ► I'm very used to it now, though.

00:20:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I know, well, we've been saying it's a long-running gag that you're becoming increasingly

00:20:31 ◼   ► American and all your visits to America and all your conversations with Americans don't

00:20:35 ◼   ► help this point. Oh, I was struck by how--this is a little mini follow-out, I suppose--I

00:20:39 ◼   ► was struck by how I feel like, um, I listened to some relay shows now and am impressed that

00:20:46 ◼   ► you've gotten some, uh, more, uh, European flavor on the network. Um, obviously, uh,

00:20:55 ◼   ► canvas. Yep. Is, is very, uh, very European. Um, and, uh, and remaster remaster because

00:21:05 ◼   ► that's you and Shahid are in the UK and then Federico in Italy. So I've listened to both

00:21:13 ◼   ► of those and been struck by that, which is kind of fun. So it's not all just the Americans

00:21:18 ◼   ► taking over, just mostly.

00:21:19 ◼   ► - Whilst we're doing this random follow-up, there is a fun little thing you can do. There's

00:21:24 ◼   ► a fun game you can play, talking about my accent and the way it's changed. The oldest

00:21:29 ◼   ► thing that you can maybe find is episode one of the pen addict recorded in 2012. Just if

00:21:37 ◼   ► you want to hear it I'll put it in the show notes.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Yeah because you took you took down all of the old episodes of like the original command

00:21:44 ◼   ► space and stuff like that. Yeah well the show that came before it like my original shows

00:21:49 ◼   ► yeah this is a lot of a lot of the old stuff basically if it didn't move to five by five

00:21:54 ◼   ► when we moved over there it kind of doesn't exist anymore right but the pen addict is

00:21:58 ◼   ► the one show that's followed me for years. It's... wow, 2012 we started.

00:22:05 ◼   ► So if you want to hear Myke from early 2012.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Yep. With a terrible microphone, you should go listen to that. Because it really is kind

00:22:14 ◼   ► of surprising. I don't actually recognise my own voice from it. It's very, very peculiar.

00:22:21 ◼   ► But there you go, you can go listen to that if you like.

00:22:24 ◼   ► Something I want to get your take on. This happened a couple of weeks ago. Kind of out

00:22:28 ◼   ► of the blue, this is on the 3rd of March, Apple created a new Twitter account at Apple

00:22:34 ◼   ► support. It is a public Twitter support system. They have open hours from 5 to 8 Pacific every

00:22:43 ◼   ► day. And it's like any corporate support that you have come across before, they say, "send

00:22:51 ◼   ► as DMs and stuff like that, they send out tips and all that kind of great stuff. They

00:22:57 ◼   ► have nearly 200,000 followers already. Why did they do this? This is very different.

00:23:04 ◼   ► It's the thing to do. I don't know, I think this is an example of somebody at Apple saying,

00:23:16 ◼   ► not try it?" Right? Like, we don't normally do this. A lot of other companies do this.

00:23:22 ◼   ► You see it from companies with large scale, with lots of customers, airlines, things like

00:23:27 ◼   ► that. The cable company does it. So why can't we do it? Why shouldn't we do it? Do we not

00:23:32 ◼   ► have the resources to do this? Would it not be helpful to help our customers? I'm sort

00:23:38 ◼   ► of doing it right here. I could work myself up into the person who make... I could make

00:23:43 ◼   ► that argument. Right? I could say, "Why wouldn't we do this? Why aren't we doing this? Why

00:23:47 ◼   ► didn't we... Are we not opening up to the public more than we ever have before?" Perhaps

00:23:53 ◼   ► this would be a way for us to do that. And we could do it from a, you know, a brand account,

00:23:57 ◼   ► just like the other big companies do. It wouldn't be like a person or something. We would need

00:24:02 ◼   ► to pay, you know, we would need a team, but perhaps this could save us in the long run

00:24:08 ◼   ► in terms of reducing the time to get a Genius Bar appointment or anything like that, you

00:24:13 ◼   ► maybe it would help retail out and phone support if we could do this Twitter support stuff as part

00:24:20 ◼   ► of our support portfolio. And this is the kind of thing that nobody would have suggested, I think,

00:24:28 ◼   ► or at least nobody high up would have thought politically acceptable to suggest to Apple

00:24:34 ◼   ► before. But Apple has changed its communication strategy a lot, really since Katie Cotton left,

00:24:40 ◼   ► is the biggest change, I think. So, yeah. I suspect that that's what happened, is that

00:24:47 ◼   ► somebody in the support area has been seeing what their peers in support have done at other

00:24:52 ◼   ► companies for a long time, and this is another tool for them.

00:24:58 ◼   ► From my experience of working in a big company, some of this pressure actually comes from

00:25:04 ◼   ► Twitter as well. They lobby big companies to have these accounts. So there's also that

00:25:11 ◼   ► on the other side, right? They help them get them set up and they really try and push the

00:25:15 ◼   ► message for why this type of thing should exist, which is smart for them to do because

00:25:20 ◼   ► it becomes another channel that people can talk to companies through.

00:25:25 ◼   ► It's just an interesting move because it doesn't really seem like it's come from anywhere specific,

00:25:32 ◼   ► Like it's just appeared.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And I know that we've seen some of the Apple gaming accounts and stuff like that, but previously

00:25:39 ◼   ► support whilst good at Apple has been quite restricted to certain areas.

00:25:43 ◼   ► It's mainly flowed through the GeniusBot, through the stores, and I wonder how many

00:25:49 ◼   ► people they must have taking care of an operation like this.

00:25:55 ◼   ► I was wondering that too, but I don't know. You know, somebody who might know is our friend

00:26:02 ◼   ► Scott McNulty, who worked at Comcast for a while. He wasn't at Comcast Cares, but he

00:26:10 ◼   ► knew the people who were. And he could probably tell us. I'd imagine that... It depends on

00:26:19 ◼   ► the volume. I mean, if you constrain the hours, yeah, you need customer service reps on this,

00:26:24 ◼   ► although I don't know how many because I did have a thought actually when this account

00:26:29 ◼   ► launched that I guess Twitter jail isn't a thing anymore because the number of the avalanche

00:26:34 ◼   ► of replies that come from this account it was just amazing how many replies were coming

00:26:41 ◼   ► out of it.

00:26:42 ◼   ► >> Well yeah because they use services right so there are customer support services that

00:26:47 ◼   ► are set up and I would assume that they have kind of unrestricted access.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And so my guess is there's a help desk app of some sort that consumes all of the tweets

00:27:02 ◼   ► and then basically they're like tickets and then people grab a ticket and say "I'll answer

00:27:08 ◼   ► this one, this one's mine" and then they answer it and then they mark it and then if there's

00:27:13 ◼   ► a reply to that one that they would get marked that there was a reply and they would follow

00:27:17 ◼   ► the chain so that they can split up the duty across multiple people. I do hope this is

00:27:22 ◼   ► not one person sitting in Tweetbot, hitting reply and looking things up on a web browser

00:27:27 ◼   ► because that would be a really tough job.

00:27:29 ◼   ► No, that's exactly how it works. Apple are using a system called Sprinkler. You can see

00:27:36 ◼   ► that from what they're replying to. But I have seen the use of tools like this. There's

00:27:44 ◼   ► a tool called Radian6 which does this kind of thing. It's exactly that. It turns incoming

00:27:50 ◼   ► tweets into support tickets and then they're dealt with that way and also these services

00:27:56 ◼   ► can kind of track keywords and stuff like that around the brand to give a kind of an

00:28:01 ◼   ► idea like a score of how these things are progressing and the kind of the way that people

00:28:05 ◼   ► are interacting with you. It's valuable, it's very valuable. I think it is a good thing

00:28:11 ◼   ► that Apple are doing this trying to make the customer service a little bit more accessible

00:28:16 ◼   ► and open to people who maybe don't have AppleCare, I think is a good thing.

00:28:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I'm all for it. I think the more things they do like this, I mean, you

00:28:25 ◼   ► are gonna end up in, you know, you are asking for people to yell at you when they're mad

00:28:30 ◼   ► because their thing doesn't work, just like the airlines are and just like Comcast, you

00:28:34 ◼   ► know, and all the other cable companies are. You are going to get that, but you can also

00:28:40 ◼   ► do things like, you know, I know we make fun of people a lot for things like, you could

00:28:46 ◼   ► Google it. Like, I get emails, and I don't make fun of them, but I roll my eyes sometimes

00:28:50 ◼   ► when people are like, "Hey, what's that article you did about this?" I get emails like that

00:28:54 ◼   ► and tweets like that, and it's like, literally, if you type the thing that they asked me about

00:28:59 ◼   ► into Google, or maybe ad site colon six colors dot com into Google, it's the first result.

00:29:05 ◼   ► It's right there. It didn't take -- but you know what? Some people don't think like that.

