Upgrade - 117: Sugar Christmas

Episode Date: November 28, 2016

Is Apple a big business trapped in the body of a startup? Myke and Jason discuss that issue, say lots of things that might be quoted out of context later, and then settle in to watch 1984's "Gremlins."

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 117 today's show is brought to you by smile encapsular mac weldon and mail route my name is mike hurley i am joined by the one and only mr jason snell hi mike are you the one and only mr jason snell oh man i'm not the internet has ruined no there's a there's a jason snell who actually the one i get the most is there's a jason snell who works or worked at industrial light and magic doing um 3d match move stuff and i and and uh so he's involved in that and, again, lives or lived in the same county as me. So at one point I actually donated blood and they said, is this your birthday? And I was like, uh, or no, I went in for a blood test.

And they're like, is this your birthday? They're putting me in the system. I'm like, no, that's not, no. I think you have the other one. And they're like, oh, okay. So you are the one of many Jason Snell then. Yeah, occasionally he he wins awards and stuff and people are like jason i had no idea that you also did computer

animation it's like nope not me you need to ride that train man and there's also like a guy who's like a bluegrass musician in the midwest somewhere who's jason snell and he's got a band and stuff and occasionally a google alert comes on on for those and the saddest of my google alerts because i do have a google alert for me that i set up a million years ago is that there was a guy with my name in hawaii i think who was found dead by the side of the road oh man that's unfortunate yeah i have a uh michael hurley i have he is an American folk singer. But I totally dominate Mike with a Y Hurley. Well, Mike with a Y makes all the difference, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Smart. Having a Wikipedia page as well gives me that nice little bio on Google. Oh, yeah. I'm sure I told you this story before, but back in the early days, so my colleague at Macworld for many years and incomparable panelist, Philip Michaels, I registered philipmichaels.com, and he had a blog for a while that I think is not alive anymore,

although I still got the files, called The Trials of Philip Michaels, and it was all of his sort of funny things he wrote. He would write funny things in email to a group of friends. This is so long ago. And then I would just post them to the internet for him because we had no... Anyway, so one day he gets an email from a guy named Philip Michaels. And the letter is basically, stop using your name on the internet because people search for me and they can't find me.

All they find is your dumb things that you write on the internet. And I think his response back was, sorry, it's my name too. I'm not going gonna not use it but you know it's like that early in the internet i think people didn't understand how it worked but uh he definitely had the upper hand on all other and that's a that's a pretty common kind of name about you know philip michaels there's got to be thousands of them and uh but he had that he has the domain or more accurately i have the domain and the uh and and he had all of the search engine stuff and that other guy was just out of luck but he was really bent out of shape about it that's crazy man i think i love the idea as well that you were just

taking emails and just posting them online yeah the tv blog was the same way that was that was an email not even a mailing list it was like literally people just like with 15 people in the two line replying to all with funny things about television and i was i was doing something for mac user where i was testing like a web server and i was like oh what if i did a you know we didn't even have a word for it back then what if i could set up a template and then we could post these items on the internet and make a website with things on them? Because we couldn't even, the blog was not a thing then. And that's how that started too. Same thing.

It was just like we were circulating our funny things in email. And I was like, hey, what if we put that on the internet for other people to read? for other people to read. And the irony of this, of course, is, well, it's not irony, but I'll just point out that Phil met Lisa Schmeiser, his wife of many years now, because she saw his funny things

that he wrote on his website that I made. Look what you did. So look, yep. Yep, I win. Well, he wins, but I helped because I made a website. I got his brilliance out there for the world to see, including his future wife. So that's how things used to work before there was Tumblr, kids.

You had to have a friend who knew how to run a web server to put your funny things on the internet. Jason, did you get your Thanksgiving 5K badge on your Apple Watch? I did not. Good man. I did not. I'm almost more proud of you because you didn't, you know? No, but here's the sad thing, Mike, is on Thanksgiving Day, I walked probably six or seven K. Oh, I saw you tweet about this.

Yeah, so we took a walk in the morning. So we were visiting my sister-in-law, who lives about four hours from here uh which is nice uh she used to live on the east coast and she moved back and she lives right between where we live and where uh lauren and her you know lauren's parents live uh and so it's easier for everybody basically we first off we can all get together and uh we can drive four hours and they can drive four or five hours and we're all together. It's great. And it's up in the foothills.

It's very much the same terrain as where I grew up. It's, you know, it's a, you know, 50 miles south of where I grew up, but it's very much at the same altitude and it's the same climate and it's the same countryside. It's great. It's out in the country. And her land backs up on this kind of hilly open space, basically. And so she has legal access to go back there. And that's where she takes walks with her dog. She's got three dogs. And so we all went out on Thanksgiving morning with four dogs because we brought our dog too. It's like a little dog vacation. And we had a great walk and up hills and down hills

and through meadows. And it was amazing. And we get back to start cooking dinner and it's or Thanksgiving meal, whatever it is, because I think we ate it at like two or three in the afternoon. And I wasn't quite at 5k. I was a little bit short. I was at like three miles or two and a half miles. I was a little bit short, I was at like three miles or two and a half miles. I was a little bit short, but not a lot short. And I thought if I didn't have to go in and prep the turkey right now, because I roasted the turkey, I would just go out on the street and walk around a little bit and get the stupid badge. But instead I thought, no, I've got things to do. So I stopped. And then after dinner, of course, we went back out for another little bit of a walk.

I've got things to do. So I stopped. And then after dinner, of course, we went back out for another little bit of a walk. And I logged that one too. And if you put them both together, it was totally more than 5K. But the way that Apple's badge thing worked, it sounds like if you tried to add multiple ones together and they said, make a workout of more than 5K. And apparently also if you used a fitness app that uses the API, but that isn't a workout started in the workout app on Apple Watch, you didn't get it either. So close.

But I applaud Apple for doing it. I think it's a fun idea. I think that they should make more challenges like that where they try to encourage people to do it. I think it's gamifying fitness on a broader level. Get everybody to do a boxing day walk you know, a boxing day walk of, of at least three miles or something like that. I think stuff like that, it's kind of fun. Everybody's sharing their badges and talking about it and you don't have to do it, but you know, I think, I think it's a fun idea. So anyway, I did, I did walk more than 5k,

hike really more than 5k, just, uh, turkey badge for me alas did you do anything special you i saw a photo that suggests that you did despite not having a reservation when we talked have an american style thanksgiving uh meal last week in between the time that we spoke and thanksgiving we decided to go to a restaurant and we had a great thanksgiving dinner yeah i saw it it was yeah it. It was all the stuff, right? It looks like you had turkey and... All the trimmings. All the trimmings, yeah.

Yeah, it was really good. I'm really pleased that we did it because Idina really wanted to do that. She wanted to go and have a nice Thanksgiving meal because she'd never had it before and she was jealous that I did a couple of years ago, I think. So yeah, we did that and it was really, really nice. We had a great time with that one. It fun were there were there lots of americans around you

i think so uh i think so it's hard to tell um but i assume so cowboy hats yeah i don't know how you identify the americans exactly because i couldn't necessarily hear everybody yeah um i wasn't sure how to uh how to identify them yeah Yeah, cowboy hats, little flags, you know, the whole nine yards. Sure. But yeah, no, it was really nice. It was really, really, really nice. I love the food. I'm glad you did that. I love the food that you Americans decide to eat for Thanksgiving.

Wow, and for you, it's like a little bonus Christmas, right? Because it's the same sort of idea. It's like sugar Christmas, I guess. Would probably be the way to put it. That's kind of it's kind of how it is the extra sugary stuff on top yeah well we like it that way sure dude that's why i love america so much um there was a i want to mention this little product got announced today uh by our friends at studio neat uh i will just say right off the top not only

are uh tom and dan a studio neat friends of mine i host a podcast with him or relay fm called thoroughly considered i just want to mention that because we're about to talk about one of their products uh because it's cool um but you're the one who's been using it anyway yeah i've been using this i don't even know how long now many Months. Many months. I remember having one sent to me to give to Federico at WWDC. Yeah. So it's been a long time. This has been in development. It's been a very long time coming.

In fact, I'm scrolling back through Slack, and I think I got it in February. Right. So a long time ago. And those were handmade concept versions where they're like, you know, he's, he's cutting the material and putting it together. And, and they made some changes since then.

They, they actually based on the feedback, they changed the sort of like how the snap is put together and, and, and a little bit of the angle of view, but it's, so I've been using this and I've been on some shows like Twit where people have seen it and said, what is that?

And I've said, it's not a product that is out yet. So I can't help you with it. But one of my favorite accessories for the iPad has been the origami, the in-case origami workstation, which is a little case that you snap the old Apple Bluetooth keyboard into. And it's a super small, very compact carrying case. And then you fold it open and fold it back. It's got a little Velcro kind of thing. And you sort of stick your iPad in it. And you've got an

iPad workstation, basically, with the standard Apple keyboard of the time. Now, the problem is, the iPads are bigger, the bezels are smaller, and that's the old keyboard. The dimensions are not as... It's still usable, but it's not as great as it used to be with a modern iPad. So, the Canopy from Studio Neat is, I guess, basically a new take on that same concept. It's not quite the same as the origami in that the origami had sort of like these little wings that you folded over and then Velcroed and all of that. The canopy doesn't work like that.

The canopy has basically three surfaces and a snap to close it. And then when you open it up, you fold two of the surfaces back around and snap them back together. And that is the base of it. And then when you open it up, you fold two of the surfaces back around and snap them back together. And that, and that is the base of it. And it's designed for the magic keyboard and it will only really fit the magic keyboard. Other keyboards are, it's, it's exactly the size of the magic keyboard, but if you, and it's got this like super suction-y stick them stuff on the back. So you can take it on and off, but if you put it down,

it's held quite well to the canopy case. You just sort of like line it up and stick it down and it'll stay there forever. And then, so it wraps up very, again, compact carrying case. You've got a little Bluetooth keyboard. The Magic Keyboard's a really nice keyboard. And then you unsnap it, open it up, fold it around the back, and snap it again and put your iPad in it. And now you've got a full Apple Magic Keyboard and your iPad to do work. And I've used it all the time because I don't love cases that you have to snap your iPad into because it takes work to get them back out again. It also adds bulk and weight and all that stuff. Right, right.

