Upgrade - 120: Time Is a Better Indicator of Time

Episode Date: December 19, 2016

This week, Jason reviews the AirPods while Myke waits for his to arrive. We also discuss Apple’s removal of the battery indicator from MacBooks, and at the very end of the show do a special Myke at the Movies review of “Rogue One."

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 120 today's show is brought to you by casper fresh books and encapsula my name is mike hurley and i am joined as i always am by mr jason snell hello mike how are you i am very well mr jason, Mike. How are you? I am very well, Mr. Jason Snell. How are you, sir? I'm doing just fine. Weathering the brutal weather conditions of December in the

Bay Area. Good luck with that. Temperatures near or slightly below freezing. Shocking! You don't want to have to deal with that, Jason. you need those hands to be limber not to be cold you know i know you've got to be able to type out all the words exactly i gotta i gotta get my typing fingers nice and warm yeah it's true how are you how is your uh how is your uh your home how is your new home very good actually we've completely moved in now we live here um it isn't just a place that we own that we were sometimes visiting.

Like last week, I was still just visiting, but we moved in on Wednesday. We're settling in. It's a very stressful, very busy time, turns out, moving into a home. Funny. It is funny how things like that work. What you should do is combine that with something like the holiday season to add a little stress. Is there a holiday season coming up? Turns out.

Uh-huh. This is where you can't get a realization this weekend that we haven't bought any presents for anybody. Uh-huh. Shocker. It's just not something I'm thinking about. And people are saying, family members are saying, oh, what would you like for Christmas? It's like, I have no idea. I don't know what I need in my life anymore.

Housewarming presents, I guess. So I've just been asking everybody this holiday season for the most exciting of gifts, gift cards and gift vouchers. Oh, nice. Because I don't know what I need, but what I know I need is money for, you know, because I need to buy more things for the home.

And I don't want to ask anyone for cash. So there's a nice department store that I like, which has lots of fancy little things in it that we've asked for gift vouchers for. And then we'll go around and we'll buy like spoons and towels and stuff. Sure. Sure, I should do.

Well, you know, my tip to you, if you're worried about giving gifts to other people is, especially because of the configuration of the holidays this year, consider Happy New Year gifts. That gives you an entire extra week. I mean... When you receive our Christmas card this year, Mike, you'll find,

and there were air quotes there that you couldn't see, you'll find that it says Happy New Year, and we were like, extra week. Yeah, you just get a little bit more time. I don't know how popular it would be around the dinner table though. No gifts for anybody. I had considered buying

things for the home and dedicating them to people. Oh, well that's an interesting approach. You, thank you for the top half of this blender. Yeah, it is the Aunt May memorial couch that we've bought here. So you'll be remembered forever, Aunt May. I don't have an Aunt May.

No, Spider-Man is the one you're thinking of there. I don't know my secret identity. Are you Spider-Man, Mike? Are you Spider-Man UK? Bangor office is coming along, though. Okay. I have furniture in here now what's what's changed in the in the box what's changed in the office uh i have a chair so i'm sitting down this week

because i was standing last week and i didn't enjoy standing for the entire episode um and i have storage so i have storage i have this big storage cabinet i went to been to ikea a lot i have this like shelved storage cabinet all of my pens and notebooks and little bits and bobs. Then I have a gaming center where I have all of my games, consoles, and board games and stuff. And then I have a general storage and I have drawers. I have a sticker drawer, of course. I have a cable drawer and a power drawer. All sorts of cables and things.

And I'm happy because it's all coming together and uh it is a big difference to have a dedicated place for me to be able to work in yeah i i yeah that that feeling is is really really nice um as opposed to just closing the door on the bedroom and that being the place. And once we get the remaining parts of our furniture, I have a small sofa being delivered here for the office, and then we have a larger sofa for the front room. And once they're in, that's going to be really great

because I like to do some work outside of the office environment. So in the morning and stuff, I'm booting up. I will work in the front room on the big sofa and then i have a sofa in here because i like to be because i'm an ipad worker um desks aren't really the best no no i keep thinking about that i keep thinking about um one of these days seeing if i can find, I don't think they make them a, a little like a mount mounting arm for my iPad pro so that I could use it sort of at the desk. Cause I think that would be kind of fun, but they're,

they're not made for that. Elevation labs have just created a product called the draft table for iPad. I saw that. I'm, I'm very tempted to try one of these because this would be how I could use it at a desk or a table more comfortably. So like I have a corner desk and I thought about having like the large side of my desk be the iMac part and then the smaller part of the desk being the iPad area. And this draft table thing looks really nice.

And I'm thinking about maybe trying to get one of these and try it out but yeah, I do find that working on the sofa is much nicer for using an iPad because you can recline and you can move around more easily and the ergonomics of iOS devices I think has yet to be fully discovered right like how people that work on them a lot feel with them over time um but one thing that i find for me that at least

makes me feel feel more comfortable when i'm using my ipad is that i'm able to sit in many different areas on many different types of chairs and can make myself more comfortable that way and at least that's how i like to work so once everything's in that's going to be great but just right now this is like my place to record the shows and i was editing some video earlier and i was responding to some emails and i'm kind of setting it all up and i have some charging stations going in place and i I'm just very happy to finally have a dedicated workspace to call my own. It's a great feeling. Yeah, it's a big deal to do that.

When we set up the office here in the garage, that was a big change for me to be able to not just sort of steal space in the corner of the living room or in the bedroom. And yeah, I did my podcast recording in the bedroom. I would do writing in the bedroom. And like that's fine. Except you know. That's not a private space. In any real way.

And there's like stuff in there. And so then there are interruptions. And then you go to bed. And you didn't leave. So that's not great either so yeah that's great i have a piece of long-term follow-up for something we spoke about a very long time ago which was amazon's drone delivery system right there um i had no idea this was happening but i saw some news um over the end of last week that Amazon have a trial, like a private trial going on in the UK with just a handful of customers.

It's like two or three people right now where they're doing drone delivery with the idea that over the next few months, they're going to hope to expand this out to, they say, dozens more people. hope to expand this out to, they say, dozens more people. So the reason this is happening in the United Kingdom is that drone regulations are more favorable for what Amazon are trying to do here. And there's two specific things that are beneficial. One is that the UK air regulation system, I'm trying to find what it's actually called, but I can't find it. But let's just call it the UK drone regulation system. That seems correct. It is allowed for drones to fly out of public eyeline, which is a great thing. So you don't have to see them or hear them because they can be flown commercially at that kind of altitude. And that also one person can control multiple drones at the same time. Now, this is good for Amazon, like their drones can sense and avoid obstacles. So

they say that the safety is there. But apparently the FAA, my understanding is they won't allow one person to control multiple drones. So at that point, it's kind of pointless for Amazon, right? Like you just have one person controlling one drone. I don't know how much that's really going to help them other than just the speed. And I don't think they care

about the speed so much. The speed is for us. For them, it's delivering things with less human beings involved, less salaries to pay. I think that's Amazon's primary reason for doing this. But the first order was for

an amazon fire tv stick and a bag of popcorn and it arrived 13 minutes after the order was placed by the person i think this is awesome yeah i saw that i saw that and and the video because they you know amazon was in the house and was at the launch site, and they had a drone following the drone, taking video of the drone. But they're going over fields and things like that. So you got the sense, too, that this is in a not very densely populated region. No, this is in a more rural area. And it looks like they're in a more rural area

of the more rural area. They're in Cambridge in England. And I think they've made the right choice. This is a place, they have a distribution center nearby. It's not very densely populated, so if there are any problems, it's less likely to injure somebody.

And also their drone looks like it is covered in foam. So it looks more like a flying foam box than anything else. But yeah, I think I'm excited about this. I remain excited about this. I think that this will be a cool thing whenever Amazon are able to do it. Have you changed your mind at all on this, Jason? Well, okay. So as I recall, what I said at the time was that it seemed impractical.

And I continue to believe it seems impractical. But boy, they're spending a lot of time on it. So I can see, again, in dense areas, I have a lot harder time seeing this, but I can see this for delivery in less populated areas. This makes more sense to me for people who live kind of out in the middle of nowhere to get things delivered to them that otherwise they might not have access to than it does for people in dense areas. Like if you're someplace where you don't have a nearby store, it's going to be a half an hour drive to find a store and the store doesn't have very much in it. My sister-in-law lives in a place kind of like that. Then I can especially see the value of providing access to something like this. But at that level, I'm not sure that there are enough people to make it worth the while of somebody like Amazon to serve them. So I'm wondering what the sweet spot is. Is it

suburbs maybe where it's dense, but not too dense so that there are lots of people, but there's also still sort of room to maneuver. I don't know. It's fun that they're trying it and not just sort of poo-pooing it saying, no, let's try it. Maybe drones is a solution.

There are one last piece of follow-up today. The upgradees are still available for voting in until the 23rd of december that is when we're going to be shutting down the voting for the third annual upgradies we've had many many many responses so far uh over 350 people over 350 upgradians have submitted their responses uh you can go in, you can vote for the choices that we have selected, or you can select your own nominations for the categories, and then me and Jason will be going through it all, and we will be using your votes as a way to help inform the winners.

As we mentioned before, I want to just make this very clear, this is not a democratic process. Your votes as the Upgradians will be entered into helping me and Jason just make this very clear this is not a a democratic process uh that your the your votes as the upgradians will be entered into helping me and jason make the decision as to which item company thing will take home each upgradey um in the category yes so i continue to be very excited for this year's yes please please do that we Please, please do that. We are, so the morning Pacific time of Friday, the 23rd

really, so if you're in the U.S. by the end of Thursday, the 22nd, please get your votes in and then that show will air on January 2nd. January 2nd. Or as I said, the first of the year, by which I mean January 2nd. I had one other piece of, it's not quite follow-up.

