Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:10 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 38.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Hover, simplified domain management.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Mail route, a secure hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam.

00:00:22 ◼   ► And, go to meeting.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Make it easy to meet with your team, whenever you need to, wherever you are.

00:00:28 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined as always by the man behind Six Colors, Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Hello, Mr. I'm Michael. How are you?

00:00:37 ◼   ► I am very well, sir. How are you?

00:00:38 ◼   ► I'm doing good. We had the long weekend, which in England is called the, a very bureaucratic

00:00:45 ◼   ► name, the Spring Bank Holiday.

00:00:47 ◼   ► We have many bank holidays. This one doesn't really have too much of a purpose. So it's

00:00:51 ◼   ► just called the Spring one.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And the bank is just because the banks are closed and they felt that that was the most

00:00:58 ◼   ► important thing was that the banks are closed.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I have no idea why they're called that. I feel like I've looked it up once or twice,

00:01:04 ◼   ► but they're just called bank holidays. I mean, sometimes when I used to work in a bank, sometimes

00:01:10 ◼   ► the banks were open, which didn't make any sense, but they were.

00:01:13 ◼   ► That's a crime, the banks open on a bank holiday. That's madness.

00:01:17 ◼   ► You can imagine how we felt.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I was in, on this weekend, which I was in Europe, I forget when that was, 2004 or something

00:01:27 ◼   ► like that. We ended up in Bruges in Belgium and it was also a long weekend there. I think

00:01:34 ◼   ► it was something related to a church calendar thing, but I think everybody sort of agrees

00:01:37 ◼   ► that they're going to find a way to have the last Monday in May off as a kickoff to summer.

00:01:44 ◼   ► It was funny because the banks were definitely on holiday in Bruges because there was no

00:01:48 ◼   ► money in the ATMs. So we were like, "We don't have money and we can't get money." It was

00:01:54 ◼   ► interesting. And we finally found an ATM somewhere, like our fifth ATM, finally we found some

00:02:00 ◼   ► ones that would send some euro to us. It was weird. Belgium, what are you going to do?

00:02:06 ◼   ► Anyway, yes, Memorial Day here in the US. And so, my daughter marched in a parade yesterday,

00:02:12 ◼   ► and yeah, it was nice. It's the official kickoff to summer in San Francisco, which

00:02:16 ◼   ► means that it was like 60 degrees and foggy all day, as it usually is on Memorial Day.

00:02:23 ◼   ► So you know, stand outside and shiver.

00:02:25 ◼   ► Woo, summer.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Woo hoo.

00:02:27 ◼   ► I'm hoping for a little bit of sun in a couple of weeks' time.

00:02:31 ◼   ► I hope, well we haven't had any so far, but I hope that it turns nice so that we can put

00:02:35 ◼   ► on a nice show for you people when you're all out here in two weeks.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Two weeks, Myke.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Two weeks.

00:02:40 ◼   ► So you know what that means next week, right?

00:02:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:02:44 ◼   ► No, what does that mean for next week?

00:02:45 ◼   ► Predictions!

00:02:46 ◼   ► Oh no, okay good.

00:02:48 ◼   ► I was worried that, I was worried you were going to say something like it's the mid-year

00:02:52 ◼   ► Upgrady Awards! No! I have ideas about the Upgradies by the way for the end of the year.

00:02:58 ◼   ► I have ideas.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Steve: See? I told you. I told you it would kick in.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Adam; I do have some ideas. They will actually be the second annual Upgradies, which is you

00:03:06 ◼   ► can't do annual unless you do them again. So it will actually be legitimately annual.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Anyway, yes, we'll do some predictions next week and then we will be together for our,

00:03:18 ◼   ► I guess this will be our third live in-person upgrade in two weeks after the keynote.

00:03:25 ◼   ► So that will be exciting.

00:03:26 ◼   ► We'll be recording on Monday as well which is fantastic.

00:03:28 ◼   ► So we'll be live from San Francisco which I enjoy.

00:03:32 ◼   ► This is where the Monday broadcast pays off.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Although today it's on Tuesday.

00:03:37 ◼   ► And also whatever day, podcasting, whatever day you choose to listen to this, it might

00:03:41 ◼   ► be Thursday where you are.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Hello Thursday.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Should we do some follow up?

00:03:46 ◼   ► I think that's a good idea.

00:03:47 ◼   ► A couple of things this week.

00:03:49 ◼   ► So we had something from listener Eric who wanted to kind of just... we were talking

00:03:54 ◼   ► about pronunciations again last week in Ask Upgrade about trying to teach Siri pronunciations

00:04:01 ◼   ► of names.

00:04:02 ◼   ► And we were saying that where you can't necessarily teach it, pronunciations of different words

00:04:07 ◼   ► for the text dictation, you can teach it to learn your name and to say your name back

00:04:12 ◼   ► to you correctly.

00:04:13 ◼   ► However, Eric has had some problems with this.

00:04:15 ◼   ► cannot teach Siri how to pronounce his name. His last name is spelled R-A-U-C-H. It has

00:04:24 ◼   ► a silent C-H. So I'm going to say it's like Rau or Raul or something like that. He

00:04:30 ◼   ► says he cannot get Siri to learn his name in any fashion, which is so unfortunate. I

00:04:36 ◼   ► guess you'd have to like put it in as like R-A-W or something like that.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Well, this is my understanding is that there is a field in contacts for pronunciation.

00:04:44 ◼   ► And I think, but I don't know where it gets used, but it might get used in this way, where

00:04:50 ◼   ► you can put in the pronunciation and you can have that be a phonetic, you know, pronunciation,

00:04:54 ◼   ► something ridiculous. Like when I do the incomparable intros and the little computer voice reads

00:04:58 ◼   ► the number and sometimes those are bizarre phrases that I put in there in order to get

00:05:04 ◼   ► it to sound the way I want it to sound. And I think you can do that with any contact is

00:05:10 ◼   ► have a pronunciation field and it gets used in some places, but it's inconsistent and

00:05:14 ◼   ► yeah, Siri, you know, she's going to do what she's going to do or if you're in other parts

00:05:19 ◼   ► of the world, he's going to do what he's going to do. But, you know, Siri is just, Siri is

00:05:22 ◼   ► going to Siri, is what I'm saying.

00:05:25 ◼   ► -Siri is a dude here.

00:05:27 ◼   ► -Yeah, I know.

00:05:28 ◼   ► -I think that there is a female voice now, but I'm very used to British Siri being a

00:05:33 ◼   ► guy, so I kind of just leave it as it is. But I think that we got the female voice in

00:05:38 ◼   ► and like, you know, a seven or something.

00:05:40 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:05:41 ◼   ► - But, you know, it takes on a certain personality, so.

00:05:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah.

00:05:44 ◼   ► - So we were talking about Letterman a bit last week.

00:05:48 ◼   ► We were talking about your "Encompro" episode,

00:05:50 ◼   ► and I'd kind of just wanted to get,

00:05:51 ◼   ► 'cause I don't know if you're gonna talk about it

00:05:53 ◼   ► anywhere else, I wanted to just get a brief feeling

00:05:55 ◼   ► for were you happy, did you watch Letterman finale?

00:05:59 ◼   ► How did you feel about it?

00:06:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, we watched it on broadcast,

00:06:03 ◼   ► stayed up late and watched it,

00:06:04 ◼   ► I talked about it a little bit on the TV podcast I do with Tim Goodman, the TV critic at The

00:06:11 ◼   ► Hollywood Reporter, which is on the Incomparable. It's called TV Talk Machine. I talked about

00:06:15 ◼   ► it a little bit with him there. You know, it was a good sendoff. It wasn't Weepy and

00:06:20 ◼   ► Maudlin. It was lots of montages of stuff. And it ended with this crazy montage that

00:06:28 ◼   ► the producers have been working on since December. Basically, Foo Fighters comes out, starts

00:06:32 ◼   ► playing Everlong live on stage, but then instead of showing them, they run this montage. Somebody

00:06:38 ◼   ► annotated it on Facebook. It's like 500 different clips over the span of four minutes or something.

00:06:44 ◼   ► It's super crazy. I literally felt like my life was passing before my eyes, especially

00:06:50 ◼   ► for the first half of it because I remember almost everything in the first half, certainly

00:06:55 ◼   ► in his NBC days. Suddenly, I had that moment of like, "That is my life from 1985 to,

00:07:02 ◼   ► 1995 at least. It was pretty crazy. So it was good. I think it was a good send-off to

00:07:10 ◼   ► just say goodbye and talk about stuff, memories and do some funny bits and have it be done.

00:07:18 ◼   ► And it wasn't one of those kind of teary finales and I think that was fitting. And so yeah,

00:07:24 ◼   ► it was good. Beyond that, I mean I didn't watch the show. I wasn't watching the show

00:07:30 ◼   ► show regularly the last few years anyway. So, you know, it's just a passing of a moment

00:07:37 ◼   ► then. And I said that in the incomparable episode that I did about it is, you know,

00:07:41 ◼   ► when I thought about it, you know, this is something that I moved on from this a long

00:07:45 ◼   ► time ago. And so it's not as if something was taken from me so much as it was a moment

00:07:50 ◼   ► to think about those good times in the past. And I think the finale did that too. So, yeah.

00:07:57 ◼   ► So thanks for asking, but it was good. Yeah.

00:07:58 ◼   ► - So when I saw everybody talking about it,

00:08:00 ◼   ► I decided that I would go to YouTube

00:08:03 ◼   ► and I watched a few clips from the finale.

00:08:05 ◼   ► But it was one of those scenarios,

00:08:07 ◼   ► like I just wanna watch the whole thing.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Like just give me the whole thing.

00:08:11 ◼   ► However you need to do that, just let me watch it.

00:08:13 ◼   ► Like I've never wanted to watch Letterman before

00:08:16 ◼   ► because it's just never been something

00:08:17 ◼   ► that was on my radar too much.

00:08:18 ◼   ► Like I know of him, I know about all the late night shows.

00:08:23 ◼   ► But I didn't really particularly have an interest

00:08:26 ◼   ► in watching it before.

00:08:27 ◼   ► But I wanted to watch that episode.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Couldn't like just watch these little snippets of it, which was fine

00:08:32 ◼   ► But I kind of wanted to see the whole thing and plus like they were you know

00:08:36 ◼   ► The snippets that I watched were good

00:08:38 ◼   ► But like they weren't I mean and I had heard people talking about this like they weren't like the kind of snippets that you see from

00:08:45 ◼   ► other

00:08:46 ◼   ► Talk shows where they're like you can just take that one little bit and you're good, right?

00:08:50 ◼   ► It felt like that there was more to it than that because I know like, you know

00:08:54 ◼   ► I'd heard like in some profiles that maybe one of the reasons he's decided to go away is because shows like

00:09:00 ◼   ► Jimmy Fallon and James Corden and people like that they make their bits to be shared right to go viral, right?

00:09:08 ◼   ► And he wasn't too interested in doing that

00:09:11 ◼   ► Well, I think there is a full show up there

00:09:14 ◼   ► You may have to do your magical things to make it think that you're in the US

00:09:19 ◼   ► but there is on the CBS comm slash late show there's a

00:09:22 ◼   ► The leftmost in their list of latest videos is full episode, and it looks like that's

00:09:30 ◼   ► the final episode, so it may be there.

00:09:32 ◼   ► >> So I was just going to YouTube.

00:09:34 ◼   ► >> Oh yeah.

00:09:35 ◼   ► >> I don't know why not just put it on YouTube.

00:09:38 ◼   ► >> Well I'm sure they have their reasons, but I think there's a way to get it.

00:09:41 ◼   ► >> I can't watch it because of my geographical reasons, although I can if I do some stuff.

00:09:46 ◼   ► >> You can do your magic tricks anyway, but yeah.

00:09:51 ◼   ► It's funny because they're done now and they were ripping the seats out of the theater

00:09:55 ◼   ► and they asked him about it actually. He was at the Indy 500, the auto race this weekend

00:10:01 ◼   ► because he's from Indianapolis and he is a co-owner of cars that race in that race actually.

00:10:09 ◼   ► He said, "Yeah, day later they're tearing the seats out of the theater." So that pretty

00:10:14 ◼   ► much says it all about show business, right? So they're done. They're moving out the staff

00:10:20 ◼   ► and it's just over. It wasn't just, "We're going to have some time to tidy up." It's

00:10:26 ◼   ► shows over, folks. So that's kind of interesting, that website on the CBS site. It presumably

00:10:33 ◼   ► is just abandoned now and then at some point, it will get turned into the Stephen Colbert

00:10:37 ◼   ► site. And I have this question about contractually, at what point are they on their own and that

00:10:43 ◼   ► Letterman's company owns all that material and are they going to… Is there a staff

00:10:48 ◼   ► at his company because Worldwide Pants is his production company. Are they building

00:10:52 ◼   ► a David Letterman.com or something like that that's got old clips or archives or things

00:10:57 ◼   ► they post on YouTube? Johnny Carson's estate actually has that. So I wonder if they'll

00:11:01 ◼   ► do that. But it's interesting. This is one of those cases of like digital permanence

00:11:05 ◼   ► and impermanence where I feel like a lot of these clips that are on the official site,

00:11:09 ◼   ► they're just going to go away because CBS is going to want to promote the new version

00:11:14 ◼   ► of the show hosted by Stephen Colbert and I'm not sure whether that all the Letterman

00:11:18 ◼   ► stuff won't just get thrown in the trash you know digitally like the like the set and the

00:11:23 ◼   ► seats were thrown in the trash the next day.

