Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► from relay FM this is upgrade episode number 61 today's show is brought to you

00:00:14 ◼   ► by lynda.com casper and stamps.com my name is mike

00:00:18 ◼   ► hurley and i'm joined by mr jason snowe hello mr mike hurley how

00:00:23 ◼   ► are you sir good morning i'm doing fine good good morning to you

00:00:26 ◼   ► Good day to you, sir.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Oh, good day to you, sir.

00:00:28 ◼   ► And we say good day to a special guest this week.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that's one of our rare special guests.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Mr. Joe Steele.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Joe Steele.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Good day to you both as well.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Good day.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Good day.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Good day indeed.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Joe is usually in our chat room and he's actually on the show this time.

00:00:44 ◼   ► He can talk back to us when we hear him.

00:00:47 ◼   ► That might not be a good thing.

00:00:50 ◼   ► So Joe is here because we want to talk about the Apple TV today and Mr. Steele is renowned

00:00:56 ◼   ► for his opinions on the Apple TV. So we're going to talk about that a little

00:01:01 ◼   ► bit later on. But of course we must stick to the format and we have a follow-up/out

00:01:07 ◼   ► section. And I would like to begin with a clarification about something I was

00:01:12 ◼   ► talking about last week, which a few people wrote in about, but Mrs. Stephen

00:01:15 ◼   ► Hackett got... Who? Basically, yeah, exactly, attacked me and Jason in the Slack room

00:01:20 ◼   ► about something that I said last week. So I was talking about... Vicious attacks.

00:01:24 ◼   ► indeed vicious word attacks. If you remember I was talking about the fact

00:01:28 ◼   ► that I was having issues with apps that I was trying to open them on my new iMac

00:01:33 ◼   ► and then I said that there was that they basically had to be deleted and when I

00:01:37 ◼   ► deleted and reinstalled the apps on the Mac App Store I was surprised at the

00:01:42 ◼   ► fact that all of my preferences remained. So Steve reminded me that app

00:01:46 ◼   ► preferences are saved separately even for Mac App Store apps like they are for

00:01:51 ◼   ► all Mac apps there's like a press folder now I knew this where I remember back in

00:01:56 ◼   ► the day using an app called little zapper do you remember little zapper

00:01:59 ◼   ► Jason nope was it called little zapper it was some kind of it was an application

00:02:05 ◼   ► this is the follow-up that creates more follow-up this is perfect it was an

00:02:09 ◼   ► application that had a ray gun icon and used it to fully uninstall applications

00:02:17 ◼   ► So you would drag an app onto this app. I think it was called Little Zapper

00:02:24 ◼   ► or something Zapper and App Zapper I'm being told in the chat room. And what it

00:02:30 ◼   ► would do is it would not only install... yep it's still exists it still looks the

00:02:35 ◼   ► same look at that guy. You would drag apps onto it and it would remove all of

00:02:39 ◼   ► the preferences files and everything so it was completely uninstalled from your

00:02:42 ◼   ► Mac. This is something that continues to boggle my mind to this day that there

00:02:46 ◼   ► isn't a simple one install that gets rid of everything and I was just I just

00:02:51 ◼   ► naturally assumed that apps from the App Store were treated in this way like they

00:02:55 ◼   ► are on iOS so that was why I was surprised my natural assumption failed

00:03:00 ◼   ► me well it's yeah it's there's a well you're thinking that it's sandbox and so

00:03:05 ◼   ► it's all in the app but there also is a little they have access to a preferences

00:03:10 ◼   ► place and it's for this very reason that if you delete your app and then you

00:03:13 ◼   ► bring it back later it remembers all the stuff. Yeah but it doesn't do that on

00:03:17 ◼   ► other platforms though right? Like unless it syncs with iCloud in some way. So it's

00:03:22 ◼   ► just a confusing thing I think to me but there you go. That explains why. In a great

00:03:28 ◼   ► piece of follow-out I inadvertently or we inadvertently created an entire

00:03:33 ◼   ► segment on this week's episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast, episode 141. So

00:03:39 ◼   ► they and they were talking about follow-out if you if you remember John

00:03:43 ◼   ► does not condone the use of the term follow-out but to that Jason I say I

00:03:48 ◼   ► don't care well John owns follow-up he does not own all of the follow-up

00:03:52 ◼   ► verticals that we have helped to spurn here would do you care do you need

00:03:57 ◼   ► John's approval for follow-out no I don't good I don't we did we also didn't

00:04:03 ◼   ► didn't we learn that the identity of the inventor of follow-out as a concept to

00:04:08 ◼   ► this week? One of our actually linked I'm trying to pull up the the the tweet here

00:04:15 ◼   ► because it was um I can't find it but we actually did have the he cited his tweet

00:04:21 ◼   ► from January where where where he coined follow-out for us. I'll do well I'll look

00:04:30 ◼   ► that up while you explain what happened on ATP. Basically they discussed my

00:04:35 ◼   ► storage issues and thinking about whether I would need a NAS or something

00:04:40 ◼   ► locally attached to solve my storage problem. Because I have stuff that I

00:04:44 ◼   ► want to store like big files, like logic files and stuff like that but you

00:04:49 ◼   ► know I have a terabyte of storage and I want to keep them off of the iMac. So the

00:04:54 ◼   ► guys were talking about and they kind of got pretty deep into the weeds about

00:04:58 ◼   ► like NAS and Synology even though that they all knew and said on the show that

00:05:02 ◼   ► that's not something that can work for me. My network setup and

00:05:05 ◼   ► arrangement here is not something that will work for me. So I will probably end

00:05:09 ◼   ► up going with a attached route. So I'm gonna start looking into... this is

00:05:13 ◼   ► something that Marco was mentioning. Ideally I would like this to be an SSD

00:05:18 ◼   ► solution because I don't want noise and heat because it will be in the same room

00:05:24 ◼   ► right if it's gonna be connected. So I'm gonna start looking into something like

00:05:28 ◼   ► that maybe some kind of SSD enclosure. I don't know if something like a Drobo

00:05:31 ◼   ► works in this way I haven't looked into that yet because I do want speed and

00:05:35 ◼   ► silence but I liked something that John mentioned where he was talking about the

00:05:38 ◼   ► fact that it's crazy that this problem still exists today. And that the

00:05:45 ◼   ► the problem is inherently that everybody's needs are different and there

00:05:48 ◼   ► isn't a solution that can fix it and it remains to be one of the only

00:05:52 ◼   ► computer hardware issues that lives on in this way. Well and I think I may

00:05:57 ◼   ► mention this last week but I think one of the reasons this remains is because

00:06:01 ◼   ► Because everybody assumes that the world is going to infinite cloud storage and infinite

00:06:05 ◼   ► bandwidth, which is great.

00:06:06 ◼   ► It probably is on an infinite timescale.

00:06:10 ◼   ► But ding, they...

00:06:13 ◼   ► But not now, right?

00:06:15 ◼   ► Not now.

00:06:16 ◼   ► You don't have infinite bandwidth.

00:06:17 ◼   ► You have very limited bandwidth and there's not infinite cloud storage.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And so I understand why companies wouldn't want to invest in something that might only

00:06:25 ◼   ► be technology that nerdy people would want for...

00:06:28 ◼   ► And maybe consumers, I think that's the feeling is like the cloud storage stuff is going to

00:06:32 ◼   ► be the solution that works for general consumers and that's just going to continue to grow.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And it makes it for people like us who have these more specific needs, there's not a perfect

00:06:42 ◼   ► selection of things to choose from.

00:06:43 ◼   ► So we're all kind of choosing from this imperfect collection.

00:06:45 ◼   ► I've got this Drobo and I love it because it's huge.

00:06:49 ◼   ► There's so much space on it.

00:06:51 ◼   ► You know, it does make a little bit of noise, although it's about six feet, eight feet away

00:06:54 ◼   ► from me.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And when it runs, it mostly sounds like faint sounds of rain on the roof or something like

00:07:03 ◼   ► that.

00:07:04 ◼   ► It's this little, very soft, gentle ticking kind of sound.

00:07:06 ◼   ► And I could probably put it further away and not hear it at all.

00:07:10 ◼   ► But it doesn't bother me.

00:07:12 ◼   ► It doesn't show up on recordings.

00:07:13 ◼   ► It's not a problem.

00:07:15 ◼   ► And I love the size of it.

00:07:16 ◼   ► And what I hated was I used to have a stack of terabyte drives, like multiple one terabyte

00:07:22 ◼   ► drives.

00:07:23 ◼   ► And then it's like, which drive is it on?

00:07:24 ◼   ► loud because they've got individual enclosures, so they've got their own spinning disks and

00:07:29 ◼   ► their own fans, and I hate that. So SSD enclosure might work. It's gonna not be cheap, but that

00:07:36 ◼   ► might be one way to do it. And the other thing I would say is, yeah, if you could get like

00:07:40 ◼   ► a Firewire RAID of some kind, or not Firewire, Thunderbolt RAID of some kind, you could possibly

00:07:45 ◼   ► even get like a really long Thunderbolt cable and put it like far away from your computer

00:07:50 ◼   ► where you're not gonna hear it as much. I don't know.

00:07:52 ◼   ► In my current setup that doesn't really work so much.

00:07:54 ◼   ► It may be in the future, like in the future I could maybe go with some kind of NAS storage solution,

00:07:59 ◼   ► but right now I can't. So I really appreciate if anybody has any recommendations of SSD enclosures.

00:08:05 ◼   ► I like the idea of a Drobo, right? Because of their kind of solution that, you know,

00:08:09 ◼   ► like you can take drives out, put drives in, that kind of stuff and it's not an issue.

00:08:12 ◼   ► But I'm not, I'm not fixed to that idea. Basically, I just want something that I can mount, you know,

00:08:18 ◼   ► and I have a few terabytes of SSD storage I'm completely aware of how

00:08:22 ◼   ► expensive this is gonna be. But it is the solution that I want and need so

00:08:26 ◼   ► I'm willing to put the money in if I know that it's gonna be worth my time.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Yeah I think that's reasonable. And there was just one thing that I wanted to

00:08:34 ◼   ► mention before we get into the Apple TV today which was a really great post on

00:08:37 ◼   ► the Twitter blog where they were addressing some feedback that they had

00:08:42 ◼   ► from developers. So during their flight conference a couple of weeks ago Jack

00:08:47 ◼   ► Dorsey sent out a tweet and he was like, you know, use the hashtag #helloworld

00:08:50 ◼   ► and let us know what you developers want to see, right? He wanted requests, he

00:08:55 ◼   ► wanted ideas, and on this blog they go through and they list some of the most

00:08:59 ◼   ► popular requests and they talk about those, which is really interesting, and

00:09:03 ◼   ► they highlight certain ways that they're thinking about some things. They don't

00:09:08 ◼   ► really address any specific changes, but to me the fact that they're talking

00:09:13 ◼   ► about things like rate limiting and token restrictions and they kind of talk

00:09:18 ◼   ► about why that's difficult for them to address but to me the idea that they're

00:09:22 ◼   ► even mentioning these things as bad things is good to me. This feels like a

00:09:27 ◼   ► change of some kind is coming right that they are openly talking about the issues

00:09:32 ◼   ► that developers have with their platform. I like that. I think this is a really

00:09:37 ◼   ► positive change. It's on the full-on blog it's not like on a developer blog. I

00:09:41 ◼   ► I think this is really, really awesome.

00:09:43 ◼   ► Yeah, and it sounds like they don't know, you know, they're not committing to anything.

00:09:47 ◼   ► No, but they don't need to right now.

00:09:49 ◼   ► They're just saying, "We hear you and we're thinking about it."

00:09:52 ◼   ► And yes, they may come out and say, "Well, when we talk about developers and APIs, we're

00:09:56 ◼   ► really talking about these, you know, value add, vertical, blah, blah, blah, blah, kind

00:10:00 ◼   ► of things that ride on top of Twitter."

00:10:03 ◼   ► But you know, I think they're certainly aware of this perception that the Twitter client

00:10:07 ◼   ► isn't the be all end all for all users, and that they used to have a really vibrant third

00:10:12 ◼   ► party client environment, but the API has been strangled and they have the tokens, which

00:10:17 ◼   ► they mentioned, like how it's a pain for developers because they've got tokens that they have

00:10:22 ◼   ► for per user and all of that.

00:10:24 ◼   ► And I'm encouraged by that.

00:10:26 ◼   ► My gut feeling is we're not going to ever have sort of like what it was, but it may

00:10:34 ◼   ► be better than it is now, and I think that would be great.

00:10:36 ◼   ► And I'm okay with them saying, and they said in that blog post actually, we want to be

00:10:41 ◼   ► able to create new features and get them out.

00:10:44 ◼   ► And we don't want to roll things out on the API when we're not sure how they're going

00:10:47 ◼   ► to work or whether people are going to use them.

00:10:49 ◼   ► And their examples were like Twitter polls and the lightning bolt moments feature, right?

00:10:57 ◼   ► Where they want the freedom to be able to explore this stuff.

00:11:03 ◼   ► And you can imagine like if they rolled out Twitter polls with an API and said, okay,

00:11:06 ◼   ► here's how we're doing polling. Everybody support this. This is how it's going to be."

00:11:10 ◼   ► And then in three months, they're like, "Oh, yeah, we did that wrong. We're going to change

00:11:14 ◼   ► it or we're going to kill it." And then all the developers are like, "What? I just spent

00:11:18 ◼   ► all this time implementing polls and you're killing the feature?" They want the freedom

00:11:22 ◼   ► to be able to say, "Yeah, actually, yes, we are. We want to try these features out and

00:11:26 ◼   ► change them or kill them and not have developers..." If we have to support this whole development

00:11:31 ◼   ► environment and these APIs and all of that and be concerned about the developer reaction

00:11:36 ◼   ► to some of these new features, we may not launch the features we need to launch. And

00:11:40 ◼   ► I see that. I totally get that. Then again, there are things that they withhold from their

00:11:44 ◼   ► APIs that are just standard things in Twitter and they're withholding them because they're

00:11:48 ◼   ► jerks. And those, it would be nice if they didn't do those. So I think there's maybe

00:11:53 ◼   ► a balance here where some new features might only show up in the official clients at first.

00:11:59 ◼   ► And that's okay. But right now the official client or the non-official clients have no

00:12:05 ◼   ► access to basically any new features or almost any new features added over the last four

00:12:09 ◼   ► years and that would be nice if they could change it and it would be nice if the token

00:12:14 ◼   ► limitations were lifted so that developers could actually have a reason to invest in

00:12:18 ◼   ► development because I know that like why do we not see Twitterific for Mac updated from

00:12:24 ◼   ► the version that dates from like five years ago and I think I don't know this for a fact

00:12:28 ◼   ► I've talked to those guys about Twitterific a lot but I don't know this for a fact but

00:12:31 ◼   ► But my guess is that's going to be a lot of extra work for a smaller audience, because

00:12:36 ◼   ► the Mac is a smaller audience than iOS.

