Upgrade - 173: The 2017 Upgrade Holiday Special

Episode Date: December 25, 2017

Just in time for Christmas, Jason and Myke look back at the trends of 2017 and reveal their 2018 Apple wish lists. Then it's time for special guests Serenity Caldwell and Stephen Hackett to join us for a round of very special #askupgrade, the first-ever Upgrade Secret Santa, and a Myke at the Movies look at "Home Alone 2."

From RelayFM, it's the Upgrade Holiday Special with your host, Mike Hurley! Thank you for that wonderful introduction, Jason Snell. This episode is brought to you by TextExpander from Smile, Encapsular, AppOptics, and Pingdom. My name is Mike Hurley, as I was so wonderfully introduced, and I am joined on this very special holiday episode by Jason Snell. Happy holidays, Jason Snell. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays, Mike. What better Monday than Christmas Monday to do an episode of Upgrade?

Most definitely. And we couldn't leave the Upgradians out in the cold. And Jason, that actually leads me quite nicely into our snail talk question our holiday snail talk question from kevin not kevin mcallister a different kevin kevin would like to know have you ever had a white christmas jason i have i grew up in a place where we have what where we had snow once or twice a year it usually wasn't very much but sometimes it would be um but it was it was occasional and rare because we were at like 2,000 feet elevation. So it didn't happen that often in California.

But it did happen. A couple times a year we'd get snow. Maybe once every three or four years we'd get a sizable accumulation. And boy, as a kid, when there was a possibility, when it looked like it was going to be cold or it might be precipitation in northern california california in general you have this issue where if it's if it's going to rain the the clouds trap in the heat and so it's less likely to snow um and when it's really cold it's usually because it's clear and the heat escapes and that and so to get them both to get it cold enough and raining, turning into snow is a magical kind of thing for, um, for, uh, lower parts of California.

So, uh, always as a kid, I would be like, oh, white Christmas, white Christmas, white Christmas, uh, get up the next morning, nothing, right? It's just rain. That would happen a lot. Whereas the possibility we might get some snow, even if it wasn't Christmas, I'd get excited about it. Then I'd look up here out my window in the morning get up you know right when the first sign of light and i'd look out and there would not be snow and those moments when there was snow were

great but like mostly it was it was disappointment and the christmas it's actually of my freshman year in college coming home for christmas that christmas it snowed on christmas eve and there was there was snow on the on the ground and on the grass and you know everywhere outside on christmas morning and that was the one time i had a legitimate white christmas uh and i because i thought i went through all high school and i went off to college i thought i guess it's just never gonna happen i'm never gonna be lucky enough to have those two times a year that randomly it snows land on Christmas. And it, and it was, it was never close. And then on, uh, on Christmas day, 1988, it, uh, it was a white Christmas.

It was great. I've never had one. It's even, I mean, I think it's snowing. I think it snows even more rarely in london than it does where i grew up i think it does so yeah when i was a kid especially very rarely snowed and it has snowed more because of hashtag climate change as i've grown up and we have had there was a couple of years ago we had a very bad snowfall yeah yeah i shut the entire country down but i don't i don't even know if it was in december but it it may have been actually in the beginning of the next year but i've seen snow i've

had snow i've had lots of snow um but i've never had a white christmas so as you can imagine from the fact that this is called the holiday special we have a special episode um we're going to talk about some some thoughts on 2017 and into 2018 about technology we are then going to be joined later on in the episode by stephen hackett and serenity caldwell and we're going to be doing we're going to be answering some holiday questions we have a secret santa and a mic at the movies home alone 2 so you have all of that to look forward to but i wanted to mention jason everyone's going to be thinking oh they're going to talk about all the big Apple news of the week. No, we're not.

That's not what a holiday special is all about. We're not going to talk about the comings and goings of the last week. I mean, I am reluctant to dive in. Yeah, because it's Christmas. We'll get to it in the new year, right? I mean, if everybody's still freaking out about how Apple handles throttling processor power when old batteries are failing to provide enough power. We'll catch up to that in January. Or if Macintosh software is dead.

We'll get to that in January. If Mac apps are going to become iOS apps, we will talk about it in January. It's all, you know what? It's still going to be there. And even though, that was like holding up a newspaper as proof of life, by the way,

that we didn't record this episode in October. We are actually aware of what happened last week, but we're not going to talk about that. We'll wait for January after the Upgradies. After, of course, the most prestigious award ceremony of the year, which is the Upgradies, which is next week. So get excited. We've got the Upgradies coming. So, Jason. Yes, Mike.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the year of technology in 2017 i'll talk about a couple of big themes that have occurred in the year and then talk about maybe some some things we're looking forward to in 2018 and i think that there have been you can you can correct me if i'm wrong but i think maybe in 2017 we've seen two two pretty big trends and one is in smartphones and one is in home technology and in smartphones we've had disappearing bezels and in home technology we've had smart speakers i think that they have been two of the biggest trends in consumer technology um of the year would you agree i mean i couldn't they were kind of the biggest things to me i think of stuck out i i feel like this is the year of um of the big players all aggressively pushing toward the

disappearing bezel smartphone as as close as they can get to it that that is the that is like the goal now um and really that is not just uh you could say it's like almost a lemming like kind of um just like everybody follows everybody else and everybody goes in that direction. But I think realistically, it's also just about the technology. Like the technology is improving to reduce the size of the bezels and get that screen out there. And what is more natural?

I mean, I think, I think Johnny, I've actually said this at one point, the iPhone 10 is the closest that Apple has come to like their vision of what uh an iphone would be because the fundamental vision of all of these smartphones like if you really boil down what would they look like ideally they would be all screen like they would be all screen yeah that is the dream is that this is just a a screen you hold in your hand and interact with and they have not been able to do that because of lots of technological limitations. And those limitations are being solved. And so this was the year we got, you know, everybody's pushing in the borders around their devices to try and get there because the technology makes that more possible.

So, you know, not just Apple, Google, Samsung, lots of different companies doing that. And I think it that and i think it's fun did it yeah that's right and i wanted a big one i wanted in uh i wanted on my ipad honestly me too i i i mean even then though we got it to a point right like the bezel on the side is a lot less yeah right it's a lot less and that has happened over time and i hope that that we see something like that i hope in like you know we're going to talk about this uh but 2018 i would love to see um an ipad which would have a bigger screen in a in a same size or vice versa right like i would love to see a very thin bezel ipad that would be that would be very exciting um i i think that you know the the thing about this the disappearing bezels you know you mentioned it like the technology allowed it i think by and large this wasn't a case of like these technology companies copying each other because of how long

it takes for these devices to come together i think it was just 2017 you know back into 2016 and into 2017 was just the first time that this kind of stuff could be done like the technology is at a point now where for about around a thousand dollars, you can sell a phone that is mostly screen and that it doesn't need a huge chin or forehead. It doesn't need a huge space around the side because the miniaturization and all the screen tech has gotten to where it needs to be that this has become a possibility. that for observers of consumer technology, I think the last couple of years have seen some, every advancement in smartphones has not really been too heavily focused on physical design. There have been different designs, but not like leaps and bounds forward in design. And I think that 2017 across the board, Android and iOS has seen huge, huge changes. Like Samsung, I think have been ahead of the curve for a bit. You know, they have been, I think of all companies have been edging

to this, where other companies just went from having all bezels to no bezels, you know, or minimal bezels. And they have been kind of edging towards it over the last couple of years with the way that they've been like curving their screens over the edges and kind of pushing and pushing and pushing which is unsurprising because samsung make the displays that everybody's buying right like it is unsurprising that they are the company that's been able to get to this first uh but this has been a great trend and as a incredibly happy iphone 10 owner um i am very very pleased that this has been what we've been able to see this year in smartphones yeah i think it's a good i think it's a good trend um a lot of times when we talk about smartphone trends we

talk about things like screen size or thinness and lightness or processor power or things like that or transfer speed on cellular networks and i feel like not enough attention is paid to the physical uh innovations that happen and that is things like getting the bezels to be smaller it's things like improving glare reduction improving uh shatter resistance which which even though people drop their phones and they still break trust me the glass is getting better all the time and you know this is going to keep people don't notice but like i will throw waterproofing in there too because now all the apple phones are waterproof all the new models like there's a lot of material science going on and a lot of engineering going on it's not just chip design and uh software so the other trend that uh mentioned was smart speakers and this is one

where i think the battle for supremacy is still is still on in a way that it maybe isn't in smartphones right there are the big players the big players are there and they're going to be that way you know samsung and uh iphone google is trying but you know samsung is is murdering them still uh in the android arena the battle for supremacy i think is still on in the smart speaker world because there are some products still to hit the market from big companies like apple um but as it stands right now I think Amazon is kind of sitting pretty at the top, at least in what is considered to be the best by people in technology. I think mostly people are recommending Amazon's products. And Amazon this year decided to release every possible Echo possible.

yeah we had the look and the show and then uh the spot has just come out and we had the second gen echo and the what is the one with the home chip in it the echo plus oh yeah i mean something like that i don't even know i've lost track i've lost track there's lots and it's a it's an interesting category um i think there's a real question about amazon like amazon is putting its foot to the floor here because Amazon has a lead. But you're absolutely right in saying that Google has got them in their sites. Apple has got them in their sites. And the challenge there is that Google and Apple bring ecosystems with them. And Amazon's ecosystem is not really a device ecosystem.

It's a shopping ecosystem. And the weakest thing about Amazon to me and about the echo in particular is that all my devices are apple devices and there's just an a failure for interaction there because there's only so much amazon can do amazon's ecosystem is great in some areas and terrible in others and whereas apple is tied into my devices directly and is interested in making that experience better. And that's the advantage the HomePod will have when it ships for people who have Apple devices is that it'll be integrated in a way that Amazon will have a very hard time doing. And likewise, if you use Android devices, the Google stuff is going to integrate with all of your Google services and your Google Assistant stuff. And they have a huge advantage there so amazon's trying to get enough of a lead and use its leverage to

get enough partners and things like that everything connected so that it can stay afloat but i'm not sure i'm not sure it's a good match i'm not sure if ultimately as all the success the echo has had if if tying in with your other devices and platforms and things ends up being important to smart assistants amazon's going to have a hard time which is why amazon's trying to make it not be that way trying to have as many they're trying to make an echo for every use case for every person tied into every service and when it works it works incredibly well our shopping list is is um we use any list um and i have any list on the desktop and i have it on my devices and my wife has it on her devices and it

syncs with the echo lists which means the echo is seamlessly a part of our shopping list on all our devices and the echo they all have the same list that was not the case until earlier this year when they when they uh they built that bridge between the two apps it's like night and day it is so much better because now uh we can rely on that data to pass across so the more of that amazon can do where all the all the pieces of your life in your other uh silos on all these other devices are all kind of like interconnected to the echo, then they've got a fighting chance. But the value having seen that with the shopping list thing, it's like, Oh my god, the value of being integrated versus not is enormous. And it's gonna be tough for Amazon, they've got the lead, they've got a lot going for

them. But it's gonna be tough because because my gut feeling is that you're going to want those assistants to be tied into everything else you're wanting. In fact, I have an Echo Show, and I do have those moments where I think if the HomePod does well, I actually think an iOS-ish HomePod with a screen might actually be good only because the problem with the echo show is that it has no apps and you're you know the video screen is only occasionally useful and i well that was the original rumor right that the apple's answer to uh the echo and to google home would have a screen and it screen it has that little i know that little light up thing on top yeah i i remember when when they announced the home pod at wwdc i was very surprised and and almost a bit turned off it was like my my initial because i'm really not very excited about that product at all and yeah that began for me where i was like no that's not what

