Upgrade - 119: Make the Chart Bigger

Episode Date: December 12, 2016

Myke's got a new office! Also, we follow up on our conversation about ARM Macs and try to explain Single Sign On for Apple TV. Finally, after 25 years, Jason has watched "Home Alone" and will discuss it on a new Myke at the Movies.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 119 today's show is brought to you by encapsular foot cardigan aero and away my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell hi mike i'm just sitting here in the place that i'm always sitting when we do upgrade nothing special nothing different how about you should we do some follow-up i am uh i am standing right now and standing is the key we're gonna talk about that a little bit later on uh in mega office the my new beta 0.2 yeah so expect things to sound weird and echoey and everything because uh i haven't got anything ready and that's just the way it's going to be today i think yeah yeah i'm still trying to settle into this place um and later on in the episode i'm going to talk a little

bit about what my uh what my setup arrangement is here because it's extremely different We'll look back on this this period and it'll be those fond memories of Mike's transitional phase when he was moving and still doing podcasts while moving but now, you know, we just we gotta do it

I'm very excited for you, I'm very excited that you're there. You were saying before we get started, maybe you should have taken the week off, but you know what? You're soldiering on. I got to put this content out. People, you know, they want the content. They're demanding it.

I know. They want to hear our thoughts about Home Alone. They do. That's true. I was going to say you could get a guest host, but then who would talk to me about Home Alone? I will not accept that. I will not accept anybody else to talk about Home Alone with you. Yeah.

alone i will not accept that i will not accept anybody else to talk about home alone with you yeah i mean seriously that's like i've spent how many years not watching home alone and now here here we are and i've seen it so you know 25 plus years in the making of me waiting to see home alone and you are the person i waited to see it well not see it with talk about it after i saw it kind of see yeah yeah close enough all right um we mentioned last week that we're going to be doing voting for the upgradies for this year and we want you all to be involved so you will find a link in the show notes to the voting form the google form for the third annual upgradies yeah yeah so we put in a bunch of nominees, and I think there's a fill-in-the-blank, too. And so you can influence what we talk about

in the Upgradees episode, which will be coming out the first of the year. So you've got some time to influence our decisions. Or the second. Yes, well, I mean, I sort of meant colloquially the first of the year, but yes, it will literally be January 2nd, 2017. Put that on your calendars. We have, as I said, we've shortlisted the things that me and Jason have thought of,

but we're very aware of the fact that there may be some things we haven't thought of. So if you see something that you think desperately needs to be nominated in category let us know and you'll see i put a note right at the very top um of the form that the uh the chief upgradians reserve the right to amend the nominee list and that's purely in case we've forgotten anything so that sounds very formal for for like oh jeez no i can't believe we didn't say you know but yes very formal chief upgrad yes, very formal. Chief Upgradians decide. Very formal. Very serious. I thought it was better than just like we're leaving this open because we have terrible memories and we haven't been writing stuff down throughout the year, which is what I'm going to do next year.

I've realized that I'm going to start maybe keeping notes throughout the year for the things that I want to put in the Upgradies. So I don't forget. On last week's show, we were talking about keyboard shortcuts on the iPad, and I mentioned how I really liked when you press the command key, it shows you every available keyboard shortcut, and

there's nothing on the Mac to do this. Well, there's a few people wrote in to let me know about something which I'm sure I have seen before. As soon as it was sent to me, I remembered it, but I never would have remembered it on my own about the help of the Upgradians. And Al was the first person to write in to recommend an application called Cheat Sheet by Stefan First. And basically, it does just that. It gives you the ability to hold down a key and see all of the keyboard

shortcuts available for the application that you're looking at so it is exactly what i was trying to wish into existence so it does exist yeah that's actually a really great um i wonder why that's not a mac os feature right like why why you know apple could presumably you know either either look at the contents of the menus and things like that, or it could set up a, you know, some sort of method by which developers would define that stuff separately for that particular feature. I'm a little surprised that Apple doesn't offer that. It seems like a very friendly feature, and it's very nice on the iPad. So I'm a little surprised that's not in macOS. I have thought to myself that maybe the reason that it's not there

is because Mac applications have so many keyboard shortcuts that it's kind of an ugly and confusing thing. Like, you know, you open up something like Photoshop or Logic and you'll be swiping pages through pages and the names that they're given won't make any sense until you actually act, you know. That's what I think is that it might be a little bit too entrenched to do this like there are some applications like airmail on ios it has like three or four pages of them and it's like this is too many right right so it's like i don't know what

the right mix is there to be honest because it's good to have the keyboard shortcuts because they're typically hidden right so it's like if somebody finds them then good you know bully for them but uh like there are many applications on the ipad that i find keyboard shortcuts for that are not listed in that sheet and i don't really know how that's possible but it happens um so yeah they're they're there just just press all the keys press every key every time you get an application spend four hours pressing every single key and every single command key up key combination you can think of and write it all down.

Get a pad and a pen. And as you're typing, take notes about what seems to happen. And then, yeah. That's our recommendation to you for good keyboard shortcut behavior, I think. Honey, I can't come to dinner yet. I've just moved from command to command shift. I'll be a little while. I've got a new application.

Block off the calendar for a week. Pizza Watch. This is a segment of follow-up I'm going to call Pizza Watch. Justin has written to let us know that Domino's, the great pizza chain of Domino's, is currently using pineapple pepperoni in their advertising, Jason.

It's happening. So, thank you to Justin for letting us know that such a thing exists. I mean, I'm always happy to know that people are eating their pizza in this way, because it is the superior combination

yeah no that's good thank you and this has been pizza watch oh yeah that's much better we've lasers are used elsewhere yeah oh mike we had a lot of arm follow-up a lot lot lot, lot, lot. Yep. There was the big news that, honestly, Microsoft doing stuff on ARM has been, and working on an emulator has been out there. I didn't really talk about it a whole lot, but it's been out there for a little while.

But Microsoft has relaunched its arm strategy um if you may you may remember that when the surface launched there were two different kinds of surfaces there was a surface and the surface rt basically um and they went through different names there was surface rt and surface pro and all that but basically there are two different kind of surfaces that were made and are now are not um now it's just an intel-based one for the time being. But for a while, they made an ARM version. That was the RT version. And they had a RT version of Windows. And that was on ARM.

And it included Microsoft Office recompiled for ARM. But classic x86 apps wouldn't run on it because they didn't have an emulator. And then it had all of the modern, you know, Metro't run on it because they didn't have an emulator and then it had all of the modern you know metro styling stuff on it too and uh it didn't really you know it didn't take advantage of all that old windows software and so people weren't uh that fond of it and it died but microsoft is sort of going back to that again they're working with Qualcomm. They're going to do not only an x86 emulator for ARM, but a full on ARM version of Windows again. And so in theory, you know, you'll be able to buy a laptop next year, maybe with a Snapdragon processor like Qualcomm makes for smartphones.

And it will run Windows, even though that Snapdragon is an ARM processor and it will be able to run your old Windows software in emulation. So that's interesting. The thing that I think, you know, emulating x86 on ARM, it's emulation. It's going to, you know, I don't think this changes the story for Apple at all. If Apple wants to emulate, it can do it. If it moved to ARM, you pay a penalty for that, right? Emulation will slow everything down because you're running a virtual chip inside a real chip. But what I find really interesting about this story, when we were detailing all the things about moving to ARM, this suggests that Microsoft is now this suggests that Microsoft is now publicly hedging about the future of Intel. And I think that to me is the most fascinating thing about this because Microsoft already tried this and kind of, it was kind of a flop and yet here they are again. And maybe Qualcomm is, you know,

is pushing them and funding this. But, but I do wonder, given that Microsoft, you know, Windows matters to Microsoft and that Microsoft is doing this. The question I have is, what does that say about Microsoft's perception about the future of ARM processors versus the future of Intel processors? And it's just another log on the fire. But I think that's really interesting that that microsoft is is committing to this the the emulation thing is what's interesting to me i mean if they consider it important enough why not just i mean i guess they just don't want to have a specific version again right because it ends up being a bifurcated disaster. Yeah, I mean, unless...

I think what Microsoft is hoping is that it'll just be... It just works, right? Where developers will start compiling for both, but if you only have the x86 version, it'll work on ARM and it'll run an emulation. Theoretically, an ARM Mac could probably boot Windows for ARM natively, but then run x86 apps in emulation inside of it. It's weird. I don't know. It's a fascinating thing. I think it's really weird that they

had Windows RT and killed it and now they're bringing it back sort of. But I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's entirely possible. And we talked about some of this stuff last week. It's entirely possible that Microsoft looks at mobile computing innovation and says, these, this stuff could make better laptops than what Intel is doing. That Intel has just not done a good enough job with power saving and battery life and all those things. And the smartphone, you know, the smartphone industry is so successful that it's driving innovation so fast that we, if we make a version of windows that runs on this stuff,

there will be a whole, you know, slew of laptop makers who will embrace it and make pretty good laptops that are running on ARM. So, you know, it also could be that, you know, because Microsoft isn't choosing here, right? That Microsoft is like, sure, Qualcomm, yeah, we'll make a version for you to try and, you know, sell to Dell and Lenovo and whoever else to make PCs for. We can do that. But that, you know, they're also still making the Intel version, and so if it is a flop, the PC makers and Qualcomm will be the ones who are paying the most for it.

Yeah, this is a slightly different game. I think people are looking at this and pointing to it as a reason that Apple are going to or should do it, but I think Microsoft play a different game, don't they? Like you're saying about who does this impact the most? Well, it's going to impact the people

trying to sell the products. Microsoft is still getting their licensing fee one way or another. Right. Microsoft's putting down a bet, in a way. And I'm not sure Apple... A lot of the things that Microsoft

does in public, Apple does in private. I mean, I think you could take that back like all the way to almost everything. Like, is Apple working on augmented reality? Sure they are. Are they doing lots of demos and have they given their product a name? No, but HoloLens is the thing that's out there, right? And so it's like, and that has always been the way Microsoft was pre-announcing hardware and software and features years before they shipped. Sometimes they never did ship.

Let me tell you about the search in Longhorn. Woo, it's going to be great. Oh, Longhorn. Last of us from the past. We went to Europe like 2004 or something. And we were in a B&B in Amsterdam with this other young couple. And it turned out the guy was working on search for longhorn and i was like oh man he's like yeah never shipped anyway longhorn became

windows vista basically became this yeah yeah but in some sort of but a lot of the stuff got dropped out like it's not it's not quite like saying copeland became a you know mac os 8 because it's sort of like yeah that's a few of the bits of it did but and it's not quite the right analogy but it's close so this is my point is that you know microsoft does this stuff in public because of the way you know there's a weird metaphor but like microsoft keeps some of its organs outside its body but it's kind of like that, right? It's like Microsoft makes windows. It makes kind of the brain, but like, and then the computers, well, they do now make surface, right? But there are all these PC makers and, you know, they're part of this life form of the Windows PC world. And

Apple, it's all inside Apple, like Apple keeps it all inside. So, you know, is Apple making a bet? I'm sure Apple, we've all talked about it. I'm sure Apple's got Macs that run on ARM processors inside Apple, right? I mean, just as they did with Intel where they had the Intel project running for years inside Apple when they were using PowerPC. And I'm sure they're investigating.

It wouldn't shock me if they've investigated all of this stuff. But, you know, my whole thesis was it comes to Apple's disposition about how much effort it's going to be to move the Mac over and if it's worth their time versus just letting the Mac kind of ride. But seeing Microsoft publicly do something like this makes me think, you know, Microsoft's pretty smart and the fate of Windows matters a lot to them. And so you look at this and think, that is interesting. That makes me wonder a little bit, makes me think a little differently

about Apple's internal calculation about it if Microsoft is kind of publicly hedging at this point. This week's episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Encapsular, a cloud service that makes your website faster and safer. They have a worldwide network that can inspect every packet that comes and goes from your website, blocking attacks against your site whilst delivering your content to your customers faster. That's what it's all about, being faster. Every day, websites of all sizes get attacked

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and claim your free month. Thank you so much to Encapsular for their support of this show. I'm RelayFM. All right. encapsular service and claim your free month thank you so much to encapsular for their support of this show and relay fm all right so a little more on arm i think i thought we were done let's continue on shall we i i know you did but i've just got a couple other quick things that are a little more follow-up just um maybe i maybe i I just subconsciously want Arm to just go away. Don't cut off your own arm, Mike. Here we go. I heard from a lot of developers who say that virtualization of x86 and support of x86 is absolutely vital.

