Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► (Music)

00:00:15 ◼   ► From your friends at Relay FM, this is Upgrade Episode 75.

00:00:19 ◼   ► This week's show is brought to you by Casper, Fresh Brooks, and Mail Route.

00:00:23 ◼   ► My name is Steven Hackett and I'm joined by the man perched high above San Francisco,

00:00:28 ◼   ► Mr. Jason Snow.

00:00:29 ◼   ► That's not how my geography works.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Hi, you're not Myke Hurley.

00:00:33 ◼   ► What happened, Stephen Hackett?

00:00:34 ◼   ► You're my co-host for the Liftoff podcast.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Are we talking about space today,

00:00:37 ◼   ► or are we talking about computers and stuff?

00:00:39 ◼   ► - I think we're talking about computers and stuff.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Myke Hurley is at home sick in bed.

00:00:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's it.

00:00:46 ◼   ► I think he's feeling a little bit better,

00:00:47 ◼   ► but the problem is he sent me an email the other day.

00:00:50 ◼   ► The problem is that he is a professional podcasters,

00:00:52 ◼   ► and he needs to use his voice for that.

00:00:54 ◼   ► And we talked about this on a past show,

00:00:56 ◼   ► this idea that you almost,

00:00:57 ◼   ► when you go to conferences and things,

00:00:59 ◼   ► You almost need to protect your voice like you are a singer or something because you

00:01:02 ◼   ► are a person who uses your voice to make a living. So although Myke is feeling better,

00:01:07 ◼   ► his voice is not great. He did a recording session over the weekend. I mean, his voice

00:01:11 ◼   ► isn't that great to begin with, let's just be honest here. Hi, Myke! But over the

00:01:18 ◼   ► weekend he did a cortex with Gray and he said by the end of it his voice was really rough

00:01:22 ◼   ► and he was not going to—he knew that it would be a problem for today. So we broke

00:01:28 ◼   ► broke the glass on the emergency backup post, and thank you for being here.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - I appreciate you finally letting me out of that little glass container you guys have

00:01:36 ◼   ► kept me in for a year and a half.

00:01:37 ◼   ► - It's oxygenated, what is your problem? You can't breathe, it's fine. You and Scott Baio

00:01:43 ◼   ► are in, that was a Super Bowl ad callback. Anyway, did you watch the Super Bowl?

00:01:49 ◼   ► - No.

00:01:50 ◼   ► - All right, good talk. Good talk, I'm glad we, I did, on Twitter, it's fascinating during

00:01:55 ◼   ► the sports stuff, how people in our community, our kind of nerdy computer community, they're

00:02:01 ◼   ► the people who are sports fans and the people who are not. And I definitely hear from a

00:02:03 ◼   ► lot of the ones who are not who say they are surprised because in their world, the people

00:02:10 ◼   ► were either sports fans or they were like nerds, but they were not both. And the fact

00:02:16 ◼   ► is lots of people, I'm all over the map. I'm a mess. I like sports and I like computers

00:02:23 ◼   ► I like movies and TV shows. I like lots of things, is what I'm saying. So don't try to

00:02:28 ◼   ► pin me down. But this is not a sports podcast, so we will not talk about the superb owl.

00:02:34 ◼   ► Other than to say that Myke, sick in bed though he was, was apparently up in the middle of

00:02:39 ◼   ► the night in England watching the Super Bowl, because he likes to do that, because I think

00:02:42 ◼   ► he likes the spectacle of it.

00:02:44 ◼   ► I think he does too. And there is a lot of spectacle. I did see something this morning,

00:02:48 ◼   ► a recap of the halftime show and it seems completely crazy, but I was at home, home

00:02:53 ◼   ► working, not watching football.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:56 ◼   ► You were helping put together the document for today and then I went in.

00:03:00 ◼   ► It's funny, you know, traditionally, I don't know about other people, but traditionally

00:03:05 ◼   ► one eats dinner and perhaps if you like this sort of thing, has an adult beverage late

00:03:11 ◼   ► in the evening and that's the time when you stop, you know, you stop your working and

00:03:14 ◼   ► and you move on to relaxation and entertainment and other parts of your life. And yesterday

00:03:19 ◼   ► was super weird because being on the West Coast especially, the Super Bowl starts at

00:03:23 ◼   ► like three in the afternoon. And we had people over, we had Phil Michaels and Lisa Schmeiser

00:03:27 ◼   ► came over with their daughter and we took a little hike in the neighborhood and we're

00:03:33 ◼   ► briefly high above San Francisco. And we came back and I cooked a lot of stuff, I made a

00:03:40 ◼   ► lot of food. And it was weird. So we had a lot of food, and I had some beer, and it was

00:03:46 ◼   ► all sort of in the mid-afternoon, which is not traditional. And then when it was all

00:03:50 ◼   ► said and done, and they left, and my wife's family called, and she was talking to them

00:03:55 ◼   ► on the phone, and I came out here, and I sat down, and I worked for about an hour, and

00:03:59 ◼   ► I worked on what we're going to talk about today and some other stuff. And it was just

00:04:03 ◼   ► really funny that that's not usually how it works, that you have lots of food and drink

00:04:07 ◼   ► beer and all that. And then many hours later, you sit down and work for a while. But working

00:04:12 ◼   ► at home, I guess that's how it works.

00:04:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's hard to set those boundaries sometimes. But that's enough about us. Let's

00:04:20 ◼   ► talk about in the vein of sports.

00:04:22 ◼   ► - More and more about us. Oh, that's enough.

00:04:24 ◼   ► - Let's talk about the brain ball all-stars.

00:04:27 ◼   ► - Okay. Yeah. So people have been asking for a long time, including you, about doing upgrade

00:04:35 ◼   ► merchandise because people have been listening to the show for more than a year and we have

00:04:40 ◼   ► no upgrade merchandise, and now we do. So we are working, this is I think a new one

00:04:45 ◼   ► for Relay, we're working, although Incomparable has done this for a while, with Cotton Bureau,

00:04:50 ◼   ► and we have two products available for people if they would like to buy them. I don't want

00:04:54 ◼   ► to turn this into an ad read, but it is a little bit, because we want you to know that

00:04:57 ◼   ► they exist, and they're only going to be on sale until February 19th, so you need to get

00:05:03 ◼   ► your order in if you want one of these. And the first one is the Brain Ball t-shirt. So

00:05:10 ◼   ► our relay designer Frank did an amazing job at designing this shirt. It is the sports

00:05:17 ◼   ► t-shirt, except it is for the sport of Brain Ball. It features an orange brain on it, very

00:05:22 ◼   ► similar to the one that I have, I'm looking at right now on my desk. And it's labeled

00:05:28 ◼   ► the Upgrade All Stars Brain Ball Established 2014. And you can get that in a navy t-shirt

00:05:35 ◼   ► in a couple of different styles, or you can get it in a raglan, which is that sort of,

00:05:40 ◼   ► if you think of it as a sort of a softball shirt, it's got, it's two-toned, the sleeves

00:05:45 ◼   ► are a different color, and they're long sleeves or three-quarter sleeves. So it's pretty cool.

00:05:52 ◼   ► I was really happy with it. We were thinking for a long time of what we wanted to do, because

00:05:56 ◼   ► We did want to just do like an upgrade logo t-shirt.

00:05:58 ◼   ► And the brain ball is a lot of-- it's a fun t-shirt.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I'm really looking forward to getting mine.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I am ordering mine right now.

00:06:06 ◼   ► OK.

00:06:06 ◼   ► All right.

00:06:08 ◼   ► Did you not know about it before?

00:06:09 ◼   ► No, I did.

00:06:10 ◼   ► I just haven't done it.

00:06:10 ◼   ► My sales pitch really won you over.

00:06:12 ◼   ► Yeah, you talked me into it.

00:06:13 ◼   ► So the other thing--

00:06:14 ◼   ► one of the other concepts we had when

00:06:15 ◼   ► Myke and I were talking about this

00:06:17 ◼   ► is this idea of upgrade your wardrobe.

00:06:19 ◼   ► We wanted to do something special.

00:06:21 ◼   ► We wanted to do something that we

00:06:22 ◼   ► hadn't done for any of the Relay podcast before,

00:06:24 ◼   ► and I haven't done for Incomparable before.

00:06:25 ◼   ► And so we decided we were going to do it, and it's expensive,

00:06:28 ◼   ► but we wanted to do it because we thought

00:06:30 ◼   ► it would be a lot of fun.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And it's a hoodie.

00:06:32 ◼   ► It's the Upgrade Your Wardrobe Hoodie,

00:06:34 ◼   ► and that link will also be in the show notes.

00:06:37 ◼   ► It is an independent trading company zip-up hoodie.

00:06:41 ◼   ► This is actually--

00:06:43 ◼   ► I actually went to the Cotton Bureau guys

00:06:44 ◼   ► and said, can you get this hoodie?

00:06:45 ◼   ► Because this is actually my favorite hoodie.

00:06:47 ◼   ► This is going to be your endorsement portion.

00:06:49 ◼   ► This is the hoodie I wear.

00:06:50 ◼   ► I have the light and heavy versions.

00:06:52 ◼   ► This is the heavier version of it.

00:06:54 ◼   ► It's a really great zip hoodie.

00:06:56 ◼   ► It's got an embroidered upgrade logo, which is pretty awesome on the front.

00:07:04 ◼   ► It's an embroidered patch with the upgrade logo.

00:07:07 ◼   ► So you will look like either a really in-the-know podcast listener or possibly a Star Trek character

00:07:14 ◼   ► as you wear it.

00:07:15 ◼   ► It's beautiful.

00:07:16 ◼   ► I love it.

00:07:18 ◼   ► And there is a secret design feature of this hoodie that we cannot reveal, but those who

00:07:25 ◼   ► have the hoodie will be inculcated into a secret society of upgradians who have the

00:07:33 ◼   ► Upgrade Your Wardrobe hoodie.

00:07:35 ◼   ► And that is also courtesy of something that Frank did, that the Cotton Bureau people worked

00:07:40 ◼   ► on us, worked with us on it, and it's awesome.

00:07:43 ◼   ► So...

00:07:44 ◼   ► It is really cool.

00:07:46 ◼   ► So that's all we're going to say about it.

00:07:48 ◼   ► And we know that it's pricey and that shipping internationally is pricey too and we're sorry

00:07:52 ◼   ► about that.

00:07:53 ◼   ► This is what we were capable of doing for this round.

00:07:56 ◼   ► So if you would like some upgrade gear, please check it out.

00:08:00 ◼   ► And you've got until February the 19th.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Very cool.

00:08:05 ◼   ► So a little more traditional follow up now.

00:08:09 ◼   ► Over the weekend, it looks like Apple opened a repair extension program for the late 2013

00:08:16 ◼   ► Mac Pro.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Upgrade listeners will be well aware that Myke owned one of these, and if you ever listened

00:08:22 ◼   ► live, there were times where his computer would just stop working, and then Jason would

00:08:27 ◼   ► be talking into the--

00:08:29 ◼   ► - I would monologue for a while.

00:08:31 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:08:32 ◼   ► - Answer questions from the chat room while Myke rebooted, yeah.

00:08:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, so, and we had always sort of thought

00:08:37 ◼   ► that that was a GPU issue, and it looks like

00:08:40 ◼   ► according to this repair program that it is.

00:08:42 ◼   ► And so they are, there's a whole list of things here.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Basically your computer of course has to fall

00:08:47 ◼   ► into the manufacturer date, they usually do

00:08:50 ◼   ► a serial number check, and you have to be experiencing

00:08:53 ◼   ► some symptoms, so some of the ones listed are

00:08:54 ◼   ► distorted video, no video, freezing, restarts,

00:08:58 ◼   ► preventing the system from starting up.

00:09:01 ◼   ► lots of very power-related type issues,

00:09:04 ◼   ► and it seems like Apple is going to take care of these.

00:09:08 ◼   ► What's cool about this, people might not know this

00:09:10 ◼   ► about the repair extension program,

00:09:12 ◼   ► is that say that you don't buy

00:09:14 ◼   ► the warranty with the machine,

00:09:18 ◼   ► so you don't buy the AppleCare,

00:09:20 ◼   ► Apple will act as if you have for these specific issues.

00:09:24 ◼   ► So say that you have, or you're experiencing this,

00:09:27 ◼   ► and your computer is out of warranty,

00:09:28 ◼   ► well, they're not going to come replace

00:09:31 ◼   ► SSD if an SSD fails, but if you have this failure and you fall within these

00:09:34 ◼   ► parameters, the Apple Store, the Genius Bar, AppleCare on the phone

00:09:39 ◼   ► will take care of it, which is pretty cool.

00:09:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I think given that this has been a problem, obviously,

00:09:47 ◼   ► since manufacturing for some of these models, that is the thing they

00:09:50 ◼   ► have to do. They would get sued. I suspect they might anyway. I mean, they're

00:09:55 ◼   ► always getting sued. But yeah, it's good. So if you've got a trash can,

00:10:00 ◼   ► Trashcan Mac Pro, you should check it out because even if you are not noticing many

00:10:06 ◼   ► problems I think it's worth seeing if you are eligible for this because this is a problem

00:10:12 ◼   ► that will affect the, these things should last a long time and they cost a lot of money

00:10:17 ◼   ► and this is a physical problem, this is a hardware problem that Apple has taken responsibility

00:10:23 ◼   ► for. So I believe Myke's, the owner, the new owner of Myke's Mac Pro will also probably

00:10:30 ◼   ► take advantage of this program. But Myke sold it, he sold the Mac Pro, so he doesn't, he's

00:10:34 ◼   ► got a 5K iMac now instead, so he doesn't have to worry about it.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Yeah, so if you have thrown your Mac Pro in the trash can, go get it out, dust it off,

00:10:42 ◼   ► and that might be a tight fit. I got a big trash can here, couple Mac Pros in there.