i want like i wanted to have a screen on it like that is a a worthwhile upgrade for me i mean i am not interested um in the echo show because all of the things that i would want a device like that for i don't have amazon doesn't provide that for me like i don't want amazon's version of facetime i just want facetime right like stuff like that where it's like i'm not interested right like i i don't want to get into amazon's calling ecosystem to provide this for me because i think that that's for me nonsense like i don't want to do that like i'm not going to go through the pain of trying to get my nan to use amazon face calling time like i'm just not interested it's never gonna happen that's

not a thing but i'm hoping that uh version two version three of the home pod becomes something more compelling for me like i i really don't envision a world in which i buy the home pod as we have currently seen it um it is a music device with limited uh smart speaker functionality and that is the reverse to which i use my echo products right Like I use them as smart speakers with different tools and services and then maybe sometimes use it for music. Like you're saying about Anylist, I mean, I think I can go one better. The actual company that we have our shopping delivered via, which is Ocado, they have a skill now. So we can add things directly to our shopping cart, right? Like with the grocery provider that we use. they have a skill now so we can add things directly to our shopping cart right like with

the grocery provider that we use um and unless apple is able to convince companies to do this kind of stuff then it won't work but that requires apple to make the siri apis better because currently they're incredibly limited and they don't look like they're going to change. And for all intents and purposes, it looks like that if you didn't like the way the Apple Watch used to work, you're probably not going to like the way the HomePod works, because everything is being processed on phones. And I'm just, I think, except the music stuff. And I'm just not, this just doesn't feel like a compelling product for me.

I'm very interested to see people like you have to say about the HomePod from a usage perspective once it launches to see if it can turn me around. But this is just one Apple product that I'm not interested in. That's fine because I don't have to be interested in all of them. But this is the one. And it hasn't been that way for a while. I mean, even something like the iMac Pro, I don't want to buy it, but I'm still interested in it. I would still like one. I just don't feel that way for a while i mean like even something like the imac pro i don't want to buy it but i'm still interested in it i would still like one i just don't feel the need for one but currently like apple have have i've been in the distortion field right i've seen this product

i've been sitting in rooms with other nerds who are excited about it at wwdc and i just couldn't care about it like it's just not something that i care for i gotta be honest it is um an interesting choice apple made to make this a kind of higher end audio product is how they're selling like it's just not something that careful i gotta be honest it is um an interesting choice apple made to make this a kind of higher end audio product is how they're selling it it's big it's uh it's meant to you know sound better than things like the echo uh which is fine but i'll point out like the echo was successful because it was small and you could stick it on a countertop in your kitchen and although it doesn't play music very well, although it's okay, it's not great, but it's okay, it still succeeded. And I think it succeeded because it was relatively small and filled a niche for utility reasons. And, you know, the HomePod isn't filling that niche it's in this like sonos like place

and i'm not convinced i i think that is a place for you to make a lot of money if you're apple um i think it's gonna have good margins it allows them to charge a lot of money for that product but i don't think people looking for a place to put a device where they're going to sit and listen to music and all it does is basically play music i don't know i don't i have a hard time thinking that that's a huge market complete compared to something like the echo which because it is slighter and not as high quality in terms of the audio, but it's very utilitarian. You stick it somewhere and it listens to you and you have it do stuff for you, including play music. I feel like that's just a more kind of broad audience for a product like that versus the

HomePod, which feels just very focused on music. Focus is good good but i don't see the broad appeal there like i feel like if apple apple's gonna do this and that's great but apple needs to be working on a line of these things that are smaller and larger and have video and don't that can go in different different places because i'm not sure like and again i'm just coming from my own experience here i don't know where i would put the home pod in my house quite honestly i don't think i have a place for it and some people will but i don't know i i share your skepticism about it'll be interesting to see how it plays out all right gather around the fire ladies and gentlemen as i tell you about our first sponsor

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son and he's had some problems with some components but just even the case of like wondering where to start like what stuff do i actually need to buy i've been looking at that it's it's a big project i'm excited about it but it is a a big and daunting project that i've got in my 2018 and i wondered if uh you have anything in 2018 that you're looking forward to like that in general technology is there a project that you want to tackle this year is there anything that you've been kind of mulling around that is a thing on your horizon i don't have anything particular i mean these things do emerge but i don't have anything i think floating out there right now i do um like like i wasn't planning last year to replace my mac mini and

build a hackintosh server with an intel nook uh box right I had no plans to do that. But some instability in my existing Mac Mini, and Apple's lack of updates for the Mac Mini, and our friend Russell talking about how he created a hacked Intel Nook as a Mac, kind of led me down that path where I have ended up doing that. So that was a project that I did this year. I hope to, I'll say, to be fair, I hope to replace it with a real Mac mini someday, but they would need to release one. So we'll see. I keep toying with the idea of going to 4K HDR

and getting a much larger TV than I have right now, which has a lot of ramifications in terms of like taking down pieces of furniture and uh running cables through the walls and things and mounting a large tv in the living room um i'm not quite sure when i want to do that and whether i want to wait a few years for oled stuff to come down in price or whether that i want to just kind of bite the bullet because i would literally like my tv's 50 inches diagonal i'd like to i'd like to go up to something that isn't just 55 i'd like to go up to like 65 or something like that and have it be nice and big and uh i'm still toying with that idea so we'll we'll see but that's one like kind of home thing um but stuff just happens

i didn't expect to buy an electric car this year and that happened and i got to learn about like electric car charging networks and things like that which was interesting and different and i got to do that and uh so i'm sure something will come up but um i don't have anything right now on my um on my to-do list i i um i'm just gonna lie and wait and see what happens so i also wanted to take a look at some stuff that we're hoping for in 2018 and i want to go across uh the apple line across the suite of products that exist sure and i want to start with ios because i think ios 11 gave me a lot of what i've been very happy about this year um you know stuff like the files app and improved multitasking and just the overall um attention that was given to the ip in iOS 11 was a big thing for me this year. And I,

all I care about personally in iOS 12 is just signs that they're keeping that going in a way that they didn't in iOS 10, right? Where it was like, iPad, what iPad? I don't necessarily want tons more other than making the stuff better, but I want to see, you know, in June, iPad getting some stage time, showing off some stuff, whatever it is, and actually then also seeing some of the results of that in the software than just the way that it had been in the past. I really want to just get signs of continued life, you know?

Yeah, I don't want the iPad to be an every-other-year proposition for Apple. Like, if it seems serious about the iPad Pro, it seems to have turned the corner in terms of, like, iPad sales and having rationalized their product line by making the cheaper iPad and the more expensive and full featured iPad pro models. So I want them to keep pushing there. And that means more stuff. There's plenty of places for iOS 12 to improve on that side. And I, and I hope they do. That's like, that's, that's my number one thing. Honestly, I, I don't have a long iOS wishlist in terms of the software because, um, like on the iPhone side, I think they've done a great job and my iPhone is great.

And I don't, you know, they like we talked about the old upgrade experience and they've improved that dramatically. So things are getting a lot better on that front. But the iPad could still use more love i think in terms of uh of making more you know kind of pro feature stuff and the you know the ones that i always come back to are you know i'd like the files app to support more stuff i'd like to be able to uh connect to uh an smb you know file server with the files app i'd like to be able to attach a usb stick to an ipad and see the you know and pull files off of it i'd like to do stuff like that that is sort of like just work features of a computer that the ipad

just is incapable of doing um and i'm sure they'll surprise us with some some incredibly clever stuff do you care the same way about ipad hardware for next year well again they've kind of resolved the biggest issue right which is that the the ipad pro is is you know we got the 10.5 and the 12.9 it's clear i i'd imagine i mean i would like i would love a reduced bezel uh face id ipad pro i think that would be awesome um i'm so i'm happy with where the ipad is though so i don't have one of these things where it's like oh my god they really have to do this. My wish list would be jumping off of the iPad.

And I'm not sure this is realistic, but my wish list would be new iOS hardware, whether it's that iOS laptop that I wrote about or a bigger iPad or a desktop iOS device. I would love to see something like that. I doubt 2018 is the year when we'll see something like that. But I would love to see something like that. doubt 2018 is the year when we'll see something like that but i would i would love to see something like that i honestly i'm cool with the hardware like i'm fine mostly with that right now i would like to see some more accessories yeah i would really like to see some smart connector stuff i would like to see a new pencil like i i would really i mean be great if some of this stuff came from Apple, but it doesn't all need to. But I would really like to see some new accessories. The smart connector has been a disappointment and the, like the, you know, keyboard cases

for the 10.5 iPad Pro are like the fact that there's nothing much out there that's built for it. And that partially is a function of the iPadad pro you know and the ipad in general having um low enough sales that i think that the accessory makers have been reluctant to make a product that only works on an ipad pro although i would think the 10.5 is a popular enough product that it's worth having more accessories than are out there now so i'm with you there um uh yeah and and like uh maybe a revised version of the pencil is a part of that too so the iphone i mean i just want them to keep it going they i i don't need the same

you want 10 plus they can give me uh i i mean i would love a 10 plus but i don't need that um if they did that i would love it and I would buy that. An OLED one, though, I wouldn't. If they had a Plus phone that looked exactly the same, big screen, I would struggle. I don't know if it would be an Insta buy for me because I really do love the OLEDled but um but i do love the bigger screen so i i would love to see an iphone 10 plus the one that we currently have um but i

don't need that this year personally i could take an s version of this phone and i'd be more than happy you know some small changes better camera faster i would happily do that like i did with any of the other s is right um i just want them to keep it going um that's that's kind of all i care about yep do you do you think that do you have much of a desire for apple to release an se i think it's time i think they need to i think that's an existing market i'm a big fan of the se even though i don't use it i know people who do and like it and i like the idea of spreading the product line out more and it'll it'll have been two years so i think it's time to have that phone get a get a bump to you know maybe it's like iphone 7 specs or something but i think it's time

what would you like to see on the mac oh boy um the mac you know i want to see the mac pro i want that to exist i want apple to update the hardware on all the existing models to use the latest Intel stuff and the latest graphics processors available. I want Apple to show a commitment to its users that there's going to be a new MacBook Pro basically every year with the latest and greatest in it. And there's going to be new iMacs with the latest and greatest in it, which given, I think it's Coffee Lake that's coming out. That may be like six core iMacs, which could be cool. And just keep updating the Mac with the latest stuff.

