Upgrade - 163: Kindle Bubbles

Episode Date: October 16, 2017

This week there's a bunch of news from the world of entertainment. Apple's new TV execs made their first big deal in Hollywood, which brings up lots of questions about what Apple's video service will be and when it will arrive. There's also a new service that brings your iTunes purchases to Amazon and Google and vice versa. Speaking of Amazon, there's also a new Kindle you can take in the bathtub--if you have a good bathtub.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 163 today's show is brought to you by balance squarespace and mac weldon my name is mike hurley and i am joined in person across this breakfast counter by mr jason snell happy breakfast Mike. Happy breakfast counter to you, Jason Snell. We're in Chicago right now. We are. We even have a tiny, tiny, tiny audience. But nobody cares about that because it's time for Snell Talk. That's perfect. Nice. I like that. We actually have a really fun Snell Talk question today from Josh. Josh misses the old small talk, so how's the weather today? It's sunny today. It is sunny. We are in Chicago. We're in an Airbnb right now.'s a a train that goes by sometimes which you may get the pleasure of hearing but just pretend we're

merlin yeah we got a streetcar and we are at release notes yes release notes starts today yes we've been doing some stuff in and around we had had a bunch of live episodes we had a live episode of the pen addict which is coming out later this week at field notes we had live episode of connected and a live episode of ingen Pen Addict, which is coming out later this week at Field Notes. We had a live episode of Connected and a live episode of Ungenious. Connected and Ungenious will be out today as well. We've been doing some fun stuff. A bunch of meetups. It's been a really, really great week so far.

And now we have a live episode of Upgrade, live before a studio audience. Of two people, Federico and Steven. Say hi, guys. Hey, guys. You probably can't hear them, but they're there. They're there. They're working on their iPads. They're not imaginary.

They're getting their work done. They're real, yeah. You can't work on an iPad, Mike. What They're there. They're working on their iPads. They're not imaginary. They're getting their work done. They're real, yeah. You can't work on an iPad, Mike. What are you talking about? That's very true, actually. That is very true. So how's the Spider Mac? The Spider Mac is, the Spider is gone.

The Mac has returned. I cannot tell you how relieved I was to get my iMac back. I was so sad. I mean, I think I mentioned this last week. I was so sad to have it gone and have my little monitor arm just standing there at attention with nothing on it. It was like, but my computer, where did it go? But it has been returned from its repairs with no spider in the in the in the glass did they give you the spider back like you know if you have some like some kind of medical procedure that like kidney stones

will put them in a little jar for you or something no this is more like when a pet dies that does not give you your dead pet to you they they flushed it they use a lot of i'm sure a lot of care and and uh i would love to see how they did that like just the whole process taking the screen off just to remove the spider and then put it back again i assume they pulled off the entire screen um and replaced it it's the only way to do it right yeah and those imax are hard to do but anyway it's it's uh it's done it which allows me to work undistracted and also to sell it or give it away, hand it down when I decide to upgrade my iMac, which I think is going to happen. I think it's just a matter of whether I'm going to do the latest and greatest iMac this fall

or whether I will. I really want to see about the iMac Pro. I think that's my thing. I think you've decided this in your brain. You're getting an iMac Pro. I think that's my thing. I think you've decided this in your brain. You're getting an iMac Pro. I think you've decided this. I have decided to get an iMac Pro with one exception, which is I know there's going to be a moment

when I'm on the shopping page of the iMac Pro once the orders open up where it's going to say, here's how much it costs, and it's going to be $5,000. I'm going to be like, really? Do I want to do this? This is a lot of money. I think everybody used to do this. You'd go to the old Mac Pro page

and you'd price up how expensive can you make this? You know, like you get it for like 10 grand, 12 grand. This is probably going to be like that, I reckon. Not that you'll pay that amount of money, but you could if you wanted to. It will be the base model if I get one of these, let me tell you. And that base model will be very, very, very good. It be very very very good yeah i mean there's no doubt that logically it would be good for me

doing my job to have that but not the writing part but the denoising files part audio files so yeah we'll see last week we spent some time talking about emoji um the 11.1 beta came out um after the after we recorded so you can get the emoji now and they're great there's a bunch of new great emoji in there um and i got some feedback some follow-up from mark bramhill who is the creator of welcome to macintosh and he just did a big emoji series so he has a lot of thoughts about emoji so i was talking about um that i believe that apple hold off the emoji releases until after the main release to try and spur on adoption. And Mark said that Unicode finalizes emoji in the summer,

giving a fairly short timeline to illustrate and that Unicode are now switching to an earlier timeline finalizing three months after in the spring. So we may see next year's new emoji in iOS 12 because vendors have complained to Unicode, which is why they switched their timeline. So it could be the reason for the wait. So we'll see. I mean, I still believe that they hold it off because other vendors like Google

have supported them already. But it could be like if they want to spend time really illustrating them and that kind of thing. But it's good to see that. It is funny to see how the Unicode consortium, which which is this big thing is basically the emoji house now right like and they're making all these changes now so emoji can be better prepared and stuff like that but yeah so that's what they're doing going forward yeah it's it's a funny example of an organization that was not made to do this but they've kind kind of become... They've fallen into it.

So they have to deal with it. This is what they do. They do emoji now. So when we were in Chicago, we planned to go to the cinema together. Unfortunately, you had a plane that got canceled, so you didn't make it. Yeah, there was...

It's sunny now, but over the weekend, there were torrential rains in Chicago, big thunderstorms for a whole day on saturday and so my flight got canceled so i i came in sunday which meant i didn't get the chance to do mike at the movies in person with you on saturday night because we wanted to talk about we i went to see blade around 2049 which we were going to talk about together but we can't now so i just want to give some completely no spoilers opinions of blade run 2049 oh here we go i just wanted to say that i really

like this movie a lot and it gave me what i liked about the first one the visuals and the music are incredible just so beautiful one of the most visually beautiful films i have ever seen beautiful one of the most visually beautiful films i have ever seen um it was stunning and it also gave me less of what i didn't like about blade runner so i found the story to be easier to follow and there was more action like there was more stuff going on in the movie um so you just made blade runner fans happy and then like reluctant because they're like but wait mike is saying that he likes blade runner 2049 better than blade runner in some ways because yeah it it has more of the things that you like which is going to be heresy but as i mentioned to you i believe last night there is literally nothing you can say about blade runner now that will not anger somebody if you like blade runner

you already don't like what me and jason have to say about anything to do with blade runner but even though we've got this reputation now even though we both pretty much came out If you like Blade Runner, you already don't like what me and Jason have to say about anything to do with Blade Runner. Even though we've got this reputation now, even though we both pretty much came out in our revision with John Syracuse in being much more favorable to Blade Runner after watching the final cut. Yeah, but I prefer this movie. I really like Ryan Gosling in general, so that was a big win for me. He's great in it. I recommend it I know it hasn't done very well in the box box office um which it in a way like it doesn't surprise me like I understand that like it's a huge cast but it is a sequel to a movie that is

a kind of a cult movie Blade Runner I feel like for sure you and it was not a hit so it is not surprising to me that the the sequel to this movie which maybe never should have been made right like by a lot of people's standards kind of has not doing so well but i do recommend it like i i i actually don't really feel like you even need to have seen blade runners to go and see this movie like they set things out pretty simply with text and it's kind of like they have a crawl at the beginning kind of thing and that's it. But yeah, I really liked it. I'm just ashamed we can't talk about it in more detail.

Maybe one day. Maybe. One last thing. I just wanted to mention because I've been spending more time with Apple nerds in different locations over the last couple of days. The iOS 11 Wi-fi password sharing thing

is amazing so this is when you're somebody's connected to a wi-fi network and you try to connect to the same network it gives them a pop-up on any device mac or ios they can say yes allow this person share the password with them and it just pre-fills on your device and you just have to be in somebody's contact book so it's quite funny like if there's a bunch of people in a room and you try and connect to the wi-fi it pings all of their devices and someone will just let you on but it is so much easier than going like hey what's the wi-fi password it's really good it's a really good feature yeah and it doesn't need to be secure in that way right because it the idea is not well they're not the owner of the wi-fi network so

should they be giving that out the fact is once you know the wi-fi password you know it yeah theoretically and you can share it yeah so why not just share it have to be in your contacts like i like that kind of security so they just have to be a friend of yours and you can give them the wi-fi password like i think that works really well it's a good feature it's great i look forward to using that sometime. So I didn't say, I want to, because we kind of skipped all the way

through the Snell Talk question. Thank you to Josh for submitting his Snell Talk question. If you have a question you'd like to open the show,

hashtag Snell Talk and they'll go into a document and we can pull those out. That's right. And who knows, maybe there'll be more Snell Talk

questions about Small Talk, about the weather. Maybe there will be. Then it'll be directed by the listeners. We'll have to talk about the weather then it'll be directed by the listeners will have to talk about small talk because they'll they demand it kind of all is small talk yeah i suppose so it's just it's just directed instead of random it is a little weird i have to say not

just it's very nice to be across the table from you we do this really a shocking amount given that i live in california and you live in london it is we we do this two or three times a year it seems and more than that which is which is great so so high five yeah there it is that was good podcasting terrible spit out some water and did a high five um it is a little disconcerting i realize as i'm sitting here because i keep um looking up and and to my left expecting to see the oak tree out my window. And it's not there. There's no oak tree over there. Where's the oak tree?

