Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:09 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to episode 4 of Upgrade on Relay FM.

00:00:13 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Hover, simplified domain management.

00:00:17 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and today I am joined by your host, as I always am, Mr. Jason Snow.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Always, it's a pleasure to be back Myke. Hi, how's it going?

00:00:27 ◼   ► Very well sir, happy birthday to you.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. It just so happens.

00:00:32 ◼   ► All of our listeners can wish you a happy birthday too if they haven't already.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Oh boy. They can join the people on my Facebook page who are saying happy birthday. Nothing

00:00:41 ◼   ► like waking up to 50 emails saying someone has added a comment to your Facebook page.

00:00:47 ◼   ► But again, better that than nobody.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Are you much of a Facebook user?

00:00:52 ◼   ► No, my wife is more than I am and so she'll say,

00:00:57 ◼   ► did you see this thing on Facebook?

00:00:59 ◼   ► And I'll go to Facebook.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I do use it, but I don't go, I don't check it.

00:01:03 ◼   ► I go there sometimes to see it's,

00:01:07 ◼   ► but I don't actually like actively check it.

00:01:12 ◼   ► So I've got like, you know,

00:01:13 ◼   ► you got college and high school friends who are on it

00:01:16 ◼   ► and family members and there are people there

00:01:18 ◼   ► that that's the only way I communicate with them.

00:01:20 ◼   ► and I don't mind it, but I'm not a big Facebook user

00:01:25 ◼   ► because I've just, to use Facebook,

00:01:29 ◼   ► you just got to keep going back to their website

00:01:31 ◼   ► and I just don't work like that.

00:01:33 ◼   ► I mean, I use Twitter because I have a Twitter app

00:01:35 ◼   ► that I run on my Mac anyway.

00:01:39 ◼   ► On my iPad, I just never even think about it.

00:01:41 ◼   ► It's just not, yeah.

00:01:43 ◼   ► So I'm a very light Facebook user, I guess I would say.

00:01:47 ◼   ► It's the place where on Twitter,

00:01:51 ◼   ► it's all nerdy conversations, right?

00:01:53 ◼   ► About technology and things.

00:01:54 ◼   ► On Facebook, it's not.

00:01:55 ◼   ► On Facebook, it's all pictures of the families

00:01:58 ◼   ► and friends and, you know, it's not...

00:02:01 ◼   ► When I post my nerdy stuff on Facebook,

00:02:03 ◼   ► it gets a very different reaction

00:02:04 ◼   ► from when I post it on Twitter.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Mostly like, "Oh, Jason's got more of his computer things."

00:02:09 ◼   ► Right? Which is, that's what they say.

00:02:12 ◼   ► - All of your computer maths.

00:02:13 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly.

00:02:15 ◼   ► I started using LinkedIn. I've tried to stay away from...

00:02:20 ◼   ► I accepted your connection request earlier today by the way, we're now colleagues at

00:02:26 ◼   ► Relay FM.

00:02:27 ◼   ► We are, we're very much involved in our own professional network now, which I'm really

00:02:32 ◼   ► excited about.

00:02:33 ◼   ► That's right.

00:02:34 ◼   ► I don't really know why I started using it. I had a couple of requests from some people

00:02:40 ◼   ► that I kind of wanted to stay connected with, like from a business perspective,

00:02:47 ◼   ► like it just made sense. So I figured well now I may as well do it. So like I'm

00:02:54 ◼   ► you know I figure it might be a way to help with business stuff like sponsors

00:02:58 ◼   ► and stuff like that maybe. So I figured why not just invite one

00:03:03 ◼   ► disgusting social network into my life. LinkedIn is one of the worst services

00:03:09 ◼   ► I've ever used. Every time I do anything it tries to scrape my address book. Every single time!

00:03:15 ◼   ► It's crazy. I hate it and I don't use it except I, you know, I use it as a resume essentially.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Yeah. It's like I connect to people I know and I make sure that my job descriptions are up to date,

00:03:31 ◼   ► which I got to do recently. I logged into Linkedin and I said, "Oh, I've had some changes.

00:03:36 ◼   ► I'm going to put some different stuff down here. I've occasionally will get a recruiter or somebody

00:03:40 ◼   ► who contacts me and says would you be interested in this job or other but otherwise I find it you

00:03:46 ◼   ► know totally useless and it's funny because for some people I guess it works because I know they've

00:03:50 ◼   ► tried to make it much more of a an actual social network where there are conversations and you send

00:03:55 ◼   ► messages and things like that and it just is no appeal to me at all but then again I'm not one of

00:04:00 ◼   ► of those you know business guys I don't have a I'm not wearing a tie so I think

00:04:05 ◼   ► I'm not allowed into the special rooms on LinkedIn because you need a jacket

00:04:08 ◼   ► and tie to get in there it's like every time I do anything so like I use the app

00:04:13 ◼   ► right it's like what first I get a thousand emails then I log into the app

00:04:17 ◼   ► to accept the requests and the first thing it would do before it let me do

00:04:22 ◼   ► anything it's like it takes you through like a wizard every single time I open

00:04:26 ◼   ► the app, "Hey there Myke, we've noticed that we've not been deep within your address

00:04:31 ◼   ► book recently and you kind of have to be really careful." And then I have this

00:04:36 ◼   ► weird thing and somebody can explain this for me because I don't understand

00:04:39 ◼   ► it, that in the application on my iPhone there is a messages icon and the

00:04:47 ◼   ► messages icon says 2 next to it. Then I click it and it tells me I have no

00:04:52 ◼   ► messages and I don't understand what the number two because I the second thing

00:04:58 ◼   ► you can do the first thing you can do is whatever and the second thing is click

00:05:01 ◼   ► that button because the notifications things as a little flag and that has to

00:05:05 ◼   ► a little badge like a little red badge right but then the messages it has two

00:05:10 ◼   ► and it doesn't have a red badge it's like messages squared it's kind of what

00:05:13 ◼   ► it looks like and I can't understand what it's asking me to do like I then

00:05:19 ◼   ► sort of poked around and saw that upgrade to premium allows 10 in mails I don't know

00:05:24 ◼   ► what an in mail is I assume it's something to do with that maybe I'm not in mailing enough

00:05:30 ◼   ► and like 10 is expensive yeah yeah I do you remember when when you used to sign up for

00:05:37 ◼   ► um network social networking services and they'd ask for your IM and if you put that

00:05:41 ◼   ► in it would it would send a message to everybody in your address book yep because I did that

00:05:47 ◼   ► once and literally every single person I had in my buddy list got a note from me saying

00:05:51 ◼   ► I'm now using this thing and then I got all these angry IMs from everybody saying what

00:05:55 ◼   ► the hell just happened. Like Path right? Do you remember Path when it did that address

00:06:00 ◼   ► book? What did it do? It was just uploading addresses to them. Yeah it was just that was

00:06:07 ◼   ► just like a kind of breach of trust because they were trying to connect. They're trying

00:06:11 ◼   ► to match you to people you knew is what they said and I think that was probably the case

00:06:16 ◼   ► But, you know, there are also cases where it's just like spam.

00:06:19 ◼   ► It's like, we're going to tell, and they often would cloak it on like, you know,

00:06:22 ◼   ► a next button it's like, you know, or a save button.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Just let us know your information, like, oh, you know, your I am.

00:06:29 ◼   ► And, and then it would just like just completely spam everything.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Um, yeah, not good.

00:06:35 ◼   ► Not good.

00:06:36 ◼   ► And LinkedIn strikes me as being a little like that too, that it's, it's, it's all

00:06:41 ◼   ► upsell, which I mean, on one level, it's great that they charge and that they're

00:06:44 ◼   ► they're making a business of this and it's not just,

00:06:47 ◼   ► we'll give it away and then drop ads in your feed

00:06:50 ◼   ► or whatever, but it's a weird, like I said,

00:06:54 ◼   ► I've never really got LinkedIn and the reason,

00:06:57 ◼   ► one of the ways I knew I didn't get LinkedIn is that

00:06:59 ◼   ► at IDG and especially Macworld,

00:07:04 ◼   ► Twitter and Facebook were great outlets for us.

00:07:07 ◼   ► And I always thought it was funny that PC World

00:07:10 ◼   ► had much more luck with StumbleUpon and LinkedIn

00:07:14 ◼   ► And the other part of IDG, the enterprise business,

00:07:17 ◼   ► was all about LinkedIn.

00:07:18 ◼   ► It was like, oh, LinkedIn, they're huge.

00:07:21 ◼   ► They're such, are you on LinkedIn?

00:07:22 ◼   ► It's a big deal.

00:07:23 ◼   ► And us consumer guys were like, no.

00:07:26 ◼   ► - So I may be divulging too much here,

00:07:31 ◼   ► but I'm just gonna go over it anyway and see what happens.

00:07:33 ◼   ► So I work for a very large financial corporate company

00:07:37 ◼   ► in marketing, and we've recently been discussing

00:07:41 ◼   ► our social strategy.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And one of those things was to work with LinkedIn and do like articles on LinkedIn and use like

00:07:50 ◼   ► and create a LinkedIn page and it was deemed that this would be more important than like

00:07:56 ◼   ► others other social networks that maybe we want to go with LinkedIn first.

00:08:00 ◼   ► And that it just seemed very peculiar to me until I really thought about it and was like

00:08:04 ◼   ► well corporations, big business, big money, LinkedIn is probably the place to go.

00:08:10 ◼   ► So people write blog posts and stuff there now, don't they?

00:08:13 ◼   ► Sorry. Oh yeah, they're opinion leaders, they're thought managers, they're brand...

00:08:22 ◼   ► Net brand promotion custodial... Yeah, that's totally... That's what they are.

00:08:29 ◼   ► I should endorse you for something while I'm on... Now that we're LinkedIn buddies,

00:08:33 ◼   ► I should endorse you. Please do. Please do. For something terrible.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Somebody endorsed me for volcanology earlier. A friend of mine, Ansi.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Oh that's good. This is always good to have. Whilst we're talking about

00:08:46 ◼   ► horrible social networks and before we move on to follow up,

00:08:48 ◼   ► Ello. Have you signed up for Ello? Did you just say hello to me in your accent?

00:08:55 ◼   ► Ello. Or did you mean the... I don't know, I'm very confused now. It could be either.

00:09:01 ◼   ► I did sign up for LO. I don't understand it. No. At all. I don't like the design.

00:09:09 ◼   ► I don't understand that when I look at friends I don't see what they have to say. I just see who's

00:09:15 ◼   ► following me. Those people aren't my friends. Those are the people who are following me.

00:09:18 ◼   ► I don't get that. Like, I try to find a timeline and there kind of isn't a timeline.

