Upgrade

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00:00:03 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 44.

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

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00:00:25 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined as always

00:00:28 ◼   ► from an undisclosed Californian location by Mr. Jason Snow.

00:00:32 ◼   ► - Yes, I'm in a different undisclosed California location.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Hello from sunny and warm Southern California, Myke.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - How is it now?

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Even when it's foggy here, it's warm,

00:00:44 ◼   ► which it puts it one up on the Bay Area

00:00:46 ◼   ► where when it's foggy, it is not warm.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Here when it's foggy, it's actually warm.

00:00:50 ◼   ► So it's been nice.

00:00:51 ◼   ► We were in, my wife and I went down to San Diego

00:00:54 ◼   ► for a couple of days.

00:00:55 ◼   ► It's sort of, it's the week before Comic-Con,

00:00:57 ◼   ► So they're putting up all the Comic-Con banners and things, but I'd always dreamed all the

00:01:00 ◼   ► times I'd gone to Comic-Con.

00:01:01 ◼   ► I'd been to Comic-Con in San Diego like three out of the last five years, something like

00:01:06 ◼   ► that.

00:01:09 ◼   ► I always, I would walk around with just the throngs of people and trying to get from one

00:01:13 ◼   ► place to another and think, "This is really nice.

00:01:15 ◼   ► If there were less people here, and if my wife was with me, this would make a nice vacation."

00:01:21 ◼   ► And finally I put my dream into reality and we went down for a couple of days this week

00:01:26 ◼   ► and just were in San Diego without the kids and left the kids with grandma and grandpa

00:01:30 ◼   ► and had a really nice time so that was like a little mini summer vacation and San Diego

00:01:35 ◼   ► is beautiful and it is even more beautiful when there are not thousands of people surrounding

00:01:39 ◼   ► you at Comic Con so yeah that was nice and now I'm back in greater LA area and we're

00:01:45 ◼   ► headed back home after this program in fact we will be heading home.

00:01:49 ◼   ► You're not going to Comic Con?

00:01:51 ◼   ► No I'm not going to Comic Con this year.

00:01:53 ◼   ► You know, it is huge.

00:01:55 ◼   ► It is too big.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And although I can glean some things from it, I decided, well first off, you have to

00:02:01 ◼   ► re-qualify every couple of years for a press pass, and I'm not entirely sure I would have

00:02:05 ◼   ► gotten one this year, and when you qualify it was like right in the wake of me leaving

00:02:09 ◼   ► Macworld and I had this sort of like, you know, do I want to bother?

00:02:12 ◼   ► And I just decided after last year that I didn't want to go this year, it was too crazy,

00:02:18 ◼   ► and I didn't get enough out of it.

00:02:19 ◼   ► I started going honestly because of the iPad, because comics and the iPad seemed like a

00:02:25 ◼   ► natural fit, and so when Apple, the first year that Apple came out with the iPad, 2010,

00:02:31 ◼   ► I went to Comic Con, talked to the Comixology people, talked to the iVerse people, talked

00:02:35 ◼   ► to a bunch of publishers, went to a bunch of sessions, and it was a moment in time when

00:02:40 ◼   ► the comics industry was really trying to figure out, how do you use these devices to create

00:02:44 ◼   ► comics, how do you use these devices for people to read comics, can you, you know, what does

00:02:47 ◼   ► do for traditional comic book sellers that people are getting these things digitally.

00:02:51 ◼   ► It was a really interesting time. Last year when I went I feel like it's just part of

00:02:55 ◼   ► the culture now.

00:02:56 ◼   ► It's settled.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. People have figured it out. They've figured out yes it is good. And you can make

00:03:02 ◼   ► comics with these devices and you can read them and people buy them digitally and the

00:03:07 ◼   ► comic book stores are still doing okay. The ones that have survived have survived for

00:03:10 ◼   ► other reasons and it's fine.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Yep, and Amazon have tied that market all up with a nice little bow.

00:03:16 ◼   ► Yeah, well they have. I actually did a piece on Six Colors a couple weeks ago because they

00:03:19 ◼   ► did an app update and I got to talk to their, actually I talked to their CEO David Steinberger

00:03:24 ◼   ► who's the CEO of Comixology and he's basically the head of comic books for Amazon too. So

00:03:29 ◼   ► I think they've got some big plans to bring some of their good comic technology over to

00:03:34 ◼   ► the Kindle app at some point. They haven't announced anything and they haven't told me

00:03:37 ◼   ► anything secretly either. It's just speculation but it seems like it makes sense because the

00:03:42 ◼   ► the Kindle stuff isn't as good as the Comixology stuff is in terms of a reading experience.

00:03:47 ◼   ► But anyway while I was talking to him about their app update he mentioned that he had

00:03:51 ◼   ► been listening to our podcast at one point which was pretty fun. So if he's out there,

00:03:57 ◼   ► hello David Steinberger of Comixology. But yeah it's sort of settled now. So for me I

00:04:03 ◼   ► never wanted to wait in line for five hours to see people far away on a panel for forty

00:04:09 ◼   ► it's... and so, I found interesting panels to go to, but it was an interesting people

00:04:15 ◼   ► to talk to, but it was a lot less appealing than it was right when this was a real question

00:04:20 ◼   ► about how people were going to react to it. And it was, you know, I was coming to write

00:04:24 ◼   ► about things, not just to wander around, and that plus being independent, I had to make

00:04:30 ◼   ► some decisions about it, and I thought, "Eh, it's not for me. Maybe I'll do it again,"

00:04:34 ◼   ► Although the size, it's so unwieldy that it's actually kind of difficult to go to for that.

00:04:39 ◼   ► But it does, you know, it was fun.

00:04:42 ◼   ► And San Diego's beautiful.

00:04:43 ◼   ► So I was happy to go to San Diego even though I did it pre-Comic-Con this year.

00:04:48 ◼   ► I always thought I would like to go, but over time my desire has gone away.

00:04:54 ◼   ► You know, it's fun, but it's a spectacle and it's just, I think it's oversized.

00:05:01 ◼   ► That's why, because it just looks too unwieldy.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Yeah, the New York, I've heard good things about the New York Comic Con, which is also

00:05:07 ◼   ► huge.

00:05:08 ◼   ► It's a similar size.

00:05:10 ◼   ► I think the difference is there's a little less...

00:05:12 ◼   ► See, at San Diego Comic Con, it's not, they say it's celebrating the popular arts, and

00:05:17 ◼   ► there's some truth to that.

00:05:18 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of what's there is movies and TV shows doing promotion.

00:05:22 ◼   ► It's not just comics anymore.

00:05:24 ◼   ► It's movies, TV shows, video games, lots of other stuff.

00:05:26 ◼   ► It's a pop culture convention, basically.

00:05:28 ◼   ► And it's kind of an overstuffed bag now.

00:05:32 ◼   ► So maybe something like, maybe you should go to the New York Comic Con or something.

00:05:36 ◼   ► I'm sure there's a really cool equivalent of that in London somewhere.

00:05:39 ◼   ► There is.

00:05:40 ◼   ► And I think the smaller scale might actually benefit that event to not have the insanity

00:05:45 ◼   ► of the large scale.

00:05:46 ◼   ► Yeah, there is a London Comic Con.

00:05:48 ◼   ► I've just not been, I keep missing it.

00:05:50 ◼   ► It's one of those things, you know, like every year I'm like, "Oh, I'll go to that."

00:05:53 ◼   ► And then it just, I just miss it.

00:05:56 ◼   ► Every single time I miss it.

00:05:58 ◼   ► But it looks so fun.

00:05:59 ◼   ► October so maybe I'll maybe I should just get tickets and actually go this time

00:06:03 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, it's it's fun. I mean I I went to a couple conventions when I was a kid and

00:06:09 ◼   ► And then only in the last few years have I been to more sci-fi and comic conventions, and they're kind of fun

00:06:16 ◼   ► They're not I wouldn't say they're like absolutely my bag. Actually. My favorite thing about them is meeting meeting interesting people

00:06:21 ◼   ► Not waiting in lines and not big crowds. Those are not my favorite things

00:06:27 ◼   ► But, I mean, the reason I go, the number one reason I go to the Doctor Who convention in

00:06:30 ◼   ► LA every year now is because I know like 15 people who go to it every year and it's my

00:06:35 ◼   ► chance to see them.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And you know, I honestly don't even need a ticket to the event because I could just stand

00:06:42 ◼   ► in the lobby and have a good time talking to the people I know, mostly podcasters actually.

00:06:47 ◼   ► So anyway, it's a fun little subculture for me to sort of dip in and out of, but I'm happy

00:06:55 ◼   ► to every year that I go I think why am I here and every year that I don't go now that I

00:07:00 ◼   ► since I went the first time the years that I haven't gone I look at it and I'm like oh

00:07:04 ◼   ► Comic Con I'm not there you know and I do feel a little bit of that like but I you know

00:07:09 ◼   ► I'm not there this year but after last year I was like I gotta take a year off at least.

00:07:17 ◼   ► Should we address some follow up? Yeah let's do some let's do some follow up. So interestingly

00:07:21 ◼   ► in the time that we, since last episode to this episode, we were talking about antitrust

00:07:28 ◼   ► and the ebook case came up and basically a couple of days ago the US Court of Appeals

00:07:36 ◼   ► upheld the 2013 decision that Apple was guilty of conspiring with publishers.

00:07:41 ◼   ► So basically Apple had an appeal which has now been shut down and they will have to pay

00:07:45 ◼   ► the $450 million fine.

00:07:48 ◼   ► So it kind of, I think, puts this to bed now.

00:07:50 ◼   ► Yeah, we got, when we were talking about this earlier, last week we got some feedback from

00:07:55 ◼   ► a few people who are like, very much in Apple's camp on this and said, "No, there's no proof

00:08:00 ◼   ► that there was, that Apple was involved in collusion and you should report the real story

00:08:06 ◼   ► and not just assume the worst of Apple and all that."

00:08:08 ◼   ► And my response was, "I believe that Steve Jobs and Apple got the publishers together

00:08:15 ◼   ► and banded them together to push back on Amazon."

00:08:18 ◼   ► I think quite validly and rightly, but that my understanding and my belief of what went

00:08:24 ◼   ► on, that's illegal collusion, and although they were, I think, doing it, not for altruistic

00:08:32 ◼   ► reasons, but doing it to push back against another opponent, and it really was competition,

00:08:39 ◼   ► this court ruling makes it very clear that as far as the US court system is concerned,

00:08:43 ◼   ► Apple did this, it's settled.

00:08:45 ◼   ► The appeal is passed.

00:08:47 ◼   ► a done deal.

00:08:48 ◼   ► >> So you kind of just have to lean to that and be like well that's that then.

00:08:52 ◼   ► >> Yeah and I feel like Apple, I've said this before and you know it's always tricky when

00:08:57 ◼   ► you're talking about Steve Jobs because you know Steve Jobs, I think you just give it

00:09:02 ◼   ► as a given, it's like look Steve Jobs we all know all the great things about Steve Jobs

00:09:06 ◼   ► but one of the issues with Steve Jobs is he believed that sometimes there were things

00:09:12 ◼   ► he wanted to do that weren't legal, and he didn't care. That was part of his personality.

00:09:17 ◼   ► And you saw it in parking and handicap spots, and you saw it in making secret deals to not

00:09:25 ◼   ► hire employees from other tech companies, which is also illegal. And you saw it, I think,

00:09:31 ◼   ► in the e-books case, where he thought, and again, you can see the motivation of it, you

00:09:35 ◼   ► can totally understand why he would say that, which is, you know, we gotta break Amazon

00:09:39 ◼   ► here because they've got a stranglehold on this market. But what he did, I would say

00:09:46 ◼   ► and I think the courts have said, wasn't legal. Maybe it was the right thing to do from a

00:09:51 ◼   ► moral standpoint, but it was also collusion with the leaders of the publishing industry.

00:09:57 ◼   ► So I think that's a case where I would hope that we talk a lot about the new Apple. This

00:10:04 ◼   ► This is one of those cases where maybe the new Apple is less inclined to do the all-out

00:10:09 ◼   ► nuclear patent war with Samsung and stuff like this.

00:10:14 ◼   ► I feel that's one of those areas where Steve Jobs was just so in control of that company

00:10:18 ◼   ► that he would get mad about something or get his mindset on something and it didn't matter

00:10:22 ◼   ► if all of his advisors and his lawyers were saying "no, no, don't" that he would just

00:10:27 ◼   ► do it because that was him.

00:10:29 ◼   ► I think history has shown that Steve had a very much by any means necessary kind of...

00:10:38 ◼   ► Yeah, well he was a rebellious guy, right?

00:10:41 ◼   ► And sometimes I think yes, he was...

00:10:45 ◼   ► I was gonna say shoot first, ask questions later, but that's not entirely right.

00:10:49 ◼   ► It's a...

00:10:50 ◼   ► Whatever it takes.

00:10:51 ◼   ► It's ask forgiveness, not permission, right?

00:10:55 ◼   ► in the pirate flag, even as a huge company, I think that's where he lost some perspective.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Where I believe that he really believed that the non-compete stuff, where they agreed not

00:11:06 ◼   ► to hire away other people from other tech companies and the other tech companies agreed

00:11:10 ◼   ► the same, which is illegal. I think he really did believe that that was doing the best thing

00:11:15 ◼   ► for Apple and didn't think of the fact that he was preventing people from furthering their

00:11:21 ◼   ► careers and stifling their salaries. I don't think he thought that but you know the fact

00:11:26 ◼   ► is I think that's what happened. I think that he just didn't have that perspective because

00:11:31 ◼   ► he was focused on what he was focused on and you know I just think that's that's who he

00:11:35 ◼   ► was. He was he was focused on very particular things and didn't really care if somebody

00:11:42 ◼   ► got in his way and would say that's just bureaucracy or that's just you're just worried about us

00:11:46 ◼   ► getting sued but you know I don't care this is the right thing to do and you know I think

00:11:50 ◼   ► That's all the Samsung patent stuff and the Android patent stuff in general I think is

00:11:55 ◼   ► the same thing.

