Upgrade - 10: Podcasting, It’s Great!

Episode Date: November 17, 2014

This week Jason and Myke address more important Taylor Swift follow-up, discuss why podcasting is back (again), and take on App Store pricing in the wake of Monument Valley and Space Age.

Hello and welcome back to Upgrade on RelayFM. This is episode 10 of Upgrade. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at TextExpander from Smile, where you can type more with less effort and hover. Simplified domain management. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by your host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hello, Mr. Mike Hurley. How are you? I am very well, sir. How are you? I'm doing great.

I had a minor flood in my laundry room moments ago, but there are many towels. Towels are good at absorbing floods, and nothing seems to have shorted out so doing great are you well grounded um i hope so i i'm wearing my i'm wearing my uh my tennis shoes sneakers or trainers perhaps you would call them and uh so i'm hopeful that i've i've uh i'm insulated from the flood if should it come. Good. Good. Yeah.

If the floods come, I am ready. Oh, man. Okay, so. You should build a podcasting arc. Just in case. That's a good idea. Podcasting is back. Did you hear?

I did hear about that, actually. I heard the rumors. And we've reached double digits. So we're alive and kicking at 10. That means it's been 10 weeks of my post-Mac World life, because I

started two podcasts that week, the week after. Interesting. You'll be able to judge it as it goes further and further into the future. Yeah, Upgrade and TV Talk Machine are both at episode 10 this week, because I started those two podcasts 10 weeks ago. Yeah, Upgrade and TV Talk Machine are both at episode 10 this week because I started those two podcasts 10 weeks ago. Yeah, it's funny how that is.

So yeah, my site, actually, Six Colors, has been up for exactly two months now. Congratulations. Since September 16th. So yeah, thank you. Thank you. Here I am. Still alive.

That's the interesting thing about most of the relay shows, right? Where they were new, they're all the same episode number. Right. Like, obviously, it's starting to change a bit now. But it was funny. And it still is because it's like 13, 13, 13, 13. Yeah. I like it, though.

Yeah. One of these days, Casey's just going to be like, I can't, I can't. Baby, ah, er, can't. And then, you know, that one's going to get behind. Yep. That's my prediction. He's going to be like, how about we... Although then again, I can't, I can't. Baby, ah, er, can't. And then, you know, that one's going to get behind. Yep. That's my prediction. He's going to be like, how about we... Although then again, I don't know.

Maybe it's his lifeline, these podcasts that he's on. He's escaped. I mean, he does work outside the home. And therefore, you know, I just remember for the first three weeks when my daughter was born. My daughter who just turned 13. So it's amusing to watch Casey go through having a newborn and I just got a teenager. But I was thinking back to then and I was home for, I think, three weeks and it was after week one or half of week one, it was the cabin fever was high. I was like going to Home Depot and bringing back cabinets and storage bins and things like that.

Like, let's do projects because we're just sitting with a sleeping baby otherwise. I think Casey's like partly back at work now. Yeah. He's doing what I did with, especially with my second, when my son was born. I took, I sort of scattered my leave and vacation time. So I did a week off and then a week where I went in like a couple days and then another, you know, then a bunch of three day weeks and I just sort of scaled it a little bit

which I think is smart because just being gone and then suddenly being full time after having that baby and being under that sort of sleep stress is pretty crazy Is this the paternity vertical? It could be parenting vertical. It's possible. We've stumbled into a vertical. Even before we get to follow-up, we are verticalizing.

Should we do some follow-up? Should we do some follow-up, Mike? Yes! One of these days, we're not going to have any follow-up. I'll make it up. Don't worry. I'll find something. We will.

Okay. I have a little bit of have any follow-up. I'll make it up. Don't worry. I'll find something. Okay. I have a little bit of Taylor Swift follow-up. I never thought I would say that, but Taylor Swift follow-up is a thing. Part of this, we talked about this last week, about this is following up on follow-up about when I was talking about streaming services and pointing out that they're shifting sands and you could have things disappear from your library. And Taylor Swift pulled her music from Spotify. There was a back and forth last week where the guy from Spotify said, we're paying you a lot of money. And her people were saying, well, no, it's not really a lot of money. And it turned out that the truth lies in the middle where Taylor Swift's people were quoting the figure that she made in the US last year from streaming. So basically the smallest number possible.

It was like half a million or something. Yeah, half a million. And Spotify was, and this made me laugh, they took the worldwide figure and then took the trend line of where payments were going to estimate her payment for next year, which is cheating. Because she has a new album out right now. That's why the trend line is so good. Yeah. So that's cheating. And then, well, there's Spotify growth and all that.

So that was interesting. And it has brought up a lot of people have had opinions about this. And I think, like we were talking last week, it's worth talking about, you want to find a sustainable place, right? And you don't want artists to say, well, forget it. This is bad. We're going to pull out of these services. But at the same time, the artists do need to make a living. So you need to find a sustainable place. And the argument now seems to be Taylor Swift on one side and Spotify on the other she's

saying it's not and they're saying it is sustainable and you know the problem is it's unclear to me as somebody not in the music business whether Taylor Swift is using her clout to represent all artists right and like she's going to make her money regardless and she's okay with that but she's got a soapbox to stand up for other artists rights or whether she's just concerned about what taylor swift is going to make and that what she says doesn't really apply to anybody but like the top 20 artists and i don't know i don't know the facts there but i think everybody who loves music would and love streaming services wants this to work right we want it to be something where it's great for consumers you pay your monthly fee you can listen to what you want what you want is there and doesn't disappear and that the artists

get paid that's really what everybody wants i think there's no way it will it will ever even out like artists are never gonna make as much from streaming services as they made from selling their albums directly. I'm not sure artists made money from selling their albums directly, though, really, right? Because the record companies took all that money. So that's where I go back to my feeling on this, is that in the long run, it will even out

if you ignore the actual money coming from the music itself because in theory it allows more people to find out about you and therefore people buy concert tickets because that's where that seems or you're making the Dave Grohl argument you're making the Dave Grohl argument which is is, look, I don't really care about... I mean, Dave Grohl said basically, I've written off album sales, whatever. If they like my music, they'll come to my show and that's where I make my money. And that's actually true for a lot of artists is that historically the record companies have taken so much of the money that the artists couldn't make it on album sales anyway. So I would argue that that is maybe wrong, like morally wrong, and that new technology coming in could potentially right some of those wrongs and bring that money directly

to the artists in a way that it hasn't. And you see that with things like artists doing Kickstarters and Indiegogos. And I've bought my last, what, two Mike Doty albums direct from him using, I think, Indiegogo. And I did a They Might Be Giants thing where I paid them directly and I got concert tickets and their album releases. And I just re-upped where they're doing a thing called Dial a Song Direct where it's part of their instant fan club where you pay them directly and they give you stuff. There are options there. I looked at that Dial a Song thing for this year and I don't understand how they make any money from it. Well, I think they make a little and I think it's because it's direct because they're eliminating the middleman there.

