Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From relay FM it's Upgrade episode number 21.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by lynda.com where you can instantly

00:00:16 ◼   ► stream thousands of courses created by industry experts.

00:00:19 ◼   ► For a 10-day free trial visit lynda.com/upgrade.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Squarespace. Start here, go anywhere. Mailroute. A secure hosted email service

00:00:28 ◼   ► for protection from viruses and spam and Stamps.com,

00:00:31 ◼   ► postage on demand. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined as always

00:00:36 ◼   ► by the one and only Mr. Jason Snow. Hi Myke, how's it going?

00:00:40 ◼   ► I'm good PowerSlider, how are you? Oh I'm doing great. I did,

00:00:43 ◼   ► I sent you guys a picture of me listening to Connected

00:00:47 ◼   ► while driving past one infinite loop in Cupertino last week, that was just for

00:00:51 ◼   ► you. It was, that was old school, kicking it

00:00:54 ◼   ► I was power sliding through the loop, as we do.

00:00:57 ◼   ► It's the only way to roll.

00:01:00 ◼   ► So we have a big show today.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Big show, lots of stuff.

00:01:03 ◼   ► We have lots of...

00:01:04 ◼   ► I'm looking at the document right now, and we have a whole series worth of follow-up.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:10 ◼   ► But we have a little special thing that we're gonna do...

00:01:12 ◼   ► At the end.

00:01:13 ◼   ► At the end today.

00:01:14 ◼   ► So last week...

00:01:15 ◼   ► I'll tease it for now.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Last week, we were talking about the Holocaust Cloak.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Which is a reference to the Princess Bride.

00:01:23 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:01:24 ◼   ► horrified to find out that I have not seen The Princess Bride. So I watched The Princess

00:01:29 ◼   ► Bride yesterday and we're going to talk about it today.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Yes, so stay tuned till the end if you want to hear that.

00:01:36 ◼   ► So should we kick it off with some good old-fashioned follow-up?

00:01:38 ◼   ► Yeah, let's do the follow-up. I had one quick bit of follow-up from Lister Michael about

00:01:45 ◼   ► Marco Marketing, which is from a couple of shows ago, but I wanted to pass this along

00:01:52 ◼   ► because the idea here is, you know, yes, Marco is, Marco Armet is high profile, but he's

00:01:57 ◼   ► also putting himself out there and becoming high profile. And I think the argument I made

00:02:02 ◼   ► was that 21st century marketing, that's part of the deal. That's not cheating. That's part

00:02:07 ◼   ► of the deal. So Lister Michael wrote in and said, "I'm in the process of changing jobs

00:02:11 ◼   ► for the second time in almost exactly a year. I'm going from a pretty good to a great one.

00:02:14 ◼   ► And I can partly lay that on the fact that I was willing to do something in public and

00:02:18 ◼   ► be a professional about it. I'm an iOS developer, and most of the openings understandably want

00:02:22 ◼   ► to see candidates who have an app they can point to in the app store to even be considered.

00:02:26 ◼   ► I don't really get to do that because I used to work for the government making interactive

00:02:30 ◼   ► training and the job I'm just winding down is an enterprise app for sales reps and managers.

00:02:34 ◼   ► In theory I could make an app in my free time, but trying to put the effort to make an app

00:02:37 ◼   ► that I consider worth releasing is daunting. So last year I set writing at least one blog

00:02:42 ◼   ► post a week in a professional voice and stuck with it. I'm nearing almost a full year of

00:02:47 ◼   ► of posts without missing a week now,

00:02:48 ◼   ► and it's lucky to break 20 page views on a good week.

00:02:51 ◼   ► Some weeks it feels like pulling teeth to write anything,

00:02:53 ◼   ► other weeks it goes well.

00:02:54 ◼   ► The thing that amazed me is when I decided to apply

00:02:56 ◼   ► to a handful of the very best iOS developer shops

00:02:58 ◼   ► in my area, right around the one year mark

00:03:00 ◼   ► of starting my new job,

00:03:01 ◼   ► both because I wanted a change of culture

00:03:04 ◼   ► from my current job and to see if I was good enough,

00:03:06 ◼   ► I got an interview at my number one choice,

00:03:08 ◼   ► which I had gotten a form letter rejection from a year ago.

00:03:11 ◼   ► In the interview, three of the four interviewers

00:03:14 ◼   ► mentioned checking my blog, which I put on my resume under contact info and in a positive

00:03:19 ◼   ► light as they had skimmed it over before the interview to get a feel for me.

00:03:22 ◼   ► Even more surprisingly, one of them skipped the technical portion of the interview because

00:03:25 ◼   ► of it and instead focused much more on the cultural process section.

00:03:29 ◼   ► The blog probably isn't the whole story.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Not being a relocation hire probably made me a lot more appealing and I've done a whole

00:03:34 ◼   ► lot of professional development in the last year, but I'm convinced it helped get me in

00:03:37 ◼   ► the door.

00:03:38 ◼   ► So yeah, being willing to put yourself out there has value, even if you're not remotely

00:03:43 ◼   ► popular, listener Michael. Thank you. I just thought that was a great story.

00:03:48 ◼   ► I think that, like, I enjoy reading this as well, because it's a good--I think it's good

00:03:53 ◼   ► to show these days that you have the ability to do other things, you know?

00:03:58 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, and that you're serious about. I mean, this is--I think we might have talked

00:04:03 ◼   ► about this on an earlier show, I know I've talked about it on a podcast somewhere, that

00:04:07 ◼   ► when I hired somebody, when I would interview people at IDG, especially for junior editor

00:04:12 ◼   ► jobs. I would ask them about things like if they were straight out of college or recently

00:04:17 ◼   ► out of college, what they did in college in terms of writing and editing. And, you know,

00:04:22 ◼   ► it was a check to see how committed they were to this as a profession. And if they said,

00:04:27 ◼   ► "Well, you know, I wrote papers for my English classes," I was much less impressed than if

00:04:31 ◼   ► they said, "Oh, well, I worked on the student newspaper and I started this online journal

00:04:35 ◼   ► and I did this other thing," because that's a sign. That's a sign that this is somebody

00:04:39 ◼   ► who takes this area, this business, this profession seriously. And I think listener Michael is

00:04:46 ◼   ► doing that here where he's saying, he's not even raising his profile necessarily as he's

00:04:51 ◼   ► putting himself out there and demonstrating his commitment. And I think that's a big deal.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And I think it's something people look for in interviews. That checks a box. That's like,

00:05:03 ◼   ► oh, this person is serious about this,

00:05:05 ◼   ► has something to commend themselves.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I think it's very valuable if you're trying

00:05:11 ◼   ► to hire somebody to look at something like that.

00:05:14 ◼   ► - My brother's in university,

00:05:16 ◼   ► and he would like to do journalism one day.

00:05:19 ◼   ► That's what he's interested in.

00:05:22 ◼   ► And he's really interested in sports journalism.

00:05:24 ◼   ► So he's done some stuff,

00:05:27 ◼   ► like he wrote for a couple of websites,

00:05:29 ◼   ► but I'm always really, really pushing him

00:05:32 ◼   ► to have his own blog because whenever he applies for internships or any kind of like small

00:05:39 ◼   ► position somewhere or writing programs they all just want to see examples of his work

00:05:45 ◼   ► and the best place to do that is to just have a blog and it's like what I kind of take it

00:05:49 ◼   ► back to how I got started doing this stuff.

00:05:52 ◼   ► I just had a podcast I did every week and I showed up every week and just got better

00:05:55 ◼   ► over time and you can kind of practice in obscurity in a way because it's very rare

00:06:01 ◼   ► that you'll put something onto the internet and all of a sudden all of the internet find

00:06:06 ◼   ► out about it on day one.

00:06:08 ◼   ► But it allows you to hone your skills and to practice.

00:06:11 ◼   ► So if you have any sort of interest in anything technology related, I'm assuming that you

00:06:19 ◼   ► like it.

00:06:20 ◼   ► If you want to have a job in it or anything that you're interested in, if you want a job

00:06:24 ◼   ► in a certain field that is a passion of yours, get a blog about it and write about it or

00:06:30 ◼   ► do a podcast about it.

00:06:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, showing passion for the subject

00:06:35 ◼   ► that is also what you want to have be your profession

00:06:38 ◼   ► is generally a really good sign.

00:06:40 ◼   ► It's a good sign for people who are hiring you

00:06:42 ◼   ► and it's a good sign for people who want,

00:06:44 ◼   ► you know, who are colleagues

00:06:45 ◼   ► or potential future colleagues that,

00:06:47 ◼   ► oh, this is somebody who's got enthusiasm

00:06:48 ◼   ► and wants to talk about this stuff.

00:06:50 ◼   ► And it makes a difference

00:06:51 ◼   ► and it's not necessarily a calculation of like,

00:06:53 ◼   ► score them from one to 10 on enthusiasm.

00:06:56 ◼   ► But it just, it's,

00:06:59 ◼   ► The fact is that most of the other people in that industry

00:07:01 ◼   ► are enthusiastic about that too.

00:07:02 ◼   ► And seeing your enthusiasm about it makes a connection too.

00:07:08 ◼   ► So yeah, I thought-- anyway, I thought

00:07:10 ◼   ► it was really great feedback.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And it was a hole that I didn't expect this podcast to go down.

00:07:16 ◼   ► But it's actually been kind of a very interesting place

00:07:19 ◼   ► to go, this idea that in this modern era,

00:07:23 ◼   ► There's a perception of what deserved success looks like.

00:07:28 ◼   ► And then we throw a lot of things away

00:07:35 ◼   ► that are actually a huge part of whether something

00:07:37 ◼   ► is succeeding or failing and you can't ignore it.

00:07:39 ◼   ► And this was just another example of something.

00:07:41 ◼   ► This is a site that nobody read.

00:07:43 ◼   ► But the people who needed to read it read it

00:07:46 ◼   ► and it made a difference and that's cool.

00:07:48 ◼   ► It's good to know.

00:07:49 ◼   ► - I'm gonna be a good brother, Jason,

00:07:51 ◼   ► and get my brothers.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I'm going to put his site in the show notes today.

00:07:56 ◼   ► Good for you.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Scoring some good brotherly love points there, I think.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Well done.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Let's move on.

00:08:04 ◼   ► What else do we have today?

00:08:05 ◼   ► Oh, so much feedback about pens and tablet computing.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Do you wish you'd never said anything?

00:08:11 ◼   ► No, no I don't.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I think this gives me perspective.

00:08:16 ◼   ► I will point out up front that when I brought up this subject, the very first thing I said

00:08:20 ◼   ► is I hate pens and can't write and don't like styluses because I don't like pens and pencils

00:08:29 ◼   ► and writing things out longhand. I'm really bad at it. My handwriting is illegible. I

00:08:34 ◼   ► don't enjoy it. I would much rather type notes. But I did profess a skepticism from seeing

00:08:42 ◼   ► pen-based computing technologies in the past. And we had a really interesting spectrum of

00:08:47 ◼   ► responses from people about their experience with pen input and tablet computers. So I'm

00:08:56 ◼   ► going to run a bunch of it down. Really, hopefully really quickly, but probably not. Okay, here

00:09:03 ◼   ► we go. So listener Alec wrote in and said notability changed the game for him. Beside

00:09:10 ◼   ► the benefit of syncing with the cloud and audio recording, he said there were some key

00:09:14 ◼   ► features copy and paste not just for text but for drawn figures this is

00:09:17 ◼   ► something that I think you might have mentioned briefly this idea that that if

00:09:22 ◼   ► you're if you're taking notes on something that requires figures or that

00:09:26 ◼   ► requires little pictures things like that having that available and being able

00:09:31 ◼   ► to kind of copy and paste it it's not something you can type you have to write

00:09:35 ◼   ► you have to write that down so so we listed that colors didn't need multiple

00:09:41 ◼   ► Pen's laying around on a small pullout desk. Sorry, Myke, but I could change the color

00:09:45 ◼   ► later if I wanted to. Easier to tap a swatch and change the color than physically drop

00:09:50 ◼   ► and regrip a new pen. "Hey dude, I missed class. Can you send me the notes?" Share sheet. Boom.

00:09:57 ◼   ► That's good. And he said, "Notability subtly tweaks your strokes and I found that made

00:10:01 ◼   ► my handwriting and figures look better." So I thought that was interesting. Notability

00:10:05 ◼   ► listener Troy wrote in to say, "For most undergraduate students, tech needs are driven by two things,

00:10:13 ◼   ► cost and reliability, and it's going to be a long time before any type of digital note-taking

00:10:17 ◼   ► technology beats pen and paper on either of those. By far the most common note-taking

00:10:21 ◼   ► technology used in my classes is pen and paper. That said, I see students take notes on just

00:10:25 ◼   ► about every sort of device except pen input tablet. I've actually seen students two thumb-type

00:10:30 ◼   ► notes on a phone, something I wouldn't have thought possible. Those students are going

00:10:34 ◼   ► to fail, by the way.

00:10:35 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:10:36 ◼   ► You think?

00:10:37 ◼   ► I can type pretty quickly.

00:10:39 ◼   ► No, they're probably fine.

00:10:40 ◼   ► That was my initial thought, was they're not the best students, but they are trying to

00:10:45 ◼   ► get something down on their phone.

00:10:47 ◼   ► No, it may be.

00:10:49 ◼   ► I like listener Troy's point here, which is he thought it impossible, but hey, if it works

00:10:55 ◼   ► for them, then that's great.

00:10:57 ◼   ► So here's my question to you.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Would you think that someone would fail if they were typing on a keyboard on a laptop

00:11:03 ◼   ► their notes.

00:11:04 ◼   ► No, my concern is just that, I mean, we don't have any judgment here about how good these

00:11:10 ◼   ► students are.

00:11:12 ◼   ► They could either be great phone typers or they could be people who just like couldn't

00:11:17 ◼   ► find their pen and need to take a couple notes, but it's not very good.

00:11:22 ◼   ► If I was taking notes on a phone, that would be bad.

00:11:26 ◼   ► But they could also be just geniuses who are great at taking notes on the phone.

00:11:31 ◼   ► that could be just a purely generational shift. I feel way faster on the iPhone.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Like, I feel it. Whether I am or not, like, I feel like I'm a faster typer on the

00:11:42 ◼   ► iPhone than I am on the on the Mac. Wow. I should do some sort of test. I don't

00:11:50 ◼   ► even understand. I can't even understand what you're saying, Myke. Are you speaking

00:11:53 ◼   ► English anymore? Have you lapsed into some other words you're using? Not words

00:11:58 ◼   ► that I understand. Is this, has the Atlantic Ocean separated us again? Oh no, okay.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Listen, Troy goes on to say, "I see a variety of Mac and Windows laptops,

00:12:08 ◼   ► occasional iPad, a handful of Surface devices. I've seen some live scribe pens." Live scribe is

00:12:13 ◼   ► that thing that records audio and, but you know, but he asked students if they use the audio and

00:12:18 ◼   ► they say they thought they would, but they never do. But here's the key point from Listen to Troy.

00:12:22 ◼   ► "If I can go a little professory on you for a bit, most of the time the tech gets in the way.

00:12:25 ◼   ► The purpose of class notes is to provide something for your memory to latch onto so you can remember

00:12:30 ◼   ► the material, not to produce a verbatim transcript.

00:12:33 ◼   ► An aside from me, Jason, we used to have a lecture note service when I was in college

00:12:38 ◼   ► and the whole...and sometimes what they'll do is, even now, is sometimes professors will

00:12:45 ◼   ► record their lectures and post them as podcasts.

00:12:47 ◼   ► The idea is, you know, if verbatim...don't do a lot of work to generate the verbatim.

00:12:52 ◼   ► It's like trying to do a verbatim transcript of an Apple event.

00:12:55 ◼   ► It's like, you know what?

00:12:56 ◼   ► They're gonna post the video.

00:12:57 ◼   ► You can get the verbatim transcript later.

00:12:59 ◼   ► Take the important notes, get the highlights here.

00:13:01 ◼   ► And this is what he's saying is,

00:13:03 ◼   ► verbatim transcript is not the objective.

00:13:06 ◼   ► The key, he goes on to say,

00:13:08 ◼   ► is to have as close to a friction-free environment

00:13:10 ◼   ► for that as you can.

00:13:11 ◼   ► Note-taking is as much about the process

00:13:13 ◼   ► as it is the result.

00:13:14 ◼   ► Having to quickly summarize the material

00:13:16 ◼   ► and reshape it in a way that makes sense to the note-taker

00:13:18 ◼   ► is a large part of it.

00:13:19 ◼   ► For people like Jason, who type, that's me,

00:13:21 ◼   ► 100 words per minute, that probably means a laptop

00:13:23 ◼   ► with a good keyboard for a majority of my students,

00:13:25 ◼   ► the note-taking method with the least friction

00:13:27 ◼   ► and least distraction from the task at hand

00:13:29 ◼   ► to still pen and paper,

00:13:30 ◼   ► and I don't see that changing for many years yet."

00:13:33 ◼   ► Listener Troy.

00:13:34 ◼   ► So thank you for that.

00:13:35 ◼   ► I would say actually, as a college student,

00:13:37 ◼   ► I was not, even when I got a laptop in grad school,

00:13:42 ◼   ► typing to take notes was not something that I did.

