71: Muffingate
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From relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 71. Today's show is brought to you by MailRoute and Fizzle.
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My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr Jason Snow.
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Hello Mr Myke Hurley, how are you?
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I'm very well sir, how are you?
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Doing, uh, doing fine. It's a, uh, it's a, it's a Monday morning here in San Francisco as always.
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It's a dark Monday evening here in London, as always.
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This is our Monday, this is our kickoff.
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People listen anytime they want, but for us, this is how the--for me, this is how the week
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gets started, which is exciting.
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It focuses the mind.
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Upgrade your mind.
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We don't have a lot of follow-up this week because it's been completely dominated by
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Muffin Gate.
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We have a lot of muffin-related follow-up.
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It was funny when I was going through the Ask Upgrade questions for this week.
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I said, "There's not a lot of Ask Upgrade," because it was all muffin-related.
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There was no, there were very few actual questions like usual. It's all just muffins.
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I want to just say, so I'll put a couple of tweets in the show notes.
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Some people eat in muffins, some people showing us them in supermarkets.
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I think this is one of those things where the United States of America has twisted my understanding of my own country.
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Because it seems that everybody else knows what a muffin is and everybody else thinks of muffins as these.
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I maintain that the average person on the street in the United Kingdom, if you say to them, "What's a muffin?"
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They would say, "The chocolate chip muffin kind." Right? I- I- I- that's just how I feel. That's how I feel.
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But what has been proven to me is that muffins run rife in this fair land.
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And they are the Egg McMuffin kind.
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Have you seen the muffin top episode of Seinfeld yet?
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No, not yet.
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Oh, that's- that's- that's the American kind of muffins.
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Yeah, because that's what I think of. Chocolate chip muffins, blueberry muffins.
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Yep. But it turns out what we in America call the English muffin is indeed what people in
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Britain call muffins. And we actually had several people take pictures of muffins in
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stores to assure us that they are, as Wikipedia said, available in every store.
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I still say that that is incorrect. There are people that have contacted us and they
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are basically stating that fact, I still say that that is statistically an incorrect fact.
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We don't have any evidence, we haven't received photos from all the stores.
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That's what I want now, okay? People of the UK, I want photos in all of the stores.
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All the great stores. So yes, but they're apparently a kind of muffin, are these little
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flat things that are not quite crumpets, but apparently based on crumpets and baked.
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Well, crumpets are thicker and more spongy.
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Yeah. Yeah. That's, that sounds like it. And that's what we in America call the English
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muffin, and those are widely available in the United States. And that's what I have
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for breakfast many mornings, is the English muffin. So the answer is, yes, English muffins
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are available in England and they're called muffins, but it's a bit confusing because
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you have other things that you also call muffins that are what we call muffins here.
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And they're not called like America muffins or anything like that.
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No. And the Egg McMuffin came up, which I thought was like a good precedent that neither
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of us failed to set. I've eaten food at McDonald's. I don't know how long it's been since I've
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eaten food at a McDonald's. So it just doesn't come up. But yes, Egg McMuffin is a McDonald's
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meal where it's what, an egg and ham? And it's inside a...
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I think it's sausage meat.
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No, or sausage, something like that. And it's egg and meat, and then it's in between the
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sides of the English muffin.
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So the funny thing is, like even in the McDonald's here, you can get an Egg McMuffin and a muffin,
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they're both called the same thing, they're both muffins. I feel like I need to add muffins
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to my shopping list now to eat for breakfast just so I can fully indoctrinate myself in
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something that everybody else seems to know so much about.
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Yeah, you toasted. I'm surprised that we didn't get more commentary on the fact that I said
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that I toasted and put peanut butter and jelly on it.
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Why is that bad?
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Because nothing, well, nothing makes the internet judge you more than when you express a preference
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for food and especially, I've learned because peanut butter is my favorite food that lots
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of parts of the world consider peanut butter a monstrous invention and so I rarely can
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mention peanut butter on Twitter without somebody complaining that peanut butter is a horrible
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thing and why would anybody eat it.
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Because it's poison.
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I'm still standing, Myke.
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Poison for me.
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It makes me stronger.
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A peanut butter muffin, Jason, would kill me dead.
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Oh, it's so good.
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Sometimes I just have the peanut butter on it.
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Yeah, I would die, I think.
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So it's the best with some tea. So anyway, that's sometimes my breakfast. Not always.
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Sometimes it's a yogurt. Sometimes it's cereal. I had cereal this morning. I'm not big into
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cereal, but I had no English muffins this morning. So cereal it was. The cat loves it
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when I have cereal because I let the cat have the milk at the bottom of the bowl.
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Oh man, that's the best part of the cereal. You must love your cat.
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Yeah, I decided that I wasn't getting enjoyment out of it and that I thought that the cat
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might and it turns out now the cat like when I come back without the cereal bowl
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he is you could I pay attention he is notably paying attention to me and then
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is sad or at least stops paying attention to me and when I bring the
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cereal bowl back he he keep he plays it cool for a while and then eventually he
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like stands up and moves closer to me and sits like sits upright on the bed
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looking at me and I think oh yeah here we are gotta wait for it I'm not gonna
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rush myself here, Kat. But anyway, hopefully we'll get some new English muffins in and
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then I can go back to that for my breakfast. I also mentioned in passing, sort of jokingly,
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the Australian toaster biscuit, which was hilarious because I got a whole bunch of Australians
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who are very upset because they have no idea what an Australian toaster biscuit is. So
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we'll put a link in the show notes. It was a product made by a company called Oroweat
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in the United States marketed as the Australian toaster biscuit. I suspect it's kind of like
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a crumpet. We did buy them. They're softer and butterier and spongier than English muffins.
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They're no longer sold. They died. They had their ad campaign. The link in the show notes
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will have an amusing TV commercial for them. But what I need to explain to Australians
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is that they – Australia, you don't understand. Americans consider anything Australian to
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be exotic. Basically, you can slap a koala on some shampoo and it is now just magical
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Aussie shampoo. Crazy. Put a boomerang and a didgeridoo on a mediocre steak restaurant
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and now it's very exciting. These are things that we do in America. So just know that we
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We call lots of things Australian for no good reason because it's just exotic and exciting
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to have things that are Australian in the United States.
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Don't ask me why.
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I don't understand it.
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Usually the reaction to foreign things in the United States tends to be to recoil and
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run away but not Australian things.
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No you put that koala on something or a kangaroo, it's over.
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You gotta understand that, and that's the story of the Australian toaster biscuit. They're
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crumpets, and then aren't made anymore, and they weren't Australian. Or perhaps they were,
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because somebody went to Australia and had a crumpet and said, "This is brilliant," and
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brought it back and said, "We've gotta stick a koala on this." But anyway, that's the answer.
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Sorry Australia, we stole things that weren't yours and called them yours, and that's what
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In other important technology news, in our recent Twitter corner that we've had, there
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was some news that came out just after last week's show that Twitter is considering a
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10,000 character limit for tweets.
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The implementation of this currently is a little bit up in the air, like what people
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believe it's going to be.
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Yeah, and that's a key.
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Yeah, exactly.
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But I think the general consensus will be that it will be the original tweet and then
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the ability to have a longer text or it cuts off off the 140 characters you have to click
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to see more. So this is kind of something in the realm of what we've been asking for
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recently in that it is proof of advancement of the platform right?
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Yeah and it actually feels very much like a lot of the features that Twitter has added
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which are trying to get see how people are using the service and add features that that
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fit with that because, you know, @mentions and hashtags, there's so many things and retweets.
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These are all things that were invented by users and then eventually supported by the
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And although I saw a lot of people saying, "Oh no, Twitter, this is a disaster.
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You should never allow more than 140 characters."
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The fact is that users are already bypassing 140 characters by doing text shots, by posting
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images of text.
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And so obviously people want to attach more text to a tweet, and they're doing it in a
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really bad way because images can't be indexed, they can't be searched, they can't be read
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by a screen reader if you're somebody who has to rely on a screen reader in order to
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read things.
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There are lots of reasons why you would want it as real text and not images.
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So you know, obviously the users want this feature.
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>> So I think that the devil is in the details in how this is implemented because there are
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are many ways that you could do nasty things or peculiar things in this. Like for example,
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you could write a tweet and then have like 10,000 characters of @mentions.
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Yeah, making it easier for people to spam things. I think, I mean I should mention also
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that I wrote a piece on Six Colors about Notes app on the iPhone because this is, it turns
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out, you can't unsee it once you hear this, but it is the most popular way for people
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to do text shots on Twitter.
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And especially when I--
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- That's what I'm on Instagram.
