Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

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

00:00:13 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Cards Against Humanity and Pilot.

00:00:18 ◼   ► We'll tell you a little bit about those fantastic companies a little later on in the show.

00:00:22 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by your host, Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Myke, three is a magic number.

00:00:28 ◼   ► It's the magic number 123.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:00:31 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:32 ◼   ► And here we are.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Yes.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I'm doing well.

00:00:35 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:36 ◼   ► I'm very well.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Monday is fast becoming one of my favorite days of the week because of this show.

00:00:40 ◼   ► It's a great way to kick off the week, I think.

00:00:42 ◼   ► I'm really enjoying having...

00:00:45 ◼   ► I don't have a lot of schedule yet or routine in my life since leaving IDG, and having this

00:00:52 ◼   ► conversation on Monday is great.

00:00:56 ◼   ► That really grounds me a little bit.

00:00:58 ◼   ► I like a Monday show.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I think that it's quite nice for the schedule, you know?

00:01:03 ◼   ► You get all of the last week's stuff that happened, you have the weekend to think about

00:01:07 ◼   ► it, and then on Monday you can talk about it again.

00:01:09 ◼   ► It does mean that we'll always miss every announcement, every product announcement.

00:01:14 ◼   ► So we may have to be a bit fast on this.

00:01:15 ◼   ► We won't miss it, Myke.

00:01:16 ◼   ► We will have time to think about it.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:01:22 ◼   ► We have the longest possible time.

00:01:24 ◼   ► Yeah, or we'll delay it for a couple of days and not record on Monday.

00:01:28 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:30 ◼   ► So your favorite segment of the show?

00:01:33 ◼   ► Follow-up?

00:01:33 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:34 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:35 ◼   ► I love follow-up.

00:01:37 ◼   ► That could in itself be follow-up from previous episodes,

00:01:41 ◼   ► because in the last episode, we did our first follow-up,

00:01:44 ◼   ► and I was very excited about it.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Anyway, so we did a bad thing.

00:01:49 ◼   ► Or as one of our listeners, Joe Cab, called it pure evil.

00:01:54 ◼   ► and in all caps, pure evil.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And that's, we triggered a lot of people's Siri

00:01:59 ◼   ► by saying the key phrase that triggers Siri.

00:02:04 ◼   ► And I attempted to send a text message to your mother

00:02:07 ◼   ► saying, everybody's mother, saying,

00:02:09 ◼   ► I'm sorry about what I did.

00:02:11 ◼   ► And I had several people say it almost went out

00:02:14 ◼   ► or we triggered Siri three or four times.

00:02:17 ◼   ► The point was not for us to,

00:02:18 ◼   ► we weren't actually trying to be evil,

00:02:20 ◼   ► but we were trying to make the point that this is a,

00:02:23 ◼   ► This is perhaps a usability issue with this new feature where you say that phrase and

00:02:29 ◼   ► Siri appears.

00:02:32 ◼   ► I'm not going to try to troll our listeners every week by saying it, but I think it was

00:02:36 ◼   ► worth doing.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I'm glad nobody seemed too mad about it.

00:02:40 ◼   ► They seemed to take it as sort of a prank/information.

00:02:43 ◼   ► It was the most informative prank you could possibly do.

00:02:46 ◼   ► It was like a public service announcement.

00:02:50 ◼   ► We were basically letting people know about the dangers of that Siri command.

00:02:59 ◼   ► I feel like even just saying Siri is probably enough.

00:03:04 ◼   ► I had a bunch of people send me phrases that they noticed triggered Siri when they were

00:03:09 ◼   ► in the car.

00:03:10 ◼   ► It seems to happen a lot, people are in their cars with their iPhones plugged in, listening

00:03:14 ◼   ► to a podcast.

00:03:15 ◼   ► when it's plugged in, if that feature is turned on,

00:03:18 ◼   ► you can trigger it.

00:03:19 ◼   ► And that seems to have happened to a lot of people.

00:03:23 ◼   ► But, you know, pure evil, I guess we'll take it

00:03:25 ◼   ► if you wanna call us that, but we were trying to help

00:03:28 ◼   ► in a, we maybe had a little more glee

00:03:30 ◼   ► than one would normally expect from a situation like that.

00:03:34 ◼   ► I did wanna mention listener Olivier

00:03:38 ◼   ► sent in a link, which was really great, to a YouTube video.

00:03:45 ◼   ► this was apparently a deal that the same issue happened last year when the

00:03:51 ◼   ► Xbox One came out. That there was a... you can say Xbox One sign out and the Xbox

00:04:01 ◼   ► One will sign out and log out of its account and all of that. And the video

00:04:07 ◼   ► that listener Olivier sent in is somebody set up their gamertag to be

00:04:11 ◼   ► Xbox one sign out and then it's just videos of people trying to say their

00:04:15 ◼   ► name and accidentally locking themselves out of the game every time they just

00:04:21 ◼   ► mentioned this other player's name. So this is a you know this is one of the problems

00:04:25 ◼   ► with voice recognition and not having it tied to something that you can set

00:04:30 ◼   ► yourself. I think that's going to be the solution to making this a

00:04:34 ◼   ► better feature on Apple's part is being able to trigger if Siri can't

00:04:39 ◼   ► recognize your voice just as a voice, then let you choose a phrase that Siri will recognize

00:04:47 ◼   ► that is not just the one phrase for every single iPhone.

00:04:51 ◼   ► In the show notes for this week's episode, which you can find at relay.fm/upgrade/three,

00:04:58 ◼   ► you will find a link that I'm putting in there to an article on IGN in which it speaks about

00:05:06 ◼   ► there was an advert with Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad. He did an Xbox commercial and he was

00:05:14 ◼   ► going through these voice features and it was just activating people's Xboxes and doing

00:05:19 ◼   ► things, which was absolutely fantastic. It was just turning on the consoles and making

00:05:24 ◼   ► them do stuff because you were watching the advert on your television. I just thought

00:05:29 ◼   ► that was great.

00:05:31 ◼   ► It's early days, right? I mean, really this is what we're talking about here. It's such

00:05:35 ◼   ► early days for this feature and all these devices are struggling with this.

00:05:40 ◼   ► And just to bring up the topic that will last for at least six months,

00:05:47 ◼   ► if voice is a key command on the Apple Watch, do you think this kind of thing is going to continue to just become more of a problem?

00:06:01 ◼   ► I mean, if we're walking around with things

00:06:02 ◼   ► and just out in the day, you know,

00:06:04 ◼   ► these things are gonna be activated

00:06:06 ◼   ► and people are gonna be getting phone calls and--

00:06:09 ◼   ► - I think, I mean, the software is going to get better.

00:06:11 ◼   ► I think either you're gonna be able to train it

00:06:12 ◼   ► for your voice or you're gonna pick a passphrase

00:06:15 ◼   ► that it is listening for,

00:06:16 ◼   ► or it's gonna get more intelligent about realizing

00:06:19 ◼   ► that you weren't triggering it.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I mean, that's right.

00:06:22 ◼   ► That's one thing that software can do

00:06:23 ◼   ► is it can listen and trigger itself

00:06:25 ◼   ► thinking it's going to be a command,

00:06:27 ◼   ► realize very quickly that it's not

00:06:29 ◼   ► and just go back to sleep.

00:06:31 ◼   ► I think all of those are options

00:06:33 ◼   ► and I'm sure they're working on them.

00:06:34 ◼   ► But this seems awfully simplistic as a feature.

00:06:37 ◼   ► It's kind of a neat feature,

00:06:38 ◼   ► but you really, it's listening all the time

00:06:42 ◼   ► and which is why it only works when it's powered.

00:06:45 ◼   ► And not only is it a little weird

00:06:47 ◼   ► that it's listening all the time,

00:06:48 ◼   ► but that you're gonna be able to trigger it

00:06:50 ◼   ► by saying perfectly innocuous things.

00:06:52 ◼   ► But it's gonna get better.

00:06:53 ◼   ► It will totally get better.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Either somebody will have a nice breakthrough

00:06:56 ◼   ► in saying, look, we can do your voiceprint.

00:06:59 ◼   ► we know it's you, only you can activate this. Or it'll be, you know, you

00:07:02 ◼   ► choose a passphrase for it and then that's, you know, my voice is my passport,

00:07:06 ◼   ► verify me,

00:07:07 ◼   ► and then that'll work. That was a Sneakers reference, if you haven't seen that movie,

00:07:11 ◼   ► that's what they say. Yeah, I didn't get it, sorry. You should see that movie, it's a good movie.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Sneakers. I have, um, what's that movie that you really like?

00:07:19 ◼   ► Is it Weird Science? No, it's not. No?

00:07:23 ◼   ► Weird something genius. It's real genius. Real genius, that's it. It is not Weird Science.

00:07:28 ◼   ► I have that on my on my list to watch. All right. You wrote an article about it the other day, didn't you?

00:07:35 ◼   ► They're making it into a TV series

00:07:38 ◼   ► Which is horrifying. This is a movie from 1985

00:07:43 ◼   ► And it is one of my favorite movies and NBC is making it into a TV series

00:07:48 ◼   ► So it's gonna ruin it but the original movie will remain as the 80s of 80s movies. I do love it

00:07:55 ◼   ► I love it because the the

00:07:57 ◼   ► characters in it are all really they're like geniuses at a basically Caltech and they're the heroes and

00:08:03 ◼   ► That's really nice to see and then yes

00:08:06 ◼   ► It is the 80s of movies with I think there are three different musical montages in it

00:08:10 ◼   ► Which is and there's nothing more 80s than the montage. So yeah, but this is a sneakers. You should that's a that's a

00:08:16 ◼   ► That's a really good movie. You should check it out with with technology that's actually handled pretty well the tech stuff in it

00:08:24 ◼   ► Look at that that wasn't even follow-up. That was like a tangent within the follow-up. How about that?

00:08:28 ◼   ► Let's see what else what other follow-up we got a listener Garrett wrote in

00:08:33 ◼   ► Who just wanted to thank me for mentioning. I mentioned the leather cases from Apple

00:08:38 ◼   ► and

00:08:40 ◼   ► He wrote in a nice really nice letter said a lot of nice things about the podcast and about my six colors website

00:08:46 ◼   ► But you know, he was he liked he I get apparently the leather case really hit the spot for him and and that's great

00:08:53 ◼   ► I'm still using it and that's the most I've gone using an Apple case maybe ever

00:08:58 ◼   ► and it's not for everybody and it definitely sort of impinges on the sort

00:09:02 ◼   ► of swipe from the sides but it also makes it a little more grippy which I

00:09:07 ◼   ► like because these phones are all curvy and nice but that also makes them a

00:09:12 ◼   ► little a little slippery. What else do we have? Ah let's see I proclaimed last week

00:09:20 ◼   ► that I now need to like find links and read RSS which I have sort of declared

00:09:25 ◼   ► bankruptcy on a long time ago and we got a lot of suggestions about how I should

00:09:30 ◼   ► do this none of none of which I'm actually following through on yet but I

00:09:33 ◼   ► I'm investigating all of them. Listener Shep suggested he says he uses

00:09:39 ◼   ► that newswire on the Mac and I do have that I have the old version and the new

00:09:43 ◼   ► version he suggested a service called blog trotter which will email you links

00:09:49 ◼   ► you subscribe to feeds and then it sends you email if you're very email oriented.