00:13:45 ◼   ► And the only time I type to take notes now

00:13:47 ◼   ► and type quickly is when I am trying to get quotes down

00:13:51 ◼   ► because if I'm doing an interview or something like that,

00:13:56 ◼   ► where there is no transcript

00:13:57 ◼   ► and I need to get the direct quotes,

00:13:59 ◼   ► I will type because I can type down

00:14:01 ◼   ► what they're saying really fast.

00:14:02 ◼   ► But in general, I prefer much shorter notes.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Like Troy says, I'm really trying to hit the highlights

00:14:08 ◼   ► and give myself, and give my memory,

00:14:10 ◼   ► like he says, something to latch onto.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And there's other feedback we got,

00:14:16 ◼   ► not all of it in our document here, that was very similar,

00:14:19 ◼   ► which is the point to having notes is more a process

00:14:24 ◼   ► that leads to you pondering the information

00:14:27 ◼   ► and filtering it and attaching it

00:14:29 ◼   ► and it's part of the learning process.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Not, you're not a court recorder,

00:14:33 ◼   ► you're not writing down a transcript

00:14:35 ◼   ► of everything that's said.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Listener Gary wrote in to say,

00:14:39 ◼   ► "Regarding note taking on the iPad,

00:14:41 ◼   ► "I prefer it over pen and paper

00:14:42 ◼   ► "for the same reason I prefer reading books on the iPad.

00:14:45 ◼   ► "I can have all my notes with me.

00:14:46 ◼   ► "I can have other documents that I need

00:14:48 ◼   ► for a meeting on the iPad and mark them up with notes. So that's a fair point.

00:14:52 ◼   ► I think the interesting thing about this feedback, and we do have some more, is how much we received.

00:14:58 ◼   ► I was surprised how much came through. I have strong feelings about this topic, and I think

00:15:05 ◼   ► you do too, but it didn't necessarily mean for me that I thought we were going to get

00:15:11 ◼   ► this much feedback about it. Just because we have opinions doesn't mean

00:15:14 ◼   ► that anyone else cares at all about what we care about.

00:15:19 ◼   ► I think of all of the things we've spoken about, this may be by word count the most

00:15:25 ◼   ► feedback we've ever received. Lots of long emails about this.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Not handwritten, I'll point out. There should be. Well, we're waiting, you

00:15:33 ◼   ► know. Post takes a little bit longer than email, so we're waiting for the handwritten

00:15:37 ◼   ► stuff to come through. We do have a sponsor break I would like to

00:15:42 ◼   ► take now, Jason, if that is okay before we continue the rest of the follow-up for today.

00:15:46 ◼   ► All right, epic follow-up. You know it's epic when there's a sponsor break in the middle

00:15:49 ◼   ► of it.

00:15:51 ◼   ► It's already February. What are you waiting for? Invest in yourself this year and start

00:15:55 ◼   ► learning something new at lynda.com with a 10-day free trial for listeners of Upgrade.

00:16:01 ◼   ► lynda.com is used by millions of people around the world and has over 3,000 courses on topics

00:16:07 ◼   ► like web development, photography, visual design, business, and so much more. Whether

00:16:12 ◼   ► you want to set new financial goals, invest in a new hobby, or improve upon some current

00:16:16 ◼   ► skills for your personal life or for your job, lynda.com has something for you.

00:16:22 ◼   ► You'll get unlimited access to every single course that they have. You can view these

00:16:25 ◼   ► on your tablet, your mobile device, their apps for iOS and Android, and of course you

00:16:29 ◼   ► can look at them on the desktop and they have searchable transcripts and they have different

00:16:33 ◼   ► speed settings you can play for the videos as well if you want to learn super fast at

00:16:37 ◼   ► lynda.com you can do that.

00:16:39 ◼   ► Maybe you want to learn a little bit about marketing online to help with your business

00:16:42 ◼   ► or website, which goes back to what we were talking about a little earlier.

00:16:45 ◼   ► You want to improve some skills in something that you love and you set up a blog.

00:16:50 ◼   ► These guys at lynda.com, they can help you out with that.

00:16:52 ◼   ► They can help you think about how to present yourself a little bit differently.

00:16:56 ◼   ► And then when you want to build your own app as well, they have courses on Swift.

00:16:59 ◼   ► They have courses on iOS app development.

00:17:01 ◼   ► They even have courses on Android development too, if that's something that you're interested

00:17:04 ◼   ► in.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Listen yourself today and sign up for a free 10-day trial to lynda.com by visiting lynda.com/upgrade.

00:17:12 ◼   ► That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash upgrade.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Go ahead, I challenge you to learn something new.

00:17:18 ◼   ► Thank you so much to lynda.com for supporting this show and all of Relay FM.

00:17:22 ◼   ► - All right, again not handwritten.

00:17:25 ◼   ► This comes from a good, good friend of the show.

00:17:28 ◼   ► It's Upgrading Tony.

00:17:30 ◼   ► This is Tony Sindelar from various Uncomfortable podcasts.

00:17:35 ◼   ► This is not about Dungeons and Dragons though.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Tony is in academia.

00:17:38 ◼   ► He says, "I would say that students have overwhelmingly moved to doing note-taking electronically,

00:17:41 ◼   ► whether typed on a laptop or inked on a tablet, just as faculty have overwhelmingly moved

00:17:45 ◼   ► from chalk talk to PowerPoint.

00:17:48 ◼   ► Inking with an iPad or Surface does have a lot of advantages for note-taking, especially

00:17:51 ◼   ► diagrams, symbols, concept mapping, but we still aren't there yet in terms of ease of

00:17:55 ◼   ► use of the tools.

00:17:56 ◼   ► So I guess I agree with Jason's skepticism.

00:17:59 ◼   ► People in education have been hoping for crazy new improvements that will fix everything,

00:18:03 ◼   ► but it keeps not being here regardless of the latest vendor trying to push something.

00:18:06 ◼   ► I remember a pre-iPad era associate provost lobbying for all first-year students at a

00:18:10 ◼   ► large state school to be required to buy one of those clunky expensive Windows XP-based

00:18:15 ◼   ► tablets.

00:18:16 ◼   ► So Tony—interesting points because he's saying electronic note-taking is predominant

00:18:24 ◼   ► now but that he's skeptical about whether the tools are just good enough yet, which

00:18:31 ◼   ► is sort of where I am is I don't dispute that this could be great. I just am a

00:18:35 ◼   ► little bit skeptical about whether people who are writing and saying "oh yes

00:18:38 ◼   ► I use digital link for note-taking" whether they're doing that despite it

00:18:43 ◼   ► being clunky or because it's just not it's just super awesome and I need to

00:18:48 ◼   ► get a rush out and get a stylus and start writing everything. That's never

00:18:53 ◼   ► gonna happen. It's never gonna happen.

00:18:57 ◼   ► This makes me think of that Surface Hub, you know, like the digital kind of note-taking type thing.

00:19:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:19:04 ◼   ► Yeah, because you know it's like that sort of idea, right?

00:19:07 ◼   ► Everything's better if it's on a screen instead, but none of these things have really caught on.

00:19:12 ◼   ► I remember in school we had smart boards, they were called, where basically the teachers could...

00:19:25 ◼   ► They were kind of like projected screens.

00:19:28 ◼   ► It was weird. It was like it was a whiteboard,

00:19:30 ◼   ► but they would write on them with these pens that didn't actually write on the board.

00:19:33 ◼   ► It just created something that was projected onto them.

00:19:35 ◼   ► But very often, the projector was turned off and they just used the whiteboard.

00:19:40 ◼   ► Yeah. We had one that was...

00:19:43 ◼   ► It was a real whiteboard, but you used these pens with special little stickers on them.

00:19:47 ◼   ► And the idea was that it was recording everything that was written up on the whiteboard,

00:19:51 ◼   ► and you could play that back later.

00:19:54 ◼   ► But yeah, it didn't. I don't know. I mean, the world, this is one of the reasons why I think I

00:19:59 ◼   ► bring more skepticism to this than a lot of the listeners is because I've been in this, I've been,

00:20:05 ◼   ► this is one of those areas where my, my, I've lost my childlike enthusiasm for technology

00:20:10 ◼   ► that I, I, that I keep in other areas. I have lots of areas where I'm very enthusiastic about

00:20:15 ◼   ► new technology. This is one of those where I've been disappointed so many times that I, I now have,

00:20:22 ◼   ► I view it much more cynically.

00:20:24 ◼   ► I can't tell you, it's been like 15 or 20 years

00:20:26 ◼   ► that people have been saying,

00:20:28 ◼   ► we're gonna change how people take notes.

00:20:29 ◼   ► And I just, I remain quite skeptical that it's good enough.

00:20:34 ◼   ► Not that it doesn't have advantages,

00:20:35 ◼   ► but that is it good enough?

00:20:36 ◼   ► Is it, and maybe that's,

00:20:38 ◼   ► and we were originally talking about Apple doing a stylus.

00:20:41 ◼   ► I mean, maybe that is what, you know,

00:20:43 ◼   ► Apple is trying to do here is can we make something

00:20:45 ◼   ► that is good enough for Apple standards?

00:20:47 ◼   ► 'Cause boy, if Apple comes out with a stylus

00:20:49 ◼   ► and it's lame, then that's not good.

00:20:52 ◼   ► So I have two more pieces of feedback here

00:20:55 ◼   ► about this issue that I wanna get to

00:20:57 ◼   ► 'cause so many people wrote in.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Listener Dave writes in,

00:21:01 ◼   ► "My previous two laptops were Windows tablets.

00:21:03 ◼   ► Much of my work involves being onsite

00:21:05 ◼   ► with clients and their environments.

00:21:06 ◼   ► I'm mostly on the normal work floor rather than in meetings.

00:21:09 ◼   ► When you're sitting next to someone's desk,

00:21:10 ◼   ► I find writing notes much easier than typing.

00:21:12 ◼   ► You can sit in what is for me a much more natural position.

00:21:16 ◼   ► You can also make notes standing up.

00:21:17 ◼   ► As Myke said, the notes are automatically backed up.

00:21:19 ◼   ► My tool of choice was OneNote synced via Dropbox.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Therefore, I have all my notes instantly accessible.

00:21:25 ◼   ► My handwriting's pretty awful.

00:21:26 ◼   ► Yay, me too.

00:21:28 ◼   ► But it's important to remember software

00:21:29 ◼   ► to understand handwriting has a much easier job

00:21:31 ◼   ► when it knows the strokes you used

00:21:33 ◼   ► as opposed to trying to OCR a random scrawl.

00:21:35 ◼   ► This is a really good point.

00:21:36 ◼   ► From my initial use in 2004,

00:21:38 ◼   ► the recognition was very impressive

00:21:39 ◼   ► and improved with new Windows versions.

00:21:41 ◼   ► I never formally converted my notes.

00:21:43 ◼   ► OneNote just made them searchable.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Combined with OneNote's fuzzy searching,

00:21:46 ◼   ► it was very rare for searches to fail.

00:21:48 ◼   ► In fact, it felt like it was sometimes better

00:21:49 ◼   ► at reading my handwriting than I was.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I thought that was good feedback.

00:21:53 ◼   ► That's some positive words about Windows tablets.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And finally on this topic, Upgrader Darcy wrote in

00:22:00 ◼   ► and said, "I really enjoy this show,

00:22:03 ◼   ► "especially when you two disagree.

00:22:04 ◼   ► "In that vein, allow me to take issue

00:22:08 ◼   ► "with something that Myke said."

00:22:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:22:11 ◼   ► I deleted all feedback that disagreed with me.

00:22:15 ◼   ► So every feature that people think they need,

00:22:18 ◼   ► whether they need it or not,

00:22:19 ◼   ► if they think they need it and then Microsoft's doing it,

00:22:22 ◼   ► that's a potential sale that you lose to Microsoft.

00:22:24 ◼   ► This is something that you've said on the last show.

00:22:26 ◼   ► I think that's accurate.

00:22:27 ◼   ► And what Darcy says is,

00:22:28 ◼   ► "Isn't this the opposite of what made Apple so successful?

00:22:30 ◼   ► Apple's products are typically less feature rich

00:22:33 ◼   ► than its competitors.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Instead, Apple focuses on certain core functionality,

00:22:37 ◼   ► making the product as easy

00:22:38 ◼   ► and as enjoyable to use as possible."

00:22:40 ◼   ► Darcy goes on, "I've been an Apple user since '96

00:22:43 ◼   ► and have been with a company through the darkest times."

00:22:44 ◼   ► that's true, I can verify that.

00:22:46 ◼   ► While I'm elated that Apple's been so successful,

00:22:48 ◼   ► I'm terrified its success will cause the company

00:22:50 ◼   ► to lose focus and to try to fill

00:22:52 ◼   ► every product niche imaginable.

00:22:54 ◼   ► I'm not saying that a stylus is necessarily a bad idea.

00:22:57 ◼   ► It may be part of a focused, well thought out strategy

00:22:59 ◼   ► for the iPad, but focus is key and it is so easily lost

00:23:02 ◼   ► when a company continually breaks its own sales records

00:23:05 ◼   ► quarter after quarter.

00:23:06 ◼   ► Okay, that doesn't apply to recent iPad sales, but still.

00:23:09 ◼   ► In this, I am in complete agreement with Steve.

00:23:12 ◼   ► Steve who?

00:23:13 ◼   ► Oh, Steve Jobs, right.

00:23:14 ◼   ► when he said, "Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.

00:23:18 ◼   ► In light of the recent,

00:23:19 ◼   ► Apple is losing the functional high ground discussion."

00:23:22 ◼   ► Hi Marco.

00:23:23 ◼   ► "It is perhaps more important than ever

00:23:25 ◼   ► that Apple focus on core functionality

00:23:26 ◼   ► and making sure it's hard earned,

00:23:28 ◼   ► it just works, reputation isn't tarnished any further."

00:23:31 ◼   ► Any thoughts about that?

00:23:32 ◼   ► About how wrong you were, Myke?

00:23:33 ◼   ► Any apologies to Upgrader Darcy?

00:23:36 ◼   ► - Yes, 'cause I don't think I am wrong.

00:23:38 ◼   ► So my feeling on this is I agree

00:23:42 ◼   ► that that is how Apple was.

00:23:45 ◼   ► I don't think it's where Apple will be like into the future.

00:23:48 ◼   ► I think that Apple are trying to attract different markets now.

00:23:54 ◼   ► They have a lot more of a focus on the Asian markets than they

00:24:01 ◼   ► did before which is probably a really good reason for why the

00:24:04 ◼   ► iPhones got bigger. And I think it's if they do a stylus I think

00:24:08 ◼   ► that's another reason for why they've done that.

00:24:10 ◼   ► I do believe that if Apple wants to grow,

00:24:13 ◼   ► they have to start doing things like this.

00:24:15 ◼   ► They have to start going for the features

00:24:18 ◼   ► that other people have to attract the other customers.

00:24:20 ◼   ► And I just see that that is a path that they may take.

00:24:24 ◼   ► I agree it's not the one that they have had before,

00:24:27 ◼   ► but I think it's the one

00:24:28 ◼   ► that they could start to take going forward.

00:24:30 ◼   ► That's my own personal opinion.

00:24:33 ◼   ► - All right.

00:24:33 ◼   ► - My punditry.

00:24:34 ◼   ► - I guess, I don't think either of these approaches

00:24:40 ◼   ► is wrong. I think what I would say is Apple is trying to reach different markets. That's

00:24:46 ◼   ► absolutely true. I do feel like that Apple, look, if all Apple was concerned about was

00:24:52 ◼   ► checking a feature box in a list of features, then they would have had an Apple stylus available

00:25:01 ◼   ► for a phone and tablet years ago. So there is a line that Apple needs to cross, a bar

00:25:08 ◼   ► they need to clear. That is, you know, we've got a story with this, that it's good

00:25:14 ◼   ► enough for us. It meets our--I don't mean it good enough in a negative way, I mean

00:25:18 ◼   ► like it meets our standards. Below this point we can't ship it. That bar

00:25:24 ◼   ► may change depending on the market, but I do think it is there, and I think

00:25:28 ◼   ► that's sort of what Darcy is saying here is--

00:25:30 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

00:25:32 ◼   ► --is it needs to--you can't just throw a pen out there because other people have pens, and they

00:25:37 ◼   ► haven't right they Samsung has been waving that stylus in Apple's face for

00:25:42 ◼   ► years and Apple's done nothing yeah it's a it's like taunting them look at the

00:25:47 ◼   ► stylus the s-pen is here and nothing so when if Apple does come out with

00:25:54 ◼   ► something that would be an interesting moment because what they're saying is

00:25:57 ◼   ► now we've got a story to tell now we've got a product that meets our standards

00:26:01 ◼   ► and what's that going to be and the software and the hardware need to be

00:26:05 ◼   ► good enough to make that something.

00:26:08 ◼   ► 'Cause otherwise, if it's good enough now,

00:26:10 ◼   ► if everything is good enough now,

00:26:11 ◼   ► then why doesn't Apple have that product?