And you're carrying it all around. So for this, it adds very little weight to the existing Magic Keyboard and it's a carrying case for the keyboard. So I throw the keyboard in a bag. I did it this, you know, for Thanksgiving. You throw the keyboard in a bag. It's there if you need it

and it will serve as its own, you know, it's also its own stand for the iPad. So if I want to write an article, I will get out the keyboard and I'll set it up and I'll drop the iPad in and I'll write. But when I want to walk away, I just pick up my iPad and walk away. It's not snapped in or attached. It's just sitting in the canopy. So I like it. It's a very specific product for a very

specific use case. But if you like the magic keyboard, if you like the idea of having a keyboard at the ready, but not having, you know, this keyboard attachment, uh, then I think it's a, I think it's a great option. And I, I have used, I've used it more than any other iPad keyboard thing since I got it. It fills a need that doesn't exist anymore, right? Well, it feels like a hole in the market. That's what I'm saying. Because the origami has gone away, right? There's no more origami.

No, that's it. This is, I had dreamed about a next-gen origami because I really liked that idea of take Apple's standard external keyboard and make a nice case that also turns into a stand for my iPad. Like that, that was what I was looking for. And, uh, and this is what this is with the magic keyboard. So, you know, again, there are other use cases where a, uh, putting it in a keyboard case is better. I know, you know, you and I both really like the, the Logitech

create, uh, the 9.7. It's a very, very nice keyboard case. But it is a case, and you're carrying it around. So it depends. Everybody's got – there's no right or wrong here. Everybody's got different uses. But for the way I use my big iPad Pro, this is generally the best fit because most of the time I just want to have the keyboard away somewhere, and I'll pull it out if I need to use it. Yeah, it is really nice.

I'm just not a fan of that keyboard. I don't know why I've used it like once or twice, and I used it for a day, and my hands were on fire. Huh, interesting. I don't know why. I couldn't tell you why. I use so many keyboards that are like that one, but there was just something

about that keyboard i still have one it's like it's it's in a it's in a drawer maybe i'll use it one day for something but i wish you know my my biggest criticism of it is probably that i wish that of the of the of the canopy is that it its strength is that it is made exactly for the magic keyboard and the magic keyboard is the right if you you're going to make a product like this for one keyboard, that's the right keyboard to make it for. The downside of that is there are some other really good Bluetooth keyboards that are good with iPads, and you can't use it with that. Just like with the origami back in the day, it's made for the one keyboard. It won't work with any other keyboard. So if you like the Magic Keyboard, and a lot of people do, and want to use it with your iPad, and I mean, it's like, yeah,

this fits a very specific niche, but it happens to be one that I really appreciate. So I like this product a lot. So you can go and check it out. There'll be a link in the show notes. But it's at studioneats.com. I think they're taking pre-orders for it right now. Yeah. studioneats.com slash Canopy, if you're interested. But it's good to talk about it since I've been using it for whatever it is now. Yeah, you're one of the lucky few that's had it for a while. But yeah, they're shipping it in the coming weeks, so you can go check it out. And we're going to be recording an episode, I think, of Thoroughly Considered next week, where we're going to talk about this, this has been a um this has been a long

and interesting process in trying to get this product made so if you're interested yeah i'm looking forward to the the story because i've only seen the one little bit as being you know as being a test case for the the initial hand cut test version yeah all right this week's episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at mac weldon the company that produces amazing comfortable underwear socks shirts undershirts hoodies and sweatpants that you're gonna love and if you're not wearing them if you're not wearing mac weldon right now for some crazy reason mac weldon is going to be better than whatever you're wearing right now because they believe in all the things that are important they believe in smart design i know you are you always are i am uh they believe in smart design premium fabrics

thank you for sharing and simple shopping experiences i'm not going to take this lying down your suggestion that mac weldon stuff is better than what i'm wearing now it is not because it is already mac weldon all right go on. Fine. I've got to give you that moment. I know. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Mack Weldon. No, Mack Weldon. Oh, Mack Weldon, I see. Mack Weldon.

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I don't know why you bombard me during the Mack Weldon ads, but you do and I enjoy it. I think the most entertaining podcast ads are where there are things going on in them and you can't skip them. That's the beauty of it and i i for some reason i plus i i do have those things so i can actually talk about them and and it's also fun to just uh to just derail me push your buttons a little bit i appreciate it werewolves you and john gruber had a great talk on the talk show which i actually got to after the last episode because i didn't want to spoil our show by hearing you talk about everything. And I decided I didn't want to talk about any of it. That's smart.

Plus, I think it was 17 hours long. Yeah. Yeah, something like that. It was long. It was a big one. But it was a great one. one um and there was a bunch of uh brouhaha after the show i guess is a way to to to focus on it which was effectively you and and john spoke about johnny ive a little bit on the show and we're kind of throwing around the idea about the design by apple in california book indicating the

potential longevity of Ives' career and also kind of what his focus is. Basically the same conversations that me and you had, the same conversations that Federico and Stephen had, the same conversations that they had on ATP. But there was a problem with the talk show. For some reason, it's the only podcast that I know in kind of the Apple technology sphere

that will get verbatim quoted as fact. Yeah, Gruber's reputation is to blame for this, right? It's like people are like, oh, he knows stuff to the point where now he has to sort of disclaim a lot when he writes saying, I don't actually know this. I'm just guessing because people kind of assume that he knows all the secrets, which isn't really true. He I'm just guessing, because people kind of assume that he knows all the secrets, which isn't really true. He does have good connections there, and after this all happened, he got some people to Little Birdies,

as he says, to tell him positive things about Johnny Ives' commitment to Apple, sort of. But there's more... The Kremlinology of Apple like which we do here sometimes. And there's there's deep holes of Apple Kremlin ology around the Internet. They watch Gruber like like Gruber is considered a connected to the Politburo in some way where they can do the Kremlin ology through him. And so, ironically, one of the things that we talk about and that Marco has talked about before on ATP about how one of the beautiful things about podcasting is it's off the cuff. It's not as considered as writing. Your thoughts can evolve as you have the conversation.

And because nobody has yet, and I'm shocked that this has not yet happened, nobody has yet turned a text-to-speech engine on all podcasts and dumped them into Google. Like, Google hasn't done that. I'm really surprised that that hasn't happened, that all things everybody says on a podcast are not yet indexable. But I think it will happen. And I am terrified for that day. Yeah, it's going to be a challenge. But it allows you to kind of think these things out and be a little bit imprecise.

And it just kind of goes in its own little universe and you have to listen and you have to get the context of it, right? So, because John is in this, you know, he's considered connected enough that what he says can be part of Apple Kremlinology, what he said about Johnny Ive, which he did not properly disclaim and he wrote a piece about how, you know, if you listen to the context, you can really understand that. But if you take the direct quote,

you can't was picked up and quoted in an article by, I think Apple insider about this. And in fact, the writer admitted to me, cause I, I wrote to him. So what happened was worse than that, which is I got, I started getting tweets saying um jason said jason's sources at apple say that johnny ive is no longer

involved in uh product design and i was like what what and i went to that article and all the things that john said about johnny Ive were attributed to me. And so the story is basically, and the writer kind of admitted this, that a writer for Apple Insider on a very slow news week was half listening to the talk show to the point where he didn't even know who was who. Because I think he had a cold and his ears were a little bit plugged up and decided and decided to make decided to make a story about the seemingly authoritative i heard that pronouncements from pundits pontificating and making speculation on a podcast and and sort of ginned up a story about it which then he had to revise because it wasn't me who said that it was john and then john sort of added in his layer which was if you listen to the whole thing and this guy it wasn't me who said that it was John. And then John sort of added in his layer, which was if you listen to the whole thing, and this guy clearly wasn't paying super close

attention to it, you get the context. But the danger of podcasting is if they do listen and they do write down what you say, they can take it out of context. And then you have no control over your words. So you know, that's the you can you can control all your words if you post it yourself, but it's easier for them to find. If they take you out of context, if they do find it, then you don't have that control. So it's a problem. It's the internet. This is what happens. But, you know, the substance of it is that John and I were doing what everybody else was doing, like you said, which is speculating about what's Johnny Ives involvement. He's got a new title. I made a lot of those same speculations, which is, does this mean he's more product focused? Does this mean that his new title allows him to sort of step away and look big

picture? And he's not, he's not as deeply involved in individual products necessarily, but he is managing the people who are, and he's taken this sort of Steve Jobsian role as a product lead because Tim Cook is not somebody who seems to have that same kind of product sense. And it was all pretty reasonable. But if you quote a certain part of what Gruber said, it sounds like his sources at Apple say that Ive isn't there. And what that seems to have done is shaken out of the tree some people at Apple who said to John, no, that's not true. He's as connected as ever ever so who knows what the truth is because you know there's also some kind of counter programming kind of happening there but uh

but yeah this is it's a it's a you know what a what a what a story this is a very 20 21st century it's a very 2016 kind of story where you've got podcasts and blogs and slow news weeks and speculation about apple and you know counter information being sort of spread after the fact and i don't know what a mess basically the word from apple now um is still interesting to me though which is that i've is focusing on bigger projects like architecture but that all design decisions go through him. And I said it's the word from Apple because that's what somebody decided to share with John Gruber for John Gruber to share with the world. Yeah, and the way he phrases it is Johnny Ive is as connected to product design as ever, which I guess that that was one way to look at it is Johnny's not connected to product design. I don't know that

was never really my number one theory my theory was always that he's connected to product design right these people who are in charge of design at apple work for him i i always figured he was connected i just figured he was higher up less involved day-to-day working on some other stuff too not that he wasn't connected and and i guess what they're saying here is, look, he's not out the door. And connected is an interesting choice of words because it means, well, it depends on how you want to read it. But my take is exactly that he is overseeing. He's not taking pen to paper on a daily basis as much anymore.

That's the way that I look at this. And honestly, not surprising to me. me like this makes perfect sense to me like that he is more of an overseer now because he's not going to be around forever and quite frankly he's the people that are underneath him i can't i can never remember their names yeah Yeah, I know. The two design offices, whether they have one on hardware and one on software. Yeah. They are going to be, at least one of them will take his role one day,

in theory. So he should be kind of giving them a little bit more autonomy and just having the decisions float through him. Well, if he's Steve Jobs now in terms of product taste to a certain degree, right? That is not, if he's Steve, if he's Steve jobs now in terms of product tastes to a certain degree, right? That, that does not take it from me as somebody in a much smaller scale and different industry. But when you get more responsibility, you can't do your old job

anymore. Like you can't. So if Johnny Ive has been elevated when he got promoted to this other level, of course, he's not going to be as involved with the details. How can he be? Plus, you're right. What you're doing is bringing in your lieutenants and they're learning to do your old job or one of them is kind of a new job, which is the software design, which kind of didn't exist before, I think, before sort of Forstall left. But you've got software design and hardware design, and then you've got Johnny Ive in this new role above them. So, of course, he's less involved.

