Upgrade - 129: Disneyland for Developers

Episode Date: February 20, 2017

How will Apple’s WWDC be different now that it’s moving back to San Jose from San Francisco? Why is The Iconfactory kickstarting a new version of Twitterrific for Mac? And in this episode, Myke at the Movies travels back in time to 1984 for “The Terminator."

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 129 today's show is brought to you by text expander from smile ero encapsular and squarespace my name is mike hurley i am joined by mr jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i'm joined by mr jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i'm very good mr jason snell how are you good good it's uh it's more rain where we got the atmospheric river here did you know have you heard about the atmospheric river i don't know that phrase at all but i knew that there was rain in california basically it's just referring to imagine a giant like uh hose of water from the tropics spraying all over California. That's nice of it.

That's what we have. The tropics are being very good to you, I guess. Yeah. Because you need the rain, right, in San Francisco. Totally need the rain. This is the wettest year we've had in a very long time, and it follows several of the driest years we've had in a very long time. So you might be able to use your hose pipe in the summer. That would be nice.

I might be able to plant some things. I think I won't, but it's possible. Yeah, anything's possible. You don't have the excuse anymore. It's like, oh, I can't look after garden plants because they can't water them. They're keeping a lot of the drought restrictions in place because the idea is that there will be wet years and there will be really dry years and so you want to just sort of not use a lot of water regardless because you need to save the water yeah for for when it's dry but yeah

yeah i i'll water a plant here and there that'll be great i'll flush my toilet woo fancy uh there is a theme to this week's follow-up the theme is me every piece of follow-up today is related to me in some way interesting i i thought you were going to say there's a we've got a theme song for the follow-up this time we do and and uh any mike's got the follow-up it's all about mike follow-up there you go that's all we needed uh i picked up one of those x1 mice the citrix mouse thing so you can use it's all we needed. I picked up one of those X1 mice, the Citrix mouse thing. So you can use it with all your Citrix? Well, this is what I thought, right?

Like last time when I was looking at the Citrix page, it just kind of said that you had to be using some kind of Citrix corporate environment. But then Jay Travers on Twitter let me know about a client called Jump Desktop, which is just like you put the client on your Mac, you download the iOS app, and then you can connect to your Mac, right right like something like screens or something like that just like a regular kind of vnc application so when i found out about this and jump desktop explicitly supports these mice um i picked up one of them the mice i got i bought it from citrix directly which felt like super corporate like they is the only um is the only thing that I can remember having bought recently that explicitly

had a, had a screen to ask for my VAT information, which was hilarious. So it's like, it's super businessy. So it came and basically it works perfectly well. So I connected to my Mac on my iPad. It's super weird and kind of awesome.

Like I'm able to use a mouse and move the mouse around and I can just so I connected to my Mac on my iPad. It's super weird and kind of awesome. Like I'm able to use a mouse and move the mouse around and I can just interact with my Mac on my iPad as I was expected. The lag isn't that bad. It's way better than I would have thought. I tried editing a podcast in it just to see what that would be like. The problem that I had was like a lack of gestures. Like I couldn't very easily pan around and swipe around because the mouse isn't like functional enough to have all like the the crazy

score wheels and obviously there was no trackpad but right just so i used it today because there's this this is one thing i constantly complain about this there's like a set of emails that i need to send once a week that require me to pull some fields out of a google sheet and email them to people so i have to do this on my mac because i need rich text support so it keeps the table fun like formatting so today i just grabbed the mouse and i opened my ipad it was purely for a test and i was able to do it all and send all those emails out so this is very interesting to me i mean you know if i was the sort of person that needed a Mac for some weird application of some description

and was only kind of holding on to that but was an iPad person, I would totally go with a headless Mac Mini, put it in a closet, and use this mouse to connect to it. If all I was using my Mac for was just a weirdo application that only works on the Mac that's for my work and also to send these emails that need this rich text, then that's what I would do because this works perfectly well. The first thing I do, I open up System Preferences

and adjust the screen resolution because the 5K iMac on the iPad, everything is minuscule it's like with the settings I have so to make every limb a little bit bigger and then it works perfectly fine like it I was really super surprised at how well it worked and I'm kind of a little bit disappointed that like I couldn't get uh Logic to work the way that I wanted because it was like oh I may never need to bring a Mac on the road to edit a show. Imagine that. I will note that when I was digging around, I was looking up at Screens. Screens is my current favorite of these applications,

just for general stuff. And I was kind of digging around, and I spoke to Luke, and he is aware of these mice, but it isn't very high on his list right now because not a lot of people have them, obviously. But what he did mention to me, which I'd completely forgotten about, is there is an in-app purchase in screens to turn a secondary device into

a trackpad. Like an iPhone? Yeah. So, similar kind of deal, really. You know, like I could use my iPhone as a trackpad on my iPad. You know, like iPhone as a trackpad and then screens on my iPad. you know like iphone's trackpad and then screens on my on my ipad so that's pretty there but it is but it's but so is using a mouse with your ipad it's all wacky

uh it's just depending on what you're looking for but uh i was i'm very surprised at how well this works and i'm thinking about like what other things do i do on my mac that maybe i don't need to do because this mouse works surprisingly well like i've never really i've always been one to turn my iMac off but maybe i won't do that so much anymore because i don't necessarily need to be in the office to use it well i do have that happen with screens the way i use it i have a mac mini server so i do turn my iMac off but the mac mini server is always on and i will occasionally from a remote location i did this when i was in Hawaii i needed to do something that i realized like i didn't bring a file with me or something like that but it was on the Mac and so i ended up

uh you know using the screens to control my Mac mini to get the thing where i needed it to be so that i could get it on my iPad and it was just, you know, it is convenient to have it there. I would say my feeling about these remote screen interfaces is in my experience, it's always been sort of a last resort. Sort of like how emulation was back in the old

pre-Intel days and the PowerPC days where it's like, if you need to run Windows software on a Mac, you can do it, but you would mac you can do it but you would never choose to do it unless there was no other recourse and that's how i sort of feel about this but hey you know the when when um when you and marco were talking see it's almost like i'm segueing into our next bit of follow-up when you and marco were talking about the ipad and the mac one of the things you mentioned in that conversation was the walls. Like if you hit a wall

and you can't, uh, there's something you can't do on the iPad. One way to get past the walls is to have a window into some other computer somewhere, whether it's a virtual windows desktop or it's a Mac server, or it's a, you know, a terminal, a terminal SSHing to a Unix system. That's one way to get around the walls, in addition to things like web services. So this can be a piece of the puzzle to, for example, traveling with an iPad. Not having a Mac, but not traveling with it, but having it available in an emergency case. Because here's the thing. This is just a straight-up Bluetooth device.

All I'm doing is connecting this mouse via Bluetooth. So it is exactly that. Any developer, in theory, could build this support in. That is the thing that bugs me about this. And I'm going to come back to that thing that I've been complaining about for a while now, which is since Apple has broken the idea that there's no cursor in iOS, because you can 3D touch on the iPhone to get that cursor for text selection and insertion, and you can two fingers down on the iPad to do it.

Since they've already done there, that's like the seal is broken. Just support Bluetooth pointing devices. It's not going to put a cursor on anyone's screen. That's not going to happen. But if you support Bluetooth pointing devices, it means that apps that could use it for text selection or for moving a cursor remotely can do it. Nobody else is going to use it for anything, and that's fine. You know, you can have it be that the default state of that device is that it doesn't seem to do anything. But if you're in a text editing interface that works with the two fingers down or the 3d touch, that it'll also work with a trackpad that you can select text and move it around,

or drive a mouse in a in a VNC app, like why why not do that? Why not do that and have it be standard so that every app can just say, yes, I want to register that device and use it if you're a Luke and you're doing screens. Yes, we will support Bluetooth pointing devices. Done. Not like we have to do something weird to support this strange Citrix mouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just a thing that you can do. I agree with that. Yeah, and I don't think it breaks... I mean, the argument is iOS doesn't need a pointing device. It's like, well, it doesn't need one, but you know, it already has an IBM cursor for text selection. So just let people do it optionally. No one else, it will not break it. If you don't have one of those, you will never, nothing is broken in iOS by doing this. But some things could be made way better by offering it as an option to people who care. So I've actually added that one back to my iOS 11 wish list.

It's like, why not? What does it hurt to do that? And this is a great example of what it helps. Yeah, there are cases. There are definitely cases. Yeah, there are not a lot, but there are some. There are some. We found two, right?

We found two good ones. And there are probably a few more. But those are two really good ones that are text selection and driving a cursor on a remote screen. So we mentioned it last week. Jason just alluded to it. Me and Marco went head-to-head on our discussion about the future of computing. It's a real AFMB side.

I put a link in the show notes to it if you want to go and find it and take a listen, which you should. I think it was a good discussion. We didn't really come to much of a resolution, but I don't think we expected to. But there was, we kind of surprised each other. I think about where we ended up with it by the end of the discussion.

So I think it's worth checking out. And as, as we were joking, we can now finally stop talking about it. Now, now we've come together. We don't need to talk about it anymore. You guys the hard work of i think in the end boiling it down to the the your worldviews and the way you're using the terms which was always my frustration and hearing

conversations about this is everybody was arguing something slightly different yeah yeah and so it seemed like they were at loggerheads when in fact they might actually have been agreeing but they were they were you know they were using different terms so it sounded like they were at loggerheads when in fact they might actually have been agreeing, but they were, they were, you know, they were using different terms. So it sounded like they were disagreeing. So you guys, you guys seem to have a very similar vision about what a computing device of, you know, I was using in my Macworld article, like 2025, what a future computing device is like. And then it's just a question of where do we, you know, what device leads there? And, you know, my, my view is still that the iPad is far more likely to lead there because that's Apple's next generation. Apple doesn't need a Copeland 2025 kind of, you know, a new operating system for 2025. They've got one. It's iOS. iOS is Apple's next generation operating system. So if Apple's going to design the computer of the future for a decade out, then I think it's iOS. iOS is Apple's next generation operating system. So if Apple's going to design the computer of the future for a decade out, then I think it's going to be the iPad based on what we now think of as the iPad anyway, because it's far more likely that'll be iOS than some retrofitted version of macOS. But I can see all the sides of it. And the other thing I would say about what

Marco said is, I think one of his overriding concerns is he is he is a developer right he is a developer and he's very concerned about like how do i get my work done as as the future progresses and you know for him it's going to be a very long time before he could possibly get his work done on a system based on an ipad there are a lot of steps that have to go into it to get to that point. And so I get why he is much more resistant to that idea, because for him, he can't be a person to make that move, because he's got some of the strictest requirements of anybody. If you remember my long-term saga now with my bridge keyboard,

right, so they sent me another one. It wasn't working. Exact same problem. Same thing that happened to me, yeah. So I sent it back to them, and I've asked for a full refund. They were very apologetic. It seems like we've got confirmation now that what they did was they had a group of 12.9 keyboards that were a bad batch.