But yeah, like the Dial a Song Direct, I think you pay like 30 bucks or something and you just get some songs um the the instant fan club for they might be giants you pay what a hundred dollars and you get two concert tickets you get two album releases and you get the the weekly like dial-a-song music and some like merch um you know it's probably not a huge money maker but it does attach them directly to their biggest fans, which I think is, I think is kind of cool. But anyway, these, so these are options are out there too. And maybe that's where the future of this stuff is, is the super fans. It's the Spotify isn't for the super fans. Spotify is extra. And then you get your money through super fans buying stuff direct from you and, um, and, uh, your concerts and maybe that's it. And that's

fine. That's fine. And that's fine. That's fine if that's the case. But Taylor Swift is still not on Spotify. So my argument that just like Netflix, music services may have this problem where your favorite artist just vanishes. Maybe that will happen. In the long run, it needs to be solved because it will devalue these services

if this is the case. But I fear that we are in a period of upheaval where artists are going to be doing this and contract disputes are going to happen and catalogs are going to disappear from the music services too. And that will be bad for those services and the people who use them. We mentioned Foo Fighters. I thoroughly recommend their new album, Sonic Highways. I didn't mention Foo Fighters. I thoroughly recommend their new album, Sonic Highways. I didn't mention Foo Fighters. I mentioned Nirvana, but that's a disconnect between us. Oh, interesting.

I know. I like Foo Fighters too. It's fine. But I just, you know, you're a young whippersnapper and Dave Grohl was in a band before Foo Fighters. Anyway. I know. I know.

I know the history. But yes, I love their new album. I've been listening to it on Beats Music. But, on Friday, no, tomorrow, I think, tomorrow morning,

no, it's Friday, they have tickets going for their tour and I'm going to wake up especially early to get in line to buy tickets. And that's because

I love the new album. So, it works. So, that's because i love the new album so it was that's our that's our music vertical music vertical check um let's see what other what other follow up we're going to come back to spotify in a bit actually i think okay that's good that makes sense yeah we'll get there yeah um setup follow-up we talked about our setups last week um and i know that was hard for some of us to hear and i felt really bad afterward i'm like you know mike was really good on the show about it but now i'm a little concerned that that mike has been upset by our discussion of his of his setup um so i i hope you're okay i haven't been upset i i've just been uh slightly uh harassed

um and uh slightly i've just been trying not to think about it basically okay it's been my my uh my tact at the moment however you know i say harass People have had very good suggestions for me in all, but my main thing is I don't necessarily want to change anything about the way that I work right now. Well, that goes back to you being your own i really meant you're being very conservative in your tech decisions for what you're doing now because you've got um you've got a business and you've got particular needs and you've got a workflow that works for you and just like any it person i saw in like the publishing industry like at macworld the editors would install new updates immediately and be like whatever new software we'll do, whatever. But the people who did like the design and the copy editors, those,

those, uh, computers were very rarely updated. Uh, it was a very conservative approach because they were the ones who, who had to get the magazine out. And, uh,

you know, they had the Adobe software and all that. And it was a very different kind of thing where it's like,'s not mess this up just because it's fun whereas editors that was our job was to just mess things up for fun um and so i think that's the position you're in which is you want to be careful you don't want to mess anything up you you're out on your own now building this business um you know you want to be careful about how you do it. I think that makes perfect sense. And it's very easy for the internet to get judgmental about that

and be like, oh, come on, just buy a thing. And you're like, well, no, I'm not going to buy that thing right now. I'm going to make my own priorities. And that's quite right. Yeah, that is exactly it. Thank you. Although listener Kyle on Twitter

and in the chat room as we speak did point out that Mountain Lion supports airdrop, so you could AirDrop your files from your Mac Mini to your MacBook Pro. Yeah, I've not tried that out yet, but that is one that I'll maybe have a go with. I'll see. Alright.

Also, some follow-up for me. Alexander Vachich, I'm going to say, Radiant AV on Twitter, said, I am very surprised that as prolific a writer as Jason is, he would use such a terribly uncomfortable desk with a slide-out keyboard tray. Now, so some judgment, feeling some judgment from the internet. I wrote him back and basically said, said well i'm the one at the desk and you're the one looking at a picture so who's better at judging how uncomfortable it is i love

your responses to things right i mean really like one photo and you've decided it's uncomfortable i'm sitting at it maybe i have a better idea his his point in the end uh was that he hates keyboard trays and that he has had an experience where he, you know, he does the hover thing where you're hover, hover. Where he, you know, your hands are, which you shouldn't do when you're typing, which is when you're paused and you're thinking or you're reading something on screen to hold your hands over your keyboard and suspend them there. Like you're ready to type at any at a moment's notice that's really bad for your hands and your wrists and your arms and your shoulders it's just bad you should not do that you should type when you need to type and not hover when when you're not typing and he said he had you know he had pain from doing that and that the the problem with the keyboard tray is you can't rest your hands on it because it's all flimsy. And that's all true to the point that although I was okay with my old setup, I have

actually for the last few days been trying it with the keyboard tray off with the iMac higher up on the arm and further back on the desk and my keyboard and trackpad on the desktop instead of in the keyboard tray. And it's different and I'm not sure I like it, but I'm giving it a try because I never really loved keyboard trays too. It was more, if you've got an adjustable keyboard tray and a monitor on an arm and a sit-stand desk, you can literally put your keyboard, your desktop, and your display at any height. And that's what I had. And there are some advantages to that but I'm kind of interested in this approach where the keyboard is on the

solid surface instead of on the flimsy keyboard tray so I'm trying that out and I'm not sure whether it's better or worse I can barely get my desk low enough to make this work and my chair high enough but it does work so I'm going to give that a try

we're all going for changes yeah it happens to make this work and my chair high enough. But it does work, so I'm going to give that a try. We're all going for changes. Yeah, it happens. Workspaces. I have a Nick and Nerf Brain Ball follow-up. Of course. Of course. I mean, why wouldn't we?

It's important. I hear that it turns out they're going for a lot of money on ebay um listener nj green wrote in with a link to uh 130 brain ball on ebay and listener greg uh tweeted uh are you absolutely sure that your nerf brain isn't for sale to which i said you couldn't afford it um because and no no they're not for sale uh but it turns out that yes the the uh these two i think i have a third in a box somewhere but i have two out in my in my office here these two orange nick and nerf brain balls from the 90s um you have mint in box i i don't have mint in box so this is the this is this is the other thing

somebody and i'm not sure who said i hope you've still got the containers because they're really worth something and and that i don't have because as i said a couple weeks ago the brain balls came to the macworld offices um back i mean way back back when we were on howard street and down in san francisco and not on second street so this is right after the mac world mac user merger so it's you know it's late 90s and uh it was part of i don't know some piece of piece of software maybe mind mapping i don't remember what it was but they said sent a box and like a lot of pr things they send it with like well i will get their attention by having not just a press release in a box with software, but a brain.