But, you know, the other way to look at that is that he's still working hard on, you know, and is incredibly important at Apple. He's just taking on this kind of like senior figure who is talking about product directions in videos in the white room and is managing the kind of product process with uh balancing design and uh the realities of engineering and all of those things now and again you know when we talk about apple i have to say this i'm not necessarily saying he's doing a great job at that or that all of apple's products are fantastic that's not what i'm saying but i can understand that as a role that they need you need somebody

to do that especially if you're as we'll probably talk about later today if you're structured like apple is structured which was a structure built by steve jobs you do sort of need some people to say right to say this is the kind of you know product we want to build. And it wasn't engineers, right? It was sort of Steve who did that in collaboration, but he was like a decider and had good taste and good product sense. And I think everybody would admit that he was the one who did that. Nobody's going to be Steve anymore, but perhaps that's now Johnny Ives' role.

Final sign-off, frankly. That's what he does he's final sign off for product design yeah and setting and setting direction and checking in with with his lieutenants and saying and saying I like that he probably calls them left tenants by the way because of course because naturally aluminium sir Johnny Ive indeed indeed he's got a sword somewhere probably um so he uh he's checking in with them and saying, I don't, you know, he's setting the direction. He's checking in. He's going to, right? But it's not the same as being down in the trenches with those things every day, because it's literally impossible for him to do that, because he's got too much that he's responsible for. much that he's responsible for so you know that that i i suspect that that that seems reasonable to me not knowing anything about what actually goes on inside apple because again i do not talk to any little birdies really just the whole thing for me was it was just funny it was just funny to

see it's like how much stuff is said on podcasts every week i know right but it only ever seems to be john that finds himself in this mess well marco yeah right because marco will write things i mean i think he doesn't anymore but marco would write things on his blog and people would freak out about it and be on cnbc and all that but that's the thing is you know not to not to belabor this but it's about laziness in the media right like it's it's too hard to listen to podcasts and scrape them for clickbait. It's too hard. So mostly it doesn't happen.

And there isn't anything to really link to as well. Like you can't link to the text. Right. I mean, although clickbait doesn't care necessarily if you can link. But yeah, it's more work because you have to transcribe it. It's hard. It's harder to do that. Yeah, it's more work because you have to transcribe it.

It's hard. It's harder to do that. John gets listened to by a lot of people and a lot of influential people and is perceived as having a level of knowledge and access that allows, you know, that makes it a little bit more. Even then, though, I feel like if it wasn't Thanksgiving week and there was more news going on, that probably wouldn't have been a story. But, you know, it's true. that probably wouldn't have been a story but um you know but it's true marco can say things that are far more incendiary on atp that don't get the coverage that's something that he he writes on marco.org will get because it's a lot more work to hear him say those things on atp well it's like this whole thing about the all glass all glass iphone no home button 10th anniversary that started on the talk

show that whole rumor started with gruber in may huh and then it got reported on and now it's considered fact but my memory tells me and i did some googling and yeah i've got something in may that was i'm sure that was the first time that that was mentioned and now it's like everyone's expecting his 10th anniversary iphone because well Well, this is what comes up when you're influential like John is. I mean, John, I know, I got to say, and I love talking on the talk show. And I feel like it lets me reach people who don't know who I am and never hear me. I always love your episodes. They're always some of my favorite ones.

And it's fun to talk to John. I don't get to talk to John a lot. And so it's also just like me and John shooting the breeze a little bit. It's great. It's great. Because when I see him at events, I get to talk to him for five minutes and then we have to go into the event and that's it. So it's, I always enjoy my conversations with John. That all said, every, I imagine this happens to him constantly, but for me, I just get a window into it. Every time I'm on the talk show for the next week i will get weird emails twitter mentions posts referencing me because people have their eye on that and and it's it's a different audience

and you know i'll get some of that for twit too but for john's there is there is scrutiny there is hate listening it is. It is a different world. I feel bad for him because, like, I just hope it doesn't discourage him from sharing his thoughts on a talk show. Like, that's my favorite way to consume content from John Gruber because it's, like, it's relaxed and he's just talking. You know, that's how I like it. I mean, because that, you know, podcasting is just my favorite thing anyway. he's just talking you know that's how i like it i mean because that you know podcasting is just my favorite thing anyway but just like in the link post that he wrote where he kind of clarifies and stuff it just you know it just is like his opening thing is like this is what i just like

most about podcasting and that just kind of makes me sad a little bit you know yeah and his footnote was sad too because he's like you know when i started seeing these stories i was appalled it felt like a punch to the gut it wasn't what i meant to convey and i realized i've been there you know like not with this stuff but like with just other stuff like you just say something and people and it's taken in a way because it's you're just kind of just riffing and you upset someone and you never meant to and that's that's what i'm saying it makes me and that's the problem with a medium like this is you know if you take it out of context if you you don't listen every episode or you don't listen to that episode, you just jump to a time code.

People will hear you say something. And you know what? It is a rough draft. It is something that our thoughts are evolving about. Like when I write a story, I am considering it and making I'm considering every word. But we don't write scripts here. This is not. No.

Good Lord. This is not scripted. Right. We have an outline. Right. Like the things we want to get to. But then we just have a conversation. Yeah, because as we're talking very frequently,

I will, and you will, I'm sure, as well, like I have a new idea or I have a new take on it, something that I wasn't previously expecting before because as we're talking, like synapses are firing and we have the chat room giving us pointers and stuff. And so it evolves as it goes along. And I think that's what makes podcasting so amazing. But it can also open someone up to scrutiny

if they're looked at in certain ways. Yeah. I hope that nobody starts scrutinizing us. Look away! That British guy said something really bad about Johnny Ive. How dare he? How dare he? How dare he? This week's episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Encapsular.

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Thank you so much to Encapsular for their support of this show and RelayFM. So there was this really interesting article over at Vox this week, and it's the start of a whole series of posts that they're working on that I think Vox are calling New Money. And they started this by looking at Apple's corporate structure and how it could potentially be affecting their product lines, which is perfect for right now

because everybody is concerned about Apple's product lines, especially the Mac and what's going on there. And this is quite complex. I want to try and distill it down, if I can, for our listeners, Jason, and then we can talk about it as we go along. So the question is this. If Apple is the most valuable company in the world,

why can't they make everything? And so this is a really good thought, right? They have this much money. Why can they not make everything? Why can they not just employ people and just make everything and it not be a problem? And there's a couple of companies that are not as valuable as Apple that have much broader offerings, right? So if you look at someone like Samsung who make all consumer products.

Yes, everything. And the Vox article picks out GE, right, who build jet engines, tidal energy farms, freight rail, data systems, mining equipment, medical devices, right? Like the list goes on and on and on. So why can't Apple do this? Like why is the Mac falling behind? Why is the Mac Pro not been updated in over a thousand days?

Like why are some products dying on the vine? And apparently this answer is found in the corporate structure that Apple chooses to employ. And there are two different types. So most big companies, a company like GE, they run on a divisional system. So this is where different parts of a company are kind of broken up and run slightly independently. So they will have all of the people, the resources and control that they need in their column of the organization to get everything done.

And only the people right at the very top talk to the CEO as a way to help steer the ship. But they're relatively autonomous in their being, right? So there is like, for example, we've heard this many times, right? You talk about Samsung. Samsung are a great way for me to try and help explain this.

So Samsung have Samsung, the phone division, and then they also have the chip fabrication division. And the chip fabrication division sell chips to Apple, but have nothing, but even though Samsung phone and Apple are at loggerheads all the time, Samsung chip company don't care because Apple's their customer.

So they're completely separated in that way. and then there's people right at the very top who help steer the company it's all samsung but they have kind of their own columns of power this is a divisional system right apple is structured in what's known as a functional system so a good way to look at this is if you go to app then this is from i'm kind of cribbing this from the vox article it's a fantastic article there'll be a link in the show notes, you really, really should read it. Yeah, it's absolutely brilliant. I learned a lot. So, for example, if you look at Apple's corporate structure, at least what they show you on their page, there's no vice president of iPhone, there's no vice president of Mac, they have senior vice presidents of hardware, technology,

and hardware engineering so functional structures are mainly used as a way to foster collaboration they don't split things up into product lines they have everybody under the same individual across product lines so for example you would have software and hardware like i can't think of a good word to explain it but like there'll be somebody who runs software and hardware, and that software and hardware teams are split across products. So the same person who manages software for iPhone will also manage software for the Mac.

So this is done as a way to help people work together, and it is argued that because Apple run like this, they have cross-device features, things like continuity and handoff and stuff. They're possible because Apple is made up of teams that work closely together. Am I doing okay so far, Jason? Yeah.

Yeah, no, I think you've got it. This is the way Matt Iglesias puts it in the Vox articles very much. It's structured like a startup in that when you are a small company, what you do is you have the people who make the product. And that's right. And they're structured based on what you do to make the product.

And Apple is structured like that. Although we have to keep in mind that the core who make the products is a much smaller part of Apple's business. When you see a total number of employees, it includes the 30,000 retail employees. There's a lot of support employees. It's a smaller core. But that's how they're structured is there's an operating system group, right? And the people who build the operating systems build the operating systems. And software is software and hardware is hardware. It's not, as you put it, that there's a Mac division that is off in a building somewhere and that's all they do is the Mac. That's not

how Apple is structured. Microsoft is another good example of a counter. So Microsoft have vice presidents who run lines of business, like Office, devices, servers, that kind of thing. So these people all have their own software engineers that work in their teams,

but they don't have somebody who's the vice president of software engineering. Like it's more siloed. You know, like the Office team and the devices team, they have software and hardware engineers right where they need them,

but they don't have these like cross like device or cross product line teams. devices team, they have software and hardware engineers right where they need them, but they don't have these cross device or cross product line teams. It's more siloed, and apparently this is better for accountability. If something goes wrong with Office, it falls on the VP of Office, because it's

clear. If something goes wrong with iWork, who is ultimately responsible for that? Is it Craig Federighi? It seems a bit weird, but it's software. Microsoft also is an interesting example because at the very end of his tenure, Steve Ballmer re-organized Microsoft to be more like Apple and functionally organized. And I believe then Satya Nadella came in and organized it back. Yeah, that was one of his first things. He did a complete reorganization to do it this way.

But like the good question, so this is the good question of this, right? Who is responsible ultimately inside of Apple for the fact that the Mac Pro has not been updated in 1,000 days? Yep. I can't answer that question. It's, well, and the answer is,

it's somebody who is also in charge of making sure that the iPhone and iPad and everything else ship. Right. So then how are you going to argue, right? How do you argue with that person? This actually is, it's funny. I'm reminded of a conversation we had about the iPad where we, if there was a CEO of iPad Incorporated, they would have been fired. And this is the thing, right? There is no CEO of iPad Incorporated. That doesn't exist. There's no, as far as we know, there's no iPad product manager, right?

