Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello listeners, September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

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00:00:25 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to episode 2 of Upgrade on Relay FM.

00:00:29 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Igloo, an internet you'll actually like,

00:00:33 ◼   ► and TextExpander from Smile.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Type more with less effort.

00:00:37 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by your host, Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Hello Myke, we're back.

00:00:43 ◼   ► We are back.

00:00:44 ◼   ► They didn't shut us down after one episode.

00:00:47 ◼   ► I'm friendly with the guy who controls the network, so I convinced him to let us keep

00:00:53 ◼   ► it going.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Good, good.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:00:56 ◼   ► really great feedback for episode one.

00:00:59 ◼   ► So thank you to everyone that was very nice to us

00:01:03 ◼   ► and we're back for another episode of Upgrade.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - And probably the thing that is gonna make Jason

00:01:11 ◼   ► more happy than anything else on the planet

00:01:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:15 ◼   ► is the fact that we can do follow up on this show

00:01:19 ◼   ► and our Google document, about two thirds of it is follow up

00:01:25 ◼   ► - So, I mean--

00:01:26 ◼   ► - We just admit it.

00:01:27 ◼   ► You know, Accidental Tech podcast has follow up

00:01:30 ◼   ► for like 90% of their running time,

00:01:31 ◼   ► but we might as well just admit it upfront.

00:01:33 ◼   ► There's a lot of follow up.

00:01:34 ◼   ► I'm very excited that we have so much follow up

00:01:36 ◼   ► 'cause I've never really done podcasts

00:01:37 ◼   ► with follow up before.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And we got comments,

00:01:40 ◼   ► which means we have things we can follow up on.

00:01:42 ◼   ► 'Cause that was the big question last week

00:01:44 ◼   ► was would anybody say anything

00:01:45 ◼   ► or would there literally be no follow up

00:01:47 ◼   ► other than to remind people that there could be follow up.

00:01:51 ◼   ► - Before we start the officially ordained follow up,

00:01:54 ◼   ► There was one piece of, there was one correction

00:01:56 ◼   ► that I would like to make from last week's show.

00:01:59 ◼   ► - All right.

00:02:00 ◼   ► - And it's correcting you, if that's okay.

00:02:02 ◼   ► - Yes, you're fired.

00:02:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:06 ◼   ► - I'll get my coat in a moment.

00:02:09 ◼   ► One question that I had for you was about

00:02:11 ◼   ► if the screen was curved on the iPhones.

00:02:15 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, the screen's not, the glass is.

00:02:18 ◼   ► - I think my question was poorly phrased.

00:02:23 ◼   ► And what I was asking was it,

00:02:24 ◼   ► 'cause they mentioned in the keynote about the corners,

00:02:27 ◼   ► like the edges of the phones,

00:02:29 ◼   ► like they are sort of smoothed down,

00:02:33 ◼   ► so they kind of curve around a little bit.

00:02:35 ◼   ► - But that's not the screen, right?

00:02:36 ◼   ► That's the glass in front of the screen.

00:02:38 ◼   ► So it was, I'll take it.

00:02:41 ◼   ► I was reading it and also thinking about Apple Watch

00:02:45 ◼   ► in a different way, but yeah,

00:02:46 ◼   ► that's actually one of the things

00:02:47 ◼   ► that makes it feel so nice,

00:02:49 ◼   ► is that the screen isn't just a flat slab

00:02:51 ◼   ► and then there are edges or it doesn't go into like a ring,

00:02:55 ◼   ► it just curves down and then, and that makes it,

00:02:58 ◼   ► that's one of my favorite features actually of the phones

00:03:01 ◼   ► now that I've been using them for a week is they're really,

00:03:05 ◼   ► that curve really makes them much more comfortable to hold.

00:03:07 ◼   ► - Death to the chamfer, huh?

00:03:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, death to the chamfer.

00:03:11 ◼   ► I'm glad we learned a word though.

00:03:12 ◼   ► We increased our word power by learning that word

00:03:15 ◼   ► and now we will store it away for future use.

00:03:17 ◼   ► - Never ever use it again.

00:03:19 ◼   ► - No. - Ever, ever, ever.

00:03:20 ◼   ► - No, there is another correction that we should do,

00:03:23 ◼   ► which is I mentioned reachability,

00:03:25 ◼   ► it revealed a black void at the top of the screen.

00:03:27 ◼   ► It's actually not a black void.

00:03:29 ◼   ► I complained that it didn't have your picture behind,

00:03:32 ◼   ► like a fuzzed version of your backdrop, your wallpaper.

00:03:36 ◼   ► It actually does, but it's really like darker

00:03:40 ◼   ► and fuzzed out so much that it's almost unrecognizable,

00:03:43 ◼   ► but it isn't just a black void.

00:03:45 ◼   ► It's more like a dark wallpaper-y version of a wall.

00:03:50 ◼   ► void but it's not like you just if you've got a picture of your friends at the top of your

00:03:57 ◼   ► wallpaper it's not like they peek through when you do reachability it's sort of like you can see

00:04:01 ◼   ► through the haze like I would see like I could see sort of the corner of a mountain from the

00:04:07 ◼   ► picture but just barely so it's definitely not meant to be anything but like a very subtle

00:04:13 ◼   ► reference to what's in your on your backdrop in reachability but it's not a complete black void

00:04:18 ◼   ► It's almost so hard to see that they may as well have not done it.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't understand. I mean, I guess they didn't want to distract,

00:04:28 ◼   ► but I feel like it's a weird thing that they should either have embraced the fact that you

00:04:33 ◼   ► get to peek through and see your... That's the metaphor of iOS 7 and 8 is everything

00:04:38 ◼   ► sort of translucent and you can see down through the stack. And so you should either make it

00:04:43 ◼   ► viewable or you should just not even bother but instead it's this very it's

00:04:47 ◼   ► very subtle very subtle but it is there and I said that it was just a total

00:04:51 ◼   ► black void it is not.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Dead Space Gray.

00:04:55 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:04:57 ◼   ► Ding!

00:04:59 ◼   ► So this is a weird piece of follow-up but it's a piece of follow-up I would like to address.

00:05:08 ◼   ► So on last week's episode I creeped some people out by talking about the fact

00:05:13 ◼   ► that I had really long fingers and how I thought that it would be okay for me to

00:05:17 ◼   ► get a plus and there was a whilst away in in Italy last week my lady friend took

00:05:26 ◼   ► a picture of me using my iPhone and I had many people comment on the tweet and

00:05:33 ◼   ► I've put it in our show notes which are at relay.fm/upgrade/2.

00:05:38 ◼   ► If you want to see a picture of my hands, you're free to do that.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Many people commented on the fact that my fingers were very long.

00:05:44 ◼   ► Jason, I don't know if you've seen this picture.

00:05:46 ◼   ► I don't know if you have an official view or feeling on the sides of my hands.

00:05:50 ◼   ► I was confused to see you without glasses.

00:05:53 ◼   ► That confused me a little bit.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:05:55 ◼   ► I also was confused to see you comfortable and outdoors.

00:05:58 ◼   ► That was different.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And yes, your fingers seem very long.

00:06:03 ◼   ► My fingers I think are long but they're not nearly as long as yours.

00:06:07 ◼   ► I believe my toes are very long but that rarely comes up in a technological context.

00:06:12 ◼   ► We are venturing into some very interesting areas.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Interesting is a strong word for it.

00:06:20 ◼   ► You published a very interesting article on not your website.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Not on my website, no.

00:06:26 ◼   ► On the Verge I think is where that one is what you're talking about, right?

00:06:30 ◼   ► What was that about?

00:06:31 ◼   ► Well, you know, Nielle Patel is an acquaintance.

00:06:36 ◼   ► We've exchanged emails and text messages and just, you know, we're friendly.

00:06:41 ◼   ► And he's the editor-in-chief of The Verge. I've always liked Nielle.

00:06:44 ◼   ► And he sent me an email last week saying,

00:06:49 ◼   ► "Would you like to write a quick thing? We want to scan in all these old Macworld covers."

00:06:55 ◼   ► 'cause he's old enough that he, as a kid,

00:07:00 ◼   ► grew up reading computer magazines

00:07:02 ◼   ► and Macworld in particular, which is what I did,

00:07:06 ◼   ► although I didn't really come to it

00:07:07 ◼   ► until sort of in high school.

00:07:08 ◼   ► But the pouring over, back before there were tech websites,

00:07:13 ◼   ► I mean, the only way to get this information

00:07:14 ◼   ► was to get a magazine and just pour over every detail,

00:07:17 ◼   ► every page, there are articles that I would read

00:07:19 ◼   ► like 30 or 40 times when I was buying my first PowerBook.

00:07:23 ◼   ► Every detail, like what does that mean?

00:07:25 ◼   ► parsing sentences, does this mean this feature?

00:07:28 ◼   ► Probably means that article could have been written better

00:07:30 ◼   ► actually in hindsight if I was that confused.

00:07:32 ◼   ► But it was a big thing culturally before all this stuff

00:07:37 ◼   ► was on the web, that was the only connection that you had

00:07:39 ◼   ► if you loved computers and technology.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And so they were gonna scan in a bunch of old Macworld

00:07:44 ◼   ► covers and they wanted me to write something short,

00:07:46 ◼   ► 300 words or something like that about it.

00:07:48 ◼   ► So I wrote a quick thing actually on the plane

00:07:51 ◼   ► 'cause I was going to and from Portland

00:07:55 ◼   ► the weekend after this all happened

00:07:57 ◼   ► to go to the XOXO Festival.

00:07:59 ◼   ► And I just wrote a quick thing and sent it to them.

00:08:01 ◼   ► And then they posted it right about when my site launched,

00:08:05 ◼   ► which was very nice of them

00:08:06 ◼   ► 'cause they linked to it prominently in the header

00:08:09 ◼   ► and I got a lot of traffic in the verge.

00:08:11 ◼   ► But it was nice.

00:08:12 ◼   ► It was just a little,

00:08:13 ◼   ► I'm trying to say farewell to Macworld as a print magazine,

00:08:16 ◼   ► which certainly I have a long history with.

00:08:18 ◼   ► And although I have not been thinking about it

00:08:20 ◼   ► as a print magazine very much lately

00:08:22 ◼   ► because we've been focused on the website

00:08:23 ◼   ► and I've been focused on other sites at IDG for a long time.

00:08:28 ◼   ► It was a nice sort of Viking funeral for Macworld in print

00:08:32 ◼   ► and the idea of computer magazines,

00:08:37 ◼   ► which was once a really big thing

00:08:38 ◼   ► and is now no longer necessary.

00:08:41 ◼   ► - We kind of didn't really address it last week,

00:08:45 ◼   ► but it's very sad that the magazine has gone away.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it is, and yet at the same time it isn't what it used to be.

00:08:56 ◼   ► I actually think the quality of it has been quite good and has kept up over the years.

00:09:03 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't have a fraction of the staff, even when I was still there, it didn't

00:09:07 ◼   ► have a fraction of the staff it did when I started, and even that was a much smaller

00:09:10 ◼   ► staff than they used to have.

00:09:12 ◼   ► But I think the quality was good, but it's not really necessary anymore.

00:09:20 ◼   ► But that doesn't change the fact that this is a thing that had been in existence for

00:09:23 ◼   ► the life of the Mac.

00:09:24 ◼   ► It's been printing for 30 years.

00:09:28 ◼   ► And so on that level it's sad.

00:09:30 ◼   ► But time moves on.

00:09:32 ◼   ► That's what happens.

00:09:33 ◼   ► It's just like I know a lot of people have said this, but I remember when Stephen Hackett

00:09:38 ◼   ► was he had a I think it was the back page yeah and I just remember his

00:09:45 ◼   ► excitement and like how excited I was for him. Print gives you tangibility that

00:09:53 ◼   ► those of us who work on the web don't get and that often that works very well

00:09:57 ◼   ► with our parents and grandparents and other relatives where suddenly the fact

00:10:02 ◼   ► that you've been doing things on the internet has a manifestation that they

00:10:05 ◼   ► can understand. They can understand, "Oh wow, you are important enough or knowledgeable

00:10:10 ◼   ► enough that somebody with a printing press took your picture and put it on their back

00:10:15 ◼   ► page with your words." That's a seal of approval that for people who grew up before the internet

00:10:20 ◼   ► era, this internet stuff, they don't know whether this is all made up and fake or whether

00:10:26 ◼   ► it's really a real thing. And so for them, what a huge stamp it is to have you be on

00:10:32 ◼   ► tree in ink. That's a real signifier of quality and I can't tell you how many writers over

00:10:40 ◼   ► the years we used, I mentioned this in the Verge article, who were web writers that we

00:10:44 ◼   ► would find and say "we like your stuff, why don't we publish you in the magazine?" and

00:10:48 ◼   ► they're like "that's cool" and they would always say "my mom went out and bought a copy,

00:10:53 ◼   ► my grandma went out and bought a copy, they bought ten copies and sent it to all the relatives."

