Upgrade - 224: A Bearded Man Is The Hero

Episode Date: December 17, 2018

This week we try to understand Apple's plans to build a "Netflix for magazines" inside of Apple News, Jason confesses his love for the new Apple Pencil, and we celebrate the season with a special Myke at the Movies about "Miracle on 34th Street".

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 224 today's show is brought to you by squarespace pingdom lunar display and green chef my name is mike hurley and i am joined by my partner in crime mr jason snell you're not supposed to talk about the crime, Mike. I told we had a conversation about this. My partner in doing good, Mr. Jason Snell. That's right. Yes, that's from my garage. It's me.

Hi. Our hashtag Snell Talk question comes from Brent this week. And Brent wants to know, when your Apple Pencil is on the top of your iPad to charge, which way does the tip point? Is this a trick question? I have no answer to this because I don't care. Okay, well, I do. I guess I'm that kind of person. So if I have it in landscape as it would be,

like home button that doesn't exist on the right camera on the left. The Apple Pencil, the tip is always pointing towards the camera. So from my perspective, it's pointing to the left. Okay. So away from the USB-C port towards the camera. That's my preference. Don't ask me why. I don't know why the camera that's my that's my preference don't ask me why i don't know why but that's just the way it must be yeah i don't i don't care that's my that's my answer i would say everybody it is probably better to not care about these types

of things but i do so yeah well you can't change yourself if you if you do care then you care and you're one of those kinds of people and i am not i also am only you know i'm only leaving it there well we'll talk about my apple pencil habits we will actually i don't have it there all the time but i do have it there some of the time there was a reason last time i picked this question and it was talking about the apple pencil later on in the show if you would like to send in a question like brent did just send in a tweet with the hashtag snail talk and it may be used to open a future episode of upgrade we start today with some follow-up um apple music is slowly rolling out in the u.s

on the amazon echo right now it is u.s only there is absolutely nothing to confirm or deny if and how long this is going to be the case, that it will be US only. But it is. You can indeed, as we had hoped, set Apple Music as your default music provider for the Echo. Yes, you can. It actually tells you when you add the skill, because I did this, when you add the skill, as I did on Friday, it says, great. you add the skill as i did on friday it says great now if you want to uh make this the default you can go to settings and do that and i think there's even a button that takes you there in the app um in the amazon app uh to control the lady the lady in the canister app um and uh then you go there and you say yeah this is my

music service and then that's it when you say hey lady play this playlist or play this song it says okay i'm playing that song from apple music and that's it from there it kind of does everything that you'd expect it to do it it ticks all the boxes um it also has some flaws which you would expect um this is coming from a an article great article nine to five mac it doesn't seem that right now it will support iCloud music library songs meaning that these are stuff you upload yourself the old iTunes match stuff so if you upload something to your iCloud music library that doesn't exist in Apple music you can't play it it has to be in Apple music it seems like it's only looking it's not looking at your personal library necessarily this sounds like um just what is on apple music yeah but

because this is integrated into the echo as a default music provider it can actually do some things that the home pod cannot like for example you can set an apple music playlist or a station as an alarm so like you can set alarms, like morning alarms on the Amazon Echo, and it can be music, and you can choose music from Apple Music, which is not something you can do on any iOS device or on a HomePod. So I guess it's kind of fun. It is, as was feared, we had somebody ask about this last week, it is currently limited to amazon echo speakers

only so this is not for uh i'm just gonna say it this is not for alexa devices it has to be for echo devices so the sonos stuff it's not going to work there for now and who knows how long it honestly this feels like this is not something that is in Sonos's hands. How frustrating is that to have a device that does Alexa and also does Apple Music and they don't work together? Yeah, that's why it makes it worse. I would more understand it if it was like all of the other products that exist. But the Sonos... I get the complexity of it in the sense that Sonos is already paired with Apple Music.

And this is through whatever the Alexa part of it is. And how do you reconcile those? Or can you? Is it impossible? I get it, but it's super frustrating. And yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep. Also, I should say the Echo has multi-speaker support now. So if you have multiple Echos, I believe you can do the thing where you say play this on the other one or play this everywhere and it will work with Apple Music, which is great. But what it won't do is

also play on a HomePod or some other AirPlay 2 device because it's not supporting AirPlay 2. It's just supporting playing Apple Music in the Alexa ecosystem. Yep. Which, you know, if you want to... This is probably the most cost-effective way right now to

get multiple speakers playing Apple music in your home because, because Amazon have such a variety of devices, including that like $35 one that you just plug into speakers. Yeah. I was going to say, if you've got a, if you've got some, uh, a receiver with an input or a set of powered speakers and you can get an Echo Dot and just plug it into there, even if you only use that remotely and say from your main Echo, play this on my speakers or something, that will work. And that's interesting. Like you're basically, yeah, you've got Amazon music access like you had or allomusic access on these devices, the Echoes, like you had with Spotify. And so if you've already invested in those and you also are an Apple music person, it's like, okay, great. Now they're way more useful than they were. Or if you're like me, you can drop your, you know, Amazon music device supplementary subscription that you got just so you could play music on the echo because now if you're already an apple music customer you can you can just use that there instead so that's good yeah so this is this is cool like it's interesting to

see um you can correct me if i'm wrong but there was nothing from apple no press release but is it is officially today right is supposed to be the day that they said it was coming but they seem to be rolling it out a bit sooner so maybe we'll see maybe we'll see something maybe or maybe your uh conspiracy theory from connected will be right and they'll just pretend that it never happened yeah i'm gonna keep my eye on the apple music um the page on apple.com and see if they add anything there because if they add it that's that's probably where it should go because they have little like icons and stuff to denote that you can uh that you can listen on android devices and sonos devices so in theory they should add uh the amazon echo

selection of products there so we'll see we'll see upgradees voting is still open until December 24th. I can confirm as was prophesied on the last episode this is now the most nominated slash voted for Upgradees of all time it has eclipsed last year so there's lots and lots of wonderful suggestions coming in and if you're looking

for some inspiration for your votes the folk over at max stories today just introduced max story selects which is their awards um which is really cool to see so federico and john and ryan got together and they voted on what their favorite apps of the year are very helpful for me jason because the apps of the year stuff is always the ones that i really struggle with so i know i'm pleased to see that the Max Stories crew are kind of giving me some inspiration

for what could be voted on. But it's really cool. They have beautiful little rosettes in a beautiful Federico style. I'm excited also. Wall Street has reacted positively to the news of the upgrade. It's showing year-over-year growth.

So that's good to know. We're moving into services, though. Oh, boy. Let're moving into services though. Oh boy. Let's talk some upstream news. We have a couple of pieces of Apple related signings I guess. Apple has acquired JJ Abrams produced drama series

starring Jennifer Garner. It is called My Glory Was I Had Such Friends and it's a limited series that's based on a memoir of the same name. This is now the second Abrams produced drama series coming to Apple's TV service. And they also have picked up peanuts. So they've done a deal to get the rights to produce content starring Charles

M. Schultz's roster of characters for the uninitiated. This is like Snoopy and Charlie Brown. So this may include new series some shorts or maybe even kind of like feature-length specials um and is focused on stem so science technology so science technology something engineering and mathematics yeah that's the one so it's two it's two deals so so i mean it's one overarching deal one of the things they announce is they're going to do short form stem educational content and they and they're also going to do specials or shows or whatever else.

There's all sorts of other stuff that they'll probably do. But I thought it was an interesting, very specific thing that they're very specifically going to make educational content featuring Snoopy that is about STEM topics. So, you know, the fact is this is a lot like the Sesame Street deal with HBO, where Sesame Street episodes premiere on HBO now. And that was a way for Sesame Workshop to get more funding because they were not essentially not funded well enough by PBS. And the shows end up on PBS eventually, but they start on HBO. And I think it's interesting in the sense that this is we get so focused on, as you mentioned, the Jennifer Garner,arner jj abrams thing uh reunion of alias people who that was one of my favorite shows alias uh which was jj abrams producing jennifer garner um this is the other part of that right it's not just prestige dramas and and uh high you know star

power and star producers and all of that the other part of this kind of battle for streaming supremacy is children's content. This is another front in that war, which is, I think everybody knows that one way you get parents to subscribe to something is that there's stuff for their kids on it, and that you can't just do adult. Well, you can, but it's an extra benefit to your service to have kids programming on board, especially if you're somebody like Apple who is trying to focus on family content. That is an important thing for them to do. And of course, hovering in the background, it's coming next year.

Everybody knows it. It's a streaming service with the Disney brand. And if the Disney brand means anything, it means family friendly content and kid content. So they got to be there. And that's what Apple is doing with this deal. One of mine and your favorite shows on Netflix recently, one of their originals, has just been renewed for a second season. And that is David Letterman's show, his interview show. So they're going to be doing another six episodes in 2019.

