Upgrade - 193: This is Stephen Hackett’s Fault

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

The 25th anniversary of BBEdit and a visit with a friend lead Jason to take a deep dive into Mac history, Google shows a disappointing lack of forethought in its AI demo, and the future of TV is apparently Apple’s TV app.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 193 today's show is brought to you by fresh books pingdom and simple contacts my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snell hola jason snell hello mate hello you're changing the intro up. That's very strange, but nobody wants to talk about that. So, you know, we should probably move on. Strong beginning to this episode today. Oh, it's going to be a good one.

It's going to be a good one. So, yeah, we have a Snow Talk question, as we always do. This one comes from Upgradian Ryan. Upgradian Ryan wants to know, Jason, do you schedule time for reading books during the day? Do you turn everything off to avoid distractions and really focus on what you're reading? Nope. But you do read a lot of books though, by the incomparable these days too right because we've got i'm in the uh award reading period we do episode or episodes about the all the novels that are nominated for

the hugo and nebula awards which are like the big science fiction and fantasy awards every year and it's a good way for me to find good books and all and get an idea of sort of like what people think are the best books of the year i don't always agree there's usually some ones in there that i don't like and there's some great surprises there um i tend to read some on the weekend and i tend to read at night before i go to sleep like i i will read i'll go to bed and i'll read there and i don't turn everything off to avoid distractions because i use a Kindle. A Kindle has no distractions. And that's the trick.

A paper book would also have no push notifications, by the way. But I use a Kindle. I don't read on an iPhone or iPad or something like that. And that's one of the reasons is that when I'm reading on my Kindle, that's all I'm doing is reading. And that's where I do almost all of my reading. Every now and then I'll get stuck somewhere in a waiting room or something and I'll have my phone and I will call up the Kindle app and read the book on there briefly. But, you know, 99%, more than 99% of the time, it's on a Kindle. And that'll be around the house on the weekend or something like that. Occasionally I'll get in a book.

This happened not too long ago. I was really into a book and I knew I was almost at the end. And it was the middle of the day and I took a break and I read the book for like half an hour or an hour or something. And then went back to work, finished my lunch or whatever and went back to work. But usually it's in the evening before I go to sleep and that and on the weekends that's yeah and and that's one of the reasons i love the kindle no distractions it's just about text on a page and uh that works for me which kindle are you using right now i have the oasis 2 um which i can't really recommend what i like about it is that it's solidly built and it's got buttons to turn the pages.

It's nice, but it's also overpriced. Most people should just get a paperwhite, which just has the touchscreen. It doesn't have the, it doesn't have buttons, physical buttons, which they really should make. But apparently physical buttons are a premium feature now. So the paperwhite is what most people should look at. It's a pretty good deal. And I like a dedicated book reader, but I'm using the Oasis too.

Thank you to Ryan for sending in that Snell Talk question. You can send in a question of any kind to start the show just by sending out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk and it can be picked for a future episode. I have a piece of follow-up that comes in from Upgradian and friend of the show, Todd. Todd wanted to just correct us about Arrested Development Season 4, so

we were talking about that in Upstream last week, about the fact that there is the Remix version and it seemed like that the regular season had just disappeared. But it turns out that it is on... There's like a tab in netflix in some players and apps um called trailers and more and it's right the original season is buried in there so you can

still get it but they're trying to hide it which is really interesting and so this came up on the tv talk machine podcast where tim goodman and i were talking about how we we were baffled what about why netflix when it brings a show back for like a second season, that first episode doesn't start with a lengthy like, here's what you need to remember from season one trailer, which I still think they should do. But it turns out

for their originals, they do make those. They're in the trailers and more section. Oh, interesting. And if you watch on my understanding is, because this is how I use Netflix, if you watch on Apple TV you can't see that section so that's great right why can't you see that in the app at all i don't as far as i can tell last time i checked there's like you can see the seasons but i i couldn't find the trailers and more please correct us if we're wrong about it but i had a hard time finding it. On the web, I can find it. So anyway, yes, that is where season four is.

And also, again, this is like a good tip. If you want to watch a little recap of season one of Stranger Things before going on to season two, look in the trailers and more section for Stranger Things and you may find that Netflix actually did make a recap for you. I don't know why they don't put those

at the front of the new season with a skip button. Because they're so good at those skip buttons anyway, right? Like they've always, they're all over the place. And they know that if somebody binges it, you know, if a show that's released weekly, there's like the traditional TV in America certainly is the show's finale airs in May and then it premieres in September. So you've got a few months where you have to remember where you left off. But when a show is a binge show, even if it releases every year, if you watch it in a weekend, you watched it in a

weekend, and then a year passed, like you're not going to remember what happened. And I know Netflix may just want you to watch it again. Okay, fine. If you've got the time, you could do that. But putting that trailer up front to just get you back what you need to know would be really nice. But it does live, in many cases, in the trailers and more section. So I have to give a very important update on our live show at WWDC. This is incredibly important if you've bought a ticket. If you bought a ticket to our live show at WWDC, you is incredibly important if you've bought a ticket. If you bought a ticket to our live show at WWDC, you really, really need to listen to this because

unfortunately, due to circumstances outside of our control, we have had to relocate the event and sell new tickets. So if you bought a ticket to our event at OrkConf on Wednesday the 6th, that ticket has been refunded. OrkConf have refunded

them and unfortunately we've had to cancel the tickets. Some stuff happened and we needed to get a new venue. So we have a new venue and it is an incredible venue that we're really excited about called the Hammer Theatre, which is so beautiful and it has like tiered seating. It's incredible. But we have to sell new tickets for it. So if you bought a ticket to the original event, you will have gotten an email last week. I think it was on Friday. That link said there is a link in that email that you will need to go and buy tickets. So check your email. If you bought a ticket, you're going to need to buy a new ticket. The link is in there. The tickets are about $7. Unfortunately, there were some fees that we had to to kind of swallow up and so that these these are just like

a dollar fifty more or two dollars more than the previous tickets um we may share this link publicly at some point but we want to make sure everybody who bought an original ticket has a chance to get one before we do that um so please, if you bought a ticket, make sure you check your email. You're looking for an email from OrkConf about the venue relocation, and it has all of the information that you need in there to get yourself a new ticket to our show at the Hammer Theatre. We should give a

bit of information about the show, which we haven't really shared yet, but we're looking to do a double bill. The show's going to be split into two parts. The first part will be uh your friend of mine jason snell uh steven hackett and serenity caldwell uh breaking down all of the news from the conference because we're recording midweek um and giving their insight and this is what i find interesting about this kind of discussion after being surrounded by the developer

community for a few days so like you know the keynote was on monday but what is everybody talking about by wednesday what other little bits and details have we found out so it's going to be like a mini episode of download that's going to open the show um and then the second part of the show is going to be myself and federico vatici and steven have connected and we're going to be doing what we do expect hijinks is basically all i'll say about that at the moment uh we're we're gonna we don't know what we're going to do yet, but we have some ideas. It's going to be themed around the event,

but we have been known to get a little bit kooky when we record live shows, which is one of the reasons that we love doing live shows because it's very different. So yeah, we're going to have a fantastic show. I think it's going to be our best one yet. So please make sure you don't miss it. Check your email if you bought a ticket

and make sure that you get a new one. And we're going to give it maybe another week. And if there is any tickets left, we're going to put those out publicly. This venue is incredible. I'm really excited about it. And talking about the venue, we really pushed for time on this, obviously,

because we're getting so close to the event. We couldn't have done this without the help of Jessie Char. So we really pushed for time on this, obviously, because we're getting so close to the event. We couldn't have done this without the help of Jessie Char. She's one of the organizers of the Layers Conference, which is an amazing conference organized by two women, Elaine and Jessie. They really care about every little detail. I've been to Layers before. I'm going to be hanging out at Layers this year as well because they have a great lineup of diverse speakers, including the incredible lettering designer, Jessica Heash, and one of the original Apple emoji designers, Angela

Guzman. I want to promote the conference because we would not have a live show if it was not for Jessie this year. She really, really helped us out with finding a venue and getting everything negotiated. So you can find out more about Layers and you should attend Layers if you're going to be in town. It's at layers.is and they've given us a promo code for relay fm listeners use the code relay and you'll get 50 off your ticket to layers so a bunch of information there uh please please

please check your email if you bought a ticket and make sure you get and have a ticket i really don't want anyone to miss out um and again i apologize that we've had to do this uh we didn't want to have to do this but unfortunately we were put in a bit of a a bit of a bind but um we're gonna have an amazing show um and that show uh by the way that's gonna be in the connected feed for the week so me and jason will be recording on monday straight after the keynote as we always do um where of course all of the focus is about who won the draft, because there's going to be a draft. That's obviously going to be coming in a couple of weeks, the draft, right? Like two weeks away?