00:26:13 ◼   ► I think that's the argument is,

00:26:14 ◼   ► it may be good enough for some people now,

00:26:16 ◼   ► but it seems to not be good enough for Apple,

00:26:18 ◼   ► 'cause Apple is content to not upgrade their digitizer

00:26:21 ◼   ► and not come out with its own pen

00:26:23 ◼   ► that kicks all the other pens out of the market.

00:26:26 ◼   ► So what makes that change?

00:26:28 ◼   ► And what's the thing that pushes them to do that?

00:26:30 ◼   ► And maybe it's just to find a reason for an iPad Pro

00:26:34 ◼   ► for being, maybe it's just we need reasons

00:26:37 ◼   ► why we would sell this thing,

00:26:39 ◼   ► but that's troubling in its own way, if that's the case.

00:26:42 ◼   ► I don't know, but I think, yeah,

00:26:45 ◼   ► I think it'll be interesting to see.

00:26:46 ◼   ► This is one of those things that's very,

00:26:49 ◼   ► the answer to this, what happens here,

00:26:51 ◼   ► will give us an interesting data point

00:26:53 ◼   ► on where Apple is right now

00:26:54 ◼   ► in terms of its product philosophy in 2015.

00:26:58 ◼   ► If it does this, that'll be fascinating to see.

00:27:02 ◼   ► And I will try some note-taking app at some point here

00:27:06 ◼   ► against my better judgment because I don't like pens

00:27:10 ◼   ► just to get a better idea

00:27:11 ◼   ► of what the current experience is like,

00:27:12 ◼   ► at least on the iPad, I don't have a surface to try out.

00:27:16 ◼   ► But, all right, that's follow-up.

00:27:20 ◼   ► Yay.

00:27:22 ◼   ► - Time for follow-out.

00:27:24 ◼   ► - Time for some follow-out.

00:27:25 ◼   ► We should mention #AskUpgrade on Twitter.

00:27:28 ◼   ► You can go to Relay FM

00:27:30 ◼   ► and send feedback via the feedback form.

00:27:33 ◼   ► That works too.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And you can be a part of follow up.

00:27:36 ◼   ► We love to hear from you.

00:27:37 ◼   ► Follow out, I just wanted to mention Connected24 this week.

00:27:41 ◼   ► This was your big, and I mean big,

00:27:45 ◼   ► it's like three hours long podcast

00:27:48 ◼   ► where you break down the iPad launch.

00:27:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was quite an undertaking.

00:27:54 ◼   ► People may have been familiar with the prompt episode 30

00:27:59 ◼   ► where we did this for the iPhone.

00:28:00 ◼   ► The difference being from a production perspective,

00:28:05 ◼   ► this time we went back a bit further as well

00:28:07 ◼   ► and we looked at the run up to the iPad's introduction.

00:28:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, a lot of research.

00:28:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, Federico did some incredible research

00:28:14 ◼   ► and he took a look at kind of what the rumors

00:28:17 ◼   ► were like leading up.

00:28:18 ◼   ► And so we did that, then we did like the play by play

00:28:22 ◼   ► breakdown of the iPad introduction

00:28:26 ◼   ► and spoke about how we feel about the iPad.

00:28:28 ◼   ► So it was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it.

00:28:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I liked it a lot.

00:28:32 ◼   ► I really enjoyed, I listened to that on my drive

00:28:34 ◼   ► down to Cupertino and back last week.

00:28:36 ◼   ► I was just visiting a friend, nothing secret,

00:28:39 ◼   ► just visiting a friend.

00:28:40 ◼   ► I've got more friends at Apple these days

00:28:43 ◼   ► 'cause some of my former colleagues

00:28:45 ◼   ► are doing work at Apple now, so, but I can say no more.

00:28:48 ◼   ► It's not that exciting.

00:28:51 ◼   ► It's just, it's nice to go down there and visit with pals

00:28:55 ◼   ► who are inside the rainbow curtain now.

00:28:58 ◼   ► That's not a phrase.

00:29:00 ◼   ► - I like it though.

00:29:02 ◼   ► - I wanted to mention this mostly

00:29:05 ◼   ► because I wanted to tell a story

00:29:06 ◼   ► about when I went to the iPad event

00:29:08 ◼   ► related to our note-taking thing.

00:29:13 ◼   ► I think Dan Morin was live blogging it

00:29:17 ◼   ► and I was, or maybe I was live blogging it.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Anyway, you do that and when you're covering it

00:29:22 ◼   ► that intensely, you kind of miss, you miss seeing it.

00:29:26 ◼   ► You miss the, you lose the, you lose the big picture.

00:29:31 ◼   ► You don't see the forest for the trees

00:29:33 ◼   ► when you're covering an event like that.

00:29:34 ◼   ► So I will often watch an event video afterward.

00:29:37 ◼   ► So the later that day, or maybe the next day I'm home,

00:29:43 ◼   ► and I'm watching on my Apple TV,

00:29:46 ◼   ► I am watching the iPad launch on the TV.

00:29:50 ◼   ► on the TV.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And I don't realize that my son,

00:29:58 ◼   ► who was five at the time, is behind the couch

00:30:01 ◼   ► and is transfixed by this.

00:30:04 ◼   ► And it's a fond memory for me now

00:30:05 ◼   ► because he was exposed

00:30:08 ◼   ► to the untempered reality distortion field.

00:30:11 ◼   ► And I had that moment where I was like,

00:30:12 ◼   ► "Oh my God, he's been inside the RDF."

00:30:14 ◼   ► Because he doesn't usually see TV commercials,

00:30:18 ◼   ► he doesn't know. And now he's got Apple event, Steve Jobs just talking to him about how great

00:30:23 ◼   ► the iPad is. And it totally worked because for the next whatever, four months, he would

00:30:28 ◼   ► not stop talking about how we needed an iPad. He's like, "We need an iPad. We have to have

00:30:32 ◼   ► an iPad." This five-year-old kid, "We have to have an iPad. It does this. It does this.

00:30:36 ◼   ► Is the iPad out yet? When are we going to get an iPad? We have to get an iPad." And it

00:30:39 ◼   ► was amazing how powerful that event was, whatever, you know, 30-minute chunk of it he saw was

00:30:45 ◼   ► to him because he was completely enthralled and then could not stop talking about the

00:30:49 ◼   ► iPad. And you know flash forward 10 years and his favorite device is in fact an iPad

00:30:57 ◼   ► and he uses it all the time. So you know he's an iPad kid. Thanks Steve.

00:31:04 ◼   ► I love that. I mean that he was caught up in it. I feel like I was caught up in it as

00:31:09 ◼   ► well. Like I mentioned on the show I was watching the I was watching Steve through the intro

00:31:14 ◼   ► I was like, I should buy an iPad Air 2.

00:31:17 ◼   ► It'd be so amazing to read the New York Times.

00:31:20 ◼   ► And then I was able to break out of it

00:31:21 ◼   ► not too long after, thankfully.

00:31:23 ◼   ► But it will get ya.

00:31:26 ◼   ► - It's dangerous.

00:31:28 ◼   ► - It's very dangerous.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Right, we have completed follow up and out.

00:31:33 ◼   ► And we do have a couple of topics today.

00:31:35 ◼   ► So why don't we take a quick break here and jump right in.

00:31:39 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Squarespace,

00:31:42 ◼   ► the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website,

00:31:47 ◼   ► portfolio and online store. For a free trial and 10% off, visit squarespace.com and enter

00:31:53 ◼   ► the offer code UPGRADE at checkout. When it comes to giving yourself a place online,

00:31:58 ◼   ► there is nowhere better than Squarespace, whether you're me, you or Jeff Bridges.

00:32:05 ◼   ► Squarespace have made an incredible ad campaign for the Super Bowl, which I'm sure many of

00:32:09 ◼   ► you would have seen during the Super Bowl features. The one I named is Jeff Bridges.

00:32:13 ◼   ► Super Bowl! Super Bowl indeed. Jeff made a sleeping tape

00:32:19 ◼   ► in collaboration with Squarespace. So basically it's like an album of music to help you sleep

00:32:24 ◼   ► and dream. Mr. Bridges is all about the dreaming. They've made some really great videos like

00:32:29 ◼   ► they've made the ad but there's also some more videos of Jeff in a forest with a boom

00:32:33 ◼   ► mic and then sitting down in front of a MacBook to actually create your Squarespace website.

00:32:38 ◼   ► And of course Squarespace have built a really great site to go along with this, which you

00:32:41 ◼   ► can find at DreamingWithJeff.com.

00:32:44 ◼   ► And I wanted to bring this up because it is a great example of everything you can do with

00:32:49 ◼   ► Squarespace.

00:32:50 ◼   ► If you go to DreamingWithJeff.com, you'll see a great website that looks good on loads

00:32:53 ◼   ► of different devices, all the devices that you have, because it features responsive web

00:32:56 ◼   ► design.

00:32:57 ◼   ► It has an inbuilt music player, so you can listen to the album right there.

00:33:00 ◼   ► You can buy the album using the commerce platform.

00:33:04 ◼   ► And it basically just gives a really great overview of what you will get with Squarespace.

00:33:09 ◼   ► So go to DreamingWithJeff.com, you can check it out.

00:33:13 ◼   ► They're giving away all the proceeds of people that buy the album to charity and it just

00:33:16 ◼   ► shows how great a Squarespace website can be.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Go check it out, but you should sign up for Squarespace.

00:33:22 ◼   ► They have 24/7 customer support, they have a great commerce platform, they have rock

00:33:26 ◼   ► solid fast hosting and so much more.

00:33:28 ◼   ► If you want a website on the internet, Squarespace should be what you check out first.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Go sign up for a free trial right now with no credit card required and start building

00:33:37 ◼   ► your website today by going to squarespace.com.

00:33:39 ◼   ► When you decide to sign up, make sure that you use the offer code UPGRADE to get 10%

00:33:43 ◼   ► off your first purchase and to show your support for this show.

00:33:47 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Squarespace for the support of all of Relay FM.

00:33:51 ◼   ► Squarespace.

00:33:52 ◼   ► Start here.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Go anywhere.

00:33:55 ◼   ► A website on the internet you said?

00:33:57 ◼   ► I have created a website on my computer that is not on the internet and here's the address.

00:34:02 ◼   ► MacintoshHD/sites/Jason'scoolwebsite/coolwebsitepage1_is-this-file.html

00:34:19 ◼   ► That sounds really good. I look forward to visiting that.

00:34:23 ◼   ► Yeah, check it out. It's not on the internet, but you can get to it on my hard drive.

00:34:27 ◼   ► I'll be right over.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Good.

00:34:28 ◼   ► (sighs)

00:34:31 ◼   ► We have topics now.

00:34:32 ◼   ► We should put a thing at the beginning of the show

00:34:34 ◼   ► that says, "If you would like to skip the follow-up,

00:34:38 ◼   ► please advance to 30 minutes in."

00:34:40 ◼   ► - We could make it like one of those

00:34:43 ◼   ► tech space adventure games.

00:34:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:34:48 ◼   ► You need to know the cheat code to get to the...

00:34:50 ◼   ► So here's the thing.

00:34:51 ◼   ► One of the reasons I'm excited about doing this show

00:34:55 ◼   ► every week is the follow-up.

00:34:57 ◼   ► I've thought a lot about the problems of doing—I think it's an advantage of these sequential

00:35:01 ◼   ► shows, shows that people listen to every week, is that it's telling an ongoing story and

00:35:07 ◼   ► the follow-up is—not only does that allow the listeners to interact, but it also means

00:35:12 ◼   ► that like sort of—there are these echoes that move through the episodes that as you

00:35:16 ◼   ► listen to them you're like, "Oh yeah, I remember that and they said this," and it all kind

00:35:19 ◼   ► of builds, and I think that's great.

00:35:20 ◼   ► I think one of the challenges with it is if you do 30 minutes of follow-up at the beginning

00:35:24 ◼   ► of the show. This is, I think, hypercritical I always felt this about, is I liked the follow-up,

00:35:29 ◼   ► and yet I also felt like you go back and you want to listen to the TiVo episode of hypercritical,

00:35:34 ◼   ► but you've got to go through 20 minutes of follow-up to get there, and it's follow-up

00:35:37 ◼   ► from shows that you haven't listened to in ages. So it hurts on that. It's not like instantly

00:35:44 ◼   ► accessible. You have to wait, or you have to just go through follow-up of things you

00:35:48 ◼   ► haven't heard. And, you know, we don't do anything incomparable for a bunch of reasons,

00:35:52 ◼   ► I always thought the way you could do it is just stick it all at the end, but the danger

00:35:57 ◼   ► there is that then you never get to it. So I don't know what the best... short of putting

00:36:02 ◼   ► in chapter marks, Myke, and that's not gonna happen.

00:36:05 ◼   ► I like the chronology of having the follow-up at the front, because it's leading on from

00:36:15 ◼   ► last time.

00:36:16 ◼   ► Well, like I said, that gives you, for regular listeners, I agree, I think that is the power

00:36:21 ◼   ► of it. I think that's, like I said, that's why I was excited to do this show in this

00:36:24 ◼   ► way is I listen to all these shows that have the follow-up at the beginning and I love

00:36:28 ◼   ► the follow-up at the beginning and the other shows that I do don't have it. So I like that

00:36:34 ◼   ► part of it but there's always that, the downside of it is that, you know, it's 30 minutes of

00:36:39 ◼   ► talk before you, you know, it's not like follow-up isn't topics, it's just in a context that

00:36:47 ◼   ► is lost if it's the first episode you listen to.

00:36:49 ◼   ► I don't know I totally get that because it makes logical sense but I've listened to

00:36:56 ◼   ► shows I've jumped into podcasts before and I've still drawn entertainment from

00:37:01 ◼   ► listening to the follow-up I don't know maybe I'm crazy but I'm assuming that

00:37:06 ◼   ► people well I know people don't go right back to the start and listen all the way

00:37:11 ◼   ► but we do get new people every week so all right

00:37:14 ◼   ► Rifola in the chat room suggests a follow-up sandwich so there's a term

00:37:18 ◼   ► that we need to copyright immediately and steal from Rifola. Follow-up sandwich would

00:37:22 ◼   ► be you start with a hot topic and then you move to follow-up and then you go on with

00:37:26 ◼   ► the rest of the stories. I don't know, that feels a little choppy too. There's no, that's

00:37:31 ◼   ► the beauty of this medium, this format is there's no right answer. We could try different

00:37:38 ◼   ► things. We moved Ask Upgrade to the end, so you know, or near the end. I mean the big

00:37:45 ◼   ► topic this week is Apple's huge results last week.

00:37:50 ◼   ► Yeah, they were huge.

00:37:54 ◼   ► That was a crazy thing the last Tuesday afternoon that Dan Morin and I were covering on Six

00:37:59 ◼   ► Colors.

00:38:01 ◼   ► You get to listen to Tim Cook talk, you get to listen to Luca, the CFO, talk about headwinds

00:38:08 ◼   ► and foreign financial transactions and hedging and things that I do not understand because

00:38:17 ◼   ► they are business and finance things. But you get Tim Cook dropping little tidbits here

00:38:21 ◼   ► and there about sort of, again, I love that stuff about why, you know, why does Apple,

00:38:25 ◼   ► what's it thinking? Why do they do what they do? What is their approach to this? And we

00:38:29 ◼   ► got and we got some of that. There was a good ask upgrade item that we put in here from

00:38:38 ◼   ► a listener whose name I did not translate,

00:38:40 ◼   ► 'cause one of the problems with the Ask upgrade

00:38:43 ◼   ► is it just gives us the username.

00:38:44 ◼   ► It's David, it's listener David,

00:38:47 ◼   ► said, "How does Apple produce 34,000 iPhones an hour

00:38:52 ◼   ► and still be supply constrained

00:38:54 ◼   ► and ship them around the world?"

00:38:56 ◼   ► It's a good question.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Nine phones a second were sold in that three month span,

00:39:05 ◼   ► nine iPhones a second.

00:39:07 ◼   ► - Magic and robots.

00:39:09 ◼   ► - It is hard to imagine.

00:39:13 ◼   ► I mean, it's just, I said this,

00:39:15 ◼   ► I can't remember where I said this.

00:39:17 ◼   ► I think I said this somewhere,

00:39:18 ◼   ► but maybe not on this show.

00:39:20 ◼   ► It gets to the point, maybe it was on Clockwise,

00:39:22 ◼   ► it gets to the point where the numbers are hard

00:39:24 ◼   ► just for people to fathom.

00:39:26 ◼   ► It's like the law of large numbers that we talk about

00:39:30 ◼   ► is this idea that, I mean,

00:39:34 ◼   ► and people misuse the term law of large numbers,

00:39:36 ◼   ► But it's often used in terms of Apple in saying that at some point you're so big that you

00:39:40 ◼   ► can't get -- you can't grow much, you can't get much bigger because the number's just

00:39:44 ◼   ► too big to begin with.

00:39:46 ◼   ► This is sort of the argument about Facebook growth will eventually be constrained because

00:39:50 ◼   ► they will run out of human beings.

00:39:52 ◼   ► I think though when we talk about large numbers with Apple, sometimes the problem is it's

00:39:58 ◼   ► just hard for our brains to comprehend what it means that they made that many billions

00:40:02 ◼   ► of dollars and sold that many iPhones.

00:40:04 ◼   ► These are very large numbers.

