Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode number 32.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by lynda.com, where you can instant-stream thousands of

00:00:16 ◼   ► courses created by industry experts, MailRoute, a secure hosted email service for protection

00:00:21 ◼   ► from viruses and spam, PDF/Pen ScanPlus from Smile, the app for mobile scanning and OCR,

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm Warby Parker. Glasses should not cost as much as an iPhone. My name is Myke Hurley

00:00:32 ◼   ► and I am joined as always by the one and only Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:35 ◼   ► - Hi Myke, good morning. - Good morning to you, sir.

00:00:39 ◼   ► - We're doing this a little bit earlier than usual because of other commitments I've got.

00:00:43 ◼   ► But that's fine, I'm awake. I've had two cups of tea. I'm ready to go.

00:00:47 ◼   ► - So we have a big show today. We have Myke Watches the Movies at the end, spinal tap.

00:00:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, we do. So everybody who's looking at the length of this episode and thinking,

00:00:56 ◼   ► good God, why is it so long? The answer is there's a Spinal Tap at the end. And as we

00:01:00 ◼   ► established on episode 30 with John Syracuse, this is a little bit like the post-show of

00:01:06 ◼   ► ATP. You don't need to listen if you don't want to because we're going to talk about

00:01:11 ◼   ► a movie at the end. But we hope you will tune in because it should be fun.

00:01:14 ◼   ► I have lots of notes.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Good.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Lots and lots and lots of notes about Spinal Tap. So I'm very excited about that. But we

00:01:20 ◼   ► have an action-packed show anyway. I mean, there's Apple Watch stuff that we want to

00:01:25 ◼   ► about. I think we've both, well, you have seen them already, but you've been for a try-on.

00:01:29 ◼   ► I've been for a try-on and I'm really excited to talk about that. And we have a couple of

00:01:34 ◼   ► other little bits and bobs that we want to talk about today. But first, as always, why

00:01:37 ◼   ► don't we dive into a little bit of follow-up?

00:01:39 ◼   ► - A little bit of follow-up, yeah. I wanted to mention again, I'm still receiving feedback

00:01:44 ◼   ► from episode 30, which is not surprising since that was just a week ago, because we did our

00:01:49 ◼   ► our little interim episode about the MacBook that was 31, messing up all schedules and

00:01:54 ◼   ► calendars for Upgrade Forevermore, that we—I continue to hear from people who point out

00:02:00 ◼   ► that people did word processing and spreadsheets on phones years before the iPhone. I'm not

00:02:04 ◼   ► sure if we actually said literally it was not available at that time. I don't think

00:02:09 ◼   ► we did, but if we did, we were engaging in a hyperbole. I was typing things in on a palm

00:02:16 ◼   ► with an external keyboard years before that. Our point again, just to say it one more time,

00:02:20 ◼   ► our point was that the vast majority of people who were enthralled by the idea of the iPhone

00:02:25 ◼   ► were not people who had been using Windows Mobile and demanded a powerful spreadsheet,

00:02:30 ◼   ► which is what is the thesis of becoming Steve Jobs? And they're wrong about that. And a

00:02:36 ◼   ► few people saying, "But I used spreadsheets on my Windows Mobile phone before the iPhone

00:02:41 ◼   ► came out and I relied on it or I needed to SSH into a Unix system somewhere and so I

00:02:47 ◼   ► was disappointed by the iPhone not having apps. Those people, their experiences are

00:02:51 ◼   ► perfectly valid, but once again what I'd say is that's not what the book's trying to make

00:02:56 ◼   ► as its premise and I think what it's trying to say is not accurate that the iPhone did

00:03:02 ◼   ► not meet with a negative reaction because it didn't run apps because I don't, I think

00:03:06 ◼   ► that it was actually spectacularly loved even though it didn't have apps. And I don't think

00:03:11 ◼   ► powerful spreadsheets were really what people were looking for and were like

00:03:15 ◼   ► saying well it doesn't have powerful spreadsheets I'm not gonna buy the

00:03:17 ◼   ► iPhone until there's an app store and that was the point there not that there

00:03:21 ◼   ► weren't apps I had a palm pre and a palm 3 before that I had lots of lots of apps

00:03:27 ◼   ► but that was that was sort of not the point but yes we validate that there

00:03:30 ◼   ► were people out there who were trailblazers who were using apps on

00:03:33 ◼   ► phones before the iPhone came out yes absolutely I lost my place in the audio

00:03:38 ◼   ► book. Oh no! It's okay I found it again I found it again this morning. This is

00:03:44 ◼   ► because of a phone restore that I had to do which that's a whole lot of a story

00:03:49 ◼   ► for another day. Is that day Wednesday? I don't know I've dealt with it this

00:03:56 ◼   ► morning but I'm too annoyed at my phone carrier to even want to... anyway. Do you file

00:04:01 ◼   ► your personal experiences now as that's an upgrade that that's an analog that's

00:04:04 ◼   ► connected do you do that now? Yes. Especially with topics. So like try on that's upgrade.

00:04:11 ◼   ► Photos that's connected. That is a thing that I do actually go through in my brain it's an

00:04:19 ◼   ► interesting way to live. So as I was scrolling through the audiobook the first place that I

00:04:27 ◼   ► landed on was the iPhone thing again and I got really mad again. It was like "oh here I am again

00:04:34 ◼   ► It's talking rubbish.

00:04:36 ◼   ► Oh, it just upsets me.

00:04:38 ◼   ► It makes me really angry.

00:04:39 ◼   ► I saw somebody interacting with one of the authors on Twitter and pointing out a factual

00:04:43 ◼   ► error and they're like, "Yeah, we'll fix that in a future edition."

00:04:46 ◼   ► And I thought, "Geez, at this point, do I need to write to them and say, 'I've got a

00:04:49 ◼   ► list of about 15 things you got wrong.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Do you want me to send it to you some?'"

00:04:54 ◼   ► I mean, I'm happy to send them the list, but I also have now been on the record as complaining

00:04:59 ◼   ► about their book, so I don't know.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Maybe I will.

00:05:03 ◼   ► reason you're complaining about it, well there's two points, it's the factual inaccuracies

00:05:08 ◼   ► and then this part that we're about to talk about now. Shall I read this feedback from

00:05:13 ◼   ► Alberto? Yeah, did this come from Alberto? Alberto sent this, yeah this was yesterday

00:05:19 ◼   ► while I was on Twit actually I got this long tweet chain from Alberto. Sure, go ahead and

00:05:24 ◼   ► read it. Okay, so this is verbatim from Alberto. You stated on multiple podcasts that the era

00:05:29 ◼   ► of 1985 to 1997 was somehow not a failure for Apple. You can research their filings.

00:05:34 ◼   ► At one point they were losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year. I think you're

00:05:38 ◼   ► remembering the era sentimentally. Regardless of the good memories you have of the era of your

00:05:44 ◼   ► star in the Apple community, the facts are that Apple was haemorrhaging cash for a large part of

00:05:48 ◼   ► the time that Steve Jobs was exiled. Arguing it in any other way does it disservice your listeners.

00:05:53 ◼   ► You fell in love, understandably, with a computer that was nevertheless a financial failure.

00:05:57 ◼   ► You say that because you loved the Mac, it somehow means that Apple was not a failure for more than a decade.

00:06:04 ◼   ► The facts are that it was.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Right. It's good. And I went through the trouble of getting all the tweets and putting them all together so that I could get this piece of feedback in there,

00:06:12 ◼   ► which was not tagged as AskUpgrade. It was just sent directly to me.

00:06:15 ◼   ► And I think we mentioned this before, but I'm going to mention it again now.

00:06:20 ◼   ► Part of this is the perspective of financial versus product, which is what he's saying is,

00:06:25 ◼   ► "Look, you can say you like the products.

00:06:27 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:06:28 ◼   ► It was a failure.

00:06:29 ◼   ► They lost money," which I don't agree with.

00:06:32 ◼   ► I think that you can have a movie that's really great that is a financial disaster, and those

00:06:38 ◼   ► two things are very different.

00:06:39 ◼   ► So you could have a company that's really poorly managed and yet make products that

00:06:44 ◼   ► you like.

00:06:45 ◼   ► On Twit yesterday, Ben Thompson made the argument that ... I mean, it was in the context of

00:06:51 ◼   ► something that Leah Laporte said that was really questionable. But he basically said,

00:06:56 ◼   ► "Jason, you were stupid to use the Mac in the '90s because Windows was everywhere and

00:07:03 ◼   ► better." And I don't agree. I don't agree at all. I feel like that during this era,

00:07:11 ◼   ► I loved using the Mac. I knew how to use Windows and didn't like it and thought it was kind

00:07:16 ◼   ► of awful and icky, and was willing to put up with the fact that the Mac was incompatible

00:07:21 ◼   ► with anything. Not just incompatible, Myke. Uncompatible. It was unable to be combated.

00:07:30 ◼   ► Because of all the benefits, it was nicer, and you could do almost everything, but you

00:07:37 ◼   ► only had one or two apps that did it instead of 20, which is what it was like on Windows.

00:07:41 ◼   ► mostly crappy and maybe one that was really great.

00:07:45 ◼   ► But again, I don't wanna re-fight the reason

00:07:47 ◼   ► like why Mac users stuck with the Mac

00:07:51 ◼   ► even when it was only 10%, other than to say,

00:07:54 ◼   ► please don't discount our experience

00:07:57 ◼   ► by rewriting history now and saying,

00:07:59 ◼   ► well, look that because Windows had 90%,

00:08:02 ◼   ► you guys shouldn't have been using the Mac

00:08:06 ◼   ► and 'cause that's not what it was like

00:08:09 ◼   ► when it was actually happening.

00:08:10 ◼   ► It was not like that at all.

00:08:11 ◼   ► So that's point one. The other point here is that Alberto is doing a lot of, you know,

00:08:15 ◼   ► at one point they were losing hundreds of millions of dollars. For a large part of the

00:08:21 ◼   ► time that Steve Jobs was exiled, Apple was hemorrhaging cash. And I have to say, I think

00:08:24 ◼   ► Alberto is a little bit of a victim of this narrative, which is that Steve Jobs left Apple,

00:08:29 ◼   ► it became a disaster immediately, and then Steve Jobs came back and saved it. It's like,

00:08:33 ◼   ► no, it became a disaster gradually, and at the end it really accelerated and it fell

00:08:38 ◼   ► apart and they could have made some decisions early on maybe that would have saved the company,

00:08:43 ◼   ► maybe not. And that Scully had problems executing, but yet at the same time he had, as John and

00:08:49 ◼   ► I said, the product vision of doing the Newton. I mean, he was not wrong in the grand scheme

00:08:53 ◼   ► of things about where tech was going, but they were wrong and too early about a lot

00:08:58 ◼   ► of the details. But again, this is not my... I'm not trying to argue a business standpoint.

00:09:02 ◼   ► My point about the "Becoming Steve Jobs" book is it's written by business journalists. And

00:09:05 ◼   ► And so it's very easy for them to look at the Apple of the '80s and '90s and say it

00:09:10 ◼   ► was a failure, because from a business standpoint, it was a failure. It was a company that went

00:09:14 ◼   ► into decline and then almost went out of business. What I'm saying is you cannot extend that

00:09:19 ◼   ► and say that there was not other stuff going on at Apple in terms of the products, in terms

00:09:25 ◼   ► of the Mac community that wasn't valuable between 1985 and 1997. I know the mid-'90s

00:09:32 ◼   ► kind of a dark time for Mac users in general, not just Apple's business. It started to fall

00:09:37 ◼   ► apart, but that is, you know, if I had to simplify my argument about the non-jobs period

00:09:44 ◼   ► of Apple, the inner regnum, I would say people take 12 years and make it seem like two, the

00:09:50 ◼   ► last two, and that's not accurate. There was a lot of interesting stuff that happened before

00:09:56 ◼   ► it all fell apart in the mid-90s, and I think that we've simplified that story. And as for

00:10:01 ◼   ► for doing a disservice to my listeners, as Alberto claims here, I would say I'm just

00:10:06 ◼   ► trying to be a little bit contrarian here. I feel like there is this common narrative

00:10:09 ◼   ► about how Apple was a total disaster while Steve Jobs was gone, and there was essentially

00:10:14 ◼   ► it's getting boiled down to there was no value, and it was a wasteland, and tumbleweeds were

00:10:18 ◼   ► rolling through. And I don't think that's true, because this is the era where I discovered

00:10:21 ◼   ► the Mac, loved the Mac, became an avid Mac user, started reading all the Mac magazines,

00:10:25 ◼   ► and eventually decided I wanted to write about it professionally. So maybe I was a crazy

00:10:28 ◼   ► person to do all those things, but I think I saw some value there in that subculture.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And it's difficult for me to see that all get collapsed into the Gil Amelio and Michael

00:10:40 ◼   ► Spindler era because that was bad. But there were a lot of good times before it went bad.

00:10:46 ◼   ► And I am a product person, so I don't really care about the fact that Apple lost money

00:10:51 ◼   ► at the end. I mean, that would have put them out of business. I care more that their products

00:10:55 ◼   ► at the end weren't very good, and that they couldn't ship a next-generation operating

00:11:01 ◼   ► system. Again, it's a financial thing versus a product thing. I care about the fact that

00:11:06 ◼   ► their products were really great and then their products weren't great, not that they

00:11:09 ◼   ► lost money at some point. And that's a totally valid argument if you're viewing it from a

00:11:12 ◼   ► business perspective. But I'm not saying Apple was a great business when Steve Jobs was gone.

00:11:16 ◼   ► I'm saying Apple made a lot of great products and there was a lot of great stuff in the

00:11:20 ◼   ► ecosystem in that period. And that's the difference between my perspective about Apple in that

00:11:27 ◼   ► era and the becoming Steve Jobs perspective. And that's fair enough. I totally get where

00:11:32 ◼   ► they're coming from, but I think that there was much more nuance there than... So now

00:11:37 ◼   ► I've just made Alberto mad again. So anyway, that's my take on it. That's why I wanted

00:11:42 ◼   ► to bring it up. I feel like what I'm saying is not talked about today. People just kind

00:11:47 ◼   ► of throw that whole era in the bin because it ended badly.

00:11:51 ◼   ► It's like, you know, do you -- if there's a marriage that goes for 20 years and the

00:11:56 ◼   ► last two it falls apart and they get a divorce, do you look back at the previous 18 years

00:12:00 ◼   ► and say that whole time was a disaster?

00:12:02 ◼   ► It's like, well, not necessarily.

00:12:03 ◼   ► They might have had a good 15 years and then it started to fall apart.

00:12:07 ◼   ► And let's not rewrite history is what I'm saying.

00:12:10 ◼   ► So.

00:12:11 ◼   ► I think something that's worth remembering that maybe tries to put this into context

00:12:14 ◼   ► a little bit is the parallel with Pixar.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Pixar was spending and just hemorrhaging millions and millions of dollars before

00:12:22 ◼   ► they did the deal with Disney. Like they were just spending all of Steve Jobs and

00:12:27 ◼   ► the investors money right and they were making interesting things but they were

00:12:30 ◼   ► just spending spending spending loads of money until Toy Story right came and

00:12:35 ◼   ► saved them. But nobody, especially in the book, they don't call Pixar irrelevant and talk about how

00:12:39 ◼   ► exciting Pixar was even during this time. It's just a state of perspective like

00:12:45 ◼   ► you see it you see it differently because you're in in the weeds enjoying

00:12:50 ◼   ► right it's you you be here long enough and and in this world and you realize

00:12:55 ◼   ► that there are things that you've been around once you're around long enough

00:12:59 ◼   ► people start to point things that happened in the past and you say that's

00:13:01 ◼   ► not what happened and that doesn't happen until you've been around long

00:13:04 ◼   ► enough for enough time to go past that people's narratives are shaped by the

00:13:08 ◼   ► present and you're remembering things from the past but the last point I'll

00:13:12 ◼   ► make about this is, based on something that was mentioned in the chat room, you know,

00:13:15 ◼   ► was the Mac a critical success? The Mac was always considered better than Windows. It

00:13:19 ◼   ► just didn't work because Apple didn't have, Apple was making a single product like they

00:13:24 ◼   ► are today that's their operating system and their hardware, and the PCs were cheap and

00:13:27 ◼   ► plentiful and businesses bought them and, you know, the market share went all to Microsoft.

