Upgrade - 130: Ron Has a Pretty Sweet Job

Episode Date: February 27, 2017

Apple Park nears completion, The Nintendo Switch arrives, Silicon Valley culture fails its workers, and pineapple on pizza creates an international incident.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 130 today's show is brought to you by blue apron fresh books and encapsular my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell it's lucky number 130 mike that's what they call it that's as the old phrase goes lucky 130 unlucky 13 lucky 130 we are gonna be together in a few weeks time we are uh i was uh i was asked to return to your part of the world and uh and so we're gonna get together yeah i'm gonna be so last fall we we saw each other and we did a special upgrade episode to your part of the world. And so we're going to get together. Yeah, I'm going to be... So last fall, we saw each other and we did a special Upgrade episode from Ireland

where I was doing... You attended Ool and I was attending Ool, but I was also a special guest of the event. And what I was doing is interviewing participants in the event for something called Ool Radio, which is a podcast that I did. And it was just, you know, 20 minute interviews with interesting people talking about what they, you know, what sort of the same subjects that they were talking about

at UL. And we also did a clockwise from there. Anyway, they asked me to come back and do more UL Radio this time. And I said yes, because I can't resist going back to Ireland. I think this will be the fifth straight calendar year I've gone to ireland which is crazy because i'd never been before um and the fourth wool so we're gonna we're gonna both uh we're gonna both be both be in wool that's the starter we will be back in ireland together and uh people should i guess we should plug ULL, 2017.ull.ie. They have not asked us to in any way. But the fact that this will be the third time that we've recorded Upgrade from ULL, I think that we will both very much endorse this conference.

It is my favorite conference that I go to. ULL is very special, and it's a special place. And the lineup this year is maybe the best lineup that I've seen at All before. So I'm super excited about it. I have a warm feeling in my heart to look at the lineup and see how many RelayFM hosts there are. That makes me smile. Yeah, All is amazing. If you're inclined, if you're thinking about doing it, I would say, yeah, you really should.

Like, if you're thinking about it, I recommend that you actually just go out and do it. So we'll put some links in the show notes. You should attend if you're interested. And you can see us and we'll be there. And depending on timing, we've tended to record Upgrade from a hotel room. But you never know. The UL Radio room was actually pretty great. And we had an audience for Clockwise.

And I'm not sure what days I'm having access to the rooms. We might be able to record Upgrade just in the room that's the podcast room so upgrade in front of a live audience could be it's possible that would be exciting but if not we'll definitely be around and and talking to people and uh yeah so so check it out and we'll be there but talking about being around i'm going to flash everybody back to 2015 if you remember back to then i i was uh going to wool and it was this time of year i think it was more of the of the spring and they moved it to fall last year for a few reasons but it's back in the spring 2015 i made a point of stopping by the uk which i couldn't do in 2016 uh since i'm going all that way i wanted to

visit my pals in the uk as well so that's happening again and we did a meetup in 2015 when i was there with me and mike at a place called the big chill house in king's cross and guess what we are doing it again we're doing it again and we've done a couple of meetups there now. Like we did one with Federico last year. And a few other RelayFM hosts as well. We did a connected meetup. I really like the Big Chill. They're very accommodating.

This time we're going for a slightly smaller room than before. There are 50 tickets available. We have to do tickets because we have a room booked with a maximum capacity. So there are tickets. They're free. They're first come, first served. It's going to be on April the 5th, Wednesday April the 5th from 7.30 to 11pm

as Jason mentioned at the Big Chill House. There is a link in the show notes where you can get your Upgrade London meetup tickets. We are only mentioning this on the show notes where you can get your upgrade london meetup tickets we are only mentioning this on the show for now because we want to make sure that upgradians get the uh first attempt at coming to this thing because ideally we would love it if it was just upgrade listeners right that came because you're all the best people and we want you to be there so wednesday

april 5th there's a link in the show notes to get your Upgrade London meetup tickets. So you want to find that, click the link, sign up, and you'll be able to come and hang out with me and Mr. Jason Snell for a couple of hours. It was so much fun last time. I'm very excited to do it again. It was. It was amazing. Somebody gave me cheese. Somebody gave me some manchego, which I left behind.

I just totally forgot about it. Well, I was carrying cheese around for hours and then I left it somewhere and I don't even know where it is. Can I be honest, Mike? People kept bringing us drinks. It was crazy. That may be the most alcohol

I have ever had in one session. And I remember thinking on the tube back to where I was staying, thinking, well, drunk people on the tube is pretty much common in London, so I'm not worried about it. I felt like I was fitting in. But boy, people kept bringing us drinks. It was amazing and a great time and met a lot of great people.

So hopefully people will come and find us at the Big Chill. So sign up for the tickets. Last time it was way less prepared and we didn't really do any preparation at all and this time i've decided we should i think that's good literally they were shooing us out of the main area so many people came for the meetup that they were like we need to you know we have an empty room upstairs why don't we just shoo these people upstairs and that way it'll be less intimidating intimidating in here for all of our other patrons and that was great but you know this time we wanted to plan ahead a little bit. So we have a room for us, which is nice.

And they want us to, you know, we have to buy drinks and things, obviously, because there's a so. So everybody buy drinks or buy us drinks. Well, maybe buy yourself drinks. Yeah. No, I don't. I don't endorse the everybody. But maybe like a small handful of people. No, that was so dangerous.

It is a city I'm not used to that I had to find my way back home to a place I don't normally live. It was tough. I'll make sure you get home this time. Don't worry. Thank you. Thank you, Mike.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I will say it starts at 7.30 p.m. up until 11. You can come and leave whenever you want. You don't have to be there for the whole time.

We won't keep you present. Don't worry. But you can come and we're going to have a great time. So I hope to see you there you don't have to be there for the whole time we won't keep you yeah don't worry but you can come and we're gonna have a great time so i hope to see you there i would like to address something uh i'm sure you received equal amounts of tweets and emails about this as i did because it has long been known that both me and you enjoy pineapple on our pizza with pepperoni pineapple being the preferred choice of both for us after you introduced it to me it is the most important

things yes some would say the official food of the upgrade podcast is pepperoni pineapple pizza well i did find out on analog episode 100 which i got to participate in that uh pizza is your favorite food. It is. And this pizza is my favorite pizza. So really, you are responsible for my favorite food. Well, you're welcome. Anytime. And basically, we received a lot of follow up and feedback about the fact that the president of Iceland, the country, said that he would ban pineapple as a pizza topping if he could. So lots of people were telling us one of two things. This is an outrage, or this proves that your pizza choice is bonkers,

which I would like to just say for the fact I don't care what you say. I love pineapple on my pizza and it's amazing. Yes. So if you don't like it, that's fine, but we do very much. What I really appreciated about the president of Iceland is that, although he explained, also I have to laugh because one upgradian wrote in to explain that it was the president of Iceland, the country, not the frozen foods store.

That was why I said the country, because in the the uk there is a frozen food store called iceland uh and i just feel like it's worth just just putting that into perspective you know yeah it makes me laugh anyway um the uh he said in a later follow-up after this caused a ridiculous controversy an international outrage well that's true because we're going to get to the canadians there was definitely some some uh across the north atlantic there was some uh some tension building but he said he went on to make a point that although he doesn't personally prefer pineapple pizza and recommend seafood pizza instead that he just because he's the president he doesn't think president should make a law that people should only do things that he likes that's not he's you know people should be able to do what they like he just says as a person he doesn't like that kind of pizza

he prefers the seafood pizza and i thought that was a a very nice follow-up for somebody who probably has better things to do with their time than talk several times about pizza toppings so full good job president of iceland i will say i cannot abide by somebody saying pineapple is not a good topping and instead saying seafood is yeah seafood on a pizza i cannot envision a fish pizza but i don't like fish i don't like seafood in general uh then again he's in iceland They're right there in the middle of the ocean. They probably really like their seafood there. So that's fine. Whatever.

And it turns out, turns out. Turns out. The Hawaiian pizza, the pineapple and ham, which is the traditional, right, was actually invented in Canada. Yes. And Justin Trudeau, who is the Prime Minister of Canada and is, I would say, a meme machine,

I think is pretty fair. He came out and said, on record, that he stands by this delicious southwestern Ontario creation and that he is, in fact, Team Pineapple.

