Upgrade - 23: The Church of The Coverflow

Episode Date: February 16, 2015

The possibility of Apple building a car, why being critical is both important and difficult, using a secondary Mac, and Jason and Myke answer your questions.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 23 today's episode of upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at lynda.com where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts for a 10-day free trial visit lynda.com slash upgrade. Mail Route, a secure hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam. And stamps.com, postage on demand. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined as always by your host of mine, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Mike. How's it going? Very well, sir. Where are you? Are you in a submarine? Are you on a plane? I am speaking to you from an undisclosed location in the greater Los Angeles area. I'm down here with my in-laws, with my family, and we're driving back home tomorrow.

But today, even though today is a holiday in the United States, Mike, it's President's Day. But I'm here because it's upgrade upgrade and upgrade waits for no one happy president to you thank you pick your favorite what who's who's your favorite president i mean i think the only one that i have any opinion about is the current president interesting like. Do you know of other presidents? Yeah, yeah, I know of them. But of the presidents that I remember really in my lifetime, I have, and I'm properly, truly aware of, I have the choice of George Bush and Barack Obama.

Right. The safe answer is Abraham Lincoln. Just say Abraham Lincoln and we'll be good well my reasoning like for outside and kind of not being directly affected by American politics I would go with uh Barack because he his like his term into office coming into office was like historical right first like non-white president and then also he

I don't know there's something about him that like from again a non-political thing is kind of cool he does some cool things so like to a Brit like someone who's not affected by him as much it's fun to watch him do cool things but there you go yeah all right fair enough we would have also accepted any of the

other presidents but at least you identified a precedent that's good i don't know who my favorite prime minister well we'll go with churchill how about that perfect i like the way you said it as well okay churchill yeah I don't know. They just seem more of like Church Hill instead of like the way that I would say, which is Churchill, which doesn't sound any different to most people. I've been to his birthplace,

but we're way off topic now. We were never on topic. So follow up? Yes, please. Follow up, or as we could also call it topics that we recently covered and are now covering again. And in fact, I've got two, uh, two, uh, notes from listeners about the nature of follow-up. Uh, um, listener Mark said, I like follow-up at the beginning. It's like previously on upgrade or when we last left Mike and Jason. So that's good feedback about how we could sell follow-up as something more exciting for the people who don't like follow-up.

And listener Nick said, follow-up tangent topics used to bug me, but then I decided topics are topics. Who cares when they happen? Very nice approach there. Topics are going to happen. Who knows when? Who knows where? They just happen.

Topics going to topic. Topics are going to happen. Who knows when, who knows where. They just happen. Topic's going to topic. Topic's going to topic. So topic number one of the follow-up of recent topics that are previously on when we last, Mike and Jason, whatever. Last time we saw Mike and Jason. I have three pieces of follow-up from listeners that I'm going to refer to as cover flowians. They are from the Church of the Cover Flow. We last week mentioned that Cover Flow is still in the Finder, and we both expressed, even though I use ListView and you use ColumnView, the next step style ColumnView that you use,

which is also somewhat crazy, because everybody knows the way that you use the Finder, that one uses the Finder is the right way, and all other ways that other people use it are crazy. Anyway, both of us agreed that although we disagree about how we use the Finder, the people who use CoverFlow, those people are crazy people. And so we said, anybody who uses CoverFlow, write in. And we got some notes from CoverFlowians. Listener Nate is a CoverFlowian. He says, I use CoverFlow and the Finder almost every day. I'm an eighth grade math teacher and have thousands of worksheets and documents that I've created over the years. The easiest way I have found of sorting through them quickly is searching by keyword and then using CoverFlow to preview the contents. If there's a better way, I would love to know about it. And I think he makes a good point here that he's actually looking at those thumbnails and

flipping through them, trying to find the one that looks right and uh i don't i mean i guess you could put you could do that in a list view with a really big icon and scroll through that which would probably serve the same purpose it might work just as well it might not uh but he's been using cover flow all this time since before the list view was that flexible um and uh or icon view was that flexible so uh more power to you, listener Nate. CGP Grey told me he actually uses the same and I was shocked. I was shocked when he told me. He's a cover flowian.

Yeah, he was very angry at me. But yeah, so it's like the same sort of idea. He says when he's working on a project, he's using lots of different media types. So if he knows he's looking for an image, it's an easy way to just scroll down and wait to see the icon size change even and so this is one of those things like i said i know we ask for feedback but you know you know you do those things where it's like you know you have a you have an idea or like you have a thought that we make, just like a throwaway comment.

And then you just get inundated. This is one of those things. And I love it when that happens. It's amazing. And, you know, here at Upgrade, we ask you to send in your feedback. We do. It's not like ATP where all they tell you to do is not email them. Oh, here we go.

That's an ATP joke. That's not. I'm not being serious there. Listener H also said, whenever I use CoverFlow in the Finder, it's to look at photos. I don't use icon view for this because the icons don't get as large as I would like. That's amazing because they get really large. Also, I can't see file info while I browse. This is a great point. Whereas in CoverFlow, there's a list view below the previews that shows me lots of metadata.

I don't use quick look because it only shows one image at a time, and I like to peek ahead in CoverFlow to browse faster. So that's a good one, perfectly valid. And Listener Dale said, I work with lots of scanned PDFs that have similar layout and content. CoverFlow is a quick, convenient way to view and rename them for filing purposes. The icon view, even with the size slider turned all the way up, is simply not big enough to see the detail in the PDFs on my 15-inch MacBook Pro. I don't know if there's a better way to do this than with CoverFlow. So I'm not sure. I mean, this seems to be, the common ground here seems to be that CoverFlow lets you see these icons at huge sizes, even bigger than you can in an icon view in the finder. And so they stick with CoverFlow. Although some of this also seems to be, well,

CoverFlow works for me, so I'm not going to change it. It may be that there's some other view option in the finder now that could solve this, but they've got something that works for them. So if Apple removes CoverFlow at some point in the future, we will find out if there is a solution that's better for them than CoverFlow. But that's the answer. Three listeners, thank you for writing in and explaining that you use CoverFlow. I think CoverFlow is kind of weird, but hey, if it works for you. Please don't. Don't email us.

See, there we are. We did it. We're just as bad as ATP now. We're just as bad as ATP now. The other bit of a topic that you've heard before and now you're hearing again that's totally not follow-up comes. It's about podcasting, so that'll push some buttons for a few listeners. Listener Tim wrote in. We were talking last week about one of the problems with podcasting being discoverability and shareability and that there's no way to, you know, like with YouTube, you can link to a particular part of a clip and play it back. And podcasting is kind of hard to, uh, hard to explain and hard to introduce to people. And it's one of the problems with, uh, growing the

podcast audience and listener Tim wrote in. Um, and he, he wrote us a few times. He kept thinking of more things to say, which was actually kind of great. It was a really well thought out email that he wrote. The first one was really long and he was like taking a little journey as he wrote it, I think. But he pointed out that a bunch of other podcasters have talked about the same issue that recommending podcasts to people is really hard. As he put it, the activation energy is tremendously high. A little science for you there. If you don't already know the person very well and can explain why you might think they'd enjoy a specific podcast episode, it's futile. Then again, maybe the other side of that coin

is that podcast listeners are supposed to be loyal, good with feedback, and tend to be more valuable for advertisers. I would say, I mean, this is, we talked about this a little bit. This is the up and down side. And I wrote about this on Six Colors. This is the up and down side of podcasting

is the audiences are fantastic, but it is very hard to get people into the audience because you need to be committed enough to get like what a podcast is and start to listen. And once the activation energy is spent and you're in, it's a lot easier. Tim actually wrote a blog post, which we'll link to in the show notes, where he describes, among other things, trying to get his sister to listen to a podcast. And it is sobering in the sense that it just shows how hard it is to get people to get podcasts. And it needs to be better. And the question is, who's going to make it better? And I'm not sure there's a great answer there. Although Tim's email actually filled me with excitement because I felt like there's a great opportunity here for somebody to try to make the podcasting thing more accessible for people.

I don't know who's going to do it. I kind of don't think that even though he's got a lot of really great ideas, a one-man band like Marco Arment is going to be able to do it. He's on one platform with one app. I feel like the place with the most leverage here to make a difference is probably Apple. And although Apple is making some interesting moves with some of the changes they made to the podcast app and that they put it on every iPhone now,

I feel like they could do more and that if Apple innovated here a little bit more, if Apple created some better tools for podcasters, including things like building MP3 chapter marks or things like that and supported it in their apps, they could start to push some discoverability if they built a sharing system that threw up an iTunes page

with a podcast episode embedded in it that jumped to the right area or whatever. Apple could probably start the ball rolling. And Apple's not going to be the be-all end-all because there's going to be Google, you know, Android users and their Windows users and all of that. But Apple could probably make a dent that might be enough. They're a big enough player because they've got the iTunes podcast directory. They could potentially make a difference.

