Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► *BEEP*

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Intro Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 17. Today's show is brought to you by Igloo,

00:00:14 ◼   ► an internet you'll actually like. Hover, simplified domain management, Mailroute,

00:00:19 ◼   ► a secure hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam, and Stamps.com, postage on

00:00:25 ◼   ► demand. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by the man, the maverick that is Mr. Jason

00:00:31 ◼   ► Snell.

00:00:32 ◼   ► That's mavericks, Myke. Maverick.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Oh, the O.S. the Yosemite.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Yosemite. I grew up near Yosemite. That's not a bad one. I feel like there's probably

00:00:41 ◼   ► a Jason Snell drinking game out there somewhere that has a, if Jason mentions he grew up near

00:00:45 ◼   ► Yosemite you have to take a drink. Because I did. I did.

00:00:48 ◼   ► There should be a Jason Snell drinking game.

00:00:51 ◼   ► There probably should be. Please, dark beers, I recommend. And somebody recommended we do

00:00:58 ◼   ► an entire podcast about beer, which I thought was interesting, or drinking. I was like,

00:01:03 ◼   ► okay. That was one of our Ask Upgrade questions too. So it is true though, my wife always

00:01:09 ◼   ► says this, that when I was in college, people would ask where I grew up and I would describe

00:01:12 ◼   ► it, she says uncharitably, as the place you get if you fail to make the turn off, the

00:01:19 ◼   ► correct turnoff to Yosemite, which was a common thing that happened.

00:01:23 ◼   ► As people would drive up from the Bay Area, they were trying to go to Yosemite, they would

00:01:26 ◼   ► miss Yosemite Junction, and they would end up in Sonora.

00:01:30 ◼   ► And you'd see confused people, and you'd be like, "No, no, you missed it.

00:01:34 ◼   ► It's back that way."

00:01:35 ◼   ► And she thought that literally it was like a tumbleweed and a one-room schoolhouse and

00:01:41 ◼   ► a couple of cowboys, and that would be about it for the town.

00:01:44 ◼   ► I mean, it was slightly larger than that,

00:01:46 ◼   ► but it is true that it was right there

00:01:49 ◼   ► by the turnoff to go into the park from--

00:01:53 ◼   ► that was the most common way in, I think,

00:01:55 ◼   ► from people from the Bay Area.

00:01:56 ◼   ► So yeah, don't sell your hometown as a missed turnoff,

00:01:58 ◼   ► because it makes it sound like literally no one would ever

00:02:00 ◼   ► go there except by mistake, which wasn't entirely true,

00:02:03 ◼   ► just partially true.

00:02:04 ◼   ► It makes it sound like when you explain that there's no power,

00:02:07 ◼   ► there's no phone lines, you know, it's kind of like this--

00:02:10 ◼   ► Yeah, we have a traffic light.

00:02:11 ◼   ► What?

00:02:12 ◼   ► We have a traffic light.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Wow.

00:02:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, the light, we referred to it as the light

00:02:16 ◼   ► 'cause it was only the one.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Like where do they live?

00:02:19 ◼   ► They're on the other side of the light, yeah.

00:02:20 ◼   ► It's right at the light.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Yeah, oh yeah.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Where's your bank?

00:02:24 ◼   ► It's at the light, it's the one at the light.

00:02:27 ◼   ► True story.

00:02:28 ◼   ► - Oh dear.

00:02:30 ◼   ► - All right, follow up time you think?

00:02:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, but not a lot today actually.

00:02:33 ◼   ► - We got it, well I've moved some of the follow up

00:02:36 ◼   ► into two verticals 'cause I think that is a fun thing to do.

00:02:39 ◼   ► So, but I've got one piece of loose unclassified follow up

00:02:44 ◼   ► which is from listener John.

00:02:45 ◼   ► And I just, it was a nice thing,

00:02:47 ◼   ► we'll put it in the show notes.

00:02:49 ◼   ► He said that we were talking about one password

00:02:52 ◼   ► and about, I think I mentioned last week

00:02:56 ◼   ► that we were doing one password stuff with my in-laws

00:02:59 ◼   ► because they were writing things down.

00:03:01 ◼   ► My mom was writing all her passwords in a book.

00:03:03 ◼   ► My mother-in-law and my father-in-law had,

00:03:06 ◼   ► no, my mom wrote them in a paper book.

00:03:10 ◼   ► My father-in-law had a word file

00:03:12 ◼   ► in a password protected DMG on his Mac, which is pretty good.

00:03:16 ◼   ► - That's an interesting route to take.

00:03:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it worked when he didn't have a smartphone,

00:03:22 ◼   ► but now that he has a smartphone, he said,

00:03:23 ◼   ► "Yeah, I was on somebody else's computer,

00:03:24 ◼   ► "I had to download the DMG."

00:03:26 ◼   ► And I'm like, "Oh my God, you downloaded every file

00:03:27 ◼   ► "that you have in your secure archive to that computer."

00:03:30 ◼   ► When you only needed like 5K of passwords.

00:03:33 ◼   ► So we got them on one password,

00:03:35 ◼   ► but the best one was my mother-in-law,

00:03:36 ◼   ► 'cause she stored all her passwords in her bookmarks.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Like literally the bookmark would be Apple

00:03:43 ◼   ► followed by the password.

00:03:44 ◼   ► And then she'd click on the bookmark

00:03:47 ◼   ► and put in the password.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Anyway, they're using one password now.

00:03:51 ◼   ► So anyway, Lister John's point was,

00:03:54 ◼   ► he wanted to mention DiceWare

00:03:56 ◼   ► and he linked to a blog post on Agile Bits from 2011,

00:04:00 ◼   ► where they talk about better ways to come up

00:04:02 ◼   ► with your master password for one password.

00:04:04 ◼   ► And I thought this was really a nice idea,

00:04:06 ◼   ► which is DiceWare.

00:04:08 ◼   ► You roll some dice, roll a six-sided die,

00:04:11 ◼   ► or if you've got a bunch of die, you can roll them.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And there's like a list of common words.

00:04:15 ◼   ► And what you basically do is you randomly generate

00:04:18 ◼   ► common words and string them together.

00:04:20 ◼   ► And that allows you to come up with a fairly strong password

00:04:24 ◼   ► that's also memorable.

00:04:25 ◼   ► And keeping in mind that this is the password

00:04:26 ◼   ► that's not sitting out on the internet,

00:04:28 ◼   ► it's just sitting on your computer.

00:04:29 ◼   ► And it's a nice, it's in the show notes.

00:04:31 ◼   ► I think that's a nice way.

00:04:32 ◼   ► One of the challenges is to come up with something

00:04:33 ◼   ► that's not really guessable,

00:04:34 ◼   ► but is also a password that you can remember.

00:04:37 ◼   ► And I thought that was nice.

00:04:39 ◼   ► I think CompuServe back in the ancient days

00:04:42 ◼   ► used a system like this because I remember

00:04:44 ◼   ► all of my CompuServe passwords were weird words.

00:04:48 ◼   ► They were words, but they were weird words.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And they would just be,

00:04:52 ◼   ► there'd be two or three of them with dashes between them.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And that was the password.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And I always thought those were really memorable

00:04:57 ◼   ► in a way that today's modern,

00:05:00 ◼   ► right bracket capital A lowercase p,

00:05:04 ◼   ► nine kind of passwords are not.

00:05:06 ◼   ► So I thought that was a nice link from listener John.

00:05:10 ◼   ► So thank you listener John.

00:05:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's, it's interesting, right?

00:05:14 ◼   ► Because that master password, that's kind of the killer one

00:05:17 ◼   ► because you kind of have to remember it

00:05:19 ◼   ► and there's nothing you can do really if you forget it.

00:05:22 ◼   ► It's my understanding that you're kind of like,

00:05:25 ◼   ► 'cause there's no service to reset it, like you're done.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So like I have one that's personal to me,

00:05:30 ◼   ► but it has made up words in it.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Like words that don't exist in English.

00:05:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, and I think, now that I think about it,

00:05:37 ◼   ► I think maybe all of the CompuServe ones that I remember,

00:05:40 ◼   ► and I would mention them except that I actually use

00:05:42 ◼   ► some of them as passwords to this day.

00:05:44 ◼   ► I've recycled them from CompuServe

00:05:46 ◼   ► 'cause I still remember them 25 years later, 30 years later.

00:05:50 ◼   ► But they were not quite English words.

00:05:51 ◼   ► They were based on English words

00:05:53 ◼   ► and then would have prefixes or suffixes, you know?

00:05:56 ◼   ► And that's also really clever

00:05:58 ◼   ► because that's harder to determine algorithmically,

00:06:01 ◼   ► but they stick in your mind,

00:06:03 ◼   ► that perfectly cromulent word

00:06:05 ◼   ► that sticks in your mind.

00:06:06 ◼   ► So like if to use the Simpsons reference,

00:06:08 ◼   ► if your password is imbiggen-chromulant,

00:06:12 ◼   ► that's those two words are totally unrelated

00:06:16 ◼   ► except on the Simpsons.

00:06:18 ◼   ► So don't use that password,

00:06:19 ◼   ► but it would be something like that.

00:06:20 ◼   ► It would be like ornery-ing colon yellowed, right?

00:06:25 ◼   ► And you could probably remember that,

00:06:28 ◼   ► but it's not really words.

00:06:30 ◼   ► And anyway, it's kind of a cool idea

00:06:32 ◼   ► 'cause that's one of the challenges,

00:06:33 ◼   ► especially if you need to change passwords.

00:06:35 ◼   ► But it's a challenge in general,

00:06:36 ◼   ► is how do you remember the master password?

00:06:38 ◼   ► You still need to remember that one.

00:06:39 ◼   ► It should be good.

00:06:40 ◼   ► It should not be 123 password, right?

00:06:43 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:06:44 ◼   ► Going back quickly, just a few steps,

00:06:45 ◼   ► talking about people in family using 1Password.

00:06:49 ◼   ► We recently moved,

00:06:51 ◼   ► well, my girlfriend wanted a better solution,

00:06:53 ◼   ► so she has moved to 1Password.

00:06:55 ◼   ► And we were setting up a PIN number for something,

00:07:00 ◼   ► a grocery delivery service that we use. They like you to set up a pin number for

00:07:06 ◼   ► the app for easy access. And she set up a pin number for it and she opened

00:07:11 ◼   ► 1Password and I saw her putting it into a note that had a bunch of other

00:07:13 ◼   ► information in it and I was kind of like... I inquired, I was like "Do you

00:07:19 ◼   ► keep everything in a note?" And she was like "Well I keep logins in individual

00:07:24 ◼   ► logins but stuff like pin numbers and stuff like that I just have one note

00:07:27 ◼   ► that I put it all in. And it's secure, right? Because she's using a secure note

00:07:31 ◼   ► and one password and I don't think there's anything wrong with it but it's the different way

00:07:34 ◼   ► than how I would do it. I set up an individual thing for every thing. Like

00:07:39 ◼   ► for example my like any PIN numbers and stuff like that I might have for a

00:07:42 ◼   ► banking app even though I don't log in via one password for those things they

00:07:47 ◼   ► don't allow you to. I saved the PIN numbers under the individual like in

00:07:51 ◼   ► individual fields but I just found it interesting.

00:07:54 ◼   ► You like structured data and she just wants to have it available in a list.

00:08:00 ◼   ► It makes sense. And if you're not using it, it depends on how you think of it.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Everybody's got their own mental filing system, right?

00:08:06 ◼   ► And I think that you file it in a way that works for you,

00:08:10 ◼   ► and she files it in a way that works for her, and I think that's fine. I think that's fair.

00:08:13 ◼   ► As long as it's perfectly safe behind that master password, then everyone's a winner, in my opinion.

00:08:18 ◼   ► I agree. I agree.

00:08:20 ◼   ► I like the title of this next vertical that we have, or the first vertical of today's episode.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Would you like to tell the listeners what you have labeled this?

00:08:28 ◼   ► Yes, this is the "Myke is wrong" vertical.

00:08:30 ◼   ► I feel like all of my shows have these. You're the first person to label it.

00:08:35 ◼   ► Let's just call it what it is. If there is nothing else that people can expect from Upgrade,

00:08:40 ◼   ► they should expect some honesty from us. So this is the "Myke is wrong" vertical. We have two pieces

00:08:45 ◼   ► of feedback from the #AskUpgrade method, which is still going strong, use #AskUpgrade on any

00:08:52 ◼   ► tweet and it appears in our magic spreadsheet via the if this then that route.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Listener Jeff wrote in to point out something that I believe I pointed out in last week's

00:09:04 ◼   ► show, which is it can't be the first annual anything. It could be inaugural. At one, you

00:09:08 ◼   ► slipped. That show was about eight hours long and for most of it you got it down. You just

00:09:14 ◼   ► said this is the first upgrade ease the you know or the inaugural upgrade ease

00:09:18 ◼   ► and then right at the end you referred to it I believe as the first annual and

00:09:22 ◼   ► I think you may hear me in the background saying something like oh Myke

00:09:25 ◼   ► it's not you know but I double down on it yeah so Jeff Jeff Jeff contacted us I

00:09:33 ◼   ► was feeling a little bit mischievous and I I've heard a bit of back and forth with

00:09:38 ◼   ► Jeff I think which I would not allow it to be inaugural. I stuck by first annual. I know

00:09:49 ◼   ► it's wrong. If you're going to be wrong you might as well stick to your wrongness. Exactly.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Embrace it. I love Jeff's tweet too because he used three hashtags. He had ask upgrade,

00:09:57 ◼   ► he had tell upgrade. Don't tweet to tell upgrade. And pedant, however you want to say that.

00:10:03 ◼   ► The pedants now will say it's pedant and the pedants will say it's pedant. Someone will

00:10:07 ◼   ► me a gif and someone else will make me a gif. And anyway, listener Steven also wrote in—this

00:10:12 ◼   ► is not Steven Hackett, by the way, although it could be, but it's not—and he says,

00:10:17 ◼   ► "Can we have an official register of those who only want to be listeners as Upgrading

00:10:21 ◼   ► is just awful, and may I be on it?" And to which I say yes. Somebody start a register

00:10:28 ◼   ► of people who want to be listeners. As I said, I'm actually feeling like Upgrading is a

00:10:34 ◼   ► a nice broad term for the entire listenership,

00:10:38 ◼   ► but that the individual honorific that I prefer

00:10:40 ◼   ► certainly is just, is listener.

00:10:43 ◼   ► But yes, listener Steven, if you would like to create

00:10:45 ◼   ► a register, I would be happy to bless the register

00:10:49 ◼   ► of listeners versus the register of upgradians.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Maybe it could be like a little message board

00:10:53 ◼   ► where people yell at each other,

00:10:54 ◼   ► 'cause that's what happens on the internet.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Anyway, that is, that's two of the mic is wrong

00:11:00 ◼   ► vertical items, and then the last one,

00:11:02 ◼   ► I'm not sure if this qualifies, but I threw it in here,

00:11:03 ◼   ► which is listener Phil who tweeted,

00:11:06 ◼   ► "Myke loves award shows like Jason loves drafts."

00:11:10 ◼   ► - That is pretty accurate. - Which is true.

00:11:11 ◼   ► That is solid, that is solid.

00:11:13 ◼   ► And I'm not saying you're wrong,

00:11:14 ◼   ► I'm just saying that you do love awards

00:11:17 ◼   ► and I do love drafts and it made me think that,

00:11:20 ◼   ► yes, Lister Phil has figured us out

00:11:22 ◼   ► and I started to think about what we could draft

00:11:24 ◼   ► in a future episode of Upgrade.

00:11:26 ◼   ► So maybe we'll get there sometime.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Maybe we'll bring on a guest

00:11:29 ◼   ► and we'll do a little draft of something because--

00:11:31 ◼   ► - Oh wow.

00:11:31 ◼   ► You've done an award show, it's my turn, but not today.

00:11:35 ◼   ► So that's the Myke is Wrong vertical.

00:11:36 ◼   ► It's that was gentle.

00:11:37 ◼   ► You weren't that wrong.

00:11:38 ◼   ► Do you have anything to say for yourself

00:11:40 ◼   ► as we reach the end of the Myke is Wrong vertical?

00:11:44 ◼   ► - I accept none of the blame for anything.

00:11:46 ◼   ► - All right.

00:11:48 ◼   ► You just refuse.