And we'll say, oh, think clearer with our software or whatever it is. So they obviously they paid an intern or somebody to take them out of the boxes, the original boxes, and just put them in their mailer with their stuff and mail that to tech industry people. So I don't have the box because I did literally collect from my coworkers who did not, who had just kept them at their desks and didn't care about them. I collected the extras like two years later. I'm like, no, I'll take that brain ball if you're not using it. So that's the story with the brain ball. So I don't have it mint in box. They are definitely used.

Although the 131 on eBay is used. Yeah. So these are like gold, Mike. They're like gold, which is why my other bit of brain ball follow-up is terrifying. My daughter had her birthday party this weekend. As I said, she turned 13. And she had a bunch of girls over. There were like eight girls in our house. And it was pretty crazy. They were outside. They did some tie-dyeing. They hung out in her room. And they hung out for a little while in our garage, which is not just my office,

but there's a big beanbag chair here. And there's a can, and when I'm not using it, the idea is it's also a place for teenagers to go and not be near us, which is, that's a feature. Um, I came out, uh, after they had all left late that night, Saturday night to discover, um, on the floor in various far corners of the house, both of my brain balls. So the girls had been playing with the brain balls. Don't they know the worth? That was exactly what I thought. This goes for $130 on eBay.

So I haven't said anything to my daughter about it yet, but I'm... Actually, what I did tell her was, hey, the stuff that's on my desk needs to be off limits and don't let anybody play with the stuff that's on my desk what i didn't say is like my precious precious orange foam brain yeah don't tell her how much they cost or one day one of them just goes suspiciously missing just gone who knows where it went so that's uh orange foam brain follow-up. Vertical. Done. Shall we, because we have a little piece of follow-up,

but I think it might stretch a bit. So should we talk about Hover now? I would like to hear from some friends right now. In my moment of need where I'm upset about my potentially damaged brain balls, I would like to hear from a friend. Well, let me cheer you up, Jason, by telling you about our very good friends at Hover. They are the best way to buy and manage domain names.

Hover has been my choice for as long as I can remember from when I became sensible. Because before Hover, my life was crazy, trying to navigate the obstacle course of domain management. But Hover has cleared all of that up. Once you need a name, it can either be a name for a new project or maybe you want to play a joke on me and Jason and set up like manchegocheese.fm or something.

You can go to Hover. Or hightelephone.plumbing. You can go to Hover and get all of this. They have a really great way of searching for domains. You just type in the words that you're looking for, and they'll give you all of the top-level domain options that are available. They have over 200 different top-level domains. As Jason mentioned, they have.plumbing if you want it.

They have.academy,.coffee. They have.sexy if that's the kind of thing you're looking for. They also have your standards like.com,.co,.me,.net. Brainball.sexy. Brainball.sexy. Brainball.sexy. Brainball.xyz if you want it as well. Basically, you can monopolize all of the Brainball domains by just going to Hover and registering them all in one easy go.

And if you do do something like register 100 domains for Brainball, then you can take advantage of their volume discounts when it comes to renewal time. So if you have loads and loads of domains of Hover, they can give you a discount when you renew them all. They have fantastic customer support. They have a no-hold, no-wait, no-transfer telephone support policy. They have great email stuff as well.

So if you want to email them and get some support that way, they're really great at that. They have loads of written guides and help documents if you want to transfer domains over and do domain management stuff. But they also have their valet service where they can do all those transfers for you. Hover will give you free who is privacy of every domain because they believe in keeping your private information private. Go right now to hover.com and try them out. You want to use the code verticals at checkout and you'll save 10%

off your first purchase at hover.com and show your support for upgrade. That is verticals, V-E-R-T-I-C-A-L-S at checkout. Thank you so much to Hover for sponsoring this show and supporting RelayFM.

Our friends. Our friends, our good friends. At Hover. At Hover. If those, and also my other mic translation for that spot would be uh when he says xyz he means xyz yes yes you need to go to uh hover for your xyz yes that's thank you well done i love that they that hover embracing this because basically it's just becoming a war of pronunciation.

And they're letting us go with it. So I appreciate that. We're into the UK-US vertical now. I wanted to mention I had an episode of The Incomparable that I posted this weekend, which was about webcomics. And that's one word because in the episode you'll hear John Syracuse say, one word, webcomics. Not webcomics. It's one word, because in the episode, you'll hear John Syracuse say, one word, web comics, not web comics. It's one word, web comics. It's like, all right, all right. And then like, seriously, it's like,

I will never ever write that as two words again, because John Syracuse has told me it's bad. It's just, I do what he says. So there was a reference in there to a comic called Axe Cop. And Tony Sindelar tells a story about a guy who he saw at PAX that he thought was a cop, an actual cop. But it turns out it was an axe cop cosplayer. So

he was a guy wearing, essentially impersonating an officer, but he had a hatchet and so it was okay. But what Tony said was impressive is that he had a natural authentic cop mustache. said was impressive is that he had he had a natural authentic cop mustache and i i uh i thought authentic cop mustache was a really great title uh so i decided that was going to be the title and then i had that moment of like well wait aren't there two different ways to spell mustache and indeed that let me led me into a dictionary um bottomless pit of dictionary definitions where i discovered that americans spell mustache m-u-s-t-a-c-h-e and non-american english speakers tend to spell it m-o-u-s-t-a-c-h-e i had no idea so anyway i spelled it the american way just like how gray so my question gray is the same way the rule with gray by the way is very easy because if you're American, you spell it with an A

and if you're English, you spell it with an E. Oh, that's nice. It's good to remember. If you're Australian, I'm sorry, you should probably spell it with an A, but you probably spell it with an E. So my question to you with the moustache thing is how do you... I mean, we know Movember because it's M-O and they're also referred to as Moes, you know? A moustache is referred to as a Mo.

Interesting. Because it's pronounced moustache? No, it's spelt that way. Oh, I do know many people. Spelt, spelt, which we would say spelled. Oh, man. I know many people that call them moustaches, but there you go. That's another thing for another time.

Moustachio. I don't know. It's stupid, but it's just yet another way where our common language separates us. So that's your US, UK. Hover. Hover. Hover. Follow up.

We're almost done. Last week we spoke about podcasting. Podcasting is back. You're going to hear this everywhere at the moment because everybody's really interested in it. And especially on other podcasts that you listen to, I'm sure everyone's going to talk about it, but we get to go there first because it's Monday.

Because it's Monday, yeah. We spoke last week about Serial and what that's doing and now there's all these Wall Street Journal articles and stuff. And then there's been more stuff over the weekend and like Marco wrote a very interesting post about podcasts and sponsorship and the way that all that sort of stuff is growing.