00:29:08 ◼   ► don't understand how that works, they don't, they just, that's not the way that they approach

00:29:13 ◼   ► things. So, yeah, if you can pop in there and be like, "Oh, it's here." Like, we've

00:29:17 ◼   ► got the, they know where all the tech documentation resources are posted on Apple's site, they

00:29:23 ◼   ► can, they do a quick search, they find the tech note about it, they paste it back in,

00:29:28 ◼   ► say check this out, this answers your question, that's nice, right? That's nice. They're not

00:29:34 ◼   ► necessarily going to be able to do like massive troubleshooting, but they can do within the

00:29:38 ◼   ► constraints of Twitter, they can do that. And if somebody's having a real problem, this

00:29:42 ◼   ► happens with all of these customer service Twitter accounts, they'll say, "Follow us

00:29:45 ◼   ► and send a DM." And then basically they're putting it into email support. They're putting

00:29:50 ◼   ► it into a... It's a path into their main support structure, which is also... I mean, in the

00:29:57 ◼   ► end, yeah, it's more work and more effort, but they're a big company with a lot of customers

00:30:01 ◼   ► to support. So another channel into their support system, another customer who's not

00:30:06 ◼   ► just frustrated and doesn't know where to turn, that's all for the good, I would say.

00:30:12 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I just thought it was an interesting thing because it's a market change, right?

00:30:18 ◼   ► This is one of the things I think since Tim took over we've been talking a lot about,

00:30:23 ◼   ► is just the things that are changing in Apple, the things that are new, which seem to come

00:30:28 ◼   ► from his leadership. And a man who talks about customer satisfaction so often, it is unsurprising

00:30:35 ◼   ► that they have increased their support capabilities.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Well, as brilliant as Steve Jobs was in a lot of ways, though, also I would say I feel

00:30:43 ◼   ► like Steve Jobs had a worldview, and it benefited him, and it benefited Apple. But I'm not sure

00:30:49 ◼   ► how much room there was for certain stuff in Steve Jobs's worldview. And I think his

00:30:54 ◼   ► view. And who's to say if he had not lived, he would not have adapted to some of this

00:30:59 ◼   ► stuff. But I think this is one of those areas where it took a change in leadership at the

00:31:06 ◼   ► CEO level, at the head of corporate communications level, for somebody to say, "Let's reevaluate

00:31:11 ◼   ► where we are right now." And not to say Steve Jobs would answer emails, right? But something

00:31:16 ◼   ► like having a whole customer service thing on Twitter, Apple was locked down. A lot of

00:31:23 ◼   ► their strategy was let's just control everything. And so to have anybody put themselves out

00:31:28 ◼   ► there seemed like, you know, it's not impossible, but it would be a harder battle to fight.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Because you'd have to convince some people who were entrenched, whether it got to Steve

00:31:38 ◼   ► or whether it got to Katie or whether, I don't know who it would have had to get to in that

00:31:42 ◼   ► era. But now I think everybody at Apple feels like there's a bigger spirit of, at IDG we

00:31:49 ◼   ► we used to call it "Let's Try This," which was one of the Pat McGovern corporate values,

00:31:55 ◼   ► and I always liked that that was something that he put in his company was, "If you've

00:31:59 ◼   ► got an idea about something that you think could be good for the company, let's give

00:32:03 ◼   ► it a try." And Apple seems to be in a "Let's Try This" phase right now, where for a while

00:32:09 ◼   ► they were like, "Look, we've got a thing that's working for us. This is the system we set

00:32:15 ◼   ► up." Essentially, when Steve came back to Apple, "We set it up this way. This is working.

00:32:19 ◼   ► we've got products to make, let's go." And for the last couple of years, it seems like

00:32:23 ◼   ► they've taken the time to say, "Let's revisit some of those things that we set up in 1997,

00:32:29 ◼   ► you know, through 2000 when we were getting started here." And the world has moved on

00:32:33 ◼   ► a little bit. Maybe we can do things better. And I just, I love that Apple is showing that

00:32:37 ◼   ► flexibility. I'm not saying that Apple support is like the greatest thing in the world that's

00:32:42 ◼   ► going to solve a lot of problems, but I think it's a nice, don't you think it's like a nice

00:32:47 ◼   ► symptom of change at Apple, if nothing else? I do. I think it's, I mean I know it

00:32:53 ◼   ► seems strange, but it is an indication of the openness that they are

00:32:57 ◼   ► displaying because they are openly allowing people to send all of their

00:33:02 ◼   ► problems out into the world and focus them towards an account. Like if you just

00:33:06 ◼   ► go and look at the mentions, you see hate, right, and things that are wrong and

00:33:09 ◼   ► things that are going wrong for people. You can go and see all of that and

00:33:13 ◼   ► that doesn't really feel like a traditional Apple way of wanting to do

00:33:16 ◼   ► things, right, like to point focus at the problems, but this is something that should

00:33:22 ◼   ► exist because in the long run it will actually help people and reduce the burden of people

00:33:30 ◼   ► trying to maybe call or get a Genius Bar appointment. This should be part of the overall support

00:33:36 ◼   ► structure, which it is, which is good. I'm glad that it exists.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Well, I think there are a lot of benefits. I mean, you can also see them going out there

00:33:43 ◼   ► and trying to help people, which I think is to their benefit. Stonewalling and pretending

00:33:48 ◼   ► that nobody has any problems and everything you do is fantastic is a locked down communication

00:33:54 ◼   ► strategy. That is definitely the old way of doing things at Apple. But it's not realistic,

00:33:59 ◼   ► right? I mean, people still talk about the frustrations that they've got. And finding

00:34:04 ◼   ► ways to channel it and acknowledge it and make it better, I do think that goes back

00:34:09 ◼   ► to Tim Cook talking about customer sat all the time. I think, talking about the John

00:34:14 ◼   ► Oliver show on HBO, they did a long piece last night about encryption, and it's great

00:34:19 ◼   ► and I recommend that people watch it. I imagine that it's on YouTube now. If not, it will

00:34:23 ◼   ► be soon, because they tend to post their stuff there. But it was really good, but one of

00:34:29 ◼   ► the points that they made toward the end that I thought was really effective is that Apple

00:34:34 ◼   ► acts like all of its stuff is this magical thing and that they can do anything. And that's

00:34:40 ◼   ► the mystique of Apple, which is great marketing, but it bites you when you talk about something

00:34:45 ◼   ► like encryption because you see all these people saying, essentially, these are computer

00:34:50 ◼   ► geniuses who can do anything. Surely they can create a whole new form of encryption

00:34:54 ◼   ► that is secure for everybody else, but allows a court order to open it up. And this is the,

00:35:01 ◼   ► know, it's sort of that two-edged sword here where Apple has created a mystique about it

00:35:06 ◼   ► that in some cases is dangerous because it leads to backlash, whether that backlash is

00:35:11 ◼   ► people in Congress thinking that Apple can make a magical encryption form that doesn't

00:35:16 ◼   ► exist, or whether it's that customers get angry because they were told that this would

00:35:20 ◼   ► be magical but they're having a problem with their hardware.

00:35:23 ◼   ► Talking about the encryption debate, so we have an event booked, March 21st will be the

00:35:31 ◼   ► Apple event for, expect new products.

00:35:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:36 ◼   ► But before we talk about the new products and what we think could or couldn't be there,

00:35:38 ◼   ► do you think they're going to address this in any way?

00:35:45 ◼   ► My guess would be that the opening remarks from Tim, assuming there are some, would touch

00:35:53 ◼   ► on it but obliquely.

00:35:57 ◼   ► That would be my guess.

00:35:58 ◼   ► That he'll say, you know, "We remain committed to our customers' privacy and security around

00:36:04 ◼   ► the world," and then just kind of like, and people might applaud that, but that there

00:36:08 ◼   ► won't be any more detail than that.

00:36:10 ◼   ► My feeling is that is probably what's going to happen.

00:36:13 ◼   ► I'm taking an outside bet on mention to making iOS even more secure for iOS 10 at this event.

00:36:24 ◼   ► Could be, my guess is that, I mean I think it wouldn't be that specific, I think it would

00:36:30 ◼   ► be more like we're working on ways to make it even more secure in the future, but like

00:36:35 ◼   ► literally that would be it.

00:36:37 ◼   ► That's as much as I think it could go, if they're going to talk about anything, he may

00:36:41 ◼   ► just say something along those lines but I agree other than that it's kind of just like

00:36:46 ◼   ► you know we have great stuff to do to talk about today but I just want to mention how

00:36:53 ◼   ► we're committed to our customers blah blah blah.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Let's talk about what we're expecting to see so just run through a little checklist of

00:37:01 ◼   ► the things that have been mentioned here so smaller iPhone potentially named the iPhone

00:37:06 ◼   ► SE right?

00:37:07 ◼   ► That's in the Gurman report.

00:37:10 ◼   ► So we're expecting that's going to be it.

00:37:14 ◼   ► The Apple invitation, whilst that's always fun to look at, shows the four colours.

00:37:20 ◼   ► Whatever devices that are going to be unveiled will probably have the four colours, the grey,

00:37:24 ◼   ► the silver, the gold and the rose.