00:11:56 ◼   ► It's the "let's go nuclear on them" and everybody's like "no no no no no, it's not going to be

00:12:01 ◼   ► worth it, we're not going to win, what's it going to accomplish?"

00:12:03 ◼   ► And I think there was just some anger there.

00:12:05 ◼   ► Was it justified anger?

00:12:06 ◼   ► Again, yes, I think it was justified, but not pragmatic.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Or legal.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Or in the end, yes, or actually something, in the case of the ebook thing, or something

00:12:19 ◼   ► that was legal.

00:12:20 ◼   ► Even though they felt like and may have been in the right in terms of trying to increase

00:12:25 ◼   ► competition in that.

00:12:27 ◼   ► It was actually the rare case, right, I mean super rare case of industry collusion increasing

00:12:33 ◼   ► competition but that's what it was.

00:12:38 ◼   ► In regards to the Apple Music and Taylor Swift and anti-competitive antitrust stuff, Stephen

00:12:46 ◼   ► Hackett, co-host of Connected and co-founder of Relay FM who just also today announced

00:12:52 ◼   ► that he has gone independent. He is now going to be a full-time writer and podcaster and

00:12:58 ◼   ► I'm going to include a link in the show notes to Stephen's blog post. You can go check that

00:13:01 ◼   ► out. He's selling t-shirts to help give him that first kick into the independent world.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Please go help him out. Stephen has joined us in the realm of fun employment, right?

00:13:11 ◼   ► He has indeed. You and me and Stephen and David Sparks.

00:13:16 ◼   ► in the dream. So go help Steven out. Go buy a t-shirt. It's a big thing. It's a big thing

00:13:22 ◼   ► for Relay. We now both are putting, I put all my time into it, Steven's putting a majority

00:13:27 ◼   ► of his time into it. It's exciting for us. It's less than a year. One year in August.

00:13:33 ◼   ► So anyway, so he pointed out that one angle that we potentially missed is that by working

00:13:41 ◼   ► with the record labels and that kind of thing that we may have missed that Apple

00:13:45 ◼   ► Music might be pushed by the record labels to consumers and that could be

00:13:50 ◼   ► part of the anti-competitive stuff that we missed. But you know which I

00:13:54 ◼   ► understand but my feeling about this is while I get that idea of working with

00:13:59 ◼   ► the labels would potentially you know push them on consumers. My point that

00:14:04 ◼   ► Taylor Swift writing the letter means it's all okay from a legal perspective. I

00:14:09 ◼   ► I think that that still stands.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Like it doesn't make any sense.

00:14:11 ◼   ► The Department of Justice is not gonna be,

00:14:13 ◼   ► I still don't think it's gonna be like,

00:14:15 ◼   ► oh, Taylor Swift wrote that letter?

00:14:16 ◼   ► Well of course you can, you know,

00:14:19 ◼   ► of course you can do whatever you want.

00:14:20 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense to me still.

00:14:23 ◼   ► - I agree.

00:14:23 ◼   ► I think, I mean my take on that was,

00:14:26 ◼   ► and I think I said this last week,

00:14:27 ◼   ► is that the fear there is that what there was

00:14:30 ◼   ► is a secret backroom deal like with the eBooks thing

00:14:32 ◼   ► where Apple's like, here's our plan

00:14:35 ◼   ► for how we get rid of Spotify free tier.

00:14:38 ◼   ► is we, you know, colluding to get rid of the idea of a free tier because from all accounts

00:14:44 ◼   ► the music industry doesn't like the free tier and Apple isn't offering a free tier but it

00:14:50 ◼   ► could also be that Apple is coming as a new party here and there and the music industry

00:14:54 ◼   ► is saying look we don't want a free tier and Apple's like great we'll do that you know

00:14:59 ◼   ► just get on your good side and you know I think it'll be I think it'll be fine.

00:15:03 ◼   ► It just funs them. It doesn't make sense to me the idea of like if they paid free trial it would make the music labels

00:15:11 ◼   ► promote Apple music more

00:15:14 ◼   ► Because they're doing something that a competition isn't doing

00:15:16 ◼   ► So, you know therefore it's illegal but Taylor Swift said please pay and they do and then the Department of Justice is like, alright

00:15:25 ◼   ► It's not legal anymore. That still stands for me. It doesn't make any sense.

00:15:28 ◼   ► But your honor there was a blog post

00:15:30 ◼   ► - I do, sir, have you heard the term open letter?

00:15:34 ◼   ► Like it's not, it's just not gonna happen.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Let's move on though.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Alexander pointed out to me a potential solution

00:15:40 ◼   ► for my woes of the force touch track pad.

00:15:43 ◼   ► I was mentioning how the click and drag

00:15:46 ◼   ► just doesn't work for me and in something like Logic,

00:15:48 ◼   ► I cannot work in that scenario.

00:15:50 ◼   ► And he mentioned that there is the ability

00:15:53 ◼   ► to do a three finger drag motion movement.

00:15:56 ◼   ► I don't know if this works in Logic.

00:16:00 ◼   ► I think it works in any windowed thing.

00:16:04 ◼   ► I'm not sure whether it works.

00:16:06 ◼   ► I think it's to drag windows around though,

00:16:08 ◼   ► not to drag objects around.

00:16:10 ◼   ► - That's what I'd assume too.

00:16:12 ◼   ► So I mean, basically, even if there are solutions

00:16:17 ◼   ► which are like more fingers on the track pad,

00:16:19 ◼   ► like I don't, my issue with the Force Touch track pad

00:16:23 ◼   ► is that I just don't think that the best solution

00:16:27 ◼   ► is to take the physical click away from laptops

00:16:30 ◼   ► that have the space to keep it.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Like so, you know, updating the 15 inch

00:16:34 ◼   ► with removing the clickable trackpad,

00:16:36 ◼   ► changing nothing about the body design,

00:16:39 ◼   ► and putting it in there.

00:16:39 ◼   ► I just don't think that it's the right option

00:16:41 ◼   ► because for me, whenever I click down on my trackpad,

00:16:46 ◼   ► a click is registered, right?

00:16:47 ◼   ► That is a given because it is a physical switch

00:16:49 ◼   ► and it works.

00:16:50 ◼   ► I can't think of any time where I've ever clicked

00:16:52 ◼   ► and it hasn't worked.

00:16:54 ◼   ► But it was happening enough for me

00:16:55 ◼   ► on the Force Touch trackpad

00:16:56 ◼   ► where it makes me question if it's worth it doing.

00:16:59 ◼   ► And I just wonder, is it possible,

00:17:03 ◼   ► and I'm sure that they could find a way

00:17:05 ◼   ► to make a hybrid version which has a real click,

00:17:08 ◼   ► but also the pressure sensitivity

00:17:09 ◼   ► so they can continue doing the force touch APIs

00:17:11 ◼   ► that they wanna do.

00:17:12 ◼   ► 'Cause that can, to me, is the only reason

00:17:14 ◼   ► that you would put it in something like the 15 inches

00:17:16 ◼   ► because you wanna push these force touch APIs, right?

00:17:18 ◼   ► So you can have bigger clicks.

00:17:20 ◼   ► What if I clicked down and then kept pushing

00:17:22 ◼   ► and then a force touch click happened, right?

00:17:25 ◼   ► give me that. Don't take away the real click if it doesn't need to be. It just doesn't

00:17:30 ◼   ► make sense to me because you are taking something that is 100% reliable and making it not so.

00:17:36 ◼   ► And that is a very peculiar thing for me. It's a shame because the first time I tried

00:17:40 ◼   ► to force touch I was blown away by it. And when I'm just using it, just browsing around

00:17:44 ◼   ► the web, it is kind of crazy to me because it does feel like a real click. But it's not

00:17:48 ◼   ► one. And at times when I really need it, like when I'm editing a podcast, I need complete

00:17:53 ◼   ► precision and anything that gets in my way during that process is not something that

00:17:57 ◼   ► I want to be working with and I find it, I found it very frustrating to use in those

00:18:01 ◼   ► scenarios.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know if there can be a hybrid version or not based on, because if you're

00:18:06 ◼   ► trying to do pressure sensitivity but you've got a diving board kind of thing, I think

00:18:10 ◼   ► that's, I think it would be much more complicated than just taking it out.

00:18:13 ◼   ► I would, I think my response would be, I wonder if they can make it better than it is in this

00:18:21 ◼   ► first generation because my feeling is not I don't I haven't been bothered by

00:18:25 ◼   ► it like you have but I kind of like it but the one problem I have with it is I

00:18:30 ◼   ► feel like there's not enough feedback I feel like the click and I think Marco

00:18:34 ◼   ► talked about this when he was complaining about the MacBook one as

00:18:38 ◼   ► Marco would call it it doesn't it's not clicky enough that's my feeling about it

00:18:43 ◼   ► is and when I click it I want it to be more I want more feedback and for

00:18:48 ◼   ► whatever reason the maximum feedback it'll give you still doesn't quite feel

00:18:53 ◼   ► it still feels like not a real click and so I wonder if they could just you know

00:18:58 ◼   ► if if what we're really saying here is this is not a solved problem and the

00:19:04 ◼   ► next generation of force touch trackpads needs to be better because this is not

00:19:10 ◼   ► quite good enough for for you to use and you know more fee and I definitely feel

00:19:17 ◼   ► the desire for some more feedback.

00:19:20 ◼   ► That said, I also, I was noticing, I use a trackpad, a Magic Trackpad at my desk at home,

00:19:28 ◼   ► and I have contorted my hand, I actually hurt my wrist a little bit, I contorted my hand

00:19:34 ◼   ► into this weird position in order to use it because I've got my keyboard tray that I use,

00:19:38 ◼   ► has got these, I don't even know what they are, they're like strips of adhesive, I think

00:19:43 ◼   ► to put down like an arm rest or a wrist rest or something

00:19:47 ◼   ► that I don't use.

00:19:49 ◼   ► But I can't put, there's certain places

00:19:53 ◼   ► I can't put the track pad,

00:19:54 ◼   ► because the track pad needs to physically depress,

00:19:57 ◼   ► and if the legs are up, it doesn't click right.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And I had one of those moments where I thought,

00:20:02 ◼   ► well, this is one of the advantages of having

00:20:05 ◼   ► something like the Force Touch track pad,

00:20:07 ◼   ► if you had that as a magic track pad,

00:20:09 ◼   ► is it wouldn't need legs that depress.

00:20:14 ◼   ► It would just sense the pressure

00:20:17 ◼   ► and that would be good enough.

00:20:18 ◼   ► But, so maybe a next generation,

00:20:20 ◼   ► maybe Apple will listen to stories like yours

00:20:24 ◼   ► and say, "Oh, so what is the issue

00:20:27 ◼   ► "about how Myke uses logic

00:20:30 ◼   ► "that doesn't work with the force trudge

00:20:32 ◼   ► "and can we make that better?

00:20:33 ◼   ► "Can we emulate that better?

00:20:34 ◼   ► "Can we make the software better?

00:20:35 ◼   ► "Can we make the vibration motor

00:20:38 ◼   ► more, you know, I don't know, buzzier.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I don't know what the solution is, but maybe that's one way to approach this is.

00:20:49 ◼   ► It's not, it's a first try and it needs to be better.

00:20:54 ◼   ► It definitely does.

00:20:55 ◼   ► I hope that it will be and I'm sure that it will be.

00:20:57 ◼   ► It's just weird to me.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Looking at it now, it's really weird to me that they put it in the 15-inch without doing

00:21:01 ◼   ► anything else.

00:21:02 ◼   ► It wasn't needed, but they did it and it's sort of peculiar.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Well, I mean, they, very clearly Apple feels that the keyboard is a compromise and, you

00:21:13 ◼   ► know, every time I've talked to Apple about the keyboard on the MacBook One, they've said,

00:21:17 ◼   ► "Oh God, look at me, I'm calling the MacBook One Marco!"

00:21:20 ◼   ► It's easier, it is easier because it's just called the MacBook which doesn't really help.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Yeah, the adjective-less MacBook. Every time I talk to somebody from Apple about it, they're

00:21:28 ◼   ► like, "Look, we know that travel is a problem but we increased the, you know, keycaps and

00:21:34 ◼   ► all of that and we're trying to balance it out.

00:21:37 ◼   ► But I've not yet heard somebody at Apple just say, "Oh, it's better this way."

00:21:42 ◼   ► They all seem to admit it's different and it's not better, which for Apple, with any

00:21:47 ◼   ► new piece of technology they do, is a big admission.

00:21:50 ◼   ► It's not actually better, but what they're basically saying is, "But it's not worse because

00:21:55 ◼   ► of other reasons.

00:21:56 ◼   ► We've balanced out the bad and the good."

00:21:59 ◼   ► With the Force Touch trackpad, Apple very clearly thinks, "This is the future, this

00:22:02 ◼   ► is better, it does more stuff, it's more flexible, this is better. So Apple clearly thinks it's

00:22:09 ◼   ► better and that's why they put it in, the 15 and the 13, is they think this is just

00:22:13 ◼   ► better. And what I hear from people who don't like it is they're wrong, or at least for

00:22:18 ◼   ► some class of users they're wrong, it's not better, it needs to be better still because

00:22:23 ◼   ► for a lot of uses it feels like a regression. And again, I hope Apple's listening to that

00:22:30 ◼   ► not just sort of feeling like, "Well, we did that, let's move on to the next thing."