But then today, as we record this, which is the 17th of November, 2014, there seems to have been some rumors floating around that Spotify is going to enter the podcasting game and become a provider of spoken word audio content um so and then jason snell in in uh who is this some guy in response to this wrote a great post on his site sixcolors.com and i believe that my co-host jason knows Mr. Jason Snell and can comment on his opinions. Yes, I have his Nerf brain ball right here.

Yeah, it was that, well, this came up this morning, the TechCrunch story about Spotify having sort of secret podcasting features built in. And it led to a whole discussion on the little back channel from Relay. And Stephen Hackett wrote a post on his site and I wrote a post on my site about it. And I think it's interesting because I think we can debate whether Spotify is a brand for – they probably would say we are a brand for listeners. And podcasting is one of the ways people listen to things. And I would say maybe it's a music brand and i'm not sure whether it people are going to want to listen to spoken word on spotify that seems like a pretty different use case but i could maybe maybe but there was a there was another pretty big music brand that that brought podcasts in there wasn't there so

itunes yeah well that's true that's true. That's true. Although that's different in that iTunes is sort of this catalog of they had audio books and they have podcasts and all of that. But it is true. Apple has the big library for podcasting. And so in my piece, which I've been meaning to write for a while, and I may have even mentioned it on a previous show, this idea that podcasting is having a moment. That's really great. Apple is uniquely positioned, I think, to give it a boost. I'm not sure whether it will or not. I'm not sure whether Apple cares enough. It's not really at the core of Apple's business. But at the same time, I feel like Apple, more than any other single company, could probably boost the future of podcasting.

This is an interesting moment where, like we said last week, we can roll our eyes at this rediscovery of the medium, but it's great that it's been rediscovered because it needed to be rediscovered because all those newspaper and magazine stories were written in 2005 about it. And the tech wasn't far along enough for it to become a mainstream hit. And it is now, but everybody sort of just saw it fizzled in 2005. And then below the radar, it continued to grow, but it just never met the outrageous expectations of 2005. So now we've all seen it grow. We've all adopted podcasting apps and are listening to all these podcasts all the time. And I'm listening to several right now. It's only slightly distracting. And it's good that people are rediscovering it.

Writing an article in New York Magazine about it that gets passed around is good for everybody because it's going to bring more people in as listeners because they read about Serial and they want to listen to podcasts and then they'll say, what else can I listen to? It's great for podcasters because I really believe that there are lots of major advertisers that we would think they'd be really savvy in terms of technology and things like that. But no, actually, like an ad buyer at an ad agency who reads that story that's getting passed around about podcasting, I really believe those people are going to be more likely to buy advertising because it's got that stamp that says, oh, this is a thing now. And before they might've been like, nah, podcasts, nobody cares about

them anymore. It's just a hobby. But now it's like, oh, oh, did you hear they're back? And we can joke about, did you hear the're back? And we can joke about, did you hear the podcast are back? But that is a message that for people who are potentially buying podcast advertising is a big deal. And I do think that

that also is going to reach potential listeners who are going to say that. And that's good for the medium. So I think it's all great, all great for the medium. But Marco Arment had a post this weekend that partially was throwing everybody, including us, who's done a podcast survey with the mid-roll where we ask people to fill out some survey information so we know more about who our listeners are.

I sort of threw them under the bus, but the larger point that I thought was interesting was him pointing out quite rightly, look, the tech is evolving slowly. Not everybody's got Bluetooth. Not everybody's car radios have Bluetooth. It works easily. It's kind of hard to set up, but it'll get there. And I thought that was a good point too, that not only are people, the tech's okay now, but it's going to get better. And this comes back to the larger point, which is somebody in something is going to put podcasting over the top. And, and, you know, my piece on six colors, I'm saying really is Apple. You could argue it's Apple and Google with CarPlay and Android Auto. But is it, could it be Spotify? Could the Spotify already with its podcast integration,

could it do it? Is, is some third party? I mean, we were talking on, on not to give too much away on the Relay Back channel, but we came up with a billion dollar idea about how we're going to completely revolutionize podcasting. So some third party like us could, we could do that too. Billionaires, please contact us. We've got some great ideas. Great ideas. So good. Just write us a check and we'll do it. I'll be the editorial director of Brilliant Podcast Startup Incorporated, LLC, GMBH, whatever, XYZ. So I don't know. I think it would be extremely good for the medium if Spotify got involved because I think it would push Apple even further into doing something because they know that they are the home. to doing something because they know that they are the home um whether people listen in overcast or whatever it doesn't matter itunes the itunes podcast directly remains the home they make up a small percentage of our overall listenership in some instances like the highest

is like 15 to 20 percent of our downloads come from itunes and the rest come from the third party apps um And that's in its highest. I think this show actually has the highest listenership in iTunes out of all of our shows. The incomparables iTunes and podcast app scores are higher. I think the further you get out of the super like Apple tech nerd sphere, which we are deep down in, this is where we live, but I think it gets bigger and bigger. And I'm fairly comfortable in saying the two most popular pieces of software to listen to podcasts are iTunes and Apple's podcast app.

That is not what we see. Well, yeah, in the world, but not for us. Oh, yes, in the world, of course. In the world, right? And that's the challenge is getting across. Our audience already is aware of podcasts, right? But what about everybody else? That's the question.

So I think things like Spotify would be good. I mean, we would, of course, put our shows into Spotify, provided they didn't have terms like Stitcher does. Right, right. You have to mention Spotify or if they want to do something with your ads, like Spotify has got their premium service or they're going to want to take your ads out

or you're going to have to put in because that's not, how do we make money if they... There are a lot of questions, right? There are a lot of questions. In the chat room, by the way, real-time follow-up about several people saying podcast is not a good name. And I'm torn on that because I feel like a name ends up not meaning anything.

A name is like it doesn't, you know, it's whatever. Like Joe Steele. Like Joe Steele has just taken the words right out of my mouth. A podcast by any other name would smell as sweet. It actually doesn't matter. Leo Laporte tried to do it. He came up with a worse name in my netcast. It's so much worse.

He continues to hold on to that. He's kind of, well, no, he's kind of given up. I think other than the fact that they've got it in their pre-rolls and all of that, I hear him talk about podcasts all the time now.

I think he's no longer trying to start a netcast revolution there. There's no point. I try to explain it to people as being that it's like on-demand radio. I mean radio is probably the word you want to use for to talk about this stuff is like it's internet radio or something like that but it's it's i'm not entirely convinced that there's another word out there that solves this um maybe a brand name maybe somebody's app uh does it or you know spotify has a again the the is it has a thing that says podcasts.

And I'm not – that doesn't solve that problem. But maybe somebody could come up with something that becomes a more generic concept than podcasts. Because in the end, I want regular people to be able to listen to podcasts. And more than that, I want them – I want that person who reads about that podcasts are back and that Serial is really good to listen to Serial. And when they get caught up with Serial and there's no new episode for a week, I would like the podcast app that they're using to say, here's something else you might like. And that doesn't exist right now. That really, I mean, Stitcher will do that, I guess. But that's about it.

