Upgrade - 194: Game of Jenga with Drivers

Episode Date: May 21, 2018

Myke just built a gaming PC, which prompts us to discuss the current state of the art of Windows and macOS, as well as a broader discussion of living a multi-ecosystem lifestyle.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 194 today's show is brought to you very kindly by simple contacts squarespace and linode my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hi jason snell can you tell why i'm so excited? Why are you so excited? No, no is my answer. I can't tell why. Next week is draft time. It's the most wonderful time of the three times a year or so. The WWDC draft, it's the big one. Next week on Upgrade, big episode.

We're going to do our draft for our WWDC picks because believe it or not, everyone, we are two weeks away from WWDC. So get ready for that. I'm very excited for the draft, Jason. I'm very, very excited for the draft. But we don't need to keep talking about it today because we have a hashtag snow talk question

which comes from Joel. And Joel would like to know. This is an interesting question for you here, Jason. Joel would like to know. This is an interesting question for you here, Jason. Joel would like to know, would you rather have AirPods and an older iPhone or an iPhone X with any other type of headphones? So just I'll rephrase it a little bit. You can own AirPods, but you cannot use them with an iPhone X,

or you can own an iPhone X and you cannot use AirPods. Also, thehone 8 came out the same time as the iphone 10 and he says an older iphone so it can't even be an iphone 8 well i guess it came out a couple months earlier technically yeah the iphone 8 earlier i am ruling iphone 8 counts uh well i either way i think i uh this is this is a tough hypothetical i appreciate it joel thanks a lot uh monday morning and I'm being hit with hypotheticals. But I'm going to say where the mean man comes to my house and said, I'm sorry, sir. You cannot possess both AirPods.

One man cannot possess so much power. That is a cruel, cruel, mean man who came to my door and said that I must give one of them up. You know what? I have another pair of wireless headphones that I don't like as much. And I have some wired headphones I like very much. And as much as I like having the AirPods, I think at this point, I would really rather not unlearn all the behavior that I've learned in the iPhone 10. miss a few features, but it's still the home button and all of that. I might go the other way, but the iPhone 10 has kind of reprogrammed all the gestures in my brain, reprogrammed all those kind of gestures I use on the phone. And I don't want to ever go back. When I pick up my wife's phone, I'm like, what is, why is it not? Oh, there's a button. How cute. There's a button

at the bottom. I remember that when iPhonesiphones had buttons so so yeah i think i would just make do with headphones although i would be i would be sad because i like my airpods but i think i i never want to go back uh now that i'm in iphone 10 land it is very difficult because every iphone is better than the previous one so it's you know it is a difficult thing to say yeah x iphone or iphone 10 is uh better than is like my favorite iphone of all time right like it's a difficult thing to say because in theory they always should because they get better but i feel like that there is some kind of like every phone you have an amount of affinity for it you know like that it is of course you know it's a better phone, but you either like it more or less. And I would say that the iPhone 10 is my favorite iPhone since the original iPhone. Like, I absolutely love this phone,

where like previous phones, that affinity had started to decrease. Like, you know, if you've listened to this show for long enough, you will know that I really did not like the iPhone 7, right? I had a lot of problems with the iPhone 7 because again, like they took away stuff that didn't make sense to me and I didn't get anything in return. That was my biggest problem with the iPhone 7. The iPhone 10, I absolutely love it. So this is me saying I would use any other type of headphones. I'd go back to wired earpods personally, like, cause I did okay before, right? Like the AirPods are incredible, right? but i don't love the airpods more than other headphones than i do the iphone more than other iphones yep especially because they're old but there are a lot

of cool wireless headphones on the market now like for example do you know what i would do i'd just buy the beats once and then and then i'm done so i sure showed you joel uh thank you joel for your question um you can send in a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk for any question to open the show. I would love for you listeners, for the Upgradians, to think of something fun for our draft episode next week for a SnellTalk question. So get your brain working on that one.

Maybe we can have something draft or WWDC related for our hashtag SnellTalk question. Be like Joel. Be cool. Send in a question. So we have no follow-ups. Let's just move into upstream. Netflix orders Guillermo de Toro horror anthology series. It's going to be called, I love this name, Guillermo de Toro presents 10 After Midnight.

I love that name. It's so evocative of something I can't put my finger on, but 10 After Midnight, I really like it. Creepy, scary, woo! Exactly. This is a part of a long-term deal that Netflix and Guillermo del Toro have. I think it's a first-look deal, I think,

but they have a deal together where he is making content for them. This show has no set episode or series order, and it has no premiere date right now they've just announced that it's happening and it's an anthology series and i'm fascinated because you know it's been there used to be we talked about this before i think but there used to be a lot of anthology series on tv in the old days and and like the twilight zone is is a great example of that and there are others alfred hitchcock presents is a great example of that but lately with streaming especially there has been this resurgence in this and i'm kind of

fascinated by it black mirror is your best example although there are others i would argue that that's the reason that anthology series is so popular again yeah i mean they tried it with amazing stories in the 80s and it didn't really work like and the twilight zone they brought back in the 80s too and it neither of them was a particularly big success. They both kind of put it around for two or three years, but they were never a big success. I feel like with streaming, something has changed and I can't decide what it is and whether it's that audiences are more receptive to this. The idea that you're essentially watching a short story instead of watching a continuing story or a short film, if you will, right?

That maybe people are more receptive to that on streaming, that they can kind of pick and choose. It's funny because it's very different. Like you could binge Black Mirror, but everything, every episode is different. So you don't really have to. You could also just watch a couple and move on with your life and maybe not be so sad because it's Black Mirror. It's interesting because anthology series do not lend themselves to binging because we binge because shows are built to entice you to watch the next episode. So because it's just available to us, we do, right? Yeah. Yeah. So the question is, why are people doing this? And my guess is that, that some factor here is the idea that these are little films and that you end

up with, this is almost like a, it's like a studio within a studio almost where it's like you come and work with Guillermo, Guillermo del, it's Monday morning. Guillermo del Torillermo guillermo del it's monday morning guillermo de toro gdt yep you go work with him you go work with gdt and um and make a you know you come in and you direct an episode and you're making a little film and you're a director and maybe you're a big name director. Like, you know, there are notable people who've come in and directed their other anthology series and are planning to, or you're a writer and you come in and say, well, I've got

this, I've got this idea and you pitch it to GDT. And he's like, yeah, that's awesome. That fits with our format. But so I wonder if that's part of it is this is a place for people who are creative, people who work in the movie and TV industry, to do these one-off projects so they're not committing to working a long time on a project. They can drop in and shoot something for a couple of weeks and then be done. Maybe that's part of it, too. But it's another one for Netflix. it too but it's uh it's uh another one another one for netflix um our by the way yes listener joe in the chat room has pointed out that netflix also has announced the thing we talked about a few weeks ago which is that the obamas have made that deal that maybe david letterman helped inspire them to make to produce films and series for netflix so the obamas have uh are gonna try it which i think

is going to be interesting to watch because there is a real question about whether people want to watch first off there's a political issue right where there's like a portion of the audience that's not going to want to watch the obamas do anything um and then there's the other issue which is just how much of this is going to be you know take your medicine television and trying to like say get people engaged in public service and changing the world and all these things that former presidents tend to do is that going to be i mean it's totally prestige for netflix to do that but what's the audience going to be like for that so we'll have to watch it but it what's the audience going to be like for that? So we'll have to watch it.

But what a world we live in where the second act for a former president of the United States is making a deal with a streaming service. How different is it to writing books these days, though, really? It's true. I mean, the challenge there is the books. What are the books like a memoir will sell well right but so will a tv series from that that obama sits down to tell walk you through his presidency in interviews with people obama talks with people in his administration about the obama administration and the hard choices they

made. And there's a thing about Osama bin Laden and there's a thing like all of that, like the mistakes they made and the things they feel that they are proud of and all of that. That would be an interesting series. I kind of feel like instead what we're going to get is, you know, stuff about like a spotlight on volunteerism or, and I'm not trying to, or other stuff like that, which again, I'm not trying to belittle those efforts. Those are important, charitable, philanthropic efforts and getting people to, you know, speak, speaking to people about getting them excited about this stuff and all that. It's great. That's a great role for a former president, but that as entertainment, I am less sure is going to reach a particularly broad audience but who knows i mean

i would love this to be like hey you know presidential memoirs well it's a show like what that would be amazing but again i don't think that's what they're gonna do although uh call me Netflix or the Obamas if you want to talk about the idea of I'm available for you to consult on your memoir television series. But wouldn't that be cool? I think that would be really interesting if it was literally like the people involved in a presidency breaking it down a few years after the fact and kind of justifying themselves and having people question them and having them do a little bit of failure analysis. I think that would be fascinating. Like I said, like a video memoir almost, but it ain't going to happen.