00:37:27 ◼   ► In this household right here, we are hoping that there is a smaller iPhone released and

00:37:31 ◼   ► it is a good product because that's something we're looking forward to getting for Adina

00:37:35 ◼   ► here.

00:37:36 ◼   ► would prefer the smaller iPhone.

00:37:38 ◼   ► - She most definitely would, yeah.

00:37:39 ◼   ► And her phone currently is just basically,

00:37:41 ◼   ► it may as well be falling to pieces.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Do we think we're going to see 10 inch iPad Pro?

00:37:49 ◼   ► Probably yes, right?

00:37:50 ◼   ► It feels like it's iPad time.

00:37:52 ◼   ► - All the rumors say so,

00:37:54 ◼   ► say that what we've been talking about

00:37:56 ◼   ► is the iPad Air 3 that now may be called an iPad,

00:38:00 ◼   ► a smaller iPad Pro, and this is with pencil support

00:38:03 ◼   ► and the smart connector will happen.

00:38:07 ◼   ► The naming, it'll be interesting to see the naming

00:38:10 ◼   ► 'cause naming is a little more flexible in some ways

00:38:13 ◼   ► than the hardware.

00:38:14 ◼   ► It's definitely more flexible.

00:38:16 ◼   ► I don't know if you could change it at the last minute,

00:38:18 ◼   ► but it's more flexible than hardware.

00:38:19 ◼   ► And how they, yeah, how they explain iPhone SE,

00:38:24 ◼   ► how they explain iPhone or iPad Pro,

00:38:26 ◼   ► always good to see the way Apple refers to these products

00:38:30 ◼   ► and explains how they fit if they do.

00:38:32 ◼   ► So, but I imagine we'll see that.

00:38:34 ◼   ► New Apple Watch bands.

00:38:37 ◼   ► Don't they always have new Apple Watch bands?

00:38:40 ◼   ► Feels like it now.

00:38:41 ◼   ► I mean, they're a seasonal thing, which makes perfect sense.

00:38:43 ◼   ► It feels like this is going to be a thing.

00:38:45 ◼   ► And you know, again, referring to the original Germin reports, we're looking at potentially

00:38:51 ◼   ► a NATO style band.

00:38:53 ◼   ► NATO bands are like these material woven bands.

00:38:57 ◼   ► And I really hope we do see some of those because I love that band.

00:39:00 ◼   ► I had a Seiko watch which had one of those previously and was very happy with that, so

00:39:06 ◼   ► I would like to see that.

00:39:07 ◼   ► And also just some change in the Apple Watch band designs, you know, new designs is great

00:39:13 ◼   ► rather than just new colors to keep that product fresh.

00:39:16 ◼   ► I don't think we're going to get anything more Apple Watch related outside of that.

00:39:22 ◼   ► I agree.

00:39:23 ◼   ► And the question there is do they do like a little update and say, "Hey, Apple Watch,

00:39:27 ◼   ► it's great.

00:39:28 ◼   ► here's uh... we're doing some new colors today moving on

00:39:32 ◼   ► or or or you know if if that or they just make new colors available

00:39:37 ◼   ► I think that's what we're gonna see if anything I

00:39:41 ◼   ► I think it's gonna be very uh...

00:39:43 ◼   ► I think it's gonna be very quiet about the Apple Watch here other than just new colors

00:39:47 ◼   ► because I just think that maybe one won't want to put too much focus on it yet

00:39:51 ◼   ► because they don't have new hardware

00:39:53 ◼   ► and you know as we've discussed in the past the current hardware is

00:39:56 ◼   ► a little long in the tooth now. Because what is it? Two years old?

00:40:01 ◼   ► It's been a year. Well it's been a year since it shipped.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Yeah, but I'm thinking since we originally saw it. Because that ends the whole story,

00:40:09 ◼   ► right? You're thinking when you first saw the product and then it was... anyway.

00:40:11 ◼   ► I was a Macworld employee when we first saw the Apple Watch.

00:40:15 ◼   ► There you go. There you go. So there's your gauge of time.

00:40:18 ◼   ► What about new Macs? What do you think here? We're gonna see anything Macintosh related?

00:40:25 ◼   ► there definitely seem to be new Macs coming. Definitely heard rumbles about possibly a

00:40:31 ◼   ► new MacBook. Definitely heard the rumbles about new MacBook Pro models. I think it's

00:40:38 ◼   ► an open question. I think tomorrow, or not tomorrow, but a week from today would be a

00:40:42 ◼   ► perfect time to do it. I think it comes down to sort of like what's the runtime of the

00:40:46 ◼   ► event and what do they want to focus on? Because you could release Macs without an event. You

00:40:52 ◼   ► you really could. And they often do. But they might use the event just to give it a little

00:40:57 ◼   ► extra push and release them. So I don't know, I'm on the fence about that, about whether

00:41:01 ◼   ► they're going to do that or not. Do they want to mix the Mac into their message about these

00:41:06 ◼   ► other products? At the same time, this does seem like an odds and ends kind of event with

00:41:10 ◼   ► the small iPhone variation and the, you know, a new, smaller iPad Pro and that does the

00:41:17 ◼   ► things that the other iPad Pro does and sure so throw in some new Macs too. If I had to

00:41:23 ◼   ► bet I'd probably bet that they will because it adds a little more weight, a little more

00:41:28 ◼   ► heft to the event.

00:41:29 ◼   ► Not that it matters what I think to Apple but if they were going to follow my advice

00:41:35 ◼   ► it would be to do it all at once because there's not going to be one singular product here

00:41:38 ◼   ► I believe if what we're getting is what has been rumored. There's not one singular product

00:41:45 ◼   ► here that is a real headline on its own. These are all small products that aren't in the

00:41:51 ◼   ► top tier of Apple's products, especially where the iPad, we've seen all of the features potentially

00:41:57 ◼   ► already in the iPad Pro, so my feeling would be you bombard to get lots of headlines, so

00:42:05 ◼   ► you just have lots of little stories as opposed to the iPhone big story.

00:42:09 ◼   ► Make it up in volume.

00:42:10 ◼   ► Yeah, you make it up in volume.

00:42:11 ◼   ► right there's a lot here we you know it's not a lot it's new but there's a

00:42:15 ◼   ► lot of it that that would be my feeling is you just know you go for everything

00:42:20 ◼   ► in the hopes that something will grab someone you know I think I think that's

00:42:25 ◼   ► the most likely it is kind of funny if if it really is I mean you could argue

00:42:29 ◼   ► that the the new iPad is the biggest story because that 10-inch size is

00:42:33 ◼   ► probably the sweet spot for the iPad in terms of sales certainly I would think

00:42:39 ◼   ► so but but yeah it's a grab bag grab bag event yeah so we will be recording after

00:42:46 ◼   ► the event as we usually do so we have an episode on Monday sometime on Monday the

00:42:52 ◼   ► 21st we will do after the event we will do a recording and catch up and that'll

00:42:56 ◼   ► be our first it's kind of a nice rhythm that upgrade becomes like the first take

00:43:01 ◼   ► right afterward you know breaking it down and talking about it and then you

00:43:05 ◼   ► you will go off and do some analysis with Connected later in the week. And then we will

00:43:10 ◼   ► come back with sort of our week-long reflection on the... Actually, are you even on the one

00:43:17 ◼   ► the week after or is that one of the... No. So I will come back a week later with reflections

00:43:22 ◼   ► with a special guest to be invited because I haven't invited anybody because you're out

00:43:28 ◼   ► that week. But anyway, I like that kind of pattern that we're gonna get the quick hit

00:43:31 ◼   ► right after the event. So we will do that. We don't know when, but sometime on Monday.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Yes, I've blocked out my entire day for the event.

00:43:41 ◼   ► Yeah, so it might be late for you, but stay up late.

00:43:44 ◼   ► Yeah, if you want to listen live, we'll be tweeting about it. Currently, the schedule

00:43:47 ◼   ► is just blocked off for the whole day. So that's that. I mean, as is usual, it's not

00:43:53 ◼   ► too much here, but we like to kind of just do a little roundup of what we think is going

00:43:56 ◼   ► to happen so we can reflect back on it. I really do think we're going to get an odds

00:43:59 ◼   ► an ends event with a FBI statement basically at the beginning and a kind of look forward

00:44:06 ◼   ► at the end towards WWDC. We're getting quite close now it feels to me to WWDC so I think

00:44:14 ◼   ► that we're going to see some of the groundwork being laid here. We've obviously got 9.3 on

00:44:17 ◼   ► the horizon so we can expect a demo of 9.3 potentially with a feature or two that we

00:44:24 ◼   ► don't know about yet to support something we don't yet know about right so you know

00:44:27 ◼   ► the 10 inch iPad Pro might have a little thing, you know, maybe whatever it was they were

00:44:31 ◼   ► doing with the Apple Pencil. We might see some kind of signs of that kind of thing,

00:44:37 ◼   ► but we'll at least get another demo of 9.3. Maybe something Mac related, there's rumblings

00:44:44 ◼   ► of iTunes being worked on or Apple Music being split out, which was kind of spoken about

00:44:49 ◼   ► in that episode of the talk show, but we haven't seen anything about that yet.

