Upgrade - 139: Make Money from the Money

Episode Date: May 2, 2017

If there are two things Myke knows a lot about, it’s banking and stickers. And so this week he helps Jason understand why banks might not love Apple’s new attempt to expand Apple Pay and why he co...vers his sleek, pristine Apple devices with loads of stickers.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 from relay fm this is upgrade episode 139 today's show is brought to you by our fine sponsors the folk at encapsula casper and mac weldon my name is mike hurley i am joined by mr jason snail hi jason snail hi mike hurley how are you today i'm fine i would tell you about the weather but i'm not allowed to do that anymore no today jason you have to tell me in our snail talk segment about your uh favorite peanut butter as asked by timicus because they said that you have mentioned this on a couple of shows recently that you like peanut butter and they want to know what brand of peanut butter is the snell approved brand i'm i i okay yeah peanut butter is my favorite food that's true i decided this finally after after 40 plus years on this planet i i finally realized my favorite food is peanut butter um you know you
Starting point is 00:01:03 always think of something else and then like a like a meal or something instead of no it's peanut butter um i buy the uh the the peanut butter i get us from trader joe's and it's the and i prefer the crunchy to the smooth um and i feel like i get really john syracuse on this and that's probably not wise. But I will say that generally, I prefer the, you know, what when I was a kid, we called the 100% natural peanut butter, and it's the kind that doesn't have any other ingredients other than peanuts and salt. So none of the like stabilized, put it in your pantry, don't refrigerate it kind of
Starting point is 00:01:44 peanut butters that they make that where they change the oil that's in it and take out the peanut oil and none of that stuff the real the real deal the real stuff and the stuff that i get uh for my daily use is uh trader joe's all right well there you go i'll never eat it but i'm pleased that you like it do you know i have a peanut allergy i i did you how do you how are you feeling now that we talked about peanuts is that okay are you still do you have any reaction passed out for a moment there but uh okay i'm back to it now you're visualized eating a peanut and then passed out realized it was just a visualization just the idea you're more allergic to the idea of peanuts. I'm allergic to peanuts as a concept
Starting point is 00:02:26 as opposed to peanuts as a food. So that's my real problem in life. Don't read any Charlie Brennan Snoopy comics. You could die. Jason Snell, we have some exciting news to share with the Upgradians. Do we? That they now have the opportunity to be Downloadians as well
Starting point is 00:02:43 if they would so wish to be. We have a new show on RelayFM, and it's called Download. And this is a show idea that me and Stephen and you have been working on together for quite some time. I am not involved in the production of the show. You are the host of this show, and Stephen is your producer. Would you like to tell the Upgradians a little bit about what Download is? Yeah, I mean, it's different. It is a different kind of thing for Relay, I would say.
Starting point is 00:03:12 In general, when we were in Memphis last summer, we talked about the idea of a show like this for a while. And the idea was, could we do something that covered a broader tech base than just... Even like Clockwise, which I do with Dan, is because of my background and Dan's background, a little more Apple-focused. And it's also very time-constrained for topics in 30 minutes. We thought, what if we did something that was less Apple-focused, did not have that kind of a time constraint? You could really discuss sort of the issues of the week. Um, and in terms of some of the ways it's structured, like Steven is, so I'm hosting it. Steven is producing it, which is kind of a different
Starting point is 00:03:57 thing. He's there on the call, but generally doesn't participate much. Um, he's more there as our facilitator. We're trying to, you know, just to have it be a little bit different and then putting the show together and having it be, ideally, it's a recap of, it's discussion of the stories of the week in the general tech world for people to listen to at the end of the week.
Starting point is 00:04:24 So that's sort of our part of the conception of it that we, I remember you and I talked about too, the idea that you do a week recap and you have it available for people to listen to basically on their Friday commutes. So we do it, we're recording it on Thursdays and releasing sort of Thursday afternoon-ish. And so it's on people's devices if they want to listen on Friday, either morning or afternoon on their commutes as a sort of capper to the week of what's been going on in the broader tech field. And then the idea of the guests is that this is a place where we want to bring in people, some familiar voices, but we also want to bring in new people who haven't been on relay
Starting point is 00:05:02 before at all and introduce people to some some some new new interesting people and voices talking about technology that um it's going to be one of the biggest i think challenges in the show is finding and uh you know uncovering those people and bringing them on the show and then you know there's the logistics of scheduling them to come on and getting that all working and that but that's that's part of the premise of the show. And then, you know, there's the logistics of scheduling them to come on and getting that all working. And that, but that's, that's part of the premise of the show is to have it be, it's not a, it's not the same people every week. It's, it's a, uh, it's, it's new people. And it's hopefully from a, a different and larger pool than maybe we use for clockwise. And it's a different Jason to the Jason that we get on upgrade, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:05:42 Yeah. I mean, I, I already have a show where i can talk about what topics i want to talk about every week and that's upgrade right so and download the idea is that i'm the host and like that's the that's part of the premise is i am a i am asking questions and facilitating conversation but you should hear my voice a lot less on download than you do on upgrade. My goal is to use my skills that I built up as an interviewer and as a podcaster to try and facilitate conversation with the interesting people that we have on as panelists. So really, I think if I'm doing my job, I'm getting a lot of interesting conversation out of the guests and not filling it with my own stuff
Starting point is 00:06:31 because I have other places that I can do that. And that's not my goal with download. And so it's an ambitious project that you guys have taken on. And I really enjoyed listening to episode one where your guests were Serenity Caldwell and Lisa Schmeiser. You talk about a bunch of really interesting stuff, including the Amazon look,
Starting point is 00:06:50 which it was really interesting to hear them talk about it, especially Lisa, because she seems to have quite a background in retail, like understanding the inner workings of retail. So people can go and find it. It's at relay.fm slash download. And there are a bunch of ways that listeners can participate and you talk about that on the show but i think another one which is quite interesting you know we talk about and you
Starting point is 00:07:09 were speaking about trying to find new and interesting voices i mean i think you would very much appreciate people letting you know who they want to hear on the show as well as the stories right yeah and there's people can tweet at underscore download FM, which just fits right in with all the other Relay accounts. That's really difficult to get anything with the word download in it on Twitter, right? Yeah, probably. So that's a funny thing. I had a bunch of people respond saying, how am I ever going to find download? Because if you Google for download podcast, you're going to get literally how to download a podcast.
Starting point is 00:07:43 And the answer is, one, we thought of this. And two, people don't Google just the name of a podcast, really. They put it into their podcast player. And I would wager that if you search in most podcast players, even for just the word download, you'll probably find it. Because there aren't, I think there is not a podcast that we could find that's just called Download. So it should be in there. It was when I did a search in Overcast the day after we launched it, it was the number one result. So I think that people can that was our idea was that it's actually a really bad name if you're trying to do something that has to be done via a Google search. But I just don't think that's thinking in the podcast
Starting point is 00:08:25 context i think it's actually a clever name and it's like upgrade and then there's download and relay has all these one word names the fact that you as a listener found the show upgrade means you can probably find the show download i i think that's a fair very fair point right right that it's just these are these are our simple words that it's going to be hard to find if you are just doing a broad search. But in your podcast app of choice, not a problem. Another part of this premise is that it's the tech stories that are most interesting of the week.
