57: Complex Feelings
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From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 57.
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Today's show is brought to you by Lynda.com,
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where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts.
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Stamps.com, posted on demand, and go to meeting.
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Make it easy to meet with your team wherever you need to, wherever you are.
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My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by the wonderful Mr. Jason Snell.
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Can you believe we've done 57 of these?
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It's amazing.
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It's amazing.
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It's flying by my friend.
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It is flying by.
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You do an episode a week and they just, the numbers just keep on going and it's
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just a couple of extras as well.
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Yeah, that's true.
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That's true.
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Well, happy, happy Monday to you.
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We recorded this on Monday and happy whatever day it is to you podcast
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listeners when you're listening to this.
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I always had that problem because the podcasts happen in this eternal
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present that is any day or any time and so you can't say tonight or today if you
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are listening during the day kind of thing. It's hard because podcasts could
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be any time. They're unmoored from time and space.
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Exactly. That's right but I'm glad that you're listening to this podcast now. So
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I want to do a little bit of follow-up from last week if you remember I tried
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my best to activate Ahoy! telephone on people and it didn't affect everyone as
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we heard from many people over Twitter in both camps so some people I did
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activate their Ahoy! telephone and some I did not and we heard from both from both
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sides so basically all you know is that the training isn't as perfect as you
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would maybe hope it would be and that it doesn't matter kind of who the person is
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it can still activate the new Ahoy! telephone feature.
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If you do not know what I'm talking about when I say Ahoy! telephone, it is to activate
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the personal assistant in your phone whilst the screen is off, which can now happen in
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the new S-phones.
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But we say Ahoy!
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telephone so we don't activate people's telephones.
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But I had an instance for me where I was watching a TV show and it activated a couple of days
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Somebody said, "Are you serious?" and it lit up.
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But the funny thing about it is it was an American lady coming through my MacBook speakers.
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So I think the training clearly needs work.
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So this made me think, can you turn this feature off?
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And yes you can.
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If you go to settings general in Siri, you can turn off the new feature that's in iOS
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9 and the new S phones, which is what I have done.
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Because I have my watch if I need to do the hands-free stuff and that makes way more sense
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to me anyway.
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makes sense to me too. And the training, I'm unclear on whether the training is just looking
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at particular like tones of voice or frequency ranges or if it's doing something a little
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more sophisticated. It does have you say a few different things but I'm still not convinced
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that's doing anything other than trying to get you to speak with a natural tone. So it
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sounds like it's better than it was perhaps but it's not locked on to your voice and no
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whether voice will unlock that feature.
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That doesn't seem to be the case.
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I think that there is more that you can do, like for example if it maybe had you just
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try and say more words than just that key phrase.
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Because you'd think that gender and accent would be a real...
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Like they're basically the two biggest defining characteristics of somebody's voice.
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And the fact that it picked up the exact opposite to me was interesting.
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Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
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There may be something about the way that it's listening to that it because the other
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thing that would solve this is if you could set something to say, set a key phrase or
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choose from a collection of key phrases, which is I think what Amazon does.
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My guess is though that there are costs for all of that because it's obviously listening
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for a certain pattern of sound with its low power mode, but it's still listening just
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for that certain pattern.
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so it might be harder to do it. It's a tricky problem, but the difficulty is, yeah, if it's
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listening all the time and you're in lots of places where people are talking, that you're
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going to get accidental activations.
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Also to follow up on my iCloud problems, during the last episode and now, Apple has released
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another point update. I don't know what these ones are actually called. What are these called?
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Because point updates is like 9.1.
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I don't know. Minor updates.
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update, we'll go there, 9.0.2, which had a bunch of fixes. It didn't mention anything
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about iCloud, but it has fixed my iCloud backup problems. So my phone is now backing up overnight
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automatically. Now the thing is, I have some friends, because I've been talking to people
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a lot about this who are having the same problem as me, and this did not fix it for them. Which
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I think further goes to my point from last week in that something is broken
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and it's a random set of things that can fix it for different people. Like you
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know I was saying like it just needs that kick to reboot it and that did that
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9.0.2 did that for me but it still hasn't done it for everyone. I don't know
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what Apple need to do here because it seems like there's a fix that they can't
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put their finger on either. I'm hoping that 9.1 will be enough of a big change
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for a lot of people that it does fix it but not being able to back up to iCloud
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it's very frustrating. I agree it get you lose your safety net when when you you
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aren't doing that when you can't rely on that. Yep and it's the reason I pay for
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iCloud storage so right yeah yeah in a in a roundabout way I pay to back up my
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phone. I guess this is why people don't upgrade right away is that you spend a
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couple of weeks and Apple obviously spends a couple of weeks shaking all the little bugs
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out. And they're inevitably, you know, so when, when I write reviews of stuff like this,
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people are like, I can't believe you didn't mention this thing. And the answer is, well,
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you know, what happens most of these things are things that don't happen every time they
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happen to one person out of a thousand or one person out of 10,000. The problem is that,
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you know, if you're, if you're only testing with a small group, relatively small group
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of people, you may never find some of these quirks and then you roll it out to tens of
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thousands and then you notice. Confidence has definitely been shook in the average
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consumer about upgrading even though Apple's statistics are fantastic right? I
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just know that from people that I've spoken to they get a bit nervous about
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upgrading their devices now. Yeah I think IOS 7 really made a lot of iOS
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users wary because that was a pretty traumatic update and changed the
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you know, change the OS interface itself. And I think that has led to iOS users being
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a little more reluctant to dive in.
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- And was it eight that break people's phones? Or was it seven?
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- I don't know.
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- I remember it was one of them that had... There was like a bad... There was some bad
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code in the update.
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- Oh, yeah. Well, that was in eight. In eight, there was the one that it... There was an
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eight update that killed the cellular modem.
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- Yeah, there you go. That was it. That's what I wanted to go about.
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- Good times.
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So it's like, you know, you keep doing these things and people are like, "Oh!"
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And I feel for Apple because, I mean, the 7, the iOS 7 one, where they maybe could have
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predicted it, they didn't necessarily know that people wouldn't like it, right?
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But it's the issue of if people aren't tuned into your marketing message, they wake up
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the next day and they basically have a different phone, right?
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Because it looks nothing like the one from the day before.
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the motivation of the vendors is interesting because in a lot of these cases, they don't
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want you to not upgrade. They want you to upgrade and they don't care. They know that
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some people are going to be fearing change and be reluctant to change, but they're highly
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motivated to get everybody on the latest and greatest. And so they're not trying to make
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life easy for people who are holding back from updating. They're not interested in that.
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And the challenge is when you do something really traumatic, like with the iOS 7 interface
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changes, that's pretty, yeah, that was pretty shocking.
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And I think there was a lot of trust lost there because their phone changed overnight.
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And I know I heard it from some of my relatives, like, you know, "There's a new update.
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Is this going to change my phone again completely?"
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Just that one time.
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But still, they remember.
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>>It is one of those things, though, that I don't know how you solve that problem.
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Like if it's what you want to do, like, I don't know if there's any other way to do
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it but, you know, there are people smarter than me to look at these issues.
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Let's do a bit of follow-up.
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We haven't spoken about this yet and I know that a few people wanted us to.
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It's all part of the conspiracy.
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Yeah, it's all part of the conspiracy, the ever-running large conspiracy regarding peace
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and ad blockers and Marco.
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And there's been some really interesting discussion on ATP136 and on the talk show 132 about this
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this. Obviously Marco was on both of those. And I know that, Jason, you wanted
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to kind of talk about the fact that we're friends, right? Yeah, this is, I mean
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I don't really want to spend a lot of time talking about ad blockers and
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about the, I think it's a complicated issue. I think I may have said
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this previously, you will end up just all feeling bad and not solving anything.
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I'm gearing up for something, like I'm still chewing through my feelings and I think that
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me and Grey are going to talk about this at some point, just because I think he's going
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to have a different kind of view on this kind of stuff because he comes from somewhere else.
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I would be interested to hear what he has to say. I think after we did the show last
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week we talked about this a little so the people who were in the live chat listening
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live stream heard it, but I did talk about ad blocking and more generally about how problematic
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web ads are on the talk show in July, so that's episode 126 of the talk show. Gruber and I
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talked about that for quite a bit and I think, you know, I recounted some of the things that
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I witnessed working for a publishing company that was struggling with how you make money
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on the web. And my feelings about ad blocking in general are--they're difficult, they're
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problematic because I think that on one level it is wrong to take the content that's being
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offered but not the things that ride along with them. On one level I think that's wrong.
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On another level though I feel like the abuse of that connection and that trust has gone
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totally out of control and and sort of taken the publishers don't have any ground to stand
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on anymore about this because of how badly they've abused that if you could imagine getting a getting
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a newspaper your daily newspaper suddenly I mean think back 10 years your daily newspaper
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suddenly comes with a fake a fake front page that's all fake stories about an advertiser and
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And when you open it up, there's like a thing that pops up and plays a sound until you close
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And then somewhere else in there, they've inserted eight different cologne samples and
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those are stinking up the newspaper.
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And some of those were attempted in print.
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And generally, it was very expensive and it turned out that the readers hated it.
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I've got to say I saw Andy Baio tweet today about the front page of the LA Times and it
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looks like a web page.
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I put a link in the show notes and in the chat room.
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It's kind of fun to see.
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So the trend toward junk, I mean, it happens.
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So I feel like it's a complicated issue and like I said I think in the end everybody just
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feels bad because you want to find a way to support this.
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This is one of the things that was, I think, almost inevitable when the entire model for
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the web settled down to everything is free, or almost everything is free on the web and
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it's all about traffic and ads to make money and not about people paying for stories. It
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used to be you didn't get news unless you paid for it, and now we all get it for free
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from a lot of different sources. So there's that issue. But that's actually not what I
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wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about, at least briefly, is that I had that
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moment listening to Marco talk about making the decision to pull Peace because he wasn't
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comfortable and he decided he didn't want to be in the ad blocking industry. I don't
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know, Myke, you and I were privy to--we saw a beta of Peace and we saw conversations about
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piece a little bit in our Relay FM Slack channel. And I just had a couple of moments where I
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felt like I asked myself, "Did I fail Marco by not trying to steer him away from this
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idea that he decided was a bad idea?" Because I felt like we were all sort of supportive
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of Marco. It's like, "Hey Marco, I can't believe you're doing this thing, but good for you."
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And we tried to be sort of friendly and supportive.
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And I just had that moment of thinking, you know, should we have been more skeptical?
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Should we have been, you know, warned him, like, "Do you really want to get into this
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I don't know.
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I just feel a little bit of guilt that I could have seen this coming and failed to say anything.
