Upgrade - 138: Bad for the Person, Great for the Wizard

Episode Date: April 25, 2017

Jason and Myke are back together (from their separate offices) to discuss the trouble with free services that take your data and re-sell it to others, and why it’s important to be a savvy and skeptical consumer. They also discuss the future of the iPad Pro app market, changes to Apple’s affiliate program, Apple’s approval to make self-driving cars, and the 1982 classic film “Blade Runner.”

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 138 today's show is brought to you by encapsular text expander mac walden and fresh books my name is mike hurley and i am joined by mr jason snell hey mike how's it going? Welcome home. I arrived home today from the Atlanta Pen Show, where I was taking part in Pen Addict stuff. I'll put a link in the show notes. We did a live show.

We had 100 pen nerds in a room, and we recorded an episode, and it was great. And if you're interested in the Pen Addict at at all maybe you've never listened before this might be a good jumping on point live episodes are the way to go we did the we did that live uh clockwise at all and that was great like there's laughter and people applaud at the end and it's amazing it's great when you start the show and people are like screaming you

know it's great oh it's so good i really want to do more of them but it's it's really difficult you know it's like it's a difficult thing to to get it all set up it all the logistics of it including the technical stuff it's a it's a big deal but uh i'm glad you had a good time that's why we're if you are uh wondering why this podcast episode dropped in your feed a day late uh mike forgot what day it was. I sure did. When he planned his trip and said, no, I'll be back on Monday. And then he realized he was not going to be back on Monday. At least I realized on like Friday or Saturday that I wasn't going to be home until Tuesday.

Right? Like, luckily enough, I didn't recognize this on Monday morning. Yeah. Or it's like Sunday night at the airport. That would have been very unfortunate. Where's my plane? It's not here. Yeah. Or it's like Sunday night at the airport. That would have been very unfortunate. Where's my plane? It's not here. Yeah.

So it's good. And I realized just as you picked up the call today that this is the first time we've done a show where I know what your office looks like. Yep. Because you've been in it. Because I've been in it. That's right. I know where you live. You do.

Oh, dear. I mean, like literally, I know where you live. I've been to, dear. I mean, like, literally, I know where you live. I've been to your house. I didn't mean that to be threatening, but it came out threatening. I have just come back from the U.S., and in the hotel, in the parking lot of the hotel that I stay at, there is a Waffle House. In the parking lot. So, Jill's question for Snail Talk this week. Jill asked, Jasonason pancakes or waffles

waffles you're a waffle guy huh yeah i mean people who follow me on twitter know this already in fact i just made waffles for dinner a couple nights ago because we had nothing in the house and didn't want to go shopping and so i said we'll do breakfast for dinner and i made waffles. I like waffles. They have shape. They have, you know, they can be crispy and all that. Pancakes are nice.

I don't want to run down pancakes, but they're just kind of, you know, they're floppy and insubstantial. And they're fine. But waffles are the winner here. So I'm going to say, nobody asked me, but I'm'm gonna say uh i like pancakes more but i've never really had good homemade waffles so i need good homemade waffles and then i can make my decision i don't know waffles are waffles i don't know if good homemade waffles i mean like i don't know i mean waffle house waffles are not very good yeah All right. Well, maybe so. Maybe so. There are good waffles out there.

I'll just say that. But I like them because they got little holes, little indentations so you can get like syrup in there. I do like that. I do like that. And in Belgium, where they serve waffles from a little cart and they kind of bake them with the syrupy stuff kind of on the griddle the belgian's waffles are the best and if you've only had belgian quote-unquote belgian waffles which in a place that's not belgium you have not had the belgian's waffles so again i i promote belgium as a place you should go and when you're there beer waffles chocolate fries. I have done all of those things in that place,

and I agree with that assessment 100%. They are the best. Yep. So, Jason, nothing happened on April the 18th. Of course nothing happened on April the 18th. Hashtag Jason was right. You may remember weeks and weeks ago, I think we were discussing this when Apple Park was announced.

I brought up the fact that at WWDC on the wall, there was a call out to a date which said, Hello April 18th, 2017. And I thought that there might be something about that date. There was nothing about that date. What actually happens on that day is it's a tax return day in the United States of America. And that's probably what Apple were referring to. So, hashtag Jason was right.

Nothing happened on that day except people paid their taxes. Everybody have a waffle. I saw on The Verge this week that Samsung announced that the pre-orders for the Galaxy S8 were 30% higher year over year compared to the Galaxy S7. And that Samsung is saying this is their best ever pre-order number. The reason I bring this up is because we spent quite a lot of time following the exploding Note 7 fiasco. And I know everybody knows this is not that line of phones,

but it's Samsung's phone that came directly after that. So in theory, we'll have been affected with all of the press and all of the bad coverage about the fact that their phones are exploding in fact every review i watched or read basically led with the fact that the note 7 exploded right like it was it was the big trend rightly so i mean you can't write the review of this phone without bringing that up because it affects it you know like it seems like samsung actually undercooked the battery in this like they put a weaker battery than they maybe would have like it doesn't have a real great improvement on battery life in any way so it's interesting to me to see that it seems that people have decided um they don't care and that either

they think that this is not a problem or they believe that samsung can fix the situation and or what i expect is happening is people seeing the look of that phone and they're like oh my god i want that and they're buying it and they don't care about the fact that the Note exploded. So I have two theories here. One is the Galaxy S8 flagship is not the Note. It's not the phablet. It's not the huge phone. And the Galaxy S7 is Samsung's most popular phone.

So I think what this says and what this says to us is the Samsung brand as a whole has not been so tarnished that it is dramatically depressing sales. Although, we will never know what the sales might have been. Exactly. Which we'll get to my second theory in a moment. We'll never tell us what they might have been, that this might have been an even greater blockbuster of a phone if they had not had their problems last time. But we'll have to see what happens with the Note 8. They've resolved that they're doing a Note 8. They're not renaming it. They're just doubling down on it. We'll see how those sales go, although I've got a feeling that they'll go okay, if only because everybody who wanted a Note 7 couldn't have one or had to give it back, right? But we'll see. We'll see if that brand sales are suppressed. It's also possible that

people who used to buy Notes are like, forget that. I'm just going to get the S8 and be done. So that's also possible. My second theory here is that this, you know, Apple showed it. When you make substantial changes to the phone's look and ergonomics, you can get a sales boost. When Apple made the big phones, they had a huge sales boost. So maybe the, you know, small bezel, super interesting looking design of the s8 is something that consumers really respond to and because you know that that consumers respond to changes in design especially if they are uh ones that you can see very readily and it makes the phone look cool or makes any product look cool they they respond to that so i think that maybe that's part of it too um yeah so you know it's it's what this does tell us is that samsung as a global phone brand

doesn't seem to have been uh smashed by you know all the bad press for the note at least when it comes to their most most important product right their their single most important product is the s8 and they um it's interesting that they were kind of paranoid about it though like the new york times i think didn't get a review unit in advance because the i mean i wonder what's going on there whether they're they're a little concerned or whether they're trying to have some payback to certain news organizations who they felt covered the the note 7 thing aggressively um i don't know quite what's going on with that but it feels like an almost apple like move really isn't it i know right yeah uh but by all accounts it's a successful launch um

and so we can make a lot out of the note 7 debacle and the fact that the leader of Samsung got arrested and stuff like that. But the fact is Samsung as a global technology giant, not just in the phone space, but all sorts of places still seems to just be motoring along and their most important smartphone product is doing great. And I think you, honestly, I think you nailed it in the fact that the design is trumping anything else. Right. I think so. People were seeing that and they're you, honestly, I think you nailed it in the fact that the design is trumping anything else. Right. I think so. People are seeing that and they're like, whoa.

Like, I mean, I've said it in other places and I'll say it here. Like, I think that's the best looking phone out right now, at least. Sure. You know, like a regular consumer is going to look at it and go, wow, that's really cool. I want it. I want it. I want it. Right.

That's not, that makes perfect sense and let's keep in mind too that you know we talk a lot about um well we don't on this show but people in general talk a lot about like apple's market share and android market share and things like that but in terms of like successful smartphone products the two most successful smartphone products are the galaxy s series and the iphone yeah like everybody else is way behind those are the two so they're gonna be the best and if there is a competition there and i would argue that i'm not sure people are really kind of hopping back and forth between the galaxy and the iphone so much substantial right people do, but I don't think it's a hugely substantial number.

I think especially for those two phones particularly, people have the one that they like. If you start moving into HTC and LG, I think people move around a lot more. Right. here is like galaxy s8 doing well is eliminating even more of the oxygen from the high-end android smartphone makers who compete with samsung and that's it's kind of a fascinating dynamic to see that you know there's google and there's android and that's great but then there's samsung and samsung's trying to exert itself in software in certain places. And it's also trying to stomp out, stomp on all the competition and on the Google side, on the Android side. So that's kind of interesting, too. So it's a weird dynamic.

But I think if you care about the iPhone, I don't know. I mean, I think the most interesting thing here is that Samsung seems to have set the bar in terms of this design. And all the rumors that we've heard about a new iPhone suggest that Apple is basically on the same path to do the same thing. And it's not because either company in this case is copying one another. It's because this is sort of where the technology is capable of going today. Because, and full credit to Samsung, for years, Samsung was doing fast follow on apple where apple would release a product and then six months later you'd see the samsung product look exactly the same and samsung made a product that does not look like the iphone right it looks it looks different they are pushing it

forward here and full credit to them for that because apple's gonna have to respond yeah funnily enough we might end up in september going oh wow that really looks like the s8 and that will be a really interesting thing. And I think that it's a sign of the times, whatever that may be. And I think it's a sign of two things. It's a speeding up of Samsung and a slowing down of Apple. And it's resulted in this product. And I think it's really interesting to see the tides turn.

We've had 10 years of it being in the other direction. And Samsung, for their faults, have finally gotten to the point where they're able to produce something quicker. Yeah, I mean, the other way to view it is that there's a whole collection of places where Samsung has tried to do things that are forward looking. And most of them have been ridiculous like you know we'll look at your eyes and if you don't look at your phone we'll pause your video it's like no i don't want that stop their software i mean they still got a load of that stupid stuff software stuff in this phone right they do the software stuff is and their intelligent agent that didn't ship with it but yes um this is a case where they made some very specific hardware decisions that everybody seems to like and make the phone look good.