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- Yeah, yeah, see, so it's, and I noticed it a lot for football players, college football
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players in the US when they commit to go to the NFL draft or when they're high school
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players and they're committing to college or things like that.
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A lot of athlete announcements are done this way where they take screenshots.
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- I see what you're saying.
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- They write a note in notes.app and take screenshots of it and then they post that
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It's a thing.
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And then I wrote about this and not four hours later Jack Dorsey posted his thing about how
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Twitter was considering this and his was a screenshot from Notes.
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Which was fantastic, I thought.
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I loved that he actually commented on it, right?
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And basically just saying, "Look, this is where we started.
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We started with it because it was a restriction.
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We loved it, like the 140 characters, but the idea of what people are doing right now
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with these screenshots, like what he's doing, it's not optimal, you know, it can't be searched
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or anything like that."
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They want to evolve the product, they're going to make sure they stay true to the core of
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it, but they want to add more features.
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And I think it's great, and what I really love is that they say we're going to tell
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developers well in advance so they can prepare accordingly.
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Yeah, yeah, that was an interesting little tip of the cap to what we were talking about
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next week, about working with developers on this.
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I'm going to guess that the way they're going to do this, a lot of people just assumed it
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means your tweets are going to be 10,000 characters in length, but I'm going to guess that one
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of two things is going to happen here.
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you will still have a hundred and forty characters for your tweet, but you'll be able to add a text attachment or a read more
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Back in blogging like for if you're using Mars editor or something and you know a lot of blogging systems have like the extended entry field
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Which is essentially you know more of on this after the jump kind of things in the old blog days, right?
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It'll be something like that where basically you can write a tweet
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But you can also attach
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text and that text can be up to 10,000 characters and it shows as a preview that there's more
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text and you have to click to read more or they may just do it where above 140 characters
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you get a warning that it's going to be truncated which is like some of those services like
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Twitlonger do that where and I actually don't like that as much because what you end up
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with is people crafting, they don't craft the first 140.
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They just don't pay attention.
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And they basically say, you know, "Too bad for you.
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If you want to know what this sentence says, click on this link to go to this other service."
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And I hate that.
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So I would rather that Twitter give you a hard limit at 140 and then have this, you
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know, "say more" kind of text attachment.
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And that way, when you're in a Twitter client, whether it's the official Twitter stuff or
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it's a third-party client, what you'll see is just like with a photo attachment or something
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like that, you'll see that there's an attachment to this tweet.
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then you'll need to tap to read more instead of having somebody's tweet flood your timeline.
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I think that's the way to do it. I think that would be good because the fact is people use
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Twitter this way already. Some people, not everybody, not everybody does anything on
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Twitter. Everybody uses the service different, but this is clearly a need where people want
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to express more information on Twitter and they don't want to do it with a tweet storm.
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And I don't really love tweet storms either because then that does fill my timeline with
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with 14 tweets from somebody. I think this is a good combination where the spirit of
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Twitter still exists because the main tweet is 140 characters and then you have the ability
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to express yourself in a way that is searchable and readable by screen readers, indexable
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in all sorts of ways. I think that's a better way to do it.
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I think this would be great if they implemented it in that way, right? Like the idea of you
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write like a title it would be and then you could add the rest but like you just
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know that like they're in two different fields even right so you get your 140
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characters then you get your 10,000 characters and when they come up in a
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little time in a timeline there's a little button that you press and you can
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see more I think that that would be quite nice I wouldn't object to that at
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all yeah I think I think that's the way to do it and we'll see how people use it
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it, right? Because that'll be interesting too, is like style-wise, how do people use
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this? Do they just say, "Hey, check out this thing I wrote," or do they write a headline,
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or do they say, you know, "I had some thoughts about this thing that just happened and here
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they are," and then attach it. It'll be interesting to see how that would evolve too if they do
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this. But I think it's a good move because the text shot thing, it's just, it's a thing.
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It's a real thing where people are trying to... Sometimes they're quoting other sites,
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and that's problematic but not as problematic, but sometimes they are literally just writing
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things and putting them on Twitter. And although I am not a big advocate of that, I'm somebody
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who has a lot of different outlets where I can express myself without putting it on Twitter
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at length, but not everybody does. And I think you're seeing a group of people who want to
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do this and use the service this way. And I think it would be a mistake to do what I
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I see some people do on Twitter and say, "Well, I don't want to do that." So they
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shouldn't let people do that because I think Twitter is at its best when it
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looks at how some of its users are using the service and says, "Oh yeah, we should
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probably support that natively." And that's what they're doing.
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Do you know what this feels like? This feels like an old-school Twitter move and you know who's back?
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Mm-hmm. Yep.
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I think this is great. This is exactly what we're looking for. I think this could be done really well.
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I'd be really interested to see if any, like, websites or bloggers just post their entire articles.
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Yeah, I was seeing this argument about Medium today. There was a discussion about Medium
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and I'm not sure whether it was just happenstance or whether they were seeing each other's posts,
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but it was a bunch of people talking about Medium. And one of the arguments was, you
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know, why would I not set up my own blog and post something on Medium? You know, Medium
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is not my site. I don't own Medium. You know, I don't get the benefits of it. And there
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was an argument that Medium provides you with exposure, but I think the question is, well,
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the web is accessible from everywhere. So is posting on Medium good just because there's
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enough of a social network on Medium where people are looking on Medium to find things
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to read? I don't use Medium that way. I don't know many, any people who do. But maybe, but
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this is an interesting approach for some people where it's like they're not even going to
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have, they have no, a lot of people have no place to post things. They don't. They're
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not bloggers. The place where they get their thoughts out on the internet is Twitter or
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Facebook or Twitter and Facebook and so give it give them a space to do this
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does it it turns a microblog platform which is what Twitter was always sort of
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called into a blogging platform in a way and while I would not choose to have my
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blog be Twitter because again it's not my service they have the content what if
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something happens in the content gets wiped out you know it's it's for me I
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I would be hesitant there, but I'm a bad example here, right?
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The good example is all these people who are trying to get their expressions out
00:17:28
◼
►
to the widest possible audience and their widest audience is on Twitter and they have no other way to do it.
00:17:35
◼
►
Let them express themselves. In fact, they're doing it already just in a bad way. Let them do it in a good way.
00:17:40
◼
►
Let them do it in a better way where it's not gonna clog up everybody's timelines because there's gonna be a way to put it in
00:17:45
◼
►
there as an attachment,
00:17:46
◼
►
But to let them do it and just embrace the fact that this is a way people want to use Twitter if I'm at Twitter
00:17:52
◼
►
I like to find ways that people like Twitter and encourage them to continue to use it that way
00:17:57
◼
►
But it's like oh, yeah, you you all of you future millionaire
00:18:01
◼
►
Athletes want to use Twitter to announce what you're doing. We're gonna make that even easier for you
00:18:06
◼
►
You're not gonna have to use the Apple Notes app anymore
00:18:08
◼
►
It's like it for me if I wanted to post something somewhere
00:18:12
◼
►
I would want to post it on Twitter rather than Medium if I was going to post something
00:18:16
◼
►
like this somewhere because Twitter for me feels more like my home on the internet than
00:18:21
◼
►
Medium does. Like, it's where I talk, it's where I go.
00:18:27
◼
►
You have more followers on Twitter than on Medium, right? That's the reality of it,
00:18:32
◼
►
is most people have more followers on Twitter than Medium. Because who has followers on
00:18:37
◼
►
on Medium, unless you're one of these brands that's posting on Medium, and even then,
00:18:43
◼
►
are people really checking their Medium list, or are they checking Twitter?
00:18:47
◼
►
For the posts that people link to on Medium, you're on Twitter to find links that people
00:18:52
◼
►
send to Medium and other places. One last thing I find quite interesting about this
00:18:57
◼
►
is Ev Williams, CEO of Medium, is on the Twitter board. And this is clearly a shot at Medium.
00:19:04
◼
►
I think so, although who knows?
00:19:06
◼
►
there's a... And the Notes app. Yeah, and then we're coming for you Notes.app. I don't know,
00:19:13
◼
►
it depends on how they do it too, because do they style it kind of not particularly
00:19:18
◼
►
styled? Do they create something that's more kind of medium-like? Do they provide like
00:19:21
◼
►
an API so that blogging services can, you know, feed the text of a post into a text
00:19:27
◼
►
attachment on Twitter so that you could post it at medium and say attach this to Twitter?
00:19:32
◼
►
I don't know what the details are there, but I look at it and think that, you know, if
00:19:40
◼
►
Medium is trying to give people a place to post, and it's pretty and it's got a nice
00:19:43
◼
►
CMS and all of that, yeah, Twitter is a great place for people to post things instead of
00:19:49
◼
►
something like Medium, if they just need a place to put their text.
