Upgrade - 199: Puppet Series

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

This week we take a deep dive into Apple’s forthcoming video service, as Jason and Myke make predictions about what it will cost and how Apple’s billion-dollar content purchases will roll out. Also, Instagram gets into TV, Google gets back into podcasting, and we prepare for the beginning of the Upgrade Summer of Fun!

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 199 today's show is brought to you very kindly by hello pdf pen 10 from smile and pingdom my name is mike hurley and i am joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hi, Mike Hurley. It's good to be here. It is today that we say goodbye to the spring on this show. Yes, yes. We just entered into summer in terms of sort of astronomically. It's summer. But we're also right on the verge of the summer of fun.

Can you feel it it's it's gonna be here it's gonna be here very very soon like next week like next week and we'll talk we'll give you a little bit more details about the summer of fun a little later on today but we must start as we always do with a hashtag snail talk question and today's comes from mark and mark wants to know jason can you name one of your favorite childhood toys? You phrased that sort of like it's a quiz. Can you? Are you able to? Well, I can.

You know why? I actually rewrote it a little bit to say that way, because I don't know if I can really think of many. Interesting. I can, and listeners to The Incomparable will not be surprised when i say this my favorite childhood toys were the micronauts which were a uh a very if you were if you were my age they were an indelible part of your childhood there's a there's actually a moment in the tv show freaks and geeks where um the one character's dad says oh it's we bought all those micronauts for you or something i was

like oh boy this is this is absolutely era specific stuff the micronauts for you or something. I was like, oh boy, this is absolutely era-specific stuff. The Micronauts were a line of toys. They were based on Japanese toys, but they were rolled out by a company named Migo in the US. And what was interesting about them is that they were all kind of like interchangeable. They were all basically on the same scale. So there were cheap ones that were made of plastic.

These are some weird looking toys. I'm looking at Google image search right now. Yeah so there were cheap ones that were made of plastic these are some weird looking toys i'm looking at google image search right now yeah there was cheap ones so there were the guys that like the the small figures and there were ones that were made of plastic that were called the time travelers and there were ones that were made of die-cast metal um so some of them were metal they were like super high quality actually um but they were all the same scale they all had like the like the hands could come off um and they had were all the same scale. They all had like the hands could come off. They had vehicles. All the vehicles were the right size. There were these little holes in the little circles like ports in the backs of the people that you could like stick them on a seat in a vehicle or like in a little hatch inside a robot. They could fit in the robots.

And then the robots also, which were bigger and plastic, they could come apart. And like there was a big red robot called Biotron. And he had treads on his back. And it looked kind of cool. But you could also disassemble him and turn him into a car. Because there were battery slots in his sides. And the treads, you could make him into a tank, basically, that one of the other Micronauts could drive. And you flip the switch and the treads would roll.

So there were all sorts of vehicles, all sorts of characters, cool robots. I still have, I don't actually still have most of my Micronauts. They all got thrown away or sold against my will. But I do have, eBay is a wonderful thing. I do have a few that I've bought that were my favorites that I have on a shelf

that are awesome, like the Biotron and the microtron robots because they're kind of cool robots so that was my favorite toy um and my friends and i like i could tell you which i'm looking at my friends head right here yeah on google images that that's a pretty cool looking thing it's a cool robot right so um and and yeah and you could disassemble them and turn them into a tank which is also kind of cool so they were fun and the idea which i always thought was great was that the the key core idea was that they were interchangeable parts so that you could take the head off of one and put it on another one and you could they all fit in the same different vehicles and the vehicles often would come apart and could go back together um

it it's overstating it to say they were like what if you made action figures and vehicles that were like lego in the sense that the all of them could kind of like be rebuilt in different ways it's probably overstating it but it was kind of like that and that was like when i was in first grade i will tell you that was the toy that everybody wanted and uh it was pretty great. What did the Micronauts actually do? Was it a comic or a TV show? It became a comic after the toys became such a wild success. They made a comic of it.

And the funny thing is then that the comic book lasted longer than the toys lasted. The comic book lasted longer than the toys lasted the comic book lasted way longer and they have since since uh kind of rebooted the they've done new versions of the comic it's uh migo's intellectual property is now owned by um hasbro i think and so they're talking about making a movie based on it which will be terrible because it'll be in the transformers universe presumably um and they've got they've rebooted different versions of the comics. But the original Marvel comic was my favorite comic book growing up. And I did a whole episode about Micronauts on Anthony Johnston's Unjustly Maligned podcast. So maybe we can put a link to that in the

show notes. But yeah, that was my favorite comic book, my favorite toys as a kid. Wow. That was kid. Wow. That was actually really interesting. You know, I've heard you mention the Micronauts a bunch, and I always thought it was just... But you never knew what they looked like. Well, I always thought it was just a comic book.

I don't know if I ever recall you mentioning that they were toys, like on The Incomparable. Like, I have always heard you mention them, and then because they were on the... You always used to mention it on The Incomparable. I assumed it was a TV show

or a comic book, not a toy line that then got turned into it. Because that's quite rare, right, that it goes from toy to comic. It's usually the other way around. Right. No, this was a – that was the era of sort of merchandising tie-ins and all of that. So that's what they were trying to do there is we have a popular toy line. And also, I mean, we have a popular space-themed toy line. Star Wars is huge.

Marvel Comics is looking for Star Wars-like properties to turn into comics to tap into the market of kids who love Star Wars. And it turns out kids who love these space-themed, sci-fi-themed toys, it's perfect. And they got some very good writers and artists to work on that. Strangely, it actually outlived the popularity of the toys because it was a good comic too. Well, there you go.

Great question from Mark. If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question for the future, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk and it goes into a sheet for us to pull from at a future date. Thank you, Mark, for that. I have some follow-up on spam calling apps.

So in Ask Upgrade last week, we were talking about some apps to try and block those local spam calls, like local number spam calls. And I just wanted to round up a few from Upgradian listeners who have gone out and they've done the work for us. Like Jason, Ben recommended Nomo Robo.

So there's another, but I think you said you'd stopped using it, Jason. Was that right? Yeah, yeah. I have used it occasionally. I think one of the problems with it is that it struggles with the local exchange problem of like, it looks like it's a local number.

It's not necessarily on a black list um so i but i haven't tried it in a little while i have it on my i actually have it on my uh landline that's that's through the cable company that the phone that i've had for like 20 years um they bundle nomo robo with that so it's it's doing some it's actually pretty great because that's the phone number that has been collected and is on every phone spam list. But I haven't tried it on my iPhone. And then I've got a couple more. Alan and Brad both use something called Haya, H-I-Y-A.

Of course, all the links to these will be in the show notes. Ed uses an app called Wide Protect. And another Brad likes Exchange Blocker as well. So there's a bunch of options there for you if you want to go and try those out to see if you can get those spam calls under control. Should we do some upstream? There's been a lot happening.

Yeah, let's do it. So we, in our ability to try and track what's going to happen with Fox, Disney have upped their deal uh disney has now increased their deal to 71.3 billion dollars so it's more than fox and they have an excuse for it they said well streaming is even more valuable now than it was six months ago and so we're going to increase our deals like yeah okay sure sure that's a what's also interesting is because one of the arguments for the comcast deal is that it's a cash deal and Disney's was a stock deal.

So this new offer is half cash, half stock. And basically, if you're a Fox shareholder, up to 50%, you basically get to choose. Do you want the cash or do you want Disney stock? And frankly, Fox are doing pretty good out of this now, the fact that these two companies are fighting over them. And I think as far as we're aware, it's still investors choosing sometime in July what they're going to do. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the board prefers the Disney offer and they still prefer the Disney offer. Well, they prefer even more now, I bet.