00:11:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, I just flat out refuse.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And that was kind of the first annual

00:11:53 ◼   ► Myke is Wrong vertical, I think.

00:11:55 ◼   ► - All right.

00:11:56 ◼   ► Oh, you've turned it into an award show.

00:11:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:58 ◼   ► How typical.

00:11:59 ◼   ► - And I win!

00:12:00 ◼   ► I am the winner.

00:12:02 ◼   ► - Yes.

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00:14:06 ◼   ► this week's episode of upgrade do you like that the code there Jason yeah that

00:14:11 ◼   ► was excellent enemy yeah they're not an enemy though they're our friends no they

00:14:16 ◼   ► are our friends but the code is an enemy all right except if you use the

00:14:23 ◼   ► code you get a discount. So it's really a friend in disguise. Pretending to be an enemy.

00:14:30 ◼   ► Yeah. Friend in disguise.

00:14:32 ◼   ► All right. Hover. That's how I say it. More vertical. It's time for the podcast vertical

00:14:39 ◼   ► now. And this is our last vertical before we get into the full topics. I wanted to—I

00:14:44 ◼   ► guess we should say the podcast vertical brought to you by Hover. I suppose they could sponsor

00:14:47 ◼   ► or a vertical.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Listener Jim wrote in to say,

00:14:52 ◼   ► "Overcast has saved me 41 hours using smart speed.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Does this mean I have a problem?"

00:14:58 ◼   ► I looked up my Overcast setting in the settings.

00:15:03 ◼   ► If you scroll to the bottom,

00:15:04 ◼   ► it tells you how much time it saved you

00:15:05 ◼   ► by taking out silence.

00:15:07 ◼   ► And I'm only at 17 hours,

00:15:09 ◼   ► less than half of what listener Jim is listing here.

00:15:12 ◼   ► Myke, do you know how many hours Overcast has saved you?

00:15:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I mentioned it last week but I will look again because I don't remember what just

00:15:19 ◼   ► happened in my head.

00:15:20 ◼   ► I didn't mention it last week because I hadn't looked.

00:15:23 ◼   ► 27.

00:15:24 ◼   ► Oh good, okay.

00:15:26 ◼   ► So wow, listener Jim.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Anyway, does this mean you have a problem listener Jim?

00:15:29 ◼   ► Yes, it does.

00:15:30 ◼   ► You do have a problem.

00:15:31 ◼   ► It is a fantastic problem.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Never stop listening to podcasts.

00:15:36 ◼   ► Ever.

00:15:37 ◼   ► So I feel a bit bad this week.

00:15:40 ◼   ► Why is that?

00:15:41 ◼   ► - I have a really huge backlog from the holidays.

00:15:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too.

00:15:46 ◼   ► - And I realize that, and this probably sounds bad,

00:15:50 ◼   ► but a lot of our listeners, they also have my shows.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Now I don't have my shows in my backlog, right?

00:15:56 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't listen to my own shows.

00:15:58 ◼   ► But people that listen to my shows

00:16:00 ◼   ► probably listen to all of the shows that I listen to.

00:16:02 ◼   ► So I don't know how anyone's gonna get through them all.

00:16:04 ◼   ► In May, people will still be hearing

00:16:05 ◼   ► about what I think of 2014.

00:16:08 ◼   ► I have so much stuff.

00:16:09 ◼   ► I have like two episodes of Roderick on the Line now.

00:16:12 ◼   ► I don't know how that has happened.

00:16:14 ◼   ► I blame Jon Gruber for four hours of epic Star Wars-ness

00:16:19 ◼   ► that I finished today.

00:16:21 ◼   ► I'm gonna blame Jon.

00:16:24 ◼   ► That was a good show though, the talk show episode.

00:16:26 ◼   ► But now it's all building up.

00:16:29 ◼   ► I have ATP still to listen to.

00:16:31 ◼   ► I have TPK to listen to.

00:16:33 ◼   ► - Ah yeah, I listened to ATP, although I skipped,

00:16:36 ◼   ► I don't always skip the super technical stuff,

00:16:38 ◼   ► but I skipped the super technical stuff

00:16:39 ◼   ► where Marco is giving sort of details about Node.js

00:16:42 ◼   ► and I'm just like, yeah, you know,

00:16:43 ◼   ► I like listening to the philosophy.

00:16:46 ◼   ► I was gonna do an ATP follow-up vertical

00:16:49 ◼   ► 'cause I have opinions about ATP,

00:16:52 ◼   ► which hopefully most of our listeners have listened to

00:16:55 ◼   ► or listened to.

00:16:56 ◼   ► But when Marco gets the deep down, it's usually Marco,

00:16:59 ◼   ► sometimes it's Casey or John,

00:17:01 ◼   ► but I like the philosophy of programming

00:17:04 ◼   ► and sort of how programmers think

00:17:05 ◼   ► and how they evaluate their work.

00:17:07 ◼   ► And I think that's all really interesting at a high level.

00:17:09 ◼   ► And then every now and then, they get down into the depths

00:17:11 ◼   ► of sort of like real details about developing

00:17:14 ◼   ► and I'm not a developer.

00:17:15 ◼   ► And even then I will often listen,

00:17:18 ◼   ► but when I have a giant backlog, that's when I go,

00:17:20 ◼   ► you know, I'm gonna skip the next 25 minutes of this

00:17:22 ◼   ► and get to the next item in the show notes.

00:17:25 ◼   ► They don't do chapter marks,

00:17:26 ◼   ► Marco actually wrote a post about that,

00:17:28 ◼   ► but they have helpful show notes

00:17:30 ◼   ► and you can just use the scrubber to go to the next thing.

00:17:32 ◼   ► So that's what I did.

00:17:34 ◼   ► And the backlog is the number one reason why.

00:17:36 ◼   ► I haven't listened to the Star Wars talk show,

00:17:38 ◼   ► Although it sounds like there's some alignment issues with the tracks, so they're talking

00:17:41 ◼   ► over themselves at a few points.

00:17:43 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:17:44 ◼   ► That's a little scary.

00:17:45 ◼   ► I have to deal with that with the incomparable.

00:17:46 ◼   ► And it sounds like there aren't usually three people on the talk show, I guess.

00:17:51 ◼   ► I think the problem is, as you may have heard in other shows, John Syracuse and Guy English

00:17:56 ◼   ► will, they will basically talk until one of them stops.

00:18:01 ◼   ► There's a great episode, I think it was, I think it was Debug, where they argue about

00:18:07 ◼   ► what, maybe Copeland? Was it Copeland 2010? Cop, yeah.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Yeah, Copeland 2010, yeah it might be. Yeah, sure.

00:18:18 ◼   ► They have a discussion about that and basically it's like a war. It's incredible to listen

00:18:23 ◼   ► to. Huh.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Because they just fight like in words and just will keep talking until one shuts up

00:18:29 ◼   ► and then they will continue. Well, one method when you're on a panel show,

00:18:32 ◼   ► I mean this is true with The Incomparable is, you just talk until you realize that someone

00:18:36 ◼   ► else is not going to stop and then you give up and then in the edit you take

00:18:38 ◼   ► out the person who lost that war and if they said a complete thought maybe you

00:18:44 ◼   ► pull them apart but if one of them gets sort of truncated and waits for the

00:18:47 ◼   ► other one to finish and then comes in there's some work that can be done there

00:18:49 ◼   ► it sounds to me like what Guy was saying is that on the Star Wars episode his

00:18:53 ◼   ► track drifted or was misaligned so where it sounds like they're like

00:18:57 ◼   ► John is always stepping on what Guy is saying and in reality it's that they

00:19:00 ◼   ► were they were they were shifted off a little bit from one another and and so

00:19:05 ◼   ► So it makes—and that happens with Drift.

00:19:08 ◼   ► It's tricky.

00:19:09 ◼   ► It's tricky.

00:19:10 ◼   ► I've been there.

00:19:11 ◼   ► And if you're doing a three or four-hour-long podcast, the Drift can get pretty severe over

00:19:13 ◼   ► time.

00:19:14 ◼   ► The files don't line up—you line them up at the beginning, is what we're talking about,

00:19:18 ◼   ► and by the end, they don't line up anymore.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And so you have to go through and every 20 minutes or every half hour—you know, depends

00:19:25 ◼   ► on how bad the Drift is—you need to cut the files and realign them so that they line

00:19:30 ◼   ► up again so that everybody sort of has this consensual, you know, current time

00:19:35 ◼   ► that they actually had in the in the recording session on Skype but didn't

00:19:39 ◼   ► go into the audio files because they drift a little bit. Marco wrote a

00:19:45 ◼   ► utility that fixes that but it's it's still in beta and private and so nobody

00:19:48 ◼   ► has it. So you know that's it is a pain. It's also unusable to people that

00:19:56 ◼   ► don't understand the command line like me. Yes that's true it is a command line

00:20:00 ◼   ► utility. It's great. I can't wait for him to release it because it's really good. I

00:20:03 ◼   ► use it all the time. But he's a busy guy, Marco.

00:20:07 ◼   ► I chop the files up like an animal.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the other way to do it. I do that for TPK because it's... Well,

00:20:16 ◼   ► sometimes you just can't... The tool doesn't even do it. It's just too messy and you have

00:20:21 ◼   ► to sync it yourself and chop it up like an animal. That's okay. It happens. All in the

00:20:29 ◼   ► interests of podcast quality, I would say. The big thing is, and we talked about this

00:20:34 ◼   ► last week as real-time follow-up, but Joe Steele helpfully did an Ask Upgrade post about

00:20:40 ◼   ► this too, which is that we should make each other listen to The Flop House and Hello Internet

00:20:44 ◼   ► and discuss it. And this was our homework from last week, is that you went off and listened

00:20:48 ◼   ► to at least one episode of The Flop House, and I went off and listened to an episode

00:20:51 ◼   ► of Hello Internet, neither of which we had heard before and both of which we had professed

00:20:55 ◼   ► to be among our favorite podcasts.

00:20:57 ◼   ► So we should talk about that, we should report back now.

00:21:00 ◼   ► So do you listen to The Flop House?

00:21:02 ◼   ► - I listen to episode 133, Bullet to the Head.

00:21:06 ◼   ► - Bullet to the Head, that's the Sylvester Stallone movie.

00:21:09 ◼   ► - Uh-huh.

00:21:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:21:10 ◼   ► - So basically, one of the things that kept me away

00:21:15 ◼   ► from The Flop House was I haven't seen most of the movies

00:21:21 ◼   ► they talk about.

00:21:22 ◼   ► And I'd heard people-- - Which shouldn't stop you.

00:21:23 ◼   ► - Exactly, I heard people mention it,

00:21:25 ◼   ► but I'm still like, yeah, but I don't know.

00:21:27 ◼   ► But it really doesn't even make a difference.

00:21:29 ◼   ► They do a really good job of explaining

00:21:31 ◼   ► what they're talking about,

00:21:32 ◼   ► and then they just talk about it,

00:21:33 ◼   ► but at least in this episode that I've listened to,

00:21:35 ◼   ► they didn't, the movie is not discussed in great detail.

00:21:40 ◼   ► - No. - It's kind of just,

00:21:41 ◼   ► the movie allows them to make jokes

00:21:44 ◼   ► about things that happen in the movie.

00:21:46 ◼   ► - I started listening to The Flop House,

00:21:47 ◼   ► I picked episodes of movies that I'd seen,

00:21:49 ◼   ► 'cause there were three or four movies that I'd seen

00:21:52 ◼   ► that were in their list.

00:21:53 ◼   ► And I realized listening to those that it didn't matter.

00:21:58 ◼   ► That knowing what was in the movie allowed me

00:22:01 ◼   ► to nod along at points and go, yes, but that was it.

00:22:04 ◼   ► And then I got past it.

00:22:06 ◼   ► - You may need to help me with some of the names

00:22:09 ◼   ► of people as I speak about this.

00:22:11 ◼   ► I don't know how familiar you are with this episode.

00:22:14 ◼   ► - I, in fact, knowing that you were listening to it,

00:22:17 ◼   ► I listened back to most of it this weekend.

00:22:21 ◼   ► - Okay, so--

00:22:22 ◼   ► - That's called preparation, Myke.

00:22:23 ◼   ► - The audio is tough.

00:22:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:22:27 ◼   ► - Sometimes you have to look past things like that.

00:22:30 ◼   ► - And we had several listeners who said,

00:22:31 ◼   ► "Oh, I can't listen to this show, it just sounds terrible."

00:22:34 ◼   ► And I replied back to one of them, I think,

00:22:36 ◼   ► and I said, "Well, it's one of my favorites

00:22:37 ◼   ► and it's got great content,

00:22:38 ◼   ► but if you just can't bear to listen to it, I understand.

00:22:40 ◼   ► Especially at the beginning, it sounds terrible."

00:22:42 ◼   ► And there are episodes that sound better

00:22:44 ◼   ► and there are episodes that sound worse.

00:22:45 ◼   ► It seems like maybe since they joined Maximum Fun,

00:22:48 ◼   ► they've gotten a little bit of a technical upgrade

00:22:50 ◼   ► or some help in getting their setup clearer

00:22:53 ◼   ► 'cause it sounds, it always sounds better

00:22:56 ◼   ► as time goes along.

00:22:57 ◼   ► But yeah, there's one famous episode that literally,

00:23:00 ◼   ► there was a cable that was hooked up wrong

00:23:02 ◼   ► and so there's a radio station that is interference

00:23:06 ◼   ► coming from the radio station,

00:23:07 ◼   ► broadcasting through the cables for the entire episode.

00:23:10 ◼   ► And I think it's posted-- - But they kept it.

00:23:12 ◼   ► - Well, I think it's posted as like a side note of like,

00:23:16 ◼   ► you shouldn't listen to this because it sounds terrible,

00:23:19 ◼   ► but it's over there.

00:23:20 ◼   ► they kind of like put it on the side I believe. But yeah, the audio quality is far from pristine.

00:23:26 ◼   ► It is three kind of non-technical people in a room together with three microphones and

00:23:33 ◼   ► yeah. So there's no doubt about that. It is not a professional production in that way.

00:23:38 ◼   ► So but I look past it because things happen. I've had bad, you know, I've had bad shows

00:23:48 ◼   ► audio wise and I got better at it. Some people say that we're still not at the

00:23:52 ◼   ► level that they would like and that's fine you know we're working at it every

00:23:56 ◼   ► day. But you know sometimes you have to look past it so I did and within minutes

00:24:03 ◼   ► I was laughing out loud at the train station. It's kind of I don't even know

00:24:09 ◼   ► how it started but they were doing this like impression of German people

00:24:14 ◼   ► And I'm not 100% sure why it happened and I figured that that's probably just part of it.

00:24:20 ◼   ► Oh, it was there was they did a riff about like Werner Herzog movies and it like completely

00:24:26 ◼   ► inappropriate Werner Herzog movies. Yeah, and then it was just kind of just like stereotypical

00:24:32 ◼   ► like terrible German accents. But it was really funny and within about maybe 20 minutes I kind

00:24:41 ◼   ► of worked out what this show kind of is. Yeah these are I mean two of these guys

00:24:47 ◼   ► are writers for The Daily Show and when I subjected my friend Phil Michaels to

00:24:51 ◼   ► this for the first time he came back and he said it's funny it's really great he

00:24:55 ◼   ► likes a lot but he said it's very writers room. That is exactly what I was about to say.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Just throw all the jokes out there and see which ones work just let them all

00:25:04 ◼   ► out and it's like you're inside a writers room somewhere where people are

00:25:08 ◼   ► just comedy writers are sitting there just anything that comes to mind they

00:25:11 ◼   ► just throw it out there and a lot of it is really funny and they riff off of

00:25:14 ◼   ► each other but that's what it is it's it's almost like a just a stream of

00:25:19 ◼   ► consciousness kind of thing collaboration because I've seen like

00:25:23 ◼   ► documentaries like about South Park and stuff and they show what the writers

00:25:26 ◼   ► room is like and when I was listening I was like this is just like that because

00:25:30 ◼   ► someone will say something that's mildly funny and they will keep going until

00:25:35 ◼   ► everyone is just bursting with laughter but they'll just keep making that keep

00:25:39 ◼   ► building and keep building and keep building which actually I've I can see

00:25:43 ◼   ► how that could drive people crazy but I really liked it I've really yeah it's

00:25:49 ◼   ► that's what you get that's what it is and either that works for you not it

00:25:53 ◼   ► makes me laugh so much that that that's that's why I that's why I love it but

00:25:58 ◼   ► it's yeah it's not for everybody the sound quality isn't gonna do it for some

00:26:00 ◼   ► people I find it acceptable I've dropped podcasts because I terrible sound

00:26:04 ◼   ► quality but I think the flop house is good enough that once you get into it

00:26:08 ◼   ► Most of the episodes are fine.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Every now and then there's one where something is set wrong

00:26:13 ◼   ► and it's bad and you have to kind of grit your teeth

00:26:16 ◼   ► or just give up and go to the next one.