And what's frustrating to me is that I went through this, you went through this. They seem to acknowledge that it's an issue, but they knew it was an issue before and they seem to have been unable or unwilling to pull those units off the market because they don't work or to test them to see that they don't work it's like i asked them like do you test them before they go out like this is clearly an issue and they were like we don't yeah and you know that this is an issue

you should pull all of them and test all of them and i think you know you sent me that email that they sent you it may be now that they've pulled all of them from their UK store, like they've had them all shipped back. But yeah, this is why when people ask me and when I wrote that article, I basically said, I got one that works and I really like it, but, you know, I had two that didn't work and you had two that didn't work. And so I don't, you know, so I can't really give it a recommendation. I can tell you that I've got one that works

and it's pretty nice, and their customer service was nice, but the bottom line is I had this, I do ship things, get a box, ship it back, get a box, ship it back, get a box to get it to work right. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I would just say,

I know that you really like it and I can see why, but if you're thinking about it i cannot right now at all recommend that anybody buy this product because yeah it is it's insane like i i've had two of them yeah because because they they had a they've had a severe production problem with their with their at least the 12.9 that you know and there are bad ones out there and they didn't seem to test them yeah just between me you and federico three people we've had five broken ones yeah so and it's the exact same problem of all of them like they just miss key presses the one that i got that worked was literally the guy in customer service at the headquarters of bridge

said i have one right here i have just tested it it works fine i am sending it to you now like that was what it took the warehouse was full of the bad ones and it's just yeah at some point you just gotta i mean i feel bad for them but what are they going to do they're going to keep shipping those things out to people having them be broken and then paying to ship them back it's like what what is going on there so yeah yeah, it's unfortunate, because I think it's got a lot going for it in terms of the technology, the design of the clips, and the fact that you can pivot it to any angle, I think the industrial design of it's really good. But you know, it's a keyboard, you have to type on it. If it drops letters, it's a complete failure. So yeah, I think until they,

maybe they'll get their act together, maybe they will replace all these products and then they'll make a statement or something like that but right now yeah it's very hard to to suggest to anybody that they go through this cycle of you know hoping that they get one that's functional last quick thing uh relay fm is currently hiring uh we are looking for a part-time remote administrative assistant to help us out with some of the things that we do here at RelayFM. We have some information up at relay.fm. We are accepting cover letters and resumes up until February the 24th. We've had quite a few great applications, so we're just going to be opening it up until Friday this week.

So if you're interested, please take a look and maybe send some stuff in. And you never know where it might go. So thank you. Alright, this week's episode is brought to you by TextExpander from Smile. TextExpander for Teams multiplies

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It's like, we have a slight problem with this URL. It's like like it happens it totally happens the name is a great name but it can cause some issues yes surprise jason snell wwdc has been announced surprise it's very unexpected to get this news uh in february yeah isn't that nice it's almost reasonable to give people a lot of time to plan to come across the country we're gonna come back to this with the world but surprise times two san jose yeah we're all going to san jose california everyone from june 5 to 9 do you know the way to san jose i know the way because Apple used to have their developer conference there. So it's

just a return. It's a return to San Jose for Apple. Developers are able to register for their place from March 27th at 10 a.m. Pacific and tickets will be offered to people by random selection. You have about a week to get your application in and then there'll be a lottery and then people pick from the lottery can buy their tickets. So short i was thinking about this and while san jose is interesting and we'll get to maybe some of the implications of moving the location there's a lot here with this announcement in which apple has given us exactly what we were concerned or complaining about last year. So we have got a ton of notice, like months of notice rather than weeks of notice. Travel costs are cheaper.

It's cheaper to fly. It's cheaper to stay. So it's cheaper to fly, I've found, from people flying from Europe. There are less flights, but they're definitely available. There are less companies that offer flights, but my flights have been fine and you're booking to san jose airport yeah yeah there are some directs british airways offers direct from london nice uh flying into san jose um the hotel costs are significantly cheaper oh yeah i found like i'm looking at like saving over a thousand dollars well and there's a couple things about it

the um the hotels are cheaper in san jose and the available hotels sort of near the convention center are um if you get outside of the downtown core and you're willing to take a cab or an uber or um to even be on the light rail line you can you know it's even cheaper so there are lots of um it's yeah it's flexible it's a it's not a it's not a tourist city so in the summer uh you don't have the pressure on hotel rooms that that san francisco has yeah i will say like the hotel that i'm staying in looks nicer than the park 55 where you should stay in san francisco and looks about as close and yeah we've saved a ton of money on it oh absolutely also i'll mention the weather is vastly better in san jose in the summertime it

will be it will be probably not foggy and probably 10 to 15 to 20 degrees warmer so i can finally wear shorts in wwdc it'll be summer in san jose yeah that's right even if it's uh 58 and foggy in san francisco it will you know it quite possibly will be sunny and 85 in san jose also apple are shaking things up a bit you know which which is fine yeah yeah yeah i think right i think the number one reason they did this because my initial thought was go someplace where you've got more space right more for more people although you know the argument could be made that apple doesn't even though apple can sell out wwdc at any size at some point you know it doesn't really scale. You're going to have huge, are you going to have huge rooms full of people listening to these sessions?

And you can't really scale the labs because there are only so many engineers and there's only so much time for them to have those conversations. And this is not about that. The McHenry Convention Center in San Jose, which held this event for years, up to 2002, I want to say. I think the last event there was when Steve Jobs had the coffin on stage and did the funeral for OS9, one of my favorite things that Steve Jobs ever did, because it's ridiculous and it was great. And it's the same size as Moscone West, basically. Also, people are getting confused. Moscone Center is undergoing some renovation, the North and South Halls, but the West Hall is open.

I cannot imagine that Apple could not have just stayed in San Francisco if it wanted to. I think this is, so it's not a move for space, but I think it is a move for convenience for Apple. Yeah, I think this is going to be the new norm, honestly. Yeah, Steve Jobs wanted the big stage of San Francisco and he wanted to send the message like, it's going to be a big deal.

We're going to be in San Francisco. The world's going to come to San Francisco. I think that was very much a Steve Jobs decision. And now, you know, the convenience of it being close to Apple. Apple has grown. The event has grown. This is like five minutes, 10 minutes away from Apple. Whereas, you know, to go, it was either a very long drive or it was a long drive.

And then people in hotel rooms in San Francisco, Apple people who are going to WWDC this year can like just make their normal commute basically. And so that it's way easier to get people there and back from there. Much, much easier for them in terms of logistics. So I think that's the reasoning behind this. Easier to get people there and back from there. Much easier for them in terms of logistics. Yeah. So I think that's the reasoning behind this. And the one question I've got is about the keynote. Because the last few years, you know, Apple already has been shaking this up.

They put the keynote into the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium the last last two years which is a much bigger venue because they wanted uh they wanted to be able to get all the attendees and the press and the vips into that event um so and also that allows them to set up for smaller spaces in mosconi west without having to turn over that space uh on you know after day one basically so my question is really what happens you know after day one basically so my question is really what happens to that what happens to the keynote and where does it go i don't know about all the venues downtown there are some theaters and things in downtown san jose but they're not i would say uh not appropriate for something like this when you've got thousands of attendees plus press like they've done a couple at the california theater which is right around the corner but that was a tight event for

just press let alone thousands of attendees they don't fit in that theater i will say a short walking distance away from the convention center is the arena where the san jose sharks play so if they wanted to just go full-on like what what are the san jose sharks they are a national hockey league team and the warriors played there Warriors played there when their arena was being redone. And the NCAA tournament has played rounds there. It is a basketball hockey arena and concerts and things. So you could absolutely do the, you know, big. If Apple wanted to take over an arena to do a keynote they could totally do

that um it could be somewhere else to be how it sounds like you can like take over half of an arena right like and then just block the other part off like yeah in saying that they'll take over an arena doesn't mean that they're going to put 20 000 people or have a you know it doesn't mean that but it is a space that they could use. Yeah. It's, it's flexible and you could just put people on the floor. I mean, at Bill Graham, they essentially put people on the floor and then they had some people right behind there. And that was the, that was the whole thing. And they could do that. There may be some other venues around there. We'll see. And then there's the question about like campus two and could, is there a space at Campus 2 that they could use?

Because, you know, Google went through this, right? Google used to do their I.O. at Moscone West and they moved it down closer to the Google campus. And they did their keynote at Shoreline, which is an outdoor concert venue. And, of course, it's outdoors. So people were like having to put on sunscreen and it was really hot. So they were like worried about heat stroke and things like that. put on sunscreen and there was it was really hot so they were like worried about heat stroke and like that but uh so apple will have to figure that one out too because i i'm skeptical about them putting the keynote in in the mckenry convention center they might do it but i'm

skeptical i feel like they've they've grown beyond that now so how let me ask you actually have you ever been to a wwdc in san jose i've been to many um i started going to wwdc in probably 96 maybe um and all and i have not i have not missed a wwdc since then so i went to whatever that is five or six of those in San Jose at the McKendrick Convention Center. That was a very different time. It was, you could get into any session you wanted. There was never a line, really, after they opened the

doors. There were always seats available or maybe you had to stand in the back, but it was not like it is now. Apple would be pushing people to buy tickets. They would contact developers and say, please come to WWDC. Again, that doesn't happen anymore.

And we even did our, for Mac user, we did our redesign that we did of the magazine, which was probably 96. We did that. We did our big event announcing it and showing the first copies and all of that at a restaurant in San Jose, WWDC week. I remember that one pretty clearly, too.

So, yeah, it's a part of my history covering Apple, and it's definitely a part of Apple history. So what do you think, then? Do you think that this is going to be a good location for it today? So San Francisco, San Francisco is a big city. I know technically San Jose has more people in it than San Francisco, but San Francisco's downtown core is huge and incredibly urban. San Jose's downtown core is smaller and not as dense. And San Francisco has a lot of things going on. It's got tourists. It's about San Francisco. San Jose, again, not trying to make light of San Jose, but just to say San Jose is a mid-sized city of which we have many in the US. It's got a nice downtown core. It's got a bunch of people who work there and then they go home at the end of the day. It doesn't have the kind of nightlife that San Francisco has. It doesn't have the tourist attraction San Francisco has. If you're somebody who is looking for that kind of vibe, you're not going to get it in San Jose

so much, at least not as much. But what it does let Apple potentially do is take over the town for that week. Take it over Like, Austin for South by Southwest, where it's just like everything that's happening in downtown San Jose for that week in the evening is WWDC stuff. And everywhere you walk, everybody you see is a developer. And that's not going to happen in San Francisco, right? There's just too much other stuff going on. But in San Jose, that can kind of happen. So I think that's going to be the difference in the vibe. It is a little more, you know, it's less dense. I wouldn't say it feels suburban, but it is definitely less dense. It is a, you know, it's not San Francisco.

San Francisco is a unique thing, and there's good and bad with that. It really is just different. And so done right, I think that it could actually be really great and feel much more like a community event, whereas San Francisco, you're kind of like popping out of the community, going through the streets of San Francisco and then popping back in somewhere where the community is also in little bubbles. But when you're out on the street, it's the cold, cruel streets of San Francisco. And in San Jose, it may not feel like the whole thing may just feel like Disneyland for developers, right? It could be like that. I don't think it's going to be like that this year because I don't think anybody knows the lay of the land except old people who were there 15 years ago.

And I don't think everybody's going to be wanting to see what this thing is going to be like. But if Apple does it here in San Jose for the next few years, I think what you'll see is that kind of growth curve where people figure out what the best, what are the good venues and what's the best way to approach this. But this is going to be, this is going to be a weird year because everybody's really starting new. So from the WWDC website, Apple said, take advantage of exciting experiences around the city all week and celebrate with an incredible bash on Thursday. I'm really interested to see what this means. Are Apple going to be planning parties and stuff?