Where's the squirrel that is running along the fence? They're not out there. I can see a McDonald's. It is Monday morning, though. So that feels... And I'm sitting here kind of unshaved and in my shirt from yesterday because I haven't taken a shower yet this morning

and in that way it feels like upgrade there's a lot a lot of information for the listener today's show is brought to you by mac wild and they make the most comfortable underwear socks shirts undershirts hoodies and sweatpants that you're ever going to wear mac wild and his bed and whatever you're wearing right now unless you've already been smart enough to buy mac wild and clothing yep you're wearing mac wild right right now speaking of what we said earlier so much information this is just all of the information did you wear your mac walden uh sweatpants on the plane of course i did of course you did of course i did it was a little chilly the other day at home and i put on my mac walden sweatpants and then i saw that you were flying with federico and i thought oh we're mac walden sweatpants twinsies

we were mac walden buddies that day mac Weldon have a no questions asked return policy. If you don't like what you buy for them, like for your first pair, you just keep it and they'll refund you, no questions asked. That's how confident they are that you're going to love their fantastic clothes. They have meticulous attention to detail,

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Listeners of this show can get $20 off at macwildon.com with the code upgrade i should say i'm also wearing macwildon today jason just so you know some information we are still macwildon buddies thank you so much to macwildon for their support of this show and relay fm jason your favorite topic there's a new kindle what a new kindle new A new Kindle. So this is still the Oasis, right? Which is weird because they seem to come up with names for new stuff all the time. Yeah. And this seems like a pretty significant update. Well, they've revised the Paperwhite.

Okay. And they've revised the Kindle, I guess is what they call it. Paperwhite is a terrible name. Like that, for me, is not aged. That is just a bad product name paper yeah well the idea at the time was that it is a high contrast screen the instead of being a kind of medium gray it's a very light gray and it's got the back lighting on it and it's actually the best kindle to get in terms of being a good buy with the features that it's got still but it's well we'll

see how this new one so this new oasis this the old oasis um was more expensive than this one and kind of weird it came with a case with a battery on it and you had to get the case because it was very small and very thin and had not great battery life although e-ink ebook readers are um really good it's at uh using battery lightly but um you could put the case on it and then it would use that battery or recharge its own internal battery um so with this they've kept the kind of wedge shape of that it's got a kind of a thick part and a thin part but the case is gone the mandatory battery battery case. It's got bigger battery inside, and it's heavier than it was because that battery weighs a couple ounces. So it's heavier, and it's got a larger screen. It's got a 7-inch screen.

So it's kind of going outside of the previously common 6-inch Kindle screen. Previously common 6-inch Kindle screen. So it's still their premium, most expensive Kindle. But it's no longer their light Kindle because it's gained that weight. And it's cheaper. So that's good. It starts at $250. And we'll see how it goes.

They're doing some interesting things. They're now doing a storage tier, which they didn't do before, which I think is really funny because e-books are very small. I think they're doing this because they've added Audible support, right? They've added Audible support, yeah. With Bluetooth audio.

So Amazon owns Audible, and you can buy Audible bundles of e-book and audio book, and they've added to this new Oasis, and I think they're rolling it out to a couple of existing models, including the oldasis and maybe um maybe there's one more where they're going to add bluetooth support that apparently there's bluetooth in those devices and it's just turned off bluetooth audio support so that you can also use it pair it with headphones and listen to your audio book if you uh want to stop reading but keep going which is funny because

that's a throwback to the original kindles the original kindles had headphone jacks and you could put audio books on them so this is like the next generation of that which i think is kind of interesting um and then the other big thing which has never before been in existence on a kindle unless you used a ziploc bag in the bathtub like jeff bezos apparently did did he doesn't need to anymore because it's waterproof yeah why would you want a ziplock bag in the bathtub like jeff bezos apparently did did he doesn't need to anymore because it's waterproof yeah why would you want a waterproof kindle like reading the bathtub is that is that the main reason that they've done this yeah that's interesting yeah people and i know so i i realized i was talking to aline sims actually about this who is here um and she said

she was excited about the bathtub uh thing and i realized your feeling about reading in the bathtub has a lot to do with whether you have a good bathtub and i do not our bathtub is uncomfortable yeah just stay on the show no that's not gonna happen um i did when we were in hawaii i i did read in a uh there was a hot tub at the place we were staying um out back and so it's just you know it's out there in the fresh air and a beautiful view in a hot tub and i did read there and i i had the kindle oasis the old one so i would just you know hold it hold it very carefully so as not to drop it in the water and destroy it but um i think there are there are people who read in the bathtub including jeff bezos who i'm not kidding famously said that he used a ziploc bag around his it's

funny because they're it's ipx8 certified for waterproofing which is just funny to me because of like what this certification means like what you can do you can submerge a kindle for two up to two meters for 60 minutes like that's i don't think that's ever going to happen. Well, what I was thinking is that's the rating for, Mom, I dropped the Kindle in the pool. All right, we'll go get it. How long does it take to fish it out of the bottom of the pool? But I feel like Amazon is shifting their tactics here. And this is, look, e-book, e-ink readers are a niche product category,

but they're actually popular we've talked about this every time we talk about the kindle i have to do this disclaimer which is tech nerds think it's dumb because it's black and white and you should just get a tablet but the fact is tech nerds are not the main audience for this product it is people who are the demographic of kindle users i'm sure if amazon actually would release this data which which they never will, but I would say the demographic of Kindle, it's older. There are probably more women than men in this demographic. It is the book reader demographic, which is a very different demographic than the tech nerd demographic. And these are great for reading books.

That's why I have them is they're great for reading text you know on a on a page that's what they're good for and amazon this time is like storage tier audiobook integration direct um waterproofing bigger screen which is new it probably is going to be i have the kobo aura one which is a uh a pretty good ebook reader and and it's like the difference between reading a paperback and reading like a hardcover book or something where it's like got the bigger screen i imagine the oasis is going to kind of be like that um so uh it shows that amazon is still trying stuff with the kindle which i like i don't have a color one right no i mean the color kindle was basically the uh the fire fire tablet right this is still black

and white yeah it's it's just i think they make uh color e-ink but there are issues with it and it's like and it's not important you don't need it but like this is i think that adds to what you were saying about who this product is for like if they were making this for the tech audience they probably would put color in it just because it would be fancy it would be a checkbox and all that but this is this is an uncool product this is not not a product that needs to be cool an echo no you know and i you know i have an ipad and i read on my ipad all the time and when i read novels i read them on a kindle i i prefer to read them on the kindle i prefer the reflective screen it's comfortable uh it is it is easier on my eyes it's it's nice to not be distracted

just you know how i say like working on the ipad feels less distracting than working on the mac because mostly i'm in one app at a time reading on the kindle is way less distracting than reading on the ipad because there's no notifications coming in or anything like that i'm just reading my book so it's yeah it's not for everyone and i think that for people who are sort of more vaguely interested in a kindle um the paperwhite is probably still going to be the better buy because it's way cheaper and like if you're going to buy an e-reader that's kind of disposable and you use it at the beach a couple of times a year the paperwhite is uh is the one i choose because it does have the lighting so you can read it at night without a light.

Does this have a light? Yeah. They all do now. This has like eight, something like there are nine LCD or nine LED backlights in the paper white. And this one's got like 15 or something. This is bigger, right? It makes sense. Yeah.

And it's more evenly lit when they do it that way. So, yeah, I think it's cool. You when they do it that way so yeah i think it's cool you want one or well so i like the oasis the current oasis a lot and one of the things i like about it is you can pop that cover off and it's super light it's like not like there's nothing in your hand it's just there's no weight to it it's great but this isn't and this one is um is i think basically the same weight as the one the current oasis the old oasis in a case but without the case it's way heavier it's like several ounces heavier um so when when this was announced i thought to myself yeah you know i think as a

user of the kindle i oasis i'm not sure i really want to have this um as somebody who writes about this and talks about it i totally ordered it because i decided it was worth it to me to try it out and talk about it and review it and figure out where it fits in my grand which kindle should you buy scheme i think the waterproofing might edge out the weight like the benefit of the waterproofing for a lot of people be like i don't care that it's heavier like i really need it to be waterproof. If you are somebody who takes your Kindle to the beach or the pool or anything like that or reads in the bathtub or a hot tub or something like that. I should have called it the Kindle bubbles or something.