And Apple has been working on this, too. But because of their schedules, Samsung got there first. And in the end, getting there first probably doesn't matter. But it does raise the bar. And if Apple doesn't get there, maybe it matters. So I just wanted to address some follow-up in regards to yours and Ren's discussion from last week about the iPad Pro and kind of where it is and where it's going.

Sure. Is this internal, sort of like internal follow-up where you're following up? Yeah. Or are there other people following up? Is this about you? I don't know. We'll have to ask Syracuse how he defines this. I'm not sure.

Okay. Right. Fair enough. So Simon wrote in and he said, two themes regarding quality iPad software are a lack of pro-level software on the iPad versus the Mac and inability of developers to earn what they need from iPad-specific software due to consumer cost expectations. Could you both envision Apple creating an iPad Pro section

of the App Store that changed the calculus of it? A niche gated community within the App Store with a few conditions. Software limited to the iPad Pro line. A small pool of apps that carry a higher price. Emphasis on utilizing Pro hardware features of the iPad like the Pencil and Smart Connector. A definite upgrade path utilizing subscriptions and more customer information shared between Apple and the developer. Could be a pie-in-the-sky type thing, but Apple should create a path to sell $20, $50, or $100 apps in order to emphasize the production features of the iPad. What do you think?

So, you know, reasonable people can differ, but I actually kind of reject the premise that apple um needs to do something like create an ipad pro i mean section like in the sense that you'd feature them sure but i i feel like the path forward here is for apple to continue doing what it's started to do which is differentiating the ipad pro by making the ipad the lower end system and making the ipad pro the high-end system and making the iPad Pro the high-end system, it's already differentiating the two products. And there's the expensive iPad and the cheaper iPad. And that's a start. I think there's nothing in today's climate that prevents any of the things

that Simon wrote in about from happening without any policy changes from Apple, without a single change, like lack of pro level software on the iPad versus the Mac. Well, first off, there's a lot of pro level software on the iPad that I think is a myth. I think that's a mistake to say that it's not all there. But there's a lot of really great pro level software on the iPad today. And the platform certainly makes it possible for them there to be more. Now, I'm a little disappointed in Adobe for doing something like breaking Photoshop into like eight different little apps and not embracing the fact that maybe we just want to run Photoshop on our iPads. But maybe they'll get there at some point, I have the five Photoshop apps or whatever on my iPad. And quite frankly, as I use Photoshop,

because I understand kind of the premise of it, because I've been using it for 20 years, 25 years at this point, 30 years, I don't know, a very long time. And then on iOS, it loses all of its help. The brand doesn't have the stickiness to me on the iPad because it's not familiar at all. It's like, well, wait a second, how many different Photoshop apps do I have? And how do I use them? And where do I go? And it's kind of a mess. But that's on Adobe. They could change it. They've got a subscription model. The Microsoft Office apps on ios are great and they have a subscription model and it's and it and it's sustainable um the inability of developers to earn what they need from ipad specific software well you look at um the omni group they charge

higher prices or they have a subscription model and you can get the money you need all that needs to change is that people who are making professional software on iOS need to charge the right price for it. And I think having the iPad Pro be more differentiated and realizing that Pro software is not gonna cost $5 and that people who are interested in buying apps for $5 or $2 are not your market and just don't price your apps that way.

All that has to happen is that you price the apps higher. And again, then they have to sell enough copies for that to be sustainable, either a la carte or through the subscription model, which seems like a pretty good model too. The challenge is going to be, you need to get pros to use the systems. I think that Apple differentiating the iPad Pro helps push the product line down there. But I don't think it'll succeed or fail as a market based on the success of the iPad Pro hardware and whether people can sell professional software at a sustainable rate. It will succeed or fail regardless of whether there's a special iPad Pro app store. I just don't think that needs to happen.

I just don't think it matters. that needs to happen. I just don't think it matters. Now, you know, maybe a showcase for iPad Pros, you know, which they already have, like, great on iPad Pro is fine. But, you know, just charge a sustainable rate for your software. Use the Pro hardware. I agree with that. You know, absolutely. If you're building professional software for the iPad, you should assume that your professional users are going to use the iPad Pro and focus on that stuff. And there's already a subscription model, the 30% goes down after they've been on it for a year. So there's a lot of ways you can do that if you use Apple's model. And if you do what Adobe and Microsoft are doing, you sell a subscription on your own and you get all the money. So there are lots of ways to do this now. I think it's misguided to say that this is a problem that Apple can fix by tinkering with the details in the app store. Again, reasonable people can differ, but in my mind, this is all about Apple building a better platform that's more

appealing to professional users in terms of the iPad Pro and differentiating it from the iPad, which they're doing already. We're seeing it. And I'm, I think it will be even clearer with the next round of iPads whenever they come and hopefully with the next version of iOS. And then it's for developers to say, you know, I'm going to have the courage, sorry to use that word to say, yeah, I'm going to charge a reasonable amount of money for this product because it's a pro product for iPad Pro. And I'm not going to try and if somebody's not going to buy it because it doesn't cost $5 too bad. I don't want that market. That's not the market I'm interested in. We're no longer chasing iPhone users for 99 cents. We are building professional products and that can happen. And you know, the, I there's a chicken and egg thing there about the

software and the hardware and how you get that to happen and apple should be evangelizing this and encouraging this but i don't think they need to actually like create a new place for the ipad pro i think they just you know they need to make it clear that it's a pro level system and get you know and software needs to be charged accordingly to be sustainable. Speaking of professional applications, professional developers, and clear business models, this week's episode is brought to you by TextExpander from Smile. TextExpander for Teams is a productivity multiplier. You get a shared knowledge base to ensure your team communicates quickly and accurately together.

With TextExpander, everyone in your team will share common replies that can be worded by your best writers. They're all immediately accessible and searchable through simple abbreviations and keyboard shortcuts. The response that everyone needs would be just a couple of keys away, and any changes that you need to make are updated seamlessly in the background. And what's great about TextExpander is that it's available on all of the platforms that your team could be on, Mac, iOS, and Windows as well. I'm having some problems with my iMac right now. I think I need to zap the PRAM or something, but my login items are not sticking. So there are just a couple of apps, not all of them, that just don't open when they're supposed to. And unfortunately, right now, TextExpander is caught up in this.

So I'm turning on my iMac and I'm typing things and nothing's happening, right? And I'm like, something's broken. And it's because I'm typing my TextExpander keyboard abbreviations and nothing's expanding. And it really upsets my brain when that doesn't happen because TextExpander has become an incredibly important way that I get my work done.

And one of the things that I love on iOS as well is, you know, I can use the keyboard, which comes with the TextExpander app on iOS, or so many applications integrate with TextExpander as well. So Bear, the app that I use for a lot of writing of sponsor copy and stuff like that, it integrates with TextExpander. So I get all my snippets there and all my favorite apps as well. Now, April is the new TextExpander's first anniversary. In that time, the TextExpander team have added team statistics, group notes, public groups, monthly active reports,

the Windows app, tons of client software updates, and so much more. And we here at Real AFM would like to extend our congratulations to Smile and TextExpander for hitting this milestone, and we will wish them every success in the coming years. You can go and support this awesome team, check out incredible applications, and celebrate their anniversary by going to textexpander.com slash upgradefm.

That's textexpander.com slash U-P-G-R-A-D-E-F-M. Thank you so much to TextExpander from Smile for their support of this show. Thank you so much to Texas Panda from Smile for their support of this show. So at the end of today's episode, we're going to be talking about Blade Runner for Mike at the Movies. And I just wanted to mention this because I wasn't here last week, so I didn't remind anybody. But we're doing that at the end of today's episode. Consider yourself reminded. You have been reminded. You look at the length of this episode and you think oh my god why is it so long the answer is mike at

the movies is why the answer is blade runner that's the reason yep jason you put in this big topic today can you explain to me what's on your mind i don't know how big it is but it's something i thought was interesting we talked over the weekend when you were in Atlanta about the Uber story that Mike Isaac wrote for the New York times. And if we wanted to talk about Uber again, I was like, man, I don't want to talk about Uber again. And that story, that story is like full of, it's got some awful stuff in it about Tim Cook calling in Travis Kalanick and

saying, you know, you're in trouble because you're doing this thing. And it was super sleazy where they were finding ways to tag phone hardware using APIs that were, I think people figure probably private, but accessible. Anyway, basically they were doing like tracking in the sense of do not track kind of tracking where they were they were able to kind of fingerprint a user and their device in a unique way so that they saw them on the web later they would be able to recognize them or if they wipe the phone and then and then uh reinstalled that they would be able to tell that that was the same thing and they said they were doing it for fraud detection but one of the things they knew that it was

counter to apple's guidelines because they put in geo fencing to basically turn off the feature if it was in cupertino jeez i mean it's like no matter what they were doing it for whether it was some good thing or not it was something they knew they shouldn't be doing really at its core that's the part of it right you knew you shouldn't do this to the point that you made it so nobody in apple would find it and also do they think i mean either either they thought that apple was that bad or apple was that bad but like if you're apple you've got to do lots of things to like test this stuff including presumably spoofing where you're located in order to set an arbitrary location and see what happens in that location so that you can test out uber And instead of ordering a car to one infinite loop, you order it in Philadelphia or something like that. And they obviously didn't get away from it. But that was 2015, right? Like Uber, in the grand scheme of things, Uber has,

I would argue, probably done way worse stuff in the intervening time for people to get mad about this kind of older thing that they did. And people were saying that some of it was related to maybe stuff that's getting closed up or has been closed up in iOS. It was not like physical location tracking. That's one of the funny things that came up as people assume this meant like Uber had some strange black magic where you could delete the Uber app and they still knew where you were. But in reality, people leap to that conclusion, which was not true, because there was this

whole other story of Uber hanging onto your location data after you closed the Uber app so they could see where you went, which again, falls under the category of sleazy things that Uber has done since this happened. And so people jump to conclusions about this because of prior behavior on their part, which is kind of reasonable in a way, even though not accurate in this case. But this is all a prologue because I think the most interesting thing or one of the most interesting things to come out of this whole article was about user data and about in broad strokes, how whole businesses and mostly internet businesses, but whole businesses, exist to do super sleazy things with personal information of people on the internet.