This is probably not what they're doing. But who knows? Could be good. I mean, they're entertaining. We'll wait and see. Canal Plus in France now offers an Apple TV as a cable replacement box. Canal Plus are like a TV provider.

They have gotten rid of their own boxes now going forward and will be offering their current 5 million customers the opportunity to have an Apple TV instead of their satellite TV boxes. These customers will be able to watch programming in the Canal Plus app, and obviously they'll have a login for that. And the boxes, the Apple TV boxes, are on a lease agreement of six euros a month. Canal Plus customers can currently opt to stick with their current satellite service instead, or they can switch over to the Apple TV option.

This is very interesting. This is a satellite TV service that's also becoming an over-the-top, as they say, TV service, an internet TV service. I think it's great to see this. I think this is going to happen more. Yes. I've mentioned on previous shows that the Comcast app, the Xfinity app on my iPad, is essentially a – when I'm in my house, it's essentially a cable box. I can watch any channel that they have in my house, it's essentially a cable box. I can watch any channel that they have in my house live. Plus I have access to all the on-demand and the extra stuff that they've got.

And I realized at some point that if they put that on the Apple TV, my Apple TV would essentially be a cable box. That it wouldn't have all the features. They don't have like a DVR feature on their stuff. And I have a DVR. So my DVR is way more functional than this. But it's so close to being that. And we've seen some of these over the top providers, and they have cloud DVR and things like that in order to take care of that. So I think this is a question on one level of like, is it better for cable companies to offer this sort of thing um or does it it risk making them uh you know if you're going to get your cable companies uh app why don't you just use the youtube tv app if it's better right like that that would be the argument there and uh but i think it also

says that well they make that canal plus like may have exclusives in France or whatever for certain channels. That's true. That's true. But I'm thinking that's how they have to compete then. At that point, your cable provider, separate from your internet, and my cable provider is my internet provider, and that's how they get you. But it does... At one point, the over-the-top services are so full-featured that the cable companies are just essentially competing. They're another over-the-top services are so full featured that the cable companies are just essentially competing there are another over-the-top service whether they're using their

proprietary way to get video into your home or whether like canal plus they're like look here's an app just use that either way they're just all competing then and that's a that's a separate competition from being the provider of of the internet pipe and that pipe. And that's a little bit different from what some cable companies do now where they control your internet and they control your video. But in the end, I think more competition is good. And having competition for who your TV provider is

is potentially a really good thing. So also I'll point out again this is a satellite service which is notable because satellite services don't have high speed internet i mean they've got low speed internet but they don't have high speed internet to your house yes and no so like you can't offer it over satellite but these companies also typically tend to offer internet service now as well some some do in in the u.s in the u.s um uh the satellite services generally although there's been some consolidation but generally you know the satellite service doesn't give you anything but there is satellite internet it's very slow a lot of latency it's not good but um and a few of them like direct tv is owned by

at&t and at&t has broadband in some markets, but mostly it doesn't. So if you're like me, I used to be a DirecTV customer. I still had to have high-speed internet from someone else. And it was AT&T for a while with DSL, and then I moved to Comcast. And then eventually I picked up Comcast for TV. So what I'm saying is, if you're not in lockstep where like most of your customers are getting tv and internet from you it's a lot easier to do this right because for you you like you're already under pressure because they've they've got another company they're paying for their internet they

could drop you on a moment's notice and so for them they're basically saying look however you want it satellite satellite, internet, whatever, we don't care. Just use us for your TV and we'll be happy. And I think that that's just, we'll see more of that. DirecTV now is an over-the-top service. That is, it's the same kind of idea. They're a satellite broadcaster and there are limits to that. So now they also are an over-the-top service. So yeah, it's interesting. Even if you're not in France, it's an interesting development

because most cable companies could do this today if they really wanted to. They'd have to invest in the technology a little bit, but like a lot of their apps already are there for this stuff. They're just, I see why they would be reluctant because once everything is an app, then they have to compete with all the other apps. Whereas right now they get to be like the monolithic TV provider and you don't have to use them.

But a lot of consumers are just like, OK, they give me my TV, at least older consumers. I think younger consumers do not care about their TV services. But there's still a lot of money to be made in selling people cable instead of internet and then pick an app. All right, buckle up. This one's a little bit confusing. Google announces YouTube Music and YouTube Premium. So they are separating the features of YouTube Red

and they are now charging for them differently. So it will now cost you $9. 99 cents a month to get youtube music this was the existing price of youtube red um youtube red did come with some music features like you got to be able to listen to youtube in the background and stuff like that but google are now creating a youtube music streaming service it's going to be have its own dedicated app for mobile and desktop they are building a full-on music streaming service now um i am assuming google play music is going to die uh because they are leaning into the powerful brands and the advantages of youtube for this um google say then and again like this is how I think you can read that,

is they say that they have the YouTube advantage, is what they call it. This means that as well as official songs, right, so you get to listen to, say, the Taylor Swift album, you also have, because it's YouTube, access to thousands of remixes,

covers, live versions, and music videos. So that does make it quite interesting. This is something that Apple Music doesn't have and Spotify doesn't have because Google have. So say, for example, if you like Pomplamoose and you like their covers, you can get them immediately because they're in YouTube, right? So also Google have or YouTube, a powerful search engine algorithm

behind it. They give an example of, you could search for that hipster song with the whistling, and you would get the song Young Folks from a few years ago. This is an example that they give. I like that thought, right? And it makes sense, because people are searching for this stuff right now in YouTube so like youtube's algorithm for finding this music is incredibly powerful so that's going to be youtube music if you want to get ad free youtube the ability to download videos and get access to youtube originals all the youtube red stuff you now need to pay a total of 11.99 you cannot have this separately you must have a YouTube music subscription,

and then you can pay extra for YouTube Premium, which is an additional $2. However, if you are already a YouTube Red customer, you're grandfathered into the $9.99 price. This will be for new customers only. I believe that is rolling out this week. So if this sounds interesting to you, and it hasn't rolled out in your territory, maybe go sign up for youtube red right now uh because you'll get it for 9.99

the big news for me is that youtube premium and youtube music is going international previously youtube red has been us only so rolling out in the coming weeks to many countries including germany france mexico italy and the uk we're going to be able to get youtube music and youtube premium now i am really interested in youtube music because of the additional features that youtube has that nobody else has like i'm really keen to try this out because if they have all the songs that i want they have playlist functionality right i'm assuming that they can do a lot of the like Discover Weekly type stuff, probably better than Apple can,

maybe not as good as Spotify, we'll see. But the fact that they have all of this other content that they can give you around that musician and around that song, that is a competitive advantage that Spotify and Apple cannot match them on for now. And I think that's really cool. I think it sounds really really interesting i'm keen to see what the apps are like but more than anything i want to get youtube premium because i want to be able to download youtube

videos that i i have a workflow that does this but i'd prefer to not have to do this i would like to be able to just watch them in the app download them in the app and so because i like to watch like some video game streams that i like, for example, when I'm flying. And it's such a pain to have to do the whole rigmarole. No, we paid for YouTube Red last summer for a couple of months. There was a trial. And we did that because we were going on a long car trip. And Julian wanted to download a bunch of his favorite YouTube videos and watch them while we were in the middle of the Nevada desert.