00:26:17 ◼   ► But yeah, it's very creative and you know,

00:26:20 ◼   ► not just, it's not just somebody says something

00:26:21 ◼   ► mildly funny, sometimes it's somebody just mispronounces

00:26:25 ◼   ► a word and that leads to a ridiculous chain of jokes.

00:26:28 ◼   ► And the highlight of "Bullet to the Head" is that

00:26:31 ◼   ► there's a recurring bit with a Sylvester Stallone impression.

00:26:36 ◼   ► - That just goes on forever,

00:26:37 ◼   ► but it's actually really, really funny.

00:26:39 ◼   ► - But I also loved in that episode, "The Letters Song."

00:26:42 ◼   ► Does that happen a lot? - "The Letters Song."

00:26:45 ◼   ► Almost every week. - All right, okay.

00:26:46 ◼   ► - There is a, when they introduce the letter segment,

00:26:48 ◼   ► it would be as if every time we did a vertical

00:26:51 ◼   ► or a topic on this show, I sang a made up,

00:26:54 ◼   ► improvised, terrible song about the topic

00:26:56 ◼   ► for like a minute or two or 10,

00:27:00 ◼   ► because that's what Elliott Kaelin does on the Flop House.

00:27:02 ◼   ► But it's become, again, it's one of those things

00:27:04 ◼   ► that I think in isolation would seem bizarre

00:27:06 ◼   ► and not necessarily funny, but then I think with repetition,

00:27:10 ◼   ► it becomes incredibly funny because you know it's coming

00:27:12 ◼   ► and they know it's coming.

00:27:14 ◼   ► And then he has to find another, you know,

00:27:16 ◼   ► original way to sing a stupid song.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:27:19 ◼   ► It's one of my favorites.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And I feel more emboldened to recommend it to people now

00:27:25 ◼   ► because knowing so many people who I've recommended to,

00:27:28 ◼   ► who've liked it and people who recommended to me,

00:27:31 ◼   ► you know, John Siracusa recommended to me and you know,

00:27:34 ◼   ► and Merlin loves it and Phil Michaels loves it.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I mean, there's so many people who love The Flop House

00:27:39 ◼   ► now that I feel like, okay,

00:27:40 ◼   ► it's got a pretty good batting average.

00:27:41 ◼   ► It's not for everybody, but most of the people

00:27:43 ◼   ► I've turned onto it have liked it.

00:27:46 ◼   ► - So I really liked it.

00:27:48 ◼   ► And I have downloaded more episodes.

00:27:51 ◼   ► I went through and did probably what most people do.

00:27:54 ◼   ► I looked for some that I have seen.

00:27:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:27:58 ◼   ► - And I've got a couple here.

00:28:00 ◼   ► It's unfortunately at a time when I have like

00:28:02 ◼   ► 20 shows above it, but I plan to listen to more of the show

00:28:06 ◼   ► I enjoyed it a lot listening to it and enough that I will keep it subscribed and I will definitely

00:28:11 ◼   ► Listen in it might be one of those shows that like what I do is when I'm out of stuff

00:28:16 ◼   ► I'll listen to a bunch which I kind of do

00:28:19 ◼   ► Anyway, I have a few shows like that which aren't so like topical or anything like that and I'll go back and listen to a bunch

00:28:25 ◼   ► of them

00:28:26 ◼   ► so I'm yeah, I'm very pleased that I

00:28:30 ◼   ► Was encouraged to listen to this show

00:28:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm glad you did

00:28:35 ◼   ► I think limitless was the first one that I that I saw the Bradley Cooper movie and that's because I had seen that

00:28:40 ◼   ► That is episode 85 Wow, you really did know didn't you I was looking I was looking at the at their list

00:28:51 ◼   ► Try and see what these movies are that were bad. I felt bad. Like I've seen movies that were on the flophouse

00:28:55 ◼   ► That's a bad sign when you've seen a movie night and day is another one. I saw that's the Cameron Diaz Tom Cruise movie

00:29:00 ◼   ► Yeah, that's number 79. I'd seen that one. So I that was one of my first listens just because I'd because I had seen it

00:29:07 ◼   ► You know, there are a few there are few of those. Yeah, not too many

00:29:11 ◼   ► I think one of the I think there's an x-men or like a Wolverine movie

00:29:14 ◼   ► That's that's in there that I had seen I have about an origins with Colin Wolverine -

00:29:20 ◼   ► Colin something I have about eight episodes downloaded like just things I think I might enjoy. Yes

00:29:27 ◼   ► Thank you. There's a nice catalog and then it comes out every other week

00:29:30 ◼   ► So it's not the pace of it is kind of nice where you know

00:29:33 ◼   ► Some of the like we were saying some of these weekly podcasts like I just finished

00:29:37 ◼   ► Or I just gotten to the previous ATP and they released the new ATP and I was like no you lap me again

00:29:43 ◼   ► I was right there and I kind of like that the flophouse although I would love a flophouse every week

00:29:48 ◼   ► I kind of like that every it's every other week the you know when it comes it's it's it's a it's special that it's arrived and

00:29:55 ◼   ► I try to prioritize it. And the back catalog, like I said, it's a little spotty in terms of audio quality, but I finally, I'm going through, I listen to the new episodes and then I've still got about 20 or 30 that I haven't listened to that are in the middle, which John Sirkusa would weep if he heard that, but you know, I don't think you need to start at the beginning with The Flop House.

00:30:14 ◼   ► Okay. Hello, Internet.

00:30:17 ◼   ► Hello, Internet.

00:30:18 ◼   ► So you listened to episode seven, right? Was it seven?

00:30:22 ◼   ► The one with, wasn't it like 16 or something? The one with the flags.

00:30:25 ◼   ► Yeah, no you're right, it wasn't seven. I will find it now. I don't know why I said

00:30:30 ◼   ► seven. That was random.

00:30:31 ◼   ► I just picked a number. You listened to episode...

00:30:36 ◼   ► 16. 16.

00:30:37 ◼   ► 16. Great.

00:30:38 ◼   ► And part of 17, which I had queued up for ages. I didn't get very far into 17 before

00:30:43 ◼   ► we did the show, but I did listen to all of episode 16.

00:30:47 ◼   ► So the episode is actually called "The Worst Topic for a Podcast" because they talk about

00:30:52 ◼   ► flags.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Flags.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Which is great because you need to see the flags.

00:30:55 ◼   ► Yep.

00:30:56 ◼   ► But they're in the show notes, so you know, they're kind of there.

00:30:59 ◼   ► So go on, what do you think?

00:31:00 ◼   ► Tell me.

00:31:02 ◼   ► So I liked it.

00:31:03 ◼   ► I think it's funny at the beginning they talk about how they're firmly in the "two guys

00:31:06 ◼   ► talk about stuff" podcast genre, which we know something about, Myke.

00:31:12 ◼   ► I think they're really interesting.

00:31:13 ◼   ► I think Grey is a kind of like a combination of John

00:31:21 ◼   ► Syracuse and like Merlin Mann.

00:31:23 ◼   ► He's like an interesting-- he's a character in that kind of--

00:31:27 ◼   ► you know, he's got opinions, and he's

00:31:30 ◼   ► got reasons for his opinions.

00:31:32 ◼   ► And I don't know, he's a really interesting guy.

00:31:35 ◼   ► His videos are great.

00:31:36 ◼   ► And then Brady is Australian, and in all the best ways

00:31:40 ◼   ► that one could be Australian.

00:31:42 ◼   ► He seems very friendly and smart and skeptical

00:31:45 ◼   ► and I don't know, he's Australian.

00:31:46 ◼   ► And they have a nice rapport.

00:31:49 ◼   ► And I really liked their bit,

00:31:52 ◼   ► they had a bit in there about brain crack,

00:31:53 ◼   ► which is where you spend so much time envisioning

00:31:55 ◼   ► how great it's gonna be when you finish a creative project

00:31:57 ◼   ► that you never start it, which I really,

00:32:02 ◼   ► I totally get how that is a dangerous thing to do

00:32:04 ◼   ► and how you need to not go down that path.

00:32:07 ◼   ► I mean, visualizing success is great,

00:32:08 ◼   ► but you need to actually do the work.

00:32:10 ◼   ► and if you spend too much time imagining

00:32:12 ◼   ► how great it's gonna be when you're done,

00:32:13 ◼   ► then you're not actually ever gonna do it.

00:32:15 ◼   ► I thought that was really great.

00:32:17 ◼   ► And then the flag stuff, I have opinions about flags.

00:32:20 ◼   ► We don't need to take that terrible worst topic

00:32:23 ◼   ► for a podcast and do it here,

00:32:24 ◼   ► but I enjoyed that because I enjoy,

00:32:26 ◼   ► I've posted several things on the internet

00:32:29 ◼   ► about the design of graphics on screen for sporting events,

00:32:34 ◼   ► televised sporting events.

00:32:36 ◼   ► And it struck me while I was listening

00:32:38 ◼   ► this flag discussion. Although flags don't really have a user interface, flags are just

00:32:43 ◼   ► like completely symbolic, so it's a in some ways a pure design challenge. I find it interesting

00:32:51 ◼   ► in the same way, which is it's sort of, you know, mostly an abstract, obscure, weird question

00:32:59 ◼   ► that becomes more interesting when you look at it and say, "Why does this exist? What

00:33:03 ◼   ► are the, what's the purpose here? How did this come to be?" And I think about that sometimes

00:33:07 ◼   ► when I'm thinking about sports graphics and other stuff like that, design of soda cans,

00:33:14 ◼   ► things like that, that are design and that have relevance, but at the same time, it is

00:33:19 ◼   ► kind of funny to spend a lot of time and brainpower thinking about them.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Also the California flag is great, and I don't know what he's talking about having. I agree

00:33:30 ◼   ► that text on a flag is not great, especially if it's like, "Wyoming! We are a state and

00:33:36 ◼   ► we put the word "Wyoming" on our flag versus something like California where it says "California

00:33:41 ◼   ► Republican" it's a reference to the two weeks or whatever when California was independent before

00:33:45 ◼   ► joining the United States and it's got a bear and a red star. How the red star on the California

00:33:52 ◼   ► state flag got through the communist scare of the 50s just I have no idea how that happened because

00:34:00 ◼   ► it looks, you know, vaguely like there's going to be a Communist revolution of bears in the

00:34:07 ◼   ► near future in California. I agree with Grey that the Maryland flag is just a masterpiece of

00:34:14 ◼   ► insanity. The Maryland flag is like a fever dream. I don't even know how that could be

00:34:20 ◼   ► a thing. It is, and I never really looked at it that closely.

00:34:27 ◼   ► I think if you look at it too closely you will pass out.

00:34:30 ◼   ► I think that's what happens. Yeah, don't don't exactly don't don't look at it too

00:34:34 ◼   ► closely or you might die. You know, we're here to talk you down.

00:34:38 ◼   ► Don't look at the Maryland flag while you're driving,

00:34:40 ◼   ► especially. That would be that would be bad. You would you'll crash immediately

00:34:44 ◼   ► and it will rewrite your brain. Yeah, but anyway it was a fun

00:34:48 ◼   ► podcast and I would listen again.

00:34:51 ◼   ► I... it is a challenge because there are so many podcasts and my queue is so large, but

00:35:00 ◼   ► these guys are really interesting and I love their attention to detail.

00:35:03 ◼   ► I like their rapport.

00:35:07 ◼   ► You know, I like the humor of them talking about like, you know, would you watch a video

00:35:11 ◼   ► about airline crashes while on a plane?

00:35:13 ◼   ► That was a good question.

00:35:17 ◼   ► And yeah, I like it.

00:35:18 ◼   ► I like that it's not about, it's applying, like I said,

00:35:21 ◼   ► it's applying the kinds of analysis that you would apply

00:35:26 ◼   ► to something like technology and on all these tech podcasts

00:35:30 ◼   ► to other stuff in the case of the flags.

00:35:32 ◼   ► And so I liked it.

00:35:35 ◼   ► I approve of your choice.

00:35:37 ◼   ► I understand why you like it.

00:35:38 ◼   ► I'm not ready to say it's suddenly in my top five podcasts,

00:35:41 ◼   ► but I will listen again.

00:35:43 ◼   ► And I'm glad I got the push from you to listen

00:35:46 ◼   ► because like I said, people had told me

00:35:47 ◼   ► I should listen to episode 17 for quite a while and had been sitting, I'd been staring

00:35:51 ◼   ► at Mr. Phoenix on my overcast for a long time and where they talk about her and some other

00:36:00 ◼   ► movies.

00:36:01 ◼   ► I've been willing to listen to that one for a while so now I will listen to that next.

00:36:06 ◼   ► And I also watched like a billion CGP Grey videos on YouTube that I hadn't seen.

00:36:11 ◼   ► I thought I'd seen his videos and I've seen like five and he's done like a hundred so

00:36:16 ◼   ► That was actually a lot of fun.

00:36:18 ◼   ► I watched a bunch of his YouTube videos too.

00:36:20 ◼   ► - And they are all fantastic.

00:36:21 ◼   ► When I-- - Yeah, he's great.

00:36:23 ◼   ► - After I first listened, well, after I got kind of addicted

00:36:27 ◼   ► to Hello Internet, I then went and just watched

00:36:30 ◼   ► every single video.

00:36:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah. - Not in one go.

00:36:34 ◼   ► I mean, that's kind of crazy.

00:36:36 ◼   ► But I kind of over a couple of weeks just went through

00:36:38 ◼   ► and just watched all of his stuff.

00:36:40 ◼   ► 'Cause it's all great. - And all his videos

00:36:41 ◼   ► have millions of views on YouTube.

00:36:43 ◼   ► It's amazing. - Yeah, he's very,

00:36:45 ◼   ► very good at what he does.

00:36:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, no, I was blown away by that.

00:36:48 ◼   ► It actually is one of those things where you look at

00:36:49 ◼   ► and you're like, wow, so maybe I won't think about

00:36:53 ◼   ► making YouTube videos.

00:36:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:36:55 ◼   ► Oh my God, that is a high bar.

00:36:58 ◼   ► I mean, it's just so impressive that he does that.

00:37:00 ◼   ► But I love it, and I love that they're often on topics

00:37:03 ◼   ► like that where it's like, I think this is interesting.

00:37:05 ◼   ► It's not like how you slice an apple or something like that.

00:37:09 ◼   ► It's explaining things that people are like,

00:37:13 ◼   ► oh yeah, I always wondered about that.

00:37:15 ◼   ► and explaining it in a clear, entertaining way,

00:37:18 ◼   ► which is a great use of YouTube videos, I think.

00:37:21 ◼   ► So I, you know, and those are the ones I'd seen,

00:37:23 ◼   ► but he has so many more.

00:37:25 ◼   ► And I will, first I listened to the American,

00:37:27 ◼   ► or watched the American Empire video,

00:37:28 ◼   ► 'cause they talk about that in episode 16.

00:37:30 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, good.

00:37:32 ◼   ► So you're not crazy.

00:37:33 ◼   ► That's a good podcast. - Good, good.

00:37:35 ◼   ► Shall we talk about our second sponsor

00:37:38 ◼   ► for this week's episode, Jason?

00:37:39 ◼   ► Please, please, Jason Snell.

00:37:40 ◼   ► Jason Snell of Six Colors. - Yes, Myke Hurley.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Please, could you tell me-- - I'm gonna ask my

00:37:44 ◼   ► Kirli a relay.

00:37:45 ◼   ► - Please could you tell me about mail route?

00:37:47 ◼   ► - Do you need a friend?

00:37:48 ◼   ► - I need a friend.

00:37:49 ◼   ► - Okay, well, mail route could be your friend.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I've talked about mail route before.

