Upgrade - 133: You're an Empty Row Person

Episode Date: March 20, 2017

Apple’s been a leader in podcasting since the early days, but is there a new era coming soon? Jason and Myke have some theories. Plus, we carefully analyze each other’s iPhone and iPad home screens, marvel at Apple’s stock price, and answer your questions.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 133 today's show is brought to you very kindly by freshbooks ero and encapsula my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell hey jason snell hey mike hurley how are you good i went all ascent on the end of that introduction there. I decided to just keep it going, keep it ramping up. I appreciate your communication skills, Mike Hurley! Anytime, Jason Snell. So how is it going over there in California today, Mr. Snell? Well, you know, a little foggy. It's like just a spring, like early spring day, basically. And going fine going good kids

are at school upgrade is on everything's right with the world i had lunch with a friend of mine uh a couple of days ago and they're an upgrade listener and they were mentioning how the beginning of the episode always makes them laugh just as it tends to be something along the lines of either me are you talking about the weather or making a comment about how Upgrade is the start of the week. Yep. Every time. It's Monday. It's like we've become our, yeah, it's become our thing, I guess.

Because you ask me, like, how is it going over there? And I'm like, I have a window I can look out and see. And the answer is light gray today. And yeah. So I'll tell you what, here is a thought here. We have an army of Upgradians out there in the world. We do. Who are full of creative ideas.

So maybe we should petition the Upgradians to tweet at me and you for suggestions on how we can mix up our little preamble before the follow-up, like our little opening section here, our introduction to the show. Maybe we can get some suggestions on people, some little quick little icebreakers or something that me and you can do to begin the episode every week. Great idea. So you can tweet at me or Jason. The welcome message of the week.

Yeah. So instead of saying, how's it going over there, you can say... I give you a little question or something, you know, and then you answer that question. That's a good one. Send me questions at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E, that I can ask Jason every Monday morning. And that could be a way for us to start off the show in the future. Beautiful. So let's get into follow-up.

In Ask Upgrade last week, we filled out a question from Robbie who asked about how to clean his nylon Apple Watch band. And I suggested soap and a sponge, of course, Robbie. But apparently, Robbie wrote in, as requested, to let us know how his cleaning process went. Apparently, Apple support documentations, because of course, I should have thought of this, there is a KBase article on how to clean watch straps.

Of course there is. Their documents recommend using a lightly dampened lint-free cloth. thought of this there is a k-base article on how to clean what straps there is uh their documents recommend using a lightly dampened lint-free cloth as i'm sure only exists in the white world of johnny ive in his white room and didn't robbie say that he knew for a fact that a damp lint-free cloth would not solve his horrendously dirtied I think so but he sent me the link because it says categorically not to use soap in that document however Robbie wrote

in this morning to let me know that he put his band in the washing machine and it came out fine so do whatever you want I guess I'm not entirely sure that that knowledge based document has been updated to detail the um nylon band right because they've got a leather section and then they say everything

else do this but like the nylon band is such a different material to the sport and yeah it totally worked for robbie i i don't think i would put it in the washing machine no because i feel like it might get uh kind of more worn and distorted in the washing machine but i would think like you would take a wool sweater or something like that where you you take it to the sink and use soap and scrub it a little bit and let it dry and i think that would probably be that's my gut feeling is that would would probably be the gentlest way to do it. So, yeah, like, if you were to take a sport band, obviously the way to clean it is just to wipe it, right? Because it's rubber, you can just wipe anything off with a lightly dampened cloth.

But that's not how the nylon ones work. I agree, I don't think it's been updated. So, come on, Apple, update the KBase. want to work i agree i don't think it's been updated so come on apple update the k base uh twitterific funded and it hit the 100 000 dollar stretch goal this was something that me and you've been talking about a bunch over the last couple of weeks i was unsure as to whether the campaign would fund it did fund um i was one of the people that did what you said would happen which is how these things usually tend to go when When it looked like it was going to hit the 100, I think it was something like 99,000 or something,

I backed because I am interested in this application as long as it has the features that I wanted, which were all behind the $100,000 stretch goal mostly. And it did fund. I am pleased that it funded. Of course, why would I not be pleased? You put a hmm in the document here. Jason was right, of course.

I think Jason was right. Jason was right, for was right i'm not sure you're pleased that i was right but i was like i said two weeks ago that uh weird things happen when kickstarters approach their end yeah and i i was i was pretty sure that they would fund you were very confident and they might hit i thought that it was pretty likely they'd hit the stretch goal and and that it totally it was it was dramatic, something that I didn't remember, I had already noticed, but I didn't mention because I wasn't thinking of it while we recorded two weeks ago,

which was I noted that John Gruber had not posted about it at Daring Fireball yet. And here's a thing that I've noticed, and I haven't talked to John about this, but the impression I get is John Gruber really likes, and he says it in his write-ups, he really likes having Daring Fireball readers put kickstarters over the top so all of those like the two three weeks that twitterific kickstarter was going on he didn't say a word about it it's like he totally knew about it

it's a thing that he cares about and i'm sitting there going so gruber didn't write about this it's like that's the answer right is john wants to be the one who comes in and goes boom it's funded and that's totally what happened shining alma uh-huh and that's totally what happened i mean he he he posted it right before they hit their goal and push them over so that's and quite honestly that's not a bad strategy right to to keep your uh to keep your audience in reserve for that moment when they need an extra boost when it's three weeks in don't't discount the Upgradians, you know? Oh, I think we helped get it close. I think so. I think that the Upgradians out there probably did help.

Yeah, I say like in general, of course, with the hashtag was right, the people, we like to be right. Like I like to be right, you like to be right. But this isn't something that I would have been happy to be right about, like if it didn't hit the stretch goal. you've just been skeptical about about which i have but now i'm pleased i bought in i've got the level that has stickers of course because i want stickers

um and i'm i'm curious to see how this uh project continues uh maybe over the next year or so i think they're looking to ship the first beta this year. So I'd be curious to see how that goes along. And I'm also interested to see if and how they use the Kickstarter update functionality, if they're going to let people in on the progression of the application. That would be kind of nice. We spoke a lot last week about windowing on iOS. And Gary wrote in to remind us of an app called Moom.

And I had this in my head, but I don't know why I didn't bring it up. Moom is an application for the Mac, which allows you to take windows and kind of snap them into corners and give them assigned sizes. And this is very similar to the type of thing that I'm looking and hoping for um on ios in the future

when it comes to some kind of application management i'm trying to steer away from calling it window management uh because if i call it window management i'm saying that there's windows so i'm calling it application management yes the application view tiles or whatever you want to call yes i know the reason that i didn't think of it is we weren't talking about the mac i mean that's it's yes there are lots there are uh there are probably a dozen different kind of window managers for the mac out there i did a search this morning i was looking uh somebody else recommended a different one that i'd never heard of and now i can't find that recommendation anywhere but uh i don't think so but there's

a lot of them out there and boom Moom is great it's for many tricks it's short for move and zoom and that's what it does is it lets you set the yeah I mean it's very clever for the Mac so that's the idea is for Apple to come up with something that's fairly intuitive that lets you kind of manage where your apps go on a screen especially if it's a larger iOS device and there are a lot of examples and Moom is a good one of ways to do this. Windows obviously has its snapping stuff too, that are application placement tools that make that easier without it being a super complicated, multi-layered window that we think of for like Mac stuff today, where I've got, like I have right now, actually, where I've got different windows and the one in the front is covering up three other windows partially, but that are behind

them. Steven Newton is the pure definition of a model upgradian. Yes. He sent in a picture of a record player attached to an iPod Hi-Fi. See, we can all get along. Yep. Perfect. He has a very special

setup to Stephen. So thank you, Stephen, for sending that in. We were talking about... How did this even come up last week? Can you remember? We were talking about old hardware or something. Yeah, I think that was it. I think it was old tech.