Yeah, two weeks away. So that's going to be on the 28th, the draft, which I can't wait for, so excited about the draft. And then our episode on the 4th will be about all the news from the keynote. And then the live show is going to be on the 6th, and that will go out in the connected feed. So you'll be able to check it out there. so much going on it's really going to be a summer oh yeah summer of fun that's also happening summer of fun is happening we're so excited

we're getting so much prepared for that i am yeah love it all right so talking about weird and wonderful things we come up with let's do some upstream news. I want to start off today, Jason, by talking about Jon Favreau's Star Wars series. Because Solo is premiering, Jon Favreau has been doing a little bit of press too as part of the whole Star Wars family. And he's given some information about the upcoming series that he's going to be doing as part of Disney's upcoming streaming service.

The show is still expected to debut in fall 2019. It's going to be set, it's planned to be set three years after Return of the Jedi, so obviously significantly before The Force Awakens. It's going to feature all new characters, and something I found very interesting, at least from a budgetary perspective,

they're going to be using the motion capture techniques that were seen in the Jungle Book, so the live- action Jungle Book movie. So looks like they're probably pouring quite a lot of money into this series. Yeah, I'm not surprised given that it's Star Wars and that Disney is wanting to launch this streaming service and get people to sign up. This is going to be one of the reasons people sign up for this service. There'll probably be some Marvel shows too, is my guess. And they'll make it a must buy kind of situation for people who are

fans of these franchises because they want your money um so yeah yeah a little more detail i'm sure they'll trickle out details for the next year and fall 2019 uh i has disney said if they're launching this service this year or next year i thought it might have been this maybe this fall but there is more coming with with disney you know they are well i mean service they could be launching one of their three total services this year and then the other one the year after well they launched espn plus that's out there um so the the question is just like when does this uh when does this one one happen and we don't really know yet we know some details um new marvel show all the mcu movies a bunch of other stuff so we you know there's just a question of what it's

called and and uh when they release it but it's going to happen so oh uh we should talk about cancellations briefly and there is an angle here that is upstream related um i'd say not upstream related at all is just mentioning the brooklyn 99 cancellation and then renewal only to say that i think it's interesting from a business perspective and and something that people when they talk about look we all love our tv shows and movies and stuff and uh you want to see decisions made based on you know based tied into your love of something. You want to feel like your love is the thing that drives this thing when it's not true. It's a business. And these are often just cold business decisions that go into this. In fact, most of the time they are because we're

talking about millions and millions of dollars for any TV show. So I want to mention this, though, because it is tied in with the way that all of these different companies are kind of jousting with each other and trying to figure out streaming and how their business models are going to work going forward. So Fox cancels the sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine after five years. It's a really good show. If you haven't watched it, you should check it out. It's from Michael Schur, who did Parks and Recreation and does The Good Place on NBC. Now, that's actually relevant.

and does The Good Place on NBC. Now, that's actually relevant. He's got a deal with Universal, which is Comcast, NBC, Universal, that's all the same thing, right? That's where his production deal is. And Brooklyn Nine-Nine is produced by NBC Universal. So it's a situation where Fox doesn't make the show. It only airs the show.

And this vertical integration, this like, we make the show, we air the show, that's like those are the things, that kind of integration is what is the norm in Hollywood now. And the idea there is your company invests in this thing and you get the short-term benefit of putting it on TV and the long-term benefit of reaping the rewards for video sales and syndication and all of those other things. But sometimes they make these deals where they're going across that somebody who's a competitor, but they're also, their studio is providing you with a show. And the reality is that these networks are much less inclined to keep those shows around because they're not, they don't own them basically. And so there's less of a business interest to keep them going. And so in this case, and we see this all the time, the network picks the shows that it owns and not the shows that it doesn't own. So Brooklyn Nine-Nine drops, they shop it around, they go to Hulu and Netflix apparently, who both turned them down for it. Like,

we're not interested. I was a little surprised that hulu wasn't interested but yeah they weren't and what's funny is that wasn't the end of it obviously they were looking for a better deal from someone else to see if somebody else wanted to jump on and and revive this for a sixth season but when they didn't make those deals with hulu and netflix to their satisfaction um they just put it on nbc so nbc renewed it and nbc is going to air it which because they own it right it's almost like that was the last uh that was their last resort well if we can't get somebody else to pay for this we'll just pay for it ourselves and then you know nbc gets the positive rub because like this became a big social media thing right over the 12 hours that

the show was canceled and then everyone's like thank you nbc for saving our show right and the social media my daughter loves this show and she was like oh we did it and i said no you didn't like this deal was gonna get made regardless of the fans jason keep the dreams alive my man keep the dream alive no no no you gotta um gotta be realistic but the uh but it was good promotion for the show and it's good promotion for nbc having picked it up um but but they're the owner and operator of that show now so there's that plus i've got the deal with the ongoing deal with mike shore for the good place um so this kind of like it's another show they could run them together they could run one of them and then follow with the other one because they're both short run they're gonna bring it back for 13

episodes so um anyway so think just think about who owns it, who airs it, and who owns it. It matters. And it matters. So I'm going to pivot to another cancellation, which is The Expanse, which is on the SyFy channel in the US. And this has a little more upstream tie-in because, first off, who runs the SyFy channel? It's NBCUn Universal so we're now NBC's on the other side of it they canceled this show but they don't own it um they renewed The Magicians which is a similar show and also a very good show uh but they own that show that's a that's an NBC Universal show this show The Expanse is owned by a company called Alcon um which sounds like they're a james bond villain but they might not be uh they might be i don't know and uh so what's interesting so first off not owned right so so much less inclined to

keep it around because you don't own a piece of it and the report that broke the cancellation which is a deadline.com says and this is where it gets to upstream, the cancellation decision by SyFy is said to be linked to the nature of its agreement for the series, which only gives the cable network first run linear rights in the US. Linear meaning on a TV channel that plays part of the show in an ad and then traditional TV. It goes on to say, that puts an extraordinary amount of emphasis on live linear viewing, which is inherently challenging for sci-fi genre series that tend to draw the lion's share of their audiences from digital and streaming. It sounds to me, I don't know all the

details here, but it sounds to me like, I think maybe they only get a small cut or whatever of the iTunes sales and they have limits to when they can stream it on their own website. So it's funny so it's like they didn't buy the right rights for this show probably because they didn't want to spend the money or or because the producer wanted to hold those back and use it to help recoup their investment there's obviously a deal made there and again we're just again it's a it's a fun show that i really like but when you talk about making it it it's about money. So a bad deal in terms of streaming rights that might have seemed like a better deal three or four years ago, but is very apparently now not,

is apparently one of the reasons why this thing got canceled at SyFy. It's even worse because if you're outside of North America, you may know that The Expanse is one of these shows that, like so many American shows, is picked up for the rest of the world by Netflix. The difference is, again, something in this deal is really bad because most Netflix shows that are like US shows that are showed on Netflix elsewhere, and this is true with streaming like Star Trek Discovery, it's also true with a lot of network TV shows, they go on Netflix the next day in the rest of the world. So they're shown Sunday night, let's say, in the US, and on Monday, it drops in the rest of the world. That's sort of how these things work. The Expanse, they have to run the entire season weekly in the US. And then there's some, I don't even understand, waiting period that

happens after that. And only then does it get dropped on Netflix worldwide. Which means, of course, the show gets pirated. Because people who don't want to get spoiled and people who want to watch the show now and not wait three months, four months, five months to see it are just going to pirate the show. So that's weird too. So obviously this is a show that they made this deal, which allowed this great show to happen for three years, but it clearly was a terrible deal in terms of modern television technology that nobody is happy with. So that deal's over. Syfy has canceled the show. And the next question is, will that show get picked up somewhere else? I'm actually really optimistic about it only because I feel like this is something where a streaming service comes in and

says, oh, this is going to be way better once we can clear up the stupid deal that was set in at the beginning. So I'm not sure I would, I might actually say it's more likely than not that Netflix will just pick the show up worldwide, not because it's rescuing a canceled show, but because it's already a Netflix show in most of the world. And if they could just pick it up, then they could drop it in a binge everywhere like they like to do instead of this weird delayed thing outside the US. Then again, we don't know the deals contractually. We don't know whether this Alcon group is charging too much money.