And you stop for a moment and think, well, how do they get that personal information? And the answer is, they create services that are free that help you do something. They create services that are free that help you do something. And then they turn around and sell your information to other people. And this is, you know, when we talk about like if the product is free, then you're the product. You're not the customer. You're the product. And people have made that argument about like Google and things like that.

And there's some truth to that. But I want to take it out of the Apple versus Google wars and talk about it a little more abstractly, which is there's a company called Slice that does a lot of competitive data stuff. And they claim to know things about people's internet purchase habits. And the question, and this has come up over the years, it's like, how do they do that? habits. And the question, and this has come up over the years, it's like, how do they do that? And the answer is they have access to bulk anonymized data from people's inboxes of the receipts that they get from online orders they place. And the question is, the next question is, where do they get that information? The answer is Slice bought a company called Unroll Me that does this, that Unroll Me is this thing that is a web app that you authorize to look at your gmail inbox basically your inbox it connects to your email server reads your email and what it offers

the user is the ability to like auto unsubscribe from mailing lists and stuff like that it's a it's a free helpful service a pretty cool service right like the idea and everything behind it's like yeah this is cool it's yeah it's okay i mean you can probably just do that yourself but yeah it's it's like we're going to help you do this and there are other services like this that do other things and which is a whole other issue because some of them are legitimate and some of them are not but imagine this is a company whose business model is give people a useful tool for free in exchange for being able to take the contents of their email inbox and sell it. Maybe not specific emails, but maybe it's anonymized. Maybe it's just data. Maybe they're just using a sample. Although there's at least a rumor that somebody is

spreading that at some point they were actually storing the context of everybody's email on an Amazon S3 server in an unsecure fashion. They deny it. But somebody who says that they were actually storing the context of everybody's email on an Amazon S3 server in an unsecure fashion. They deny it. But somebody who says that they were working at a company that almost bought Unroll.me said that it's true. So I don't really know, but they could have done that. Maybe they didn't, but they could have because they have access to everybody's email boxes. They may have not even meant to, but they might have done it, right? Like it's very possible. They might have done it accidentally. They might have been unsecure, you know, imagine having, you know, we had we had around the election, we had all these people who had their email compromised.

Imagine you personally are like, Oh, well, that would never happen to me. Meanwhile, you've got a service that you don't know who they are or what they do. And they are silently downloading all your email because you let them and this was their business model like the unroll me business model is how do we make money from this resurface well we gather the data and then we sell it and that was the whole idea and you know they the way the way that mike isaac put in the new york times is uber used this this competitive intelligence. They purchased data from Slice using an email digest service it owns named Unroll Me. Slice collected its customers Lyft receipts and sold the anonymized data to Uber, which Uber used as a proxy for the health of Lyft's business.

And we've seen this, Slice has used this for all sorts of other purchase information. It's like, how are people buying things on the internet? Well, we have a sample that we can use to tell, as a proxy, to tell how it's going. It turns out their sample is that Unroll.me has everybody's inboxes so that they can scan it for information. And again, that's a trade-off that maybe people are willing to make for that service but i think it's um i think it's it's something that shows you how this economy on the internet works where you get something for free but it's more complex trade than you ever really think about in terms of access to your data and

we all need to think about it more like we can we all need to think about this stuff more you need to check the terms terms of service when you sign up. You need to ponder a little bit about who is paying to keep this company afloat. And the problem is a lot of tech companies these days are VC funded and their business model is give everything away for free and then figure out a business model. So sometimes it can be hard because they're not always created with selling your with selling your data in mind but they may get there if that's the place that they can find money like that face app you know that people are passing around it's like it's free and it's like you can make yourself look old or do a gender swap or make yourself look young and pretty um that's a free app and and everybody's uploading their

pictures to their server and my question with that has always been like what step two here what are they doing with all of our pictures because what you know what and maybe it's nothing and they're not keeping them and they've got some other business model but you got to ask the question like why is this happening who is this company what are they doing with the with my data there are a bunch of business models that any company that offers free can pursue and i think it's always important to bear in mind that one of them is this and it's something that i think about you know like and and people get frustrated with with my approach to this stuff sometimes like especially uh people people that have a great fear of Google. Yeah. But I know the trade-off.

Right. I don't know it explicitly, but I know it abstractly. It's the same with something like Unroll Me, right? If I used a service like this, I wouldn't necessarily think that they were doing what they did, but I would know that they're doing something. And it's up to you if you are willing to say, well, let me think about what my data is worth and what they may get about me and what they may actually be able to really do with this data. And then decide if I think that this is worth it for me.

So let's let's use this example, right? Now, this Lyft email receipt thing, I mean, a lot of people are using this to say how terrible Uber is, but I actually don't think Uber is at fault in this, to be honest. They were offered this data, right, by a company. Yeah, but they're buying market intelligence. Yeah, I'm sure Lyft do it as well, right?

I'm sure lots of companies do it. Because you get a company like Slice come to you and be like, I can tell you about your customers. And it's like, well, yeah, you buy that data. Slice is at fault, really, for getting the data without telling people. But whatever. Are you familiar with Experian, the credit referencing company? Sure.

I was going to mention financial stuff that this happens all the time. Yeah, go ahead. When I worked in marketing, this is the type of data we would buy. And it's very broad data, but they can say, we can take this algorithm that we built and we can overlay it over your customer base and we can tell you who we think have children. And then you can use that data however you think you should use that data. This is how marketing is done, right? But the data has to come from somewhere. A lot of the time that data comes from places that would be normal, places that you would expect. Like, so for example, when I was in the bank, that data came from our transaction information, right? And everyone knows we can

see their transactions, right? And I feel like that that is something that's like, okay, like if you've based something on the fact that I've used my credit card review, well, you know that. So the bank wasn't selling the data. It was using a model, right? Right. As far as we know, Slice also gets data from places like financial institutions. I'm sure they do. Slice probably has a deal with a bunch of major credit card makers to just, again, anonymize, but say like this many Apple transactions at this average self, whatever the data is.

And they'll say it's like it's anonymized. We'll do things as parts of our privacy policy. It doesn't mean that they're not selling data there. In fact, that's one of the, I mean, I think people sometimes don't understand that even if you find a revenue model for a company, for a product or a service that you're using, and say, oh, this is how they make their money, chances are that even if you find the primary way they make their money, that's not the only way they make their money. So many companies dealing data exchange. Incremental revenue is the phrase that always got thrown around at IDG. And it's just like, this is how businesses work is, okay, we have, or I should say a

lot of businesses work is, all right, we make a million dollars. Yay. But you know what? If we did this other thing, this person has come to us and said, they'll write us a check for $100,000 to do to give them some data and we can fit it in our privacy policy. So let's do that. And so at IDG, it was things like list rental, where you sign up and pay back in the day, you pay $25 or $30 to get a year of the magazine sent

to you in your mailbox. And guess what happens? Anybody who's subscribed to a magazine knows this, like you start getting junk mail to the person who subscribed to that magazine. Well, how does that happen? It's like magazine publishers, one of their incremental revenue sources was selling their mailing lists to people who wanted to send mail to people. They would be like, oh, your audience is fairly affluent. I mean, you'd start marketing, like, look at how affluent our audience is. These people have a lot of money and they're very tech forward. You want to market to them. And sometimes that was things like the Mac catalog or something like something like that where it was totally legit like a perfect fit but sometimes it's just like you know conde nast wants to find new subscribers for

conde nast traveler and they buy a bunch of magazine lists and send them uh subscription offers and that that like happened all the time. And then in the modern context, email lists work the same way where there's email list rental, where you get paid to spam your own customers with an ad for someone else. And is that the core business? No, but still, it takes a very particular kind of principled business person who is thinking about the big picture, which the danger is the person who's making these decisions is not the CEO thinking about the big picture. It's a salesperson who's got a revenue target to hit. And they look and they say, oh, I can get an easy $100,000 right here. So let's do it.

And it takes a big person to say, you know what? We're selling out our customers. and it takes a big person to say, you know what? We're selling out our customers. I'd rather turn that money away and not sell out our customers because you're turning away revenue for your business. And if your business is struggling even a little or has pressure from investors to grow

or any number of reasons why, you make that calculation and say, nah, it's fine, and you and you sell out your customers it happens all the time i think it's worth just pointing out at this stage that neither of us like this or think that this is necessary the way the world should work no it's gross nor do we want to apply these practices to the to the businesses we both run but i think we've just both been in the corporate world enough to know that Nor do we want to apply these practices to the businesses we both run. But I think we've just both been in the corporate world enough to know that it really does happen.

We've seen some things. We've seen some terrible things. And or had to be involved in them in some way. Because it was the way that things were done. Exactly. So I guess, you know what what's the lesson here i think the lesson is to be to to be aware like you said be aware of the trade-offs that you think you're probably making be savvy don't take something for nothing think of think of what is happening behind the scenes be you know be aware of it and and sometimes that i would say

sometimes the trade-off is going to be what you're willing to do like i i have my domain in gmail you know google apps you know which which actually is a paid service now it's not it used to be like a freebie thing but it's like a paid service now google apps is that's they don't call it double dipping right like from google because that you pay them but they're still looking at all that data yeah well that's true there's still some although i i don't know what the security differences are but yeah basically i'm sure it's different but like they're not like oh we won't pay any attention to that anymore but i'm kind of okay with that because the google services are are very good and i i am willing and also i have to say i believe that google's model is the the stuff that they're doing is very much like looking at stuff in context in

order to serve ads or in different places to me because ads is their business would i consider switching if i got a clearer signal that google is actually like trawling through my archive and selling the data yeah i would consider it i would consider the trade-off all you can do everybody makes their own decision for different reasons but you got to be try to be savvy about it consider what the the trade-offs are. And then maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe anonymizing your receipt data in exchange for this convenience service is not a big deal. That's fine. But the awareness of who have you authorized to look at your email inbox? Who have you authorized to look at your Twitter followers list or post on your Twitter account?