Yeah, I wonder, you know, they only announced this now. It's kind of funny because those episodes played out into the summer. I'm a little surprised. I don't know whether this is Netflix considering what they want to do or whether it was Letterman considering, you know, how he wanted to do it or if they gave him the nod six months ago and he's been working on this, but they've only announced it now. I'm unclear on what exactly took them so long here. Netflix has had, we don't go into a lot of the details here, but Netflix has definitely had ups and downs with talk show content where they're trying to do,

it's one of those things of like, how you do something um that is sort of timely but also bingeable and has a weekly release schedule maybe instead of being a uh a binge drop of a whole season and they've tried a bunch of different things uh they they michelle wolf had a show joe joel mckale had a show that i really liked actually um they killed those shows they gave hasan minaj has a deal the former former Daily Show correspondent, for his show Patriot Act, which is very good. It is basically like John Oliver's show, except no desk. He just stands in front of a screen. But it's a very similar kind of topical comedy slash information show. And they gave him like a 30 week deal. And that show runs weekly. So they're Netflix, you know, Netflix wants,

and I think believes that there's something to it to have these kinds of shows that can extend, that can be timely. I think they're looking at HBO and HBO having success with this and looking at yeah, comedy central and stuff like that and saying, can we do something as part of our portfolio that can fulfill this desire from people to have this kind of talk show or or otherwise kind of conversational and topical stuff I'm not sure they've cracked it

yet but they're trying a bunch of different stuff and bringing Letterman back I mean this is not gonna this is a monthly thing again like it was last year it's six episodes presumably dropped once a month but um it's still really interesting to watch how netflix struggles with this because like hassan minaj i read an interview with him where he said you know their challenge is they want to be topical but they they also want to be uh for it to be kind of evergreen so that if you don't watch and then you want to watch five or six of them in a row, that they don't feel outdated. You can go back and watch six of them and not feel like,

why would you watch a news show from three weeks ago? They want them to be replayable. And that's a challenge with Netflix, where it's like people have expectations of Netflix that don't necessarily work with traditional views of providing topical content. So it's a fascinating thing to watch Netflix, which has done so well in so many areas. And this is an area where they just haven't figured it out yet. Yeah, they put clips of Patriot Act, which is a show on YouTube, which I think is one of the things that Netflix has been missing. Yeah, and HBO does that with John Oliver. Yeah, they all do it. They all do it it like i was watching some uh people were sharing some saturday night

live clips this morning sure sure totally right like it's part of the strategy it's a little different if you're a premium streaming service or like hbo right i always thought it was like and i think that's why that they've always kind of not wanted to do it maybe netflix right but like this is how i think you get people to watch these shows is they need to see those little clips first because that's what the late night talk show is now. It's a bunch of attempts at going viral. That's what they are. And finally, Warner Media have hired Kevin Reilly

to run their streaming service. Reilly has been a chief creative officer at Turner and was previously the programmer for Fox and NBC. So you told me this is a big deal. Yeah, this is a big deal. And I know it's insider baseball in the sense that it is just a name of a guy who's a suit, a corporate suit kind of thing. But here's the thing with Kevin Reilly. He's a highly respected programmer. He was the programmer at the Fox broadcast network. And this means someone who sets the television schedule, right? Not someone sitting their code in the back end.

No, he's... Yeah, that's true. Sorry. This is the upstream segment. Upstream programmers are different from the rest of the programmers we talk about on this show. Sorry, they're software engineers, Mike. Dr. Drang has exploded somewhere. So the Fox TV network and the NBC TV network, he was the guy who was in charge of what shows do we make?

What gets the green light? What doesn't? What shows do we cancel? He is very well respected. He is generally thought of as having a very good taste, very successful as a programmer. Recently, he's been doing the programming at TBS and TNT, which are Turner, which is, of course, owned by Warner Media now. And so I think this is an amazing, great move. I think that one of the challenges that all of these services have is you've got to have good programmers, you've got to have good content people. And the New York

Times did a big profile over the weekend of the person who's in charge of the movies at Netflix. And once again, that stat that you and I, I think, have talked about before that Netflix plans on releasing something like 60 movies in a year, which yes, means that they're releasing more than one movie a week. That's an original Netflix feature film, which is baffling. It's mind-boggling. But these people matter because these are the people who are making those decisions. They're shaping what the network or service looks like. And if they have good instincts and good taste and good relationships, they can produce an overall product, which is what you want. If you're trying to convince somebody to subscribe to your service, that can be really successful. And you see this with some of the other people.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with John Landgraf, who is the at the fx networks which are going to be brought inside of disney next year is landgraf going to be put in charge of hulu maybe or something like that we'll we'll see but uh riley anyway uh generally uh well thought of guy and warner it's telling i think for warner media to say yeah he's the guy like it's all going to go to him. We're not going to have all these different fiefdoms inside of Warner. We're going to have Riley in charge of the content for Warner's streaming service. And that's, I think, smart for them. So it's a background hire kind of thing or promotion, really.

But I think that's the kind of person you want in a job like that so the end of today's episode is going to be a mic at the movie segment and we're going to be talking about the christmas classic miracle on 34th street so we've got that at the end of the episode and whilst we're talking about holiday classics um next week's episode of upgrade is going to be the holiday special and it is very special and very holiday yes it is it is we've got it uh in the works uh i it is a special format but it it leads it is not a departure in the sense of it being uh not about apple and tech but it is a departure in format a little bit. There will be special guests, as there were last year, I believe.

Should we say how many special guests there will be? I think saying how many might give away what we're doing. So we'll just say it is a classic format. Very classic. A very classic number of guests to have and a classic number of guests yes the best today's episode is brought to you in part by luna display luna display is the hardware solution that turns your ipad into a wireless display for your mac so you'll have super a super portable second display with stunning image quality and basically zero lag.

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all up and now I just have this Mac mini just sitting here no display attached to it and whenever i want to jump on it i just open the luna display app on my ipad and i can sit and just use it like it's a mac i cannot believe how well this thing works like yeah it's it's i've been using um remote desktop software software to connect to my Mac Mini for a very long time. The difference is because it's using the hardware acceleration and all the other kind of like magic stuff because the Luna display has its little module that you plug into it that poses as a monitor. You end up with much higher quality and more responsive screen sharing in your house than, and just on my wifi,

I don't need to be tethered or anything like that. It's pretty great. Like the, the initial concept of this thing was that you, you could use it as a second monitor. And actually it, if you want a second monitor and you've got a, a beautiful iPad with a retina display,

just sitting there, you could do that too. But as a screen sharing resource to have a mac somewhere in your house and then just have an ipad and and be able to control it natively it's pretty great and so i i'm doing that now too in the house i still have my screen sharing software for out of the house or from my mac but when i'm on my ipad in the house with the keyboard it's just yeah i i can turn it into a mac and it feels like a mac for keyboard apple pencil like that is perfect the apple pencil is so good right because the touch targets can be small the apple pencil does it perfectly yeah i think it's fantastic i'm so so happy with it and

listeners of this show can get an exclusive 10 discount on the luna display just head over to lunadisplay.com that is l-u-n--A D-I-S-P-L-A-Y dot com. Enter the promo code UPGRADE at checkout and you'll get that 10% off. That is LunarDisplay.com promo code UPGRADE at checkout. Our thanks to Lunar Display for their support of this show and all of RelayFM.

Jason Snell, should we talk about magazines? Oh boy! People love magazines! I feel like with a topic like this, there is literally nobody better placed to discuss magazines and Apple together. So we have a report from Jerry Smith at Bloomberg. Apple is planning to put its purchase

of the magazine subscription service Texture, which it picked up in March of this year to good use, as they are preparing to launch a new service that has unlimited access to over 200 magazines and publications, possibly

for $5 a month. Did somebody say services revenue? Who said services revenue? This is a, you know, this is we don't talk about it so much, but the texture purchase is absolutely another attempt for Apple to build another part of their

services business, right? They want to create... I'd completely forgotten about it, to be honest. Yeah, so, I mean, it's still operating is the funny thing, and they have kind of cut it to this $5 a month. Whether they keep it there or not, I don't know. Clearly the plan here is, Apple wants to create a way where you can inside of apple news opt to pay for a service for like five bucks or whatever a month again recurring revenue more money to the bottom line of that services line it's great uh and what you get out of it is

access uh access to paywalled content, of a bunch of different publications. And we talk about it being magazines. I think what this story suggests is they're trying very much to get away from the idea of like a print magazine replica and more into basically just content feeds that go into Apple News so that you spend $5 on this and all of the content from all of these different magazines and websites is just available to you to read without hitting a paywall. And when I think about this, and this may not be what they're doing, but when I think about this, I think about this as a way for Apple to say, we made deals with a whole bunch of places

that you get frustrated because you try to read their stuff and you hit a paywall. But if you pay us $5 a month and subscribe to them in Apple News, you'll never hit a paywall. You can read anything you like in any of these different places. And it's an interesting idea. I think one of the big questions is, does it make sense? Would the money that would go to the publications be enough to keep them running? And I think the answer is probably no, but it might be a good supplemental source. And that's how, when I think about this,

that's what I end up coming back to is, it feels like the right business model here is there are like the premium websites that want, they want to sell to you direct. They want you to subscribe direct. And I think the more Apple can do to make it easy to subscribe to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, whatever, from inside Apple News, but the money goes back to them, the better. But if they can offer an all-you-can-eat kind of subscription

that unlocks the content in sites that you're not necessarily as focused on. You're not the, you know, the one that always gets me is I click on a link and I go to a site somewhere and it's like a local newspaper site in Phoenix. And they're like, you can't read this story because we want you to subscribe. And I think I'm never going to subscribe

to a newspaper from Phoenix. So I guess I'll just close the window. Is there an opportunity there for that newspaper in Phoenix to get a little bit of money from my reading of their article as a part of the $5 a month or whatever Apple service? Some percentage of that goes to them because I read their article and it's better than what they got from me, which was zero because I was not interested in reading or subscribing. I hit their paywall and I just left.

