Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode number 48.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:15 ◼   ► lender.com where you can instantly stream thousands of courses

00:00:18 ◼   ► created by industry experts.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Casper because everyone deserves a great night's sleep

00:00:23 ◼   ► and Fracture, photos printed in vivid colour directly on glass.

00:00:27 ◼   ► my name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:30 ◼   ► >> MIKE Hi Myke, how's it going?

00:00:32 ◼   ► >> MATT I am very well, sir. How are you?

00:00:34 ◼   ► >> MIKE I'm doing good. It's Monday!

00:00:36 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:00:37 ◼   ► MATT Well, it's Monday in listener time, but we are recording this on Friday.

00:00:40 ◼   ► MIKE Yeah, we're recording this early because I'm going on vacation next week. It is the

00:00:45 ◼   ► season, all your favorite podcasts are being recorded at weird times because people go

00:00:49 ◼   ► on vacation with their families and it's all, you know, it's that time of year. So that's

00:00:54 ◼   ► what's going on. We're recording this on Friday, but it'll be out on Monday. And then, in fact,

00:01:01 ◼   ► our following episode won't be released until a Tuesday because I'm, again, finishing up

00:01:06 ◼   ► my travel. So, you know, bear with us for the next couple of weeks as we go through

00:01:12 ◼   ► this travel time.

00:01:13 ◼   ► >> Yeah, it's just one of those things I always get really nervous recording in advance, especially

00:01:19 ◼   ► when it's a topical show like this one, because you never know what's going to happen between

00:01:23 ◼   ► now a Monday evening when the show goes out.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Yeah, in fact, we can, you know, we could ruin everything. We could, whatever we talk

00:01:30 ◼   ► about will be eclipsed. That always happens. I had that with, um, Topical makes a difference.

00:01:37 ◼   ► I mean, and Comparable sometimes gets recorded weeks or even a couple of months in advance

00:01:41 ◼   ► from time to time. And, and, uh, I actually had that happen last summer where we, we recorded

00:01:46 ◼   ► an episode and in it, we, we talked about James Garner a little bit and like three weeks

00:01:51 ◼   ► weeks later he died and I had to make some serious changes to that episode when I got

00:01:56 ◼   ► to it because I had to take stuff out because it was really weird. We were talking about

00:02:02 ◼   ► him as if he was alive but he was dead at that point. Stuff like that happens when you

00:02:06 ◼   ► pre-record and you just have to deal with it. But hopefully no big tech news. For Pete's

00:02:10 ◼   ► sake, it's August. A weekend in August. What big news could possibly happen over a weekend

00:02:17 ◼   ► in August. Now we'll pause for everybody to laugh because of the amazingly huge thing

00:02:23 ◼   ► that happened over the weekend in August.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Facebook shuts down.

00:02:27 ◼   ► It's over Microsoft just giving the money back to the shareholders.

00:02:30 ◼   ► They're closing up the door. They're 90 days from bankruptcy. Because we're going to talk

00:02:35 ◼   ► about Twitter a bit today. And we're talking about them because they're in an interesting

00:02:40 ◼   ► kind of a little bit volatile state at the moment, which is why it concerns me, right?

00:02:45 ◼   ► Because they are, anything, literally anything could happen because they don't have a CEO,

00:02:50 ◼   ► they might announce the CEO on Monday morning, who knows?

00:02:53 ◼   ► So probably what I will do Jason, and everybody who's listening to this now will know, I will

00:02:57 ◼   ► put this episode out the minute I wake up on Monday.

00:03:00 ◼   ► I think that's the way to do it, I was going to suggest, you said Monday evening, I'm like

00:03:03 ◼   ► no no no, Myke, just the alarm goes off and the first thing you do is post the episode.

00:03:10 ◼   ► I will wire my alarm clock so when I hit the snooze button it just posts upgrade.

00:03:17 ◼   ► That's great, then when I wake up in the middle of, again I don't even know where I'll be,

00:03:22 ◼   ► when I wake up in Bend, Oregon on Monday morning it'll already be done.

00:03:26 ◼   ► And then the news can break and we'll say, "Hey look, we beat it out, the door.

00:03:30 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:03:32 ◼   ► We already posted our show."

00:03:35 ◼   ► See, I don't mind if I post a show and then it's out of date that afternoon.

00:03:39 ◼   ► if like I've been holding on to one. Yeah it's the deniability of saying well look

00:03:43 ◼   ► what could we do we you know we're not time travelers here versus you've got it

00:03:47 ◼   ► in your hands and you're like oh no. Because Jason was on holiday. Yeah exactly exactly I've

00:03:54 ◼   ► debated whether I need to bring a microphone with me just in case something

00:03:57 ◼   ► happens but I might actually not bring well I have to bring a laptop because I

00:04:00 ◼   ► have to edit at least one podcast while I'm gone but I'm not sure I need to record

00:04:03 ◼   ► anything so I may not bring a microphone. That was that thing you were saying on

00:04:07 ◼   ► the talk show right where you were saying about what if Steve Jobs dies

00:04:10 ◼   ► yeah yeah that was the that was for a long time that just got in my head like

00:04:15 ◼   ► that was the you got to be on guard at all times because what if Steve Jobs

00:04:19 ◼   ► dies and even like before he was sick it was like what if Steve Jobs dies in a

00:04:23 ◼   ► plane crash but it was always like that is the prototypical the art archetypal

00:04:28 ◼   ► big story that you can't miss when I was a Mac world and it got in my head I mean

00:04:32 ◼   ► was definitely like everything you did was what if the big story happens.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Were you in the office when that happened?

00:04:41 ◼   ► Yeah I was, I was. I had just been in a long meeting in the afternoon and I went back to

00:04:45 ◼   ► my desk and I'm sitting at my desk on the sixth floor of 501 Second Street and there

00:04:51 ◼   ► was a, I think it was a tweet from somewhere saying that somebody was reporting that Steve

00:04:57 ◼   ► jobs had died and then that was my you know that was my evening that was that

00:05:02 ◼   ► was and my night that was interesting too because like the next day was my

00:05:05 ◼   ► birthday so I was like getting ready to wrap things up and go home and do

00:05:09 ◼   ► birthday stuff and then it was a very different evening after that and and as

00:05:13 ◼   ► a bus commuter I had like all the work I could do until I got the last bus home

00:05:17 ◼   ► and then I worked on the bus and then I thought about what I was gonna write as

00:05:21 ◼   ► I walked back oh yeah that was a day.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Did you have anything ready at Macworld?

00:05:27 ◼   ► - You know, we did.

00:05:29 ◼   ► But, and we had it coded under the names,

00:05:34 ◼   ► I think it was CEO appreciation.

00:05:36 ◼   ► And the idea was,

00:05:40 ◼   ► let's work on an appreciation of Steve Jobs's tenure as CEO.

00:05:44 ◼   ► And in fact, we ran it somewhere, I think in print,

00:05:54 ◼   ► when he stepped down as CEO in August of that year.

00:05:58 ◼   ► And we ran a modified version of that when he died.

00:06:03 ◼   ► That was, but so we did have something,

00:06:08 ◼   ► but it didn't have anything in it about like,

00:06:09 ◼   ► Steve Jobs died, XXX, it was very much like.

00:06:13 ◼   ► - It was all of the content, like it was the meat.

00:06:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's write about what he did at Apple.

00:06:19 ◼   ► It was also about him at Apple because it was Mac world.

00:06:21 ◼   ► And so, you know, we weren't writing about his life

00:06:23 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:06:24 ◼   ► That would have been a traditional obituary,

00:06:26 ◼   ► but also very weird.

00:06:28 ◼   ► But when he stepped down as a CEO in August,

00:06:33 ◼   ► so a couple months before he died

00:06:35 ◼   ► or a month and a half before he died, we had that story.

00:06:39 ◼   ► And we're like, well, you know,

00:06:40 ◼   ► this is as good a time as any,

00:06:42 ◼   ► 'cause this seems like it's closing the book

00:06:44 ◼   ► on his tenure as CEO.

00:06:46 ◼   ► So let's do it now.

00:06:47 ◼   ► But then we did run that on the web on the day of,

00:06:51 ◼   ► that was there. Phil Michaels and I put that one together, I think.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Because I think it kind of got to a time where any big publication would have been silly

00:06:59 ◼   ► not to have something in the can.

00:07:01 ◼   ► Yeah, although you know, you had that thing with Bloomberg where Connie at Bloomberg wrote

00:07:07 ◼   ► this obituary and they pushed it across the wire and it's like so embarrassing and yeah,

00:07:14 ◼   ► so you try to, that's, you know, you try to be careful. So it never went in our CMS. It

00:07:20 ◼   ► in a Google Doc with a name that said nothing about Steve Jobs or obituary and we didn't

00:07:26 ◼   ► have any details in it about a death or anything like that. It was literally like me and Phil

00:07:31 ◼   ► doing a research project of let's write a story appreciating Steve Jobs for his time

00:07:37 ◼   ► as Apple CEO just in case we want to do that sometime.

00:07:41 ◼   ► I don't remember anything going out from Bloomberg.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah, they had a Steve Jobs obituary that ran.

00:07:49 ◼   ► accidentally across their wire by Connie Guillemo.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Wow. I'm finding links now about it.

00:07:59 ◼   ► That happens from time--I mean, so many obituaries are pre-written, because again,

00:08:02 ◼   ► it is inevitable that famous people will die because everybody dies, so

00:08:06 ◼   ► you write those obituaries. The funny one for me

00:08:09 ◼   ► is occasionally--the New York Times famously has

00:08:13 ◼   ► these obituaries--I think they still do, but they certainly did back in the

00:08:16 ◼   ► the heyday, pre-written, ready to go. And at one point, somebody died, and this is not

00:08:22 ◼   ► that long ago, this is like in the last five years, somebody died and the obituary that

00:08:27 ◼   ► was written about them was bylined by somebody who had been dead for several years.

00:08:32 ◼   ► -Oh my word. -They had pre-written the obituary years before.

00:08:37 ◼   ► The person died, the editors dusted off the obituary that was in whatever file they have

00:08:41 ◼   ► for all their obituaries, they inserted the information at the top about like the details

00:08:45 ◼   ► of the death, but it ran as this, and it was a very nice obituary, but it was written by

00:08:51 ◼   ► somebody who had predeceased the subject of the obituary by several years.

00:08:56 ◼   ► Cuz whilst it makes sense, like if I was in that situation I would have been doing the

00:09:02 ◼   ► same kind of work, it seems distasteful if you find out that it's done in advance.

00:09:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:09 ◼   ► But it makes sense.

00:09:11 ◼   ► You need to do it.

00:09:13 ◼   ► things in advance, I mean I've known lots of people who will write, you know, we would

00:09:17 ◼   ► guess what Apple things were going to be announced based on rumors and speculation, and sometimes

00:09:22 ◼   ► you would write an article body, like chunks of it, that were based on things that you

00:09:27 ◼   ► were going to assume were true, and then you just leave it open. And then when the thing

00:09:30 ◼   ► got announced you would change the things to the facts, but you had like a skeleton

00:09:36 ◼   ► of a story that was like--because you know, you know, Apple on Tuesday unveiled their

00:09:42 ◼   ► new ex at WWDC at Moscone West. You know, you can guess what a lot of the story's gonna

00:09:50 ◼   ► be because it's gonna be the kind of wrapper around the details and you'd leave space for

00:09:53 ◼   ► the details. That sort of thing happens too.

00:09:57 ◼   ► Someone smart could write that in just text expander and just like, could just fire it

00:10:03 ◼   ► off and just change add in a couple of keywords and your story's done every year.

00:10:07 ◼   ► Because they are effectively much or much the same aren't they I suppose with

00:10:12 ◼   ► just some key details. Yeah I mean there are a lot of things in common you try to

00:10:16 ◼   ► this is a way to save time and it's a yeah you know but you can also you can

00:10:20 ◼   ► also get yourself in a lot of trouble if you do that which is why you got to be

00:10:23 ◼   ► super careful and that's why journalists have lots of lots of code words like

00:10:28 ◼   ► like a lot of the journals I don't know if we talked about on this show before

00:10:31 ◼   ► But a lot of journalism code words are, they're all misspelled things.

00:10:34 ◼   ► They're things that will, that will, will throw a spell check.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Or even if you look at them, you'll be like, that's not a word.

00:10:40 ◼   ► And that's because, um, that way, you know, that it's not real.

00:10:44 ◼   ► So like there's TK, capital T capital K, that's a, you know, there's more information

00:10:49 ◼   ► to come here, but instead of writing information to come, because those are all words, you

00:10:53 ◼   ► put TK and people, any journalist is going to see a TK and be like, whoa, we got to fill

00:10:57 ◼   ► this in before we can run this.

00:10:58 ◼   ► or journal, you know, like a head is a headline, a deck is a line that goes below the headline,

00:11:05 ◼   ► and a lead is the first paragraph. And in journalism parlance, those are spelled H-E-D,

00:11:11 ◼   ► D-E-K, and L-E-D-E. They're spelled intentionally misspelled.

00:11:15 ◼   ► >> I always wondered why they were spelled that way.

00:11:19 ◼   ► >> That's why, is to my knowledge, is they're misspelled so you know that they're not supposed

00:11:24 ◼   ► to run. Which is, you know, I had my college newspaper the year after I left, so I wasn't

00:11:30 ◼   ► responsible for this, but they had an issue that went to print that had a fake version

00:11:36 ◼   ► of their sports section in it. It was a mock-up from earlier in the day, and they had neglected

00:11:44 ◼   ► to put the final version down, and the reason nobody noticed is that they used joke headlines

00:11:51 ◼   ► instead of just, you know, TK TK TK, which somebody would have spotted. Instead they

00:11:56 ◼   ► had these joke headlines like "track pulls up lame" and "baseball team loses again" and

00:12:02 ◼   ► things like that and so nobody caught it and that's why you don't do that. Pro tip. Pro

00:12:07 ◼   ► tip. Look at that, that was it. One of those... That's an unexpected topic. Yeah, I don't

00:12:12 ◼   ► even know how we got here. I don't even know. It's because we're recording this on a Friday,

00:12:17 ◼   ► Myke, that's why.

00:12:18 ◼   ► We're wild, we're loosening the tires on Friday over an upgrade.

00:12:23 ◼   ► Should we take a first break and then do some follow up?

00:12:26 ◼   ► Let's do it!

00:12:27 ◼   ► Why not go crazy with it?