I don't know if Apple cares enough. I'm sure there are people at Apple who do, but that was just, it's a thought I've had for a while now, which is I think maybe the highest leverage place to make change, to make podcasts more accessible involves somebody at Apple. Now, my question is, is there somebody at Apple who's really concerned about podcasts or is there like somebody at Apple who runs the podcast app, somebody at Apple who does iTunes and it's got encoding and stuff in it, but they don't really care about it. Somebody at Apple who is in charge of the podcast section of the iTunes store. Is there a bigger picture view of

podcasting at Apple? Is there somebody who's a champion for podcasting at Apple? My guess is not if there is, that's awesome. Cause I think that person has a lot of potential to make change here. That would be, I think, I wish Apple did have that. That would be a great job. In fact, I would say, I was saying this to David Sparks this morning when we had breakfast. He said, would you ever consider working at Apple? And I said, you know, the only job at Apple that I think I would be suited for and that I would love would be the podcast evangelist czar kind of person, because I do think Apple has a chance to change the medium there, but I just don't think it's, and I don't think it's necessarily a focus they should have,

but I think they could make a lot of change if they wanted to push in that area. I do know that there are people that work on podcasts at Apple, right? The people that work on the iTunes team, there are staff and they are huge fans of the medium. Oh, absolutely. But what I don't know, and I think is what you're saying, Jason, correct me if I'm wrong, is I don't know how much these people have

to be able to swing any real product direction. Well, think of it this way. And actually, I'm not sure how this dovetails with like how iBooks works and with the people who build iBooks author, but that's sort of what I'm thinking is, is there somebody, are those people who live and breathe podcasts

and promoting them in the iTunes store, are those people, do they have any power to do anything involving, let's say, creating a tool for podcasters that makes some of these other things possible? A piece of software or a web app? Derived direction of the podcast app that's for iOS? Evangelize podcasting features in GarageBand, which if there's somebody whose job it's been to do that, I feel very sorry for them because nobody's listening. That's my question.

Is podcasting something that's just scattered into a bunch of different things? Because Apple collectively has power to change that, change the medium, I think. Or at least, like I said, the most leverage of anyone, one organization right now to do that. I think if they pushed in certain directions, the whole podcasting world would push that way just to pick up on the momentum. But I'm not sure Apple has a center like that. And if they do, that's great. But I'm not sure they do. I sort of feel like they view iTunes as a podcast as a section of iTunes. And then there's a podcast app. And maybe those people talk to each other, or maybe they don't. And then there are no engineering resources for things like tools that would make the stuff that came into the podcast part of iTunes better or make the podcasting discovery experience better.

That stuff doesn't seem to really be there other than just if you go to the podcast app and look in the directory, you'll see things. And that's good, but I think that's not all that Apple could probably be doing. I don't know. So Upgradian, Steve, at Steve Librarian, so I will say Steve. That's Steve. He is a librarian. Yep. He said to us using the hashtag AskUpgrade that we said that last week you said you didn't want a YouTube podcast,

but this week mentioned a good use case shareability and that's kind of what jason is talking about a bit as well it's like having somebody who's better at it now i totally understand the what was it like what it sounds like we're saying which is like we will we want kind of a bit of both but i personally uh wouldn't want there to be a company like a stitcher or something that does this i agree i agree the only company that i at the moment would trust to do something is apple like we've been saying just simply because in the past they have been very respectful of a lot of things that podcasters want to do like host their own files like apple do not touch anything exactly um so that's why they're the only company

that right now not only are they probably the only one that could do it today and and have a real swing in anything that they wanted to do in the podcasting space because they actually really did help pioneer the medium i know there were people first but they really really did help pioneer the medium. I know there were people first, but they really actually did put it on the map. Without Apple, podcasting never would have taken off in the first place, I would say. But also, they've been pretty good about it all so far. So I think that they're the only ones that I would personally trust. Yeah. And what we don't want is a monolith that controls the only way that you can get listeners and the only way you can make money is by going through X.

We don't want that. And Apple hasn't done that. And I'm not advocating for, I don't want Apple to invent a whole bunch of new things that only work on iPhones and that you've got to go through Apple to do approval for everything and all of that. I'm not advocating

that. But I do think that they have some leverage to push some of this stuff forward and maybe solve some of these problems if they wanted to solve them. And I do think it would improve. What do they get out of it? I do think they would improve people's attachment to their iPhones and to their cars with CarPlay, potentially, if they do a good job of this, that this is going to be another way that people love their iPhones. Because I know the people who listen to lots of podcast apps now,

podcasts now on iPhone podcast apps, they love that experience. And your iPhone becomes that much more valuable to you because you are listening to all of these podcasts. So I think that there's a lot of strength there for Apple if they wanted to go there. But I'm not sure that there's anything that organized. I think it's just kind of all up.

I also threw in here from listener Tom, just because it's just going to get your goat again, Mike, is you could also use a chapter marker to solve problems like follow-up. You could. You could. You could. And this is one of those cases where what I would say is the current state of chapter markers and podcast apps is so problematic

that it is not something that is worth the time of many podcasters when they make those calculations. But if the tools improved and if support improved and it became something that had some momentum behind it, it might be something that could be done.

And that would be nice. But right now, this is part of the difficulty is that, you know, there's no chicken. There's no egg. It's just some straw. And everybody's saying, where's the chicken? Anyway, that is follow-up. Boom. Done with follow-up. Well, no, it wasn't follow-up it was oh sorry previously on topics we discussed previously and are now discussing again

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Thank you so much to Lynda for supporting this show and all of RelayFM. New things. New things. Hooray. Talking about new things. Yeah, moving into topics, I had a couple quick links i wanted to do not spend too much time on them but um one of them is david sparks who i mentioned earlier i had breakfast with him today because i'm down here where he lives in orange county and uh on friday was his last day at his law firm. He started his, or Thursday maybe,

and Friday he posted his new website where he's got his new law firm. And then he wanted to devote more time to doing the stuff that we do too, right? He wants to devote more time to writing about tech topics and doing his Mac Sparky Field Guides books and videos and his podcasting. And his law firm, he was at his law

firm for even longer than I was at Macworld. And it was a big move for him. And it turns out that he and I, I mean, he and I have talked about this a lot. We have a lot of this in common, including being, he was pointing out today, parents who were children during the Great Depression and who seemed to instill in their children this sort of risk-averse nature of like, oh, you just grab whatever you can get when you can get it because you never know when it's all going to go bad rather than like I'm going to take a risk. And if it doesn't work, I'll figure something out. And he feels that and I felt that. And so he feels that. And I feel felt that. And, and, uh, so he, he, he did it. He, he left his law firm and, uh, and is now has his own firm where he likes to say he sort of practices like a, like an old country doctor. He likes consulting with his clients and doing the

right thing for them and steering them away from things that might make him more money, uh, but are wrong for them. And, uh, he's a, so he's doing that. He's a business, business attorney. And then he's going to do more books and do more stuff on MacSparky.com. And that's awesome. He is a great guy. If you haven't visited his site, if you haven't looked at his books and you haven't listened to MacPower users, you are really missing out. And we're going to get more of David Spark's nerdy side, which every time I talk to him, I'm amused by the fact that he's got his, all of his colleagues who are lawyers and the people at the firm were like this and all of his other lawyer friends. And they are completely baffled by us. They do not, they're like, you've got this Apple-y thing, this geeky thing.

And they thought it was like, you know, this funny thing that he did, like collecting figurines or something. And he, and he, and they're a little bit baffled that he's like, no, this is a major part of what I want to do. And I want to make room for it. And I don't want to have cases that take up my entire, like four months. So I can't do books and I can't do anything else. I want to be able to modulate that a little bit better. And now he's going to be able to do that. He's going to be able to pick his clients and do the kind of law that he wants to practice and have time to do his books and write about stuff on his blog and do Mac power users. And, uh, that's great. So I just wanted to mention that because he, you know, he's going through what, what I went through and, you know,

obviously he and I have been talking about this for a while and I'm really excited for him. I think he's going to do, I think he's going to do a great job he's just one of those people that you know if you're gonna throw around like the full-time thing you know like the idea that going full-time on your passion project or whatever I feel like David is just one of those people that deserve it like just really does he's just so fantastic and he's such a um he's such a credit like to to the community like he's just such just like fantastic thing you know that we all need to see more of and hear more of um we're lucky to have him and i'm so i'm just so happy for him it's just fantastic And I should mention, I also listened this weekend as I was driving around LA. Freeways, there's a lot of driving involved.