So I don't know. I mean, this is the challenges. The economics are problematic if you've got literally like every magazine, every magazine brand and other website brands, because I think newspapers need to be involved in this too,

in a content unlocking system because they're sharing that money based on how many people are reading them. I don't know. It's a tough one. I'm pretty skeptical about it, but it's possible it could work, but they're going to have to get it right. And I'm concerned that the all you can read thing just is never going to be able to support any of these news organizations. But it would be nice. As a reader of stuff on the internet, it might motivate me to use Apple News more if I knew that I would be less likely to hit a paywall and an annoying, you know, blocking thing, and that I was supporting the sites that I was reading. But I don't know. I think talking about this in the context of magazines is actually a bad thing because what they're trying to do here is

lead these magazines to be more sort of Apple News native with their content. So Apple's not going to... I would be very surprised if Apple embraced the idea that they're going to put like page replicas up somewhere from a magazine that is in print. Why don't we just go back to those wonderful digital interactive magazines? So the problem is we don't have another word to call this. Like if you read a story on The Atlantic or The New Yorker, I mean, those are magazines, but you wouldn't call them newspapers. They are websites, content websites. And that's really what I think is going on here is that they're, you know,

what do you do with a lot of these long form content websites, some of which also do some news that are struggling because they used to be magazines and they maybe still have a magazine component. How do you get more revenue to them? And the truth is,

people aren't going to subscribe to more than a handful, but this Apple subscription service might be able to give you access to a bunch of them all in one go that's uh it's kind of interesting so it seems like the current plan would be that this is going to be an add-on feature inside of apple news and as you say what what it probably means is like there'll be some mechanism to get your paywalled web content, which is technically the magazine content, right? A lot of it is actually the same stuff, right? If you do actually a company that has a magazine or you're a company like Bloomberg.

I wonder if Bloomberg, I wonder if this is where Bloomberg found this out. But anyway, you know, like that you could offer this stuff this stuff right from your paywalls through apple news and everybody gets a cut of an amount of money uh apparently this could launch as soon as spring this is before wwc which makes me think along with the tv service they maybe do a big like content event i would you do would you allow even a little bit of the spotlight for your TV service to fall on magazines instead? I wouldn't.

If they're going to bundle it all up into one subscription, maybe. Yeah, maybe that's a question we get a lot that I think is worth asking, which is, would it be, at what point does Apple roll out a prime, like kind of bundle that is just like, you know, give me all the things. That's the only reason that i can imagine them doing it that way um i could even imagine them like showing it off then very quickly and doing a bigger thing later down the line like maybe it doesn't come in the same or whatever but i i can i would be surprised to see apple with with multiple separate services that you pay for.

I don't think they will go that way. You mean like now? Like now. But when they have content services. One of the things I can imagine they will sell them all individually, but I also imagine a bundle where you get them for a slight discount. But I could be wrong. So according to Bloomberg, Apple's plans are to

entice companies like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, companies like that, but they are getting some pushback as it is feared that Apple would cannibalize the subscribers that these publications could or already do have, and then just give them a small fraction of the sum rather than getting a much higher price if sold directly yeah this is what i said earlier which is the the top tier stuff they're they're not going to want this right they're going to want to sell like if i'm the new york times my goal is not to get a fraction of a fraction of something from apple my goal is to convert people to online subscriptions to the new y Times. And I don't think that's going to change. So what Apple needs to do is make those companies

either provide, I think they already do this in Apple News, right? Where they provide a limited number of stories for free if you read it in Apple News. But like in the long run, they want, you know, they want people to pay them directly or you know more or less directly and if you can make it easier to sign up for the wall street journal inside apple news for a subscription and unlock everything then great but if i was the wall street journal i would never ever ever want to be part of a five dollar a month all you can read plan yeah for all my content maybe for a subset but they may go from making four dollars and fifty cents profit after fees to 50 cents right like if they're split up between all these other companies it seems it seems like

a tough ask apple is saying apparently to the companies they'll make it up in volume which is like it's like such a tough thing to say oh you'll just make it back in volume we'll get you so many people i don't know i don't know about all of this i have a question for you though would you do it with six colors no because i don't have a paywall right but like no i mean that's my answer is no i don't have a paywall and if i were going to do a paywall i don't think i would do a paywall where i take a fraction of Apple's $5 all you can read because my site is appealing to a relatively small number of people who are intensely focused on the subjects I write about. And if I ever were to convert Six Colors to something more like Stratechery, which would

require basically the bottom to drop out of what remains of the written word freelance world that I still work in regularly. There's no way that I would put that inside of somebody else's service to get fractional revenue. I would sell it direct to people like Ben Thompson does for $100 a year or something. And that's what I would do. So in no circumstances would I use something like this. I really struggle with this thing this service like one okay so here's a couple things one it doesn't interest me anyway really like this is not something i'm probably going to sign up for because this is content that i'm not really looking for but there's this there's just like a bunch of like weird parts to it where it's like

are we really going to go through this again like newsstand didn't work right right it's totally true i mean there are lots this is much better than newsstand in the sense that it is not requiring publishers newsstand was a disaster and it was a disaster because steve jobs saw demos of whizzy apps and thought this is the future at which point instead of giving publishers a standard format like in iBooks or Apple News to write their content to, they suddenly all had, every single publisher had to be an app developer. It was really good for app development contract shops because they suddenly had a lot of business, but it was very bad for everybody else because it was super expensive and the results were poor.

And this is better in the sense that it's just a content feed and Apple built the app and it's Apple News and you have some control over it. You've got some, you know, richer layout features. It's a much better experience. So it's better than that. But you're right in the sense that it is maybe some struggling publishers hoping Apple will provide them with a lifeline. But when you start to pencil it out, it becomes a little bit harder to imagine what this lifeline is. And if you're, you know, in the end, it comes back to the, you know, we'll give you pennies. But what you really want is to convert everybody to be a premium subscriber and get access to all this above and beyond stuff. And, you know, that means that the best this

service I think could hope to be is to provide a little bit of incremental revenue to publishers from people who are less casual readers and maybe convert them into subscribers later. But I just don't see this service being something that, you know, saves the business of you name it, you know, saves the Atlantic, saves Wired. Like now Wired just gets its money from apple and everybody is happy i don't think that is um reasonable at all because then like it also opens up all these other problems of like who does apple let in and then what does that mean right like what publishers get let into this like from what political leanings and what groups and then it's like well it's like it's just like it just feels like this is there's a lot of potential issues with something like this and i'm not necessarily sure i can see a real huge upside to anyone really. Yeah. It's a, uh, Apple news is a weird beast in general. Um, Apple thinks,

I mean, this is Apple's RSS reader, right? Like Google killed Google reader. Apple wrote Apple news. Like Apple wants to, to have this experience. They care about it. It's a weird app. I don't love it. I don't use it very much. But people do use it. It doesn't make money for publishers, but people do use it. So, you know, I don't know. Wouldn't it be nice if you could pay a monthly fee to unlock all the content inside Apple News and know that money was going back to the people who made that content and that money was substantial enough that it helped them keep their businesses afloat. Absolutely all true. I have skepticism about

many, if not most of those points in that scenario, but wouldn't it be nice? Sure. It would be great. I feel like in the end, what's going to happen is what, something speaking of Ben Thompson that Ben has been writing about for ages on Stratechery, which is you're going to get publications where you are willing to spend money and you're going to get publications that drive massive amounts of traffic for ads and not a lot in between. And those publications that'll get you to spend money could be large publications like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post. It could be niche publications like Stratechery. And then there's the BuzzFeeds of the world. But that might be it. There may be a few. What happens to the New Yorker is some people will

pay for the New Yorker and other people won't. And hopefully they'll get enough people that they can stay in business. But that's kind of, you know, can Apple somehow make this work on the inside? I appreciate that they're trying. But yeah, it's hard to really imagine how this is going to actually work. I'm glad that's not my job. Yeah, no, thanks. Today's show is brought to you by Green Chef. Green Chef is a meal delivery service that includes everything you need to cook delicious gourmet meals that you can feel good about. Green Chef sends a wide variety of organic ingredients and imaginative new recipes every week. And they have meal plans that include different dietary requirements.

They do meal plans for paleo, vegan, vegetarian diets, keto, gluten-free, omnivore, and carnivore too. Green Chef is the first USDA-certified organic meal delivery service. Every ingredient is thoughtfully sourced. Its journey is tracked from planting to plating, and their recipes include pre-made sauces, dressings, and spices, so you can get more flavor in less time. Jason, can you tell me like what makes cooking these types of meals easy with Green Chef? Yeah, it's, well, so we got the vegetarian,

which was interesting because I'm not a vegetarian, but they were very tasty. They're easy to make. They don't take too long. You get relatively, you know, you're getting fresh ingredients in the box and making it yourself, but they also are trying to make it easy where like you'll get

things in little packages so that you don't have to take a big thing and then chop it up and process it a lot they try to reduce some of the drudgery of some of the processing but you're cooking it yourself and serving it in a relatively small amount of time which is really nice so having um having something like green chef you can plan your week so we got this and we got i think we got three because i think we got the two-person thing and you know that's like three days of the week planned for us which was uh it was pretty great not having to do the meal planning is like the my favorite part right and they have a family plan with two dinners for a family of four we ended ended up with the three for a family of two,

and my daughter was on vacation with friends that week. So it was a weird thing where we were actually kind of extending the meals for two to serve two or three, depending on my son's preference for the meals that we were making. But they were great. I would make several of them. Again, I've saved their menu cards because you can make them again yourself later. So it's not only a food acquisition service for a couple of days a week, but also a menu acquisition service, recipe acquisition service

for programming the other days of the week. So yeah, it's a very convenient and fun. And the vegetarian, and again, I'm not predisposed to like vegetarian stuff uh and it was all really good like really really good for 50 off your first box of green chef go to green chef.us slash upgrade that's green chef.us slash upgrade for 50 off your first box of green chef our thanks to green chef for their support of this show and relay fm there's that uh there's a top four member special right in the relay fm members feed of the salad episode

yes that shows your uh predisposition to vegetables it's not just me i mean dan and uh and tiff and marco are in there and we oh yeah there was a lot of cheese and croutons picked in that one but yeah it's the best salad of all time was created yes yes it cheese and croutons picked in that one. The best salad of all time was created. Yes, yes. It's cheese, croutons. What else is in there? Salad dressing. Are there vegetables in there?