And you talked about how you had a record player and I mentioned that i still use an ipod hi-fi just as my external speaker and then somebody called me a hipster and it's like no i don't think that's how i think using old tech that you have around because it still works uh is as unhip as it gets if i bought an ipod hi-fi at the thrift store and then placed it prominently with an ipod in the dock playing music hipster music that would be hipstery there is a hit i'm not okay i will not call you a hipster here jason uh but i will say that there is there is an element of hipsterness which would be to continue using something after everybody stopped as kind of like oh look how special i am kind of thing

see i don't agree i think hipsters i think hipsters get the stuff after people have stopped using it in order to be new and different that is definitely a bigger trend you're thinking of cheap people cheap people keep using old things because they still work even though they're old and uncool and they risk mockery by mentioning that they still use them that's those people are called cheap people because i could totally buy a modern speaker and hook it up to my iMac but why i have this dumb iPod hi-fi that works fine with the aux port so i'm just cheap apple stock is currently at an all-time high so or it's at least hit it i don't i actually haven't looked at what it is today

i'll take a look at that in a moment but great news for us mike as huge apple investors that we are not right speak no i'm not i i'm not actually it's another all-time high it's uh the article written on friday um was that there was an all-time high of $141.69. So $140.69 was when it closed at trading on Thursday, March 16th. That was an all-time high which beat the previous all-time high, which was set two days earlier. time high, which beat the previous all time high, which was set two days earlier. Right now, Apple stock is at $141.15 a share. I mean, we'll see where it goes by the end of trading today, but it's higher than that even. So this is interesting as to why it's doing this right now,

because I mean, me and you have been talking about how there isn't really anything happening right now. There's no products being announced. There's no news. We're in a quiet period. What's going on? I mean, I assume, my assumption is they are riding the last quarterly results, which were very good. And there's also a wave of anticipation for products? wave of anticipation for products i guess i mean this is the problem is that that stock market is not always logical and it is based on future prediction right the past results are not are already built into the stock so it's all about future prediction so it must be uh it's people feeling the stock is undervalued people feeling that the stock is a better bet than other places for them to put their money, that Apple is much more likely to do well in the long run. It's anticipation and rumors. It is. It is about the new iPhone and getting excited about that and other rumors about what they're doing and a feeling of confidence in Apple.

But some of it, I think, is the market is interesting. It's not always logical. And for people who care like we do, who care much more about the products than we care about it as an investment opportunity. And there are people out there who are very smart people. I'm sure there are people who listen to this show who really care are Apple investors and they care about what Apple's doing because they're thinking about Apple as an investment. It's just not how I approach it. It's not how most of the people we know approach this because we don't, you know, we're not, we're not in it to cover Apple as a stock. We're in it to cover Apple as a, as a company that makes interesting products that

we like to use. And, and so for me, you know, it's, it's always a little bit baffling about, about how this works because the market's perception of Apple is often quite different. And, and this, just to make sure we can ring the bell that we've once again mentioned ATP, you know, last week's ATP at one point, it was, it was, you know, there was a rant, Marco went off on a rant a little bit. And at some point, John Syracuse said, you know, nobody's nobody's gonna be called to task for Apple not putting out a new Mac Pro if the stock's at an all time high. And there's some truth to that, that like, you know, you have to balance the way we view Apple, which is from a user's perspective, and the way the market views Apple. I'm not saying that Apple internal management doesn't have issues with some

of the stuff that's been going on and that people might be called to account for it if they are seen to be poor performers. I don't really know that. What I am saying is total different perspective if you're an investor looking at Apple and Apple's potential and if you're a grumpy Mac user who has seen, you know, the latest, you know, the last year of Mac releases from Apple. Yeah, it's just, I think it puts things into a strange perspective, right? Like, I guess the company has to and does pay attention to both of these things, you know, like the happiness of their most enthusiastic users

and also their investors because they're both important. I can't say who's more important. I don't know, honestly. Like, you can make arguments for both. But to us, obviously, our needs and our desires are more important than anything else. Clearly. Yeah, but I just think it's

it's interesting to see that like at a time where the apple enthusiast media is saying that apple is currently a little bit boring because they're not doing anything right at least they're not doing the things that we want them to do that seems so obvious that they should be doing that the stock market is like yeah this is great you know and it's just it's very it's just a strange like juxtaposition to see these two things happening at the same time yeah and and of course the reality is that you can't if you wait to if you wait to change the direction of your company based on feedback like... Steve Jobs actually, I think, really managed this way, which was never be comfortable, always be thinking about the next

thing is. And I hope Apple continues to have that culture that Steve Jobs put inside of Apple, because this is a great example where it would be very easy to say, look how much money we make from the iPhone. It's one of the most successful commercial products in existence. Look at how great we're doing on the stock market. Everything is great. And the danger is if you look at those and say everything's fine and don't make changes, what's happening potentially is that what's happening inside Apple and its processes are not doing as well. And by the time that's visible to the outside world and they start to take some hits, there's so much lag time that it's going to be years before they can turn it around and they're going to go through many more hard times. So I hope that Apple's culture remains such that they can look at the big stock price and they can look at the great iPhone sales

every single quarter and say, yeah, but if we stop here, we have not done our jobs. And use their net worth, which has just gone up because all these people have Apple stock options as part of their compensation, use it as a motivation to do the next great thing instead of viewing, basically status quo is fine

because we're doing great. Yeah. It was just something that I saw the article go by and I was like, wow, it's very strange isn't it funny it's certainly quite a contrast from the grumpiness of uh but like i said i think you know i think mac users especially have reason to be grumpy and it doesn't necessarily mean i mean let's be honest apple would probably not get hit much if at all in the stock price if apple said we're abandoning the mac and focusing entirely on the iPhone because the iPhone is so incredibly popular.

Yeah, it's so incredibly popular. I don't think they're going to do that. But like the market doesn't care about the Mac users, right? They care about the big picture. And the iPhone is really the big picture and the future. The iPhone and then belief in Apple's internal genius to create new product categories. And some of that, you know, that's a bet. That's where the future bet comes in, which is whether it's car or it's Mark Herman had a report out today about augmented reality down the road for Apple, like whatever future bets they're making,

part of what's built into the stock price is a belief that Apple will have more things, and they will continue to do well with new things. Maintaining the Mac base, while important to us and important to people, I would say within Apple, to a certain degree at least, is not what they care about. This week's episode is brought to you by Encapsular, the multifunction content delivery network that boosts the performance of your website, protects it from denial of service attacks, and secures it from bad guys, all whilst ensuring high availability. All you have to do is make a small change to your DNS

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That's I-N-C-A-P-S-U-L-A dot com slash upgrade. You'll find out more here and get your free month of service. Thank you so much to Encapsular for their support of this show and RelayFM. So last month at the Recode conference, Peter Kafka, he interviewed Eddie Cue about a bunch of

things. One of these was, one question that he asked was about podcasting and he was talking about the shows that he does and he was talking about the fact that he'd gotten an email from someone at Gimlet that wanted a bunch of questions to be asked or something. And he basically said, like, what are you doing in podcasting? And Eddie Q effectively shut the entire conversation down with a quote, which I'll read here.

He said, I think there's a huge resurgence in podcasting. Thanks, Eddie. And it's exactly what customers want because it's the ability of listening to something on demand when you want and that's exactly what it's about can we do more and will we do more absolutely we're working on new features for podcasts stay tuned this is a one of those types of pr quotes that says everything and nothing yeah it's like the tim cook uh things about creative mac creative mac users where it's like you know they're very they're very important to us and then you know it's like okay and we're moving on we know what does that mean yeah and this is it's funny i think this got lost

a little bit in the whole people talking about uh apple's tv show i mean that that's sort of what everybody came out of there with is like oh there's going to be this tv show on that's a planet of the apps and everybody was kind of snarking about that that was the big news that came from it but i thought this was really uh an interesting mysterious quote because i fully expected apple to say look podcasts are great we're happy to have uh the leading podcast directory and we we've been there since the very beginning supporting the podcasting world because we think it's super important and we are we have been and will continue to be a leader because podcasts are great and instead he says uh it's there's a huge renaissance people are

excited about it and we can do more and we're working on more it's like okay well that is i i agree it's nothing and yet it's it's less than it's more than nothing nothing i guess i don't know how you do it it's not just we think podcasts are really great and have a lovely home on itunes that's right yay podcast instead it's like, and we will be doing more. Stay tuned. Goodbye. And so it's like, I won't say anything more about it, but it is one tick up from nothing because he didn't need to say that, right? He didn't need to tease future developments for podcasts because nobody really expects future developments for podcasts, right? I think he could have easily gotten away with just saying, yeah, they're great. We love them. We're the leader. Yay, us. Yay, easily gotten away with just saying yeah they're great we love them we're the leader yay us yay podcasting awesome and he didn't he said no let wait wait hey hold hold on everybody we're working

on more stuff for podcasts stay tuned so what could this mean right so let's assume that they are doing something right so let's assume that this quote means that they're working on some stuff, right? Exactly. Yeah. And so I, last week on Six Colors, I tried to, I tried to break this down a little bit because it was like, I felt like nobody, I searched, I was like, did anybody do this story? Like after he talked about it, I thought it on my list for weeks.

And I thought like, surely there will be a, a, a conspiracy theory. What could it mean story about this. And I couldn't find one. Maybe there's one out there. But I never remembered reading one. So I did my own. So basically where Apple are right now with podcasts, they have the iTunes podcast directory, which was unveiled in 2005. And I would argue that it is basically the backbone of the podcast industry.

Yes. It is the largest directory. Basically, everything is there. It is mostly open to everyone. Apple do have some guidelines of what they allow in, but it's mostly open to everyone, including explicit content. Yeah. You fill out a form, submit your RSS feed, and that's it.