If they do, who are they for? Do you have to be an attendee? My hope would say no. And the reason I would say that is just because last year, Apple really embraced the community of conferences that are around WWDC. Remember like on the page, they had like layers and all conflict. They were on the page of like the WWDC page.

I'm hoping that there, you know, that there's going to be something similar this time that, you know, there will still be some other events that people are going to put on and that Apple will be kind of encouraging them as well as helping establish some of their own. I would really like to believe that they are aware of the fact

that this is an event which brings people like me out, right? Like people that are not going to get a ticket but want to be in and around the event. And I hope that they do a good job of encouraging that between now and June and show to people like, if you want to still come to this you know just just for the funsies it's still going to be a good thing to do you know right i

hope that that's going to be the case that's the question is is exactly that does apple does apple mean that it's programming the knights and apple program stuff right they put the the apple design awards and and stuff like that they do and the bash is always always there they did the bash at bill graham last time so again i asked the question what's the venue for the bash is the bash a showing off if they especially if they don't go there for the keynote is the bash a showing off tour of of campus two maybe um i don't know but also again i'll say there is that amazing arena not too far away. I don't think it's any further away than Bill Graham was from Moscone, for example.

And imagine a bash with a concert that is in a giant hockey arena. That could be kind of awesome, actually, if you get the run of the place. So I don't know. I think that it's an open question. And Apple's participation is a good question because um it apple could exert itself and say we're gonna schedule this week and you know you can try to schedule things in all that are alternatives but we're really going to schedule our attendees up and and try to take all their time or apple could take that more laissez-faire attitude of saying you know we're going to do this much and no further. And then we assume that the community is going to fill in the blanks. And that's great. But that's part of the question, I think, is going to be people who have to put deposits down on venues

and things like that before knowing what Apple's going to do. What does that, what does it all mean? So that's why this year may be kind of a feeling out period where everybody's trying to figure out exactly where their things fit, what Apple wants to do with this event. Because it's still, this is the beating heart of the Apple community. That's the only single unifying event that's left. Although it is focused on developers, still like Macworld Expo is gone. Like this is the big one. Is it, you know, what form is it going to take this time? But I do believe that

if Apple gives it time and is consistent with it now for the next few years, that you'll see the same stuff growing up around it that grew up around the old one. But right now, this is like a fresh planting, right?

It's just soil and the developer conference and we don't really know what's going to grow around it because we don't even know where the conference is going to grow and change and how you fit into it i've been to four wwdcs and i'm excited about there being a new place with new bars and new restaurants and new traditions because you know it's always fun to shake things up like it's getting a bit samey,

right? Like you go to the BGPC and you got this thing on this night and you go to this place and you go to this restaurant and you go to this bar. Like these are the places that you go to, to the places that you know. Um, and I'm excited about it being different again. Um,

I'm upset that I won't get blue bottle coffee cause it's like my favorite, but that's not there. Uh, but yeah, it's still California. There's going to be great food and drink and coffee and stuff everywhere and it's i mean i'm kind of excited to explore this new downtown area plus i kind of don't really like downtown san francisco um i don't know what downtown san jose is like um but i don't really

like downtown san francisco so much so it might be nice to get a change of scenery you'll you'll you'll like it better it's certainly different um what i would say is when you're in san francisco there is no mistaking you are in san francisco it's a place uh it's a big city that uh has its own unique vibe to it and that's my knock on san jose is san jose is you know it's a it's a it's a city like many others but uh but it's it's nicer in so many different ways than san francisco too so it'll just be different you know i'm kind of cool with it though because downtown san francisco means wwdc to me so like downtown san jose will just start to mean wwdc like i'm not going to do it for any other reason and you know it's kind of a cool thing and then maybe in a few years i will

want to visit san francisco as a tourist again because I have no desire to ever do that, even though there's a lot more of San Francisco than I've ever seen. But I'm kind of just a bit burnt out on it, having been there every year for four years. What about you? Like, you don't stay in downtown San Francisco because you just drive in on the couple of days that you might be in town but San Jose I don't really know California geography I was very surprised to learn that it's five minutes from Apple's campus San Jose like I had no idea I don't know where anything is um so is is this much further for you like and what are you planning to do oh yeah it's a lot

it's a lot further um back in the day I would I a couple of times I stayed in San Jose for a night or two. I do remember staying at a hotel by the airport and then driving in and parking at the convention center. I did that a few times. It's a long drive. It's one that I can do. But when I was doing those, it was very much like, you know, I'd go to the sessions for the day and then I'd get in the car and go home. But if you're hanging around with people, now it's 9 o'clock and it's like, okay, guys, I got to go drive for an hour and a half to home. So for me, it just, you know, it means different logistics.

I mean, I've stayed in San Francisco sometimes for Macworld Expo. I would stay for a day or two in San Francisco sometimes for Macworld Expo. I would stay for a day or two in San Francisco sometimes just because it was impractical. I try not to do that. So for this one, I might end up getting a hotel for a night or two. I haven't yet. You should. We'll see. You should. We'll see.

It'd be nice. Have some time in the snail zone. Sure. Yeah. So we'll see. But if not, I'll just drive down the freeway. It's a long drive, but it's fine. Between now and June, there is the expectation that Campus 2 is opening, right? Yeah. I mean, we haven't heard anything about it other than that it's taking shape.

The flyover pictures that I've seen of it seem like it's coming together. But that's all we've really heard. I do wonder about that. I've seen of it seem like it's coming together. But that's all we've really heard. I do wonder about that. I've mentioned it before. Like, would there be an event at Campus 2? Because first off, you know all the developers want to see it. And you know that they've got a couple of milestones there

in terms of the keynote and in terms of the bash that they could do there. They could also do an event like during the week that was a campus to something where it was you know it was not necessarily a big event with a with a band or something like that and it's not something with the press but it's something just for developers they could do something like that an open house kind of thing so there are there are things i don't know what the like we know that there's a big grass space interior to uh infinite loop that they've used for they used to use that's

where the bash was that's always where the bash was um during the wwdc in san jose is that on on what thursday night everybody would take buses to infinite loop and go to the inside of infinite loop and there was a beer bash there i believe that is what it used to be i do wonder though if like you want a bunch of developers to come and ruin your new lawn though you know well i think that i think you make a strong point there so that that's my question is is there a space for something like that or is that just you know, or is that not on the agenda? That's a big question. What about if they were to do the keynote there and simulcast it for developers?

I wonder if that's the type of a thing that might happen. I don't know. The developers, unfortunately, have to go into a room and watch it, but the press get to be in there. It's a developer conference keynote. I don't think they want to do something like that. They could do that, but I don't think they want to do that. No they could do that but i don't think they want to do that no that would suck i mean i understand how like there's always been like overflow rooms and stuff but at least you're in the same building yeah but like i just assumed that like if there is no event at campus two before then i can't imagine how they wouldn't want to show it off somehow right because when would the next one be september that

they would do an event there well and two developers right i mean i think the auditorium at campus two my my impression is is it's sized not for those thousands of developers but it's for the press and vip and all of that for an iphone event right so i think i don't think that's in play for this unless it's much larger than I think it is. If it is, then maybe. But then you've got to get everybody there from San Jose, which means you've got to run a bunch of shuttle buses and things like that. And they could do that. But I think it's an open question about where Apple's next event is going to be.

Are they capable of going to campus too for an uh an ipad event in the next few months i don't know and david in the chat points out that like we just think is a good call that maybe they will want to wait to have the 10th year thing there's the first event i can see that i can totally see that so there you go ladies and gents w WWDC, June 5-9, San Jose. I'm going to be there. Jason will be there for an amount of time. I hope that we'll still see you there if you're planning to go. I think this could be a good year.

If you've never been before, this could be a good year. It could be a bad year. But if it's a bad year, you won't know, so you might as well go. If you've never been there before, you're not going to know because it's the first time but i think it could be interesting because everything's going to be shaken up and people are going to be uh getting new traditions and stuff like that it could be a good it could be a good time to go yeah it's it could be it'll be very different people be figuring out new traditions will be started this time right that's i think what's going to happen is the old traditions are done and people

will miss them, but the new traditions will start. This week's episode is brought to you by Encapsular, the multifunction content delivery network that boosts the performance of your website, protects it from denial of service attacks, and secures it from bad guys, whilst also ensuring high availability. Over 100,000 organizations trust Encapsular every single day. From huge Fortune 500 companies to one-person websites, it doesn't matter who you are, Encapsular can help protect you. They have all the resources you're ever going to need to help your website load quickly, even if something bad is happening. And with their 24-7 operations team, you have that additional help there if you need it.

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Thank you so much to Encapsular for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. of this show and relay fm so last week the icon factory uh set up a kickstarter campaign for twitterific on the mac yes now i know that you are a twitterific user mr jason snell i am not on the mac anymore so much i used to i used to and then finally it got so old and there were so many features it didn't support that I switched and I used the official Twitter client, which is not great, but I use it on the Mac. I don't think it's been updated since 2013, the Twitterific client for the Mac. I think just from skimming over the Kickstarter page just now. Regular updates until 2013.

And then in 2013, they stopped, basically, yeah. And many people have asked and begged and pleaded and desired for them to make a new Mac client, but that hasn't happened. And it's mainly because of Twitter's change in the way that they want third-party apps to be developed and also just economic changes with app development. So Twitterific had decided to,

or Icon Factory had decided to go to Kickstarter with Twitterific, as I guess as a kind of like a pseudo pre-order. So, you know, if they're going to make this, they want to know that there are people out there that are willing to pay for it. And in these times, the best way is to have a Kickstarter campaign. I mean, that's what we do for pen addict stuff, right? We want to put on events, but we want to make sure people actually want them them so we do a kickstarter so then we're not in the hole over it you know like if we if we just recorded a video episode and sold it afterwards we don't know if it recouped the costs but by doing it this way we know in advance if we can yeah this is a great tool for something

like this where i know the icon factory has been struggling with this idea. I mean, they tried to do, they did new versions of Twitterific for Mac where they built like frameworks to try and translate the work they had done on iOS to get it to run on the Mac. I mean, so much work. They were so concerned about finding ways to keep the Mac app up to date

when it was clear that, you know, all their money was in iOS. And so in the end, and it's a very small company, in the end, iOS is what got the attention and the Mac thing languished. And I think they hated that,

but they were concerned. And I'll keep in mind that this is a time when Twitter basically was saying third-party apps are going to go away. So they were like, all right, well, if we've got a limited amount of space here, and as the creators of the word tweet and the bluebird image and things like that, Icon Factory has a special relationship with Twitter.