And like I said last week, I'm sure that it is. What I wasn't trying to do was say, I know that those people aren't important or something like that. But what I was trying to say is I would think that Apple has some idea of what percentage of its device sales are to people who have to have x86 compatibility to do their jobs and the what we've seen with apple recently is that if that that number might be bigger than we would like it to be at the point where apple says it doesn't matter right i mean that seems to be something that that has been going on it's like what we think of as important may not be what Apple thinks of as important. And I haven't seen any good statistics saying this many Mac users in the installed base need an x86 system. I mean, I hear lots of anecdotes. And I heard from several developers who said, come on, there's got to be millions of them. I go to conferences and at my job and I see, you know, people who are using Macs and using various virtualization or, you know, systems and they need x86 compatibility.

But those are anecdotes. And it's very easy to get down in a field where everybody you know is doing certain kinds of work and needs that. And that's very important to you and it's very important to them, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's a very important slice of Apple's market. And I'm not saying it's not important, but I'm saying that Apple may not think it's important. We don't know.

And Apple has shown that it is willing to, shown recently, that it is willing to make decisions that it think benefit its products for the, you know, whether it's 95% or 98% or 90%, whatever, of its user base to make the product that they use better at the expense of people who are in that one or two or five or 10% that, you know, where it's very important to them. And that's just that's just where we are. So you know, I don't, I would be kind of fascinated to see if there are statistics about like how many Mac users, you know, rely on x86 compatibility

specifically to do their jobs. That, you know, that's I heard some people say web developers need x86 compatibility. I'm not quite sure why that is. Because, yeah, anyway, it's all fine. Anecdotes are great. Don't send me more anecdotes. I don't want more anecdotes. I am curious if there's public information about this. I'm sure Apple knows or has a very good idea of what that you know what percentage of its sales are um are people who would not be able to buy a mac if it didn't offer x86 yeah i stand by my thinking from last time that i have no doubt that there are many many many people that do this millions i don't think so but many many many many people that need this emulation stuff absolutely but and they would be very sad if it went away absolutely but i don't think that it's enough people if apple want to make this decision that they won't make it like i think i think the

magnitude of this decision is so great that if apple makes it um what they're saying is this is so important that we're willing to give that up. Like, I mean, that, that, that's the only reason if, if, if it's big enough for them to make a switch, it's big enough for them to say, you know, we're going to let the chips fall where they may with people who are currently behind.

Yeah. Yeah. I just can't imagine a meeting room where they're saying, right, so we're ready to, to do this. And then somebody puts their hand up and says, well,

you know, 1% of our customer base uses bootcamp, you you know or like some kind of emulation for something i can't oh okay well we'll stick on intel's roadmap then i just don't see it happening yeah i mean it's possible that they would still do something like what microsoft is doing which is use the arm uh in situations where it's necessary which is is laptops, especially the MacBook would be the beachhead there. I think that it's a question. My gut feeling is that it seems unlikely to me that Apple would long-term keep all the

Mac on, you know, two separate processor platforms. It seems unlikely to me, but it's not impossible that it would do it. seems unlikely to me. But it's not impossible that it would do it. But, and this comes to another piece of feedback we got, which was, I heard from some people who are like, hey, did you know that the iPad has a processor in it? Yeah, I heard that. I read that somewhere. I read that somewhere. My point about that was that the iPad Pro, the fastest iPad Pro, is about as fast as the slowest Mac. And that's it, you know, so just saying, well, of course, they could do it. Of course, they could do it. The question is, how do you scale to provide the kind of power and speed that is required by people who have faster Macs than the MacBook. And not saying they couldn't do it, throw some more cores at it, whatever,

they could do it. It's just effort. It's more effort. They can't just take a chip from an iPad, pop it in a Mac and call it done unless they like, I mean, it's more than that without going too much into it. So yes, the iPad pro has a very nice processor. My, my iPad pro has a processor that in single core operations, I believe is faster than the 2016 MacBook, not in dual, not in multi-core. It's a little bit slower, but it's faster in single core. That's pretty amazing. Um, but that's the 2016 MacBook. You can't, you know, if you're picking and choosing, the 2016 MacBook does not represent the best of the Mac. It represents the worst of the Mac in terms of speed. So yeah, anyway, in terms of new models, anyway, the

MacBook Air might be slower. I don't know, but that's a legacy product at this point. might be slower. I don't know, but that's a legacy product at this point. And yeah, so finally, this is the point, which is all of this argument about details, I feel like, like I said last week, is kind of moot because in the end, I think, like I said earlier, it comes down to the choice Apple wants to make. And I think it's not about, can Apple this it's really does Apple think this is worth doing worth the effort of doing like is the Mac and the touch you know there are plenty of arguments for both I I'm I'm still kind of inclined to say it's more work than uh is worth it for Apple although you know the thinking about the Microsoft stuff a little bit has made me uh pause a little bit more about it um but in the end this is like you know what how much effort does apple want to put into a mac processor transition and what does it get by doing it and uh what we saw with the touch bar is apple

is willing to put in a certain amount of effort into the mac and so that's okay that's the case for is like if apple would do that that, then why not do more? And maybe one of the reasons that the Mac has been so sluggish for the last couple of years is that Apple is taking their eye off the ball with Intel because they want to build our Macs. That's a theory. It's out there. But I don't think it's supported by rumors, but it's a theory. There are lots of theories. So we'll see. in the end i feel like this is we can debate like all of the different data points uh but you know those are data points in apple's decision making process because apple can do it if it wants it's just a matter of if it wants to and you know i think that's i'm still inclined to say that it's less

likely because it would be so much effort to do it at least now so apple tv single sign-on launched this joe steals in the chat room so get ready so can you remind me what this is because like as far as i'm aware single sign-on means nothing to me in the united kingdom it is a much ballyhooed feature of tvOS 10. And the idea here is your television provider can provide access to content that you get. Normally you would pay for on cable or satellite, but you get it on streaming digital as well because you're already paying for it somewhere else. So an example would be, I have Comcast, I have HBO on Comcast. That means that I

can go, I can, on an Apple TV or an iPad, I can launch HBO Go and log in with my cable information and it says, oh yeah, you're a you're a a comcast subscriber who has hbo so you can watch hbo on your devices too it's great right i mean it's it's legitimately great it is frustrating when that doesn't work and don't get me started there are separate deals for separate providers so i can do that with hbo but i don't appear to be able to do that with something like stars where they don't have a deal with Comcast. So I can't do it. When I had direct TV, I couldn't do ESPN streaming. Now that I have Comcast, I can, but the point here is your cable or satellite login, your TV

provider login is like a magic key that unlocks streaming capability for content you're already buying via the traditional tv method right that makes sense um so single sign-on the idea is i mean this was one of the complaints that we all had about this uh not too long ago which is um why is it that every time i launch an app it asks me to log in with my cable ID and password, especially on the Apple TV, we're putting in an ID and password is laborious. Shouldn't it be collected somewhere where I can enter it in the settings that like, yes, I'm on Comcast. Here's my password. Here's my ID, Apple TV, you do the work for me. Well, that's single sign on. That's the idea is you do it in one place.

TV OS knows that it totally works or iOS. It knows that here's what I know. And boom, it'll just, you say, I want to watch HBO. And it's like, yeah, totally. I already know who you are. I got you logged in. Great. Here, watch HBO.

That's single sign-on. And now we have it. Huge asterisk. um that single sign on and now we have it huge asterisk so basically what it seems like is it is launched kind of unceremoniously i don't know if this was like it was like december right december was the time frame that apple gave for this feature when it announced it um it was in the september event right? And now there are significant portions missing, like TV channels and TV stations missing. TVOS 10 feature, but it didn't get enabled until an update.

And then they turned this feature on. And this is for iOS as well, right? And it is in iOS as well because there's the TV app for iOS. And it's the same idea as it's supposed to kind of connect all of this stuff is that out uh yeah no okay i think it's 10.2 okay that it's in which isn't out yet but i think maybe out like this imminently i think maybe this week but it's already out on apple tv um so here it is you can you can sign in the problem is apple has apparently this is bizarre again bizarre tv stuff apple apparently has to make individual deals with tv providers to connect with this because there is an API or something.

And so the question is, are these contractual issues or are they technical issues? But either way, none of the major, well, few of the major TV providers in the US, the major satellite providers are there, which says something about, because satellite providers feel pressure from internet, because they can't really offer high speed internet. And so all of their customers, if they've got high speed internet are getting it from somewhere else, probably a competitor. And so I think they're inclined to make their, their streaming experience as awesome as possible. But in terms of like Comcast, which I have, or Time Warner Cable, these are not there. So I can't use single sign-on even now. And then what's worse is the apps also need to support

single sign-on. They have to be updated to support this feature. And only 20 apps have been supported. And there, some of them have only been updated on one of the platforms. So like A&E is iOS only and, uh, FX now is TVOS only. So it is, uh, not all there yet.

It's a great idea. I think it gets me. And I guess this is why I keep thinking that, that either Apple just wants everybody to, to, um, do what they want, um, to take their orders, or there's something contractually obligated here. Because the thing that frustrates me about this is like,

on my Mac, when I try to watch any of these things, it just puts me it'll it just it takes me to a Comcast login page, where I put in my username and password. And then it does a redirect with a key that basically says, yes, this person is validated. And then I'm through on whatever service it is. And I keep thinking to myself, why doesn't Apple just do that in the background? Like, I know that that's scraping basically, but you could totally do that. And just like, there's a form submission. Oh, Comcast form submission, get the key, take it over here, put it over here. Boom, we're done.

But nope, that's apparently too complicated or too hinky. So instead we have everybody needs to update their stuff to use our single sign-on system. And the answer is not everybody did it. I think I'm just struggling to get my head around why this is such a feature worth doing anyway. Well, I mean, it's a very Apple approach, right? I mean, the idea is if you, you know, it goes back to our complaints about getting set up with the Apple TV when the new Apple TV came out, which is you keep putting in your password and it's frustrating. This solves, that's a problem on, at in the u.s on tv apps on apple tv is you have a single login that all of them need to to do to give you access which is your your tv

provider login whether it's a traditional cable satellite or even something like sling which is a sort of like a an over-the-top um you know virtual cable service that just comes over the internet um you have a you you you need that one password and uh and username to get activate all of them so the very apple thing to do is to say just give it to us and we'll take care of the rest and in in a in a perfect world that is what it should be is like you should be able to turn on your apple tv and it says hey hey buddy looks like you're on cable why don't we uh why don't we log you in and then uh we'll that'll unlock all the content that you get on comcast like all right i'll do that and it's like

yeah okay awesome we know we know who you are and we know you're on Comcast and here are the apps you can use. And if you launch them, they show you everything that you have access to and we're done. And that would be great because right now the experience is, oh, let me go get the HBO app. Let me launch the HBO app. Oh, now it says I need to get my iPad and go to a webpage and put in the code I see on screen and then log into Comcast and now wait a minute and now it works. And then I open up the Showtime app and it says, hey, go get that iPad because now you need to do this here. And so on and so on for every app that you use. Then you move to the ESPN app and it asks you the same thing. That's the idea.

Why did they launch this now if they're missing so many providers? Why didn't they just delay it? You know, it's easy to poke fun right now, but they delay AirPods, which is significantly more important. I don't know how many people are going to be desperately waiting for this thing, and then it launches and they can't use it with the providers anyway, which leaves a bad experience where people may never come back to it.