00:12:28 ◼   ► This week's episode is brought to you by lynda.com, the online learning platform that houses over

00:12:33 ◼   ► 3000 on-demand video courses that are there to help you strengthen your business, technology

00:12:38 ◼   ► and creative skills.

00:12:39 ◼   ► You can get yourself a free 10-day trial by visiting lynda.com/upgrade.

00:12:47 ◼   ► One of my favorite things about lynda.com is, and I like thinking about it, especially

00:12:52 ◼   ► when doing this show, because me and Jason have recently kind of started our own businesses

00:12:57 ◼   ► and we're self-employed now, you could actually go on to lynda.com and you could sign up and

00:13:03 ◼   ► you would be able to learn, start to finish, how to run a business.

00:13:06 ◼   ► You could have something that you're curious about, you could have a little hobby that

00:13:10 ◼   ► you've wanted to start, maybe you want to get into app development or maybe you want

00:13:14 ◼   ► to get into design or something like that. Maybe you want to get into podcasting or audio

00:13:18 ◼   ► production. You can learn the nuts and bolts of the applications and the hardware tools

00:13:22 ◼   ► that you need. And they have great experts who are there to teach you about this stuff.

00:13:27 ◼   ► But then you can also learn a lot of supplementary things that you might want to know when you're

00:13:31 ◼   ► starting a business. Like you can learn about taxes, you can learn about going paperless,

00:13:36 ◼   ► you can learn about marketing and body language and business negotiation skills and things

00:13:42 ◼   ► like that. You can learn all of this stuff from lynda.com. So I mean of course you don't

00:13:46 ◼   ► have to use it for this purpose. You can use it just to learn that piece of software you've

00:13:49 ◼   ► always wanted to know. You can use it to help learn some skills that might help you get

00:13:54 ◼   ► a new job that you've always wanted or even just to learn a hobby that you like. But that's

00:13:58 ◼   ► the kind of thing that I like about lynda.com is you can kind of dip in and learn whatever

00:14:02 ◼   ► you want. And you can learn it wherever you want. You can learn it on whatever schedule

00:14:06 ◼   ► you want as well. All of their videos are broken down into bite-sized chunks so it's

00:14:10 ◼   ► is

00:14:23 ◼   ► wherever you want, whenever you want, however you want.

00:14:26 ◼   ► Your lynda.com membership when you sign up, which you should, will give you unlimited

00:14:30 ◼   ► access to training on hundreds of topics just for one flat rate.

00:14:33 ◼   ► Whether you are looking to become an industry expert, you're passionate about a hobby, or

00:14:37 ◼   ► you want to learn something new, go ahead and visit lynda.com/upgrade and sign up for

00:14:43 ◼   ► your free 10 day trial.

00:14:44 ◼   ► Go check them out, it will help support this show too.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Thank you so much lynda.com for their support of Relay FM.

00:14:53 ◼   ► Okie dokie. So Apple Pay, I have been using it.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Oh yes. How's that been going?

00:14:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I like it a lot actually. It feels kind of magical.

00:15:03 ◼   ► It makes me happy to use it.

00:15:05 ◼   ► I mean, you know, as I said before, I really like contactless payments.

00:15:10 ◼   ► That is a thing that I've been using for a while

00:15:13 ◼   ► and I'm happy to be able to just do it without needing to get anything out of my pocket anymore.

00:15:18 ◼   ► I prefer to do Apple Pay on the watch because it's faster.

00:15:22 ◼   ► - I'm with you there, despite what Nevin Murgon says.

00:15:26 ◼   ► I agree, it's faster.

00:15:28 ◼   ► Although you can double tap, in iOS 9,

00:15:30 ◼   ► you can double tap on the home screen on the phone

00:15:32 ◼   ► and bring it up, which is one of the things

00:15:34 ◼   ► that lets you kind of prepare it in advance.

00:15:37 ◼   ► - You can do what?

00:15:38 ◼   ► - You can, in iOS 9, if you double tap the home screen

00:15:40 ◼   ► on your phone, it will bring up Apple Pay,

00:15:42 ◼   ► like on the watch. - Wow, really?

00:15:44 ◼   ► You double tap the screen?

00:15:46 ◼   ► - No, no, sorry, double tap the home button.

00:15:48 ◼   ► - Oh, I was gonna say, what?

00:15:50 ◼   ► - Double push, double tap,

00:15:52 ◼   ► 'cause again, Nevin is mad at me for saying

00:15:53 ◼   ► that that's a tap, but you push that home button twice

00:15:56 ◼   ► when it's locked and Apple Pay will open up,

00:15:59 ◼   ► like on the watch, which is nice

00:16:03 ◼   ► because that's one of the things I like about the watch

00:16:04 ◼   ► is I can sort of get it ready.

00:16:06 ◼   ► I tap it a couple of times and then all I have to do

00:16:09 ◼   ► because I don't even need my fingerprint at that point

00:16:12 ◼   ► is just kind of wave it and it buzzes and that's nice.

00:16:15 ◼   ► - That's the thing what I find to be the slowest part

00:16:17 ◼   ► that adds the time is the fingerprint scan.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I mean, I know it's only a couple of milliseconds

00:16:21 ◼   ► whatever but the transactions already milliseconds in itself so it's like you

00:16:24 ◼   ► know you're you're doubling the time it takes well and you get your finger on I

00:16:28 ◼   ► mean it's confusing this happened I was watching my wife do Apple pay the other

00:16:32 ◼   ► day she I was like I'm gonna let you have the glory of the Apple payer and

00:16:35 ◼   ► and she brought her phone with her finger on finger resting on the home

00:16:41 ◼   ► screen to unlock it on the home button to unlock it and it unlocked and went to

00:16:47 ◼   ► the home screen or she maybe she pressed the button it was one of those things

00:16:50 ◼   ► things where Apple Pay was starting to slide up and it went away. And then she's like,

00:16:53 ◼   ► "Well, how do I get it back?" I'm like, "Well, you know, you move it away and then move it

00:16:56 ◼   ► back and all that." And it was, it's one of those things that like there's a lot going

00:16:59 ◼   ► on involving how you use the button on the phone when you do Apple Pay. And I think,

00:17:05 ◼   ► I think Apple is working on making that a little simpler in iOS 9, but on the watch,

00:17:08 ◼   ► it's just very clear. Once you've got the watch on and validated, all you do is double

00:17:12 ◼   ► tap that button and it opens up and that's really nice. Where'd you go and what'd you

00:17:18 ◼   ► Oh, I have bought many things now. I have bought lunch a couple of times. Usually whenever

00:17:26 ◼   ► I leave the house, which has been three days this week, Jason, it's probably a new personal

00:17:31 ◼   ► record, I tend to just buy like a juice or something from the local shop. And it's like

00:17:39 ◼   ► an 89 pence transaction. And I never have cash. So I always just using my card anyway.

00:17:43 ◼   ► So now I just use my watch. I've been using it on the underground.

00:17:47 ◼   ► Nice.

00:17:48 ◼   ► It is slower than even a card is because we have those like we call them oyster cards and it's like a

00:17:55 ◼   ► Ticketless like it's like a little right NFC card. We've had them years. Yeah

00:18:00 ◼   ► That is it like an instant thing that they go through

00:18:04 ◼   ► They're using contactless cards takes a little bit longer using Apple pay takes a little bit longer still

00:18:09 ◼   ► So it's not seamless, but I like it and I've been using my watch to go through

00:18:14 ◼   ► there is a thing which is you have to know and I'll say it here in case

00:18:18 ◼   ► anybody doesn't know you have to use the same device on entry and exit right

00:18:23 ◼   ► because it registers that unique code so if you use your even if using the same

00:18:29 ◼   ► card and use your phone to go in and your watch to go out you'll be charged

00:18:33 ◼   ► maximum fare because it hasn't recognized that you have checked in and

00:18:37 ◼   ► checked out so that's just something to remember but I just use my watch always

00:18:41 ◼   ► It's a little bit awkward that I have to kind of reach across my body to hit the thing,

00:18:46 ◼   ► but it does a pretty good job and I like it.

00:18:48 ◼   ► It just feels more convenient because I'm not like, I mean, you know, it's not like

00:18:52 ◼   ► an arduous task to get my credit card out of my wallet in my pocket, but my watch is

00:18:58 ◼   ► just right there.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Like it's just right there and I just double tap the little button and I just beat my way

00:19:03 ◼   ► in.

00:19:04 ◼   ► I know.

00:19:05 ◼   ► I know.

00:19:06 ◼   ► That's, that's exactly my experience is it's really nice having Apple Pay is really nice

00:19:09 ◼   ► with the watch because it's right there and putting you know tapping that button a couple

00:19:14 ◼   ► of times is something I can do without looking and it's just a natural kind of movement while

00:19:20 ◼   ► I'm standing there at the at the at the register and then I just you know I just hold my wrist

00:19:25 ◼   ► over by the scanner by the by the reader and I feel the little tap that it's good and that's

00:19:32 ◼   ► it I mean it's you can do it really kind of without thinking which is is a lot of fun

00:19:36 ◼   ► I have some real-time follow-up. This is the example I was searching for before. The New

00:19:43 ◼   ► York Times' obituary of Elizabeth Taylor, who died in 2011, was written by their theater

00:19:51 ◼   ► critic Mel Gussow, who died in 2005.

00:19:54 ◼   ► >> Oh, wow. They had that ready for a long time.

00:20:01 ◼   ► >> A very, very long time. And there was another one that they had that was a little bit less,

00:20:05 ◼   ► but that was the extreme example is six years after the guy died,

00:20:09 ◼   ► his story ran, which is kind of cool, right? Like,

00:20:12 ◼   ► like I remember after Roger Ebert died,

00:20:13 ◼   ► there was one movie review he had written that was for a movie that didn't come

00:20:17 ◼   ► out for a few months. And so several months passed.

00:20:21 ◼   ► And then the r at Roger Ebert.com, they said, well, here,

00:20:25 ◼   ► here's his last review,

00:20:26 ◼   ► his last published review because they had held it until the movie was coming

00:20:30 ◼   ► out. And that's kind of fun to have something that you didn't realize was, uh,

00:20:34 ◼   ► was still in the works ready to go from somebody who's not with us anymore. So that was kind

00:20:40 ◼   ► of cool. But yeah, the New York Times, they're prepared.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I'm just looking at our show notes, they look very morose. They look very strange when people

00:20:51 ◼   ► see them.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Summer fun! Woo! Summer fun!

00:20:53 ◼   ► Steve Jobs obituary. Elizabeth Taylor obituary.

00:20:55 ◼   ► Fun time Friday!

00:20:58 ◼   ► Summertime! Yeah! Woo!

00:21:00 ◼   ► We don't have a lot of follow up this week, so what about this Apple TV stuff then that's

00:21:08 ◼   ► the John Pakskowski?

00:21:09 ◼   ► Paskowski?

00:21:10 ◼   ► Paskowski?

00:21:11 ◼   ► Paskowski?

00:21:12 ◼   ► I can't do it.

00:21:13 ◼   ► It's one of those names I read it but don't say it very much.

00:21:18 ◼   ► Yeah, Paskowski I think.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Can never get used to going to BuzzFeed for this type of news.

00:21:25 ◼   ► I know, I know.

00:21:26 ◼   ► This is the, you know, that's my old pal, Matt Honan is building a very interesting

00:21:32 ◼   ► tech bureau in San Francisco for Buzzfeed.

00:21:35 ◼   ► And John Pekowski who used to be at Recode and the Wall Street Journal and other places

00:21:41 ◼   ► is now at Buzzfeed breaking this news.

00:21:43 ◼   ► And he's the one who broke the news that the Apple TV was going to get revved at WWDC.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And then he's the one who broke the news that it wasn't.

00:21:51 ◼   ► And now he's broken again the news that that Apple TV that we told you was going to come

00:21:55 ◼   ► and then didn't come is going to come in September. And, you know, this time for sure. It's like,

00:22:04 ◼   ► part of me feels like at last it's here and part of me feels like I'll believe it when

00:22:07 ◼   ► I see it and not a moment before. I don't know. We've talked about it before. I mean,

00:22:15 ◼   ► my questions, what I put in our show notes here is where do we think Apple TV fits in

00:22:22 ◼   ► in Apple's overall strategy.

00:22:24 ◼   ► 'Cause we spend a lot of time talking about Apple TV

00:22:27 ◼   ► because it's one of these, you know,

00:22:30 ◼   ► it's a unique Apple product.

00:22:31 ◼   ► It's not part of their other kind of product families.

00:22:35 ◼   ► It's this thing that's off on the side.

00:22:37 ◼   ► It's been revved a few times,

00:22:39 ◼   ► but it's never been kind of at the core.

00:22:41 ◼   ► And yet it's the subject of a lot of conversation.

00:22:47 ◼   ► So do you have an Apple TV?

00:22:49 ◼   ► - No. - No, you don't even have--

00:22:50 ◼   ► I have literally zero interest.

00:22:53 ◼   ► I don't watch TV in the TV sense.

00:22:58 ◼   ► I watch things on Netflix and Amazon Prime

00:23:03 ◼   ► and stuff like that,

00:23:04 ◼   ► but we tend to just watch things in bed on a laptop.

00:23:09 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:23:11 ◼   ► - You know, I'm really not a big TV guy.

00:23:14 ◼   ► - I fear that's the future of television,

00:23:17 ◼   ► and I have a problem with that only

00:23:18 ◼   ► because I don't like the experience of watching

00:23:22 ◼   ► on a small screen.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Like everybody huddle around the small screen

00:23:25 ◼   ► to watch this thing.

00:23:26 ◼   ► I don't love that.

00:23:27 ◼   ► I like having a big screen somewhere

00:23:29 ◼   ► that I can put the video on, even if it is streaming.

00:23:32 ◼   ► But I know a lot of people just don't.

00:23:34 ◼   ► I mean, I wonder, I look at my kids

00:23:36 ◼   ► and wonder if they will ever,

00:23:38 ◼   ► I feel like the TV screen is going to end up being like,

00:23:42 ◼   ► when I was a kid, we had a movie projector

00:23:45 ◼   ► for our home movies and a screen that we would get out

00:23:48 ◼   ► and we'd set it up.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And I feel like TVs are gonna be like that.

00:23:52 ◼   ► It's like you buy it because you wanna have

00:23:54 ◼   ► that movie theater kind of experience

00:23:57 ◼   ► and, oh, we can all watch this together.

00:23:59 ◼   ► But that's why it'll exist.

00:24:01 ◼   ► It's not as the thing that you use to watch everything,

00:24:04 ◼   ► but as the thing that's for sort of special,

00:24:07 ◼   ► communal, oh, well, if we're all gonna watch this,

00:24:11 ◼   ► we might as well put it up on the big screen.