00:10:58 ◼   ► That was a very common phenomenon.

00:11:01 ◼   ► What else do we have? Oh, let's see, more follow-up. Yeah, that's right, we're still doing follow-up. It's very exciting.

00:11:09 ◼   ► So, the common bond in a lot of the follow-up this week was about our

00:11:16 ◼   ► conversation about the phone sizes, because we talked a lot about the iPhone

00:11:20 ◼   ► 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, and we talked a little bit about the fact that the 5C

00:11:24 ◼   ► and 5S are still there, and this was a common thread is the question if

00:11:30 ◼   ► Apple is going to abandon that four inch phone size?

00:11:34 ◼   ► I've heard a lot of people say, "Well, you know, Apple doesn't make

00:11:38 ◼   ► this phone, they've abandoned this size." It's not really true. The 5C and 5S

00:11:42 ◼   ► are still out there. The new phones are bigger, but

00:11:46 ◼   ► I think when people assume that that's the end of the line for the smaller phones,

00:11:50 ◼   ► it could be, "I am skeptical. I think

00:11:54 ◼   ► Apple, I think there's a good chance Apple is going to keep something

00:11:58 ◼   ► around in that size for a while and perhaps even forever.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Just because it didn't get updated this year

00:12:04 ◼   ► doesn't mean that in a year or two,

00:12:07 ◼   ► there will be something, whether it's called the five

00:12:09 ◼   ► or whether it's called like the 6C for compact or smaller

00:12:12 ◼   ► or something like that, that is on par or close to on par

00:12:17 ◼   ► with these bigger phones, but is in that smaller,

00:12:19 ◼   ► a smaller size like the 5 series.

00:12:22 ◼   ► And so we got some feedback about that.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Listener Phil wrote in to say that there were,

00:12:29 ◼   ► the Plus felt way too big to use.

00:12:31 ◼   ► He was planning on getting the 6 himself,

00:12:33 ◼   ► but if there were a hardware upgraded 5S,

00:12:35 ◼   ► he might be tempted to stick with that.

00:12:37 ◼   ► And Listener Shep wrote in to say,

00:12:40 ◼   ► "I think a small functional iPhone Nano is possible

00:12:43 ◼   ► if the technology behind the Apple Watch

00:12:46 ◼   ► can be made affordably and in larger sizes."

00:12:48 ◼   ► He had an interesting idea that there's actually a patent,

00:12:51 ◼   ► an Apple patent about that is making,

00:12:54 ◼   ► eliminating the physical home button

00:12:56 ◼   ► and instead making sort of a virtual button

00:13:00 ◼   ► that would reduce the size even more

00:13:02 ◼   ► while still keeping the screen at the same size,

00:13:04 ◼   ► which is an interesting idea.

00:13:05 ◼   ► But definitely, I heard a lot of women on Twitter,

00:13:10 ◼   ► Brianna Wu was going on about this,

00:13:12 ◼   ► like these phones are too big for them.

00:13:14 ◼   ► They don't fit in their pockets.

00:13:15 ◼   ► They don't like it.

00:13:15 ◼   ► They like the five.

00:13:16 ◼   ► I don't think the release of the six and the six plus

00:13:21 ◼   ► is Apple saying, you people who like the five,

00:13:23 ◼   ► we, you know, forget it, we're never gonna serve you again.

00:13:27 ◼   ► You could assume that because they didn't do a new five

00:13:30 ◼   ► this time, but I don't know, there is nothing stopping them

00:13:33 ◼   ► from continuing to have a phone that size

00:13:37 ◼   ► in their product line, they just didn't update it this year.

00:13:40 ◼   ► - I've been thinking about this a little bit too myself,

00:13:42 ◼   ► and I don't think they did what we expected them to do,

00:13:45 ◼   ► which was to take the 5S and put it in a plastic shell.

00:13:50 ◼   ► - Right, right, the 5C is still the 5C,

00:13:53 ◼   ► which is two years ago's model now in a plastic shell.

00:13:57 ◼   ► - And then the 5S is just the 5S.

00:14:00 ◼   ► So, but I've also been thinking quite a bit about this

00:14:04 ◼   ► and I think that, I wonder if Apple

00:14:08 ◼   ► would be willing to do it.

00:14:10 ◼   ► Like, you're looking at the sales numbers,

00:14:13 ◼   ► we had the first sales numbers of 10 million

00:14:15 ◼   ► sold over opening weekend with the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

00:14:22 ◼   ► And I wonder, you know, if in a, I don't know,

00:14:24 ◼   ► it'd be like four years maybe before the 5S

00:14:29 ◼   ► would be bumped out, potentially something like,

00:14:31 ◼   ► if you look at the fact we've just got rid of the 4S,

00:14:34 ◼   ► how old is the 4S?

00:14:36 ◼   ► - Oh, the 4S is, well, if the 5 is two years old,

00:14:40 ◼   ► the 4S is three years old.

00:14:42 ◼   ► - So maybe in about three years time

00:14:44 ◼   ► is when we're gonna get the answer to that question.

00:14:45 ◼   ► - Maybe, maybe, I mean, there's the work that goes

00:14:48 ◼   ► into integrating the innards of the phone

00:14:51 ◼   ► into a smaller thing.

00:14:53 ◼   ► I mean, presumably they would at some point

00:14:55 ◼   ► want to increase the, improve the industrial design,

00:14:57 ◼   ► make it more curvy and less like the five is now

00:15:01 ◼   ► because that's the old design language

00:15:02 ◼   ► and they moved on to this new look and feel.

00:15:05 ◼   ► But I think there's nothing stopping them from doing that.

00:15:07 ◼   ► I think, you know, Apple's got a lot, behind the scenes,

00:15:10 ◼   ► Apple does a lot of market research.

00:15:12 ◼   ► They've got a lot of numbers.

00:15:13 ◼   ► They know in what regions, at what rate

00:15:17 ◼   ► the large size phones sell.

00:15:20 ◼   ► That was one of the reasons that they made the 6 Plus

00:15:22 ◼   ► is to go into regions, especially like Asia,

00:15:25 ◼   ► where those phones are very popular.

00:15:26 ◼   ► They know what phones sell and at what sizes.

00:15:30 ◼   ► So Apple probably knows the answer to this already

00:15:33 ◼   ► about what the difference is

00:15:35 ◼   ► between the iPhone 5 sized market

00:15:38 ◼   ► and the iPhone 6 sized market.

00:15:40 ◼   ► And they may have already decided,

00:15:41 ◼   ► well, it's not a big enough market for us to worry about it.

00:15:44 ◼   ► I think it's just as likely that they said,

00:15:46 ◼   ► look, the 6 is our flagship.

00:15:48 ◼   ► that is gonna be the size that most people want.

00:15:51 ◼   ► Some people are gonna want a bigger phone,

00:15:52 ◼   ► some people are gonna want a smaller phone,

00:15:54 ◼   ► and we will serve those markets too.

00:15:56 ◼   ► And if it's worth it for them to make a phone

00:16:01 ◼   ► that's a little bit smaller, they will.

00:16:03 ◼   ► They just don't need to do it right now

00:16:04 ◼   ► because the 5S is a perfectly good phone,

00:16:06 ◼   ► it's got touch ID, it doesn't have the NFC stuff

00:16:09 ◼   ► for Apple Pay, but it's a one year old phone.

00:16:13 ◼   ► There was a huge leap in performance

00:16:14 ◼   ► between the 5 and the 5S.

00:16:16 ◼   ► So the 5S is solid in a way that that free 5C

00:16:21 ◼   ► is a perfectly fine phone too,

00:16:23 ◼   ► but the 5S is that much faster.

00:16:25 ◼   ► So I don't know, they didn't need to change it now.

00:16:28 ◼   ► I think the question is gonna be in a year or two,

00:16:31 ◼   ► do they just say, "Forget it if you want a smaller phone?"

00:16:33 ◼   ► I just, they've done the market research,

00:16:36 ◼   ► so they probably know, but I would be surprised actually.

00:16:39 ◼   ► I would probably put a very modest bet

00:16:42 ◼   ► that there will, on the fact that there will always be

00:16:45 ◼   ► a smaller phone in the line, that they don't want to turn their back on people

00:16:50 ◼   ► who refuse that. But they may know different. They may think,

00:16:53 ◼   ► "Yeah, people are complaining, but they'll all get used to it and then there'll be no

00:16:56 ◼   ► market for a smaller phone."

00:16:57 ◼   ► That may be. They're the ones that have

00:17:00 ◼   ► lots of, you know, Apple does a lot of

00:17:03 ◼   ► research. They don't make these moves

00:17:07 ◼   ► entirely on gut feel. They have an idea of how consumers are

00:17:10 ◼   ► are seeing this product line. But from Twitter it seems like

00:17:14 ◼   ► there is a market, Twitter not a great research tool, but it seems like there is a market for a

00:17:18 ◼   ► smaller phone out there that maybe Apple will maintain in the future. I think it may have been

00:17:26 ◼   ► John Gruber's review where he spoke about, I read it in somebody's review, about the fact that

00:17:32 ◼   ► there'll probably never be an iPhone bigger than this because they were like testing sizes in

00:17:37 ◼   ► in increments. Right, yeah he said like every every tenth of an inch or something like that.

00:17:44 ◼   ► So yeah here we go I've got the quote here. "My understanding talking to people at the

00:17:51 ◼   ► event last week is that Apple's industrial design team mocked up prototypes of every

00:17:55 ◼   ► single size between 4.0 and 6.0 inches in tenths of an inch increments and from those

00:18:02 ◼   ► twenty sizes selected the two that hit the best sweet spots the regular iPhone and ginormous

00:18:07 ◼   ► iPhone so we might never see new iPhone sizes again or at least not bigger ones.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Keeping in mind, I mean he's talking to people who are working on the hardware design, but

00:18:18 ◼   ► like I said, this is also informed by research.

00:18:21 ◼   ► This is also informed by who's buying what, at least on a gross scale, right?

00:18:25 ◼   ► They know people are buying big phones so they wanted to make a big phone and then they

00:18:28 ◼   ► figured out what their right size was for their big phone.

00:18:33 ◼   ► And the small, I think it works on the small side too.

00:18:35 ◼   ► I don't know what they're thinking internally at Apple,

00:18:37 ◼   ► obviously about this.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Do they think the six is enough?

00:18:40 ◼   ► But yeah, the six plus is big.

00:18:43 ◼   ► And above a certain point, yeah,

00:18:45 ◼   ► they probably would rather you just buy an iPad.

00:18:48 ◼   ► But markets change too.

00:18:50 ◼   ► People, you know, if Samsung or somebody else comes out

00:18:53 ◼   ► with something that's crazy that everybody looks at

00:18:56 ◼   ► and thinks, well, that, you know, that'll never sell

00:18:58 ◼   ► and it surprisingly sells, then everybody will take stock.

00:19:01 ◼   ► And they'll, I think that's what happened with the Note.

00:19:04 ◼   ► See, this is the difference between Apple and Samsung.

00:19:07 ◼   ► Apple mocks up every size in 10th of an inch increments

00:19:11 ◼   ► and holds it in their hands, you know, internally at Apple.

00:19:14 ◼   ► Samsung just releases every phone in every size

00:19:17 ◼   ► and sees what sells, which is crazy.

00:19:19 ◼   ► - I wonder what the right option is in that scenario,

00:19:22 ◼   ► though, right?

00:19:23 ◼   ► Because Samsung found their winner.

00:19:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:19:26 ◼   ► - And they may have never found it.

00:19:28 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly right.

00:19:29 ◼   ► And Apple didn't, you know, Apple wasn't a believer

00:19:33 ◼   ► in that, I think, in that large phone size.

00:19:36 ◼   ► And they learned a lesson.

00:19:37 ◼   ► No, there's advantages to doing what Samsung does

00:19:41 ◼   ► 'cause they're doing market research in the market.

00:19:42 ◼   ► I think Apple,

00:19:44 ◼   ► part of it is I think Apple can't make that many products.

00:19:49 ◼   ► I think Apple's attention to quality and detail

00:19:52 ◼   ► is such that they really need to focus

00:19:53 ◼   ► and they're not that huge a company.

00:19:55 ◼   ► They need to focus on a few products

00:19:57 ◼   ► and make them really, really good.

00:19:58 ◼   ► And Samsung has the ability,

00:19:59 ◼   ► and especially Samsung with the Android interface

00:20:02 ◼   ► being scalable, that, you know, it wasn't a lot of extra work to make all those different

00:20:05 ◼   ► models whereas Apple has had to spend two years laying the groundwork to make these

00:20:10 ◼   ► different phone sizes because they were locked into that sort of 1x, 2x mode for their developers.