We don't know if when they made their streaming deal in the US with Amazon for the reruns, if that contract now makes it impossible for them to make a new deal with Netflix in the US. We don't know any of those details, but it's kind of funny. My hope is that streaming killed the show and streaming will also save it. If it doesn't, I still really want to see the postmortem of like,

where did this go wrong? Because it sounds to me like this is a show that probably should still be on the air somewhere. But the deal that they made three years ago or four years ago to make this show has broken it. Anyway, we'll see. And it's a good show. People should watch it. I hope it doesn't get canceled ultimately. And lastly today, a Bloomberg report has indicated that Apple are currently looking at attempting to take on Amazon by offering subscriptions to video services directly through their TV app. This is something that Amazon offers through Prime Video right now. Right, Amazon Channels, they call it.

So this would be basically Apple taking a step but going further to making the TV app the one-stop shop for video content because they will be able to allow you to sign up for channels like hbo showtime and a bunch of others just right within the tv app and watch the content in the tv app my expectation here is that this is some kind of like you know this is them doing some kind of in-app purchase type thing which makes me wonder like do you do we really think that they're going to be doing a 70 30 split with these companies i doubt it because i doubt apple need this more than they do because like i'm sure like hbo has already has their own app and service that you just download so yeah i i don't i don't really know how much this helps

but this just feels like something that you can say oh and now you know when you're giving your update about the fact that we have this streaming service coming oh and now you can also watch hbo content even easier in the tv app because you can buy a subscription right there or something i don't know there's a question about the um the mechanism behind this this is a bloomberg report so it's kind of unclear about what... You have to parse their words carefully and try to figure out what's going on here. It does seem like a repudiation of the future of TV is apps strategy, because it sounds a lot more like the future of TV is the TV app. Yeah. But you could argue that maybe what it's about is App Store discoverability and that all this really is, is putting those channels and those offerings front and center inside the TV app so that you don't have to download the HBO Now app and then sign up for HBO Now. You can just say, oh, HBO sounds good in the TV app and click it and say, yes, I want that.

And then it just works. And it plays it in the app or it downloads the HBO app in the background and then just opens it when you navigate to it. There's lots of different ways that they could do it. And that's the implementation question here is like, do you never see the HBO app at that point? Because that's what happens with Amazon is when you get Prime Video and you subscribe to CBS All Access inside Prime Video, you just watch inside Prime Video. You don't go to their app. You use Amazon's app. Maybe that would happen here. We also have to ask the question, how does this tie into the Apple video service? Because that's also probably part of the strategy here is that you're in the TV app,

you can get HBO Now, you can get the Disney streaming service when it comes out, and you can get the Apple streaming service when it comes out. and you can get the Apple streaming service when it comes out. Presumably that's where it will be. So putting other services in there too kind of makes sense. This is also, I think it's smart. I think it's actually really smart because I like Amazon's approach here, which is, you know, we're not just, Prime Video is not just a service. It's a catch-all for all sorts of other services too.

And you can program your own set of streaming, which you do anyway, but you can do it all within their house. And Apple's building a different kind of house here, right? Because you're in an Apple TV. So you're already in Apple's domain at that point. So you're already in Apple's domain at that point. But this is a way for that stuff to get front and center and to go through Apple's stuff. And Apple takes a cut, I'm sure. I doubt it is going to be the traditional cut.

This is probably a different kind of deal that they would make. But I like it. I actually think the reason that I like it the most is that I think it's just better for people better, better for the customers better for the people who are using these apps to for Apple to be like, you know what, most of the time, just stay in the TV app, tell us what you want. If you want a channel, if you want to show that's on a channel you don't get, you can just buy that channel, subscribe to that channel right there, and then just watch your show. And don't worry about it. And you'll get one bill that's from Apple that says, here you are, you paid for these four services, and just don't worry about it. And I think there's a lot to be said for that approach, just the simplicity of it.

All right, today's show is brought to you in part by Simple Contacts. So talking about apps making things more simple, that is what Simple Contacts does. Because what they do is they give you an easy way to renew your contact lens prescription from wherever you want in just minutes. All you need to do, you complete their online self-guided vision test. This takes less than five minutes to do, which you can do from wherever you are right now. You just download the Simple Contacts app and get started. Then you'll no longer have to wait in doctor's offices to get your contact lenses every time. No more waiting rooms, nothing. You can order your favorite contacts right from the website as well as their app. You'll have all of the lens brands that you love available to you with options for astigmatism,

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And that is a huge time savings for you. Would you agree, Jason? I know that you've used Simple Contacts. Yeah, is a huge time savings for you. Would you agree, Jason? I know that you've used simple contacts. Yeah. I mean, I always got frustrated. You get the end of these expendable items, contact lenses. And if you don't need to go see your doctor for a regular eye health appointment, you still have to go, like they control the whole thing. And while I like to support my doctor and support the fact that they have like, you know, that I can get glasses there and that they're taking care of my vision. At the same time, it gets frustrating, this idea that they want you to come back just to renew your existing prescription for contacts.

So simple contacts just makes it really easy to do that part. Yeah, it just it seems like it seems to me like just kind of like a real suck on your time, right? To have to every time like, I mean, I don't know how long the prescriptions last for, like maybe like a couple of months or whatever, to have to keep going back, like who's got time for that in their day, this isn't a thing that people have time for, I think. So it's great that you can just use simple context to do it. As a listener of this show, you can get $30 off your contact lenses. Just go to simplecontacts.com slash ahoy or enter the code ahoy at checkout.

That's simplecontacts.com slash A-H-O-Y, you know, like the telephone. Or simply use the code ahoy for $30 off. Our thanks to Simple Contacts for their support of this show. So last week was BB Edit's 25th anniversary uh which means the app is 26 years old um yep i've learned this from from working uh with you for a while the difference between anniversaries and age of something um because well it's right it's the 25th well it's the 25th

anniversary of the release of the commercial version of bb edit but there was a free version the year before and i gotta think that because when they celebrated the uh the 15th anniversary the 20th anniversary i think it was the 20th anniversary that was six years ago um they celebrated the 20th anniversary of its release i gotta think that maybe they just forgot last year and then realized like oh oh but we can make it the anniversary of the commercial release this time we can do that um and so that's what they did but it has been because at 20 it was it was posted to usenet to the the mac binaries on that date 20 years before and this time time it was, it was released as a commercial

product 25 years before. So it was six years ago that I wrote the 20th anniversary post, but still, um, I was for reasons that we'll get into in a minute. I was looking through my box of kind of old software this week and, um, or last week. And I found this thing that I knew I kept, which is the BB edit edit anthology which i wish more developers would do stuff like this it's hilarious it's a cd-rom with every version of bb edit on it every sort of like major version of bb edit on it and it was meant to celebrate the the 10th anniversary of bb edit because 10 years is an awful long time to have software and it had the first versions from

you know from back in the in the early 90s all the way up to the present day in 2002 and i laughed when i saw this because it's like oh yeah that's this was the 10th anniversary it was 15 years ago 15 years ago in fact now years ago, because who's counting? But it is amazing when you think about it. And they put out a press release, and I'm quoted in there, and so is John Syracuse. And we both said the same thing, which is pretty funny, which is it went from OS 9 to OS 10. It went from 68,000 Motorola to PowerPC to Intel. Like that is one of the remarkable things about this product is that it just keeps on going. And there are other products that keep on going.