00:37:54 ◼   ► I would like to talk about them again right now.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Mail route, I've been using them for a while.

00:37:58 ◼   ► Mail route is a service that sits between your mail server

00:38:03 ◼   ► and the big bad internet and takes in your mail,

00:38:06 ◼   ► filters out the spam and anything like virus attachments

00:38:09 ◼   ► and any bounced email and you never see that.

00:38:11 ◼   ► It never comes to your inbox.

00:38:13 ◼   ► And so you don't have to install any hardware,

00:38:15 ◼   ► you don't have to install any software.

00:38:17 ◼   ► It's mail filtering in the cloud.

00:38:19 ◼   ► You open your email,

00:38:20 ◼   ► you see only the legit email that you want to see.

00:38:22 ◼   ► I have it set, and this is an option,

00:38:24 ◼   ► you can set it to once a day,

00:38:26 ◼   ► send me a digest that says,

00:38:27 ◼   ► "Here's what we filtered out."

00:38:28 ◼   ► And those have very quick links on them

00:38:30 ◼   ► to automatically deliver any message

00:38:32 ◼   ► that it was actually good,

00:38:33 ◼   ► and in fact, even whitelist it.

00:38:35 ◼   ► So that person will never be blocked again in the future,

00:38:38 ◼   ► which is also good.

00:38:40 ◼   ► So I use that feature a lot.

00:38:43 ◼   ► That said, it very rarely filters something out

00:38:46 ◼   ► that is not spam.

00:38:47 ◼   ► It happens once in a couple of months, I think.

00:38:51 ◼   ► Have I seen one of those?

00:38:53 ◼   ► So the spam is gone.

00:38:54 ◼   ► I have a clean inbox and it was super easy to set up.

00:38:58 ◼   ► The web interface is great.

00:39:01 ◼   ► Big institutions can use it.

00:39:02 ◼   ► It's used by large universities and corporations.

00:39:05 ◼   ► If you are a desktop user like me,

00:39:07 ◼   ► you will find that the interface is simple,

00:39:09 ◼   ► but those admins, email admins and IT pros,

00:39:13 ◼   ► it's built for them too.

00:39:14 ◼   ► So if you're one of those people

00:39:16 ◼   ► who's an email administrator

00:39:17 ◼   ► or an IT professional somewhere,

00:39:18 ◼   ► like I said, large organizations like universities use this.

00:39:22 ◼   ► They have tools for you.

00:39:23 ◼   ► They have an API.

00:39:25 ◼   ► They support LDAP, Active Directory, TLS, mail bagging.

00:39:28 ◼   ► Yes.

00:39:30 ◼   ► And outbound relay.

00:39:31 ◼   ► So everything that you'd want from people

00:39:32 ◼   ► who are handling your mail.

00:39:33 ◼   ► So by the time it gets to you, it's already been processed.

00:39:35 ◼   ► All that junk has been taken out of it.

00:39:37 ◼   ► And it works.

00:39:39 ◼   ► I like it a lot, I use it definitely for the domain

00:39:41 ◼   ► that I control, that I get my mail

00:39:43 ◼   ► and my family gets their mail on.

00:39:44 ◼   ► They are all being spam filtered by MailRoute.

00:39:49 ◼   ► So here's what you need to do to remove spam

00:39:51 ◼   ► from your life for good, and it is good to not have spam.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Go to mailroute, M-A-I-L-R-O-U-T-E dot net,

00:39:59 ◼   ► mailroute.net/upgrade, the show that you're listening

00:40:03 ◼   ► to right now, for a free trial and 10% off the lifetime

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00:40:08 ◼   ► that's a great deal. So thank you so much to MailRoute for sponsoring Upgrade. And a

00:40:15 ◼   ► good friend. They are a good friend. Thank you, MailRoute. We really appreciate your

00:40:18 ◼   ► support every week. So Marco Arment broke the internet. Yeah, this is still going on

00:40:27 ◼   ► as we talk. Marco is tweeting about it and there was a screenshot that he retweeted of

00:40:32 ◼   ► MSNBC talking about his blog post, which is crazy.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And there's definitely, I think Marco feels really bad right now because he was intending

00:40:42 ◼   ► his blog post called "His Apple Lost the Functional High Ground."

00:40:46 ◼   ► He was intending that for Apple and the Apple nerd community, and the danger is always that

00:40:53 ◼   ► you're going to get picked up by the Apple is doomed crowd and used as fodder for that.

00:40:59 ◼   ► and that seems to have happened.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And I totally get why Marco is feeling funny about that now,

00:41:04 ◼   ► 'cause that was not really his intent.

00:41:05 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:41:06 ◼   ► - But as somebody who's in the media business

00:41:09 ◼   ► and has been in this business for 20 years, it happens.

00:41:12 ◼   ► I mean, this is just, it's like when you write stuff

00:41:14 ◼   ► and put it out there, you can't control who takes it

00:41:16 ◼   ► and which one goes big and how people,

00:41:19 ◼   ► I mean, that's just, that's the part of the cost

00:41:21 ◼   ► of being out there is that some stuff is gonna blow up

00:41:24 ◼   ► and you never really can control what it is.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Like I can see it, 'cause like, he kind of said,

00:41:29 ◼   ► you know, he intended it for the nerd crowd, as you said.

00:41:31 ◼   ► Like not even, I mean,

00:41:33 ◼   ► I don't really fully understand that title.

00:41:36 ◼   ► Like, I feel like I kind of get the gist of it.

00:41:39 ◼   ► But if you ask me to try and put that into other words,

00:41:41 ◼   ► like, I don't know if I could, really.

00:41:45 ◼   ► - If I had to categorize his regret,

00:41:47 ◼   ► and I mean, he'll probably talk about this much more

00:41:49 ◼   ► on ATP this week, but, you know,

00:41:52 ◼   ► I looked at it and I thought, for example,

00:41:53 ◼   ► there are lots of examples of this,

00:41:55 ◼   ► and yet the Post doesn't have any of them.

00:41:56 ◼   ► I think there's an assumption there that everybody knows what they are, but I think it would

00:42:00 ◼   ► have been valuable if he had said, "Here are some, just for example, some of the things

00:42:04 ◼   ► that I've seen that bother me about this." But there aren't a lot of examples in there.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I think you're right. Yeah, as an editor I look at it and I think he probably could have

00:42:14 ◼   ► spent more time with it, and I'm sure that if he knew that it was going to get picked

00:42:17 ◼   ► up like it did, he would have spent more time with it, and I suspect that's part of it too.

00:42:21 ◼   ► But the main point, I didn't really want to talk about the effect of posting something

00:42:25 ◼   ► as much as I wanted to talk about the post and the point.

00:42:28 ◼   ► And that is, I mentioned this on Six Colors this morning

00:42:32 ◼   ► when I linked to Marco's post is that I've had a thing

00:42:35 ◼   ► in my little reminders stack of story ideas.

00:42:40 ◼   ► That's what I keep in my single use of,

00:42:42 ◼   ► just like I use notes to do incomparable notes,

00:42:46 ◼   ► I do reminders for story ideas for Six Colors.

00:42:49 ◼   ► And I've had the phrase more about Apple

00:42:51 ◼   ► and software quality in there for a couple months now.

00:42:54 ◼   ► And I just haven't had that moment, that flash of like,

00:42:57 ◼   ► ah, I know what to say about Apple and software quality.

00:43:00 ◼   ► But this is the issue.

00:43:01 ◼   ► And this is what Marco is bringing up.

00:43:03 ◼   ► And I think it's resonated because other people,

00:43:06 ◼   ► at least in these kind of Apple nerd circles,

00:43:08 ◼   ► have had the same feeling,

00:43:10 ◼   ► which is a feeling that there's something wrong

00:43:13 ◼   ► with Apple software quality.

00:43:15 ◼   ► That things are kind of buggy and don't work right

00:43:20 ◼   ► and seem like they were rushed

00:43:21 ◼   ► or not very well thought out.

00:43:23 ◼   ► and that there's also a perception that it didn't used to be like that.

00:43:26 ◼   ► That it used to be better at, the Apple software quality used to be better.

00:43:31 ◼   ► So it's interesting because like I agree with what Marco said and it was a good post and it felt like a Marco post, right?

00:43:39 ◼   ► It was just a post that Marco wrote and it's really, it is really interesting that it has kind of ballooned, I suppose.

00:43:49 ◼   ► Anybody who's listened to ATP has heard them talk about this same issue.

00:43:53 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very, very interesting. I mean, I guess that the general public have a feeling towards this sense.

00:44:02 ◼   ► Otherwise, I can't imagine why news outlets would...

00:44:05 ◼   ► Well, I can. I mean, it's the same reason the whole Apple Doom industry exists, is because

00:44:12 ◼   ► people want to write about, "Oh, is Apple in trouble?" And I think that's the issue here,

00:44:17 ◼   ► is that this is fueling that. You know, I tried to write, and one of the reasons I haven't

00:44:22 ◼   ► written this is that I—it's very difficult to—and Marco, I think, tried this and maybe

00:44:27 ◼   ► came off a little bit more negative than he wanted to. It's difficult to do a balanced

00:44:35 ◼   ► discussion of this issue, because there are going to be people who are like, "Oh, you

00:44:38 ◼   ► guys are just bellyaching, everything's fine, this is just more doomsaying, Apple is doomed,

00:44:41 ◼   ► blah blah blah," and then there are other people who are going to run around and go,

00:44:44 ◼   ► "Oh my God, Apple's doomed," right?

00:44:45 ◼   ► And you can't reach, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

00:44:50 ◼   ► I think that the internet is littered with anecdotes

00:44:55 ◼   ► about, "Oh, this feature doesn't work.

00:44:57 ◼   ► "This feature doesn't work.

00:44:58 ◼   ► "This feature, you know, I'm worried about this app

00:45:01 ◼   ► "has been abandoned."

00:45:02 ◼   ► There's a lot of that out there.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And none of those things can be pointed to

00:45:06 ◼   ► and you can say, "See, proof, there it is."

00:45:11 ◼   ► But I do get a general sense,

00:45:13 ◼   ► And I think the reason the Marco story resonated

00:45:15 ◼   ► with so many people in this community is,

00:45:17 ◼   ► I think a bunch of us feel like,

00:45:19 ◼   ► and there was a, I think Hacker News,

00:45:22 ◼   ► or maybe it was a Reddit thread where somebody who's,

00:45:24 ◼   ► who claimed at least to be working in the OS group at Apple

00:45:27 ◼   ► said that the OS engineers at Apple feel this way too,

00:45:30 ◼   ► feel that there's something wrong,

00:45:31 ◼   ► that the way that the stuff is being pushed out is not,

00:45:34 ◼   ► is leading to a software experience

00:45:38 ◼   ► that is not up to maybe what we expect from Apple.

00:45:41 ◼   ► and maybe our expectations are too high,

00:45:43 ◼   ► but boy, that's a scary road to go down and say,

00:45:46 ◼   ► "Hey, it was okay for Microsoft.

00:45:47 ◼   ► "Maybe it's okay for Apple."

00:45:48 ◼   ► That's not a good path to walk down.

00:45:50 ◼   ► I do think, so I do think something's going on

00:45:52 ◼   ► and we may have even touched on this

00:45:54 ◼   ► in previous episodes of this show.

00:45:55 ◼   ► I feel like these yearly monolithic software releases

00:46:00 ◼   ► with a whole bunch of new features tied,

00:46:02 ◼   ► some of which are tied to hardware

00:46:04 ◼   ► and some of which are not,

00:46:05 ◼   ► my gut feeling is that they are probably

00:46:10 ◼   ► part of the reason that we're seeing a little more instability. But there are lots of other

00:46:15 ◼   ► issues too. I mean, Apple's apps have been an issue where John Saracusa talked about

00:46:20 ◼   ► this at length in an ATP episode a little while ago about how Apple seems to, you know,

00:46:25 ◼   ► put a team on pages and numbers and keynote and they work on it and then that team gets

00:46:30 ◼   ► retasked and there's like one person there to do bug fixes and basically the apps are

00:46:34 ◼   ► abandoned for three or four years and then somebody comes back and they write new versions

00:46:38 ◼   ► of those apps and break all the compatibility and you lose features and that's the new version.

00:46:44 ◼   ► The way iPhoto has been kind of mismanaged, I would say, over its entire lifespan, Aputure

00:46:49 ◼   ► being launched with great fanfare and then kind of being allowed to just fade away to

00:46:53 ◼   ► the point where, although you can buy it and bundle it with a new Mac, it's also going

00:46:57 ◼   ► to be removed and replaced with this new Photos app that presumably everybody's working really

00:47:01 ◼   ► hard on now.

00:47:03 ◼   ► But that leads to the next question, which is, what's the Photos app quality going to

00:47:06 ◼   ► be?

00:47:07 ◼   ► to be updated regularly, or is it going to be one of these things that gets released

00:47:12 ◼   ► and we're told that it's great and then it sort of never gets updated for four years?

00:47:16 ◼   ► We don't know. Apple's had issues with software before, it feels like there are more of them

00:47:21 ◼   ► now. It's hard to get a read beyond the anecdotes and see is this just everybody kind of looking

00:47:28 ◼   ► at each other and saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm having bugs too. This is obviously a big

00:47:31 ◼   ► problem." Is it really a big problem? And that comes to the core of this, which is what's

00:47:36 ◼   ► going on inside Apple? And we don't know. We don't know. Short of somebody saying,

00:47:41 ◼   ► "I'm an Apple insider and I can tell you the truth of what's going on on the inside,"

00:47:46 ◼   ► it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell whether this is just, you know, our misty water-colored

00:47:51 ◼   ► memories of Snow Leopard and that in reality, you know, there are always issues. Like I

00:47:56 ◼   ► said, I think with some of Apple's apps, there have always been issues. That said,

00:48:01 ◼   ► I think it's telling that a lot of Apple nerds have been saying for the last six months

00:48:06 ◼   ► that the pace feels like it's too great,

00:48:09 ◼   ► and that they're calling for an OS release

00:48:13 ◼   ► that's more like the old school snow leopards

00:48:16 ◼   ► and mountain lions, where you don't try to pour in

00:48:19 ◼   ► every feature and you kind of calm it down

00:48:21 ◼   ► and try to get this stuff to be less quirky

00:48:24 ◼   ► and more stable than it is now.

00:48:26 ◼   ► I don't know, it's tough because it's so easy

00:48:30 ◼   ► to be on the outside looking in and make assumptions

00:48:32 ◼   ► about what's going on on the inside.

00:48:34 ◼   ► but unless you're inside, you don't know.

00:48:36 ◼   ► My worry, and I think this is Marco's worry,

00:48:39 ◼   ► and he mentioned it in his post actually,

00:48:42 ◼   ► is that what if there's an issue here

00:48:45 ◼   ► and Apple doesn't think it's a big deal,

00:48:48 ◼   ► but it is a big deal.

00:48:49 ◼   ► And that's making some assumptions there.

00:48:50 ◼   ► You're making an assumption about what people at Apple,

00:48:53 ◼   ► the powers that be at Apple feel is important.

00:48:56 ◼   ► And you're making an assumption about

00:48:57 ◼   ► whether there's really a problem or not.

00:48:59 ◼   ► And my guess is that people inside Apple,

00:49:02 ◼   ► that information is available to people inside Apple.

00:49:04 ◼   ► They know whether this is a problem or not

00:49:06 ◼   ► based on various metrics,

00:49:07 ◼   ► whether it's the feeling of the engineering team

00:49:09 ◼   ► or the bug tracker, or whether it is consumer complaints

00:49:12 ◼   ► or support requests or whatever.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And obviously they know what they feel

00:49:17 ◼   ► about whether it's really relevant

00:49:19 ◼   ► to their business going forward,

00:49:20 ◼   ► or whether it's just the noise that happens around software

00:49:23 ◼   ► because software in general has quality issues

00:49:26 ◼   ► and always has, and maybe always will.

00:49:28 ◼   ► And the fear is that this is a problem

00:49:33 ◼   ► and that they don't care or they don't think it's a problem.

00:49:36 ◼   ► And I think that was the motivation behind Marco's post

00:49:38 ◼   ► and some of the other posts that we've seen.

00:49:40 ◼   ► And I linked to a whole bunch of them.

00:49:41 ◼   ► Guy English had one, Kirk McElhern had one.