00:22:34 ◼   ► Moving on, in terms of moving on to the next thing, in our upgrade last week we mentioned

00:22:42 ◼   ► that Jim would like us to guess the sex of his baby girl who was, I think, was being

00:22:49 ◼   ► born at that moment.

00:22:52 ◼   ► In advance he wrote to us and said that on the Monday of our show, episode 43, that they

00:22:58 ◼   ► would be having a baby so I assume scheduled like a c-section or something

00:23:01 ◼   ► and he said what's the sex of the baby we don't know and we both declared that

00:23:06 ◼   ► it was a girl and we were right and we were right upgrade wins congratulations

00:23:11 ◼   ► to Jim and the whole and away family on their baby girl yeah absolutely the week

00:23:18 ◼   ► can we claim Jim's baby is the first upgrade baby as I'm concerned we have

00:23:24 ◼   ► just done that yes. Excellent, excellent. Baby upgrade! And the last thing I wanted

00:23:29 ◼   ► to follow out of we have a new show on Relay called Material and it is an

00:23:34 ◼   ► Android and Google focused show which has been created by Russell Ivanovich

00:23:39 ◼   ► Andy Anarko and Yasmeen Evgen who we welcome all three to the Relay family

00:23:43 ◼   ► Material has been created by the three of them in the idea that they want to

00:23:48 ◼   ► create a show about Google and its related products that can be listened to

00:23:52 ◼   ► by anyone. Like their idea is to try and create something that Apple fans will

00:23:57 ◼   ► love, that Windows fans will love, and that Google fans will love. So if you

00:24:00 ◼   ► enjoy this show I heartily recommend that you check out Material. They have a

00:24:05 ◼   ► great episode one and they also have a like a little episode zero, a kind of

00:24:10 ◼   ► like origin story type thing, you know, in case you want a little bit more about

00:24:13 ◼   ► your hosts. You should go and check it out. I really really enjoyed it and it is

00:24:17 ◼   ► a fantastic addition to our lineup at Relay FM that you should go and check

00:24:22 ◼   ► out where I know. Yeah I think the idea of having it be about Google, Google is such a major part of

00:24:27 ◼   ► I mean we talked about it here how we use so much of Google but also to have people who know about

00:24:31 ◼   ► Android and and have that perspective is good it adds to the diversity of the network which I think

00:24:37 ◼   ► is really nice. I know I was trying very hard to recruit Andy to do something at Relay and we got

00:24:45 ◼   ► Andy on this. Russell really interesting it's a great trio so I'm looking forward to it.

00:24:52 ◼   ► I think it's going to be a fun show.

00:24:55 ◼   ► show.

00:25:02 ◼   ► over

00:25:16 ◼   ► That's L Y N D A dot com slash upgrade.

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00:27:07 ◼   ► as

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00:27:35 ◼   ► So Jason please tell me, you put a little topic in here, Safari is the new Internet

00:27:40 ◼   ► Explorer and I read a couple of articles about this and they've got a lot of things in here

00:27:44 ◼   ► that I don't really understand about web frameworks and stuff like that.

00:27:48 ◼   ► But what's going on here, I've seen a lot of people talking about this over the last

00:27:50 ◼   ► few days.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Yeah it was definitely a discussion that was had, this guy named Nolan Lawson who described

00:27:58 ◼   ► himself as an Android and web developer, and I think that is... he actually seems like

00:28:03 ◼   ► a really bright guy, he definitely comes from a particular perspective, and his perspectives

00:28:07 ◼   ► are not necessarily favorable to Apple, I would say, for a couple reasons. One, he doesn't

00:28:14 ◼   ► seem to be a particularly enthusiastic user of Apple's products, he's an Android developer,

00:28:19 ◼   ► and a web developer, and web developers have had an issue, you know, have had an on and

00:28:23 ◼   ► off relationship with Apple. We've been talking a lot about new Apple and old Apple, and this

00:28:31 ◼   ► is one of those cases where Apple's participation in standards bodies and discussion about where

00:28:37 ◼   ► web development standards are going, and you know, it's hot and cold, and it's frustrated

00:28:44 ◼   ► a lot of web developers. So Nolan Lawson wrote this piece where he said Safari is the new

00:28:49 ◼   ► Internet Explorer and he had gone to a conference and said all the developers are frustrated

00:28:54 ◼   ► because there are all these new web technologies that are standards that they've been trying

00:28:58 ◼   ► to push into all the different web browsers because once they're in all the web browsers

00:29:03 ◼   ► then everybody can use them and it's very difficult if something's only supported on

00:29:06 ◼   ► Chrome you know you have to do a fallback or something like that because it's not really

00:29:10 ◼   ► great practice to say sorry this only works on one browser. Generally they want to support

00:29:16 ◼   ► more, they want to support everything, and they've been frustrated by the lack of pace

00:29:22 ◼   ► in Safari development, in WebKit development really.

00:29:25 ◼   ► And I think, also I would say Nolan Lawson's approach is definitely mobile-centric, a lot

00:29:31 ◼   ► of his discussion, it was clear that he was referring to, when he was talking about Safari,

00:29:36 ◼   ► he was really talking about Safari and WebKit on iOS, I think that was his focus, he's not

00:29:42 ◼   ► so concerned about the Mac, he doesn't seem to be somebody who cares particularly about

00:29:45 ◼   ► that aspect of it, he was really talking about mobile. What struck me about it, and I wrote

00:29:49 ◼   ► a link on it, so I was one of the people who, and Rene Ritchie wrote a story at iMore about

00:29:53 ◼   ► it, I was one of the people who I think early on was, I had seen it, it actually floated

00:29:57 ◼   ► up on Nuzzle for me, because I follow a bunch of people who are on the, you know, are web

00:30:02 ◼   ► developers or in the web development and web standards world, and that's how it floated

00:30:06 ◼   ► up in front of me, and I thought, well that's a provocative headline, right? Safari is the

00:30:10 ◼   ► the new IE, and I read the story and what struck me about it was, one, I thought, well,

00:30:16 ◼   ► if Apple is really way behind on a bunch of core web technologies that other people are

00:30:20 ◼   ► building, that concerns me, because Apple should be, I think, generally trying to have

00:30:28 ◼   ► Safari not be this eye-rolling, weird browser.

00:30:31 ◼   ► I think that on general principles, it would be nice if Safari was considered by the web

00:30:39 ◼   ► development community, a modern browser, and not the next IE, right?

00:30:43 ◼   ► So on that level, just generally, I was like, "Well, this is troubling.

00:30:45 ◼   ► I don't know enough about this, but I sure hope that this isn't an accurate depiction."

00:30:49 ◼   ► And I would love to hear from somebody who's on the WebKit team and the Safari team at

00:30:53 ◼   ► Apple sort of talking about what their approach is to development, because one of his examples

00:30:58 ◼   ► is like there's a database format that's been around for quite a while now as a standard

00:31:03 ◼   ► Apple has sort of not implemented or implemented in a kind of partial way, and as a result,

00:31:11 ◼   ► you know, the database that they have to use in Safari is not particularly robust, and

00:31:17 ◼   ► it frustrates web developers that they have to do that. So on that level, you know, again,

00:31:22 ◼   ► not knowing about it, it's like, okay, red flag from web developers saying that Safari

00:31:26 ◼   ► is really bugging them, I wonder what Apple has to say about it. But the other thing that

00:31:30 ◼   ► struck me about it in reading that article was how Nolan Lawson doesn't really understand

00:31:36 ◼   ► Apple, and that just was clear to me in reading it. And that, you know, I got feedback, I

00:31:42 ◼   ► got, because some of my tweets got, and my link got passed around, and I started to get

00:31:48 ◼   ► feedback from people who were very clearly web developers or Android developers, people

00:31:52 ◼   ► outside the kind of Apple sphere, and you know, they basically took it as, "I can't

00:31:56 ◼   ► believe that you would argue that, you know, Apple shouldn't support web standards. You

00:32:02 ◼   ► know, it's like, okay, well that is a really reductive version of what I wrote, because

00:32:06 ◼   ► what I wrote is, it troubles me if Apple's not following web standards. But Nolan Lawson's

00:32:12 ◼   ► perspective in that first piece was very much not understanding anything about Apple. So

00:32:17 ◼   ► he, you know, it was hard not to look at some of the examples that he gave, which were for

00:32:21 ◼   ► initiatives, there are initiatives in the web development world that it will come as

00:32:26 ◼   ► no surprise to anybody are all about giving web developers access as if their apps were

00:32:34 ◼   ► native apps on mobile.

00:32:37 ◼   ► And essentially this is, hey we built up a lot of skills in web development and everybody's

00:32:41 ◼   ► excited about mobile apps, so we really like to be able to use our skills to write those.

00:32:46 ◼   ► So we've built a bunch of this, you know, we've had these standards and it comes, a

00:32:50 ◼   ► lot of it is supported by Chrome because Google and the Chrome team have really been pushing

00:32:55 ◼   ► this idea of websites as apps.

00:32:56 ◼   ► There's the Chrome app store which has not taken the world by storm but it's something

00:33:01 ◼   ► that Google has pushed in the past.

00:33:05 ◼   ► And you know, I totally understand if you're a web developer and you say how do I get,

00:33:08 ◼   ► you know, I want to build apps too.

00:33:10 ◼   ► I want to build mobile apps that we have access to the things that mobile apps do.

00:33:16 ◼   ► But my point was, what's Apple's motivation to support, and the answer that these people

00:33:25 ◼   ► give is, well it's a standard, it's a web standard, why would Apple not want to support

00:33:28 ◼   ► a standard?

00:33:29 ◼   ► But from Apple's perspective it's like, wait a second, you're trying to create your own

00:33:34 ◼   ► cross-platform app standard, and then shame us into supporting it.

00:33:41 ◼   ► And just why would Apple make that a priority?

00:33:45 ◼   ► And then I had some people say, "Well, what do you mean, 'Priority'?

00:33:47 ◼   ► Apple's got lots of money, they could do anything!"

00:33:48 ◼   ► It's like, well, okay, first off, Apple needs to choose what they want their priorities

00:33:52 ◼   ► to be like anyone else, and they're not gonna run out and hire a hundred new programmers

00:33:57 ◼   ► to do, so that they can, with a pile of money, so they can do anything.

00:34:01 ◼   ► They still have to make their choices with their resources, and they also have to make

00:34:04 ◼   ► strategic plans.

00:34:07 ◼   ► And if Apple believes that creating, letting web developers create web apps that run on

00:34:15 ◼   ► Android phones and run on iOS and they run the same and they look the same more or less

00:34:20 ◼   ► and they're not that good but they're okay.

00:34:23 ◼   ► You know if I'm somebody at Apple I think about that and I think what's going to happen

00:34:27 ◼   ► is that there's going to be this whole layer of apps that are no longer developed natively

00:34:32 ◼   ► because the businesses, the banks, whoever it is who don't want to spend the money on

00:34:40 ◼   ► native app development will just build a web app and it'll be okay.

00:34:44 ◼   ► And in the end what you're doing is sort of reducing iOS to a platform with some native

00:34:49 ◼   ► games and Apple's apps and some native apps but also a lot of really boring me too web

00:34:55 ◼   ► apps that are maybe not that attractive and not that fast.

00:35:01 ◼   ► and maybe some of them are good but a lot of them are not good. And why would Apple

00:35:06 ◼   ► do that? I was giving flashbacks to the early days of Java where people said, "Oh, Java's

00:35:12 ◼   ► gonna be great because it's gonna be everywhere and you're gonna be able to write it once

00:35:15 ◼   ► and run it everywhere." And you know, it didn't happen. In the end, all Java did is have terrible

00:35:20 ◼   ► apps that ran everywhere sometimes and that wasn't a good experience. Apple's really kind

00:35:26 ◼   ► gone in on the native app thing with great success.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I would also say that being beholden to a standards body to drive innovation forward

00:35:37 ◼   ► is as non-Apple as it gets.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Because Apple, when Apple rolls out its new APIs to its developers, Apple can make decisions

00:35:47 ◼   ► and say we're going to push the platform forward here and we're going to do this there and

00:35:50 ◼   ► we're going to be innovative in these ways and we're going to catch up with the competition

00:35:53 ◼   ► in these ways and go to it.

00:35:56 ◼   ► I have a hard time seeing how this vision of apps being developed using web technologies,

00:36:03 ◼   ► using web standards, allows Apple to differentiate their platform.

00:36:07 ◼   ► It turns Apple into a meet-to-platform, which if you're an Android and web developer, sounds

00:36:12 ◼   ► like the path forward, because that's obviously the right way to do it.

00:36:16 ◼   ► But if you're anybody who is at Apple, or understands Apple, or understands Apple's

00:36:21 ◼   ► focus on users, you look at that and say, "That sounds like a terrible idea.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Why would they ever do that?

00:36:26 ◼   ► And ultimately that's what struck me about the Safari is the new IE post is, one, I'm

00:36:32 ◼   ► interested to hear from Apple if they really are dragging their feet on things that they

00:36:36 ◼   ► probably should prioritize that will make the web better for users.

00:36:40 ◼   ► And two, that there seems to be this undercurrent in at least part of the web development community

00:36:47 ◼   ► that they really want to make mobile apps and are really mad at Apple because Apple's

00:36:50 ◼   ► like, "I'm not so sure that's a good idea."

00:36:53 ◼   ► Or that Apple's silent about it because when you look at what they're proposing, it's very

00:36:58 ◼   ► hard to see why Apple would think it was a good idea.