00:13:34 ◼   ► But as a point in my argument, what I'll say is, it wasn't until Windows 95 that the game

00:13:40 ◼   ► really, really, really changed and that Apple lost its upper hand. And I don't think Windows

00:13:47 ◼   ► 95 was as good as the Mac either, but it was close enough. And for people who didn't live

00:13:51 ◼   ► through that era, Windows users were furious about Windows 95. I remember it well. They

00:13:57 ◼   ► were furious about it. And you know why they were furious about it? The common complaint

00:14:01 ◼   ► from Windows 3.1 power users about Windows 95 was, "Why did you turn my computer into

00:14:06 ◼   ► a Mac. So, you know, essentially in '95, that's when Microsoft was like, "We got it," and

00:14:12 ◼   ► they like totally nailed it, knocked off the Mac entirely, and were ready to roll. And

00:14:17 ◼   ► that was when the jig was really up for Apple. That was the last—and I think in the book,

00:14:21 ◼   ► they say that, and I—although I don't agree with the book's claim that it made Windows

00:14:25 ◼   ► better than the Mac at that point, it made it good enough that it didn't matter to most

00:14:30 ◼   ► people. And Apple's differentiators kind of fell away at that point, and that was really—things

00:14:35 ◼   ► were bad enough at that point at Apple, but that just made it worse. And then, you know,

00:14:39 ◼   ► at that point they're two years away from going out of business.

00:14:41 ◼   ► I hope we don't have to talk about this again. Yeah, I think that's it. I think we wrapped

00:14:45 ◼   ► it up. The only other thing-- Not that it's bad, but we-- I feel like you have to keep--

00:14:50 ◼   ► Yeah. No, this is-- I just-- I feel like that was enough because I think Alberto made an

00:14:55 ◼   ► interesting argument, although I disagree with it, and I wanted to address that. Somebody,

00:15:00 ◼   ► listener John, not John Siracusa, wrote in to say, "It occurred to me that you and John

00:15:04 ◼   ► John Syracuse and me and John Syracuse, you should write the definitive Steve Jobs Apple

00:15:08 ◼   ► book. I don't think this is what we are good at, but I appreciate it. That's very nice.

00:15:13 ◼   ► I had two other pieces of follow-up and then we'll move on. One is that a quote that I

00:15:17 ◼   ► didn't mention in episode 30 from the book that just bugged me is there's a guy named

00:15:21 ◼   ► Myke Slade who worked at Next, and they're talking about Steve Jobs and Lorraine when

00:15:25 ◼   ► they had kids. And he says, "They were classic new parents. They did everything wrong. They

00:15:31 ◼   ► were both hippies, so the kid was in their bed the whole time, the kid was only breastfed.

00:15:35 ◼   ► So what did the kid do? He screamed all the time and was hungry all the time, because

00:15:38 ◼   ► duh, right? So within a week they looked like prison camp survivors. This is Myke Slade.

00:15:43 ◼   ► I don't know Myke Slade, but you know, I like, there's nothing like telling other parents

00:15:49 ◼   ► what they should do. Like, you know the answers and they don't. And as somebody who was not

00:15:53 ◼   ► a hippie, but also co-slept with our baby and breastfed our baby, hey Myke Slade, can

00:16:00 ◼   ► you see the finger I'm holding up here? Boy, people love telling other parents what to

00:16:06 ◼   ► do. That's not a hippie thing. That's, I mean, come on. And again, you know, this guy seems

00:16:10 ◼   ► to seems to think like he knows how to be a parent and Steve Jobs doesn't and that guy

00:16:17 ◼   ► was a jerk. And I thought that was just an interesting quote in the book where I where

00:16:20 ◼   ► I was like, I don't know who this guy is, but I don't like him now because of that quote.

00:16:24 ◼   ► Judgmental much? And there's the last thing which is from listener Shereen who said, I'd

00:16:29 ◼   ► to the Robot or Not podcast with Jason and John Siracusa, just saying.

00:16:33 ◼   ► And to which I say, I'm working on it. I'm working on it with John, more accurately,

00:16:41 ◼   ► to see if we can delve deeper into whether things are robots or not. So that's it. That's

00:16:46 ◼   ► all the follow up.

00:16:47 ◼   ► So let me take a quick break before we get into our topics this week. And let me just

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00:19:06 ◼   ► So Mr. Jason Snell, you wrote a little piece about buying and trying an Apple Watch. Now

00:19:17 ◼   ► We were all up at whatever time it was in your local time zone in the Real AFM chat room

00:19:22 ◼   ► and everybody was talking about how much they were refreshing the webpage and using the app

00:19:29 ◼   ► and such like that as we were all buying our Apple watches. What did you put on all the room for?

00:19:36 ◼   ► - Oh my, it was so stressful, like what am I gonna do, what am I gonna do,

00:19:43 ◼   ► and I'm watching the clock tick because here it was midnight so I just stayed up.

00:19:47 ◼   ► What am I going to do? What am I going to order? You know and I kept looking at the different

00:19:50 ◼   ► prices and I kept seeing you know stainless steel and it's like 700 dollars and in the end I went

00:19:57 ◼   ► with what turned out to be what everybody went with it seems almost which is I went with the

00:20:04 ◼   ► space gray sport with the black band because I liked how the space gray I like the black band

00:20:12 ◼   ► rather than one of the bright color bands. And it came with the space gray color aluminum body instead of the more silvery aluminum body.

00:20:20 ◼   ► And I like the look of that too. All of my other iOS devices are space gray as well. I like the look of that color.

00:20:28 ◼   ► And so that's what I placed an order for. And at the same time I made a Trion appointment for the next morning, the first slot the next morning,

00:20:36 ◼   ► or the second slot I guess, 10.15 a.m. the next day. So now meanwhile you also

00:20:43 ◼   ► ordered something and made a try-on appointment right?

00:20:47 ◼   ► Yep I ordered the sport with the blue band. Not to criticize your choice here but one of the

00:20:55 ◼   ► reasons I didn't go with the space gray is it limits the bands you can you can

00:21:00 ◼   ► use in my opinion because a lot of the attachments for the bands are in the

00:21:05 ◼   ► steel color so they would kind of clash against each other. You kind of end up... if that

00:21:12 ◼   ► bothers you, it might not bother you.

00:21:13 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't feel like... I feel like the shiny stainless steel is not close

00:21:19 ◼   ► to either of the textures of the sport watch. So if it really bothers you, I think that

00:21:24 ◼   ► you need to get a stainless steel instead of it. So it didn't bother me. And I did decide

00:21:30 ◼   ► to buy an extra band after doing my try-on experience, but I just I decided I liked the

00:21:36 ◼   ► look of the black watch and the black box strap and space grey watch more. So but I

00:21:43 ◼   ► think your opinion is valid. The blue band is really cute. That was my other thing that

00:21:46 ◼   ► I was thinking of in the sport because it's kind of adorable.

00:21:48 ◼   ► I like it. I like it. Ideally I would have wanted a black band but I do just I also personally

00:21:56 ◼   ► do just prefer the pure aluminium look to the grey. This is one of the things I found

00:22:02 ◼   ► so interesting. So I read your post about the Tryon, I read Stephen's and Max Parkys.

00:22:10 ◼   ► And the thing that I have found the most interesting is every single person has completely different

00:22:16 ◼   ► opinions about the way the bands look, about the way the bodies look. And I've never seen

00:22:22 ◼   ► it like this before.

00:22:23 ◼   ► That's why you gotta try them on. It's fashion.

00:22:26 ◼   ► reinforcing the fact that this comes down to taste. Like Stephen said that he

00:22:31 ◼   ► thought that the the aluminium felt cheap and because it was light and I

00:22:36 ◼   ► felt like the steel was heavier than I would have wanted and was happy I went

00:22:40 ◼   ► with the aluminium. Like there's so there's so many different like some people say

00:22:44 ◼   ► they really love the modern buckle some people say the leather feels like

00:22:47 ◼   ► plastic like it's so interesting to read everybody's different opinions on this

00:22:52 ◼   ► stuff. Yeah. Yeah, and I wonder whether it ticks over with where it's just fashion and

00:22:59 ◼   ► it's personal and people have different way different opinions about like what they wear

00:23:03 ◼   ► on their wrist then it uses different parts of your you know brain different judgments

00:23:07 ◼   ► you make then if it's just a computer that you're carrying around or something. I don't

00:23:12 ◼   ► I don't know I I definitely formed opinions about the bands through through trial although

00:23:17 ◼   ► they were very similar to the opinions I had before. Some of them reinforced, a few of

00:23:22 ◼   ► them changed. But yeah, everybody's got their take on it. I did, somebody asked me to explain

00:23:27 ◼   ► what the colors are and I said, "Well, the standard Sport reminds me most of like the

00:23:32 ◼   ► original iPhone back. It's a little, it's not quite like the MacBook Pro aluminum, aluminum.

00:23:45 ◼   ► feels a little bit hazier like that original iPhone.

00:23:48 ◼   ► The space gray one is like the space gray back

00:23:51 ◼   ► of a current iPhone.

00:23:52 ◼   ► And then the stainless steel is like the back

00:23:55 ◼   ► of an iPod classic.

00:23:56 ◼   ► It's the shiny stainless steel.

00:23:58 ◼   ► And they all have their value.

00:24:00 ◼   ► Although, honestly, we can also overthink this

00:24:02 ◼   ► because mostly what you see is the screen.

00:24:05 ◼   ► And the metal color is really just kind of on the sides

00:24:08 ◼   ► and the crown.

00:24:10 ◼   ► It's not super prominent.

00:24:12 ◼   ► I mean, it's there.

00:24:13 ◼   ► but you know the face is black and I actually like that's one of the reasons why I liked the

00:24:18 ◼   ► space gray as well is that it I liked how it went with the black face of the watch but you know it's

00:24:26 ◼   ► fashion it's because luxury Myke. Because luxury so this was my first experience of an Apple Watch.

00:24:32 ◼   ► Yes yeah I realized that that I unlike most people who go to the Tryon experience I had

00:24:39 ◼   ► tried the Apple Watch a couple of times before, but it was very different to be

00:24:43 ◼   ► in the store with a trained salesperson instead of being with a, you know, one of

00:24:47 ◼   ► the PR people in a crazy media room. So what was your experience of

00:24:52 ◼   ► trying on the Apple Watch? So I went to Covent Garden, which is I think

00:24:59 ◼   ► the largest Apple store in the world, maybe? It's definitely one of the biggest.

00:25:04 ◼   ► it's it's insane it's multiple floors and the floors are just huge it's a

00:25:09 ◼   ► humongous store but it's a really great store it's my favorite because there's a

00:25:13 ◼   ► lot of real natural light huge windows they have a skylight it looks fantastic

00:25:16 ◼   ► in there so it was a really great I was actually trying on the watch underneath

00:25:22 ◼   ► the skylight which was pretty sweet so it just looked pretty good so I booked

00:25:26 ◼   ► the appointment in the morning and I went in and you kind of go in and they

00:25:30 ◼   ► check you in on their easy pay terminals that they have. So they just check you in

00:25:35 ◼   ► and I saw the guy take some notes about me which is what I thought was quite

00:25:39 ◼   ► funny like so that so that the person who was coming to pick me up could

00:25:42 ◼   ► recognize me so he's like describing what I was wearing but I was with my

00:25:45 ◼   ► girlfriend too because she we both booked appointments like she had 130 I

00:25:49 ◼   ► had 145 so we could try them on together which they were totally down with

00:25:54 ◼   ► they're like yeah we'll just get someone to take you both and we'll do them in

00:25:57 ◼   ► once I thought that was pretty cool so we were taken over by a guy his name was

00:26:01 ◼   ► Ben and Ben was very nice and he took us over to the tables because they had just

00:26:06 ◼   ► these blank tables now in stores that don't have anything on them except these

00:26:09 ◼   ► like blue leather pads that they put the watches down on and the drawers I

00:26:14 ◼   ► thought was so cool they're they're opened by like some sort of magnetic

00:26:17 ◼   ► lock which is when they put their easy pay terminal this is like an iPod touch

00:26:20 ◼   ► of a chip and pin machine on the back I don't know if you have those in America

00:26:23 ◼   ► Yeah. Okay. So they hold the terminal up to the drawer and the drawer unlocks and

00:26:29 ◼   ► they can open the drawer and they can see inside. I'm gonna put some pictures

00:26:34 ◼   ► in the show notes that I took. So like there's links to some tweets with some

00:26:37 ◼   ► pictures in them. So you'll be able to see like what the drawers inside looks

00:26:40 ◼   ► like and stuff like that. So I'll put those in the show notes. Which you can

00:26:43 ◼   ► find in your podcast Apple choice or at relay.fm/upgrade/32. So I basically

00:26:51 ◼   ► then we had some time to try everything on and they have a selection of

00:26:55 ◼   ► models. What I found was really interesting they do not have 42 silver

00:26:59 ◼   ► aluminium. They just didn't have them in the entire store. All of the

00:27:05 ◼   ► drawers had the exact same configuration. They had 38 so I got to try on the 38.

00:27:09 ◼   ► They had 42 in the gray and then they had a bunch of steels with all different

00:27:15 ◼   ► bands. They did not have a lot of the sport. They were really

00:27:19 ◼   ► pushing the steel because the steel is looks better with the bands right?

00:27:22 ◼   ► Sure. So my kind of overall feeling is the sport band feels fantastic. I love it.

00:27:31 ◼   ► I think it feels way better than I expected and I'm really happy that

00:27:34 ◼   ► that's going to be the main band that I'll have at least for the first little while.

00:27:38 ◼   ► I agree. I think the sport band is softer than I expected. The feel on it is really nice and soft

00:27:45 ◼   ► and it feels much more pliable than I expected.

00:27:50 ◼   ► It sort of moves easily, which I also,

00:27:56 ◼   ► it's not what I thought.

00:27:57 ◼   ► So yeah, it felt much more comfortable

00:28:00 ◼   ► and pleasant to wear than I thought it would.

00:28:03 ◼   ► - I think the lever loop is the biggest disappointment.

00:28:06 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:28:07 ◼   ► - And for me, it's mainly in,

00:28:08 ◼   ► the feel of it was fine, that didn't bother me,

00:28:11 ◼   ► but it's the mechanism for putting it on.

00:28:13 ◼   ► So you know you've got, so I'll explain,

00:28:15 ◼   ► you can go see it but you know you have like the little ridges which are all the

00:28:17 ◼   ► individual magnets right? To try and wrap that around itself you have to put it

00:28:22 ◼   ► through this hole which has a metal ring around the outside so you're kind of

00:28:26 ◼   ► like forcing it through like you have to like force each individual magnet

00:28:31 ◼   ► through the hole it's really not a very elegant way of doing it and considering

00:28:36 ◼   ► you definitely will be taking this watch off at least once a day all right and

00:28:40 ◼   ► putting it on again in the morning I don't want a mechanism like that like

00:28:44 ◼   ► the sport was perfectly fine like you just wrap it around clip it in slide it

00:28:47 ◼   ► in and I feel like over time that will get so easy to just do that to do that

00:28:53 ◼   ► action because I tried it on and took it off a couple of times so this is

00:28:57 ◼   ► interesting I've seen some people differently the guy let me take pick up

00:29:01 ◼   ► the watches put them on myself take them off myself I could do whatever I wanted

00:29:05 ◼   ► with them yeah I wasn't allowed to put them on myself yeah so I don't know this

00:29:08 ◼   ► is so interesting how different people have different things but I was able to

00:29:12 ◼   ► to pick them up like he was helping me because I was like can you hold them

00:29:15 ◼   ► because I was scared I was gonna drop it right so I was like can you just put your

00:29:17 ◼   ► hand on the back is that sure what do you like you know it's like you can do

00:29:20 ◼   ► whatever you want with it I really like they cleaned down all of the watches or

00:29:23 ◼   ► cloth as well before before you put them on which I really liked yeah the leather

00:29:28 ◼   ► loop I don't like the Milanese I don't know how to say I try and say it like I

00:29:33 ◼   ► imagine Federico would say it that was my favorite oh my word that feels

00:29:39 ◼   ► - That was fantastic.

00:29:40 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:29:41 ◼   ► - But I loved the feeling of it.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Federico said this and I totally agree,

00:29:46 ◼   ► it feels more like fabric.

00:29:47 ◼   ► And I also, so I have my try on appointment

00:29:51 ◼   ► and I'm kind of skipping ahead now,

00:29:53 ◼   ► but then I saw a guy that I've seen a couple of times

00:29:56 ◼   ► in the Apple Store, who's a listener of this show

00:29:57 ◼   ► and some of our shows on Relay and we were chatting.

00:30:00 ◼   ► And I said to him that I would really like to see

00:30:04 ◼   ► what the sport looked like with the Milanese.

00:30:08 ◼   ► 'cause you're not allowed to change the bands,

00:30:09 ◼   ► but he then took me over and we changed the bands over.

00:30:12 ◼   ► So I have some other photos

00:30:15 ◼   ► which caused a whole big problem.

00:30:16 ◼   ► I'll put links to this in the show notes.

00:30:18 ◼   ► So what I do, I took a couple of close-up shots

00:30:21 ◼   ► with the Milanese, with the Spalt,

00:30:24 ◼   ► and I tried to show the different connections,

00:30:26 ◼   ► 'cause on the face of it, it's kind of like a brushed steel,

00:30:29 ◼   ► so it fits quite well with the aluminum,

00:30:32 ◼   ► but then on the side is the polished,

00:30:33 ◼   ► so it's up to you if you like it.