Microsoft Word is a good example, right? And Microsoft Excel, those all were on the 68,000 and they still exist. But BBEdit is the work of a very small group of people, primarily Rich Siegel, who wrote it originally and still is basically the person who does it he's he's had other people here and there throughout history bare bones used to be a little bit bigger i think it's a little bit smaller now but um i think it's remarkable that that in viewed from a certain angle this is a person's life's work essentially and that he has been we know like our friend james thompson

is a little bit like this too where he's been an independent developer for a very long time and he's got in james's case he had uh drag thing and p calc but like there is a career to be made and uh there and i think it needs to be really recognized as remarkable like the they're sticking with these apps and the need for the app as as long as the need for the app continues, the app continues. But what people needed from a text editor in 1993 and what they need from one now and what they needed 10 years ago and 15 years ago and 20 years ago, all totally different, right? So you've got to navigate everybody's needs, what the competition is. You got to navigate the changes in the platform where Apple introduces PowerTalk and you're like, great, we're going to do PowerTalk.

And then they're like, okay, PowerTalk is dead. And you're like, okay, we'll move on to the next thing, right? And they just keep on doing that. That's what's remarkable because it's not just that this app has survived. It's that the people who make it have stuck with it and that the people who make it have stuck with it and that the people who use it

have stuck with it all that time. Well, there is one place that BBEdit never went to, right? Which is iOS. Yeah, yeah. And I think about that all the time. And I know, like, again, I think, watching something like Scrivener, which is a tool that I really like for the Mac,

and it's on iOS now. And Keith, the main person who does Scrivener, again is a tool that I really like for the Mac, and it's on iOS now. And Keith, the main person who does Scrivener, again, kind of like it's his baby, that app, they tried to bring it to iOS for years. And they had all of these failures. It was, they were talking about it when the iPad originally came out. And it only came out like last year.

Yeah, well, and they went through developers. And I think Keith ended up saying, I have to write it myself. He was trying to get like some other, an iOS developer to come in and do the iOS version. And they had, you know, I don't know all the gory details there. But like in the end, they got it out. And it's very similar to the one on the Mac. And they sync and stuff.

And it's great. But it took them a long time. And I think that suggests perhaps why Rich said, you know, we're not going to do that. But I think about it all the time. And I think that suggests perhaps why Rich said, we're not going to do that. But I think about it all the time. And the reason I think about it all the time is that I have yet to find an app on iOS that really does what BBEdit does on the Mac. I've used all sorts of different text editors on iOS, and they all have things going for them. And yet none of them have resonated with me like BBEdit has on the Mac for all this time. And so I'm kind of still looking on iOS. I'm still able to be convinced and converted and turned into a loyal user of something that does everything

that I want it to do. Which is not to say that, you know, one writer isn't fine. That's what I used to write most of my stuff on iOS these days. But it's not BBEdit. So, you know, it's fine. But there are lots of things that it doesn't do. And editorial was the same way. And, you know, Ulysses is the same way. And Scrivener is the same way.

So I get why BBE BB edits not on iOS, but it kills me that BB edits not on iOS, nor is there something that is very clearly the BB edit of iOS that is like, well, if you use BB out on the Mac, you ought to use this on iOS just haven't found it yet, maybe someday. So I should say the good the good BBEdit is it's a text editor. It uses text files. So I don't need app interoperability in the same way that you do for a lot of apps between Mac and iOS. I have all my stories that I write sync in a Dropbox folder called stories. And all of my text editors on iOS are integrated with Dropbox and look at that folder and and it's text it's markdown text for the most part so that's the good thing is that i don't need bb edit for ios because it's all just

text files so that that part's good but i do want like all the features i use on it and i generally don't find them so you mentioned that you uh will we're digging through some old software i was and when we were talking about putting this episode together you you let me in on a little secret that we decided we have to talk about today which is that you're buying old computers about today which is that you're buying old computers i i bought i bought an old i went i drove to the east bay last tuesday to somebody's house to pick up the first time i've done an ebay local pickup usually local pickups on ebay you're like oh wow this g4 cube is really reasonable i wonder where oh you've got to be in kansas to pick it up otherwise they won't ship it to you this was a local pickup in the bay area and it was for a very reasonable sum of money i got a a power mac g4 with a cinema display um it's adorable it's taken me back to the 90s um oh

this was the tower after the imac right so it So it's like blue and plastic and all that stuff. Yeah, it's the one with the door that comes down on the side. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and this is actually, I had one. This is a later model than the one that I had, which makes me a little sad, but the price could not be beat. And yeah, so I have that. And also actually, this is Stephen Hackett's fault.

Let's just say it. It's Stephen Hackett's fault because we's just say it. It's Stephen Hackett's fault because we were in Austin and I was talking to him and we were talking about, he brought some disk images of virtual machines of macOS because you can run older macOSes. What is it? From, you can run Leopard server, leopard server snow leopard server and then after that

the client versions of os 10 legally in an emulator so you can so he had i had a couple of the server versions and he had a couple of the client versions and we we we have images basically of all those versions so if i want to go back and look at like what 10.7 looks like these are the wild things that everybody does uh during my bachelor party bachelor party yeah oh yeah they exchange disc images you you you you record podcasts you you do uh charts about apple results and you exchange mac os 10 virtualization disc images these are the things you do um so he he he and i are talking about it and i think to myself that you know this is one of the challenges is this loss of history and there come and and he he has noticed this and i've noticed it too like there comes a point where you're like what did that look like in 10.4 and the the answer is, who knows? Like, I just kept upgrading my computer.

And I don't remember what Mac OS 10, 10.4 was like, or 10.6. Or sometimes people will ask us even on Ask Upgrade, like, you know, when did Apple do this? And it's like, let's do some searches, maybe we can find it. I lived through it, but I don't know if I know it. And I thought, I don't have a project here. I can imagine some things that I might write about, about some of this stuff, the older Macs and Apple history stuff that I might want to do at some point. And what set me off on this is that Stephen said,

I was saying, well, what Macs are versatile in terms of version numbers that you run a lot of different versions of Mac OS? And he said, you know, the 2009 like iMac is really good because it runs from Leopard all the way to El Capitan. So it's a really big spread. And I thought, I have a 2009 iMac in the back of my car at the airport parking lot that's supposed to go to the computer recycling center. So I came home and I pulled the iMac out of the car, put it back in my office, and it's now four feet away from me. And it has on separate partitions, fresh, freshly updated of all the versions of OS10 from Leopard through El Capitan.

When you do the startup disk system preference, it is amazing. It's like, take your pick. You got to scroll to the left and right. They don't all fit in the window. It's amazing. So I've got that. And then I bought this Power Mac G4

with a monitor. Because it's a Quicksilver, it doesn't run 10.0, which makes me sad because I may still, I may yet buy an older Power Mac G4, but this one runs 10.1 through 10.5. So it gives me a pretty good cross section of the early history. Not a lot of emulation options for PowerPC, which makes it bad for... There's like that chunk of Mac history that's kind of lost if you don't have an old computer, because it's very hard to emulate. You can emulate OS 9 and OS 8, and even back to System 6 really easily. But the early days of OS X are a lot harder to do in emulation. So there's kind of a no man's land there. So I bought a $150 computer and got it running.

And let me tell you, not only is it a nostalgia trip, because I remember writing reviews of X1 and X2 and all of that. So to see them again, it's like, wow, how much OS X has changed between then and now. And what hasn't changed? The fact that I can be running X1 and connect to my file server, like just command K, put in the address, log in, and there's my file server. That made me laugh. That's strange. I didn't expect that level of compatibility. But the other thing I noticed, and this is true on my 2009 iMac,

as well as this 2002 Power Mac G4 is turns out when you run the original software that came on those machines, instead of spending several years upgrading them, they're fast. That's, it's logical, right? Because you don't buy a brand new computer. In the 2000s, we didn't buy a brand new computer and it was slow. It was fast. But then you update it over time and they they build it for the newer hardware

and the older hardware runs it but not as well so it was really refreshing to take this this iMac that I consider ancient and slow and install um Leopard on it it's really fast with Leopard it came with Leopard to begin with it's really fast on on leopard they're not slow because they get old like they're slow because the software updates the performance capabilities exactly right now 10 like os 10 10 0 and 10 1 to a certain extent but 10 0 especially is just slow it was slow everywhere but in those in that era most of the computers didn't come with os 10 10 0 they came with os 9 and that was the one you ran and it was fast. And XO was new and experimental and all of that.

But generally, once they got the bugs worked out, you get a computer and it's fast. And then they add a whole bunch of new features that take advantage of the new hardware that's coming out. And the old hardware doesn't do as good a job. And they don't – it's like when we talk about how Apple should test older iPhones when they do iOS releases because they have brutal performance issues on some iOS releases on older hardware. And the truth of the matter is that you generally don't worry about the older hardware. You're building this for the newer hardware. Because it's not a priority. It's not a business priority.