00:19:52
◼
►
I think it's clear something's happening, and we'll keep our eye on it, because, you
00:19:56
◼
►
know, Jack has basically said they're looking at it, which probably means it's happening.
00:20:01
◼
►
ends the Twitter vertical for this week.
00:20:03
◼
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Should we thank our sponsor?
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I think that's a good idea.
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week's episode of Upgrade.
00:22:12
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I'm so happy the mail bagging is back.
00:22:16
◼
►
Alright, do you want to know something that's not back, something that's going away?
00:22:21
◼
►
I don't, but I know you're going to tell me.
00:22:23
◼
►
The 3.5mm headphone jack.
00:22:25
◼
►
This has been rumbling around for about a month or so.
00:22:31
◼
►
We'd originally planned to talk about it a while ago, but decided not to because Jason
00:22:34
◼
►
got really mad.
00:22:37
◼
►
I believe what I said is these rumors are too early, and there's no point in me getting
00:22:42
◼
►
really angry about something that Apple hasn't done. And that may happen today too, but it
00:22:49
◼
►
feels like there's at least more evidence that this may happen. The rumblings are confirming
00:22:57
◼
►
rather than denying that this might happen, so it's probably worth talking about.
00:23:03
◼
►
So, in the last week there's been a bunch of stories, but I guess the most interesting
00:23:07
◼
►
one is one posted over Fast Company. And the Fast Company article to many people, and I
00:23:14
◼
►
think I feel this way too, feels like one of those anonymous sources inside of Apple
00:23:20
◼
►
articles. It's very much along the lines of like, "This is gonna happen. We had a person
00:23:26
◼
►
say it." And...
00:23:28
◼
►
It doesn't feel like an Apple source to me. It feels like a Cirrus Logic source to me.
00:23:34
◼
►
That's the company prominently named in this story by Mark Sullivan, who I, disclaimer,
00:23:39
◼
►
I worked with Mark, he was an editor at PC World.
00:23:43
◼
►
But that's what it struck me, is that this wasn't necessarily an Apple source, this was
00:23:46
◼
►
a partner source.
00:23:48
◼
►
Because Apple tends to leak from the supply chain and from partners.
00:23:51
◼
►
Well, there's someone is leaking it somewhere.
00:23:55
◼
►
But anyway, there's no smoke about fire and this one really feels like it's heating up.
00:24:00
◼
►
the idea in case you're unaware or would like a summary is that for the iPhone 7 that it
00:24:06
◼
►
will be slimmer and one of the ways that they're going to make it slimmer is by removing the
00:24:09
◼
►
3.5mm headphone jack because it's one of the components that Apple has the least control
00:24:14
◼
►
over and is one of the wider components on the phone and on the inside of the phone as
00:24:19
◼
►
well it's like a little box that goes around the circular port which is taking up a lot
00:24:24
◼
►
of space inside. So one of the ways that they're able to get rid of this and make the well
00:24:28
◼
►
Well one of the ways to make the phone get thinner is to get rid of that port.
00:24:34
◼
►
So if they do this it will obviously cause some issues in that basically every set of
00:24:39
◼
►
headphones you or anybody else on the planet owns will not work with your iPhone unless
00:24:44
◼
►
it is bluetooth or what is starting to happen now, lightning.
00:24:49
◼
►
And so this is kind of where we're at right now and there's many things to discuss.
00:24:53
◼
►
But Jason, I want to ask you first and foremost, do you think this is going to happen?
00:24:58
◼
►
JASON HARRIS I would say I think it's increasingly likely,
00:25:03
◼
►
but I don't think that the reports we've seen so far are quite strong enough for me
00:25:11
◼
►
to be completely resigned to it yet.
00:25:14
◼
►
I feel like, um, the-- although there was, I think, did 9to5-- I'm not sure if 9to5Mac
00:25:21
◼
►
has done a story that it's gone.
00:25:26
◼
►
They've heard that there's going to be cord-free beats with charging cases and stuff like that
00:25:33
◼
►
ahead of the iPhone 7.
00:25:35
◼
►
Which is an interesting story in its own right in terms of that it's really cord-free, which
00:25:39
◼
►
is one of my big complaints about wireless headphones.
00:25:41
◼
►
But we'll get there.
00:25:43
◼
►
I'd say that again, it is a possibility.
00:25:48
◼
►
I don't feel like super confident about it.
00:25:51
◼
►
The Fast Company report, although it cites specific sources,
00:25:54
◼
►
it cites specific sources saying
00:25:55
◼
►
that there's no headphone jack
00:25:57
◼
►
and there's wireless charging and it's waterproof,
00:26:00
◼
►
which is a lot of detail and it could all be true,
00:26:05
◼
►
but I remain a little bit skeptical of it.
00:26:08
◼
►
There are some sources that are cited in that story
00:26:12
◼
►
that are not quite right,
00:26:14
◼
►
which decreases my confidence a little bit.
00:26:17
◼
►
You know, it's another log on the fire here, but I feel like it's not enough to tick me
00:26:27
◼
►
over into, "Yeah, that's probably happening."
00:26:29
◼
►
Or at least not until it's certainly happening.
00:26:31
◼
►
I feel like it is gonna happen.
00:26:32
◼
►
Well, I think there's a good chance, because we have seen a lot of talk about this, and
00:26:39
◼
►
there hasn't been any kind of counter-argument saying, "No, no, no, that's not actually happening,"
00:26:45
◼
►
which oftentimes you would see, often I think from inside Apple leading out somewhere just
00:26:51
◼
►
to kind of downplay something that isn't going to happen, and we haven't seen anything like
00:26:55
◼
►
that either. So, you know, I think I'd say it's more likely than not, but I don't feel
00:27:00
◼
►
like complete confidence that it's definitely going to happen yet.
00:27:03
◼
►
>> Because one of the things that I think about when looking at this is, and I know
00:27:07
◼
►
you don't like this logic, it's going to happen eventually. The 3.5 million--
00:27:13
◼
►
The sun will expand and swallow the earth eventually too.
00:27:15
◼
►
On an infinite timescale, Jason.
00:27:17
◼
►
But the 3.5mm jack is one of kind of the last bastions to fall.
00:27:22
◼
►
It is an older technology and it's just, nothing's happened to it.
00:27:26
◼
►
It hasn't really changed in many ways.
00:27:29
◼
►
It's kind of dumb, you know, in like the sense of smart and dumb that we have these days.
00:27:33
◼
►
It is kind of a dumb technology.
00:27:35
◼
►
You just plug your headphones into it and that's all it does.
00:27:38
◼
►
And it has to happen at some point that it will go away.
00:27:41
◼
►
It will be replaced.
00:27:42
◼
►
So to be fair, it does also carry your microphone signal and your remote control clicker.
00:27:49
◼
►
But all of that stuff is not like incredibly smart and it's been around like that for a
00:27:53
◼
►
very long time.
00:27:54
◼
►
Like that's been the exact same technology since the original iPhone.
00:27:57
◼
►
There isn't a lot of advancement in that field whilst everything else is advancing.
00:28:02
◼
►
So it has to go away at some point and be replaced.
00:28:06
◼
►
And I think that that time is—may as well be now as any other point.
00:28:12
◼
►
So this is my question for you is, okay, it's been around a long time.
00:28:17
◼
►
Something being around a long time is not in and of itself a reason to get rid of it.
00:28:22
◼
►
There needs to be something that is gained by it.
00:28:24
◼
►
I have really been amused—maybe not amused, maybe amused is not the right word—I've
00:28:30
◼
►
been interested to see how, once these reports started to come out, a lot of people who follow
00:28:34
◼
►
Apple and like Apple products have been saying essentially kill it with fire, we must destroy
00:28:39
◼
►
this port, it is old and must be destroyed. And this question of like why suddenly now
00:28:43
◼
►
is this thing that we've relied on and that is on every set of corded headphones that
00:28:47
◼
►
have essentially that have been made in the world except for a handful of weird headphones,
00:28:55
◼
►
why the sudden need to kill it? What… I don't feel like it has to die, like I don't
00:28:59
◼
►
like it must die but it's like if it's gonna then why not now like we have
00:29:04
◼
►
Bluetooth now Bluetooth headphones are getting better I just got my first pair
00:29:07
◼
►
of Bluetooth headphones and I really like that what I don't like is that they
00:29:10
◼
►
have to be charged right that that is frustrating because you could be out
00:29:13
◼
►
somewhere and they die I still get all sorts of stuttering issues with Bluetooth
00:29:18
◼
►
where things were and and that happened in iOS 8 happens in iOS 9 where things I
00:29:24
◼
►
don't know what it is things get out of sync I have to turn my headphones off
00:29:26
◼
►
and back on to get them to work right. Podcasts stutter, music stutters or stops and then
00:29:30
◼
►
stutters again. I've had it happen in my car the same way. It's like, I don't, I'm not
00:29:35
◼
►
entirely convinced that Bluetooth is reliable enough. It's better than it was. It's a lot
00:29:39
◼
►
better than it was. People who remember it from not syncing properly, having lag and
00:29:44
◼
►
stuff like that, they've, it still does actually have lag, but they built it into the OS. Like
00:29:49
◼
►
if you watch a video with Bluetooth headphones on iOS, it delays the video essentially so
00:29:54
◼
►
so that it syncs with the headphones and it works. It works quite well actually. I used
00:29:58
◼
►
that over the holiday when I was cooking. I had Bluetooth headphones in and iPad playing
00:30:03
◼
►
video worked great. So you know it's got issues. I'm not sure that Bluetooth, I think it's
00:30:08
◼
►
arguable that Bluetooth is good enough. It might be but it's arguable and yes now you
00:30:13
◼
►
need to charge your headphones. But then the other option is lightning headphones. And
00:30:19
◼
►
It's like, alright, you probably don't really gain a lot.