00:40:06 ◼   ► They're outside of the scope of our day-to-day experience.

00:40:10 ◼   ► And when you look at the numbers too, you see how huge the iPhone is and it continues

00:40:14 ◼   ► to be bigger.

00:40:15 ◼   ► I mean, Apple is essentially iPhone incorporated with a nice side business of computers and

00:40:21 ◼   ► iPads and iTunes and Apple Pay.

00:40:25 ◼   ► But those are all like little cute little side businesses that on their own would be

00:40:29 ◼   ► big businesses, but the iPhone just dwarfs them and every other tech company in, and

00:40:37 ◼   ► maybe every other company in existence. It's hard to fathom.

00:40:44 ◼   ► How do you think Apple feel about having their company so iPhone heavy, and do you think

00:40:51 ◼   ► that it is a, or should be a concern to have one product line out of their maybe five or

00:40:58 ◼   ► or six product lines drive that amount,

00:41:01 ◼   ► that sort of percentage of revenue?

00:41:03 ◼   ► - It's a good problem to have.

00:41:06 ◼   ► I don't think anybody's going to turn down a product

00:41:10 ◼   ► that is that successful and profitable,

00:41:13 ◼   ► but I do think it's potentially distorting.

00:41:18 ◼   ► And I've been thinking about this

00:41:21 ◼   ► with regard to the Apple Watch.

00:41:24 ◼   ► The Apple Watch is a really interesting product, right?

00:41:28 ◼   ► But there are lots of interesting products

00:41:30 ◼   ► Apple could come up with.

00:41:31 ◼   ► In fact, Apple's got some interesting products,

00:41:33 ◼   ► not just the Mac and the iPad, but like the Apple TV.

00:41:37 ◼   ► And they say, "Well, are we looking at that?

00:41:38 ◼   ► "That's an area of interest."

00:41:40 ◼   ► But what's the Apple Watch?

00:41:42 ◼   ► The Apple Watch is an iPhone accessory.

00:41:45 ◼   ► It does not work without the iPhone.

00:41:47 ◼   ► It is an iPhone accessory.

00:41:49 ◼   ► And it may be very successful

00:41:52 ◼   ► as a really, really great iPhone accessory

00:41:54 ◼   ► because we know, I mean, looking at the other smartwatches

00:41:57 ◼   ► that are out there, the only one that really even works

00:41:59 ◼   ► with the iPhone is the Pebble, and as a Pebble user,

00:42:02 ◼   ► I can tell you it doesn't work that well.

00:42:04 ◼   ► They are sort of, it works despite the OS's issues

00:42:07 ◼   ► with the Pebble, not because of.

00:42:10 ◼   ► And so this thing is instantly going to be the,

00:42:16 ◼   ► not just a cool piece of hardware

00:42:19 ◼   ► and not just a fashion item,

00:42:20 ◼   ► but it's going to be really the only way you would interact

00:42:25 ◼   ► with a smartwatch and an iPhone because of that.

00:42:28 ◼   ► It's not just Apple's trademark hardware

00:42:31 ◼   ► and software integration, it's their hardware, software,

00:42:33 ◼   ► and accessory connectivity to other hardware and software.

00:42:38 ◼   ► It's this ecosystem integration on a really,

00:42:43 ◼   ► not like ecosystem like there's a Mac over there,

00:42:45 ◼   ► but it's like there's a watch and a phone

00:42:47 ◼   ► and they're connected together just perfectly, seamlessly.

00:42:50 ◼   ► This is the kind of product you make

00:42:54 ◼   ► when you have a product as huge as the iPhone.

00:42:57 ◼   ► The Apple Watch is exactly what kind of a product

00:43:04 ◼   ► a company makes when they are the iPhone company,

00:43:09 ◼   ► because it's an iPhone accessory.

00:43:12 ◼   ► And I'm not saying that's not gonna be

00:43:14 ◼   ► a really interesting product,

00:43:15 ◼   ► but I was just thinking about it this weekend.

00:43:19 ◼   ► It just, it feels,

00:43:20 ◼   ► if the iPhone was as successful as the iPad and the Mac,

00:43:25 ◼   ► the Apple Watch wouldn't be a thing, I think,

00:43:27 ◼   ► or it wouldn't be the thing that it is,

00:43:29 ◼   ► because you're only gonna sell it to a certain percentage

00:43:32 ◼   ► of the people who have iPhones.

00:43:34 ◼   ► And so you need this giant number

00:43:36 ◼   ► in order to justify making that product.

00:43:38 ◼   ► But they've got the giant number.

00:43:40 ◼   ► They've got the giant number.

00:43:42 ◼   ► What percentage of iPhone users need to buy an Apple Watch

00:43:44 ◼   ► to make the Apple Watch bigger than the iPad and the Mac.

00:43:47 ◼   ► There's a number and it's probably not that big.

00:43:49 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:43:51 ◼   ► Not in saying they'll get there,

00:43:52 ◼   ► but they could theoretically.

00:43:54 ◼   ► - It seems like that the margins might be quite high,

00:43:58 ◼   ► like if the rumored price is believed to be true, right?

00:44:02 ◼   ► 'Cause they're charging kind of like

00:44:04 ◼   ► fashion accessory price lines, you know?

00:44:08 ◼   ► There is a potential, maybe not initially

00:44:10 ◼   ► 'cause these things can be difficult to produce,

00:44:12 ◼   ► But eventually there could be at least some models

00:44:15 ◼   ► of the Apple Watch where the margins are quite good

00:44:17 ◼   ► on it for Apple, maybe.

00:44:20 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:44:21 ◼   ► So without putting a value judgment on it,

00:44:27 ◼   ► I think the Apple Watch is a good example

00:44:29 ◼   ► of what is probably a distortion from,

00:44:32 ◼   ► again, I'm trying not to be negative about it.

00:44:34 ◼   ► I'm trying to say this is behavior that is changed

00:44:38 ◼   ► because the number that goes along with the iPhone

00:44:41 ◼   ► is so huge.

00:44:42 ◼   ► and Apple TV is a different product

00:44:45 ◼   ► and it's relying on Apple's ecosystem.

00:44:48 ◼   ► And yeah, iPhone is a part of that,

00:44:50 ◼   ► but it's the iTunes ecosystem

00:44:53 ◼   ► and Macs and iPads and other things.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And if you're prioritizing,

00:44:57 ◼   ► when the iPhone gets this big, I feel like,

00:45:01 ◼   ► any math you do about what kind of products

00:45:05 ◼   ► should you do next comes back to,

00:45:08 ◼   ► well, yeah, but look at this iPhone.

00:45:09 ◼   ► It's like, should we do more iPhones?

00:45:11 ◼   ► should we do things that we sell to iPhone users?

00:45:14 ◼   ► Because even if you sell a small percentage of,

00:45:19 ◼   ► sell a product to a small percentage of those users,

00:45:21 ◼   ► that number is just so large now that, you know,

00:45:25 ◼   ► it's, I don't think this is ever gonna happen,

00:45:27 ◼   ► but I think it's worth just as an exercise, ask yourself,

00:45:32 ◼   ► what would the decisions that an Apple

00:45:35 ◼   ► that just had the Mac and the iPad,

00:45:40 ◼   ► or the Mac, the iPad, and an iPhone that was at the same sales level as the Mac and the

00:45:45 ◼   ► iPad, they're roughly comparable in terms of revenue. What decisions would that company

00:45:49 ◼   ► make in terms of its product direction and development? And what decisions does the real

00:45:53 ◼   ► Apple make? And, you know, those decisions are going to be different, I think, because

00:45:59 ◼   ► I don't think it's a question of like, there's only one path forward. I think there's a question

00:46:02 ◼   ► of there are lots of paths forward, which paths do we choose to walk down? And how much

00:46:06 ◼   ► do energy do we invest in them? And the existence of the iPhone is this great success, you know,

00:46:12 ◼   ► that is going to lead you down those paths, the paths that are fed by and can feed the

00:46:18 ◼   ► iPhone. I think it benefits, ultimately, I do think the Mac and the iPad benefit to a

00:46:23 ◼   ► certain degree just because there's so much money, and it makes Apple successful, and

00:46:27 ◼   ► there's a halo around the iPhone that extends to those products. But, you know, at the same

00:46:32 ◼   ► time if you stand up and say, "Yeah, the iOS for iPads, you know, that interface and

00:46:37 ◼   ► software should be better," you may get a lot of agreement even inside Apple, even inside

00:46:43 ◼   ► the iOS development team that the iPad could be a better product, that iOS could be tuned

00:46:47 ◼   ► more for the iPad. At the same time, look at the numbers. What are you going to prioritize?

00:46:53 ◼   ► It's very difficult to prioritize the iPad ever, I think, when you look at the iPhone.

00:46:59 ◼   ► So it's a challenge.

00:47:01 ◼   ► It's fascinating to look at that number and try to imagine what that does to a company's

00:47:08 ◼   ► priorities.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Lester Jeff wrote in and related to this and said, "Has the iPhone become a little boring

00:47:15 ◼   ► into mainstream?

00:47:16 ◼   ► Is it time for Apple to do something with the next major model that either does something

00:47:20 ◼   ► interesting hardware or software wise?

00:47:22 ◼   ► I'd personally like them to incorporate some gesture-based maneuvers for app switching,

00:47:26 ◼   ► for example."

00:47:27 ◼   ► bad idea, Jeff, but I think what I would say is boring and boring mainstream when

00:47:34 ◼   ► it is this making this much money. Again, how motivated is Apple to do something

00:47:40 ◼   ► big that's like different? Other than wanting to improve things, but I think

00:47:45 ◼   ► there's also a feeling like why would you mess up the thing that's doing so

00:47:49 ◼   ► crazily well? And I guess this is one of those things that I always hear on ATP

00:47:53 ◼   ► that John Siracusa especially talks about, which is this, you know, the idea that success

00:47:59 ◼   ► hides a lot of problems. And I think this is one of those good examples, which is at

00:48:05 ◼   ► some point, if the iPhone really could make a step and be that much better, is there a

00:48:12 ◼   ► point at which Apple would be hesitant to do that because it's just too successful now?

00:48:19 ◼   ► I mean, the counterargument would be back in the day, and this is in Apple's DNA, I

00:48:22 ◼   ► really do believe is that the iPod mini was the biggest selling iPod and they killed it

00:48:27 ◼   ► and replaced it with the Nano because they thought it was better. And you would like

00:48:32 ◼   ► that to be part of this company's culture that they will not be afraid to make a big

00:48:37 ◼   ► change. But at the same time, they are not going to want to alienate their existing iPhone

00:48:43 ◼   ► audience. I don't know.

00:48:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure. - What do you think?

00:48:47 ◼   ► - I think boring and mainstream is a little harsh.

00:48:52 ◼   ► I don't think I would agree with that.

00:48:55 ◼   ► I think it's always good and fun to have new things,

00:48:59 ◼   ► but I don't, by kind of, I don't think necessarily

00:49:03 ◼   ► that gestures like the pre would then make the iPhone

00:49:08 ◼   ► not boring if your current concern is that it's boring.

00:49:11 ◼   ► I don't really, considering the phone

00:49:15 ◼   ► significantly changed form factor. Like I don't think you can get bigger than that.

00:49:20 ◼   ► - The six is a big thing. I wrote a piece on Macworld back in April of last year titled "Apple is not here to entertain you."

00:49:32 ◼   ► And it came out of a conversation I was having with Rene Ritchie over lunch in Petaluma, actually, after we did one of the Twitch shows.

00:49:40 ◼   ► And the idea is, yeah, I get it.

00:49:45 ◼   ► People want Apple to do new things,

00:49:46 ◼   ► but Apple's business is not to keep analysts and reporters

00:49:50 ◼   ► and even fans of technology entertained by new things.

00:49:55 ◼   ► That's not their job.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Their job is to make great products

00:49:59 ◼   ► and have a successful business.

00:50:01 ◼   ► And they do entertain us from time to time,

00:50:05 ◼   ► but their job is not to like,

00:50:08 ◼   ► 'Cause it's like, you know,

00:50:09 ◼   ► we have this incredibly successful product.

00:50:11 ◼   ► Come on, that's boring.

00:50:12 ◼   ► You already had that product.

00:50:13 ◼   ► Give us a new product.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Like, no, we're gonna keep doing this good product

00:50:16 ◼   ► that we have.

00:50:17 ◼   ► Entertain, you know,

00:50:18 ◼   ► I get that it might not be as entertaining,

00:50:21 ◼   ► but it's incredibly successful and a popular product

00:50:24 ◼   ► and people like it.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And so that's okay.

00:50:28 ◼   ► As long as it isn't hiding problems.

00:50:31 ◼   ► You know, I would hate for Apple to bypass

00:50:33 ◼   ► a revolutionary change to the iPhone

00:50:35 ◼   ► because they don't need to bother.

00:50:38 ◼   ► but they seem to try very hard to not go down that path.

00:50:42 ◼   ► - Should we address something?

00:50:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, we should.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Well, I want one more point on this just really quickly,

00:50:52 ◼   ► which was I liked that Tim Cook talked about the iPad

00:50:55 ◼   ► and gave it his, and it's in my transcript

00:51:00 ◼   ► that I put on six colors about it

00:51:02 ◼   ► 'cause I transcribed everything Tim Cook said.

00:51:05 ◼   ► I recorded and then I used those fast typing fingers

00:51:08 ◼   ► to get a transcript of everything Tim Cook said in the call.

00:51:13 ◼   ► And he makes his sort of impassioned defense of the iPad

00:51:15 ◼   ► and says, look, it's obviously the refresh cycle,

00:51:19 ◼   ► the buying cycle is not as rapid as it is for iPhones,

00:51:24 ◼   ► but he's a believer in the category.

00:51:26 ◼   ► I think it's interesting to watch that

00:51:27 ◼   ► because iPad sales were flat and they're flat.

00:51:31 ◼   ► iPad sales are flat.

00:51:32 ◼   ► So it's something to watch.

00:51:34 ◼   ► It's interesting to see that Apple's not backing away

00:51:38 ◼   ► from it in the sense that Tim Cook says that over time,

00:51:40 ◼   ► he believes that this is a fantastic category.

00:51:43 ◼   ► I also feel like the iPad is unfairly being compared

00:51:46 ◼   ► to the iPhone because smartphones

00:51:49 ◼   ► are just a different category.

00:51:50 ◼   ► Smartphones do not follow the same laws

00:51:52 ◼   ► as computers and tablets.

00:51:54 ◼   ► They don't.

00:51:55 ◼   ► It's much more, the iPad business is roughly

00:51:57 ◼   ► the Mac business at this point, which is not bad.

00:52:00 ◼   ► that's a good business to be in, but it's not the iPhone,

00:52:03 ◼   ► and it's not gonna be the iPhone.

00:52:05 ◼   ► So it's something that's worth watching,

00:52:07 ◼   ► but I do think it's worth people checking out

00:52:10 ◼   ► what Tim Cook said about the iPad,

00:52:11 ◼   ► because it's a statement about how they believe in it,

00:52:15 ◼   ► but that they're still learning what the issues are,

00:52:18 ◼   ► and how often people are gonna buy a new iPad,

00:52:21 ◼   ► because the iPads last, iPads last,

00:52:23 ◼   ► and there's no subsidy to drive you

00:52:24 ◼   ► to buy a new model every two years.

00:52:26 ◼   ► - That's totally it.

00:52:28 ◼   ► I think Apple in the long term, I believe,

00:52:31 ◼   ► will need to get accustomed to the fact

00:52:34 ◼   ► that people will upgrade their iPads

00:52:36 ◼   ► as frequently as they upgrade their Macs or PCs.

00:52:39 ◼   ► I think that that's the thing that they maybe hoped

00:52:45 ◼   ► wouldn't be the case, naturally.

00:52:47 ◼   ► But I think time is telling that that is kind of

00:52:51 ◼   ► the way people treat these devices.

00:52:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, well I mean you upgrade every two years,

00:52:55 ◼   ► you'll upgrade an iPhone for $200,

00:52:57 ◼   ► but that's because your phone company

00:52:59 ◼   ► is paying the other three or 400.

00:53:01 ◼   ► And the iPad doesn't, if the iPad was 199,

00:53:05 ◼   ► maybe that would be the case, but that's just not,

00:53:08 ◼   ► and that's just not how it works.

00:53:09 ◼   ► It's not how it works.

00:53:11 ◼   ► - Do you know what, I still don't even think

00:53:12 ◼   ► that that would be it.

00:53:13 ◼   ► I think it's the inertia of the contract ending

00:53:17 ◼   ► that pushes people.

00:53:20 ◼   ► - And it just isn't there. - Because they can't do it.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Yeah, and there just isn't a thing.

00:53:23 ◼   ► - Right, you could argue that most of the phone's

00:53:26 ◼   ► Phone life can be much longer than two years too.

00:53:29 ◼   ► Maybe not as long as an iPad, but longer than it is.

00:53:32 ◼   ► But if you're on a contract cycle,

00:53:34 ◼   ► it makes it that much easier.

00:53:35 ◼   ► You actually, in the US, the way the contracts

00:53:38 ◼   ► generally have worked up to now, some are changing this,

00:53:41 ◼   ► but generally the phone companies calculated out,

00:53:45 ◼   ► their subsidy is covered in two years,

00:53:47 ◼   ► and your contract is two years.