00:10:50 ◼   ► the 5SE is in the news again. This uh... That's the rumored uh...

00:10:55 ◼   ► new small uh... replacement for the 5S

00:10:59 ◼   ► uh... with uh... more iPhone 6 technology in it.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And this is... it's funny 'cause Myke and I talked about

00:11:06 ◼   ► colored iPhones and colored Apple products

00:11:10 ◼   ► uh... I think last week.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And then there's this rumor... I hope we didn't start this rumor.

00:11:17 ◼   ► But it's a rumor from Mac, a story from MacRumors that is referencing a Japanese website,

00:11:25 ◼   ► so it's one of those rumor stories, but still, that there are other colors for the

00:11:30 ◼   ► iPhone 5SE, including a pink shade that they say is different than the rose gold of it.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And who knows whether this is real or not, and whether it's just one color, but I love

00:11:45 ◼   ► the idea in general of Apple, as we said last week, you know, you were looking at, you've

00:11:50 ◼   ► got all the old hardware, you look at those iPod Nanos, and I guess you get them mostly

00:11:55 ◼   ► in the blue, but still, they're all, it's like a blue iPod Nano, and every time I looked

00:11:59 ◼   ► in my drawer of like old iPods that I had at Macworld, I was, you know, here's a pink

00:12:04 ◼   ► one and here's a red one, and here's a blue one, and here's an orange one, and that gave

00:12:09 ◼   ► them all personality, and when I look at my drawer of iPhones and things, you know, it's,

00:12:14 ◼   ► "Oh, that one's silver, that one's darker, metallic."

00:12:17 ◼   ► You know, it's just kind of boring.

00:12:19 ◼   ► So I think it would be great if they put colors

00:12:21 ◼   ► not just on the 5SE, but everywhere.

00:12:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Nano, I mean, you guys touched on it,

00:12:27 ◼   ► it really is like the example, right?

00:12:30 ◼   ► Even though for the ones from my video,

00:12:31 ◼   ► I bought all blue ones, even the shades differ over time.

00:12:35 ◼   ► Apple really, you know, they were playful

00:12:39 ◼   ► is the adjective that comes to mind with the iPod Nano,

00:12:42 ◼   ► And I think it'd be fun to have that in the iPhone as well.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And maybe this 5SE, I would only imagine,

00:12:48 ◼   ► would be lower volume than the other ones.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And so maybe it's a way to start doing that

00:12:52 ◼   ► without committing to a product like the iPhone 6S,

00:12:56 ◼   ► which they've just sold.

00:12:57 ◼   ► - Well, we know that the 5C came in colors.

00:13:01 ◼   ► And although that didn't do as well

00:13:03 ◼   ► as I think people expected it to,

00:13:05 ◼   ► which, in hindsight, is that surprising?

00:13:08 ◼   ► I think that was Apple's lesson in

00:13:11 ◼   ► don't just make, you know, they changed the shell,

00:13:14 ◼   ► but in the, and called it a different name,

00:13:17 ◼   ► but inside it was still the old phone.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And, you know, it felt like an aberration for them

00:13:22 ◼   ► from their usual thing, which is just,

00:13:24 ◼   ► look, it's the old phone. (laughs)

00:13:26 ◼   ► That seems like a simpler conversation to have with people.

00:13:29 ◼   ► So the 5C, you know, but the 5C did that.

00:13:32 ◼   ► It had colors and the colorful back and all that,

00:13:34 ◼   ► but, you know, I don't know.

00:13:36 ◼   ► I just, I think it's, I think the iPod showed us.

00:13:38 ◼   ► It was a lot of fun having those colorful things,

00:13:40 ◼   ► you got to make a choice and for whatever reason choosing between red and

00:13:44 ◼   ► blue and and orange and green is more exciting than choosing between these

00:13:51 ◼   ► various shades of gray perhaps with a a gold tint right yeah it's less exciting

00:13:58 ◼   ► I don't know yeah I agree we heard from listener Luca about this shutting off a

00:14:05 ◼   ► Mac from an iOS device question yeah yeah so we have a question on ask

00:14:10 ◼   ► upgrade about turning off, I think it was turning off Plex on a Mac from an iOS device,

00:14:16 ◼   ► and we got three pieces of feedback. So Luca wrote in and said, "Alfred Remote will do

00:14:22 ◼   ► that," which is an iOS app that talks to the Alfred app that runs on the Mac that is

00:14:27 ◼   ► an automation app. And so you can run Alfred Remote on that computer and turn off the Mac.

00:14:33 ◼   ► I'm not sure, you might be able to set up a script that turns off Plex and trigger it

00:14:38 ◼   ► via Alfred remote. And also it's just an interesting idea that you know if you

00:14:42 ◼   ► use Alfred you may not even be aware that there's the iOS app that will

00:14:46 ◼   ► trigger stuff from your iOS device. But I also heard from listener Simon

00:14:50 ◼   ► who had a very nerdy way of doing this that I thought was cool which was you

00:14:55 ◼   ► have an Apple script that says you know tell application plex to quit. You put

00:15:01 ◼   ► that on the Mac and then you use workflow the iOS app and you create a

00:15:06 ◼   ► workflow that SSHs into your computer and runs the script using the OSA script command.

00:15:17 ◼   ► And then you do the same thing with a different script to launch Plex.

00:15:20 ◼   ► I thought that was really clever and I think that would totally work.

00:15:25 ◼   ► And then listener David wrote in and said you can also use, similar to the Alfred recommendation,

00:15:33 ◼   ► can also use Keyboard Maestro Control, which is an app that lets you control Keyboard Maestro,

00:15:39 ◼   ► another utility, to call a quitplex macro that you create in Keyboard Maestro. So it

00:15:46 ◼   ► sounds like those are all ways, whether you want to build it yourself or whether you want

00:15:49 ◼   ► to use a third-party utility and an app of turning off a Mac or quitting a specific app

00:15:57 ◼   ► that's running on the Mac. So lots of options if you want to do that. So thank you to Luca

00:16:01 ◼   ► and Simon and David because they all piled on with various ways you could do it. Or you

00:16:07 ◼   ► could just use remote desktop using screens or iTeleport or something like that, which

00:16:13 ◼   ► is what I usually do, but it's more fiddly for sure.

00:16:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I've used the Alfred remote and it really is pretty handy. I have a Mac Mini hooked

00:16:25 ◼   ► up to our television. Sometimes, if I just need to do something quick to that, instead

00:16:28 ◼   ► instead of, you know, as good as screens is,

00:16:31 ◼   ► especially on the iPad Pro, sometimes it's quicker

00:16:33 ◼   ► just to tell it to do something as opposed to going

00:16:35 ◼   ► and doing it yourself, and I think that's where these

00:16:38 ◼   ► scripts and remote firing come in handy when you don't

00:16:41 ◼   ► have access to the GUI or don't want to tap around

00:16:44 ◼   ► your phone on a, you know, a visualization

00:16:47 ◼   ► of your Mac screen, so, lots of good solutions here,

00:16:51 ◼   ► I think, for people.

00:16:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:16:53 ◼   ► I think that's all the follow-up we have.

00:16:55 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:16:56 ◼   ► Do you want to tell us about our first sponsor this week?

00:16:58 ◼   ► - Sure, absolutely.

00:16:59 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade brought to you by Casper.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Casper is an online retailer of premium mattresses

00:17:04 ◼   ► you can get for a fraction of the price

00:17:05 ◼   ► that you would find in a store.

00:17:07 ◼   ► Now, if you've shopped for a mattress before,

00:17:09 ◼   ► you have been frustrated.

00:17:10 ◼   ► I know I have.

00:17:11 ◼   ► The last couple of mattresses we bought in a showroom

00:17:14 ◼   ► with a salesperson hovering usually,

00:17:17 ◼   ► and you lay down for a minute,

00:17:18 ◼   ► and you try to imagine that that minute was eight hours.

00:17:22 ◼   ► (both laughing)

00:17:23 ◼   ► You can't because it doesn't work like that,

00:17:26 ◼   ► and they always have sales,

00:17:27 ◼   ► which means that probably the base prices are inflated,

00:17:30 ◼   ► but then they have a sale that cuts it down.

00:17:32 ◼   ► And I don't know, I was always uncomfortable

00:17:34 ◼   ► 'cause I felt like I didn't have a lot of information

00:17:36 ◼   ► as a consumer, nor did I have a lot of power.

00:17:38 ◼   ► And I was just sort of gonna have to close my eyes

00:17:41 ◼   ► and make a purchase decision and hope for the best.

00:17:44 ◼   ► One of the nice things about the internet in general

00:17:47 ◼   ► is that a lot of these kind of uncomfortable

00:17:49 ◼   ► consumer behaviors you don't have to participate in anymore.

00:17:51 ◼   ► And I think that Casper has actually done a great job

00:17:54 ◼   ► of this because, so their mattress is clever.

00:17:56 ◼   ► made of a couple of different types of foam. There's a latex foam that gives it this really

00:18:00 ◼   ► great feel on the top, and then it's got memory foam underneath that gives it a lot of firmness.

00:18:06 ◼   ► So it's a really combination of being firm but also being comfortable that is not like

00:18:12 ◼   ► the old mattresses that I used to buy at all. And then because it's foam, they can pack

00:18:16 ◼   ► it in this little vacuum-sealed bag inside a cardboard box and they can mail it to you.

00:18:21 ◼   ► So you don't have to go in a short room, you don't have to pay hundreds of dollars for

00:18:26 ◼   ► delivery men to bring you a mattress to your door, it comes in a box and you open it up

00:18:31 ◼   ► and it expands and now you've got the mattress. And then the best part is, well the best part

00:18:36 ◼   ► is sleeping on it, but if you don't like it, you don't have that pressure of, "Well,

00:18:41 ◼   ► I just spent hundreds of dollars on a mattress that I can't take back and I don't like

00:18:46 ◼   ► it. What do I do now?" With Casper, if you don't like it, for 100 days you can send

00:18:53 ◼   ► it back. You can like it on all those days. You can dislike it for all those days. At

00:18:58 ◼   ► the point when you realize that you don't like it, you send it back. You get your money

00:19:02 ◼   ► back. Casper will take it back. So there's no risk to you in trying it. You can go on

00:19:05 ◼   ► the internet. You can order a Casper mattress. And the mattress prices are pretty great.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Mattresses often cost a lot of money. Casper's mattresses are generally better than industry

00:19:15 ◼   ► averages. $500 for a twin, $750 for a full, all the way up to $950 for a king. They're

00:19:20 ◼   ► made in America. And, you know, basically you can avoid the showroom with Casper. And

00:19:25 ◼   ► yet what I find, because I've had one for more than a year, is a very comfortable mattress

00:19:30 ◼   ► and there was no stress about it. It was so great we actually went out and bought a new

00:19:35 ◼   ► bed frame because we liked the Casper so much we wanted to kind of upgrade the furniture

00:19:40 ◼   ► to fit with the Casper. So it was actually, you know, I definitely have had a great experience

00:19:45 ◼   ► with Casper, but the best thing is if you don't, they will take it away and you get

00:19:49 ◼   ► your money back. Now, listeners of Upgrade can get $50 toward any mattress purchase.

00:19:52 ◼   ► You just go to casper.com/upgrade. Use the code "upgrade" and get $50 toward any

00:19:58 ◼   ► Casper mattress purchase. Thank you to Casper for supporting this show and all of Relay

00:20:03 ◼   ► FM. It's Casper. That's the story. It is not a ghost. It is a mattress.

00:20:09 ◼   ► It's a great mattress. Yeah. So this week, or I guess now last week, there was this big

00:20:14 ◼   ► There's a big article over on The Verge

00:20:16 ◼   ► written by Walt Mossberg.

00:20:17 ◼   ► I'm sure you've heard about it by now,

00:20:19 ◼   ► so I'm not going to really dive into the article too much,

00:20:21 ◼   ► I don't think.

00:20:22 ◼   ► But basically I think his sort of high-level argument

00:20:25 ◼   ► is that Apple's first-party apps,

00:20:28 ◼   ► so things like Mail and Safari and Calendar,

00:20:32 ◼   ► the apps that Apple builds

00:20:34 ◼   ► that sort of sit on top of the operating system,

00:20:36 ◼   ► that those have really fallen down in quality

00:20:40 ◼   ► over the last several years, several releases,

00:20:43 ◼   ► both on the Mac and iOS, and where they kind of

00:20:46 ◼   ► meet each other in the service cloud layer.

00:20:49 ◼   ► And it really, it took off, I mean,

00:20:51 ◼   ► there's a lot of response to this,

00:20:53 ◼   ► all basically people kind of gnawing their head in agreement.

00:20:56 ◼   ► And for me, I thought it was an interesting thing

00:20:59 ◼   ► to jump off from, to talk about what we use,

00:21:03 ◼   ► like what first-party apps are in our workflows,

00:21:06 ◼   ► and what do we rely on that Apple builds,

00:21:09 ◼   ► besides the OS itself?

00:21:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the distinction between

00:21:12 ◼   ► operating systems and the apps is interesting.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Sometimes it's unfair because some of the apps

00:21:17 ◼   ► really are part of the operating system process

00:21:19 ◼   ► and others are less so.

00:21:21 ◼   ► But I do think it's interesting to separate them out

00:21:24 ◼   ► and say how many of the problems that people have

00:21:26 ◼   ► with Apple are not the OS,

00:21:29 ◼   ► but are these first party apps or are services

00:21:33 ◼   ► or some combination of both.

00:21:35 ◼   ► 'Cause Apple's doing a lot of jobs here, right?

00:21:36 ◼   ► They're doing hardware and software and services,

00:21:39 ◼   ► but the software is actually the OS stuff

00:21:42 ◼   ► more fundamental and then apps that come along with, some of which are kind of tied to fundamental

00:21:47 ◼   ► parts of the operating system and others aren't. I'm not using any mail and calendar stuff

00:21:54 ◼   ► from Apple at this point, are you?