This is follow-out. We're into the follow-out section now. I guess. I just wanted to mention, because we talk, it's one of those things. There are people who read Six Colors, and there are people who listen to this podcast, and there are people who do both. But I think if you're a podcast listener and you're interested in how podcasts get made, you might be curious about this, even if you're not a regular reader of things written about

technology on the internet. So we'll put a link in the show notes. I did another editing video a couple of years ago. I did a video where I captured myself editing the incomparable and logic on my Mac just so that I had like a time-lapse version I could do saying like, here's how this looks, here's the whole process. And I did that last week for an episode of Clockwise, where I edited the whole episode on my iPad Pro using Ferrite. And I captured the whole thing. And then I sort of annotated it. And it, most of it's in sort of time-lapse mode, although I slow down at a few points to point out very specific things that I'm doing. So if you are curious about what it looks like to edit a podcast,

especially edit a podcast on an iPad, you can check that out because I thought that would be a useful document to have. So that's what it is. You know what I would love? I'm fascinated by the video and the reason that I would love this is because I want to get better with using something like Ferrite.

It's to see what you're doing. You know, I gave some thought to setting up like a camera behind me. Taking, looking at my hand gestures and stuff while I was editing it and sync it with the capture. And I may do that at some point. But for this one, I didn't have the time or the capture. And I may do that at some point, but for this one, I didn't have the time or, you know, will to do that. Yeah. No, I get that. Cause that's a, that's quite a production. It's a complicated setup to do. Well, I mean, I, I got, I've got a, you know, tall tripod that I can put over my shoulder and, you know, but it means that I need to hold the

iPad steady instead of like, you know, like you were saying, you can kind of shift it around and be comfortable with it. And, you know, I would have to make sure of the angles and all that. It's just more complicated, but I may do that at some point. Because, yeah, what you can't see in an iOS video is like the hand gestures and things like that that are happening behind the scenes. All right. This week's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Encapsular.

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Okay, so it is Monday the 19th of December today. Today is the day in which people are able to get their hands on AirPods. They are available in very limited supply in Apple retail stores, and many people are receiving deliveries today. I, my AirPods are out for delivery right now. They may even arrive before the end of the episode, but some people out there in the world, the lucky few have had them for longer than that. And Jason Snell, you are one of those people. I am. There he goes, clicking his little case.

My little floss case thing. so I want to know when did you get the airpods how much time do you have to spend with them I got them I want to say Thursday I just I just stuck one in my ear but you probably couldn't hear that you know didn't hear uh I'm not using them for this podcast I got them yeah I want to say Thursday, and have been using them, you know, on and off ever since, walking the dog and stuff like that, and cooking, doing the dishes, all that sort of thing. So, yeah, spending time with them. Now, you're an interesting case for these because you use very specific type of headphones most of the time, don't you? Yeah, I mean, I'm usually using, well, it's less true than it was. I usually use in-ear monitors. So they're, you know, they custom silicone things shaped to the shape of my ear that they go in. So they're like, they block the sound and all of that. pair of Bluetooth headphones that are basically earbuds. They're sort of canal phones, but they don't go in very far. They're the Bluebird or, yeah, Bluebuds, Jaybird Bluebuds, something like

that. And they're fine. They're, you know, they're traditional. They've got a cord between them, right? That's a big difference that the earpods have over over those kinds of things the earpods are in this new category where there are a handful of products now where each individual earbud is its own thing so i've been using those um the blue buds out in the world for walking the dog and running and things like that for the last year plus i kind of got them because i wanted a set of bluetooth headphones to test with iOS and with the watch and stuff like that. And so I've been using those. So I have not been using my, you know, block out all the sound so I can't hear when that person is coming up behind me to run into me with their bicycle.

I haven't been doing that for a while now. So that's my, you know, so it wasn't as big of a transition to go to these as it would have been if I hadn't been using the other Bluetooth headphones. Having used these for a few days, and I have a lot of specific questions for you, but one thing that I'm wondering about is, have you kind of really understood why Apple decided to make these as two separate earbuds unconnected. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I will get into this one. This is great because I haven't written my review yet. So thank you for working.

It's like my little review therapy here. So we're workshopping. We're workshopping. We are. We're workshopping. That happens from time to time. Well, the Blue Buds. So the Blue Buds are really nice Bluetooth headphones. They're not

cheap. And you have two configurations you can wear them in. You can either wear them where they go in your ears and the little cable that connects them that's got a clicker on it dangles down in front of you, almost like a necklace or something. Yeah. And this is the same as Jaybird's newer ones, like the X2 and the X3. Yeah. I mean, this is how you have to do it. They're one unit. So they have to be, even though the little things are in your ears, they're not really wireless in the sense that there is a wire running between them. So you can do that. And then, and what I found when I started doing that was, and we talked about it on the show, is that they bounced around and it was kind of annoying. And if I ran, they really bounced around and it was super annoying.

And a listener to Upgrade said, well, I mean, that's why they shipped that little plastic clip with it is so that you can basically fold the cable back on itself until it's very short. And then you wear them behind your head. until it's very short. And then you wear them behind your head. Yeah. And you adjust it so that they're basically you plug them into your ears and then they run and then, you know, they run behind your head and connect and there's no slack. It's all just, you know, there's nothing to bounce around because it's just sort of like sitting on the back of your head. And I moved mine to that configuration and was a lot happier. Now there are downsides to that, which is the button is now behind your head. The microphone is behind your head. So if somebody calls you, you can't really talk to them using this approach, but for activity, especially running,

but even walking, it made it feel a lot more like I didn't have this wire bouncing around, but you know, so that was better, but it still had drawbacks. And, you know, and that's the bottom line is that the most natural way to have wireless headphones is to have them not or wireless earbuds anyway, is to have them not connected to each other. Because, right, because you think wireless, you're thinking, I stick something in this ear, I stick something in that ear, and that's it. Not, I stick something in this ear and that ear with a cable connecting them. It makes a big difference. It really does. See, I don't know if I would have ever imagined this design. And I've never used headphones like this. I've always used headphones that either have a piece of plastic in between them or a cable connecting them. or a cable connecting them. Like this wouldn't have been what I would have ever imagined Apple's Bluetooth headphones to really be.

You know, I was expecting something that would have like a little cable. And we spoke about this a long time ago that you don't plug and you plug it into a lightning port, you know, and you charge it that way. That's what I always thought. And maybe it's because I've never used a Bluetooth earbud before like that. So I didn't maybe understand the shortcomings of the frustrations of still having a cable. But the problem is like the down what you gain in upside presents new downsides. And I guess the new downsides is they're easier to lose.

Right. I mean, this is they've got to be surely easier to lose. Certainly. I mean, they've got to be surely easier to lose. Certainly. I mean, there are two of them. So your chance of misplacing one of them goes up because now you have to keep track of two. I saw somebody on Twitter today say that, like, literally they dropped one of the AirPods down the drain first thing. I mean, you do have to be careful with them i had

i dropped one i forget where i dropped one but i dropped one i thought wow that would have been oh it was while i was picking up uh picking up my dog's poop and i i dropped one of them and it went it didn't go in the poop everybody it's okay but it went but it went in the tall grass it went in the tall grass and i had to like search around in the tall grass um but the good news is they don't they don't we can come back to this maybe but they don't fall out like on the drop of a hat they actually don't fall out very much at all if i mean basically i was falling i had things falling out because i was bumping them not because they just naturally wiggled out of my ears. So that's

the difference. But yes, there is more of an opportunity to lose them than if they're tied together because then you've got one long headphone object instead of two little tiny floating earbud objects. So yeah, that is true. And when I think about when the headphones or earphones fall out for me, funnily enough, the time when it happens the most is when I might be on public transport and somebody catches their arm on the cable. So a lot of the time when I may lose an earbud, actually, it wouldn't happen for that reason. And that connects to the reason that they don't fall out. I mean, I think the big change here in terms of like the physics of headphones is that

without the cables pulling down, whether you're thinking of a different set of wireless headphones that are connected to one another, or if you're thinking about a set of wired headphones, that are connected to one another, or if you're thinking about a set of wired headphones, the cable stretching down or stretching across is exerting a force. And these earpods don't have the cable. So they don't have that downforce that's trying to pull them out of your ears along the length of that whole cable going down to wherever the cable is connected. And it makes a difference. It makes a big difference in terms of feel and in terms of comfort with the stability of them, that they stay put in a way that I've never found Apple earbuds

to stay put before. Yeah, this isn't necessarily something that I would have assumed either, right? That the cable is presenting some kind of force. No, I mean, it is, but I never would have thought that it was a substantial enough thing to make a dramatic difference in the feel of the earbuds in your ears and the likelihood that they're going to fall out. But it's interesting that that's clearly a thing. And I've put in the show notes a GIF that you created that you posted on Twitter of you shaking your head side to side oh good and they wouldn't they didn't come out and it's a great gif of you uh for so many reasons it's just fantastic that's yeah i make i make gifs on the internet now that's what i do that's my job now

it's your gob now i think it's in the arrow works and uh sure uh and so it looks like that there is an an element of because it doesn't look like they've changed the design too much right like they look just like ear pods oh yeah the in ear the the you know in your ear next to your ear part is exactly the same as far as i can tell but it's in terms of they are um they're lighter i guess and they have less force being applied to them which means that they're lighter, I guess, and they have less force being applied to them, which means that they're more likely to stick in the ear, which is great.

And I guess, you know, the heaviest part is what's resting inside of your ear. So I guess that's why they're sticking in. So that's interesting. What do you think about the size of them? Because every time I look at a picture,

the stems look weird. They look weird. They look weird. They look weird to me. I guess it takes some getting used to. That's, I mean, I sort of feel like that's a problem for other people. Because you don't see them. That's an interesting way to look at it. It's like other people have to look at them, but you don't have to because they're in your ears and you can't see them there. But they are noticeably different because the beams or whatever you want to call them, the long part is thicker than a cable running to a pair of ear pods.