So I'm wondering if maybe we should just uproot move to Canada both of us and we base upgrade from there now well Canada's pretty great and it would it has something for both of us in that it is a uh it is a unique mixture you know of English and America and North American you know United United States culture. It is sort of the place, other than maybe like Bermuda or something, it's one of the few places that is this combination

of my culture and your culture swirled together with the unique Canadian culture, but it has similarities with both of our homelands. It doesn't get any better than the money, right? It's called dollars, but it than the money right it's called dollars but it has the queen on it that's that's true and they have the they have the loony and

the toonie which are coins um and they have no pennies they have no pennies either there's lots of things to be said for canada here's the thing mike i am a californian and I struggle with the idea because pretty much all of Canada is pretty far to the north from me. And the weather is not so good. If I must move to Canada, I would probably choose Vancouver or Victoria, something on the West Coast as a West Coast guy. We'll move there. But Canada is great. So, yes, upgrade world headquarters of the future in uh british columbia perfect and we we will be and the uh the upgrade world headquarters will

the commissary will only serve pepperoni and pineapple pizza god that'd be incredible i could eat it every day i could eat it every day until you die of pizza as far as what a way to go he died as he lived he died doing what he loved eating pizza eating pizza yep so thank you canada yeah thanks canada's great we love canada this episode is brought to you by fresh books life as a freelancer can be a challenging thing jason snell is well aware of this he hosts a podcast dedicated to it called free by FreshBooks. Life as a freelancer can be a challenging thing. Jason Snell is well aware of this. He hosts a podcast dedicated to it called Free Agents, which you should go and listen to.

And you actually just did an episode all about invoicing and getting people to pay you. And in my opinion, there is no better way than FreshBooks. FreshBooks has been designed from the ground up to work exactly the way that people do these days with it being all based online. It is built to make you more productive and organized whilst also letting you get paid quickly. The working world is different now, and with the growth of the internet, there's never been more opportunities to become self-employed. There are opportunities now that simply could not have existed before,

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has a great notification system. When you log in, you'll be able to see exactly what's changed with your business and what needs your attention. And all of these features are coupled with a beautiful design, which focuses on simplicity and clarity, answering the age-old question of how is my business doing? FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to listeners of this show. Go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade

and enter upgrade in the how you heard about us section so they'll know that you came to them from this show. I will just underscore how much I love FreshBooks. We are fast approaching our 1000th invoice with FreshBooks at RelayFM. It really makes our work a lot easier to manage. Thank you so much to FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right. So, Jason, you wanted to just spend a little bit of time today talking about Uber. Yeah. You know, I don't want to go like super deep down in it because it's been out there. The story's been out there for a while. And I'd like to say, as we often do on this show, that the folks over at Accidental Tech Podcast covered it very well in episode 210. It was covered in Rocket in episode 111. There's some really good podcasts out there about it.

The story is a woman named Susan Fowler spent a year at Uber and then left to go work at Stripe. Where did she end up going? Stripe. Stri did she end up going? Stripe. And once she left Uber, she talked about her reasons for leaving Uber and how super awful aspects of the job were. I think it's interesting and important to note that, as John noted on ATP,

that there are lots of reasons you might not just immediately quit when something bad happened to you at your job including liking your co-workers and being really uh excited about the work you're doing and uh and it's it's it's messy and it's complicated although i think the what says it all is the chapter about Uber in ATP last week, because Marco puts in the chapters now, was Uber is horrible, which is, it's about it. for reporting managers to HR. And she was refused transfers because of bad working conditions. And just, it's a horror story. It's worth reading. I think what's really amazing about it also

is that since it came out, women who work in the tech industry have said, this is not unusual. It might be on an extreme end, but it's not like a one, you know, it's not a, oh, one time this happened. That's not what the case is. But I wanted to talk about it. You know, I don't want to retread a lot of what's been already covered and covered probably better than I can in places like Rocket and ATP. But I wanted to talk about the HR angle here. I wrote about this briefly on Six Colors too, because human resources, I spent a long time

managing people in a large organization. And over time, that was a large group of people. And I was on a management team where we talked to the HR people and we talked to the heads of other groups about what was going on to a certain degree. There's a certain degree that I'm sure happened that was completely confidential that I didn't get involved in because it wasn't my group. But I got to see a lot over the years about it. And that's the thing that struck me about Susan Fowler's story is about human resources. is about human resources. Like human resources. Um, also my, my uncle was, uh, the vice president of human resources for a large, uh, like a fortune 500 company for, um, Owens, Illinois,

Brockway, which is a, uh, a glass and plastic manufacturer. And he did like union negotiations and all of that. Um, so I, I thought about HR stuff. My wife worked in HR briefly. I mean, I thought about this for a long time and worked with HR people for a long time. And HR, John mentioned some of this on ATP. HR used to be the personnel department first off. They used to just call it personnel. And that's something that you might be able to kind of see that what HR is, it's an entity that works for the company, right? These people work for the company. And their primary job really is to make sure that the company doesn't fall into legal trouble.

So their job is to make sure that if you've got unions, that you have to negotiate the union contracts. But it's also things like, here are the company rules and processes. And if you follow them and don't follow them, and here are the benefits, and we're going to administer them. And when I say that the HR department works for the company, I mean, what I really wanted to say is a lot of people who are just workers and have an HR person that they fill out forms with or talk to about issues they've got with their benefits and all that. And HR people are, almost all the HR people I've met have been great people who legitimately care about the people who work for their company.

But when a company's culture is completely aligned with the idea that the employees are important and that they want to be taken care of and they need to be protected if people are breaking the rules or doing things that are bad. They need to be protected if people are breaking the rules or doing things that are bad. When the culture is aligned there with those kinds of values, then HR really is a pretty healthy place that is about protecting the interests of the employees and the company. And the best HR environments I've been in have been like that. What gets bad is when there's a kind of broken corporate culture, where suddenly, some of the priorities are, are not really conducive to taking care of your employees. And it's much more about, you know, in the case of Uber, protecting sort of unfireable people who are bad actors and shielding them from any fallout from their bad behavior at the expense of other employees. And what you saw in Susan Fowler's story is literally HR people gaslighting an employee and saying, no, this has never happened before. This is a first time when it turns out other people had also reported this person for the same, you know, making passes at women who reported to him was not a first time. And so, I mean, that's the truth of HR is that if your corporate culture is broken or skewed in some way, HR is no longer necessarily a refuge. And I know that there are HR people who get frustrated about that. I will say the worst HR people I've ever worked with were people from a kind of broken culture who I came to not trust. And in fact, I had managers

in that group tell me not to trust the HR people because they were almost like the enemy. And that was a sign of a culture that was messed up. So anyway, my big point here is I love HR people. When they're in a healthy environment, they are great to work with as a manager and as an employee. They are very helpful people. They want to be helpful. I've worked with some wonderful HR people over the years. But in a broken culture, things get really bad. And when Travis Kalanick says, or Kalanick, yeah, Travis Kalanick says, oh, no, no, no, no, this is against our culture. We're going to get to the bottom of this. My takeaway is, no, it is your culture, dude.

It is your culture. Because for your HR department to act this way, they must feel like the company's priorities are completely broken. And that comes from the company culture because otherwise they wouldn't behave this way. I mean, you worked in a big bank. What's your take on all of this? I was also a manager. I had to deal with HR for many different reasons. When I had difficult employees or employees with difficulties, I had to work with HR, they had to work with HR. I had to work with HR when I was going through some problems. work of hr they had to work of hr i had to work of hr when i was going through some problems i mean really i think in a in a responsible company a big company uh the hr department

should feel like an independent organization like they should feel like that they're an outside part of the company because nobody should be able to put their hands in and mess around in there right and in an independent yeah they should feel independent. Ultimately, they do. They are trying to make sure that the company is shielded from problems. But if you think about it, like in a healthy culture, protecting the employees is part of the culture. And therefore, protecting the employees by making sure people follow the rules also protects the company, right? That is, and I've had that. I mean, I've had HR people who have defended employees about like, you know,

we shouldn't lay this person off. We, you know, like really serious, like, and push back to push on the best interests of the employees and say, you know, to management, you need to rethink the way you're approaching this. And in a healthy environment, that is absolutely what it should feel like. But it's not like the independence is created into the group, right? The group isn't fundamentally independent. It feels fair because the culture has said we want to treat everybody fairly. Like a good HR should should not feel like

it's defending any individual except for the rules right like sometimes they'll work against people sometimes they'll work for people right like employees or sometimes they they work for the managers sometimes they work against like it should always just be that their guiding principle is the rules right um that they're not necessarily going to go one way or another. So if a company is doing stuff like this, the rules are either not clear enough or they're not enforced or there are incentives

to work against the rules for whatever reason. Like, it seems like from what has been said about Uber at this point, that this isn't just one bad person inside of the hr department right because there have been multiple stories of this type of stuff i mean let alone all of the other things that uber has done right like right like threaten journalists

with spying and yeah many the list is long at point, no matter what they think are the principles of the company, the employees of the company are not following the principles that have, in theory, been set out. What they're following is the leader. And it seems like that that's not going very well. I hear so many people say that like everyone that works at uber is terrible and i don't agree with that right because they're obviously not you know like no susan fowler would deny that right because she said she loved a lot of her co-workers and the projects that they were working on were fascinating and interesting right