00:30:35 ◼   ► There's four pictures.

00:30:36 ◼   ► The last one, I just wanna let you know if you look at it,

00:30:38 ◼   ► my girlfriend's wrist it's not my wrist so I caused so many problems for people

00:30:43 ◼   ► with these pictures because I took three on my wrist and then one on hers and she

00:30:46 ◼   ► has tiny tiny wrists so like she's got even the 38 is big on her but people

00:30:53 ◼   ► were like saying oh the watch looks so loud on your wrist no the fourth picture

00:30:56 ◼   ► is my girlfriend so bear that in mind but I really liked the way that those

00:31:01 ◼   ► actually looked together. So the try-on was really good I spent it felt like as

00:31:08 ◼   ► long as I wanted I don't think that's the case but I didn't feel rushed it was

00:31:13 ◼   ► kind of like okay I'm done looking now I liked the way the steel link bracelet

00:31:18 ◼   ► looked I like how it looked I didn't like how it looked on me. I can see

00:31:24 ◼   ► like Joshua Topolsky in his review it looked really great on his wrist but

00:31:29 ◼   ► I just don't think it's good on my wrist.

00:31:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, but he can, yeah, he carries off

00:31:33 ◼   ► some different kind of fashion than I do certainly.

00:31:36 ◼   ► And I've never liked the metal link bracelets,

00:31:39 ◼   ► but having hairy arms especially,

00:31:40 ◼   ► it's like they always pinch and stuff and I didn't like it.

00:31:42 ◼   ► I totally see what you're saying about the Milanese loop

00:31:44 ◼   ► with wanting it to, because that's metal.

00:31:48 ◼   ► I've been looking at leather bands,

00:31:51 ◼   ► so I've not been concerned about the mismatch with the body,

00:31:54 ◼   ► but that is a case where you really,

00:31:56 ◼   ► you've got a metal band and you want it to match the body at that point. That's a lot

00:32:00 ◼   ► of silver that's whereas black leather doesn't match the watch body anyway so it's not as

00:32:07 ◼   ► big a deal. So I totally see what you're saying there.

00:32:10 ◼   ► So because I always have my eye on the Menezia Loop I'm happy that it went well with the

00:32:16 ◼   ► sport. I haven't put an order. I'm gonna get that band but I'm not putting an order in

00:32:20 ◼   ► because it's back dated till June online and I'm hoping that before June you'll be able

00:32:23 ◼   ► to get one in a store?

00:32:25 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah, so what I did was I tried on the sport band

00:32:30 ◼   ► and I liked it and I actually had the black sport band

00:32:34 ◼   ► with the space gray sport,

00:32:36 ◼   ► which is what I had ordered the night before.

00:32:38 ◼   ► And I thought to myself, well, you know, let's see,

00:32:41 ◼   ► if I don't like this, then I can change my order.

00:32:43 ◼   ► And I wore that for a couple of minutes

00:32:45 ◼   ► and it was super comfortable.

00:32:46 ◼   ► I really thought it was comfortable.

00:32:48 ◼   ► And I was concerned about whether this watch

00:32:51 ◼   ► was gonna feel weird and what am I getting

00:32:53 ◼   ► myself into and after a minute or two I was looking at it and thinking I'm really happy

00:32:59 ◼   ► with my purchase because this actually feels good. I like the look, I like how it feels,

00:33:04 ◼   ► it feels really light. I do wear a watch regularly but I worry with a new watch am I going to

00:33:10 ◼   ► feel like oh no this is too much but it didn't feel like it was too much. It felt perfectly

00:33:14 ◼   ► normal it didn't look huge to me on my wrist it felt comfortable. Then I took the sport

00:33:19 ◼   ► band off and what happened is what happened when I got the pebble for the first time and

00:33:23 ◼   ► came with a rubber band, a cheap crappy rubber band, not the nice rubber band, Floralastomer,

00:33:28 ◼   ► Floralastomer, say it with me, Floralastomer, band that the Apple Watch did, but it had

00:33:34 ◼   ► the same effect, which is when I took it off, I immediately could feel the dampness of the

00:33:39 ◼   ► sweat that my wrist had been exuding under the band that had nowhere to go, because the

00:33:45 ◼   ► band is not absorbent, and it's icky and I don't like that feeling, and I immediately

00:33:50 ◼   ► thought to myself, "Let's try the leather classic buckle and see what that looks like."

00:33:55 ◼   ► And I put that on, and the leather classic buckle is essentially every watch band I've

00:34:01 ◼   ► had since I stopped having a Casio calculator watch in high school. And I really like that

00:34:11 ◼   ► band style. I've always--I swapped out my pebble band for a leather classic buckle band.

00:34:19 ◼   ► And I really like the classic buckle that Apple did. It's very high quality. I like

00:34:23 ◼   ► that the little pins are flat and that the perforations in the leather are rectangular

00:34:30 ◼   ► and not just little circles, which means there's more room for the force to be spread, so they

00:34:35 ◼   ► should actually last longer. And I thought that the leather feel was really nice on that.

00:34:40 ◼   ► And so when I—the net result is when I went home, all I did was place an order for the

00:34:44 ◼   ► black leather classic buckle because I want one of those too and I'll replace my sport

00:34:51 ◼   ► band for at least for most purposes and people you know people talk about well yeah you know

00:34:58 ◼   ► you sweat into the leather band and it absorbs your sweat and all that it's like that's the

00:35:02 ◼   ► beauty for me of leather is that it will it'll breathe a little bit it'll absorb a little

00:35:06 ◼   ► moisture and then it'll release it later and yeah it does that mean over time that band

00:35:09 ◼   ► is gonna age and and yeah yeah it is and I kind of like that that's one of the nice things

00:35:14 ◼   ► about leather and yeah at some point it'll fall apart and that's fine too but I'm not

00:35:18 ◼   ► gonna wear it swimming or anything like that but it will be more comfortable so that's

00:35:22 ◼   ► what I'm going for.

00:35:23 ◼   ► Yep I I agreed that like I can imagine that I wouldn't want to wear and I don't necessarily

00:35:27 ◼   ► want to wear the sport band all the time but just my band option is just like I'm not June

00:35:33 ◼   ► seems like a crazy thing to put an order for like I'm convinced I could buy one before

00:35:39 ◼   ► then.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Well I mean all these dates that everybody's getting for these ship dates here I I am skeptical

00:35:44 ◼   ► I think that Apple's gonna beat those dates for a lot of this stuff. I think Apple's being

00:35:51 ◼   ► conservative. That's my guess. Also, they're showing date ranges, which I think is kind

00:35:54 ◼   ► of funny. You know, maybe a lack of confidence over exactly how many they're gonna be able

00:36:00 ◼   ► to produce. But I'm optimistic that maybe we'll all get stuff a little earlier than

00:36:06 ◼   ► we think we will.

00:36:07 ◼   ► I hope so not.

00:36:08 ◼   ► But I still put in the order for that band. And if that band... My feeling is it's gonna

00:36:13 ◼   ► to be like when I got the the the kit the cover for the iPad 2 or whatever the iPad

00:36:17 ◼   ► mini where I got the cover and I had to wait like another week before I got the iPad I

00:36:22 ◼   ► had the cover for nothing I feel like that's going to happen probably I'm going to end

00:36:25 ◼   ► up with a band be like I can imagine there's a watch attached to it make my own little

00:36:31 ◼   ► watch out of sticks and genuinely that's why I didn't order a band at checkout like when

00:36:36 ◼   ► I originally bought a watch it's like I'm not going through that again I have my iPhone

00:36:41 ◼   ► six plus case for a week just looking at it. I'm not, no I'm not gonna go

00:36:47 ◼   ► through this torment. One of the interesting things in the stores is

00:36:50 ◼   ► these, they have, so the watches that you put on in the try on it are on a demo

00:36:55 ◼   ► loop which is really nice because it shows and kind of goes through everything

00:36:58 ◼   ► and plus you don't want to be using them at that point that's how I feel I think

00:37:01 ◼   ► it's the right thing to do actually. This is about the bands and the feel of the

00:37:05 ◼   ► watches and you can start the demo loop and it can interact you can look at it

00:37:09 ◼   ► when you want to look at it and it's always doing something.

00:37:12 ◼   ► And one of the things that's really interesting

00:37:14 ◼   ► is it does all the tactics stuff.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So it catches you whilst you're talking to the guy

00:37:18 ◼   ► or the girl at the store.

00:37:20 ◼   ► So it's like, oh, like the first time it happened,

00:37:23 ◼   ► I was like, whoa, okay, that's crazy.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Yeah, and that was nice.

00:37:26 ◼   ► And I liked that and it did like the heartbeat stuff.

00:37:28 ◼   ► So that was really cool.

00:37:29 ◼   ► But then they have these like devices.

00:37:32 ◼   ► My understanding is it's an iPad mini

00:37:34 ◼   ► with some other stuff in the guts

00:37:36 ◼   ► these watches that are attached to an acrylic box and these are like they're

00:37:42 ◼   ► like the demo units basically and what they do is as you're moving around the

00:37:47 ◼   ► interface the iPad screen on the left is giving you more information about the

00:37:52 ◼   ► Apple service that you're currently using which is really nice so nice little

00:37:56 ◼   ► companion but I you know I was able to go in and use the watch and it has the

00:38:01 ◼   ► Apple developed apps, no third-party apps on these. It's gonna take a little bit of

00:38:08 ◼   ► getting used to because some of the ways that you interact with the UI is not

00:38:13 ◼   ► necessarily as I would have expected. But I think that there are some things that

00:38:18 ◼   ► are in here which was giving me the feeling, the joy feeling of a new Apple

00:38:25 ◼   ► product. Like for example, when you're... whatever app is in the center of the

00:38:30 ◼   ► screen you can scroll into from the crown, the digital crown, and you can start

00:38:39 ◼   ► scrolling and the elements of the app start to appear and you can scroll them

00:38:43 ◼   ► away again. So like you start scrolling into the watch and like the hands appear

00:38:47 ◼   ► and the dial appears and it all starts to come together but you can stop it and

00:38:51 ◼   ► spin it away and it's like and so you can just zoom in and out and watch the

00:38:54 ◼   ► interface like you come in and go away come in and go away and it's like that

00:38:59 ◼   ► kind of attention is what I love most and and I think that there are all these

00:39:04 ◼   ► little things that I was coming into contact with whilst using the watch

00:39:07 ◼   ► where it was filling me with that joy and excitement and I've heard contrary

00:39:13 ◼   ► from other people but having used this I am I am really really excited to play

00:39:19 ◼   ► around with this device more because there just seems to be some things in

00:39:22 ◼   ► here that I just find the details so fantastic like the way you can customize

00:39:27 ◼   ► the watch faces and the way that you change color so like you you go on to

00:39:33 ◼   ► one of the customization things and you can change the color of the elements of

00:39:36 ◼   ► the watch face by scrolling the digital crown and watching the colors change

00:39:39 ◼   ► around like there are just little parts of it that I love and the screen itself

00:39:46 ◼   ► and the way that the apps look it they look way better than I expected.

00:39:50 ◼   ► The quality of the screen is way better.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Yeah oh that that screen is beautiful it is an

00:39:55 ◼   ► amazing screen and I like the crown. I feel like Apple's gonna learn from how people use

00:40:00 ◼   ► it and already has probably among the Apple employees who've had it like the best ways

00:40:06 ◼   ► of using these things and you know I think it's a it's an exciting time because we've

00:40:12 ◼   ► got a product that that everybody's got some ideas about how it's gonna work but I think

00:40:16 ◼   ► in the real world we're gonna find some really interesting things out and that Apple may

00:40:19 ◼   ► adjust what its plans are based on that. So I think that's exciting too, that we're all

00:40:26 ◼   ► going to figure out like, "Oh, the crown is really good for this, but not that." And I

00:40:30 ◼   ► don't use these. I mean, I was listening to, God, who was it? One of these many tech podcasts

00:40:36 ◼   ► was talking about how maybe the apps, maybe apps, it was ATP, Marco was talking about,

00:40:43 ◼   ► The apps as a concept is like, should be even further in the background.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Like you know, really most of your interactions should be the watch face and the glances and

00:40:52 ◼   ► that the idea of launching watch apps should be not much of a thing because you know, maybe

00:40:59 ◼   ► that's too complex an interaction for this and we'll find out.

00:41:02 ◼   ► We'll find out how many apps people use and how they get to them and whether having an

00:41:06 ◼   ► app screen, that honeycomb app screen is even really necessary as a primary mode of interacting

00:41:11 ◼   ► with this thing.

00:41:12 ◼   ► it in terms of the iPhone where it's the primary mode. And Apple's already pushed it into the

00:41:16 ◼   ► background and sort of said, "No, the watch face is the primary," and then the glances,

00:41:20 ◼   ► and then, you know, you can also go find your apps. And it'll be interesting to see it unfold.

00:41:25 ◼   ► One of the things I'm most excited about getting it is using it for a while. And actually,

00:41:30 ◼   ► one of the—I've had a bunch of people say, "I can't believe that Apple didn't get you

00:41:33 ◼   ► a watch. You didn't get a review." It's like, "Well, I was busy with the MacBook and with

00:41:38 ◼   ► travel and, you know, it's okay." And in fact, I'm kind of glad because the amount of work

00:41:42 ◼   ► that the people who did the embargoed reviews of the watch had to do was, it was a lot.

00:41:49 ◼   ► It was a lot. I don't, I thought about it and was exhausted, especially since there's

00:41:53 ◼   ► also the MacBook that I had to work on last week. So I'm looking forward to getting it

00:41:59 ◼   ► and spending time with it. And the pressure's kind of off that these reviews are out there,

00:42:03 ◼   ► right? And so I feel like I can take my time now and use it and then write about what I'm

00:42:09 ◼   ► observing about it. Instead of having this week where you have to intensively use it

00:42:14 ◼   ► and take pictures of it and do videos of it and write a whole big package and have it

00:42:19 ◼   ► all laid out in, you know, Verge and Bloomberg kind of fancy ways or not. It's a lot. And

00:42:27 ◼   ► I'm kind of glad to be able to take the slow-cooked path with the Apple Watch because I feel like

00:42:32 ◼   ► it will unfold itself in ongoing use in a way that is very hard to replicate if

00:42:38 ◼   ► you just have to write a review in a week. And the thing is, like even from a

00:42:44 ◼   ► business perspective, there's still so much to write after it comes out. Like so

00:42:48 ◼   ► oh yeah you know that so for you it's like yeah okay you didn't get the big

00:42:52 ◼   ► whiz-bang embargo review but it's not like you're I would assume you're not

00:42:56 ◼   ► really hurting from it because you still have loads of stuff to write that people

00:43:00 ◼   ► want to see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so being able to do that kind of as an ongoing

00:43:07 ◼   ► thing instead of just dropping a big review I think there's some power in

00:43:09 ◼   ► that. Should we take a break? Thank you, new sponsor, to upgrade. I don't know if you want to talk about

00:43:15 ◼   ► anything more about the Tron experience or anything like that. No, I got my

00:43:20 ◼   ► part out. I had a very nice person who was an Apple In-Store employee

00:43:26 ◼   ► who was showing me stuff and she knew who I was which is weird because that's

00:43:32 ◼   ► still weird but she was very she was very nice however she seemed to have

00:43:36 ◼   ► lost her wipedown rag and so she kept like grabbing other people's at our

00:43:41 ◼   ► table because we like four or six people at this table and so there were other

00:43:44 ◼   ► Apple people there and they had their rags on the table and she keep grabbing

00:43:47 ◼   ► them and there was this one guy who was like that's mine she's like I just need

00:43:50 ◼   ► to borrow it for a second he's like that's mine and she's like I don't have

00:43:53 ◼   ► "Come on!"

00:43:54 ◼   ► And she goes, "We gotta wipe 'em down."

00:43:56 ◼   ► Obviously they were told, "You gotta wipe 'em down."

00:43:58 ◼   ► Every time somebody takes it off, you wipe it down and then you move on to the next one

00:44:01 ◼   ► because we don't want them coming out of the drawer with fingerprints and stuff on them.

00:44:04 ◼   ► We want them pristine at that point.

00:44:06 ◼   ► But she had lost her rag somewhere and so that was pretty funny.

00:44:10 ◼   ► - When I left the store, I definitely felt like I had experienced something that wasn't

00:44:17 ◼   ► an Apple store.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I feel like it was more akin to a jewelry store or a fashion store.

00:44:24 ◼   ► It was a very, and my girlfriend agreed, it was a very different feeling experience.

00:44:29 ◼   ► And they took so much care.

00:44:31 ◼   ► It was one of the first times I've ever filled in, like I got a feedback survey and I filled

00:44:35 ◼   ► the feedback survey in.