So streaming would kill our cellular even if he could. And we don't want that. And we did that. And that's okay. I'm fascinated by this because this shows you all the strength and all the confusion of Google's brands. First off, they tried to launch you know they have a google music brand that is that was originally famously google play music all access the worst product name for first service name ever um they may keep that or they may kill that right but that that is a

traditional if there can be such a thing music streaming service like apple music music streams yield spotify um so there's that and then there's youtube and the funny thing is like i get it i get it right like youtube is not a music brand in the sense that its name even is about video and we think about it about video however that hasn't stopped it from being one of the primary ways, if not the primary way, that many people, especially younger people, listen to music. I think that YouTube is probably the biggest music platform on the planet. It's possible. My daughter listens to music on a music app. She's using Apple Music now.

She used Spotify for a while. And I said, I upgraded us to the family plan for Apple Music. And she has switched now because she has everything in there. But my son really likes listening to video game music and it's all on YouTube. He will literally just put his iPad playing YouTube music on his headphones while he plays video games, right? And I think this is a very common use case. We took a family trip this weekend and we brought one of my son's friends with me. He came along know, he, he came along and, uh, so then I had, I had two of these boys in the back seat, uh, and they're both doing this, right? Like, this is just what, what, uh, that cohort is doing. Um, and so on that level,

it's like, yeah, I know you don't think of YouTube as a music brand, but it's actually an enormous music brand for some people. I think the danger of Google just killing their traditional music service would be that some people aren't going to ever see YouTube as a music brand. But the problem is those people are probably already using Spotify, right? Like I'm not sure, maybe choose what you're best at. And YouTube is what is best at doing music for within the Google portfolio. So just leaning into that, I kind of like that idea. It's going to be right. Like not every service is for everybody. Your description of all of the advantages that YouTube has in terms of all the content

that's around that, the ancillary content, that's the stuff that I listened to once and never want to listen to again. So for me, I'm like, I don't care about that. I'm also really skeptical of, because of Google in general, that they're really going to be able to do something like a discover mute, you know, playlist or, or curated playlist, because that's not them. They're algorithm based. And I'm not entirely sure I trust their algorithms to actually give me a over, over having some human participation in the curation. But again, that's a style thing.

Like for other people, you just trust the, I mean, when I think about using YouTube, you kind of trust the algorithm, right? Like, oh, look at these videos. How many times do you play a YouTube video and then you see like five interesting videos that are generated by the algorithm, right? So there is something to be said for that. And so that's all good that's all good i think as weird as it is as an old to look at this and be like youtube

music service it makes sense it totally makes sense if you understand what youtube is in terms of being a music delivery platform for uh especially young people my problem is the video stuff because i feel like youtube bread was weird because it was like all these youtube features plus premium content and of course they've changed their premium content strategy to um where they they were like working with youtubers and now they're still working with youtubers but they also have like traditional mostly celebrities now right right and cobra kai is just a it's just an original series right they're they're they're trying out a an entirely just an original scripted series so that's the part that kind of i feel like

they're getting their music story together their video story is still just kind of a mess because i look at this and i think well wait a second so you can't get it separately so you have to get a music service in order to get the extra features and the video content which that seems like a mistake to me so the youtube um music seems like a service that will actually stick um after them trying all these different things i would probably lay money that youtube premium is going to change dramatically in the next couple of years because I'm not sure it actually works or makes any sense. It's more like they need a place to stuff a bunch of these things. And why you would not just put the, I mean, like the downloading videos and stuff,

it's like, you got people paying you money. Maybe you want an extra $2 a month. You're Google, you want an extra $2 a month for somebody who's already paying you, maybe you should just let them have that feature. Ad free is weird. It's fine. But of course, staking anything on ad free is always strange, because you have a relationship with advertisers. And now you're telling them that we have this hardcore group of people who you can't reach, which is also a little bit weird. And then you've got the premium content. So I'm not sure they've got a whole story there. But then again, I could also say, maybe Google saying, look, we're not going to build our own video streaming service outside of YouTube. And we're not just like we probably shouldn't have built our own music streaming service outside of YouTube, because we own YouTube, and we're just going to be YouTube as much as we possibly

can. And I can see, I can really see that argument. I feel like the end result may be that they realize that generating all of this premium content, whether it was with YouTubers or then celebrities, or then they bought this scripted show, they may realize, no, that's not us. And they just kind of back away from there but it's hard you can see apple couldn't resist it it's hard to sit on the sidelines as a tech giant and see netflix and see what amazon's doing and apple's doing it and be google and like but i really want to compete with those guys it's like but you've got youtube you don't need to compete with those guys you've got this huge video but i kind of want to spend billions of dollars on original scripted content like maybe not maybe don't do that but who knows i don't know it's fascinating i'm tired

of youtube and google keeping changing all of their things and and what they are it's so confusing and weird but with the music thing anyway i feel like they maybe found the right approach which is just to embrace that youtube is a music brand too, and just lean all the way in. Today's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. They will let you easily create a website for your next idea. And with the ability to grab a unique domain, take advantage of beautiful award-winning templates, and so much more, they are the all-in-one place for you to put your next project on the internet. They have all of the functionality that you're going to need and they take away all of the stuff that you don't want to have to fuss yourself over. Like let's say you want to add an online

store or what about blog functionality to your site? Well, you don't have to install or patch or upgrade anything. It's just all there ready for you to take advantage of with Squarespace. They make all of this stuff so easy so you don't have to worry about it. And if you get stuck with anything, if you need any help or assistance, not only do they have incredible support documentation, they have award-winning 24-7 customer support right there. If you need it, you can just talk to someone and they will help you. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month, but you can sign up for a trial today. You have no credit card required by going to squarespace.com slash upgrade you should take a look at it

play around trust me you're going to love it I've used Squarespace for so many projects in the years over the years and I keep coming back to them because it's the easiest way for me to get my thoughts out and my words out on the internet once again that is squarespace.com slash upgrade

and you want to use the code upgrade at checkout when you sign up to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and show your support for this show at squarespace.com slash upgrade and the code UPGRADE for 10% off. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. So I have built a gaming PC. This is something that I've been talking about throughout the year. And I have done it. And it's given me a couple of things that I want been talking about throughout the year and I have done it

and it's making me, it's given me a couple of things that I want to talk to you about, Jason. If you are interested in hearing the process of me building the PC, I'll do some follow-out to episode 58 of Remaster and episode 69

of Cortex, which will be released within 24 hours of this show being posted, so you can look out for those and I kind of Cortex, which will be released within 24 hours of this show being posted. So you can look out for those. And I kind of go into detail about the actual building process. But I didn't want to talk about that so much here today. I wanted to talk about some of my experiences of using a PC again after, well, for one, not having really used a PC at all for four years and not used a PC for like entertainment or my own choice for like 10 years, maybe. Right before I got my first Mac, more than that, nearly 15, who knows? So I have a few different areas, Jason, that I wanted to talk to you about.

App stores is probably the one of the most interesting. The Windows App Store is barren. It is a bad, it is bad. It's kind of like the Mac App Store in that there isn't really a lot there, but Microsoft tries to position it. There is, I have to say this because I can't get over it.

There's a huge storm here happening right now in London. I have to mention it right now because you're going to keep hearing it. I nearly, my brain nearly exploded a minute ago because of some lightning. I edited that out of the show, but there is, there's a storm.

I'm sorry. There's nothing I can do to control the weather. That's exactly it. That was an accurate representation of what just happened outside of my office. But anyway, so, you know, the Mac App Store is a lonely place, right? And the Windows App Store is kind of like that.

There are some apps there. There are some utilities there. But most of the stuff that's there, it's not really that useful or updated that often because there's just not a lot of focus put there by Apple. And I don't think there's been a lot of focus there by microsoft but the thing is about the the windows app store that is the app store for all of their devices right so you can still get windows phone apps and then there's tablet apps and then there's the desktop apps um and it's if you think of it

in comparison to the ios store, it's not good. Like, I downloaded the official Twitter app. It's just the web page. Like, that's all it is. It is literally the web page. You can't even have multiple accounts in the official Twitter app on Windows. All it is is the web page.