Like maybe there's a product marketing manager, but is there like a person who's got the business control and the budget line and all of that for the ipad and decides where ipad resources are spent i don't think so i would assume that there is someone who is pseudo in that role the speaker for the ipad yes or the mac right their boss also looks after iphone right and it's like how do you argue like if you need resourcing you know how do you argue with a dan riccio who's the hardware engineering guy or johnny i think it's surji who is the hardware technologies person how do you go to them and be like i I need some more budget for the Mac Pro? And they go, well, I mean, there's a new iPhone coming. It seems like the way that the Apple stuff works is that people get retasked, right?

So there aren't people, my understanding is that there are lots of people who like you work on this project and then you go work on that project. And some of those things happen where if you are the person who loves the ipad it seems like you know if you you know you get what resources you get and if those people are working on the iphone it's like all right that's but you know but even then it's not like there are as far as i can tell ipad os people right they're ios people and it's but budget is a

is a is a word that we're using but i'm thinking more of like a time and attention budget as opposed to a financial budget yeah so one of the things that is interesting to me when i was thinking about this like just just thinking about my own memories of apple and how it was run over the time that i've been interested in them and you kind of alluded to this earlier tim cook has only seemed to move apple further towards a functional structure like after forstall left he consolidated roles even further didn't he like he took positions away and moved them under key individuals and also uh you know it seems like he's maybe doing more than that remember we were talking about the idea of um all of the internet

services teams coming together and then they will all kind of sit in one organization maybe in one building right but it all still comes under like eddie q who looks after all internet software and services which includes the app store and includes ibooks right right and some of i i think that some of that is more easily so okay so here's the thing this is this approach is part of Steve Jobs's secret sauce about like how Apple gets stuff done. Right. I think, I think Jobs felt very strongly that you need these cross-functional teams. A lot of Apple's strengths were about kind of combining things in new ways. And that is, that is part of the, the, the corporate culture, you know, that, that something like Apple university probably reinforces in all of the hires and existing employees. So that's, that's the challenge here is, um, is Apple able to split things off or if they split things off, did they lose something that makes them fundamentally Apple-y? I think the service is a really good question where I could see how services as its

own thing with its own line in the financial reports now and some very clear products could be broken up into smaller teams. But even then, there know, there's this argument that like, there's one Apple ID. And a lot of our criticisms about this stuff are like, why do I need to keep putting in my password in different places? Why does my iPhone not know that when I just logged in here, but now I'm trying to buy an app and I need to log in again, right? And some of that is because some of this stuff got built up separately. And it needs to be more integrated, not less integrated. So this is the challenge with every single thing is, is that something we can really do on our own? And for a new product, like, are we limiting what we can create as a new product because we've got it in a silo as opposed to using our knowledge from like the ipad was created because they had the knowledge of the operating system from the iphone and the

and the hardware too like it was it sprung out of the iphone a lot of the mac stuff that happens is based on work that also went in to ios the car project just to throw out one example, right? The car project you would think would benefit from Apple's base. Now, maybe this isn't true and maybe that's how it got reorg, but you would think that Apple's base of knowledge, especially on the operating system side, would be useful to some degree with the car project. So how do you, do you risk harming that other product by separating it from the core base of knowledge. On the other hand, if it's a small product like an Apple TV or something like that, it only exists because they've got that iOS base to use on it and previously a Mac base,

but they had a base from another product. Does that product suffer because it's small and not high priority? Yeah, maybe. But does that product also exist? Because it's connected to the base of those other products? Also, yeah, yes, it does. So it's a really difficult problem. When you scale, right, and that that I think is the base of a lot of this is the reason that we talk about startups behaving this way is because they're more manageable because i will tell you if you're managing five people working on one thing it's a lot different than if you're managing 30 people working on five things or six things yeah yeah it's just not you know and this is that people

have written books about it like as you scale things change you can't just say hey we we are making one great product with five people, now make six great products with 30 people. Like, that kind of doesn't work. So there's two courses here, right, for Apple from now forward. They have a stay on this course. They continue with their functional structure.

They create a further, more, like, increasingly cohesive product line due to their collaboration, but they only focus on the most popular products because of that, because that's the way that you can be most effective here, right? You have to shrink the line to be able to actually affect the most change. Or do they now move to a divisional system in the attempt to maximize all lines individually at the expense of potential collaboration and cohesion? Honestly, I think I prefer the sound of option one. And there is just going to be some things that meet the chopping block. It's a funny thing because we're in a moment where people are criticizing a lot of the decisions Apple is making.

And so the idea of change sounds appealing but i feel like if apple went to a more divisional system everybody the outcome of that would be that everybody would be screaming that apple has completely lost the things that make it apple i think that under under their current system some people lose right and i think that it's the people on the the edges are going to lose a little bit and we're seeing that right that the real pro machines that people are losing but on the the idea of of them kind of moving to a more divisional less collaborative uh function a less collaborative system i think everybody loses honestly i think we lose what makes apple products apple products so what i try to do is imagine if the mac would be better out on its own if they just created a mac division or spun off you know mac incorporated or whatever

um i'll link to uh adam eggs wrote a piece on tidbits about sort of where the app where where the mac fits and the way he says it which I think is an interesting way of thinking it, is that the Mac is an iPhone accessory in a way. Like it's the computer that works best with your iPhone. And Mac users may be really offended by that, but there are way more iPhone users than there are Mac users. So viewed through that lens, what Apple's saying is our best way to keep Mac sales high is to make it the best friend to your iPhone and work like your iPhone. And so if you've got an iPhone, why would you buy a PC? You're better off buying a Mac. But if you think about it, I mean, it is true. Apple definitely thinks that. You could argue that if you had the Mac go its

own way and not care about being the best iPhone companion it could be, that the result would be that it would do what the rest of the PC industry does, which is just keep shrinking. Like that may be the reason the Mac is floating when the rest of the PCs are shrinking is because Apple has chosen to tie it very closely with this incredibly successful smartphone product that Apple sells. I also start to think like, if you had that separate Mac division, you know, going back to like Samsung examples and things like that, does it make, does that division make decisions that are bad for Apple as a whole, but might increase Mac sales where you see that it's like, why did they do that? And the answer is because they don't care what happens in the rest

of Apple. What if they, what if they said, well, now we're going to make a touchscreen Mac because we don't care about the iPad anymore. We're just going to, we're just going to do that. And we're going to, would that be good? Would that be bad? And I feel like the real truth here is Mac on its own, you lose access or, you know, to some or all of a degree access to the core OS development. There's core OS shared among all these devices. What about chip development? People talk about like ARM on the Mac, but the chip development, you know, are they going to, is the Mac division going to develop chips on their own? That's not going to happen. So you can throw that out the window.

Would Touch Bar have happened, which has got huge amounts of learning and actual operating system from iOS? Stuff like that in a Mac context wouldn't exist anymore. Without all of that stuff, what is the Mac in a Mac division like that? Other than another PC maker doing what the PC makers do, which is probably putting more current Intel processors in their computers and otherwise kind of not doing a whole lot. And I don't think that would ever happen.

But I'm just saying, if you start to walk through it, it's like, this is why Apple doesn't do this. And this is why the, as a Mac user, the way Apple has treated the Mac is frustrating and yet still is probably the right choice. I, and I'm not defending specific, they've screwed up a lot of things with the Mac this year, but I don't think the Mac is a better product. If it's siloed off from the, you know, the world's most single, you know, the world's most popular single consumer product or electronics product,

the iPhone, right? I don't, I don't think that severing those connections and making the Mac live on its own is worth it. And you can say, well, we won't sever them. We'll just, we'll just create more responsibility. It's like, I don't think it

works that way. I don't think you can section off part of the bowl of soup. It's soup. It all just mixes around. So I don't know. It's a business school problem that is interesting. And I'm sure the people at Apple and the business school people who run Apple University inside Apple have talked about it a lot. But I do believe that Apple thinks this is fundamentally part of what they do. It's also a huge challenge, right? Because it does mean that Apple kind of can't walk and chew gum at the same time. That's an overstatement of it.

But it means that Apple requires more focus and that Apple has to do a lot of process switching to keep all these products going. And it makes you wonder, are they doing things internally to try and keep their functional structure while also allowing them to be more multi-threaded? And I'm sure they're trying that because this is the challenge. How do you scale this thing that's fundamentally Apple? Because I think it's the reason why Apple isn't something like Samsung or GE is because at its heart, and I think a lot of us have been saying this for a long time, as big as Apple is in terms of its value, because of the products they sell, and how huge its supply chain is, if you look at the people who make the products in Cupertino, it's still run like a fairly small company. It really kind of is. And I know that's hard to

grasp. And so when they do something like the report about killing the airport, and I say, well, I can kind of understand it because they want to focus. People are like, what do you mean? They got all the money. Why do they need to focus? It's like, well, this is why. Because they're not really made on a large scale. Again, there are lots of exceptions, I'm sure. But on a large scale, this is, I think, part of the magic of Apple and the secret sauce that goes into Apple making these kind of products. This is their playbook. It's really hard to do that and then just say, well, what if we triple the number of people who are working on everything? Then we can do more products. I'm not sure that actually works. There is one thing that could be improved quite significantly by Apple kind of changing to a more divisional structure. We could see new people in the vice president roles. Yeah, that's true.

I mean, I would love, don't get me wrong i would love high visibility people who are the spokespeople for products right because it seems like that there are a lot of women in important roles inside of apple which because they've been changing kind of who presents you know like they're bringing more product managers onto stage to like talk about apple pay and stuff like that. So it seems like there are women at the top there, but they're not on the current SVP thing, right? The way it's structured right now. So if they would move more divisional,

then we may see more of those women get more important roles inside of Apple, which would be a good thing. Yeah, there are some product marketing positions that are tied to product lines. but and i think that's how apple does structure it so you've got spokespeople who are out there like greg jaswiak is uh is vice president of ipod iphone and ios product marketing right so he's the he's the iphone guy basically right but it's product marketing it's being a spokesperson and an advocate for your product. That's not quite the same, right?

And is there a person who is like the Mac person? Actually, you know, Apple PR is structured that way. I know who the guy is who does Mac PR. Like, I know that guy. And he's a good guy. And I talk to him all the time. And like, that is structured that way. Like, PR people are tasked with products but but it would be great and again this is me saying it

would be great for me as an observer and somebody who writes about this stuff and uses this stuff not necessarily what's right for Apple I want to be clear about that too but it would be great to have a person you can point to and say, that's the Mac person. That's the iPad person. That's the person I... Even if they were more of an evangelist or a product marketing manager, we talk about Sal Segoian, right? It's like, he was the Apple Script guy. He was the automator guy, right? There is some value in these big products of being able to point to somebody. And I'm not saying that Phil Schiller doesn't do a good job expressing what Apple needs to express,

but it, I do feel like I would love to hear from somebody who's like, no, no, no. I am the person who cares about the Mac every day at Apple and make sure that the Mac gets what it deserves. Right.

