Tomorrow - 221: Silver linings

Episode Date: December 23, 2020

This week, Josh and Ryan chat with Input's Guides Editor, Evan Rodgers, about all the horrors of 2020 and what we have to look forward to in 2021. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon? You're all on notice. Joe Biden? Hello. Happy holidays, Tony! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast is brought to you by our partners at Genesis, who are celebrating the release of their newest model, the first-ever Genesis GV80. Electric SUV for our modern times, the GV80 showcases the perfect blend of unexpected capability and sleek design. As this car is meant to get you anywhere you want to go with ease and style, with available all-wheel drive and 375 horsepower,

as well as the convenience of their complimentary Genesis service, valet. Genesis is here to exceed your every expectation and then some be the first to experience the new era of what a modern luxury SUV should be. Visit Genesis.com to learn more about the Genesis GV80 today, boundless by design. Hey, welcome to Tomorrow. I'm your host Josh Wittepolsky. Today on the podcast, we discuss Batman, monster trucks, and silver linings. I don't want to waste one minute.

Let's get ready to it. All right, we're back. Hello. We're better than ever. Ryan's here. But also, we have a special guest this week. Evan Rogers, the guy, the guy there he is right there, the guides editor for input magazine.net. No, it's

actually input mag.com. Evan has just come off a grueling holiday gift season and and and how do you feel? How do you feel about all that? I feel great. I mean the sort of holiday gift guide whole package, I feel like turned out really well. I feel like we really, like, found the gifts that our audience really was. We had a lot of style gifts, we had a lot of electric transportation gifts. We had a lot of outdoor and ultra light gifts, which made me very happy. Yeah. So I feel like we really did it. We did, we did.

Our goal was to not do gift guides that were like, everybody does this gift guide, so it's like gifts, holiday gifts, $25 and under. It's like, yeah, that's just like a really big... Socks! Get socks! They're silly, silly socks. I think yes, socks. I think like a really good one like

Cheyenne MacDonald our news editor wrote thoughtful gifts for your friend who's always in pain which I Thought is like a really cool like I we know you know people who are like who are sick or have pain And it's like a really interesting angle of like Just not trying to be like we did an audio gifts one that I thought was like really good. We kind of did it by budget, but it's very specific. Home audio instead of just like general audio gifts.

Like I thought that we did one about with e-bikes and scooters, which I thought was really good. Like I like GIFs. I like guides for buying things that are actually about specific like people or needs. Exactly. Yeah, as we all know, the best gift is one that demonstrates that you really,

truly understand the person receiving it. And we don't have a guide for every single person in the world right now. But especially with the chronic pain one, like there's a lot of empathy in that guide, and I, you know, I think that's really what sort of like makes our guide package really special, you know, is it like for the people that it does apply to, these are like especially the bike guide, like the, um, the writer we had on that really knew what she was talking about, and these are real, these are gifts for like real cyclists.

This is not like a, you know, like a poser gift guide. Like, you know, we looked up what people were looking at on Amazon for bikes. Yeah. BioWater bottle. Yeah. That's like the gaming one was really good. We did like a kind of ridiculous gaming gifts.

Some of them are ridiculous. Some of them are within reason. But you know, like stuff like, like we suggest like the prophecy gaming table, which is a, it's a table for playing D&D, if you're really serious. That's really cool. We have a bunch of this, we have this crazy racing setup, which is a race car.

It's like 100,000 euro or 100,000 pounds. That's literally an F1 car with no guts in it. That you just play racing. It's so awesome. Well, I mean, but you know, these are, I like them. These are gifts that I, you don't, you just don't see. There's also a weird shit. Like we have this like, this haptic vest.

Like I kind of want the haptic vest. I mean, the guys that drive me, the guys that drive me the most crazy are like, the best notebooks and it's like, it's like Adele and an Apple notebook and the Surface. And it's like, okay, thosele and an apple notebook and the surface and it's like okay there's there those are yep those are laptops you can buy like that's true like that's not really like a great gift in my opinion although I should say I did get Laura a new MacBook Air for Hanukkah and uh but I mean she did I got a gold I got the gold well it's funny because i was like

i was like um... well i bought one for myself and i was like talking about how good it is and she's been complaining about how her battery life her battery dies in like twenty minutes on her old macbook air it's like literally she just is constantly walk around the house with a charger trying to like set it up somewhere and uh... you know i was uh... well the new ones are coming out,

and they're supposed to be really good, and then I got one, I was like, these are really good. She was like, oh yeah, maybe Santa will get me one. I was like, oh fuck, like, I definitely should have bought her. Although I wasn't sure that they were actually good. I bought one after Ray wrote about it, and I was like, okay, like, I'm gonna get one of these and see. But, but she was like,

I mean, at the time, it was not exactly clear how it would shake out with the M1 chips, but it's... I thought that they would be fast and good at a few specific things, but that it would be a nightmare for a year to two years, sort of like when the intel switch happened, where it was just like software's not working and these weird plugins I used don't work, and if I do have to emulate something from like an old app, it's super slow and buggy, and now I feel like, you know, and that didn't actually in practice, I do have to emulate something from like an old app. It's super slow and buggy. And now I can't.

Yes, yes. And that didn't actually in practice. I have, no, knock on one. I have no bad experience. I'll tell you what works. I'll tell you what actually was the main thing that led me to the purchase, which was, well, that kind of pushed me over the edge was like,

somebody, maybe it was Ray, I can't remember who wrote, that like, it was like, oh yeah, like, I installed Dropbox, including it's like, Finder integration and it works fine. And it's like, wait, so you're telling me that even the little weird stuff that runs in the background that is like literally not written for this chip will work. And I don't have to be like, oh, my workflow

is now completely screwed up because- In some cases, if they work faster than they did on the machines, it has not. It is crazy how seamless it is to use. It is nothing like the last time Apple did this, the jump from PowerPC to X86. It's like that was a you could tell you were running this weird emulation and a lot of stuff didn't work and it broke a lot of plugins and all this, it broke a lot of like, it wouldn't have plugins extensions as they were known. But like, this is just like an absolute pleasure without any, to me, I've had no hitches whatsoever in the transition.