00:21:56 ◼   ► I am, actually. I use mail.app both on the Mac and on iOS, but I feel like the time is

00:22:06 ◼   ► coming to an end, and I use Gmail for my personal stuff and then I use Google Apps for work.

00:22:11 ◼   ► - Yep, me too.

00:22:12 ◼   ► - And they work fine, you know, I think it was at Mavericks

00:22:15 ◼   ► had like a lot of like really bad Gmail issues,

00:22:19 ◼   ► but it works now fine, but you lose a lot of the sort of

00:22:23 ◼   ► extra stuff that you can do on top of Gmail,

00:22:27 ◼   ► and for me, those features are becoming more important

00:22:30 ◼   ► than being able to use what's built in.

00:22:33 ◼   ► So I do use Mail, but maybe not for too much longer.

00:22:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think probably around the time

00:22:40 ◼   ► that you're talking about with Mavericks sort of having very bad Gmail problems.

00:22:45 ◼   ► I ended up using, trying a bunch of different apps, and I kept coming back to Mailplane,

00:22:51 ◼   ► which is just some pretty stuff on top of the Gmail interface and just the web interface.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And I thought that would be something that I, there's no way that I would stick with

00:23:02 ◼   ► it, and yet I've stuck with it.

00:23:03 ◼   ► And now when I go back to Mail, I think, "Yeah, you know, it's better than it was.

00:23:09 ◼   ► actually mail in El Capitan is much better than it was in some ways. Like, it's much

00:23:16 ◼   ► more efficient in checking mail than it ever used to be. But I've always had a love-hate

00:23:21 ◼   ► relationship with mail. Like, mail is, you know, it's always been inefficient and it

00:23:26 ◼   ► felt like something that was built for very, by very particular users for themselves and

00:23:32 ◼   ► that there are lots of ways people use mail outside of working at Apple that mail never

00:23:38 ◼   ► really, I mean, the inefficiency was one of the big things, it's like, it was built for

00:23:43 ◼   ► having as much data as you could possibly need, and it would just check IMAP mailboxes

00:23:48 ◼   ► in the background, and wouldn't prioritize, you'd get new mail, and you couldn't see it,

00:23:53 ◼   ► because it was downloading other things, and it basically would make you wait to see what

00:23:57 ◼   ► was in your inbox, and that's just, no mail program should ever do that, but mail did

00:24:02 ◼   ► that, and it's actually better at that now than it used to be, but I think it took Apple

00:24:08 ◼   ► employees working on airplane Wi-Fi to discover, at last, that mail was inefficient at that.

00:24:16 ◼   ► And it's got weird quirks and stuff. And you're right, if you use features of Gmail, then

00:24:20 ◼   ► it's not fantastic. And also, a lot of people have been trying to re-conceptualize mail

00:24:26 ◼   ► for a long time. And recently, we've seen a lot of scheduling your mail and prioritizing

00:24:33 ◼   ► it like a to-do list and stuff like that. And mail seems behind the curve on all of

00:24:37 ◼   ► as well.

00:24:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it does.

00:24:41 ◼   ► The thing about mail that sort of sticks with me, though,

00:24:46 ◼   ► is that it is so integrated and that with any of these

00:24:50 ◼   ► app replacements, especially on iOS, it's hard to

00:24:54 ◼   ► really integrate a third-party app into all the system stuff

00:25:00 ◼   ► the way that mail is, because mail comes with it.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And that's, for me, like, all these apps are always

00:25:08 ◼   ► going to be a little bit behind until Apple,

00:25:10 ◼   ► if Apple allows third-party apps to swap in as the default,

00:25:14 ◼   ► like they do on the Mac.

00:25:15 ◼   ► On the Mac, you can do that most of the time,

00:25:18 ◼   ► but not on iOS yet.

00:25:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's, I actually had this last night where I,

00:25:24 ◼   ► I mentioned we had Phil and Lisa over to watch

00:25:27 ◼   ► the Super Bowl, and they asked for one of the recipes

00:25:30 ◼   ► of one of the things that I made,

00:25:31 ◼   ► and I wanted to email it to them, and it was on my iPad,

00:25:34 ◼   ► had the Safari open and I thought, I had that moment of like, "Can I share this?"

00:25:42 ◼   ► And there are still times, and I was able to share that with Outlook, which I'm using

00:25:45 ◼   ► right now, and send it that way, but there are times even now where things come up where

00:25:51 ◼   ► iOS still really wants to use Apple Mail to send something out.

00:25:57 ◼   ► And it's a problem, right?

00:26:00 ◼   ► It means that you always need, I feel like,

00:26:03 ◼   ► depending on your settings, there are a lot of people,

00:26:05 ◼   ► if you use a third-party tool,

00:26:06 ◼   ► you're basically double-loading everything,

00:26:08 ◼   ► because I think that unless you've got the settings right,

00:26:10 ◼   ► you know, mail is still gonna load your mail,

00:26:13 ◼   ► if you've got mail set up,

00:26:14 ◼   ► even if you're using some other mail app.

00:26:16 ◼   ► And that's dumb and wasteful, but I think it's just,

00:26:20 ◼   ► you know, it's not a drop-in replacement

00:26:22 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:26:23 ◼   ► But I wouldn't go back to Apple Mail, I think,

00:26:25 ◼   ► at this point, because I do like some of those

00:26:27 ◼   ► extra features, even though I think Apple Mail on iOS,

00:26:30 ◼   ► I have no problem with it.

00:26:31 ◼   ► I think it's fine.

00:26:33 ◼   ► I don't think it's burdened by the history of Apple

00:26:37 ◼   ► Mail on the desktop.

00:26:40 ◼   ► Yeah, one thing I would like to see these third party

00:26:42 ◼   ► apps do better at, though, is multi-account support.

00:26:45 ◼   ► So I used to use MailPlane when I had a jobby job for my work

00:26:49 ◼   ► email.

00:26:49 ◼   ► And so everything was just in there.

00:26:51 ◼   ► I used Gmail on iOS for that account.

00:26:54 ◼   ► And so it was completely firewalled off

00:26:55 ◼   ► from personal email.

00:26:56 ◼   ► But now that firewall doesn't really exist anymore.

00:26:59 ◼   ► and I've got three accounts I need to check,

00:27:01 ◼   ► and even the Gmail app on iOS, which is pretty good,

00:27:06 ◼   ► there's a lot of hoops you have to jump through

00:27:08 ◼   ► to see a unified inbox, for instance,

00:27:09 ◼   ► which I love on the Mac.

00:27:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, unified inbox is--

00:27:12 ◼   ► - It's like the holy grail of third-party mail apps.

00:27:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, that would be a reason to not use a system

00:27:19 ◼   ► that doesn't unify your inbox, and in fact,

00:27:22 ◼   ► that's why when I was working at Macworld,

00:27:25 ◼   ► I generally did use a mail app that was not mail-plane,

00:27:28 ◼   ► because I wanted a unified inbox.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I wanted to see all my mail,

00:27:32 ◼   ► even though it was coming from different accounts

00:27:34 ◼   ► and going back out through different accounts.

00:27:35 ◼   ► I didn't want to,

00:27:37 ◼   ► I wanted a list of what mail I needed to deal with.

00:27:39 ◼   ► And then eventually, the mail problems got so bad

00:27:41 ◼   ► because of OS updates and also because of server updates

00:27:44 ◼   ► that happened at IDG that I did end up with

00:27:48 ◼   ► two separate windows for mail.

00:27:51 ◼   ► And it's another thing to check.

00:27:53 ◼   ► So, I don't know.

00:27:56 ◼   ► It's Apple Mail, it's funny, I was just telling somebody

00:28:00 ◼   ► the other day about, and I know I've said on the show

00:28:02 ◼   ► before that it's funny that we're in this position

00:28:05 ◼   ► where in some cases I really prefer the iOS counterpart

00:28:09 ◼   ► of Mac apps, and we're gonna talk about the Mac

00:28:11 ◼   ► a little bit later, but this is sort of one of those things

00:28:14 ◼   ► about technical debt, I feel like, where, you know,

00:28:18 ◼   ► Apple Mail is new on iOS, and on the Mac,

00:28:22 ◼   ► it's based on Next Mail, I think.

00:28:25 ◼   ► I mean, it's a much older app for sure.

00:28:29 ◼   ► And I feel this way about the Microsoft Office apps too.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Like Office for iOS, I feel like,

00:28:33 ◼   ► is such a fresh breath of air,

00:28:36 ◼   ► and I don't feel that way about Office on the Mac.

00:28:39 ◼   ► And it's kind of not fair, because it's an older platform,

00:28:42 ◼   ► and they've got a lot of users to support

00:28:44 ◼   ► who've been using it for a long time,

00:28:46 ◼   ► and it's a different game.

00:28:48 ◼   ► But in the end, it's a disadvantage to those Mac apps

00:28:52 ◼   ► they have to support that you know they have that history and they have to

00:28:56 ◼   ► support that user base and you know I apple has shown in the past that it is

00:29:02 ◼   ► unafraid sometimes to make a big break from the past with something like iMovie

00:29:07 ◼   ► or GarageBand and I wonder if the solution to something like mail or

00:29:12 ◼   ► iTunes which we should probably also talk about is taking that kind of bold

00:29:17 ◼   ► step with those apps and say mail is going to be really different than it's

00:29:21 ◼   ► been before or iTunes is going to be really different please please than it's

00:29:25 ◼   ► been before because over you know 10 15 20 years just junk builds up on apps and

00:29:31 ◼   ► iOS really makes it clear because the iOS stuff hasn't had that much time for

00:29:35 ◼   ► the junk to build up yet it's only still building up right what about a what

00:29:41 ◼   ► about web browsers that's a another common one I think that people swap out

00:29:46 ◼   ► so I use Safari on iOS but on the Mac I've switched to Chrome full-time and

00:29:50 ◼   ► and have for years now. What about you?

00:29:53 ◼   ► I'm Safari all the way, honestly.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I use Chrome. Chrome remains my Flash holding bin of, "Oh, this webpage wants to load a video using Flash."

00:30:05 ◼   ► I will go open that in Chrome.

00:30:07 ◼   ► But I use Safari everywhere, and part of that is just the ecosystem thing, right?

00:30:13 ◼   ► Which is that if I have a browser window open on my iPad, I can call it up on my Mac and Safari and vice versa.

00:30:19 ◼   ► because I can see that there's iCloud tabs.

00:30:24 ◼   ► Right, right, so I have access to all of that,

00:30:26 ◼   ► and I have access to the history from place to place.

00:30:29 ◼   ► And Safari generally works well for me.

00:30:31 ◼   ► There are those moments where I get really frustrated

00:30:33 ◼   ► with Safari, but even then I try Chrome,

00:30:37 ◼   ► and I get frustrated by it, and I come back to Safari.

00:30:40 ◼   ► Safari generally works for me,

00:30:44 ◼   ► except there was that really sad moment, was it last year,

00:30:46 ◼   ► when Google Apps stuff just basically broke in Safari

00:30:50 ◼   ► for a while.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Basically, I think almost the whole run of Yosemite's version

00:30:55 ◼   ► of Safari, it just didn't work.

00:30:57 ◼   ► And all the Twitter links don't work half the time in Safari

00:31:01 ◼   ► now because of some, I don't know,

00:31:03 ◼   ► redirect problem that a t.co link will just not load.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sure that's fine.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Yeah, who needs Twitter links?

00:31:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:11 ◼   ► And Chrome has gotten clever.

00:31:13 ◼   ► So if you are using Handoff and you have something open

00:31:16 ◼   ► in Safari on iOS, you can hand it off to Chrome on the Mac

00:31:20 ◼   ► and vice versa.

00:31:21 ◼   ► But those iCloud tabs, right?

00:31:23 ◼   ► So my iPad Pro is at home today asleep,

00:31:27 ◼   ► and I left a tab open in it.

00:31:29 ◼   ► That I can't get to without using Safari.

00:31:32 ◼   ► Without using Safari.

00:31:33 ◼   ► Safari uses that iCloud tab feature.

00:31:34 ◼   ► But the Handoff stuff, they've gotten pretty good

00:31:35 ◼   ► at sort of pretending to be Safari, which I think

00:31:38 ◼   ► is a clever way around it.

00:31:39 ◼   ► Because I don't want to use a third-party browser on iOS.

00:31:42 ◼   ► - So why are you using Chrome?

00:31:44 ◼   ► Why are you using Chrome on Mac?

00:31:47 ◼   ► - Part of it was the Yosemite thing,

00:31:50 ◼   ► Google Apps thing last year,

00:31:51 ◼   ► but a big part of it too is that I,

00:31:54 ◼   ► for a couple different things,

00:31:55 ◼   ► I need different profiles in Chrome.

00:31:58 ◼   ► So Chrome can go in and say,

00:31:59 ◼   ► you know, this profile's logged into this

00:32:02 ◼   ► Google Apps account,

00:32:02 ◼   ► and I have one separate from my YouTube Creator account

00:32:05 ◼   ► because that stuff is crazy and needs to be sandboxed.

00:32:09 ◼   ► And so that is helpful in my sort of everyday work.

00:32:14 ◼   ► But the big thing is I have found Safari to be,

00:32:17 ◼   ► sort of have these weird little bugs

00:32:18 ◼   ► with stuff that I need to use.

00:32:21 ◼   ► Which was infuriating for a long time

00:32:24 ◼   ► 'cause they were both built on WebKit

00:32:25 ◼   ► and now that's broken off and Google and Apple

00:32:28 ◼   ► are no longer really working together on WebKit.

00:32:30 ◼   ► - Nope, they're not web buddies anymore.

00:32:32 ◼   ► - No, and they broke up.

00:32:34 ◼   ► So for me, I find Chrome to be faster

00:32:36 ◼   ► and to sort of be a little more universally supported.