I get it. It is weird to me that they did all of this and didn't give it a new product name. That is strange to me well i think obviously it was um the successor to the oasis they they obviously when they were developing it the fact that it's got that kind of wedge shape where the battery's on one side so you've got your sort of side you grip that's a little bit thicker and then there's the other side which doesn't have that which means it makes it lighter overall and less bulky overall obviously it originated from that same idea so it's that they think about it as an evolution i think there are too many kindles um and that they're that

there's probably a kindle in there that they should probably get rid of but that's where we are so there's also going on to more kind of entertainment e-news in technology there's a few things there's a few things going on this week um that are all relating to movies and how technology companies are evolving their movie efforts the first is a service called movies anywhere which is something that's existed for a while but wasn't massively useful right disney movies anywhere yeah because it is a disney owned property and it was you could buy say you bought a disney movie on itunes or amazon or google play you could link these accounts to disney service and then these movies would be

available for you everywhere both in the disney movies anywhere app and this And this is the really mind-boggling part. If you bought a Disney movie on Amazon, you could download it on iTunes and vice versa across all of these services. This week, Disney extended this to other major studios. It's now called Movies Anywhere, right? They removed the Disney branding from the name. And it includes Warner Brothers, Universal, Fox, and Sony.

I think Paramount is the big holdout. Paramount is the big holdout. But this is wild. So you can buy movies wherever they're cheapest and watch them wherever you want. Yeah, I suspect that their pricing is going to be the same everywhere. But let's imagine there's a because you know you can go to to itunes sometimes and there'll be a like a movie of the day yeah it's possible it's possible but they'll they'll sink everywhere and and um i had this experience

with the disney stuff where we were visiting my mom in arizona and i threw a uh a fire tv stick in my bag just for the trip because she doesn't have any Netflix down there. And, um, I thought we might want to watch movies. And I realized that I had Disney movies anywhere and we brought up the Amazon movie list and the purchase movies was all of the Marvel movies that

I bought on iTunes. And it was like, Oh my God, that is, it's amazing. What it does is it's really good for so the the background here is that the movie studios are concerned that with the rise of streaming services people aren't buying movies anymore because you can just just whatever's on wait wait for it to be on streaming and they want to so it used to be

they were more hostile to us but but now they want us to, they're motivated to make us happy. And so this is, I mean, with that motivation out there, this is a consumer friendly feature. It's them trying to coax us into continuing to buy or resuming buying movies by saying, guess what?

We've decided that despite Apple and Amazon fighting over you, if you buy our movie, you just get it everywhere. You buy a disc with a code, you get it everywhere. And it's not like use the ultraviolet app, which links to this voodoo service you've never heard of. It's like, no, no, no. You will get this on all services. If you want it on Google Play, if you want it on iTunes,

you want it on Amazon, we don't it on itunes you want it on amazon we don't care we don't care if you have an apple tv or amazon fire tv both all of them we literally just you get the movie when you buy the disc or you do a download you get the movie and uh you know maybe that'll maybe that'll work they're trying to make your investment in buying a movie more valuable because they know that if you're um even if you're not going to netflix and watching movies but you're starting to watch movies on set top boxes that stops blu-ray sales because you can't do anything with the blu-ray and if you're like you know us right i definitely had this where i will buy an itunes download and one of the reasons is that it's available

everywhere on my ipad without me having to rip the Blu-ray and copy it to Plex and then put it on my iPad. I can literally just go download in the TV app and it'll download. That is so much more convenient. If you are somebody who might buy a Blu-ray otherwise, this gives

you an out, which is, no, it's covered now. No matter what device you want, it's covered. It's super smart. I get what device you want it's covered it's it's super smart i get why they're doing it but it is a it is a really positive you know good news for consumers kind of thing and it works it's a kind of magical and you get some movies when you sign up for it you get ghostbusters the lego movie and big hero 6 yeah good movies yeah and and uh so i signed up and you link your accounts you sign up to movies anywhere um if you were a disney movies anywhere person you put in that password and stuff uh at some point and

it like relinks it copies that data over so it's sort of a new service but it'll copy your data from disney movies anywhere you log into itunes and amazon and voodoo and google and like all the services they've got if you've got accounts there. So if you've got a bunch of ultraviolet movies that are synced to your Voodoo account, which I did, I had to, I had to, well,

the ultraviolet codes are so stupid because the app is so bad, but there are some digital movies that are over there. And, and that's actually one of these kinds of pro tips is if you've got movies in that stupid ultraviolet locker and it's linked to Voodoo, now you can get the voodoo account to movies anywhere and they all come over so i've got these ultraviolet movies that are suddenly in my itunes account i read on the verge that apple will give you the 4k hdr versions as

well yeah it seems like the um one of the things that's happening here is i think it depends on every studio's deal, because Disney's not on in 4K HDR, right? Disney doesn't have it in a roll, but if the movie exists and you bought it somewhere else. It's going to be a resolution blind service. So I had some movies that I bought not in HD a long time ago. They're all in HD now.

That's another thing that this service seems to do is just grant you like, look, if you get the best version, you bought our movie, you get it in the best version that's available. Yeah. How did Disney convince Apple and Google and Amazon to do this?

It's a good question. That's the part that makes me wonder because i can't work this goes against their business model of erecting walls that make it harder for people to switch like i can see how disney convinced the other studios because they probably had data that showed this is good for you it's been good for us yeah and they saw i mean disney just built this thing right i don't know if disney built it and already had talked to this other studios and they're like no no no or or but whatever it was disney built it they show that it works and all the other studios are like that's that's good and at some point

somebody had a conversation which was you don't even need to don't don't don't try to reinvent this let's just do it let's do it all together let's just turn it into something for everyone like we'll take on our branding off it like we're gonna make this like a consortium deal like yeah you kick in some money for the development efforts and and we'll turn this into a consortium i just assume that either disney or one of the other studios like when going to these companies for deals they're just like yeah we're gonna do this but you're gonna have to do this now yeah because that's the thing is that amazon and apple and google all had to build in support for this which is boggles my mind as well right that it's not just like you have to give us

you have to give people the movies for free right so you're not getting any money out of it you also have to develop hooks into your existing infrastructure which given everything i kind of know about itunes was probably a very difficult thing to do. I could see the argument if you're Apple that it's getting people into your ecosystem too because anything that happens at Google or Amazon or Vudu, Ultraviolet, whatever, is just kind of like swept into iTunes, which makes it super convenient on the apple tv boxes more uh appealing but the argument

the counter argument is all those itunes movies that people have invested in that's the only reason that they're still using an apple tv now they can get a fire stick instead they can just get the fire stick and they're gone so that that's the risk it may just be that they're all like um don't forget that the studios have some leverage here right because they own the content that's what i assume so it may be that just part of the the deal here is that the studios have all said one of the conditions of us being on your services is that you need to provide um this feature that allows our customers to um to have the freedom to move among services and it is interesting to me like considering disney is the forerunner of this and apple don't get 4k disney movies but they've still been able

to convince apple to do this it's like it's a weird bargaining thing going on right now i mean this may have been a condition of disney a while ago or even of other studios even before this got built it might have been in the contract for this which is a provision well i was thinking it's like a provision that says if we bring you a customer for our movie and say give them this movie you have to do it essentially in the contract if the contract is read that way which is we get to arbitrarily um designate people as owning a movie for uh based on codes or whatever which might be like you know you'd buy like a dvd and it would have an itunes code yeah exactly like that that's like a redemption code but so it's possible that legally it was in the contract

yeah and the movie studios came to apple and amazon and google and said here's how here's what we're building to enforce this part of the contract so we you need to do this so it may be that it wasn't even a negotiation it may have already been in the deal and that they decided this is how we want to implement this now here Here's a date, you know, please. And for Apple's part, it sounds like, you know, or any of these companies part, they have to do some authentication and they have to accept some like movie IDs as being granted. It's a development project, though. Somebody at Apple had to spend time building this stuff. And that allows people to take content out of their ecosystem and likewise for amazon and google and as you can imagine us only for now for now but those for nows are infinite well the

that well the fact is yeah we talk about contracts it's a different contract in every single region and so that's a mess it it is a mess but i think there's hope here because what this suggests is that the big players in digital distribution and the uh studios all feel that um this is the way forward or mostly feel that this is the way forward so it may end up everywhere over time just because nobody wants to do it. The old, the old way. This just becomes the way.