Yeah, even more. But we'll see what the shareholders do. We'll see if Comcast responds. But we'll see what the shareholders do. We'll see if Comcast responds. Ben Thompson wrote an interesting piece in his Stratechery newsletter where he said, different parts of Fox have different value to the two companies. And he kind of makes the argument that he thinks maybe Comcast ultimately would find more value in fox's assets than disney because basically

what he said was to super summarize it is that um comcast uh has limited options to expand what they want to do and this is a good fit for them disney if they didn't get this has a bunch of other pieces of content that they could they could pick up pieces other other other companies that have assets similar to fox so what he was saying was he thinks that it's possible comcast will overbid and outbid disney because they have fewer options other than this fewer alternatives and that Disney uh Disney has other things that they could do but uh we'll see how it goes I mean I think the right now the key is that the Fox board prefers the Disney offers and and they already have a done deal with them and in fact they can't like divvy up the pieces because Disney already has an agreement with Fox to buy them.

And so they would actually pay a penalty. That's part of the game that's going on here is that Disney has a deal with Fox to buy them. And if Comcast buys them out instead, if they take that deal, they are breaking the deal with Disney. They have to pay a penalty, which is, it's nothing. It's like a billion dollars. But they consider it nothing when all this kind of money is being thrown around. But that also precludes Disney and Comcast from like negotiating a deal where they kind of divvy up the resources of Fox into you take this, I'll take this. So it'll be fascinating to watch it. And it will have huge ramifications for the entertainment business regardless of who gets it yeah i understand the

point that uh ben thompson's trying to make there right like about who it benefits more but i i will say that like kind of my feeling on this would be that we don't necessarily know what Disney's reason is. And if their reason is to acquire the characters that Fox owns, that's worth a lot to Disney. Disney know that now, right? Buying up popular characters or the rights for characters has become Disney's M.O. And yeah, there are other other characters but fox has really good ones yeah fox has a lot i mean the the intellectual property it fits right into what disney's trying to do which is convert into a streaming based direct from consumer entertainment company which

absolutely makes sense like if you have the entire back catalog of the simpsons to put on your streaming service like that's gonna do you pretty well i think oh yeah yeah so uh we'll we'll see what happens it's uh there's a lot going on talking of which igtv instagram has launched a brand new app and service called igtv instagram television is what that is short for, but the brand is IGTV. That's what they're calling it. It is focused on longer video content. For most people right now, these are videos up to 10 minutes in length, but larger creators, more popular creators can post videos up to an hour. All of the video is in portrait. Currently, there is no ads or monetization for creators,

but Instagram have confirmed they are working on all of this. But just right now they want to build a base. Basically the idea is we want to get people into the used to it. So it's free and we'll put the ads in later, which is a perfectly fine business model, right? For what they're trying to do. Let's see if it works and then we can sell it. Um, you can see some of the IGTV content currently in the regular Instagram app. And it's quite interesting because they seem to have basically built the UI of the IGTV app inside of the Instagram app as well. So you can get used to what the UI looks like. But they're trying to push you out to this new application that they've built.

Instagram now has over a billion active users now last week youtube had their keynote from vidcon and they have 1.9 now that's a lot i wouldn't have expected it was that close which i find to be quite interesting so this is why this is making the news and why it is interesting, because what I think Instagram is going for here is to try and move the independent content creators away from YouTube. And I think that they're trying to take the slice of people, you know, people like MKBHD, you know, people like Hot Ones, these huge channels, but they're independent. They're not Jimmy Kimmel. They're not James Corden.

I assume they're trying to siphon off the independent creators and bring them over. To do this, they're going to need to get monetization going, and it needs to be a good offer. to do this, they're going to need to get monetization going, and it needs to be a good offer. But it could work, because creators, independent creators these days, are very frustrated at YouTube, right? And YouTube are trying to beat this, because they've got all these problems in demonetization,

but they announced that they're doing donations, and they're basically doing features that Patreon has and features that Twitch has, right? They're now going to offer these baked into the platform so there's a lot of movement right now because clearly youtube is worried i think in a way that they haven't been in years and part of this is what instagram is doing there's going to be some shifts my competition is good yeah i like competition it's good there was a good conversation between uh carolina milanesi and lisa schmeiser about this on download last week in episode 60 so people should uh check that out because uh they and they talked about things like also about

like lifestyle vloggers and um you know being having uh using brands having brands capitalize on that you know in other words having sort of like brands fund some of the the videos on instagram because there's already kind of a lot of brand advertising on instagram so the idea that you would take like a makeup blogger and they would be funded by a particular brand of makeup and then their videos would would be essentially sponsored by them and and that that's a way to drive people to be able to use Instagram and make money and reach that audience. And so there's a bunch of different angles that it could take.

But bottom line is, yeah, YouTube's not going to take it lying down. But at the same time, YouTube knows, has felt for a long time that it's got its creators right where it wants them, because where else are they going to go?

And so having a legitimate competitor with the deep pockets of uh facebook behind it yes because that's who you've got to remember right it's facebook like we talk about instagram but it's facebook but you know a lot of you know if you are if you are a popular youtuber you have a popular instagram account now too because it's a huge platform um i i've played around with igtv a lot of the people that i follow aren't posting much to it yet but i expect that to start to change quite significantly over the next couple of weeks we didn't mention the most the other most interesting part about it is instagram igtv vertical video so it is vertical video it is meant to be watched on a phone now a lot of youtube stuff is what is watched on a phone. Now, a lot of YouTube stuff is watched on a phone too,

but YouTube is predominantly horizontal. Yeah, it is interesting that, I mean, I understand why they're going the vertical video route, but it's only on phones, this app. I mean, Instagram know their audience, right? And obviously all of their users are on phones because it's all they offer. But TV, like long form video content,

maybe it would be good to put it on other platforms too, but I don't know how they would make that work from a visual perspective. If what they want to do is vertical video, I don't know how it translates to a TV app. I don't know if it ever does. But I know that like a lot of popular YouTubers, they have really significant desktop viewing audiences because people watch these videos when they're at work. So I'm keen to see if and how Instagram try and take that kind of stuff on, or if they just think to themselves, no, we're going to leave that to YouTube. So the reason this is interesting, though, is that this is no joke, right? Like

Instagram are making a big play here and i want to see how it goes and rick allen in the chat rooms made a great point uh mkbhd did a really good video breaking down why he is interested as a huge youtuber in igtv and like what what his what excites him about it and why he thinks it's a good thing to do. So I would also recommend going and watch that too to get a point of view from somebody who is deep within this and has to make some decisions. But he's saying they're working on IGTV content

over at MKBHD headquarters. So I'm keen to see how it all shakes out. Yeah, I was thinking about the similarly with our our uh our friend cgp gray the idea that you know maybe it's maybe it's just a it doesn't necessarily have to be either or like maybe there's some content that's more appropriate for igtv yeah maybe so and that if you're somebody like mkbhd or somebody like gray like he doesn't do one kind of content gray doesn't he does all sorts of kinds. He does his core videos, but he does vlogs and he does, you know, he's, he's streaming live when he's playing a video game and he does all sorts of other things.

So I could see, and he does two podcasts, right? So I could see, um, somebody like him or some, who I know, and somebody like MKBHD, who I don't know. Thinking about that too, which is an interesting question of like, what is this going to be good for? And what do I do? And is there some of the stuff that I do or should start doing that fits better? And we'll see how it plays out. Yeah, it's going to take time for people to work out what works there. And I'm looking forward to seeing that. All right, let's take our first break. And then we do actually have a little bit more upstream stuff to do today. But I want to thank our first sponsor.