Just maybe look. Maybe check and see. You might be surprised. And it's worth thinking about. It's just worth thinking about because this is, the reality is there are whole businesses, many of them, that this is what they do. This is part of the economy of technology right now. And I do think it's dangerous. I saw a tweet, I can't remember who, it might've been Kara Swisher tweeted about like watch out silicon valley because this kind of stuff is the thing that is going to make turn the public against you and turn the government against you oh yeah and and you know and right now honestly this is the sort of thing that's more likely to happen in the eu

than in the us because the eu EU has much more sort of like business regulation stuff that they are concerned with than the US is. But if it becomes politically expedient because people are up in arms about privacy breaches and reselling of consumer data, if it becomes politically expedient for that to be a quick win for politicians, it could happen and it could really blast a lot of tech industry business models. So this is the world we live in and it's something to be aware of. One last point on this. Me and you have spent so much time talking about the fact that we don't want big podcast data, right? We spent all this time talking about the fact that we don't want

this tracking information. We don't want the information about what people are listening to, where they, you know, we don't want any of that. This is why, because we know what that looks like. And the companies that are asking for this, where does their money come from? Venture capital. Yeah, this is all like, yeah, find other ways to monetize everybody monetize is a key word i've never liked that word and since the very beginning the way i describe it is the

word monetize to me always invokes this image which is it's almost like from a cartoon it's a human being standing somewhere looking around, just a generic human being. And like a wizard or something comes out with a magic wand with, you know, like a little stick with a like a star on the end and goes bing. And that person turns into a pile of money. Bad for the person. Great for the wizard because the wizard's got money now. That's monetizing. up money now. That's monetizing.

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So when we apply this idea to the App Store, you can do this. Anyone can do this. You can do this if you are just tweeting about applications. You can add an affiliate link to them. Or if you write about them like Jason, or if you have show notes like we do, you can add a tag to a link that you put in about an iOS app or an app that's on any of Apple's app stores, or basically any of their products on any of their stores, including the iTunes store. And what happens if somebody follows that link and they buy the product? You get a cut of the purchase price from Apple's end.

So they give you part of their cut. It used to be 7% of the cut of the purchase price, right? So they give you 7% back. So that's great. Apple announced a couple of days ago that on May the 1st, which is basically a week away, they're going to be changing the affiliate program and they're going to be cutting the percentage

that an affiliate linker gets from the purchase price from 7% to 2.5%. This is pretty big news for people, especially in the world of writing about apps on the web yeah it's uh writing writing about apps and i would say also um people who built services and i'm thinking of like arnold kim who uh built app shopper and touch arcade building sites that include like databases and things and their their business model they have ads but i think but their business model is fed in large part by

affiliate revenue you buy an app based on a link that they included they get a cut that comes out of apple's percentage um and likewise with i mean this is common like wire cutter does this with amazon primarily where they get a they get a percentage of amazon's sales uh for all the referral traffic and the deal there is basically like we are we are driving sales to your site and you give us a kickback but in this case it's a blanket deal and they've changed the terms so and with with very little warning so you know you know, I understand why Apple might do it in the sense that it's money that they put back in their pocket and they, they must figure that the people who are sending them traffic don't probably don't deserve that much money. They don't need that. If the, if, if, if the traffic drops off, drops off a little bit,

it will still be worth it for them to reclaim that money. And possibly that they'll still keep doing it even at the lower percentage. So why not lower it? But it's really tough for everybody else, right? Like app developers may suffer because their apps may not necessarily be as visible in all of these places outside of the app store

that currently highlight them. Like if you imagine if Federico at MacSt story says, he's not going to do this because this is like his favorite thing, but say, we're going to cut back on our app coverage because we can't make money at it anymore. We have to shift to cover more hardware products because the Amazon deal is better than those app developers who would have gotten featured on Mac stories just won't. And of course, for people like Federico or Arnold Kim, um or john vorhees who builds an app that builds affiliate links right um it's going to hurt them i feel like the only company that doesn't get hurt here is apple because apple's just walking away with more cash i don't understand why really they've done it like i mean i was you

mentioned some of the people there. I pulled in some interesting quotes that I saw. I saw Rene I. Moore saying that it's more than a 50% cut in revenue for sites or developers that have successful affiliate initiatives. And as he mentioned, especially those trying to reduce ads on their site. And something I saw from Federico, you know, I mentioned at the start that the cut was on Apple's part. You know, the developers don't make any more money

by this change. Apple was just reducing their cut. And it does feel like there are going to be a bunch of people that are going to feel an effect from this. And it did make me think as well, you know, things like, it seems like the business of writing about these types of things online

is getting harder and harder, like the deck shut down recently. And this is another thing. Like if you were thinking like, okay, maybe advertising isn't doing that well anymore, but at least people are buying the apps from my codes and that makes me a few hundred dollars a month, a few thousand dollars a month or whatever it might be, depending on the size of your publication.

I mean, this is just making it harder and harder. It's a huge amount of money to change in an incredibly short timescale. Yeah, I again, I'm going to come back to and again, I'm not saying that I'm advocating this, but I'm trying to understand what Apple is doing here. I feel like somebody at Apple looked at this and said, why are we giving them this big percentage? One, they're probably going to do it anyway. And even if they don't, do we really think that this drives enough traffic? And they've got the stats, like, what does this drive? Is it really worth giving people this money? Are they going to stop? What if they do? Do we care? And basically walk away. And my guess is say, they're not going to stop and we get the money back. So let's do it. But it comes from

a position of confidence. Like we don't need them. We don't need to give them this amount of money. And this is a trend, right? Like Amazon hasn't cut their fees at the base rate, but Amazon recently cut their fees at the higher volumes. It used to be that higher volumes would get higher percentages, and I believe that they've knocked that out, which has hurt people who rely on Amazon fees too, is my understanding. It's tough because the idea here is there's a symbiotic relationship that Amazon or Apple is getting their stuff out of their own silo and into the wider internet, which is good to get those products in front of people who might not come into their little silos. And in exchange for

motivating people to make that effort, people get a kickback if there are sales and people make a living doing that. I mean, that's, it's a, I have both affiliate things for six colors. It, I wouldn't say I make a living at it. I get some nice, I wouldn't even say nice. I get some money from it. It's nothing huge. It will not make or break me for it to disappear. I'm fortunate in that way.

So I kind of look at this more as an observer. I kind of don't care what happens. If my affiliate revenue just vanished tomorrow. It's a minor frustration for you, right? I wouldn't even say I'm frustrated. I put the stuff there because it seems like a good practice to do that like if if somebody's going to buy a usb you know podcasting microphone from my article then um and i can i can get money back for that and it's a product that i recommend why not right but it's not my business model if i if if i was doing but for some sites it is like for some sites

writing about one reason why you write about apps is for the is for the affiliate kickback why why you write about hardware stuff is for the affiliate kickback and that like helps you do your job and it's not i don't think it's sleazy if you're writing about products intentionally with good content and the links that you would put in there anyway have affiliate links there are also sites that have built up you know whole databases like touch arcade and and an app shopper and the whole point there is we built a database is all affiliate affiliated we added on top of it but that's how this is how we survive um i don't know it's uh it's an interesting calculation that apple made and And it has fallout for everybody except probably Apple. There's always a why.

There has to be a why. And one why that I've heard people considering is that could this be Apple starting to put the wheels in motion for a potential reduction to their developer cut overall, maybe taking the 30% cut down to 20 or 15 or something like that? What do you think about that potential option here or potential reason for why this might be occurring? It's possible. I mean, it's also possible that this is a counterbalancing of their cut on the subscription revenue that they've already done. Yeah the question would be why would apple do the the reduction in their app store cut what would be the motivation there are

they concerned about app store economics and that think that taking 20 instead of 30 might bolster app development i'm skeptical that they would think that why well i mean if you i mean it would right like it would be a good sign well first off if you're apple you're riding high do you really do you really think i mean maybe you could argue that you don't need to take that money from the from the developers it's gone so well that you don't need to give it back to them do you really think though that the app store any economic problems people have developing apps in the app store will be cured by taking a little bit less of a cut is that really the problem with the app store? I don't think it is. So you throw a little money

back in the pool. I think that would be very generous if Apple did that. Apple doesn't need that money. At the same time, that's services revenue. Apple really wants to say, look at our services revenue. So to cut that number, you're throwing that portion. It's not true for, none of this is actually true for the other parts of the iTunes store businesses, but it's just for app referrals. So, you know, I don't know. I think they're motivated to keep it.

And in fact, you could argue that this is all just to bolster services revenue by cutting those kickbacks. I don't like it because I can see people being affected by it, right? That's the truth of it, right? Is that this may be something that makes sense from an Apple perspective, but like any business decision like this, who gets hurt? Like the decider is probably not the one that's going to get hurt.

But everybody else who's come to rely on it they're going to get hurt so we may understand reasons or can guess some reasons but we know the people who will be impacted and in the long run you could really argue like apple is making a calculation they could be wrong right they could they could be calculating that it doesn't matter but if you demotivate people to link to the App Store, then maybe that does have a long-term effect. Maybe that does hurt. And this is my feeling. It's like, maybe that hurts third-party developers.

Not Apple per se, but it hurts third-party developers to not have as much of a presence on the wider internet. Or maybe not. The fact that the affiliate program exists is a thing that shows that it works. This program exists because

this is a thing that you do. This program exists because the fact that this program exists increases the amount of people that will link to the app store. Not having those or having people go away that's not a good thing for the developer at the other end like this is a funnel demotivates people to write

about the app store demotivates people to build sites that whose purpose is to drive people to the app store and apple has obviously decided that it's not as important as it was to do those things. This is one of those things, one of the many, many, many times where Apple's desire for secrecy is frustrating when really I don't know if they need to be. Just tell us why you're doing it.

