Upgrade - 206: The Rings in a Tree

Episode Date: August 13, 2018

This week Myke breaks his iPad, Jason visits the Microsoft Store and leaves with an Xbox, and we pick our favorite video games of all time.

from relay fm it's the summer of fun and this is episode 206 of upgrade today's show is brought to you by backblaze squarespace and instabug my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell mike hurley the summer continues boy does, does it continue. Summer rolls on and we have a hashtag Snell Talk question from Brian to start this week's episode and Brian wants to know, I like this question, so Jason, you need to remember

to put the frozen steak that's in the freezer in the fridge to thaw out overnight. What technology or app do you use, if any, to remember that you need to do this? Listener Brian, I'm going to blow your mind. Here's the technology that I use.

I don't remember to do it because I don't bother. And then I get out my sous vide immersion cooker and fill up a pot with cold water and put in the immersion cooker um and set it to the lowest temperature possible to basically not heat it just circulate and i put the steak in and it's thawed in probably less than 30 minutes because with the circulating water it will very rapidly thaw that meat so i don't thaw meat overnight anymore. I use the immersion circulator to thaw the meat before,

right, and then I cook it. Sometimes I just put it at the target temperature and throw in the frozen meat and cook it sous vide, but sometimes I don't. Yeah, so that's my answer. I know what you were going for here, but that's my answer is I use technology to mean that I don't need to move the frozen snake, steak, oh my gosh it could be it could be a snake steak who knows into the uh into the fridge from the freezer all right so i have two follow-up questions one

what is your sous vide oh it's it's one of the it's the ananova the anova one or something i don't know what it is it's one i have the one that doesn't have wi-fi it just says bluetooth and i don't use the bluetooth i find the app control of that thing pointless i really just want to set a temperature and press the button and i walk away for for several hours and then the food is cooked um it is a lot of fun to do but it also is practical because it does yes it lets you it lets you thaw the meat and it lets you cook it kind of like right there. And I'm doing a lot of like, I'm doing a lot of things that are like, it's for dinner and I'm home during the day. So I can go like start it cooking at one or two in the afternoon. And then by the time it's five 30 or whatever, it's ready. And because the funny thing

about the sous vide cooking is once it reaches the target temperature, it just sits there. And over time it'll get, you know, it'll, over time, the texture of the meat will change because it'll start to be... It's not done more, but if you've got a tough piece of meat, it will become more tender. If you let it cook, I've done some things that are like for 24 hours. But the nice thing about it is it won't overcook it. It won't burn it it so if you leave it for two hours or three hours it actually doesn't matter because it only reaches the target temperature it never gets hotter than that they have a new one a little real little one called

the anova nano which looks really interesting so i guess it just makes it easier for people and there's just cool it's just it's cool science that um circulating water around is what you need. The other way to thaw a steak, by the way, is you put it in a bowl and put it under the tap and turn on the tap as little as it possibly can come out dripping into the bowl. Because that's basically going to circulate. And that's the point is that the water moves and the water's whisking the cold water away from the frozen object, replacing it with water that's a little bit warmer and that thaws it very

quickly. Yeah, I want to get one of these. I'm going to wait for this little one to come out. It's coming out in the UK soon. I've had a couple of sous vide steaks and they've always been the best home steaks i've ever eaten yeah yeah they're they're um it can be really well done not well done like it's well made because you can choose your target you can if you want

medium rare you you know you choose that temperature and when it hits it they're done and then you sear them and they're tasty. And then you can do Brian Chen at the New York Times, who's a tech writer, but he wrote a whole thing about doing roasts using sous vide. And I've done that a couple of times. And like for $20 of meat, we got like two steak dinners out of it for four. So like kind of, kind of amazing. In fact, we, uh, and one of the things we did there is that you, we, we served one dinner and then I, uh, froze the rest of it because then once it's frozen in a Ziploc bag, you can just toss the Ziploc bag in to the sous vide water and warm and thaw them

and warm them back up to basically eating temperature and then eat them. So it's a, a pretty cool thing it's a kitchen gadget for sure but it's one that i think has i feel like it has justified its purchase and placement in my kitchen yeah i want one of these things i want one of these things uh but this actually gets back to the root of the question in the first place from brian so let's say that right now you do have a thing that you need to remember later on. What technology do you use? I'm going to give you answers that you don't want to hear, which is one, it's in the old Snellatron.

It's just in my head, hey, I need to remember to do that later, which as I get older is going to be increasingly faulty as a system. You've passed a warranty on that technology, I'm afraid. You're going to love this. Phase two is I put an item on my calendar that says 2 p.m.

Thaw the steak. Don't hate that because that feels like a calendary type thing for me. It's not really like a to-do app type thing. I don't like to put stuff like that in my to-do app. That's kind of where my big things go. Then we're on the same page here, right? Because it's not that I need to do it eventually or today sometime.

It's that in the early afternoon, I need to do it. So it goes on the calendar because it's a time thing. Now, I use an app called Due, D-U-E, for this type of stuff. It is like a very quick reminder app. And what I like about it is that when the reminder hits, the notification will keep hitting like every couple of minutes or whatever until

you, until you either complete it or you postpone it. That's why I liked you because it will bug you. So that's what I like. Uh, Brian, thank you for that question. That was a, I think we went to some new and interesting places with that one. If you would like to send in a question to open the show, just send in a tweet out into the world, the hashtag Snell talk. And as you can clearly see, it can be about absolutely anything. Now,

Jason, I want to conclude my iPad stand followup with a very interesting tale for you today. Okay. So if you remember, I have been looking at and looking into we talked about a couple of weeks this stand called the tabatha stand by a company called cole brooks and i can never remember off the top of my head uh the company's name is colebrook bossen saunders um i don't really know

much about a lot of's a lot of names. It's a lot of names. But it's the Tabitha stand. And remember I mentioned it felt like it was faulty and they were sending me a new one? They have sent me the new one. And I have it. And I really like it.

So the height, it's not a huge difference. It's maybe an inch higher than the Viozon stand. But it is exactly the height that I needed. So it is a full extension. And it does lock on the full extension. There was a problem with the one that they'd sent me before. It fits perfectly and it is at the exact height that I need.

Unfortunately, the way that this thing is set up, it kind of attaches in on two edges and then clips in on one other, like in the middle of the, so two sides and then kind of attaches in on the on two edges and then clips in on one other like in the middle of the so two sides and then kind of in the middle on the other side when it kind of clamps in it doesn't fit with the smart keyboard attached so i have to remove the smart keyboard when i put it in uh i really like it it go it feels much more secure to me um even at full height than the viazon does like when i tap on it it doesn't move like it is more secure than the viazon stand is so i really like this however i've broken my

ipad so now okay here's what happened the the what happened. The iPad is in the stand, and the back plate is relatively small. The back plate is, I don't know, like six or seven inches that goes on the back. Then it has these extended arms that click on to, as I say, to two corners, and then you do the other, on the other end, kind of in a, kind of the ends of the iPad.

Now, I don't know exactly how I did this, but I repositioned it because you can also kind of like move it up and down and left and right on the stand. Right. And you can kind of move it around and lock it into place. So you can adjust kind of what angle it's at, as well as the up and down height i think that what i did was i was trying to adjust it too forcibly and i've put too much pressure on the top and bottom edge of my ipad because i have cracked the screen the whole way down and the edges have those like semicircle cracks like i think i have exerted too much pressure on the stand yeah i don't blame the stand for this right now because i've i believe with the way that it's cracked

i had some kind of small break somewhere some like chip in it or something because it's way too clean for not that much pressure applied to it so you, you know, I kind of just wanted to put that out there. I really like this stand. I still use this stand. I don't think that this stand is completely at fault for breaking my iPad. I actually don't think that this is the case. I broke my iPad while it was in this stand,

if that makes sense. I don't think that this stand broke my iPad. So, it's £460 to fix my iPad via AppleCare. I don't get AppleCare on devices I typically don't remove from my home. My iPad is still usable right now, and I'm just being careful with it.

I'm just going to ride it out for another five or six weeks. I just have some very precocious cracks in the screen. Sometimes when I pick up the iPad, I can hear the glass, you know? It is what it is. But I tell you, though, I'm not annoyed about this. I have never broken a device. I've never broke a screen on any device I've ever owned. So I feel kind of fine about it. Remember as well, I have a second iPad, right? So I have both sizes of iPadad i broke my 12.9 two is one and one is not exactly but this is part of the reason for me um so so i'm continuing to use it i'm continuing to use it in the stand i'm just being a little bit more careful um so the other thing that i should

mention the articulation point has a little screw locking mechanism. So I think I may have had that too tight and I was trying to move it and I put way too much force on the iPad. So, you know, beware. So what you're saying is it's user error is probably at fault here? Yeah, I don't think that having, like, I don't think that using this stand

or moving the iPad around in this stand will break it. I think that it is my fault. Either I had a chip or I had some kind of weakness in the screen and then I've combined it with exerting too much pressure on the iPad as well. So, you know, I think it is what it is. And when it happened, I wasn't even angry. I was like, okay, I can still use this thing. I'm about five or six weeks, hopefully,

from being able to replace it anyway. And I think I've done pretty well. My batting average has been pretty high at this point that I've spent like 10 years with these devices and I've never broke a screen. I've never even chipped a screen. So it was going to happen eventually. But I will say I do recommend this stand stand but just be careful with it when you use it which i guess is the same for most products that you own i don't know i recommend you get this jason it's not that expensive i think it's really good uh i recommend that you get it and try it because i think you will really like this it is an upgrade in almost every way over the vias and stand it's better made a little it's more stable i feel a little

scared now well you but this is the thing you shouldn't because you know my story so you will be more careful with this than i was i see you know i see every time i pivot it i'm gonna say take that mic well yeah you just the way that you do it is you unscrew it at the back before you pivot it which is probably what you should be doing, not trying to pivot it when it's locked in. I really like this product, and I'm still using it, so I really like it. And hopefully Apple does release a new iPad in early September so I can replace my broken one.