00:20:17 ◼   ► So you know, it was in some ways, it was easier for Samsung to do it because Samsung's playing

00:20:23 ◼   ► Samsung's game and Apple's playing Apple's game but you know, Samsung got an advantage

00:20:27 ◼   ► because they threw lots of spaghetti against the wall and something stuck and

00:20:31 ◼   ► it was it was the the note especially that that surprised everybody.

00:20:35 ◼   ► So we still have quite a bit more follow-up but I want to take a quick

00:20:40 ◼   ► break to thank our first sponsor for this week's episode and that is the fine

00:20:44 ◼   ► folks over at Smile and today I want to talk a little bit about TextExpander Touch.

00:20:48 ◼   ► TextExpander Touch is an app that saves you time and effort by

00:20:53 ◼   ► expanding short abbreviations into frequently used text on your iOS devices.

00:20:57 ◼   ► Whether it's something simple like a frequently used address, an email

00:21:01 ◼   ► signature, several paragraphs of the standard response, or maybe a frequently

00:21:06 ◼   ► used email address that you use, you'll love how easy it is to use TextExpander

00:21:10 ◼   ► to avoid typing the same thing over and over and over again. You can sync all of

00:21:16 ◼   ► your snippets with TextExpander on the Mac via Dropbox, meaning that all of your

00:21:20 ◼   ► Snippets are going to stay in sync across all of your devices.

00:21:23 ◼   ► You can access your TextExpander Snippets inside Smiles iOS app, TextExpander Touch,

00:21:28 ◼   ► or you can enable TextExpander in the 60 plus apps in this app store

00:21:33 ◼   ► that have integrated snippets.

00:21:35 ◼   ► So these are apps like some of my favorites like OmniFocus,

00:21:38 ◼   ► Fantastical, Day One, Drafts, Launch Center Pro and so many more.

00:21:42 ◼   ► But this is the really cool thing.

00:21:44 ◼   ► This is the new thing.

00:21:45 ◼   ► And we spoke about this last week, but now it's here with the new TextExpander

00:21:49 ◼   ► Touch 3 on iOS. There's now a new TextExpander custom keyboard so that you

00:21:55 ◼   ► can expand abbreviations in all of your iOS apps on iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

00:22:00 ◼   ► So now even if you have an app that isn't one of the 60+ that support snippets

00:22:05 ◼   ► directly, you can now still get the great time and hassle-saving benefits of TextExpander

00:22:11 ◼   ► everywhere because of this custom keyboard that they've made.

00:22:15 ◼   ► This is something that simply could not be done before iOS 8 and a new TextExpander

00:22:19 ◼   ► keyboard has quickly become one of my favorite new features of iOS 8. I am able

00:22:23 ◼   ► to just jump in and I'm able to trigger off little things like I have shipping

00:22:28 ◼   ► addresses and stuff like that that I have text expanded snippets for and rather

00:22:32 ◼   ► than having to type all of that out I can just use the text expanded keyboard

00:22:35 ◼   ► and I can trigger them everywhere. I want to make something very clear for a

00:22:39 ◼   ► moment. So Apple have a limitation, not a limitation, it's like a security setting

00:22:46 ◼   ► that they've enabled. So you have to kind of say I want to give keyboards full

00:22:50 ◼   ► access and this can typically means like connecting to the internet for whatever

00:22:56 ◼   ► reason this that they may need to like apps like SwiftKey they go out to the

00:23:01 ◼   ► internet for suggestions and things like that. Now the TextExpander requires

00:23:06 ◼   ► TextExpander keyboard requires you to give this but it's only so you can share

00:23:10 ◼   ► snippet data with the main TextExpander app and also play the awesome bloop

00:23:14 ◼   ► sounds that you're used to hearing when you expand a snippet. So that they need it so

00:23:18 ◼   ► they can connect the two apps together so you can get the snippets. Now, Smile wanted

00:23:23 ◼   ► me to bring this up because they've had some feedback from their customers and so something

00:23:26 ◼   ► that they've done, that they had done anyway, is they publish an update to their privacy

00:23:30 ◼   ► policy on their website which you can check out if you want and it outlines exactly what

00:23:34 ◼   ► they need this access for. But it's effectively just so it can get the access to the snippets

00:23:38 ◼   ► that you want. I love this keyboard, it's made a real improvement to my work on iOS

00:23:43 ◼   ► I love how they use the lowercase and uppercase lettering on the keyboard so you don't have

00:23:47 ◼   ► to keep second guessing that shift key.

00:23:49 ◼   ► So go right now to the App Store and grab the new TextExpander Touch 3 and start saving

00:23:54 ◼   ► time today.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Thank you so much to TextExpander and Smile, of course, for their sponsoring of Upgrade

00:24:01 ◼   ► and Relay FM.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Yeah, one of the funny things about this update is there were apps that supported TextExpander,

00:24:09 ◼   ► but it was a lot of work for the third-party apps.

00:24:11 ◼   ► and then you get to an Apple app and there was no support for it because Apple

00:24:16 ◼   ► wasn't paying attention, didn't care, wasn't going to work on that.

00:24:19 ◼   ► And now with this keyboard it's everywhere. It's literally everywhere you

00:24:22 ◼   ► get that keyboard you can use the text expander shortcuts

00:24:25 ◼   ► in Notes, in Mail, in Safari, wherever.

00:24:28 ◼   ► I love using it in Mail.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Yeah. Big fan.

00:24:34 ◼   ► So Mr Snell,

00:24:35 ◼   ► back to your beloved follow up.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Oh, follow up.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Yeah, well you know episode one there's going to be a lot of follow-up.

00:24:43 ◼   ► Listener Bonnie wrote in to say that she ordered the iPhone 6 Plus for her 84-year-old mother.

00:24:49 ◼   ► This is something that we mentioned last week.

00:24:53 ◼   ► She's moving up from an iPhone 4 but Bonnie says because of her failing eyesight I've

00:24:57 ◼   ► had to have the text on her old phone expanded so large she actually used a magnifying glass

00:25:01 ◼   ► on her phone.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And with the new 6 Plus, they'll have the display zoom turned on.

00:25:09 ◼   ► So everything will be bigger, and then she'll also have an easier time finding the phone

00:25:12 ◼   ► because it's just that much larger.

00:25:15 ◼   ► And I thought that was an interesting real world example of how I've heard this in the past,

00:25:19 ◼   ► that people want, you know, you have two choices when you make a screen bigger.

00:25:23 ◼   ► You can either make it show more or just make everything scale up and be bigger the bigger it gets.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Like, I don't know if you remember the,

00:25:31 ◼   ► for a while Apple was making the iBook in 11 and 13 inches

00:25:35 ◼   ► and, or 12 and 14 inches, something like that.

00:25:38 ◼   ► It was two sizes, but the screens were the same size.

00:25:41 ◼   ► So literally it was just, on the bigger laptop,

00:25:43 ◼   ► everything looked bigger.

00:25:45 ◼   ► There's the same resolution, just a different size.

00:25:48 ◼   ► So you could get small print or large print iBook.

00:25:52 ◼   ► And this is a little bit like that.

00:25:53 ◼   ► So nice, so 84 year old mom getting an iPhone 6 Plus.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Myke, your phone is the choice of the octogenarians.

00:26:02 ◼   ► - Just like me, huh?

00:26:03 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:26:05 ◼   ► You're very much like an 84-year-old mother.

00:26:07 ◼   ► - I'm an octogenarian at heart.

00:26:10 ◼   ► - That's right.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Damn kids.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Get off my lawn.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Listener Russ wrote in,

00:26:17 ◼   ► people were asking about the speaker,

00:26:19 ◼   ► and the 6+ definitely seems to have

00:26:22 ◼   ► a little bit louder speaker.

00:26:24 ◼   ► We talked about speakers last time,

00:26:26 ◼   ► and his suggestion, which is an interesting one,

00:26:28 ◼   ► is that maybe Apple doesn't care too much about the speakers

00:26:31 ◼   ► because they know that people are using this with Bluetooth

00:26:34 ◼   ► and docs and things like that

00:26:35 ◼   ► and doesn't really prioritize the speaker, which is true.

00:26:40 ◼   ► So that may be why you're not getting as much satisfaction

00:26:43 ◼   ► out of your speaker on your iPhone.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Have you tried the speaker on the new phone yet?

00:26:50 ◼   ► - I've had it for like an hour,

00:26:51 ◼   ► which I'm gonna mention in a bit.

00:26:53 ◼   ► So I haven't got to dig in too much,

00:26:55 ◼   ► but I have seen people on Twitter saying that to them,

00:26:58 ◼   ► it sounds better or louder. It is louder. It is noticeably louder than the 6 or the

00:27:03 ◼   ► 5. And to be honest, I mean for me, and one of the reasons I asked, it wasn't so much

00:27:08 ◼   ► that I needed it to have more accurate sound reproduction, you know, for my audio file

00:27:13 ◼   ► music. You just want to hear podcasts while you're cooking. Exactly. I want to hear it

00:27:18 ◼   ► over things. Yeah. And so, you know, if it's louder that's great. I did not expect the

00:27:26 ◼   ► vibrate motor to be so dramatic. It's powerful. Well you get that big phone you

00:27:35 ◼   ► got room for a nice powerful vibration from the motor. There was something that

00:27:41 ◼   ► I wanted to ask you from an article that I read on your lovely website which

00:27:46 ◼   ► we're going to talk about in a bit, SixColors.com and it was about the

00:27:50 ◼   ► you wrote about the Apple Watch Edition right so the potentially two

00:27:55 ◼   ► million dollar watch. I should have charged everybody a thousand dollars to

00:28:00 ◼   ► read that article because it's article edition. But there was one

00:28:04 ◼   ► thing that you mentioned in it that I hadn't seen anywhere else which is the

00:28:10 ◼   ► box that the edition comes in. Can you just, anybody that hasn't read it or

00:28:15 ◼   ► just to recap, what am I referring to? It just got lost in the shuffle. Some people

00:28:19 ◼   ► wrote about it. I actually did a search because I didn't see it anywhere either

00:28:22 ◼   ► either and David Pogue mentioned it. Anybody who got a briefing after the event got a chance

00:28:27 ◼   ► to see it and a few people wrote about it but I think it got lost in the shuffle of

00:28:30 ◼   ► the event. The idea is that if you buy the Apple Watch edition, it's unclear exactly

00:28:34 ◼   ► what you get. I think I recall but I don't have it in my notes that they said that you

00:28:38 ◼   ► actually get multiple bands when you buy the edition which again I'm not 100% sure on that

00:28:45 ◼   ► but again you're paying so much, we don't know how much, for this that they really wanted

00:28:49 ◼   ► to load it up with features. And one of the things is, it comes in a box. It comes in

00:28:53 ◼   ► a leather box. So that's fancy, right? And it's just like any watch, you get a fancy

00:28:59 ◼   ► watch box. It's part of the luxury watch experience. The difference here is that when you open

00:29:04 ◼   ► the top, when you take the top of the box off, the base of the box, the bottom part,

00:29:08 ◼   ► has the magnetic sort of stand where the watch attaches. It's a MagSafe induction charger

00:29:16 ◼   ► for the watch. And on the back of the box is a little slot that is a lightning slot

00:29:23 ◼   ► and you can slot a lightning cable in there and plug it in and now your leather Apple

00:29:28 ◼   ► Watch Edition box is a dock that you can put by your bedside or out by your hot tub or

00:29:34 ◼   ► on your helipad or in your island retreat or wherever you'd like and you can charge

00:29:42 ◼   ► it right there at the end of the day. So it's not just a case, it's not just a box, it's

00:29:47 ◼   ► a leather charger box. So you're not like threading the cable through this, it's like

00:29:52 ◼   ► built in to it. Oh the electronics are built in, so you plug one of those little white

00:29:57 ◼   ► lightning cables into the little slot on the back of the box and that's it. And then you

00:30:02 ◼   ► click, you know you put the watch on the magnetic charging thingy and it charges. See because

00:30:10 ◼   ► this like watch boxes are a thing in high-end watches right so it this shows that they are

00:30:17 ◼   ► paying attention to it i've been thinking a lot about this because i like many people

00:30:23 ◼   ► have not considered the price of the watch edition it's too much a lot of us are like well it's gonna

00:30:32 ◼   ► cost too much and who thought i didn't think much more than that like it'll be a lot like i said to

00:30:38 ◼   ► John Syracuse on Twitter, you know, how much you got. It's all of that. We'll take it all.

00:30:45 ◼   ► All your assets.

00:30:46 ◼   ► There's so many questions.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, that's part of Apple's plan here. One, they don't know the answers to a lot

00:30:54 ◼   ► of these questions. And two, they're going to have to roll this product out next year

00:30:58 ◼   ► and they want to save some mystery. So some of it is mystery and some of it is they don't

00:31:02 ◼   ► know yet what they're going to say. But it is fascinating. They are piling on. I got

00:31:07 ◼   ► the feeling when I was looking at it. They're piling on the luxury features, that it's solid

00:31:11 ◼   ► gold and it is definitely heavier than the other watches because it is gold. It's impressive.