00:09:53 ◼   ► He uses Flipboard which I have used but haven't used in a while and also an app

00:09:59 ◼   ► called Nuzzle N-U-Z-Z-E-L so don't get too excited which tries to do some

00:10:05 ◼   ► intelligent things about links from your social networks not just links from

00:10:10 ◼   ► people you follow but links from people they follow so trying to create like a

00:10:14 ◼   ► a slightly larger sphere of social media

00:10:19 ◼   ► to mine links from, which was interesting.

00:10:21 ◼   ► Listener Chris mentioned Feedbin,

00:10:24 ◼   ► which I'm also trying out.

00:10:26 ◼   ► There are a bunch of sort of services that sprung up

00:10:29 ◼   ► when Google Reader shut down that I'm looking at

00:10:32 ◼   ► and that are interesting.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And then Listener Perry recommended one

00:10:35 ◼   ► that I can't pronounce and did not know existed,

00:10:39 ◼   ► but it actually looks pretty interesting.

00:10:41 ◼   ► It's B-A-Z, that's Z for you, Myke.

00:10:45 ◼   ► B-A-Z-Q-U-X, Bazquox.

00:10:49 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I think you'll find that's Bazquox.

00:10:51 ◼   ► What's the problem?

00:10:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:10:53 ◼   ► - Very clearly it's Bazquox.

00:10:54 ◼   ► I apologize to the Bazquoxians for mangling their name.

00:10:59 ◼   ► Anyway, he recommended that and that's another,

00:11:01 ◼   ► you know, feed aggregation tool at Web App

00:11:04 ◼   ► that was interesting.

00:11:05 ◼   ► So my journey through RSS continues

00:11:08 ◼   ► because I haven't settled on anything

00:11:10 ◼   ► and I'm trying a bunch of different stuff.

00:11:11 ◼   ► and we'll see how it goes.

00:11:12 ◼   ► But that was all good.

00:11:14 ◼   ► People were very helpful trying to suggest ways

00:11:17 ◼   ► that I could follow RSS feeds.

00:11:19 ◼   ► So thank you to everybody.

00:11:21 ◼   ► It is Basquox, of course.

00:11:25 ◼   ► I mentioned that I have to proofread my site

00:11:29 ◼   ► and I don't have copy editors.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Although we didn't really copy edit things on Macworld,

00:11:34 ◼   ► on the website anyway for ages,

00:11:36 ◼   ► but we did a lot of peer review.

00:11:38 ◼   ► You send it to one of your colleagues and say,

00:11:39 ◼   ► can you look at my story?

00:11:40 ◼   ► and they send you their stories.

00:11:42 ◼   ► And Six Colors, there are no other people, it's just me.

00:11:47 ◼   ► And I got a bunch of people,

00:11:49 ◼   ► I had some people volunteer to read the site,

00:11:51 ◼   ► but we already pointed out that Chris Pepper,

00:11:52 ◼   ► who is the internet's copy editor, is doing a great job

00:11:55 ◼   ► proofreading my site after I post things

00:11:57 ◼   ► and sending me corrections.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Thank you, Chris.

00:11:59 ◼   ► And Lister Michael, I wanted to mention,

00:12:02 ◼   ► and I think somebody else also sent this in,

00:12:05 ◼   ► said they use text to speech.

00:12:07 ◼   ► So when they write something,

00:12:09 ◼   ► they will then have their Mac's text-to-speech engine

00:12:12 ◼   ► read their article back to them

00:12:15 ◼   ► because then they can listen to it.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And I suppose you could read it out loud too,

00:12:18 ◼   ► but the computer will be unforgiving.

00:12:20 ◼   ► It's not gonna fill in any blanks

00:12:22 ◼   ► and you may notice some mistakes that way.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I thought that was pretty clever

00:12:26 ◼   ► and I've tried that a couple of times now.

00:12:28 ◼   ► It takes a long time, but it does seem to work

00:12:31 ◼   ► 'cause it's using a different part of your brain

00:12:33 ◼   ► than the reading part.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And that's useful when you're trying to find proof.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Most mistakes in stuff that you write,

00:12:40 ◼   ► it's because your brain is good at filling in the gaps.

00:12:43 ◼   ► And so you omit a word and then, you know,

00:12:45 ◼   ► when you read it, your brain inserts the word there

00:12:48 ◼   ► and it's not there and that's a problem.

00:12:51 ◼   ► So text to speech forces you to listen to the computer

00:12:55 ◼   ► as if it was talking to you, saying what you've written

00:12:58 ◼   ► and then your brain might not skip over the omissions

00:13:03 ◼   ► that way.

00:13:04 ◼   ► So I thought that was good.

00:13:06 ◼   ► When you were saying that, it was bugging me.

00:13:10 ◼   ► 'Cause I know I've seen this as well.

00:13:13 ◼   ► It was CGP Grey, he tweeted you.

00:13:16 ◼   ► - All right, yeah.

00:13:17 ◼   ► So we have a couple of those, yeah.

00:13:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:13:20 ◼   ► - And thanks to them.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I will try that.

00:13:22 ◼   ► I have tried it, I will try it again.

00:13:24 ◼   ► For the incomparable, I use that really primitive--

00:13:26 ◼   ► - You do.

00:13:28 ◼   ► - Speech, text to speech voice,

00:13:29 ◼   ► because it's the classic radio head.

00:13:33 ◼   ► You know, many people have used that voice,

00:13:34 ◼   ► But that means that's my default, so it's actually really painful to listen to an article in that voice.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And there are so many better text-to-speech voices, but I have to turn it and then turn it back.

00:13:44 ◼   ► I will probably do that at some point.

00:13:47 ◼   ► You don't want to ruin the incomparable voice with something.

00:13:49 ◼   ► No.

00:13:49 ◼   ► High-tech.

00:13:50 ◼   ► He needs to be as low-tech as possible, that voice.

00:13:55 ◼   ► So, I think we've got some follow-up about the digital crown.

00:13:59 ◼   ► That comes directly from me.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Yes, there's a listener mic.

00:14:03 ◼   ► Myke, also co-host Myke.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Super handsome listener Myke.

00:14:07 ◼   ► You know he's English?

00:14:09 ◼   ► Very English.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Some people didn't know that.

00:14:12 ◼   ► This was just a random, I was walking to work this morning and I think I'd started listening

00:14:17 ◼   ► to the talk show and they mentioned the Digital Crown and I had two questions about it actually,

00:14:25 ◼   ► I just thought of another one.

00:14:27 ◼   ► So I assume that you felt what it feels like to turn.

00:14:31 ◼   ► Yes.

00:14:32 ◼   ► And I wondered what that felt like.

00:14:33 ◼   ► So does it like to spin quite freely?

00:14:36 ◼   ► Is there a level of resistance or does it like click?

00:14:39 ◼   ► Can you feel it like as you turn it?

00:14:42 ◼   ► Okay I have to admit that I had to sort of search through my memories to and I think

00:14:48 ◼   ► this is right although I will if somebody wants to correct me please do.

00:14:52 ◼   ► My recollection is that it's got some resistance, it doesn't spin like totally wildly, you know,

00:15:01 ◼   ► there's some force required, a little bit of force required to move it, but it also

00:15:05 ◼   ► isn't a click click click kind of thing, that it's sort of a, it doesn't feel loose, it

00:15:09 ◼   ► doesn't sort of just spin completely freely like you could flick it and it would spin

00:15:13 ◼   ► for a while, but it also doesn't feel like it's incrementing, tick tick tick, it's just

00:15:19 ◼   ► you know, kind of a continuous turn. So you get some force feedback just that

00:15:23 ◼   ► you're... so you can calibrate sort of like how much you're turning it. But it

00:15:28 ◼   ► seemed like, as I recall, a smooth kind of advancement.

00:15:34 ◼   ► And also I have one more. On ATP this week they were having many arguments...

00:15:40 ◼   ► Yes they were.

00:15:41 ◼   ► ...about the Apple Watch again.

00:15:42 ◼   ► This could be... this could be Monday. Having this show on Monday means that we can always just deconstruct...

00:15:46 ◼   ► this podcast may just turn into a post-game show for ATP where we

00:15:49 ◼   ► deconstruct everything that the ATP boys talked about on Friday. And then if they

00:15:55 ◼   ► want to follow up from us, they do it Wednesday, but then it doesn't come out

00:15:59 ◼   ► until the Friday so we're always gonna be ahead. So they were talking

00:16:03 ◼   ► about the color on the Apple Watch Edition, you know the digital crown can

00:16:07 ◼   ► be a different color and how would that work. Is the color fixed? Because in

00:16:13 ◼   ► my mind like I'd just for some reason imagined it was like an LED that changed

00:16:18 ◼   ► color depending on the watch band you have?

00:16:22 ◼   ► I don't think so I think it's just a

00:16:24 ◼   ► I think it's just a piece of a piece of metal although the you're right there's

00:16:32 ◼   ► that picture with the red yeah on it I don't know it just looked like a you

00:16:37 ◼   ► know it just looked like a piece of hardware but they're showing and

00:16:41 ◼   ► matching it may be as simple as that the crown comes off that that you get the

00:16:46 ◼   ► crown and the band and the crown pops off you know on the on a lot of these

00:16:52 ◼   ► watches if you wheel it the you know backward it will pop and then you can

00:16:56 ◼   ► you can wind it or things like that it wouldn't surprise me if there was a way

00:16:59 ◼   ► to that that wasn't like that was elegant right because especially for the

00:17:03 ◼   ► Apple watch watch edition that you would pop it out and unscrew it and it would

00:17:09 ◼   ► come off and you could put another one on to match the fashion. It would be very

00:17:14 ◼   ► clever if that was something like a like an LED but you know it's gonna take

00:17:19 ◼   ► battery and then it's gonna glow which is not gonna you know your your your

00:17:24 ◼   ► watch band isn't glowing so I don't know I might that's my guess my guess is that

00:17:28 ◼   ► is that it's that it may come paired with the bands there may be a crown that

00:17:34 ◼   ► that comes paired with it but I don't I don't know the answer that's just a

00:17:38 ◼   ► guess. Yeah because then you I mean in theory well because on the on the site

00:17:41 ◼   ► you can see there's multiple colors on the edition page on Apple's page I

00:17:46 ◼   ► thought it was just red but there's a white one and there's a blue one and

00:17:49 ◼   ► there's maybe a black one as well it's hard to see so maybe yeah maybe you get

00:17:55 ◼   ► you get this is interesting to me because then they'd be giving away this

00:17:59 ◼   ► little gold thing every time. Yeah but for the edition it costs so much

00:18:04 ◼   ► we're all guessing that why not make that a feature is that it's matched to

00:18:09 ◼   ► order whereas if you look at the sport or the regular Apple watch those pages

00:18:14 ◼   ► those seem to all the crown be the crowns exactly the same so maybe that's

00:18:18 ◼   ► the extra bonus thing you get with the addition is the the the crown is

00:18:25 ◼   ► swappable or every band that you buy comes with a crown too. I like that I

00:18:32 ◼   ► I think that's cool.

00:18:34 ◼   ► I mean if they could engineer that, I mean like on my dad's Rolex that I have,

00:18:39 ◼   ► you know, you wind it one direction and it feels very much like a crown, but if you wind it backward it pops out.

00:18:45 ◼   ► There's a mechanical, it sort of unscrews slightly and it pops out and then you can do some stuff from there.