I don't know the details of it. I don't know if they've ever told anybody that, but I suspect there are all sorts of things that the Icon Factory gets to do, including use the word Twitter in their product name that nobody else gets to do because they have contributed so much to Twitter over the years. Yeah, it's like you can use the word we created, you can use the word we created, let's call it a day, right? Yeah, I think so. And I don't even know if they have tokens for that was the thing that they did was basically twitter said you know apps have a limited number of users that they can acquire third-party apps and then they're done and i'm not even sure that that's the case with twitter but if it is i'm sure that with twitter

if they may have a lot but they anyway um this is a special way to do things that wasn't available to them then Kickstarter. And the great advantage of it is it's basically a pre-order. They're gauging the market's need for this product because what concerned them is as a small company, could they put the investment required in? And over the years, it's only gotten greater because the code base is that much out of further out of date. Could they put the investment in to twitter for mac that was required to do it and actually make money on it right or would they put in up front thousands and thousands of dollars worth of work and then release it and nobody buys it and that was the concern is like what's the market for this what can we do so the kickstarter lets them say here it is here's

what we're planning on doing um if you if you order this in advance, you will get a you know, you'll get a copy, you pay a little more and you get on our beta. And we're going to build this thing if we get however much money they have. And it's a $75,000 goal with $100,000 stretch goal. So I like that part of it. Because you know, there are really kind of two outcomes here. One is they will get enough money to build the app. And the other outcome is it turns out there is not enough demand for this app. And then they walk away. And I think in fact, in that scenario, I think they would probably walk away feeling okay about it, feeling vindicated in a way that their sort of abandonment of that app was the right business

call because there's just not enough support for them to keep working on it. So I like this idea. If this was a random company, I don't think I would like it as much, but given that they have a huge history with building Twitter clients and they're they're i signed up for twitter because twitterific was a thing that was created and this is and this happened in the gap between when the iphone was announced and when it was released so it's 10 years so it was very early in twitter's history that they that they did this so they have the they have the background here and I love their iOS app. It's not for everybody, but it is my window into Twitter on iOS. And I would love to see them come back to the Mac because there aren't any Mac apps for Twitter that really satisfy me at this point.

I know, and don't send in your suggestions because I've got them all. I've got TweetBot, I've got Night Owl or whatever it's called now. I've got them all. I've got TweetBot. I've got Night Owl or whatever it's called now. I've got them all. None of them satisfy me. 9.32 p.m. on the 10th of February 2007. Setting up Twitter, going to download Twitterific, and listening to This Week in Media. That was my first tweet. Yeah, and my first tweet was something like testing out Twitterific, I think, was my first tweet.

I can find out because Twitter has a discover first tweet function it's actually linked in my uh installing twitterific that is your first tweet that's what you said yep so what do you think about this and what it says about the mac software market like can you imagine icon factory doing this for an iphone app like they just released an ipad drawing application out of the blue yeah right linear well i think i think what it says is that they're well i think it says some things about the mac software market but i think it also says some things about the twitter client market right i think i think what you see here is uncertainty that there's a market for a product and with something like linea uh or linea however which is superb by the way it is amazing um it's a drawing app uh you can use the apple pencil on it you can use your finger it's very

good um i think they looked at that and said that's a market opportunity we can jump on it we're going to make that happen like they they have confidence that there's a market for that product they may happen. Like they have confidence that there's a market for that product. They may be wrong, but they have confidence that there's a market for that product. The challenge here is, is one, do people want Twitter clients? Two, what's the risk of building a Twitter client based on what Twitter does, which is, is scary. And three, it's the Mac And like just being in the Mac app store is not going to solve your problems. Like you can make money on the iOS app store. It doesn't mean everybody does, but you can do it. But on the Mac, it's harder. So I think it says, I think it says a lot about all of those things. And, and as a result, I'm not sure we can take away like lessons learned um about like

something other than this particular instance so listener john uh wrote in about this and said do you think that this is a sign of slowdown in the use of this client or a resurgence of interest in the client um i mean this client i was about as uh faithful a user as anyone and for a long time and i gave up on it because it just broke in so many ways john syracuse still has not given up on it he still uses it which is mind-boggling because there's so many things it doesn't support there are still a bunch of things it does really incredibly well. And you could hack it. I like change the font and the colors and stuff because you could just go inside the

package and change the colors, which I really like to do. I mean, I loved it, but the Twitter service has advanced so much in the last few years. So I think this client has basically been dead. I think Icon Factory basically treats it as dead. John Syracuse is not a good example of this. But if you think about it, it's basically a four-year abandoned product. And they're not even talking about updating it. They're talking about writing a new version of it. Now, they know they've got an actively developed iOS version. So they've got some code they can use, and they know the service in and out, and they know the features in and out and they know the features in and out. But I think, I think what this is about is maybe a feeling that there's more stability in the Twitter client market than there used to be that Twitter is, is less likely to shut the door on, on third party clients. I think it's their desire to do this, but not, not thinking that they could, or that they had the time to do it, let alone the resources to do it. So I think it's, I think it's those things. They probably

hear from a lot of their users who miss it and like me, aren't satisfied with the tools that are out there, the Twitter apps that are out there on the Mac right now. So I think it's a combination of things. I'm not sure if we can extrapolate it quite as much to the rest of the market because the Twitter client market is such a weird thing. You know, TweetBot seems to be motoring along on iOS and Mac. And that seems to be a valid business for them. Although I don't know any of the details of it. Maybe for all I know, the TweetBot for Mac is a disappointment to them. But I don't think it is.

I don't know. TweetBot for Mac is totally fine. Yeah. Like as an application, like it runs and works perfectly fine. And if I was the Icon Factory, I would look at it too from the perspective of what they know about the iOS market, which is you're going to have people who use the default, and that's fine, and TweetBot's there.

But I think they feel like they've got a niche on iOS that's not being fulfilled on the Mac right now. Because people who like Twitterific on iOS and not TweetBot, on the Mac, people like me, they can't make that decision because there's no Twitterific there. But if you're somebody like me, I'm much more likely to respond to a Twitterific style Mac app than I am to TweetBot. Because for various reasons, TweetBot is fine. It just doesn't do it for me. Personally, it doesn't work for me.

It's a great app. It's got lots of features. I can't use it. So I think that maybe they're doing that, looking at the Mac market and saying, there is a place for us there. We can build this client, knowing what we know about iOS and knowing that there are users out there who like our approach here. That's what we want to do.

So like for me, I guess there's a big market of people like me as well i stay away or don't stay away but i i i haven't ever switched back or seriously tried out twitterific again because it doesn't have a mac app right because when i'm on my mac i want it to sync up with my iphone yeah i i'm using Twitter, you know, so that doesn't happen for me. I don't care. With Tweetbot, you know, everything's in sync. And I like that. My timeline position,

my mentions, my DMs, everything's in sync. And when you're used to that, Jason, I will tell you, it's quite a feature. Let me tell you. It's never been important to me. But you care about it. And this is what I'm saying is sort of like there are things people care about that TweetBot gives them and they love them. And I, you know, whatever those things are, I don't care about them, obviously, because it's not enough to I pay.

I've bought every version of TweetBot. It just doesn't do it for me. So I'm glad it does it for you and many other people. So you mentioned about them rebuilding the application. And the goal is $75,000. And this $75,000 is for them to build what the Icon Factory is referring to as a minimal product, which will take six to seven months. And there is a list of features that are included in kind of that minimal product. But there is two stretch goals. There's a $100,000 stretch goal and a $125,000 stretch goal. And I do have a concern that what I consider is far too many really basic features of Twitter

are behind the $100,000 mark. So I'll give you just a short list of some of the ones that I think should be in what I consider to be a basic Twitter client. Direct messaging, built-in Twitter search, built-in media viewer of images, GIFs, or videos, built-in conversation and threaded tweet viewer, and built-in viewer for user profiles and searching for and getting suggested users

whilst composing a tweet. All of those things I consider to be very basic, not from a development perspective, but from a what-I-expect what I expect out of a Twitter client. And my concern is, if they don't match that $100,000 stretch goal, if they don't get that, are these features going to be added at all? Like, could you be buying a Twitter client now for $15, but they kind of hit $75,000 and they don't really make up the rest of the money? Like, how long would it be

until you see those things would you ever see them like would they hit that 75 000 but this is all the people that ever want this application like they're going to back this kickstarter and then these things never get added like i understand the idea of splitting development up and i'm sure that what they're doing is splitting things that are important out and moving them around but like you know that like the things that are difficult to make they're putting behind the other stretch goals i get that but i think that there are far too many things in this list which i consider to just be basics of twitter um and i get like you know there are people in the chat i'm like our dms important i think they are i mean again this is my subjective thing here.

But especially like looking at conversations, like being able to see conversations or tweets, like if you want to see a conversation between people or looking at user profiles, like searching on Twitter. Like, I think there are a lot of these things here, which are what I consider to be very basic functionality of any client that I would expect, which are behind a $100,000 stretch goal. I think you are overthinking it. All right. I think the way this is structured is it's Kickstarter structured. It is, you got to have stretch goals. They are going to build this, they say from scratch, they're not going to, you know, just update the existing client because it's

too old. And in fact, the $100,000 and $125,000 stretch goals are for another major version that we'll follow up with. So basically, what they're doing is saying, we're going to do this project in stages, and stage one is the basics. And we're and we can't like, we're not going to wait to add all these features and then do a final release, we're going to do a first release, and then we'll work on the rest. Now, if they don't make the stretch goal, I guess it's a question. My guess is that once they do all the work to build this app, they're not going to stop. So my guess is that that next version is probably going to come anyway. There's a chance maybe that it won't, but I think most likely what they're

really doing is saying, look, we're going to build this app in stages. Here's stage one, here's stage two, here's stage three. We need stretch goals for Kickstarter. So we're going to build this app in stages here's stage one here's stage two here's stage three we need stretch goals for kickstarter so we're going to list stage two and stage three as stretch goals and that's what they're doing that's my that's my guess is you know i think i think it is just as much uncertainty as any piece of software ever does but i don't think it's anything more than that i can totally see what you're saying, but all I'm doing is reading what the page says, right? So like, and what it says is, if we raise over $100,000,

we will follow up with another major version that includes these. Yeah. Like if they don't make enough money after this thing is funded, will those things ever be added? And that's my question. And I'm not sure about that. Well, I think what I'd say is the stretch goals are there

because they want to motivate people because they figure they'll the stretch goals are there because they want to motivate people because they figure they'll probably reach their basic goal and they want to have people keep developing, keep donating. And second, they want to keep the realism of a first version. And then third, I think that's a question you could literally ask about any app.

What they're saying here is, if we have that much money, we know we can build those and if they don't i think their intention is probably still to build those because why would they go through all this effort and then have a basic twitter client but their certainty goes down a little bit because they have to see how much it's going to take and what the market reaction to the app is yeah so you know i. It's just like any app. You buy a 1.0 and you hope that they add the features

that aren't in there yet. And that's just part of the deal. But I mean, really, Kickstarter psychology, you have to have stretch goals, right? And what are the stretch goals going to be for an app like this? And the answer is the next version. I don't think there's any...

I mean, what else can you do? That seems to be it. Because you have to have stretch goals. That's like Kickstarter 101. You want to push people when they're beyond what your basic goal is to keep donating because you want to get as much money up front as possible. So I think that this is just a realistic thing. I think they're not saying if you don't donate $100,000, we will cease development and never develop it again. I don't think that's how I read it at all.