00:44:53 ◼   ► I don't know. I mean, there's two ways to view this event too. One is that it's the

00:45:01 ◼   ► beginning of 2016. And the other way to view it is it's the end of the model year, the

00:45:07 ◼   ► 2015 model year. And that, right? Because it's all this kind of incremental improvement.

00:45:14 ◼   ► I mean, if they're new Macs, then it's sort of the beginning of the Mac year. But for

00:45:17 ◼   ► this iOS stuff it seems much more like it's the kind of extras from last year's technology

00:45:24 ◼   ► and then a WWDC is where we kind of kick off the next product cycle for Apple. So you could

00:45:29 ◼   ► view this event as either kind of a beginning or as an ending. It certainly feels like a

00:45:33 ◼   ► transition point. Because it's bringing everything up to speed and maybe pushing a few things

00:45:38 ◼   ► on which is cool.

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00:49:00 ◼   ► So there was a story that came from the Oculus Rift founder whose name is escaping me. I

00:49:09 ◼   ► think he was the guy who was on the time cover right floating in the air with the beach behind

00:49:13 ◼   ► him, do you remember that?

00:49:15 ◼   ► Oh yeah, Palmer Lucky.

00:49:18 ◼   ► Palmer Lucky, that's it. What an interesting name that is, I'd like to find out the etymology

00:49:23 ◼   ► that name. But anyway, basically he has been quoted to say that effectively Oculus will

00:49:31 ◼   ► not support the Mac with their VR headset until Apple makes a good computer for gaming.

00:49:37 ◼   ► Now this is something that the kind of the underpinnings of the story I've been following

00:49:42 ◼   ► for a little while, when the Kickstarter campaign came out and all of the dev kits, for a while

00:49:47 ◼   ► there was Mac support built into the software and then at a certain point during the development

00:49:53 ◼   ► of the Oculus they stopped supporting the Mac and at that time they weren't very clear as to

00:49:58 ◼   ► whether they were going to come back or not it seemed like they'd run into some hurdles

00:50:01 ◼   ► and then eventually support for Oculus on the Mac stopped and they stopped developing anything

00:50:08 ◼   ► and effectively you know they've kind of said here and there the reasons for this but it's

00:50:14 ◼   ► you know Palmer Luckey has made it quite clear now that basically Macs are not powerful enough

00:50:19 ◼   ► as gaming machines to run the Oculus Rift. And it does take a lot, you know, there are

00:50:25 ◼   ► a lot of PCs that won't run the Oculus Rift either. So now that basically it looks like

00:50:31 ◼   ► if you are a Mac owner, a Mac user, you will not be able to use this and even doing something

00:50:36 ◼   ► like Bootcamp probably won't help you because it's not a software issue they're running

00:50:40 ◼   ► into. Basically the argument here is that the graphics cards and all that kind of stuff

00:50:46 ◼   ► will not meet their recommended spec. This is a quote on the 9to5 Mac from Palmer Luckey.

00:50:53 ◼   ► He says, "You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with a top-of-the-line AMD Fire Pro D700, and it

00:50:59 ◼   ► still doesn't meet our recommended specifications. They prioritize higher-end GPUs like they

00:51:04 ◼   ► used for a while back in the day. I think we'd love to support the Mac."

00:51:08 ◼   ► This is interesting to me, Jason.

00:51:11 ◼   ► So a lot of this has to do with the fact that Apple's, well there's two things going on

00:51:17 ◼   ► here. One is Apple seems to be content using a lot of GPUs that are not considered acceptable

00:51:25 ◼   ► for PC gaming. And why do they do that? I think the answer is because they don't care

00:51:33 ◼   ► about PC gaming. They don't care about games. They don't. They don't care. Even when you

00:51:37 ◼   ► look at the Mac Pro, their calculations about like GPUs have to do with like using GPUs

00:51:42 ◼   ► for scientific applications and things like that, not for games. They just, and it's,

00:51:49 ◼   ► we no longer live in a time when we have a modular Mac that you can plug a Mac version

00:51:55 ◼   ► usually of a PC game card into, which I mean I did that on my Power Mac G4, I put a new

00:52:03 ◼   ► graphics card in at one point but we don't those days are over there there

00:52:06 ◼   ► are no essentially there no modular max anymore so you know when when Palmer

00:52:15 ◼   ► Lucky says that they won't support Mac until Apple makes a good computer

00:52:19 ◼   ► I mean the guys being a jerk because Apple makes lots of good computers

00:52:23 ◼   ► Apple just doesn't doesn't bend over backward to engineer PC game rigs

00:52:29 ◼   ► because they don't care. And so I guess what I would say if I were Apple what I'd say to

00:52:34 ◼   ► Palmer Lucky is probably something like, "We don't care about what you're doing. What you

00:52:41 ◼   ► do and you think is important, we don't care about."

00:52:44 ◼   ► They do care about VR. Tim Cook has basically said as much that it is an area of interest.

00:52:48 ◼   ► Do they care about VR games plugged into a headset that's attached to a Mac? I don't

00:52:54 ◼   ► think they do. I don't think they do.

00:52:56 ◼   ► I think that Apple are working on VR because if they're not they're stupid. VR is the next

00:53:04 ◼   ► thing it would appear, right? It is the next thing we can see for technology. It might

00:53:10 ◼   ► not be the next iPhone, it probably won't be, but if we look at where technology is

00:53:14 ◼   ► in 2016, virtual reality is the next revolution, right? Would you agree with that? It's like

00:53:20 ◼   ► the thing on the horizon.

00:53:23 ◼   ► I would say it is going to be popular with gamers.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And that's the part that I'm certain of.

00:53:33 ◼   ► And the rest of it I'm still a little skeptical of how long it's going to be.

00:53:36 ◼   ► I can't see applications outside of gaming right now either.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Well Apple's not exactly a giant in gaming, especially like the more advanced gamers who

00:53:47 ◼   ► are going to be buying first and second generation VR equipment, right?

00:53:51 ◼   ► Of course.

00:53:52 ◼   ► My concern though is that Apple are definitely making something and my feeling is that it's

00:54:01 ◼   ► going to be for iOS.

00:54:02 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, of course.

00:54:06 ◼   ► So I think they're going to miss out on the OS X and that is simply because they're just

00:54:13 ◼   ► not concerned enough about games as a thing that they would bother to put it on an OS

00:54:20 ◼   ► as well because they will put it on iOS because you can't escape it.

00:54:23 ◼   ► The games are part of iOS, it's one of the biggest game platforms in the world, so you

00:54:28 ◼   ► can't ignore it, but in that you're going to miss out on some of the really powerful

00:54:33 ◼   ► experiences that the additional graphics capabilities can deliver.

00:54:37 ◼   ► I mean this week as we record, Sony has their PSVR event where we're expecting to get more

00:54:42 ◼   ► details on a release date for the Playstation headset, which I would take a bet is going

00:54:49 ◼   ► to be the winner of the current generation of VR. It's cheaper, more people have a Playstation

00:54:55 ◼   ► than they have a PC that can run this stuff. So I think that is going to be a real key

00:55:00 ◼   ► here but I think that it would be really nice to see Apple take advantage of the power that

00:55:06 ◼   ► OS X and these machines can deliver to put something here which would be really compelling

00:55:13 ◼   ► but I just don't think we're going to see it. I also don't think we're going to see

00:55:16 ◼   ► anything VR from Apple in 2016. Which is interesting because this is the year of VR and I wonder

00:55:24 ◼   ► if we're gonna, you know we've got one of two situations here either they're gonna be

00:55:28 ◼   ► late and it won't be good enough or they're gonna be late and it will be better than everybody

00:55:33 ◼   ► else and that can be one of two things of Apple it can go either way. I'll be interested

00:55:37 ◼   ► to see where it goes because gaming is the main application but gaming is not really

00:55:43 ◼   ► something that the company as a whole seems to put a lot of effort into. So I'm very interested

00:55:50 ◼   ► to see what Apple envisions VR to be for them.