00:30:22
◼
►
I mean, I don't really know if you're gonna get any noticeable change in audio quality.
00:30:28
◼
►
But I think with Lightning headphones, it's just as the headphones as you know them just
00:30:32
◼
►
have a different port.
00:30:34
◼
►
And I really do feel like the majority of people that own iPhones use the headphones
00:30:41
◼
►
that come in the box.
00:30:44
◼
►
So let's set aside the EarPod users, because I agree with you.
00:30:48
◼
►
the majority of people use ear pods with the iPhone.
00:30:53
◼
►
I'm one of those people, like I've just got those Bluetooth ones, but up until then I
00:30:56
◼
►
just used my ear pods.
00:30:58
◼
►
Yeah, the majority of people I would say do that, even though Applebot Beats, which is
00:31:02
◼
►
an entire company whose business is predicated on the idea that they can build headphones
00:31:06
◼
►
with this plug and you can plug them in anywhere, and that is a sizable audience and those people
00:31:10
◼
►
spend money, but, and so that's what we need to talk about here, because I think you're
00:31:15
◼
►
In the premise that if you just use earpods and the earpods that come with your iPhone
00:31:20
◼
►
are lightning, then those people just don't care. It means that their fancy earpods won't
00:31:26
◼
►
plug into their laptop or any other device anywhere, but it does give them earpods that
00:31:32
◼
►
they can use on the iPhone, and so maybe it doesn't matter. But if you think about
00:31:37
◼
►
everybody else, there are so many issues about compatibility because all the old headphones
00:31:44
◼
►
are no longer compatible without a dongle. Any new headphones that get made that are lightning
00:31:48
◼
►
only work without products, so they're not repurposable the other direction,
00:31:52
◼
►
which is problematic. So you've got to buy an adapter. And I think that there are problems
00:31:59
◼
►
with that. I agree that that's just for the group of people who are using third-party headphones,
00:32:04
◼
►
but that's a lot of people. I don't think saying it's not going to bother EarPod users is a good
00:32:11
◼
►
enough argument because I will completely grant that it's not enough for them. But there is this
00:32:15
◼
►
whole market segment that is important. You know, Beats shows it. I think a lot of Apple users are
00:32:20
◼
►
people who care about third-party headphones. And you end up in the situation where, unlike some
00:32:27
◼
►
technology changes where it's painful and Apple does it early and then the world catches up and
00:32:34
◼
►
then eventually it's not painful anymore, this isn't a transition that everybody's making to
00:32:38
◼
►
lightning headphones because lightning is owned by Apple.
00:32:41
◼
►
Nobody else is going to do-- lightning headphones are not going to show up everywhere to the
00:32:45
◼
►
point where now everybody just uses lightning headphones.
00:32:48
◼
►
It's always going to be an Apple thing.
00:32:50
◼
►
And so then you invest in a pair of nice headphones and you either will always need an adapter
00:32:55
◼
►
for your iPhone if they're wired headphones or you will buy lightning headphones and never
00:33:00
◼
►
be able to use them on any other device that isn't an Apple device with a lightning port
00:33:05
◼
►
I think that's problematic.
00:33:07
◼
►
It's not a deal breaker, right, because you can have adapters. It's just, it's not the
00:33:15
◼
►
same as a lot of other transitions where, you know, yes we got rid of Mac, ADB and serial
00:33:23
◼
►
and went to USB, but everybody went to USB so in the end the pain kind of went away.
00:33:28
◼
►
That's not the case here.
00:33:29
◼
►
It's a quick question for you, and we'll get back to this. What happens to Macs? Did I
00:33:35
◼
►
I get lightning bolts on them? Maybe? I don't know and the problem there too is
00:33:40
◼
►
that then so are you then forced to buy an adapter that has a mini jack on it so
00:33:44
◼
►
you can plug in some external speakers? If you're at a yeah yeah I mean if
00:33:49
◼
►
you're at a party with your iPhone and there's a speaker that you can plug into
00:33:54
◼
►
to play or in a conference room or something and you don't have your audio
00:33:57
◼
►
adapter with you you can't plug in your iPhone to the speaker system it's
00:34:02
◼
►
there's a lot of that but yeah the Mac I think that's a real question is
00:34:05
◼
►
what's happening with lightning and if Apple does this and puts lightning on
00:34:09
◼
►
the iPhone lightning is the only audio connector on the iPhone 7 also I have
00:34:14
◼
►
some questions about what that means for the future of lightning because that
00:34:19
◼
►
would seem to me to suggest that lightning will be around for a long time
00:34:22
◼
►
and it's weird because there's also USB C which Apple at least adopted with the
00:34:27
◼
►
with the the MacBook and it's very similar but not the same as lightning so
00:34:33
◼
►
So, how do they get along? Will you see a Macbook that's got Lightning and USB-C on
00:34:39
◼
►
I really don't see Apple mov- 'cause I've heard people mentioning this and considering
00:34:44
◼
►
this. I don't see Apple moving to USB-C on iOS devices. I just don't see it happening.
00:34:49
◼
►
They will be on Lightning for as long as USB-C is around, in my opinion.
00:34:53
◼
►
So do Macs get Lightning ports?
00:34:56
◼
►
I think that they do. I think that they do. If they're gonna start saying, like, the-
00:35:02
◼
►
Because it will mix the message, right?
00:35:04
◼
►
Because when they announce the iPhone 7, they will say that it's the best way to listen
00:35:08
◼
►
to music, is by using the lightning port or Bluetooth.
00:35:12
◼
►
So continuing to have headphone ports on Macs would be kind of weird, I think, in that regard.
00:35:17
◼
►
Or then you have to have like a 3.5mm jack and a lightning port and Bluetooth, right?
00:35:22
◼
►
That's the only way it works.
00:35:24
◼
►
When you think about the keyboard and the trackpad and the mouse all charging via lightning,
00:35:28
◼
►
those are all Mac products that charge via Lightning. You could argue that the writing
00:35:32
◼
►
is on the wall there, that Lightning is coming to the Mac because the peripherals already
00:35:36
◼
►
-- Mac peripherals already have Lightning ports on them.
00:35:39
◼
►
But you can't -- there aren't Lightning-to-Lightning connectors, are there?
00:35:42
◼
►
Not yet, but if there was a Lightning port on the Mac, there would be, right?
00:35:45
◼
►
Then they could -- I don't know if it could -- if it would work, but then you could just
00:35:48
◼
►
have Lightning ports in the plugs as well instead of USB.
00:35:51
◼
►
You could. You could. Or the answer could just be, look, it's USB, and we also sell
00:35:55
◼
►
an audio adapter for USB because USB and Thunderbolt will go out to audio. My audio actually doesn't
00:36:03
◼
►
come from my Mac because I've got this Thunderbolt hub. So the speaker on my desk is fed by the
00:36:09
◼
►
Thunderbolt hub, not from my Mac. So it's already using an adapter.
00:36:12
◼
►
>> Yeah, mine goes through USB as well because I use the pre-to and all my equipment.
00:36:18
◼
►
>> So I did want to mention while we're talking about this that why you make this change,
00:36:25
◼
►
I do think you have to ask the question, "What is gained?" And I think Apple is going to
00:36:29
◼
►
have to sell that. Apple is going to have to say, "Here's why we did it. Here's the benefit."
00:36:33
◼
►
Because if the benefit is, "Well, it's thinner, so we dumped it. Sorry, suckers. That's not
00:36:36
◼
►
good enough." They're going to sell this, right?