00:24:13 ◼   ► That is exactly the way that I use TV.

00:24:15 ◼   ► - In fact, I would say, I think the number one reason

00:24:18 ◼   ► by far that my kids look at the TV screen that we've got

00:24:21 ◼   ► is 'cause they're playing games on it.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have a TV for my Xbox and PlayStation,

00:24:25 ◼   ► but it's not connected to any TV service.

00:24:29 ◼   ► It was in the event of an aerial.

00:24:30 ◼   ► - Right, and you could watch Netflix on it.

00:24:34 ◼   ► - But I don't.

00:24:35 ◼   ► - But you don't.

00:24:36 ◼   ► That is the funny thing, yeah.

00:24:38 ◼   ► So we've got, you know, we have TVs here.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Well, I think this is one of the challenges, right?

00:24:43 ◼   ► It's TV is changing so much

00:24:45 ◼   ► and the tech industry is changing so much.

00:24:47 ◼   ► And those things are sometimes related and sometimes not,

00:24:52 ◼   ► but there was a great,

00:24:54 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be able to find it now,

00:24:55 ◼   ► but there was a great chart that I saw

00:24:57 ◼   ► cited a bunch of different places about,

00:25:00 ◼   ► I think Gruberlink to it too.

00:25:01 ◼   ► So that would probably be the easiest way to find it.

00:25:04 ◼   ► And it's just how much TV viewing is done

00:25:06 ◼   ► by people at various ages.

00:25:08 ◼   ► And for young people, it is just falling rapidly.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Yeah, here it is.

00:25:14 ◼   ► It was in the Wall Street Journal.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And it's just like 18 to 24, TV viewing is down 32%.

00:25:22 ◼   ► 25 to 34, it's down 23%.

00:25:25 ◼   ► And this is why TV, you know, as we,

00:25:29 ◼   ► traditional TV, as we know it, it's going to go away

00:25:31 ◼   ► and become, very rapidly become just for old people.

00:25:35 ◼   ► And again, I think people are gonna still watch

00:25:39 ◼   ► recorded entertainment.

00:25:41 ◼   ► My daughter's really into YouTube,

00:25:42 ◼   ► but a lot of my daughter's friends really love Netflix,

00:25:44 ◼   ► and they watch shows on Netflix,

00:25:45 ◼   ► and she watches some stuff on Netflix or on Artivo.

00:25:49 ◼   ► But the concept of traditional TV

00:25:52 ◼   ► is just completely lost on them,

00:25:53 ◼   ► and that makes me go back to thinking,

00:25:56 ◼   ► we'll still watch entertainment,

00:25:58 ◼   ► but this traditional thought of TV,

00:26:01 ◼   ► maybe old people will watch it that way,

00:26:03 ◼   ► but nobody else is going to.

00:26:05 ◼   ► It seems so weird to me that Apple is approaching this with a device.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Like surely this, whatever it is they end up doing,

00:26:12 ◼   ► if they try and do something in TV, should be on all services.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Because Apple made this bed.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Like they gave us personal devices, right? iPads, iPhones.

00:26:24 ◼   ► So people watched their own content,

00:26:26 ◼   ► the content that they like on the device that they find most personal.

00:26:29 ◼   ► I think that's the way it is now. I think that's why I watch things that way.

00:26:33 ◼   ► I think it's why your kids watch things that way.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Because I've never been a big TV guy.

00:26:38 ◼   ► I'm not a young person, I'm a young person,

00:26:40 ◼   ► but I'm not like a teenager.

00:26:42 ◼   ► So I don't compare myself in that kind of way,

00:26:44 ◼   ► but I've just never been a big TV person.

00:26:47 ◼   ► So I just tend to watch things on the screen

00:26:50 ◼   ► that I like the most, or what's most convenient,

00:26:54 ◼   ► as opposed to sitting down to watch a show.

00:26:56 ◼   ► But I think it's like these standalone devices

00:27:02 ◼   ► don't make a lot of sense to me, like for any purpose.

00:27:06 ◼   ► Like I mean, gaming seems like a thing,

00:27:09 ◼   ► but the games are not gonna be incredibly powered.

00:27:12 ◼   ► So I think people are still just gonna wanna prefer

00:27:14 ◼   ► to play them on their iPhone or their iPad.

00:27:16 ◼   ► I don't really understand looking at it right now.

00:27:21 ◼   ► I don't really understand Apple TV as a platform.

00:27:25 ◼   ► I've never been interested in it.

00:27:27 ◼   ► - So I think what they're trying to do here is,

00:27:31 ◼   ► And maybe this is one of the reasons why this is such an odd product is in the end, if we,

00:27:36 ◼   ► if we accept that, uh, the, uh, a big TV set is really not about what we think of

00:27:43 ◼   ► as traditional television anymore, but it's about, uh, getting content that you

00:27:48 ◼   ► like onto a bigger screen.

00:27:50 ◼   ► If that's what it's about is TV is a big screen.

00:27:53 ◼   ► That's what it is.

00:27:54 ◼   ► It's a device so large, you can't hold it in your hands, but it's bigger.

00:27:58 ◼   ► So it's better for watching movies and you know, they're with a large

00:28:03 ◼   ► watching with a large group of people watching a sporting event, stuff like

00:28:06 ◼   ► that, it's better, that's what it's better for is not anything about the

00:28:09 ◼   ► programming on it, but because it's literally, it is a big screen and our

00:28:13 ◼   ► iPads and our iPhones and our laptops.

00:28:15 ◼   ► Aren't so big.

00:28:16 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:17 ◼   ► If, if we accept that as the definition of what television is, or what a

00:28:22 ◼   ► television set is, then what is Apple TV for?

00:28:26 ◼   ► And yeah, you know, Apple TV is for, it's for airplay.

00:28:31 ◼   ► It's, you know, it's for throwing content from your device.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Like my TiVo has support for the YouTube slinging feature.

00:28:38 ◼   ► - Chromecast.

00:28:39 ◼   ► - So I will, well, not Chromecast, it's the,

00:28:43 ◼   ► so my TiVo has a YouTube app on it.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And you know, the YouTube app has this ability

00:28:47 ◼   ► to basically fling the URL of a YouTube video

00:28:51 ◼   ► and then it plays it instead of on your phone.

00:28:53 ◼   ► You can like share it and play it somewhere else.

00:28:54 ◼   ► And I actually think that's a really great feature, and I use that all the time.

00:28:57 ◼   ► Like, I'll have a movie trailer, and it'll be on my iPhone, and I'll want to show it to my family.

00:29:02 ◼   ► You know, "Oh, here's this new Marvel movie that the trailer just dropped,"

00:29:05 ◼   ► or the new Star Wars behind-the-scenes footage from Comic-Con and all that.

00:29:09 ◼   ► And, you know, they're sitting around in the living room, and there's a baseball game on or whatever,

00:29:13 ◼   ► and I'll go boop boop, and I'll tap on my phone, and the YouTube video will just come up on the TV,

00:29:18 ◼   ► because TiVo will just launch the YouTube app and start playing it.

00:29:21 ◼   ► It's like, that's cool, that's good.

00:29:23 ◼   ► That's a good use for a TV,

00:29:25 ◼   ► is to throw stuff up there from the internet

00:29:27 ◼   ► because you wanna see it on the big screen

00:29:28 ◼   ► and hear it with big speakers or whatever.

00:29:32 ◼   ► Okay, so that's one thing.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And so you've gotta build a lot of services into it

00:29:35 ◼   ► and Apple's got their own AirPlay stuff,

00:29:36 ◼   ► so they wanna do that for their devices.

00:29:38 ◼   ► So it's a really great way for you to put things

00:29:41 ◼   ► on a big screen from your little devices.

00:29:42 ◼   ► I think that's a big part of it.

00:29:44 ◼   ► And you can do it that way.

00:29:46 ◼   ► You don't actually even need to use the Apple TV interface

00:29:48 ◼   ► if you don't want to,

00:29:49 ◼   ► although we do rent movies on Apple TV.

00:29:51 ◼   ► So that's something that we do and watch Netflix.

00:29:55 ◼   ► I'm mostly using the TiVo for that now,

00:29:57 ◼   ► but you can do that on there.

00:29:58 ◼   ► So it's a portal for your devices.

00:30:01 ◼   ► It's a portal for services.

00:30:02 ◼   ► You talk about games,

00:30:03 ◼   ► like not everybody's gonna buy a game console.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Game consoles are kind of a pain.

00:30:07 ◼   ► They're a pain to set up and then you have a lot of them

00:30:09 ◼   ► and they still have like disks that you have to buy

00:30:12 ◼   ► a lot of times for the big games

00:30:13 ◼   ► and it's $50 disks and all of that.

00:30:16 ◼   ► So I think that there's a potential market

00:30:18 ◼   ► for playing games that are like a little more console-like.

00:30:21 ◼   ► I think that's a harder sell, but if you like use your iPhone as the controller, maybe.

00:30:27 ◼   ► I'm not entirely convinced on that.

00:30:29 ◼   ► But well, you know.

00:30:31 ◼   ► No, because the thing is, is like the iPhone is a terrible controller, like for a TV experience.

00:30:38 ◼   ► If you're button mashing, yes.

00:30:39 ◼   ► I'm thinking like if you use the, just basically the positional stuff in the iPhone.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:30:47 ◼   ► And you, and use that for playing.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Like, I could totally play Mario Kart with my iPhone as the controller, right?

00:30:53 ◼   ► Well, maybe you will be.

00:30:56 ◼   ► And maybe I will be, because that could be something as simple as, you know, it's the

00:30:59 ◼   ► steering wheel and that's entirely motion, and then like the left half of the screen

00:31:03 ◼   ► is braking and the right half of the screen is launching whatever my weapon is or something

00:31:10 ◼   ► like that.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I mean, I could see that maybe, I think it's a harder sell, but I could see that.

00:31:14 ◼   ► And then a lot of people are talking about HomeKit, that one of the advantages of something

00:31:17 ◼   ► like having an Apple TV on your home network is that it can talk to all of your devices

00:31:23 ◼   ► and kind of like channel them to the internet and have them interconnect, although they

00:31:27 ◼   ► often can do that on their own and a lot of these devices don't need a hub for that. But

00:31:33 ◼   ► I could see that maybe there's an argument there. I was thinking about Siri and devices

00:31:38 ◼   ► like the Amazon Echo, which it's a music player and it's a voice recognition thing so you

00:31:46 ◼   ► can tell it things and it's tied in with your home network. And I thought Apple TV, that

00:31:49 ◼   ► might be an interesting thing for Apple TV. It'll also play Apple Music, presumably, so

00:31:54 ◼   ► it's something where you could hook it into speakers and maybe even have it be listening

00:31:59 ◼   ► to your commands. So you could say, basically, it's Siri in your house instead of like in

00:32:04 ◼   ► your car or in your pocket, it's Siri for your living room. Or you could open your phone

00:32:11 ◼   ► and say, "Hey, play this music on the big speakers," and it would know that the big

00:32:16 ◼   ► speakers are attached to an Apple TV that's attached to the, you know. There are lots

00:32:21 ◼   ► of things. I think the challenge is, what's the single, focused, super clear principle

00:32:27 ◼   ► about why you have an Apple TV? And, you know, it's, that's hard. I guess maybe you'd say

00:32:35 ◼   ► it's essentially AirPlay, it's being able to take stuff from your apps and put it up

00:32:40 ◼   ► on a big screen. It doesn't feel like enough, like it really feels like content should be

00:32:44 ◼   ► the thing but for Paksaelski's report that's not coming. Yeah not yet, not yet. Which is

00:32:52 ◼   ► weird. Well I think this is one of the reasons why you've seen with Chromecast and with the

00:32:57 ◼   ► Fire TV stick and things like that, this move toward a little tiny thing that just sort

00:33:01 ◼   ► of like hides attached to your TV and makes a dumb TV smart. And Apple TV isn't quite

00:33:07 ◼   ► But I feel like that's one of the reasons those approaches exist is because you could

00:33:12 ◼   ► argue that that's all you really need is you just need a thing to stick on your TV that

00:33:18 ◼   ► lets your iPhone put things on the screen.

00:33:21 ◼   ► Like know that the TV exists.

00:33:23 ◼   ► And I think that, I mean, I think at its base that is what the Apple TV is for.

00:33:26 ◼   ► I think, I think the, and because Apple is doing its own thing instead of using some

00:33:32 ◼   ► other standard that everybody else uses, right?

00:33:34 ◼   ► It's like only Apple's things can do airplay to video.

00:33:39 ◼   ► And it's like, so if you want to attach,

00:33:42 ◼   ► if you want to throw video from your Apple devices

00:33:44 ◼   ► up onto a screen, the way you do that is you buy an Apple TV.

00:33:47 ◼   ► And that, so I think in the end,

00:33:50 ◼   ► that is probably the number one thing it's good for,

00:33:53 ◼   ► but it also lets you navigate online content

00:33:58 ◼   ► and play it on your TV without having to use your phone

00:34:03 ◼   ► your iPad to do that. I mean, it also serves that purpose, which is nice because I would

00:34:10 ◼   ► rather use the Apple remote or some other physical remote than the remote app on my

00:34:14 ◼   ► iPhone. I know some people don't feel that way, but I would much rather use a remote

00:34:20 ◼   ► to navigate. I would rather rent a movie on Apple TV than rent a movie on my iPhone and

00:34:25 ◼   ► then try to AirPlay it to my Apple TV. But other people just don't care. I don't know.

00:34:33 ◼   ► a weird product. This is why it's weird, this is why it's, yeah, it's weird stuff. It'll

00:34:39 ◼   ► be interesting to see how it goes. This is one of those cases where things are moving

00:34:43 ◼   ► fast. TV is changing fast, the technology is changing fast, and it's tough. In some

00:34:49 ◼   ► ways I think every product in this category is just a complete mess and a work in progress,

00:34:54 ◼   ► because how else could it, how could it be any different? The whole TV world is a complete

00:34:59 ◼   ► mess right now.

00:35:03 ◼   ► We'll see in a couple of months maybe.

00:35:05 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe so.

00:35:06 ◼   ► I would love it if I had an Apple device in my house that would be sort of like the Amazon

00:35:13 ◼   ► Echo though and tied into Apple Music and plugged into a speaker somewhere.