But, you know, it's, I don't know, it just is different. It's not dramatic, but it's definitely different. And they have to have that extension part down. That's where the microphone is. And you need something to hold on to. I mean, that's really the part that you grab and pull it out of your ear too,

using that part there. But it's going to take some getting used to. For people who have never seen them before, they're going to like, oh, that looks different. You don't have cables running out of your ears. You just have these things that stop. And that's what they look like, right? They look like they're beginning to progress down like a cabled version would. And then there's no more cable after that. I remember I expect I'm going to have the exact same feeling about wearing these in public

as I did when I got my first iPhone and my first Apple Watch. The kind of uncomfortable feeling of people are going to be looking at me, and they're going to either think that that thing is weird, or they're going to know what it is, and they're going to be looking at me and they're going to either think that that thing is weird or they're going to know what it is and they're going to keep looking because you won't miss these things i don't think i had the same feeling walking the dog the same exact feeling which is i'm on the dog path i'm like you know if somebody knows what these are they will you know they will spot that i've got them and know that i have the new apple airpods and uh that will happen for a little while because this is kind of it's not new tech

but because it's from apple it will be much more broadly seen tech than then uh it's new enough like the idea of earphones that are not connected well you know you know the idea that yeah i just wanted to make that point that it's, these aren't first, right? There are others out there that do this, but this is going to be the one that most people will have the first interaction with. Yeah, this is going to be widely adopted

and the others are not. Exactly, exactly. And popularized by Apple. And so that's going to change, you know, if you get these, you're going to have those conversations with people like, oh, are those, you know, are those earphones? Are those Apple earphones? How does that work? There's no cord, you know, if you get these, you're going to have those conversations with people like, oh, are those, you know, are those earphones? Are those Apple earphones? How does that work? There's no cord, you know, plus you will be spotted as like, you've got a, you know, you've

got one of those just like, you know, when the Apple watch came out, it was like that too. And when you had an iPod with iPod headphones, it was like that too. Like all of these scenarios where you get something that's kind of new looking and you wear them out in public that you're going to get that, you know, some people are going to recognize it other people will not notice at all because a lot of people don't notice things and that's yeah you know we'll we'll talk about star wars later when i whenever i leave the house um i i take my ear pods with me they're always just they just go in my pocket so i'm ready at a moment's notice to listen to something if i want to because that's just the kind of person that i am i assume many of

our listeners are exactly the same right who would want to listen to street sounds when you could be listening to jason snell talk about star wars right why exactly why would you do that why would you ever do that is carrying that little case more or less convenient? Because it's definitely more bulk than a coil pair of headphones, but it's also not a mess of wires in your pocket. Yeah, well, you described it perfectly right there, which is it's more bulk than just stuffing some headphones in your pocket. Although I guess an argument could be made that since it's this little, you know,

little plastic packet, you have more awareness of where it is where sometimes I'm like, Oh, I still have my headphones in my pocket. Like, Oh, I didn't, I didn't mean to bring those with me.

Like with this, you're like, okay, I know where it is. I know where my headphones are. They're in my bag. They're in my pocket. They are wherever they are, but it is more I know where my headphones are. They're in my bag. They're in my pocket. They are wherever they are.

But it is more bulk and a little more weight. But they don't get tangled, right? It's just different. You don't have to take your headphones out of your pocket and then untangle them first. You just open the little box and pop them out. That's one of the big differences. Now, this case, in case people don't know,

it's been a while, really, since we've spoken about these in much depth. little case also has a battery in it and it charges the the uh airpods i keep it's so difficult to keep earpods and airpods right in my brain i know the battery inside of the case charges the airpods when you put them inside yes what is the battery life like on the airpods themselves um you know as them singularly and together and also when you combine the case like how does that all look because it's a big picture of these three different things isn't it like each individual airpod has a battery life and then also the case does as well and they work together yes uh you know apple's quoting five hours on a charge.

And I think that is that's about right. I've used them some and I was looking at some other reviews like Susie at Macworld posted her review today and said that she, you know, she would run them for five hours and they'd still have 10 percent, 15 percent battery life. That seems about right. 15 battery life that that seems about right um and then there's and then there's the case and you can top up your charge by sticking them back in the case which is uh which is nice because i think the idea there is um that you're probably not just having your headphones stuck in for more than five hours straight i mean this is uh this was a conversation i think on maybe on atp i think i remember casey talking about this and it's the same thought of like you know at some point for a few minutes you're going to be able to take your your headphones out

or you're going to need to take your headphones out and interact with another human being probably even if it's just uh eating your meal on the plane, right? There's probably something that you could do without those headphones in. And the way that, it's kind of interesting because of the way that the product is made, you would always put it in the case because they're so small, right? Exactly. You're not just going to leave them. to leave them. Yeah. Although, I mean, when you talk about carrying around the case, the other thing is if you're not, um, if you're not going to be using them for more than five hours, you could also just stick them in your pocket and not carry them in the case. You could do that. And that would probably be okay. But, uh, if you stick them in the case for 15 minutes,

Apple says that's three hours of battery life. I didn't get to test that scientifically, but, you know, I would just, one of the challenges for me was most of the time I would just naturally, when I was done listening to them, pop them in the case. And so, you know, it would, without a concerted effort to drain the battery, you know, they would immediately charge back up. And the next time I used them, they were back at a hundred percent. And then the case itself has a little lightning connector on the bottom. So you plug it in to a lightning cable, you know, the same lightning cable you plug into your iPhone or your magic track pad or whatever, you just plug that in and it charges back up. And Apple says that, that, uh, you can get 24, more than 24 hours of, of playtime. Uh, if you walk away with the ear, with the AirPods and the case fully charged, you've got more than 24 hours of play time before you have to connect it to get

more power and how does it work on a battery indicators perspective like how am i notified of low battery on either the airpods or the um the case well um so the case has a little light that goes on that tells you charging status. Are they charged? Are they charging? And which is one of those little green amber things that colorblind people have a hard time seeing. So that's awesome. There's just a light that says something. Who knows what it says?

I take them at their word that it must mean something anyway uh the the uh device will tell you what the battery level is you know your iphone will tell you your mac will tell you what the battery level is of the airpods when you've got them in the airpods and when they are down to like 10 battery or something they make a little uh they make a little sad noise. It's like, ooh. Do they pop up a notification on the connected device like an Apple Pencil does?

When you open the charger near the device, it slides up a little thing that tells you what the current status of the charger and the AirPods are. But from your use, you've not seen like 20 battery remaining or whatever oh yeah yeah you get you get that you get that notification you can see the battery remaining in the in the headphones on the mac and on ios and then it shows up in the little widget and stuff like that right the little widget that's it's i i think so i

i don't know if i've connected them to my i see that one on my my iPad more and I'm not sure if I've connected them to my iPad. I did connect them to my Mac and toggled them back and forth. And it all just gets picked up automatically on modern iOS and devices and Macs because of iCloud. So I didn't need to repair. As soon as I paired them with my phone, they automatically showed up on my Mac.

How did you find that? That was just absolutely seamless? I mean, I found that to be that way with the Powerbeats, or no, the Solo 3, or whatever they're called, the Beats Solo 3s. I assume you have to be running iOS 10 and Sierra, I assume. Yeah, behind. So if you're using older operating systems or non-compatible

hardware then you have to do a bluetooth pair basically which is you press the button on the back of the little case and it shows up as a bluetooth device and you pair it and then in that scenario I think the way it works is that if it's actively playing to one device it doesn't want you to hijack it. But if you take them out and then wait five seconds or something like that, it knows that they're not being actively used. Then you can connect from the other device.

I actually paired them with Nexus 5X Android phone and they worked, again, worked just fine. The double tap gesture in that scenario is just play, pause. If there's no secret sauce, that's what they've done. They're just Bluetooth headphones and there's a double tap for play, pause. And you don't have to do the little pairing button thing when you originally set it up, right?

Right. I open the box and it says, hey, I found some earpods some airpods do you want me to um connect them or something i took a screenshot of it but it's very um it's very much what you'd expect from that experience which since apple has laid its own stuff on top of the standards it allows apple to write lots of uh fancy slash cute uh ui that says things like uh you know airpods with a big button that says connect and that's it and then x so you can be like nope don't want those or you can go yeah sure and that's it that's that's it okay the

whole thing that's pretty standard then and it. That's the whole thing. That's pretty standard then, and for everything else it works perfectly, right? So you get the standard Bluetooth pairing as normal, and then you get the special Apple pairing system with the W1 chip for iOS and macOS devices. Yeah, yeah. So it's just, yeah, if you're on a device whose hardware and software supports the sort of secret layer, you get the super easy connection, pairing, syncing stuff.

And then if you're on hardware that doesn't support that, then you kind of go back to press the button, start going to pairing mode, pair the device. But, you know, it still works. Fair enough. What about the control of audio can you talk to me a little bit about what is going on there kind of a standard and what you can change uh sure um the so they've got this accelerometer built into them and the idea there is that there are, what are the gestures? So if there's no clicker, right? There's no volume up, no volume down, no clicker for play pause, or triple tap, or you can't do any of those things. So there are basically two gestures

that you can do with these things. And one of them is take one out of your ear, which is a gesture. It's a user interface gesture and it's actually one of the the things that i think is the most clever about these these headphones is number one gesture you know play pause is take one out of your ear works great and put it back in continues to play and to clear up something like this is only it only plays music if you've already paused music right like the music doesn't begin as soon as i put ear pods in my ear for the first time in the morning exactly right it's just it's just like um yeah i mean that's right that the the it behaves more or less like you'd expect headphones to behave which is if you pause something and then

and then you you know within a reasonable amount of something and then, and then you, you know, within a reasonable amount of time in the, in that context, even if it's, you know, minutes, pop it back in, it starts to play again. But in the morning, you know, if you wake up and put them in and they connect for the first time, they don't just start playing whatever is randomly playing on your iPhone. You need to tell it to start playing something. But, but it is in that interim state. Like I was walking down the this always happened with my Bluetooth the blue buds which was you know I'm walking down the path with the dog and somebody's coming the other way

and I want to if they say something to me I want to hear what they're saying and not just have podcasts blaring over them and that used to be like I'd reach back behind my head to find the clicker or I would use my Apple Watch or I'd pull my phone out of my pocket

but something to pause and I would take the ear bud out right and with the with the airpods i just take one of them out as i'm walking by the person and if they talk then i can hear them and if they don't talk and we walk past them i just pop it right back in and that's it that's my entire uh interface gesture so that pauses both ears right like both ears get paused when you take one out but you can listen with just one ear right you can just you can if you want to you can play with just one and it just powers one and it routes mono audio to that one right instead of stereo it's very interesting yeah yeah Yeah, it is. It's pretty clever. So that's gesture number one. And gesture number two is

using the accelerometer. If you tap twice on the device, on either earbud, it will trigger by default Siri. And you can also set that in the Bluetooth settings to trigger nothing or

play pause. So you can have two, two play pauses. I mean, that's probably how I'm going to set it up. Honestly, have it as be play pause as well. Because I don't really,

I don't really want to talk to Siri. Honestly, to, to change songs and change volume. I will either feel for buttons or I'll use my apple watch i was thinking it's it every now and then you see these these these little things which show a disconnect inside of apple um and i think that some of the changes with the apple watch with the earpods coming out shows that like it now more than ever do we need to be able to get quick access to music controls on the Apple Watch? And I was thinking, why can't there be a two-pane control center on the Apple Watch?

