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Upgrade

19: Marco Marketing

 

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00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:03   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 19.

00:00:13   Today's show is brought to you by our friends at lynda.com

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00:00:20   For a 10-day free trial, visit lynda.com/upgrade.

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00:00:34   My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined as always by the man about town, Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:39   Hi Myke, I'm the man about town, eh?

00:00:43   Uh huh, that's what you want to say.

00:00:46   Interesting way to describe somebody who works inside his house.

00:00:49   You're a Snell town, you know?

00:00:52   Sure.

00:00:53   You're the mayor of Snell town.

00:00:54   I bring it with me, yeah.

00:00:55   I don't know where that came from.

00:00:57   It was the first thing that came to my head.

00:01:00   I have a little bit of a sore throat today so I might be a little bit husky, Jason.

00:01:05   I'm just getting over my cold.

00:01:06   My cold is finally abating.

00:01:08   I'm almost out of it.

00:01:09   I'm almost done with the cold.

00:01:12   So I'll probably get the flu.

00:01:13   I've been thinking about it recently, right?

00:01:15   I have a sore throat because over the weekend I went to a birthday party.

00:01:19   My brother was celebrating his 30th birthday.

00:01:22   So we celebrated and in celebrating my throat became sore because out in nightclubs and

00:01:29   talking to people it's loud.

00:01:31   And I think to myself these days I should take more care of my voice so maybe I'll take

00:01:34   like an extra sketch or something next time and just won't speak.

00:01:39   This is how I always feel with WWDC.

00:01:40   I'm not used to spending a lot of time out in loud environments shouting at people in

00:01:48   order to be heard.

00:01:49   And so whenever I go to WWDC or some other conference,

00:01:54   I have this where I shred my voice in very short order.

00:01:57   It happens really quickly.

00:01:59   - Yep, I can feel it going within like 20 minutes.

00:02:02   - Yeah, and where was it?

00:02:04   At Singleton, I was doing a podcast with Dan Morin

00:02:07   after one of the events in the evening.

00:02:10   And Dan and I looked at each other about 10, 20 minutes in

00:02:13   and we're like, we need to stop talking

00:02:15   or our podcast later is gonna be,

00:02:18   "Hello, Dan!"

00:02:19   (laughing)

00:02:20   You know, it just completely wrecked.

00:02:21   So yeah, you're gonna have to watch that.

00:02:23   Your voice is your professional tool now.

00:02:28   It's your instrument.

00:02:29   - If you would like to hear myself,

00:02:32   Stephen, Jason, and Dan very hoarse at WWDC,

00:02:37   there is an episode of the pre-relay Clockwise.

00:02:41   - Oh yes. - Where we did that.

00:02:42   And it was quite funny, like we were doing that show

00:02:44   and I was like, "I can't talk, guys."

00:02:46   I'll put it in the show notes.

00:02:48   It's quite funny to hear us.

00:02:49   There was lots of drinks around the room

00:02:52   to try and keep everybody speaking.

00:02:55   - Yeah, yeah.

00:02:56   It's not good, you know, yeah.

00:02:58   It may be entertaining content,

00:02:59   but down quality in terms of voices.

00:03:03   You need to be able to be heard to be on a podcast.

00:03:05   I think it'd be difficult for somebody

00:03:07   who's lost their voice to be on a podcast.

00:03:09   - So we have a real barnstormer of a show today.

00:03:12   - We do.

00:03:13   This is a biplane that is going around from town to town

00:03:16   doing tricks aerially. It's that kind of show.

00:03:18   - It's that kind of show.

00:03:19   So we're gonna kick it off with some epic length followup,

00:03:23   but in a good way.

00:03:25   So why don't you tell me what we've got?

00:03:27   - Yeah, yeah, good followup.

00:03:28   We're doing some restructuring of formats and verticals

00:03:32   and we've had some notes from the network executives

00:03:36   and it's all gonna be good.

00:03:38   But we'll start with a little followup

00:03:39   because I love the followup.

00:03:41   Listener Rob wrote in to say,

00:03:44   Thank you, Jason, for motivating me to finally write my thing about all day battery life.

00:03:51   So we talked last week about Apple solving for X with batteries and Myke pushed back

00:03:57   on some of the theories in my charts, which actually was quite enjoyable.

00:04:00   I really enjoyed that you were like, "Well, wait, what about this?"

00:04:03   And that was, I love the give and take of that segment.

00:04:05   I thought that was really great.

00:04:07   Rob wrote a piece that we can put in the show notes where he talks a little bit about battery

00:04:13   life and who uses, you know, people are creatures of habit. He said we get used to plugging

00:04:21   in our phones, that more people would have their phones run out of battery if they never

00:04:29   plugged in their phones, but you get trained to plug them in in order to hoard electricity

00:04:32   and then you end up in a place where your phone lasts, but it's been tethered. And he

00:04:38   he makes a bunch of other points

00:04:39   and it's an interesting piece,

00:04:40   but I wanted to use that as a jumping off point

00:04:43   to also based on some feedback

00:04:45   that isn't in our notes that I got is,

00:04:47   just to discuss this,

00:04:50   Apple seems to feel like there are,

00:04:54   Apple is well aware there are people

00:04:58   who want more battery life on their iPhone.

00:05:00   They're well aware of that.

00:05:02   I think Apple seems to feel that the people

00:05:04   who really, really want more battery life

00:05:07   are a relatively small group that can just buy

00:05:10   an external battery or a battery pack.

00:05:11   And I talk to people all the time,

00:05:12   there are certain people who never use

00:05:14   an external battery pack.

00:05:15   And then there are other people who are like,

00:05:16   "Oh yeah, I always just buy a Mophie case."

00:05:19   Like always, that's always what they do.

00:05:21   'Cause that for them, they like to live their life with that.

00:05:24   And Apple's approach seems to be that everybody else

00:05:29   shouldn't have to take on more thickness and weight

00:05:31   in their phone for, in order to fulfill the needs

00:05:35   of this smaller group of people who want more battery life

00:05:39   than what Apple is willing to give.

00:05:41   Now, the question is, where do you make that cutoff?

00:05:44   If it's half the people want more battery life

00:05:47   or 70% of the people want more battery life.

00:05:50   If most iPhones or many, very many iPhones

00:05:53   are always on battery packs

00:05:55   because the battery is just not good enough

00:05:57   to the point where it starts to also hurt sales of iPhones

00:05:59   'cause everybody says you can't buy an iPhone,

00:06:01   it doesn't have enough battery life.

00:06:04   Apple has to make that decision about what is a niche feature and not fulfill it.

00:06:11   And I feel like with a battery, I mean, that's definitely, that seems to be what they're

00:06:15   doing is saying, look, most people get by just fine.

00:06:18   It's not hurting the perception of our product.

00:06:21   There are certain people who really, really, really, really want more battery life, but

00:06:24   there are third party products for them.

00:06:26   we're not going to subject every person who uses this device to extra weight because some

00:06:34   people really want more battery life, especially when they're third-party products. So that

00:06:38   seems to be where they're coming from.

00:06:40   So with my 5S, I had it living in a Mophie case for practically all of its life because

00:06:47   I wanted that extra battery, it doubled my battery power. But now with the 6 Plus, if

00:06:52   If I wanted a Mophie case, there's no way I could use it.

00:06:55   It would be huge.

00:06:56   Like, can you imagine?

00:06:57   Although, with the 6 Plus, there is one.

00:06:59   I know, yeah.

00:07:00   But with the 6 Plus, it seems a lot less necessary, because the 6 Plus actually does have the

00:07:04   best battery life of any iPhone.

00:07:06   Yeah, definitely.

00:07:09   I do wonder about battery life being a niche.

00:07:14   I don't think it is.

00:07:16   There's nobody in my life that I know that doesn't have battery issues.

00:07:23   People are plugging their phones in multiple times a day or they're complaining that these

00:07:27   phones don't get battery life or whatever.

00:07:29   I can't think of anybody that I know that wouldn't be happier to have more battery life.

00:07:40   Is that magic more battery life or is that more battery life but their phone is bigger

00:07:44   and heavier. That's the trade-off, right? And I want to make it clear too, I got a couple

00:07:50   notes about this. When I'm stepping through Apple's thought processes here, that is not

00:07:55   an endorsement necessarily. I'm just trying to understand why Apple does what it does

00:07:59   in some of this stuff. And I think that it's an interesting question of like, Apple presumably

00:08:05   has an internal research department that is polling existing Apple customers and prospective

00:08:13   Apple customers and really trying to get a read on people's attitudes toward this stuff.

00:08:18   And so Apple probably has a pretty good idea of what at least they think the add-on battery

00:08:25   market is versus the people who buy an iPhone and don't buy an add-on battery. And I think

00:08:32   it's an interesting question of where do you change your priorities? Where do you make

00:08:35   the cutoff? I think we're talking about this because this is closer to being an issue than

00:08:42   I mean there are things that are truly like so far out on the edge that you're

00:08:47   like you know I'm switching to desktop Linux you're like all right you know

00:08:51   you're so far off on the edge of the mass of the people who buy this product

00:08:55   that I'm not so worried about you you're going to find a way to make yourself

00:08:58   happy

00:08:59   I'm not going to take this product and mess it up a little bit just to satisfy

00:09:02   these edge cases but this one seems like it's a bigger issue and that there there

00:09:08   is more opportunity for Apple to revisit it and say well and which they may have

00:09:11   have done by, certainly by making the phones bigger, they've gotten battery life as part

00:09:16   of the bargain. And so I think that's interesting. But it's not that I'm necessarily endorsing

00:09:21   this line of thought. I'm just trying to understand why Apple does what it does, because I find

00:09:24   that can be illuminating in trying to understand what else they might be doing. And I think

00:09:29   this is an interesting question for that reason.

00:09:33   So I had some follow-up and a little bit of pushback last week about my kind of claims

00:09:41   about my battery life and how great I think it is basically.

00:09:45   And I remember talking, I believe, with Nick Donnelly

00:09:50   on Twitter, Upgrading listener, Nick Donnelly,

00:09:53   and he was kind of saying that your battery life is great

00:09:57   because of all the non-screen battery life it gets.

00:10:00   Like it's not actually that much better was his claim.

00:10:03   So I was thinking about this,

00:10:06   and I think what he was kind of meaning is like,

00:10:07   yes, the audio playback is way longer on the 6 Plus,

00:10:10   but standby and using the screen isn't.

00:10:12   So I wanted to think about this and kind of,

00:10:14   I took stock today of the way that I've used my phone.

00:10:18   Now, there is one thing that's really frustrating.

00:10:21   I wanted to include one of the usage statistics

00:10:23   as like a screenshot,

00:10:24   but I had to restart my phone at one point today

00:10:28   because I'd lost data coverage.

00:10:29   It was weird, blame EE, my carrier.

00:10:32   So now I can't get the numbers, the actual numbers,

00:10:36   but I have times, so I can give you that.

00:10:38   So basically, I looked at it today, and so from 9am to 4pm, I have used my iPhone constantly.

00:10:44   I've used it to check and reply to email, I've read the documents for these show notes

00:10:49   in Google Drive, I've read all of my Twitter-themed stream for the day, I was playing video, I

00:10:56   was watching YouTube videos at one point whilst I was eating some lunch, I've been playing

00:11:00   games, I've used maps, and I've been listening to Overcast, so I've been on a two and a half

00:11:05   hour round trip today, for example where I was also listening to Overcast and

00:11:09   playing games at the same time because I think when I use my phone I'm very

00:11:13   rarely have the screen off like even if I'm listening to a

00:11:17   show I'm playing games or reading Twitter or something like that. So between

00:11:22   9 a.m. to 4 p.m. so I've used my phone I think constantly throughout that period

00:11:27   maybe like an hour where I wasn't where I was in a meeting I had 15% battery

00:11:31   life left on my phone by 4 p.m. So I think, I mean, and people can argue with

00:11:38   me, I think that's incredible and it's way more, way more than I got on my 5 and

00:11:44   my 5s. Yeah. Like I would have sometimes 15% by like 11 a.m. doing the same kind

00:11:51   of stuff. Yeah, I think most of the tests that involve screen on show that the 6+

00:11:56   life is crazy. Yeah and like to give, yeah, to give our kind of an idea to show

00:12:02   like it is kind of screen on time in like the last 24 hours. I'm looking at

00:12:07   the percentage like 17% tweetbot, 16% messages, 15% home and lock screen and

00:12:12   then it kind of goes down from there. So I mean I'm looking at it today and

00:12:18   coming out like yeah no that I think that's pretty impressive. That's a work

00:12:20   day. I've done an entire work day working on my phone for the entire day and it's

00:12:25   and it's lusted.

00:12:26   - Yeah, yeah, no, it's good.

00:12:29   I think the nice thing about the bigger screens

00:12:34   is that by doing bigger screens,

00:12:37   Apple is also picking up better battery life.

00:12:41   Even if it was never on its own enough,

00:12:43   I think with the bigger screen,

00:12:44   it gives them an opportunity to do better battery life.

00:12:49   And I liked, I mean, we had feedback

00:12:52   based on our discussion from people talking about

00:12:54   this idea that Apple's power isn't solving the issues,

00:12:59   they're not solving for X so much as they're a prisoner

00:13:05   to the way that the technology grows and changes

00:13:09   and all of that.

