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Upgrade

46: The S Could Stand for Snell

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 46. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:14   Lynda.com where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts,

00:00:19   text expander from Smile, type more with less effort, and Fracture. Photos printed in vivid

00:00:25   color directly on glass. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by the wonderful Mr. Jason

00:00:31   Snell.

00:00:32   Oh, that's very nice of you to say. Hi, Myke. You are pretty wonderful yourself. Welcome

00:00:36   to the Mutual Admiration Society, I suppose. How are you?

00:00:40   I am very well, sir. How are you?

00:00:41   Good, good. Very good. Have a good... Have a weekend, actual weekend, which I very rarely

00:00:47   have. It was... That was very nice. My wife and I are here. The kids are coming back in

00:00:51   couple of days but they're with their grandparents and we I didn't have an

00:00:56   incomparable episode this weekend so I you know that's hours of editing that I

00:01:00   often do on Saturday mornings gone I only had I did have a podcast this

00:01:05   weekend but it was early on Saturday morning and then nothing else the rest

00:01:08   of the weekend and it was great it was like this must be what we this is why

00:01:12   people like weekends so it was it was a good rest it was a good break.

00:01:17   Did you have a lot of weekends when you were at IDG? Or you were still doing all the

00:01:22   incomparable stuff? Well that's exactly it, all the side project stuff. I mean

00:01:25   Saturday morning is podcast morning for me, you know, generally I will make, you

00:01:33   know, breakfast when the kids are here especially, I'll make breakfast and all

00:01:37   that and we'll do that and then I'll go out and you know I'll spend three or

00:01:39   four hours working on the incomparable and there's often a podcast recording

00:01:44   session in there and yeah that was true at IDG as well. Plus you know stuff comes

00:01:47   up or I've got ongoing stories or things for IDG, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's not that

00:01:52   different than it was where the weekend is interspersed. I've just got work stuff interspersed

00:01:58   with life stuff and that's just how it is and that's fine. But this weekend was nice

00:02:02   in the sense that I sort of said, "No, I'm not gonna do that this weekend. This is our

00:02:08   last chance to get a couple of days with kind of--we had nothing else on the calendar. Usually

00:02:13   there's take a kid somewhere and do this or take the kids this way," and there was nothing

00:02:17   and it was one of those moments of like, "Hey, let's celebrate having nothing on the calendar

00:02:21   by not putting anything on the calendar." So we didn't. It's not bad.

00:02:25   >> CHESNEY Not bad. Yeah, my weekends tend to be a balance of life and business, but

00:02:31   it tends to work out pretty well, actually.

00:02:33   >> MARTIN I mean, we still did stuff like, um, we went for some walks and, uh, we, uh,

00:02:39   we did a bunch of house stuff, so like painted, we painted a lot of stuff, like touched up

00:02:44   a bunch of paint in the house and painted some furniture and bought some

00:02:47   bought my son a new desk and we did stuff but it wasn't you know we wasn't

00:02:52   the usual stuff and that was good. I plugged in I rewired my TV with these

00:02:58   new HDMI cables because I got frustrated by how our TV was set up it was really

00:03:04   confusing and I couldn't tell what was plugged into where and I bought all these

00:03:07   color we were longer they need to be longer and not broken because some of

00:03:11   them were kind of questionable in and I threw them away and they need to be colored so that

00:03:17   I now know like my TiVo is hooked up with the red cable.

00:03:21   Did you go with the gold-plated option? No, I got a reasonably priced, mono-priced

00:03:27   set of cables but they have colors so that makes me happy. So yeah, red for the TiVo.

00:03:36   Shall we move into your very favorite of all verticals?

00:03:40   Well it is the container in which all verticals reside, which is follow up slash out.

00:03:47   Let's do that now.

00:03:49   So Agus wrote in about our discussion last week in Ask Upgrade about Touch ID in apps,

00:03:56   and this is what Agus had to say.

00:03:58   There's another reason that you may have not mentioned about why Touch ID exists in applications,

00:04:02   because we were questioning as to whether you need it if you lock your phone.

00:04:07   Apps that use Touch ID also have access to the Safari Keychain.

00:04:11   This means that apps that require a username and password to access a web component, such

00:04:15   as the Backblaze app and also sections of the Apple Store and Amazon apps, can retrieve

00:04:19   these details by using Touch ID instead of having to ask every time they're launched,

00:04:23   assuming the login details are obviously saved in the Keychain.

00:04:27   Yeah, that's a good tip, Angus.

00:04:31   I've noticed this with, I mean, this is why you lock your phone too, because Safari won't

00:04:36   let you have access to Safari Keychain

00:04:38   unless you've got a lock on it.

00:04:39   And I was just, it can be really convenient.

00:04:43   I was on this iPad 2 that I'm using,

00:04:45   iPad Air 2 that I'm using for iOS 9.

00:04:47   I realized I didn't have Safari stuff synced.

00:04:52   And once I did that and my password began,

00:04:55   started just showing up everywhere, it's very convenient.

00:04:57   Even if you use one password, having stuff saved

00:05:00   in the Safari Keychain can be incredibly convenient

00:05:03   because it just auto fills it

00:05:05   and you don't even need to look it up.

00:05:07   And I do that for some stuff.

00:05:09   And so, yeah, you would want that to be locked away,

00:05:12   obviously, so that's another good reason.

00:05:15   I am happy to have more reasons to use Touch ID.

00:05:18   I wish Touch ID was everywhere,

00:05:22   because it's so much easier to just verify it

00:05:25   with my thumbprint than to have to deal with typing

00:05:28   a password in somewhere.

00:05:29   I'd love it to be everywhere.

00:05:32   - I wish it was on my Mac.

00:05:33   - I was thinking about that the other day.

00:05:35   I was typing something in and thinking,

00:05:37   this Mac's never gonna have it

00:05:39   'cause it would be a new Mac hardware,

00:05:40   but I would love to have that.

00:05:41   Or somebody was speculating,

00:05:44   I remember reading somewhere,

00:05:45   somebody was speculating of like a new Magic Trackpad

00:05:47   that maybe was Force Touch,

00:05:49   but that maybe it would also have a Touch ID sensor

00:05:52   somewhere in it.

00:05:53   That would be cool.

00:05:55   Although I don't know whether securely,

00:05:57   whether you can do something like Touch ID

00:06:00   with a wireless device or not,

00:06:03   'cause there might be some man in the middle

00:06:05   or some other kind of security problems there.

00:06:08   But yeah, it would be nice to do something like Touch ID

00:06:10   on the Mac just to not have to type in that password

00:06:13   because my voice is my passport, verify me.

00:06:16   That's from sneakers, Myke.

00:06:19   - Indeed, I know that very well.

00:06:20   - Good.

00:06:22   - Will has provided another way

00:06:25   in which you can shuffle artists

00:06:27   and this also will provide a little bit of clarification

00:06:30   that I don't think I was completely clear on.

00:06:32   So if you remember in previous episodes we've spoken about the fact that you can't very easily play artists

00:06:39   like you just shuffle all songs in an artist if they have more than two albums in

00:06:43   Apple music if you have more than two albums specific artist the option to shuffle all songs goes away

00:06:48   But we'll discovered that if you go to the artist view

00:06:51   So you've got the list of all artists and you tap on the thumbnail of the artwork

00:06:56   It just starts playing all songs and then you can shuffle them. This is exactly what I was looking for

00:07:01   However, I now know that it's not what Jason was looking for at all.

00:07:05   And I think me, along with many other people, have missed this.

00:07:09   So I'm going to try and sum this up for you, Jason.

00:07:12   Because I'm worried that we've not been able to get this locked down.

00:07:16   What I am looking for is I, for example, have Kings of Leon.

00:07:18   I have added all of Kings of Leon's albums into my Apple Music collection.

00:07:23   So they are there.

00:07:24   So now I can go in, press the album artwork on the artist view, and it will start playing

00:07:28   them all.

00:07:29   you're looking for is a way to search for Kings of Leon and then shuffle

00:07:34   shuffle play all of their albums without adding them to your collection.

00:07:38   Right, that was what I was looking for is how do I how do I go to an

00:07:42   artist that I'm interested in hearing from and not all artists have a playlist

00:07:46   that says intro to this artist right how so how do I listen to songs of theirs

00:07:54   and one of my thoughts is just why don't I just shuffle through their albums just

00:07:58   you know, just shuffle all their songs. Now there's problems with that because there's a lot of junk,

00:08:03   duplicates, special editions, things like that, but that was just my thought was,

00:08:08   when I go to any artist I should be able to say, you know, play me some stuff from this artist.

00:08:12   And you can't do that unless you add them. I mean, you could play stuff, but it doesn't seem like you

00:08:19   can play, like, show me a sample or just show me a random collection of this artist. Instead,

00:08:24   you need to either add them to your library, or if you're lucky, there's a playlist and then that

00:08:28   solves it, because then there's a, you know, intro to artist name. Like, intro to Kings of Leon is

00:08:33   probably a playlist, and I could go there and play that not knowing them, and those playlists are

00:08:39   really designed for me, because you know them well, and so it wouldn't be—I see those playlists on

00:08:44   artists I know, and I'm like, "No, I could make my own playlist, thank you." But for me, as somebody

00:08:49   who doesn't know an artist, that would be really useful. But sometimes they're not there, and then

00:08:53   then I end up in this situation where I don't think you can go into like their list of songs

00:08:59   and just shuffle that.

00:09:01   What you could do is, I was just looking this up, you could search for the artist name and

00:09:06   then in the search results, click on the heading of songs and you can play it that way. But

00:09:13   the problem with that is it plays absolutely everything including all of the album songs,

00:09:20   of the singles from those albums all live is everything right that's the

00:09:24   problem but it is possible to select somebody like that and just play

00:09:30   everything however I just did a search for Alabama shakes which is a which is a

00:09:35   bad that I quite like but the problem is as you go further down there is stuff

00:09:39   that is not Alabama shakes in here so actually that won't work hmm this is a

00:09:46   conundrum. Right, because it's finding everything that matches... yeah, I

00:09:50   saw that too, where I searched for Genesis for a forthcoming episode of a

00:09:57   different podcast, because I was listening to some Genesis in advance of

00:10:01   doing that podcast, and I could play from that songs list, but that songs

00:10:07   list also contained all the songs with the word Genesis in it, so it wasn't

00:10:13   it wasn't an artist shuffle at that point.