00:36:41
◼
►
There'll be some software features that they'll say couldn't have existed otherwise that we
00:36:46
◼
►
don't see yet.
00:36:47
◼
►
I saw some posts this last week where suddenly people were talking about noise cancelling
00:36:54
◼
►
regard to this move and I thought well that's interesting because that seems to
00:36:57
◼
►
have come out of nowhere and I wonder if that is the start of the Apple
00:37:02
◼
►
explanation campaign of like why would you do that but I think you need that I
00:37:07
◼
►
think you need the reasons why like like you said the headphone jack is dumb with
00:37:11
◼
►
something like a lightning connector you could add more stuff outboard you could
00:37:15
◼
►
you could you know because because lightning is configurable you could have
00:37:20
◼
►
have all sorts of things happen in those lightning devices that were smarter than
00:37:24
◼
►
standard headphones can really be with the headphone jack and maybe noise
00:37:28
◼
►
cancellation is part of that. I wonder if you could provide more power so that
00:37:32
◼
►
if you built hardware that needed more power for sensors or microphones or
00:37:36
◼
►
noise cancelling or something. I'm not sure if lightning can provide more power
00:37:39
◼
►
I would assume that it can. So there are probably reasons and Apple's going
00:37:44
◼
►
to need to make that case. Like here's why we did this and why you shouldn't be
00:37:48
◼
►
angry at us because you get benefits by switching to this.
00:37:52
◼
►
Hooray, we're providing all these good things for the user.
00:37:55
◼
►
What we will hear from some people who are already
00:38:00
◼
►
sort of defending this move that hasn't happened yet
00:38:02
◼
►
is stuff that's completely misinformed.
00:38:04
◼
►
And the one that really kills me is that,
00:38:06
◼
►
well, these will be a pure digital connection
00:38:07
◼
►
instead of the analog connection in the headphone jack.
00:38:10
◼
►
And that's completely wrong
00:38:13
◼
►
'cause headphones are fundamentally analog
00:38:15
◼
►
'cause sound is fundamentally analog.
00:38:17
◼
►
All you're really doing,
00:38:18
◼
►
at some point there are wires going to speakers, right?
00:38:20
◼
►
So the question is, audio has to be converted
00:38:23
◼
►
through a digital audio converter, a DAC,
00:38:26
◼
►
and there's a really good DAC in the iPhone.
00:38:29
◼
►
And so you could move the DAC out into the headphones,
00:38:33
◼
►
although that's really expensive,
00:38:35
◼
►
and my understanding is Lightning has
00:38:38
◼
►
an analog audio pass-through already.
00:38:40
◼
►
So presumably, in most cases,
00:38:42
◼
►
you would pass through analog audio
00:38:45
◼
►
from the iPhone out to the headphones anyway.
00:38:47
◼
►
presumably you would do that. So, and even if you didn't, you would still need to convert
00:38:51
◼
►
digital to analog in order to get it in the headphone speakers. So the DAC, the digital
00:39:00
◼
►
to analog converter, is, it has to be a part of the process anyway. So if somebody tells
00:39:06
◼
►
you it's pure digital, until it's like going directly into your brain, I guess your brain
00:39:10
◼
►
isn't even digital, your brain is also analog. So, no, that is not a reason that it's now
00:39:16
◼
►
now not in analog, we're going from analog to digital. It's a bad, bad reason. But there
00:39:19
◼
►
could be good reasons. And I think Apple is going to need to make those cases, because
00:39:23
◼
►
it would be possible to have a much smarter device if you attached it via Lightning.
00:39:28
◼
►
Let's talk about adapters. Yeah.
00:39:32
◼
►
They have to make one, right? Flat out, they have to make one.
00:39:36
◼
►
Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:39:37
◼
►
My feeling would be, you don't put it in the box, because that undermines the change.
00:39:42
◼
►
Most people use ear pods. Yep.
00:39:44
◼
►
They don't need it.
00:39:45
◼
►
Yeah, even if people didn't, right?
00:39:47
◼
►
Even if most people didn't use AirPods, you still don't do it.
00:39:50
◼
►
Because it's like admitting that you made the wrong move, in my opinion.
00:39:54
◼
►
Like if you put an adapter in, it's like saying you still should be living in the past rather
00:40:00
◼
►
than coming with us into the future.
00:40:03
◼
►
Which is why they didn't put any adapters in the MacBook box either, and made you pay
00:40:06
◼
►
$80 for them.
00:40:08
◼
►
But these ones have to be cheap, in my opinion.
00:40:11
◼
►
They just have to be.
00:40:13
◼
►
I've seen speculation.
00:40:14
◼
►
What do you think the Apple lightning to classic audio adapter costs?
00:40:20
◼
►
It should be $5.
00:40:23
◼
►
I was going to, uh, I I'm going to predict 19.
00:40:28
◼
►
Uh, which is lower than I've seen some people predict 29.
00:40:32
◼
►
I'm going to predict 19.
00:40:33
◼
►
I feel like Apple doesn't make any products that are less than $19.
00:40:39
◼
►
But, um, uh, I do agree.
00:40:41
◼
►
It should be cheap.
00:40:42
◼
►
Also, I saw that somebody made a really good point.
00:40:44
◼
►
- Here's one, here's one for you.
00:40:47
◼
►
- Apple make an iPhone micro USB adapter in Europe
00:40:51
◼
►
because they have to.
00:40:53
◼
►
- It's seven pounds.
00:40:54
◼
►
- All right.
00:40:57
◼
►
- Well, the old, let me rephrase that.
00:40:59
◼
►
The 30 pin one, seven pounds, and it always was.
00:41:02
◼
►
The lightning one is 15 pounds.
00:41:04
◼
►
- All right, well see--
00:41:05
◼
►
- So it's still cheaper than usual stuff that they do.
00:41:07
◼
►
- 15 pounds though, that's a $20 product, right?
00:41:10
◼
►
- Yeah, yeah.
00:41:11
◼
►
They still do make a £7 one.
00:41:13
◼
►
'Cause yeah, and it was £7 when it came around as well.
00:41:16
◼
►
But then they moved to Lightning.
00:41:18
◼
►
- I think the Lightning adds cost too.
00:41:20
◼
►
I did see something that I wanted to mention,
00:41:22
◼
►
which is it's also how this adapter works,
00:41:25
◼
►
that if it's a rigid adapter that sticks out
00:41:28
◼
►
half an inch or an inch, that's gonna be awful.
00:41:31
◼
►
Just like in your pocket with your iPhone.
00:41:33
◼
►
So I saw somebody-- - So I have a thought
00:41:36
◼
►
- 'Cause I, yeah, I thought the exact same thing.
00:41:38
◼
►
One of the reasons I thought it should be cheap
00:41:40
◼
►
is you buy a bunch of them and you attach them to the headphones and they fix to the
00:41:44
◼
►
headphones. So it's not sticking out of the phone, it sticks out the end of your headphones.
00:41:48
◼
►
Yeah, but still, if it's rigid, then it's sticking out of the, um, it's sticking out
00:41:54
◼
►
of your pocket. Yeah, but so a lot of headphones, like the
00:41:57
◼
►
3.5mm jacks anyway, like on over-the-ear headphones, they're larger, they're quite large.
00:42:02
◼
►
Yeah, but now you've got even more, because you're extending it. I think somebody mentioned
00:42:05
◼
►
the idea of having it be a flexible cable, that it's as small as possible lightning adapter,
00:42:11
◼
►
and then what it comes out with beyond that is flexible instead of just straight. And
00:42:15
◼
►
I think that's a good idea, and I hope that's what this is if Apple makes this, just because
00:42:20
◼
►
it makes it a little less painful for people to use. And I love the idea of having it be
00:42:25
◼
►
cheap enough that you can attach it. I mean, most people don't have eight different sets
00:42:29
◼
►
of headphones, so you attach it to your favorite set and forget it. I think that's perfectly
00:42:33
◼
►
a perfectly reasonable use case and I think a lot of people will do that.
00:42:38
◼
►
Stephen pointed out in the chat room that the MagSafe to MagSafe 2 converter is $9.
00:42:42
◼
►
Yes, that's true. I was actually going to mention that, but that's like a piece of metal.
00:42:47
◼
►
So, it's pretty dumb. But yes, that is the cheapest thing you can buy in the Apple store,
00:42:51
◼
►
And what about what goes in the box now? What goes in the box? Do they go crazy and go Bluetooth
00:42:57
◼
►
or do they put some Lightning EarPods in there?
00:42:59
◼
►
Lightning EarPods. That'll be it.
00:43:00
◼
►
Because this is where that 9 to 5 Mac story comes in, right?
00:43:03
◼
►
Because what it looks like is Apple is developing something called AirPods, which they would
00:43:07
◼
►
be the additional one that you would buy.