I think it's a couple things. I think it's Apple wanting to reward the providers that have done the work. That's a good point. This has been in the offing for a while. Maybe it puts the onus on the people that haven't done it to do it right because now customer support is going to go out you know like people are going to contact like whomever and just say hey why haven't you done this kind of thing yeah so i think that's it i think i think that's exactly what it is it's one to reward the people who've done it and two to put pressure on

the ones who haven't it reminds me of apple pay in that way right like there were they didn't really have everywhere that apple pay is launched it hasn't launched with all the providers that everybody would want and i think apple just push it out there so it puts public kind of pressure on the banks and the financial institutions to get it supported it's a very apple thing to do it and it's not it's not limited to apple but i think this is a very common way to do it which is you know you're trying to get you're trying to get 10 players to play ball with you and five of them play ball with you and you and the five who've played ball are like come on you know let's go and you and at some point you're like yeah let's go and and you

know and then you name and shame the ones who who aren't uh playing ball and maybe they come to the table and maybe they don't i just broke that metaphor maybe they come to the field to play ball yeah and maybe they don't but um yeah they keep their organs on the football field so that's the story it's it is weird but um i think this is apple's lesson for working with the entertainment industry in general is you know we we talk a lot about apple wanting to control everything and boy is that true and and not have to rely on anybody else for anything they do. And this is a case where they have to rely on all sorts of other people. And this is one of those cases where it's like, you know, there's no alternative. Apple has to cut deals. Apple has to work with third parties and they're not necessarily the shiniest and most technically savvy of third parties. And so we get stuff like this and it's, it's messy and ugly and not very Appley, but Apple

wants to be on, you know, wants to have this product and be in this space. And this is the kind of stuff that ends up happening if they can't. You know, compounded by the fact that Apple probably has some very particular approaches to their partners and has made some very specific decisions about what's good enough for them and not good enough for them, which can benefit their products and frequently does. But it can also lead to problems dealing with other people. All right, I want to shift gears here a little bit, Jason, and read you a quote that Tim Cook gave to Reuters. Our data shows that Apple Watch is doing great and looks to be one of the most popular holiday gifts this year. Sales growth is off the charts. In fact, during the first week of holiday

shopping, our sell-through of Apple Watch was greater than any week in the product's history. And as we expected, we're on track for the best quarter ever for Apple Watch, he said. Cook did not respond to any requests for specific sales figures for the gadget, Reuters said. Tim Cook's doing his best Jeff Bezos impression. Yeah, he really is. Off the charts. I made a new Bezos chart.

People can check it out. We'll put it in the show notes. I do want to point out that on your chart, the sales stay on the chart. Well, so somebody called me on that and on Twitter, I did release the earlier version of the chart where it was off the chart. But what we do is we just update the chart so then the sales growth is on the charts.

But initially, it starts off the charts, and then you fix the charts, and then it's on the charts again. Make the chart bigger, right? You've got to make the chart bigger. That's the real problem. If things keep going off the chart, just make the chart bigger. But it sounds more fun to say sales growth is off the charts than to say sales growth was so big that our charts were broken and we had to fix them by making them bigger. That's not as good. I think there's something kind of cool in saying like sales growth was so big we had to create a new chart to contain it.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's less snappy. Sales growth is so good our charts are all larger now, right? You know, but again, off the charts. good our charts are all larger now right you know but again off the charts it's fun to say i did make a chart uh with the fact that uh things are are the best yet and there's no scale because like jeff bezos talking about how great kindle or amazon prime or whatever is doing he likes to show charts where the the numbers start low and go high, but we don't know what the numbers are. And you just have our left to guess. And with the Apple Watch, because Apple Watch is in other,

and so there are lots of estimates and the people who look at the other revenue line, in that link that we'll put in to Six Colors, I also did a chart of the other revenue. And lots of smart people including horace did you have done the kind of like extrapolation based on this of what you know what apple watch sales should be and based on like changes in the other revenue line and um and this all came about because idc, which is, yes, was owned by the same people who owned my company that I used to work at. IDG, really innovative name and structures there. Yeah.

International Data Corp, the analysts, they, yeah, tell me about it. Anyway, they said basically, oh, Apple Watch sales are terrible. And all the analysts who've been looking at this are like, no, we don't think that that's actually really accurate. And then it was enough of a kind of hubbub that we ended up with a Tim Cook statement to Reuters saying, no, actually, they're pretty great. And we have to take them at their word. And we have to take them at their word. But if you look at the other figure, people feel like the IDC report was wrong. And now we've got Tim Cook on the record as saying, it's doing great and we're going to have the best quarter yet. So even though the chart is like, last year it was cool and this year it's better and we don't know what those mean.

At least that's all we've got to go on is that and extrapolating from the other uh revenue line so like i know why i know why they do this i know why tim does this i know why they're not giving figures i know why he's saying it's better than before but there is like the logical part of my brain that's like why even bother saying it like if you're not going to tell us what it means, or does it mean you sold two this time and you sold one last time? Because it might as well be that, you know? They say it's competitive, which I kind of don't buy either. I'm not quite sure. What does that even mean?

I think the reason, I mean, look, the number one reason you do it is because you don't want to talk about numbers and you don't want to share them in case you're not happy with the numbers. But you know what? This goes back to something else. Public companies have to disclose information. They hate it. They don't want to disclose information. But above a certain level,

you have to break out revenue for products. And as long as the Apple TV and the Apple Watch are below that number, Apple can roll them into other and not talk about them. And they rolled iPod back into other once it went down below that level. And I think what this says is culturally, public corporations are not interested in sharing any information that they're not forced to by law bottom line i think that's it and i i think you know jeff bezos is a little bit like that too where he can get away with those charts and so he does it's frustrating my concern as a as a watcher of apple is they're going to

start to do this more and more try and get away with it like bezos does and uh that i don't like because i like to know all the numbers oh yeah we want to know sure totally and it leaves the analyst to guess um the problem with playing this game is that you have to do what he did which is when a report comes out that says wow apple's numbers are really bad but apple won't give the numbers then you're forced to you know make a statement to reuters saying no actually they're very good tim cookout and and then go back into your you know into the mothership return to your turn the cloaking device back on but that's the only that's the game you have to play if you're not going to disclose the numbers this is what you have to do so you can either disclose the numbers or you can't or you have to do. So you can either disclose the numbers or you can't, or you have to manage

expectations like this or, and, and, and dribble out little tidbits here and there, which, you know, we, we've been, that's one of the reasons I pay attention to those analyst calls is that there are good little tidbits in there that they will mention and you write it down. And like Horace Deju has done that for a long time where he's tracking, I think he was tracking iOS activations or something like that. And it's like, that's not on any chart,

but they mention it from time to time. And you end up building a chart that's like, for a long time, it was at WWDC they'd mentioned it. And occasionally they mentioned an analyst call. So you have these charts that are like, well, in June, they said that for this period it was this and in in september they mentioned that for this other period it was this and you kind of like from that you try to extrapolate what the numbers might be um which is hard but sometimes that's what we all have to do because

they're not going to share the numbers yeah and then once you've've got them, once you get them every year or every 18 months or something like that, so iOS activation things, you can draw lines between them. You can make projections on them. That stuff, it helps inform. So that's why it is important. The jokes, like the more color jokes,

give us more color on that, is actually very useful stuff. But for whatever reason, Apple decided that this is a product that they're not going to give information on. And I don't know, like, I feel like when when when they do that, it must give an element of question in the app to the analysts, right? Like, do you not believe in this product enough that you don't want people to know how many are selling? Like what, you know, it's got to, it must raise those kinds of questions, which probably put it on the back foot with people, like put people on the back foot anyway,

so that they're willing and ready to write these articles saying that it must not be selling well. Right. That's my only thinking around this. That's part of the game. I mean, this is the challenge. They obviously had this argument internally and decided that, you know, let's just, it's a brand new product. We don't need to disclose it. We don't know how well it's going to do. Let's, let's, because the other side of it would be if they, if the, if the numbers were flagging, uh, people might start freaking out and saying, Oh no, why do you keep doing this? And you know, the shareholders get mad and all of that. And this lets them kind of build it and grow it in secret and let it kind of bubble away because they think it's important long term, even though the numbers in the will then speculate about your numbers. And sometimes they will speculate badly. And you have to deal with it.

And people will wonder why you're hiding your numbers. And you'll have to deal with it. And I agree with you that it would be better if they released this stuff. But I don't work at Apple. And if I worked at Apple, I might have a very different opinion about it. I mean, people want to know lots of things. People want to know how many Relay members there are. People want to know how many Six Colors members there are.

People want to know how much money Stephen Hackett makes from his YouTube channel. And, you know, we don't tell. The reason I don't do Patreon is because I'm not interested in a system that shows you how many people are giving me money. Not interested. Yeah. Right? And so I can see, you know, it's easy to be curious, but if you're the person on the inside,

you've got lots of reasons to not share that information. But there is always going to be a, you know, a trade-off. So there's some real-time follow-up. iOS 10.2 is out now. So the TV app is now out there it is the app for the apple tv is now out as well via a software update so it's all out now enjoy your single sign on everybody enjoy the new emoji more than anything else yeah oh the emoji is so good now the new ones they changed the peach back though they

changed it and changed it again you know They changed it from a peach-looking thing to something that looks more like a bottom. Yeah, because people were using peach to mean butt. Well, they do anyway. They changed it from what people considered to look like a butt to look like a peach, although I think the one that they changed it to looked more like a butt,

but now they've changed it back again. I think they should prioritize making it look like a peach. If it also looks like a butt, then that's great too. This has been Emoji Talk with Mike and Jason. Enjoy. No, I think it's important to have an emoji that looks kind of like a butt. Oh, well. I'm going to link to a Macworld article that explains all about the peach butt in case you're interested.

So there you go. I'm not, but some people may be. Some people may be. There are lots of great emoji in this update. So you should go check them out. There's a lot of gender stuff, which is fantastic. There's a lot more professions. And there's also whiskey and bacon.

Seriously, what more could you want from your emoji? I don't know. This week's episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Eero. These days, everything in our homes requires an internet connection. I will tell you right now, as somebody who is moving into a new home, I am realizing very quickly how much stuff I have needs to connect to an internet connection because I have a new internet connection, right? Like I have a new ISP. So I'm reconnecting everything in my house again. You know, you're looking at thermostats, light bulbs. We're looking at getting some like some a lot more smart home stuff here, security cameras, everything. And we're looking at using

all these services that take so much bandwidth these days, all these streaming services like Netflix. Wi-Fi is the foundation for all of the things in our homes because nobody wants like a million cables running around their house connecting to all these many, many devices. because nobody wants like a million cables running around their house, connecting to all these many, many devices. And the thing is, Wi-Fi at home is broken. Connections can be inconsistent, they can be slow, they can be unresponsive. And to get the best possible connection,

you need a distributed system that can provide you with a connection all over your home. And this is something that has been so expensive to do in the past. But with Eero, you can install an enterprise-grade Wi-Fi system in your home in just a few minutes this isn't like just simple extender technology each of Eero's little devices that they make each Eero has two radios inside so it keeps your connection fast and in sync in your whole home on one network name which is a really good thing I mean I know a few people that have tried to do this and they have multiple networks at home, which kind of sucks. Like somebody comes to your house and like staying over for a couple of days.

You're like, yeah, you've got to connect to this one here and this one here and this one. No one wants that. Eero makes it all simple. Jason, I believe that your house is set up with Eero's. Yeah, I have three here in my little house. And how does three work for you? Do you find that since installing the Eero,

you've had a better connection in other places that you may not have had before? Yeah, well, one of the challenges here was always that the internet comes in at one end of the house, so the other end of the house would not get a very good signal. And so there was always a challenge of wiring. I ended up with a wired connection to sort of a central location in the house,

Like wiring, I ended up with a wired connection to sort of a central location in the house. But even there, it was not, the coverage was not great. And now I have one in our back bedroom and one in the center of the house and then one out here in the garage. And everything is now covered, which is one of the nice things about the multiple, the mesh approach to Wi-Fi. We've spoken in the past weeks about the potential for Apple to be getting out of this game, right? So there are big companies that say they don't want to do this anymore. And you get a company like Eero comes along who's created a new way to make all of this work. And it works. The average house in the US is easily covered by two or three euros like Jason has. So you can get a three pack as a good starting point. But if you live in a larger space and you need more, you can add up to 10 in

total. And because of their 30 day money back guarantee, you can always return one or more of them if you end up not needing that many. So say you buy five and you only need four, you just send one back and you'll get a refund on that, which is awesome. If you want to find out more about Eero and get one for yourself, just go to Eero.com. That's E-E-R-O.com. And because you listen to this show, you will get free expedited shipping. You just need to enter the code UPGRADE at checkout. Thank you so much to Eero for their support of this show and RelayFM. I actually spoke with Eero a couple of days ago,

and I think business is booming for them right now, which I'm really pleased about because I know it's a good product. But it was quite funny. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised. All right. So mentioned at the top of the show, Jason, that, uh, I am in a completely new arrangement here. I have, it's something that I'm very stressed out today, recording with you, not because of you, you know, if anything, you're calming me down, but everything is different here. Um, I tried to turn my iMac on before we started.

I just set it up. And I couldn't log in because my keyboard wasn't working. Well, you're not an authorized user for that location, obviously. It would seem so. I use the Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard, the one that Marco uses. I got it in his recommendation because I was getting some RSI problems a couple of years ago and it really helped um and it just wasn't working i have since uh had adina go to the local store and get me some batteries now the store is only downstairs she was very kind to go and do that and i've changed the batteries in my keyboard and i'm

happy to report that somehow the batteries died in the last two days um i don't know why that has happened um but those batteries i've had that keyboard for like two years it's the first time somehow the batteries died in the last two days. I don't know why that has happened. But those batteries, I've had that keyboard for like two years. It's the first time I've replaced them. So that's what it is. So I'm going to put a link in the show notes to a photo that I took of my setup just before we recorded. And you will see that there is a MacBook, a MacBook Adorable sitting where the keyboard should be.