00:32:40 ◼   ► That said, there are problems.

00:32:41 ◼   ► I mean Chrome is very famously

00:32:44 ◼   ► a complete energy hog on the Mac.

00:32:46 ◼   ► I mean you can see significant battery life increase

00:32:50 ◼   ► if you switch from Chrome back to Safari.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Most of the time it just seems to work better for me.

00:32:57 ◼   ► And hey, it's nice to have options,

00:33:00 ◼   ► but I will grant that it does not feel as native

00:33:03 ◼   ► or as refined as Safari does at times.

00:33:05 ◼   ► Yeah, so my wife uses Chrome and she prefers it and it's a lot of the reasons that you

00:33:11 ◼   ► said and I think that's totally reasonable.

00:33:15 ◼   ► It just doesn't seem necessary for me so I don't do it but it's a purpose use browser

00:33:24 ◼   ► for me I guess I would say.

00:33:26 ◼   ► So like I said, I mean I can say the video stuff, that's true but if I ever have a hiccup

00:33:31 ◼   ► in Google Apps, I just go to Chrome because it is, obviously, Google is building their

00:33:36 ◼   ► apps to work in Chrome for the best experience, and it is the best experience. They feel much

00:33:43 ◼   ► more streamlined and less sluggish than they do on Safari. That's the fact. And yeah, every

00:33:50 ◼   ► now and then there are features that Chrome has that Safari doesn't. So like those podcast,

00:33:55 ◼   ► I recorded last week's TV Talk Machine podcast with Tim Goodman. I don't have him record

00:34:00 ◼   ► his end of the conversation like we do with most of our podcasts because it's just too

00:34:03 ◼   ► much, it's too much work. He's not a particularly technical guy. He's a really insightful TV

00:34:07 ◼   ► critic but he's not a technical guy at all. And I've been using Cast with him a little

00:34:11 ◼   ► bit which is, you know, TriCast, T-R-Y-C-A dot S-T, which is a, basically it's a podcast

00:34:19 ◼   ► service where you set up a podcast and send people a link and they click on the link in

00:34:24 ◼   ► Chrome and you have the conversation and it's doing all of the recording and uploading in

00:34:29 ◼   ► the background so you don't have to be technical at all as long as you've got a microphone

00:34:33 ◼   ► and you can be part of the conversation and you get the highest audio quality at the end

00:34:36 ◼   ► of it which is great but you cannot do that with Safari Safari doesn't support those protocols

00:34:40 ◼   ► yet hopefully it will at some point but until it does that's an example where it's just

00:34:46 ◼   ► like you got to use Chrome or I think Firefox or something but I'm not going to use Firefox

00:34:50 ◼   ► I would use so I use Chrome for some stuff but I haven't I haven't completely switched

00:34:54 ◼   ► I think it's I think part of it is just comfort in Safari and part of it is the ecosystem

00:34:57 ◼   ► - Awesome.

00:34:58 ◼   ► So, kind of coming to us just a little bit,

00:35:02 ◼   ► what about mapping?

00:35:04 ◼   ► I know for me here in Memphis,

00:35:06 ◼   ► Apple Maps has basically always been fine.

00:35:10 ◼   ► I've never had the sort of horror stories

00:35:12 ◼   ► of it taking me to an abandoned warehouse

00:35:14 ◼   ► when I was trying to go to the pediatrician's office.

00:35:17 ◼   ► But you spend time in a much bigger city sometimes.

00:35:22 ◼   ► How has Maps been for you?

00:35:25 ◼   ► Maps is, I am fortunate to live in the area in which Apple is located, so the maps here

00:35:32 ◼   ► are great. The Apple Maps are great. And I wrote, I mean, we talked about it on the show

00:35:37 ◼   ► with Myke before, that I used Apple Maps a lot on my, in the beta for iOS 9 last summer

00:35:44 ◼   ► on our road trip, and I thought it worked pretty great. But again, that was a West Coast,

00:35:48 ◼   ► that was a West Coast road trip. And I've heard that in some parts of the US, and especially

00:35:52 ◼   ► I've heard in other countries, the Maps data is still bad. But I think the Maps app is

00:35:57 ◼   ► good and the data is good in some places, right? I think the app itself is not a problem.

00:36:04 ◼   ► I think that's more of a services problem. Every now and then I get frustrated by the

00:36:08 ◼   ► Maps app, and I do try the Google Maps app from time to time, sometimes as a second opinion.

00:36:14 ◼   ► And I do use that occasionally. It's a little bit like my Chrome experience where I try

00:36:18 ◼   ► to use the Apple stuff, but I will also use the Google stuff from time to time.

00:36:23 ◼   ► And I don't have a big problem with it.

00:36:25 ◼   ► The Google stuff is good too.

00:36:26 ◼   ► I think Google adding lane guidance has been really good, and that's a place where Apple

00:36:31 ◼   ► is behind.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Google's lane guidance isn't always reliable, but I like the idea that it's trying to

00:36:38 ◼   ► tell you what lane you need to get in on the freeway, because that can be...

00:36:44 ◼   ► The more information you get, the better when you're driving somewhere, especially if

00:36:47 ◼   ► someplace unfamiliar. So I was in Phoenix the other week and driving on Interstate 10

00:36:54 ◼   ► through Phoenix and there are a couple places there where the old, and MAP still does this,

00:37:00 ◼   ► the old style like, "In two miles, remain on the road." And you're like, "Why did you

00:37:07 ◼   ► say that?" And the answer is because in their MAP interface, there's an exit-only lane.

00:37:15 ◼   ► the way the computer program translates that is basically to tell you to stay on the road

00:37:19 ◼   ► and not exit, which is kind of dumb because you're on the road, so why would you exit?

00:37:26 ◼   ► But when you get lane guidance in, you can have a little more intelligence and you can

00:37:29 ◼   ► say, "Stay in the left three lanes," and that's more helpful. Or, "Use the right

00:37:37 ◼   ► two lanes to exit," or something like that can be helpful. So when I use Google Maps,

00:37:42 ◼   ► I do recognize that they are, they're ahead of Apple

00:37:45 ◼   ► in terms of data, and it's not surprising, right?

00:37:47 ◼   ► It's Google.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Google has been ahead of everybody

00:37:50 ◼   ► in terms of that kind of data for a long time.

00:37:53 ◼   ► - What about Notes?

00:37:56 ◼   ► Notes obviously got a big overhaul this past year.

00:38:00 ◼   ► - It won an upgradey, you know,

00:38:02 ◼   ► Myke and I gave it an upgradey, so.

00:38:03 ◼   ► - It's true.

00:38:04 ◼   ► - That's big news, big news.

00:38:07 ◼   ► - Still happy with it?

00:38:08 ◼   ► - Still waiting for Apple to put the upgradey

00:38:09 ◼   ► on the notes page on the Apple website. Is there a notes page on the Apple website?

00:38:13 ◼   ► I'm sure there is. Yeah, I was just using it the other day. John

00:38:18 ◼   ► Sirakusen and I recorded an episode of Robot or Not and I have a little note that is all

00:38:23 ◼   ► of the things that I need to ask him about whether they're robots or not. I've got

00:38:27 ◼   ► all my notes of when I watch a movie for The Incomparable. Those are in there. And I've

00:38:33 ◼   ► got, we just did an episode of The Incomparable where we did an album draft and I wrote down

00:38:39 ◼   ► all the albums that I was thinking of drafting in Notes. So I use Notes as just a holding

00:38:44 ◼   ► bin for stuff. And the biggest reason is because it's capable of doing everything I want, and

00:38:48 ◼   ► it syncs to all of my devices, and that's what I want. I don't want to save things in

00:38:56 ◼   ► a text file on my Mac if I know that I'm going to be using them on my iPad, because then

00:39:02 ◼   ► what I'm going to maybe go to Dropbox if I saved it in Dropbox. It's just not worth it.

00:39:06 ◼   ► just put in notes and then it'll show up on my iPhone and iPad.

00:39:09 ◼   ► So that's what I definitely use it. Do you use Notes?

00:39:12 ◼   ► I do for some stuff. I went real heavy

00:39:15 ◼   ► into it when it first showed up this past year and

00:39:19 ◼   ► I've since reverted kind of back to where I was where I have

00:39:23 ◼   ► most of the stuff that I keep Notes on live as PlantX files on Dropbox.

00:39:28 ◼   ► I use NV-ALT on the Mac

00:39:30 ◼   ► and OneWriter which Federico turned me on to on iOS.

00:39:34 ◼   ► And One Rider does a really great trick

00:39:36 ◼   ► where it downloads the file locally,

00:39:38 ◼   ► so if you're offline with your iOS device,

00:39:40 ◼   ► you can edit the document and it syncs back with Dropbox

00:39:42 ◼   ► when it comes online, which kind of solves that problem

00:39:45 ◼   ► that you were talking about, like, well, it's on Dropbox

00:39:47 ◼   ► or it's on the Mac, I don't know where it is.

00:39:49 ◼   ► One Rider does a good job of that.

00:39:51 ◼   ► But Notes is still definitely used,

00:39:54 ◼   ► for example, what you said, that sort of like

00:39:55 ◼   ► short burst stuff, hey, I just need,

00:39:58 ◼   ► like I need to run to the store, this is what I need to get.

00:40:02 ◼   ► or if I'm just sort of stuck somewhere,

00:40:06 ◼   ► I just need to get some thoughts out of my head

00:40:07 ◼   ► and just get something out of my brain into something else.

00:40:11 ◼   ► Like just this past week, we had some concrete work

00:40:14 ◼   ► down at our house and some on the phone with the contractor

00:40:17 ◼   ► and he's kind of telling me the line items

00:40:19 ◼   ► and the prices and everything

00:40:20 ◼   ► before he sends me over the document

00:40:22 ◼   ► and I'm just kind of just taking notes on our phone call.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Like, yeah, these are the questions I need to ask,

00:40:26 ◼   ► this is what I need to look out for,

00:40:27 ◼   ► this is the day that my kids can walk on the concrete

00:40:30 ◼   ► sinking into it. Just that little sort of stuff that doesn't have a home anywhere

00:40:35 ◼   ► else, I found notes to be really, really good at. Yeah, notes, I think that's

00:40:40 ◼   ► becoming the consensus, is that this Laughing Stock kind of app is actually

00:40:45 ◼   ► now pretty good. I also use Reminders, which I don't use a lot. It's not

00:40:50 ◼   ► like my to-do... well, I guess it is. I don't have a to-do system, let's put it that way.

00:40:57 ◼   ► I don't have a to-do system, but I have Reminders lists. I have a Reminders list

00:41:00 ◼   ► of, especially I have a working list of like story ideas for six colors and my mackerel

00:41:05 ◼   ► column. So I use it for that and then I use the integration with Siri to do any list,

00:41:13 ◼   ► shopping list stuff and that all goes through Reminders. But that's about it for that. But

00:41:19 ◼   ► I don't use another to-do list, so Reminders is my to-do list, I suppose.

00:41:25 ◼   ► - That has given me heartburn thinking about not having a task management system.

00:41:29 ◼   ► - Well, that is one of the ways where we are totally

00:41:32 ◼   ► different people.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I have no task, I have tried all the task management

00:41:35 ◼   ► systems, this is a topic, Myke and I should talk about

00:41:38 ◼   ► this, maybe there should be an intervention or something,

00:41:39 ◼   ► but I've tried all the task management systems and I just,

00:41:41 ◼   ► I can't get them, I can't get into them, I can't use them,

00:41:44 ◼   ► I've tried them all, and it just doesn't stick for me.

00:41:48 ◼   ► So this is why I am a complete abject failure who never

00:41:52 ◼   ► does anything.

00:41:56 ◼   ► Somehow I get it all done, but it's not through a system.

00:41:59 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:42:00 ◼   ► - I'm sweating thinking about that.

00:42:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm sure.

00:42:04 ◼   ► - I use OmniFocus for all that stuff,

00:42:06 ◼   ► but I do use reminders.

00:42:08 ◼   ► They're shared, the shared list,

00:42:09 ◼   ► so in reminders you can say,

00:42:10 ◼   ► "Hey, I want to share this list

00:42:12 ◼   ► "with another iCloud email address."

00:42:15 ◼   ► And that person can go in there

00:42:16 ◼   ► and you both have read/write access to the list.

00:42:19 ◼   ► And so my wife and I keep one for the grocery store.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And then we kind of keep a second one

00:42:24 ◼   ► for like non grocery store shopping,

00:42:28 ◼   ► so like Target or whatever.

00:42:29 ◼   ► And so if like just yesterday, coming home,

00:42:33 ◼   ► and she took the kids in to pick up something to eat

00:42:36 ◼   ► at a restaurant to go,

00:42:37 ◼   ► and I was at the grocery store next door,

00:42:38 ◼   ► we didn't have to like sit in the car and be like,

00:42:41 ◼   ► oh, do we have this, do we need this?

00:42:43 ◼   ► It was very much a hey, I know it's in a reminder

00:42:47 ◼   ► so I can just pop into Kroger and I buy these eight things

00:42:49 ◼   ► and everyone's happy and everyone knows what's going on.

00:42:51 ◼   ► So it's the shared functionality and reminders is really what made it click for us.

00:42:57 ◼   ► And I really hope that Notes gets that soon, where you can say, "Hey, you know, this

00:43:03 ◼   ► Note my wife and I share, and we both have access to it."

00:43:07 ◼   ► I think that'd be a really logical place for Notes to extend in the near future.

00:43:13 ◼   ► That makes a lot of sense.

00:43:14 ◼   ► I realized that I could horrify and excite Myke by telling him that my entire to-do system

00:43:21 ◼   ► is just writing things down on scraps of paper because he would be horrified because that's

00:43:26 ◼   ► not a system, but I would have to use a pen.

00:43:28 ◼   ► You'd make his day and destroy his day all at once.