00:44:36 ◼   ► So I was really really impressed with the overall feeling.

00:44:40 ◼   ► And my understanding of this is like, the Apple Store employees in their training were

00:44:45 ◼   ► told even how they are to put the watches down on the counter like

00:44:50 ◼   ► different watches have to be put down on the counter in different ways so that

00:44:55 ◼   ► they're really going for the retail thing like for example the Milanese you

00:44:59 ◼   ► put it down with the face up so they can see all the band but the link bracelet

00:45:03 ◼   ► you put down on its side with the digital crown pointing up because you

00:45:06 ◼   ► can't put the link bracelet with the face up because it whirls over so they

00:45:11 ◼   ► were they were explained like this is how you have to do this is how you have to do

00:45:14 ◼   ► this. I find that fascinating because that makes sense, like from the jewelry store perspective,

00:45:19 ◼   ► from the luxury perspective, treat the products with care and show them in a specific way.

00:45:23 ◼   ► But...

00:45:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it's... On one level, it's not like an Apple Store experience. On another level,

00:45:28 ◼   ► it is exactly the kind of thing that fits in with what the Apple Store should be doing. I mean,

00:45:34 ◼   ► I do think this is the influence of Angela Ahrens, who I realized they hired her a year and a half

00:45:41 ◼   ► ago, although she I think only started about a year ago. But with her experience at Burberry,

00:45:47 ◼   ► understanding how you train retail staff in high-end retail locations, I think it's good

00:45:53 ◼   ► because it fits in, right? The whole idea of the Apple Store experience is supposed

00:45:56 ◼   ► to be this hands-on personal, elegant kind of experience. And in fact, most of the complaints

00:46:03 ◼   ► I hear about the Apple Store these days are the staff aren't as well-trained as they used

00:46:09 ◼   ► to be and it's hard to figure out, hard to flag somebody down and, you know, lots of

00:46:15 ◼   ► complaints about how it feels a little more like a chaotic experience.

00:46:21 ◼   ► And so if I'm Angela Ahrens, that would be one of the things that I would be concerned

00:46:25 ◼   ► about and I would want to reinstil some of this like really personal, well-trained kind

00:46:33 ◼   ► of stuff so that when you come out of the Apple Store, you think, "Wow, that was something."

00:46:38 ◼   ► And I think the Apple store used to be like that, and partially because of its popularity,

00:46:43 ◼   ► it's harder for them to get that right now.

00:46:45 ◼   ► And I think this is an example of Apple trying to get that experience back into those stores

00:46:52 ◼   ► using the watch.

00:46:53 ◼   ► And I think it's good.

00:46:54 ◼   ► It was certainly impressive to me.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And that story, 10 a.m. on a, what, Friday morning, it was packed with people around

00:47:04 ◼   ► the watches.

00:47:05 ◼   ► It was pretty amazing.

00:47:06 ◼   ► All right.

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00:48:02 ◼   ► which sounds so fancy.

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00:48:15 ◼   ► and anti-glare coating, there's no additional cost.

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00:48:24 ◼   ► it's fantastic.

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00:48:27 ◼   ► and cleaning cloth, you're gonna be hard-pressed

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00:48:37 ◼   ► that we ship to you directly.

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00:48:52 ◼   ► and you'll have them back in your hands

00:48:53 ◼   ► within 10 business days.

00:48:55 ◼   ► Now, Mr. Jason Snow, you have actually done a try-on

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00:49:06 ◼   ► "What is this?"

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00:49:11 ◼   ► where my wife and my daughter stared at my face

00:49:13 ◼   ► as I put on various sunglasses.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And then my daughter put them all on herself too

00:49:17 ◼   ► because she wanted to look cool,

00:49:19 ◼   ► much cooler than her father.

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00:49:48 ◼   ► And then she's judging it from like one angle.

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00:51:13 ◼   ► Go to warbyparker.com/upgrade.

00:51:18 ◼   ► So what else did you want to talk about today, sir?

00:51:20 ◼   ► Well, I wanted to talk at least briefly about we mentioned those reviews and I think that's

00:51:26 ◼   ► interesting that we got those reviews.

00:51:27 ◼   ► This whole rollout is fascinating to me for the Apple Watch. So now we're into the product,

00:51:32 ◼   ► we're talking about sort of like Apple strategy stuff. So they do the pre-order two weeks

00:51:37 ◼   ► before they're going to start shipping. There is just a couple of days before the pre-order,

00:51:43 ◼   ► there are all the Margot reviews drop. And the idea there is just, I think, to keep the

00:51:48 ◼   ► watch in the public consciousness. Also, an interesting either confidence that the reviews

00:51:54 ◼   ► were gonna be good or kind of an understanding that the reviews didn't matter what they said

00:51:59 ◼   ► as much as it mattered that they were all being published, and so it's free advertising

00:52:04 ◼   ► for Apple. But those all dropped before the pre-order period. And then about a week before

00:52:09 ◼   ► that or even less, there was this...David Pierce did a story in Wired that was like

00:52:14 ◼   ► how they did it where he talked to a few people at Apple who were obviously furnished. You

00:52:18 ◼   ► know, Apple furnished him some people for some interviews about some parts of the watch

00:52:23 ◼   ► development process, which is a different kind of story we don't usually see Apple do.

00:52:29 ◼   ► Google has been doing that a lot with Steven Levy, where they give him access and let him

00:52:33 ◼   ► write these stories about how Google thought up this whatever thing. But Apple hasn't done

00:52:37 ◼   ► a lot of that, and this is one of those cases where Apple's strategy is not the same as

00:52:41 ◼   ► when Katie Cotton was there. How much of it is Katie not being there? How much of it is

00:52:46 ◼   ► it's Tim, and he's telling this from the top, like, "Let's play this game differently."

00:52:52 ◼   ► this is a very different kind of game and it is, I guess, essentially a full court press,

00:52:57 ◼   ► but it's fascinating that they're, you know, in the Steve Jobs era, Apple was this black

00:53:02 ◼   ► box and then magic products emerged from it. And then Tim Cook era, they are, and it's

00:53:07 ◼   ► Apple's, this is all to, it's PR, it's all to Apple's benefit, but they are painting

00:53:11 ◼   ► a picture of Apple as this amazing company with all these great people who collaborate

00:53:16 ◼   ► on these great products. And some of that is to combat the feeling that it was all from

00:53:20 ◼   ► Steve Jobs, which Steve Jobs really liked. Like, the Isaacson book makes clear that Steve

00:53:25 ◼   ► Jobs really liked—and becoming Steve Jobs says it too—he really liked the idea that

00:53:30 ◼   ► everybody thought that he invented everything. Like, that was part of what he was doing.

00:53:33 ◼   ► And when James Thompson does his presentation at OOL and talks about trying to get into

00:53:38 ◼   ► the about box in the Finder, and he gets in just at the point where Apple decrees—Steve

00:53:43 ◼   ► Jobs decrees—that all names will be taken out of the credits of all Apple software,

00:53:47 ◼   ► I mean, they say that was to keep them off the list in terms of being poached by other

00:53:53 ◼   ► companies, and I'm sure that was part of it.

00:53:55 ◼   ► But part of it is the mystique of it all magically happening from Apple, and who knows how it

00:53:59 ◼   ► gets made.

00:54:00 ◼   ► It's just magic software that happens from elves somewhere.

00:54:04 ◼   ► And so this is different, right?

00:54:07 ◼   ► This is Apple saying, "We're going to furnish you with these guys who worked on the watch

00:54:10 ◼   ► team, and you're going to get to talk to all of them about what they went through and the

00:54:15 ◼   ► process involved."

00:54:16 ◼   ► and it's still PR, right?

00:54:18 ◼   ► It's just a different approach.

00:54:20 ◼   ► It's a different kind of story.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Here they're saying, look how smart we are,

00:54:23 ◼   ► look how talented our people are that they do this stuff.

00:54:26 ◼   ► Not everybody can do this.

00:54:27 ◼   ► This is an Apple, you know,

00:54:28 ◼   ► only Apple has this level of attention to detail,

00:54:31 ◼   ► as opposed to the old way, which was like, you know,

00:54:34 ◼   ► I don't know how they do it.

00:54:35 ◼   ► The magic product comes out of Apple.

00:54:37 ◼   ► So different.

00:54:38 ◼   ► I just thought the David Pierce story, especially,

00:54:39 ◼   ► there's like, that is not the old Apple at all.

00:54:42 ◼   ► That is a very new approach.

00:54:45 ◼   ► And as somebody who is a writer, I look at it too and I think, you know, it's hard to,

00:54:52 ◼   ► well, if you're David Pierce, you know, who's a good writer and you're wired, it's hard

00:54:56 ◼   ► to turn down that story.

00:54:58 ◼   ► You got to do that story.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And yet at the same time, everything in that story is furnished by Apple.

00:55:02 ◼   ► So it's a real challenge because it is a piece of PR on one level and he's got to put his

00:55:07 ◼   ► own spin on it and his own take on it because that, and getting the access, I mean, Apple

00:55:12 ◼   ► willing to talk about its product process for a new product that's coming out. I mean,

00:55:16 ◼   ► that is big unto itself. That is a huge deal. But at the same time, they are choosing exactly

00:55:23 ◼   ► who you could talk to and exactly what information that they're willing to talk about. So it's

00:55:28 ◼   ► a tricky thing, but I love that we're getting a little bit of an insight into it, regardless

00:55:35 ◼   ► of the fact that it is targeted to promote the Apple Watch. I love that we got a little

00:55:39 ◼   ► bit of the insight. Those stories in that story about like, you know, what's their motivation

00:55:43 ◼   ► and what are they trying to do with the product are really interesting. So I think it's worth

00:55:47 ◼   ► a read. I think it's a nice story. But it's also interesting just to think about how that

00:55:52 ◼   ► is a fascinatingly different kind of bit of PR than what Apple has done before.

00:55:57 ◼   ► - Man, to pierce luck out on that. Like it's maybe his first big piece since he joined

00:56:03 ◼   ► Wired?

00:56:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, because he was at the Verge before.

00:56:05 ◼   ► - Yeah. I've always really, really liked his stuff.

00:56:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah, he's great.

00:56:09 ◼   ► I hope that he continues to do product reviews for Wired because they were always my favorite

00:56:15 ◼   ► thing about The Verge.

00:56:18 ◼   ► There was something interesting, I watched Joshua Topolski's video and realized that

00:56:23 ◼   ► I miss him.

00:56:26 ◼   ► I talked to him for a little while at the Apple Watch, at the latest event, the Apple

00:56:31 ◼   ► Watch and MacBook event.

00:56:34 ◼   ► And yeah, he's got that. I mean, he's got a new baby and all that, but it's like, he's

00:56:38 ◼   ► been doing management stuff at Bloomberg, setting this whole thing up. And it was nice

00:56:42 ◼   ► to get him back in the field a little bit, even at the Verge. He was the editor in chief

00:56:47 ◼   ► and that meant that a lot of his time had to be spent on management. I know the feeling,

00:56:52 ◼   ► right? And so it was nice to see him lend his experience covering tech products to that

00:56:59 ◼   ► story. I thought that was good. And I thought that was great actually that he got the Apple

00:57:04 ◼   ► watch because I think that was a question of like what Apple's relationship with the

00:57:07 ◼   ► Verge was always kind of like well you know it was it was it was a little rocky at times

00:57:14 ◼   ► and not only did you know not only did the Verge get one but Joshua Topolski got one

00:57:19 ◼   ► at Bloomberg too and I thought that was I thought that was cool cool to see because

00:57:23 ◼   ► he's got a you know he he he is not well known for nothing he is he is well known for some

00:57:28 ◼   ► really good reasons that you may lose sight of when he becomes like the you know the figurehead

00:57:33 ◼   ► of The Verge or Bloomberg.

00:57:34 ◼   ► I feel like The Verge is like for Apple, a kind of have to.

00:57:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think this is another PR difference, which

00:57:45 ◼   ► is old Apple PR would be like, "Well, we're going to punish them." And new Apple PR is

00:57:50 ◼   ► like, "They can say whatever they want. We just need to be there." Because honestly,

00:57:54 ◼   ► if you're Apple, you've got to have confidence. This happens so much with internet things

00:57:58 ◼   ► too. It's, I cannot believe that this person who is famous is so thin-skinned about criticism

00:58:06 ◼   ► because surely they get it all the time. How could they not have grown calluses and realized

00:58:11 ◼   ► that people are going to criticize them and they just need to move on? Surely, they've

00:58:15 ◼   ► -- and like super famous people that you find like, wow, how can you not be good at this

00:58:20 ◼   ► at this point? I think Apple was kind of like that too, where it was like, you know, Apple,

00:58:25 ◼   ► I think you're bigger than any of these media outlets that you're dealing with.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Just let them, you know, just, I mean, sure, if there's somebody who you feel like is not,

00:58:36 ◼   ► you can't deal with them fairly, that's a different thing.

00:58:38 ◼   ► But you know if you give them access, they're going to take it, and you know that they've

00:58:43 ◼   ► got a huge following.

00:58:44 ◼   ► So just let them say what they're going to say.

00:58:46 ◼   ► And in the end, I think, somebody was making this point, like, all reviews are good reviews,

00:58:51 ◼   ► because it's all press.

00:58:53 ◼   ► And do people really read the reviews as buying advice or do they read them as entertainment?

00:58:58 ◼   ► I think it's a good question.

00:59:00 ◼   ► So I think it's a good change in Apple's policy to be like, "Yeah, The Verge is big.

00:59:05 ◼   ► The Verge is one of the definitive tech sites, if not the definitive tech site on the internet.

00:59:12 ◼   ► We'll let them have it."

00:59:13 ◼   ► And also saying, "They're going to say what they're going to say."

00:59:17 ◼   ► And it's fine.

00:59:18 ◼   ► I mean, literally, it's fine.

00:59:21 ◼   ► let them review it. So that's a different approach, but I think it's good.

00:59:26 ◼   ► So just mention one thing. Joshua Topolsky has a new podcast launching I think this week

00:59:31 ◼   ► called "Tomorrow." Yeah. And I actually don't think it's affiliated with Bloomberg. Hmm. So I'm

00:59:37 ◼   ► very excited about that. Yeah, he talked about that briefly when I ran into

00:59:41 ◼   ► him. He said something about maybe having me on sometime, so maybe that'll

00:59:45 ◼   ► happen. Because everywhere he's talking about it, it's just tomorrowpodcast.com. There's no Bloomberg

00:59:51 ◼   ► logo's nowhere. I hope that that's the case and I wonder if that might have been a thing

00:59:56 ◼   ► for him with Vox. Because he's been mentioning doing a podcast of his own for a long time.

01:00:02 ◼   ► And I wonder if he was like, you know, I want to do this thing and they're like, no.

01:00:06 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I mean, I know, again, I know the feeling. And also if Bloomberg's not interested

01:00:14 ◼   ► in doing that, which would be interesting in the sense that...

01:00:18 ◼   ► It's a question, well yeah, I mean when they're covering all the rise of all these different

01:00:25 ◼   ► podcast things, would they not want to do that? And I don't know the details of their

01:00:29 ◼   ► policies and Joshua Topolsky's employment contract and all of those things, but it would

01:00:34 ◼   ► be interesting if Joshua Topolsky was allowed to launch his own podcast venture on the side.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Then again, Bloomberg's a very kind of like, you know, pro-business, right? It's a business

01:00:44 ◼   ► thing. So maybe they're like, yeah, if you want to create your own business on the side,

01:00:48 ◼   ► know, that's totally separate from what you're doing at Bloomberg, then go ahead. But I just

01:00:52 ◼   ► don't know if you can report on—this was always the challenge. It's like, if we're

01:00:56 ◼   ► paying you to be a tech expert, and then you're going off on the side and creating a whole

01:00:59 ◼   ► other business where you're a tech expert, are we really getting all of your tech expertise,

01:01:04 ◼   ► or are you giving us a little tiny bit? But, you know, regardless of whether it's just

01:01:09 ◼   ► Josh's thing on his own, or whether it's with Bloomberg, or whether it's just part of Bloomberg,

01:01:14 ◼   ► I don't know. But yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing it. More podcasts are—that's a

01:01:17 ◼   ► good thing.

01:01:18 ◼   ► of the data has Bloomberg mentioned anywhere and in the show description says that he's

01:01:22 ◼   ► talking about technology culture internet. I'm excited about it because I've always really

01:01:28 ◼   ► really liked that guy like I really look up to him I think he's amazing. I don't know

01:01:33 ◼   ► that a lot of people don't like him or whatever but I have always thought he was incredible.