And I'm currently using the MacBook. This is part of my continued stress of this episode is I am recording onto a machine I have never recorded a show onto before. So who knows what's going to happen? But you can go there and you can take a look at this because the reason I wanted to talk about this is I tweeted a picture of this stuff the other day

and I had so many people asking me questions. This reminds me of what happened with you. Oh yeah, people love asking what products you're using and all of that they they love it it's also because of because of my work i use a bunch of really weird things yep right like boxes and stuff with lights on them that you may have no idea what they are but you know quite frankly i don't know half of what i was looking at your picture and thinking like okay i think i know what that is but it goes to this it looks like it goes to this other thing i wonder

what that is i was doing the same thing absolutely so uh you can go look at in the show notes but i guess i'll start with the base which is the desk so i am using an ikea it's called the beant, B-E-K-A-N-T, sit-stand desk. Mine's a corner version because I've always wanted a corner desk. I don't know why. I just like the idea of it just wrapping around a little bit. Now, before anybody writes in to tell me about all of the desks that I should have bought instead of this one, all of the Wirecutter top picks are not available to be shipped to the United Kingdom.

They are all US-based, which is a frustration I have with the Wirecutter top picks are not available to be shipped to the United Kingdom. They are all US-based, which is a frustration I have with the Wirecutter. I think this should be part of their consideration process, that they should at least offer something. They do mention the IKEA desk quite a lot in their article about sit-stand desks, because there are a lot of people that kind of swear by this thing. Now, my thinking was, this was a desk I knew I could buy. If it sucks or breaks, then I'll get a new one later. But since a couple people asked me about the desk, some people have got this and say they love it. Some people have got this and say that they hate it, which is basically how all conversation on the internet tends to go. um but my my what i wanted was

i wanted a desk that was sit stand and motorized that wasn't going to cost me a million pounds because there are a couple of companies companies use companies that would ship one to me on a boat and i'm not going to do that that's that's bonkers i i have so i got one when I was setting up my home office and it was actually Lex Friedman, our buddy, recommended it. And it was relatively inexpensive. And so I set it up and it's fine. But I very much had the same approach that you did, which is if it's not great, I'll get another one. I was like literally this was a desk that I bought because I wanted to set up a home office, and I hadn't was like, Oh, sit, stand adjustable, uh,

desk. Very interesting. Motorized. Very interesting. And of course, the next time I visited, um, them in Southern California,

he had bought the, I believe top of the line, um, wire cutter choice, adjustable sit, stand desk. And I will say this, I saw it and how it works.

And I was like, Oh yeah, mine is cheap like his is really really great and i've i i think that from time to time like one of these days given that this is now my desk 100 of the time one of these days i might get i might splurge for a nicer bigger fancier desk but the fact is this thing has served me for whatever three four years now so um but but yeah i'm glad i'm wire cutter i mean the challenge with getting products um availability in different countries is is is different and and so like the question is could they do like wire cutter uk or what it's it's hard it's hard my feeling just like, have, if you've got an entire content,

if you've got an entire category with like five picks in it and none of them are available outside of the US, just find one. Yeah. And call it the international or the European pick, right?

Yeah. That's a good point. So, because, you know, I've seen pictures of these and I know how much better they are than the one that I have. Like, you know, I've already found something I don't like about it. it like i've got it standing right now and everything wobbles

a little bit not a lot but more than i would like now i wonder if that's just something about standing desks in general like or like coming from my old desk was like this huge heavy glass thing uh you know and and it didn't have legs it had glass that went all the way around the outside so that thing was never wobbling because it didn't have like a central point it had like glass went all the way around the the short edges and into the longer edges so it was like super stable so i don't know if like just because of the way these legs are like because they they come into the middle right they have like feet and then they have like one pole each on each side that goes up to the middle that is making it wobble anyway but hey ho the thing is i'm standing right now

which i've never done um and i and we're an hour in and i kind of like it because when you're talking i can just go over here jason and just like walk around a little bit which is which is kind of a nice thing to be able to do um whilst'm recording. So that's cool. I'm happy with the standing desk thing. Mike, it's all about the length of your headphone cord. Okay, hang on a second then. Because I'm also standing right now. This is as far as I can go. Which is pretty far.

I can't go very far unless I pick up my USB interface. And mine wiggles a little bit too. I have my iMac and my microphone on boom arms, right? So if I stand here holding the desk and I shake it a little bit, everything wiggles. It's just how it happens. But the thing is, it shouldn't be a problem

because the shock mounts and everything that I have built in here, you shouldn't hear anything. Right. But it's just frustrating. Like I'm talking right now and I have my elbow on the desk and my microphone is just like bouncing up and down in front of my face which is i think this

is just going to be the downside of this uh but yeah so that this is like a different thing for me and it's about like i've just i've just realized like how much time i am at my desk and and it's not i don't spend the whole day at this desk and i won't spend the whole day at this desk look i'm getting a sofa for this office and we're having a sofa in the front room where when I'm not recording, I will probably be there a lot of the time. But when I am at my desk, when I am recording, it is hours, right? Like me and you will probably be on the phone for about two and a half hours today. And then I will spend maybe another hour editing immediately after like uh-huh and i don't get up right like especially when we're recording like i'm not leaving the room to go to the bathroom i'll get a glass of water right because

that would be kind of rude to you like i'm i'm here i'm sitting here so like it's just me thinking that maybe what i would do is i'm sitting down, I mute my microphone, I raise the desk, I unmute, you know, and now I'm standing. I started this podcast sitting and now I'm standing, right, during one of the ad breaks, I think. I just muted it and lifted, you know, it's mechanical, but I put it all the way up and now I'm standing. It's great. And that is, right, so then you've got a different, you know, a different feel.

It breaks up the hours that you're there. You don't just sit in the desk. It's great. Get a floor mat if you don't have one, by the way. For me to stand on? Yes. Why? What's good about that?

I see people talking about this. It is good for the ergonomics of the situation. Having something a little squishy to stand on instead of just a hard floor. Even if it's carpet, you should get a little mat. I started with a little yoga mat that I folded over, and now I have, I think, what is the wire cutters choice for a standing mat. But anything that gives you an anti-fatigue mat i think they call them um something that that you can stand on that's a little bit uh squishy yeah i have i i think i have their flat mat choice or at least it was at one point but um it's it's good i i i have used

i've stood here without it and it uh my legs and feet get uh angry at me much faster than with the squishy one all right i've put um the link to that in the show notes, so I'm so sure I'll have to look and nothing will ship here and then. You'll probably get a mat sent. I'm sure. Like I said, at the very least, you can get a yoga mat and fold it over and stand on it, and that would be something. But this would be one of those things that I could get sent to someone

and pick it up. It's true. Because it's small. It could fit in a suitcase. I don't know. Mine wouldn't fit in a suitcase interesting interesting yeah i'm seeing a lot of them they're like these big huge plastic things interesting i'll take a look see i would want something that uh wouldn't interrupt the chair right well i i yeah i have to roll my chair out of the way and drop it down and then pick it up and roll my chair back in that works that works i'm sure i can win. So the biggest question that I got was,

what are the boxes? Right. And I have lots of little boxes on my desk. So you take a look. I'm going to go from this image from the right to the left because it's less exciting on the right. Okay.

Let me stop you then because I think, is it, oh, maybe it's in one. This is a different picture than the one's maybe it's in one this is a different picture than the one that i saw on twitter but it is uh so you have a headphone amp on this desk right yeah did i correctly identify yeah okay i'm going from far right okay i played this game too and i got that one right at least all right let's do it right to left far right is two usb hard

drives that i have connected to my mac all the time via the currently that okay just so you know the cable management is not done yet i literally took all of this out of box 10 minutes before i recorded and put it on the desk um so i have uh just two usb hard drives one is what i just call cold storage i just put stuff on it like there's not really any organization to it i just put things on it um it could be like video files tv series that kind of things i could tear by or something and that it's like it's like storage i never even think of it's just always connected the other drive is my time machine drive so i just have that just sitting there and the time machine drive i think both of them are spinning discs, actually. It was funny because I plugged this in before

plugging in the power to my USB hub and one of the spinning disk drives was very unhappy about that. It was making a clicking sound, which I've not heard before, which could be a problem. Not good. We'll do some disk utility work on that afterwards. I mean, it's not an important drive, right? It's just

what Time Machine goes on to. I can just get a new drive and just rebuild time machine again. It's not, it's not a huge problem. Plus now I can use online backup. So hip hip hooray. I cannot wait to get this thing running on backblaze because I've just not been able to use it because of my internet connection. So I'm very excited to start doing online backup here. Um, right. So if we move in now we have my headphone amp now this is by a company that uh the the company's name is shita now marco takes liberties with this yes because it's s-c-h-i-i-t now i went on their website and they it's very funny actually the the home page of of their website uh it says you know yes this is the name of our company this is how it's spelt but it's actually pronounced shita not like uh the the the

naughty word which i will not say uh so this is a product called the magni 2 and all this is is a headphone amp now the reason that i use a headphone amp is because the USB audio interface that I use, which is the box that with all the lights on it, the black box underneath the iMac, that's called the USB pre 2. Now this is what my microphone plugs into. And then I can adjust some levels and then I can, cause my microphone plugs in by XLR. It's not a USB microphone. And then I take the USB cable and plug that into my Mac so I can record from it. Now the, the sound that comes out of the, uh, the USB pre two, I find to have quite a bit of interference to it. So I use the, the, the Magni two, the Sheetal Magni two as a way to give me clear sound, um, which I've, I found it very frustrating. I was, I was getting a

lot of interference coming straight out of the USB Pre 2. I don't know if you have this problem, but I have real bad problems. I've known some people that do and some people that don't, but just plugging the headphone straight in would either give a low whine or GSM signals would

interfere with it. It was very frustrating. So I use the headphone up for that. So just before we move on, because I i want to stop this is some real-time follow-up from me which is as far as i can tell that pronunciation on their website is a joke and it really is just a pun okay or not even a pun it's just that they thought it would be really funny to say we you know we make a lot of really good i didn't read the second line i didn't read so you were fished in by that and it's a joke but we're still not going to say the word because we don't want to bleep it out no thank you for the real-time follow-up on that i just read the first line on

their website and was like great that's what i'll say on the show no that's their story that they tell and then they go nope actually nope it's not they just thought it would be funny but i still don't want to say it nope so uh marco does not take liberties he does what you're supposed to do but you gotta find it you gotta find a bleep sound and you gotta drop it in every time you say it and it's not worth it i'm just not gonna do it um then yeah i already mentioned the usb pre 2 i do not recommend this because it's so expensive. Right. Yes. Agreed. The headphone app is

like $90. If you want a headphone app, if you want more control, you want better sound, go for it. It's great. It's great for what it does and the thing's built like a tank. The USB Pre 2, I'm a big fan of Casey Neistat and there's a video on Casey Neistat's vlog.

I will not be able to find this because it's like 600 videos where he talks about his gear philosophy. And one of the things he says is like, you start off with terrible equipment and then you pay a little bit more money and your quality is like doubled or tripled by spending a little bit more money. But after that, like after the first few times that you upgrade, it becomes you spend more and more money for just tinier and tinier increases in quality. But it comes to a certain point where like you,

after creating something for so long or doing something for so long, you desire that quality and then you have the means to pay for it. But it's not necessary if you're starting out right so this is this is my philosophy with usb pre 2 this thing is way way more money than you need like frankly xlr microphones completely is way more than most people need

but absolutely i have found a setup now that gives me exactly what i want which is i sound in podcasts as i do to myself in my ears and that is because i have spent a stupid amount of money you'll be able to go and look up how much money all this stuff costs but this is what i do for a living uh i've had this stuff for a year to a year and a half. And I don't think I will replace it for like five years. Like I have no, I'm at the point now where like I've found the perfect equipment. And to be honest, the equipment that I found before I thought was the perfect equipment. And I had that for like four years.

It's like, you know, I don't change this stuff out very frequently. But I found stuff that really, really works for me. So that's my feeling is like, if you're doing this stuff, you want some lower cost interfaces or you want a USB microphone. Now I'll include a link in the show notes to something that Jason put together for low cost USB audio interfaces. Like I have the Tascam 2x2, which is something that you've put in here, which I use for like on the go and for small stuff.