00:43:34 ◼   ► All at once. Should we touch, before we move on off this topic, should we touch the third

00:43:39 ◼   ► rail of apps, which is iTunes and Apple Music on iOS? You just sent the sobs of sadness.

00:43:47 ◼   ► It is.

00:43:48 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:43:50 ◼   ► - I mean, I use iTunes every day.

00:43:52 ◼   ► I'm not an Apple music subscriber.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Listeners of Connected will know that no stream

00:43:56 ◼   ► music service has really entered my life

00:43:58 ◼   ► in any meaningful way yet.

00:44:00 ◼   ► So I have a bunch of files on disk that iTunes can play,

00:44:03 ◼   ► and I sync them to my iPhone and my iPad,

00:44:06 ◼   ► and an iPod Nano I used to work out with

00:44:09 ◼   ► and that sort of thing.

00:44:10 ◼   ► And iTunes has gotten pretty bad,

00:44:12 ◼   ► and anyone who has opened iTunes any time recently

00:44:15 ◼   ► knows that, where things that used to be simple

00:44:17 ◼   ► and things that used to be fast are neither simple

00:44:22 ◼   ► nor fast anymore, and it's become bloated in a way that,

00:44:27 ◼   ► like you said, these apps pick up weight as they go along.

00:44:31 ◼   ► They pick up features they don't need.

00:44:33 ◼   ► I mean, I know this for a fact, because I have a problem.

00:44:37 ◼   ► The current version of iTunes, you can restore

00:44:40 ◼   ► an original iPod from 2001 in and sync music to it.

00:44:43 ◼   ► I love that it's a collector, but that doesn't need

00:44:46 ◼   ► to be there, why is that still there?

00:44:50 ◼   ► I think it's really time for iTunes on the Mac

00:44:54 ◼   ► to either get broken up into different apps

00:44:56 ◼   ► or to really see some of this stuff go away.

00:44:59 ◼   ► And I know from--

00:45:00 ◼   ► - They need to do an X on it, right?

00:45:03 ◼   ► They need to do that Final Cut 10, that Logic 10,

00:45:07 ◼   ► that GarageBand 10, whatever it is,

00:45:10 ◼   ► it's that, hey, we still call it maybe this thing,

00:45:14 ◼   ► but it's not this thing anymore.

00:45:15 ◼   ► just change the name of it too because all the people will be like, "No, you can't change

00:45:19 ◼   ► the name iTunes. iTunes is important." Well, there could be an iTunes app like there is

00:45:23 ◼   ► on iOS that's just like the store and stuff, and that would be fine. But the iTunes app,

00:45:30 ◼   ► I think, I mean, everybody seems to be in agreement about this. It's just you got to

00:45:33 ◼   ► blow it up. You got to blow the thing up. What is the line from Aliens? Pull out, nuke

00:45:38 ◼   ► the site from Orbit. It's the only way to be sure. I think that's what you got to do.

00:45:41 ◼   ► And they may be doing it. I mean, they may have spent the last two years trying to do

00:45:44 ◼   ► and it just hasn't happened yet.

00:45:45 ◼   ► But iTunes, as a product, just can't stand.

00:45:49 ◼   ► It cannot continue.

00:45:52 ◼   ► It's been a disaster for years.

00:45:54 ◼   ► And I use it every day.

00:45:56 ◼   ► And it's a mess.

00:45:57 ◼   ► And it's doing 10 things at once.

00:45:59 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense.

00:46:00 ◼   ► It's like an operating system unto itself.

00:46:03 ◼   ► And it's got to go.

00:46:05 ◼   ► They should make a very nice music player that is integrated

00:46:08 ◼   ► super well with iCloud.

00:46:10 ◼   ► And that'll be a great app.

00:46:12 ◼   ► they can make a syncing app for all their devices and device data. And you know, it's

00:46:16 ◼   ► not like they have, you know, you control your syncing from the Photos app, which is

00:46:21 ◼   ► another Apple app that I use all the time. You know, Photos isn't built into iTunes.

00:46:26 ◼   ► It's got a place in iTunes where you can sync your photos and it talks to photos and

00:46:30 ◼   ► it looks at the photos database and it lets you pick albums. So it's not like these

00:46:33 ◼   ► apps have to live together and be the same app. They can talk to each other. So you make

00:46:37 ◼   ► a syncing app and you make a music app and you make a store app and make them all good.

00:46:42 ◼   ► - They used to have a syncing app, they could just bring it back.

00:46:44 ◼   ► - iSync! iSync, they could bring it back. But it's just not, I mean, it's not good.

00:46:51 ◼   ► It's just a mess right now. - Yeah, and I think this idea that apps gain

00:46:57 ◼   ► new features over time and they become sort of something that they would never intend

00:47:01 ◼   ► to be, I think that's what's happening to music.app on iOS, where it started out really

00:47:06 ◼   ► really simply, I can sync music from my computer over

00:47:11 ◼   ► and I can listen to it.

00:47:11 ◼   ► And then they added purchasing, which I think they did

00:47:15 ◼   ► a pretty good job of, if I'm re-sourced correctly,

00:47:17 ◼   ► of being able to download new music from the iTunes store

00:47:19 ◼   ► on your device and do what it's supposed to do.

00:47:23 ◼   ► But Apple Music being bolted to the back of all of that,

00:47:26 ◼   ► just dealing, as in the chat room,

00:47:27 ◼   ► just jumping up and down, screaming about it.

00:47:29 ◼   ► It's really not gone well for a lot of people,

00:47:32 ◼   ► and even someone who doesn't use it,

00:47:35 ◼   ► knowing that it's there, and I've actually resorted

00:47:38 ◼   ► to turning on parental controls on my device

00:47:40 ◼   ► to get rid of some of it, so I don't have to see it.

00:47:42 ◼   ► And I really think Apple Music would be better served

00:47:46 ◼   ► in its own app, but I feel like if they were going to do that

00:47:50 ◼   ► they would have done it.

00:47:51 ◼   ► And they obviously spent time merging the two,

00:47:54 ◼   ► and so I think that's what Apple views

00:47:56 ◼   ► as the best way to do it.

00:47:57 ◼   ► - I think so, well I think they could do a better job

00:48:00 ◼   ► keeping them separate.

00:48:01 ◼   ► I think one of the most disappointing things,

00:48:03 ◼   ► I use the Music app and I think it's fine,

00:48:05 ◼   ► although it's overly complicated, I can use it, I can get what I want out of it, but,

00:48:11 ◼   ► and we should put a link in the notes, Joe Steele did write a piece, it's a little bit

00:48:15 ◼   ► ranty but that's okay, he was in the mood to rant, about, he tried using the Amazon

00:48:22 ◼   ► Prime Music app, and it's instructive in how it's trying to do a very similar thing to

00:48:28 ◼   ► what Apple does, and does it in a very different way, and a more, probably a better way than

00:48:34 ◼   ► what Apple is doing, we'll put it that way. But my big disappointment with the music app

00:48:38 ◼   ► is really that it feels like Apple made decisions in the music app design to push everybody

00:48:48 ◼   ► who uses their iPhone to listen to music, or their iPad or their iPod Touch, to push

00:48:54 ◼   ► Apple Music on them. That's the problem I have with it, is I don't feel, when I look

00:49:00 ◼   ► at that app, I don't look at it and say, "Well, the reason that they did this this way is because

00:49:05 ◼   ► it makes it easier on the customer. It makes it easier on the user." It feels to me like somebody

00:49:11 ◼   ► said, "Do you realize the only way that this music service we're launching is going to succeed is if

00:49:15 ◼   ► we get in the face of everybody who listens to music?" So let's get in their faces at all times

00:49:20 ◼   ► and make it really hard for them to use this without using Apple Music so that Apple Music

00:49:26 ◼   ► will be something that people just get to, you know, because they're confused or, you know,

00:49:31 ◼   ► and, you know, maybe nobody said, "Let's confuse them and make their lives hard,"

00:49:36 ◼   ► but it really feels like they're saying, "Let's push Apple Music. We need to push Apple Music.

00:49:40 ◼   ► This needs to be an app that is really pushing our service." And that's the thing that bothers

00:49:46 ◼   ► me about it is that I think that I just get that feeling that these were not decisions made

00:49:51 ◼   ► to make me happy as a user, even as an Apple Music subscriber,

00:49:56 ◼   ► they were made to get the eyeballs who use the app

00:50:01 ◼   ► to be aware that Apple has a subscription music service.

00:50:05 ◼   ► And that's not-- it needs to not do that.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Yeah, it feels very un-Apple-like, right?

00:50:11 ◼   ► You launch music for the first time,

00:50:13 ◼   ► and you get a full-screen ad for the Apple Music service.

00:50:16 ◼   ► And our go-to that feels like a decision that

00:50:18 ◼   ► that was done by business people and not people

00:50:22 ◼   ► who were concerned with that user experience

00:50:25 ◼   ► that Apple says it prides itself on.

00:50:28 ◼   ► - And even as an Apple Music subscriber, which I am,

00:50:31 ◼   ► the prioritization of the tabs is ridiculous

00:50:34 ◼   ► on iTunes and Apple Music, where it's sort of like,

00:50:37 ◼   ► in Apple Music, music.app, right,

00:50:40 ◼   ► it's like for you and new, and in the corner is my library.

00:50:44 ◼   ► like in the corner is my library. You know, maybe that Apple, that's a major philosophical

00:50:52 ◼   ► change to say what's really important to you is our stuff and not your stuff. And I just

00:50:57 ◼   ► don't agree. I think that that's a mistake. I think if I have music in my library, my

00:51:03 ◼   ► library is important to me and I should be able to play the music in my library. And

00:51:08 ◼   ► as an iOS user, you don't have really another choice to play music unless you're using another

00:51:13 ◼   ► streaming service but if you have like music that you want to load onto your

00:51:17 ◼   ► device you're probably going to use the the what used to be the iPod app back in

00:51:21 ◼   ► the day and you know instead it's kind of off in the corner of this subscription

00:51:26 ◼   ► service app and the integration between the two is nice it could be better

00:51:30 ◼   ► actually as a subscriber I kind of want it to be better because there are too

00:51:33 ◼   ► many times when I'm searching for something and I have to decide where I

00:51:36 ◼   ► want to search for it but and then iTunes is in there too which is even

00:51:40 ◼   ► more confusing on the Mac where in some contexts you're searching either your library or iTunes

00:51:48 ◼   ► and in another context it's either your library or Apple Music because there's three different

00:51:53 ◼   ► sources of information, the purchases and the streaming. I don't know. It's a mess and

00:51:59 ◼   ► I'm not saying that it's easy to do. This is a hard problem but Amazon took a different

00:52:05 ◼   ► approach and it's simpler and it's and it's a and it's a you know it and their

00:52:10 ◼   ► challenge a little bit easier but still it this is this is work that that that

00:52:15 ◼   ► needs to be done and I just can't help but feel like we have the evidence we've

00:52:19 ◼   ► got is that iTunes hasn't gotten any better and that the the music app is

00:52:25 ◼   ► feels kind of like an ad for Apple music and this is not this is this is a

00:52:30 ◼   ► relationship that needs to be repaired I guess is what I'm saying

00:52:34 ◼   ► - It is, and you know, in thinking about this whole

00:52:37 ◼   ► discussion about Apple software quality,

00:52:40 ◼   ► and then just the exercise you and I went through

00:52:43 ◼   ► of what do we use and what do we not use,

00:52:45 ◼   ► the other angle that I can't help but think about is

00:52:49 ◼   ► that I do think that conversation equality is,

00:52:55 ◼   ► I think it's a real thing, I think it's something

00:52:57 ◼   ► worth discussing, but it's also an angle where some

00:53:00 ◼   ► of these apps and these tools just aren't meant for us,

00:53:03 ◼   ► where you and I and people listening are, to a degree,

00:53:08 ◼   ► some sort of power user, somewhere on that spectrum of

00:53:14 ◼   ► computer users and iOS users and technology enthusiasts

00:53:20 ◼   ► who do know and care about the differences

00:53:23 ◼   ► between something like OmniFocus and Reminders,

00:53:25 ◼   ► or something like iCloud, Keychain, and 1Password, right?

00:53:29 ◼   ► Like on the surface, they do sort of the same thing,

00:53:31 ◼   ► but if you get into it and you care to get into it,

00:53:33 ◼   ► you know that they're different.

00:53:35 ◼   ► And I think that's sort of something to remain aware of

00:53:39 ◼   ► in this conversation that just because reminders,

00:53:42 ◼   ► for instance, doesn't meet my needs,

00:53:45 ◼   ► doesn't mean it's a bad app necessarily.

00:53:47 ◼   ► It just means that it's not for me.

00:53:48 ◼   ► And that's totally fine, and I completely understand

00:53:51 ◼   ► that Apple has to write their first party apps

00:53:54 ◼   ► to aim for the masses.

00:53:55 ◼   ► And the masses don't know or care about snoozing your email.

00:53:59 ◼   ► And there are a segment of people who do care about that,

00:54:03 ◼   ► and they are the people that we talk to on Twitter

00:54:06 ◼   ► and listen to the shows, and they're on the shows.

00:54:07 ◼   ► But that's an important thing to remember,

00:54:10 ◼   ► that you and I might have problems with mail,

00:54:14 ◼   ► but a lot of people don't.

00:54:17 ◼   ► And they might run into software issues,

00:54:19 ◼   ► and that's that other rail to this conversation.

00:54:22 ◼   ► But it's easy, I think, and it's tempting

00:54:25 ◼   ► to conflate those two things in this argument.

00:54:28 ◼   ► and something that I try to be aware of,

00:54:30 ◼   ► that just because something doesn't meet my needs

00:54:32 ◼   ► doesn't mean that it's bad.

00:54:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly right.

00:54:35 ◼   ► That's something we should always keep in mind, right?