All right, last piece of follow-up today. It turns out that we scared Elon Musk into taking Tesla private when we were talking last week about what companies Apple should buy. He heard our show and he was like, no one's buying my company. So now he's trying to buy it all back again.

Yeah, yeah. Hello to Upgradian Elon who had that moment where he was like oh crap even even uh the apple could buy my company oh no and so therefore he did uh he he's talking to people about possibly taking tesla private i don't think we have a lot to say about this other than to say that it was very funny that like the day after we listed tesla in our summer of fun uh apple shopping spree uh elon musk said oh we don't want that we don't want to do that we're gonna we're gonna day after we listed Tesla in our Summer of Fun Apple shopping spree, Elon Musk said, we don't want that. We don't want to do that. We're going to get out of this public company

game. I think the reason being more than anything else that he doesn't like the rules that public companies have to play by. And there's something to be said for that. I'm sure this is my feeling about Apple too. It's like Apple would much rather never disclose anything, right? But because they're a public company, they are required to disclose in certain product categories at certain points what they're doing. And so they get all the benefits of being a public company, but there are the drawbacks. And Elon Musk may be considering if he can just exit from that entirely. I know that you and Stephen talk about Elon Musk a lot on Liftoff, right? Because of SpaceX. But there, I can't think of like a high powered individual, like in technology,

who's had a biggest fall from grace for me personally about the way that I think about them than Elon I would say like three or four months ago I was comparing him in my mind to Steve Jobs as like this incredible visionary but I now think of Elon as like he feels like a not good dangerous bad person which Steve Jobs may have been, but Steve Jobs just didn't have a Twitter account. Like, yeah, I really wished that Elon would stop tweeting. Yeah, I think that I think there's something to be said for that. I think you may be right.

I think you may be right. I think Steve Jobs probably did all sorts of infuriating things that we know of secondhand or long after the fact. They're similar but you know everybody is different i'm looking forward to that book um that uh what's it called small fry that lisa uh brandon jobs wrote is coming out soon right right right um i'm i'm really intrigued about that like i like she has a twitter account doesn't tweet very much. She sent two tweets, and I think the second tweet was kind of just like, I'm pleased people are excited about this. Don't expect this to be some tell-all thing, because it isn't.

It's like how someone in her position, living the life that she led, for those of you that don't follow particularly, Lisa is the child that Steve Jobs tried to avoid for most of his 20s before owning up to the fact that she was his daughter. She's written a book. The reason I'm very intrigued about it is she is obviously going to talk very openly about her relationship with him. She is obviously going to talk very openly about her relationship with him. And I think it's going to be kind of interesting to see how someone who shouldn't like him ended up liking him. And I think that's going to be really interesting. It comes out in a couple of weeks, beginning of September.

So I'm really keen to get it. I hope there's an audiobook version. I'm expecting there will be because it's got a lot of attention, right? And so, yeah, I'm really excited to read this. I'm assuming you will read this because you're a voracious reader anyway? Maybe, although I have to say

what I'm not is a voracious reader of books about the tech industry. Okay. Like, I get them sometimes, but I rarely read them um i was thinking about this the other day because uh i never saw the steve jobs movie the aaron sorkin one i never i never i never saw it and it was one of those things where it's like that's funny right like after all this and what we do that we wouldn't see it. And it's like, you know what? I just,

I think some of it is, do I, right? Like that. Well, yeah, but also do I want to, do I want to use my personal time that could go toward another thing that's part of my job or something that is not part of my job.

And it's, it's a difficult decision to invest my personal reading time because it's not like I'm like, oh, for work today, I will watch this movie. That's just sort of not how it happens. I read when I read and I watch a movie when I watch a movie. And to have it be something like this, it has to clear a bar because oftentimes I'm reading to do something different than the tech world. I'm not, you know, I'm not one of those people who's like, if it's not a book about the subject of my profession, then I don't want to read it. It's like, no, it's the opposite. Like, I'm not sure I want to read books about the tech industry. I bought Nick Bilton's book about

Twitter like two years ago and I've never cracked it so i'm more interested in this because it is somebody's personal story i like those kinds of books i like biographies um in general typically of people that i enjoy so i'm kind of interested to see what this book ends up like did not like the uh walter isa Isaacson book. I did like, was it called Becoming Steve Jobs? Is that what it was called? The book written by those two business writers. I did like that one a lot. That was a very good book. So there you go.

There's some book time with Mike who doesn't read and Jason who likes to read fiction. So there you go. There's Tech Book Corner, which is a one and done segment of good stuff all right should take our first break yes let's thank backblaze for their support of this show backblaze is unlimited cloud backup for macs and pcs that starts at just five dollars a month you can sign up for a 15 day free trial with no credit card required at backblaze.com slash upgrade podcast. If you have anything important on your computer, you know, your

computer where you keep all of your important things, you should probably have thought to yourself at some point, I should back this stuff up at some point, maybe soon. I'll back it up. The problem with at some point, the problem with soon is that it never happens. You never do it. If you say to yourself, oh, I'll do this at some point in the future, you're not going to do it. Like Jason and the Nick Milton book. He's just like, I buy this book. I'll read it at some point.

Some point never happens. Check out Backblaze today and finally get it checked off your list. Go right now to that URL, backblaze.com slash upgrade podcast, because Backblaze will back up documents, music, photos, videos, drawings, projects, anything and everything that you can store on your computer, they will back it up. And once it is backed up, you can access all of your data anywhere in the world, even from your phone. If you need to restore one file, Backblaze can do it. If you need to restore everything, they can do that too. And if you don't have enough time to download it all, they can even ship you a hard drive that has all your data on. And once you've restored your precious documents, you can send them the hard drive back and they'll give you a refund on the cost of it. Backblaze have restored over 30 billion

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Like for me, I just, over the weekend, we received our wedding photos and i put them on my mac and they went into dropbox like great they're in dropbox but i need more than that so they also go to backblaze and i feel safe knowing that my wedding photos now exist with backblaze i was like they're good backblazer got it covered and also as well well, oh, if you need business backup, you can already, they have another product for this. Maybe if you use Backblaze at home and you think that you should be using it at your work, go to that same URL,

backblaze.com slash upgrade podcast, and they have a business backup link at the top of the page. They have a whole suite of products there as well, available for you, for your business, or for the company that you work in. Our thanks to Backblaze for their support

of this show. Seriously, please go back up your stuff. Alright, should we do some upstream news? Great idea. YouTube have created the YouTube Device Report to highlight devices

that will give you the best viewing experience. Hello, I'm Johnny YouTube, and this is the YouTube Device Report. Johnny YouTube is now the host of Upstream here on Upgrade. This first appeared during... Oh, I'm just hearing that Johnny YouTube did something really unfortunate on his YouTube channel, and he's offended a lot of people, and he's no longer the host of the YouTube device well I never liked I never liked any YouTube in the first place so I'm pleased no who does he

think he is I know button in the shows anyway uh the the this first appeared during the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 announcement that happened last week where uh this phone was called a YouTube signature device now YouTube signature devices which is part of the YouTube device report where this phone was called a YouTube Signature Device. Now, YouTube Signature Devices, which is part of the YouTube Device Report, these are devices that feature the ability to do all of these things, to watch 360-degree video,

support HDR and high frame rate. They have reliable DRM support, 4K decoding, and next-gen codecs. So you are a Signature Device if you support all of these things, which is all of the types of video stuff that YouTube does. There are 18 devices in this program right now. They're all, I think, Android devices right now. No Apple devices because of this next-gen codecs thing,

which is VP9, which is how Google supports 4K content. You may cast your mind back to when the Apple TV came out, and we spoke about this. YouTube encode all of their 4K stuff in a codec called VP9, which Apple does not support, which is why you cannot get 4K on any Apple devices. This includes watching YouTube videos on your iPhone or your iPad. They're all in, I think they go up to like 2440 by something, something. So it's in higher than 1080. Oh, is that true?

I don't know what they go to. They go up to a high level, but not 4K on iPads. So this is why, and this thing exists now, the YouTube signature device thing, and we're probably never going to see Apple's devices on this because it seems unlikely at this point that they're going to add VP9 support because Apple has their own codecs.

Yeah, I don't like format wars like this on either side. I maintain my position that Apple should support this. So does a YouTube signature device have Johnny YouTube's signature on the device? Let's hope not. Is it like an autograph? I hope it hasn't because he's already been shown somebody we shouldn't support. He's just been fired. Something terrible happened on the trip he took and there was a scandal

and we just don't even want to talk about what happened to Johnny YouTube. So yeah. How do you, after time, and we've thought thought about this we've had some time to think about this or not uh do you believe that apple should be supporting vp9 so i don't as a as a user of these products i don't care and i think that's the important part here is I don't care. Just get it together, right? Like Apple and Google need to work this out. I don't care if it's Apple. Oh, but because there's probably an argument on both sides, right? It was like, oh, but Apple doesn't want to do this because they are so invested in HEVC. And oh, but Google can't do it because Apple blah, blah, right? It's like, I don't care. In the end, I don't care. I am happy if Apple supports it.