00:53:49 ◼   ► You can keep your phone for three years.

00:53:50 ◼   ► They don't make your bill, in most cases, any lower.

00:53:55 ◼   ► So you're motivated to get a new phone every two years

00:53:58 ◼   ► because otherwise you're just handing money back

00:54:02 ◼   ► to the phone company.

00:54:04 ◼   ► So there's actually a bunch of motivations.

00:54:08 ◼   ► Now that is changing.

00:54:09 ◼   ► Some of the plans now are more specifically subsidy plans

00:54:12 ◼   ► and you're paying extra for the length of the subsidy

00:54:15 ◼   ► and not forever.

00:54:17 ◼   ► And then there's less motivation to get a new phone

00:54:19 ◼   ► right away because your bill goes down.

00:54:21 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:54:23 ◼   ► Okay, we should make a note before we move on

00:54:26 ◼   ► to our next topic that something crazy happened.

00:54:29 ◼   ► I used to play a dice baseball game.

00:54:33 ◼   ► This is gonna be right up your alley, Myke.

00:54:37 ◼   ► A tabletop dice baseball game, a couple actually.

00:54:42 ◼   ► And both of them had the same mechanic,

00:54:44 ◼   ► which is if you rolled a certain set of dice,

00:54:47 ◼   ► a certain dice roll,

00:54:49 ◼   ► it's like D&D for sports nerds basically,

00:54:52 ◼   ► is what I'm saying.

00:54:53 ◼   ► There would be, I remember in the game that I played in high school, it was 38 was "Something Crazy Happens."

00:54:59 ◼   ► It's like, almost everything else was just a normal play, but then the crazy thing would come up and you'd be like,

00:55:04 ◼   ► "Oh, what happened?" And then something weird, there'd be a guy would be hit by a pitch or there'd be an injury or whatever.

00:55:10 ◼   ► You, during the middle of the last segment, rolled 38.

00:55:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I did.

00:55:15 ◼   ► And all the crazy things happened simultaneously.

00:55:18 ◼   ► So, you are now hearing me locally recorded. Up to this point you have heard

00:55:24 ◼   ► the Skype recording. I apologize if it sounded below our usual standards.

00:55:30 ◼   ► Basically, Skype seemed to be the catalyst for a catastrophic destruction of my Mac,

00:55:36 ◼   ► in which my entire UI froze. The clock didn't move for five minutes and I had

00:55:44 ◼   ► to suffer multiple restarts, I upgraded Skype, then it couldn't read or see any of my audio

00:55:52 ◼   ► inputs or outputs. So after lots of troubleshooting and reading the K-base, here we are and I

00:56:00 ◼   ► think we're okay and we can move on ahead. But it was kind of a catastrophic failure

00:56:06 ◼   ► enough that we wanted to point it out at this point during the show and then move on from

00:56:11 ◼   ► it.

00:56:12 ◼   ► We survived, apparently.

00:56:15 ◼   ► That's the rumor.

00:56:16 ◼   ► You shouldn't say up to this point, "Now it all sounds good," because you don't know.

00:56:21 ◼   ► We may be patching in, "You may have another failure here."

00:56:24 ◼   ► It's possible, but probably not.

00:56:26 ◼   ► Well, we'll address that one when we come to it.

00:56:28 ◼   ► Okay, yeah.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Sorry, wait for the next footnote.

00:56:30 ◼   ► All right, do you want to talk, before we get to Ask Upgrade and the movie, do you want

00:56:34 ◼   ► to talk about YouTube a little bit?

00:56:35 ◼   ► Because this was a link you put in the show notes actually last week and we didn't get

00:56:38 ◼   ► to it.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Yeah, I did want to talk about this.

00:56:42 ◼   ► I'm actually currently listening,

00:56:43 ◼   ► well before we started the show today,

00:56:46 ◼   ► I was listening to an episode of Hello Internet,

00:56:48 ◼   ► which is a show that everybody knows I love so much.

00:56:50 ◼   ► And Brady and Gray were just about

00:56:52 ◼   ► to start discussing this issue.

00:56:55 ◼   ► So for the YouTube discussion, I haven't heard it yet.

00:57:00 ◼   ► - This sort of advanced follow out.

00:57:01 ◼   ► It's follow out with us having not heard it yet.

00:57:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would assume that that's probably

00:57:06 ◼   ► the way we could look at things.

00:57:07 ◼   ► But I think that they are probably gonna have

00:57:10 ◼   ► much better discussion about the YouTube side and it isn't really I don't really

00:57:14 ◼   ► want to talk about YouTube per se so let me just set this up so basically

00:57:20 ◼   ► musician Zoe Keating she is kind of being pushed by YouTube into signing the

00:57:27 ◼   ► contract for the new YouTube music deal so basically at the moment she can

00:57:32 ◼   ► currently decide whether if her music is used in a video if she wants to take a

00:57:36 ◼   ► cut of the ads from it that's kind of the contract that she's currently on she

00:57:40 ◼   ► then YouTube want to move her into a totally different contract which has

00:57:43 ◼   ► totally different rules and regulations about the way that her music is done and

00:57:48 ◼   ► she could be a pay channel and there'll be ads on everything and

00:57:51 ◼   ► basically the stuff that she doesn't want to do. Now the reason I wanted to

00:57:55 ◼   ► bring this up is because there was a bit of discussion on the day that you wrote

00:57:58 ◼   ► a little piece, this is like a week or so ago, with people that are on YouTube,

00:58:02 ◼   ► people that are not on YouTube and looking at how kind of YouTube owns this

00:58:07 ◼   ► market and if you want to create videos on the internet you have to be on

00:58:12 ◼   ► YouTube. Like there is nowhere else. You can be on other places but you will not

00:58:17 ◼   ► get the critical mass that you want. If you want to get the audience the

00:58:20 ◼   ► audience is there. And it made me think about what we do and the fact that there

00:58:24 ◼   ► is not currently one single source and how important I think that that is for

00:58:31 ◼   ► entertainment and media for there not to be one single source because you're

00:58:36 ◼   ► you're destroyed. I am very intrigued looking at how Microsoft was

00:58:41 ◼   ► completely railroaded by the European Union. That YouTube is not finding itself

00:58:45 ◼   ► or Google is not finding itself in a sort of sticky situation with them.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Because it is very much like they own the pipe, they own everything. It's all

00:58:53 ◼   ► there, you have no say, there's nowhere else you can go. But I know that there's

00:58:56 ◼   ► there's lots of different reasons as to why it was a problem for Microsoft. But I

00:59:00 ◼   ► just look at it and think you are such a dominant force, you are such an

00:59:04 ◼   ► incredible monopoly on the video streaming world. It scares me to think

00:59:12 ◼   ► that somebody might come and try and do this to podcasts. And there are companies

00:59:16 ◼   ► that are trying but they are not really... I don't... they're having success. I don't

00:59:21 ◼   ► know how much they're succeeding though, you know? Well yeah, it's the... I mean the

00:59:26 ◼   ► fact that podcasts are founded on RSS is a fundamentally decentralizing feature.

00:59:32 ◼   ► that even when you have a big podcast directory like iTunes, in the end all

00:59:37 ◼   ► iTunes is doing is pointing you back at an RSS feed that is elsewhere, and that

00:59:43 ◼   ► has had this great democratizing effect, although it also, you know, not having an

00:59:49 ◼   ► official central point for all podcasts does make it harder to find podcasts. I

00:59:53 ◼   ► would argue that this is one of the great things about the iTunes directory

00:59:55 ◼   ► for podcasts, is there is a place run by a company everybody knows that has a

01:00:01 ◼   ► a directory of podcasts. And that's really good. You need to be in that directory. You

01:00:06 ◼   ► don't have to be, but it's a really good place to go. People know that they can look on iTunes

01:00:11 ◼   ► for podcasts. And it's like YouTube, except that Apple doesn't actually serve the files

01:00:16 ◼   ► or, you know, they could remove you from the podcast directory, but they just don't care.

01:00:22 ◼   ► It's a hands-off kind of thing. It's just the podcast directory is there for you to

01:00:27 ◼   ► to use and it's decentralized behind it.

01:00:29 ◼   ► And YouTube is not the case and it is scary.

01:00:32 ◼   ► And yes, I'm sure Stitcher or some company like that

01:00:37 ◼   ► would love to be able to be,

01:00:40 ◼   ► it's not like, I think what would need to happen

01:00:46 ◼   ► is there would need to be some sort of ground swell

01:00:49 ◼   ► for a particular kind of technology

01:00:52 ◼   ► or all the cars get only one way that they can.

01:00:57 ◼   ► that podcasts get into cars are only two ways.

01:01:00 ◼   ► And they're through Stitcher or, you know, Company X,

01:01:04 ◼   ► and that's it.

01:01:05 ◼   ► That would be the scary thing,

01:01:06 ◼   ► because then they could really exert power and say,

01:01:09 ◼   ► you know, if you wanna play,

01:01:12 ◼   ► if you wanna be in the only place that most listeners go,

01:01:16 ◼   ► then we have power over you.

01:01:18 ◼   ► And that's where YouTube is right now.

01:01:19 ◼   ► And it's scary because YouTube is,

01:01:21 ◼   ► I mean, Gray called it a, it's a monopoly and a monopsony.

01:01:24 ◼   ► It is the only market,

01:01:25 ◼   ► and it is the only place for people to receive the goods.

01:01:29 ◼   ► And it is, you know, it is the Soviet grocery store

01:01:32 ◼   ► with the long bread line.

01:01:34 ◼   ► My kids are huge YouTube fans.

01:01:38 ◼   ► They are YouTube viewers.

01:01:39 ◼   ► They watch YouTube like I watched sitcoms

01:01:44 ◼   ► at four in the afternoon when I was a kid.

01:01:46 ◼   ► I mean, like they don't need to watch "Gilligan's Island."

01:01:49 ◼   ► They have YouTube and they watch it.

01:01:52 ◼   ► That's what, that's their TV.

01:01:55 ◼   ► and it's all on YouTube,

01:01:56 ◼   ► and it all links to other things on YouTube,

01:01:57 ◼   ► and all the creators are on YouTube.

01:01:59 ◼   ► And maybe we'll get to the point

01:02:01 ◼   ► where there's an alternative to YouTube.

01:02:04 ◼   ► I'm sure people are trying,

01:02:06 ◼   ► but Google's purchase of YouTube

01:02:08 ◼   ► has turned out to be pretty powerful

01:02:10 ◼   ► because that is the place.

01:02:12 ◼   ► It's like its own genre, its own network,

01:02:15 ◼   ► it is everything, and it is wildly successful,

01:02:19 ◼   ► and there's a whole generation coming up now

01:02:23 ◼   ► that is going to view YouTube as just the definitive place where all video lives. So

01:02:28 ◼   ► it's, it's, it'll be interesting to see how it goes. In fact, I mean, I could see like

01:02:34 ◼   ► five or ten years out a scenario where Google's, you know, what we think of as Google's big

01:02:40 ◼   ► businesses, especially like the text ad stuff, is a lot less relevant, but Google controls

01:02:46 ◼   ► all video advertising on the internet essentially with this, with YouTube.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - I actually do believe, and I've been thinking about this

01:02:52 ◼   ► recently, that in 50, 60, 100 years,

01:02:56 ◼   ► Google will be remembered for YouTube primarily.

01:02:58 ◼   ► I think that that is gonna be the thing

01:03:01 ◼   ► that people will remember them for.

01:03:03 ◼   ► I think it's that powerful. - It'll be like a trivia

01:03:04 ◼   ► question, did you know that that Google search engine

01:03:06 ◼   ► also was behind YouTube?

01:03:09 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Wow, really?

01:03:10 ◼   ► Both of those things were from the same company, yeah?

01:03:13 ◼   ► In fact, Google bought YouTube, wow, they bought them, wow.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I hope they spent a lot of money on,

01:03:19 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause YouTube,

01:03:20 ◼   ► I was trying to explain this to somebody,

01:03:21 ◼   ► I think maybe it was on the talk show,

01:03:23 ◼   ► 'cause Jon Gruber's son is roughly my son's age.

01:03:26 ◼   ► You know, YouTube is not like,

01:03:29 ◼   ► even like a channel two showing "Gilligan's Island" reruns

01:03:33 ◼   ► in the afternoon when I was a kid.

01:03:34 ◼   ► YouTube is all the TV networks.

01:03:36 ◼   ► YouTube is not like a TV network when I was a kid.

01:03:39 ◼   ► It's all, it's television.

01:03:41 ◼   ► Imagine one company owning all of television.

01:03:45 ◼   ► For my kids' generation, that's what this is.

01:03:48 ◼   ► It's not, that's why I think it's a good buy.

01:03:52 ◼   ► And Minecraft, it's the same deal.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Microsoft buying Minecraft,

01:03:55 ◼   ► they're not buying a game,

01:03:59 ◼   ► they're kind of buying the game.

01:04:02 ◼   ► And between Minecraft and YouTube,

01:04:04 ◼   ► you've pretty much described 80% of my kids'

01:04:09 ◼   ► entertainment life over the last four years.

01:04:12 ◼   ► - It's like it's not even so much it's all of the TV,

01:04:17 ◼   ► It's everything you could ever want to watch.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Like that's the difference.

01:04:21 ◼   ► It's not just it's all the TV channels.

01:04:23 ◼   ► It's like what do you wanna watch right now?

01:04:25 ◼   ► Okay, it's on YouTube.

01:04:27 ◼   ► Like because somebody is making it.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Someone somewhere is making it.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Like my nephew watches people,

01:04:35 ◼   ► like videos of people unboxing toys.

01:04:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah.

01:04:39 ◼   ► - And just showing toys on YouTube.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Or he watches people play Disney Infinity.

01:04:46 ◼   ► Like, it's just what he does.

01:04:48 ◼   ► And it's just this crazy world.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And I remember when he was like,

01:04:52 ◼   ► maybe 18 months old,

01:04:55 ◼   ► and he was playing with my iPhone.

01:05:00 ◼   ► For the first time playing with my iPhone,

01:05:01 ◼   ► he watches YouTube on my brother's,

01:05:04 ◼   ► like his dad's iPhone.

01:05:06 ◼   ► But I gave him my iPhone,

01:05:08 ◼   ► and he navigated to the screen,

01:05:09 ◼   ► and opened the folder in which he could see the YouTube icon.

01:05:13 ◼   ► Like, and I was just blown away,

01:05:15 ◼   ► because he didn't know where it was,

01:05:17 ◼   ► but he saw that little red play button inside that folder

01:05:20 ◼   ► and he knew what that meant.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And then he started going around the recent history

01:05:25 ◼   ► 'cause he knew that was where the videos were in his mind.

01:05:28 ◼   ► - Amazing.

01:05:29 ◼   ► - That he's been watching.

01:05:31 ◼   ► That's his remote control, right?

01:05:33 ◼   ► That is his world, his entertainment view.

01:05:37 ◼   ► Now I think that this is incredibly powerful

01:05:39 ◼   ► and I think that YouTube fundamentally is a great thing

01:05:43 ◼   ► because it enables that and it enables creation

01:05:46 ◼   ► and it enables people to find a voice for themselves online.

01:05:49 ◼   ► Anything like that is fantastic.

01:05:51 ◼   ► The problem is when it becomes a business

01:05:53 ◼   ► and it's the only option.

01:05:55 ◼   ► I think that it,

01:05:56 ◼   ► YouTube, the great thing about YouTube is not Google

01:06:01 ◼   ► or the YouTube company.

01:06:03 ◼   ► The great thing about YouTube is the people within it

01:06:05 ◼   ► creating the stuff and like that's when it becomes a problem.

01:06:09 ◼   ► So like with podcasts, we have all of the people

01:06:12 ◼   ► but there is no company that is making us do anything.

01:06:17 ◼   ► - And if you don't like your deal,

01:06:19 ◼   ► you go somewhere else and get a better deal.

01:06:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, because all of the companies

01:06:23 ◼   ► that you might get deals with, there are other ones.

01:06:26 ◼   ► - Right, and with YouTube, the Zoe Keating example

01:06:28 ◼   ► that was chilling, and it's unclear whether this was just

01:06:30 ◼   ► some overzealous rep or what, but the message was

01:06:34 ◼   ► essentially, here are our new terms, you can either say yes

01:06:39 ◼   ► or you can go away.

01:06:41 ◼   ► - And where are you gonna go?

01:06:43 ◼   ► - And where are you gonna go?

01:06:44 ◼   ► - Like this is your living, what are you gonna do?

01:06:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it'll happen though.

01:06:48 ◼   ► Some YouTuber or set of YouTube stars will do something

01:06:53 ◼   ► where they go off of YouTube and all that's left on YouTube

01:06:59 ◼   ► is pointers to this other place.

01:07:02 ◼   ► And that'll, I mean, I think it's already happened,

01:07:05 ◼   ► but not super successfully,

01:07:07 ◼   ► but I feel like that will just keep happening.

01:07:09 ◼   ► You're gonna try to,

01:07:11 ◼   ► somebody's gonna try to establish a competitor

01:07:13 ◼   ► and try to make deals with these YouTubers to come over.