00:37:02 ◼   ► So part of what was written about here by Nolan is the way that he phrased the piece,

00:37:11 ◼   ► what it was focused around is he'd just finished and just come back from a conference in London

00:37:16 ◼   ► called the Edge Conference, which is about advancing the web and looking at future web

00:37:21 ◼   ► technologies.

00:37:22 ◼   ► And the reason it struck a chord with him is because nobody from Apple was there, but

00:37:25 ◼   ► basically everybody else had someone.

00:37:29 ◼   ► And so my thinking along these lines is, if you just boil it down to the most simple part,

00:37:37 ◼   ► if Apple does or is ignoring this stuff, is that not just what Microsoft did?

00:37:45 ◼   ► They just ignored web standards, they ignored future web technologies, and then it gave

00:37:51 ◼   ► us IE?

00:37:52 ◼   ► Is that not just what they did?

00:37:53 ◼   ► And then the reason that he makes this comparison is

00:37:57 ◼   ► it's what's installed on every Mac.

00:37:58 ◼   ► Macs are becoming more popular.

00:38:00 ◼   ► iOS devices have it.

00:38:03 ◼   ► And I wanna talk about browser choice in iOS in a minute.

00:38:06 ◼   ► And you're kind of majorly locked into that.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And that's only gaining with Safari View Controller

00:38:12 ◼   ► in iOS 9.

00:38:13 ◼   ► If Apple isn't advancing in certain areas,

00:38:17 ◼   ► does that not just make them like Microsoft?

00:38:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, and I think in Renee's piece,

00:38:24 ◼   ► Renee Ritchie's piece, you talked about this a little bit.

00:38:26 ◼   ► It depends on how you say, just like Microsoft,

00:38:28 ◼   ► what does that mean?

00:38:29 ◼   ► Just like Microsoft, just like IE, what does that mean?

00:38:32 ◼   ► If you cast it in broad terms, you can absolutely say,

00:38:35 ◼   ► look, Apple's behaving like Microsoft with IE.

00:38:38 ◼   ► But what I would say is they're supporting web standards

00:38:42 ◼   ► to improve the web experience so that people who are using

00:38:47 ◼   ► what we think of as the web have a good experience.

00:38:53 ◼   ► And I completely agree that, I mean, look, if the iOS experience with some web app is

00:38:59 ◼   ► really rotten because they have to use a second tier kind of database system to store files

00:39:05 ◼   ► because, and store data because the new standard that's really awesome just hasn't been implemented

00:39:11 ◼   ► by Apple because Apple doesn't care, and I'm not saying that's actually the case, but if

00:39:15 ◼   ► was the case, that would be a problem. And that's the first thing I said in my post about

00:39:18 ◼   ► it was, "Look, I don't know enough about this to say if all of these standards are good

00:39:23 ◼   ► and if they're being followed and if Apple's dragging their feet, but that is bad." And

00:39:26 ◼   ► that would be—you could argue that would be what Microsoft did, because Microsoft was

00:39:31 ◼   ► focused on its own things, and it was focused on, you know, use ActiveX plugins that aren't

00:39:39 ◼   ► even part of web technology. They're, you know, an x86 plug-in standard, so it was completely

00:39:46 ◼   ► tied to Windows and it was outside the realm of even web standards. But it seems to me

00:39:53 ◼   ► that what Apple's doing, the second part of the argument is, if we agree that following

00:39:59 ◼   ► open web standards and keeping modern in browsers is a good thing, and I think I do, at what

00:40:05 ◼   ► point do you draw the line if what the web standards bodies and the web developers want

00:40:11 ◼   ► to do is start to push into areas that you as a platform owner think are your business?

00:40:19 ◼   ► And that was what made me react to the first Nolan Lawson post, is it struck me as that

00:40:30 ◼   ► this stuff was crossing that line, and that they were really saying, "Look, we want to

00:40:35 ◼   ► use this open standards-based platform to write apps."

00:40:41 ◼   ► And there's an argument to be made that that could be great.

00:40:45 ◼   ► I've seen some very interesting people, including Lauren Brikter, say basically, "Oh, you can

00:40:53 ◼   ► do amazing things using the web technology.

00:40:56 ◼   ► you shouldn't assume that it will just lead to crappy web apps and there are also crappy

00:41:00 ◼   ► native apps. Well, okay, I'll say, yeah, I bet there could be good web apps and I know

00:41:05 ◼   ► that there are crappy native apps. But if you're the platform owner, if you're Apple,

00:41:09 ◼   ► especially, where you control the platform completely and your business is very different,

00:41:14 ◼   ► you can't afford to be the same, run the exact same apps as everybody else because your whole

00:41:21 ◼   ► business is being different than if we've signed on to "Yay, web development, web standards,

00:41:29 ◼   ► we love it, it's the side of good."

00:41:31 ◼   ► And then the web standards body says, "Oh, by the way, web standards now include your

00:41:34 ◼   ► development platform for apps.

00:41:36 ◼   ► We want equal access to that."

00:41:38 ◼   ► I think it is perfectly reasonable for Apple to say, "Mm-mm, mm-mm, no.

00:41:43 ◼   ► That we're not going to give you, because we don't think that's going to be a good experience."

00:41:47 ◼   ► And I got a sense of that a little bit.

00:41:49 ◼   ► So I feel like there's layers here and there's a bunch of different issues.

00:41:55 ◼   ► And in some of them I'm in full support.

00:41:57 ◼   ► I would like to hear, I would like the new Apple to come out of its shell even more and

00:42:03 ◼   ► participate in these conferences and say what it likes and doesn't like and say no, we don't

00:42:08 ◼   ► agree with this approach and let everybody know where Apple stands.

00:42:12 ◼   ► Because I got a sense from Nolan Lawson's post that there's a feeling in a lot of the

00:42:15 ◼   ► web development community that there's just a frustration that Apple doesn't participate

00:42:18 ◼   ► more. And, you know, that's been Apple's way in the past, but maybe this is an opportunity

00:42:23 ◼   ► for this new Apple to be a little more forceful and a little more communicative about what

00:42:28 ◼   ► Apple's view of the web and web standards is. Fully support that. But I also kind of

00:42:33 ◼   ► understand that some of what they're suggesting may be things that Apple looks at and goes,

00:42:38 ◼   ► "No, we're not, we don't think that's the right approach for the web." And if that makes

00:42:43 ◼   ► them like Microsoft in a broad sense than I guess they are, but I think that it's an

00:42:49 ◼   ► unfair comparison at that point.

00:42:52 ◼   ► Let's talk about iOS for a moment.

00:42:54 ◼   ► So I've seen people in regards to this piece, also talking about, and I've seen this linked

00:43:00 ◼   ► somewhere, an article about iOS browser choice written by Kenneth, I'm trying to find his

00:43:08 ◼   ► surname.

00:43:09 ◼   ► It's like Kenneth.io is the website.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Kenneth doesn't have his surname, Orkenberg I think maybe? Anyway, he wrote

00:43:17 ◼   ► and he's actually started a petition to Apple. His surname is Dot IO. Yeah, Mr. Dot IO. He

00:43:24 ◼   ► has written, he's actually started a petition and you know he's talking about

00:43:27 ◼   ► the idea that there are technologies in iOS which make Safari better than any

00:43:34 ◼   ► other browser and you obviously can't set browsers that you want like I use

00:43:39 ◼   ► Chrome, I can't set Chrome's the default, and you know there is a potential for

00:43:43 ◼   ► this kind of stuff to increase now that like Safari view controller is coming

00:43:48 ◼   ► around and basically what that does, but I don't know my very sort of basic

00:43:51 ◼   ► understanding of it, is it effectively every time you click on a link a Safari

00:43:55 ◼   ► page can slide in from the outside and there'll be a new back button in the

00:43:59 ◼   ► status bar which can take you back and basically it stops people from needing

00:44:02 ◼   ► to create their own in-app browsers, they can just leverage Safari. So what this

00:44:09 ◼   ► This further points out to me is so many developers are going to use this now and it further increases

00:44:15 ◼   ► Safari's advantage over something like Chrome.

00:44:18 ◼   ► It's all WebKit though.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I mean it doesn't change the fact that this is all being rendered with WebKit.

00:44:22 ◼   ► It just means that it's more clearly sort of in-app Safari instead of a window running

00:44:29 ◼   ► the WebKit browser.

00:44:31 ◼   ► But they're all running though.

00:44:33 ◼   ► Every single thing is in WebKit in iOS.

00:44:36 ◼   ► Apple won't allow anything else basically.

00:44:38 ◼   ► But there are features of Chrome that I like and one of the things that I really like is

00:44:43 ◼   ► that Chrome fully embraced the callback URL.

00:44:48 ◼   ► But that's effectively all Safari View Controller is allowing you to do.

00:44:51 ◼   ► You can go back to where you were.

00:44:53 ◼   ► So I see a world where more and more developers may not even bother adding Chrome support

00:44:59 ◼   ► anymore.

00:45:00 ◼   ► Because many, I'd say, pro apps or productivity apps or very nerdy apps allow for the ability

00:45:07 ◼   ► to open a link into Chrome for that reason and I use that and I'm very happy

00:45:11 ◼   ► with that but I see this kind of stuff I would see a world where this is just

00:45:15 ◼   ► gonna decrease because it'd be like why would you even bother because you get

00:45:18 ◼   ► the full powerful Safari of all the great stuff that has that has built in

00:45:22 ◼   ► that other apps can't take advantage of and it just concerns me Jason because I

00:45:28 ◼   ► am a Chrome user that is the browser that I choose and I see a world where

00:45:33 ◼   ► it's just gonna be less and less advantageous to be using it on iOS.

00:45:42 ◼   ► So it is, this is a difficult thing to pick apart because is what we're seeing

00:45:50 ◼   ► support for web standards or is it an astroturfing campaign by people who like

00:45:57 ◼   ► Chrome and want Google, who is an active participant in web standards, and Chrome to have more

00:46:06 ◼   ► access to iOS.

00:46:08 ◼   ► And you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but when I see this Kenneth post and a link

00:46:14 ◼   ► to Jake from the Chrome team who says, "Hey, if Apple are throttling back their web platform

00:46:19 ◼   ► work on Safari..."

00:46:20 ◼   ► If, I guess, because he's just decided to cast some aspersions there.

00:46:26 ◼   ► I wish they'd let other browsers on iOS so someone else could have a go.

00:46:30 ◼   ► Burn from the guy at Chrome.

00:46:34 ◼   ► That's part of the question here is how much of this, from Apple's perspective, is basically

00:46:39 ◼   ► Google trying to get more access to iOS versus Apple keeping control.

00:46:45 ◼   ► But here's what I'd say.

00:46:47 ◼   ► I think it's dumb that Apple doesn't let other browsers on iOS.

00:46:52 ◼   ► Bottom line.

00:46:53 ◼   ► I think you could argue that there's a consistency approach that you want, and by offering these

00:47:01 ◼   ► system-wide and now in iOS 9, offering this Safari service essentially to bring up Safari

00:47:08 ◼   ► inside an app and then you back out.

00:47:12 ◼   ► I think there's great strength in that, but the flip side of that is great strength that

00:47:17 ◼   ► doesn't need to be necessarily feel to feel threatened by other rendering

00:47:21 ◼   ► engines running on iOS so so yeah I think it's dumb that Chrome can't run on

00:47:28 ◼   ► iOS as Chrome and not as a WebKit instance inside of a wrapper called

00:47:33 ◼   ► Chrome which is what it is right now so I I agree with that I think Apple should

00:47:38 ◼   ► should I mean Apple's never gonna compete with Chrome on iOS in the sense

00:47:44 ◼   ► sense that all of the system calls are going to be based on WebKit and Safari.

00:47:48 ◼   ► That's just how it's going to be because they're the platform vendor and we, you know, we can't

00:47:52 ◼   ► open, you know, you can't open a different camera app by default.

00:47:56 ◼   ► You can't open a different mail app by default.

00:47:59 ◼   ► This is something Federico talks about all the time.

00:48:01 ◼   ► Apple has, at this point, wants to keep all that stuff like super seamless and tied to

00:48:05 ◼   ► the Apple apps.

00:48:06 ◼   ► and it can be frustrating for users of other apps. But I do think that it's fine if Apple

00:48:15 ◼   ► were to open it up to other rendering engines and that's always seemed to be one of the

00:48:20 ◼   ► stranger limits in the app store that you know other browsers are not welcome. Everybody

00:48:29 ◼   ► uses WebKit and that's it.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder, I think it's just an interesting thing to keep an eye on, like where are Apple

00:48:37 ◼   ► going to go in this.

00:48:39 ◼   ► And you know, we've been talking a lot recently about antitrust and anti-competitive stuff,

00:48:43 ◼   ► and considering this is something that Microsoft was hit so hard on, it's in the 90s right?

00:48:50 ◼   ► Sure, but the difference was that Microsoft was effectively a monopoly because they had

00:48:54 ◼   ► more than 90% of the computer industry.

00:48:57 ◼   ► And that's the difference, is if you want to use a different browser, don't use the

00:48:59 ◼   ► iPhone, use Android.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And Android has a bigger market share than iOS.

00:49:04 ◼   ► So there's no, you know, saying it's the same behavior as Microsoft, well, it's different

00:49:08 ◼   ► in one big way.

00:49:09 ◼   ► As Microsoft, we're using its monopoly power to control the web, the entire web, and say

00:49:13 ◼   ► basically we have 90% of web browsing devices, because there was no mobile back then, really.

00:49:19 ◼   ► So we have more than 90% of all of the web looking at our stuff, and we're going to integrate

00:49:24 ◼   ► it everywhere so that we can drown out all the competition and we will control everything

00:49:29 ◼   ► that everyone sees on the web.