I got to catch up on a lot of my podcasts. I listened to last week's Inquisitive with your guest, Merlin Mann. So this is, I guess, technically follow-out. I wanted to mention, because in a similar way, I mean, obviously you have gone through this going out on your own thing, like I have and like David has. And I wanted to mention that you guys talked about a lot of these same issues in that episode of Inquisitive, which is really excellent, and about trying new things and making big jumps. And I know that starting this week, Inquisitive is going to be a very different show. And I've heard what you're doing with it. And it's really great. But I really encourage

people to listen to last week's inquisitive with merlin if they want to hear you guys talk about some of the very same things that david and i were talking about over you know eggs and potatoes and sausage this morning thank you jason follow up to you that's like nepotism follow-up but it'll it'll do it will shake out my other quick link is to the Johnny Ive profile that was in the New Yorker today, which is so long that I didn't get through it and I had to go. So I instant papered the rest of it. But people should read it. It's fascinating. The level of access the reporter got is excellent. The level of detail of the reporting was very impressive to

me. The fact that this reporter was noticing lots of things and was following up with people and asking what they were later. And I was, as just from a pure reportorial stance, I was looking at it going, wow, okay, good job. This person did a really good job or, or the editors or the fact checkers or whoever did it, did it, they all worked on this. And it's a very rich thing. The short thing that I will mention, and I said this on Twitter earlier today, is come for the many tens of thousands of words profile of Johnny Ive.

Stay for the anecdote about how he and J.J. Abrams discussed lightsaber design. Yes, I read that. So I saw this this morning and was like, I can't do this. This is too much. So I tweeted, I'm just going to wait for people to sum it up for me. And then today, people have been sending me links, which has been awesome.

And there's one that I'm including in the show notes today, which are at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 23 or your podcast app of choice. Thank you. No problem. slash upgrade, slash 23, or your podcast app of choice. Thank you. No problem. The Verge did a 15 things we learned post, which was very useful. And it wasn't a slideshow.

It was just a list of 15 things. And it was all very interesting stuff. And I expect to, over the next day or so, see lots of little tidbits come up. But I see an article like that. I see an article like that, Jason. And I think to myself, like that Jason and I think to myself genuinely and I don't mean it as a joke someone should just narrate it and put it out as a podcast

Oh I agree It's so long it takes a lot of time for somebody to sit through even if you're a fast reader but this is the perfect type of thing to turn into a 45 minute podcast just somebody reading it because then people can like listen to it on their commute.

I don't know. It feels like it's just one of those things that's like just begging to be put into audio form. I agree. It's funny. I, having written that story about the photos app for tidbits last week, I,

they have a, they have an audio recording of all their articles. So I actually got to record an audio version of what I wrote. And among the many quirky things that the guys at Tidbits do that Adam and Tanya have put together over there, that one fascinates me. But it's interesting that you mentioned this, that yes, this would have been a great podcast, this big profile, but, uh, you know,

I'm sure somebody out there will turn text to speech on it. That won't be the same, but it would be a great, it would be a great, I mean, I guess you could argue at that point, there's a slippery slope where people say, oh,

well, but then if we recorded his audio, do we get, well, but that takes too long. It's like, no, just read it.

It's fine. Just read it. Yeah. Like you don't even, you don't need to have Jonathan Ive on on the audio like just read it anyway anyway that's just my my that's just simply it comes because i'm just not a big fan of reading really long things fair enough i also wanted to mention since i'm down here in la um i wanted to as a mini topic just mention i'm traveling.

This is not something that I did before I got the Retina 5K iMac. I'm traveling with a laptop. That's not new, but it's not my main Mac. And that has, I've had lots of interesting moments with that. I had that a little bit at Christmas when I was traveling. And now the two hard drives have diverged even further because that's what happens is they were, one was a migration from the other. So they were the same. And then

when I, at Christmas, they had diverged a little bit and now they've diverged much further from each other. But I just want to say it's, it's great. First off, it's great. Federico Vatici talks about like posting from anywhere using his, his iPad. I felt like that with my 11 inch MacBook air. Um, I posted an item from the Marriott LAX, uh, lobby, uh, that was going on with people dressed as various Dr. Who characters all around me. Uh, I posted some items from there for six colors. I posted items from my, my in-laws dining room table. And most off, I noticed the things that I'm really thankful that I've got to make this process easier

and make me not have to be quite as prepared as I might have had to be. You know, I was busy packing for the trip and I didn't have to do a lot of packing on my hard drive for the trip because of Dropbox, where I keep most of my active project files because of 1Password, because this laptop, you know, doesn't have, and I think I maybe reset the

cookies at some point. It doesn't, I had to log into everything on this laptop. Maybe it's just because I haven't used it very much. And, you know, 1Password syncing via Dropbox got me logged back into everything. And I didn't have any frustrations. Using Google Docs, I've got all of my documents that I needed to get, including our show notes here. They're in Google Docs. It was easy to get to them.

Even something like LaunchBar, having stuff like I've got the Google Docs or the Google Drive app, and it puts files down on my file system that aren't really files. They're just links to the stuff that's up on Google Drive, these spreadsheets and documents. And then LaunchBar indexes that. So I can just open LaunchBar and type the first few letters of a Google Doc, and it comes up. And I don't have to think about it. It just sort of happens. It's great. And if I did forget something, and I mentioned this in a previous show, if I did forget something, I also am in a previous show if I did forget something I also am grateful that I have an online backup because my online backup I can I can actually restore files from my online backup of my iMac onto this laptop using the online backup service

and that's great because if I do forget something at home and that does happen I can retrieve the backup file that I saved at home, even though my computer is off, which is also great. So I was really appreciative that we live in a world where I've got this little laptop and I've got all this software and all these cloud services and you put it all together. And it kind of doesn't matter that I'm not on my computer that I use every day.

Because other than the fact that the screen is dramatically less sharp and dramatically smaller, which I really notice in a way that I did not notice before when I was using the 11-inch every day. Other than that, it's just easy. It's easy to keep doing my job even though I'm not on that system because of all these other services and pieces of software that make it easy. I kind of deal with this in like a like the reverse it's kind of

strange so like i use my retina macbook pro as like my main computer like it's where all my stuff is it's the computer that i use every day but the mac pro is kind of where maybe the most important work i do is and recently i've been like i have like a co-working space that i go to but i haven't been there that much in the last couple of weeks because i'm working on uh the new inquisitive it requires me to be using logic a lot to get it done you'll see why and the files are huge like just humongous so i can't really easily move them around yeah like to the macbook pro so i'm like chained to the desktop computer in a in a really weird way because it's kind of like my laptop is where i do everything and then usually my mac pro benefits

from the fact that i have one password and dropbox on them even though i don't really use it for a lot but now it's kind of like I can't go wherever I want because those project files are locked down to that machine just because they're like multiple gigabytes. And I don't want to and can't transfer them easily because I'm concerned about moving one to... If I really, really wanted to, I could just take the logic file and put it onto the Retina pro and go but it's

i don't know this you could you could do it i i do that i i actually do that i um i and i actually have uh because i also will copy those files off sometimes to the my server that's attached to my drobo and and then bring them back and and, and they're huge. I've got, especially the radio theater episodes that I'm, I'm working on, uh, are, are like what you're doing with inquisitive, lots of editing, lots of source files. They are enormous, like, you know, 50 gig files. They're just, they're, they're, they're huge and getting bigger all the time. Um, and yeah, you can do it. You can do it. I mean, I, i i end up to to load up this laptop before i came here that was the one thing i did was this week's episode of the incomparable and i plugged it into um to gigabit ethernet through the my my gigabit ethernet adapter and then copied

it that way because um doing it airdrop was not gonna do do it. So when I go, because I've got quite a bit of traveling in April, I'm going to do an element of that. But that's too much for me just to work in a different location for a day. Because then I'm moving it all onto one, then moving it all back again four hours later. For this incomparable episode, when I get home, I'll just plug into ethernet and copy it to the archive i'm not going to copy it back to the desktop i'm not going to go back and forth and back and forth a bunch of times that would get pretty annoying because the files are huge because i like i said

i would do it when i go like the same view like if i go on a longer trip i will do it but it's like the idea of i can't just with all of my other work you know that i do, I can just pick up from one machine and go to another because it's easy. It's small files. But once you start getting into these really large files, it kind of does tether you to a machine a little bit more, especially with my personal internet issues, like with the connection speeds that I have. There just isn't a way for me to move this data around over the web.

It's just not possible for me to do that. Yeah. It's interesting. There's an issue. With the huge files, it's hard. Huge media files are still a little bit of an exception. You can't just drop them in Dropbox and know that if I close up here, I can go right over there and get them because it will take forever for them to sync.

Yeah. If you have space like it actually costs me money to do because i have to buy additional data for the hotspot that i use on the mac pro like oh right well yeah you're not even you can't even do a land sync there no no problem so there we go well not all things have been so this will all be solved in five years unfortunately though your files will then be like 20 terabytes and you won't be able to transfer them then but yeah yeah everything else will get bigger everything will get faster the hard drives will get bigger but your data files will just get huge because they'll be the 3d super telepathy audio yeah 3d audio oh

i can't wait for 3d audio it's gonna be be so good Jason I want to ask you a question is Apple building a car? yeah they got some cinder blocks up in their driveway they got the frame there they got the chassis they got the tires off they're working on it what's going on here?