00:55:55 ◼   ► Yeah, also this is not, you know, it's not the year of VR, it's the year where the first

00:56:00 ◼   ► commercial VR products will ship. That's not the same. That's not the same. And Apple is

00:56:06 ◼   ► not, Apple is not going to participate in a first-generation device that's going

00:56:14 ◼   ► to largely appeal to gamers. It's not gonna, right, it's not gonna happen. So I

00:56:19 ◼   ► don't think they're behind it all in not having a product this year. I think

00:56:24 ◼   ► it's a question of what they're targeting with this because if games

00:56:28 ◼   ► really is the best application for VR, and I think it is, then it might be

00:56:35 ◼   ► something that they need to worry about soon if there's any uptake on the, you

00:56:42 ◼   ► know, Samsung and HTC sort of mobile VR stuff, but on the Mac it doesn't seem to

00:56:50 ◼   ► be, you know, I just I don't think people are going to be rushing out to buy PC

00:56:55 ◼   ► gaming PCs with high-end specs and Oculus rifts to play games other than

00:57:00 ◼   ► that hardcore gaming market that wouldn't really look twice at a Mac

00:57:03 ◼   ► anyway. So it'll be interesting to see what they what they do with it but you

00:57:07 ◼   ► know Apple's Mac priorities are different and I just they have never

00:57:10 ◼   ► been as somebody who you know at Macworld we had to do this for years

00:57:14 ◼   ► where we had you know we covered Mac games we had Mac gaming column and Peter

00:57:18 ◼   ► Cohen wrote it for a while and and Roman Loyola wrote it for a while Chris

00:57:22 ◼   ► Breen wrote it for a while and you know we had a lot of people writing about Mac

00:57:26 ◼   ► games trying very hard to write about Mac games and Stephen Levy wrote it for

00:57:31 ◼   ► a while actually back in the day. And Mac games are, you know, it's never really been

00:57:38 ◼   ► a thing because it's never been a priority. It's more like Apple makes hardware for other

00:57:43 ◼   ► reasons and then people are like, "Yeah, I might be able to put a game on there though,"

00:57:48 ◼   ► but it's never been, you know, really that Apple has cared about gaming. That's never

00:57:53 ◼   ► really been the case on the Mac. And they care about it more on iOS because they see

00:58:00 ◼   ► that it's popular. Still questionable though. Well, you know, when they talk about Metal

00:58:05 ◼   ► and stuff like that, I mean, they're making some decisions on iOS that are meant to be

00:58:11 ◼   ► for gaming. Also, it shows off their chip-making prowess, and I think that's part of it too,

00:58:17 ◼   ► is if you're going to try to differentiate yourself by having really impressive hardware

00:58:23 ◼   ► specs for your mobile devices. One way to do that is by showing how great it runs games.

00:58:30 ◼   ► So I think they go together, and I think that sets them up to do VR in an interesting way

00:58:35 ◼   ► using the stuff that we know of as the--because you know, you also don't want a giant--you

00:58:40 ◼   ► don't want to have a headset connected to a giant box with fans blowing, right? Ideally,

00:58:46 ◼   ► this should be a lightweight thing that you put on your head that does this, and so mobile

00:58:50 ◼   ► is gonna be, mobile tech is gonna be the place where you're gonna really differentiate, I

00:58:54 ◼   ► think. And Apple has that tech. So I think they'll get there, but, you know, not on the

00:58:59 ◼   ► Mac. Anybody, I find it miraculous that Oculus even considered building stuff that worked

00:59:04 ◼   ► with Macs at any point.

00:59:06 ◼   ► Well you gotta try. I played with Gear VR for the first time last week. The Samsung

00:59:15 ◼   ► one.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:17 ◼   ► It's incredible.

00:59:18 ◼   ► It really is.

00:59:20 ◼   ► It's so much more simple, right? And I've played with

00:59:24 ◼   ► Google Cardboard and even that blows me away, but this one is really really great.

00:59:31 ◼   ► You know, it has like a touchpad on the side kind of like so you can move around and access different things.

00:59:37 ◼   ► But I was playing this one kind of demo-y game thing and I was walking

00:59:43 ◼   ► Basically, I started and I was in a museum like a gallery. I looked at

00:59:47 ◼   ► a Bango painting and then all of a sudden I'm inside and walking around inside of the

00:59:52 ◼   ► painting. And you know, I'm really taken aback by VR. The couple of experiences that I've

01:00:00 ◼   ► had with it I thought were kind of incredible and I really love it as a platform because

01:00:08 ◼   ► the kind of experiences that you get are very unlike anything else that I've experienced

01:00:14 ◼   ► before because there is an element of like, okay, this kind of feels like it's

01:00:17 ◼   ► really happening to me now. Um, and I'm excited to see what happens.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And I really hope that Apple develops something like the gear VR that integrates

01:00:27 ◼   ► with the iPhone, because that is a fantastic pairing.

01:00:30 ◼   ► And that gear VR headset is simple.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Really, you know, it has a speaker in it.

01:00:37 ◼   ► I think it has a little touch pad on the side.

01:00:38 ◼   ► You just plug your phone into it and you get to go.

01:00:41 ◼   ► Um, and that was developed in partnership with Oculus.

01:00:44 ◼   ► And I you know I really I really wish that Apple was the company that partnered with Oculus to make that to be honest

01:00:49 ◼   ► Because I think it's really cool

01:00:51 ◼   ► Really cool, but it seems

01:00:54 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like them does it

01:00:57 ◼   ► No

01:01:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I still want it, and I think we're gonna get it. I think next year. There will be an iPhone headset

01:01:06 ◼   ► I've heard good things about the HTC Vive -

01:01:10 ◼   ► actually? Apparently, I didn't know this so we were talking about this on the last episode of

01:01:15 ◼   ► remaster. From a journalist and developer perspective, the Vive is said to be a better,

01:01:24 ◼   ► more engaging experience than the Oculus. But HTC and Steam's problem is that Oculus is kind of the

01:01:33 ◼   ► name, it's the brand. But I really do think that PlayStation is the dark horse here, because

01:01:42 ◼   ► they have the systems in millions and millions of people's homes already. So I'm excited

01:01:47 ◼   ► to see what they do.

01:01:48 ◼   ► That's exactly it. You say Oculus is the brand, but if you ask regular people, nobody knows

01:01:51 ◼   ► Oculus.

01:01:52 ◼   ► Well, of course, yeah.

01:01:55 ◼   ► They built up some mind share in the people who are watching this space among tech people.

01:01:59 ◼   ► But yeah, Sony could, if Sony rolls in or, or, or, you know, or Xbox, Microsoft and Xbox,

01:02:07 ◼   ► or Nintendo, I mean, if a gaming platform like Sony being perhaps the best position

01:02:11 ◼   ► here rolls in and says, "VR games, here we are, PlayStation, boom." Right? Right? That's

01:02:17 ◼   ► got, carries so much more weight than Oculus. Even if Oculus has been a pioneer of this

01:02:24 ◼   ► all along. And Steam, again, carries weight with a certain audience, and that makes the

01:02:31 ◼   ► Vive intriguing, and I've heard good things about the hardware. But it's all early days,

01:02:36 ◼   ► I mean, that's the thing, this stuff is gonna, this stuff is exciting because it's gonna

01:02:40 ◼   ► finally ship in 2016, but it's all gonna be first generation, early adopter, let's figure

01:02:46 ◼   ► out what works and what doesn't kind of stuff, and it's exciting to be on that. But yeah.

01:02:51 ◼   ► If you are interested at all by this discussion, I urge you to subscribe to remaster

01:02:56 ◼   ► This week's episode. This is actually what we're gonna be focusing on PlayStation's announcement

01:03:02 ◼   ► Our co-host Shahid has actually decided he's going to go to San Francisco for the event

01:03:09 ◼   ► And to be around and to see what's going on and we're planning something pretty special actually

01:03:14 ◼   ► So go and subscribe to remaster

01:03:17 ◼   ► relay.fm/remaster and the episode that will drop in episode 6 later this week

01:03:23 ◼   ► I think is gonna be something pretty cool. So you should go and check that out

01:03:26 ◼   ► Whilst we're talking about games before we do our Ask Upgrades

01:03:30 ◼   ► Firewatch now I have played Firewatch you have played Firewatch

01:03:36 ◼   ► We both discussed it in various places

01:03:38 ◼   ► Remaster number five includes the discussion of three of us talking about Firewatch. No spoilers here, by the way

01:03:43 ◼   ► Yeah, and you've spoken about it on the incomparable

01:03:46 ◼   ► I played it on PlayStation, which means I missed out on a couple of interesting features.

01:03:52 ◼   ► I played it on a fantastic piece of gaming hardware, the 5K iMac.

01:04:00 ◼   ► The funny thing is, anybody that I know that's played this game that wasn't on the 5K iMac,

01:04:05 ◼   ► it's apparently been a bit of a dumpster fire.

01:04:08 ◼   ► I know people that have been playing on MacBook Pros and their fans are screaming.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Oh yeah, sure.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I'm surprised. The only time I have ever heard the fans on my iMac is when I was playing

01:04:20 ◼   ► a Steam game. It's the only time I've ever heard it because it's demanding. I really

01:04:27 ◼   ► loved Firewatch. I think that it is a great story and a great experience that I think

01:04:35 ◼   ► people should go for. It's kind of in the Monument Valley camp of games where you understand

01:04:40 ◼   ► you're paying for an experience that will take you about 4-5 hours to complete. I think

01:04:45 ◼   ► that that is a great type of video game. The game that I was talking about that I got today,

01:04:50 ◼   ► there's like hundreds of hours in there which I'll probably never finish but I want to experience

01:04:55 ◼   ► it because it's meant to be quite good. The games like Firewatch that I really enjoy is

01:04:59 ◼   ► I know I've got a contained thing that I can go out and do and it will be done. But what

01:05:05 ◼   ► I didn't expect from Firewatch was how much it was going to make me question my own morality.