00:35:18 ◼   ► I would really love to be able to say, "Play this album" or "Play whatever" and whether

00:35:23 ◼   ► it was doing that from my phone or whether it didn't need any other device to be in proximity

00:35:28 ◼   ► because it was its own device and on the internet. I think there's a lot of features here, but

00:35:34 ◼   ► how does it all go together? How does it all fit together in a way where the product makes

00:35:38 ◼   ► sense? And I'm not sure whether this new Apple TV, should it appear, will do that or not.

00:35:44 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll see. I don't know. I just...

00:35:47 ◼   ► You don't care. You just don't care.

00:35:49 ◼   ► I don't think it's for me, but maybe there's, as we always hope with Apple, there is this

00:35:55 ◼   ► thing in there or a story in there that I don't yet see and there may be a need for

00:36:01 ◼   ► me for it.

00:36:02 ◼   ► So let's say you, you know, you, you, you know, you get a little older and you buy a

00:36:06 ◼   ► house and you know, you think, oh, I want to watch a movie and you think, well, I could

00:36:10 ◼   ► watch it on my iPad or my laptop screen or something, but wouldn't it be nice if I had

00:36:14 ◼   ► a bigger screen to watch it on?

00:36:17 ◼   ► And I mean that, that's where you get the scenario, right?

00:36:20 ◼   ► Is that, is that you need something to attach that TV to your Apple devices and that's the

00:36:25 ◼   ► Apple TV that's why it's there. I mean there are times where we do watch movies

00:36:29 ◼   ► on the big TV downstairs but it's just rare that we do that to be honest

00:36:33 ◼   ► because a lot of the stuff that we're watching we're just like binge watching

00:36:36 ◼   ► shows on Netflix it doesn't really seem necessary to watch it on the TV because

00:36:44 ◼   ► you know it's just it's just throwaway content a lot of the time. I have a nice big TV and a

00:36:50 ◼   ► comfortable couch and it's, I prefer to, you know, when Lauren and I watch a show

00:36:55 ◼   ► in the evening after the kids have gone to bed or as they're going to bed, we're,

00:36:59 ◼   ► we're, uh, you know, we're in our living room and yeah, we could totally watch a

00:37:03 ◼   ► Netflix show, um, sitting next to each other on the couch, looking down at an

00:37:08 ◼   ► iPad, you know, but instead we watch it on a big, a big screen that we've got.

00:37:14 ◼   ► I mean, it's not huge, but it's a lay, it's like a, you know, 50 inch or

00:37:17 ◼   ► something flat screen and that's nicer and I can move around and tilt. I don't have to

00:37:25 ◼   ► like tilt my head in one very specific direction in order to see the video playing on that

00:37:30 ◼   ► screen through the little iPad speakers or something like that. I mean it's nicer but

00:37:36 ◼   ► that's a far cry from saying well the only place you can get anything is on that TV.

00:37:41 ◼   ► Those days are ending. So it's really more about thinking of the TV I really believe

00:37:46 ◼   ► as just another screen. It's just a really big screen with maybe some big speakers attached

00:37:50 ◼   ► to it. And that's it. Otherwise it's just like your phone or your iPad. It's just another

00:37:56 ◼   ► screen.

00:37:57 ◼   ► I think at this point though it is completely safe to say that Apple will never make a television

00:38:02 ◼   ► set because I think today that makes literally zero sense.

00:38:06 ◼   ► I agree.

00:38:07 ◼   ► I don't know why you would do it.

00:38:08 ◼   ► I don't know. Yeah, I don't know why you would because yeah. Why?

00:38:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, why? - You don't need to.

00:38:15 ◼   ► You don't need to, you can put everything you need

00:38:16 ◼   ► in that box.

00:38:17 ◼   ► - Why do they wanna be in that business

00:38:19 ◼   ► where they're selling, you know,

00:38:21 ◼   ► even if there were good margins in it,

00:38:22 ◼   ► it's like, I just don't, yeah, I don't see that.

00:38:24 ◼   ► I've never understood that.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Even Gene Munster has given up on that one.

00:38:27 ◼   ► - Poor Gene.

00:38:28 ◼   ► - He's doing okay.

00:38:31 ◼   ► - Should take a second break?

00:38:32 ◼   ► - Yep, let's do it.

00:38:33 ◼   ► - This week's episode is also brought to you by Casper.

00:38:37 ◼   ► Casper is an online retailer of premium mattresses

00:38:40 ◼   ► that you can get for a fraction of the price

00:38:42 ◼   ► that you'll find in store. The mattress industry has for a long time been this

00:38:47 ◼   ► really weird thing that you have to like go to a store and you want to buy a new

00:38:52 ◼   ► mattress and you I had to do this recently and you lay down on a bed and

00:38:55 ◼   ► it's like this is just so weird like why would you want to do this like it's just

00:38:59 ◼   ► a very strange way of doing things you lay down and it's like oh well now I'm

00:39:04 ◼   ► in a middle of a showroom and I have my shoes on and it's just very peculiar so

00:39:08 ◼   ► Casper is here to revolutionize the way that you think about buying mattresses

00:39:12 ◼   ► by cutting the cost of dealing with resellers and showrooms and they pass their savings

00:39:17 ◼   ► directly to you, the consumer.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And also their product is really interesting and really cool. A Casper Mattress provides

00:39:23 ◼   ► resilience and long lasting supportive comfort. They have developed their own type of mattress,

00:39:28 ◼   ► a hybrid which combines premium latex foam with memory foam and these two technologies

00:39:33 ◼   ► come together for what Casper says will give you better nights and brighter days. It provides

00:39:38 ◼   ► you with just the right sink and just the right bounce.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Usually mattresses can cost well over $1500 but Casper mattresses cost between $500 for

00:39:47 ◼   ► a twin size, $750 for a full size, $850 for a queen and $950 for a king and all Casper

00:39:53 ◼   ► mattresses are made in America.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Now Mr. Jason Snow I believe that you have a Casper mattress.

00:39:57 ◼   ► Me being here in the island of the United Kingdom means that I unfortunately cannot

00:40:01 ◼   ► get a Casper mattress but I know that you do indeed have one.

00:40:05 ◼   ► I sleep on one every night.

00:40:06 ◼   ► And in fact, my in-laws were here a couple of weeks ago

00:40:11 ◼   ► and my father-in-law was like,

00:40:14 ◼   ► "Oh, can I check out that mattress

00:40:15 ◼   ► that you've been talking about?"

00:40:17 ◼   ► Because apparently my wife has been talking

00:40:18 ◼   ► about the Casper mattress.

00:40:21 ◼   ► And so he came and sat down on it

00:40:23 ◼   ► 'cause they're looking for a new mattress.

00:40:25 ◼   ► And I was trying to explain to him the difference

00:40:27 ◼   ► that it's the memory foam underneath with a latex on top,

00:40:31 ◼   ► the latex foam, so that it's sort of a comfortable top part

00:40:34 ◼   ► but it's still got a lot of support.

00:40:36 ◼   ► And the feature that I've mentioned before,

00:40:38 ◼   ► which is the no trampolining,

00:40:40 ◼   ► that the cat can be sitting on one side of the bed

00:40:42 ◼   ► and you sit down on the other side of the bed

00:40:43 ◼   ► and it doesn't like eject the cat into the air.

00:40:46 ◼   ► The person on one side of the bed can be drinking tea

00:40:49 ◼   ► and somebody else can be sitting on the other side,

00:40:51 ◼   ► can drop down on the other side and the tea isn't spilled,

00:40:54 ◼   ► which let me tell you on our old mattress,

00:40:55 ◼   ► the tea got spilled.

00:40:56 ◼   ► So I think they may, I said to him,

00:41:00 ◼   ► we've got a code for you if you want to buy a Casper

00:41:03 ◼   ► and you can save a little bit of money.

00:41:06 ◼   ► - That code is, if you go to casper.com/upgrade,

00:41:09 ◼   ► you'll get $50 towards any mattress purchase.

00:41:13 ◼   ► You just go to casper.com/upgrade.

00:41:15 ◼   ► Use the code upgrade at checkout

00:41:16 ◼   ► and terms and conditions apply on that.

00:41:18 ◼   ► I will mention that Casper offer a free delivery

00:41:21 ◼   ► and returns have been a 100 day period.

00:41:23 ◼   ► It is completely risk free when you buy a Casper mattress.

00:41:26 ◼   ► This means you get the time to try it out for yourself

00:41:28 ◼   ► at home with all of your own bedding on your own bed

00:41:31 ◼   ► for 100 days to make sure that it's right for you.

00:41:34 ◼   ► It's completely risk-free.

00:41:35 ◼   ► They shipped you in a fancy box,

00:41:37 ◼   ► and opening them is an experience all of its own.

00:41:40 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Casper

00:41:42 ◼   ► for supporting this show and Relay FM.

00:41:44 ◼   ► I really wish I could get a Casper mattress.

00:41:49 ◼   ► I must say.

00:41:50 ◼   ► - If we had known we were gonna be talking about Apple TV

00:41:52 ◼   ► today, we could have gotten Joe Steele on the line.

00:41:55 ◼   ► He has lots of opinions about Apple TV.

00:41:57 ◼   ► - Oh, I'm sure that we will have the ability

00:41:59 ◼   ► to talk to him at another point about this,

00:42:01 ◼   ► That would actually be fun.

00:42:03 ◼   ► Let's put that on the to-do list.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Let's put that on the to-do list as one of our rare upgrade guests to talk about Apple

00:42:08 ◼   ► TV with Joe Steele.

00:42:09 ◼   ► Because we're now going to enter that news cycle, the rumor news cycle of Apple TV, right?

00:42:13 ◼   ► Because iPhone 6s is not interesting, right?

00:42:18 ◼   ► It's not exciting.

00:42:20 ◼   ► I think we are entering the period where if we're not careful, every episode of Upgrade

00:42:24 ◼   ► is literally just going to be more talk about the three rumors that are going to happen

00:42:27 ◼   ► between now and the middle of September.

00:42:30 ◼   ► So we'll try to measure that out a little bit and only talk about things when there's

00:42:34 ◼   ► something new to say.

00:42:35 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:42:36 ◼   ► Hence why we're going to talk about something a little bit different now, which is Twitter.

00:42:39 ◼   ► Yeah!

00:42:40 ◼   ► Twitter.

00:42:41 ◼   ► So Twitter right now is a company that is in a state of flux.

00:42:45 ◼   ► They just announced their Q2 earnings.

00:42:47 ◼   ► Their earnings were good.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Their revenue was higher than expectation.

00:42:53 ◼   ► But their big problem right now, and one of the reasons why they're in a bit of turmoil,

00:42:59 ◼   ► is they are not attracting users fast enough.

00:43:03 ◼   ► And I read a quote from,

00:43:06 ◼   ► I think it might have been from Dorsey or from their COO,

00:43:10 ◼   ► I think his name is Noto?

00:43:11 ◼   ► I could be completely wrong there.

00:43:14 ◼   ► I wanna make sure I get that right now before we continue.

00:43:18 ◼   ► Yeah, Anthony Noto.

00:43:19 ◼   ► And they were talking about user growth

00:43:21 ◼   ► and saying that their advertising is doing well,

00:43:24 ◼   ► but they actually might end up at an inventory problem

00:43:28 ◼   ► because they're going to have too much demand for advertising

00:43:30 ◼   ► and they have eyeballs to show it to.

00:43:32 ◼   ► So that is like an issue for them,

00:43:34 ◼   ► but more, you know, what they actually need

00:43:37 ◼   ► is people using the service,

00:43:38 ◼   ► and they're trying many different things

00:43:40 ◼   ► and have tried many different things

00:43:41 ◼   ► and have made many guarantees,

00:43:43 ◼   ► but that's not happening, they're not attracting users.

00:43:46 ◼   ► And one of the other big things

00:43:47 ◼   ► that's happening at Twitter right now

00:43:48 ◼   ► is Twitter has no CEO.

00:43:50 ◼   ► Costolo stepped down amidst many concerns

00:43:54 ◼   ► that the company wasn't going anywhere,

00:43:57 ◼   ► And now Jack Dorsey is at the helm in an interim position,

00:44:01 ◼   ► but Twitter has yet to announce its new CEO.

00:44:04 ◼   ► From the reports that you see right now,

00:44:06 ◼   ► it's because they haven't actually decided on a new CEO.

00:44:10 ◼   ► So this is kind of where they are now.

00:44:14 ◼   ► And I kind of wanted to talk about this a bit,

00:44:18 ◼   ► but also perform some thought exercises, Jason, with you

00:44:23 ◼   ► about Twitter as a company and as a service.

00:44:26 ◼   ► that's one of the interesting things I've heard people mention this before and I

00:44:28 ◼   ► definitely think about it this way that there is Twitter as a company Twitter

00:44:34 ◼   ► incorporated or whatever they are and Twitter as in the service that I see

00:44:39 ◼   ► through Tweetbot and and I see those as two very very different things so what

00:44:45 ◼   ► do you think Twitter needs to do right now for Twitter the company what should

00:44:51 ◼   ► they be focusing on? Well, I will put in the show notes Chris Sacca wrote this thing that

00:44:58 ◼   ► got spread around a lot about what he thought Twitter should do and I thought there was

00:45:02 ◼   ► a lot of really perceptive stuff in there. You start by saying what is this is a forgive

00:45:07 ◼   ► the business school jargon here. I didn't go to business school. Well, my wife did and

00:45:11 ◼   ► I worked for many CEOs over the years. So the question you should always ask yourself

00:45:16 ◼   ► I think is what do we do better than anyone else in the world?

00:45:21 ◼   ► Or some degree of that.

00:45:22 ◼   ► What do I do that's different?

00:45:23 ◼   ► What do I do that's better?

00:45:24 ◼   ► 'Cause you wanna focus on that.

00:45:25 ◼   ► Focus on your strengths, focus on what you're good at.

00:45:27 ◼   ► And what Chris Sacca pointed out,

00:45:30 ◼   ► and I think is really good is Twitter is really good

00:45:33 ◼   ► at real time and breaking news and hot topics

00:45:36 ◼   ► and being the water cooler.

00:45:38 ◼   ► As we all discovered when we first logged on to Twitter

00:45:41 ◼   ► back in the day, it is the water cooler.