It's a new sponsor for Upgrade, Jason. And it is Holo. Holo make insanely comfortable buckwheat pillows. I don't know if you've ever tried a buckwheat pillow. You probably haven't. Like you have to be in like certain situations, like places that specifically will have this stuff. but it's really different to regular fluffy pillows. Hollow pillows, buckwheat pillows support your head and neck and they don't collapse under the weight of your head like a

traditional pillow will. Hollow stays cool and dry compared to feather or foam pillows. Plus buckwheat tends to breathe better, meaning it doesn't get warm and humid. So you don't need to flip over to the cool side of the pillow anymore because it always stays cool. You can also remove or add the filling, the buckwheat filling, to suit your needs. So your pillow can be just the way that you like it, as thin or as thick as you want. There are people in the world, they're very popular in Japan, where they've been using these types of pillows for years. are very popular in Japan where they've been using these types of pillows for years. And also if you go to like a super fancy hotel and they have like a pillow menu, which I've actually seen in some places, I don't know why this is a thing, but it is buckwheat pillows are there as well. If you, if, if you want to maybe upgrade your sleep game. Now I have one of these and I was really interested in hollow because I've been having some neck

problems recently and I personally don't like soft pillows I've typically either had firm pillows or I'll have like multiple soft pillows I don't like my head sinking in and I've been using a hollow pillow for about three weeks and I I really, really like it. Now, I can't say to you that this is going to make any aches or pains that you have go away, but my pains are not getting worse. I actually came back from a trip where I was actually when I was at WWDC. The pillows were all soft. I came back, I was a wreck because it's not what I'm used to.

But I've changed to a new pillow, my my hollow pillow and it's working great for me i also just really like the sound that it makes i find it very calming because when you're moving it's like a like a beanbaggy type sound really it's like a beanbag sound yeah and i actually really like that i like that when i i also um in the mornings i kind of i get my pillow and I put it against my headboard and I sit up and it supports me. But with the Holo pillow, it like really supports me because I can basically just like push myself into this thing and it doesn't move. I really, really like this pillow a lot. It's really nice. Holo is made in the USA. They use quality construction and materials. Their certified cotton case is cut and sewn for durability, and the buckwheat is grown and milled in the US as well.

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hulls. Yeah, and that's where the hull in Hollow comes from. Yep. So we had a question from Joe Steele. Joe Steele says, if you were structuring Apple's secret streaming service, how would you do it? And then he gave a couple of little questions

that we're gonna answer. So I will say, Jason wrote an article on Macworld this past week i think where you actually spoke about some of this stuff in general like which is all coming from our it's basically a written version of some upstream stuff so you can go and read that if you want to the the cycle too was also it was like upstream and then i saw uh john gruber posted something

about it um and tweeted about it and and he made this statement that was specifically about like one part of the pricing and how he thought it would be priced and i thought huh i don't agree with that and i realized every time i've written about this i've because it's tricky it's tricky because apple has so many different options and as as I say in the Macworld story, like, obviously, people have sat in rooms in Cupertino and debated greatly all their different options. They have so many different options to come up with a rollout option that is the one that they want to do. But because there are so many options, like every time I write about it, I start like seeing all the different options. I'm like, I don't know, they got so many different ways that they could go. So for this Macworld column, what I set myself was the goal of what do you think? Like pick, pick an answer,

pick a final answer, which means I'll probably be wrong. I had somebody tweeted at me and said, well, I don't agree with what you said at all. And I said, well, I'll put, let me put it this way. I think what I picked is the most likely thing to happen. I also think it's way less than 50% likely to happen because there are so many different options. That makes any sense. Like I think even the most likely option probably only has like a 10 or 20% chance of happening because Apple has so many different choices to pick from. And we don't know what specific strategy they're going to do. But for this exercise, I made myself pick, which is easy because if I make a mistake, it isn't a billion dollars in content down the drain. So it's easier for me than it is for the executives.

That's why they pay the executives the big money. And they can pay us the big money and we could at least give them. And we can make those decisions for them. Yes, that's right. No, we give them out. No, we give the decisions for free. No. All right.

So here are our free decisions. So first of Joe's questions, questions pricing what do you think the pricing is going to be yeah and this is where um this is what gruber said he thought that it was going to be bundled with uh apple music because he felt like um there wouldn't be enough content and that they might charge for it eventually but they wouldn't at first and that's what prompted me to write the story because i looked at that and like, no, I don't agree with that at all. That's something I know. And again, I could be wrong, but I feel very strongly like they're not spending a billion dollars just to pour some TV shows into Apple Music. And in the long run, the idea is that

it's going to be a standalone service. If the long run is you want to increase services revenue, bundling it into your streaming music service is a problem because one, not everybody wants your streaming music service. And two, not everyone who wants your streaming music service wants your video service. So I think it's a mistake to do that. And so I wouldn't recommend that Apple do that. So I'm going to predict that Apple's going to sell this as a standalone service. Now I decided, and this is, I realized that this goes against one of my key rules, which is figure out what you think Apple's going to charge and then expect them to charge more. I'm going to say that they're going to come out of the gate at $8 a month, which is what the base Netflix subscription is. Except Netflix ramps it up if you have more viewers and if you have higher quality.

And I'm saying $8 a month for the whole thing, like 4K, HDR, all the people in your family. The reason I say $8 is they're not going to have a lot of content at launch. So if they can be comparable to Netflix, if they're not coming, I think if they want to grow this service, it needs to at least start at a competitive price.

I mean, you could make an argument that they should price it even lower because it's going to be a smaller amount. But I don't think, I think there's going to be a limit to that. I think they could go higher. I think they could go to a mid-tier Netflix subscription price. But if I had to pick, I'm going to say, I think they're going to kind of undercut Netflix a little bit, partially because they want to undercut Netflix and not be seen as, not be directly compared to Netflix because they aren't going to have the catalog Netflix does. I also do think that it will be bundled with Apple Music,

that Apple Music subscribers can subscribe to both and save a little bit of money. I think that's the solution to the, well, what about people who are subscribing to Apple Music? I think they'll do a bundle where you get both and save a couple of bucks a month. I think $10 or you can get it and apple music for 15 that's where i think they're gonna go and i think that's reasonable the way that i

expect they get around the argument of they don't have it much at launch is that you get the first three months for free and then on stage they'll say oh we're launching with these but by the time the trial's up you'll have all of these shows and then there'll be like say oh we're launching with these but by the time the trial's up you'll have all of these shows and then there'll be like extra ones and in my article what i said was i don't think there'll be a three-month trial okay i decided to i decided to envision the rollout in detail so i decided there'll be a one-month trial and what they're going to do is uh and we'll get to this later in terms of rollout but what they're going to do is they're not going to post like whole seasons of their shows the first month they'll post like maybe a half season of some of their shows and the idea there is i don't envision them launching entire

shows with all the episodes and giving it away for three months because they're basically giving away all of those shows and i think they want to hold again they could do that i think they want to hold some of it back so that when your free trial is up and you want to see more episodes the episodes are coming sooner and if they have to wait a year i think it's a little less likely but i you know i think yours is a reasonable scenario i just oh oh the other thought i had was that for episode one is free of everything forever like on itunes and in the tv app like anybody can watch episode one for free yeah yeah yeah you'll open the app and you'll go to the page which is called apple tv and you have a

there's like a smorgasbord of free options that you can just try before you buy i think that's a really good point and we've talked about here but i'll just say it again i i've also put my stake in the ground and said the service is going to be called apple tv just it's and yes i know there's a box called apple tv and there's but there's also an app called tv and i feel like just call it apple tv and the apple tv box yeah has apple tv of course it does because it's the apple tv box and yeah i won't say what i'm going to say we're killing these questions uh any live components i don't think i mean we haven't heard anything about that i think there are lots of streaming services that are experimenting with live stuff i feel like that's a separate issue that um if apple wanted to do like an over-the-top service that that would be probably a different