Yep. And it's just RSS. That's it. The iTunes store doesn't host or re-deliver your content in any way. It is effectively a handshake between you, the user, and the RSS

feed from the producer. All Apple does is just subscribes you to that feed. Then they're gone from the equation if you're using the Apple Podcast app. They're out of it. Apple has nothing else to do with that relationship. Also, as well, and you note this in your article, basically for podcast producers, Apple has a pretty basic version of iTunes Connect, which is the portal that they give to app developers that they allow for podcasters to use

to kind of make some small changes to their page and allow them to submit more than one show. So after you submit the first one and you're in kind of the iTunes Podcast Connect portal, you can submit more shows and it's an easier, more streamlined process. And you get some tools to kind of to manage things. And it's an easier more streamlined process and you get you get some uh some tools to to kind of to manage things and it's interesting because this is so this will start in 2005 and

an interesting historical note is this whole thing was like podcasts were coming on and somebody at apple said well why don't we do something here and what they did was they they hacked the itunes music store infrastructure yeah to create a podcast section in itunes that's what they did that's all it is that's why there's charts and stuff like that exactly and what's funny is three years later of course they did their biggest hack of the itunes music store which was the app store right which is entirely based on on itunes but this was like before the app store came this was like their maybe not Store came, this was like their, maybe not their first because they did add like movies and TV,

but this was an early example of Apple taking their music infrastructure and just doing another category, in this case, podcasts. And they used, as you mentioned, it's all standard, right? This is not a custom. There are some custom tags in RSS feeds that you can put in that are iTunes tags that basically give iTunes more information about your category and your art and stuff like that. But it's an open thing and anybody can submit it. It is basically Apple just

said nobody's doing this. And for people to find podcasts, there needs to be a central directory. So we'll build one and put it in iTunes. And it is for the last 12 years. It has not had any serious competition as the definitive place for where podcasts live. Funnily enough, this is just a funny piece of serendipity for me. This was the same presentation in which they announced the switch to Intel for the Mac my first Mac was the first Intel Mac and

the iTunes podcast directory is obviously pretty important to me just a fun little thing to me this kind of started all of everything that ran through for me this event made a big impact on my brain and I didn't know about it. So, as well as

all of these tools and the directory itself, Apple has some marketing support for podcasts currently. You see they have the Twitter account and they obviously have the featured pages and stuff like that, which run... It seems like they have some sort of global reach on this.

I know that there is some US support support but there's also dedicated support in other countries like the uk featured page is different to the u.s featured page and stuff i just saw they had a job posting the other week that a couple people sent to me i'm not quite sure if they want me to work at apple on podcasts or what but they sent it to me and it was and i mean i think i had one person sending me said you know anybody who could do this job and it was... I mean, I think I had one person send it to me and say, do you know anybody who could do this job? And it was a Spanish-language preferred, ideally curating podcasting charts and stuff for South America. So there you go.

Or Latin America, right? They have resources for it. And of course, the iOS app is installed on all devices. This has gone backwards and forwards over the years. They broke it out from the iTunes app or the music app, whatever it was. Then you had to install it like you would install Pages, and then they pre-installed it on all phones.

Currently, it's pre-installed as part of iOS. Yeah, absolutely. So this is where Apple is right now. This is their podcast offering. And you broke down your piece into a couple of headers. The first header I also want to read with some chunky quotes from your article

if you'll allow me to do so. What Apple won't do is what Jason says and that is provide a lot of user data. This is from Mr. Jason Snell. This is, I suspect, what every podcasting startup wants. Unlike the web, where user behavior can be closely measured and quantified,

podcasting is a bit of a mystery. In general, we know that you downloaded a file, and that's it. To know more, you need to be inside of the apps that people use to listen to podcasts. I will just say, as a founder of a podcasting startup, Jason, I will call foul to your point there. I don't want this. Well, okay. Well, that's, I mean, and I think I said earlier in that article, it's a podcasting startup with venture backing and investors who want a big return on their investment.

And they want to spend their money and ramp up really fast. And yeah, this is like the gimlets of the world want this. As Peter Kafka said to Eddie Q on stage, this is the kind of stuff that the gimlets of the world want. And I think a lot of people think they want this stuff because they're thinking about digital advertising. And like on the web, you get metrics. You get so many metrics about who people are and where they've been and what they're clicking on and all of that. And people don't realize that the way podcasting works is like literally you download the file and then you disappear. You go into the fog after you downloaded a file. We don't know if you play it. We don't know how long it plays. We don't know if you skip the ads. The only way that we can see

you through that fog at all is if you send us an email or tweet at us or use the offer code on an ad or anything like that. But I can't tell once you download the file, I basically can't tell if you ever play it or not. You could subscribe and some apps will, you know, if you don't listen, they'll stop downloading after a little while. And we can tell that because the download number changes, but we can't see user behavior. That's a fact. And it unnerves people who are, even though in the history of media, most media is like that. We don't know how many people looked at the billboard. We don't know how many people actually opened up that magazine that they subscribe to or that newspaper that they subscribe to. We don't know how many people had their eyes focused on the television when the ad played, we don't know any of those things either i mean honestly but you don't actually know how many people had the tv on right it's

all extrapolated stuff right it's all i mean they're meters and stuff now too and they try to do some eye tracking and person counting for some of that to get a sample of it but it's not like digital where in in uh in web advertising like they know how many ads get served and they know how many clicks there are like they know how many clicks there are. They know everything. And I think that that's spoiled digital ad agencies where they view podcasting as a digital play and not as radio or TV or newspaper or magazine. And they want all those stats. Now, I think we could argue, would they actually do anything with them?

And do they really need them? But they want them. There's a perception that that stuff is desired. And they can't get them without somebody handing them data from inside an app, which is why some podcast networks have their own apps. Another reason is that they can also lock content behind a paywall. And we'll talk about that in a minute, I suspect. But one of the reasons is because then all the user behavior data belongs to them. So Stitcher, for example, that's owned by Midroll. They have a premium offering that you pay for and you get extra stuff. But they also let you... It's a regular podcast app. And it's not like it used to be where it re-encoded podcasts. It's just a regular podcast client now. But Stitcher can, and I don't know if they are.

I assume they are. Look at your behavior in the app. They can aggregate that and say, this podcast was played by a certain number, not just downloaded. And the average distance in that a listener got was here. And if you aren't on the app. Looking at user behavior. You don't know. And you know. I don't really have a desire.

To get any of that data personally. I agree. I sell ads for RelayFM. And I am a host. You know. I'm part of the whole package. And I don't. With where we are right now. And the way that the business is right now,

I don't think it's necessary. I think we're fine to continue our business and the podcasting industry as business as a whole, as it is, because the rates are good, because the responsiveness is good. And there is a lot of what is called direct response advertising, which is where we give codes or URLs and the advertisers know if that works for them and exactly right it's more

simple than the web but honestly it has worked and it is working and i am really confused as to why people think it will get better if they can change it. I don't see that happening. And I've talked to our friend Lex Friedman, who heads up sales at Midroll. And he's been on the show before. We had him on in the past. He's been on this show and we've talked to him about this, right? And maybe we'll talk to him again in the future because it is kind of fascinating. But he's made the point and he's absolutely right. If I'm an advertiser and I give you X dollars and I look at how many people put in my offer code and I say, wow, that really worked. I'm very happy with how well that worked. I'm going to keep advertising.

Does the number I claim to you in terms of how many people listen to my podcast matter? Like, should you not be thinking of it in terms of the value of who returned to you? Now, there are some cases with branding, brand advertising, where you're less focused on the code. And that's more of a cross my fingers and hope people are listening kind of situation where getting a tangible number could be helpful.

But even then, we can approximate. And I think there's a move in the industry to try to find a a common measurement statistic which is harder than it sounds of like what how do you define a listener to a podcast because of the way that it works on the technical side it can be a hard thing to do but if we can nail that down of like this is how many people downloaded this podcast and the numbers match which they currently don't then that's probably probably enough, right? Because in the end, if I tell you I got 30,000 downloads, but we got a newfangled statistic that says I've got 20,000

who actually listened, and the results for you as an advertiser are exactly the same, you should pay me the same. Because that's what it's about, right? So I'm skeptical and having worked on the web, right. For several years, many years, I can tell you there's a lot of data. It isn't used well. A lot of times it's not measured right. And it is misused by salespeople and by ad agencies and by clients to get whatever they want to push the rates down to, you know, it's, it's not, I don't see it in most cases as actually being valuable. I see it as being corrosive. So, you know, I think, uh, and then let's take this up a level. Okay. We're talking about like, would they actually use it?