One is all of the little buttons that they have, and then one is audio. Right, like on the iPhone. Yeah, like on iOS. I hope that that's something that they then bring back again, because that will be the best way, I think, to control the AirPods. It's just to tap the playpals there to use the crown to put volume up and down. What I'll assume I'll be doing for volume controls is reaching for my phone if it's nearby and using it there, or I'll open the thing on the Apple Watch. I don't want to say, ahoy telephone, volume down. I don't want to do that. You don't have to say Ahoy Telephone volume down.

I don't want to do that. You don't have to say Ahoy Telephone because you double tap. So it's double tap volume down. But I think this is exactly it. I think that the biggest flaw in the AirPods is Siri. Or to put it another way is reliance on Siri. Reliance on Siri as the place that you just dump, we don't want to do it, so let's just have Siri do it. You kind of put all of your complexity, all of your edge cases, everything else just gets dumped into Siri. And there are a few problems with that. Part of it is, yeah, you know what?

If I'm sitting on the subway and I want to make the music louder, I'm not going to double tap on my ear and say, volume up. But as you point out, not that you even could if you wanted to, because Siri doesn't work without an internet connection. And that's the other part of it. So first off, there's the whole thing also that Siri still really wants you to look at the screen. And so, you know, it doesn't help

if you ask Siri something on those things and they're like, look what I found for you. You're like, well, look where, where am I looking? And it's like, take out your phone and look. It's in front of you. It's not helpful. But yeah, you mentioned it there, which is if you're on the subway

and you're somewhere where there isn't an internet connection, it doesn't work. And this baffles me because they built voice control into iOS way before they built Syrian. And voice control was really dumb. Voice control had a very limited feature set, but it let you control your media playback. It let you control music and stuff. It let you call people. Yeah, it let you call people in your address book. It would scan your address book it would it would know what those names were and it would know what was in your music

library and it would like it would be able to do it was a rudimentary kind of thing before there was siri to do voice control but the way it works now if you lose your internet connection it doesn't go back to voice control it goes nowhere and so if you are somewhere without an internet connection you're out in the country somewhere and you're running and you say, you double tap volume louder, it can't help you. It won't do it. And that's really dumb because the device should be able to do that. But take it back a step, which is, this is also a design decision to say, all we're going

to do is play, pause and punt to Siri. And I think that's a mistake. I think that is the biggest flaw in these things is, okay, you've got that accelerometer in there. Maybe you need more gestures, or maybe you did need a button on it, or maybe you needed some other kind of touch interface, or maybe you need the ability to differentiate since most people will be listening to both ears. Maybe you need the ability to have a different gesture in your left ear than your right ear. I know that's wacky and most people wouldn be listening to both ears, maybe you need the ability to have a different gesture

in your left ear than your right ear. I know that's wacky and most people wouldn't do it, but for some, the ability to like have your next track on the left and your play pause on the right or something like that, it would be more gestures. It would be more ways of controlling this thing without having to open a watch or open a phone,

which is, I think, the ideal here. And right now, it's vocabulary. As awesome as the take the earbud out to pause and then put it back into play is, that is such a great feature. That is a really amazing sort of real-world connected UI gesture. I really like it. I think it's super smart.

But the, you know, or double tap and do everything else. Like, yeah, no. Like if I want to make my volume a little louder, double tap and shout volume loud, just seems dumb. I like, I would like another, oh, if there was only something to do or to advance to the next track or to skip ahead or anything like that. Also, Siri's control of other media apps is more limited. So if you're not listening to the music app, you're more limited in what you can do, although you can still control like system volume and things like that. I don't know. It's an amazing piece of tech. And I think the answer to why it punts so much to Siri is probably that they were really limited in what they were capable of doing with this product because it is packing so much tech into so many places.

And there's probably not room to create some sort of button or touch surface or all that. uh, separately programmable or supported a triple tap or supported a single tap. Although single tap, it might like, they might have to discard all of those because it's too prone to error, but a double tap, you can, you can get that, but then let's, let's do a triple tap. And again, most people won't triple tap, but that could be something. I don't know. That's, that's the, that's the limitation here because while the Apple Watch is not a bad remote for this, you do have to wake it up and press the dock button and make sure that you're tapped into the now playing and then you can spin the volume control. Also, by the way, watchOS update, that lets you perhaps optionally just at the watch face, spin the crown to change the volume on your audio device.

How about that? That would be nice. I would love that. But even so, you know, that is relying on an Apple Watch. So, you know, not everybody's going to have one of those. The Apple Watch is a mandatory AirPod accessory. I would bet the people that are buying AirPods right now, there's probably quite a lot of them also on an Apple Watch. Sure, sure. But you want this to be, I mean, there are way more people with iPhones than there are with Apple Watches. This is a much, you know, it's a less expensive product. It's got a broader audience.

Ultimately, there will be, I think, more AirPods out there than Apple Watches. I do think that. So overall, what's your take on this? Have Apple delivered? that um so overall what's your take on this of apple delivered yeah i think it's a really good product i mean i really do i think this is um for people who've been um groaning and grousing a lot about uh apple's direction and has apple lost it and what is apple focused on i look at this and i think this is the kind of product that we expect from Apple. And although it's got flaws, like I just went on about for five minutes about like punting

to Siri, because I think Siri, you know, there are lots of issues there. The fact is they work really well. The play, the most important gesture, which is the play pause gesture works perfectly. They stay in sync. which is the play pause gesture works perfectly. They stay in sync. I had over the course of many hours of listening, I had a couple momentary out of syncs where we're like on a podcast where a voice would get slightly echoey for like half a second and then go back. That happened like twice in hours and hours and hours. And it was momentary. It was like a little blip basically so in keeping these two devices in sync in your ears so that your brain you know your brain will sync audio from the left

ear and the right ear pretty well up to a point and then beyond that point it gives up and uh whatever apple's doing to make sure that those audio streams are running in parallel it it worked very well so very effective some amazing technology packed into these things. They sound pretty good. I had forgotten. You know, I think I'm still blaming the ear pods for the sins of the original Apple earbuds. Because I went back to ear pods and I listened to them. At some point, I bought better headphones, right? So I stopped bothering to listen to ear pods.

But for this, I went back and listened to ear pods. And they sound very similar to the sound of the AirPods. They may sound exactly the same for all I know, but I don't want to say that. To me, they sound basically the same. And it sounds pretty good. I was surprised at how good. And I threw songs that I know really well that have lots of bass on them, that have sort of sneaky bass on them, that have lots of range. And I was surprised. I mean,

if somebody's super finicky and can only listen to music with high-end headphones, then they're going to not love these because they're not going to love anything that sounds like this. But I would say, um, even, even me with my more expensive headphones that I've been buying since I was driven away from the really cheap, lousy iPod headphones in the beginning. Um, I was impressed. Like I would listen to music on these happily. Um, they're, they're, I think they're good enough, you know, for most people like apple apple's never going to be able to please everybody we've been talking about that for the last month or two but they have chosen you know the the vast i think majority of people uh who care about this stuff

who who listen to music and podcasts and things on their iphone will be made happy by this this product so so yeah i think in the end it pretty terrific, even though it's definitely got some flaws. Um, I'm, I'm impressed and having spent some time with some of the competition, um, I'm, I am similarly impressed because like, I'm happy that I've spent a year walking around with a Jaybird, um, headphones, because that has given me a perspective on how much nicer it is to not have that cord running between them next week i will say what i think of them yeah we had we didn't get the call during the broadcast no yeah they haven't been delivered and even if they had been delivered you couldn't actually use them so i i am looking forward to your to a second opinion in our uh in

our special boxing day episode yep next week. That'll be fun. And this is as somebody who uses earpods every day. Right. Well, see, that's the thing is that you have this experience and I don't. Oh, one other thing. People kept asking me, does it hurt when you wear them in your ears after a while? And I had two answers to that, which is one, everybody's ears are different. It's the truth.

Everybody's ears are shaped differently. Everybody's going to have a different reaction. So if my ears hurt or don't hurt, it doesn't say anything about if your ears will hurt or don't hurt. My personal experience is that the first time I went out with them to walk the dog, after a while, my right ear started to hurt. But what I realized is i actually needed to reset the the airpod a little bit it was kind of straight up and down and i kind of tilted it so that the the little beam at the bottom of it was pointing more toward my neck instead of like straight down at the ground um and that it just it i was like oh this may not be set sitting right in my ear

and so i just repositioned it to what felt like a more comfortable position. I've been wearing them in that position since and have not had any more problems. So I think some of that was, you know, essentially I was wearing it wrong. But I found a comfortable spot and they haven't bothered me. This week's episode is also brought to you by our friends over at FreshBooks. So let's imagine this. I'm sure many of you feel this way. You're racing against the clock. You're trying to wrap up the 17 projects you have, especially at this time of the year, prepping for a meeting later on this afternoon. And so you can get ready for the Christmas party.