00:18:50 ◼   ► So it would seem like they could make it

00:18:52 ◼   ► make it removable like that if they wanted to.

00:18:56 ◼   ► In theory you'll be winding this one back and forth quite a lot, right?

00:19:00 ◼   ► Right, well yeah but it's, if there's a motion that you can use that pops it out, it may

00:19:06 ◼   ► also be that you pick what you want it to look like and it stays there, but there's

00:19:09 ◼   ► this implication that if you've got a red band and it's red and a blue band and it's

00:19:12 ◼   ► blue then perhaps you get to customize it because you can slide those bands on and off.

00:19:17 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Or you just take it to the magical Apple Watch upgrade store that everybody is imagining

00:19:23 ◼   ► will exist and they just do it for you.

00:19:25 ◼   ► The man in white gloves will bring out his little special crown tools and he'll just

00:19:29 ◼   ► pop it right out.

00:19:30 ◼   ► >> Sure.

00:19:31 ◼   ► Sure.

00:19:32 ◼   ► It might be a robot.

00:19:33 ◼   ► >> It probably will be a robot.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And the last piece of follow-up is a great thing.

00:19:38 ◼   ► So, as well as this show, when you came over to the lovely Relay FM, you also brought Clockwise

00:19:45 ◼   ► along with you, and we launched Clockwise onto Relay FM this week.

00:19:49 ◼   ► >> Yes.

00:19:50 ◼   ► Yes.

00:19:51 ◼   ► So we did two kind of interregnum episodes, two episodes where sort of nobody was in charge

00:19:57 ◼   ► of it.

00:19:58 ◼   ► it's still us doing it.

00:20:00 ◼   ► That actually hasn't changed since the beginning,

00:20:01 ◼   ► but we had two after we left IDG,

00:20:03 ◼   ► and those two have now been imported

00:20:05 ◼   ► into the Relay content management system.

00:20:09 ◼   ► And so going forward, starting this week,

00:20:12 ◼   ► we'll be doing Clockwise every week and posting it to Relay.

00:20:15 ◼   ► And if people haven't listened, it's fun.

00:20:18 ◼   ► It's me and Dan Morin,

00:20:19 ◼   ► and we bring on two guests every week,

00:20:21 ◼   ► and the four of us discuss four topics about technology,

00:20:25 ◼   ► and the entire show is 30 minutes or shorter

00:20:29 ◼   ► with the idea that some people don't have time to listen to lots of

00:20:32 ◼   ► two hour long podcasts and you can get four fairly timely, hopefully, topics

00:20:38 ◼   ► covered in short order. And so it's a fun,

00:20:41 ◼   ► different kind of podcast format and we hopefully will

00:20:45 ◼   ► have lots of interesting guests over the next

00:20:48 ◼   ► few weeks. So we'll see. I like the 30 minute format.

00:20:52 ◼   ► It's nice. It's refreshing. Not every podcast should be two hours long, not every podcast

00:20:58 ◼   ► should be 30 minutes long, but having some variety out there I think is nice.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Yeah, very much so. So should we take a break?

00:21:05 ◼   ► Let's do it. So I'm very excited to say this episode is sponsored by Cards Against Humanity.

00:21:12 ◼   ► In lieu of an ad, Cards Against Humanity have requested that I read the following words

00:21:16 ◼   ► to you. Vitamin, rubbish, water bottle, aluminium, mum, strawberry, privacy, schedule, garage,

00:21:28 ◼   ► mobile and advertisement. That's all they wanted me to say.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Some of those, you surprised me because you didn't say advertisement, you didn't say strawberry.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Yeah, see that's the difference. They're trying to catch your Britishisms.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they got them. Well, I think I got them. But what I do want to say about

00:21:48 ◼   ► Cars Against Humanity, which is something I didn't ask you to say, is that I love them

00:21:52 ◼   ► very much. I love everything that they do. So please go to carsagainsthumanity.com, check

00:21:57 ◼   ► out what they do, and buy everything. Thank you so much to Cars Against Humanity for sponsoring

00:22:02 ◼   ► this week's episode of Upgrade and for supporting Real AFM. Yay. So there you go. I enjoyed

00:22:09 ◼   ► that very much. When I received that email in my inbox, I laughed. I laughed and laughed.

00:22:15 ◼   ► But you did say "vitamin" instead of "vitamin."

00:22:18 ◼   ► Yeah, so I'll do it. It says "vitamin, rubbish, water bottle, aluminium."

00:22:23 ◼   ► Aluminium, right?

00:22:24 ◼   ► Yeah, "mum," "strawberry."

00:22:26 ◼   ► "Mom," "strawberry."

00:22:28 ◼   ► "Strawberry," "strawberry," "strawberry." There you go.

00:22:30 ◼   ► No.

00:22:31 ◼   ► "Privacy," "schedule," "garage," "mobile."

00:22:33 ◼   ► You didn't say "privacy." Interesting. But you say "mobile."

00:22:37 ◼   ► mobile and advertisement. This is great, people in the chat room saying you also

00:22:42 ◼   ► said privacy wrong. That makes me laugh. It's not wrong, it's just different.

00:22:47 ◼   ► Schedule, schedule, you know, it's all fine. Schedule. Yeah, sure. People like that one

00:22:52 ◼   ► because that does sound, it sounds like a totally different word. Anyhow. So what do we want to talk

00:23:00 ◼   ► about today, Mr Snell? Well, let's see, I don't know, Myke, what do you want to talk about? I

00:23:06 ◼   ► I wrote this thing last week that I thought was a little

00:23:10 ◼   ► a little bit silly, but it actually got a really great

00:23:12 ◼   ► reaction.

00:23:13 ◼   ► I think people do care about this.

00:23:15 ◼   ► It's about streaming services.

00:23:18 ◼   ► And I mentioned music, although really music isn't as big

00:23:21 ◼   ► an issue, although it has its issues,

00:23:23 ◼   ► but about the video services.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And this all comes out of the fact that a bunch of sites

00:23:27 ◼   ► last week pointed out that as of October 1st,

00:23:33 ◼   ► in the US anyway, Netflix is dropping

00:23:37 ◼   ► Battlestar Galactica, the new version of Battlestar Galactica

00:23:41 ◼   ► is disappearing from Netflix.

00:23:43 ◼   ► And I think like all the Law and Order shows

00:23:44 ◼   ► are disappearing and a bunch of movies

00:23:46 ◼   ► and a bunch of other stuff is disappearing.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And, you know, I'm a Netflix subscriber,

00:23:53 ◼   ► I'm an Amazon Prime subscriber,

00:23:55 ◼   ► I've been a Hulu Plus subscriber and maybe again.

00:23:58 ◼   ► So I'm not against these services,

00:24:01 ◼   ► but one of the things that frustrates me about them

00:24:03 ◼   ► is that they, stuff comes and goes.

00:24:06 ◼   ► And it's not, people talk about the convenience

00:24:09 ◼   ► of streaming services and they are very convenient,

00:24:11 ◼   ► but when you don't own your stuff,

00:24:14 ◼   ► what often will happen is stuff will just vanish.

00:24:17 ◼   ► And there's gonna be somebody who has no idea

00:24:19 ◼   ► that we're talking about this,

00:24:20 ◼   ► who's going through their Battlestar Galactica watch

00:24:23 ◼   ► or rewatch, watching an episode a day, let's say,

00:24:26 ◼   ► and they're halfway through.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And on October 1st, they're gonna go to Netflix

00:24:30 ◼   ► and the show's gonna be gone.

00:24:31 ◼   ► And who knows where it will be?

00:24:34 ◼   ► And maybe they'll go out and buy the DVDs

00:24:36 ◼   ► or maybe they'll just get angry.

00:24:38 ◼   ► But this is, I think, one of the problems

00:24:41 ◼   ► with streaming media is as convenient as it is,

00:24:45 ◼   ► I had somebody write to me about music too and say,

00:24:47 ◼   ► their example is Peter Gabriel,

00:24:49 ◼   ► which I was actually gonna use in my story,

00:24:51 ◼   ► which is he's got a really complex relationship

00:24:54 ◼   ► with these streaming services.

00:24:55 ◼   ► He seems to not like them very much.

00:24:57 ◼   ► And that was always one of the artists I would test

00:25:00 ◼   ► when I would try these streaming media services out.

00:25:02 ◼   ► Like his catalog just isn't on them

00:25:05 ◼   ► or only part of it is on them.

00:25:07 ◼   ► That's bad, but it's not quite as bad

00:25:09 ◼   ► as having the whole catalog be there

00:25:11 ◼   ► of your favorite artist and then one day going

00:25:14 ◼   ► and having it just be gone, which could happen.

00:25:16 ◼   ► I think it doesn't happen in music so much,

00:25:18 ◼   ► but it could happen.

00:25:19 ◼   ► And it certainly happens all the time on video.

00:25:21 ◼   ► And it's just, you know, it doesn't make those services

00:25:24 ◼   ► less, well, it makes them maybe a little less compelling,

00:25:28 ◼   ► but they still have so many advantages.

00:25:31 ◼   ► It just adds this little sour note,

00:25:32 ◼   ► like I can't count on this show being here.

00:25:35 ◼   ► I can put it in my wish list, I can put it in my favorites,

00:25:38 ◼   ► but if I don't watch it right now,

00:25:40 ◼   ► it may just not be there when I turn around.

00:25:41 ◼   ► And that hurts those products, I think.

00:25:45 ◼   ► - So you kind of mention in the piece

00:25:48 ◼   ► that you mentioned here that you subscribe

00:25:50 ◼   ► to a bunch of these services,

00:25:51 ◼   ► but it doesn't feel like that you rely on them too much.

00:25:55 ◼   ► So do you still buy movies, TV shows, stuff like that?

00:26:00 ◼   ► Music?

00:26:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:26:03 ◼   ► I mean, music, I absolutely do.

00:26:05 ◼   ► In fact, even when I discover stuff on like new releases

00:26:08 ◼   ► and things on Beats or Rhapsody,

00:26:12 ◼   ► one of those subscription services, I will usually buy it.

00:26:16 ◼   ► And part of that is because I don't wanna fuss.

00:26:18 ◼   ► I have so much music that I own.

00:26:20 ◼   ► And I could like download everything

00:26:25 ◼   ► into the Beats app and not use the music app and have it automatically saved to my iPhone

00:26:31 ◼   ► for when I'm offline because that always comes up when I'm on an airplane or something, that

00:26:35 ◼   ► I want to listen to music and the streaming services won't do it.

00:26:38 ◼   ► You can save them, but it's less convenient and the rest of my music is somewhere else

00:26:43 ◼   ► so now I've got some music in some places and some music in other places and that frustrates

00:26:47 ◼   ► me.

00:26:48 ◼   ► And I appreciate that part of the reason that this is true is because I do have a music

00:26:52 ◼   ► library because I was buying CDs for you know more than a decade and I ripped

00:26:57 ◼   ► them all and they're all in iTunes match now

00:26:59 ◼   ► but um...

00:27:01 ◼   ► uh... but I do buy music because it just seems more convenient for me to just

00:27:05 ◼   ► have it and not worry about it and have it in my iTunes match library.

00:27:09 ◼   ► On the video side I don't buy

00:27:11 ◼   ► uh... very much in terms of especially TV shows on DVD or Blu-ray I don't really

00:27:16 ◼   ► do that anymore

00:27:18 ◼   ► uh...