00:09:24 ◼   ► I don't know. And I don't like the fact that although it was sort of put forth as being this

00:09:30 ◼   ► like alternative to existing social networks. You know, it's venture funded and they can talk a good

00:09:36 ◼   ► game but it's free and venture funded and so I imagine that the monetization strategy will be

00:09:41 ◼   ► ads or personal data or the usual, right? It's sort of like Facebook for other people who want

00:09:48 ◼   ► your data instead of Facebook. Andy Baio wrote a great kind of mini blog post on Elo about this

00:09:58 ◼   ► exact thing where he kind of discovered the sort of the venture funding nature of it.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Very interesting. I've not signed up for Ello. I haven't had an invitation. I'm not actively

00:10:15 ◼   ► pursuing one. I'm not massively interested in it. I think that could be a LinkedIn status.

00:10:24 ◼   ► currently not currently pursuing an LO invitation? I think it's very peculiar to

00:10:32 ◼   ► even though it is a beta to not have an app of any kind I feel like a social

00:10:39 ◼   ► network only on the desktop is a critical flaw and they probably should

00:10:45 ◼   ► have worked on that even before they got to public beta. I think alpha may be fine

00:10:50 ◼   ► but even when you go into public beta stage you should really have some kind

00:10:55 ◼   ► of application. Do they have a responsive site? I'm gonna guess they probably do.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Yeah I assume they do. It looks like they do. Yeah the website looks like it would be

00:11:08 ◼   ► responsive right? The desktop website just has that look about it but

00:11:11 ◼   ► there's not really much going on. Right it's a very minimal layout too. It's

00:11:16 ◼   ► all like monospace font and you know, grey and black text on a white background and you

00:11:23 ◼   ► know, that sort of thing.

00:11:26 ◼   ► So let's do some follow up.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Alright, that was follow up, that was all about my birthday by the way.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Yeah that was birthday follow up.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Follow up from last year's birthday.

00:11:35 ◼   ► Mmhmm.

00:11:36 ◼   ► I'm checking again next year.

00:11:37 ◼   ► That'll be episode 56.

00:11:41 ◼   ► So we had a few people, including Mr. Steven Hackett and Mr. Russell Ivanovich, contact

00:11:50 ◼   ► us and I don't know why we didn't think about this, but it was a couple of different things

00:11:57 ◼   ► around sort of "Hey Siri" and dictation, things like that.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Steven let us know that Google now supports voice training, which makes sense, and Russell

00:12:08 ◼   ► let us know that the Moto X even allows you to set a custom phrase so you can just, you

00:12:16 ◼   ► can set up the Moto X and all the Motorola phones to go, to sort of activate the voice

00:12:21 ◼   ► dictation on a phrase that you decide, which is much more sensible.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Which is much better. Listener Ryan also wrote in about that and that's great. I mean, one

00:12:30 ◼   ► of the, I was telling Russell that I'm happy after a couple of years where I was doing

00:12:35 ◼   ► PC World and Greenbot, the Android site, and TechHive as well as Macworld of being very

00:12:41 ◼   ► much like all things to all people. I was very happy to sort of bring it down to the

00:12:45 ◼   ► Apple perspective and but we did talk about, you know, this is a problem that everybody

00:12:50 ◼   ► needs to solve. You know, Android hasn't solved it, but it's great that it's in the Moto X

00:12:56 ◼   ► and I imagine everybody will get there eventually and Apple needs to get there too because we

00:13:02 ◼   ► we triggered a lot of people's series and you know I feel bad about that. Yeah. But

00:13:07 ◼   ► I also feel like it's sort of a topic we need to talk about that it's just it just seems

00:13:13 ◼   ► completely impractical to me as it currently is so but it's good to know that Moto X lets

00:13:17 ◼   ► you set a passphrase. And Google like Google at least wherever it works on that attempt

00:13:23 ◼   ► to do some learning of your voice. Yeah. Which Apple don't even at least publicly they don't

00:13:30 ◼   ► say that they even bother. Like it's just like whatever, just anyone.

00:13:35 ◼   ► Anybody can talk to Siri. At any time, anywhere.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Why not? Just let everybody in.

00:13:41 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. It's for kicks, for giggles. And we proofed that by activating everybody's

00:13:50 ◼   ► Siri in episode two.

00:13:54 ◼   ► So we have some follow-up in the document which has today, however, today that follow-up

00:14:02 ◼   ► has become less so.

00:14:05 ◼   ► So the follow-up comes from @woolenhat on Twitter to remind me that iPlayer shows are

00:14:13 ◼   ► very time limited and that a reason to use Netflix in the UK is because the BBC shows

00:14:22 ◼   ► on Netflix don't expire so quickly. Now this is really good for the back

00:14:27 ◼   ► catalogue stuff but it's interesting to note that today the BBC extended iPlayer

00:14:33 ◼   ► shows from expiring from a week to 30 days. So obviously they still

00:14:39 ◼   ► expire after 30 days but it's just interesting that I noticed that today

00:14:43 ◼   ► and I wanted to just mention that too. So yeah I mean one good thing is if you

00:14:46 ◼   ► want to watch That Mitchell and Webb it's on Netflix it's not on BBC

00:14:54 ◼   ► you know it's not on the iPlayer or if you want to watch I don't know Top Gear

00:14:58 ◼   ► I don't actually don't know Top Gear is on Netflix but that sort of idea you

00:15:01 ◼   ► know you can you can watch these shows for a long time after they've expired on

00:15:06 ◼   ► iPlayer but iPlayer is really great so I love it.

00:15:11 ◼   ► All right, top hat, UK flag.

00:15:14 ◼   ► - Yep, so slow. - Woo!

00:15:17 ◼   ► Yeah, we don't have that.

00:15:18 ◼   ► I mean, there are actually,

00:15:19 ◼   ► there are like ABC's got an app and NBC's got an app

00:15:22 ◼   ► and my cable company has an app

00:15:24 ◼   ► that's tied into their on-demand.

00:15:25 ◼   ► And some of this stuff does exist, but you're right,

00:15:27 ◼   ► it's a window.

00:15:29 ◼   ► I think in general, they,

00:15:30 ◼   ► depends on what studio is making them

00:15:35 ◼   ► and what network is broadcasting them,

00:15:36 ◼   ► but they're often available in the watch again,

00:15:40 ◼   ► or you just missed it kind of window

00:15:42 ◼   ► and that can last a week or a month.

00:15:45 ◼   ► But I was getting caught up on a new show last year

00:15:49 ◼   ► and I watched the first couple

00:15:50 ◼   ► and I thought, oh, this is pretty good.

00:15:51 ◼   ► And I had like the last seven or eight on my DVR

00:15:54 ◼   ► and I had three or four I needed to fill in.

00:15:56 ◼   ► And then one day I went and the first two

00:15:59 ◼   ► that I needed to watch had vanished

00:16:00 ◼   ► because it turns out they were in a six week window

00:16:04 ◼   ► or something and they had fallen out of it.

00:16:06 ◼   ► And so they seem to do that

00:16:09 ◼   ► where you've got that first glance where it's basically saying,

00:16:13 ◼   ► "This is like it was broadcast. It just happened."

00:16:16 ◼   ► And then it goes away again until they can sell it to a streaming service.

00:16:19 ◼   ► In some Casey List-style real-time follow-up,

00:16:23 ◼   ► I just received an important notification from LinkedIn

00:16:27 ◼   ► to let me know that Jason Snell has endorsed me in marketing,

00:16:31 ◼   ► podcasting, public speaking, social media...

00:16:33 ◼   ► Social media marketing, social networking.

00:16:36 ◼   ► It wanted me to endorse you for all those things.

00:16:38 ◼   ► I just wanted to add podcasting and then I clicked okay and I endorsed you for everything.

00:16:41 ◼   ► So I regret my endorsement of you for some things that I cannot actually independently

00:16:46 ◼   ► confirm but I was going to endorse you for podcasting.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Well I appreciate all of the endorsements even though some of them are unwanted.

00:16:55 ◼   ► All right, well I endorse that.

00:16:59 ◼   ► We had lots of people give us suggestions this week about alternatives to Dropbox.

00:17:07 ◼   ► So many people suggested Google Drive as a good Dropbox alternative just in

00:17:15 ◼   ► general because I know that we were kind of bemoaning Dropbox a little bit.

00:17:20 ◼   ► Google Drive is really great but there's a lot of things that it doesn't do so

00:17:26 ◼   ► well in my opinion. And one of the big things that I was saying

00:17:31 ◼   ► about why I love and use Dropbox is for the way that it integrates a lot of

00:17:35 ◼   ► apps on iOS that Google Drive simply doesn't. And really, I completely forget that Google

00:17:42 ◼   ► Drive is a storage solution. I just think of them as where my documents are, like my

00:17:47 ◼   ► Google Docs. That's all I think of it for. And one host shares their audio with me that

00:17:54 ◼   ► way. I can't remember why, but they do. The UI changes they've made to Google Docs and

00:18:00 ◼   ► Google Drive also baffle me because now they go to different places and

00:18:04 ◼   ► docs.google.com brings up something that looks like a drive and drive.google.com

00:18:10 ◼   ► brings up something that looks like a list of documents and I'm completely

00:18:13 ◼   ► confused. I very much like their apps on the iPhone except the fact that I now

00:18:18 ◼   ► have to have four apps which doesn't make complete sense to me and they did

00:18:24 ◼   ► make a change recently where they put some of the... so they have... I make lots

00:18:30 ◼   ► of lists and bulleted lists. That's how we do our show rundowns. And I indent them, right,

00:18:37 ◼   ► as you do with an outline. So you have like the bulleted lists and then you indent some

00:18:41 ◼   ► of the lists. I'm sure there's a different way. Is it nested or something? There's a

00:18:45 ◼   ► better term. But now to be able to do like the indent, you have to press like two buttons

00:18:53 ◼   ► or three buttons instead of pressing one as it used to be. And I don't really know why

00:18:56 ◼   ► I have my fingers crossed, Jason, for an iPhone 6 Plus update that will allow me better access

00:19:04 ◼   ► to a lot of these controls.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Although this is like another complaint that I have at the moment where I don't understand

00:19:10 ◼   ► why companies like Google have not got even iPhone 6 optimized apps out yet.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Like it just seems so peculiar to me.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Like as at the time that we're recording on October 6th, like Google released an update

00:19:25 ◼   ► today like a bug fix update for Google Drive.

00:19:27 ◼   ► I'm like, you are Google, surely you can get this together.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I really like the Google Sheets app, especially on the iPad.

00:19:39 ◼   ► It's kind of amazing.

00:19:40 ◼   ► It is, I mean I used, when I was at IDG, I did use the Office apps on iPad and they're

00:19:45 ◼   ► good, but the Google apps are pretty good for basic spreadsheets.

00:19:50 ◼   ► Google Sheets actually works really well.

00:19:52 ◼   ► was a long time coming where Google Docs and Google Drive didn't work well on iOS, but

00:19:57 ◼   ► those apps are good. I like them a lot.

00:20:00 ◼   ► It's like people have said to me in the past, "Oh, why do you use Google Drive and not iWork

00:20:07 ◼   ► in the cloud?"