00:31:18 ◼   ► They're loading a lot of luxury features into this. This isn't just, you know, you get it

00:31:22 ◼   ► in the same plastic box. You get it in the special leather box with the charger built

00:31:25 ◼   ► in.

00:31:26 ◼   ► What are your thoughts about the one-year shelf life, potentially? If we look at this

00:31:32 ◼   ► like all of our other Apple devices.

00:31:35 ◼   ► I mean, that's a great question.

00:31:39 ◼   ► I was listening actually to a accidental tech podcast

00:31:43 ◼   ► the other day and they were talking about this too.

00:31:45 ◼   ► And it was, you know, the idea of planned obsolescence

00:31:48 ◼   ► that after a year or two,

00:31:49 ◼   ► this is gonna be old crappy hardware

00:31:50 ◼   ► and you just spent thousands and thousands of dollars on it.

00:31:53 ◼   ► And it's old crappy hardware wrapped in gold.

00:31:56 ◼   ► And when I think about the edition and its price

00:31:59 ◼   ► and all these features, it does make me wonder

00:32:03 ◼   ► If part of the features that they pile into a product

00:32:06 ◼   ► that's that expensive, might not be upgrades,

00:32:11 ◼   ► might not be a guarantee that for five years

00:32:16 ◼   ► they will replace the internals,

00:32:19 ◼   ► that you'll be able to take it to an Apple store

00:32:21 ◼   ► and wait half an hour or wait an hour,

00:32:25 ◼   ► like you would take your watch in to be serviced

00:32:27 ◼   ► at a high end watch store, maybe it's a day,

00:32:31 ◼   ► and come back and it will have new internals

00:32:33 ◼   ► that they'll commit to fitting the latest technology

00:32:37 ◼   ► into that watch shape for some period of time.

00:32:41 ◼   ► It wouldn't, that would be very different

00:32:43 ◼   ► and it seems untenable except when we realize

00:32:46 ◼   ► we're talking about a, you know, whatever,

00:32:48 ◼   ► two, five, $10,000 piece of jewelry,

00:32:51 ◼   ► maybe that's one of the new ways Apple addresses this market

00:32:56 ◼   ► is with some sort of a guarantee against obsolescence

00:32:59 ◼   ► for some period of time.

00:33:00 ◼   ► It wouldn't, they're going way off the book here.

00:33:03 ◼   ► So it wouldn't surprise me for them to take it further

00:33:05 ◼   ► and say, you get concierge service and technical upgrades.

00:33:09 ◼   ► And for at least five years,

00:33:11 ◼   ► we'll make sure that you've got the latest,

00:33:14 ◼   ► latest hardware updates on the inside of this thing.

00:33:18 ◼   ► That's impractical to a point

00:33:20 ◼   ► if they keep changing the look of the design.

00:33:22 ◼   ► But maybe it's worth it to commit to finding a way

00:33:27 ◼   ► to build something into this enclosure

00:33:31 ◼   ► or to swap it for a different one even,

00:33:34 ◼   ► just to give them some guarantee.

00:33:36 ◼   ► 'Cause that's what worries me,

00:33:37 ◼   ► is you spend 10 grand on something that's a family heirloom,

00:33:40 ◼   ► it's different from spending 10 grand on something

00:33:42 ◼   ► that's gonna be completely outdated in a year or two.

00:33:45 ◼   ► - I think you could just swap it over, right?

00:33:48 ◼   ► Like the cost of them getting the gold back helps.

00:33:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, it could be that simple.

00:33:56 ◼   ► Although whether, I don't know, I don't know.

00:34:00 ◼   ► It depends on how personal people feel about it,

00:34:02 ◼   ► but maybe, maybe so.

00:34:04 ◼   ► I don't know, I think there's something there.

00:34:06 ◼   ► I think that if I was an Apple working on the Apple Watch,

00:34:10 ◼   ► this would be one of the main discussions is

00:34:13 ◼   ► the difference between a Rolex and the Apple Watch

00:34:16 ◼   ► is that the Rolex will do exactly what it does now

00:34:19 ◼   ► in 50 years, because they're not gonna change time, right?

00:34:23 ◼   ► They're not gonna add a 14th, 15th, and 16th hour in 2020.

00:34:28 ◼   ► They're not gonna add a new number.

00:34:32 ◼   ► None of those things is going to happen.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Watches are still going to work.

00:34:37 ◼   ► But the Apple Watch is a piece of technology

00:34:39 ◼   ► and we know how those things go.

00:34:41 ◼   ► So that's, I would have that high on my list of concerns

00:34:46 ◼   ► for something with a high price tag

00:34:47 ◼   ► like the Apple Watch edition if I were at Apple.

00:34:50 ◼   ► - Do you remember when the original iPhone

00:34:53 ◼   ► was released and it how long was it for it until it shipped? Is it like six months?

00:34:58 ◼   ► Oh they announced it no I wasn't out in December and they announced it in

00:35:05 ◼   ► October I think so I think it was only a couple of months for the for the for the

00:35:09 ◼   ► iPod? No the original iPhone. Oh iPhone yeah that was six months that was

00:35:13 ◼   ► January to end of June beginning of July. So six months. Between that time

00:35:18 ◼   ► everyone just spoke about what they thought the iPhone was gonna be like and

00:35:21 ◼   ► talking about, oh imagine if this is the iPhone,

00:35:24 ◼   ► that's the kind of stuff.

00:35:26 ◼   ► That's what we have again.

00:35:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:35:28 ◼   ► - We can spend the next six months just pontificating

00:35:31 ◼   ► about the word tradition. - Isn't it great?

00:35:32 ◼   ► - It's great.

00:35:34 ◼   ► - There's limited information, some people know things

00:35:36 ◼   ► that other people don't know.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Everything's sort of spread through whispers,

00:35:39 ◼   ► plenty of room for speculation, yeah.

00:35:42 ◼   ► - We've got something to talk about, right?

00:35:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, high five.

00:35:46 ◼   ► - There's one last thing that I dropped in a document today

00:35:50 ◼   ► And it's not follow-up per se,

00:35:54 ◼   ► but this felt like the best place to say it.

00:35:56 ◼   ► And it was a tweet from our friend, David Sparks.

00:35:59 ◼   ► And he's obviously referring to the IOS 8 episode

00:36:04 ◼   ► of Mac Power Users.

00:36:05 ◼   ► And his tweet was, "I think I angered the entire internet

00:36:09 ◼   ► by repeatedly saying, 'Hey Siri,' on the podcast.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Think we'll need a code word for future reference."

00:36:15 ◼   ► And it made me think about how much power we have

00:36:18 ◼   ► for anybody listening on like a loudspeaker

00:36:20 ◼   ► or in an office or something, could you say,

00:36:21 ◼   ► "Hey, Siri," and then they're all just gonna go off.

00:36:24 ◼   ► So I don't know if you maybe wanna give it a go.

00:36:26 ◼   ► - When I was on, I think MacBreak Weekly

00:36:28 ◼   ► or it might've been Twit a few weeks ago,

00:36:30 ◼   ► we were talking about this,

00:36:30 ◼   ► and it was only when it was in beta.

00:36:32 ◼   ► So the potential for downfall was less.

00:36:36 ◼   ► But yes, you have the ability

00:36:37 ◼   ► because there's no way to train it

00:36:39 ◼   ► to only respond to your voice or something.

00:36:41 ◼   ► If you've got this feature turned on in iOS 8

00:36:43 ◼   ► and your iPhone is plugged in and listening to us,

00:36:46 ◼   ► then I could say, "Hey, Siri, send a text message to my mom

00:36:51 ◼   ► saying I'm sorry for what I did."

00:36:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:36:56 ◼   ► Yes, send it.

00:36:59 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:02 ◼   ► It's really dangerous and I don't think I like this feature.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Also, I don't know if you like husband and wife

00:37:07 ◼   ► and you both have iPhone 6s

00:37:09 ◼   ► and they're sitting next to each other

00:37:10 ◼   ► and somebody says, "Hey, Siri, they're both gonna fire off."

00:37:12 ◼   ► It's crazy, yeah, I wonder about this feature.

00:37:15 ◼   ► - I turned it off immediately when I...

00:37:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:18 ◼   ► Because I activated it.

00:37:20 ◼   ► But the thing, I was watching a TV show

00:37:22 ◼   ► and it just randomly went off.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Nobody said, "Hey, Siri."

00:37:25 ◼   ► It just fired off on its own.

00:37:27 ◼   ► I can't understand why you would want this

00:37:31 ◼   ► if the iPhone doesn't do anything to try and learn your voice

00:37:34 ◼   ► which it doesn't appear like it does

00:37:36 ◼   ► or at least if it does,

00:37:37 ◼   ► I haven't seen anybody mention it.

00:37:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I like the idea of it being in some environments

00:37:43 ◼   ► where you might wanna be, you know,

00:37:45 ◼   ► you can't press a button, you know, you're not,

00:37:48 ◼   ► you're really hands-free and you wanna trigger off Siri.

00:37:51 ◼   ► I can see that, but yeah,

00:37:53 ◼   ► you'd either wanna be able to set a code word

00:37:55 ◼   ► or have some other kind of, you know,

00:38:00 ◼   ► voice recognition that matches you to a person.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Right now, it's just kind of dangerous.

00:38:04 ◼   ► And like I was saying, impractical,

00:38:06 ◼   ► 'cause if you've got multiple devices that do this,

00:38:08 ◼   ► then it's gonna be a disaster.

00:38:10 ◼   ► Every device is gonna do the same thing

00:38:11 ◼   ► and you're gonna have many series talking back to you

00:38:13 ◼   ► and it's crazy.

00:38:15 ◼   ► I should try that sometime,

00:38:16 ◼   ► 'cause I've got three of these devices right now.

00:38:19 ◼   ► I should, we could just line up like five iOS 8 devices

00:38:23 ◼   ► and plug them all in and then see what happens

00:38:26 ◼   ► when you say, "Hey Siri, that's bad.

00:38:27 ◼   ► "That's a bad idea.

00:38:29 ◼   ► "I gotta do that."

00:38:30 ◼   ► - So let's talk about the new iPhones a little bit.

00:38:34 ◼   ► So I received my iPhone Plus today,

00:38:40 ◼   ► like an hour before I recorded.

00:38:43 ◼   ► So I don't have a lot to say about it right now.

00:38:48 ◼   ► I have a few things.

00:38:49 ◼   ► It is really, really big.

00:38:53 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:38:54 ◼   ► How do your fingers fit with it though?

00:38:57 ◼   ► - Not too badly.

00:38:58 ◼   ► - Your crazily, insanely long fingers.

00:39:02 ◼   ► - It is big.

00:39:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:39:04 ◼   ► - It is big.

00:39:05 ◼   ► - I think I can deal with it.

00:39:09 ◼   ► I think I've not had enough time with it yet

00:39:12 ◼   ► to get used to it, but I can hold it

00:39:14 ◼   ► and I feel like I have a secure hold on it.

00:39:16 ◼   ► I bought this rubbery case from Amazon.

00:39:20 ◼   ► So I had a case on day one because I ordered

00:39:23 ◼   ► one of the Apple silicone cases,

00:39:25 ◼   ► but doesn't ship till October,

00:39:27 ◼   ► which seems kind of a strange thing to do

00:39:31 ◼   ► to have a phone and I ordered them at the same time.

00:39:35 ◼   ► So the cases couldn't have sold out faster than the phones.

00:39:39 ◼   ► So I didn't really understand what's going on there.

00:39:41 ◼   ► but I'm going to go to an Apple store tomorrow

00:39:43 ◼   ► and buy one of the leather cases and Apple Care Plus.

00:39:48 ◼   ► I've never had Apple Care for a phone before,

00:39:51 ◼   ► but I think I will drop this one.

00:39:52 ◼   ► So I'm going to get that.

00:39:56 ◼   ► Lots of people will probably ask for the case that I bought.

00:40:00 ◼   ► So I'll make sure I put it in the show notes.

00:40:03 ◼   ► It's one of these companies that I think always takes a bet

00:40:07 ◼   ► on the rumors or is one of the companies

00:40:10 ◼   ► pays a ridiculous amount. Spigen. S P I G E N. I've heard people say that these guys

00:40:17 ◼   ► are always kind of there on Amazon on day one. I bought like a clear kind of

00:40:23 ◼   ► rubbery texture case. I like a case that gives me extra grip. That's important

00:40:30 ◼   ► with this phone to have as much grip as possible. So I'm probably gonna get one

00:40:35 ◼   ► of the leather cases and the silicon cases and just decide between which one I like

00:40:39 ◼   ► the most. I really like the the I've been trying the Apple leather case on the on

00:40:45 ◼   ► the 6 and it's nice it's nicer than the 5 cases I think the Apple 5 cases were

00:40:51 ◼   ► kind of hard to put on and the leather one didn't feel like leather it was

00:40:54 ◼   ► stretched so tightly and it was like not textured and it didn't feel like a

00:40:58 ◼   ► leather case even though it was made of leather and the new one is much easier

00:41:03 ◼   ► to get on and nicer and feels like leather and feels a little more grippy

00:41:07 ◼   ► and I've actually been enjoying trying it

00:41:09 ◼   ► and I don't usually wear a case with my iPhone

00:41:12 ◼   ► and I put it on and it's actually pretty nice.