feature but i don't know so my guess my guess is no my guess is not at launch and maybe they'll make some deals for live content like sports and things later on. It's not impossible that they would do something like crazy, like say, well, it's going to be $12 a month and include all of our originals and over the top, basically like channels from different sources. They could do that. I've heard no rumors to that effect. And I wouldn't guess that is the most likely scenario. I think exactly the same i think one day they will try and get some sports stuff because it's valuable but i don't think they're going to rush for it and i don't expect like news or anything yeah so yeah i don't think

there's going to be i think it's all going to be tv shows for for a while um weekly episodic releases or like dropping all uh of a season for binging what do you think they're gonna do you think half seasons right i i i'm gonna go with half seasons as a compromise that i think might work and and what you're seeing is that netflix is even doing this now where netflix and amazon are both doing this where they're taking um they're taking orders and they're cutting them in half. So like Arrested Development, they only dropped half of the episodes and the other half is dropping at a later time. Amazon does this. The Tick dropped half the episodes and then they did it. So there's experimentation happening where they're not dropping a whole

thing. Hulu, on the other hand, rolls everything out weekly, which is very old school. And you know what? I think it's possible. I'd never really thought of it before last week when I was writing about this. It's possible that Apple would just say, you know what? We like the weekly conversation. I'm a believer that the binge thing is actually really bad for PR and marketing for TV shows because nobody talks about, like Westworld and The Expanse and things like that. Nobody, everybody's talking about like what happened this week.

Whereas with a Netflix show like Luke Cage drops and like there's an article about the season of Nick Cage. Now that would be a show. Marvel's Nicolas Cage. I don't want to see that show. But Luke Cage,

they talk about the season of Luke Cage and then they're done and the conversation moves on. But you can't talk about the water cooler if everybody's at different points in the season. Exactly right. Now Netflix has so much content that I think they just don't want to have

the complication of having like, well, the finale of Luke Cage is happening and this other thing is dropping and this other show's in the middle. They just kind of want to like drop it, promote once and move along and i get that but there's an argument to be made that weekly release is actually a way better way to do it and if and it also does especially if you don't have a huge catalog of content that you're that you're like apple's gonna have like you know maybe two dozen shows shows in production maybe they can launch with 10 maybe less uh having them stream weekly instead of in a in a bunch is a big advantage because it spreads it out and you got to keep watching keeps people coming opening the app finding the new

stuff right like there's a yeah and yeah the paying part because if you want to watch episode seven you've got to keep paying because right you know it's going to be next month that said i i i if i had to pick one which is i did for the column i actually picked the half season thing where they they order 10 episodes of jen jennifer aniston and reese witherspoon's show they drop five of them or four of them or six of them and say the second half is coming in five months or whatever and that gives them that basically they don't have a lot of shows so it gives them another marketing point if they if every season gives them two different times that they can promote it yeah i actually think there's going to be a mix um i hadn't thought about half seasons so i'm going to take that and say that i think it will be a mix of half seasons and weekly depending

on the show um i think that they may do like half seasons for the stuff that they think isn't like blockbuster, you know, so maybe like their animated stuff might come out in half seasons or whatever. But the big shows, you know, like they're big, like some of the science fiction stuff that they're doing or the Steven Spielberg thing that might go weekly as a way to build buzz. But they also have content so people can just go in and just watch a bunch of stuff. That's kind of where I think it's going to go. Will this be on Apple platforms only? They also have content so people can just go in and just watch a bunch of stuff. That's kind of where I think it's going to go. Will this be on Apple platforms only? I think yes. I think the only reason, I mean, the reason you do this if you're Apple is that you want people on your platforms.

Like Apple, I guess, you know, you could argue, well, yeah, but don't you want to take money from people who are watching on Android devices? It's like, no, we're Apple. No, we don't. And I know that they've got Apple Music on Android kind of as a legacy of having Beats on Android, but I just, I don't think so. Again, it's possible. It's not impossible, but I think it'll be Apple only. The only wrinkle that I put in that Macworld column is I am interested in the idea that as TVs, especially more expensive TVs, are all embedding in the equivalent of an outside box, like a Roku, which is in a lot of TVs now. I'm intrigued by the idea of Apple having some high-end TV partners who embed the guts of the Apple TV in their TV sets. And I had somebody on Twitter who thought I meant they would just put the service on their TVs. And that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is you will have a television that will come with Apple TV. And that means literally the app platform, the app store, the TV app, all the other apps will be Apple TV. Now, that's probably far off if it ever happens, but I want it to happen. So I threw it in there as an extra like I would like

to see that happen. And I think that would actually be a cool strategic move for Apple. Because in the end, you know, gets all those tvs in their ecosystem and that's probably a good thing um i i mean i'm inclined to say that it will be apple os only i like the idea of the embedded tv set thing but i'm not gonna say that i necessarily think that's gonna happen because that's that that to me it is i know that you would think it's a stretch to imagine doing that no that and yeah and there's no evidence of it yet i just i feel like it's a logical place for them to go once they've got a service up and running on top of everything else is i and i'm reminded of the fact that like high sense the the tv maker has a world cup deal where they're a world cup sponsor and if you you buy one of their new 4K HDR TVs, there's an app on them that streams the World Cup. And they're like literally

using the World Cup to sell you a TV so you can watch the World Cup in 4K. That's really interesting. And that's the kind of world we live in now. So I think about that. And I think, well, you know, making a deal with a couple of good manufacturers of high quality hd you know 4k hdr tvs to do uh to kind of apple on board as one of the extra you know bonus features would be an interesting thing for them to do but i don't think it's going to happen anytime soon bigger point is no android i think no and and i think that like it even comes into part of the branding because i agree apple tv well how do you get the apple tv you buy the apple tv buy buy an apple tv box or get an ipad or get an iphone yeah yeah will they screen films

in theaters this is the uh the do you want an academy award yeah uh question and i i say i like to thank the academy um i think they probably will, the films that they're bankrolling, if they're bankrolling films. I know there's at least an animated film. I'd like to think that if they have a film that they aspire to win awards, that they will screen it. I would be surprised if they screen them, if they release them wide. I would not be surprised if they release them in New York and LA for a week for Academy Award consideration. And that's it. Yeah, I 100% believe that Apple will do anything that they can to win awards on their programming. That feels like a thing that they would want. But I also at the same time agree with you that they will do the bare minimum required to do that.

They will do whatever it takes to get into qualification for anything, right? Golden Globes, Oscars, whatever. But they will want those awards. I agree. I think Apple, like anybody else, like sure, who's going to turn down an Academy Award? Nobody. And finally, any back catalog stuff do you think there's going to be any back catalog shows that apple will buy in to put on the service yeah um i had a wacky idea here which i put in because i want originally i was going to say no

i just like no i don't think they're going to do that. They have connections. They have deals. They could pick up some shows if they wanted to, some catalogs. It's possible that they'll do that. Although I was trying to think how they do that. And it's unlikely that it would be exclusive. So it's going to be like, yeah, we got a bunch of old reruns plus our new shows. I can't see that. I decided to split the difference though, because it is really hard to launch with just like five shows. Although to be fair, I bought CBS all access just for Star Trek discovery. I

know a lot of people who got Hulu just for like the Handmaid's Tale or HBO just for Game of Thrones. So it happens. It really does happen. I don't think it's unrealistic for people to pay for a streaming service for a show or two that said my wacky idea was that they'll buy some targeted back catalog stuff that's tied into the shows that they're launching so my example would be like ron moore is doing that um what if the space race continued into the present day and beyond show and i thought okay well get Battlestar Galactica, which Ron Moore did. Get From the Earth to the Moon, the old HBO miniseries about the space race. Maybe get Ascension, which was a wacky sci-fi channel show that was essentially the same

premise and had Trisha Helfer from Battlestar Galactica in it. You could curate a handful of other things that were kind of like around your TV show. There's like, oh, and while you're here, also watch these other things that we provided for you. I TV show. There's like, oh, and while you're here, also watch these other things that we provided for you. I don't think it's very likely to happen, but that was my clever way of trying to mix the two, because otherwise I would just say no. My expectation is whilst we compare them a lot

to Netflix, Apple want to be HBO. And so it's just going to be their own stuff. Well, yeah, HBO has old stuff. So here's the other possibility is HBO has catalog stuff. They have catalog movies, not TV shows. Movies. They've got HBO's TV shows.