00:13:09   And I don't really buy that because I think in the end,

00:13:12   they could always make it bigger or heavier

00:13:14   or keep it the same.

00:13:15   And they often choose not to do that.

00:13:18   And that shows where their priorities are.

00:13:20   Yes, they are a prisoner in the sense that

00:13:22   this is a math problem.

00:13:23   why I say it's solving for X. This is algebra, you know, you change one variable and the

00:13:27   other variable has to change, and you're trying to get the right balance. And the way I figure

00:13:33   it, there's a number below which they won't go. And it varies some, but that number is

00:13:40   lower than I think some people, mystery number of people, would put the minimum battery life.

00:13:47   I think a lot of people would put it higher. But the good news is with the 6 line at least,

00:13:53   that number has come up perhaps as a side effect

00:13:57   of having more area inside the device,

00:14:01   so more places for battery to go,

00:14:03   just because you increase those screen dimensions

00:14:06   and even though it's not very thick,

00:14:08   that's still, you're adding a lot of area,

00:14:10   a lot of volume inside the device.

00:14:12   Anyway, I think it's an interesting topic

00:14:17   and I'm glad we got some feedback about that.

00:14:22   uh...

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00:16:07   Thanks friends.

00:16:09   Thanks lynda friends.

00:16:13   more follow-up. Something related it seems to last week when I admitted that I don't

00:16:18   use full screen mode very much, not even when editing, not even when editing using Logic

00:16:22   10 on an 11-inch MacBook Air, which I admit is kind of crazy.

00:16:27   You can't really use Logic in full screen though, because when you're trying to move

00:16:31   around the interface, it kind of sometimes requires you to drag outside of the app to

00:16:35   move quickly enough. So even though I am a full screen person, I don't use Logic in full

00:16:41   green because it slows me down. I will sometimes use it once I'm finished

00:16:47   dragging everything in and I'm just kind of motoring away with with editing for a

00:16:52   while but it's not it doesn't save me that much space either honestly it saves

00:17:00   me very small amount of space. Anyway, related to podcast editing I'm

00:17:06   gonna write something about this on six colors this week but I should pass on

00:17:11   I made a video. I made two videos this week, actually. I posted two videos this

00:17:19   week. One of them we'll put in the show notes. Well, we'll probably end up with

00:17:23   both of them in the show notes, won't we? But I'll put one in for you right now,

00:17:28   Myke. I did a time-lapse of me editing the incomparable this weekend, and I'm

00:17:34   gonna write about how I edit podcasts and embed that video, but it's up now,

00:17:39   so we can put that in the show notes. I saw CGP Grey did this with an episode of Hello

00:17:45   Internet I believe, and I thought that was an interesting idea, and when I write about

00:17:50   editing people ask me how I do my editing, and I occasionally post a screenshot and people

00:17:54   try to understand what the heck they're seeing, and I realized it might be useful sometime

00:17:58   to do a time lapse. So there's a video up at, I think it's like 200x of me editing an

00:18:06   episode of the incomparable, a fairly straightforward episode of the incomparable that you can go

00:18:10   see, speaking of editing things.

00:18:13   The difference between yours and Grey's video is Grey's video is 65 minutes long, because

00:18:18   he didn't respeed as much as you did, so depending on your tolerance.

00:18:22   Yeah, I took the maximum speed of Final Cut Pro, you know, the 200x mode, and I just said

00:18:30   do that, and so it's about 10 minutes long, which should be enough.

00:18:34   You can pause it, you can move around in it and see stuff if you want to.

00:18:39   And it's a 1080, it's a full HD, so the resolution is pretty good if you want to see it at that

00:18:43   level.

00:18:44   And, and, you know, you can set speed on YouTube, so you could watch it at a quarter speed if

00:18:49   you wanted to.

00:18:50   Exactly.

00:18:51   There you go, brilliant.

00:18:52   So plenty of options there, and I will write something up about that hopefully this week.

00:18:57   That is a top tip from me, by the way, the speed on YouTube.

00:19:01   Like if I'm watching a video, like a keynote video for something, like I'm doing some research,

00:19:05   I tend to watch it at like 1.5 and it helps me get through things a lot quicker.

00:19:11   People who listen to podcasts at elevated speeds will appreciate this tip.

00:19:14   They will.

00:19:15   Uh, listener Connor, uh, wrote in related to this saying, "Establishing habits, Apple

00:19:21   releases a new feature that allows greater productivity.

00:19:23   How does JSON implement it?"

00:19:25   Um, I have two answers to this.

00:19:28   One is, I tend to try all the new things because I usually am reviewing this stuff, so I have

00:19:33   to use the new features.

00:19:35   And so I do.

00:19:36   And sometimes those new features will stick, and I'll use them.

00:19:41   And other times they won't, and they'll fall by the wayside.

00:19:44   And there are many, many, many OS X features, for example, that I have used during the development

00:19:50   phase of the operating system, and then the moment that I'm done with my article, I never

00:19:56   use them again.

00:19:58   happens a lot. Why is this Jason? Why do you think this is? Are you so ingrained that you

00:20:04   don't, things don't catch on? My second point was I've been a Mac user for 25 years, right?

00:20:09   And it's not just habit, but it's efficiency. And this is something that I think, the key

00:20:17   moment to adopting a new workflow, I think, we should talk about this with David and Katie

00:20:23   time. Mac power users, vertical. The key moment is when you realize that your super optimized

00:20:31   thing that you've built up over time, because I think that's what most of us do as users

00:20:34   is we build up these super optimized workflows that may not even make sense, but they built

00:20:40   up step by step. Each step made sense. I think that happens a lot in life where you create

00:20:44   this crazy percolage of things and you would never go that way by choice, but each step

00:20:53   seemed to make sense. And so you end up with this thing that is efficient for you and really

00:21:00   idiosyncratic, but it works and it works for you. And a lot of computer users have that.

00:21:06   They're like, "Well, I do it this way." Well, I don't. Why do you do that? Like my editing

00:21:10   video, right? It's like, why do you edit it that way? Somebody who's a professional audio

00:21:13   editor commented on the video on Twitter and he said, "This is both I don't watch and must

00:21:22   watch" because there are probably things in there that will make me go "Why?" and other

00:21:25   things that will make me go "Oh!" right? So my point is we do this and we build these

00:21:30   things up and this is how we do our jobs on computers. The trick is when something new

00:21:38   happens to, if you're lucky, you look at it and you realize that if you do this new thing,

00:21:46   even if it's slightly more work in the beginning, you can see that it will be less work in the

00:21:52   end once you are comfortable with it. And that's a hard thing to do because there's

00:21:56   a learning curve there and it's unfamiliar and you have to have the kind of vision of

00:22:03   like, "Oh, that might be a better way to do this. Maybe I'll try that." And that's hard.

00:22:07   And sometimes people just, I mean, most of the time, probably people just don't do it.

00:22:09   They just don't bother.

00:22:10   They're like, look, I've got, I've got it the way I want it.

00:22:13   I'm really efficient with this.

00:22:14   Like, like Chris Breen tried to get me to edit podcasts and audition because he thought

00:22:18   audition was superior to logic.

00:22:22   And I, I just, one is I just learned how to do logic, but the other thing was I had constructed

00:22:28   what I think is a very good logic editing workflow for the kinds of shows that I do

00:22:34   and what I'm trying to solve for, back to algebra, which is I want a good quality show

00:22:40   but I also want it done as fast as possible and I can do it really quickly with my approach.

00:22:46   And I think Chris's approach is more careful in some ways, but takes longer. And it's one

00:22:56   of those things that I could probably learn Audition and it might pay off, it might not.

00:23:03   And I decided, you know what? I just started doing logic. I'm pretty happy with it. I'm

00:23:06   going to stick with it. But I think we all have that with new features of any operating

00:23:10   system. You know, any, any upgrade to software upgrade. Okay. So ding, the show's paid for

00:23:16   itself. Um, and it's a challenge. It's a challenge for all users. Cause I think actually the

00:23:21   more efficient you are, the more a power user you are, where you're getting, doing these

00:23:25   weird things in order, putting different apps together, using utilities like, like text

00:23:30   Expander or Keyboard Maestro or things like that, the more of that you build on, the more

00:23:36   efficient you get, but the harder it is to unravel that and go back to something and

00:23:39   try something new. So that is, I have the assorted cruft of 25 years of being a Mac

00:23:45   user and although OS X kind of broke a lot of that stuff, I've still had, you know, whatever

00:23:50   11 or 14 years, 13 years of OS X hardcore use to do the same thing. So yeah, it's a

00:23:58   a challenge. So I try because I have to write the reviews. At least I have to try this stuff.

00:24:03   Although one of the challenges with writing the reviews is if you're writing on like a

00:24:07   separate boot partition, you know, you're not really using it. You're like, "Doot-doo-doo,

00:24:13   here I am in this new beta of OS X Monterey Bay, and I'm using doot-doo-doo. Okay, now

00:24:19   I need to do work, restart, and then you do your work." Well, until you're really using

00:24:25   it on your real work and I know that's dangerous but until you're doing that you're not really

00:24:28   using it. You're just kind of tooling around in it and clicking on things and that's not

00:24:33   the same. So it's a challenge but I feel like I'm actually having an advantage in that my

00:24:38   job requires me to try it at least but even for that, even when you have that, like you

00:24:42   have to try it, it's hard to adopt that stuff.

00:24:45   Yeah I think it's, you know you say you kind of hinge on that point by saying it's your

00:24:52   history like your long history with the Mac but I think everyone's the same like

00:24:56   we all have our kind of our entrenched workflows like and it's

00:25:02   very difficult to break them like I was editing in GarageBand for way longer

00:25:06   than I needed to because it was what I knew I just knew how to use it and I

00:25:11   had logic I had logic yeah and I was just like ah but but I only want to

00:25:17   spend three hours editing this show and if I go to the new program whatever day

00:25:22   I do that it's gonna be ten hours. I had seven, never used it. I bought seven and

00:25:28   never used it because I was convinced that I needed to learn it. I mean seven

00:25:33   the UI was just like a it was like a toxic health stew basically and and

00:25:40   like ten when they brought ten out I was like right I can go in and do this now

00:25:44   because or X I actually don't it's called X right did I call it X or they

00:25:49   call it 10. They call this one X, don't they? They could go back and forth.

00:25:53   No, I think it's 10.

00:25:54   Oh, so confusing. But it's 7 to 10. And then when that came out, I was like, "I can understand

00:26:00   this and it's new so I can kind of jump in," and I did that. But that took me a long time

00:26:05   to then learn it, you know? And I'm still learning it. It's this thing like I use logic

00:26:09   every single day and there are so many features I don't fully understand how to use yet. But

00:26:14   I know what I know and I know what I need to know.

00:26:17   And that's kind of a very kind of a simple thing

00:26:20   for everybody.

00:26:21   Do you know what's hilarious?

00:26:22   Right now, I've just been told on my Mac

00:26:24   to learn what's new in OS X Yosemite.

00:26:26   It's like they can hear us.

00:26:28   You know, come on over guys, let me show you how to use it.

00:26:30   - No, the dialogue box should be like accept or deny.

00:26:35   Just no, I don't want to know.

00:26:37   Do not tell me anything that's new.

00:26:40   I think Connor's question is good.

00:26:42   I'm kind of serious.

00:26:43   I feel like we should come back to this at some point.

00:26:47   I think this is something that, interesting podcast

00:26:51   that I listen to touch on this sometimes,

00:26:54   but I feel like maybe this is the,

00:26:55   a lot of times it's the unsaid thing.

00:26:59   Maybe Upgrade is the right place,

00:27:00   since that's really what the name of this podcast is,

00:27:04   to talk about something you hear on Mac Power Users

00:27:06   or something Merlin talks about on Back to Work.

00:27:10   He does that sometimes too.

00:27:11   And there's this, I'm fascinated by that idea

00:27:15   that software companies work very hard

00:27:17   to create things that are new, new tools,

00:27:19   things to improve your workflow

00:27:21   and users tend to fight against it,

00:27:23   which is an interesting push and pull.

00:27:24   Like, you know, we need to give you,

00:27:26   instead of it being users with pitchforks and torches

00:27:29   demanding new features,

00:27:31   the way it seems to work in the software world

00:27:34   is all the users are like, no, don't change it.

00:27:37   And the software company is like,

00:27:39   guys, we gotta stay in business.

00:27:40   You gotta buy new features.

00:27:41   Here are some new features for you.

00:27:43   You like 'em, try 'em, come on.

00:27:44   And the user's like, "No, no, I don't want anything new."

00:27:48   Not all users, but that happens a lot.

00:27:49   That happens a lot with people who really rely

00:27:52   on certain pieces of software to do their jobs,

00:27:54   because they don't like change.

00:27:55   They've got these super-optimized workflows,

00:27:57   and it's a challenge,

00:27:58   'cause it's hard to move things ahead.

00:28:01   I think this is why Apple,

00:28:03   I mean, this is exactly why everybody freaked out

00:28:05   when Apple did Final Cut X.