00:41:16 ◼   ► It's funny that you talk about having the device

00:41:17 ◼   ► and not the case, 'cause for me,

00:41:19 ◼   ► I always flash back to when the,

00:41:21 ◼   ► I wanna say maybe the first iPad mini came out

00:41:23 ◼   ► and I bought it and I got a box from Apple

00:41:26 ◼   ► and I was very excited and it was the case.

00:41:29 ◼   ► It was like the smart case or the smart cover.

00:41:31 ◼   ► And for like two weeks,

00:41:33 ◼   ► I had this thing that didn't attach to anything.

00:41:35 ◼   ► I just had this cover

00:41:36 ◼   ► and it was just, it was the worst.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Like, eventually these magnets will snap

00:41:42 ◼   ► onto an Apple product,

00:41:43 ◼   ► but now it's just a cover for nothing.

00:41:46 ◼   ► So that's worse, believe me,

00:41:48 ◼   ► having the case and not the product, that is the worst.

00:41:52 ◼   ► - So aside from that, I don't have a lot more to say.

00:41:57 ◼   ► Like I've not used it nowhere near enough.

00:41:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh no, you need to take some time with it.

00:42:01 ◼   ► You really, yeah, you need to take some time with it.

00:42:04 ◼   ► that's you've got to live with it and like do all of your things that are just, that

00:42:09 ◼   ► come naturally that you don't even think about and see where they conflict with this new

00:42:14 ◼   ► thing and then how you deal with that.

00:42:17 ◼   ► So in a moment of cross-promotion, so I'm recording "Connected" tomorrow with me and

00:42:24 ◼   ► Federico Vittucci, which is another Relay FM show at relay.fm/connected. So I'm going

00:42:30 ◼   ► give myself on that show I would have had my first 24 hours and one thing that

00:42:36 ◼   ► I'm going to do is not charge the phone my plan is to not plug my phone in from

00:42:42 ◼   ► the moment I unplug it tomorrow and see how far I can go I think that would be

00:42:48 ◼   ► that's that would be a really important test for me because one of the reasons

00:42:51 ◼   ► of having this device is for the battery so I will have had it for a day at that

00:42:57 ◼   ► point if you think that one day is any better than an hour so you can tune

00:43:01 ◼   ► into connected and hear my thoughts on the 6 plus. Very nice I look forward to

00:43:06 ◼   ► that. How have your impressions changed if at all since the last time we spoke?

00:43:12 ◼   ► Oh I don't know not not a lot I mean I like the 6 I think I made the right

00:43:21 ◼   ► choice there. I think the 6 Plus is going to have its huge fans and that's great and

00:43:29 ◼   ► that a lot of people are going to say, "Wow, that's a really enormous phone. I'm not quite

00:43:34 ◼   ► sure about that." I like the 6 Plus. The battery life is amazing. The screen is amazing. But

00:43:45 ◼   ► But it's huge and so it's only gonna be for some people.

00:43:50 ◼   ► Beyond that, I guess all the time I spent at XOXO

00:43:53 ◼   ► did teach me that I think the battery life,

00:43:57 ◼   ► it's hard to gauge battery life.

00:43:58 ◼   ► The battery life on the 6 feels better than on the 5,

00:44:00 ◼   ► although I'm using a one-year-old 5S.

00:44:02 ◼   ► So that battery is degraded already

00:44:05 ◼   ► 'cause that's what happens with batteries

00:44:07 ◼   ► is you use them and they lose life.

00:44:09 ◼   ► But it seems better and then the 6 Plus

00:44:13 ◼   ► is that much better on top of that.

00:44:15 ◼   ► - Betterer.

00:44:17 ◼   ► - It is more better, yeah.

00:44:18 ◼   ► - And you mentioned this,

00:44:22 ◼   ► are you using a case right on yours?

00:44:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm just trying out the Apple leather case

00:44:26 ◼   ► and just to see, honestly,

00:44:30 ◼   ► just so I can write something about it,

00:44:31 ◼   ► to just sort of experience what these cases are like.

00:44:33 ◼   ► And like I said, it feels better than the five cases.

00:44:36 ◼   ► It was easier to put on

00:44:38 ◼   ► and it feels more like an actual leather case

00:44:40 ◼   ► and it is grippy in a way.

00:44:42 ◼   ► and the old leather cases were so stretched out

00:44:45 ◼   ► and they felt weird.

00:44:47 ◼   ► I didn't like the Apple cases on the 5,

00:44:50 ◼   ► but on the 6, it seems pretty nice.

00:44:53 ◼   ► - And what phone did you buy?

00:44:56 ◼   ► - I bought the 6 in space grey at the 64.

00:45:01 ◼   ► So yeah, that was the one I bought and I've got it.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And it's great.

00:45:07 ◼   ► It's nice to be back with the black phone

00:45:10 ◼   ► after a year with the, I got the gold last year.

00:45:14 ◼   ► It's nice, it's fine.

00:45:17 ◼   ► But I like the, my favorite iPhone maybe of all time

00:45:21 ◼   ► was the black iPhone 5.

00:45:23 ◼   ► I loved the black iPhone 5.

00:45:25 ◼   ► It was just like Darth Vader's phone.

00:45:27 ◼   ► And this is not quite that,

00:45:29 ◼   ► but although I've got the black leather case on it.

00:45:32 ◼   ► So the space gray, you can't even see the space gray,

00:45:34 ◼   ► it's just all black.

00:45:35 ◼   ► It's the spinal tap phone.

00:45:38 ◼   ► How much black could it be? None more black.

00:45:40 ◼   ► The black 5 was the one that like really chipped up, wasn't it?

00:45:46 ◼   ► Not for me, but yeah, apparently for people. Apparently it could show some wounds, but you know, it didn't ever bother me.

00:45:57 ◼   ► It was great. I loved it.

00:45:59 ◼   ► A black phone as black as my heart.

00:46:02 ◼   ► No, that's not true.

00:46:05 ◼   ► That's not true. My heart is much blacker than that. Anyway.

00:46:07 ◼   ► Apparently your heart consists of six colors.

00:46:10 ◼   ► Six colors, that's right.

00:46:11 ◼   ► It is pumping six colors through.

00:46:13 ◼   ► This is true.

00:46:14 ◼   ► And we're going to get to that just after we take a moment to thank our second sponsor.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Ah, excellent.

00:46:20 ◼   ► Look at that for this week's episode.

00:46:22 ◼   ► And that's our friends at Igloo.

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00:46:28 ◼   ► Igloo's intranet works on any mobile device, including these new iPhones, the 6 and the

00:46:34 ◼   ► 6 Plus.

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00:46:40 ◼   ► So you can do anything from reading a document, to sharing a photo of your lunch, to administrative

00:46:45 ◼   ► tasks like managing your settings within your intranet.

00:46:49 ◼   ► igloos document preview engine is also fully HTML5 compatible, so if your teammate uploads

00:46:55 ◼   ► a word, excel or even javascript file, you can read it on your device without having

00:46:59 ◼   ► to download the content or use a native app.

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00:47:07 ◼   ► a document.

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00:47:21 ◼   ► of use on your phone.

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00:47:57 ◼   ► intranet on your phone is quite a magical thing, trust me on that.

00:48:02 ◼   ► igloo is free to use with up to 10 people and you can sign up right now at igloosoftware.com/upgrade.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Thank you so much to igloo for their support of upgrade and all of Relay FM.

00:48:13 ◼   ► Yay igloo!

00:48:15 ◼   ► Hooray!

00:48:16 ◼   ► I don't just like them, I love them.

00:48:19 ◼   ► I have some real time follow up you're going to like.

00:48:22 ◼   ► Okay go for it.

00:48:24 ◼   ► This is from the Upgrade Twitter account, which is @_upgradefm.

00:48:30 ◼   ► And listener Leo writes, "You almost sent a text to my mum with your 'Hey Siri' joke.

00:48:35 ◼   ► That brought podcast interaction to a whole new level."

00:48:38 ◼   ► Wow, it worked!

00:48:40 ◼   ► Oh, Jason, you may have done both an amazing and terrible thing.

00:48:44 ◼   ► It's not me, it's Apple!

00:48:46 ◼   ► Apple does this thing!

00:48:47 ◼   ► It's a bad idea!

00:48:49 ◼   ► We were just doing some theater, it's theater!

00:48:52 ◼   ► I know.

00:48:53 ◼   ► I know this is podcasting theater, that's what it is.

00:48:56 ◼   ► So I'm sometimes known for my interviewing skills.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Yes.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Will you allow me to conduct a mini-interview?

00:49:05 ◼   ► What you like to be known for are your interviewing skills.

00:49:09 ◼   ► Well now, I mean you were one of my favorite guests on Command Space and Inquisitive and

00:49:14 ◼   ► I can't do it anymore.

00:49:16 ◼   ► You can no longer be a guest on my show.

00:49:18 ◼   ► I've retired.

00:49:19 ◼   ► I have to do it here.

00:49:21 ◼   ► So we didn't talk about six colors at all last week.

00:49:24 ◼   ► No, I wasn't sure whether it would be up by the time the podcast posted, so I didn't want

00:49:29 ◼   ► to commit.

00:49:30 ◼   ► I did mention that the old saying about bleeding six colors, but I didn't actually say that

00:49:35 ◼   ► that was my site.

00:49:36 ◼   ► That was like a little Easter egg.

00:49:37 ◼   ► That was a nice nod.

00:49:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:39 ◼   ► I like that.

00:49:40 ◼   ► I had a big smile on my face when you said it.

00:49:43 ◼   ► So I want to talk about not just six colors, but the shift in your day-to-day life.

00:49:51 ◼   ► So this has been your first week ever as an independent writer, right?

00:49:57 ◼   ► Yeah, it's day four now, essentially, my work day, day four of working in my garage doing this as my job.

00:50:06 ◼   ► How's it been?

00:50:09 ◼   ► Well, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. That's the thing, is that we had the Apple event, then the IDG layoff,

00:50:17 ◼   ► and then I very rapidly was like doing,

00:50:22 ◼   ► well then I was writing my iPhone review

00:50:25 ◼   ► and we did our first episode and I went to XOXO

00:50:30 ◼   ► and I finished my iPhone review and I came home

00:50:33 ◼   ► and the iPhone embargo's dropped and I launched the website

00:50:37 ◼   ► and then I had three days where I was sort of like

00:50:41 ◼   ► doing things with the website, writing articles,

00:50:43 ◼   ► fixing things in the HTML and all of that.

00:50:45 ◼   ► So it's too early to tell,

00:50:48 ◼   ► 'cause this is literally like day four

00:50:50 ◼   ► of what would be considered a normal day for me.

00:50:52 ◼   ► It's been a lot of fun though.

00:50:54 ◼   ► I've said in a few places on my statement

00:50:57 ◼   ► when I left Macworld that it had been

00:50:59 ◼   ► a tough couple of years, I hadn't really been happy,

00:51:02 ◼   ► and I hadn't been doing the things

00:51:03 ◼   ► that I really loved at the job.

00:51:05 ◼   ► And I can say that so far.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I get out of bed in the morning

00:51:09 ◼   ► and I have none of those feelings of like,

00:51:10 ◼   ► oh God, I gotta grip my teeth,

00:51:14 ◼   ► I gotta get through this, it's another day,

00:51:17 ◼   ► I gotta go into the office.

00:51:18 ◼   ► And that's just gone, those feelings are gone.

00:51:21 ◼   ► Now, give it a few weeks and we'll see if they come back

00:51:24 ◼   ► and like, oh, I can't believe I gotta go to the garage now

00:51:26 ◼   ► and start working.

00:51:27 ◼   ► But for now it's just sort of a glee of like,

00:51:28 ◼   ► I get to go out and work and write things and find links

00:51:33 ◼   ► and talk to people on the internet and do podcasts.

00:51:35 ◼   ► And I'm excited about that.

00:51:37 ◼   ► But I'm still trying to find a rhythm and a schedule

00:51:42 ◼   ► that works for me.

00:51:43 ◼   ► and it's a brand new thing.

00:51:46 ◼   ► So I'm gonna learn a lot about what to do

00:51:49 ◼   ► and what not to do.

00:51:49 ◼   ► And a lot of this is experimental and exploratory right now

00:51:52 ◼   ► 'cause it's day four.

00:51:54 ◼   ► This is the first full week of me doing this.

00:52:00 ◼   ► So we'll see how it goes.

00:52:02 ◼   ► I'm gonna learn a lot.