00:11:25 ◼   ► David: You don't want to like you know from that perspective you don't want to revel in

00:11:28 ◼   ► how great the past is when you're trying to promote the new show.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Tim: CBS's job is to promote the new show plus I'm not quite sure what CBS's rights

00:11:35 ◼   ► to that stuff are contractually after some period of time like it may be that the moment

00:11:39 ◼   ► Colbert premieres, the Letterman stuff has to go off because it's not theirs anymore.

00:11:44 ◼   ► It belongs to Letterman and not CBS. That is probably the case. So it's a weird thing,

00:11:50 ◼   ► but it made me think about the fact that NBC and David Letterman, they have never made

00:11:58 ◼   ► much effort to show old clips. There have been reruns a couple of times of old David

00:12:03 ◼   ► Letterman shows and those got nipped in the bud pretty quickly. And so that stuff is not

00:12:08 ◼   ► available anywhere except on YouTube where huge amounts of it are available. In fact,

00:12:12 ◼   ► I was seeing people, even Jimmy Kimmel, I think, when he said goodbye to Letterman on

00:12:19 ◼   ► the same night as Letterman's last show, he played a clip from YouTube of a favorite

00:12:25 ◼   ► moment of his. So these people just put, you know, and I was going to do it and I discovered

00:12:29 ◼   ► that every clip that I saved on an old VHS tape that I got out and I was playing and

00:12:33 ◼   ► all that, they're all already on YouTube. So in the end, that's your digital permanence.

00:12:37 ◼   ► It's like people going outside of the law in order to get this stuff around and then

00:12:42 ◼   ► that becomes this incredibly valuable resource.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Whereas the official channels, you know, that stuff is inaccessible like you said, you didn't

00:12:50 ◼   ► even look on CBS.com and then it goes away because their, you know, their contract expires

00:12:55 ◼   ► and it's just all gone.

00:12:56 ◼   ► So you know, bless you YouTubers for uploading things you don't have the rights to so that

00:13:03 ◼   ► we could actually see this stuff.

00:13:05 ◼   ► So, otherwise it's just lost.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Yeah. So many of the Farewell Letterman pieces in the last couple of weeks have had YouTube

00:13:14 ◼   ► embeds in them. Those are all not authorized by David Letterman or NBC, but that's also

00:13:20 ◼   ► the legacy of the show. I mean, thank goodness those things exist because otherwise… Well,

00:13:24 ◼   ► I sent you… We were talking last week, not to spoil a future episode of a different podcast,

00:13:30 ◼   ► we were talking last week about off of this show about music and I sent you a still of

00:13:39 ◼   ► David Letterman holding up the record of my favorite album of all time.

00:13:43 ◼   ► David Why would we have been talking about that?

00:13:45 ◼   ► Tim I don't know why that would be. It's for

00:13:47 ◼   ► a future episode of Clockwise obviously. So that was just, that was just, you know, that's

00:13:53 ◼   ► on YouTube. I searched for the band and Letterman and I got all of their performances on Letterman

00:13:59 ◼   ► they're all on YouTube so yeah shine on you crazy pirates.

00:14:06 ◼   ► So you released your photo book. It's out now. It's finally all done.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Yeah I think they're calling it version 1.1. I would say it's the real final version of it.

00:14:18 ◼   ► We released sort of the first half and yeah yeah so it's a Photos for Mac, a Take Control crash course is the name of it.

00:14:27 ◼   ► can get it at TakeControl.com. Or no, TakeControlBooks.com, sorry. Don't go to... that's like that dash.com

00:14:34 ◼   ► that's laundry detergent. Don't go there. And don't go to TakeControl. TakeControlBooks.com.

00:14:40 ◼   ► And so it's part of the Take Control Books line, so what you're going to get is it's...

00:14:44 ◼   ► I think the page count is like 60-ish. It's this like super boiled-down design, lots of

00:14:51 ◼   ► screenshots, lots of references. It is me trying to boil down everything like you need.

00:14:56 ◼   ► kind of dense. I think it's visual, so it's easier to get through. I was thinking about

00:15:02 ◼   ► it. If I had written a traditional book, I probably would have written four times the

00:15:07 ◼   ► amount of words, but I'm not sure it would have been any more informative, and I'm pretty

00:15:14 ◼   ► sure it wouldn't have been as easy to read. It's an interesting format. I wrote this to

00:15:20 ◼   ► to fit their format, but their format is interesting in that the Crash Course format is, you know,

00:15:26 ◼   ► it's kind of no nonsense. The chapters…

00:15:28 ◼   ► David: Not a lot of voice in there, I assume.

00:15:31 ◼   ► David Tzemba-Lemmich Yeah, there's some jokes in there. I tried

00:15:34 ◼   ► to put some voice in there, but you know, there's not a lot of room for it. You know,

00:15:37 ◼   ► the chapters are of a fairly constrained length. You've got a column running down the side

00:15:41 ◼   ► with sidebars and images in it. It is a format that you're fitting, but I think what's

00:15:45 ◼   ► powerful about it is it's really no nonsense. It's like, you know, if you want to read

00:15:50 ◼   ► a book that is thousands and thousands of words about some piece of software because

00:15:53 ◼   ► it's fun. This is probably not the book for you. This is a book that is like, "Let's

00:15:58 ◼   ► get down to business. Here's what you need to know. Here's some tips. Here's what

00:16:01 ◼   ► these different tools do." And I kind of appreciate that because I think there's

00:16:05 ◼   ► probably more of an audience for that than there is for sort of recreational reading

00:16:08 ◼   ► about software. So that's what they're… and Adam and Tanya Anx to do it. You know,

00:16:13 ◼   ► they know their business and they know their audience. But it was an educational experience

00:16:18 ◼   ► to write it. I feel like I've learned a whole lot about photos for Mac and I like it. I'm

00:16:23 ◼   ► not going to ditch it. I do like it, although it's got some serious limitations that hopefully

00:16:29 ◼   ► Apple is already working on.

00:16:30 ◼   ► I think having a short book that gives you all the information you're going to need is

00:16:35 ◼   ► good if what you're trying to do is just learn how to use a program. As nice as it is to

00:16:40 ◼   ► get a lot more of the character around it, if a crash course is what you're looking for,

00:16:45 ◼   ► 60 pages seems about right.

00:16:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, and you can jump around and it's got, you know, it's very visual.

00:16:51 ◼   ► They do some nice things like when you say click on this button or look at this icon,

00:16:55 ◼   ► the icon is in the text, like you put it right. I mean, it was a lot of work for me to take

00:16:59 ◼   ► the screenshots and all that, but it ends up being, yeah, so it's interesting. It's

00:17:06 ◼   ► been interesting. I've gotten some feedback already from people, you know, and some of

00:17:10 ◼   ► it is why did it take so long and the answer is because Apple like sort of unveiled photos

00:17:16 ◼   ► really much earlier than I think anybody anticipated. And I started writing it when it was in that

00:17:21 ◼   ► first beta. And it just with my travel and a bunch of other production issues with them,

00:17:26 ◼   ► it took until now for us to get the final final. But that's what we got the first half

00:17:29 ◼   ► out when we did is we wanted to get as much as we could out as soon as we could. And then

00:17:34 ◼   ► again, like the format, you know, I think it's actually a really clever format and I

00:17:40 ◼   ► think it's a very useful format. If you are expecting, you know, Jason's 20,000, you know,

00:17:46 ◼   ► word essay on the meaning of photos, you're not going to get it because that's not the

00:17:49 ◼   ► point of the book. The book is really, you know, what are all the tools and how do I

00:17:53 ◼   ► use it? And I think it's very useful in that.

00:17:56 ◼   ► - Cool. We have a ton of stuff to get to today.

00:17:58 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:17:59 ◼   ► - So we should probably do that. But before we do, let me take a moment to thank our friends

00:18:03 ◼   ► over at Hover. Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names. Me and Jason were

00:18:09 ◼   ► talking before we recorded today about the fact that we're both coming up to about a

00:18:13 ◼   ► a year on our projects like Six Colors and Relay are both coming up towards a year old.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And I'm getting, and I know Jason is as well, a lot of domain renewal notices right now.

00:18:23 ◼   ► So I'm getting some stuff coming from Hover where it's like, you know, it's coming up

00:18:28 ◼   ► to a year, do you want to renew?

00:18:30 ◼   ► And you know, the only thing that I ever hear from them is just these renewal notices, which

00:18:34 ◼   ► is great, they don't send me a bunch of spam.

00:18:36 ◼   ► But what it's doing is reminding me of like a year ago about all of the stuff that I was

00:18:42 ◼   ► trying to buy to think of names for Relay when me and Stephen were thinking about this

00:18:46 ◼   ► stuff and it reminds me of the process like so we would have an idea for a name so we'd

00:18:51 ◼   ► go over to hover it was like the first place that we'd go is the domain available if it

00:18:56 ◼   ► was we'd buy them and it was really simple to do and what it will allow you to do is

00:19:00 ◼   ► to collect up these names that you could then maybe use other stuff or just to make sure

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00:21:00 ◼   ► So yesterday as we record this, so it was Labor Day in the States.

00:21:04 ◼   ► No.

00:21:05 ◼   ► No.

00:21:06 ◼   ► Memorial Day.

00:21:07 ◼   ► That's it.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Memorial Day.

00:21:09 ◼   ► I was getting those ones mixed up.

00:21:10 ◼   ► I don't think I need to worry about it.

00:21:12 ◼   ► It's not my country.

00:21:14 ◼   ► I know it's a holiday.

00:21:16 ◼   ► I apologize.

00:21:17 ◼   ► Well, judging by your accent, it's rapidly becoming your country, so watch it early.

00:21:21 ◼   ► We'll wait until I actually get the visa and make the move.

00:21:25 ◼   ► All right.

00:21:26 ◼   ► So it was Memorial Day.

00:21:27 ◼   ► There we go.

00:21:28 ◼   ► We got it right this time.

00:21:29 ◼   ► Good job. And Johnny Ive got a new job.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Apparently, or has he had it for a while? He told Stephen Fry about his new job.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Yes, this is really interesting. So it was announced in the UK, in the Telegraph, in

00:21:44 ◼   ► a profile by Stephen Fry. That was how it came to the world.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And then Tim Cook sent a memo. Yeah.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Yeah, which then leaks out, as these things tend to do, and I believe they're written

00:21:55 ◼   ► that way. They've got to be, right? You've got to write those knowing that the world's

00:21:58 ◼   ► going to see them. Like, "Oh, by the way, everyone, secret project X is coming along.

00:22:03 ◼   ► It's coming along nice and I don't tell anyone."

00:22:06 ◼   ► Shh! Keep it under your hat.

00:22:09 ◼   ► So he is now Chief Design Officer. So he is what is now known as a C-level executive.

00:22:15 ◼   ► C-level. That's right. He's living in C-level. He's pivoting with brands at C-level.

00:22:21 ◼   ► So this puts him with… is Phil Shiller like a CMO or is he just…

00:22:29 ◼   ► I think he's senior vice president, executive vice president, yeah.

00:22:34 ◼   ► So this puts Ive at a very, very strong position in Apple now, at least from a title perspective,

00:22:41 ◼   ► because in theory, as people have said, he's probably one of the most strong people.

00:22:46 ◼   ► It effectively goes Tim Cook, Johnny Ive, everybody else.

00:22:50 ◼   ► else is senior vice president. So the only, that we know of at this point, the only C-level

00:22:57 ◼   ► executive is Johnny Iff.

00:23:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:01 ◼   ► Well, so we have what, Tim Cook and then we have the COO as well?

00:23:09 ◼   ► Is there a, there's a, you know, do they call that, do they call that person the COO?

00:23:16 ◼   ► I have no idea anymore.

00:23:17 ◼   ► I'm looking at the executive profile list and I don't see anybody with a chief title

00:23:22 ◼   ► other than Tim Cook.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Well, there we go.

00:23:27 ◼   ► There are now two people that are working underneath Johnny.

00:23:31 ◼   ► So if you remember, when Forstor left, they pushed the industrial design and user interface

00:23:40 ◼   ► teams together and Johnny was running them both.

00:23:44 ◼   ► Now they've split them apart again with Johnny overseeing everything.

00:23:49 ◼   ► They now have a vice president of industrial design and a vice president of user interface

00:23:54 ◼   ► design which was how, if I'm remembering correctly, kind of how it was before and then Johnny

00:24:00 ◼   ► took them both over but now there are officially people that are heading up those two departments

00:24:05 ◼   ► with Johnny sitting above them.

00:24:06 ◼   ► That's a different structure but it reminds me of how it was before.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I'm not sure if it's different. And this is the thing, I don't have any insider information

00:24:17 ◼   ► about this, but my gut feeling about this is this is... So one of the things that I

00:24:22 ◼   ► learned in my years doing some media company stuff, but anyway, is you get the job and

00:24:31 ◼   ► then you get the title a lot of the time. That's just sort of how it works. Putting

00:24:35 ◼   ► Jonny Ive in charge of software design means he was doing, I mean, that's when his job

00:24:41 ◼   ► changed. That's when his job changed. Because that's too much. Either he didn't change anything

00:24:47 ◼   ► at which point he wasn't in charge of it, or, let's be serious, he was in charge of

00:24:50 ◼   ► it, which means he was not able to spend the amount of time he was able to spend on other

00:24:54 ◼   ► things. I'm sure he had trusted lieutenants. Maybe these two people were the trusted lieutenants

00:24:59 ◼   ► at the beginning, Alan Dye and Richard Howarth. Maybe they were not. Maybe they emerged as

00:25:07 ◼   ► this went along. I don't know that. But let's just assume they more or less were.