00:28:07   And I'm not saying, again,

00:28:08   I'm not saying Final Cut X was a good idea.

00:28:11   All right, let's see.

00:28:12   I am.

00:28:13   I think it was a good idea in general to say,

00:28:15   we're going to, we want to do something

00:28:17   that's very different.

00:28:18   The problem was the way they communicated it

00:28:20   and the way they put it out there,

00:28:22   it was everybody perceived it as being,

00:28:24   oh, you should upgrade.

00:28:25   And it wasn't, it didn't have the features

00:28:28   that anybody who was using the previous version

00:28:30   of Final Cut could, you know,

00:28:33   so many of them couldn't upgrade to it

00:28:34   because it wasn't really an upgrade.

00:28:36   They should probably have called it, you know,

00:28:38   something new, new cut, second cut, I don't know what.

00:28:42   - It should have been just labeled as a beta,

00:28:44   like initially, and just put out that way.

00:28:45   - I kind of feel like it should have been,

00:28:47   I kind of feel like it should have been a new name.

00:28:49   A new name, maybe hearkening back to the old name 1.0,

00:28:51   because that's what it was, right?

00:28:53   But I understand why Apple wanted to do that,

00:28:56   and I totally understand why the users rebelled against it,

00:28:58   because again, you make your livelihood in Final Cut Pro,

00:29:01   and Apple gives you this thing, and you're like,

00:29:02   "Whoa, this is nothing like what I used."

00:29:04   And there, again, optimized workflows,

00:29:07   I've got everything where I want it.

00:29:08   Now you're completely messing this up.

00:29:10   And even if in the end, after a lot of work

00:29:13   and a bunch of updates, it is a better approach.

00:29:16   That's a lot of work that people may not want to do

00:29:20   ever or right now.

00:29:21   And just like you and me with logic, same thing.

00:29:24   It was clearly going to be in the end.

00:29:27   And that's why I finally jumped,

00:29:29   is I realized my frustrations with GarageBand

00:29:32   reached the point where I knew

00:29:34   that I needed to put in the time.

00:29:36   This is actually very similar to our feedback last week about scripting, an automator and

00:29:42   things like that.

00:29:44   At some point you realize, "Oh my God, if I put in five hours right now, I'm going to

00:29:47   save 100 hours in the next year."

00:29:51   That's what drives that change, I think, is that final realization that what you've got

00:29:55   now, although you optimized it, is just not good enough.

00:29:59   There's something out there that probably is better, and then you take the plunge.

00:30:03   And also Apple ripping out some of the podcast templates and features in GarageBand was like,

00:30:08   "Okay, time to go to Logic."

00:30:10   Like, Apple making their decision made on this, "You can still use the old GarageBand,

00:30:15   but at some point..."

00:30:16   It was like with Final Cut, right?

00:30:17   It's like, "At some point, you're not going to use it anymore, so you've got to kind of

00:30:21   learn the new thing."

00:30:22   So I decided instead of trying to learn the workarounds, which there are workarounds,

00:30:27   to get in GarageBand to still output as a podcast like you'd want.

00:30:30   I figured it's just time to move to Logic.

00:30:32   This topic, this idea, like you mentioned a moment ago about the company deciding that

00:30:38   they need new features, that users need new features and users rebelling, ties in really

00:30:45   interestingly to the software turnaround that we've been talking about recently.

00:30:51   Like who then, who is actually pushing the need for a yearly release cycle?

00:30:57   Is it the company, Apple, thinking that if they don't do this they're going to be irrelevant

00:31:01   or is it users really wanting it,

00:31:02   and maybe users don't want it.

00:31:04   I just think it's an interesting thing

00:31:05   that actually ties back to something

00:31:06   that we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks.

00:31:09   - Yeah, I mean, where is the drive?

00:31:11   I think there's some features that users,

00:31:14   I mean, the fact is, it's that famous thing

00:31:16   about the faster horse that I guess,

00:31:18   maybe somebody actually said,

00:31:20   if you ask people what they wanted,

00:31:22   a carriage horse and buggy users,

00:31:24   they'd say a faster horse, they wouldn't say a car.

00:31:26   Users don't always know what they want,

00:31:27   and that's sort of Steve Jobs famously has said that,

00:31:30   that they don't do a lot of focus group testing at Apple, right? Because people don't know

00:31:33   what they actually, what they need until Apple comes up with it and presents it to them.

00:31:39   And there's some truth to that. There are features that you're like, "Oh my God, this

00:31:42   is so great." But there are also things that it's that march of progress. It's like, "Oh,

00:31:46   well, you need to change how you do things, but in the end it'll be great." And people

00:31:50   are going to be much more resistant to that than if it's like a totally new thing, I think,

00:31:54   that comes out of left field. Yeah, this is really interesting. We've gone beyond follow-up

00:32:00   now. I feel bad because we had short follow-up and now that hasn't happened, but this is

00:32:04   really a topic. So thank you, Upgrading and Connor, for driving us into this topic, which

00:32:10   is I think one of the core questions of being a technology user and I think one of the core

00:32:14   things that we have been and should continue to talk about on this show, which is essentially

00:32:18   upgrade or not, right? And upgrades aren't always upgrades, right? Upgrades aren't always

00:32:26   what the people want. It's really interesting. Sometimes subscription stuff for companies

00:32:33   like Adobe, and Microsoft is doing this too, you could argue that that's a part of this

00:32:38   too, that in some ways potentially having a subscription service for your software could

00:32:43   allow you to escape from the "we're going to shove an upgrade at you every year or two

00:32:49   because we need the money" to this other model which is "look, just pay to use our software,

00:32:54   we'll keep updating it, you keep using it.

00:32:57   There's nice things about that.

00:32:59   There are also bad things like,

00:33:01   they just push you a new version.

00:33:03   You're like, whoa, wait, what happened to my old version?

00:33:06   And there's nothing you can do about it.

00:33:08   That can happen with some of that stuff,

00:33:10   especially web apps that happens like Google docs,

00:33:12   we've got a new version, but I liked your old version,

00:33:14   too bad it's gone.

00:33:15   Fascinating stuff.

00:33:17   - Let's go back to follow up.

00:33:19   - Yeah, a couple more quick follow up items

00:33:21   and then we'll jump into some of the other big topics

00:33:23   we've got. Listener Diane asked if anyone was considering that Apple could be

00:33:27   planning a magnetic charger like the Apple Watch is supposed to have,

00:33:31   and I think people, I've heard people talk about that, you know MagSafe is that,

00:33:36   though. MagSafe is the magnetic charger. It's smaller, I believe, than the one

00:33:41   that's on the Apple Watch. I don't know what's gonna happen, you know, I think

00:33:48   it's unlikely that there would be an induction-based charger on the MacBook

00:33:52   air I suppose it's possible but there are then you need to have a pad or

00:33:56   something to put it on I I don't feel like that's gonna be what what they're

00:34:02   gonna do so that's my quick answer I think what people are wondering with

00:34:06   that question is are they going to bypass that single USB for power

00:34:10   completely yeah I think that's the question right I don't think so no

00:34:13   neither do I because it one German probably would have found that out and

00:34:18   two I don't know where you put it like other people said what about on the

00:34:21   - The Apple logo, that would be a disaster.

00:34:24   That would just be a disaster.

00:34:25   Like there's no good would come of charging through

00:34:28   that little Apple logo there.

00:34:30   I can't see it working very well.

00:34:31   - No.

00:34:32   Let's see, Upgrading Zach wrote in,

00:34:36   identified himself as an Upgrading,

00:34:38   so definitely an Upgrading. - Good man, good man.

00:34:40   - And Diane, of course, is the one who suggested Upgrading

00:34:42   to us in the beginning, so she's an Upgrading, Diane.

00:34:45   Upgrading Zach says, "Do you guys think Apple would dump

00:34:49   "the 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air

00:34:51   and replace them with both with the 12 inch.

00:34:53   My take on this is eventually,

00:34:57   I think that's probably what would happen,

00:34:59   but I don't think it would happen right away,

00:35:01   only because Apple seems to have had a lot of success

00:35:04   keeping old models around,

00:35:05   that you see the old iPhone models around.

00:35:07   And the way that works is every year

00:35:09   that a chip set is out there,

00:35:10   every year all those components are out there being used,

00:35:13   they've already, so they've set up the factory to build them.

00:35:16   So that's no cost, it's already there,

00:35:18   you just have to keep the lines running.

00:35:20   and the parts get cheaper over time.

00:35:23   So a product with a small product margin to begin with

00:35:28   can have a very large product margin later on in its life.

00:35:31   This is Ben Thompson just had a two-part interview

00:35:35   for Stratechery members about,

00:35:39   where he was talking to Hugo Barra,

00:35:40   who used to be working on Android

00:35:42   and now is at Xiaomi in China,

00:35:46   and he's the international VP or something.

00:35:48   But he was talking about this very phenomenon

00:35:53   that one of the ways that they are profitable

00:35:55   on their hardware is that they'll keep models around

00:35:57   for four or five years in different markets.

00:36:00   And after the first year, they get really profitable.

00:36:03   And Apple has done that with the iPhone.

00:36:06   The non Retina 13-inch MacBook Pro

00:36:08   is still being sold by Apple even now.

00:36:11   So my gut feeling is that the 11 and 13 Airs

00:36:14   will keep on for a while.

00:36:16   And that's why my gut feeling

00:36:18   is that the new 12 will be more expensive than the old Airs because it'll be retina

00:36:24   and they're not, and they'll be old tech so they'll be cheaper because they can cut the

00:36:29   prices and still keep their margins really high. So that's my gut feeling, is that they

00:36:35   will eventually fade away, but it will be a fade and not just a "they're gone." If I

00:36:41   had to guess, that would be my guess because that seems to make economic sense and it seems

00:36:46   to be a strategy that Apple really likes because that's their phone and iPad strategy too.

00:36:51   It didn't used to be this way but look at the current iPad line, it's the same thing,

00:36:55   right? They're all three versions of the iPad mini are still being sold. It's crazy.

00:37:02   Crazy!

00:37:03   I would like to give my punditry based on not as much knowledge as you have on these

00:37:09   I actually think that the 11 and 13 won't be called the Air anymore.

00:37:16   I foresee the 11 and 13 Air going away and the 11 and 13 as they are currently just become

00:37:22   the MacBooks and 12 takes the Air.

00:37:25   I like your way of thinking.

00:37:26   Because I don't see, if it is as thin as it is, they're not the same line anymore and

00:37:31   I think Apple are then showing that that 12-inch line is the future of a new product line like

00:37:36   they did with the Air in the first place and moved the Macbooks, you know, when they changed

00:37:40   all the names around over time, haven't they?

00:37:43   Like what's become MacBook has become MacBook Pro and that kind of thing.

00:37:46   So I foresee another shift in the naming again, so they end up with the Air line, the MacBook

00:37:51   line and the MacBook Pro line.

00:37:53   It's possible.

00:37:54   There's some confusion there, but if they intend, I would say I am on board with that

00:37:58   way of thinking if they intend to keep those products around in some form.

00:38:01   Yeah.

00:38:02   - 11 and 13 would stay until then they can improve,

00:38:05   they can like stabilize the new air model,

00:38:08   make other iterations of that in different sizes

00:38:11   and then bump the 11 and 13 out again,

00:38:13   like they've done in the past.

00:38:15   Like we had the air, the MacBook and the MacBook Pro, right?

00:38:18   And then the MacBook doesn't exist anymore.

00:38:20   So I think it'd be a similar kind of thing.

00:38:22   So they'll bump them up and then when they can get rid

00:38:24   of those, they'll remove them.

00:38:25   - We'll see.

00:38:26   I'm intrigued.

00:38:28   That's a nice bit of punditry.

00:38:30   Well done.

00:38:31   - Thank you.

00:38:32   Unfortunately, we're not keeping score.

00:38:36   One last bit of feedback, which was listener Joe, who said, "If I'm Mac and iOS only, is

00:38:45   there any reason to use 1Password over just using iCloud Keychain?"

00:38:50   Really good one.

00:38:52   Without going into too much detail, because that could be a whole other topic, I think

00:38:56   iCloud Keychain is good, and I think it's better than nothing.

00:39:01   I've already invested in 1Password, so I feel like I want to keep going with that, but the

00:39:05   reasons are it is more flexible.

00:39:09   I believe iCloud Keychain only works on Safari on the Mac, is that right, Myke?

00:39:15   Yeah, it doesn't work in Chrome on the iPhone, for example.

00:39:17   Well yeah, but on the Mac, does it work?

00:39:21   Or just in Safari?

00:39:22   I'm not 100% sure about that.

00:39:24   I'm going to say it does, actually.

00:39:25   I'm going to say it does.

00:39:26   Oh, okay.

00:39:27   Alright, okay.

00:39:28   I've made that up.

00:39:29   I'll find out.

00:39:30   browsers on iOS it doesn't work and it has a great feature where if you

00:39:36   sync your 1Password on Dropbox you can actually access inside the

00:39:45   1Password bundle is an HTML file that you can open in a web browser and you can

00:39:51   put in your password and you can use 1Password with just access to the file

00:39:55   and no software at all, which is awesome. It supports for multiple accounts on sites.