I snapped and got a new laptop when I realized that I was, that browsing the internet or we're doing work slacks or writing articles on my iPad was silent. It was cool to the touch. The battery lasted all day. It was just like a joy. And then when I brought out my like real computer with like a real chip in it and like a full operating system, it would be chugging along if I was in Slack. It was like chugging to do Google Docs and it was hot and it was like I was just I got to the point you get an hour battery life where I was just like,

it has to be better. Like, if it's running, whatever this iPad is running, it has to be better. And it's been, it's a huge step up. And honestly, okay, so for this episode, I really wanted to talk about, this is a good segue. I really wanted to talk about like the year in review, like the year of tech and sort of,

obviously the coronavirus has like hung over all of tech and all of social media and all of the internet and says it has hung over everything. But I do think there are some tech stories from this year that are landmark things that we're going to look back on and some of them are obvious and some of them aren't. And I think this switch over to in chip architecture for Apple is a huge deal. This is a huge C change moment in how computers are made, like how apps are distributed, because now you can run,

now games that run on the iPad and iPhone also run on the Mac. And like having a company that makes every part of their computer, like from the chips to the, like everything, but basically the displays, is a really big deal. And already Microsoft is taking steps to make its own ARM processors, because they

see the huge benefit of what Apple's been doing for decades, which is like custom designing the hardware and software to go together. And I think this is the moment where like we will begin to see the collapse of iOS and iPad OS into Mac OS. And sort of we're going to get what Apple is in the future because of this. And in some ways this was inevitable and it should have been more obvious that this was about to happen even before the rumors started because strategically this makes so much sense for Apple, and it's such a massive improvement for customers.

And I think it's gonna change the way that, you know, gadgets are made. Like, yeah, I think that it is a big step, and I will say that I think for Apple, just in the apps, just to take to abstract them out from everything else, we're about to see the end of the divide is going to be over pretty soon. And already you can run iPad apps and iPhone apps on the laptop.

And I think that increasingly, with all the pressure that's going on with about how these systems operate for users, I mean, we were talking about this in the last podcast about, you know, what you can run on your phone or your iPad. I think the challenge for Apple, of course, to be to make it make sense that there are these, like, that there is the range of products of, I mean, if the, I mean, for what I could tell, the only difference now between an iPad with a keyboard, like the keyboard attachment that I have, and the M1 MacBook that I have, is that Apple chose to put the more full featured version of the operating system on the Mac. You know? There's nothing stopping the iPad from running that exact

operating system in exactly the same way, or even some very... that like there's nothing stopping the iPad from running that exact operating system in exactly the same way or even some very enough it would even have more features because it has a touchscreen. Right so so now like to me the question is like what's going on like what are we doing here that you've got this this weird unnecessary I mean you have to tell me why you didn't put a touchscreen on this thing. I suppose they could say, well, ergonomically, we don't believe in it. But you know, Apple's always like, that's for the birds. And then like two years later, they're like, we did it.

Well, here's the thing. They could sell you a touch screen that snaps into a beautiful keyboard case. And it all runs full Mac operating software and you get the full experience or they could sell you two things. And they're very excited about the idea of selling you two things. Right, so there's a big question there, like what happens? I don't know. I think Microsoft has a different challenge now,

which is they have failed so far to demonstrate that they could make the transition away from Intel to ARM. And I tried this, by the way. You tried what? Yeah, so I have a Lenovo Windows on Snapdragon laptop using the Snapdragon 850. And when Microsoft very quietly,

I believe on a Friday, late on a Friday, you know, put out a blog post saying, you know, we have updated our emulator to work with 64-bit apps, which is, you know, you couldn't even find 32-bit apps to run on it before. I had to run like to edit video on that laptop. I had to find a version of Sony Vegas from eight years ago that still had a 32-bit version, and you can imagine how great that was. So I tried this new 64-bit update that they have, and it's trash.

You know what I mean? I can't even get DaVinci resolved to run. Because one of the plugins does just not compatible. But it's like the Surface X is, is it not a, yeah, it's like, it's a bad slow computer. Like the difference between the Surface X, the promise, the idea was supposed to be like, the Surface Pro X, wherever the last one that I reviewed,

like a year ago or something, it was supposed to be like, okay, we now, it's like a full feature Windows laptop, but it's gonna run for 10 hours battery and it's ARM architecture but it's going to run for 10 hours battery and it's arm architecture. And it's like, it was like slow and shitty and it didn't run all the apps and you couldn't like install Dropbox. And I would say that like what happened with the M1 Mac is like the opposite experience where it's like it literally lived up to the Apple joke, which is it just works.

It was everything just not only worked, but better than the other versions, right? And I think that Microsoft hasn't gotten there yet, and now has missed the opportunity. Yeah, I don't know. It's very, it's like, they're not, their architecture is not going to have a transition like we've seen with Apple. Do you think that the problem is, I mean, go with me for a second. They have Windows, a version of Windows that runs on Xbox that is pretty lightweight,

and a lot of the shit has been cut out of it. It just basically, it's an environment to run games. Yeah, to run direct x games. Then you have the Zoom HD, which was a great, a beautiful user interface. I mean, I'm certainly stunning Metro UI. Still to this day looks futuristic. It's like the song Toxic by Britney Spears.

Every time you see it or hear it, you're like, damn, that's still really good. Like that still works, it's modern. But was a failure, then they go to Windows Mobile, that also didn't, that failed to take off from multiple reasons we're not able to get into. But, all to say, Microsoft's most profitable and basically most well maintained

and longest supported piece of software is Windows and Windows is huge. Windows, it like has so much legacy and compatibility and so many options and so many drivers. And so many, it's just a clunky. We talked last week about how there are Microsoft developers and engineers who aren't sure how core functions of the operating system work because they weren't

documented and they just kind of work. And so they don't fuck around with it. And there's a lot of like spaghetti code happening. And I wonder if Apple having chopped their operating system should off at the turn of the century and said, like, we're making OS 10. It's completely different. Where, like, you know, there'll be some legacy modes.