I think the big picture. And like I said, uh, you quoted me saying what Apple won't do is I have a really hard time seeing Apple provide detailed data about the behavior of its customers inside an app back to the people who are a third party, a core OS app as well, right? I just have a hard time seeing Apple saying, you know what? Hey, everybody who uses an iPhone from now on, when you play or pause or skip in our podcast app, we're going to aggregate that data and send it to the maker of that podcast. I just, I cannot envision Apple going down that route just because of Apple's take on the sanctity of user data. I just have a hard time imagining that they would ever let that level of detail happen.

Now, maybe they could do some basic stats of plays or something like that, and maybe they would do that. I'm skeptical still, but maybe. But I don't think Apple's ever going to be able to provide podcasters with that level of detail of user behavior because it violates their stand on privacy, user privacy so you have some other headings what apple might do which is support paid subscriptions for shows so as you point out in the article apple has a payment infrastructure sitting right there which is part of the same underpinnings that the podcast store is built on which is the itunes store and the app store right like that infrastructure

the apple id infrastructure that's sitting right there with the ability to take people's money so this may be to enable for uh producers to create podcasts that have that are just listen and supported you know like how you have one and we have one. Yeah, like I was saying how Howl and Stitcher Premium, and there are a bunch of things like that. Or, I mean, there are plenty of examples where you have to download an app, a special app to get access to that podcast because it's paid or Audible does this.

And sometimes it's, we wall off the archive, Script Notes does that and Marc Maron does that. And you have to pay and log in and then you get access and you can listen in those special apps. So I could imagine Apple saying, Hey, we're going to make it podcasters so that you don't have to have to build your own app or work with a company who built a white labeled app that you're going to modify to look like you. You can just do it in Apple podcasts and iTunes. And we've got a payment infrastructure already because we sell billions and billions of dollars

of apps and music and movies and whatever. And now you can do that for your podcasts. And here's a format and it's, you know, maybe it's just RSS, but it's put in a special place or it's got some special tags and they, I don't know, you know, how the details would work, but they have all the pieces to do that and say, we know that you're struggling in making money and want to be able to sell your podcast too. And the open podcast format doesn't allow it. So we've worked our magic to do that for you. I totally could see Apple doing that. The question is, does this matter enough to apple for them to build something like that and normally i would say no but then again i didn't expect eddie q to say we've got things coming in podcasting i expected him to just say yay podcasting is great so it makes me wonder if there's a commerce story here where they could be because also that's very

apple to swoop in as the savior and say aha we have the answer to people who want to charge for special podcasts. We can make that happen and save those podcasters and give them a single solution that does this. I could totally see Apple doing that, making that pitch. And if they did that, Apple starts becoming kind of like a gatekeeper for specific content. starts becoming kind of like a gatekeeper for specific content, could they then maybe put an application on Android like they have with Apple Music that would allow non-iOS users to get to that content? Or would they want to keep this content as iOS only? And or would producers be happy enough to do that? My gut feeling is that if apple is going to go to the trouble of launching a podcast subscriptions plan they would probably go to the trouble of

doing an android podcast app especially since the android podcast app universe is not super strong like pocket cast is there and there are a few others, but like Google Play Music podcast access is not the best. It's not like that is a locked out area. So Apple could go in there and then allow podcasters to say, you can subscribe to this paid podcast anywhere. And they, you know, maybe do a web version. They could do a Windows version,

although there's iTunes on Windows, although everybody hates it, but you could do like a web version that you log into and and you could play it there and it could sync just like itunes and the podcast app sync so i think that's that's the only reason i could see apple doing podcasts for android but i it's a reason it's not a bad reason if you're going to jump in and say we're going to be the place that people who want to charge for premium podcasts uh it. That would be, that's my theory. But obviously the thing that we can assume that will definitely keep happening is what Apple's been doing, right? So curating and managing and moving forward the application that's currently on iOS, right? Like that's what's going to happen.

Iterating. Yeah. They'll, they'll, they'll improve the curation. They'll, you know, they're, they're apparently staffing up or up or at least keeping their staff i think and i i think doing better jobs with curation improving the app doing some better stuff in the app i think that will certainly happen regardless and would have regardless of what eddie q said i i would imagine that they would just keep on iterating on that stuff and making it better but i guess if it's more um i think that safe bet would be on there being some kind of support for paid paid podcast subscriptions that's the best i can come up with is apple apple taking their existing free podcast database and then adding a paid layer onto it. So not like paying for your existing

podcasts. And, you know, it really is like the idea that if you're, if you're what, what Audible is doing now is a good example or what Howl and Citra Premium are doing now, which is we've got some shows that you have to be a member to get, right? So imagine somebody saying, here's a great new podcast. It costs, you know, it costs $5 a year or something like that to get it. And if you don't pay, you don't get it.

There's questions about if this would even work, but it's certainly a la carte purchases and ongoing subscriptions are both things that Apple has a great history with. I'm not sure I love this idea and I'm not sure it would work. I'm just saying that if I try to think of something Apple might do

and that I hear some demand for among some podcasters, especially ones that are trying to find a good revenue model, then I could see this happening. I'm not sure i would ever use it but um you know but the fact is i i have a premium podcast feed or two and so for the incomparable and relay does too and it's more security through obscurity and honor system than anything else because there's no way to lock that down and i'm fine with that because i want to let

people listen in overcast if they want to and not say you can only listen to this in podcasts and i imagine that's how it would work right it's not going to be like oh marco here's the api that lets you have access to the premium podcast that seems unlikely right it's more going to be it's in the podcast app on ios if you log in with your apple id and subscribe. The one thing that I would be interested in and would think it would be kind of cool if they did it would be a way to allow people to pay for early access. So if you pay, you get the show, and then a week later it's free or something like that.

Which is what a lot of those other models do. I would like to see it because otherwise there's going to be two listings for every single podcast in existence. Oh, yeah. Because they're going to put it up for the paid version or they're going to have the free version which comes out later which has ads in it. I think it would be kind of cool if they found a way to do that. And again, I can't really foresee wanting to go down this route like i can't think of any project that i have currently or i'm thinking about that would fit

this because of it being walled into apple's application um but yeah i guess one other thing that you didn't mention that i don't think Apple will do is become an advertising player of any kind. Yeah, don't you think they've gone down that route already? Yeah. Yep, I add. I add. So yeah, there you go. I think it's right to point it out because it does indicate that something is coming.

But I think it's kind of unclear to really put, I at least find it complete, kind of unclear to put my finger on exactly what they're going to do. But I think that logic would dictate what you have suggested here, which is that it will be some kind of way to, for podcasters to make money from Apple's stored credit cards. So there you go. Yeah. This week's episode, this. So there you go. Yeah. This week's episode, this is how we make money.

This week's episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Whether you are racing against the clock to wrap up the projects that you're working on whilst preparing for a meeting later in the afternoon or whilst trying to tackle a mounting of paperwork or maybe you're out in the field, it doesn't matter what you're doing. Life as a freelancer can be challenging

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so they will know that you came to them from this show. Thank you so much to FreshBooks for their continued support of Upgrade and RelayFM. So one of our Ask Upgrade questions that was in a document that I saw this week was from Tyler, and Tyler asked, what is on your home screens? Now, this is too big of a question for just Ask Upgrade, and I'm not sure. I did a little search. I couldn't remember. I did a little search. I

don't think that me and you have ever done this before, and it's one of my favorite things to do is to compare people's home screens i take great pleasure in doing this looking at people's home screens asking questions sometimes picking them apart if necessary so we're going to do this i think we'll start with you jason and we'll take a look at your iphone and ipad so there'll be links in the show notes so people can go and see it and this is like our home screens as of like yesterday or something when I asked for the pictures. So we'll take a look at your iPhone home screen here. So let's kind of go left to right from top to bottom and explain, you know, in as many words as you would like, the choices that you have made for the apps that you have here.

All right. Messages. Because, you know, people need messages. I send texts to my wife and my daughter and my mom. And yeah, messages. Phone, no longer in the dock. It was in the dock for a very long time mike but i took it out because you know what i don't call on my iphone very much pretty simple but it

took me a while it took me a long time to accept a phone app needed to not be in the dock anymore it's still on your home screen though well i do make calls and i'm not gonna go that far as to hide it the app store because you gotta update things right you gotta find apps that somebody mentions to you so i got the app store there these are up and the rationale here by the way is that the higher up it is to a certain point the top row i'm actually not, I don't think those are that important because they're far away from my fingers. But you want to be, I guess the thing here is you want to be able to see those. You have badges set for those applications. So I guess that's kind of the thinking there, right?

Like messages and phone and the app store. I do have badges on those. There's stuff going on, right? I guess, which makes sense to me. Photos. There it is. I don't have a lot to me. Photos. There it is. I don't have a lot to say about that. The next row is Maps.