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I didn't see it coming.
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It's not like I saw it coming and decided I was going to let him, you know, go through
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had that moment of pause of like, you know, did I, could I have thought about this a little
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bit more and sort of jumped out and said, "No, wait my arms. No, Margot, stop. No, think
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about this some more." And I didn't do that.
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See, I feel bad about it too now. And it kind of frustrates me looking back at it because
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I have, I mean we've spoken about it on this show in the past, like I have very complex feelings
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towards ad blocking and I don't really know where I fall on it. So I should have been able to
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transplant that feeling onto the idea to say "Marco this could be trouble" but for some reason
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it never crossed my mind. I was using it, trying it out, I was like "this is really cool" was my
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thinking. Right? And just like, "Wow, look how fast the pages load!" I was purely
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focused on the technical, and this is exactly what Marco was saying, and I
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think it might be difficult for people to hear that and believe it. Right, like
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he was talking about this on ATP, but I was like nodding along because I was
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like, "Yeah, I saw it too, and it never... I didn't connect the dots between the two
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things." Because it just felt like, "Hey, this is a technical achievement. He has
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created a thing that really works well and I really think it's because I don't
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have skin in this exact game I think that was why I didn't think about it
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because there's nothing to block on Relay there's nothing there I mean some
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some desktop ad blockers do actually block our this episode was sponsored by
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Box because every now and then I get an email from someone saying you should put
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sponsors on the page I'm like hey you should turn off your ad blocker and I
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checked that it was one of the first things I checked when I install pieces
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to our sponsor blocks load on the on the show pages and they did and I was
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like great that works and so I didn't ever really think about the you are
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entering into a war of ideals here and it's interesting to look at it now and
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be like well yeah of course he was and it's funny how we all kind of came to
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that thinking afterwards rather than before?
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>>TIM CHANIN-POMERANZ It's a story that's been told many times,
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which is the, you know, I think most probably most notably in the Manhattan Project, but
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it's the story of scientists and there and and but it goes for all technology, which
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is there's the enthusiasm about learning something new and creating something new. And then there
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there is the thought about the application of it. And those are always in conflict, or
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often in conflict anyway, where you've got the, as the line from one of my favorite TV
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shows said, I mean, I only build the bomb, I don't drop it, right? Like, it doesn't,
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I'm completely disconnected from the effects of the thing that I've built. I'm just focused
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on the building. And I think history is full of examples of people enthusiastic about building
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new things without necessarily thinking through all the horrible uses that would come to them.
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And so, you know, I think that we were guilty in some ways of not shifting our frame of
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reference from this person we know who we're in this sort of private conversation with
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having worked on something new and trying it out and saying, "Yeah, it really does
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work, and I noticed this about it," and not taking that step back and saying, "What's
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going to happen when this all goes down, and where does it lead?" and thinking about
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that, and I'm not saying that making an ad blocker is immoral, but I'm saying that it
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is controversial enough that when you pull back from the idea of "this is a cool thing
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that you built," you then start to have that realization of what's going to happen. I think
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we could have seen it coming, and that's all I wanted to bring up. There's no answer here
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other than I feel bad that Marco had to go through it. I totally understand how it happened,
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which is that he realized that, first off, he's a smart businessman. I have to say that.
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He saw an opportunity here. As a programmer, he thought, "Oh, content blockers on OS 9
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are going to be a big thing. Let's do something there." And he did something there, and he
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built it. And he did that because of his interest in learning about this technology, in supporting
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new Apple technologies, and because he assumed, I think, more than—and he talked about this
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on ATP and I think the talk show, he assumed there'd be 20 of them, right? And there weren't.
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Surprisingly only a handful of them at launch. And that was the stuff that was driving him,
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was I could build this, I could make a deal with Ghostery, I could learn what the different
00:19:07
◼
►
formats are and I could implement this new thing from Apple. And that was what was driving
00:19:13
◼
►
it. And it was only afterward that he realized, "Oh, I'm going to get all the people in the
00:19:19
◼
►
media business angry at me, and I'm looking now at a future where I'm going to have to
00:19:24
◼
►
maintain this thing, and now I'm part of the ad block industry, which is kind of a gross
00:19:28
◼
►
industry." And he didn't want to be a part of it. So ultimately, I feel bad that he went
00:19:34
◼
►
through it and that he didn't stop earlier and say, "Oh, this is not a good idea. I shouldn't
00:19:38
◼
►
release this. And like I said, I feel at least a little residual guilt that I didn't at least
00:19:48
◼
►
have enough perspective to say, "Are you sure you want to do this?" And I'm not saying that,
00:19:53
◼
►
you know, like I said, I didn't know this was going to happen and say, "Well, we'll
00:19:56
◼
►
see. Let's watch what Marco does now." It was like, I didn't think of it and I wish
00:20:00
◼
►
I had. Yeah. Definitely. All right, let's take a break and get into, we have a real
00:20:06
◼
►
selection of topics today. Lots of little things going on.
00:20:09
◼
►
Oh yeah, big menu.
00:20:10
◼
►
This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by lynda.com, the online learning platform
00:20:15
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transcripts that you can follow along and click to an answer to skip to a
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point in the video I actually had this I'm putting together a presentation and
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I did for some reason in keynote I couldn't work out how to animate a
00:21:41
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bulleted list I just couldn't all it was doing was just animating the whole list
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and I went to lynda.com I searched a keynote and I searched bullets and I was
00:21:50
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able to go to the transcript of this video about animations I clicked the
00:21:53
◼
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word bullet and it went straight to the video and the guy told me that all I
00:21:56
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needed to do was to animate by character or whatever it was you have to break to
00:22:00
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a couple of drop downs and I got it to work and I was very happy and lynda.com saved me
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because otherwise my presentation would have lacked the real animation that it needs.
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So you'll also be able to create and save playlists of the courses that you want and
00:22:13
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you can share them with the people in your life maybe if they need to learn how to do
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bullet points in Keynote 2.
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Thank you so much lynda.com for the continued support of Upgrade and Relay FM.
00:22:46
◼
►
So OS X El Capitan came out in between the two shows that we've recorded.
00:22:53
◼
►
I'm running El Capitan on my Mac Pro right now.
00:22:57
◼
►
It has not fixed the issues I was having with my Mac Pro, which is for anybody that hasn't
00:23:03
◼
►
followed the chain.
00:23:04
◼
►
I have an issue with my Mac Pro wherein it sometimes just freezes.
00:23:11
◼
►
All of the UI locks up.
00:23:13
◼
►
I can still have podcast conversations, Skype still works, and in some apps audio recording
00:23:20
◼
►
still works.
00:23:21
◼
►
It's a whole big thing, which is so much to say this is why I will be buying a new iMac
00:23:27
◼
►
as soon as they are revved, which I'm hoping should be soon-ish.
00:23:31
◼
►
I priced one out today.
00:23:32
◼
►
Oh, well that's never a good sign.
00:23:35
◼
►
I'm going to be buying a monster, Jason.
00:23:38
◼
►
I'm looking at currently, as it stands, 4 gigahertz quad-core i7, 16 gigabytes of RAM,
00:23:47
◼
►
1 terabyte of flash storage.
00:23:50
◼
►
Are you anticipating getting an updated 5K?
00:23:54
◼
►
Yeah, I'm getting the 5K, yep.
00:23:56
◼
►
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:23:58
◼
►
Boy, that's gonna be a sad--
00:23:59
◼
►
That day is coming soon, I'm sure,
00:24:01
◼
►
where my precious 5K iMac here will be last year's model.
00:24:05
◼
►
I mean, technically it is last year's model,
00:24:07
◼
►
but it hasn't been eclipsed yet.
00:24:08
◼
►
But it's--well, yeah, I mean,
00:24:10
◼
►
they've re-bundled some stuff and all that,
00:24:12
◼
►
but my precious, my precious model.
00:24:13
◼
►
Yeah, I'm gonna be going the whole way,
00:24:15
◼
►
'cause I'll be able to sell my Mac Pro
00:24:17
◼
►
for about two-thirds of the cost.
00:24:18
◼
►
Dare I say #JasonWasRight?
00:24:22
◼
►
Well, no, you see--
00:24:23
◼
►
Come on, give this to me.
00:24:24
◼
►
Give this to me!
00:24:25
◼
►
No, because people say this, right, because they said, "Oh, you should get an iMac, you
00:24:28
◼
►
should get an iMac at the time."
00:24:29
◼
►
But at that time, I only had the space for one monitor in the office where I work, and
00:24:36
◼
►
I needed to have something that could also have games consoles plugged into.
00:24:42
◼
►
So that was why I had to go with a machine.
00:24:44
◼
►
That was one of the primary reasons.
00:24:45
◼
►
But now I have a whole different setup.
00:24:47
◼
►
I have a lovely TV here that my PS4 and Xbox and Wii are plugged into.
00:24:51
◼
►
And so now I'm going to go for the iMac because I want that big Retina display as well as
00:24:55
◼
►
all the power now.
00:24:59
◼
►
I'll allow it.
00:25:00
◼
►
Yeah, I'm sorry.
00:25:03
◼
►
You'll get a Jason was right in soon enough.
00:25:05
◼
►
Maybe before the end of this episode.
00:25:06
◼
►
You're just copying me.
00:25:07
◼
►
Yeah, that's it.
00:25:08
◼
►
I just want that Jason Snell experience.
00:25:11
◼
►
Yeah, the full Snell Zone experience.
00:25:16
◼
►
So El Capitan, what you're saying is your solution updating to El Capitan isn't going
00:25:23
◼
►
to do it, so instead you're just going to buy a whole new computer.
00:25:27
◼
►
I'm sorry, I had hoped that maybe just whatever that problem is that it would be solved in
00:25:32
◼
►
El Capitan, but...
00:25:33
◼
►
This isn't a thing to be sorry about.
00:25:35
◼
►
I'm going to be getting a nicer computer.
00:25:38
◼
►
You know, there was a part of me that was hoping that this wouldn't fix the problem.
00:25:43
◼
►
Well then congratulations, I'm glad your bug did not get fixed in El Capitan.
00:25:48
◼
►
Whatever it is, whatever strange OS bug it is that it does that, that's just such a weird
00:25:55
◼
►
Yeah, so El Capitan came out.
00:25:58
◼
►
That's what we're saying.
00:25:59
◼
►
El Capitan is out.
00:26:01
◼
►
I'm hoping you will have more to say about El Capitan than I do.
00:26:05
◼
►
Like I don't have a ton to say.
00:26:06
◼
►
I like the split screen and I like the overall enhancement submission control because I really
00:26:12
◼
►
do work in my Mac in Mission Control?"