00:25:16 ◼   ► This strikes me as being the quantification of that, that this was part of the plan. Now,

00:25:21 ◼   ► it may be that this is moving the story forward in the sense that this is also Johnny Ive

00:25:26 ◼   ► saying, "Now that we've got this ship running more like we talked about, Tim, I don't want

00:25:33 ◼   ► to be a manager who's doing day-to-day stuff because I'm a designer. These guys are my

00:25:42 ◼   ► managers."

00:25:43 ◼   ► Boy, first off, I can identify with that because I had those same feelings, which is you get

00:25:49 ◼   ► to that point where you're like, "I'm not doing the thing that I am good at and that

00:25:52 ◼   ► you hired me to do, I'm now doing all of this other stuff. But he's so talented that you

00:25:57 ◼   ► don't want to lose him, and you trust him, so how do you structure it? And I feel like

00:26:03 ◼   ► my gut feeling again with no inside information, this is Apple outsider territory, me and Matt

00:26:07 ◼   ► Drance, we're on the outside. But I view this as being Johnny Ive saying, "I'm in charge

00:26:15 ◼   ► because you trust me, Tim, but I don't want to be the day-to-day manager of these giant

00:26:20 ◼   ► groups because I'm a designer at heart and I want to follow, you know, Steven Fry called

00:26:25 ◼   ► it like blue sky stuff. I don't view it that way. I don't think that he's saying I like

00:26:29 ◼   ► to just imagine crazy things that will never be built. I think it's more like I want to

00:26:34 ◼   ► get back to the business of focusing on products. So I read this as being Johnny I'm saying,

00:26:39 ◼   ► "Look, I have two jobs. I have to be the leader of this giant group and with that I'm going

00:26:43 ◼   ► to have a couple of people who I manage who are going to be worried about the nuts and

00:26:48 ◼   ► bolts day-to-day and then I'm also going to be an active participant in product design

00:26:53 ◼   ► and because that's what I love and that's what you want me doing anyway. So I'm fairly

00:26:57 ◼   ► positive about this. It could be that this is corporate speak for the fact that Johnny

00:27:01 ◼   ► Ive is getting burned out and wants to spend more time in England and you know or in his

00:27:08 ◼   ► mansion in San Francisco and not coming. It could be that but I think it could easily

00:27:13 ◼   ► be, and I think a perfectly reasonable scenario that I've seen happen in other places is,

00:27:19 ◼   ► this is allowing your super creative, talented guy to not get lost in being the head of two

00:27:28 ◼   ► giant groups. So that's my take on it, is that this could easily just be a formalization

00:27:37 ◼   ► of how this has already come to be that explains how they're functioning gives these two

00:27:45 ◼   ► other guys the authority and visibility to be part of it while Johnny Ive can go back

00:27:51 ◼   ► to being, you know, kind of like totem of design at Apple plus work on projects because

00:27:59 ◼   ► he's really good at that. And honestly, you know, that makes sense to me because if

00:28:06 ◼   ► whatever the next hard super important design project is at Apple,

00:28:10 ◼   ► you kinda want Johnny Ive on that, right? You kinda don't want him being like, "Nah,

00:28:13 ◼   ► I'm too busy. We got a reorg in the software design group over here." It's like,

00:28:18 ◼   ► no, you don't want him doing that. You want him on those projects. So,

00:28:22 ◼   ► you know, maybe I'm being a little optimistic here and it's entirely

00:28:27 ◼   ► possible that this is just a bad sign that Johnny Ive is leading

00:28:29 ◼   ► and we want to get these guys in place so that when he goes,

00:28:32 ◼   ► you know, will have people who are visible, but I think it's very easily

00:28:36 ◼   ► explained as just being that. That he's a really talented guy,

00:28:39 ◼   ► this is too much for him to manage day to day, they feel like the ship is kind of

00:28:44 ◼   ► righted from where it was when they made this move,

00:28:46 ◼   ► and this way those guys get to be seen as leaders while Johnny Ive gets to be

00:28:50 ◼   ► seen as the

00:28:51 ◼   ► the guy who does design and also go back to

00:28:55 ◼   ► formally to working on the most important design projects that Apple has.

00:29:01 ◼   ► So I actually think of it as being a little bit of all of those and kind of in a reverse

00:29:07 ◼   ► order to the way that you mentioned them.

00:29:09 ◼   ► So I think that probably first and foremost this is succession planning.

00:29:15 ◼   ► And that should start in theory 15 years, 20 years before Johnny Ive's going to go.

00:29:21 ◼   ► You need to know, because it's like the Steve Jobs conundrum all over again.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Like Apple has to know that they have people that can make stuff without Johnny Ive making

00:29:29 ◼   ► it.

00:29:30 ◼   ► That is a thing that needs to happen and that should start now.

00:29:33 ◼   ► It does happen but they need to… they've over messaged Johnny Ive just like they over

00:29:38 ◼   ► messaged Steve Jobs and again Steve Jobs was responsible for a lot of that himself. But

00:29:44 ◼   ► I think you're right that this is the… we already have a good team here. You risk

00:29:49 ◼   ► when one guy has everything invested in him that if he leaves then people are like freaking

00:29:55 ◼   ► out. Oh my God, he left. He did everything. And so some of this is sending the message

00:29:59 ◼   ► that no no there's very talented teams here that are also working on this stuff.

00:30:04 ◼   ► That's a PR thing I think that's right. Yeah and then I think it's like going

00:30:08 ◼   ► back from that is like it is so they just take the managerial stuff away

00:30:14 ◼   ► because we like to think of Apple as a beautiful incredible place but it is a

00:30:21 ◼   ► company big company stuff and as the head of a division he will have been

00:30:27 ◼   ► bogged down in HR stuff. Well, and the people who rise to this level are not rising to that

00:30:33 ◼   ► level because of their greatness at that stuff. Maybe some of them are great at it. Maybe

00:30:36 ◼   ► some of them are good at it. Maybe some of them love it. My old boss at IDG, my last

00:30:41 ◼   ► boss at IDG, was a C-level executive. He was the chief content officer for IDG. And he

00:30:48 ◼   ► used to be an editor, but he was, he loved being a manager and doing all the political

00:30:52 ◼   ► he loved it. And I liked him. I like him. He's a good guy. But he took to it in a way

00:31:00 ◼   ► that I just never—I could not imagine doing that job where he just didn't make stuff

00:31:07 ◼   ► anymore. His job was to be a manager. So different people react to it differently. I look at

00:31:12 ◼   ► Johnny Ive, too, and I say, "Well, first off, he doesn't need to do this," right?

00:31:19 ◼   ► than the excitement of changing the world and making great products. He doesn't need

00:31:26 ◼   ► the money. He doesn't need the acclaim. The queen has bestowed some accolades on him.

00:31:34 ◼   ► He will be honored regardless. So what keeps him at Apple? It's the opportunity to make

00:31:39 ◼   ► cool stuff, and it's probably the opportunity to be involved in designing this stuff in

00:31:45 ◼   ► detail. So if you're Johnny Ive, I cannot imagine that he wouldn't have a moment where

00:31:50 ◼   ► he'd say, and maybe this was when he was given this division in the first place, where

00:31:54 ◼   ► he would say to Tim, "Yeah, I'll get the act together, but at some point I want to

00:31:58 ◼   ► go back in the design lab, and I'm happy to do it at a high level, but I'm going to

00:32:03 ◼   ► need to bring in some managers because I don't want to do that job." I mean, that's just

00:32:07 ◼   ► my gut feeling about him, is that he's not the kind of person who just would be happy

00:32:14 ◼   ► to give up design altogether and just manage a design group. That doesn't make any sense

00:32:17 ◼   ► from anything we know about Jonathan and I.

00:32:21 ◼   ► And then my other thought, you know, working back from that, is if you take those responsibilities

00:32:26 ◼   ► away from him, he can then spend a bit more time living his life how he wants to live

00:32:31 ◼   ► it. Because he will continue doing everything he's doing now minus some stuff. He's not

00:32:38 ◼   ► going to do more, right, in theory. Because from the profiles that we've seen about him

00:32:43 ◼   ► everything that Stephen Fry talks about is stuff we already knew he was doing.

00:32:47 ◼   ► So if you take away the vice president, like the SVP and the EVP stuff from somebody and

00:32:54 ◼   ► allow them to do the free thinking, right, that he should want to be doing and/or work

00:33:01 ◼   ► on the projects that he wants to work on delegating the rest to his new teams, that is the path

00:33:09 ◼   ► to someone who has a job that they really want to do and they really love. Because he

00:33:15 ◼   ► has a, in theory, one of the best jobs in the world, in theory. If you are a designer,

00:33:21 ◼   ► you want Johnny Ive's job.

00:33:22 ◼   ► And he, you know, I don't know Johnny Ive. I would imagine that he loves that part of

00:33:28 ◼   ► his job. And if, I think one of the challenges of all of these incredibly talented people

00:33:33 ◼   ► who have made a huge amount of money at Apple is how do you get them to stay? You get them

00:33:38 ◼   ► to stay because where else in the world will they have the opportunity to have the kind

00:33:42 ◼   ► of impact they can have at Apple and because they're doing things they love. And if somebody

00:33:48 ◼   ► as a manager, as somebody who used to manage a lot of people, I look at that and say, "Okay,

00:33:53 ◼   ► you're really talented and we don't want to lose you. We don't have like leverage on you.

00:33:57 ◼   ► You didn't just buy a super expensive house and now have a big mortgage and there's no

00:34:01 ◼   ► way you're going to leave your job. You know, you are just, how do I motivate you?" I never

00:34:06 ◼   ► really liked it when people congratulated you on buying a house because they knew you

00:34:10 ◼   ► wouldn't quit your job by the way because they did that to me. I never liked that. We

00:34:13 ◼   ► got you right where we want you, worker. But I look at Jon Yann and it's like, "How do

00:34:21 ◼   ► you motivate somebody like that?" Well, you say, "I'll unburden you from some of this

00:34:26 ◼   ► stuff. You've got lieutenants. You already can't do it all. You've got lieutenants who

00:34:31 ◼   ► are doing this and doing a good job at it and maybe you know those lieutenants hopefully

00:34:36 ◼   ► and you're like, "Oh, and those guys love that stuff and are really good at it. So let's

00:34:40 ◼   ► take it off your shoulders." I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And that could very

00:34:44 ◼   ► well be the whole story here is it's not good for Johnny Ive. It's not good for Apple to

00:34:51 ◼   ► have Johnny Ive worried about things that aren't designing products, quite honestly.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Designing products or determining the overarching design philosophy at the company. I feel like

00:35:00 ◼   ► those are his two jobs and they are bracketed by all of this management junk that he doesn't

00:35:05 ◼   ► need to deal with.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and there's other things that I think about, like,

00:35:10 ◼   ► potentially, and I mean, I think this is, there's a good chance that this is the

00:35:16 ◼   ► case. Stuff like designing the campus is to keep him interested.

00:35:20 ◼   ► I think, yeah.

00:35:21 ◼   ► There's no reason in the world that he would be involved in designing

00:35:27 ◼   ► the new building, because that's not what he designs.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:31 ◼   ► but if you are a designer, like, that is an incredible project to work on.

00:35:37 ◼   ► - As somebody who has done a slightly smaller project on the new Apple Campus,

00:35:42 ◼   ► which is we redid our kitchen.

00:35:43 ◼   ► - Slightly.

00:35:47 ◼   ► - I will say, if you view the architect and the...this isn't entirely accurate,

00:35:57 ◼   ► but if you view the architect and the builders of this as sort of your

00:36:00 ◼   ► contractor. The fact is that when you're building something like this, there are a million little

00:36:04 ◼   ► decisions that have to be made. And if you're the client, if you're the person who's paying

00:36:11 ◼   ► to do the work, they will come to you with those decisions. So who at Apple is going

00:36:15 ◼   ► to make those decisions? And I think that's sort of what's going on here too, is like,

00:36:20 ◼   ► "Look, Steve's not here anymore to make these decisions. He got the ball rolling here. Johnny

00:36:24 ◼   ► probably knows what Steve was thinking. He's got his own thoughts." Maybe if you really

00:36:29 ◼   ► want this thing to have the attention to detail that they want to have it. It is an Apple

00:36:32 ◼   ► product that they're designing here. Then I feel like maybe that's the role he's in.

00:36:37 ◼   ► I don't think he's doing architecture, right? They have a prestigious architecture firm

00:36:41 ◼   ► to do that. But I think he and his people may be the ones who are like making those

00:36:45 ◼   ► decisions of, you know, for us it was like, "What color do you want the outlets to be?"