Then switching to Intel completely, like, had their operating system rewritten and ready to go. Did it again with the M1, but also did it for iOS and started bringing some of those cuts and streamline features into the Mac operating system. So now they have a very smooth, tight operating system, and iOS and iPad OS are obviously very modern and very built from the ground up. And so their software can be perfectly tailored and developers know exactly who what they're

getting into and also developers now know that the M1 is the future of the Mac like all Macs will be M1 and so they can then target their software accordingly. Microsoft who knows I mean if you're a developer what's your incentive to go chase down the arm thing is they like within you know it's been like what it's been like a month since the M1 like formal announcement or something like that and already there's there's a pretty good Deluge of software that's being you know cross compiled for the M1. Yeah, I mean when I there's there's a doby Betas for everything now and like the chrome runs like a dream which is the first time in my life

I can say that there's an M1 version version of Chrome. When I download, when I downloaded Chrome from my MacBook, or my new MacBook, it was like, do you want the one for Apple's chip or do you want the one for the Intel chip? Oh, right. Well, here, they're already on. My point though. My point is, is that like the, the Windows on ARM initiative has been around for at least two CESs and there's not shit. There's not. I couldn't even tell you. Yes. There's a Firefox has an ARM version, but you know.

I mean, this is the Windows 7, Windows 10 thing of like, Windows 10 was supposed to have all these full screen apps and like it was going to be a great habit experience. I'm like, I've literally never used any of that ever. And I've had touchscreen windows computers. I just used regular windows and dealt with that. And that every time, every time I launch the, like one good example of this on Windows 10 is the built-in mail app that was for this like, it's still in this like metro idea from, you know, a few years back. And it's just, it's still in this metro idea from a few years back. And it's just, I couldn't even,

I couldn't describe to you how low information density is this is. It is perfect. It's very consumer. Actually, the thing that annoys me most about that app, you can put the Windows Mail app, right? Yeah, just the regular Windows Mail app. It's a fine, I mean, it is lacking some major features like aliases,

but besides that, it would actually, it annoys me about it, and this is true of what is the browser called now, Edge, or whatever? Yeah, Edge browser. It uses some kind of like smoothing, like acceleration on like typing that and scrolling that the other apps that are on Windows that and scrolling,

that other apps that are on Windows don't use, like third party apps, and it's like, when you type in the mail app, it actually looks smoother and faster than when you type in a Chrome window. And I don't understand why that is, but it's like, I can feel that Microsoft has given its own apps, some kind of special juice,

that other apps are getting. Have you ever noticed that? It's like really aggravating to me like well, it's part of what I was like and I say it's part of the huge inconsistencies across the operating system that I don't even know Like games are running in a completely different environment and in different ways than apps that you don't have for the Microsoft store Which are also very different and not comparable to the apps that you side load which a lot of those are legacy. Like it's all over the place. Not even I mean just the settings menu is all over the place and the design makes no sense and I don't know how Microsoft gets itself out of this other than a very very very painful period where they say we have two operating systems one for consumer products that you should buy and

this is it and we're not selling a home version of Windows and then one for back end servers and stuff like that. But at some point, I just don't know. Yeah, I mean, this is like, we're going, but in some ways, I really like Windows, but in some ways it feels like where Windows used to be, where everything was sort of brute force. Maybe it never really changed. Everything was just kind of brute force.

They're like, well, we have computers that are fast enough now that we can just run all these, like, I mean, even installing an app on a, even installing a program on your Windows computer can take so many forms. It's like, why is there an OSI? Is there an EXC? Yeah, like, what is it?

And the dialogues are like, the dialogues look like they're from like, win 95. Like, it's very odd. Like, why isn't, why hasn't this just been like, rained in? Like, you don't have to be Apple, but it just is a, confusing at this point, you know? It's like, and it's because it's so disparate,

I get it, it's sort of like, there are victim of their own success in the way's so disparate, I get it, it's sort of like, they're a victim of their own success in the way that the disparate, open nature of windows has allowed lots of things to thrive. But now we're at a point where it's like, well, it ain't that installing an app, ain't that special. You should have a way to do it on your,

that's like a part of your core platform. Like I should have be able to have a dialogue of installing and uninstalling things in One place only Like like in Windows there are multiple places where you can have an install and uninstall like experience There are absolute yeah, there are absolutely anyone off There are programs that that that programs install that are just there for the express purpose of uninstalling the program. It's like, I think at this point, Windows would say, we're not allowing that anymore.

I mean, it's so difficult to know if a program is running that I still bring up the task manager and have to kill individual task managers. Oh, I run. I run. It's a constant friend. The task manager is basically like the actual only source of truth on a Windows computer for what is happening. That's essentially how the computer has the computers operating. Otherwise, you're lost.

You could make the argument that Windows is like the Izuzu truck. Like it is just, you just need something heavy duty that can, you know, do all the, provide you all the utility that you need, right? It's not about user experience, it's all about utility. You know what I mean? Like what I need to do, like a very, like a very, like I need to flash a Samsung phone.

The software only, like the engineering software only works on Windows. But here's the difference between those two things. Is that like, with the Izuzu truck, like all of this work that has gone into like the internal combustion engine, you know? Like, it makes that, like, it is good technology. They have refined the internal combustion engine

to the point where, you know, you know, you know, like a big heavy truck like that can actually get somewhat decent gas mileage. And like, it's all accrued into a very good product that provides a lot of utility. And that's just not the case. It was like, actually, imagine if that is Zuzu truck

was like the size of a house. And you could still a little haul like a refrigerator inside of it. I think it's a very good, I think it's a very good, I think it's a very fair assessment of the situation. And by the way, I love Windows. I love my PCs. I mean, I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 last night

and it was a wonderful dream experience. I mean, except for some... PCs do amazing things and frankly, there are stuff that PCs do that things, and frankly, there are stuff that PCs do that just, there literally is no way to do it with Linux or Mac. Like, there are specific things that I occasionally run and do that I have to, I have to use a Windows

computer, and when I use it, it works, and then I'm like, it's so frustrating that this shit doesn't work elsewhere. And obviously, you're given a lot of more freedom. But day to day, I can in good conscience recommend a Windows PC to almost anyone that asks me. I think it's a special, yeah, it's a specialty item for a special to use. Like I would rather give most people a Chromebook. Oh, absolutely. Sure. Today's podcast is brought to you by our partners at Genesis who are

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boundless by design. Well, what else happened this year? What else was like this big technology story? Yeah, let's talk about what did happen, Ryan. We can, we can win. We can win about Windows forever. Well, there is, there is the whole rise of working from home, telepresence, sort of being forced to go mainstream.