Like, this isn't because oh because of the new iphone right like it's nothing to do with that right and and it would be just it would be interesting to see why they're doing it if it plays into something else i wish they would do them all at the same time right like if this is because of the a potential that they're going to cut let's just imagine they're going to cut this down right they're going to cut, let's just imagine that they're going to cut this down, right? They're going to cut this, sorry, the developer cut down. Then it would be great to say, look, we're doing this, and we're also doing this at the same time.

Because otherwise, all it is, is it does that thing that we hate to think about, where Apple's this big company that likes to make a lot of money, where it could just be that they want to increase the services revenue by half a percent. And this is a way to do that. Yep. Self-driving cars is another thing. So there's been a couple of stories in the past week which categorically say that Apple is still working on a car project.

Like there's no way to avoid it anymore because of some of the things that you have to do. So the California DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles, has granted Apple clearance for trials of autonomous driving technology on public roads. These tests will begin with new software being used inside of existing vehicles. Apple's test cars will have a person behind the wheel to monitor're testing at all times. And the California permit covers three 2015 Lexus RX 450 H SUVs and six particular drivers, the DMV said. This is one of those things where this isn't a rumor.

This isn't a leak. This is like in black and white on the Department of Motor Vehicles website. It is like a permit. This is very reminiscent of me to FCC stuff, right? Things that leaked or used to get leaked from the FCC it is like a permit this is this is very reminiscent of me to fcc stuff right things that leaked or used to get leaked from the fcc um because there's just legal things you have to go through well they're not even leaked they're like public things you need to file and so apple you know apple at a certain point can't be really? Can't stonewall and deny everything?

They can not talk about it, sure. But like, this is not a... Maybe this doesn't matter. But for those who would say, well, it's just a rumor, the rumor, the so-called Project Titan, the rumor of Apple car, all of those things, right? Well, we can say for sure, Apple is testing autonomous vehicle technology in California or has the intention of testing autonomous vehicle technology, period, because they filed the paperwork. It's done. That's a fact. For those who didn't necessarily believe what they were reading, those stories were accurate, at least to a certain degree because this is uh this is real and we don't know anything about the details in terms of what um you know what uh what they're doing what their strategy is what the technology is that they're testing we don't know any of that but we do know that it's

really going to happen or at least apple plans on it happening enough to have applied so business insider then obtained some of apple's documentation for this via a public records request which is brilliant this is hilarious to me that this the way this this information is getting out so they got some documentation that apple i think had given to the dmv to detail what they were going to be doing and how they were going to be training people. So these documents show off internal testing and training documentation, right? It's guides that Apple put together for their people that are going to be working on this project.

The system itself is currently called the Apple Automation System. So I guess workflows work in this? Weirdly, they detail that the cars that will be used for this feature, what they're doing, are going to be having Logitech gaming steering wheels and pedals put inside of them to simulate the feeling of driving when the person has to take control. So these cars are pretty heavily modified to the point where they're putting gaming hardware inside of them. So this isn't a rumor anymore. Apple is working on a self-driving car project.

This isn't a leak from Mark Gurman anymore. This is categorical. Whether this is ever something that meets the market, we're not sure. We're not going to know that until it either does or just we never hear about it again. But this is a clear sign that Apple is doing something in this space. So let's assume that they're not building a car, right? Which is what we've heard, that they were building a car, but now they're not building a car. Why would Apple be building self-driving car technology? What is the point of this? Why would Apple be building self-driving car technology?

What is the point of this? Why would a car company want Apple's technology? Why did Apple feel the desire to create this technology? And why would a consumer choose a car that has Apple's self-driving car technology over Volvo's? Good questions, Mike. And this is all I have,'s like i don't think there are any answers yeah i don't have any answers i was thinking like well how do i answer this the answer is i don't have the answers these are all things we've talked about before like you said that are

that are out there which is what is apple doing here and i keep coming back. My touchstone in all of this is you're Apple. You've got lots and lots of money. You know you're great at some things in technology. You are making bets for the future, just like Google is, just like everybody should be who's got lots and lots of cash and is a tech company because you know otherwise, if you stay still, you will be replaced. And you make some bets. And you look at the car industry and you say this is ripe for change on so many different levels. The electric, the electrification of the, of the fleet is going to happen. The, uh, you know, introduction of self-driving technology, or at least intelligent assist

technology is going to happen to what degree is debatable. So why not place a bet there? That's stuff we know. Um, so that's there that's stuff we know um so that's that's great like i understand why they're exploring this the next step is the hardest one for both of us to conceive of and for a lot of people to conceive of which is one is apple gonna make their own car which it seems like they were investigating and then they backed off of although it's unclear whether they backed off on it because they're not or because they wouldn't need to worry about it for so long that there was

no point in working on it in the meantime when they weren't sure if they if they were going to go that way but step two is the really weird one right which is is apple going to build car tech that is then what licensed by car makers to use as their onboard systems are they going to be like the android of cars because that's not very apple to be like lots of car makers have the apple car in it that's not very apple that's not like their business model it's not something that they've ever done i mean that is what carplay is but carplay is an apple carplay is an apple product that you plug into your car but this is like gonna have to be a whole built into every car thing which is different i mean like it's more like apple tv exists but

there don't exist tvs with apple tv built inside of it right right? TV is a great point here, right? Apple can't get TV companies, cable companies, to put their content on Apple's box. How are they going to get car companies to accept their operating system? The difference is, in this case, Apple is the content provider. In this case, Apple is the one that says,

we've got the tech. We're great. you you car company you stink you're bad at this we've used your cars they're they're awful we've got this super sweet thing let's make a deal that's what they can say and i think that they would i think that people would be maybe motivated to do that although there's going to be a whole not invented here thing where it's like but but we've got a whole team that's been working on self-driving tech for the last 10 years um we're just going to use that and apple's going to say it's worse than ours just fire those people and buy our system that's what they're going to say um i you know again i have a hard time picturing that i have a hard time

picturing apple making their own cars i i floated a while ago the scenario that maybe this is something where apple eventually makes a strategic investment in a car company and they work jointly on a new line of cars that has apple tech in it but it's like a joint venture of you know uh of apple and gm or apple and volkswagen or whoever it is, Apple and Nissan, make some company, they make a deal, there's a strategic investment. Apple doesn't necessarily buy them out, but they buy a big percentage that like, we're committed to this, we're going to create a line. That's the best I've come up with yet. And I'm not an expert on car stuff. So I don't know if that's plausible or not. But, but like that idea of what if we, what if we didn't buy a car company, but we weren't all also like licensing it out to everybody. And then Apple would get a say in what the cars were and they would be viewed as special,

um, at least at the start. And then maybe it expands from there. That's the best guess I have, but I mean, I don't know. It's weird, but I understand their impulse to do it. And I'm intrigued by it. I just am still having a hard time seeing exactly what the end game is. And maybe Apple is too. I mean, maybe that was the whole thing that happened when they scaled back Project Titan, was Apple just saying, it's too soon. Let's slow this down. We need to get our tech right. The other stuff can wait. And we'll either do it later, or we'll find somebody to do it for us. We need to get our tech right. The other stuff can wait and we'll either do it later or we'll find somebody to do it for us. But that's not our area of expertise

so we're going to leave it for now and figure it out later after we know whether this is a thing or not. And that's, you know, why they're out there with their Lexus SUVs. We have the same questions.

We don't have any new answers. No. We have the same predictions. But what we do have now is more fact and you know what this is also going to do this is going to create a whole new level of stories on the internet where people take pictures of apple maps mapping vehicles in california and say is this the self-driving car because now we know that they're going to be able to be on public roads which means that everybody's going to freak out and be like oh they're on public roads and we know what the cars are and we do know yeah only if you see a 2015 lexus rx 450h suv do you got to look

at your steering wheel logitech steering wheel that's it'll probably have it'll probably have like a huge apple logo on the side right like apple on one side and on the other side it'll say warning apple self-driving car right totally it probably will you know at least have something right like i can't imagine i mean i haven't looked into it but i can't imagine these cars just drive around unmarked that would be no i think they do oh really they do i guess that's probably for the best actually right so people don't freak out around them when maybe they shouldn't have to. Nothing makes me more nervous than when I'm behind a car on the freeway that has a student driver sign in it. That scares me. So maybe you don't want robot student.

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service and claim your free month thank you so much to Encapsular for their support of this show and RelayFM. Time for some Ask Upgrade. Nate asked, thank you, do you think... Oh, wow, there it goes. Oh, the laser's

misfired. One laser, big effect today. Do you think that iOS 11 will introduce the option to make App Store and iTunes purchases via Apple Pay? I don't know what made me think of this recently. You know what it was? I lost my cards. I lost all my cards.

And I had to go... I got that annoying prompt in iTunes where it was saying to me, hey, you need to update your purchasing information. And I went there, and I was surprised by the fact that i couldn't just choose apple pay like i had to enter in my card information again why can't it just use apple pay i have a theory which is that if apple has your credit card information direct and charges you

direct that it's better like a better price for them like maybe the transaction fee is lower yeah i'm not sure that's actually true it's also possible that it's just a complicated bit of infrastructure and they don't want to deal with it um with changing it like it's all working okay and it's going to be a lot of work to do it or or it's or they're working on it and it's taking time i agree with you it would be way more convenient to have all of apple stuff be in apple pay but that does not seem to have happened also uh can you do apple pay with subscriptions i don't know i have no idea um because basically the way it works now is is you put it the card on file and then when you buy something, it's just like, yes, buy it in Apple's UI instead of bringing up an Apple Pay sheet where you have to pick a credit card and buy it. So I think there's some simplicity to the idea of keeping it on file at Apple.

So I'm sure they've got a reason. As a user, it is annoying, right? I just had that. I had to change my credit card on an Apple site. Oh, I think you can because memberful has apple pay doesn't it yeah oh yeah you're right so you can do subscriptions via apple pay you can so i don't know my guess is that it's it's either a technical issue or um or it's a money issue that like so right so either it's hard to do and they may not have

prioritized it or they're working on it or they ran the numbers and said oh if we do apple pay for our own stuff we'll lose millions of dollars and they're like then let's not do that brent asked how does jason decide what articles to write for six colors versus mac world or other places because you write all over the web don't you yeah well not all over i write weekly at mac world and sort of monthly at imor where were you writing before pc's win supersite oh win supersite yeah that's right they wanted somebody to explain apple to pc guys what were the comments like on those articles why yeah i yeah i don't know they it was it was nice of them to have me and they paid me and that was great um and i waited for them to not pay me anymore because as a freelancer, hey, it's great when they pay you for articles.