00:27:19 ◼   ► I do buy movies, although sometimes it's Blu-ray,

00:27:23 ◼   ► sometimes it's iTunes.

00:27:24 ◼   ► And in most cases I'm buying it there

00:27:26 ◼   ► because not only do I wanna have it,

00:27:28 ◼   ► but because those things don't show up

00:27:30 ◼   ► on a streaming service for,

00:27:33 ◼   ► like the free tier of a streaming service,

00:27:36 ◼   ► or it's not free, but like the Prime Video or the Netflix

00:27:39 ◼   ► versus the iTunes or buy through Amazon version.

00:27:44 ◼   ► They don't show up there for a long time.

00:27:46 ◼   ► So I will sometimes buy those movies if I think

00:27:48 ◼   ► I'm gonna watch this movie a bunch of times, I wanna watch it right now, I'm just gonna buy it and I'm gonna have it around.

00:27:54 ◼   ► I will do that.

00:27:56 ◼   ► So I...

00:27:59 ◼   ► You are coming to this from the entirely other side, aren't you?

00:28:02 ◼   ► I'm pretty much all streaming.

00:28:04 ◼   ► I mean, yesterday I was at a video games expo

00:28:09 ◼   ► and I bought some

00:28:11 ◼   ► video game music CDs.

00:28:14 ◼   ► Like chiptunes and stuff like that.

00:28:16 ◼   ► I like to work with that sort of music.

00:28:19 ◼   ► And I came home and I broke out the SuperDrive.

00:28:23 ◼   ► I had to buy a SuperDrive recently

00:28:24 ◼   ► because I realized none of my computers

00:28:26 ◼   ► have a CD drive anymore.

00:28:28 ◼   ► And I needed to burn a CD for a family event.

00:28:30 ◼   ► That was hilarious.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Those SuperDrives are expensive.

00:28:34 ◼   ► So I had to do that.

00:28:36 ◼   ► So I ripped the--

00:28:37 ◼   ► - So why did you buy a SuperDrive

00:28:39 ◼   ► and not like a USB Blu-ray drive for 40 bucks?

00:28:43 ◼   ► - Because I didn't think about it.

00:28:45 ◼   ► probably it would appear.

00:28:46 ◼   ► - That's there, you can get a really good cheap drive

00:28:51 ◼   ► that also does Blu-ray for, yeah, for cheap.

00:28:54 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:28:54 ◼   ► - Unfortunately, you've now put yourself

00:28:56 ◼   ► into the situation of being the person

00:28:59 ◼   ► that I will consult every purchase with.

00:29:01 ◼   ► - Oh no, I made a horrible mistake.

00:29:03 ◼   ► - You've made a terrible mistake.

00:29:04 ◼   ► I buy lots of things.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So now you will get text messages from me.

00:29:08 ◼   ► Should I buy this?

00:29:09 ◼   ► Just a link on Amazon to some random--

00:29:11 ◼   ► - I'll do it.

00:29:12 ◼   ► I will be your personal purchasing consultant

00:29:14 ◼   ► and they'll give us material.

00:29:15 ◼   ► You could ask me right here every week.

00:29:17 ◼   ► We could have a new segment that's like

00:29:18 ◼   ► Myke asks Jason what to buy.

00:29:19 ◼   ► - Myke's buying corner.

00:29:21 ◼   ► We can workshop that name a little bit.

00:29:23 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:29:25 ◼   ► - So I ripped these CDs into,

00:29:28 ◼   ► it was one of them was like a three CD compilation

00:29:30 ◼   ► and I ripped it into iTunes and I'm not kidding,

00:29:33 ◼   ► it took me 20 minutes to find it.

00:29:35 ◼   ► So I ripped it into iTunes, right?

00:29:39 ◼   ► And I could not find it.

00:29:40 ◼   ► It just wasn't in any of the views.

00:29:43 ◼   ► It wasn't in artist, it wasn't in album.

00:29:45 ◼   ► None of the songs were listed in songs.

00:29:47 ◼   ► I couldn't work out what had happened.

00:29:49 ◼   ► So then I tried to rip it again.

00:29:50 ◼   ► It was like, you're gonna replace the music.

00:29:52 ◼   ► Do you wanna just replace it or rip it again?

00:29:54 ◼   ► And I was like, but it's not there.

00:29:56 ◼   ► So then I had to go and find,

00:29:57 ◼   ► and so I searched on my Mac and I found the folders

00:30:00 ◼   ► and I found where they should be.

00:30:01 ◼   ► I went into iTunes and it wasn't there.

00:30:03 ◼   ► The only way I could find it

00:30:04 ◼   ► was going to the recently added playlist,

00:30:07 ◼   ► finding all of the songs

00:30:08 ◼   ► and manually marking them as a compilation.

00:30:11 ◼   ► In doing so, it showed up.

00:30:12 ◼   ► and I have no idea why this happened.

00:30:15 ◼   ► I cannot, so all of this is to say--

00:30:18 ◼   ► - iTunes compilations are bad.

00:30:20 ◼   ► They have always been bad.

00:30:22 ◼   ► They are very confusing.

00:30:23 ◼   ► - This is like, I cannot stand iTunes Match.

00:30:28 ◼   ► I hate it so much.

00:30:30 ◼   ► There are so many weird things that it does.

00:30:33 ◼   ► And unfortunately recently there's that

00:30:35 ◼   ► and then also the new Jonathan Colton album,

00:30:38 ◼   ► the new live album's come out, so I bought that too.

00:30:42 ◼   ► So I am now using iTunes Match for a few different albums

00:30:45 ◼   ► that I'm enjoying, and I just cannot stand it.

00:30:49 ◼   ► I am a user of Beats music, and I love Beats music.

00:30:53 ◼   ► The things that I love about Beats music

00:30:57 ◼   ► is like all their playlist stuff

00:30:58 ◼   ► and the curation that they do.

00:31:00 ◼   ► It's absolutely fantastic.

00:31:02 ◼   ► And it's just because I pay a flat fee

00:31:06 ◼   ► and get all of the music that I want.

00:31:10 ◼   ► I have had instances where albums disappear

00:31:12 ◼   ► or there's a new version of the album.

00:31:15 ◼   ► So it knocks my one out and then I have to subscribe

00:31:17 ◼   ► to it again, which is really weird.

00:31:19 ◼   ► But just buying music and filling up my hard drive

00:31:24 ◼   ► with music or filling up my shelves with CDs

00:31:27 ◼   ► is just not something that I want to do.

00:31:28 ◼   ► And it was something that I did.

00:31:30 ◼   ► Like I was kind of in the original iPod generation.

00:31:33 ◼   ► I was in the Napster generation.

00:31:34 ◼   ► So I was very used to going onto iTunes.

00:31:37 ◼   ► I used to go onto iTunes every week

00:31:38 ◼   ► with my part-time job salary, I used to buy at least two or three albums on iTunes a week.

00:31:46 ◼   ► Stuff I'd never heard, I used to just go in and be like, "I want to get that one, and

00:31:49 ◼   ► I want to get that one."

00:31:50 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I mean, streaming services are so much better for stuff like that, where you

00:31:55 ◼   ► want to try something, and before you would have to buy it in order to listen to it once.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And that's the worst. That is the worst. I think that's the argument, even for people

00:32:07 ◼   ► who buy music to subscribe to a streaming service just to find recommendations for other

00:32:13 ◼   ► stuff or you heard something on the radio and you want to hear it again and follow that

00:32:19 ◼   ► artist and see what else is on that album.

00:32:22 ◼   ► That was always the problem with music was you had to take such a huge risk to listen

00:32:28 ◼   ► to an album because you didn't know whether it would be any good or not and you wouldn't

00:32:33 ◼   ► know if you liked it.

00:32:34 ◼   ► You heard good things but you didn't actually hear the product.

00:32:37 ◼   ► So I think that's a perfect example.

00:32:39 ◼   ► If you're buying three albums a week, unheard, to try out, you would be really saved by going

00:32:46 ◼   ► to streaming, there's no doubt.

00:32:49 ◼   ► But then I have a real love-hate relationship with video streaming services.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Because there's never anything to watch.

00:32:57 ◼   ► I feel like Netflix these days, really the only good stuff on Netflix is their original

00:33:01 ◼   ► programming.

00:33:02 ◼   ► I like the TV.

00:33:04 ◼   ► I use Netflix for TV.

00:33:07 ◼   ► I do occasionally watch a movie on Netflix, but it's rare.

00:33:11 ◼   ► Netflix is a TV on demand service for me.

00:33:13 ◼   ► It's like a whole libraries of commercial free TV series

00:33:17 ◼   ► that I haven't watched that I'm watching now.

00:33:20 ◼   ► And that's the number one thing I use it for,

00:33:22 ◼   ► which is the frustration

00:33:23 ◼   ► with something like Battlestar Galactica.

00:33:24 ◼   ► Like I'm watching my personal example,

00:33:27 ◼   ► I'm watching Bob's Burgers right now, which is very good.

00:33:29 ◼   ► And I didn't, when it came on the air,

00:33:31 ◼   ► I didn't watch it because it was on,

00:33:33 ◼   ► it was sort of promoted along with like Family Guy,

00:33:35 ◼   ► I don't like Family Guy, but I love The Simpsons or I did the first 15 years it was on

00:33:40 ◼   ► and and so then Bob workers comes out in the way they promoted it was sort of to fit in

00:33:46 ◼   ► thematically with Family Guy made it seem really kind of crude and crass and

00:33:50 ◼   ► Then I've had so many people who I whose taste I respect say it's actually

00:33:56 ◼   ► Incredibly good and funny and so we started watching it on Netflix and it's great

00:34:00 ◼   ► And now we've we watched the first season we're into the second season and that's one of those examples where you know

00:34:04 ◼   ► a lot of times it's late, the kids have gone to bed,

00:34:07 ◼   ► we watch something, there's room for a half an hour show

00:34:10 ◼   ► before we go to bed.

00:34:11 ◼   ► And we'll just pop on one of those episodes

00:34:14 ◼   ► of Bob's Burgers and watch it and laugh.

00:34:16 ◼   ► And I do actually have that little fear

00:34:20 ◼   ► in the back of my mind that one day I'm gonna come

00:34:22 ◼   ► to that Bob's Burgers list and it's just gonna be gone.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And too bad, goodbye.

00:34:27 ◼   ► It's too bad.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Netflix in the UK is definitely not as good for TV,

00:34:36 ◼   ► which is, so it's kind of like this weird place

00:34:42 ◼   ► where it doesn't really have any good movies

00:34:44 ◼   ► and it doesn't really have that great TV.

00:34:47 ◼   ► I mean, 'cause as well, bear in mind that, you know,

00:34:49 ◼   ► in the UK, obviously a lot of what we consider

00:34:52 ◼   ► to be great TV is our TV, right?

00:34:54 ◼   ► - Sure. - And that's kind of

00:34:55 ◼   ► world known, like people like British TV,

00:34:57 ◼   ► as much as we love American TV too.

00:35:00 ◼   ► but all of the British TV stuff is available for free on the individual networks.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Yes, an iPlayer or the equivalent for the other non-BBC/BBC channels.

00:35:12 ◼   ► And especially the BBC.

00:35:13 ◼   ► You know my policy, right, about the BBC, which is all British television comes from the BBC.