And Stitcher is bad for other reasons. So there's a lot of opportunity out there. It's early days for the medium, but I think it's great for the medium that we're having these conversations and that people are taking notice again because we all think it's a great medium. I think it's an interesting time. I'm very excited that I'm involved in it. I also think that the thing that I keep coming back to right now, the reason why this is all happening, I genuinely think that in a few years' time,

there will be podcasting before and after iTunes and podcasting before and after Serial. I do think that this is a pivotal time in the industry, is this show, because it is pulling people in. And I hope, going on from what you were saying, Jason, I do hope that what happens is people listen to this and are like, I quite like this. What other things do I like?

I like tech. And then they start searching around and then they find other shows. And then they say, I also like tech. And then they start searching around and then they find other shows. And then they, you know, say, I also like movies and they find other shows. I also like video games, you know? And I think that that is, that is pretty much what pulls people in anyway. And I'm seeing Serial is very interesting. I am coming into contact with many people now as I'm telling people what I do for a living, telling me that I listen to Serial.

That is happening in my life because I know that Serial is doing what podcasting always did, but on a wider basis, which is word of mouth. That is how shows tend to grow because nobody advertises. There's no, people aren't, we don't advertise upgrade on This American Life, right? It doesn't work like that.

We don't do that. So people find out about this stuff through word of mouth and Serial was seeing that on a much wider base. My only hope is that, I mean, because I'm, I know you're not very far into Serial

and there'll be no Serial spoilers here. I'm becoming increasingly more uncomfortable with the show and I hope that that doesn't happen to a wider base. I love it, but it's just, I'm starting to wonder, what's the end of it? Right. But ideally, I mean, serial is storytelling. I mean, it is journalism, but it's storytelling and it works because of the way the story is being told. And if presumably they have a good ending that fits, endings are hard, but that fits with what's come before.'s going to break out and it hasn't happened, but Serial might be the one that does it at last.

I mean, like Marc Maron had a bunch of stories about him, but it didn't seem to, you know, everyone is a little bit bigger and this is certainly, I think, the biggest by far up to now. Well, iTunes are currently promoting the banner that it's the show, it's reached five million downloads quicker than any show ever has yeah i suspect that that's incorrect in some instances i would say that's probably five million through itunes so it means it's much larger and i expect that

that number was is not right now i don't think it was immediate i think it hit five million a couple of weeks ago or something and then they talk about it. But I would expect it to be a much, much larger totals than that. Something that came up in the chat room that I think is worth mentioning again about the name

and how you try to explain even what they are to people and it's a hard thing to do. I've mentioned before that I've explained to my mother several times what a podcast is, and I think she still doesn't get it. But this is my point, is calling it the label you put on it,

whatever that label is, that's not the reason people don't get it. People don't get it because it's abstract, it's a new kind of medium, and because the tech to get it is not as easy as it should be. I think those are the issues. I think the name is, it's easy to blame the name. The name is not the problem. The name may not be great, but the name is not the problem. The problem is that if my sister says, I want to listen to this serial thing that I heard about, how do I do that?

says, I want to listen to this serial thing that I heard about. How do I do that? I have to be like, okay, well, you go to the podcast app and you do a search or you can find the thing and you tap on it and all that. And then she says, well, but how do I listen to it in my car? I'm like, okay, have you paired your car with Bluetooth? No, I haven't. All right. Well, it's this whole chain of things. And it's not something people are familiar with. People took a lot of time to understand how the web worked and how like Netflix worked. And this is another one of those things where you've got to explain streaming media and it's on demand, but you can also download them in advance. And it's just there's a lot in there. And the more that the technology evolves, the easier it's all going to get, which is why I keep coming back to things like CarPlay and Android Auto.

Like the more this is all just kind of part of what everybody expects in their car and they can go boop and play something, it gets a lot easier. But I don't know. But it's an exciting time to have this happening because I think it is good for all of us. This American Life actually made a really funny and clever video about how to listen to podcasts.

I'll find it and put it in the show notes. It's Ira Glass is with, I think he has a friend, but I think it might be a relative. It's a lady who's in like her 80s or 90s. And she explains how to listen to the show. It's very, very clever. Yeah, I'll find it. I'll put it in the show notes.

Yeah, it's How to Listen to a Podcast with Ira and May, and it will be in the show notes. Jason, where can people find the show notes for this show? You go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 10. Perfect. 10 is the same number in English and American English. Indeed it is. It's very funny.

It's actually quite amusing. So I would urge people to watch it. But things like that, that's pretty good. They explain it really well, actually. I thought they did a great job. Nice. Podcasting is the future. It's the future.

It's happening. It's back. Nice. Podcasting is the future. It's the future. It's happening. It's back. Do you want to talk about friends now,

or do you want to talk about another topic before we talk about a friend? Let's talk about a friend. This episode of Upgrade is also brought to you by our friends Smile, and we want to talk about TextExpander Touch today. TextExpander Touch is the fantastic app for your iPhone or iPad that's going to save you time and effort by helping you expand short abbreviations into frequently used text. Whether it's something simple like a frequently used address, maybe a shipping address that you use when you buy things on the internet, an email signature that you frequently want to append that

maybe even has an image in it, or several paragraphs of a standard response to an email support request that you get a lot, you're going to love how easy it is to use TextExpander to avoid typing those same things over and over and over again. With TextExpander Touch, you're able to sync all of your snippets with TextExpander on the Mac via Dropbox, meaning that all of your snippets are going to stay in sync on all of your devices.

You can access your TextExpander snippets inside Smile's iOS app where you can write little notes and you can copy and paste the text, or you can enable TextExpander in the over 60 apps in the App Store that have integrated snippets like OmniFocus, Day One, Fantastical, Drafts, Lawton Center Pro, and many, many more. But with iOS 8 and TextExpander Touch 3, came the TextExpander custom keyboard, so that you're able to expand

abbreviations in any application on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. So now even if an app doesn't support TextExpander snippets directly, you can just change the keyboard over and you have access to all of your snippets right there. This is something that couldn't have been done before iOS 8 and a new TextExpander keyboard has made it just perfect. I mean, you have everything. You have it right there. You don't have to switch into another app. You don't have to hope that your snippets are up to date. It's just there.

The TextExpander Touch keyboard communicates directly with the TextExpander Touch 3 application, so it needs to ask for that full access for the keyboard in the settings. This is because it needs to share the data between the application and the keyboard. Smile have updated their privacy policy on their website to show that they care about your privacy and they don't do anything crazy. And this is literally all they need it for. You can read that on their site if you are so inclined. You should go right now to the App Store and grab the new TextExpander Touch 3 and start saving time today. I'm a big fan. I could not recommend TextExpander enough. TextExpander on the Mac, TextExpander Touch on iOS.