I have no idea this story seemed to come from a weird place, like it spun out of the Tesla, you know, Tesla's stealing people from Apple, Apple's stealing people back. And then all of a sudden, the Wall Street Journal pops out with a story that says, you know, we've confirmed from sources at Apple that there's a team of 100 people who are working on a car project. Wow. That was abrupt. That was sudden. I don't know why. First off. Okay. There are a bunch of things here. First off, Apple does a lot of R and D. Apple tries a lot of things. I think that we never see, or that we never see what they thought they would be when they started doing them. And I think that's part of what's happening here. Look, if you're Tim Cook and you're, or you're another senior executive at Apple and you're like car, cars, like Tesla's

really got this opportunity to be the Apple of the car industry and really reinvent cars and think of them as electronic, electric cars, purely electric, their computers. There's battery technology, which we know about manufacturing we know about. Could should we do that? Or is that too far afield for me? And and, and if I'm Tim Cook, maybe I say, you know what, let's look at it. Let's see. And if it's not, and if any company has the money to spend to see, it's Apple. And what if the answer is that it's a good idea? What if they could be a major player in the super smart electric car industry with all of the skills that they've already got and they bypass it because they didn't want to bother to think about it. I mean, that's where you get into danger as a company. We were talking about

on previous shows about Apple being willing to change, right? Like I wrote about it at iMore a couple of weeks back. This is one of those examples where I feel like it's really great that Apple has this let's try it attitude if this is what's going on here. Like, let's look at it. Now, they may decide it's a bad idea. They may come back and say, look, we can't add that much, or it's going to cost way too much. And we don't, you know, we don't think it's going to be profitable enough. There's so many different ways they could come back and say this program is not going to work. But, you know, unlike Google, which would just say, hey, look, self-driving cars, we're doing this thing. It might be a product in 20 years.

Apple doesn't do that. Apple goes off and investigates lots of stuff. And they only tell you about it when they've got something that they want to sell you. So, you know, I'm curious about the whole would Apple just rather buy Tesla or not? And maybe, you know, maybe Elon Musk is not interested in working for Apple and it's that simple. And Apple thinks, well, we don't want to work with Elon Musk anyway. What if we did an Apple car ourselves? What would that be like?

And I can see why you'd get in a war over engineers if you have these two competing smart car projects or, you know, super intelligent driving computer projects, whatever you want to call them. But so I don't think it's outrageous for them to be investigating it. I think the challenge for Apple is going to be, can they do this? Can they add to this? Can they really, can they really do something that changes the world? And are they trying to change the world or are they doing research that's going to allow them to i don't know buy somebody or sell this technology to somebody or more likely partner with somebody make a partnership with one of the automakers i don't know how big are the automakers maybe

apple could just buy buy ford or something and say well i, new cars. I think I heard one of those things when the earnings calls out that Apple could buy GM, Ford, and one other. They could just buy them if they wanted to. Why would you want to? Other than the factories and some of the supply chain. But even then, the argument for Apple getting into the car business

is that they don't want to be in the old car business. If you're Apple, you get into this business because you see it not as an extension of the old car business, be in the old car business. If you're Apple, you get into this business because you see it not as an extension of the old car business, but that the old car business that started with Henry Ford is dying. And there will be a new car business. And the new car business is going to be Tesla.

And it's going to be what Google is doing. And it's going to be maybe some of these cars that some of the car makers are making now that are these electric cars that are very different, but that they don't want to be maybe some of these cars that some of the car makers are making now that are that are these electric cars that are very different but that they don't want to be burdened by having this whole old car company infrastructure around them and if they really believe that that like we we can be better by not having any of that then that's the reason you investigate it so buying ford you know on that level like why would you do that yeah like it seems seems crazy because you're buying you're basically buying all of the wrong infrastructure

like everything you're buying is kind of not what you're trying to make if what you're trying to make is an electric car because those companies have the ability to make electric cars but they also have factories and tens of thousands of people that are making gas cars so it's kind of like why would you do that i really don't know how i feel about this like yeah i've read some people say like what i originally thought like my original thought about when i you know my my gut reaction my instant reaction was if apple make a car i'm concerned about apple's direction as a company because it's like what are you doing like you why why are you making a car right that's and i still think there's a big part of me that feels that way yeah and then uh like i've seen seen some

other stuff like steven wrote a great piece on 512 pixels about it because me and him originally had a conversation and we had the exact same feelings like what are you doing and he wrote like this interesting piece about like you know consumer electronics can only go so far like if they want to continue as a company they need to start thinking about other things

and this could be an interesting one to do and I get that but there's still this part of me and I do think it's the larger part of me, where it's like, why? Like, you're doing all right for money. Like, you know, like, do you need, is this the thing? Like, is this the next thing that you as a company should be going for?

Like, are there not other things that aren't like cars? It might be or it might not be. And that's why I think they're investigating this. But, you know, when I've talked about Google in the past, I keep saying, look, Google knows that. And you can see it in their balance sheet. Now, Google knows that text ad advertising is not going to not going to continue. They know it. They know it.

it. They know it. And I think Google is spending all their crazy money they've got right now on all of these Google X projects because they're trying to place some bets or put some money down in the roulette wheel and spin the wheel a couple of times and say, can we find the next big things? What are the next big things? Maybe for them, the next big thing is YouTube advertising. And then they're working on the one that's after that. But I think as a company, if you're not looking for that next big thing, you risk becoming so complacent that you end up being like Microsoft and being sort of like, we're just going to ride this thing down. And then with Satya Nadella, he's like, oh, geez, we can't do that. And now he's been given the task of way too late saying, OK, we're going to rethink this. And so for Apple, I do think it's in Apple's character and their culture to say, why not?

I think the moment I think what you do is say, what are we good at? And if you look at the electric car thing and you say, okay, we have so much expertise. I mean, you could, you go the same, it's like the opposite direction from the watch. At least the watch right now is an iPhone accessory, but still it's like kind of a wacky direction. But if you look at it and say, okay, design hardware, integration between hardware and software, building devices with batteries right it's like uh building things at scale um they're good at a lot of the stuff that goes into making an electric car they're good at all that stuff and if they think like i said if they think that that car market is going to have a shake-up um if if current cars are like uh mainframe computers

or something and this is like the first pc or if this is like these are like mainframe computers or something, and this is like the first PC, or if this is like, these are like smartphones as opposed to old cell phones, if they really think there's a market, I don't want to belabor that metaphor, but if there's a market change happening in the auto industry, and that the companies that are best positioned to make cars in the future are going to be tech companies, not old style car companies, because the old style car companies, as technical as they get, are not going to be able to do what Tesla does, because Tesla is starting from a very Silicon Valley kind of approach, instead of having this whole huge legacy of old school automotive engineering and structure and factories and all of that.

Now, I'm not saying that's true. I'm saying if Apple thinks that, then I can see why they would look into this. But that's step one. There are a lot of steps before we all get invited out to the track for a special Apple event where they unveil the cars and we drive them around. A beautiful white track with white tires that don't mark the track. I can't wait to see that Johnny Ive video about the car. But, you know, so I wouldn't put it past them because Apple's in a very funny place right now

where they've got huge momentum and all this power and all this money. And I know we all would say things like, wow, I can't believe that they're building a car, but they can't get, you know, pages to work better and they can't get iCloud to sync better. It's like, well, that's true on one level. But on another level, you know, what is Apple best at? Apple is best at that building hardware with some really nice software on it, that hardware software synthesis stuff.

And if they view, and they're really good, we know it's supply chain and hardware engineering and all of those things. If they view the electric car market as a place where that core strength of Apple would be a winner. And you got to think they do believe that whether or not it's true, whether they got to look at it and say, wow, if we did that, we would be awesome. And we would totally win there. You know that people at Apple think that the question is then how do you investigate it in a sober way to find out what the real deal is so you can decide if you actually want

to go down this path or not. And my gut feeling is that that's where they are or that they've just come out of that and are now have decided that it is and they're starting to do something more. You know, this feels to me like something that is years away and is more investigatory. I could totally be wrong. I don't have any facts about this. But that's just my gut feeling is that this is either something that they're still figuring out or they've just figured it out and are going to do it. But it's totally reasonable, I think, to make that argument that they really believe that the entire auto industry is going to transform in the next 10 or 20 years as electric cars come on board and that the most important features of cars going forward are going to be

about software and battery charging and self-driving features and stuff like that. That's all about software. And if you're Apple and you're looking at how current car makers approach the integration of hardware and software, or even the integration of hardware, the car, and hardware, the entertainment systems, the air conditioning, all sorts of other things. It's terrible. It's terrible. Integration is really bad in most of the auto industry. And Tesla integration is pretty darn good. And some of the luxury brands, the integration is better. But if you're Apple and you look at that and say, wow, we could do full stack, control the whole car, and that we