It's not good there. And I think this is why they announced this a couple of weeks ago, right? At Build, their revenue split change. So they're doing like 95% goes to developers now. It can be up to between 85% and 95%

of the revenue goes to developers. And this is a clear thing from them where they really want people to use their apps, like their app really want people to use their apps like their app store and to use their functions and to actually put stuff there but there is another side of the windows app store which is games so like any xbox exclusive is on the microsoft store for pc like this is the reason i bought it. And this shows the big difference, right? Like you can get games in the Mac app store, but they're like, okay, games or they're older games. Like this is anything like games that come out now on Xbox. I can get on my PC as well as being

able to get anything from steam. You know, all these PC games and VR games are available to me, which is why I built this PC in the first place. And that's the big difference, right? Apple has apps. Microsoft has games. And depending on what you are more focused towards, I think that's these days why you would make the decision that you would make, right?

Would you agree with that? Yeah, I think so. So I also wanted to talk about just the overall feel today still, because I think Windows 10 looks nicer than any version of Windows I've used in the past. Have you used Windows 10 at all? Yeah, I haven't installed on my iMac, actually, because I do have, of course, I do have games that I want to play that are only available on Windows.

And so I set up boot camp. I went to my local Microsoft store. I walked in the door. I had to make my way through the massive crowds that were outside the Apple store. And then walked with a tumbleweed blowing by into the Microsoft store. I'm sorry, we kid Microsoft, but those stores don't have very many people in them. I had like two, three people who were like, oh, yes, sir. I wanted to touch that Surface thing, the big Surface Studio thing.

And I couldn't even use it for a minute before I had like two people pop up to me saying, yes, sir, can I help you with anything? I'm like, oh, man. Anyway, I bought a Windows 10 install on a little USB stick and used Boot Camp and got it all up and running on my iMac. So I do have it and I have used it I uh it's a little weird because like I learned how to use Windows XP right and that's my the Windows that I like I know my way around in Windows XP and Windows 10 it's like it's so strange and like things are in corners and they're little tabs and little blue things everywhere and it's it's a little takes it takes a lot of getting used to but it looks great it like it is it is the

result of microsoft taking care with their platform but what i like because on the face of it everything looks way nicer but you do not have to go very far down to get windows 95 back oh yeah like so you can go into the control panel right and everything's much more nicely designed and you click it and you can select from these little icons as soon as you click like properties and anything you get windows 95 pop up right with all the tabs and it's like no this is not it's only skin deep this uh this this wouldn't just change i think their philosophy is like we they want to float up all the stuff that most people care about to this one level and it's a very nice level and then if you want to tweak

anything they're like all right forget it here you go like you're you're one of those people you know dig down dig down deep and yeah it's hard you know you can't you can't change it all overnight and so yeah there's still a whole level below the surface because it's still windows right it still needs to it still fundamentally is windows it needs to do the things that windows does and that also means that it has to have all of these kind of weird areas and tweaky settings and things things that seem perfectly normal probably to a windows user but that to a mac user you're like whoa okay now what do what do i have to do? But in surprise to nobody, if overall look and feel on polish is what you like, the Mac OS is...

I feel like I had forgotten or not paid attention for a while to just the overall look and feel of desktop operating systems. I appreciate the way my Mac looks a lot more now that I've used Windows. Like Windows looks so much better than it ever has. Yes.

But it's still not, I mean, I'm sorry if you love Windows, but like for my tastes, it is still nowhere near what the Mac is. Like just from a visual consistency perspective, like everything kind of looks the same. You know, like there are elements of basically all mac apps unless they're like windows first like steam for example right like all mac apps kind of have a look to them and all of the os kind of has a consistent look to it and this consistency

doesn't really seem to exist in windows so much and i know that that is like a thing of windows right so like i wanted to talk about custom customizability a little bit right like it's almost endless on windows you can yeah you can you know it comes from the build right you choose every piece of hardware you want you make your own thing which is i think is amazing like i've loved doing that like making my own pc and the software as well like it's all kind of you're putting it all together on your own but what that lends itself to uh is a real kind of mess in places right because things just don't they just don't like map together so well at times you, like apps just look so wildly different sometimes.

And I don't want to beat up Windows here, but I do think that, and everybody can like what they like, but I think there is a trend in the media, especially the tech media, to give Microsoft kind of a pass because it's made so many improvements, which again, to be congratulated microsoft used to not care basically about user experience and design and they they clearly do

care and they are trying their best but i will also say going back to the mac os thing like there are people out there i read now who straight faced say microsoft has passed apple on desktop in terms of usability in terms of design they haven't like i don't i want i want a master class from those people those those i think and again they are using windows a lot so maybe they they are seeing it and i just haven't gotten it but i look at it and i think um you don't use your computer as much as you used to because you're using smartphones. You are taken in by how much they've improved. And so here's a fun narrative because horse race narratives are fun.

And this is like, Oh, now Microsoft is edged. Ha ha. The shoe is on the other foot. Now Apple, Microsoft is beat. I just,

I don't think it actually bears up other than to say like, it's got a bunch of touchscreen stuff that of course Apple doesn't even do. And if you're interacting in that mode, it is very nice on that level. They've built it for that. And, but anyway, I, I, I question that. And then when you go to the other apps, this, the other thing is when I, when I was saying like apps or like Microsoft is committed to improving windows like microsoft app developers windows app developers not as committed not not as committed so um my my story here is that i have a friend who is a podcaster and a podcast editor and i uh i have her do some podcast editing for me

and uh she and her husband have a, uh, uh, like podcast consulting business. Give it a plug. Podcast. Work with people. It's cat. It's a cult cast.

It's Erica Ensign and Steven Schepansky. And they are at, I think it's, we are castria, C A S T R I A. Dot com. And I think that is a redirect. Anyway.

Um, so she's a PC user. He's a Mac user. And we were talking about recording audio and video and i was talking about audio hijack and she and and i'm like what would be the equivalent on windows and there's a program called total recorder and i i called up the total recorder website and first off they make it kind of hard to see what total recorder looks like which i find suspicious fundamentally like you want me to buy your software and you won't show me your software. That's,

I'm a little concerned about that, but I feel like it is the perfect example of the difference between the Mac and windows, which is call record or not call recorder, uh, audio hijack. It's got these little, little round wrecked, uh, you know, little squares with rounded off corners that you build like a little workflow and it's got a whole bunch of different functions and you can do all of this stuff and you press the button and the little uh it lights up and all of this stuff and and then there's like total recorder which again seems like a very functional useful app for recording audio and video on windows but to look at it it is it it does not feel like the modern version of Windows that

Microsoft would like us to think about for Windows 10. It feels like a PC app from the Windows 95 era, which is a whole bunch of rectangles and functions and menus, and it's confusing. And again, you know, fair enough. If it's confusing and again you know fair enough if it's functional people are going to use it and apparently it is uh it is functional but i had that moment where i was like oh yeah windows right yeah so like you know you were talking about usability right i don't i just think that one of the biggest arguments against usability is drivers. The problems I've been having with drivers. And so drivers are what you need to install to make basically everything work.

A lot of them install automatically, but a lot of them don't. So I have a little audio interface called the Tascam 2x2. It's just a simple audio interface that I've had for a while. If I plug it into my Mac, it just works. I can plug my XLR microphone in. It's a USB interface. Works straight away, no problem. It needs drivers on Windows to work. So you plug it

in, you have to download drivers from Tascam's website. And then I plugged it, I had to, my mouse stopped working. I needed a new driver for my mouse. When I installed the driver for my mouse, my Tascam audio mouse stopped working i needed a new driver for my mouse when i installed the driver for my mouse my tascam audio interface stopped working then i had to like download older versions of the tascam driver until it worked again and i feel like i am constantly playing this like game of jenga with drivers like it's wild like it's i i just like you install one

and then one stops working and then you have to update one and another stops working and then this one didn't auto update so you have to like on the mac you just plug and unplug things and they work right sometimes you need software but you just need software right and the software does its thing but by and large you don't and this is this is apple's advantage of having i i've dealt with this mike with the hackintosh stuff right because it's the same thing apple builds all its own hardware and it builds its os and the os supports all the hardware that's in every mac that is uh this is where compatibility comes from in large part os compatibility is like they have to cover every

system every every os that is, every device that is covered, compatibility, the OS has to have all the drivers for all the hardware that Apple has ever shipped for those devices, which is hard, but it does mean that every device has the drivers all the time. It's not a problem. And then, yeah, when you do the Hackintosh stuff, it's the same thing where like either, oh, it doesn't do Wi-Fi because there's no driver for that. Or there's like, well, you can take this driver and you can install it, but you have to kind of hack this file and then you do this and you install it and then restart and set this BIOS setting and then it'll work. And doing that, it reminded me like, me like oh yeah hardware doesn't just work there's software that has to talk to it and apple takes care of that whole like thing you just never have to worry about it and then if you're building your own pc no you gotta do it yourself which

i mean to be fair you are building your own pc but it is a reminder of how uh good we got it i wouldn't i would still have to do some but i wouldn't have to install as many if I was just buying something off the shelf. But there's stuff I would still need, but not as many as I have needed. But this is just, though, I find this frustrating, but it's the flip side of the thing that I like, so I'm willing to accept it. And what I like is the customizability of it.