They save my bacon on a daily basis. If you want to find out more, point to your web browser at smilesoftware.com slash upgrade. Thank you so much to Smile for their support of this show and RelayFM at smilesoftware.com slash upgrade. And a good friend.

A very good friend, indeed. We like our friends, and Smile are a very good one, like Hover. How can you not be friendly with a company that's called Smile? Exactly. I'm very happy that their name is just Smile now. Smile on my Mac used to be their name, and I never really understood that. That seemed like a haiku to me. Yes.

Or the first line of a song. Yeah, there's a smile on my Mac. My Mac is now smiling. I'm smiling upon my Mac. I'm just smiling. It's good. It's much better that way. Oh, what now?

What would you like to talk about? We have a few things. Well, I mean, we should talk about app pricing a little bit. I think the two big stories from last week actually were these two interesting game releases, Monument Valley, the extra levels of Monument Valley, and also Space Age came out last week. Two absolutely fantastic games, like super good games.

But their pricing is interesting because they they are not 99 cent games and they are not in-app purchase driven games right they're they're not in the um in the genre of you know freemium games right where where you go and and get it for free and download some levels and then you can opt to buy more levels for more space age is four dollars and monument valley is four dollars and the new forgotten shores expansion pack is an in-app purchase of two dollars more and uh you know i it's interesting the there was there was a minor kerfuffle and it was minor um and i like saying kerfuffle um a minor a minor dust up a minor kerfuffle, and it was minor, and I like saying kerfuffle. A minor dust-up.

There were some people who gave Monument Valley one-star reviews because they were mad that they had the temerity to charge for an update. How dare they? And that led to all of us sort of rolling our eyes and doing that. Come on, it's two bucks. You get more levels. Why is this a big deal? And I wrote a piece on Six Colors about this because

I think it's at least worth understanding why people are acting so entitled. And one-star reviews are like, those people are babies and they're having a tantrum. And, you know, okay, let's just give that as a given. But the question is why? And for developers, do they need to keep that in mind?

Or do they just not care and say, you know, hey, babies, I don't care about you. You know, you're just being a baby. Um, and, and I, I think it's worth having that conversation. I think it's worth saying what, like looking at what Monument Valley, uh, us too, as the developer, we're looking at what they did and saying, what were their options here? And why did they choose without knowing the details of their business? Uh, why do they choose what knowing the details of their business why do they choose what they chose and what other things could they have chosen and you know they had options i had

several people point out that they had the option to just give it away for free yep and and that that would be and there's most people who make that argument there's this implication that um they'll give it away for free it It'll make their existing customers happy. And everybody else in the world will then flock to buy it. And they'll make more money that way, which I don't believe is true in most cases. I think a lot of app developers, especially in the productivity category, work that way. Whether it works for them, I don't know. But for example, you see Fantastical releases a new update. and they go back up the chart again, because they get a bit

of press, or OmniFocus goes back up the chart again, because they've had a good update. That's the way that they work. I don't know if that is the best way of working, especially because, you know, you hear these days that the charts kind of aren't what they used to be, you know? Getting to number 10 in the charts now is not like what it was a couple of years ago or something but i mean that's that's the way that it is done i don't but i'm not saying i think that's right or wrong but i think that's why you know you get you get basically i keep coming back to the fact that now the app store is its own economy and there are ways of working

and there are expectations that live within that economy that have been built by developers, whether it could be EA as the developer, right? Or it could be Smile as the developer. There have been decisions that have been made and there have been opportunities taken. And now we have a situation in which apps are expected to be cheap or free.

And if you charge the price of a cup of coffee, it's a premium app. But that's the world that we live in now. So it's about understanding how we work within those parameters. Complaining that $3 is not going to be able to put food on the table. I understand that. And of course, I agree with that.

And I buy applications for that amount of money if I think that I want them and I think that they're worth it and I want to support the developer. But that is the world in which we live now. Am I being unfair? No, one of the things that a developer like us too has to deal with is the environment that they're in, right?

And they can behave a certain way all they like, that a developer like us too has to deal with is the environment that they're in right and they can behave a certain way all they like but they're not you know it isn't the us2 app store it isn't the monument valley app store it's the app store and and every other the behavior of every other app developer especially of every popular app, impacts how their customers see what their business decisions are. And so through that lens, charging an in-app purchase, when Doodle Jump is updated every month with new features

and they never charge anybody for them because their strategy is to just keep having people buy Doodle Jump. And I think Doodle Jump, the philosophy there and the whole argument here is only 1% of the world or one fraction of 1% of the world has your app. So pretty much everybody doesn't have your app. So you should just keep making it better and more people will buy it. Whereas I think the argument for Monument Valley might be this app is a premium

app. It was promoted heavily. Everybody wrote about it. Apple promoted it. Apple's going to promote these expansions. Everybody who is probably, or most people who are likely to discover Monument Valley have discovered it. And our best audience for the new levels is the people who already played Monument Valley. So we're going to put it inside the game that you've already paid $4 for, and we're going to charge for more levels. And that way it's also fair in a way that somebody new who wants to play Monument Valley needs to buy the full game for $4. And then if they want the extra levels, they need to pay another $2. That was their decision.

They, you know, if you're used to getting free updates, especially they made some mistakes. I think, uh, some of their update, um, communication to their customers was we are going to be adding new levels in an update, which I think was very easily in this environment read as we're going to give you new levels and what they got. The update actually enabled the ability to buy new levels. And you know, that, that I think people make an assumption based on the environment that we're in the app store. And that's okay.

They could have opted. I mean, this is what I go through in my piece on Six Colors. They could have opted to, I think the best option potentially was to go back in time. So first you got to build a time machine. But what if Monument Valley had the first couple of levels for free? And then there was an in-app purchase for the last eight levels. And then there was a new in-app purchase for another set of levels. I don't think there would be complaints then.

Maybe they decided at the time when it came out, they decided that's not the game they wanted to play. They didn't want to interrupt the game experience that way, because it is an experience to play that game it's not a i've had a couple people tell me well i don't really like the puzzles they were too easy it's like yeah they're not that hard but that's kind of not the point it's it's meant to be mildly puzzling and beautiful and atmospheric and that's why that game is is successful so maybe it's you know maybe they could have made it freemium it It would have been junkier that way.