Starting point is 00:08:58 And it's meant to be a little opinionated. One of the places where my and Stephen's sensibility comes into the show is the stories we pick. We're trying to pick interesting stories from a variety of different angles that we think have some depth to them that go beyond just, here's a computer that was announced. I mean, that'll happen from time to time, but like the Amazon, the Echo look, right? We ended up talking about Amazon's ambitions for uh retail and fashion and and also we talked about personalization and things like that so it allows us to pick kind of interesting topics it's not going to be 15 topics a week and uh and also i think we're shooting for like between an hour and 90 minutes for the shows so we don't want it to be we don't
Starting point is 00:09:41 want to be like a a very long show It's not super constrained like clockwise either. We're trying to find a happy medium there, but it is opinionated in the sense that we're picking some topics that we think are going to be really interesting and varied every week. And that's part of what Stephen and I are doing when we put the show together. And we're watching all the headlines all week long and putting links together and then kind of debating what we want the show's main topics to actually be when we get toward recording time cool so uh people can go get it now reader.fm download and they can uh tune in and i bet people will enjoy it but we do have some more traditional
Starting point is 00:10:17 follow-up uh copyright john syracusa uh sure ryan uh sent us a link that already nine to five mac were reporting that uh i think bloomberg had found the first images of somebody uh finding the self-driving lexus yeah we were just we were just talking about this and here it is which is um with the apple car stuff uh i think i said it's only a matter of time before the uh first shot of a lexus with stuff on it is revealed and here it is which is it's like a day or two later yep there you go they found it and i think it's it's very highly expected to be the car that apple is using because it's like completely unbranded has a bunch of tech on it that's expected and is the exact model of lexus so there you go it's there if you want to see what it looks like it doesn't look very exciting um no it's it's a lexus with with bits on it like with just like tech bits tech bits yep that's what they call it listed as such yeah just add the
Starting point is 00:11:23 tech bits in the car well it's got a little a little silver ball here and a little camera pod there and it's just you know it's it's a uh that's what it is it's a it's so i hope everybody's excited that we've seen the uh tech bits we've seen apple cars in the wild in uh in this completely irrelevant test form. I did want to say, we were talking about Apple Car stuff. The Tesla Show podcast was recommended to us by a couple of different people because they did an episode there, episode number 53, which was called The Apple Car. And it's all about going into great detail about what would Apple's car strategy be.
Starting point is 00:12:07 And I thought it was, I thought it was really good. I having never heard this podcast before, I thought the guys were, were, were very interesting with their analysis. I liked that. I liked it a lot. And the thing that they did that I had never really considered in detail before that they made me think is a serious possibility is that the end game of Apple's car strategy is not to sell a car to anybody, but to create a car service where you call for a car and it comes and gets you and takes you where you want to go. And then they don't need a dealer network or anything. They go straight after, essentially, if you can imagine what Uber would be if they replace, well, if, when they replace
Starting point is 00:12:54 all of their pesky drivers with computers, which is I'm sure their goal, right? They've said as much. Imagining a world where people don't have to even own a car. They're just a member of the service and they call for a self-driving car and it comes and picks them up and takes them where they want to go. And that seems kind of wild, but if you think about it, you can roll that out in different cities, in different markets. And given how many people live in urban areas, you could cover a pretty large portion of a population just by serving urban and suburban areas um really interesting argument i think it has a lot of strength to it in the sense that it gets it gets apple out of the business of
Starting point is 00:13:37 sort of selling people a car and supporting them uh and fixing their cars when they're in warranty and things like that and instead makes it more about how apple's the owner of all those cars and all you do is sign up for the service and ask for a car when you need it i think it's a it's a couple levels further back in terms of sort of conceptualizing where the transportation personal transportation world is going but that sounds very apple to me too i mean and it lines up with that investment they made in the chinese car handling service which i think is called dd yeah yeah that i had that exact thought they didn't mention that in the uh in the tesla show episode but that was my thought too was that shows apple gaining some expertise
Starting point is 00:14:22 by being a partner with Didi is that they're thinking of car service as a concept. Yeah, that is interesting. Not necessarily like I'm going to... Right, because if you believe, and this is an open question, but if you believe that in the long run, if you have self-driving cars,
Starting point is 00:14:40 and most cars, as people pointed out, most cars spend... Well, every car spends most of its time unused, right? Unless you're a cab, your car sits in a driveway or a parking lot for most of the time. It's only driving for a small fraction of time. So if you look at that and you think that in the long run, it would be way more efficient for cars to be in operation all the time and you've got self-driving technology, then for most cases, you'd be better off not owning a car and being a member of a car network as long as they can provide you a car when you need it, either on demand or by a schedule, and get you where you need to go, that actually would be a far more efficient use of the technology
Starting point is 00:15:26 and of space in cities to have the cars moving instead of parked. Now, not saying that that's absolutely going to happen, but that's certainly a possible future for transportation. And if that's the case, then, you know, that potentially simplifies a lot of what Apple would have to shoot for. And if you're Apple, do you want to shoot for, if you believe that that's going to happen in 10 or 15 years, would you do all the work required to sell cars to people now, knowing that in 5 or 10 or 15 years, you're going to stop? Now, obviously, Tesla's doing that. Tesla has to do that right now. going to stop. Now, obviously, Tesla's doing that. Tesla has to do that right now. But maybe Apple wouldn't have to do that if they're five years out for something like this, and they're just rolling it out in certain markets. I don't know. It's a wild idea, but I was intrigued by it. I
Starting point is 00:16:15 think it's an interesting concept. And they cover that in some detail in that podcast. So it's worth a listen. All right. Yeah, I don't know if I would have come to that conclusion on my own for quite some time, if at all. But that definitely makes way more sense than building a car. Right. Or even making a CarPlay Plus type thing. Yeah, and I think that Google,
Starting point is 00:16:40 I mean, I think this is what Google is thinking too. I think it's a very similar thing to what Google is thinking, which is in the long run, or, you know, alphabet, that in the long run, you know, transportation becomes more of a service. And I know that this is what Uber is thinking. Like Uber absolutely thinks that the future of Uber is self-driving cars that come when you call.
Starting point is 00:17:01 And are they wrong about that? I don't know. I mean, there are always going to be exceptions, right? If you're in a rural area, you're not going to be able to do that. There are always going to be people who have to have, even in a world like this, if we accept that this will happen, there are going to be exceptions. People who have to have their own car because their roads aren't covered. But, and here's the other part of this that I thought was interesting,
Starting point is 00:17:29 is all of those Apple Maps cars, they talk about this a little bit in the podcast, all those Apple Maps cars that everybody got excited about, but then they thought were Apple self-driving cars, but they're not. They're just Apple Maps cars with all these sensors on them.