00:20:08 ◼   ► Yeah, you mean Federico.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Yeah, and many listeners as well, and it's simply because Google Drive really works really,

00:20:18 ◼   ► really well and Apple have in my opinion yet to do that like even if it works okay

00:20:23 ◼   ► on the web because there was an episode of the prompt where we totally ripped

00:20:26 ◼   ► into it people said like oh it's getting a lot better it's getting a lot better

00:20:30 ◼   ► take action take action take action Apple still don't like that them app

00:20:36 ◼   ► strategy for that is just atrocious it's just like download a copy and nothing

00:20:41 ◼   ► will sync and then hopefully it will be okay yeah hold your breath close your

00:20:45 ◼   ► turn around three times and nothing happens. Yeah, it's Google Drive. Google Drive, I believe,

00:20:54 ◼   ► does selective sync, so it's actually exactly like Dropbox in that way. I don't think you

00:20:58 ◼   ► can just sort of say don't sync this folder, which is the Dropbox issue too. Although somebody

00:21:04 ◼   ► mentioned that Microsoft OneDrive has this offline files idea.

00:21:12 ◼   ► Yeah, this seems really smart. I read about this at Jane Nathan.

00:21:18 ◼   ► He said you can basically just say I want this to only be online and then it will just

00:21:23 ◼   ► sync and then you can delete it. Very clever. They seem to have really kind of got that

00:21:27 ◼   ► idea.

00:21:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and there's nothing stopping from Dropbox from doing something like that and saying

00:21:33 ◼   ► let me just mark this file as an offline file and you'd keep kind of a shortcut to it but

00:21:38 ◼   ► it wouldn't be stored locally.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And if you went offline, you wouldn't see it.

00:21:42 ◼   ► So you can do your like online files

00:21:43 ◼   ► and your offline files or save these locally.

00:21:46 ◼   ► And the rest of these, I just wanna be in the cloud.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And Microsoft seems to be, I mean, it adds complexity,

00:21:50 ◼   ► but it does allow you to sort of like use your space

00:21:54 ◼   ► a little more functionally than saying,

00:21:55 ◼   ► I've got a folder that I'm not syncing

00:21:57 ◼   ► that I can't see because I'm not syncing it, but it's there.

00:22:00 ◼   ► My space monkey arrived this week.

00:22:05 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:22:06 ◼   ► - We mentioned this last week.

00:22:08 ◼   ► This is this crazy thing that it's like the file transporter.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Actually, it's a hard drive that you attach to your network

00:22:17 ◼   ► and it acts as your own personal Dropbox.

00:22:21 ◼   ► It's got a terabyte of data.

00:22:22 ◼   ► You can just throw files in it.

00:22:24 ◼   ► But what it actually is, and some people I know,

00:22:28 ◼   ► I had a few people write in,

00:22:29 ◼   ► are very disquieted by this idea.

00:22:31 ◼   ► The way Space Monkey works is

00:22:33 ◼   ► it's actually a two terabyte drive

00:22:35 ◼   ► and one terabyte of it is your stuff.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And the other terabyte is encrypted,

00:22:41 ◼   ► mathematically hashed, magical.

00:22:44 ◼   ► It basically is part of the Space Monkey storage cloud.

00:22:48 ◼   ► So it's got this, the Space Monkey storage cloud

00:22:52 ◼   ► is this massively distributed network of hard drives

00:22:55 ◼   ► that have bits of your data encrypted on them,

00:22:58 ◼   ► but stored on them so that if your Space Monkey dies,

00:23:02 ◼   ► RIP Space Monkey.

00:23:03 ◼   ► I think the first Space Monkey died.

00:23:05 ◼   ► I think that the seal on the space capsule,

00:23:08 ◼   ► the Russian setup was, anyway.

00:23:11 ◼   ► The idea is that even if your space monkey dies,

00:23:15 ◼   ► your data is still in the cloud,

00:23:16 ◼   ► but it's not like a big server farm cloud.

00:23:18 ◼   ► My understanding is the cloud is other space monkey users

00:23:21 ◼   ► and that can be creepy.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Although I think in practice,

00:23:24 ◼   ► it's not necessarily much more creepy

00:23:26 ◼   ► than relying on Dropbox.

00:23:29 ◼   ► And it sounds like this is all,

00:23:30 ◼   ► these are real computer nerds who put this stuff together.

00:23:33 ◼   ► seems like it's actually a pretty secure smart idea. The thing I don't like about

00:23:37 ◼   ► it as a podcaster is that I cannot pause it. I can limit its

00:23:43 ◼   ► bandwidth but I can't say "Hey, Space Monkey, I'm doing a podcast now, I don't

00:23:47 ◼   ► want you transferring any data while I'm doing the podcast to degrade the Skype

00:23:52 ◼   ► connection" and it doesn't seem like I can unplug the network connector but

00:23:56 ◼   ► that's about it. It doesn't seem like I have more control over it but it's smart

00:24:00 ◼   ► in the sense that you can fill it up and it actually does some intelligent things to this

00:24:05 ◼   ► is why I wanted to try it, where if you don't use a file for a while, it will just sort

00:24:10 ◼   ► of like migrate it off into offline storage mode. It's trying to do some really intelligent

00:24:14 ◼   ► things with the storage you're using on the device. It's not a one to one connection,

00:24:20 ◼   ► you can you can pin something and say I always want this to be on my hard drive. But otherwise,

00:24:24 ◼   ► it's doing sort of like what Apple does with the fusion drive where it's moving files from

00:24:28 ◼   ► the fast SSD to the slow hard drive if you're not going to use them very often.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Space Monkey seems to do that with your shared files on the Space Monkey.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Say, you don't need this anymore, but it's over there if you need it.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And that's smart.

00:24:45 ◼   ► So I just wanted to try it out.

00:24:48 ◼   ► I'll let you know what I think of it when I decide, but it's an interesting product

00:24:52 ◼   ► and I like that kind of innovation in trying to do something smart about moving the files

00:24:57 ◼   ► around and letting me store a terabyte's worth of data in that shared folder without having

00:25:03 ◼   ► that whole terabyte be on my MacBook Air because it doesn't have room.

00:25:08 ◼   ► How do you feel about doing that though? Like, I don't know if I've gauged from you really

00:25:14 ◼   ► over time if you're very security conscious or if you're maybe more like me where it's

00:25:20 ◼   ► like, you know, I lock down what I have to lock down but don't get really scared about

00:25:25 ◼   ► things.

00:25:26 ◼   ► really scared about it. I feel like there's so many things that are insecure that we don't know

00:25:30 ◼   ► about and that we don't think are secure that worrying about--I mean, I'm not going to do

00:25:34 ◼   ► things that strike me as being like stupidly insecure. I look at the Space Monkey stuff and

00:25:39 ◼   ► I think, actually this is pretty smart. I don't really think anybody's going to get, you know,

00:25:43 ◼   ► anybody's going to open up their hard drive and find my files and read them. I don't think that's

00:25:48 ◼   ► how it works. So I've got some level of trust enough that it doesn't seem like BS to me. But

00:25:54 ◼   ► But there are other things like I wrote about a while ago,

00:25:56 ◼   ► this app for the pebble that controlled your nest.

00:26:01 ◼   ► And I thought that was really cool

00:26:03 ◼   ► 'cause I've got a nest and I've got a pebble

00:26:04 ◼   ► and I can check what the temperature is

00:26:06 ◼   ► and make it warmer or colder right from my watch.

00:26:10 ◼   ► And then as I installed it,

00:26:12 ◼   ► I realized the way it works is some guy wrote this app

00:26:15 ◼   ► and what you do is you give his server your password

00:26:18 ◼   ► and username for nest and then it talks to nest.

00:26:22 ◼   ► And I thought, nope, not gonna do that, right?

00:26:25 ◼   ► I mean, there's a limit.

00:26:26 ◼   ► It's like, I'm not gonna give some guy

00:26:27 ◼   ► who wrote some piece of software

00:26:29 ◼   ► that's in a third-party app store on the Pebble

00:26:32 ◼   ► my username and password for the Nest website.

00:26:37 ◼   ► I'm just not gonna do it.

00:26:38 ◼   ► Even though that's not a huge security breach,

00:26:40 ◼   ► it's like, no, that seems dumb.

00:26:41 ◼   ► There should be an API and I should be able to authenticate.

00:26:44 ◼   ► And until that happens, I'm not gonna use that.

00:26:47 ◼   ► But I'm not super paranoid about this stuff.

00:26:50 ◼   ► If there was some like incredibly important financial document, I suppose I would encrypt it in a disk image or something like that.

00:26:56 ◼   ► But, you know, I keep, I've got, um, I've got a running tally of sponsors and things for the incomparable and a Google doc, and I've got, uh, files on Dropbox.

00:27:07 ◼   ► And, you know, I've got those secured.

00:27:09 ◼   ► Like two factors secured in fact, but in the end, if I, you know, I don't, I, it doesn't reach the point where I'm like, oh, but Dropbox can see it.

00:27:17 ◼   ► Google can see that stuff because yeah, they can they can but I don't think they are seeing it and you know at some point

00:27:25 ◼   ► It's just the feature is so convenient and and it just doesn't doesn't bug me enough to be worried about it

00:27:30 ◼   ► That's the real thing that you've mentioned that I think about is I weigh up security and convenience

00:27:35 ◼   ► Pete that I know that there are like a thousand listeners who just fired up their email clients

00:27:40 ◼   ► To tell me that I'm insane

00:27:43 ◼   ► But I really do that. There are things where I think to myself, "This could probably be more secure."

00:27:48 ◼   ► But I think I want to weigh up the convenience of it. Like two-factor authentication?

00:27:55 ◼   ► I don't really do that anywhere. This is probably a terrible thing to say on air.

00:27:59 ◼   ► Because I do it now. I know people that

00:28:04 ◼   ► they buy new machines. It was funny to watch people on a new iPhone day and they're like, "I can't log into anything."

00:28:11 ◼   ► Just everything, everything I can't look into.

00:28:14 ◼   ► And that just seems like a horrible thing.

00:28:16 ◼   ► - It's not fun, but you know, I don't do, I mean, hey,

00:28:22 ◼   ► there are plenty of times where I realize

00:28:23 ◼   ► I need to log into my Google account and my phone,

00:28:26 ◼   ► which is my two factor source, is in the other room.

00:28:28 ◼   ► And it says, I need the six digit number.

00:28:30 ◼   ► And I go, okay.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And I have to get up, I have to go, I have to open the door,

00:28:33 ◼   ► walk over, find my phone, bring it back over here

00:28:36 ◼   ► and look up the number.

00:28:37 ◼   ► And that's as opposed to just logging in.

00:28:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that's kind of a pain, a minor pain, but it's a pain.

00:28:42 ◼   ► But yeah, I feel better knowing,

00:28:45 ◼   ► especially every now and then I get an email that says,

00:28:48 ◼   ► somebody tried to log into your account.

00:28:50 ◼   ► And I think, well, they can't get in

00:28:53 ◼   ► because I've got two factor.

00:28:54 ◼   ► So I'm at least in a little bit,

00:28:56 ◼   ► or they could still trigger, you know,

00:28:58 ◼   ► some social engineering and things like that.