For Macworld, I have something in mind for the kind of thing I write for Macworld and I don't know how to define it. There's a certain kind of article. Some of it is length. Some of it is like, ideally it's 800 to a thousand words kind of article because that feels like that's the column length for mackerel that was always my column length

mackerel back in the day when i was writing a monthly column um and so i think about that link and i think about like story topic like there's certain stories that i'd be like i'm not going to write that for mackerel that's silly um i want the mackerel piece to be like a certain kind of piece and of a certain length. And so I collect story ideas in my little reminders list of story ideas. And I don't, sometimes I'll put like Macworld question mark, like maybe this sounds like a Macworld piece. And other times I'll sit down on like Tuesday afternoon and I'll look at it and I'll be like, any of these ideas, Macworld, you know, Macworld ideas, could I do this as the Macworld column?

And sometimes the answer is yes. And sometimes the answer is no. And I sit there and rack my brain to come up with what my story idea is. So there is a length and a sort of topic that I do. There are some pieces I write for six colors that could be Macworld pieces. And I just decide now I'm going to write that for six colors instead. Because, you know, I also need to write things for six colors. For iMore, generally, it's a little different in that I talk to Serenity and I say, do you have any ideas, any prompts you want to give me? And she will usually come back with something. And that's fun because that is – and then I will try to figure out what spin I could put on that to get something out of it. So it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

I feel like the Macworld pieces have a different out of it. So it's a little, yeah, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I feel like the Macworld pieces have a different tone of voice. Like they feel different to the six color stuff. They are almost always written specifically with the Macworld in mind. Not always, but almost always. Every now and then I will write something intending it to be for six colors and I will

get to the end and think, oh, this is, this has turned into a Macworld piece. I'm just going to send this to Susie at Macworld. But that, that only happens like a couple of times a year. Most of the times I am writing it for Macworld, um, you know, and thinking of that audience and thinking of the, the context of the, you know you know of uh jason snell once a week column and you know it's so it's slightly different steve asked if we ever get a new 4k apple tv do you think that apple will give a multiple bluetooth headphone connection option so i don't know if i see this feature specifically happening or that Apple would even really promote it if they did because it seemed like a super niche thing, right?

Multiple people can connect Bluetooth headphones to the Apple TV and listen together. I can understand many situations in which this would be useful for people. I think of young parents, right? Like the baby's sleeping. Let's use headphones. I can see these, makes sense.

But I just don't know if i see this feature however what i will say is i am very impressed i was very impressed to learn about the ability to bluetooth 5.0 have you seen anything about bluetooth 5.0 at all jason i haven't so mkbhd put together a video about this because the galaxy s8 which we were talking about earlier has bluetooth 5.0 built into it and one one of the things, as well as better data transfer, faster speeds, much improved range, it really is vastly better. One of the things you can do with Bluetooth 5.0 is connect two audio devices at the same time from one phone. at the same time from one phone so and mkbhd shows this he connects two bluetooth speakers to the s8 and they're both playing the same thing at once it's kind of cool yeah so like you're

saying that who needs sonos right like you can have multiple speakers in your home playing the same audio source well yeah it simplifies it right like i'm gonna express skepticism that you could keep those things in sync over the long run it's better for headphones right because they don't need to be exactly in sync because you're but your brain beyond a certain bit of out of sync everything sounds weird your brain tries to put push them together and then at some point it gives up and says nope i can't do it anymore so i'm skeptical of that there is a slight like there is there is a slight difference between them at times and he says there are things you can do to make it better but it is cool to see this technology starting right of course this is

the first time that this has been available and you know they apple did the engineering for the airpods that even though they're not connected to each other except wirelessly they uh they are in sync yep so maybe bluetooth 5 would make that even better i mean i have weird things sometimes like if i just turn my head quickly like the airpods get really upset and like they like i lose it for just a millisecond it's very strange that's the one where i seem to have it the most it's like ah don't do. I always find that really funny. You know, my AirPods, like, no, don't move too fast. I did have a thing on the airplane. I didn't want to fall asleep with my AirPods in

and was getting my earpods, my cable ones with the lightning thing. I was changing to those when I was sleepy because if I fall asleep and, like, my head hits the seat, the AirPods coming out, AirPods's coming out and it's gone. Forever. I've lost it in the airplane seat. And that was kind of a funny thing on my travels. Don't fall asleep with the AirPods in.

You may lose them. S Chan asked, would you consider living overseas? Both of us, because we are independent workers. Is that something we would ever consider, living overseas? It would be easier to do, right? Like, we don't have an office that we have to go to. We work remotely with people.

Like, we could live overseas, I guess. Yeah, but would you? Maybe. I mean, it depends. Like, I had my dreams, you know, of moving to America. Who knows, though? Like, political climates are very strange these days. Yes, all over. So, you know, maybe if everything settles down again at some point, then maybe.

But right now, no, I wouldn't. However, there are times this year, like, I actually think I'm going to be in the U.S. in multiple different cities for the entire month of August. And I will effectively be living overseas during that time. I'm not going to be taking a month off work. I'm going to be working. So that's going to be an interesting experience. I,

uh, yeah, I mean, I would consider it, but, uh, you know, all the usual,

right? Like it's easier, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we would do it. Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. Cause okay.

We don't, we're independent workers, but we all, you know, we have family, right? Like, if I moved to Ireland, right? First off, let's go over this. You can't just move to another country and work. They have to let you in and approve you. And you have to fill out paperwork and things like that. It's a complicated process and they may

not, and these days it's more complicated. They may not let you in. They may not want you to be there. But if I were to go there, then what would happen? Like, okay, I'd pull my kids out of school. My daughter's about to go to college. Is she going to go to college back in the US? And now she's a very long plane ride away. My son is going to have to go to a different school. It also means that I'm now like a 12-hour flight away from my mother, who is in her late 70s, away from my wife's parents. There's so much like, it's very hard to do that i guess is what i'm saying and so while it's it's a it's an interesting thing to think about um i think it's unlikely uh and i happen to live in a gigantic country too so like i i probably wouldn't move to ohio either right

because that would put me far away from my mom and from my wife's parents. And that would be a long way to go too, even though it's in the same country. So I do think about when my kids are out of the house, if I might move somewhere else in the US, it's possible, but it's probably a lot less likely that I would move overseas just because it would be very, from San Francisco, very, very, very far away from everybody in my family. And that is just very complicated. I have friends who are English who keep having to fly back because of horrible things happening medically to their parents. And it's rough to drop everything and fly 10 hours, 12 hours to get to a sick parent.

hours, 12 hours to get to a sick parent. Gary asks, are there any local or UK focused apps like Yelp or Google Maps that you recommend for people traveling to London? So one, I recommend Google Maps and Yelp. Yelp and Google Maps are not US only. I mean, you can get all of the recommendations you would get in the US for those here. All of the stuff is in there. You can get that. I also would recommend Foursquare, especially for London. It's very good. Foursquare ratings are very good in London.

Recommendations are very good in London. We use it all the time. So you can use the ones that you're used to using. London is a major city enough that it will have as good information as you might get in somewhere like New York or San Francisco and all these applications. So Google Maps, Yelp, and Foursquare are great for London recommendations. And Seth asked today, why can't I buy a Neo Nintendo Switch in any retail

store or Amazon? I've been looking regularly. Am I missing something? In a nutshell, Nintendo is selling more than they expected that they were going to sell. That's basically it. You can see this in the fact that they have said that they have changed their production amounts that they're making in their first year. The Switch has been more popular than Nintendo expected.

It's like any big product, right? When a new iPhone comes out, you either get it immediately or you wait a while because companies forecast and things happen and then maybe you can't get it i recommend there is a link i'll put in the show notes i stock now i heard about this in atp and i've recommended it to some friends i know some people that have been able to use this service as a way to see i think this is in the u.s or maybe outside of the u.s as well yeah i can actually see they they have UK information on here too. It can show you current stock information is given to them by retail outlets as to where stock is. It doesn't necessarily mean there is one there.

I had a friend who looked at it. The information was there. It said that they had units. They went to the store and they were like, yeah, we had them this morning. It's not live data. It was data that was right at some point. the store and they were like yeah we had them this morning right like it's not it's not live data yeah a lot of stories update at the end of the day point exactly so you know buyer beware but uh it is possible and look just quite frankly it's a very popular system right now it's a popular piece

of technology and uh yeah you're not missing anything you missed the uh pre-order window that's what you missed seth i've gonna i'm gonna wind us back for a moment for a little uh real-time follow-up to trademark john syracuse i think that's casey i think casey came up is that casey follow-up yeah all right okay casey liss this one's for you uh in our chat room uh we we uh we need to define before we get an avalanche of email overseas right because it's very important that i said from san francisco it's hard to think of any place that's overseas that isn't far away and and somebody in the chat room david shop in the chat room said well what about vancouver it's like overseas to me implies traveling overseas to get someplace else i can drive to vancouver so while that would be moving to a different country um and vancouver is lovely

uh i would just be able to drive there mexico i can drive there i guess technically i could drive to all of the americas although i probably wouldn't want to i mean technically you can drive anywhere right but that's a you might also be getting on a boat well then i'm not driving though then i'm on a boat boat or not that's a new debating podcast that we can have so uh so but hawaii would be overseas i could live in hawaii maybe but again then i would be five six hours from all of my family and that would be hard so anyway that's overseas as a way to refer to international travel or living is an interesting term. But since you live on an island and I live in America, it's not a bad term to use for us, but it's a weird term to use

because it may not mean what you think it means. That's all. All right, so we have more today. We have Mike at the Movies. We do. We're talking about Blade Runner. But before we do let's thank our final sponsor for this week's show and that's fresh books look maybe you're racing

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click a link right there to pay immediately. And we have a bunch of clients and companies that we work with that I send out an invoice, I get paid straight away. And it's because we're sending them via FreshBooks. If I emailed them, it may take them that little bit longer, right? They print it off, they put it in an entry, and it just sits there. But with FreshBooks, it gives them the ability to pay it straight away. It's one of the reasons that I love it. FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to listeners of this show. If you invoice anybody, please just go and try this out.