00:26:14
◼
►
Well, I mean, I think that's one of the unheralded improvements is that I really like what they
00:26:20
◼
►
did to Mission Control.
00:26:21
◼
►
The fact that all of your windows now appear when you activate Mission Control instead
00:26:30
◼
►
of stacking all the windows from an app together, which was kind of annoying if you work heavily
00:26:36
◼
►
in some specific apps.
00:26:39
◼
►
And I really like that they've got the geography thing going on where it's much easier to find
00:26:45
◼
►
windows in Mission Control because they don't go too far away.
00:26:48
◼
►
They sort of stay roughly where they were.
00:26:52
◼
►
So you know like it was over on the left somewhere and you look and you can find it.
00:26:56
◼
►
I think they did a good job with all of that and you can drag more things up into the Mission
00:27:01
◼
►
Control bar now.
00:27:02
◼
►
I like that you can send them out full screen by just dragging it up there.
00:27:06
◼
►
Yeah, you just grab the window and toss it up there and it's full screen.
00:27:09
◼
►
And the split screen stuff is really good. So talking about that presentation
00:27:12
◼
►
that I'm working on, see I'm working on 25 inch monitor here. So I have keynote
00:27:17
◼
►
open, effectively it's full in size and I also have the Notes app
00:27:22
◼
►
pinned to the side because I've written my outline for my presentation
00:27:26
◼
►
in the Notes app and then I'm transferring some into my speaker notes
00:27:30
◼
►
and using it to help me go through the presentation and add slides in and stuff
00:27:35
◼
►
like that so the split screen is fantastic for that I wish there was a
00:27:40
◼
►
more elegant way to bring apps out of full screen currently going up to the
00:27:45
◼
►
menu bar and hitting the green well what used to be the green button or whatever
00:27:49
◼
►
it is now it's a really inelegant solution so do you know the other the
00:27:54
◼
►
other way to do it is in mission control you can actually if you go to the the
00:27:59
◼
►
the space that is your split screen uh-huh instead of having the X to get rid
00:28:04
◼
►
of the space, it has this little icon that's like,
00:28:07
◼
►
it basically means blow apart.
00:28:09
◼
►
And if you click it, the two, both of the windows
00:28:12
◼
►
go back into regular mode.
00:28:14
◼
►
- Yeah, see that's-- - So that is a way
00:28:16
◼
►
to do it faster, but-- - That doesn't feel right
00:28:17
◼
►
to me. - But you should have
00:28:19
◼
►
a keyboard shortcut on that green button, I think.
00:28:23
◼
►
Or the green button should just pull both of the apps out.
00:28:25
◼
►
I think this is one of those cases where
00:28:27
◼
►
the fact is Split View is just full screen mode
00:28:30
◼
►
with two apps in it.
00:28:31
◼
►
and they both think they're in full screen mode
00:28:34
◼
►
on a monitor that's narrower.
00:28:36
◼
►
- My ideal way of doing this is if you have two apps
00:28:40
◼
►
in split screen and you go into mission control,
00:28:42
◼
►
it shows you those two sort of broken out
00:28:46
◼
►
and then you can move them individually.
00:28:48
◼
►
- That'd be nice.
00:28:50
◼
►
- Yeah, it's just, it's not,
00:28:52
◼
►
this is one of those features
00:28:53
◼
►
that will get refined over time, I think.
00:28:55
◼
►
- But in this first version, it's a little bit of a hack.
00:28:57
◼
►
It is two apps in full screen mode,
00:29:00
◼
►
but running side by side.
00:29:01
◼
►
They don't really know about each other.
00:29:03
◼
►
I have some issues with the fact that apps don't,
00:29:06
◼
►
so many apps are not written to assume
00:29:08
◼
►
that if they're in full screen mode,
00:29:09
◼
►
they might be sharing space with another app.
00:29:11
◼
►
And so they don't often indicate whether they're active
00:29:14
◼
►
or not, and that's problematic because, you know,
00:29:17
◼
►
you can only type in the one that's active.
00:29:18
◼
►
And in some cases, things like scrolling or pinching
00:29:20
◼
►
and zooming are limited based on whether the app
00:29:23
◼
►
is front most or not.
00:29:24
◼
►
In full screen mode, there's no concept
00:29:26
◼
►
of front most kind of.
00:29:28
◼
►
it's, they're gonna work this stuff out.
00:29:30
◼
►
But I agree with you, it is, you should be able,
00:29:34
◼
►
right now if you click that green button,
00:29:36
◼
►
one app goes back into the desktop
00:29:40
◼
►
and the other one stays full screen,
00:29:43
◼
►
which I'm not sure should be the default behavior,
00:29:47
◼
►
but at the very least it would, you know,
00:29:49
◼
►
it would be nice if there was a very quick way
00:29:52
◼
►
to do that, to uncouple them both
00:29:56
◼
►
and send them back to their respective spaces rather than having to click one and then go
00:30:00
◼
►
swipe back to the other one and click it too.
00:30:03
◼
►
And right now the fastest—there is a shortcut to do that, but it's to go to Mission Control
00:30:07
◼
►
and blow up the little space that they share with the little icon in the corner of the
00:30:16
◼
►
icon at the top of the screen in the Mission Control bar.
00:30:20
◼
►
you've spent more time thinking and reviewing, naturally, OS X than I have.
00:30:28
◼
►
Are there any other features of El Capitan that excite you or that interest you?
00:30:35
◼
►
I mean, for example, if there's anything good in Safari, I don't know what it is, because
00:30:39
◼
►
I'm using Chrome, like a gentleman.
00:30:41
◼
►
Well, Pinsights.
00:30:42
◼
►
like pen sites okay which is like mega favorites instead the because I use the
00:30:56
◼
►
bookmarks bar or the favorites bar or whatever they call it now and and it's
00:31:01
◼
►
the favorites bar and I've got a bunch of stuff up in there but the the pen
00:31:06
◼
►
sites is these little these little tiny tabs they live within the tab bar and
00:31:12
◼
►
and they have an icon if the site has given an icon.
00:31:17
◼
►
Although I found in Safari that the icons sort of come and go
00:31:21
◼
►
don't really know why.
00:31:22
◼
►
Sometimes they're there, sometimes they aren't there,
00:31:25
◼
►
but you can pin those sites and they stay there
00:31:28
◼
►
and they're in every window.
00:31:29
◼
►
And so if you've got sites that you visit a lot,
00:31:31
◼
►
you can just pin them and then they're always available.
00:31:33
◼
►
They're a keystroke away.
00:31:35
◼
►
It tries to keep them up to date.
00:31:37
◼
►
So they're preloaded.
00:31:38
◼
►
If you click on a link that's in the pin site,
00:31:41
◼
►
it stays in the pin site, but if you click on an offside link rather than closing your
00:31:45
◼
►
pin site and opening that link in the same window, it just flips you to a new tab, and
00:31:53
◼
►
the place you left on your favorite site is still there.
00:31:56
◼
►
So there's some nice things about that that I think it's kind of cool.
00:32:01
◼
►
And I think Safari, oh, that changes the keyboard shortcut behavior, which is kind of annoying
00:32:07
◼
►
if you're somebody who did get used to the keyboard shortcuts of the bookmark bar.
00:32:11
◼
►
And then there's the audio muting feature, which is nice, which is your auto-play video
00:32:16
◼
►
If you've got a tab that suddenly starts making noise, and people who have lots of tabs open,
00:32:21
◼
►
this happens a lot, you can mute your browser tab if it's playing in that window.
00:32:27
◼
►
You can also mute all the others and just say, "Wherever that thing is playing, I don't
00:32:32
◼
►
want to hear it."
00:32:33
◼
►
And that's a nice feature.
00:32:36
◼
►
So there's some stuff in there.
00:32:38
◼
►
Notes got big improvements that sync up with the iOS 9 improvements.
00:32:41
◼
►
I should have mentioned notes because it's one of my favorite apps now.
00:32:45
◼
►
Just flat out.
00:32:47
◼
►
All those features that use the iCloud, first off it's the iCloud syncing so you don't have
00:32:51
◼
►
to just use IMAP email boxes for your notes.
00:32:54
◼
►
They actually sync with iCloud now and iCloud.
00:32:59
◼
►
iCloud notes get all these other features where there's like more like check boxes and
00:33:03
◼
►
you can do sketches with on iOS and you can view those on the Mac, although you can't
00:33:07
◼
►
create them.
00:33:10
◼
►
You know, it's a, I think like in my review on Macworld, I liken this to putting a better
00:33:17
◼
►
selfie camera on an iPhone and putting a camera on the iPad is one of those things that maybe
00:33:22
◼
►
Apple when they were building these products didn't expect it to be as popular a behavior
00:33:27
◼
►
as it turned out to be.
00:33:28
◼
►
And once you realize that it's popular, you say, well, we should probably make it better
00:33:32
◼
►
then if it's going to be popular people
00:33:34
◼
►
going to use it we should make it better
00:33:35
◼
►
and I feel like that's what happened
00:33:36
◼
►
with notes is they realize that
00:33:38
◼
►
everybody uses notes for something
00:33:39
◼
►
because it's pre-installed it's super
00:33:41
◼
►
easy to get to it may not be the
00:33:43
◼
►
greatest thing in the world yes there
00:33:44
◼
►
are competitors that do a better job but
00:33:45
◼
►
it's still crazy popular so let's make
00:33:48
◼
►
it better and so they did and so it's
00:33:50
◼
►
better across iOS and and OS 10 and I
00:33:54
◼
►
think they did a good job and I'm glad
00:33:55
◼
►
they finally put in the effort to not
00:33:57
◼
►
make it like use your email boxes in
00:33:59
◼
►
order to do notes because that was dumb
00:34:01
◼
►
It was a hack that lasted for like eight years.
00:34:04
◼
►
I don't know how that managed, but it's done now and it's very easy to migrate to.
00:34:10
◼
►
You can actually just select your notes and drag them into iCloud and they move over to
00:34:14
◼
►
iCloud and it's fine.
00:34:16
◼
►
You can set up folders for your notes and, you know, they did a very good job, I think,
00:34:20
◼
►
with updating notes.