00:10:16   But I could go into that artist, I just don't, you know,

00:10:19   this is, what I'm really saying is,

00:10:22   maybe what I'm asking for is a programmatic playlist,

00:10:25   if you don't have a really good intro playlist,

00:10:27   give me a, you know, most popular songs

00:10:32   by this artist playlist or something, 'cause I--

00:10:35   - Some artists do have that, so again,

00:10:37   like Zalabamushakes is an example,

00:10:39   they have a, it just says top songs,

00:10:42   just has like seven songs, but it's not a playlist, it's just the most popular songs

00:10:45   by the artist. Right, so that's, I want more of that, because

00:10:49   for me, I hear about a band, I know nothing about them, I've only heard one song by them

00:10:52   in some other playlist, I go, "Oh, they're interesting, what do I do?" And right now,

00:10:56   it seems like what I really need to do if they don't have a playlist that's been curated

00:11:01   for them is sort of just pick an album at random and start playing it. But what if I

00:11:06   to add like three albums and shuffle them. I can do it, but it's more work. So I just

00:11:12   feel like that's a discovery thing that I have, that I desire, that I would like to

00:11:17   see. But, you know, it's early yet. Oh, and listener Rich also suggested, and I think

00:11:24   this actually does work, is use Siri and tell Siri to play music from a band and it will

00:11:28   find 20 songs by that artist and play them.

00:11:35   So it turns out that there are many, many ways to pronounce the name of the T that we

00:11:41   were talking about during the New Mexico Tea Company.

00:11:42   The South African Tea?

00:11:44   Yes.

00:11:45   So many people wrote in, many people wrote in, many people were angry.

00:11:49   And there are two different ways to pronounce the T which is spelled R-O-O-I-B-O-S.

00:11:55   There is an English way and a Dutch way.

00:11:57   So I'm going to do my best here.

00:11:59   The English way is "Roybos" and the Dutch way is "Royboush".

00:12:05   Alright.

00:12:06   But many people call it Redbush, because that's what that translates to.

00:12:09   That's what it means, yeah.

00:12:10   Yep, Redbush tea.

00:12:11   So, there you go.

00:12:12   I'll put a link in the show notes to the Wikipedia page, which has the audio clips, which I attempted

00:12:19   to pronounce in my own way.

00:12:22   And it's actually "Wictionary" rather than Wikipedia.

00:12:25   And it's still pronounced "Hibiscus".

00:12:28   Hibiscus.

00:12:29   No, "Hibiscus".

00:12:30   Hibiscus.

00:12:31   Hibiscus.

00:12:32   Hibiscus.

00:12:33   No, yeah, well, it's all Hibiscus.

00:12:34   - Yeah, well, all hibiscus is so close.

00:12:36   Hibiscus, I think you know more,

00:12:40   especially if you're near Hawaii,

00:12:43   'cause it's a very common thing in Hawaii

00:12:45   and I've been to Hawaii many times.

00:12:46   You've never been to Hawaii, right?

00:12:48   - I've never been to Hawaii.

00:12:49   It's high on my list of places to go though.

00:12:52   - You should, yeah, you should go sometime.

00:12:54   That's the kind of thing that,

00:12:55   given how far away it is for you,

00:12:57   that's the kind of thing where if you are going

00:13:01   to the west coast of North America,

00:13:04   planning it into something like that before or after

00:13:07   or during a trip to the west coast of North America

00:13:10   is one way to fit it in.

00:13:13   'Cause it is just,

00:13:14   for people who don't live in California, essentially,

00:13:16   it is out in the middle of nowhere

00:13:17   because it's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,

00:13:19   but it's great.

00:13:20   I love it.

00:13:21   It's my favorite place in the world.

00:13:23   - Yeah, it's high on the list.

00:13:24   - Yeah, get there someday.

00:13:25   Volcanoes, you know.

00:13:27   - My favorite. - Lava.

00:13:30   I love it. You should say, um, tell, say, I love some lava.

00:13:37   I love some lava. Okay. It's just fun. It's more fun English

00:13:41   accent. Anyway. Oh, are you a lava lover?

00:13:45   A lava lover, yep. Okay. We got a lot of feedback about the space

00:13:51   stuff we talked about. I pelted you with space facts, which I have to say, um, I have been

00:13:57   doing to people around me since I was in first grade. I remember very distinctly that I got

00:14:01   some book about the planets in first grade and actually like would read facts from the

00:14:05   book to my classmates in first grade and it is a wonder that they didn't just like punch

00:14:10   me in the face and throw me down in the dirt. So I've been doing it since then so I you

00:14:15   got to you got to hear it from me and then later in the week you got to hear it from

00:14:18   Steven on connected because you have the pleasure to host podcasts with two people who are space

00:14:26   fans. So you got it twice. I really enjoyed it though because I, you know, like all nerds,

00:14:34   space is interesting to me. I've just never spent a lot of time learning about it, you

00:14:39   know? Yeah, so we were hopefully able to kind of boil it down and make it, you know, make

00:14:45   it understandable and interesting. We got some really nice feedback from people about

00:14:49   it which was great. I did make a mistake which I heard about several times because that's

00:14:53   what happens with podcasts is you make the mistake once, and then as people listen to

00:14:57   it over the course of the week, they all tell you that you're wrong. Yay! New Horizons,

00:15:02   when it left the Earth, was the fastest launch of an object going that we've sent out into

00:15:10   the solar system. But it is not the fastest moving object because both of the Voyager

00:15:17   probes at the very least, there may actually be some others too, but certainly the Voyagers

00:15:22   are going faster. They went around Jupiter and Saturn, and when you go around a big planet

00:15:28   like that, it usually is increasing your speed and pushing you on to the next one. They have

00:15:33   a sort of gravity assist thing that happens, and it's complicated. So I'm not going to

00:15:38   talk about it too much because then I'll have to correct that next week. But the idea is

00:15:43   the Voyagers are going faster. So New Horizons is never going to catch up. The Voyager 2,

00:15:48   I think will be the furthest out object that we've made for, you know, the foreseeable

00:15:54   future. So we got a nice bit of feedback from Andy, listener Andy, who enjoyed our accidental

00:16:01   astronomy and asked if there were any beginner level astronomy podcasts to recommend. Back

00:16:07   in the early days of podcasting, I actually listened to these podcasts like 2008, 2009,

00:16:12   somewhere in there, that are by a guy named Richard Pogge, who is a astronomy professor

00:16:17   at Ohio State University, and we'll put the link to his page in the show notes. It's an

00:16:22   old school, it's like a tilde, it's got a tilde in the directory name, it is old school

00:16:27   web, but it's got links to, he did, he recorded himself with several of his introductory astronomy

00:16:35   classes. There are three that I listen to that are all still up from 2008, 2007, 2009.

00:16:43   And they're in, I think they're in the iTunes podcast directory, but he's also got the direct

00:16:46   links on his site. So we'll put that in the show notes. And then he's, Pogge, P-O-G-G-E,

00:16:51   he actually has a more recent course in iTunes U that you can also listen to. I think he's

00:16:55   a really good teacher, which is not always the case with professors at major universities.

00:17:00   They're there because they're good at research and getting grants and things like that, and

00:17:04   the teaching is often secondary. But Pogge, I thought, was just a really, first, I love

00:17:09   that in 2007 he bought himself an MP3 recorder and a clip on microphone and just thought,

00:17:16   wouldn't it be cool if I could record my lectures? And then he also made them available to the

00:17:21   students so that if they missed a lecture they could listen back, or if they were there

00:17:24   they could still listen back, which I always thought was really cool. And there were good

00:17:29   courses. So I recommend those if you really want to dive in. They are intended as essentially

00:17:32   introductory courses. One of them is about the solar system, it just goes through every

00:17:36   part of the solar system. It's good stuff. In terms of like modern podcasts, Neil deGrasse

00:17:42   Tyson's StarTalk podcast is widely loved, so I'll throw that out there. I really enjoyed

00:17:46   the NPR Science Friday podcast, which they, I don't know if they still do this or not,

00:17:52   one of the things I liked about it is they split all the segments up into individual

00:17:55   items, so they would do a show for a couple of hours, but instead of dropping like one

00:18:00   podcast, they would drop all the segments. And I always like that because I could listen

00:18:05   to the segments that interested me and skip the ones that didn't.

00:18:09   So it's kind of like chapter markers.

00:18:11   Yeah, a little bit, except instead they're just episodes are the chapters. Each segment

00:18:16   is its own episode and they drop, you know, a bunch of episodes every Friday. And of course

00:18:22   you and Steven introduced the best space podcast to never exist, which is Space and Cider.

00:18:28   Not Space Insider, that's a website. It's Space and Cider because people drink cider

00:18:33   while talking about space, and you can't get that anywhere because it is made up.

00:18:38   So it really sounded like he said that.

00:18:40   I know, I know, but he didn't.

00:18:43   I actually just bought spaceandcyder.com.

00:18:48   Alright just in case, just in case, just in case, you never know.

00:18:52   You never know.

00:18:54   So a couple weeks ago we were talking about my knowledge of the US states.

00:18:59   I can't even remember how this came up.

00:19:02   And I said I would take a quiz,

00:19:04   and a couple of days after the show I did,

00:19:05   but we forgot to talk about it last week.

00:19:07   - Right, there's so much last week.

00:19:09   - Yeah, have you seen the results of my US state quiz?

00:19:12   I sent it to you, and I'm gonna put a link in the show notes

00:19:14   to a PDF of my quiz results.

00:19:17   - No.

00:19:18   Oh, here it is, here it is, okay.

00:19:22   I hadn't looked at that.

00:19:24   I wanted to be surprised.

00:19:25   - So I got 16 correct.

00:19:28   - Wow, that's 32%, Myke, that's not a passing grade.

00:19:31   - What do you think about that?

00:19:32   16, correct.

00:19:34   Do you think that that is a bad score?

00:19:35   Like, all things considered?

00:19:37   - Well, for an American, that's a very,

00:19:39   I think, a very bad score.

00:19:40   For a person from England, probably not.

00:19:45   I'm looking at your results here.