00:49:31 ◼   ► What Apple's saying is, we want to control the web on our devices, but if you don't want

00:49:36 ◼   ► to use our devices, you can use any of the other devices because Apple's phone market

00:49:42 ◼   ► share is not even close to half.

00:49:46 ◼   ► For me, that's the big difference.

00:49:48 ◼   ► Is it the same in that it's a platform vendor who wants to control the web on their platform?

00:49:52 ◼   ► Yeah, but Apple's end result is control of their platform and Microsoft's end result

00:49:58 ◼   ► was control of the entire internet and the shutting out of all competition anywhere.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:04 ◼   ► I feel like in the last couple of weeks I've been a little bit down sounding on Apple and

00:50:11 ◼   ► I don't want people to think that I am, if that makes sense.

00:50:14 ◼   ► There's just been a few things recently that have been frustrating me and I only talk about

00:50:20 ◼   ► them in this way because I love them so much and I hate it when they annoy me.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And I think this is a good subject to see both sides of it right.

00:50:32 ◼   ► That for me, I think Apple could be more open, I think Apple should participate more in web

00:50:37 ◼   ► standards, but I also don't think that we should all make the assumption that that means

00:50:41 ◼   ► Apple should say yes to everything that everybody in web standards proposes.

00:50:45 ◼   ► I mean Apple needs to be out there, but they need to be out there saying yes and no.

00:50:50 ◼   ► And if people want to say "Oh I can't believe Apple's not supporting this" that's fine,

00:50:54 ◼   ► But right now it's like we keep waiting for Apple, what the web developers say is we keep

00:50:59 ◼   ► waiting for Apple to release updates to see if they're supporting these things because

00:51:04 ◼   ► we just don't know.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And that's weird.

00:51:08 ◼   ► And I would like to see less of that from Apple.

00:51:12 ◼   ► But I think Apple's absolutely right to be able to say, "No, we don't believe that that's

00:51:17 ◼   ► the future of the web and we don't think that's good for our users and we're not going to

00:51:20 ◼   ► support it."

00:51:21 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess maybe they can they can choose to support what they want to support

00:51:25 ◼   ► But they need to be more open about it rather than just leaving people high and dry just waiting

00:51:30 ◼   ► exactly, and it's totally I think in in

00:51:33 ◼   ► fit it fits with

00:51:36 ◼   ► The way Tim Cook's Apple has been comporting itself lately for it to be more open about that and I hope that happens

00:51:42 ◼   ► I hope that that that is one of the other ways that Apple is gonna be a little more communicative

00:51:47 ◼   ► Than it was in the past that this is not you know webkit development

00:51:52 ◼   ► You know Safari features and user features and things like that

00:51:55 ◼   ► I totally get wanting to keep those secret until you you know you announce El Capitan or whatever

00:52:01 ◼   ► but on the webkit side

00:52:03 ◼   ► Being more open about where Apple thinks webkit is going and how it's going to support different initiatives

00:52:11 ◼   ► Let's let's get that at me open and be as communicative as possible about it

00:52:16 ◼   ► So that Nolan Lawson can write a blog post that says I can't believe Apple doesn't like my database format

00:52:21 ◼   ► Instead of why won't Apple decide what it wants to do with this database format?

00:52:27 ◼   ► Yeah, like basically talk about the things that I don't understand like this kind of stuff like I don't understand it

00:52:34 ◼   ► So if I don't understand it, nobody already understands it unless you do this stuff

00:52:37 ◼   ► there's no harm in talking about it and saying what you're gonna do it or not because you're not giving anything away because like

00:52:45 ◼   ► 99% of people that buy your products don't even know what you're talking about

00:52:49 ◼   ► So like just just tell tell Nolan if you're gonna support the database for just just do it, you know

00:52:54 ◼   ► Also to get back to that ie parallel Microsoft announced all sorts of things for ie Microsoft's issue was not

00:53:01 ◼   ► questions about whether it would support web standards a lot of Microsoft's issues were Microsoft just announced its own web standards and

00:53:09 ◼   ► expected people to build them and

00:53:13 ◼   ► And Apple does occasionally do stuff like that, but the difference is they're just saying

00:53:19 ◼   ► support this on our devices, and Microsoft was literally saying we control the entire

00:53:23 ◼   ► web, you have to do what we say.

00:53:24 ◼   ► So it's a little bit different.

00:53:26 ◼   ► But yeah, I think there's interesting points being made on all sides, and I think I posted

00:53:31 ◼   ► a follow-up because Nolan Lawson posted a follow-up where he was humble and said, you

00:53:36 ◼   ► know, he thinks he probably went too far in some areas, but that this was sort of what

00:53:40 ◼   ► he meant and he didn't expect it to blow up like it did, and I interacted with him a little

00:53:45 ◼   ► bit on Twitter and he seems like a nice guy, and I posted a follow-up and I said, "Look,

00:53:50 ◼   ► I think this is a good discussion that we're having. I don't agree with all of Nolan's

00:53:54 ◼   ► points, he doesn't agree with mine, I don't agree with Lauren Bricter's points, many of

00:54:00 ◼   ► them, and he doesn't agree with mine, and that's fine, I'm glad we're having the conversation.

00:54:05 ◼   ► I'd like Apple to be a part of this conversation too, because it seems like there's a lot of

00:54:08 ◼   ► frustration about not knowing what the heck Apple is doing in areas where Apple

00:54:13 ◼   ► should probably just say look here's what we think.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Right let's take a break and then we'll talk about Apple Music.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Hey! No singing this time. No singing. This week's episode is also brought to you by

00:54:24 ◼   ► Fracture. Fracture, you may have heard of them, they're a fantastic company who do

00:54:28 ◼   ► a really really interesting thing. That Fracture is basically taking the way that

00:54:32 ◼   ► people print and display their favorite types of images and doing it in a brand

00:54:35 ◼   ► new way that is really, really cool.

00:54:38 ◼   ► You upload a photo to fractureme.com

00:54:40 ◼   ► and they don't just make a print of it and send it to your house

00:54:43 ◼   ► and it may be a little frame or something, or maybe they just,

00:54:45 ◼   ► you know, send you a picture in a tube.

00:54:47 ◼   ► What they do is they print your photo directly onto a piece of glass.

00:54:52 ◼   ► It is kind of like magic and it's really amazing.

00:54:55 ◼   ► I have a few fractures here that I've bought over the years, and I have

00:54:58 ◼   ► some ones that people sent to me as gifts as well, and I really love them.

00:55:02 ◼   ► They look incredible.

00:55:03 ◼   ► They're packaged in a really great way.

00:55:05 ◼   ► So I've had them shipped from Florida.

00:55:07 ◼   ► They have a little factory where they check them by hand

00:55:10 ◼   ► and they're all checked for quality.

00:55:11 ◼   ► It's in Gainesville, Florida.

00:55:13 ◼   ► They have a small team there.

00:55:15 ◼   ► They have shipped them to me in the United Kingdom.

00:55:17 ◼   ► Pieces of glass, right?

00:55:18 ◼   ► And they're perfect.

00:55:18 ◼   ► I've had maybe eight or nine fractures sent to me here,

00:55:22 ◼   ► and they have all come through perfect.

00:55:24 ◼   ► I'm so impressed with how they do it.

00:55:26 ◼   ► They package them in such a great way,

00:55:27 ◼   ► and they all come with everything you need as well.

00:55:30 ◼   ► Like, so the packaging and that all helps you.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Basically, the frame that they send you,

00:55:35 ◼   ► like so that the piece of glass is mounted onto like this foam board on the back, which

00:55:39 ◼   ► also has in it the ability to hang it on the wall, they send you the screws and stuff that

00:55:43 ◼   ► you're going to need.

00:55:44 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

00:55:45 ◼   ► I love fracture prints.

00:55:47 ◼   ► Jason, I know that you've had a few, I know when I came to see you in your home in lovely

00:55:52 ◼   ► California you had some fractures on the wall of your own.

00:55:55 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:55:56 ◼   ► I have several.

00:55:57 ◼   ► I have five on the walls out in my garage.

00:55:59 ◼   ► When we talk about the frame, it's not really, it's not a frame, right?

00:56:03 ◼   ► the picture, because the picture is printed on the glass, so instead of having a frame,

00:56:07 ◼   ► what we think of as the frame is the picture, the picture is the frame with fracture, which

00:56:10 ◼   ► is really interesting. I've got a bunch of the smaller squares, and this is following

00:56:15 ◼   ► on from a recommendation that Marco Orment made, where he was printing out, or fracturing,

00:56:22 ◼   ► or however you want to say it, having fracture send him icons of his apps, and so I actually

00:56:27 ◼   ► ordered a bunch of icons of my podcasts and have those up on the wall and they're beautiful

00:56:33 ◼   ► and the orangey color of the Clockwise logo is vibrant and the red in the upgrade logo

00:56:41 ◼   ► is bright and I love the deep bluey purpley incomparable logo and I mean they all look

00:56:48 ◼   ► like the red of the Total Party Kill logo, they're all very pretty.

00:56:52 ◼   ► I've also got Tiffany Arment sent me a black and white photo that she shot of the ATP WWDC

00:57:02 ◼   ► episode from 2014 which we did at the Macworld Podcast Studios.

00:57:06 ◼   ► So it's me because I was setting them up and then the three guys from ATP and Tiff was

00:57:10 ◼   ► there and took a picture of the four of us at the table and said all four of us got that

00:57:17 ◼   ► fracture.

00:57:19 ◼   ► And so I've got that up and that's a pretty cool little souvenir of that moment from 2014.

00:57:23 ◼   ► And then I've also got a big one that also comes from Tiffany Herment of a little painting

00:57:29 ◼   ► she did based on a joke that happened at dinner at the last night at Ool where you and James

00:57:34 ◼   ► Thompson were looking up American words for English things or American translations of

00:57:40 ◼   ► English words.

00:57:41 ◼   ► A hilariously wrong website.

00:57:44 ◼   ► And we ended up in this whole path down about blueberries being bilberries and a container

00:57:51 ◼   ► of them being a punnet of bilberries and Tiff went home and she painted a little watercolor

00:57:58 ◼   ► of a punnet of bilberries and she fractured that and I've got one of those on my wall

00:58:05 ◼   ► too.

00:58:06 ◼   ► I have one too.

00:58:07 ◼   ► It's beautiful.

00:58:08 ◼   ► So it works for art.

00:58:10 ◼   ► You can take your kids art and scan it in and send it to them and have it be in this

00:58:14 ◼   ► kind of beautiful permanent display.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Works great for photos, works great for logos and things like that.

00:58:23 ◼   ► I've been really happy with it.

00:58:24 ◼   ► I think when we repainted our house, redid our house, we took a lot of the photos off

00:58:29 ◼   ► the walls and I'm actually considering when we put stuff back on the walls like in our

00:58:35 ◼   ► hallway doing those with fractures instead of getting prints and then having to buy frames

00:58:40 ◼   ► and getting things matted and framed and all of those things.

00:58:44 ◼   ► So they're really beautiful.

00:58:46 ◼   ► They really are special looking.

00:58:47 ◼   ► I love them a lot.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And they're great.

00:58:50 ◼   ► We mentioned that they're great for gifts as well as just getting your own stuff done.

00:58:53 ◼   ► It's a really easy gift choice.

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00:59:48 ◼   ► So Apple Music we've had it for a week now.

00:59:50 ◼   ► Do you mind if I give my overall feelings and then we can do it?

00:59:54 ◼   ► I was going to say, "Hey Myke, give me your overall feelings about Apple Music."

00:59:58 ◼   ► I was going to start there so let's hear it.

01:00:00 ◼   ► I'm happy with it overall.

01:00:03 ◼   ► There are some niggling problems that I have that I think are gonna just get ironed out

01:00:08 ◼   ► because they tend to be with software more than anything.

01:00:12 ◼   ► iTunes is a little bit confusing but I feel like that's just iTunes right so I

01:00:18 ◼   ► didn't really expect anything else and there is this is some weird stuff like

01:00:23 ◼   ► I've seen it's basically become a meme now which is like if you're listening to

01:00:26 ◼   ► a song how do you get to the artist or album and it's like you press this

01:00:30 ◼   ► button and this button it's possible I can't remember how you I think you tap

01:00:34 ◼   ► the ellipses and then you tap the name of the current song and it takes you to

01:00:38 ◼   ► which doesn't even make any sense.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Like there's some weird navigation stuff.

01:00:42 ◼   ► - Dan Morin posted a thing about it that was so bizarre

01:00:44 ◼   ► that it's like it's a really useful how-to tip

01:00:46 ◼   ► and yet at the same time it should not be like this.

01:00:49 ◼   ► - No.

01:00:50 ◼   ► But it's, you know,

01:00:51 ◼   ► there are things that could be a lot better with it.

01:00:55 ◼   ► But I think overall I am happy with the service

01:00:59 ◼   ► and I am enjoying using it.

01:01:01 ◼   ► But I think that they've got some ways to go still, I think.

01:01:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I wonder if they should have called the three month trial a beta.

01:01:12 ◼   ► Yeah, that probably would have been a good idea.

01:01:16 ◼   ► Jonathan Mann did a song about Apple Music that was mostly from the perspective of musicians

01:01:23 ◼   ► and Dave Whiskus wrote a blog post about it too.