But what it made me think is the next time I hand down a machine, we all want the latest and greatest features. down a machine we all want the latest and greatest features but i'm gonna next time i hand down a machine to one of my kids let's say um i'm gonna really think hard about going back to the original uh os version because they they run way better under their original like my son is using i think he's got he might have uh sierra on his macbook air and like if if that was if that was running yosemite instead i bet you it would run better or whatever version in fact it might even be it's probably an earlier version than that that it's that it is its earliest version that it runs it would probably run way better it wouldn't do all sorts of the whizzy stuff like this power mac g4 can't basically can't browse the web because the web browser is built

for it or can't do ssl modern ssl stuff and so they're just like i can't even open the apple hot news page that was the default on some of those versions just doesn't work and the older versions like you can't even download a version of icab which is usually your go-to for like a browser that's still being built for old versions but not that old so you know there's a version of iCab, which is usually your go-to for like a browser that's still being built for old versions, but not that old. So, you know, there's a bunch of stuff that just falls out entirely, but at the same time, like, you know what, if you've got a 2009 iMac and you put, you know, an older version of Microsoft Word on it or BBEdit for that matter, it's fine. Like it's fine for a whole lot of uses. It's just not the modern uses that we have. So it's something to keep in mind if you've got an old computer around and you know

somebody who wants to use it. The problem is that like the web technologies, especially, that's the challenge and security issues, right? Those drive you forward in software versions. And then as you drive forward, the computer the, the computer becomes less usable, uh, unfortunately, but that that's true. And, you know, um, that this is why people like there are people out there who still use windows XP because they're super comfortable with it and it runs great on their old hardware, but it's a, you know, it's a garbage fire of security issues. So I don't know. Anyway, I've got, got uh i've got old computers around me now are you gonna start a youtube channel talking about all of your old necks six colors already has a youtube channel that people should subscribe to because every now and then i do it i i am

trying i was talking to steven about this too i want to do videos he does two videos a month i think i think that's probably a pace that is beyond my capability but yeah too i want to do videos he does two videos a month i think i think that's probably a pace that is beyond my capability but yeah i do want to do some more stuff with video and this gives me some more options um i i tend not to do other than last week when i did that imac at 20 story um because i had to write i don't generally spend a lot of time writing about old apple stuff it's funny because i would live through it and yet steven hackett who didn't is the one who writes about it because he has a uh he has a wife and family who support his purchase of lots and lots and lots of old computers in a way that i do not uh but and which is fine um but i'm thinking i'm thinking

about it i'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. Because I do. I got my old Macworld magazines out of a box last week, too, because I was looking up a bunch of stuff about the iMac. And, yeah, it's kind of fun that I have my work for 20 years printed out on pieces of paper. It's kind of cool. It's old-fashioned and yet also has a permanence that things I write on the web do not. But anyway, so I'm thinking about it. I don't want to just go full on

nostalgia, but I think there may be some interesting things to write about and make videos about. So I at least wanted to have them having that stuff inaccessible where I like literally can't talk about early OS 10 days because I have no examples of it that I can run anywhere. That was kind of frustrating. So even if this Power Mac G4 just kind of goes in the corner and doesn't do anything most of the time, I kind of want to have it for reference reasons. And it looks kind of cool. The monitor actually is the beautiful part. The cinema display, it's this teeny tiny monitor but it's like the translucent plastic all around it um and it's a single connector to the g4 because this was the apple apple built their own connector of course they did the apple display

connector but it's got power and usb in it as well as the video signal and that's why they did it is it's a single cable from the video card and the G4 to the cinema display. And then it's got USB hubs on the back. It's like before there was a Thunderbolt display, this is how they had to do it. They had to engineer their own cable in order to do all of that. But as a result, the computer itself is a monstrosity. And this one in particular has these incredibly loud fans. It is the Wind Tunnel G4.

and this one in particular has these incredibly loud fans it is the wind tunnel g4 um but the the actual computing experience of having this little screen and your little keyboard and mouse oh the ebay person gave me a a round uh imac mouse with it i was like thanks and then immediately disconnected it and just threw it out the car window on the way home i'd like to say i stomped on it but it's it's around somewhere's so bad. It's so bad. Anyway, so the little cinema display and all that, it's kind of adorable. It's definitely the pro version of the iMac design that they were trying to get

across. Yeah. Okay, today's show is also brought to you by our friends at FreshBooks. FreshBooks know how important it is to help you make smart decisions for your business because they know how important it is when you, as a business owner, are doing the right thing, making the right decisions. So they will help support you in a few different ways.

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You just have to go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and enter upgrade in the how did you hear about us section so they will know that you came to them from this show. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their continued support of Upgrade and RelayFM. All right, let's talk about Google Duplex. We gotta do it. We gotta do it. I was hesitant of it, but we're gonna do it. Alright, Google Duplex,

in case you haven't been following, was announced at Google I.O. last week, and in a nutshell, Google Duplex is like the next evolution of Google's AI and machine learning. It's kind of Google Assistant's steroids, right? Like it's taking everything that they have learned

and they're applying this technology in different ways to accomplish different things. Maybe. The only thing that they have shown so far is that Google Duplex can make telephone calls for you on your behalf to restaurants and businesses, etc. I'm assuming that if you listen to this show you have probably heard this news probably both me and jason have shared i think our feelings about it

in some detail on episode 54 download and episode 192 have connected but just i want to get it out of the way real quickly that both me and jason we feel very similarly about this. I think immediately both of us were in the, I don't like this. I was never impressed by what I saw in the way that I know a lot of people are, and I understand why people are impressed by it, but it kind of, it made me go a little bit cold inside because it freaked me out when I first saw the video because I find it creepy. I find it a little bit disingenuous because it freaked me out when i first saw the video because i i find it creepy uh i find it a little bit disingenuous because it's basically designed to trick humans and it's kind of like a little inhumane in the way that it's i don't know not human which and it kind of felt like

a juxtaposition very definition of inhumane no, I mean, it's not that they're doing like an evil, inhumane, disgusting thing, but it's just removing humanity from the process, right? Like inhumane is one of those words that has like a vast spectrum of what it can be attributed to. Flammable means inflammable?

Exactly. What a country. So, I didn't like how they were positioning this especially when they were talking about like digital well-being and being good online and being good users of technology later on i didn't like the whole these two things didn't meet up for me um no i've seen a lot of people believe that this criticism is being levered at Google because Apple fanboys. I understand why people may feel that way.

I 100% would feel this way if Apple did it. And I know this because I don't have that general fear of Google that a lot of people in the Apple world do. Sure. Sure. I am totally happy and I use many Google services and I give them all my data gladly because I like the exchange of information for productivity that I get with Google. I'm happy with that. Me too. I'm in the Apple ecosystem, the Google ecosystem, and the Amazon ecosystem. I am not a one ecosystem person.

I have so much of Google stuff that I use. So I agree. It's not that. Although I do have to laugh at the idea like well what if apple did this yeah like right like apple would have ai this as if they could do it as if they could do it but but i will say it also plays into our our our preconceptions about google like i think what i'm going to download is this is like the stereotype of google yeah which is incredible technology that you cannot believe somebody built and that you also cannot believe that there was nobody at any point that said should we really do it this way to the point where it got all the way to the very beginning of the google io keynote which is like at no point

did somebody think we're putting we're investing time in building an assistant that pretends to be human that so it can fool humans that maybe we shouldn't go down that path and we should disclose who we are instead of trying to trick people and nobody like again this is this is the stereotype of google that ironically sundar pichai was trying to get away from when he was talking about caring about their users and and doing things to to get them to be away from their devices and all of that but this is that stereotype which is they're brilliant and they have no concept of like ethics or morality or humanity or anything like that and like this plays right

into that whole narrative which is why if apple did it it would be weird and we'd be like wait a second that's so strange that you did that whereas with google we're like of course this is google saying this and that's that's maybe not fair but they've kind of earned it i feel like that that uh this is not the first time something like this has been done by google and i understand how it got to that keynote i can see how that happened right like everyone's so excited it's amazing what an amazing demo people are going to go nuts about this thing absolutely building technology that good is is something to be proud of but your application of it was lacking it's also the the

steps in the process. This is actually the thing that after having a week to think about this, the thing that I keep thinking about is somebody somewhere said, we need to fool people. Yeah. Like literally that was the charter. This is what I don't like about it either. This is,