Yeah. You get a movie. It's got a code inside. You put that code in at movies anywhere and it pops up in your library, right? You just buy a movie on iTunes and it's on your, it's on your Fire Stick. Yeah, I'm interested to see since Blu-rays are physical objects,

they're going to have to print inserts and put them in there, how long that takes to turn over. But I assume every Blu-ray is going to have a code in it now for this purpose using Movies Anywhere. And that'll be an interesting experience too. But I'm much more inclined to buy a blu-ray knowing that i get the full hd version on all the services um the problem is that they're these guys are also working against themselves if they really if they want to sell blu-rays instead of digital

copies because i almost always buy the digital copy now because it comes out like a month before the blu-ray does yeah and i'm not as obsessive with the blu-ray quality as john syracuse is in my house i don't want more boxes well and i i'm proceed you know i'm ripping all my blu-rays and putting them in plex right and so the goal there is that those blu-rays are going to end up in a in a box yeah in the garage they're not going to be in my house anymore but then it's like i don't want that i just want the digital movie yeah well it's a lot less clutter if you if you uh if you do that which is usually what wins the day for me it's like, I don't want that. I just want the digital movies. Yeah, well, it's a lot less clutter if you do that, which is usually what wins the day for me.

It's like Wonder Woman, Spider-Man Homecoming. I just bought the iTunes version, and now I got them everywhere. Today's episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Use the offer code UPGRADE at checkout, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace lets you easily create the website that you have for your next idea or project.

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we're going to talk about it like it's happening mostly because there's no way it isn't because they hired those two executives and get and according to the wall street journal gave them a billion dollar budget um and now they're and now they're signing on steven spielberg properties like these aren't going to be in we're going to get this these just aren't going to be in apple music anymore. But we'll get to that in a minute. Yeah, Zach von Amberg and Jamie Ehrlich. The Breaking Bad guys, right? Are the guys. Well, there's Sony.

Sony. Which did Breaking Bad. They're not writers. No, but they did the deals. They bring the deals in. Yeah, exactly. And then they hired somebody from, I think, WGN America. And they've got a whole...

A serious team. And apparently in Culver City in LA. So they're like, that's the Apple-powered service office that's got all these TV producers. They're in the industry. This is not Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps. Those are easy jokes to make. But that was like

that was literally like eddie q and his and and the beats people oh wow messing around with stuff that's what eddie did right like that's what they did that's what jimmy irvine did yeah and then they were like oh these suck yeah we need real tv we need to be serious about this and we're going to do this that was their test stuff but we need to be serious so that was like version one yeah so people who who try to say oh well they got to do better than carpool karaoke um yeah this is all about that and this is not going to be like the next one will be amazing stories and then in six months there will be another apple video product that's also not going to happen. Giving these guys that budget is a sign that they're going to make lots of deals. Lots of deals.

So let's talk about this one. What is Amazing Stories? Because this is a reboot of an existing property, right? What is Amazing Stories? I've never heard of it. Amazing Stories is an anthology series from the 80s based on basically the name of a science fiction magazine from the 50s that's still being published.

So it was kind of like The Twilight Zone except lighter and not as good, I would say. There are a lot of people who have very fond memories of amazing stories. My understanding is that those are the people who were sort of 10 years old when it premiered. I was 15. I was not impressed. But some people liked it. But the idea is it's an anthology series.

So think Black Mirror, except not as dark as Black Mirror, because there's nothing as dark as Black Mirror. It's the blackest. But it's... anthology series. So think Black Mirror, except not as dark as Black Mirror because there's nothing as dark as Black Mirror. It's the blackest. But it's... None more black. So every... Yeah. So every episode is going to be different, a different story. Okay.

And... Is this like that... They say that Brian Fuller is going to be the showrunner on it. Is it American Horror Story? Is it like that? No, that's anthologized across seasons. So you have one story across a season. Or lore. Right? The Iron Mankey show. So you have one story across a season. Or lore.

Right? The Iron Mankey show. That's different things every episode. Every episode. Yeah, it's like that. The new Amazon show. Black Mirror, I think, is like the most relevant modern example. Although there's also a room something or other on HBO that's like this.

Or Showtime. I don't watch scary things. I don't know. So this is that. I don't want scary things. I don't know. So this is that. This is genre stories, science fiction, fantasy, horror,

in basically short stories. So one episode tells a story. Most of the week type deals. And that also means director and writer and stars of the week. So presumably they'll have well-known actors. Black Mirror has a lot of very well-known actors in it because they're not committing to being on a series. They're shooting a 60-minute movie and then they're gone. So it's going to be like that.

That's what that show is. Brian Fuller, who created Star Trek Discovery, who is the showrunner on American Gods. He did Hannibal. He's done a bunch of other stuff. He's apparently the showrunner, which is interesting because he's always sort of said his story for why he left Star Trek Discovery was that he was too busy running American Gods, which always was suspicious, but now it's like extra suspicious. Then again, this is an anthology show. So Brian Fuller is a good name. He was given a lot of money by Apple. Brian Fuller was given a – he's a good name to attach to it creatively okay and

since it's an anthology series it may be a matter of like let's have brian fuller come in and define what this show is and pick what the stories are pick some directors but he doesn't necessarily have to he maybe he writes the first episode but otherwise he's finding the writers and the directors and the stories that they're going to do. And then we'll see. But it's $5 million an episode for 10 episodes. That feels like a big budget. Is that big? That's $50 million, but it's out of a billion. But no, but like per episode.

I mean, obviously, you know a lot about money TV to me. I'd say that's a standard big budget TV show thing. It's not cheap. But I think the Star trek discovery episodes cost like seven million an episode eight million an episode game of thrones is probably more like a billion like 10 million an episode so dragons are really expensive dragons understanding they eat a lot it's been reported as well that apple are in lots of bidding wars i mean there's there's lots of lots of rumbling about all the bidding wars that they're in. So they got a billion dollars, right? So they are talking to people and they're bidding on content.

And so the best example, Ryan Murphy, who does American Horror Story, and Glee, and a bunch of stuff. What a tone shift. Glee is the outlier for him, I got to say. Most of his stuff is... It's like Old dark and then the happiest happiness was him too which is a super weird show so wow okay what what what a interesting portfolio yeah oh yeah he's an interesting i don't i don't love his stuff but he is he is he knows what he

is doing and what he's good at um so he's got a show called ratchet which is based it's like it's a little you know how um they did the psycho prequel which is called baits motel this is like evil nurse ratchet from one flew over the cuckoo's nest and it's like how she became oh wow evil nurse ratchet uh that's the show bidding wars over it apple was apparently strongly involved in bidding for that show and didn't get it. They lost to Netflix. Apparently Netflix got it by packaging together a super sweet deal for American Horror Story to continue streaming on Netflix. And a two-season commitment to Ratched. So basically they were like,

we're going to give you all the money up front. And Apple kind of was like, no, we're not going to, it feels like rich for Netflix. Maybe made a deal to push Apple out, right? Like they're trying to make sure that Apple isn't getting,

cause that's a, and we should say Netflix is content acquisition budget is about $7 billion next year. So Apple's only, Apple's not leaping to that. You can't can't i mean you can't go from zero to you can't go to seven billion that doesn't you can't do that one billion is stage one of this but the point is they're playing in this game and they've got money to spend which is why the spielberg deal is interesting so on the podcast i do with tim goodman on the incomparable tv talk

machine we've been talking about this a while and in fact, for a couple of weeks, we've been saying, wait for it, there will be a big name attached to Apple. They will make a splash and this is it, I guess I would say.

Steven Spielberg's a pretty big splash. but this is the first in a series of deals. Like, there will be another one in a few weeks. There will be another one in a few weeks. There will be another one after that.

They will make, with a billion dollars, they could buy 20 shows. They're not gonna do that. They'll probably buy 10 shows. HBO's got probably 15 shows going over the course of a year. I think Apple wants to get to maybe that level. Probably won't get their write-off.

They'll probably fund some original movies too. They'll buy some movies. We'll see in the mean i i feel like i can tell you what is going to happen in the next six months they're going to make a deal with an actor that you've heard of they're going to make a deal with the creator of a show it's like a boardwalk empire type deal right let's find a big movie actor and put them in a tv show yeah i mean and there was a rumor that they're talking to vince gilligan who did breaking bad. Jennifer Aniston. Apparently there's a show with Jennifer Aniston and somebody else that, that has been shopped around that they've been talking about.