00:40:01   Apple's iCloud keychain is kind of brain dead. It's really really good for one

00:40:07   login but if you have more than one login it's not so good. It's also if it

00:40:12   doesn't work on a particular site you're just out of luck whereas with one

00:40:15   password you can actually go in and edit which fields you want to have it be

00:40:18   saved and then it'll work. It's an extra layer of security because when you

00:40:24   unlock your phone and are using Safari,

00:40:26   iCloud Keychain will work.

00:40:28   Whereas with 1Password, you have to enter in another password

00:40:31   in order to get it.

00:40:31   I'd say iCloud Keychain is really great to have around

00:40:34   and I use it for some things.

00:40:35   I've got something saved in iCloud Keychain

00:40:37   and I just don't even have to bring up 1Password

00:40:39   in those instances.

00:40:40   I can be like, yeah, iCloud Keychain, great.

00:40:43   But it's a typical story of Apple doing a feature

00:40:46   that is really nice and friendly and broad.

00:40:49   And if you're using the very base set of features,

00:40:52   it's good enough.

00:40:53   and if you want to go beyond that then that's where the third parties are strong.

00:40:58   I found a Chrome support document

00:41:00   that says on a Mac Google Chrome uses the keychain access to store your login

00:41:05   information.

00:41:06   I don't know if it's pulling from it but at least it stores there.

00:41:09   I think for me with with one password the other thing is I feel like I have more

00:41:12   visibility of what's actually in there.

00:41:14   I find the iCloud keychain to be a little bit

00:41:19   more hazy and it doesn't really have an update.

00:41:21   UI, you've got the keychain assistant,

00:41:25   keychain access and all that.

00:41:26   And yeah, I mean, it's again,

00:41:28   Apple is trying to keep it simple and faceless

00:41:30   and when it works, it's fine.

00:41:32   As long as you're always on iOS or Mac.

00:41:35   - Keychain shouldn't do any more than it already does.

00:41:38   It does everything it should be doing in my opinion.

00:41:40   And then if you want more, you go one password.

00:41:42   Same as like reading list,

00:41:43   like it does the bare minimum.

00:41:45   And then if you want more.

00:41:47   There was one thing I wanted to mention, Jason,

00:41:49   it's not really a follow up, but I saw it today

00:41:51   and I thought it might interest you, Mac user in the UK

00:41:54   is closing its doors, the magazine.

00:41:55   - Indeed, yeah.

00:41:57   - Now I know that Mac user in the US,

00:41:59   is Mac user in the US affected, do you know?

00:42:01   - Mac user in the US doesn't exist.

00:42:03   Mac user in the UK was the only Mac user remaining.

00:42:05   I started my career in Mac user.

00:42:07   What happened is Ziff Davis licensed the name

00:42:10   outside of the UK from Dennis Publishing in the UK.

00:42:14   And so all the other Mac users around the world

00:42:18   were Ziff Davis.

00:42:19   when Ziff Davis and IDG got together and merged MacUser into MacWorld, all the MacUsers went

00:42:24   away except for MacUserUK.

00:42:28   So MacUserUK, it's actually the reason why MacWorld in the UK gives stars instead of

00:42:35   mice.

00:42:36   It's because the mouse rating originated with MacUser.

00:42:39   Whereas MacWorld in the US, when it took over MacUser, decided to keep the mice around instead

00:42:45   of the stars just because it was a little more distinctive and there were enough of

00:42:48   us who are from MacUser who are like, "Come on, use the mouse, use the mouse!" Mouse and

00:42:52   the Eddie Awards stuck around even though those were originally from MacUser.

00:42:55   That must be a little bit sad then, to see MacUser completely shut its doors now.

00:43:01   It is, it's the last thing with that name. And so that is sad. It's a very similar story

00:43:08   to the one that I told about IDG, which is, like IDG, Dennis Publishing was run by an

00:43:14   iconoclastic billionaire who did what he wanted and who passed away. I mean,

00:43:19   Felix Dennis, quite more, uh, uh, of a character,

00:43:25   an outsized character than Pat McGovern. Um, but, uh,

00:43:29   same story, which is he passed away and, uh,

00:43:32   and they're running the business differently and whether that directly impacted

00:43:35   the shutting down of Mac user. My gut feeling is that like Pat McGovern,

00:43:39   it was more difficult to get rid of some of the long-standing products with the founder

00:43:45   around than when the founder was gone. But it is sad some great people worked there and

00:43:50   some great people came out of there over the last 20 years. I first got to know Ian Betteridge

00:43:55   when he was doing MacUser and it's a shame. MacWorld UK, as far as I know, is still going

00:44:01   strong which is great and I hope to be over there in March and actually visit with those

00:44:08   guys.

00:44:08   But not you? No. Well maybe you.

00:44:12   Well if I'm not seeing you at Ool

00:44:17   in Ireland then I will try to see you in London.

00:44:20   One of those things will happen. Maybe we'll do an upgrade, live upgrade.

00:44:24   Wouldn't that be something, an in-person version of upgrade? We haven't done that yet.

00:44:27   We haven't done that yet. Jason would you like to thank a friend before we get into some topics

00:44:32   an hour in?

00:44:33   Is that your way of saying that I am thanking the friend personally?

00:44:36   Yeah. Okay, well then in that case it must be mail route.

00:44:40   You bet it is. I'm happy to thank my friends at mail route.

00:44:43   I like to thank them frequently because

00:44:47   when I open my mail and there's not spam in it, one of the big reasons why is

00:44:51   because I use mail route.

00:44:53   If you can imagine this crazy world that I live in, there's no spam, no viruses, no

00:44:58   bounced email messages. I open my mail

00:45:00   and I only see legitimate mail, the stuff that I want to see

00:45:03   and that's because of mail route.

00:45:05   Mail route isn't hardware, it isn't software,

00:45:08   it is a cloud service.

00:45:09   So it sits between your mail and the big bad internet

00:45:13   and it takes the mail in, it uses its intelligent filters

00:45:16   to figure out what spam and what's virus and what's bounces,

00:45:20   it filters that stuff out and then it passes

00:45:21   all the other mail along to your mail server.

00:45:24   So for a while I was running my own mail server

00:45:27   in my house over my own internet line

00:45:30   and every spam message that came in

00:45:32   was slowing down my internet line

00:45:34   and mail route stopped that, which was awesome.

00:45:37   And I still use to this day,

00:45:38   it is really good at filtering out just the bad stuff

00:45:42   and letting the good stuff through.

00:45:43   They've got a digest they sent me every day

00:45:45   that says everything that they filtered out

00:45:47   and there's a one click hyperlink in that message

00:45:51   so that I can auto deliver and whitelist any messages

00:45:54   that happened to be marked as spam but weren't.

00:45:57   And that doesn't happen very often.

00:45:58   They're just very good at keeping the good stuff good

00:46:03   and the bad stuff bad.

00:46:04   If you are an email administrator or an IT professional,

00:46:07   you'll be happy to know that MailRoute

00:46:09   will work great for you.

00:46:10   They've got an API for easy account management.

00:46:12   They support LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, Outbound Relay,

00:46:16   Myke's favorite, which is mail bagging.

00:46:18   - Mail bagging.

00:46:19   - Everything you want from the people handling your mail.

00:46:21   Remove spam from your life for good.

00:46:23   Go to mailroute.net/upgrade.

00:46:25   You'll get a free trial.

00:46:26   You can try this out without paying them anything.

00:46:28   And if you use mailroute.net/upgrade, you can sign up for 10% off,

00:46:34   and that's 10% off the lifetime of your account with MailRoute.

00:46:37   It's not a temporary thing, it is the lifetime of your time with MailRoute.

00:46:41   So thank you so much to MailRoute for filtering out my spam and sponsoring upgrade.

00:46:45   Thank you, MailRoute.

00:46:48   And a good friend.

00:46:50   So Jason, you did something really interesting this past week.

00:46:55   Uh-oh.

00:46:56   You went into full-on video production mode at Six Colors HQ. Multiple cameras and everything.

00:47:02   Tell me about why you wanted to do this and what the article is about.

00:47:07   I think my children would dispute the idea that I'm a YouTuber, but I did post... I got some work

00:47:14   to do to be a YouTuber. But I did post a video... This isn't new for me. I have actually done multi-camera

00:47:20   video stuff all by myself before for the various Macworld how-to videos that we did over the years

00:47:27   and actually for a lot of the stuff that I did under NDA, you know, new Apple products,

00:47:32   they would say, you'd sign this NDA that said, we talked about this in episode one, in fact,

00:47:36   they signed these NDA saying nobody but your, you know, you can show it to your family, but they

00:47:41   they are also under the NDA and you can't show it to anybody else. It's just you. At your whole

00:47:46   editorial organization, it's just you, which is kind of ridiculous because you got to have editors

00:47:50   and you know there's planning and all of that but that was what the NDA was and

00:47:54   so I would sometimes do these videos where I was setting up two cameras and I

00:47:57   was editing it myself and I was doing all the technical stuff and shooting it

00:48:01   and editing it and then I post it and and simultaneous with me posting this

00:48:04   completely homemade video about the iPhone 4 or something there'd be on on

00:48:09   the D site at the time also all things digital there would be a Walt

00:48:14   Mossberg video where he was like clearly in the studio with a bunch of cameras

00:48:19   and that there was obviously a whole technical staff who put this together

00:48:22   because I'm telling you Walt didn't edit that himself and I was like God Walt

00:48:25   Mossberg it was like he was he was uh he was going a little bit beyond this the

00:48:31   the letter of the NDA but at the same time I was happy to do it because I do

00:48:36   know how to edit a video if I have to so so I've done that in the past and I want

00:48:42   to do more of that I would like to do regular videos on six colors if I can

00:48:46   find reasons to do them, I will do them. So I did one about CarPlay. I followed Marco

00:48:52   Armentz's lead and he bought a CarPlay unit for testing overcast because he wanted to

00:48:59   do overcast on CarPlay. And the way he did it was he bought a unit on Amazon, I think,

00:49:05   and bought a couple of adapters so that he could just run it on his desk and not put

00:49:10   it in a car. And so that's what I did. I bought a Pioneer CarPlay doubled in head unit on

00:49:19   Amazon and I bought a couple of those same adapters that Margot recommended and plugged

00:49:25   it in and got to use CarPlay and then decided I would do a video because there are not that

00:49:30   many, there are some, but there are not that many CarPlay videos and most of them date

00:49:34   back to the fall and I wanted to give my readers a view of what CarPlay looks like today, because

00:49:44   I think it's still a little mysterious. And I figured not enough people are writing about

00:49:48   or talking about CarPlay and by having a CarPlay unit in my house I can stay up on it if I

00:49:55   need to. And if this becomes a thing at all I will be able to write about new stuff that

00:50:00   happens with CarPlay, so I figured it was worth the 500 bucks or something I had

00:50:03   to pay to buy the hardware. So I made a video which required me to...

00:50:09   that was a challenge. I ended up with a camera shooting me on a tripod, that

00:50:15   was fine, but to get a camera in position to shoot the screen with the CarPlay

00:50:20   interface on it was tricky. I ended up with an iPhone on a tripod and had

00:50:30   that like on my keyboard tray pointing at the at the screen of the of the CarPlay

00:50:34   thing. CarPlay looks like a disaster. I don't recommend it to anyone. No it looks

00:50:43   like a total mess. Yeah. Like so what if you haven't already go and watch the

00:50:49   video I loved it as a video by the way because I am more I like to see that

00:50:54   kind of thing and rather than just read it. So good. Six minutes of a guy pushing

00:50:59   buttons on a touch screen.

00:51:01   Woo!

00:51:02   Yep.

00:51:03   - So just, you can go over to our show notes,

00:51:05   relay.fm/upgrade/19, you'll see it in there.

00:51:07   You can go watch the video.

00:51:08   - And that's where I am right now.

00:51:09   That is Six Colors World Headquarters, I'm not kidding.

00:51:11   That is the corner of my office with the microphone

00:51:13   I'm talking into right now and everything.

00:51:15   So if you want to completely ruin your vision

00:51:18   of how I do this show, watch that video.

00:51:21   - Perfect.

00:51:22   It seems like the only app on the entire system

00:51:28   that looks and kinda works the way you'd want it to

00:51:31   is probably maps.

00:51:32   - Is maps, yeah.

00:51:33   - Everything else, it looked buggy.

00:51:36   Like even like the phone, like Siri just didn't work,

00:51:39   it seemed like for some of it.

00:51:40   Like you were trying to call your wife, right?

00:51:43   And I noticed that you cut the video

00:51:46   because it looked like Siri was just not understanding.

00:51:49   It was like, what number would you like?

00:51:50   And it'd be like, oh, and it'd be like,

00:51:52   I don't know what the phone is.

00:51:53   - I think in the video I just tapped the screen,

00:51:55   I'm like, forget it.

00:51:56   - You're just like, just go away.

00:51:58   Well, there's a timing issue with Siri a lot of the time where it beeps maybe a little

00:52:04   late and you're trying to say it and so it missed it and then by the time you say it

00:52:08   again it's given up and so you end up in this really... if you get the timing wrong with

00:52:13   Siri it can get really frustrating.