And they can do more innovations like bringing the stuff that's in like the T2 that's in the iMac Pro, the Apple built processor, that's an ARM processor. If they want to innovate in that area and kind of like build their own stuff in and make the Mac a little more of a hybrid, I'm okay with that. But the key to me is just, you know, show your commitment to the Mac by not leaving these products with old parts sitting. The whole reason to use intel stuff is that intel keeps making newer faster versions of it and you need to pick it up and that's like part of the the almost like the social contract between computer users and the manufacturer is that they will keep up to date with the latest parts and we know what the parts are and then apple doesn't keep up to

date and it's frustrating so i i just kind of put in a pitch for that more than anything else. I want to see the Mac mini finally get a revision. Speaking of the Mac pro the Mac mini, um, you know, it doesn't need to get updated every year, but every three years or so with the latest and greatest. And I would really like to see a design that, that gets us out of the spinning hard drive as an option entirely, just an SSD based Mac mini. Um, that would be pretty great. So that's, that's kind of what I'm looking for on the on the Mac hardware side. And then in terms of terms of Mac OS, I honestly don't know whether I want sort of steady state fix bugs, or whether I want them to take great leaps. There are those stories that you know, about Apple considering finding ways to bring to take

advantage of all the people who build iOS software to let them bring that stuff over to the Mac more easily. I think that's kind of a no brainer if they can get it to work. Well, I'm a little skeptical about how well it could work. And, you know, in the background, I keep thinking, you know, do you want to do this? Or do you want to just kind of focus on on whatever your next generation operating system is that is that is kind of neither and both the mac or ios because if the mac ends up being kind of a place for legacy mac software and ios apps um i worry that it does become a like a toaster fridge at that point so i'm not i'm not you know it'll be a big topic in 2018 for sure about what apple's doing for the future of the Mac. But I just say like,

keep it alive, keep it rolling and, uh, fixing bugs and, uh, having some parody with iOS. That's kind of, kind of what I want.

The only hardware that I feel personally that I really would be very disappointed if Apple did not ship next year, um, would be a significant design change to the Apple watch. Um, I think that now, 2018, if we even see a watch in 2018, I assume we will, I would like it to be thinner. I would like to see an always-on display. You know, I would like a visual change to the Apple Watch. The product has gotten very, very good because I believe they have not had to or felt pressure to change the overall design, right? The battery has gotten fantastic. The

speed is brilliant. They've put LTE chips in it. All of that stuff has gotten great. And I think it's because they've been able to just make everything smaller and stuff more in. But my feeling would be if they had an Apple watch series 4 and it looked just like this one um i would be pretty disappointed about it because i can't think of anything else you know if they gave me the always on display i may be willing to stomach it for one more year like but that's the only thing left but even then i still don't want it to get thicker again i would want it to get thinner um but that that's that is some hardware yeah i would really want to see some big changes to and would really really

like to see some design changes too yeah the always on display is the is the missing feature yeah new watch faces boy i mean just there need to be more watch faces that's just it's amazing that we've had that's a watch os5 thing yeah we've had almost nothing uh in terms of new watch faces other than you know some cartoon characters and there are a couple of them but there should be way more i i if if past me from when the watch was announced came and looked at the watch today that would be the number one shocker for me is the the lack of diversity of watch faces there's just a still only a handful of them um and i'm with you on the always on display i i they need to get to the point where they've got enough confidence in the battery that you can opt at least to have my watch never gets

close to running out right i i would really like it if there was some sort of low power face that they could put on it so that i don't i you know i don't have to kind of flip my wrist in exactly the right way in order to see the time and for the apple tv hardware i kind of whatever um it's fine i'm happy with it they did 4k we're we're i think we're good in terms of the hardware for a while with the 4k one it's it's about what's inside and my you know and i have all the services that i want now my only feeling for this is um if apple release any original content in 2018, which they may not, but if they do, I desperately want it to be good because none of it has been so far. And I know that we're looking at a different strategy than what Apple is currently had, which is fine. But when Apple make their big content effort, like the really serious one, they've got to be very good immediately for it to work in

my opinion like for it to really capture people they have to have something that people want to watch they have to have the water cooler tv show for a period of time would you agree with that yeah i mean this is uh this is why they hired the guys they hired as the producers or whatever presidents of apple's tv efforts is those are tv executives who have good relationships and they are making deals with people who are um who are well known and respected because in the end um people are going to want the whole point is to make stuff that people like and want to see. And that means it needs to be good. And the point of what Apple was making before was kind of not that,

which is why I pointed out on this show, you got to draw a line, you know, check your carpool karaoke and planet of the apps jokes at the door. Cause that was a bunch of kind of music execs inside Apple, um, making some side deals to try some stuff out on apple music and once um uh erlich and von amberg got to apple like that was that those days were over and now is the days where they're making deals with steven spielberg uh reese witherspoon jennifer aniston run more

to do uh to do prestige scripted programming. And there's going to be more of that. And that's, you know, it's got to fit Apple's brand, which means it needs to be good and respected. And it's going to need to make people want to whatever they need to do to see it, which is buy Apple hardware or subscribe to an Apple video service or something, whatever it is, we don't know. All right right so that is what we're looking for in 2018 uh with apple and uh in case we hadn't made it clear to our audience me and jason are sitting in a log cabin right now and the fire is crackling um and we have some guests that have been very quiet up until now but it's about time that we we brought them

in and let them speak uh but before we do let me thank uh our second sponsor for this show and that is app optics application monitoring shouldn't break the bank app optics is a next-gen application performance management system built specifically to help developers and devops teams trace distributed transactions through their complex environment. AppOptics includes broad APM language support with auto-instrumentation, simple and easy to use infrastructure monitoring, which is all built in, and it's all supported by a large open community. Their plans start at just $7.50 a month, and you can learn more today at appoptics.com slash upgrade.

That's just $7.50 a month is where their plans start, and learn more at appoptics.com slash upgrade that's just seven dollars and fifty cents a month is where their plans start and learn more appoptics.com slash upgrade our thanks to app optics for their support of this show and relay fm so jason i think it's time that we welcome our guests our holiday special guests um and there couldn't be any guests more special than serenity caldwell and steven hackett of query on relay fm hello hello hey now the party has started now it's happening all right it's the real holiday party we can get away from all that serious stuff and we're gonna get into just pure holiday spirit mode sweet can i pour in some bourbon to this apple cider is it yes don't tell hr just don't tell hr fortunately the people who run this company are not here right now, so it'll be fine.

It's true. Oh, interesting. Definitely not. It's been relieved of power. The real people in control. So I mentioned that Stephen and Ren host Query on RelayFM, which is a show based all around answering technological questions. so i figured that considering we have people that are so good at answering questions that we could combine our question answering abilities to tackle some holiday themed hashtag ask upgrade hashtag ask query questions what do you think yeah i had said on the last

episode jason that we were not going to do any ask upgrade but what i really meant was traditional ask upgrade because these questions they are not. And the first one comes from a different Steven. And a different Steven wants to know what our favorite gifts are or have been this holiday season. Steven, what about you? You know, I think I'm like a lot of nerds where I'm really hard to buy for, just because tech stuff comes out and I tend to, something that I'm interested in, I tend to pick it up. So this would be a gift that I bought myself, which is a terribly selfish answer. I don't know.

How am I supposed to answer this? On the best gifts, always the one you buy yourself, you know, when you think about it. You truly know yourself. Yeah. This was to further destroy the premise of the question. I'm not really doing a good job promoting query at this, but is this what the show is like? We basically just answer what we want to answer. To further destroy the premise of the question. I'm not really doing a good job promoting query at this.

Is this what the show is like? We basically just answer what we want to answer. Stephen's being contrary. I'm a big fan of the Kindle as a gift. I've got the new Oasis, but the sort of Kindle, what is it, Jason? Paperwhite? The Paperwhite is sort of the go-to for people who like to read but don't have the space for books like many of us do. It's a real winner, and it's often on sale.

It was on sale all throughout the buying season. And it's a great way to see if e-books are for you or for someone you care about. eBooks are for, are for you over someone you, you care about. So it's always, uh, you know, someone is looking for, you know, a tech related gift, the, the paper whites always towards the top of my list. Yeah. All right. Uh, so in my stocking, my favorite thing that I found in my stocking this year, um, I got a, uh, Spider-Man fidget cube, which is like, you know, I, I do, I mean mean i got the brain ball here i have various other objects that i kind of pick up while i'm while i'm sitting at my desk and then i saw that the makers of the fidget cube have signed a licensing deal with marvel comics and are making licensed i thought this was just like a totally fake thing this sounds incredible no it's it's legitimately i mean it's

just a fidget cube but it's like with spider-man on it and it's cool so uh that's my that's my favorite uh stocking stuffer item and then uh to jump off of something that steven said uh if you like kindles or amazon echoes they keep coming out with new ones. So one nice thing to do is if sometime this year you bought yourself a new Echo or a new Kindle, I will often pass on my old one. In fact, my mom got my Amazon Echo this year because the original, because she was expressing when she visited us, she was expressing interest in them and was like, oh, I don't know. I can't whatever. And I thought I could just give her my old one because i don't need it anymore so she's um she's she's got that now and will probably be calling me soon to ask me what the heck i did to

her house but but uh that's just a just a little a little tip because you know you you don't need to save all those kindles or echoes if you upgrade you can find somebody and maybe make it a little present oh my god this goes way deeper they have dc and marvel and they also make fidget spinners as well as fidget cubes in those characters too this is serious oh yeah mike you've just gone down the deep end you're like i forget the podcast i'm just gonna pay attention to fidget spinners two hundred dollars later, Ren? Okay, well, to answer that question, I have to bring back on a pre-podcast visitor. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is a real R2-D2. Did you steal R2-D2? What happened?

Yes. I talked Lucasfilm into giving me... No, I wish. No, instead, my father, actually, for for my 30th birthday decided that the best thing to get his daughter who was turning 30 was a sphero artuditu which i surprisingly did not have uh and i have to say despite the fact that the sphero droids are still kind of limited to the app being open while you play with them i I love this present. I love how realistic this, like, it's a tiny

version of the droid, but they really, really went all out on this to an extent. Like, they, the BB-8 was cute, but it didn't have an inbound speaker, whereas the R2 unit is fully self-sustaining, so it will make its beeps itself. And then in addition

to that, if you just leave the app open and you don't play with it you just you know keep it keep it open r2 will just start chattering randomly his uh his onboard sensors flash certain colors and change his head moves uh there are tiny little uh he has treads in his feet unlike any other r2 i've ever played with they usually have you know two double sets of wheels but he this model literally has treads in his feet, unlike any other R2 I've ever played with. They usually have, you know, two double sets of wheels. But he this model literally has treads, which allowed Spiro to actually push the treads into the ground to give him kind of the walking, bouncing maneuver that he does in the films. And, you know, he's he's basically one set of rocket packs short of being a perfect miniaturization of the droid and i love him and he makes me happy even if he terrifies my dogs i have the bb-8 um like everybody else everybody in the world um and i have been eyeing the r2d2 which is significantly bigger than i expected um i i somehow it feels like i don't know why in my mind it would have been

smaller but i saw it in an apple store and uh he's a real little guy so he's atomically sized for the bb-8 because here's the fun part the sphero and the the the r2 and the bb-8 will talk to each other oh my god it's really cute it's really cute i can see bb8 sitting up there with my legos sets so um for me i i went uh for a gift that i have been wanting for a very long time and it's a a real good coffee grinder um and i got the baratza virtuoso because it's what marco armand recommended um that was the gift that i got uh this holiday season which i was the gift that I got this holiday season, which I was the most excited about, because now I get to grind my own beans every morning,

which I know Jason loves. Yes, the smell of coffee in the morning, that's the best. That fresh smell of coffee to wake Jason up. I know that he loves it. All right, so thank you very much, Alva Steven, for that question. Our second question comes from Chris, and Chris wants to know how we deal with bad presents. So, Ren, I want to ask you first, how how do you deal with the embarrassment of receiving a bad present? rack your brain about who would actually benefit from said present and you give it to them interesting usually you try i like at least in my opinion i'm i'm i feel like there's a there's a good line right where if if the present has a gift certificate or a gift receipt component to it i

don't think there's any harm in returning said present and getting something that you yourself would benefit more from but if it's something where it's like, clearly, the person spent a lot of time and effort and did not include a gift receipt, whether it's a homemade item, whether it's something else, generally, I try and find it a good home. Because I think the worst thing, honestly, is saying, thank you. Oh, my God, I love it. And then leaving it in a closet in a corner for 20 years before you eventually have to throw it out. It's really depressing. Obviously, like, it depends. You know, it might be if it's if it's your mother giving you a present, like a really, I don't know, a gaudy hat or something that she expects you to wear all the

time. You know, you can gauge accordingly, you might be able to have the conversation with your mother that you might not with your aunt or your grandmother or your significant other uh but but generally i feel like uh truth and re-gifting is the best medicine i guess if somebody gives you a gift receipt they're not 100 confident in their gift anyway that that's kind of my thinking or that at least that it will fit. I would say that for me, I just smile the best that I can smile and hide the gift somewhere in my home forever. I'm not very good. Finding somebody to give it to is probably good, but I've never thought of doing that.