00:43:10
◼
►
Like they used to be that in-ear, but it has always been the in-ear AirPods or iPhone or
00:43:15
◼
►
iPod headphones that they've always done.
00:43:18
◼
►
Yeah, so this is the markup.
00:43:20
◼
►
This is the, you can, we'll give you a pair of boring old headphones.
00:43:25
◼
►
I can hear the keynote pitch here, right?
00:43:28
◼
►
It's the, "Well, wired headphones, they get in the way.
00:43:30
◼
►
Look at all these ways that your iPhone headphones get tangled."
00:43:34
◼
►
We made a video of how annoying it is to have the...
00:43:38
◼
►
We got the lady from the Apple Pay commercial back to say, "Oh, no, my headphones have been
00:43:42
◼
►
tangled in the doorknob.
00:43:46
◼
►
But imagine a wireless headphones and everybody will be like, "Yeah, we've seen Bluetooth
00:43:52
◼
►
headphones."
00:43:53
◼
►
And then Tim Cook says, or Phil Schiller or whoever says, "Aha, but they still have a
00:43:56
◼
►
wire because they have a wire that connects the two parts across the back
00:44:00
◼
►
of your your neck or the front of your neck and it's really annoying and it
00:44:03
◼
►
bounces around and makes sound that ruins the sound of your headphones. What
00:44:07
◼
►
if both of the things you stuck in your ears were themselves wireless and not
00:44:11
◼
►
connected to one another? That's what we've done. I think that's what the rumor
00:44:15
◼
►
is from from 9 to 5 and as somebody who's got a set of Bluetooth earbuds
00:44:19
◼
►
I'm totally on board with that because that the wire that connects them is
00:44:23
◼
►
really annoying and it does make noise and it bugs me. So, but then you've got two of
00:44:29
◼
►
these things, you have to keep track of them, don't lose them, you're gonna lose them, and
00:44:33
◼
►
they both have to be charged. So apparently there's a charging case, that's what this
00:44:38
◼
►
thing comes with. Yeah, that has battery in it. You charge the battery in the case, and
00:44:43
◼
►
then you pop them in the case and it charges. Right. I like that as an idea. That's smart.
00:44:46
◼
►
The battery could be quite large really, because it's just a case, and you pop them in there
00:44:50
◼
►
and it charges wirelessly. So whenever you're not using them you don't lose
00:44:53
◼
►
them and they are recharging on the battery that's in the case and then when
00:44:56
◼
►
you get home you plug in the case with the with the air pods in them and they
00:45:02
◼
►
charge. It's smart. That's a very smart idea. And if it charges by
00:45:06
◼
►
lightning all the better. Sure. They're everywhere right? Lightning cables are
00:45:11
◼
►
everywhere in my house. I could just plug them in anywhere because like these new
00:45:15
◼
►
Sennheisers that I've got they charge by mini USB. Yeah. And I only have mini USB
00:45:19
◼
►
ports in like one room. Yeah my blue buds are the same way. Because I just don't
00:45:24
◼
►
have as many requirements for mini-USB as I do Lightning. You can just pull
00:45:30
◼
►
the mini-USB cable out of the BB-8 dock. Not a bad idea. That's what I do to
00:45:37
◼
►
charge mine now. BB-8, I steal the power from BB-8 and charge my headphones. Poor BB-8.
00:45:43
◼
►
Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's a, you know, I think that is an interesting idea and I
00:45:48
◼
►
I think people will lose them, but I would be,
00:45:50
◼
►
I would actually be excited about that,
00:45:53
◼
►
depending on how they sound,
00:45:54
◼
►
because I do wear in-ear headphones,
00:45:56
◼
►
so something that I stick in my ear is not,
00:45:58
◼
►
it's not a problem to me.
00:46:00
◼
►
And when I use the wireless headphones,
00:46:01
◼
►
although I like the fact that they're wireless,
00:46:03
◼
►
they are, that cord that runs between them is not great.
00:46:07
◼
►
I'm not a fan of it.
00:46:08
◼
►
I would love to be rid of it.
00:46:10
◼
►
As somebody who does use third-party headphones
00:46:12
◼
►
with my iPhone all the time to listen to podcasts and stuff,
00:46:15
◼
►
- Yeah, I mean, I'm not thrilled with having
00:46:18
◼
►
to have an adapter for it.
00:46:20
◼
►
And I think that, I actually think one of the big problems
00:46:22
◼
►
here is that it feeds into public perception,
00:46:25
◼
►
negative public perception of Apple.
00:46:26
◼
►
And they're just, it's something you're gonna have
00:46:28
◼
►
to deal with, is public perception of Apple is that Apple
00:46:31
◼
►
likes to ruin the stuff that you own in order to force you
00:46:33
◼
►
to buy new stuff.
00:46:34
◼
►
That's the public perception of Apple.
00:46:35
◼
►
People are still complaining about the conversion
00:46:38
◼
►
from the 30 pin connector to lightning,
00:46:40
◼
►
which I think is unfair because the 30 pin connector
00:46:42
◼
►
was around all the time.
00:46:43
◼
►
if you look at Apple's competitors like Samsung and you see what connectors that they put
00:46:47
◼
►
on their products, they have been all sorts of proprietary connectors that are on a single
00:46:51
◼
►
product and then they're never seen again. And Lightning is much better. 30-pin was around
00:46:57
◼
►
for a long time. Lightning is going to be around presumably for a long time. I think
00:47:01
◼
►
we just said that we think it will be. So I think it's unfair there. I think the defense
00:47:07
◼
►
is a lot weaker with a move like this. I think this feeds into perception that Apple's making
00:47:11
◼
►
all these headphones that are out there obsolete, it's forcing you to buy a dongle if you want
00:47:15
◼
►
to use them. The party scenario I mentioned where there are mini jack plugs everywhere
00:47:21
◼
►
in the world and now you're going to be in a situation like you were with a Mac that
00:47:26
◼
►
doesn't have the right video connector on it where if you don't happen to have your
00:47:30
◼
►
audio dongle with you for your iPhone, you can't plug into that sound system that you
00:47:36
◼
►
were going to plug into. It just it's it's not enough of a reason not to do it but it's
00:47:43
◼
►
worth considering as part of the the math that perhaps Apple's already considered about
00:47:50
◼
►
what do you gain what do you lose and how do you sell it.
00:47:53
◼
►
And I still think it's happening. I still think it's happening.
00:47:59
◼
►
It's a very Apple move it's got all of the forward thinking you know it is it's like
00:48:05
◼
►
a combination of arrogance and forward thinking that is required for this. And Apple's always
00:48:08
◼
►
been very good at this, and Steve Jobs was great at it, which is, we want to drag the
00:48:13
◼
►
world ahead, but the world doesn't want to go. And then you have that moment when
00:48:16
◼
►
I say arrogance, then you have that moment where it's like, well, you know what, they're
00:48:19
◼
►
going to come along with us. Even though they don't like it, they're going to come along
00:48:23
◼
►
with us because we're great. And that's a very Apple move. And it would not surprise
00:48:28
◼
►
me at all if they did it, because even though I can complain about it, and I'm not entirely
00:48:32
◼
►
sure that I believe all of the reports and that it's 100%. From the beginning, it's been
00:48:41
◼
►
very clear, and we talked about this off air a few months ago, that it is a quintessentially
00:48:47
◼
►
Apple thing to do. So on that level, it's like, would Apple do this? Hell yeah, Apple
00:48:53
◼
►
of course would do this. Will they do it? You know, probably, maybe, possibly, but it's
00:49:01
◼
►
It's complicated and how they do it is going to be interesting to see if they do it.
00:49:05
◼
►
How do they sell it?
00:49:06
◼
►
How do they explain it?
00:49:07
◼
►
What are their reasons?
00:49:08
◼
►
Why is this a benefit to users?
00:49:09
◼
►
And then how does the public react to it?
00:49:12
◼
►
It'll be interesting to see if it happens.
00:49:14
◼
►
We've only got like eight months to go.
00:49:18
◼
►
Yeah, that's right.
00:49:21
◼
►
Let the speculation about products to be announced in September begin.
00:49:25
◼
►
Should we do some ask upgrade?
00:49:28
◼
►
I think it's time.
00:49:29
◼
►
I'll warm up the lasers while you tell us about our sponsor.
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◼
►
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creative way. And this is the way that Fizzle will teach you how to build a business. And
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◼
►
you won't be alone in this process either. Fizzle is also a private community for questions
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and answers and feedback from other business owners as well.