Maybe. So Jason, an apple pencil sitting in a tree. T-A-P-P-I-N-G. You've professed your love for the Apple Pencil. Do I have to say hashtag Mike was right? You just did it, so that's all I need. The mere utterance of the phrase gives me power. That's all it takes.

I've made a horrible mistake. So, I was very excited to see this headline over on Macworld in your More Color column. The new Apple Pencil made me a believer. So I was very, very excited about this. But before we talk about what you love

about the new Apple Pencil, can you give a refresher as to your previous usage of the Apple Pencil? It won't take long. Basically, the Apple Pencil came out and whenever there was something new with the Apple Pencil, I would try Basically, the Apple Pencil came out. And whenever there was something new with the Apple Pencil, I would try to find my Apple Pencil wherever I had left it last. And then realize it was dead and have to plug it in awkwardly to the bottom of my iPad and have it sort of stick out and charge.

And then I would, you know, go, oh, yeah, I could write on this and it's searchable text or, oh, I drew a stick figure. Yay. Here's a sun. Yeah. And then I would be done. And I would put it away and I would not use it again. Because basically most of the stories about, especially early on, which is when I spent the most time with it, right when the iPad Pro came out, the 12.9 came out the first time in 2015. I would try that stuff out so I could have the experience of it. But like, it was all kind of in the context of note-taking or drawing. And I am not a, I'm not a pen and or pencil enthusiast, Mike, unlike some, I have never liked handwriting. My handwriting has always been terrible. The moment I could type my papers and turn them in at school, I did so. The very moment

that that was allowed, I did so. And I kept asking until they said yes. I don't draw. My handwriting is bad. My relationship with styluses has has always been poor so i had very little enthusiasm beyond sort of like getting the experience of what the apple pencil can do and how it feels like to keep going um besides which yes there's no attachment method and it rolled away and uh charging it was awkward so like when i would think oh could i try the apple pencil Apple Pencil here? I would be like, I don't know where it is and it's not charged and I'm just not going to bother. Yeah, exactly. So my relationship with the Apple Pencil, probably

over the course of the three years of the original Apple Pencil, almost, was, you know, did I hold it in my hand for as long as an hour in total over that time put together probably not it was probably less than that the apple pencil 2 has a bunch of nice features right

the matte finish is nice to hold the flat edge means it doesn't roll away so easy there's no more cap you know and it has the little function thing that you can do but the single best thing about it and i think the reason that it has made more people excited about it is one the fact that it's like it is the inductive charging but the two points of that which make it interesting which is one it's always where it needs to be and two it always has power like that has so monumentally changed what this product this accessory is it's made it like something completely brand new again yeah it's it's um it's around right even if it's not attached it's around because you you know you don't just absent-mindedly place it somewhere i mean you can but like i feel like because it's magnetically

attached you choose to take it off and you place it somewhere rather than it just kind of like you know you're using your ipad and it doesn attach. So it's laying there and then it gets covered with something and it's gone. Like you choose to disengage it and place it somewhere. That makes a difference. It doesn't roll as easily off of tables and things, which is helpful. The charging is not awkward. So if you're thinking you're going to use it, you can attach it. I never, If you're thinking you're going to use it, you can attach it. I never liked or really did use an iPad Pro with the pencil charging sticking out because I hated it. I hated how it looked. I hated how it felt.

It felt like it was going to snap off. It made me quite nervous and anxious, and I didn't like it. Whereas this one, if you're like're like oh i might use the pencil later snap you snap it on it's charging it's uh it's with you and then when you take it off you put it somewhere and think this is where the pencil is going so it has made it just that has made it more available which i think makes a difference i also guess I also guess it's a little bit nicer to hold. The matte finish is nicer. It just feels nicer.

So it's also more pleasant to use. So there are a lot of things they did in the hardware upgrade side of it that made it more likely that I would be able to give it a try again. Rather than kind of leaving it where it was, wherever that was. Because most of the time I didn't even know. Where is that Apple Pencil? Is it in the pencil? We have a little bowl that has a bunch of pens and pencils in it. I would often go over there and find it in there.

Yeah, in the pen cup. The Apple Pencil would be in there like, ah, it is there. Great. Yeah. So if you don't hand write and you don't draw, what are you doing with it so for me uh this all came about because i wanted to use again the apple pencil number two pencil uh for something to try it out and in the intervening time since i really since the first one came out uh ferrite recording studio the um the ipad audio editing app podcast editing app I use, added a whole bunch of support for the pencil.

And a new beta that is now released added support for the gestures on the, you know, the double tap on the pencil too. So I thought I would give it a try. And I thought, let's edit. What would it be like? Because I edit in FairWrite a lot, but I do it with my fingers. I was like, what if I brought the pencil in to the party? What would that be like? So that's what made me try it.

Here's an app that is not a note-taking app, and it is not a drawing app. It is something that I do that could perhaps be improved by the Apple Pencil that is not one of these things that I don't do, that I don't like and I don't do. And it's really great, like really great. I have it set up so that the pencil is, I'm double tapping on the pencil to do play or pause, which is otherwise to finger tap on the screen I have set up. But that requires my hands to shift position and tap on the pencil to do play or pause, which is otherwise to finger tap on the screen I have

set up. But that requires my hands to shift position and tap on the screen. And I can do an awful lot of editing with holding the iPad and writing on it with the pencil rather than getting my fingers down, which is actually great for selecting things to delete. Especially I do a lot because of the way I edit a podcast. I'm doing a lot of deleting because I do strip silence, which pulls out all the areas of silence, but there are still little areas where there was a slight amount of sound, but nobody is talking. And I, I need to clean all of that up and delete it and then do some detailed edits when people are talking as well. I can do most of that with the pencil. And then my fingers, while I'm holding the iPad, are really doing nothing more than sort of scrolling left to right. And I can go through and I found it's quite delightful actually

to delete all the stuff I need to delete the regions, triple tap on a track and then slide it to move everything that's forward of it. All of these are gestures that I had before, but I had to do it with my fingers. The pencil is more precise for the edits. Editing detail in what people are saying was very hard with my fingers because the fingers aren't very precise and the pencil is much more precise. So not that I couldn't do it, it just took more steps and I would have to do some undoes and I'd have to move the editor around in order to get it exactly where I wanted. And with the pencil, it's a lot easier to get it right the first time.

So in the end, not only was it successful and I edited a whole episode of The Incomparable using Ferrite and the Apple Pencil. I did that over Thanksgiving when I was traveling. But I have edited the last five episodes of the incomparable on oh look at you wow okay so this is this is when you know the experiment worked when it became the choice you made yeah right yeah yeah and it's it and i think it is a superior experience to using my fingers like i said said, mostly because the fingers, you know, the finger gestures and stuff are, they're great. They're very powerful. But, you know, the precision of the pencil tip versus a, you know, meaty fingertip, it's just, it's much more precise, which means that now I'm editing some of the in, you know, the way I edit, you get a block of somebody talking and that's their kind

of monologue. And it was always less likely that I was going to edit in those blocks, edit in between when people are talking and clean things up. But now I will see in the waveforms, I'll see somebody have a pause or an um, or they'll, or I'll hear them repeat or stutter. And with a pencil, I could be like, and just take it out and it's gone which is more i'm so i'm actually a more active editor using the pencil than i was so it was that moment where i was like oh i see what they're talking about i see what mike was talking about with the pencil and using it so i don't i don't use it to like navigate my ipad interface i don't use it out of the app to scroll around and stuff like that i don't do that but in

this context in this app i found an app that i use that uses the pencil um and and it was kind of a revelation just to finally have an app that does something that i want to do because drawing and taking notes by hand are not things i want to do now there was one interesting thing that you pointed out in your article which is something that I would love to see Apple take a crack at, which is like some kind of handwriting recognition keyboard. Yeah, I got a bunch of emails from people who said, oh, there's this app that you can write in. There's no taking app you can write in, and it turns your handwriting into text. And that's great. But I think in the Macworld article, I very specifically said, you know, I don't care about note-taking apps. I don't use them.

What I'm surprised by is that Apple hasn't built a handwriting recognition keyboard, you know, to take the keyboard space. And there's a third party one that I tried. And that's one of the times I use the Apple pencil actually for 20 minutes. And it was really bad. Like I'm surprised there was not a first party keyboard that basically, if you have an Apple pencil in your hand and the keyboard slides up, let's say you put your pencil down and instead of it being a keyboard, now you're just writing out words and it does handwriting recognition and inserts those words in whatever app you're in as though you were typing. I feel like that would be really good for some people

who like to handwrite. And I'm surprised that Apple hasn't bothered given that they've got the Newton technology and that they had a million years ago. That probably is out of date and they'd have to rebuild it. And that became Ink in Mac os which was there for way way longer than you would expect but like i'm a little surprised that apple doesn't think that handwriting might be a way to do text input on the ipad pro for somebody who's using the pencil and i wouldn't use it because i again i don't want to write things out by hand. And I appreciate that there are apps that let you do that and it converts it. But I was thinking more broadly that wouldn't it be interesting if they had something that either worked as a keyboard or that was even maybe more

Newton-like where if you had a, I mean, really it would still be kind of keyboard-like. You've got a blinking text insertion point and you write something on the screen in words that it would say, oh, you're writing words. I'm going to put those words at the text insertion point and you write something on the screen in words that it would say oh you're writing words i'm going to put those words at the text insertion point like that would be kind of cool and i'm yeah i'm just they haven't done that and so that's that's kind of too bad given that they've got this text input device that has been used for you know thousands of years to do that now somebody who has used the apple pencil for a while and is a big fan. I wanted to make some recommendations, Jason, to the Upgradians. None of these are for you.