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Just go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade, and please enter upgrade in the how you heard about us section so FreshBooks knows that you came to them from this show. Thank you so much to FreshBooks for their support of Upgrade and RelayFM. Okay, let's talk about battery life on the laptops, the Apple laptops on the MacBooks. So there has been mixed reports about the battery life of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. They vary wildly. Some people say it's the best ever.

Some people say it's fine. Some people say this is an unmitigated disaster. There could be a million reasons why that's happening. Quite frankly, nobody knows why the battery life is varying so much there are many theories you know there are theories about about uh graphics cards and processors cards here we go mike's out whatever the external graphics cards in the macbook pro now there's a great conversation about this slot is that in Is that in a Nubus slot? Is that in a Nubus or a PCI? Yeah, yeah. It's the Express one. Express card slot.

Depending on whether you have the integrated or dedicated. Oh, I'm ruining this. I'm ruining this. I can never remember the difference between. Integrated and discrete. See, because those words say that makes. Anyway, there are different graphics cards in the MacBook Pros, and some people think that depending on what the load is,

it's running that way. There is some thought in all of the things that macOS does now, especially with stuff like photos, and all of the things that it does in the background. The same things that destroy your iOS's battery life on the first day, right? But there seems to be persistent and unknown issues with these computers so there has been an update to sierra which has maybe improved battery life for some of these with some bug fixes maybe but what it has also done is take away the time remaining from the battery indicator.

So previously you click the battery indicator in the menu bar and it would show you the percentage and how long is left of the battery. So using your battery, using your MacBook now, the current rate you're using it, you would get two hours of battery life or you might get 10 hours of battery life. That has been removed for all laptops now. Now, there are many schools of thought

as to why this thing is being removed. There are people that are claiming, well, I mean, again, I don't know enough about the internals of this, but there are people that are claiming that the API is wrong and has been wrong for years and is unreliable. But no matter what the reason, the timing is terrible. This goes back to some other things that have been knocking around recently, as to Apple making decisions that seem peculiar from a PR perspective, with the other being designed by Apple in California. Everybody was upset about the MacBook and where the focus of the Mac was,

and then they released the $300 photo book. Now everybody's upset about battery life. Apple have removed the time remaining from the MacBook battery life indicator. This just seems strange. Now, what it looks like, and my feeling on this is what is actually happening here, is the way that Apple have fixed the battery life is to remove the battery indicator.

This is the fix for now. It's like they can't get a handle on it. Maybe the combination of the battery not being great, plus the API not being as clear as it could be makes the situation seem even worse than it already is. So the band aid solution is to remove that functionality. Have I done a decent job of at least summing it up and giving my own opinion? So there's definitely that in there.

My own opinion. I think you did i i think the that is that is it's very easy to connect the dots and see it that way which is oh so you got a problem with our battery life well now you won't know it so good luck i think what you don't know doesn't hurt you. Yeah. I think the reality is that the battery life indicator has been progressively less accurate over time. And somebody at Apple got frustrated that they were being called out. either that they were being called out or the more charitable thing would be that customers were confused by this battery life indicator that was increasingly especially on the new macbooks really not accurate um and you know like you said there are a lot there are a lot of theories i think the reality is and last week's atp did a good job of going over a lot of these issues and in detail

and they know the difference between discrete and integrated so yeah if you want to listen to people that know the difference between those two things don't listen to me don't listen to mike but listen to listen to john and marco and casey so i've really tried there are just i know there are just some things you gave it a go i don't care all about yeah i get it i get it um the you know the when when atp talks about script or programming languages, that's when I pass out and hit my head. So anyway, the theory that I subscribe to is that Apple has been doing a whole lot of work over the last, you know, many years to improve power efficiency on Mac laptops in a lot of ways that make it so that when things aren't cranked up to a hundred percent and the fan is going and it's using all the cores and it's encoding video or whatever, when, when it's doing that, it's got to have that up that, you know, the ability to go up to the highest point of, of a performance and do that. But when it's not doing that, it's, it's, you know, over time,

it's much more aggressive. And the chip designs are like this too, much more aggressive at cranking everything down in order to save power. The challenge with that is if you got a test that is basic web browsing or whatever, depending on how that test is built, it may be revealing a battery figure in terms of time that is real, but continues to diverge more and more from how much battery life does this thing have if I use it at 100% efficiency, if I'm encoding a video or something like that. Because it may have been that back in the olden days, I'm just going to make up numbers now, but back in the olden days,

that Mac laptop that you had would encode video at 100% CPU on battery for an hour and die. But if you did general web browsing, you could get two hours. And then over time, suddenly encoding video still took an hour before it killed the battery, but general web browsing took three hours because they were more efficient with general web browsing, kind of shutting down all the power difference between high mode and low mode. And the theory goes that now we've reached a point where they have progressed so far with this and shaved battery out of these systems that they still will claim, you know, oh, 10 hours

of web browsing. But now that full on 100% using everything is maybe not even an hour. Maybe it's less than an hour. And that's a problem, right? Because that's how you get wild swings and estimates. Because if you're encoding a video or editing a podcast or whatever, at that moment, that thing is going to say, oh, God, you've got 40 minutes left. But if you're just like looking at a file in Microsoft Word, it's going to say, oh,

yeah, you got seven hours left. And those could be with the same percentage of battery. And those could be with the same percentage of battery. And so Apple's argument would probably be, does this do anybody any good to have a time estimate that is not, and it's not even an estimate. The language was remaining time, colon, a time. It was cut to the article. Right? Right? So my reaction to this was,

why didn't you just change the string to say estimated remaining time? Because the idea is I don't know how many people took that as I have exactly one hour and 15. It was always like time is a much better indicator of time than percentage points okay i agree with you and yet the iphone doesn't have a time indicator but i hate that i wish it did have an estimated time remaining right because there are times where like i'm using my ios devices and it says like 35 i have no idea what that means so don't know so the challenge so the challenge is how do you communicate a number when it's not really one number because it depends on how you use it in the future and the answer would be so right right that theoretically if you went

in low power mode um and really refrain from using your phone a whole lot, you could get five hours out of that 20%. But if you are playing Mario Run, then it's going to kill that battery in an hour or half an hour. And those are wildly different numbers or Pokemon Go, right? Wildly different numbers for the same thing. The answer, honestly, and this is the core of my criticism of Apple for doing this, and maybe they'll bring it back at some point with this sort of thing done, is the other way to do this would be to make your number better, right? Not just say estimated time remaining or whatever, which you could do rather than just say remaining time, colon, number. Make it better.

Like profile the user. Know what they're doing. Have that number be based on your standard usage pattern. Provide some intelligent analysis of how people use the laptop. If you're somebody who always is using general web browsing, then know that and use that as the guess. If you're somebody who 10% of the time that they use it, it's at 100% CPUs and the other 90% it's not. Use that as the basis.

Will it be a perfect number? No, it won't be. But it could be a better number and it could be useful for people. And Apple is in the business of simplifying technology, right? This goes back to what you were saying. The time is a better estimate of time than battery percentage. It is because it's the actual measurement. And this computer, hopefully, or phone or tablet should be smart enough to not know for sure. Yes, you might do something completely unexpected. You might do something where, oh, now that I'm on battery power, I'm going to encode this Blu-ray. It's like, what? Why would you do that? Oh, well, okay, I'll do it until my battery runs out. Like, what? Why would you do that?

Oh, well, okay, I'll do it until my battery runs out. That could happen. But your computer could take its best shot. And I think the conventional wisdom anyway is that that number that was until it was removed in the menu bar was not really that. It wasn't good enough of a number. And so your choices are make the number better or remove it and run away. And chose to remove it and run away for now and that's too bad but i think you know the bigger issue here is is i think is the timing of that like if this has been a no problem for a long time then it shouldn't have been done now and even if you wanted to do it now is not the right

time to do it because my guess is that this was yeah my guess is that the the reason why this happened is because it was exacerbated by the new laptops and they were getting not just dinged in the press but also they were getting support issues where people were saying something's wrong with my laptop it says I have seven hours of battery left and then the battery dies in one. And that bubbles up through the chain. And somebody somewhere at Apple is like, I told you that stupid number is always wrong. Why do we even have it? And at some point, somebody in a position of authority said, look, let's just take it out. And it probably wasn't. I would, in fact, I would guess it probably wasn't somebody saying

people are complaining about the amount of time that our batteries last in these laptops. Let's remove the number. I don't think it was that, but you're right. The impression is, oh, geez, people don't like our laptop battery number. Let's take out the readout, right? And it looks terrible. Sure. Here's the thing, though, right?

Even though, like I said, time is a better indicator of time than percentage points, people can still understand how numbers work. Is the percentage indicator better than the time indicator from an API perspective? Because that number is still going to tick down. And if people are losing 40% of battery life in an hour, they still know that's a problem. Right.

I think, well, yeah, sure. That has to be part of the issue is, look, I would say, here, let's pull back for a minute to a little bit broader picture, and this could be something for the WWDC wish list. It's like a Mac wish list item, bit broader picture, and this could be something for the WWDC wishlist. It's like a Mac wishlist item, which is for all of Apple's talk about bringing mobile technology to the Mac and improving it, whether it's features that are also on iOS or whether it's, you know, the things like

the touch bar or better power management. There are places where I think Apple could do an even better job with this, right? And hasn't. And the two that come up now are, and again, ATP talked about this last week, low power mode, which is a much better system-wide conceptual framework for sometimes I need to save battery power. Or sometimes I need to save battery power, whether it's ability to be aware that I'm on a limited, a metered network and not do all this stuff in the background. With power saving, it would be, I'm not going to analyze a thousand photos for mountains and horses right now because I'm trying to save power. And some of that may be going on in the background, but I think there's a lot of skepticism about that, that maybe they've taken their eye off the ball of some of that stuff. And in terms of percentage versus time, I guess what I would say is I get the argument who says, well, I look at that time and I know that that's not the real number, but I use that as a gauge about what my current sort

of battery drain is. And like at this rate of drain, it'll be over by then. But you know, people watch the percentage and do the same thing. People do that. I think it's incumbent on Apple to do a better job of communicating how much time you're going to get out of your phone or your laptop than they maybe do now. And that's across the board, right? Like you said, you know, maybe, you know, 86% battery is not a helpful indicator and that they'd be better off saying here's how much time we think you have with the battery they could all you could also argue that most people don't want even to see anything they just want to see the battery symbol and know when it's halfway and that's the level of granularity that they really need is oh geez

i need to charge and some you know everybody's different people are going to use it for different things but it just frustrates me because it seems like this is something where Apple could do a better job providing information for the user. And instead, what has happened is they've just removed the feature. Yeah, I don't like that. You know, I keep bringing this up, but it's like stickers in iMessage on the iPad in split screen where drag and drop you could drag an image you could drag a sticker but if you're in split screen it wouldn't drop on the message

so the way they fixed that problem was to just no longer allow you to even drag them you've not fixed it you've not fixed this you don't fix something by removing it that's not a fix it's like oh we fixed the engine in your car Like, you don't fix something by removing it. That's not a fix.