00:52:16   And you mentioned you show the messages and you're dictating a message.

00:52:19   Why can I not just use the audio feature?

00:52:21   Like, just record an audio and send that?

00:52:24   That one completely baffles me, is that they put in this audio messages thing in iOS 8

00:52:31   and CarPlay doesn't support it, which would seem to be the best way to communicate in

00:52:36   the car, is that you could send an audio message to somebody and then if they wanted to send

00:52:40   text back to you, at least as an option, I don't know how the interface works to say

00:52:44   I prefer, you know, maybe Siri says you want to send this person an audio message because

00:52:48   I think Siri knows whether it's compatible or not.

00:52:53   But it would be, yeah, I don't understand why.

00:52:56   'Cause that would be much easier for me to just say,

00:52:59   "Hey, Myke, I'm headed over, I'll be there in 20 minutes,"

00:53:04   and have it just send my audio of me saying that.

00:53:07   And then if you want to reply,

00:53:08   it would just, I'd just hear your voice.

00:53:09   And it's not, it doesn't do that.

00:53:11   It's all text to speech, speech to text.

00:53:14   Just that's, yeah, it feels like it's old Siri.

00:53:18   It actually, Gruber was writing about how he feels like Siri's gotten a lot better lately,

00:53:22   and I agree.

00:53:24   When I use CarPlay, I feel like, "Oh, this is how Siri used to be."

00:53:28   It feels like old Siri.

00:53:29   It doesn't feel like better Siri.

00:53:31   It feels like it feels more laggy, and maybe that's just because it's going through the

00:53:37   CarPlay interface.

00:53:38   I had some people ask me also, "Could it just be that the Pioneer unit is lousy, not the

00:53:42   CarPlay is lousy?"

00:53:43   And my understanding is that what's happening is the iPhone is projecting CarPlay onto the

00:53:48   the Pioneer unit. So the Pioneer head unit is responsible for perhaps the scrolling being

00:53:55   laggy and certainly for the touchscreen not being great and sometimes mistaking scrolls

00:54:01   for taps and things like that. But I think everything else is the fault of iOS. Everything

00:54:07   else I think is coming from the phone. I had a couple people say to me, "Oh, I found it

00:54:12   works a lot better. Third party apps work a lot better when you turn off the phone and

00:54:16   then turn it back on. I'm like, okay, one, that's terrible.

00:54:19   - As a thing to help, like in the car,

00:54:22   while you're driving, it's the worst possible thing.

00:54:25   - And two, I tried it and it didn't help.

00:54:27   I think it made the iHeartRadio app menu come up

00:54:30   the first time, but then it still crashed.

00:54:32   And in the video, you get to hear me crash Overcast.

00:54:36   I believe while playing ATP, that's extra funny,

00:54:40   but certainly it crashes Overcast while I'm using it.

00:54:44   and it just sort of sputters to a stop

00:54:46   and then goes back to the main screen.

00:54:48   - It started to sound all like distorted

00:54:50   and then Overcast just like exploded.

00:54:52   - Yeah, the third party apps are,

00:54:54   I, if it only happened on one of them,

00:54:57   I would say, okay, this, you know,

00:54:58   Marco or the iHeartRadio people didn't do a very good job

00:55:01   with their first iteration of it,

00:55:03   but they're both really buggy.

00:55:04   So as far as I can tell,

00:55:05   the third party apps thing is still a mess.

00:55:07   Apple's website lists all of these third party apps

00:55:10   that are supported by CarPlay.

00:55:11   And I could only find like two or three

00:55:13   that actually work on CarPlay.

00:55:15   They've got like Beats music.

00:55:16   It's on CarPlay.

00:55:17   Nope, nope, it's not.

00:55:19   It's not.

00:55:20   And it makes me think,

00:55:22   it makes me think that this is a problem

00:55:24   and there's not a lot of scrutiny

00:55:25   being put on CarPlay right now

00:55:27   so they can get away with it.

00:55:28   But it's just not fully baked.

00:55:30   I think the third party stuff is a mess.

00:55:31   I've asked Marco a couple of times.

00:55:33   I sent him some emails saying,

00:55:35   "I'm seeing lots of problems with CarPlay

00:55:37   and I haven't gotten a response from him.

00:55:38   I wonder if that's one of those,

00:55:40   you know, can't say something nice,

00:55:42   don't say anything at all, but I don't blame him

00:55:45   or the iHeartRadio developers.

00:55:46   I feel like the third-party stuff is really half-baked

00:55:51   like from CarPlay as far as I can tell, it's all unstable.

00:55:55   And then the main CarPlay stuff isn't great.

00:55:57   Maps is the best one.

00:55:58   I do feel like this is a little bit,

00:56:03   oh, I should say I didn't wire in the parking brake,

00:56:06   which I need to do because the interface

00:56:08   is slightly different.

00:56:09   That was the while driving interface.

00:56:11   there is a more full interface,

00:56:14   like a keyboard will come up and stuff if you're parked.

00:56:17   But that's wired into the parking brake

00:56:21   and you can actually buy something on Amazon

00:56:23   that overrides that and that's for people

00:56:24   who wanna watch videos while they're driving, I guess,

00:56:26   which is very dangerous and don't do that,

00:56:27   but you can do that.

00:56:29   So I may buy one of those and wire it in

00:56:31   just to do what I need to do to test this stuff.

00:56:35   But the larger point is that, yeah,

00:56:37   the Maps app feels exactly like what I want it to be,

00:56:40   which is, oh, this is maps in a dashboard context.

00:56:45   That's actually kind of great.

00:56:46   I like that a lot.

00:56:47   The rest of it, not so much.

00:56:49   Like the music app even,

00:56:50   it seems like there are no concessions to long lists.

00:56:54   You've got this little tiny screen

00:56:56   and you can't do the ABCD down the side.

00:57:00   You just have a list that you have to scroll through.

00:57:02   And like on my Honda Odyssey minivan that we have,

00:57:06   that's about four years old,

00:57:08   it's got an iPod interface

00:57:09   and it's just got a click wheel basically

00:57:12   to connect to the iPod,

00:57:14   but it's got on its little crappy slow interface,

00:57:16   it has this A to Z mode where you,

00:57:18   if you have a list of 500 artists

00:57:22   'cause you have a device

00:57:24   with lots of storage capacity attached,

00:57:26   you can go A to Z

00:57:28   and basically you can scroll through the letters

00:57:30   till you get to the letter where your artist is.

00:57:32   And then you click and then it shows you all the artists

00:57:35   starting with that letter.

00:57:36   And it's a way to jump down in the list

00:57:38   even though you don't have the interface for it

00:57:41   because you could never scroll through that.

00:57:43   There are very few, if any, concessions

00:57:46   to that kind of thing in this interface.

00:57:48   It just seems really rudimentary.

00:57:50   And yeah, I would, I haven't put it in my car

00:57:56   and I'm not going to.

00:57:56   I've got a Sony Bluetooth stereo in there

00:58:00   that I bought a few years ago.

00:58:02   And I can, you know, my phone is paired with it

00:58:04   and I can pause and press the back button

00:58:07   and press the forward button and move around in podcasts,

00:58:09   and it's fine.

00:58:11   And it will not show me anything

00:58:14   'cause it doesn't have a video screen on it,

00:58:16   but it will play the audio of my turn-by-turn navigation,

00:58:19   and it's good enough.

00:58:20   And CarPlay for these expensive units, it's just not ready.

00:58:24   I think it's actually good for all concerned

00:58:26   that there are only a few devices that support this,

00:58:29   and there are very few cars currently that have it,

00:58:31   because it doesn't feel like it's a finished product.

00:58:35   CarPlay's one thing, the one thing that it is intended to do is to stop distracting you.

00:58:43   The idea of it existing is to provide an interface that doesn't distract and allows you to focus

00:58:49   and concentrate on driving.

00:58:51   So stability and ease of usability needs to be at the fore.

00:58:57   And your video shows that that's actually gonna be firm from the truth.

00:59:01   Because some of the things that you would want to do, like using the voice memo stuff

00:59:07   to send messages, is less distracting than dictating and listening and having it fail.

00:59:14   And stability kind of needs to be key.

00:59:16   Maybe there shouldn't be third-party apps at all on CarPlay, if this is the case right

00:59:22   now.

00:59:23   Especially if they're allowing them in one at a time.

00:59:25   They should be really scrutinized.

00:59:29   What you want is, I mean there definitely need to be third party apps because the Apple

00:59:35   apps don't, you want access to different music services and you want access to different

00:59:40   audio stuff and you maybe want access to different information like different driving things,

00:59:47   right?

00:59:48   Like I could see them allowing Waze and Google Maps on and I could see them allowing Beats

00:59:53   and Pandora and Rhapsody and all the music services on there like iHeartRadio and podcast

01:00:00   players like Overcast. That kind of makes sense. As an Overcast user, I don't want to

01:00:07   have to use the podcast app for my podcasts because I don't. And I'm not going to go back

01:00:12   to the podcast app just so I can play different podcasts in my car than the ones I'm playing

01:00:17   when I'm not in my car using Overcast and I'm not going to abandon Overcast. So having

01:00:21   the third-party stuff in there could be good. Major League Baseball is supposed to be one

01:00:25   of the partners. Again, it's not actually, at least they're not in the season now, so

01:00:28   they have an excuse. But that's one of those things that I've wanted. I've wanted a Major

01:00:32   League Baseball display in my car for a long time. I keep thinking that would be a great

01:00:36   use because they could have like a scoreboard and you could tap on a game and it would play

01:00:41   the audio and maybe put up a little like simplified status of like here's what the score is and

01:00:46   here's who's batting, something that is not super distracting

01:00:49   but adds some information.

01:00:51   And those are good uses of it.

01:00:53   But right now, it's interesting too

01:00:55   because I have not used Android Auto,

01:00:57   but it's fascinating to see that with Android Auto,

01:01:00   Google is trying to, it looks like make a more

01:01:05   dense set of interface elements

01:01:10   than what Apple is using, which is super simplified.

01:01:12   and as a user, I like the idea that Google is going in

01:01:17   where it's a little more refined.

01:01:21   I understand as somebody who wants to not get

01:01:24   in a car crash, maybe Apple's approach is better.

01:01:28   But it's problematic, let's just say that.

01:01:31   I find it funny that this is supposed to be the solution

01:01:33   to bad UI from car entertainment infotainment manufacturers

01:01:42   and yet here's Apple with something that's kinda bad.

01:01:45   That's fascinating to me.

01:01:47   I guess the car is a harder problem

01:01:49   than maybe they thought it was.

01:01:51   - Basically, I think my kind of view on this

01:01:57   is Google is better placed than Apple

01:02:00   to understand how to develop for hardware

01:02:02   they don't control.

01:02:03   - Well, I mean, the way Apple is doing it is they are,

01:02:09   I mean, they're mandating,

01:02:10   Like the CarPlay window is always the same size

01:02:12   and there are two approaches,

01:02:14   which is touchscreen approach or button-based approach

01:02:17   that you can use.

01:02:18   And it's gotta have a microphone input

01:02:20   and it's gotta have audio output.

01:02:21   And so they, it is, I don't think that's the problem.

01:02:25   Again, I don't love the touchscreen on this Pioneer unit.

01:02:29   It's poor.

01:02:30   And using an Apple created interface on a touchscreen

01:02:34   that reacts the way it does is a weird experience.

01:02:36   And that is something that they're gonna have to learn.

01:02:39   and that it may reflect poorly on them.

01:02:42   But all the other issues that I'm having seem to stem back to,

01:02:47   they stem from Apple's own software

01:02:53   and their own decisions about this.

01:02:55   And like I said, this is like a stealth product in a way.

01:02:58   I think people aren't even talking about it.

01:03:00   In fact, probably whoever is working on CarPlay at Apple

01:03:02   saw my thing and it's like,

01:03:03   "Oh, why are they writing about CarPlay now?

01:03:05   Stop, someone's written about CarPlay."

01:03:08   (laughing)

01:03:09   - There's like an alarm went off somewhere.

01:03:11   - 'Cause it's just, you know, it's below the radar.

01:03:13   But, you know, I was really excited when Marco talked

01:03:17   about how he was building a third party app.

01:03:18   It's like, well, that's really interesting.

01:03:19   I should get on this.

01:03:20   And now I've seen the third party apps.

01:03:21   I'm like, oh my God, it's not good.

01:03:23   It's not good.

01:03:24   So it was fun to do it.

01:03:26   I put it off.

01:03:27   I got that CarPlay unit in December

01:03:29   and I just, I put it off for a while

01:03:31   because I was traveling.

01:03:32   And also just because the first time I used it,

01:03:34   I was like, oh my God, this is awful.

01:03:36   And I had to think about it for a while.

01:03:37   and I wanted to get some other third party apps

01:03:39   and finally I had to do it.

01:03:40   So if nothing else, the video will give you an idea

01:03:44   of what this thing is without having

01:03:46   to actually see it in person.

01:03:47   And that's why I did a video,

01:03:49   because I feel like even taking pictures of the screen

01:03:52   would not do it justice,

01:03:53   that you really needed to sort of see

01:03:54   how the interactions worked.