Yeah, I was going to say, are these note-taking and drawing apps? Yes, they most definitely are. Because this, look, I primarily, I use my Apple Pencil for navigating interface in lieu of using my fingers

because it's more comfortable for me. But, so like that's one use stuff like what jason's doing is another use where there are a bunch of like professional applications that are integrating the apple pencil as a secondary input method to allow for some cool stuff but the apple pencil is primarily supposed to and designed to be used for note-taking and creative work. So there's just a small list of applications that I wanted to read out, and I'll put links to them in the show notes. So I use two different note-taking apps, Notability and GoodNotes. These are like your general handwriting apps. They have different paper types that you can use. You can create your own paper types for some of them. And these are just really good apps. They have basic shapes you can use. You can create your own paper types for some of them.

These are just really good apps. They have basic shapes you can draw on, highlighters and different types of pens and stuff like that. They're slightly different, and they both have slightly different feature sets. If you are super keen on taking notes by hand on your iPad Pro, get them both and try them both is my recommendation. Because most people I know that do this, they prefer one or the other. I prefer Notability, but I couldn't tell you why.

I just do. And so that's just how that is. Paper, which is owned by WeTransfer now, which was a surprise to me when looking this up today. Remember that? Paper by 53? Remember that app? It's bought by WeTransfer. That is just a fun sketching app. It's got a nice little design. I've always enjoyed playing around with it. It has simple tools, but done in a really nice way. It is a kind of low barrier to entry kind of drawing app. Linear by the Icon Factory, similar in that way where it's like, it's got a lot of basic features that you'd want but they are getting really clever really fast with some other stuff that they're doing like automatic shape recognition now and stuff like that i linear is an app to watch i think because

it started off as a very simple drawing app for the ipad pro but is getting more and more powerful all the time so that's a fun one um procreate i mean i don't know how to use procreate but people like it like but it's you know it is the artist's tool of choice for the ipad for a lot of people like it's it is the one right procreate it's very very very powerful until photoshop along. It's like, it seems to be the thing that illustrators and artists want to use. There is an app called Art Set 4, which was recommended to me by Tiffany Arment, who hosts Make Do on RelayFM, which is a creative podcast,

along with many other great shows. And, you know, Tiff is a prolific podcaster, and that's one of the things that she does is a creativity podcast. But Art Set is like, it feels like the most realistic for traditional tools like watercolor and all that kind of stuff, right? So different painting styles and different drawing styles. It has tons and tons and tons and tons of options. So this is like a fun one to play around with where Procreate, I think, is

one that people tend to use more to create something that they can use digitally and then one of my very very very favorite apps is pigment which is a coloring book app which i love pigment it's so much fun it's really nice to use um they since i maybe last spoke about them they went to a subscription model which i think is probably the best idea for them uh from a business perspective but now they have a bunch of Disney content and stuff so you can colour in the Lion King if you want to and they even have

I think a specific Marvel version which I've played with so if you want to colour in Spider-Man Jason you can now if you want to so they're really fun, they're just some recommendations to some apps that I've used a lot. I'm always willing to hear about any others.

So if anybody out there is using their Apple Pencil in other applications to great effect, I would love to hear about it. Especially if you're using it in an app that supports it in a non-traditional way. I would really like to know about that.

You know, something like Ferrite, rightrite right which is you wouldn't necessarily assume that it would support the apple pencil but it does to great effect um i would love to hear more about those but jason snow i'm so happy to hear that you love your apple pencil i do i do the the combination again stuff that i could probably have done you know a couple years, but I think the combination of the software support being there where it wasn't when I first tried this and the new hardware, like the Apple Pencil. Even I appreciate the new hardware in the sense that I think it makes it a tool that I might use, right? Because, again, if it was just the old hardware, even if I realized how great this was, I would suddenly be in a position where I need to keep track of the Apple Pencil and make sure it's charged and all these things. And those are barriers that would make me be like,

ah, forget it, right? And the new Pencil doesn't do that. Today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends at Pingdom. Pingdom are awesome because they help keep the sites that you love online. They monitor your site so you don't have to and give you real-time feedback

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It's really great. You just have that information right at your fingertips. If you have a site of any size, you need Pingdom. They have a no-fuss approach to help you get started. All Pingdom need is the URL that you want to monitor, and they'll take care of the rest. Go to pingdom.com slash RelayFM right now to get yourself a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Then when you sign up, use the code UPGRADE at checkout to get a massive 30 of your first invoice our thanks again to pingdom for their support of this show and relay fm it is time for hashtag ask upgrade jason snow oh mike i'm warming up i'm warming up this is very exciting laser news laser related news

okay warming up the red and green uh christmas lasers for the holiday special next week. Are we going to have lasers? They are beautiful, and they have interesting defensive properties too. So if we're ever invaded by I don't even know what would invade a podcast during a holiday special, those green and red lasers

will be ready. To help protect us. Yeah, I think so. From whatever happens on Christmas christmas eve yeah oh man who are we gonna call so our first question comes from uh tom this week and tom says setting aside pro apps on the ipad why is there no weathering calculator app included ios on the ipad seems like a simple thing so whilst we of course of course, do not know why, right? Like we don't know the answer to that. It is still a super strange oversight, but I think it is a great advantage for third-party apps.

Some of my favorites like pCalc and CarrotWeather. One of the reasons that I use pCalc and CarrotWeather on my iPhone over the built-in ones is because they're the ones I use on my iPad as well. So, you know, for the sake of applications that I enjoy, I hope the iPad never adds a calculator or a weather app because I really love those applications. And I'm sure that their businesses are helped by the fact that there are some iOS devices that don't include these applications.

Undoubtedly. I do wonder, given what we have just seen in terms of those Marzipan apps coming to the ipad as well as the mac this year like stocks stocks stocks uh and voice recorder you know that i wonder if part of this transition is going to include these same apps being on all devices so i wonder if there will be a marzipan calculator that will be on iphone ipad and mac and you can count your marzipan with it i wouldn't be able to use it personally because i'd be allergic to it oh it gets and it gets your hands all sticky if you

try to use a marzipan calculator i don't recommend it doesn't it seem though that like weather and calculator probably would have been better things to end up i don't know who knows i don't i don't know i mean yeah i don't understand it unless there's something like super weird about like a patent somebody has for putting weather on a tablet or something like i don't understand why it's not there i i don't i don't get it i don't get it i think i think they just built those apps for the iPhone and when the iPad came out, they were like, meh. And we've been stuck

ever since, just like with the others. Just like with voice recorder and stocks. Why would stocks not be on the iPad? It's like, well, they built it for the iPhone and they just didn't bother. Maybe they'll bother. Then that'll be a sad day for James Thompson and for the carrot people because they will phone and they just didn't bother and so maybe they'll bother uh and if that's then then that

would be a sad day for james thompson and for the carrot people because they will uh lose one of their advantages but they've got others it's fine you know you know that apple's calculator is never going to have a full featured racing game in it it's definitely not going to have a giant hidden 3d racing game with and augmented reality features as well so yeah in a similar vein frank asks do you think that the shortcuts app could make the move to the mac via marzipan that's a lot of m's when i read this question at first like my initial reaction was no of course not but then i started thinking about it and i was like well i guess maybe right like at first i was like no there's no way they would just build it natively but then i thought

to myself well we don't even know if it's worth doing that in 2019 right like because we have no idea what's going to happen over the next couple of years at wwc and it might be that it's not worth apple building new mac apps in the old way so well yeah maybe so marzipan is uh i i think part of this conversation because so question one is do we think that marzipan apps on the mac are going to be controllable via automator or apple script and the answer is no no of course they aren't of course they aren't yeah of course all right well then how do you how do you control them and the answer is well shortcuts which doesn't exist on the mac okay automator exists on the mac and shortcuts is uh inspired by automator it is a

very much a an ios take on automator shortcuts, Automator has a lot of actions that are literally just things that are commanding an app to do something. They're not, you know, they're not cross app things, right? They're just have mail do this, have Safari do this, or I send you data and you send me back data. So I'm actually kind of optimistic that what we're going to get ultimately is that shortcuts will come to the Mac and a lot of the stuff that's in Automator, a lot of those items will appear in shortcuts, as will new items that are using the new method that shortcuts controls on iOS that will come with

Marzipan. Because I think you could actually mix and match them fairly easily there. You know, I don't want to say that it's easy and there wouldn't be an engineering challenge there, but given that the legacy Mac app stuff for automator is all these individual like block items, you know, you should be able to have those blocks be available in shortcuts. Because what you're doing is you're passing data out and saying, hey, do this and then give me back something. And that's not any different from what shortcuts does. So I think they could do it. I also think at that point, then shortcuts on the Mac would have the possibility to do like run shell script and run apple script or something like that which would be fascinating

too um so i think it's possible and i think it will probably happen eventually uh i wouldn't be surprised if it takes them years to get there adrian asks given the choice would you rather get a new iphone 10 so last year's iPhone 10, or a new XR? I would rather have the X than the XR. Okay. Why is that? I don't like the big phones. I think the XR is beautiful and it's not as big as I anticipated, but I prefer the size

of the iPhone X. It's that simple. I mean, if you weigh in the money part of it, if the iPhone 10 was, you know, $999, like the iPhone 10S is, maybe I would feel different about it. But at $899, it would still be $150 more expensive, but it would be the size I wanted. Yeah, I would probably take the iPhone 10, even factoring in the price being more and the tech being a little bit older just because of the size issue. But it would be an interesting question. It is an interesting question.