I mean, we're talking on Zoom right now, which is became a product every single person knew about a two months into the year that nobody had ever heard about. And it's, I mean, Zoom is, it's got a lot of features. It's not like a user-friendly, like, it's got a lot of features. It's not like a user friendly, like it's no FaceTime. FaceTime, it pops up, you hit a button, there's a video call, it's done.

Zoom comes with all of this stuff because we had so many problems, specific problems that needed to be solved. I think Zoom is interesting because what it has made me, one of the things that's interesting about Zoom is that Zoom has turned us into, I feel like we've created an environment where a phone call, a audio-only experience

would have been fine, we now feel compelled to make it a video call. Like I've had calls that are one-on-one calls of people that should really be a phone call, but for some reason they end up being on zoom and it's like I think it's interesting how not only have we embrace the concept of video Video conferencing I mean what the fun here's the funny thing about video conferencing It has it been a running joke if you are in any type of job any type of corporate job That all the video confer conference solutions are awful, and it's a horrible situation every time you're trying

to get a room full of people in an office somewhere, and people remotely together to talk to each other and show each other things. Pre-COVID, in 2019, at previous jobs, people are, like, ads, you know, at previous jobs, it's like people are like circulating like blue jeans links and like Skype. Yeah, just somebody facetimes you, then you've got, you know, Uber conference,

like it just, it was all over the place totally. Now we're all using Zoom slash facetime occasionally, but my grandparents now are intimately familiar with this piece of corporate telepresence software zoom that they have never had to use because just through sheer necessity. And I think that push, even when we're able to go out and back into the world, I don't think there's like putting

a genie back in the bottle. Like consumers have been fully educated through necessity and they also now Also now options are present in your head that never were like I don't understand why I need to go to the doctor's office If I don't have a physical thing that needs to be looked at ever again like why would I ever go to a doctor's office to be like Hi my auntie to presents are working. Can I have a new subscription? I've prescribed a prescription can I even you? Oh I did press it time. No, I just did Netflix. They were like to consumer. They were like, here's the thing. We're gonna give you a Netflix subscription to secure your depression right away. No, like, why would I go be like, can I have a new prescription

and then have to take the subway back to my office? Like, if anything, when the bus will office is open back up, sorry to this man, but I can't see myself being there more than three days a week. Well, yeah, I don't think you need to be. I actually think, I think I've seen our teams be more productive. I mean, of course, I've been preaching this for a long time. I'm a big work. That's what I'm going to say to you.

That's the thing that I think is so interesting is that when we were starting the verge, like I had never worked from home before. And it's, if you're not used like all of us, like here at Input, I think all of us have had like semi remote work for the last 10 years. In media, there's a lot of freelancing. And like, especially, and if you work in TV,

you work for two or three months, really hardcore in an office, in a set, and then the rest of the year, you're at home just like answering emails. But like in those first days, it was really hard because like you have an entire, like you need to be on top of your shit when it comes to time management,

like you're in your home space, and you know when you're sort of trapped in your own apartment, it feels what is time, time is nothing. Right. Which means you need to be on top of your shit. It's really hard. I mean, there's other huge downsides. I feel like our companionship,

we, the core input team was sort of kidnapped, and we spent a ton of time together weekends, CES, we became close very quickly, which ended up being to our benefit because I think for a lot of people in other industries or a lot of people at other jobs who didn't necessarily work force to go through that or whatever, I think it's hard to remember

that there's human beings on the other side of the screen that like people exist when they're not talking to you or interacting with you, that work is getting done just because you're not seeing it. I mean there's a huge emotional shift that has to happen when you no longer have most of your senses to perceive other people. And I feel sometimes our team will get snippy with each other and I have to remind myself like you know we don't see each other there's no like empathy here. We're just reading words in a slackbox and coming up with our own meanings and inflections and, you know, what's going on on the other side. I don't know if somebody answered in two words

because they were getting a package delivered and they just quickly wanted to help me out. Like, there's no way to know. And there's no bonding. And so there are huge downsides to this. But I think for people in industries like video game development or finance or things that like had crushing hours at the office, I mean, this is a chance to see your kids. And I think that that's also like at the end of the day, that kind of like I'll solve every other problem I need to solve for somebody if they get to spend more time with their family. Well, there was an NPR thing this morning that I was listening to about how, you know, there's this exodus from

California like Silicon Valley people just you know wealthy people moving out of Silicon Valley and into you know like like Washington state and Texas and While it is true that those people are probably insufferable and those local the locals there will hate them You know, it is good, it is good for local economies. Having a little bit of distribution where people bring some of that money out of San Francisco and into some of these more rural communities

is probably gonna be, I mean, there's been, there has actually been a few great migrations in the past in the United States. Some of them for horrible, terrible reasons. But like economically, you know, actually movement between states was actually at an all time low right before COVID. Of course.

And so like that money was really trapped in San Francisco. Well, I can't have like a glorious city in this guy where all the rich tech people live. It's not in the rest of us live in this underground garbage dump. Although I will say never leaving Manhattan, Manhattan. I'm sorry. Having, having, having, if you have the flexibility to move to a place where I say the cost of living is way lower and you can afford a thing like a house and you can, your kids can go to a better school or whatever

the thing is. Like that is very positive. Now unfortunately, we are not providing that opportunity to every person who is going through this pandemic. It's like a certain group of people who can move their, like say, hey, I'm gonna move my job online. I can keep doing it. And those people have done very well. There's actually a lot of data out there right now that people in those ranks of your job has continued

and has been able to move online and you're able to work from home, those people are doing better than ever. People on the other side are doing worse than ever. And it's like, obviously, there are jobs that cannot be done from home. And you know, without, I mean, without this turning into many hours long podcasts, we do, this country does have a responsibility and an obligation to figure out a way to make it easier for those people to live and work. For anybody who doesn't have this kind of portability, but I do think the portability of jobs now is a huge opportunity. It's an opportunity for new types of businesses. It's an opportunity for people to live in ways that are better for them and their families. I do think, I do think we might mourn for a little bit this, there was this kind of gravitational

pull of cities that was creating an increasingly, actually I mean when you think about cities, increasingly obviously diverse with a diversity of ideas and people. So I think think like for the most part, but I think like this remote working thing means that people who are disabled who literally can't make it around Manhattan can now have a job that that we used to previously be location gated. Right. Well, also, I mean, it's driving down the cost of living in those places in the cities, right? Because you've got suddenly you've got real estate that has been freed up with people who are going elsewhere. I do think like, I think the long term,

I think we were always moving towards a more remote working lifestyle. I think that the internet has provided an enormous amounts of ways that we could be working remotely. And I think that like there are things that we do that we've always done that were like, oh yeah, this is what we do.