01:01:27 ◼   ► But in Jonathan Mann's song, he mentions in his video that in the past Apple has released

01:01:33 ◼   ► things that were sort of of this level of stability and called it a beta and

01:01:36 ◼   ► you know it I'm I've really enjoyed it myself but I do have that feeling that

01:01:43 ◼   ► you know this got pushed out as a work in progress and maybe they should have

01:01:51 ◼   ► just said look we're gonna do a free public beta for three months you know

01:01:55 ◼   ► use it tell us what you think of it and we'll keep making changes to it as we as

01:02:00 ◼   ► as we go because yeah there's just weird things the UI is weird yeah there's just some strange

01:02:06 ◼   ► stuff in it that I feel like needs to get ironed out but the content is just it's a

01:02:12 ◼   ► lot of fun beats we got to talk about beats one so the day that it launched I was driving

01:02:16 ◼   ► from we drove from San Francisco to LA the day that it launched so we listened to beats

01:02:21 ◼   ► one for quite a while on the drive and then we switched over and listened to some playlists

01:02:26 ◼   ► and stuff. So I'm, you know, this is your guy, Zane Lowe. Do you have more to say about

01:02:33 ◼   ► Beats 1?

01:02:34 ◼   ► Yeah, let me just mention Playlists first.

01:02:37 ◼   ► Oh yeah, okay.

01:02:38 ◼   ► And then we'll talk about Beats 1.

01:02:40 ◼   ► Speaking of Betas.

01:02:41 ◼   ► Well, no, because what I want to say is, because I have good things to say about Playlists,

01:02:45 ◼   ► I'm not sure what, I'll ask you what the problem is that you have. The thing is, like, the

01:02:51 ◼   ► app is frustrating in points, but it's not so much that it's an issue, and fundamentally

01:02:55 ◼   ► the fact that the service works the way that I want it to

01:02:58 ◼   ► and the content that I want is in there

01:02:59 ◼   ► means that I am overall very, very happy with Apple Music.

01:03:03 ◼   ► Like for example, the playlists that they have,

01:03:06 ◼   ► I just adore.

01:03:08 ◼   ► It seems like every time I open the app on my iPhone,

01:03:11 ◼   ► they are suggesting a new playlist to me

01:03:13 ◼   ► which I just wanna listen to instantly.

01:03:16 ◼   ► And I keep pulling them up and it's perfect.

01:03:19 ◼   ► 'Cause I am a big fan of alternative music,

01:03:21 ◼   ► alternative indie rock and stuff like that.

01:03:23 ◼   ► And I follow the Apple--

01:03:25 ◼   ► - It turns out that all of the music that I like

01:03:27 ◼   ► is classified in Apple Music as alternative.

01:03:30 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:03:30 ◼   ► - So like, okay, that's a really broad category

01:03:32 ◼   ► and I don't really like that word, but okay.

01:03:35 ◼   ► - It is, I have the same,

01:03:36 ◼   ► but it doesn't really bother me too much

01:03:37 ◼   ► because the music-

01:03:38 ◼   ► - 'Cause rock is like Jim Dalrymple territory, right?

01:03:41 ◼   ► Rock is like screaming guitars and stuff.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And I consider myself a rock music fan,

01:03:45 ◼   ► but they're not, you know,

01:03:47 ◼   ► what they've classified as rock is very different

01:03:49 ◼   ► than what I would consider alternative.

01:03:51 ◼   ► I'm with you, alternative.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Did you listen to A-list alternative playlist?

01:03:55 ◼   ► 'Cause I really loved it and it was entirely populated

01:03:57 ◼   ► other than Muse and there was one other artist

01:04:01 ◼   ► that I'd heard of in there, but it was entirely populated

01:04:03 ◼   ► by artists I'd never heard of.

01:04:05 ◼   ► And not all of it was great,

01:04:08 ◼   ► but a lot of it was legitimately great.

01:04:11 ◼   ► - I haven't listened to it, but I'm looking at it

01:04:12 ◼   ► and there is a ton of my favorite bands in here.

01:04:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I discovered Civil Twilight, I discovered,

01:04:20 ◼   ► and they're really good.

01:04:21 ◼   ► I'd never heard of them.

01:04:22 ◼   ► one of my favorite songs at the moment is "Bros"

01:04:25 ◼   ► by Wolf Alice, which is a song that I know

01:04:27 ◼   ► from like a year or two ago,

01:04:28 ◼   ► 'cause they've just released their first album.

01:04:31 ◼   ► But it's, yeah, there's just some great stuff on here.

01:04:33 ◼   ► And the thing is, I'm opening it up,

01:04:34 ◼   ► and it's suggesting to me like, alternative party.

01:04:37 ◼   ► And I'm looking at it, I'm like,

01:04:38 ◼   ► "Oh my God, this is amazing."

01:04:39 ◼   ► And there was this one playlist,

01:04:40 ◼   ► which was like, alternative songs about youth.

01:04:43 ◼   ► And it was basically all of the stuff

01:04:45 ◼   ► that I love when I was 19.

01:04:47 ◼   ► And it's like, this is just, and I'm eating it up.

01:04:50 ◼   ► Like, I am in love with these playlists.

01:04:52 ◼   ► and I'm subscribing to more and more and more every single day.

01:04:55 ◼   ► I'll put a couple of links to some of the ones that we've mentioned in the show notes.

01:04:58 ◼   ► It's incredibly hard to link to them.

01:05:00 ◼   ► But I'll find a way.

01:05:01 ◼   ► This is what I was going to say.

01:05:02 ◼   ► My complaints about playlists are my complaints about beats in general,

01:05:05 ◼   ► or sorry, Apple Music in general, which is it's hard to find things.

01:05:08 ◼   ► It's hard to know where to look.

01:05:11 ◼   ► If you heart something,

01:05:13 ◼   ► nothing seems to happen other than filling the recommendation engine.

01:05:16 ◼   ► You can't look at your hearts. They're not saved anywhere.

01:05:18 ◼   ► You can add things.

01:05:19 ◼   ► What you need to do is add things to your library.

01:05:22 ◼   ► Then they show up in your iTunes library, which is very interesting.

01:05:25 ◼   ► It makes no distinction.

01:05:27 ◼   ► So I took that Civil Twilight album and I just added it to my library and it shows up

01:05:32 ◼   ► on my Mac and iTunes, which is crazy.

01:05:35 ◼   ► But cool, I like that, but it's crazy.

01:05:37 ◼   ► And likewise if I subscribe to a playlist, that A-list alternative playlist is in my

01:05:41 ◼   ► playlist on iTunes, which is actually kind of great.

01:05:44 ◼   ► I really like the mixture of my iTunes library.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I know some people have a problem with it, but I really like being able to add things

01:05:50 ◼   ► and have my existing iTunes library and they're all just present.

01:05:54 ◼   ► It's just some confusion about how do I find things?

01:05:56 ◼   ► How do I find an artist?

01:05:58 ◼   ► How do I find a playlist?

01:05:59 ◼   ► How do I save it for later?

01:06:01 ◼   ► Some of that stuff could be clearer.

01:06:03 ◼   ► And then one of the things that frustrates me too is that sometimes I actually just want

01:06:08 ◼   ► to do an artist shuffle.

01:06:10 ◼   ► Like play everything from this artist in a shuffle.

01:06:13 ◼   ► And I don't think you can do that.

01:06:15 ◼   ► Oh man, I haven't tried to do that yet but that's going to drive me crazy if you can't

01:06:18 ◼   ► do that.

01:06:19 ◼   ► It seems very album and track oriented and I don't think you can find an artist and just

01:06:26 ◼   ► press shuffle or play with the shuffle turned on.

01:06:28 ◼   ► I guess what you could do, and I've had to do this in the past, is create a playlist.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Yeah, but again, it ought to be easier than that.

01:06:39 ◼   ► So that's what I've been saying is I think the content is great, not just that they've

01:06:42 ◼   ► got a library of tracks, but the curation that we've been talking about I think is really

01:06:47 ◼   ► good.

01:06:48 ◼   ► I liked it on Beats too. I like that it's more integrated with my music library now

01:06:52 ◼   ► that it's Apple Music. So, yeah, I've been enjoying it. I just feel like some of the

01:06:58 ◼   ► interface stuff, especially on the iPhone, is kind of obscure. That ellipsis button,

01:07:04 ◼   ► right, is like we also put a lot of other crap in here and it's all hiding under the

01:07:08 ◼   ► ellipsis. It's like I'm not quite sure. I mean, it's a hard interface problem. We can't

01:07:14 ◼   ► just say, "Well, it's very obvious how Apple should have done this," because it's like,

01:07:18 ◼   ► this is really hard because they've got a la carte music and they've got a

01:07:22 ◼   ► streaming service and they've got radio and they've got to try to mix it all

01:07:26 ◼   ► together in a way that makes sense and then it also falls back if you're not a

01:07:30 ◼   ► subscriber and you don't want to see it it's a hard problem but they've got more

01:07:34 ◼   ► work to do. Because fundamentally you're not gonna get it to make sense because

01:07:39 ◼   ► it's too much like and over time it will but like it's not gonna make sense

01:07:44 ◼   ► initially because it's a very very hard problem to fix and they will I believe

01:07:50 ◼   ► that they will do it but you've really got to open it up to allow people like

01:07:54 ◼   ► us to complain before you can kind of understand some of the things that

01:07:59 ◼   ► people want to do because especially music everybody has their own way of

01:08:02 ◼   ► wanting to categorize it play it use it the type of stuff they want to look for

01:08:06 ◼   ► and you've got to get this feedback however Apple because I genuinely

01:08:10 ◼   ► I genuinely believe they listen and read, right?

01:08:12 ◼   ► And as well, like to us and to other people and they also look at people on Twitter, I

01:08:17 ◼   ► believe that that is happening.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Apple is very aware of what people are saying about Apple.

01:08:21 ◼   ► I think even in the days when Apple didn't communicate, I can tell you from personal

01:08:25 ◼   ► experience, Apple is paying attention.

01:08:28 ◼   ► And the people who work on Apple products are paying attention to what people say about

01:08:31 ◼   ► their products.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:08:33 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:08:34 ◼   ► It is not a black hole.

01:08:35 ◼   ► So let's talk about Beats 1.

01:08:36 ◼   ► I've been really impressed with it.

01:08:37 ◼   ► I think it's fantastic.

01:08:39 ◼   ► There's so many interesting shows, there's fantastic guest DJs, I like just tuning in

01:08:48 ◼   ► and my girlfriend has just, she asked me about it, I explained it to her, I showed her it

01:08:54 ◼   ► and now I keep hearing music playing, I'm like what is that?

01:08:57 ◼   ► She's like it's Beats 1 and she just keeps listening to it and she seems to really like

01:09:00 ◼   ► it.

01:09:01 ◼   ► There is a great mix, I've been really really frustrated by seeing people saying "oh I don't

01:09:06 ◼   ► like rap".

01:09:07 ◼   ► not just rap, there is rap, you need to understand that rap and hip hop is a massive market of

01:09:13 ◼   ► music and just because you don't listen to it, stop complaining about it, right? Because

01:09:18 ◼   ► there is a big mix there, but you are maybe tuning into the two hours where like, Julie

01:09:24 ◼   ► Adenouga is playing her set and she is predominantly hip hop and rap, because that's where she

01:09:29 ◼   ► came from. But you listen to Zayn and I mean, I'm just gonna say it, I told you, right?

01:09:36 ◼   ► out there that Zane Lowe is amazing.

01:09:38 ◼   ► He is incredible and his sets have been fantastic

01:09:41 ◼   ► and I love that they make playlists out of them

01:09:43 ◼   ► and you can follow them and connect.

01:09:45 ◼   ► I think I--

01:09:45 ◼   ► - I am disappointed that you can't listen back to the show

01:09:49 ◼   ► because the playlist, just having the playlist of the music,

01:09:52 ◼   ► that's a good, what was that song they played,

01:09:55 ◼   ► kind of service, but I do kind of miss the fact

01:09:58 ◼   ► that I can't go back and listen to the actual

01:10:01 ◼   ► Saint Vincent mixtape delivery service

01:10:03 ◼   ► because that was, I only caught the end of it

01:10:06 ◼   ► it was really great but I can't go back and listen to that show. I can see the playlist

01:10:10 ◼   ► and play those songs which is cool but I do wish that they had like a, even if it was

01:10:16 ◼   ► a seven day listen again I-player like kind of experience. We listened to Juliette and

01:10:21 ◼   ► Nuka coming down and that is totally not my genre of music and yet I enjoyed it because

01:10:27 ◼   ► so okay, the one at its worst is radio right and I don't love the radio and a lot of people

01:10:32 ◼   ► don't like the radio, you don't have any control over it, you have to take what comes. And

01:10:37 ◼   ► at its worst, that's what it is. If it's pummeling you with music that you don't like, you should

01:10:42 ◼   ► change the channel or listen to something else, right? But at its best, it is kind of

01:10:48 ◼   ► delightful with the surprise. It takes the fact that you aren't in control and takes

01:10:53 ◼   ► you on a journey. And whether it was, for us, the Julia Inuga set that on her first

01:11:00 ◼   ► day, on that first day, she was taking us on a little trip and she would say, you know,

01:11:06 ◼   ► she was playing, there was hip hop and rap and it was all up tempo, well it was mostly

01:11:13 ◼   ► up tempo, not entirely, but she's dropping in and is a very entertaining person and you

01:11:20 ◼   ► get the feeling like you're driving around town and she's the driver and she's talking

01:11:24 ◼   ► to you and she's playing music and she's telling you about the music and even though

01:11:30 ◼   ► all not all the music with stuff that I liked I kind of felt like I was having a

01:11:34 ◼   ► little bit of an adventure and being exposed to stuff that I wouldn't have

01:11:38 ◼   ► been exposed to and some of it I really did like and then I also felt when I was

01:11:42 ◼   ► done that I had taken this fun trip with with with with Julie and that you know

01:11:49 ◼   ► and that was kind of fun too so I think that at its best that's what it is is

01:11:54 ◼   ► is using the linear nature of radio to, with some very talented people, to take you on

01:12:01 ◼   ► a journey. And the point is almost not the music. I mean, the music is the journey you're

01:12:05 ◼   ► taking, but it's not like a playlist of music with people appearing in between and saying,

01:12:12 ◼   ► "That was this song. Now here is another song." But it is this cur--you get the sense it's

01:12:16 ◼   ► curated by these people, they care about it, and they're entertaining you along the way.