And it's Apple Maps, right? You use Apple Maps. Because you live in San Francisco. Yeah, so the Maps data here is fine. And then I have Google Maps, but it's not on the screen. Authy, which I use for two-factor codes for the most part yes i know that one password does two-factor as well i find offy's interface much simpler at getting at two-factor codes so don't email me i i do have one as a trial i put my dropbox two-factor in one password

and it's more convenient when I'm at my Mac and less convenient everywhere else because I have to open one password and unlock it and go to my favorites or where I've saved it. And then I can view the code. And in Authy, it opens and I can choose which account and the code is there. It's easier.

So I like Authy. Yeah, I don't do any of this i'm i use text messages i feel like i need to get into the future with this get into the future messages for all of my two faxes stuff join us here we have ipod high fives i don't know that's the wrong future i don't want to be a part of that future smell no record players here in the future um find friends is next to it because i use that a lot to see is my wife home from coming home from work yet you know where's my daughter that happens a lot where's my son if he's riding his bike home and i'm like is he is he on his way home yet

uh just checking in on on where my family is where's mike that's that yeah where's mike i can check on that where's steven hackett i can find out uh settings because you know sometimes you gotta set settings you gotta set those settings now you gotta do it uh next row any list this is currently our shared grocery list app not me and you no no no my family's and it's not just me i used to say this was my wife's and mine but it's actually my daughter my daughter has now been given access to the any list list and now when she complains that there's not something in the house we say put it on the list instead of dutifully putting it on the list for her so she now has to do that as a 15 year old also leads to some very funny things that i find on the list for her. So she now has to do that as a 15 year old. Also leads to some very funny things that I find on the list from time to time.

Like, really? This must be Jamie. Notes. Because notes is actually really great. And I use it all the time to write down things that are, I do this for my notes for when I'm watching a movie or something for the incomparable, or if I need something that is like a more detailed than a to-do item that is, you know, here's a thing that I need to remember or something somebody is saying, or I'm having a conversation with somebody and they tell me a few things that I

need to write down somewhere and I don't have paper or a pencil or a pen, so I use notes for that. So I keep it out there. One password, because I do use one password all the time to look things up. And I can't just access it from the extension for a few reasons. Sometimes the extension doesn't work right. And sometimes I need to get things on the clipboard for very specific reasons for other apps or whatever. So I need to have it handy.

And then the next one on that row is Fantastical. Which is my calendar. I use that instead of the Apple calendar on the iPhone. That's great. Nothing? No comments yet? No no my comment on fantastical will come after your next application oh all right reminders yeah so anytime i have an idea for a story that i think would be a good story for six colors or from a macworld column i open reminders i've got a story list list i write

it down there. Anytime I have an idea for like a novel I want to write or a short story I want to write, I open reminders. I've got a story ideas list. I put it down there. So that's literally, I mean, this happened to me yesterday where I'm walking somewhere and I think, oh, that would be a cool novel idea.

And I open up reminders and type in enough that reminds me that I had that idea. And then I put it away again. Because if you don't write it down, then you may never remember it again. It could be a very good idea. They bubble up all the time, story ideas do, whether it's fiction ideas or especially like my tech writing stuff, those bubble up and I got to capture them and I capture them in reminders. And that is when I'm sitting at my desk here looking and thinking, I got to write something. What am I going to write? I open the story list in reminders and there are all of my dumb ideas. And then I look at them and I'm like, no, no, yes. Okay. Maybe that one. And that's how I

manage that part of my process. That's interesting. I put stuff like that in notes, really. Yeah, I like this because the story list is much more prominent and I do use notes for other things. So then I have to go find the story list. And there is something very satisfying about checking the box when I post the story. You can have check boxes in the notes app. I can, but it's not the same.

This, I check the box and they go away. Ah, right. Okay. Yeah. There's a big difference. I don't have to do any maintenance on it. I just add them. And then when I write the story, I check the box and that's it.

So it works perfectly for how I use it. Then you have music and Sonos here. I listen to music, the music app when I have headphones on, on my iPhone. I use the Sonos app when I'm playing music in the house. Yep. So I need both. Now, the MLB app application, is this video, is this like scores? And do you have it on your phone the whole time?

Oh, no, there's a whole so mike after the world series is over i go through a one week period of mourning that baseball is over until the next spring and then i and then there's a a brief solemn ceremony is held where the mlb at bat app is removed from my home screen and then in march as the flowers are beginning to peak up out of the flower beds and the promise of spring is arriving there's another ceremony where there's confetti there may be some songs and the mlb at bad app is added back to my home screen okay i and i don't even keep it somewhere else i delete it in the off season it's just not on my phone oh i bring it back and it's on the home screen that's a big ceremony that was not

thrown in a folder i'm not gonna throw baseball in a folder for the winter it goes away and you need to feel that death that is dead it's gone that misery and then you bring it back and so now it's back and it does does scores. It does audio. So I can listen to like, I can be walking somewhere and listen to the baseball game on my headphones while I'm going. It does do video,

including live games, but also highlights. And it does some push notifications and I tweak those settings so I can get some push notifications of like the game is starting. That's the one I have on for the Giants. The Giants game is starting now.

And that is useful to me so so yeah it's great it's a great app it's always been a great app it's one of the best apps on ios since the very beginning so then you have the mail app because you get email um i do sometimes get email and i am back to using mail yeah Yeah. What's going on here? What were you using? Were you on AirMail or Spark? I don't remember. I was using AirMail for a while. And why are you back on the Apple Mail app now?

You know, Spark has some HTML rendering issues where I had email messages that I would open and it would not display them or it would only display parts of them. Like Ben Thompson's St stratechery newsletter everything that he would quote in block quote just didn't show up why did you say spark or airmail in airmail in airmail okay yeah and so i'm just back to this for now and again i'm kind of open and i use gmail so i could probably just use the gmail app but i don't think i like the gmail app as much as i like this although i thought about it i thought about gmail i thought about inbox i've used those a little bit um because i do use google mail so i could use gmail but uh right now i'm back to i'm back to apple mail i'm just i've gone back to the default at

least you know it's a tenuous um tenuous hold on my home screen now when i saw this picture initially is these next three icons on your bottom row that i am the most interested in here i thought i thought about moving them out and then i decided no no you get to see the real thing so next is a folder containing uh eight flight tracking apps because as i wrote on six colors my flight tracking app was discontinued so was my flight tracking app i i i downloaded a bunch of possible replacements so that i can try them out and decide what i think and write an article about it like the whole world was looking at you for this answer you know that yeah yeah unfortunately i'm not traveling for another two weeks so and i haven't had the time to like put in a fake flight and experience that which i

probably should do but i thought it might be better if I just put my flights to London in here and had that experience. So this is a temporary thing. And likewise, the next two, I have Stitcher and Audible on here, and that's because I've been listening to Offices and Bosses, which is a Stitcher Premium show based on Hello from the Magic Tavern, and it's only on Stitcher Premium and Howl. So I have to have one of those on here. And Audible I have on here because I've been listening to Presidents Are People 2, which is a show that is an Audible original. It does end up getting posted on iTunes.

And I'm so far behind that I might be better off just subscribing to the iTunes feed of it. But as an Amazon Prime customer, I have access to all that stuff through Audible, all the Audible channels material. I did not know that. Yeah. Amazon Prime, you get access to the, not to all the Audible books, but to their podcasts, which are called channels. The Audible app interface is terrible, by the way. But in terms of like controlling what you hear next, I don't understand how it works, which is why I might move it back to Overcast. So those are there for now, but they're not positions of honor it's more like i want to remind myself

that i've got podcasts to listen to that i can't listen to in overcast so i need to use them instead so they they round it out and then there's another row that's empty so here's a question i have for you right you're an empty row person uh you have three icons that are currently uh seem to be temporary right the flight trackers app stitcher and audible but you have mail on this this row with these so do you usually or would you usually have just mail on that row on its own well no probably not so is that like like, do you have like this temporary space on your home screen where things get moved in and out? Sometimes.

And in fact, I think what happened here is that I added those in and I added the MLB app back. And that if I had just added the MLB app back and I had mail sticking out in the next row all by itself, I would have had to, I could have left it there. I might also have decided to add three things in or remove a thing. If you had to i could have left it there i might also have decided to add three things in or remove a thing if you had to remove a thing do you know what it would have been from your current list of things here or is that too difficult question i think that's i think

that's too difficult a question i don't it's very difficult i don't think i would i don't think i need two empty rows so i probably would have thought are there some other things that are floating around that i i use occasionally that I could bring up to my home screen? Yeah, I'm going through this a little bit now, as you'll discover soon. I have some spacing issues. But your dock seems pretty standard, as I would expect. You have Overcast, then Safari, to Terrific, and Slack. Yeah, and this is a big change for me i mean i didn't used to have slack in the dock i didn't used to have overcast in the dock my dock used to be phone mail safari and twitterific so what happened there well what happened is i realized that the things

that i use my phone for by far the most are slack twitterific overcast and safari yep and they should probably be in my dock that makes a lot of of sense. I also only have a second screen, and it's all just folders with stuff dumped in them because I'm on the gray Hurley model, which is if it's not on the home screen, I'm just searching for it. Come on. All right, let's flip over to your iPad real quick.