00:54:37 ◼   ► That's the constant challenge of,

00:54:40 ◼   ► when I was talking about difficulty earlier,

00:54:41 ◼   ► I mean, these aren't easy things.

00:54:43 ◼   ► Apple has to build tools for the 99% of users, right?

00:54:47 ◼   ► There is a small percentage of people

00:54:54 ◼   ► who are gonna wanna do more,

00:54:57 ◼   ► But we are a small percentage of people, and we are those people, right? Whether we're

00:55:03 ◼   ► 1% or half a percent or 10% or 5%, whatever it is, Apple's responsibility is first to

00:55:09 ◼   ► everybody, and keeping it simple is a part of that. Unfortunately, with something like

00:55:16 ◼   ► Apple Music, it feels like they're not keeping it simple either. But I don't expect Apple

00:55:22 ◼   ► Mail to ever transform into a superpower kind of feature, although I do feel like Apple

00:55:27 ◼   ► mail maybe could be a place where Apple could say, "Wouldn't it be nice if we told you about

00:55:32 ◼   ► this email on Monday that you got over the weekend?" They could try that, but they would

00:55:38 ◼   ► have to be thinking, you know, who's their audience for that app, and then getting out

00:55:42 ◼   ► of the way and letting the third parties, and they have, right? I mean, you don't have

00:55:46 ◼   ► to use Apple Mail, so that's fine.

00:55:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I think there's always going to be that tension there, and that's not a uniquely Apple

00:55:54 ◼   ► problem, but it's one that I feel is more sort of acutely

00:55:58 ◼   ► felt by people who are on our side of it, who do need or

00:56:05 ◼   ► want more, and then throw that in with the, oh, it's also

00:56:08 ◼   ► sort of unreliable at times.

00:56:10 ◼   ► It's kind of a nasty one-two punch.

00:56:12 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:56:15 ◼   ► - Software, Jason, how does it work?

00:56:17 ◼   ► - How does it work?

00:56:18 ◼   ► Well, so let's, we're gonna talk about the Mac a little bit

00:56:20 ◼   ► more, but we should take a break first.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Do you want to tell people about our next sponsor?

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00:59:22 ◼   ► Yay! The Mac. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to talk for a little bit, not too long. We've been,

00:59:27 ◼   ► we went on about, about software for a while, but I want to talk about the Mac. One reason

00:59:32 ◼   ► is because you are here, and you are a Mac aficionado and historian, I suppose, at this

00:59:40 ◼   ► at this point and collector of old Mac things,

00:59:43 ◼   ► including most recently a 20th anniversary Macintosh.

00:59:46 ◼   ► - It's actually right, I left it at the office,

00:59:48 ◼   ► it's actually like right here, right next to me.

00:59:50 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah.

00:59:51 ◼   ► Yeah, a guy in a tuxedo used to bring that to people

00:59:55 ◼   ► when they paid $7,000 in, what, 1995 money, 1996 money?

00:59:59 ◼   ► - '98.

01:00:03 ◼   ► - 1998 money.

01:00:04 ◼   ► - I did not pay that, but I also did not come

01:00:08 ◼   ► the Tuxedo so what can you do? It wasn't 98, 97. 97. Because we got ours at MacUser when

01:00:15 ◼   ► I was at MacUser so it would have to have been like spring of 97. Yeah. There you go.

01:00:22 ◼   ► It's a weird computer. Yes it is. It's super weird. It's one of the weirdest Macs ever

01:00:28 ◼   ► made. But you know, and you've got a lot of old Apple hardware stuff, but I wanted to

01:00:33 ◼   ► bring it up because you were on and also because Dan Morin wrote a piece on MacWorld last week

01:00:37 ◼   ► that was really nice that Phil Schiller retweeted,

01:00:39 ◼   ► which I thought was really cool,

01:00:42 ◼   ► which was about the staying power of the Mac.

01:00:45 ◼   ► And I just wanted, we talk a lot about,

01:00:47 ◼   ► like we've just done iOS stuff and all that,

01:00:50 ◼   ► and I thought it was worth taking a minute

01:00:51 ◼   ► and talking about the not losing sight

01:00:54 ◼   ► of the appeal of the Mac and the power of the Mac.

01:00:56 ◼   ► I mean, you are a Mac user primarily, right?

01:01:01 ◼   ► I mean, you're not doing your job on an iPad, are you?

01:01:04 ◼   ► - No, I'm not.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And that is the underlying tension of my show

01:01:09 ◼   ► with Myke and Federico, that Federico's been iOS first

01:01:13 ◼   ► for a long time, and Myke has turned that way recently

01:01:16 ◼   ► with the iPad Pro.

01:01:18 ◼   ► And for me though, it's not that I can't do my work

01:01:22 ◼   ► on the iPad, 'cause for the most part,

01:01:24 ◼   ► Myke and I's jobs are basically the same.

01:01:26 ◼   ► What he does on his iPad I could do on my iPad,

01:01:28 ◼   ► but I still find the Mac to be the place

01:01:31 ◼   ► where I'm the most comfortable and the most efficient.

01:01:34 ◼   ► So for me, when it's time to sit down

01:01:37 ◼   ► and get something done, I'm gonna reach for my MacBook Pro,

01:01:41 ◼   ► even over the new iPad Pro, which I like.

01:01:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:01:46 ◼   ► I've been trying to consider my Mac my work.

01:01:54 ◼   ► I'm gesturing now and nobody can see it

01:01:59 ◼   ► 'cause that's really good, bad podcasting.

01:02:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:02:03 ◼   ► I use my Mac in my office, and what I'm not doing

01:02:06 ◼   ► is bringing the laptop out into the house much.

01:02:09 ◼   ► The office is separate, I got the door closed,

01:02:12 ◼   ► I'm in here, the rest of the house is out there,

01:02:14 ◼   ► and that's what I'm trying to do,

01:02:17 ◼   ► but that also means that although I can and do use

01:02:21 ◼   ► the iPad Pro for work, and I will sometimes go

01:02:23 ◼   ► into the house and write some stuff in there,

01:02:25 ◼   ► and I usually use the iPad Pro for that,

01:02:29 ◼   ► my work context is the Mac, and I do rely on the Mac

01:02:32 ◼   ► this stuff and I can't really imagine working, I can work in short bursts or maybe even on

01:02:39 ◼   ► a vacation if I could get podcasting to work without bringing a laptop, but I cannot envision

01:02:44 ◼   ► at this point, as much as I am enjoying trying to imagine life where you only work on an

01:02:50 ◼   ► iPad, I can't envision that as my life at this point. The Mac allows me to be so productive,

01:02:57 ◼   ► having this big screen, having the powerful computer,

01:03:00 ◼   ► having all the software and scripting

01:03:02 ◼   ► and all sorts of other things.

01:03:04 ◼   ► And some of that is, I'll acknowledge,

01:03:06 ◼   ► because I've been using the Mac since, what, 1990?

01:03:09 ◼   ► A long time.

01:03:10 ◼   ► But this is my workplace, essentially,

01:03:16 ◼   ► is the screen of this 5K iMac is my workplace.

01:03:19 ◼   ► - I think there's something to be said for that,

01:03:21 ◼   ► and I have thought a lot about that sort of approach.

01:03:26 ◼   ► I think we're talking about this March event here in a second, but I currently use a current

01:03:30 ◼   ► generation so with the Force Touch trackpad, 15 inch MacBook Pro and my thought was, hey,

01:03:37 ◼   ► I'm going to use this thing as a laptop alone a bunch of the time because I had this vision

01:03:42 ◼   ► when I went self employed of I'm going to go work at a co-working space or go to a coffee

01:03:47 ◼   ► shop and even here I'm at my office now and I have a display and a keyboard and a mouse

01:03:52 ◼   ► in front of me and I dock the thing just like I do at home.

01:03:56 ◼   ► And so I have been thinking about,

01:03:58 ◼   ► well, I don't think the 15 inch fits me

01:04:01 ◼   ► the way that I thought it would.

01:04:02 ◼   ► I bought this over the summer right before I quit my job.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Maybe I should do something different.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Maybe I should go with an iMac and then maybe

01:04:11 ◼   ► like the 13 inch Pro or maybe even a loaded MacBook Air

01:04:15 ◼   ► as my when I need a notebook and then try the iPad Pro

01:04:20 ◼   ► to sort of fill that space that you were talking about

01:04:22 ◼   ► where right now, if I'm going to do something

01:04:25 ◼   ► sort of out in the house, to use your language,

01:04:29 ◼   ► it's going to be my MacBook Pro,

01:04:30 ◼   ► and it already has my work stuff on it,

01:04:31 ◼   ► so I'm just going to go do work,

01:04:34 ◼   ► because it's there, because that's the context

01:04:36 ◼   ► in which I work.

01:04:37 ◼   ► And so I really like that idea of using the iPad

01:04:41 ◼   ► sort of as not only a secondary device,

01:04:43 ◼   ► but a device for a different purpose,

01:04:46 ◼   ► and not, for me, for years, the frustration of iOS

01:04:50 ◼   ► was I'm trying to recreate what I have on the Mac

01:04:52 ◼   ► on this tablet or on this phone.

01:04:55 ◼   ► And when it finally clicked for me,

01:04:56 ◼   ► it was like, that's not the way I should approach this.

01:04:58 ◼   ► I should approach this that this is a very different device,

01:05:01 ◼   ► different form factor, different UI,

01:05:03 ◼   ► different class of applications,

01:05:06 ◼   ► and I should maybe treat them differently in my approach.

01:05:11 ◼   ► And when I sort of stumbled upon that,

01:05:15 ◼   ► it really sort of changed the game for me a little bit.

01:05:18 ◼   ► I think that's a good point. When I talk about context switching, it's a little bit of that.

01:05:23 ◼   ► When I am writing on my iPad, it is because I want to be out of my office, and I will go to

01:05:29 ◼   ► the bar in my kitchen and put the iPad there and stand up and write there. Or I will go sit on the

01:05:36 ◼   ► couch and do something that is not... I'm using it as a change of pace, and it works really well

01:05:43 ◼   ► as that. I also feel like there's, you know, the iPad, I was talking over the weekend to

01:05:51 ◼   ► a librarian at my local library, and she was saying how she asked me about when are they

01:06:00 ◼   ► going to make the iPad more advanced so it's more like a computer. That's literally what

01:06:05 ◼   ► she said. And I, you know, I tried to explain to her that, you know, Microsoft is because

01:06:10 ◼   ► they make PCs and they've sort of failed when it comes to the smartphone especially, but

01:06:16 ◼   ► the tablet to a certain degree, that they're trying to now make PCs that are also tablets.

01:06:20 ◼   ► The Surface is powered by Windows and the Surface Book, which is kind of a disaster

01:06:25 ◼   ► in terms of being a tablet because it has very little battery life and it has to have

01:06:28 ◼   ► a second processor and all this stuff, but Microsoft is committed to convergence because

01:06:32 ◼   ► their business makes them, the strength of their business is in PCs, so they want to

01:06:37 ◼   ► to converge them. Whereas Apple is still fighting it, right? Apple still wants to not make a

01:06:42 ◼   ► toaster fridge. They want to have iOS devices and they want to have Macs. And so I started

01:06:47 ◼   ► to wonder while I was talking to her, things like, you know, Apple's stated philosophy

01:06:53 ◼   ► is we want to keep those things separately. What does it mean when the iPad sales are

01:06:57 ◼   ► faltering like they are? Is that good for the Mac? Because they are making things like

01:07:01 ◼   ► MacBook, which is obviously inspired by the iPad,

01:07:04 ◼   ► but it's a Mac.

01:07:05 ◼   ► Or do we think that's good for the Mac,

01:07:09 ◼   ► or is that a concern that if the iPad is faltering,

01:07:14 ◼   ► Apple might try to do something rash,

01:07:16 ◼   ► like make a toaster fridge?

01:07:18 ◼   ► - It is a good question, and I have a tendency

01:07:23 ◼   ► to believe guys like Phil Schiller when they say

01:07:25 ◼   ► we're gonna keep these things separate,

01:07:27 ◼   ► but at the same time, you guys spoke about it last week,

01:07:30 ◼   ► that free fall the iPad bends us in,

01:07:33 ◼   ► I can't help but think the iPad Pro, to a degree,

01:07:36 ◼   ► was a reaction to that.

01:07:37 ◼   ► I think the iPad Pro's a great product.

01:07:39 ◼   ► I, like you and Myke, bought one and love it.

01:07:43 ◼   ► But I can't help but think that maybe this was a,

01:07:44 ◼   ► "Hey, we need to try something new here.

01:07:46 ◼   ► "Let's go bigger, let's put a keyboard on it,

01:07:48 ◼   ► "let's make it more of a professional tool,"

01:07:52 ◼   ► as opposed to maybe how people are using them now.

01:07:57 ◼   ► But all that aside, for now at least,

01:07:59 ◼   ► they are separate, and I think that the fact that

01:08:01 ◼   ► the Mac has done so well for so long,

01:08:04 ◼   ► it's what, 32 years?

01:08:08 ◼   ► That's a heck of a run, and with OS X now being really

01:08:14 ◼   ► 15 years old or so, kind of depending on how you count it,

01:08:17 ◼   ► that's a good run as well, and it's a very,

01:08:19 ◼   ► in many ways a very stable platform,

01:08:22 ◼   ► and a very mature platform.

01:08:24 ◼   ► You see all this churn in iOS still of

01:08:28 ◼   ► doing a lot of new things and trying new things,

01:08:31 ◼   ► adding things like extensions and redoing the interface

01:08:35 ◼   ► a couple years ago.

01:08:36 ◼   ► You don't see that on the Mac as much now, right?

01:08:37 ◼   ► The Mac has settled down.

01:08:39 ◼   ► - Right.

01:08:40 ◼   ► - And I think that's good.