01:01:39 ◼   ► Yeah I don't know him personally I've had some nice conversations with him at these

01:01:44 ◼   ► Apple events he's always taken time to chat with me at these Apple events which I gotta

01:01:48 ◼   ► to say, not everybody does. And so I've always appreciated that. Him and Nile both. I've

01:01:54 ◼   ► spent time talking to them and I really appreciate that. I don't know them personally beyond

01:01:59 ◼   ► that but I've always appreciated that they've had the time to chat and they've been pleasurable

01:02:05 ◼   ► to chat with them and their work is good. I'm happy. Like Nile's story, I've heard a

01:02:09 ◼   ► lot of people say that they didn't read it because it was in that crazy layout. I read

01:02:12 ◼   ► it in Instapaper. I thought it was really great. I thought it was a good story. I think

01:02:15 ◼   ► he did a good job. You know, I think it's distracting maybe, the layout, but I think

01:02:19 ◼   ► he did a good job. And Topolski, same way, you know, he's a pro.

01:02:24 ◼   ► We spoke about this on Connected, but I think, I think, Nilay had some fundamental problems

01:02:29 ◼   ► with the way that he was approaching the notification problem, or what he perceived as a notification

01:02:34 ◼   ► problem.

01:02:35 ◼   ► Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying I endorse this review, but I thought it was a good read,

01:02:39 ◼   ► and I get his take on it. But yeah, yeah. Well, I laughed. A lot of the reviews are

01:02:44 ◼   ► Turns out, staring at your watch while you're having a conversation with somebody, when

01:02:50 ◼   ► you keep checking your watch, it's kind of rude.

01:02:52 ◼   ► It's like, "Yes, this is true."

01:02:54 ◼   ► But what I liked about Topolski's review is he was kind of like, "But you get to a point

01:03:01 ◼   ► where you pare them down."

01:03:04 ◼   ► Like he said, "I got to the point where I pared my notifications down, so I wasn't looking

01:03:07 ◼   ► that often."

01:03:08 ◼   ► It's like, that was the obvious conclusion that Neillay didn't address.

01:03:12 ◼   ► Neil A. was like, "Every time I get an email, I get a notification about it." It's like,

01:03:17 ◼   ► "Dude, don't do that."

01:03:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, "And now I miss the important people in my life." It's like, "I don't even

01:03:22 ◼   ► know how you've jumped there."

01:03:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, you need to... I think, actually, speaking as an editorial person, right, one

01:03:29 ◼   ► of the great opportunities, I'm sure Renee Ritchie has already written 30 stories about

01:03:33 ◼   ► this, one of the great opportunities with the Apple Watch, because that's what they

01:03:35 ◼   ► do at iMore, they write 30 stories about it. They are so productive. Managing your notifications

01:03:42 ◼   ► in Notification Center and how—what notifications get sent to the watch and choosing—strategies

01:03:47 ◼   ► for choosing what notifications are—it's really easy to just ignore that and just say

01:03:51 ◼   ► no to everything or yes to everything and just deal with it. With the Apple Watch, it

01:03:55 ◼   ► becomes even more important that you make some decisions about exactly what you want

01:04:01 ◼   ► to see and be notified by because that's the—like, Nielle's story is influenced by the fact that

01:04:06 ◼   ► that he has got everything pushing a notification to him.

01:04:10 ◼   ► And that's too many things.

01:04:13 ◼   ► - Yep. - But we'll see.

01:04:14 ◼   ► 30 stories on iMore, just written by Rene Ritchie,

01:04:17 ◼   ► all by himself.

01:04:18 ◼   ► - I'm trying to find one.

01:04:19 ◼   ► I know there's gonna be one.

01:04:20 ◼   ► I just haven't found it yet.

01:04:21 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, there have been in the past

01:04:23 ◼   ► about notification center.

01:04:23 ◼   ► It's like this is adding a whole other layer.

01:04:25 ◼   ► I dealt with this a little bit with the Pebble,

01:04:27 ◼   ► 'cause the Pebble was taking every notification

01:04:29 ◼   ► from my lock screen, and there was too many.

01:04:31 ◼   ► And so, you know, you have to pare it down.

01:04:33 ◼   ► You use -- If you're using Apple Mail,

01:04:35 ◼   ► you use the VIP feature, so you only get notified by certain people sending you email instead

01:04:41 ◼   ► of everybody. And you know, you have to set some limits about what you're gonna see.

01:04:47 ◼   ► >> But like the difference between the Pebble and the Apple Watch is you can keep notifications

01:04:53 ◼   ► on your phone and turn them off on the watch. Like that's even better.

01:04:56 ◼   ► >> Yeah. >> You know, because you can turn them off

01:04:59 ◼   ► in the companion app. >> Yeah, yeah. I mean, and this is gonna be

01:05:03 ◼   ► part of the strategy for everybody is when do you want to be also also it's personal

01:05:07 ◼   ► it's like self-control like you feel that tap on your wrist you know something's going

01:05:13 ◼   ► on you can just note to yourself oh something's going on and then when there's a natural time

01:05:20 ◼   ► say now I'll check and see what's going on it doesn't have to be oh tap on the wrist

01:05:25 ◼   ► I must look right now right and that's about like personal development so there are like

01:05:31 ◼   ► I'm saying all this before I even own a watch but I can foresee some things already.

01:05:35 ◼   ► I hope that Apple continues to push for even more granular control even though it does

01:05:40 ◼   ► add a lot of additional things.

01:05:42 ◼   ► What I would really like is, say for example, iMessage.

01:05:49 ◼   ► If somebody is sending me a bunch of iMessages I don't need to be notified about every one.

01:05:53 ◼   ► Does that make sense?

01:05:54 ◼   ► So say you're sending me, like for people, the way they use instant message, you send

01:05:59 ◼   ► like I know that I do this, I send like six iMessages in a row or whatever as I'm talking

01:06:05 ◼   ► to somebody. You don't need to tell me about all of them, you know, I'd like to see stuff

01:06:08 ◼   ► like that. It's like, you know, notify me once and then give it a five minute break

01:06:11 ◼   ► or anyway this is getting into something we don't need to get into now.

01:06:14 ◼   ► No, no, but you're right, there is, I think the next frontier for Apple, maybe it's an

01:06:18 ◼   ► iOS 9 thing, is really overhauling Notification Center to provide much better control over

01:06:26 ◼   ► what goes where, including the watch, and...

01:06:30 ◼   ► 'cause I feel like Notification Center's kind of overwhelmed right now.

01:06:34 ◼   ► And it was a good first attempt at notification management, but I think it needs a rethink.

01:06:39 ◼   ► So I'm hoping that might be an iOS 9 thing spurred on by the Apple Watch to do a better

01:06:43 ◼   ► job of letting us have more granular control over what we see where and when.

01:06:49 ◼   ► >> That would make a bigger feature on stage as well, by saying, "And now, because of the

01:06:54 ◼   ► Apple Watch, right? Then if they would have just done it already. Does that make sense?

01:06:57 ◼   ► Because now there's like more of a reason to do it that will make you happy that it's

01:06:59 ◼   ► done.

01:07:00 ◼   ► I think there are a lot of things that Apple does where they know that it's something they

01:07:04 ◼   ► should do at some point and then the prioritization becomes, "Do I have a reason that I need to

01:07:08 ◼   ► do this now?" And the Apple Watch, I think, gives Apple a reason to prioritize certain

01:07:13 ◼   ► features. This is what I was saying about like the pen stuff on the iPad and other iPad

01:07:16 ◼   ► feature innovations, like things that are not just big iPhone parts of the iPad. Like,

01:07:22 ◼   ► If they do a big iPad Pro, that might be the reason to do a whole raft of iPad features.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Like, well, now we've got a reason to do it because we're going to tie it to this product.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And I think Notification Center and the watch may be that same thing where, like, this is

01:07:35 ◼   ► the impetus to do this overhaul because now there's enough there that we really need to

01:07:42 ◼   ► do it.

01:07:43 ◼   ► - Should we do some ask upgrade?

01:07:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's do it.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Jason Snell, who is helping support Ask Upgrade this week?

01:07:53 ◼   ► - Ask Upgrade is brought to you by our friends at MailRoute.

01:07:58 ◼   ► - MailRoute.

01:07:59 ◼   ► - Imagine a world without spam, viruses, or bounced email.

01:08:02 ◼   ► This is a world you can live in.

01:08:04 ◼   ► MailRoute has been filtering the bad stuff out of my email

01:08:07 ◼   ► for more than, it's like, I think coming up on two years now.

01:08:11 ◼   ► Here's how it works.

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01:08:13 ◼   ► You don't have to install any hardware or software.

01:08:14 ◼   ► It's a cloud service.

01:08:16 ◼   ► So you have to do something which is called editing your MX record, which is for each

01:08:21 ◼   ► domain there's a thing called the MX record, which is basically saying what server receives

01:08:25 ◼   ► email for this domain.

01:08:27 ◼   ► And you set that to mail route.

01:08:28 ◼   ► So instead of it going to your mail server, all the mail that you receive, all the inbound

01:08:31 ◼   ► mail goes to mail route.

01:08:33 ◼   ► So all the mail, including the good stuff, but all the junk, comes to mail route servers.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Mail route takes it in, mail route deals with it, uses its intelligence software to figure

01:08:41 ◼   ► out whether it's good or not.

01:08:42 ◼   ► If it's good, it passes it on to your mail server.

01:08:45 ◼   ► If it's bad, it never gets to your mail server.

01:08:47 ◼   ► It's held in this quarantine.

01:08:48 ◼   ► It's like that, like the big trap in Ghostbusters.

01:08:51 ◼   ► Have you seen Ghostbusters, Myke?

01:08:53 ◼   ► - Did it?

01:08:54 ◼   ► Yes.

01:08:55 ◼   ► - Okay, good.

01:08:56 ◼   ► - Definitely, don't worry.

01:08:58 ◼   ► - So that's where they keep the ghosts.

01:08:59 ◼   ► Well, they keep the spam in there.

01:09:01 ◼   ► And the good stuff comes to you.

01:09:03 ◼   ► And they can send you a note every day or every week saying, "Here's the stuff we filtered

01:09:08 ◼   ► out."

01:09:09 ◼   ► And you can click to quickly deliver it if they did misfilter something, which very rarely

01:09:13 ◼   ► happens, but it happens occasionally.

01:09:15 ◼   ► And you can set up whitelists, so, you know, always let things through from these people

01:09:19 ◼   ► or from these domains, and they see so much junk that they have a really good system for

01:09:23 ◼   ► understanding what the spam is and identifying it before it can even reach you.

01:09:29 ◼   ► So as a desktop user, it couldn't be easier.

01:09:31 ◼   ► If you are an email administrator or IT professional, they've got the tools that you and your supervisors

01:09:36 ◼   ► are going to demand, like an API for account management, support for LDAP and Active Directory,

01:09:42 ◼   ► TLS outbound relay and everybody's favorite, mailbagging. We can't high-five it in person

01:09:52 ◼   ► anymore, sadly. And so, again, risk-free trial is the thing that you can test this out without

01:10:00 ◼   ► putting down a credit card. So you sign up, you change the MX records, and that's it.

01:10:04 ◼   ► Your mailbox and hardware, your mail server, all completely protected. It's simple, effective.

01:10:08 ◼   ► no reason not to try it. You can always switch out and switch your MX record back if you

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01:10:27 ◼   ► of your account. And thank you to MailRoute for keeping my inbox clean and for sponsoring

01:10:33 ◼   ► Ask Upgrade.

01:10:34 ◼   ► Mail route. Like the Ghostbusters, but for your email.

01:10:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that's right. They're spambusters. Who you gonna call?

01:10:42 ◼   ► Spambusters!

01:10:44 ◼   ► No, no, Myke. What you gonna do?

01:10:48 ◼   ► Mail bagging!

01:10:50 ◼   ► There's something there. We'll work on it.

01:10:54 ◼   ► We need to call Lex. He can write some lyrics for us.

01:10:59 ◼   ► This is how we do this.

01:11:00 ◼   ► Oh no, don't even, you know, that's gonna happen now.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Suddenly people are going to come back and there's going to be a Ghostbusters-like song

01:11:07 ◼   ► and then we're going to have to pay Huey Lewis and Ray Parker Jr. royalties.

01:11:10 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:11:11 ◼   ► It's not like White Christmas.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Alright, no, not at all.

01:11:16 ◼   ► That's totally royalty free.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Ask Upgrade.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Do you have some questions for me?

01:11:20 ◼   ► Oh you bet I do.

01:11:21 ◼   ► This comes from UpgradingWill.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Do you think Apple will update the Magic Mouse for Force Touch?

01:11:27 ◼   ► Would this be an opportunity to change its physical shape?

01:11:32 ◼   ► this blew my mind. I am not... so Myke are you a mouse or trackpad person?

01:11:37 ◼   ► I am a mouse person. I prefer trackpads but I have to use a mouse because of

01:11:42 ◼   ► where's my hands and wrist hurt.

01:11:43 ◼   ► Do you have a magic mouse?

01:11:45 ◼   ► I do indeed because I use all the spaces in Mission Control.

01:11:50 ◼   ► So let me ask you then, can you conceive of how force touch would work?

01:11:55 ◼   ► Like I guess it would just sit on the table and you'd press it and

01:11:59 ◼   ► press it harder. Would that work for you?

01:12:01 ◼   ► Because I already clicked, like I've always thought it would be interesting to just, and I've never understood why you can't just tap the Magic Mouse.

01:12:08 ◼   ► Like why do you have to click? Because it has stuff in it, it has some sensors in it already anyway.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Right, for the scrolling and stuff, yeah.

01:12:15 ◼   ► So I've always wondered why can't I just tap with it? Because then I could then, because I have to use the trackpad whilst recording so you don't hear like...

01:12:23 ◼   ► I don't know if you could hear that, but lots of clicking.

01:12:26 ◼   ► So I've always wanted that and yeah, I could see that.

01:12:28 ◼   ► I could definitely see that.

01:12:29 ◼   ► You could just press harder, but the thing is,

01:12:31 ◼   ► ah, see, that's the thing.

01:12:32 ◼   ► If you press harder,

01:12:33 ◼   ► it would have to overhaul the entire mouse

01:12:37 ◼   ► that didn't have a physical click anymore.

01:12:38 ◼   ► It would have to be like with false touch.

01:12:40 ◼   ► So, but yeah, you could totally do it.

01:12:42 ◼   ► You could do it in this current shape, I reckon.

01:12:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, I, yeah, it'd be interesting to see.

01:12:47 ◼   ► I think the question is, does Apple believe

01:12:49 ◼   ► that there is much of a market left for the mouse

01:12:51 ◼   ► or do they love the trackpad so much

01:12:53 ◼   ► that they want everybody to use it?

01:12:54 ◼   ► I feel like it's almost certain

01:12:56 ◼   ► that there will be a Force Touch Magic Trackpad.

01:12:59 ◼   ► But about the mouse, it's an interesting idea.

01:13:03 ◼   ► - I hope so, 'cause then it would be,

01:13:05 ◼   ► I would have a mouse

01:13:06 ◼   ► that doesn't make a physical clicking sound,

01:13:08 ◼   ► which is like for a podcaster,

01:13:11 ◼   ► that's like the heavenly product.

01:13:14 ◼   ► - All right, that's good to know.

01:13:16 ◼   ► I had some people ask me

01:13:17 ◼   ► if the Force Touch Trackpad made any noise.

01:13:20 ◼   ► And there was somebody on somewhere,

01:13:23 ◼   ► maybe it was in the chat room, said, "No, it doesn't."

01:13:25 ◼   ► And I had to say, well, actually it does.

01:13:27 ◼   ► It does make a noise because the vibration causes this.

01:13:29 ◼   ► I mean, it sounds like a click.

01:13:32 ◼   ► It does make a little noise.

01:13:33 ◼   ► If you're in a quiet space and you click, you hear it go,

01:13:36 ◼   ► you can hear it.

01:13:37 ◼   ► It's very quiet.

01:13:38 ◼   ► But I think that this is a good idea.

01:13:41 ◼   ► Will Apple do it, upgrade and will?

01:13:43 ◼   ► I don't know, but it's an interesting opportunity.

01:13:46 ◼   ► And I do think Apple wants Force Touch to be everywhere.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So why not?

01:13:50 ◼   ► - So when I started having wrist pains,

01:13:53 ◼   ► I bought a Logitech MX mouse. Feels fantastic. It's one of those really great

01:13:58 ◼   ► ergonomically sculpted ones with loads of different buttons on it. But I can't use

01:14:02 ◼   ► it on the MacBook Pro because I need to be able to use like swiping between

01:14:07 ◼   ► desktops and stuff because it's just the way that I work. So I use that with the

01:14:11 ◼   ► editing but I wish I could use that mouse basically. I really love the

01:14:15 ◼   ► Logitech mouse but it doesn't work for me. I used a Kensington Trackball for many many

01:14:21 ◼   ► years but now I use the Magic Trackpad. I've come across to the Magic Trackpad.