00:12:39 ◼   ► And again, if you've got limits and Tweetbot is the same way, where you're limited to the

00:12:45 ◼   ► number of customers you can have, then it's very hard to invest more development effort

00:12:51 ◼   ► in these products, because at some point you're going to not be able to sell any more copies

00:12:55 ◼   ► of that.

00:12:56 ◼   ► And so it might spur investment in Twitter-related apps if they were to change the story.

00:13:01 ◼   ► on something like the tokens. So yeah, I share your optimism, but let's not get ahead of

00:13:08 ◼   ► ourselves. There's still a long way to go and we may not like everything we get, but

00:13:14 ◼   ► it's good that they're talking about it because that's better than what it was. This is actually,

00:13:18 ◼   ► and this is some breaking news, which is like this morning, they came out with a story in

00:13:23 ◼   ► The Hollywood Reporter about how it looks like CBS is setting up a production company

00:13:29 ◼   ► that's gonna deal with them to start exploring doing a new Star Trek TV show. And Joe and

00:13:34 ◼   ► I, I know, are very excited about that. And it's like, I had a bunch of people say, "Well,

00:13:38 ◼   ► you know, they're still looking for a writer, and we don't know about these producers, and

00:13:42 ◼   ► people who don't like the J.J. Abrams movies are like, 'Well, these are J.J. Abrams guys,

00:13:45 ◼   ► so I don't like that about it.'" And I had the same thought as about this Twitter post,

00:13:49 ◼   ► which is, "Look, it's a step." There were previously no steps. It was silence. So it's

00:13:55 ◼   ► a start. We may not like everything that comes out of that Star Trek TV show if it ever even

00:13:59 ◼   ► friends, but at least they're talking about it. That's how I feel about Twitter. That

00:14:03 ◼   ► was some nerd stuff there. Hi Joe.

00:14:05 ◼   ► I love that you tried to find any possible way to bring up that Star Trek news. Just

00:14:11 ◼   ► any way you could get around to that.

00:14:13 ◼   ► I wasn't going to do it. And then suddenly there it was. So I had to take it because

00:14:16 ◼   ► it's the same thing, right? It's like the first news about anything you're like, well,

00:14:19 ◼   ► I don't know. Um, you know, and you want to be restrained. You don't want to be like super

00:14:23 ◼   ► like, Oh, it's going to be great. It's going to be awesome. It's the greatest thing ever.

00:14:27 ◼   ► And then, you know, but you also want to acknowledge that for things to exist, there has to be

00:14:32 ◼   ► that first step where like we're considering that this might exist.

00:14:36 ◼   ► And I feel that way about the Twitter thing too.

00:14:38 ◼   ► It's like, hey, they're paying attention.

00:14:40 ◼   ► They may not do what we want, but they seem to be paying attention and that's good.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Twitter and Star Trek.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Exactly the same.

00:14:48 ◼   ► They're the same.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:50 ◼   ► That's what we've learned today, kids.

00:14:51 ◼   ► A legacy of squandering something really great and then trying to figure out what to do with

00:14:56 ◼   ► it.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Well I'm pleased you've learned some valuable lessons and so it's time to move on now Jason.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Well actually one more thing I promised this Michael Tofias is the coiner of Follow Out.

00:15:07 ◼   ► He sent us a tweet that was dated January 19th 2015 where he said to you and me and

00:15:15 ◼   ► Upgrade FM the follow up on other podcasts vertical should be named Follow Out.

00:15:19 ◼   ► So I think we have to give Michael his due as the as the coiner of Follow Out which I

00:15:24 ◼   ► I like as a term.

00:15:25 ◼   ► So there it is.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Congratulations.

00:15:27 ◼   ► You have—you will go down in the history books now.

00:15:29 ◼   ► I like that there are two favorites of this tweet.

00:15:32 ◼   ► One is you, one is me.

00:15:33 ◼   ► We both agreed immediately with this notion.

00:15:36 ◼   ► So there we go.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Actually, I just—I just faved it this week when he linked to it again.

00:15:39 ◼   ► He linked to it and was like, "Mm-mm, mm-mm, that was me."

00:15:42 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh, okay, fav.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Super fav.

00:15:45 ◼   ► Okay, that's follow-up out."

00:15:48 ◼   ► This week's episode is brought to you by lynda.com, the online learning platform that has—believe

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00:17:41 ◼   ► Thank you so much lynda.com for the continued support of this show and Relay FM.

00:17:46 ◼   ► You know, Myke, when we started doing those ads, that number, that 3,000 number was much

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00:17:52 ◼   ► Yes.

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00:18:19 ◼   ► something to look out for. Stuff that I think all of us listening to this show would really like.

00:18:24 ◼   ► So Apple TV we all have one right? Yep. Yes everybody has an Apple TV. I just

00:18:31 ◼   ► want to preface this conversation to say that I think that most of my views and

00:18:35 ◼   ► opinions are tainted on the fact that I don't care about the Apple TV. Like I have

00:18:41 ◼   ► I set it up, played around with it and I haven't touched it since. And I know

00:18:46 ◼   ► that I will, and we'll get to that in a bit why I think that there could be some

00:18:49 ◼   ► stuff here for me, but just my kind of habits don't really lend themselves to

00:18:57 ◼   ► the Apple TV, like the way that I consume entertainment. But Mr. Rosenstiel, you are

00:19:03 ◼   ► an Apple TV user, are you not? Like you you were a fan of the product or at

00:19:07 ◼   ► least used the product prior to this? Yes, I am a passionate user, I guess, of the

00:19:15 ◼   ► third generation one that came out quite some time ago, and that one was in sore

00:19:22 ◼   ► need of an update, and so I ran out and bought the the fourth gen, and I have had

00:19:29 ◼   ► opinions about both things in the past. I think that it's a good product for Apple

00:19:33 ◼   ► to have in general, which is why it always surprises me when you talk about

00:19:36 ◼   ► about how you can't fathom using it but but I could I could understand maybe if

00:19:43 ◼   ► you have all of these devices so close to you your computer and your iPad etc

00:19:47 ◼   ► that it might not seem necessary to turn on the TV to go plod through these apps

00:19:54 ◼   ► what about you Jason I just somebody mrs. supin this in the chat room mentioned

00:20:00 ◼   ► that purchasing all four generations of Apple TV,

00:20:04 ◼   ► I've done that.

00:20:05 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:20:06 ◼   ► I had the hand warmer giant running.

00:20:11 ◼   ► I looked it up, it was like running Tiger, I think.

00:20:14 ◼   ► It was a Mac, essentially, a very small Mac mini,

00:20:17 ◼   ► flat Mac mini, and then the two black boxes,

00:20:20 ◼   ► the thin black boxes, and now the tall black box.

00:20:23 ◼   ► I use it, I used to use it more.

00:20:25 ◼   ► I mentioned this, I think maybe last week.

00:20:28 ◼   ► I used to use it more, but lately I've been using my TiVo more as a streamer because the

00:20:34 ◼   ► TiVo now supports a bunch of the streaming services.

00:20:38 ◼   ► But I also have a lot of content on iTunes.

00:20:40 ◼   ► So I ended up, you know, it ended up being at the very least an iTunes streamer, but

00:20:44 ◼   ► I used to use it as our, it was our Netflix box too.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And now we mostly use Netflix through TiVo.

00:20:51 ◼   ► And actually one of the reasons we do that is because there's a tied in search database

00:20:56 ◼   ► has those shows and when... so if you search for a show or you can kind of pin a show on

00:21:02 ◼   ► the TiVo menu, it will have Netflix and Hulu links in there and Amazon, which is not yet

00:21:07 ◼   ► on the Apple TV. So I've been using it on and off for its entire life, I think would

00:21:13 ◼   ► be fair to say.

00:21:15 ◼   ► So I want to talk about the setup experience, which is my favorite topic for any Apple device

00:21:19 ◼   ► right now, just because I've been setting up so many Apple devices recently. So my first

00:21:25 ◼   ► bugbear with this you take it out of the box and Apple do not include a HDMI

00:21:29 ◼   ► cable with the Apple TV which I think is a problem because I believe that there

00:21:35 ◼   ► would be a lot of people that will buy this device maybe from not an Apple

00:21:38 ◼   ► store right maybe from a Best Buy or something or they buy it online and it

00:21:42 ◼   ► arrives and I really don't think that the best experience for a new product is

00:21:46 ◼   ► it arrives and you don't have the cable to plug it into your TV like you're just

00:21:50 ◼   ► like oh well now I have to go get another cable I just think put it in

00:21:53 ◼   ► there and increase the price by $10 if you really have to but there should be a

00:21:57 ◼   ► HDMI cable in my opinion in this box. Well one of the baffling things is that

00:22:03 ◼   ► they include the lightning cable instead of like you said an HDMI cable and it's

00:22:08 ◼   ► like I have I have some of those around my house and it's not like you

00:22:13 ◼   ► constantly need it for the remote so it would have made more sense probably for

00:22:17 ◼   ► that to have been an HDMI cable and they don't even cost that much anymore

00:22:20 ◼   ► more relatively speaking like Monoprice cables or Amazon basics or whatever. I

00:22:24 ◼   ► knew it didn't have it inside of the box but I also knew that I had one from the

00:22:27 ◼   ► old TV that I wouldn't need. I don't know the buying experience for most people if

00:22:32 ◼   ► they will know to look on the box where it says that it includes these things

00:22:37 ◼   ► and not that other thing so hopefully nobody gets it for Christmas and can't

00:22:42 ◼   ► plug it into anything. The guy, so I ordered I ordered one online on Monday

00:22:47 ◼   ► And while I was on the tarmac at Phoenix Airport, and it was, I didn't want to pay

00:22:55 ◼   ► the extra shipping so it's gonna arrive today probably. While we're doing this it

00:22:58 ◼   ► may actually show up at my front door. So on Friday morning I just went on to the

00:23:02 ◼   ► Apple Store and they had an in-store pickup and I just ordered one and went

00:23:04 ◼   ► and got it at 10 in the morning on Friday and was using it. But when I when

00:23:08 ◼   ► I picked it up the guy who brought it out said, "Do you have an HDMI cable?" They

00:23:13 ◼   ► very specifically and I assumed have been trained at the Apple stores to mention HDMI

00:23:21 ◼   ► cables because they know it doesn't have it in the box. I think that's interesting because

00:23:24 ◼   ► that's it's an upsell for them I'll grant you but also it's an awareness that this may

00:23:30 ◼   ► be an issue.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Right, but see the thing is that is a problem not a good thing.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Oh I agree.

00:23:35 ◼   ► I think some people would hear that and be like oh yeah no that's good because they're

00:23:39 ◼   ► asking you, right? They're making sure you've got one. But what that actually shows is,

00:23:43 ◼   ► if they have been trained, Apple understands that this is a bad thing, right? They understand

00:23:48 ◼   ► that people may have this problem. So they're telling people to talk about it. It's crazy

00:23:52 ◼   ► making to me.

00:23:53 ◼   ► It's good retail customer service, but it's caused by a decision by Apple, the product

00:24:00 ◼   ► part, to not include it in the box.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, and I actually had a different experience. I, cause I, I, to, similar to

00:24:07 ◼   ► Jason I was like oh no it doesn't say like when it's gonna be available in

00:24:10 ◼   ► stores I better go buy it online now and then it was available that Friday so I

00:24:16 ◼   ► went to the Apple Store in Century City picked it up and the employee there did

00:24:21 ◼   ► not mention the HDMI cable people in LA are awful yes we live in LA we all

00:24:29 ◼   ► understand how TV works yeah I mean you you you have like 5,000 HDMI cables

00:24:35 ◼   ► because you watch so much TV. That's right. It's like spaghetti. I don't know

00:24:41 ◼   ► maybe I was lucky then I thought I noted that they did I have so many extra

00:24:45 ◼   ► HDMI cables that it was really like no no no I don't want any more please don't

00:24:50 ◼   ► sell me your whatever it is probably among the more expensive HDMI cables to

00:24:55 ◼   ► buy would be one at the Apple Store right. Rose gold plated. I expect that

00:25:01 ◼   ► most people listening to this show have cables. Like I had an extra HDMI cable, of

00:25:06 ◼   ► course I did, but it's really confusing to me that you don't do that. Like if you buy a

00:25:10 ◼   ► games console, right, so the Xbox, PlayStation, they come with them in and I

00:25:14 ◼   ► know it's a different price point but it depends what market Apple think that

00:25:17 ◼   ► they're operating in because they really do like to think they're a games console

00:25:20 ◼   ► about 50% of the time and it just is very peculiar to me that you wouldn't

00:25:24 ◼   ► include those cables. But anyway let's talk about setting up, right, so I plugged

00:25:27 ◼   ► the Apple TV and I'm starting to go and it's like you know heavens of heavens

00:25:32 ◼   ► above have opened and I can hear the angels sing as it tells me to set up my

00:25:36 ◼   ► device by holding my iOS device nearby right like this is fantastic I don't

00:25:42 ◼   ► need to enter all the passwords so I put my iPhone real close to the Apple TV so

00:25:47 ◼   ► it will work and then it just said couldn't activate try again later I tried

00:25:52 ◼   ► again three more times and it wouldn't activate so I had to do manual setup

00:25:56 ◼   ► It's like they knew. They knew that I would be annoyed if I had to do this.

00:25:59 ◼   ► So I had to go through, I had to type in all my Apple ID,

00:26:01 ◼   ► I had to type in all my passwords a couple of times, and then quite strangely,

00:26:06 ◼   ► as soon as I set up the Apple TV, I got a pop-up on my Mac telling me that my Apple

00:26:10 ◼   ► ID was now being used on a new iPad, which I found really surprising.

00:26:15 ◼   ► Huh.

00:26:15 ◼   ► I was like, "Okay, Apple TV, you think you're an iPad."

00:26:19 ◼   ► So that was my setup experience. It was so close, so close to being what I wanted but wasn't what I got.

00:26:27 ◼   ► I assume that you two maybe had a better experience than me?

00:26:30 ◼   ► Different.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Jason, you go first with yours.

00:26:34 ◼   ► I too got the iPhone setup thing and it worked.

00:26:41 ◼   ► And so it associated my iCloud ID with the device and that was great.

00:26:45 ◼   ► that was great and I thought, wow, good job Apple.