I think this is the nugget of what made me and you so uncomfortable. Right. Is they, they, by inserting all those ums and uhs and uptalk and kind of uh stalling expressions things that normal human beings use right and it was an amazing demo of that like oh my god this assistant sounds way more like a human being than the ones that we talk to all the time that was brilliant it's arguable right and i've seen some people make this argument like just as a point that like duplex basically passed the turing test because the human beings on the other end of the line had no idea at least in the two samples that we saw right which are two samples that they showed there was many more that failed right like i have lots of questions too about um a sidebar um i have a lot of questions about how they train this thing. Did they have people at Google posing as service workers or did they just crank call service

workers throughout the Bay Area as part of their machine learning and training for this? I don't think they've disclosed sort of like how did they train this and who did they train it on? And then presumably the people that they're talking to here agreed after the fact to be used on stage, or they weren't really business owners and they were people at Google pretending to be. I'm not quite sure what's going on there, but I have a lot of questions about that. But the root of it, and this is what you and I, I think, do agree on,

is that technology is amazing, but at no point did anybody say, wait a second, is our goal here to lie to people on the phone? Our goal here is to fool them because you don't build in the ums and the uhs and the question marks, I think, the uptalks, without having intent to deceive. Because this is not a product, at least the way that the product is pitched, is it's not a product where you know it's a robot but they sound like a human this has been pitched as a product that you don't know it's a robot you think it's a human and you're doing your work to talk to the human and for me that's that's where i i say why did nobody say it's unethical to build software designed to hack a human being and fool them into thinking that we're something we're not. That is a bad look. That is not something we should be doing.

What are our best practices here? And I know people who are tired of pundits bellyaching about this thing, which you probably are. But the point that I think is really important here is these are the moments where we, as members of a society, push back on the creators of this stuff and say, this is too far. Yeah. You need to have, you need to think about how you interact with human beings because as a society, as a culture, we've decided these are the rules about how computers talk to people just like as a culture we decide that it's not legal to secretly record a phone call right it's it's not that different from that sort of idea like say you're a computer and move on but um we need to talk about that now and i i think it's very clear that the people who are programming this stuff are not only not capable but are not even thinking of the social ramifications of this stuff because

that that's that and that's what made me angry it's like they don't seem to care i mean i can see an innocent to a point way that people decided to build in the arms and ass right where it was kind of just like wow this thing is so good how much better could we make it but like not thinking on the other side of it where there should be someone who's saying to them no right like you should not do that right like what i mean is that you know i can imagine how it may have been built without the intent to deceive but someone should have spotted it made that clear which i'm sure many people did inside of google right because i've been inside of big companies like you can very you can have a very vocal minority right that don't believe anything and it's that's the other part of this right is that the that it's

not necessarily that nobody at google saw this and argued about it it's that they lost yeah or nobody high enough got believed that it was wrong exactly exactly right i should also say i mean i do think this technology is impressive i share uh they had a good discussion on atp last week about this i shared john syracuse's skepticism about this. We can take it as read, we can take it on face that this works. My first thought, honestly, after saying, oh, wow, look what they did there. That's amazing technology. My second thought was not the ethics. My second thought was, I don't believe this is real. My second thought was literally, I cannot believe that they could get this accurately enough that they could turn it loose on the world

at scale, which is what Google does, and have it be functional. I just don't believe it. It would be, I just, I don't think the tech is actually good enough. It felt to me like one of these things that Google promises and then never quite delivers, because I think it's an overreach. And if they prove me wrong, then so be it but i as somebody who's observed this tech stuff for a while now i looked at it and thought uh this seems like it's a stretch technology wise but if you could get it to work like this i mean great but i think it's better served in answering the phone than making the calls right like better and i'm okay with the idea that some small business somewhere has a google service that answers their phone for them and is a call screener and makes appointments and drops them on a Google calendar and transfers them to a voicemail if they need to leave a message for a human being.

Like we already see versions of that now. It's sort of a sophisticated answering machine. But that's not what this does. A computer is bugging a person. And more than that, it's also on a larger scale, Google getting frustrated that there's still corners of the world that it can't map and control. And like the paper appointment book in a small business, like a hair salon or a restaurant that's not on one of these restaurant scheduling services there are there are um people at google who hate that right why won't they get with the times why can't we consume their information why can't we make them part of the scheduling api that everybody else in the world is following now and And it looks to me like this is the solution for that problem. This is why it was designed. It's literally designed to make a robot that

calls people because they want Google to have control over that scheduling book in a way that they can't now. And that bugs me because it's like, this is Google's priority, and they'll do anything they can to reach that. And I think that's a mistake. There are lots of positive places this could be used. If you're in a place where you don't speak the language very well, it could speak for you. Again, disclosure is the key there.

If you have disabilities or you have other issues in your life that make you either unable to speak clearly or deeply reluctant to talk on the phone. I could see this as an agent that lets you do that or lets you get things done that would otherwise be things you couldn't do. I think that's all good. But again, disclosure would probably not kill that. The fooling people part just really bugs me. And I have to say, I'm not mad, Google. I'm disappointed. Because I thought Google, and I think Google is getting better about this stuff. But this shows you how entrenched this way of thinking is at Google.

That they're still doing stuff like this. And I think they're making progress. I would like to think they're getting better at this. This is an unfortunate backslide to the worst, the best and worst of Google, which is brilliant technology and there's nobody asking a question about whether they should do it or not.

Google released a statement. They published a blog post and released a statement to various outlets. I'll read the statement that they gave to The Verge. We're designing this feature with disclosure built in and we'll make sure the system is appropriately identified. What we showed at I.O. was an early technology demo and we look forward to incorporating feedback as we develop this into a product.

So there's two things here. I'm very pleased that they're going to consider adding transparency into this and disclosure disclosure i do not for one second believe that that was the plan when they went into io um yep because they i'm sure it's written on a whiteboard somewhere right i'm sure someone was thinking about it i'm sure they had a team looking at it but they didn't think it was important enough to mention this io um but they thought it was important enough to make sure everybody knew about it after the internet was lit on fire for a couple of days right so i'm very pleased that they have listened i think this is a sign of that changing google as you mentioned right they have listened and

responded correctly by being like yeah no we're gonna do this but i think they're kind of covering their tracks up a little bit it's my opinion i'll never know but that's my opinion and and for the argument there's an argument to be made that like oh but we don't want to we don't want to restrain google's innovation here it's like i kind of disagree because i feel like you could channel google's innovation like yeah if somebody early on had said to the people who worked very hard making this very impressive tech demo that their fundamental approach of lacking disclosure and their rationale for building this technology of trying to get to a human being who controls a paper address book that you can't book over the web with a web form that um that was not going to fly and that that was antithetical to their, uh, corporate values

and that they let's talk about like, what could we do? What problem are we trying to solve here? Is this a problem that Google should solve? How should we solve it? What are the best practices about identifying that you're an intelligent agent when you're talking to a human being, uh, when you receive a call, when you send a call, when you start that call, are those different? There's a whole conversation that could be had upfront before this technology got too far along that steered the building of this technology in

a way that would get an impressive tech demo, but also a product that people wouldn't object to. but also a product that people wouldn't object to. And that didn't happen. So that for me is the part that makes me stumble here is like I get clever people wanting to build clever things to solve problems. And that at one level, you wanna have them keep being clever and doing those things.

But at some point along the way, ideally before it goes too far, you instill in your culture that asking questions of like, should we do this? Because it's super wasteful to build something, a big project that you demo on stage. And only after that's all done, everybody goes, oh, this is a terrible idea. And now what do we do? Like, get out in front of it. Ask these questions yourself. What are your values? And for all of the changes at Google, it always has been an engineer first culture, and it still is. This demo shows it. It still is. And the problem with that is that the people who build the

technology are not usually focused on how people will use it or the rights and wrongs of it. They just want to build something cool. And I realize that is a gross generalization, but we're talking in massive terms in a giant company and the corporate culture that goes along with it. And that's what we got out here. Very clearly, this is still part of what Google is. And I think they would be better served having more of a, you know, more of a super ego looking down and saying, maybe not do that in that way. I mean, there are a bunch of things that I would like to see this technology do. Like, in my mind, I would love to see this technology turned upon itself in that, you know,

say me and you were trying to arrange a time to record the show and we just let our Google assistants just talk to each other and deal with it. There's like, there's like APIs for that now. Like you don't need a talking assistant for that. I don't need my robot to call your robot because we're both connected. Well, okay.