00:29:00 ◼   ► But they're not gonna, even if they guess my password,

00:29:02 ◼   ► they're not all the way through.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And that makes me feel better.

00:29:05 ◼   ► I'm only using two factor for Apple,

00:29:07 ◼   ► Google and Dropbox right now.

00:29:09 ◼   ► but it is less convenient.

00:29:12 ◼   ► That's always what happens.

00:29:13 ◼   ► That's why people do things that are fundamentally insecure

00:29:15 ◼   ► is because it's so convenient.

00:29:16 ◼   ► It's the, I'm trying to think of the right metaphor here.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Is it the, it's like the velvet coffin or something?

00:29:25 ◼   ► I don't even know what it is.

00:29:26 ◼   ► Is it the diamond encrusted handcuffs?

00:29:28 ◼   ► It's that kind of thing, right?

00:29:30 ◼   ► Where it's like, well, it's so comfortable to do this thing

00:29:32 ◼   ► that's not really that great, but it's so comfortable.

00:29:35 ◼   ► And the human nature is like, you know,

00:29:37 ◼   ► I know that this is bad, but it's convenient for me,

00:29:41 ◼   ► so I'm gonna do it anyway.

00:29:42 ◼   ► And you gotta wait.

00:29:44 ◼   ► I think we're better off engaging those issues

00:29:47 ◼   ► than a regular person.

00:29:48 ◼   ► That's the really scary thing,

00:29:50 ◼   ► is that people who are not as technically savvy

00:29:53 ◼   ► are not equipped to understand this stuff.

00:29:58 ◼   ► They're relying on people like us who are their friends

00:30:01 ◼   ► or people who write about this stuff

00:30:02 ◼   ► to talk to them about it.

00:30:04 ◼   ► And otherwise, they're relying on the goodwill

00:30:06 ◼   ► of the companies involved,

00:30:07 ◼   ► which is, that's scary, right?

00:30:09 ◼   ► Because those companies don't often, you know,

00:30:12 ◼   ► often really want to get as much as they can from you

00:30:15 ◼   ► and they aren't necessarily trustworthy.

00:30:17 ◼   ► - Is a question for you.

00:30:20 ◼   ► Does, do you think that Yosemite and the SMS relay

00:30:24 ◼   ► will make two-factor authentication better or worse?

00:30:29 ◼   ► Is it good or bad for two-factor?

00:30:31 ◼   ► Because obviously the good thing is

00:30:33 ◼   ► you don't need to run around the house

00:30:34 ◼   ► looking for the phone to get the code.

00:30:37 ◼   ► But the bad thing is, if your phone,

00:30:40 ◼   ► like you know, somebody in the house or whatever

00:30:42 ◼   ► in the office could be at your Mac and just get the code.

00:30:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true.

00:30:48 ◼   ► That's true.

00:30:49 ◼   ► I mean, ideally not, but yeah.

00:30:54 ◼   ► I mean, there are always scenarios in here

00:30:56 ◼   ► where it's like, okay, well, I've got the secure,

00:30:59 ◼   ► but if you've got my Mac and you've got my phone,

00:31:00 ◼   ► then you can, and you can get into my phone.

00:31:03 ◼   ► that's the other thing, right?

00:31:04 ◼   ► My phone is also passcode locked and touch ID locked.

00:31:07 ◼   ► I don't know, but something like Space Monkey,

00:31:10 ◼   ► I mean, it certainly gives me pause

00:31:12 ◼   ► and I'm not sure that I totally am on board with it,

00:31:14 ◼   ► but I like the idea.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And this it's like, what kind,

00:31:19 ◼   ► it's not even how paranoid are you,

00:31:20 ◼   ► it's what kind of paranoid are you?

00:31:23 ◼   ► It's like, am I paranoid that parts of my data

00:31:27 ◼   ► and you know, or the mathematically constructed bits

00:31:31 ◼   ► that can be reassembled into my data

00:31:33 ◼   ► are scattered across a bunch of hard drives

00:31:35 ◼   ► of a bunch of other people around the world.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Is that creepier than my data is saved on a hard drive

00:31:42 ◼   ► or a bunch of hard drives in a file server room

00:31:48 ◼   ► somewhere in Idaho that could be breached

00:31:53 ◼   ► by a hacker who's looking to get into

00:31:56 ◼   ► so-and-so's data facility.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Take your poison, I guess,

00:32:01 ◼   ► or don't do any of it and be a hermit.

00:32:03 ◼   ► I mean, that's the other way to go.

00:32:04 ◼   ► And then you lose the convenience,

00:32:06 ◼   ► but you're much more secure.

00:32:07 ◼   ► And yeah, that's fair enough.

00:32:09 ◼   ► I mean, I don't, people who wanna be a hermit,

00:32:12 ◼   ► a data hermit, they, I don't think they're crazy.

00:32:16 ◼   ► I think that's perfectly reasonable if they wanna do that.

00:32:20 ◼   ► They are gonna lose a lot of convenience,

00:32:21 ◼   ► but it's perfectly reasonable to do that.

00:32:23 ◼   ► I just, I don't think I care enough to be a data hermit.

00:32:29 ◼   ► Listener Daniel wrote in to suggest Unbound for iOS and Mac as a good way to view your

00:32:36 ◼   ► Dropbox photos.

00:32:38 ◼   ► I don't know why I haven't thought of this because we spoke about it on the prompt and

00:32:41 ◼   ► connected like a million times.

00:32:44 ◼   ► But Unbound is just, it basically gives you the iOS camera view for Dropbox photos.

00:32:52 ◼   ► That makes, and it makes that a much better photo sharing or photo storage solution.

00:32:58 ◼   ► I'm still flummoxed about what I'm gonna do about photos.

00:33:02 ◼   ► I think seeing what Apple does with a new photos app

00:33:04 ◼   ► is gonna be part of it

00:33:05 ◼   ► 'cause we've got a giant photo library in iPhoto

00:33:09 ◼   ► that's 13 years of photos

00:33:11 ◼   ► and it doesn't fit on my wife's MacBook Air hard drive.

00:33:15 ◼   ► So we've got an external hard drive that we back up

00:33:18 ◼   ► and I don't know what we're gonna do.

00:33:20 ◼   ► I would like a workflow that allows us to put photos in it

00:33:24 ◼   ► without attaching this hard drive.

00:33:26 ◼   ► I would really like that.

00:33:28 ◼   ► and we don't have it right now.

00:33:29 ◼   ► So I'm not, you know, whether we just park that somewhere

00:33:33 ◼   ► and use a cloud service for the rest of it, I don't know.

00:33:37 ◼   ► I feel like there are no good solutions.

00:33:39 ◼   ► There are solutions out there,

00:33:40 ◼   ► but there are none that are like perfect.

00:33:43 ◼   ► And given that we have so much

00:33:46 ◼   ► in the Apple ecosystem already,

00:33:47 ◼   ► waiting to see what Apple does with the Photos app

00:33:50 ◼   ► and iCloud, it seems worthwhile.

00:33:53 ◼   ► But I definitely have thought about the,

00:33:55 ◼   ► all that new storage on Dropbox as a potential thing.

00:33:59 ◼   ► If we, all we'd have to change is we'd need to

00:34:03 ◼   ► import photos from our SLR where we still take pictures

00:34:06 ◼   ► on a digital SLR every now and then,

00:34:08 ◼   ► we need to import those to Dropbox.

00:34:11 ◼   ► But everything that we're doing on our phones,

00:34:14 ◼   ► you know, can sync directly with Dropbox.

00:34:16 ◼   ► So it's a possibility.

00:34:17 ◼   ► - You could get one of those iFi cards

00:34:19 ◼   ► and it will do it for you.

00:34:21 ◼   ► - We have one of those.

00:34:23 ◼   ► I actually, I could do that.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Ah, very interesting.

00:34:27 ◼   ► - Are you rubbing your hands still?

00:34:30 ◼   ► - I did, I did.

00:34:31 ◼   ► That was one of my like, yes.

00:34:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:34:34 ◼   ► I like the way you think, Myke.

00:34:35 ◼   ► I'm going to endorse you for photo uploading now.

00:34:38 ◼   ► - That's what I've always wanted.

00:34:41 ◼   ► This was just an interesting story that I saw,

00:34:44 ◼   ► which really made me smile when I saw it.

00:34:48 ◼   ► When was this?

00:34:49 ◼   ► This is October 2nd.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Yeah, so it was a couple of days after we recorded last week.

00:34:53 ◼   ► I saw that Adam Sandler has signed a four movie deal with Netflix.

00:34:59 ◼   ► Yes. Strangely enough, announced on a Thursday in the middle of the day,

00:35:03 ◼   ► and not on late in the day on a Friday when most companies report bad news.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Sing! Take that, Adam Sandler. Take that, rich guy.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Have you ever liked Adam Sandler movies?

00:35:16 ◼   ► Oh, Adam Sandler movies? No. Never? None of them?

00:35:19 ◼   ► No. I'm a fan of Happy Gilmore.

00:35:23 ◼   ► If you haven't seen that, you should.

00:35:25 ◼   ► I think that's his best.

00:35:27 ◼   ► It was one of his earliest.

00:35:28 ◼   ► And I watched it recently, actually.

00:35:32 ◼   ► It was on TV about a couple of weeks ago

00:35:34 ◼   ► and there was nothing on, so I watched it.

00:35:36 ◼   ► Holds up, even after the Adam Sandlin-ness,

00:35:40 ◼   ► 'cause there isn't too much of that in this movie.

00:35:43 ◼   ► Like he doesn't do a lot of the voices that he does,

00:35:46 ◼   ► just his voice that he makes.

00:35:49 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:35:50 ◼   ► He moves his mouth, sounds come out.

00:35:52 ◼   ► in a monotone way.

00:35:54 ◼   ► It's still funny, it's still good.

00:35:57 ◼   ► But I just find it really interesting.

00:35:58 ◼   ► And if you will allow me,

00:36:00 ◼   ► I would like to read Adam Sandler's official statement

00:36:03 ◼   ► that he made to the press about why he did this.

00:36:07 ◼   ► - Go ahead.

00:36:08 ◼   ► - When these fine people came to me with an offer

00:36:10 ◼   ► to make four movies for them,

00:36:11 ◼   ► I immediately said yes for one reason and one reason only.

00:36:15 ◼   ► Netflix rhymes with wet chicks.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Let the streaming begin.

00:36:18 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:36:21 ◼   ► If that spoke to you,

00:36:22 ◼   ► - Get ready. - You're sold.

00:36:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:36:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a really interesting idea.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Netflix is, you know, Netflix is experimenting

00:36:32 ◼   ► with lots of different things.

00:36:34 ◼   ► I read a piece this week, and I can't remember who wrote it,

00:36:36 ◼   ► that was, it was very much like,

00:36:37 ◼   ► what does Netflix wanna be?

00:36:39 ◼   ► Does it wanna be HBO?

00:36:40 ◼   ► Is it trying to beat, to be HBO before HBO becomes Netflix?