I have built a PC to my own specification to mean that it's as powerful as I want it to be, and it has all of the features that I want. Like I appreciate what Windows can do for me. Like it is allowing me to do a thing that I really want to do gaming on the PC and streaming games that I couldn't do any other way. Right. Like that's why I am happy with it. And I love my PC because it's my PC.

I built it. Right. And everything else is like, well, the software is just the software. It's just a bridge for me to get to the games. Like I'm not sitting and doing my work on this PC and that's not going to change because I like macOS for that stuff.

But all I have to do is like, yes, it takes time to manage it. It does take time to manage it, but I'm willing to do that management because I am getting ultimately what I want out of this, which is the ability to play literally any PC game around. So I think you've crystallized perfectly what I learned after much pain over many years is the fundamental difference, I think, between people who are enthusiastic about Macs and people who are enthusiastic about PCs. It's a little bit like this with iOS and Android,

but it's really about this with PC. There are parallels there, for sure. And again, not PC users in general, because there are a vast number of PC users, and the vast number of them, the vast percentage, are not PC enthusiasts, right? A lot of them don't care about their computer. It's just a computer that they have.

They literally don't care. And I would argue that's what that nice, bright, blue, shiny layer on Windows 10 is. It's for them, right? They hopefully will never see the layer underneath that that's still a little bit ugly and tweaky. see the layer underneath that that's still a little bit ugly and tweaky but what you said is exactly right which is i think the pc enthusiasts never understood that mac users even if they were enthusiasts what they were enthusiastic about is that apple kind of like took care of all those issues and like those are issues we don't care about. I don't want to be bothered with them. I want to move this way. Whereas if you're viewing the world as I can make a computer by buying parts and assembling them, and then I get all the software

and I put that together and I can make the perfect computer for me because I chose the parts. I chose the software. I installed it all myself. I made this computer. That is fun for some people. It is an accomplishment. It is a thing that you now have that is for you, made by you, to your specifications. That's all great. And that is a divide, right? Because I think from the Apple side, and again, I don't want to generalize because there are people who don't care. And there are people who actually wish that you could do that stuff on on Macs, and have always been. But I look at that. And I'm like, yeah, I don't want to do that. Like, it's that simple, right? It's like, well, wait a second, you're a you say you're like a tech person, and you care you like computers, and you like knowing stuff about computers, why would you not

want to build your own PC and install your own drivers and and for me that's the that's always been the disconnect which is because that sounds awful and i don't want to do it i'd rather spend my time on something else but it as it's not invalid to say that is fun to do that i've i kind of had fun building the the two kind of hackintosh projects that i've done i had fun doing them oh for certain you know, for certain definitions of fun, but, you know, and felt and certainly felt a sense of accomplishment that I got these things to work, but also realizing that it wasn't for everyone and that I wasn't going to judge somebody for not wanting to do that because I myself also kind of don't want to do that on an ongoing basis.

But like in the end, you got the thing that you wanted and you made it yourself. And that's great. Yeah, I'm and I tell you, I'm very happy. Like, I feel like I'm playing whack-a-mole a little bit right now. But I expected that to happen because I don't know anything about this world. Right. Of like building a gaming PC and maintaining it and getting it to where i want it to be you know like i'm doing a bunch of things where i'm like buying this part but that was the

wrong part or like going down this direction i know i made a mistake here like for example i have a hdmi monitor right and i just bought an oculus but the hate i only have one hdmi port and the oculus needs that so now what do i do right so like okay maybe i need to get an adapter you gotta buy a different right you gotta or buy a different video card or something buy a different video card or buy a different monitor like a display port monitor because my graphics card has one hdmi and three display ports on it it's like okay and a lot of the gaming monitors run by display port so like there's just all these things where it's like i didn't know that here's the thing i learned and this is and mostly most of my frustrations come from the fact that i don't know any of this and

i'm learning it and that's part of whilst it can be frustrating it's also part of a valuable experience for me because i feel like i have not learned something in consumer technology for a very long time, right? Like I feel like most of the stuff that I use, I know, and I know how it works and I know what I need to know to make it work the way I want. And this is like a whole different world to me. It's opening up, which I'm, which I'm excited about. It's great, but it's led me to think of something else, Jason, that I wanted to talk to you about and that's ecosystems. But before we do that, let me thank Linode for their support of this show. With Linode, you'll have access to a suite of powerful hosting options with prices starting at just $5 a month, and you'll be up and running with your own virtual

server in the Linode cloud in under just a minute. Whether you're getting started with your first server or deploying a complex system, Linode is the right choice for you. They offer the fastest hardware and network with fantastic customer support behind it all. It has never been easier to launch a Linode cloud server, and they will guarantee to you 99.9% uptime for server availability. Linode is amazing for tasks like running a mail server, operating a VPN, hosting large databases, and so much more. They have amazing pricing options available too. Their plans start at just $5 a month and you'll get a gigabyte of RAM for that.

And they have high memory plans that start with 16 gigabytes and go on from there. So there is something for you no matter what type of virtual server you need. And here's a great offer for you. If you go to linode.com upgrade, that's L-I-N-o-d-e.com slash upgrade, you will get $20 towards any Linode plan. And if you sign up for the one gigabyte of

RAM plan, that will give you four free months to try out. They have a seven day money back guarantee, so there's nothing to lose. And if you go to linode.com slash upgrade, you'll learn more, sign up, take advantage of that totally little credit and support this show in the process you can also use the promo code upgrade2018 at checkout our thanks to linode for their support of this show and relay fm and everything i do and everything jason does because my that's where all of my stuff is is on a linode server so yay so in trying to get a pc set up i've been focusing a little bit on ecosystems because there's been some stuff that I've been doing where like, if I have my iPhone and I need to get something from my iPhone to my Mac or my Mac to my iPhone, it's pretty easy to

do that. You know, like the continuity stuff, I do use some of it. Like I use the copy and paste or, you know, I'll use the notes app or something like that. And that stuff obviously doesn't work with my PC, right? I can't do that. That doesn't work so well. There are some ways to bridge the gaps, right? Like I have one password on everything. I can get Dropbox and everything, that kind of stuff.

But it's nowhere near as seamless. So it kind of got me to thinking about the ecosystems that are out there and the ecosystems that we out there and the ecosystems that we are in um i would say that whilst i own a pc i'm definitely not in the microsoft ecosystem because it's the only piece it's the only microsoft product that i own and honestly i'm using google services and steam and everything else right so i'm still in the other ecosystems that i'm a part of but microsoft's pc is a conduit to that so i would say that i think we're pretty similar in the main ecosystems that we're a part

of or apple google and amazon right and i think this is a way where we may diverge from some of our listeners and it's something that i always keep in mind that it is i think a lot of our listeners are probably just in the apple ecosystem or primarily in the Apple ecosystem. And there are plenty who aren't, but it is something that I think about from time to time, but it's like, I don't know, it's just never been, I've always kind of like tried out these different services and sort of mixed and matched. And I like that about it, but it's not for everyone. And it is in many ways, inconvenient, right? To do that because the convenience of being in an ecosystem is that it's all just there and you just use all of it and you never have to think about it. And it's the same idea of people who go into the Apple store and they buy everything at the Apple store, all the accessories and everything like that.

and everything like that. Or when we were talking about airports a while ago, like buying a Wi-Fi base station from Apple, you could probably get one somewhere else, but you'd have to shop for it and all those things. And it's like, no, I'm just going to get the Apple one, right? Like it's all from the one vendor. It's going to be easier to set it all up. And so there's some, you know, it's super convenient,

but you kind of pay for it. And that's the power of the ecosystem. But yeah, I'm like you, I, every now and then when I write about Apple, or I write something about Google or Amazon, I will get an accusation that's like, well, yeah, but you just care about Apple stuff. And it's like, I don't know, I am, I've got a lot of Google stuff. And I got a lot of Amazon stuff. I, you know, I do not, do not i you know i am a heavy user of the google ecosystem so like there are many advantages to picking a company and sticking to that company like because the products will work together and there's sometimes less sure

like just mental baggage so for example I find myself constantly triggering my HomePod, well, trying to trigger my HomePod, I should say, for music, but I actually trigger the Echo. So I'm asking my HomePod to play something, but in my mind, the Echo trigger word is how you talk to a computer.