Yes and no. So, I mean, I've used a bunch of these services, and the problem that I always have is they just look for what's the next available slot and just book it in. But I want an AI that understands my personal preferences.

Like, if I have nothing on my calendar before upgrade, I don't want a meeting before upgrade. Right, but you're asking for a better calendar app and better calendar scheduling protocols. that's that's the thing here is that a spoken word agent doesn't is not the solution to your problem it's a solution to a very narrow domain of things that this that you know that involve talking to human beings who need have information that the computer needs to get that that's the that's the challenge i could see it with like if you have a friend who this this is the challenge you have a friend who doesn't have a schedule that's shared with you and you need to coordinate with them and they don't have

a computer schedule that then you're frustrated right like how do we make this work but you could talk to your friend and schedule it instead of having a computer do it yeah this is very basic right i don't have the mind to come up with these ideas but like the point that i was just trying to make is like there is a nugget of interesting technology that exists within this thing but it was implemented badly like this demo could have gone very differently for google right like i think they could have solved almost the entire problem by having, instead of it saying, I need to make a haircut appointment for my client, Jane. They could have said, hi, this is the Google assistant calling for Jane.

She wants to make an appointment. Can we set that up? And you know what? If people realize the Google assistant means that it's a robot, fine. And if they don't, I'm kind of okay with it. It's like, we disclosed it. People are going to learn that this is the robot. They can ignore it. I think it needs to, if you ask, are you a computer? It needs to say yes, right? It also needs to admit that it's a computer, but I think it needs to disclose it upfront, but we can have those ethical debates about it. I think if they had done that, this whole conversation goes away,

but they didn't do it because they thought it would be funnier and more entertaining and more buzzworthy if they did a video on stage that fooled people, which is why it had that crank call aspect to it, which made the people who answered the phone the butts of the jokes. And that is a clear example of punching down, right? It's like Google, one of the most powerful companies in the world, is at their developers conference making people laugh at the humans on the other end of the phone who don't know they're talking to a computer. It's not good.

Yeah, in this instance, whilst I am disappointed about it, I am willing to give Google a pass because they've responded and they've given me what i want and because but really i feel like a lot of this this ai stuff we're new in this you know like trying to understand how we interact with convincing artificial intelligence that is a new thing for us as humans and people who use technology. They screwed up. I don't expect them to make this kind of mistake again. And as long as, like, if I, you know, if I see them doing this kind of stuff in the future

and they seem to do it in a, what I consider to be more kind of humane and ethical way, like, less tricking and more disclosure, like, then I'm willing to forget that this happened. Right? Because this isn't something that i can do to someone today it was just like a little demo that they were showing it was in poor taste and they've kind of apologized they've made clear what they're going to do as long as they stick on that path i'm cool with it because as i say this is this is new this is new for us like how yeah how how artificial intelligences and robots and humans interact with each other like we've had it in fantasy for many years but it's only now getting to the point where it can be a trick well right this is this is an ethical question that is new in terms of it being real and i'm not going to cut Google quite as much slack as you

because I think the problem is that I thought they were further along in changing kind of their culture about this stuff. And this feels very much like classic old Google of not really thinking through the ramifications of what they're doing. I do think that having it happen this way is going to lend more power to the people inside Google saying we need to be much more aware of this stuff. There were a bunch of I told you so's on Thursday morning. Yeah, I think so.

I hope so. And there better be because everybody thought it was great and nobody even questioned it. To be honest, you talk about the evolving culture and how we deal with this stuff. That was the thing that made me most relieved is that I went through that day of the keynote thinking, boy, that Google thing is not good. The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable it made me. And the next morning, I was looking at stories about it. And I was very happy to find that almost universally, people who wrote about it had the same issues I had because that suggests to me that this is not an esoteric question. That everybody or at least many people involved immediately said, you should not have done that that way and brought up a lot of the same issues.

done that that way and brought up a lot of the same issues. And I'm encouraged by that because that is how you set these boundaries is by having a lot of people react negatively and say, you crossed a boundary and having the company, whether it's Google or Amazon or Microsoft or Apple say, you're right. Okay. We didn't know that boundary was there. You're right. It's there. We're not going to cross that boundary again. And that's how we set boundaries is by doing it this way. So I was happy that the reaction was what it was because the world could have just said, no, it's fine. We don't care. And I would have been like, but this is super creepy.

And everybody would have been like, yeah, you're just too sensitive. It's fine. We don't care about this robots calling people, whatever. And that's not what happened. I mean, there are people who responded that way, but a lot of people didn't. And I find that encouraging too. And I mean, again, let's wrap this up by saying Apple is, we've talked about many times, so behind in a lot of this stuff, the feeling that like Apple is struggling to with Siri and struggling to do this stuff.

And they hired, you know, machine learning people from Google and they're working on it and they say they're going to get better and all of those things, right? This demo was amazing in showing Google's technological prowess. And I got to be honest, like, that's why they did the demo. They're bragging. They're showing off. And they're showing how far they are ahead of the competition. And while it showed that Google has some real problems with the ethics of the use of their technology, it also did show how far ahead they are of everyone else, so far as we can tell.

And they are. Like, there's no doubt about that part of it. This is an amazing bit of technology. And even though I'm skeptical about whether it would work in the long run, the fact that they would even show it on stage is like, you know, this is the kind of stuff that Google is thinking of doing. And that's the future. Everybody's going to get there.

It's going to happen over time. But I think they're right to not take a victory lap, but just brag a little bit about where they are. The point that we're at now, I almost feel like just saying, like, just sit this one out, Apple. I don't think they can, but I think that if, if again i don't want to

say it this way i was gonna say if i were at apple i i wonder if what is happening at apple or maybe what would be best for apple at this point is basically to tear siri down and build a new siri and maybe they've tried that and maybe they are trying that maybe they did do that and it's still a problem but like it feels like apple is was ahead to start but now has struggled over time i don't know what the solution is i don't know whether tearing it down is the solution or more rapid iterations for siri i we don't know why but i feel like it's important enough that they need to keep doing it. But, you know, I don't know. They got to think that this is a key part of their future. And yet it, you know, let's say maybe the best thing the HomePod will do

is make it clear to Apple just how important Siri being better is to their future. I don't know. Because you're right. You're right. It is in many places. Apple is ahead. Or you could say Apple and Google are doing similar things, but they are serving different audiences and have different philosophies. things but they are uh serving different audiences and have different philosophies it's hard for me to look at this category and not say that apple is way behind google and amazon

yeah like siri is still misunderstanding who like what like so we have a thing in our house that just started happening the last two days where adina is saying oh hi telephone and it's picking up her iphone instead of the home pod like well that's not supposed to happen though right like so it's like now what's going on so and then i see something like this and i'm like oh man like wow like this is very different isn't it and i just i don't really know i don't really i just can't i just can't imagine what the path is for them i really don't i don't see but

hopefully we'll see something in a couple of weeks maybe they're working behind the scenes and they're gonna reveal all let's uh cross our fingers on that one. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom. If your website was down right now, if visitors were coming to your site, they couldn't access your content or click that all-important Buy Now button, how would you know unless you were sitting there

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Alright, so, should we do some hashtag ask upgrade questions? That's a great idea. First one comes from Jeff. Jeff says, If the new iPhone lineup that released this year is what's rumored, which is three phones that kind of look like the iPhone X in some way, do we think that Apple would continue

to sell a phone that looks like or is the iPhone 8? What do you think? Yes, I think so, because I think Apple is going to want those different tiers. So you'll have a new iPhone X and X Plus, you'll have an iphone 9 and 9 plus maybe and then you'll have the 8 because you'll they'll want they'll want the previous even cheaper previous generation that's how they have done it up to now because i believe now they're selling the 10 the 8 and the 7 are they still selling the 6s to apple.com slash iphone iphone they are selling the 10 the 8 the 7, are they still selling the 6S too? Apple.com slash iPhone. Slash iPhone.