Okay. Take a look here. So I guess first off, do you think of your iPhone and and ipad layouts in relation to each other in any way no no neither do i so i'll set up straight up front like i do not um so there's a couple of things that i'm noticing here in contrast to your although twitterific and slack are on the far right of the dock which is something that is the same on both but i i think that's a coincidence i've already noticed a few things that are interesting to me about what you've got going on here.

You have Calendar, not Fantastical on your iPad. Why is that? I don't like the layout of Fantastical on the iPad. Yeah, I only like it in split view, honestly. I don't think that the full view is very nice. I don't like it very much. I really like the weak view in Calendar on the iPad. Yeah, I don't like that it shows the entire month.

Like, it has the whole month calendar in the bottom right. Like, I'm not a big fan of the Fantastical Way out either. So you have on here a bunch of specific reading applications, like Comixology, Marvel Unlimited. Is the SF Chronicle and washington post apps are they newspaper oh and the new york times are they newspapers or are they like yes let me i know sorry i know they are newspapers uh but i mean is it the newspaper application or is it like a web like is it an iphone app application that makes sense like it's not like a newsstand thing it's not a it's

well newsstand doesn't exist anymore but it's not like a digital replica of a newspaper there because they definitely still exist those applications yeah they know their stories so that's and those are the three news sources that i um subscribe to and so i have the apps on here and i will read them in the morning with my tea sometimes i got the local news from the chronicle and i got the washington post in the new york times and i will read them sometimes and they send me little news alerts every now and then. And I do most of that newspaper reading on the iPad, usually in the morning. So that's a good place for those. A lot of the same apps are on here, by the way, I should say.

You know, Calendar is different, but like Photos App Store, Find Friends, 1Password, Notes, they're all there for the same reasons yeah and in fact you'll see reminders isn't on here and that's because uh very rarely am i you know reminders is my walking around somewhere can't you know need to dash something down that i'm thinking of right away and the i that rarely ever happens when i'm in the context of using an ipad and if it is i'll just search for it but it's it's pretty rare so yeah yeah, I have these, I have the two comic book reading apps. I've got the three newspaper apps. They're all out here on top. You have a weather app, Wunderstation, which I think it's probably talking to your weather station, right? Yeah, Wunderstation is from Weather Underground. And it's, it's iPad only. And it lets you connect to any Weather Underground

weather station. So it's got my live weather data and i can also look at like weather stations that are near other people so like i can say this is how hot it is at my mom's house in phoenix because there's a weather station like 200 yards away from where she lives so i can get exactly in her community how ridiculously hot it is but you had no weather app on your iPhone home screen. I don't. I searched, I just yesterday was searching for the weather app. And I think in the winter, when we were having lots and lots of rain,

I think dark sky was up there. And then I moved it off because we're getting towards spring and I had other things that I was putting on there. So I think dark sky probably was on there and got demoted. And I thought about that, maybe bringing a weather app back. Because I do look it up and I end up searching for the weather app, which is dumb. And then, of course, you have your two writing applications like Scrivener and OneWriter. Now, these aren't on the iPhone.

I assume you're doing all the writing on your iPad. Yeah, I don't write on my iPhone. And so, yeah, so Scrivener and OneWriter are on here. And that's where I do writing on my iPad. Do you have them on your iPhone so you can review something if you want to uh they may be on there okay uh but in practice i never you don't do that okay i'm up yeah and then the only other one here is ferrite which is your uh audio app your podcasting app on ios that you that you use it's an audio editor and it sometimes it's on the first screen and

sometimes it's not because i go a long time without using it because i only really use it when i travel it's it happens to be there right now and mo be a bat i should say is also on here which is great because again scores highlights videos and it does picture in picture so i can put a game on and and have it float while i do other stuff and then down in the dock it's not that exciting mail messages safari settings twitterific and slack no overcast by the way because i don't listen to podcasts on my ipad occasionally overcast is on here and occasionally i will look if somebody's referencing something that was in a podcast i'll go and like stream it but i've got it set to stream only and it's just it's there if i need to access a podcast really quickly for reference but i don't use it for listening all right my turn

i feel like there's a little bit more peculiarness in my iphone home screen people seem to find that um to be the case all right so i'm gonna go top top left as you did. I will note how much I think nicer the iPhone home screen looks on the Plus with those packed-in icons. It looks richer, you know, more, more, more. Especially mine is just a more very colorful iPhone. My background, by the way, will be in the show notes. It is the – I've got to get it in, Snell. Come on.

You've got a J. Summers right. I'm not saying I'm right. Just let me say that. Have you started talking about your home screen yet? I missed it. I have a wallpaper, which is the Upgradian official wallpaper. I use that for my iPhone. I'll put a link in the show notes if you want to find it.

I am very upset that you weren't using it, Jason, but you did have a picture of one of your children, so I guess that's acceptable. Sitting on the beach, yeah. I'm going to go top left. I have the RelayFM app, which is our live listening app, mostly because I just like to see my own company logo on my iPhone home screen. Honestly, that's the reason that's there.

I use Bear. Bear is where I do the writing for all of our advertising copy for all of the shows. All of the sponsor reads are all written in Bear. It's a Markdown text editor. Notes. Notes is where all of my notes go, whether it's just like simple text notes or like little ideas for things. All of my travel documents go in there and all of my show preparation notes.

So not the documents that me and Jason share, but like as I'm thinking of things to talk about throughout the week for my shows, I just send all of the links and thoughts into notes and collect them up on the day of the show to put into our show documents, which tend to be in Google Docs. I have Dropbox. Dropbox is my file system. It's where all my files are for everything, right?

Like it all goes in Dropbox on all devices so I can view everything that I need to. I have Due, which is where I keep simple recurring reminders for things. And or like if I have to go take the trash out later on today or take a pill if I'm sick, like that all goes in Due because it's just a simple way to get things to be reminded to me. And Due, my favorite feature about Due, is it keeps reminding you until you complete it. It just keeps going

and keeps going and keeps going until it's completed or until the time is changed. I like that app a lot for that. You can stop me anytime if you have criticism or questions, Jason. No. Music, because that's where my music is canary because that is my home security camera

I like having that on my home screen so I can easily jump into it I really really really like my canary a lot Google Maps because I find Google Maps to be better than Apple Maps in every single possible way it is so much better,

I find, in London for point of interest. And I do check into Apple Maps every now and then to make sure that I'm right on this. The point of interest data is better. The information it has about businesses and places that I'm going to is better. Like, for example, one of my new favorite features is Google Maps will show you when a place is busy. Because whether it's collecting this data from people searching for it or whatever, however it's collecting it, it shows a little graph of when the peak times are for a restaurant or something, which I like. I have the camera app on my home screen for two reasons. One, the camera app has always been on my home screen, right, since the original iPhone.hone and i also it serves double duty because it's a way for me to get to my photos too

so you just tap into the camera app yeah i can take a picture or i can grab my photos get it off no get it off if it's locked you can swipe right and if it's not if it's unlocked you can swipe up and launch it from control center be like me i i moved the camera away now i don't need it anymore nope nope don't need it no i need it because i honestly honestly i forget about these other shortcuts and i tend to unlock my phone and open the camera app learn mike learn grow as a person double duty it's double duty you have the photos app on your home screen i have the camera app on mine because i can get to the camera or the photos all within the app by far the most efficient way to launch the camera app on mine because i can get to the camera or the photos all within the app by far the most efficient way to launch the photos app is to buy the camera app that's

that's what i find sure solid solid instagram instagram is there that is a social network that i look at photos on uh fantastic cow um is my calendar app i find it to be the best calendar app my favorite feature about fantasticical is the natural language entry. So even though, as I said, and it's on my iPad, we'll get to that shortly, I don't tend to like the iPad layout in the full view so much.

I can't use anything else because I need the natural language entry for events. PCalc. I love PCalc. It is my favorite calendar application calculator application. PCalc has a couple of features that I really like a lot that other calculator apps do not have. So it's the one that I go for. I love it too. I just don't use a calculator on my phone enough

to have it on my home screen. I do a lot. That's why it's on my home screen. I use the calculator on my phone a lot. So this is my one of choice. I have messages there because I get messages like Jason. You've got a one. I have a one. I have Slack right there next to messages.

There is not completely, but there is some grouping of things. Camera and Instagram are next to each other. Bear and notes are next to messages. Do you notice there is not completely, but there is some grouping of things. So camera and Instagram are next to each other, Bear and Notes are next to each other, and Messages and Slack are next to each other. They are grouped purposefully because that's kind of just where that satellite works out in my brain.