00:34:23
◼
►
And photos, since I'm the author of Photos for Mac, a take control crash course, a book
00:34:29
◼
►
book available, an e-book available for download now. I pay very close attention to the Photos
00:34:35
◼
►
app because I wrote a whole book about it and now that there's an update to Photos version
00:34:41
◼
►
1.1 that comes with El Capitan, I wanted to go through that and find all the new features
00:34:48
◼
►
there because I'm going to have to update my book. It will be a free update but I'm
00:34:52
◼
►
gonna update my book for for 1.1 and and there are a few they knocked off the
00:34:58
◼
►
the biggest feature requests keeping in mind photos for Mac only came out in the
00:35:02
◼
►
spring they haven't had a whole year to update it so it's a it's not a 2.0 it's a
00:35:07
◼
►
1.1 but like the top complaint of users of photos was that you couldn't geotag
00:35:13
◼
►
photos in the app you couldn't edit geo data and you couldn't add geo data to
00:35:17
◼
►
photos that didn't have it embedded in it, like taken from an SLR or something, some
00:35:23
◼
►
other device that doesn't have location information.
00:35:26
◼
►
And you can now.
00:35:27
◼
►
It uses the same maps database that everything else does by default, the Apple Maps database.
00:35:34
◼
►
But I selected a whole bunch of pictures that I took 10 years ago that aren't geotagged,
00:35:40
◼
►
and I was able to select them all and choose Command-I to bring up the info pane and enter
00:35:45
◼
►
in the name of the location where we were and hit return and boom they were
00:35:47
◼
►
all geotagged and it automatically syncs over iCloud so if I search later for
00:35:52
◼
►
pictures from Seattle those pictures that I tagged are now going to show up
00:35:56
◼
►
so that was a it should have you know it should have been there but it wasn't
00:36:00
◼
►
batch batch geotagging individual geotagging batch changing of titles and
00:36:04
◼
►
descriptions and keywords that's all in there now so you know and the other
00:36:08
◼
►
thing is extensions I actually wrote about this on on six colors you can now
00:36:11
◼
►
app developers can write extensions that work in photos, editing extensions,
00:36:17
◼
►
similar to the concept of photo editing extensions on iOS, which there haven't
00:36:22
◼
►
been a lot of, but I've counted like four or five that are in the Mac App Store
00:36:27
◼
►
right now that will let you...
00:36:28
◼
►
Still waiting on that VSCO one that they demoed on stage.
00:36:35
◼
►
With iOS 8 or whatever it was.
00:36:38
◼
►
- Yeah, yeah, that didn't get a lot of pickup, did it?
00:36:41
◼
►
But I tried a few from Mac Fun, from B-Funky,
00:36:46
◼
►
and Pixelmator's got one that's coming out
00:36:48
◼
►
with an update to Pixelmator.
00:36:50
◼
►
And, you know, we'll see how the developer
00:36:54
◼
►
adoption goes of this.
00:36:56
◼
►
And the idea is that third parties can add things.
00:36:59
◼
►
Like, there are some filters that are black and white
00:37:01
◼
►
filters inside photos, but Tonality from Mac Fun,
00:37:05
◼
►
which is like an $18 app.
00:37:07
◼
►
And it's funny because as an app, it is just like a blank.
00:37:10
◼
►
You know, you open a picture and it brings up an interface
00:37:13
◼
►
and you make changes and it creates a, you know,
00:37:16
◼
►
a really nice, usually like black and white image
00:37:19
◼
►
and you press okay and it saves it out.
00:37:21
◼
►
It's not much of an app.
00:37:22
◼
►
And it actually makes sense as an extension inside
00:37:26
◼
►
of photos because then you're editing a photo
00:37:29
◼
►
and then you get to the point where you wanna run it
00:37:31
◼
►
through this third party extension and you can do that.
00:37:36
◼
►
and then you save it and you never left photos.
00:37:39
◼
►
You just use the functionality of that inside of photos.
00:37:42
◼
►
So that got added.
00:37:44
◼
►
We'll see if it's a curiosity
00:37:45
◼
►
or if it becomes more valuable.
00:37:47
◼
►
I think that one of the nice things about it is
00:37:50
◼
►
it lets people who have pet features
00:37:52
◼
►
that there's some subculture of people,
00:37:54
◼
►
some subsection that really, really wants this feature,
00:37:57
◼
►
but it's never gonna be enough for Apple to add it.
00:37:59
◼
►
Now somebody can develop an extension that does it
00:38:02
◼
►
and it'll work inside the photos
00:38:04
◼
►
and Apple doesn't have to go down that path.
00:38:07
◼
►
So that's beyond that.
00:38:11
◼
►
I mean, El Capitan is where it's compatible with everything.
00:38:15
◼
►
I believe they haven't reduced compatibility
00:38:19
◼
►
for an OS release since Mountain Lion.
00:38:24
◼
►
I think all the same systems run Mountain Lion,
00:38:28
◼
►
Maverick, Yosemite and El Capitan.
00:38:31
◼
►
They haven't, not all the features work,
00:38:34
◼
►
But Apple very much wants everybody.
00:38:36
◼
►
And in fact, you can upgrade from as long,
00:38:38
◼
►
if you've got a compatible system
00:38:39
◼
►
from as far back as Snow Leopard,
00:38:41
◼
►
you can upgrade directly to El Capitan.
00:38:44
◼
►
- That's good.
00:38:47
◼
►
- Yeah, well, Apple wants everybody on the current version.
00:38:49
◼
►
And that's where all the biggest security updates are.
00:38:53
◼
►
And that's part of the reasoning for doing it this way,
00:38:57
◼
►
is they want everybody on this version.
00:38:59
◼
►
They want, that way,
00:39:03
◼
►
they're not spending all their time maintaining Windows XP, right?
00:39:06
◼
►
They're like, "Look, if you've got any computer that we've sold,
00:39:09
◼
►
almost any computer we've sold in the last six years,
00:39:12
◼
►
you can just run El Capitan and you'll get all the updates."
00:39:15
◼
►
So, I think that's interesting.
00:39:18
◼
►
It's free, it's a download,
00:39:20
◼
►
and it works with pretty much any computer
00:39:24
◼
►
from the last five years.
00:39:25
◼
►
- Anything else, El Capitan?
00:39:28
◼
►
- I don't know, I feel like I've got it all there.
00:39:32
◼
►
That's, it's free.
00:39:34
◼
►
It's been solid for me.
00:39:36
◼
►
I think people should, yeah,
00:39:42
◼
►
I think you should give it a try.
00:39:43
◼
►
Again, we just talked about,
00:39:45
◼
►
if you wanna wait a couple of weeks
00:39:47
◼
►
to see if issues get shaken out, then do so.
00:39:51
◼
►
And then I guess the other thing I would say is,
00:39:53
◼
►
if there are apps that you rely on day to day
00:39:55
◼
►
to do your job, go check and see if they are okay
00:39:59
◼
►
in El Capitan, 'cause if they're not, don't upgrade.
00:40:01
◼
►
That's like rule one, is if there's stuff that you rely on
00:40:05
◼
►
that doesn't work with it, 'cause I heard from somebody
00:40:07
◼
►
who said, "Oh, I upgraded to El Capitan,
00:40:08
◼
►
it turns out that these two programs that I use
00:40:10
◼
►
that I totally rely on that are like five years old
00:40:13
◼
►
don't work in El Capitan without installing
00:40:14
◼
►
all of these extra things."
00:40:16
◼
►
And it was a disaster, so I went back to Yosemite.
00:40:18
◼
►
I'm like, "Well, yeah, I think if you were relying
00:40:23
◼
►
on especially old software, check out to Google around
00:40:26
◼
►
a little bit, see if there are issues,
00:40:28
◼
►
because that can be a problem.
00:40:32
◼
►
I didn't have any issues like that
00:40:34
◼
►
because I'm using mostly recent software.
00:40:37
◼
►
Like an app that many podcasts use,
00:40:40
◼
►
the Levelator apparently broke in El Capitan,
00:40:42
◼
►
although Tidbits posted an article about
00:40:44
◼
►
there is a way to fix it.
00:40:47
◼
►
It's an unsupported app from a company that no longer exists
00:40:52
◼
►
but people are trying to keep it alive.
00:40:55
◼
►
But with the exceptions of
00:40:57
◼
►
if you've got a mission critical app
00:40:58
◼
►
that just won't work in it, I'd say,
00:41:00
◼
►
otherwise it's a pretty smooth update.
00:41:02
◼
►
I thought it's almost routine.
00:41:05
◼
►
And that's a good thing that Apple is trying to make this
00:41:09
◼
►
as smooth and routine as possible
00:41:11
◼
►
and not have these upgrades seem upsetting to people.
00:41:16
◼
►
And I think they did a pretty good job with El Capitan.
00:41:20
◼
►
It's a, you know, I can't measure the speed improvements.
00:41:24
◼
►
They say it's a lot faster.
00:41:25
◼
►
It's probably more measurable on slower systems
00:41:28
◼
►
than the 5K iMac that I was using for most of my testing because it's pretty fast as
00:41:34
◼
►
But by using Metal underneath instead of OpenGL, the game performance should be a lot better
00:41:38
◼
►
and a whole bunch of other graphics stuff should be a lot smoother because core animation
00:41:42
◼
►
and core graphics are now using Metal instead of OpenGL.
00:41:46
◼
►
>> But it didn't fix your computer.
00:41:51
◼
►
>> No, it didn't.
00:41:52
◼
►
It did not fix my computer at all.
00:41:54
◼
►
Actually, let me take a second sponsor break right now and then I want to talk about Amazon
00:42:01
◼
►
a little bit.
00:42:03
◼
►
Yeah, because there's some interesting stuff going on there this week.
00:42:06
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►
So, over the past few days, Amazon have issued a release and have then subsequently stopped
00:43:59
◼
►
selling devices like the Apple TV and the Chromecast.
00:44:03
◼
►
And the quote from Amazon is, "Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important
00:44:08
◼
►
part of Prime," is what they said in an email that they sent out.
00:44:12
◼
►
"It's important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in
00:44:16
◼
►
in order to avoid customer confusion.
00:44:20
◼
►
So basically what it seems like and what the assumption is
00:44:24
◼
►
that Amazon and Apple and Amazon and Google
00:44:29
◼
►
have not yet come to an agreement
00:44:33
◼
►
over how to work together to get Prime onto their platforms.
00:44:37
◼
►
So whether it's the Apple or Google
00:44:40
◼
►
are asking Amazon to design in a certain way
00:44:43
◼
►
that they're uncomfortable with,
00:44:44
◼
►
or Amazon is saying,
00:44:46
◼
►
we're not gonna go through your in-app purchase system
00:44:48
◼
►
and we want people to sign up for their accounts,
00:44:49
◼
►
whatever the reasons are,
00:44:52
◼
►
they've basically come to a stalemate
00:44:54
◼
►
in which Amazon has now taken some pretty harsh action.
00:44:58
◼
►
- Yeah, it's weird, it's weird.