I am happy if Google re-encodes stuff for formats that Apple devices can play. I could see arguments for both that if you make a 4K playback device and it's missing the codec that is used by all of the 4K content on YouTube, that you should probably add that codec. I could also see the argument that you're YouTube, and you should probably encode to all sorts of different formats. So why are you withholding this one format that's commonly available on this platform? I think both of those have valid arguments for and against. As a consumer, I just want it to work right,

and it's really frustrating that it doesn't work right. And I don't know. In the end, this is two big, rich companies fighting while consumers lose. And that is stupid. But it does feel like they're in this intractable position right now where, you know, Apple doesn't want to put their Kodak on the devices and YouTube doesn't want to re-encode all that 4K video in a different format. And so we sit here. Yeah, I feel like Apple should support VP9 in the same way that I believe in Android there is support for the high image format, HEIF, and HEIC, or whatever that is, you know, like the way that Apple encodes photos and videos. If devices don't have that support, they should have them in because that's important for people sharing content. But I feel like the onus is on Apple, really, because if Google have chosen VP9 to encode their YouTube videos, it's a lot more work to ask Google to change the codec that they use than it is for, you know,

I'm assuming for Apple to add the support to the operating system. And I think the argument that if I had to rule on this, if I was the judge in the case of Apple v. Google on this point, I think what I would say is Apple, as the maker of a device that is designed for 4K playback, should be making every effort to support all the 4K codecs so that it can play all

the 4K video that's available. And this isn't some rinky-dink streaming service that they're supporting here. Yeah. YouTube made a decision that they don't like but but you're right the result for youtube is re-encode every single 4k video in a different format to please apple and could they sure sure of course they could i remember when youtube has done that in the past where they've done a mass re-encode and over course of months, everything got encoded in a new format. But here we are, like Apple's making 4K, the Apple TV 4K is sitting there and it can't play 4K YouTube. And that's dumb. And I think it makes Apple's product worse. So I agree that if I had to pick, I would pick saying to Apple, you guys should just do this. Like, what do you care about more? The giving a little bit of a boost to a codec that you don't like,

but is out there and isn't going away, versus one you do like, which is also out there and is also not going away. Or having your product not be as good, because it doesn't play content from one provider. Is that a failing of the provider or of you? Who's going to get blamed for that? And the answer is you're going to get blamed.

Why do all the other boxes play this YouTube content at 4K and my Apple TV doesn't? Well, whose fault is that? It's Apple's fault. I mean, from a consumer perspective, I think that's what you end up feeling is like, why does one box not do it and all the rest do? So I don't know. But I hate it, though. I would like both of these companies to get over themselves and just let people watch the content they want on the device that they want.

Customer sat would be off the charts if they had. Sure. If you're working at Apple, you got to know that one of your slides in your presentation about why you have to do something to tim is to talk about customer sat that's like that's funny but that's true like i think i suspect it is that's funny but like if you are trying to sell something to him clearly customer satisfaction is the thing you want to put on the slide deck i mean i like that approach but also if you're at a company that's as successful as apple saying all right i want to do this because look we sell a lot of computers we sell a lot of iphones right it's like yeah i know we sell a lot of iphones but

can you talk about whether this thing is going to improve our customer satisfaction rates or the likelihood that they'll buy another one like talk to me about that. I get it. I get it. We kid Tim Cook with his customer sat buzzword, but there is something admirable about trying to focus on whether your customers like the products you sell them rather than just that you managed to sell one to them. But certainly on the inside, you got to think that that is like, you know your audience, right? Yeah. Like this is going to improve customer sat right tim right it's customer sat yeah here's something that will probably

increase my customer sat with apple's upcoming streaming service um apple have ordered a show from the creators of always it's always sunny in philadelphia. The show will be created by Rob McElhenney. I think that's how you pronounce his surname. I think so. And Charlie Day, who play Mac and Charlie. His name's Charlie in the show, right? I have no idea. Have you never seen this show?

I have never seen It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, no. Interesting. Okay. All right. It's a very good show. I don't know if you would like it, though. I think is the way that I would say that. I like it very much.

I don't know if you would like it. This show will be set in a video game studio and counts Ubisoft as a co-producer, which is really interesting, and I don't know what that means. Like, will they be working at Ubisoft as a co-producer, which is really interesting, and I don't know what that means. Like, will they be working at Ubisoft? Like, what is that? It's actually something that gives me this...

I'm like, hmm, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I like... You see creators of a show that's been very successful, long-running comedy on cable, and now they're doing this, and it's like all right another collaboration from those guys that's a really good get by apple and then you hear it's set at a video game studio

and one of the producers is a video game studio and you're like what does that mean like is that going to be like a really weird um kind of forced connection or is it more that the creators had this really clever idea and they wanted to consult with somebody who actually understands it or who could give them assets or whatever i that's the mystery to me is this is this like a little bit of creative poison that will make this show kind of feel like gross and wrong or is it just a side effect of the idea of the show and until we see it i guess we won't know i'm willing to to believe it's the second purely because these guys are very successful um and they probably have a lot of opportunities that come their way now i would be surprised if they would sell something down the river in this way right that that they agree you know i agree

it seems to me that i'm more likely to are on the side of ubisoft is involved for a really good creative reason that will become apparent when the show airs um mcelaney will star in the show which is set to be a 30 minute comedy series now if you've ever seen it's always sunny in philadelphia or know much about the show this should answer any questions about apple's approach to mature entertainment because yeah right well i will say that mcclelland has i think either has or is going to write like either the minecraft movie or the lego, or at least was signed on for one of those and is eventually not doing it. Yeah, he is announced to write the Minecraft movie.

So if that comes to pass, that's clearly a movie for kids, so they have that ability. But I can't imagine him writing a 30-minute comedy with Charlie Day that wasn't mature in some way. Right. But it depends what route they're going to go down. writing in that way that they must have lots of opportunities to make shows like that and that this show could be made on fx for example and be adult in nature so yeah my expectation is this probably does err on the mature side which i think i think at this point at least if you

listen to this show enough you would have a good sense that Apple are not going to really be very shy about their content. I think that they've, at this point, signed on enough creators and enough types of shows which would indicate that they were going to make some mature content anyway. You would expect that at least one of their space shows would be Game of Thrones-y in that way. Or at least violence of their space shows would be game of thronesy in that way um that or at least at least violence right was going to occur so but this is just another yeah another

big signing for apple it's it's as if all the different streaming services are just doing a big draft with real money it does feel like this to snap up all of the creative talent they can all right it is membership time it is that time of year it is august if you have listened to our show for long enough or any relay fm show for long enough you will know that relay fm does offer a membership program so you can give us money to support the shows that you love and in august is basically the only time that we ever talk about that because uh we do bonus content during this time so if you become a relay fm member this is what you will get access to there's a bunch of members only exclusive

things like a monthly behind the scene newsletter you get 5k desktop wallpapers of relay fm show artwork there is a monthly relayayFM host crossover show that Stephen hosts, where he brings together two RelayFM hosts that are not on the same show and asks them some questions about something that they both care about. And so it's a fun kind of crossover.

But the biggest thing that we talk about right now is if you will also get access to our bonus episodes feed. So throughout August and September, a bunch of Real AFM shows put out special content as crossovers and fun things. If you have been listening to any of these before, you've been a member in the past, you will know that Upgrade and Cortex crossover to do a text adventure every year. We've done two of them. We are doing the third this year. It is called Space Station.

It is a space-themed adventure. It was previously described to us as hard. It is hard. We actually have a trailer for Space Station, which we're going to play at the very end of this week's episode, so make sure you stick around for that. And it is going to be published on

Friday the 17th of August. So it's going to be this Friday if you're listening. But it will be in the feed. If you subscribe now or you subscribe later, you get sent a link to the RSS feed.

So you can subscribe in your podcast app of choice. And you can subscribe now and you can pick it up or you can pick it up later and all of the previous bonuses that all of the shows have ever done are in that feed so if you subscribe now and you want to listen to our western and our spooky versions of the text adventures that we've done in the past spooky manor and six gun showdown you can go and to those. I actually recommend that you do go and listen to those. So you can show your support for this show or any show by going to relay.fm membership. But if you do go to relay.fm upgrade, you can sign up and give your money direct to the show. Or you can support all of the shows by going to relay.fm membership.

It is important to note that we changed the URL of the feed that we use this year. So if you're an active member, you will have gotten an email about that. If you've previously canceled your membership, you'll need to sign up again to get the new feed. If you have any problems with that, you can email us and we'll sort it out for you. But make sure that you have the new feed or please go and sign up and i just want to say that we both really really appreciate your support if you give money for this show or any show it just helps like it helps us both me and jason are supported i am entirely and i think jason is in a large part due to podcasts and a big part of that is our membership so it helps us you know we are obviously an advertising focused business but knowing that

we have a baseline of support that comes in every month is really really important to us so thank you for that I want to go back on a couple of points. I want to restate the idea that you get everything from the previous ones when you sign up. So that's a great value. It's not like you're cut off from the previous two years now of doing that. And you said it was very hard. And that made me chuckle because I just listened back to the draft version of what will be posted on Friday and was laughing at how gentle I was with you guys. Oh, interesting. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, man, I made that. I took it. It was so easy on you two. Okay. Because really. It was harder. We still.