01:12:22 ◼   ► That's when it hits, that's what it is.

01:12:24 ◼   ► And when it doesn't work for you, you know, again, it's radio at that point and you should

01:12:29 ◼   ► change the channel or listen to a playlist.

01:12:33 ◼   ► I think.

01:12:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I completely agree.

01:12:36 ◼   ► The main problem that I think Apple, that Beats 1 has right now is trying to understand

01:12:40 ◼   ► their schedule.

01:12:43 ◼   ► They are attempting to create a schedule on their Tumblr page, but they need to really

01:12:48 ◼   ► lay it out better.

01:12:50 ◼   ► It seems like they play music, they play the shows every 12 hours.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Yeah, it looks like it's a 12 hour loop.

01:12:57 ◼   ► But it's not exactly 12 hours all the time.

01:13:00 ◼   ► Sometimes it's like 11.

01:13:01 ◼   ► It's like for example, I just did a... because Elton John's show starts today.

01:13:06 ◼   ► But it starts at 3am my time.

01:13:09 ◼   ► And then it's going to be broadcast again, you would expect at 3pm tomorrow.

01:13:13 ◼   ► But I just found a link on Elton John's website where they explain it.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Which is really funny.

01:13:18 ◼   ► They say, "It is not a podcast."

01:13:19 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, look at that."

01:13:20 ◼   ► But apparently it's gonna be played at 3 a.m.

01:13:24 ◼   ► and then 2 p.m.

01:13:25 ◼   ► So that's not every 12 hours.

01:13:28 ◼   ► - No, interesting.

01:13:29 ◼   ► - If that is correct, this stuff,

01:13:31 ◼   ► it needs to be explained better

01:13:33 ◼   ► because their website doesn't do a good enough job

01:13:35 ◼   ► of showing it.

01:13:36 ◼   ► For example, if I scroll through now,

01:13:37 ◼   ► it only shows the next 10 hours of stuff.

01:13:39 ◼   ► So they need to get better at that.

01:13:42 ◼   ► But again, that's just a thing.

01:13:43 ◼   ► You just update the website.

01:13:45 ◼   ► But it is, I feel like these are just growing pains.

01:13:48 ◼   ► You just need to make the Tumblr a bit better to understand,

01:13:50 ◼   ► show a bigger list of stuff.

01:13:53 ◼   ► But like, you know, I just think that it's,

01:13:55 ◼   ► Beats One is just brilliant.

01:13:58 ◼   ► It's just such a great idea,

01:13:59 ◼   ► and I think that there is so much stuff

01:14:02 ◼   ► that they can still do with this,

01:14:04 ◼   ► and so many more channels they can do,

01:14:06 ◼   ► and I'm really, you know,

01:14:07 ◼   ► I wanna check out more of the celebrity shows.

01:14:08 ◼   ► I haven't had enough time to listen to it,

01:14:10 ◼   ► but it is partly because I haven't really been able

01:14:12 ◼   ► to work out when some stuff is being broadcast,

01:14:14 ◼   ► and I kinda just tune in and see what's happening

01:14:16 ◼   ► at the time, but that is kinda cool that they do that.

01:14:18 ◼   ► and I can just tune in and see what's there.

01:14:20 ◼   ► By the way, you know, talking about the playlists,

01:14:22 ◼   ► like if you wanna find playlists for a certain show,

01:14:25 ◼   ► just search for that person's name

01:14:27 ◼   ► and you can go to the connect page and follow them

01:14:29 ◼   ► and then the new playlists pop up

01:14:30 ◼   ► and you'll be able to see them in your full YouTube.

01:14:32 ◼   ► It's a lot of stuff and we have to learn new ways

01:14:35 ◼   ► of doing things, but I think what you learn

01:14:37 ◼   ► and it's probably not that difficult.

01:14:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, St. Vincent's Mixtape Delivery Service,

01:14:41 ◼   ► did you listen to that?

01:14:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got the playlist.

01:14:43 ◼   ► I didn't hear the show, but I got the playlist.

01:14:45 ◼   ► - Well, the show is amazing because what the idea here is

01:14:47 ◼   ► that she is talking to a fan and she calls them on the phone

01:14:51 ◼   ► and explains what the songs are on the mixtape

01:14:54 ◼   ► and why she picked them.

01:14:56 ◼   ► And the fans meanwhile, the fan is just melting down

01:14:59 ◼   ► because they're talking to this person they're a fan of.

01:15:01 ◼   ► And it's kind of hilarious.

01:15:03 ◼   ► So there was this girl that she's talking to about this,

01:15:05 ◼   ► but the playlist is insane.

01:15:07 ◼   ► It is an 80s playlist and it is, you know,

01:15:11 ◼   ► that was, it was for day one,

01:15:13 ◼   ► I thought it was a really smart move.

01:15:14 ◼   ► They, you know, they had Zane Lowe on,

01:15:16 ◼   ► They had "Julie" and "Nuga", they had the Beats LA stuff, which was very rap oriented,

01:15:21 ◼   ► hip hop oriented.

01:15:22 ◼   ► And then you get to St. Vincent and it's Depeche Mode, Stereo Lab, New Order, Devo, Chaka Khan,

01:15:29 ◼   ► Erasure, Bjork, David Bowie, Pet Shop Boys, The Pointer Sisters, and Talking Heads.

01:15:34 ◼   ► It's this super blast of the 80s that was, it was just a riot to listen to that.

01:15:40 ◼   ► So yeah, that's the diversity of it too.

01:15:44 ◼   ► I mean linear means that you may not you may tune in and find something you don't like but that you know

01:15:49 ◼   ► That's gonna happen. But sometimes something listening to something you're not you haven't been exposed to you may find something you like about it

01:15:55 ◼   ► That's the other thing that can happen. I'm not gonna listen to it all the time

01:15:57 ◼   ► I don't know how often you're gonna you're gonna listen to it

01:16:00 ◼   ► I'm not gonna listen to it all the time

01:16:01 ◼   ► But I will tune it in from time to time because I'm I'm very curious about what they can provide

01:16:06 ◼   ► And I anticipate that I will probably find some shows that I that I like and that I make time for

01:16:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I want to just lock myself into the schedule a bit more so I can work out how to do it because a lot

01:16:16 ◼   ► Of the work that I do is audio based. So, you know, yeah, that's the challenge

01:16:20 ◼   ► Oh, we should also say thank you to everybody out there who's listening to this podcast and hasn't stopped listening to podcasts

01:16:24 ◼   ► Because of all the things on Apple music and beats one. We thank you. It's not that good. You shouldn't go listen to it

01:16:29 ◼   ► You should just listen to us

01:16:30 ◼   ► Someone said it all back a couple of people said this to me on the day that it launches like aren't you worried?

01:16:35 ◼   ► I'm like not really I mean

01:16:37 ◼   ► There's just another thing for people to listen to I think that people enjoy our stuff enough that they will tune in

01:16:42 ◼   ► Irrespective of what great radios out there that radio and music services have been there all along and this is a new one and and

01:16:49 ◼   ► If it's a better one, then it provides some more competition to us, but I feel like

01:16:54 ◼   ► podcasts and and music are very different and use different parts of the brain and

01:16:59 ◼   ► And you know when I want to listen to music I'll listen to music and when I want to listen to podcasts or audiobooks

01:17:04 ◼   ► I'll listen to those

01:17:06 ◼   ► Should we do some Ask Upgrade?

01:17:08 ◼   ► Let's do that.

01:17:09 ◼   ► This week's episode of Ask Upgrade is brought to you by Hover. Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names.

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01:17:21 ◼   ► I don't have to traverse on a salt course of pop-ups and windows and add-ons. I just go to hover.com

01:17:27 ◼   ► I search what I want. If the TLD that I want is available, I just go and buy it. Done. Easy. In and out.

01:17:33 ◼   ► I don't have to like

01:17:35 ◼   ► uncheck the little checkbox and read the big thing and like make sure that I'm not signing up for I don't know

01:17:42 ◼   ► For a big book to be delivered to my house and I don't know what these people sell but crazy stuff

01:17:47 ◼   ► Hover.com make it super easy. They have all the TLDs that you expect .com, .co, .me

01:17:51 ◼   ► They have all the crazy new ones as well. Maybe when I get a .plumbing or .coffee or .academy domain

01:17:55 ◼   ► You can go and get those they'll show you what's available

01:17:57 ◼   ► You select the ones that you want if maybe a domain isn't available

01:18:01 ◼   ► but hover.com can sometimes sit in the middle and help you with the auctioning process and

01:18:05 ◼   ► that kind of stuff. They offer that service. They can help you out there as well. You know,

01:18:09 ◼   ► you're going to get the great service that hover.com will provide. Their .com domains

01:18:12 ◼   ► start at just $12.99. They have Whois privacy for free, which I love. If a domain supports

01:18:18 ◼   ► Whois privacy, they will just enable it for you during the checkout process. You can uncheck

01:18:22 ◼   ► it if you really want to. I don't know why you'd want to, but you can't. They'll just

01:18:25 ◼   ► take it and then your private information stays private. I just love that they do that.

01:18:29 ◼   ► It just seems like such a no brainer that it should be included but believe it or not

01:18:33 ◼   ► with some other people you have to pay.

01:18:34 ◼   ► I don't know why but they make you do it probably because they can charge you so they will.

01:18:38 ◼   ► This is not the way that hover works.

01:18:39 ◼   ► They have fantastic customer support.

01:18:41 ◼   ► They have a no hold, no wait, no transfer telephone support policy.

01:18:44 ◼   ► You pick up the phone to hover.com you're speaking to a person.

01:18:46 ◼   ► If you don't want to speak to people they have great email communication.

01:18:50 ◼   ► You can do great email support.

01:18:51 ◼   ► I've used that a bunch before.

01:18:53 ◼   ► It's fantastic when I've messed something up they've helped me out.

01:18:55 ◼   ► They've pointed to me exactly what I need to do.

01:18:57 ◼   ► I love it.

01:18:58 ◼   ► of

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01:19:20 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Hover for their support of Upgrade.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Robot or not, huh?

01:19:25 ◼   ► That show is like a whirlwind in the internet.

01:19:29 ◼   ► - We just got a link this weekend to a podcast

01:19:34 ◼   ► that had the guy who created Invader Zim on it,

01:19:37 ◼   ► the animated show, and they must have spent 10 minutes

01:19:41 ◼   ► basically talking about Robot or Not, not the podcast.

01:19:46 ◼   ► They mentioned the podcast and then they just started

01:19:48 ◼   ► debating robots or not of various things,

01:19:50 ◼   ► which was pretty hilarious.

01:19:52 ◼   ► So yeah, it is the dumb idea that has struck a nerve.

01:19:56 ◼   ► I figured it would.

01:19:57 ◼   ► I mean, it struck a nerve with us.

01:19:58 ◼   ► That's why we did it, is that every time anybody

01:20:00 ◼   ► would bring it up, everybody had opinions

01:20:02 ◼   ► and wanted to talk about whether things were robots or not.

01:20:04 ◼   ► So I saw someone on Twitter say,

01:20:06 ◼   ► "It's not a podcast about robots.

01:20:08 ◼   ► "It's a podcast about semantics."

01:20:09 ◼   ► And I don't agree, I think it is a podcast about both.

01:20:12 ◼   ► But yeah, I keep, it's crazy

01:20:15 ◼   ► that people want to listen. If you haven't heard it, it's me and John

01:20:19 ◼   ► Siracusa talking about whether things are robots or not and we post a couple

01:20:23 ◼   ► episodes a week but each episode is only about three minutes long and it's just

01:20:26 ◼   ► about one topic and then we move on. It's been fun to do it and it's been

01:20:31 ◼   ► fun to see people alternately entertained and frustrated by it but

01:20:37 ◼   ► that was sort of the point I think.

01:20:39 ◼   ► I feel like it is completely impossible for me to

01:20:42 ◼   ► to understand what John is gonna say as a robot.

01:20:46 ◼   ► That's what I love about it.

01:20:47 ◼   ► - That is the beauty of it is it's, is it me too, right?

01:20:50 ◼   ► I ask him and I have no idea where he's going.

01:20:53 ◼   ► There have been several times when I'm sure

01:20:54 ◼   ► that we're gonna have a violent disagreement on it

01:20:56 ◼   ► and then I'm surprised that he actually says

01:20:58 ◼   ► what I agree with because I've been ready with Kit,

01:21:01 ◼   ► the car from Knight Rider, I was ready to debate him

01:21:04 ◼   ► vociferously about my feelings about

01:21:06 ◼   ► whether Kit is a robot or not.

01:21:08 ◼   ► It turns out he was on my side on that one.

01:21:11 ◼   ► So that one was an easier one.

01:21:14 ◼   ► I also do kind of approach it from the perspective of,

01:21:17 ◼   ► I really wanna hear what Jon has to say

01:21:19 ◼   ► about whether things are robots or not.

01:21:22 ◼   ► I'm not sure I entirely endorse all of his judgments,

01:21:25 ◼   ► but in this case, Jon is the robot master.

01:21:29 ◼   ► So we see what Jon, it's all about Jon

01:21:32 ◼   ► and what he thinks a robot is

01:21:34 ◼   ► because his ways are strange and interesting.

01:21:37 ◼   ► - Onto Ask Upgrade.

01:21:40 ◼   ► Jason, I also would like to know,

01:21:41 ◼   ► are you still showering with your watch on and have you had any problems with that?