could make a much better car because of that. And that the future of cars is going to be that because the most important differentiating features in cars going forward is going to be stuff that requires super high tech software stuff and sensors. And that's us. I mean, if you really look at 20 years and say every car is going to have a self-driving mode, it's like, you know, who's going to build that? Is it just going to be Google? Are car makers going to do it? Are OEMs going to integrate with cars? That's terrifying. So I don't know. When I first heard, I thought this was totally crazy. And the more I think about it, the more I think like, if I was at Apple, I would certainly want to take a shot at at least seeing if this is something we want to do with an eye

toward the fact that somebody might come back and say, you do not know what we're stepping in if we go go this way and and the ability to back away and say look it's not for us last question on this um i don't think that since the iphone we've really had a compelling long-term rumor did you remember like rumors used to be like iphone rumor was like 12 years yeah like you'd have something and then you talk about it a lot and a lot and a lot and i guess maybe the apple making a television is the only thing but i genuinely feel like this is gonna be the thing that people just keep talking about like Like, not all the time, but it's going to... Because I remember, you know, like from years ago,

should Apple make a car? But it was always like, should Apple make a car? Right. And it was super jokey in a way that this is not. You know, the watch was a little bit like that. The TV, Gene Munster is out there. He's going to flog that one. You know, if Apple comes out with a car

before they come out with the TV, I expect Gene munster to just throw himself in front of the car at the presentation i remember apple phone rumors from the 90s right that's been going on that went that went on for a long time so in fact when those rumors intensified a lot of us were like yeah yeah we've heard it before because it's like i've always felt that those long-term rumors become self-fulfilling prophecies. Like, if people keep saying it and keep asking for it and keep wanting it, eventually, maybe you just have to make it. Because you get to the point where people want it so bad

that if you have any inclination of making it, you've got to market the market has created itself i also think you can control if you decide that's not a direction you want to go naturally you get to control that and say never mind right and like downplay it and come out and and and get the you know the one reason it builds is because you're not saying you're not doing it yeah yep and and i I would imagine that if Apple decides they're not doing it or that it's not going to be what people think, there will start to be those stories that will leak through reliable sources that will say, well, it's not really a car. What Apple's really doing is whatever. And they'll downplay it if they decide that this is not what they're doing. Cool.

All right. Should we take a break and then actually talk about something which kind of plays into what we've just been speaking about? Yeah. Let's do it. Jason, could you please, please thank our friends over at MailRoute? Yes. Thank you, MailRoute. And more than that, let me tell you a little story, a little word picture.

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in the cloud looks at all that mail, and they work very hard to make their algorithms really smart at detecting what is spam. They know stuff that looks totally innocuous by looking at the subject headers and things like that. They know it's spam because they are seeing all the spam that, you know, in their universe. And so they filter that stuff out. They do virus scans on file attachments. So if you've got a friend with a compromised Windows PC, that thing's going to get moved out of there.

Bounces that come back to you that are like, especially if people send out spam in your name, the bounces come back to you. That's the worst. That's filtered out too. So when I open my inbox, I don't see any of that. I just see the mail that I want to see. And there are some really great user-friendly features. Everybody on my domain receives a weekly, some of them are weekly and some of them are daily, it depends, everybody gets to choose their frequency, listing all the mail that was rejected and its subject and who it was from. Those are very entertaining to see the trends and spam words, it makes me laugh every time. And then there's a little link, and you can, with one click, I can whitelist and deliver a message if I see something that was filtered out wrongly, which doesn't happen very often, MailRoute is incredibly accurate.

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Thank you, Upgrade, for being sponsored by MailRoute. MailRoute. That's backward. Welcome to MailRoute. This is Upgrade. This is our new podcast brought to you by upgrade thank you to mail route for sponsoring upgrade thank you mail route thanks mr mail route that was a newsboy a 30s newsboy came in or mickey mouse oh dear what tell me about this link that you've put in here our next topic is this link i put in here i i wanted to just mention this is not it doesn't

have to be a very long topic but predicting the difficulty of predicting apple we just spent a lot of time uh chewing over this rumor about apple making a car and and i love that stuff i love trying to figure out what apple's thinking that is like my favorite thing is like observing what Apple does, trying to figure out what their thought processes are, trying to understand Apple. And sometimes it rubs people the wrong way. And I get people who say to me, why did you say that this was a good idea? You always say that, you know, this thing that Apple's doing is a good idea. You know, I don't always think that what Apple does is a good idea.

I'm not trying to endorse Apple's ideas. I'm trying to understand why they do them. Because I think that we're all served by having a better idea of why Apple does what it does is a good idea. I'm not trying to endorse Apple's ideas. I'm trying to understand why they do them. Because I think that we're all served by having a better idea of why Apple does what it does. I think that helps. Understanding Apple is important. And so that's why I spend a lot of time with it. A guy named John Kirk, speaking of lawyers and former lawyers, I believe he's a former lawyer, wrote a piece on tech opinions called The Secret to Apple's Success Remains a Secret. You should read it. It's an interesting piece. The money graph is, I notice a consistent pattern in Apple's critics. Those that understand Apple the least criticize them the most.

If you want me to believe you understand the reasons why Apple will fail, first demonstrate to me that you understand the reason why Apple grew at all and grew so tall. Until then, I'll remain skeptical of the doomsayers. For while I have great respect for the opinions of many Apple observers, I still believe that the secret to Apple's success remains a secret. I think what, so there's so much here that's really interesting. One of them is a lot of the people who write about Apple being doomed prove in what they write that they have no idea about how Apple's business works or why Apple has been successful. And those are people that are – it's actually very easy to ignore them because these are the people who say Apple is doomed. At some point, people are going to wake up and realize that these are just religious cult drone people who were brainwashed by clever marketing into buying products.

Those people have no idea what they're talking about. You can just discount them. I almost can't believe that people still write that stuff in 2015. I saw one the other week. I mean, sometimes I'm not sure they believe it, but they write it. I mean, this is the Rob Enderle factor. Rob Enderle, I'm pretty sure, doesn't believe most of what he writes. He's writing it because he's getting paid to write it, and he makes a very nice living

writing what his clients pay him to write and opining about whatever his clients want him to opine about. It's a living. I couldn't do that, but that's what Rob Enderly seems to be doing. So anyway, the point, the difficulty with Apple's success of the last decade is if you were an analyst or a journalist or something in between, fashion industry analyst, who said Apple's making mostly good decisions, Apple's going to keep growing, Apple's doing great. And you had said that consistently since 1997, you'd be right. You could also say, well, if you're somebody who's just an Apple fan boy, who thinks everything Apple does is right, you could, since 1997, have said everything Apple's doing is great. Apple's going to keep getting great. They would be right. And that leads to a very interesting case where you have to look a little bit deeper

because somebody who critically evaluates Apple but correctly perceives what the company is doing is hard to distinguish from somebody who just uncritically praises Apple on the surface because Apple has done so well. So this is the challenge. And this is actually, I think, the source of why a lot of people who write about Apple, including John Gruber, get called lots of names. I think John Gruber is a really good critical thinker and is well aware of the issues involving Apple. And

this is the thing about Marco writing that piece of the issues involving Apple. And this is the thing about Marco writing that piece that criticized something about Apple and people's like, oh, geez, now things are bad that even the fanboys are criticizing Apple. It's like, no, he's been doing that a lot, but it is easier to paint everybody with that same brush because Apple's done so well. And I always got that at Macworld. There was a period at Macworld where people were saying, why do you keep giving, why does Macworld, not just me, why does Macworld keep giving all of these products these high ratings? I was like, well, show me the last really, really doggy Mac that Apple developed. There was a period there where they just were good. They were on a roll. The products were good.

Do I give a terrible review to a product just for variation, just for kicks? And this is the problem when Apple's on a roll like this, is that the contrarians have always been wrong and the fans have always been right. And so it becomes really difficult to figure out who's got a handle on it and who doesn't. And I think that's some of what John Kirk's going for here. And his argument is, we still don't really understand Apple's success

because when you're hitting all the greens, there's no way to tell whether your theories about what Apple's doing right are right or not. Because until they have some failures and some like serious failures, and we can go back and go, oh, well, that means that this theory isn't right. It's very hard to tell. And I think that's a really interesting idea. And I think it's true. I think it's very easy to see the people who totally don't get Apple.

But it is harder for us to know for sure. Like I said, it's harder for us to know for sure that we understand Apple. And that's one of the things that fascinates me is trying to understand why they do what they do. And since I'm not a financial analyst, I'm a little less concerned about why they're financially successful than sort of like creatively successful. Why do they make the choices that they make? And then I also, in our document, link to an amusing tweet by Farhad Manjoo, who wrote from the New York Times, who said, at this point, the whole journo analyst class,

myself included, has to concede we were wrong about Apple having to make a cheaper iPhone. has to concede we were wrong about Apple having to make a cheaper iPhone. Now, I appreciate the mea culpa. However, it's a little less of a mea culpa when you say, hey, don't blame me. Everybody got it wrong. To which I say, really, everybody? I don't think that's accurate. I don't think everybody got it wrong. I think people have been complaining about Apple needing to go down, downscale and reach a cheaper market for ages now. And that has never proven to be right. And some people know that. And I just, I just, that, that tweet made me laugh out loud that it's the very well done way of wrapping your, yourself, wrapping your entire field around you so that it's not just you who got it wrong.