Thank you, Adrian. But I think in the end, I would probably just stick with the 10. I like my 10. I think the 10 is great. And it would be enough for me. I would go 10R. Of course you would. A lot of the inverse reasons to you right like it's closer to the size that i want um the screen is still fantastic and it's got all the new tech in it so yeah no i get it i get it and and that's that's

uh unfortunately the iphone 10 not available so it's not a question oh yeah yeah of course it's not and finally today for ask upgrade david asks if apple introduces a low-end apple tv what are the chances of going game focused maybe with controllers on the high-end model they're already comparing the ipad to the xbox one and their chips are getting better and better so whilst I was on my recent hiatus, well, hiatus, my assignment, that's it. While I was on my recent assignment, John Voorhees stepped in for me on Remaster with Federico Vittici, and they spoke about gaming on the iPad Pro

and what that is like today. It's a very interesting episode because there was a bunch of stuff that I learned, which I didn't know about, which I think says a lot about apple's current attitude to games it's like for example there are there are heavy there are like really restrictive limits on the sizes of apps and games like the maximum size you can download from the app store is like four gigabytes and then if you want any more so you want to get more data you want to get more files or more like graphics packs as some of these games

do you then need to download these as like free in-app purchases which also have limits on them so like if apple wanted to make something that was truly like graphically impressive or have this stuff made for their system all of that stuff needs to change because games are huge if they're supposed to look good, right? So like this is even more restrictive on tvOS as it stands currently right now. And this is before you even get into all the pricing and business issues and the perception shifts that would need to occur because I don't know why like a game on the app store should be free but you download it but a game on the switch online store can be 50 like right i don't know

what it is that like has broken that in people's brains but it has and i can't ever imagine well i cannot imagine in the near to mid future apple producing a box that sells 40 software and nobody and everybody's fine with that it just doesn't seem to make sense to me even if it was the same game because you see i see it a lot right like one way or another like a an ios game go to the switch or a switch game or a console game to go to ios and the prices are completely different like there are a bunch of iOS games popping up on the Switch now that have been ported over

and they tend to be more expensive and everyone's fine with that so these are like two massive things from technical perspectives where it's just people that want to make really deep and beautiful games struggle with the size constraints put on them and there are already

these business model issues let alone the fact that like i mean apple don't even currently make a very good remote control for their tv box let alone controllers so yeah the there are different kinds of games these are separate console games are popular with a subset of an audience that is i would argue actually that apple is the best at the most important segment of gaming which is mobile gaming like people playing on their phones and their ipads and stuff yeah there is no there is no mobile game platform better i mean i'm kind of excluding the Switch from this because it's different. That's different, but...

But it's, yeah, I do think it's different. I'm not saying... The Switch is not a mobile gaming. The Switching is a game console that is mobile. It is a different market with different pricing rules, as you just pointed out. It is not your phone. It is not your tablet.

It is a game, a dedicated game device. Also a dedicated game device controlled by Nintendo that is not going to allow lots of, you know, the ad freemium kind of model like Nintendo not interested in that, right? So you're not going to, they're not going to let you do that. Whereas Apple's like, all right, we're going to do that, which is kind of weird, but that's just where Apple ended up because of the app store. It's been very successful for them. But like, so, you know, the question was, what are the chances? I think the answer is there's no chance.

I think the Apple TV at best is going to be viewed as a way for you to get games that are written for iPhones and iPads on your TV if you want to see them there. And that's fine. But, you know, Apple's focus, if it can have any focus on gaming at all, will be in mobile gaming, in iPhone primarily, and then other platforms secondarily. They're not going to build a console. They're not going to take on Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo. Not interested.

They've never been interested in gaming. They're interested in gaming only in that it suits them when they show off their graphics power of their latest processors or you know when it's throwing off so much money that they have to sort of pay attention to it but they kind of don't care and i don't think that's going to change i just don't think they've got it in them so all these dreams of the apple tv being a could could apple really invest in making the apple tv a console like device yes but they won't. And even if they did, I don't think it would be much of a success because of all of the other challenges.

Like, you know, Microsoft spent an enormous amount of money and lots and lots of time to establish Xbox as a player in the gaming platform wars, and Apple's never going to do that. So, you know, the Apple TV is an extension of the iPad and the iPhone,

and it's really all about the iPhone, and it's the mobile gaming space. It's just a different kind of gaming. And if you're expecting Apple to be an Xbox, even though they talked about the graphics power of the Xbox and all that, like again, using it to show off the power of their processors in their thousand dollar iPad pro is not the same. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade to do that. Thank you to everybody that has for today's episode.

So after this break, we are going to go to the movies, for Mike at the Movies, and talk about Miracle on 34th Street. So this episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. They'll let you easily create a website for your next idea or project. With the ability to grab a unique domain name, take advantage of award-winning templates

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and show your support for this show. Once again, that's squarespace.com slash upgrade and the code upgrade at checkout to get 10 of your first purchase our thanks to squarespace for their support of this show squarespace make your next move make your next website so jason we are here again back at the theater at the movies yes and we are going to be talking about a miracle on 34th street today so you keep you keep wanting to put an article in front of it it's not the miracle i can't help it it's not a miracle on 34th street because it's so hard to say otherwise it's so miracle on 34th street we're gonna be taught it's It's just, I hate that. From 1947.

I hate the title, Jason. I hate it because I can't say it. It's so hard for me to say 34th, right? So I'm struggling so hard with that anyway because everything just becomes F sounds otherwise. Yeah, 34th Street, right? And that's 34th, right? That's what my brain is telling me to say and i'm already fighting against that and then there's no article it just i can't anyway what did i know about this movie beforehand uh nothing really i knew that it was a classic right

like i knew it was a classic i thought it had that scene where in where like the guy runs down the street screaming at the end but that's a different movie right yeah that that's uh uh it's a wonderful life with it's a wonderful life there you go so that was what i thought i was waiting for that to happen in this movie didn't happen um oh did not happen it's true i initially bought the 1994 version by accident because that was what was recommended when I did the search on iTunes. It was the first result. So I bought that one

and only found out that there was a difference in version because somebody tweeted asking whether we were watching the 1994 or 1947. And I was like, well, this is news to me. So then I went and bought the 1947 version. And I watched it in black and white because that also was what the Apple TV gave me. Yes.

But there is a colorized version too, right? Yeah, in the 80s they colorized it. Don't watch the colorized version. Okay. I probably would have watched the colorized version if I could have found that as an option. But the black and white worked perfectly fine for me i was i was very i was very happy with it you know like like all nicely

produced it was it was very good resolution right like it looked really crisp even though it was in black and white you know something has it been remastered at all do you know when yeah yeah i when i started watching this it was a it was a standard def copy and now it's uh high def and it looks a lot better yeah it looked really good i like the way it looked um i need to just say that like i really struggled with this movie well it's it's old right it's a very different kind of movie i think so uh the dialogue is really strange in places. The exposition is super weird at times. Some of the conversations that the characters are having are just so weird. In just a what is going on kind of way.

As is some of the super strange behavior by some of the people in this movie that I'll get to in a bit. But I will say, the last third loved it when the court stuff started happening loved it like i loved all that one of the weird things about this movie is that it is a bunch of different movies in one and when they get to the court i always have that moment where i say oh yeah it's a totally different movie now we're now in the courtroom phase of this movie because there's the whole like uh there's there's a there's a romantic comedy in here yep there's this weird story about uh like human resources at the department store that is going on mental institutions i'm not really sure how that lines up but they can do it yeah and then there's

and then there's the courtroom stuff at the end. Yeah, I like it all, but the courtroom stuff is amazing. It felt like a bunch of scenes. It just felt like a bunch of vignettes in places put together, this movie. So, have you been watching this movie your whole life, Jason? Has this been a staple since childhood? No, this is my wife's favorite okay christmas movie and i didn't see it before like 10 years ago okay okay so i was wondering if that was a thing to it but like

i just really struggled with it like it was you know all of the things that usually bother me about movies this like all of them like you know my little things that bother me about like believability and just like general strangeness in movies like this this movie is full of it and it's probably because it was made in 1947 right like that's probably why um is this movie funded by macy Like, what is going on with Macy's in this movie? Well, I mean, it's set in Macy's, right? And the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and all of that. The focus on Macy's being this wonderful, wonderful, helpful-to-the-world company is, like, super weird.

Well, then again, Macy's also has the Drunk Santa for the Thanksgiving Parade. So there's a little bit of that. And then there's Gimble's, the department store, which is like the other department store across the street, which is kind of legendary. You know, the best part about this movie is that it came out in the summer. No way. It did. It did. Why?

I guess they just weren't focusing on it or whatever. Good question. Good question. And I don't have an answer for you. Yeah. That is wild. It came out on the 11th, June 1947. It did. It did indeed. It came out in a bunch of other places around the world later that year, like Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Brazil, France, like all all these countries got it in december but in the u.s it was released in june uh-huh that's so strange why did they do that i i don't you have a christmas movie you released it also i'll point out uh interesting it won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Story for Best Screenplay.