00:49:44 ◼   ► I think people are writing about this

00:49:46 ◼   ► because they want to air this question

00:49:50 ◼   ► so that maybe somebody at a higher level at Apple asks,

00:49:54 ◼   ► "Is this a problem?"

00:49:56 ◼   ► because the scary thing is if Apple,

00:49:58 ◼   ► if this is a problem and Apple doesn't know,

00:50:00 ◼   ► 'cause that's dangerous.

00:50:01 ◼   ► That leads to Apple being in trouble

00:50:04 ◼   ► because they left something to fester for a long time

00:50:07 ◼   ► and people who like Apple and like Apple's products

00:50:09 ◼   ► and would like Apple's products to be great,

00:50:12 ◼   ► would, you would see why they would be concerned about that

00:50:15 ◼   ► and they would want, they would want to raise the alarm

00:50:18 ◼   ► and I don't think they're coming from a position

00:50:20 ◼   ► of trying to say Apple is doomed

00:50:22 ◼   ► because they wanna make money on stock manipulation

00:50:25 ◼   ► and I don't think they're doing it

00:50:26 ◼   ► because they secretly hate Apple

00:50:28 ◼   ► and they want Apple to fail.

00:50:29 ◼   ► I think that's the core of Marco feeling like his post

00:50:32 ◼   ► has been taken by those people and used as an example

00:50:35 ◼   ► of something that he doesn't really believe.

00:50:37 ◼   ► But at the same time,

00:50:39 ◼   ► I do think they're coming from a position of like,

00:50:41 ◼   ► "Hey, Apple, we think there's a problem here

00:50:43 ◼   ► "and you've shown very little sign that you,

00:50:47 ◼   ► "you've given us no proof that you're aware of it."

00:50:50 ◼   ► And that's concerning 'cause if you're not aware of it,

00:50:54 ◼   ► then this could lead into bad areas.

00:50:58 ◼   ► But it's so messy and that's the thing.

00:51:00 ◼   ► It's so messy, there's so many different ways

00:51:03 ◼   ► that this could be true.

00:51:05 ◼   ► Systems on the inside are so complex

00:51:07 ◼   ► that we have very little vision

00:51:11 ◼   ► and purposefully on Apple's part

00:51:12 ◼   ► into how this process actually works.

00:51:16 ◼   ► But from the outside, all we can do is say

00:51:18 ◼   ► from the outside it feels like there's something

00:51:20 ◼   ► that is not quite right here.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And the only other thing we can do from the outside

00:51:25 ◼   ► is kind of wave our arms and say,

00:51:27 ◼   ► "Hey, do you guys know that it seems like

00:51:30 ◼   ► there's something not right here?"

00:51:31 ◼   ► And I feel like that's, ultimately that's what's going on.

00:51:34 ◼   ► 'Cause that's all we really have the power to do

00:51:36 ◼   ► is bring up the issue and say, you know,

00:51:39 ◼   ► you can maybe say, "Here's what I think might solve this."

00:51:41 ◼   ► But in the end, you know,

00:51:43 ◼   ► it's gonna be way more complicated than that

00:51:45 ◼   ► if you're on the inside.

00:51:46 ◼   ► But, so I think that's what's motivating it.

00:51:48 ◼   ► I do think, like I said, I think there's an issue.

00:51:51 ◼   ► I think it's very easy to overstate the issue

00:51:53 ◼   ► and the fact that Marco links to a post

00:51:54 ◼   ► that has since been taken down by a guy who basically said,

00:51:57 ◼   ► oh, forget it, the Mac's no good,

00:51:58 ◼   ► I'm going back to desktop Linux.

00:52:00 ◼   ► I mean, really, I'm going back to Linux, really?

00:52:03 ◼   ► That's such a bizarre edge case,

00:52:07 ◼   ► not something that a regular person would ever think about.

00:52:10 ◼   ► I don't see that as a bellwether,

00:52:11 ◼   ► that's just kind of dumb, in my opinion.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Sorry to the guy who wrote that,

00:52:15 ◼   ► and the piece wasn't bad,

00:52:17 ◼   ► but I'm going back to desktop Linux is just,

00:52:20 ◼   ► I mean, that's like a self parody almost.

00:52:22 ◼   ► I saw those posts a lot in the 2000s too.

00:52:25 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't know.

00:52:27 ◼   ► I think there are issues.

00:52:28 ◼   ► I think that Apple needs to change the way

00:52:30 ◼   ► they manage their software

00:52:31 ◼   ► because what's working now isn't working

00:52:33 ◼   ► on a lot of different levels.

00:52:35 ◼   ► But I don't think it's a total disaster

00:52:38 ◼   ► and that Apple is doomed.

00:52:39 ◼   ► And like I said, my biggest concern is,

00:52:42 ◼   ► is this a thing that Apple is aware of or not?

00:52:46 ◼   ► Because they won't say.

00:52:47 ◼   ► And so all we can do is say,

00:52:48 ◼   ► hey, wave our hands and say,

00:52:50 ◼   ► do you know, just tell it, just letting you know,

00:52:53 ◼   ► did you know you left the lights on in your car?

00:52:55 ◼   ► And the answer may be, oh yeah, they go off automatically,

00:52:58 ◼   ► it's gonna be fine.

00:52:59 ◼   ► Or it might be, oh no, thanks for telling me.

00:53:01 ◼   ► And we just don't know 'cause Apple's secretive

00:53:03 ◼   ► and they're not, short of Phil Schiller coming out

00:53:05 ◼   ► or Tim Cook coming out with a statement about this,

00:53:07 ◼   ► which is never gonna happen.

00:53:09 ◼   ► It would require a real crisis for that to happen.

00:53:12 ◼   ► Or them saying something about it

00:53:14 ◼   ► as part of a new direction WWDC,

00:53:16 ◼   ► saying we're going, I don't know,

00:53:18 ◼   ► we're getting rid of monolithic software updates

00:53:20 ◼   ► and we're gonna just roll out updates every few months

00:53:22 ◼   ► and they're gonna be small

00:53:24 ◼   ► and we'll occasionally introduce new features

00:53:25 ◼   ► and we'll warn you in advance.

00:53:26 ◼   ► I mean, they could change completely how they do this

00:53:29 ◼   ► and describe this in that context.

00:53:31 ◼   ► That might be the clearest sign of them taking this to heart

00:53:35 ◼   ► but it's not the only one that might happen.

00:53:38 ◼   ► - So when I look at this and I look at what people say

00:53:42 ◼   ► and the way that we think about it,

00:53:43 ◼   ► I try and look back at what has it been like in the past?

00:53:47 ◼   ► Because I mean, if you remove OS X from this

00:53:50 ◼   ► in my mind anyway, I would, because there isn't so much of a pattern.

00:53:55 ◼   ► Because the release schedule has not been as defined as iOS, right? Because iOS has

00:54:01 ◼   ► been every year since the start. So you can look at it and be like, right, so

00:54:05 ◼   ► you've got a pattern here. Has anything changed in that period of time? So in the

00:54:10 ◼   ► eight years? And I look back and I think every iOS release or every iPhone

00:54:15 ◼   ► OS release has had problems and bugs like I'm sure of it I remember them.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Absolutely. But it did feel like they got fixed and and I think iOS 7 in my memory

00:54:30 ◼   ► was definitely the the most unstable release because there were things that

00:54:34 ◼   ► iOS 7 did that were just crazy like the reboots which happened for a very very

00:54:40 ◼   ► long time you know your phone would just randomly reboot sitting on your desk.

00:54:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I got to experience that.

00:54:46 ◼   ► That was early on and it was a 64-bit devices thing,

00:54:50 ◼   ► I think, with iOS 7.

00:54:51 ◼   ► And then it went away eventually.

00:54:53 ◼   ► To be right, I just feel like iOS 7 and 8, especially,

00:54:56 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:54:57 ◼   ► - Were so ambitious, in a good way.

00:55:01 ◼   ► I don't know, I mean, I feel like Apple's hardware

00:55:04 ◼   ► is so strong that they don't need to hang their hat

00:55:08 ◼   ► on software features in order to sell products.

00:55:11 ◼   ► But at the same time, we are all the same people

00:55:14 ◼   ► who complain that you can't airdrop from iOS to Mac.

00:55:18 ◼   ► We complained about that for two years,

00:55:21 ◼   ► that there were two things called airdrop

00:55:22 ◼   ► and they weren't compatible with each other.

00:55:24 ◼   ► And now they are, but that was a whole new feature

00:55:26 ◼   ► and it's kind of buggy.

00:55:28 ◼   ► I used a lot and it's great,

00:55:31 ◼   ► but I know that for some people it doesn't work

00:55:33 ◼   ► or they don't see the right people and I totally get that.

00:55:36 ◼   ► So that's a balancing act too.

00:55:38 ◼   ► I just feel like that's the real question is,

00:55:41 ◼   ► what is the advantage of adding those features in

00:55:44 ◼   ► versus the kind of it just works stability thing.

00:55:47 ◼   ► And I think what people like Marco are worried about

00:55:50 ◼   ► is that the general public is starting to feel like

00:55:53 ◼   ► I can't trust Apple.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And I think, I don't know if that's true.

00:55:56 ◼   ► And that is, that is, see speaking of which,

00:55:58 ◼   ► if I wrote that on a blog post,

00:56:00 ◼   ► that would get on MSNBC, right?

00:56:01 ◼   ► People are like, oh, you can't trust Apple,

00:56:03 ◼   ► says the Apple journalist guy.

00:56:05 ◼   ► But I think the truth is that the biggest black guy

00:56:08 ◼   ► Apple has had in this entire process is iOS 7 because it was such a big change

00:56:13 ◼   ► and it had some bugs and it upset people to the point where now they're

00:56:18 ◼   ► wary of software from Apple. That was bad and they're still living that

00:56:23 ◼   ► down I think because I hear that from regular people all the time like do I

00:56:26 ◼   ► want to apply this update? My mom asked me all the time now if she wants to

00:56:30 ◼   ► apply an iPhone update because that one time when she did it crazy things

00:56:34 ◼   ► happened because it was the iOS 7 update and now it's bug fixes and I said no it's

00:56:38 ◼   ► bug fixes, you should install it.

00:56:39 ◼   ► But that, boy, that changed the game.

00:56:41 ◼   ► And it's stuff like that, I think,

00:56:42 ◼   ► that has the biggest impact, big stuff like that on Apple.

00:56:46 ◼   ► But yeah, if everybody feels like,

00:56:48 ◼   ► "Oh, that's iCloud, it doesn't work.

00:56:50 ◼   ► "I can't get my bookmarks to sync."

00:56:52 ◼   ► They were supposed to sync and they sync for a while

00:56:53 ◼   ► and now they don't.

00:56:55 ◼   ► It just chips away at the perception of Apple's quality.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And when Apple is executing hardware,

00:57:02 ◼   ► I would say they're on all cylinders with hardware.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Their hardware is just so amazing.

00:57:08 ◼   ► the way they, the pipeline they've got for new hardware.

00:57:11 ◼   ► You look at the software and you say,

00:57:14 ◼   ► it's not up to the same standards.

00:57:15 ◼   ► And how do you get it up to the same standards?

00:57:18 ◼   ► Do you do the iPhone, original iPhone OS thing

00:57:20 ◼   ► and back it off to like fewer features, but really polished?

00:57:24 ◼   ► Or do you feel the pressure from Android

00:57:28 ◼   ► and feel like you need to keep up with them

00:57:30 ◼   ► or you're gonna lose on a software feature level

00:57:32 ◼   ► and put things out, but sacrifice quality?

00:57:36 ◼   ► I think as well people are still reeling, and I hear this from friends and family members

00:57:42 ◼   ► over the iOS 8 bricking.

00:57:47 ◼   ► So I know people that are concerned to update in case it breaks their phones because they

00:57:51 ◼   ► heard it on the news and that was an actual thing that happened.

00:57:53 ◼   ► It didn't happen to a lot of people, it happened to people we know.

00:57:56 ◼   ► It happened.

00:57:57 ◼   ► And I think it was something that still people were concerned about.

00:58:02 ◼   ► I look at this though and I think like from my layman's way of thinking about

00:58:07 ◼   ► these things, what's the solution? I think that there's clearly

00:58:14 ◼   ► an engineering bottleneck, right? I think if you're churning out things on a

00:58:17 ◼   ► yearly basis you've only got so much time you can do things in. And I think I

00:58:23 ◼   ► don't understand why OS X has a yearly release schedule now. It doesn't

00:58:30 ◼   ► makes sense to me. I think Apple is kind of kidding itself if it thinks that by

00:58:35 ◼   ► doing that it helps sell Macs at the rate they sell iPhones because people

00:58:39 ◼   ► just don't think about the computers that way and I don't think that the

00:58:44 ◼   ► general public get excited about an OS X update in the same way they do a phone

00:58:48 ◼   ► update. I agree 100%. I don't think software updates as marketing is a

00:58:53 ◼   ► thing anymore. And I say this as a guy who enjoys reading John

00:58:57 ◼   ► Syracuse's reviews, I write an OS X review every year, it does great traffic, you know,

00:59:04 ◼   ► you can write books about, you know, new edition covering Yosemite, right? I don't think it's

00:59:09 ◼   ► a thing anymore. I think with the soft auto-update approach that we've got now, that's why I

00:59:14 ◼   ► mentioned it earlier, you know, maybe there are some reasons technically as a software

00:59:18 ◼   ► engineering organization why it's just always better to put a stake in the ground and say,

00:59:23 ◼   ► once a year we're going to do a monolithic release. But I feel like as a user, it's not

00:59:26 ◼   ► necessary, and that they'd be better off with taking their time and doing incremental updates

00:59:33 ◼   ► and fixing bugs and adding features as necessary. That all said, it makes it more complicated

00:59:39 ◼   ► for the install base and when do you leave features out for certain things and you've

00:59:42 ◼   ► got to test and maybe it's easier to just do that once. The big issue though is tying

00:59:46 ◼   ► it with iOS. The big issue is if there's a new feature we want in iOS and one of our

00:59:51 ◼   ► advantages as a company is that we have computers and phones and tablets and they all can inter-roll

00:59:56 ◼   ► relate, then if you add that feature, we saw this with iCloud Drive, we saw this with AirDrop,

01:00:02 ◼   ► if you add a feature on iOS, you really need to have that tie into the Mac, and that kind

01:00:05 ◼   ► of pushes you to have a Mac release schedule that's very similar to the iOS schedule.

01:00:11 ◼   ► And so, I mean, that's why it's hard. That's why Apple is the only company that does that.

01:00:16 ◼   ► The phone is the problem, because if you have to put new, if basically you need people to

01:00:23 ◼   ► to buy your phones every year.

01:00:25 ◼   ► So you need to do something to the hardware.

01:00:27 ◼   ► If you do something to the hardware,

01:00:28 ◼   ► the software has to go along with it.

01:00:29 ◼   ► So they will always have a yearly release schedule

01:00:33 ◼   ► for the iPhone.

01:00:34 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, although that's not, I mean, they will,

01:00:36 ◼   ► but we've seen iOS releases for the iPad

01:00:41 ◼   ► that add new features to the iPad,

01:00:42 ◼   ► and that they're just the new features

01:00:44 ◼   ► for that piece of hardware.

01:00:45 ◼   ► There would be, like Apple Pay was enabled

01:00:47 ◼   ► by a software update.

01:00:49 ◼   ► I think you could do,

01:00:51 ◼   ► we may just be arguing terminology now,

01:00:54 ◼   ► but I think you could say, look,

01:00:55 ◼   ► we're gonna do a new version of the operating system

01:00:57 ◼   ► for the new phones,

01:00:59 ◼   ► and not have it be what we think of now

01:01:01 ◼   ► as a new version of the operating system

01:01:02 ◼   ► where they get people together at WWDC every year

01:01:05 ◼   ► and unveil hundreds of new APIs

01:01:08 ◼   ► and thousands of new features

01:01:10 ◼   ► and all of the things they do on those slides

01:01:12 ◼   ► and get the developers really excited.

01:01:13 ◼   ► I do wonder how much WWDC and this,

01:01:17 ◼   ► again, I'm not a developer,

01:01:18 ◼   ► So I would love developers to sound off on this themselves,

01:01:22 ◼   ► because they are the ones who are there.