01:07:17 ◼   ► But it's scary for them because, you know,

01:07:19 ◼   ► unless you're guaranteeing them revenue,

01:07:21 ◼   ► you know, you're really risking,

01:07:22 ◼   ► you're losing that ecosystem.

01:07:24 ◼   ► 'Cause not only do they have their followers,

01:07:26 ◼   ► but those people are subscribed to, you know,

01:07:28 ◼   ► 20 or 30 different YouTubers

01:07:29 ◼   ► and they're all kind of mixed in together.

01:07:31 ◼   ► It's like leaving a TV network.

01:07:33 ◼   ► You're out of the rotation over there

01:07:34 ◼   ► and instead you have to remember to go to this other site

01:07:37 ◼   ► and watch the videos over there, it's tough.

01:07:40 ◼   ► I mean, that's the kind of mind share YouTube has.

01:07:42 ◼   ► So yeah, I hope that doesn't happen for podcasting,

01:07:44 ◼   ► but it would really,

01:07:45 ◼   ► at this point it would really require

01:07:47 ◼   ► some technological shift

01:07:52 ◼   ► where somebody gets in somewhere

01:07:53 ◼   ► that really opens the door to a huge audience

01:07:55 ◼   ► and that's why I keep bringing up the car.

01:07:57 ◼   ► And if it ended up that every car had Stitcher

01:08:01 ◼   ► and that was the only way people were listening

01:08:04 ◼   ► to podcasts and cars anymore,

01:08:06 ◼   ► then we would all be like,

01:08:08 ◼   ► "God, I guess we have to go to Stitcher

01:08:10 ◼   ► and that would be scary."

01:08:11 ◼   ► But I don't think it's gonna happen

01:08:12 ◼   ► because I think in all those cases,

01:08:14 ◼   ► it's like AppRadio and there'll be multiple options.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Even if it ends up being, unfortunately,

01:08:19 ◼   ► like you have to make a deal with somebody

01:08:21 ◼   ► to get into the car.

01:08:23 ◼   ► But even there, I feel like there will be

01:08:26 ◼   ► some better independent options.

01:08:30 ◼   ► - Yep, 'cause that's why we're not on Stitcher.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Like, I've taken a look at some of their contract terms,

01:08:37 ◼   ► and me and Steven, we just, we don't wanna sign it

01:08:41 ◼   ► 'cause we don't think we have to.

01:08:42 ◼   ► So we're not going to.

01:08:44 ◼   ► It's as simple as that.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Like, we're perfectly fine with the audience that we have,

01:08:48 ◼   ► and that audience grows,

01:08:50 ◼   ► and that audience comes from where it comes from.

01:08:53 ◼   ► I'm not really in the interest of signing

01:08:55 ◼   ► my, our souls away, you know?

01:08:58 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:08:58 ◼   ► All right, we should move on.

01:09:02 ◼   ► Yes, so we should do some Ask Upgrade before we do our special inaugural movie segment.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Would you like to tell our friends who is sponsoring Ask Upgrade this week?

01:09:13 ◼   ► Yes, #AskUpgrade is brought to you this week by Stamps.com.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Trips to the post office are never convenient.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Why not get postage right from your desk with Stamps.com.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Stamps.com even gives you special postage discounts you can't get at the post office,

01:09:28 ◼   ► including first class, priority mail, express, international, and more.

01:09:31 ◼   ► you'll never pay full price for postage again.

01:09:34 ◼   ► So here's how it works.

01:09:35 ◼   ► You use your own computer, your own printer,

01:09:38 ◼   ► buy and print official US postage.

01:09:40 ◼   ► This is why Myke cannot read this ad

01:09:41 ◼   ► because he is not in the US.

01:09:44 ◼   ► Official US postage for any letter or package,

01:09:46 ◼   ► you hand it to the mailman or drop it in a mailbox

01:09:49 ◼   ► and it goes, and that's it.

01:09:52 ◼   ► More than 500,000 small businesses are using stamps.com.

01:09:55 ◼   ► This is great if you're a small business,

01:09:56 ◼   ► it's great if you've got a small business on the side

01:09:58 ◼   ► and you're trying to put together shipping at home

01:10:01 ◼   ► in the evening and you've got your day job

01:10:04 ◼   ► and shipping is a pain and you don't wanna wait.

01:10:06 ◼   ► You don't have the time to wait at the post office.

01:10:09 ◼   ► It's a great solution for that.

01:10:10 ◼   ► And right now you can use our promo code,

01:10:13 ◼   ► which is UPGRADE, the name of the podcast

01:10:15 ◼   ► you're listening to, to get a special offer.

01:10:17 ◼   ► You get a no risk trial and there is a $110 bonus offer,

01:10:21 ◼   ► which includes a digital scale.

01:10:22 ◼   ► I've got a digital scale right here.

01:10:25 ◼   ► - Can you tap it?

01:10:25 ◼   ► Digital scale.

01:10:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, and up to $55 of free postage.

01:10:32 ◼   ► So don't wait, go to stamps.com

01:10:34 ◼   ► and before you do anything else,

01:10:36 ◼   ► click on the microphone at the top of the page

01:10:38 ◼   ► and type in upgrade.

01:10:39 ◼   ► That'll let them know that we sent you

01:10:41 ◼   ► and you will get the special deal.

01:10:43 ◼   ► So that's stamps.com, easy to remember, enter code upgrade.

01:10:47 ◼   ► And thank you so much to stamps.com for sponsoring upgrade.

01:10:51 ◼   ► I will endeavor to send,

01:10:53 ◼   ► I've got a couple of packages to mail out now

01:10:55 ◼   ► using stamps.com.

01:10:56 ◼   ► I have to put together my care package for Myke.

01:10:58 ◼   ► I haven't done that yet.

01:10:59 ◼   ► And I'm sending a little care package to Dan Morin

01:11:02 ◼   ► all the way in Boston.

01:11:03 ◼   ► And I'm gonna put that together later today

01:11:06 ◼   ► and stick it in my mailbox.

01:11:07 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna even walk to the post office 'cause why?

01:11:10 ◼   ► There are people there.

01:11:11 ◼   ► I don't wanna deal with those people.

01:11:13 ◼   ► - If anything, stamps.com is great

01:11:16 ◼   ► for Jason Snell to send people gifts.

01:11:18 ◼   ► And if that's not a reason enough to sign up

01:11:20 ◼   ► so you can send gifts, then I don't know what is.

01:11:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:24 ◼   ► - Care packages.

01:11:25 ◼   ► It's important for my business.

01:11:27 ◼   ► It's business development for the incomparable incorporated.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Askupgradetime, just a few selected entries from the hashtag.

01:11:36 ◼   ► Lister Brian wrote in to say,

01:11:38 ◼   ► "Do you pirate movies or television?

01:11:40 ◼   ► "If so, how do you explain this to your kids

01:11:42 ◼   ► "or your future kids?"

01:11:43 ◼   ► How do you explain this to your future kids, Myke?

01:11:45 ◼   ► And is it different than jailbreak and app pirating?

01:11:50 ◼   ► So I'll answer first.

01:11:53 ◼   ► I don't pirate stuff.

01:11:54 ◼   ► I will make a minor exception

01:11:56 ◼   ► for things that are completely unavailable

01:11:58 ◼   ► for purchase or rent.

01:11:59 ◼   ► And even then I feel like I need to buy something

01:12:02 ◼   ► in order to balance out my media karma.

01:12:05 ◼   ► So for example, there was a period where Doctor Who

01:12:08 ◼   ► was airing months in advance in the UK.

01:12:11 ◼   ► And I bit torrented those and pre-ordered the DVDs.

01:12:16 ◼   ► And I felt like, eh, it's a fair trade.

01:12:18 ◼   ► And back in the pre-comicsology days,

01:12:22 ◼   ► I would occasionally download comic torrents.

01:12:25 ◼   ► And that would basically drive sales of,

01:12:29 ◼   ► I would buy the trades or the hardcovers of those comics.

01:12:32 ◼   ► And I wasn't downloading new issues.

01:12:35 ◼   ► I was sort of like downloading the,

01:12:36 ◼   ► "Oh, here's 50 issues of this comic."

01:12:38 ◼   ► And I'd read them and I'd be like, "Okay."

01:12:40 ◼   ► And then I'd buy the hardcover of that.

01:12:41 ◼   ► So I don't do it much at all anymore.

01:12:44 ◼   ► Like I said, unless there's something

01:12:46 ◼   ► that's just totally unavailable in the US,

01:12:49 ◼   ► and then occasionally I'll do that.

01:12:50 ◼   ► Like, let's see, "Black Mirror," which is now on Netflix,

01:12:54 ◼   ► was not available in the US for several years.

01:12:56 ◼   ► And one of the incomparable people saw it,

01:12:59 ◼   ► presumably on BitTorrent and recommended it highly.

01:13:03 ◼   ► And I watched that through that means, but that's about it.

01:13:07 ◼   ► I would say the only difference between that

01:13:08 ◼   ► and something like app pirating for me

01:13:10 ◼   ► is that without pirating,

01:13:11 ◼   ► you are often harming a small business

01:13:14 ◼   ► and with movie and TV show pirating,

01:13:15 ◼   ► you're usually harming a huge conglomerate

01:13:18 ◼   ► or set of conglomerates.

01:13:19 ◼   ► I'm not sure that really makes it any better or worse,

01:13:21 ◼   ► but it is different in that way.

01:13:23 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, that's my feeling about piracy

01:13:27 ◼   ► is that at this point, I'm not using it

01:13:29 ◼   ► to get around buying things.

01:13:31 ◼   ► I'm using it occasionally to get around

01:13:33 ◼   ► geographic restrictions or distribution problems

01:13:36 ◼   ► or just an unavailability of something digitally,

01:13:39 ◼   ► that happens.

01:13:40 ◼   ► Sometimes for the incomparable, we have that

01:13:43 ◼   ► where we're trying to talk about something

01:13:44 ◼   ► that's not widely available.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Or I've downloaded some British stuff early

01:13:50 ◼   ► because we had, I did a Dr. Who recap

01:13:53 ◼   ► with somebody in Scotland and it wasn't gonna air in the US

01:13:57 ◼   ► until like four in the morning his time.

01:13:58 ◼   ► So I downloaded the BitTorrent version, watched it,

01:14:00 ◼   ► we talked and then I watched it again with my family

01:14:03 ◼   ► on TV that night.

01:14:05 ◼   ► So, and when I can I buy things

01:14:07 ◼   ► in order to balance out the books.

01:14:09 ◼   ► So that's mine.

01:14:10 ◼   ► Myke, what about you?

01:14:12 ◼   ► - I do feel like the balancing out the books thing

01:14:15 ◼   ► should be like, that should make it okay.

01:14:18 ◼   ► Like legally, like that should be fine.

01:14:21 ◼   ► - It doesn't, but I feel better about it.

01:14:24 ◼   ► I felt better about those Doctor Who downloads

01:14:26 ◼   ► because I bought the DVD.

01:14:27 ◼   ► It's like, all right, well look,

01:14:29 ◼   ► I was not patronizing,

01:14:32 ◼   ► I think I even recorded them when they aired in the US,

01:14:35 ◼   ► just to feel better about having recorded them

01:14:37 ◼   ► when they aired in the US.

01:14:38 ◼   ► But ideally, yes, I should have waited patiently

01:14:41 ◼   ► for them to air months later in the US,

01:14:43 ◼   ► and watched those, and watched the commercials,

01:14:45 ◼   ► and then felt good about it.

01:14:47 ◼   ► But at least, like with the comics, it's the same thing.

01:14:49 ◼   ► I downloaded a BitTorrent of whatever, of Invincible,

01:14:53 ◼   ► and then I liked it, and then I bought the trades,

01:14:56 ◼   ► or Why the Last Man, something like that.

01:14:57 ◼   ► And it's not ideal, and I don't do that anymore

01:15:00 ◼   ► because it's a lot easier to get that stuff legally

01:15:04 ◼   ► through a digital means,

01:15:05 ◼   ► 'cause I was also reading comics on a device,

01:15:06 ◼   ► I wasn't reading them on paper.

01:15:08 ◼   ► So that made a big difference too.

01:15:10 ◼   ► So, you know, but it doesn't,

01:15:13 ◼   ► I don't think it absolves me legally,

01:15:15 ◼   ► but I feel like it absolves me somehow morally,

01:15:18 ◼   ► karmically in some way to have given the creator money after the fact?

01:15:24 ◼   ► I mean obviously like before before people email us, yes I understand that if

01:15:31 ◼   ► you are not being very careful with your settings, your peer-to-peer settings, by

01:15:39 ◼   ► using BitTorrent you are helping other people find the stuff and I know

01:15:44 ◼   ► know that that's that's probably the bigger problem but you know you can you

01:15:48 ◼   ► can lock off your upload and not not be sharing out you're just but I'm sure

01:15:53 ◼   ► they're you know anyway invincible by the way is a great comic book it is I

01:15:58 ◼   ► thoroughly recommend it it's a favorite of mine so I'm gonna put that in the

01:16:02 ◼   ► show notes which you can find at relay.fm/upgrade/21 or in your

01:16:07 ◼   ► podcast app of choice right now. Indeed. So I've, my main reason for not pirating

01:16:16 ◼   ► these days is I cannot be bothered with the aggravation of pirating. I find it to

01:16:22 ◼   ► be a frustrating experience full of just things that I'm not interested in doing.

01:16:27 ◼   ► That's the classic Steve Jobs line, right, when he announced the iTunes Store.

01:16:31 ◼   ► One of the things he said was it's hard to use these peer-to-peer networks and

01:16:36 ◼   ► the quality is questionable and the tagging is bad and it's hard to find the stuff and

01:16:41 ◼   ► it's much easier to just go on iTunes and click a button. And you know, he was right.

01:16:46 ◼   ► There is something to that. People will pay, not everybody, but a lot of people will pay

01:16:49 ◼   ► for convenience. And so if you can make the legal means convenient and pirating is sort

01:16:55 ◼   ► of fundamentally inconvenient in many or most cases, then you know, that makes a difference.

01:17:00 ◼   ► Unless you're like literally like, I cannot and will not buy this, but that's a different

01:17:05 ◼   ► approach than saying it's I'm willing to pay to get that convenience.

01:17:10 ◼   ► So I just believe in streaming just please make it available like that's all I want just

01:17:16 ◼   ► make it available I will pay like I will pay like when I was looking for the Princess Bride

01:17:22 ◼   ► I googled for it and there were a bunch of like daily motion videos or whatever and I

01:17:27 ◼   ► just ignored them until I could find the easiest way to pay and I went to iTunes like because

01:17:32 ◼   ► I just don't want the aggravation. There are, I mean, I guess the only thing that I

01:17:36 ◼   ► maybe do that's questionable is like I use like American Netflix via using a

01:17:42 ◼   ► VPN. Cloak is my VPN of choice by the way. Big fan of that. I like Cloak a lot.

01:17:48 ◼   ► Getcloak.com. Works on iOS and Mac. It's really fancy. I'm a big fan.

01:17:54 ◼   ► But, so you know, sometimes I will do that. Like I will sign into

01:17:59 ◼   ► American Netflix like we're watching Parks and Recreation at the

01:18:02 ◼   ► moment and Amazon Prime Instant only has the first three seasons in the UK so to

01:18:09 ◼   ► get more to get like seasons four to seven I can sign into American Netflix

01:18:12 ◼   ► like I don't even understand why these things happen like okay I do but like it

01:18:18 ◼   ► makes no sense to me like why do this just make it available to me like don't

01:18:22 ◼   ► don't make me do this you are making me want to pirate like season three ended

01:18:27 ◼   ► in like 2010. Come on! Anyway, so Parks and Rec is a great show by the way.

01:18:34 ◼   ► I'm enjoying it. Fantastic show. I'm really really enjoying it a lot. So that's kind of my

01:18:42 ◼   ► thing. I do that. I use cloak. But I'm a paying customer of those services. So if I

01:18:47 ◼   ► was in the United States of America that's what I would be seeing. But I'm not.

01:18:50 ◼   ► I'm here. There's nothing I can do about it. All right. Well that's a good mini topic. I bet

01:18:56 ◼   ► We'll have some feedback on that one.

01:18:58 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:18:59 ◼   ► - Another Ask Upgrade, listener Chris said,

01:19:02 ◼   ► "Podcasting is a large chunk of both of your careers.

01:19:04 ◼   ► "How many hours a week do you guys spend

01:19:06 ◼   ► "working on your shows?"

01:19:07 ◼   ► What do you think, Myke?

01:19:09 ◼   ► - This is so hard for me to answer now

01:19:12 ◼   ► because it's literally all of my time, you know?

01:19:15 ◼   ► Because there's so much more that goes into it.

01:19:18 ◼   ► So like for example, for this show,

01:19:20 ◼   ► for the like the standard pre-preparation,

01:19:24 ◼   ► Jason puts the majority of the work in,

01:19:26 ◼   ► he puts together the document, which is fantastic,

01:19:29 ◼   ► and I love him dearly for that.

01:19:30 ◼   ► And that's the same with most of my shows, actually,

01:19:33 ◼   ► is that the co-hosts that I work with

01:19:35 ◼   ► put together the document,

01:19:37 ◼   ► and then I take care of all of the other bits, you know?