Right. And they've got catalog movies. And that's a possibility. I floated earlier, and it's not the one I picked for this article, the idea that they would even say, like, it's the best, you know, what the stuff that you've, you know, you watch on iTunes and now it's, it's going to be included. But what it really is, is just a subset of the movie library that they've purchased that gives you access to a whole bunch of, you know, older movie releases that they've made some deals about. Cause that's what the HBO catalog is like. It's, it's just, it's just a smattering of movies and they come on for a couple of months and they go off. And, uh, Netflix's movie catalog is kind it's it's just it's just a smattering of movies and they come on for a couple of months and they go off and uh netflix's movie catalog is kind of like that amazon's

catalog is kind of like that so they could do that and it wouldn't take the spotlight away from their original series but it would let them have a catalog of a sort which is you know and they could sell all these great movies that you'll love um there was one uh so moving on from this there was one last thing on apple that we didn't mention uh apple have teamed up with the sesame workshop to help them work on a kids tv show so the sesame workshop are responsible for sesame street apple are not getting sesame street hbo has sesame street which is also super weird because they needed to get Sesame Street money, basically. And so they made the deal with HBO and all the shows start on HBO, all the Sesame Street shows, and then I think moved to PBS later. So this is another deal for them to do

new programming for Apple. So this is a quote from Variety. Under the multi-series order sesame workshop the non-profit educational organization behind sesame street will produce live action and animated series as well as develop a puppet series for apple puppet series yes of course what it feels like basically is apple will like we're to need kids stuff. Hey, Sesame Workshop, can you just do all of that for us? It looks like maybe at least three series coming from them for Apple. Yeah, I know. Isn't that interesting?

Yeah. And that is very much like, here is some money. You are respected. Make some shows for us for kids. Say hi to Oprah. Yeah, say hi on the way out. She's on her way in. Look, again, we created a whole segment of this show purely because Apple's doing this.

But they're doing a lot of this. We said it last week with Oprah. This is a lot of stuff. This is no joke. Upgradians know what many other people who follow apple do not understand which is that apple is not just messing around here i every now and then i somebody else brings up oh well planet of the apps wasn't very good it's like wow okay you've been asleep for a year now um the the apple hired um van amberg and erlich a year ago now they've spent who knows how much more than a billion dollars on all these deals lots and lots and lots of money

they are dead serious about this so those people will be very surprised when apple announces the service and they see just what's in it but we know now we know now like we're paying attention it appears to me that apple are more serious about Apple TV than they were about Apple Music. Because for Apple Music, they kind of just did what was to be done, right? They just did the deals, pushed it out. But this is a lot of very targeted, very important moves that they're making. Apple hasn't done a ton with trying to secure exclusive albums.

They've dabbled in it here and there, but by the most part, it seems like they kind of just let that go. And now, you know, Spotify doing it. And I think Apple have gotten themselves into the place of Apple Music now where they just assume everyone's going to come to them. And but for the Apple TV stuff that it would have been very easy for them to buy netflix and just say here you go here's all netflix's stuff it's ours now all right or like just buy a bunch of back catalog stuff and just be like here you go we do what all these other companies do but instead they are starting ground up with a bunch of really important people really interesting creators and making a service that they are hoping can't be missed this This is the next chapter, everyone.

This is the next stage. And as we say, Upgradians know. Upgradians are in the know. And that's the service that we provide here on the Upgrade Podcast. That's the service that we provide. Today's show is brought to you by PDFPen from our friends at Smile. The new PDFPen 10 is the ultimate tool for editing PDFs and going paperless. This month, Smile celebrates

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slash podcast. Our thanks to PDFPen10 for their support of this show. And hey Smile, congratulations on 15 years. We love you. I do. It's true. I love that company. They're the best. So AirPower. Late last week, Mark Gurman had a report.

It was an article that contained not a lot of information, but information that we haven't had from elsewhere. It's just kind of in rumor and conjecture at this point. But Mark Gurman is reporting that there are a couple of reasons why AirPower hasn't shipped. One of them is that the circuitry that apple is trying to to build is very complex and they're also because of this complex complexity um they are trying to make sure that it won't overheat uh because of this apple want like so because of the way that apple wants to have this air power mat work they want it to be that you can take any of the way that Apple wants to have this AirPower mat work,

they want it to be that you can take any of the three devices, so the phone, the updated AirPods case, and the watch, and you can just put them down anywhere on the mat in any order, and it will charge. That's what they want to be able to do with this thing. That is incredibly difficult to do, because you have to have overlapping circuitry and all of these different like because they're doing their chi chat chi stuff but there's also some additional

apple based stuff that's going in there and this is making it very hard for them to achieve a product the mat also includes a chip which has a stripped downdown version of iOS to help with device power management. Gurman is saying that the plan currently is to have it on sale in September, which will be one year after it was announced. Now, I feel like over the last 10 years, I've gotten a pretty good handle as to what Apple is all about. It really boggles my mind that they didn't know this a year ago,

that this was going to be a hard thing to build. Well, I mean, similarly to the HomePod and AirPlay 2 story, I think is this, it's a story of Apple having more confidence in their ability to deliver a product than it turned out to be the case, which I think goes to why you shouldn't. I mean, why does Apple generally not announce products way in advance? This is one reason, right? This is one reason. It's a very good reason to do it.

Is what if you can't? You thought you could, but it turns out you can't. You hit some roadblock somewhere. That's what happened with airplay 2 is that my understanding is that it didn't work and uh they did it again they had to do it again in order to get it right and it delayed it a long way um this seems similar and it's funny because this is this is like uh kind of a confirmation of the that kind of like third hand thing we heard at wwdc which which was i think jokingly or at least half jokingly described as they were catching on fire

which i think is probably not entirely true i just want to say real quick a couple of weeks ago on cortex me and gray were talking about this stuff and i said i don't like chi charges because i get worried about them like there is just a feeling to me that it just makes me a little uncomfortable about like the heat that could potentially be passing through i'm just gonna say you know like this this is clearly a concern by the companies that are building these things so maybe i'm not completely wild in my my fear about chi charging yeah and i'm not saying that i have any actual reports that they were catching on fire but trying to sure it will ensure it will not overheat

it is has been overheating and that does not that does not work and overheating is not a good thing it's just also the boldness of apple saying hey here's a product category we've literally never made before that other people have been working on for ages. But we're going to come in and do something totally more complex and different that nobody else is even trying to do now. But we're going to just kind of stroll on in here and solve this problem. And that's great when you can do it. But in this case, it seems like they went, oh, this is hard. Oh, I see. I see. uh fair enough i i think um i my question was like what's this thing gonna cost by the time it comes out like how much engineering is going into this oh it's gonna be eye-watering and it's gonna have like software in it for power management yeah honestly i'm thinking

199 something like that. It's just going to be like, is it worth it? Is it worth it? I don't know. I don't think so. I like the idea. It's a fun idea. Maybe it'll be great when it comes out, but they're struggling with it and it's very interesting. We have two Qi chargers at our house and I like them. It turns out we do use them. That's where our iPhones get set now. And it's nice. Yeah, Adina uses hers every day. She's very happy with it. I mean, I would consider one on my desk.