she's not saying it's a it's awful you know 100 she's saying that this aspect of it was untenable and it's cultural and it's huge yeah but like what is very clear is that there are people that are being treated treated terribly like yeah either they're being sexually harassed or they're being bullied or there's you know a myriad of problems that have to be fixed if this company is going to continue i mean the the sexual harassment is incredibly offensive and has understandably gotten a lot of the attention here but the thing as a manager uh of many years the thing that struck out at me the most was the retaliation like at one point in her story literally the hr person says well you're going to get a bad review because

you reported this guy and that's just going to happen yep and and you know we're going to deal with it and that is that is incredibly i mean that's illegal yeah that's like and that goes back to something that that uh i've heard a few people say which is if the hr department's job is to protect the company from being sued this this group did a really bad job because that's like a fundamental like like responding to reports of sexual harassment with retaliation is literally the how big would you like the check to be moment in terms of the law that's amazing that they can show and they admitted that they were going there was going to be retaliation against her for reporting this incident it's amazing but that's how broken this culture was is that is that even something like that of protecting the company wasn't as high up on the list as protecting these people who were bad actors and allowing them to continue doing it

that that is a completely broken culture i just really struggled to get my head around how there is clearly such a focus on women in technology right now right it is a thing that is being spoken about there are so many pushes to try and make these environments better. I cannot understand how a company as big as Uber can let something like this happen. Like, I just cannot understand how you can still, at this point, have a culture that has not ironed this stuff out. Like, this shouldn't be happening. There should be no push on the HR department to act this way. They should be pushed the other way. They should be pushed to overact in the other way.

In a healthy corporate culture, the HR people say, oh my God, did you see what just happened? That guy needs to go. Because we cannot face that type of public relations right like they must know well yeah but also just from an hr perspective is like you have to have the healthy pr aside i mean the management should be supportive of it for a lot of reasons right to to to defend their employees and protect their employees and have a positive work environment and to not have this be an issue where it's a huge pr problem if it comes out yeah of course i don't mean this like this shouldn't

happen just for PR. Like, what I mean is, like, it should never happen, but especially right now, right? Like, these things should not be done, they should be dealt with appropriately. But in the culture that we're in right now, like, the climate that we're in right now, like, you have to overact to these things

to try and stomp them out, right? Yeah, and the, the again i have a hard time imagining how this situation happened because the hr people i worked with would not take any crap like the years that i worked at the mac publishing mac you know mac world and and in my early days at pc world mac world combined too like I mean, I would talk and there would be a lot of back and forth. Kate, my HR person, she was a fierce defender of doing what was right and the rules and of the people. And she would push back against the management team. Ultimately, if the president of the company said, this is what we're going to do, she would need to do it or I guess quit if it

was something outrageous. But there was that kind of relationship. And what I see in these Uber reports is that HR did not have that relationship. Either HR didn't care and it had already been made clear that their number one priority was keeping this great talent no matter what they did. And if they acted like awful people, it didn't matter. Or they had just decided that they couldn't fight it anymore. That anybody who would take a stand and say, this is unacceptable. These are not the kind of practices that any modern business should ever do that they were essentially told to leave or they had to leave because they were not being listened to. Because that's the healthiest

moment here is right. The HR person should say, we got to get this guy out. And yeah. Okay. If it truly is somebody's first time, I can see the argument that like, okay, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to take this person and we're going to give them training and we're going to, we're going to, you know, give them, put them on probation and we're going to check in with them and all of that. You could, we can, we could argue that point about, do you just instantly fire somebody for certain offenses versus other offenses or do you give them a second chance? But if you do give them a second chance in some way, you know, opportunities to retaliate and, you know, having other things happen, you know, then even with a second chance, that second chance should be on a like thin ice and they should be gone. And the HR department should be patrolling that, right?

But none of that seems to have happened here. And in fact, it's the reverse where they're defending the bad actor. And it's just, it's baffling to me because the HR people I worked with would, I mean, they would push back on way more gentle things in terms of anything involving the employees. They were always like devil's advocate,

at least for the employees. Like, what if devil's advocate, at least for the employees. Like, what if we did this? You shouldn't do that. Did you think about this aspect that will happen if we change this policy? Like that's, that was my experience with my HR people. And it was great. I mean, sometimes it was annoying, right?

Because you're like, oh, I have this great idea. And they're like, that's not going to work because, but that's their job is to do that. And at Uber, it's just, yeah, it's baffling to me that how broken did it have to be? It's not like they said, we're going to hire evil HR people. Get the evil people here. We want evil HR here. That's not, either it's people who are willing to do whatever because they're working for a big company and they'll do whatever, or they're so beaten down that they just will

follow orders. It's just baffling to me because i think most hr professionals would just be aghast at some of this behavior it's it's amazing yeah it basically you know this shouldn't be happening anymore companies need to be more responsible yeah i don't know if and how uber can can show, but they need to show it. I have a theory about why this happens in a lot of, and it doesn't, it's not like why sexual harassment happens, but like why so much of this stuff goes undocumented, unpunished and all of that. My theory is that in a lot of these tech companies, they are young and they are founded and run by people who don't actually know what the rules are

or don't care what the rules are. In fact, maybe they got where they are by ignoring what the rules are. I mean, that's the whole Uber corporate culture, right? It's just do it and not worry about it and don't worry about the rules. Who cares about the rules? And maybe there's something in that,

that like the way these cultures get built is totally deformed because it's entirely focused on startup growth and high performers and things like that. And that like anything goes, you will work, you know, way more hours than anybody should be asked to work because startup. And, you know, our high performers who do that are incredibly valuable and we want to give them incentives to do it because startup. that are incredibly valuable and we want to give them incentives to do it because startup. And then you get to that point where you've got an HR department because you have to, because somebody said, no, you need to hire HR because you actually need to pay these people and have policies and all of those things and do payroll. And they're like, all right,

we'll hire some HR people. But they're never integral to the company. They just get in the way and they are to be batted away whenever the startup mentality kind of floods in. Now, that might be an excuse. I'm not a good one. I'm just trying to understand why it might happen at a startup like Uber has been. Why did it get so broken? Maybe that's one of the reasons. That doesn't really excuse all the established corporate cultures where this happens. If you're Apple and you've been around for for decades uh this should this should be over and you know my understanding is old tech companies have these same problems too so i don't know what's what are the priorities here it's uh it's it's frustrating yeah i think at the point where

you have to hire hr people you can't do that stuff anymore you know like you can't break people you can't push people you know like yeah right it obviously obviously that the things that susan was talking about in her piece should never be allowed anywhere but like at least some of the things you're talking about like over pushing your employees making work every hour that ever happens like at the point where you're at the size where you need to hire hr like you just can't you just can't do that anymore yeah and clearly for whatever reason they they didn't bend to that i would argue that maybe silicon valley cultural in general is broken or deformed in you know to a certain degree where not just things like sexual harassment or failing to hire women and uh and people who aren't white for jobs you know beyond that to just basic employee care like the idea that i think a lot of silicon valley

is built on hire somebody in their early 20s work them to death until they burn out discard them they get money that they haven't spent because they haven't lived their life. They've just been working. And then they go off and do something else with the money. But you work them and break them and throw them away and continue again. And a lot of Silicon Valley companies, that is the business model. Yeah. I mean, you name checked Apple a moment ago, like from all reports I've ever heard, they still are like this. Yeah. Yeah, certainly in some groups.

I think not all groups are like that. But in the core product groups and all of that, yeah, there's this expectation that we will work you. And a lot of companies, including Apple, we will work you to death, basically. You don't have a life. You work for us. We pay you. You can't do anything with the money, but we pay you. And then at some point, people are like, and we know people like this.