00:35:16 ◼   ► I'm an American, Channel 4, Sky TV, what, BBC. It's all BBC. Just a shorthand.

00:35:23 ◼   ► So it's all on iPlayer is what you're saying.

00:35:24 ◼   ► what you're saying. Yeah, but all of the networks, except for BBC, the other three main networks,

00:35:30 ◼   ► they have their own, where they show all their programming, but they have ads. I don't know

00:35:34 ◼   ► what you're talking about with other than the BBC, but okay. The other BBC channels.

00:35:38 ◼   ► Okay, good. They're confusing me there. It's always been strange to me that people watch

00:35:43 ◼   ► the BBC shows on paid services, or the BBC sells their programming on iTunes, and I've

00:35:48 ◼   ► never understood who's buying it. It seems very peculiar to me but I guess it's for

00:35:53 ◼   ► people like you Jason who like to just keep things forever. Well are they you

00:35:58 ◼   ► know if you're going on a flight let's say they're flying to New York. You can

00:36:02 ◼   ► download from the iPlayer. Not in HD though right? Yeah in HD and keep it for 30 days.

00:36:08 ◼   ► Well then you're right I don't understand those people. I don't think

00:36:12 ◼   ► it's always been like that and I think it's always been able for HD but I did

00:36:15 ◼   ► it recently when going on holiday. So I mean so for that sort of stuff, for

00:36:21 ◼   ► sort of streaming movies and TV in the UK, I mean Amazon Prime is just as bad

00:36:28 ◼   ► as well. The catalogues are very poor because there's a lot of like US

00:36:34 ◼   ► shows that we don't get. I mean there are like examples of where it works like for

00:36:39 ◼   ► example Breaking Bad. So Breaking Bad did a great thing in the UK. It was so

00:36:44 ◼   ► popular on Netflix. It was just incredibly popular on Netflix. I don't

00:36:48 ◼   ► think any major network had bought it up and people just started finding it on

00:36:51 ◼   ► Netflix and watching it there. So when it came to the final season, Netflix in the

00:36:56 ◼   ► UK did a deal with AMC and they had each episode of the final season within

00:37:02 ◼   ► 24 hours on Netflix and it was incredible. So it was like the next

00:37:06 ◼   ► morning, I mean obviously people aren't watching it at like 8 o'clock in the

00:37:09 ◼   ► morning instead of watching it in the evening, so I think Breaking Bad aired on

00:37:13 ◼   ► Sunday nights and then on Monday nights I would be watching it. That was just absolutely

00:37:19 ◼   ► fantastic. So there are examples where it works like that, but most of the time it's

00:37:23 ◼   ► behind or there's like a couple of seasons behind the US version of Netflix. It's just

00:37:28 ◼   ► a struggle, but then there's no movies at all. I mean, Netflix in the US, what's it

00:37:35 ◼   ► like for movies?

00:37:36 ◼   ► It's not great. They have some deals with some studios, but I mean this is, again, this

00:37:41 ◼   ► sort of my larger point too is that what you are is at the whim of these deals that Netflix

00:37:47 ◼   ► cuts with studios. And the studios used to cut favorable deals with Netflix and now they

00:37:51 ◼   ► want their concern that Netflix is big and powerful and they want more money and Netflix

00:37:55 ◼   ► is going to give them more money. And so you end up with things. Some things come on like

00:38:01 ◼   ► they made a deal with Disney and like all the Marvel movies and things came onto Netflix

00:38:05 ◼   ► and even even relatively recent Marvel movies are like The Avengers popped on there a few

00:38:09 ◼   ► months ago and I thought, "Wow, that's a movie from..." I mean, yeah, it's a couple years

00:38:14 ◼   ► old but it doesn't feel like a catalog movie. It feels a little more recent than that. But

00:38:19 ◼   ► they have a deal with that studio. Other movies from other studios, if it's older than...

00:38:26 ◼   ► Or if it's newer than five years, it's just not on there. I mean, so it's a smattering

00:38:30 ◼   ► of not new releases but new-ish releases and then lots of old stuff and lots of documentaries

00:38:37 ◼   ► and things that are really interesting. It's actually a great outlet for a lot of independent

00:38:41 ◼   ► stuff, especially documentaries. But for like major motion pictures, it's just not. I mean

00:38:47 ◼   ► for that, you know, we rent those on iTunes. Honestly, that's what we do most of the time.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Unless it's a movie that I want to buy because my kids and I are going to watch it ten times,

00:38:56 ◼   ► generally we'll just rent it from iTunes because it's not going to be on Netflix for, you know,

00:39:02 ◼   ► four years.

00:39:03 ◼   ► So all of this is to say, streaming services can't kind of suck.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, and it's the, I just wanted to point out in my piece that it's the ephemerality

00:39:15 ◼   ► of the catalogue that's the problem.

00:39:17 ◼   ► I think if you could, this whole category is plagued by the fact that they can take

00:39:22 ◼   ► away your stuff at any moment.

00:39:24 ◼   ► In fact there was a thing about iTunes at one point where things were disappearing from

00:39:27 ◼   ► your purchased downloadable list.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it was Disney.

00:39:30 ◼   ► Was that Disney stuff?

00:39:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:39:32 ◼   ► was it was I think a mistake because I think the idea there is that if somebody

00:39:37 ◼   ► buys it even if it's not in the catalog anymore they can download it again but

00:39:41 ◼   ► that was a I think maybe it wasn't in their initial contract and so there was

00:39:44 ◼   ► this thing where people had left it up on iTunes but didn't have their own copy

00:39:48 ◼   ► and they figured I can just download it later and then it vanished and that

00:39:51 ◼   ► those got restored and I think that got worked out that the studios realized

00:39:55 ◼   ► that you know a purchase relationship is different from a streaming relationship

00:39:58 ◼   ► But the larger point here is for all of the benefits of streaming services,

00:40:03 ◼   ► the thing that risks this entire category is if the streaming services

00:40:09 ◼   ► and the content providers can't get along, they're going to sabotage these services

00:40:14 ◼   ► because people aren't going to trust them anymore.

00:40:16 ◼   ► People are going to not view them as something that they can rely on

00:40:20 ◼   ► to provide them with entertainment because that thing that they were planning on watching on Friday

00:40:24 ◼   ► when you know they saw it in the catalog on Tuesday isn't there on Friday it's

00:40:29 ◼   ► disappeared and you know you hear people talking about this the other way to view

00:40:33 ◼   ► this is people get really frustrated about like I don't know where that movie

00:40:35 ◼   ► is I don't know where that TV show is where do I go to get it I looked on

00:40:39 ◼   ► Amazon I looked did you look on Hulu no I didn't look on Hulu oh it's on Hulu

00:40:43 ◼   ► well but you don't have Hulu Plus it'll play on your computer but it won't play

00:40:46 ◼   ► on your your Apple TV it's just you know these things as great as the potential

00:40:51 ◼   ► is to have every movie and TV show ever made available for all people at all times if you

00:40:58 ◼   ► pay a fee. And every bit of music that's been recorded available for everybody for a fee.

00:41:04 ◼   ► That's amazing as a promise. But the reality is that these contracts mean things are disappearing

00:41:10 ◼   ► and reappearing and they're trying to create a demand for their service by making it an

00:41:14 ◼   ► exclusive over here and you can't get it over there, which forces people to subscribe to

00:41:20 ◼   ► to like four different services in order to get everything

00:41:22 ◼   ► they want to see.

00:41:24 ◼   ► And, you know, I understand the business aspect of it,

00:41:27 ◼   ► but it's really frustrating as a consumer

00:41:28 ◼   ► and it makes the whole thing

00:41:30 ◼   ► just a more sour experience, I think.

00:41:33 ◼   ► - The music industry is closer than the,

00:41:36 ◼   ► like the movie and TV industry.

00:41:39 ◼   ► - They are.

00:41:39 ◼   ► - Like most services have pretty much everything.

00:41:42 ◼   ► - Pretty much everything, yeah.

00:41:43 ◼   ► Like I said, they're the occasional,

00:41:44 ◼   ► like the guy pointed out the Peter Gabriel thing,

00:41:46 ◼   ► which is totally true,

00:41:48 ◼   ► where there's some artists that are problematic.

00:41:51 ◼   ► But we have not yet seen a case

00:41:54 ◼   ► where a record studio drops out of a streaming service,

00:41:56 ◼   ► I think, but that could happen, right?

00:41:58 ◼   ► Imagine if Spotify or Beats or one of the other services,

00:42:03 ◼   ► suddenly one day one of the big four, five,

00:42:06 ◼   ► I don't even know how many big labels there are anymore,

00:42:08 ◼   ► just they had a contract dispute,

00:42:10 ◼   ► sort of like a cable company and a TV provider

00:42:14 ◼   ► like having channels disappear off the cable system.

00:42:17 ◼   ► people would scream bloody murder if that happened.

00:42:19 ◼   ► Like, wait a second, half of my favorite artists

00:42:21 ◼   ► just vanished, why is that?

00:42:23 ◼   ► They haven't done that, and I think that's smart

00:42:25 ◼   ► that it hasn't happened yet,

00:42:26 ◼   ► but I wouldn't put money on it never happening,

00:42:29 ◼   ► because again, I think if there was actual money

00:42:32 ◼   ► in those services, which it seems like maybe there isn't,

00:42:36 ◼   ► not like the video services.

00:42:37 ◼   ► Netflix seems to be doing okay,

00:42:38 ◼   ► but I don't hear people falling all over themselves

00:42:42 ◼   ► about the incredible financials

00:42:44 ◼   ► of these music streaming services.

00:42:45 ◼   ► I think maybe the music streaming services don't work very well.

00:42:48 ◼   ► But if they did and their perception was that there was big money to be made there, then

00:42:52 ◼   ► we would see these same problems, I think.

00:42:54 ◼   ► I think Apple getting into it, we might see the first instance of that.

00:43:00 ◼   ► I mean, there's always been sort of anecdotal hearsay that the music labels prevented Apple

00:43:10 ◼   ► from starting a streaming service, which is one of the reasons they bought Beats.

00:43:14 ◼   ► And it's because they don't want Apple to do this, because then they will take the biggest

00:43:19 ◼   ► slice of the pie in theory.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Although ironically they might also popularize it so it actually makes sense for a broader

00:43:25 ◼   ► consumer base than the people who subscribe.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Because we all know people who subscribe to these things, we all subscribe to these things.

00:43:30 ◼   ► I think in a broader sense it still hasn't caught on as much as it could.

00:43:35 ◼   ► There's a huge potential market here, and I think that's their biggest fear is that

00:43:38 ◼   ► Apple will establish this.

00:43:40 ◼   ► at the same time Apple might establish this and that might be good for the music industry.

00:43:45 ◼   ► I don't know. I don't know.

00:43:46 ◼   ► I think you're giving music executives too much.

00:43:50 ◼   ► Well, no, they oftentimes, this is exactly it, they shoot themselves in the foot. And

00:43:54 ◼   ► this may be one of those cases where they've played keep away with Apple because they're

00:43:58 ◼   ► afraid of Apple's potential dominance elsewhere becoming dominance here, but they may also

00:44:03 ◼   ► be preventing this part of their industry from succeeding.

00:44:09 ◼   ► So yeah, it's funny, it's funny, but all of this because Battlestar Galactica is not going

00:44:14 ◼   ► to be on TV, on Netflix in a couple days.