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So that's freshbooks.com slash upgrade. You can find out more and sign up for a 30-day unrestricted free trial. Thank you so much to FreshBooks for supporting this show and RelayFM. All right, so it is Mike at the Movies time. And today we are talking about Blade Runner. Blade Runner. Now, this Mike at the Movies is unique for a bunch of different ways okay number one you didn't want to do this one okay it's fine it's fine i thought it was a it was a weird choice but it's a very famous movie yep by all rights we should probably have done aliens since we did

alien uh yeah i needed i needed a break from the scariness. And I know many people told me that Aliens is very different, but I just needed a movie that wasn't the Alien movie. So that's number one. That's part number one. Number two is I've never had a movie in my... The movies where multiple people felt the need to warn me about the movie in certain ways.

Like people thinking that i wasn't gonna like it and that they were maybe trying to talk me out of it um and saying that oh no don't watch this version watch that version watch this version type thing so people were tweeting at me like this john siracusa didn't want me to watch it um i saw him he was in london uh we had dinner which was fantastic and uh he told me he didn't want me to watch the movie because he didn't think i would like it and he loves it and i was very dead set on wanting to watch just the regular edition of the movie um the one with the Harrison Ford voiceover stuff I wanted to watch

the standard version of this movie I didn't want to direct as Carter or anything like that I wanted to watch that movie the original movie this was the one that for whatever reason was put out this is the one that people latched on to I wanted to watch it so that was what we chose

it's also unique because this is the first movie that I, for my, the movies that I have watched on a plane and in more than one sitting. Okay. Because I misjudged when I started watching the movie and we had to land and then I had to pick it up on the plane ride home. I see.

So this is unique for many ways. the plane ride home i see so this is unique for many ways so i will do in my standard format that i have created for myself would you like to know what i thought about this movie before i watched it yes i would so i believed that uh blade runner was a film noir style detective story which i guess i was kind of right about i mean it's kind of i think that's kind of where they went with it right like it's absolutely it's not black, I think that's kind of where they went with it, right? Like it's not, it's not black and white, but it's a lot of those tropes. Like they may as well have said at one point,

and she had legs from here to there. It was kind of that style, right? You know, that you see in like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and whatever. And I knew that it was a, cult classic is maybe the wrong term because it was a popular movie right but like it has gained this

kind of following to it I also know that it's being remade or like there's more of the story yeah there is a sequel being made a much much later sequel that is being released in October.

But yes, this is a well-known, well-thought-of historic film, and I would say influential film in many ways. The look of this film has been referenced and paid homage to many, many, many, many times. That's one of the important things about it. And its connection to Alien is it's the same director. This is Ridley Scott. So it does have a connection to Alien. It is kind of a logical follow-on in a way, whereas Aliens would have been for a different reason. Also, I have to ask you, which version did you watch? Did you watch the version with the narration? Yeah.

Okay. It was what iTunes gave me. So I just got what was, I believe, to be the standard edition on iTunes. Is that not it, then? I don't know. There are multiple editions of Blade Runner of i didn't get the final cut i i got the the the regular what looked like to me to be the regular edition of the movie people were telling me to watch the final cut but i decided not to i wanted to get what i believed

would be the the most original version this yeah so you watched the 1982 theatrical release, which is the one with the lots and lots of Harrison Ford narration. And my understanding, just from what I've picked up, was this narration was added in later because people couldn't work out what was going on, right? Is that true? I think that's right.

I don't know. I'm not a Blade Runner historian, but that's my understanding, is that the narration was put in to explain the movie. And I think it was needed. It adds to the noir feel of it, I feel like. And I think Ford's good. People are split about whether the no narration versions are better. the no narration versions are are better i don't i mean and you might talk to somebody who's like oh it's that's the real one but there are other people who disagree i think it's telling that both versions are available right because they are they are very different in a lot of ways but

you you got to see the one that was in theaters so like what i'll say is like you know i haven't seen the other versions of the movie however many there might be but without the narration in the movie that i watched i i don't think i would have known what was going on like so did you know um going in did you know that this is about androids did you know that there that there is like uh did you know about like the cityscape stuff like that it looked like dark and and lots of lots of uh screens on buildings and stuff yeah just just having been exposed to pop culture you know i was i was familiar with the term replicant but i wasn't completely sure what that was in reference to whether it was clones or robots or aliens right but i knew that was a thing um and i've seen

i've seen the the look of this movie all over the place right like? Like the big screens, because I seen like pictures of like Tokyo now and people saying like, look, it is Blade Runner, you know, like stuff like that. Like I've seen that kind of thing. So I was familiar with some of the base ideas as to what this movie was putting out there, you know? And so let me tell you what i thought of this movie it is one of the most beautiful films i have ever seen i was so taken aback and drawn in by the look of this film like the majority of my notes are just about wow this set is beautiful and, this set is beautiful, and wow, that set is beautiful. Like, I was completely sold on the look of this movie. Some of it is too dark, right? Just like the way that the movie's lit was a bit dark for me.

But the set design and the world design is incredible, and I'm kind of so surprised that it's taken this long for any continuation of this world, right? That it's taken this long for either a sequel or a prequel or whatever because this world is so intriguing and well thought out and fleshed out and there's like this whole lore and language to it, let alone just the way it looks. It's surprising to me that more hasn't been done

in the Blade Runner universe before now, honestly. Yeah, it's, you know it was viewed and it's based on a uh a story by philip k dick um the science fiction writer uh maybe there was a feeling like it's a one-off uh the franchising of everything in hollywood uh has has really picked up lately. So now we're getting the sequel, right. All these years later, which is weird,

but that's where we are. So at the time, you know, at the time, I think it, it, it was not universally hailed or anything like that. And it was not a huge hit.

It really did become kind of appreciated later, became a cult classic. It was put on the national film registry as a historic film i mean it got there but it took it took some it took some time and so on on that level maybe i'm not surprised that it took them that long to to revisit it they did they did however ridley scott did revisit the film a couple of times with these alternate versions of it i think i like this movie more than you do okay that's probably not hard yeah because i i don't i'm i'm i'm i don't feel like i dislike the movie i don't dislike i don't dislike

this movie i i um i have i have a bunch of issues with it and i don't love it. Like I don't, I don't feel a great affection for it. I think it's, it, it, it looks amazing. I think the storytelling is a mess. Um, I think it's got some really memorable scenes.

Uh, and, and my big thing is that although the soundtrack, like the score is beautiful, it's a Vangelis who did chariots of fire as well, did this score and it's fascinating and weird and electronic and all that but it's also sleepy and and the movie is slow and i i've told this story before but i'll i'll say it again my wife i've tried to get my wife to watch this movie three times and all three times she fell asleep yep fell asleep all three times and she does not fall asleep while

watching movies all three times because the music lulls you and nothing is really happening and the scary thing is you get lulled and lulled and lulled and then daryl hannah screams and does a bunch of cart wheels and tries to kill somebody and you're like and now you're awake so i have yeah i have some issues with this movie it's not a movie that i enjoy although it's a movie that i can appreciate for what it is oh and i should say that that scene with that scene with rutger hauer where he died where he's he's like i've seen things you wouldn't believe i've seen ships off the tannhauser gate and uh or fish ships on fire on the arm of orion and all of that time to die that scene all these things will

be lost like tears and rain that that that monologue is amazing and i love it and i also make jokes about it all the time because it is so uh impressive there are some amazing things in this movie and you know you could argue that that maybe sometimes that that's okay that maybe a movie is memorable and important even if it doesn't really hold together as a whole because the stuff the bits that are in it there's so many of them that are things you can appreciate so that's that's sort of my take is i'm kind of ambivalent about the movie as a whole but i have to appreciate the artistry and a lot of the things that are in it are amazing and harrison ford you know i think i yeah what a career that guy had in the early in the late 70s early

80s because this is right you know you got indiana jones han solo you put this in there it's like this deckard performance where he's this noir detective in this future world and all that and he really you know it's it's another one of those fascinating kind of performances that guy that guy is great he was like typecast is the best kind of thing cool guy right yeah yeah great thing to be typecast as right like those three roles it's like we need a cool guy okay does anybody know a cool guy oh yeah we'll get harrison ford in to do it we got a guy well it's the i look at that and i think that that's the kind of career that that's a humphrey bogart kind of career where this is a guy. He's a movie star and he can play these parts and people love him.

And so like just keep making movies where he's that cool guy. Like why would you stop making movies where he's the cool guy? And yeah, yeah, absolutely. One of the things I really couldn't understand about this movie is replicants and their relationship to planet earth because if if i was following it correctly replicants are outlawed on planet earth but there is a company based on planet earth that makes them yeah i think the idea is that they're they're made to work and they're not supposed to get free and try to live among people. And it's not clear to me whether they're not allowed to be on Earth at all.

I think that's not true. But that these ones have come back to Earth illegally because they want more life. They want to extend their lives. And they've come back to their creator. I mean, it's a classic story in that way it's a it's a frankenstein kind of story where the the created creature has come back to its creator demanding life or or killing the creator which is totally what happens here so yeah yeah it was just difficult for me to follow. Are they outlawed completely? It was just a difficult thing because this whole police force has been created to destroy them,

but yet the company there is making them. It was just a little bit like I didn't really feel like I had a full grasp on it. Because are they only allowed on the other world? It's like we destroyed planet earth and everybody's being moved off if they can be or they're desired to be right it's kind of what's happening in this world and sean but you know sean young is there as rachel and she's a she's a replicant but she's there on earth so it's i think it's i think that it's more that these are like rogue replicants that are being hunted. And that's the story there. So, yeah, I guess that makes a little bit more sense, right? Like there are some that are allowed because like they reference pleasure models, right?