00:19:50   This is, well, okay, you got Alaska and Hawaii.

00:19:55   - Easy, they were the easy ones.

00:19:57   So that gives you 14 continental United States. What states have you been to in the United States?

00:20:05   California, and you got that one right. Yep. Oregon, you got that one right. Portland.

00:20:10   I always say the places. Yeah, I've been to Nevada. Yeah, you got that one right.

00:20:15   I've been to Michigan. And you didn't get that one. Nope. And maybe that's it. Oh, Tennessee.

00:20:24   Tennessee and Georgia and you you didn't get you didn't get Georgia and you did

00:20:31   get Tennessee yep so I think that there are some some pretty bad results on here

00:20:41   but overall I'm proud that I was able to get any to be honest because it's

00:20:46   difficult I've never studied this like why would we have you know you got you

00:20:52   got Idaho. Yep. You thought you thought Montana was Wisconsin. Wow. I don't even know why that's funny.

00:21:00   Wisconsin's not... okay so if are you looking at the map? Yep. Okay are you

00:21:07   looking at number six Montana? Mm-hmm. Okay go to the right. That's North and

00:21:11   South Dakota. Go to the right. Yep. That's Minnesota. Mm-hmm. Go to the right. Mm-hmm.

00:21:18   that's Wisconsin. Okay. 34. Well at least it was at the top though. It was at the top. You got, you got, right, you got

00:21:25   the what the X right but not the Y. So here's the other thing about this. I had

00:21:30   to type in the results. I had to bring up a list on Wikipedia of the states

00:21:34   because I don't know the 50 states. Right? So it's like that is another thing. I didn't even know all the states.

00:21:40   Like I probably could have only done about 20. How did you get, you got Wyoming

00:21:46   right that is a good guess yeah those are the square states those are really

00:21:51   hard to get the square state complete guesses basically if it wasn't super

00:21:56   obvious right like Texas you said Utah was Indiana Wow and Utah you labeled

00:22:07   well what is it Arizona you labeled as Utah okay I can see that I can see that

00:22:11   You you named Colorado as Illinois. Okay, Illinois is in the Midwest which is not in the middle of the country

00:22:18   It is that's where Chicago is

00:22:20   You put Chicago in Denver, basically, that's okay. You got New Mexico, right? You got Texas, right? Texas is a good one

00:22:27   That's a good anchor on the lower section of the map

00:22:30   So there are some where it's like I have a vague idea of where this state sits

00:22:36   Yeah, you've been the country you put

00:22:38   Missouri in Kansas

00:22:41   They're next to each other. That's not terrible. You put Oklahoma and Ohio or...

00:22:47   You put Ohio and Oklahoma, that's not as good.

00:22:51   You put Louisiana in South Dakota? Okay, that's a bad one. You missed that one by a lot.

00:22:59   That was... Louisiana's New Orleans, that's like steamy and on the Gulf.

00:23:05   I really struggled with the northeastern states.

00:23:08   - Well, they're so little, yeah.

00:23:11   - 'Cause I know a bunch that are up there.

00:23:13   I just didn't know which one was which.

00:23:15   - Also you labeled Delaware as Minnesota.

00:23:19   - Again.

00:23:20   It's funny how like this is hilarious to you

00:23:22   and I have no idea what it's like.

00:23:24   - Well, it's funny because for me,

00:23:27   I would think that somebody from the United States

00:23:29   would get, I mean, look, North and South Dakota,

00:23:33   you know, you've got the North and South

00:23:34   so you can figure out which is which there,

00:23:36   but you've got to know that they're kind of

00:23:37   in the middle there.

00:23:38   And if you mix them up with Minnesota,

00:23:40   or if you mixed Kansas up with Nebraska

00:23:44   or something like that,

00:23:45   I would, or Missouri with Iowa and Arkansas,

00:23:49   I could kind of understand that.

00:23:51   Or Illinois and Indiana and Ohio,

00:23:52   I could kind of understand that.

00:23:54   What's fascinating to me is that you've got states

00:23:55   that are like, because you don't have any context

00:23:58   of how the states, like what their character is.

00:24:02   So like for me, Louisiana is where New Orleans is.

00:24:05   It is a hot, steamy region.

00:24:08   it has to be south and it has to be,

00:24:10   and you probably would know that it like got hit

00:24:12   by Hurricane Katrina, it's on the Gulf Coast

00:24:14   and that would be able to place it.

00:24:15   And you placed it in the Northern Plains near Canada.

00:24:18   So that's an example where you don't have that context

00:24:21   to say, what do I know about the state?

00:24:23   And be able to, you know, other than a few California

00:24:27   and Florida and things like that.

00:24:29   - Yeah, see there was some at the end where I was like,

00:24:32   I have some states left and I have some boxes left.

00:24:35   So that might've been one of those.

00:24:37   You know, it's like I'm looking down the list,

00:24:38   I'm like, I've got three empty boxes,

00:24:40   I don't know what needs to go here.

00:24:41   I had to go down through the state list,

00:24:43   check all the names that I had,

00:24:44   and then just throw some names in

00:24:46   and hope that I got some of them right.

00:24:47   - Yeah, that may explain why you labeled Pennsylvania

00:24:50   as New York and New York as Vancouver.

00:24:53   - Can't help you, my friend.

00:24:58   - That's amazing, it's amazing.

00:25:01   Well, you know, I'm sure if you gave me

00:25:05   the 20 most populous cities in the UK and had me label them, I would probably get five.

00:25:13   Yeah, but I don't even know if I would get them right.

00:25:15   Oh, okay. Fair enough.

00:25:16   Because the thing is, like, we're not really... There isn't a focus on it like there is in

00:25:22   the US. You know, you guys have this focus on yourselves, which is very different to

00:25:26   how the rest of the world looks at their own country, I think.

00:25:29   Well, it's a bit con... I mean, this is a little bit like... I keep saying this to people

00:25:34   who try to compare like the US to a country in Europe.

00:25:37   It's like, this is a continent.

00:25:39   So this would be like somebody from Europe learning

00:25:43   where the other countries in Europe are on a map of Europe.

00:25:47   - Yeah, I would probably have a better job

00:25:49   of labeling Europe than places in the UK.

00:25:52   - Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

00:25:54   That makes sense.

00:25:55   It is a lot of states.

00:25:56   And again, unless, and I don't mean to offend people

00:25:59   'cause I have relatives in many of these states

00:26:01   by saying this, but unless you have a personal connection

00:26:03   or a cultural connection or something like that to a state,

00:26:06   it's easy to not understand what a state is.

00:26:08   Because, you know, like I know people in Indiana,

00:26:12   so I know where Indiana is.

00:26:14   But if you don't know exactly where it is

00:26:17   and you don't have any kind of cultural context of,

00:26:19   I know somebody or there's a, you know,

00:26:21   like New Orleans gives you Louisiana,

00:26:25   if you know that context fairly, fairly easily.

00:26:28   But if you don't, then, you know,

00:26:30   if you don't know that Maine is just kind of

00:26:32   all the way up at the top there, which you labeled as Iowa.

00:26:37   Oh my, that's just hilarious.

00:26:41   Anyway, then that's why you wouldn't even know.

00:26:44   And yeah, school children in the US get drilled in this too.

00:26:46   So that's part of it too.

00:26:47   But there's also that context thing of just knowing,

00:26:49   oh, well, New Orleans is hot, so it must be at the bottom.

00:26:53   - Some, I think some of the ones that I got right

00:26:55   or close to right was by that kind of thinking.

00:26:59   But I don't know enough about all of the states

00:27:01   know exactly what they said. I know about New Orleans as fuck, I didn't

00:27:05   specifically though it was hot there so it wouldn't have helped me.

00:27:10   It's hot and steamy like Florida. Alright well you fail. This week's episode

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00:29:36   So Jason Snell, there was some new Apple products this week.

00:29:40   Yes.

00:29:41   Oh great.

00:29:42   - Yeah, new mind blowing Apple products.

00:29:45   The, there was--

00:29:47   - Mind bending I think is a better.

00:29:49   - Mind touching, mind approaching.

00:29:54   - Mind shuffling.

00:29:55   - So the mind, yes, nano mind, touch.

00:29:59   iPod touch, new iPod touch.

00:30:02   This is the thing that John Syracuse

00:30:04   would be dancing in the streets about probably

00:30:05   if he didn't go and get an iPhone.

00:30:09   the, he didn't need, if he danced

00:30:12   and if he went in the street.

00:30:15   Okay, really John Syracuse,

00:30:16   he wouldn't have done any of those things.

00:30:17   Anyway, a new iPod touch with an AA processor.

00:30:20   So this is one of those things where it's not,

00:30:23   it is up, it's up to spec with the current models,

00:30:28   which are 2014, right?

00:30:31   So it's the 2015 iPod touch has the 2014 era,

00:30:35   but still current for now,

00:30:37   processor of the iPhone 6, although probably clocked down somewhat, but still it's an A8-powered

00:30:45   4-inch, so it's the iPhone 5 series screen still, as it was before.

00:30:53   And it's its first update in what, three years or something like that? So I mean that's good news.

00:31:02   - Yeah.

00:31:03   - Wow, the enthusiasm,

00:31:05   this reminds me on clockwise the other week,

00:31:07   somebody said, who will speak for the iPod?

00:31:11   And I was like, not me.

00:31:13   It's kind of fading away,

00:31:16   but this is still valuable in certain contexts as a product

00:31:19   because not everybody wants or needs

00:31:22   or can afford a monthly phone bill with data on it.

00:31:27   'Cause the data really is where they get you.

00:31:32   And so I know people who have dumb phones and iPod touches.

00:31:37   I just feel like with the iPad and the iPad mini,

00:31:40   it's less exciting than it was.

00:31:43   People say, well, you can get it for a kid.

00:31:44   And it's true, you can get it for a kid

00:31:45   and they can put it in their pocket or something.

00:31:46   But like, you could also get,

00:31:49   and it's cheaper than getting an iPad mini even,

00:31:51   but it's just, it's niche keeps getting smaller and smaller,

00:31:56   I feel like, but it is good that it exists, I think,

00:31:59   to have something out there that you can buy.

00:32:02   199 gets you an iOS device that is basically an iPhone,

00:32:07   somewhere between an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 6.