Starting point is 00:17:41 What they point out in this podcast is something that, again, I hadn't really thought about. And I'm kicking myself now, which is, well, yeah, they say they're Apple Maps cars, but what they're probably is enhanced Apple mapping cars that are getting lots of detail because for the Apple self-driving car, they need way more detail for their for their maps right so they you know apple's apple's mapping cars that are out there mapping roads are not necessarily just improving the data of apple maps but they're also building a data set that is much richer to use with a self-driving system which makes sense right it makes sense so anyway interesting stuff
Starting point is 00:18:27 interesting uh and and maybe enough of a leap to help us make sense of what the end game here looks like which i have had trouble seeing ever since this apple car story came out huh there you go so go check that out that show even uh i guess we've they give a lot more color than than what we've spoken about here and it sounds like that they're kind of more exposed in this than we are uh yeah it's also funny because it's a podcast theoretically about tesla and yet that episode is just about apple it's not about tesla at all so it's an interesting uh interesting to get it from that perspective too of people who are enthusiastic about Tesla. The future of cars, really.
Starting point is 00:19:10 Yeah, exactly right. But they're taking a break a little bit to talk about some other potential futures. This week's episode is brought to you in part by our friends at Encapsula, the multifunction content delivery network that not only boosts the performance of your website, but it also protects it from denial ofservice attacks and secures it from bad guys whilst
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Starting point is 00:20:26 slash upgrade. This is where you'll find out more about Encapsular's service and claim your free month. Thank you so much to Encapsular for their support of this show and RelayFM. Recode this week had a report that apparently Apple is looking to create a peer-to-peer
Starting point is 00:20:42 money transfer service. Ooh. And that they've been holding talks with payment processors about creating something like Venmo. Venmo is like a peer-to-peer money transferring thing. I send you $5. You know, it's the... Lex Friedman made me sign up
Starting point is 00:20:58 for that when I was visiting him. I forget even what the context was. Maybe we were like splitting our lunch order or something and he was like oh just venmo it to me and i'm like but you know but it is literally like oh yeah here's that ten dollars for fantasy football or whatever and you just send money to your friends now obviously this is an add-on to apple pay right that's how apple would be doing this.
Starting point is 00:21:25 You would open the Apple Pay app, which probably would exist then, and you'd just say, or you'd go to your contacts or something, and you'd just send, or even probably be an iMessage. You know what? It's probably be an iMessage is where it would be. Probably. And you would say, send this contact $5, and you'd hold your thumb or your finger over the Touch ID, and it would go. The idea is Apple are trying to launch
Starting point is 00:21:45 something like this this year, hopefully. And that's one part of this story, right? They're trying to do this. This is something that they would work with companies like Visa and MasterCard, like the payment processors and the banks. And it'd be good to go, right? Everyone's going to continue to get what they get right now. Like when somebody uses Apple Pay, pretty much everyone's happy here. You know, the banks continue to do what they do, the car processors get what they get. However, this report also says that they're in talks with Visa to create an Apple-branded prepaid card so people could use this transfer of money instantly. So you would have a card in your wallet that Apple would give you, and then you would be able to pay
Starting point is 00:22:26 for things with the money that somebody has sent you right because the idea here is if you receive if somebody sends you ten dollars um if you don't what where does that money go right if you're if you're not hooked up to your bank if you haven't given apple your bank account information or something like that where does that money go and it sounds like the answer is it goes in a prepaid card uh that it goes it goes in essentially it is a little mini temporary digital wallet containing the money that people have sent you and you can use that to pay for things yep and depending on where you live in the world it may take time to get the money back like if you live in the united kingdom i would be time to get the money back. Like if you live in the United Kingdom, I would be able to withdraw that money instantly because we have a payment system between banks that has
Starting point is 00:23:10 basically instant transfer. But from this report, it seems like that does not exist in the United States of America. And it would take multiple days probably before you would see that money if you wanted to withdraw it to your bank account so apple would then create a prepaid card now i think personally that this rumor has been misunderstood and what apple wants to make here is an apple pay only card i don't think apple want to distribute plastic cards to people i think that they are working with visa on prepaid card technology in which there is no card you just have it in apple pay but like this this this report talks about a plastic card but i think they've misunderstood that yeah i i think the the logic here is that you create a you create a virtual credit card like we've been talking
Starting point is 00:24:03 about for three or four weeks exactly well that's why this is follow-up right exactly it's a virtual credit card um and all even that is a we can't even call it a credit card right because it's a debit card the idea is that the money's already there but we have a card system with instantaneous transfers of of uh of cash it is this is the way to do this is using the credit card system. And so rather than having an Apple Venmo like thing where in order to sign up, you have to put in like things with your bank account number and connect it up to your bank and have it move over time from point A to point B and all this ridiculous stuff. The solution is use the credit card system. Well, how do we do that? We will create a digital card that we will be able to put money on. And then they only have to deal with Visa. They don't have to deal with everybody's individual banks because it's just
Starting point is 00:24:56 for that. It's like the way I was thinking of it is it's like an Amazon balance. If you've ever had somebody send you an Amazon gift card or something like that, or even an iTunes balance on an iTunes card, you end up with this money and it's sitting there on your account. And where is it? It's kind of nowhere. It's, but you know, when you pay for things, it's the money that comes off first. And that's not as convenient in the sense that, you know, it's, can you transfer it out? Can you do that? Can you take that money? Now, If my friend has sent me $10, but they've used Apple Pay, does that mean I have to just spend it on my virtual card or can I transfer it back to my bank or something like that? And I don't know, they probably, they'd probably work it out, but it wouldn't be instantaneous. But my
Starting point is 00:25:40 guess is that you would be able to just also just kind of keep it there as a balance like an account balance and use that um with your apple pay account and and therefore it's just a digital it's it's it's a little digital storehouse for this equivalent of cash that's sitting there at which point i'm not sure the banks would be too bent out of shape over it given that the bank infrastructure just kind of doesn't support this right now the banks would be upset about this this is part of the problem oh here comes banking mike there we go he's gonna tell me well i mean they're gonna be upset in the sense that that it's apple and visa walking away with their customers but what's the alternative well i mean what you said about is it doesn't matter there's an alternative they will be upset because Apple will be walking away with their customers because what this does is cuts them out.
Starting point is 00:26:28 And there is some disruption happening in the banking industry right now, especially in the UK, by a term called challenger banks. And so these are new banks or new ways of banking that are popping up. And I have signed up recently for something called Monzo. And Monzo currently works a lot like this. You get a physical card. They don't work with Apple Pay yet. You get it because they're not a bank. Apple would be doing some funky stuff with Visa to get this to work. But you get a physical card and you top it up in Monzo's app using Apple Pay. And then you can spend on this card. The app is amazing
Starting point is 00:27:05 and it does stuff that no other banking app that I've used has ever done. Every purchase you make, you get a push notification and it tells you how much it was. It's fantastic for traveling because you buy something in a foreign currency and you get a push notification that tells you how much it actually was in your local currency. Everything's categorized in the app.