01:05:10 ◼   ► So that is, you know, that's one of the great things about this game. And I think that it

01:05:15 ◼   ► is a little marvel that people should go and check out. And when they're done, you can

01:05:19 ◼   ► listen to remaster and the incomparable to see what we think about this.

01:05:23 ◼   ► Right.

01:05:24 ◼   ► There is actually a question I want to ask you about this game. I will do it at the very

01:05:29 ◼   ► end of the show.

01:05:31 ◼   ► Okay.

01:05:32 ◼   ► So people won't get spoiled.

01:05:34 ◼   ► a good game. I'll say again what I said on the incomparable that I wish there were more

01:05:39 ◼   ► games like this because I'm never going to be one of those people who invests, not just

01:05:46 ◼   ► like a hundred hours, but I'm never going to be one of those people who invest 20 hours

01:05:49 ◼   ► in a game. It's never going to happen. I don't have that. My priorities in my life, even

01:05:57 ◼   ► if I like playing games, I don't like playing games to the point of spending that amount

01:06:03 ◼   ► of time on any game. It's just never going to happen. So I buy games that are fun to

01:06:07 ◼   ► play and I play them for five hours and then I, you know, stop. My son will play games

01:06:14 ◼   ► forever, but I just, I don't have that kind of time in my life. I do a lot of stuff. I

01:06:18 ◼   ► do a lot of work. I do writing, I do podcasts, I read books, I watch movies and TV shows.

01:06:23 ◼   ► I do lots of stuff in my entertainment life. So having a game that lasts three or four

01:06:30 ◼   ► hours and gives you an experience that is like a movie a little bit, but also is that

01:06:36 ◼   ► fundamentally kind of immersive video game experience because you're making decisions.

01:06:41 ◼   ► I love those kinds of games, and I wish there were more of them. It was nice to have Firewatch

01:06:45 ◼   ► because it's one of those. It's what John Syracuse calls the artsy-fartsy video games,

01:06:52 ◼   ► where it's not a big game platform, you know, $60 game. It's not the kind of game that you

01:06:59 ◼   ► you order on Amazon Prime now, right? But it's great, great story. Paying $15 and having

01:07:10 ◼   ► three or four hours of entertainment, great deal for me. So I'm glad that it exists.

01:07:15 ◼   ► It doesn't surprise me that Panic helped make this happen, because this game is kind of

01:07:19 ◼   ► perfectly targeted at the Panic software audience. Like, those two things go together really,

01:07:26 ◼   ► really nicely. Because you know, it's lots of people that like, they really like the

01:07:31 ◼   ► value of certain things, maybe don't have the time. And like something that's really

01:07:36 ◼   ► nicely designed and created with a nice thought and story behind it. Yeah, it's not it doesn't

01:07:41 ◼   ► it doesn't surprise me that this game has been quite popular with Apple bloggers. Yeah,

01:07:46 ◼   ► it fits. It fits. Yeah, sure. It's real nice. I love it though. You should go play it. All

01:07:51 ◼   ► All right, let's do some Ask Upgrade.

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01:10:29 ◼   ► Our first question this week comes from Rob. Rob would like to know, "When we're not

01:10:33 ◼   ► actually writing, how much do you use your iPad Pro in the smart keyboard case?"

01:10:38 ◼   ► My iPad Pro is always in the smart keyboard case. I use it as a stand when I'm watching

01:10:42 ◼   ► TV in bed. And I use it always, these two things go together. I've always felt that

01:10:49 ◼   ► iPads go together with the smart cover in some way, and the smart cover that I use also

01:10:53 ◼   ► has a keyboard attached to it. And Jason, you'll be happy to know that as of a couple

01:10:57 ◼   ► of days ago, I have started putting stickers on the smart cover.

01:11:01 ◼   ► Great.

01:11:05 ◼   ► What about you?

01:11:06 ◼   ► How often do you keep it in?

01:11:07 ◼   ► It bends and stuff, those stickers aren't going to last on there.

01:11:09 ◼   ► I'm not putting them on the parts where it bends, just on the panels.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Yeah, alright, well we'll see.

01:11:15 ◼   ► I know, I'm not sure if it's going to work, but I'm doing it anyway.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Alright.

01:11:20 ◼   ► I don't like the keyboard case, and so I use the Smart Cover and I have an external

01:11:25 ◼   ► keyboard and if I want to write I will you know put it in a stand and use the

01:11:31 ◼   ► external keyboard otherwise I don't use the keyboard case at all. What don't you like?

01:11:36 ◼   ► It's bulky I think it makes a lousy cover because it's heavy and thick

01:11:41 ◼   ► and so when I have it on there every time I use my iPad I pull the keyboard

01:11:46 ◼   ► cover off and normally when I use the smart cover I leave it on because

01:11:51 ◼   ► although it adds a little bit of bulk it's fine it's a little bit it gives it

01:11:54 ◼   ► some grip ability if you're in portrait orientation.

01:11:57 ◼   ► So I don't like those things about it and at that point if I'm going to use an external

01:12:03 ◼   ► keyboard the external keyboard is going to have more key travel and another row of keys

01:12:06 ◼   ► at the top so you can do things like adjust the brightness and the volume and play and

01:12:09 ◼   ► pause your music when you're using the iPad and the keyboard case doesn't do that which

01:12:13 ◼   ► is frustrating.

01:12:14 ◼   ► So I don't see the value in having it for the way I use my iPad Pro where I can just

01:12:20 ◼   ► bring a keyboard with me and use that if I want to. And when I don't, I don't.

01:12:27 ◼   ► I agree with the bulkiness. I got used to that pretty quick. I decided I was just going

01:12:32 ◼   ► to leave it on and see if I would deal with it and it doesn't feel bulky to me anymore.

01:12:38 ◼   ► And the value of having the keyboard there always is great to me. Bearing in mind how

01:12:43 ◼   ► much I use this device, I like to use the keyboard. It's like the hybrid between a laptop

01:12:51 ◼   ► and an iPad for me. Rob had a second question, do you know of a keyboard shortcut on the

01:12:57 ◼   ► iPad Pro keyboard to bring up the iOS search screen? Yes, it's command space, so you just

01:13:00 ◼   ► hit the command key and space bar and it will take you to the spotlight screen no matter

01:13:04 ◼   ► where you are. And I just wanted to mention this because 9.3, which will be out probably

01:13:09 ◼   ► in a week or two, brings the ability to use the arrow keys and the enter key to navigate

01:13:14 ◼   ► that list, which is a fantastic addition that I love and use daily.

01:13:20 ◼   ► If you're asked, "Do you think it's a good idea to use one's iCloud password for

01:13:27 ◼   ► your Mac login password?

01:13:29 ◼   ► Is one or the other more secure?"

01:13:31 ◼   ► This is a difficult question.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I was a little bit... I don't do this because... and honestly my reason is I have

01:13:42 ◼   ► a complicated password for iCloud. Because it's on the internet and you want to have

01:13:50 ◼   ► a complicated password so that it doesn't get broken. I don't want to type that every

01:13:56 ◼   ► time I need to validate anything on my Mac, install something or anytime it wants my password.

01:14:03 ◼   ► I don't want to type the iCloud password. It's complicated. I want something simpler.

01:14:07 ◼   ► If I was in an environment where I was worried about people breaking into my Mac, maybe I

01:14:11 ◼   ► would have a different opinion about it, but I don't.

01:14:13 ◼   ► Yeah. So, um...

01:14:14 ◼   ► My Mac sits at home. I have a simple password for my Mac. And I have a very complicated

01:14:23 ◼   ► password for my iTunes password and all of my other stuff. You know, if you got onto

01:14:27 ◼   ► my Mac, the majority of damage that you could do, you would need another password for it.

01:14:33 ◼   ► So I'm kind of I feel kind of okay with that.

01:14:36 ◼   ► I don't I don't feel that having those two passwords be the same is a good idea.

01:14:42 ◼   ► If what you're looking for is security have two strong passwords.

01:14:46 ◼   ► But I don't I just feel that that is not good.

01:14:49 ◼   ► I feel like your iCloud password should only be used in one place.

01:14:53 ◼   ► iCloud.

01:14:54 ◼   ► That's it.

01:14:55 ◼   ► That's a really important password.

01:14:56 ◼   ► I think mixing those up putting them in other places using them for other things is probably

01:15:01 ◼   ► a bad idea. Yeah, I don't know if it's a big deal either

01:15:06 ◼   ► way, but I don't do that. I'm sure there's some reason why it makes sense that you can

01:15:13 ◼   ► log in anywhere. But for me, no. I totally agree with W. Brenda in the chat

01:15:21 ◼   ► room as well. I cannot wait for something, a Mac peripheral that has touch ID.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Touch ID, would that be nice? That would be lovely. My main thing is just

01:15:29 ◼   ► typing in my 1 password password. I wish I could do that because I'm used to not doing

01:15:35 ◼   ► it anywhere else where I use my touch ID on all my other devices.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Seth would like to know, when editing photos do you mostly use photos.mac, the mac app

01:15:46 ◼   ► or photos ipad? I am way behind on family photos and want advice. So what do you do

01:15:51 ◼   ► when you're editing? Where do you like to edit your photos Jason?