01:01:24 ◼   ► When I'm there, I'm just covering it

01:01:26 ◼   ► as a person who's interested in the platforms

01:01:29 ◼   ► and interested in Apple.

01:01:30 ◼   ► But I sometimes wonder if WWDC is not in some ways

01:01:35 ◼   ► putting the cart before the horse.

01:01:40 ◼   ► That if we're going to have everybody

01:01:43 ◼   ► in the same room together in San Francisco every year,

01:01:46 ◼   ► That's the time we need to evangelize them

01:01:48 ◼   ► on everything we're doing that's new.

01:01:50 ◼   ► And so you will always have a monolithic

01:01:52 ◼   ► operating system update in the fall

01:01:54 ◼   ► because that's when you've got them all together

01:01:56 ◼   ► in San Francisco.

01:01:57 ◼   ► What's interesting is like WatchKit,

01:01:59 ◼   ► all of that stuff rolled out online.

01:02:02 ◼   ► All that stuff they built, lots of great stuff

01:02:04 ◼   ► on Apple's website for developers about WatchKit.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And for me, that calls into question one,

01:02:09 ◼   ► do you really need WWDC?

01:02:11 ◼   ► Almost nobody can go to it now anyway.

01:02:13 ◼   ► It's great for the parties, but you know,

01:02:15 ◼   ► a small fraction of people who want to go to the sessions can go, and they're posting

01:02:18 ◼   ► them all online anyway. But if you can roll out new stuff online, that reduces your need

01:02:25 ◼   ► to have that be the place that you roll out all of your features throughout the year.

01:02:29 ◼   ► So I'm not saying they might not continue to do what we call a monolithic or marketing

01:02:34 ◼   ► operating system release for the Mac or iOS or both every year, but what they could do

01:02:41 ◼   ► is roll out those features, new features to developers

01:02:45 ◼   ► in advance online and not just at WWDC.

01:02:49 ◼   ► 'Cause they've done that a few times

01:02:51 ◼   ► and I think it will work just fine.

01:02:54 ◼   ► So that's a possibility.

01:02:56 ◼   ► 'Cause I do wonder about that sometimes.

01:02:58 ◼   ► If like the whole product cycle of WWDC

01:03:02 ◼   ► and then the phones and tablets in the fall

01:03:04 ◼   ► has now driven, that drives the cycle,

01:03:06 ◼   ► which is well, then we've gotta have all those APIs

01:03:09 ◼   ► announced in June and shipping in September

01:03:12 ◼   ► because that's the cycle to sell products for the holidays.

01:03:17 ◼   ► But again, I'm on the outside looking in.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Somebody at Apple, I've been through this

01:03:20 ◼   ► as somebody on the inside, just in Mac world,

01:03:22 ◼   ► but where people make these crazy assumptions

01:03:25 ◼   ► about how you actually do your job that are not right,

01:03:29 ◼   ► or they're missing all of the complications

01:03:31 ◼   ► about your business that people on the outside

01:03:32 ◼   ► aren't aware of.

01:03:33 ◼   ► So I wanna say that, again,

01:03:34 ◼   ► that all we can do is look at the output from Apple

01:03:37 ◼   ► and make some guesses and maybe throw around some ideas.

01:03:41 ◼   ► But we don't know because we're not on the inside.

01:03:45 ◼   ► - Maybe one last point that I wanna make

01:03:48 ◼   ► unless you have any more.

01:03:50 ◼   ► I think Apple need a release schedule in some way

01:03:55 ◼   ► because if you look back at them through history,

01:04:00 ◼   ► if they ever have a date which is open-ended,

01:04:03 ◼   ► they are at the end of that date.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Like that is like an Apple joke, right?

01:04:08 ◼   ► They say, oh, we'll be in the fall, right?

01:04:09 ◼   ► So we'll see it the last day of fall,

01:04:11 ◼   ► just before, you know, just as the snow starts to settle.

01:04:15 ◼   ► So if they don't, my fear would be,

01:04:17 ◼   ► if they just said, we're not gonna stick

01:04:20 ◼   ► to this release schedule anymore,

01:04:21 ◼   ► then it's gonna be a very long time

01:04:24 ◼   ► between upgrades, you know, between, of the OS.

01:04:27 ◼   ► And I think, you know, going back again,

01:04:29 ◼   ► I think that the phone is the catalyst for it,

01:04:32 ◼   ► And I can't see how they can break out of that

01:04:36 ◼   ► because they gotta sell those phones every year.

01:04:38 ◼   ► And the new hardware dictates new software,

01:04:40 ◼   ► so that means a new iOS.

01:04:42 ◼   ► - Well, again, I agree with you to a certain point.

01:04:47 ◼   ► I would say that the fact is the selling point

01:04:51 ◼   ► of the iPhone 6 Plus was not iOS 8.

01:04:54 ◼   ► It was the iPhone 6 Plus.

01:04:55 ◼   ► And you could have done iOS 7.3 or 2 or whatever.

01:05:00 ◼   ► Was there an iOS 7.2?

01:05:01 ◼   ► You could have done iOS 7 point something

01:05:03 ◼   ► and had it been bug fixes for iOS 7

01:05:07 ◼   ► and a few new features that were tied to the hardware

01:05:09 ◼   ► of the new phones, you would not necessarily have to add

01:05:12 ◼   ► a whole bunch of software features that rolled out

01:05:14 ◼   ► to all the phones and all the iPads

01:05:17 ◼   ► on the day that you released the iPhone 6.

01:05:19 ◼   ► You could just do what they did

01:05:21 ◼   ► when they released the first iPad,

01:05:22 ◼   ► which is do an update of the software

01:05:24 ◼   ► and say now it supports the iPad.

01:05:26 ◼   ► - It was 4.2 I think was the first iPad release.

01:05:30 ◼   ► - So there's a spectrum of things they can do.

01:05:32 ◼   ► So I mean, and that's part of the haziness

01:05:34 ◼   ► in the gray area here is sure,

01:05:36 ◼   ► you're gonna need a new software update

01:05:37 ◼   ► to support that new hardware.

01:05:38 ◼   ► Although even then, and we've seen this in the past

01:05:41 ◼   ► with the iPad and with the Mac several times,

01:05:45 ◼   ► is even then sometimes Apple releases new hardware

01:05:47 ◼   ► that's running a particular build of software

01:05:50 ◼   ► that only runs on that device.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And the other devices just don't get it

01:05:54 ◼   ► because it's not for them, it's only for this.

01:05:56 ◼   ► And then they sync up later with another update

01:05:58 ◼   ► that goes to everybody.

01:05:59 ◼   ► So that's also a possibility.

01:06:02 ◼   ► So there's lots of, you know, I agree with you

01:06:04 ◼   ► that the hardware cycle does drive software to a degree,

01:06:09 ◼   ► but I would question the idea that what we think of

01:06:14 ◼   ► as a big annual, like I said,

01:06:17 ◼   ► marketing operating system release,

01:06:19 ◼   ► iOS 8, woo, it's really exciting,

01:06:22 ◼   ► is necessarily what has to be the software update

01:06:25 ◼   ► for the hardware.

01:06:26 ◼   ► 'Cause in the end, I think the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus

01:06:28 ◼   ► sell themselves and that the software that is needed to enable their great new

01:06:33 ◼   ► hardware needs to be there but that other stuff like extensions and all of

01:06:38 ◼   ► that that we got promised to WWDC that came with iOS 8 did that need to be

01:06:43 ◼   ► there I mean after they promised it it did but it did that need to happen when

01:06:47 ◼   ► the iPhone 6 came out it didn't really it you know that was that that could

01:06:52 ◼   ► have been disconnected from the iPhone release and it would have been fine I

01:06:54 ◼   ► I think. Easy for me to say. I'm out here. I'm in my garage. I'm not in

01:07:01 ◼   ► Cupertino. Let's take a break. Good idea. And relax. Jason, would you like to tell

01:07:07 ◼   ► us about a new sponsor we have for this week's episode of Upgrade? I would, and I

01:07:12 ◼   ► believe they'll be coming and visiting us again, which is

01:07:15 ◼   ► great because I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of my thing from

01:07:21 ◼   ► So, these days you can get almost anything on demand.

01:07:26 ◼   ► That's the beauty of the internet.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Our podcast is one example of that, right?

01:07:29 ◼   ► You can listen whenever you want.

01:07:31 ◼   ► We can say, "Hey, good morning," or "Good afternoon," or whatever, but we don't know

01:07:35 ◼   ► when you're listening to it.

01:07:36 ◼   ► It could be, you could be at two in the morning and you can't sleep and you're listening to

01:07:40 ◼   ► our podcast now.

01:07:41 ◼   ► So drink some warm milk, listen for a little while, and then go back to sleep, you person

01:07:45 ◼   ► who has insomnia.

01:07:47 ◼   ► But that's great.

01:07:48 ◼   ► So here's the question.

01:07:50 ◼   ► If you live in that world, then why are you still going to the post office and dealing

01:07:55 ◼   ► with limited hours and long lines, there's nothing more painful, when you can get postage

01:07:59 ◼   ► on demand with Stamps.com?

01:08:02 ◼   ► So Stamps.com is a website and a service that lets you do anything you can do at the post

01:08:06 ◼   ► office from your desk.

01:08:08 ◼   ► You can buy and print official US postage.

01:08:11 ◼   ► This is why I'm reading this ad, by the way, because Myke, not in the United States.

01:08:15 ◼   ► I'm going to send you something using Stamps.com though, Myke.

01:08:17 ◼   ► That's going to be a continuing story for us.

01:08:19 ◼   ► buy and print official US postage for any letter or package using your own

01:08:24 ◼   ► computer and your own printer. And unlike the post office, Stamps.com never closes.

01:08:29 ◼   ► You can get postage when you need it 24/7. So you're packing up boxes in the

01:08:33 ◼   ► middle of the night that you got to ship out the next morning. You can get them

01:08:37 ◼   ► all ready to go just then. This is really exciting. I'm looking forward to getting

01:08:42 ◼   ► my USB postage meter way scale thing from stamps.com and weighing boxes and

01:08:50 ◼   ► printing out postage and shipping them out and I don't have it yet so I can't

01:08:56 ◼   ► tell you that story yet other than that I'm excited to do that because in

01:08:58 ◼   ► December we sent out a whole lot of stuff and had to go wait in line at the

01:09:02 ◼   ► post office and it was really unpleasant. Our post office is, you know, it's dingy

01:09:07 ◼   ► and there's a long line especially during the holidays but there's always a

01:09:09 ◼   ► line in the middle of the afternoon and I'm looking forward to doing this and

01:09:13 ◼   ► bypassing the whole thing and just using my computer and the internet. Let me just

01:09:17 ◼   ► say Jason that our friends at NOC who look after the Relay FM store, we use

01:09:24 ◼   ► Stamps.com for that stuff. Look at that. And they tell me, basically when we were

01:09:29 ◼   ► talking about postage, this is a couple of months ago, they said nope we're gonna

01:09:33 ◼   ► go to Stamps.com, it's who we use, they make it easy, we can print everything out

01:09:37 ◼   ► here, stick on the labels and to get it out the door. Yeah, that's it. And also as

01:09:41 ◼   ► well when we were working out what our rates were gonna be, they just have some

01:09:44 ◼   ► great charts, we could see how much they were and put them into the system. So

01:09:47 ◼   ► it's, you know, I wish that I had something like that here because this

01:09:54 ◼   ► just makes the idea of posting and dealing with with commerce if you sell

01:09:58 ◼   ► physical things just so much easier. Well it's the equivalent of, you know, like

01:10:03 ◼   ► Like I said, the internet, the way we view how we use the internet for things, it moves

01:10:08 ◼   ► all the idea of shipping things and paying for sending that stuff out into that way of

01:10:14 ◼   ► thinking, which is I can do this on demand, I can do this at my computer, I can do it

01:10:18 ◼   ► right now with my printer, and then ship it out at, you know, I can work at the times

01:10:23 ◼   ► that I want to work and I want to get these things done.

01:10:26 ◼   ► Now listeners will be very happy, listeners and upgradians will be very happy to know

01:10:30 ◼   ► that there's a special offer. You can use promo code UPGRADE, the name of the show,

01:10:34 ◼   ► how easy is that. For a special offer, there's a no risk trial plus a $110 bonus offer. You

01:10:41 ◼   ► get a digital scale and up to $55 of free postage. So don't wait. Go to Stamps.com before

01:10:47 ◼   ► you do anything else, though. Click on the microphone at the top of the homepage. Stamps.com,

01:10:53 ◼   ► look for the microphone. It's at the top of the homepage. Click on it and type in "upgrade."

01:10:57 ◼   ► That's how they know that we sent you and then you'll get the deal.

01:11:00 ◼   ► Stamps.com and enter upgrade to get the special offer.

01:11:05 ◼   ► And I look forward, they ship internationally too, so I look forward to sending something.

01:11:10 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure what yet, but I will send something to Myke using stamps.com.

01:11:13 ◼   ► So thank you so much to stamps.com.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Our new friend at upgrade.

01:11:18 ◼   ► If it's not a Brainblog, we'll be sad.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Maybe just a picture of one.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Well, I could just email you a picture of one.

01:11:25 ◼   ► I'll get, there'll be something good.

01:11:27 ◼   ► I'll put something, a little mic prize package together

01:11:31 ◼   ► and send it to you.

01:11:31 ◼   ► Maybe some Manchego, it probably would go bad

01:11:33 ◼   ► by the time it got to you.

01:11:34 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:11:35 ◼   ► - A picture of Manchego.

01:11:36 ◼   ► - I don't think the customs officers

01:11:37 ◼   ► would be too happy about that.

01:11:38 ◼   ► - No, no, I don't think they would.

01:11:40 ◼   ► - So what else do we have today?

01:11:42 ◼   ► - Well, we were talking about Apple and software quality,

01:11:45 ◼   ► and I want to at least give a nod to family sharing.

01:11:49 ◼   ► David Sparks, a host of Mac Power users,

01:11:52 ◼   ► and he writes at MacSparky.com.

01:11:54 ◼   ► Really nice guy.

01:11:56 ◼   ► I try to have lunch with him whenever I'm in LA.

01:12:00 ◼   ► He does this in his spare time, does books and podcasts

01:12:03 ◼   ► and writes about Apple stuff.

01:12:05 ◼   ► And then his day job, he's a lawyer.

01:12:06 ◼   ► So he really loves this stuff because he takes time

01:12:09 ◼   ► outside of his actual job and spends it

01:12:13 ◼   ► making all this great stuff.

01:12:14 ◼   ► But he wrote a post on Max Sparky

01:12:16 ◼   ► about giving up on family sharing,

01:12:18 ◼   ► that he and his family had been using the new family sharing

01:12:20 ◼   ► feature in iOS 8.

01:12:22 ◼   ► And they had given up on it.

01:12:25 ◼   ► And I don't have a lot to say about this

01:12:29 ◼   ► other than to point people at that article.

01:12:32 ◼   ► But I think it's, and I don't wanna draw a larger point

01:12:36 ◼   ► and say, well, here's an example

01:12:37 ◼   ► of Apple software quality going down,

01:12:40 ◼   ► because again, these are all anecdotes.

01:12:42 ◼   ► I will say my family and I have used this too.

01:12:45 ◼   ► And like David, I found that the other members of my family

01:12:48 ◼   ► are mad at me for subjecting them to this thing.

01:12:50 ◼   ► 'cause while it works, when it works it is a great idea.

01:12:55 ◼   ► When it works it is a great idea.

01:12:56 ◼   ► I love the fact that my kids no longer have to

01:12:59 ◼   ► bring their iPad or iPhone to me and be like,

01:13:04 ◼   ► can you put in the password?

01:13:05 ◼   ► I wanna download a free game.

01:13:07 ◼   ► I can actually approve purchases from my own devices.

01:13:11 ◼   ► - Can we back up a second?

01:13:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure.

01:13:13 ◼   ► - 'Cause I have never used family sharing.

01:13:16 ◼   ► - You want me to explain family sharing?

01:13:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've kind of ignored it completely.

01:13:19 ◼   ► So the idea is you have multiple Apple IDs.

01:13:22 ◼   ► So instead of doing what many families do,

01:13:23 ◼   ► which is share one Apple ID,

01:13:25 ◼   ► and there's a 10 device limit, 10 iOS device limit,

01:13:28 ◼   ► or no, 10 device limit for an Apple ID.