00:36:45 ◼   ► Is it trying to do something completely different

00:36:47 ◼   ► and take on movie theaters?

00:36:51 ◼   ► it's fascinating. I feel like they're, this is a Silicon Valley kind of thing, right?

00:36:55 ◼   ► They're just trying stuff and seeing how they can disrupt and probably pivot and other things too.

00:37:01 ◼   ► You know, disrupting with Adam Sandler is an interesting idea, but what I don't like is

00:37:07 ◼   ► exclusive content, but I know that everybody does it. It's like, I don't love the fact that if you

00:37:11 ◼   ► love Adam Sandler, the only way you can see his movies now is going to be to subscribe to Netflix,

00:37:16 ◼   ► but that's how they get people to subscribe. The same is true of like, if you love Game of Thrones,

00:37:20 ◼   ► You got to get HBO if you want to see it when it airs so or you can pirate it

00:37:25 ◼   ► But so don't talk about that

00:37:26 ◼   ► but like one of the reasons that I did want to put this in the document was that I

00:37:31 ◼   ► Mean we were talking about the fact that Netflix is losing content because they can't secure the deals or they can't keep the deals

00:37:39 ◼   ► Right or somebody offers more money now

00:37:41 ◼   ► The only way Netflix can secure content is if it pays for it like it funds it and and Netflix's statement was

00:37:49 ◼   ► Adam Sandler's movies are some of the most watched movies on Netflix. So to them it was a no-brainer

00:37:54 ◼   ► And you can kind of see it from that perspective if they're being truthful about that. It makes perfect sense to do this

00:38:01 ◼   ► yeah, there's a rumor going around that that

00:38:04 ◼   ► CBS is talking to

00:38:07 ◼   ► Netflix about

00:38:10 ◼   ► Doing a Star Trek series. There's no Star Trek TV series on the air right now and

00:38:14 ◼   ► I've heard other rumors that say look until they make that third movie

00:38:17 ◼   ► they're not gonna, they're gonna finish that trilogy

00:38:19 ◼   ► and then they'll do a TV show.

00:38:20 ◼   ► But what made it sound reasonable to me is,

00:38:23 ◼   ► first off, Star Trek is popular,

00:38:26 ◼   ► but it's probably not popular enough

00:38:30 ◼   ► to make a show on CBS about it,

00:38:32 ◼   ► maybe on the CW or something like that.

00:38:34 ◼   ► But it's probably not widely popular enough

00:38:37 ◼   ► to do a cable version because the budget would be too small.

00:38:40 ◼   ► So where does it go?

00:38:41 ◼   ► How do you do that?

00:38:42 ◼   ► They tried that with Enterprise

00:38:44 ◼   ► and it didn't really work on a network.

00:38:47 ◼   ► they cancelled it after three years I think. So the rumors about Netflix start to sound

00:38:53 ◼   ► really interesting because Netflix has said their users watch Star Trek. They've got all

00:38:58 ◼   ► the series, they get watched a whole lot, people love watching that and that's powerful

00:39:02 ◼   ► right if you're Netflix to say well we actually know what our people want and this is what

00:39:06 ◼   ► they want. So they've got the deal with Marvel where they know that people are watching those

00:39:10 ◼   ► Marvel movies and they ordered a bunch of different series, mini series based on other

00:39:15 ◼   ► Marvel characters. I totally forgot about that. So they know they know what people

00:39:20 ◼   ► are watching and so like the Star Trek rumor totally makes sense to me. I don't

00:39:23 ◼   ► know if it'll actually happen or when it'll happen but would a new Star Trek

00:39:26 ◼   ► series go straight to Netflix? Why not? If Netflix knows that their people love

00:39:30 ◼   ► Star Trek why would they not do that and they know that all the Star Trek fans

00:39:34 ◼   ► are going to want to see the show so they're going to get Netflix. So it is

00:39:37 ◼   ► really interesting like does Netflix become half a catalog of stuff that you

00:39:43 ◼   ► like and have a studio essentially saying, and that's what HBO does, right? HBO runs

00:39:51 ◼   ► old movies and then they've got their originals, movies and TV shows that they do. So it's

00:39:55 ◼   ► fascinating. It allows them to control some part of their destiny. When we talk about

00:39:59 ◼   ► Apple, that's number one thing that Apple believes too, is they want to control their

00:40:02 ◼   ► destiny. Anything that's important to the future of their business, Apple wants to control

00:40:06 ◼   ► it. And this is a little bit of that for Netflix. We can't necessarily control whether we're

00:40:11 ◼   ► gonna have a long-standing deal with Universal for their TV shows and movies, but what we can control

00:40:17 ◼   ► is that we made our own deals for content and we, you know, we've got that. We've got Orange is the

00:40:22 ◼   ► New Black and we've got House of Cards, although I think they actually, I think the deals have

00:40:29 ◼   ► changed a little bit since House of Cards, because House of Cards then like got picked up on other

00:40:34 ◼   ► streaming services and stuff now, I think for the first season, but anyway, yeah, I think that's a

00:40:39 ◼   ► a big part of this is Netflix wants to control its destiny a little bit and if it knows things

00:40:44 ◼   ► about its audience that nobody else knows, it can pick what it wants. So yeah, they know

00:40:50 ◼   ► that people are watching Happy Gilmore over and over again.

00:40:53 ◼   ► I bet it helps them assign budgets for these projects too. You can see something like Arrested

00:41:00 ◼   ► Development. I'm sure it cost them a lot of money to get everybody in, but they probably

00:41:05 ◼   ► knew that they would make it back or at least had a good idea for it because you could probably

00:41:09 ◼   ► have done it with 75% of the cost, you know? But it wouldn't have been as good, but you

00:41:16 ◼   ► could have at least made it. But I'm sure that they knew, "Okay, we need to pay this

00:41:20 ◼   ► much for Michael Cera because he's a big movie star now, but it's worth it because we think,

00:41:25 ◼   ► you know, we look at these numbers and we can work out a lot of people will sign up

00:41:29 ◼   ► for this."

00:41:30 ◼   ► Yeah, the challenge, and this is the challenge for HBO too, is how do you connect specific

00:41:36 ◼   ► pieces of content with motivating people to either sign up or remain signed up for your

00:41:43 ◼   ► service, right? It's not quite the same. They can do ratings and ratings are good so they

00:41:47 ◼   ► can see plays. But beyond that, they just sort of have to hope that the more plays they

00:41:52 ◼   ► get, the more times, you know, the more minutes you're watching Netflix in any given week,

00:41:58 ◼   ► presumably have a direct correlation with retention. And then they probably have some

00:42:02 ◼   ► idea based on when "Orange is the New Black" comes on, like how many people add the service,

00:42:09 ◼   ► but it's tricky, right? Because it's not like they make their money on a play of an Adam

00:42:14 ◼   ► Sandler movie that they produced, or on a play of "Orange is the New Black" or "Arrested

00:42:20 ◼   ► Development" or "House of Cards". They're not making money on those. In fact, they're

00:42:24 ◼   ► paying money for stuff that isn't their production per stream, so they've got to back out the

00:42:31 ◼   ► math and say this is worth it to us because we've got these second level things that make

00:42:38 ◼   ► us feel good about it.

00:42:39 ◼   ► But they're not going to be able, even if the Adam Sandler movies do great on Netflix

00:42:44 ◼   ► but it doesn't induce anybody to sign up for the service, was it worth it?

00:42:49 ◼   ► How much was it worth it just to keep people happy, existing customers happy?

00:42:54 ◼   ► It's tough.

00:42:55 ◼   ► That's a really tricky one.

00:42:56 ◼   ► I guess over time they can kind of just assign a figure.

00:43:00 ◼   ► For example, if they pay, say they pay $2 every time someone watches an Adam Sandler

00:43:05 ◼   ► movie.

00:43:06 ◼   ► In theory, then they could assign those $2, fake $2 to themselves and work out if over

00:43:10 ◼   ► time it was actually worth it.

00:43:13 ◼   ► They're stealing money from their partners and funneling that content to the people who

00:43:17 ◼   ► are, wow, that is really true.

00:43:20 ◼   ► Like the more Netflix content is on Netflix and the more times people spend watching Netflix

00:43:25 ◼   ► content is less time, presumably, that they're watching other people's content, which means

00:43:30 ◼   ► Netflix is getting some of the money back just by, you know, if you spend two hours

00:43:34 ◼   ► watching Orange is the New Black instead of The Avengers, then Netflix is not paying Marvel

00:43:40 ◼   ► and Disney for The Avengers.

00:43:42 ◼   ► They've kept your $15.

00:43:44 ◼   ► Diabolical.

00:43:47 ◼   ► Listener Olivier wrote in to say, this is something we totally didn't consider at all,

00:43:54 ◼   ► that streaming versus physical media is an interesting discussion when you think about

00:43:58 ◼   ► bandwidth. Olivier said that in Canada, I'm assuming he, right Olivier? Yeah. It's

00:44:06 ◼   ► still pretty expensive. I pay almost $80 a month for 100 gigabytes of bandwidth

00:44:11 ◼   ► and you know so he says it's way cheaper to buy a blu-ray at Best Buy for $7 if

00:44:17 ◼   ► they find it in the discount bin. And something that I wanted to add as well is

00:44:21 ◼   ► speeds. I don't have very fast internet. I cannot get faster internet than what

00:44:25 ◼   ► I've got and sometimes it to download a movie from iTunes can take like four

00:44:31 ◼   ► hours right so then what's the point in downloading it?

00:44:34 ◼   ► These are all good points that we you know the economics can be different I'm

00:44:39 ◼   ► not paying for my bandwidth here by the byte so I you know downloading a movie

00:44:44 ◼   ► isn't a problem and our speeds although not fantastic are reasonable enough that

00:44:47 ◼   ► that I can I can do that I get the 1080 Super HD Netflix when I watch it on my

00:44:53 ◼   ► TiVo so but you're right you're right there are lots of reasons why you might not want to stream

00:44:59 ◼   ► and get that uh get that disc in the in the bargain bin in Canada for seven Canadian dollars

00:45:08 ◼   ► that may be an Adam Sandler movie he's probably one of the ones he's working on

00:45:12 ◼   ► the wedding singer so there's one more piece of follow-up in here that i think is 100%

00:45:19 ◼   ► Jason Snow related. Yeah listener Dave. Listener Dave wrote in to say I'm enjoying your

00:45:25 ◼   ► glee at having follow-up to deal with. Yes and then he went on that wasn't the whole email.

00:45:33 ◼   ► So Lex Friedman does this podcast called Your Daily Lex which is pretty much what it says on

00:45:40 ◼   ► the tin. He five days a week usually will do about a five minute podcast. He just turns on the

00:45:46 ◼   ► the microphone talks for five minutes and then turns off the microphone and posts it.

00:45:50 ◼   ► And I realized last week that I hadn't gotten a new daily Lex in about a week and I thought,

00:45:57 ◼   ► what is going on? I know that he had a bunch of stuff that was going on. It was the Jewish

00:46:01 ◼   ► holidays and he had an offsite that was actually in his house from his company. So he was entertaining

00:46:07 ◼   ► his company's executives in his house, which I would imagine is really...