Starting point is 00:27:21 You can see things by spending. It's great. You should try it if you live in the UK. You should try it. Now, this would be what Apple was looking to build here. Now, what happens with this is the banks lose their customers potentially, and they lose the money. So they don't see any of the money. So they don't make money from the money, which is how banks make a lot of money,
Starting point is 00:27:40 from just interest and doing whatever it is that they do. And then when money is in the banking system, people can lend against it, et cetera, et cetera. I'm going way too far into this stack now. I apologize. So they make money from the money is what you're telling me. Yeah. Yes.
Starting point is 00:27:55 Interesting. What a genius scheme. It's funny. Funny. And then basically one of the things that the recode account recode story goes into which is something that i used to hear all the time is that banks like to be what is called the in the industry front of wallet which basically means right the card that you have the bank is the one that people use first and apple and the banks worked hard together to make sure that this
Starting point is 00:28:23 type of thing is maintained. Right. So you have an actual wallet where you see your card in it. Right. And when I double tap on my Apple Watch or my iPhone, the first card that comes up is my Chase Sapphire. Right. Yeah. And that is front of wallet. And you can pretty much guarantee that will change.
Starting point is 00:28:41 Right. When you have your Apple Pay card account. A little mad money card here well yeah yeah no i see i see it i think that i think the question is if you're apple and you're trying to launch this sort of a a person-to-person transfer service the and again won't stop the banks from being angry but it's sort of like what what are your options what are your options here to make it something that's fairly frictionless now it's possible that apple is using this uh as a prod to the banks to maybe there's some
Starting point is 00:29:14 other situation some other solution that the banks have um that could do this but that they're reluctant to implement like something something that would let you do that because wouldn't it be nice if you could just say if somebody sends me money just put it on my you know basically send it to my card essentially right like send it to my credit card account and credit it and do something like that but but you know this is the but this is the challenge so i i see like apple's trying for expediency here to get something in the market, but it goes right against their bank partners. And the banks are partners of Apple with Apple Pay. You can't just tell the banks to go away.
Starting point is 00:29:53 They are key partners in the whole Apple Pay scheme. This would be a tricky thing for them because it would upset the banks. And as you say, upsetting the banks is bad for Apple, because if Apple want to, you know, Apple has seen what happens when they upset their partners in neighboring industries. You know, look at the issues that I'm sure they're having trying to launch a TV service.
Starting point is 00:30:18 All of the issues that they had trying to launch a music service, because they upset their partners in the music industry, right, by taking their industry away from them. And this would be something that Apple's customers would really like, but Apple's partners who are important to them may not like it so much. And this would be tricky. I mean, the peer-to-peer payment system, that works. But cutting them out by putting it into Apple Pay,
Starting point is 00:30:47 whilst that would be brilliant, would be tricky. It would be tricky for them to maneuver their way through that, I think. I hope they do it, though, because I would like it. Well, this is, I think, one of the most fascinating places where Apple is playing right now, not banking in general, but thinking of it more broadly, there's Apple trying to drive forward with things that they think people are interested in, ways people can use technology to benefit them.
Starting point is 00:31:19 But it comes up against partners that Apple needs. Apple can't just build a thing. They have to build a thing and get the partners on board. And like the TV industry, it's reluctant to do that. Banking was not reluctant or was somewhat reluctant with Apple Pay, but they got them on board. But this is a case where Apple's sheer will cannot make this work, right? It has to be more.
Starting point is 00:31:42 And I think that's really frustrating for Apple. It's got to be because Apple is used to being able to just make something and everybody else, it doesn't matter if everybody else says, no, that's a bad idea. We think you're doomed. Forget it. That Apple can just defy them and do it anyway and be proven right. But in a lot of these other areas, Apple can't do that. They can't play that game because they need to get people on board with their vision in order to make a product a reality. And that's hard because some of Apple's ideas, quite frankly, do go against conventional
Starting point is 00:32:14 wisdom. And it's hard to get people on board with it. You could argue that the iPhone would have had a very hard time, as revolutionary as that product ended up being. time as revolutionary as that product ended up being but you know they they got singular wireless which became at&t by the phone by the time the phone shipped to be on board with the iphone as we currently conceive of it without junk on it with apple kind of controlling the customer relationship and when that deal was announced i mean there were a lot of people in that industry who thought that that singular was taken for a ride by steve jobs and uh and yet they they were fortunate that they had that partner and they made that deal and it had to be an exclusive in order to do it but they did
Starting point is 00:32:57 that deal um because this is the thing you can have the greatest most innovative idea in the world if you're apple and if you can't get the people who need to say yes to say yes to it it just won't happen so this is an interesting interesting uh way apple has to kind of like uh navigate here where they don't want to anger the banks but they also want to provide more functionality and compete in some of these other areas yeah it's like you know when apple wanted to create a maps app it's like okay all they're doing is fighting against google and it's like it's they're just two people in their industry they don't need each other anymore it's not a problem right like you can burn that bridge and just carry on going and that will be fine but as you say that when they need when they need it
Starting point is 00:33:40 need someone for something you know like if all the banks say no screw it we're gonna pull apple pay like that is a big problem for apple yeah this is this is um joe joe steel our buddy in the chat room pointed out that you know one of the places and dan moran has written about it on six colors a few times the um that in at a farmer's market or an art fair or something like that the idea that instead like apple pay, all our devices have Apple Pay on them, but you know, you have to have a square reader when you're doing a transfer like that
Starting point is 00:34:11 because they can't accept money. They can only pay money. And it doesn't really follow, right? You should be able to put in like the price of something and like tap your Apple Pay on their Apple pay right you should be able to just go boop here here's some money without having cash and and that's the that's
Starting point is 00:34:32 the problem apple's trying to solve here but um but i you know i see the bank's point too that they're that that's scary right because then you don't need a credit card anymore theoretically you can just everything is digital cash now and they're out of the equation at least they're out of the equation until you decide to transfer some of your extra digital cash back into your bank account but that's not quite the same yeah if you use apple pay all the time that just becomes your apple pay credits you know and you just use it becomes your wallet it's cash in your wallet except digital but it's the same thing it's like if you if you if you live a life where you're doing a lot of stuff with cash
Starting point is 00:35:09 and people are giving you cash and you're spending cash then you know that's invisible to your bank because it's just the cash that's in your wallet until you deposit some of it if you're somebody who who has so much cash that you end up depositing in your bank account and if the bank's business model is based on cycling that cash through the credit card system then that's not so great let me tell you what i would love to see with something like this the ability to do international transfers more easily being able to then cut out paypal well yeah Wouldn't that be nice? Because whilst PayPal is the most convenient way that I've found to send money overseas, their fees, oh my God, they're so bad.
Starting point is 00:35:54 Their fees are so high. And for someone like me, they'll cut me on the transfer fee and then also cut me on the foreign exchange fee foreign exchange fee yeah because i know what they're doing right like i know where it works and i feel like apple's still gonna hit me but they're gonna hit me less i think than than paypal would and yeah there are a bunch of other ways to do it a lot of them take far too long you know and i know how the banking industry works and don't sometimes want my money tied up in these really antiquated money transfer systems between international banks.