00:26:48 ◼   ► You know I've got an iOS device,

00:26:50 ◼   ► you know I've got my iPhone here.

00:26:52 ◼   ► That makes it much easier.

00:26:53 ◼   ► I mean, you don't have to have it,

00:26:54 ◼   ► but chances are pretty good

00:26:56 ◼   ► that you've got an iOS device around.

00:26:58 ◼   ► I've got that.

00:26:59 ◼   ► It's got proximity, I'm verifying who I am.

00:27:02 ◼   ► We're good to go.

00:27:04 ◼   ► And that was great.

00:27:05 ◼   ► Except later in the process,

00:27:08 ◼   ► I was asked to enter in my iCloud password,

00:27:13 ◼   ► which is a complicated password with symbols

00:27:15 ◼   ► and upper and lowercase letters.

00:27:16 ◼   ► And I had that moment where I thought,

00:27:18 ◼   ► oh, well, you know what we need to do is go to the remote app

00:27:23 ◼   ► because the remote app gives you a keyboard

00:27:27 ◼   ► when there's text input on the Apple TV.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And so you open it up in your iPhone

00:27:30 ◼   ► and then you can type in,

00:27:31 ◼   ► and I don't use it for like searches and things

00:27:34 ◼   ► on my old Apple TV, but I do it for passwords and stuff

00:27:37 ◼   ► because passwords are long strings of characters, right?

00:27:41 ◼   ► So I have to admit at the event in September, I specifically asked an Apple

00:27:47 ◼   ► person at an Apple TV.

00:27:49 ◼   ► If the remote app would be updated to work with the new Apple TV, it seemed

00:27:54 ◼   ► logical because it's got the new Apple TV has got a touch screen and it's got

00:27:58 ◼   ► sensors and it's got, it's got all the stuff that's also in an iPhone.

00:28:02 ◼   ► So you should theoretically be able to run an app on your iPhone that makes your

00:28:05 ◼   ► iPhone kind of like an Apple TV remote.

00:28:07 ◼   ► You know, and one comes in the box, but you know, you have your iPhone

00:28:11 ◼   ► around, maybe that would be another way to do it. Plus it's got the ability to do things

00:28:14 ◼   ► like input passwords. And so I asked this guy at the Apple event and he said, "Nope."

00:28:21 ◼   ► And I thought, "That is really weird that it's a no. It's not an I don't know anything

00:28:25 ◼   ► about that. It's a no." Well, it turns out that guy is right because they haven't updated

00:28:30 ◼   ► the remote app. It doesn't work with the new Apple TV. And so I got to input my complex

00:28:35 ◼   ► iCloud password, even though I'd already paired it with my iPhone, I had to put my complex

00:28:40 ◼   ► iCloud password in again using the trackpad and that one line screen and also can I mention

00:28:46 ◼   ► that it's a one line keyboard screen instead of one with rows.

00:28:53 ◼   ► So instead of being able to, so if you want to go from A to Z you have to move all the

00:28:57 ◼   ► way across instead of being able to kind of go down and around like it's emulating a keyboard

00:29:02 ◼   ► or sometimes they call that the Ouija board interface.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So I had to do that multiple times.

00:29:07 ◼   ► I think for the type of trackpad that Apple have created,

00:29:11 ◼   ► I think that this sliding left to right is maybe the best.

00:29:16 ◼   ► - I think it's debatable.

00:29:19 ◼   ► I think it's debatable.

00:29:20 ◼   ► - I think that a grid would have been better

00:29:22 ◼   ► because the actual surface area of it,

00:29:26 ◼   ► it's so narrow that like going all the way to the left

00:29:29 ◼   ► and all the way to the right,

00:29:30 ◼   ► you're just dragging your thumb multiple times

00:29:31 ◼   ► to go back and forth.

00:29:32 ◼   ► And oftentimes you skip over letters and stuff

00:29:34 ◼   ► 'cause you're trying to go very quickly to the other side.

00:29:37 ◼   ► So I found it to be imprecise

00:29:39 ◼   ► and probably one of the worst software keyboards

00:29:42 ◼   ► I've seen Apple make in a long time.

00:29:44 ◼   ► And I didn't even like the one

00:29:45 ◼   ► that was on the previous Apple TV where it was the grid.

00:29:48 ◼   ► But with something like this,

00:29:49 ◼   ► it would have been preferable to just one giant line.

00:29:52 ◼   ► - My thinking is that if you have multiple rows,

00:29:56 ◼   ► it would be, I don't know if the people's movement

00:29:59 ◼   ► on the touchpad is precise enough

00:30:01 ◼   ► to drop down the row simply enough.

00:30:02 ◼   ► I can imagine a scenario where you mean to go down one,

00:30:05 ◼   ► you go down two,

00:30:06 ◼   ► because if you have that problem going left to right,

00:30:08 ◼   ► imagine that in both axes.

00:30:11 ◼   ► I just think it increases the amount of errors

00:30:13 ◼   ► that could be made when trying to select a letter.

00:30:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, but your software should be pretty smart

00:30:17 ◼   ► about knowing the kind of velocity of what you're doing

00:30:19 ◼   ► and know that if you're moving to the right,

00:30:23 ◼   ► but your angle is a little bit down

00:30:25 ◼   ► to just sort of keep it to the right,

00:30:26 ◼   ► and they do that on iOS all the time.

00:30:28 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:30:30 ◼   ► I wish Apple would have done this.

00:30:31 ◼   ► The best software keyboard and control input mechanism that I've used is the PlayStation

00:30:36 ◼   ► 4, where you can go into this mode where you hold the controller and you move the controller

00:30:42 ◼   ► in 3D space, like you're pointing it at the TV.

00:30:45 ◼   ► And as you move the controller up and down, it moves the selection.

00:30:49 ◼   ► So you aim the controller at the TV, move it left, right, up and down, and it hovers

00:30:54 ◼   ► over the letters and you just tap the one that you want.

00:30:56 ◼   ► I like that.

00:30:57 ◼   ► That worked really well for me.

00:30:59 ◼   ► And it's kind of like imagine, it's like text input on a Wii, right?

00:31:02 ◼   ► You point at the remote and you point where you want to go and you hit it.

00:31:05 ◼   ► And I would have liked to have seen Apple do this because they have the technology in

00:31:09 ◼   ► the remote to make that kind of keyboard occur.

00:31:13 ◼   ► So I think it would have been nice to see something like that.

00:31:15 ◼   ► But yeah, the text entry system is not great.

00:31:18 ◼   ► And it is really frustrating that it's the only way that you can do this.

00:31:21 ◼   ► Yeah, the remote app is a great fallback for these moments when you need to do that.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And so the fact that Apple has an app and the previous generation supports it and it

00:31:28 ◼   ► just doesn't exist for this, it's ridiculous. So there's that. And I haven't gotten to my

00:31:33 ◼   ► best part yet, which is not only do I have to enter my iCloud password in not once, but

00:31:37 ◼   ► I think, I'm going to say three times, which is crazy. And this is a problem Myke, you

00:31:43 ◼   ► and I have talked about on upgrade about iOS updates and going to a new phone where it

00:31:49 ◼   ► sure seems like we should be able to enter our Apple password in fewer times than we

00:31:54 ◼   ► do. But in addition to that, when I went to download an app that was, it was made fire,

00:32:00 ◼   ► so it was a free app, but within app purchase. And I don't know if that, I think that maybe

00:32:04 ◼   ► triggers a different buying thing than doing an update or downloading a free app. And I

00:32:09 ◼   ► was told, you need to verify your credit card security number.

00:32:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I had that too.

00:32:15 ◼   ► That made me furious.

00:32:17 ◼   ► And what it said was, "Open iTunes and go to your account screen."

00:32:26 ◼   ► And I thought, "Whoa, wait a second."

00:32:29 ◼   ► So it basically kicked me to my computer.

00:32:31 ◼   ► I had to go to iTunes to the account screen.

00:32:33 ◼   ► So you have to know where that is because it was really vague.

00:32:36 ◼   ► It was like the account screen in iTunes, which is you have to put on your name and

00:32:39 ◼   ► you go to the account.

00:32:40 ◼   ► And then on the account screen, there was a line of text toward the top of the screen

00:32:45 ◼   ► but not at the top of the screen.

00:32:47 ◼   ► that was not a particularly prominently displayed line, I would say. It was actually pretty

00:32:54 ◼   ► small and it said, "Before you can complete the purchase you started on your Apple TV,

00:32:59 ◼   ► you must click 'Edit' next to your billing address and verify your payment information."

00:33:03 ◼   ► Now I don't know why my credit card information was flagged and I know other people have not

00:33:06 ◼   ► had to deal with this, but I looked at this and I'm like, "Are you kidding me? To set

00:33:10 ◼   ► up my Apple TV, to download a free app on top of everything else, you're kicking me

00:33:14 ◼   ► back to a computer, to iTunes, to a detail screen, and then get this really non-obvious

00:33:20 ◼   ► line of text that says that you need to click "Edit" next to your billing address, of course.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Yes, sucks.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Where else would I do it? And then bring that up so that I can enter in the space where

00:33:31 ◼   ► my security code is. I could enter the three-digit security code or whatever it is, little security

00:33:37 ◼   ► code. And then when I did that, then I got the message that you mentioned, which is,

00:33:42 ◼   ► Oh, now an iPhone or an iPad has been associated,

00:33:46 ◼   ► another device has been associated with this,

00:33:48 ◼   ► with this Apple account.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And at that point I went back to my Apple TV

00:33:53 ◼   ► and it asked me for my password again.

00:33:55 ◼   ► And, and then when I input it again, laboriously,

00:34:01 ◼   ► my long complicated iTunes password,

00:34:03 ◼   ► the free app finally downloaded.

00:34:04 ◼   ► And, and, and this is going to be, I mean,

00:34:06 ◼   ► a lot of people have written about this.

00:34:08 ◼   ► Basically, we'll talk about the post setup part,

00:34:13 ◼   ► and I had a much better experience with that,

00:34:15 ◼   ► but the setup part, I mean, it's just,

00:34:17 ◼   ► this is the same story as when we were talking

00:34:19 ◼   ► about the iPhones.

00:34:20 ◼   ► Apple is making attempts to make it easier.

00:34:23 ◼   ► That initial pairing kind of with your iCloud account

00:34:25 ◼   ► is pretty great, but then it just kind of fell apart.

00:34:29 ◼   ► And once I got it all, like all the flags were ticked.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Everything was checked and it was like, yes,

00:34:35 ◼   ► now you're validated for everything.

00:34:37 ◼   ► Once I did that, it was smooth sailing,

00:34:39 ◼   ► but it took, it was ridiculous what it took to get there.

00:34:42 ◼   ► - I had the card verification thing pop up,

00:34:47 ◼   ► but I just had to enter the CCV code on the Apple TV.

00:34:51 ◼   ► That was all I had to do.

00:34:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know what it was about my setup

00:34:56 ◼   ► that it made me go to iTunes, but it's bizarre.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:35:01 ◼   ► - I had it on my screen as well, like Myke did,

00:35:05 ◼   ► but I clicked away 'cause I didn't have my card with me

00:35:09 ◼   ► right at the time.

00:35:09 ◼   ► And so then when I went back later on,

00:35:12 ◼   ► I just went to my computer to authorize it and update it.

00:35:17 ◼   ► But that is really unpleasant.

00:35:20 ◼   ► And it's a number of,

00:35:21 ◼   ► it's one of a number of times that it kicks you

00:35:24 ◼   ► to your computer to do that.

00:35:26 ◼   ► One thing about setting up an Apple TV

00:35:29 ◼   ► is also it only really sets up that pairing thing once.

00:35:33 ◼   ► I was kind of curious to see how it would happen

00:35:36 ◼   ► if I actually moved.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So I went from my boyfriend's apartment to my apartment

00:35:42 ◼   ► and I tested the Apple TV and I had paired it at his place

00:35:45 ◼   ► and it loaded up all the wifi stuff for his place.

00:35:48 ◼   ► And when I went to my apartment,

00:35:50 ◼   ► it didn't recognize the network

00:35:52 ◼   ► 'cause it doesn't download every network

00:35:53 ◼   ► your iPhone has ever been connected to.

00:35:55 ◼   ► It only does the one that's inside of the room.

00:35:58 ◼   ► So when I went to my place,

00:36:01 ◼   ► I had to enter in my network, it showed no network.

00:36:06 ◼   ► I had to go select the network.

00:36:07 ◼   ► I had to enter in the wifi password through the remote app.

00:36:11 ◼   ► And then it was authorized to be on the network here.

00:36:14 ◼   ► But that's one of those curious things.

00:36:16 ◼   ► There's like, you can't trigger that same Bluetooth thing

00:36:18 ◼   ► again, apparently.

00:36:20 ◼   ► I'm sure if you like hard reset the entire device,

00:36:22 ◼   ► you probably could.

00:36:23 ◼   ► - Why didn't you do that, Joe?

00:36:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you're like taking this to an event

00:36:27 ◼   ► or something like that,

00:36:28 ◼   ► like I know a lot of people take Apple TVs

00:36:30 ◼   ► to business meetings or something so they can use it to airplay things.

00:36:37 ◼   ► You would have to enter in the password every single time and there's no remote app to do

00:36:40 ◼   ► that quickly and there's no way to do that fast pairing thing on the spot.

00:36:45 ◼   ► So that's just kind of a very strange omission.

00:36:49 ◼   ► You'd think it'd be like, "Hey, I don't have a network I recognize around me.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Are you sure you don't want to set up a new one with your iPhone?"

00:36:55 ◼   ► But whatever.

00:36:56 ◼   ► I feel like setting up Apple devices now is like death by a thousand cuts.

00:36:59 ◼   ► Like that's what any kind of Apple device right that I have used in the last year as the as they

00:37:06 ◼   ► are becoming more and more complex as a company there's just all these tiny little things you have

00:37:11 ◼   ► to do but they add up like there was that um I think there was a tweet floating around where

00:37:15 ◼   ► it's showing like it's like 47 steps or something like that to set up a new iPhone was that it?

00:37:20 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. It was the iOS 4 setup, which is three screens, and then it's the current

00:37:27 ◼   ► setup where you're asked all of these different questions. And I've heard from people, because

00:37:31 ◼   ► we complained about it then, and one of the things I heard from people was, "Well, this

00:37:34 ◼   ► is all because of security. Apple doesn't want to have some golden ticket that you can

00:37:39 ◼   ► have access to that unlocks everything, because at that point there's some security issues."