And it does a perfect job. But I just really like the fact that the USB Pre-2, which is the one that I use, it just gives me that little bit more. Like I can just do some weird stuff with that, which in a pinch is great. Like it has all these little switches that you can flip and you can you know like it basically it's like i have something that will let that will grow with me and i won't be constrained by it you know like the two by two like it gets really crazy if you try and talk to anybody over skype right like you couldn't do local recordings a bit perfect like

two microphones but there's no way to get that those two microphones into Skype. With the USB Pre, you can make it work, right? And that's kind of like the feeling that I want and what I'm looking for with this stuff. And so it is more expensive than you need. I don't recommend that anybody goes and buys what I have, but if you've been doing this stuff for years and maybe you're already using an Xlr microphone and you and you make some money doing this audio work in some way then i recommend the usb pre-2 to you because i have had literally zero problems with this thing since i bought it and i couldn't be happier with it but i don't recommend it yeah yeah i have the same problem where people are like what do you use for this and it's like yeah but i don't recommend what i use to the the regular person off the street because it's i i decided a couple years ago that i was doing this enough as my

part of my livelihood that i was going to buy a really nice microphone and a really nice usb interface and thanks marco ruins us all uh funny that guy makes makes other people spend money but uh and i'm very happy with it, but I'd never recommend it. So I don't know if I mentioned this before. I haven't mentioned it now. So the headphone app that I'm using, the headphones that I'm using, which I haven't spoken about, and the microphone, I bought those all whilst in Marco Armit's house.

Because he sat me down at his computer and he was like, talking to that, listen to these. I can't go to that house. I don't have enough money to go to that house. Don't go. I mean, we saved money by not staying in the city and then I spent all that money on audio equipment. So also in the show notes are some lower cost microphone options

that Jason has found. You've done some really good stuff with this, so it's good that we can put that in there. If you're interested in this stuff, maybe you want to start or you want to upgrade a little bit from what you're currently using. Ding. Then Jason's put together some great resources for that. So let me talk about my, the little blue box that sits on the right hand side on the left hand side. That is a rolls mute switch. Now there are not many XLR mute switches that work really well. This one is called the rolls. It's

this little blue thing. I couldn't get it here. So Jason got one for me. And when I saw you in August, you gave it to me. Yeah. And it's fine. I mean, it's just built like a tank and it just has a big button on it. It's a big piece of metal with a button on it.

Yeah, it's perfect. But it does. And it's got two modes. It's got the mode where your mic is muted when you hold it down and then you let go when it comes up. Or it's got a toggle, which is how I use it. Because, you know, I will have on many panel podcasts and things like that, I'll have an extended period of time that I'm not talking. So I can mute it and walk away and then come back. And, yeah, it's, you know, it's not the most exciting piece of hardware in the world but

i love it i'm very happy to have a hardware mute switch my blue yeti microphone that i used to use had a mute switch right on it and i i'm not one of those like oh you just mute it using a keyboard shortcut and it's like now i like i want to mute it everywhere yeah yeah exactly right because that's the thing is you can mute in skype but it's not actually muting your recording somewhere else. So yeah, exactly. And because we do record to like multiple places, I don't want to have to forget about that. And for a while, I had no mute switch.

I just couldn't get one. And it was really, really annoying. And I very rarely use it, but I've used it a couple of times in this episode already because there's so much stuff going on. So this is a great little thing. Now, my microphone, again, this is a microphone I recommend to nobody. It is the Neumann KMS-105.

By far and away the best microphone I've ever used. Like, flat out the best microphone I've ever used. I think Marco uses this one or has used this one, but it's not in his review because it's so expensive for what you get. Now, I was very lucky to find a slightly used one on eBay for like three quarters of the price, which I was very happy about. Somebody in the UK, it's got a few dings on the case, but it works perfectly fine. This microphone gives the cleanest sound that I've ever used, and it does a really good job of not picking up background noise. There is so much noise and echo around me right now, and if you think that this show doesn't sound as good as

normal, you have no idea how it would sound if I was using something else uh this microphone is absolutely fantastic and i love it the one thing i don't like about it is it looks like a a microphone for singing like it's that kind of shape and i don't like that i want my microphones to look like broadcast microphones like i use the high old pr40 for so long and it looks like uh like you're at a radio station yeah well i've got I've got the Shure SM7B, which also looks like that. But this doesn't. And I've often thought there must be cases. Somebody must have made...

Do you know what I want, Jason? I want that big silver microphone with the slats in it. Yeah. You know, like the really old-timey one? I want something like that to put over the top of this thing. But anyway, it doesn't matter, but it's just my one little nitpick, which is not important in any way. No, I feel that same way. I might be able to get better sound or at least as good a sound with one of the other mics that I've got that I use when I'm doing remote recording or adding a microphone here.

a microphone here. I might, the sound might be as good or better with those other microphones, but it would look like a, you know, a microphone and a mic stand from a rock show in a, you know, in a shock mount with a thing dropped down in front of it as a pop filter. And instead I've got, you know, my microphone has all of that built into it. So I just have a microphone here and that's, it looks a lot nicer. If it sounded worse, appreciably worse, I guess, I would change, but I'm still happy with mine. So there is... Oh, actually, the microphone that I'm using,

Marco has added it to his thing now, and he puts it at number two because of the price. Because of the price, yeah. Yeah, so I think when i when i got it it wasn't in there but it was updated uh oh in september 2015 so maybe it was maybe i don't know what i'm talking about uh but you know what i would recommend to people is marco's number one pick which is the shure beta 87a um and also the 58 is it the 58a yeah beta 58a is a lot cheaper than the 87

and I think it sounds great. That's my travel microphone for my live stuff is a bunch of the Beta 58As. But if you're just buying a microphone, it's the Audio-Technica ATR2100 USB because it's cheap and it's good and it does USB and it does XLR. So that's my number one.

I'm going to put a link to Marco's mega review of microphones because you can go and listen to the samples. But I actually recorded analog this week on a Beta 58A because it was part of what I'd already packed up all this equipment. And when I was editing, I was like, do you know what? This sounds close enough. I can hear the differences. I don't know if other people would but this microphone

that I use is this is my tool this is the tool of my trade is this microphone so I want the one that does the best job for me I use a boom arm so that's the thing that comes in from the right hand side and suspends the microphone I use one by a company called K&M

again I use this one it company called K&M. Again, I use this one. It was recommended to me by Marco. I like this one a lot because it has an XLR cable built into it as opposed to trying... The one that I had before, I was wrapping a cable around it and kind of strapping

it on. But in this one, the cable is built into the stand, like into the arm. So out one side i plug my microphone and out the other side is a cable that i can take and plug in um to my interface i i really like that that makes it a lot simpler so that's really good and then my headphones are the beyerdynamic dt 770 um i just really like these headphones. They're super comfortable. I don't like the cable. It's like a straight cable. I wish it had a coiled cable, but it has a straight cable. And they're just really good. They sound really good with music, but I like them because I can

wear them for many, many, many, many hours. And they're very, very comfortable. So yeah, that's kind of my gear. I mean, there's a couple of other little things floating around here, like my Wacom tablet is off to the side because I don't have the iMac set up yet. But that's there. You'll see that I've took a trip to Dongle Town. You can see two dongles on here. And then, of course, the Magic Trackpad.

Again, I'll mention this in case people don't know how I do this. When I edit, and actually when I use my Mac, I'm left-handed, so I use my Wacom pen in my left hand where I'm navigating interface and making cuts and stuff, and then I use my right hand on the trackpad, which I use for gestures and for panning. I maintain that this is the best way to especially edit anything,

and I try and turn people on to this. You don't have to use a tablet, but I think two-handedness is awesome. Having a trackpad for gestures and then some other form of input for more fine-tune editing is great. So yeah, that's kind of my feeling on that. But yeah, that is my equipment. That is my new setup. That's what I'm dealing with here. And I've obviously had the 5K iMac, which is the Mac that I usually use rather than the MacBook Adorable sitting there that I'm looking at right now and wondering if it's doing the job that it's supposed to be doing. I do really like

this computer a lot. I've been using it more recently and, and I kind of hit upon something, Jason, why I'd like this computer. It is the computer closest to the iPad. Uh, yeah, sure. It's so thin. It's so light. and it's like the keyboard feels not like a regular keyboard right like i think it reminds me of the ipad when i use it uh but i was doing some stuff on it today uh like i posted cortex today from it from a cafe whilst the floor wearing was being put in which is what i was dealing with today and uh trying to export from final cut like the youtube video and uh trying to encode the mp3 it took a very very very long time a very long time uh and i realized why i love my iMac i really do love this machine

it's not built for that stuff it will do it but it's not built for it i had that same experience when i've traveled with um especially with that my 11 inch MacBook Air, where once I got the 5K iMac, I got used to the speed of plugins and exporting the file from Logic and doing video encoding. And then I was doing a podcast production on, I think from my mom's house in arizona on my macbook air and again i have edited so many podcasts on that thing but after coming off the 5k iMac i i was like oh my god i it's gonna take five minutes to export this thing i just said you know i i'd forgotten so there it's great you can take it with you it doesn't have a lot of power that's the trade-off um but it's you know they're these are delightfully little laptops they just don't have the power of that the 5k iMac so

I I have those I have those moments when I'm even now on my iMac I have those moments where I'm denoising something and I've got the original 5k iMac so it's um got the slower SSD than the the one that's like twice as fast of SSD, the channel to the SSD. And I have those moments where I'm like, oh man, imagine how much faster this would be because it's entirely just hitting the disc. It's like,

oh, well I'm not going to buy a new iMac just for a faster disc, but there it is. Yeah. I, um, I think it took cluster an hour to hour to make the final cut video. Yeah.

Which is like a 5 or 10 minute thing. I'm not even kidding. I'm not surprised. I know what I'm getting into with this stuff. And frankly, this is the thing. It wouldn't have been done. I couldn't have done it. I couldn't have been at home

while they were doing this so it may have taken an hour but it took an hour to do it's done otherwise it wouldn't have been done and it would have been many more hours late so you know this is the thing and what i was able to just grab this i just grabbed it and just walked down to the cafe didn't even have a bag with me because this thing is so incredibly small and so incredibly light and it's exactly what i'm looking for but it's just uh realizing what you're losing sometimes it's like okay like it should put it all into perspective but i i am still very very happy with my choice of getting this over the macbook pro the macbook pro would have done it quickly but it wouldn't have been as easy to carry around and that's what I'm looking for.

All right. So do you have any more questions about my setup here? No. I mean, I identified the audio, the USB audio interface. I noticed that, the amp for your headphones. I don't know. I don't think I mean, I guess my only question is now at your new place, are you closer to Dongle Town?

Is the trip to Dongle Town longer or shorter than your old place? It's a quicker trip to Dongle Town. Okay, good, good. Yeah, that's good. That was really important for the move. Yeah.

You know, looking at the future that we're going into now, like how far away from Dongle Town. It's important. Apple users need to be close to Dongle Town. All right, good. That's all. I have no further further questions this week's episode is brought to you as well by our friends over at away away are a creator of amazing luggage made from the highest materials whilst offering

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upgrade time reggie's one oh thank you so much. Rajiv wanted to know, why do Americans only get 24 hours to watch an iTunes-rented movie whilst other countries get 48 hours? And the reason is, is local laws about return periods. So I remember when the iTunes stores started doing rentals, originally it was like you got 24 hours to watch it.

But I think in the UK, I think we get 72. It's either 48 or 72 hours. And it's just based upon european union laws um wow about uh the the time that you get to watch a movie and i think we get like 30 days to watch it or something and then once you start it's like 48 or 72 hours to complete it so it's different completely different to yours and it's all just based on consumer law and stuff like that. As a parent, let me tell you, 24-hour rentals are the worst.

It's a little bit better now, but when the kids were little or littler, it was very difficult to get through an entire movie before we were just exhausted and had to pass out. There were so many times when there were movies that I wanted to watch. I mean, it still happens to a certain degree, um, where it's not appropriate when our, you know, younger kids are running around. So you can only watch it when they're in bed or in some cases, like when they're, you know, a very small house, my son's bedroom is next to the living room, shares a wall with the living room. And so it's not just when he goes to bed, but it's like, and is asleep. And then you're like, you're picking a movie to watch. And you're like, I can't watch this two hour and 20 minute long movie because I'll pass out. And you know,

there's no way it's too late for us to start this movie and we would choose short movies or we would not rent a movie because we couldn't do it over two nights it's the worst i just think that it should be like i know it's more complicated but you get 24 hours to you know to watch it from the start so let's say you start a movie you get halfway through you get 24 hours in which you can go back to the start and watch it through. But other than that, you could pick up from any point for as long as you want. You should be able to watch the movie the whole way through once, whether you pause it or not.

Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, you could argue that that allows you to keep the movie forever because you keep backing it up and things like that. During your rental period, you should be able to back it up to the beginning and start it again or watch it as many. But the fact is it comes from a pay-per-view system. It's using pay-per-view contracts a lot of the time where they had very specific like 24-hour purchase or 24-hour rental, watch it as much as you like, and then it disappears and all that.

But I agree with you. I'm not sure what is served by having it be a 24-hour window and not a 72-hour window. I doubt there are very many people who don't get to the end of a movie and rent it a second time the next day, right? I don't think that happens. But it would be, yeah, it's totally consumer hostile. I know that Amazon has some. Joe Steele, our buddy in the chat room, mentions that some, but not all of their titles,

do have a longer window. And I have rented movies on Amazon for that reason, that I'll see two-day rentals on there. And Apple just hasn't gone down that route, and it's annoying. Andrew asked, now that Spark has a desktop client, the email client, are you ever going to be changing your email workflow setup? So I use AirMail on all of my devices, and I really love the power that it has, and it seems to be getting more and more features all the time. And my email client is the type of app where I want more and more features

all the time because I like for it to get better. AirMail has bugs. It can be buggy. It can be weird. But it's being actively developed, and they're working on all of those things. And the power that it provides me and the flexibility that it provides me, I'm willing to take for the bugs that it has. I'm using Gmail, and I use Mailplane on the Mac,

and I'm currently using actually Mail.app, but I've been looking at the Gmail app too on iOS. I'm keeping an open mind. I really like using Mailplane, using the Gmail web interface, essentially wrapped around a Mac app. It works really well for me and how I deal with mail. I've really kind of become a convert to that after many years of using Apple Mail and Eudora before that. But I'm going to keep an open mind because i think either airmail or spark um it it it goes back mike to my organizational system ding your what uh my uh calendar you have one

to-do list my calendar it goes back to my calendar and to-do list so uh it could be part of a larger organizational shift for me in 2017 or not. So I'm going to keep an open mind. I do think, and Andrew makes this point in his question, that I can't rely on anything that doesn't work on the Mac and iOS. That was one of the reasons I went with AirMail. I'd spoken about how much I liked Spark in the past, but I couldn't use use them completely i couldn't go all in on it because it didn't have a mac app and all of these applications they kind of they do things to your email right like you know they

make them look a certain way they might categorize they have special special for special mailboxes they make in your account in order to move things in and then they move them out again and they notify you and things like that you need to be present in that interface in order to get that stuff. Now, even though I use airmail, I don't use things like snoozing features anymore because I was bitten so badly when mailbox died. So I don't use snoozing and I will never use it again because I'm not going to let myself get into a situation where an app goes away and then all this stuff gets broken. However, I will not be switching to Spark because I don't know what their business model is, and I don't like that for something like my email application.

AirMail, you pay up front. Spark is free, and they said they were going to have in-app purchases for these different categorization features since it launched, and they've not done any of it. So I question. Now, I know the company, like they have a read-all. They make a bunch of applications that they sell. So, you know, they're a company that makes money.

But Spark can't be a profit center for them right now. And until I see something like that, I won't even be considering a move because my email application, again, this is coming from somebody who used Mailbox. Mailbox got bought by Dropbox. Dropbox tried to use it, couldn't make money out of it, killed it. My email is too important to me. And I want an application that I can rely on. And right now, I believe that application is AirMail. As cool as Spark is, as cool as it looks, I need to know that it's going to be around. And right now, I can't see how they're going to guarantee that other than just saying it, and that's not enough.

Yeah, I hear that um i'm not too worried about the snoozing features just because they tend to work by moving things into special mailboxes and when i stopped using um whatever it was was a mailbox that or i don't i don't i just moved them out but i have 500 messages in my inbox so that would work for me i know jason i know no organizational system your system i can't someone needs to just fly like david sparks in to just sit with you for like four days i might get you that for christmas i might get you a spark so you can calm down and just deal with you.

See how much it costs to hire him for a couple of days. Nathan wants to know why do you think that there are not more games that use split view on the iPad? I only know of one and that's Threes. You know what? I thought about it. That's a good point. Like, you know, Threes you can use in split view in a little side pane. So you can maybe

have like a long YouTube video up or something and play threes at the same time i've done this uh you know like i might be like watching a long video or listening to a podcast and i have like i have threes open on the side panel i think there are just not a lot of games that specifically work i mean threes works because threes on the ipad especially on one of the pro ipads it's too big so like 3s works on the side panel because really it is an iPhone game. Any other size screen, it kind of is a bit too much. So it works really well.

But I do wonder why I haven't seen more games that like specifically take advantage of that because I think that there is something there. Yeah, I think most game developers don't think, I think most game developers would like to believe that their game is the center of attention and that why would anybody be doing something else while they're playing my game good point and some games that's true maybe some games that's not true i mean if i was playing

words with friends with somebody who was online at the same time and we were moving back and forth right like i might want to keep that window open and do something else rather than switch away and then get the wait for the notification um but you know i i think i think you could argue that split view is really good for moving between you know i'm doing something over here and i'm doing something over there and they're kind of interrelated and a game is usually a hundred percent of your focus so So that's why, I think. Good point. Ken asked, on Twitch, Jason recommended using Signal.

Do you think iMessage is just as secure? What is Signal? I don't even know what this is. Signal is a secure messaging platform. It's all encrypted end-to-end. And that was, we were talking about protecting yourself

from government spying, basically. And using Signal was something that is sort of generally thought of as a best practice, that it's a end-to-end encrypted system that seems trustworthy and doesn't seem to have been broken, and you could use it. and doesn't seem to have been broken and you could use it. I think iMessage is secure based on what we know of it, other than the fact that there is, you know, there's some metadata that gets sent to Apple, but, and so it just depends, right?

Like Apple is a big target. I think Apple has engineered iMessage very specifically to be end-to-end encrypted. I would say the problem is that iMessage only works if you've got iOS devices. So the advantage of using something like Signal is that it also works on Android. I am not a security expert. Because your text messages won't be encrypted in the same way that your iMessages would be. Sure, sure.

Exactly right. Yeah, if you're sending the green bubbles to somebody on Android, right, that's not going to do it. But Signal is cross platform. I'm not a security expert. I really am not at all, even remotely. But when I listen to security experts, this is one of the things they say is use Signal because it's pretty secure. iOS is actually pretty secure compared to Android. I think they like Chromebooks at this point, that they're pretty secure. There are very specific things that are harder to subvert. But that's all I can say about it. Bill asks, are there any iOS browsers that can spoof a website and make it think that you're using Internet Explorer. I wonder why Bill wants to do this.

I assume he's testing something. Check out iCab. iCab has browser spoofing. iCab is incredible in every sense of the word application for iOS. It is a third-party browser that does just crazy things. You can do multiple, up to three pane split view in iCab. It gets...

It's one of these applications that's been around forever. It was one of those applications that has had a history of being banned from the store and all that stuff. And they're making a big fuss when it was like, there should be third-party browsers and all that stuff and iCab has a long history of active development

it is a good application I know Federico uses it for some stuff not to browse but like for like for some interesting things I think even Fraser spoke about it on an episode of Canvas on one of their earlier episodes so iCab would be if any if any app's going to do it icab's going to be the one yeah mike asked what are the pros and cons of one password versus last pass i have one password on my phone and ipad but have yet to migrate from last pass is it worth it yeah and the short answer here i i picked this question because uh Wirecutter just updated their best password managers article. And we'll put a link in the show notes. They recommend LastPass largely because it's cheaper.

And it's more friendly cross-platform. One password doesn't work on Chromebooks. And it's got features that are missing on Windows, at least at the moment. And it's more expensive. So these are reasons why they picked it. My understanding is that LastPass, I mean, LastPass had a security problem at one point. And I think they sync. Doesn't LastPass do their own cloud service?

I have no idea. I don't know. I mean, I sync my one password database with Dropbox. So in order to get my passwords, you would need to break into my Dropbox and then break into the encryption of the file inside of my Dropbox. Agile bits do their own nails whether too don't they yeah you can also you can also do that depending on on the system that you've got so you know that uh that you just gotta you gotta shop i i think in in the end

price and compatibility across platforms are the are the things to look at first um i feel better about using my own dropbox like through a lot through one password i i just makes me feel better like there's multiple layers here multiple companies you know an element of maybe physical access required like i i like that i like that those extra layers that it gives me don't tell me if it's wrong i like what i do it makes me happy please don't tell me that i'm being a bonehead i don't want to know and um what wirecutter says about one password very specifically is it's got a more polished and convenient user interface it's a little faster at most tasks it's got a local storage option if you don't trust the cloud it gives you more options than last class last password working with attached files and it can do uh the one-time token stuff for two-step

verification which you otherwise would have to do in a separate app so but it is more expensive and uh less compatible across uh if you if you care about things like chromebooks or um some of their features on windows so we've also discovered today that one password is easier to say on a podcast yeah because otherwise we're talking about last plus. La, pla, pla. Plus last.

It's a long-lasting band-aid solution. Yeah. This week's episode is, we're going to do Mike at the Movies after this,

by the way. Oh, yes. We're going to get to Home Alone, which I'm so excited about. But this episode is brought to you

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I realized the moment that I started opening it that it was going to be wrapped inside yeah what are you going to do Home Alone one of my very favorite Christmas movies you just did a great episode of Top 4 where both Marco and Tiff

you did it with you and Lauren, and you did Christmas movies. And both Marco and Tiff put Home Alone on their top four list. Yes. So I'm very interested to find out what you feel about this movie. Before you tell me,

in true Mike at the Movie style, what did you know about this movie before you watched it? You knew the screaming part because you did that last week don't do it again please yeah everyone will be happy to know i if you listened to the last episode and heard jason scream i ducked the audio down he was about two times louder than that at the time so please don't do that again so here's what i know about it. I know that in 1990, when I was 19 years old, I was aware that this was a huge hit. You could not It ran through Christmas and into January with big word of mouth and big box office, even though it was a holiday release and released in the middle of November because it was so

successful. And so everybody was talking about it. I felt like by the time I got through college, I was probably the only person on earth who had not seen Home Alone. And I just didn't see it. I didn't exert any effort to go see it. And since then, I don't think I've really avoided it as much as, well, maybe I haven't avoided it. Like it wasn't on TV. And I was like, oh, Home Alone.

I can't watch that i gotta keep the streak intact but it was one of those things where i started to think i'm the only person who hasn't seen home alone i do this i'm like this for game of thrones like i'm never gonna watch game of thrones because i'm happy i don't watch it now like it's like a badge of honor that i hold for myself here's a unique thing well and so this is i want you to know what i did for this show is that it's been 26 years since this movie came out and you made me break a 26 year long streak of being able to say to people, you know, I've never seen Home Alone and have them be like, what? That's, that's impossible. In fact, top four was sort of like my going away party for that, that little part of my life because I, uh, when we recorded that, I hadn't seen Home Alone, but a couple days later, I saw it. So, oh, I should say, what do I know about it? I know that it's a movie where Macaulay Culkin is at home

and burglars are trying to break in, and he does terrible things to them in order to not be taken or attacked or whatever to defend his home from the burglars. And I knew that it was a john hughes production and that joe pesci and and daniel stern were in it that is all i knew about home alone okay you knew the you knew most of it right it's really like well that's what home alone is well but okay so so here's the thing though the thing that I think of as Home Alone, and maybe this is true. So it was funny watching this with Lauren because for her, this is an old, an old movie. She's seen unknown numbers of times dating back to 1990 when she probably saw it in the theater when it came out, like everybody else in humanity.

humanity. So I'm asking questions and making comments about they could have done it this way as if it's a brand new thing. And she's like, but you're talking about ancient history. It's a little bit like fact checking Gone with the Wind or something where it's like, yeah, it's kind of too late now for you to be asking these questions. So I was doing some of that. But the thing that really surprised me is what we think of as Home alone doesn't happen in the movie until an hour and 15 minutes in. Yeah, that's when the assault on the house begins. Everything before that is, you know, it's set up and there are other little vignettes. And that's the stuff I didn't I didn't realize. I mean, I kind of figured that it would start with like him being left home alone and being like good luck kevin and they leave

and he's home alone and he has adventures and uh is attacked by these guys and fends them off and all of that but uh but no that's not how it's structured at all there is on on that line though that there is um the thing is having seen this movie a bunch of times there's something that i noticed this time is how little setup there actually is to the point where he gets left like that is very quick that point it's well okay so it's quick but there's a lot that happens between that point and the home invasion part and yes arguably that i mean if you if you take away a lot of the cultural significance all of of that is interesting and important stuff. It's like how this little kid tries to live on his own, right?