I've talked to people like this at Apple conferences. At some point, they're like, I'm not going to do this anymore. And they a family and a life for 40 hours a week or 50 hours a week when I can pay a lot less to a 20 something and they'll work 60 hours a week. And I would say that that's kind of immoral because you're exploiting your younger workers, discriminating against people who have lives. And you're just, you know, you're billion dollar companies that are cheaping out because you've got kind of cheap labor that you're exploiting. And then at some point, I feel like that is broken and that people should be allowed... Healthy company culture includes the fact that people should not have to work a 60-hour week. But Silicon Valley culture, that is incredibly common. It's gross. I mean, I've worked in those industries. I know people like advertising is really bad. Banking is really bad. Like still, you know, like these aren't

nowhere near startups, right? And they work people to the bone. Yeah, companies want to get as much out of their employees as they can, as they can get away with for as little as they can pay them. That is a part of the deal. And I do think that that is beyond a certain point that is broken because I'm skeptical of how effective people are after a certain point and whether that's actually useful or not. But also I think it's immoral to burn people out and know you're burning them out just because, look, if you want to work more, that's fine. But cultures where you literally can't not work, it's broken. And I would argue that once you're at that point in your corporate values, that it's not a big jump from there to all these other things, because you've already got an HR group that is essentially not defending its people

because it knows it's workers, because it knows that these kinds of things are just part of the game. You have already established your fundamental lack of respect for the people that you pay money to. And that sort of starts seeping into everything. And then you just start to forget what should be basic human values, which is clearly, as we've seen here, where Uber is right now. And they have to have to fix it. Like, they just have to fix it. thankfully in such a harsh way that they're making a bunch of statements and they've been what do they get like a former u.s justice or something like in to start looking at it for them it's the attorney general uh one of the obama attorney generals is investigating it and yeah

we'll see i mean i can't and it's going to be like a publicly like it's going to be like a public report right that they'll publish about yeah we'll see we'll see i can't imagine how that's gonna look for them yeah they just gotta fix it because this this really isn't where we should be and we should be at this point trying harder and harder to bring people of all backgrounds and genders like i can't believe we're still doing this into these companies and making them feel safe. Like how, how are we still at this point? I, I cannot understand it. So I hope that there's some change. Yeah. Today's episode is also brought to you by Encapsula, 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, the multi-function content delivery network that boosts the performance of your website,

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occupied thinking about Friday. Because on Friday, the Nintendo Switch is released. Ah. I have some Switches on pre-order. I have multiple machines pre-ordered. Because I have suffered in the past, Jason,

from pre-ordering things that don't arrive when they're supposed to. So I have a small handful of pre-orders from different places. And if I get all three of the pre-orders, I already know what I'm doing with the other two consoles. I won't be keeping them. I'm selling one to a brother and then the third one

either onto a friend or I'm going to be putting it on eBay. Are you at all interested in the Nintendo Switch? I'm interested in it. I made the decision not to pre-order it um part of that and you know forgive me if you've heard this before but part of it is console creep yeah this is a total thing yep 100 you know you know i i have a wii u which i like i bought mostly for mario kart but there are a bunch of great games on it. My kids were playing Mario Kart 8 the other day.

I'm not sad that I bought it. If it had been completely incompatible with all of our old Wii games, I would have been sad that I bought it because there are not that many Wii U games out there. And now it's kind of a dead platform. But we had a Wii with all those Wii games, and it's compatible with all of them. So like this weekend, my family and I played a Beatles rock band, which is a Wii game. And we still have all the instruments still work on the Wii U and it works on the Wii U and it's great.

Plus then we can flip over and do Mario Kart eight. And that's, that's a Wii U game and it's got the high, high quality. So my point is the Wii U for me had value because it was replacing a box, right? And one of the things that, yeah. But it's not a, it's not a, I'm keeping a level number of consoles in my house, right?

But like the Xbox One, which we have, I still have an Xbox 360 in a different room. Why? Because sometimes my son wants to play those Xbox 360 games and the games he likes never got that compatibility thing that microsoft talked about but really didn't deliver on where you could download you know xbox one compatible versions of xbox 360 games his games that he played never slow moving but continually moving process yeah there may be more

now but it's one of those things where i've just kept the 360 around because why not yeah and and we have the tv that's out here actually in my office that that he will come in here sometimes and and play on the 360 and it's great but again it's now there's another console i have a i have a playstation 3 and an xbox 360 in this room and then i've got a wii u and an xbox one in the living. There's a lot of games in the Snell Zone. So, that's my feeling about the Nintendo Switch is I'm intrigued in it, intrigued by it, but it's another box in our house. And I realize this is a box you can pick up and carry

in your hands and do other things with. And it looks cool and I'm looking forward to it. And since we are a Nintendo-y kind of house, in the sense my kids have grown up with the wii and then the wii u and and it's it's part of their it's part of their childhood and and they still have fondness for that stuff and my son has a ds as well um i feel like we will probably get one at some point um and that probably it'll be my son kind of demanding it and given that he will be able to play it on the tv

and just walk away with it and play with it you know without taking over our living room i'll probably get there but um and the stuff looks good you know and that's where you're going to be able to get the latest mario stuff and and and zelda and all the nintendo stuff but i'm holding back a little bit i'm i tend not to be a first buyer of any consoles. And there's just my fundamental frustration with more box clutter. Like I don't have a PS4. Why don't I have a PS4?

It's like, I don't want another box. I'm intrigued by the PS4 with the VR and all of that. And yet I don't have a PS4 because where am I going to put that? I mean, I've already got a huge stack of boxes in my living room. It's too many boxes already. As you say, luckily, the Switch has a very small footprint. It's small.

It's very small. It's good for if you have a unit. This obviously isn't your problem, but for many people, if your problem is, how am I going to fit another console? It fits nicely into your existing arrangement. However, Nintendo, at this point um doing people in your position a favor uh which is doing a disservice for a lot of the people that are buying the switch immediately is that there's like four games um and this is the same for many

consoles right um but they also don't even have a lot of ports available of old stuff like it's very slim however what they have already done is they have a good runway of games that will lead up to the holiday season which i expect the plan is that they are going to be selling it now a bunch of games will come out they'll drop the price of the holidays and you'll be able to get a great bundle with the new mario and have mario kart on it and it'll have zelda on it yeah and you know and and you can see oh splatoon which is such a great game so i think that it's a very smart rollout because they're rolling it out in you know it's not even spring yet and you know with nintendo we've seen it over the years there are always huge availability problems

like i remember trying to get a wii and it was really hard like it was hard to find was a unique case it was a combination of nintendo were trying to see if they could constrain reliability yeah believed but then also it was a massive hit, right? So it was unfortunately a double header, right? And you know, when I tried to get an Xbox One, which was after launch by quite a bit, it was still kind of hard to get them. I find the consoles can be hard to find and hard to buy. Well, look at what it's like when you try and buy an iPhone, right?

You know, you want to buy one immediately, you wait for a month. You know, like it's that kind of idea, right? So I think this is smart on Nintendo's part because they're not like what Apple has become where they drop a huge, they're manufacturing them all the time and then they announce the product and they drop a huge amount of them

and they can fulfill a lot of their demand. Although even Apple, as we know with the 7 Plus could not fulfill demand at all into the whole first quarter of 2017. But this gives Nintendo time to launch the platform, get people, including their developers, used to what the platform is, and ramp up production, gauge demand. And so when you hit the holidays, when people might buy these, and that might be when we buy ours, although, and my son's birthday is in August, so maybe that's a thing too. I don't know. But at that point, they should be available and there will be more games for them and it will all start to make sense.

So that's my kind of applause to Nintendo. If they do this right, when they hit the holidays, anyone who's going to be able to want a Switch will be able to get one and it'll have great games and they'll be happy. And that's the way you do it. have great games and they'll be happy and that's the way you do it you don't want to frustrate people by creating sort of you know accidentally or purposefully this scarcity where where it's hard to get it's like no no no you want people to be able to go to amazon and say give me a nintendo switch and have it come two days later i think this is part of the reason they've done it because march is a terrible time to release a games console there is no good reason to do it it's a soft launch in a way right including the Including the catalog, which is very small.

It's really a soft launch. And I think that's fine. I think it's fine because really, when do they want to be at full speed with this thing? Holiday quarter. Yeah, because Nintendo have a lot of work to do to try and encourage outside developers to make games for their platformers again.

And they've got some interesting deals in place, like the next FIFA game will be available on the the switch and that is something that has not happened on nintendo consoles for a long time especially well it looks like it's going to be the full game which is also something that hasn't happened for a very long time even on the wii you know console makers would release these weird or watered down versions of these games i mean why do i have an xbox one it's because it's because i wanted i mean i had an xbox 360 because i wanted to play destiny you know my my son wants to play overwatch um these are you know titles that are not on nintendo's platforms and it's frustrating and there's still going to be a lot of that there there is i think nintendo's always going to have

that where they're not going to have the the the triple a titles and all of that but if nintendo can do what they do well which is their their stuff especially and they've got this really interesting design where it is a handheld and a console in one then um they they have a chance like to reach people who don't really care about the triple a games and also to be a second console for people who've got a PlayStation or an Xbox One but also want to get the Nintendo stuff because it's such a different product. I think it actually feels better to buy something like the Nintendo Switch

because it's not yet another plastic box under your TV like the PlayStation and the Xbox. Also, if and when they go all in on it being the only Nintendo platform, that's going to be a big thing for them because then they get people that they get all the handheld they get all the ds stuff pokemon right the next pokemon game will hopefully be available for the switch only gotta be do that then they will be making a big statement like as of right now nintendo is not claiming the death of the 3ds line however there

are also not a lot of games coming out for the three it makes it may go on i mean they still sell my you know my son got one for his birthday like they're they're old but there's a huge catalog and people love them and it's great for kids yeah especially like it's like you know you might not your kid might not have a phone but they've got a DS, and it's great. But I think, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens. The fact that it's a handheld makes it a different kind of product, and I like that about it, that it's a little bit of both. With inbuilt two-person multiplayer, you multiplayer, you can split the controller in half, give one person... It's got some control innovation like on the Wii,

which is great. That because it's portable, it makes it easier to do a LAN party essentially, which you can't do. I think about that a lot with console games that I've got where it's like, well, I can't bring my console. I mean, you can, but who does?