01:21:46 ◼   ► I took a test shower with the first Apple Watch, the one that Brad has now, Brad from

01:21:53 ◼   ► the pen addict. So I wish him luck with it. No, I did that as a test just so I could write

01:22:00 ◼   ► about having taken a shower with it, but I don't shower with my watch on. Also I mostly

01:22:04 ◼   ► am wearing the leather band which is not appropriate for showering. So no I did, actually we go,

01:22:09 ◼   ► On the 4th of July we went to the back bay here in Orange County down to Newport Beach

01:22:16 ◼   ► and we did a, we paddled around on Independence Day, did I say New Year's Day?

01:22:21 ◼   ► On the 4th of July we went and paddled around in outrigger canoes which was a lot of fun.

01:22:28 ◼   ► Went around Balboa Island, stopped, got a frozen banana at the banana stand, there's

01:22:32 ◼   ► always money in the banana stand.

01:22:35 ◼   ► That's actually, I mean that is what they're talking about.

01:22:38 ◼   ► place where we went is basically what they're talking about that's the reference from it's

01:22:43 ◼   ► not just a banana stand but it's a reference lots of references to Balboa Island in Arrested

01:22:48 ◼   ► Development and we got back and I noticed that the the digital crown was like a little

01:22:53 ◼   ► sticky and it's like the salt and and maybe some sand but like the salt had gotten in

01:22:57 ◼   ► there and I actually did for the first time I followed the the tech note and I took off

01:23:02 ◼   ► the the watch band and I took a little you know warm water and I sort of spun the spun

01:23:08 ◼   ► the digital crown under the warm water and then I dried the watch off, put the band back

01:23:11 ◼   ► on, everything's fine.

01:23:13 ◼   ► That terrifies me.

01:23:15 ◼   ► But I'm not taking showers with the Apple Watch.

01:23:18 ◼   ► I'm less careful with it like around water, like washing the dishes or whatever, I don't

01:23:22 ◼   ► take it off, I wouldn't swim with it, I wouldn't shower with it.

01:23:26 ◼   ► I do have some scratches on my watch now, like on the screen, and I'm just trying to

01:23:30 ◼   ► forget about them.

01:23:32 ◼   ► I bought the Apple Care so I figure I'm going to give it like another few months and I'm

01:23:35 ◼   ► gonna take it in, pay the £50 and get them to replace it. Yeah fair enough.

01:23:41 ◼   ► I wore the watch because when we went on the boat because I thought you

01:23:46 ◼   ► know it doesn't matter if it gets splashed on and I had meant to bring my

01:23:50 ◼   ► sport band and actually wear that but I brought the leather it was fine. I didn't

01:23:54 ◼   ► go for a swim. Guy wants to know is CoverFlow truly dead in iTunes in

01:24:01 ◼   ► the new music app, I think it is.

01:24:03 ◼   ► I mean.

01:24:04 ◼   ► Myke, we established already on the show that we are not your cover flow experts but it

01:24:09 ◼   ► seems to be truly totally utterly dead.

01:24:12 ◼   ► Because it's pointless for music.

01:24:16 ◼   ► Jeremy wanted to just kind of, he was very confused Jeremy and I understand.

01:24:22 ◼   ► He doesn't understand iCloud music.

01:24:23 ◼   ► So it's the iCloud music drive thing.

01:24:26 ◼   ► He says in my device I don't want to see all of my iTunes purchases access via iCloud.

01:24:31 ◼   ► I had a time where I had to go in and delete from my library

01:24:35 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff that I just didn't want to see in there

01:24:37 ◼   ► that I bought like six years ago.

01:24:39 ◼   ► - Right.

01:24:40 ◼   ► - It's just a thing.

01:24:41 ◼   ► It seems like basically the iCloud music library

01:24:45 ◼   ► seems like a thing that snuck up on me.

01:24:46 ◼   ► I don't know if I knew about this before.

01:24:48 ◼   ► The first time I recall knowing about it

01:24:50 ◼   ► was when Apple Music launched.

01:24:52 ◼   ► I'm sure it'd been around, but I'd kind of ignored it.

01:24:54 ◼   ► Seems to have to be enabled,

01:24:56 ◼   ► although you get this weird error where it's like,

01:24:59 ◼   ► you can't enable it!

01:25:00 ◼   ► and then it's, did you get that?

01:25:03 ◼   ► Like some really weird arrow popped up

01:25:04 ◼   ► and I saw a bunch of people saying it

01:25:06 ◼   ► when I first launched Apple Music.

01:25:08 ◼   ► And it was like, you cannot sync your library,

01:25:10 ◼   ► you must turn it back on again.

01:25:11 ◼   ► It was very strange.

01:25:12 ◼   ► But yeah, it seems like you have to have

01:25:14 ◼   ► this iCloud music library.

01:25:16 ◼   ► - Well there's a setting, there's a setting to turn it off.

01:25:20 ◼   ► What does that do?

01:25:21 ◼   ► - I don't know, I don't wanna do it, I'm scared.

01:25:23 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:25:25 ◼   ► Well it's, yeah I think,

01:25:28 ◼   ► well I mean this is add songs and playlists

01:25:30 ◼   ► my music and access them from all your devices. I don't know. We're still figuring all this

01:25:34 ◼   ► stuff out. But I think you can't pick and choose, so I think you can either show your

01:25:40 ◼   ► library or not and access Apple Music or not.

01:25:47 ◼   ► Yeah I think it's like the idea of do you want to see what you add to your music library

01:25:50 ◼   ► and mirror across your devices. If you do, you have to have that turned on. I think that's

01:25:54 ◼   ► my understanding of it. So, I mean you could probably try and get by without it, but I

01:25:58 ◼   ► I think in the end you're just gonna have to give in

01:26:00 ◼   ► and just spend the time pruning your library as I did.

01:26:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, or if you don't wanna use Apple Music,

01:26:05 ◼   ► you just turn all that stuff off and then you're old school.

01:26:09 ◼   ► - Talking about that, John asked,

01:26:12 ◼   ► "How long do you think Apple will let me continue

01:26:14 ◼   ► "to keep going with my iTunes match?

01:26:15 ◼   ► "Will I eventually have to switch to Apple Music?"

01:26:18 ◼   ► In all of these scenarios, my advice tends to be the same,

01:26:21 ◼   ► which is just try and get used to the new thing

01:26:24 ◼   ► because eventually the old thing is gonna go away.

01:26:28 ◼   ► Yeah, Apple has said they're going to maintain iTunes Match.

01:26:33 ◼   ► I feel like as long as the iTunes store is a viable business of selling music, actually

01:26:40 ◼   ► selling it, I think iTunes Match is useful for Apple to keep around in parallel because

01:26:44 ◼   ► it provides a service for the people who are buying and not streaming.

01:26:49 ◼   ► But it's hard to see them putting much effort into it.

01:26:51 ◼   ► At the same time, Eddie Q said that he was hoping that the song limit on iTunes Match

01:26:55 ◼   ► would be raised.

01:26:58 ◼   ► I think that is because it also affects the song limit for Apple Music because it has

01:27:02 ◼   ► all of iTunes matches functionality built into it.

01:27:05 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true because you're uploading or matching and then using that on...

01:27:11 ◼   ► This is actually going to change...

01:27:12 ◼   ► Serenity Caldwell wrote a nice piece about like, no, it's not going to add DRM to the

01:27:17 ◼   ► music you already bought.

01:27:19 ◼   ► But it is going to change.

01:27:20 ◼   ► This is going to change how I handle music, because I've got a Mac that I buy music on,

01:27:26 ◼   ► and then I've got a Mac that I have my entire music library stored as a file.

01:27:33 ◼   ► And that Mac, right now, the way I do it, since I have iTunes Match, is I just download

01:27:38 ◼   ► the music on the one Mac, and then it uploads to iCloud, and then I download it on the other

01:27:41 ◼   ► Mac.

01:27:42 ◼   ► And if I give up iTunes Match, which I think I'm going to do, I'm going to just have to

01:27:46 ◼   ► diligent about the music I buy, I actually copy it over to that Mac and add it, so I've got a

01:27:51 ◼   ► non-iTunes, a non-iTunes or Apple Music version of those files, because I did buy them

01:27:59 ◼   ► and I want to have the non-DRM version. But yeah, it depends on if Apple thinks this is a real--

01:28:09 ◼   ► first of all, how much effort is it to do my iTunes match? It may not be a whole lot of effort

01:28:13 ◼   ► to keep that going. And, you know, how big is the market for the people who are not doing Apple Music?

01:28:18 ◼   ► And Apple still wants to serve them, and do they feel that this is a product that the remaining

01:28:25 ◼   ► people who aren't doing Apple Music want or not? But, you know, I'd imagine it'll at least be

01:28:30 ◼   ► around for another year, but I don't know. I don't believe that it's doomed, but it could go away.

01:28:37 ◼   ► I'm not certain it will go away, but it could if Apple just feels like, "Look, don't do

01:28:43 ◼   ► that anymore, just pay for Apple Music."

01:28:45 ◼   ► Do you want to cover this last one here from Michael?

01:28:49 ◼   ► Yeah, so Michael sent us a funny Ask upgrade and linked to a page that is "Brits try to

01:28:58 ◼   ► label the United States on a map and hilarity ensues."

01:29:01 ◼   ► A little 4th of July humor.

01:29:03 ◼   ► And he suggested some great radio drama for us that you get the geography test of trying

01:29:08 ◼   ► to name all the US states followed by me being quizzed about the Magna Carta.

01:29:13 ◼   ► And I wrote back and told Michael that I didn't think this would be effective because I saw

01:29:19 ◼   ► that Doctor Who episode where they go back in time and an android tries to stop the Magna

01:29:24 ◼   ► Carta from being signed and I know all about the Magna Carta because of Doctor Who.

01:29:28 ◼   ► So although it would be funny to test you about states.

01:29:31 ◼   ► Because sometimes I feel like you know a great deal about America that in some areas and

01:29:39 ◼   ► then in other areas you don't.

01:29:41 ◼   ► And it's a funny mixture with you that you have good knowledge and more American knowledge

01:29:46 ◼   ► than I think the average Brit would have.

01:29:50 ◼   ► And yet in other areas I think you haven't picked up that knowledge and so those areas

01:29:55 ◼   ► would be more vacant.

01:29:58 ◼   ► You've been to Memphis and I haven't, and you've been to Atlanta and I haven't, so you've

01:30:02 ◼   ► got me there.

01:30:03 ◼   ► I think I would quite like to take that test, because I don't know how I would do it.

01:30:07 ◼   ► I don't think I would do very well.

01:30:09 ◼   ► You should see if you can find a printout of the US map and just fill it in and scan

01:30:15 ◼   ► that and send it to me and maybe we'll talk about that next time.

01:30:18 ◼   ► Okay, I can do that.

01:30:19 ◼   ► And then you can invent a task for me.

01:30:22 ◼   ► Just don't make it Doctor Who related because then I would win.

01:30:25 ◼   ► So if anybody knows a place where I can take this online, that would be great.

01:30:30 ◼   ► Okay.

01:30:31 ◼   ► If I could just type it in.

01:30:32 ◼   ► Send that to us.

01:30:33 ◼   ► If you know a place where I can just take this test, send that to us.

01:30:36 ◼   ► I suppose.

01:30:37 ◼   ► It's less funny than if I don't have the proof of you writing Minnesota in Wisconsin's box.

01:30:42 ◼   ► I can send you a screenshot of my results or something.

01:30:44 ◼   ► Okay.

01:30:45 ◼   ► All right.

01:30:46 ◼   ► Because, yeah, that would be a lot easier then.

01:30:48 ◼   ► Because I don't have a printer.

01:30:49 ◼   ► Okay.

01:30:50 ◼   ► So that's like number one.

01:30:51 ◼   ► All right.

01:30:52 ◼   ► Yeah, screenshot works.

01:30:53 ◼   ► I just want proof.

01:30:54 ◼   ► I want proof of you labeling Oregon as Washington.

01:30:58 ◼   ► - 'Cause I think it would be very entertaining

01:31:00 ◼   ► for everyone, including me,

01:31:02 ◼   ► to see how I do on something like that.

01:31:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's not Colorado, that's Wyoming.

01:31:05 ◼   ► - So that wraps up for this week's episode of Upgrade.

01:31:09 ◼   ► If you'd like to find the show notes for today's episode,

01:31:11 ◼   ► there's a bunch in there,

01:31:11 ◼   ► including links to a bunch of Apple Music playlists.

01:31:13 ◼   ► You might wanna go check them out.

01:31:14 ◼   ► If they're not in your podcast app of choice,

01:31:16 ◼   ► you can find them at relay.fm/upgrade/44.

01:31:20 ◼   ► If you wanna find Jason online,

01:31:21 ◼   ► he writes over at sixcolors.com,

01:31:23 ◼   ► and he is @JSNEL, J S N E double L on Twitter. I am @imike, I M Y K E. Don't forget all

01:31:28 ◼   ► your feedback, follow up and questions for this show can be tweeted with the hashtag

01:31:31 ◼   ► #askupgrade. It's a great way for us to collect feedback and follow up as well as

01:31:35 ◼   ► the questions that you have so feel free to send any and everything through to there and

01:31:39 ◼   ► that would be great for us especially if you want to send me through some map tests, great

01:31:43 ◼   ► place to do that. Thanks again to our sponsors for helping us out today, Lynda.com, Hover

01:31:47 ◼   ► and Fracture and we'll be back next time with episode number 45. Until then, say goodbye

01:31:52 ◼   ► Jason.

01:31:52 ◼   ► Goodbye everybody.

01:31:54 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:31:57 ◼   ► [ Music ]