Stephen, what do you do? I mean, I'm in line with y'all. You know, you always want to be thankful and be kind. And then when no one knows, You know, you always want to be thankful and be kind. And then when no one knows, you know, either re-gift or I definitely have done the thing where you just hide it as well. Sometimes it's the best choice. You guys are being taken gift hostage. It's true.

That is true. Jason? Yeah. No, you try to be as grateful as possible while also out of the corner of your eye trying to see if there's a gift receipt in there so you can return it. And otherwise, yeah, you either find somebody, like Ren said, who might appreciate it. Or you donate it maybe to like if it's a book or something or a movie or something to the library or something like that. And find a nice home for it where it can do somebody some good i'll throw it out the window of the car in your driveway no no only for fruit cake the birds will eat it aaron wanted to know if we put up decorations or lights and if they

are powered by smart devices now jason i know that me and you have discussed this on the show before do you have uh any additional lights or uh treats that you've been able to automate in the Snell household? No, our front lights and the Christmas lights around the edge of our house are both on a timer driven by smart devices. There are smart bulbs in the front lights and a smart switch. And that's plugged in to the lights the lights are plugged into it and then they are on a schedule using a home kit and uh it's triggered by you know like a sunset and then goes off at a certain time and it has worked like a charm steven i know that you have many hue bulbs in your home mostly in your office did any of those make it into the house to turn red and

green this holiday season they did not the hue bulbs all stayed in place in the studio but uh we we put the christmas tree and the outside lights on the i home little switch you know it's a plug thing that goes in the wall and you plug your lights into it and so those are controllable via home kit and the amazon echo and i did change those devices i already had in the house, but I did rename them, you know, Christmas tree and outdoor light. So the kids could ask the Echo, you know, friend in the cylinder, please turn on the Christmas tree and the Christmas tree would come on, which they find hilarious. Yeah, we got to do that this year. This is the first year that we've had a Christmas tree and I had a Wemo that I've not used and I got to hook it up to the tree, but it did result in a funny exchanged.

Um, there was just something about the way that Adina says three in her Romanian accent, um, and tree that they sound the same. So every time she would ask, uh, the echo to turn on the tree,

it would say, I cannot find anything called three. And it just kept doing that over and over and over again to the point that I had to rename it, um, to Christmas, just turn on Christmas and then Christmas gets turned on. That's better.

Almost. I'm surprised you didn't name it Christmas three. Well, I considered that, but then I would have, I would have to ask it to turn on the three and then I would get it wrong. Uh, and then it was forever.

We would, no, no, exactly. That's a turn on the three and then i would get it wrong uh and then it was you can't forever we would no yeah no exactly that's a turn on the free um brand do you have any uh additional home automation based holiday lights i do um i like a number of you uh use an i devices uh switch to i have all of our front lights hooked up via that and a very long extension cord that's multi-pronged probably not the uh most electrically efficient slash safe way to do it but that's how i did it this year maybe i'll come up with a better way next year uh and then i feel like all holiday lights come with an element of danger oh yeah uh we uh we have on our package it's like you can string no more than three of these together and i I'm pretty sure we have more like six. So we'll see.

Regardless, we have that in the front yard. And then in the front window, we usually have a set of hue, oh gosh, blooms. That's right. They have a funny name. The hue blooms that are basically the angled room lights that usually put behind like you put behind books or something like that. We have them in our bay windows just to hiding behind curtains to add atmosphere to the room. And now they are adding atmosphere to my holiday Hoth snow scene. my holiday Hoth snow scene. So we've got some red oranges and greens over flying X-Wings having battles in midair with string.

That is my real holiday contribution, let's be fair. And then we also have a couple of hue bulbs. We have a hue light strip behind the television that's now holiday themed, and the light that usually backsplashes off of the ceiling because we don't have a light in the living room is now also a holiday green.

So it's a it's very, very holiday themed in the front in the front room. Very. Michael wanted to know, do any of you have holiday themed wallpapers on any of your devices? No, it's not. It's not really for me. I tend to leave my wallpapers alone for months and months at a time. And with the iPhone 10, just there's no correct wallpaper except just black. And so I guess that's a holiday wallpaper, depending on how you feel about the holiday. I've got the Cortex grid on mine, which is great.

Twitterific offered this year a holiday icon, which I think is fun. More apps could do that now with now that apps can redefine their icon and so i am using the holiday twitterific icon that is the one little bit of festiveness in my uh in my devices yeah it's a holly in a santa hat only in a santa hat right yeah i guess you should be called holly during period. Sure, that's right. There's a green background, red Santa hat, and a blue Twitterific bird. Yep. I don't have anything on my iPhone or my Mac, but because I had to write an article about holiday watch faces for iMore, I do have quite a number of photo faces for my Apple Watch that are various holiday-themed fun.

I like that. That's a good idea, actually. It's good good especially now that the photo face has a complication because it's not it's not completely useless and it's kind of like a custom watch face but not quite i would like to see the siri watch face get backgrounds to it i feel like that's one you could work with because there isn't always stuff on it hmm someone should take care of that. AJ wants to know, Jason, I'm going to ask you this first. Do you ever update electronics before wrapping them and putting them under the tree? I have done that in the past.

I don't feel like I need to keep the box intact if I can extract something from the box if i know there's an update sometimes it's it's unrealistic with something like a game console although like when i got my son the nintendo switch for his birthday i did open it up run all the updaters like the day before we left on the trip where because i gave it to him while we were on our trip and so um like if i had an ipad or something like that and i knew that there was going to be an os update that was required i would probably do that so if it's convenient to sort of secretly surreptitiously update the the software i would do it sure do kindle still come when like signed in is that still a thing that happens it's your it's your option you can you can you can actually say it's by default it will come auto logged into your account but you can also tell it it's a default, it will come auto-logged into your account,

but you can also tell it it's a gift and not to do that. I like that it does that, though. It's a really nice touch, right? Imagine if you ordered an iPhone and it came signed into your Apple ID. With all of your apps ready. Now, that would be a whole big thing. I would be very excited about that, not having to go through the upgrade process. And, Stephen, you also have young children.

Is this a thing that you do? I've not done it because, as a nerd nerd one of the best parts of a new electronics is that like plastic cling wrap deal i don't want to do that i want people to have that joy um do you really think that your children care about that they don't do a lot of electronics i mean they get like a hand-me-down ipad mini every three years okay they've never had the cling wrap is what you're saying yeah they've never gotten used to it um but you know for you know if i do give electronics you know to my spouse or a sibling or something uh what i always kind of included of you know i can help if you want or if you need i can help you get this set up so i think you know it's kind of part of the gift as a nerd, it's part of your gift to the world as your expertise.

I agree with that. And usually my, my MO is if I'm going to give an electronics gift to a member of my family, I will be there the day that they open that electronics gift. Because yeah, even honestly, I have pre set up electronics, uh, electronics now and again. I, I set up my mother's iPad before I gave her an iPad a few years back. Um, and while that is in some ways useful, you still get a bunch of questions and sometimes they're even more annoying questions because you haven't quite figured out what they want from their settings where you like, you think, you know, and then you've discovered that something majorly, you know, and then you've discovered that something is majorly missing, and then you don't find out until you're gone.

So I've found it's generally better, unless, as Jason said, unless you know that there's going to be a big update, like for the PS4, for instance. When I got Rick a PS4 last year, I ran all of the updates for both the PS4 and its software because i knew otherwise we were going to be sitting around for four hours waiting for updates before we got to play on christmas day you are a good partner that is that is a good thing to do especially for a playstation because they just do not work on christmas because psn goes down and so everybody's sad and our final question comes from graham and graham wants to know what are the best games or distractions for a family over the holiday season ren do you have

any hot tips here oh man i have to go with heads up um always yes yeah it always works right always works heads up is delightful and then here's something i also discovered and i'm sad that it was not in stock because it would have been a Secret Santa gift for one of you. Space Team has a card game version. Oh. Yeah. I have that.

I backed that Kickstarter. Is it fun? Is it as fun as the... It's really good. Yeah, it's really, really good. Yeah. I feel like I could get my non-tech friends into that as a game far more easily than I could trying to get them to download it on their devices and have all the Bluetooth sync and everything else. So, yeah, that's my runner up.

I would say Exploding Kittens is another fantastic card game, which is just a really fun game and it's very simple to learn. But the good thing about it is even though it is a simple game you can after a few rounds the strategy can get deep it's a really fun game that i love to play so that's that's a very good option jason what do you have uh telestrations is an amazingly great game for family gatherings especially at the holidays is our go-to. We will box it up and take it with us. If we're traveling, it is basically the game of telephone where everybody gets a slate. Telestrations comes with a bunch of these little, like, uh, they're not quite there. They're the kind of thing where you can write on it and then you lift

the thing and, uh, or no, actually it's dry erase markers, what they do now. Um, so everybody gets a little slate and a dry erase marker and a secret word that is given to them. And the way it works is you draw the secret word. And then you pass it to the next person who has to write down what they think the drawing is. And then the next person takes what they wrote down and draws that. And so on. And the goal, I mean, the goal is to laugh at all the ridiculous things that happen when people draw things badly and misunderstand what things are but ultimately the goal is to try

and get your drawing and concept all the way back around to you in this game of telephone and that rarely happens but the laughs are a plenty so i really recommend that and a thing similar to that actually on the digital side that i'll recommend i've had great success lately playing jackbox party pack which is available yes on ios on all the consoles it's on apple tv and the brilliance of it is you pop that on the television or on a big ipad and everybody just uses their phones to log into a website and they play on the website and it's got great sound effects and music and there are a bunch of different mini games and there are four different jackbox packs now and uh that's that's fun for everybody and you don't have to be super technical to be into it because almost everybody has a phone with a web browser and that's all you really need and there are drawing

games and word games and uh various levels of complexity and that's a lot of fun too turns out they brought one of their games lice water to the amazonico oh interesting i didn't know that that's a lot of fun too. Turns out they brought one of their games, Licewater, to the Amazon Echo. Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. That's fun. Just found that out by going to their website for the show notes. Stephen, what do you have? Any good tips for party games? You know, my family's not a big, huge game family. If it's all the siblings and in-laws, we'll kind of revert back to a classic like Risk that's a big uh a big fun one in our family and there there are a couple of

different ios versions of that that allow multiplayer none of them are super great um so we kind of go go old school there but um you know with the kids i mean my kids are still like young kids games ages so i'm really good at hungry hungry. So I'm really good at Hungry Hungry Hippo. I'm really good at it, guys. I can crush my three-year-old. I'm very pleased for you. I'm very, very pleased for you. I'll take it where I can get it some days, honestly.