It's nicer the way it is. But they have to make that decision, and they're living in that environment. But I do hate it when people assume that everything should be free. That is the problem because I think the truth is if the only way that they could have released this was by making it free for existing customers they would not have made the levels because i don't think they believe there is enough of a market in new sales driven by the release of new levels to make it worth um their while now they could be wrong about that but i i bet you that was their calculation when you heard uh new levels coming what did you expect i assumed that it would be an app purchase although i think i heard that it was going to be an app purchase but it's a premium app right

i paid for it and so i i i kind of expected that new levels would be paid they could have released a second app and i actually think one of the problems with uh this um this whole thing is that they conceived you know monument valley Monument Valley has an ending. And so how do you make a sequel? And they decided they weren't going to make a sequel. They were going to kind of insert new levels in between the sort of next to last level and the last level of the original story. Because that was a place where they could fit it into the story. And as a result, I don't know if it would make sense as a standalone app. And that would have been another way to go is just to release it as another

$4 app or $2 app and say, it's Monument Valley 2. But they didn't want to make that. They felt that this was just an addition to the existing story. So they had lots of options. This might be the right one. I think their customers... The other thing here is the customer isn't always right. Everybody always says the customer is always right. The customer is always right. No, customers can be unreasonable. And more to the point, not everybody is your target audience. And people who aren't in your target audience will get really huffy about not being in your target audience. How dare you not target this to me? This should all be about me. But in reality, as a business, you need to choose who your target is, and it's not going to be

everybody. And that's just how it works sometimes. And so in this case, it may just be that they're like, look, our audience for this is people who love the first game and are happy to spend two dollars to get a new experience in this game that's our target audience and yeah and we want to reach those people and we don't want to just add to the main game for free and hope we find people who weren't paying attention a year ago we want this to be to our core audience these are the people who appreciate what we're doing here they're the ones who are going to give us the money and if you're not in that audience, you can be outraged about it. But that's their decision, and it might be a good one. Sometimes good business decisions leave some people on the outside looking in, and that's just how it goes.

You literally cannot make everybody happy. I see this more now running a business, right? There are sometimes there are things that people ask you to do, which make perfect sense to you, like the person asking, and also kind of makes sense to me as the business owner. But sometimes I try and weigh up the risk, reward, or just like the work and reward that's required for a decision and feel that it doesn't work out for me where it seems like a perfectly valid idea or a way of doing things that doesn't necessarily mean that that matches with your ambitions and goals for your business and this is clearly the way that us two decided to go like they decided that what they would do is release this app as release these

levels as an update to the app they could have released a second app and then you know whatever they would have been the benefits or negatives of that or not i mean we have no idea if apple requested anything in this you know please do it this way or don't do it that way we don't know um but it's they you know this is the way that they chose to go and and i think for for me, I think they made the right choice. I prefer having it all in one app, and I would have given them the money anyway. I would have given them the money.

I wanted to give them more money. This is one of those scenarios where I wanted to give them more. It's the same with Space Age as well. I hope that they do more of that game because I loved it, and I hope that there is more of that game because I loved it. And I hope there is more of that story. Same sort of idea, right? Apps that are about $4 or $5 each and tell great stories and have a little experience and are short.

And I like that because it's like longer than a movie and cheaper than a movie. So I'm happy with that. Yeah, some people are... I mentioned that people said, oh, Monument Valley, the puzzles aren't very hard. And Space Age, I've heard some of that too. It's like, oh,

it's so short and parts of it aren't that hard. I'm on the last level, which my wife has beaten, but I haven't. The last level's really hard. I was texting Federico. I was like, please help me. Because we interviewed one of the developers, Matt Coney, on virtual.

And I was completing the game that day. And I finished it five minutes before we started because I was struggling so much with the last boss. And I was just frantically texting Federico and getting him to help me. Yeah, it's hard stuff there. But earlier, it's easy. And actually, this is, I think, one of the issues. I like that they make it premium. They say, you're going to pay us $4 for this.

This is a commitment. Yes, I wish Apple had a tryout or demo system, but they don't. And so your options are to make it free with an in-app purchase at a gate where you say, look, you can play the first two levels and then you have to stop the first level, whatever it is. Or you can just say, look, buy this and you'll have a good experience. Sometimes I think creative decisions factor into this. It's easier to do the gate after a level or two when it's a series of escalating kind of like video game levels that are just, you know, more, more guys or faster guys or whatever than it is when you're telling a story. And I feel like space age is a good example where,

um, I've talked to some people who started playing it and said, eh, it's kind of boring. I'm like, okay, well, it's telling you a story and there, if it's not working for you, then that's a problem. And maybe it's not for you. But that story unfolds over time, and you actually have to get into several levels before you realize that it's doing lots of interesting things with storytelling that you might not expect from a video game. But you have to get there. And because of the way it's structured, I think it actually would have been a bad freemium game because the first couple of levels are really simple because they're trying to ramp you up and they're trying to explain how this whole system works. And it calls into question the structure of the thing you're trying to build. I was actually talking, it's NaNoWriMo and I'm working on revising my novel this month. And I had somebody read it who's a novelist and a writing teacher too. And one of the points he made was, you're spending too much

time. The first hundred pages, not a whole lot happens. You need to condense this and you need to provide more excitement early on because he said, in reality, agents and publishers are looking for a reason to bail out of anything they're reading because they read so much. And if there isn't something really solid and exciting at the beginning, it's going to make it hard to sell. That doesn't necessarily mean that all the best novels have something exciting at the beginning. But the ones that it's going to be harder to sell it to anybody if you don't have that. And that reminded me of Space Age because it's the same thing. It's like they could have distorted their story to make it seem really awesome and exciting early on uh before the

gate dropped and you had to pay money but you know they didn't want to do that they didn't want to tell the story in that way and it would have made their story less good because this story that they wanted to tell um so they made that decision so some of that is the creative decision it's just like um and i think monument valley would be the same way it sort of breaks the spell and they're trying the whole idea here is these are beautiful and interesting and quirky works of art. They're experiences. They're not just puzzles. They're, I hate to say, it sounds so pretentious to say they're experiences, but I can't find a better word for it.

It's like you become, you're listening to the music. You're looking at the graphics. You're, it's like watching a movie except interactive it's not playing something that's got like a bunch of levels like you know playing wordament and just doing word searches all the time it's not that kind of thing and um i think maybe the premium model works better for that i have loads of games especially on the iphone that have no end like threes right i play i still play threes every day and I love those sort of games.

But sometimes I want a game that has an end that I can reach without putting 45 hours in. And if it's going to cost me five pounds or five dollars to get that game, I'm happy with that. And I really do. I love these sorts of games and I'm pleased that, you know,

there was that kind of outpouring of support for us too, you know, where people kind of drove the rating up. Because I think things like that are important to show that there is a market for it, even if your ratings sometimes tell you not so much. Yeah. Yeah, and it turns out people rushed us to defense, more or less, and gave them a bunch of five-star ratings, and it was fine.

But it's interesting. I think the big picture here is it's very easy to look at something from the outside and say, oh, well, they should have done this. And people do that all the time. But they don't know the dynamics. They don't know the cost to us, too, to make this. They don't know, you know, there's an assumption that they didn't think about it. I'm sure they thought about it a whole lot and they had lots of reasons to do it this way. Could they have communicated it better? I think yes. Uh, I don't think it would

have mattered in the end. Um, I think they probably anticipated that there would be reactions like this and they decided this was the best way to go. And it's an interesting lesson and it's worth everybody who is in the app ecosystem, the app market, the app industry needs to look at this and use it as another lesson of like, how do you define the feelings of your target audience? And how do you approach that? And I know people, I mean, Marco Arment took great care in figuring out the business model for Overcast. And he went a bunch of different ways before he settled on one that he thought would make sense. And what he settled on was freemium. What he settled on was a limited version of the app for free, and then you unlock one time to enable all the other features. limited version of the app for free, and then you unlock one time to enable all the other features.