00:32:10   - I really, I really struggle

00:32:16   to understand the placement of this device.

00:32:19   And I know that like the idea is it's like,

00:32:21   it's basically the lowest end

00:32:24   to be able to play games on, right?

00:32:26   That's effectively what it is.

00:32:28   I think it is kind of like the cheapest way to play iPhone games, right?

00:32:33   So you can buy them for kids and stuff.

00:32:35   I think that's probably the prime market.

00:32:37   Yeah, but my son has been using hand-me-down iPads of mine for a couple of years,

00:32:41   and that's way better.

00:32:43   But they are more expensive.

00:32:44   Oh, I agree.

00:32:44   But they're way better choices.

00:32:46   So I think there's a lot of people that go that way, and I think it's a better way

00:32:49   because my feeling about this is bigger screens are better for games.

00:32:54   and every game device, every other handheld gaming device

00:32:59   is bigger than an iPod touch,

00:33:01   physically or in screen size.

00:33:05   They're just like bigger devices.

00:33:06   And I think that they work better for games.

00:33:09   But I think it's the idea of there's no iOS devices

00:33:12   in a family.

00:33:13   Jimmy would like an iPhone.

00:33:16   So you buy him an iPod touch for his birthday.

00:33:20   You know, I think that's where this device sits.

00:33:23   Because I genuinely cannot think of another place where it really, really makes sense.

00:33:30   Because it's like, okay, it has a really large hard drive to replace the iPod Classic, but

00:33:36   I just, I don't see it.

00:33:38   I just, I really don't get it.

00:33:40   It's a very, very peculiar device and I find it even stranger with some of the things they've

00:33:45   given it and some of the things they haven't.

00:33:48   No Apple Pay on this is weird to me, and I know it requires the addition of a Touch ID

00:33:55   sensor, which I'm sure is an expensive part, but Apple Pay feels like such a core part

00:34:01   of Apple now.

00:34:02   It feels like such a big thing for their future.

00:34:07   Having a device that is new, that could support it but doesn't, it seems like a very strange

00:34:14   omission to me.

00:34:16   - Yeah, I think it's about making it cheap.

00:34:21   I think it's that simple.

00:34:22   It's like they didn't want to put in the, you know,

00:34:24   whatever it is, the secure enclave,

00:34:26   that secure element thing, and not just,

00:34:29   and we're not talking about Apple Pay even necessarily,

00:34:31   because of connectivity issues,

00:34:33   you need a device that's always on the internet

00:34:36   to do Apple Pay as the, you know, near field stuff,

00:34:39   but you can do the Apple Pay for online.

00:34:41   - You don't need it.

00:34:43   It doesn't need to be connected to the internet.

00:34:45   - It does and does it.

00:34:46   Well, it's NFC, it's not in the iPad either.

00:34:51   So they've decided to say Apple Pay for online is fine.

00:34:54   And for not is not.

00:34:56   - Well, 'cause like, you know, it doesn't make sense

00:34:59   to put an NFC chip in the iPad

00:35:01   because you couldn't pay in a store with that thing.

00:35:04   - You could theoretically with an iPod touch.

00:35:05   I suppose that's true, but I think the point is

00:35:07   they'd have to put in NFC hardware

00:35:09   and they'd have to put in touch ID hardware.

00:35:10   And the idea here is to create something that's cheap.

00:35:13   - Yeah, I mean, that's definitely the reason.

00:35:15   - It's definitely the reason is because the expense.

00:35:17   - An unlocked iPhone 5S currently is like $500.

00:35:22   And this is 199 to start.

00:35:29   And I didn't actually look up the price, but it's a lot.

00:35:32   The gap is huge and you can't just say, well, it's,

00:35:34   you know, if you throw in $130 or whatever,

00:35:36   that's the premium they charge when you take an iPad

00:35:38   and make it a cellular device.

00:35:40   I mean, they wouldn't ever do that here

00:35:41   because at that point it is an iPhone basically

00:35:44   that can't make calls, but who cares?

00:35:46   So part of this is an artificial distinction

00:35:49   to separate the iPhone from the iPod touch,

00:35:51   but part of it is, you know,

00:35:53   they are charging so much less for it.

00:35:55   And that's partially because they're throwing

00:35:58   lots of features out.

00:35:59   And I think Apple Pay is an expensive feature.

00:36:02   I mean, it requires some custom hardware,

00:36:05   more than one piece of custom hardware to make it work.

00:36:07   And I think, you know, Apple does not want this thing

00:36:11   to be that close to an iPhone

00:36:13   and doesn't want it to be that functional

00:36:14   compared to an iPhone.

00:36:15   That's just not what this thing is for.

00:36:17   So I think that's, I do think,

00:36:20   and I wrote about this at Six Colors,

00:36:22   I do think, or well, no, I didn't.

00:36:24   I wrote about this at Macworld.

00:36:25   That's a site that I occasionally write for.

00:36:27   You may have heard of it.

00:36:29   I wonder if though this,

00:36:32   if you can have a four inch iPhone five sized iPod touch

00:36:36   with an AA processor in it,

00:36:38   it makes me wonder if we will see a four inch iPhone

00:36:41   this fall, which I've been talking about

00:36:42   since the last iPhone release that I wasn't convinced

00:36:45   that the iPhone 5S was the end of the line.

00:36:48   And I'm still not.

00:36:49   And this gives me a little more hope,

00:36:50   the fact that Apple is still creating products

00:36:52   with that screen size

00:36:54   and these products have an A8 processor in them.

00:36:58   It makes me think perhaps we will see an iPhone,

00:37:01   I don't know what, 6C or something like that,

00:37:05   that is essentially this or 5S something else, 5Q.

00:37:10   I don't even know what it would be,

00:37:12   but that it was the smaller phone size,

00:37:15   but with an AA processor in it.

00:37:17   And hopefully that one would have touch ID.

00:37:20   Well, it would have touch ID.

00:37:21   Hopefully it would also have Apple Pay at that point.

00:37:23   And then you'd have three sizes of phones.

00:37:25   Of course, the iPhone 6 would then rev

00:37:27   to be even more awesome with like an A9.

00:37:30   And it would be essentially a generation behind,

00:37:32   but at least like the iPad mini,

00:37:35   but at least it would exist.

00:37:36   So I am gonna take that as a positive from this.

00:37:38   Even if you're not super enthusiastic

00:37:42   about the iPod touch, I feel like maybe it augurs for,

00:37:46   you know, a new-ish phone in the old school iPhone 5 size,

00:37:51   which some people would like, not you,

00:37:54   'cause you like the gigantic phone,

00:37:55   but some people I've heard, you know,

00:37:58   would really love a more modern phone in that size.

00:38:02   - I wanna talk about that very quickly.

00:38:05   Sadio in the chat room has pointed out

00:38:06   that the iPad Air 2 does have an NFC chip in it,

00:38:09   but it's not used.

00:38:11   All right, fair enough.

00:38:12   I wonder if it must just kind of come connected with,

00:38:14   but it's yeah, it's off.

00:38:15   They don't want you tapping your iPad Air at the store.

00:38:20   - 'Cause the idea being people have thought

00:38:23   that potentially this is for merchant terminals.

00:38:25   - Right, I've heard that speculation

00:38:27   that at some point they might be able to turn that on

00:38:29   and have some sort of, you know, use it as a,

00:38:32   you know, use your Apple Pay phone to pay

00:38:36   to an iPad Air 2 Apple Pay driven terminal

00:38:41   and do it that way, but that's just a rumor.

00:38:45   - Well, I feel like they're not gonna do that

00:38:47   for as long as they have a good relationship with Square.

00:38:50   - Well, unless Square's the first app that,

00:38:53   unless Square gets access to the NFC before anything else,

00:38:57   I mean, that could be part of this, right?

00:38:59   - Square have built a Apple Pay Reader, right?

00:39:04   - Right.

00:39:05   which they put on stage at WWDC.

00:39:08   So I feel like that that is a thing

00:39:10   that they're clearly working with Apple on,

00:39:12   and it's, you know, so maybe Apple have the chip in there

00:39:15   just in case, but right now they're happy

00:39:18   to work with partners on it.

00:39:20   - Sure.

00:39:20   - Hey, who knows?

00:39:21   Right, so let's talk about this small phone.

00:39:24   - Yeah.

00:39:25   - So what are you expecting here?

00:39:27   Like the body of maybe the C, like the colors,

00:39:32   and with all of the hardware of the six?

00:39:35   - I don't, if I had to make a guess,

00:39:37   if I'm, okay, we're in fantasy land now,

00:39:40   'cause I have no little birdies telling me things,

00:39:42   but if I'm in fantasy land, what I would say,

00:39:44   my bet would be, most likely,

00:39:47   would be something that looks more or less

00:39:49   like the iPhone 5S,

00:39:50   but has an A8 processor in it and does Apple Pay.

00:39:56   That would basically be it, that it would be,

00:39:59   it would look more or less like the 5S,

00:40:01   that they wouldn't really change it to look,

00:40:03   it's possible they would try to redesign it

00:40:05   to make it look more like the six,

00:40:08   but I think that they could also just save their time

00:40:10   and fit it inside.

00:40:11   Like this new iPod Touch is the exact same exterior

00:40:16   as the old one.

00:40:18   It's the dimensions are the same, the weight is the same.

00:40:21   So they didn't bother redesigning the outside.

00:40:24   They just redesigned the insides.

00:40:26   So let's go with that.

00:40:28   Let's say that's what they're gonna do.

00:40:29   They're gonna take the 5S, which is, you know,

00:40:33   it's a nice looking thing.

00:40:34   They're selling that now.

00:40:35   That's your $99 with contract phone.

00:40:39   And they put an A8 and Apple Pay support in there.

00:40:45   It's already got touch ID.

00:40:46   Maybe they upgrade the cameras a little bit,

00:40:49   but more to the level of last year's iPhones,

00:40:53   not the forthcoming new iPhones.

00:40:56   and keep it as the $99.

00:40:59   And at that point, you've got an A9 iPhone 6 Plus for $299

00:41:04   and as the starting price, an A9 iPhone 6S for $199.

00:41:10   And then you've got this thing, iPhone 5Z, 5Q,

00:41:19   or iPhone 6C or something for $999.