But I think Kirk's point is fascinating. The idea that when all you see from Apple is success, and this is similar to what John Syracuse talks about on ATP sometimes, which is, I think goes back to the Pixar question, which is success was the John Madden line, success is a great deodorant. The idea that as long as everything's going good, a lot of the problems, you just never see them because nobody has to deal with them

because everything's looking good. And it's only when there are failures that you can start to pick it apart. And I'm sure Apple has lots of internal processes to identify failures, but it's very hard for us to see it on the outside. And what they call failures are probably not things that are even very visible for us. And if they are visible for us, Apple will deny that they're failures, even while they're probably eating each other alive inside, saying, how could we have done that better? Anyway, I'm fascinated by the idea that Apple has been so unprecedentedly successful that it's actually hard to judge why what do you think um i i don't i don't disagree with anything you're saying uh the regards like to being critical about apple i think for me anyway like it's worth pointing out that like being critical is not necessarily a bad thing.

The idea of we criticize Apple, but we're not saying that they are doomed. And I think that there's really a thing to make. Because saying the people that are most critical are maybe the people that know the least. It depends on – I think it depends on how they're being critical. Because we are critical about Apple because we know a lot about them and we love them. And when they do things that are crazy to us or annoying to us, it's because we know how good they can be.

I think that what Kirk is saying is that we're not in that group of the ones who criticize Apple the most. Cause there are those people who literally just criticize everything Apple does. We're more down in the, you know, I like this, of course, you know, I love my Mac.

It's great. But which is a level, a level down for him in the hierarchy of, of critics. But it is true that we have the, especially Apple, Apple ecosystem here, media ecosystem is really weirdly distorted because first off, there were all the people who remember when Apple was doomed, was actually

doomed in the 90s. And now Apple's been on this incredible run. And that leads to this really weird combination of things where you've got the doomsayers out there. People conflate any criticism of Apple with being the doomsayers. It's so easy. I don't know if you've got the doomsayers out there. People conflate any criticism of Apple with being the doomsayers is so easy. I don't know if you've experienced this. I have. If you write something that says that something about Apple is less than up to par, you will get furious people who are trying to destroy you because they basically are going to destroy. I think they've

geared up for a fight with the people on Business Insider who are just writing stupid things, but they don't limit their attack to that. They're going to attack all lack of purity of thought. And that's, I think, really harmful to discussion of Apple and critical views of Apple. But it's a weird environment where you've got these critics of Apple

who totally don't get it. And it makes criticizing Apple with nuance a lot harder because of this, that layer floating at the top that is just stupid and has no idea what they're talking about. Yeah. Like we can be quite, and we are quite critical of Apple unconnected. You know, me, Steven and Federico, we kind of say how we're feeling and if something annoys us then we do and some people kind of see that as us just being like down on them um which is not kind of what our intention is is the idea because we love them and we know what they're capable of yeah that when they don't and you know and it's difficult because it's like you know

make us unicorn tears like give us everything we want all of the time but it's difficult because it's like, you know, make us unicorn tears, like give us everything we want all of the time. But it's a company that historically has had a pretty good track record of doing that, you know. So we kind of want what we know they can give us. Yeah. And as somebody once said, nothing is so perfect that it can't be criticized right i mean this is this is how i've made my look you could argue that a huge chunk of my media life not just about tech but about culture stuff with the incomparable stuff is about dissecting and criticizing things i like and it doesn't mean i don't them. This week's incomparable is about a movie called The Core, which is really bad and I don't like it. But generally discussing things I like.

And like John Syracuse always says, you know, understanding why you like it and what parts you didn't like and what worked and what didn't, or like I said, why Apple does what it does, is I find examining all of that really interesting. There are people who will view criticism as an attack. And if you're somebody who's really internalized your love of Apple products, and you feel like people are really saying stupid, mean things about this company whose products you love, like some of these Business Insider and Forbes kind of pundit people that John Kirk is talking about having no idea even about what they're

writing. And especially if you're somebody who lived through that near-death experience in the 90s, then when people criticize Apple, it feels like they're criticizing you, and you take it personally and you get mad. And there is some of that out there. But I agree with you. I think, And there is some of that out there. But I agree with you. I think, as we say on The Incomparable, actually, a lot of this stuff is coming from a place of love or at least of wanting the products to be better because we want them to be is tear this thing down. It is at its core constructive criticism where if you're not trying to change the behavior of someone else, you're at least trying to understand why you didn't like something or how it could be different. And that's not for everybody. Some people just want to say, yeah, I like it. It's cool. I don't want to hear about the bad things. And that's fine. That's a valid choice. But I love picking that stuff apart and not trying, and that is not a worldview that says everything is bad. It's more like a worldview that says, it's kind of fun to understand why things are good and why they're bad and what the nuances

are there. But it is a charged, Apple is a company that is just full of charged commentary, and it makes it much difficult to find places in the middle sometimes. Should we do some Ask Upgrade? Yes, Mike. I think it's time to move on to hashtag Ask Upgrade, brought to you by Stamps.com. I love that we have a sponsor for that. I really like it it's fun mail bagging it's actual mail you could put it in a bag but you should probably use a box or an envelope stamps.com so getting your mailing and shipping done if especially if you're a small

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In fact, there are postage discounts with stamps.com. So it is really a no-brainer if you are in a small business and you are mailing a lot of stuff and you're thinking about getting something like a postage meter or you're frustrated by having to go to the post office. I've been using stamps.com to send packages out for the incomparable. I also sent a box to Dan Morin. He got it. It's a hilarious box because it's got discs in it from an old shrink wrap copy of Logic Pro that I had laying around because Dan needs to edit better. So he's frustrated with GarageBand. And I said, you know, I have this copy of Logic Pro sitting around, Logic Pro 9, but it works fine. I'll send it to you. Getting a box full of discs in 2015

is really weird. And might send them a magnet. An unofficial, by the way, Mike, bootleg clockwise magnet. Yeah. I went there. I'm going to hire David Sparks. David Sparks. It's too late. I've hired him to defend me. I've

really been enjoying putting that stuff in my mailbox or handing it to my postman and not going to the mail, the post office, which I don't want to go there and see those people ever. So there's a special offer right now from stamps.com. Use promo code upgrade, which is the name of the podcast you're listening to. So it should be easy to remember.

It is a very simple word and you'll get a no risk trial. And there's $110 bonus offer, which includes a digital scale and up to $55 of free postage. So don't wait. Go to stamps.com. And before you do anything else, look up at the top of the screen, and you will see a microphone icon. You click on that and type in the word upgrade. So stamps.com, go there, look for the the microphone enter upgrade for the special no risk trial offer and thank you so much to upgrade for being sponsored by stamps.com see i'm just going to keep doing that now that's the new way i'm going to do it thanks stamps.com so let's do some ask upgrade hashtag ask upgrade listener ben wrote in to say, regarding the Photos app, which we talked about last week,

any way to have multiple iCloud accounts, for example, me and my wife, feed to the same photos in our library. Listener Ben, it's a beta, and it's a new version, so you never know what's going to happen. But right now, no. no right now it is a one-to-one and in fact you can only have one um iCloud account per computer or one one or one photos library per computer sync to iCloud so uh maybe I I would love family sharing for example to have some

hooks for photo stuff feels like if they were going to do it they wouldn't do it that way Ben they would do it through family sharing yeah and I think you know this is also new including family sharing that that would be the kind of thing that maybe in a year

maybe in the next rev we would get some more family features because it's a natural that's such an easy version too that would be the kind of thing that maybe in a year, you know, maybe in the next rev, we would get some more family features like this. Cause it's a natural, that's such an easy version two thing, isn't it? Like you said, you know, that's,

that's a feature that you could conceivably wait on. And it gives you something to say like, Oh, and now we have this. Well, there's already a shared library infrastructure. So you could have a family version of a shared library infrastructure that allowed you to share some or all of your photos and they would just be part of everybody in the

family's library in some way there are ways they could do it we're just not there yet this is this version is brand new still in beta and it's going to be one library one iCloud account per back and they don't you know you can do the sharing stuff so you could share albums and things with your wife's iCloud account, but it's not the same as having sort of a shared pool right now, unfortunately. We have

at eves underscore io. Yeah, I think this is Eve in French. Oh, yes. Eve. Oh, of course, yes. We Europeans are neurotically privacy concerned. Is there a photos for Mac setup with minimum iCloud involvement? Yes. And Yves, yes, that is true.