Starting point is 00:36:29 And I also find that so many of the other services are a little less reliable. At least while PayPal are expensive, I know that they're likely not going to go away in between the time that the money is sent and received. So I would love to see Apple try and hit that. You know, that would be a great thing for me. It'd also just be easy, you know, as a way for me to pay you back for a meal, right? Which there kind of isn't a good way to do that right now without everybody losing out something.
Starting point is 00:37:02 So Apple, find a way to do the peer-to-peer thing, but tread carefully on the prepaid card thing. I don't know if that's going to be the best thing for you in the long run. Today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Mack Weldon. They make the most comfortable underwear, socks, shirts, undershirts, hoodies, and sweatpants that you will ever wear. Mack Weldon is better than whatever you're wearing right now, and they're so confident of this, they have a no questions asked return policy. Whatever you buy from them, they know you're going to be comfortable in it. But if for any reason you don't like it, just keep it and they'll refund you no questions asked. Why are Mack Weldon
Starting point is 00:37:38 so confident that they will offer this no questions asked return policy? It is because they know that by pairing premium fabrics with a with meticulous attention to detail and combining it with their simple shopping experience that they deliver a new level of daily comfort direct to you they make undershirts that stay tucked socks that stay up and waistbands that don't roll everything they make is made of premium cotton blended with natural fibers and their website is built to get you in and out as quickly as possible they are not interested in wasting your time i have been taking a lot of flights recently jason snell can you imagine can you can you somehow conceive of what i was wearing on the
Starting point is 00:38:14 flights uh do you know that that i can because i ordered a pair and i have taken receipt of them now oh the sweatpants yeah the ace the ace them now. Oh, the sweatpants? Yeah. The Ace, the Ace, right? They're called the Ace sweatpants. They're great, aren't they? They're like, I got mine this week. I haven't worn them yet, but looking at them, it's great because I love shorts.
Starting point is 00:38:46 I like wearing shorts, but shorts are only appropriate during times of shorts-related weather those ace sweatpants they're like long shorts they're great they look great i'm very excited by them they do also make those in shorts the ace yeah well they're just shorts then i mean of course they do but anyway i i um uh my thought process is you were raving about them. And then also the idea that the, you know, I work at home. And if it's a cooler kind of day, at some point, the pajama, wearing flannel pajamas around the house makes me feel like I am even more of a stereotypical person who works at home. Like I'm in my pajamas all day. And I like to feel like some progression that I've, I've more advanced. So that's what the sweatpants are going to give me is a,
Starting point is 00:39:30 I can put, I can wear those. And then I feel a little bit more together than if I'm just wearing pajamas. So thanks, Mike. Anytime, anything for you. Mack Weldon do amazing stuff.
Starting point is 00:39:42 Go to Mack Weldon.com M A C K W E L D O N. M-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-O-N.com and you'll get 20% off when you use the code UPGRADE. They're good for working out, going to work, traveling, everyday life. Mack Weldon's stuff is awesome. MackWeldon.com, the code UPGRADE to get 20% off. Thank you so much to Mack Weldon for their support of this show and RelayFM. Maybe I should call them Longs. Longs. Long shorts would just be longs, right? Yeah, I guess
Starting point is 00:40:06 so. Or like averages? Regulars? I'm not sure. Maybe. I don't know. All right. So we accidentally walked into a topic that for some reason I still care about more than I should, which is the way that banks work. I mean, you know, 10 years I worked for a financial institution, like I can't help myself. Absolutely. Now we're going to talk about something else that I really love, which we have been wanting to talk about for ages. Today is the day, stickers. Let's talk about stickers.
Starting point is 00:40:36 Let's do it. Do you have any questions for me about stickers, Jason Snell? Why? Why? I wish I could tell you why it began so in case you don't know dear listener i cover my apple devices primarily uh my ipads and my macbook uh in stickers i i'm not the only person that does this like this is a thing you see this, right? People put stickers on their computers. But I have become known for it because I don't like to just put stickers on. I like to cover my devices in stickers.
Starting point is 00:41:17 And I know I began with this with what you have stuck on your laptop, which is I covered an Apple logo on a laptop with the rainbow logo. Yeah, I have that on my MacBook Air and on my iPad Pro now, actually. I have a little decal that's exactly the size of the Apple logo on the device, and I covered it with the rainbow Apple logo. Yeah, and I don't have a specific place to recommend for these, just Etsy. You just look for one Etsy.
Starting point is 00:41:54 And I remember a while ago when the iPad Pro, the 12.9 came out, there wasn't anything that fit it because it was a different size. And there was just one Etsy person, and I just contacted them with a message like can you make one for this like sure and then they just sent it to me right i got mine from from a company called super together that sells on etsy and they they have a they had an ipad pro um 12.9 decal that fit perfectly for all i know that was the person that i got it from could be oh it actually was because I remember this logo, just an S.
Starting point is 00:42:25 Yeah, this was that. And it's UK-based, yeah. So I'll put that in the show notes if you want to find it. And this was just like a beginning for me. And then it was just over time as I was doing shows and having stickers made, I kind of wanted a place to put them. And a place that made sense to me was to put them on my laptop. And then it just went from there now i have an entire drawer in my office full of stickers
Starting point is 00:42:51 i try and get new and interesting stickers all the time and i like to do this because it feels like some kind of personalization for me like i feel like what I'm doing is making these devices mine. And the things that I tend to stick on to my devices are things that I enjoy. Like, it is an expression of stuff that I like. And then when I look at these devices, I every time, you know, it's like art for me in a way, like, I just look at them and I appreciate it, right? Like, these are things that I enjoy. They're things that I find funny or things that I like the look of or stuff that I have made. Like, I make lots of stickers for shows and, like, just little jokes.
Starting point is 00:43:35 You know, like, anybody that came to the Upgrade Meetup may have walked away with an Upgradian sticker or a Pineapple Pizza sticker, and I have those stuck on all my devices now. It's just a thing that I really like, and i kind of treat every new device that i get these big devices as like a blank canvas and it builds over time and i overlap right like i'm a sticker overlapper i'm definitely not one of these people that like places things in a line i like it to be all higgledy-piggledy because I like that however you hold the device,
Starting point is 00:44:05 you kind of get something, right? Like it's always in the right orientation. And my favorite thing to do is to kind of over time try and fill as much of the device as I can. Now, of course, this destroys resale value unless you're willing to get all the stickers off. I haven't yet had to resell the device that has stickers on them. They usually just get passed down or passed around. The only thing that I have is I have a 13-inch MacBook Pro that I eventually
Starting point is 00:44:34 want to get rid of, but it's covered in stickers right now. I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I just haven't gotten around to getting rid of it, but I have a family member I could probably give it to. Yeah, well, so I've got two questions here one is uh well not a question um i think you can since especially since these are um metal shells i think you can peel them off yeah with some elbow grease i could get it off with with some elbow grease and also they there's stuff you can buy that is that that's what it does is it takes the sticker adhesive off. Some like that you spray on or put on a rag and that helps kind of melt the sticker adhesive. So you could do it.