Because that's what my mind has been trained to. So that is like a mental baggage when we have to remember, oh no, I have to ask the HomePod in the HomePod's way, not talk to the Echo in the Echo's way. But if I was all in on Siri for this, then this wouldn't be so much of a problem for me. So this can be some of the issues

as well as just the fact that, you know, if you use such and such company services, it can be difficult to get it to integrate with another, right? Like if you use iCloud for your mail, it works fantastically in mail. But if you use Google, there's things that you miss, right? You don't get like push notifications on iOS, right? They're all delayed, right?

There are a bunch of things that can start to get tricky. But me and you use Apple, Google, apple google amazon products why why do you do that why do you use products from multiple companies when most of these products there is something comparable in every individual ecosystem so for me it's always the idea that i want the best product and and not and sometimes it's the first product that's true but i I want the best product and, and not, and sometimes it's the first product. That's true. But I always want the best product and I don't care who it comes from on some level.

If it's the best, I'm not going to get, and this is again, people make, everybody makes their own decisions, but every now and then over the years, I've gotten asked like, why do you use this?

And not what Apple does. And my answer is because Apple stuff isn't as good. And there is this implication like, well, but you have Apple stuff, so you should just use Apple stuff. And that's very powerful. And it can be there are reasons you go that way. But for me, it was always like, no, I'm not going to use iCloud Mail. I'm not going to use iCloud Drive.

It's better now, right? But I still don't use it. I still use Dropbox. I've got OneDrive. I still use Dropbox, right? I think it's the best one for me. And I use Gmail. I use Google Docs. I could use Microsoft stuff for document sharing. I could use Apple stuff for document sharing. I don use Apple stuff for document sharing. I don't. I just don't. And some of that is because I made a choice a while ago and there's kind of inertia there. But at some point I made the choice that this is better. I'm going to use it. I don't care that it's in the other ecosystem.

One of the things that Google does that really makes it easy to also be in google's ecosystem is google doesn't it's actually kind of like at various points in the microsoft apple relationship relationship where microsoft didn't care if you used a mac um microsoft even when microsoft was killing the mac in the mid to late 90s um the analysis that was done at several points was that microsoft might actually make more money off of the average max sale than the average pc sale and it had to do with the percentage of max that had microsoft office installed on them and if you think this is the cost of a seat of microsoft office and it's this percentage then you realize like for every max sale every max sold there is a certain percentage of a seat of

office that goes along with it and and you start to do the math and you're like oh yeah actually like microsoft wouldn't want to lose half the market to apple but the segment of the market that's buying max is also buying microsoft products and so microsoft's fine with it google's like that right google's even more so right they will put everything on everything i i have to say i mean and again maybe these aren't the exact right words but the feeling i get is that google does not care if you buy an iphone or an android phone they want android to be good it is super important for them it is a you know they they get to control huge parts of the user base by doing that and we can a you know they they get to control huge parts of the user

base by doing that and we can debate you know what they're doing with that data and all that but but one of the reasons android exists at all is that google got really concerned that apple figured it out and they were going to take over the smartphone market and uh and and that would potentially shut out google from people who use smartphones. And that was bad. They've ended up as essentially the Microsoft at the smartphone market. But I would say the same thing applies, which is Google doesn't care.

Google doesn't care if you use iPads in schools instead of Chromebooks. You know why? Most of those iPads are using Google Classroom. Most of those iPhones, or at least many of those iPhones, it's very easy to use Google Maps and you can use Chrome

and you can use all the Google services. You can use Chrome and you can use, you know, all the Google services. You can use Gmail, you can use Google Docs and Sheets and all of that stuff is on iOS too. So they're like, fine. And so they make it easy. They make it easy for you to use anything. And on computers, right, they're in the web browser. So they're like, you know, yeah, you can use, that's how they got big is that they lived in the web browser. So they're like, you know, yeah, you can use, that's how they got big is that they lived in your web browser and it didn't matter whether you're running Windows or Mac because you were just in a web browser and that's how Google built their success. So it's really easy to be an Apple hardware user and in Google's ecosystem.

And I'm one of those people. I mean, I really am. I am mostly using Google stuff rather than Apple stuff for the places, the services where they compete directly. Like I, you know, pages is an app that remains in my application folder, but I don't use it. I also have the Microsoft stuff and I use that. I mean, I use numbers and Excel for different things and I use that. I mean, I use Numbers and Excel for different things. And I use Keynote, but not PowerPoint because I don't work in a big company that requires PowerPoint anymore. And I use Google Docs and I use Google Sheets.

So, I don't know. I'm all over the place. And I think for both me and you, there is obviously an element of we use this stuff so we can try and remain informed but in doing that we do also find new things that we like and you know and we are both we both have home pods but prefer our echoes for the majority of things that a smart speaker can do but i do also think that like within the remit that you can as an individual to try and try out new things to make sure that you are aware of what's out there right like yes and this can even just be the case of like if you want to buy a new product do some research about what's available rather than just buying or using the

product or service that is provided by the company that you've always used from because like so for example like apple notes is a great example of this right like apple notes was terrible so bad for so long and would have been really easy for us to just ignore but when they showed off the new apple notes in like ios 9 or 10 and it looked really good it could have been easier to just be like they can't do this like it's gonna suck and it's gonna lose all my could have been easier to just be like, they can't do this. Like, it's going to suck, and it's going to lose all my data. But I tried it, and I was like, oh no, this is actually the best one

available for me right now, you know? Yeah, I think there is, if you're like us, and you're communicating with people about this stuff, it is, you're not doing anybody any favors by only knowing what one company is doing because and this is this is always a conundrum when you're talking about technology stuff like my my job largely is not and has never been to constantly justify choosing Apple stuff over the competition.

Like I've never been in that world. My job is to serve the people who are using Apple's products by telling them what is good and what is bad, whether it's Apple or not. But that is, and there's a difference there. Like, cause, cause this happens all the time when you write about the iPhone and somebody says, why didn't you mention that Android is better? It's like, whatever. Or why didn't you mention Windows is better when you write about the Mac?

It's like, okay, Mac world always back in the day, it was like, this is not a site about switching. We're not gonna constantly have that debate. We're speaking to people who've made that choice about all the other choices they're making. But this is the, but my point is, what you don't want to do is say, Apple's got this amazing thing, not knowing that that thing already existed from five different vendors and Apple's playing catch up. Ideally, you have a

context where you can say that's amazing for things that are truly amazing. And that's catch up for things that are truly Apple being behind and catching up to the amazing. And that's catch up for things that are truly Apple being behind and catching up to the crowd. And that is sometimes hard because sometimes it's an area that you going into a keynote or something you don't know about a lot about and Apple announces something and you're like, oh, that's pretty cool. And then you have to look around and be like, is this new or is this? And sometimes the answer is, yeah, that's actually new. And people who are using the competition are like, oh, that that's really interesting and other times it's like oh well they finally got there but ideally if you're trying this stuff out then you can sit there and you can say all right

they advance the ball or you can say all right well they just caught up with google there or they caught up with amazon there and uh it's important to know that right to not be um not not be missing that larger story and i think there's i i think it makes for better conversation and it makes for better analysis when you know uh the bigger picture um and it always disappoints me when i see somebody writing about apple announcing something and treating it like it's this amazing new thing when I know that somebody else did it two years ago. Right. Because that's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's the wrong way to play this story. But yeah. So I think it's important on lots of levels. Personally, also, I want the best stuff and I want to try out the new stuff and I don't want

to lock myself in. But professionally, I also want to know what the lay of the land is that's why i've got i mean i've got an android phone about a foot away i've got windows installed on my iMac i use all these different services like i want to at least be vaguely versed in the other stuff so that i can, again, not make the argument of like, well, you should just give up because I'm not, people who are going to make those decisions, I'm, they're going to have other people to listen to about the big picture stuff. But like the details of, is this better or worse? Should you use iCloud? Should you use Google Drive? Should you use OneDrive? Should you use Dropbox? Like that, that is worth, that's useful for everybody. So I think that it is worth trying to keep up as an individual.