I know you Europeans, including Mike, are privacy concerned. Are the British still considering themselves European? Technically, no, not in that sense like we are in europe but most year most brits do not consider themselves european and plus like i do not have privacy concerns okay just in general for for eve's sake anyway um the um yes is the answer you don't even need to turn on iCloud Photos to use Photos for Mac. You can just leave it off. And you don't

even need to have your photos come into the Photos library if you want. If you've got them as files on your desktop or in folders or wherever you keep them, you can actually, there's a setting to not copy them into the library. And then when you drag them in, it's referencing them on disk.

What's that doing? Hard linking or something? What is that doing? No, that it's just referencing the files. That's essentially like an alias. So if you delete them, they're gone. I checked. Hard linking them would be interesting because the idea there would be that if you deleted them from your disk, they would still be in the library.

But I think that defeats the purpose of managing them yourself, which is if you want to delete them, you would just delete them and they'd be deleted. This way you delete it and it wouldn't go anywhere. And you'd be like, why? Why won't it die? And then you're deleting everything in two places. And that's a bad thing so but so yes you can you can use it as not iCloud but managing its own library or even not iCloud and having it being on your desk a desktop or on your hard drive and that all works so that's pretty great so you can you can effectively use it as just an app for local

photos like iPhoto basically yeah I know it sounds like a crazy thing maybe to inquire, but it just seems that Apple is so iCloud-focused that it would be like the app for the future, but it's good that they're keeping that in mind for people that don't want to do that. Right. Also, some libraries are going to be huge, and you've got to pay for iCloud Sync. So some people are not going to want to pay and that's fine. Um, and, and, uh, yeah. Uh, Ooh, this is a Twitter. See these, we're in ask upgrade where we don't actually know the names of people because the ask upgrade thing doesn't do it.

This is from Twitter user. Ah, it's nearly down. It's Andy listener. Andy says, Mike, It's nearly down. It's Andy. Listener Andy says, Mike, what do you make of the news that Zane Lowe is leaving the Beeb for Apple? And I've also got a tweet here from a iMike, spelled strangely with a Y, that says, context, Zane Lowe is way more than a DJ.

The guy loves music and can spot new stuff like no one else. This makes sense for curation. So can you talk a little bit about Apple hiring this fellow named Zane Lowe, who I've never heard of? So Zane is from New Zealand, I think, but he's been on the BBC for as long as I can remember. Since 2003, he has been a DJ on Radio 1. I'm going to include a link as well to an article that Federico wrote

because Federico is familiar with Zane Lowe as well. What makes Zane Lowe more than a DJ is his ability to spot and discover new music. There are a lot of bands that have been very popular in Britain, either American bands or UK bands, it doesn't really matter where they come from, that have become popular because of Zane Lowe's influence. Like, for example, a band that I really love,

the Arctic Monkeys, Zane really kind of pushed them even further into the mindset of the general populace because the Arctic Monkeys became popular because they kind of didn't try and destroy music sharing. Like if people were sharing their music illegally, they didn't stop it, really. So it kind of helped them become big that way.

But then they kind of had to break through the Radio 1 audience, which is like a large mainstream audience in the UK. But basically it makes sense for Zayn to join Apple if what Apple is doing is continuing to go with music curation in their music streaming service that will replace Beats. Which is the best thing about Beats, I think. Yes, it is for me, 100%. And that's why I put up with some of my frustrations with it

is because the music curation is so good. And that's why I put up with some of my frustrations with it is because the music curation is so good. Yeah. And Zane Lowe joining Apple as like in an editorial position is fantastic because he is really great at spotting new music. I hope that they continue to do something with him that he is famous for. He used to do these like album playbacks

where he would bring the artist into the studio and he would play the entire album, a new album or a recent album, and talk through with the artist each track. Just absolutely fantastic. And he's just one of those people that really understands. Are you familiar with John Peel, Jason? Vaguely, yes. John Peel was another Radio 1 DJ from many years ago. He passed away in 2004. But he is very, very well known for doing this.

The Peel sessions, which were a thing where he would pick out music. Nobody has ever had an ear, like in recent history, as well known for having an ear for new music as john peel but zane lowe is is to my mind anyway one of the closest people in the uk that could could do that and and i guess what speaks to his ability is that apple is bringing him over from the united kingdom to work with them in the us um do you know what i mean i think it shows his ability is that they're bringing someone from outside of the United States

to come and work with them on this. Very exciting. I'm very, very excited now to hear that. That's cool. That's cool. I think it's, I mean, this is another example of how the way we think of Apple has to change

because Apple is not the company that it was. And there are a lot more parts of it. And having somebody like Zane Lowe, who is a curator and understand somebody like Zane Lowe, who is a, uh, you know, a curator and understander and breaker of new music. Uh, when you're, when, you know, you have iTunes and you have a streaming service, uh, it, you know, that's the business that they're in. And, uh, and that's, uh, and who knows, they'll also probably have him find, uh, the right, uh, the right breaking bands to run in their commercials too or something like that.

I mean, having some people like that who understand music, because it is, you know, they love music at Apple and all, but it is a tech company. So having people who understand this part of the, this business that they're in is smart. We have one more piece of feedback,, of, uh, feedback of, sorry, not feedback. We're not using that word anymore. Hashtag ask upgrade questions. And it is from Twitter user tar kid.

And I wonder if I can, we'll play the game of like, what's their actual name. Twitter listener, Robert. There you go. Listener. Robert wrote in to say, I'm just saying Mike watches a movie can be a regular feature.

I love it uh i think what we said last week is i think i think mike watches a movie movies with mike whatever we want to call it should should be a recurring feature it's not going to be every week but but uh i think i think as movies uh come up uh we will uh we will do more of that do you think are you up for it i am more movies yeah i'm definitely up for it we may we may be stealing it for an episode of analog oh because i've never seen sneakers and it drives casey insane oh well i was gonna say we got some feedback suggesting that we uh that we that we have you watch sneakers right well then there you go that

listen to analog i think maybe maybe next week's episode because it's one of casey's movies and he constantly quotes it to me and i have no idea what he's talking about so this is going to be like a floating vertical movies with mike i think it could be fun because uh it might be a nice thing to cross around with federico's always telling me to watch mean girls but i don't think that will pop up on any of the the other shows but who knows you never never know. You never know? You never know. You can make it a subcast. That's the thing that I invented.

You do that. I'm leaving that solely on you. The movies with Mike's subcast. Speaking of which, I did mention that we watch The Core on The Incomparable, which is a thing we're going to try to do on a recurring basis where we watch a, shall we say, not particularly well-loved science fiction movie from the past

and uh so you should check that out it's uh very funny it's me and dan moran and john syracusa and tony cindylar uh talking about 2003 uh science fiction disaster movie and that word disaster is probably in the wrong place in that sentence uh the core so you should check that out whilst we're doing this whilst we're doing follow out i want to tell people to go listen to the incomparable game show oh yeah we should we should mention that that hadn't dropped when we were on last week it's uh inconceivable which is a reference to the princess bride which you've seen yeah yeah with dan moran is the first episode of The Incomparable Game Show. And did you like it?

I loved it. You know I've wanted you to do game shows for a long time. Yeah, I know, I know. We did it. I'm so, it's fantastic. Explain to people though, very quickly. Sure. How this works, because it is a little bit different.

So all of us professed a love for panel shows and game shows, and none of us felt like we had the time or energy to do one every week. And we talked about, well, can we do it every other week? Well, probably not. Maybe once a month. And a bunch of us said, oh, I could do a game show or a panel show once a month. And I had this moment, I think it was me, we had a whole thread about it, could have been somebody else. But there was this moment this moment that was well if we've got four people who are willing to do a game show once a month we could just have it be like a rotating wheel of shows in the podcast so that's what we're trying to do so inconceivable was number one there'll be a new thing uh this week hopefully we're recording it later tonight uh that i'm doing with Dan Morin that is similar

to Clockwise, but the opposite. An alternate reality. David Lohr is working on a panel discussion show and Philip Michaels is working on one for us too, which

listeners of the Macworld podcast might be able to guess what that is going to be. What on earth type of game show could Philip Michaels be working on one for us too. So which listeners of the Macworld podcast might be able to guess what that is going to be. What on earth type of game show could Philip Michaels be working on? And so, yeah, well, and we'll see how it goes. And if other things fall in and things fall out as we go, that's fine. And it may not be exactly every week, depending,

because it's a lot of scheduling of a lot of different moving parts. But yeah, we're hoping to keep it up. I love those kind of shows because they end up being really entertaining. And it's fun to listen to people play games while they're also having a good time and making jokes and things like that.