To your friend's house and then you need another TV and all of that. and there are a lot of games that have network multiplayer but they don't they won't do split screen in person multiplayer and with a switch you just bring your switch with you to another friend's house and you can play together easily which is a really great and then you know the other thing i like about it um no disc yeah uh cards cards it's all on cards basically yeah memory cards and what's great about that is the games that need to install yep just pop them in and you play yep it's not the way it is in the modern world so yeah i'm super excited about this uh if you want to hear me and federico and shahid continue to just go crazy over this

thing uh you go check out remaster 29 as we've made the joke that we're all kind of especially me and federico are basically nesting for this thing right now like we're setting up the area where it's going to go in the space where it's going to go yep making sure we've got all the accessories we want and i've labeled the input on my TV switch. It's ready to go. It's that plug. We'll plug it right in there. Yeah, sure.

Get ready. I'm very, very excited about this. I said this on the show, and I'm planning on making a YouTube video kind of focused around this idea, but I love Apple, but I don't love Apple as much as I love Nintendo. Interesting. My nostalgia and love for as much as I love Nintendo. Interesting.

My nostalgia and love for Nintendo goes back my entire life. My earliest memories are playing NES games. Some of my very earliest memories are playing various Nintendo games with my brother or watching him play Nintendo games when I was like three years old. This is a company that has been with me throughout my entire life. They're a company, like it doesn't matter how many mess ups they make.

Like I'm always convinced that they'll pull it out of the bag. And I really want the Switch to be a success because they need it. And I need it if I want them to continue. So yeah, Nintendo is the company that I love the most. It's not the company that I pay the most attention to because you know

honestly one of the reasons that Remaster exists is because me and Federico or like the reason that me and Federico have a video game podcast it's the third iteration of this show is because we just want a place to talk about video games and mostly that's Nintendo because we are quite similar in that regard to like our entire lives nintendo has been a part of it where apple has maybe been for the last 10 years but like our entire lives nintendo has been a massive part of that um so

please let the switch be amazing and for me nintendo is a part of my children's lives and and and so for them it's been a part from the beginning. And I'm sure my son, who loves video games, would say that was playing Wii games is where he got his start. But for me, it's just as a parent. It's that thing. I completely skipped the original Nintendo generation.

The Wii was the first Nintendo device that i ever got um because i went from the atari 2600 to not playing video games again until the ps1 and so i skipped all over that however my my brother-in-law i would visit um when lauren and i would visit uh her parents house and her brother's 15 years younger and um he was a nes kid and so like i i learned about you know mario and uh and what else did he play kirby um all of that stuff so um because he's he's only a little bit older than you so um yeah it's it's uh i get it i get it even though it's just not for me. For me, the Atari 2600 was incredibly formative, and then the Apple stuff. But I get why people are attached to Nintendo, and I think that that's one of the great things about... personality in a way that you know honestly like xbox and playstation have sort of have personalities kind of but when they're battling over triple a titles i mean they do exclusives and stuff but why do they even have to do exclusives it's try and differentiate at all

between them whereas nintendo there's no again for right or for wrong for good and for ill nintendo there's no mistaking that it is what it is it is not like the others and uh that's i mean how how how similar does that sound to how we talk about apple it's it's a similar kind of feeling like when i watched that nintendo switch uh presentation the live presentation they did i i thought to myself well one it's a little weird but two it is the most apple-like presentation i've ever seen from another company in the sense that they're just like, their whole attitude seemed very similar to Apple. So transitioning back to the company and their Apple.

Speaking of Apple. Last week we were talking about San Jose and we were talking about the Apple campus and wondering whether there will be any events at the Apple campus and we weren't sure when the thing was opening. And then a couple of days afterwards, we found out that Campus 2 will be opening in April, but it now has a name.

It will not be called Campus 2, which would have been the worst name ever, because Campus 2, electric boogaloo, I guess. The name for Campus 2 is now Apple Park. Yes, Apple Park. Do you know what I don't like it. It doesn't roll off the tongue very nicely for me. It's too many Ps too closely together,

but Apple Park. Apple Park is, I don't know. I wonder if we're going to start calling it the park, like the end of the loop, if it'll be like that. Maybe, maybe. Apple Park. It does feel a little bit like a stadium.

It also, I think, makes it harder for Apple apple to sponsor like by naming rights for a stadium somewhere because it'd be apple park they would have to do apple stadium i guess uh it seems unlikely they uh a few people noted that it's it may be either accidentally or purposefully a tip of a cap to xerox park which was the xerox palo alto reaches research center which is famously where steve jobs went and saw the alto i think it was yeah i i wondered that and and i can't kind of came to the conclusion that it must be because when they were talking about the name if this ever came up they would have gone well that's kind of like xerox park right like they would have at least yeah someone would have like tweaked that beforehand so if they didn't name it like because of that i'm sure they spoke about it and like oh

yeah that's kind of nice they should have done called a campus 2 with the brackets from the apple 2 that's what they should have done oh no but apple apple park is i i think it's fine i think we'll get used to it i think it's like changing powerbook to mac's fine. I think we'll get used to it. I think it's like changing PowerBook to MacBook. I think we'll get used to it. Oh, we sure will. We sure will. It's not a bad name. I just don't, I like the way it looks when it's written.

I don't like how it sounds when I try and say it. Yeah, fair enough. Which isn't necessarily a reason that they should, you know, call it something else. It's going to take over six months to move the 12 000 people that are going to be occupying the park yeah there is still some construction though that's going to continue all the way through to the summer so it's not it's not 100 done but this you know you can move people in and still work on a few parts yeah there's so much landscaping and stuff going on too i imagine a lot of the work is going to be landscaping and things that that will continue because if you look at the

pictures of it like the the center of the ring is just enormous landscaping and it's be landscaping and things that will continue. Because if you look at the pictures of it, like the center of the ring is just enormous landscaping and it's all landscaping. And then the outside of the, I mean, there's so much. I mean, the other reason to call it a park is that it looks like a park with buildings in it. Like there are trees and fields and things all over this thing. And that was part of the design plan from the beginning. So I think that's

appropriate. Keep in mind too, I had a couple of people ask like, what happens to Infinite Loop? And the answer is Apple has so many people in Cupertino and around there. In fact, I believe they basically filled up Cupertino and they've started renting space in like San Jose nearby, just because they've run out of Cupertino space. Apple will be able to move people from the loop. Presumably all of the people in the loop will be moving to Apple Park. I don't know that for sure. But they'll have that space. Well, they've got so many other people in other buildings in Cupertino that they will be able to put those groups together, where they're probably far flung. We talked about that on a previous show, that they may be in different areas. Those groups will be able to come together in one place in the loop then what happens is the

the disparate groups that are out there in all these office parks around apple and cupertino they will get to move to uh other parts together and you know and be and and get more of the facilities together instead of being scattered and yes in the end there will probably be some some square footage in some parts of cupertinoino or over in San Jose that they will drop. But it will be like, if you've ever been to Cupertino, you may have noticed this. And if you haven't done it, you should do it sometime. When you get off the freeway, you get off 280, you turn right if you're coming from San Francisco. And the loop campus is on the left.

And you can turn in there. And you make the left turn on you can turn in there. And you know, you make the left turn on Mariani, and it becomes infinite loop. What you may not know, if you're focused on the majesty that is infinite loop, there's where the icon garden used to be. Does it really go all the way around? Yes, it does. Look at all the parking lot that's full of electric cars. There they are. But as you're coming down Mariani, approaching the entryway to the loop, on the right side, there are all these other office buildings. Those are all Apple.