01:14:27 ◼   ► I do like the Magic Trackpad. Yeah? Well the Magic Trackpad and the Logic

01:14:31 ◼   ► Mouse make my two-handed editing system that makes people's minds bend a little bit.

01:14:36 ◼   ► No that's good I know there are multiple people who have both and use them for different things

01:14:42 ◼   ► they use the swipes and stuff on the trackpad and then they do all their precision mousing

01:14:46 ◼   ► with a mouse. Yep. As a trackball person switching to the trackpad was pretty easy especially

01:14:51 ◼   ► since I was already using it on my laptop,

01:14:53 ◼   ► I was totally used to it.

01:14:54 ◼   ► So I switched and I don't miss it.

01:14:56 ◼   ► - Upgrading David, how does photos.app handle video

01:15:02 ◼   ► from your iPhone camera roll?

01:15:04 ◼   ► - It imports it.

01:15:06 ◼   ► - I should expect.

01:15:08 ◼   ► - I don't know what more to say.

01:15:11 ◼   ► It imports it.

01:15:11 ◼   ► They're not like video tools in photos per se,

01:15:15 ◼   ► other than like, I think if it's a slow-mo,

01:15:19 ◼   ► they'll give you the slow-mo handles and stuff.

01:15:21 ◼   ► So it doesn't, I thought,

01:15:22 ◼   ► Photos app is weird in that it handles video,

01:15:26 ◼   ► but it doesn't really know what to do with video.

01:15:29 ◼   ► And I don't know what they're gonna do about that.

01:15:31 ◼   ► I assume there'll be linkages with iMovie at some point

01:15:35 ◼   ► that are better than what's there now.

01:15:36 ◼   ► But right now your videos are in there,

01:15:38 ◼   ► but they kind of don't do anything.

01:15:40 ◼   ► But they are in there.

01:15:41 ◼   ► And then you can always export them out to other places.

01:15:44 ◼   ► - So talking about photos, I think I mentioned this earlier,

01:15:48 ◼   ► but we're gonna have you on Connected this week.

01:15:51 ◼   ► - Ah yes, Forward Promote for the network.

01:15:53 ◼   ► I will be on with the lads of Connected later this week.

01:15:58 ◼   ► It'll be exciting.

01:15:59 ◼   ► - 'Cause that's the photo management show.

01:16:01 ◼   ► - I'll finally be on a podcast with Federico.

01:16:04 ◼   ► Oh wait, I already had Federico on, muahaha.

01:16:09 ◼   ► - Well you can be on a podcast with Federico

01:16:10 ◼   ► where I don't have a mild heart attack.

01:16:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, that'll be nice.

01:16:14 ◼   ► No, I love that show and I've been listening to you guys

01:16:16 ◼   ► since the prompt days, so that'll be fun to talk about photo management. That's

01:16:21 ◼   ► gonna be fun. Since I'm writing a book about photos, I am

01:16:24 ◼   ► spending a lot of time thinking about photos.app. Indeed. Nick has asked, "Can you

01:16:30 ◼   ► give an estimate of the key travel on the new MacBook? Seems to be 1.5

01:16:34 ◼   ► millimeters on my wired Apple keyboard." Yeah, so key travel is the amount of

01:16:40 ◼   ► distance you can depress a key before you land at the bottom, and I don't know

01:16:45 ◼   ► exactly what the key travel is but it's more in the half a millimeter I

01:16:50 ◼   ► think than the one and a half millimeters so it's it's dramatically

01:16:54 ◼   ► reduced I would say it's a half to a third of the key travel of the stock

01:17:00 ◼   ► Apple keyboards it's a lot less.

01:17:03 ◼   ► Jonny has asked your cut-up podcast radio idea has

01:17:08 ◼   ► actually been done pretty well by PRX you should check out Remix.

01:17:12 ◼   ► Yeah, so Public Radio Exchange, which is one of the public radio distributors in the US,

01:17:19 ◼   ► has a bunch of these narrative shows that have like little story blocks, and they have

01:17:26 ◼   ► done this interesting thing where they've created remix, which is...

01:17:29 ◼   ► I was talking about how, wouldn't it be great if somebody came up with this idea where there

01:17:32 ◼   ► were short segments from a bunch of different podcasts, and then you could mix them together

01:17:37 ◼   ► based on people's interest and all of that, but you would have to have short...

01:17:40 ◼   ► shuffling through a bunch of two-hour podcasts doesn't help because you're only getting a

01:17:45 ◼   ► shuffle every two hours. And so apparently I looked at this briefly, Remix is from PRX,

01:17:53 ◼   ► and they have taken those shorter segments from their various shows and put them kind

01:17:59 ◼   ► of in this remix format, which is very clever, because you've got to own the material, you've

01:18:05 ◼   ► got to have material that's easily cut up into small things, and then you have to build

01:18:08 ◼   ► this you know a way to remix it and PRX did it so that's interesting and I will

01:18:14 ◼   ► check it out further but you know that that is a it's a smart idea but you've

01:18:18 ◼   ► got to have the material for it you know you've got to have the the short the

01:18:22 ◼   ► short blocks and then be able to mix them together.

01:18:26 ◼   ► This comes from Rajeev. Rajeev has asked what is the difference between the watch

01:18:31 ◼   ► apps that will be coming out on the 24th and true third-party apps? Good question.

01:18:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, great question.

01:18:37 ◼   ► So the watch apps that are coming out on the 24th

01:18:40 ◼   ► using WatchKit, the idea there is that essentially

01:18:42 ◼   ► it's all embedded in the iPhone app.

01:18:44 ◼   ► And the iPhone app is running

01:18:46 ◼   ► and projecting things to the watch.

01:18:49 ◼   ► So when you do something on a watch app,

01:18:52 ◼   ► the stuff that's gonna be out at launch,

01:18:54 ◼   ► what's really happening is all the work

01:18:56 ◼   ► is happening on your iPhone,

01:18:58 ◼   ► and the iPhone is sending back,

01:19:00 ◼   ► quite literally sending back images to display on the watch.

01:19:05 ◼   ► So it's not really running on the watch.

01:19:09 ◼   ► It's this proxy for back, you know,

01:19:12 ◼   ► phoning home from your, literally from your phone.

01:19:15 ◼   ► The, what Apple has said,

01:19:17 ◼   ► and we're hoping that we'll get a lot more about this

01:19:19 ◼   ► at WWDC is that by the end of the year,

01:19:22 ◼   ► developers will be able to write apps

01:19:24 ◼   ► that actually run on the watch.

01:19:26 ◼   ► And I think that's understandable that this,

01:19:28 ◼   ► they're trying to give a better solution

01:19:29 ◼   ► than the old iPhone solution of a sweet solution

01:19:32 ◼   ► that you write web apps by giving it this sort of like

01:19:35 ◼   ► proxy app thing while they build the product and they learn what goes into writing a native

01:19:42 ◼   ► watch app themselves. And then they pass that on in a bundled up way to developers. So by the end

01:19:47 ◼   ► of the year, hopefully developers will have the tools to write native watch apps. But that's not

01:19:54 ◼   ► going to be the case in the short term. In the short term, you get these things that are like

01:19:57 ◼   ► projected things from your phone, which is better than nothing, but it's not running on the watch.

01:20:04 ◼   ► it like the Apple stuff is.

01:20:06 ◼   ► >> And then we have from Shalini,

01:20:10 ◼   ► "Is there a podcast streaming platform that allows streaming only to selected listeners,

01:20:15 ◼   ► not broadcasting to the public?"

01:20:18 ◼   ► >> Uh...

01:20:20 ◼   ► >> I don't know of any.

01:20:21 ◼   ► >> Yeah, people have tried this with the subscription only thing,

01:20:24 ◼   ► and it turns out that I think largely,

01:20:26 ◼   ► because most podcast things don't support authentication,

01:20:28 ◼   ► most podcast apps,

01:20:30 ◼   ► that there's a lot of security through obscurity,

01:20:32 ◼   ► security, just you know saying look don't pass this around here's the secret URL everybody

01:20:38 ◼   ► can actually get there but they just keep it in secret. Libsyn which serves a lot of

01:20:44 ◼   ► it's like a CDN for podcasts a content delivery network in fact Relay uses it. Libsyn has

01:20:50 ◼   ► this thing that some podcasts like Marc Maron is using it where they wall off old episodes

01:20:58 ◼   ► and you can only listen to them through their app and so you have to pay and then you get

01:21:02 ◼   ► access through the app to old episodes. But that's a, essentially it's a proprietary thing

01:21:08 ◼   ► where they've built the listing app and the authentication in so that you can go back

01:21:14 ◼   ► and listen to the old episodes. So, you know, not premium podcasting, there's a reason that

01:21:19 ◼   ► premium podcasting is not a thing. It's just, you know, that technically it hasn't been

01:21:23 ◼   ► there and there's nobody, and now it's a challenge because there's no commonly agreed upon way

01:21:29 ◼   ► to make it work so the podcast apps don't support it. So something could emerge at some

01:21:34 ◼   ► point, but right now it hasn't. And, you know, right down to the fact that on iTunes, you

01:21:39 ◼   ► know, they're all free. They all just say free, you know, subscribe. So maybe one day

01:21:44 ◼   ► that'll happen, but it's going to be tough because there's no central podcast authority

01:21:49 ◼   ► that's going to declare a new format. And if you did declare it, you'd need all the

01:21:53 ◼   ► podcast apps to be on board or you're cutting yourself off from a bunch of listeners. Right,

01:21:58 ◼   ► Right, Myke?

01:21:59 ◼   ► Yeah, you don't want to do that.

01:22:01 ◼   ► I have no desire from really cutting people off.

01:22:04 ◼   ► I think that maybe Shani might have been talking about live streaming.

01:22:08 ◼   ► That's how I read it anyway.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Oh, interesting.

01:22:10 ◼   ► No, no, I mean, I think it's the same thing is that you'd log in and then you'd have a

01:22:15 ◼   ► you could have HTTP authentication for something like that.

01:22:18 ◼   ► With a lot of these things, it's just like the mess and difficulty just make me not want

01:22:24 ◼   ► to do anything like that.

01:22:25 ◼   ► I think like I've thought about what if I do a like a support thing for the incomparable

01:22:32 ◼   ► and I know what I could do for people who supported me as a thank you would be a couple

01:22:40 ◼   ► of streams of stuff that is not you know not the regular stuff. And when I think about

01:22:46 ◼   ► trying to secure that in some way I just think forget it I'm just gonna make it obscure and

01:22:51 ◼   ► remind people that they shouldn't share it

01:22:54 ◼   ► and probably put something in the stream that says,

01:22:56 ◼   ► "Hey, you got this because you donated.

01:22:59 ◼   ► And if you haven't donated, you really should,

01:23:01 ◼   ► because that's what this is for."

01:23:05 ◼   ► But beyond that, yeah, it's so much complication

01:23:09 ◼   ► that I think for most people it's not worth doing.

01:23:11 ◼   ► I mean, sure, you could build your own infrastructure

01:23:13 ◼   ► and have logins and have it not broadcast to the public.

01:23:16 ◼   ► You could do that.

01:23:17 ◼   ► But it's just a lot of effort to do that for live streams

01:23:19 ◼   ► and things like that.

01:23:20 ◼   ► Right, so that comes to the end of Ask Upgrade for this week, so we're going to go into our

01:23:25 ◼   ► extra special segment where I have watched a movie.

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01:25:42 ◼   ► Spinal Tap. Yes, I feel like this is the post-show. I'd be like, "Myke didn't do any research."

01:25:51 ◼   ► Except he watched a movie and took notes. Yeah. We made him watch it. We made him watch it.

01:26:00 ◼   ► All right, you watched one of my favorites. This is Spinal Tap from 1984,

01:26:06 ◼   ► directed by Rob Reiner, who directed The Princess Bride. And this is a mockumentary at a time when

01:26:15 ◼   ► that was not a genre, which it's sort of become now. It's a fake documentary about a fake rock

01:26:21 ◼   ► band. And I'm told that at the time people watched it and thought it was real, which I kind of can't

01:26:27 ◼   ► believe but I'm told that that was the case. So this is a rock band with a documentary

01:26:34 ◼   ► directed by Marty DeBergie who is played by Rob Reiner and the band features Michael McKeon

01:26:40 ◼   ► and Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest as the three primary band members in the one

01:26:46 ◼   ► of the world's loudest bands. No value judgments. Spinal Tap. So what did you think? Tell me

01:26:53 ◼   ► about your experience watching this movie.

01:26:55 ◼   ► So I have a theory about why people thought it was real.

01:26:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:26:59 ◼   ► Because they decided that it was an English band.

01:27:02 ◼   ► Ah, that's true.

01:27:04 ◼   ► Also the very beginning of the movie when they're talking to fans and there's like that

01:27:08 ◼   ► one woman who's like, "Oh, you know, you just become one with the music, man."

01:27:12 ◼   ► Those were real heavy metal fans.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Those people are real.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I can tell.

01:27:17 ◼   ► Those little, I think they're called Vox Pops.

01:27:19 ◼   ► I think that's what it's called.

01:27:21 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

01:27:22 ◼   ► they I have in my notes like one so there's two reasons that I think that

01:27:26 ◼   ► people believe this they chose an English band so you could as an American

01:27:31 ◼   ► conceivably have never heard of them also that especially at the start the it

01:27:36 ◼   ► shot so convincingly the Vox pops like those little conversations with people

01:27:40 ◼   ► the editing looks really good they use archive footage quite well to show like

01:27:45 ◼   ► the band's history and the dialogue is delivered like a documentary they talk

01:27:51 ◼   ► over each other. They're saying things that don't make any sense.

01:27:55 ◼   ► I think the movie was was largely improvised. They had a through line, but it's improvised

01:28:02 ◼   ► and you get that feeling like this is we're watching real people talk here. They're not

01:28:05 ◼   ► reading from a script and acting this out there. They knew what the scene was supposed

01:28:09 ◼   ► to do, but then there was just a huge amount of improvisation. I think legendarily the

01:28:13 ◼   ► first cut of this movie was like six hours long because they had all of the stuff. They

01:28:18 ◼   ► took out whole subplots and one of the DVDs has like an hour of extra things. It's amazing.

01:28:28 ◼   ► I think there's a joke that's in the cut scenes that's funnier than any single joke in the

01:28:32 ◼   ► movie but I understand why they cut so much of it. So yeah, I think you're right that

01:28:37 ◼   ► verisimilitude is added from having that improv sort of style because it does feel like you're

01:28:43 ◼   ► just watching events occur instead of seeing a scene acted out.

01:28:48 ◼   ► So there are, because there are like jokes that happen in the movie that are thrown away.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:28:53 ◼   ► They're literally like somebody moves on because it was a bad joke and that is not the type

01:28:58 ◼   ► of thing that you would hear.

01:29:00 ◼   ► Or like where they say something and you hear them improvising, like you hear the improvising,

01:29:05 ◼   ► when they say that one of them choked, it's like oh yeah the drummer died because he choked

01:29:09 ◼   ► on his vomit.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Like because he choked on vomit.

01:29:11 ◼   ► On vomit, yeah.

01:29:12 ◼   ► "No wait, no, somebody else's vomit."

01:29:14 ◼   ► Like, and it was like, you know,

01:29:15 ◼   ► that you could hear them like workshopping the joke.

01:29:17 ◼   ► And it was like, this feels real.

01:29:20 ◼   ► I can genuinely see how people could have,

01:29:22 ◼   ► could have mistaken that.

01:29:23 ◼   ► - There's a moment where,

01:29:25 ◼   ► where Rob Reiner is reading reviews of Spinal Tap albums.

01:29:30 ◼   ► And he gets to the,

01:29:32 ◼   ► you're gonna have to note the time code for this one, Myke.

01:29:33 ◼   ► He gets to the point where he says,

01:29:35 ◼   ► "Your album's 'Shark Sandwich.'"

01:29:37 ◼   ► That was a two word review, which was just,

01:29:39 ◼   ► "Sh*t sandwich."

01:29:41 ◼   ► And if you watch the the guys in the band at that point, they're all just laughing.

01:29:45 ◼   ► You can see them smiling in the scene because he's taken them by surprise with these reviews

01:29:50 ◼   ► and all they manage is like, "Oh, you can't write that.

01:29:53 ◼   ► That's not real.

01:29:54 ◼   ► Let me see that."

01:29:55 ◼   ► It's like, "That's not a real review.

01:29:56 ◼   ► No one will print that."

01:29:58 ◼   ► But they're just trying to make them laugh and yeah, it's...

01:30:03 ◼   ► But then again, I have those moments where I'm like, "How would anybody believe that's

01:30:05 ◼   ► real?"

01:30:06 ◼   ► But it is completely straight of this happened.

01:30:10 ◼   ► There's no real winks or anything like that. It's like, no, this is the story. There's

01:30:14 ◼   ► never a reveal that it's all a joke. It's just that's the movie. So what else did you

01:30:20 ◼   ► notice?