00:41:26   And so it's a new product that's kind of an old product,

00:41:30   but it also, it means that people who want

00:41:33   the smaller phone can still get it.

00:41:35   And just, you know, it's there.

00:41:38   It's not gonna be as awesome as the bigger phones are,

00:41:41   but it will stick around.

00:41:43   And that gives Apple, that allows Apple to keep

00:41:45   that lower priced phone in the line

00:41:49   while having it support, like you were saying,

00:41:52   having it support Apple Pay, for example,

00:41:55   and kind of clear out some of the products that don't.

00:41:57   - So in your imagination, in this Snell product lineup,

00:42:02   there is no cheap phone with a big screen.

00:42:07   - In my imagination, yeah.

00:42:10   Yeah, that's it.

00:42:11   The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are,

00:42:14   or their successors are 99 and 199,

00:42:18   and they're gone, or while supplies last or something.

00:42:22   Or maybe, you know, maybe they stick around,

00:42:24   last year's models are also 99,

00:42:26   you can get last year's model.

00:42:28   But I think it would be one reasonable way to do it,

00:42:31   would be to say, you know, we've got, you know,

00:42:34   medium, large, and extra large, 99, you know,

00:42:38   199 and 299, and then extra for more storage

00:42:43   on top of the base, the 16 base.

00:42:45   - So would there potentially be in this lineup then,

00:42:48   we have the 5C, which will probably just still stick around

00:42:52   as like the 99. As the free phone.

00:42:54   Of the free. Probably.

00:42:55   Yeah, they gotta have a free phone.

00:42:58   So that probably, they're not gonna keep the 4 or 4S.

00:43:01   That makes sense I think,

00:43:02   is the phone that goes into that slot.

00:43:05   Then they have a 5C+,

00:43:09   which is the mythical Jason Snell phone.

00:43:14   Yeah, it's the 5S with an A8.

00:43:16   Yeah. And Apple Pay.

00:43:18   And Apple Pay.

00:43:20   and then they have the two larger phones in their revs,

00:43:24   then their revs, like in their revisions basically.

00:43:28   - Yeah, the 2015 versions.

00:43:30   Yeah, that's what I would,

00:43:33   in this scenario, that's what I would say.

00:43:35   - Yeah, okay.

00:43:36   - And that's, this feels like sort of the direction

00:43:39   Apple's going with all its products,

00:43:40   which is you've got like your flagships

00:43:44   that you update every year,

00:43:45   and then you've got these other ones

00:43:46   that kind of trail a year behind,

00:43:48   and then you've got some stuff that you keep around

00:43:49   because you need something that's got higher margins

00:43:52   that you can cut the price on for various reasons.

00:43:56   Not saying they will do it that way,

00:43:57   but that would be one way to do it.

00:43:59   That would be, you know, instead of saying,

00:44:02   we give you last year's iPhone 6 for cheap,

00:44:06   we say, you know, we can give you this year's

00:44:09   four inch phone for cheap,

00:44:11   which I think is a better proposition

00:44:15   to say this is the new four inch iPhone,

00:44:18   even if yeah, it's using last year's technology,

00:44:20   but it's the new four inch iPhone,

00:44:22   instead of saying this is last year's six,

00:44:27   which it could do,

00:44:28   but I feel like there's a market for the smaller phone.

00:44:32   And so why not just, it's not enough of a priority.

00:44:36   Like last year was the first time Apple did two different,

00:44:39   like two different entirely new iPhones

00:44:41   with the six and the six plus.

00:44:43   So of course they weren't gonna also update

00:44:45   the five at that point,

00:44:47   It was too much, too much.

00:44:48   But this year, this year, would they push an update?

00:44:52   Just like the iPad mini 3 will probably go to iPad mini 4

00:44:57   and get last year's iPad Air 2 specs, right?

00:44:59   And just stay a year behind.

00:45:01   And this would be the equivalent of that.

00:45:03   - Okay, what about the way it looks, this device?

00:45:10   - Oh, my mythical imaginary?

00:45:12   - Yeah.

00:45:14   - It's too bad that 5S has taken

00:45:15   or the S could stand for Snell.

00:45:17   But it's already called it the 5S.

00:45:20   The 5SS.

00:45:21   Like I said, I think looking at the iPod touch

00:45:26   and knowing like,

00:45:28   how much work do you wanna put into this thing?

00:45:29   Look, we wanna have it out there

00:45:30   and we wanna have it be cheap,

00:45:32   but we want more recent technology into it.

00:45:34   Do you really restyle it?

00:45:36   You could, but do you?

00:45:38   Or do you just say, look, the 5 looks great.

00:45:41   Let's just keep the 5 look around.

00:45:44   it won't look like the 6 and 6 Plus if they do that.

00:45:46   So they could totally, you know, they could restyle it

00:45:50   to have the kind of curvy edges and stuff

00:45:53   and call it a 6 something.

00:45:55   Or they could leave it blocky, but have it be modern,

00:45:59   and even call it a 5 something.

00:46:01   - I think one of the key problems that Apple

00:46:05   definitely looked to solve with the introduction of the 5C

00:46:09   is how do you take an old device and make it look new

00:46:12   So it looks like you have a new phone when you buy it

00:46:15   and not an old phone.

00:46:16   - Right.

00:46:17   - And I think if they kept it just in like 5S,

00:46:19   same body, silver, black, gold,

00:46:24   I think that they would struggle to sell it.

00:46:26   I wouldn't be surprised to see iPod touch metallic colors.

00:46:31   - That could be, that could be.

00:46:33   With so many of these products,

00:46:36   it really is just like how much do they wanna prioritize it?

00:46:40   'Cause I don't think this is,

00:46:41   when I'm describing this product,

00:46:42   this isn't their high priority product, right?

00:46:44   The next six plus and six are their high priority products.

00:46:47   This is a, yes, we also rev that too.

00:46:49   So that's the question is, do they have enough,

00:46:52   do they want it to look like the other phones

00:46:54   or do they want it to not look like the other phones?

00:46:57   'Cause what they really wanna sell are the big phones.

00:46:59   I don't know. - Yeah.

00:47:03   - It would be more consistent

00:47:04   to have it look like the six family.

00:47:06   - You say that about selling the big phones.

00:47:08   When they introduced,

00:47:10   What was the C introduced alongside?

00:47:13   What phone was it that they introduced the C alongside?

00:47:17   - The 5S.

00:47:18   - Right, because in the UK and in other places,

00:47:22   all of the marketing, like the billboard marketing,

00:47:26   was for the C range, all of it.

00:47:28   - Huh, yeah, and--

00:47:30   - It was very interesting that they did that,

00:47:32   but that was the choice that they decided to go down.

00:47:34   - Yeah.

00:47:35   - So I wouldn't be surprised to see that again

00:47:37   if they went down that route.

00:47:39   - It's possible.

00:47:40   - Yeah, I don't know.

00:47:42   We could theorize about it all day

00:47:44   and somebody at Apple may be listening to this

00:47:47   and just laughing and laughing.

00:47:48   But yeah, I think this is, we've talked about this before.

00:47:53   This is one of those things that is fascinating

00:47:55   about talking about what Apple strategy is,

00:47:58   is there's so many different paths that could go down.

00:48:01   And they have, inside Apple, they have more statistics.

00:48:04   Nobody knows more about who's buying phones

00:48:07   and how many they're buying

00:48:09   and in what configurations where,

00:48:12   let alone market research than people inside Apple.

00:48:15   So they know way more than we do about who,

00:48:18   you know, what the markets are.

00:48:19   And they may have looked at the data and said,

00:48:20   "You know what, I know people are,

00:48:22   there are noisy people out there who say I wanna,

00:48:24   I'm not gonna upgrade from the 5S

00:48:25   because I don't want the big phone,

00:48:27   but when we do all of our looks at sales and research,

00:48:29   those people are a fraction of the market

00:48:31   and we are just not gonna bother."

00:48:33   That may be the case.

00:48:34   I would like to believe that it's not the case,

00:48:36   but it's possible because they know more than we do

00:48:38   because they see their internal sales data.

00:48:41   But even with that, they have so many different choices.

00:48:45   There's so many different ways

00:48:45   they could go with their product line.

00:48:46   So it's kind of fascinating to break it down in that way.

00:48:49   Do you spend the time to make a four inch phone

00:48:52   that looks kind of like the iPhone six line

00:48:54   and do it that way?

00:48:55   Do you leave it in the old shape of the five S?

00:48:57   Do you use it as the shiny colors thing,

00:49:02   like six shiny colors, like the iPod touch?

00:49:08   I, lots of choices, lots of choices.

00:49:11   My gut feeling is since the 5S is still in the product line,

00:49:14   that it would be more a space gray, silver, gold thing,

00:49:19   and you know, maybe looks like the 6,

00:49:23   maybe looks like the 5,

00:49:24   and that they'll keep that C model

00:49:27   as their colorful low-end model, but who knows?

00:49:31   - If I'm gonna take a bet on this, provided it exists,

00:49:35   and I'm still not convinced that they'll make this,

00:49:37   personally. I don't know what I think about that. I would put a bet on it looking like

00:49:45   the 5 but having metallic colors. That would be my bet. But I'm still not even convinced

00:49:52   it'll exist.

00:49:53   I don't, I mean my confidence in this product exists is greater because the iPod Touch is

00:49:58   out there, but it's not like, it's not a 90% or anything. It's, I think it's maybe better

00:50:04   than a coin flip. I think it's more likely than not because I think they need to do something

00:50:09   other than just clear the five down to the free phone and say forget it, you can't buy,

00:50:14   you know, we've abandoned that size. They've never said they've abandoned that size and

00:50:19   in fact they still sell phones in that size. I would, like I said, I would like to believe

00:50:24   that they are not going to abandon that size and that we'll see something a year behind.

00:50:29   But I don't think it's a sure thing because like I said there could be market research

00:50:33   that makes it clear that inside Apple there is no point in doing that phone.

00:50:37   Yeah, because it basically could be, yeah I'm sure there are quite a lot of people

00:50:42   that would love a phone this size, but are there enough to continue making it?