May I wrote this thing about movie theaters a little while ago, you know, which is sort of a part of this But like I think movies like the evolution of movie theaters will be interesting because I think like the the occurrences and occasions to go to a movie will become maybe Rare and more special in a way and it'll be less like okay, this is just what we do now, and that'll change the way we make movies, and the way we build movie theaters, and all kinds of stuff. But like, I think everything... There was no reason that I saw Hotel Transylvania 3

in a physical theater, and I bought food, and I took time out of my life. I did do that thing, but if it had been on Netflix, I probably would've just... That's crazy Ryan. What if I had just done that? I'm not maybe the single craziest thing

you've ever told me since I've known you. You went to see Hotel Transylvania 3 in a theater? You're with kids. Okay, I was gonna say, this is a children's movie for you. Yeah, but if you could watch that at home with Netflix and not have to get a million kids rounded up and pay for every single ticket,

that is what it should be. But theaters should exist because then, I see you've, but also right. I had such moving movie experiences that like an Alamo Draft house. Absolutely. But to your point, like I agree, but why should hotel trans-Lavanie have to be

the number one movie in America for it to be in theaters? Is the other question. You know what I mean? So maybe there's on fewer screens, it's got a smaller, like a shorter run, but like if you wanna go have that experience you can still have it, but I think the idea that you're like, okay, guys a shorter run. But like if you wanna go have that experience, you can still have it.

But I think the idea that you're like, okay, guys, we spent $250 million on fucking hotel Transylvania 3. And if it doesn't make a billion dollars in the next six months, we're screwed. It's like, that's a crazy business that should not exist in my opinion. Well, you get bad, this thing I tweeted last night about hotel Transylvania 3.

No, it was about crudes the crudes the cruege yeah yeah out tenet on vod and it's like I'm like I'm not is mechie dude wait is it is andaya is mechie from the crudes I might be or close to another movie that's some other movie a crew I think never came out really I think what yes and I is mechie me to never come out what the fuck is the movie? Who knows the movie is Small foot. Yeah small foot. It's like a big foot movie. It's about big foot son or something I mean

Remember that they made a movie about talking cars. Do you know this do you remember they made a movie about like talking monster trucks? cars. Do you know this? Do you remember they made a movie about like talking monster trucks? There was like the idea of like the studio heads like son had the idea. He was like you should make a movie about talking monster trucks that they spent like $200 million on it and it was a massive bomb. I mean the quibby tells us anything. Is this these people? Don't know what they're doing. I'm gonna fight out what this movie is. Yeah, I mean mean the Quibi thing was also a big part of the year and I think it was a big. Oh, it's called Monster Trucks is the name of the film. It the Quibi thing should be a warning shot through all of tech and media that like number one, you business cannot exist on VC capital alone for all time.

Like I'm going to have to start making money and also like not also like not everything is too big to fail. Cyberpunk and Quibi should tell people, you can spend a billion dollars on something and people can hate it. And there are things for us. It's not necessarily being funny. Can I just read this Wikipedia entry? It's so good.

The film is called Monster Trucks. On July 31st, 2013, Paramount Animation announced they were developing a new live action animated franchise with an entry film. This was gonna be a franchise. They were gonna make this into fucking Avengers for kids. Title monster trucks with some people said, but whoever who cares, write the film script, the pitch was created by Paramount's president, Adam Goodman, alongside his four-year-old son. It cost $125 million to make.

Oh my God, this movie. And it made $64 million total at the box office and they had to take a $115 million dollar right down because it performed so poorly. Wow, this is some like 1997 concept shit. And now this fucking kid, or Adam Goodman's son has to live with this shit hanging over his head for the rest of his life when he goes in for his job at McKinsey They're like, oh, you remember when you were 10 you made that really bad call and I'm like it's looking good

The rest of me looks good, but you've got a history of incredible fail You're credit is just shred it But but but this is it this is my fucking point okay that that Adam Goodman was like well but could come up with an idea let's make let's make a hundred twenty five million dollars on the monster truck thing and we'll turn it to the Avengers and it'll make us billions and billions of dollars like dude maybe you should have made like a smaller film for less money to see if people wanted that instead of deciding that this was like you had to do this. This is the problem with filming. There's what you know offense. I

mean the Avengers movies are all you know to some degree fun but like do we need all of them? Like does is the Ant-Man? Does the Ant-Man movie really add that much to our lives? Do we need all of them to have blockbuster film premieres? This is my question. You want to put it all on TV. Disney plus, go for it. I mean, you could have made a batten. By the way, the other thing is it does is they're like, okay, well, the Iron Man movies have all made billions of dollars. The next Batman movie has to make a billion dollars. Or it's like, not successful.

And then, and with that, that changes the characters too. Because Batman is also a character that has been through lots of weird iterations and some of the smaller more subtle projects and it up being the most successful like that man had a series and now it has to be it has to be Jared leto and Robert Pattinson and Ben Affleck in a movie about how cool and gritty and real it is with explosions and a hot chicks yes so is it this is called by committee so this is one of my favorite my cool and gritty and real it is with explosions and a hot chick. So it's a feminist.

It's called by committee. So this is one of my favorite, my actually brings us to a talking about trends for 2021 and beyond. This is one of my favorite things that's happening right now, which is the idea. So we started watching the stand. I don't know if anybody else has watched it. And I know it's had mixed reviews.

The stand is based, of course, on the Stephen King book about a flu-like pandemic that wipes out all life, most life on the planet. I heard a lot. Very rip from the headlines. And I'm like, the book is like 1,100 pages long. It's a very long book. I listened to it on audio.