Well, as I say, I definitely hope that's the case. I also find it strange that there is no, not even basic mock-ups of the application in this campaign. There's kind of nothing, which is just, it's an interesting choice to me. Yeah. I find that kind of curious. I mean, they're not mocking up the product until they have the support, I think. I think they're

going on their track record, and their track record is pretty good. So that's, you know, I think it's interesting too. I think what they would argue is they could do mock-ups now, but the amount of work that goes into building a real app with a real interface is the act of building the app, and they're not building the app until they get the funding. So I think I get what you're saying, which is that the right way, we talk about the Kickstarter 101, the right way to do a Kickstarter of this is to have fake UI. And I think the reality of the icon factory looking at this is that they don't believe in fake ui they believe in real ui so they just didn't do any but you know yeah from a marketing perspective some kickstarter expert would probably tell you in addition to having stretch goals to

have fake ui mock-ups they would because you should um you know like there's a whole thing in kickstarter about prototypes and there is nothing in this project about that at all, which is a peculiar omission to me. I hope they make their goal. If anything, I'm a TweetBot user and I would like Twitterific to keep existing because I have

an affinity for the product. As we always say about Apple, if you like something, you want it to have competition. TweetBot is my client of choice, but I want Twitterific to be good so they can push each other forward. And I would love to be able to maybe dip my toe into Twitterific again,

but I'm only personally willing to do that if there is a Mac client which is updated. So I hope that they're able to make it, and I hope that in a year's time, they're able to produce, or in a year of time, they're able to produce, or in a year's, like a year of development or something like that, they're able to produce an application which has got all of the basic features that it would need

to be one that someone could use every day. So we'll see. I wish them the best of luck. You can go. There will be a link in our show notes. You can back it. I'm sure you've backed it. Oh, yeah.

You didn't put in the million dollars that john siracusa put in i did not fund this at a million dollars okay okay that's that's true there are two people there are two people that put the 500 pledge in which is i love that i love that there are two people in the world that wanted this app to exist so much that they put 500 in i think that's awesome, and you get a bunch of stuff. You do. Like Icon Factory software and little collectible things and all of that. I think I pledged at the $100 level.

Look at you. You're that guy. Look at you. Hey, big spender. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Jason, you can notice about Jason Snell, supporter of independent software.

Yeah, and as you'll find out in last week's clockwise supporter of failed kickstarters oh sorry a supporter of successful kickstarters that didn't ever ship anything so you know it happens is this gonna have the snell curse to it no are you confident but my first i realized my first kickstarter i mentioned this on clockwise my first kickstarter that i ever backed funded it's a it's a an animated film that uh has not been released and it's been like seven years or something oh well yeah yeah i think i've had pretty good pretty good luck i have i have two actually uh but that was the first for your first one to be still not yet fulfilled it's just hilarious today's show is also brought to you by ero these days everything in our homes requires the internet speakers thermostats light bulbs

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get yourself free overnight shipping just enter the code UPGRADE when you select overnight shipping at checkout and you'll get that added for free. Thank you so much to Eero for their support of this show and RelayFM It is time for some Ask Upgrade, Mr. Jason Snell.

Jacob wanted to know what headphones we use whilst recording podcasts, and is it worth buying a set of studio monitors? So, I have used headphones that have been classed as studio monitors in the past. I used the Sony, I think they're called the

MDR 750? 7506. That's it, the Sony MDR 7506 headphones, which are considered to be, I believe, monitor star headphones. And they were great for a while, but over time, kind of the ear pad stuff started wearing off, and I was getting like pieces of black foam in my ears. But I was using them for a long time. They were fine for what I was doing when I had them. But now I use headphones called the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro, which were recommended to me by a friend of the show, Marco Arment. And I really like these headphones a lot.

They work very well. They're very comfortable for long periods of time. I will say about the Sonys they became uncomfortable after after long use um like they my ears would get really hot and like itchy right like they weren't very comfortable uh but i do find these ones to be comfortable like i wear them for hours and hours and hours a day um and and i have a really good use out of them plus when i do want to use them with music they sound fantastic as well because I do do that sometimes

so my I use a pair of ultimate ears in ear monitors with the custom silicone so they go in my ear and I don't is it worth I don't know what it's worth I'd say the most important things if you're recording podcasts are to have a set of headphones.

One. That's step one. They need to be comfortable for long periods of time if you're recording for long periods of time. That's step two. And they need to isolate the audio so they don't leak out. So no open earphones. Earbuds are not really great. Headsets are not really great.

not really great. Headsets are not really great. Anything where the microphone that you're using for the podcast very easily can pick up the sound of the other person talking in your ear that's leaking from it, that is a terrible setup for podcasting. So I think that's my number three. So comfort is important and having them is important, but the next thing is also not having them kind of leak into the outside world. They need to be a closed system, whether you're in the ear like mine are or over the ear like Mike's are. Yeah, most definitely. That's what you need. You need like super in-ear like Jason has or like good over the ear.

As long as you've got one of those two, then you're going to be fine. But they're the ones that we use. Brent asked, do you think that the next iPhone will come with a 3.5 millimeter to lightning headphone adapter like the seven does i don't i think this was a one-time thing right like now we should be used to it otherwise you buy one i give i i say maybe 50 50 i think it's possible that that adapter can't cost very much. I think maybe one more go. You got to think about the upgrade cycle.

It's a two-year upgrade cycle. So you're going to have people coming in for this fall's iPhones who are coming from two previous, you know, two generations ago, not just the one. And as a result, I think it might be a two-year adapter cycle too,

just to get those people and be nice to them like Apple was nice to the people last fall so that's why i'd say it's sort of a 50 50 i see the other side of it which is just nah one-time deal uh we moved on nobody cares anymore we're just moving on and you can buy an adapter if you want but i think it's also a pretty reasonable scenario that they just do it for two years and that's the transition because that's the average age of an upgrade. I think with those two scenarios, it's just what do you think the original reason Apple was doing it for? Like, I don't know what it is, right? Is it PR cover or was it to help people who have legacy headphones?

And depending on what side of the fence you fall down on, depends on which argument you go for. And we will know in September. Well, that's why I say flip a coin. Yep. It really is. I'm not really sure which one will win out, but that's exactly it. Talking about the future of computing, Brando asked,

do you think that the future of computing could be something like the Nintendo Switch, where you just dock a device and then you know plug it into a monitor and could that be a smartphone so i thought about this there's like a whole article i want to write about this and and we should probably talk about this more my short version of it is yeah it makes a lot of sense that if everybody's got a smartphone and the smartphone's got an incredible processor in it that what you really could do is just dock it to other other form factors you don't really need like an iPad, right?

You just have your smartphone and all that. And I start to think about it. I'm like, that makes total sense. Like wherever I go, whatever screen I find, all my data is on my smartphone and I will be able to pop it up on a bigger device. However, when I start imagining what that bigger device is, it's like, okay, well, it's got to be a touchscreen, right? It's got to be a pleasant,

high quality, high resolution touchscreen device. And I start to think about what that device looks like. And I think it looks like an iPad. And then I think, if you're going to build a device like that,

would you not just have brains in it too and have it syncing to the same cloud data store as that you're syncing on your smartphone rather than having it drive it remotely from your smartphone and have it syncing to the same cloud data store as that you're syncing on your smartphone rather than having it drive it remotely from your smartphone and have to worry about the smartphone battery

and all of those things or plugging the smartphone in or plugging a cable in or things like that. And so I go back and forth in that because I firmly believe bigger screens are part of the working experience. I don't think people are going to get their jobs done on a six inch screen,

but that, you know, when I start to think about the scenario of creating that external touchscreen thing that gives you that space, but it's being driven by your smartphone, I do very quickly start to ask myself, why would you not just make the screen smart and have it be its own device that can be operated independently of the person with the phone?

I don't know. Yeah, for many years I have wondered to myself what it would be like to have that device. I remember a long time ago there was a device that Motorola made. I think it was Motorola called the Atrix. Yep. And I remember whenever this was and whatever technology podcasts I was doing at that point, I was kind of fascinated by this product,

this product that you would just plug in to a bunch of different things, and it was just the one device that you carried with you. I've always been kind of like taken by this idea of like you just have this brain that plugs into docks and it plugs into tablets um or like laptops like it's always been a something that's that i've thought could be an interesting thing but like you i you know as you say this and as i've thought about it over time, I wonder if by the time we get to a point where smartphones will be powerful enough

to drive all of that stuff convincingly, will networking and cloud solutions just be so powerful that we don't need that? Right? I mean, that's where I come down. I can see both sides of the argument, but that's where I kind of come down is if, as the stuff advances and I look at those big screen things, I mean, I can see the value of things like, okay, well, what about in a computer lab

somewhere, someplace where the big screens are shared? Wouldn't you want to be able to have, just walk right up and have it be your stuff on there. And it's like, yeah, but even then, if that tech advances to that degree, wouldn't your phone be able to provide the data that it needs to know that it's you and then just go off on its own? I think in the end, maybe the distinction between devices and your personality fall away. between devices and your personality fall away. And it's just whatever screen you use is smart and knows it's you and shows you your data. And the idea of like, well, what device am I using here kind of falls in the background. It's just like any device sophisticated enough to be that

big screen seems to me to be sophisticated enough to not to be to not need to be remote controlled by another device. It's so it's sophisticated enough to be itself and use your data rather than like be a, you know, it's this incredibly sophisticated touchscreen display that is so dumb that you need to plug your phone into it for it to work. I just I have a hard time seeing that it's possible, but it just seems to me me that the way the world is going, it won't be so fiddly. It'll be like every screen is smart, basically. Parker asked if either of us have had to replace the tip on our Apple Pencils yet. So you can take the tip off and there is one that comes in the box, an extra one, or you can buy extra tips from the Apple Store. I haven't needed to. I mean, I don't know how often you need to use them to make that change, but I'm sure at some point you would, right? Like I can imagine you could wear it down,

but like I don't know how long it would take and how much use it would take to do that. And if I haven't, I'm very, very convinced that you haven't needed to. It's Certainly not. Yeah. So I don't know how often it is you need to use them. But I do know, like my Wacom, I haven't yet, but I need to replace the tip because I've worn that tip down. So I don't know if maybe it's made of different types of material, different plastic, maybe it's more resilient on the Apple Pencil, but I haven't needed to change it. But I can see how somebody would. Over time it would wear away, but I haven't needed to change it. But I can see how somebody would. Over time, it would wear away, but I don't know how long that time is.

And Matt asked if I had a recommendation. People ask me about this type of thing quite a lot, so I wanted to include it today. For like a four-port USB charger. Now, he asked for UK, but this product is sold in all different countries all over

the place. It is the Anker 60W 6 port family sized desktop USB charger. This thing is amazing. Stephen had one of these a couple of years ago, I think we were in WWDC and I immediately bought one. It is just a thing that you plug

into the mains and you have 6 USB ports that you can plug into. And this is so fantastic when you travel with another person if you're both like heavy on the apple ecosystem like me and adina we need at least five uh lightning charges right or like well we need two one each for our phones at least one ipad and then two apple watches and you just don't get that many outlets in hotel rooms and this i find to be nicer than taking a strip because I just have a bunch of cables that are permanently connected to this thing

in my travel bag. And then wherever I'm ready to go, I can plug it in. I can just use a travel adapter if I need to. I can plug it in. It's a fantastic piece of technology and I recommend it to anybody that travels. Cool.