Um, Vince Gilligan and Brian Cranston from breaking bad have both apparently been like talking to them. Apple's also trying to talk to, to people. And these guys who, these guys have a relationship with the breaking bad guys, but they're also talking to people who they, like but they've never worked with before so they you

know uh hollywood reporter did a good story about this so those are going to pay off some of those deals are going to get made and people are going to be all of a sudden people are going to look in like six months and they're going to be like oh apple's already got five shows in production it's still going to take until like the end of next year before they show up but that's going to happen and um and because they got a billion dollars to spend and they will go to film festivals that's going to happen they're going to go to a film festival and they're going to buy some movies and people are going to go like where are those going and the answer is going to be they're going wherever all this other stuff is going on apple's stuff and they will they will buy some catalog stuff too.

They'll buy streaming rights. Do you think so? Yeah, I feel like, there's a question about what this service is, but I feel like if it's only these originals, it's gonna feel kind of skimpy. So I would imagine that they will buy some films and they'll probably play it as,

you know, these are some of the most popular movies on, on iTunes. And now you can stream them for free with your subscription. Just movies. They're trying to TV. Maybe. Why?

Like you wrote a great piece, which came out from like a long Twitter exchange. Yes. Which I was a million people that you had over the weekend and it brought about a lot of this stuff but and there's one thing you mentioned in here it's like why not just buy hulu well so tim goodman says that he thinks that what they should do hulu is owned by three tv networks and a cable company. The TV networks, it's a real question whether they want,

they're almost like frenemies to Hulu. They all probably want to do their own streaming services. Like ABC Disney owns part of Hulu. But they're going to launch their own streaming services. So why are they in Hulu? The idea was Hulu was a thing that networks could do to claim that they were doing something in streaming video when they weren't. It was an as well thing.

Like we're also here as well. We also are present, right? It was a tough thing for them to do. They've always had this. So what Tim has suggested is if Apple buys Hulu, they get Hulu's original content, they get Hulu's streaming deals, at least for a while, because those are all renegotiable.

They get Hulu's infrastructure. If you think about Beats Music, Apple Music is built on the back of Beats Music. It's already built. That's the example to push. You'd be like, oh, why would they do that? Well, they did it already. Apple wanted to launch a streaming music service,

so they bought one and then changed it into their own. And Hulu actually has a live TV service too that could be integrated directly into Apple TV. Because the real key is like, okay, so let's just say this thing costs $10 a month. There has to be stuff there. You can't start charging $10 a month when you have just one show, right?

Because CBS All Access is charging $5 a month for you have just one show right like because cbs all access is charging five dollars a month for essentially star trek discovery although they've got even they have their old their cbs back catalog their stuff that's why i think i think they have to have catalog stuff so even if they don't buy hulu which would cost them like 25 billion dollars it would be a very expensive purchase but apple might be actually a better owner for hulu than the networks and cable companies that own it now um counter argument to hulu apple buying hulu is if they bought hulu hulu's got its own programming executives and their own original content they wouldn't necessarily have needed to hire these guys um but it doesn't preclude them from still buying when i think about

buying that they're really buying it for technology if they want to use it. But they're buying out the contracts. That's the value is buying the deals. And they would own The Handmaid's Tale, which won the Emmy for best drama. They would just own it at that point. Because you know, like, they want, Apple want awards so bad. Oh, sure. Well, that's definitely going to be part of the story, right?

Apple is going to want to win an Emmy award for something. Because that's done so good for Amazon. Yeah yeah it's done really well for hulu like hulu is on the map now because of the handmaid's tale in a way that they weren't but like i think like transparent and stuff like the amount of awards transparent one it's like it it's legit and then the high castle did that too is that the quote from bezos every time we win an emmy we sell more shoes or something like that like it's you know i love that quote it makes total sense but like that's the way he that's the way he thinks too so if they don't buy hulu though i do think that they need something so it maybe it's old tv shows old tv shows seems like a weirder

fit for them sets though than old movies but yeah you throw the office and parks and rec and 30 rock they can also buy a lesser streaming service and throw the or a few and throw them all together so what exists like um like acorn is a good example acorn well you wouldn't because you get it in in britain it's called television acorn is a a primarily a british tv streaming service it's got some european tv okay as well but it's primarily like british current and classic british tv and that it's a niche uh streamer and they could buy some some some little streamers and put them together make some deals for some movies and call it a day and have a better package of stuff to show um but i do i i agree if they if they do 10 original series

they're not going to roll them out at once right because then they'll run for 10 weeks and then they'll be done and then what then there's nothing only the crickets are tripping no you get no push on any of them when there's too many about hbo's originals right hbo's got two or three originals on maybe four at a time and they are staggered across time that's kind of the level they need to offer it would if that was all would it be enough maybe but i feel like there's you know i don't want to overstate this but i think it's important for them to have some catalog stuff too and the movies make sense to me from a like a pr perspective of like also we've got these this great selection of movies that's favorites from the itunes catalog that you can watch for free that's how you spin it but in

reality it's like we made some content deals for some old movies just like hbo does because hbo's got you know some recent releases yep and then they've got a catalog of old weird old stuff like i i watch batman forever on hbo because because we were doing it for the incomparable and i i i went to uh fan tv which is like a streaming catalog and they're like oh it's on hpl go i'm like great that's and it's terrible but it was there so i could watch that so free do you think do you think this is a separate service this isn't gonna be apple music right big question because it really feels like you're putting a billion dollars into this don't call it music when it's not music well if they if they rolled into apple music they'd have to change the name um i think that would be bad for everything if i had to pick i would pick if

i had to guess about what's going to happen i'd say it's a separate service because music consumers and video consumers are different apple wants more money from consumers so maybe they offer a bundle or something but it's like it's a separate service amazon you get video when you get prime you still have to pay extra if you want the full music library they still have that as a separate service google is talking about rolling play into um into uh youtube bread google play all music all access music now they're like saying if you get but it's like youtube music is what they're really pushing yeah but i think google the google play music is going to get rolled in there too i think so but it's like 15 a month it's it's not it's not a a nine dollar seven dollar a month video service at that point so my gut feeling

is it'll be a we'll say ten dollars a month maybe it's seven dollars a month or five dollars a month with a 90-day trial so when you get your, when you get an Apple TV, you get three months of it for free and all of that is there. They'll do that. And then maybe there's a bundle where you can get the, you know, the package deal for both Apple music and Apple, whatever.

They already used the good name. So Apple TV is taken. Apple TV is a good name for it anyway. I think that Apple, why not just the tv app is already there right yeah it just becomes apple tv box and apple the apple tv service and there's an argument about like well what about movies movies aren't tv it's like apple has with the tv app apple has already said that they consider any video that you watch on a device that you own tv you're watching it on even the movies movies, you watched them on the TV.

Or on your iPad, but there's a TV app on your iPad. So you're either watching it on your TV via an Apple TV or you're watching it on your iPad or iPhone via the TV app. It's all TV. So I think the Apple TV as a product, you know,

conflating it with Apple TV as a service, maybe that's, I don't know, maybe that's been the plan all along. But I feel like... I feel it's a way to help sell Apple TVs. But I feel like that's the idea. And then it's only available on the Apple TV as a streamer box. And so if you want Apple TV, you get an Apple TV,

and then you get Apple TV. Is that a problem? Because, like, if I want Netflix shows, if I want Amazon shows, I can get them mostly anywhere. If Apple creates their own tv shows should they restrict it on the apple apple and i was like ios devices and tv devices depends on what they want to do right i think apple has this kind of vision of their revenue as a um it's a combination of things like if this was a pure services revenue thing,

they would put it everywhere. Make an app for Android. But they want. Apple Music's on Android. Yeah, but I, but is that the legacy of there being beats on Android? I don't know. I don't think so.

I mean, they had an existing app. They could have just shut that down. And an existing developer. They could have. I, it's a good, that's a good counter argument and i thought about that and it's possible my gut feeling is the most likely scenario is apple wants this to be a revenue generator for services but their whole services strategy is to get more

revenue out of people who are their customers not get random services revenue from people who don't have apple products. So that they, I think they want to view this as a way to drive people to buy an Apple TV. I think that would be a mistake. I don't know. I could go either way. I mean.

Because the Apple TV is too expensive. Does Apple, the question is, does Apple want this service, does Apple want the Apple TV service to be everywhere and, or do they want it to be a lever to use to get people to buy an apple device i think if the plan is which i think it's obvious is more services revenue i think the best thing you do is make it available to everybody like if

your goal is we want to get more recurring revenue, the easiest way to do that is to put it on Android as well. I think it's a good argument. Because you open it up to anyone with a device. Yeah, it's a good argument. I see there are good arguments on either side for this. Exactly, yeah. So I don't know what the right thing to do from a business standpoint is.