I just haven't found one that stands out that I like the look of yet. And so I just used the Studio Neat Dock that I've been using for the last couple of years. Like, it works great. I would consider it, but I'm not, you know, AirPower was never that interesting to me anyway. I never liked the look of it

and just didn't work out, you know, based upon where I put my devices, where I'd even put one of those things. It seemed like an interesting idea for travel, you know, but then I'm still dealing with an iPad that I need to bring chargers for, so I may as well stick with the cable that currently charges the three devices that I need, my AirPods, my iPhone, and my iPad.

Like, really, I only need to just bring one cable because it's very rare that I'm charging my iPad and my iPhone at the same time while I'm traveling. So that works just as well, really. And so, you know, the AirPower Mac doesn't necessarily solve my problems because it can't charge my iPad. So it was just never a product to me

that I was that interested in. I'm just really surprised at how long it has taken them to get it together. I mean, again, you mentioned stuff that's been late, right? This could be a year that like a product being announced twice iphone keynotes to see there's nothing like lapping yourself on a product announcement that is the best i mean with the home pod with airplay 2 they're like uh uh uh we announced it uh two weeks before wwdc is there's like no no no no no no i didn't get lapped i

didn't get lapped the winner was behind me by like five feet when i crossed the line i wasn't lapped i was just very much at the back of the first lap that that's what that is so yeah maybe uh air power will be announced in late august could be for shipping in october but we announced it in august so it's fine um google have launched a standalone first party podcast app i would expect that there are many of you listening right now who maybe aren't that familiar with android that are saying to yourself huh wasn't there always one the is no. There was a long time ago an app called, I think, Google Listen, which was a 20% project from someone, which was shipping in the store,

and it was an okay podcast app on Android. That went away, and then what followed it a little while later was Google announced the whole initiative, and it was US only, and podcasters had to submit their was US only, and podcasters had to submit their podcasts to be entered into the Google Podcast Directory, which you could find inside of Google Play Music, their music streaming service. Then a couple of months ago or a month or two ago, there were some articles that came out from Google where they were talking about their

upcoming podcast app. It is now available. It is now no longer a part of Play Music. It is called Google Podcast, and it launched on Android last week. There are no plans for an iOS version, which makes sense, but it's kind of surprising based upon Google's kind of MO, like have it everywhere, but they're just doing an Android app right now. The design of it is okay. You know, things look... Well, I would say the design of it is okay once you've added your first podcast. So I updated my Android phone. I have one of the original Pixels,

and I downloaded Google Podcasts, and I opened the app and was met with just a blank screen, just a white screen. And it said Google Podcasts at the top, and it had a magnifying glass in the top left corner. Honestly, I thought something was broken. That it was a terrible first launch experience, in my opinion.

It should be showing me some kind of directory. It has nothing like that right now that I could find, although I know it's something that they're talking about, so I don't really know why it didn't launch with that. It's very bare bones, this app. I could add shows. It had no show notes, no chapters, nothing like that. I mean, I know that show notes are maybe like in some areas, like a niche thing,

but they're in the RSS feed. Like it's not hard to support them. Right. And considering the fact that Google is a search company, the search might be a little bit easier if you can index the show notes as well. Just saying, Google, just saying Google, just throwing that out there Google have spoken about some features that it will have it should admit that they will be able to make recommendations to you based on machine learning it's integrated with Assistant to help you search for shows anywhere that you can access Google Assistant

they're also planning to add closed captions with the use of their assistant technology. And the reason they're saying this is so you could, if you're in a loud area, you'd be able to read what's happening in the show, so you're on the subway. Or you could listen to a show in another language and get translated captions.

I don't know why you would do that, but like, okay, that's the thing you could do. I don't know when you would do that, but like, okay, that's the thing you could do. I don't know when I think about this, because trying to speech-to-text a podcast is very difficult to do, because I've taken a look at services that do it, and every service I have ever seen or used always requires some level of human intervention. Because especially if you've got more than one person on a podcast, it can be really difficult to understand who's talking, especially if people are talking over each other. And just in general, trying to have a machine, an algorithm or whatever, some kind of speech

to text system work out what's going on, it can be very difficult um i'm sure if anyone can do this google can do this but the proof's going to be in the pudding because i haven't seen any transcription service that is automated that does a good enough job including youtube's closed captions yeah and they they do have the engine that does this and it powers a lot of other transcription things that are also using humans um maybe they've made an advance here i'm sure they're always making advances the machine transcription stuff has come a long way it's still pretty bad which is why when people i got really mad at wwdc because somebody was tweeting about this article that that i complained about and they actually changed the wording of it but

the wording of the article was something like transcripts are easy for podcasts. And I was like, no, that's not true. They're easy to get. They're not easy to get good. Yeah, yeah. No, they take time or money or both in order to be readable by people because the raw transcripts are bad. Now, maybe Google, Google's,

if anybody's going to have the ability to make them better and better and better, it is Google. And so maybe as a part of this initiative, that's going to happen. And I think that would be great because the tech isn't quite good enough yet, but I hope it comes. It's certainly better for searching. David Smith, obviously, indexes a couple of the podcasts that you and I listen to, and that basically makes them searchable, which is great. You can say like, when did they say that on ATP? And you can get an answer. answer and that's great even though the transcript is not readable per se you can like use it to find time stamps and all of that and I think that's great

and I want Google to do more of that and I want that available not just in their Android podcast app I want that available in like a search yeah the search is really good but they are they are promoting this as a readability thing, which makes me raise an eyebrow. Like, I don't... So we'll see. I mean, that's why it's not in there right now, along with show notes and chapter markers and all sorts of other things. And a directory.

Because they... Okay, so Google... I'll jump ahead a bit, because they're also talking about setting up an independent advisory board to advance gender, racial, and geographic equality in podcasting. Because of the shows that they've looked at, they've found, you know, as you would expect, right, that minorities are underrepresented. But they also talk about something which I don't see very much

where outside of US metro areas for production, where shows are actually being made, and they will offer extra promotion to shows that are more diverse in these areas. They've have nothing more concrete to say about this right now, like who is this independent advisory board and what does more promotion mean?

And I would say especially because they have no directory. Like, there's no visible directory. It's all search. So how are they going to promote it? I don't know. It seems like a work in progress and given Google's previous attempts to embrace podcasting which were kind of half-hearted and failed i uh i'll believe it when i see it in all of these cases but i hope

they i hope they commit like the podcasting group inside apple is very small it's a very small group like we think in the podcasting world we think of them as massive because they are of massive importance to the podcasting world. Apple's got the number one podcast player. The promotion on the podcast app is a huge deal. Like it's super important. But within Apple, they're a tiny group. a tiny group. Like from the perspective of people who are doing like Apple software and iTunes, you know, services planning, they're like a little tiny group, which is funny. So, but, but it's so much more than Google has provided up to now. And I hope this is not one of those Apple versus Google things. I think as podcasters, I want Google to embrace podcasting. I want Google to put at least as much effort into it as Apple does, if not more, because it's good for podcasting to have more people listening to podcasts than listen now. And I'm just going to say it, it is mind-boggling that the number one podcast app is Apple Podcasts. Not because it's bad or anything.

It's not. It's fine. It's mind-boggling because there are so many Android phones out there. And yet, Android phones are a minority share of the podcast audience in terms of platform. And I'm not just saying among Apple Nerd Podcasts. I'm saying in the entire podcast world, Apple has this outsized presence. And why is that? It's because Apple has had a small group of people who care about podcasts working on

podcasts for more than 10 years. And Google has never gotten it together. And I hope they do. The fact that they're, forgive me for ranting here for a moment, but the fact that Google has made no effort to do what David Smith sort of did as an offhand project, which is text-to-speech, or speech-to-text, index, audio on the web. Google's goal is supposed to be to make all the world's information searchable. It has made no attempt to make the podcast world searchable. Now, maybe it sort of sounds like maybe they're going to do that.