00:44:16 ◼   ► But this is the modern world we live in, which is, you know, you just can't rely on them.

00:44:22 ◼   ► And that's the unfortunate thing about a streaming service, as great as they are, you can't rely

00:44:26 ◼   ► on them.

00:44:27 ◼   ► You just can't.

00:44:28 ◼   ► The stuff that you expect to watch eventually may just disappear.

00:44:32 ◼   ► And that's too bad.

00:44:33 ◼   ► Aaron Goodwin in the chat has just sent a link to a site called can I stream it? Yeah. Yeah can I stream dot IT?

00:44:40 ◼   ► It's a really good site if you if you ever wonder if a movie's available

00:44:45 ◼   ► Via free streaming or online rental that is the place to go and there there I think

00:44:49 ◼   ► one of only like a handful of

00:44:52 ◼   ► Companies that still have access to the Netflix API

00:44:57 ◼   ► Netflix famously used to have an open API and said hey

00:45:00 ◼   ► "Hey, let's make a community and everybody can share information."

00:45:04 ◼   ► And then they're like, "Yeah, we're turning off all the sharing data and now we're turning

00:45:07 ◼   ► off the API because we're a big company now and we don't need you."

00:45:12 ◼   ► But "Can I stream it?" is still attached to the Netflix fire hose.

00:45:16 ◼   ► So they've got really good data.

00:45:20 ◼   ► And that's where I go.

00:45:21 ◼   ► When we do like an old movie club or something on the incomparable and I need to find a movie,

00:45:25 ◼   ► that's where I go.

00:45:26 ◼   ► I always go there.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Like then I know if I need to rent it or buy it from Netflix or Amazon or Apple or wherever.

00:45:36 ◼   ► So let's take a quick break to thank our second sponsor for this week's episode of Upgrade

00:45:41 ◼   ► and that is our friends at Pilot.

00:45:44 ◼   ► Pilot is a design and development studio that was founded in 2009.

00:45:48 ◼   ► They create products for startups and enterprise clients across iPhone, iPad and the web.

00:45:53 ◼   ► They have a team of over 50 designers, developers and producers, and also product directors

00:45:58 ◼   ► that are based in Berlin, London and their head office in Poland.

00:46:02 ◼   ► They are ready and waiting to help you on your next project.

00:46:07 ◼   ► Pilot can either help you build a great team that you can work with every day, or they

00:46:10 ◼   ► can set you up with a producer who can take care of everything for you.

00:46:14 ◼   ► They try and match to the way you want to work.

00:46:17 ◼   ► Pilot works with clients from all around the world, both big brands like Lonely Planet

00:46:21 ◼   ► and Macmillan and smaller companies alike. No project is too big or too small. Some startups

00:46:27 ◼   ► that they have worked with have been backed by world-class investors and accepted into top

00:46:31 ◼   ► accelerators such as Y Combinator. The quality of Pilot's work can help companies shine even in the

00:46:37 ◼   ► toughest of environments. If you're looking for a first-class team of designers and developers who

00:46:42 ◼   ► sweat the little details, check out Pilot.co. Thank you so much to Pilot for their support

00:46:48 ◼   ► of Upgrade and Relay FM.

00:46:51 ◼   ► Hooray pilot!

00:46:52 ◼   ► Yeah indeed.

00:46:56 ◼   ► So what do you want to talk about next? We have a couple of topics here.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Yeah I think we only have room for maybe one more so

00:47:04 ◼   ► you know...

00:47:06 ◼   ► let's talk about Dropbox.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Let's talk about Dropbox, why not? We're going to say we keep talking about

00:47:13 ◼   ► talking about the Kindle and we haven't talked about it yet but we got time.

00:47:16 ◼   ► There is still reasoning in holding it because, you know, at some point you'll get your Voyager.

00:47:22 ◼   ► Kindle Voyage. Yes.

00:47:24 ◼   ► I call it the Voyager too. I can't help myself from doing that. I've heard other people doing that.

00:47:30 ◼   ► Voyage. Voyage is a weird name.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Well, you know, Kindle is a weird name. Fire is a weird name. That's true. It's just part of the

00:47:37 ◼   ► Amazon product line of weird named devices. Prime Insta video.

00:47:41 ◼   ► But I'm not going to get it for three weeks, I think. So we've got a little bit of time to

00:47:45 ◼   ► to talk about the Kindle.

00:47:47 ◼   ► So people wanna give us pre-follow-up about Kindles,

00:47:52 ◼   ► and if you read with a Kindle, you could do that.

00:47:55 ◼   ► How do they reach us, Myke?

00:47:59 ◼   ► We should say that.

00:48:00 ◼   ► - Oh, that's good.

00:48:01 ◼   ► There's a couple of ways.

00:48:02 ◼   ► We're both on Twitter.

00:48:03 ◼   ► Jason is @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.

00:48:08 ◼   ► I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E,

00:48:10 ◼   ► or you can go to relay.fm/upgrade,

00:48:13 ◼   ► and you can hit the little contact button,

00:48:15 ◼   ► and that will send us an email.

00:48:17 ◼   ► - Beautiful, beautiful.

00:48:19 ◼   ► Dropbox.

00:48:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, so you wrote a little piece.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I didn't really know what to expect from it,

00:48:26 ◼   ► but this wasn't what I expected it to be.

00:48:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:48:31 ◼   ► - Good, I'm glad to keep you guessing.

00:48:32 ◼   ► - So I found that, I just found that quite interesting.

00:48:35 ◼   ► 'Cause it was like the Dropbox conundrum.

00:48:37 ◼   ► I was like, "Ooh, okay, let's take a look at this."

00:48:39 ◼   ► And it was, as I say, it was a very good piece.

00:48:41 ◼   ► I just don't know if it was,

00:48:42 ◼   ► I don't know what I was expecting it to be,

00:48:44 ◼   ► but it wasn't that.

00:48:46 ◼   ► So what is your problem with Dropbox?

00:48:49 ◼   ► - Well, it's a ridiculous problem

00:48:52 ◼   ► because it's a problem caused by Dropbox

00:48:55 ◼   ► fixing one of the major problems with their service,

00:48:57 ◼   ► which is that they weren't competitive on price

00:49:00 ◼   ► with the amount of storage they offered.

00:49:02 ◼   ► I think they offered 100 gigabytes of storage

00:49:04 ◼   ► for about $100 a year.

00:49:06 ◼   ► And if you look at their competitors for that price,

00:49:09 ◼   ► you could get a terabyte basically of storage.

00:49:12 ◼   ► And so they changed those,

00:49:14 ◼   ► they simplified their pricing structure,

00:49:16 ◼   ► they eliminated all their other pricing tiers it seems

00:49:18 ◼   ► and have gone to this $100 a year pricing tier

00:49:22 ◼   ► or there's a monthly fee too, that's in the ballpark

00:49:25 ◼   ► and you get a terabyte.

00:49:26 ◼   ► So that's great that their personal paid account,

00:49:30 ◼   ► there's still a free account, there's still business

00:49:32 ◼   ► and then there's this Pro tier,

00:49:34 ◼   ► Dropbox Pro they call it now.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And it's got some new features,

00:49:37 ◼   ► but the big feature is it's got a terabyte.

00:49:39 ◼   ► And I thought that was really great

00:49:41 ◼   ► because now they're competitive.

00:49:43 ◼   ► But then I started to think about it a little bit more

00:49:45 ◼   ► and realized that one of the problems is that Dropbox

00:49:49 ◼   ► has this root metaphor, which is there's a folder

00:49:51 ◼   ► on your hard drive that is your Dropbox folder

00:49:54 ◼   ► and you can put things in it.

00:49:56 ◼   ► And one of the funny things is Dropbox,

00:50:01 ◼   ► my hard drive doesn't have a terabyte for a Dropbox folder.

00:50:06 ◼   ► So I literally can't fill my Dropbox on my computer.

00:50:09 ◼   ► I can't take advantage of that.

00:50:10 ◼   ► And I realized this is a, you know, my, my, my diamond shoes are pinching my

00:50:15 ◼   ► feet, um, kind of problem, right?

00:50:18 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:50:19 ◼   ► Oh, all this free, all this extra storage they've given me.

00:50:22 ◼   ► I can't use it.

00:50:23 ◼   ► It's unused because of my beautiful laptop.

00:50:25 ◼   ► But it bugs me.

00:50:26 ◼   ► It bugs me that, that I have that storage space and I could, and it's

00:50:30 ◼   ► cloud storage, I could move things there.

00:50:32 ◼   ► But the metaphor for Dropbox is you don't move things into Dropbox.

00:50:37 ◼   ► you put them on your computer and they also are on Dropbox.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And I don't think I have any device with internal,

00:50:45 ◼   ► in fact, I looked it up.

00:50:46 ◼   ► There is only one system that you can buy

00:50:49 ◼   ► as the default configuration from Apple

00:50:52 ◼   ► that has more than a terabyte of internal storage.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And that's, believe it or not, the Mac mini server,

00:50:58 ◼   ► which you can get by default with two one terabyte drives.

00:51:03 ◼   ► - Who would have, I would not have expected.

00:51:05 ◼   ► I think you're going to have maybe Mac Pro or maybe an iMac of some kind. No, because the Mac Pros are all flash storage now.

00:51:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and the iMacs all are fusion drive, but they all start at one terabyte.

00:51:18 ◼   ► So, yeah, so what do you do with a terabyte of Dropbox? And again, this is a not a bad problem to have because it's great that Dropbox will essentially,

00:51:27 ◼   ► it's essentially unlimited storage for most people, not everybody.

00:51:31 ◼   ► if you've got a big external storage and you've put your Dropbox makes it kind of

00:51:34 ◼   ► hard to put your Dropbox on an external drive but you can do it.

00:51:38 ◼   ► It's kind of a pain if you've already got it on your internal drive because it wants to

00:51:41 ◼   ► move it all and sometimes there are errors and but you can do it.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And so some people, for some people it's great but I would say for,

00:51:49 ◼   ► my guess is the bulk of Dropbox's personal users. It's essentially

00:51:52 ◼   ► unlimited storage in that you are going to fill up your hard drive before you

00:51:56 ◼   ► fill up your Dropbox.

00:51:57 ◼   ► And that's great,

00:52:00 ◼   ► but what, and there are workarounds too, I guess I should say.

00:52:04 ◼   ► They have this feature called Selective Sync

00:52:06 ◼   ► that lets you turn off syncing on a computer from Dropbox.

00:52:11 ◼   ► So like I have a computer,

00:52:14 ◼   ► I have a Mac Mini server actually in my house

00:52:16 ◼   ► with a Drobo attached to it, this giant hard drive.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And that's where my Dropbox folder is.

00:52:22 ◼   ► So I can create a folder called like only on the Mac Mini

00:52:26 ◼   ► and uncheck it on my computer on my little laptop.

00:52:30 ◼   ► and throw a terabyte worth in there.

00:52:33 ◼   ► And that will work.

00:52:34 ◼   ► It's a workaround.

00:52:35 ◼   ► Selective Sync is kind of a really lousy interface,

00:52:37 ◼   ► but it works.

00:52:38 ◼   ► But what I really would like is,

00:52:41 ◼   ► and I don't think that Dropbox is ever gonna do it

00:52:43 ◼   ► because I think this is like a health club membership

00:52:45 ◼   ► where they're promising it,

00:52:47 ◼   ► knowing that most people will never take advantage of it.