Starting point is 00:45:15 It just takes some work. But how do your friends or family who receive these hand-me-down items, how do they feel about the fact that they're getting a thing that's covered in stickers? Well, you know, they kind of can't complain if it's hand-me-down, right? Here's a new device for you. That's on you, right? You're not giving me any money for this because the things that I hand down or hand around to family for money are phones. And I don't put stickers on phones because I put cases on my phone.
Starting point is 00:45:41 Plus, the phone is such a small space. I don't put stickers on there. I don't feel like there's enough that I can do. I really like the covered in stickers look and the phone doesn't provide me with that. So, you know, my iPads, nobody has gotten one of those yet because Apple refuses to update them. And I just haven't done anything with my MacBook Pro yet. And i don't know if i have a family member that needs a macbook pro but i'm gonna ask around soon because it's kind of just been sitting here and if they want to keep it this way they can keep it this way otherwise they can do the work you know that's up to them um i love i i do really like getting a new device
Starting point is 00:46:21 and starting over like i don't um i don't like immediately cover them although i have got a much larger sticker store now than i ever have before so i can do quite a lot because the most awkward part is the in-between stage just when like you've just got a couple like more than like three or four and like less than 15 stickers on the surface right because you've got lots of gaps and you kind of have to be smart about the way that things get placed um but i'm ready now i'm ready for my next device jason because i have been amassing quite a selection of stickers over the last few months via the means of a few services um i currently subscribe to two monthly sticker subscription services oh Oh my god. I need to decide on one of them. And I just haven't decided
Starting point is 00:47:08 on which one yet. I've been trying these both out because they kind of both launched around the same time. And I wanted to see what I would get. One of them is called Slaptastic. I'll put links in the show notes for these. And this one, they kind of... Wouldn't that be Slaptastic?
Starting point is 00:47:24 It would definitely be that. I've never thought of it that way before. You've never said that out loud before? Yeah, slap-tastic was always my way of reading this, but it definitely is slap-tastic. That's how it's pronounced in English, British English, I'm sure. No, no, it should definitely be slap-tastic. I've just never...
Starting point is 00:47:42 You know when you don't read things aloud? I do. And they're just when you don't read things aloud? I do. And they're just in your head in a certain way. But yeah, Slaptastic is definitely what they're called. And they seem to commission stickers. They'll find some artists and they commission them around a theme. And then another one that is called Sticker Swaps is way more of a random selection of stuff.
Starting point is 00:48:03 This is probably the one that I would end up dropping, but you get like really interesting random things with them. And I don't know where their stuff comes from, but it feels like that they might be like buying them in bulk from somewhere or like picking up stuff that's not used. And also like you can trade stickers with them. It's kind of an interesting thing.
Starting point is 00:48:24 And you get like like you get a lot you get a lot more with this company because they have the stickers that they're creating or collecting for the month then plus just some really random stuff like i got this tiny little spider-man sticker that was all like shiny you know like a holographic sticker which had come from like obviously a sticker book at some point. Very strange, but I liked that little sticker. It was funny. And then another one that I use, Sticker Mule. Now I use Sticker Mule, we use Sticker Mule to print the stickers that we sell or that we give away. They're fantastic.
Starting point is 00:48:54 Sticker Mule can do anything, right? From like just squares and circles to die cutting. They're brilliant. So if you're ever making stickers for anything, I thoroughly recommend Sticker Mule. They're very very high quality vinyl stickers but they also have a marketplace so you can go in and just buy individual stickers from them um some of them are pretty fairly priced and some of them are not so much but they tend to be bigger but you can just go in just have a scroll through and you'll find some stuff in there um and i i kind of bought a bunch of
Starting point is 00:49:25 stickers from there before which i which i like so that is how i have amassed a huge drawer of stickers which is currently existing awaiting a new device uh to affix them to so that's interesting so you've reached you feel like you've reached your saturation point on your existing devices where you don't want to continue the pile up oh no what i do now is um when i get new stickers if something if something works uh then i will add to my current devices but at the point that i am right now i feel like well i have felt like they have been close to replacement for a long time but that's just not been happening so i haven't been adding new stuff because when i get a really good sticker now i want to keep it for the next device right like get something this is a good one like i don't want to put
Starting point is 00:50:13 in on something that might be gone soon right so you want you want to stock those stickers for your next purchase because you want the stickers to have more time in the sun exactly i want to be able to enjoy them for a longer period of time. Now, when you get a new device, will you immediately put on a bunch of stickers, or will you roll them out slowly over time? In the past, I've rolled it more slowly, but now I have this huge
Starting point is 00:50:36 box, effectively, of stickers. I will be adding more for my next device, because I've been collecting more and been waiting for longer. But I won't cover it, because I want to leave space for new stuff that comes in it's fascinating now lots of people when i talk about this they they feel a sense of abject horror yeah i would um dare dare to cover the beautiful johnny ive work in stickers right they get i have had people jason who get very angry with me and i know those people have already started to write to me
Starting point is 00:51:14 to express their email mike but a few years ago apple vindicated me by releasing an ad for the macbook yes which featured featured stickers all over it. Stickers, yeah. Which was a great feeling, because now I have something to send to these people when they write to me. It's like, well, Apple, this is approved via Apple, right? Mm-hmm.
Starting point is 00:51:38 But are you someone that has this abject horror at the amount of stickers that you see? Because you've seen my devices right yeah yeah uh i don't have abject horror i think people should do what makes them feel happy on their devices um i am somebody it's not it's not for me i have some practical issues with it but also it's just not for me. I, the way that I always have phrased this is, uh, I prefer to, uh, to be unadorned, right? I don't, I don't have any tattoos, similar reason, believe it or not. It's like, I, you know, I, I, there's a limit. Like I, I kind of like things the way they are. Um, very specific changes changes I can kind of get behind, like the fact that,
Starting point is 00:52:27 especially since doing six colors, I have taken the Apple logos on all of my devices and put six color Apple rainbow decal on all of them. And that is a bit of customization. Also, I just had this happen. And that's something I want to point out for on the practical side of stickers. Believe it or not, there is a practical side of stickers. My, uh, friend and former coworker, uh,
Starting point is 00:52:48 Rob Griffiths was just tweeting the other day about how they went on, uh, uh, he made sure to bring his laptop on a trip that they were taking, get to their destination and discover that it's actually, uh, his child's laptop. Yep.
Starting point is 00:53:03 That makes sense. And I said, I said, Rob, you know what we did is I made all the MacBooks in the house get decals of some sort on them so that we could tell them all apart because I was endlessly picking up my wife's or my son's and not mine. And now mine has the Apple logo.
Starting point is 00:53:19 Hers has this knitting pattern on it. And he has a TARDIS from Doctor Who with the Apple, the cutout for the, cause it's a MacBook Air, the cutout for the Apple logo, it goes over the windows. So it's like the windows light up, but we can tell them all apart and that's good. Now my daughter has a Chromebook and her Chromebook is completely covered with stickers. So she's doing it the mic way and that's fine. In fact, and when we were in hawaii i made sure that we got some stickers or decals i guess they ended up being of as a souvenir and
Starting point is 00:53:51 that got put down on her computer and my son's got his on his um on his ds his nintendo ds it's got stickers on on it um and uh you know what device i put stickers on mike the ipod hi-fi oh i've seen them i'm on this yeah because that i'm okay with that but most of them i'm not i for the for the same reasons which is i i kind of i think they're kind of they they're kind of messy and and i don't want to go all in with like you you've gone all in on messy. It's like a quilt. Like it's just a whole bunch of different stuff piled on top of each other. I didn't want to do that for a couple of reasons. One is tactile.