They are saying that they are going to do this and that if you go to google and search for something you can actually subscribe to a podcast from inside of a google search now so like they're doing some stuff but they but the point is they are saying it they haven't done it and they've launched their initiative like i'm looking around online and i'm seeing screenshots that include like trending lists but i couldn't find them it's like i don't know if maybe they start to show up like once you start subscribing to stuff i don't know but like i don't know it seems it's basically it seems like they have the skeleton of something right now and decided to launch it which seems very strange to me let's hope that this is the first step in a long process where Google is committing to podcasting and is putting energy into here. Because I want, there is a huge audience of people who aren't into podcasts now because it's too much effort to get podcasts on Android.

Not that there aren't great Android apps to do podcasting, because there are. Android not that there aren't great Android apps to do podcasting because there are but the fact there are great iOS apps that do podcasting and yet by far the dominant one is the one that's stock on the device and that's where Google needs to end up is with a good doesn't even have to be great doesn't have to be best in class just leave some space yeah leave some space for um pocket casts and other apps to to provide new features. But something like what Apple does where there's a good podcast player that comes with Android. So that if somebody says, hey, I was listening to a podcast, all they have to do is search for a podcast. Oh, there's an app.

What's the name of that podcast? Type it in and they're listening to a podcast. That's what Android needs. It will dramatically expand the number of people who are listening to podcasts, and that's a good thing. So I hope they stay committed. My frustration is that I feel like we've been down this road with Google before a couple of times, and they never stayed committed to it. I hope they stay committed this time. You can find RelayFM shows and Google Podcasts. We've been in there for a while. If that's your bag, they're there. um please while we're talking about this actually let's talk about the other side let's talk about

podcast production so uh anchor which is a company that's been a sponsor in the past they're not a sponsor at the moment they've released a new universal app that focuses on podcast creation on the ipad so they've they've made an update to their ios app and it now includes some podcast creation tools. The tools are simple, but they're actually pretty powerful. So it has drag and drop, and I like this. You could drag and drop audio in from the Files app, which I think is really cool.

You can then trim it. You can split it into multiple clips and then drag the order of those clips around. So they're very basic tools, right? You can split clips in half, and you can trim clips down. But for the majority of people, that's probably what they're looking to do. And really, if you look at something like Ferrite, Ferrite is a very professional piece of software for people that are very serious about creating podcasts. And I mean, Anchor in general, their tools are about like making it just easy to do. And this is a nice step into something a little bit more complex.

So you could say record something because you could plug in, it supports like the camera connection kit stuff. So you could plug in a microphone, record something with someone, record something on your phone later on and then put it all into one project, make it into one show and publish it on Anchor.

Yeah, I like the idea of democratizing podcasting. This is the other side of it, right? The fact is you could do a podcast that's literally you talking to your phone, but the medium is becoming or genre or whatever you want to call it is becoming more sophisticated. Still, anybody can do a podcast. still anybody can do a podcast and so creating some tools that vary that make it easy not just to post a podcast but to make it sound a little bit better to put in music to take out that part that you want to take out for regular people to do that is a good thing and that's what i like about this approach is that it's basically saying look you can you can clean up do some basic cleanup without having to find a new workflow and find other apps and all of that that anchor will let you do it i think it's

a good move yeah and this is why i like them in general because then they like they simplify product like the posting so you can you can put you can post it you get the rss feed and they put it into itunes and they can put it onto smart speakers and stuff for you right but i really like this app i've played around with it um and it is a fun way to make simple podcasts, right? Like a show like this one, I couldn't produce it inside of Anchor because I edit way too heavily, you know? But if you are making a show,

like you're starting out, this is a fantastic way to start out and learn some really simple basics about editing, just like trimming and splitting. Like these are things that you need to kind of get your head around and their tools actually make it easy to conceive of why you'd want to do these types of things so i give it a thumbs up like again if you're starting out if you've never done this stuff before i recommend anchor and here's a little tease for

you if you enjoy hearing us talk about podcast stuff oh oh boy, do we have a treat for you. Oh yeah. Next week is episode 200. Episode 200 is split into two parts. The first part of the show is me and Jason talking about Upgrade. We are using episode 200 as a way to reflect on the show, kind of talk about where it came from, how it's evolved and why we love doing it and why it's important to us.

The second half is for people that have asked us, oh, hey, you've mentioned that you wanted to do podcast tips. Because we spoke about that a while ago. You want to give us some more podcast advice. I was holding on to it. And you're going to get a lot of it next week. I've been holding on to it. We're going through the basics of everything. next week. I've been holding on to... We're going through the basics of

everything. Hardware, software, production, posting, some tips and tricks on things that we think are important. Stuff like what about podcast networks? What about monetization? What about preparation? We're doing all of it. So next week's episode, you're going to get me

and Jason being touchy-feely about our show, and then a... as much as it can be a podcast masterclass from the two of us. So, this is also the beginning, in case you hadn't guessed, of the Summer of Fun, starting with episode 200. So that's going to be next

week's episode of Upgrade. But we're not done with today's yet. We must finish, as we always do, with hashtag AskUpgrade. And today's AskUpgrade questions are brought to you by Pingdom, the company who offer uptime monitoring and web performance management. If your website was down right now, if visitors couldn't access your content or click that important Buy Now button, how would you know?

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So we're going to hashtag ask upgrade. The question comes from Ryberts. Let's begin. Is it safe to turn on iMessage in the cloud? Have you had any issues with it? Have you turned it on? I have turned it on. And what do you think? I've had no issues with it. I can get all my messages everywhere. I think it's good.

Well, I feel lucky for you because it's been a bit of a dumpster for me so far. Is the dumpster on fire? Yes, it is. So am I getting my messages everywhere? I mean, in theory, yes, I am. But at different times. So I have like two devices with me. Sometimes my iPhone gets a message and my iPad will get it like 30 seconds to a minute later.

I'm seeing problems. And this is before installing to a minute later. I'm seeing problems, and this is before installing iOS 12 as well. I'm having the same problems on iOS 12. Some messages are taking way longer to send now for a reason that I can't understand. I constantly see the message of either downloading stuff from the cloud or when it's not connected to Wi-Fi telling me that it will resume on Wi-Fi. I don't know why he needs to tell me this all the time. My Mac is just a disaster. Everything's out of order.

So it's not... I mean, yes, I'm getting my messages, but it's not solving problems for me. In fact, it's actually, I think, given me more problems than before. But as with most of these types of cloud things, I speak to many people like yourself, Jason, who have no problems at all. So my recommendation would be don't turn it on yet because you probably don't need it.

I would just say to wait a little bit longer. I would honestly personally wait until iOS 12. If I could go back, that's what I would do. I would wait until iOS 12 because I would figure they're going to do more work on it. That would be my recommendation. I think there's a reason Apple aren't turning it on on purpose. This does actually bring me to a point, just something I wanted to mention. So I'm on iOS 12

now, and during the upgrade process, it says to you, do you want to keep your phone up to date? And your options are either continue or decide later. If you click continue, which is the obvious thing to do, it turns on automatic software updates for your phone. I don't know what I think about that. I've turned it off. It seems like a...

I just don't trust it. There's been enough problems in the past of bad updates, right? And this isn't every time, but I think I'm good with my current process of like an iOS update comes out and I wait at least an hour before I install it. I think that this is a very bold thing to do because I know why they're doing it. They want people to be on the most recent updates. But I really hope that those automatic updates don't start happening immediately. But I want to wait and see how that ends up shaking out. But I just thought that was really interesting.

Do you have any thoughts on that? I like the idea of it because if you're comfortable with it, then it doesn't get in your way. And I think there's something to be said for that. And there are going to be people who want to take control of that situation. And there are going to be people who don't want to worry about it. So I'm okay with the idea of letting people choose what they want to do there. Yeah, I think that the way that they present the choice isn't super clear. But hey-ho.