It was harder. It was harder. We did our best with it, but it's definitely harder. And you guys are also, in some cases, you were your own worst enemy. Because one of the things that I love, and that's why they're so entertaining to listen to, is that you and Gray are worried that everything is going to be a trap. Right. Like some of the most innocuous things, you're like, okay, I don't know if we can do this.

Which is great. So that part. I felt like you were making your own difficulty. of the most innocuous things you're like okay i don't know if we can do this which is great so it that part i felt like you were making your own difficulty so i didn't need to ramp up the difficulty on my end you you took care of it well so the thing is this is ptsd for us right from from the original from from six gun showdown but we were just like rolling through our lives and then things just kept jumping out and killing us so we're always scared that something's going to come out and kill us i think and so yeah go and listen to that by signing up so go to relay.fm upgrade and you can pledge to give this show some money but no matter what you decide to do no matter what show you support you can support any

show you can support all of the shows. You'll get access to everything. So all of the bonus content is available to you. And on that note, every year, me and Stephen do a Q&A because we do this in August because it's Real AFM's birthday. And we're about to celebrate our fourth birthday in this weekend. So we're going to be doing

on this coming episode of Connected. So this week's episode of Connected is going to feature our RelayFM Q&A. So if you have any questions about RelayFM or podcasting in general, just tweet with the hashtag RelayQA. And we'll pick those up and we'll be selecting a large portion of those to answer on the show. So there you go. Thank you for that. Now, Jason, we have some breaking news. large portion of those to answer um on the show so there you go thank you for that now jason we have some breaking news um face there is a new beta of ios today i was 12 and group facetime has been removed from the initial release of ios 12 and will ship in a future software update

later in the fall are we gonna see airplay 2 here do you think well let me tell you what is your experience with group facetime well this is this was my initial reaction to seeing this which was to say i have tried group facetime a few times and therefore i understand why they're doing this and it seems like a smart move to me because it was really buggy and weird. And saying, I applaud them for saying we can't ship this to everybody with the final version. It's still too weird and buggy and we need some more time to let it cook. I think that's a good move because it was, you know, again, could you use it? Sure.

But it was weird and buggy. And I think it's a good idea to say, we're going to put our best foot forward here. So we're not going to enable this feature at launch for iOS 12. Yeah, I think that it's a shame, but I understand, right? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you want to do it. If you're going to do it, you want to do it right. The last thing they want is to do group Faceetime and have everybody's first experience with it be a disaster and then even if they fix it and say no no no it's better now everybody'll be like no group facetime didn't work it was stupid remember that so better to just take it out until it works better and i think my my use of it so far has been that it doesn't work right really basically i've never participated in a group facetime that was fully functional yeah and i i it's intriguing to me that they've said it's going to come later this fall um i feel like should you should you say that like you'll

be real real confident like if you're going to say that it's going to come later this fall right right right you you're you're expecting confidence that maybe airplay 2 didn't give you i mean i'm sure these are very very different challenges but it would be much easier to just say in a future version of ios 12 rather than later this fall yeah my only my only feeling on this is that they really want to use this as a way to show off the next iPhone somehow. I don't know. I can't work out why you do it, but I guess we'll see. And I hope it does work because it should be a very good feature, especially with all the Memoji stuff.

So there you go, some breaking news. Jason, after talking about it for the last couple of weeks you were kind of saying oh maybe i should buy an xbox at some point you went out bought an xbox you have an xbox now i did this is the the slippery slope continues uh remember last week i said i bought a 4k tv and that led to taking a lot of furniture that we'd had for more than a decade and putting it out on the street with a sign labeled free on it. It's all gone now, by the way. They took everything.

So we bought new furniture, which cost twice as much as the TV did. And then I lamented also that uh that getting 4k hdr movies is complicated and like the marvel and disney stuff um doesn't isn't available on itunes and you can't buy it on movies anywhere and have the 4k play on uh on itunes but you can do some stuff on voodoo and you can buy the 4k blu-ray disc uh and use the code and then that'll play on Voodoo and it's just kind of this whole mess. And I mentioned that 4K Blu-ray discs are intriguing because the bitrate's way higher than anything that's going to stream.

Like streaming 4K, you're losing a lot because the bitrate just can't be that high. But I didn't want to buy a 4K Blu-ray player because that seemed dumb. Then I realized, but what I could do is buy a new Xbox. Replace my existing Xbox. not go up a box i don't want another box yeah games consoles are always the best new media players because they're

not just new media players right like it's not just a high definition blu-ray player it's also a games console let's say i don't love the fact that when i'm watching a movie on the xbox i have to pick up an xbox controller and wake it up in order to play or pause that's dumb although i think it'll do infrared so i think i can i can do infrared signals for that and i'm going to program that into my logitech harmony but it is a little bit weird but you're right like in terms of not having a unitasker like i just i'm not going to buy a standalone 4k blu-ray it's like we got rid of our blu-ray players we just use games consoles when we need to use a disc but there is a big benefit in using um a 4k disc in that the bit rate is so much better than anything that's streaming

and uh and that was that was enough so yeah um and and what happened was the day after our show i think a listener pointed out that microsoft had just done a new promo where they were going to do a rebate. Basically, you could turn in your old Xbox or any other console, basically, and they would give you money toward a new Xbox. And it's also my son had his birthday party last week, and he loves video games. So I had that moment of like you know i could do this so i took my external usb drive i copied all of the files and and and settings off of the old xbox and wiped it and went to the microsoft store and got a uh and i decided to get the xbox one x because my son will really appreciate the 4k and graphics and all that and if i'm going to buy a

new xbox i might as well get the good one so that it's got a nice long life on our beautiful 4K TV. And I got money back for the other Xbox One, which was great, which I think I bought used. So, like, I think I did okay there. And that means that I can watch those beautiful 4K movies and he can play games. And what I told my wife is, the present i give to you is there's not another box in the house and she was like oh good good good good yes that is a present for me because she just i bought another box and attached it to the tv like all the other boxes she's like no no no more boxes so that's that's all done so so yeah i uh so now we have the a newer xbox one with fancy graphics and it'll play my black panther uh uhd blu-ray and it looks

beautiful and uh yeah that so but again more money so that the tv is a bargain it's 9.99.97 did we say it's three cents under a thousand and this cost me so much money in ancillary products at this point i'm way over the three cents now yeah that's what i'm saying oh man you just blew that budget right out huh three cent budget's gone and what a shame yep um do you have any real opinions about the xbox not really um like i said my my son does most of the game playing on it. I will say, for 4K gaming, it is the leader right now. So it outputs true 4K where the PS4 Pro doesn't really.

Or at least the games are in true 4K. The Xbox games are in true 4K, which I think the PS4 Pro's games aren't. You do get a better 4K experience from the Xbox. true 4k the xbox games are in true 4k which i think the ps4 pros games aren't like you you do get a better uh 4k experience from the xbox than you do the playstation is my understanding it gets very deep into it right it's kind of like i would expect it is pretty similar like to how 4k streaming to 4k from the discs is kind of what you're looking at yeah right between the playstation and uh the xbox so you did make the right decision uh in regards to gaming but i know that wasn't the reason but like you know you you have at least got the best 4k console the problem that was though i mean part of the motivation was that it's got the 4k hdr tv um and wanted to do something nice for my son on his birthday

had this other interest in it that was set off by getting the 4k tv and wanting the the disc support and it just felt like oh well this makes sense that i can make him happy i can make me happy and uh and he and his friends you know most of his friends are playing on xbox he has a friend who just moved away and they're Xbox buddies. That's a good reason. So it's like upgrading the Xbox seems like a good way to do it. The only thing in, the only problem against Xbox,

which is a pretty big problem, is all of the really good exclusives are on PlayStation. Yeah. Now, Microsoft are doing an immense amount of work to solve this problem. Like, for example, they just bought five game studios.

Yes, they did. So, like, you know, they're making a lot of efforts. And I think their best effort that Microsoft have right now in making your experience worth it is something called the Xbox Game Pass, which is like Netflixflix but for video games so they have over 100 games and it's 9.99 a month you get like a bunch of really there's some really good games in this like rocket league and fallout 4 sea of thieves doom there's a lot of really good games in this what makes it extra good is any

exclusive any xbox exclusive gets added to the game pass the day it is released so pretty huge forza which is their big driving game forza horizon 4 is coming out soon that will be added to this 9.9999 a month pass immediately. Now, that's unprecedented in this type of stuff. There have been a lot of attempts at this in the past. That's really great. But again, the problem with it is there are not a lot of console exclusives. But they're working on it.

And Microsoft are really working on it. And they're trying to make it a better experience because Microsoft have lost this round of console. They've lost in the console wars here because you've got... Sony's got all the really big exclusives and the biggest games, or at least they have all of the big games

the same way that Microsoft do. And then Nintendo have captured all of the minds. And it is believed that there have been more switches sold than there have been uh xbox ones sold sure or at least if that hasn't happened yet it will happen like nintendo just reported that they sold 20 million switches so far and are expecting to sell another 20 million over the next year and what's funny is that it just it has worked out this way that we have a switch and an xbox one and uh so it's hard for playstation because again there's the no new boxes rule so until the point where we put the wii u to rest which is hard because we have such a massive catalog of games that the kids love to play even now that the Wii and the Wii U that play on that thing.