It was nominated for Best Picture. And Edmund Nguyen, who plays Chris Kringle, won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this. So it was not one of those movies that was not recognized at the time. But yes, why was it released in june good question no good answers chris gringle edmund gwent he's the best thing in this movie in my opinion like every time he's in a scene i enjoyed it like it was a lot of the ancillary stuff around it that was like super weird to me like the whole start part is so it's so strange like why is this child going to this man's house why does the man take the child to the zoo like it's all like considering the pet like he'd never met the mom like it's so weird

and like and i don't i know i'm looking at this with 2019 2018 eyes right so like it makes it extra weird but it's so weird like i can't help but watch it and be like stranger danger like i you know it's it's very peculiar to me yeah so one of the things that if you think about it is going on here and i asked lauren about this while we were watching it this weekend is there's that scene where the um where maureen o'hara as doris walker meets uh john payne as uh galey yep uh for the first time and he already has an extensive relationship with her daughter the man who lives across the hall they've hung out he took her to the zoo and her mother has never met him it's just and i think some of that is just the screenplay has just kind of it's just

delighting over the the idea because they just need to get to where they're going but as lauren said her mother when she was like a little girl in new york city would ride the subway places like on her own as like a six-year-old girl yeah so it was a different time i know but yes i had i had those moments where you look at it now and you're like, what is going on? At the same time, I do like the screwball aspect of the fact that the man across the hall and the daughter are... He's manipulated her.

Because that great scene is where she's like, oh, our turkey's really big. You should have Mr. Gailey over for Thanksgiving dinner. And she's like, no, no, I couldn't. He says, well, you know, I guess I could be available, you know, but it would be too much trouble. And she's like no no i couldn't he says well you know i i guess i could be available uh you know but it not it would be too much trouble and she's no no i insist and then the the daughter immediately says did i do a good job mr gailey is that what you wanted me to say and it's like oh you've been revealed to her like you know i heard that uh if you want to

meet a mother you've got to get to know the child or something yeah yeah and it's like okay like it's all just like i'm watching like what is going on here like that's a weird that's definitely the romance part of the plot is a little bit weird i'm much more in those scenes i'm much more focused on a couple of things i'm much more focused on edmund gwen uh who like i said won the oscar i think he's great I think he's like the definitive movie Santa Claus. He's got his delightful... He's English. He's got his delightful accent. He is Santa Claus.

And just like, yes, of course I am. He's got... I'll tell you who the first president was and I'll touch my nose and I can do all the tests and all of that. I like that part of it. And I also am fascinated by the fact that Doris Walker,

her daughter is precocious, but also has been taught to not believe in anything that is not like hard evidence. And that's not my favorite part of the movie that the, the end result is, Oh, that was just my silly common sense. Believe whatever crazy stuff you like at the end.

Cause I'm like, no, I don't actually agree with that, but I do enjoy all the, the fact that she doesn't believe in Santa Claus and she gets very confused when she pulls his beard and he's, he, you know, he's not a fraud. Uh, Santa, like all the other Santas who sit on thrones of lies. That's a reference to elf that you've, you've seen elf, right?

Yes. Okay. We actually watched elf this weekend. That's also a great movie anyway um yeah so so that the the pursuing of doris by by mr gailey is not my favorite part of the movie it's kind of weird but i do like the daughter stuff and i i love uh i love edmund gwen he's so great he's brilliant that part from the moment that he's the drunk santa guy's gotta keep warm somehow the totally drunk santa on the macy's uh parade float and they're like we gotta get him out of here but who are we gonna get is santa guy's gotta keep warm somehow the totally drunk santa on the macy's uh parade float and they're like we gotta get him out of here but who are we gonna get a santa claus and

guess what you're gonna get the real santa claus the santa claus he's ready he's gonna step right in and he's gonna fix your customer service issues at macy's um that that's that's another thing i love about this movie is that um it makes the point that the – because the Macy's people are like, here's a list of stuff that we have too much of. So if a kid doesn't know what they want for Christmas, recommend one of these items. And Kris Kringle is like, no, that's terrible. And he just immediately says, oh, you can go across the street to Gimble's and get that. Or you can go down to this other obscure – I'd stay on top of the toy market, he says, because, of course go across the street to Gimble's and get that. Or you can go down to this other obscure... I'd stay on top of the toy market, he says, because of course, he's Santa Claus.

And Macy's learns that good customer service is sometimes helping your customer find a product somewhere else. And it's revolutionary. And then their competition does it and they spread it to their other stores. And I like that part of it because i think that's a good bit of uh of real world uh recommendation right like the best thing to do is to help your customer even if you know rather than doing a hard sell and trying to sell them something they don't want i agree like it's santa teaches them an important lesson it is this this the weird obsession with macy's like it's like what is macy's relationship to this movie like it just seems so peculiar yeah well i i don't think they they funded it or anything but i do think that there was a you know because they let them shoot at the parade yeah and all of that like i think that was

all part of it and the idea that macy's in new york at least is part of this holiday tradition i think that was part of it elf is set at gimbals which no longer exists um but was prominently featured in miracle on 34th street which is why elf is set at gimbals um and that made them that let them set set it at a department store everybody knows without it being one that's actually in business so they were able to not i'm just now getting the parallels between those two movies. Oh, yeah. Like, as you mentioned, like, oh, because he thinks he's an elf. He's a real elf, right? Right, but came from the North Pole, like, which is the opposite, right? Uh-huh.

Yeah, okay. That's fun. That's a lot of fun. Obviously, because, you know, I haven't really, I don't really know this movie enough yet, even though I've just, like, I've seen it once, right? Like, to start making those, like, I bet if i watched elf again i would see it more right than than it being the other way you absolutely um it's so surprising that santa does hit that guy in the head right kringle is just like he just clonks that guy i guess that's the lesson that

violence never solves anything because that is the fact that he whacks the guy i mean to be honest that guy is a fraud and a terrible human being gravel saw but you should not you should not whack sawyer on the head with your your cane or umbrella or whatever don't don't do it like violence never solves anything and that becomes the wedge that allows mr sawyer to get him uh committed at one point for being a crazy person yeah it's like may not have been the the right option and it was just surprising to me that it didn't really take a lot like he kind of just got to a point was like i don't want to argue with you anymore so i'm gonna i'm gonna hit you on the noggin on the head yeah yeah santa no stop beating that man up don't yeah that awful awful man and then it's

just like there's all these funny little things like the judge the honest judge okay why is he gonna be so honest so so that so the courtroom right so the courtroom is great there's that scene that i really love that's in at the postal service where uh jack alon is like, hey, I got an idea. We got this mail for Santa. What if we took it to the courthouse? I have a question about this. Why does Doris mail the letter? She lives across the hallway from the lawyer, right?

Like, this is my, I'm sorry I sorry i do this is that is that is that the letter do they mail i mean it's just all the mail is going no but like the first letter is written by uh by the kids susan so they put it in the you know they put in the mail it's they that's the thing you do you mail your letter to Santa. Isn't it fun? And then it goes to Santa Claus Indiana. The kid's not there. The kid's not there. And it's mailed. The address is the courthouse. Ah. Right? Interesting. It's all part

of the plan. Sure. It's all part of Fred's plan. Ah, they're all in it the whole time. I have never even considered that. It's totally irrelevant. The whole idea is just that they get this idea. Also, that scene in the post office is fascinating because Jack Albertson is the guy who has the idea. He's really great. The other guy is Lou, and he is like the worst actor in the movie where he's like, I just forget about it.

He's super like stylized very bad. But Jack Albertson's good. And he's like, ah, we'll send them all down to the courthouse. I got a great idea. But the court stuff itself. Okay, so the judge is great. It's hilarious. It's so funny.

The district attorney is great. So the judge is worried that if he rules against Santa, they're going to not vote for him. He talks to my favorite character in the movie, other than, I guess, Edmund Gwynn, which is William Frawley, who was Fred Mertz in I Love Lucy. He is the political fixer. He's so good.

He spends most of his time out in the court with his unlit cigar, gesturing it at the judge. And at one point when they're like, Your Honor, you need to rule on whether he's Santa Claus or not. And Fred Mertz, sorry, William Frawley, is like pointing at the chambers like, Get out of here. Get out of here. You got to get out of here.

We got to talk about this and it's like you're gonna make a career ending move if you tell people that, cause it's gonna be in the papers that you're the judge who said Santa Claus wasn't real and you're gonna make everybody sad and I love the story that he tells, it's like then the kids won't want their toys anymore, which is gonna upset

the department stores, you upset the department stores you're gonna upset the toy makers, the toy makers got the unions you want those unions to come down and you're like oh no the whole world will be destroyed if you say that this this thing is not true he envisions also because there are lots of wacky newspaper spinning newspaper things here um my favorite of which well okay my favorite of which is the headline that's all the k's that is just ridiculous chris kringle crazy court case coming calamity cry kitties but the the but the second best one is the judge imagines what the story will be if he rules against santa claus and if you pause it and read that story it's like horrible judge made all

children around the world sad today by deciding that santa doesn't exist who this judge is terrible and like it's this amazing story that is written about him. So he's like, okay, I can't do this. So it's like everybody's playing along. The district attorney doesn't want to be particularly brutal with this because he doesn't want to be mean to the nice old man, nice crazy old man. Yeah, I like that part.

Mr. Mera? It would have been so easy for them to just paint him as the bad guy because he's playing the bad guy in the room but then they have that moment at home right where he's like oh i don't want to do this yeah and what choice do i have i should have i should have married a plumber and he's like well if depending on how this goes you might maybe you maybe you might have uh and the kids don't want to talk to him because they're like, you're prosecuting Santa. And so when he gets up there, he's like, are you Santa? And he says, yes, I am. He's like, we have no further questions.