00:45:44 ◼   ► it is a place where you can talk about what's going on and it can connect people. It can

00:45:47 ◼   ► connect communities and it can connect everybody, a community in terms of colleagues or friends,

00:45:53 ◼   ► but also a community in terms of interest in a topic. And Sacca pointed out, and I think

00:45:58 ◼   ► it was brilliant, that if you were following, and Ben Thompson has written about this too

00:46:03 ◼   ► on Stratechery, like Ben's example was the NBA playoffs. He was writing during the NBA

00:46:07 ◼   ► playoffs and he said, if you were following, and I think it was also the trade deadline

00:46:13 ◼   ► or something, it was something sports-related, NBA-related, where there was all this stuff

00:46:17 ◼   ► happening on Twitter and there ended up being players making jokes on Twitter because there

00:46:21 ◼   ► was a signing deadline for new players. But this is also true in live sporting events

00:46:24 ◼   ► and things too. And the teams and the fans were all kind of interacting and the players

00:46:29 ◼   ► were making jokes, and it was this amazing little window into what was happening right

00:46:34 ◼   ► then with the NBA signing deadline. And if you were following the right people through

00:46:38 ◼   ► a list or just following in your timeline, you had this amazing experience. But if you're

00:46:43 ◼   ► somebody who is like not a Twitter user doesn't know anything about Twitter, hasn't curated

00:46:47 ◼   ► a list about this particular interest, you just didn't see it because you have to have

00:46:53 ◼   ► put in the work so that at that moment you can see those tweets. And Saka's point and

00:47:00 ◼   ► Ben Thompson's point that I think is dead on is Twitter needs to be better about exposing

00:47:04 ◼   ► the very best stuff about a hot topic as it's happening to users. And those users don't

00:47:09 ◼   ► necessarily need to be logged into Twitter even. And if they are logged into Twitter,

00:47:13 ◼   ► can set favorites and all that, but they shouldn't need to curate lists or scan a hashtag that's

00:47:19 ◼   ► got a billion posts, just a fire hose of junk coming at it. They need to do a better job

00:47:24 ◼   ► of finding, probably algorithmically, finding the best tweets from the best people on a

00:47:29 ◼   ► hot subject and exposing them to people so that people who are like watching a game,

00:47:35 ◼   ► like any sporting event that's going on, could tune in and see this conversation and jump

00:47:40 ◼   ► into it, or an awards show, you know, the Academy Awards, or some breaking news event

00:47:46 ◼   ► that happens, Ferguson, you know, all the stuff that happened in Ferguson, right, that's

00:47:50 ◼   ► an example of that. Or presidential candidates or whatever, right, Twitter can be really

00:47:55 ◼   ► good at stuff that's happening right now. And it's just really hard because it's like,

00:48:01 ◼   ► the bottom line is, because that's what Twitter could do. My question is, what is Twitter

00:48:08 ◼   ► doing. It looks like they've made some changes to, in some areas, like their abuse stuff

00:48:14 ◼   ► seems to be way better than it was, although there's more work to do there, it seems like

00:48:18 ◼   ► they've made some headway there, but on their product, there are so many missing pieces,

00:48:22 ◼   ► like I use the Twitter Mac app, mostly because it's got some features that they don't allow

00:48:26 ◼   ► third-party apps to do, so they're only in the Twitter Mac app, but it's bad. It's bad.

00:48:32 ◼   ► The Twitter iOS app isn't great. The Twitter Mac app is atrocious. So it's like they took

00:48:36 ◼   ► their ball and went home in terms of letting third parties do new features or support new

00:48:43 ◼   ► features that they're not in the API so they can't support them and they limited their

00:48:46 ◼   ► number of users and all of that, and then they stopped development on the apps. But

00:48:52 ◼   ► if you look at their service, it's similar. It's like, what have they done? What have

00:48:54 ◼   ► they done to upgrade the service? What have they done to make it easier for people to

00:48:58 ◼   ► discover stuff? It's still the same old Twitter in so many ways as it's been. And it's a shame

00:49:03 ◼   ► because I get huge value out of Twitter. But that's what I keep coming back to is Twitter.

00:49:09 ◼   ► What Twitter is best at is exposing interesting conversations and communities happening in

00:49:16 ◼   ► real time about things that are going on. And it's way too hard to tune into those.

00:49:23 ◼   ► And searching a hashtag is not the answer. They need to take a lot of their metadata,

00:49:28 ◼   ► a lot of things that they can understand about the content of individual tweets and who the

00:49:32 ◼   ► the people are who are tweeting them and what their background is. Some of that may be human-curated,

00:49:37 ◼   ► like on this topic these are good people and some of it could be algorithmic. They just

00:49:40 ◼   ► need to do more of that. I think that's the number one thing, because then if you realize

00:49:45 ◼   ► everybody is on Twitter because this thing is happening and Twitter is the place you

00:49:49 ◼   ► go for that, that is going to open up user growth to Twitter, where people are like,

00:49:53 ◼   ► "Oh man, that was really great. I need to do more stuff on Twitter." And then they get

00:49:58 ◼   ► you to register for an account and save your favorites and all of those things, and that

00:50:02 ◼   ► I think is a way to move forward.

00:50:04 ◼   ► But right now it's just like, you know,

00:50:06 ◼   ► the new, if you've tried to make a new user in Twitter

00:50:09 ◼   ► and go through that process, it's awful.

00:50:11 ◼   ► They do like auto file, follow things,

00:50:14 ◼   ► but nobody's following you.

00:50:15 ◼   ► And unless you can find friends,

00:50:16 ◼   ► then you're like looking at a bunch of brand accounts

00:50:18 ◼   ► and you could tweet something,

00:50:19 ◼   ► but you're just tweeting it out into oblivion

00:50:21 ◼   ► and nobody will ever see it.

00:50:23 ◼   ► And that's a terrible experience.

00:50:24 ◼   ► No wonder people abandon their Twitter accounts.

00:50:28 ◼   ► It's gotta be better.

00:50:30 ◼   ► - Have you heard of Project Lightning?

00:50:32 ◼   ► - I read that, well I read that Verge story.

00:50:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, so Project Lightning is a new initiative

00:50:42 ◼   ► that Twitter is working on, and it is actually to address

00:50:46 ◼   ► some of the things that you've spoken about.

00:50:47 ◼   ► So basically Project Lightning is a new initiative

00:50:51 ◼   ► by Twitter to collect tweets and related media

00:50:53 ◼   ► around certain events and stories.

00:50:55 ◼   ► So part of it is gonna be human curated,

00:50:59 ◼   ► which I don't even know how they're gonna do that,

00:51:01 ◼   ► but they'll find a way.

00:51:02 ◼   ► And part of it will obviously be algorithmically curated.

00:51:05 ◼   ► And the human curation stuff will be around big events.

00:51:08 ◼   ► So for example, the Verge, Casey Newton at the Verge

00:51:12 ◼   ► did a Q&A with Twitter's head of product, Kevin Wheel.

00:51:17 ◼   ► And he gave the example of the VMAs, right?

00:51:21 ◼   ► The Video Music Awards.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And said basically, imagine an event-based follow.

00:51:27 ◼   ► This is something that they're considering.

00:51:28 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:51:29 ◼   ► - So being able to follow what's happening at the VMAs

00:51:32 ◼   ► just while they're happening.

00:51:34 ◼   ► So it will break out of the rules of the current timeline

00:51:36 ◼   ► to show you content that you're interested in,

00:51:38 ◼   ► not from people you follow necessarily,

00:51:41 ◼   ► but it allows you to be connected

00:51:42 ◼   ► to what is happening right now in a certain place.

00:51:46 ◼   ► This is a very, I mean, it makes so much sense

00:51:50 ◼   ► to be able to do that.

00:51:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, follow an event, follow a concept,

00:51:54 ◼   ► follow a brand and not like their account,

00:51:57 ◼   ► But like if I want to follow the San Francisco Giants conversation, that's not the same as

00:52:02 ◼   ► saying follow SF Giants.

00:52:04 ◼   ► If I want to follow the VMAs, I want to follow the VMAs, not the MTV VMA account.

00:52:11 ◼   ► And Twitter, so it's good that they're talking about this.

00:52:14 ◼   ► They need to do this, right?

00:52:15 ◼   ► They need to finally do something resembling anything.

00:52:20 ◼   ► Because yes, I think it's very clear that these are things that they could do.

00:52:23 ◼   ► They've got all this great data and all these great conversations, and yet they're mired

00:52:26 ◼   ► in this concept of which I mean the original power of Twitter is this asymmetric you follow

00:52:31 ◼   ► me I don't have to follow you but you can still talk to me that's all good but I feel

00:52:35 ◼   ► like they've done nothing to change that in or add to it in like its entire existence

00:52:44 ◼   ► and it's this this absolutely has to happen you should be able to follow abstract things

00:52:52 ◼   ► and like like an awards show or a or a team or a candidate or a or a cause and see the conversations

00:53:00 ◼   ► going on. Well it definitely seems like they are on this path right that they are they are making

00:53:05 ◼   ► this change and Ben Thompson again wrote another great piece about about stuff like this but also

00:53:13 ◼   ► about Jack Dorsey because currently Dorsey is the interim CEO and the word on the street is that he

00:53:21 ◼   ► He wants the position.

00:53:23 ◼   ► But Twitter, the company, the board, is hesitant for him because of the fact that he is the

00:53:31 ◼   ► CEO of Square, right, as well.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And they want him to be all in on Twitter.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Which I can totally understand.

00:53:39 ◼   ► The CEO of two companies seems a little excessive.

00:53:43 ◼   ► But apparently he wants the job again.

00:53:46 ◼   ► And he did some good Q&A stuff around the earnings call.

00:53:50 ◼   ► And one of the things that he's talking about is potentially changing.

00:53:57 ◼   ► So this is a quote from the call.

00:54:00 ◼   ► You will see us continue to question our reverse chronological timeline and all of the work

00:54:06 ◼   ► it takes to build one by finding and following accounts through experiences like While You

00:54:11 ◼   ► Were Away and Project Lightning which launches this fall.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Our goal is to show more meaningful tweets and conversations faster, whether that's logged

00:54:19 ◼   ► in or out of Twitter. Dorsey, and then Ben Thompson adds a bit of commentary to this

00:54:23 ◼   ► from his article, "Dorsey noted later that the traditional reverse chronological timeline

00:54:28 ◼   ► would still be available, but he again made clear that the strictly chronological timeline

00:54:32 ◼   ► wasn't gospel," and then goes on to say, "It's doubtful that anyone else would say so so

00:54:37 ◼   ► brazenly."

00:54:38 ◼   ► Right. I mean, I don't think they're going to throw away what makes Twitter Twitter,

00:54:41 ◼   ► but they need to do other things, right? Like, it's not enough. For some of us, it may be

00:54:45 ◼   ► enough but it's not enough for Twitter to grow and find other people who are

00:54:49 ◼   ► not who and allow other people who are not us to get something out of Twitter I

00:54:54 ◼   ► think and I think that that is I think it's very wise I think that they need to

00:54:59 ◼   ► be thinking of the fact that like you said when you start a Twitter account

00:55:03 ◼   ► you you're basically like a a person with a megaphone in a town square because

00:55:14 ◼   ► you're just shouting into oblivion.

00:55:16 ◼   ► - Well, no, you're an invisible person, right?

00:55:19 ◼   ► I mean, nobody follows you.

00:55:20 ◼   ► You follow everybody.

00:55:21 ◼   ► And that leads to this passive sort of experience

00:55:24 ◼   ► where now you're seeing links on Twitter

00:55:26 ◼   ► from brands or influencers or whatever, right?

00:55:30 ◼   ► And that's fine.

00:55:33 ◼   ► But then when you have something to say,

00:55:35 ◼   ► how does anyone know?

00:55:37 ◼   ► How does anyone find you unless you tell your friends,

00:55:39 ◼   ► "Hey, I'm on Twitter."

00:55:41 ◼   ► How do you, you know,

00:55:42 ◼   ► you can start posting things with hashtags

00:55:44 ◼   ► and hope that the people who, you know, other than Spambox though, how do they find you?

00:55:47 ◼   ► They search for a hashtag and they see you and all that. And maybe you don't want to

00:55:51 ◼   ► be part of the conversation, but I think it is a problem with Twitter that you can't as

00:55:57 ◼   ► easily find other people, you know, building that social graph or whatever you want to

00:56:01 ◼   ► call it. And, you know, and yet all you're getting out of it is this sort of like brand

00:56:05 ◼   ► stream which is not that interesting either. So, you know, creating these aggregate streams

00:56:12 ◼   ► is a good idea. And this is one of those cases where they collide with Facebook a little

00:56:17 ◼   ► bit, but I think the difference is Facebook is your family tree and your map of social

00:56:24 ◼   ► connections from high school and college and your business world, maybe. And Twitter is

00:56:30 ◼   ► about stuff that's happening right now. And that gives Twitter some advantages over Facebook,

00:56:35 ◼   ► because Facebook's really not about that.

00:56:37 ◼   ► What do you think about Jack Dorsey?

00:56:42 ◼   ► I think he says a lot of the right things.

00:56:45 ◼   ► I think he cares about Twitter, which is important, and you'd think that that would be a ridiculous

00:56:52 ◼   ► statement to make, but when you look at some of the people who have worked at Twitter and

00:56:55 ◼   ► are on the board of Twitter who don't use Twitter, and Ben Thompson mentioned this,

00:57:01 ◼   ► is like, Twitter has a board problem, which is it's like former CEOs who don't like each

00:57:06 ◼   ► other and a board that doesn't use Twitter. And you know what? You don't have to be a

00:57:12 ◼   ► fan of X to be the CEO of the company that produces X, but it sure helps. It sure helps

00:57:21 ◼   ► to have a vision about what your product should be based on your knowledge of and love of

00:57:27 ◼   ► the service, based on knowing the power of what you have. And it baffles me, as somebody

00:57:35 ◼   ► who is very enthusiastic about Twitter and what Twitter could be and has been a fan of

00:57:39 ◼   ► Twitter all along, it does infuriate me that they have this board of directors that just

00:57:43 ◼   ► doesn't care. They're there because they've got money, they're there because they invested

00:57:48 ◼   ► in it, they're there because they're buddies with somebody who put them on the board, but

00:57:53 ◼   ► these do not seem to be people who actually get what Twitter's about. And is it any wonder

00:57:58 ◼   ► that Twitter has been adrift for the last few years? I try to be understanding and not

00:58:03 ◼   ► harsh about so many of these things. In the early years, Twitter really struggled with

00:58:06 ◼   ► scale, the fail whale and all of that, but lately they just seem completely adrift. And

00:58:12 ◼   ► it's not that they don't have talented people there working on the product, and yet we see

00:58:15 ◼   ► so little in terms of innovation in the product, and it's just sort of like drifting there.