00:37:45 ◼   ► And to that I would say, "Okay, Apple decided that it's going to hang its hat on security,

00:37:50 ◼   ► and privacy, but it also hangs its hat on user experience, right? And this is one of

00:37:56 ◼   ► those cases where one, if that's the reason, one is in the way of the other. And I'm sorry,

00:38:04 ◼   ► but this is Apple. The user experience needs to win. And if they want to keep it secure,

00:38:09 ◼   ► which they should, they need to find a way to make it have a good user experience. Saying,

00:38:13 ◼   ► "Well, security or privacy as a reason why there's bad user experience," it's not an

00:38:19 ◼   ► loose. It's got to be better. And I'm encouraged by the fact that they seem to be trying to

00:38:22 ◼   ► make it better, at least on this Apple TV with that initial pairing thing. And we talked

00:38:27 ◼   ► about this a few weeks ago when we were talking about the iPhone. My gut feeling is that the

00:38:32 ◼   ► iCloud authentication stuff is so gnarly behind the scenes that there are lots of cases where

00:38:39 ◼   ► the left hand just doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and their default has been,

00:38:43 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm going to just throw up another password dialogue here." And I get them. We all get

00:38:48 ◼   ► them all the time. It's not just on setup, but it's like all the time I get these "Put

00:38:51 ◼   ► your iCloud password in." It's like, why am I doing that? What has happened that means

00:38:56 ◼   ► I need to put my iCloud password in again? And on setup, it's even worse. So this is

00:39:00 ◼   ► a challenge for Apple. I hope that they recognize it and that little pairing attempt at the

00:39:05 ◼   ► beginning of the Apple TV process is an indication that they are working to make this easier.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Because yeah, it needs to be a lot simpler. Think about the attention they put into boxes.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Think about the attention Apple puts into the unboxing experience.

00:39:19 ◼   ► All of the things they do with the cardboard and the printing on the boxes and the feeling,

00:39:26 ◼   ► you open the box and then the device is wrapped in there and they've got the little bundle

00:39:30 ◼   ► with the user guide and all of that stuff is in there and Apple does unboxing better

00:39:36 ◼   ► than anybody, right?

00:39:39 ◼   ► And then you plug it in and that attention to detail honestly isn't there for the setup.

00:39:45 ◼   ► And this is a case where their hardware or their supply chain side is in order, and they're

00:39:51 ◼   ► making great hardware and they're putting it in great boxes, and then they've got their

00:39:55 ◼   ► software and services are letting the product down.

00:39:58 ◼   ► Yeah, and to go reinforce something you said about the security and privacy.

00:40:07 ◼   ► When you set up the device, there's a location setting screen where it's asking if it's all

00:40:11 ◼   ► for applications and the operating system

00:40:15 ◼   ► to use your location.

00:40:16 ◼   ► And it's sort of like iOS except it's sort of vague.

00:40:18 ◼   ► It's not like, it seems like a one-time authorization.

00:40:22 ◼   ► And so I was like, no, I wonder if I'll be prompted

00:40:24 ◼   ► at some point.

00:40:25 ◼   ► I still haven't been prompted to enter in that location

00:40:28 ◼   ► for anything at all, but I was very curious

00:40:31 ◼   ► why they had like phrased it in such a vague manner.

00:40:33 ◼   ► And another thing is like you're signing in

00:40:36 ◼   ► with one ID on this device and you have to go into a screen

00:40:39 ◼   ► to swap to another ID.

00:40:40 ◼   ► So if you're using this on a TV in your family,

00:40:43 ◼   ► almost everyone's going to be using whatever ID

00:40:46 ◼   ► is on that device at the time.

00:40:49 ◼   ► So whoever the account that is, dad, mom,

00:40:52 ◼   ► boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever,

00:40:55 ◼   ► that's the device that'll probably be signed in

00:40:57 ◼   ► almost all the time and everybody will work

00:40:59 ◼   ► out of that one device.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And there's even the thing of like,

00:41:01 ◼   ► when you first enter your password for a purchase,

00:41:04 ◼   ► it'll ask, do you want to be prompted for this all the time,

00:41:09 ◼   ► every 15 minutes or never again.

00:41:11 ◼   ► And so I of course pick never again,

00:41:13 ◼   ► but I can just imagine, yeah,

00:41:15 ◼   ► I can just imagine like in a shared environment

00:41:18 ◼   ► where you push the other thing,

00:41:20 ◼   ► people accidentally buying things

00:41:21 ◼   ► on other people's Apple IDs,

00:41:22 ◼   ► children are notorious for this sort of thing.

00:41:26 ◼   ► And it's just one of those things where it's like,

00:41:28 ◼   ► they made it easier there in the way

00:41:31 ◼   ► that you don't have to enter the password,

00:41:32 ◼   ► but that's because entering the password is so terrible.

00:41:34 ◼   ► But the end result is you're also not really having

00:41:37 ◼   ► that filter control over like the purchase experience anymore.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - Right. - Weirdly, it makes more sense

00:41:42 ◼   ► for me to have that pop up on my iPhone,

00:41:44 ◼   ► which is my personal device,

00:41:45 ◼   ► than the Apple TV, which is a shared device.

00:41:48 ◼   ► - Well, you know, Amazon lets you put in a code

00:41:52 ◼   ► for purchases that's not your password.

00:41:55 ◼   ► And so, you know, you authenticate with them,

00:41:57 ◼   ► and that's ideally a high security password

00:42:01 ◼   ► that you're using, your Amazon password.

00:42:02 ◼   ► And then you get to set a code for purchases

00:42:05 ◼   ► on their devices and or on other devices actually.

00:42:08 ◼   ► It's like, it's your purchase code across all the apps

00:42:10 ◼   ► that Amazon uses where you can purchase things.

00:42:12 ◼   ► 'Cause I get it on my TiVo too.

00:42:13 ◼   ► And it's like a digit code on my TiVo.

00:42:16 ◼   ► So it's really easy.

00:42:17 ◼   ► I can just put in the numbers,

00:42:18 ◼   ► but it would be very easy to set something like that up.

00:42:21 ◼   ► I think.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And, but Apple instead, it's sort of like

00:42:25 ◼   ► either you buy everything

00:42:26 ◼   ► or you get to enter in your password and that's not good.

00:42:30 ◼   ► - Or you just hold down on the Siri button.

00:42:31 ◼   ► You say, my voice is my passport, verify me.

00:42:33 ◼   ► - It's verify me.

00:42:34 ◼   ► Alright guys, let me take a break here because then we can carry on talking about all the

00:42:39 ◼   ► things that we love and hate about the Apple TV.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Yeah, okay, give us a, we need a break.

00:42:44 ◼   ► We're gonna get some air while you give us a break.

00:42:48 ◼   ► Thanks Myke.

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00:45:25 ◼   ► All right, let's talk about the things

00:45:26 ◼   ► we actually like about this device, right?

00:45:28 ◼   ► 'Cause we spent a lot of time complaining about it.

00:45:31 ◼   ► Jason, what is kind of speaking to you

00:45:34 ◼   ► as a thing that you enjoy,

00:45:36 ◼   ► some things that you enjoy about the new Apple TV?

00:45:38 ◼   ► - I mean, I really like what they did with the interface.

00:45:40 ◼   ► I think this is a fun interface.

00:45:43 ◼   ► It's so interesting, the little floaty.

00:45:46 ◼   ► - It's very beautiful.

00:45:48 ◼   ► It really is a very, very beautiful interface.

00:45:50 ◼   ► Like top to bottom, I think it's really great.

00:45:53 ◼   ► Like I also love the way the app store looks

00:45:54 ◼   ► in the same vein.

00:45:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's a nice sort of rethink.

00:45:58 ◼   ► I mean, it's been so long.

00:46:00 ◼   ► It's been since like the year after the second gen model

00:46:03 ◼   ► came out when they did a refresh.

00:46:05 ◼   ► And this, it echoes it, but it's a little bit different.

00:46:10 ◼   ► I like, I loved moving all the apps around.

00:46:14 ◼   ► The fact that the top row,

00:46:16 ◼   ► which is basically like the dock,

00:46:18 ◼   ► you can take Apple stuff out of it

00:46:21 ◼   ► and put your apps that you want in it.

00:46:23 ◼   ► So, you know, I can put Netflix and Hulu up there

00:46:26 ◼   ► and HBO Go, and that's great.

00:46:29 ◼   ► I like that a lot.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Playing games on it, it's funny how some,

00:46:33 ◼   ► and these are the ones that are on the Apple TV, right?

00:46:35 ◼   ► But you don't think about how limited the interaction is

00:46:38 ◼   ► on some iOS games until you play them

00:46:40 ◼   ► with a remote control on an Apple TV.

00:46:41 ◼   ► Like, I played "Alto's Adventure" for how long?

00:46:44 ◼   ► And about a minute of playing it on the Apple TV,

00:46:47 ◼   ► I was like, wow, this literally is just a, you know,

00:46:51 ◼   ► a one button interface for this entire game.

00:46:54 ◼   ► Like, you know, you've got that whole complex touchscreen

00:46:57 ◼   ► with all the gesture support

00:46:59 ◼   ► and really all you're doing is tapping.

00:47:01 ◼   ► And so you can put that on the click.

00:47:02 ◼   ► So I just wanted to call it the interface.

00:47:05 ◼   ► I think even the stock,

00:47:07 ◼   ► some of the apps I used are video apps,

00:47:09 ◼   ► like the NBC Sports Live Extra

00:47:11 ◼   ► that are essentially using the stock

00:47:13 ◼   ► kind of like library that comes with,

00:47:15 ◼   ► that comes with the Apple provides to developers

00:47:20 ◼   ► and those look great.

00:47:22 ◼   ► So I was impressed by that.

00:47:24 ◼   ► And then Netflix, I wanted to mention

00:47:25 ◼   ► just because I think it's an interesting,

00:47:27 ◼   ► I was wondering what Netflix was gonna look like

00:47:29 ◼   ► and it's not quite like the sort of generic Netflix app

00:47:32 ◼   ► that's on all other connected devices that Netflix is on

00:47:36 ◼   ► that is basically a web app, but it's pretty close, right?

00:47:40 ◼   ► It feels like an interesting,

00:47:42 ◼   ► and I think actually the Apple TV interface

00:47:45 ◼   ► is very similar to what Netflix was doing anyway.

00:47:47 ◼   ► And so I was, it fit,

00:47:50 ◼   ► it seemed to fit with what Netflix's brand is all about

00:47:53 ◼   ► and what the Apple TV looks like

00:47:54 ◼   ► and not be some weird mishmash.

00:47:56 ◼   ► So yeah, that's the number one thing I wanted to call out

00:48:00 ◼   ► is, you know, it's responsive.

00:48:02 ◼   ► It definitely feels faster to load everything

00:48:06 ◼   ► than the old one did.

00:48:07 ◼   ► But I just, I like the interface touches.

00:48:09 ◼   ► I like the sounds, I think they did a really good job.

00:48:12 ◼   ► And I was as skeptical as I was about using the trackpad.

00:48:15 ◼   ► For most cases, I think once you get used to it,

00:48:18 ◼   ► the trackpad is, I see why it's there, it's kind of fun.

00:48:22 ◼   ► A directional button probably would have been fine.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I did very quickly recognize that if you tap

00:48:28 ◼   ► to the right or left side of the trackpad,

00:48:33 ◼   ► basically you can use the trackpad as a D button by tapping.

00:48:35 ◼   ► This is a tap to click, which I had to learn

00:48:39 ◼   ► because I'm not a tap to click person on track pads,

00:48:42 ◼   ► but it has tap to click D buttons.

00:48:44 ◼   ► You can basically tap up, down, left, right on the remote

00:48:49 ◼   ► and it'll move you up, down, left, right.

00:48:53 ◼   ► Also, be sure you hold the remote in the right.

00:48:56 ◼   ► I actually really love the remote.

00:48:57 ◼   ► I love how it looks.

00:48:58 ◼   ► I think it's a cool looking remote

00:49:01 ◼   ► and it feels pretty good.

00:49:02 ◼   ► - It's definitely some great Apple design.

00:49:04 ◼   ► But yeah, but as everybody has pointed out,

00:49:06 ◼   ► the problem with it is it's,

00:49:08 ◼   ► 'cause Johnny Ive wants everything to be symmetrical,

00:49:10 ◼   ► is that it's symmetrical,

00:49:12 ◼   ► and that means you can't tell in the dark

00:49:13 ◼   ► whether you're holding it upside down or right side up.

00:49:16 ◼   ► And that it should be asymmetrical in some way

00:49:19 ◼   ► so that you can orient better in the dark.

00:49:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, like the old one had a big circle thing, right?

00:49:25 ◼   ► That was the button it was easy to see and hold.

00:49:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, like the TiVo remote is like shaped like a peanut,

00:49:30 ◼   ► but it's an asymmetrical, well, actually they made,

00:49:32 ◼   ► I've got a couple of them that are symmetrical

00:49:34 ◼   ► and they're terrible, but the asymmetrical TiVo remotes

00:49:36 ◼   ► are great because in the dark,

00:49:37 ◼   ► you can always tell which end is up and that's important.

00:49:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I actually have more,

00:49:44 ◼   ► slightly more negative feelings about the remote.

00:49:46 ◼   ► I hit, yeah, I know.

00:49:49 ◼   ► I mean, what are you gonna do?

00:49:50 ◼   ► I don't like the metal on the back.

00:49:53 ◼   ► It makes my hands feel clammy,

00:49:54 ◼   ► especially if I'm doing something like playing a game.

00:49:57 ◼   ► The, like you're saying, the symmetrical-ness of it,

00:50:00 ◼   ► it's terrible.

00:50:01 ◼   ► I have, in the short time that I've had it,

00:50:03 ◼   ► I have picked it up the wrong way several times and gone to click the completely shiny surface and been like, nope, that's not it.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Also, if you have it like on the couch arm and it slides off into the couch and then you go to fish around for it, you're going to accidentally hit the touch pad and drag your finger across the TV somewhere and click on something you didn't mean to or skip around in the movie you're watching, which I don't enjoy.

00:50:26 ◼   ► I think that that is actually one of the things that makes it a worse remote than the previous remote where you couldn't accidentally trigger it unless you actually pushed on it.

00:50:33 ◼   ► The other thing about it is that I see the functionality of it in terms of all of the things that it can do,

00:50:43 ◼   ► but like you're saying, it ultimately feels like it's been boiled down to basically do all of the things that the D-Pad interface can do.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And a couple other extra things, like having a dedicated Siri button and having the...