01:30:21 ◼   ► So, basically, unlike some of the other movies that we've watched, my notes are effectively

01:30:28 ◼   ► all quotes. So I think the first joke that I really, really laughed at was, so they're

01:30:36 ◼   ► They're at this like an album launch party, or like a tour launch party, and it's been

01:30:44 ◼   ► put on by the music label.

01:30:47 ◼   ► And for some reason, and I think it may have just been for this joke, the people giving

01:30:53 ◼   ► out food are mimes?

01:30:55 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:30:58 ◼   ► Dana Carvey and Billy Crystal among them.

01:31:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:01 ◼   ► they're like they're a mime they're basically just mimes giving out like

01:31:05 ◼   ► they're serving food and they're backstage then it just goes backstage

01:31:09 ◼   ► cuts to a conversation between two of the mimes because they're talking about

01:31:12 ◼   ► what food to serve next and one guy one guy says to the other guy mime is money

01:31:18 ◼   ► mime is money yeah that's Billy Crystal Billy Crystal in a very small party

01:31:24 ◼   ► thing and it used to be rating Dana Carvey yeah before he was on Saturday

01:31:29 ◼   ► Night Live I think. A little bit of research, I found that this actually started as a Saturday

01:31:35 ◼   ► Night Live sketch. That is, I don't know if that's true. I read it on Wikipedia so it

01:31:45 ◼   ► must be true. Oh it must be true. It's possible, so Christopher Guest and Billy Crystal were

01:31:50 ◼   ► cast members on Saturday Night Live, although I thought that was after, maybe it was just

01:31:55 ◼   ► before. I don't know. It is all tied up together in that way, that they all knew each other,

01:32:00 ◼   ► I think, through Saturday Night Live. And in fact, all of the members of Spinal Tap

01:32:04 ◼   ► have been cast members of Saturday Night Live now at one time or other, Michael McKeon much

01:32:09 ◼   ► later, but they all have been. And then Christopher Guest has gone on to direct several well-reviewed

01:32:16 ◼   ► fake documentaries in this style about different subjects. But this is sort of where it all

01:32:23 ◼   ► started.

01:32:24 ◼   ► notes do you have what other lines do you have so well then interspersed

01:32:29 ◼   ► throughout all of this movie is they're on tour right so spinal tap come to

01:32:34 ◼   ► America for their tour to to to promote their album sniff the glove smell the

01:32:41 ◼   ► glove smell the glove yeah which is a whole other subplot that I'll get to in a minute which is fantastic I love that so that they they show them they show

01:32:51 ◼   ► like songs that are happening now the songs I found out obviously as many

01:32:56 ◼   ► people anyone's seen a movie known they're all actually performed by the

01:32:58 ◼   ► actors yeah and also like I knew about this because I mean I've known about

01:33:02 ◼   ► spinal tap for years it's just it's just something that's in pop culture like

01:33:07 ◼   ► they performed a couple of shows in the UK a few years ago they they they were

01:33:11 ◼   ► at Glastonbury and then they did a one-night world tour at Wembley Arena and so one of the

01:33:19 ◼   ► songs this is when I realized what the music is right they do a song called the

01:33:23 ◼   ► I think it may be called the bigger the cushion or that was just at least no no

01:33:28 ◼   ► it's big it's big bottom big yeah that's the next quote from the song that I have

01:33:32 ◼   ► which is obviously a parody of Queen yeah oh yeah well yeah right that's that

01:33:39 ◼   ► bottom girls yeah that bottom girls so this is what I know for then I have

01:33:42 ◼   ► another thing after basically every song is parodying another British band so

01:33:46 ◼   ► they have I noted parodies of AC/DC, Beatles, Queen, Rolling Stones and The Who.

01:33:51 ◼   ► Yeah, oh yeah. So like they're just clear like there are parts. And the idea is that

01:33:55 ◼   ► Spinal Tap, it's not it's not that the movie is parodying them I think the idea

01:33:59 ◼   ► is that Spinal Tap is completely unoriginal. Yeah. And is just knocking off

01:34:04 ◼   ► every other band. Like this The Who one is my I think my favorite because they're

01:34:09 ◼   ► just singing like this heavy metal rock song and then they start doing the

01:34:13 ◼   ► keyboard part of like Tommy or something. Oh yeah. And it's just like in the middle

01:34:18 ◼   ► and then it just carry on and the Rolling Stones one's really great as well.

01:34:22 ◼   ► So then basically one of the big problems that they're having in America

01:34:27 ◼   ► is that they cannot get their album launched because the cover is offensive.

01:34:33 ◼   ► It's offensive. Yes. And there's a conversation between I think the

01:34:37 ◼   ► manager's name's Ian and a record label executive called Bobby I think.

01:34:42 ◼   ► Bobby Fleckman.

01:34:43 ◼   ► Bobby Fleckman.

01:34:44 ◼   ► He's like, what's her name again?

01:34:45 ◼   ► Bobby Fleckman.

01:34:46 ◼   ► Bobby Fleckman.

01:34:47 ◼   ► It's Fran Drescher.

01:34:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:50 ◼   ► Bobby Fleckman.

01:34:51 ◼   ► They're talking about album covers and then Ian's saying about how important the album

01:34:55 ◼   ► cover is and Bobby's like, what about the white album?

01:34:57 ◼   ► There was literally nothing on that cover, which I really like, which then leads into

01:35:03 ◼   ► later like sort of going backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, like Kmart won't stock

01:35:07 ◼   ► and stuff like that to the point where the album arrives at like a soundcheck

01:35:12 ◼   ► that they're doing and it's just completely black there's no writing on

01:35:16 ◼   ► it nothing it's just a completely black cover which there's a couple of lines

01:35:21 ◼   ► that I really love which we've mentioned you mentioned here Tim before and this

01:35:24 ◼   ► is what I think prompted why this would be the next movie none more black there

01:35:29 ◼   ► is not black it could it be none more black and also death it looks like death

01:35:33 ◼   ► death, death sells. So obviously it's the opposite of the white album is what they end

01:35:40 ◼   ► up going for. But the problem with an all black cover as opposed to an all white cover

01:35:45 ◼   ► is you cannot read what's on it. It just looks like a really nice mirror.

01:35:51 ◼   ► And it's shrink wrapped. So they're like, "I don't even know what I'm looking at here."

01:35:55 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. Actual bands have done that too. I think somewhat an homage, but they put like

01:36:00 ◼   ► a sticker on it or something to explain it.

01:36:01 ◼   ► I mean, there was nothing on it.

01:36:03 ◼   ► So what I have skipped out with a black cover bit

01:36:06 ◼   ► goes to 11, which in context, even though I know it,

01:36:11 ◼   ► it was still really funny.

01:36:12 ◼   ► So I know the line and I knew what was coming,

01:36:15 ◼   ► but delivery of it is excellent.

01:36:16 ◼   ► Because then it goes back,

01:36:17 ◼   ► why don't you just make 10 louder?

01:36:19 ◼   ► It's like, but this goes to 11.

01:36:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:36:22 ◼   ► No, I think the real comedy in the line,

01:36:25 ◼   ► and everybody quotes the line,

01:36:26 ◼   ► the real comedy in the line is that Rob Reiner

01:36:29 ◼   ► as Marty DeBergie is trying to reason with him, right?

01:36:32 ◼   ► He's like, well, you know, whenever ours go to 11,

01:36:35 ◼   ► whenever you want that extra bit and go off the cliff

01:36:37 ◼   ► and you're at 10, you have nowhere else to go.

01:36:38 ◼   ► Well, you do have one, you can take it up to 11.

01:36:40 ◼   ► And then Rob Reiner says,

01:36:42 ◼   ► well, why don't you just make the whole thing louder

01:36:44 ◼   ► and make 10 that much more louder?

01:36:46 ◼   ► Which sets up the, but these go to 11.

01:36:49 ◼   ► Like, ah, I can't even deal with this guy.

01:36:51 ◼   ► That's what makes that funny.

01:36:52 ◼   ► It's much more funny, I think, in context.

01:36:55 ◼   ► - So this is Nigel, who is the lead guitarist.

01:36:59 ◼   ► Yes. Solos are his specialty.

01:37:03 ◼   ► With the violin, where he's playing the guitar with the violin and the other guitar with

01:37:06 ◼   ► his foot.

01:37:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:08 ◼   ► My solos are my trademark.

01:37:11 ◼   ► That's it.

01:37:13 ◼   ► And this is at a sexual where he's showing him around his guitars. And I love the bit

01:37:18 ◼   ► where he's like, "Don't look at this one. Don't even touch it. No one can touch it."

01:37:22 ◼   ► It can't be played. Don't even look at it.

01:37:26 ◼   ► So Nigel kind of is Paul McCartney, right? Because the other thing that's going on is

01:37:35 ◼   ► David?

01:37:36 ◼   ► David St. Humboldt's, his girlfriend Janine comes and is touring with the band at some

01:37:42 ◼   ► point and she's got lots of creative ideas that infuriates Nigel. And they're childhood

01:37:48 ◼   ► friends. It's very much Lennon and McCartney. They're childhood friends and when you see

01:37:52 ◼   ► and flashback they start out as, because they keep changing to be whatever is popular, they

01:37:57 ◼   ► start out as a Beatles kind of band and turn into a and then turn into heavy metal over time

01:38:02 ◼   ► and so they're childhood friends and now the the girlfriend has come in between them.

01:38:09 ◼   ► Yeah. And then they're in Memphis and then it's the at Graceland and they're they're trying to

01:38:17 ◼   ► harmonize Heartbreak Hotel terribly standing at the grave and then

01:38:23 ◼   ► because basically that they're struggling because Memphis shows just been

01:38:26 ◼   ► canceled and Nigel says to David about how this puts it into perspective as it's

01:38:31 ◼   ► too much respective which is really great too much yeah there's an extra

01:38:38 ◼   ► word in there that you're dropping out yeah but that's one of my favorite I use

01:38:44 ◼   ► that all the time too much effing perspective. It's like puts it all in perspective at Elvis's

01:38:49 ◼   ► grave yeah I love that moment. And then there's the great so I come I'm basically just jump

01:38:56 ◼   ► into my favorite bits of the movie. Sure. Like and then there's the great bit where

01:38:59 ◼   ► there there's so much good stuff happening in this performance when they're in the alien

01:39:05 ◼   ► pods. Oh yeah yeah. So they're in these because they're all of the the performances have funny

01:39:11 ◼   ► bits in them but this one is like there's there's multiple things happening so there are these alien

01:39:16 ◼   ► pods on stage and what's really great about these performances is they're doing these arena level

01:39:22 ◼   ► production in tiny halls and like theaters because the American tour is like they're like a thousand

01:39:30 ◼   ► people and this actually goes back to there's a part where um I'm sure I thought I had oh yeah

01:39:35 ◼   ► I had this in my notes where, what's the name of the guy who's, is it Deberg?

01:39:40 ◼   ► Marty Debergi. Marty Debergi. He's the director. Yeah. Yeah, who's like the fake

01:39:45 ◼   ► director in the thing as well, right? So he's, you know, pretending to be the

01:39:50 ◼   ► interviewer and the documentary maker. He's talking to the manager Ian, and he's like,

01:39:55 ◼   ► "Is the popularity of the group waning?" Because they've gone from 10,000 seat

01:39:59 ◼   ► arenas to 1,000 seat arenas. And Ian's response is, "No, their appeal is just

01:40:05 ◼   ► becoming more selective. Yeah. That's some good PR. And the pod scene is rock and

01:40:11 ◼   ► roll creation so that's the Who song. That's where in the middle they've

01:40:13 ◼   ► got the little keyboard solo and they do the weird harmony falsetto

01:40:18 ◼   ► thing that happens. And in that scene Harry Shearer doesn't come out of

01:40:23 ◼   ► his pod and is fighting and is trapped and they have people trying to free him

01:40:26 ◼   ► and the moment that he comes out everybody else is going back in and then

01:40:30 ◼   ► he thinks about going back in and gets like trapped in between. That's so bad.

01:40:34 ◼   ► Nigel has a tiny guitar. I don't think it's a ukulele, it's just a really small

01:40:41 ◼   ► guitar and like it's just no no attention is paid to that but that was

01:40:44 ◼   ► the first thing I know is the guitar is tiny.

01:40:47 ◼   ► Yep, nobody knows why. There's obviously the running joke of the

01:40:52 ◼   ► drummers. They have like 32 drummers over the history of the band that have all

01:40:55 ◼   ► died in ridiculous ways.

01:40:59 ◼   ► Right, including a bizarre gardening accident.

01:41:01 ◼   ► Yeah, which, oh it's one of those things where they don't even want to investigate it because

01:41:06 ◼   ► it's so weird.

01:41:07 ◼   ► It's better left unknown.

01:41:09 ◼   ► There was one thing I meant to mention about the start that I didn't.

01:41:13 ◼   ► The British accents, the London accents, so good.

01:41:17 ◼   ► Everyone.

01:41:18 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

01:41:19 ◼   ► Because they are going for regional London accents.

01:41:22 ◼   ► And they nail it.

01:41:23 ◼   ► - Well, Christopher Guest is English.

01:41:26 ◼   ► He is an English American.

01:41:29 ◼   ► He has dual citizenship

01:41:30 ◼   ► and he is actually Baron Hayden Guest.

01:41:33 ◼   ► He is a Baron.

01:41:36 ◼   ► He is a hereditary peer, believe it or not.

01:41:40 ◼   ► But I believe was raised in America,

01:41:43 ◼   ► but he's been exposed to enough English, I think,

01:41:46 ◼   ► to do the English accent.

01:41:47 ◼   ► But like Michael McKeon is just an American guy.

01:41:50 ◼   ► He was squiggy on the Laverne and Shirley.

01:41:53 ◼   ► But they and Harry Shearer likewise.

01:41:55 ◼   ► So it's good to hear that the accents are pretty good.

01:41:57 ◼   ► Obviously Ian is actually an English actor,

01:42:00 ◼   ► but they wanted it to be the English rock band, right?

01:42:03 ◼   ► The English heavy metal band,

01:42:04 ◼   ► obscure, strange, British heavy metal band

01:42:07 ◼   ► is what they were going for.

01:42:09 ◼   ► - Yep, because it was like when I saw it

01:42:11 ◼   ► and I saw the cast members,

01:42:12 ◼   ► I was like, why didn't they pick British people?

01:42:14 ◼   ► Why did they have American people?

01:42:16 ◼   ► I know it's because they wanted to make the movie,

01:42:18 ◼   ► but then when you started talking--

01:42:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, they were the ones who came up with the idea

01:42:21 ◼   ► and like, we could be British.

01:42:23 ◼   ► Like at that point I didn't know the inception of it as well.

01:42:25 ◼   ► I thought it was just a movie that was cast, but no, they came up with these characters

01:42:28 ◼   ► and they wanted to make a movie out of it.

01:42:30 ◼   ► But they do an incredibly good job.

01:42:32 ◼   ► And looking at the IMDb trivia, there's a bunch of points in the movie where they're

01:42:39 ◼   ► in an airport and there's Tanao announcements, which is the actual actors in their American

01:42:43 ◼   ► accents.

01:42:44 ◼   ► Ah yeah.

01:42:45 ◼   ► That's littered throughout it.

01:42:48 ◼   ► There's this great scene where Nigel is playing the piano.

01:42:52 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:42:54 ◼   ► And he...

01:42:55 ◼   ► So the first time I watched this scene, this is the moment where we had to pause the tape

01:42:59 ◼   ► and I was literally, and this has happened very rarely in my life, I literally had fallen

01:43:03 ◼   ► on the floor and was laughing uncontrollably and tears were streaming down and we had to

01:43:09 ◼   ► stop it for this scene.

01:43:11 ◼   ► This is the scene that did it to me.

01:43:12 ◼   ► It is so good.

01:43:13 ◼   ► So he's playing the piano and he's playing this beautiful piece of music.

01:43:17 ◼   ► And this is where you think that the plot's about to turn here because Nigel's super creative

01:43:23 ◼   ► and he wants to go out and my thinking was, "Oh, this is where it's going to turn because

01:43:28 ◼   ► he's now going to go away and make really, really beautiful music."

01:43:31 ◼   ► He's creating this piece and he's humming along and he's saying that, "I'm a mix between

01:43:37 ◼   ► Beethoven...

01:43:38 ◼   ► Oh, is it Bach and Mozart?"

01:43:41 ◼   ► Bach and Mozart.

01:43:42 ◼   ► And he calls it "Moch."

01:43:43 ◼   ► Is it "Moch"?

01:43:44 ◼   ► It's kind of a "Moch" piece.

01:43:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:43:46 ◼   ► And it's just beautiful music and then like talking about it's like well you know what do you want to do with this?