It was like, I spent several months listening to it. It's a book an audio book. But the thing that's interesting is that, they made it is also, by the way, the movie It, the book is like 1,100 page or 1,200 page book. They made it into two movies. I think it was a failure. Maybe you guys enjoyed it, but if you read the book,

it was a failure of execution that could have been a really great Limited series like ten episodes or even like two seasons of something that you where you really got to dig into these super interesting Characters and all the perfect example the Mandalorian is And guess what wasn't most of those Star Wars movies exactly and this is this to me is what's so interesting is that we are starting to shift. We have believed for so long that like, oh, you make a movie. It's two hours long, it's a weekend. It's, it comes out on Christmas weekend

or whatever, it's a big blockbuster. The big release. Yeah, the big release and that's how you do it. And it's like, maybe actually now we can start to think about better ways to get those stories to people and to tell those stories. And like, it doesn't have to be this thing like we can change the entire Fabric of what we think this is supposed to be like like you think you're supposed to have like the billion dollar movie because we built a system up

Based on shit from like that night basically the 1950s You know are the 1940s with how we made movies and it's yeah I think like now that that entertainment is where it's at you can make the kinds of TV shows you can make. I mean, to call them TV shows is not even the right way to describe them. They're like serialized movies, most of these things. I mean, the Mandalorian is as good as any Star Wars movie

that has come out in the last 20 years. It better in some ways. It has the production value and the character development that those movies have and then some right but like and and frankly specificity smaller scale character driven Like things that have something to say or that are weird to me are way better than these super I mean, I am sure that is the question thing, but I think I think I would rather lots of weird Batman one shots

than another Batman V Superman and for the rest of my life. That's the crazy thing about these superhero movies. This is that they have really, really bad stakes creep, right? It's a like, they're every single one. This is like, well, this thing is going to, like Thanos destroyed the universe. Everybody has powers become like

cataclysmic reality-bending powers and like in the Mandalorian You have a classic father-son adventure series the stakes are not that high and it's it really is a joy There's a lot. There actually are huge flaws in the Mandalorian, but it is just it's really great to watch Yeah, but compared to that but but it's also doesn't it doesn't If everybody likes you you've said nothing. It's right. Yeah, it's like and I think that and I think that the idea of I mean, I just think that it's just there's so much more you can do in the imaginative game of thrones now I know that game of thrones final season was complete shit show But I mean everybody was enjoying the hell out of it up until the final season imagine if

They had tried to do game of of Thrones as a series of movies. Like, think about how few things there would have been to dig into it. I mean, it's like the Harry Potter thing. The Harry Potter movies are cute and whatever. But if you really wanted to do... Well, if you really wanted to do... ...why books, I mean, they're short, you know? But if you really wanted to do that series and the world building and all that stuff,

justice in a way where you didn't need to read the book to enjoy the movie You could have done an HBO series where each year was each school year was ten episodes and you got lots of those little stories that happened in the books and you could do a lot of world building and obviously you would, you know This is all of this takes place in a universe where JK Rowling is in a huge transfer of an horrible person. I feel like that's a better way to tell that story. And I think that the Mandalorian is proof that, I also think most comic book characters benefit from monsters of the week, Buffy style, in a TV series, rather than every single movie needing to be a team up

against a cataclysmic galactic threat. I mean, it is, I will say, I mean, I think about this all the time. This is exactly what I was saying with the stand, which is like, I read that book and I was like, this is fucking great. And if they had tried, and they did make it into like a mini series that was, you know, this is from the 80s.

So it's like the quality of what they could do was just not there. But like, at least they didn't try to make it to a movie. You try to cram a thousand page book into a movie. You're just going to lose so much of what makes it entertaining and interesting. And I think like the expanse is the expansiveness of the worlds that we are that we are now like adapting are just like I think comic books are a great example.

I'm sorry, but like I think that a Batman series would allow us to explore much more of the things that all of the Batman movies are attempting to explore in these films that you only get like a glimpse of, you know. How many amazing characters came out of Batman single episode or single issue or single arcs? Like Harley Quinn was a one episode person and then became a two episode person. And now is the most the most valuable property DC has as Harley Quinn. And she came out of an animated TV show from one episode because people took a chance.

Just imagine the arc of a Batman series that took on like Batman going from like a lone wolf to his relationship with Robin to taking on Robin as a partner and as as a son. And then Robin being killed in death in the death in the family by the Joker spoiler alert. I mean, you could obviously would change some of this, but just imagine how many amazing seasons of television you could create with those big arcs of characters and the type of like in depth like drama and emotion and action you could fucking get into versus like Ben Affleck and and and what's his name with the mustache fighting for two hours in a movie

Which seems like is such a it's a air yeah Henry Cavill thank you You're you're air dropped into these characters. You know nothing about you're given no reason to actually give a shit about anything Unless you're like you're like paying them paying them, it's just pure like fandom. And then it's over. It's like, Batman is like, this guy seems like a douche. Listen, my parents are about, like kingdom for a Buffy slash Veronica Mars style

back girl TV show, where she's early in college. And she's got to solve things with detective work. Like occasionally she runs into the big super. Remember that one part of the about Batman also being kind of like a detective that we'd never get to see. Yeah. Oh my god. You can do a whole season. You could literally just do a whole season of a Batman series where it's not even like it's just him trying to solve like like you could take like the long Halloween and turn that into a season where it's him trying to solve like a serial killer

like crime and it's like that you can have a whole separate thing going on that isn't even like, oh, Batman's just like beating people up everywhere he goes. You know, we're like, check out Batman's cool gadgets or whatever. I just think the opportunity is so huge. And I think some, we've gotten there a little bit. I didn't really love the Legion show,

but a lot of people did. And I think it at least tried to do something new with like I think the Connions had a great first season. And I'm looking forward to she Hulk. I watch the first like season and a half of pre-trip. I don't know why I stopped. The preacher did a really interesting, the boys is a great example. Oh my god. So go out. Of a total like, watch me really dig in. Yes, watch the watch. Watch the series crazy. Yeah crazy, that's it.

Yeah, I mean, and so I think this actually is exactly the point talking about this whole shift of how we live. Like I do think yes, people are gonna be, when we get into 2021 and everybody has their vaccinations and we can actually go out and public again, it's gonna be people are gonna be desperate to go do things together, like go see movies and go to concerts and all that stuff.