I think we're just not a PlayStation forward kind of house, and I kind of don't care. You have made the best decision for your set of circumstances, especially for the fact that your son and his friends already play on Xbox. It's like you should never have bought him a PlayStation. You know what I mean? That would have been a very bad idea. I was just merely kind of laying out the landscape but you have actually kind of the reverse syracusa yes i guess you are you have bought into the xbox at the right point though because microsoft have now realized their problem and they are taking great steps to try and fix it yeah you know so this is the larger point here which is that uh saying like all right

microsoft's gonna take care of this like i just and i realize this is dumb but as a long time apple person i am just uneasy about every interaction i have with microsoft and for no good reason like i went to the microsoft store i've been in the microsoft store a couple of times before i went to the microsoft store were you hoping nobody would see you in there did you wear a disguise i felt like either a like spy who who was going to be found out and i did i took out my iphone i'm like yeah but you know come on uh or or like a traitor like why are you in the microsoft store you everybody get your rocks throw the rocks at the at the guy who's terrified that syracuse walks past like he's somehow in california he walks past the mall he was like he would never he would never know it would be like me coming out of of uh of the store with my xbox

and bumping into john syracuse and i'm like john what are you doing here and he would just shake his head and walk away yeah that was playing in my mind really yeah it was it was super weird i did get to play i i played with the um the new surface go a little bit while they were getting me set up and that's that little teeny tiny well it is a beautiful piece of hardware it's like taking an it's almost like taking an 11 inch macbook air something that size or a little bit smaller and then again you know except it's a it's sort of like a tablet with a with a with a keyboard add-on like an ipad keyboard the surface keyboard is. And my thought is like,

I would love a device like this to travel with that's a computer and a tablet, but it doesn't run either my preferred computer or tablet operating system. So it's exactly what I don't want. Here's the thing, right? Like I have been watching some reviews of like the Surface Go and stuff

and I'm like really intrigued by it. i tell you what i want to do i want to switch to it for a week to like try it and like talk about it on this show or something but i'm i don't want to spend a thousand dollars to do that because that's kind of what you need to spend to go all in on it right because it starts out cheap but it starts out cheap with the like super slow storage and no keyboard no pen yeah this is one of those those examples of where microsoft is willing to sell you something that is not a great product to get to that low price and then if you want something that's appreciably better you are now you know you're now going to it's no longer a cheap product but it is an intriguing product. And I think I am kind of fascinated by it and, you know, turning it to an Apple perspective, as I often do. I do have

that moment where I think, yeah, but imagine if this was like an iPad or a Mac with an iPad app layer or something like that. Imagine where this was the tablet operating system that I wanted or the computer operating system that I wanted. But neither of those is actually true. And when I talk, you know, I have not spent massive amounts of time with Windows 10. I haven't installed. I spent some time with it. I'm very confused by it because I learned how to use Windows XP basically. And all future versions of Windows are like, wait a second, what's happening here. But I will say this, the, um, it is, uh, the people who know about this stuff say it's still not great as a tablet. Like it's, you know, you can get around in the tablet mode, but really it's a PC. It's really still a PC. And, you know, I'm sure Microsoft is pushing in that direction that there's some people who like holding it as a tablet, but like,

I like my iPad as a tablet. I want it to be a tablet and a good tablet when I want it to be a tablet. And then I want to attach it to a keyboard and get work done that way. And that's, that's a challenge for Apple because they've got the two different operating systems that they're, that they're trying to put together. Whereas Microsoft is trying to get the context to switch in the single operating system, which is a different kind of challenge. But as a piece of hardware goes, it's great to see it because that's the kind of hardware that Apple is not making because they kind of can't right now, although maybe soon they could. But that was fascinating. And I also got to spend a little bit of time with the Surface Studio, which, again, I'm not entirely sure of the ergonomics of it.

But it is kind of cool to have a big iMac-like screen that you can just kind of tilt down and put your hands on. So interesting to me. And this is the case where I think some of Apple's success limits their ability to do little weird products and see what happens to them. Apple has so much success and I think so much pride. There's so much scrutiny of them that they test a bunch of stuff in-house, but they're really conservative with what they release. And there are strong arguments that that's the right approach. really conservative with what they release. And there are strong arguments that that's the right approach. But it is funny to see Microsoft just out there experimenting with all of these different variations of hardware. And some of them are interesting. Now, a lot of them may end up being

kind of a very limited appeal to the point where from an Apple perspective, it would be a flop. to the point where from an Apple perspective, it would be a flop. But maybe from a Microsoft perspective, they can get away with that because they're appealing to that kind of audience. I don't know. Anyway, it felt super weird being in the Microsoft store. It's never as crowded as the Apple store,

but the people were very nice and they didn't know about the trade-in offer. And so I pointed them at the Xbox Twitter feed and they're like, oh yeah, okay. And then they calculated out how much money i got back and it was it was fine um yeah literally the guy was like oh we don't have it i don't think we have any specials like that but we can trade it in for recycling and i said no you should check you do it was on the xbox twitter account yesterday and they're like oh okay and he and he was like oh yeah here it. And he was like, oh yeah, here it is. Okay, great. And then we put it together. So anyway, yeah, it was weird.

And not Syracuse approved, right? John's like, no Microsoft things in my house. But for us, especially, I mean, like literally with my son's birthday and not to get into it too deeply, but like my son's birthday party was also basically the going away party for his best friend who's moving to minnesota and they play video games together so it was also a little

bit of an investment in um making that experience continue to be great was it a surprise the game the xbox oh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's really good yeah i mean we had the xbox original right but but he came home and we turned it on and he was like whoa wait a second i'm like yeah happy birthday buddy yeah and that comes with a month of game pass so he's he's actually and this is the last couple weeks before school starts so that's been great because he's got time to uh download download sea of thieves and try it out if he wants to which is really fun really fun. Really fun game. I like that a lot. Alright, let's take a break and thank Instabug,

the new sponsor of Upgrade here. Instabug is a lightweight SDK that provides more than 20,000 companies with bug and crash reports from users and testers. It helps them to improve app quality and iterate faster. So let's say, imagine, dear Upgradian,

you've just finished developing your app and you want to test it. When you distribute it out to people, to your testers, you'll need to deal with a lot of feedback. And a lot of it's probably tedious or difficult to understand, which often doesn't give you enough data. Well, Instabug has super intuitive bug and crash reporting solutions. Their SDK streamlines bug reporting. So when your users find a bug, they can shake their phone. An Instabug will pop up with a screenshot allowing users to draw on it and hit send to you. So they can shake it, takes a screenshot,

like this is wrong, and they can circle it and send it to you. That's all the context you need in a lot of cases. You'll then also get detailed reports on your dashboard with complete device details, network logs, and the visual steps the user has taken so you can reproduce their bug. Doesn't that sound magical? As for crash reports, they're all sent to you automatically along with a complete stack trace so you'll know which line is causing your app to crash. This is all done from your app with zero interruption to user experience.

And Instabug have a great offer right now. You can get a free Instabug t-shirt with their motto, I squash bugs for a living when you sign up and integrate the SDK, which is totally free to integrate. No credit cards required to try it out. So go to instabug.com slash upgrade.

That is instabug.com slash upgrade to try it out and get that cool t-shirt as well our thanks to instabug for their support of this show i like that where it's like well our product is free to try so we'll give them a t-shirt like i like that it's like well we can't give them a code because it's free to try so let's give them a t-shirt so do that instabug.com slash upgrade okay so summer of fun time you thought it had gone away it doesn't go

away it runs all the way through the summer but considering we just spent some time talking about a games console why don't we talk about some of our favorite video games of all time and I can see our list if you want and this is gonna like

almost if you cut into a tree you can see our list. If you want, and this is going to, like almost if you cut into a tree, you can see... Are you saying I'm a tree? Uh-uh, no, because this goes for both of us, I think. For some of mine too. Cut into a tree, you can tell how old the tree is by looking at the rings in the tree. Some of our video game picks here

are like almost the rings in our tree where you can guess our ages a little bit yes from this oh yeah i think totally um so uh should we do this in in almost draft style we'll just go one each until we're through our lists here that's a great idea these are not comprehensive lists but i've tried to pick out kind of as i'm sure you have too, something that shows the breadth of our picks from all ages of consoles, all ages of platforms, and the types of games that we like. And I'm going to start off, which is probably,

I think I'm pretty confident in saying, my favorite video game of all time. And I'm trying to adjust for recency bias, but it still doesn't matter when I do. Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild it's the perfect video game is why I love it so much I don't want to say too much about this right now

because we are going to be discussing the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild on Playing for Fun it's going to be our episode which will be out in like a week or two, so if you don't listen to Playing for Fun, it's a show I do with Tiff Arment where we pick a video game that we both love and we talk about it with just the good stuff.

We don't talk about bad things on the show, we just talk about things that we love about video games. But Breath of the Wild is in the front of my mind right now because of that. I think it was really the perfect storm of game and console. You know, it was the launch game for the Switch, and the Switch gave me the video game console of

my dreams, which was one console, the same games on home and portable, right? Like like it was perfect and legend of zelda being this massive world on this tiny console that i could play on a plane just only added to my overall love of this video game i've played many open world video games i have a couple more open world video games in my list here because i do really like these big worlds where you can go about and make your own game in i really like making my own game inside of a video game. It's one of my favorite things to do in a good video game. And I've never

played a game like this. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild has the most living world of any game I've ever played. You just sometimes feel like you're stumbling into something, which you never really feel with video games. Even

open world games, they always feel like, oh, this is happening. But, you know, I've seen many videos of this, and it's happened to me, where you're fighting a huge monster, and you're kind of backing off, and then it somehow bumps into another big monster, and then you fight each other. Like, what is going on?