So there you go. Do you have anything like this? No, I've got a power strip that's got two usb ports on it and that does me fairly well i i uh it's one of those things where um flexibility with having multiple devices in the kids it's actually better to have some that are on on their own plugs uh-huh because but also you know i'm not changing most of my travel i'm not changing plug types for you. The advantage of

something like this is you can get one, you know, plug adapter into the wall in whatever, you know, in the U S and you get all of those USB, uh, out to charge. Whereas if you've got individual plugs, you have to adapt the individual plugs. If you change countries to a different plug style. So, uh, but I don't, um, i don't have anything like that i've thought about it but i don't at this point have anything like that so we are now uh completed the regular episode of upgrade the what you have come for potentially is now done and we are about to get into mike at the movies the terminator is our Mike at the movies pick this week. So this is fair warning if you have not yet seen the Terminator

and want to avoid spoilers, this is the time in which you would switch off. But we're now going to do a sponsor horn? I guess. And thanks Squarespace for supporting this week's show. Enter the offer code UPGRADE at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. Hey,

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squarespace.com. Then when you decide to sign up, use the offer code UPGRADE to get 10% off your first purchase, and show your support for this show. Thank you to Squarespace. Make your next move. Make your next website. All right, now let me get my secondary notebook out here. Yes.

I'm taking some notes today, Jason Snell, about the movie that we watched. I've got a brand new notebook that I broke out for The Terminator. It is the year 2029, the far off future. That's how it starts. Would you like to, should we do it in a regular fashion and I tell you what I thought I knew

about this movie before I watched it? Let's do it. I'll be back. I expected that to be in here somewhere. I believed that The Terminator was a robot slash cyborg slash alien uh that came to destroy the earth that's a lot of things well like it was like you know i was thinking it's all of those things like it is an alien it's from another planet but it's like a robot cyborg thing oh

you know okay cyborg john syracuse would tell you cyborg is not a robot. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I believe that the Terminator came to destroy the Earth. I knew that it stole somebody's clothes at one point, maybe a motorbike, and maybe their skin. I wasn't sure about that. Like, I wasn't sure if it had its own skin, the Terminator. Interesting. I believe that in this movie, the Terminator found a heart of gold

and saves the day from some other big bad you are seeing the good humans so you're mixing up this is the we we have a prelude to this last week when we talked about this movie which is you i think a lot of your knowledge of the terminator comes from terminator 2 it definitely does because yeah this doesn't happen in this movie no and the terminator action figure thing that i had looked not like this terminator and like it was the one with like all of the face metal often you see all of the metal i think it's terminator 2 terminator yeah um because there was no hasta la vista baby no that's terminator two and that's

what my action figure would say because it was one that made sounds yep so it was uh i'm definitely so the movie that i thought that i'd seen as a kid or that i had seen as a kid but didn't remember terminator two because i was also waiting for him helping out a child and i now know who that child was um and yeah turns out not this no this is this is hey many people including me experienced terminator 2 having not seen the terminator i didn't see the terminator until much after i saw terminator 2 but because that was a huge summer blockbuster hit but uh but this this much more moderately priced, moderately budgeted film from 1984 is where it all started. So, would... Actually, first, is this one of your favorite movies?

No, I've seen it a few times and I like it. I also think it's worth seeing if you've seen or plan to see Terminator 2. I think it's a very interesting film and kind of a classic, but it's not one of my personal favorites. So would you, I think it's best to not hide these things, you know, like for me to just get it out in the open about how I feel about this movie and then we can talk about it.

Let it out, Mike. I didn't like this one, Jason. Really? Didn't like it at all. I really, really just did not enjoy this movie. The music is horrific, like so bad. It sounds like it was made on like

a casio keyboard it's you know there is some good music in here but most of it is terrible yeah i may have not noticed the good stuff right because it was good but i really noticed the bad stuff because it was horrific it is it is of its time and i think my argument would be in its time it wasn't very good because i like music like think of all of the movies we've seen they're all 80s movies and i've not criticized it you're thinking about 80s pop music in movies this is 80s soundtrack synth music where we were just talking about this on the incomparable for castle in the sky which is from 1982 something like that 1986 it's it's it's a early to mid-80s movie and it's got a few moments

of that same thing where it's like and you're like really are we playing a really bad video game all of a sudden like i have one point in my notes for the terminator basically like um this is this is terrible action syntho pulse music like i i wonder how much better this movie would feel if it was more traditionally scored than it is like terminator 2 is more traditionally scored right okay but there's a lot of synth music here and i mean this is a very 80s movie too but yeah i i i think the music is a big problem in it myself too it looks weird to me and i don't know why this is so when i was watching the movie it felt like a long tv show and i don't know if it's maybe like I'm watching some HD reproduction

like it definitely was a HD reproduction I don't know if maybe something is it in there I bought it from iTunes well it was shot but it was shot on was it shot on 35? it might have even been shot on 16mm it's grainy and dimly lit

and I mean it's I wouldn't call it a low budget movie but it's not a blockbuster movie and terminator 2 is a big budget action movie in some ways helped define the modern big budget action set piece kind of film um because it was so successful and it had the you know it had the c Terminator and all of these things in it. And this is not. This is a modest budget set in 1984 where there's a girl, just a regular girl, who discovers that she's part of this catastrophic event in the far future and is being hunted for, as far far as she can tell no reason at all and so it's dark and there's like there's cops and there's a you know there's a serial killer that's the phone

book killer they talk about that's killing people named sarah connor um it's not if you if i went through this if you watch terminator 2 and then you go back to the Terminator expecting more of the same, you're like, what? Because Arnold Schwarzenegger's in it, Linda Hamilton's in it, but it's not the same kind of movie at all. The makeup and special effects aged terribly. I will pick out some things when we go through some of the moments. Okay.

i will pick out some things when we go through some of the moments okay uh there are some bad plot holes slash common sense problems which really annoyed me um because it's a time travel movie they're going to be bad plot holes but common nothing to do with time travel right common sense is a good way to put it i let the time travel stuff go because time travel timelines are always full of issues and just like the whole problem of time travel stuff go because time travel timelines are always full of issues. And just like the whole problem of time travel movies, like it's just a huge plot mess. Just doesn't matter how it's done. It's always an issue. Like if you're talking about the timeline.

Why did this human being do this thing? Nobody would do that. That's why I wanted to state like common sense problems. Yep. That's a great way to put it. And I think some kind of not good performances throughout. Yeah. All right. Fair enough.

All right. So we start off with space war. Yeah. In the far future, there's a horrible machine war going on. And there are models. There are lots of models used here that are space vehicles. Well, this is what I'm considering at this time, space vehicles. But they're Earth vehicles, but they're future vehicles. Future. here that the space vehicles well this is what i'm considering at this time space vehicles but

they're earth vehicles but they're future vehicles um they didn't look good uh and this is a problem with hd right like i can't fault the movie for this well but you know on this on the big screen you would have seen everything and more that you saw in hd then they're just terrible like in the movie theater yeah works for star wars right in star wars and you know that it's all different like but in star wars it's the same kind of thing right it's just small models that they're using yeah but i can be fooled by it in these i'm like this just looks like toys like they do like a close-up of these uh like these tank tracks and it just like just looks like a toy to me um i don't think that that looked very good and then I guess we start off with like the big

scene naked Arnold Schwarzenegger yeah he falls to the ground and oh my god do you see more than I expected to see there is a lot more of Arnold Schwarzenegger in this movie than I thought there was

going to be Jason nobody prepared me for that give me your clothes yeah uh that that i saw more arnie than i expected today i knew he would be naked um i was not expecting that much of what i was also yeah oh yeah but you get it you get it and he got clothes from like some punk kids which again another thing I thought that he got them from someone in a bar. It's just one of those things that has become pop culture. Terminator 2.

Then another naked person appears. Yes, Michael Biehn shows up as Reese. He gets some 80s clothes of his own. Yep. I will just mention first name Kyle because in my notes I refer to him as Kyle a lot, because I checked IMDB. Yeah. And, like, before the characters, you know,

because I write my notes, right, and I saw the name Kyle, so I wrote the name Kyle down a lot. But Kyle Reese, he comes and he does not look as good a shape as Arnie. You know, like, he's got scars all over him and stuff. So something's gone wrong here with our friend mr reese uh this is where the music is super bad it begins like being super bad it's as i said it sounds like a cheap casio keyboard like when kyle was being chased by the police at this point whenever you see arnie the music is like this and it sounds to me like a train

running on tracks if you've ever been under a bridge and a train goes overhead yeah that's what arnold schwarzenegger sounds like i guess yep that's his theme the this also where we meet sarah connor who i just wanted to say because in my notes i i have this that this is she looks as 80s as a person could be she has she is wearing acid washed guest jeans she is the 80s personified here and so i guess when we meet sarah connor and she's uh she comes into the movie you realize something's about to happen here i think we're about 20 minutes in to the film yeah and i have literally no idea what's going on right and i know this is the i guess this is the point but like i'm like have i missed something like i have no idea what is happening in this movie i don't know who or why any of those people are here you know you kind of get nothing um and

then this is the point when like you start to see a lot more of the evil intentions of arnst wilson agar and he's trying to find someone called sarah connor and he goes to a house and he kills a woman but it's not the lady that we think it's going to be right um and then you kind of realize at this point that he is going through the phone book or like he's trying to find sarah connor's and he wants to kill her but unfortunately started off with the wrong person. I found it kind of funny like when

when the, because Sarah Connors is in the worst diner of all time. Everyone is really horrible there for some reason and wants immediate service, which doesn't happen. I don't know if this really happens anywhere. Like everybody's screaming for service all at once. I don't think this is a thing. but her friend comes to get her to show her the news report about someone with the same name being killed so i don't think that this is the thing

they're like yeah that you would like come and look at this and she's like ah this is crazy i don't think this is like a thing that people would really pay that much attention to yeah and then they're like eight people sitting around the tv screen watching it it's like really like this seems like a real thing to kind of hang your hat on uh then there's kind of flashbacks where we then find out that that are the other guy the the hurt looking guy he's a fighter in the isn't a soldier in the space war right yep um there is a there's some this is when i talk about bad acting or bad performances this is one of them so he is running through these trenches with a with a comrade and they're trying to take down this thing which i can only kind of describe as a as an at-at right yeah and this is the flash-forward. There's a brief flash-forward into the future.

And they're throwing these grenades at it, and he throws one and runs away, then his comrade is shot, and then he's kind of just nonplussed by this. He's like, ooh, and then just carries on. I'm assuming there's some kind of relationship here, like friends at least. That had to hurt.

It's like, I've got stuff to do. No time to waste um and i just found that like a really because they they took enough to go to his face for him to give a face reaction like a facial reaction to the death of a teammate like a soldier but he's like now whatever i gotta get out of here and then like another one like he then jumps into a car and then person's killed. And he just gets out of the car and leaves. He does not care for people getting killed. And then we go to the... Then we're back in the modern day again. Or the current day.

We go to the police station where we find our police officer who's seen it all! He doesn't care about any crimes because he's seen all the crimes. This is Lieutenant Traxler. But this one, but once it's explained to him, he's never seen a phone book killer before.

I love it. It's like, ah, I have no time for crime. I've seen all the crime. But he's hard-nosed but was concerned about this one. And then our Sarah now is on her own. Is that Lance Henriksen? I think that's... Is that who that is?