00:50:46   That's the thing, right? It's like yeah there probably will be a lot of people

00:50:48   but it costs a lot of money to make something like this, is the cost gonna

00:50:52   outweigh the amount of people that will buy it? I mean that's a question about

00:50:56   the Apple Touch but they've clearly made that decision there but they might not

00:50:59   want to make that decision for the phone because the phones are probably more

00:51:02   expensive to make. And what are the margins on that phone versus last year's

00:51:07   iPhone 6 at 16, you know, gigabytes? What are the margin differences there?

00:51:12   Would you be better off just marketing a $99 iPhone 6 along with the new, you know,

00:51:16   iPhone 6s? Or would you like to differentiate so that the $99 phone

00:51:24   isn't the bigger screen and that get people to feel like they're choosing

00:51:29   their phone size when they're choosing their price.

00:51:32   And there are probably, you could have a whole day

00:51:36   of arguments with people at Apple

00:51:39   about what the right thing to do is there

00:51:41   with lots of different data from the channel.

00:51:44   And we don't have access to a lot of that.

00:51:46   So we have to sort of speculate about it.

00:51:47   But those are the kinds of decisions that go into it.

00:51:50   Is there an audience here?

00:51:51   What does it do to our other products?

00:51:53   Does it take, if our margins are less on this

00:51:56   on the new 6S, are we gonna have a certain percentage of those people who are just gonna

00:52:02   opt for the cheaper phone? That hurts us. If Apple believes that they're gonna lose

00:52:10   a certain number of people who aren't gonna buy a 6-sized phone regardless, but then there's

00:52:14   a whole chunk who would buy a smaller phone if it's there, but otherwise will just buy

00:52:17   the bigger phone, and the bigger phone has the bigger margins and they do the math, they

00:52:21   say, "Look, we're killing ourselves if we offer a smaller model that has those margins."

00:52:30   So it's super complicated, and that's why my confidence that they'll do it is more like,

00:52:36   you know, 55%, which is up from before last week. But the fact that there is now an iPod

00:52:44   Touch in that size with last year's processor gives me some hope that they are... I mean,

00:52:50   they've built that product now, right? They've built a 4-inch device, iOS device,

00:52:55   with an A8 processor. And I would guess that those probably could be

00:53:02   work saved by designing them both together. Like, let's bring the

00:53:07   A8s to these two 4-inch models, but they'll hold off on the iPhone until the

00:53:12   iPhones come out. But I don't know enough about that. It may just be that

00:53:16   those are two separate projects and there's nothing to be gained. But, you

00:53:19   You know, the fact is that device exists,

00:53:21   it's got an AA processor in it.

00:53:23   It's very close to being this iPhone that I've described.

00:53:27   And the question is, you know,

00:53:29   do they want it to be that too or do they not?

00:53:31   I don't know.

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00:55:14   Confirmed, yes. I'm looking at the upgrade. The upgrade one's on the top, Myke.

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00:56:36   So, we should talk about, really quickly, we don't have to spend a lot of time on it,

00:56:39   but one thing that also happened last week, we mentioned the big news, right? The other

00:56:42   big news, iPod Nano, iPod Shuffle releases, they do still exist and they got updated.

00:56:49   The iPod Nano still looks like iOS 6. John Gruber said that his birdies tell him that

00:56:54   there's just nobody left to do anything with that software to update it. And the iPod Shuffle

00:57:00   still exists, and I've heard from some people who still use them. Even when I run, I run

00:57:05   with my phone, and if I didn't run with my phone, I've got an Apple Watch, so I would

00:57:10   use that as my iPod shuffle. But I understand that this is all about, there's still a market

00:57:16   for it, and the margins on those are great, and so why not keep selling them? The one

00:57:20   thing that baffles me, though, about it is, and this goes back to, we're willing to keep

00:57:25   selling this product but we're not willing to do anything to make it that

00:57:29   much better like we'll just change the anodized colors but we're not gonna do

00:57:33   any software work for it because it's it's a it's not important enough it's

00:57:38   too important to kill not important enough to improve and the example I want

00:57:42   to give here is as far as we can tell the iPod nano and the iPod shuffle that

00:57:47   were just released don't support Apple music so if you add a song to your

00:57:52   library and you want to put it on the shuffle, you can't, because it's a DRM'd

00:57:56   Apple Music file, and they didn't update the software on the iPod shuffle or

00:58:02   Nano to play that stuff, apparently. I haven't tested this, I don't have these

00:58:06   these products. Now on one level I understand it because they seem to have

00:58:10   nobody home developing those products anymore, really, and it probably would

00:58:14   require some, you know, maybe serious software changes to support that

00:58:19   kind of DRM stuff, or changes in iTunes that when it's copying to those devices, it does

00:58:26   something that makes them playable, wraps them in a different kind of DRM that they

00:58:29   understand or takes the DRM off, which maybe they can't do because of the licensing agreements

00:58:34   for Apple Music. Okay, I get that. However, on the other hand, it does seem bizarre to

00:58:40   me because these are products made by a company that has a music service that their music

00:58:46   products don't support. And, you know, so I understand the technical reasons why, but

00:58:50   at the same time part of me says, "Why do these products exist if you're not going to

00:58:54   support them for something like your brand new music service?" Because I was thinking

00:58:59   it would actually be kind of great if you were an iPod shuffle kind of person to take

00:59:03   an Apple Music playlist and sync it to your iPod shuffle and go for a run. I think that

00:59:08   would be a lot of fun, but you can't do it.

00:59:12   if like, I mean it's possible to do right in theory in the idea that I imagine

00:59:20   that if I left my iPhone in airplane mode for a period of time at some point

00:59:26   it's going to say to me you need to connect this device to the internet to

00:59:30   continue listening to your music. Yeah to the Apple music tracks. I would imagine

00:59:35   it's gonna say that. We haven't tested that but I would imagine after a month

00:59:38   or a couple of months, that there's probably some leeway there because sometimes you're

00:59:43   just not on the internet, you're traveling internationally or something like that. You

00:59:46   wouldn't want to lose your music, but at some point it's going to say, "Look, you need to

00:59:49   phone home. I need to know that this isn't, you know, that you didn't cancel. Download

00:59:53   the every music piece of music ever and then cancel while this was in airplane mode. We

00:59:58   need to see, you know, we need to verify your subscription." I get that, but there's got

01:00:03   to be a period of time, right? And, you know, for something like an iPod shuffle, is there

01:00:08   gonna be a great heist of Apple Music by pre-loading an iPod Shuffle and then never ever connecting

01:00:15   it to a computer ever again. I guess it's theoretically possible but it seems sort of

01:00:19   silly. And even there, they would have to update the software but to say in order to

01:00:24   listen to Apple Music you need to plug your iPod Shuffle into your Mac every...

01:00:29   - Just after like 30 days it says if you want to continue listening to this you need to

01:00:33   authenticate me. Like it just gives you that audio message. They could do this but it's

01:00:37   clear that there is nobody working on this because like this product image on

01:00:42   apple.com/iPod at the Nano is embarrassing because they have five of

01:00:48   them four of them are facing you from the backs you see it as the colors but

01:00:52   then the other one has a current album Tame Impala's new album and it's the UI

01:00:57   is like shiny right it looks bad it's the iOS 6 UI because and it's not running

01:01:05   iOS 6. This is not an iOS device. It's running something that has been made to look like

01:01:10   iOS and whoever skinned it is working on more important products now. So my thinking is

01:01:22   to keep the iPod Touch margin low, they have to update the anodization

01:01:33   like method for all three of these products and it spreads the cost because

01:01:39   if you wanted to update the colors of this device you would also you can't

01:01:46   separate it from the nano and the shuffle because they have their own

01:01:50   colors you have to update all of the colors at once because it spreads the

01:01:53   cost amongst the three items for like the anodization pit like and the

01:01:57   materials that they use for it so they had to do this to keep the margins

01:02:03   making sense. So they have to update the Nano and the Shuffle even though Apple

01:02:07   doesn't care about them like in that way like they don't care about them in the

01:02:11   same way they care about the touch because the touch got new features and

01:02:14   you can put Apple music on it and stuff like that right it got stuff and it

01:02:18   continues to get iOS updates but the Nano and the Shuffle don't run iOS

01:02:22   there's nobody working on those teams it seems like but they had to update the

01:02:26   colors so if you're gonna update the colors you gotta make new marketing

01:02:29   materials out of it so they just did that and they're trying their best to

01:02:32   hide it. That's my opinion on this. Good conspiracy theory, I like it. I don't know if it has

01:02:36   any basis in reality but it's a good one. Good job. Because I feel like you have to,

01:02:40   you know, they can't keep the old anodization stuff. It doesn't make sense to just do them

01:02:46   for those two devices which if you imagine the Apple Touch isn't selling a lot, no way

01:02:50   are the Nano and the Shuffle selling a lot. Yeah, yeah, I mean, they did, I think it's

01:02:57   this is these products are in the minimal the minimum minimum required to

01:03:04   keep it alive category right now I wonder if it's like I wonder why I wonder

01:03:11   if it's just like a pride thing they want the iPod to live on I think that

01:03:17   they look at the sales and figure that it's you know given the margins on the

01:03:21   products and given the sales you might as well keep selling them like they're

01:03:24   They're in the iPod classic phase now,

01:03:27   where they're just gonna fade away.

01:03:29   But there's still a business there.

01:03:31   Because I mean, at some point, really, if you're Apple,

01:03:33   you're gonna say, look, you've got an iPhone,

01:03:36   and you've got, like who is using the Nano and the Shuffle?

01:03:39   And I know that there are probably like kids,

01:03:42   and there are certain kinds of scenarios

01:03:46   where you would wanna use a Nano or a Shuffle,

01:03:49   and the prices are good, but at some point,

01:03:52   it's still not a good enough business for Apple to be in.

01:03:55   But right now it's just good enough for them

01:03:57   to keep them alive, but to do as little effort,

01:04:00   make as little effort as possible.

01:04:02   - Yeah, it's like we're just gonna keep this

01:04:07   until the point where we can get rid of it,

01:04:09   which is exactly what they did with the iPod Classic.

01:04:11   So maybe we're a year or two away,

01:04:13   maybe a little bit longer before the Nano.