It's just an incredible video game. I love breath of the wild that's my yeah my first in my favorite video games of all time i've not ordered the rest of this list by the way yeah i haven't ordered my list at all um so i'm going to start with a great mac game so now i'm channeling my inner inner syracuse um there is probably not a game i've invested more time in than marathon on the mac in the uh in the 90s um this was now for those who don't go that far back this is the game that the bungee guys made before they made halo and it is kind of like halo zero in a way it is it is a first-person shooter with multiplayer as well as a story mode that uh it led them to make halo it's the reason that they made halo the reason they got bought by microsoft um and it is uh i played I think most of the single players through.

I'm not sure if I got to the end of all of them, but I got to the end of some of them. And then this was my multiplayer game of choice. Back in the day with Marathon, it was on a LAN and we would just play at the office, at the Mac user office, especially 95, 96. End of the day, traffic's really bad. Some of us couldn't really even bother going home because the traffic was so bad and we would get on a conference call on speakerphone and that's great. And then play. That's really cool. I like that.

That's a nice memory of a video game. The maps were great. The maps that they made for marathon were great and then there was a third-party map making app and there was a map making community on the internet and we would download these maps and some of most of them were garbage let's be honest but every now and then there'd be one we'd be like oh yeah let's play that again and my favorite one that was like a good palette cleanser was called kill fest you can't run and it was a tiny room full of ammunition and it was just it was chaos it was complete chaos and all we would do is laugh at how ridiculous the game was but some of them were brilliant the the the way they um they built it

the idea was that they were kind of like portals actually a little bit like portal not quite but these kind of like permanent portals so you'd have like different different angles that you could go in when you stepped between a portal. And so there would be kind of like different worlds and you'd have to chase people between different worlds. Really good. And I'll mention as an honorable mention that, that I almost, you know, said Halo one here, which I played all the way through on my Mac. And I played huge amounts of multiplayer on that. And at that point it was on the internet with random strangers for the most part. And those Halo 1 maps, I mean, I have them memorized. I love them. And being on the internet on a server with people you didn't know

back in the day, that was revelatory because now all of a sudden I could play 8 on 8 team Halo because there were always 15 other people who were interested in playing it along with me and those maps were so amazing so that was an experience that I will also never forget so just like a sort of some love

for Bungie right there I'm gonna go with Super Mario Bros 3 it's just an incredible 2D side-scrolling Mario game. It's my favorite of that style of Mario game. It's the one that I have the fondest memories for as a kid. Getting the Tanooki Mario, and then you can swipe at things and fly.

That was my favorite of those Marios before it went into the uh snares the snes did you see recently that that nintendo confirmed that it's actually that it is pronounced nes and not nes anyway they officially confirmed that in some exhibition somewhere nintendo does this every now and then where they're like oh mario's not a plumber anymore or like toad's uh head is a hat or something like they do these they just they they have these like pieces of lore that they randomly confirm anyway so super mario 3 i love it it's an absolute classic um and you i have such fond memories of that one as a kid that's great.

I'm going to really quickly go. I mentioned this not too long ago, I think on this show, because we played this, my son and I played this at the arcade earlier this summer over in Alameda. But my favorite arcade game is Joust, which is where you're riding an ostrich and you're jousting with evil. What are they? Buzzardsards i don't know um and uh just the mechanic of the game where you have to be higher than them and you hit them and then you

knock them off and then you have to pick up the egg that gets dropped because apparently when you kill a rider they turn into an egg and then if you wait too long they hatch back out and get picked up which is super weird as my son pointed out to me, and I never really thought about it. But as a result, you've got a flap, and you can go fast, or you can go slow, and there's a really good physics engine there. And it's simple, but it's also complicated. Things get faster. They start dropping out terrain, so you have to stay in the air longer. I love that game.

It's my favorite arcade game. My favorite iOS game. My favorite iOS game of all time is Threes. It is perfect when it comes to iOS games. I've been playing it for years and years and years and continue to.

If you've never played Threes, you should play Threes. It's wonderful. Yeah, I've played it it's great let me pick an Apple 2 game because part of what I do do you have any Apple 2 games on your list only 4 this is

we're into the inner rings now Mike I played a lot of games on my Apple 2 when I was in high school and my favorite was load runner which again like marathon you could make your own levels most of which were bad but occasionally there would be a really great level and it was it's a puzzle game but it's like an action puzzle game where you have to you're a little guy and you run around and uh it's 2d

and you can climb up ladders uh and you can go across like pits on a vine but basically what you're doing is you're digging and you need to dig holes to either drop your enemies in because if they touch you you die but also to move to other parts of the screen you have to dig you know dig a bunch of holes and drop down into a hole and through into the next part of the screen and as a result usually as the as the mazes get harder the maps get harder uh there are very specific solutions and sequences you need to go in order to get through without dying and um it's a great combination of that you know action action puzzler is a fun genre the idea that you're thinking but you also have to move fast and if you you wait too long, you will, uh, you will not succeed.

And load runner did that. And I, I, um, play that, that great game to play on a keyboard. And I have that on a, on an Apple two emulator and I, I call it up every now and then and play it cause it's still a really great. And I, I think actually it's one of those games that has been remade a bunch of times using high quality graphics. And I'm not interested. I want, I feel like it works like classic arcade games it works at as these little low quality bitmap dudes running around on a screen uh destroying bricks with their little zapper gun or whatever it is i love it uh tony hawk's pro skater i'm gonna go for versions two to four because it's just it's an iterative game really

and after four is where it started to get bad and i loved all of those versions pretty much equally uh i really like the sony hawks games i've always enjoyed them as like a arcadey sport game um i enjoy skateboarding games i like a lot of the music that's in the games uh it's a real shame that the tony hawks franchise has kind of fell apart over the years and is nowhere near where like what it used to be you know tony hawks pro skater 2 specifically is always in people's top like 20 lists for video when you see like the top 20 video games of all time or whatever it's very very frequently in there and now like the most recent games are just absolute garbage so i've always really enjoyed those games though they've

been a lot of fun over the years and i enjoyed growing up just pouring hours and hours and hours into trying to perfect uh the tricks i like the skate games as well that are more a more realistic take on skateboarding but uh tony Tony Hawk always wins out for me. I once found Julian and his friend, speaking of them playing video games together, taking turns at a Tony Hawk game, and they're literally just basically jumping a skateboard off the edge of a building and falling to their death

over and over and over again and just laughing yeah it was hilarious um let me pick an ios game i recently finished alto's odyssey played that all the way through more than adventure you prefer it to adventure yeah the second the second one right yeah yeah i prefer the second one to the original um there's more there's more it's it's it's uh and the the original i never played through to conclusion and this one i played through to conclusion i felt like also some of this is i felt like i was i was really good at this game and a lot of the games i play i feel like i'm terrible at it and i'm not among the top you know 80 of players and alto's odyssey i felt like i'm among the top, you know, 80% of players. And Alto's Odyssey, I felt like I'm among the top 5% of players of this game.

You can stand tall in that game. Yeah, and I got to the end, and I got to the end fairly quickly, I think. And I was really good, and all my friends who were playing it are like, oh my god, what happened? Like, how do you have that score? And I was like, you'll get there, right? Like, you'll figure it out. But it was delightful to play. It was sort of relaxing, but also challenging. And then the way it ended was, was, uh, was beautiful, right? Where you get to the last one. And the last thing I had to do was basically was just ride for a day or ride for two days or

something like that, which is in the game. You see the sunset, you see the sunrise. Right. Um, and I had done the get huge number of points as my next to last challenge. And the last challenge was just ride a long time. And that was great. Cause like at that point, riding a long time is not the issue. Like if you can get the points, you can ride for a long time. You, you dial it back. You don't have to try as hard to get points and you can just ride for a long time. And it led to a really wonderful experience of like a long ride. You dial it back. You don't have to try as hard to get points and you can just ride for a long time. And it led to a really wonderful experience of like a long ride. I get to spend time with this game kind of like one last time, go out, have a really nice run. And then the game is over. And then I closed it and I was like, that was perfect. And I was done. But I loved the whole experience of it. It was beautiful. Sounds great. I love both those games, but i loved the whole experience of it it was beautiful sounds great i love both those

games but odyssey is the one that i i really got to experience as somebody who figured out how to play the game and could play it really well so i mentioned that i loved open world games where you got to make your own game right i mentioned that was all there the game where I learned to do this was Grand Theft Auto Vice City. Vice City is and will probably always be my favorite in the Grand Theft Auto series. I love the setting. I loved the 80s setting. The graphics

and everything was really awesomely colored. It was all pastel and neon. I loved the music in the game. This was the first time that they licensed music for a grand theft auto game and it was incredible they just had loads of really great at songs and they made these great uh radio stations it was one i think i listened to it's called emotion and it was just amazing it had such great songs in it songs that have become some of my favorite songs now like i love that that's the track list that they had um and i would just most of the once i completed the

game i spent probably at least a year continuing to play the game afterwards just driving around and like picking the thing i wanted to go and do and just doing it like making my own objectives driving around for a while seeing a thing exploring a exploring a thing. I really, really love this game. I really hope that one day they actually remake this game. I think it's, of all of the Grand Theft Autos, like the older ones, I feel like it's one that they could really, would be really amazing if they spent the time now to bring it up to modern standards.