Like him going to the store and all that. And in theory, like if you weigh them all up, they're all like interesting parts on their own. But there is now so much cultural significance around the home invasion section of the movie that it is strange. But like if you take that away, because I was trying to watch it in a different way than usual, like I was trying to pay attention to things,

the point at which the movie starts to Macaulay Culkin is on his own is very fast. And there isn't much backstory in this movie either, which was a surprise, really, like trying to outline why this would happen. You very quickly realize that it's set up that the whole family hates Kevin. Yeah.

Yeah. And there's no reason why for that. And I, and I actually think that the movie is better for that because it keeps it moving quicker than trying to go into like Kevin McCallister was a boy who was always in trouble at school. You know, they don't really go into any of that.

It's just like none of his brothers and sisters like him probably because he's the youngest and the parents seem to be a bit of a trouble and he doesn't like them too right because he exactly he wishes that his family would just go away and leave him alone yeah um i i think it's funny i agree with you it happens as it happens as quickly as possible but i noticed the great extent they go to to make it like the movie puts in a lot of work to engineer a scenario where a kid would be left at home alone for multiple days. A little kid would be left at home alone for multiple days. Like they try really hard and it feels I got to be honest. It feels super artificial.

Like it's very clear that the movie needs to get to its premise and so you all have to watch for 15 minutes as the movie does its work to get to the premise and i you know i don't know what a better solution is other than like literally he wakes up and nobody's at home and we find out at the end that oh we didn't realize you weren't with us and then we were trapped in france and then i i made my way back like you could just do that i guess but people i think they were worried in 1990 that people are going to be wondering like how could this happen and so and and how awful are these parents so they have to make it that the parents are more frazzled they wake up late there are two

vans this is at a time pre-9-11 when you could go to the airport and just kind of like run through the airport yeah which at the time was not you know at the time secure there was still airport security so you know and as a parent you're like counting your kids but this is a large group the idea is that everybody always expects that somebody else knows where kevin is and they're and they're so busy running through security that they're not stopping to count everybody today to you know post 9-11 security that this would be you know very difficult to pull off but at the time i think you can just kind of go but there's a lot of that there's an awful lot of that that is there and i guess why i i get why they do it but i did have that move that moment of like come on movie i get it you want him to be alone let's let's just get there but it needed to do all that work with the you know that kid goes in the

van to look around and then comes back out but they've done the count you know but it's it's it's over fast it happens pretty fast but i i was uh i i just noted that they they put in a lot of effort to get to the premise because that you know really the point effort to get to the premise because really the point was to get to the premise. So a few things that I noticed. The McAllisters are very rich, it would seem. Their house is massive. And I don't know why. It's not explained what either of the parents do.

It's a movie house. It's very nice. It is the suburbs in Chicago. I mean, it is a very nice house. That's true. There are five children. I count this. There are five children in the McAllister immediate family.

There are many more children in this movie, but there are five. Kevin has two brothers and two sisters. None of the kids look alike at all. And the funny thing is, Macaulay Culkin's younger brother is in this movie, but he's a cousin

yeah which is hilarious that like they actually used his younger brother but not as immediate family uh but i guess because he's younger right they kevin needed to be the youngest kid in this i wonder if uh i wonder how it ended up working out right like was it was it it was it macaulay or was it i can't remember the other guy's name like i wonder whether they were thinking who they would go without the two of them um i think that whilst macaulay culkin is young in this movie i think he does a really good job of carrying this on his own which is not an easy thing to do like i don't know how old he is in this movie but he's young and uh he does a really really good job and he i think he does a convincing

job in a lot of places like you believe that he is kevin mccallister i think it's kind of what ruined his career as well isn't it like i think he is kevin mccallister he's nine i think he was nine he did an amazing job as a nine-year-old for this movie he he he carries the movie and he does it and he does it quite well um yeah he does a good job i noticed that that you know he does a he does it quite well. Yeah, he does a good job. I noticed that, that he does a very good job. But it's without him, I don't know if this movie would be the success that it is because you need somebody who's capable

and not a complete blank. And he is kind of annoying at times, but he is a presence. And that's good because you need somebody. You need a strong personality. And he's supposed to be kind of annoying. That's why his parents and family are annoyed by him. Right. And that's why they leave him behind.

Yeah. Um, I, I had, it's funny that you talk about, um, spelling some things out and not spelling other things out. Joe Pesci is there in a police uniform at the very beginning and he's not

explained. And I said to Lauren, why house? I said to lauren why house i said to lauren why oh i think he just walked in when the other family was coming in or something and i said why is he there and she says just wait i'm like but why is he did i miss why he's there she said no just wait i'm like all right and then he does the you know we just had some break-ins in the neighborhood we're checking making sure everybody's around if you can keep an eye on your you know your neighbors and all that and and it turns out that, yeah, he's casing the joint.

But that was a funny thing where he's not introduced and he's just sort of like part of the furniture. And then we see, and he gets his little ding, gold tooth that is there. So we can see him. And yeah, his uncle, Kevin's uncle is mean. And just look what you did you little jerk is a line and and i i just wrote down the the uh does he say family suck something like that i

think kevin says family suck so you'd be you know you'd be sad if you woke up and didn't have a family um and then okay so let me ask you a question because i always assume that this movie is a you know it is a an unrealistic story which is fine so it's a fantasy on that level but there's this one scene where he goes to bed and there and there's this you know you'd be sad if you woke up and didn't have a family where like the the power goes out in the night and i i started wondering to myself is this movie kind of trying to imply that something sort of magical happens here that kevin is i don't think so no a lot of a lot of those movies around this time would do this but i actually think what this movie's doing is magic from a child's perspective because he believes he wished his

family right right like well that's true and he doesn't think they've gone to the airport he thinks he did this and i think they can see if this movie is what movies of the 80s and 90s make children believe they can do right yeah but they also why would he not why would he not go to the police why would he not ask somebody for help the answer is because he's magic because because he's anthony from the twilight zone and he sent his family to the cornfield and so he isn't gonna talk to that that's true there's something about the shot of the storm blowing in and the power going out that the way it's shot the maybe the way the music is that I thought made it seem a little more magical than coincidental that I,

that, that led me, I was like, that's weird. But, and then it's never brought up again, but it was, it,

it, you're right. It's meant to be that he does this. So they're late to the airport because they can't, they can't. Uh, and that's where we get the whole rush to O'Hare airport and the vans and all of that.

And, um, you know, in, I, you know in i i you know again i don't really think that a scenario like this would be possible but they try very hard to get you through it so that you don't hate the parents and you end up with kevin home home alone and there's another element of this which wasn't discovered really and by popular culture until

many years later right so like there is a lot of this it's like very ham fist and trying to set it up right like the ways in which this would happen i agree with that like the tree falling and making the power go out sets up a lot of like why no one can call kevin on the phone yes right oh yeah it's very you can see the plot machinations going on on the screen right which is this is all about setting up his isolation there's one more element of this so you know when he knocks the milk over onto the pizza and it goes onto the onto the tickets right screen right which is this is all about setting up his isolation there's one more element of this so you know when he knocks the milk over onto the pizza and it goes onto the onto the tickets right this was discovered like in popular culture many years later with the blue area production of this movie so the the milk is knocked over it goes onto the train ticket like the plane tickets the dad

tries to clean it all up and he throws a bunch of tissue into the trash and they actually show a shot of him throwing tissue into the trash in the trash is one plane ticket ah so which is why they didn't have an extra plane ticket for kevin exactly and it's like never considered like it was in the movie never made a thing of but nobody really noticed it because it was that you would have had to have seen it and it's really hard to see but like i remember this just like a few years ago it's like became a thing of popular culture so this is one of the ways they tried to set up like and and the thing is i i can agree with you to a point they go to a really like they go to a really far extreme but the thing is what i actually quite like about this movie is that it is thought through in that way oh yeah you know like it's like these are the ways

oh it's very engineered and i i can feel that and you know i don't i don't love it but i appreciate why they had to do it which is they had to engineer it so that um how would this perfect situation happen uh why don't kids get left home alone all the time it's like well all these things had to happen for it to happen this one time and that's what we have here but you don't hate the parents because they were just frazzled and they didn't realize and they thought the other one had it. And I've seen that. As I think mentioned on the top four episode, Lauren's parents left her sister at a gas station at one point and had to turn around and go back. So it happens.

I do really, going back a step, I really like the idea that it is meant to play like Kevin believes he did this because it changes the tone of the movie. If Kevin believes that they just went without him, it makes an angry child, not a happy child. He thinks he got what he want rather than, oh, they forgot about me. There's one moment I really like in this movie as well,

which it plays to the realism part that I like when he's looking through Buzzy's room and he's like destroying everything and he picks up a copy of Playboy and he opens the covers and he goes, no clothes on anyone, sickening, and throws it behind his head. That's what nine-year-old boys think, right?

I think it would have been really easy to have him be like, waka, waka, like, you know, that just seems like the thing you do for laughs right the nine-year-old boy plays playboy for the same time but they actually go realistic which is like no nine-year-old boy wants wants to look in playboy like it's just not a thing and i just think it's it's really funny yeah no i i agree i agree um so he like watches he made his family disappear he's watching miracle on 34th street and and uh oh and he. Oh, and he watches a gangster movie. The movie is in a movie.

It gives that a great effect. Keep the change, you filthy animal. Right, that one. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Exactly right. That's the line. And, you know, then it's revealed that Joe Pesci is actually a burglar.

And they then try and burgle the house. And it fails because Kevin kind of becomes wise to it. He's scared but he turns the lights on and he kind of blocks them out. As well, like during this point, something we

skipped over is the McAllister family have realized when on the plane that Kevin's not there. They've realized that and then they arrive in Paris. They go into Paris for

the holiday season and then the whole thing starts with them trying to gain contact with the police who they get through the most apathetic police department in the world who sends an officer who knocks on the door nobody answers and he's just like oh well it's useless and then leaves and then the police are exited from the movie yeah that's the end until the until the very end right uh yeah they they that's it then we checked the, and although I like the way that's constructed, where then the mom,

Catherine O'Hara, great from SCTV, right? Says, oh, I called the, I called the police. They're going to check on Kevin.

And I'm like, great job done. It's like, no, no, not job done. No. So then she waits in the airport and then it's like many ways in which she

tries to get home. And we'll, we'll pause that for a bit and we'll come back to that later when she actually does find her route. But then it goes into like Kevin trying to live his life. And it just produces one of my favorite lines from the whole movie when he's in the store. And he says, is this toothbrush approved by the American Dental Association? He asks the lady. It's hilarious.

It's hilarious. Because she has no idea. She's like, I don't know. But it's like he's seen it on TV, right? Like he's seen it on an ad and and i love that line so much it's um i really enjoy the scene where he's checking out and the checkout lady says because that one he just leaves and they chase him and he runs away and yeah and because he gets scared of the guy with the shovel yeah yeah right the guy with the shovel which we'll come guy with the shovel, which we'll come back to. But I like the later scene where he goes shopping

and he's actually buying the stuff that he needs at the supermarket. And the lady says, is your mom here? And he says, well, of course she is. Who would let a kid home at Christmas? Yeah, who would do that? And they're like, well, where is she? Oh, she's out she's out in the car whatever he says um and i i just i really love that he's got his sort of wacky

confidence there of like well of course i'm not here alone yeah i just i thought that scene was really funny that was really good and then here's a pizza at one point too yeah using the guy yeah that was that was funny uh he then at this. Yeah. Using the guy. Yeah. That was, that was funny. Uh, he then at this, this is kind of the point where the movie starts to turn and Kevin wants his family back now. Like he's sad.

He wants them to come back. Uh, and then also at this point, this is when, um, Mrs. McAllister, she bumps into John Candy,

who is a staple of my childhood. So, so yeah, we got it. We got a real SCTV reunion here. Catherine O'Hara and John Candy together. They were both on SCTV, Sketch Comedy Show, Canadian Sketch Comedy Show.