00:46:10 ◼   ► How big is Lex's house?

00:46:12 ◼   ► So I mentioned this on Lex's podcast is I like to call it the solar mansion because

00:46:17 ◼   ► it's got solar panels on the roof. The swimming pool in the backyard is heated by solar power.

00:46:22 ◼   ► I envision Lex's house as being about 10 stories tall with a thousand rooms. It's not. I've

00:46:30 ◼   ► never been to Lex's house, but he's got a basement and he's got I think a couple other

00:46:34 ◼   ► levels and I think they did this all down in the basement maybe. I don't know. I've

00:46:37 ◼   ► I've never been to Lex's palatial estate in New Jersey.

00:46:41 ◼   ► The point is Lex didn't do a podcast for a while.

00:46:44 ◼   ► And I was thinking about this

00:46:45 ◼   ► because I haven't been listening to podcasts

00:46:48 ◼   ► as regularly as I used to

00:46:50 ◼   ► because I don't have my job anymore,

00:46:52 ◼   ► which means I don't have my commute anymore.

00:46:54 ◼   ► My new job is in my house.

00:46:56 ◼   ► So that's great because I've spent,

00:46:59 ◼   ► you know, two hours plus every day commuting.

00:47:02 ◼   ► I got that time back.

00:47:03 ◼   ► But it also means that the things I did during that time

00:47:07 ◼   ► are not there anymore.

00:47:09 ◼   ► I'm not doing those anymore.

00:47:11 ◼   ► And I can do some of them if I want,

00:47:13 ◼   ► but I have to like say,

00:47:14 ◼   ► "I'm gonna take the time to sit here

00:47:16 ◼   ► and listen to a podcast."

00:47:17 ◼   ► And a lot of times it doesn't happen.

00:47:18 ◼   ► So I missed that Lex hadn't done a podcast in a while

00:47:22 ◼   ► until I went to my podcast app when I was walking around,

00:47:26 ◼   ► I dropped my son off at school

00:47:27 ◼   ► and I was gonna take a little walk to get some exercise

00:47:30 ◼   ► and also to listen to some podcasts.

00:47:32 ◼   ► And I realized there was only one Lex, daily Lex.

00:47:36 ◼   ► And I thought about this as an instructive

00:47:38 ◼   ► about how my life has changed,

00:47:39 ◼   ► that I expected there to be five daily Lexes

00:47:41 ◼   ► that I could just listen to all in a row,

00:47:43 ◼   ► and I didn't.

00:47:45 ◼   ► So I came home and I recorded my own episode

00:47:47 ◼   ► of your daily Lex and sent it to Lex,

00:47:48 ◼   ► and he posted it as an episode of your daily Lex,

00:47:51 ◼   ► even though it was with me.

00:47:53 ◼   ► - So this was completely unsolicited.

00:47:55 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I just sent it to him.

00:47:56 ◼   ► I thought, you know what would be funny

00:47:57 ◼   ► is if I just recorded an episode of your daily Lex

00:47:59 ◼   ► and sent it to Lex.

00:48:00 ◼   ► And he said, "Do you mind if I post it?"

00:48:01 ◼   ► I said, "Well, that was kind of the idea."

00:48:03 ◼   ► Yes, you should post this.

00:48:05 ◼   ► And then the next day he came back

00:48:07 ◼   ► and he's been posting it daily again.

00:48:10 ◼   ► - You challenged him.

00:48:11 ◼   ► - But it was, so listener Dave said,

00:48:13 ◼   ► "I heard you're five minutes on your daily Lex."

00:48:15 ◼   ► And I think it would be interesting

00:48:16 ◼   ► for the Six Colors newsletter that I'm doing.

00:48:19 ◼   ► And I think for the podcast too,

00:48:20 ◼   ► since he likes follow-up,

00:48:21 ◼   ► to reflect the changes happening with you.

00:48:23 ◼   ► So it's something for us to, I think, bookmark

00:48:25 ◼   ► and maybe talk about a little bit that after 18 years

00:48:29 ◼   ► working in downtown San Francisco,

00:48:31 ◼   ► I am now in my garage in the suburbs and I haven't,

00:48:36 ◼   ► I actually, this is the longest I have been not setting foot

00:48:39 ◼   ► in the city of San Francisco since probably 1996.

00:48:43 ◼   ► It's been almost a month now

00:48:47 ◼   ► and I haven't been back in the city in that time at all

00:48:50 ◼   ► for any reason.

00:48:52 ◼   ► And yeah, I think it's worth talking about at some point

00:48:55 ◼   ► over time about like the life change stuff

00:48:58 ◼   ► 'cause that is something that's happening with me

00:48:59 ◼   ► is I'm not, you know, my life is very different

00:49:02 ◼   ► than it was a few weeks ago,

00:49:04 ◼   ► because now I'm working out of my house

00:49:06 ◼   ► and I'm doing six colors and I'm doing more podcasting

00:49:09 ◼   ► and picking up my kids at school and other stuff like that.

00:49:12 ◼   ► So it's definitely, I touched on a lot of these same issues

00:49:15 ◼   ► in that daily Lex episode, but it's just, you know,

00:49:18 ◼   ► the commute is a great example that you get that time back,

00:49:22 ◼   ► you get to spend that in a different way

00:49:24 ◼   ► than you spent it in the past,

00:49:26 ◼   ► but what you spend it on is different.

00:49:29 ◼   ► And so like, I'm not reading the newspaper every morning

00:49:31 ◼   ► and I'm not listening to as many podcasts

00:49:33 ◼   ► and I don't have as much leisure,

00:49:36 ◼   ► or as you would say leisure, reading time

00:49:38 ◼   ► because I would do that on the bus

00:49:41 ◼   ► and now I'm like busy working on stuff instead.

00:49:43 ◼   ► I sort of come in to the garage and start working.

00:49:46 ◼   ► And so it's just different.

00:49:47 ◼   ► So it's worth, I think, maybe checking in on that

00:49:50 ◼   ► every so often on this show

00:49:52 ◼   ► because listener Dave is quite right

00:49:54 ◼   ► that, you know, this is a very,

00:49:58 ◼   ► Not only do I love follow-up, but this is a very different life, I think, than I had

00:50:01 ◼   ► before.

00:50:02 ◼   ► So, you know, thanks for being here with me, Myke.

00:50:05 ◼   ► >> It's a pleasure.

00:50:08 ◼   ► >> Just, you know, keeping it real with Myke.

00:50:10 ◼   ► I don't talk to people is basically what I'm saying, so I'm glad that I get our time together.

00:50:15 ◼   ► >> Our time together today where we've just finished the follow-up has been an hour.

00:50:19 ◼   ► So we're crossing into ATP.

00:50:21 ◼   ► >> ATP territory, yes.

00:50:22 ◼   ► >> Yep, that's the goal.

00:50:24 ◼   ► this week's episode the the topic started in the post show I think was the

00:50:29 ◼   ► point but let's let's take a break and we can thank our sponsor for this week's

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00:54:18 ◼   ► Hover for sponsoring this week's episode. Oh Myke, Myke, Myke. They're gonna be

00:54:26 ◼   ► angry at us again. Maybe everybody's phones just took them to Hover to buy

00:54:32 ◼   ► some domains. I hope so. That wouldn't be a bad thing.

00:54:35 ◼   ► yeah apple pay apple pay you wrote an interesting article in response to an

00:54:42 ◼   ► O'Reilly piece oh yeah Tim O'Reilly wrote a thing that I was gonna link to

00:54:49 ◼   ► it and then I thought I can't link to it because it makes me too angry and then I

00:54:54 ◼   ► thought maybe I should write a thing about why it why it bugs me so much

00:54:57 ◼   ► because I felt like just linking to it was not was not right and you know it

00:55:05 ◼   ► was about Apple Pay and yet in the end there's a comment that he leaves

00:55:09 ◼   ► replying to somebody in his own article saying well it really isn't about Apple

00:55:14 ◼   ► Pay which actually made me a little bit more angry because because this is your

00:55:19 ◼   ► typical let's use a current Apple thing that people are talking about and and

00:55:25 ◼   ► then like pivot on it to grind some other acts that you would like to grind

00:55:29 ◼   ► So even though he throws a lot of elbows at Apple and says, "Oh yeah, Apple's magical this and, you know, Apple's marketing wizardry that,"

00:55:41 ◼   ► in the end, he's not even like talking. In the end, I think what he's really doing is promoting this company he invested in called Cover, which is like, not Hover,

00:55:50 ◼   ► cover, which is like "Uber for restaurants" and I know Uber for whatever is a joke, but seriously

00:55:57 ◼   ► it's Uber for restaurants. You use it and you go in and it's like you don't ever have to deal with

00:56:03 ◼   ► the filthy, filthy paying of people or filthy, dirty having a wallet or having a credit card or

00:56:10 ◼   ► signing a bill because we know people can't bear to do that. That is the most monstrous thing that

00:56:14 ◼   ► that you do at a restaurant is pay the bill, have to get out your wallet. It's awful.

00:56:20 ◼   ► You know, life doesn't need to be that way. Why do that when you can use cover and you

00:56:25 ◼   ► just walk in and say, "Hi, I'm Joe." And they're like, "Oh, Mr. Joe, I'm so happy to see you."

00:56:30 ◼   ► And the tip is automatically calculated and it's like an Uber ride except at a restaurant

00:56:35 ◼   ► and you don't go anywhere because the restaurant doesn't move probably. And that's really what

00:56:40 ◼   ► Tim O'Reilly seems to have been using Apple Pay

00:56:43 ◼   ► as a wedge to talk about the future of payments,

00:56:47 ◼   ► which was his point was like, look,

00:56:49 ◼   ► Apple Pay has a solution to an existing problem,

00:56:52 ◼   ► but Uber and Cover are solving,

00:56:54 ◼   ► they're thinking way outside the box

00:56:57 ◼   ► and they're solving the future of payments.

00:56:59 ◼   ► And it just seemed really silly to me

00:57:01 ◼   ► because in the end, I'm not quite sure what,

00:57:04 ◼   ► I mean, Uber still requires you to put your credit card in

00:57:09 ◼   ► to set up your account.

00:57:10 ◼   ► And if your credit card changes

00:57:11 ◼   ► or you have to cancel it and get a new one

00:57:13 ◼   ► because of fraud or something like that,

00:57:14 ◼   ► you have to give Uber your credit card number again.

00:57:18 ◼   ► You have to use the app in order to call the car,

00:57:22 ◼   ► at which point I'm not sure how that's much different

00:57:25 ◼   ► than pulling out your phone and going beep

00:57:28 ◼   ► and paying for something with Apple Pay.

00:57:30 ◼   ► It actually doesn't seem,

00:57:31 ◼   ► it seems kind of disingenuous to me.