00:52:51 ◼   ► What I would really like is Dropbox to have a feature

00:52:53 ◼   ► where there's also another place I can copy files

00:52:58 ◼   ► that moves them off my computer and saves them on Dropbox for later.

00:53:03 ◼   ► And I don't think they'll ever do it because it kind of goes against their

00:53:06 ◼   ► metaphor and their, you know, why would they bother?

00:53:10 ◼   ► But it does kind of bug me that it's a terabyte but I can't really use it,

00:53:14 ◼   ► and I certainly can't use it elegantly because I just don't have the room.

00:53:17 ◼   ► I could move literally everything I possibly could off of my MacBook Air

00:53:22 ◼   ► hard drive into the Dropbox folder.

00:53:24 ◼   ► like my MacBook Air could be a Dropbox folder

00:53:27 ◼   ► and I wouldn't fill it up.

00:53:28 ◼   ► - So I had some points that I wanted to,

00:53:32 ◼   ► sort of asking some things I wanted to go down,

00:53:34 ◼   ► but I just thought of something

00:53:36 ◼   ► which I hadn't considered before

00:53:39 ◼   ► with the problem with putting a terabyte of stuff on Dropbox.

00:53:44 ◼   ► What do you do when you get a new computer?

00:53:46 ◼   ► Like that's a terabyte of stuff to download.

00:53:50 ◼   ► That's gonna take an awful long time.

00:53:52 ◼   ► Right, if you're doing the whole thing.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Although again, you could do selective sync.

00:53:56 ◼   ► And I guess they have the LAN sync as well, right?

00:53:58 ◼   ► But still, there's still a terabyte of stuff to move.

00:54:01 ◼   ► Yeah, they say they have the LAN sync,

00:54:02 ◼   ► although I've got two devices on my network

00:54:04 ◼   ► and I don't ever see them LAN syncing.

00:54:06 ◼   ► I'm skeptical of that.

00:54:07 ◼   ► But that might be happening. It kind of works sometimes.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Like it kind of works.

00:54:12 ◼   ► I've done it before.

00:54:13 ◼   ► And you have to be like,

00:54:15 ◼   ► there's a lot of rubber chickens that you need to swing

00:54:17 ◼   ► to get it to work properly.

00:54:19 ◼   ► It's very peculiar as a thing.

00:54:23 ◼   ► So I'm interested, how do you use Dropbox?

00:54:30 ◼   ► - You know, I throw stuff in it all the time.

00:54:35 ◼   ► It is sort of my default place to save things now.

00:54:37 ◼   ► I have things on my desktop.

00:54:39 ◼   ► We could probably talk about this in another show.

00:54:41 ◼   ► I'm gonna write that down in fact, the desktop.

00:54:43 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:54:44 ◼   ► That's a good topic.

00:54:45 ◼   ► I throw things on my desktop and then John Siracusa

00:54:49 ◼   ► Occasionally we'll see my computer and shake his head and be like,

00:54:52 ◼   ► I don't know how you can live like that.

00:54:53 ◼   ► Um, but everything eventually ends up either in the trash or in Dropbox.

00:54:59 ◼   ► And I use it to share files.

00:55:01 ◼   ► We use it to transfer files for this show, for the incomparable,

00:55:04 ◼   ► a lot of podcast files we transfer using Dropbox.

00:55:06 ◼   ► Um, I use it for all my screenshots.

00:55:09 ◼   ► If I want to show somebody something on my computer, I take a screenshot.

00:55:12 ◼   ► It automatically goes to the Dropbox.

00:55:14 ◼   ► Uh, Dropbox puts the share link on my clipboard, I think.

00:55:18 ◼   ► and I just paste and say, here, check this out.

00:55:21 ◼   ► So I use it for a lot of stuff like that.

00:55:24 ◼   ► It is, yeah, so what it is is like a nice place to sync

00:55:29 ◼   ► between different devices and to have things accessible

00:55:31 ◼   ► on my phone and my iPad if I wanna refer to them elsewhere.

00:55:35 ◼   ► When I used to have a desktop PC at work

00:55:39 ◼   ► and a laptop at home, I used it to have file continuity

00:55:44 ◼   ► between the two devices, but it's been a while

00:55:46 ◼   ► since I had two separate work computers.

00:55:49 ◼   ► So I use it for a bunch of different stuff.

00:55:51 ◼   ► What I don't do is use it as a backup

00:55:55 ◼   ► or use it to offload files off of the SSD in my MacBook Air

00:55:58 ◼   ► because it's just not made for that.

00:56:00 ◼   ► And that's sort of the conundrum here is that

00:56:03 ◼   ► this is so much storage that you could start doing that,

00:56:05 ◼   ► but that's not what it's for.

00:56:07 ◼   ► - If I'm saving a file to my computer,

00:56:12 ◼   ► so if you discount media files,

00:56:15 ◼   ► If I'm saving any kind of document, it goes in Dropbox.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Dropbox is like my file system.

00:56:21 ◼   ► Finder opens to Dropbox for me.

00:56:24 ◼   ► It is the place that I put everything.

00:56:27 ◼   ► I also upload all of my photos via the Carousel app.

00:56:32 ◼   ► So every photo that I take on my iPhone,

00:56:34 ◼   ► which is where all of my photos are taken,

00:56:37 ◼   ► they're uploaded to Dropbox.

00:56:39 ◼   ► And then I have Hazel processing them into folders.

00:56:43 ◼   ► I used a workflow that Federico Vitici came up with.

00:56:47 ◼   ► I'll put that in the show notes.

00:56:49 ◼   ► And it basically, Hazel just takes all of my photos

00:56:52 ◼   ► and organizes them into folders.

00:56:54 ◼   ► I am probably going to move that to the iCloud photo library

00:56:59 ◼   ► storage drive system,

00:57:01 ◼   ► because Dropbox doesn't do a great job of it.

00:57:03 ◼   ► Like it doesn't do anything really to surface them.

00:57:06 ◼   ► I expected so much more from Carousel

00:57:09 ◼   ► that we just simply did not get the app and the service

00:57:12 ◼   ► I was expecting to be the Everpix that we lost, you know?

00:57:17 ◼   ► But it was kind of just like,

00:57:18 ◼   ► here's an app with a scrolling system

00:57:20 ◼   ► that will make you feel nauseous when you use it.

00:57:23 ◼   ► And that's about it for you.

00:57:25 ◼   ► - I'm tempted to use Dropbox for the photo thing

00:57:28 ◼   ► only because since I'm paying for it,

00:57:30 ◼   ► I have a terabyte there, I might as well use it.

00:57:32 ◼   ► And that's actually one of those examples

00:57:33 ◼   ► where if I don't sync that to my local system,

00:57:36 ◼   ► I can just have my mobile devices

00:57:38 ◼   ► be shooting photos into it forever

00:57:40 ◼   ► and just fill it up with photos and then I can always get them down from there

00:57:45 ◼   ► but you're right it

00:57:46 ◼   ► Dropbox is like um...

00:57:48 ◼   ► using Dropbox as a photo library is a little bit like using the finder as a

00:57:52 ◼   ► photo library, you open your folder

00:57:54 ◼   ► you say show me the icons and crank up the icon view and say see

00:57:59 ◼   ► it's a photo management tool and it's

00:58:01 ◼   ► really not it's file management that's showing you pictures. It's terrible I just

00:58:05 ◼   ► needed somewhere to put them because every picture service I was using kept

00:58:09 ◼   ► folding

00:58:10 ◼   ► So it was where I chose, always expecting that at some point

00:58:14 ◼   ► either Dropbox would fix it, which we hope that they'd done,

00:58:16 ◼   ► but they sort of started and never finished it.

00:58:19 ◼   ► But now I expect Apple to do it,

00:58:21 ◼   ► because I want features like just an easy way

00:58:24 ◼   ► to find photos, like at the moment,

00:58:25 ◼   ► I have to remember the year or month

00:58:28 ◼   ► in which a picture was taken.

00:58:29 ◼   ► And that doesn't necessarily work as a system,

00:58:32 ◼   ► but like having things like Apple promises

00:58:34 ◼   ► this intelligent search with the iCloud photo library stuff

00:58:38 ◼   ► and the locations, so that seems like a good thing for me.

00:58:42 ◼   ► That's the other thing that I guess I use Dropbox for,

00:58:45 ◼   ► so it's like file storage and photo backup.

00:58:47 ◼   ► - So the photo thing is actually a huge deal

00:58:50 ◼   ► because this is an example where having MacBook Airs

00:58:53 ◼   ► in my house, our photo library is enormous

00:58:56 ◼   ► and it won't fit on a MacBook Air hard drive, it won't.

00:58:59 ◼   ► We have an external drive that is also backed up

00:59:02 ◼   ► and mirrored that has our photos on it

00:59:05 ◼   ► because the photo library is too large

00:59:07 ◼   ► And I'm looking forward to seeing what Apple does here

00:59:11 ◼   ► because we're back to talking about photos.

00:59:14 ◼   ► This could just as well be the prompt, I suppose.

00:59:17 ◼   ► RIP, poor one out for the prompt.

00:59:20 ◼   ► The, you guys should do another podcast.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Wait a second.

00:59:23 ◼   ► You might do one.

00:59:24 ◼   ► I wanna see how Apple does this

00:59:29 ◼   ► because this goes back to the same issue.

00:59:33 ◼   ► My hard drive isn't big enough for all my photos,

00:59:35 ◼   ► but I need to have all my photos

00:59:36 ◼   ► and they need to be backed up in the cloud.

00:59:38 ◼   ► So how does that work?

00:59:39 ◼   ► Can I have a photo library that shows me everything

00:59:42 ◼   ► and might even have lower resolution versions

00:59:44 ◼   ► of them locally,

00:59:45 ◼   ► but if I want to get the high resolution version, I can.

00:59:48 ◼   ► Can I do that and have it accessible from my Mac

00:59:50 ◼   ► and from the web and from my mobile devices?

00:59:53 ◼   ► Can I do that with something?

00:59:55 ◼   ► And if I can do that, then that's great.

00:59:56 ◼   ► But it runs to the problem where I thought

00:59:59 ◼   ► about putting my photo library on Dropbox

01:00:01 ◼   ► and Dropbox will now take it.

01:00:03 ◼   ► It is big enough that it will take it,

01:00:06 ◼   ► but none of my computer's internal drives,

01:00:08 ◼   ► which is where these Dropbox folders live,

01:00:10 ◼   ► is big enough to accept it.

01:00:11 ◼   ► So we could turn that off with selective syncing, okay,

01:00:14 ◼   ► but then no computer has access to that,

01:00:17 ◼   ► so what's looking at the iPhoto library?

01:00:18 ◼   ► Nothing.

01:00:19 ◼   ► So it's just one of those things that,

01:00:22 ◼   ► it's not all the pieces are there.

01:00:23 ◼   ► And I realize this is a problem that I'm searching for,

01:00:27 ◼   ► because it's prompted by the knowledge

01:00:30 ◼   ► that there's a terabyte there for me to access,

01:00:31 ◼   ► that I'm paying for.

01:00:33 ◼   ► And that if I just pretend that it's like it was before,

01:00:36 ◼   ► 'cause I hadn't filled up my 100 gigabytes,

01:00:38 ◼   ► then it wouldn't be a problem.