00:52:03 ◼   ► I'm just open to the fact that I'm gonna learn things

00:52:06 ◼   ► that are completely unexpected of like,

00:52:09 ◼   ► oh, turns out this sort of thing is good

00:52:10 ◼   ► and this sort of thing I should never ever ever do.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And I look forward to that.

00:52:14 ◼   ► - What's it been like to get back into writing every day?

00:52:20 ◼   ► Because I think I can probably assume

00:52:23 ◼   ► that you weren't writing every day when you were at IDG.

00:52:27 ◼   ► I assume you were also doing a lot of administrative work

00:52:31 ◼   ► and meetings and like planning and things like that.

00:52:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, I kept the Apple articles

00:52:39 ◼   ► and occasionally I would write other stories

00:52:41 ◼   ► just to keep myself sane.

00:52:42 ◼   ► But most of my job was meetings

00:52:44 ◼   ► and talking to other editors.

00:52:45 ◼   ► And the way I phrased it,

00:52:46 ◼   ► I think when I announced my departure was,

00:52:49 ◼   ► I was managing the people who managed the people

00:52:51 ◼   ► who managed the people who wrote articles.

00:52:53 ◼   ► And that was just, you know,

00:52:54 ◼   ► and even when I was EIC at Macworld,

00:52:57 ◼   ► I was doing a lot less of that stuff

00:53:00 ◼   ► than because I was managing,

00:53:02 ◼   ► and it's not just managing,

00:53:04 ◼   ► it's also that there were other people there

00:53:06 ◼   ► to do those things.

00:53:07 ◼   ► So like, I don't have any,

00:53:08 ◼   ► on Six Colors, I don't have any comprehensive

00:53:10 ◼   ► iOS 8 coverage right now.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And the number one reason for that is

00:53:14 ◼   ► that this has been a crazy couple of weeks

00:53:16 ◼   ► and I had to do the iPhone review and prioritize that.

00:53:18 ◼   ► But number two reason is,

00:53:20 ◼   ► Dan Morin wrote that review for Macworld.

00:53:22 ◼   ► And so I've spent, you know, that was a delegation thing.

00:53:26 ◼   ► That was, Dan's gonna do that.

00:53:28 ◼   ► And so, you know, when you're surrounded

00:53:32 ◼   ► by talented people like that,

00:53:33 ◼   ► you end up not writing articles

00:53:36 ◼   ► because you can't write all the articles

00:53:38 ◼   ► and because you've got great people

00:53:39 ◼   ► to write those articles anyway.

00:53:41 ◼   ► And so, yeah, you end up becoming removed

00:53:44 ◼   ► from the writing part of it.

00:53:46 ◼   ► And that didn't make me happy because I like writing.

00:53:50 ◼   ► I like editing too, and that's something

00:53:52 ◼   ► I'm not doing right now,

00:53:53 ◼   ► because I'm just writing for myself.

00:53:55 ◼   ► But it's nice to get back to writing

00:53:58 ◼   ► and to spread out a little bit in terms of the voice

00:54:02 ◼   ► and have it be me, because a lot of the stuff that I wrote,

00:54:05 ◼   ► I could seep through, but it was also Macworld saying this thing.

00:54:10 ◼   ► And I'm trying to establish Six Colors as being me.

00:54:14 ◼   ► And I've got some guest writers who've come in already.

00:54:16 ◼   ► Dan Frakes and Dan Warren both wrote something last week, but it's my place.

00:54:21 ◼   ► And I want my interests and personality to come through because when I look at

00:54:26 ◼   ► sites like Daring Fireball and The Loop, John Gruber and Jim Downerimple,

00:54:31 ◼   ► their personalities come through there.

00:54:33 ◼   ► and I think one of the reasons people like those sites,

00:54:35 ◼   ► who read those sites, is because they're reading a person

00:54:38 ◼   ► and including their quirks and interests,

00:54:42 ◼   ► rather than having it be totally flat.

00:54:44 ◼   ► So it's been fun, it's been fun,

00:54:46 ◼   ► but I totally recognize that I've got a lot more to learn

00:54:50 ◼   ► about how to do this.

00:54:52 ◼   ► - You say about the sort of the personal aspect.

00:54:57 ◼   ► I'm assuming that when you ever did write things

00:55:01 ◼   ► Macworld or TechHive that you had to conform to the style guide in a way?

00:55:07 ◼   ► Sure, and sometimes you internalize that. I mean, I'm sure I could have ignored it

00:55:11 ◼   ► and gotten away with it. Yeah. You internalize it and you think to

00:55:15 ◼   ► yourself, "I'm doing this under the banner of Macworld and I need to follow the..."

00:55:18 ◼   ► You know, sometimes I would leave out strange, weird references because I just

00:55:24 ◼   ► figured nobody needed to see that or they would take it out anyway. Sometimes

00:55:28 ◼   ► Sometimes I'd leave them in and then an editor would take them out and that's been one of

00:55:32 ◼   ► the pleasures of the last week is putting those references in and they just are there

00:55:37 ◼   ► and people can take them or leave them but I've done I've had a few of those.

00:55:43 ◼   ► I think I did a yeah I've done a couple of those little jokes and things and I think

00:55:48 ◼   ► that's fun and it adds to it but those are not necessarily things I would have done in

00:55:51 ◼   ► Macworld.

00:55:52 ◼   ► And you mentioned about your own personality coming through and the things that you write

00:55:57 ◼   ► about.

00:55:58 ◼   ► obviously people know that you are a big fan of pop culture stuff, you know, they see

00:56:03 ◼   ► that with your work at the incomparable. Will you be writing about these things

00:56:07 ◼   ► at Six Colors or are we gonna see other aspects of your

00:56:10 ◼   ► personality here? I want some of that to come through at Six Colors

00:56:17 ◼   ► but what I especially at first want to do is establish that I am

00:56:21 ◼   ► writing about technology and I'm writing about Apple and I will also write about

00:56:25 ◼   ► other stuff. In fact, the first post that I did was a--before this I launched as a

00:56:29 ◼   ► test--was a link post about this Smithsonian Magazine article about the

00:56:33 ◼   ► original Star Trek USS Enterprise model being refurbished. So I do intend for

00:56:38 ◼   ► some of that to be in there, but I also don't want to turn it into a link blog

00:56:43 ◼   ► of sci-fi links, because I want to cater to the audience that, you know,

00:56:48 ◼   ► cares about the tech stuff too, and maybe also cares about that, and I don't want

00:56:52 ◼   ► to send the wrong signal early on that this is going to be super nerdy, you know, sci-fi

00:56:59 ◼   ► links with the occasional Apple post because I just, I feel like that's the wrong balance,

00:57:04 ◼   ► but I have to find that balance. I mean, I made the decision not to turn the incomparable

00:57:08 ◼   ► into a pop culture and technology podcast network and do my own podcasts about technology

00:57:15 ◼   ► there. I, instead I talked to you and we're going to do Clockwise and this show here at

00:57:20 ◼   ► relay because I thought it was a different audience and a different kind

00:57:25 ◼   ► of thing and I kind of wanted a little separation. Six colors is different and I

00:57:29 ◼   ► don't know quite where it's gonna go. I'd like to write about the geekier stuff

00:57:34 ◼   ► there a little bit too and let my my love of that stuff show through but

00:57:38 ◼   ► right now I kind of feel like I'm taking it easy well and we'll see how it goes.

00:57:43 ◼   ► I just don't want to go overboard with it.

00:57:46 ◼   ► How long have your days been so far?

00:57:48 ◼   ► Are you working one hour, 25 hours?

00:57:52 ◼   ► How much like--

00:57:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:53 ◼   ► - Well, this has been a weird week

00:57:57 ◼   ► because of all the travel and the embargo

00:58:00 ◼   ► and things like that.

00:58:01 ◼   ► I try to do, this is what my wife and I have been talking

00:58:05 ◼   ► about is how do you set up a schedule

00:58:06 ◼   ► for something like this?

00:58:08 ◼   ► 'Cause ultimately, we'd like to be able to plan out

00:58:11 ◼   ► sort of like when am I going in and starting work

00:58:15 ◼   ► and when am I finishing?

00:58:16 ◼   ► And I already had some issues with that

00:58:20 ◼   ► because I would come home from the office

00:58:21 ◼   ► and do the incomparable.

00:58:22 ◼   ► So I was working evenings doing the incomparable already.

00:58:27 ◼   ► So we're still working it out.

00:58:28 ◼   ► Ideally, I get up in the morning,

00:58:31 ◼   ► the kids are getting ready to go to school.

00:58:33 ◼   ► I make a pot of tea.

00:58:35 ◼   ► The kids are rushing out the door.

00:58:36 ◼   ► At some point between seven and eight,

00:58:39 ◼   ► I am going into the garage and starting to work.

00:58:44 ◼   ► And then in the evening, at some point I come back,

00:58:49 ◼   ► I emerge and I'm trying to find time to do that.

00:58:53 ◼   ► And also I will leave in the afternoon

00:58:55 ◼   ► to pick up my kids at school and things like that

00:58:57 ◼   ► if I need to.

00:58:58 ◼   ► So I'm still trying to explore it

00:59:00 ◼   ► depending on what's going on with the incomparable.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Sometimes there are long evenings,

00:59:06 ◼   ► but it's still settling down too.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Like I'm still making changes to the site,

00:59:10 ◼   ► like Facebook tags and RSS tags and accessibility CSS

00:59:15 ◼   ► and things like that that I just need to do

00:59:17 ◼   ► because I'm building the site and the site templates

00:59:19 ◼   ► from scratch more or less, which is fun.

00:59:21 ◼   ► But that's also like site maintenance

00:59:24 ◼   ► that I imagine will become less of an issue going forward.

00:59:27 ◼   ► But right now it's an issue because the site's brand new.

00:59:30 ◼   ► So balancing the time of like writing

00:59:32 ◼   ► versus posting links versus updating templates

00:59:37 ◼   ► versus emailing people is all in there too.

00:59:41 ◼   ► - What have been some of the other challenges

00:59:44 ◼   ► you faced this week?

00:59:45 ◼   ► - I don't know, I mean, we've sort of talked about it.

00:59:51 ◼   ► It's trying to find a balance, trying to figure out

00:59:54 ◼   ► what to write and what not to write.

00:59:57 ◼   ► What constitutes a story and what doesn't?

00:59:59 ◼   ► What constitutes a link and what doesn't?

01:00:01 ◼   ► What should I be linking to?

01:00:02 ◼   ► How do I do that?

01:00:04 ◼   ► I have a whole list of stories of things I wanna write,

01:00:06 ◼   ► There's a question of, are those 300 word stories?

01:00:09 ◼   ► Are those a thousand word stories?

01:00:11 ◼   ► How do I balance out the topics?

01:00:13 ◼   ► What are people interested in reading?

01:00:15 ◼   ► A big one for me, and I'm gonna write about this

01:00:18 ◼   ► because it's a big one for me is finding links in RSS.

01:00:22 ◼   ► Because doing this job on my own,

01:00:26 ◼   ► I need to be tied in with lots of sites

01:00:28 ◼   ► that have interesting things that I might wanna link to.

01:00:32 ◼   ► And I don't use RSS.

01:00:34 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:00:35 ◼   ► this is a problem.

01:00:36 ◼   ► Most of the links I get are from Twitter

01:00:38 ◼   ► and I actually posted a couple of links today,

01:00:40 ◼   ► both of which came from Twitter,

01:00:42 ◼   ► but I realized that I probably need to do

01:00:45 ◼   ► some more curation directly within RSS.

01:00:48 ◼   ► And I kind of declared,

01:00:50 ◼   ► I didn't even declare RSS bankruptcy,

01:00:52 ◼   ► I like foreclosed on RSS

01:00:54 ◼   ► and they knocked over the house

01:00:57 ◼   ► and there's just an empty lot there now.

01:00:59 ◼   ► And now I'm saying, all right,

01:01:00 ◼   ► maybe I actually need to put in some effort

01:01:03 ◼   ► to curate those sources for links

01:01:07 ◼   ► so that six callers can have some good interesting links

01:01:09 ◼   ► and it's not just literally me posting links

01:01:12 ◼   ► that I read on Daring Fireball

01:01:13 ◼   ► 'cause that would be a really crappy site

01:01:16 ◼   ► because during, not because those links are bad

01:01:17 ◼   ► but because there's already a site that does that.

01:01:20 ◼   ► So that's something I'm grappling with

01:01:22 ◼   ► is trying to figure out

01:01:23 ◼   ► and I'm gonna write about it eventually.

01:01:24 ◼   ► There's the different feed providers

01:01:26 ◼   ► and they're the different clients

01:01:27 ◼   ► and I'm literally a babe in the woods.

01:01:29 ◼   ► You know, net news wire three was sort of my end

01:01:33 ◼   ► with RSS, so things are different now,

01:01:36 ◼   ► and I'm gonna have to figure that one out.