01:15:54 ◼   ► the Mac. I've got the giant 5K iMac, it is great for photos.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And you're using just the Photos app, do you use any kind of plugins?

01:16:02 ◼   ► Not really, I mean I use Tonality occasionally, which is a plugin that does nice,

01:16:10 ◼   ► basically black and white toned photos, but mostly I'm just using the standard stuff. I mean,

01:16:18 ◼   ► The standard editing suite in Photos has levels and it's got a lot of different adjustment

01:16:25 ◼   ► levels, adjustment layers you can do.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Most of what I would do to adjust a photo I can do inside of Photos.

01:16:31 ◼   ► So I generally do it there.

01:16:34 ◼   ► If I'm on my iPad I will often end up in Photos editing like screenshots to crop them out

01:16:40 ◼   ► and things like that, but I don't usually do any like photo processing on the iPad.

01:16:46 ◼   ► I use the Mac because it's fast and has a huge screen.

01:16:50 ◼   ► - I don't really do any photo processing at all.

01:16:53 ◼   ► I don't really take photos in that way yet.

01:16:56 ◼   ► I think for a lot of people, that type of processing occurs

01:16:59 ◼   ► when they have a family.

01:17:01 ◼   ► I think that, at least with all of my friends,

01:17:02 ◼   ► it seems that they get a lot more serious,

01:17:05 ◼   ► unless they're already photos people,

01:17:06 ◼   ► they get a lot more serious about photography

01:17:09 ◼   ► when they have children.

01:17:10 ◼   ► - Right.

01:17:11 ◼   ► - Which I think makes perfect sense.

01:17:13 ◼   ► So right now, you know, my photos are all taken on my iPhone

01:17:15 ◼   ► and I put them on Instagram.

01:17:18 ◼   ► If I do any kind of editing, I just

01:17:20 ◼   ► use Apple's built-in tools to rotate, crop,

01:17:23 ◼   ► change brightness and stuff in the Photos app.

01:17:25 ◼   ► They do like 95% of everything that I want to do with a photo.

01:17:30 ◼   ► They're very simple, good tools, and they work fine for me.

01:17:33 ◼   ► But I can see that if I was doing a lot of it,

01:17:36 ◼   ► then I might look at a different solution.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Maybe that would be something like Pixelmator,

01:17:40 ◼   ► because that is kind of crazy powerful.

01:17:43 ◼   ► that app every time I use it I'm like oh my god on iOS? I don't understand how it is as

01:17:49 ◼   ► good as it is. It is a superb application. Even I was using it today, it even has split

01:17:57 ◼   ► screen. It's like I just didn't expect that was going to be the case. I say oh Pixelmator

01:18:02 ◼   ► you are wonderful. So that is a great suggestion there for you. If you want to do something

01:18:06 ◼   ► a little bit more you can go and try out Pixelmator. You're going to have to help me in this one

01:18:11 ◼   ► Jason Gary asked is Apple talk something you need to still include on your resume

01:18:15 ◼   ► will prospective employers be impressed or just laugh I would say take it off I

01:18:20 ◼   ► don't even know my let's see if I know this I probably don't Apple talk was

01:18:26 ◼   ► like some sort of proprietary communication method between machines

01:18:29 ◼   ► it's a networking protocol there we go that's the term I was looking for but

01:18:33 ◼   ► that was what I thought it was I've seen it in like the network preferences I've

01:18:37 ◼   ► I've never used it. If you ever used it, what would you use it for?

01:18:41 ◼   ► Well you use it if you live in the 1990s for networking and printing, but not so much anymore.

01:18:52 ◼   ► It's faded away now that we have...

01:18:54 ◼   ► Bonjour.

01:18:55 ◼   ► Bonjour and just Ethernet in general and everybody's on an internet network. You don't need it

01:19:06 ◼   ► anymore.

01:19:07 ◼   ► proprietary Wi-Fi networks and stuff, like, I'm right, like, you can connect to printers

01:19:11 ◼   ► via Wi-Fi now, right? They just…

01:19:13 ◼   ► >> Well, yeah. Yeah, well, it's… Apple Talk was not… it's not right to think

01:19:19 ◼   ► of it as… these were the protocols, so they would go over others, so you could do Apple

01:19:24 ◼   ► Talk over Ethernet, and Apple Talk… so it… and it let you find other devices, so that's

01:19:32 ◼   ► why Bonjour sort of replaced that. So you get a Bonjour and you get everybody on an

01:19:39 ◼   ► IP network and you don't need it. It was there from the very beginning. Anyway, it was a

01:19:44 ◼   ► great thing to have. Apple was at the forefront of having networking baked into every computer.

01:19:50 ◼   ► I set up many local talk networks which actually use telephone cables as the networking cable.

01:19:57 ◼   ► of we have Ethernet now which is like way more wires in it than you know the little

01:20:03 ◼   ► flimsy cable that you'd have a landline connected with but back in the day we actually networked

01:20:09 ◼   ► with those little flimsy telephone landline connectors and used Apple Talk to transfer

01:20:16 ◼   ► files and all of those things but those days are those days are long past so yeah I would

01:20:21 ◼   ► take it off the resume for sure.

01:20:23 ◼   ► Alright, spoiler horn time.

01:20:25 ◼   ► [

01:20:34 ◼   ► really address this on the incomparable and I was hoping that you would. We spoke about this on

01:20:39 ◼   ► remaster and it was quite interesting. It's finding out how people, the path that they took

01:20:46 ◼   ► towards the end of the game and what they did with Delilah. So what was really interesting for me was

01:20:52 ◼   ► me and Federico, we both progressed our romantic relationship with Delilah and then at the end of

01:20:58 ◼   ► the game we both asked her to move to Boulder with us. What did you do? How would you define

01:21:09 ◼   ► progressed your romantic relationship with Delilah? There is a... okay so I don't know

01:21:15 ◼   ► if everybody's seen this part but there is one moment where the conversation gets quite

01:21:22 ◼   ► sexual and you can kind of invite that conversation to occur.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Yeah I didn't do that. Okay did you even come across that? No I have no recollection

01:21:34 ◼   ► of that at all. So you know when you're looking at the fire you're standing in

01:21:40 ◼   ► your tower and there's that big fire there's a conversation that occurs which

01:21:44 ◼   ► begins of like I wouldn't you know it kind of seems to go along the lines of

01:21:47 ◼   ► it would be nice if we could spend this time together and and it gets towards

01:21:52 ◼   ► the role of looking like it's going to a certain place and then it fades to black

01:21:57 ◼   ► so you can infer what occurred afterwards and and then your relationship with

01:22:04 ◼   ► Delilah after going through this is very intimate feeling they feel very familiar

01:22:10 ◼   ► with each other after this point and you can and then the you know both me and

01:22:16 ◼   ► Federico went down this path. Which is funny, Shahid didn't and he's married. Me and Federico

01:22:25 ◼   ► both have very committed relationships, but it was just funny to me that we both did this

01:22:29 ◼   ► and I was interested to see how people went, not even necessarily going through that, but

01:22:34 ◼   ► what they did at the end. So what did you do at the end with Delilah?

01:22:38 ◼   ► So I feel like that scene that you're talking about, if I remember it right, I mean you

01:22:49 ◼   ► definitely sense a closeness between the two of them. Maybe I didn't take the same path

01:22:55 ◼   ► that you did, although it's definitely the case that after that fade out their relationship

01:23:01 ◼   ► is tighter, but I felt like they were getting closer all the time. I felt like that was

01:23:05 ◼   ► part of the kind of adventure that they had together was him opening up to her and talking

01:23:09 ◼   ► about the problems that were happening in his life. And so I read that into the relationship

01:23:14 ◼   ► all along and quite honestly I got to the end and I thought I wanted to give this guy

01:23:19 ◼   ► a shot at happiness. And so I absolutely asked Delilah to come to Boulder. Absolutely.

01:23:26 ◼   ► Absolutely. Okay, so you were doing it as like a disc,

01:23:29 ◼   ► yeah, and I felt the same. As playing the game, like, you know, I got lost in the world,

01:23:37 ◼   ► and which is, you know, exactly what you would want, right, from a game like this, and my

01:23:43 ◼   ► kind of feeling was, if I am this guy, I felt connected to Delilah.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Yeah, which the game wants you to feel.

01:23:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and so my feeling was they should be together.

01:24:01 ◼   ► The situation that he was in was not ideal.

01:24:06 ◼   ► There was no right or wrong, which is one of the great things about this game, is there

01:24:09 ◼   ► is no right or wrong.

01:24:10 ◼   ► It's all grey.