01:19:41 ◼   ► Like, make sure that there's advertisers,

01:19:42 ◼   ► and make sure that my Mac doesn't blow up.

01:19:46 ◼   ► I didn't do very well doing that today.

01:19:49 ◼   ► But you know, I do the editing and the posting

01:19:50 ◼   ► and that kind of stuff.

01:19:52 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe, let's say,

01:19:55 ◼   ► We used to kind of say like, oh, for every hour

01:19:59 ◼   ► that we record, it's probably an hour's worth

01:20:02 ◼   ► of other stuff as well.

01:20:03 ◼   ► And I think that that's still a pretty fair thing to say.

01:20:07 ◼   ► But one of my big things is it's not even like active time

01:20:12 ◼   ► working on the shows, it's thinking about them.

01:20:16 ◼   ► I think about them all the time, you know?

01:20:18 ◼   ► Like what can we do for this show?

01:20:20 ◼   ► Like I have a little idea and then I put that in a document

01:20:23 ◼   ► or why don't we try this and send a message to you.

01:20:26 ◼   ► So there's so much even unconscious time, I guess,

01:20:31 ◼   ► that goes into the now.

01:20:32 ◼   ► But for me, it's all I do.

01:20:34 ◼   ► I mean, it's probably different for you.

01:20:36 ◼   ► - Right.

01:20:37 ◼   ► - Because you do other things as well.

01:20:38 ◼   ► But basically, all of my working time is on podcasts.

01:20:43 ◼   ► But one of the big things is it's changing show by show now.

01:20:46 ◼   ► It used to be very clear cut, I would do this,

01:20:49 ◼   ► these are my responsibilities,

01:20:50 ◼   ► these are responsibilities of my co-hosts,

01:20:52 ◼   ► and this is how long it would take to edit.

01:20:54 ◼   ► But now I have different shows

01:20:55 ◼   ► that I edit in different ways,

01:20:56 ◼   ► and I prepare for some shows differently to this show.

01:20:59 ◼   ► So it's very flexible right now,

01:21:01 ◼   ► but it's all of my working time.

01:21:04 ◼   ► - Well, all of my shows are different.

01:21:07 ◼   ► I mentioned this actually in a piece that we'll link to,

01:21:10 ◼   ► which went up on Six Colors

01:21:13 ◼   ► the day that we recorded this, February 2nd.

01:21:15 ◼   ► It's about how I edit podcasts.

01:21:18 ◼   ► And in there, I say,

01:21:20 ◼   ► look, every one of my shows is different,

01:21:22 ◼   ► and the amount of work that goes into it is different.

01:21:23 ◼   ► You're absolutely right, there is this unconscious time.

01:21:26 ◼   ► This is true about writing stuff too.

01:21:28 ◼   ► There's the time where you're thinking about things

01:21:30 ◼   ► that somebody on the outside would look at and say,

01:21:31 ◼   ► "Look, you're not doing anything now,"

01:21:33 ◼   ► but you actually are.

01:21:34 ◼   ► And we have the Relay FM Slack group

01:21:36 ◼   ► and there's stuff that shoots around in there

01:21:38 ◼   ► that I think is informing what we end up with on the shows.

01:21:42 ◼   ► There's a lot of stuff that's hard to define,

01:21:45 ◼   ► but it's also true that there's the specific stuff.

01:21:48 ◼   ► So yeah, on Friday afternoon,

01:21:50 ◼   ► as I'm wrapping up my work week,

01:21:52 ◼   ► I have that moment where I start to think

01:21:54 ◼   ► about what am I gonna talk about on upgrade?

01:21:57 ◼   ► And that kind of goes through the weekend

01:21:59 ◼   ► and at some point on Sunday night or Monday morning,

01:22:03 ◼   ► I will go through our document

01:22:05 ◼   ► and start to cull things from the Ask Upgrade list

01:22:10 ◼   ► and from Twitter and from email

01:22:12 ◼   ► and think about what the topics are of the last week

01:22:14 ◼   ► and what's worth talking about.

01:22:16 ◼   ► And then there's the time to record.

01:22:19 ◼   ► This show is different because you do the editing.

01:22:21 ◼   ► So that's actually very different in terms of my time input

01:22:24 ◼   ► because I'm really spending the time we spend talking

01:22:26 ◼   ► and then the thinking about it beforehand

01:22:28 ◼   ► and assembling a document,

01:22:30 ◼   ► which isn't a massive amount of time,

01:22:31 ◼   ► but it's definitely time.

01:22:33 ◼   ► For something like Clockwise,

01:22:35 ◼   ► there's time spent booking guests

01:22:36 ◼   ► 'cause we have to book two guests every week.

01:22:39 ◼   ► And I'm trying to do that more in advance,

01:22:41 ◼   ► which actually saves me time

01:22:42 ◼   ► because I can send out invitations

01:22:43 ◼   ► and try to schedule people weeks in advance

01:22:46 ◼   ► instead of every week having to try

01:22:48 ◼   ► and beat the bushes and find a couple of people

01:22:51 ◼   ► who are free at that particular time.

01:22:53 ◼   ► So that takes time.

01:22:54 ◼   ► And doing the show doesn't take a lot of time.

01:22:57 ◼   ► It's, you know, probably we're on Skype

01:22:59 ◼   ► for about 40 minutes, but it's a half an hour show.

01:23:02 ◼   ► So that's easy.

01:23:02 ◼   ► And then the editing time is mostly me getting it to length.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Like last week's show was 34 minutes long.

01:23:10 ◼   ► So I had to pull four minutes of conversation out

01:23:12 ◼   ► of a pretty tight show, which is hard,

01:23:15 ◼   ► but that's the format.

01:23:16 ◼   ► So that's what it is.

01:23:17 ◼   ► For something like "TV Talk Machine,"

01:23:20 ◼   ► which I do with the TV critic Tim Goodman,

01:23:22 ◼   ► that's a Skype conversation.

01:23:23 ◼   ► That's a two-person Skype conversation.

01:23:25 ◼   ► I do almost nothing to that show.

01:23:26 ◼   ► So we talk for an hour or a little bit less than an hour.

01:23:29 ◼   ► And then in about 10 minutes, I've edited it and posted it

01:23:32 ◼   ► because there's very little for me to do.

01:23:34 ◼   ► I don't really, unless I note something where, you know,

01:23:37 ◼   ► one of us had to, you know, had a technical problem

01:23:40 ◼   ► or had to go talk to our kids who were being too loud

01:23:42 ◼   ► or something like that,

01:23:43 ◼   ► that's pretty much a just very straightforward kind of show.

01:23:47 ◼   ► Something like "The Incomparable,"

01:23:48 ◼   ► not only is there, there is scheduling time for that,

01:23:51 ◼   ► but, and then those shows,

01:23:55 ◼   ► recording sessions tend to be a couple hours long.

01:23:57 ◼   ► And then that is, I posted a video of my edit process

01:24:01 ◼   ► for an episode of "The Incomparable."

01:24:03 ◼   ► That's a two to four hour long post-production for most.

01:24:07 ◼   ► I'd say on average it's probably about two or three hours

01:24:11 ◼   ► to do an episode of that.

01:24:12 ◼   ► And that's, I edit that more,

01:24:15 ◼   ► in a more detailed fashion than I do other shows.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And part of that is the content of the show.

01:24:20 ◼   ► And part of that is the number of panelists on the show

01:24:22 ◼   ► and the fact that it's an unstructured conversation.

01:24:25 ◼   ► So there's more interruptions that have to get smoothed out

01:24:27 ◼   ► and all of that.

01:24:28 ◼   ► And then the total party kill is, you know,

01:24:30 ◼   ► that's a totally different commitment because that's a,

01:24:33 ◼   ► you know, three or four hour gameplay,

01:24:34 ◼   ► which we usually have about a half an hour

01:24:36 ◼   ► of technical frustrations at the beginning

01:24:38 ◼   ► to get it rolling.

01:24:39 ◼   ► But then it's just me having fun.

01:24:40 ◼   ► And then over the course of several weeks,

01:24:43 ◼   ► I have to go through the edit

01:24:45 ◼   ► and do a less detailed edit than I do

01:24:47 ◼   ► for something like the incomparable,

01:24:49 ◼   ► but still, you know, I'm still looking for stray noises

01:24:52 ◼   ► and things like that.

01:24:53 ◼   ► So it varies.

01:24:54 ◼   ► I numbered it up.

01:24:55 ◼   ► I haven't tallied in a while

01:24:56 ◼   ► how much time I spend on podcasts,

01:24:58 ◼   ► but you know, I think it's pretty efficient.

01:25:00 ◼   ► Like this podcast, I probably spend three hours a week on,

01:25:04 ◼   ► and clockwise, I probably spend two hours a week on,

01:25:07 ◼   ► and incomparable, I probably spend five hours a week on,

01:25:10 ◼   ► and TV Talk Machine, that's probably like an hour and a half.

01:25:14 ◼   ► So it varies based on what the show is.

01:25:17 ◼   ► - But like, so like saying about that,

01:25:18 ◼   ► that episode of "Connected" that we did.

01:25:20 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:25:22 ◼   ► - That took me between five and six hours to edit that.

01:25:25 ◼   ► - Well, we talked about on one of your previous

01:25:27 ◼   ► interview shows, we talked about the radio drama

01:25:30 ◼   ► and the incomparable radio drama, you know,

01:25:32 ◼   ► the first one and the second one too,

01:25:34 ◼   ► they probably both took me 30, 40 hours to edit,

01:25:36 ◼   ► but those are, you know, exceptions to the rule.

01:25:38 ◼   ► There's the weekly cycle of like,

01:25:41 ◼   ► this is what a regular episode is.

01:25:43 ◼   ► And then there's the, it's just like anything, right?

01:25:44 ◼   ► Then there's the week where you have to work above

01:25:46 ◼   ► and beyond 'cause you're on some crazy project.

01:25:48 ◼   ► And then you go back down and it's like,

01:25:49 ◼   ► now we're back in kind of regular time mode.

01:25:52 ◼   ► Anyway, I hope that answers your question, Lister Chris.

01:25:58 ◼   ► You do the math, add it all up.

01:26:02 ◼   ► But it varies, the recording time

01:26:05 ◼   ► and the edit time can really vary.

01:26:07 ◼   ► And then there's the prep time that can vary.

01:26:09 ◼   ► But it's not, I get the impression from some people,

01:26:11 ◼   ► it's like I can't believe you do like you do what six shows and I do five four a week six weekly shows and four weekly

01:26:17 ◼   ► Shows and there's like how do you have time for anything else? And for me the answer is

01:26:21 ◼   ► It's a part-time job. It is a big chunk of my time, but it's still not

01:26:27 ◼   ► You know, it's you can do the math there, but it's less than 20 hours a week that I spend on this

01:26:33 ◼   ► yeah, so I

01:26:35 ◼   ► Could do more but I'm not gonna

01:26:39 ◼   ► Yeah, you can do more. Trust me. I do. But like, you know, for me, it's, it's, it's,

01:26:43 ◼   ► there's so much more, you know, now than for me to do than there ever was before with all

01:26:49 ◼   ► of my arrangements. Because we run the machine. And, and that, and the machine takes a lot

01:26:57 ◼   ► of oil to get it to run.

01:26:59 ◼   ► Right. Well, there's the running the business part of it too, that is totally, that's not

01:27:04 ◼   ► on every show. That's like running your business. It's separate from the shows, but that's also

01:27:08 ◼   ► and I have that with the incomparable and six colors both.

01:27:11 ◼   ► Brian, real time follow up,

01:27:14 ◼   ► Brian Hamilton asks in the chat room,

01:27:15 ◼   ► how does, how do my sound quality standards

01:27:18 ◼   ► shift between shows?

01:27:19 ◼   ► - That's a really good question.

01:27:22 ◼   ► That is an excellent question

01:27:24 ◼   ► 'cause I do have different standards.

01:27:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too, me too.

01:27:28 ◼   ► Like I said, I do TV Talk Machine and I don't even record,

01:27:32 ◼   ► I just use the Skype call.

01:27:34 ◼   ► I don't even have Tim record his end.

01:27:37 ◼   ► And my two reasons for doing that is,

01:27:39 ◼   ► generally our Skype call is very good quality,

01:27:42 ◼   ► and we're both local, we're both in the Bay Area,

01:27:45 ◼   ► it's very good quality, it's fine.

01:27:48 ◼   ► And two is, he's not a super technical guy,

01:27:51 ◼   ► and I kinda just don't wanna walk him through the steps

01:27:54 ◼   ► every week of doing his own recording

01:27:56 ◼   ► and then getting it to me.

01:27:57 ◼   ► And if it was a problem, I would probably go through

01:27:59 ◼   ► and set him up with Dropbox,

01:28:00 ◼   ► and set him up with Call Recorder and all of that,

01:28:02 ◼   ► but it's never been a problem, and I don't wanna bother.

01:28:05 ◼   ► So my standards are a little lower,

01:28:06 ◼   ► But since it's only two people talking

01:28:08 ◼   ► and it generally is of good quality,

01:28:10 ◼   ► it's good enough for me.

01:28:11 ◼   ► And I still do take the two tracks

01:28:13 ◼   ► and noise gate them and compress them

01:28:15 ◼   ► and do some stuff with them.

01:28:16 ◼   ► But I don't ask for a self-recorded track for him.

01:28:18 ◼   ► And that's the only show I do like that.

01:28:21 ◼   ► All the rest of them, you know,

01:28:23 ◼   ► it varies somewhat,

01:28:25 ◼   ► but I try to have everybody record their end.

01:28:28 ◼   ► And then it's just a matter of what you prioritize.

01:28:30 ◼   ► With "Incomparable," I'm prioritizing overtalking

01:28:32 ◼   ► and interruptions because that's a panel show.

01:28:34 ◼   ► With Clockwise, because the format is so regimented,

01:28:37 ◼   ► there's not a lot of overtalking and interruption,

01:28:39 ◼   ► but it has to fit in 30 minutes.

01:28:41 ◼   ► So that's what I prioritize is cutting it to fit.

01:28:44 ◼   ► It just varies.

01:28:45 ◼   ► In Total Party Kill, I'm all over the place.

01:28:46 ◼   ► 'Cause I told myself when we started doing that,

01:28:48 ◼   ► that I wasn't gonna edit that heavily at all.

01:28:50 ◼   ► And it turns out I edited about as heavily.

01:28:53 ◼   ► In my Six Colors piece, I say I don't.

01:28:56 ◼   ► It's a lie.

01:28:57 ◼   ► I kind of edit that as heavily,

01:28:58 ◼   ► almost as heavily as I do the incomparable.

01:29:00 ◼   ► And that's, I probably shouldn't,

01:29:02 ◼   ► because it takes too much time.

01:29:05 ◼   ► But I kinda do.

01:29:07 ◼   ► I kinda just get into the habit of saying,

01:29:09 ◼   ► I wanna get out all those,

01:29:11 ◼   ► all the over talking and all the weird,

01:29:12 ◼   ► like people bumping their microphones

01:29:14 ◼   ► 'cause it sounds better.

01:29:16 ◼   ► But sometimes it's just,

01:29:17 ◼   ► what I said in that article,

01:29:18 ◼   ► and Myke, I know we've talked about this too,

01:29:20 ◼   ► is there's a spectrum.

01:29:21 ◼   ► There's like on the one side,

01:29:22 ◼   ► it's like my wife listens to a knitting podcast

01:29:24 ◼   ► that literally they press record and then they press stop.

01:29:28 ◼   ► And like the act of pressing record is in the podcast.

01:29:32 ◼   ► And if they have to go away for a moment,

01:29:34 ◼   ► they say, okay, we're gonna pause it.

01:29:36 ◼   ► And then, and now we're back.

01:29:38 ◼   ► They like literally there was no editing.

01:29:40 ◼   ► And then on the other end of the spectrum

01:29:41 ◼   ► is something that's like an NPR podcast

01:29:43 ◼   ► or something that's like super edited

01:29:44 ◼   ► within an inch of its life.

01:29:45 ◼   ► And as you move from the one side to the other,

01:29:48 ◼   ► it's just time.

01:29:49 ◼   ► It's more and more exponentially increasing time.

01:29:53 ◼   ► And you gotta decide every show is different.

01:29:55 ◼   ► And that's what I found is every podcast that I do

01:29:57 ◼   ► falls somewhere on that spectrum and it's different based on what the needs are of that

01:30:01 ◼   ► show and I think that's absolutely true. The relay shows are more similar than my shows

01:30:06 ◼   ► are but they're, but still every show is going to be different. You're editing someone else's

01:30:11 ◼   ► show now too and that, the rocket, so that's got to be a different experience still.

01:30:15 ◼   ► That's totally different. Editing a show that's not mine is weird. It's weird. I like to do

01:30:22 ◼   ► it because whilst we're getting kind of the kinks worked out, I have the ability to help

01:30:29 ◼   ► guide the show a little bit, which I quite like, so I can give them thoughts and stuff

01:30:34 ◼   ► like that.

01:30:36 ◼   ► I like that.

01:30:37 ◼   ► And also I would be listening to the show anyway, so I may as well make it part of my

01:30:41 ◼   ► work at the moment, which is fun.

01:30:48 ◼   ► But yeah, it's different.