00:57:33 ◼   ► I'm not sure that something like Uber

00:57:37 ◼   ► is really that different from something like Apple Pay,

00:57:39 ◼   ► except for the use cases, which is, you know,

00:57:42 ◼   ► the Apple Pay use cases may be going to Whole Foods

00:57:44 ◼   ► and doing some shopping,

00:57:45 ◼   ► and the Uber use case is calling a car.

00:57:48 ◼   ► - I think what he's trying to say,

00:57:50 ◼   ► which I don't agree with, is that for some reason,

00:57:54 ◼   ► having something that debits a transaction from your card

00:57:58 ◼   ► each time you use it,

00:58:01 ◼   ► whether you use your card or some other method, you know,

00:58:05 ◼   ► but he's saying that that's somehow antiquated.

00:58:09 ◼   ► But everything that he's doing still devots a card.

00:58:12 ◼   ► It's just doing it under a veil.

00:58:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, that's it.

00:58:16 ◼   ► It's like when you call an Uber,

00:58:18 ◼   ► your interaction is when you call it.

00:58:20 ◼   ► And then that's the last time you use your phone,

00:58:22 ◼   ► although you still have to see the car

00:58:23 ◼   ► and you might look at the screen

00:58:26 ◼   ► to see if this is the driver of the car that you wanted

00:58:29 ◼   ► and they need to see that it's you.

00:58:30 ◼   ► And that all still happens.

00:58:32 ◼   ► So it's not less complicated.

00:58:34 ◼   ► it's just sort of different. I think he's, and I made fun of him in my piece a little

00:58:39 ◼   ► bit, I think this is this sort of Silicon Valley utopia thing, which is like, well,

00:58:45 ◼   ► in the future, we will need to carry wallets, or you because we'll be recognized, you know,

00:58:51 ◼   ► on our own, it's just like our own our own faces will be our passport. And they'll say,

00:58:56 ◼   ► you know, it's like what Square Pay tried to do, which is like, you walk up to the counter

00:58:59 ◼   ► at the deli having ordered a sandwich and just say, I'm Bob. And they're like, Oh, yeah,

00:59:04 ◼   ► and they'll put it on your account,

00:59:05 ◼   ► which totally doesn't scale

00:59:07 ◼   ► because if every single customer uses that service

00:59:09 ◼   ► and is checking in,

00:59:10 ◼   ► it's gonna get really confusing really fast.

00:59:13 ◼   ► But in the end, these services need to authenticate.

00:59:16 ◼   ► They need to say, I am who I said I was

00:59:19 ◼   ► and you have an ability to receive money from me.

00:59:22 ◼   ► And Apple Pay is one way to do that.

00:59:25 ◼   ► And the way Uber does it is a different way,

00:59:27 ◼   ► but they're not that different.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And to suggest that one is like mired in the past,

00:59:32 ◼   ► And in fact, Uber you give your real credit card to,

00:59:34 ◼   ► whereas Apple Pay is using this one-time code.

00:59:37 ◼   ► So it's actually more secure and more private than Uber is.

00:59:42 ◼   ► So, you know, again, he's pushing his own thing,

00:59:46 ◼   ► but it really bugs me this idea that first off,

00:59:48 ◼   ► I'm gonna use Apple to get attention for my thing.

00:59:51 ◼   ► Then I'm gonna run down Apple's thing

00:59:52 ◼   ► and say that it's not the cool thing

00:59:54 ◼   ► because my thing is the cool thing,

00:59:55 ◼   ► when in fact it is serving the exact same purpose

00:59:59 ◼   ► and it's not any different.

01:00:00 ◼   ► You throw in a little Silicon Valley utopia,

01:00:02 ◼   ► which is like, oh, we're totally gonna pivot

01:00:03 ◼   ► the entire world with our new super train

01:00:08 ◼   ► that we're building.

01:00:09 ◼   ► And it's kind of ridiculous 'cause in fact,

01:00:13 ◼   ► I mean, my final point was,

01:00:14 ◼   ► do these people go to the supermarket?

01:00:16 ◼   ► I mean, in the end, you have to buy,

01:00:17 ◼   ► you have to put things in a basket and check out somewhere.

01:00:20 ◼   ► I mean, that's, and you have to pay.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And that's just, I mean, that's not old school.

01:00:26 ◼   ► It's gonna be a long time before there's RFID tags

01:00:28 ◼   ► on everything and you can literally just walk into a store,

01:00:31 ◼   ► grab some stuff, put it in a bag and walk out.

01:00:33 ◼   ► It's gonna be a while before that.

01:00:35 ◼   ► That's not a realistic vision of the near future.

01:00:39 ◼   ► - Well, Square tried to do this idea

01:00:41 ◼   ► of replacing the checkout process with a different process,

01:00:45 ◼   ► which is Square Wallet, and that folded.

01:00:47 ◼   ► - Where they'd see your face,

01:00:48 ◼   ► and they were, but then you set up Square,

01:00:51 ◼   ► and I think what it's basically doing

01:00:52 ◼   ► is it's detecting your presence,

01:00:54 ◼   ► because you've got Square on your smartphone,

01:00:57 ◼   ► which again is really not that different from Apple Pay,

01:01:00 ◼   ► because what we're doing is we're using our phone

01:01:02 ◼   ► to create or authenticate

01:01:07 ◼   ► and then we're using sort of like Uber,

01:01:09 ◼   ► they're looking at your face or whatever

01:01:10 ◼   ► and saying, oh yeah, it's you.

01:01:12 ◼   ► You know, it's not that different.

01:01:15 ◼   ► It's, I don't know.

01:01:16 ◼   ► It's, I love that different companies

01:01:18 ◼   ► are trying different things and this cover idea

01:01:20 ◼   ► where you'd like, you make your reservation

01:01:21 ◼   ► and then you just don't have to worry about it

01:01:23 ◼   ► when you're done eating, you just leave

01:01:25 ◼   ► and it's auto-tipped and auto-paid and all of that.

01:01:28 ◼   ► I mean, that's neat and all, but like I said,

01:01:30 ◼   ► I don't think the big inconvenience about going to a restaurant is waiting for the check.

01:01:35 ◼   ► I think that idea sounds really good, but it's not the problem that he's trying to paint

01:01:44 ◼   ► it as.

01:01:45 ◼   ► Yeah, oh yeah.

01:01:46 ◼   ► And then this is real-time follow-up from Red King in the chat room, saying "Sometimes

01:01:49 ◼   ► startups in Silicon Valley are crazy out of touch with people in the real world."

01:01:52 ◼   ► This is, I think, ultimately what set me off about this piece, is I feel like Tim O'Reilly

01:01:57 ◼   ► is writing from a position of being so far inside the Silicon Valley vortex that he doesn't

01:02:05 ◼   ► have any conception of like how real people pay for products and live their lives and

01:02:13 ◼   ► it's all about these fantastical Uber. You take your Uber to your cover restaurant, you

01:02:19 ◼   ► never take out your wallet, it's all amazing. And just that's not, those are exceptions,

01:02:25 ◼   ► aren't the future that everybody's going to be going to. Those are simple examples that

01:02:32 ◼   ► don't scale and that are pretty much exclusive to a Silicon Valley mindset. And that bugs

01:02:40 ◼   ► me because it's like, you know, you can criticize, there are lots of reasons to be skeptical

01:02:45 ◼   ► about the future success of Apple Pay, but to say, well, it's not Uber, not only is wrong,

01:02:52 ◼   ► But it's completely without perspective.

01:02:54 ◼   ► So you know, it was thanks to Tim O'Reilly for writing that post and getting me all riled

01:02:58 ◼   ► up.

01:02:59 ◼   ► That was good.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Because there is that other part of Apple Pay as well, which is interesting, right?

01:03:03 ◼   ► Which is kind of like what you can imagine that Uber part being, which is the APIs that

01:03:09 ◼   ► they're building.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Right, where you can pay right on your device.

01:03:12 ◼   ► And again, then it's sending a one-time code and you don't have to ideally, like Uber could

01:03:19 ◼   ► work with Apple Pay and then you wouldn't need to give Uber anything, right?

01:03:23 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:03:24 ◼   ► Okay, so you don't need to give Uber your credit card.

01:03:26 ◼   ► You don't need to give Uber your identity, essentially.

01:03:29 ◼   ► All you need to do is verify payment.

01:03:30 ◼   ► I think they're calling it Uber Ride, sorry, Uber Ride Now, I think they're calling it,

01:03:35 ◼   ► something like that.

01:03:36 ◼   ► That's nice.

01:03:37 ◼   ► It sounds like Override.

01:03:38 ◼   ► That's great.

01:03:39 ◼   ► Good job.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Good branding.

01:03:41 ◼   ► Hey, Siri, Uber Ride Now.

01:03:42 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

01:03:43 ◼   ► Oh, dear.

01:03:44 ◼   ► I'm sorry. Oh dear. People are gonna hate me so much.

01:03:52 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. I already, Mykey R in the chatroom said I set off his phone. Of course you did.

01:03:57 ◼   ► So I've probably just done it again. He's probably screaming at me. Do you want to talk

01:04:04 ◼   ► about Pebble? Sure. I got one. Yeah I have one too and I kind of mentioned to you do

01:04:12 ◼   ► ever want to talk about Pebble and you said that you were getting ready to

01:04:15 ◼   ► publish something within a couple of days so I figure why not talk about it now so you have a

01:04:19 ◼   ► original Pebble right? I do I have the Kickstarter. You have the Kickstarter one? Look at you. I have a

01:04:26 ◼   ► Pebble Steel which I picked up as soon as they went on sale. Do you wear it every day?

01:04:34 ◼   ► Yes I mean for again life changes if I'm if I'm going out of the house and going

01:04:41 ◼   ► out and about and not just sitting in my pajamas in my garage and writing things

01:04:45 ◼   ► i i do wear it absolutely

01:04:49 ◼   ► what do you do you like it i mean i love mine i love my okay do you wear yours

01:04:53 ◼   ► every day yeah i do yeah 100 i like it i mean i've

01:04:56 ◼   ► been wearing it for a year and a half now i i like it

01:04:59 ◼   ► um uh they announced last week that they are cutting the price to 99

01:05:05 ◼   ► for the base model which i think is really smart

01:05:08 ◼   ► and then they added a bunch of uh sort of software features like background

01:05:11 ◼   ► tasks and things like that. And I was thinking about this and then I subscribed to Ben Thompson's

01:05:18 ◼   ► Stratechery site and get his newsletter and he made a bunch of the same observations that

01:05:22 ◼   ► I'd been thinking so I had one of those like "I'm gonna write about this, it's gonna be similar"

01:05:27 ◼   ► and he's like "well okay go ahead it's fine" and so I just wrote this thing that I'm gonna post

01:05:32 ◼   ► shortly after the show is done that I think saying that Pebble is dead because there are

01:05:41 ◼   ► all these other smartwatches with the bright color screens and stuff isn't right because

01:05:45 ◼   ► it's got a week-long battery and it costs under a hundred dollars now. And when it was focused,

01:05:52 ◼   ► as it was initially on notifications, I think it actually did a pretty good job. And I think

01:05:57 ◼   ► they've done some good updates to the notification system. It works better with iOS. It works really

01:06:02 ◼   ► well with Android. I think there's a place for a watch like that and say, "Look, we're not going

01:06:08 ◼   ► gonna be brightly colored and anything like that,

01:06:10 ◼   ► but we're gonna give you your notifications,

01:06:11 ◼   ► we're gonna be really focused on that,

01:06:13 ◼   ► and it's gonna be under $100.