And I don't think we have that. Right. And if you ask Phil Schiller, that's probably part of his job too. Right. But in the end, it's, you know, it's not just his job. It's part of his job.

And if you ask him about the Mac, he may say, we love the Mac, but on another day he'll say, but you know, look at what is great on the iPhone because he's got a lot of roles and that's, you know, so yes, I would love a figure out there. Maybe this is the advantage of having the old, the old evangelist program right like with or you could think of it as a product marketing person if you'd like it's like who is the who is the person who who helps represent that product line on stage and in interviews and is the like the mac maven right that might help us but i don't think it helps any problems inside of apple like if there was a mac spokesperson it doesn't mean that the mac pro gets updated faster right like

that is like a a marketing decision right it depends on if they're just a spokesperson or if they're somebody who is um responsible the other quest the other question about this is communication right if that spokesperson has the ability to communicate and maybe even has some influence, then there could be some interesting sort of like maybe there's better awareness inside of Apple if they're not aware. Or maybe Apple's able to express what they're doing that would require them to want to express it. And that's the question. Do they really want to express it? But they could do that.

But you're right. I mean, it's something that we would like to see. I'm not sure it's something that makes sense for Apple to do it. But they could do that. But you're right. I mean, it's something that we would like to see. I'm not sure it's something that makes sense for Apple to do it. But wouldn't it be great if you did have somebody who could be like, oh, that's the person. They tell us what's going on with the Mac. They're the first one out there when there's something going on with the Mac. And, you know, right now, again, it's a functional thing. I mean, that's Phil Schiller's job. And so Phil Schiller will come out and talk about what's going on when it's a Mac issue. And you're right.

That's more about communication than about behind the scenes. But I suspect it's happening behind the scenes too. I don't know. You cannot ignore that if this is the way Apple is run, or it's like any company, there's a part of me that's like, it doesn't even matter if it's a divisional iPhone, it's always going to be king.

Well, I mean, the idea would be that you would take your 13% of the company's focus and go somewhere with it and build the product. That's the dream is like the Mac and the iPad take their 13% cut of revenue and they build a budget because realistically that's part of this too is they get a profit and loss based on the Mac. And the goal is to make a profit on the Mac. And that would make changes, right? I mean, you could also argue that Apple manages those products now as part of this kind of larger ecosystem. It's a little bit different when you get to spend your little cut of what you make and return a profit. And would those decisions be distorted? But that's the dream anyway, is that they get to go off and pay their people and make the decisions that only matter to the Mac. And that may even contradict what Apple does. Or they get told, well, yeah, you can't, even though you want to make that decision, we're not going to let you

because that's going to interfere with our decisions. So it would be complicated. Is that, would that even be a better scenario? Let look at our ipad right you know as you said before the head of ipad would have been fired so is the fact that apple was run this way good for the ipad because it's like a halo i think so the iphone like would the ipad get as much focus as it's been getting and hopefully will continue to get next year if Apple was instructed this way? Because would the iPad have just been killed? Apple's a long game with the iPad, right? I mean, Tim Cook says, I think that ultimately the iPad

is the future of this stuff, right? I mean, that is not a product that has been doing well for a long time now, but Apple believes in it. And if you were in charge of the P&L for the iPad, yeah, you would either need a lot of patience or you would be in trouble. And it goes to that person then starts to make decisions that are based on what they need to do for their P&L and for their job to stay and not necessarily for

the long-term focus of Apple, right? And that's, again, a downside of having those divisions. As somebody who worked at a company with lots of divisions, right, we would make decisions that were completely in opposition to what other groups were making because they were the right decisions for us. And as our divisions got, we actually, IDG, became less and less divisional as I worked there. And with every change came more overhead, and it made it in many ways harder to do our jobs and harder to do a good product because we now were part of this larger entity. And so it's just different. It's not necessarily fundamentally better, but I do think it's fundamentally Apple, the way it's structured around functions. I do think that is like an Apple

thing. And that if Apple made something off in a silo, would it really be Apple-y? Plus, we haven't even talked about the human beings here so much. But if you're somebody who's an OS engineer, and you're working on stuff that's Mac and iOS and things that are going to be core stuff that's going to work in both places or something that came from iOS and now you're going to put it on the Mac, that's a much cooler job than being told you're going to work in the Mac division. You get 13% of the budget. You've got this small audience. They love you. I hope you like it. But a lot of engineers on a career path who are the best engineers, the hottest engineers, they would view that as being exiled. So one of the advantages in terms of people of keeping these groups large is that you're all rowing in the same direction for Apple

and you work on different projects instead of being kind of put in Siberia, which would lead probably to, and again, not necessarily, but I'm going to say a Mac division on its own probably would not have the highest rising stars of Apple running it because it's a legacy division without growing user base. And so, you know, they might have good engineers over there, but it would certainly be the kind of place that would be not perceived as being like the place to be if you're an up and coming developer at Apple, engineer at Apple. And that would be a problem too, I think, for a platform like that.

Great article, a Vox really taught me some stuff. So go check it out. Time for some Ask Upgrade, Jason. Sounds like it. Who is supporting Ask Upgrade this week? I'm very excited to tell you that Ask Upgrade this week is being brought to us by MailRoute. That's right. Now, who should handle email security and delivery for you? The answer is the people who do only that. And that is MailRoute. All the big companies are bowing out of the email protection business. It's hard work. And we just talked about focus. We just talked about doing what you're great at and not worrying about the stuff that's not core to your business. Well, guess what? There are a lot of companies that thought email protection was a nice add-on,

and it's actually so hard that maybe it's worth not doing it. Postini went away, McAfee and MXLogic. Google came out and said they want you to use a gateway service like MailRoute so that they don't have to filter all your mail for Google Apps. Who can you trust to do the job properly? The answer is MailRoute, a team that has been focused entirely on this, just on email security since 1997. It's a very long time ago. They've been doing this. This is what they do. MailRoute protects your email against spam, viruses, and

other threats. It protects your mail server, and they deliver your mail even when your mail server can't. There's no hardware or software to install. It lives in the cloud. If you own your domain, that's all you need to use MailRoute. Their interface is easy to navigate. It's loaded with administrative tools, including an API. It's all designed to make your life better. There's no spam, there are no viruses, and you have no bounced mail putting a load on your email server. MailRoute takes the bullet for you. They'll protect your email from all of those things and will guarantee mail access during outages. That's one of the nice things about having MailRoute between you and the internet is if something happens to your server,

MailRoute is still collecting your mail and you can even go there and check it if you need to. They do it better and have been doing it longer than anyone else. They have lots of great features that I'm not going to get into here. But I am going to mention that in addition to that great API I talked about earlier, they do offer mailbagging. Mailbagging. Stop spam today. Sign up for a 30-day trial at mailroute.net slash upgrade.

And listeners to upgrade, all upgradians out there, you'll get 10% off for the lifetime of your account, mailroute.net slash upgrade. Thank you to MailRoute for the support of this show and all of RelayFM. And thank you, Mike. If you have missed me creatively saying mailbagging, go sign up for MailRoute.

The more people sign up for MailRoute, the more times I get to say mailbagging. I think that's true. Simple as that. It's pretty simple. That was good. You had more times I get to say mailbagging. I think that's true. Simple as that. It's pretty simple. That was good. You had a lot of pent-up mailbagging energy there. It was ready.

I did go into sheer panic when I realized I wasn't sure how I was going to do it. Yeah. I appreciate your enthusiasm. Time for Ask Upgrade. Brent asked, Exporting MP3 for podcasts, shall I use 64K, 96K, or something else? Jason, what on earth is Brent talking about with all these codes? It's a great question, Brent.

The search here, let's see. I'm going to back up. The MP3s are encoded at a bit rate so the lower the bit rate the lower the quality but the smaller the file size and so it used to be i was listening to a podcast i was listening to an incomparable um from 2011 and it sounds terrible and it was encoded at a very low bit rate and um so these days people have more bandwidth although you know you've got metering and and people on smartphones downloading on cellular and there are lots of other issues. So the question is a common one.

What do you do? I would say I used to do everything at 64 kbps mono. I still do a lot at that. still do a lot at that but i marco arment sort of encouraged me to try encoding things more at 96 kbbs stereo because when you've got stereo stuff it sounds it's in stereo and when you don't it uses that bit rate for your audio quality and your audio quality is good so uh and it's not that much bigger it is bigger file size so So I would say, you know, most of the shows I do are either 64K mono or 96K stereo. Mike, what about relay shows?

It varies across the map. However, people encode their own shows. Most of our shows are edited by their hosts. I have always recommended 96 kilobits a second mono as a minimum. I used to do 64, but I think that 96 is a lot better sounding. However, I have changed what I am encoding recently because I don't know what it was, but I was just listening to some of my shows recently

and I'm like, I don't like how they sound. It doesn't sound like how it sounds to me when I edit them because the quality is lower. So I have recently been encoding 128 stereo. Wow. Including our show and nobody said anything. So I'm going to keep doing it because I think it sounds vastly better

and they're not that much bigger. For example, today I published an episode of Cortex. It is an hour and 40 minutes long and it's 95 that much bigger. Like, for example, today I published an episode of Cortex. It is an hour and 40 minutes long, and it's 95 megabytes. Yeah. Right? That's fine. It's fine, I think. You know, people download over Wi-Fi these days. If they're on LTE, the bandwidth caps are larger. I think that that is mostly fine, to be honest.

I have been doing this for months and nobody said anything so I'm going to keep doing it I don't think people even know I would say right now 96k stereo is my standard I would say go with that as a minimum if you've gotten weird like me you should go up to 128 I would say right now to not go any more than that

but that's where I'm sitting this is the first time I've said that I'm doing this I'm going to keep doing it if anybody tells me if anybody complains now after listening to this episode your complaint is invalid because you didn't know right i will not take your complaint the uh i should say one of the fun things about mp3 is when you switch to stereo it it you know it basically only uses the stereo when it's when it detects a stereo signal. Otherwise, it encodes it all as mono when it's mono. So it's not doubling the file size for something that's in mono just because you said it was in stereo.

Exactly. So that's why I can do stereo, and that's why the file sizes stay smaller. And I love what zach w's in the chat room can confirm didn't notice a change so whatever makes you happy mike and it does because i think the shows sound better they sound truer to how we actually sound at 128 than at 96 and and i really it doesn't seem to be making a massive difference so i did it all right there you go surprise makes. Makes the music sound better.