00:36:50 ◼   ► We can put white outlets here, but the material on your wall here is green, so we could custom

00:36:57 ◼   ► order some green outlets, which was the point where my wife and I melted down and were like,

00:37:01 ◼   ► "Just put the white outlets in! Ah!" Because there's so many decisions. But that seems

00:37:05 ◼   ► to me to be the place where Johnny Ive might be fitting in is, "Oh, we need tables. We

00:37:11 ◼   ► need carpet," or whatever, and being like, "All right, what do we want that to be at

00:37:16 ◼   ► a high level?" And I know that seems ridiculous because maybe it is not at a high level, but

00:37:21 ◼   ► I think you're also right that it keeps him engaged, and it also invests in him the idea

00:37:26 ◼   ► that everything Apple does regarding design is his purview. He's setting the tone there.

00:37:31 ◼   ► And I think it's also good for Tim Cook because it lets Tim Cook say, "Look, I got this guy.

00:37:35 ◼   ► This is my guy. I'm not designing products, but I got the best guy at it. I got Sir Jonathan

00:37:40 ◼   ► Ive doing it for us. He's my chief design officer." I think that's good for Tim Cook

00:37:46 ◼   ► too.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Because you know, they say, it says in the profile that like, he is even designing chairs

00:37:55 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah, yeah, it is a little bit of whatever

00:37:59 ◼   ► you want, Johnny, just don't go.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Whatever interests you, let's do it.

00:38:06 ◼   ► But at the same time, I mean, I do believe that they view that Apple Campus as an Apple

00:38:11 ◼   ► product.

00:38:14 ◼   ► It's their new home and they want it to be… the last thing you'd want to do is spend

00:38:19 ◼   ► all that money and then have it be let down with lots of like, you know, crappy chairs

00:38:24 ◼   ► from Ikea.

00:38:27 ◼   ► You know, it would be… you want to take it the last mile.

00:38:30 ◼   ► I think that is a sign of Apple's design philosophy is you want to take it the last

00:38:34 ◼   ► mile.

00:38:35 ◼   ► You want to get it all the way there and not have this great idea that then doesn't come

00:38:38 ◼   ► through in the final execution.

00:38:40 ◼   ► So just to try and save some follow-up, Luca Maestri is the CFO.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Oh, Luca.

00:38:49 ◼   ► So there isn't a COO, which is interesting to me because Tim was, wasn't he?

00:38:55 ◼   ► He was a COO.

00:38:57 ◼   ► But Jeff Williams is just an SVP.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Well, Luca is Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Chief Financial Officer, yep.

00:39:05 ◼   ► But he's the only one looking at that page that has that.

00:39:08 ◼   ► there will be three C-level executives. That is so interesting to me that

00:39:14 ◼   ► it's just that. Like you think about Phil Schiller and he's not the CMO, right?

00:39:20 ◼   ► Well maybe he will be. Maybe he will be but you know it's just so

00:39:24 ◼   ► interesting to see. I mean it feels obvious in a company like Apple that you

00:39:30 ◼   ► would give someone a title like that because design is what they have. That is

00:39:36 ◼   ► is all they have. They are the company that designs things incredibly well, top to bottom,

00:39:41 ◼   ► inside and out. That is what they are. So it makes sense that you would create a position

00:39:46 ◼   ► like that.

00:39:47 ◼   ► And Shiller used to be worldwide product marketing and now he's worldwide marketing, which I

00:39:52 ◼   ► think is also kind of interesting. I don't know when that happened. That might have been

00:39:55 ◼   ► years ago. But yeah, it's a one step from there to be CMO. I think if you're Phil Shiller

00:40:00 ◼   ► also, he might just say, "I don't like that title. I'd rather just be SVP."

00:40:04 ◼   ► Maybe. Maybe. This is an interesting thing to me. I think there's a lot of...

00:40:13 ◼   ► Titles... It's dripping. It's dripping with subtext. Yeah, titles are not jobs. Titles

00:40:20 ◼   ► are not jobs. Titles are... They're statements. They're communication. Titles are communication.

00:40:25 ◼   ► You communicate your role and your importance with your title when you're talking to your

00:40:29 ◼   ► peers or you're applying for another job. And your company is communicating your importance

00:40:34 ◼   ► and visibility within the organization with the title. But titles aren't jobs. Jonathan

00:40:39 ◼   ► and I could be, and this is the thing, Phil Schiller's job, if Phil Schiller wanted

00:40:44 ◼   ► to be CMO, maybe they'd make him CMO. Maybe he would prefer not to be. But it doesn't

00:40:49 ◼   ► change his job. And you can have, again, just to bring my history in here, when I got, let's

00:40:58 ◼   ► When Macworld was sucked inside of PC World, my boss Rick LePage was let go because he

00:41:08 ◼   ► was the president of Macworld at that point. The guy named Jeff Edmond was put in charge

00:41:13 ◼   ► of PC, was in charge of PC World, was now also in charge of Macworld. And I had the

00:41:17 ◼   ► conversation where I went up to see upstairs to see Jeff Edmond and he said, "Here's

00:41:22 ◼   ► what's happening. Rick is leaving. We're going to take care of him. I'm going to

00:41:26 ◼   ► in charge, you know, you're going to sit on my management team." And then he said, "And you're

00:41:30 ◼   ► now senior vice president and editorial director of Macworld." And I was like, "Okay." And I got

00:41:37 ◼   ► promoted. Why did that happen? Because I didn't do anything. My boss lost his job. And the answer was,

00:41:44 ◼   ► they wanted to send a message. They wanted to send a message of importance of Macworld. They wanted

00:41:50 ◼   ► wanted to make me feel better, I guess. I'm not sure. I guess it did. I don't know.

00:41:55 ◼   ► But it was all about communication. It was about—because it was kind of unbidden. It's

00:41:59 ◼   ► not like I went to him and said, "Well, I don't know about this." It's not like

00:42:02 ◼   ► it was the annual review process. It was there to communicate some things to me and to the

00:42:09 ◼   ► staff and to maybe other observers. And so that's what this is all about. I feel like

00:42:16 ◼   ► this is communicating changes that have already happened or changes that need to happen, but

00:42:24 ◼   ► the titles themselves kind of, I mean, Johnny Ive's title could be, you know, he could have

00:42:32 ◼   ► no title. He could be like, "I prefer to be titleless," and he would be on the executive

00:42:35 ◼   ► profile page and there would be nothing. He could do that, right? And that would just

00:42:41 ◼   ► be, we would all just accept it. Well, it's quirky designers, whatever. Yeah, so titles

00:42:47 ◼   ► are not, titles are about communication with other people and what it, so it's always good

00:42:52 ◼   ► to ask the question, what is Apple trying to communicate here? It may or may not be

00:42:56 ◼   ► about us. It may be about those people, but it's probably about us. It's probably about

00:43:02 ◼   ► everybody observing Apple too and wanting to know what the deal is with, you know, and

00:43:06 ◼   ► stop whispers of like, "Well, you know, Johnny isn't doing day to day." They're like, "Yeah,

00:43:10 ◼   ► Donnie isn't doing day to day. You know, we already announced that. Gets in front of that

00:43:15 ◼   ► change that they want to make.

00:43:17 ◼   ► But do you think, I mean, a lot of people speculated that they announced it on a day

00:43:22 ◼   ► that the markets were closed because it could potentially have had a bad effect on the market.

00:43:26 ◼   ► I mean, any change, right, affects the market, like will affect the market.

00:43:31 ◼   ► Sure. Any change involving a member of your staff, sure. Sure. It softens the, yeah, it

00:43:38 ◼   ► also softens the rather than being a knee-jerk reaction right of like oh god

00:43:42 ◼   ► Jonathan I've what what's happening out fear fear fear instead it's like it

00:43:46 ◼   ► trickles out people are like eating a hot dog their barbecue in a hamburger and

00:43:50 ◼   ► they're like Oh Jonathan I and they have time to process and there's nothing they

00:43:53 ◼   ► can do and it doesn't you know like everything Apple does now as an effect

00:43:58 ◼   ► like this it's interesting they did on the Monday though they don't Monday

00:44:02 ◼   ► where like plausibly people at Apple who don't observe holidays were back to work

00:44:06 ◼   ► instead of doing it Friday evening, which is the traditional bad news time.

00:44:10 ◼   ► So what they didn't want to do is send the message that this was bad news,

00:44:13 ◼   ► but they still, I think, wanted to mute the response.

00:44:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But it was interesting news nonetheless, I think.

00:44:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:44:23 ◼   ► - And I'm interested to see how this plays out. Like, are we going to see more of these other

00:44:28 ◼   ► people, you know? How is that going to work? I think that would be interesting to see.

00:44:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:44:35 ◼   ► I hope that we do. I hope that we do. Yeah, I imagine we'll be seeing those people at

00:44:39 ◼   ► WWDC. Yeah, that'd be interesting. Maybe in some videos or something. We'll see.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Alright, should we take a break and then talk about some Google stuff?

00:44:48 ◼   ► Great idea. Let's go on a skewer. This week's episode

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00:46:43 ◼   ► So Jason, it is Google I/O this week. It's Google time. So we have all of that to think

00:46:50 ◼   ► about before WWDC, which is, you know, that's that. So Google tends to do this. I don't

00:46:56 ◼   ► know if they do it purposefully, but I would if I was them. Just get your news out quickly.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Get it out first because if you and Apple are working on a similar thing, at least you

00:47:03 ◼   ► can get the news cycle for a few days. Because otherwise, your product launches are just

00:47:08 ◼   ► ruined by everybody talking about how it's not Apple's one.

00:47:11 ◼   ► It's very--also, you know, Google will have some hardware partner announcements and all

00:47:15 ◼   ► that, but they don't necessarily dazzle--have all the tools to dazzle like Apple does because

00:47:20 ◼   ► they, you know, they're talking very much about cloud and software and operating systems.

00:47:25 ◼   ► and Apple has some hardware to, you know, glint a little bit and people are like, "Ooh,

00:47:31 ◼   ► shiny."

00:47:32 ◼   ► It's funny, Google I/O is very different. It's shorter than WWDC and the keynote is

00:47:38 ◼   ► much longer, traditionally. We'll see if it is this year. But in the past, the Google

00:47:42 ◼   ► I/O keynotes have been endless because there seems to be -- I mean, Google is doing a lot

00:47:48 ◼   ► of stuff, but there seems to be a reluctance to let parts of Google that don't have anything

00:47:56 ◼   ► that merits being on stage, a reluctance to not have them be on stage. So for the last,

00:48:03 ◼   ► I think, what was it, two years ago, there was a maps demo at Google I/O keynote that

00:48:07 ◼   ► was like, "Hey, maps. You like maps, right? Yay, maps." And goodbye. And that was what

00:48:13 ◼   ► just happened. And it was just a waste of our time. So it'll be interesting to see that's

00:48:18 ◼   ► one of the ways where Google I/O's keynote differs often from Apple is even though so

00:48:22 ◼   ► many companies, including Google and Microsoft, now are like using the Apple playbook in terms

00:48:27 ◼   ► of their event structure, they really have been inspired by the kind of classic Steve

00:48:32 ◼   ► Jobs event structure, there are still moments where as a close Apple follower you look and

00:48:37 ◼   ► you say, "Oh, that's not, you know, they're not doing it the same way." And with Google,

00:48:42 ◼   ► I feel like some of it is just the discipline to say you're out of the keynote person who's

00:48:47 ◼   ► got a whole fiefdom that, you know, you're really excited about this product, but you're

00:48:51 ◼   ► out of the keynote because we're going to keep it to two hours. And so it'll, you know,

00:48:54 ◼   ► be three and a half hours or whatever. But there's always really interesting stuff announced

00:48:59 ◼   ► at the Google I/O keynote because it is Google's chance to do that thing where they get a big

00:49:04 ◼   ► event and the developers are excited and they can sort of set the direction for where they're

00:49:08 ◼   ► going with their platforms for the next year.

00:49:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's interesting to think about them in these kinds of terms now, because

00:49:19 ◼   ► they're definitely trying to pump up the showmanship a little bit, right?

00:49:24 ◼   ► I think when I/O originally started, it was very much a developer conference, and they

00:49:28 ◼   ► still are more heavy on that than Apple, but when you see them come on stage, they are

00:49:35 ◼   ► trying to give a bit of lip service to all of the different departments, showing how

00:49:39 ◼   ► how much of a corporation they are, but I think they are also now trying to do more

00:49:43 ◼   ► to dazzle because they're aware that it's a public event. So that's one of the things

00:49:47 ◼   ► that I think makes IO more and more interesting to tune into. Because I do think that Google

00:49:52 ◼   ► do some very interesting things, and I actually look forward to this presentation.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I am always interested to see that you're guaranteed to get some, like I said, some

00:50:02 ◼   ► boring things that you wonder why they're there. Some things that are interesting from

00:50:08 ◼   ► an impact standpoint where they will talk about something new that's coming in the next

00:50:12 ◼   ► version of Android and you'll say, you know, "Oh, that's interesting." Although, I feel

00:50:16 ◼   ► like with Android and iOS, we've left the period of, "Oh my God, they added 80 new features

00:50:23 ◼   ► that totally we need and that we've been clamoring for." And, you know, it's much more sort of

00:50:27 ◼   ► the steady development of it. And the fact that Google has changed their version numbering

00:50:32 ◼   ► to reduce the gap, perceived gaps between this year's model and last year's model because

00:50:38 ◼   ► they got tired of getting beat up over, you know, it doesn't even run Android 4. So they're

00:50:43 ◼   ► like, "Fine, we will just do 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and we'll call them all Android 4 and, you

00:50:48 ◼   ► know, if you want to cite it more specifically, you'll look like a jerk. So, ha-ha, we win."