01:06:15 ◼   ► The problem I have is that they also announced

01:06:19 ◼   ► these background tasks and things like that,

01:06:21 ◼   ► which threaten to wreck that battery life

01:06:24 ◼   ► that is part of their appeal.

01:06:27 ◼   ► And so we're in a fascinating point,

01:06:30 ◼   ► Ben Thompson definitely made these points too.

01:06:32 ◼   ► We're at a fascinating point where Pebble needs to decide

01:06:35 ◼   ► what it wants to be,

01:06:36 ◼   ► And I think it needs to swallow its pride.

01:06:38 ◼   ► I think the guys at Pebble need to swallow their pride

01:06:40 ◼   ► a little bit and say, look, we are not going to compete

01:06:43 ◼   ► on features with the Apple Watch and with the Motorola Watch

01:06:48 ◼   ► and with the other Android Wear watches that are coming out.

01:06:50 ◼   ► We're not gonna do it.

01:06:52 ◼   ► We will compete on battery life and price,

01:06:57 ◼   ► but we're not gonna add 50 different features

01:06:59 ◼   ► and a whole bunch of apps that drain the battery

01:07:01 ◼   ► because quite frankly, our screen is black and white.

01:07:05 ◼   ► and low resolution and we only have buttons and not a touchscreen.

01:07:10 ◼   ► So don't try to play that game. Be the alternative.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Be the under $100, really great for showing your phone notifications on your wrist,

01:07:20 ◼   ► lasts for a week device because there's probably still a place in the market

01:07:25 ◼   ► for something like that, at least for a while. And if you focus on that and you

01:07:28 ◼   ► focus your future development on that, you might find a niche with people who

01:07:33 ◼   ► just want something with neat customizable faces and basic notifications for a reasonable

01:07:38 ◼   ► price instead of spending $350 for an Apple watch that needs to be recharged every night.

01:07:44 ◼   ► Or in the middle of the day if you use it hard, we just don't know.

01:07:49 ◼   ► So there are interesting crossroads where they can like really embrace being different

01:07:53 ◼   ► or I fear not want to give up on some of these other features and that's choosing is hard

01:08:01 ◼   ► and focusing is really hard and I think Pebble is an interesting place right now

01:08:05 ◼   ► where they might have some potential but they may not be able to resist

01:08:11 ◼   ► branching out instead of focusing.

01:08:14 ◼   ► So they just sort of had a new marketing campaign

01:08:18 ◼   ► which is on their site now.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Their new marketing branding thing is like "we're just a watch."

01:08:26 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Which is good, but then they added the background notification things

01:08:30 ◼   ► and they did the, you know, the playful Johnny Ive, like, "Relax, Johnny. Breathe, Johnny,"

01:08:37 ◼   ► kind of thing. It's like, don't even compare yourself to the Apple Watch. You are not the

01:08:41 ◼   ► Apple Watch. You don't want to be the Apple Watch. I think that's the important thing

01:08:47 ◼   ► is for them to not... Don't play their game. That's not your game. You're never going to

01:08:54 ◼   ► be good at that game. Play a different game.

01:08:56 ◼   ► - Then on the day that they dropped the price recently,

01:09:00 ◼   ► they added sleep tracking and fitness tracking to the Pebble,

01:09:05 ◼   ► which is kind of like, okay,

01:09:07 ◼   ► you're kind of really crossing your--

01:09:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, again,

01:09:11 ◼   ► and they've got lots of those sensors in there

01:09:12 ◼   ► and they sort of sold people on this stuff

01:09:14 ◼   ► and we'll see where it goes,

01:09:16 ◼   ► but that's my concern is that they're trying to do too much.

01:09:19 ◼   ► And look, if fitness tracking ends up being a thing

01:09:21 ◼   ► that actually has resonance,

01:09:22 ◼   ► that they're like, for $99, it's a fitness tracker,

01:09:25 ◼   ► it's a watch, it's notifications,

01:09:26 ◼   ► that's what it is and that's great but then you know then it's like well we got

01:09:30 ◼   ► ESPN so you can check the scores and that apps interface isn't very good and

01:09:34 ◼   ► if your if your iPhone auto quits the pebble app because it's it needs to free

01:09:39 ◼   ► up the memory then the connection drops and you have to launch the pebble app

01:09:42 ◼   ► again and you know it's at some point I feel like they're they're not in this

01:09:48 ◼   ► arms race they need to pick their spots now they need to admit to that the world

01:09:52 ◼   ► is changing and that their product is not going to and their company is not

01:09:56 ◼   ► going to compete with those guys. They're not going to make a product that

01:09:59 ◼   ► competes with the Moto 360 or the Apple Watch. It's never going to happen. They

01:10:02 ◼   ► need to be playing on a different field and I think it's an

01:10:07 ◼   ► interesting question because I like the product and I know people are a lot of

01:10:11 ◼   ► people are really skeptical. I think they believed it to be something

01:10:16 ◼   ► that it just isn't but what it is I kind of like. It's just it needs to be true to

01:10:23 ◼   ► itself right and not become you know ruin itself by trying to be something

01:10:29 ◼   ► it's not so on connected which is another fine show on this network I know

01:10:36 ◼   ► that Steven is interested in the public and he wants to talk about it this week

01:10:40 ◼   ► so I'm sure him and Federica will have some some interesting opinions about

01:10:46 ◼   ► that later on this week. But I mean I am a fan, I am a big fan of my

01:10:53 ◼   ► purple and I think that it's a nice kind of entry into understanding what I

01:10:58 ◼   ► want and don't want from an Apple watch.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Example? The notifications. Like I think that there is a benefit in having

01:11:11 ◼   ► that stuff on your wrist. People think that it's crazy, but once you kind of get it to a point where

01:11:17 ◼   ► you understand what you do and don't want, just the act of looking at your wrist is much better

01:11:22 ◼   ► and more comfortable than looking at your phone in a lot of situations. Yeah, I agree. I mean,

01:11:27 ◼   ► some people believe this and some people don't, but I would rather... and this is why I always wore

01:11:35 ◼   ► a watch and not a pocket watch. Glancing at my wrist to see the time or to see a notification

01:11:41 ◼   ► now is a lot less cumbersome than reaching into my pocket and pulling out my phone and

01:11:47 ◼   ► pressing the button and checking and then putting it back. And so yeah, yes, it's a

01:11:52 ◼   ► matter of degree, but I think there's some value in doing that. I definitely think that's

01:11:57 ◼   ► why I bought the Pebble. One reason was I thought this would be an interesting category

01:12:00 ◼   ► and there would be new devices like the Apple Watch eventually, and to get a sense of what's

01:12:05 ◼   ► it good for. And the glanceable notification stuff I think is great. I'm much more skeptical

01:12:10 ◼   ► about in-depth interaction than I am about glanceability, like just what's going on really

01:12:18 ◼   ► quick and maybe like a quick response to a text, but not like now I'm going to start

01:12:23 ◼   ► dictating things and do work on my watch.

01:12:27 ◼   ► I don't see that as something I wanna do.

01:12:30 ◼   ► I like, keeping it simple makes a lot of sense to me.

01:12:33 ◼   ► So, you know, the Pebble on that level has told me,

01:12:35 ◼   ► yes, there is value in having something on your wrist.

01:12:38 ◼   ► I think these other watches have to prove

01:12:41 ◼   ► that there's value in doing more than that

01:12:44 ◼   ► and what that value is.

01:12:45 ◼   ► - Well, let's see.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Mr. Snapp. - We'll find out.

01:12:51 ◼   ► I think that that about comes to the end of this bumper birthday episode.

01:12:55 ◼   ► I think so.

01:12:58 ◼   ► You know, we're eventually going to talk about the Kindle.

01:12:59 ◼   ► It may happen when I get my Kindle.

01:13:03 ◼   ► When do you think you're going to get it?

01:13:04 ◼   ► Oh, it's like a couple weeks, I think.

01:13:07 ◼   ► I think it's in a couple weeks.

01:13:08 ◼   ► At this point it might just be worth holding it.

01:13:10 ◼   ► It might be.

01:13:11 ◼   ► I don't know if you've noticed, dear listeners, but we keep mentioning it.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Every week we have a Kindle on the topic list and then we just keep bumping it.

01:13:19 ◼   ► We actually had some follow-up that we didn't do that was about the Kindle, who were following

01:13:23 ◼   ► up that we mentioned it, which is like, no, no, we haven't talked about it yet.

01:13:27 ◼   ► This is all just, well, we're going to talk about it.

01:13:30 ◼   ► There's going to be a Kindle episode.

01:13:31 ◼   ► It's going to happen, but we don't know when, because there's so much follow-up.

01:13:36 ◼   ► Just so much.

01:13:38 ◼   ► I love it.

01:13:39 ◼   ► I know you do.

01:13:40 ◼   ► I love it too.

01:13:41 ◼   ► I don't have a show that goes this in depth on follow-ups, but it's fun.

01:13:46 ◼   ► I enjoy it.

01:13:47 ◼   ► If you want to catch our links for this week's episode of Upgrade, go to relay.fm/upgrade/for

01:13:53 ◼   ► if you want to get in touch with us, there's a contact button there but you can also get

01:13:58 ◼   ► us on Twitter.

01:13:59 ◼   ► I am @imike and Jason is @jsnell, J S N E double L on Twitter.

01:14:06 ◼   ► Of course you can keep up with all of Jason's fantastic work including his upcoming piece

01:14:10 ◼   ► about the pebble over at sixcolors.com spelt however you choose really, as long as you

01:14:16 ◼   ► just changing the U or not. If you use all different letters you won't get there. You'll

01:14:22 ◼   ► have to write six colors in some sort of English language.

01:14:24 ◼   ► Yes, S-I-X-C-O-L-O-R-S. Yeah. You can enter the U if you choose.

01:14:33 ◼   ► You can. And we'll be back next week's... next week's?

01:14:37 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. All the weeks. We're back next week. You're going to Singleton in between, right?

01:14:42 ◼   ► I am, I'm going to be fresh off of a plane. We may have to record at a different time than usual

01:14:47 ◼   ► for those live listeners out there. But yes, I should be fresh back from Canada

01:14:52 ◼   ► where streaming is expensive to talk next week.

01:14:56 ◼   ► Excellent stuff. Keep an eye on the schedule. If we need to change it, you'll find it there.

01:15:01 ◼   ► It's at relay.fm/schedule, which is also where you'll find out when all of our shows record live.

01:15:06 ◼   ► We'll be back next week. Until then, bye-bye.

01:15:09 ◼   ► Goodbye.

01:15:10 ◼   ► [Music]