I do know that if I put myself in the mind of apple restricting it to apple hardware seems most likely thing to do yeah but the precedent of apple music on android is what puts a question mark over my head because apple music is the same strategy it's the strategy of we need recurring revenue so what i would also say is this is a video service it wouldn't shock me if what they do is they put it on android and they put it in itunes on mac and pc but restrict it to apple tv as a streamer box and say look if you want our TV service on your TV. No that's what I think they would do. They put it on Android so you can watch it on the go but if you want to watch it on the television

the only way to watch it. Buy our box. Yeah they won't be on they won't make an Amazon Fire app. They won't make a Chromecast compatible thing but I think they would make an Android app to watch it on the go. And people will say oh well this is ridiculous I'm never going to pay money for this. I'm never going to buy an Apple TV for it.

It's like, okay. But when they announce that fill-in-the-blank creator of your favorite show has a new show with fill-in-the-blank star that you love. Yeah. From the producers of Breaking Bad starring this amazing cast that you love. And then there's this other show that also sounds really cool that they're doing and they're only on apple tv then you start to go well apple tv also does do netflix and amazon it's a little expensive but it's the only way i'm going to get to watch this show and will everybody do that no of course not there's a lot of arguments in the

tech world are well everybody won't do it and therefore it will be a failure and it's like this is the what i hear about the star trek being on cbs all access instead of netflix in the u.s um and they're like oh well not as many people are going to watch it so it's a failure it's like actually they're going to make their building they're building an entire streaming service on the back of this thing it's probably going to work for them they probably don't care that it's going to be 10 of the viewers that they would get if they put it on television because that's not the point the point is the money revenue and the ongoing subscriber revenue and all of those things so um that's what i come back to with that the apple thing is yeah

they're going to suppress viewership the only people who care about the fact that that amazing new show is not going to be seen potentially by as many people because it requires you to have Apple hardware are the people who are creating the shows because they want to be seen. And that's Tim Goodman wrote this piece at the Hollywood Reporter. It's a really great piece. Part of the deal here is money talks in Hollywoodwood but they also care about the things they make the creators and there is some risk that if apple's uh apple service is perceived as being super limited then um it will uh make deals go sour yep when do you think we're going to start to see some of this stuff happening? Next fall.

Okay. I can't... So you reckon a couple of shows will be announced as in development? Well, no, I think in the next six months, Apple will close like 10 deals. So was this billboard show like officially announced or was it, or was it just reported?

Although it's been, it's been reported for a while that they've been talking and talking to Apple, but this is the wall street journal reported this. Like is this, was this reported as a rumor or is there like, this is an official release. This is done both.

It was, it was, Oh, it hasn't been official. Oh, okay. It is reported by the wall street journal as having happened okay not as rumored but as a fact that they made this deal right previously in the hollywood reporter it was rumored that they were talking but wall street journal anyway says it happened deal is done so but they haven't said anything about it and i think that's one of the challenges here is that apple probably doesn't want to say anything about this

until they have a service to launch. So we may just get a lot of leaks from, the Wall Street Journal's a little surprising. I think we're going to get a lot of leaks from Variety and the Hollywood Reporter and Deadline. I mean,

the Wall Street Journal would have been surprising but it's technology. It's technology related, right? They still have sources. They're going to get it. At some point, it's better for Apple

to be in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter because that's where the industry is and cares. So the deals are going to happen over the next six months. I would say you're going to see rolling thunder from Apple. This feels very serious. It's going to be a lot of deals. It's not going to be just amazing stories. I feel like these guys are there to make deals, and they've been given money according to wall street journal they've been

given a billion dollars to make deals they're gonna make deals and i bet if they needed more money they'll get it right and my guess is that apple has an idea of like we want to launch this in the fall we want to announce it in june at wwc and and we'll launch it in the fall or we'll announce it they'll probably announce it in june um and we'll announce the in the fall, or we'll announce it, they'll probably announce it in June, and we'll announce the launch date at the iPhone event in the fall, and it will launch sometime in the fall. And that sometime will probably be determined by when the shows are ready,

but that's about how long it takes. Like, to go from making a deal to having the script, doing the casting, setting up the production, shooting the show, editing the show, that takes time. It takes a lot of time to make a TV show.

So I think it's most likely that it'll be a new Apple TV service next fall. What do you think about originals versus existing properties? For apple launching this now does it make sense for them to try and create purely original things or is it more sensible for them to do stuff like buying an old series and rebooting i think they i think well this is a programming question and it's the same like with netflix like netflix's strategy is get something for everyone and netflix releases so many shows because they are paying seven times as much as

i can't believe the amount of originals they have it's like there's so many that i've never heard of yeah and and it's so easy to miss them and they will also do you know they'll do fuller house right they'll do a broad sitcom that's not going to appeal necessarily to the same people to whom stranger things appeal or knockers or something or or uh yeah exactly or bloodline or master of none or uh bojack that would be a great game show is like we go back and forth trying to name as many netflix originals as possible but it might be too long it goes on forever i mean but my favorite thing about netflix being outside of the US is all of the deals that they do

with US networks. So we love Jane the Virgin. Right. And now it is streaming weekly on Netflix. Which Netflix, and that's counter to Netflix's brand because Netflix's brand is about dropping a whole season

and binging it. But Netflix has made a lot of deals. That's how we got Breaking Bad. They're doing that with Star Trek Discovery, too. And it comes out every week, and there are a lot of U.S. shows that instead of making a deal with a British TV channel and then a French TV channel and a German TV channel, they just make a deal with Netflix.

Netflix buys it for the whole world, and you get it the next day everywhere in the world, and it releases weekly. It's really good. So that's a nice sidebar, which is I expect that Apple will roll this service out, if not initially, then very rapidly internationally. This is a thing that Apple has over Amazon and Google, which is they really try to play internationally with their entertainment services. And Amazon is bad at that. Amazon's in a handful of countries. So I imagine these deals that they're making,

they're going to make for the originals anyway. They're going to make for worldwide. Yeah, because they own the content so they can put it wherever they want. And they already have the distribution method. Right. But like if all the original stuff, it'll be easy. Well, we're making the deals.

So like we'll just decide it's going to be worldwide. So in terms of what the programming is, I don't think they don't have a $7 billion budget budget i don't think they're going to cast a wide night like netflix i don't think they're going to make fuller house hbo is what i keep coming back to you could say showtime you could say stars but i feel like apple apple feels like a premium cable to me like in terms of their brand yeah so far they've not done a good job of that but it's all apple music though right so that's a good thing so they didn't launch the tv service with carpool karaoke so this is this is the question is in that meeting with eddie q and maybe tim cook

and um and zach and jamie the tv executives what did they say about the brand of apple like what did they say we want to be family friendly did they say we want to be like hbo did they say about the brand of apple like what did they say we want to be family friendly did they say we want to be like hbo did they say we want to be like netflix what did they say my gut feeling is they want to be hbo they want prestige they want to win awards but they also want game of thrones everybody in the tv industry wants game of thrones jeff bezos wants the name next game of thrones netflix wants the next game of thrones everybody wants that so of course they said that but that's my gut feeling is like HBO is a good model because they have huge international hits

they've got prestige they win awards they got comedies they got dramas they got some docu series and they wrap all that up and that's their service that they sell to cable subscribers or over the top with hbo now so that's my gut feeling is that is that maybe it'll be a little different there's a question about like how how gritty will they get if they get like a really grim and gritty thing uh will apple be concerned about that being part of the apple brand i think that gets overplayed where people talk about apple and disney and pixar Pixar. I think it gets overstated. They sell the movies and TV shows. They sell them. They will be rated R, TVMA content.

You can buy Game of Thrones on iTunes. Yeah. You can do it. You buy the underrated versions of movies on iTunes. I didn't know that. So I don't think. But those aren't from Apple, right? Those are from a studio and Apple's the reseller.

This is like from Apple, right? Those are from a studio and Apple's the reseller. This is like from Apple, Apple presents. But I still think, my gut feeling is, it's still going to be stuff like HBO. Because the thing is, if the plan is you want the awards, well, sometimes people are going to get naked.