00:50:53 ◼   ► I mean, that's actually a Google strategy. So, you know, that stuff will come through

00:50:59 ◼   ► and be interesting. Although, I'd say mildly interesting, there'll be those moments where

00:51:04 ◼   ► you'll be like, "Oh, that's a thing that Apple does." And there'll be other moments where

00:51:07 ◼   ► you're like, "Oh, Apple doesn't do that," because those inevitably happen. And then

00:51:11 ◼   ► there will be some announcements that we're not really expecting where we will all be

00:51:15 ◼   ► like, "Whoa, what just happened? That's crazy." And all of those things are guaranteed for

00:51:20 ◼   ► a Google I/O keynote. I'm really interested to see the intersection of Android and Chrome

00:51:25 ◼   ► OS because I feel like, you know, Google's pattern lately seems to be you do lots of

00:51:32 ◼   ► crazy stuff and then at some point you evaluate the crazy stuff and you start to decide what

00:51:36 ◼   ► works and what doesn't and you kind of bring it together into a strategy. And I feel like

00:51:41 ◼   ► Android with Android and Chrome OS, we've got this strange kind of question about what

00:51:46 ◼   ► is Chrome OS for? What is Android for? Do they do they connect? Why do you have these

00:51:50 ◼   ► different operating systems? You've got a computer operating system without apps and

00:51:56 ◼   ► then you've got a mobile operating system with apps and they've talked about bringing

00:52:01 ◼   ► them together and I wonder if that I'd like to see their their current thinking on that

00:52:05 ◼   ► like how close do they come together? Does Chrome OS combine with Android and

00:52:10 ◼   ► just sort of have an Android computer experience versus an Android tablet and

00:52:15 ◼   ► phone experience? I don't know but I'm interested to see so much of it with all

00:52:19 ◼   ► these keynotes is reading the tea leaves of like what are they thinking?

00:52:22 ◼   ► Not even so much the specific announcements as much as that what those

00:52:26 ◼   ► announcements tell us some things about their philosophy.

00:52:28 ◼   ► I mean I do every Apple keynote is like that too which is like what what does

00:52:32 ◼   ► Apple think of the Mac?

00:52:33 ◼   ► One of the ways we find that out is what they say about what they're doing on the Mac versus

00:52:37 ◼   ► what they're doing on iOS.

00:52:38 ◼   ► And Google, this is a good way to get that read out of Google.

00:52:41 ◼   ► And sometimes you can't, Google, it's harder to read it from their product announcements

00:52:45 ◼   ► because they make lots of crazy product announcements and it's hard to judge whether they're meaningful

00:52:50 ◼   ► or just another crazy project that they thought they would try.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:56 ◼   ► So do you have any kind of feeling for what you think might come out?

00:53:01 ◼   ► I mean, I know we were talking about this a little bit on Clockwise last week.

00:53:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:05 ◼   ► I mean, I've kind of got my eye on something TV related, you know, more on Google TV.

00:53:12 ◼   ► I do like the idea and I am also very interested in seeing about where Chrome and Android begin

00:53:20 ◼   ► to overlap, you know, if at all.

00:53:22 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:53:23 ◼   ► And they've kind of gone both directions with that.

00:53:27 ◼   ► so it'll be it seems like right now they're coalescing a little bit more but will that

00:53:32 ◼   ► continue or will they say no no we rethought forget it forget about that that could that

00:53:37 ◼   ► could entirely happen the TV stuff is really interesting and and I would say beyond that

00:53:41 ◼   ► also home automation stuff they've got they've got nest and when they bought drop cam they

00:53:47 ◼   ► put them inside nest so I wonder if nest is officially Google's like incubator for all

00:53:52 ◼   ► home tech and will there be a nest segment and will they talk about what they're doing

00:53:56 ◼   ► with Nest and is that confused with what Google is doing or is Google going to

00:54:00 ◼   ► say no all of our home automation stuff is here it's part of this nest thing

00:54:05 ◼   ► we're going to call it whatever we're going to call it because I think that's

00:54:07 ◼   ► one of Google's weaknesses is sometimes you get confused about you know well

00:54:11 ◼   ► what's your initiative is it this one that's over here or this one that's way

00:54:14 ◼   ► over here so some clarity on what nest is doing and what their ecosystem is for

00:54:22 ◼   ► home automation I think would be good and the TV stuff related to that sort of

00:54:26 ◼   ► you know you get Chromecast you've got app platforms Google TV Android TV you

00:54:33 ◼   ► know all these different things

00:54:34 ◼   ► what's the next step there you know they're going to build their own box are

00:54:38 ◼   ► they going to have like a partner that's demoing a box that's going to come out

00:54:41 ◼   ► what what's their take on it is voice control the big thing for them you know

00:54:46 ◼   ► or is it something else I just it'll be interesting to see because sometimes

00:54:52 ◼   ► it's unclear, like I said, from the signal. Like, "Hey, a product, what does that tell

00:54:56 ◼   ► us?" And with Google, it's hard to tell sometimes.

00:54:59 ◼   ► It is interesting when you look at some of their products and realize how much they compete

00:55:03 ◼   ► with themselves. And I wonder if that's something that is a little bit inbuilt in their corporate

00:55:10 ◼   ► culture. Like, you know, you mentioned a couple, right? So if you think, like, for years, Android

00:55:16 ◼   ► didn't have Chrome, it had a different web browser, which is called Browser. Like, you

00:55:20 ◼   ► you think you're Google TV and you've got Chromecast,

00:55:23 ◼   ► like in theory that should be one product,

00:55:25 ◼   ► you know, like how Apple have AirPlay.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And I know that Chromecast is more,

00:55:29 ◼   ► but it should be one product.

00:55:30 ◼   ► There should not be two products here.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Like it is very interesting to see

00:55:35 ◼   ► how some of that stuff works.

00:55:36 ◼   ► And I agree, like if they do something home automation

00:55:39 ◼   ► and it's not all under the Nest umbrella,

00:55:41 ◼   ► that'll be madness.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Like pick something, just pick one thing,

00:55:46 ◼   ► give it all one name and get people to work together

00:55:49 ◼   ► rather than working in their own silos, which it seems to be there is a little bit too much

00:55:53 ◼   ► of that going on at Google. At least that's how it appears to be from the outside.

00:55:57 ◼   ► I think Google culturally the biggest difference between Apple and Google is probably the idea

00:56:02 ◼   ► that Google has these different groups that are doing different things. There is no, you

00:56:09 ◼   ► know, it's let a thousand flowers bloom kind of thing. Like we will have crazy stuff happening

00:56:15 ◼   ► over here and over there. It's completely I would say I'd say the history of Google

00:56:19 ◼   ► is it's become more disciplined over time. It was originally completely undisciplined

00:56:25 ◼   ► in terms of you know what's our corporate strategy was a lot of brilliant engineers

00:56:31 ◼   ► making things up and trying things out and then we'll figure out what to do with them

00:56:34 ◼   ► later and and that that is still culturally part of Google and if they if they completely

00:56:38 ◼   ► lock that down I feel like they wouldn't be Google but at the same time sometimes you

00:56:44 ◼   ► look at Google and you get frustrated and you say, "Can you guys act like grown-ups

00:56:48 ◼   ► for a minute?" I don't want to clamp off all of your creativity because one of the things

00:56:55 ◼   ► that makes you an interesting company is that you do crazy stuff and try to see where it

00:56:59 ◼   ► leads you. Good for you. The world doesn't need everybody to behave like Apple and be

00:57:03 ◼   ► completely locked down. So that's great. But there are those moments where you're like,

00:57:08 ◼   ► "God, will you guys just settle on something to do on TVs? Will you guys settle on what

00:57:12 ◼   ► you want to do in home automation? Will you settle on your operating system strategy?

00:57:16 ◼   ► Please, right? And that's the give and take, I think, of managing Google. And when Eric

00:57:24 ◼   ► Schmidt stepped aside and Larry came back into a more active role, I feel like that

00:57:32 ◼   ► was sort of what was implied was, "We're going to try to lock this down a little bit

00:57:37 ◼   ► more and I'm gonna try to be a little more Steve Jobs like and give us a little more

00:57:43 ◼   ► focus and a little more discipline here. And I'm not sure, I mean Google is such a huge

00:57:48 ◼   ► company and they have so many projects that I think adding more of that to the equation

00:57:51 ◼   ► is good for them because it frustrates the market, it frustrates their partners, but

00:57:56 ◼   ► at the same time I wouldn't want them to be so locked down that they became another

00:57:59 ◼   ► Apple because it's good to have Google be the wacky, you know, the place where wacky

00:58:03 ◼   ► ideas come from because some of those wacky ideas are going to be great and I'd hate to

00:58:07 ◼   ► stifle them.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Should we talk about Google a little bit about how we feel about them and use them?

00:58:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, when we were talking about previewing a Google I/O and I guess I should say that

00:58:19 ◼   ► we're going to delay clockwise this week as well from its usual Wednesday slot and we're

00:58:23 ◼   ► going to do it after the Google I/O keynote and we're going to have a couple of smart

00:58:28 ◼   ► people who know a lot about Google stuff, especially Android, Andy Anako and Angé Tomich

00:58:36 ◼   ► are going to be our guests. So it will be a little later than usual but we're going

00:58:39 ◼   ► to do it after the Google I/O keynote. But every time we talk about Google on shows that

00:58:43 ◼   ► are populated by people who focus so much on Apple, you know, you definitely get feedback

00:58:47 ◼   ► of like, "Oh, Google, I hate them. They're the enemy." Just like with Microsoft in the

00:58:50 ◼   ► old days, right? "Oh, they're bad. They're the enemy. Why would you, you know, they're

00:58:55 ◼   ► just gathering all our information and you know all those arguments and I find it funny

00:59:01 ◼   ► and I put it in our document that we used to plan the show our Google doc if you will

00:59:09 ◼   ► because that's where it is that I use Google stuff all the time and I think you do too

00:59:13 ◼   ► and I find out I actually Derek Walter wrote a piece who's a freelancer who actually writes

00:59:19 ◼   ► for IDG's Android site, Greenbot, among other places, about how he's actually an Android

00:59:25 ◼   ► user who's going back to the iPhone because he loves Google's apps on the iPhone, and

00:59:31 ◼   ► that gives him the best of both, which is he gets the iOS ecosystem plus he gets to

00:59:36 ◼   ► use Google's services. And, you know, I use a lot of Google services too, and I don't

00:59:42 ◼   ► have a problem, I don't feel like it's an either/or, but I think it's interesting that

00:59:47 ◼   ► For some people it really is, like, you know, Google is the enemy, you can't use anything

00:59:51 ◼   ► involving Google, and I am firmly in Google's ecosystem as a Mac and iOS user.

01:00:01 ◼   ► I am across, and I think you are too, right?

01:00:03 ◼   ► >> Yup, I both use and love Gmail.

01:00:09 ◼   ► We use the Google Apps and personal Gmail.

01:00:13 ◼   ► I use Google Maps, even though I've been using the Apple Maps more recently because of the

01:00:20 ◼   ► Apple Watch directions.

01:00:21 ◼   ► But I'm just excited for whenever Google have a good app, but that might be like 2.0 if

01:00:28 ◼   ► they really want to make it something that's worthwhile, because I don't think they could

01:00:31 ◼   ► do too much of WatchKit.

01:00:34 ◼   ► So I've been using the Apple Maps more even though I prefer Google Maps.

01:00:39 ◼   ► I use Google Docs.

01:00:40 ◼   ► I love Google Docs.

01:00:42 ◼   ► a lot of our business is run using Drive.

01:00:44 ◼   ► - Yeah. - It's actually,

01:00:45 ◼   ► you know, I'm a big fan, I'm just a big fan of it.

01:00:48 ◼   ► And I have this feeling about how I am with Google products

01:00:53 ◼   ► and I think it's something that people need to consider

01:00:56 ◼   ► how they feel either way.

01:00:58 ◼   ► Like, I am a firm believer that I get genuine use

01:01:02 ◼   ► from Google stuff, right?

01:01:05 ◼   ► The products that I use I find very useful

01:01:08 ◼   ► and I've tried competitors, you know,

01:01:10 ◼   ► because I'm a nerd and I try stuff out.

01:01:12 ◼   ► and the competitors of Gmail, Maps, and Docs,

01:01:15 ◼   ► in my opinion, are inferior.

01:01:16 ◼   ► - I agree.

01:01:17 ◼   ► - I've tried so much other stuff--

01:01:19 ◼   ► - They're better than they used to be.

01:01:20 ◼   ► It used to be no competition at all,

01:01:23 ◼   ► but now there's competition.

01:01:25 ◼   ► - Some.

01:01:26 ◼   ► - The iOS, have you used the iOS apps,

01:01:29 ◼   ► especially on the iPad, the Google iOS apps for Docs sheets?

01:01:32 ◼   ► And I mean, I don't do slides, but they're really good.

01:01:36 ◼   ► - They have some employables that really annoy me,

01:01:38 ◼   ► but they're good.

01:01:40 ◼   ► I use them all the time, actually.

01:01:41 ◼   ► That's one of the things like, you know,

01:01:44 ◼   ► gone back and forth trying to use iCloud, right?

01:01:48 ◼   ► And I know people are gonna come and say,

01:01:50 ◼   ► "iCloud on the web is so good."