This is what I'm good at, Hungry Hungry Hippos. All right. So I want to thank everybody for sending in their questions. You can send in questions to us with the hashtag ask upgrade but if you have preferred ren and steven's question answers more then you may like the way that they answer your questions so send them in with the hashtag ask query and listen to query on relay fm every couple of weeks so that's at relay.fm query all right let me take um a break and then when we come back we're're going to talk about our Secret Santa gifts that we bought for everybody.

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upgrade secret santa so we've all bought gifts for each other the value was around 20 there was originally a 20 limit that i think maybe we all broke in the great tradition of company secret santas where they give you a dollar amount and nobody follows it we also didn't do that and thanks by the way to uh the merlin bot who we needed somebody who could pass messages along without uh and also a sign who got who for a secret santa without us knowing and uh and so our friend merlin did it and thank you merlin um i sent him uh uh i sent him something i sent him a secret santa present as a thank you so hopefully he'll get that uh somebody did right oh no it was me reveal it's merlin that box is for me thank you merlin butt okay jason you're gonna tell us about the present that you received

yes and give us a little review of it yeah so i got something called the space adventure which is a card it's a card game but it's one of these um card a storytelling collaborative creative kind of like jumping off point games so like um my son and his friend like to play a game called super fight where you basically kind of dole out superheroes with powers and uh you you kind of tell a story about who that superhero is and how the fight goes between them and the other person's superhero um so this is like that where you're you're creating um a story about a a an adventure in space and uh everybody is supposed to get a series of cards and then they are supposed to draw, actually, like a representation of what their adventure in space would look like. So, for example, I could say, Serenity, you are a Bionaut.

You need to create something to eat and drink and research the resources you need to use on the planet that you're landing on you are landing on winter world which is a world populated by hungry pandas and the city that you build needs to be round and from that you would then uh you would then sketch up the hungry panda winter world with round things as the uh as as seen by the captain of the b not captain of the explorer ship that landed on that planet whereas mike you are a diplomat so you need to create a social space for the citizens of your colony and wonder what the needs of the new species are uh you will be living in underground world sad unfortunately you have to live underground it's very hot on the planet surface it is populated by a race of shy giants and the city that you build needs to be tiny and it goes on steven you are the chief and not you're a very you you need to create a special form of transportation um and think about

how your design is powered uh you are going to volcano world hey that might be how you power it use the volcanoes uh it's populated by a race of polite vampires and uh you need to make your design very futuristic so it's stuff like that and it's a lot of fun and then is the idea that somebody has to guess them like to guess what's going on i think everybody draws them and then they explain them and then the group sort of decides which one they like the best and that's it it's just meant to be kind of a fun conversation thing um which is there are a lot of games like this that are like sort of storytelling or creative jumping off point games and uh it's a lot of fun i mean is it a game is it an activity i don't even know what it is and obviously really great with kids so uh yeah because there's no like

strictly defined by luck winner or loser right which is that's kind of fun so everyone can kind of just decide like if little johnny has worked really hard and you can see that little johnny has worked really hard you can just let little johnny win right and and it's the appeal of having like a random thing that makes you be creative because you suddenly you're like whoa i'm in i'm in the underground or i'm in the volcano world with the shy vampires and what what does that mean how does that world look like and you have to kind of engage your creativity to figure out how that would work well the shy vampires you know they're going to

stay out of the light because they're vampires and you just kind of keep doing it like that with a space theme so uh lupo the space adventure thanks do you want do you want to guess jason well yeah let's i'll give you my guess and i will reveal everything at the end i suppose um okay my guess although i do a space podcast with steven uh my guess having attended her wedding which is space themed and having revealed earlier that she would have gotten something similar for the secret santa uh the space team game but it was not available i'm gonna guess this is from serenity but i don't know interesting good guess good guess well rem why don't we go to you next actually what uh what did you receive all right well uh i received something that went back to the

1960s 1970s in a very strange way okay uh which is to say i i have a cardboard based smartphone magnifier that is built uh to resemble an old television uh and it it essentially you put your your iphone or other smartphone up to 5.4 up to up to iphone 7 plus size uh into a tray that is shaped like a vhs tape you slide it in and press play on whatever uh video that you would like to watch uh and then slide it in and there is an old school uh magnifier on the front of this that in addition to being textured like an old crt television uh blows up your screen. So instead of having, you know, a five-ish inches screen, you're going to have something that looks more like seven or eight.

It is wickedly clever, I have to say, first and foremost, for something that is entirely cardboard. And, yeah, it just looks much more high quality than I think it actually is, which is which is always nice when you're going for a sub 20 gift that actually has some functionality. It has some very smart, some very smart modifications. It has little speaker holes in the bottom right corner so that you can actually properly project your sound while your iPhone is trapped within this faux television. And it's, it even has a little space for quote unquote, ejecting your videotape on the opposite side of the tape where you just tap it and the, the video, the cardboard videotape holder slides out. And it also has a little slot where you can plug in a plug in some power if you're watching something especially long. So on a, on an overall competency thing, this is a pretty cool little gift.

The only downside is because it is essentially using a plastic magnifier. Unless you're looking at it straight on, you're going to get some strange artifacting and moving of the image. So, for instance, it's sitting to the right of me here uh and with a video playing i just actually i picked home alone because uh because why not uh with the video playing and me sitting at the the imac i can see the bottom right corner of it in the top right top left corner of the screen oh how interesting. at it off center, if you're looking at it from above or from below or on either side. So initially I thought it would be really cool to put it in the bedroom. I was like, oh, we'll put it on our dresser

and just pop our smartphone in if we want to watch a movie. And no, not so much because it doesn't look like there's any image there. But again, if you have a desk where you get to look straight on at it, it's actually quite cool. Or if you have an arbitrary, I don't know, if you get a, what are the things from 12 South called? Not a backpack, but the high-rises. Get a high-rise. Buy a $70 accessory for your $15 smartphone magnifier. Be great. Be great.

Be great. Overall, this is a very cute gift, though. Rem, would you like to guess who bought it for you? Ooh. Okay. I don't know, actually. I am going to lean either you, Mike, or Jason. I can't decide whom. Pick one. Pick one. I'm going to slightly lean towards you, Mike, or Jason. I'm like, I can't decide whom.

Pick one. Pick one. I'm going to slightly lean towards you, Mike. Okay. Steven, you go next. So my gift is a set of gifts. There are two items that are related. The first is a little snowman.

He's maybe five inches tall, four inches tall. And you can hear the cable on my desk he's powered by usb type a mercifully and you plug him in you plug him in and he has a light inside and he lights up okay i did not plug this into my computer because that seems like a great way for to be hacked someone but i plugged it in with an iphone charger and he just he lights up and uh he has a little hat and a scarf and he's adorable um i've named i need i need to name him i think he i feel like he needs a name but he doesn't have one yet but he comes with a friend the friend i'm going to read the name of this i'm just going to read you some of the text in the box because it just speaks for itself. It is the rotating moon star projection lamp, colon, twinkle, twinkle

little stars. It's a nightlight. It's got some LEDs in it. It has four LEDs in it. And you can basically hit a series of buttons to change the color. And it projects stars and moons up on the wall and the ceiling and that sort of thing um but it's it's one of those products again it's powered by usb i'm not plugging this into a computer i plugged it into a iphone wall charger uh it comes with uh you know steady light with different changing color uh it some some some bullet points in the box romantic projection show project the moon and stars onto the walls and ceiling uh it has two usage singular as a stationary light and a rotatable moon star projection lamp and you can turn on in three ways use four triple a batteries

powered by the usb cable with charger there's not a charger in the box just a usb cable or connected with computer uh i'm not i'm not gonna put this into any computer i own that seems like a terrible idea so basically two two lights one christmas themed with my little snowman friend and then a not very bright definitely shady star moon projection light do you want to guess who will that for you uh i think i'm gonna go with uh i'm gonna go with jason the snowman some reason it kind of reminds me of jason interesting and uh he's okay well you know i do live where it's where we make snowmen all the time out here so he's smiling at me and it looks like he has thoughts about the imac pro and then jason

and i of course do a space show together and uh this is space themed so i'm gonna guess jason all right it is my turn i have a 1960s batman themed stretch armstrong wow now i have no idea if if stretch armstrong uh reached the united states i'm assuming absolutely great i i was assuming so because i have one and uh i didn't buy this for myself however i have a few stories to tell so at first i'll describe in case you don't know stretch armstrong uh and especially the batman stretch armstrong is a wonder to behold um it is a uh human shaped thing or batman shaped thing in this case you can also get them in scooby-doo and other other related properties um where it is a a human made of rubber um which is filled with i think corn syrup and something so basically it is stretchable to quite a length so you can basically

just pull on the appendages of the human uh or the batman and stretch batman into many different uh ways so you can pull him around, you can twist him up, you can tie him up into knots if you want to. Stretch Armstrong is a retro toy and they've brought it back for this holiday season. And with it came a few additional characters like Batman. So I have a few stories to tell. One is a story in which I need to go back about 20 years. So about 20 years ago, a little Mike loved Stretch Armstrong and had one. just the dude stretch armstrong um he got his leg ripped off by a younger brother who tied the leg tied yeah tied the leg around the bed post tied the arm to the back of a car like a human-sized car a baby-sized car you know it's when she's sitting and then pedaled until uh the leg ripped off so my god that's what happened to young mike stretch armstrong

then young mike got a stretch armstrong dog there was a dog like um it was a stretch dog i think it was called or stretch i don't know it's many mean fetch armstrong actually was the name fetch armstrong uh mike loved fetch armstrong and on the last day of school, took him to school with him. Fetch Armstrong got stolen by another school pupil. So you would think that receiving another Stretch Armstrong related property would bring back many peculiar memories. But it was actually quite a surprise for me because i was expecting to receive batman stretch armstrong on the day that batman stretch armstrong arrived for me because i had ordered batman stretch armstrong for my nephew for christmas and he was arriving that day by amazon

so i opened my amazon packages like okay so great there's the batman stretch armstrong that i was expecting i opened the second box expecting to find more presents for christmas and found yet another batman that came with a note with uh mike attention upgrade so this was a this was a big surprise for me so i then was at my huge surprise in this one of my co-hosts had just the random happenstance to decide to buy this gift for me i shared this story with uh my fiancee to which she did not react in any way which was a big surprise for me because this was one of the biggest coincidences to occur in my entire life so i suspect that steven bought me this because he

would be the person who i guess would be most likely to ask adina um about this gift uh and she didn't give it away but her face sure did but i will say i am very happy with my gift because um this will finally be a stretch arm strong that will not either get ripped in half or stolen. So third time's a charm. So let's go down the list. Ren, did you buy Jason his secret center? I did, in fact. Thank you.