He's like, oh, we fixed the engine in your car. We took it out. Is that okay? It's not a problem anymore because it's not in there. I don't know. Yep. I don't know. I'm happy we have a balance this week. I mean, I know there is like a general consensus right now that Apple commentary is grumpy.

And I feel it, and I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated now. I'm at a point where I don't want to keep doing this. So I'm happy we got to talk about something cool like the AirPods today. But I just think that where we are right now in Q4

of 2017, maybe I'm going to give some little spoilers for the upgraders, but you can see it in the voting. One of the nominees, well, a lot of the nominees for the most disappointing products this year include the products that Apple has released, but they are also in the best products of the year category.

Correct. And I think that is a real kind of feeling right now. Like, the iPhone, I love my iPhone 7, but it still disappoints me because there wasn't... It didn't really give me that much,

to be honest, and it took away a lot. I feel like the balance was still there, but iPhones don't usually take away, but the iPhone 7 did, and it gave me some great features but it's it's that's been a weird one you know and then so we were in a weird mood I think in September you know coming off of the iPhone announcement and then it just kind of just snowballed because there was just nothing for the Mac and what there was wasn't good enough

for what the situation apple would allow them to get in so i think that's why i think genuinely we're in a winter of discontent right now that is where we where a lot of apple commentary is because it has been a very weird final quarter of the year for apple product releases right we get that we got all that pent up you know everybody, everybody was frustrated. Everybody's wanting news. And then it came and it was not the release of tension of like, Oh,

thank God now everything's fine. Instead it was, well, and again, you know, I, I think I said this at the time, but it's like that.

The problem was not that there was sort of a mixed reaction to Apple's products that they announced in the fall. The problem was that it was a reaction made by a group that has been desperate for anything. And it magnified the importance of this one set of announcements, where if there were four others of similar level in the past 12 months or 18 months, it wouldn't have mattered so much. It would have been like, well, you know, this is good, this is bad, all that. But, you know, it was such a, you know, everybody's interest was escalated and it enhanced the reaction. And it has left, yeah, it has left everything in a little bit of a weird place.

It's one of the bad side effects of complete Q4 product releases from Apple. Waiting and doing everything in the final quarter. And hopefully, hopefully we're going to see some stuff in the spring for the iPad, which I'm, this is my problem now. I wasn't too frustrated about the Mac stuff, right?

Like I could see the frustration, but I ended up getting what I wanted, which was, right? Like I could see the frustration, but I ended up getting what I wanted, which was the MacBook. And I'm happy with that, but I can see why it frustrates people. The spring better give me some good iPad stuff or I'll be very frustrated. Yeah, that would be scary.

If the spring comes and there are no new iPads or if the iPads are not, like there's no new ipads or if the ipads are uh are not uh like there's no ios update and we and we spend another yeah six months or a year with the terrible app switcher and all that yeah yeah oh yeah get ready for that one then it will be six months of will we even get anything we didn't get anything in 10 so she was on the other foot then yeah me and federico were talking about this and connected a couple of weeks ago like if you are an ipad pro user it's been just as bad right like with there not being anything that you want so like it's just been a funny thing to think about yeah all right it's nearly time for ask upgrade and a mini mic at the movie segment at the end of this week's show but

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Time for us to upgrade. Steven asks, how do you manage your media libraries and what software do you use to do so? I've got so much invested in iTunes, but I really do not like it. I don't have a media library anymore. I use streaming services. Yeah, that's sort of my answer too. I do have an iTunes library,

and that's got my stuff that I bought and downloaded. But so much of what I do now is just using apple music in my case i have a hard drive that has a bunch of movies on it has a bunch of music on it just in folders that have been i'd kind of like moved from device to device over the years and i didn't put that on my iMac when i got it because at that point i was into all the streaming services you know i use netflix i buy things on itunes but i just delete them when I'm done with them because you can just download them or play them straight from the iTunes apps

on any of their devices. I use Apple Music. I use Netflix. I use Amazon Prime. I don't want, I mean, especially in the age of SSDs, I don't want a media library anymore. Yeah, I mean, I keep mine on my server that's got lots of storage but my increasing

uh not you know my lack of use of it and my not caring about it so much uh where i used to care about it a lot and maintain it and all that that's just to me that it's not it's not a priority and perhaps not long for this world i do have like i I use the Amazon uploader to basically, I spent the whatever, $20 a year or something to upload or match. It's the Amazon equivalent of iTunes match my whole library because I don't want to pay for a separate music streaming service for like the Echo. And so I've got basically that makes my MP3 library, my iTunes library available on the Echo. And so I've got, basically that makes my MP3 library, my iTunes library available on the Echo. So if I want to play an album that I own, I can do that because the Prime Music is really limited. And so that expands what's available on the Echo. I was just listening to Out in the Kitchen last night, my wife did a shuffle of Beatles songs, and that all came out of the upload from the library.

And Sonos, when I'm using Sonos, one of the options there is also sort of like your library. And so I have the option through that player to either play from Apple Music or play from Sonos. There are other services. I'm not using Spotify. I'm using Apple Music. But yeah, so it is, you know, I don't really like it. And I wouldn't say, I think the beauty of the streaming services is that you don't have to manage your media libraries. Like I'm more concerned about managing my playlists, like making playlists of things I want to listen to. But when you kind of cut ties more or less and just let yourself be one with the streaming service,

you kind of leave all the media management behind. And there's a lot to say for that. Building on this, Stepan, I assume this is a different person. It is a different person, but Stephen and Stepan both wrote in about why they hate iTunes, which I think is cool. iTunes is a joke in 2016. How do you see its future?

It still seems somewhat essential with restores and fast upgrading of iOS devices and management of media. What do you think, Jason? This has been an often spoken about thing. When is iTunes going to be broken up or when is itunes gonna be remade like do you think that the itunes store has this phoenix from the flames moment within it i'm a little worried that the answer to this is very much like the answer to so much of what we've been talking about the last few months which is how much does Apple care about the Mac? Because, you know, iOS is so important to Apple. Is Apple really, for the people who are consuming music and video on a Mac today,

how many people are doing that versus an Apple TV or an iOS device? In terms of Apple's priorities, it's sort of like iTunes for Windows. It's sort of, I have to ask the question, like, does Apple think it's good enough? Like, not good, but good enough that they don't need to invest in it? Are they really going to make a TV app for the Mac? Or are they just going to say, well, forget it. We don't care. Don't get me wrong. I hope that Apple will make a proper music app that's a better Mac app for Apple Music and a better video app that lets you see movies and TV on the iTunes store and maybe separates out wired device sync and stuff, wired and wireless device sync. But if I had to guess if I, you know, there's somebody in Apple making the argument that that's an edge case,

and that everybody's moving to, to the cloud, everybody's using iOS devices for streaming stuff. And it's just not a it's, it's just not a big enough market, it works. And let's keep it working. But let's not make a major investment into transforming iTunes. It's, you know, it is what it is on the Mac. Let's just leave it there. And based on what's happened with iTunes the last couple of years, that seems accurate because I, you know, there's nothing. It's just, it continues to exist. And on top of that, like there's not a lot of competition. So I don't feel like Apple is having its lunch eaten by anybody else on the Mac. So that there's even less of a reason for them to care. That's depressing,

but it is, but I think it's true. Donovan asked, uh, I would love to hear your thoughts on what is considered to be a standard mic recommendation. The blue Yeti for somebody getting started podcasting. I still recommend the blue Yeti. Uh, mic recommendation the blue yeti for somebody getting started podcasting i still recommend the blue yeti uh i used the blue yeti for many years and the reason i recommend it is it is a really good all-in-one package it's not the best sound quality um it's difficult to mount to a shock mount so like if you it comes in it

comes with an integrated stand if you put it on the table it's fine but you bump into the table, that's going to really come into the microphone. So you have to be careful with it. Don't wrap your hands on the table. Just stop playing with the table and you'll be fine. But what the Yeti comes with, I love. It comes with the ability to plug some headphones in so you can monitor the microphone. So you can listen to your own voice as you're talking, which is very important so you can understand the volume levels but also to help you improve your podcasting voice.