It does. It makes everything sound better. It makes me and you sound better. Yay. So much compression happens to these. Yeah. Anyway. Mark said... I think I sound fine, Mike.

Exactly. It's great. Hello. Mark's question is... Mark's question is... Do you think the opening of Apple Campus 2 has anything to do with Apple's refocus, for example, killing monitors in airports? Great question.

And I think this lends into, I kind of, the trainer thought that I think Mark has, and a couple of people asked this question this week, which is quite interesting to me. The idea of like bringing these teams together, putting them together, working out kind of who's going to go where. Is this a time when Apple's sitting down and being like, we're going to have to move. It's like me moving house right now. We have to move this stuff. Is it worth it? I feel like I'm Tim Cook right now, you know, in my house.

I'm moving from Office 1 to Office 2. Do I really want to take this monitor or can I really get by without it? I think that there might be a little bit of this going on, which is why they may be killing off some of this stuff now. They're taking stock of what they've got, what they have to move, and who's going to continue. And maybe they're getting rid of it.

I don't know. Yeah, I think that it only has something to do with it in the sense that it might be an impetus, like, do this now. We don't want to move these people if we're going to reorg or get then say, oh, we don't have space for them there because we just moved in and we didn't, right? I mean, so I think space planning is something that it gives you a deadline. It maybe makes you focus and make a decision that you've been putting off. But I'd say that's got to be it, right? I mean, what's not happening is Apple's like, oh man, AppleScript.

I don't know if I've got any chairs for them. Let's just get rid of AppleScript. I got no desks are available for AppleScript. That's not happening. It may be, if it's anything, it may be just, you know, setting a deadline of like, if we're going to make changes,

let's make them now so that we can, you know, move people with those changes already factored in. David asked, no need for Apple to make a Wi-Fi router specifically, right? Like David thinks it's like whatever, like we did. We were kind of just like, okay. But what about something like Time Machine? Is that going to be impacted by this?

Now, the Time Capsule, which is apple's hardware product which does time machine over wi-fi i expect that that will go away right but time machine itself the backup system i assume that that is completely unconnected to that team and it's a it's a mac thing yeah yep and uh there are ways like there are nas um devices that support time machine now apple has a spec for time machine over smb as well as over afp um i think there's some questions about the a lot of the nas devices sorry for using all these terms but this is you, NAS is a network storage. It's it's that that's effectively, that's what time capsule is, which is it's a, it's a, it's a storage device on that's networked instead of being a computer. It is a computer, but you don't

see it as that. And it's just sits on your network. A lot of the makers of those they're using like open source stuff that is not necessarily totally, um, what Apple wants to see. But I think that Apple getting out of this market will probably motivate more marketing of this. Also, there's been a report, Apple's still selling these things, right? I would imagine that the day that the time capsule vanishes from Apple stores, Apple stores will have something that they will recommend for wireless backup. Yeah, or there'll be somebody who sells a hard drive that's a networked hard drive with time machine support that you will plug in somewhere to your Ethernet or it'll be a Wi-Fi configuration thing and it'll be validated by Apple officially or um with officially or apple will have chosen it and

said this one works and we think we can sell this and we're going to sell this in our retail stores i think that will all inevitably happen i i you know people do it i know we know lots of people who back up to nasa's using time machine and it works fine and uh you know I don't because I have a Mac Mini that I back up to. So I'm backing up to it instead. But you can do that too. So that's my feeling is it is. I heard from a bunch of people who said, but if the future is wireless, why is wireless backup going away? And my feeling is I don't think wireless backup is going to go away.

I think Apple is going to be able to point to somebody and say they're doing it. And even if Apple doesn't do that, which would surprise me, I think that any opportunity for Apple retail stores to sell a NAS box to somebody who's buying a laptop for their wireless backup, they will take. But if I'm the maker of a device like that, I'm going to look at this as a huge opportunity to make sure that my time machine support over the network is rock solid because i can swoop in where apple is abandoning the market and take uh and take customers yeah i think even though um some people are upset with what is left in like the monitor space or some of the dongles and stuff i think apple's being

pretty responsible in that if they're not interested in doing something anymore, they're helping other people make it. Yeah. So we'll see about that. I use Time Machine. I think Time Machine's great.

And I just have a little hard drive plugged into my iMac. And there it goes. It just does its thing. Yeah, I heard from somebody who said that they had never used Time Machine. They tried Time Machine that way plugged into my iMac and there it goes it just does its thing yeah I heard from somebody who said that they had never uh used time time they tried time machine that way with an external drive and that it had never completed and I didn't know what to say to them other than that I've

used it a lot with an a directly attached drive and it works fine you might need to I would say maybe if it's never completed maybe the drive isn't big enough. It's possible. Or maybe the energy saver settings are wrong and it's going to sleep before it can finish the first backup or something like that. But it's made to work that way. And if it doesn't work for you, something else is wrong. Your hard drive is wrong. Something on your Mac is wrong. Something's messed up because that's how it works.

It's meant to work that way. Hello. Andy asked, do either of you have a favorite ginger molasses cookie recipe now we mentioned ginger molasses cookies last week now i have only ever had ginger molasses cookies in one place but i love them and it's in blue bottle coffee they sell them in blue bottle well it's funny that you should mention that mike because he's asking because they were my review of the MacBook Pro with touch bar it was sitting on my kitchen counter yep and you had the recipe up a recipe was up and there was a box of cookies next to it that were the ginger molasses cookies that the recipe was up um and uh

and so because I made it and they were really good and I'm going to make them again it's funny that you mentioned blue bottle because in fact, the recipe and we'll put it in the show notes that I got from my friend Sherry on her blog, pork cracklins, but it came linked from another blog called pixels and crumbs. It is the blue bottle coffee, ginger molasses cookie recipe.

So there it is. You need a lot of ginger. Let me tell you, I graded a lot of ginger for those cookies, but they were great. They were super spicy and sweet and fantastic. So we'll put the link in the notes to the direct, and maybe we'll put in the link to Sherry's blog, because Sherry writes a lot of great stuff about food on Pork Cracklins. And yeah, they're great.

So, like, I'll'll say this is very specific, but if you ever do go to Blue Bottle and you get the New Orleans coffee, which is my favorite coffee drink that they make, which is their cold coffee, it pairs perfectly with the ginger cookies. So I recommend them. Okay.

So I think they're in New York and San Francisco, I think. Yeah. Or you make your own. Or you New York and San Francisco, I think. Yeah. Or you make your own. Or you can make your own. Make your own. All right. Lachlan asked, he wanted to take a kind of survey of the two of us as to how much we're using Apple's iMessage features that came with iOS 10.

So we have all of the things here. So, Jason, how often do you use iMessage apps? Never. Same here. I don't have one that I use. What about stickers? Sometimes. Always, every day, constantly.

Ironically and non-ironically. I use stickers for fun. I use them for information. I use them to convey emotion. I think it is fantastic. I love them fun I use them for information I use them to convey emotion I think it is fantastic I love them I love them I'd use them more if they worked on the Mac

Yeah I would use them even more If they worked drag and drop In iPlayer split screen Which they do not Oh yeah yep they don't They do not It was so funny When 10 was released you could drag them,

so they would come up with a drag animation, and then you'd try and stick them, and they went away. So in X-2, they fixed this feature. How did they fix it? You can't drag them at all in split-screen. Nope. That is not the way to fix the problem.

That is a terrible way to fix something, but that's how it is, so I hope for a change there in the future. What about effects? So like the confetti and the explosions? Sometimes. I use them ironically. I agree.

But I still do use them. I use them ironically more than I use digital touch, ironically, on my Apple Watch, right? Like that was an ironic thing that wore off, but I still use sending those message effects because I think they're funny, but I don't use them to convey anything seriously.

It's all for fun. Because sometimes someone will send me something and it is hilarious, right? Like it works. What about digital touch in iMessage? Oh, digital touch, never. Never digital touch never never handwriting never never never tap back sometimes i don't want all the works on the mac yeah i sometimes use it uh like to thumbs up a message or something tap back i always forget it's there you can like press and hold on

the message i think your 3d touch message and you get those little bubble balloons that pop up. I think that Apple should make that a better to access system. But yeah, I do use that sometimes. So that's it. I think apps, apps kind of have been overshown by stickers as they should be because apps, I'm not really sure how much they should really live inside of our message. In honesty i i don't think that i've really seen any that i'm that keen of um stickers are amazing and i'll ask a quick question for today chris asked would you buy an audiobook edition of made in california by apple narrated by johnny hive in a hot second will i buy that of course it's what we all want really isn't it just to hear him talk about the stuff yeah i mean this goes to the core problem with the book is that it's just a photo book, and anyone could have hired a good photographer and made a photo book,

and the stories about the products would be much more interesting. So, yes, an audio book, I would say a documentary about Apple Design. Everybody was like, oh, they're so self-indulgent but like okay so don't have it be released by apple but a documentary about apple design um with with with just johnny ive in the white room and and photography and videography of those products i think would be a really cool documentary that would be great but that's my problem with the book more than anything else is it doesn't actually explain anything about apple's work it just shows it and we already saw it all so yeah so uh we're gonna that's the end of us got great today uh after this break we're going

to be doing mike at the movies and today we're going to talk about gremlins no more technology talk for the day so if you either haven't seen gremlins yet or you're just you know you're not interested in the mic at the movies no more technology talk but we're going to be talking about mike at the movies gremlins after we take a moment to thank our friends over at smile for supporting this show and supporting mike at the movies and today i want to talk to you a little bit about pdf pen pro 8 which is the giant sw Army knife for PDFs. Imagine a Swiss Army knife that had so many tools that it needed a wheelbarrow to pull it around in. That's what PDF Pen Pro is for PDFs, but luckily it's a piece of software, so it doesn't add any weight, which is great.

PDF Pen Pro can add signatures, can edit text, and even images. You can perform OCR on scanned documents, export into Microsoft Word format, put anything in there. It's amazing. Like seriously, PDF Pen Pro is, if you use PDFs in any way, this thing is going to make your life easier. It does for me. I have PDFs sent to me so much. I have Word documents that are sent to me that I need to somehow sign. I don't know what people expect when they do that. Do they want me to print and then scan? No, I don't do that. I don't own a printer. I don't even own a printer because I use PDF Pen for all of this stuff. With PDF Pen Pro, I get a document come to me, I sign it, I send it back. I can even export it back out in Microsoft Word so they get the file as they would have expected. It makes my life easier. It means that I can sign documents and contracts within seconds

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and you can also attach files to your PDFs as well there are things that PDF Pen Pro can do to PDFs that I didn't even know could be done to PDFs you can get 20% off the new PDF Pen Pro 8 in November, so you haven't got long, by visiting smilesoftware.com slash upgrades. If you are hearing this and you are interested in this, go right now to smilesoftware.com slash upgrade. If you've not checked out PDF Pen Pro, now is the time. Thank you so much to Smile for their support of this show. I like that all in the chat room has said, can you not go to a library and print it out?