01:03:56   And I'll do a follow up at some point

01:03:57   with if I can find a way to enable the features

01:04:02   that you have to have the parking brake on,

01:04:05   stopped, you know, when stopped features. If I can figure out how to enable that,

01:04:09   and there's something substantial there, I'll try to do an update.

01:04:13   I don't want to install it in my car and I also, when GPS apps started to

01:04:19   come out for the iPhone, I did a video that I shot in my car driving around and

01:04:23   it was so painful to do that that I don't want to make videos in my car

01:04:29   if I can help it. So I'd rather have it be sitting on my desk.

01:04:32   Podcast is in cars, testing carplay.

01:04:36   Exactly. Especially if I had camera people it would be different but

01:04:41   you know like I said I shoot most of these videos by myself and so I was

01:04:45   trying to figure out how you could lock down a camera somewhere and actually get

01:04:48   a picture of the phone doing the thing when you're going over bumps and the

01:04:55   cameras are jostling or falling off where you had them tied up and it was

01:04:59   yeah it was it was I don't want to do that plus I don't really you know I was

01:05:03   really in love with it I would put it in my car because I would think oh it's so

01:05:06   cool and I don't want it in my car I just don't I don't want carplay in my

01:05:10   car I won't call our desk play okay keep it at that yeah yeah Jason would you

01:05:16   like to tell me about stamps dot-com I could do that I could do that

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01:05:37   because you go to the post office, it takes up time.

01:05:39   If you're not available during post office hours,

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01:06:59   And I've sent a package with stamps.com.

01:07:02   I've got some other stuff I need to fulfill

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01:07:07   to test out stamps.com and something to Myke as well

01:07:09   because he deserves it and because you can also ship

01:07:14   internationally using stamps.com.

01:07:16   So thanks to stamps.com for sponsoring the show

01:07:18   and my sincere apologies to Myke because the queen is mean

01:07:22   and will not let him send things with Stamps.com.

01:07:24   - It makes me sad, but I'm happy that Stamps.com

01:07:28   is allowing me to receive gifts, so.

01:07:30   - There you go.

01:07:31   - Can't argue with that.

01:07:32   - Yeah, exactly.

01:07:34   So you'll receive something from the great,

01:07:35   incomparable, incorporated empire at a future time.

01:07:39   - Wow, I am excited.

01:07:41   - Yeah, I know.

01:07:42   - So there's been an interesting,

01:07:46   I don't know, trend, I don't know about trend,

01:07:50   but there's a couple of articles this week about app sales.

01:07:54   So the guys at US2Games released a really interesting

01:07:58   infographic about what's happened with Monument Valley

01:08:03   kind of sales-wise and revenue-wise.

01:08:06   And then Marco posted a fantastic piece on his blog

01:08:09   about how Overcast has fared in 2014.

01:08:15   So I was interested, Jason,

01:08:17   'cause I know that you linked to Marco's piece.

01:08:19   there may be more to say about Marco's piece in our world than the Monument

01:08:24   Valley. However, if you haven't seen the Monument Valley infographic you should

01:08:27   because the numbers are staggering to see, sort of download-wise and revenue-wise

01:08:32   and also the piracy, which is really interesting and maybe is a topic for

01:08:37   another day. But I wonder kind of, Jason, what do you, one, like what do you

01:08:41   think about developers releasing this information? Do you think it's helpful?

01:08:44   Who is it helpful to? And kind of what is your take on it? I think it's really

01:08:48   helpful because it's very hard it's very easy to get the the the dream of being

01:08:55   an app developer and just making the guess that oh it's the luxurious life of

01:08:59   an app developer and and boy these app developers they really got it made and I

01:09:04   think it's good to get these data points and we've seen other indie developers

01:09:07   release information too because I think it gives everybody a better sense of

01:09:12   if you're going to become an app developer what are you getting yourself

01:09:16   yourself into and what are the success stories and what do they look like and

01:09:19   what are the hits and what do they look like and what are the

01:09:23   misses and what do they look like. I think it's good to have that

01:09:26   information out there. I also feel like nobody should feel they

01:09:33   need to do it but I'm very happy for the people who decide, like Marco said,

01:09:39   nobody wants to talk about money but I'm appreciative that Marco was willing to

01:09:44   talk about money because people if nobody talks about it then nobody really

01:09:47   has an idea of what's going on and the more disclosure you get the better the

01:09:51   clearer a picture you get a lot of the comments I saw about Marcos thing were

01:09:55   about the fact that he totaled up how much money Apple has made on overcast

01:09:59   and you know we all know that Apple takes 30% right but I saw a lot of

01:10:07   of comments that basically said, "Wow, 30% is a lot!"

01:10:14   $70,343. Yeah, it's a third of the total. I mean,

01:10:20   you think 30%, you're like, "Ah, 30%, whatever." And then you realize that Marco made $164,000

01:10:26   on Overcast, and Apple made $70,000. So Overcast made a lot more. Overcast made $240,000. But

01:10:36   But Mark only made 160 of that, and Apple made 70 of that, because that's what 30% is.

01:10:42   And so that even that, which is this basic thing that we all know, to see it laid out

01:10:46   like that was really interesting.

01:10:48   But in general, I thought it was also fascinating because I view having you and you and I see

01:10:54   some podcast numbers, and we see some statistics about podcast clients.

01:10:59   And by all accounts from all the podcasters in our sphere, at least, Overcast has been

01:11:04   a big hit.

01:11:05   It went rapidly from being non-existent to being the number one or number two podcast

01:11:12   client in my feeds.

01:11:14   It's number one for everything, really.

01:11:16   Yeah.

01:11:17   Yeah.

01:11:18   It's, it's...

01:11:19   With a bullet as well in some instances.

01:11:20   I think iTunes, iTunes may be bigger on some of my feeds, but mostly it's Overcast.

01:11:24   And you could actually see the other clients go down as Overcast went up.

01:11:28   So it was a huge hit.

01:11:30   And so by within our little realm, which is a tiny, tiny realm within this larger world

01:11:36   of iOS app store.

01:11:37   So what it's fascinating to see is that Overcast, which by all accounts is a huge hit in its

01:11:42   chosen market, is not throwing off millions and millions of dollars.

01:11:47   It's throwing off something that looks like a maybe sustainable business for Marco.

01:11:53   As he put it, something that he can do while he's not working for someone else on something

01:12:00   I don't care about," is what he said. He can work in his home office, drink his fussy coffee,

01:12:04   take a nap after lunch if he wants to, and be around for his family. And that's successful

01:12:09   by his definition. And that resonated for me because I'm in a very similar position

01:12:14   where I'm not looking to create a media empire where I'm going to build a business and get

01:12:20   investment and grow and get millions and millions of dollars. I'm looking to create a sustainable

01:12:27   that will allow me to live my life and support my family.

01:12:31   And that is, so on one level, I'm really encouraged

01:12:34   by Marco's post because he's saying he can do that.

01:12:36   On another level though, I look at it and think,

01:12:39   this is what dominating your, granted niche product category

01:12:44   but still he's dominating that category.

01:12:48   And this is what he's making, which suggests to me

01:12:50   that iOS podcast apps is a category

01:12:54   that only has a couple hundred thousand dollars in it.

01:12:57   And that makes me think secondarily,

01:13:00   ouch, that's not sustainable

01:13:04   for at least an ecosystem of apps, right?

01:13:07   It's all those apps that Marco used to link to in Overcast.

01:13:10   They can't all be making this.

01:13:11   If he's number one and this is what he's making,

01:13:14   then none of the others are probably throwing off on iOS

01:13:18   something close to that now.

01:13:19   And that's, so I'm happy that it's sustainable for Marco,

01:13:24   but his app was also a real success.

01:13:26   and we see it continuing to be a success.

01:13:29   So that, yeah, that gives me some pause

01:13:32   because what it says is that if you're not dominating

01:13:35   like Marco is, you're not, your app is not going

01:13:39   to provide a comfortable living on its own.

01:13:41   Maybe you've got other apps and you cobble them together.

01:13:43   Maybe you've got some freelance work.

01:13:45   However you do it, I think that's the other side of it

01:13:47   is that, you know, he's, it's not just,

01:13:51   hey, Overcast did okay, yay.

01:13:53   I agree that's true.

01:13:55   but then I also think, "Hey, on my charts, Overcast dominates."

01:13:59   So what we're seeing here is,

01:14:01   "It's all okay," is what happens with domination in that category.

01:14:05   That's a little bit troublesome to me.

01:14:07   But that's what it is.

01:14:08   - So, I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree.

01:14:12   Which is interesting that we keep going down this route.

01:14:14   - All right, let's fight, Myke.

01:14:16   - So... - When I see you in London...

01:14:18   - Fisticuffs. - Yeah.

01:14:21   Overcast is dominant for us because it's the audience that we roll in.

01:14:29   And interestingly enough, Upgrade has the lowest percentage of Overcast for us.

01:14:37   Interesting.

01:14:38   Of all of the shows.

01:14:39   Oh, Upgrading and you yourselves are all so iconoclastic.

01:14:44   We love you.

01:14:45   It is still the majority holder, but it's less.

01:14:47   And Apple and iTunes has a bigger cut for this show than any other show that we do.

01:14:53   I genuinely think the audience is different and I hope that as we start to move into different

01:14:58   areas, we see different things happen.

01:15:02   Like the pan addict as well is a lower figure because it's a different world.

01:15:08   I don't see this as only a couple hundred thousand dollar industry because if you take

01:15:17   a look at what happened at the end of the year, at the end of 2014, there was an uptick

01:15:23   for Marco and he calls it the serial bump.

01:15:27   So what that tells me is there are people in the world that found out about podcasts

01:15:33   and download it overcast, but it also tells me that there is room to grow.

01:15:39   Because I expect that whilst Marco is a dominant player for us, in the wider market that is

01:15:47   not the case and that Apple is the dominant force.

01:15:53   It's interesting as to why that's happening, but if you think, for example, so if cereal

01:16:01   Marco has had a million listeners, right, which was that number have been bounded about

01:16:07   a lot, but let's just say that that's possible, that they had a million people listen.

01:16:13   And Marco is potentially around 200,000 active users.

01:16:18   He doesn't really go into too much detail, but he says 200,000 people launched the app

01:16:22   and got far enough to create an account.

01:16:23   So we'll say that's the say, best case scenario, that's 200,000 people.

01:16:28   numbers, do you see what I mean? They're very different. So that says to me that Marco has

01:16:34   like 800,000 potential more people to go just for one show and then when you open it up

01:16:38   to what the wider audience can be. So it's all just me kind of just thinking as I'm going

01:16:43   but like what this tells me is there is a market for Marco to be successful. There is

01:16:48   a market for us to be successful as well as what we do in podcasting as a whole and I

01:16:53   I see these two things as positives,

01:16:55   they're positive trends.

01:16:57   And the fact that Marco is continuing to make,

01:17:01   on average, like what is it, like $15,000 a month?

01:17:05   And there's--

01:17:06   - No, that's huge, 'cause my concern was going to be

01:17:08   he was going to sell all of his in-app purchases

01:17:11   and then no one would ever give him any more money ever.

01:17:13   - Yeah, I figured that, I think everybody had that fear

01:17:17   for Overcast, was that it was gonna have

01:17:19   a barnstormer of a star, and then that was it.

01:17:23   but it definitely seems like that's not the case.

01:17:26   I mean, and I saw a lot of independent app developers

01:17:28   were like, this is good news to see.

01:17:32   Can I get your opinion on something?

01:17:35   'Cause I see people complain,

01:17:36   or not complain, but I see people make this claim,

01:17:40   and I wonder what you think about it.

01:17:42   Marco's successful, so of course.

01:17:46   He's famous, so of course.

01:17:49   - Right, that's fine for Marco.

01:17:51   - Yeah.

01:17:51   Let's see, look everybody's different, Marco has some unique things about who he is.

01:18:00   Marco's notoriety and the fact that he's got this wildly successful podcast helps him launch a product.

01:18:11   So the numbers at the beginning are those attributable in large part to his notoriety?

01:18:20   Sure, it's great marketing platform for him the fact that he talked about the travails of developing overcast on ATP for weeks and weeks

01:18:27   It helps it made me it made me want to see it that much more

01:18:32   and

01:18:35   so

01:18:36   That's that that is true and that you know marketing is marketing and Marco's got Marco marketing Marco marketing Marco ting

01:18:43   He he's got his own way of doing and he's got his own fan base and and that's good

01:18:49   that'll only get you so far. So I think that that trend at the very end of the

01:18:57   of the the stats where he's still selling things that's that's the

01:19:02   encouraging thing like you said that people who know Marco have got Overcast

01:19:08   if they're gonna get it and now it's people who are finding Overcast and yes

01:19:14   his initial success helps drive the visibility of that app which helps other

01:19:19   people find it. That's true. I think there are things to be learned from Marco and

01:19:26   his numbers despite that, despite the fact that he is in some ways unique as a

01:19:33   developer. Yeah, so I guess that's my take on it. It's hard for me to listen to

01:19:39   "that's fine for Marco" statements without feeling a little bit like it's kind of

01:19:43   like sour grapes that somehow he doesn't deserve it or that he, you know, that just keeps coming

01:19:53   back to that. It's like, well, he's not one of us, he's famous and he's got this podcast

01:19:58   and all that. It's like, well, you know what? He was just a guy when he did build and analyze.