That is Paul Winfield. Lance Henriksen is the detective. It's Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen are the cops there. Yeah, that's right. Both actually really great actors in little bit parts. Good character actors. I like the cops. They're totally not prepared for what they're going to get here but i do i do like the cops there

so then sarah and her housemate and i seeming best friend ginger that to a nightclub tech noir the swingiest nightclub oh no we're not at tech noir yet no come on okay fine we're not at i'm so excited about Tech Noir. That is my favorite thing in the whole movie. Okay, go ahead. Sarah's stood up on a date, right? And so she then goes out on her own, and Ginger is going out with her boyfriend,

who we're introduced to as a bit of a creep. There was something I wanted to mention about Sarah Connor. Why do they take great pains to try and make her kooky like she talks to the statue when she gets to the diner yeah you know she has a pet lizard okay so I think what what they're trying to do here given what happens to her this you can see it and and I will say also the contrast between the character in this movie and the next movie is breathtaking like the effect of this movie on her in the next movie is one of the things you miss if you haven't seen this movie and the next movie is breathtaking. Like the effect of this movie on her in the next movie is one of the things you miss if you haven't seen this movie

is just how much her life changes because of what happens here. But in this, they want her to be the stock, a stock young woman from an 80s comedy, basically. They want her to be kooky and she's got a bad job but she's just a regular girl that's what they want they're trying very hard to establish that so that they can because i i really believe james cameron the writer and director of this felt like that was what this movie was was a a collision of a you know murderous robot time travel action movie with an 80s movie

like an 80s teen movie i think that's what his premise kind of was and so they really try to sell you on sarah connor's quirky life before it gets completely ruined right because there is a there is a rom-com element here right because or at least it's not there's rom not so much calm but it is that right because she meets uh kyle reese and and they have their sort of love story that that runs through it a little bit too so that clearly he's trying cameron is trying to have that be part of the part of the storyline here is like a movie that you've seen before but it's but um the terminator has come in to ruin it all yeah i guess it's just like the lizard thing i was like really

yeah it's weird it's weird there are maybe other ways to do this i don't know what they are but like it just seemed like a really strange just like a really strange choice yeah um so sarah goes out on her own and she stood up and she's in a pizza place and she finds out on the tv that there are other sarah connor's and she puts two and two like another sarah connor's is killed so she kind of connor i keep calling her connor's sarah connor is killed and she kind of puts two and two together and works out that she's probably in trouble right there is a strong chance that she is in trouble um but she then leaves the pizza place on her own like she just she leaves and she starts running and she's getting um she's getting like

kind of tailed uh by reese she doesn't know at this point but she thinks it's a problem um so she then ducks into the bar tech tech noir which is a great name for a bar because it's terrible it's it is and and the and it is terrible it's the tech themed nightclub the swinging nightclub of tech noir and then uh it's bad it's so bad she tries to call the police has no luck and then we we flash back to the apartment and uh terminator has arrived and kills ginger thinking that it might be sarah right then uh unfortunately sarah calls um she calls the answer machine and gives her location yes answer machine now i have an issue with this which i'll get back to in a moment because initially i'm like okay i can kind of see this

right you're in trouble and you like you need to say like i am here i'm at this specific place this is the phone number please try and find me like the police aren't helping me like i can't get through to them um then it kind of goes back to sarah she calls the police she finally gets through the detective says stay there we're sending a police car they're going to be right there right the police economy is scrambling the city trying to find this person right then arnie is there how did he get there so quick like all she does robotic efficiency she sits down and he is outside the he has arrived at the nightclub right now we know he doesn't move

mega fast he cannot run quicker than any human because there are many chase scenes on foot he may have gotten in a car or some kind of vehicle to get there but all that would tell me is that tech noir is very close in proximity to her apartment so So if that's the case, why did she need to be so specific on the phone to ginger about where this place is? You know, I would say it's kind of a horror movie trope that's happening here, which is that the bad guy pops up immediately. You left out a couple of things that I wanted to mention,

which is when the roommate and her boyfriend are killed, there's a scene where they don't know that the Terminator is there because she's wearing a Walkman. Is that right? Yeah. And I felt like that was the message. You're shutting out the world, you kids and your Walkmans. And also, when she's doing this,

she's making herself the largest sandwich in history. With, like, ants on a log and a big glass of milk i don't know what she's making anyway uh but she dies and it's it's it's very sad so uh yeah then arnold is there and he's gonna kill another sarah connor because that's what he's been sent back to do but kyle reese is also there and just as as arnie is about to put a bullet into sarah he pulls out the shotgun that he took from earlier. We find out that he is a good guy because he takes some shots at Arnie.

The club clears, but unfortunately many people are caught in the crossfire. So there are many deaths at Tech Noir. Sorry, Tech Noir. That's why Tech Noir is no longer a good name for a nightclub. No longer in business. Yep, because of the the unfortunate it came to be known as the as the tech noir killings so they uh they had to change

it also uh not only does he shoot arnold and we we basically learned that he's a robot at this point this is the this is the reveal for people who didn't know what this movie was about right is that he's a he's a cyborg or whatever and that and Reese is the good guy. But what Kyle says to Sarah here is important for Terminator 2 because he says, come with me if you want to live. Yeah, I wrote that down. I know that line. It's then said by Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator in Terminator 2. Interesting. Then they make a run for it and the Terminator, he a police car right and this is where we find out

that he can imitate voices right which makes me wonder why he has the accent that he has why did the terminator settle on on that accent i think he was i think the voice uh synthesizer was programmed by an austrian man i guess so right it's interesting to me it's like he can choose any voice that was the one that he just nothing wrong with an austrian accent it's just like in the future in the future robot accents sound austrian they merge the robot accent that must have been it that must have been where the technology was developed because we find out that the machines started a nuclear war it feels very much like sneakers to me. They created defense systems. The defense systems realized that humans were the problem

and they wanted everybody dead. And they're going to kill everyone. However, Sarah's future son, this is Kyle Reese who's come from the future is explaining all of this. Sarah's future son will save humanity and that's why they want her to be killed. Yeah, this is, in my notes it's

just written down as then he recounts the plot of terminator 2 because it's like literally he's just saying this is what will happen in terminator 2 the machines they'll send somebody back that they'll try to kill your son it's like okay got it got it write that down for later um but this is also when he's giving her the premise about who the Terminator is. That I like, I really like this part because it makes it clear that this is a monster movie that you're actually watching. You're watching like the ultimate monster movie. The line that he says is, it can't be bargained with or reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity or fear.

It won't stop until you are dead. So the idea that this is a relentless killing machine, you're its you're its focus we gotta run and that's what the rest of the movie is and i i think a modern movie a 2017 movie would get to this in four minutes um but in in 1984 there's a lot of time spent with you know mystery and setup and and flavor of like her life and who she is and you have to get to this point where it's like okay this is what this movie is now yes and we're like an hour in yeah a relentless killing machine is going to kill you and we are going to try to stop it now let's go and that's it there's a car chase and the cars crash and the terminator escapes in more mystery you know like in more magic the the robot magic that he has he can he can escape in a flash movie monster magic yeah this is where sarah and reese

are arrested and sarah is kind of taken into protective custody and uh reese's is interviewed and obviously they don't believe his story right because he sounds like a crazy person they're in the police station she's they send a psychologist to talk to her who's an awful awful person. And he kind of says, oh, I can make my life work on this man because he fully believes what he's saying.

We also see at this point Terminator operating on himself including where he pulls out an eyeball which made me just i couldn't i just the exacto knife to the eyeball that's like oh yeah but that after he does this the prosthetic makeup like is so bad yeah it just looks like a dead man is moving like i said it's a it's a monster movie and yeah it's not the best yeah and and i love how they get out of it by having him like he puts on sunglasses and then he's back to regular

arnie face yeah that's right that's how you hide it good work everyone but it's i don't know i don't know why they chose such a close-up on that face like it's like yeah all the whole screen is just full of fake face like there is yeah they really shouldn't have done it that way. It reminds me of Rogue One, right? Where like they, they create like CGI people, but spend way too much time focusing on the CGI people.

It's like, just pull, pull back. This reflection's totally fine. Um, so she's looking in a mirror, right? Just like do the shot over his shoulder in the mirror.

Like I know what, I know you're super proud of yourself, but it can't have looked good even then like i can't imagine it did it feels like a shot from a horror movie where there's like the guy who did the fake blood and the fake skin is like it's so cool look at that fake blood and they're like all right i'll put a shot of your fake blood in the movie yeah but it's not that it's not that great but so he goes to the police station and uh we get that line that you've been looking for i'll be back yeah just uh he sizes up the police station and we get that line that you've been looking for. I'll be back. Yeah.

He sizes up the wall and then just drives a car through it, which is great. Yeah. See, this is the thing is, I knew the line before I'd seen this movie, right? And when it comes, I just started laughing because it's really funny, right? It's like, you know, sir, you know, you're a visitor. We got a lot going on here. And he just says, I'll be back. And he leaves and drives a car right through the police station it's like he's back he kept his promise it's just the the brutality of it and how he's just like i'll be back yep that's there's a reason that move that is a catchphrase that is a great moment he then makes short work of the

police force just mass yes like we got 30 guys here yeah he just kills all the cops yeah every single one of them doesn't even care no one even gets close to him he just destroys them like i love it like a couple of times he's like doing stuff and taking bullets it's like oh man like that's all it's like ah this is frustrating and it just kills everybody yeah um but sarah and uh reese. Yes, with the help of a very fast synthesizer running in the background. I do wonder why the cyborg can't run faster. I think it's a trade-off, right? Do you want the...

I don't know. I've got some headcanon I could give you about how they built this cyborg to be shaped like Arnold Schwarzenegger because they went for speed they went for strength over speed or perhaps the size of the metal casing is so great that they just can't you know they have to have a beefy

a beefy skin to put on them because they just it's obviously not built for speed it's not a running skin is slowing him down he's just ripped the leg skin off no but what i'm saying is the skin is covering the big metal exoskeleton it's the weight of the exoskeleton they don't make terminators in small okay or speedy he's also metal that's really heavy so yeah that's that's that's what i say about it this is not he's not meant to he's not meant to

need to run right he can just kill everybody i think that's the idea so then uh there's like a scene with like kind of kyle and kyle reese and sarah kind of they're kind of getting close to each other telling more stories just explaining more about kind of like how all of this happened why he was the one who came back like you, you know, all that sort of stuff. He doesn't know the full story yet. We find that out later. But like, there's like a flashback scene and he has a picture of her

and all that sort of stuff. And you can see there's going to be romance. Yeah, your son had a picture of you. This is a little time travel business, right? Your son had a picture of you. You were young like you are now, but you seemed so sad. And this is your romantic,

kind of like romantic moment here that happens between them but we'll pause that for just one second yes because they're in a hotel room right they're in they're in a motel room um they kind of hold up there they've got a dog that they've got outside because uh dogs can detect the cyborgs terminators who knew just whatever yeah that's kind of, it's creepy. Earlier you see Arnold walking and there's dogs barking everywhere. It's like, alright, that's a clue. Kind of like that. That's a cool thing.