And Mike, did you buy Ren her secret center? Yes, in fact, I did. Jason, did you buy Steven his secret center? Yes, I did. Jason, did you buy Stephen his secret Santa? Yes, I did. And then, Stephen, I was right. You bought mine, didn't you? Did. And did you cheat by asking Adina?

So I can tell you the story. Okay, tell me the story. My initial idea, so what I've discovered is that toys from the 90s on eBay are super cheap. I've been down a Dubai Friday inspired Lego hole, and I just have way too many 90s on eBay are super cheap. I've been down a Dubai Friday-inspired Lego hole, and I just have way too many 90s Lego now in my office. But I thought, I know, Mike likes Nintendo, and Mike grew up in the 90s. I was going to pick you up like an old Game Boy Color or something.

So I texted Federico, and I said, hey, has Mike ever mentioned to you, does he have one of these? Because, Mike, you have a lot of nerdy stuff and I figured maybe you've bought one or kept one from a child. I didn't want to get you something that you already had. And Federico wasn't sure. So this was when you were in Seattle. So I knew I could text Adina and not be suspicious. She doesn't have to be weird of who she's texting.

And she could ramsack your office when you're not there. So I had her go through your desk. And I think you have a Game Boy Advance, I think is what she found. So I said, you know, that's kind of close. I don't want to get in the way. And so I said, OK said okay well I'll keep thinking and she texted me back a little while later and

told me the exact story you just told in the show about Stretch Armstrong being murdered so clearly this weighs on your psyche in a way that you probably need to see somebody about well it had recently come up at a family gathering because I was buying a Stretch Armstrong

for my nephew. That's how this whole thing came about. That did not make it into our conversation, although that is hysterical that you opened two on the same day. It was wonderful. And so she brought that story up and it went on Amazon. And my first thought was, oh, I'll get him a Spider-Man one because you like Spider-Man. And my first thought was, oh, I'll get him a Spider-Man one because you like Spider-Man. But I, and we've argued about this, believe that Batman is a superior superhero because Spider-Man's powers are dumb and got you the Batman version.

So that's my story. Is there a Spider-Man one? That's my story. I didn't even know there was a Spider-Man one. If there is, then Batman. I don't know if there is or not. I saw the Batman one and knew that's what you needed. Because if there is, Batman's going to get frowned.

That's what's needed because if there is batman's gonna get frowned that's what's gonna happen but no i know it looks like that they just have it looks like it's just batman and scooby-doo is what i can find okay i would say that this has been a success all around i think everybody got great and or slightly dubious gifts and uh we all we all were able to guess each other which I think means that we know each other very well, I guess, in all manner of respects. So I would say that the inaugural Upgrade Secret Santa has been a roaring success. Wouldn't you, Jason? I think so. This is what Secret Santas are all about, is exactly this, which is moderate to low-priced gifts that you wouldn't buy yourself, but that you get from somebody else.

gifts and that you wouldn't buy yourself but that you get from somebody else and and then yes maybe maybe after this is all over you'll give them away or maybe steven you'll be looking at that snowman for years to come little that is called guilting presence little uh little uh snow snow yeah sure i look forward to hopefully seeing snow snail appear in the background of a youtube video oh yeah oh yes without a doubt that's that's what i perhaps a review of snow cell let's not go too far today's show is also brought to you by pingdom you can go and start monitoring your websites and servers at pingdom.com you'll get a 14 day free trial when you enter the offer code RELAYXMAS at checkout. You will also get yourself a huge holiday special 50% off your first invoice. That is a very big discount for my friends at Pingdom.

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and watch a Home Alone movie. And also in tradition, I have seen this movie, but Jason has not. So last year, Jason watched Home Alone for the first time. And I would say on the whole, you enjoyed Home Alone. Is that right to say, Jason? Yeah, I get why people watch it and like it and why it was a hit. It was fun and uh anybody that's seen home alone 2 can understand that if you enjoyed home alone 1 there's a strong chance

you'll like home alone 2 because it is by and large the same movie uh which is one of the things that i like about home alone 2 um i'm interested to know jason did you like the fact that home alone 2 was the same movie basically as home alone i understand why they did this but i did have that thought of this is i think what i said when we finished watching it was this is like a perfect example of having a movie be a hit and just deciding to make it again because that's what it is it is it is it is just like let's just do it all again we'll play all the same notes in all the same ways it doesn't even need to really make sense why it's all happening again it just is because everybody liked that movie so let's do it again now in a moment i'll come back to some of the interesting ramifications of this when you

look at the movie from the movie's world um but ren i'm assuming you've probably seen this movie before and do you like home alone 2 i actually like home alone 2 the best of all of the home alone movies it was actually so most i feel like a large number of people have a christmas story as their yearly play this on the television. Home Alone 2 was ours. And I think I have seen this movie definitely more times than I can count. It was a childhood staple. And rewatching it again, I remember why it was. It's definitely there are some things in this movie that do not age well.

this movie that do not age well uh but at the same time uh what i actually find kind of charming about home alone and just all of the home alone movies in general is it is basically it is the james bond formula applied to failed capers uh and it's basically like hey does this work let's try a caper in a different location with some of the same or all of the same people. And let's add in a fun friend or in this case, a homeless woman who feeds birds. And yeah, you know, have have some fun with it. I bottom line this this movie has floss, but I like it. Stephen was Home Alone to a staple in the Hackett holiday household. It was not as much as the first one I don't think and I haven't seen the first one and I don't know how long but uh my wife watched Home Alone 1 with a

friend like three or four nights ago and then we watched Home Alone 2 last night and she was like terrible idea yeah she said too much too much of the mcallister family but she really remarked just like how obviously okay this movie worked maybe we don't know why it works let's make everything the same but way more deadly and you know hey oh the deadliness yes so um for me uh mine and rent's situation are very similar i love this movie always have loved this movie um i love it more than the original and i've seen it more and having watched this movie i've realized why why i have had uh the feeling in me for my entire life that i want to spend christmas in new york it's because of this movie like i all of those things uh i wanted to spend christmas in new york and we did get to spend some christmas

in new york a couple of years ago and it was everything that I wanted it to be because everything looked like it did in the movie by and large, except I couldn't find Duncan's toy chest. Or as I like to think of it in my head and have since I was a kid, toy Duncan's chest, because that's the way it's written from left to right. So it is a toy Duncan's chest, which I enjoy a lot. And I would assume many children probably think that's the case because it's not very clearly written. Toy Duncan's chest. Mike, I think you and I had the same movies growing up. Pretty much the exact same movies growing up.

So one of the things about this movie, which I find even funnier as i am an adult is the fact that this this in this world in the mcallister world it could happen that a second time maybe one or two years apart kevin gets lost and they even to the point is's 12 months yeah it's the next christmas yeah to the point that they even make jokes about it as a family it still happens and like i know that like airport security was very different then but i just i really like just struggle to understand like my favorite moment in this is so they're running to the gate right to get there to go catch the the plane and they get there and the mom what is her name uh that's aside from this it's katherine o'hara yeah

okay that she stands there and starts counting the kids and then like the the check-in agent's like no no no just get on and she's like okay she she she understands that this could be a problem but it's just like ah whatever they told me to get on this is this is one of the big problems i have with this movie is that like the first one tries very hard to set works really hard to set up the premise of how you would leave a kid home alone like how many things had to go wrong this one i don't think you can have it both ways like there's the reality part of it which is that there is no way she would not let Kevin be, like, he would be holding her hand the entire way through.

They would always be checking for Kevin. It would never happen again. But this movie goes through all the steps of like, oh, look at all these crazy things that had to happen for this to get to the point where he was left home alone again. And I thought to myself, at this point, if you're just gonna do this, just don't bother like don't waste half an hour other than because they want to replay everything that happened in the first movie for nostalgia reasons

like why are you trying to create mechanics because it just you've left reality so far behind i would just get over it i would have liked i would have liked kevin to just like spite them is what i was thinking it's like he was the last one on and they took and his mom turns away to hand her boarding pass and he just takes off and by the time and maybe they don't even get on the plane but by the time that uh they they get off and realize he's not there he's he's used the cash to buy a ticket to new york and he's gone, right? Something like that. I would have rather had it been like Kevin is aggressively getting away because for a moment you think that's what he's going to do because he's really grumpy about his stupid

family because they're awful. And I expected that. That would have been, I would have liked that better if they had gone that way because the accidental losing a second time, it's like, why? I don't know. I didn't need to see that again because the first time I second time it's like why i don't know i didn't need to see that again because the first time i kind of went with it and the second time i'm like nope no just make it more ridiculous i can buy the fact that they were late because you've had 364 days

where your alarm clock has woke you up right so you're like you're good but yeah that like even like it does seem like the start of the movie it's starting to go that way because like kevin's like i don't want to be with you guys like he's like yeah totally like, it does seem like at the start of the movie, it's starting to go that way. Because, like, Kevin's like, I don't want to be with you guys. Like, he's like, I don't want to be with you. Yeah, totally. Run away, kid. So it seems like he might spite them. But then they seem to just let that go. And it's still just a mix-up.

Which is funny. It is funny. I will say. Buzz is awful, by the way. Buzz is awful. And I do feel it. So are all the parents. Why do they laugh so much?

My note is that Buzz is a jerk and the rest of the people in this family are idiots and i do appreciate like it does get me on kevin's side immediately that um when they're like oh you better apologize to buzz and i'm sitting there going do not apologize to buzz and he's like no i'm not going to apologize i'm like all right kid good job stick stick with it the talk boy i had a talk boy that was my favorite toy for a very long time i absolutely loved that thing i mean there are again there are many interesting things that happen with that in this movie which may be the speaker on that thing well actually i know the speaker on that thing wasn't that good um but the the talk boy tape recorder was an incredible thing and the talkboy there was a whole talkboy

line of products that existed for a long time of which i think i owned all of them including the talkboy watch and the talkboy pen like that was a great toy line for me as a kid um and i remember once that as a i will say that this is in retaliation for stretch armstrong um i was able to record my younger brother admitting to something that he'd done he spilled something or broken something via the use of a concealed talkboy tape recorder and played it back to my parents my mom didn't appreciate the fact that i'd done that so much but i did it so as you can tell like me and my younger brother we get on very well now we didn't get on so well uh as kids so but i did do that i did my favorite part about the talk boy is according to wikipedia which is

never wrong it was conceived for this movie and then hasbro made a bunch of them and just just took a giant swimming pool full of money from all these people like it's so great that it started life as a movie prop and then became a toy yeah i mean well everybody wanted it because the movie right like oh yeah and then it just became its own thing after that because the original talkboy was so expensive that they made the talkboy pen which seemed like wizardry it was like a digital recorder at that point uh yeah it was it was very cool like the original talkboy i don't remember if the one that you bought had cassettes. I think it did, though. I think that was still a cassette-based toy.

Yeah, it was cassette-based. There you go. At least the female one was. Oh, do you mean the Talkgirl, which is ridiculous? Which was so dumb. And it was pink. It was so dumb. I could not convince my parents to buy me a Talkboy.