01:43:50 ◼   ► And it's like oh imagine this and this is the the horns coming in here and then uh

01:43:56 ◼   ► It's like what do you call this piece?

01:43:59 ◼   ► Lick my love pump. Yep

01:44:01 ◼   ► So good unbelievable just unbelievable

01:44:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I really love that on the floor crying just crying so ridiculous. And then a tiny stonehenge is

01:44:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the joke there is that they run on the back of a napkin and they put the two

01:44:19 ◼   ► marks for inches instead of the one mark for feet, and so they make it in inches instead

01:44:23 ◼   ► of feet. So it's a 1/12 scale Stonehenge made out of foam.

01:44:28 ◼   ► - But they still use it on stage. - And they have little people dancing around

01:44:31 ◼   ► it. - And it's just this great thing. And then

01:44:35 ◼   ► it kind of, the movie kind of goes the way that you'd expect at this point. So Nigel's

01:44:41 ◼   ► really upset about the fact that Janine, which is David's wife, is getting... she

01:44:49 ◼   ► basically becomes the manager of the band, so he quits the band. Then the band is

01:44:52 ◼   ► about to break up because they can't continue without Nigel.

01:44:56 ◼   ► - And the breakup happens because the tour reaches its low point when they

01:45:01 ◼   ► play a dinner dance at an Air Force base. And Fred Willard is there with his

01:45:08 ◼   ► little Air Force uniform on to welcome them and then the air traffic control signal comes

01:45:14 ◼   ► across the guitar and he throws it down and that's the end of the band.

01:45:20 ◼   ► And then they're kind of like, what songs can we play?

01:45:24 ◼   ► They go to other venues like they're in a theme park and it's puppets and Spinal Tap.

01:45:29 ◼   ► Yeah, puppet show and Spinal Tap.

01:45:31 ◼   ► I specifically asked it to say Spinal Tap and puppet show.

01:45:34 ◼   ► Like that's better.

01:45:35 ◼   ► But you have a really big dressing room.

01:45:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:45:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:45:39 ◼   ► - And then they're backstage talking about the set,

01:45:41 ◼   ► and they're crossing off all the songs

01:45:43 ◼   ► that they can't do about Nigel,

01:45:45 ◼   ► and then they have a 10 minute set.

01:45:48 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:45:49 ◼   ► - Which is hilarious.

01:45:50 ◼   ► It's the basic name Nick-- - So it's time for the--

01:45:52 ◼   ► - Derek, it's Derek.

01:45:53 ◼   ► - Derek Smalls, yeah.

01:45:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, and he's like, "We have a 10 minute set here."

01:45:56 ◼   ► And it's like, "Oh."

01:45:57 ◼   ► - So we'll do the reformed Spinal Tap Jazz Odyssey.

01:46:00 ◼   ► - Yeah. - With their meandering jazz.

01:46:04 ◼   ► He wrote this.

01:46:05 ◼   ► - Derek wrote this. - It's like, "Oh boy, great."

01:46:07 ◼   ► Great, yeah.

01:46:09 ◼   ► So then, like, they're coming to the fact that the band is now ending, so there's this

01:46:13 ◼   ► great scene at the album wrap party where nobody is--the tour wrap party, nobody's there.

01:46:17 ◼   ► Yeah, but they're on the top of a building in Los Angeles, which the entire movie was

01:46:20 ◼   ► shot in Los Angeles, but this is the moment where they can actually use that.

01:46:23 ◼   ► So they're on top of a, like, a hotel or something at a patio pool thing in Los Angeles looking

01:46:29 ◼   ► over the city, and this is the, you know, it's the end.

01:46:32 ◼   ► It's not--obviously not gonna continue.

01:46:34 ◼   ► And Derek and David are talking about all the projects that they can now take up.

01:46:38 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:46:39 ◼   ► We have a Jack the Ripper musical.

01:46:40 ◼   ► Yeah, we're lucky!

01:46:41 ◼   ► We can finally do the Jack the Ripper musical.

01:46:44 ◼   ► It's like, "You're a naughty boy, Mr. Jack!"

01:46:47 ◼   ► It's a line in their song.

01:46:50 ◼   ► And then, at the final performance that they're at, they have a surprise return from Richard.

01:47:00 ◼   ► he says that they're at what like number five in the Japanese chart or something?

01:47:06 ◼   ► Yeah isn't it? So Nigel comes back. Nigel, why did I say Richard? I don't know.

01:47:12 ◼   ► I don't know where that name came from. Yeah Nigel comes back, it's very British you see Nigel.

01:47:16 ◼   ► Nigel comes back and says he's got Ian who's also, Ian's been fired and Nigel's quit.

01:47:22 ◼   ► but Sex Farm is on the charts in Japan. So how about we go to Japan and suddenly they

01:47:30 ◼   ► do the last gig right and they welcome him back on stage and then you know cut to they're

01:47:34 ◼   ► playing Japan before excited throngs in Japan and Ian is back and they're playing they're

01:47:42 ◼   ► big in Japan the end basically. Yeah big in Japan.

01:47:48 ◼   ► - Love this movie.

01:47:50 ◼   ► - I'm glad you liked it.

01:47:51 ◼   ► I didn't know because this is a very peculiar sort of movie.

01:47:55 ◼   ► And I think it helps if you get some of the jokes

01:48:00 ◼   ► of the music, but I feel like it works

01:48:03 ◼   ► even if you don't know a lot of the references to the music

01:48:05 ◼   ► because it feels authentic.

01:48:08 ◼   ► The music feels authentically bad, but authentic.

01:48:11 ◼   ► And they are actually playing their instruments

01:48:13 ◼   ► and what they're doing is,

01:48:17 ◼   ► You didn't mention when they get lost in Cleveland,

01:48:19 ◼   ► which I really liked that scene where they just keep on,

01:48:21 ◼   ► hello Cleveland, hello Cleveland.

01:48:23 ◼   ► And they're just, and they keep coming back to the same guy

01:48:25 ◼   ► and he's like, what are you doing here?

01:48:27 ◼   ► It's over there.

01:48:29 ◼   ► They can't find the stage.

01:48:31 ◼   ► That's a real story.

01:48:32 ◼   ► That's actually in a list of things of,

01:48:34 ◼   ► I think they made a list of like famous tour stories,

01:48:37 ◼   ► like demanding the Brown M&M's and all that.

01:48:40 ◼   ► They've got the scene where they want

01:48:41 ◼   ► the little tiny sandwiches with the things cut off

01:48:43 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:48:45 ◼   ► It's like, I can't use this bread, it's too small.

01:48:47 ◼   ► And it folds the thing over and it all breaks in half.

01:48:50 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:48:51 ◼   ► - But I love it when they're getting lost.

01:48:52 ◼   ► It's like, don't let it go guys, go, go, go.

01:48:55 ◼   ► Come on, rock and roll.

01:48:56 ◼   ► - Rock and roll.

01:48:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:48:58 ◼   ► They can't find the stage.

01:48:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a, I love it.

01:49:02 ◼   ► Every time I watch it, I laugh and laugh.

01:49:04 ◼   ► And it was shot in 16 millimeter.

01:49:07 ◼   ► So I've got the Blu-ray, I don't even know.

01:49:08 ◼   ► I mean, it looks a little bit better,

01:49:10 ◼   ► but it's like, it is shot on low quality film stock.

01:49:14 ◼   ► it is a, you know, grungy, you know, mid 80s documentary.

01:49:19 ◼   ► That's what it's meant to look like.

01:49:20 ◼   ► And, but it is, I'm glad you liked it.

01:49:23 ◼   ► Cause you know, it's people doing fake English accents

01:49:25 ◼   ► and it's from the 80s.

01:49:26 ◼   ► So I didn't know whether it would work for you or not,

01:49:29 ◼   ► but I'm glad it did.

01:49:31 ◼   ► - That's my two favorite things.

01:49:33 ◼   ► 80s movies with fake British accents.

01:49:35 ◼   ► - Jack.

01:49:38 ◼   ► - I didn't really, really love this movie.

01:49:39 ◼   ► I love the way it looked.

01:49:40 ◼   ► I love the way that it looked kind of grungy.

01:49:42 ◼   ► I feel like if it was polished up the Blu-ray, it would lose a lot of what it's--

01:49:46 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, there would be no point.

01:49:47 ◼   ► - And I like this, we're on three for three.

01:49:51 ◼   ► - That's good too.

01:49:52 ◼   ► Well, I'm trying to be careful with the movies I select for you.

01:49:55 ◼   ► So I've got a couple bits of trivia for you.

01:49:58 ◼   ► So the first DVD that they did of this

01:50:01 ◼   ► was a Criterion Collection DVD.

01:50:03 ◼   ► And the actors and Rob Reiner are on it

01:50:07 ◼   ► talking about how they made the movie, which is really cool.

01:50:11 ◼   ► that went out of print and MGM did their own DVD of it.

01:50:15 ◼   ► And that's got a commentary track that's them in character

01:50:18 ◼   ► complaining about how Marty DeBergie ruined their careers

01:50:21 ◼   ► with this movie.

01:50:22 ◼   ► And it's funny because there's that criterion

01:50:25 ◼   ► is like the only time they've ever gone out of character

01:50:27 ◼   ► to talk about the movie.

01:50:29 ◼   ► All the rest of it is in character.

01:50:31 ◼   ► So I have both and then I bought the Blu-ray too.

01:50:33 ◼   ► And then there are bonus tracks on scattered across

01:50:36 ◼   ► all these different DVDs that are things pulled out

01:50:40 ◼   ► the movie because like I said it legendarily it was this incredibly long movie and there was a

01:50:44 ◼   ► whole subplot about the opening. The opening act was an all-woman rock band and they were becoming

01:50:51 ◼   ► famous as Spinal Tap was becoming not famous and this is a story that happens a lot where the

01:50:56 ◼   ► opening act suddenly catches fire and they're bigger than the act that they're opening for

01:51:01 ◼   ► and that also there was the implication that the women in that band were sleeping with the men in

01:51:09 ◼   ► in Spinal Tap and there's you still see that the only part of the subplot that exists anymore

01:51:15 ◼   ► is you see various members of Spinal Tap get herpes sores on their mouths.

01:51:20 ◼   ► Yeah I noticed that and just thought it was a funny joke.

01:51:23 ◼   ► Yeah so what it's supposed to be is like one of the women in the in the it progresses because

01:51:31 ◼   ► they're all sleeping with the women in the other band and the women in the other band

01:51:35 ◼   ► are sleeping with them but that they just took it all out so that doesn't even exist

01:51:39 ◼   ► anymore. I saw Cheryl Crow open for Crowded House and every time I think about that subplot

01:51:45 ◼   ► that's what I think of is like Cheryl Crow right as she exploded and become huge was

01:51:50 ◼   ► opening for Crowded House. And I remember like as that tour went on by the time I got

01:51:54 ◼   ► to San Francisco it was like she had big hits and had just been on David Letterman and they

01:52:00 ◼   ► were like their album had taken a year to get released in America. So I think about

01:52:05 ◼   ► that a little bit. And then the cut scene that I really love, there's a scene with Bruno

01:52:11 ◼   ► Kirby who is the limo driver, he's the one who says, who talks about Frank Sinatra all

01:52:16 ◼   ► the time.

01:52:17 ◼   ► They don't understand the real love that he lost.

01:52:18 ◼   ► If he loved and lost like Frank has, then you know what life's about. There's a scene

01:52:24 ◼   ► that they cut from the movie where everybody is in a hotel room and they're getting high

01:52:32 ◼   ► and ordering pizza.

01:52:36 ◼   ► And he, Bruno Kirby, I think brings in the pizza

01:52:40 ◼   ► and they tell him to stay.

01:52:41 ◼   ► And he's like trying to defer and all that

01:52:44 ◼   ► and say, no, no, no, you know, I'm just gonna go.

01:52:47 ◼   ► And then there's just a hard cut.

01:52:49 ◼   ► And Bruno Kirby is now standing in his underwear.

01:52:53 ◼   ► Obviously he has partaken of the drugs that are available.

01:52:59 ◼   ► And the pizza box, I think the pizza box is empty now.

01:53:02 ◼   ► And he's singing into a banana or something.

01:53:07 ◼   ► I think it's not, you know, or just a pretend microphone.

01:53:09 ◼   ► He's singing a Frank Sinatra song.

01:53:12 ◼   ► And it's the end of it.

01:53:13 ◼   ► It's like "My Way" or something.

01:53:14 ◼   ► And he finishes it and he points at the band and says,

01:53:17 ◼   ► "Now that's music."

01:53:18 ◼   ► And then collapses.

01:53:20 ◼   ► And it is the funniest thing.

01:53:22 ◼   ► I think it's funnier than anything in the movie.

01:53:24 ◼   ► And I understand why they cut it 'cause it goes on forever

01:53:27 ◼   ► and is not really necessary.

01:53:29 ◼   ► but I love the the ongoing obsession that Bruno Kirby has with Frank Sinatra and how he ends up

01:53:34 ◼   ► in his underpants singing Frank Sinatra in a hotel room and then he passes out and everybody

01:53:40 ◼   ► laughs and that's the end of the scene. So yeah you should check out the bonus the bonus stuff

01:53:45 ◼   ► if you can find that there's some good there's some good stuff in there because they had

01:53:49 ◼   ► and I think they made the right decision to make it short because it's 82 minutes long I think

01:53:53 ◼   ► I think get in get out tell your jokes be done but it is funny that they had the many hours version

01:53:58 ◼   ► that came out of the out of all the improv. All right, two for three, or three for three.

01:54:05 ◼   ► Whoo! That's good. Yeah, I love this one. I'm glad you like it. Somebody was asking on Twitter what

01:54:11 ◼   ► the best succession of three films by a director, three consecutive films by a director is, and

01:54:17 ◼   ► Rob Reiner in his, at the beginning of his directorial career, had a really great,

01:54:25 ◼   ► a really great streak that includes This Is Spinal Tap and The Princess Bride.

01:54:31 ◼   ► Do I need to watch the other one now?

01:54:34 ◼   ► Well the problem is that they sort of there's a more middling one in between. So This Is Spinal Tap

01:54:43 ◼   ► then he directed The Sure Thing which actually is a really good as a 80s teen sex comedy it is

01:54:51 ◼   ► actually really quite good because it's got heart. And then he did Stand By Me, which

01:54:57 ◼   ► I don't know if you've seen, but it's kind of a, you know, that's a nice kind of classic

01:55:00 ◼   ► 80s movie with Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix. And then he did The Princess Bride and When

01:55:06 ◼   ► Harry Met Sally and Misery and A Few Good Men. These are all pretty good movies. And

01:55:12 ◼   ► then he stopped making good movies. But it's a really great collection between 1984 and

01:55:19 ◼   ► and 1992 where he made some some very good movies including some of my favorite movies

01:55:23 ◼   ► of all time but not three in a row they all were kind of mixed in with some of the highlights

01:55:29 ◼   ► and the and the kind of middle middle stuff but but this is spinal tap when Harry Mitzali

01:55:34 ◼   ► and the Princess Bride are three of my favorite favorite films so yeah I like this one an

01:55:38 ◼   ► awful lot thank you I'm glad and I'm glad to those who stuck around to listen to Myke

01:55:44 ◼   ► watches a movie!

01:55:45 ◼   ► Indeed.

01:55:46 ◼   ► Brought to you by Smile.

01:55:48 ◼   ► Thank you, Smile, for making Myke watch a movie.

01:55:52 ◼   ► And thank you all for listening.

01:55:54 ◼   ► We'll thank all of our sponsors too.

01:55:56 ◼   ► Our friends over at Warby Parker, Mail Route, and Linda for helping us out, sponsoring this

01:56:00 ◼   ► episode, along with Smile.

01:56:01 ◼   ► We love all those guys.

01:56:02 ◼   ► They help make this show possible.

01:56:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:56:05 ◼   ► I want to thank Jason Snell for joining me as always.

01:56:06 ◼   ► You can find Mr. Jason Snell.

01:56:08 ◼   ► He is on Twitter.

01:56:09 ◼   ► He's @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.

01:56:10 ◼   ► and is the editor-in-chief of the fantastic six colors dot com. You can find more there.

01:56:16 ◼   ► Don't forget to check out Clockwise on Relay FM and of course the great shows that Jason

01:56:22 ◼   ► does over on the incomparable too. I am Myke Hurley, I am @imike, I am YKE. I am a host

01:56:29 ◼   ► of many shows on the fabulous Relay FM which you are listening to right now. This show

01:56:34 ◼   ► can be found along with many others over at relay.fm.

01:56:38 ◼   ► But thanks most of all to you for listening.

01:56:41 ◼   ► Until next time, say goodbye to yourself.

01:56:44 ◼   ► Goodbye everybody.

01:56:45 ◼   ► It's one louder, isn't it?

01:56:47 ◼   ► Straight to the left.

01:56:48 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:56:51 ◼   ► [ Music ]