Because that's what happens in award-winning TV shows. It's true. You're just going to have to deal with that. These two things come together. They're not all going to be like that. But I think they will push the envelope with some stuff and then they'll have some other stuff that is that is less so it wouldn't surprise me if they're not quite as

aggressive with the adult content as hbo that some of their stuff will be more adult and some of the stuff will be more kind of like tv level yeah they'll do some tv and some cable tv and some premium cable because not everybody wants stuff like that right you know and but that's my that's my gut feeling is that they'll do that and that the first slate will reflect that but we'll see we'll see what the marching orders are that that these execs have been given because that's part of the deal like that's their magic stuff is they know people but they also are trying to adhere to you know what this what the promise of the brand is like what what are they trying to bring to people because in the end apple does

want to build a service where people know it has an identity like i know what i get when i subscribe to apple tv like i know what i get when i subscribe to hbo or show. I bet you're so happy about this. Because this is just like Jason's wheelhouse. My world's colliding here. TV and technology. It is pretty awesome. Well, it's fun. I love talking about it. I will say it does frustrate me

when I hear the carpool karaoke jokes. Because they are justified. Planet of the Apps jokes are the best too because that was not a show i liked they are justified to joke about that because apple's flailing kind of attempts at tv have been not great but they hired all of this was done before they hired these people right like it was done yeah they hired these guys in june that was the that was the day that day in june that was the day that apple got serious about this time that eddie got taken off the project right like yeah well i mean i think they report to eddie but like eddie one of the good things about eddie q i think is that he he knows to put

the professionals in charge of their business yeah and this is like these guys would these guys are set up in culver City and they're doing Apple TV. And that's what they're doing. And that was the day that Apple got serious about video. And all the jokes are totally earned, but if you're analyzing Apple making a deal with Spielberg using the

lens of Planet of the Apps... You're looking at it wrong. Yeah, that's malpractice. You're looking at it wrong. So the downside of this is I've been paying attention to this long enough that i see those takes i've seen those takes in the last week and they infuriate me because that's somebody who is um either willfully misunderstanding or uh or just completely doesn't get it it's just dying to make the joke right like yeah the joke is more important and it's like hey we can we should all laugh at planet of the apps you know what i bet there was some really bad netflix originals like at the start you know i bet there were some terrible ones

right like that's just how it is before imagine like netflix made its own movie tv series and put it out on dvds before they had streaming like it's like the before time yeah like there is a hard line between when they hired these guys and what came before, because that was the moment that Apple became a Hollywood player. And those guys were hired in June, but they didn't start until late August. So now is when this is all going to happen.

Now they've taken, they started taking meetings and planning their attack. They've made one acquisition. There will be many more. Apple has enough money to buy 20 original series at an average of 50 million per i don't think they'll do that and i think that the the cost will be up and down i think they'll buy some documentaries and i think they'll buy some some movies and i think they'll do some other stuff but it'll be fun to see what they are that's

the thing that fascinates me about this too is like what is an apple video service what does it mean who who is it for what's it going to look like and what what big names that are familiar to us are they gonna are gonna be attached to the apple brand for the first time that's kind of fun right like some actor you love who suddenly is going to be showing up on stage at an apple event somewhere to promote their tv show they're all gonna be on stage oh oh yeah no this is our life now steven spielberg with king no bingo man with our with our keynote draft we're gonna have to start we're gonna have a whole section of our draft they're gonna that's where they announced the big tv shows they're like oh and we have a new show with and brian cranston comes on the stage and his vintage apple jacket and he spends a few minutes talking about i think he stole that from drake today's show is brought to you by balance balance have just launched balance open this is

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we will start with andrew and andrew asked mac desktops have the option to get a magic mouse and a magic trackpad when you buy them is there there a reason to do this? Well, that should be for you, right? Don't you have two input devices? So I use a Wacom tablet and a trackpad. So what I do, and I have and did use a mouse and trackpad. Yeah, and I know other people who do the same thing because of RSI. They use certain movements they use on their offhand, and then they have another hand for other movements.

To find movements. So what you get to do is, by having two input methods, you get to give dominant hands a break, which is really good for RSI. So you're kind of moving around what you're doing. So say, for example, just in general web browsing, I'm moving around the machine. If I'm panning around, I use the trackpad.

If I'm trying to click something, I use my Wacom tablet. When I'm editing, my trackpad is used for navigating the timeline of logic, right? So I zoom around, zoom in. That's all with gestures with my right hand. And then my left hand is doing all the important work with Wacom tablets. So the reason to do this is that it gives you a way

to kind of mix everything up. And if you get used to it, it's a really efficient and kind of cool way. It kind of feels a bit like to have your hands doing all this stuff at all times. So, yeah, that's probably why they offer it, because it is actually a nice pairing to have. Josh asked, will we ever see mouse pointer support on iOS or just the iPad? Do you think we're ever going to get a mouse for iOS? I feel like it's getting closer all the time. I feel like it's getting closer,

and that anything that we would assume Apple would never do on iOS, we need to throw away, because they've done all sorts of things that we assume they would never do. I posted, my friend Chip wrote a story on Six Colors a couple years ago about Bluetooth pointing device support in iOS. And I agree with him. And I feel like ever since they did the text insertion cursor thing, that I wish they would just support Bluetooth pointing devices. Just like support them for that. And maybe for some other gestures right like it doesn't have to be a big thing but um i don't want a mouse or i don't want a cursor on screen all the time

that you click around on i don't think that's the right interface for ios but i think that they could do more i think that there are cases where a pointing device is useful. Selecting text, let me tell you, as somebody who writes all the time, selecting text, that I-beam cursor that they have where you put two fingers down on the iPad or your 3D touch on the iPhone, it's great. It frustrates me that I can't just have a trackpad

when I'm sitting on my iPad, sitting at a table looking at my iPad to do that. Like that would be great. Just the little text selection cursor would be enough, right? I don't need a whole windowing system. That's all I need. So I hope they do it. The other thing is um virtual

like like uh consoles like screens and all of that some of those there you can buy yeah citrix has a we spoke about a while ago you have to buy that special mouse citrix have it and then jump desktop and the citrix x1 citrix x1 mouse which I bought to try out, and it works really great. I would love to be able to use a mouse with Google Sheets because Google Sheets can get real complicated. And if I could use a trackpad built into it, like just a trackpad built into the smart keyboard, I would be very happy with that.

Also, as somebody who uses the iPad in a stand with a keyboard all the time, and you do too, I'd really rather, when all I'm doing is scrolling and swiping, I would really love to be able to do that while keeping my hands down rather than reaching it up. Yeah, a way to scroll a webpage

without scrolling the screen would be kind of nice. Please don't tell me to buy a laptop. No, no. Don't do it. Don't email Mike. The fact is you should not have to buy a citrix mouse right yeah you should be able to use again individual apps could support it it doesn't have to be that there's a big black arrow on the

screen all the time but like yeah if i I'm in screens and I have a... I shouldn't... Screens has a mode where you use your iPhone as a trackpad. That's cool, but you know what's better than an iPhone as a trackpad? Trackpad. A trackpad. Funnily enough. So if I have to do that,

there are certain circumstances where I think it would be useful. I think the fear is that you're opening Pandora's box and turning it back into a Mac, but that's not what we're saying. Just like drag and drop and multitasking and all of these other things that they brought from the desktop, don't turn it into a Mac.

It's a different take on it. I don't think iOS is a platform that can't take advantage of pointing devices because we've already seen that in certain cases it can. So why not just embrace that for the edge cases? It's not going to be a fundamental part of the product, but for the edge cases, why not do that? Why not let the, here's the crazy ones who want to pair a trackpad. Let's do it.

And I will say one of my thought exercises that I like to do is imagining a desktop iPad, you know, imagining a 24-inch iPad. Even if it's in a position where you can touch it and all of that, you're probably going to have an external keyboard and a pointing device would be really good in that scenario too. It might be a bit too big to be like just pulling stuff around on the screen the screen all the time you know but for gestures and flipping around and all that yeah you may not want to always be touching like reaching the top right hand corner of the screen you know if it's 24 inches because it's probably going to be suspended or like on the table or something and again not asking for a mac solution here where it just turns it into a mac i'm saying maybe products like that and and even even an iPad that's sitting upright with an external keyboard could be

improved by having the ability to add a pointing device. So Josh, the answer to your question is I don't know if we're ever going to see it, but I hope we do. I feel like the genie is out of the bottle with the iBeam cursor for text selection.