They insisted on a talk girl and i was just i was furious i was like i want the blue one blue one's cooler anyway there is if for many years i have believed that there was a game girl like a girl version of the game boy but i think i'm thinking of this like there were pink game boys but i think it is the talk girl that i'm thinking of when i think there was a game there was the game boys but i think it is the talk girl that i'm thinking of when i think there was a game there was the game gear but not the game yeah but there was pink versions of the game boy but they just called it game boy because it doesn't mean it's for boys like it's just a toy but anyway uh the talk boy was amazing and is used to great effect throughout this entire film

but yes i think the the big difference in this movie is that instead of being alone at home kevin is in another city he's lost in new york he's lost in new york which is a thing that he wanted because for every unknown reason records an ad about the plaza hotel whilst he's still at home um but that was very helpful for him later on when he needed to book a reservation uh i don't know why any adult would take a reservation from from the slowed down voice uh that was given to them it's perfectly time for conversation yeah it's very well oh no because you just press play and pause credit cards i have them my favorite part is it's peter mccallister the father the father just so you know it's not it's not a child this is a father i like this part and the

reason i like this part is it's not in the other movie right this is this is i mean there's sort of like it when he goes shopping and all that but this is like uh this whole comedy bit with the hotel and with tim curry and rob schneider and and they uh and and i i like that i also like that well tim curry is is a little too villainous but like rob schneider you end up being like they're hapless and so instead of being burglars they're just kind of clueless adults that he's uh he's uh he's putting the moves on and kind of getting them all confused by his devious child genius or whatever he has. So I like this part of it. I like the hotel part, except for the part where Donald Trump walks by. I like to imagine that he was insufferable on the set and he wanted to be in the shot,

and Chris Columbus agreed that he would be in the shot. And it's, yeah, that's like, I like to believe. I love that tim curry is so immediately mistrusting of him like for a completely unknown reason he just sees the boy in the lobby and he's like find out everything you can about that boy right like why because he's not dressed to the standards of the plaza hotel clearly he's judging him he's judging him hard i like that kevin has got like lots of grifter moves though that he gets them convinced i'm like oh my dad just dropped me off and you've

got a reservation and all this stuff like i like that he talks he's he's a smart kid and he can talk his way because how do you get like that's the whole premise here is how do you how do you get a kid into this hotel and uh and he does it like i i like that it's almost like a heist it's like how do we get this kid into the hotel it is like a heist yeah it is and i like i like the line where he's like uh i'll get up to a bit of mischief like i like that he's like he's he's he's playing the little cheeky boy card pretty well he does it he does a good job like when he's trying to get the he's like what is he like lady i don't know how to use credit cards or something like that he's like i'm just a kid and then when he sees her like do that thing what is that thing called with the card the chunk machine that that's what

it's called that's that's yeah it's swiping it's a credit authorization it's running a credit card back in the in the day where you did that that way do you make a you make like carbon copies of the numbers that are raised on the credit card that was how we did it back in the day by the way i've looked it up on wikipedia which is never wrong uh donald trump bought the plaza hotel in 1988 1992 when the movie was released uh the the uh it was uh ownership was transferred in one of donald trump's uh many real estate bankruptcies so there you go um i was very impressed at kevin's master puppeteering um during the shower scene with the big inflatable clown he's gotten even better at puppeteering he's very very talented uh i guess he had he honed his

skills just in case this ever happened to him again this cracks me up because i didn't actually remember this until i saw it uh watching this again last year uh or last year yesterday night and i was just like what what how who thought this would be a funny gag to put in a film and why does it work because i still don't understand why it works it's funny but i don't know why um there this this part reminds me because it's music themed uh i love the music in this movie like the soundtrack and just the music in general but the theme like the john williams score is wonderful like one of my favorite things about home alone is the music anyway like the themes

the two big themes from home alone like i absolutely love them um and they're still in this movie and along with all the other music it's just so good like that moment when uh tim curry's is like sneaking through the like all of the music is just so fantastic um and then oh of course our villains are back the wet bandits uh they were put in prison i like that them escaping from prison made front page news uh on the newspapers the wet bandits have escaped you remember those people that robbed one house they got one house not in new york yep they're they're out so watch out uh but they're kind of working on it and they bump into each other after kevin's visit to duncan's toy chest which is one of my other favorite parts

of this movie again just because i was a kid and just imagining that a toy store like that would exist was quite a wonderful thing yeah it's it's like the off-brand fao shorts or something um the and i think you mean toy junk duncan's chest uh the okay joe pesci and daniel stern like this is where i really draw the line with this movie which is they don't just want it to have the exact same plot as the first movie they literally don't want to change the characters in the movie so they bring them back which is like totally ridiculous that they would be there and that they would see him and all of that and i had a moment where i thought wouldn't it be more fun if there were new robbers who didn't know kevin's moves who had to uh you know who had to

he had to fight that were like new york criminals but instead it's just joe pesci uh and daniel stern and i have to i have to applaud joe pesci this movie literally just has him do cartoon dialogue at various points where all he's saying is he's just laughing to himself a lot but it's like they didn't give him dialogue like stupid kevin or whatever or or if they did he didn't use it and he's literally just saying rock rock rock rock rock the whole movie it's amazing so full credit but um maybe nobody else wanted to play these characters because they are murdered repeatedly and somehow stay alive i don't know how that's possible i honestly though i understand why you're saying that but i can't imagine this movie any other way like it for me

is either the three of them or it doesn't work because when they change it for three and four it kind of sucks that's why they did it this way it's because people like you want to see the want to see that other movie again and that's fine that's fine i uh i i would have maybe suggested they make a different movie but they didn't so that's okay they just play this one again my favorite callback to the original movie is when they bump into each other for the first time and um harry has an m imprint on his hand yes which is from the doorknob uh-huh in the original movie which i love yep like because when it must have been one of the burning ones yeah and he's very cautious about doorknobs

all throughout this movie he like taps them real lightly to make sure they're not hot like that series that made a real i mean i guess a literal and a psychological impression on him oh no oh boy well you know he's it's learned a little bit there's some uh character progression in this film yeah albeit minor that's as far as they evolve doorknobs now of course all i want to talk about is the scene with the many injuries but there is a part that i wanted to just touch on before that which gets us to that which is kevin's well of course i'm not even thinking about the uh the return of the movie was he was the sequel is like even filthier angels or something it's called it's got some some name like that uh with the again

the same scene he's just playing and stopping at the video uh which works perfectly and everybody very uh conveniently falls into the trap to have all of the the words used perfectly whenever it's needed um but the kevin lost in new york at night part i didn't like it as a kid and i don't like it now um it scared me as a kid now i just i just think that it is a mostly pointless scene with him bumping in to various ne'er-do-wells in the evening including the taxi driver who i don't know why the taxi driver wants to scare him away and then drive away. But he does.

And he does. And it's very peculiar to me. This is scary New York. This is before New York became less scary. This is sort of like at the end, tail end of that period where New York was always portrayed and was, you know, dirty and full of crime. And there's that line where it's like, you can't go out there on the street, lady. There's the criminals everywhere roaming around the streets of new york and it's like that was what it was like in fact i went to new york for the first time uh by myself about two months did

you escape from your family i did well sort of i suppose uh about two months after this movie came out i was in your february 93 and i remember it being you know kind of shabby and crappy and the next time i went back to new york city like eight years later or whatever completely different like way definitely this was right at the end of that period where it was kind of dark and drab and dirty and times square was full of like porno places and stuff like that and it's not like that anymore so this is a bygone of uh super scary new york jason did you foil any uh toy store roberts toy store robberies or i unfortunately i did not but it does say something about the the vast i never feel older than than when talking to people younger

than me about things that hit them in their childhood because it's that moment where i'm like oh this was your childhood i was in my first year of grad school when this movie came out so i was not paying attention to movies about uh about kids and i hadn't seen home alone right i totally missed that so why would i see the sequel turns out it would have been fine but uh yeah anyway so yeah it's scary new york well one of the reasons that you may have seen it was for the increase in severity of the injuries sustained to the Wet Bandits. It's amazing.

And like last year... Sticky Bandits, Mike. We're the Sticky Bandits now. Like last year, I have listed and will now list to you every injury that is sustained in uh this in the scene at the renovated the renovating house which by the way that house needs serious renovations because there is a lot wrong with that house uh i can't believe anybody lived in it well i mean they've got they've obviously gutted it and they're doing huge work although i like how they say like oh

your uncle's uh they're doing some work on his house or whatever they're renovating his house it's like they've literally gutted the entire house there is nothing left in that random holes i hope i hope the uncle is staying in europe for a year because it will be a long time before anyone and then especially now that his nephew has has uh has further gutted yes even more so yeah so the first entry is actually sustained outside of the toy store where a human seesaw mechanism has ensured that Harry will land on a car with back first to the point where the roof caves in windows. Yes. So he's dead at this point.

He's, his spine is shattered into a million pieces. Unless that, that car roof is made of aluminum foil. There are four bricks dropped onto marv's head from the roof of the house and this is like a four-story uh brick redstone what they call red brick houses yeah just so there are four there are four in succession dropped onto his head can i admit that i laughed i laughed a lot at that part yes this is this is the moment this is the

moment where the movie where i i kind of nodded at the movie and I said, okay, movie, you're a cartoon. It's fine. Here we go. Because I just, again, there is some real art in the, you just saw something happen and it's going to keep happening and that the characters are going to keep making exactly the wrong decisions so that it continues to happen even though even though by all accounts one of those bricks would have killed uh daniel stern and the second one certainly would have killed him just killed him his his skull would

have been obliterated yes you ever wonder how many people accidentally went to jail for murder because they thought they could just knock somebody out by dropping a brick on them it is a scary thought to think of how many injuries were sustained due to these movies um i think they could net the the true the true brutality of these movies could never be accurately calculated um a staple gun is shot through a hole in a door into marv's butt, groin, and face. Yes. Over three separate instances. Yeah, he rotates very nicely, kindly.

Yeah, keeps rotating. Harry slips from a ladder covered in soap onto his back. It's probably about a 10-foot fall as he lands because he has to climb up a bunch of stuff to jump onto it. Marv falls through a hole in the floor down to a basement this is maybe one or two stories down into the basement um a bag of spanners is opened above a doorway and they all drop onto harry's head and it's probably about 30 spanners um that hit. Marv slips on more soap. He hits the shelving unit, which falls onto him. The shelving unit is stacked with paint tins,

which then cover him in paint. Marv is then electrocuted via some very large battery, maybe a generator. Yeah, it's a welder. It's a welding machine. The battery from a welding machine, which has been rigged to some taps marv is electrocuted to the point that we see his skeleton um i'm not 100 sure how and why but that is what i mean this is

the cartoon part like rather rather than it being like an electrified skeleton like you're seeing through his skin it's literally just he becomes a skeleton briefly and then is not a skeleton anymore this this movie caused a lot of children to question what physics and you know chemistry and just science in general is all sciences okay so mike before you go on i want to i want to point out something here and i i would encourage everybody the next time you watch this movie to think of this movie this way i'm sure i'm not the first person to have this thought but i'm going to share it now because it occurred to me somewhere where daniel stern falls two stories and then is electrocuted and turns into a

skeleton. I thought, you know what I'm watching here? I, and this is maybe the genius of home alone. This is a horror movie, except the music is quirky instead of terrifying. Oh my gosh.