I'm pleased you elaborated on that because I have no idea what you're talking about. SCTV is a classic sketch comedy show, kind of like Saturday Night Live, but different with a different cast. And it was made in Canada. And it's a bunch of great performers who you would know uh from that do you know about bob and doug mckenzie that whole

bit strange brew have you know anything about no idea what you're talking about no okay well anyway it all came out of sctv uh rick moranis actually was an also an sctv guy um so this is two sctv cast members here, which is great. And John Candy. It's great to see John Candy. Also in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, another John Hughes movie. And it's hilarious because she's at the airport in New Jersey somewhere trying to get back to Chicago. And John Candy has a bunch of guys wearing yellow outfits that are a polka band and they're driving to wisconsin so they can stop off on the way in chicago which you know it

is on the way and uh so he offers her a ride and they take a ride in the polka truck the polka king in the midwest polka polka polka it's so weird and funny. And their initial scene at the airport is funny where, you know, he's trying to have kind of an inappropriate, not in a bad way, but in a like, perhaps the, you know, small talk is not appropriate with a lady who's terrified that she's left her son home alone. And finally, but he's all very sunny about it. And then he's like, oh, oh, yeah, right. Anyway, we got a truck and we're going to chicago so we can take you and uh and then there's a scene where they're playing polka music in the back of a a delivery truck it's hilarious and weird and delightful um then we find out that the scary shovel guy isn't scary and he's just sad right there's like a scene where like kevin talks to him and this is like the redeeming moment

and Kevin's like, I have to protect the house because he knows that the burglars are coming and this is when he starts to run home, right? I love that scene where he goes into the church and he meets the salt man, right? The shovel man. And he tells a sad story about how that's his granddaughter singing,

but he doesn't get to see her because he and his son had a falling out and he's afraid and kevin says you know grown-ups shouldn't be afraid of anything and he's like yeah well which also is good because it makes kevin realize that the burglars can be afraid of things too right that carries onward but i really love the moment where um where he asks if kevin if he's been good and kevin's like oh yeah yeah i've been very good and he's like well no like no i haven't been and that made me laugh a lot where he was like no not really actually i'm got a moment of introspection here no actually i am not i have not been good that was that was great and then so that's a that's a really nice scene that

sets up uh something with the shovel man later but um at that point we are in we have reached an hour and 15 minutes it is time for the construction of traps for uh for daniel stern and joe pesci to be to fall into now jason i've done something special okay i've tell you that I've done this. I cataloged every injury that is undertaken by the home invaders. And I've listed them out for you. Would you like to hear them? Yes, let me know.

This is all of the injuries sustained by the character Harry played by Joe Pesci. He gets a BB gun. This is in chronological order. BB gun to the nether regions. He slips on ice down to concrete. He slips downstairs, which are iced, and falls down the stairs. He receives a severe burn on his head from his hand, sorry,

from a door handle, which leaves the imprint of the M into his hand, the McAllister M. He then receives a flame furrowed to the head. He then is covered in glue and feathers. He slips on toy cars to a wooden floor. He receives a paint can to the face. He trips on tripwire and falls down to the floor. He receives a crowbar to the ribs in an attempt to kill a spider.

He then falls from a zip wire down to the ground below, a wire hitting a brick wall, and then receives a shovel to the head. Now, these are the injuries sustained by Marv, who is played by Daniel Stern receives a shovel to the head. Now these are the injuries sustained by Marv who is played by Daniel Stern. BB gun to the forehead. He slips down concrete stairs that are covered in ice. He then slips on ice down to the floor below. He receives a crowbar which

falls on his head. He receives a clothes iron falling on his head. He steps on a nail whilst barefoot. He falls downstairs on a concrete floor. He steps on broken glass baub nail whilst barefoot. He falls downstairs on a concrete floor. He steps on broken glass baubles whilst barefoot. He slips on toy cars to a wooden floor, receives a paint can to the face, a tarantula on the face, crowbars to the ribs because of an attempt to kill a spider.

It happens to both of them. Falling from zip wire to ground below via hitting a brick wall, and then shovel to the head indestructible see the real the real hidden element of this movie is what we've not found out about is these are actually superhero burglars uh they have some super villain powers super villains super villains well okay so this is a light fun movie up to this point. At this point, it becomes a cartoon. Yeah. And I'm fine with that. It's a pretty great cartoon.

Yeah. It's a pretty great live action cartoon. The level at which they take this, it could have been done so badly. Like, I don't know what makes this one good, right? But it is enjoyable. But you could do all of this and it not work because it's so fantastical like no human being would get through maybe the first two or three steps of that yeah right like people you just would stop i i don't think daniel stern would be able to continue after he gets the nail through

his foot right well i mean the clothesline to the head maybe it will have killed him oh the iron yeah i do i do like how the the um again in true cartoon fashion the shape of the iron is on his forehead for the rest of the movie that's great you know like but it's it's so brilliant and the thing if you should now watch home alone 2 oh i'm sure why not i'm not gonna wait 26 years for that one. I prefer Home Alone 2, personally, because it takes this to the next level. Home Alone 2 is the Force Awakens to the original Star Wars. It retells the exact same story. But the thing is, it does it with all the same beats, and it takes it up a notch.

I really like it. It does a really, really great job of continuing the next movie, because it goes up a notch but also hits all the things you're familiar with and enjoy so they kind of perfected the movie because they they they hit upon though they worked out what hit with people which was the home invasion section so it was much longer and more elaborate and more fun and joe still agrees with me so oh so so uh two notes i wanted to say here first off we we missed the time earlier where he uh creates a ah the mannequins yeah he's got he's got the mannequins that he's moving with ropes he's got michael jordan cut out on a toy train that one made me laugh out loud right hey it's michael jordan and he's just going by what how

is he moving oh he's on he's taped to a train that's great that's really good so he we see him doing that and then later right before the the burglars come um i don't know if you ever watched uh the a-team when you were a kid but that is a scene out of the a-team which is in every episode of the a-team there's like a musical montage and you see them building all the things that they're gonna they're gonna use in order to defeat the bad guy. And we get that montage here where it's, you know, Kevin is going to, we see him build all the things.

He puts the tar down, he puts the nail in, you know, we're, we need the setup so that then we can see all those traps being sprung and understand what we're seeing. And I enjoyed that little montage too. And the music is so good in this movie. The John Williams.

John Williams. So good. It's so, so good. Cause it's like, he sets is, I think it's called, I learned this from dan moran a leitmotif leitmotif leitmotif yeah sure whatever the original theme and then it is just french or something it's just adapted and adapted and adapted throughout the whole movie and i absolutely love the score of this movie so then uh kevin has fended off the home and their mom comes back and

it's a nice touching moment and then the whole family arrives almost immediately which is hilarious because they just got the flight right they just waited and got the flight home uh but it's how many times have you seen that too how many times have you seen it where somebody somebody gets on an earlier flight but then they get way late and it takes them all this time to get back, and the other people who waited for the other flight are right behind them or ahead of them. There is a problem that I have with this end of the movie in which the McAllister parents do not seem excited enough

or happy enough. There's an element where, a moment where they both just go into the kitchen and just leave Kevin there in the hallway on his own. And I was like, I feel like there needs to be more fanfare about this. It's very, that last moment is very strange. It strikes a weird beat with me.

They don't know what he did. He also, Kevin has proven to be a very good cleaner of things. Yes, yes. And replacer, I assume. Because so many things got damaged and or broken and or lost. He does a good job of cleaning up overnight. Right. But again, the movie doesn't want to have the parents yell at him for ruining the house,

right? While, you know, we left you here for three days and all these things are broken, right? They don't want to have that be the tone that the movie ends on. So instead, he sort of magically cleans things up. The only thing he doesn't clean is Buzz's room. His brother, Buzz. That's a funny joke. And his brother can be angry at him, but the parents should not be.

I mean, I can see the reasoning behind that. I'm okay because they don't know what he's gone through. I'm okay with them being, you know, they just flew to Paris and back and had their vacation ruined because of this mistake that they made. So, you know, I'm okay with it being tempered. I actually was thinking like, I wasn't thinking that the family was going to come back. I was thinking if I was on that plane with all my children and my, you know,

and my brother-in-law's children or whatever, and we were going to Paris for Christmas week and little Kevin was left home alone, what would I do? And I think the answer would be that I would volunteer to fly home, but I don't think I would have the whole family turn around.

I get, again, why they want the closure of everybody back in the house at the end of the movie, but that seemed, like, let everybody else, like, one of the parents who forgot their son, you get to go home

and be with the son, but don't bring the whole family back. Don't waste your vacation. Let everybody else have a good time. That is a good point. It is not necessary that everybody had to come home. Catherine O'Hara coming home makes sense, right? And it actually made sense that she did that.

But again, logically, okay. But I understand why a lot of my things in this are like i can see why the movie does these things because it the movie wants to tell the story it wants to tell right so it's like yeah they probably should have stayed but you know what i want everybody in the house in the end like i have them in the beginning you know yeah we could just start it with uh you know with him being left behind but we want you to feel sympathetic about it and you want to you want him everything that happens in this movie you can see why it's constructed that way but it's fine because you know they're telling the story they want to tell and uh and so they wanted to hit these particular beats and it's i

completely forgive it overall thoughts of the movie i actually realized i asked you this question and then we skipped over it yeah no i thought it was fun i thought it was a fun movie um yeah i did like it i i enjoy the i enjoy uh i i enjoy the cartoon part it it moves really fast and there's a lot of fun that the assault and him repelling them that i thought was the entire movie um i think that i think that part is really great i like the uh like i said i like the bit with the the the recurring bit with the guy the salt man it actually reminds me a little bit of in have you seen groundhog day have we talked about yeah yeah yeah i've seen it it reminds me of the old the old man in groundhog day that he keeps coming back and he can't save him it's a little bit like that where it's sort

of this this um a little more touching i mean he's initially, but he turns out to have this sort of sad story. In the end, we see that he's taken Kevin's advice and reunited with his son and his son's family. And it sort of like runs through the movie. Um, and I really liked the scene where they're talking in the church. I think that's got some nice touching moments and also some funny moments.

Um, so that part is, that part is fun. Um, the John Candy thing is hilarious and great. If I had a complaint about it, I would say it's that in that first hour and 15, I'd probably like a less premise setup at the beginning.

Even though it moves fast, it's like, yeah, we get it. He's home alone. Get it. And I don't know. That middle part is kind of where he's home alone is a little bit mushy. I kind of wanted more wacky stuff like more montages of of uh a nine-year-old doing all the things that he's never allowed to do and um I I don't know I I felt like if we're gonna have if this is the movie that you're making and not just

wall-to-wall assault by the burglars i expected it to be maybe like a little bit more of that time with him like kid you're home alone your parents are gone you can do anything and he does some of it but you know he also makes himself macaroni and cheese so i don't know um home alone 2 is the movie for you yeah maybe so because also at that point right like the way that they can kind of make it work more is for kevin it's it happened again so this time he knows there's no magic involved so he goes wild uh yeah fair enough maybe he feels some responsibility the first time because he's made his parents disappear we don't make too fine a point on it but he does think that he has used mental powers to make his entire family vanish from the face of the earth so yeah fair fair point yeah

good good movie so yeah i recommend home alone 2 for you it's also a christmas movie so yeah sure still in the season till the season yeah absolutely i'll check it out that might be that might be fun and this was on hbo go i didn't even have to rent it it was just right there for this for the season perfect all right i think that wraps it up well thank you mike you're one for one in recommending movies for me to watch that i like and uh and i'm gonna say i i am still i i still have a pretty good record with you because neither of us really like gremlins we did hear from people by the way who said we just don't understand gremlins it's like whatever i think i understand pretty well i did hear um the flop house was praising gremlins 2 again and i don't think i would like gremlins 2 but it sounds like like home alone 2

it sounds like gremlins 2 is like hey you know what people really liked in gremlins is all those gremlins doing crazy stuff let's do a whole movie of that where we just go to town it's like yeah you see that's the thing that was the bit that i hated it is the part that i hated too but like if you're going to be that then embrace that part because then then the movie is pure right then the movie is about one thing which is we're going to have lots of gremlins and i can even if that might not be the movie for me i can appreciate that that's the movie where they're like oh you know what people really liked is this. Let's do that. Which Home Alone 2 apparently is very similar in that way. Fine.

Give the people what they want. If you want to find the show notes for this week, including the link to get to our voting form for the third annual upgrade, you want to head over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 119. That is where you will find our links

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and also at Jason L J S N E double L on Twitter. I am at I Mike. I am Y K E. We'll be back next time with another episode of Upgrade until then say goodbye Mr. Snow oh you did it again why did you I did the slap too yeah I got that

that's it never again