If you're going gonna allow us to move a cursor on the screen apple let me have a device that lets me do it more easily adam says uh you guys both often discuss your frequent use of dropbox and google docs why not do both files and docs in google drive so one of the reasons for me is i forget that google drive is a storage solution for anything other than google documents and photos which aren't really stored there no right it's just a so this is why because the documents don't really exist in google drive like the google doc stuff i forget that i can put anything in it right because it's just like well this is just the place where files that don't exist exist yes that's right and the people that I collaborate with everybody uses Dropbox I'm not going to say to someone hey use Google Drive instead

and apps integrate better with the Dropbox API that's why so Google Drive it's just where my docs live. It's not my storage solution. Yeah, I have not tried to do like shared folders and all of that. But you're right, everybody's got Dropbox. It's the power of freemium too in a way that like, even though you can get Google Drive with free space too, it's like everybody's got the Dropbox app installed. Everybody knows how to do that. And so it's sort of like i've already adopted it

and it and i think it's powerful also it has the strength like so many apps do of being what dropbox does whereas google drive is not what google does it's a an adjunct and so i feel like dropbox is always going to be hungrier at building features and reliability for Dropbox than Google is for Google Drive. They're very hungry with their design. Have you seen those scribbly things? My concern is that Dropbox is losing focus, and now they're saying, well, we're really not a company for storage. We're a place to collaborate.

We're a place to collaborate and design and all that with Dropbox paper and all that. It's like, no, that's not what you are. Sorry. Adrian wants to know, Jason, are you still using Todoist? I am. Yes. I went through about a week where I forgot to open it. But it was a weird week, and I was traveling, and it was weird.

But yes, I am using it. I've got a bunch of monthly tasks in there for the six colors magazine i've got a bunch of weekly tasks especially for download having to schedule uh download podcast uh guests and make sure that the download topic list is uh is up and running how's that going steven oh he's around here he's away doing it now he's gone already um and i have uh podcast posting to do's in there now where i've got like free agents every other week there's a post so it's it's still on my calendar but it's also in my to-do list um my my complaints my issues with to-do lists are still uh that i keep thinking of things based on that I need to do them by a

certain date, but they take more time and get frustrated that I can't say like, I have this, I have to watch. So like, I have to watch these movies for an incomparable episode recording on Friday. So I want a thing that says, remember, you have to watch two movies by Friday. Todoist doesn't want to do that. Todoist wants me to either put that on Friday, in which case I'm not going to see it until it's too late. Or I have to create it earlier, which is not the real deadline, in order to tell me. I could do that and have it be. So you want like start dates.

Yeah. And we've talked about this before. It's like that's one of the challenges I've got with it is it really thinks of like todoist as this is a relatively small thing you can check off on a certain day and that's not quite what i want i wanted to kind of hover over me and say remember this needs to be due by friday and it will take four hours due by friday due by friday it's totally different yes i am i am trying to integrate it. I am trying to find ways to... What's happening now is that I have things

that fall out of the Snell filing system, which is my brain. And I'm like, oh, yeah. And I think this is the sort of thing I should put in Todoist. So we'll see how it goes. But I am sticking with it for now along... The calendar still is a thing that I use because it is how my brain works but to do list is um is helping a compliment it's helping

me out for now colton asked why is the chromecast usually left out when talking about tv box competition it's true when we talk about we just did it didn't mention chromecast at all now the reason i don't is because it's not a TV box. It is not a box that has an interface. It is a way to, it's like AirPlay. It's just a way to stream stuff, right? Like that, I think that's why I leave it out. It doesn't feel like the same product to me as an Apple TV or Roku or Fire TV. People don't build apps for it. It's like, does it do just the support for Chromecast already exist in other places? If it does, you can Chromecast to it, right?

You can do the casting thing and you can watch it on the TV. That's why I leave it out because it doesn't have that same feeling of like, is Google going to do deals for Chromecast? Like it doesn't feel that way, you know? What do you think? Yeah, you said it. I think that's the... Okay, I'm going to be a little impolitic here but i feel like this is one of those examples where google is run by people

who don't understand how people think um and i know there are a lot of tech nerds out there who love chromecast of course there are it's a don nerds out there who love Chromecast. Of course there are. It's a dongle that you attach to your TV and then control everything from your phone. That's a tech nerdy kind of thing. I think most people, like there's no there there. There's no home there. It really is. I'm a tech nerd.

I do not want to sit down in front of my television and then pop around on my phone looking for an app to stick on the television. And then find the button. I don't do that. This is why I don't like to AirPlay. AirPlay is a last resort. I will AirPlay if I have to. If there's an app that lets me AirPlay that isn't available on the Apple TV, I will do it. But I hate it. I hate it because now I've got a device that is streaming over my

network is it going to be reliable how's that going to work I know that Chromecast will pick up the URL and we'll go out and find it itself so it's not like that but it's like I'm suddenly my phone is a remote and if it works for you that's great but it's not the same as these other products and and that's why and that don't know how it works but like it doesn't feel like they're doing deals they just like open this up as a way to say to developers oh you can integrate with this so it's like a different strategy and i think that's why we don't bring it up because the apple tv and the fire tv they are backed by companies that are trying to make original content right like that's what makes that interesting is that it's more than just the thing

you plug into the television. And I think that's why Google kind of gets left out of this in places. Yeah, their thing is turn your, your device is the best remote, they say. And I don't agree. Remotes are really nice in general. And there's no there there.

I believe that Chromecast, as far as I know, and forgive me, I'm sure there are exceptions here, but to me, Chromecast is a wireless video adapter. It's a plug. It's not a place for stuff like the fire tv and roku and the apple tv it's and it if it works for you again i'm not saying you're a bad person if you like chromecast chromecast has a lot of things going for it but it's not one of these things is not like the other and and and that's why and i it to me it's like one of those things

that i point out and i say google like you're so weird like why is why is this your strategy that everything is an app everything is an android app on your phone and the chromecast well we don't need uh an interface on it we don't need a remote your device is the best remote yeah i don't i don't agree with that just like i don't agree when vizio um put out those tvs that didn't have remotes because you're supposed to use your phone it's like no uh-uh no and lastly today simon asked at 199 is the sonos one the homepod killer so the sonos one was announced a couple weeks ago yeah it is the sonos One, the HomePod killer. So the Sonos One was announced a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. It is the Sonos Play One, which is their little speaker,

but it has Amazon Echo support. Yep. It's going to get Google Home support and AirPlay 2. It's $199. So that's $200 cheaper than the HomePod. I don't like the phrase, the killer. No. Because it never worked.

Anything that's called the something killer never killed anything. Yes. But is the Sonos One serious competition for the HomePod? Yes, but... Are people going to buy it? My guess, because I've got to play one, which is basically the same, other than the voice support.

And it sounds good. The HomePod sounds better. The HomePod sounds better than the Play 3, let alone the Play 1. The HomePod has Siri integration, which is problematic in many ways, but it also is going to let you voice control Apple music so if you're an apple music subscriber you can't do that on the play on the whatever it's called the sonos one right because the the amazon echo stuff almost said her name the amazon echo stuff um will let

you voice control amazon's music stuff yeah and maybe i think spotify down the road but not we were talking about it's unconnected it's so confusing because there is a potential that the airplay 2 integration will let you control apple music via siri it's but then but then it's from via siri from your your phone not on the device and it's streaming to the device yeah so uh so i think i think my answer here is no because i think the home pod exists in this weird space where people are going to buy it because they love apple and they've got and they are using apple music and that they think it's going to be a good product and the sonos one is weirdly complicated by what assistants are on it it does sound good i think

i guess what i'd say is the real challenge for the home pod is that it has it is expensive and there are speakers that are cheaper that have similar features that sound pretty good yeah i mean i i still i mean i think the jury is out on whether the home pod is even going to be worth it for anybody. Oh, I agree. I agree. It's a weird product. It has a real risk to be the iPod Hi-Fi too, in my opinion. It's a very expensive, very limited use case device.

I think there's a real scenario where next fall there's an all new HomePod. Which is $199. That's smaller and cheaper and not what this current HomePod is.'ll see but i i think i think that's the challenge i don't think the sonos one's entrance is look the jig is up for the home pod because i think it's it's just another entrant in this in this field that talk that exposes the issues with the home pod if you'd like to find our show notes for this week we're at relay.fm

slash upgrade slash 163. Thank you to everybody that submits questions. As always, you can submit Snell Talk questions with the hashtag Snell Talk for the beginning of the show and hashtag ask upgrade questions for the end of the show. If you want to find Jason online, he's at sixcolors.com, theincomparable.com.

He hosts a bunch of shows over at RelayFM as well, and he's at JSnell on Twitter. I am at iMike. We'll be back next week. As normal, we're at the Release Notes conference. If you are at Release Notes, we're going to be there for the next few days. So please come say hi. We'd love to speak to you and, I don't know, talk about pineapple or something.

Sure, probably. But we'll be back next time. Until then, oh, thanks to our sponsors this week, the great folk over at Balance, Squarespace, and Mack Weldon. We'll be back next week. Until then, oh, thanks to our sponsors this week, the great folk over at Balance, Squarespace, and Mack Weldon. We'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.

High five! Woo!