00:58:20 ◼   ► I gotta think that part of that comes from the fact that there are a lot of people in

00:58:25 ◼   ► influential places at Twitter who just don't get Twitter, and that's a problem. That's

00:58:29 ◼   ► a problem. So I will say that about Dorsey is that he seems to know and love and understand

00:58:36 ◼   ► the power of Twitter, and you need people like that, because I still think it's an incredibly

00:58:43 ◼   ► powerful service with a lot of potential. The amount of content that they've got behind

00:58:49 ◼   ► the scenes, the things they know about what people are talking about, this is why their

00:58:52 ◼   ► deals with broadcasters and other media companies are also kind of brilliant, is like they know

00:58:58 ◼   ► what people are talking about. And the more of that that they can get, the more data they've

00:59:02 ◼   ► got. And not in a creepy way of like, we're going to target you because you're talking

00:59:06 ◼   ► about X, but in an aggregate way, like this is what the world cares about right now. That

00:59:11 ◼   ► could be really powerful. So they've got a lot going for them. They've got a lot of assets,

00:59:15 ◼   ► but you know, they got to do something with it. And that's the frustration is that they,

00:59:20 ◼   ► is that I feel like so much of the product has just been kind of sitting there. So, you

00:59:25 ◼   ► know, that's what I think about Dorsey is he cares and that's a good start. And you

00:59:31 ◼   ► know, if somebody, you can point at somebody else and say, well, this person really has

00:59:34 ◼   ► a great idea about Twitter, then that would be great. But you know, I don't know enough

00:59:38 ◼   ► about who else is out there. But you know, I don't know. It's so frustrating to talk

00:59:44 ◼   ► about Twitter because there's so much good about Twitter and there's so much bad about

00:59:46 ◼   ► Twitter as a user, but as a business, that's, you know, it's the same story, I think, which

00:59:53 ◼   ► is so much potential, so much power, and you know, what are they doing with it?

01:00:00 ◼   ► I like the Jobs-esque story with Dorsey. Sure, sure. He comes back having learned some lessons

01:00:08 ◼   ► about and gotten some perspective. Well, this will be like his third time coming back. Yeah.

01:00:15 ◼   ► But like, you know, he got ousted, well then he ousted Ev when he came back again, but

01:00:20 ◼   ► this guy I mean he created it like it was his original idea although he the

01:00:25 ◼   ► technology that he created was something very different it was like a dispatch

01:00:28 ◼   ► system and they ended up turning into Twitter for that history actually Kevin

01:00:34 ◼   ► Rose did a credible interview with with Jack Dorsey a few years ago I'll find it

01:00:39 ◼   ► and put in the show notes where he talks about like where his original idea was

01:00:42 ◼   ► and how it ended up moving along. But I think that he's very, very interesting

01:00:51 ◼   ► and as a character I quite like him. He does some peculiar things but that

01:00:58 ◼   ► continues to be quite interesting and he seems very smart. I really love this one

01:01:02 ◼   ► quote from him on this earnings call. He says "Our goal is to show more meaningful

01:01:08 ◼   ► tweets and conversations. If we meet these expectations Twitter will overcome

01:01:12 ◼   ► the first thing people check every morning to start the day. I mean that's

01:01:17 ◼   ► an obvious thing, because that's what I do, it's what you do. It's what basically everybody

01:01:21 ◼   ► listening to the show does. But we understand Twitter and have a different

01:01:25 ◼   ► feeling about Twitter because we, as you know, as listeners of this show, we get out

01:01:31 ◼   ► of Twitter what Twitter wants the world to get from Twitter. Which is such a

01:01:35 ◼   ► weird thing because we are very against a lot of the things that the company

01:01:40 ◼   ► does because the company's trying to wrestle back what they let go. It was a

01:01:46 ◼   ► wild west, right? And anybody could do anything. And now we, none of us, well a

01:01:51 ◼   ► lot of people do, but I think a lot a lot a lot of people listening to the show do

01:01:55 ◼   ► not use the official apps. They use third-party apps. And I think that that

01:02:00 ◼   ► is a normal thing, which is, you know, when I ask you like what do you think

01:02:03 ◼   ► Twitter should do as a company, it's very different to what what would you like to

01:02:08 ◼   ► see them do. I mean for me, I would like them to give a bit more control back to third parties,

01:02:14 ◼   ► but with conditions. The conditions are, you need to show our advertising. And it's not

01:02:19 ◼   ► necessarily what I want, but it's what I would take that trade off.

01:02:23 ◼   ► You know?

01:02:24 ◼   ► >> Yeah, that was a huge miscalculation. That was a huge miscalculation on their part. Like,

01:02:28 ◼   ► Twitter is not going to make it or break it as a company based on forcing people into

01:02:31 ◼   ► the official client and onto the web. And again, I would feel more sympathy for them

01:02:36 ◼   ► if they hadn't completely abandoned-- they killed all the Mac-- as a Mac user who uses

01:02:41 ◼   ► Twitter, they killed all the Mac clients, and they didn't keep up their end of the bargain

01:02:45 ◼   ► by having their client be good. It's not good. It's buggy, and it's just-- it's not good.

01:02:50 ◼   ► But it's got features that they've withheld from everybody else. It's like, first thing

01:02:53 ◼   ► I would do if I ran the zoo at Twitter would be to set-- to go back to third-party app

01:02:59 ◼   ► developers and say, "Look, like you just said, we're-- you are gonna get access to everything

01:03:05 ◼   ► that we've got. But you have to display it in these ways, because we don't want to be

01:03:08 ◼   ► in the business. We know there are different kinds of users. We don't want to be in the

01:03:11 ◼   ► business of having to create the world-class window into our platform on every single platform

01:03:18 ◼   ► that's out there. It's too much work for us. It's not a priority for us. Or I would say,

01:03:25 ◼   ► we need to make every Twitter app world-class on all the platforms, one or the other. But

01:03:31 ◼   ► now it's neither because you know their their apps are kind of embarrassing and

01:03:35 ◼   ► and they've closed off the third parties so so that would be you know absolutely

01:03:40 ◼   ► at the top of the list I would also um I would embrace their their existence as a

01:03:46 ◼   ► way of link collecting and sharing and you know I personally I would say you

01:03:53 ◼   ► need either should buy nuzzle or you should do nuzzle I don't know how they

01:03:57 ◼   ► haven't bought them. I just don't understand.

01:03:59 ◼   ► -Twitter feeds are an amazing way of mining news links, just making a newspaper out of

01:04:07 ◼   ► the conversation of the moment. And it's all in the data, and you know, Nuzzle is using

01:04:12 ◼   ► that data to build its product. And it's a really good product for nerds who know about

01:04:20 ◼   ► Nuzzle, but that could be for everybody. I mean, that's another way where Twitter, you

01:04:24 ◼   ► could surface what people are reading and the conversations about what they're reading

01:04:29 ◼   ► and do all sorts of kind of amazing things. But again, where is it? Where is it? It's

01:04:35 ◼   ► not there.

01:04:36 ◼   ► Oh, Twitter.

01:04:37 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a, it's a, I know there was a time when I really complained about, uh, I always

01:04:44 ◼   ► thought one area for them was, was for groups because Twitter, um, now they have group DMS,

01:04:49 ◼   ► but they're like, you know, instant messages. I always felt like Twitter would be really

01:04:51 ◼   ► great if you could make posts that were constrained to a certain number of people. Like I could

01:04:57 ◼   ► say, "I want to send this tweet, but I only want to send it to people who follow me,"

01:05:01 ◼   ► or "Only send it to people I follow," or "Only send it to," yeah, like the Google Plus circles,

01:05:06 ◼   ► "Only send it to my colleagues in the technology industry," you know, the tech journalists.

01:05:10 ◼   ► I only want them to see this, not everybody, just them. And they missed that chance. And

01:05:16 ◼   ► maybe that was a bad fit for them. They made the decision not to go down there. And I think

01:05:20 ◼   ► about it now and I think, well, it's too late. That's what Slack is for. And Slack is not

01:05:26 ◼   ► quite a perfect analog, but it is a place, and we have like a relay Slack and I have

01:05:32 ◼   ► an incomparable Slack. I mean, there's lots of different Slacks that people are in. And

01:05:36 ◼   ► the fact is, there are conversations I don't have on Twitter that I might've had on Twitter

01:05:41 ◼   ► before, but it's easier for me to have them in Slack because they're really conversations

01:05:45 ◼   ► for a very, that I want to have with a smaller group of people. And I don't need to have

01:05:50 ◼   ► those in public because although I could have them in public, it's easier and more targeted

01:05:56 ◼   ► for me to have them in Slack where there's a smaller group of people. There's going to

01:05:59 ◼   ► be less noise, there's going to be less kind of stuff that I have to go through that's

01:06:02 ◼   ► not helpful. And I can go more directly to a smaller group of people who are the people

01:06:06 ◼   ► I really want to talk about a particular issue. And so that's sort of gone from the Twitter

01:06:11 ◼   ► agenda for me now is that sort of thing. And on one level that's a shame because that's

01:06:17 ◼   ► dark social, that's private social. And one of the things I get out of Twitter is interacting

01:06:24 ◼   ► with people who I don't follow but they can always talk to me. And those people are great,

01:06:28 ◼   ► the people I know from Twitter. I meet them at events and I'm like, "Hey, from the internet,

01:06:31 ◼   ► from Twitter, I recognize you from your avatar," or whatever, right? I love that. And the shame

01:06:35 ◼   ► of Twitter kind of like saying, "We don't want to give you control over that," is that

01:06:42 ◼   ► some of that goes to the dark social stuff, some stuff that might have been a little less

01:06:46 ◼   ► limited before. But in the end, I feel like Slack is actually really good at being what

01:06:51 ◼   ► it's being, and that was not really down the middle of what Twitter wanted to be, and so

01:06:58 ◼   ► maybe it's all for the best, that those have sort of split off. I think the real-time watercooler

01:07:03 ◼   ► stuff is a much better fit for Twitter's strengths right now and their volume of content.

01:07:08 ◼   ► I think it's going to be one to watch. I mean, I think in my mind I want Dorsey in because I'm

01:07:14 ◼   ► interested in him, but I think there's this nagging part of my brain in the back that's like,

01:07:18 ◼   ► "maybe he'll be the one to give us the control back that we want." Because, you know, he was

01:07:22 ◼   ► there in the first instance, but it's a different company now and I would be very surprised if they

01:07:27 ◼   ► ever give anything back to the third parties. It really does just feel like a matter of time until

01:07:33 ◼   ► the API access is shut down. Yeah it's just it's a shame because they're like I

01:07:39 ◼   ► said I feel like their product is first off the nerds who are using the third

01:07:43 ◼   ► party clients were not are not gonna it's not going to restrain their growth

01:07:47 ◼   ► to have those in existence there but again I think there's a contract among

01:07:52 ◼   ► or between Twitter and its users which is if you're gonna if you're if you're

01:07:57 ◼   ► the only game in town your game needs to be good and it's just not I mean that

01:08:02 ◼   ► that is the bottom line is there may be, I don't actually know, there may be some very

01:08:06 ◼   ► nice people working on the Twitter app for Mac and they may be just as frustrated about

01:08:12 ◼   ► it as everybody who uses it, but it's just not that, trust me, I use it every day, it's

01:08:18 ◼   ► just not that good. And I would use Twitterific on my Mac if I could, but the only version

01:08:23 ◼   ► of Twitterific that runs on the Mac is really old and not very useful, and that's because

01:08:27 ◼   ► of all of the developer limitations. Yeah, and I don't like, before everybody pours in,

01:08:35 ◼   ► yes, I do have Tweetbot, and I don't like it, and I use Twitter, even though it's not

01:08:40 ◼   ► very good. But the point stands, this is an issue for Tweetbot, too, they're gonna run

01:08:44 ◼   ► out of users, too, and they don't have access to the API, or they have stuff that is not

01:08:49 ◼   ► in the API either, so they can't access it. So, I don't know. I think you're right, I

01:08:54 ◼   ► I think realistically Twitter's not gonna open it up,

01:08:56 ◼   ► but I would.

01:08:58 ◼   ► I think it's good for Twitter service

01:09:00 ◼   ► to have as many different views into it as possible

01:09:03 ◼   ► as long as they're following the rules

01:09:04 ◼   ► for whatever Twitter is doing to make money.

01:09:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me

01:09:08 ◼   ► why they didn't just give us the ads.

01:09:10 ◼   ► - Plus you get innovation that way

01:09:12 ◼   ► and maybe that leads to Twitter hiring people

01:09:14 ◼   ► or buying technology that improves the service.

01:09:16 ◼   ► That was always the saddest. - Oh, tweetie.

01:09:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's always the saddest story about Twitter

01:09:21 ◼   ► is the Twitter, so many of the key features of Twitter

01:09:23 ◼   ► were built by the community. And, you know, and at some point they said, well, we're done

01:09:27 ◼   ► with you. We don't need you anymore. And the problem with that is if they had immediately

01:09:31 ◼   ► turned the corner and done amazing stuff themselves, that would have been like, oh, okay, I see

01:09:36 ◼   ► why they needed to do that. But instead they took their ball and they didn't go home. They

01:09:40 ◼   ► just took their ball and they like deflated the ball and sat there on the deflated ball.

01:09:45 ◼   ► I'm going to just run that one into the ground. And that is the shame of Twitter is that they

01:09:49 ◼   ► thanked the community for everything that it had done to contribute to their success.

01:09:53 ◼   ► They picked up all these features and said, "Yeah, this is great.

01:09:56 ◼   ► This is awesome, but now we need to go our own way and do this ourselves."

01:09:59 ◼   ► And they proceeded to do nothing.

01:10:01 ◼   ► That's the problem I have with Twitter turning its back on the third parties.

01:10:05 ◼   ► Come on.

01:10:06 ◼   ► It is this company that's foundations are so weird.

01:10:11 ◼   ► The logo came from the idea of somebody else.

01:10:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Fundamental idea of the Bluebird.

01:10:18 ◼   ► The @ reply, you know, the DM.

01:10:22 ◼   ► Hashtags. Retweeting, hashtags. All of it. None of it. None of it was created by Twitter,

01:10:28 ◼   ► the company. Yeah. And then they took it, which is fine because everyone was building

01:10:32 ◼   ► on their own service. Right. But then they shut it off to the rest of the world again.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Which you know is so, it's just so strange. So very very strange. And again, if they,

01:10:42 ◼   ► if that was a moment for them to say "we got it from here", that's fine, except they didn't

01:10:47 ◼   ► do anything. It was just a power play to shut everybody else out because they were afraid.