01:04:16   I think the Nano would go first, in my opinion,

01:04:19   and the Shuffle would stick around,

01:04:20   it's probably easier to continue just keeping the shuffle around because it

01:04:24   doesn't look weird right the nano looks weird now but the shuffle is kind of

01:04:29   just like this little thing that you just put music on like it doesn't it

01:04:34   doesn't I can't imagine it requires a lot of development to keep alive yeah

01:04:39   and then it's like you need something to when you're at the gym well the shuffle

01:04:43   is perfect for you sure unless you have an Apple watch let's you have an Apple

01:04:48   See that's the other thing right when you move further down the line.

01:04:51   So we'll just get an "I know the prices aren't the same" but that's what the Apple Watch

01:04:54   is for.

01:04:55   It's exactly for this.

01:04:56   We created a whole version to be made when you work out.

01:04:59   That's the product you want madam.

01:05:00   Like you know that's just a way that I can imagine them going in the future.

01:05:04   Should we do some Ask Upgrade wrap up?

01:05:06   I think that's a good idea.

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01:07:47   So, John asked, "What is the average time you spend producing and editing a podcast,

01:07:55   cutting out the ums and the ahs, splicing in secret messages, and so on?"

01:07:59   Well, secret messages take a lot of time.

01:08:02   Well, for me, it varies.

01:08:06   I do a weekly TV podcast with Tim Goodman, who's the chief critic at The Hollywood Reporter,

01:08:15   and we talk for about an hour, and it takes me maybe five minutes,

01:08:23   because all I really do is cut the beginning and end of the conversation

01:08:27   and get it. And like last week his son

01:08:31   had to leave in the middle of it so he had to like go downstairs and unlock the

01:08:35   door and say goodbye and give him his stuff and

01:08:38   whatever there was like a little bit in the middle where I had to trim that

01:08:41   part out and that was it. That was all I that was

01:08:44   all I did. It was a two-person conversation. I can write down like this

01:08:47   one. I can write down when when there are

01:08:49   issues and we can trim those out and it's super fast.

01:08:52   I don't edit the ums and the ahs out because I think that's how people talk,

01:08:55   unless there's a very long delay somewhere. I just don't think it's worth

01:08:59   it to do. I think you could edit forever and I

01:09:02   don't think you would be appreciably improving the,

01:09:07   see I ummed right there, the product by doing that.

01:09:10   I will say that for something like the incomparable I would spend more like

01:09:14   three or four hours on it. Something like Total Party Kill,

01:09:17   which runs about an hour, I probably spend an hour and a half or two hours

01:09:21   And that's because those are podcasts with lots of people,

01:09:24   and often there are some sound issues,

01:09:27   and I need to play through the entire episode

01:09:29   and make some changes as I run

01:09:34   based on noises that people are making

01:09:36   or things I need to cut out with incomparable.

01:09:38   I do a lot more kind of editorial influence

01:09:41   in terms of saying this is a digression,

01:09:43   I'm gonna take this out.

01:09:44   And so that one is a much more intense podcast.

01:09:49   But even there, I'm not cutting out Umz and Ahz

01:09:51   more than like a long pause, I won't do it.

01:09:55   And occasionally, yes, splicing in a secret message.

01:09:57   So my answer is it really varies depending on

01:10:00   what the show is and what the content is

01:10:02   and what I'm trying to do with it.

01:10:03   And if it's got a lot of people and it's very complicated,

01:10:06   it takes longer.

01:10:07   And shorter ones, if I just recorded it,

01:10:09   I know everything that's in it, I know it sounds fine,

01:10:11   and I know there's one thing I need to clip out,

01:10:14   it's a five or 10 minute process.

01:10:16   What about you?

01:10:17   Is it, I imagine most of the shows you do

01:10:19   are more like that category, the quick edit category.

01:10:22   - Not really anymore.

01:10:24   - No, 'cause you're editing the panel shows now, aren't you?

01:10:28   So how long does this show take to edit?

01:10:30   - This show probably takes about 20 minutes now.

01:10:33   - Yeah.

01:10:34   - Because what I do is, right next to me I have a notepad

01:10:37   and I write down some of the collisions that we have,

01:10:40   so I try and take some of those out

01:10:41   when we talk over each other and stuff like that.

01:10:43   And I pull some of those out

01:10:44   and I do that for all the shows now.

01:10:47   So that has increased my edit time over what it used to be,

01:10:49   which was just cutting the end, cutting the start,

01:10:52   putting it out there and letting it go.

01:10:54   So that is one thing.

01:10:56   I think analog is, we do a heavier edit on that.

01:11:01   So like we cut some stuff to make the show a bit tighter.

01:11:05   - That's the Casey Liz edit.

01:11:06   - Yeah, but the thing is about that is it takes me again

01:11:09   about 20 minutes because Casey does the listen through

01:11:11   and he makes notes for me.

01:11:13   The show that takes me the longest to edit

01:11:15   is Cortex right now.

01:11:16   because we do a full listen through.

01:11:20   I do cut out things like ums and ahs in there

01:11:23   to polish it up and we cut out things that are digression.

01:11:26   It's pretty similar to you with the incomparable actually.

01:11:30   So with me and Gray we do that and we actually both edit.

01:11:33   So I do the first edit, I give it to Gray

01:11:36   and he does a second pass through.

01:11:37   - Wow.

01:11:38   - Yep.

01:11:39   So that's how that show is edited.

01:11:41   So it's a much longer process.

01:11:42   And in those cases what I have found

01:11:44   is a good rule of thumb.

01:11:45   If you're doing a full listen through,

01:11:47   you're cutting the stuff that is irrelevant,

01:11:49   you're cutting the ums and the ahs and things like that,

01:11:51   I find it takes about twice as long as the show is to do.

01:11:55   - Yeah. - I've found.

01:11:56   Because you're going back and you're cutting something,

01:11:58   going back and listening. - That's about it.

01:12:00   I'd say that for incomparable too.

01:12:01   Anything where you've got a big panel like that,

01:12:03   'cause you're really, it's a two to one ratio,

01:12:06   you're listening through it and then there's stuff

01:12:10   that you have to go back and change

01:12:11   and that all kind of adds up to about,

01:12:13   yeah, 'cause your average,

01:12:15   I always tell people it's about three hours

01:12:17   to do the incomparable and you know,

01:12:18   the shows are all about 90 minutes ish.

01:12:22   Sometimes they're not,

01:12:23   but they're in that ballpark usually.

01:12:24   And so the three, three and a half hours

01:12:26   is not unreasonable for that.

01:12:27   I think that's right.

01:12:28   Panel shows are harder because you do have

01:12:30   much more over talking.

01:12:33   Like you and I over talk a little bit

01:12:35   'cause we've got some latency here on this show,

01:12:37   but it's still just two voices.

01:12:38   Even if you kept that in, it would be understandable

01:12:41   'cause there are really only two people it could be.

01:12:43   But when you've got five people, seven people,

01:12:46   you have to take out the interruptions.

01:12:50   There are more interruptions and you have to take them out

01:12:53   or you'd never understand half of what was being said.

01:12:56   - So James asked,

01:12:57   Jason, I'm gonna leave this one for you, I think.

01:13:00   James wants to buy a new MacBook Pro.

01:13:02   Should he wait until USB-C comes to the Pro before buying?

01:13:06   - This is the classic,

01:13:08   when should I buy question with Apple stuff.

01:13:10   And what I would say is,

01:13:13   you say you want to buy a new MacBook Pro,

01:13:15   do you need to buy a new MacBook Pro?

01:13:20   Because that's, the longer you can wait,

01:13:23   the more new stuff there will be.

01:13:25   That's the bottom line.

01:13:27   It's always been that way, it will always be that way.

01:13:30   So hold out until you need to buy one,

01:13:33   but if you need to buy one, you should go ahead and buy one

01:13:35   because you need it, and so it's time.

01:13:38   There will probably be USB-C in the Pro,

01:13:40   but that probably won't be until the next revision

01:13:42   of the Pro line, which probably won't be for another year.

01:13:45   So are you gonna wait until next spring, maybe,

01:13:48   to get a new MacBook Pro with USB-C?

01:13:50   If you can, then you will get that.

01:13:54   Of course, if you buy next year's,

01:13:56   you'll be missing some feature

01:13:57   that's in the year after that,

01:13:58   and that will go on forever.

01:14:00   So at some point you just gotta say,

01:14:01   "All right, I want this one.

01:14:02   "I don't have USB-C on my Retina iMac.

01:14:05   "I'm okay with it because I needed a Retina iMac.

01:14:08   "I needed a new computer and I got it, and it's great."

01:14:10   So in the end, it's a personal decision.

01:14:13   I think your MacBook Pro, you know,

01:14:17   maybe with, well, let's see, I don't know.

01:14:22   I mean, Thunderbolt, the new Thunderbolt

01:14:23   and the new USB are gonna be big changes.

01:14:27   And if you can wait, I would wait

01:14:29   because we are going through a port transition here.

01:14:31   And if you can afford to wait a year,

01:14:33   I think that's probably good.

01:14:34   But again, if you need it, you need it.

01:14:38   But I would wait if you could.

01:14:40   But I would always say that.

01:14:42   And say like, when you start getting that itch

01:14:45   to buy a new computer, don't just buy a new computer.

01:14:48   Wait, wait.

01:14:49   Try to go as far as you can before you just can't stand it

01:14:52   anymore and you have to do it and then buy it.

01:14:55   I think that's what I try to do.

01:14:57   - This is a completely off topic thing,

01:15:02   but something that I meant to mention earlier in the show

01:15:05   about Apple Music.

01:15:07   - Yeah.

01:15:10   This week, Dr. Dre's The Pharmacy Show

01:15:15   has been put in its entirety on Dre's Connect page.

01:15:20   - Oh, see, that's cool, that's cool.

01:15:22   That's an interesting test of listen again mode

01:15:25   instead of just a playlist.

01:15:27   I would love that because I miss some of these shows

01:15:30   and I hear about them later and I can't listen to them.

01:15:32   I can only see the tracks

01:15:33   and listen to the tracks that were played.

01:15:34   And as we've said before,

01:15:36   That's kinda not the point of most of these shows.

01:15:41   The point is to hear the person who's built this hour

01:15:44   or two of entertainment for you,

01:15:46   and not having access to that seems kinda crazy.

01:15:49   - Yep.