01:20:02   He was just some guy. I mean, he is responsible for having a following. So you can't just

01:20:09   "Oh well, it doesn't count because Marco's got a following." It's like, yeah, okay, you

01:20:13   know what? That's one way to market your stuff is to become a known person. And not everybody

01:20:18   is going to be able to do that, not everybody is willing to put themselves out there like

01:20:22   that. But Marco has, and he's gotten benefit of it, not just from ATP, but from his visibility

01:20:32   leading to people being interested in his other projects. This is the 21st century,

01:20:35   kind of stuff that's how that's how it works now. Being an anonymous developer

01:20:40   who throws penny into a fountain and hopes that it becomes a hit app is not

01:20:45   does not have a great chance of success but if you're somebody who builds not to

01:20:51   give back to Kevin Kelly's thousand true fans kind of thing but this is how it

01:20:55   works this is this is absolutely a model for how this stuff works and yes even

01:21:00   even now Marco's success with Overcast probably has something to do with the

01:21:04   kick-start it got from his audience and you know I don't I don't know I don't

01:21:10   think that's necessarily a bad thing I do I do think there's a an element of

01:21:13   sour grapes I also see the oh well he's got all of that tumblr money so he

01:21:17   doesn't even need this money to live and things like that and you know save it

01:21:21   for the rest of us I see I see some of that too there's a lot of stuff out

01:21:23   there but Marco is you know he's he's well known he's a polarizing figure

01:21:28   sometimes he brings it on himself a lot of times he totally doesn't deserve it

01:21:31   it, and he gets it anyway. You know, it's complicated, but I would say there are lots

01:21:36   of ways that you can market your products, and one of them is by being visible in the

01:21:45   world and having people who are interested in what you're doing. And Marko's got that,

01:21:49   but that doesn't mean other people couldn't do that too. I mean, Daniel Jalkud has a following.

01:21:54   not nearly as big as Marco's, but Daniel and Manton doing their podcasts, that brings,

01:22:02   you know, that you're part of the circle. You're a little bit more than a face in the

01:22:08   crowd at that point. And I think that is part of, even if it's not intended to be marketing,

01:22:13   this will sell me some apps being visible on a podcast. I think that it's still part

01:22:17   of the whole, again, this little world we live in, but it's part of that. It's part

01:22:24   of the marketing cycle. It makes you more visible to get covered on websites where the

01:22:29   people who write the websites know you, but maybe the people who read the websites don't.

01:22:35   And yeah, and it goes from there. So it's just, this is how it works today. So I've

01:22:40   gotten off on a little bit of a rant here, but I do think it's unfair. I know that, sure,

01:22:44   is Marco and not every developer is Marco but at the same time I don't really like the

01:22:48   implication there that because Marco is Marco we have nothing to learn from him because I think

01:22:55   that's um I think that's bogus. Nobody gives you fame. No. You have to work at that and and if

01:23:04   if it helped him to get a bump in the first week well that's that's what he gets for working hard

01:23:09   and if he has tumblr money that's what he gets for working hard. Yeah. Like he worked hard and

01:23:14   and he made good things.

01:23:15   And I'm not saying that other people aren't working hard

01:23:17   and making good things,

01:23:18   but sometimes you have to work for a long time.

01:23:21   - Well, and you can't say he's got a podcast

01:23:23   so it's not fair.

01:23:24   It's like, well, do you have a podcast?

01:23:26   Well, no, I don't like to talk and all that.

01:23:27   Do you have other things that you do?

01:23:28   Well, no, I don't.

01:23:29   I'm not saying everybody who complains about it is like that,

01:23:31   but it's like, those all go together.

01:23:33   They aren't separate.

01:23:34   It's not like this is an Olympic event in programming

01:23:39   where only programming is allowed

01:23:40   and all other things are not.

01:23:41   That's not how it works.

01:23:42   That's not how the world works.

01:23:43   this is marketing, this is a store,

01:23:45   you want to have visibility,

01:23:47   you want people to be talking about what you're doing.

01:23:49   And you know, as John Siracusa would say,

01:23:52   it's necessary but not sufficient.

01:23:54   It is, you still have to have a good product,

01:23:56   people still have to want it.

01:23:58   But it is part of the way you get people

01:24:00   to be aware that your product exists,

01:24:02   and that's just how it is.

01:24:03   And it's not invalidating the work that gets done.

01:24:06   - I just look at all this and I see it as positive.

01:24:09   No matter where he came from or what he did,

01:24:11   like this is positive stuff.

01:24:12   Same for Monument Valley as well, I think the market thing is maybe more interesting

01:24:18   to this discussion, but they made a lot of money.

01:24:22   Yeah, $5.8, $5.9 million in revenue.

01:24:26   But they pumped like a million and a half nearly into building it, but it's still an

01:24:32   incredible – I mean, it's relative, right?

01:24:35   Because – Games do really well on the App Store, folks.

01:24:38   Yeah, exactly.

01:24:39   But it's all relative, right?

01:24:41   That's a huge increase in profit.

01:24:43   Like if you put 10 grand into it and you made like 100 grand, you know, it's all relative.

01:24:48   So they put a lot of money in, they got a lot of money out.

01:24:51   So that's interesting.

01:24:53   But I think that you look at stuff like what Marco's doing and I think that sharing this

01:24:59   is positive for everyone.

01:25:01   It's proving you can do it.

01:25:03   And for me, what it proves more than anything else is you need to think about your business

01:25:07   model.

01:25:08   Marco had a different business model.

01:25:10   He had a free app with an in-app purchase and everyone says you shouldn't do it, or

01:25:14   everyone said it's gross and it's disgusting.

01:25:16   Not about Overcast, but about doing a business model that's like, "Oh, you should respect

01:25:22   us and pay up front."

01:25:23   And I understand all of that, but what Marco shows is you sometimes need to think about

01:25:27   doing things a little bit differently, because I think these graphs and charts would look

01:25:31   very different if Overcast was a $5 to entry.

01:25:34   Oh, totally.

01:25:35   So I think that this is a key to thinking differently.

01:25:36   He wouldn't get sampled.

01:25:39   He wouldn't get sampled by those people who bought it over Christmas and then paid for

01:25:43   it.

01:25:44   Or in that chart, because they wouldn't have bought it.

01:25:47   They would have just stuck with the free thing.

01:25:48   For sure.

01:25:49   So you've got to think about these things, and I think that that is a demonstration of

01:25:53   that.

01:25:54   I say congratulations to him, to be honest, and I think he's done a great job.

01:25:59   So shall we round off today's episode with some Ask Upgrade?

01:26:03   I think we shall.

01:26:05   We actually have a sponsor for our Ask Upgrade segment this week, and that is our friends

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01:27:51   at large.

01:27:52   We love you guys and go check out their stuff.

01:27:54   Thank you so much.

01:27:55   Yay!

01:27:56   yay

01:27:58   so what do we have in Ask Upgrade this week Mr. Jason? I feel like we're reaching

01:28:02   into the mailbag, you know I love mailbaging. Yes it is. And this is like our mailbag.

01:28:06   Yes.

01:28:08   Yep, there you go. It is, this is our mailbag.

01:28:11   Um... it's the smile mailbag.

01:28:13   The smile mailbag.

01:28:14   Just a mailbag with a really big smile logo on it this week. Yep, that's it. That's exactly it.

01:28:19   Uh... listener Javi wrote in

01:28:22   to say,

01:28:23   this is a good one,

01:28:24   wondering why JSNL has me blocked on Twitter?

01:28:30   We're approaching Alcott County, guys.

01:28:35   The answer is I used Twitter's powerful search feature

01:28:38   to find all mentions of listener Javi mentioning me on Twitter and I found no

01:28:42   examples of him

01:28:43   saying anything that would offend me at all. It doesn't mean he didn't say

01:28:47   something and then delete it later.

01:28:48   I block lots of people because life's too short and they

01:28:51   they get in my timeline saying strange things

01:28:54   or they won't leave me alone,

01:28:55   or they're telling me, stick to technology

01:28:58   or I don't follow you to listen to you tweet about sports.

01:29:01   So stop writing about that and stuff like that.

01:29:02   And I just have a life's too short to deal with those people.

01:29:06   I just block them.

01:29:07   Now, listener Havi, I had no idea why I did the searches.

01:29:12   I can't find anything.

01:29:13   I found over the years that the people

01:29:15   who most deserve to be blocked

01:29:17   are not asking to be unblocked.

01:29:20   I've had a few people like say,

01:29:22   "Hey, can you tell Jason to not block me

01:29:24   "because he can't see my tweets anymore?"

01:29:26   And those people have never been a problem again.

01:29:29   I've never had a problem with that.

01:29:31   So, listen to Javi, you were unblocked.

01:29:35   I don't know why you were blocked.

01:29:36   And again, these days they have mute.

01:29:41   And so if somebody is not abusive,

01:29:43   but is just like saying things that bug me,

01:29:46   I can mute them on Twitter

01:29:48   and then they can continue to see me,

01:29:49   but I just don't see them and I think that's a nice feature.

01:29:51   But back in the old days, you know,

01:29:54   the block was much more aggressive and I'll block jerks,

01:29:57   you know, I'll block awful, awful people.

01:30:00   But if I just don't want to see you

01:30:01   because you're saying crazy stuff or whatever,

01:30:04   or I just saying stuff that I don't want to see

01:30:06   because I've got a, you know, I've got other priorities,

01:30:09   then maybe I'll mute you instead and then you won't see it.

01:30:12   - Takes a lot of me to block someone, but I will do it.

01:30:15   I block if people are being, if they insult me,

01:30:19   like personally, I've had people that have made

01:30:23   really weird jokes that I don't like

01:30:26   and if you do that I will block you

01:30:27   'cause that's the only way that I,

01:30:30   I know this sounds weird,

01:30:31   we're going into analog territory now,

01:30:33   but it's the only way that I feel like

01:30:34   I can get anything back.

01:30:36   'Cause I'm not gonna, if you insult me personally,

01:30:37   if you insult, 'cause I had somebody insult my appearance

01:30:41   once in a picture and I was like, you're going,

01:30:45   like you don't, and this sounds so terrible

01:30:48   and I apologize already for how big headed

01:30:50   this makes me sound,

01:30:51   but you don't deserve any entertainment from me.

01:30:54   If I could reach in and delete your podcast app,

01:30:56   I would do that as well.

01:30:57   Because at this point, I don't know why you're here.

01:31:00   Like, why are you doing this to me?

01:31:02   Like, even if you think that's a funny joke,

01:31:03   we are not friends.

01:31:05   Like, I don't know you.

01:31:07   I mean, even if my, I don't wanna say what you said,

01:31:10   but even if my friends said what he said to me,

01:31:13   I would be really upset about it.

01:31:15   So it's like, it's the only one that I can think

01:31:17   that I've blocked for that reason.

01:31:18   Otherwise, I report a lot of people for spam.

01:31:22   - Sure.

01:31:24   - If I see people being aggressive towards someone,

01:31:29   I report them for spam.

01:31:30   I do that quite a lot.

01:31:32   'Cause that blocks as well.

01:31:33   But I see why you do it,

01:31:36   because I've seen scenarios

01:31:39   where people talk to you in a really weird way.

01:31:42   And if I had that kind of response,

01:31:44   I think I would take that view as well.

01:31:46   It's basically just like, you know, this isn't so much just me and Jason because we're so super popular.

01:31:52   If people are aggressive to you or upset you, you don't have to see that.

01:31:56   And the easiest way to do it is just to get rid of them and block them out of your life.

01:32:00   Life's too short and the social networks of the world are not a place where you should feel harassed.

01:32:06   And Twitter need to do...

01:32:09   This is a whole long thing we could talk hours about.

01:32:12   There is so much more that Twitter needs to do and all of their promises have just been

01:32:17   ridiculous so far and they are not doing what they need to be doing and the government in

01:32:21   this country is trying to push them into doing that.

01:32:25   I had a nice conversation with Brianna Wu about this that was not on a podcast but it's

01:32:30   the idea that there's no precinct, police precinct for Twitter.

01:32:36   Twitter is nobody's beat, Facebook is nobody's beat.

01:32:38   So the police are almost incapable of focusing on this kind of thing, which is why we need

01:32:46   to rethink attacks and harassment and things like that on the internet.

01:32:52   And if there are illegal acts happening, then there needs to be somebody who's patrolling

01:32:57   it.

01:32:58   And we don't have that concept yet because our structures are decades behind that kind

01:33:02   of concept.

01:33:03   I have had on our list since episode one, a Twitter episode.

01:33:07   we'll get there eventually or maybe it will be the grand crossover between

01:33:11   upgrade and analog, I don't know, but there's so much that I use Twitter

01:33:15   for and so much I like about it and so much terrible stuff on it too. I mean

01:33:19   let's be honest and I block, I'm much quicker to block only because I've got a

01:33:23   lot of followers and I attract some people who say things that are

01:33:30   that are unfortunate and I, you know, I have no patience for that.