And so, you know, it is not practical for anybody to buy all of the products that are coming out or even to buy like one product of every major platform. So I think it's important to find some places where you can keep up. So I will give a plug right now to Download, which is one of Jason's shows on RelayFM. And this is one of the reasons Jason has to be so plugged in, because Download covers all of technology.

Again, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe one of the production ideas of download is unless there is an event going on, you cover one Apple story only, right? Well, I mean, we will or none, right? I mean, that's the idea is it's not an Apple podcast. It's about technology in general. And so Stephen Hackett and I both need to watch the broader market, which is useful for us. That's good for us. both need to watch the broader market, which is useful for us. That's good for us. He also is doing the subnet podcast and it's similar. Like he, he needs to be watching for both of those

podcasts. What, um, you know, what's going on in the broader market. And then I try to get guests on who, who know about that stuff. And they educate me about what Microsoft's doing and what Google's doing and what, what Amazon's doing and things like that. So that that's good. And it is good to have that perspective to the little bigger bigger perspective about what's going on in the wider world and then something i do um i watch a lot of youtubers who work in technology who are primarily focused on android so you know i mentioned forever mkbhd uh he's one individual who's like he is he seems to he understands iphone he uses iphone he has an appreciation for Apple products.

But he doesn't really seem to be a fan particularly, right? And he mostly focuses a lot of his mobile stuff on Android. And so he always has all the new devices, and I really enjoy watching his opinions because I trust what he says. It's good to find people you can trust. So MKBHD for sure. And Austin Evans is another YouTuber whose work I like a lot for very similar reasons. you know like it's good to find people you can trust so mkbhd for sure and austin evans is a is another youtuber whose work i like a lot uh for for very similar reasons and uh austin's stuff

about gaming pcs helped me build my gaming pc so like i think finding some shows or finding some youtubers or finding some websites that cover stuff more broadly i think is a good way to try and keep abreast of what's going on. Like, I feel like I understand the Android handset market from watching MKBHD's videos. Like, I understand what OnePlus is doing. I understand what like Razer is doing. I, you know, like I get an idea of that from his stuff.

So there you go. I was just thinking about this and now we've spoken about it and now we can take a break and do hashtag askupgrade. Today's show is also brought to you by Simple Contacts, the app that takes the tiresome task of renewing your contact lens prescription

and makes it completely fuss free. With Simple Contacts, you're able to reorder your contacts from anywhere in just minutes. All you need to do is complete their online self-guided vision test in less than five minutes from wherever you are right now. No more doctor's offices, no more waiting rooms. Jason, is that accurate? Is it completely fuss-free to complete the Simple Contacts

online vision test? Yeah, you just put your phone somewhere and you look at it and it looks at you. And I mean, really, there's not a lot to it. Because the goal is to make sure that your prescription hasn't changed. Because it's not an eye exam. And it's not meant to be. It's just meant to, in fact, make sure that your vision remains what is on the prescription so that they are okay, allowing you to reorder it. So super simple. You can get it done in just minutes. And then once you've done that, you will have access to all of the lens brands that you love.

They have options for astigmatism, multifocal lenses, colored lenses, and more. You can order whatever you want right from their website or app. The vision test is just $20 for comparison and appointment without insurance. It could cost you over $200.

Simple Contacts is going to save you money and time. I want to let you know this is not a replacement for your periodic full eye health exam. So they will just be checking that your prescription is correct and they will help you renew your lenses based on their prescription. Simple Contacts does not write new prescriptions or examine your eye health. You still have to do that periodically too. 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

or use the code ahoy, A-H-O-Y at checkout for $30 off our thanks to Simple Contacts for their continued support of this show and RelayFM. Are you ready, Jason, for hashtag AskUpgrade? I'm ready, Mike. Let me have it. Rowan has the first question this week. Rowan has said,

At this point, I've given up on Instagram ever releasing an app for the iPad. Do you have any thoughts on why they have chosen to ignore the iPad this way uh i i don't know uh it seems dumb um part of me thinks you can be logged into the web browser and see stuff and so they figure like that's fine uh it does baffle me a little bit like how hard is it for them to take their app and just do a i know it's there's work but like their instagram

to make an ipad layout so that john syracuse doesn't have to watch you know in 2x an iphone app like the iphone's popular it makes the photos pretty um so it is it is frustrating my guess is that they've got other priorities and that they just it's just not on their agenda but i'm a little it's strange that it's been this long and that they just haven't even done it so i don't know my thinking is like instagram's business is based around people taking pictures and sharing them right as well as viewing but the taking the putting the content into the system is probably the most important part so there's always something pictures on their ipads all the time we see them we point at them and say wow they're taking a picture on an ipad i just

don't think it's as much and i think that they focus on the phone i want the app i mean this is the only reason that i can assume they've not made it is they just want to they they don't want to focus on the taking rather than the viewing um i just don't at this point i don't believe they will make it but i want it i agree with you i think at this point if they haven't done it they're never going to do it ben wants to know does the pop socket on my iphone 10 affect the ability to do wireless charging i had a bunch of people asking me this question after i spoke about pop sockets last week um the answer is mostly no uh so you, with a pop socket on your phone, put it on a charging pad and it will charge.

If you balance your phone on the pad, it will charge. I tried this out as soon as I got it just because I was interested. But to do this, you have to have the pop socket placed in an area on the phone that the phone will balance. So if you have it at the phone that the phone will balance. Right? So if you have it at the bottom, it might not work. You might have to,

it's going to depend on like how much contact you make. But if you have it in the middle, like I do, just underneath the Apple logo on my case, you can put it on there, the phone balances and it will charge through it.

So I'm not going to recommend this because I have no idea what that means or does, but it does work. I can confirm that. I can answer that part of the question. You can still charge with PopSocket on your case. Michael's question for Jason is,

Jason, do you maintain a standard workday like nine to five of an hour for lunch? If so, as a free agent, have you considered changing that or is the corporate schedule too ingrained in you? If it's not how does this feel after years being in an office environment with those kind of standard rigid hours interesting uh an hour for lunch makes me laugh um i uh i did used to work with

some people who had like some serious rsi issues who made sure that they took an hour break in the middle of the day for lunch because they earned it and because they needed the break physically. But I never, I never, I would, I would go out, if I didn't bring my lunch, I would go out and get like a sandwich and bring it back. But then I was just eating at my desk. So I never took a, you know, rarely ever took a lunch break where I like went somewhere for an hour and then came back. So first off, I'm going to say that. Um, but Michael, let me tell you, if I was left entirely to my own devices, I would probably, um, I would probably have very different hours than I do. I would probably work much later.

Sort of like Mike. I would probably work much later. I always, again, I'm older now, but when I was in college and in my twenties, like I found that I was always really productive in the afternoon and evening and into night. Like that was my most productive time. And so I'm going to guess that that might still be the case every now and then my wife um is out like she's uh gonna to dinner with friends or she's been doing um a bunch of extra dance classes the last few weeks because they've got their their end of the term show coming up and so like she's gone until nine o'clock and I'm like, oh, I'm going to do some work. It's like a treat.