And that, you know, he came up with a whole bunch of other ideas before he settled on that. So people are thinking about this stuff all the time. And this is another data point. And, you know, in the end, just because lots of games are freemium and lots of apps are freemium, it doesn't mean that that's the right approach for something like Monument Valley or Space Age, where it's a certain kind of game that is more of this experience and less of a casual, super easy game. It's different. And maybe this is the right approach for them. Maybe this boutique, you're buying it up front approach works better for this kind of game. I don't know. But I'm sure all the developers think about this

a whole lot. So if you'll allow me for a moment just a tad of cross-promotion. I'm hoping to be joined on Inquisitive this week by Monument Valley's executive producer, Dan Gray. So I'll ask you a bunch of this stuff. Awesome. I'll get the answers for you, Jason.

He'll just say, nah, we didn't think about it. We just thought, you know, purchase sounds good. And then we knocked off early. IAP has a nice ring to it. It kind of sounds like IDO, and we just won't move it. Yeah, sure. I'm sure that's it. But bottom line is, it takes time and money to make these apps,

and they need to find a way to make that work and, and to, and to get that money back. And I'm glad that they chose to make more levels of monument Valley. Cause I was sad when I played through it because it was beautiful. And I think about it from time to time and, and, uh, I've gone back and played it once or twice. And,

uh, I, you know, I'm, I'm happy that it's in the world and this is, I was happy to give them $2 for it. It was not a, it was a no brainer.

The new ones are stunning. They are stunning. No orange foam brainer. Yeah, they are. It makes me laugh. I mean, again,

the puzzles aren't necessarily hard. It's the, it's those moments of delight. Again, I'm sorry to use these words that sound like I'm on stage at an Apple event, but it's those moments of delight where you turn a wheel or you do something or you, you, you, you, the perspective changes in Monument Valley and you go, oh, look at that. I see that

now. That's what I love about it. It's not the diabolically difficult puzzles. It's those moments of surprise where your perspective shifts and you see something more clever. It's clever and you're listening to that music and looking at the graphics graphics and it's you know that's what i love about that and i've had some of those same experiences with space age where there are there are narrative things that happen that made me laugh out loud that i thought were really funny and uh and clever and you know that's part of it too do you have anything else you'd like to talk about today or should we leave it there for today's episode i think uh i i think we could leave it there i mean at some point we should probably talk about about uh see what another vertical in this podcast is future products from amazon um and i've got the that amazon tv stick thing that's their Chromecast competitor. I've got that ordered, but it doesn't come out for another week or something.

And then the Amazon Echo was announced, which is like a Siri speaker that lives in your house and listens to everything you say. And that's a weird product with a weird product video. And we could talk about that, but I signed up to be on the list to buy one of those. Oh, really? So we might, well, yeah, you can always send it back, right? I kind of want to try it. You're a technologist. Yeah, I kind of want to try that one.

And I'm a Prime member, so it's cheaper for me than it is for other people. And I want to give that a try, but it's a weird product. And so we could talk about it now, but I i think maybe and maybe we will on a future show but maybe we'll just do what we do in this podcast which is promote that in the future we'll talk about amazon uh hardware products but never get to it when is the echo likely to ship it's unclear three to five weeks on their page at the moment yeah but you have you you sign up oh and then they say we'll let you know when yeah we'll let you know when uh when you can purchase one so like i mine when i go to the echo page it says thank you for your request if selected you will receive an email with an invitation to purchase in the coming weeks oh my word how. How lucky you will be to receive an invitation

to spend $100 on Amazon. I wonder if we can do it in the UK. Let me see. No, it's not in the UK. Yeah. No, but it is, you know, what I like about Amazon is that they have, they feel the freedom to do kind of crazy products

and mash up technologies. And I think that's great. I don't know whether it's always practical. The Fire Phone was a flop, but maybe they'll learn from it. And, you know, although I look at the, I saw an ad the other night for the Fire Tablet. The Fire Tablet's a pretty good value. But I look at it and I think, wow, if you want an Android tablet, you shouldn't get it because it's not really an Android tablet. And if you want an iPad, you shouldn't get it because it's certainly not an iPad. What is it? It's this weird

Amazon hybrid thing. And I don't know. I like Amazon a lot. I like their services a lot. And some of the stuff, I'm not sure I'm convinced that this is stuff that people actually want. That it's like Amazon wants it because they want you to be in their ecosystem. But I'm not sure I'm convinced that this is stuff that people actually want. That it's like Amazon wants it because they want you to be in their ecosystem. But I'm not sure they're making products that actual people want. Yeah, they're making stuff that makes sense for Amazon. I mean, the Amazon Echo is literally like, we have this technology, what could we build with it? And that's bad. But what's good is if there's somebody with a vision of like, you know, what would be great is if my speaker, you know, my Sonos kind of speaker could be controlled by voice.

And oh, well, imagine we could do all this other stuff, too. You know, maybe there's a good product in there or maybe it's a disaster. I'm not encouraged by their product video, which is really cheesy. So bad. But we'll see. I think I could spend an hour just talking about that video. At that point, we should just watch Too Many Cooks instead. Too Many Cooks.

Sorry, everyone. My son, leaving the house this morning, he had to return. It's library day, so he had to return his books. And he had a stack of five books. And I said, too many books? And my wife and I were then singing Too Many Books all the way to school with him, which he was not happy about. But he had too many books.

Too many books. Too many books. Too many books. Every podcast I'm on ends up in singing in the end. That's what I've learned. Thank you so much to our sponsors. Make a book, especially if you're friends at Hover. Thank you, Hover and and smile for supporting this week's

episode you guys are fantastic and uh thank you for helping good friends they are good friends they're very good friends enemy slot still available yes amazon if you want to be a friend or an enemy let us know yeah. Thank you all for listening. You are also our friends. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, I am at imike on Twitter. I-M-Y-K-E. Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. We are at relay.fm slash upgrade.

If you go slash 10, you'll get the show notes for this week's episode. And you can also find the contact button to send us an email if you would like. Jason also writes thefantasticsixcolors.com and you should go and check him out and read his fantastic work, which you should be doing. If you're not already, why are you listening to this podcast as well? You should know Jason's work, surely. Surely.

Maybe they never learn to read. Maybe. And if that's the case, I'm sorry. You have podcasts. Always have the podcast. We'll be back next week with another episode of Upgrade. Until then, oh, hey, telephone.

Arrivederci.