The state rests. He doesn't want to push it. He's like, this should be enough. He thinks he's Santa. I'm not going to be mean to this guy. I'm leaving it on the judge. And of course, that just opens the door for the shenanigans that Mr. Gailey does and that the judge has to deal with. I have a question for you, Jason.ason yeah can you subpoena a child well the yes i think you can i think you can i think it is funny

that the district attorney is not aware and has not been made aware by his wife who is holding the subpoena that his son has been subpoenaed to appear in his own in his own case up at breakfast maybe but it does lead to a wonderful double take where he's like what and she's like i got the subpoena right here and then and then mr gailey like lifts up tommy mara the junior and puts him in the little chair to and and says you know do you believe in santa claus does your dad believe in santa claus it's like oh yes don't you daddy and he's like uh yeah okay and and so like all the adults are all trying to keep

the myth of Santa Claus alive. Nobody wants to say that Santa Claus doesn't exist, which does ultimately lead to the state of New York and the federal government endorsing this man as the real Santa Claus,

which is just wonderful. The way that unfolds is genuinely very clever. Like I really enjoyed the reveal. Like, of the three pieces of mail. And it's like, oh, that's not nearly enough. It's like, ha ha ha! It's like, bring it in, boys!

I like how they, and this is some theatrics that's great, they could just put the mail bags on the judge's desk, because the judge is like, put them right here on my desk. But they don't. They empty the individual letters out of the bags all over his desk, so he's completely covered in mail. When I i saw that i felt bad for the prop department yeah but i i like i when i see it i imagine that there's a conversation that happens out in the hallway where mr gailey says okay now here's what you're gonna do yeah when the judge says to bring him in you don't

just put the bags up there empty the bags all over the judge because that's what we want is just a flood of mail. And they're like, all right, whatever you want, whatever you say, Mr. Gailey. It's like, good, good boys, good. And then he goes back inside and then he's like, bring them in boys. And they cover the judge with mail. What I also love is that the judge,

it's just the rules so smartly, right? It's like, well, the US government says, this guy said saying so must be cut to william frawley in the audience who goes who gives that nod like yeah yeah now you're getting elected for sure buddy the da he's a republican oh that that is maybe my favorite line in the movie is the only the only people who are going to vote for you in the next election are you and the da out there and he goes the district attorney's a republican it's like so sad the judge is like i nobody will vote for me there's a couple of like really strange jokes in this movie that like i figure were really funny at the time but

you have to know what what it is and they're like there's one where it's like there's some guy in new york and they think he's a russian prince but he owns a restaurant i don't remember his name it's like that's obviously a joke at someone but i have no idea yeah that's a real there was a real guy who thought that and that's it but yeah obviously that's going to be a pop culture reference that that comes out no i i think the idea maybe the most delightful thing in here is that this is a movie that knows that people view new yorkers as cynical people so like doris is like don't believe in santa claus don't teach don't even tell my kid that santa claus is real when that she's a kid we're just going to tell her that it's made up there's the the william frolly and the judge who are like it's all political shenanigans that are happening that

you know the the saying that santa is real is all just part of their plot to get him reelected as the judge. Um, so it lays all that in there. And then yet what comes out of it is that, uh, he is declared Santa Claus, which he is.

It also has that great ending where they, the Susan is sad because she hasn't gotten her, uh, her dream house that she wants for her and her mom for them to move out into the suburbs and into a dream house and it ends with um on their way back from the old folks home chris kringle tells them which way to go to get from you know long island back into the city which happens to take them right past the house that's for sale and susan's very excited and they run in it's exactly how she imagined and she's

like i'm gonna go see if there's a swing there is there is a swing all that and that's very excited and they run in it's exactly how she imagined and she's like I'm gonna go see if there's a swing there is there is a swing all that and that's all like oh Chris Kringle set this whole thing up but then his his cane is in the quarter and there's that moment of like the very last thing in the movie is like he's not really Santa or is he I really like the line

I really like the line where like you know he's like Gail is talking about like oh what like a I must be a really great lawyer like this wonderful thing that I did like and that then like it moves on a little bit and then he's like maybe it wasn't so wonderful after all like yeah I didn't convince everyone that some old dude was Santa he is Santa it's very good yeah yep yep it's good and that's the last line of the movie it's pretty great yeah it's it's and again at that point their relationship moves very quickly too where the romantic comedy plot where they're like they're just colleagues and then before you

know it they're like have been together for a long time it's like how is that possible the time doesn't it's like just go with it right it doesn't make sense you just go back to the courtroom we'll just spend more time in the courtroom. Yeah, so it is weird and absurd, and I love it. It's great. The last half an hour, I genuinely loved it. Like, I loved it. It was brilliant.

There was, like, a line. I wish I remember what line it was, but there was just, like, oh, it was just this one line where Gailey says, I intend to prove Mr. Kringle is Santa Claus. And I'm like, I am in now. Like, movie, you have gotten me. Like, I'm all about this.

But like the first part, there's too much weird stuff and the little vignettes where it feels like it felt a little disjointed to me up until that point. I wonder if this movie would have, I mean, it's a classic classic so it doesn't matter but maybe the title should have been the case against santa claus or something like that yeah yeah just to highlight the the fact that it ends up in a court i i loved a few good men like i love that movie really all i want is courtroom dramas basically the same yeah so there you go i would

say like basically i was i was worried that i was going to come to this episode and be like i hated this movie bah humbug yeah but that last that was last 30 minutes that was just good stuff that was i would say some some holiday in the future revisit it and you may find you you you may find yourself appreciating the early stuff more i expect i will i have appreciated it more as i've gone along because i get to, again, I kind of put aside some of the weirder details and I end up kind of being delighted by Edmund Gwent's performance and Mr. Gailey manipulating the little kid, played by future movie star Natalie Wood, to get him to Thanksgiving dinner and some of the weird stuff at Macy's and how they, you know echoes of elf right which is no this is how we do it at macy's and and uh santa being like i'm not doing it that way which is very much the same thing that we see in elf there's a mailroom scene in elf too that always i always think is a reference to the post office scene in miracle on 34th street yeah i i expect that upon further rewatches of this movie, I would come to it differently. It was too weird to me.

I didn't understand what was going on, and it was all very strange. But now I know the whole arc of the movie, I think I would find it less weird if I watched those same parts again. But the initial shock of, like, why is this child hanging out at this dude's house? It was very perplexing to me.

It is very, very strange. Also, a bearded man is the hero. So there you go. What more could you want? It turns out that if you leave your whiskers in the cold, they'll grow more. I didn't know that. Helps them grow.

That's what Santa says. So I got to believe. Oh, that's that's what santa says so uh i gotta believe oh there's that's actually a moment that i really like where you're trying to break the uh break the uh the illusion and it fails where the where he says oh well at the old folks home we're going to do a thing on on christmas day you could come you could come over and see us for that which they do it's like great we'll do that and dora says well you could you know tonight we're having dinner, Christmas Eve, we're having dinner at our house.

You could come over for that. And he says, I'm afraid I'm busy. And she's like, oh, right. Because you're Santa Claus, you're busy on Christmas Eve, right? And it's that moment where everybody's like, right, right. Don't invite Santa over on Christmas Eve if he's the real Santa. I thought I was done talking about this, but I have more I want to ask you now okay so here's the thing what is santa doing why is he doing all of this why is he working at macy's like what's happened to santa

well i so that's the great mystery of it is is he santa and if he is why is he doing this and i would say um it may be that he's magical just could be and that this is a place where he has chosen to spend some of his uh in order to solve people's problems and spread holiday cheer in new york city this year this is what he's done he's solving the problem of the drunken santa at the macy's parade and then from there that leads him into this whole other succession of things or you know or maybe santa is a real person who lives in at an old folks home. And that just happens to be where he lives. But then he does his magical thing.

Who knows? Like, that's the great mystery of it is if he is Santa, what does that mean? And there's no answer for that. Like, because maybe this is just what Santa does. Like, he goes around the world when it's not Christmas and just helps people out. Maybe so. That's his other job.

What else is he doing? We know from other movies, the elves are making the toys. Santa just does the delivery. But he only needs to do that one night a year, so he's got other stuff to do at other times, I guess. Yeah, he's magic. He's magic.

If you'd like to find our show notes for this week, relay.fm slash upgrade slash 224. Again, hashtag Snell Talk and hashtag AskUpgrade for your questions, but not for the next couple of weeks because we have two very special episodes to round out 2018. So we have our holiday spectacular next week and then the Upgradies the week after. So this will be the last time we remind you to vote in the Upgradies. And the vote will close on the 24th of December.

So you have a week left. So this is your last warning for the Upgradies. Please, please, please enjoy the holiday special. We're really happy with it. I think you're going to have a great time listening to that. It's a fun trip, I think, that we

all take together and you'll be able to enjoy. And then we'll be back now on New Year's Eve for quite the spectacular, which is the fifth annual Upgradies. My excitement level, Jason Snell, very high. Yeah, I can tell. It's hard to even contain it.

Very high. I've already started making my picks, you know, my own nominations. Yeah, that's on my list for this week, because I've got to do my own choices for the Upgradies. It takes time to get it all in set. It does. You've got to do some work. But there are many categories that need your input. So you don't want to be that person listening to the Upgradies,

and you're like, no, my favorite podcast didn't win. You know, play your part. Vote. There's a link in the show notes. You can answer all the categories. You can answer some of the categories. It's totally up to you. You can find us both online. Jason is at jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L, on Twitter.

I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. You can go to sixcolors.com and theincomparable.com for more of Jason's work. And we both host many shows here at RelayFM. Go to relay.fm slash shows and I'm sure you'll be able to pick out something new especially with the holidays coming up, you've got some travel going on

pick up a new RelayFM show to listen to, you might find something something new for yourself while you're making all of your holiday trips over the next few weeks we'll be back next time, until then say goodbye Jason Snell goodbye everybody We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.