That's where that anechoic chamber that they demoed during an antenna gate. It's across the street. It's not even in the loop. It's across the street. And then if you don't make the turn on Mariani and you just drive down, what is it,

Stevens Creek Boulevard? What is that street? How would I know? I don't know. I'm just, I'm asking myself. I wasn't asking you. Anyway, if you drive down that street, just look at the signs on the road of all of the office buildings as you pass them. They all have Apple logos on them. Like it's a company town. It is packed. So, you know, we think of Apple as taking place at the loop, but the loop is a tiny fraction of the office building space that they've got in Cupertino. And so with, with the park, they'll move, you know, the loop people,

presumably to the park, maybe not all of them, then they'll, they'll be a whole thing. So I think the loop's not going anywhere because it's like another nice campus. I think Apple would probably prefer to have the loop than to have just random office buildings in Cupertino. And then they'll rearrange their other thing. So it's a mammoth task for facilities people. There's somebody working very hard, a lot of people working really hard

in their facilities group to do it. And I find it fascinating, but I don't think the loop is going to go anywhere. In fact, it'll be that like building behind an IHOP in San Jose that they drop. Like, well, fine, you know, we didn't need that. Our lease is coming up and we're not going to need that space, so we're going to drop it. They'll probably also keep some space around and either allow themselves to spread out a little bit or keep some space open for growth because that's been a challenge for them too is where do you put people if you're if you've rented all of the available business space in Cupertino some cool statistics about apple park the ring-shaped building so the main building houses 2.8 million

square feet of space it features the largest curved panels of glass in the world i feel like apple keep doing this like they keep getting the largest pieces of glass like yes how much more glass one day there will be when they there'll be a book about how apple revolutionized the curved glass industry the campus will run on 100 renewable energy yeah there's solar panels on everything and then they've also got their big solar park down the coast that they that they get all the power from and there will be a cafe cafe i should say cafe yes cafe and apple store open to the public which is great this is a huge thing that um people have made the pilgrimage right to infinite loop and they and there's the new used to be the company store now it's just

the little apple store that's in infinite loop one or next to infinite loop one and there's a little parking lot there for people to come and it's always very busy and it's a little bit weird it's so hostile feeling yeah it feels like you shouldn't be there right so they're going to do a visitor center essentially where you're going to be able to come uh to the apple the new apple park campus and park and there'll be a cafe and an apple store yeah and it'll probably be this is this is such a great thing that they've done because they need to admit it you need to admit that people idolize your company to the point that they just want to come and see it and you can't create a building like that and not let people come and see it like otherwise make a

nondescript building like infinite loop doesn't look amazing right like it's just it's just like a cluster of buildings it's a circular like you know you can drive around architecture yeah like it's not like really amazing looking this thing is like maybe some of the most interesting architecture around like on the planet today right you hired these people to make a beautiful building let people come and see it and if they do come and see it get them a cafe to come and sit in for half an hour before they have to leave again because an infinite loop you go there you will go into the apple store you probably buy something because they have stuff that you can't get anywhere else buy some pens buy some pens buy a t-shirt you take

a picture with the sign and then you leave yep and so it's kind of a little bit underwhelming um so i'm really excited that they're doing this and i'm so happy that it will be open before wwdc because i can then go and see it and it's way easier to get to you could take a taxi now, you don't have to hire a car because it was so far away from downtown San Francisco so yeah, I'm excited about this I think that it is a great addition

a welcome addition the theater where we assume Apple will be doing some product unveilings in the future will be named the Steve Jobs Theater which which is a fitting name. It has 1,000 seats and is comprised of a 20-foot tall glass cylinder, because of course it is, with a metallic carbon fiber roof. The theater has been built on top of a hill,

which overlooks Meadows and the main building. And the way it works, it's on top of a hill, but that's also like it's down in the earth like you will enter the the entryway the lobby um is this is this cylinder and then my understanding is then you go down into the auditorium so it's down from the campus but still above other stuff yeah yeah so it's no but but what i'm saying is when you enter the auditorium, like the auditorium isn't, isn't tall. The auditorium is in, is down in the ground.

Like you go down like a staircase or something. Yeah. Yeah. The audit, when you're sitting in the auditorium, you're not overlooking outside. Like you can't get distracted by, by a bird flying by or something. No, you're descending into the, uh, descending into the the earth there which actually is how the town hall works right you you enter at ground level and then and then you uh are at the top of the auditorium and it goes down and that's that's where it'll be steve jobs theater is really great you know pixar has a steve jobs building and that's how they honored him i wondered

for a long time if they were going to refer to this as the steve jobs campus i think it's better this way that there is the that would be too much that they don't have to they don't have to invoke steve every time they talk about where they're going but uh like i'm going over to steve's place it's weird but the steve jobs theater like what what are people what people remember about steve jobs like his presentation so to name the theater after him it's's perfect. It is the perfect combination of not having to be, like you said, too much, but honoring him with a building on the campus.

And not the big ring building, but this place where all the press comes and they're going to say, Apple announced at the Steve Jobs Theater in this event, and that's great. And they'll get to say on stage, they'll be like, you know, in this building that is dedicated to Steve. Yeah, welcome to be like, you know, in this building that is dedicated to Steve, like we are... Yeah, welcome to the Steve Jobs Theater.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yes, I think it's nice. I think they did it well. I assume that they obviously, again, like Steve Jobs campus was on the table and I'm also pleased that they found a more fitting tribute because naming the entire campus after him

is maybe too much. So let's talk scale for a second yep because uh and i will put a link in the show notes to this tweet that i that i found this is from uh sky one ron is ron survey he is the uh traffic reporter for kcbs in san francisco perfect person to take this picture he takes some spectacular bay area pictures you should if you like pictures of the bay area you should follow sky one ron because he uh he's he's up in the air flying around the bay area all the time yeah i'm looking at his feed now it's amazing um in fact the one day i was sitting in bed drinking my tea and looking at twitter and i saw a picture of marin county from sky one ron and the funny thing is i had just heard an

airplane go over my house and it was totally him that was when he was taking that picture it's pretty funny that's a plane not a helicopter no it's a plane it's an airplane that's interesting well the barrier is really huge um so he needs a plane to get around to all the different it's a it's a pretty large region so he flies his little plane around to all of the the freeways and stuff to see the congestion and things like that. Ron has a pretty sweet job, doesn't he? It's a pretty good, yeah. It's a pretty good job.

What do you do for a living? I fly a tiny plane around San Francisco and take photos of it. And every 10 minutes, I'm on the radio saying where there's a backup. And that's it. That's what he does. Every 10 minutes? Traffic and weather together every 10 minutes. I assumed you're in the rush hour, right like all day am 7 40 well they do they do traffic and weather together

every 10 minutes they don't have sky one run on i think except during the commutes but okay because then it became a terrible job yes i'm up all day i can't go away i'm trapped no um when it's really foggy they put them in a car sometimes that's extra sad like i just am driving around in traffic so anyway this picture that he tweeted um which you'll see i replied to him and said you don't have to call it campus 2 anymore now you can call it apple park um and this was taken on steve jobs's uh what would have been his 62nd birthday i like this picture because of one thing which is the scale like the the auditorium looks like an looks like an outhouse it looks like a water tank it is so it is dwarfed in comparison to the giant ring that ring like i think we're all gonna go there and be like blown away by the the scale of it i think from the outside you know you're barely

gonna be able to tell if you're standing next to it, that it's curved because it's so huge. And then the inside, which we are imagining, I always kind of imagine the inside of Infinite Loop where there's a, there's kind of a little park in there and tables and pathways. And that's where Cafe Max kind of opens out onto. And this thing is, this thing is huge. I mean, you could put a baseball stadium on the inside of this if you wanted to. It's just, it is staggering. So anyway, it's a great picture. And the scale of it is just blows me away. Like this is a big thousand seat auditorium that Apple's going to open up to the press. And it is like, if the main building is a wheel, it's like, I don't even know. It's not the hubcap.

It's like a little bolt that holds the wheel on. It's so tiny. Yeah, that seems kind of incredible. Yeah. Like, there's a building in Romania called the Palace of the Parliament or People's House. And it's the second largest administrative building in the world after the pentagon right and i imagine it like seeing campus two or apple park the the ringed building would be kind of like this where you kind of walk up to this building

you arrive at this building and it it's bigger than you can right? Like you can't see the edges of it, right? Like because it's so large. Yeah. The ends of it just pass outside of your field of vision. And I imagine it's going to be a similar kind of thing to that because this building is just massive. It has an area of 365,000 square meters, which is just, it's massive.

It's like I'm doing like a conversion to feet now. Oh my, I can't even work that out. It's really big, really big is the answer. And I wonder how it scales up to what the new campus building is going to be like. But yeah, I imagine it's going to be kind of like that. What do you think the first event in the steve jobs theater will be well we talked about this last week about wwdc i think the best answer is probably the iphone event uh because that allows them to i'm not sure when the theater will be ready and there's the access

in and there's all this construction going on it would seem logical that maybe it would be that event uh because that's apple's biggest event and to hold it there if they feel they can hold it there i mean i guess that's the question is is they've been holding those events in places like bill graham and do they want to do all their events on campus now and is that going to be you know the thousand seats is going to be the only that's the only event venue for apple ever um that'll be interesting to see because it's it's still not as big necessarily as a giant uh theater that they could rent somewhere but it's theirs and they don't have to like spend days in san francisco doing setup and stuff right and build out they can just do it at their, they own it.