Starting point is 00:54:32 I know that I will feel the edges on those devices and I'll just start picking on the edges of them and it'll drive me crazy. And that is me, but that's a thing that I know about myself. And I also don't like if i put one on or two on then it's sort of like this clean sheet with a couple of things defacing it and that bothers me too you gotta you gotta go all in if you're gonna put them on in my opinion so i can't do it i can't do it um the the ipod hi-fi is a fun place because i get all these great stickers and i have no place to put them i i've stuck them on there because you know quite frankly i don't
Starting point is 00:55:03 really care if that thing gets covered with stickers. It's all, it's just fine. And then the other thing is the hand-me-down thing where I feel like if I, if I stick a bunch of stickers on things, I'm going to have to do the work to peel them all off before I, I sell or give away the, the, the device. So it's not for me. I did put in honor of Mike Hurley, I, I've started putting some stickers on one of my keyboard cases, the Logitech 9.7-inch keyboard case. Oh. I put some stickers on there because I figured. I have stickers on the cases, too, right? So I have them on the devices and they're on the cases.
Starting point is 00:55:40 Anyway, I don't, you know, it's not're and stickers just feel so permanent to the fact that they don't that they don't come off it can overlap you know yeah yeah i don't know probably add to the thickness over time i think you'd have to go many layers deep for it you would you would end up you wouldn't end up yeah with a very thick layer of stickers over time. Imagine if John Syracuse loved putting stickers on his computer, which let's stop there because it could never possibly ever happen. But imagine now him using that same Mac Pro for eight years. He wouldn't be able to fit it in the room anymore.
Starting point is 00:56:25 It would be like three inches thick of just stickers. You'd have to cut through it, right? It would be a real problem for him. It would be archaeology to excavate back to the bottom layer of the stickers. Stickers, they're awesome. Yeah, it's kind of your calling card now. They're fun. They're fun. They're fun.
Starting point is 00:56:47 I just, you know, if I could like have an expiration date, I've said this about tattoos too. It's the same thing, which is like, if it like disappeared after a period of time, like just vanished, I would feel much better about it. Like, yeah, I got that sticker on there now, but you know, in three months, that sticker will just be gone and it'll be fine.
Starting point is 00:57:05 But that's not how they work. Speaking of stickers and tattoos, you can buy a sticker of the tattoo I have on my arm. It's true. If you want to. I don't. Go and do that. You should.
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Starting point is 00:57:55 developed proprietary foam that relieves pressure and increases airflow. They then combined it with springy comfort layer to contour to your body and keep you cool this means casper's mattresses have just the right sink and just the right mounts they are designed and developed in america and they are quality mattresses at great prices mr jason snow i believe that you have one of these quality mattresses in your home yeah indeed i spent all day yesterday laying on it oh no well i mean you know if you're gonna lay on something let it be a mattress well and it was a very hot day and we don't have air conditioning and one of the things i appreciate about it is the uh it it it doesn't sleep hot i was able to
Starting point is 00:58:37 lay on it and not be kind of hot and miserable while i was uh even though it was a fairly warm day so you were feeling a little under the weather. You weren't just being lazy. I was way under the weather. You couldn't even see the weather from where I was. But I was cradled in the loving embrace of my Casper mattress. Buying a Casper mattress is so easy, and it's completely risk-free as well. They offer free delivery and free returns to the US, Canada, and the UK. And with Casper, you can actually get to sleep on that mattress before you make your decision.
Starting point is 00:59:10 You try it out for 100 nights and decide if it's the mattress that you want to then spend the next third of your life on. If you don't love it, they'll pick it up and refund you everything. You can get $50 towards any mattress purchase by going to casper.com upgrade and using the code upgrade at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Thank you so much to casper.com upgrade and using the code upgrade at checkout terms and conditions apply thank you so much to casper for their support of this show it is time for ask upgrade brent wants to know mike have you put stickers on your nintendo switch um i haven't yet but i probably will because it feels like a device that like a device that would look good with some stickers on it.
Starting point is 00:59:47 I know that apparently the plastic does not take too kindly to you taking them off, like sticker adhesive doesn't work very well with the Nintendo Switch plastic, whatever coating it is that they use, but as I said, I don't take stickers off, so it wouldn't bother me. But yeah, it is a device in my mind that i could put it on if it feels like it passes the size barrier now the nintendo switch plastic coating that of the actual unit itself if you lick that it doesn't taste better right i haven't licked that i think it's just the cartridges though okay um i haven't licked the cartridge Maybe that could be the next frontier for materials in tech products
Starting point is 01:00:28 would be like a taste or a personal coding. Yeah. Scratch and sniff or a taste test. Mateus has wrote in, Jason, and they want us to recommend a good app to manage time zones of a good widget. Now, I can go 50% of this and can recommend a good widget that I like. It's called clock with a K, K-L-O-K. And I've been using this for a while. It's a pretty good widget. It allows five time zones. And you can also, within the widget, you can get what the
Starting point is 01:00:58 time will be at a certain point. So you can tap one of the time zones and it pops up a little selector underneath and you can select time and it will show you what the time will be in each of the time zones. It's pretty good. I've been using it for a long time and I like it a lot. I don't have a good suggestion for a full on application or something more full featured in the widget if you're looking for that. And I wanted to throw this out to the Upgradians if they have any suggestions for a good time zone management app for Mateus for his devices. Hunter
Starting point is 01:01:33 has asked, you're allowed to keep or he's not asked, it's more given us a hypothetical, right? That we're allowed to keep one iPad or one iPhone with just two apps on it. Which device and which apps? I spent a lot of time thinking about this, Jason.
Starting point is 01:01:52 That's a weird question. It is. It's very specific in a couple of ways which make me raise an eyebrow. Is this the only device we have? This was the way that I... Well, I read it's iOS, right? Like our iOS devices are reduced to one and we're only allowed two apps on that device.
Starting point is 01:02:08 So I decided I'm going to pick with this my 9.7-inch iPad with Slack and AirMail because if I'm going to be only using one iOS device, I will be doing my work on it the same that I always have. And an iPhone doesn't work. I need the split screen. And I would prefer to have the portability not completely destroyed. So I would go 9.7 over 12.9, right? So I'm picking the middle of the road on the portability to still get the use, but so I can still carry it around without needing a bag all the time. And I'm
Starting point is 01:02:44 assuming that I still have all of the other stock apps, so I could, for example, read Twitter on their website, right? So I would go with Slack because I don't think I can use it on iOS. I don't think you could Slack in a window. I've never tried, but I wouldn't want to. And AirMail is just the best way for me to manage my email. And so Slack and AirMail would be the two things that I would want the most
Starting point is 01:03:07 because I could still continue to get my business done in a world where, for some reason, Hunter's restricted me so heavily. Yeah, it's a cruel, dystopian future that Hunter is displaying here where you're only allowed to have one iOS device and the App Store only has two apps in it. So what have you gone with?