At the hotel, Reese is going to go out to get supplies. He gives Sarah a handgun. No point. Why does he do that? I don't know. At this point... We know that you can't kill why does he give her a handgun why does he even have one it's pointless i don't know man

like this this is like part of like i see these things immediately when i watch them and i just wonder how it got yeah you're right it's it's action movie trope right like instead it should be like can you give me a gun or something and have him say what would be the point if he finds you a gun's not going to stop him right and that's instead it's like sure have a gun stay here making sense to me yeah no it's it's like action movie it's a stock action movie moment and that's why it's in there yep then uh i really like this part um where she's on the phone to her mom her mom's in a cabin and like her mom's like why don't you come here it's like no i'm in the place like why won't you tell me where i am and like she explains where she is and terminator's just gone and found the mom killed the mom and is doing the voice changing thing yep i thought that was pretty

cool i like that that was pretty and that's one of those things i mean terminator 2 in many ways is a a remake of this with a twist because so few people saw this compared to Terminator 2. And that's an effective scene that is doubled in Terminator 2. Yeah, he's gone to the parents and has used her mother's voice to impersonate her mother and get the information. voice to to uh impersonate her mother and get the information so yeah there's a there's a romantic tie beginning between the two of them which culminates in an extremely extensive over-the-top and unnecessary sex scene like yep what what the hell yep all the things everything dumped in all the things it came out of nowhere and it was wasted lasted for way longer than i expected and there was way more detail to it all yeah and look i know what they're trying to do but it's not

needed right like they did this because they want to set up the fact that that reese is the dad but you never needed to see this i feel like they're like it's a rated r movie we're gonna get away with it because it's a rated rated r, so let's put it in. Let's give people some of this, too. The 80s was a weird time. Also, Michael Biehn, and I had a debate with Erica Ensign on The Incomparable about it, because she thinks he's dreamy.

I just think he is a not particularly charismatic kind of blank. I kept thinking that this relationship might have been more effective if there was an actor who was a little more charismatic. But she said, no, absolutely not. So, you know, your mileage may vary. It's not the relationship that I have an issue with.

It is the extensiveness of this scene. Yeah, oh yeah, I get it. I get it. I just, I wanted to mention, I wanted to take my shot at Michael Biehn when I could. I do. I think he's kind of boring. But yeah, it is extensive.

I do totally not buy that she falls in love with him like this like i don't get it i mean maybe it's because she's just looking up to him because he saved her life right like and that's kind of swept her up and the whole thing i can totally see that but it's it's like as well like she mentions like at the end of the movie like we had a lifetime of love in the few hours we were together i didn't see this happening no no. Why did this happen? They had one conversation under like an underpass, and then they went to the hotel room, and then that was it. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, yeah. There's shorthand here, but we're asked to believe that in between all the scenes we saw, amazing things happened that we didn didn't see which happens in a lot of movies and it's definitely true in this one where you know the movie is really banking on you kind of going from point a to point b and believing that there was stuff that connected them in the middle and if you can believe it then it works for you but if you leave that gap it's too wide a gap then it won't work for you and i agree here doesn't seem, they kind of overdo it with the, with the, you know, lifetime of love thing. I mean, I would actually understand it more if it was more like they're on the run, you know, they just barely escaped with their lives. They, uh, they are together. They're two young, attractive people. They have sex. And then, you know, later

it's like, well, he, he was a great guy. He he saved my life we shared a moment and now i have a baby but that's not what she says it's this lifetime of love thing it's like what yeah yeah it's like they're adding romance in in a way that doesn't comport with the like what they've shown it just it's it's really strange now the 80s was a weird time i think maybe also there's the idea that they wanted since these are our heroes they want to have it be this that it was an act of love that uh that created john connor when you know the the performances and and uh scenes don't really show it being an act of love per se uh they're like little wardrokes are gonna go with it we need to do that we need to we need to have it be meaningful because otherwise it's just it's just uh sex in a hotel sex in a motel somewhere it's like that's not enough that's what i was trying to get it like i understand that but

the wholesomeness of doing that doesn't comport with the graphicness of the sex scene i yeah i know it's weird this is what i can't wrap my head around it. It's, yeah. You're not wrong. So then there's another car chase. Reese is hurt in this car chase a little bit. Yeah. And then they crash a car, car flips over, they're getting away, and the Terminator commandeers a fuel truck. Yeah.

Which cannot outrun a human, turns out, that Sarah Connor can run faster than this truck can drive. Doesn't matter how long this chase is running on for. We're looking at a good couple of minutes in real time that she is outrunning this truck. Just doesn't make any sense. They're going down a straight road at one point.

At one point, he's coming down a hill and he cannot get to speed to catch her and also as well so they create bombs earlier he doesn't know how to drive a truck he's got the gears in the wrong gears no because he scans it which i thought was pretty cool right like he scans it and can instantly understand how to operate the machine which i did quite a lot i was like yeah look you took time to fill that plot hole and then they make bombs earlier in the movie reese throws a bomb into a hole in the back of the gas truck so it will explode he jumps into a dumpster to protect himself from the explosion but just doesn't give any warning to sarah who's like in front of the thing running it's like thanks dude like you just go

protect yourself um the truck explodes great explosion and i love all the fire scenes right like him being on fire and that all looked really good um i bought all of that um but there we get terrible stop motion robot yeah it's a ray harryhausen style uh king kong you know stop motion i don't know why they did this because they have scenes where they've got like an animatronic right from the shoulder up they should have just used that all the time all of the stop motion stuff it looks ridiculous yeah i think it's a case of they wanted to they wanted to have that full-on robot and so they do the stop-motion version, and it didn't turn out maybe like they hoped,

but that was what they had to use, so they used it. But yeah, it's really dated. I feel like they could have just gone like Kermit the Frog with it and just shown torso and then moving legs, just shots of that. Yeah, done like a a lower leg puppet and then the upper leg animatronic and just not even yeah because or or have it be very brief of like a cutaway and then green screen technology is not good enough right at this point in time when

they're closing the door and it's like a clear green screen like it's it's it's not very good yeah um but you know that there's like this big fight and they've, they, he puts another bomb into the rib cage of the Terminator and explodes. And are they in the factory now? Is that what you're talking about? Okay. So I,

I like a lot of things in the fact, I mean, this is, I think it's very good action scenes here. The action stuff here is, is really good as it builds to the climax here in the factory. There's a funny moment, you know,

that the, it's a robotic factory, which I really like. Cause it's like the Terminator walks into the robotic factory it's like it's my people there they are hey guys yeah he said something here about why turning the robots on would help and i couldn't catch it yeah something about like it will it will mean that we can't it can't track us or something yeah i don't know the the. But anyway, so they're in the robot factory and then he sticks a bomb in the Terminator.

Boom. Yeah, and it blows the Terminator up, kills Kyle Reese, right? This kills him. Yeah, Sarah's wounded and Kyle is dead, yeah. But the Terminator will not stop. It's a horror movie, right? It's a horror movie monster. So the Terminator, even with all of that, the Terminator will not stop. It's a horror movie, right? It's a horror movie monster.

So the Terminator, even with all of that, the Terminator has been blown apart but is not dead. It's still got its kind of upper body. Yeah, and also Sarah is injured. She's hurt her leg. Her leg has been pierced in one of the explosions. She got out completely unscathed from the gas truck exploding. But so you get that another classic

suspense thing here where she is slowed but the Terminator is also slowed because it's just parts of the Terminator now so she's crawling away and it's crawling to get her and she like pulls down this grate and it gets its arm through and it kills her with the arm but

then she presses a button on basically the tunnel they just crawled through is a machine it's a hydraulic press that they've crawled through and now she crushes him and says you're terminated yeah you're terminated

and that got him that's it then we kind of flash forward in time and Sarah is on the road she's in mexico yeah she's recording tapes of her thoughts to uh her unborn baby you can see she's pregnant and uh she she stops at a gas station a child takes a photo of her which he has to pay she has to pay four bucks to get it right and she's like oh great hustle

and this is the photo that it will be left for the baby to give to kyle reese in the future yep right um and i like here that they they actually address the timeline which i quite like that actually where like she addresses that everything has to happen for it to happen yeah which is something is usually glossed over in a lot of time travel movies, right? But they actually address the timeline. That it all makes sense within that. Okay, good. I'm pleased that you did that.

And then, oh, God. There's a storm coming. There's a storm coming. I know. Oh! Really? Yeah. Really? Like, it's not a storm coming i know oh really yeah really like it's not a storm you know it wasn't it wasn't a storm that sent all these robots crazy they don't like the weather they don't like the wind wind makes robots very angry yep the term the terminator can you see why this why people like this movie like the action i mean this is a i'll say this

too if you think about schwarzenegger 80s action movies like this is viewed as an action movie it's like oh this this has a lot more than your usual action movie or your usual monster movie it's got it's got the uh it's got the the extra time travel twist and the fact that he's a relentless not vampire or zombie or something but he's a cyborg like viewed in the in the context of kind of crappy 80s action movies i which arnold schwarzenegger made a lot of along with sylvester stallone and a bunch of other people I think this movie comes out as as being a standout but viewed from another perspective it is you know it it is what it is it is it is a product of that genre yeah that for me it's just the special effects are bad but I can excuse them yeah no the

action's good and the special effects are bad the music is can excuse them. Yeah. No, the action's good and the special effects are bad. The music is bad. Yeah. And just the common sense holes, like they just really frustrate me because some of them just feel so simple. Namely, the speed in which Arnie can travel to places but can't run fast enough to catch anybody on foot.

Yeah, that's horror movie logic. Yeah. I know this is all horror movie stuff, right? But this isn't a horror movie. I know there are horror movie tropes in it, but I'm less willing to accept it because an action movie and action movies tend to be based more on reality. And also there is no mystical. and also there is no mystical with monsters in horror movies there is a

what is powering this monster is there magic involved we know that's not the case because we know this is a cyborg we know what Terminator is it's explained to us clearly what this thing is and what it's capable of there are just things in it that I just didn't like the action scenes were good but they weren't really good enough the and the relationships

between everybody is just weird in a way that doesn't make sense um yeah i did this movie didn't float my boat fair enough i think it's i think it's good to have seen it and there's some fun things in it it is dated dated. It launched a huge franchise. So I think that alone makes it worth seeing. I totally can see how Terminator 2 is better than Terminator. And we should watch that at some point because it is a movie that is in most ways, maybe not all, but in most ways, maybe all actually superior to this one. But I think it is good to have seen this because there are payoffs in Terminator 2 in 1991, you know, seven years later that really work better when you, you know, just seeing Sarah in Terminator 2. You're like, oh, my God.

Right. Like she is completely different than the soft uh diner waitress that we need here um and so seeing them in succession there there's those payoffs and come with me if you want to live the fact that that terminator is sent back to protect john connor so arnold schwarzenegger goes from being the villain in this movie to the hero in the next movie yeah is a brilliant twist on it. But again, I feel like it plays better if you can see where it starts and then see the twist. So for these reasons, I think it's kind of required viewing, or at least it helps a lot.

But yeah, it's not a movie I revisit a lot. It was fun to revisit it, but it's not a movie that I consider essential in any other way. But now you're literate on it. now people can talk about the terminator and they'll say something you'll be like actually i think that was terminator 2 because i just saw the terminator i can tell you what's in that one it's is it techno music is it you know electronic music from the techno noir come 1982 to tech noir yeah tech noir i don't believe reappears sorry when we open a nightclub me and you when we're done with this podcast game. Mike and Jason's Tech Noir? Yep. That's what we'll call it. If you want to find our show notes for this

week, head on over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 129. Thanks again to our sponsors, TextExpander, Eero, Encapsular, and Squarespace. If you want to find Jason online, he is over at sixcolors.com, theincomparable.com, and on Twitter at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.

And I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E on Twitter. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Bye, everybody. I'll be back. There it is. There it is. It's like, what's happening?

I get the movies. I'll be back