01:01:38 ◼   ► So that's something I'm grappling with,

01:01:40 ◼   ► is I had people who collected links for me before, sort of,

01:01:45 ◼   ► and that's sort of my job now,

01:01:46 ◼   ► and I need to figure out a strategy there.

01:01:51 ◼   ► - Do you wanna know something quite interesting?

01:01:52 ◼   ► That this is actually, I think this is actually

01:01:55 ◼   ► extremely ironic.

01:01:57 ◼   ► So I gave up on RSS about maybe six months ago,

01:02:02 ◼   ► I just couldn't do it anymore.

01:02:05 ◼   ► I didn't want to, I subscribed to way too many feeds

01:02:08 ◼   ► and it's getting too much.

01:02:10 ◼   ► Then we started doing this show

01:02:13 ◼   ► and sort of thinking about what my role is on this show

01:02:17 ◼   ► and finding the things that we talk about.

01:02:20 ◼   ► I thought, I can't miss any of Jason's articles.

01:02:24 ◼   ► I can't miss them, I have to see them because--

01:02:28 ◼   ► - You do.

01:02:29 ◼   ► This is true of everybody.

01:02:31 ◼   ► - But especially if you.

01:02:32 ◼   ► - But especially, I figure one of my key jobs

01:02:35 ◼   ► is to read the stuff that you post

01:02:38 ◼   ► because that will form a lot of what we talk about

01:02:40 ◼   ► on this show. - Sure.

01:02:42 ◼   ► - So I've started using RSS again because of you.

01:02:45 ◼   ► - Oh, well see, I'm right there with you.

01:02:47 ◼   ► I'm right there with you, it's a challenge.

01:02:49 ◼   ► - I've subscribed to like 15 maximum feeds.

01:02:54 ◼   ► I don't think it's that many.

01:02:55 ◼   ► And like, I'm also finding it better.

01:02:58 ◼   ► I'm pleased I've done it because it's helping me

01:02:59 ◼   ► the other shows as well so like I'm read I'm making sure that now I read

01:03:03 ◼   ► everything that Federico writes and everything that Steven writes because I

01:03:05 ◼   ► just followed their accounts on Twitter like right for their sites but I would

01:03:10 ◼   ► miss things or I would just scan through them but now I'm actively reading them

01:03:14 ◼   ► all and when I was away last week I used instapaper to send a bunch of

01:03:19 ◼   ► articles to my Kindle and I was reading I read Federico's fantastic iOS 8 review

01:03:25 ◼   ► on the Kindle. I'm quite happy with the decision.

01:03:29 ◼   ► All right, good, good. Well that's something I'm

01:03:33 ◼   ► working toward now. That's actually one of those workflow things, is I

01:03:36 ◼   ► need to make time to read and find ways to find interesting things

01:03:41 ◼   ► to read so that I know what people are

01:03:45 ◼   ► talking about and thinking about and that that can inform me and that's part

01:03:50 ◼   ► of my challenge too. Just

01:03:52 ◼   ► Just having building up that ways to collect that stuff.

01:03:56 ◼   ► - Any high points from the week?

01:03:59 ◼   ► Anything specific that jumps out to you as like a big check?

01:04:03 ◼   ► - Well, as somebody who's started a new website,

01:04:06 ◼   ► getting, like I said, having Nile post that article

01:04:09 ◼   ► on the verge after I launched six colors

01:04:12 ◼   ► with a prominent link in an editor's note

01:04:14 ◼   ► at the top of it to six colors

01:04:17 ◼   ► and seeing that drive traffic was great

01:04:19 ◼   ► because you've got to start, you know,

01:04:21 ◼   ► it doesn't matter if people know you,

01:04:23 ◼   ► a new domain with nothing on it is nobody goes there.

01:04:26 ◼   ► It's zero, it starts with zero traffic

01:04:28 ◼   ► and it is hard to build an audience for something new.

01:04:31 ◼   ► And so that was great.

01:04:32 ◼   ► And then John Gruber late in the week linked to me

01:04:36 ◼   ► from "Daring Fireball" and that was fantastic.

01:04:39 ◼   ► And again, you know, you start from zero,

01:04:42 ◼   ► any exposure you can get where people can say,

01:04:44 ◼   ► "Oh, this exists."

01:04:45 ◼   ► And then maybe I wanna read that is a huge deal

01:04:50 ◼   ► because you are, no matter who you are

01:04:52 ◼   ► and where you come from, that site that you launch

01:04:55 ◼   ► starts with zero traffic and zero page rank on Google.

01:04:58 ◼   ► And nobody knows the name and nobody knows anything

01:05:01 ◼   ► about it existing and it's in no bookmarks

01:05:04 ◼   ► and it's in no RSS readers.

01:05:06 ◼   ► So getting people to link,

01:05:09 ◼   ► oh, also I should mention Techmeme.

01:05:11 ◼   ► My notes story about the review I wrote for Macworld

01:05:17 ◼   ► got linked on Techmeme on the day that the site launched.

01:05:20 ◼   ► So the site had been up for about an hour

01:05:22 ◼   ► and I was on Techmeme's front page

01:05:24 ◼   ► with Jason Snell, six colors.

01:05:26 ◼   ► And I don't know if it was that Gabe Rivera

01:05:28 ◼   ► or somebody else at Techmeme,

01:05:29 ◼   ► I don't know how that happened,

01:05:30 ◼   ► but that was also awesome because really at this point,

01:05:33 ◼   ► I'm trying to find an audience and remind people

01:05:37 ◼   ► who might know me from somewhere else

01:05:39 ◼   ► that this is what I'm doing now

01:05:41 ◼   ► and just get in people's feed readers

01:05:43 ◼   ► on their bookmarks and in their Twitter feeds. So those were all huge. For the first week,

01:05:49 ◼   ► I'd say those were the high points is people with great audiences linking to me and saying

01:05:55 ◼   ► this thing exists now. Were you worried? Like, you know, and I don't mean this in like a jokey way,

01:06:05 ◼   ► but you are still Jason Snow.

01:06:08 ◼   ► Yes, as ever.

01:06:11 ◼   ► You know, and like so that does, it does help, right?

01:06:15 ◼   ► Been that way for a while now, like 43 years or so, yeah.

01:06:18 ◼   ► Well, did you have concern? You know, did you think...

01:06:24 ◼   ► I love the past tense of this, I have concern, I have ongoing concern.

01:06:28 ◼   ► Okay, that people wouldn't find you or that

01:06:31 ◼   ► the site wouldn't go, you know, it's...

01:06:36 ◼   ► I've seen it, I've seen this happen before where, you know,

01:06:39 ◼   ► just because, uh, it's just, it's easy to lose track of people and, and starting

01:06:44 ◼   ► websites, having started some websites for IDG, starting websites is hard.

01:06:49 ◼   ► People don't know they exist. I still have people, there was a guy on

01:06:52 ◼   ► Twitter yesterday who, who said, "I didn't realize that you were doing all these

01:06:57 ◼   ► other, other podcasts at The Incomparable. I

01:06:59 ◼   ► thought you were just doing the incomparable. It's like, I don't know how many different ways I could

01:07:03 ◼   ► have communicated that, and yet he just completely missed it until yesterday. And so, you know,

01:07:09 ◼   ► you can lay your plans and publicize and all of those things, but the fact is, any transition,

01:07:16 ◼   ► you're going to lose people and potentially a lot of people. So you've got to try to be as diligent

01:07:22 ◼   ► as possible to communicate that. And, you know, honestly, it would have been much easier on me

01:07:29 ◼   ► if I could have gone to XOXO after the layoff and not worked on an iPhone

01:07:38 ◼   ► review there and then come home afterward not having worked on an iPhone

01:07:42 ◼   ► review or launched a website and taken some time to deal with some of my

01:07:46 ◼   ► burnout of my couple years at IDG that have been the rougher years and to spend

01:07:52 ◼   ► some more time with my family and to read some books and to just decompress a

01:07:56 ◼   ► little bit and I didn't do that and in fact I was home from XOXO for a good two

01:08:01 ◼   ► hours and I'd launched a brand new website and why did I do that? I did that

01:08:05 ◼   ► because of the timing because the iPhone release, the fact I had the iPhones in

01:08:09 ◼   ► advance, we were doing our podcast, all of these things lined up. It was an

01:08:13 ◼   ► opportunity for me to expose the new stuff I was doing to an audience that

01:08:19 ◼   ► was going to be paying attention at that moment and if I let that moment go I

01:08:24 ◼   ► I might never get that audience again.

01:08:28 ◼   ► And so I had to do it.

01:08:29 ◼   ► So I did it and it might not be what I would have chosen,

01:08:34 ◼   ► but given the cards I was dealt,

01:08:36 ◼   ► I think it was the thing I needed to do

01:08:38 ◼   ► because you risk just being lost in the shuffle.

01:08:41 ◼   ► There are a lot of voices out there

01:08:43 ◼   ► and momentum and inertia is a powerful force.

01:08:48 ◼   ► It's just like, I've been reading these sites,

01:08:50 ◼   ► I'll continue to read these sites.

01:08:51 ◼   ► And so to make some noise and I've been very happy,

01:08:53 ◼   ► people said very nice things and people have linked to me and that's actually been amazing.

01:08:57 ◼   ► I'm really grateful that people have been so nice.

01:09:01 ◼   ► But I felt like I needed to take those steps and not just take a break and not do anything

01:09:06 ◼   ► for a few weeks because the timing was too good and I, you know, I risked giving away

01:09:12 ◼   ► that audience and maybe never finding it again.

01:09:16 ◼   ► What's it been like working without an editor?

01:09:19 ◼   ► I'm assuming that you, well you mentioned it actually, that you worked with editors

01:09:22 ◼   ► when you wrote pieces at Macworld. I'm assuming you don't have an editor now, it's just you?

01:09:28 ◼   ► It's just me. Well, we all have an editor, it's the internet, and many of us have Chris

01:09:33 ◼   ► Pepper as an editor. If you don't know Chris Pepper, he's a guy, I've had pizza with him

01:09:38 ◼   ► in New York, he is an obsessive reader of tech stuff, he saves it all to Instapaper

01:09:42 ◼   ► and reads it, and then he finds mistakes and emails them to you, which we refer to as getting

01:09:47 ◼   ► peppered.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Who's me?

01:09:49 ◼   ► - Who's me?

01:09:50 ◼   ► - And I was, oh, everybody who works at Macworld,

01:09:53 ◼   ► everybody who works at Tidbits, Chris gets around,

01:09:56 ◼   ► but I got peppered on my first day at Six Colors,

01:10:00 ◼   ► and that was, I was honored to be peppered.

01:10:03 ◼   ► And I do read, you know, I spell check everything,

01:10:05 ◼   ► and I read everything in preview, and then you post it,

01:10:09 ◼   ► and then there are things that are wrong,

01:10:10 ◼   ► and you have to change them.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And that's different, 'cause I did like running,

01:10:17 ◼   ► doing a sanity check on articles at Macworld

01:10:19 ◼   ► where it was literally like, here's a preview URL,

01:10:22 ◼   ► can you give this a read before I push it live?

01:10:23 ◼   ► And I don't have that now.

01:10:25 ◼   ► So I'm trying to spend a little more time with it,

01:10:27 ◼   ► but they're gonna be errors because I'm just a guy.

01:10:29 ◼   ► I always send IMs to Gruber when he posts things

01:10:32 ◼   ► where there's a, if I see a mistake

01:10:34 ◼   ► or he's got a bad markdown link or something,

01:10:36 ◼   ► I'll just send him an IM saying,

01:10:38 ◼   ► I noticed this and he fixes it and says, thanks.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And it doesn't happen that often, but it happens.

01:10:43 ◼   ► It happens to all of us.

01:10:43 ◼   ► So it's different and I'm trying to pay,

01:10:48 ◼   ► I'm adding cycles to it.

01:10:49 ◼   ► It used to be, I just paste it in and say,

01:10:51 ◼   ► hey, somebody look at this.

01:10:52 ◼   ► And now I paste it in and then I read it in the editor

01:10:56 ◼   ► and then I preview it and I read it in the web browser

01:10:59 ◼   ► and then I post it.

01:11:00 ◼   ► And then there's an amazing thing that happens,

01:11:02 ◼   ► which is as soon as the story is live,

01:11:04 ◼   ► even though you were previewing it in the template

01:11:07 ◼   ► all along, as soon as it's live,

01:11:08 ◼   ► then you see all the mistakes, as soon as it's live.

01:11:11 ◼   ► So that's been different.

01:11:13 ◼   ► But it's fine, it's fine.

01:11:14 ◼   ► I've been pretty comfortable writing stuff.

01:11:18 ◼   ► I don't feel like my stuff needs a major overhaul

01:11:21 ◼   ► or anything and I think people are seeing on six colors

01:11:23 ◼   ► that this is what I sound like.

01:11:26 ◼   ► And I've sounded like this for a while now.

01:11:28 ◼   ► I just, I'm a pretty good speller, so.