01:08:41 ◼   ► I think it's for people like you and I

01:08:42 ◼   ► who depend on them every day.

01:08:44 ◼   ► I'm kind of glad that the Mac's wild days

01:08:46 ◼   ► seem to be behind it.

01:08:47 ◼   ► I don't want them to roll out a new version of OS X

01:08:50 ◼   ► and all of a sudden I have major compatibility issues

01:08:53 ◼   ► with a bunch of the software I use.

01:08:55 ◼   ► And that wasn't always the case.

01:08:58 ◼   ► It really wasn't the case when I first came to the Mac.

01:09:01 ◼   ► There was a lot of churn.

01:09:02 ◼   ► I came right during the nine to 10 transition.

01:09:06 ◼   ► I learned all the ins and outs of the classic Mac OS,

01:09:08 ◼   ► and like, oh, that's going away, by the way.

01:09:11 ◼   ► I know you just learned how to debug Apple Talk nodes,

01:09:16 ◼   ► but that doesn't really matter anymore.

01:09:17 ◼   ► - The first five years in any operating system

01:09:19 ◼   ► are like the Wild West, and we got to see that

01:09:22 ◼   ► in the early days of OS X, and then that happened

01:09:25 ◼   ► in iOS and it's sort of, even on iOS it's shaking out,

01:09:28 ◼   ► but in the Mac it's sort of shaken out.

01:09:31 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:09:32 ◼   ► So, I mean, so you've got a 5K iMac,

01:09:34 ◼   ► what do you hope to see from Apple

01:09:38 ◼   ► with the Mac in the next year or so?

01:09:39 ◼   ► - Well, that's, I'm curious about that.

01:09:41 ◼   ► I mean, all these talk about like an iOS event in March

01:09:44 ◼   ► or an Apple event in March, and I keep thinking,

01:09:47 ◼   ► when are we gonna see that story

01:09:49 ◼   ► about when new Macs are coming?

01:09:51 ◼   ► Like, I would like to know when new Macs are coming.

01:09:53 ◼   ► And nobody's talking about it.

01:09:55 ◼   ► And I started to wonder, would there be new Macs

01:09:56 ◼   ► at that event in March?

01:09:58 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe not?

01:10:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:10:01 ◼   ► Does anybody care?

01:10:03 ◼   ► Or is the iPhone, the iPhone and pushing the iPad,

01:10:07 ◼   ► is that the focus and the Mac will happen

01:10:09 ◼   ► on its own timeline?

01:10:10 ◼   ► I mean, inside Apple, there's a Mac team.

01:10:13 ◼   ► And there's a Mac PR team.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Not just a Mac technical team, there's a Mac PR team.

01:10:20 ◼   ► And there's an iPhone PR team,

01:10:21 ◼   ► and there's an iPad PR team.

01:10:23 ◼   ► So it's not like they would have to work together on that,

01:10:27 ◼   ► or they can just go their own way

01:10:29 ◼   ► and plan their own quiet or Mac rollout,

01:10:31 ◼   ► and maybe it's not even an event,

01:10:33 ◼   ► it's press briefings or something like that.

01:10:34 ◼   ► But I do wonder about that.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Everybody keeps talking about how they need to turn over,

01:10:38 ◼   ► they need to turn over

01:10:39 ◼   ► to the new Intel processor architecture.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And they are, a lot of people are looking at Thunderbolt,

01:10:45 ◼   ► and Thunderbolt 3, which is pin compatible

01:10:47 ◼   ► or port compatible, plug compatible with USB-C, right?

01:10:51 ◼   ► So I think all of us kind of hope that that's the big story on the Mac in 2016 is this move

01:10:59 ◼   ► to the USB-C plug, but it's actually Thunderbolt 3, so it kind of can do anything.

01:11:06 ◼   ► And I think that would be great.

01:11:08 ◼   ► I also am really curious to see what happens with the MacBook and if they refashion it

01:11:14 ◼   ► in some way and upgrade it, or if they just sort of let it ride and say, "Nope, it's

01:11:20 ◼   ► still going to be what it is.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Maybe they make that a Thunderbolt 3 port,

01:11:24 ◼   ► but otherwise it's just sort of like,

01:11:25 ◼   ► one port, that's it, sorry.

01:11:27 ◼   ► It is what it is.

01:11:28 ◼   ► Or if they go, well okay, two ports.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Or if they just take the headphone jack away

01:11:33 ◼   ► and laugh at us, I don't know.

01:11:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:36 ◼   ► - The MacBook I think is the most interesting one to look at.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I'm with you, I really can't decide if this is going to be

01:11:42 ◼   ► like that first MacBook Air,

01:11:44 ◼   ► and then a couple years later they say,

01:11:45 ◼   ► hey, you know what, we're going to keep the name,

01:11:47 ◼   ► and we're going to keep this idea of being thin and light,

01:11:50 ◼   ► but we've rebuilt the entire thing and it's been poured up.

01:11:53 ◼   ► - That little drop down door is gone.

01:11:55 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh.

01:11:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, mm-hmm.

01:11:57 ◼   ► - The iPod hard drive.

01:11:58 ◼   ► Like, I don't want to run a computer on an iPod hard drive.

01:12:00 ◼   ► It's a terrible idea.

01:12:02 ◼   ► So I think the MacBooks is one to watch,

01:12:07 ◼   ► but I do think this storyline of Skylake

01:12:09 ◼   ► and Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C, that's an interesting one.

01:12:13 ◼   ► For me, having a current MacBook Pro,

01:12:16 ◼   ► part of this too is like,

01:12:17 ◼   ► well, I have a Thunderbolt display at home,

01:12:19 ◼   ► and I've got a Thunderbolt dock here at the office.

01:12:22 ◼   ► Is all that stuff going to work if I buy a new MacBook Pro?

01:12:27 ◼   ► Am I going to be able to adapt down to what I have now?

01:12:29 ◼   ► Am I going to spend even more money

01:12:32 ◼   ► if they also release a Retina Thunderbolt display

01:12:34 ◼   ► that works with the new machines?

01:12:36 ◼   ► Like if they do that, I am just, I'm in trouble.

01:12:39 ◼   ► So I think, I feel like the Mac is like on the edge

01:12:42 ◼   ► of this like big upgrade that we see

01:12:45 ◼   ► every three, four, five years.

01:12:47 ◼   ► I think we saw it when they went unibody,

01:12:48 ◼   ► I think we saw it when they went retina,

01:12:50 ◼   ► and I think we're going to see it again now,

01:12:51 ◼   ► where sort of the underlying technologies

01:12:53 ◼   ► that we've had for a long time, for several years now,

01:12:56 ◼   ► are, it's time to get those changed out.

01:12:59 ◼   ► And I think that's exciting.

01:13:00 ◼   ► I hope that they have some products ready in March.

01:13:04 ◼   ► I think they probably will, I think,

01:13:05 ◼   ► but I do think the iOS is going to be the push,

01:13:08 ◼   ► and maybe this will be a press release type thing.

01:13:10 ◼   ► - I see some rumors, but they're like DigiTimes

01:13:12 ◼   ► kind of rumors, so the batting average isn't fantastic,

01:13:15 ◼   ► but there are rumors that we might see

01:13:17 ◼   ► announcement of like the new MacBook and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Skylake and USB-C

01:13:25 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3 at the March event, but who knows? Who knows whether they, Apple's going to calculate

01:13:31 ◼   ► how they want to communicate that and is that the best place to talk about the Mac or are they

01:13:35 ◼   ► better off kind of targeting? They do, right? We've seen them. They roll products out in all

01:13:40 ◼   ► sorts of ways now. They do briefings and make announcements with press releases and embargo

01:13:45 ◼   ► drops and sometimes they do events. So, you know, maybe they would mention something on

01:13:50 ◼   ► stage in March or maybe they would wait until April or something and then announce it in

01:13:54 ◼   ► some other way. But if those rumors are accurate, then that would be really nice because then

01:13:58 ◼   ► we're seeing the beginning of a wave of Skylake and Thunderbolt 3 Mac updates that would carry

01:14:05 ◼   ► us for the rest of the year, which would be, that would be awesome.

01:14:09 ◼   ► I think so. So I guess we'll see, you know. I might actually, that might be enough to

01:14:14 ◼   ► make me think that the MacBook is a product I might buy someday even though I don't like

01:14:17 ◼   ► the keyboard.

01:14:18 ◼   ► Um, that might be Thunderbolt, the Thunderbolt 3 and the ability to have that kind of, um,

01:14:23 ◼   ► connection speed and power would be intriguing at least.

01:14:27 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:14:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

01:14:29 ◼   ► - Alright, we should do some Ask/Upgrade.

01:14:31 ◼   ► - We should.

01:14:32 ◼   ► - Even though Myke's not here.

01:14:34 ◼   ► That's the first question is where's Myke?

01:14:35 ◼   ► And the answer is in bed.

01:14:36 ◼   ► - Still gone.

01:14:37 ◼   ► - Still gone.

01:14:38 ◼   ► He'll be back next week probably.

01:14:39 ◼   ► Um, he's feeling better.

01:14:40 ◼   ► We just need to get his voice better.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Send him some honey and some lemon and some tea.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Squirt the lemon in his eye, pour the honey on his face,

01:14:49 ◼   ► and splash the tea on his chest.

01:14:52 ◼   ► I think that's how you do it.

01:14:55 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by MailRoute.

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01:16:54 ◼   ► All right, that's a first try at lasers, but uh, it was more like six. That was like a six gun.

01:17:03 ◼   ► that was like an old west shoot them out hey there partner it's time for the lasers

01:17:07 ◼   ► i definitely was doing finger guns as i said it like i'm not ashamed to

01:17:11 ◼   ► okay admit that to lots of lots of people those were six shooters not lasers i'm just letting you

01:17:15 ◼   ► know so well reload them it's different here in the south jeff asks will apple release an ipad

01:17:22 ◼   ► air 3 keyboard at launch um wow well if they've got a smart connector there's got to be something

01:17:31 ◼   ► attached to it right why would they put a smart connect the rumor is that

01:17:34 ◼   ► there'll be a smart connector on the iPad Air 3 why would you do that and

01:17:37 ◼   ► have no no accessories for it so I'm going to say yes I wonder what that will

01:17:43 ◼   ► be I wonder how you can do that because it can't be a full-sized keyboard for

01:17:47 ◼   ► that but maybe instead they'll do something just thinking off the top of

01:17:51 ◼   ► my head maybe they'll have a partner something like the logitech create

01:17:54 ◼   ► keyboard maybe they'll have a partner perhaps even logitech that has a keyboard

01:17:58 ◼   ► that you sort of snap into a case and it's a full-size keyboard and you put the Air 3

01:18:03 ◼   ► in it, maybe a Create 4 iPad Air 3, because the problem is if you do it as a cover, it's

01:18:10 ◼   ► not going to be a full-size keyboard because the iPad Air is smaller than the iPad Pro,

01:18:15 ◼   ► so the keyboard has to be smaller. So that would be, if I had to predict, that's what

01:18:19 ◼   ► my prediction would be, is that they'll work with a partner instead.

01:18:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I tend to agree.

01:18:24 ◼   ► I think the width issue is the only thing that really

01:18:29 ◼   ► breaks this smaller smart keyboard down for me.

01:18:32 ◼   ► Where the iPad Pro smart keyboard is pretty nice to type on

01:18:36 ◼   ► because you have the width of a regular keyboard,

01:18:39 ◼   ► but by the time you put the keyboard in it,

01:18:41 ◼   ► you have all the stuff that goes around it,

01:18:43 ◼   ► and you got to fold it up and everything,

01:18:45 ◼   ► it's going to be a little squished.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Apple made such a big deal about this is a full-size

01:18:49 ◼   ► keyboard, they always push that language.

01:18:52 ◼   ► be weird for them to say, "Oh, this is almost what we usually sell, but it's like 70% the

01:18:58 ◼   ► size. Sorry." Maybe they'll do it, but my guess is that they'll have some other sort

01:19:04 ◼   ► of solution to get around it where the keyboard can be wider than the iPad itself.

01:19:07 ◼   ► - Unless the keyboard unfolds or something. - That'd be very exciting.

01:19:12 ◼   ► - But it seems unlikely. That's my feeling. But thanks, Jeff.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Michael not our Michael another Michael properly spelled Michael are there any

01:19:24 ◼   ► classic a Mac slash Apple devices you'd love to use again if stuffed with modern

01:19:28 ◼   ► specs and features Wow it's a good one good question I would love even though

01:19:36 ◼   ► the screen would be small I would love a I would love a an original iPhone with

01:19:43 ◼   ► modern specs I think that would be amazing because I love the design of the

01:19:48 ◼   ► original iPhone it's got some issues it's got some compromises but I do love

01:19:53 ◼   ► it so that would be something I would try I do have a fourth generation iPod

01:19:57 ◼   ► that I installed a flash drive in so it's got you know huge capacity and

01:20:02 ◼   ► doesn't make any you know spinning up noises and vibrations or anything like

01:20:06 ◼   ► that because it's entirely solid state now and that's kind of fun because it's

01:20:09 ◼   ► It's a big iPod, but there's nothing in it.

01:20:12 ◼   ► It's super light.

01:20:13 ◼   ► And in terms of other stuff, I don't know.

01:20:18 ◼   ► My real answer, my non-fantasy answer is

01:20:23 ◼   ► I'd really like my 11-inch MacBook Air to be Retina.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Honestly, yeah.

01:20:28 ◼   ► - You'd like a current computer to be modern.

01:20:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would like my 11-inch MacBook Air.

01:20:34 ◼   ► I don't even need new ports and stuff in it,

01:20:37 ◼   ► and it's got an i7 in it.