Starting point is 01:03:28 device and the app store only has two apps in it. So what have you gone with? I'm going to say the my iPhone 7. Okay. Because if I am only allowed to have one iOS device I'm going to have it be the one that I can put in my pocket because although I prefer not to go back to the way I lived before I will do it if I need to, and I'll just use my MacBook Air or get a MacBook or MacBook Pro, whatever, for the things I use my iPad for now. But I can't stick... Apple does not yet make a Mac that I can stick in my pocket
Starting point is 01:03:53 and go walk the dog and listen to podcasts with. So I'm going to say that and Overcast and probably Slack for the same reasons that you did. Yeah, Overcast would be one that I would miss a lot. But, you know, I'm assuming that I have all the stock apps, so I would have to move to the podcast app in that situation, which would make me very sad. But there's nothing...
Starting point is 01:04:16 I mean, I guess I could use the regular mail app, right? But I really don't like it. I'll struggle on that one. Maybe I would change to Overcast and Slack. I'm not sure. Yeah, and maybe if I... The question is, would I prefer to use Twitterific and Apple Podcasts or Overcast
Starting point is 01:04:35 and the Twitter website? You know, I guess flip a coin there. But I'd have to be my phone just so I could have it, the device that's with me when I'm out walking around, and I would just go back to the Mac for the stuff I use the iPad for. Jimmy wants to know what we expect from the next
Starting point is 01:04:53 upgrade to the Apple Watch. I don't expect huge stuff, but this is maybe the things that I would at least want the most, which would be for it to continue to be faster, continue to have better battery, but to be thinner. I would really like it to be thinner than it is.
Starting point is 01:05:11 Thinner and lighter would be great for me for the next version of the Apple Watch. If I was going to think of a feature that they may put in, this is something I definitely will think is coming eventually, but it might be the the the version after this which would be um lte chip would be really great uh but just because then you could just it would always be able to use it and i feel like a lot like be able to use a connection i feel like that might help a lot of the slowness because it's it's not always grabbing stuff from the phone if at all
Starting point is 01:05:40 um an lte chip might be nice because then you could just use it without the phone ever needing to be around um and you have a uh a feature that i definitely want but i'll let you go with it yeah uh the screen always on yeah doesn't always have to be animated doesn't have to be you know when you're not looking at it that doesn't have to have a second hand that's sweeping through or something blinking or anything like that, whatever you need to do to save power. But that, that if I, to get rid of the thing where you need to actively kind of flip your wrist in a certain way, or the screen doesn't show up and your watch doesn't is blank. That's no good. It should be, you know, I've learned to live with it, but it's just, it should be on. There should be something showing the time on when you look at it all the time and then i also agree about cellular connection being something that they need to add down the road i don't even think
Starting point is 01:06:31 it necessarily needs to be lte a slower connection would be fine and might be cheaper and uh you know smaller and be able to yeah i mean useless power i really doubt it needs LTE. Yeah, right. 3G would do it. Just like 3G. I think that there's a lot that you could do if it can rely on having an internet connection all the time. And they now have these things where your phone will also ring on other cellular devices that are on your plan. So you could have it where you go for a run,
Starting point is 01:07:03 and if somebody calls you on your phone, your watch will ring even if you're nowhere near your plan. So you could have it where you go for a run. And if somebody calls you on your phone, your watch will ring even if you're nowhere near your phone. That's pretty great because that means that you can stay in touch and you don't have to carry your phone with you at all. Brent asked, how often do you use tap backs in iMessage? Now, in case you don't remember, tap backs is the name that Apple gave to the thing where you can leave a heart or a thumb up or a thumb down, exclamation mark or a ha ha on a message, an iMessage. I use them quite a lot, actually, especially in group conversations, especially if I'm catching up on a group conversation. You know, I can kind of just leave something to show that I'd seen it. I started using it a lot more after I realized the best way to get to this menu
Starting point is 01:07:47 is to double-tap the message, not to 3D touch it. It's way easier to get to it just by double-tapping the message, and then you're given a little dialog to select from. What I don't like about them is the way the notifications are presented to the other person. I think it's silly. That you see a full text notification it says it's like federico liked and then the name then the exact text of the message i just feel like that it's there needs to be a better way to display that
Starting point is 01:08:14 information than in text like it just doesn't work for me yeah but do you use them uh i will occasionally use them on ios and i never use them on the Mac because on the Mac getting to them is kind of ridiculous and you end up like control clicking on a message and choosing tap back and then choosing, it's no but occasionally I'll do it on iOS because it is easy there like you said Final question today comes from Gannon Gannon wants to know, what is gannon the name gannon makes me think of zelda now that's that's all i can do i'm sorry gannon what is your go-to pair
Starting point is 01:08:52 of everyday sneakers uh for me currently it is uh the nike air max fly knit that's so good so it is the air max shape of shoe in the material that Nike call Flyknit which is like this nice woven really light airy material I have a pair and I love them and whilst looking for this
Starting point is 01:09:17 I have the Air Max 1 Ultra Flyknit and whilst looking through their website to get this link I found a version 2 in some cool colors which I may have to treat myself to at some point in the near future and it's so exciting my shoes are new balance m1340 which has a actually made is made of a similar material i think um and uh yeah i that's what my my podiatrist told me to get was some some control shoes stability control shoes so that's what i've got and and i
Starting point is 01:09:55 find it funny the way that this is my go-to pair of everyday sneakers it is these are my shoes i wear them basically they're the only shoes that i wear so yeah i'm in those all the time um i i have lots of pairs of uh sneakers i'm shocked yeah it's a it's a thing that i actually do like a lot from a fashion perspective i'm not as interested in fashion as I used to be as a younger man, but sneakers is a thing that I do still really enjoy. All right, that wraps it up for this week's episode of Upgrade. A few things you can do if you want to submit a question for Snell Talk at the beginning of the show. Send us a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk. If you have a question for us at the end of the show for us to expand upon, give you an answer to something, our opinion on something, to provide us with some constraints that are unfairly put on us
Starting point is 01:10:49 for our iOS devices like Hunter did. You can send us a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade. What you need to do, you can send it to us. You can send it to the Upgrade account. You can just send it out randomly in the world. But do not worry. I will find it because that's what I'm good at. If you want to find Jason online, he is at jsnl, j-s-n-e-l-l, he's at sixcolors.com, and he's the host of the new show Download on RelayFM, which is at relay.fm
Starting point is 01:11:13 slash download. If you want to find him more, you can do that. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E on the Twitter machine. I want to take a moment to thank our sponsors again, Casper, Mack, Walden, and Encapsular for supporting the show. But most of all, as always,
Starting point is 01:11:28 to you out there, the Upgradients, thank you for listening, as you always do. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Mr. Snell. Goodbye, everybody.

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