I can work from seven to nine p.m. Woo. So here's the thing, though, this implication that it's the ingrained corporate schedule. It's not it. That's not it. The issue is life is structured around work times and I live with humans. So that's the bottom line is, I could work until two in the morning and then sleep until 10 in the morning and get up and

kind of putter around for the first few hours and then go back to work at four in the afternoon. The problem is this. I have two children. They go to school during school hours. They wake up at seven in the morning. They come home at four in the afternoon and then they're home the rest of the night. I have a wife. She has a job. She generally is working. I think it's like nine, was it nine 30 or 10 until about five 30. Um, I can't live this weird nighttime Batman kind of life because, uh, I have other people in my life and they are still on traditional scheduling. So my freedom to work whenever I want is limited by the fact that I do have a family and I'm not going to work while they're home and then sleeping. And then I'm certainly not

going to sleep through them all getting up. And so I basically work, you know, eight to five, mostly, it varies, but something like that. And that's, again, mostly because it's the time where people are out of the house and I can do it. So I would love to have a more flexible schedule, but I just don't think it's in the cards. And it has nothing to do with my office. My hours are much nicer now

because I don't have to deal with commutes and sometimes the traffic where that 45-minute bus ride home my hours are much nicer now because I don't have to deal with commutes and, um, you know, sometimes the traffic where, uh, that 45 minute bus ride home becomes an hour and a half. Like I don't have to deal with any of that kind of variability, uh, which is nice.

I have no schedule. I don't know what it is. Yeah. You, you were like on East coast time in London, which is amazing. So that's the one question I had for you is how do you square that with Adina having a job with ours

does she just leave and you're you just keep snoozing no she mostly wakes me up I'm usually awake before 9 but I go to bed at like 2.30 that mostly works for me I'm fine with that right now like yeah you're gonna need

more sleep eventually but sure yeah yeah i mean it will i'm sure at some point but like i can i function perfectly fine i i honestly i i tend to be a little bit more sluggish if i sleep longer um i don't know why like it's just how i am wired for the time being i'm sure it will change because this has changed a bunch of times over my life but that's kind of like i used to really struggle to wake up in the mornings but now i don't anymore um so that's just kind of where i am right now i have absolutely no standard schedule but i like my life that way that i kind of pick and choose so the way and the way it works is that you're so when when Adina comes home, do you hang out with her and then she goes to sleep and you go back to work? By and large, yeah.

I mean, there are some evenings where I work a little bit later or whatever, but that's typically what happens. When she gets home, we just spend time together and then she goes to sleep. I either work or I just read Twitter and watch YouTube videos. Yeah, my challenge would be that if I went back to work after, I mean, really, because I don't want to stay up with Lauren until she goes to bed. So I go back to work after that. I could totally do that. But the problem is going to be in the morning, everybody else is going to be waking me up at 6.30, 6.45 in the morning. The dog, the kids, and Lauren, they're all going to be getting up and I can't sleep through that.

And then all of a sudden I'm up till two in the morning and up at 6.45 AM and that's not going to, that's not going to, I would die. So there you go. That's my problem. And I don't nap. That's the other problem. I don't nap. I can't grab a nap in the middle of the day in order to improve things. I don't do that. Eric wants to know if either of us use a UPS in our office studio. This is not the postal service system. This is an uninterrupted power supply?

Is that what... Interruptible power supply, I think. It's like a... It basically is a thick power strip that's got a battery in it. And you've got some of the ports on the power strip. The battery will power even if your power goes out. Which is, it's funny, if you're having a thunderstorm like I am today,

these things can be really useful because they keep things powered. But Jason, do you think I use a UPS? I'm going to guess you don't have a UPS. I don't. I don't. Because I've never had a power outage. I did not get a UPS until I set up my home office and then I finally got one. I almost never have a power outage here. We're very lucky. I think that whatever our particular little block is, that it seems pretty resilient, it only happens maybe once a year.

But I, I, I do have one. In fact, now I have two, I bought one a while ago and then I realized that I wanted to keep my internet up. And so I bought a second one because my cable modem used to be in the

other room and I put it in there, my router and my modem over there so that they would stay up because the theory there is that if your power goes out, but the internet's still on, you stay on the internet, which is also nice. And you could even power like a wifi base station for a little while. And then you could still get wifi on your battery operated devices, even when the power is out, which is great. So I do have them. I'm going to move one of them. The one that's in there doesn't, isn't powering anything super vital anymore. So I'm going to move it in here eventually into my office. The primary thing is to keep the iMac running at least briefly when the power goes out. My UPS has a USB cable on it. So it's attached to my iMac.

And there are software interactions there that my iMac actually has a battery settings menu, which is funny because it's not a laptop, but it's for when the UPS kicks in. And it basically allows it to dim the monitor when it's on the battery power and auto shut down after, when the battery's about to run out.

And the idea there is it'll give you time to save and maybe copy things somewhere if you need them to, you know, need to have access to them, but you know, you're going to lose your main thing. Because I've got a laptop with battery and I've got iPads and iPhones, but the iMac is not going to make it for more than a few minutes on battery power. So yes, I recommend that people consider getting these. They're really useful and you're not losing data. And now that we store things in the cloud, losing data is not as big a deal, but giving it access, putting your router or your Wi-Fi or your access point or whatever on a battery backup, because depending on where you are and

what happened, you may find that your internet is still there. It's just the power that went out. And that means that you can still use your tablet or your iPhone or your laptop to connect to the internet, even when the power is out, which is also nice. So we'll put a link in the show notes to the Wirecutters review of the best um on our uninterruptible power supplies i have one of those one of their picks the cyber power is the pick that i bought and i also have an apc one that i bought a couple of years ago they're heavy i bet but um they're just big fat batteries right but but but like if you're recording a podcast and your power went out, like some of the podcast recording apps, you just lose the recording. Yeah, they get upset.

It's very bad. So I recommend that, yeah. I'm going to look into this, I think. Look into one, yeah. Yeah, because you never know. You might have a thunderstorm, a sudden thunderstorm, and the power could go out. Eric, either the same Eric or another Eric also asked,

I was really taken with the design of the keynote slides at the last Apple Education event. So this was the Apple pencil written, beautifully handwritten slides. Do you think this is going to be a new style for Apple, having a graphic design that is outside their typical? Or do you think it was just a one-off? It's a good question.

I would love it if every Apple... I mean, they do this a little bit, but not as dramatically as the one in Chicago. I would love it if Apple had art-directed its entire event, right? And we may see this for WWDC, right? There may be WWDC typeface and art style, and that that gets integrated into the keynote. It's all that kind of white geometric blocks and stuff like they have on the WWDC typeface and art style, and that that gets integrated into the keynote. It's all that kind of white geometric blocks and stuff

like they have on the WWDC page. With WWDC, you've got to keep in mind that they probably are using the same template for everybody in the company because everybody who's doing a WWDC presentation has to use the official template. And the keynote's a little bit different, but they probably would want to connect it to that.

So I hope they do this because it's fun and it's a very Apple thing to do, but it's also a really nice kind of like design motif to say, you know, our event from the invitations onward is all going to be in this particular style, this color palette, these fonts and all of that. It's certainly not necessary, but I would like to see it. I mean, I don't think we'll see the handwriting come back, but I think we could see some other just, again, unifying principle applied to the entire event. And we'll see at WWDC if they do that.

I bet they, to a certain degree, they will do that because I think that that's Apple. But how far they take it and if they have all sorts of unique imagery and typefaces and stuff, or if it looks more or less like what Apple keynotes look like, we'll see. And finally, Jake asked, do you think we'll see new laptops at WWDC? Don't answer Jason. Draft it. He'll get our answer next week. We'll find out next week because we're going to be drafting on our next episode of upgrade we'll be participating and competing in the 2018 wwdc draft i think this is our third or fourth that might be our third wwdc draft i think that might i think that may be right and i'm up one nothing on on the year 18 so far and so unlike year, there will be a definitive winner this year, we expect.

Because last year we drew. Because I won WWDC and you won the September. Yes, it was one all. It was one all. And we've had a March event. We have this one. We're definitely having a September event. I reckon that will probably be it, but we'll wait and see.

So there's more likely this year to be a definitive winner. But Jason is the winner. He'll be getting his first picks, but we'll run through all of the rules and do our picks in the Upgrade WWDC draft next week. But until then, we will see you next time. You can send in your questions with the hashtag AskUpgrade to close out the show.

We always appreciate those. You can find Jason online at sixcolors.com and he's at theincomparable.com. On Twitter, he is at jsnell. I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. I want to thank again our wonderful sponsors, the fine folk over at Squarespace, Linode and Simple Contacts.

And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Bye, everybody.