So yeah, that's my favorite and one of one of my favorite games of all time very easily is grantham tour device city all right i'm gonna go and again uh feeling a lot of mentions of john syracuse in this episode but he's the one who raved and raved and raved about journey it's the reason that i bought a ps3 um it's great i mean he's right it is a spectacular game it is um it is beautiful to look at the sound design is beautiful the music is beautiful the uh it's easy to play but there are challenges that make that engage your brain it isn't very long but it's wonderful it is one of the only games that is linear that I have replayed because I wanted to have that experience again. I know people do that. I don't

do that. And I did it with Journey a couple of times because it's a very beautiful and sort of special experience. So, you know, he's right. John Syracuse is right. Journey is one of my favorite games of all time. And I will listen to the soundtrack. And not only is the music beautiful, but the music makes me remember the parts of the game where the music played, which is, I think, for me,

it's the only time I've ever done that with a video game soundtrack. It's just a wonderful experience. It really is kind of like the standard bearer for that experience game. Journey is really, really amazing. I'm going to go in the complete opposite direction and pick Uncharted 4. Uncharted is a series, an action series, akin to something like Tomb Raider, but with really incredible cinematic sequences.

Uncharted 4 is like part video game, part action movie. It really is just excellent. I love the story. It has a really great story in it with lots of twists and turns. The graphics are incredible. The acting is incredible. It really takes you along for the ride. It is excellent

if if you have a playstation 4 and you have not played uncharted 4 do yourself this the kindness of buying and playing that game it is wonderful it's really really good all right i am going to go to uh the play 1, the second video game console that I ever had, the first being the original Atari 2600. And, you know, I'm a sports fan. I like sports. I generally don't like video games. And so the goal, the drive in most sports video games is, you know, simulation. As close to reality as possible. Not interested. Not interested in arcade simulation where you got to kick a soccer ball around it or you got to swing the bat and judge the fastball or the softball or whatever it is. Forget about that.

Instead, the game that it turns out, the sports game that I love the most as an arcade game is NFL Blitz 2000. So there's your date. A completely unrealistic football game where you could choose plays and you could hit people and you could hit people after they were down and nobody cared and the referees didn't flag you. And it was just, it's arcade football. And so it bore no resemblance to regular football but so much fun to play against a friend especially um and i did that a lot which is a game that i've played which is similar like it is a basketball game but it is not a basketball simulation game they have those games nba that's right this is not that yeah this is not a basketball simulation game. They have those games. NBA Jam is not that. This is not that. This is just a ridiculous, fun... Yes, that is exactly the idea.

So NFL Blitz 2000. 2000. For the PS1, yeah. I'm going to pick Stardew Valley next. Oh, man, Stardew Valley. What a just... Just a wonderful game. I love Stardew Valley. What a just, just a wonderful game. I love Stardew Valley so much.

It is a farming slash relationship-y simulator. It's like a cross between Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. Stardew Valley will take from you every minute you want to give it. And then some more. It's just absolutely enthralling. love it um i'm gonna make enough we are talking about video games so i'll make another plug for a video game related thing that i do um playing for fun which is the show that i mentioned earlier where we're talking about zelda next we have a twitch uh stream that we do we have a Twitch channel. And right now we are streaming the multiplayer

update of Playing for Fun. So me and Tiff are playing Stardew Valley together. If that interests you, we have some videos you can go and watch there and you can follow so you'll be notified next time we play. Stardew Valley, man. It is just like... It's a lifestyle.

That thing will just get into your bones and like you all you want to do is play study valley it's just superb i love it so much all right i'm going to go with um what i just said about sports games is how i don't want them arcade games i don't want them to be realistic like Madden. I bought many different versions of Madden football. I bought baseball games. It just doesn't work for me once it gets to be like the simulation. Look, I was bad at sports, right? So it's like, do you have the reflexes to hit a baseball? No, I don't. Stop reminding me, right? So NFL Blitz was great because it was super unrealistic. stop reminding me, right? So NFL Blitz was great because it was super unrealistic.

My favorite baseball game of all time was the Apple II game called SSI Computer Baseball, which was, you were just the manager and you could input teams, you could input players, you could save the teams out on disks, you could play them against each other. And it was a statistical simulation. The graphics were incredibly rudimentary, even for the Apple II, if I'm being honest. But you could pinch hit, and you'd set your lineups, and you could bunt, and you could set your defense, and you could do all those things. And then the players would execute on the field, kind of connected to statistics. And then the updated version of this, which I've also played a lot, although not recently, is called Diamond Mind, which is a Windows app that is the modern equivalent of this where it's like ultra simulated and you can buy season discs that have like every team that played

in a particular season and you can have them play against each other or you can like draft your own teams and make your own league which a friend of mine and i did and that was a lot of fun too so baseball simulation stuff nerdy stuff uh don't make me hit the fastball because i can't hit it all right let's make our last picks uh i'm gonna write portal portal is just one of the greatest puzzle games ever made one of the greatest games ever and i can't believe i didn't put on my list it is incredible it's like it's just such a great puzzle game. And born in such an interesting way is just part of a three-in-one pack that Valve put out.

And you have a gun that can shoot portals and you have to traverse through the environment. You have to get from the beginning to the end of a room. And everything that entails with shooting a portal here and then shooting one over there and trying to find your way from point a to point b it really is just a mind-bending wonderful experience like i love portal so much and i'm going to conclude with an absolutely ridiculous choice which is which is superman for the atari 2600 now if you look at this game you'll be like what there's like a blob and then there's some other blobs it's like okay oh no it was the atari

2600 it looked really bad but what it was is you're superman and you got to fly around and you got to save various people and you got to stop lex luthor and i don't remember all the details but it was like a whole series of things you did and you didn't even get a score. It was a time. If you got to the end, the whole idea was that you could, what was your time? And the reason I pick it, not because it's a good game, not because I have played it since 1981, because I'm certain I haven't. It's because it was the first video game I ever mastered. I could win Superman in a minute five or something like that, which again, I'm confident that I was one of the best players of this game in the world. Maybe top 5%, top 10%. I'm not saying

I was the best. I'm sure somebody out there was like, oh yeah, but you can win Superman in 58 seconds. But it was the game where once I figured out how you beat it, I, and this is super rare for me. I know people do this, but completely rare for me. I kept replaying it and shaving off time and figuring out you could just do this and this and this and this and this and this and be done. And so it was the very first video game

that I felt like I mastered. And again, once I got to that minute or whatever, I just, I never played it again. But my friend Greg, when he was, when he found all his Atari cartridges in his attic and was getting rid of all of them, he had heard me talk about this game and he, he sent me the cartridge. So I have the cartridge just not, not to play it, it just amuses me every time I see it. I'm like, oh yeah, Superman on the Atari 2600. I was really good at that. And it fills me full of warm feelings.

And I had to pick an Atari 2600 game because that was how I started playing video games. That was the one where I had to convince my parents it wasn't going to break the TV to hook up a video game console to a television. And that was my entry into the world of video games. Just do some cursory Googling and you seem to be very good. Like I think the fastest speed run that I can see was 51 seconds. Yeah. See, that's exactly right. So I was in the minute, minute five kind of range.

And it looks like, yeah, that's, I mean, I will tell you, I optimized. I'm fairly confident that you could not get it done it's like those those famous speed run things where they're like this is actually impossible this score you're claiming it's you can't be done on the original hardware well it was a little bit like that like i knew where every single thing was and i couldn't you know and that was that was really cool as a kid especially like uh i feel this way about why do kids dive deep into lots of stuff that are their area of expertise? One reason kids do that is because the world is big and strange and complicated and they can't understand it. But they can become really good at something.

And it gives you a good feeling. And so for that brief moment in time, I was the master of Superman for the Atari 2600. I hope you have enjoyed hearing about our favorite video games. We should do some hashtag AskUpgrade before we wrap up today. This is still the summer of fun here on Upgrade. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace. You can make your next move with Squarespace. They will let you easily create the website that you want to make

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And our first question today, thank you, comes from Elle. Elle says, I know it's ill-advised to log on to your bank whilst using public Wi-Fi, just to be careful when using public Wi-Fi because you never know what people might be looking at. Does opening an application via Face ID make it inherently any more secure? No. I'm sorry to say that but face id face id is just unlocking the saved password on your app and then the app is doing its usual thing i will say i would doubt that any banking app is not doing everything encrypted and if you're doing everything encrypted then you should be okay so i would i would say i

don't think face id makes a difference there though because face id what it's really just doing is instead of having you put in your password or do touch id i mean it basically is saying okay we will make it easier for you to enter your password or will save your password, but only if it's got extra levels because they don't want any random person opening your phone and logging into your banking app. So Face ID has sort of allowed people to have more confidence. But in the end, Face ID is just unlocking a saved password in the app. Yeah. I mean, you should always exercise caution when you're using public wi-fi you know if this kind of thing is a concern to you but yeah as jason says it's whilst face id

is potentially more secure than a just typing in a pin code it doesn't inherently protect the information or what's being sent over wi-fi any more than anything else does but it is a good question um and it kind of along the same kind of lines, our next question comes from Robin. And Robin says, in light of Apple's privacy efforts, could you see the possibility of Apple launching

its own integrated VPN service? Feels like it would go a long way with privacy and ads and bad practices by applications, if possible, on that scale. Can you imagine a world in which Apple may create a VPN? No, I can't. The overhead required would seem enormous, especially at the scale that

Apple operates. And VPNs can be, you know, they're useful, but they're also, like, But they're also, like, the experience is not great. Like, am I on? Am I not on? There are slowdowns when you're on a VPN. I just, I don't see it. Yeah, it's like, I can see how you would get there because it feels like something that fits a lot of what Apple would like to do, you know,

privacy and stuff by helping you protect your internet traffic. But the pure scale required to take care of something like that, when they would probably want to enable it by default, right? Because that's kind of their idea. It would just be too much. I don't think anybody could do it at that type of scale. It just feels like too much um

parker says i use a home kit button to set off different scenes around nighttime when going to bed do you know if there will be a way to set off siri shortcuts in a similar way using a button i don't think that's going to be possible right yeah i think the impression yeah yeah i mean the series shortcut home kit support is um is questionable already but sort of like set off a shortcut tied to a button i can't yeah i don't think that's it's not it's not completely impossible but i think your phone would have to be included somewhere along the way. You might be able to press a button that then gives you a notification to open your phone, but I can't imagine...