And Kevin is a serial killer he is basically saw and that is what this movie is except that you're like yeah but they kind of deserve it but that's what it is it is a horror movie we are watching people tormented and killed in the worst possible way so home alone think about that just think about good times you'd got him taken care of christmas everybody there is back that is wonderful all right harry's head is set on fire by a blowtorch he then dips his head into a toilet filled with gasoline which explodes i think it's everything remains intact but it's still yeah it's okay so uh the the imaginations to get him to go like straight down into the toilet like he's really

making an effort to get to that point where it explodes and then again cartoon there's a massive explosion because he has put uh his on fire head in a huge bowl of kerosene and the end result is that his hat the top of his hat is blown off, but the ring is still around his head and everything is blackened, which again is right out of a cartoon. It is literally, there is no physics happening here. It is things we see in cartoons, except in live action. It's like there was an explosion, right? And then it's just everything remained like, as if like a gift exploded.

He's Wile E. Coyote at this point. They are both Wile E. Coyote. That is what we're watching. And I'm okay with it. It's fine. It's fine. Now, once you just embrace that you are watching a cartoon or a horror movie or both. Marv pulls on a rope, which he tries to use to get out of the basement where he still is,

which is tied to a 100-pound bag of cement. When he pulls on it hard enough to make his first jump, the 100-pound bag of cement falls three stories down it hard enough to make his first jump the 100 pound bag of cement falls three stories down and hits him on the head slowly falls and he watches it coming to him and doesn't try to move probably because he's a skeleton he then blows cement out of his mouth whilst in pursuit of kevin uh a ladder breaks in half sending harry to fall face down uh onto the ground um after thwarting uh attempts at having paint cans thrown into their heads because they are smart enough to remember not to just run up the stairs i love that it's the one time in this film

they show any actual intelligence they are both then hit in the face by like a metal pillar like a post from the street somehow uh which sends them down the stairs through a hole in the floor down to the basement the pillar then rolls down the stairs and lands on them by my trajectory i'm guessing by the trajectory of that pillar on the head is where it would land uh you don't see this because this is one you cannot like see happen and not know what happens right like everything else i don't know there's something in this movie like even the bricks it's like oh the bricks are small right so like they would just leave a mark but this metal pillar landing on them both they don't show because their heads would have had to have just popped like grapefruit but that's not what

happens um both are crushed between a wall and a door by a tool chest that rolled down a staircase which they are both listening what is that sound i like that even at this point they're listening what is that sound surely it can't be something bad like what is that sound luckily this time this staircase did not feature any tarantulas which i was very happy about um they both fall from the top of the building because the rope that they are climbing down is set on fire uh when they land to the ground they have gone through some uh planks of wood which were holding tins of grease which then come up into the air and land on them um at this point kevin has run away and he sustains his first and only injury in which he slips on ice and is knocked unconscious briefly

he lands on his back um they pick him up and take him to Central Park to shoot him, which is a thing. And I guess it's fine to take him to the park because... Oh, nobody's in the park. It's a lawless wilderness where there's just crime. I have to input for a sec. So around the time of this, maybe like two years after the time of this movie was set, my mother and I were in New York city and staying with a friend who lived right off central park. And he, this,

just so you know, this friend lived in a building that was previously owned by the mob and he had to deal with my, so it's like painting a picture of New York. We ended up in the park at one in the morning due to probably unwise decisions. And he offhandedly joked. He's like, yeah, you know, two years ago, you wouldn't have been able to do this because someone would have tried to shoot you, cut your throat and then bury you in the pond. Just like this is a totally normal thing to say to a 12 year old girl.

And then I'm like, let's go. Let's go home. So. So, yeah, I i buy this in other words that's my tldr about that it's where he would have been if you're going to shoot the kid anywhere take him to to a bridge in central park uh they are both then attacked by a huge flock of pigeons to which at one point we can only assume the pigeons are attempting to peck through the body of marv given the the level at which he is screaming and then that that is the

end of the injuries except for just a few times in which harry kicks marv in the shins because he's giving away all of their secrets to the police that is the full extent of the injuries sustained in home alone too they are vastly more severe than the injuries sustained in home alone it's all true can we talk about the family a little more just to say that they're terrible again? And that they go to Florida and find, of course, that Kevin isn't there and are pretty, are like okay with it. That's the thing that I get. I mean, Catherine O'Hara sort of tries to seem concerned, but she's not that concerned.

And they're like driving around and the idea is that it's raining and it's miserable in Florida and they actually don't want to be there. But, you know, they're just driving around and the idea is that it's raining and it's miserable in florida and they actually don't want to be there uh but you know they're just like hanging out and she makes a big they're making big jokes to the to the police officer in this in the airport too right they're like oh we haven't lost our luggage and they both knock on wood and just like both burst out in laughing yeah and like which is like i thought that what she would transition from the laughing into crying but that just doesn't happen they're just embarrassed because the police officer doesn't think it's that funny yeah because they lost their son for a second straight year and this time when they i mean and i appreciate back then they they would have had to wait for the credit card to come

up and then they would know that uh where he was which is new york at the plaza hotel and then that also leads me to a moment where they're like because there's like 14 of them or whatever there's this huge family they're like oh he's in new york everybody let's go and i thought really you you again trying to be practical here you're not going to take the whole family with you to new york you're going to take like the parents are going to go to new york and the rest of these losers are just going to stay behind in florida for their previously reserved crappy vacation but they don't do that the whole family goes all the mcallisters are coming to new york as i posited last year the mcallister family are

very wealthy is is my expectation because they live in a mansion in the suburbs in chicago and every year they all go somewhere luxurious for their christmas it wouldn't be as nice if that thousand dollars of room service that kevin ordered including the personally served ice cream bowl uh was like what bankrupted them so instead they just yeah he is he is i think more mad than he deserves to be in that scenario because yeah they did leave their kid again for the second year yeah and he didn't die and he should take care of himself yeah he looked after himself right like you know he was in a hotel like what do you want the kid to do like maybe he shouldn't have got the ice cream sundae bar which i really wished existed uh and maybe it does in some hotels that a gentleman will come

to your room and serve ice cream for you uh there is a line a throwaway line that i love where kevin says to the ice cream sundae man uh like he's like would you like another scoop sir and he says yeah i'm not driving which i just i love i love that i love that line it's so good it's like kevin the adult he just says what adults say so one uh character and plot mechanic we have not really talked about is the bird lady so we see her uh when kevin's like the bird lady the bird lady scared me as a kid she's very scary looking and he gets his foot caught in a rock and she lets him out or like saves him somehow from the rock and he befriends her and they go sneak above uh like, uh, like a, a big hall and they hear some music

and they talk and it seems that she is homeless by choice or, or at least part of her, part of her current situation was by choice where she was in love and it fell apart and, uh, she didn't want to be hurt again. And they, they connect. And as a kid, I mean, I didn't, I thought it was sort of weird, but watching it as an adult like she's there i mean obviously at the end she's the one who saves kevin because she puts her bird army all over the sticky bandits but i i think she's there to help balance kevin out because if all we see is yes he's trying to save duncan toy store but then he basically goes on a murderous rampage for 30 minutes uh we need something to like remind us that he is like a kind of like an innocent kid

in a way or like he has good in him um because i particularly don't like kevin the character i find him sort of annoying he does try to donate well he does give 20 of his own dollars right like in theory to the to the to the children's hospital but like the the thing that i find peculiar about the the bird lady is that she doesn't get a happy ending like the shovel man does in the original where like he meets up with his family and like everything's good like she's just like she gets the turtle dove and then that's that like that's her happy ending i think she's not she's not unhappy she She's just, this is her life. And she sort of rolls over the park with her army of birds.

There's also something to be said about both Mr. Duncan and the bird lady as kind of balances to Kevin's character, right? Where it's like the chaotic. Kevin is kind of chaotic neutral and the bird lady has some of that chaos, but also some of the centering and like the bird in some ways she is a foster, like not quite a foster mother, but a surrogate mother for Kevin, which is super weird. Again, watching it now, I'm just thinking like stranger danger, stranger danger. That said, I actually really love her narrative arc in this film because the – at least what I always took as a kid was, oh, she doesn't have any friends anymore. So all she has to – you know, the only friends she has are the birds and the birds keep her company. And then Kevin giving her a turtle dove was telling her that they could be friends and that she still has friends in the in the real world and as an adult i take that one step further based on her actual storyline of the like not being you know getting her heart broken it's like here is a thing that's normally signifies you know love and renewal and maybe it's okay for

you to to step out of the park and love again uh and you helped a little kid so so go you know go be merry we have not yet though touched upon the most ridiculous thing that happens in this entire movie which is the fact that on christmas morning kevin escapes again and nobody notices they're all opening their presents it just sneaks out again like it's nobody ever watched this kid like it's but 12 hours not even maybe not even 12 hours since you got him back and yet you're all so preoccupied with the the army of toys that has been delivered to you uh by toy duncan's chest that you you just as well it's like it's all toys the parents what are they what are they opening it's just all toys and he runs out again and they don't even

notice like i i could i was i couldn't believe it when i saw that today because i'd forgotten that he does that and yet he escapes he escapes once more that kid can never stop escaping and yet even him he's like he didn't want to leave he was sad he missed his mom but he still ran away again he didn't know she was gonna be there like the bird lady she could have been anywhere and she's always there she's she is there because the plot dictated her to be there at that time yes kevin mccallister the original wizard the original creator of the invisibility cloak and apparently can track humans also serial killer just throw that in there serial killer is it serial killer if you kill the same guys over and over even more so he is serial killer of just marvin harry yep yeah i love this movie it is ridiculous but i love

this movie it is it makes me think of christmas uh it is a christmas movie for me um and uh i have many many happy memories of this movie uh i love it very much. Jason, we will not be watching Home Alone 3 next year, if I have my say. Mike, I've already seen Home Alone 3 multiple times. Because it was the only Home Alone movie on Netflix. And my kids watched it when they were little. So I've seen young Scarlett Johansson and her brother, whoever, Alex, whatever, navigate the criminals in their little suburban house, which I actually think it's not that bad, although I haven't seen it in years,

but I saw it several times and I thought it was clever. Having never seen the originals, I was like, oh yeah, okay, I get the idea. I get the premise here. I will say this about Home Alone 2, which is I can see myself revisiting Home Alone.

I can't see myself watching this movie again because I think Home Alone is better. And so I would watch that one again instead of this. Sorry. Home Alone is probably a better movie. I prefer Home Alone 2 though. It's New York. It's New York City at Christmas.

Randall, Stephen, do you have any closing statements on Home Alone 2 Lost in New York? Just, you know, if you are in an abandoned building, just always be on the lookout for electrified sinks. That's good life advice. Be nice to homeless people and feed the birds. Tuppence a bag. I always thought she was saying tuppence for many years.

Didn't know what that was, but that was what I thought she was saying. Stephen, Serenity, thank you so much for joining us for our holiday special. And to all of you out there choosing to enjoy Upgrade over your holidays, we greatly appreciate it,

as we have for every other episode that you have consumed this year. I would like to give thanks to pingdom encapsular app optics and smile for their support of this week's show and you should go and check out query at relay.fm slash query and you can listen to steven and ren's escapades i don't think that they talk about 90s uh murder movies that often um on query very rarely other many other sometimes not that often uh very very many other enjoyable technical topics um can be found there um thank you so much for listening to the upgrade holiday special um until next time which is the upgradies which i'm very excited

about as always the most glitzy award show of the year um the upgrade is you can find um on new year's day so happy holidays happy new year to you and we'll be back on new year's day until then say goodbye everybody bye merry christmas adios