00:50:58 ◼   ► I don't know how to describe it, the TV button, I forget the exact term for that one, and

00:51:07 ◼   ► having the play/pause, which if you have to actually switch from what you're doing in

00:51:12 ◼   ► certain applications where you're sliding around on the time slider and you want to

00:51:15 ◼   ► hit play again, I think I was in Crackle or something like that and I needed to shimmy

00:51:19 ◼   ► down to hit the play/pause instead of clicking, it was weird.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And the volume's fine, but it works over IR, and the power does the weird thing over HDMI.

00:51:33 ◼   ► And when I was at my boyfriend's using his TV, the sleep that it asks you for when you

00:51:41 ◼   ► hold down on the button, it turned off his TV, but wouldn't turn it back on again.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Yes, that happened to me too.

00:51:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and when I went to my place, it works for off and on.

00:51:52 ◼   ► I have no idea why that is.

00:51:53 ◼   ► And so it's one of those things where it's like,

00:51:56 ◼   ► you guys spent a lot of time thinking how you wouldn't have

00:52:00 ◼   ► to have like all this universal remote stuff,

00:52:03 ◼   ► but it would be like smart enough.

00:52:05 ◼   ► And it's like, but it just kind of isn't exactly

00:52:07 ◼   ► smart enough if it can't turn on and off a television.

00:52:11 ◼   ► And the,

00:52:12 ◼   ► it also doesn't really like completely replace

00:52:16 ◼   ► everything you might wanna do with your television set.

00:52:20 ◼   ► So you still wind up having to fish around for other things,

00:52:24 ◼   ► I think.

00:52:25 ◼   ► It's sort of annoying.

00:52:26 ◼   ► You can't-- I couldn't switch the input with it.

00:52:31 ◼   ► So if you want to go back to watching another television

00:52:37 ◼   ► input, then it wasn't working for anything.

00:52:39 ◼   ► So that's ultimately another reason

00:52:42 ◼   ► why it's kind of annoying.

00:52:43 ◼   ► It's like, I wish it would do more things.

00:52:45 ◼   ► And I think about all the expense

00:52:48 ◼   ► that goes into the remote.

00:52:49 ◼   ► And I'm just like, could it have maybe been a slightly cheaper device if it was just a

00:52:52 ◼   ► D-pad versus this?

00:52:56 ◼   ► Because I don't think it's a particularly good game controller.

00:52:59 ◼   ► And I don't think it's a very good television remote.

00:53:01 ◼   ► So it's one of those quandaries where it's like, it's a beautiful device and it has great

00:53:06 ◼   ► build quality, but I really wish it was something else.

00:53:11 ◼   ► I can confirm, by the way, that I've got one of the original Apple remotes, the little

00:53:16 ◼   ► white ones and totally works with it which is kind of hilarious. So if you want to, you

00:53:23 ◼   ► know, it'll work on your iPod, Hi-Fi and on your brand new Apple TV.

00:53:27 ◼   ► The ones that used to come like magnetically attached to the iMacs, the front row is a

00:53:31 ◼   ► thing. Yeah, yeah, it totally works. And also you can program in other universal

00:53:36 ◼   ► remotes to work with your television set like Logitech Harmony.

00:53:39 ◼   ► Because it will listen on infrared, yeah. Yeah, so it's just like…

00:53:42 ◼   ► Which is nice. One of those things where it's like, so

00:53:44 ◼   ► The interface has been boiled down so it'll work with any basic remote.

00:53:48 ◼   ► So then what's so fancy?

00:53:50 ◼   ► What is the requirement of having the fancy remote?

00:53:52 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:53:53 ◼   ► It's play games, not very well.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Play games.

00:53:56 ◼   ► It's really terrible at playing games.

00:53:59 ◼   ► Or maybe I'm just terrible at using it to play games.

00:54:01 ◼   ► But like, Alto's Adventure was probably one of the better ones, but like you're saying,

00:54:04 ◼   ► it's basically a button.

00:54:05 ◼   ► Well, no, they screwed up because you have to click to jump, which is not good for timing.

00:54:11 ◼   ► You should be tapping to jump.

00:54:14 ◼   ► So Alto, they actually screwed that up.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Like, Cannonball, they nailed it.

00:54:17 ◼   ► It's tap to jump.

00:54:18 ◼   ► But, Altos eventually you click and so like if you are trying to hit something at just

00:54:23 ◼   ► the right time, you're just a millisecond or so off, which can make the difference.

00:54:28 ◼   ► So really you should be tapping, not clicking in my opinion.

00:54:31 ◼   ► Well like CrossFit Road, CrossFit Road is, I think is much better on, um, much better

00:54:38 ◼   ► with a D button.

00:54:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:41 ◼   ► than with the track pad because you have to click

00:54:45 ◼   ► to go forward in Crossy Road, or you can swipe,

00:54:49 ◼   ► but you have to swipe to go sideways.

00:54:51 ◼   ► And it's not a very good mechanic.

00:54:53 ◼   ► And the swipe to go forward is not as efficient.

00:54:57 ◼   ► So what I'm saying is I'm much worse at Crossy Road

00:55:00 ◼   ► than I am on the iPad.

00:55:02 ◼   ► - I am also worse.

00:55:04 ◼   ► The swiping gesture, I also keep trying to do diagonal

00:55:07 ◼   ► like it is on the screen, but it's not diagonal in my hand.

00:55:11 ◼   ► It's driving me a little, little wacky with that.

00:55:14 ◼   ► But, uh, the, uh, uh, one of the worst, uh, I've only played a few, but a terrible

00:55:21 ◼   ► game, I think is actually the Disney infinity, uh, battle of Yavin, uh,

00:55:25 ◼   ► star Wars game thing, branding experience that you can get for free.

00:55:30 ◼   ► And if anyone has an Apple TV, I highly recommend you download it.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Cause it's sort of fascinating to see this thing.

00:55:36 ◼   ► Uh, cause it is sort of poorly made and you're flying through different things.

00:55:40 ◼   ► There's weird loading screens.

00:55:42 ◼   ► I had it crash on me when it tried to load content,

00:55:44 ◼   ► so I don't know what that was, but it worked fine after that.

00:55:48 ◼   ► I was clipping through parts of the Death Star,

00:55:50 ◼   ► which is not good.

00:55:51 ◼   ► And the controls are just miserable.

00:55:54 ◼   ► You have to hold it horizontally in your hands.

00:55:57 ◼   ► And the touchpad is underneath your left thumb.

00:56:01 ◼   ► And you're using controls from the volume and everything else

00:56:06 ◼   ► with your right thumb.

00:56:08 ◼   ► It's very weird.

00:56:09 ◼   ► I don't find it comfortable because it's too small to hold like that and it's very imprecise.

00:56:15 ◼   ► And so it kept flying into things and couldn't aim at anything.

00:56:18 ◼   ► I also tried a Manticore Rising.

00:56:21 ◼   ► I had seen people raving about that on Twitter.

00:56:24 ◼   ► And that is a gyroscope controlled one.

00:56:28 ◼   ► And I found that I was just sort of spinning my wrist around trying to find enemies.

00:56:32 ◼   ► It was too inexact for targeting most of the time.

00:56:36 ◼   ► So it was just sort of the wrist spinning equivalent of button mashing.

00:56:41 ◼   ► I haven't found anything that I really think is a better game on the TV than it is on iOS,

00:56:47 ◼   ► which is sort of disappointing I think.

00:56:49 ◼   ► So most people that I've spoken to that are having good gaming experiences are using the

00:56:54 ◼   ► Nimbus controller.

00:56:56 ◼   ► So they bought the third party Nimbus controller.

00:56:58 ◼   ► But I think that is blank.

00:57:00 ◼   ► Yeah, so you don't have to beep that.

00:57:03 ◼   ► I think that is blank.

00:57:04 ◼   ► It is, it's ridiculous.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Apple should have made one. I mean I go about, I keep doing, I keep talking about

00:57:09 ◼   ► this over and over and over again. Like if they really believed in gaming there

00:57:14 ◼   ► should be a controller that Apple makes built in. But it's just, it proves the

00:57:19 ◼   ► point right which is why I brought it up that like people that are enjoying video

00:57:22 ◼   ► games on the Apple TV are using a real controller because this thing is not one.

00:57:27 ◼   ► This remote is not a game controller except for Beat Sports which works

00:57:31 ◼   ► really really well. I haven't tried that. Yeah. But I would suggest it. Okay. I really

00:57:38 ◼   ► I'm just sort of frustrated with the notion that you have to buy a third party controller

00:57:43 ◼   ► which isn't an Apple device and it's not even it's not even like Apple sells the TV and

00:57:48 ◼   ► they're like oh and here's our game controller you can buy for extra $50 or whatever because

00:57:54 ◼   ► that would seem somewhat more palatable than just like just take your chances and buy whatever

00:57:58 ◼   ► And especially when you know that the game itself is boiled down to work with basically

00:58:05 ◼   ► this remote, so that this is the bare minimum of the requirements, is this thing that it

00:58:12 ◼   ► ships with?

00:58:13 ◼   ► So then it's like, well why is it so bad at these things?

00:58:18 ◼   ► Jason, what do we like?

00:58:23 ◼   ► We need more things that we like.

00:58:27 ◼   ► Like I said, I like the interface, I like the sounds, I think that it's more responsive.

00:58:30 ◼   ► I think having the apps that have put in the work to be different, you know, Apple TV in

00:58:37 ◼   ► the old day with the channels, right, those were all really generic and sort of set up

00:58:40 ◼   ► with text files and, you know, it was like an XML schema kind of thing.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And now these are apps and the apps that are taking advantage of that, there are some really

00:58:53 ◼   ► nice features.

00:58:54 ◼   ► really did enjoy looking at a bunch of the different video apps and seeing the ones that

00:58:58 ◼   ► felt like the NBC Sports Live Extra, their app on iOS is actually not that great. It

00:59:03 ◼   ► like puts a banner ad down at the bottom of the screen and stuff like that. And it's really

00:59:07 ◼   ► awful. But the Apple TV app is very nice and it works really well. And I looked at a motion

00:59:14 ◼   ► comic and made fire at once I got it downloaded. And I thought that was a really interesting

00:59:20 ◼   ► experience to maybe not my favorite way to read a comic book, but I thought that putting

00:59:27 ◼   ► their motion comics on the TV made a lot of sense.

00:59:31 ◼   ► That's an interesting place to try that stuff.

00:59:34 ◼   ► So yeah, I think I'm encouraged by the fact that some of the apps look really good, that

00:59:40 ◼   ► over the course of the next six months or year that people are getting their legs on

00:59:47 ◼   ► what an Apple TV app looks like,

00:59:49 ◼   ► that we're gonna see some even better stuff.

00:59:51 ◼   ► But I think it does mean

00:59:52 ◼   ► that even the basic video watching experience

00:59:54 ◼   ► is gonna be better.

00:59:55 ◼   ► I will say, I'm a little surprised that Apple,

00:59:59 ◼   ► sorry, turning negative slightly here again,

01:00:03 ◼   ► but I'm a little surprised that Apple doesn't preload

01:00:06 ◼   ► or aggressively suggest certain apps.

01:00:11 ◼   ► Like, you know, 'cause the old Apple TV came

01:00:14 ◼   ► with all the channels turned on

01:00:15 ◼   ► and that's probably overkill.

01:00:17 ◼   ► but it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world

01:00:20 ◼   ► for them to say, you know, here are some video services,

01:00:25 ◼   ► select the ones you'd like to have

01:00:27 ◼   ► and we'll download them automatically right now.

01:00:30 ◼   ► I think that might not be so bad

01:00:32 ◼   ► because to go to have part of your onboarding experience be,

01:00:35 ◼   ► I have to go to the app store and download Netflix

01:00:37 ◼   ► and I have to go to the app store and download HBO Go

01:00:39 ◼   ► and I have to go to the app store again and download Hulu

01:00:41 ◼   ► instead of just sort of being either having them preloaded

01:00:45 ◼   ► or having them kind of like prompt you

01:00:49 ◼   ► to do a really quick auto download of those.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I think that would probably be better than what they offer.

01:00:54 ◼   ► I also wanted to say,

01:00:55 ◼   ► I like the services that put up a little code

01:00:58 ◼   ► and have you go to their webpage to log in because it's--

01:01:01 ◼   ► - YouTube.

01:01:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it's much easier to do that.

01:01:03 ◼   ► Hulu did that, HBO Go did that,

01:01:06 ◼   ► Major League Baseball did that,

01:01:07 ◼   ► and ABC Sports Live Extra did that.

01:01:10 ◼   ► And the best thing about that is the ones that have cable

01:01:12 ◼   ► or satellite TV or TV provider verification,

01:01:15 ◼   ► When you go in your browser,

01:01:17 ◼   ► whether it's on your iPhone or on your Mac,

01:01:19 ◼   ► once your cable provider sets that cookie,

01:01:24 ◼   ► the next one that you don't even log into your cable

01:01:25 ◼   ► provider, 'cause it already,

01:01:26 ◼   ► your browser already knows your username and your password,

01:01:29 ◼   ► or it's already got the cookie.

01:01:30 ◼   ► And so that was really kind of easy to do.

01:01:33 ◼   ► And although it's not ideal,

01:01:35 ◼   ► it would be nice if there was some magic way for me

01:01:37 ◼   ► to just sort of speak to the TV and log into those things.

01:01:41 ◼   ► I thought that was better than what I had to do with Netflix,

01:01:43 ◼   ► which is slowly peck out my email address

01:01:47 ◼   ► and then slowly peck out my Netflix password

01:01:50 ◼   ► 'cause that sucked.

01:01:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, in terms of preloading things,

01:01:56 ◼   ► it is a little barren,

01:01:58 ◼   ► but they do a good job of putting all of the things

01:02:01 ◼   ► that people might want in that top row

01:02:03 ◼   ► inside of the App Store.

01:02:04 ◼   ► One of the things I'm surprised that they don't expose,

01:02:08 ◼   ► though, is they have the purchase history.

01:02:09 ◼   ► And if you go to the purchase tab in the App Store,

01:02:11 ◼   ► you can see all the iOS apps that also are universal apps for the TV.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Which is many, almost all of the, basically all of the media things are shared

01:02:21 ◼   ► between the two as far as I could find. Except for, you know, Amazon prime,

01:02:25 ◼   ► whatever. But the, in terms of that experience,

01:02:30 ◼   ► I wonder if it would almost be better during the setup process to be like,

01:02:32 ◼   ► Hey, I found all this stuff you own.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Would you like these to also be on your TV? And you'd be like, yes,

01:02:38 ◼   ► that would be kind of nice cause I probably using exactly the same channels I'm

01:02:41 ◼   ► my television set as I'm using on my phone.