00:45:03
◼
►
I see both sides of this and I know that
00:45:06
◼
►
it's been very popular for people to just point at Amazon
00:45:09
◼
►
and say, "Amazon, you're evil, boo."
00:45:13
◼
►
If you're Amazon and you've spent, this is the conflict.
00:45:17
◼
►
Amazon has spent a lot of time and money promoting their video services,
00:45:23
◼
►
their streaming video services.
00:45:24
◼
►
And so now they're a video platform owner.
00:45:30
◼
►
They're also a seller of products.
00:45:33
◼
►
And some of those products don't work with their video platform.
00:45:36
◼
►
And I totally understand somebody at Amazon saying, this is confusing.
00:45:43
◼
►
We're getting complaints.
00:45:44
◼
►
I have to explain to people that, uh, no, just because you bought that video
00:45:50
◼
►
streamer on Amazon and you're an Amazon customer, it doesn't mean that you can
00:45:55
◼
►
get your video from Amazon on that product that you bought from Amazon because it's
00:46:00
◼
►
from Apple and they don't like us.
00:46:02
◼
►
And so they like us to sell their stuff, but they don't like us to put our stuff
00:46:06
◼
►
on their, on their boxes.
00:46:07
◼
►
Um, I, I get that.
00:46:10
◼
►
I actually do get that.
00:46:11
◼
►
I think that as computer nerds, it's easy for us to say,
00:46:15
◼
►
oh, well, come on, everybody knows that you can't do that
00:46:17
◼
►
on the Apple TV and all that, but I don't know.
00:46:20
◼
►
If you're an Amazon customer and you're using Prime Video
00:46:22
◼
►
and you say, oh, you know, I heard you can put that
00:46:24
◼
►
on a TV, well, I've got Apple stuff,
00:46:26
◼
►
I'm gonna get the Apple TV and use that.
00:46:29
◼
►
Although you can, you can use AirPlay to play Amazon video
00:46:33
◼
►
on the Apple TV, but you just can't use the app.
00:46:36
◼
►
So I guess what I'm saying is I understand that.
00:46:41
◼
►
this is the difficulty of having this platform
00:46:43
◼
►
and also being a seller of hardware,
00:46:45
◼
►
is that you are going to have issues like this,
00:46:48
◼
►
where the stuff that you're doing over here
00:46:52
◼
►
is not compatible with the stuff
00:46:53
◼
►
that you're selling over there.
00:46:54
◼
►
It's hard not to see this as a power play though,
00:46:59
◼
►
as like the equivalent of Apple taking a publisher's books
00:47:02
◼
►
out of the Apple store as an expression
00:47:06
◼
►
of discontent in some way.
00:47:08
◼
►
It also seems kind of bizarre to me in the sense
00:47:10
◼
►
I think we all assumed that Amazon would do an app for the new Apple TV.
00:47:16
◼
►
And if that is the case, wouldn't they not make such a big deal about sweeping the old Apple TV out of the store?
00:47:25
◼
►
I don't know. It seems weird. Seems weird.
00:47:29
◼
►
I think that Amazon probably want an app, but what they also want to do is sell subscriptions.
00:47:37
◼
►
And that's why this is happening. So that's why I believe this is happening right now,
00:47:41
◼
►
is because I assume that Apple and Amazon are meeting about the Apple TV.
00:47:47
◼
►
So Bezos is like, "We're not getting what we want. Screw this. We'll show them." And this is
00:47:53
◼
►
in the middle of the discussions. He said, "Well, we'll take it out of the store." And Apple go,
00:47:57
◼
►
"Fine, try us." And they go, "Okay." And they pull it out. That's what I assume is happening right
00:48:02
◼
►
now. And then somebody pulled down their pants at some point and just exposed their butt. But we
00:48:06
◼
►
But we don't know who that was. That could have been either side, really. It was a very
00:48:10
◼
►
juvenile meeting. It was very -- they should have ended it long before they had it.
00:48:14
◼
►
You say that, though. I expect that this is a lot of why this is happening. And the reason
00:48:18
◼
►
it's happening right now is because of the upcoming Apple TV. That is my feeling about
00:48:23
◼
►
this. So the thing is that the way that I see this is I don't fully know if I can reconcile
00:48:31
◼
►
in my mind why it's okay for Apple to take a cut of signups for Amazon Prime
00:48:37
◼
►
video. I can't work out in my head, like so people like oh you know there's
00:48:43
◼
►
people call foul on Amazon, but why should Apple be taking a cut of signups
00:48:50
◼
►
anyway? Well the standard approach has been if you offer, if you
00:48:56
◼
►
don't offer it in the app it's okay. That's why you can play Amazon instant
00:48:59
◼
►
video stuff on an iPad. Sure, but why shouldn't people be able to sign up in the app? Well,
00:49:05
◼
►
I think that's a separate issue. I think it's a separate issue. I think it is the issue.
00:49:10
◼
►
Well, I'm... Because this is probably, I mean, this is one of the major problems that Amazon
00:49:15
◼
►
and Apple have together, right? Sure, this is behind ripping all the commerce out of
00:49:20
◼
►
ComiXology too, it's the same story. And why the Kindle app, you can't buy books in the
00:49:24
◼
►
Kindle app and yeah it's true. And I wonder like why Apple think that this is
00:49:30
◼
►
something that it's okay for them to demand because you can buy physical
00:49:35
◼
►
goods right so it's not like there's a problem with we can't allow over payment
00:49:40
◼
►
processing because other payment processing happens in Apple App Store
00:49:43
◼
►
apps it's just this idea of a subscription service which they won't
00:49:49
◼
►
play ball on. Yeah. When like you could just sign into your Amazon account and
00:49:52
◼
►
and purchase it in the app like how you do a toaster.
00:49:57
◼
►
So my feeling on this is if Amazon don't want to use the in-app purchase
00:50:02
◼
►
system, I don't know why Apple think that they
00:50:05
◼
►
deserve to say you can't do any kind of
00:50:10
◼
►
account generation.
00:50:13
◼
►
I don't think I'm following you here. I mean,
00:50:17
◼
►
I have to admit I am surprised that this took a turn into
00:50:21
◼
►
Apple's 30%. I think that doesn't need to...
00:50:23
◼
►
- Maybe I'm not being completely clear about what I'm talking about.
00:50:25
◼
►
- I don't think that needs to be relevant because there are these two issues.
00:50:28
◼
►
There's the issue of does our box play your stuff? And historically, Amazon,
00:50:36
◼
►
you know, again, does not have an app. There's a Netflix app on the Apple TV,
00:50:39
◼
►
but there's not an Amazon app. But there is an Amazon video app on the iPad,
00:50:43
◼
►
and there is a Netflix app on the iPad. And the Amazon app, you can't,
00:50:47
◼
►
just like there's a Kindle app, you can get to your stuff, but you can't buy it on the device.
00:50:52
◼
►
You can't subscribe other than in Safari. You can't do it in the app. And that's dumb,
00:51:00
◼
►
but at least you can watch your stuff. I don't think people are signing up for Prime
00:51:04
◼
►
necessarily on these devices in app. And so maybe it's not that big an issue. Now separately,
00:51:10
◼
►
which is your point, is that's still a bad experience. And that's got to be part of the
00:51:16
◼
►
conversation here is it's a much better experience like imagine all the
00:51:21
◼
►
engineering work that Comixology had to do to rip out all their stuff they did a
00:51:24
◼
►
whole update of their app that essentially was trying to make it more
00:51:28
◼
►
palatable after they had to rip out all the all the commerce on iOS and this is
00:51:33
◼
►
all because of this 30% thing that Apple is charging that that you know Amazon
00:51:39
◼
►
doesn't want to pay because I have the margins for it yeah can't give they
00:51:43
◼
►
can't give those margins to Apple. So like it's just I maybe didn't connect
00:51:49
◼
►
the dots correctly but basically my feeling on this is that Amazon are
00:51:54
◼
►
unhappy with any device in which they can't sign up customers on. So like
00:52:01
◼
►
they you know with the iPad app for example you can just go to Safari and
00:52:06
◼
►
sign up for a Prime account but you can't do that on the Apple TV there's no
00:52:09
◼
►
flow for that so if somebody downloaded it like they want to be able to push
00:52:13
◼
►
people to new accounts. That's my assumption here and which is why I feel
00:52:17
◼
►
like there's always been this problem. Because I was really surprised to see
00:52:21
◼
►
Netflix is now selling their subscriptions via in-app purchase and I
00:52:27
◼
►
really wonder I look at that and be like, are they gonna let Apple take 30% of
00:52:32
◼
►
that? I wonder if it is the standard deal. You know, you look at that
00:52:37
◼
►
and I don't know if Netflix needed that but they've done it. I mean in Apple
00:52:41
◼
►
a proton and like crazy for doing it. So I really wonder what the play is. I mean
00:52:46
◼
►
maybe it's because there doesn't seem to be any preferential treatment for the
00:52:51
◼
►
Apple TV because they've come out and said Apple have said that the the what
00:52:57
◼
►
the API to have your content show up in universal search is available to all.
00:53:03
◼
►
You know so it's stuff like I'm like wonder why Netflix did it so like all of
00:53:06
◼
►
this adds fuel to the fire for me and like that there is something about the
00:53:10
◼
►
creation of accounts that hold is holding up Amazon that's my feeling
00:53:15
◼
►
about this anyway yeah I don't know what's going on with the Netflix thing
00:53:21
◼
►
and if they are I mean so far everything I've heard from Apple is that 30% is 30%
00:53:25
◼
►
that's just the deal and so is it possible the Netflix is just figures
00:53:30
◼
►
that the that it's more important to acquire those customers and pay up over
00:53:34
◼
►
30% than it is to not, and that maybe they will try to do something later to convert
00:53:43
◼
►
them, or is it that Apple cut them a deal and they're only paying Apple 10% or something
00:53:48
◼
►
like that? Maybe they feel it's just an important percentage of their customer base, but not
00:53:52
◼
►
a huge percentage, and they'd rather have them at a lower rate than not have them.
00:53:57
◼
►
Yeah, like maybe Netflix know the amount of people that download their app, try to sign
00:54:00
◼
►
on and have no account.
00:54:02
◼
►
Also something like Amazon Prime is problematic because Amazon Prime Video is not a video
00:54:07
◼
►
streaming service.
00:54:08
◼
►
It's part of a much larger package, and I'm sure Amazon is not willing to give Apple 30%
00:54:12
◼
►
of a package that only includes the video.
00:54:17
◼
►
It makes even—Amazon's business doesn't make a lot of sense with the 30% model.
00:54:21
◼
►
That's why you can't buy books in the Kindle app.