It has gain controls right on there so you can control how loud the microphone is. It has a mute switch, a hardware mute switch built right into the device. And it also has the four different modes that it can do so it can yeah it's it's set up to either record just you or record you and a person sitting in front of you to record you and maybe one or two people sitting next to you or to record four people around a table or something like that and and honestly it does a pretty good job of all of those. So, and for like $110, it is on Amazon right now. For me, my recommendation is you would be hard pressed to find a better all rounder

than the Blue Yeti. And I always, I used the Yeti for years and I always recommended it to people who were getting started. I don't anymore. So you might be hard pressed, but I am not. I have switched to recommending the Audio-Technica ATR2100 USB. We put that, we can put a link in the show notes to my story on six colors about a podcast studio for under a hundred dollars but the atr 2100 usb you know it's got a it's not it's it's got an on off switch that serves as a mute switch it uh it is more readily mountable on it's a lot smaller it's a lot less heavy it comes with its own tripod and mic clip it's also fairly compatible with some relatively cheap sound isolator. What

is it that keeps you from bumping? You just said it's shock mounts, shock mounts, right? So it's much more compatible with stuff like that. It's got its own handphone jack. It's got its own volume level. It's not, you you know its mute switch isn't as nice as the yeti its volume adjustment is not as nice as the yeti but it's small and light and more compatible with shock mounts and more compatible with windscreens because it's because it's smaller you can just buy a cheap windscreen so that's the little phone that you put over the top of the microphone yeah stop the like the popping the p's and all that and uh it's often available for between 35 and 50 on amazon certainly so it's it's it's cheaper um all of these are reasons why i think

it's probably the best choice now and the other reason is in sound tests it's generally better at handling echoey rooms it doesn't have some of the nice features that Mike mentioned that the Yeti has, like the two across feature, which I really like, which is if you and a friend do a podcast together in person, you can put the Yeti on the table and both of you sit on opposite sides of it. And it is set up that it will record sort of you on one side and them on the other side, and it ends up sounding pretty nice. But the Yeti is not so great in echoey rooms and the atr 2100 is much better in echoey rooms i also think the atr 2100 is hard to get in outside the us hard to get in the uk is that true i can't find it on amazon right now yeah yeah but it's and it may have a different name in the uk

but um but i think it's think that's my recommendation now. And you should check out that podcast studio for under $100 because I mentioned the accessories, getting a windscreen and a shock mount and maybe a mic stand to replace. Although the 2100 actually comes with a mic stand. So it's pretty full featured for cheap. So I think for most people who are looking for a relatively low cost entry into podcast microphones, that might be my choice today instead of the Yeti. You have asked if a genie appears and gives you the ability to listen to a podcast which is recorded one year into the future,

but you can listen to it today, what show would it be, Jason? It would be the weekly direct from Tim Cook's office, tell you everything that's going on at Apple and what he's thinking about what Apple's doing podcast that he's going to launch in 2017. Oh, that sounds like fun. Episode like 22 of that. I can't wait. I would listen to the Connect year and review episode so we're going to record that tomorrow so next year is one of those because then i'll find out about the entire year's technology stories and then i can start putting bets on it and then i can i can

start to run mill valley and and i don't think you want to i don't think you want to uh like uh cross your own timeline, though. That could be dangerous. You're hearing yourself. And what if you're not on that episode, Mike? What if you're gone and you're like, what happened to me? Why am I not on the year-in-review episode of Connected for 2017?

Well, because I already knew everything and put all the bets on one millions and millions of dollars and I don't need to be on the show anymore. Maybe. All right, so that has concluded ask upgrade for this week so we will now fire off the spoiler horn as we are about to discuss star wars rogue one so if you are still listening to us right now you have made the decision that you want to hear me and jason talk about star wars world one so if you are spoiled at this point that is not our fault

i listened to the incomparable episode 331 uh where is you and tony and monty and ren and john syracuse uh spend some time talking about the movie having pretty much just seen it i saw it on thursday night me too and i think that on the whole i i echo a lot of the the feelings that you have and that many of the the the cast of characters on the incomparable do so this force awakens this was not Force Awakens, this was not. I agree. I didn't cry during Rogue One. I didn't feel like I needed to cheer during Rogue One.

I was not overcome with emotion. I don't know if the movie attempted to do that in the same way. I don't know. But my emotion didn't just come from nostalgia I had genuine feelings and emotions for Rey and for Finn like I was really caught up in that story in a very different way so I mean I don't know what the difference was there honestly but it didn't feel like that for me and I'll wait to see how episode eight makes me feel, right? Because if episode eight makes me feel just the way that Rogue One made me feel kind of emotionally,

then I'll realize it was just because I was so freaking excited for Star Wars to come back, right? Because that may have been what it was. I couldn't stand the CGI characters. Tarkin and Leia. Leia was an abomination. Tarkin was okay, but the Leia face at the end, it just looked like Final Fantasy. She did not look like a real person at all to me. So I've asked a bunch of people if they noticed the CGI.

And it's not like they're pure cgi i think they have they have body doubles and then they did a face replacement and the face replacement is a cgi face replacement i think that's how they did it um i asked a bunch of people about this including my family and i can tell you my family members did not notice that tarkin was a cgi character and i think this is where we are now i think this was as impressive a bit of work as you could have to get to the point where people who didn't know Peter Cushing from Star Wars and know that that's Peter Cushing and know that he's been dead for 20 years or whatever. And all of that,

who just are watching a Star Wars movie and not paying as close attention to some details as as some nerds are um i think this was probably the the tarkin was probably good enough for most of them to not notice at which point job done right although you could argue and and this would be my argument that anybody who cares that it looks exactly like Peter Cushing, those are the people who are going to notice that it's not. Yeah. And hiring a lookalike to do it, somebody who looks kind of like him, like they did with Wayne Pegram in Star Wars Episode 3, maybe would disappoint fans in a different way because it's not Peter Cushing. But at the same time, it would also not be a synthetic character. Leia, I think everybody liked the idea of it, even though they knew that that was not, because they know what Carrie Fisher looks like now.

They know that that's not her, that's her from back then. And so they were twigged onto that being synthetic in a way that they weren't with Tark so so i feel like they came a long way right they unsuspecting people didn't really notice but if you look closely which all the nerds were looking closely um it feels it took me out of the movie entirely i i couldn't even tell you what is said in those scenes because i was completely taken out of it by the fact that that was a synthetic character made to look and sound like peter cushing i will say that just for the record it did not pop into my mind that he was dead that wasn't it for me it didn't really cross my mind it wasn't in my it wasn't in the front of my mind that peter cushing was dead like star wars for me is so out of time as to when it was made like i don't really think about the fact that

the people in that movie are like 40 years old like it doesn't really because it's just been this like thing so i obviously if i think about it rationally the guy of that age will not be alive now but that that wasn't my feeling it wasn't that i felt like i was looking at a dead man i just knew i wasn't looking at a human being. And I could tell immediately. And I don't know if it's because I play more video games, right? So you can see this. Because what it is, is it is nuance of movement.

As he was walking, he was walking like a video game character. And it was the movement more than the facial expressions that really destroyed it for me because he's ever so slightly kind of just floating like it just looks weird like there is not as much expressive movement in him it is by far the best sustained cgi i've seen you know like as i saw somebody uh mentioned in ant-man michael douglas like that was incredible but probably easier to do because they could use michael douglas right exactly and then just de-age him exactly i assume that makes it easier but and robert downey and civil war is the same way yeah i haven't seen that yet um oh yeah there's a flashback i mean that's not a spoiler like it's just yeah

robert downey was also in movies in the 80s and they used some footage of that to build a face replacement to make him younger yeah i think they just used too much of him a couple of scenes with him not moving would have been that's my that's my feeling about it is i i think because because john syracuse was going on about how he thought it was a mistake and i was like you know i i thought it was great when it was his reflection in the glass. And then he turns around and says something. And they just have him in groups? That's really cool.

But then he's like, somebody said, I think he's in this more than he's in Star Wars. I'm like, yeah, I felt like it was too much. They were like, look, we can do this. Let's do a lot of it. And it's like, could you, you know, maybe only use him when absolutely necessary would have been better. It is an impressive achievement. It is. But it still didn't work for me because I knew and it took me out of the movie.

And ideally, that wouldn't be the case. And whether it's that he's dead or just that he's, I mean, that movie was 45 years ago, 40 years ago. I don't even know how many, 50 years ago. Yeah. 50 years ago. He obviously is. But that wasn't what I was thinking at the time. 40 years ago i don't even know how many 50 years ago yeah 50 years ago he obviously is but it's it that wasn't what i was thinking 40 years ago you know so but believe it or not the character that i could pay that really so with tarkin was there like i was like okay but i could appreciate the

technical achievement so it didn't upset me but i was like and they really wanted this to be the movie that leads into star wars right and having him there and having darth vader there makes that the case and the leia one was such a short thing where i was like ah you did not do a good job but you know above me the most vader i hated that scene darth vader is three things. He is movement, costume, and voice. The movement didn't look right, and the voice sounded like an old man. Well. Because he's an old man, and I think they should have... How many millions of people in the world can do a good Darth Vader impression? Yeah.

Like, I don't know why they use James Earl Jones. I think it's hard to not make a movie with Darth Vader and not have James Earl Jones do it. Just every line of dialogue sounded unconvincing to me. See, that didn't bother me at all. Yeah, I was really surprised that nobody brought that up. Although going back to Star Wars, I think the Vader body movement in Star Wars is weird too.

Part of the challenge with Darth Vader is that Darth Vader in Star Wars is weird too. Part of the challenge with Darth Vader is that Darth Vader in Star Wars is very different from Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. He looks different. He moves differently. It's a very different performance and they kind of matched it.

I think they matched it wrong though. I know why they did it but I think they should have given us the Vader everybody knows. Like having dress in the appropriate dress for the time but the movement he just looked a bit timid and and like when you're coupling that with the the echoes of the imperial march in that big lava castle it all didn't work like this is clearly a very intimidating guy but the the movement was unsure, but it was the voice for me.

I really didn't like it at all. I love that scene at the end, though, where he arrives and his Star Destroyer destroys all those ships, and then he gets on board the ship and he kills all those guys in the funny hats. Yep, I think I'm going to see the movie again, obviously. I genuinely think that that will probably become

one of my favorite star wars scenes of all time it was fantastic because the whole space battle is amazing oh yeah i mean the two i mean i'll get we'll get to the star destroyers smashing into each other in a minute but like that that scene where he's just like just hacking and slashing and it's like this doesn't we don't see this very often but this is what it be like. He is an evil man and he has a job to do. And his job is to get that disc. So yeah, he will just kill everyone that gets in his way and he doesn't care about it.

And I was like, that is the kind of like the anger that, and that kind of brutality that isn't in a lot of Star Wars because of the time, but would be there today as we now see it, right? Because movies just tend to be more violent than they were then. And I liked that. I liked that scene because it was very convincing for me. If he would have just been walking through that corridor and just force pushing everybody out of the way,

like, you know, like just, ah, just get out of my way. No, he's going to be killing some guys trying to get that thing because that's how important that was to Darth Vader, right? Like, that is his job to save the Empire. He's just been put in this role, right? Like, it's his first role on the job. And so he's going to go and kill some fools with the funny hats. Yeah.