01:02:44 ◼   ► And I do have to kind of disagree

01:02:47 ◼   ► with the activation thing.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Like I wish there was a single sign on

01:02:51 ◼   ► for activating all of these.

01:02:54 ◼   ► - I agree with that.

01:02:54 ◼   ► I should be able to put my Comcast username and password

01:02:57 ◼   ► into the Apple TV and have it validate everything

01:03:00 ◼   ► that uses the Comcast validation, right?

01:03:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, if it was just another field in iTunes

01:03:05 ◼   ► and you're just like, "Hey, do this everywhere."

01:03:08 ◼   ► 'Cause I mean, Apple is totally fine

01:03:10 ◼   ► being the middleman for this stuff most of the time.

01:03:12 ◼   ► So it's sort of surprising that they leave it up

01:03:14 ◼   ► to all of these vendors to come up with their own solutions

01:03:17 ◼   ► where it requires you to use another device

01:03:19 ◼   ► inside of your house to go connect to this thing

01:03:22 ◼   ► every single time you wanna do it.

01:03:24 ◼   ► Which is actually really, like you're saying, Myke,

01:03:27 ◼   ► one of those paper cuts, is just that every app you download

01:03:32 ◼   ► that requires it is individual entry for that.

01:03:35 ◼   ► So every single one you have to go to whatever/activate,

01:03:38 ◼   ► Flickr/activate, YouTube you have to activate as well.

01:03:43 ◼   ► That sort of experience is unpleasant, I think.

01:03:48 ◼   ► It would be nice if it was sort of bundled together,

01:03:50 ◼   ► or at least you could share the credentials

01:03:51 ◼   ► from the iOS apps that you have that are universal binaries

01:03:56 ◼   ► when you're doing that initial setup.

01:03:58 ◼   ► That would be, I think, more pleasant

01:04:00 ◼   ► than the experience of having to do that,

01:04:03 ◼   ► to stop whatever you're doing every single time

01:04:05 ◼   ► and then go enter it.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Maybe in a couple months,

01:04:08 ◼   ► once all that stuff is just sitting there,

01:04:10 ◼   ► then it won't feel like a burden anymore,

01:04:12 ◼   ► 'cause you're not, we're in a compressed time scale here,

01:04:16 ◼   ► where we're downloading things

01:04:17 ◼   ► and talking about it immediately.

01:04:18 ◼   ► And of course, one of the first things we're gonna notice

01:04:20 ◼   ► is that the activation process is a little messy,

01:04:23 ◼   ► but I don't know if it's gonna continue

01:04:24 ◼   ► to feel like a burden later.

01:04:26 ◼   ► I'll say something nice, I promise.

01:04:30 ◼   ► Like Jason, I like the interface, it's very pretty.

01:04:32 ◼   ► It is a little sparse in some places,

01:04:35 ◼   ► where more info often terminates

01:04:37 ◼   ► before the end of a sentence

01:04:39 ◼   ► for some of the descriptions of games and channels, but--

01:04:42 ◼   ► - Positive, Joe, positive.

01:04:44 ◼   ► - Okay, it's beautiful to look at.

01:04:45 ◼   ► Universal Search is very nice most of the time.

01:04:50 ◼   ► It shows me Netflix first over iTunes,

01:04:55 ◼   ► if it's available there.

01:04:57 ◼   ► And you can even say things like,

01:04:59 ◼   ► "Show me all the Star Trek stuff on Netflix,"

01:05:01 ◼   ► and it'll show you exactly what is available,

01:05:04 ◼   ► which turns out they took almost all of the movies away

01:05:06 ◼   ► except for Nemesis, which is so great.

01:05:08 ◼   ► But the experience of doing that I think is great,

01:05:13 ◼   ► except for when you have a universal search entry

01:05:17 ◼   ► and it shows you the screen with your search results.

01:05:20 ◼   ► And then you can click to go to iTunes

01:05:24 ◼   ► and it looks exactly like the same screen

01:05:25 ◼   ► and you're kind of like,

01:05:26 ◼   ► I wish you guys had differentiated that

01:05:28 ◼   ► just slightly a little bit.

01:05:29 ◼   ► But it is far superior to the old experience

01:05:33 ◼   ► searching for anything. So that is something that I feel very positive about. And there

01:05:40 ◼   ► are only a couple cases where it was like certain homophones would mess it up or like

01:05:45 ◼   ► proper names of things, like "Wrath of Khan" and it's "Wrath of Khan", C-O-N. And it's

01:05:50 ◼   ► like I can't find anything. It's like you could use some context clues to figure out

01:05:54 ◼   ► that all of the other words that I said that you recorded correctly probably match up to

01:05:59 ◼   ► something.

01:06:00 ◼   ► - I was searching for the UK spy,

01:06:03 ◼   ► the TV series called "Spy," which is a comedy.

01:06:06 ◼   ► And that was funny because I had to, it's on Hulu.

01:06:09 ◼   ► And I did a search that was, you know, find spy.

01:06:13 ◼   ► And it's like, you know,

01:06:16 ◼   ► here are a bunch of spy movies on iTunes.

01:06:18 ◼   ► I'm like, that's not what I'm looking for.

01:06:19 ◼   ► And I finally, but I was able to, I think my third try,

01:06:22 ◼   ► I said, "Show me the TV series "Spy."

01:06:27 ◼   ► And it popped up a list of TV series

01:06:29 ◼   ► with spy on the title, the second of which

01:06:31 ◼   ► was the TV series Spy.

01:06:33 ◼   ► So I got, some of it is like, okay, how do I target this

01:06:36 ◼   ► and what is it listening for and all of those things

01:06:39 ◼   ► for the series searches.

01:06:41 ◼   ► But yeah, that's a great feature.

01:06:43 ◼   ► And the fact that other video apps can tie into it

01:06:47 ◼   ► so that if I've got Showtime and HBO Go

01:06:51 ◼   ► and Hulu and Netflix and they're all in there,

01:06:55 ◼   ► then when I search for a movie or a show,

01:06:58 ◼   ► I don't need to know like, oh, it's actually,

01:07:02 ◼   ► 'cause I've done this, right, where it's like,

01:07:03 ◼   ► this movie's on HBO this month and I can stream it,

01:07:06 ◼   ► but instead I rent it from iTunes because I'm a dummy.

01:07:10 ◼   ► But it's really because I've only trained myself

01:07:12 ◼   ► to look in like two places.

01:07:14 ◼   ► So being able to do that right from here and say,

01:07:15 ◼   ► oh, look, I can get that for HBO,

01:07:17 ◼   ► which I think you can't do right now,

01:07:18 ◼   ► but I think that that's coming,

01:07:20 ◼   ► that more sources are being added.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I think that's a good thing.

01:07:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I also like that you can use it

01:07:28 ◼   ► for characters as well.

01:07:30 ◼   ► So you can say like, show me stuff with Mickey Mouse

01:07:34 ◼   ► or show me stuff with Captain Kirk,

01:07:36 ◼   ► and then it'll show you those titles

01:07:38 ◼   ► that feature that character,

01:07:40 ◼   ► rather than just being constricted to the actor.

01:07:42 ◼   ► So you can see Chris Pine movies

01:07:43 ◼   ► and William Shatner movies.

01:07:45 ◼   ► It's just sort of an interesting feature.

01:07:49 ◼   ► And the cases where it didn't work were so tiny

01:07:51 ◼   ► that I overall give it a standing ovation for that.

01:07:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I should say HBO Go is in the universal search now.

01:08:03 ◼   ► Some of the other apps will be added later.

01:08:05 ◼   ► So if you search for the wire,

01:08:05 ◼   ► it'll say those are on iTunes and on HBO Go.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Cool.

01:08:10 ◼   ► So yeah, there's a lot of good things about it.

01:08:11 ◼   ► I did wanna mention that I'm very sad

01:08:14 ◼   ► that the photos support in it

01:08:16 ◼   ► is essentially the same as the old Apple TV,

01:08:19 ◼   ► where it'll show you the photo stream

01:08:21 ◼   ► and it'll show you your shared albums,

01:08:24 ◼   ► but it won't actually show you your iCloud photo library.

01:08:26 ◼   ► Like I've got all of these albums

01:08:28 ◼   ► in my iCloud photo library.

01:08:30 ◼   ► They're not available.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Only if I put them in the sharing screen,

01:08:34 ◼   ► will they show up.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And that seems dumb to me.

01:08:39 ◼   ► That was like a major photo initiative of Apple

01:08:42 ◼   ► was this iCloud photo library

01:08:44 ◼   ► and the Apple TV just basically doesn't support it.

01:08:48 ◼   ► it's sort of supporting the stuff that was already there

01:08:51 ◼   ► before they introduced iCloud Photo Library.

01:08:53 ◼   ► - Oh, well, that sort of goes hand in hand

01:08:56 ◼   ► with their music support here on the device as well.

01:08:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have a theory about this.

01:09:00 ◼   ► So we had a tipster by the name of Carlos on Connected

01:09:05 ◼   ► who informed us that this was the case, right?

01:09:08 ◼   ► That music just didn't work.

01:09:10 ◼   ► And it seems like that all of these services and teams,

01:09:15 ◼   ► They're just, they're all developing their products in silos, right?

01:09:18 ◼   ► So like the photos team's over there, the music team's over there, the TV team's over

01:09:22 ◼   ► there, and like they don't know about each other until the products launch because of

01:09:26 ◼   ► the secrecy stuff.

01:09:28 ◼   ► And then it ends up that the TV comes out without, without some proper support for two

01:09:32 ◼   ► of Apple's newest services because they couldn't talk to each other beforehand.

01:09:35 ◼   ► That's the way I read this.

01:09:37 ◼   ► It supports music, although, but you can't search or control with the voice search music.

01:09:42 ◼   ► It's like the music team had to build an app like every other developer, which is madness.

01:09:48 ◼   ► A third-party app.

01:09:49 ◼   ► Yep.

01:09:50 ◼   ► I was happy to see that the computer feature still exists, that you can use your sharing

01:09:57 ◼   ► -- Home sharing.

01:09:58 ◼   ► Yeah, and go to the computer thing and actually see the iTunes that's on a computer.

01:10:05 ◼   ► I was happy about that because I wasn't sure they cared enough to do that, but they did.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And it works very, very well, very quickly.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Another thing I should say positively is also in terms of like loading things and speed,

01:10:20 ◼   ► like even like loading up the album art off of my computer, it was doing that pretty fast.

01:10:25 ◼   ► And in terms of like music, while it's annoying all the things that are wrong, especially

01:10:30 ◼   ► if you are an Apple Music subscriber, I'm not, the fact that it just immediately has

01:10:36 ◼   ► access to your purchases in iTunes and will just stream right away is great in terms of

01:10:43 ◼   ► like a just a general experience.

01:10:45 ◼   ► Searching for things and whatever like as annoying as you would expect but just to just

01:10:49 ◼   ► having it there is handy.

01:10:52 ◼   ► >> You talk about the speed.

01:10:53 ◼   ► I think it takes some getting used to but I think it's very clever what they're doing

01:10:57 ◼   ► with their transition animation which is that you know you're instead of the classic Apple

01:11:03 ◼   ► TV transition, which is a black screen with a circle spinning around in it for an unknown

01:11:07 ◼   ► amount of time.

01:11:09 ◼   ► Instead they've got this thing where it's like the, you know, it's the blurred out background

01:11:15 ◼   ► that kind of fades in and fades back out again.

01:11:18 ◼   ► And yes, that is a magic trick.

01:11:22 ◼   ► It is trickery.

01:11:23 ◼   ► It is trying to fool you into thinking things are happening when they're not actually happening,

01:11:27 ◼   ► but behind the scenes that can cover it's the device is fast enough that that can cover

01:11:31 ◼   ► a lot of pauses, like just that moment. And I'm sure John Syracuse, if he were here, would

01:11:36 ◼   ► say, "It's extra time. I don't want the extra time. You should just jump to it as soon as

01:11:40 ◼   ► it loads." But for me, I felt like that was a better way of bridging the transition where

01:11:46 ◼   ► give me something to look at. It's pretty. It feels like it's all of a piece. It's all

01:11:50 ◼   ► flowing into the next thing. And I like that. You still will see occasionally the spinning

01:11:55 ◼   ► circle if it gets to the end, it's like, "Nope, still loading things." You'll see that. But

01:12:00 ◼   ► I thought it was a nice touch.

01:12:02 ◼   ► One thing I don't like about the blurry thing, it is nice as you say, but except that when

01:12:08 ◼   ► you blur things and have like a smooth transition from one color to another color or one value

01:12:13 ◼   ► to another value, that works differently across different TVs and you're gonna get banding

01:12:17 ◼   ► artifacts on different TVs and I've noticed that both on my TV as well as my boyfriend's

01:12:22 ◼   ► TV.

01:12:23 ◼   ► They're like, you just get like a couple of times, you'll use like a nice little like

01:12:25 ◼   ► band of different color where it just drops off not smoothly and I'm just like, I wish

01:12:30 ◼   ► that was just like if you'd done solid colors you wouldn't have that problem

01:12:33 ◼   ► but it wouldn't be as visually interesting I suppose right that that's

01:12:38 ◼   ► just a minor little little tiny nitpick super super positive show right Myke

01:12:43 ◼   ► well the thing is like I I am I am I get annoyed right like and there's many

01:12:47 ◼   ► things that I'm annoyed about but I'm just very conscious of the fact that I

01:12:52 ◼   ► feel like I'm complaining a lot the moment but it feels like everybody is

01:12:56 ◼   ► And I wonder what it is, like, do we put,

01:13:00 ◼   ► and I believe it's probably because we put Apple

01:13:02 ◼   ► under a real microscope,

01:13:05 ◼   ► because we expect greatness from them at all times, right?

01:13:08 ◼   ► Which is why we do this and why we treat them so harshly

01:13:12 ◼   ► and with such criticism over the work that they do.

01:13:17 ◼   ► - Well, it's also that they put themselves on that pedestal

01:13:21 ◼   ► when they say they've soft TV,

01:13:23 ◼   ► and that's the future of TV is apps.

01:13:25 ◼   ► So if they don't talk it up,

01:13:29 ◼   ► then I probably think we would have

01:13:31 ◼   ► slightly lower expectations.

01:13:33 ◼   ► Like when they said it was a hobby before,

01:13:34 ◼   ► it was just like, okay, well,

01:13:35 ◼   ► this is good for being a hobby.

01:13:37 ◼   ► And then now it's like, we got to go and we got it solved.

01:13:41 ◼   ► Here is spend $150 on this.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Three years in the making.

01:13:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:13:48 ◼   ► That is an issue that they make the marketing so grandiose.