00:54:23
◼
►
It's because Amazon's whole business is based on these low margins.
00:54:26
◼
►
There's no room there for them to hand somebody through.
00:54:31
◼
►
not a business designed for a middleman, right? And Apple is the middleman here.
00:54:36
◼
►
When it comes to selling of content, like, who are Apple to boss Amazon around, right?
00:54:41
◼
►
Like, they're both so huge, right? It's like, why should we have to do anything you tell us,
00:54:48
◼
►
you know? I, you know, and I hate the subject. I hate the subject because it says to me,
00:54:53
◼
►
I feel like this is some of Apple's worst tendencies. Yeah. You know, and you get that
00:55:01
◼
►
aspect of wanting complete control and being a dictator is what gets you a lot of positive
00:55:07
◼
►
things about Apple stuff. But this also has to me the width of one of, I think, the least
00:55:15
◼
►
enjoyable parts of Apple's personality as a company, which is this idea that anybody
00:55:22
◼
►
who's making money in their playground owes them a cut because they're making money off
00:55:26
◼
►
of Apple's greatness. And, you know, in some circumstances maybe that's true, but at some
00:55:34
◼
►
point it becomes, I feel like, more than that. It's not about that anymore. Like, is degrading—we've
00:55:41
◼
►
talked about this before, we talked about this about Comixology—is degrading the user
00:55:44
◼
►
experience of being a comic book reader on an iPad worth it to Apple because they need
00:55:52
◼
►
that cash? If you're going to sell comics on my platform, you've got to give me the
00:55:55
◼
►
cash, I need that cash." Well, they don't really need it. I think if Apple is ever at
00:56:00
◼
►
a point where their business is really based on making 30% of a skim off of everything
00:56:05
◼
►
that's sold in their financial transactions in the App Store and through iTunes IDs, then
00:56:10
◼
►
their business is in trouble because that's not really their business, that's a side business,
00:56:15
◼
►
and taking some reasonable cut is fine, but 30% is a pretty large cut. And for an established
00:56:20
◼
►
business like Amazon, it's incompatible. And so Apple has said, "Hey, comic book readers,
00:56:26
◼
►
here's the most popular comic book reader on the platform, and it's going to be worse
00:56:31
◼
►
now because we have this 30% rule and that's just how it has to be." That bugs me. That
00:56:36
◼
►
bugs me because I feel like the users get hurt because Apple and Amazon are fighting
00:56:41
◼
►
over this. And in this case, I'm going to take Amazon's side and say, "Amazon's business
00:56:45
◼
►
is not built so that they can give Apple 30%. They can't do it. They can't do it because
00:56:52
◼
►
they're acting as the middleman. There can't be another middleman. So, you know, I feel
00:57:00
◼
►
like the reasonable solution here would be for Apple to either have these tough negotiations
00:57:04
◼
►
behind the scenes, which who knows, might happen and that may not have gone well and
00:57:08
◼
►
that may be why we saw Amazon take its ball and go home like they did, but or
00:57:15
◼
►
throw Apple's ball in its face and stalk off the field that might be a better
00:57:19
◼
►
metaphor for it. Or have Apple say we're gonna work with a few partners
00:57:25
◼
►
who are trusted, you know, trusted third-party partners who have their own
00:57:29
◼
►
existing commerce sites and let them do in-app purchases but it's gonna be
00:57:34
◼
►
limited to this list and I people always complain it's like no no no Apple can't
00:57:37
◼
►
do that, it's got to be fair and it's got to be the same for everybody." It doesn't.
00:57:41
◼
►
It absolutely doesn't. It's Apple's store. It's Apple's rules. Apple can do whatever
00:57:44
◼
►
it wants. Apple could very easily say, "These five outside parties, we're going to allow
00:57:49
◼
►
this," because they're established and they have these much more complicated businesses.
00:57:54
◼
►
Apple could do that if it wanted, I think, and it wouldn't be a big deal for them and
00:57:59
◼
►
for their business. And it would probably improve the quality of buying books and stuff
00:58:06
◼
►
like that on iOS devices through Amazon that much better.
00:58:12
◼
►
But I feel that on the flip side in the same instance, if Amazon want to remove products
00:58:18
◼
►
from their store they can. It's their store and they can do whatever they want.
00:58:21
◼
►
Sure! It's their store! Amazon's not a public utility.
00:58:24
◼
►
No. Amazon, and that's what I was saying initially,
00:58:27
◼
►
is I see the argument, again, I don't read it this way. If Amazon had done this maybe
00:58:32
◼
►
a little more quietly. I don't, I don't think this is actually why it went down the way
00:58:36
◼
►
it is, but I see the argument that if you're Amazon and you're really invested in getting
00:58:40
◼
►
people to sign up for Prime and use this video service and there are these devices that don't
00:58:45
◼
►
support what you're doing, I can see taking them off, not because you're trying to improve
00:58:50
◼
►
a point to their manufacturers, but because it's confusing to some of your customers and
00:58:57
◼
►
they have every right to make those decisions. Just like every merchant has a right to decide
00:59:01
◼
►
what gets stocked in their stores.
00:59:04
◼
►
All right, there's one other thing that I wanted to mention today because it news broke
00:59:08
◼
►
this morning and we've spoken about it a ton, that Jack Dorsey is back in as Twitter CEO.
00:59:15
◼
►
Yeah, Jack's back.
00:59:18
◼
►
Jack is back.
00:59:19
◼
►
I mean, you know, we were talking about it.
00:59:20
◼
►
I mean, do you have any feelings on it right now?
00:59:23
◼
►
I mean, it's kind of a bit like it's like, okay, what now?
00:59:28
◼
►
Like you know, what are you going to do?
00:59:30
◼
►
He had a tweet storm this morning.
00:59:34
◼
►
- He did, good.
00:59:35
◼
►
- And yeah, that's kind of the guess,
00:59:39
◼
►
the way you should do it, right?
00:59:40
◼
►
I liked it, it was good.
00:59:41
◼
►
I'll put a link in the show notes to his tweet
00:59:44
◼
►
and also to Adam Bain's tweet
00:59:46
◼
►
and you can kind of see the tweet storms trailing off them.
00:59:49
◼
►
Adam Bain is now the COO.
00:59:51
◼
►
This was the change that people wanted to see.
00:59:55
◼
►
This was the exact changes that people were asking for.
00:59:59
◼
►
I am hopeful for difference in Twitter.
01:00:03
◼
►
I mean, I believe in Dorsey.
01:00:05
◼
►
I endorse-y him.
01:00:08
◼
►
Not saying that again.
01:00:11
◼
►
But I'm interested to see where it goes now.
01:00:15
◼
►
I think that Twitter as a company clearly is aware
01:00:18
◼
►
that they have to make some changes.
01:00:20
◼
►
And again, as we've said before,
01:00:21
◼
►
that doesn't mean that it's gonna be the changes we like,
01:00:24
◼
►
but it's just gonna be changes.
01:00:27
◼
►
- Yeah, we don't know.
01:00:29
◼
►
But boy, he does sound like he gets the product.
01:00:32
◼
►
That's what I think we've been saying all along here,
01:00:34
◼
►
is that he knows and understands the product,
01:00:36
◼
►
and he loves it, he cares about Twitter,
01:00:37
◼
►
he wants it to be better.
01:00:38
◼
►
There was an interesting story
01:00:40
◼
►
that came out over the weekend
01:00:41
◼
►
about sort of like the personal growth of Jack Dorsey,
01:00:45
◼
►
and how he's changed a lot, and grown,
01:00:48
◼
►
and become a much better CEO over the years,
01:00:51
◼
►
and a much better listener, and a much better manager,
01:00:54
◼
►
which on one level, I think, I think, uh, was a really good story.
01:00:58
◼
►
And another level I had this moment of like, Hmm, I wonder what the story is
01:01:02
◼
►
behind this, this particular story launching at this particular time.
01:01:05
◼
►
Like how much of this is organically happening and how much of this is the
01:01:09
◼
►
Jack Dorsey PR training happening.
01:01:12
◼
►
But either way, um, It became very clear over the last couple of weeks that there
01:01:17
◼
►
was nobody else to do this job who was, you know, that, that the other, for
01:01:22
◼
►
whatever reason that this was the only name and they didn't want you know they
01:01:26
◼
►
wanted him to leave Square and do this and he said no I'm not gonna do that and
01:01:31
◼
►
they still did it they still hired him so clearly they didn't have some other
01:01:37
◼
►
candidate in the wings that that was gonna be you know a better choice than
01:01:41
◼
►
him so so it's gonna be him and he's gonna have to split his time between
01:01:44
◼
►
Twitter and Square but I feel like the people at Twitter believe in him and
01:01:48
◼
►
that are energized by the fact that he's back and having a founder come back and take up
01:01:54
◼
►
the reins, we know that that can be a good experience. I hope it is for Twitter. It sounds
01:01:58
◼
►
like they've already got a bunch of stuff in motion. And you know, I don't know if you
01:02:02
◼
►
saw this, the most telling thing in the last couple of weeks about Twitter was that there's
01:02:08
◼
►
this rumor that they're going to do something that breaks the 140 character limit for tweets.