Todoist is my task management system of choice right now, which I am very, very happy with. 1Password is where all my passwords go. Narwhal is my Reddit application. I now subscribe to like three or four subreddits,

which I will go to every now and then. I never see the Reddit homepage because I don't ever want to. It's just not the way that I view Reddit. And there's just a few little communities that I enjoy that tend to be pretty okay. And Narwhal is where I do them. I think Narwhal is the best iOS Reddit app

that I've found and used. It's a really, really nicely made app. Trello. Trello is an application that me and Stephen use for a few things with RelayFM related. It's a really nice way to kind of visually look at things, right? Like to have this like visual, I keep saying visually look and visual view. I can't think of another way to say it, but like a visual representation of data.

It's a card interface. We actually use this. I use this in a couple of different places for the non-profit that i'm on the board for that it's useful to have like cards in different stacks and move them around and it's a it's a good organizational system and it does have a visual representation instead of it just being kind of like an outline or text in a document it's little cards that you can move around spatially um and then i have workflow because i am an automator not a programmer i've settled on this jason as uh all right it's the thing i was talking to casey about on analog i'm not a programmer i'm an automator i don't use workflow enough to build workflows to have it

visible um and because i use it mostly using existing workflows that I've built in share extensions. So I just haven't. Yeah, me too. But both workflow and IFTTT are on my home screen right now, and they have been for a while because I am encouraging myself to use them more. So if I have them on my home screen, it is a constant reminder for me to be in there and tinkering and playing around as I'm trying to get better at this and

think about this stuff more. So those two applications are on my home screen right now as a way to encourage more activity in them. I then have Toggle, the Toggle application, which I have there for some of the reports and the manual entry stuff because I use my workflow triggers for those. But I used a toggle app for some report stuff and then the YouTube Studio app, which is like a creator's application. So the issue that I'm having right now is I don't like those two apps are just kind of out there on their own. But eventually I will move.

I would definitely move off IFTTT from my home screen and I will definitely move off IFTTT from my home screen, and I will probably move... Well, I will move either Toggle or the YouTube Create Studio application to the second screen. One of those doesn't need to be there all the time, so we'll shove off, but I'm not sure what one that's going to be.

Then my dock is TweetBot, AirMail, Chrome, and Overcast because... Okay, so TweetBot is one of the things that I do on my phone the most, is viewing Twitter. Chrome is my web browser, so that goes there, because I also surf the net a lot on my phone. And Overcast, the majority of audio that I listen to on my phone, which is what it's a device for, is there.

It's all in there, so I go into Overcast and get that. AirMail is only there because mail has always been in my dock, because maybe Slack should be there instead if it was based purely on what the phone is used for, right? But email has always had a place there, and it works fine for me having it there. You'll also notice I don't... I have the badge there on the messages. Aside from Slack and Todoist, nothing else on my home screen gets badges. They're the only things there that will get badges

on my home screen in my iPhone. Solid. Yep, because I don't like badges. Do you have any other comments or questions about my home screen, or are we good? I think we're good. Chrome, I don't know if I knew that you use Chrome or not, but that's fine. People use Chrome.

I like it. I use Chrome on the desktop, so I use it on iOS, because then all my settings information syncs over. Makes sense. Then my iPad. Again, I'll put a link in the show notes to where i got the wallpaper it's one of steven's photos of one of his many imax so my ipad okay so i've used a 12.9 here because both of my ipads differ but for no specific reason because i really don't

don't tap on the icons on my home screen of my iPad very much. And therefore, I basically have everything I use on my iPad on the first screen. Everything that's on the second screen are apps that will eventually be added to folders or deleted. They're like apps that I'm trying out. I basically have everything on my home screen of my iPad because I launch everything typically from Spotlight. So there aren't, I mean, basically it's all of the apps that you've seen already are there and then all of the stuff that's in folders is in stuff that's in folders on my second and third screen of my iPhone or my second screen of my iPhone.

Like it's all the same apps, but they're just in slightly different configurations or hidden away. But I don't really know where anything is on my iPad. Because I never tap the icons. I'm always opening from the spotlight. So for me, it's just everything. It's all on the one screen.

And my 9.7 is organized completely differently for no reason it's just where it got organized to when i set it up um because i don't i because i always have keyboards attached to my ipads and i use spotlight to always open stuff i mean if it's not on my home screen of my iPhone, I am using Spotlight 2, but I do tap the icons on the home screen of my iPhone. So yeah, that's kind of my devices. Do you have any thoughts on my iPad there? No, I think it's interesting that you're so search-centric on the iPad. I'm not because I'm not always at a keyboard.

In fact, like I think I've said on this show, I'm like 90% of my iPad use is not with a keyboard attached because I'm sitting in bed or on the couch or whatever. And I'm just, I've just got my iPad there. And so I want the stuff. I want quick access to the stuff that I use all the time. And it's mostly reading and Twitter and Slack and stuff like that. And web browser. So they are our home screens.

And I look forward to people sending us theirs, which tends to be what happens when you show off your home screen. Ah. So there you go. I dread it, but that's okay. Send them in. I don't dread it. I like seeing it.

I also will not look forward to, but await. I will await the criticism. Judgment. Yeah, people are judgy. Yeah, that we will receive for this. Yeah, I don't want to hear about it. That's just don't email me they're gonna email you actually don't email us actually you can tweet at us that's fine don't don't email it's fine send tweets no i mean i i i i literally if you're if you're going to tell me i'm doing it wrong i literally don't want to hear it because

i don't care because I'm doing it exactly right for me. Is that why you tell me I should change the camera app? Well, I mean, I see what you're, I wear, the reason I tell you that Mike is because I was you, I was learned from my, I have, I went through that process. I used to have only the camera app and I said, Oh, well, I can get to the photos from the camera app. And then I realized that with the swipe on the lock screen and it being in the control

center it was dumb to have the camera app on there and it got demoted yeah so i'm saying i know that you like me right i know that those things are there i know that they're there jason i know but i i have converted and i can tell you it's a nice place over here but it's all it all i'd be doing no i'm not gonna do it no one can change my mind on this i am i'm resolved to it mike was wrong mike was making a peculiar choice oh you couldn't resist could you is the new is the new uh hashtag my hashtag mike was making a weird choice. Mike, be Mike-ing. He's got to be Mike-ing. Today's show is brought to you by Eero.

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and RelayFM. Ask Upgrade time. Pew, pew. Pew, pew. Matthew wants to know, I know, I scary gave it some today what 5k app is Jason using you mentioned last week that you were used doing 5k training

again I'm running again yeah I'm using an app called run 5k which is there are two of them it's the one with the dark icon I will put a link in the show notes. It's not perfect, but it's okay. I used to use Couch to 5K, which is good because it's got some pre-recorded audio, whereas this is using text-to-speech, so it's like Siri voice is telling you to run. So it's like, run now.

It's like, yeah, I hate that because i hate that but uh but the the thing i like about it is it is a pre-programmed um course basically of like day one you do this or the three you run three days a week uh and it's like week one day two week one day three and you just say i'm doing this now it tells you, warm up for five minutes, and then it says, okay, now run, and then it says, now walk, now run, and you just do it, and it gradually raises up your running ability. So I've done this a couple of times before, and then the winter comes, and I stop running, and now I'm back at it. It's like a nice Apple Watch app as well. The Apple Watch app is way better.

It's now using, as far as I can tell, it's using the WatchOS 3 stuff that lets it stay forward. One of the problems with a lot of these Apple Watch apps on these things were it wouldn't stick around or you had to change the settings to make it stick around. And in WatchOS 3, they added the ability for fitness apps to stay in the foreground when they're active. Yeah, it looks like from the screenshots,

it's also pulling the heart rate information, which I think is an OS3 thing as well. Yeah, so while I'm running, I can flip open my wrist. I've flipped the Apple Watch over while I'm running and look at it and it's showing me how, basically that's the,

oh God, how much longer do I have to keep doing this? Or, oh God, how much longer do I have until I have to start running again? But it's very useful to have that because I don't have to pull my phone out of my pocket to do that. And it'll just, and it gives me audio cues over my music or podcasts

that I listen to when I'm running. So it's not the best app in the world, but I tried a bunch of them and this is the one that I've settled on. So I really like the way the UI looks. It looks very nice and clean. I don't like the look of the icon, though. Yeah, it's not great.

It syncs with HealthKit, too, which is nice. So all of my exercises actually show up in the fitness app and stuff, which is cool. That's what I want. I want to get credit for this everywhere. Yeah, no doubt. You're going to do it. You want it everywhere, all over the place.