But I also think some of these things aren't just, well, we had to change what we were doing because of the pandemic. I think some of them will have longer lasting impact. And I hope that one of them is that we start to reconsider, I think this goes for like the work thing as much as our entertainment. It's like that we reconsider what, where the value really is and start to shift, like, just change the value proposition for a lot of the things that are on offer. I think, it's also like for people working,

I think, like, why is it necessary to bring every single writer and editor, just for us, like, take us, for an example. I get it, if you wanna go work in an office, that's great, and you feel like maybe you don't have space at home, or maybe you need just get out of the house. Totally, there's totally a reason for that. There are a lot of people who are like, you know what,

I actually, and I'll say, I'm one of the people who, I love the fact that I can still pull like a long day and then turn around and go have dinner with Zelda and I don't have to go, I don't have to commute. You know, I love the fact that like we can get on if we're like an early call and it's like, you can immediately be there without having to worry about like, oh, you're late because you're

finding a parking space or like your train got held up or whatever. Like that's taking that stress out of the day is actually a huge, like allows me to be better at my job in my opinion, you know. So it's bad is, you know, about to be 60. And he has had two hit replacements or a hit replacement in an updated hit replacement.

And he has to spend two hours a day in the car. And it gives him a lot of pain, you know what I mean? Like sitting in the, I mean, he has a nice car now that is, you know, he bought it specifically because it has really nice seats. But he spends two hours every day commuting with a hip replacement. And it's just like, that's crazy.

It's like, yeah, I mean, to your point, it's like, does everybody, that's also good for like the world. Like if we have fewer people commuting, people driving in cars, you know, fewer people like wasting resources that could otherwise be freed up. I mean, like, there's so much like, what do you think? Think about just like food waste, for instance. Like, people going into huge cities and everybody's getting like takeout or up. I mean, like, there's so much, like, what do you think about just like food waste, for instance? Like, people going into huge cities and everybody's getting like takeout or whatever. It's a huge amount of food waste, right? Just like the food itself, the packaging.

I, there's this, I think it's like- You just gave me meme PTSD. I saw a sweet, someone was like, oh, this like, apple orchard in like Holland, like, you know, had a lot of extra apples. And they like tied them to their fence for everyone else to have because they didn't want to go bad. And somebody just replied,

it was just like, in America, we just throw that away. Absolutely. We destroyed that because, you know, it's made me like, we do whatever they did to those, to those, where were the things they killed, the animals that they had? Oh, the minks, oh, God.

Oh, my God. We would do to the apples what they did to them. Absolutely, and we did. I know we want to probably wrap up soon, but like there was one other huge Thing that happened in 2020 that I'm curious about how you guys feel will you know evolve in 2021 Which is I feel like everybody sort of coalesced around saying fuck you big tech everyone was like actually Yeah, you guys are the worst I Didn't think we would get to but I it was on the list just in case.

Was we were living in a world where we were very quickly approaching a $2,000 iPhone and $1,000 gaming console. We're very quickly, I mean, games now cost minimum $70 for the PlayStation 5. And we were hurtling towards the amount of subscription services that I pay for. Like, it's shocking.

And I think that this year not only does everyone's finances not allow for that. And so things like Stadia, or the Xbox Series X, on like a financing plan for your game pass, are much more attractive options. I also think it was a year for all of us to check in and be like, hey, when Google went down for two hours and we were all working from home, like the whole world stopped for two hours, and that's probably not great.

And like I think that's a good way, it's been a wake up moment for us to look at Facebook and be like the amount of misinformation about Black Lives Matter and the pandemic and the election all in one year. We can look at it objectively and say this company has to be broken up. Like this cannot, this is not sustainable. I mean, look at the amount of wealth Jeff Bezos alone has accrued while there are starving children in this country right now. Like, I mean, they've made almost as much money as everybody else loves.

I think the thing that's most, I agree that this is definitely the year that people are like, wait a second, this shit actually sucks. But it's also like, it's the year where we started to have some conversations about solving it that felt like they rose to a level that was more real than it's ever been. And like now that the Biden Harris administration is going in and there are people there who actually know what the hell they're doing and are like, have thought about these in and there are people there who actually know what the hell they're doing and are like have thought about these problems and there are people not solely motivated by personal greed. Yes, exactly. I mean, somewhat of course always motivated by personal greed, but then maybe some other stuff.

Like, you could still be greedy and also have like ideas that aren't complete garbage. You know, the maybe this will start to happen that we actually see regulation and we see some tempering of this stuff, but it is like the inequality. I think one of the things that these companies don't seem to be able to project or understand is like, you actually could be very abusive to everybody if you were more generous. Like if you're more generous to your employees and more generous to the people who use your products, if Jeff Bezos was like, you know what, I made $83 billion in worth or whatever,

and I'm gonna give half of that right now to like feeding Americans. Like I just, I don't need all of this. Plate paid Amazon employees $30 an hour with health benefits, he would get away with all of it. And he would get really an air faster. What's weird is it's like, I get you want to be as rich as possible, but you know with like being just a little bit less rich,

you would, a lot of people would like kind of chill out. Like because what's, what's, the inequality is the thing that, that it's like not only are you destroying, you know, Amazon is like, has destroyed so many businesses and has fucked up commerce in American so many ways, and is so wildly in control of our lives in the ways that we shop, and in the ways that the mail system works,

and the ways that they can manipulate prices. But it's like, they also feel like it's just like they're giving nothing back ever. Right? You told her, Jeff Bezos tried to trick governors all across the country into giving him a huge fucking tax break on HKK or whatever.

They already have huge tax breaks on B's before that. I mean, actually Amazon, in many ways Amazon is its own beast, right? Because it's not just like a service that operates stuff on the internet. It is like a service that has a real world, you both utility and impact, right? In the sense of like they can affect businesses and they can affect like users, consumers in a way that Apple can,

it's like, okay, yeah, but like, I don't need to get, like I don't get like, I'm not getting goods, that daily goods from Apple, right? Like, it's not like a debate between me going to CVS to get batteries or ordering them from Amazon. That's a real thing that happens with people, you know? Right. Well, the CVS is actually like, you know,

I don't own any Apple products. I have some like, fundamental disagreements about the way they create their products. But like, the technology advances that get into the high end, Apple does bring them. People at the very lowest end of the iPhone totem pole do actually get a lot of utility from that iPhone.