01:02:12
◼
►
And it's unclear whether that means something like there are going to be Twitter posts that
01:02:16
◼
►
are going to be embeds in a Twitter in a tweet or whether they're going to take some of the
01:02:20
◼
►
metadata and move it out of the tweet of counting it for the tweet length. It's unclear. And
01:02:26
◼
►
we can debate whether that's a good or bad idea for Twitter. But this is the part that
01:02:30
◼
►
really got me is they talked to somebody at Twitter, I think maybe anonymously, who said
01:02:36
◼
►
there was huge internal debate about something like this. And Jack came in and said, it's
01:02:42
◼
►
okay." And everybody's like, "Oh, it's okay." And then they went about their business in
01:02:47
◼
►
building this feature. To me, that's like, wow, that is a company that is desperately
01:02:53
◼
►
looking for vision and leadership. And as the CEO and co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey
01:03:01
◼
►
has the authority to say, "Here's my vision for Twitter, and we're going to do this now,"
01:03:06
◼
►
and not have people be like, "Well, does it really fit? What do you think? Let's debate
01:03:10
◼
►
it'll he has the ability to cut through that and say it's fine build it and I
01:03:15
◼
►
get the feeling hearing that story I start to think about Twitter meandering
01:03:19
◼
►
for the last few years and think yeah maybe that is one reason why is that
01:03:23
◼
►
there was nobody to say you know dick Costolo didn't say we're gonna do it
01:03:27
◼
►
this way about the product because I think he kind of maybe didn't care about
01:03:29
◼
►
the product so much I think he was focused on other areas and I don't know
01:03:34
◼
►
again I'm just I'm just in the peanut gallery here but that that's that's my
01:03:38
◼
►
take on it is I was impressed with that anecdote that that was Jack saying it's
01:03:42
◼
►
fine do it and and everybody felt freed to do it then. So that actually mirrors
01:03:48
◼
►
completely a tweet from Adam Bain today where he said Jack has the insight as well
01:03:52
◼
►
as the moral authority as a founder to push teams to make big bold changes. Yeah
01:03:57
◼
►
right right because otherwise you're afraid you're am I screwing up Twitter
01:04:01
◼
►
now and Jack's Jack of all people is going no it's fine oh well if Jack says
01:04:05
◼
►
fine then let's do it." But it's also the other way where it's like people like
01:04:10
◼
►
Jack we shouldn't do this and he's like "do you know what though? It's mine so
01:04:13
◼
►
whatever like we can do about it like I came up with the idea this is another
01:04:17
◼
►
idea that I've had so therefore it is the actual thing right and these those
01:04:21
◼
►
things do kind of marry up in a weird way I think I'm I think it's great and
01:04:26
◼
►
another tweet that I just wanted to mention which I really loved from Dorsey
01:04:31
◼
►
where he's like "Twitter is the most powerful communication tool of our time
01:04:34
◼
►
it shows everything the world is saying right now 10 to 15 minutes before
01:04:38
◼
►
anything else. Also Adam Bain you mentioned he got promoted to COO chief
01:04:46
◼
►
operating officer from chief revenue officer and I think that's telling
01:04:49
◼
►
because I think that what that's saying is how is Jack gonna work as a CEO when
01:04:54
◼
►
he's also the CEO somewhere else and I think the answer is he's got he's got
01:04:59
◼
►
Adam Bain to do this part of this part of the job right he's gonna he's gonna
01:05:02
◼
►
to keep Twitter running and focus on some of these areas, including sales and the revenue
01:05:09
◼
►
stuff. I get the feeling that Jack as CEO is, in addition to being the leader of the
01:05:15
◼
►
whole package, is also going to be much more focused on parts of the product, and that
01:05:20
◼
►
Adam Bain gets to run parts of the business under Jack's thumbs up. That's the structure
01:05:27
◼
►
that makes sense to me, too.
01:05:28
◼
►
Well, because it's impossible to not compare Dorsey to Jobs right now.
01:05:32
◼
►
Um, you know, if you think about the way that Steve ran Apple, especially later on,
01:05:39
◼
►
he did things that interested him and that he thought was important and Tim
01:05:42
◼
►
Cook took care of everything else.
01:05:43
◼
►
And Tim Cook handled the rest of it.
01:05:45
◼
►
Hey, it worked for them.
01:05:47
◼
►
Maybe it all worked for Twitter too.
01:05:49
◼
►
And Twitter doesn't need to, and doesn't do things at the scale that Apple does.
01:05:55
◼
►
It's a, yeah, it's, it's a much smaller group.
01:05:57
◼
►
I'm excited to see where this goes.
01:05:58
◼
►
- Yeah, me too.
01:05:59
◼
►
At this point, we've detailed this on past shows.
01:06:03
◼
►
Twitter needs to move its product forward.
01:06:06
◼
►
And we may not agree with all the changes
01:06:07
◼
►
that come from that,
01:06:08
◼
►
but they need to move the product forward.
01:06:10
◼
►
I did see somebody had a little exchange with Jack today
01:06:14
◼
►
on Twitter that ended with the person saying,
01:06:17
◼
►
essentially, you should bring back
01:06:20
◼
►
the third-party developers.
01:06:22
◼
►
And it'll be interesting to see.
01:06:25
◼
►
I wouldn't put money on that happening
01:06:27
◼
►
because I feel like maybe we've just gone down the road too far.
01:06:30
◼
►
But I look at the state of the Twitter app on the iPad,
01:06:34
◼
►
and then I look at Tweetbot 4 and Twitterific,
01:06:37
◼
►
and this is so clear that Twitter as a company right now
01:06:41
◼
►
can't make a good mobile experience,
01:06:45
◼
►
and third-party developers can.
01:06:47
◼
►
So it'll be interesting to see what they do there,
01:06:51
◼
►
whether they embrace the third-party developers
01:06:53
◼
►
or whether they actually make an effort
01:06:55
◼
►
to get their internal mobile development team in shape.
01:06:58
◼
►
What we've talked about before,
01:07:00
◼
►
the whispers are that they bring talented developers
01:07:05
◼
►
in to work on Twitter's mobile apps
01:07:07
◼
►
and then they leave not too long after.
01:07:10
◼
►
And that's a bad sign.
01:07:12
◼
►
So I'm curious about how that goes,
01:07:15
◼
►
about whether Twitter says,
01:07:17
◼
►
"You know what, third-party apps are an important part
01:07:19
◼
►
"of our ecosystem and we're gonna do more with them
01:07:21
◼
►
"because that's an important part
01:07:22
◼
►
"of what we need to do to grow."
01:07:24
◼
►
or whether they'll say, no, no, no, we need to own that,
01:07:27
◼
►
but we're gonna do a better job.
01:07:28
◼
►
I don't think there's an option
01:07:30
◼
►
other than one of those two though.
01:07:31
◼
►
I will be grossly disappointed with the new Jack Dorsey era
01:07:36
◼
►
if their presence on the iPad remains what it is now,
01:07:41
◼
►
which is a joke.
01:07:42
◼
►
- Well, they just shut it down
01:07:44
◼
►
and point everyone to tweet, well, it's terrific.
01:07:47
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- Yeah, well, my fear is that they'll shut it down
01:07:49
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and point everybody at the web
01:07:51
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and say, just use the web version of Twitter.
01:07:53
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I think they're not that dumb.
01:07:54
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No, well, yeah, you're probably right.
01:07:57
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Then again, have you seen Twitter for iPad?
01:08:00
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I know, but at least it looks better than what they had before.
01:08:03
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►
I know there's a lot of white space, which is terrible, but that previous version was just horrific.
01:08:08
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►
Yeah, it was.
01:08:10
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So, you know, we live in hope.
01:08:12
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►
We do indeed. Should we do some Ask Upgrade?
01:08:14
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Yeah, it's a good idea.
01:08:15
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►
Would you like to thank our Ask Upgrade sponsor this week, Jason?
01:08:18
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Yes, I would. I would like to thank them.
01:08:21
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Ask upgrade this week brought to you by Stamps.com.
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You know, as I've told you before, it can be difficult mailing and shipping and getting
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that job done.
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It can lead you to sadness.
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This happens to me all the time.
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I don't want to go to the post office.
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It takes up time and I don't want to see those people.
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I also don't want to lease a postage meter that can be very expensive.
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There are multi-year commitments and hidden fees often.
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There is a better way though.
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It is Stamps.com.
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With Stamps.com you get to buy and print official US postage for any letter or package and do
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discounts that you can't find at the post office. Plus, Stamps.com is more powerful
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require. There's no markup on postage. In fact, you'll get special postage discounts
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with Stamps.com. So it's really a no-brainer. I have used it here to ship things. I've got
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a stack of boxes that still need to go out and I am looking forward to doing that in
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a way that I never look forward to shipping anything because all I have to do is sit at
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my desk and print out some stuff and affix the labels and then I'm good to go. I don't
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even need to go to the post office if I don't want to. It's very exciting. Stamps.com is
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"upgrade." Thank you to Stamps.com for supporting upgrade and #AskUpgrade.
01:10:09
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#AskUpgrade. I need to get an actual sound effect for you. Justin has asked, "Regarding
01:10:18
◼
►
display zoom, do you use standard or zoomed?" I use standard. I use standard too. Wow, on
01:10:27
◼
►
the 6 Plus, well, you know, you're taking full advantage of the room then. I know some
01:10:31
◼
►
Some people—so my wife uses it zoomed on the 6 because she's getting a little far-sighted.
01:10:42
◼
►
She needs reading glasses now, so she uses it zoomed.
01:10:46
◼
►
So when she went from the 5 to the 6, she put it in zoomed mode, and that means that
01:10:52
◼
►
she's got essentially the same real estate as she had on the 5, but everything's bigger.
01:10:57
◼
►
And that works—that's actually worked great.
01:11:00
◼
►
she was struggling with cranking up the font size on things, and that's really inconsistent
01:11:04
◼
►
in iOS, because not everybody's using the right font APIs in their apps, and so now
01:11:10
◼
►
she's using it Zoomed. But I'm still on standard.
01:11:13
◼
►
So if you remember, many weeks ago, I spoke about my mum getting a new phone for my mum.
01:11:19
◼
►
We got her a 6, it came a couple of days ago, and I set her up on it. She is using it standard,
01:11:25
◼
►
but she has the text bumped all the way up and bold text on, because it makes it easier
01:11:29
◼
►
for her to see. But she loves the iPhone 6. She loves it. She's coming from a 5c.
01:11:36
◼
►
We've got touch ID set up which she thinks is awesome because she wasn't
01:11:40
◼
►
using a passcode before. So we set her up with touch ID. Although she found the
01:11:45
◼
►
whole process of enabling touch ID hilarious she just was really giggling.
01:11:48
◼
►
Like, you know, keep lifting your thumb, let your finger or
01:11:52
◼
►
thumb point up and down up and down. I was telling her to do it and she just
01:11:56
◼
►
thought it was so funny to the point where she couldn't stop laughing so much
01:11:59
◼
►
that I had to hold her hand and do it for her. It was a whole big family silly
01:12:04
◼
►
moment but she really really loves it. She thinks she loves the big screen. She
01:12:09
◼
►
did say that she kind of wishes it was bigger like she's interested in the plus
01:12:13
◼
►
but she wouldn't be able to use it. It would be too big for her hands which she
01:12:17
◼
►
understands but she really does like her six a lot and I'm happy that we've
01:12:22
◼
►
got her on a new phone and she seems really happy about it and she's
01:12:26
◼
►
learning how to use apps more and she transferred her banking app overall by
01:12:30
◼
►
herself and stuff which is great because like my mom has never used a computer
01:12:34
◼
►
like she uses a Windows machine at work which she only knows how to use that
01:12:38
◼
►
exact machine with the programs in the exact way right she's one of those kinds of
01:12:42
◼
►
people that she knows how to use. My dad never used computers but I set
01:12:48
◼
►
him up with an Excel spreadsheet for his office's accounting for his books.
01:12:53
◼
►
It was just an Excel spreadsheet with tabs for every month.