Well, definitely not in this first version can they run without some kind of interface with a device. It is a nice idea. I would love it, but I don't see it in the future. Yeah, and I don't think the HomeKit, because the home app on mojave is going to be one of these new kind of apps it's not scriptable in any real way because what i was going to say is you could probably there's probably some button that you could use that was attached you know linked wirelessly or something with your mac and that when you press the button it runs a script on the Mac that clicks the right thing in the home app,

but it would be super janky. And I just don't think that's, I just don't think that's going to, or I mean, home kit aside, like running a Siri shortcut on iOS, it's just like by hardware. I just don't,

it's not a thing. Lex asks, okay, your choice camera bump on the back of your phone or notch on the front of your phone, which do you dislike more and would rather have gone from the next iPhone? You can choose. You either have a phone with no camera bump, but it has a notch or you keep the camera bump and remove the notch. Oh, wow. Um, well, it depends on how pretend we want to be here because the fact is that i don't love the camera bump but the camera bump is what gives us better pictures and i wouldn't want to have a

camera that wasn't as good let's for the fun of this for the fun of this let's assume that the there is absolutely no change so the camera still gets better or you know the face id still gets better or whatever so my next question would be is the iphone 10 that is going to come out still so so slippery that i'm more likely going to put a case on it because the thing is the case eliminates the camera bump the leather case there's no camera bump and so if i'm still going to have it in the leather case i don't feel the camera bump i don't worry about it and then i would go with the notch but even though the notch doesn't bother me but all things being equal i would say i would um

neither of them bother bother me immensely um i would probably choose the notch but i neither to keep or to get rid of to get rid of okay just because it would be more beautiful I'd probably choose the notch, but neither of them bothers me. To keep or to get rid of? To get rid of. Okay. Just because it would be more beautiful without it, but I could go either way. So my initial feeling was keep the notch, get rid of the camera bump, because I have no problem with the notch,

but I wish the camera bump wasn't there because it makes the phone uneven. But then I remembered that I use a case, so it doesn't make a difference. And I'm probably always going I use a case so it doesn't make a difference. And I'm probably always going to use a case on my iPhone because I want to protect it in case I drop it. So then yes, get rid of the notch because then I get more screen and I get a benefit from it. So I think we're both in agreement.

Whilst I have absolutely no problem, I actually quite like the way the phone looks with the notch. I would get rid of it because the camera bump doesn't ever cause me a problem in my day-to-day life because I'm a case person. Finally today, Brandon asks,

do you think that this will be the year that the higher tier iPhones will have some kind of Apple Pencil support? If the iPhones, the bigger models are, like the rumors say, and they're going to be up to like 6.5 inches with what could be the iPhone 10 Plus in screen size, the bigger models are, like the rumors say, and they're going to be up to like 6.5 inches with

what could be the iPhone 10 plus in screen size, then that would definitely be fantastic as a differentiator. So I always think it's possible. I think it's possible that you could see it on the bigger phones. There is an interesting thing to me where if they were going to do this, what phones would they put it on? Because if you put it on like the successors to the iPhone X, then you end up with the iPhone X successor and the iPhone X Plus.

But then the LCD screen is supposedly bigger than the iPhone X screen. And wouldn't it make more sense to put Apple Pencil support on the bigger iPhones? So I feel like you would only put it on the biggest one or you wouldn't do it at all, which is weird for me to think about.

But then I also, one of the reasons I picked this question is purely because I just wanted to mention the Galaxy Note 9, which we mentioned earlier was was unveiled last week and they did a bunch of really interesting things with the with the s pen so the galaxy note 9 is the one that comes with a stylus which is embedded into the phone so it pops out but this is the first time that they've added kind of smarts to it and now has bluetooth so here are a few things you can do with the note 9 stylus, the S Pen. You can click on the button that it has to play or pause music.

You can take a photo with it on the selfie camera. So you can take a photo and then also switch to the selfie camera and then use the button as like a kind of a remote. You can change slides in a presentation. You can start and stop the recorder app. You can cycle through photos in the gallery. You can use it to play and press music with bluetooth headphones or whatever I don't know why you do that exact one but they also have allowed for developers to use

the buttons that are on there to create functions in their own applications so there are a lot of functions that this thing gets i like the selfie camera one where you could hold the phone really far like far away from you and then click with the s pen to take pictures so they're doing a lot of interesting stuff with it um and i hope that if apple ever were to make something for the iphone that it would have some more interesting function to it so yeah i just wanted to mention that i think it's cool and i actually wrote a thing on tom's guide which we can put in the show notes about

um about sort of jumping off from the galaxy note and thinking about the next iphone especially this iphone 10 plus idea and i do think it's a possibility like you do that um on something like an iphone 10 plus a fancy high-end even bigger iphone 10 that doing apple pencil support on that might be a possibility they would need to make a new pencil because the apple pencil is huge but like if you've got a huge phone having the ability to use something like the pencil or like the crayon from Logitech, like something like that on those devices, maybe like, why not? It's sort of my feeling is like, if somebody wants to write on their, on their big iPhone or draw or whatever, why not let them? Um, it's going to be an add on. They're not going to like, I think embed a pencil in the iphone or anything like that but uh i think it will happen eventually that they'll do that and maybe that would be one of the differentiators of

the iphone 10 plus would be um would be pencil support in some form i would love it it would be great uh just out of interest do you know who the tom is tom's guide is there a tom i think there was a tom who did tom's hardware a long time ago and uh now they've just the brand tom and it's a brand yes tom there is a tom thomas papst was the founder in 1996 of tom's hardware so there was a tom thanks tom at one time thanks tom if you'd like to find our show notes for this week's episode, go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 206. And if you go to that site, if you go to that page, you can find our links there to become a RelayFM member and support this show. And don't forget, we're going to play our Space Station trailer for you so you can get an idea as to what the upgrade slash Cortex member special is going to sound like. So you can know what you're

going to get before you buy. Trust me though, you will enjoy it. It is as fun as they always are, if not more so. You can find Jason online at sixcolors.com and he is at jsnell on Twitter. I am at imyke. Thanks again to

Squarespace, Instabug, and Backblaze for their support of this week's episode. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody. Gray, Mike, welcome to Space Station. You wake up inside the cramped confines

of a cryosleep capsule. You're still in your service uniform and have a world-class headache. A hypo-injector rests on a countertop, just within reach. Okay, let's inject ourselves straight in the heart with the injector. Let's not be very specific

about where it's going to go. Let's just let the Snellatron decide where that ends up being. Okay. There is one thing we haven't checked. Are we human? Do we know this? We don't know this. Yeah.

You could examine yourself if you want. Yeah, examine ourselves. You are wearing the Regulation Green Technician's Uniform, marking you as a member of the Planetary Action Research Science Exploration Corps, or PARSEC. And yes, you are a human being. You figured that out when you injected yourself with the hypo-injector. We only know what we think we know. Now you know your uniform is green. There is a robot here.

Look at robot. You see a dog-sized robot designed to perform repetitive or dangerous tasks. A dog-sized robot designed to perform repetitive or dangerous tasks. The name Froz, F-R-O-Z, is laser etched into its skin. Say hello, Froz. Froz beeps and flashes its lights and twitches its mechanical arms. It's adorable. I knew it would be.

Mike, I've got four words for you. Never give up. Never surrender. Okay. Oh, Snallotron, how many save slots do we have? You have three save slots, as always. Mike, don't you dare. We've done nothing.

Nothing has happened. I agree with Gray in this case. You've literally just wandered around and learned things. I just wanted to know. All right. Jeez. You can see the mysterious death world. Whoa. Some kind of alien warship is positioned

nearby. Is there anything else in the room? Oh, I'm sorry. Does the view of the death world, is that not enough for you, Mike? Yeah, but I can't do anything with that. Mike, what I lack in knowledge, I make up for with confidence. thing with that mike what i lack in knowledge i make up for with confidence incoming message unknown language please input language to translate input freleon it translates

the message attention humans surrender space station or be destroyed with gravity cannon i'm very nervous about this game Right Because it all seems pretty simple The Freleon warship attacks the space station With a gun that fires black holes The end You have died Can we press the launch button on the escape pod With the mop

No you can't