01:24:12 ◼   ► The decisions that you make and the paths that you take is all grey.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And I really think that whatever you choose, whatever decision you choose at the end of

01:24:22 ◼   ► the game is not the right one. Well, I think that's true, although I found

01:24:26 ◼   ► honestly at the end of the game, I found myself, and listening to other people's take on the

01:24:30 ◼   ► game afterward, I feel like my read of the game was just at odds with how the game viewed

01:24:36 ◼   ► itself. Because I heard you guys talk about it, and this feeling that, and you get the

01:24:42 ◼   ► sense of like, this is about somebody who's running away, and that he needs to go back,

01:24:48 ◼   ► And there's several points where there's sort of like this, I think the game makes you say,

01:24:54 ◼   ► am I running away from my responsibilities? Do I have a responsibility to my wife who

01:25:01 ◼   ► doesn't remember me and is going to die? And she's got family and she's going to go back

01:25:09 ◼   ► to Australia and they're going to take care of her and all those things, right? And my

01:25:13 ◼   ► thought was, I think this person has a responsibility to find a way to make a new life because his

01:25:19 ◼   ► life that he had is over and shattered. And so for the people who are judging like, he's

01:25:25 ◼   ► running away and he needs to just be by his wife's side who can't remember him and all

01:25:29 ◼   ► that, it's like, she's gone, man. I mean, not to be cold about it, but she's gone. She's

01:25:34 ◼   ► gone. He can feel bad about it, but him being present for her to not remember him and go

01:25:40 ◼   ► to the home and sit there, that's him not moving on. So for me, I felt like everything

01:25:45 ◼   ► I wanted this guy to do, I didn't read it as him running away, I read it as him trying

01:25:49 ◼   ► to find a way to a new life from his old life that had been destroyed. And so for me, I

01:25:55 ◼   ► just, I can't read it the other way. I can only read it as, so maybe nothing happens

01:26:02 ◼   ► with Delilah, or maybe it's something that, I just wanted to give him a chance, right?

01:26:07 ◼   ► him a chance at this person he's connected with because his life is in a shambles and

01:26:12 ◼   ► his wife is gone and give him a shot at it. So that is entirely how I interpreted it.

01:26:19 ◼   ► And I viewed her sort of, maybe I'll stop by on my way through sometime as a glimmer

01:26:28 ◼   ► of hope and not a shutdown of like, you know, that's a little, you know, let's get outside

01:26:35 ◼   ► of the the the summer and the drama here um and see if there maybe there's something there

01:26:40 ◼   ► and maybe there's not but that was definitely how I read it as as uh and not as any sort

01:26:45 ◼   ► of rebuke that he was uh he needed to go back and and fulfill his his responsibilities to

01:26:50 ◼   ► sit by the bedside of the of the person who's dying and doesn't remember him and that's

01:26:56 ◼   ► that's how I read it yeah I I agree with many of those points like I felt the same as like

01:27:02 ◼   ► His relationship with his wife is kind of over. Her family doesn't want him there.

01:27:07 ◼   ► I got that feeling. They don't even want him there. They didn't trust him.

01:27:11 ◼   ► And she can't literally remember him. It's reached the point where he is no good to her

01:27:16 ◼   ► anymore. He has no help anymore. He can feel guilty about it, but it doesn't change the

01:27:21 ◼   ► fact that he's no help anymore, and his life with her is over, and he needs to make a new

01:27:27 ◼   ► life.

01:27:28 ◼   ► feeling was Delilah wasn't necessarily saying no to him, she was saying no for now. I think

01:27:34 ◼   ► she was, my feeling was she was trying to assess the summer loving aspect of it all.

01:27:39 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely. I think, absolutely. I was always nice to her though. I was not mean

01:27:44 ◼   ► to her. I was always non-judgmental of her as Henry. I was always like, you know, there's

01:27:48 ◼   ► nothing you could have done. I feel really bad. You know, he was, I tried to keep him

01:27:55 ◼   ► nice to her so that worked.

01:27:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I haven't played a video game in a long time that when I played it I just felt devastated.

01:28:03 ◼   ► And part of it because was the idea of the rejection that you get at the end of the game.

01:28:09 ◼   ► Like me as Henry, like we put ourselves out there and it was kind of like, it was unexpected

01:28:18 ◼   ► to me.

01:28:19 ◼   ► I thought that it was going to be, I thought that we were going to see Delilah.

01:28:23 ◼   ► I thought that we were going there and she would be there.

01:28:25 ◼   ► Yeah, John Siracusa, of course, on The Uncomparable was like, "No, you'll never see her! It's

01:28:30 ◼   ► another character! It's too expensive!" And he's right. He's right. Somebody said, it

01:28:35 ◼   ► might have been on your podcast, that they went to the tram to try and go see her, and

01:28:41 ◼   ► it was turned off or out of service or something, and I had thought about doing that too. About

01:28:46 ◼   ► like, "Why don't I just walk over there?" Yeah, it's an emergency only that you can

01:28:51 ◼   ► use it for. The game conspires against you at that point, it doesn't want you to take

01:28:55 ◼   ► that path. But great acting too, I wanted to say both the voice actors did such a great

01:29:00 ◼   ► job. That's why, I mean that was the key of the game. That's the whole game is, it's basically,

01:29:05 ◼   ► right, I mean it's like an audiobook. It's a dialogue and then you've also got this kind

01:29:11 ◼   ► of walk through the woods, it's the forest simulator. Yeah, really good game, I mean

01:29:15 ◼   ► the fact that we can talk about it like this, that's not only does that show I think why

01:29:20 ◼   ► it's worth playing but I think the something video games can do that a movie can't do is

01:29:26 ◼   ► leave you with this ambiguity of your own actions and how they affect the game because

01:29:32 ◼   ► a movie you know you are completely just watching what the what the filmmaker is having you

01:29:36 ◼   ► do but here you're given choices and you get to everybody's experience gets to be at least

01:29:41 ◼   ► a little bit different.

01:29:43 ◼   ► There's a weird pairing recommendation but I want to recommend a new Netflix show called

01:29:48 ◼   ► Flaked.

01:29:49 ◼   ► It is Will Arnett and it's fantastic.

01:29:55 ◼   ► It's very hipster, it's very music focused and it's very dark.

01:29:59 ◼   ► It's kind of another thing where nobody's good.

01:30:02 ◼   ► It's very real.

01:30:03 ◼   ► I liked it a lot.

01:30:04 ◼   ► We watched it over the weekend, binged the whole thing.

01:30:06 ◼   ► It's like eight episodes.

01:30:07 ◼   ► Really good, recommend it.

01:30:09 ◼   ► For me, just there's something about these two things that go together in a way in my

01:30:13 ◼   ► mind that I don't know if they do for everybody else, but I really, really liked it.

01:30:18 ◼   ► So I think people should check it out.

01:30:20 ◼   ► Good job.

01:30:21 ◼   ► Did you even, I didn't even know it existed until I saw it when I was watching House of

01:30:24 ◼   ► Cards.

01:30:25 ◼   ► The co-host of another podcast that I host did not like it.

01:30:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:31 ◼   ► I feel like this is a show that is really aimed at me. Kind of from a tone perspective.

01:30:40 ◼   ► Me and Adina loved it. I don't know who that person was that didn't like it. I don't know

01:30:46 ◼   ► if this is an age style kind of background thing as to why you might dislike or like

01:30:51 ◼   ► this show. But I feel like you have to be a certain type of person to really enjoy it.

01:30:57 ◼   ► Have you seen Catastrophe?

01:30:58 ◼   ► No I don't even know what that is. Is that a movie?

01:31:01 ◼   ► Oh, it's an Amazon Prime TV show.

01:31:03 ◼   ► Okay.

01:31:05 ◼   ► You should check it out.

01:31:06 ◼   ► Okay. You think I'd like it based on that?

01:31:09 ◼   ► Uh... yes.

01:31:12 ◼   ► It's based on that,

01:31:15 ◼   ► based on the fact that it is...

01:31:20 ◼   ► I guess it was on Channel 4 too, but here in the US it's on Amazon Prime.

01:31:25 ◼   ► It's an Amazon Prime original in the US.

01:31:28 ◼   ► And it's a US UK thing, which I thought you might enjoy. Okay. I'll have to look down. Um

01:31:33 ◼   ► Did was he you that said you enjoyed Nick and Laura's infinite playlist? No, it was not me

01:31:40 ◼   ► Okay, somebody that I knew recently like that movie if you like that movie you will like flaked

01:31:44 ◼   ► Okay, there you go that that's that's my recommendation I don't have anywhere else to recommend it I enjoyed it

01:31:53 ◼   ► I think that was that was Myke and Jason go to the video games. Yeah

01:31:57 ◼   ► Yeah, we've been we'd been threatening to do that, but we figured we were gonna run out of time

01:32:01 ◼   ► So we just put it into this show

01:32:03 ◼   ► Thank you for the final show notes for this week. I don't know if it a relay dot FM slash upgrade slash 80

01:32:09 ◼   ► Thanks again to our lovely sponsors IT pro TV back blaze and mail route

01:32:13 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason online head on over to six colors calm and he is at Jason L. J s ne double L on Twitter

01:32:19 ◼   ► I'm at I Myke I am y ke and we'll be back next week with coverage of the March 21st Apple event

01:32:27 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye Mr. Snow.

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