01:13:30 ◼   ► So it gets complicated.

01:13:33 ◼   ► What this does is allows you to say,

01:13:36 ◼   ► my son has an Apple ID, my daughter has an Apple ID,

01:13:38 ◼   ► my wife has an Apple ID, and I have an Apple ID,

01:13:40 ◼   ► but we're all part of the same family,

01:13:43 ◼   ► which means that we can share apps.

01:13:45 ◼   ► It means that parents can set an approval plan

01:13:50 ◼   ► for their children so that they can approve purchases

01:13:53 ◼   ► that the kids can request.

01:13:54 ◼   ► You know, the idea is to make it easier to have

01:14:00 ◼   ► an Apple ID per person rather than an Apple ID per family.

01:14:05 ◼   ► And that gets messy when they leave the household,

01:14:09 ◼   ► then they can't take their apps with them

01:14:10 ◼   ► and things like that and it gets really weird.

01:14:12 ◼   ► So the idea here is we just put it all together.

01:14:14 ◼   ► It's a nice idea.

01:14:16 ◼   ► The problem is it's got a lot of quirks

01:14:19 ◼   ► and that's why it's probably not ready for prime time,

01:14:22 ◼   ► at least for a lot of people.

01:14:23 ◼   ► The app developers have to opt in,

01:14:28 ◼   ► as David writes in his post.

01:14:30 ◼   ► There are apps that don't work with family sharing

01:14:34 ◼   ► 'cause the app developer hasn't checked the box

01:14:36 ◼   ► and that means that you go through all this trouble

01:14:39 ◼   ► and then suddenly this app that your kids use

01:14:42 ◼   ► that was bought with your Apple ID,

01:14:43 ◼   ► Well, they can't redownload it with their Apple ID

01:14:45 ◼   ► because it hasn't been approved for family sharing.

01:14:48 ◼   ► - Why do you think developers wouldn't do that

01:14:49 ◼   ► because they think they might be missing out

01:14:51 ◼   ► on sales or something?

01:14:53 ◼   ► - I think more likely it's that they haven't opted in,

01:14:56 ◼   ► that they just haven't checked the box

01:14:57 ◼   ► and so it's not there.

01:14:58 ◼   ► - They just haven't paid any attention to it.

01:14:59 ◼   ► - I wouldn't put it past some of them to say,

01:15:02 ◼   ► why would I wanna help people from doing this

01:15:04 ◼   ► even though they were already doing it?

01:15:06 ◼   ► Worse is, purchases aren't included.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Which means, again, you're back to this idea

01:15:12 ◼   ► that as iOS users we've kind of come to accept

01:15:15 ◼   ► that you buy it once and you get it everywhere

01:15:17 ◼   ► in your iOS ecosystem.

01:15:19 ◼   ► And I can see how the argument here is, no, no, no,

01:15:22 ◼   ► now we finally provided this way to do it

01:15:25 ◼   ► where it is one, you know, a purchase is only for one person

01:15:28 ◼   ► and not for a household.

01:15:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause a EA would be really sad.

01:15:34 ◼   ► - Well, but that's how it works now.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I mean, that's the thing is that's how it works now.

01:15:37 ◼   ► All the existing, the question is,

01:15:39 ◼   ► are you really gonna make more money

01:15:41 ◼   ► because now every member of a family

01:15:43 ◼   ► is gonna buy their own in-app purchase of a particular game.

01:15:46 ◼   ► Maybe in the long run, if everybody uses family sharing,

01:15:49 ◼   ► that might be true, but I don't know,

01:15:51 ◼   ► it seems like they're doing fine as it is.

01:15:53 ◼   ► But anyway, if you're going from the old way to the new way,

01:15:56 ◼   ► that is a limitation.

01:15:58 ◼   ► And iTunes Match is an example.

01:16:02 ◼   ► David sites where once you're logged in,

01:16:06 ◼   ► you're using different IDs

01:16:08 ◼   ► the iTunes match doesn't go across.

01:16:11 ◼   ► I think your backup doesn't go across.

01:16:14 ◼   ► So now you've got everybody's got their own pool of,

01:16:17 ◼   ► so here's the problem is if I wanna buy more backup space,

01:16:20 ◼   ► I can't buy more backup space for my family.

01:16:24 ◼   ► I can buy more backup space for my ID.

01:16:27 ◼   ► So then if my wife needs more backup space on iCloud,

01:16:30 ◼   ► I have to buy more backup space for her on her ID too.

01:16:33 ◼   ► That seems kind of dumb.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Ideally the family should pool all that stuff

01:16:37 ◼   ► and be able to use it together,

01:16:38 ◼   ► but that's not how it works.

01:16:40 ◼   ► For me, the biggest thing is,

01:16:45 ◼   ► my kids ask me for approvals,

01:16:49 ◼   ► and we end up in a loop where I'm putting in my password,

01:16:52 ◼   ► and it doesn't take it,

01:16:53 ◼   ► and I put in my password again, and it doesn't take it.

01:16:55 ◼   ► And then I go to their device,

01:16:57 ◼   ► and it says you can approve on the device.

01:16:59 ◼   ► So I put approve on the device,

01:17:00 ◼   ► I put in my Apple ID and my password,

01:17:02 ◼   ► and it doesn't take it,

01:17:03 ◼   ► and it gets in the cycle where it acts like it's approved it,

01:17:06 ◼   ► and then nothing happens.

01:17:08 ◼   ► And we end up in this whole dance of like,

01:17:11 ◼   ► let's log out of everybody's IDs and then log back in

01:17:14 ◼   ► and then see if the approvals will work again.

01:17:16 ◼   ► And it's just kind of a mess.

01:17:17 ◼   ► It is, it was unpleasant enough that it made me

01:17:21 ◼   ► almost want to turn it off.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And quite frankly, if I weren't thinking one of these days

01:17:24 ◼   ► I'm gonna need to write about family sharing

01:17:26 ◼   ► and what all the issues are,

01:17:27 ◼   ► I would probably have turned it off.

01:17:28 ◼   ► We still have it on.

01:17:30 ◼   ► I'm still subjecting my family to this,

01:17:31 ◼   ► mostly I think because I really do want to experience it,

01:17:35 ◼   ► but I have a hard time recommending it to anyone else.

01:17:38 ◼   ► And I was thinking all of this

01:17:40 ◼   ► and going through this with my family

01:17:42 ◼   ► and then to see David write about it was useful

01:17:46 ◼   ► because he's dealt with a lot of the same issues

01:17:48 ◼   ► and kind of come to the same conclusion,

01:17:49 ◼   ► which is it may work for some people,

01:17:52 ◼   ► but it doesn't work for his family.

01:17:53 ◼   ► It probably doesn't work for my family.

01:17:55 ◼   ► And it does kind of call into question,

01:17:57 ◼   ► are the people behind this feature thinking of all the

01:18:00 ◼   ► sort of like common use cases of families,

01:18:02 ◼   ► or are they, or was this a feature

01:18:05 ◼   ► that somebody who doesn't have a family was like,

01:18:07 ◼   ► "I've got an idea of family sharing,"

01:18:09 ◼   ► and kind of missed a lot of the issues

01:18:12 ◼   ► that the individual family members have with it.

01:18:14 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:18:15 ◼   ► - When you look at something like that, you wonder,

01:18:18 ◼   ► was this made by some single people?

01:18:19 ◼   ► - Every now and then, every now and then you're like,

01:18:23 ◼   ► and I'm sure that they talk to parents

01:18:24 ◼   ► and they talk to people about it,

01:18:25 ◼   ► but there are moments where you're thinking,

01:18:28 ◼   ► was this the design for the ideal of a family

01:18:32 ◼   ► or an actual family?

01:18:33 ◼   ► And you know what? This could be a great feature eventually.

01:18:37 ◼   ► I think it's great that Apple is trying to deal with the fact that you've got these weird aggregates of Apple IDs that have accumulated over time

01:18:44 ◼   ► that are interconnected with one another.

01:18:46 ◼   ► Amazon just did this too.

01:18:48 ◼   ► You can share...

01:18:51 ◼   ► My Kindle lets me add family members and they have access to books.

01:18:56 ◼   ► So instead of my wife having her Kindle logged into my Amazon account, she could have it logged into her Amazon account and still see the books that I bought.

01:19:06 ◼   ► I think is how that works. And, you know, we need to see more of this because the fact is, one of the ways that I think people's experience with software and cloud services is bad is about account management.

01:19:18 ◼   ► I mean, Google, one of the big problems with Google for ages

01:19:21 ◼   ► and it's not quite as bad as it used to be,

01:19:23 ◼   ► was the idea of account management.

01:19:25 ◼   ► Like, oh, I've got this account over here for Gmail

01:19:28 ◼   ► and a different account over here for YouTube.

01:19:30 ◼   ► And it's still problematic, it's just not as bad as it was

01:19:33 ◼   ► when you couldn't switch between them

01:19:34 ◼   ► without logging out of one and then logging into another.

01:19:38 ◼   ► But still, there's a whole lot of better experiences

01:19:41 ◼   ► that could be built by having a little more

01:19:44 ◼   ► kind of fine grained control over whose IDs are used where

01:19:48 ◼   ► and how they can share together.

01:19:49 ◼   ► And the fact that if my children wanna buy,

01:19:53 ◼   ► I would say buy music,

01:19:56 ◼   ► but they don't buy music anymore, right?

01:19:58 ◼   ► If they buy apps,

01:20:00 ◼   ► and then they wanna take those apps with them

01:20:01 ◼   ► when they go off to college or whatever,

01:20:03 ◼   ► if I bought them on my account,

01:20:07 ◼   ► then they kinda can't do that.

01:20:08 ◼   ► I mean, they can,

01:20:09 ◼   ► but then they're on my account forever

01:20:10 ◼   ► and I'm not gonna give them my password.

01:20:12 ◼   ► So there are a lot of really good ideas behind this.

01:20:14 ◼   ► It just seems kinda early days.

01:20:16 ◼   ► And those of us who've tried it,

01:20:18 ◼   ► at least David and I report back

01:20:22 ◼   ► that it maybe isn't all it's cracked up to be just yet.

01:20:25 ◼   ► - So we do have one final sponsor.

01:20:30 ◼   ► And I wanna talk to you a little bit about CES, Jason.

01:20:33 ◼   ► - Yes. - Because that is happening.

01:20:35 ◼   ► - It is happening right now.

01:20:36 ◼   ► - That is like a true plethora, plethora,

01:20:40 ◼   ► of tech news happening right now.

01:20:42 ◼   ► - Prefera. - A plethora of tech news

01:20:44 ◼   ► happening right now in Las Vegas.

01:20:46 ◼   ► right now.

01:20:47 ◼   ► - And we're not there, so let's try and work out

01:20:50 ◼   ► why that is.

01:20:51 ◼   ► - Myke, Myke, I'm reporting to you live from Las Vegas

01:20:52 ◼   ► at CES, go ahead with the next sponsor.

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01:22:44 ◼   ► also be showing your support for this show thank you so much to igloo for

01:22:47 ◼   ► being a great supporter of upgrade and relay FM so mr. Snell mr. Hurley why are

01:22:55 ◼   ► you in California right now shouldn't you be in Nevada like what's what's no

01:23:01 ◼   ► you're you are you are a tech journalist and there is all this tech there why

01:23:07 ◼   ► aren't you there? I understand you've been before so you know how to deal with CES.

01:23:11 ◼   ► I was forced to be there before. Right, so this is a thing right now. I'm jumping ahead of myself.

01:23:17 ◼   ► Every person I see online that writes in technology seems to say that you should never go

01:23:28 ◼   ► to CES. It's the worst thing. Everyone hates it, but everybody goes. I don't understand that. Can

01:23:33 ◼   ► Can you explain that for me?

01:23:34 ◼   ► - Well, I feel like it's gotten overdone at this point.

01:23:38 ◼   ► You know, CES, you know,

01:23:40 ◼   ► it's not my favorite trade show to cover.

01:23:42 ◼   ► I think by a long shot, I would prefer not to go ever.

01:23:45 ◼   ► But I mean, that's for me, just personally,

01:23:48 ◼   ► I don't particularly like Las Vegas

01:23:50 ◼   ► and I like it even less when it's at 100% capacity,

01:23:54 ◼   ► which is what it is for CES.

01:23:55 ◼   ► It's a complete zoo.

01:23:57 ◼   ► And the show floor is giant, so it's kind of unmanageable.

01:24:02 ◼   ► You know, if you've got a big team.

01:24:05 ◼   ► And also my, you know, I would go,

01:24:07 ◼   ► the first times I went to CES,

01:24:08 ◼   ► it was like me or me and one other person.

01:24:10 ◼   ► And we would go looking for a few things.

01:24:13 ◼   ► And the scale was overwhelming,

01:24:14 ◼   ► but we were just looking for a few things

01:24:16 ◼   ► related to Apple stuff,

01:24:17 ◼   ► because it was there for Macworld.

01:24:19 ◼   ► And, you know, that was manageable,

01:24:22 ◼   ► although totally insane.

01:24:23 ◼   ► Just as somebody who had come up with Macworld Expo

01:24:27 ◼   ► as the trade show that I always went to,

01:24:29 ◼   ► CES was like 10 Macworld Expos happening simultaneously.

01:24:32 ◼   ► It's just huge.

01:24:33 ◼   ► And now, if you're part of a big team,

01:24:36 ◼   ► it's actually decent because you get your beat

01:24:39 ◼   ► and you're told, you know, go look at the TVs.

01:24:41 ◼   ► And you don't have to worry about,

01:24:42 ◼   ► 'cause you literally, it's so big,

01:24:43 ◼   ► you can't cover it as a single person.

01:24:45 ◼   ► You have to pick what thing you wanna look for.

01:24:48 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:24:51 ◼   ► In the end went because I was not just the Macworld guy,

01:24:57 ◼   ► I was the PC World, TechHive, Macworld guy,

01:24:59 ◼   ► the IDG consumer guy.

01:25:00 ◼   ► and as the head of editorial for IDG's consumer group,

01:25:04 ◼   ► you could really not get away with not going to CES,

01:25:08 ◼   ► even though my idea of fun was not going in like

01:25:11 ◼   ► a hotel suite and getting a demo from,

01:25:14 ◼   ► you know, the makers of a PC laptop, which I did,

01:25:18 ◼   ► and that was not interesting.

01:25:20 ◼   ► But, you know, I don't know, it's a weird show.

01:25:24 ◼   ► I'm not sure why trade shows exist at all.

01:25:28 ◼   ► It primarily exists as a way for manufacturers

01:25:32 ◼   ► to push their wares on the retail channel

01:25:34 ◼   ► and get the retail channel to pick them up.

01:25:36 ◼   ► So the purpose is not for people to go see new tech

01:25:39 ◼   ► or even for journalists to see new tech.

01:25:41 ◼   ► That's the primary purpose of it.

01:25:43 ◼   ► And then around the edges, what it's become is

01:25:45 ◼   ► a launching pad for new technology, the PR stuff.

01:25:50 ◼   ► But the problem there is that, one, Apple proved

01:25:53 ◼   ► that you can have big events.

01:25:55 ◼   ► If you're a big tech company, you can have big events

01:25:57 ◼   ► your own, which means the big tech companies don't need to go to CES and

01:26:03 ◼   ► use the spectacle of CES when there are 10,000 products being announced to

01:26:07 ◼   ► announce their products. Amazon can just have an event, Samsung can just

01:26:10 ◼   ► have an event and announce their product, and Apple taught them that. So that

01:26:14 ◼   ► means that some of that stuff just isn't there. Microsoft poured out a few years

01:26:18 ◼   ► ago quite famously, didn't they? They can have their own events now, and

01:26:22 ◼   ► there's no... if you're not an A-list vendor, I would say there's almost no

01:26:27 ◼   ► dumber place, like I always said this about Macworld Expo,

01:26:29 ◼   ► there's no worse time to announce your product

01:26:32 ◼   ► than on day one of Macworld Expo,

01:26:33 ◼   ► because you are now competing with 300 products

01:26:37 ◼   ► for publicity.

01:26:39 ◼   ► And it's like, that's not good.

01:26:41 ◼   ► I mean, I appreciate that there are some journalists

01:26:43 ◼   ► at the event and you can meet with them there,

01:26:45 ◼   ► but you're also battling with everybody else in the world.