01:20:38 ◼   ► a very powerful system. I would love a retina screen in it like that is in the

01:20:43 ◼   ► MacBook. That would be my dream because that would be make it a much better

01:20:47 ◼   ► system if it was just retina. What about you, Steven? For me the the hardware

01:20:52 ◼   ► device that comes to mind almost immediately is the iMac G4. So those

01:20:57 ◼   ► playing along at home, it's not like the Bondi Blue iMac, it was a white like a

01:21:02 ◼   ► like a volleyball cut in half. Yeah, a sawed-off volleyball, yeah. Exactly. And the arm,

01:21:07 ◼   ► there was a chrome arm and an LCD floated above it,

01:21:11 ◼   ► so you could have the display at any angle you wanted to.

01:21:15 ◼   ► I have one of these, unfortunately the neck

01:21:17 ◼   ► has sort of lost its rigidity, so it sort of droops,

01:21:19 ◼   ► but it's still a stunning design,

01:21:21 ◼   ► and the beauty of it is you could do basically anything

01:21:24 ◼   ► with it that was comfortable for you,

01:21:26 ◼   ► so people used it real down low and hunched over,

01:21:28 ◼   ► so people brought it all the way up,

01:21:30 ◼   ► and it was just really flexible,

01:21:31 ◼   ► someone could sit down next to you

01:21:32 ◼   ► and you could basically just push the edge

01:21:34 ◼   ► of the display away from you, and it would pivot over,

01:21:36 ◼   ► so you could show your deskmate or something

01:21:38 ◼   ► what you were working on.

01:21:39 ◼   ► - Huh.

01:21:40 ◼   ► - It was a really, just a great looking machine,

01:21:43 ◼   ► and one that I think would be,

01:21:46 ◼   ► I think it'd be fun to have a modern equivalent to it,

01:21:48 ◼   ► because a G4, not so modern anymore.

01:21:51 ◼   ► - No.

01:21:52 ◼   ► - I did have one other answer though.

01:21:54 ◼   ► I'm gonna take the spirit of Michael's question

01:21:56 ◼   ► and apply it to software.

01:21:57 ◼   ► I think that HyperCard would be

01:21:59 ◼   ► really great to bring back,

01:22:02 ◼   ► and HyperCard did a bunch of things.

01:22:04 ◼   ► We'll put a Wikipedia link in the show notes

01:22:06 ◼   ► so you can kind of read up on it.

01:22:08 ◼   ► But HyperCard was the place that so many people

01:22:12 ◼   ► first learned about programming.

01:22:13 ◼   ► And not in the sense that you're sitting down

01:22:15 ◼   ► and writing code, but in the way that I have this data

01:22:17 ◼   ► and I need to manipulate it this way.

01:22:19 ◼   ► I need it to trigger something else over here

01:22:22 ◼   ► and build this thing for me here.

01:22:23 ◼   ► And the ability to link things together

01:22:26 ◼   ► was really revolutionary for a lot of people, I think.

01:22:30 ◼   ► and it, you know, Automator has some of that spirit in it

01:22:35 ◼   ► where you can get into Automator, do some of this,

01:22:36 ◼   ► of course, AppleScript has a lot of this in it as well,

01:22:39 ◼   ► but the HyperCard interface and the way that it was

01:22:42 ◼   ► put together, I think, just really clicked

01:22:44 ◼   ► with so many people who are admittedly older than I am,

01:22:47 ◼   ► but made a big difference in a lot of people's

01:22:51 ◼   ► like computing experience and I think got a lot of people

01:22:55 ◼   ► hooked into sort of programming

01:22:56 ◼   ► and making the computer work for them,

01:22:58 ◼   ► And I think that the Mac, and I think especially iOS,

01:23:01 ◼   ► could benefit from something like this,

01:23:02 ◼   ► where you could go in and create little programs

01:23:04 ◼   ► and do a little bit of development work

01:23:07 ◼   ► to solve a problem that only you have,

01:23:10 ◼   ► but in a way that's not at all, I guess, intimidating.

01:23:14 ◼   ► You know, if I think about learning how to write an app,

01:23:18 ◼   ► it's really intimidating to think about,

01:23:19 ◼   ► and HyperCard sort of had a real low barrier to entry.

01:23:22 ◼   ► I think that was a pretty unique combination of things.

01:23:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, there have been a lot of attempts

01:23:28 ◼   ► to create a hypercard for the web,

01:23:31 ◼   ► which, or a cloud hypercard, a hypercard web app,

01:23:37 ◼   ► and I don't know, I mean, this is, it's interesting,

01:23:40 ◼   ► the idea of something, you could argue in some ways

01:23:43 ◼   ► that the web is kind of hypercard-y,

01:23:45 ◼   ► but it's too complicated as it is.

01:23:47 ◼   ► So, yeah, and if you search, you can see

01:23:51 ◼   ► lots of think pieces over the last five years

01:23:53 ◼   ► saying the web needs a hypercard,

01:23:55 ◼   ► iPad needs a hypercard. But you know, having, there is power to having something that just

01:24:01 ◼   ► comes on your device that lets you, especially if you're a kid, like, create some really

01:24:07 ◼   ► basic, often kind of dumb stuff, the equivalent of what I did on my Apple II of, you know,

01:24:11 ◼   ► 10 print "Hello, 20, go to 10." "Oh, look, it says hello a lot forever until you break

01:24:17 ◼   ► the program." But you need, you should have something like that. And so yeah, that's a

01:24:22 ◼   ► Cool idea, that's definitely something that would be fun,

01:24:25 ◼   ► if you could use your magic wand,

01:24:27 ◼   ► create a modern HyperCard somewhere.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Justin asks, "How do the speakers on the iPad Pro

01:24:35 ◼   ► "compared to the speakers in Mac laptops?"

01:24:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, actually, last night,

01:24:42 ◼   ► played the same song on my iPad Pro,

01:24:44 ◼   ► and then I have the 15-inch MacBook Pro,

01:24:46 ◼   ► but the speaker modules are basically the same.

01:24:50 ◼   ► Only the 15-inches have a grill.

01:24:51 ◼   ► Anyways, I digress.

01:24:53 ◼   ► I will say the Mac speakers are still better,

01:24:56 ◼   ► but not by much.

01:24:57 ◼   ► The iPad Pro is world better,

01:25:00 ◼   ► both in terms of volume and clarity

01:25:03 ◼   ► than any other iOS device.

01:25:05 ◼   ► They're really giving the laptops a run for their money.

01:25:09 ◼   ► It's interesting, the iPad Pro, if you're not familiar,

01:25:12 ◼   ► has speakers on both ends of it.

01:25:14 ◼   ► So if you're in landscape,

01:25:16 ◼   ► and it's like watching something on Netflix,

01:25:19 ◼   ► The sound sort of comes from everywhere around you.

01:25:23 ◼   ► It's really pretty great.

01:25:24 ◼   ► - And the stereo effect is really noticeable.

01:25:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's so much better than what we have now on iPads,

01:25:30 ◼   ► on other iPads, but it was sort of funny,

01:25:32 ◼   ► sitting on the couch the other night

01:25:33 ◼   ► watching something on Netflix,

01:25:34 ◼   ► and my wife was like, "That seems loud."

01:25:37 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, yeah, because generally,

01:25:38 ◼   ► "like the way I sat on the couch,

01:25:40 ◼   ► "the speaker would fire towards the back of the couch,

01:25:43 ◼   ► "like just the way I was holding my iPad

01:25:44 ◼   ► "and the way I was sitting,

01:25:45 ◼   ► "and now it kind of comes out from both sides."

01:25:47 ◼   ► And it was sort of just a funny little example

01:25:49 ◼   ► of how the iPad Pro speakers have changed.

01:25:52 ◼   ► It's definitely a huge improvement,

01:25:56 ◼   ► and I would say if they're not already as good

01:25:57 ◼   ► as the Notebooks, the MacBook Pros,

01:26:00 ◼   ► it's definitely neck and neck at this point, I think.

01:26:04 ◼   ► - And I only have MacBook Airs in this house,

01:26:06 ◼   ► and it's better than those.

01:26:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, the MacBook Air speaker is not very good.

01:26:10 ◼   ► - No.

01:26:11 ◼   ► - I will say the MacBook, the little one,

01:26:13 ◼   ► and my wife has one, the speakers in that thing

01:26:15 ◼   ► are really good, especially considering the size.

01:26:18 ◼   ► better than the Air.

01:26:18 ◼   ► You know, the Air speaker's actually like,

01:26:21 ◼   ► inside the aluminum case, and they like fire

01:26:23 ◼   ► through the case, and it's kind of strange.

01:26:24 ◼   ► But anyways.

01:26:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, up through the keyboard or something, it's weird.

01:26:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, it's so close to being a direct line,

01:26:32 ◼   ► but not so much.

01:26:34 ◼   ► - Alright, one last question, yeah.

01:26:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, hmm.

01:26:37 ◼   ► Chris wants to know, what is your perfect pizza?

01:26:42 ◼   ► - Well, my perfect pizza has gluten in it, Steven,

01:26:44 ◼   ► I'll tell you that.

01:26:45 ◼   ► - And dairy.

01:26:46 ◼   ► - And dairy.

01:26:47 ◼   ► - That's a sad, sad question for me.

01:26:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, ouch.

01:26:50 ◼   ► Sorry to bring it up.

01:26:53 ◼   ► My perfect pizza, I don't know, I'll say homemade dough

01:26:57 ◼   ► 'cause I make my own pizza dough and I do like it.

01:27:01 ◼   ► And I'd say my perfect pizza is,

01:27:04 ◼   ► oh, Joe Steele is in the chat room, I hope, right now.

01:27:07 ◼   ► My favorite pizza is pepperoni and pineapple.

01:27:10 ◼   ► And so I would, that would be it.

01:27:12 ◼   ► It would be pepperoni and pineapple pizza.

01:27:14 ◼   ► I love it.

01:27:15 ◼   ► And it's perfect, and that would really be it.

01:27:18 ◼   ► That would be my perfect pizza.

01:27:20 ◼   ► John Siracusa would, at this point, say, "That's not a pizza.

01:27:23 ◼   ► I don't care.

01:27:24 ◼   ► That would be my perfect pizza."

01:27:25 ◼   ► Ah, I miss pizza.

01:27:28 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, and you can't...

01:27:30 ◼   ► The thing is, you could get a gluten-free crust that would probably be okay.

01:27:35 ◼   ► They're terrible.

01:27:36 ◼   ► But then, they're, "Well..."

01:27:39 ◼   ► But the cheese would make it all better, but you can't have the dairy either.

01:27:42 ◼   ► It's true.

01:27:43 ◼   ► And vegan cheese is the worst.

01:27:45 ◼   ► So I have not found a single one that is edible.

01:27:48 ◼   ► So I've just given it up.

01:27:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, so your perfect pizza is one full of gluten

01:27:53 ◼   ► and dairy that you can digest.

01:27:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:27:56 ◼   ► - A dream pizza, if you will.

01:27:58 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:28:00 ◼   ► If I had a different body, then I could eat pizza again.

01:28:02 ◼   ► But I don't.

01:28:04 ◼   ► - Oh well, maybe virtual reality can help.

01:28:06 ◼   ► I don't know how that would be.

01:28:08 ◼   ► - What are you looking forward to in VR?

01:28:10 ◼   ► Baking, eating pizza.

01:28:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, 10 virtual pizza, that's it.

01:28:13 ◼   ► That's the answer, we solved it.

01:28:14 ◼   ► - That seems like a good place to end the show.

01:28:16 ◼   ► - I feel like it is.

01:28:17 ◼   ► Thank you for filling in for Myke.

01:28:19 ◼   ► This, at the last minute, we appreciate it.

01:28:21 ◼   ► We both hoped that Myke would be better today,

01:28:24 ◼   ► and he's better, but he's not good enough yet.

01:28:28 ◼   ► Thanks for being on.

01:28:30 ◼   ► - It's always fun.

01:28:31 ◼   ► - I will talk to you again later,

01:28:34 ◼   ► because we're gonna do a lift-off.

01:28:37 ◼   ► We do a podcast called Lift-Off.

01:28:38 ◼   ► It also posts on Mondays every other week,

01:28:41 ◼   ► And so if you're interested in space stuff,

01:28:44 ◼   ► you should listen to that podcast,

01:28:45 ◼   ► because it's pretty good, and Steven and I do it.

01:28:48 ◼   ► - It's true, and this next episode is gonna be special.

01:28:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm gonna go visit a NASA facility,

01:28:54 ◼   ► and then I will report back next week about it.

01:28:57 ◼   ► - Gonna be the reporter in the field.

01:28:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, apparently so, that's pretty exciting.

01:29:00 ◼   ► They're not shooting me into space or anything, though.

01:29:02 ◼   ► I'm just gonna go be on the ground.

01:29:04 ◼   ► Keep my feet on the ground.

01:29:05 ◼   ► - You weren't copied on that email?

01:29:06 ◼   ► - No, no.

01:29:08 ◼   ► - Keep my mouth shut.

01:29:09 ◼   ► - Okay, well, that's a really special episode then.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Alright, well, so thanks to everybody out there for listening to Upgrade.

01:29:14 ◼   ► You can of course send us feedback on Twitter.

01:29:17 ◼   ► We are @_upgradefm.

01:29:20 ◼   ► You can use the hashtag #askupgrade.

01:29:22 ◼   ► I am @jsnell on Twitter.

01:29:24 ◼   ► Myke is @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:29:27 ◼   ► Steven is @ismh, so you can find him there.

01:29:31 ◼   ► And you can of course read all about us at relay.fm/upgrade/75 or in your podcast.

01:29:37 ◼   ► I have a choice for the show notes.

01:29:39 ◼   ► And that's about it. Thanks to our sponsors, Casper, FreshBooks, and MailRoute. And we

01:29:44 ◼   ► will see you next week. Say goodbye, Stephen Hackett.

01:29:47 ◼   ► Adios.

01:29:47 ◼   ► us.

01:29:54 ◼   ► [Music]

01:30:01 ◼   ► [Music]