I don't want to. I don't want to go and print it out. I just want to use PDF Pen Pro instead. Thank you so much to Smile for their support. Can't you just go to a mailboxes store and use their fax machine? Can't I just go and buy some mailbags? No, I can't. No, you have a mailbag.

I sent you a mailbag. You already have a mail bag i sent you a mail bag you already have a mail bag i have all the mail bags i'm ever gonna need this is one of those things where i'm like i love that i've got that but it's like i have to move that mail bag you do have to put things in the mail bag you put things in the mail bag mike exactly that's what it doesn't have to be mail in there you could print out your nails put it in the bag Time to talk about Gremlins. It's time for Mike at the Movies, and we're talking about Gremlins from 1984. Shall I do my usual and tell you what I knew or thought I knew about Gremlins before I sat down to watch it today? Yes, let's start there. That's always a good place to start.

So my understanding of Gremlins is that it's a scary movie, but's start there. That's always a good place to start. So my understanding of Gremlins is that it's a scary movie but aimed at children. That was my assumption. And that the Gremlins, which I believed were called Gremlins, like that these little monsters, these little creatures

were called the Gremlins, and that they were cute, furry things that become monsters when they are either wet or fed after midnight and that it is a cult classic movie so i was close you're close you're very close so the thing is that they they become monsters when they're fed they multiply when they're wet and i don't think that this movie should be aimed at children under any circumstances nope nope in fact this movie was one of the examples along with indiana jones and the temple of doom of why they needed to add a new rating to the film rating system in the united

states called pg-13 to say that although it was not a a a rated r, it was, it is playing at, it was inappropriate or at least special parental guidance needed to be added for children under the age of 13. And that was a new, this was one of the examples why they added that because they felt like this was not PG. PG meant anybody could go of any age, but we recommend that parents be aware of the content and they added pg-13 which meant this is really not for for um for younger kids you should be doubly aware of the material here and it's it's i mean so i haven't seen this movie since i saw it in the theater in 1984 okay also i'll point out the amusement it was it was released i believe a week um away from when ghostbusters was released in the summer of 1984 it's a christmas movie it's set on christmas eve why again like miracle on 34th street why these

movies set at christmas are released in the summer it's baffling to me but i don't know why this is a christmas movie well there's that too right uh what you know there's so many reasons so anyway i was blown away because i i have no i had no memory of this i mean i had the vaguest memories of this because i hadn't seen it since 1984 so yeah and when i when i was 13 PG 13, hello, that was me. Um, yeah. So, so directly produced by Steven Spielberg, uh, written by Chris Columbus,

who was sort of, uh, he went on to make like Mrs. Doubtfire and, uh, the first couple of Harry Potter movies, but he wrote the Goonies and Gremlins. Um,

and, uh, well, he, in fact, we're, we're doing a, we're doing a we're doing a chris columbus double feature because he directed home alone yep so there's there's a there's a lot of chris columbus here so yeah it's a it's a weird movie joe dante is a horror movie director um and so you know steven spielberg i think wanted that kind of mix of horror and comedy and kind of the, you know, the Christmastime like aspect, I think, is an interesting, it's interesting in its incongruity to the rest of the movie.

Can you answer for me what Steven Spielberg Presents means? Well, he was the producer of it. I think that the or the executive producer of it i i think he made it he made it happen and he was connected to chris columbus i suspect that he hired joe dante right to do it like and it's got like it was a selling point that like it was a steven spielberg film that he had made because a bunch of movies have that to it don't they yeah it's it's he he uh you know it's his it's from his factory but he wasn't going to direct it or Yeah, because a bunch of movies have that to it, don't they? Yeah. It's from his factory, but he wasn't going to direct it or write it, but it was from his group.

So that was the idea, I think, behind it. I should point out also, if it isn't already obvious, that this is not one of my favorite movies of all time, because I literally haven't watched it since I saw it in the theater. So this is not one of those Jason exposes Mike to one of his favorite movies in hopes that Mike doesn't hate it. This is a different kind of experiment we're running today on Mike at the Movies. Well, good news, Jason Snell. Yeah. Because I hated this movie.

Never do this experiment again. I hated this movie. See what happens when I don't, when I don't supervise the, and handpick the the very best content for you we decided to go for the holiday theme right as we're in the holidays that was the idea that's the idea between the gremlins home alone double feature but it was so far a terrible idea because i've i really dislike this movie this is the only jason upgrade uh mike at the movies that i disliked um this is the only mike at the movies movie where like i was doing other things while

this movie was on uh i i watched it today and i i really i i can't talk about the movie without stating that I hated this movie. Okay. I didn't love it. I did not love it. Or probably like it. I spent the first... I don't know. I spent a while hating it. And then I got to a point where I kind of liked it.

Okay. Part of it. Sort of in the middle. You know, I gotta be honest. I really enjoyed the part where my favorite part in this entire movie. And maybe you can guess what this is. My favorite part in this entire movie is the part where the mom kills lots of

gremlins. Yeah. That's, I loved that. I love that. Cause it's so weird. And the whole movie is really like all of these tropes of horror movies and play and Christmas movies and playing with them.

And it's meant to be kind of wacky and satirical at times and zany and over the top. It's got some severe tone problems throughout. There's so many things wrong with this movie. But the mom at home is such a, you know's the next victim the kid is gonna be shocked that his mom has died she's been killed by all these gremlins she's she's she's a woman she's at home alone uh she's very like emotional and like and and like did the right before that right like she's not really shown as a strong character yeah and she puts a gremlin in a blender she she does she microwave she microwaves one and stabs one repeatedly like with a knife yeah with a big kitchen knife uh-huh

like slasher movie style it's so great and the gremlin that goes in the blender just like explodes into like gremlin goo after like screaming and pleading to be let out yeah it's great i love that part now i will also admit i disliked the movie at that point enough that i was really happy to take out some of my frustration by having glee at the death of gremlins you know what die all gremlins die what preceded this is the worst part of the movie which is like the extended montage of the gremlins causing trouble and hurting people which you can see why okay so the other the other thing i i noticed about this watching it back is this seems like one of those kind of crowd scenes in a Muppet movie where they're panning

across a bunch of Muppets. You don't really know very well. They're like the background Muppets and they're all, they've all got something weird to do. And they're, and you know, they're making, they're going,

he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he,

he, he, The manic Muppets are doing weird things. Right. And, and, uh, it's like a group scene.

And then they cut away to like Kermit walking by and, and, uh, calm down everyone or whatever it is. It felt like, it felt like a group scene. And then they cut away to like Kermit walking by and calm down everyone or whatever it is. It felt like that, which is not my favorite thing about a Muppet movie, extended forever in time. Like it's all of the lesser uninteresting Muppets doing annoying things for minutes and minutes and minutes. And I didn't find any of it amusing at all like the the the gremlins in the bar uh where the peter gabriel song is playing in the background like it's just yeah why is she serving them why she's why is she serving them why is phoebe kate's serving i guess i guess she feels threatened by them or something but she's sort of acting like everything is normal and she should

just serve the gremlins it's like i'll keep lighting the cigarettes like i don't i don't understand my main problem with this movie is nobody ever reacts to the gremlins appropriately yeah like no i think you're right why does he buy it a creature what is it why does he buy it? A creature? Why does he buy the monk? Why, Gizmo? Why does he buy it? It looks like a Furby. It's a weird animatronic stuffed creature that in the movie, okay, it's alive. It's a movie that's never been seen before.

I don't know. Why does Randall Peltzer, the inventor, this incredibly broad character played by Hoyt Axton, known for his country music and his narration, who's not a very good actor. Nope. Why does he get this thing? I don't know. I think the idea is because he's an inventor with big ideas

that are also bad ideas generally. And this is his latest bad idea, which is I can market this thing. But he doesn't think that until later in the movie. His reason for buying it is I need a christmas present for my son and here's a weird animal that nobody's ever seen before at the speaking of all the tropes at the um uh chinese curiosity shop yeah right with the guy with the pipe and the long beard it's like what are you doing i well you know and it's one of those things where it's like i think it's knowingly knowingly tropey but it's not satirized no in any way which is like dead serious you just it's like hey hey you know the you know those horribly racist

uh cliches we could we could throw some of those and it's like uh just do it but like when when when billy opens the box everyone just accepts this thing nobody questions like what is this it's a magical creature we've never seen before when he takes it to the scientist like a science teacher the science teacher's like all right i'll do some experiments this goes nobody ever questions it so i'm like this goes to the tone problem of this movie because it's meant to be fairytale-like, right? This is meant to be a fable. Like the whole,

don't shine bright light, don't get it wet, don't feed it after midnight. It's very much like a fantasy, a fairytale kind of thing. These are the rules. Except I feel like they don't really play that up. Like I don't feel like I'm watching a fairytale and yet the rules are i feel like they don't really play that up like i don't feel like i'm watching a

fairy tale and yet the rules are kind of fairy tale ish and so he questions the rules and everybody breaks them indeed yes everybody does break them and then the other thing when when uh when the dad comes back to town right so when mr when randall pelzer comes back to town after his convention which i'll get to that convention in a minute the whole town is like in disrepute and he arrives magically in the store where the striped gremlin is dying and he never questions what the hell is going on yeah the whole town has been destroyed what's happening it's like oh that thing's just melting in front of me like dad give me a scarf because gizmo's dying on the floor just gives a scarf like never questions the thing like just doesn't question it

and this is probably because he's such a bad actor as you say right like there's no expression on his face the expression is just like well this is going on you know you know how good an actor uh uh hoyt axton is is that he about three years before this was in a tv movie based on also a christmas movie based on a christmas carol called skin flint a country christmas carol with my friend and incomparable colleague steve lutz what i didn't know this steve steve play tiny tim know this steve steve played tiny tim it you can oh yeah skin flint a country christmas carol it's on youtube you can check you can check it out yeah he's he's the yeah anyway uh that's just a little a little aside that's kind of amazing is it's it's uh it's yeah it's totally on youtube anyway uh so yeah hoy daxton is not a very good actor that's the bottom line

he was a i think he's kind of a pretty good narrator like a let me tell you a story about a boy who got a funny little creature and it turned out to destroy a town right i also didn't understand why the narration was even there well i think it's because it's hoyt axton so you make a narration but then he's acting and it's like and and then it's very much like they're reading off the script so that's not great the destruction of the there are several points at which the complete destruction of the town is kind of uh like hand-waved like uh but people can still get around and uh you know talking about the town this is hill that's hill valley right oh i don't know it is it is a movie set town with lots of snow blown onto it that's hill

valley it looked exactly the same it could be i assume it's the same like soundstage a lot or whatever that is called because they had like they had the clock tower right like that and then they had the store on the corner which is the bank but was clearly the restaurant like i'm i'm pretty sure that was hill valley i believe it that set has been there forever there's did you know that the uh i believe that set is used in the pilot episode of the twilight zone i've never seen it that that town has been there a long time that that town set and it still gets used um i i so so the mogwai itself, Gizmo, I think is kind of cute and weird. And I like that.