01:12:57
◼
►
And every year I would make him a new one and he never did anything else ever on a
01:13:01
◼
►
computer, but he knew how to turn on the Mac SE, I think, or maybe it was a Mac 2.
01:13:06
◼
►
It ended up being a 2C-I after a while.
01:13:09
◼
►
Um, and he knew to click on the folder with the year and click on the
01:13:14
◼
►
month and put in the numbers.
01:13:16
◼
►
and that was it, but he knew how to do that one thing.
01:13:19
◼
►
That was using a computer.
01:13:21
◼
►
- Yep, 'cause that's exactly it.
01:13:23
◼
►
That is computer, right?
01:13:24
◼
►
But yeah, she knows how to use her iPhone.
01:13:27
◼
►
She was talking to me the other day about Googling things.
01:13:29
◼
►
Like, it's awesome.
01:13:30
◼
►
And I love that this device is easy enough
01:13:32
◼
►
for her to understand.
01:13:33
◼
►
But we did have that conversation again.
01:13:35
◼
►
I had it with her as I have on this show a lot
01:13:37
◼
►
about the complexity stuff.
01:13:39
◼
►
Like, she completely agrees with me about how there are,
01:13:41
◼
►
you know, as it gets more complex,
01:13:43
◼
►
it's harder for her to understand
01:13:44
◼
►
because something changes in the phone that she doesn't get.
01:13:48
◼
►
So she just knows if there's anything she doesn't get,
01:13:50
◼
►
she needs to tell me.
01:13:51
◼
►
Because plus I say to her,
01:13:52
◼
►
it also is really good for the shows
01:13:53
◼
►
because it gives me something to talk about.
01:13:56
◼
►
- Wimsey asked, what's your solution
01:13:58
◼
►
for storing all of the watch bands that you own?
01:14:00
◼
►
I just put mine in a drawer,
01:14:03
◼
►
which is in my bedside cabinet.
01:14:06
◼
►
- I don't have like a box or anything.
01:14:08
◼
►
- Yep, that's mine too.
01:14:09
◼
►
It's in the drawer.
01:14:11
◼
►
Drawer solution.
01:14:13
◼
►
I look at them now, now that I have another one, I look at them and think, I should probably
01:14:18
◼
►
do something about that, but I haven't done anything beyond just have them around.
01:14:21
◼
►
I would love to see someone make a little box.
01:14:27
◼
►
Mickey wants to know what we think will come first.
01:14:30
◼
►
Apple stopping selling 16GB iPhones or more free iCloud storage.
01:14:38
◼
►
Can I choose the death of the universe?
01:14:40
◼
►
end of time the sun expanding into a red giant and melting the earth every now and then i mean you
01:14:47
◼
►
will have seen this more than me but i feel like in the time that i've been interested in this stuff
01:14:52
◼
►
there is a story in apple press that becomes a thing and it becomes like a mcguffin for a while
01:15:00
◼
►
and the 16 gigabyte iphone one is that now to the point where i think apple are kind of into a
01:15:07
◼
►
corner of having to change it because now it's being brought up in reviews in
01:15:12
◼
►
the more general tech press like it needs to come out because if they don't
01:15:16
◼
►
stop it now for the iPhone 7 it's gonna it's gonna get away from them and it
01:15:22
◼
►
could end up being a bigger point than it is now so I think that no matter what
01:15:27
◼
►
they were intending with the way that the discussion because we'll just keep
01:15:30
◼
►
talking about this for the next eight months we will it's gonna have to go
01:15:35
◼
►
away the 16 gigabyte now that's my feeling and if they don't do it then
01:15:39
◼
►
they need to they need to have a very clear reason as to why that they are
01:15:43
◼
►
will communicate to people then again it gives us something to talk about and
01:15:47
◼
►
that's you know these the next 50 shows aren't gonna talk themselves I mean
01:15:51
◼
►
that's the problem right because we need stuff to talk about so we'll keep
01:15:54
◼
►
talking about that right so that's why they have to change it because the press
01:15:58
◼
►
just keep going around and around I'm gonna go with you next fall is an
01:16:02
◼
►
opportunity for Apple to revisit the 16 gig lower end when they do the iPhone 7.
01:16:08
◼
►
It seems like a perfectly appropriate time to go up to 32 or more, but let's
01:16:15
◼
►
say 32 with the low-end model.
01:16:18
◼
►
And they had the opportunity, they changed the iCloud storage rates so
01:16:23
◼
►
infrequently and they just changed them and they didn't increase the free
01:16:27
◼
►
number from five to 10.
01:16:29
◼
►
So my gut feeling is that will probably take longer.
01:16:33
◼
►
Although there's so much, oh,
01:16:37
◼
►
topic for another episode, we'll preview this.
01:16:40
◼
►
There's so much more that needs to be done
01:16:43
◼
►
on the shared services in a family.
01:16:48
◼
►
'Cause I was trying this weekend
01:16:49
◼
►
to get my wife's iPhone to back up
01:16:52
◼
►
to my terabyte of iCloud storage that I'm paying for.
01:16:56
◼
►
and I can't do it without losing Find My iPhone, basically,
01:17:00
◼
►
or Find Friends for her,
01:17:01
◼
►
because you have to choose one or the other.
01:17:03
◼
►
And it's just, there's so many things they need to fix.
01:17:06
◼
►
So sometimes I wonder about that, like,
01:17:08
◼
►
could families pool,
01:17:09
◼
►
or could you have a bunch of different devices
01:17:11
◼
►
that each get five gigabytes that increment
01:17:13
◼
►
toward a larger number up to a limit?
01:17:16
◼
►
Lots of things they could do there,
01:17:17
◼
►
but my gut feeling is since they didn't do it
01:17:19
◼
►
when they just revised all the plans,
01:17:21
◼
►
that they probably won't do it again
01:17:23
◼
►
for a couple of years at least,
01:17:24
◼
►
because they would have done it if they were planning on doing that.
01:17:30
◼
►
And finally today, Oz would like to know if we have any thoughts on the round Pebble design.
01:17:34
◼
►
So Pebble came out with another new watch called the Pebble Time Round, which is a round
01:17:39
◼
►
face and it has some slightly different features I believe.
01:17:42
◼
►
I haven't looked into this too much to be honest, Jason, which I think is inherently
01:17:46
◼
►
part of the problem.
01:17:48
◼
►
I say to them, "Bravo for trying new things."
01:17:51
◼
►
I think I like the idea.
01:17:54
◼
►
I think the bezel is too much.
01:17:57
◼
►
I mean, I can accept the little flat tire thing
01:18:02
◼
►
on the Moto 360.
01:18:03
◼
►
I agree, well, I buy Motorola's reasoning for that,
01:18:08
◼
►
which is I say is otherwise they would need a bezel,
01:18:12
◼
►
probably like this one,
01:18:13
◼
►
'cause they need to put the display driver somewhere.
01:18:16
◼
►
I think that this is more of an indication to me
01:18:21
◼
►
that Pebble are in trouble because it's another version.
01:18:27
◼
►
Yeah, they're trying everything. I will note that it's now a two-day battery life. It used
01:18:35
◼
►
to be like six, six or seven. Now it's down to two.
01:18:39
◼
►
I think this is because it's so thin maybe?
01:18:42
◼
►
Maybe? I don't know.
01:18:43
◼
►
Could be. I think it looks nice, although the bezel is huge. Bevel. Bevel, bubble. But
01:18:51
◼
►
I admit that I've written off Pebble because I don't think their iOS story is compelling.
01:19:01
◼
►
I think even their Android one is getting harder to do.
01:19:04
◼
►
Because some of these device makers now are making full-on smartwatches with full-color
01:19:10
◼
►
screens that are real little computers that Pebble don't make that, but the battery life
01:19:17
◼
►
is starting to get better and better and better on these Motorola stuff and the Asus stuff.
01:19:21
◼
►
They're losing their competitive advantage day by day now.
01:19:25
◼
►
Yeah, it's tough for them.
01:19:28
◼
►
Especially if their competitive advantage is battery life and they've just released a really good-looking one
01:19:32
◼
►
but they've cut the battery life significantly, then at that point, why would you not go for a Moto 360? I don't know.
01:19:40
◼
►
For $250. I mean, that's the other thing is if this was a $99 watch, then I would say, "Oh, well, that's nice."
01:19:46
◼
►
Because I do think there's a market for a cheap, light smartwatch, something that doesn't really do a lot.
01:19:51
◼
►
but it shows the time and maybe it gives you some notifications or maybe it's a tracker or something,
01:19:55
◼
►
but it's cheap and it's, you know, but this is 250 for this, so that doesn't seem cheap to me.
01:20:03
◼
►
That seems like a lot. I don't think they got a long time left in them. I especially don't think
01:20:13
◼
►
they have long left in their current size and scale. I wonder if at some point they might be
01:20:20
◼
►
be an aqua hire kind of thing where they've been thinking about you know
01:20:23
◼
►
they've been thinking about smartwatch stuff for a while and if somebody might
01:20:27
◼
►
buy them just for their engineers and all that but there may be too much it
01:20:31
◼
►
may just be too late and and I don't know we'll see. If you're a company like
01:20:35
◼
►
Motorola, Asus, somebody like that you know these guys and girls have been
01:20:42
◼
►
doing this for longer than anyone you should you should get them because you
01:20:47
◼
►
know that that software idea for the Pebble Time I thought was really smart
01:20:51
◼
►
and innovative you know you know like the way that everything was in a
01:20:54
◼
►
timeline I thought that was really clever and it made a lot of sense so
01:20:59
◼
►
this is the type of stuff that they could think about because they've been
01:21:01
◼
►
doing this for as long as they have so I think somebody should consider scooping
01:21:05
◼
►
them up maybe we should buy them upgrade timepieces exchange for some relay stock
01:21:12
◼
►
yeah yeah we'll work on that work on that if you want to find show notes for
01:21:16
◼
►
this week's episode head on over to relay.fm/upgrade/57. If you want to find Jason online he's over
01:21:23
◼
►
at SixColors.com and he's @JSNEL on Twitter, J S N E double L. I am @imike, I M Y K E.
01:21:32
◼
►
Thank you so much for listening as always, we really appreciate it. If you have questions,
01:21:36
◼
►
comments, thoughts, follow up, follow out, follow in, you can use the hashtag #askupgrade.
01:21:40
◼
►
It is a great way to get all of that stuff to us because we look at it for all of those
01:21:45
◼
►
reasons. And thanks again to our sponsors, the great people over at lynda.com, gotomeeting
01:21:51
◼
►
and stamps.com. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye Jason Snow.
01:21:56
◼
►
Bye Myke Hurley.
01:21:57
◼
►
[MUSIC PLAYING]