They are selling the 10, the 8, the 7, the 6S, and the SE. Yeah, so there you go. They're going back. So they've got the two current models, and then they've got last year's model and the year before's model. So I think, yes, I think if they come out with an iPhone 10, a new iPhone 10 line and an iPhone 9 line, let's call it, then yeah, the 8 and probably the 7 will still be in the product line because Apple discounts those and keeps them on sale for, you know, for years. It's a couple of years back every time.

So there you go. I think the answer is yes. Wesley asked, what do you stylish nerds wear on your feet i like this question uh for me it's mostly nike um i mostly wear nike sneakers or trainers as they would be called here in the uk um i'm a big fan of the fly knit airmax range like there's a bunch of air Max that are made of Flyknit which is this super soft woven material but whilst doing preparation for this question I stumbled upon a pair of shoes from Adidas

that I am very keen on which i really really like the look of the this adidas and pharrell collaboration and it's called prime knit which is very much like fly knit that's like this knit this woven knit material which is really soft so yeah i tend to wear those kinds of shoes. Yeah, first off, I'm going to just question this premise. Nerd yes, stylish no. And it's worse. My podiatrist told me to buy motion control featured shoes.

So they're very specific kinds that have got support that are going to keep my feet not bad. And so I've got a pair of new balance running shoes and i think my i think my i bought a pair of walking shoes i always used to be a one pair of shoes guy i literally would only have one pair of shoes and i'd wear them all the time and then they die and i get another pair but i actually have two i have i have these super light new balance running shoes that are you know like fabric all over it so like the air gets in and and if you spill water on your shoe your sock sock is immediately wet, that kind of thing. Yeah, this is like the material I'm talking about too. Exactly right.

Exactly right. And then I also have a pair of leather black walking shoes that are, I think, New Balance as well. Although they might be Brooks, but I think they're New Balance. And those are, you know, honestly, during once the weather turns, I never wear those because I'm not going to be wearing the big black leather shoes with shorts because that's not. See, that's how stylish I am. But in the winter, they're great because they keep my feet warmer because they don't, you know, they're leather. They're keeping the heat in instead of letting it escape. So I've got a couple of pairs.

Nothing exciting. Sorry. This question from Jay is a little bit more up your street jason i think so jay says jason what is your beer style of choice and can i buy you one at wwdc this year i already replied to jay on twitter and i'll give that same answer here which is jay stouts and porters and yes somebody wants to buy me a beer of my a beer especially of my choice at wwdc yep find me someplace where beer is sold and buy me a beer at wwdc that's great i'm there sunday night monday night tuesday night uh find me and buy me a beer go ahead um i will also extend this by saying i like ipas that's my favorite um okay so yeah i will also i will also take those beers uh john has asked is there a smart speaker on the market that would allow me to use the word computer as the prompt like on the

enterprise most definitely the amazon echo does this exact thing yep the amazon echo yeah and i don't have that feature turned on because I use the word computer all the time because I write about computers. But yes, you can absolutely do that with the Amazon Echo. That seems like a terrible word to me. But if that's what you want to go with, go with it. Like that's too frequent a word at the same, right? I could not do that, but if that's

your bag, go for it. Uh, Louie wants to know if I still use a pop socket on my iPhone 10. Um, the answer is yes. Pop sockets are, you will have seen these will be my expectation. Uh, I will put a link in the show notes, uh, to pop sockets. Um, it's like this little disc that you can put on the back of a phone, and you can pull it out from the back and put your hand into it to hold it. I use my popsocket every day to hold my phone in some way or to stand my phone up. You can put it in landscape and watch video on it if you want to. There are a bunch of different ways that you can hold your phone with a popsocket. The reason I originally did it was because I was

having some RSI pains around the time that I bought my iPhone. But I actually don't think in hindsight, I don't think it was the iPhone 10 that was causing it. But I do find it way easier to hold my phone with the pop socket on at times.

And I stick it on the back of the case and it just sits there. Also, it is an incredible fidget toy um i get to just play with this thing and i will say that i converted a couple of people uh when we're as a bunch of us were together last week to uh get pop sockets so i understand that they are not for everyone i understand that they are not for most people but it works really great for me and if you buy me that beer at wwdc i can show you why i think it's a great way to tie it all together yeah i saw you with your weird thing on the back of your iphone

and i did not like it no and i get it i understand why people wouldn't like it um but like you know a lot of people like oh does it get stuck in your pocket never get stuck on my pocket because i put my phone into my pocket covering that like my hand kind of like guides my phone into my pocket anyway so it never gets stuck I like it and but I understand why a lot of people wouldn't like it but it works really really well for me and I find it very comfortable and I mean I already have this huge orange case on my phone anyway like I don't think I would stick one of these to the back of an iPhone. It has that kind of glue that is like re-adhesive,

like it's really strong, but like you can get it off and put it back and it doesn't leave marks. But I mean, I would put this on the outside of the case, but not directly onto a phone.

And our last question today comes from Dan. And Dan says, if you're only working on an iPad with no Mac or computer from which to make backups, is iCloud backup and a cloud storage service

enough to secure your data? It's like a cloud storage service like Dropbox. I assume it's not as good as a backup service like with versioning and stuff like that and file restoring,

but is it enough? This is a really interesting question that I don't feel like I have a really good answer for but it is totally something that needs to be thought about i think i think it's great that apple has iCloud backup right because then we wouldn't have backup iCloud backup it would be nice if other services could back up your iphone although again then there's issues of security you're letting apps access all of your iPhone's data

in order to back it up. Like, and that would be a lot of security effort in making that possible. The good news is, yeah, iCloud backup is there. And then there's, you could use a cloud service. And I think the answer to this question is, yes, it's enough. But if you're worried about versioning, I would say use a sync service that supports versioning. And Dropbox is a good example of that, where you get, I think, 30 days covered. And then you can also buy the PackRat version where you get unlimited versioning. Or there may be an interim step where you get a year's versioning. There are things like that. And if you're worried about versioning, use apps and a service that let you, that auto version your backups. And that will save you a lot. And then for everything else, there's iCloud,

like for your entire image. But if you're worried about details of documents and you can sync them to a cloud service, that's the way to go yeah and i think it definitely sounds like that is the situation that dan is in right i'm assuming they're using dropbox for the for the files right and this is what i do i mean i have the added thing of because i use a mac which has backblaze attached to it those files are also backed up with backblaze right because i actually have backblaze look to it, those files are also backed up with Backblaze, right? Because I actually have Backblaze look at my Dropbox folder and make a backup of it, which works great for me. And it means that all those files, as well as being kind of backed up in whatever way Dropbox will do it, it's also backed up in Backblaze as well, as well as on a time machine.

I mean, that's kind of my setup. I think that pretty good but if i was running the ios only lifestyle this like completely only ios that's probably what i would do is all files and data gets stored in applications that can talk to dropbox because it at least has some kind of uh pretty good file recovery right like i found the file recovery to be to work pretty well um and then as you say you also have for everything else you have the ios backups which you can get some versions of that although it seems to be a bit random which versions you end up getting access to um it is a problem but it is solvable in some ways like it's possible to do it in some ways and there are like um you can buy these little usb lightningy things right which you can plug in and you can back up onto but like i don't know

how great that's going to be like for you know for local backup but yeah it's a good question i would love i would love it if it was possible to have a more robust solution at some point but i don't see it coming anytime soon, if ever. All right, if you want to find our show notes for this week, you can go over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 193. If you'd like to send in a question for us at the end of the show, for us to answer and give the best answers we possibly can on, whether it's about shoes or backup services or popsockets,

you can send in questions with the hashtag ask upgrade, and we will pick some of those out every episode as we always do. I want to thank Pingdom, FreshBooks and Simple Contacts for their support of this show. We'll be back next week. If you want to find Jason online, he's at jsnell on Twitter, J S N E double L.

And he writes at sixcolors.com. I am at iMike, I M Y K E. Once again, if you bought a ticket to our WWDC live show, S-N-E-L-L, and he writes at sixcolors.com. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Once again, if you bought a ticket to our WWDC live show and you have yet to purchase a ticket at the new venue, please check your email for a message from OrkComp from last week and buy a ticket, and we hope to see you there. Again, I'm sorry for the inconvenience that this has caused,

but I really hope that you come along to the new show because it's going to be amazing. But until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.