I like that he never turns evil. That he comes around with Billy in the backpack throughout their adventures together. He's helpful at a couple of points. I think that's fun. I think that fits in with the, this is a fantasy story. This is a, this is a fairy tale. This is a boy's journey with his loyal pet slash companion teaches him to like sing along with music and stuff like that i think i think i think gizmo is cute and fun

and and although he's very limited by the fact that he's an animatronic blob um i think i think i like that part of it um i i'm yeah i'm trying to i'm trying to think i like the fact that when the when the gremlin escapes to the swimming pool that it does it actually does what when you're watching it you think they won't do you know i i assume when he goes to the swimming pool it's like well they're not gonna have like hundreds of gremlins that that would destroy this entire nope they're they're gonna do that right it's like all right it's a good thing that it's like the logical thing right he's gonna go find the biggest body of water he can right like that's logical but

that is one that's maybe the only logical thing in the movie like one thing that is i will never understand when they when they spill the water on gizmo why does he never take him out of the water it just leaves him there to continue spawning new gremlins until he's done i don't know and also like that is one of the first like super gross things in this movie like the way that the gremlins are born is just so gross and like all of the eating stuff like when they eat the chicken and they had the close-ups on the faces with like the teeth and it's that's disgusting the breaking out like cocoons is disgusting i kind of like that those were disgusting though though. I thought that was kind of fitting because the gremlins are disgusting.

I liked, yeah, the fact that you get water on them and they get boils and then the gremlins pop out. That was kind of gross. The fundamental flaw in the idea of Billy's dad thinking that he could sell the Mogwai, you can't sell them because they multiply for free how do you sell them you sell one to one person and then they just multiply well but that's the that's the um this is the problem with the trouble with tribbles have you ever seen that the episode of star trek original star trek yeah i know okay i mean it's the same premise it's there's a fuzzy thing that's cute and somebody thinks that he can sell it, but it turns out that they, they reproduce at a vast rate. And so they're worthless.

Um, they're cute, but they're worthless to speculators because they, the, you can make more of them really easily. I'm sure there's a parable about this, about rabbits or something that's been around for thousands of years. It's the same. It's the same idea. Can we talk about some ridiculous things? Let's, let's, Let's mention Christmas Eve in general

because I think one of the things that stuck with me when I watched this movie as a kid is that everything happens in this movie on Christmas Eve, which doesn't need to be the case. It could be the Christmas season, but they make it all Christmas Eve because they want to have it be Christmas Eve climax into Christmas Day.

But people are in school on Christmas Eve. That doesn't happen um people are uh there is the inventors convention happening on christmas eve why would you plan a convention on christmas eve why would you do that well the inventors i think are not that bright but we get two like two scenes with hoyd axton in like a phone booth with people walking by at the inventors convention it's the most air quotes there of all time in any movie it in like a phone booth with people walking by at the inventors convention it's the most set of all time in any movie it's like a couple panes of glass and a beige background and like they have a couple of extras walk by oh it's amazing but later on there's like somebody

in like a box with a thing that is like supposed to be an invention and you're like oh yeah inventors but again it's christmas eve and and you're like, oh yeah, inventors. But again, it's Christmas Eve and, and they're busy at the inventors convention on Christmas Eve. It doesn't make any sense to me. But the, perhaps the most ridiculous scene in the movie is, is the one in which at long last,

I don't know, like, do we care about this character at all? But at long last Phoebe Cates reveals why she doesn't like Christmas. After we've seen her say this repeatedly, there's the super, we haven't even mentioned the super broad scenes at the bank where there's Judge Reinhold, who's a jerky, yuppie kind of guy, and there's Polly Holliday.

Who I cannot take seriously because I've seen Arrested Development. Well, you shouldn't take him seriously in this either as Gerald because he's awful. Polly Holliday, who is Flo on Alice, is essentially Cruella de Vil here. She's threatening dogs. She is basically a MacGuffin villain. She is. She's a MacGuffin villain. She is.

So first off, Billy has his dog at the bank. Doesn't make any sense. How did he get it in the door nobody should have accepted that as a thing no and then and so the dog's at the bank and then and then the mean lady comes and like and then the dog attacks the mean lady he doesn't even need to take the dog to the bank why does he need to take the dog no we we don't i don't know i don't know and then and then polly holiday and another scene that scene that I remember very clearly is she's got her little staircase elevator thing that she uses because she's an old lady.

Even though she walks around fine, she doesn't go up the stairs. And of course the gremlins rewire this later so that she's ejected out her window and flung in the air and presumably is dead. So there's that. But then there's the, finally we get the reveal of Phoebe Cates is super important character point,

which is she hates Christmas, which is a whole speech about how her father went down the chimney to bring them presents dressed as Santa Claus, but he got stuck. And then, and so he went missing and they couldn't find him. And then they went to the, it was a cold night and they lit a fire.

But when they were going over to the fireplace, they smelled something awful and they thought something died in it. So they called somebody out to take off the chimney and get out the dead thing. And then it turned out that it was the dead body of her father dressed as Santa Claus. And he'd been there all along.

Ooh. And it is just terrible. Talk about tone though, right? See if you can guess what line i'm gonna bring up i can't i can't when uh is her name kate in the movie phoebe cakes yeah yeah very inventive when they're walking down the street talking about christmas kate phoebe's and she says about how christmas is depressing and that lots of people are sad at christmas kate phoebes and she says about how christmas is depressing and that lots of people are sad at christmas and she says when most people are opening their presents some are opening their veins wow what a line yeah why well there's a there's there's a lot of i hate christmas i just don't like christmas and yet she's never really redeemed like i mean

she's got a good reason to not like it although it's super extreme but then i don't know again tone problems like they threw like like billy's mom uh they threw a bunch of stuff in a blender and out came a disgusting ooze i mean because because it's like i can see how there's a movie here right i can see how there's kind of a fable about a monster and it's mishandled accidentally or a cute thing that's mishandled and it and it generates monsters and it wreaks havoc and there's a there's a boy and he likes a girl and the girl is a bah humbug kind of character i can see all of like the outline of the movie here that is like a holiday movie that's a fable about about uh i don't even know what the fable's about we'll work on that that'll be in the rewrite don't eat off the midnight what you have yeah no

midnight snacks and wear sunglasses and uh stay dry stay dry bring Bring a towel. But the end result is just a mess. It's just a huge mess. It's wacky and anarchic. And if you enjoy a wacky mess involving puppets, then this is the movie for you. But I can't endorse it. Oh, they really love Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We didn't mention that, too. And that leads to another scene that I really like.

I love the scenes where they kill gremlins, it turns out, where they break open the gas main and light a fire and blow up the movie theater. I thought that was kind of great, except, of course, the one, the stripe gremlin escapes again. Who decides to use a crossbow and a handgun to try and ward off Billy. This film is so weird.

Oh, yeah. In the end, they're in the hardware store. And there's a whole battle in the hardware store. And at one point they say, the sun will be coming up soon. And five minutes later, they can open that skylight. And bright light is streaming in from the bright day outside um okay but uh yeah yeah didn't like this movie man no it's not good don't watch it my apologies to those who like it if you like gremlins because you have fond memories of it

as a kid don't watch it again just keep your fond memories if you do like gremlins and all the things that we talk about and you watch it all the time i don't know it again just keep your fond memories if you do like gremlins and all the things that we talk about and you watch it all the time i don't know what to tell you shine on you crazy diamond it's a bad movie bad bad bad bad bad movie yeah it is it is i i like i said i what i take away from it is my glee in in the murder of all the gremlins i'm not sure i was supposed to take that away but i did enjoy that i did all the andremlins. I'm not sure I was supposed to take that away, but I did enjoy that. I did all the...

And this also makes it inappropriate for little kids, I think, but I did enjoy these gremlins who I hated being just destroyed in terrible ways and stabbed and blended. I mean, like literally, a gremlin is microwaved to death. That was kind of great, but that's it.

Didn't like this movie, Jason. No. no well we got another chance with home alone which i haven't seen well i know i love that movie and and i have watched it recently so like i'm not just going all right nostalgia like home alone is one of my is my fate probably my favorite christmas movie either that or action skyscraper yeah well that's a good one. Sad, sad, sad divorced cop. I will see what I think, though.

The shoe is on the other foot now, Mike. There's a movie that you really like. The question is, will I like it? So that's coming up. We're going to be

that's going to be on the episode on the 12th of December. So we're a couple of weeks away from a clear redemption for Christmas movies because it doesn't matter how you feel about Home Alone you'll like it more than Gremlins

okay fair enough for people who enjoy Mike at the Movies we'll remind you that we make a feed of just all of the movies Mike watches with various people over at the incomparable at the incomparable.com slash Mike there's Mike at the Movies feed so if you ever want to go back and like I remember that they watched Raiders of the Lost Ark? What

did they say about that? All of the ones from, uh, from here, from analog and there's even at least one bonus that didn't appear anywhere else. Yep. That's going to be another one. That's great. So people should check that out. Cause that's, that's a nice way. Like if you're, if you're saying, Oh, remember when they talked about that movie, we just made a feed because why not basically? Why not make a feed that's just the movie talk? So that's over at The Incomparable with a wonderful logo

featuring your glasses. Which I can see right now in a poster format that Frank made for me that I have kept because it is going to be taking pride of place in my office. Wonderful. Mega office. In mega office. It's incomparable.com slash Mike.

So this will be here in about a month's time in that feed, but as I said, between now and then, there is going to be a special which I'm going to be doing. I think this week I'm recording that. Excellent. So yeah, go check that out. If you want to, that's going to be linked to that in our show notes,

you can find those over at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 117. Thanks again to our lovely selection of sponsors today, Smile, Encapsula, Mack Weldon, and MailRoute. We will be back next time. If you want to find Jason online in the meantime, you can find many of his shows at RelayFM and The Incomparable.

And he is over at sixcolors.com, at Jason L on Twitter. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next time. Until then, Jason, say goodbye to everybody. Perfect. It's actually a very good impression.

Never do it again. Nope.