01:11:31 ◼   ► But there will be mistakes and that's gonna be weird.

01:11:35 ◼   ► - Do you know if Chris Pepper is @repep on Twitter?

01:11:38 ◼   ► - That's him.

01:11:40 ◼   ► - Found him.

01:11:40 ◼   ► - Repep or backward on Twitter.

01:11:42 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah, of course it is.

01:11:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, Repep.

01:11:45 ◼   ► And that's, yes, he is the internet's copy editor.

01:11:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:11:52 ◼   ► - How's the reception been, like in general?

01:11:57 ◼   ► I'm assuming you've received lots of emails and stuff.

01:12:00 ◼   ► - People have been very kind, I've received lots of emails.

01:12:02 ◼   ► I got a lot of emails when I left Macworld,

01:12:04 ◼   ► and then I got another batch with six colors

01:12:06 ◼   ► where people said, "I'm glad you're doing this."

01:12:07 ◼   ► So yeah, I felt bad about Macworld,

01:12:09 ◼   ► I like reading your stuff, I'm looking forward to it.

01:12:11 ◼   ► And it's all very kind and I hope I can live up

01:12:13 ◼   ► to their expectations for me.

01:12:15 ◼   ► But it's all been very nice.

01:12:16 ◼   ► I have not yet had my first negative interaction

01:12:21 ◼   ► where somebody says something absolutely awful

01:12:23 ◼   ► about something I've written or calls me a name

01:12:26 ◼   ► or says something about, I had that for my temporary site,

01:12:30 ◼   ► for the Snell world, just my announcement,

01:12:32 ◼   ► that somebody was a jerk about that site.

01:12:35 ◼   ► But it's coming and then I'll know I've truly,

01:12:38 ◼   ► well and truly made it when somebody's a jerk about something that I've written.

01:12:43 ◼   ► But it hasn't happened yet. People have been very nice.

01:12:45 ◼   ► Ironically, it was a guy who said, "Well, no wonder Macworld went out of business when

01:12:50 ◼   ► Jason Snell's personal site isn't responsive and doesn't load properly on an iPhone."

01:12:55 ◼   ► I saw that.

01:12:56 ◼   ► And that was great because, one, oh, if I had any control over what the Macworld website

01:13:01 ◼   ► looked like or any influence over it whatsoever when there was a large technical organization

01:13:07 ◼   ► running it and I yeah not not not my not my part of the business all I could do

01:13:13 ◼   ► was try to encourage them but I was very limited and then the real irony is that

01:13:18 ◼   ► the reason that snow world calm wasn't responsive is because I was busy

01:13:21 ◼   ► building all the six color stuff to be responsive and I didn't backport it to

01:13:26 ◼   ► snow world because I was busy building my new thing and hadn't thought about

01:13:29 ◼   ► the fact that I needed to move the CSS back because it's on the same templates

01:13:33 ◼   ► basically and so then that guy was a jerk and I told him he was a jerk and

01:13:36 ◼   ► then I made it responsive. So yeah, thanks jerk. In his face, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the

01:13:44 ◼   ► connection was just being... that was why he was a jerk. It's not that he was wrong

01:13:47 ◼   ► that the site should have been better on the iPhone. He was wrong because

01:13:52 ◼   ► he was making lots of connections that are not accurate to make a jerky point

01:13:57 ◼   ► and be insulting. So you know that's why he was a jerk. But he was right that

01:14:01 ◼   ► the site should have been responsive and like five minutes later it was. You bought

01:14:07 ◼   ► the correct URL this week. So yes, six colors is spelled out and and somebody

01:14:15 ◼   ► was asking in the chat room if I if I looked at the numeral six colors and I

01:14:19 ◼   ► did it I think it cost like 1,500 bucks so I haven't bought it but I did buy six

01:14:25 ◼   ► colors with color spelled with a U dot com. I didn't buy sixcolors.co.uk or anything like

01:14:32 ◼   ► that but I did buy S-I-X-C-O-L-O-U-R-S dot com and it redirects to the correct spelling

01:14:38 ◼   ► without the U. I have hopes in the future of creating a site that dynamically loads

01:14:44 ◼   ► the existing Six Colors site and replaces all of the words with Britishisms and I'll

01:14:50 ◼   ► let you know if that happens.

01:14:51 ◼   ► I can't even...

01:14:55 ◼   ► I'm sure that... There may be flags and pictures of the queen and things put in

01:14:59 ◼   ► there too at that point.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Right now it just redirects to the regular six color site.

01:15:04 ◼   ► I did it for you, Myke.

01:15:05 ◼   ► Thank you.

01:15:06 ◼   ► You know, I was thinking about just buying you the domain.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Starting like a kick star or something and getting you the domain.

01:15:14 ◼   ► So thank you so much

01:15:16 ◼   ► for...

01:15:18 ◼   ► basically because

01:15:20 ◼   ► I feel like it was done for me because I kept typing the URL incorrectly.

01:15:24 ◼   ► That was a big thing.

01:15:27 ◼   ► I guess I'm going to say it was good for you too.

01:15:30 ◼   ► Because it means that people that are in--

01:15:33 ◼   ► People bookmark things.

01:15:36 ◼   ► I don't think people type out URLs very often,

01:15:38 ◼   ► but that seemed like a natural.

01:15:40 ◼   ► And if I could buy the numeral six domains cheaply,

01:15:43 ◼   ► I would probably do that too.

01:15:45 ◼   ► But last time I checked, I think they were really pricey,

01:15:47 ◼   ► and I didn't think it was worth the money.

01:15:49 ◼   ► sixcolors.com wasn't that expensive with the U.

01:15:51 ◼   ► And so, so yeah, there it is.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Rule Britannia, USA, USA.

01:15:57 ◼   ► We are all, we're all coming together.

01:15:58 ◼   ► - And you're really gunning for me now

01:16:00 ◼   ► with this podcast stuff.

01:16:02 ◼   ► You have another one.

01:16:05 ◼   ► - There are lots of podcasts out there

01:16:07 ◼   ► and I'm not the only person who is on lots of podcasts.

01:16:09 ◼   ► I'm somebody who's on lots of podcasts,

01:16:12 ◼   ► but so were you and there are others, but yeah,

01:16:15 ◼   ► I, one of the things I wanted to do

01:16:17 ◼   ► when I made this decision to leave was do some dust some things off that were

01:16:22 ◼   ► podcasts that I wanted to do and didn't have the time and so one of those was to

01:16:26 ◼   ► do a tech podcast and that's this one and one of those was I know that the guy

01:16:31 ◼   ► who's the chief TV critic at The Hollywood Reporter and he's really good

01:16:34 ◼   ► on podcasts but he's not technically adept enough to do the produce the

01:16:39 ◼   ► podcast himself he needs somebody to help him with that and that's Tim Goodman

01:16:42 ◼   ► and so we're now doing a TV podcast together we're like every Friday we're

01:16:46 ◼   ► going to do a recording session and I'll edit it and post it and sort of like what you're

01:16:50 ◼   ► doing with me. And that was on my list and it's really his show that I'm sort of the

01:16:56 ◼   ► conductor of, sort of like how we work on this show. But I wanted to get his voice out

01:17:01 ◼   ► there and now I've got the time to do that that I didn't really have when I was working

01:17:07 ◼   ► during the day in San Francisco because his time was limited and my time was limited and

01:17:12 ◼   ► we couldn't find common times. So yeah, I'm doing, you know, I'm still doing stuff on

01:17:17 ◼   ► the incomparable and then I'm doing the two podcasts on Relay.

01:17:22 ◼   ► That's about the end of my interview. What do you like to be known for?

01:17:28 ◼   ► No, ask me later. Ask me later. It's too early. You already asked me that once this year.

01:17:34 ◼   ► You don't get to ask me again for a while. It's pretty different for you now though.

01:17:38 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. What do I like to be known for? I don't know. Am I known for anything? Known

01:17:42 ◼   ► for writing things and podcasting that people like, hopefully. Known for the world domination

01:17:48 ◼   ► of all podcasts. I swear I'm not going to be on every podcast ever. This was a very

01:17:52 ◼   ► weird week. I've had people say, "You're on every podcast right now." Yes, but in the

01:17:57 ◼   ► end I will only be on the podcast that I'm on and not like every other podcast.

01:18:01 ◼   ► That goes in cycles for people though. Like when Overcast came out, Marco was on every

01:18:07 ◼   ► podcast you know people have specific news right and that brings them to

01:18:12 ◼   ► podcasts and it also makes people more inclined to want to be on them well and

01:18:18 ◼   ► I want I do want people to also think of me and visit my site so I'm doing a

01:18:22 ◼   ► little bit it's a little bit like a book tour in that way I am talking to Leo

01:18:27 ◼   ► Laporte about being on his shows a little more often because I have the

01:18:31 ◼   ► time now and it's a half an hour drive there at Twit Studios or half an hour

01:18:35 ◼   ► for my house. So I'm hopefully going to be on Twit and MacBreak Weekly a little more often.

01:18:41 ◼   ► But yeah, this is what I'm doing is, some people were like, "Oh, so now you're going to just do

01:18:49 ◼   ► podcasts," or, "So now you're just going to do writing." And neither of those is accurate. My

01:18:54 ◼   ► goal right now, and again, this may change, my goal is to do tech writing and tech podcasting

01:19:02 ◼   ► and pop culture podcasting as all of those things,

01:19:06 ◼   ► as those are the things I do.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And from that, hopefully fashion some sort of a career

01:19:11 ◼   ► that allows me to pay my mortgage payment

01:19:13 ◼   ► and feed my kids and stuff like that.

01:19:15 ◼   ► And we'll see how it goes.

01:19:17 ◼   ► - There was a very brief moment there

01:19:20 ◼   ► where I thought you were saying

01:19:21 ◼   ► you wanted to do fashion writing?

01:19:22 ◼   ► - No.

01:19:25 ◼   ► - He was like, and fashion.

01:19:26 ◼   ► - And fashion. - A career.

01:19:27 ◼   ► - A career, yes. - I was like, oh, okay.

01:19:29 ◼   ► - And fashion. - We're going down

01:19:30 ◼   ► that route now.

01:19:31 ◼   ► going to do fashion writing, I'm going to do fashion designing, and you can just stay

01:19:34 ◼   ► tuned for my fall collection. I'll give you a hint though, how many colors do you think

01:19:40 ◼   ► will be in the collection?

01:19:42 ◼   ► Seven.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Yes, infrared is one of the colors. Anyway, yeah, so that's my ideas, you know, podcasts,

01:19:51 ◼   ► videos, writing, see what, this is the 21st century, you know, media is a different world

01:19:56 ◼   ► now and if I can find a way to make this all work, you know, we've talked about it before,

01:20:00 ◼   ► You know, your goal is to do this as your job.

01:20:04 ◼   ► And that's sort of been my goal, and I'm already at the point where I don't have that other

01:20:08 ◼   ► job, and that was sort of not my...

01:20:09 ◼   ► It was my direction, but ultimately the date and day of it were not my decision, but I

01:20:16 ◼   ► welcome it.

01:20:17 ◼   ► And so I'm on that side now of trying to make it work, and we'll see what happens.

01:20:23 ◼   ► If you would like to catch the show notes for this week's episode of Upgrade, then you

01:20:27 ◼   ► want to go to relay.fm/upgrade/2. This show records live every Monday at 12 p.m. Pacific

01:20:38 ◼   ► Time which is 3 p.m. Eastern Time and 7 p.m. GMT. We are @_upgradefm on Twitter. If you

01:20:51 ◼   ► want to get in contact with us you can also email us by going to relay.fm/upgrade and

01:20:57 ◼   ► you can hit the contact button and it will send us a lovely email. If you would like

01:21:03 ◼   ► to catch up with us personally, Jason is @jsnail on Twitter and I am @imike and don't forget

01:21:10 ◼   ► 6colors.com for all of Jason's fantastic writing all throughout the week and the weekends too

01:21:17 ◼   ► maybe sometimes. Weekends too? Do you work weekends now?

01:21:20 ◼   ► Well I'm still trying to figure, I'm trying to have some life work balance but I've been

01:21:24 ◼   ► putting some links up on the weekend of various things. I should mention also our theme song

01:21:29 ◼   ► is brought to you by the lovely and talented podcast composer extraordinaire Mr. Christopher

01:21:35 ◼   ► Breen. So thank you to Chris for doing the theme song.

01:21:39 ◼   ► I love the flavor of the incomparable in there. I can feel it. It's good.

01:21:44 ◼   ► It's that Breen magic that comes with podcast themes from Breen. Yeah.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Themes from Breen.

01:21:50 ◼   ► Yep, the Breen Themes. Coming soon to iTunes, Breen Themes.

01:21:54 ◼   ► We'll be back next week. Thank you so much for listening. Bye bye.

01:21:58 ◼   ► Bye everybody.

01:22:00 ◼   ► [Music]

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