01:13:51 ◼   ► It puts a massive target on them.

01:13:54 ◼   ► So on Twitter, after I ranted about my setup problems,

01:13:57 ◼   ► I mentioned, you know, I basically said,

01:13:59 ◼   ► so in short, this is a 1.0 product and it feels like it,

01:14:02 ◼   ► but on the positive side, there's room for improvement.

01:14:04 ◼   ► And I had a bunch of people who responded and said,

01:14:06 ◼   ► I think you shouldn't be making excuses for Apple.

01:14:09 ◼   ► And I'm like, saying that Apple's big new Apple TV product

01:14:13 ◼   ► is very clearly a 1.0,

01:14:16 ◼   ► and there's lots of room for improvement,

01:14:18 ◼   ► I'm not sure you understood the subtext there,

01:14:21 ◼   ► which is this should be,

01:14:22 ◼   ► 'cause people are like, more like a 3.0 or a 4.0, right?

01:14:25 ◼   ► And I was like, no, no, this doesn't build

01:14:28 ◼   ► on what they've done before.

01:14:29 ◼   ► This is a 1.0 again, and it feels like it.

01:14:31 ◼   ► The good side of that is that these are things,

01:14:34 ◼   ► I think there's a lot of strength here

01:14:37 ◼   ► that can be improved upon.

01:14:39 ◼   ► And there's a lot about this product that I really like,

01:14:42 ◼   ► but it's got some rough edges

01:14:46 ◼   ► and it's kind of painful to use parts of it.

01:14:48 ◼   ► And I feel like there are things that Apple can do

01:14:50 ◼   ► to address a lot of these things.

01:14:52 ◼   ► and hopefully will in the next few months.

01:14:54 ◼   ► But it does, it absolutely feels like a brand new thing

01:14:58 ◼   ► that is not, I'm not gonna say not done, not ready.

01:15:03 ◼   ► Although some of it feels, I suspect like,

01:15:06 ◼   ► like with the photo stuff and the music stuff,

01:15:08 ◼   ► it's like, why isn't that there?

01:15:10 ◼   ► And the answer is 'cause we needed to ship it now

01:15:12 ◼   ► and we weren't ready for that stuff.

01:15:13 ◼   ► That will come in time, but it's not there now.

01:15:16 ◼   ► So that's what a 1.0 product is, right?

01:15:18 ◼   ► It's like not, maybe parts of it aren't finished

01:15:21 ◼   ► and it's got some bugs and people who buy it right now are going to have to deal with

01:15:25 ◼   ► some of that stuff. I think that's just the reality of this product. This is not, you

01:15:28 ◼   ► know, a refinement of the last generation Apple TV. This is a new product on a new platform

01:15:34 ◼   ► with a whole lot of potential, but it's a 1.0 and, you know, judge accordingly.

01:15:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I completely agree with you, especially since I think, in many ways this is sort of

01:15:46 ◼   ► of like when they reset some of their applications in terms of like, oh, it's the same name,

01:15:53 ◼   ► but it doesn't do some of these old things and it does some of these other new things

01:15:56 ◼   ► that are great.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And so it's sort of like walks that line, especially, you know, we talk about remote

01:16:01 ◼   ► app, we talk about like, there's a lot of stuff that's similar, but slightly different.

01:16:06 ◼   ► And it is a hard reset in terms of like, well, now there are applications and it's a different

01:16:10 ◼   ► operating system.

01:16:11 ◼   ► So they worked hard to get it up to being able to do most of what the old one did.

01:16:15 ◼   ► but I mean most, like almost all.

01:16:19 ◼   ► But yeah, it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

01:16:24 ◼   ► Especially I think the biggest missing piece is a unified content strategy for some other

01:16:30 ◼   ► kind of subscription service like the over-the-top service we've seen them talk about, like Les

01:16:34 ◼   ► Moovis, CBS president always talks about.

01:16:38 ◼   ► You know, if you want to have a secret, don't tell it to him, because he'll just talk to

01:16:42 ◼   ► Kara Swisher about it whenever he feels like it.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Les Moonves doesn't care. He just doesn't care.

01:16:47 ◼   ► He just doesn't care about your secrets.

01:16:48 ◼   ► You know how little he cares? He cares so little that he's gonna use a new Star Trek

01:16:52 ◼   ► show to sell his online video streaming service. That's how little he cares. Les Moonves doesn't

01:16:57 ◼   ► care.

01:16:58 ◼   ► So Myke, are you really happy about the number of times you've mentioned Star Trek on the

01:17:01 ◼   ► show?

01:17:02 ◼   ► I'm so pleased that you were here for this. If you weren't here, Joe, then he'd just be

01:17:05 ◼   ► mentioned to me, and then I would just be sitting here quietly about it.

01:17:08 ◼   ► Ah. Well, that's no fun.

01:17:10 ◼   ► So at least Jason got to have his nerdy some way.

01:17:13 ◼   ► the only way. It's the whole reason I'm here. Joe, thank you so much for joining us. Where

01:17:18 ◼   ► can people find your work on the internet? You can find me at joe-steel.com or @josteel

01:17:24 ◼   ► on Twitter, and I have a podcast with Dan Sturm on the Incomparable Network. This is

01:17:31 ◼   ► total nepotism, that's why I'm here. Called Defocused. Yeah, it's called Defocused. No

01:17:38 ◼   ► banding artifacts on that though, because it's an audio podcast. Maybe there's audio

01:17:43 ◼   ► Go banding.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Listen carefully.

01:17:45 ◼   ► There might be.

01:17:46 ◼   ► Great.

01:17:47 ◼   ► Thank you so much for joining us, Joe.

01:17:48 ◼   ► Thank you for your thoughts on the Apple TV.

01:17:50 ◼   ► There you go, Joe Steele.

01:17:51 ◼   ► I'm glad.

01:17:52 ◼   ► We don't have guests that often, although I'd like to have some more often, but I've

01:17:56 ◼   ► been wanting Joe to talk about the new Apple TV for so long because he has so many opinions

01:18:00 ◼   ► about Apple TV.

01:18:02 ◼   ► So I'm glad we all got to use the product over the weekend and talk about it a little

01:18:06 ◼   ► bit.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Well, the good thing about our guests is they're guests for reasons, right?

01:18:10 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:18:11 ◼   ► And not that often.

01:18:12 ◼   ► I think he might be our fourth, third?

01:18:16 ◼   ► Something like that.

01:18:17 ◼   ► Not very many.

01:18:18 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:18:19 ◼   ► Nobody knows.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Nope.

01:18:21 ◼   ► But you know what time it is right now?

01:18:23 ◼   ► Is it time for #AskUpgrade?

01:18:25 ◼   ► Lasers, lasers.

01:18:29 ◼   ► And who is the sponsor of this week's Ask Upgrade?

01:18:32 ◼   ► It's who you'd expect.

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01:20:44 ◼   ► You're gay.

01:20:45 ◼   ► I would like to know, do either of us use screen protectors on our iPhones?

01:20:52 ◼   ► We had this question on Connected recently, and it always surprises me when I hear people

01:20:58 ◼   ► ask this stuff because I would never put a screen protector on my phone. I do wear a

01:21:02 ◼   ► case which is kind of interesting, right, that I do one and not the other. But the case

01:21:06 ◼   ► kind of protects my screen in the way that it doesn't let it shatter. I'd never worry

01:21:12 ◼   ► about my phone scratching, which is I assume the reasons that people use screen protectors.

01:21:17 ◼   ► I've never had a scratch on an iPhone. And I just don't like the way that the screens

01:21:23 ◼   ► feel with those protectors on them.

01:21:26 ◼   ► My understanding is, this is the material science that has really improved on the iPhone,

01:21:31 ◼   ► is that these screens, although they will still shatter if you drop them in the right

01:21:34 ◼   ► way, my understanding is that they don't scratch as easily as they ever had before.

01:21:39 ◼   ► And that there used to be, people used to do iPhone screen scratch tests, PC World used

01:21:43 ◼   ► to do it when I worked with those guys, where they would take some keys and awful stuff

01:21:48 ◼   ► and try to scratch it up.

01:21:49 ◼   ► And earlier iPhones could scratch fairly easily.

01:21:52 ◼   ► And you know, if you wonder why nobody does scratch tests of phones so much anymore, it's

01:21:56 ◼   ► because they don't really scratch so much.

01:21:59 ◼   ► So I don't either.

01:22:00 ◼   ► I don't like the feel of them.

01:22:01 ◼   ► I don't like having to put them on and the little bubbles that you can get in there.

01:22:06 ◼   ► I used to have screen protectors when I had the Palm, what was it, Trio.

01:22:11 ◼   ► That one had a screen protector, but that was like a resistive touch screen.

01:22:16 ◼   ► It was not a very good touch screen, and it was pretty fragile.

01:22:21 ◼   ► if you want like an anti glare I know there's some people have real glare problems again

01:22:25 ◼   ► they've made a lot of headway and having glare be less of an issue on the iPhone I know some

01:22:29 ◼   ► people will do an anti glare screen protector but I've never felt the need for anything

01:22:35 ◼   ► like that either so no I haven't I think I tried one once for a couple of weeks like

01:22:39 ◼   ► years ago and since then not at all. So there you go no screen protectors over here and

01:22:45 ◼   ► I know that you can kind of get them and they're apparently like partly made from glass now

01:22:49 ◼   ► so they feel better but it's just not it's just not something I would want.

01:22:54 ◼   ► You know when you use a screen protector the time you use a screen protector is when you've

01:22:57 ◼   ► got a slightly cracked screen?

01:23:01 ◼   ► Yeah to stop it from like destroying.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Yeah and so it'll still be usable for a while and you can put a screen protector on there

01:23:08 ◼   ► and you can actually use it and not get splinters of glass in your fingertips I have had friends

01:23:13 ◼   ► who've done that where their phone was still usable even though it had a crack across it

01:23:18 ◼   ► that that will kind of hold it together a little bit longer but I wouldn't I

01:23:22 ◼   ► wouldn't put one on a regular phone. Right so next up in this week's Ask

01:23:29 ◼   ► Upgrade is Wayne. Wayne would like to know what do you think of the possibilities of the

01:23:34 ◼   ► Apple Pencil used in conjunction with the new Magic Trackpad? I mean so I

01:23:39 ◼   ► wanted to put this in because I've been using a Wacom as a input device for the

01:23:44 ◼   ► last couple of weeks because I've mentioned this before but like some RSI stuff

01:23:49 ◼   ► I'm just trying to mix up stuff that I'm using and I think that that could be

01:23:53 ◼   ► really nice if they work together especially as this trackpad gets bigger

01:23:56 ◼   ► I mean it would have to probably be bigger than this to be used as a any

01:24:01 ◼   ► kind of system that people would want to use so you'd need a bigger trackpad but

01:24:05 ◼   ► there is a potential there I just find it very unlikely that Apple would make

01:24:09 ◼   ► that product.

01:24:10 ◼   ► >> Yeah, also the Magic Trackpad is a, you know, it's got pressure sensitivity built

01:24:17 ◼   ► into it.

01:24:18 ◼   ► The Apple Pencil has its own pressure sensitivity built into it.

01:24:21 ◼   ► So now you've got two devices that are measuring the pressure separately.

01:24:26 ◼   ► It doesn't sound like that's the right way to go to me.

01:24:31 ◼   ► >> No, I mean, it's an interesting thought experiment, but I think Apple would say for

01:24:36 ◼   ► the most reasons that people would want that just get an iPad Pro right because

01:24:40 ◼   ► you think about drawing with it. Yeah and I think on the Mac side they're

01:24:44 ◼   ► happy to have the third parties with doing that yeah. Gary would like to know

01:24:48 ◼   ► Jason you mentioned about an upgrade that you did to your mom's computer

01:24:53 ◼   ► could you reiterate that and maybe give a little bit more information about what

01:24:56 ◼   ► you did? Yeah so I Gary asked and I did what I could I wrote a post last

01:25:02 ◼   ► Friday on Six Colors, answering Gary specifically with, how about that for service, called New

01:25:10 ◼   ► Life for an Old MacBook Pro.

01:25:12 ◼   ► That gives some of the details of it.

01:25:15 ◼   ► And so you can read that there.

01:25:16 ◼   ► I had an interesting question from one of the readers about that story where they said,

01:25:23 ◼   ► is there any reason why you bought all your stuff from Otherworld Computing and didn't

01:25:29 ◼   ► shop around and get the best deals because stores like that are going to have markup

01:25:34 ◼   ► and all of that, and there are cheaper models and you can get it.

01:25:38 ◼   ► And I thought that was a really interesting point that I wanted to mention just here too,

01:25:41 ◼   ► which is there was a time when I was happy to put in the research about here's exactly

01:25:49 ◼   ► what the issues are with this particular model and the kinds of drives it needs and the kinds

01:25:54 ◼   ► of drives it'll take and the ones it won't take.

01:25:58 ◼   ► And with some Mac models, that's complicated because there's like, you need to have the

01:26:01 ◼   ► ones with the sensor or you need to have the ones with this kind of mounting bracket or

01:26:04 ◼   ► things like that.

01:26:06 ◼   ► There's sometimes some unexpected complexity there.

01:26:10 ◼   ► And you want to find the lowest price, but you want it to be a reputable product.

01:26:14 ◼   ► You want it to be reliable.

01:26:15 ◼   ► Is the seller somebody who's trustworthy?

01:26:18 ◼   ► Is the company that makes it, is this a reliable model?

01:26:23 ◼   ► And you can do a lot of work and come up with the right product and find it at the right

01:26:28 ◼   ► price and save money. There is no doubt about it. I came to the point where I didn't want

01:26:34 ◼   ► to do that anymore. Where I didn't want to fret about, is this exactly the one that will

01:26:39 ◼   ► work in my model? Or am I reading this wrong because on eBay they sell five different versions

01:26:44 ◼   ► of this, or on Amazon they're selling three different versions and did I pick the right

01:26:48 ◼   ► one or not? I've had it happen where I bought stuff and gotten it and gone, "Oh, this is

01:26:53 ◼   ► the wrong one," and had to send it back. And then you have to get a return authorization

01:26:57 ◼   ► number and then you have to ship it and maybe go to the post office and you know I don't

01:27:00 ◼   ► like that. And I just decided I would call back to our sponsor. I just decided I'm fine

01:27:11 ◼   ► with paying a little bit more for a product that it's like I've ordered from these guys

01:27:16 ◼   ► before and it doesn't it's not just the world I mean there are other there are plenty of

01:27:20 ◼   ► other resellers that are out there that sell stuff like this that you could go to. But

01:27:26 ◼   ► The point is, I'm comfortable with them.