And I think you can kind of, you can draw from that what they're getting at. And you would imagine that they wouldn't be allowed on Earth. But these like, they're called Nexus 6. This is this type of model that seems like a warrior a soldier um that they have these these uh shortened lifespans so they'll be less dangerous i guess and and i guess they're the ones that they have to hunt down also i didn't get at any point why these police are called blade runners yeah okay i don't know okay great i just it's like this is a really cool phrase but i don't know what it what it means it's what they call them they're called blade runners that's what they're called they run the legs you know yeah what's

wrong with you why can't you get this uh future tech future tech is in this future technology based in 70s thinking 80s 80s thinking yeah exactly in this future technology based in seventies thinking eighties, eighties thinking. Yeah, exactly. Also. Yeah.

Future technology and culture based on eighties thinking, which is in the eighties, in the eighties, there's definitely this feeling like Japan and Germany are going to dominate the 21st century. That was the meme in the eighties. And so you see here a Los Angeles that is very much sort of modeled on Tokyo and is very Japanese sort of modeled on Tokyo

and it's very Japanese in its style yeah and the the Nexus 6 looked like Germans right the Aryans it's yeah yeah I suppose that's true too yeah although there are pictures now I saw a picture that I think was in Beijing somewhere in Asia where somebody had a picture that they posted that basically said hey does this look like blade runner because it's today it's a picture i took today in this yeah you know large city in asia and there is there is you know the the visual style here did they did they help create that did they just correctly intuit it um you know there there's a lot here that's influential and interesting and maybe life imitating art in the end. One of the future tech things that I enjoyed the most was the photo enhancement. You know, he takes the physical picture, puts it in the computer and is able to enhance it to the point where you can basically see reflections and tiny pieces of mirror.

Right. And then he wants a hard copy of it and gets it printed onto a polaroid like that that whole scene is incredible like it starts with a physical picture is enhanced astronomically by this computer which then gives them a polaroid at the end i love stuff like that it's so funny and it makes me think like what are we putting in movies now that dates us because all of this was like where can we see this technology going into the future and like what are we doing now in movies that are based in the future that that is dating us i like to think about stuff like that because then it was like this is the the as far as we can take this technology as far as our imaginations can take us and i think that's that stuff's kind of funny.

One of the scenes that I really, really disliked is at the moment when, I think it's Roy, the kind of the replicant dude, is arguing with Tyrell about science. Like, they have this really heated debate about the extension of their life. Right. They're debating about like

the different scientific methods that should be undertaken to see if their life can be extended it's completely pointless like they're just it's just science science jargon being thrown at each other for a few minutes that culminates in an incredibly violent murder scene it's really weird i did not like that scene it was very strange I mean let alone all the stuff with J.F. like those toys that he makes when he refers to his toys they're all terrifyingly creepy and it's all kind of wrapped up in these back to

back scenes that was uncomfortable and then talking about death scenes and you mentioned it already when Pris like the female strong replicant, all of that scene where she's screaming and jumping around and then Harrison Ford shoots her and she's screaming and thrashing around on the ground.

It's a bit much. It's a little bit much. There are times in this movie where it just gets pushed a little bit too far in a lot of ways, and this is one of them. Then just the whole end scene is a little bit too much for me. There's so much that happens in the third act of this movie that I'm like, I don't know what's happened. It just goes off the rails.

It completely goes off the rails. just goes off the rails like it completely goes off the rails like when from the point where um deca arrives at uh jf's apartment which is i think the most beautiful set like the outside where he's like walking up the stairs it's just unbelievable it shot so well but from the moment he enters the door i'm like i don't know what's going on anymore uh from the moment where she's like screaming and cartwheeling around and he shoots her and she's like going crazy on the ground to then like roy the the the remaining nexus six why is he in his underwear i don't know why he strips down to his underwear to chase deca why is he howling like a wolf um none of it makes any sense like and then he sticks a nail and he's through his hand and i assume it's because he's like he's starting to seize up

right like he's starting to die and i assume he does that to make sure he has feeling in his hand left but that's weird because it's like then there are all these like biblical references right like he puts a nail through his hands it's kind of strange and then like why is he holding a dove like all of a sudden he's got a dove in his hand this doesn't make it and then like decker's fingers gets broken but he's still climbing up the walls it's really it gets the wheels come off this movie in an almost spectacular way the wheels come off this movie in an almost spectacular way it's yeah i mean again i i wish i could i could somebody like john syracuse needs to swoop in and and and explain it and defend it better than i can to the follow-up yeah because for me it's like uh yeah yeah right i mean these are things you're describing are not my favorite things about this movie.

Those are not the things that I think of fondly as being like, boy, that's a great moment. I do like Roy Batty's last, like I said, his last monologue. Yeah, that is great. By the way, the number of people that are maddened by these Mike at the Movies episodes is fascinating to me. Like, Anthony Johnston just kind of like lost it about alien he was telling me like what is that what is going on with mike and and it's like yeah i know it's it's it's funny because i'm walking in here and trashing these 80s movies that's the problem yeah that i think that's it well i think i think not getting it right like where people are like but you don't understand it's like part of the experiment with

you is seeing these movies you've never seen before and so to you you don't understand it's like part of the experiment with you is seeing these movies you've never seen before and so do you you don't have that layer of nostalgia or context to put on these things you weren't there that's exactly right i weren't there yeah you know what i also don't get i don't know what the moral of this movie is i don't know what out it's i would say i would say the themes of this movie i mean a lot of it is about trying to understand yourself and that the and and um and and having meaning in life and that the the replicants are interesting in that they're kind of an accelerated version of humanity. They have these very limited lifespans. So they're intelligent and they learn that they have a lifespan and they want to live longer, which is a very human kind of concept, even though these are androids.

These are replicants. And then you go to your creator, right? then um you go to your creator right and this is this is all the way back to frankenstein but it it's something that a created being can do that we can't as humans right we can't go to a creator and demand reasons i mean it's the base of of many religions to do that um but it's not like we you can't you can't walk up to somebody and say, why am I here? Right. Instead we ask, or we, or we have a religion that explains it to us. And the replicants get to do that.

They get to go to Tyrell and say, I want more life. Right. Why am I here? And so I think that's interesting that that's an interesting theme that's one of the ones that i grabbed too is is amid the screaming and shooting and folding of origami there is that question of uh it's like a super accelerated existential question of who who are we why are we here why do we have to die that the that the yeah you know replicants are asking the happy ending didn't fit this movie either for me. It's a very controversial ending.

Yeah, very controversial ending. I think changed at the last minute. Feels changed. And some of the footage is from another movie that they used to show the green grass and things like that as they go. It is a

surprise that it ends that way. Honestly, I was expecting that Decker was a replicant. Okay, well, so that is one of the great, I don't know if you've read about any of this, but that is one of the great debates about this movie is that some of the people making it thought he was, some thought he wasn't. They kind of left it ambiguous.

If he is a replicant, I don't know how he survived to be old harrison ford in the new movie they're making so i guess that will change uh something about the story is he in the movie yeah harrison ford's in the movie doesn't it because doesn't or doesn't shouldn't get old right right because shouldn't get shouldn't get old or, uh, yeah, or should not be there. But, uh, yeah, it's a, it's the fact, I mean, it's a classic and yet the fact that the, that they have redone it a couple of times and done alternate versions of it, I think speaks to the fact that it's also a bit of a mess and that the, the people who made it have kept thinking about going back and doing things to it, especially after it became such a classic. I think that says something about it. I think it also says something about the appeal of it, that people want to see it again and want to have a was kind of not right when he made it. And I think that's, I mean, I feel the same way about Brazil.

Have you ever seen Brazil? Terry Gilliam? It's a similarly brilliant, weird movie that has like three or four, they did a DVD with like three or four different versions in the box set of it, because there are so many different cuts of the movie and i feel like there's something there's something in that they're like there if your movie's got lots of different cuts that says something about it either you had a horrible you know horrible relationship with your studio or um or or you thought better of it later obviously the attitude toward the movie changed after it came out and that enabled people to make different cuts of it. Otherwise you just only ever have the one.

So it's just kind of fascinating when that happens and Blade Runner, like Brazil, Blade Runner has had that. And it's kind of interesting to, to view that as a trait of this film that years later, the creators of this movie made two different director's cut and ultimate cut or whatever. And it's final cut that are,

um, that are different. But, you know, again, I don't have a huge fondness for this movie, but I, I appreciate it.

And it sounds like you're kind of in the ballpark too, where it's like, it's a really interesting movie, but it's not necessarily like you feel like you want to hug it and watch it a bunch of times. There are a bunch of flaws in it that I wouldn't excuse if it didn't look the way it did. It really does look great. I mean, it cannot enough. I mean, so much has been written about it completely changed people's conceptions of science fiction futures and influenced so many movies.

Somebody in our chat room was just saying like anime, like so much anime is Blade Runner. Like that is clearly a reference point for Blade Runner or for anime is Blade Runner. And it's true in live action movies too. There is so much that we owe to Blade Runner's look. And, you know, it's funny because from that perspective, you can often look back

on these old movies and say, oh, well, I don't see the big deal, not understanding that this is the thing that set the tone. And at the time, it was kind of a revelation. I also do think though that at the time,

the people who were lukewarm on it were lukewarm on it because they were seeing its flaws and that the the you know they were looking for as a movie and seeing the problems with the storytelling and as it became a cult it became more about the debate about deckard and uh you know some of the little details and all the things that you pick up if you watch the movie 10 times that if you watch it once you're just like whatever um and i think that maybe explains why a lot of cult movies become cult movies is that is that they unfold better over many viewings than they do when you just watch it once and let it go i was i'm looking forward to the next one like i'm looking forward to Blade Runner 2049

I like Ryan Gosling a lot and I'm interested to see what could be done further in this universe yeah I think it's interesting I'm waiting I'm going to do a wait and see on that one I'm not going to be in line

for it but I'm ready to hear that it's an interesting movie and go see it, if it is. If you want to find our show notes for this week, go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 138. I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsors again, Encapsular, TextExpander, MacWalden, and FreshBooks for helping support the show.

Most of all, thank you for listening. You can find Jason's work online at sixcolors.com and he is at jsnl on Twitter. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Mr. Snell. Goodbye, everybody.