You know what I mean? And their products are, I do also think that there's some class issues going on with Apple. But the lineup is pretty good. And with Apple, but like, you know, the line up is pretty good. And I think, but I think they introduced $549 headphones. Let's just say what it is. Yes, that's true. But I mean, to your point, Josh, about the inequality is, is that like, this inequality is starting to leech into, you know, not just like the board level decisions

that are going on at these companies, but they're starting to leach into the actual consumer products themselves. Ryan, to your point, about the $500 headphones, it's like, what the fuck is that? Yeah, the bad $500 headphones. Yeah. Well, some of these businesses only work at scale. The PS5 only works as a business model or a product if most people can spend $600 on a game console.

And right now, that's like not the case. That's crazy. That's crazy. That's crazy. People are starving. Like literally, they can't get enough food. Like food, I was listening to this Washington Post thing last night. Like food, pantry services are up like 40% in the United States.

Well, I mean, let's talk about something on a lighter note. Oh, true. Wow. Hard. I'm gonna wrap this up, please. Yeah, we gotta wrap it up. That's true. We're going on a lighter note. Oh, true. Wow. Hard to wrap this up, please. Yeah, we got to wrap it. That's true.

We're going into a holiday here. Because spiral into the worst things that are happening right now, and we have, and we will, but we can't do it right now. I will say this. I will say, I believe 2021 is going to be a year of a lot of talk about regulation with very little action. Yeah, let's give that move on to nice things.

Get, tell me the nicest thing for me or your year, and then let's get out of here. Oh my god, from the year? Yeah, what's a nice thing about silver lining of 2020, the worst year ever. Okay, do you want me to start who's starting? I'll start. My silver lining has been two things.

One is spending more time with my husband. We got married this year. We did not have a honeymoon. We immediately went into lockdown and have been quarantined together for the length of our marriage. And I like him more now. And I got to spend more time with him. And I'm happy. I, you know, it sucks that this happened, but it's also a really great to know that in the worst circumstances, we grew closer together. And like like it's clarified a lot of other relationships that I have but this one the most of all and then the other nice thing from the years Ray Tracing God it's so pretty that's it.

Do you want me to go next? Yes. Okay. My silver lining I've talked about this before and I will talk about it again and I will talk about it forever. My silver lining which has almost made the pandemic good, is that I've gotten to hang with Zelda and Laura more than I have in years and years, because I haven't had to do that commuting stuff, and I haven't had to be, you know, pulled away all the time and traveling

and stuff. And like, it has been great. It has been great. It has been, I mean, hard, if we really hard, but we're in a, I mean, I'm lucky that Zell does, you know, she goes to a school here, they opened up at Bada Zerli as I think anything could to let people kids go back to school, which was great.

But like, also, you know, I've spent so much time being away that it's like we never had normal, like, okay, we're gonna have a family dinner. I was always home after dinner. I often would get home after Zelda was in bed. And so I'd see her for a little bit in the morning. And that would be it until the weekend. And I've had so much more time to hang out with her

and to do things with her. And it has been, it has been certainly really hard and certainly it has been harder on other people and it's been on us, but I think that you know, I think that it really has been like just a kind of amazing opportunity to see like, you know, Zelda especially Zelda. Obviously, Laura and I have known each other longer. You know, but Zelda's growing up. And so I've gotten to spend time with her and got to spend time with our little family unit and not had to feel that stress of like,

oh shit, I'm not gonna be home for dinner and I'm not gonna be home for bed. And so that's been really good. I am definitely stir crazy at this point, but it has been really, yeah. I mean, that part of it has been a real silver lining in my opinion. Well, my partner is a doctor in residency, so I don't get to see him as much as I would like, although we do, I mean, we do make it work though.

I thought it would be worse than this when we got into it, but I think I do think that one of the, I mean, just materially this year has been really great because we got a new apartment and the Mass Exidus of people from New York allowed us to get a two-bendroom apartment instead of a one-bedroom in our studio and that has allowed me to do A lot of really great projects this year like I made my own electric bike I taught myself how to sew and like use a sewing machine And right now I'm in the middle of building like a you know like a 14 kilowatt power wall I taught myself how to sew and you as a sewing machine. And right now I'm in the middle of building like a 14 kilowatt power wall. And those are the things that really,

I live for those projects. And so there has been some silver linings here that have been pretty good. 2020 said Cyber Truck and Evan said Power Wall. That's right. You have how many scooter batteries there? I have 32 scooter batteries that I am in the process of refurbishing. Okay. That's insane. Just such an insane project. And you're truly the only person I know who could embark on such a

a wild mission. But you see I guarantee you if this was a year where you could just go and do anything, that project would probably not be happening. Exactly. I'd be, you know, exactly. You'd have, you'd have a, you'd have a life. Yeah. You'd be able to go out see people. Like go, go to dinner. And shit. Maybe one day we shall have a life again. Oh my God. I can't wait. I am going to go to so many social events. I'm going to go to so many social events. I'm going to personally start a new coronavirus that's even more deadly. Like in my 20s, I didn't go to so many social events, I'm going to personally start a new coronavirus that's even more deadly. Like in my 20s, I didn't go to shows for various reasons,

but like I'm gonna be that guy who's like crushing a beer can on his head. Add, I mean, I definitely am looking for, I'm not really, I don't even really like social gatherings, but I am definitely looking forward to like, I mean to me, the big thing is like I miss diners. I'm like, I want to go to a diner so bad. Anyhow, that's it. Well, I'm done. 2020, Sionara and Sotoni. Is this our last episode? Is this our last episode before the end of the year?

Yeah, to all the Tonys out there, I want to say happy holidays. Oh my God. Goddamn, motherfucking new year. I will see see you we will see you in the new year But let's get hype for a new inauguration and a new fresh start with a vaccine and hopefully a lighter funner Tomorrow, wow, I think there's nothing else to say. Let's get out of here fuck Trump I was gonna say that. Yes. Good. Fuck Trump. Well, that is our show for this week. Blueback in 2021 with more tomorrow. And as always, I wish you and your family the very best, which they are going to get under a Biden-Harris administration, which gives them everything they want when they want it,

and where they want it, most importantly. God bless America.