And Dan wrote a really nice blog post on his blog about his inspiration for doing it. And it's actually a radio show in Massachusetts that the host of it just passed away a couple weeks ago. And it's a really nice piece that he wrote and inconceivable was a lot of fun. I was one of the contestants on that. If you're somebody who is sort of not interested in listening to people critically break down movies and TV shows and things like that,

but does like a funny panel shows like you get on NPR, like ask me another or wait, wait, don't tell me, check it out incomparable game show, it out, Incomparable Game Show. The incomparable.com slash game show. All right. Movies with Mike follow-up. I wanted to, we had a little bit of follow-up for Movies with Mike last week, and since the Movies with Mike segment was at the end of the show,

I thought we would put this follow-up at the end of the show. If you're somebody, Movies with Mike is a special segment. If you don't want to listen to it, you don't have to. We're not making you. We're putting this at the end out of consideration to you. So the follow-up is at the end now. We had two really nice pieces of follow-up. Listener Lindsey wrote in and he said,

I'm listening to your Real Genius segment. I hadn't seen it before. So I watched it last week when you mentioned it. Now we discussed the Jordan-Mitch relationship last week. And Lindsay says, Jordan clearly says she's 19 at least once. And in the scene with Mitch and Sherry, she says something like, I've been waiting for this moment. And I took this to mean Mitch had just turned 16. So there's a suggestion there maybe about age of consent.

And then he points out correctly, immediately when Mitch goes to see Jordan and says, I don't want to do it with her. I want to do it with you. This doesn't really square with your interpretation of an innocent relationship. I accuse you, Jason Snow. So he didn't actually say that, but I put that in there. So I have two comments here.

One is, as somebody who has watched this movie a lot, I feel like the way that that's phrased is a nice turn of phrase, but he's not very specifically saying, let's go have sex right now. I think it's much more just him revealing that he has romantic thoughts for her. And like I said, I think these two characters are so innocent and kind of growing emotionally that it's going to, they'll get there, but it's going to take a little time. I also wanted to say that my friend Erica Ensign, who does the Doctor Who podcast Verity and is on The Incomparable a lot

and is on Total Party Kill, who I got to see this weekend in person, which was great. She has this thing that she didn't invent, but I feel like she's popularized within our circles, the idea of something called headcanon. And headcanon is when you take the text of a work and then you lay your interpretation on it and say, well, I would like to believe this is what this means. And so it's like you inscribe into the canon of that work what you think it all means. So in my head canon for Real Genius, which I suppose I have, Mitch and Jordan do not immediately hook up. But they take it slow. And they'll get there, like I said. it slow and they'll get there like i said but i feel like neither of them is quite ready at that point to jump into the uh teen 80s teen sex comedy scene and that they're they're going to take it

slow and and their relationship is going to grow at a little bit of a slower pace given that he's 16 and she's 19 and they're both somewhat innocent when it comes to this stuff that's my head canon that that is or to put it another way, that's the way I choose to read the movie. Other interpretations are perfectly valid, but that's my headcanon. So there it is. I don't know if you had those sorts of deep thoughts

while you were watching it, Mike. Yeah, as I said, I was still freaked out by it. Like, and I felt better after you explained that to me last week. You know, the idea is like, they're both just simple, like simple minded. And they, you know, they may not have thought about doing anything like that yet. They're kind of innocent in that regard. I'm right there with you.

He's terrified. Yeah. Mitch is terrified of the lady's name. I can't remember. Sherry. Sherry. Sherry. And he's trying in his own stumbling way to explain that the reason that he ran out of, also as an adolescent male, you've got a woman in your room who's taken off her clothes and wants to have sex with you and you run out.

Why would you do that? That's awesome. Why would you do that? And so in his own little adolescent way, he's trying to explain to the girl he likes, this is why it's because i like you and so you know when she says did you make it with her he says you know no i want to do that with you he's not saying right now yeah that's the way i take it also in the chat room doug beale asked for the etymology of hand headcanon and there is a know your meme

page about headcanon the idea is there is canon for like doctor who and star trek and things like that which is like well if it's in the show it's it's canon but if it's in the books it's not canon it's not official it could be contradicted at any time and you can't use that as proof that when captain kirk fires the phasers in this scene he's doing it because his brother's uh second son who was kidnapped by the Klingons, etc., etc., because that happened in a book and not in the show. That's canon, right? Head canon is you get to decide what canon is in your own mind. And if you decide that the reason this person in this movie does this thing is because of this thing that's not in the movie, but you've decided that that's what it is, that's your head canon. And I like the concept because it's a pithy way of saying

it is my personal interpretation of the text. And I have it. And I've decided that I'm comfortable with that. And if you don't like it, that's fine. You can have your own headcanon, but this one is mine. It's one of my favorite things about listening to shows that talk about movies or have movies as a a subject like when people say stuff like oh you know james bond wouldn't have done that because he does this oh i'm sure that when uh this happened what he actually

like he was thinking this or he was meaning this like that's all headcanon and i love it where it's just like you know the characters so you believe that they act in a certain way. Nobody said it. I mean, you can also assume that it was the director's interpretation, but still, nobody said it. And also, this is a way out of plot holes sometimes. Yeah, and you make excuses for it

because you want to. Right, and that's why Erica will often say, and this is the phrase that Jonathan Mann used in his year-end song for The Incomparable, which is apply some hand wavium to your headcanon the hand wavium is an element that you can apply to anything that explains away things that probably don't make any sense and headcanon is actually really good for that like i don't know i mean you can pick a favorite movie and say why does this person do this and you say well probably there's something we didn't see where you know and and that is

that is you trying to interpret your way out of something in some in some cases you're probably right and the writers are like we don't need to explain every single thing that happens in the movie people will figure it out or they'll make up their own explanation and we'll move on but if you want to get an explanation you can apply some hand wavium to your head cannon. Erica's so fantastic. I'm so happy that you brought her on to the Incomparable show. She is great. She's really great. She's on this podcast, Verity, which is a bunch of women talking about Doctor Who. And it's a great podcast. And I got to meet many of the Verities this week and which was really great. And they're all so smart and so funny. And I was listening to Verity and I thought, Erica sounds like one of us.

She sounds like actually several of them do. But she was like, I was thinking I'm trying to get more women into the incomparable panel. And I heard her talking and I thought, I think she would fit in. So I emailed her and I said, I'm sorry, you have no idea who I am, but I have a podcast that you've never heard of. And but but some of her her husband does a podcast and and those guys know who I am. And her her friend Chip, who she does the Babylon 5 podcast with, is a friend of mine, too. So, you know, people who know me, but you don't know me. But I have a podcast. Would you like to be on?

And I said, for example, next week we're doing an episode about The Matrix. And she said, Oh my God, I saw the matrix 20 times in the theater. And I said, I would like you on my podcast. And yeah, she's great. And that was one of those, uh, that was one of those great moments. I need to do more. We have so many people on the panel and yet I always like recruiting more people because they bring all sorts of interesting new perspectives and she's been a great one. Uh, and it was great to see her in person this year. I saw her last year at the same event and I got to go back and see her again. We have one more bit of movies with Mike follow-up,

which is from listener Lauren, who actually liked the opening song, which I kind of downplayed with the jazz and the pictures. And Lauren said, I always thought this is just wonderful. It sets an interesting off-center mood appropriate for this movie. And then here's, I thought this is just wonderful. It sets an interesting off-center mood appropriate for this movie. And then here's, I thought this was really good.

We were talking about the references to the male anatomy that are throughout. And listener Lauren says, I never thought of it until you brought it up. But all those repeated references to that particular part of anatomy might well be a nod to the very common trope in the 60s and 70s, or like ever, of nuclear missiles and by association all weapons as a pretty obvious phallic symbol for people who must have been trying to prove something. And you know what? I have never thought of that interpretation,

but I think I'm putting that in my head canon, which may also be a phallic symbol if you want it to be. I'm going to put it in there. That I think that's a great idea. That one of the reasons this movie is obsessed with male anatomy is because this is a movie about the military industrial complex and scientists building the latest big gun so good bit of interpretation listener lauren and that's it for movies with mike follow-up we We won't be watching Sneakers because you're watching that with someone else.

I can pretend I've never seen it if you want. No, that's good. That's good. That's one of Dan Morin's favorite movies, actually. Oh. And Casey's, apparently.

So that's great. That's great. I hope you have a good time. I might ask for a really brief recap here of movies with Mike over there. Okay. We'll see.

We can do that. If you would like to find the show notes for this week's episode, recap here of movies with Mike over there. We'll see. If you would like to find the show notes for this week's episode, you should point to your web browser or podcast app at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 23. I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsors again for this week's episode. That is the fine folks over at lynda.com,

mailroute, and stamps.com. If you'd like to find Jason's amazing work on the internet, you should go to the incomparable.com, sixcolors.com, or twitter.com, slash jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L. There we go, I've made it. And I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. If you have never listened before, or you have, or maybe you're a lapsed listener,

I would really, really appreciate you checking out Inquisitive this week, or you have, or maybe you're a lapsed listener, I would really, really appreciate you checking out Inquisitive this week, episode number 27, which will be out on Wednesday the 18th. It's something that I've poured my heart and soul into, and I really hope that you enjoy it. Please tell me you enjoy it, even if you don't. And we'll be back next week thank you all for listening we love you dearly until then say goodbye jesus now goodbye everybody