01:10:53 ◼   ► I mean, again, they got to build a business. I'm not saying they don't need to build a

01:10:56 ◼   ► business. I'm saying perhaps you could have built your business with the people who had

01:11:00 ◼   ► helped make your business interesting and worth investing in instead of saying, "You're

01:11:05 ◼   ► out. We're going to do it ourselves now." But you got to put up or shut up at some point.

01:11:10 ◼   ► And that's the problem is that they haven't. I look at Twitter and I think, "If I can

01:11:17 ◼   ► could have gone forward five years in time to today from 2010 and seen Twitter of today,

01:11:25 ◼   ► I would be so disappointed. Like that's it. That's all they've done in five years. And

01:11:30 ◼   ► maybe there's a lot of work happening behind the scenes and I just don't understand, but

01:11:33 ◼   ► as a user, it's like, you know, it's just very disappointing. So I don't know. I hope,

01:11:39 ◼   ► I hope they turn the corner. I think they've still got amazing power. And I love that we're

01:11:42 ◼   ► having these conversations and they're talking about project lightning. I feel like, I feel

01:11:45 ◼   ► like there is good thing there are good things ahead for Twitter because we've

01:11:49 ◼   ► gotten to this point it's just a shame that it had to get to this but I just

01:11:54 ◼   ► hope named another five years time we look back at this time and being like oh

01:11:57 ◼   ► man I'm glad they went through that yeah it's hard not to look at the reign of

01:12:01 ◼   ► dick Costolo and just think that was always just that was a waste of time and

01:12:05 ◼   ► totally the wrong guy and the you know the he made great contributions like

01:12:09 ◼   ► just putting an ad at the top of the of the app Wow good job way to go like

01:12:15 ◼   ► Like where's the vision and the leadership there?

01:12:18 ◼   ► Obviously it wasn't there.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Maybe that's the third act.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Maybe that this is the third act.

01:12:23 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:12:25 ◼   ► Should we get on some Ask Upgrade?

01:12:26 ◼   ► I think it's a great time for that.

01:12:28 ◼   ► Perfect.

01:12:29 ◼   ► This week's episode and Ask Upgrade is brought to you as well by our friends over at Fracture,

01:12:35 ◼   ► a great company who make a great product.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Fracture is here to help rescue your images from the dark corners of a timeline or hidden

01:12:43 ◼   ► away inside an album on a hard drive and let you display them in your home, in your office,

01:12:49 ◼   ► wherever you want with great beautiful colours and you want to have them in front of you

01:12:55 ◼   ► all the time. This is what Fracture is here to help you do and they do it in a really

01:13:00 ◼   ► interesting way. Super simple, you just go to fractureme.com, you upload a picture, you

01:13:04 ◼   ► choose the size that you want and then Fracture will print this photo directly onto a piece

01:13:09 ◼   ► of glass for you and it produces stunning results with colours that look really really

01:13:15 ◼   ► great they pop. This isn't like just putting a picture in a frame this is something totally

01:13:19 ◼   ► different it is a completely new way to display your favourite images and once you receive

01:13:25 ◼   ► your fantastic glass photo print from Fracture which will be shipped to you from their great

01:13:29 ◼   ► team in Florida who hand check all of them you'll want to mount it or display it to the

01:13:34 ◼   ► world and it's really easy to do that because if you get one of their little square sizes

01:13:38 ◼   ► you can choose to have a little stand sent to you so you can just put it on your desk

01:13:41 ◼   ► which is really nice or maybe if you use one of their rectangle sizes or if you use a bigger

01:13:45 ◼   ► size one of the bigger square sizes they will put everything that you need right in the

01:13:48 ◼   ► box they apply a lovely backing mount like a foam backing mount so nothing gets damaged

01:13:53 ◼   ► and then they put a screw in the box as well so you can put it in the wall it's as simple

01:13:56 ◼   ► as that no frame needed because it is the frame itself right that piece of glass it's

01:14:01 ◼   ► a edge to edge is this image on this beautiful piece of glass for you and it really really

01:14:07 ◼   ► looks very very special. I have a few fractures of my own here. I know Jason

01:14:11 ◼   ► has some. You've heard me speak about his podcast artwork. I have podcast artwork. I

01:14:15 ◼   ► have pictures as well. I bought them as gifts. It's a really great order process.

01:14:19 ◼   ► They package it super tightly so nothing gets damaged. They all come out fantastic

01:14:23 ◼   ► and it really does give new life to some of these images that are otherwise

01:14:28 ◼   ► just hidden away. So you can get fracture prints in five different rectangle sizes

01:14:34 ◼   ► that go all the way up to 21 by 28 inch and they have three square sizes as well.

01:14:38 ◼   ► They are great gifts for family and friends it's a perfect type of thing to

01:14:43 ◼   ► buy for people for birthdays or for anniversaries or just to say thanks for

01:14:46 ◼   ► something and they start at just $15 so you're not gonna break the bank. You can

01:14:50 ◼   ► also help support this show if you use the code upgrade at checkout it's gonna

01:14:55 ◼   ► get you 10% off and it will also help us out which is fantastic. So go to

01:14:59 ◼   ► fractureme.com and get started thank you so much to fracture for their support

01:15:02 ◼   ► of this show. So Carl has written in and Carl wants to know is there a way to

01:15:09 ◼   ► edit a log workout activity in the activities app on the Apple watch? Carl

01:15:13 ◼   ► forgot to end one and now it's messing up his times. I forgot that too. I just did that the

01:15:19 ◼   ► other day I forgot to end one and I had a really great day it turns out because

01:15:23 ◼   ► I had a bike ride that went on for like five hours but didn't go anywhere. I

01:15:27 ◼   ► don't think there is a way to do it in the same way that I can't find a way to

01:15:31 ◼   ► to, for example, I went swimming yesterday and there isn't really a way to enter. I

01:15:36 ◼   ► was swimming for 15 minutes and I'm not Craig Hockenberry.

01:15:42 ◼   ► I don't wear my Apple watch when I swim because I'm scared even though I know it

01:15:48 ◼   ► would be okay. I'm still scared of it doing that so I don't do that but no I

01:15:52 ◼   ► don't think there is a way to edit them unless you've come across anything that

01:15:55 ◼   ► I've not found.

01:15:56 ◼   ► Nope. I haven't seen that either.

01:15:58 ◼   ► Carl, you're just gonna have to accept and show off to the world that that day you did

01:16:04 ◼   ► 17 hours of exercise.

01:16:07 ◼   ► Rajiv would like to know, "Do you think Apple will eventually add more types of workout

01:16:12 ◼   ► to the workout app on the watch such as swimming?"

01:16:15 ◼   ► I wanted to group these two together because I thought they went quite nicely.

01:16:19 ◼   ► I think that additional workouts will come with additional sensors.

01:16:24 ◼   ► I think that Apple have probably included most of the workouts that they can, that they

01:16:29 ◼   ► can get accurate data for with the sensors that they have.

01:16:32 ◼   ► So maybe as the sensors are tweaked, software behind them is tweaked, or more sensors are

01:16:36 ◼   ► added, they'll be able to more efficiently understand different types of workouts.

01:16:41 ◼   ► I would like some more intelligence, though, that they could add to their software to say,

01:16:46 ◼   ► you know, basically figuring that you're doing a workout.

01:16:52 ◼   ► get some of that with the motion coprocessor in the iPhone where it'll log your activity

01:16:58 ◼   ► even though you didn't say "I'm starting an activity now," I think the watch might potentially

01:17:03 ◼   ► be able to do that too, especially if it's talking to the phone and it's looking at your

01:17:06 ◼   ► heart rate and it's looking at your - it would be nice if the watch could kick into gear

01:17:09 ◼   ► and say "Oh, you're doing a workout and you didn't start a workout. I'm gonna go into

01:17:13 ◼   ► workout mode now because I can tell your heart rate is elevated and we're moving fast and

01:17:17 ◼   ► is what's happening now. And also have a little more, like I have to say I'm starting a run

01:17:23 ◼   ► or I'm starting a walk, but if I run with walking and then running and then walking

01:17:27 ◼   ► and then running, it's like weird that I guess that's a run, but it's one of those things

01:17:31 ◼   ► that I think it could be more intelligent. It's early yet, I feel like there's a lot

01:17:35 ◼   ► more that they could do. Swimming is a tricky one because I think they don't want to encourage

01:17:38 ◼   ► people to swim with their Apple Watch despite Craig Hockenberry.

01:17:41 ◼   ► I would like to be able to tell it that I went swimming and it just does the calculation.

01:17:48 ◼   ► I agree with that. I agree with that. I'd like to be able to program, I wrote something

01:17:52 ◼   ► about this the other day, I'd like to be able to program a workout that's more complex too,

01:17:58 ◼   ► to say like I said, run five minutes, walk two minutes, run five minutes, and then have

01:18:02 ◼   ► it tell me. I think in the end that'll just be a watchOS2 app that'll do that. I mean

01:18:07 ◼   ► there are some watch apps that'll do that now, but you have to have your phone with

01:18:10 ◼   ► you and I would love to be able to just do that on the watch and say I'm gonna

01:18:13 ◼   ► go for a run I'm just gonna wear my watch it's gonna tell me when to run and

01:18:16 ◼   ► when to walk and that'll come it's early days you know this is the first version

01:18:20 ◼   ► so I think it's gonna get I think it's gonna get a lot better as time goes on

01:18:24 ◼   ► they're just it's early yet. Indeed, long life in that product yeah. Chris would

01:18:31 ◼   ► like to know now that Windows 10 is out should Chris upgrade his boot camp setup?

01:18:39 ◼   ► So I've seen people, I think I saw James Thompson saying that he put

01:18:45 ◼   ► Windows 10 on his boot camp partition and basically it wasn't recognized in

01:18:51 ◼   ► his graphics card. So I think my understanding of this is Apple has to do

01:18:56 ◼   ► some stuff for boot camp. Yeah I had a boot camp partition ready to go I was

01:19:01 ◼   ► really looking forward to upgrading to Windows 10 and upgrading whatever Apple

01:19:04 ◼   ► is gonna provide and all that and then I installed El Capitan and found lots of

01:19:09 ◼   ► problems with the beta to the point where I have to record podcasts using

01:19:12 ◼   ► Yosemite, so I had to wipe my boot camp partition and instead install Yosemite

01:19:16 ◼   ► on it, so I have some refuge to go in when I'm recording podcasts because

01:19:22 ◼   ► there are some audio bugs in the betas of El Capitan. And so, alas, I will be

01:19:28 ◼   ► waiting until later to see Windows 10, but I'm looking forward to it because I

01:19:34 ◼   ► I never really understood previous versions of Windows

01:19:38 ◼   ► between here and XP.

01:19:40 ◼   ► I just was baffled by some of the UI choices they made.

01:19:43 ◼   ► So it sounds like that's a lot better in Windows 10.

01:19:45 ◼   ► So that's what I'm gonna do as my bootcamp.

01:19:48 ◼   ► But yeah, those updates should be coming.

01:19:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, yep.

01:19:53 ◼   ► And I'm interested, I mean, I've toyed,

01:19:56 ◼   ► I looked up how much does a Surface cost,

01:19:58 ◼   ► it's way more expensive than what I wanna toy around with.

01:20:01 ◼   ► But I'm interested to try out Windows 10,

01:20:04 ◼   ► but it's just not easy to do it.

01:20:06 ◼   ► And I'm not that keen on doing bootcamp, to be honest.

01:20:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I bought it because there was a point

01:20:13 ◼   ► where I was trying, I think I've given up on trying this,

01:20:15 ◼   ► but I was trying to figure out how to stream

01:20:18 ◼   ► Total Partikill on Twitch.

01:20:22 ◼   ► And that's very hard to do from a Mac

01:20:25 ◼   ► if you are trying to integrate your microphone audio

01:20:30 ◼   ► and the audio of people in the game

01:20:35 ◼   ► and the video all mixed together

01:20:37 ◼   ► and then streamed out to Twitch.

01:20:40 ◼   ► There are some programs on the Mac that theoretically do it,

01:20:43 ◼   ► but I've had very little luck getting those to run.

01:20:46 ◼   ► And there's apparently a very easy way to do that in Windows.

01:20:48 ◼   ► So I gave some thought to doing that,

01:20:50 ◼   ► it's just rebooting into Windows

01:20:51 ◼   ► when we play a Total Party Kill game

01:20:54 ◼   ► and do all the streaming in there.

01:20:55 ◼   ► And I think I've just come down to the idea

01:20:58 ◼   ► that we'll use Google Hangouts on air.

01:21:01 ◼   ► And then I make a video that shows,

01:21:04 ◼   ► 'cause the Hangouts don't show our maps that we play on.

01:21:07 ◼   ► But I just captured my screen locally of the map.

01:21:12 ◼   ► And then after the show is over, I edit those together.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And so you can see us and you can see the map.

01:21:16 ◼   ► And I just post that to YouTube later.

01:21:19 ◼   ► So I'm not sure whether,

01:21:21 ◼   ► I may have just given up on doing Twitch streaming,

01:21:24 ◼   ► but that was the impetus for that,

01:21:25 ◼   ► was being able to boot into bootcamp

01:21:28 ◼   ► and use that approach to get streaming working.

01:21:33 ◼   ► And I just sort of never got it working

01:21:35 ◼   ► and got really frustrated by Windows.

01:21:37 ◼   ► And I'll go back.

01:21:39 ◼   ► I'll go back once El Capitan is stable enough

01:21:42 ◼   ► for me to wipe the Yosemite, I'll go back and install it.

01:21:45 ◼   ► - Richard has asked,

01:21:48 ◼   ► why don't we consider moving to something

01:21:50 ◼   ► like Adobe Creative Cloud instead of sticking with Logic?

01:21:54 ◼   ► For me, I mean, I'm not really sure

01:21:56 ◼   ► why Richard asked this and maybe maybe so could complain about logic all the time.

01:22:00 ◼   ► No, he, I followed up with Richard and he basically he was he was thinking about

01:22:05 ◼   ► what he wanted to get and he was he was wondering why we use logic and not the

01:22:10 ◼   ► Adobe Creative Cloud stuff. Okay. For audition, basically. For me, I have spent

01:22:16 ◼   ► some time learning logic and I'm still learning new things in logic. I'm

01:22:23 ◼   ► learning new tools. Like for example I think I've finally gotten compressors

01:22:28 ◼   ► working in my brain. So I'm starting to roll us out in places. Funny thing is, you

01:22:35 ◼   ► know, this is one of the things people say to you, "You need to use compressors, you

01:22:38 ◼   ► need to use compressors." And then you start using them and nobody mentions it.