01:01:51 ◼   ► Yes, but there is one massive, massive,

01:01:54 ◼   ► fundamental problem with trying to collaborate

01:01:57 ◼   ► with people using iCloud.

01:02:00 ◼   ► Try and do it on iOS.

01:02:01 ◼   ► Just try, 'cause you can't.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Can't do it.

01:02:03 ◼   ► It's not possible for Jason, you to share with me

01:02:06 ◼   ► a document and me make changes to that document

01:02:09 ◼   ► on iOS that you will see.

01:02:11 ◼   ► All I can do is download the document and make changes and they're offline.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I cannot.

01:02:17 ◼   ► I just don't understand.

01:02:18 ◼   ► It drives me insane.

01:02:20 ◼   ► Well, you know, the Microsoft apps are very good on iOS, but it's the same story that

01:02:27 ◼   ► you can edit a document and save it back, but it is not -- and go back into your OneDrive

01:02:37 ◼   ► and other people can see that there are changes, but it's not the same.

01:02:40 ◼   ► It is not that sort of completely seamless experience that you get with what Google is

01:02:47 ◼   ► doing.

01:02:48 ◼   ► So, obviously, I also use Google Search, right?

01:02:51 ◼   ► I feel like I always miss that one off, but yes, of course I use Google Search.

01:02:55 ◼   ► So I feel like I really enjoy using the products and I get a lot of use out of them.

01:03:01 ◼   ► So I personally am happy for Google to take my data and create ads that they'll serve

01:03:07 ◼   ► back to me.

01:03:08 ◼   ► I know that's the trade-off, and I'm happy with that.

01:03:12 ◼   ► I feel like you just need to think about it.

01:03:15 ◼   ► Like, yeah, they're doing all this stuff,

01:03:16 ◼   ► and people think that they're like big evil,

01:03:18 ◼   ► and they're like creeping on you,

01:03:20 ◼   ► and they're gonna try and ruin your life.

01:03:23 ◼   ► People feel that way, genuinely.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And if you feel that way, that's fine.

01:03:27 ◼   ► But I get a lot of use out of Google's products,

01:03:31 ◼   ► so I'm happy with that trade-off.

01:03:33 ◼   ► Like, that's fine for me.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Like, I don't care.

01:03:37 ◼   ► I would be happy to pay and that's just not in their business model, but I mean it is

01:03:44 ◼   ► in some places, but I would be happy to pay and I don't love the fact that it's just all

01:03:49 ◼   ► free and we want your data, but I'm kind of okay with that tradeoff like you are because

01:03:55 ◼   ► I feel like they've got the best products.

01:03:58 ◼   ► Like the best products and I don't feel like what they're asking in the exchange is so

01:04:02 ◼   ► so compromised that I can't pay that price because it's a fairly painless thing right

01:04:06 ◼   ► now. And I realize there are lots of arguments to be made here about, "Well, that's how they

01:04:10 ◼   ► get you and they're driving other people out of the market that would be better." This

01:04:15 ◼   ► is all true and yet, you know, boy, those products, the products are good. And I don't

01:04:20 ◼   ► use them because they're free. I use them because they're good.

01:04:23 ◼   ► Yeah, they are just the best.

01:04:27 ◼   ► Like, I'm not one of the people that would rip a thermostat off a wall because Google

01:04:33 ◼   ► like, you know?

01:04:36 ◼   ► And it's a joke, but like when Nest were bought by Google, there were people that were saying,

01:04:41 ◼   ► "I'm taking it down."

01:04:42 ◼   ► Like, what do you think they're going to do to you?

01:04:44 ◼   ► Like, they're not evil.

01:04:45 ◼   ► They're just a company that makes money by selling ads.

01:04:48 ◼   ► I don't understand why people are so terrified of them

01:04:52 ◼   ► and I can't wait for the email that I'm gonna get.

01:04:55 ◼   ► But I just don't understand it.

01:04:57 ◼   ► If you don't like that,

01:04:58 ◼   ► if you don't like them looking at your data

01:05:01 ◼   ► and selling you ads, that's fine.

01:05:03 ◼   ► But what are you scared of?

01:05:06 ◼   ► That I don't understand.

01:05:08 ◼   ► The fear of they must be an evil company.

01:05:11 ◼   ► They do things that are not good.

01:05:14 ◼   ► And Google have been caught up

01:05:15 ◼   ► and they've been dragged through the courts.

01:05:17 ◼   ► That is true.

01:05:18 ◼   ► They've done stuff like they were doing this weird thing with Wi-Fi by using Google Street

01:05:24 ◼   ► View or something.

01:05:25 ◼   ► There are loads of things they do that aren't good.

01:05:26 ◼   ► But you know who also does really terrible things?

01:05:28 ◼   ► Apple do really terrible things.

01:05:30 ◼   ► They do things that they get dragged through the Supreme Court of Justice for because they

01:05:35 ◼   ► price fix on e-books.

01:05:36 ◼   ► That is not good stuff.

01:05:38 ◼   ► Steven: Supreme Court of Justice is not a thing, but okay.

01:05:41 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:05:42 ◼   ► You're not an American yet.

01:05:43 ◼   ► So we haven't forcibly moved you to our shores.

01:05:46 ◼   ► So I'll let you have it.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Do you understand what I'm saying?

01:05:50 ◼   ► All big companies do bad things.

01:05:53 ◼   ► And it doesn't necessarily prove that they're intentionally malicious.

01:05:58 ◼   ► Yes, Apple has done some interesting things.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Google has done some interesting things.

01:06:04 ◼   ► I think we can quibble about some of Google's stuff.

01:06:09 ◼   ► They're not saints.

01:06:10 ◼   ► You're right.

01:06:11 ◼   ► Apple's not a bunch of saints either.

01:06:14 ◼   ► the end, yeah, for me, I mean, every consumer has the right, you absolutely have the right

01:06:17 ◼   ► to not like them and not want to use them, but I think, you know, the flip side of that

01:06:21 ◼   ► is that we have the right to use the products if we like them, and I do like them, and I

01:06:24 ◼   ► just have not gotten caught up. But you know what? I, our friend John Syracuse, I won't

01:06:28 ◼   ► buy an Xbox because it's made by Microsoft. He just won't because it's Microsoft. He won't

01:06:33 ◼   ► do it. And I get that on one level, but on the other level, I'm like, you know, I just

01:06:38 ◼   ► don't, I just don't care enough about that. I just don't get caught up in that because

01:06:43 ◼   ► I think it is what you said, which is, you could demonize them, but I hate to say, "Let

01:06:53 ◼   ► he who is without sin cast the first stone," but it's like, these are big corporations.

01:06:59 ◼   ► Apple may be better than Google, but they're not without sin. There are probably other

01:07:05 ◼   ► products that you use from companies that you don't like, but you use them because you

01:07:08 ◼   ► like them, but you can afford to get away with not using Google's products or not using

01:07:12 ◼   ► Microsoft products, that's fine. I just have never gotten that. It's like, I'm not, no,

01:07:16 ◼   ► I'm not going to buy any blood diamonds, okay? I'm not going to do that. But for something

01:07:21 ◼   ► like Google stuff, it's like, I think it's good. It doesn't creep me out when I use it.

01:07:27 ◼   ► You know, it feels like the best in class. And so, you know, and that is why I'm using

01:07:34 ◼   ► it. It's not because it's free, but because it's good, like I said. So I'm not going to

01:07:38 ◼   ► tear my nest off the wall. And I do have a nest. The reason I would tear my nest off

01:07:41 ◼   ► the wall is if there's a war over home automation between Google and Apple, and it means that

01:07:47 ◼   ► like my Nest stuff just can never integrate with my other stuff in my home. That's the

01:07:52 ◼   ► part that actually really does bother me about the Apple-Google relationship is that they're

01:07:57 ◼   ► fighting for turf, and I feel like consumers, including me, are going to be potentially

01:08:01 ◼   ► hurt by that. I don't want to live in a world where you have to think about what your long-term

01:08:07 ◼   ► smartphone platform preferences before you buy a light bulb. And we've had home automation

01:08:14 ◼   ► in the show notes for weeks now. It's our new Kindle of the topic we never get to, maybe

01:08:18 ◼   ► next week. We'll just keep saying that forever. But that was one of the points I wanted to

01:08:24 ◼   ► make there and I can make it briefly here, which is when you get these format wars, the

01:08:31 ◼   ► consumers all get hurt. And I'm really concerned that we're headed that way with some of this

01:08:35 ◼   ► home automation stuff. Now, fortunately, Google is not like Apple in the sense that Google

01:08:40 ◼   ► is happy to put its stuff on Apple's platforms, and Apple has no reason to do the reverse

01:08:44 ◼   ► for lots of good reasons. You know, they sell hardware. They're in a different business

01:08:51 ◼   ► than Google, so I understand that. But that doesn't mean Google stuff is operable on iOS,

01:08:54 ◼   ► and that's great. But still, the point is, you shouldn't have to buy a car or a light

01:09:00 ◼   ► bulb or a thermostat thinking, "Well, does this commit me to using one, you know, using

01:09:06 ◼   ► an iPhone or the reverse which is I can't buy that light bulb because I use an iPhone?"

01:09:10 ◼   ► That's crazy, but I worry that that may be where we're going with some of this stuff.

01:09:14 ◼   ► So that's when I would get angry at Google and Apple is if they start erecting barriers

01:09:20 ◼   ► like that. That's where my interest in Google services and my reason why I might rip the

01:09:26 ◼   ► nest off of my wall, it would be stuff like that. Where if they're like, "Oh yeah, thanks

01:09:31 ◼   ► for buying a nest, but we decided that it's just not going to work with any of your other

01:09:36 ◼   ► stuff." That would be where it would get me, and it would be some sort of spiteful cooperation

01:09:43 ◼   ► competition thing between Google and Apple.

01:09:46 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yep. "Oh man, I'm worried about the email

01:09:49 ◼   ► I'm going to get. I got on my high horse. It's one of the things I get on my high horse

01:09:53 ◼   ► about."

01:09:54 ◼   ► you are way up there on that horse. Who's on the pillar in Trafalgar Square? Is that

01:10:01 ◼   ► Nelson?

01:10:02 ◼   ► Jason: Nelson's column.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Is he on a horse? Or not? He's just standing

01:10:07 ◼   ► there. He should get a horse. All right, that would be a high horse is what I'm saying.

01:10:10 ◼   ► Jason: Yeah, it would be. But yeah, I don't know.

01:10:13 ◼   ► Tim Cynova No, no, I want to hear.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Jason

01:10:14 ◼   ► something that frustrates me. I want to hear from people, I mean, look, if you don't, I'm

01:10:18 ◼   ► not saying please deluge us with email, but if you would like to make points about why

01:10:21 ◼   ► you don't use Google services or why you do and don't think it's a problem, I would love

01:10:25 ◼   ► to hear those because I think there are perfectly good arguments. What I would say is don't

01:10:30 ◼   ► try to prove that we shouldn't because I'm not interested in that. I'm not interested

01:10:34 ◼   ► in you telling me why what I'm doing is wrong. I'm interested in why it's wrong for you.

01:10:41 ◼   ► the distinction I would make there. But I am in, I think there are lots of valid reasons

01:10:45 ◼   ► why people would be like, "Yeah, I'm not going to use Google stuff or Microsoft stuff

01:10:49 ◼   ► or whoever stuff because X." And I think that would be interesting because I think

01:10:53 ◼   ► there are probably some very interesting reasons why people don't or do use services by,

01:10:58 ◼   ► you know, if you're an Apple person and you're using Google stuff, why or why not

01:11:03 ◼   ► if you're not. I think that's perfectly good there. But yeah, don't get mad at Myke.

01:11:09 ◼   ► I'd like to hear other perspectives, but all, you know, it's a personal choice about

01:11:14 ◼   ► whether you're okay with it or not. And I'm okay with it because, like I said, because

01:11:19 ◼   ► their products are good. That's the bottom line for me. I hate to say it. I mean, again,

01:11:22 ◼   ► I'm not going to use blood diamonds, but the products are good and they work for me.

01:11:27 ◼   ► And I don't feel like I'm giving up. I'm happy to spend money. I am spending $100 a

01:11:32 ◼   ► on Adobe Creative Cloud Photoshop and I'm spending $100 a year on Office 365. But, and

01:11:39 ◼   ► I would do that for Google stuff, but I don't have to because that's not their business

01:11:43 ◼   ► model and their stuff is good so I'm still using it.

01:11:45 ◼   ► David: I know that we pay for Google Apps Email for Relay.

01:11:48 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Oh, good.

01:11:49 ◼   ► David; We pay for that.

01:11:50 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Right, that's like $5 per user per month or

01:11:52 ◼   ► something like that.

01:11:53 ◼   ► David; Yeah, something like that. Yeah, we pay for that.

01:11:55 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah, see?

01:11:56 ◼   ► David; They do have stuff and we pay for it.

01:11:58 ◼   ► Tim Cynova They do. I don't pay for that but that's

01:12:00 ◼   ► because I'm grandfathered because I had a Google Apps account before they started charging

01:12:03 ◼   ► for it. But that's the only reason that I'm not paying for it is that I don't have to.

01:12:08 ◼   ► They said, "You don't have to pay. It's fine." But otherwise, I would.

01:12:11 ◼   ► - Talking about email, should we get onto AskUpgrade and that means our friends at MailRoute.