00:50:31
◼
►
So here's the deal, Fizzle usually costs $35 a month which adds up to about $420 a year
00:50:37
◼
►
but right now, this is the first time that they've done this, if you sign up before this
00:50:42
◼
►
Friday which is January 15th 2016 you can get a year membership for just $245 rather
00:50:53
◼
►
than $420 which is a fantastic deal.
00:50:55
◼
►
If you want to learn more there's a great video they've got at their homepage at fizzle.co
00:51:02
◼
►
and they have a 2 week trial there too that you can check out.
00:51:05
◼
►
This offer is open to anyone who doesn't want their idea to fizzle out in 2016 and it's
00:51:10
◼
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open for you until Friday.
00:51:12
◼
►
You don't have to do this alone so head to fizzle.co if you want to make some progress
00:51:16
◼
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on your personal business this year.
00:51:18
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►
Thank you so much to Fizzle for supporting this show.
00:51:21
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[imitates air-hissing]
00:51:22
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Ask Upgrade.
00:51:23
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So, with Richard, do you know where your biggest share
00:51:27
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of your audience comes from?
00:51:29
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Is it podcast app, iTunes, or any others?
00:51:31
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And do you use statistics?
00:51:35
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-Well, you are the co-founder of Relay FM,
00:51:38
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so you might want to talk about this, too.
00:51:41
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I did look up the upgrade statistics,
00:51:43
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and for Upgrade Overcast is our number-one client,
00:51:47
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and then after that, it's the podcast app
00:51:51
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►
the iOS podcast app, and then iTunes, and then Pocket Casts. Those are the top four,
00:51:56
◼
►
and those are by far the most substantial four in upgrade history and current. I actually
00:52:02
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►
checked last episode and then also the aggregate for the history of upgrade, and it's basically
00:52:07
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►
So for all of Relay FM, depending on where it's obviously different, it's the same as
00:52:12
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►
those statistics. Like, you look at material, which is our Android show, Overcast is not
00:52:18
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gonna be number one.
00:52:19
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►
I would imagine Pocket Casts does very well there. It does very well.
00:52:23
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The developer of Pocket Casts is on that podcast.
00:52:26
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It's funny, I looked at the incomparable stats
00:52:30
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and on the incomparable podcasts, the podcast app is number one.
00:52:34
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And Overcast I think might be number two. It might be like neck and neck with
00:52:38
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iTunes, but the iOS podcast app is number one.
00:52:41
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And I'm not surprised because that is a more general interest
00:52:45
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►
show. It's not just for Apple nerds, even though Apple nerds are my audience. And so
00:52:52
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that's sort of where it started and so many of my panels audience too, but it's grown
00:52:55
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►
and changed since then. And you know, not all Apple nerds are interested in pop culture
00:52:59
◼
►
stuff and there are other pop culture people who are interested in that show that aren't
00:53:03
◼
►
Apple nerds. So for that it's the podcast app. But it is amazing. And I would not be
00:53:09
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►
surprised if this is generally true, maybe not as extreme as it is for us, but generally
00:53:13
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►
true that the Apple podcast app is on iOS is the number one because it's on
00:53:18
◼
►
every iPhone and the iPhone is huge and Google has not yet you know even when
00:53:24
◼
►
Google Music assumes all podcasts bodily into heaven it's not going to be a
00:53:30
◼
►
podcast app right it's going to be a an app called Google Music and so I feel
00:53:35
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►
like Android still is not doing podcasts right until there's a thing called
00:53:41
◼
►
podcasting, you know, a podcast app that is on the deck of every Android phone. So it's
00:53:47
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►
not surprising to me that the iOS podcast app is sort of number one in a lot of places.
00:53:51
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►
Do you use stats?
00:53:52
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►
>> Oh, yeah, of course I do. I have to.
00:53:55
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>> Yeah, I mean, we tell our advertisers actually how many people, you know, download, how many
00:54:00
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►
downloads the shows get, and that's important. And podcast stats are a thorny subject that
00:54:05
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►
perhaps we will never get into here, but if we do, it'll be another time. But it is difficult
00:54:10
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►
measure podcasts. There are unique things about podcasting that make it not like other forms of
00:54:16
◼
►
media or not like forms of web media because you can't measure exactly what people listen to. Now,
00:54:23
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if you're somebody like Marco or if you're Russell with Pocket Casts and you make an app where people
00:54:29
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►
listen, they could, and I'm not saying they do, I'm not sure what they measure. - Or that they should.
00:54:35
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- Yeah, I'm not saying they should, but they could if they wanted to, and Apple could do this,
00:54:39
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►
and who knows again if they're doing it or not, measure what actually gets played,
00:54:44
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►
how long you listen to it, when you stop it, and you could get some very different statistics
00:54:49
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►
about it. But from the perspective of the provider of the content, when you download
00:54:56
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►
the file, that's it. Unless you're on a web page and you're sort of scrubbing around
00:55:01
◼
►
and listening to it because then you can actually look at the web server if you've got sophisticated
00:55:05
◼
►
stats and see sort of like when the web client is sort of streaming the file and where in
00:55:11
◼
►
the file it's seeking and pulling down data. But if you're on an app, the app just downloads
00:55:15
◼
►
the MP3. It downloads it and that's it. And then you never see anything more unless somebody
00:55:21
◼
►
clicks through to a link in the show notes. And guess what? People don't click through
00:55:24
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►
links in the show notes, mostly. So basically it's just a mystery. All we know is that the
00:55:29
◼
►
MP3 got downloaded. We don't know if it got listened to. We don't know if it got redownloaded
00:55:33
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►
somewhere else we don't know so it's it's an interesting thing very different
00:55:37
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►
from the web where you know like every single click that happens yeah our
00:55:41
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►
statistics come from our host our audio host which is Libsyn yes where yeah and
00:55:47
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►
I and I I use Libsyn for the main comparable show and the rest of them I
00:55:51
◼
►
don't but I have the RSS feed runs through feed press which has a podcast
00:55:58
◼
►
stats add-on. So that's where I get my non-main-show incomparable stats to.
00:56:06
◼
►
Solomon has a similar question. It goes like this, "AAC is ubiquitous and
00:56:11
◼
►
superior to MP3 at low bit rates, but you choose MP3 for podcasts. I'm curious as
00:56:16
◼
►
to why." For me, it's simply because not all devices can play AAC and we used to
00:56:21
◼
►
get lots of complaints from people that used Android devices, so I decided when
00:56:26
◼
►
we started Relay FM that we would be using MP3 because it is more widely
00:56:30
◼
►
accepted and used. Yeah and it may be that in you know that in 2016 this is
00:56:37
◼
►
not true anymore AAC may play everywhere but it certainly didn't used to and I
00:56:44
◼
►
would go back to our argument about why do you get rid of the headphone jack and
00:56:50
◼
►
and say, "Okay, we've got a format that plays everywhere."
00:56:55
◼
►
Like literally, it's like any device
00:56:59
◼
►
that's capable of playing audio can play an MP3 practically.
00:57:01
◼
►
It is such a broadly supported format.
00:57:05
◼
►
So if we're gonna switch to something like a AC,
00:57:07
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►
what do we get out of it?
00:57:08
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►
And Solomon says, "Superior at low bit rates."
00:57:13
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►
What I would say to that is,
00:57:15
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►
for spoken audio at the bit rates
00:57:18
◼
►
we export our files. 96 kilobytes per second. I do 64 for incomparable 64 mono and it's fine.
00:57:27
◼
►
I would say at the bit rates for spoken audio it doesn't matter. And even if the AAC at that
00:57:34
◼
►
bit rate would be superior you probably wouldn't lower the bit rate and it's just there's no gain
00:57:39
◼
►
to be made there. And it used to be the argument was the AAC had had chapter support and MP3 didn't
00:57:45
◼
►
but MP3 does actually have chapter support now and clients are increasingly supporting
00:57:50
◼
►
it including Overcast which is our number one and so yeah that's the reason there's
00:57:56
◼
►
no reason to switch because it will lead to more potential incompatibilities and the fact
00:58:02
◼
►
that it might sound slightly better and it probably doesn't sound better for spoken
00:58:07
◼
►
words like the stuff we do it's just not worth it.