01:15:51   - 'Cause I missed Elton John's Rocket Hour

01:15:54   and I'd like to hear it,

01:15:54   but now all I can do is see the playlist.

01:15:56   - There you go.

01:15:58   - Yeah.

01:16:00   - So we have more questions.

01:16:01   This comes from Olivier.

01:16:02   Olivier is looking for a checklist app

01:16:05   where they can reuse the same list template

01:16:08   over and over again.

01:16:10   Any suggestion?

01:16:10   - I was gonna say, let's talk to CGP Grey about this,

01:16:13   but you talk to him regularly, so.

01:16:14   - I do.

01:16:15   So I know from talking to Grey,

01:16:18   that it is possible to have project templates in OmniFocus.

01:16:22   So you can then invoke a template when you need it,

01:16:25   and it will just throw up the project

01:16:26   and all of the associated items with that project.

01:16:29   However, if you need something just more simple,

01:16:32   what I use for this is Clear.

01:16:34   because with Clear I create a list

01:16:36   and I put all the things that I need in that list.

01:16:38   And then when I come to check them off, I check them off,

01:16:40   but I don't delete the tasks.

01:16:43   Once you check all the tasks off in Clear and within a list,

01:16:46   you can pull up to just clear that list, but don't do that.

01:16:49   And then the next time that I need it,

01:16:51   I just swipe all of the tasks again to reactivate them

01:16:53   and it's there ready to go.

01:16:54   I do this for packing, stuff like that.

01:16:57   - Nice.

01:16:57   - So there you go.

01:16:59   And then Will, Will is very angry at us.

01:17:02   - Okay.

01:17:03   about our El Capitan installs.

01:17:05   This is probably more me than you.

01:17:06   - He has three exclamation points in his comment.

01:17:09   - After saying, "Have you never heard of partitions?"

01:17:11   - Yes.

01:17:12   - Yes, Will, I have heard of partitions.

01:17:15   I have an SSD in my MacBook Pro,

01:17:16   so I don't have a ton of space on it.

01:17:18   So I don't wanna put aside a really big portion

01:17:21   of my MacBook Pro.

01:17:22   But also, I want to live with it and use it every day.

01:17:25   And you only live once, so.

01:17:28   - Yeah, I'm with you there.

01:17:30   I have, you know, my iMac has an SSD.

01:17:32   I do think to really use and talk about and write about

01:17:37   an OS 10 version, you gotta live with it.

01:17:41   So you have to live with it.

01:17:42   And I don't have the space on my SSD to partition.

01:17:45   Plus at this point, I would have to like wipe everything

01:17:49   and then repartition.

01:17:50   And I don't wanna do that.

01:17:52   So-- - Oh yeah.

01:17:53   - So-- - Well that's even worse.

01:17:55   - Yeah, I just, I don't wanna do that.

01:17:56   So I have El Capitan on the external drive

01:17:58   and what I'm going to do is,

01:18:01   at some point here, I'm just going to install it.

01:18:03   And the question is just, do I install it on the iMac

01:18:06   or do I install it on my MacBook Air?

01:18:08   And one of them will become El Capitan,

01:18:10   but really it should be the iMac.

01:18:12   I mentioned this last week with the MacBook Air

01:18:14   as my emergency fallback machine

01:18:16   for things that don't work in El Capitan,

01:18:18   because I need to use it every day

01:18:21   in order to write about it.

01:18:22   And the only way, booting,

01:18:23   'cause that's the other thing about partitions,

01:18:24   is booting into another partition to use the new OS,

01:18:28   I never stay there for very long,

01:18:29   'cause then I gotta go back and get work done.

01:18:31   And so I'm not really using the new OS at that point, am I?

01:18:33   I'm just kind of poking around in it

01:18:35   and then I go back to using the computer

01:18:37   and I'm using the old operating system then.

01:18:39   So yes, if you wanna be safe, you can have two partitions

01:18:44   if you wanna set that up.

01:18:46   We have heard of them

01:18:47   and neither of us is really interested in

01:18:50   or willing to do it

01:18:50   or thinks that it would be enough of a benefit.

01:18:52   So, and to further Mr. Hurley's point, YOLO.

01:18:57   - Exactly.

01:18:58   (laughing)

01:18:59   And then finally, upgrading Steve has written in.

01:19:01   Steve is an aspiring writer,

01:19:03   he's starting to write some stuff online

01:19:05   and he wants to try and learn Markdown.

01:19:08   But his son was suggesting to Steve

01:19:11   that he is wasting his time.

01:19:13   His son just said, "Why don't you just write it in Word

01:19:15   "and just paste it into WordPress and call it good."

01:19:17   So Steve wants to know, do we use Markdown?

01:19:21   Do we think it's a good skill to have?

01:19:23   And what do you use to try and learn it?

01:19:25   - That's a good question.

01:19:27   Do you use Markdown?

01:19:28   you don't write a whole lot of things.

01:19:30   - No, but I do write in Markdown.

01:19:33   Whenever I write a blog post, so for example,

01:19:36   I write stuff for the Relay blog here and there

01:19:39   when we have new shows or announcements to make.

01:19:41   I write those in Markdown and I write,

01:19:45   we have a new sponsor system that we're working on

01:19:48   and all of the scripts there are written in Markdown,

01:19:50   so I write those in Markdown.

01:19:52   And also our CMS takes Markdown,

01:19:55   So I write the show notes and stuff in some instances

01:19:59   in Markdown as well.

01:20:00   So I'm very used to it.

01:20:01   And also when I'm making notes for myself,

01:20:04   I write Markdown.

01:20:05   Some of my show notes stuff I wrote.

01:20:07   So yes, I do.

01:20:08   Even though I am not a writer or a blogger

01:20:12   or anything like that,

01:20:13   I still use Markdown when I write things down.

01:20:17   - And I write in Markdown.

01:20:19   What I would say is it depends on what you're writing

01:20:21   and why you're writing it.

01:20:22   You don't need to...

01:20:24   I use Markdown because I like that I can use it

01:20:28   in any text editor and I've internalized the rules,

01:20:32   but, and I've talked to,

01:20:34   I have colleagues who wanna write in Microsoft Word.

01:20:36   I have colleagues who want to write in HTML.

01:20:39   They just do the HTML code.

01:20:41   My feeling is I don't really like reading HTML.

01:20:44   It's not that I can't do it.

01:20:45   It's just that I don't really like reading it

01:20:46   and Markdown is a little less obtrusive to the eye

01:20:49   than HTML code is.

01:20:51   And also I would always make typos in my HTML code.

01:20:54   I'd forget to close a tag.

01:20:57   I'd forget to have a quote mark at the end of the href

01:21:01   in the hyperlink, things like that.

01:21:04   And the way I view Markdown is,

01:21:07   it is easier for me to do it right,

01:21:10   less likely than I'm gonna make a mistake.

01:21:12   And then I generate using the Markdown script,

01:21:15   it generates HTML and that HTML is valid.

01:21:18   It's already, you know, there are no typos in the code

01:21:21   because the Markdown script did it based on my thing.

01:21:24   And I use BBEdit for most of what I write.

01:21:27   I've got a preview window that is a Markdown preview window

01:21:30   with my site template in it.

01:21:32   And so that's great too.

01:21:33   But you know, it doesn't need to be for everyone.

01:21:35   I use it because of the reasons I've said,

01:21:38   because it seems easy to use, it stays readable,

01:21:42   and then it generates HTML easily

01:21:45   in lots of different places.

01:21:46   There are plenty of other ways to write,

01:21:49   depending on what you're writing

01:21:50   and where you're writing them and why you're writing them.

01:21:51   So it may or may not, for Steve,

01:21:53   it may or may not be for him.

01:21:54   If you do wanna learn it,

01:21:57   there are, you know, you should go to the Daring Fireball

01:22:00   and look at the spec document that Gruber has.

01:22:03   If you really want to immerse yourself in Markdown,

01:22:07   I would recommend David Sparks's Markdown book.

01:22:10   It's a book, right?

01:22:14   - It's an iBook, yeah.

01:22:15   - Yeah, that he-- - So it's screencasts

01:22:18   and a book as well.

01:22:20   - Yeah, and he has a co-author,

01:22:23   Eddie Smith co-wrote that with him,

01:22:25   but it's an iBook book that you can get it,

01:22:29   you can see about it at maxsparky.com/markdown.

01:22:32   - And it's in our show notes.

01:22:33   - And it is in our show notes,

01:22:35   which you can find at relay.fm/upgrades/46,

01:22:40   or in your podcast app of choice.

01:22:43   So I'd check that out

01:22:44   If you really wanna dive in and learn it,

01:22:47   David Sparks's stuff is great and that's a good book.

01:22:50   But it's not for everybody and it doesn't have to be.

01:22:52   And your son may be wrong or your son may be right

01:22:56   based on what he knows about what you need to do.

01:22:59   And I think that's the difference.

01:23:00   I think your son probably would tell you

01:23:02   that it was dumb regardless, but it may be worth learning

01:23:06   if you're writing a lot on the web

01:23:08   and you don't like messing around with HTML

01:23:11   or messing around with style tools.

01:23:14   I never liked typing, you know, little, you know,

01:23:17   working style text and stuff.

01:23:19   I'd rather not do that either.

01:23:20   I'd rather work in plain text.

01:23:22   - You mentioned BBEdit.

01:23:25   I also use Byword on the Mac.

01:23:30   - Right, which is what Steve is using.

01:23:32   - Yep, and I also use Draughts.

01:23:34   - Oh yeah, yeah, those are great.

01:23:36   There are a bunch of great Markdown editors

01:23:37   on iOS, especially.

01:23:39   So I use them both.

01:23:41   Right, so that's it for this week.

01:23:43   I want to thank again our sponsors for helping us out today.

01:23:46   Learn.com, Fracture and Smile with TextExpander.

01:23:50   If you want to find our show notes, Jason mentioned those a moment ago, they're at relay.fm/upgrades/46.

01:23:54   If you want to find us online, Jason writes his fantastic stuff over at sixcolors.com

01:24:01   and he's @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L on Twitter.

01:24:05   And I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:24:08   Thank you so much for listening, and we'll be back next time.

01:24:10   Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:24:12   - Goodbye, Myke Hurley.

01:24:14   [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:24:17   [ Music ]