01:12:17 ◼   ► - Let's do it. Oh, yes. Yes, our friends at MailRoute have sponsored AskUpgrade against

01:12:22 ◼   ► this week. We love MailRoute. Speaking of mail, so I do use Google Apps for domains.

01:12:27 ◼   ► But before my mail comes to me, it's already passed through MailRoute, and MailRoute has

01:12:32 ◼   ► taken out all the bad stuff. Before it even gets to Google, the bad stuff is gone. It's

01:12:37 ◼   ► in a holding bin. It can stink up the holding bin all it likes, but I don't have to see

01:12:42 ◼   ► it. And it does do a better job than Google spam filters. When I've turned MailRoute

01:12:47 ◼   ► off, I'm like, "What is happening?" Because Google spam filters don't catch the stuff

01:12:50 ◼   ► that MailRoute catches. This is how MailRoute works. You sign up. It's a risk-free trial,

01:12:56 ◼   ► credit card necessary. You change your MX records, which are the things that tell mail

01:13:01 ◼   ► servers where to send mail for a particular domain. You point those at mail route instead

01:13:05 ◼   ► of your mail server. And that's it. Your mailbox and your hardware are completely protected.

01:13:11 ◼   ► All the mail goes to mail route first. Mail route uses its intelligence software to sort

01:13:15 ◼   ► through your mail and say, "That's good. That's bad. That's good. That's bad." They

01:13:18 ◼   ► see a lot of spam. They see a lot of viruses. They see a lot of email bounces. They know

01:13:22 ◼   ► how to detect it. That stuff gets put in a holding bin. You can get an email every day

01:13:27 ◼   ► or every week that says, "Here's what we filtered out." You can check it if you want

01:13:30 ◼   ► to see if there's something that you did want to receive. And with one click, you can have

01:13:35 ◼   ► delivered or even whitelist the sender so that all their mail forevermore will be passed

01:13:40 ◼   ► through to you and not go through the filters, which is really great. So you set that all

01:13:45 ◼   ► up and that's it. You don't have to install any hardware or software. You don't have to

01:13:49 ◼   ► put anything on your email server that's doing auto-filtering. MailRoute does all that for

01:13:53 ◼   ► you, and then it connects to your server, passes all the good mail through. It's easy

01:13:58 ◼   ► to set up, reliable, trusted by large institutions like universities and corporations. If you're

01:14:03 ◼   ► a desktop user, you'll find the interface simple and effective, like I do. And if you

01:14:08 ◼   ► are an email administrator or IT professional, we've said it before, they've got all the

01:14:11 ◼   ► buzzwords, they've got all the tools you need. There's an API so you can do account management,

01:14:16 ◼   ► support for all of that stuff. LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, mailbagging.

01:14:21 ◼   ► Mailbagging?

01:14:22 ◼   ► Mailbagging. Outbound relay, everything that you'd want from the people who are handling

01:14:26 ◼   ► your email and the good stuff gets passed along to your server. So, like I said, risk-free

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01:14:36 ◼   ► it. All listers to upgrade get 10% off for the lifetime of your account. Not for six

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01:14:53 ◼   ► for sponsoring. #AskUpgrade.

01:14:58 ◼   ► So we have some Ask Upgrade for you. For both of us. This comes from Dave first. How much

01:15:05 ◼   ► do Bluetooth headphones affect the Apple Watch battery? Jason, have you tried this yet? I

01:15:11 ◼   ► haven't.

01:15:12 ◼   ► I don't even have any Bluetooth headphones. I do have, I bought some Bluetooth headphones. I have used them briefly with the Apple Watch.

01:15:17 ◼   ► I don't know. I imagine that they have some effect.

01:15:22 ◼   ► I don't know if that was why Apple, you know,

01:15:25 ◼   ► we had a whole bunch of people say, "Well, Apple, the battery lasts so long

01:15:29 ◼   ► because it's gonna,

01:15:29 ◼   ► it's gonna reduce battery life over time," which is true. Maybe it's something like

01:15:33 ◼   ► Bluetooth headphones, that's true. I haven't,

01:15:35 ◼   ► I haven't done a battery test, like, while listening to a playlist

01:15:38 ◼   ► on Bluetooth headphones, how long does the Apple Watch last?

01:15:41 ◼   ► I'm sure it has an effect because everything does, but I don't know the details of it.

01:15:46 ◼   ► I bought the Bluetooth headphones specifically because I wanted to try them with the Apple

01:15:50 ◼   ► Watch and I have tried them, but when I've gone running, I generally like to bring my

01:15:54 ◼   ► phone with me because then I get the GPS tracking and I like to listen to podcasts and really

01:15:59 ◼   ► the right now music playback is kind of what it's built for when you've just got the watch,

01:16:04 ◼   ► so I need to test it more.

01:16:07 ◼   ► As an aside, what I found is that I love the Bluetooth headphones when I'm doing stuff

01:16:10 ◼   ► in the kitchen because I would always get my wired headphones would get yanked out of

01:16:15 ◼   ► my ears because they would snag on a knob on one of the drawers and now I use the Bluetooth

01:16:21 ◼   ► headphones when I'm doing stuff like cooking something or emptying the dishwasher and it's

01:16:26 ◼   ► there great. So I'm glad I bought them but I haven't spent enough time with them on the

01:16:32 ◼   ► watch.

01:16:34 ◼   ► And now we have from Danny. Have you noticed any digital crown stickiness in your day-to-day?

01:16:41 ◼   ► Danny notices it after workouts mainly on the sport edition.

01:16:45 ◼   ► I haven't. Have you?

01:16:48 ◼   ► Not at all.

01:16:50 ◼   ► Nothing.

01:16:50 ◼   ► No, I mean I saw, what was it, was it David's Park?

01:16:52 ◼   ► Somebody said that they had they had gotten it where it started to feel gritty and the the

01:16:56 ◼   ► stated instructions are basically run it under warm water and spin it and it'll like wash out.

01:17:01 ◼   ► It seems horrific.

01:17:01 ◼   ► But you know, it's covered.

01:17:04 ◼   ► Like, you know, people won't believe me

01:17:05 ◼   ► that you can take a shower with the Apple Watch,

01:17:07 ◼   ► but it's in the Apple Watch manual

01:17:11 ◼   ► to run the crown under warm water

01:17:14 ◼   ► and spin the dial around and just get the junk out.

01:17:16 ◼   ► So do that.

01:17:17 ◼   ► - Ah.

01:17:18 ◼   ► I did notice something, and I wanted to mention this

01:17:23 ◼   ► because we're talking about Digital Crown,

01:17:25 ◼   ► where my mind was kind of twisted a little bit

01:17:28 ◼   ► a couple of days ago.

01:17:30 ◼   ► You know when you do things with the digital crown, like for example, if you zoom out really

01:17:34 ◼   ► far on the app screen and let go, it like pings back into focus, right?

01:17:39 ◼   ► So you're like scrolling, scrolling, and then the apps fly back at you.

01:17:43 ◼   ► For some reason, my brain assumed that the crown spanned back.

01:17:48 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

01:17:50 ◼   ► That's a little mind hack they're doing on you.

01:17:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:54 ◼   ► But it doesn't.

01:17:55 ◼   ► Like the same with like, no, it doesn't.

01:17:56 ◼   ► Software can't control the crown.

01:17:57 ◼   ► The crown is entirely physical.

01:17:59 ◼   ► And the same with the rubber banding.

01:18:02 ◼   ► For some reason, in my mind,

01:18:04 ◼   ► it felt like, as it probably should,

01:18:08 ◼   ► that the crown was having a manipulation over the software

01:18:12 ◼   ► and that the software was manipulating the crown.

01:18:14 ◼   ► And it was just this very interesting thought.

01:18:16 ◼   ► I was like, "Hang on a minute, that doesn't move."

01:18:18 ◼   ► - No.

01:18:19 ◼   ► - And it was just very interesting to me to see that

01:18:22 ◼   ► and like, "Okay, you did something very smart here

01:18:25 ◼   ► "because you found a way."

01:18:27 ◼   ► Because when I'm looking at it,

01:18:29 ◼   ► and I'm spinning it, it doesn't, but again, it feels to me like there's resistance

01:18:34 ◼   ► of some description that increases. That is not the case. But that's how I feel, and

01:18:39 ◼   ► I find that very interesting.

01:18:41 ◼   ► Tim Cynova I think also the way they expect that if you

01:18:45 ◼   ► zoom out, then you're going to let go, that you're not going to hold on to the crown.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And so the way after a certain amount of time, you're going to let go. And so the way it

01:18:55 ◼   ► is you scroll it back and if you then hold your finger there and on the crown you have

01:19:00 ◼   ► to wait like half a second and then it snaps back. So the illusion is broken but that's

01:19:06 ◼   ► what they're intending is they think most people aren't going to do that they're going

01:19:09 ◼   ► to scroll back and then they're going to let go and then the snapback effect makes you

01:19:12 ◼   ► feel like the metaphor is still intact but if you hold on to it which I have to be honest

01:19:17 ◼   ► I've never done. That totally does happen. It's funny. That's the power. It's just like

01:19:25 ◼   ► with the haptic stuff on a force touch trackpad. You don't even realize that you're buying

01:19:34 ◼   ► into the metaphor until something happens that breaks the metaphor. And the crown, that's

01:19:40 ◼   ► a good example where there are certain cases. I think the rubber band on scrolling is a

01:19:46 ◼   ► good a more likely example right but even there what they try to do is just

01:19:50 ◼   ► stop it so you keep pushing the crown and it just doesn't scroll and then you

01:19:53 ◼   ► let go and it rubber bands but in reality it's not that you letting go

01:19:57 ◼   ► it's you stopping the scroll and if you hold on to the crown the the magic is

01:20:02 ◼   ► broken a little bit cool very cool mind control so this comes from Doc Elliot on

01:20:09 ◼   ► Twitter do you use Mac macro software and if so what do you use why don't you

01:20:15 ◼   ► answer this one Myke? So I have used Keyboard Maestro in the past to make

01:20:20 ◼   ► like a really rudimentary soundboard like it was madness pressing a different

01:20:24 ◼   ► function key played off the sound that was coming through it was this crazy

01:20:29 ◼   ► setup I had of a mixer and I did it for that but and I also use I don't know if

01:20:33 ◼   ► it counts I use Hazel to basically to file photos for me this is like a thing

01:20:40 ◼   ► that Federico came up with in Dropbox I'll put a link in the show notes so like

01:20:43 ◼   ► Dropbox automatically uploads pictures from my iPhone, they go into a camera uploads folder,

01:20:49 ◼   ► Hazel takes them, puts them into folders by month and date, like month and year, it's

01:20:54 ◼   ► very cool. And I also use it to do some stuff like a Skype call recorder that I use to record

01:21:01 ◼   ► the shows or to make backups of the shows. It keeps a history of all the calls and I

01:21:09 ◼   ► I have it dump those out after a couple of months when they're a couple of months old.

01:21:12 ◼   ► That's all I use, kind of macro-automation-y-wise. Do you use anything different?

01:21:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I have grand plans of using more of this stuff and I just haven't. And so maybe,

01:21:27 ◼   ► again, I'll make some grand plans, maybe I will sometime. I would say the things that

01:21:30 ◼   ► I use that are most like this are LaunchBar, which has some ways to kick off scripts and

01:21:38 ◼   ► it has some various actions that it will do. I'm not sure it counts but I'm gonna

01:21:42 ◼   ► throw it in there. And then I'm actually, I have to say, I'm using Automator to do

01:21:49 ◼   ► some stuff mostly because I know people, and I think I might have mentioned this in a

01:21:54 ◼   ► previous show, I know people who are programmers. We know people who are

01:21:58 ◼   ► programmers and oftentimes they come up with these very clever, very clever

01:22:04 ◼   ► solutions to problems that involve shell scripting or terminal commands because

01:22:08 ◼   ► that's where they live and that's how they think. And I look at those and think,

01:22:12 ◼   ► "Okay, I understand these terminal commands. I would rather not type them

01:22:15 ◼   ► every time." And so what I'll end up doing is writing is building an automator

01:22:20 ◼   ► service, which is something that you can basically get with a keyboard shortcut

01:22:25 ◼   ► or a contextual menu, and I will wrap the terminal command in that or I

01:22:32 ◼   ► will wrap it in an Apple script that generates the terminal command and then fires it off.

01:22:37 ◼   ► And I have a bunch of those. I have one for a thing that Dr. Drang wrote that's about

01:22:41 ◼   ► Southwest Airlines, uh, uh, iCal files that they send you for your confirmation, fixing

01:22:48 ◼   ► them so that they're better and adding them to your calendar. And then Marco Arment wrote

01:22:53 ◼   ► a script about MP3 encoding for podcasts that I adapted. And there's another command line

01:22:59 ◼   ► thing that Marco did and I built that into a service. And so all of those I can now when

01:23:05 ◼   ► I'm building a podcast I can select a couple of files and do a keyboard shortcut and it

01:23:10 ◼   ► turns them into from MP3s or AACs into WAVs because I need to use those for editing and

01:23:16 ◼   ► then I've got a couple of other keyboard shortcuts or submenus based on a control click. So you

01:23:24 ◼   ► know that's what I'm doing. I wouldn't say Automator is really a macro utility but those

01:23:29 ◼   ► are the automation things that I'm doing right now. I keep telling myself to use keyboard

01:23:33 ◼   ► maestro and text expander and I have most of these things.