00:58:11
◼
►
Jon would like to know do you guys still use specific RSS feed apps or just social apps
00:58:15
◼
►
like twisted to keep up with news. Jason? I'm on the record about this. I don't
00:58:21
◼
►
use RSS feed apps. I have never really reliably used RSS feed apps. Even when I
00:58:26
◼
►
was using NetNewsWire I didn't open it a lot of the time. So I've always been a
00:58:30
◼
►
bad RSS user. I'm still a bad RSS user. The number one way I read in a feed at
00:58:37
◼
►
this point is Nuzzle, which I've written about. It's great. It aggregates links
00:58:43
◼
►
from Twitter and Facebook and puts them on a page, a web page for if you're on a Mac
00:58:50
◼
►
and there's a nice app if you're on iOS and it uses your Twitter account but you can also
00:58:55
◼
►
see feeds from that other people are following. If you have Twitter lists it'll generate story
00:58:59
◼
►
lists based on that and it looks like a news reader. It's a socially powered news reader
00:59:04
◼
►
so it's showing you the headlines and summaries of the articles that your people in your social
00:59:09
◼
►
media are sharing and floats the ones that are most shared to the top and in fact and
00:59:14
◼
►
also sends out alerts you can you can have it send out alerts when there's a story that's
00:59:18
◼
►
trending where a bunch of people are sending a story. In fact that's how I found out that
00:59:23
◼
►
David Bowie died was I opened my email this morning and I had the daily nuzzle email and
00:59:28
◼
►
the top shared story in the last 24 hours when it sent the email out was that David
00:59:33
◼
►
Bowie died and that's and then I went to Twitter and I read a bunch of stories and a bunch
00:59:37
◼
►
of remembrances of David Bowie but it came from Nuzzle because everybody on my timeline
00:59:43
◼
►
was sharing articles about David Bowie after he it was announced that he had he'd passed
00:59:47
◼
►
away. Yeah I found out on Twitter. Yeah I mean I essentially found out on Twitter time
00:59:52
◼
►
delayed through Nuzzle because I was I watched last night I closed my iPad apparently and
00:59:59
◼
►
watched TV for a couple hours and then went to bed and didn't check in and that was right
01:00:05
◼
►
I would have seen it last night, but I didn't, I didn't, I just, I just went to bed after
01:00:11
◼
►
after we were done watching TV, so.
01:00:14
◼
►
Yeah, I'm Twitter only.
01:00:16
◼
►
If it's, if I don't see it on Twitter, I don't see it anywhere.
01:00:19
◼
►
Yeah, I agree.
01:00:20
◼
►
That just works for me so well.
01:00:21
◼
►
Yeah, it works for me too.
01:00:23
◼
►
In fact, I would say I use just scanning Twitter more than I, than I use Nuzzle, but I do,
01:00:28
◼
►
when I'm trying to think of, you know, I want, I want to see something that I want
01:00:33
◼
►
What do I want to read right now?
01:00:34
◼
►
Nuzzle because Nuzzle will find links that I didn't notice because I don't read every
01:00:38
◼
►
single tweet that's in my timeline. I will miss things and Nuzzle's really great at floating
01:00:42
◼
►
that stuff back up.
01:00:44
◼
►
I didn't remember this or I didn't know this about you that you didn't use an RSS app and
01:00:49
◼
►
that does surprise me because of the work that you have done in the past as well as
01:00:55
◼
►
what you do now is very link-based and finding out what's happening and being able to respond
01:01:02
◼
►
to stuff. It's just interesting to me that you don't…
01:01:05
◼
►
If I was running a breaking news site or I was the news guy at a website, I would have
01:01:11
◼
►
to do it. But I have never been that. When I was a news guy, it was always… it was
01:01:19
◼
►
either in the days when instant reaction wasn't necessary, and there weren't, you know,
01:01:24
◼
►
because it was before there was all of the web media that we have today.
01:01:28
◼
►
It went into a magazine, like, "How instant can you be?"
01:01:31
◼
►
I've got a month to write that story now.
01:01:33
◼
►
Or I was in management and I had people who were the ones who were doing that and I was
01:01:37
◼
►
not doing that anymore.
01:01:38
◼
►
So I never had to do that.
01:01:40
◼
►
And my social media sphere is really great at pointing out everything that is interesting.
01:01:45
◼
►
So when I started Six Colors, which is not intended to be a breaking news site, since
01:01:50
◼
►
then I have paid more attention to things like Nuzzle, because I do want to see those
01:01:54
◼
►
links as they happen and get them posted before John Gruber posts them.
01:01:57
◼
►
I've got a little personal like, it's not that I want to beat Grouper, it's like if
01:02:01
◼
►
Grouper posts the link, I feel like there's no point in me posting it because I'm going
01:02:06
◼
►
to assume almost everybody who reads my site also reads Daring Fireball. So I want to get
01:02:10
◼
►
it before John gets it. So that's one of my little points of, or anything before anybody
01:02:16
◼
►
else gets it. If I see something really interesting, it's usually not even news, it's usually like
01:02:20
◼
►
an interesting, like a Dr. Drang post or something. I'm like, "Aha, I got the Dr. Drang post,"
01:02:25
◼
►
then I'll link to it. So, or a Stephen Hackett post, I'll be like, "I got that one first!
01:02:30
◼
►
He wrote about another old Mac and now it's on the site." So I pay more attention to that,
01:02:37
◼
►
but still, that's why I never needed to do RSS. And I found it just, I just don't live
01:02:44
◼
►
that way where RSS, we just get out of control. I was always very web-focused. I have my favorite
01:02:51
◼
►
sites bookmarked, I would read them on the web once Twitter happened that solved that
01:02:55
◼
►
problem entirely where all the good links were passing through. So I've never had to
01:02:59
◼
►
really do it.
01:03:00
◼
►
>> Last question comes from Ayyan. "Didn't you have Apple TV? It does not have Siri in
01:03:06
◼
►
my country." Ayyan is in the Netherlands. "Is it still worth it to upgrade from version
01:03:11
◼
►
>> I--I think so. I--I don't think--I thought this was an interesting question. I don't
01:03:18
◼
►
think Siri is the reason to get the new Apple TV anyway. No I don't ever ever ever use it.
01:03:25
◼
►
I almost never use it. I have to say, I'll put this on record now, I like my Apple TV.
01:03:32
◼
►
I like it. I'm using it for airplay to the TV in the occasions where we're watching something
01:03:38
◼
►
downstairs because we're watching like Seinfeld, which maybe you did or didn't know this internet,
01:03:44
◼
►
In the United Kingdom you cannot get Seinfeld digitally, you cannot buy it, it is impossible
01:03:49
◼
►
to do or stream.
01:03:51
◼
►
So we are having to watch it from other means.
01:03:55
◼
►
DVDs of course ripped via Super Drive.
01:04:01
◼
►
So we're using it for that.
01:04:02
◼
►
I use it for YouTube and stuff, like when I eat lunch I go downstairs and sit in front
01:04:06
◼
►
of my computer and I like put YouTube on or something or Netflix and yeah I'm liking it
01:04:11
◼
►
That's all I use it for though, just that top four row.
01:04:13
◼
►
I never play games on it or anything like that.
01:04:16
◼
►
- But I'm using it.
01:04:17
◼
►
- I think the larger point is that a lot of the benefits
01:04:20
◼
►
of the new device are that it's faster,
01:04:21
◼
►
it's got the new interface, it's got the new remote,
01:04:24
◼
►
it's got all the apps, and those are reasons to upgrade.
01:04:28
◼
►
Siri alone is not, I would say.
01:04:30
◼
►
So don't let that stop you, but you still need to weigh
01:04:33
◼
►
whether you're happy with your version three Apple TV
01:04:37
◼
►
or whether you want to go up to the fourth generation.
01:04:39
◼
►
But Siri, it's nice and I use it occasionally,
01:04:42
◼
►
but it's not the reason that that product exists.
01:04:45
◼
►
In fact, if you had given me,
01:04:48
◼
►
had me list all the reasons to upgrade to version four,
01:04:52
◼
►
that I would probably not have placed that high on the list.
01:04:57
◼
►
Right, so I think that wraps up today's episode.
01:04:59
◼
►
If you wanna catch our show notes for this week,
01:05:00
◼
►
head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/71.
01:05:04
◼
►
Thanks again to our sponsors, Fizzle and MailRoute.
01:05:07
◼
►
If you wanna catch us online,
01:05:08
◼
►
you can go over to sixcolors.com,
01:05:10
◼
►
that's where you'll find Jason's work.
01:05:12
◼
►
He also is the host of Clockwise and Liftoff on Relay FM as well as a whole slew of podcasts
01:05:18
◼
►
over at The Incomparable.
01:05:20
◼
►
You can also find Jason on Twitter.
01:05:21
◼
►
He is @jsnelljsnellll.
01:05:24
◼
►
I am @imikeyke.
01:05:26
◼
►
We'd love it if you checked out our new shows on Relay FM, Canvas and Remaster.
01:05:30
◼
►
There's a couple of great editions there that you should go and check out.
01:05:35
◼
►
But we'll be back next week.
01:05:37
◼
►
Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.
01:05:39
◼
►
Goodbye everybody.
01:05:40
◼
►
[MUSIC PLAYING]