Zach asked, do you see group Face um audio or video replacing skype for your podcasting calls uh i don't for the most part partially because um having one workflow for everybody is great and uh facetime is apple only and believe it or not i podcast with people who don't use apple platforms and that's not going to stop so also there's a question of like the recording tools uh working with it and being upgraded updated for it i think we might try it out on some of our all apple things just to see but you know i my bar for like what i need need in podcasting is fairly high. Skype isn't great, but for me, I want the replacement to be better than Skype in lots of ways, lots of specific ways. And most of the things I've investigated have been different, not better, just different.

Now, the fact that Apple says they'll do 32, I imagine Apple is doing some very interesting server side stuff to make this work. 32 people at once is not, you couldn't make 32 connections. So it's the server is obviously doing some work to send you a stream that is stable and that has all those people in it. stream that is stable and that has all those people in it. Um, and that is encouraging, but again, like, I don't know, it's, it's not impossible that we would try it, but I think the bottom line is that because it's not, um, cross platform, it's never going to be something that I standardize on. I would say is more possible for me than it's ever been before. Um, I record with people in very stable environments.

I don't record with people that I don't record with every week, if that makes sense, which I know that isn't the case for you and a lot of people that I work with. But for me, I record with stable people every week. They all use Macs.

They all use iPhones. The only reason that I wasn't using FaceTime or audio before now is because I was doing some shows that have more than just two people on them. And I'm not interested in using two apps. I just want to use one. So for me now, it is more possible than before to use FaceTime audio for the shows that I do, especially when the tools that I currently use to record my audio would work. So I use Ecamm Core Recorder for Skype,

there's an Ecamm Core Recorder for FaceTime, and Audio Hydra will work for FaceTime Audio. So that would work fine for me. My feeling is I'm just going to test it out, and if I feel like it works, great. Because one of the problems that I have is Skype as an audio tool is fantastic. Everything else about Skype is getting worse all the time. Microsoft are making some very weird and very specific decisions

about where they are putting their focus on with Skype, and the current UI methods that they have on all of their platforms is a disaster, honestly. So I would like to be able to move away from Skype before it kind of goes down the tubes in some way. And I'm happy that at least now I could use FaceTime audio as a potential replacement. So I'm going to keep my eye on it. It is more possible than ever for me. Nicholas asks, do you guys think that Marzipan or ui kit on the mac could actually spell the doom for itunes

with separate apple music and podcast apps potentially coming to the mac are there any legitimate reasons left for itunes to exist in the long run well as a selfish itunes user on the mac the problem i have with the prospect of getting a music app that's based on the iOS music app is, um, I don't, I mean, I use it on, on iOS, but there are lots of things iTunes does that the music app doesn't do in terms of finding in a large library, finding an artist really fast and zooming into an album and all that. You can do it. It's just a little bit different. I do think it's inevitable though. I feel like this is the reason that itunes hasn't been revised we keep have been asking time and time again like why is it still around why is it still around haha because little

did we know that the apps that apple want would replace it with which would be an apple music app and a podcast app they've needed marzipan yeah so i i would fully expect actually that maybe even with next year's mac os release we'll get podcasts tv yep music i i i would feel that's pretty much a lock because and what about device management my guess is that there will be that itunes i've said this for a while now my guess is that itunes won't go away it's just going to be like the old quicktime player it's going to get put- GarageBand 6. It gets its own little folder. It's going to get put in a folder somewhere where you can use it to just do media syncing

or other maintenance on iOS devices that you attach via a wire. But I don't expect them to release an iOS management app. I think they'll just keep iTunes around and say, yeah you can use itunes if you really want to itunes could live on macs for as long as it's going to need people to plug their devices in right like yeah i don't think that there's going to be a huge huge change for a long time i would rather i would rather when i plug in an ios device to a mac that it show up in the finder and if i double click on it i can drag in files or i can click manage and manage it that way that'd be be way better. Do I think Apple's going to make any effort to do something like that? No, no, I think they'll just keep iTunes around

forever. But I think iTunes will, will be replaced as a media player by new iOS based apps that you use to interface with those things. And I think, I think it's inevitable. Michael has asked in ios 12 is the control center on the ipad multi-touch as it is on the iphone because in ios 11 you could for example so you take i'm going to explain this here this is this is a high concept right you could take your right thumb and pull down on control center you could use your left index finger to press a button and then just pull your right thumb up and Control Center goes away. So you can hold it, adjust it, and flick it away again.

This wasn't the case with the way that Control Center worked on iOS 11 on the iPad. Now that it has moved into iOS 12, Control Center is now in the top right-hand corner. This does work this way. So you could, for example, pull down with your right hand corner this does work this way so you could for example pull down on with your right hand and just hold it there change something like maybe increase the volume and then swipe up again with your right hand and it goes away so it is multi-touch in that instance i had no idea that this is even a thing um but it works i will mention on this uh the ipad on ios 12

the time moved to the top left hand corner which is hilarious but you know what it got as well the date a date i've missed this i love that i love having the date there it's so good yeah it's actually really good um yeah so i'm i'm really happy to have that date there and yes the time is now up there oh i wonder why that could be and finally today amir asks do you think that Apple will eventually create APIs for Safari-like in-app split screen so we could have two notes, docs, et cetera, side by side? Is this something that you care about?

I'm going to forward promote that we talk about this in greater detail in a future episode. Another summer of fun episode, yep. But you're just going to tease that for now um but i do i feel like this has got to be one of those ios 13 next fall features and i think it actually dovetails really well with the marzipan ui kit stuff where um you're gonna want to have uh apps when they're on the mac have multiple documents open in multiple windows? And how do

you display that on iOS? Probably in tabs on or split view on iPads, and then probably in a stack like in Safari on an iPhone. So yeah, I do think I do think it's coming. I think it has to come because of the Mac stuff. And it's another case where the iPad benefits from that too. Because yes, I this happens all the time when I want to have two documents open in the mac stuff and it's another case where the ipad benefits from that too because yes i this happens all the time when i i want to have two documents open in the same app and on my ipad in split view and i can't um other than safari so i do think it will happen and i think it probably was one of those things that they were thinking of for this year and that when they decided to kind of like put off a bunch of features it went in next year but mark german called it out in february in the article that he wrote about like slowing things down he mentioned that this was one of the things that

was on the deck but got got pulled off for the time being but when you think of the ui kit stuff it actually makes even more sense right because then they can build this thing in parallel so that you know you build an app one way and you pick up these features on the ipad and it works this way on the mac and um I think that's good. And I think that makes a lot of sense. So I fully expect that we'll see this next year. But yeah, to answer that second part, you can bet your bottom dollar

that this is something that me and Jason care about because that's going to be frigging amazing. Yeah, I have one writer in split view with like notes sometimes just so I can have two sets of text up at once. And that's really dumb where I literally have pasted text into notes from OneWriter because I want to have that up

because I can't bring up two instances of OneWriter. It's infuriating. So yes. And I will wait very impatiently for the six months it takes Google to adopt this in Sheets, but I'll be really happy when they do it. Yep, yep. So look at that.

And that'll be January 2020 when that happens. But it'll be really happy when they do it yep yep so look at that and that'll be january 2020 when that happens but it'll still be great when it happens all right so thank you for listening to this week's episode of upgrade our show notes are in your app of choice unless it's google podcasts and or you can find them at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 199 um next week summer of fun begins we have a lot of really exciting and fun things as you could imagine because the clues in the name planned for the summer this year we've been working very very hard from it on about for about two months so uh the summer of fun is getting bigger and better than ever before starting next week of episode 200 thanks again to our sponsors this week smile

pingdom and hello thank you for listening you can find Jason online he's at jsnall on twitter he is at sixcolors.com and theincomparable.com I am at imyke I-M-Y-K-E and we'll be back next week

until then say goodbye Jason Snell goodbye everybody