They can spend weeks before the event making it perfect because they'll be on, they control the space. So I think that's something to watch is does Apple do all their events there from now on? Is it good enough capacity for that?

But if I had to guess, I'd say the iPhone because that seems to be the, it gives them some construction time and, uh, symbolically, I think it's good to have their biggest thing be there. So I just did some calculations.

Oh, good. Uh, it's 2.6, I think. Oh, no, wait,

it's 260,128 square meters. Okay. And, uh, so yeah, it's, it's, it's,

it's still smaller than the palace of the parliament which isn't surprising basically yeah i will i will put a link in the show notes to the palace of the parliament the people's house it's a building with a very interesting history i should do this we should do this on ungenius i'm gonna'm going to put this in for our Ungeniust team because I have some stories about this building. Yeah, so that might actually be kind of fun. But yeah, I wonder if it would be the iPhone just because I have way more than 1,000 people go to that event, right?

Yeah. Oh, it's 4 million square feet, by the way, Mike, by my calculations, the Palace of the Parliament, 4 million square feet. There you go. That's a lot. A lot of feet. Yeah, a lot of feet. the Parliament, 4 million square feet. There you go. That's a lot. A lot of feet. Yeah, a lot of feet.

It's really many, many feet. Do you think that they would do it and just scale back the amount of people? I don't know. I honestly don't know. I think it's not something I really thought about, but that's a good question. Like, what's the purpose of the Steve Jobs Theater?

Is it to prevent Apple from having to rent out a space for smaller events that would have been in that theater in San Jose, the California Theater, or in the Yerba Buena Center? Like, is it, or Town Hall, which was too small. Is that what it's for? Or is it for everything? And if it's for everything, or maybe everything except WWDC keynote, where you've got that in San Jose, and you might want to have that happen in San Jose. If it's for everything, that yeah, that probably means that something like the iPhone event is not going to have quite as expansive a guest list as it usually does. So that'll be the thing. Will

they do the iPhone event in another big venue, but every other event in the Steve Jobs theater? I don't know. It's a really interesting question. And it sort of depends on what Apple feels like they get out of the turnout to those events and if it's worth it for them. Because like I said, it's way more convenient to have it be in the place that they completely control for all time. Yep. As opposed to, you know, as opposed to having to rent.

Yeah, I mean, people don't know. Like I've talked to people who worked on events for Apple. Like the amount of planning that goes into those is enormous. When they do Bill Graham, Civic Auditorium, they spend like a week building or more

building out their demo rooms and things like it's not they don't just like sweep up the floor the day before and put on a show like it's a enormous enormous undertaking to convert those venues because apple wants them the way they want them the same with uh the same with your babuena theater where they built the whole like outside demo building basically as a temporary structure because they wanted it the way they wanted it this gives them that ability themselves so um the question is just the big events with big capacity do they scale those back but everything else like it's a no-brainer and for those it might still be worth it just to have them have

complete control over the venue yeah yeah i Yeah, I wonder where they'll go. We'll see. I mean, we'll see maybe if they want to do it sooner, right? There might be an event before then. They might be able to do it there. Otherwise, they'll probably keep it to the iPhone. Yeah. Especially, you know, it is, I mean, if Apple do want to play it that way,

you know, the anniversary, 10-year anniversary year of the iPhone, like it would all kind of line up this time if they want to do it. So we'll see. Today's episode is brought to you by Blue Apron, the number one recipe delivery service that has the very freshest ingredients. For less than $10 a meal, with Blue Apron, you will get seasonal recipes delivered to your home that feature fresh, high-quality ingredients

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Yeah, alright, let's do it. Jack asked, does old technology actually get slower or just our expectations and software demand more speed that's a big one um you know this this is the feeling like you know oh my phone keeps getting slower well no of course the old tech doesn't actually get slower what happens is that the software gets updated. One, its software gets updated and the software updates are tested on newer pieces of hardware. And so they add more stuff in there

and the new pieces of hardware run it acceptably and they often don't really test it on the older stuff. And so the older stuff feels like it's gonna slow down. Also, the new stuff is faster. And so if you go from one to another, yes, you know, it feels slower, because now there's something that's much faster. And it's a combination of those things. I mean, but I would argue like, yeah, so it's so it's a combination. I think that's exactly right, Jack expectations and software, you could use like,

I could, I could still write on a Mac, you know, an original Mac, I could still write on a Mac, you know, an original Mac. I could still write on a PowerBook 160 that I used in the 90s. I absolutely could. Absolutely could. Because in the end, it's like Microsoft Word on those things. It will let me type words as fast as I can type them. And that's really all I need. It's all the other stuff.

Oh, but I want to have a Retina display. And I want to be able to record audio and cloud sync all of my files and have uh you know and then you start making the list of all the things that you really have to have that have nothing to do with putting words down and that's where all the power goes yep couldn't could not have put it better myself say us was the first technology what was the first technology purchase you can remember spending your money on? Or what is your all-time favorite, Jason? First, I mean, so I'm going to say the Mac SE. I had, to be fair, I had my money that the way my parents saved for college for me.

Essentially, they gave me a bank account and said, this is the money we saved for you for college. And that was it. So like I could spend it on things that weren't college, but then I wouldn't be able to afford to go to college, which is an interesting approach. And I was super paranoid about it. And I just didn't spend money out of that account for anything,

but I used it to buy a Mac SE. That was the thing. That was the, and I, and I just didn't spend money out of that account for anything but I used it to buy a Mac SE that was the thing that was the and I and I think I bought a uh and then I bought a uh a hard drive upgrade for it at some point which was huge because hard drives are very expensive but that Mac SE was the time where I felt like I was first exerting my own financial control to buy something something for me in terms of something that was like money i earned myself for technology i'm not sure it would have been you know after i started working at mac user and it would have been like a mid you know mid mid 90s early to mid 90s power book probably so i will i will take this question as like the first money that i earned because i know what that exactly went on oh yeah do it that was a my entire first paycheck

from when i worked at the bank i spent on a the white plastic macbook oh it was my entire paycheck but it was fine because i had absolutely no commitments at that point financially. So like it didn't matter. All I needed was to be able to just continue to get to work at point. I could walk to work. So I took my entire paycheck and I bought the white plastic MacBook, which was awesome.

I already had an iMac at that point, but I went and bought the white plastic MacBook and I love, I love had an imac at that point um but i went and bought the white plastic macbook and i love i love that thing i i really really loved it i couldn't afford the black one because it was more money it was more money yeah it was i think at that time as well i wanted the white one like white apple was still cool you know like white white apple products was still cool you know at that point they weren't but okay sure they were ipods were still cool, you know, at that point. They weren't, but okay. Sure they were. iPods were still white at that time. It's true.

The black one was cooler, but... I'm not saying what was cooler, I'm just saying the white one was still cool. Okay. I always prefer the way that the white one looks to the black one, personally. That was just my aesthetic at the time. Hashtag mike was wrong

jay lily asked is there a non-apple charger for the 12-inch macbook so yes and no um because the 12-inch macbook is usbc it can be charged in theory by any usbc charging device you know there are battery packs that will charge it, like external batteries. You can get any cable and plug it in and to any wall plug. But you will have varying levels of success based upon the voltage

that the charger that you're using can output. So just check that, basically. You want to make sure that you can have something that's got the right voltage that can power the thing. I don't know exactly what those specs are and I don't want to lead you down a path. The good thing is the new,

the MacBook is the least power required of any of the USB-C laptops. So it's the easiest to find a charger for it. That would be compatible. But the short answer is is yes the long answer is you might need to do a bit of research but yes there are it comes with a 29 watt usbc power adapter so if you bought a usbc power adapter that could put out 29 watts or more then you could you can charge the macbook with it you'll be fine. Which is, I mean, one of these sort of unsung things about going to USB-C is Apple had the

patent or whatever on MagSafe. And so every MagSafe thing was either a hack or it had to come through Apple and be approved. And for a long time, maybe most of the time, Apple did not do that. And now it all goes. You don't have to have a battery that your power cable plugs into and then goes to magsafe like you said you can just have a battery pack that plugs in via usbc the the it's wide open now for charging uh for charging usbc macbooks yep definitely all right uh darryl asks what is your and jason's view on iphone cases

uh wow well so my view overall is that if you like a case because it affects the grippiness of the phone or because you can uh you can tuck stuff in it or whatever the reason is or you drop your phone all the time and you've been saved by a case, then you should do it. Do what feels right for you. I think it's a very personal decision. For me, I never used a case until the 6 because the 6 felt slippery like a bar of soap. So for the 6 and 6S,