01:30:50 ◼   ► It's totally different because it's, I don't know, there's something strange about it because

01:30:54 ◼   ► I don't know what's going to happen next.

01:30:56 ◼   ► Like, if I'm editing something of my own, I kind of have a feeling of like, "Oh, I know

01:31:00 ◼   ► I need to work on this bit."

01:31:02 ◼   ► It's strange.

01:31:05 ◼   ► It's just a different kind of experience.

01:31:07 ◼   ► I probably won't edit Rocket forever.

01:31:09 ◼   ► We're probably going to get someone to help us on it, but just for the time being, I am,

01:31:15 ◼   ► which is a good thing.

01:31:16 ◼   ► I like doing that for them to lend a hand.

01:31:20 ◼   ► But I agree, different shows that we do, they're similar, but I do have different standards

01:31:28 ◼   ► of the amount of time that I spend on shows.

01:31:32 ◼   ► And that comes from audience size to the discerningness of the audience.

01:31:40 ◼   ► So I feel like, and I believe there's listeners of The Pen Addict are less critical about

01:31:44 ◼   ► audio then this is this show and if you listen to Bonanza well God help you

01:31:50 ◼   ► that just rolls out as it rolls out you know it's just kind of there's just

01:31:55 ◼   ► different different kind of different strokes for different folks I think

01:32:00 ◼   ► yep too quick we have two more quick bits of ask upgrade that I'll just blow

01:32:07 ◼   ► through here really quickly listener Yap wrote in to say every time I see

01:32:13 ◼   ► Manchego cheese, I have to think about the Manchego vertical and send a picture of Manchego

01:32:17 ◼   ► cheese. So I wanted to mention this only to throw in my Super Bowl fact. We had Manchego.

01:32:23 ◼   ► Philip Michaels, Lisa Schmeiser, and their daughter came over for the Super Bowl. Always

01:32:28 ◼   ► nice to have more people around for the Super Bowl. We had some Manchego. We had a nice

01:32:31 ◼   ► cheddar that I got from Whole Foods. And some Gouda. So that's your cheese update, your

01:32:38 ◼   ► cheese vertical update Super Bowl you missed the Super Bowl this year Myke

01:32:43 ◼   ► you're sleeping so frustrating so that was the plan because I had something I

01:32:47 ◼   ► needed to do this morning then I couldn't sleep oh just just read about

01:32:51 ◼   ► the Super Bowl on Twitter themed I was awake for the entire Super Bowl I'm so

01:32:56 ◼   ► annoyed because I really enjoy watching it but but didn't like I could have even

01:33:00 ◼   ► watched it online but no I didn't I thought I was trying to sleep and I was

01:33:07 ◼   ► just kind of reading Twitter when I couldn't sleep. Never mind, never mind. It looked like

01:33:11 ◼   ► it was an exciting one.

01:33:13 ◼   ► And last bit of Ask Upgrade is Peanut Gallery who said, "I wish for an iOS app that would

01:33:17 ◼   ► let me listen to Relay FM live and participate in the live chat room," which I think is a

01:33:21 ◼   ► good idea and I mentioned this in my monologue in the chat room earlier. I don't think a

01:33:28 ◼   ► dedicated app for this is necessarily going to reach a big enough audience, but if you've

01:33:31 ◼   ► got a--if somebody has a suggestion, if there's some app out there that does this, that would

01:33:36 ◼   ► great I'd love to hear about it but if you are a developer of an iOS IRC app

01:33:42 ◼   ► IRC chat app I guess C stands for chat IRC app you could probably make a nice

01:33:51 ◼   ► differentiator of a feature by point it letting your users also point the app to

01:33:57 ◼   ► a stream URL and do audio while you're in the chat room because that is a use

01:34:04 ◼   ► for podcast fans. So I don't know about a dedicated app or not but if somebody

01:34:09 ◼   ► knows something because that it happens that like you you set it to you set it

01:34:13 ◼   ► to stream audio in the background and then you go to the IRC app and at some

01:34:16 ◼   ► point there's memory problems and it quits the stream and you're not

01:34:20 ◼   ► listening anymore. If only you knew the man in charge. Yeah, if only.

01:34:26 ◼   ► Anyway. So this is going to be the first Myke watches a movie vertical. Yes. And

01:34:33 ◼   ► And at the end of the episode, I will announce there is going to be another one next week.

01:34:37 ◼   ► There is.

01:34:38 ◼   ► Which I'm excited about. But the Myke Watches a Movie vertical is brought to you by our friends

01:34:44 ◼   ► at MailRoute.

01:34:46 ◼   ► Yes, indeed. MailRoute is the sponsor of this vertical. Imagine a world without spam,

01:34:51 ◼   ► viruses, or bounced email. You don't need to imagine it because it's real if you use

01:34:56 ◼   ► MailRoute like I do. Open your email, see only legit email that you want and need to receive,

01:35:01 ◼   ► the bounces and the spam are not there, your inbox is clean.

01:35:05 ◼   ► MailRoute has made this a daily reality for me

01:35:07 ◼   ► and it can do for you.

01:35:08 ◼   ► You don't have to install any hardware or software.

01:35:10 ◼   ► You don't have to maintain any of that stuff.

01:35:12 ◼   ► MailRoute does it all in the cloud.

01:35:14 ◼   ► They receive your mail, sort it,

01:35:15 ◼   ► and then pass it on to your mail server,

01:35:18 ◼   ► cleaned of all of that junk,

01:35:20 ◼   ► all that bad stuff that you don't wanna see.

01:35:22 ◼   ► It's easy to set up, it's reliable,

01:35:24 ◼   ► it's trusted by not just me,

01:35:25 ◼   ► but the largest universities and corporations out there.

01:35:28 ◼   ► If you're a desktop user,

01:35:29 ◼   ► you'll find that the MailRoute user interface

01:35:30 ◼   ► super simple and effective. I always talk about this digest I get, which I find very

01:35:35 ◼   ► entertaining. What subjects are spammers trying to send through their trends that happen?

01:35:40 ◼   ► It's kind of hilarious, but I check that to see if there are any false readings, which

01:35:44 ◼   ► there almost never are. It's maybe happened once in the last month. If I do find a good

01:35:50 ◼   ► message in there, I click once and I can whitelist that person. They'll never be filtered again,

01:35:55 ◼   ► and that mail is immediately delivered to my inbox. So it's super easy to use. And if

01:36:00 ◼   ► If you're an email administrator or an IT professional, they've built all the tools

01:36:03 ◼   ► with you in mind. They even have an API for easy account management. Support for LDAP,

01:36:09 ◼   ► Active Directory, TLS, mail bagging, outbound relay, everything you'd want from the people

01:36:15 ◼   ► handling your mail. So remove spam from your life for good. Go to mailroute.net/upgrade,

01:36:21 ◼   ► mailroute.net/upgrade for a free trial and 10% off for the lifetime of your account.

01:36:29 ◼   ► So thank you to MailRoute for sponsoring the "Myke watches a movie" vertical and for filtering

01:36:34 ◼   ► my mail.

01:36:36 ◼   ► So The Princess Bride.

01:36:39 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:36:40 ◼   ► Now can you please give a little bit of context to this movie?

01:36:45 ◼   ► Because it's one of those films that is a cult classic, right?

01:36:48 ◼   ► It is a cult classic.

01:36:50 ◼   ► Why is that the case?

01:36:51 ◼   ► Like, do you have any kind of feeling as to why The Princess Bride is a cult classic?

01:36:56 ◼   ► So we talked about it in "Incomparable" episode 25.

01:36:59 ◼   ► I think one of the-- so I was late to "The Princess Bride."

01:37:02 ◼   ► I went off to college, and people were quoting lines

01:37:04 ◼   ► from "The Princess Bride," and I had no idea what was going on.

01:37:08 ◼   ► And then I didn't see the movie until I was maybe out

01:37:11 ◼   ► of college even at that point.

01:37:13 ◼   ► So I think for some reason, this movie is particularly quotable.

01:37:20 ◼   ► I think the heightened--

01:37:24 ◼   ► It's the storybook element that these are tropes

01:37:26 ◼   ► that we're used to seeing in fairytales

01:37:29 ◼   ► with a knowing and kind of postmodern,

01:37:34 ◼   ► you know, knowing spin.

01:37:35 ◼   ► There's a commentary on this kind of story

01:37:38 ◼   ► that's happening inside the story.

01:37:40 ◼   ► Plus it's got the framing device

01:37:41 ◼   ► with Peter Falk and Fred Savage.

01:37:43 ◼   ► So, you know, you're commenting on it as a story

01:37:46 ◼   ► while it's happening.

01:37:48 ◼   ► I think all of that is kind of mixed in there

01:37:50 ◼   ► that this is very quotable.

01:37:53 ◼   ► And I would say for the period in my life,

01:37:55 ◼   ► when this came out, the reason that all the college students

01:37:58 ◼   ► in my college were quoting it also is,

01:38:00 ◼   ► you know, when you're younger,

01:38:04 ◼   ► this is the kind of movie that is both familiar

01:38:06 ◼   ► in the sense that it is an old fashioned fairytale

01:38:09 ◼   ► and also, you know, beautifully different

01:38:13 ◼   ► in that it is winking at the whole thing.

01:38:15 ◼   ► And that's clever.

01:38:17 ◼   ► And I think, especially when you're,

01:38:19 ◼   ► you know, high school college age,

01:38:21 ◼   ► You love that idea that somebody is taking this form

01:38:25 ◼   ► that you've been seeing your entire life

01:38:26 ◼   ► and is now playing with it and winking at it.

01:38:29 ◼   ► So, but if I had to pick one thing,

01:38:31 ◼   ► it's that it's just insanely quotable.

01:38:34 ◼   ► - So when I first started hearing people mention

01:38:38 ◼   ► the Princess Bride kind of on the internet

01:38:40 ◼   ► and on shows like yours, there was something in my brain

01:38:45 ◼   ► that got it mixed up with the Anne Hathaway movie,

01:38:48 ◼   ► Princess Diaries and I was very confused as to why all of these nerds enjoyed the

01:38:54 ◼   ► Princess Diaries so much. The Princess Diaries has a 6.2 on IMDb and it's about

01:39:03 ◼   ► Mia Thermopolis has just found out that she is the heir to the apparent throne

01:39:08 ◼   ► of Genovia so it's like a regular American girl who finds out she's a

01:39:14 ◼   ► Princess basically it's so I was very confused but then once I was able to to

01:39:19 ◼   ► break the confusion the interest in Hathaway is not in the Princess Bride

01:39:24 ◼   ► she is not in the Princess Bride Julie Andrews not in the Princess Bride not at

01:39:28 ◼   ► all not even a little bit it is interesting though that even though I

01:39:33 ◼   ► have never seen this movie it has snuck into my conscience like I am aware of

01:39:37 ◼   ► the references I am aware of inconceivable I am aware of would you

01:39:43 ◼   ► like a peanut. You know, I am aware of these things. They have snuck in.

01:39:49 ◼   ► I always find that interesting when you can relate to the reference and can even

01:39:56 ◼   ► make the reference without actually knowing the source material. So that's

01:40:01 ◼   ► one of those interesting things that happens in college.

01:40:03 ◼   ► That's what happened to me in college at first too. It's like, "Hello, my name is

01:40:08 ◼   ► Negan Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. Oh yeah, I know that reference.

01:40:12 ◼   ► I know it from other references, but not from the actual movie, but from the references!

01:40:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:17 ◼   ► So, I have to make one brief aside, just to read verbatim from my notes.

01:40:25 ◼   ► And my notes say, "Oh my, Robin Wright."

01:40:27 ◼   ► Yes.

01:40:28 ◼   ► "She is beautiful."

01:40:30 ◼   ► Oh yes!

01:40:31 ◼   ► "In this movie, she is just incredibly beautiful."

01:40:34 ◼   ► I am only very familiar with her from House of Cards.

01:40:39 ◼   ► House of Cards, right, sure.

01:40:40 ◼   ► where of course she is also a beautiful lady, but she's younger, probably closer to my age

01:40:46 ◼   ► in the Princess Bride. I was going to call it Diaries. She's very stunning and she's kind of

01:40:54 ◼   ► in her look, the perfect look for a fairy tale princess. It makes perfect sense, right?

01:41:02 ◼   ► And as well, the way that the movie starts, I find to be very interesting because it starts off as

01:41:08 ◼   ► this idyllic romance story right and and it's it's very it's very well done I

01:41:15 ◼   ► like that a lot because it's kind of like with is it care how do you say

01:41:20 ◼   ► Carrie Carrie Elwes that's it Carrie Elwes and and Robin Wright are these two

01:41:25 ◼   ► blonde beautiful blue-eyed you know like sure perfect fairy tale stars and it's

01:41:32 ◼   ► like you know like soft focus lens you know they're like in love it's it starts

01:41:36 ◼   ► off really well and I love how the young boy, is it Fred Savage, right?

01:41:42 ◼   ► Yeah. He's just like, "Is this a kissing book?" And I just think it's so funny, like the way

01:41:47 ◼   ► I just really enjoyed the way that it started. I have a real love for Andre the

01:41:52 ◼   ► Giant, just in general. I was a pro wrestling fan as a kid and remember fondly

01:42:00 ◼   ► watching Andre, you know, the biggest man in the world, you know, fighting Hulk Hogan.

01:42:05 ◼   ► He apparently was given his lines phonetically for this because he doesn't he didn't speak

01:42:10 ◼   ► English very well at all.

01:42:11 ◼   ► No, no, he's French.

01:42:12 ◼   ► French, yeah.

01:42:13 ◼   ► Yeah, and does not, never did speak English very well.

01:42:16 ◼   ► Yeah, but I would argue that it enhances that character that he's sort of this somewhat

01:42:23 ◼   ► impenetrable, confusing giant man.

01:42:26 ◼   ► It's like, yeah.

01:42:28 ◼   ► And they paint him as quite simple as well, you know, because he's like, yeah, which is

01:42:32 ◼   ► which is great and I really like that because when Inigo says to you know says

01:42:38 ◼   ► right at the very end he's like is it Fezzik? Fezzik. Fezzik, like you have

01:42:45 ◼   ► finally done something right like when they're making their escape right right

01:42:49 ◼   ► there's a nice moment where where they're they're they're on the chase and

01:42:54 ◼   ► and he said he wants to fight he wants to fight them and he says no no hide

01:43:01 ◼   ► behind a rock and throw a boulder and throw rocks at them and he says my way

01:43:06 ◼   ► is not very sporting. He's like upset he's like no that's not because he's a

01:43:11 ◼   ► good he's a good guy he's not a bad guy. Vizzini is bad but Fezzik is a very nice

01:43:15 ◼   ► giant person.

01:43:17 ◼   ► Like he's Andre in this role is so fantastically terrible like

01:43:23 ◼   ► yeah that's what's so good about him.

01:43:25 ◼   ► It's endearing yeah it's endearing he is an

01:43:27 ◼   ► endearing character and it is in part because he is not an actor and he's his

01:43:32 ◼   ► lines are kind of you know muddled and and yet I think I think it works because

01:43:38 ◼   ► of that I think it makes you love love that big that big lug yeah I mean

01:43:42 ◼   ► because he's cast because he's the closest you can get to a giant to a

01:43:45 ◼   ► giant yeah like he's seven foot tall also and he suffers with gigantism you

01:43:52 ◼   ► know so he kind of has these larger-than-life features and he so he's

01:43:57 ◼   ► kind of perfect for the role that they're fitting. One of the things that I

01:44:03 ◼   ► really liked about the book, like the storytelling device, is when it would

01:44:08 ◼   ► break to like the present day and then the grandpa would, the grandfather,

01:44:14 ◼   ► would start to read the story back and you'd see the flashes of it happening.

01:44:20 ◼   ► So like he would start to tell the story and it would be his narration.

01:44:23 ◼   ► Where was I? And he'd start reading the parts and then start flashing

01:44:26 ◼   ► around again. And I don't know if this is something that is intended and I wonder

01:44:32 ◼   ► how you feel about that but you know when the grandson complains about

01:44:37 ◼   ► certain ways that the story's going I had the feeling that his grandfather was

01:44:41 ◼   ► changing the story. Ah interesting. Because he's like oh but you know such

01:44:47 ◼   ► as they they shouldn't get away or whatever and he'd be like oh no wait

01:44:51 ◼   ► just just let me continue because they seem to like at these points that the

01:44:54 ◼   ► the story takes sharp turns. Well, but what goes against that is that there's a moment where he says,

01:45:02 ◼   ► you know, what happens to Prince Humperdinck? You know, how does he die in the end? And he says,

01:45:12 ◼   ► "No, he lives. He lives. He gets away with it." And the grandson says, "Jesus, Grandpa,

01:45:19 ◼   ► "Why are you reading this book to me?"

01:45:21 ◼   ► [ Laughter ]

01:45:24 ◼   ► Yeah. -Yeah, I like that bit.

01:45:26 ◼   ► I like that. -Yeah, the whole commentary,

01:45:28 ◼   ► the, you know, "Stop with the kissing" and all of that,

01:45:30 ◼   ► and, you know, that is a -- Yeah, it's a great --

01:45:33 ◼   ► I think it's a great framing sequence to have them all,