01:33:36   I am... and they'll always say like, "Oh, you're gonna block him because you don't

01:33:41   agree with him and he's debating you." It's like, no, I don't block people because

01:33:45   they're debating me. I block people because they're crazy. I block people

01:33:48   because they're rude. I block people because they're not really interested in

01:33:53   having a conversation, they just want to, they just want to bug me and just keep

01:34:01   needling me and they're not actually having a conversation. It's stuff like

01:34:04   that. It's just life's too short. Again, if somebody, this is, there's a guy,

01:34:08   Derek Pawazek on Twitter who has this, who I have blocked in the past and

01:34:13   unblocked later, and his whole thing is if somebody is, you see on

01:34:18   Twitter is is like making you you know making you angry or making you feel bad

01:34:25   about yourself or anything that is unpleasant that is making you not want

01:34:29   to even use Twitter because it's so unpleasant just block them and move on

01:34:32   with your life or mute them I suppose you could do now but just just it likes

01:34:35   to again like I said life's too short just move on nobody you don't owe that

01:34:40   to anybody like that and I love Twitter and I love interacting with people on

01:34:44   Twitter and I do it a lot but there every now and then there's somebody who

01:34:47   is acting like really entitled, like why won't you answer my question or is

01:34:51   telling me I don't want to hear you, you know, don't write about that, I want you

01:34:56   to write about this other thing. It's like I'm not here for your amusement, I'm

01:34:58   here for my own amusement and I like having conversations with people here

01:35:02   but the point is not that I'm dancing for you, you know, I'm dance monkey dance

01:35:05   is not, I'm not gonna do that. So yeah, anyway, it's a funny, it's a funny thing

01:35:12   but I do actually like, the one thing that Twitter has done that I like is

01:35:16   is this mute feature, which is back on the Macworld forums

01:35:20   we used to talk about, there was a feature

01:35:22   that some forum packages had that was called

01:35:25   Tacky Goes to Coventry.

01:35:26   And basically it's the global mute.

01:35:30   'Cause if you ban a troll, they get really angry at you

01:35:34   and then they come back with a new sock puppet account

01:35:37   and they just keep on trolling you.

01:35:38   But if you send them to Coventry,

01:35:41   if you send them to the cornfield,

01:35:43   they continue to rage as long as they want

01:35:46   and nobody sees them. It's a global mute. They just, nobody sees their posts. They're

01:35:50   there, they see them, they think they're participating, and they're not. And, you know, that Twitter

01:35:56   mute is like that a little bit, which is like, that person can just go on and on and on to

01:35:59   me all they like, I'm just never gonna see it. And they can follow me, and if they get

01:36:03   something out of following me, that's great, but they're not gonna interact with me anymore.

01:36:07   And I like that because it, the block is like, you can't see me anymore, which is also bogus

01:36:12   because they can just log out and they can see you.

01:36:15   Anyway, we'll do a whole Twitter episode.

01:36:17   - Yeah.

01:36:18   What else do we have?

01:36:21   - Listener Gary says, "Why is it that the only apps

01:36:24   that crashed on my Mac are Microsoft apps?"

01:36:27   #AskUprate.

01:36:31   You're not using enough other third-party apps?

01:36:34   - And maybe too many Microsoft apps.

01:36:35   - And maybe too many Microsoft apps.

01:36:38   I have no serious answer here.

01:36:40   I have lots of apps that crash and I have Microsoft apps that don't crash.

01:36:44   So I really don't see many crashes on OS X.

01:36:48   No, I really see more of that on iOS. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Every now and then

01:36:54   I'll get one. I've had one with transmit lately that's been crashing that I sent

01:36:59   panic an email about and I said why is this crashing?

01:37:02   But it's pretty rare that that happens. Twitter app, the

01:37:08   official Twitter app on that crashes all the time I should say that one crashes

01:37:13   all the time you should block too much yeah that must be it yeah I'm overusing

01:37:18   it I've worn it out you're blocking it I retired oh yeah it's true

01:37:22   listener Brooks wrote in and said I just filed a feature request with Apple to

01:37:28   add a hoi telephone as a trigger fit phrase for Siri Brooks why do you have

01:37:36   to ruin everything. Why, you're gonna make us do a new catchphrase. Oh, and then Amazon

01:37:45   Echo has some programmable ones and...

01:37:49   Alexa.

01:37:50   Yeah, I don't... Let's just... Let's keep a Hoy telephone pure, okay? Let's not ruin

01:37:57   it by making it a trigger phrase. If that day comes when you can set your own trigger

01:38:03   phrase for Siri, then I do expect that many upgradians will do Ahoy telephone.

01:38:09   That seems like a next feature to be honest, because there are

01:38:14   other, like Amazon does it, and Google does it, you know, it makes sense

01:38:20   that Apple will go that way next. Unless they really really believe in the Siri

01:38:25   brand, so it's like, sorry, the "mijim

01:38:25   brand so it's like sorry the management brand yeah and they really just want

01:38:32   people to be saying that and that wouldn't surprise me either to be honest

01:38:35   you can say Siri you just can't say ahoy telephone yeah well I think I just said

01:38:41   something that will probably trigger Siri sorry about that I wasn't saying it

01:38:45   you're running around in a circle we also have @twistofmatt I'm gonna

01:38:55   to go over Upgrading and Matt.

01:38:57   One thing people don't talk about too much on the shows

01:39:00   that I like is jailbreaking.

01:39:02   What are your thoughts?

01:39:03   - I had a nice conversation with Matt,

01:39:08   Upgrading and Matt on Twitter about this last night.

01:39:10   And he was not, turns out not really advocating

01:39:12   for jailbreaking so much as was curious about it.

01:39:15   I'm opposed, there have been times

01:39:17   when I think jailbreaking has been very important.

01:39:19   In the early days of the iPhone, it was important.

01:39:21   That's how all the original third party iPhone apps happened

01:39:24   is that developers jail broke their phones

01:39:26   and like figured out how to put apps on it,

01:39:29   which is totally crazy, but they did it.

01:39:31   And then there was a time when the iPad was out

01:39:35   for the first year or so you couldn't do video out

01:39:38   on the iPad.

01:39:40   And we jail broke a bunch of iPads for Mac World Expo

01:39:44   so that we could demo iPad things on screen

01:39:48   without a camera.

01:39:49   I guess maybe it was the second year the iPad was out.

01:39:52   there was a jailbreak that let you do video out

01:39:54   over the dock connector.

01:39:55   And that was huge because up until that point,

01:39:57   we were using those little overhead cameras

01:39:59   to try to show a picture of what we were,

01:40:02   it was terrible to demo things on the iPad.

01:40:05   But mostly I don't,

01:40:07   I think the platform is robust enough now

01:40:11   that I don't think there's any really great reason.

01:40:14   I think it adds a lot of instability.

01:40:16   I think a lot of the software you can download

01:40:19   that are hacks, it's just so tweaky and hacky

01:40:21   that most people are not going to get a good experience

01:40:25   using it, so I feel like I don't wanna talk about it.

01:40:28   If you wanna bring it on yourself,

01:40:29   then go ahead and bring it on yourself,

01:40:30   but I don't think most people,

01:40:32   I don't wanna encourage people to do it,

01:40:33   'cause I don't think most people would find much value in it.

01:40:35   It causes lots of problems for upgrading to new versions

01:40:39   for the benefit of having like crazy,

01:40:42   weird, tweaky kind of stuff.

01:40:44   And then also, we don't like to talk about it,

01:40:48   but the number one reason for jailbreaking

01:40:50   is to pirate apps and I don't support that.

01:40:53   So, I, you know, if you wanna jailbreak your phone

01:40:56   and you got a reason for it, that's great,

01:40:57   but I'm not gonna talk about it.

01:40:59   - Yep, I agree, I agree.

01:41:02   It can become a bit of a mess

01:41:03   and it's a whole different world.

01:41:05   It's like a whole different thing.

01:41:07   It's not even the iOS anymore.

01:41:09   - If there was a feature, like tethering,

01:41:12   there was a time when you could do something weird

01:41:13   and you could get tethering.

01:41:14   And there was that time when you could do video

01:41:16   out on the iPad.

01:41:17   There are moments in the life of iOS

01:41:19   where it feels like there's a reason to jailbreak

01:41:21   because there's something that Apple hasn't implemented yet

01:41:24   that you know the hardware can do,

01:41:26   why haven't they implemented it

01:41:27   and there's a jailbreak implementation for it.

01:41:29   And those come along every now and then,

01:41:31   but that's the only reason I've ever jailbroken

01:41:34   because the super tweakiness of it,

01:41:37   actually listener Matt mentioned this,

01:41:40   is that he's seen some of his friends with Android phones

01:41:43   tweak their settings to the point of unusability.

01:41:46   And I think that happens.

01:41:47   I've seen jailbroken iOS devices that are very similar,

01:41:50   that are just, you know,

01:41:51   I've got all this crazy stuff going on.

01:41:53   It's like, well, that's great,

01:41:54   but you know, I think most people don't wanna see that.

01:41:57   They don't wanna do that.

01:41:58   They wanna keep it simple, so.

01:42:01   - I mean, another reason people have jailbroken in the past

01:42:03   is so they can use the phone in their country as well.

01:42:06   And you know, if that's still a thing,

01:42:07   then that makes sense to do.

01:42:09   - Yeah, unlocking your phone.

01:42:10   You've got an old phone

01:42:11   and your carrier is not cooperating to unlock it.

01:42:14   Totally makes sense.

01:42:15   Even if you are, you know, so you're still on a plan,

01:42:18   but you're gonna travel overseas

01:42:19   and you find a way to unlock your phone

01:42:21   so that you can go overseas

01:42:22   and not use your carrier's card when you're roaming.

01:42:26   I'm totally cool with that.

01:42:28   I think there are some good reasons to use it,

01:42:29   but they're very specific.

01:42:31   And then, you know, again, I feel like when we're talking,

01:42:34   the audience we're talking to,

01:42:35   even if it's a very technical audience,

01:42:37   I feel like even for them, 98% of them, 90,

01:42:41   you know, maybe for our audience, it's 95% of them

01:42:44   should really not ever jailbreak their device, and for the mass of iOS users, it's 99.9%.

01:42:52   So our last Ask upgrade today, Johnny wanted to know if we use the Ahoy! telephone feature

01:43:01   on a regular basis. You can say Siri.

01:43:04   Okay, I'll say Siri. You just can't say...

01:43:07   The other thing. Yeah, say "hey," the "say hey kid."

01:43:11   You can't say like bail, you know, what is a bail made of, Siri?

01:43:16   Right.

01:43:17   On a regular basis, do we use it how, looking for use cases, I think we both use the exact

01:43:22   same feature and the only time I ever use Siri, do this on three, two, one.

01:43:29   Set a timer for five minutes.

01:43:30   Yes, that's all I do.

01:43:32   When I'm cooking, I use Siri for timers.

01:43:34   It's great.

01:43:35   That is it.

01:43:36   Yep, me too.

01:43:37   Me too.

01:43:39   It's great for that because that is a perfect example of something that a voice interface

01:43:44   does better than the touch interface because you don't have to open the clock app and go

01:43:47   to timer and set the time and all of that and you've got stuff on your hands because

01:43:51   you're cooking or whatever.

01:43:52   You just say set a timer for five minutes.

01:43:53   It's great.

01:43:54   I love it.

01:43:56   And that is about all I use it for.

01:43:59   Yeah.

01:44:00   Mr. Snow, I think we did it.

01:44:01   I think we didn't kill anybody.

01:44:05   We learned a little.

01:44:07   We grew a little.

01:44:08   it a bit. Yep. Last. And left some topics for the next show which is always good. Yep.

01:44:15   I really enjoyed this episode, again, thank you very much as always. Thank you. I think

01:44:19   we're on a bit of a, you know, I think we talk about ourselves now, nobody's listening.

01:44:22   I think we're on a bit of a roll at the moment. I think we're on a bit of a roll. I'm really,

01:44:27   I'm enjoying the show more and more and more every week and I hope that everybody else

01:44:30   is too. If you want to find the show notes for this week's episode, point your web browser

01:44:34   Relay.fm/upgrade/19. We'd love to get your feedback about the show and topic

01:44:41   suggestions and questions and of course all you need to do for that is tweet

01:44:44   with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and they're gonna pop up in our lovely little

01:44:48   Google document and then maybe you will be a part of the Ask Upgrade section of

01:44:52   next week's show. If you want to find us online you can find Jason Ease @JSnell

01:44:57   on Twitter @JSNELL and he writes the fantastic six colors .com and I am

01:45:03   I'm Myke @imike on Twitter. I am YKE and I am the host of many shows at the glorious Relay FM

01:45:09   Of which this show has a lovely home. We'll be back next time with another episode of

01:45:15   Upgrade thanks again to our sponsors for this week mail route stamps calm Linda and smile with PDF pen

01:45:23   2 for iPad and iPhone

01:45:25   Until then say goodbye Myke. Oh, goodbye Jason

01:45:28   The tables are turned

01:45:32   HA HA!

01:45:33   [Music]