I used the same black leather Apple case and that made it grippier. And with the 7, i've got the jet black and it's grippy enough that i am now caseless again i think i have used a case since the four because i got a free case a little bumper the bumper is the best case that apple's ever made by the way like the struggles that that we have had in this house to try and find something like a bumper for Adina's iPhone 6, that was a tough time

because I fought very hard to find one for the 5, right? Because most of them, they look like bumpers, but they have the plastic back on them, right? But she loved the bumper. So we found one. I ended up finding one. I think it was like Spigen or that company that made that. But no such thing exists that we could really find for the 6

because the phone's just not built that way to support a case of that kind. She wasn't very happy about that. But she does like her. She has one of the silicone cases. I am an Apple silicone case person. I like Apple's cases. I think that over time the quality is improved of them and like the quality of it right now is pretty good i did accidentally kind of like

break mine the other day it's got like a like a wear in it like a little crack so i got a little crack in it so i'm just trying to ignore that for the time being uh because i don't really want to buy another case right now um i'm i'm not even sure if I have one. I used to have a few for the 6S Plus, but for the 7 Plus, I don't have any because it has the new hole, right? So I'd have to buy a new case, which I might do. I'm going to see if I can hold out, right,

for when they do new watches, like new watch bands, because they bring out new case colors. They should hopefully be in the coming month. So we'll see if they do that. I am a case person just really for grippiness and for added protection, especially with the big phone.

It has the ability to jump out of my hand. So I like to have that added protection because I don't buy AppleCare. So yeah, I am a case person. And then on a similar vein, Brian asked what our thoughts were on the wallet iPhone cases that carry cards and cash. I am a case person. And then on a similar vein, Brian asked what our thoughts were on the wallet iPhone cases that carry cards and cash.

I don't like these. I think they add even more bulk to the device. I'm not a fan of these personally. I have, I saw when I was in LA the other weekend, I saw somebody who had a wallet case that looked really nice. It was the first one of those I'd seen in a while that I thought was just like, it was super thin.

It had room for a couple of cards. I also, I think that they're, depending on how you use your iPhone, having one of those cases that is front and back. So it's got a little, you know, you flip it open. So it's got a cover on the front of your iPhone. I think depending on how you use your iPhone, that can be a really nice thing if you've got a leather case that it goes in so your iPhone is your wallet, but it's got a couple of cards in it.

My daughter keeps a couple of cards tucked in the back of her case, which is, I think, really useful. But I think they're just tucked in. I think it's not built for a wallet case. I know people that put emergency cash, just take the case off, put a couple of bills in, and close it up again right but i'm with you i feel like i use my phone in my pocket all the time when i don't need to carry around cards and uh so for me i'd rather just have a second module of thing that i bring with me when i need cash and cards and the rest

of the time i you know i i can bring my wallet when I need my wallet and otherwise I just bring my phone. I have a little tiny thin wallet. So like it's not a big, super thick John Syracuse size wallet. So that works better for me. But it depends on if you're always leaving the house with your phone and your cards and your cash,

then it makes sense. Again, personal decision more than anything yeah like when i'm at home you know most of the time i really don't need that you really don't i just don't need it i'm fascinated by both of these things being like what's your view and where do you stand because i i feel like dario and brian are trying um i see you brian hamilton uh are trying to get us to like proclaim what is right or wrong and we're we're not those kinds of people like this no i would never say something is well okay we i am not that kind of person do what is right for you i don't i don't say they're fundamentally good or bad do what's right that was a I don't think they're fundamentally good or bad. Do what's right for you.

That was a joke, but Mike was right. It's not about fundamentals. It was about factual correctness. That's where it began. And people think that it's about me having fundamental decisions, but it began with I made a proclamation that Apple would unveil the iPad Pro alongside the iPhone, and nobody believed me.

And then I kept fighting about it, and it ended up that I was right. And iPad Pro alongside the iPhone. And nobody believed me. And then I kept fighting about it. And it ended up that I was right. And that was where it came. But now it's been kind of morphed into this ideological debate when that's kind of not where it started. Right. It's just what Mike is right or wrong about, like factually. Remember when the rumor was that it was going to be the iPhone 6 math?

And it was because somebody had seen the six and the a plus symbol and had had translated that to math good i do remember that good times that person was not right uh kevin wants to know this is uh harkening back to another discussion today what are our favorite nintendo franchises for me it is mario mario is my favorite nintendo franchise like the standard mario platformer game yeah um mario kart it's a great one that's mine that's i mean i'm not i'm not kidding when i said that the thing that pushed me over into buying a wii u was mario kart 8 because like we had played mario kart on the wii mario kart wii forever and ever and ever and when I realized that there was a new Mario Kart coming out on the Wii U and it was compatible with all my old Wii stuff too it's like yeah let's do that because that I can't wait and it's a great game it's just such a great game yeah when does when does Mario Kart 8 Deluxe come out

for the Switch because I want to know if I'll have it when we see each other. Because it's in April. I feel like that's also a concession a little bit to the fact that a lot of people never did get the Wii U. It's like, well, okay, if you get a Switch, you can play Mario Kart 8 plus some extra stuff. Unfortunately, it's the end of April. Alas. I've already played Mario Kart 8, Mike, so oh well.

We'll see. But I'll be looking forward to seeing your Nintendo Switch. We are going to record, we should say, we're also going to record an episode of Upgrade Live in London, probably in Mega Office, which is very exciting, on a Tuesday, probably, because I'll be jet-lagged on the Monday. And that seems like a bad idea to do a podcast right after I step off of an international flight.

So that doesn't, but that was on the table and I immediately put out that. But I'm going to be, that means I'm going to be at your house. I'm going to see mega office. I'm going to be able to see that Nintendo switch. And I don't know what else,

what other wonders will await me in Mike's house. I'll line up a set of things to show you like when you're you know when you're in school and uh your friend was coming over for the first time and you would line up all of the things you wanted to show them that's what i'm going to do for you see that you're going to get to see all my cool stuff and matt asked today finally if apple could bring one pro mac app to the ip this year, which one should they do? I'm not going to answer which they should do. I'm going to say which one I want, and it would be Logic.

Fair enough. I would probably consider using Logic, although, you know, Ferrite does everything I need in a Logic-like way. And so I don't feel like i need to move on to something else i heard you talking to marco and you said and you said that ferrite uh ferrite you tried it again it didn't work i don't really understand i spent an hour trying to just cut a track just trim it i couldn't work it out and i couldn't find the answer in the guides maybe i'll sit i'll just i'll have to sit down with you and just step you through it myself

what i want is an application i have to relearn right that's why i want logic like i just want an app that has all the same keyboard shortcuts i don't know why uh the ferrite developer doesn't hasn't used the keyboard shortcuts from an app like Logic. GarageBand and Logic are also similar. That's true, and I don't use Ferrite with a keyboard. So I feel like maybe there should have been... The gesture

UI just didn't gel with me. So I would say that I would take Logic mostly, I think, for compatibility reasons. Right now, the problem I have with editing things in Ferrite is that they can only be in Ferrite. And if I start editing a project in Logic and then need to go on the road, I can't take it with me. So having Logic there for compatibility reasons would be great. I see the appeal of Final Cut, right?

Where the iPad Pro has a lot of capability. It could be a pretty great video editor beyond what iMovie has. Yeah. Final Cut should be the one that they do, but it's not the one that I would want the most. Yeah. And then Xcode is an interesting question. I think that there's so much baggage with Xcode. I'm going to make a wacky prediction, which is I don't think Xcode will ever come to the iPad. I think Apple will do a development environment for the iPad, but I don't think it'll be Xcode per se. I think they'll call it Xcode. They might call it Xcode, but it's not going to be Mac Xcode. It is going to have so many different limitations in the ways it works because the platforms are so different.

I think that because it is xcode i don't know they may not call it that they may call it something completely different we'll see it depends what the priority is like if what they're trying to do is move people then they'll call it xcode but if they're trying to like say that they've got a a new way of doing things i'll give it a new name you know know, because it really depends. Swift code. X Swift. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade.

If you want to find us online, there's a couple of ways you can do that. Go to sixcolors.com for Jason's writing, and you can find him on Twitter at Jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks again to our lovely sponsors,

FreshBooks, Encapsular, and Blue Apron. Again, if you want to come and hang out with us in London on April the 5th, then you want to go and hit the link in the show notes, and you can do that. Thanks so much for listening, as always, and

we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Mr. Snell. Goodbye, everybody.