01:23:37 ◼   ► I use text expander, of course, yeah, I use text expander.

01:23:39 ◼   ► I have it, I don't use it very much and I don't know why. I just, it's, and I've got

01:23:43 ◼   ► a bunch of clippings in BB edit and I don't use those either. So I realized the other

01:23:47 ◼   ► day that I have a keyboard shortcut that if I've got a URL on my clipboard and I select

01:23:52 ◼   ► text in BB edit, I do a keyboard shortcut and it makes the markdown link structure for

01:23:56 ◼   ► me and I never use it. I just type them out manually. I think there's, I've just got a

01:24:00 ◼   ► block there. So I'm recommitting now. I will try in the next few weeks to look at some

01:24:06 ◼   ► of my workflow and identify the places where I could, I think I could save time and make

01:24:10 ◼   ► my life better. But right now, I've got access to all this stuff and yet I'm not really using

01:24:14 ◼   ► it.

01:24:15 ◼   ► It really does blow my mind that you don't use TextExpander. Like that is just one of

01:24:19 ◼   ► those ones where I'm like, "You're a writer!"

01:24:22 ◼   ► out there is going to be mad because they sent me an email saying stop talking about

01:24:27 ◼   ► it but I'll just say again I type really fast and that means that I feel less needed, less

01:24:33 ◼   ► of a need to use TextExpander because I type really fast. I'll just type it. And I realize

01:24:40 ◼   ► that's kind of insane and yet there it is. I keep trying to think of phrases that I use

01:24:46 ◼   ► over and over again that I could just put into an expansion and I just I can't come

01:24:50 ◼   ► up with them and then I move on. I use TextExpander all the time for live blogging. When we were

01:24:58 ◼   ► doing live blogging, especially in a text document, I used it all the time because it

01:25:02 ◼   ► was really great in that scenario because you just type a couple of letters and things

01:25:06 ◼   ► would happen. You were typing really fast and furiously so that was good. But in my

01:25:11 ◼   ► day-to-day kind of writing life, I have a hard time imagining things that would require

01:25:16 ◼   ► that kind of thing. And like I said, I think that my perception is that I wouldn't save

01:25:20 ◼   ► quite as much time because I could just type it. I don't know. It's great and I have a couple things in there but it's just, you know, like

01:25:29 ◼   ► Keyboard Maestro, I've been writing about that for ages and, you know, I just have never, it's just never happened. So maybe someday.

01:25:39 ◼   ► Adrian wants to know how do you use overcast playlists?

01:25:45 ◼   ► So for me I have an all unplayed list

01:25:48 ◼   ► right so it has everything that's unplayed and I have some priority podcasts in there

01:25:52 ◼   ► so

01:25:53 ◼   ► they basically come to the top right so I have a few shows in there that I want

01:25:57 ◼   ► to be at the top so I know when they're there so they don't get lost in the shuffle

01:26:00 ◼   ► because I have lots and lots of stuff I don't listen to everything that's in my

01:26:03 ◼   ► all unfinished some stuff just gets deleted you know pick and choose some shows

01:26:07 ◼   ► I have a classics playlist for some episodes of old shows that I love and want to keep

01:26:13 ◼   ► in case the mood ever strikes and I want to listen to them.

01:26:17 ◼   ► That includes certain episodes and just certain shows in general, right?

01:26:20 ◼   ► Like "You Look Nice Today" used to be in there, but it seems like things might be changing

01:26:25 ◼   ► there.

01:26:26 ◼   ► I don't know what's happening, but it's very exciting.

01:26:27 ◼   ► I also have playlists for shows that I enjoy that I have a back catalogue that I want to

01:26:32 ◼   ► work through.

01:26:33 ◼   ► So I put them in there as well, which is quite cool.

01:26:36 ◼   ► I have one playlist. It's called The Playlist.

01:26:40 ◼   ► The Playlist?

01:26:42 ◼   ► The Playlist in honor of the magazine and other things named by Marco. It is The Playlist

01:26:48 ◼   ► and it has, there's some priority ones that are, you know, because you can set a priority.

01:26:53 ◼   ► So I've got some that are prioritized and then the rest of them are all just in there.

01:26:56 ◼   ► So I have a single playlist and I will slide things up and down and I've got stuff in there

01:27:00 ◼   ► that I've been meaning to listen to. I think about creating, like, for The Flop House.

01:27:06 ◼   ► I've got a bunch of old episodes of The Flop House downloaded because I haven't listened

01:27:10 ◼   ► to all of them yet. I'm very slowly going through the ones that I never heard because

01:27:15 ◼   ► I don't want to, you know, it's going to be sad when I've run out. But right now, I've

01:27:19 ◼   ► got extra episodes of The Flop House. I've thought about creating a classics playlist

01:27:23 ◼   ► like that. The problem is that just so often, I want to say, "Well, this podcast has 10

01:27:29 ◼   ► minutes left, what do I want to have come next? And I'll order them like that. And

01:27:32 ◼   ► I want there to be some of those classic episodes hovering down there for either when I'm

01:27:37 ◼   ► in the mood or when I'm out of the stuff that I really want to listen to. And I want

01:27:43 ◼   ► to move on to the classic thing because I've run out. And if I have them in different

01:27:46 ◼   ► –

01:27:47 ◼   ► David: You can have them in two places though.

01:27:48 ◼   ► Craig; I guess. I suppose.

01:27:49 ◼   ► David; Which I do.

01:27:50 ◼   ► Craig; I suppose.

01:27:51 ◼   ► David; Like for example, I have a Flop House playlist for the same reason. But they still

01:27:54 ◼   ► live in the all unfinished as well in case I'm flying around to see something. But

01:27:58 ◼   ► I just want to see flophouse shows, they just go there.

01:28:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, well, I'll explore that,

01:28:02 ◼   ► but right now, a single playlist, but it works for me.

01:28:05 ◼   ► It works, that's why I use Overcast,

01:28:07 ◼   ► is not only do I think the sound effects are better

01:28:10 ◼   ► than any other podcast player I've listened to

01:28:13 ◼   ► in terms of being able to listen at more than 1.0 speed,

01:28:18 ◼   ► which I was never able to do on other podcast apps

01:28:20 ◼   ► because of the weird artifacts, and they're not there,

01:28:24 ◼   ► but also the way the playlist is set up works for me.

01:28:28 ◼   ► So that's why I use Overcast.

01:28:30 ◼   ► - Troy wants to know what is the best way

01:28:35 ◼   ► to keep the Apple Watch from lighting up

01:28:38 ◼   ► at the movie theater?

01:28:40 ◼   ► Turn it off.

01:28:41 ◼   ► - I guess.

01:28:44 ◼   ► Or put it in the battery mode or something.

01:28:47 ◼   ► Yeah, if you're, first off,

01:28:49 ◼   ► almost everything on the Apple Watch

01:28:50 ◼   ► is a black background with a little bit of stuff on it.

01:28:55 ◼   ► So I think you could probably have a face

01:28:57 ◼   ► that was like the extra large or modular with red as the color and no complications just

01:29:05 ◼   ► the time, you could probably switch to that face when you're in the movie theater and

01:29:09 ◼   ► nobody would notice if your watch came on. It's only going to come on when you move your

01:29:14 ◼   ► wrist. It's not going to come on when you get a notification. So I'm sure you can minimize

01:29:19 ◼   ► it but yeah, if you absolutely don't want it coming on, I would say you put it in the

01:29:24 ◼   ► battery-saver mode and then reboot it when you leave the theater or you wear

01:29:28 ◼   ► something with sleeves and you just make sure that it's under the sleeve. I think

01:29:33 ◼   ► that's it. But try to the red because you know the red wavelengths don't don't

01:29:37 ◼   ► broadcast so much and it's the black background on the OLED screen so it's

01:29:41 ◼   ► gonna be emitting very little light if you do it that way so that might be a

01:29:45 ◼   ► thing. You can set any number of different presets for watch faces even

01:29:49 ◼   ► of the same face with different settings so create a movie theater preset maybe.

01:29:54 ◼   ► I guess do not disturb is your friend I suppose.

01:29:58 ◼   ► Yeah sure.

01:29:59 ◼   ► To stop it from lighting up when it's not bothering you but yeah if it's not lighting up I don't know what you'd do.

01:30:04 ◼   ► I think the issue is just if you know you move your wrist a little bit and it turns on because it thinks it's you know wrist raised but you're actually just hiding covering your eyes because it's a horror movie and you're afraid of what's going to happen next that would be annoying.

01:30:15 ◼   ► I think it's very bright though.

01:30:17 ◼   ► It's not. Having been to a couple movies since I got it, I've not found it to be an issue at all.

01:30:23 ◼   ► Make sure your brightness is down. There you go. That's one tip.

01:30:26 ◼   ► Just go into the watch app on your phone. Turn your brightness all the way down. That's going

01:30:32 ◼   ► to help a lot. And finally today, Thomas wants to know which grocery apps would you recommend

01:30:38 ◼   ► for the iPhone and watch has to be able to sync between two people. So I have a suggestion that

01:30:44 ◼   ► that doesn't fulfill everything in this list. So I have an app that I use, it's

01:30:48 ◼   ► not necessarily a grocery list app, but it's a shared, it's a

01:30:54 ◼   ► list app that allows you to do shared lists. It's called Silo and it's only on

01:31:00 ◼   ► the iPhone, they don't have a watch app so I can't help you with that part. I

01:31:04 ◼   ► don't know if there are any, I'm sure there are but I've not come across any,

01:31:08 ◼   ► but Silo is the best joint list app that I've tried and I tried a bunch and me

01:31:13 ◼   ► my girlfriend has some shared lists in there but they don't yet have a watch component.

01:31:19 ◼   ► They do have an iPad app.

01:31:21 ◼   ► All right. I have, yeah, again, I don't, I haven't done shopping lists on the Apple Watch

01:31:25 ◼   ► either. My wife and I are still using Grocery IQ which is not great but it works. It syncs

01:31:32 ◼   ► shopping lists between us and lets you scan in barcodes and is attached to a database

01:31:37 ◼   ► of various products at the market. I keep meaning to do a final like official test of

01:31:44 ◼   ► our groceries, which I had recommended to me, but I haven't tried it enough to move

01:31:50 ◼   ► us over to it so I can't endorse it yet. And then also I had Anylist recommended to me,

01:31:57 ◼   ► which is another grocery list app that has a little bit of meal planning on top of it,

01:32:03 ◼   ► which I'm not sure works with how we shop,

01:32:05 ◼   ► but I'm looking into that, too.

01:32:07 ◼   ► So I'd say stay tuned.

01:32:09 ◼   ► Still using Grocery IQ because it works,

01:32:13 ◼   ► but not 100% satisfied with it and looking around.

01:32:17 ◼   ► It would be cool.

01:32:19 ◼   ► My wife does most of the shopping, though,

01:32:21 ◼   ► and she doesn't have an Apple Watch,

01:32:22 ◼   ► so it would be less of a big deal for her.

01:32:24 ◼   ► I think that, you know, taking out the iPhone

01:32:25 ◼   ► and using it as a shopping list, though, that is a thing we do.

01:32:28 ◼   ► We absolutely do that.

01:32:30 ◼   ► -I do use Clear when I'm in the grocery store,

01:32:32 ◼   ► but you know you then kind of have to move things around that it doesn't work too well but

01:32:36 ◼   ► Yeah, hey, huh

01:32:38 ◼   ► All of those will be in the show notes along of a bunch of other stuff that we've spoken about today

01:32:42 ◼   ► And you can find all of that over at relay.fm/upgrade/38

01:32:46 ◼   ► If you want to find us online there's a couple of ways you can do that

01:32:49 ◼   ► You can find Jason's great work over at sixcolors.com and he is @jsnell on Twitter J S N E double L

01:32:56 ◼   ► I am @imike and don't forget you can ask questions

01:33:00 ◼   ► but also send us follow up if you like through the #AskUpgrade. We love to see your stuff

01:33:06 ◼   ► there. But you know if you want to send us tweets or if you really want to send us an

01:33:11 ◼   ► email you can find out all that information out on our show notes page as well. Did you

01:33:15 ◼   ► see how I waited that? If you really want to send us email, you can. You know, go for

01:33:22 ◼   ► it. Go for it if you like.

01:33:23 ◼   ► Steve McLaughlin You can also see our show notes probably by scrolling in the podcast

01:33:26 ◼   ► app you're listening to right now.

01:33:28 ◼   ► Most definitely, but you do not see an email link there.

01:33:30 ◼   ► You do have to go to the website to find that, so you can do that if you so desire.

01:33:34 ◼   ► But we'll be back next time.

01:33:36 ◼   ► Sure, we'll have some Google stuff to talk about and maybe have some predictions as well

01:33:40 ◼   ► for WWDC.

01:33:41 ◼   ► To an end, thanks so much for tuning into this week's episode of Upgrade.

01:33:46 ◼   ► Thanks again to our sponsors this week, MailRoute, GoToMeeting and Hover, and we'll be back

01:33:50 ◼   ► next time.

01:33:51 ◼   ► Say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:33:52 ◼   ► Goodbye, Myke Hurley.

01:33:53 ◼   ► I'm Myke Hurley.

01:33:54 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:33:57 ◼   ► [ Music ]