01:26:47 ◼   ► So that, I'd say that is part of it.

01:26:49 ◼   ► You know, it's just, it's less than it needs to be.

01:26:54 ◼   ► Mobile World Congress as a trade show,

01:26:56 ◼   ► which is in Barcelona every year,

01:26:57 ◼   ► has become the go-to place for announcing phones.

01:27:02 ◼   ► So that stuff, which is the hottest category,

01:27:05 ◼   ► essentially, in consumer electronics,

01:27:07 ◼   ► that stuff is not really at CES anymore.

01:27:10 ◼   ► So it's fine, there are always interesting announcements

01:27:14 ◼   ► that come out of CES.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Personally, and I hate to be this stereotypical

01:27:18 ◼   ► CES tech journalist kind of person,

01:27:20 ◼   ► but I always hated going to CES.

01:27:22 ◼   ► I'm happy to not be there.

01:27:24 ◼   ► And you know, it's also not cheap.

01:27:27 ◼   ► You gotta get to CES and pay for a hotel CES week in Vegas.

01:27:30 ◼   ► And as a solo person who writes mostly about Apple stuff,

01:27:34 ◼   ► I don't see how there would be any benefit

01:27:36 ◼   ► for me to go anyway.

01:27:38 ◼   ► But you know, it's not all the terribleness that,

01:27:41 ◼   ► I mean, I think it's terrible, but that's personal.

01:27:43 ◼   ► I think there's always stuff of value to be found in CES,

01:27:46 ◼   ► including bizarre things that you don't expect.

01:27:49 ◼   ► And there are always some interesting announcements.

01:27:51 ◼   ► And then there are lots of crazy things that get announced

01:27:53 ◼   ► that never ever ever ever ship.

01:27:55 ◼   ► And that's always great to look back

01:27:57 ◼   ► at the stuff from the previous CES

01:27:59 ◼   ► that still haven't made it.

01:28:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, see, you know, it's just a weird observation,

01:28:04 ◼   ► you know, to see like everybody seems to hate it,

01:28:07 ◼   ► but every year people go and it's like,

01:28:10 ◼   ► as somebody who's never been,

01:28:11 ◼   ► I've never had the experience, I kind of don't understand.

01:28:15 ◼   ► Like I would like to go one day

01:28:17 ◼   ► just to have that experience, 'cause it seems insane, right?

01:28:22 ◼   ► So I'm not going because I really want to find out the most

01:28:27 ◼   ► about what's happening in toothbrush tech.

01:28:30 ◼   ► But I think it looks exciting in its own way

01:28:36 ◼   ► and interesting and kind of weird.

01:28:39 ◼   ► And so it feels like an experience, like a thrill ride.

01:28:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't think it's that thrilling.

01:28:45 ◼   ► I get that from the outside.

01:28:49 ◼   ► In reality, it's a trade show.

01:28:51 ◼   ► You slug, you find your way to the convention center through terrible traffic in a cab or you're somewhere on the monorail and you take the monorail

01:28:59 ◼   ► You know you get there. It's packed wall-to-wall with people

01:29:03 ◼   ► You're moving very slowly through these these trade show halls that are loud

01:29:07 ◼   ► There you know you might have a briefing somewhere that you have to go to and then you sit in a little room and get a

01:29:12 ◼   ► little press briefing with for PR. You know your feet start to hurt

01:29:16 ◼   ► You know your work

01:29:17 ◼   ► You're there

01:29:18 ◼   ► you're there all day doing interviews and stuff like that,

01:29:20 ◼   ► and then you go back to your hotel room

01:29:21 ◼   ► and you write for a while,

01:29:22 ◼   ► and maybe you go out to dinner with your colleagues

01:29:25 ◼   ► and that's really nice,

01:29:26 ◼   ► or maybe you get some food in room service

01:29:29 ◼   ► because you're too busy writing

01:29:30 ◼   ► and you write until two in the morning

01:29:32 ◼   ► and then you wake up the next morning and you start it again.

01:29:34 ◼   ► It's a trade show, it's work.

01:29:35 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think there's a lot of glamor to it

01:29:38 ◼   ► unless you're going,

01:29:40 ◼   ► I was talking to somebody who was being there this year

01:29:42 ◼   ► as a PR person and they said that it's actually great

01:29:45 ◼   ► because they get to just kind of be at CES

01:29:48 ◼   ► rather than what they did in the past as a journalist,

01:29:50 ◼   ► which was cover CES.

01:29:52 ◼   ► And I think it's a nicer thing

01:29:56 ◼   ► to just kind of like be in the spectacle,

01:29:57 ◼   ► but when you're working, you know, it's work.

01:29:59 ◼   ► And you're working out of your comfort zone

01:30:01 ◼   ► in a really crazy environment

01:30:03 ◼   ► and some people really love it.

01:30:05 ◼   ► And it shows and those people are great.

01:30:08 ◼   ► And then other people hate it.

01:30:09 ◼   ► I think, yeah, it is what it is and I hate it,

01:30:12 ◼   ► but I'm not saying that everybody should.

01:30:15 ◼   ► Obviously we're early in, right? Today's like the official first day.

01:30:19 ◼   ► Yeah, although in some ways we're getting toward the end because depending on how you count,

01:30:24 ◼   ► the big announcements at CES often come in the first, you know, before the show and like the first couple days of the show.

01:30:30 ◼   ► At the end of the week there's kind of nothing going on.

01:30:33 ◼   ► So we're right, I guess we're right at the height of it now and then it'll start tailing off.

01:30:36 ◼   ► Is there anything that's interesting you?

01:30:40 ◼   ► Are there any trends? Is there anything that's like something that you care about in any way?

01:30:47 ◼   ► You know I'm looking at, I'm interested to see what the latest TV things are because the TV

01:30:52 ◼   ► industry has been trying to do crazy TV things for a while now because they sold, you know,

01:30:57 ◼   ► everybody bought a new TV in the HDTV upgrade cycle. Everybody bought a new TV. That was great

01:31:02 ◼   ► for TV makers. Literally, you know, almost every single person was like, "Oh I have a reason to buy

01:31:07 ◼   ► to buy a new TV because it's a flat screen

01:31:08 ◼   ► and it's high definition and that's great.

01:31:10 ◼   ► And then for the last few years,

01:31:11 ◼   ► they've been desperately trying to find another feature

01:31:13 ◼   ► that will make everybody throw out their old set

01:31:15 ◼   ► that's not that old and buy a new set.

01:31:17 ◼   ► So there's 3D and that didn't really take off

01:31:19 ◼   ► and they're trying 4K,

01:31:20 ◼   ► but there hasn't been a lot of content.

01:31:23 ◼   ► Sounds like I saw somebody saying that there's a,

01:31:26 ◼   ► Panasonic is showing a 4K Blu-ray player.

01:31:30 ◼   ► So there's a possibility that we will finally see content

01:31:32 ◼   ► for 4K coming in.

01:31:34 ◼   ► That makes 4K TVs at least a little bit easier

01:31:37 ◼   ► or more interesting and easier sell

01:31:39 ◼   ► than they are currently.

01:31:41 ◼   ► You know, they did curved screens,

01:31:43 ◼   ► which seems like a bad idea to me.

01:31:44 ◼   ► There's OLED, which is supposed to eventually

01:31:47 ◼   ► have picture quality that can rival plasma,

01:31:49 ◼   ► which they don't make anymore.

01:31:50 ◼   ► So I think it's, I'm always interested

01:31:52 ◼   ► by what the TV tech is gonna be

01:31:53 ◼   ► and stuff around television,

01:31:55 ◼   ► 'cause this is a place where TV news

01:31:57 ◼   ► ends up being pretty good.

01:31:58 ◼   ► So like right now, Dish, the satellite provider in the US,

01:32:03 ◼   ► has set up this thing called Sling TV,

01:32:06 ◼   ► which is, I don't know if it's the first,

01:32:10 ◼   ► but it is one of the first internet,

01:32:13 ◼   ► over the top TV services.

01:32:14 ◼   ► So basically, if you've got an internet connection

01:32:16 ◼   ► and you pay them 20 bucks,

01:32:17 ◼   ► you get a bunch of TV channels that are streamable,

01:32:21 ◼   ► and you don't have to subscribe to TV.

01:32:23 ◼   ► That's your TV subscription.

01:32:24 ◼   ► You pay 20 bucks and you get TNT, TBS, CNN,

01:32:29 ◼   ► Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim,

01:32:32 ◼   ► Disney Channel, ESPN, and ESPN2 for $20 a month.

01:32:36 ◼   ► That's interesting, whether that will go anywhere,

01:32:38 ◼   ► whether that will actually ship

01:32:40 ◼   ► what the quality of the service will be,

01:32:42 ◼   ► all remains to be seen, but that's interesting news,

01:32:45 ◼   ► 'cause that could be the beginning of a flood

01:32:48 ◼   ► of those kinds of services,

01:32:49 ◼   ► or it could be this kind of quirky thing that we're like,

01:32:51 ◼   ► oh, we thought that was a big deal, but it really wasn't.

01:32:53 ◼   ► But that's the stuff that's worth interesting,

01:32:56 ◼   ► or that's interesting enough to be worth looking at.

01:32:59 ◼   ► Then there's other stuff that's just like, why?

01:33:03 ◼   ► Why is that there?

01:33:04 ◼   ► Like there's Sony is gonna do a Walkman, I guess,

01:33:06 ◼   ► and I was on Twit yesterday and we were talking about that.

01:33:09 ◼   ► And it's like, I don't even know why they're bothering,

01:33:13 ◼   ► but you know, so there's some stuff like that.

01:33:15 ◼   ► And then there's the stuff that gets announced

01:33:17 ◼   ► that never airs, or never ships, airs.

01:33:20 ◼   ► I'm still on TV.

01:33:21 ◼   ► TV for me, TV and DVRs and over the top video services

01:33:26 ◼   ► and stuff like that are some of my favorite things at CES.

01:33:30 ◼   ► Because like I said, those tend to be the,

01:33:33 ◼   ► that tends to be the best place to show those off.

01:33:35 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:33:36 ◼   ► Yeah, there seems to be like television technologies,

01:33:42 ◼   ► kind of what CES is getting big for now,

01:33:44 ◼   ► 'cause as you say, like phones aren't a CES thing anymore.

01:33:48 ◼   ► - Right, and there's still computers and gadgets.

01:33:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, but the big computer makers

01:33:52 ◼   ► kind of aren't necessarily there.

01:33:55 ◼   ► I mean, there are still some phones,

01:33:56 ◼   ► like LG has got their, I think their G Flex 2 is at CES,

01:34:01 ◼   ► but I guess it's like if they're ready at this time of year,

01:34:04 ◼   ► they'll put it at CES otherwise it's gonna wait for Mobile World Congress

01:34:07 ◼   ► because that's most of them yeah that's right and if they do announce a phone at

01:34:11 ◼   ► CES that probably means that they have something else from Mobile World

01:34:14 ◼   ► Congress and so they don't they don't need that phone there so they'll

01:34:17 ◼   ► announce it now instead yeah yeah and there'll be other stuff there I mean

01:34:22 ◼   ► your favorite topic in the Internet of Things there there are always you know

01:34:26 ◼   ► different internet connected devices crazy and not crazy that you'll see

01:34:31 ◼   ► there and my favorite thing was always just a walk around some of the floors

01:34:34 ◼   ► are entirely like little tiny companies from China you've never heard of that

01:34:39 ◼   ► have products that are occasionally really cool and occasionally completely

01:34:43 ◼   ► baffling about why that would be a thing that anyone would sell and I suspect

01:34:47 ◼   ► what happens is that nobody offers to sell it and so they don't make it but I

01:34:51 ◼   ► was always fascinated by that stuff because there's just super weird super

01:34:56 ◼   ► weird stuff and trends sometimes it's trend spotting you're just walking

01:35:00 ◼   ► around sort of wondering about like last year I think it was there were like a

01:35:05 ◼   ► hundred different variations of e-cigarette technology at the show and

01:35:10 ◼   ► I'm like rolling my eyes and at the same time I'm like well obviously they think

01:35:13 ◼   ► there's money to be made here that all these companies are coming out with this

01:35:16 ◼   ► stuff and then I you know I walked away I was not interested in that but it was

01:35:20 ◼   ► an interesting kind of trend and you see you see that you know year to year where

01:35:23 ◼   ► there's some something where you know one year it's a what if we did this you

01:35:28 ◼   ► know a couple companies and then the next year there are 20 or 30 companies

01:35:32 ◼   ► that are all trying to do their own take on that and I think that's just sort of

01:35:35 ◼   ► the nature of it that's how that's how technology rolls sometimes is is somebody

01:35:40 ◼   ► has an original idea and then everybody else rushes to copy it and then a lot of

01:35:44 ◼   ► those are terrible and fall by the wayside and then then it's uh then it

01:35:48 ◼   ► becomes more popular. So kind of the last thing that I think could be interesting

01:35:54 ◼   ► this week are we expecting any Apple announcements do you think of any kind

01:35:58 ◼   ► or any news because they tend to do this during CES week, right? They throw something out there

01:36:03 ◼   ► to get a bit of attention back. I don't know. They do seem to do that sometimes to tweak the

01:36:10 ◼   ► people at CES. I don't think it's a good time to announce anything because people are, you know,

01:36:16 ◼   ► the journalists are at CES and unless they've got something big that's trying to steal thunder from

01:36:22 ◼   ► from CES. I think they might drop a press release or something on Tuesday or Wednesday

01:36:28 ◼   ► of CES week just to keep people talking about them, but I don't think they need to. I mean,

01:36:33 ◼   ► it's just not their thing. I feel like the world has evolved to the point where Apple

01:36:38 ◼   ► not being at CES is just sort of a given and everybody's talking about Apple and all the

01:36:42 ◼   ► smartwatch announcements will be in relation juxtaposed with the Apple Watch announcement.

01:36:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it'll be it'll be interesting to see if they do something but

01:36:51 ◼   ► If they do I don't think it will be anything particularly huge

01:36:55 ◼   ► because I think there are better weeks to do it than the first week of January when so many people are at CES because

01:37:01 ◼   ► again, even if you're Apple, you know, you're gonna be part of the noise of CES rather than you know

01:37:06 ◼   ► Waiting a week and being on your own

01:37:09 ◼   ► So I think that that just about wraps up this week's episode

01:37:13 ◼   ► But if you got anything more that you would if you got any more burning issues, mr

01:37:17 ◼   ► now that you would like to address?

01:37:19 ◼   ► - We had a bunch of issues in our little notes document

01:37:22 ◼   ► that are just gonna have to wait,

01:37:24 ◼   ► which is I think just fine,

01:37:27 ◼   ► because this has been a good show,

01:37:28 ◼   ► but it's been a long show

01:37:29 ◼   ► and that was not my goal going in.

01:37:31 ◼   ► I was hoping that we would be tight and bright,

01:37:35 ◼   ► as they say, and then out the door.

01:37:36 ◼   ► But the Apple quality thing just sort of happened

01:37:39 ◼   ► at the last minute and I felt like we needed

01:37:41 ◼   ► to talk about it.

01:37:42 ◼   ► So we'll come back to,

01:37:44 ◼   ► I wanna talk about some smart home stuff.

01:37:46 ◼   ► I want to talk about why we criticize stuff and what people can take from it.

01:37:54 ◼   ► There's a bunch of stuff I got on my list.

01:37:55 ◼   ► I still want to talk about Twitter that I've had on my list since episode one, but I think

01:38:00 ◼   ► that's enough for today.

01:38:02 ◼   ► If you'd like to find the show notes for this week, of which there are many, you can go

01:38:06 ◼   ► to relay.fm/upgrades/17.

01:38:10 ◼   ► Thanks again to our sponsors this week, the great people over at Hover, MailRoute, Stamps.com,

01:38:15 ◼   ► Igloo. Thank you to them for supporting us. We would appreciate it if you went and checked out

01:38:19 ◼   ► their services as it also helps support the show. If you would like to find us on the internet,

01:38:24 ◼   ► you can find Jason at sixcolors.com. You can spell it any way you like and well, I mean,

01:38:28 ◼   ► not any way. You kind of have to in one of the generally agreed right ways.

01:38:32 ◼   ► S-I-X and then how you spell colors in your language.