01:27:29 ◼   ► I've ordered a bunch of stuff from them over the years.

01:27:31 ◼   ► I've had ones that have failed in the past

01:27:34 ◼   ► that they've covered easily,

01:27:36 ◼   ► sent me a new version under their warranty.

01:27:41 ◼   ► So there's a level of trust there.

01:27:43 ◼   ► And then they do the work to say

01:27:45 ◼   ► what's compatible with what.

01:27:47 ◼   ► So this was a MacBook Pro five comma five,

01:27:49 ◼   ► this particular model, the mid 2009 MacBook Pro.

01:27:52 ◼   ► And they have on their site,

01:27:53 ◼   ► here's the SSDs that we've got that we certify

01:27:57 ◼   ► with a five comma five.

01:27:59 ◼   ► And here's a how-to guide about how to install it

01:28:01 ◼   ► if you wanna do that too.

01:28:02 ◼   ► And I like that.

01:28:03 ◼   ► I like the fact that they did that work

01:28:05 ◼   ► and I don't have to worry about,

01:28:07 ◼   ► oh, well you thought that this was a compatible one,

01:28:10 ◼   ► but it turns out that this model isn't compatible

01:28:12 ◼   ► for some esoteric reason.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And I just, yeah, I just kind of don't wanna deal with it.

01:28:16 ◼   ► So this is sort of one of those things

01:28:18 ◼   ► about being a smart shopper on the internet

01:28:20 ◼   ► is if you wanna put in a lot of extra work,

01:28:22 ◼   ► you can save money.

01:28:23 ◼   ► and you just have to decide,

01:28:24 ◼   ► do you wanna put in the extra work

01:28:25 ◼   ► or do you wanna just have it be easy?

01:28:27 ◼   ► And I'm fine to pay more and have it be easy

01:28:30 ◼   ► and your mileage may vary.

01:28:31 ◼   ► - This is a straight up time money equation.

01:28:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, it is.

01:28:36 ◼   ► And there's some stress too,

01:28:37 ◼   ► because you order it from somebody on eBay

01:28:39 ◼   ► and it looks like it's legit and they're 90% positive.

01:28:42 ◼   ► So you're like, oh, it's probably fine,

01:28:44 ◼   ► but you don't know where it's coming from

01:28:45 ◼   ► or whether there's gonna be an issue.

01:28:47 ◼   ► And so there's some of that too, I think,

01:28:51 ◼   ► where there's stress of like,

01:28:52 ◼   ► I'm ordering this from somebody I don't actually know

01:28:55 ◼   ► who they are and what it's gonna be like.

01:28:57 ◼   ► So there's a little bit of that,

01:28:58 ◼   ► but a lot of it is just the time that,

01:29:00 ◼   ► there are like iMac models that have weird temperature

01:29:05 ◼   ► and I think maybe MacBook Pros too, temperature sensor stuff.

01:29:07 ◼   ► And there's the, oh, well, this enclosure will fit this,

01:29:10 ◼   ► but it won't fit that.

01:29:11 ◼   ► And there's just enough complexity there historically

01:29:13 ◼   ► that it's kind of nice to be able to just say,

01:29:17 ◼   ► these guys say this one works and so I'm gonna buy that.

01:29:20 ◼   ► So I thought it was a good question.

01:29:22 ◼   ► He kind of couched it as like,

01:29:23 ◼   ► are they a sponsor or something?

01:29:25 ◼   ► It's like, no, no, they're not.

01:29:27 ◼   ► I actually, I've written about them in the past

01:29:29 ◼   ► and they used to be an advertiser,

01:29:30 ◼   ► I think at Macworld back in the day,

01:29:31 ◼   ► but you know, no, I just, as a Mac user,

01:29:34 ◼   ► it became a lot easier to deal with a company

01:29:38 ◼   ► that was gonna take care of all the compatibility issues.

01:29:40 ◼   ► And so I just sort of, I just want it to be easy.

01:29:43 ◼   ► So anyway, you can read that article.

01:29:46 ◼   ► It'll be in the show notes.

01:29:47 ◼   ► - Yes, of course. - About all the details

01:29:49 ◼   ► of my mom's old MacBook Pro, which now has a new home with somebody who will use it with

01:29:56 ◼   ► an SSD instead of the old spinning hard drive and as a result it is dramatically better.

01:30:01 ◼   ► It has gone from being unusable to being usable again. So that's great.

01:30:05 ◼   ► And finally today Robbie would like to know, "Jason, I'll ask this of you. Do you ever

01:30:10 ◼   ► think about how much your listeners or readers trust your judgment and how you can influence

01:30:15 ◼   ► what they buy? For example mice, keyboards, that kind of thing?"

01:30:19 ◼   ► great question. Absolutely. I remember talking to Andy and Iko about this years ago. It's

01:30:23 ◼   ► like the, when I was at Mac world, especially there was this, you know, you're writing,

01:30:28 ◼   ► you're writing a review or recommending a product. You are absolutely aware that people

01:30:34 ◼   ► are going to be listening and that you are influencing them. You're also aware that you

01:30:45 ◼   ► don't control them. So you can't just demand that they buy things. But you have to be aware

01:30:51 ◼   ► that you're holding a megaphone, that you're holding a bullhorn and people can hear what

01:30:57 ◼   ► you're saying and that there's responsibility that comes along with that. And sometimes

01:31:02 ◼   ► the responsibility is just to explain and to contextualize what you're saying. And I

01:31:07 ◼   ► do that a lot where I say, "Look, I am not your typical user because of X, but I use

01:31:12 ◼   ► this product because what I don't want to say is, "Oh, everybody should go to eBay and

01:31:17 ◼   ► buy an iPod HiFi right now because I love it and go buy them now," right? Well, no.

01:31:23 ◼   ► What I'd say is I have an iPod HiFi and I use it as my external speaker for my iMac

01:31:28 ◼   ► because I have it and it sounds pretty good. And even though it was a problematic product

01:31:33 ◼   ► in terms of its features and its price, the fact is for my particular use case, it works

01:31:38 ◼   ► for me, I've got it, it sounds good." Right? So a lot of times it's that. It's where you

01:31:43 ◼   ► put it in context and say, "Look, because of the way I work or because of my personal

01:31:48 ◼   ► ... " Being aware of your personal preferences is part of it. It's like the flip side of

01:31:54 ◼   ► also not reviewing a product and saying it's bad because it doesn't fit what you want from

01:31:59 ◼   ► that product because that's not enough when you write a product review to say, "Well,

01:32:05 ◼   ► I don't like it, so it's bad for everybody. So it all goes with the responsibility of knowing that

01:32:12 ◼   ► you've got an audience and that people are listening to you to try to keep that in

01:32:17 ◼   ► perspective. Now, I'm not going to not give my opinion because it might... This is the one

01:32:25 ◼   ► exception. We used to debate whether we should write negative reviews of little pieces of

01:32:30 ◼   ► software or hardware that were that were just bad. And I think what we decided was if nobody's

01:32:35 ◼   ► ever heard of it, why would you review it? Because you're just being mean. If it's a

01:32:40 ◼   ► prominent piece of software or hardware and it's bad, you do need to write about it because

01:32:44 ◼   ► you need to warn people off from it. But that was that was one case where it's like, why

01:32:48 ◼   ► do I really want to step on these guys? You know, they nobody knows who they are and their

01:32:53 ◼   ► app is bad. And that's where you get somebody who emails you and says, can you review my

01:32:56 ◼   ► my app and you say, well, you know, send me a code and I'll look at it and you look at

01:33:00 ◼   ► it and it's terrible and you have to choose. Do I write a thing that says, hey, this app

01:33:04 ◼   ► is terrible, haha, or do I just not write about it? And, and, um, that's the one case

01:33:09 ◼   ► where I will not turn my audience onto a poor, sad developer who made a product that they

01:33:15 ◼   ► like, but that is not very good and that nobody knows about. You just, you let that one go.

01:33:21 ◼   ► But generally, you just have to be aware of the impact of your words and, you know, you

01:33:29 ◼   ► have to be aware of it but you also can't control it.

01:33:31 ◼   ► Because otherwise you'll never say anything.

01:33:32 ◼   ► See, I'm on that side more.

01:33:35 ◼   ► I try not to think about it.

01:33:37 ◼   ► Like if I like something, I like something.

01:33:41 ◼   ► And I will speak about it.

01:33:42 ◼   ► I try not to think about the fact that it then may make an influence one way or the

01:33:47 ◼   ► other.

01:33:48 ◼   ► Like I just try and be honest about the stuff that I like and the stuff that I don't.

01:33:51 ◼   ► But you know people are talking about like the mic mouse, right?

01:33:54 ◼   ► About that mouse.

01:33:55 ◼   ► Which now I can't use anymore.

01:33:57 ◼   ► Which has caused significant RSI problems for me.

01:34:02 ◼   ► So in a way actually I do feel bad about recommending that because I don't know if it's going to

01:34:05 ◼   ► cause that with the other, but it was the way I was using it.

01:34:08 ◼   ► The mouse is actually built ergonomically, but I was using it all kinds of wrong.

01:34:13 ◼   ► Like I programmed all the buttons to do certain things and looking back now I can see how

01:34:20 ◼   ► I programmed it to do more than I should have been doing with it, like in the way I was

01:34:24 ◼   ► editing with it and stuff like that, and it's basically moved all of my keystrokes to mouse

01:34:28 ◼   ► strokes and it's not really built for that so much, so when I fully regain the use of

01:34:34 ◼   ► my right hand again, I'm actually going to look into gaming mice because they're more

01:34:39 ◼   ► made for macros and programs with the buttons of them.

01:34:43 ◼   ► But it is a fantastic mouse and it makes me sad that I can't use it because I really,

01:34:47 ◼   ► really love it, but I'm kind of stuck.

01:34:50 ◼   ► But this is the example of people are talking about it, which means you did spread that

01:34:56 ◼   ► around.

01:34:57 ◼   ► It's a little bit different on a podcast, but it's not that different.

01:34:59 ◼   ► And it's one of those things that I think you're right.

01:35:02 ◼   ► On one level, you can't think about it because you need to be honest and talk about the things

01:35:06 ◼   ► that you're doing and the things that you're using.

01:35:08 ◼   ► On another level, you have to be aware of it just in the sense of always remembering

01:35:13 ◼   ► that it's going out to a larger group of people and that there may be an impact.

01:35:18 ◼   ► And just to remind yourself to be honest and to be fair and to be responsible and to put

01:35:24 ◼   ► it in any, if there's any context that's required to put it in that context.

01:35:28 ◼   ► And I think ideally that's your default anyway, but every now and then I think it doesn't

01:35:33 ◼   ► hurt to remind yourself.

01:35:35 ◼   ► Like if I say this is great and I love it, that people are going to hear that.

01:35:41 ◼   ► And that's why I will oftentimes say, throw in caveats or throw in explanations because

01:35:47 ◼   ► Usually if I love something, sometimes it's just unabashed love, but a lot of times it's

01:35:52 ◼   ► like, "Well, I love it because it fits into this particular part of my workflow."

01:35:58 ◼   ► Like I'm not going to say everybody should run out and buy this USB mixer that I've got

01:36:02 ◼   ► here because it's probably not the best.

01:36:07 ◼   ► Well, this happens with podcasting and microphones and stuff like that.

01:36:09 ◼   ► It's like the Yeti, I'm still pretty comfortable as being a solid pick for people to use as

01:36:14 ◼   ► a microphone, right?

01:36:15 ◼   ► I don't use the Yeti or usually not. I've got one and I use it sometimes when I'm traveling,

01:36:20 ◼   ► but I don't use it anymore. But what I'm using, people ask me, I'm like, well, yeah,

01:36:24 ◼   ► what I'm using is more than that, but it was also more expensive and I kind of do this for a living

01:36:29 ◼   ► now. It's not the same as what I would recommend. And so just being aware of that, like that,

01:36:36 ◼   ► that my context for microphones and podcast stuff is not the same as like what most people

01:36:42 ◼   ► should probably be buying. So it's just, I don't know, the short answer, Robbie, is yes, we do.

01:36:49 ◼   ► We should have just said that. Yep, yep. We had to show our work there,

01:36:55 ◼   ► but yes, that's a good question. You've always got to show your work.

01:36:57 ◼   ► I think we've reached the end of this week's episode.

01:37:00 ◼   ► I think so. I want to just extend my thanks again to Mr. Joe Steele for joining us today.

01:37:05 ◼   ► It was a pleasure to have him on the show, and you should check out Joe's work. He is @joesteele

01:37:10 ◼   ► on Twitter and you should check out The Incomparable's lovely show Defocused, which show is a part

01:37:16 ◼   ► of, which is really, really great.

01:37:18 ◼   ► Along with all the other great shows, all the great shows over at the incomparable.com,

01:37:21 ◼   ► where of course you will find many of Jason's other podcasts, but he also hosts a plethora

01:37:26 ◼   ► of shows on Relay FM, of course, including Liftoff and Clockwise, as well as the lovely

01:37:33 ◼   ► upgrade.

01:37:35 ◼   ► You are a podcasting marvel, Mr. Jason Snow.

01:37:39 ◼   ► Myke I love that you exist because you're the you're the person who does more podcasts than me. So thank you anytime anytime

01:37:45 ◼   ► I'll just keep I'll keep adding them you keep removing them. That's how we'll go

01:37:49 ◼   ► Gonna find the show notes for this week's episode head on over to relay fan upgrade

01:37:54 ◼   ► 61 I want to take a moment again to thank our friends over at stamps calm Casper and Linda calm for sponsoring this week's episode

01:38:02 ◼   ► You can find Jason on Twitter. He is at J Snell J

01:38:05 ◼   ► and I am @imyke and you can read Jason's work over at sixcolors.com

01:38:12 ◼   ► and we will be back next time. Don't forget we do stream this show live you

01:38:16 ◼   ► can download the Relay FM app from the iTunes App Store. Did they call it the

01:38:21 ◼   ► iTunes App Store anymore or did I just go back about five years? The App Store.

01:38:25 ◼   ► The App Store. Because I was thinking it's not on Android right so I was trying to

01:38:29 ◼   ► think of the Apple App Store. Anyway from the App Store and you can sign up for

01:38:35 ◼   ► push notifications so when we do change our time around which happens every now

01:38:38 ◼   ► and then you'll know and it also has the information for when our next show will

01:38:42 ◼   ► be streaming live thank you so much for listening we'll be back next time until

01:38:47 ◼   ► then say goodbye mr. Snell goodbye mr. Snell

01:38:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:38:54 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:38:58 ◼   ► [Music]