01:22:41 ◼   ► Anyway, so I don't, I struggle with some of this stuff. It doesn't, a lot of it

01:22:50 ◼   ► there's like gel in my brain like for example why why am i turning a dial oh

01:22:55 ◼   ► yeah well the compressor the the new and that's the new one the new compressor

01:23:00 ◼   ► plug-in in logic is terrible because it's skeuomorphic I don't know what is

01:23:04 ◼   ► happening I mean it's powerful but it's all these dials that you're turning I

01:23:08 ◼   ► use a different compressor these days that I bought a different voice

01:23:13 ◼   ► compressor and it's just got a slider it's great once I get a handle on this

01:23:19 ◼   ► one maybe I'll ask you to point that one out to me. But anyway, all this is to say, like this,

01:23:24 ◼   ► audio editing and audio engineering is nowhere near my level of expertise in what I think that

01:23:31 ◼   ► I'm good or not good at and I kind of fumble my way through a lot of it and just produce a show

01:23:35 ◼   ► that is listenable effectively. And sound good, I think our shows sound good, but there's stuff

01:23:39 ◼   ► that sounds better, but hey-ho. I try and do what I can with it, but all of this is to say

01:23:47 ◼   ► I don't want to spend many many many hours again trying to learn another piece of software.

01:23:52 ◼   ► It's not, that's not cost effective for me.

01:23:57 ◼   ► Well it's not.

01:23:58 ◼   ► And Logic does most of what I want.

01:24:00 ◼   ► It's not also, I mean like I had Logic for a year before I actually started to use it.

01:24:06 ◼   ► I was using GarageBand for everything and at least, and I, because I knew, because oftentimes

01:24:11 ◼   ► when I was editing the incomparable especially, it's like Saturday morning and my family is

01:24:15 ◼   ► sitting around waiting for me to be done so that we can go do something. And under those

01:24:19 ◼   ► time pressures, the last thing I want to do is spend, take something that's going to take

01:24:24 ◼   ► me two hours and have it take eight hours because I'm going to learn a new tool. And

01:24:29 ◼   ► so it didn't happen for a long time. Now when it did happen, logic is so much better than

01:24:34 ◼   ► GarageBand that it saved me time. The amount of time I invested in learning it, that was

01:24:40 ◼   ► paid back in a matter of weeks because I am able to edit so much faster. But you

01:24:45 ◼   ► talk about something like Logic and Audition, they're different, but even if

01:24:49 ◼   ► one of them is slightly better than the other, they're different and so there's a

01:24:53 ◼   ► huge investment to get probably minimal gain unless there are very specific

01:24:58 ◼   ► things that one tool does that another doesn't do that you could use a lot.

01:25:03 ◼   ► And the method that I've got of editing Logic uses some very specific

01:25:08 ◼   ► concepts essentially specific to logic that work for me and so I would have to

01:25:14 ◼   ► come up with a new way and and not have any idea of whether in the end audition

01:25:21 ◼   ► would be a net benefit or not so that that's a lot harder I have tried

01:25:25 ◼   ► audition and I could not wrap my head around it logic although it also was a

01:25:31 ◼   ► bit baffling at first was I think more understandable for me because I had

01:25:35 ◼   ► spent time in Final Cut, and the interfaces are similar, and so I was able to kind of

01:25:40 ◼   ► intuit from that a little bit in ways that I can't from Audition. I know people who swear

01:25:44 ◼   ► by Audition. Chris Breen, now an Apple employee, so he would probably never say this publicly,

01:25:49 ◼   ► but at the time when he was working for Macworld, he swore by Audition. He loved it. But he comes

01:25:53 ◼   ► from a musical background, and I think it worked with the way that he approached sound

01:25:58 ◼   ► from his background as a musician. And it's got some features, it's got some noise removal

01:26:04 ◼   ► tools that are really great that just don't—and some waveform editing stuff that just doesn't

01:26:08 ◼   ► exist in logic and I don't know why it's not in logic. And so I, you know, I had to buy

01:26:13 ◼   ► sound soap because logic doesn't have a noise removal tool of the level that I need, and

01:26:21 ◼   ► Audition, my understanding, does. The other problem, and this is something that Richard

01:26:26 ◼   ► and I talked about, is you can buy logic for $200 and eventually there'll be an OS update

01:26:32 ◼   ► that breaks logic, but probably not for a long time. You buy it, you own it. If you

01:26:37 ◼   ► want to use Audition, it's $20 a month for as long as you want to use it. So even in

01:26:44 ◼   ► a year you're spending more on Audition than you are on Logic. That said, if you're somebody

01:26:51 ◼   ► with a Creative Cloud membership and you or your employer is spending whatever it is $40

01:26:56 ◼   ► a month for all the Creative Cloud apps, well then you've got Audition as part of that,

01:27:00 ◼   ► And so you, you know, you could try that out now instead of spending $200 on logic.

01:27:05 ◼   ► But for me, I look at that and think, you know, this is $250 a year and this one's $200

01:27:12 ◼   ► all in and you own it.

01:27:13 ◼   ► And maybe in, maybe in two or three years, you'll buy another copy of it, but you'll

01:27:17 ◼   ► be ahead of the game.

01:27:18 ◼   ► So it's, it's cheaper and you own it and you're not getting charged monthly for it.

01:27:22 ◼   ► And I like that about logic too.

01:27:24 ◼   ► Um, I, I do pay for Photoshop and Lightroom, but that's $10 a month.

01:27:28 ◼   ► If Audition, if Logic was only available for $20 a month,

01:27:31 ◼   ► I would do it, I rely on it that much.

01:27:34 ◼   ► So, you know, in the end, you can try Creative Cloud apps.

01:27:38 ◼   ► So you might want to try out Audition if you want to.

01:27:41 ◼   ► And if the idea of spending $20 a month for it

01:27:43 ◼   ► doesn't bother you.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Like I said, people swear by it, but I'm with you, Myke.

01:27:47 ◼   ► I'm self-taught and I've gotten really good at Logic.

01:27:52 ◼   ► So it would be very hard to switch now and see,

01:27:55 ◼   ► I think, see much benefit.

01:27:57 ◼   ► Nick would like to know if we use cases on our iPads if so what do we use if not

01:28:04 ◼   ► why not I use the smart cover because to me like for me in my mind iPads come

01:28:11 ◼   ► with smart covers like they are intertwined it's like part of the

01:28:16 ◼   ► product it's just such a smart design you just protect the screen you close it

01:28:21 ◼   ► and it locks the thing you open it and it unlocks the thing like that just

01:28:25 ◼   ► feels like a part of the product in and of itself to me and it has done for like

01:28:31 ◼   ► since was the iPad 2 they introduced them so I always buy smart covers I

01:28:35 ◼   ► don't have any other type of case or bag or anything else on my iPad. Same here

01:28:40 ◼   ► same here I have the smart cover my wife has the smart case which she likes she

01:28:46 ◼   ► doesn't like she likes having something around the back as well so she can set

01:28:51 ◼   ► that down and she's not gonna feel that like the metal on whatever she's setting

01:28:55 ◼   ► it down on it's gonna be it's gonna be completely wrapped in it. That ever so

01:28:58 ◼   ► slight crunching sound. Yeah it does it can be a little disconcerting right

01:29:01 ◼   ► although you can always put it screen down at that point but but I'm with you

01:29:04 ◼   ► I really like the smart cover I like being able to take it off when I want to

01:29:09 ◼   ► and and then it makes everything lighter and then I can just snap it back on and

01:29:13 ◼   ► then we're good to go and that that works for me for my iPad so that's that's

01:29:17 ◼   ► but but like I said Lauren's using the the smart case and so is Julian actually

01:29:23 ◼   ► on his iPad mini and I like them you know I know it's just like it's the

01:29:27 ◼   ► Apple case so how boring is that but best case it is I like it yeah and

01:29:32 ◼   ► they're pretty reliable they're actually even because since my son has one and he

01:29:35 ◼   ► is a ten-year-old boy and it's just a just a cloud of dirt and sticky you know

01:29:41 ◼   ► goo from yogurt and and ice cream oh my god oh my god you can wash those things

01:29:48 ◼   ► Even like the leather case, put some like, put a little soap on the inside, on the felt

01:29:53 ◼   ► on the inside and just like wash it in water and then leave it out somewhere to dry.

01:29:59 ◼   ► I've done that several times.

01:30:00 ◼   ► It actually cleans up really well.

01:30:02 ◼   ► It's kind of amazing.

01:30:03 ◼   ► So even with a filth monster like my son, it's still a resilient case.

01:30:10 ◼   ► Pardon Julian.

01:30:13 ◼   ► And last question.

01:30:14 ◼   ► He doesn't listen to the show.

01:30:17 ◼   ► Let's hope so. "Have Kindles and e-readers reached an ideal point or are there new features

01:30:23 ◼   ► and improvements that could still be made?" What a great question. Because, I mean, yeah,

01:30:28 ◼   ► I'm not massively interested in these things as you are and I would say that yes, they

01:30:33 ◼   ► are done. That's it.

01:30:39 ◼   ► I think there are new features and improvements that can absolutely be made. I think the e-ink

01:30:44 ◼   ► screens can get a lot better. They can be even more contrast and higher resolution so

01:30:50 ◼   ► that they are completely indistinguishable from paper. They are still distinguishable

01:30:54 ◼   ► from paper now. They're way better than they used to be, but they could be better. The

01:30:59 ◼   ► need to refresh, you know, blink the screen in order to wipe up the e-paper, there's a

01:31:05 ◼   ► lot more I think e-paper can do. I believe in these products, I think until you get to

01:31:12 ◼   ► the point where you've got tablets that are not just light but can solve the glare problem

01:31:18 ◼   ► and Apple's gotten better at glare but still, you know, reading... if you want to see Kindles,

01:31:24 ◼   ► go to a pool at a resort and you will see Kindles because those are people who are reading

01:31:28 ◼   ► outside in the sun and they are using a Kindle. You'll see some iPads, those people will probably

01:31:34 ◼   ► be under umbrellas because glare is still a problem. I love dedicated reading devices

01:31:41 ◼   ► like this, they're much less distracting, I never want to flip over to Twitter, or even

01:31:46 ◼   ► if I do want to flip over to Twitter, I can't, because it's just a Kindle that doesn't do

01:31:49 ◼   ► that, and I like that about it. So I think there's more that can be done, but I don't

01:31:55 ◼   ► know necessarily that there's a huge leap to be made on those devices anymore. I think

01:32:01 ◼   ► it's just going to be some screen iteration, and you know, Amazon could write way better

01:32:05 ◼   ► software, their typography could get better, they promised that and they haven't delivered

01:32:08 ◼   ► it yet. You know, the Amazon software is still pretty lousy, so somebody, Amazon or others,

01:32:14 ◼   ► could make it a more pleasant reading experience, and I feel like they could integrate web stuff

01:32:19 ◼   ► better. I mean, I'd love to see more apps on it that can do things like Instapaper or

01:32:26 ◼   ► integrate things like Instapaper, where it's much easier for me to send a story I like

01:32:31 ◼   ► from the web to my Kindle. I mean, you can do some of that, but I feel like that could

01:32:36 ◼   ► be much better integrated into the software where you could save things for later and

01:32:42 ◼   ► they all just kind of pile up intelligently in the e-reader. So there's stuff, there's

01:32:47 ◼   ► stuff but it's not going to be a wild innovation fest in the e-reader world. But I still love

01:32:53 ◼   ► my Kindle and I read it every day.

01:32:56 ◼   ► I only ever use a Kindle when I go on beach holidays and I don't use those very often.

01:33:01 ◼   ► Yeah but it's good, it's really good at the beach.

01:33:02 ◼   ► it's perfect for because you can't read, I can't read anything on my iPhone.

01:33:06 ◼   ► No you can't. Glare. That's one of these things that I think that Apple is going to have to,

01:33:13 ◼   ► Apple and its partners are going to have to work really hard on, which is better ways

01:33:18 ◼   ► of fighting glare on these devices that we use outside every day, because that's still,

01:33:24 ◼   ► they need to be brighter and more readable outside. They still have, that's still an

01:33:30 ◼   ► That's still one of the features that is problematic on phones and tablets, I think.

01:33:34 ◼   ► - Because you could get a lot of the way there, but the phone would last like an hour.

01:33:39 ◼   ► - Right, right. Or it would look weird. I mean, some of it is like they could code it and make

01:33:45 ◼   ► it really great for outside use, and then you'd go inside and you'd be like, "Oh, this looks awful."

01:33:49 ◼   ► Yeah, there's more to be done there, I think, materials-wise and components-wise, perhaps,

01:33:56 ◼   ► to make things more readable outside but that's the that's the nice thing about

01:34:00 ◼   ► the the kiddo that's why i always thought that that

01:34:02 ◼   ► that uh weird android phone with the e-ink

01:34:05 ◼   ► screen on the back was such a cool idea yeah

01:34:08 ◼   ► just because like you could you know you've got this like super high contrast

01:34:12 ◼   ► thing that you can see when you're out and about

01:34:14 ◼   ► and then uh you know it's not it's not great resolution it's black and white

01:34:18 ◼   ► but it you know you can see stuff on it when

01:34:21 ◼   ► you're out i don't know there's more there's always

01:34:24 ◼   ► more. Except for the show Myke, there's no more of this show.

01:34:29 ◼   ► Except for this last little part where I would like to thank our sponsors, Fracture, Casper

01:34:35 ◼   ► and Linda for supporting us this week. Don't forget you can always send in your follow

01:34:39 ◼   ► up questions, concerns and many more things via Twitter and use the hashtag #AskUpgrade

01:34:44 ◼   ► to do that. It's a great way we can collect all that stuff in, it makes it very easy for

01:34:47 ◼   ► me and Jason. If you want to find us both on Twitter, we've been talking about it today,

01:34:51 ◼   ► very easy to do that. I am @imike and Jason is @jsnell, J S N E double L and Jason writes

01:34:59 ◼   ► over at sixcolors.com and of course we mentioned them as well as the great shows on Real AFM.

01:35:04 ◼   ► You can find more great shows on the incomparable.com as well where you can get your pop culture,

01:35:11 ◼   ► sci-fi and many other fixes met over at the incomparable.

01:35:16 ◼   ► All the great shows. All the great shows in all the great places.

01:35:20 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade and we'll be back next

01:35:24 ◼   ► time. Until then, say goodbye Mr Snell.

01:35:27 ◼   ► I hope everybody has a good week and we'll see you next week.

01:35:30 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:35:33 ◼   ► [ Music ]