And I love that that led straight in, by the way. Like, that you get the white walls. Like, I loved all of that. Like, the fact that that led straight in by the way like that you get the white walls like i loved all of that like the fact that it went straight into it but the the space battles in this movie were my favorite thing because they are some of the best that they've ever had so whatever it was then the decisions that they've made but like there are some things like everything in space was incredible like the moment when the light was hitting the the ships and then it hits the star destroyer you know like it's like it's like the sun or whatever is is casting over them that was just a beautiful scene but when the two star destroyers smash into each

other when the x-wings hit the the force field and just like smash and skid in and skid across the yeah because the easy thing to do is just have them explode right like that because the easy thing to do is have them explode right like that's the easy thing to do like but they they came up with something new which makes way more sense which is like this is just like hitting a wall right so you're just going to skid across it i really like The performances were mostly good. Is it KS2O or K2SO? Yeah, something like that. Clear standout performance by a country mile. It's so good. The CGI, the character design is great.

The physical movement of him is great, and the voice is great. And that was Alan Tudyk, and he was a motion capture performer as that, so he was on the set in the motion capture performing that that character yeah they that that was just a fantastic character um i really i really enjoyed felicity jones as jenna so um what i really liked about it is her look like she had a great look like that she was she was a convincing

like rebel you know in the same way that Rey was like you just could look at her and believe that she could super handle herself she just had that look about her which i really liked i did not enjoy uh cassian diego luna i just didn't enjoy that performance i did i didn't

really think that he brought a lot to it forrest whitaker was incredible um and donnie yen donnie played a character's force monk yeah i can't i i actually can't say that what what is his name is it churt yeah i'm not gonna even try mads mikkelsen also great and and a lot of the kind of the the small actors um i really enjoyed those like you know like the kind of the ragtag group uh but there were some that were like you know especially diego luna i really didn't enjoy him um and and that was a shame my feeling on this is like this is this is what the prequels should have been like this is what this is a prequel like this is a prequel the this is they made a good star wars prequel mike this is it right this is how i feel about this is like this is a movie which is just setting up the big ones right and that's maybe what the prequel should have been because it had everything

the prequels had to deal with which was a story we already know yeah right and it's darth vader the darth vader we know not the darth vader we get in the prequels, who is super disappointing in my mind. This is the scary Darth Vader. He's scary. Removing the Vader thing, people say the problem with the prequels is we knew what was going to happen. But we knew what was going to happen in this movie, that they would get the plans. But they did something that was unexpected, which I loved, which is that they killed everyone. Everybody dies. Everybody dies. did something that was unexpected which i loved which is that they killed everyone everybody dies and that is everybody dies it's a great way to end this movie because it's like that makes sense no one should have lived through that and the whole and it makes way more sense for

the continuation of the story that the success was built upon the people that sacrificed and i think it makes so much sense yes i think it is it's really dangerous i mean prequels are dangerous because you're playing with people sort of um it's not just the canon it's what we call the head canon it's sort of like the world you build up to fill in the blanks um if the prequel disputes that you can end up in a really weird bit of cognitive dissonance where you're like oh no no i didn't really expect that i think this movie does such a good job of making kind of intensifying feelings that you have for star wars because you get like because the macguffin in star wars is the plans it's the death Death Star plans. Leia puts them in R2-D2.

He gets jettisoned to Tatooine. He finds Ben Kenobi. They have to travel to Alderaan. It gets blown up. They go to the Death Star. They escape. They take the plans back to Yavin, you know, and they use the plans to blow up the Death Star, right?

That is the entire movie of Star Wars is about these plans and the ramifications of them. And now we know the people who sacrificed their lives to get the plans out. Now we know them. And I feel like that makes a difference. We see how close at many points the plans come from not getting to their destination, including by Darth Vader cutting a bunch of people up with lightsabers. I think that's all good. And if you want to take it this way, we also, they also do a very clever thing about how could it be that the Death Star has this flaw

that lets you go to one thermal exhaust port and shoot one proton torpedo down them. Fantastic. Just fantastic retcon. The answer is one of the chief engineers of the Death Star tried to leave because he hated the Empire and the Empire found him, killed his wife. His daughter disappears. He's dragged back into service.

And he has, and the movie doesn't, you know, you have to work this out for yourself. But it's like, he has three choices. He can let them kill him. He can collaborate with them. That's it, right? So what's his third choice? His third choice is act like you're collaborating with them while you are undermining them from within. And that's what he chooses to

do. And he does it for years and he doesn't see his daughter and his wife is dead. But in the end, like the hero of that movie is Galen Erso. It's Mads Mikkelsen because he is the guy who makes the flaw and then gets the plans that gets the info about where the plans are so they can find the flaw to the rebellion. do which was being uh treating people badly and being cruel to people and in this case you know killing his wife and and taking him away from his daughter because they need him to work on this on the on the death star and that is the inhuman immoral act that causes the empire to fall that's pretty cool from this movie we get all of that i i think that the uh the script writer who came up with that they had a real eureka moment that day like it really works like it makes sense because up until this point it has always been like a pardon the pun a hole in the the plot why does the death star have

a hole mike it's like how how stupid could they have been right but it's like no they weren't stupid yeah it was a trick and it's you know everybody's gonna have their own take on it but for me it's like that was the art of it is that it feels like a good way to address it not rather than it being some dumb like well actually what you what you find is that empire construction techniques require the no it's not like that it's you know what the guy in charge of the death star tried to quit and they killed his wife and made him and forced him to do it and so we said screw you guys i'm gonna make a flaw in the death star and make sure the rebellion knows about it so that they can stop this weapon before it destroys more

than you know one two three planets i'm gonna i'm gonna do what i can and i i buy that i love that i i really appreciate that that's where we ended up is that i accept that canon accepted like that it works because all that the rebel all of the the empire think the rebels are doing is stealing the death stars plants right which is more than enough of a reason to try and stop them what they but they don't know that the plans contain a flaw in them but that doesn't matter because it's convincing enough that the rebels would just want them anyway. Well, you know what's,

what's, what's funny is you could argue that, and I want to see the movie before arguing this further, but you could argue that Krennic, right? When he kills all the engineers and all of that, and he's, he's on the outs,

right? He's been, he's been displaced by Tarkin. He's been told to go away by Vader basically. And he, he goes to the, to the planet where the plans are. And given what all is going on there and what,

uh, what Galen Erso says about how he was the one who betrayed them, he might have an inkling that this is a bigger deal. He might. But nobody will listen to him. And he dies with everyone else. So it doesn't matter, right? I kind of like the idea that maybe Krennic is figuring it out, that there's a bigger issue, that Galen Erso has done something really bad with the Death Star. I'm not sure the movie supports that, but if not, then my headcanon will support that.

But, you know, in the end, Krennic's been told to pound sand, literally, because it's a sandy planet where they put the... Whoever... We said this on The Incomparable. Whoever decided that the storage tapes would all be located on a sandy beach, that person deserves a medal. They were looking for a retirement place. What a great setting. Another great setting. Right.

We got this in episode seven. We got some incredible settings with the water and stuff. What a great place to have a battle. Yeah. Yeah, it was really good. So I'll say, like, there are parts of this movie that I didn't like, but I liked it. It was a very good action movie set in the Star Wars universe.

Yeah. But it wasn't what I considered to be a Star Wars movie. And this is it, right? They call it a Star Wars story. Right. And there's no crawl, and they didn't have the usual song, right? Like, there's all of this stuff. It's like, this stuff is like this is with the types of things you know i love by the way all the old star wars stuff coming back all

the the look and the design and the old old stormtroopers all great love to see all of that and it was done so well um but yeah it's like this is a really great movie well this is a this is a good movie within the Star Wars universe. I expect the Han Solo movie to be like this. I expect the Boba Fett movie to be like this. Like, good movies in the Star Wars universe. Like the Marvel movies.

That was a good Iron Man movie, but it ain't no Avengers. Right? Like, it's the same kind of idea, I think. Yeah, I think that's probably right. That you've got your standalone movies that are kind of, like, connected in the Marvel sense, they're connected, but they're not part of the main through line of story. You know, Doctor Strange was like that, Ant-Man was like that, Guardians of the Galaxy is sort of like that, where, you know, whereas the Avengers and Civil War and all of that, that's the, like,

the ongoing story that they're telling, and this other stuff just sort of ties in. This is a little bit like that. I gotta say, I look at a movie like this and think i would like to see more movies like this in the star wars story every other year kind of thing because i would really hate it if the every other year kind of thing literally was just hey remember that character you liked from a long time ago this is when they were younger or there's here's another adventure they had i actually like the idea that this movie is people we don't know it is very closely tied into people we do know and the setting of a movie we know but i do like that i hope they have the the uh the freedom and uh and creativity to do some stories set in the star wars universe that are not

uh you know young han solo young chewbacca, young Boba Fett, whatever. Star Wars babies. Yeah, exactly right. I would like some other kinds of movies. It's such a rich universe and you can have a lot of fun with it. And here they made a war movie. There are other kinds of movies

they could make too. I want to see like a romance-led movie, which actually reminds me that I didn't like. I hate sand. It's so rough and coarse and oh not that kind of romance i didn't like the romance that blossomed at the end of the movie if i felt force yeah the barely and barely there yeah it it felt like maybe there was some deleted scenes uh but it definitely felt like it was just like forced in and then was like hinted at and

then was blatant and then was hinted at again I didn't think that landed very well but good movie and I'm going to see it again if you want to find our show notes for this week head on over to relay.fm upgrades 120 we'll be back next week on Boxing Day for a holiday extravaganza

and then the week after that will be the broadcast of the pre-recorded Upgradies. It feels like a real award show. I know, right? We're pre-recording it in case anybody does anything wild. And we can't let that be put on air. If you want to find our show notes for this week, I've already told you where to go.

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Until next time, say goodbye, Mr. Snell. All the great shows! It's better than screaming it is