Exercise, you want all that. You want to close those rings damn right all right so next up uh we have from uh i'm gonna say nantlis nantlis n-a-n-t-l-y-s just read jason's airpods simplicity article do you think a spinning base so the little metal part on the uh the bottom of the earpods could be a way to include volume control yeah um it adds complexity to the design and so that's the question i'm sure apple considered something like that i wrote a piece for for macworld about how i the airpods show the value of simplicity of apple's design but also how it can be frustrating and yeah you know you can add complications but be careful what you ask for because um somebody i think uh

neil cyber tweeted out like the instruction manual for the for the bragi dash and it's like you know tap twice to do this tap three times like yeah i have a problem with the criticism of that. How many of those features are built into a multitude of clicks on the clicker of the iPhone headset? I would say a vast majority of those are built into some applications. No, because you have a lot of... It's actually having you do clicks to move modes and stuff. From this fitness mode to this fitness mode. of like uh it's actually having you do clicks to move modes and stuff like from from the the this fitness mode to this fitness mode and like over here on the left you do this and on the right you do that well you don't have to but my point was that once you go past the simplicity of a couple

of clicks you are opening the door to miss clicks misunderstandings by, you know, you click three times, but it only went twice. Or you, you know, you, you only, you wanted to do two clicks, but it only registered once it adds the more complexity it adds, it adds more power, but it also has more complexity. And that can be not as good. And I, you know, again, I'm not saying like, it's not unreasonable that it looks like that, but it does show you that the ramp up to explain to somebody how they use their headphones is more when you add stuff like that and you risk misunderstanding it so um that makes sense it's it's like you know hey i wrote in my review that i wish that it did triple click or had different commands for the left and the right but i also

appreciate the fact that everything you do that does that, you're adding the potential for users to misunderstand them, or you're hiding those features away and turning them off by default. In which case, why did we do all that work to have them be turned off by default? And Siri has its issues too. Don't get me started. But this is an interesting idea. I thought about that for, you know, could you put something that's touch sensitive in there? Or could you put something that's touch sensitive in there or could you put something that's a physical moving something like the uh you know like the the apple watch has the you know little spinning crown and do something where you could just grab the tip of the of the airpod and and turn it a little bit to adjust the volume and that would be great i hope apple is considering simple gestures that would allow you to do stuff

that you probably don't want to go to another device to do, like adjusting the volume to make it a little quieter or a little louder. Could you do that through some simple gesture? And a spin gesture, whether it was a real spinning bass or whether it was just a touch-sensitive area that you feel like you're turning a volume knob, even though you're not. Either way could be a great user interface interaction that would make a lot more sense than how can we stack in a bunch of different button tap sequences in order to increase the volume, because I don't think that would be good at all.

Sam asked, is it possible to connect a webcam to an iOS device and be able to view or record the video? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. I've never come across this. I've never come across it, Sam, I'm afraid. I don't think you can do that.

The answer is you buy a Wi-Fi webcam and it's attached to a cloud service. Yep. And you do it that way. But to directly connect to an iOS device and view and record video, I don't think this is something that that you can do uh i would say just going back one question on the airpods thing

because i just thought you know like having that little spinny bass i think the problem would be i would be like flicking out my ears all the time like i'd be going to turn it up and like just knock it straight out my ear could be but i mean i i have to reach up there and double tap on it to invoke siri or to play and pause yeah but tapping is like you're forcing it into the ear if you're twisting it you're making a motion onto a part with like a with a center of gravity might go off i'm i'm skeptical of that but that's why we uh you know if we're if we're apple product designers that's why we, you know, if we're Apple product designers, that's why we product test that, right? Yeah. Rodrigo asked, do either of you use the Logic Remote app on your iPhone or iPad when editing?

No. I forget this thing exists all the time, and I'm fine without it. It strikes me as being something that is built for music producers. Yeah. is built for music producers who want to have that remote to slide their little volumes up and down as they're listening to a mix of something. It seems to me the stuff that's on it

is not stuff that I find valuable at all. Yeah, it's not really like the touch bar or anything, where there could be little shortcuts there or stuff. I've tried it a few times. It's possible that it could do something that i would use but it at this point it does not do anything that i could use to be more efficient at editing podcasts unfortunately and it's not for us right i mean i think it really is built built for a very specific professional music producer audience. Kevin asked, how many caffeinated beverages do you have a day? Oh, well, I have a cup or two of tea and often a can of soda.

I'm trying to reduce my caffeine intake, but it is also a very helpful thing for me so i uh but something like that it's it's we make a pot of tea in the morning which makes essentially like two small cups of tea for me and then i will usually have a soda either with lunch or in the afternoon and that's about it about you kathy wants to know what kind of tea oh just uh english breakfast irish breakfast just black black caffeinated tea i have one or sometimes two not every day two cups of coffee a day that's all i have caffeine wise that tends to be i don't drink soda very much i enjoy it but just don't drink it very much.

Not on a daily basis. I used to, but not anymore. I have at least one cup of coffee in the morning and then sometimes one in the afternoon before I start recording shows. I've had two coffees today, for example. And I've had two small cups of tea. And

finally today, Brent wrote in and said, I have now listened to upgrade atp cortex and hello internet twice what should i re-listen to when i'm all caught up on my shows so uh two just very simple suggestions brent just go to relay.fm slash shows or the incomparable.com slash shows and there are lots of shows there that you can pick from um and considering to the shows that you already listen to brent i think there will be uh they're all good shows brent and uh i think that there'll be reference acknowledged uh well seeing that he listens to atp and cortex i immediately think that he should probably listen to reconcilable differences

yep yep i think so i think that's a good it's a good show you know yeah the the all the great shows is the answer relay and incomparable have shows it depends on what what uh strikes your fancy i i keep hearing from people who have been listening to total party kill which is our dnd podcast because they think it's fun and they they will re-listen to it which blows me away because i you know I participated and then edited some of the episodes and have not listened since, but people go back and listen to those again. And I'll put in a plug for The Incomparable Game Show because it is incredibly fun. And there's some episodes there that you can listen to. It's not a huge back catalog, but it's okay. And yeah, so those

are mine. What do you have? I will make one specific recommendation to a show that I have just come across, which is a very popular show and is like 347 episodes in. And I knew it existed, but never listened to it. But I started listening to it and I love it. And it's My Brother, My Brother and Me. And it's the McElroy brothers, who you may know from Polygon

or from The Adventure Zone or a million other podcasts. They just made a web tv show on cso which is my brother and my brother and me turn to tv um i have enjoyed their work on their video stuff that they've been pulling on for a while i'm a big fan of like uh i'm a big fan of carboys and monster factory and touch the skyrim and all of the silly, fun, video game related stuff that they make. So I decided to check out My Brother, My Brother and Me

and I'm already hooked on it. I'm doing like what I did for The Flophouse and I listened to one episode. Then I went back and listened to a bunch. Now I'm going back further and listening through. So I'm enjoying that a lot. So I recommend My Brother, My Brother and Me. That is, I'm going to say right now, Jason,

if we're, this is going to be my early pick, I think, for podcast. Podcast of the year? Podcast of the year, yeah. Oh, nice. It's my early pick for Upgrady. Well, you've made Brian Hamilton very happy

because he loves that podcast. I mentioned this show on Analog and I've had a few people already today tell me how excited they are that I listen to this show as well. It's funny. I love it when that sort of stuff happens, but I feel it too. Like when somebody that you listen to says that they listen to a show, another show that you like, you're like, oh, crossing the streams. So I'm listening to The Adventure Zone a little bit now, and that's going sort of my that's going to be my entry into mackleroy yeah

i think if you're enjoying i i i expect i will move to the adventure zone soon i reckon if you enjoy that you'd probably enjoy my brother my brother and me because the mackleroy comedy is the same everywhere right like they they have a style of comedy which if you enjoy you will probably enjoy anything that they do. And I think it all comes from My Brother, My Brother and Me. Because I think that's the thing that they've been doing together for the longest. As I said, they're 347 episodes in. It's a very long-running show.

So I expect that a lot of it came from that. So I reckon if you like it, if you like the Adventure Zone, you'll probably quite enjoy that one too. Give it a go. Give it a go. Alright, thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. If you want to send in

questions for me and Jason to answer on the show, send them in with the hashtag AskUpgrade. I feel like I need some kind of better system to request questions for the beginning and how they will be differentiated but I will work that out later just tweet them to me I am at imyke

for a question you would like me to ask Jason to begin the show and then once I've got a sense of if that's going to be a thing maybe I'll work out a secondary hashtag for that who knows Jasonason snell but if you ask a question i want to ask him you'll be credited in the beginning of the show i was asking the question so go ahead and send those to me over twitter indicate to me that it's

some kind of question for jason i don't know how you do this it's up to you up gradients to help me shape this as a thing you can find j Jason online at TheIncomparable.com and SixColors.com, and he is at Jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. Of course, Jason hosts, as well as this show, a fine selection of shows at RelayFM, including Clockwise, Free Agents, and

Liftoff. I got them all, right? I think so. I think so. Who knows? All the great shows. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Eero, FreshBooks, and Encapsular. Most of all, thank you for listening, and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

It's still cloudy here, Mike.