01:00:39 ◼   ► But it does, you know, it just starts to make me think,

01:00:42 ◼   ► like what's wrong with this picture?

01:00:44 ◼   ► I had somebody, I had a bunch of people recommend

01:00:45 ◼   ► expand drive, which is a multi-purpose drive utility.

01:00:50 ◼   ► But one of the things it will do is mount your Dropbox

01:00:53 ◼   ► as a volume.

01:00:54 ◼   ► - Oh, that sounds terrifying.

01:00:55 ◼   ► - And the, it is a little bit scary,

01:00:57 ◼   ► but the idea there is you can, with selective sync,

01:00:59 ◼   ► you turn off a bunch of folders.

01:01:02 ◼   ► And then when you wanna copy things to Dropbox

01:01:04 ◼   ► and have them not be on your computer,

01:01:05 ◼   ► that's what you do is you open it up

01:01:08 ◼   ► and go into one of those folders

01:01:09 ◼   ► and just move the files over.

01:01:11 ◼   ► And you can actually do that through their web interface too.

01:01:13 ◼   ► You can drop something on there and it'll upload

01:01:15 ◼   ► and then you can delete it.

01:01:16 ◼   ► But Expand Drive mounts it as a drive.

01:01:18 ◼   ► So there are workarounds like that,

01:01:19 ◼   ► but I don't know, it's not quite the same.

01:01:22 ◼   ► I wanted to mention two other devices

01:01:25 ◼   ► that I think are interesting here.

01:01:27 ◼   ► There's File Transporter,

01:01:28 ◼   ► which has sponsored a whole bunch of podcasts.

01:01:31 ◼   ► And it's from the same people who do Drobo.

01:01:33 ◼   ► - Not this one. - Mentioned Drobo earlier.

01:01:34 ◼   ► Not this one, they should.

01:01:35 ◼   ► - Yet.

01:01:36 ◼   ► - It's interesting because it's like personal Dropbox.

01:01:40 ◼   ► It's a hard drive with an intelligent enclosure

01:01:42 ◼   ► that puts it on the internet and it syncs.

01:01:45 ◼   ► And it behaves very much like Dropbox

01:01:47 ◼   ► in that you drop something in a folder

01:01:48 ◼   ► and it syncs to the file transporter

01:01:50 ◼   ► and you can link it to multiple machines.

01:01:52 ◼   ► But the other interesting thing that it does

01:01:54 ◼   ► is it has a separate folder that it puts on your computer

01:01:58 ◼   ► that's actually a mounted, it's a mount point.

01:02:01 ◼   ► and you can use your file transporter space

01:02:04 ◼   ► to move to take files that you wanna offload.

01:02:08 ◼   ► So it's got both metaphors.

01:02:10 ◼   ► It's got the synced folder metaphor that Dropbox offers

01:02:13 ◼   ► and this other, you know, just move it

01:02:15 ◼   ► and have it only available in the cloud approach.

01:02:18 ◼   ► And yeah, if you're offline,

01:02:19 ◼   ► then you don't get to see those files,

01:02:21 ◼   ► but it lets you put things in cold storage

01:02:25 ◼   ► where you don't want them locally,

01:02:26 ◼   ► your hard drive is too small.

01:02:29 ◼   ► And I realized that storage costs are dropping rapidly,

01:02:32 ◼   ► but cloud storage costs are also dropping rapidly.

01:02:35 ◼   ► So I don't think we're gonna get to a point,

01:02:37 ◼   ► we're gonna have terabyte drives

01:02:38 ◼   ► and two terabyte drives in our SSDs,

01:02:40 ◼   ► but then we'll have like a petabyte free

01:02:45 ◼   ► on Google Drive or something.

01:02:46 ◼   ► So this is gonna keep continuing.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Anyway, File Transporter does this

01:02:50 ◼   ► in the way that I sort of described

01:02:52 ◼   ► how I'd like Dropbox to do it.

01:02:54 ◼   ► And then there's this other thing called Space Monkey,

01:02:57 ◼   ► which is a great name.

01:02:58 ◼   ► and I had never heard of it.

01:03:00 ◼   ► And what it does is it's like a combination,

01:03:05 ◼   ► it's like a smart Dropbox where it looks at your file use

01:03:10 ◼   ► and it's saying, like the file transporter,

01:03:14 ◼   ► it's a hard drive with some smarts in it

01:03:16 ◼   ► and you plug it in and it's got a cloud component.

01:03:19 ◼   ► But the thing that struck me about it

01:03:21 ◼   ► that my friend Greg Noss uses it,

01:03:23 ◼   ► is it watches your file usage

01:03:26 ◼   ► and it makes sure that your files you use a lot are stored locally, but that

01:03:31 ◼   ► the files that you don't really touch, it moves them off your system, keeps them

01:03:36 ◼   ► only in the cloud, and when you request them it downloads them and makes them

01:03:41 ◼   ► available to you. Which is kind of like Fusion Drive, except over the internet.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And it sounds really weird, but it sounds kind of brilliant in the sense that--and

01:03:52 ◼   ► actually very Apple-like of saying look we'll figure out which files you

01:03:57 ◼   ► actually need and those will be kept locally and the rest of them we're just

01:04:01 ◼   ► going to move off because you don't have enough storage space otherwise. So I'm

01:04:06 ◼   ► kind of intrigued by that I actually ordered one today because I want to try

01:04:09 ◼   ► it out and see how the Space Monkey works. Also I couldn't resist any product

01:04:14 ◼   ► with a monkey in it pretty much I will buy it. I keep hearing Code Monkey though

01:04:18 ◼   ► when you say Space Monkey. Yeah you know the Curious George is the reference

01:04:22 ◼   ► I keep getting this there's a Curious George book where he's the first space

01:04:26 ◼   ► monkey he puts on a space suit 50s style space suit. Anyway it's there's lots of

01:04:34 ◼   ► different ways to spin this sort of like cloud storage local storage how do they

01:04:37 ◼   ► interact and I think it's an area of opportunity for Apple too I mean iCloud

01:04:43 ◼   ► Drive is a first step in this direction but it would be really interesting if at

01:04:48 ◼   ► some point Apple embraced the idea that your file system isn't just

01:04:55 ◼   ► what's on your local drive, it's also in their cloud and you pay for that but you

01:05:01 ◼   ► get backed up and versioning and things getting offloaded when your drive

01:05:06 ◼   ► fills up and it all happens kind of invisibly. That's a really appealing

01:05:10 ◼   ► vision. I don't know whether it would actually be appealing in reality but

01:05:14 ◼   ► But as speeds get bigger, network speeds get better,

01:05:19 ◼   ► and as the cloud becomes more advanced, I wonder.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I wonder about that,

01:05:24 ◼   ► about whether our file systems become a cache

01:05:29 ◼   ► instead of, a cache that we don't manage.

01:05:31 ◼   ► 'Cause with Dropbox,

01:05:32 ◼   ► we're managing it ourselves in the Finder.

01:05:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:05:36 ◼   ► - Well, I would like to hear some follow up

01:05:39 ◼   ► on the Space Monkey.

01:05:41 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah.

01:05:42 ◼   ► I ordered it.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Space Monkey's also fascinating

01:05:44 ◼   ► because it's actually, they say it's a one terabyte drive.

01:05:46 ◼   ► It's actually a two terabyte drive

01:05:48 ◼   ► and one terabyte of it is your data.

01:05:51 ◼   ► And the other terabyte of it is like encrypted fragments

01:05:54 ◼   ► of other people's data.

01:05:55 ◼   ► And so every drive is itself part of their cloud,

01:05:59 ◼   ► which is wild stuff.

01:06:03 ◼   ► - It's kind of creepy, but not creepy, I think.

01:06:07 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, I mean, you have to know that going in,

01:06:09 ◼   ► but I think it's a really interesting idea

01:06:10 ◼   ► that what they're doing is they don't have a central,

01:06:13 ◼   ► they don't have a central point of failure.

01:06:14 ◼   ► It's a little like a peer-to-peer cloud storage network.

01:06:18 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I don't know.

01:06:19 ◼   ► I don't know if they also run their own servers

01:06:22 ◼   ► that have some of this data

01:06:23 ◼   ► or if it's just on their customers' drives,

01:06:26 ◼   ► but it's a very, and that way it's accessible

01:06:29 ◼   ► even if you can't get to your device,

01:06:32 ◼   ► your data should be accessible via like an iPhone app,

01:06:35 ◼   ► which is kind of, it's interesting.

01:06:37 ◼   ► So I'll try it out.

01:06:38 ◼   ► What the heck?

01:06:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, why not?

01:06:40 ◼   ► This is, I mean, this is investigative journalism.

01:06:42 ◼   ► that's what you're all about now. Yes, apparently. That's what happens when you

01:06:47 ◼   ► when you go... Yeah I can't be buying $200 products on a whim all the time but

01:06:53 ◼   ► on this one I did. It has monkey in the name Myke, what am I supposed to do? Yeah

01:06:58 ◼   ► no I understand. It was inevitable really. Yeah. So I think that's about it for this

01:07:03 ◼   ► week's episode unless you have anything more you'd like to discuss today sir? No

01:07:07 ◼   ► no I I think that we've we've done enough damage for one day and we should

01:07:12 ◼   ► save some things for episode 4.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Yeah, which will be next week.

01:07:17 ◼   ► And if you want to tune in live, you can definitely do that.

01:07:21 ◼   ► We record this show at 12pm Pacific time, 3pm Eastern time, that is 8pm London time.

01:07:32 ◼   ► If you'd like to tune in, that's at relay.fm/live.

01:07:35 ◼   ► And as I mentioned earlier in the show, this week's show notes are at relay.fm/upgrade/three.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Thank you so much again to our sponsors for this week, Cards Against Humanity and Pilot.

01:07:46 ◼   ► I mentioned it earlier but I am @imike on Twitter, I-M-Y-K-E, and Jason is @jstnell,

01:07:51 ◼   ► J-S-E-N-N-E-L-L.

01:07:52 ◼   ► I'm not used to spelling your Twitter handle.

01:07:56 ◼   ► It's like we need a song for that or something.

01:07:59 ◼   ► It's tricky.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Yes.

01:08:01 ◼   ► Jonathan Mann, please note.

01:08:03 ◼   ► And sixcolors.com, you can read all my things.

01:08:05 ◼   ► Oh, I'm sorry.

01:08:07 ◼   ► Yes, sixcolors.com for Jason's fantastic website.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Don't forget, Myke. Don't forget it.

01:08:12 ◼   ► I won't ever forget it.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Count the colors.

01:08:14 ◼   ► It's in my RSS. I restarted RSS just for you.

01:08:17 ◼   ► RSS.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Ah, you know? And I read everything you write.

01:08:21 ◼   ► I appreciate that. Somebody has to.

01:08:24 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:08:24 ◼   ► Do you want to be my copy editor?

01:08:25 ◼   ► Yeah, sure. I can.

01:08:28 ◼   ► You don't want me to be your copy editor.

01:08:30 ◼   ► There's a whole website devoted to the misspellings that I make.

01:08:33 ◼   ► You definitely don't want that.

01:08:34 ◼   ► This is true.

01:08:36 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade.

01:08:38 ◼   ► We'll be back next time. Bye-bye.

01:08:40 ◼   ► Bye!

01:08:42 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:08:45 ◼   ► [ Music ]