Upgrade - 235: Don’t Be So Mean

Episode Date: March 4, 2019

This episode covers all the hot-button issues of the day! Is Apple micromanaging the content of its forthcoming video service? Is Face ID really superior to Touch ID? Will the arrival of iOS apps be good for the Mac? Why do British TV licence fees exist? Is the Netflix 'Skip Intro' button evil? Should Netflix be banned from the Oscars? Prepare your complaint emails now!

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 235 today's show is brought to you by fresh books hero and lunar display my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snell hi jason snell i'm mike hurley how are you enjoying my country i'm very well i'm in chicago illinois right now we'll talk about why in a minute because right now nobody cares about that because all they want is our hashtag snell talk question which this week comes from jonathan and jonathan wants to know jason when you make cereal do you put the cereal in the bowl first or the milk in the bowl first um this is a weird question which is only appropriate i suppose so thank you jonathan yep um cereal first yep then milk yeah because you need to use the cereal to gauge how much milk and if you put the cereal on the milk the cereal just floats on the milk and it doesn't

tell you anything i feel like what i'm about to say is the type of thing that you should never say, but I think people that put milk in first are monsters. Yeah, so I was going to say, I know that in England especially, there is the great debate about tea, about you do milk in first or not. Yeah, it's the same deal. Milk always goes in afterwards. Yeah, I usually put the milk in later.

You've got to use what's in the mug or the cup as the way to judge how much milk is required. Yeah. It's simple. Right, because you can then add more milk until it reaches the level. Also, if you put the milk in first and pour the cereal in, the milk's going to spill out of the bowl, right? Because the cereal lands in the milk and spills everywhere.

It could, or it's just going to float on top of the milk and then what have you done you've just got a cereal that you have to dig through to get to the milk it's the idea there is the milk gets poured over the cereal and it helps coat the cereal in the milk exactly so it distributes the milk a little more widely and then you can you can start so yeah that's my that's my uh story on this show we share lots of opinions about things and And yeah, we get lots of responses. You know, we talk about like, again, like today, we're going to talk about what do we

like more, touch ID or face ID? I guarantee the majority of feedback that we're going to get about this episode is people's feelings about the cereal milk question. Yeah. Or more broadly, milk in first. No, just in general, which should never happen. I will acknowledge the, I will occasionally put the milk in first in my wife's tea, only because I'm lazy.

And if you put the milk in first and then put the tea in... Stirs it for you. You don't have to stir it. It's still unacceptable. But it's not, yeah. But it was a bonus question from Jonathan. Jason, what is your favorite cereal? I don't have a great answer here.

As an adult, I don't have a great answer here i um as an adult i don't eat cereal very much and when i do it is some kashi heart health uh it's like little little hearts and circles that are it's boring cereal is what i eat when i eat it i don't eat it a lot it's technically some people say oatmeal is a cereal which i don't think i would say it is sometimes too same oatmeal with some maple syrup actually I like that but my all time favorite my childhood favorite the go to the one that I didn't get

very often and I loved it when I got it Captain Crunch loved it I had Captain Crunch for the first time in Portland XOXO there's actually a top 4 episode which is the Armands show where we ate cereal from a van and ranked them. From a van.

And I'm not in that episode, although you may hear me in the background. I was witnessing it from behind the core group. I was watching as all that happened. By the way, I have to correct you, Mike. It's not Cap'n Crunch. Cap'n. It's Cap'n Crunch. Cap'n. Cap'n Crunchin cappin crunch cap apostrophe n

my my favorite cereal uh is something which is very close to what is called uh cinnamon toast crunch in america but in the uk it is called curiously cinnamon which i think is the best name for a cereal that has ever existed. Curiously Cinnamon. How curious. From the people who brought you Bizarrely Vanilla and Strangely Chocolate. That could not be more English. Okay, great. Good to know.

Good to know. I knew it was going to be a good name. I knew it was going to be one of those brand names that is explained to an American and the american can't even understand what just happened just what huh so that was great thank you to jonathan for sending in this snell talk question i'm gonna have a classic here you can send in a question of any kind to open the show and if it's weird and wonderful enough it may just be chosen just send in a tweet with the hashtag snell talk so i am in chicago the reason i'm in'm in Chicago is because I made a surprise appearance on Mac Power Users 472,

which was recorded live in Chicago this weekend. Yeah, it was. And I popped up during the show, as did Rosemary Orchard of Automators, and we were guests on the show. The reason that I did this is I just wanted to come out and support the guys because basically what happened was, Jason, I tell this story on the on the mac powies episode i heard it i heard it because

i listened yeah um when steven came on board with the show he sent me the first episode before it went up and i could tell how happy he was and i was so excited for him that i just booked a plane ticket to chicago uh and then here i am how often are you in the u.s these days you you come to the u.s so often now that's amazing this year on average i think it's every six weeks that's amazing well that is a fun episode and steven tried out uh some new podcast equipment which is exciting so that was that was also fun sounds great and um and you got me looking at usbc hubs because well i guess rose got me looking at usbc hubs because they were in that episode they were talking about it and um i'm not making any purchases now but i'm intrigued by it because of my ipad because i don't have a i don't have a mac

laptop with usbc on it but i do have uh i do have an iPad Pro with USB-C. And I'm intrigued by the idea of one of these hubs because there could be scenarios where I want to charge and have devices connected, right? Wouldn't that be for podcasting and things like that? But I decided I'm going to wait because I would really like to know Apple's intentions toward USB devices in iOS going forward before I do that. I like the idea of buying a little box. In fact, if they add support for, for example, reading the files off of an SD card that aren't photos or videos, that's a great time to get a little hub that would give me maybe a headphone jack and an SD card reader and some USB ports and all of that. I don't really need a VGA

port or something, but I do occasionally present to user groups and having those ports around might be good too. So I'm interested, but it's entirely possible that many, many of those ports or adapter thingies would be wasted on an iPad. And so I'm going to gonna wait but I am intrigued that the state of the art in USB-C hubs is progressing. I bought one of those hyper drives so I backed it on Kickstarter this is like a little thing that's meant to hyper drive I'm actually using one of their products right now for my MacBook Pro which I'm recording on and you've seen them they're like these they're color coated to basically match the laptops, and they just plug into the side of the laptop,

and it's like a long strip of metal that has a bunch of ports in it. Well, they created one for the iPad. They had a Kickstarter campaign, and mine's actually been shipped. So we'll be able to talk about that next week if it's of any interest, if the product is good. We'll see. But I backfired on those because I just saw it. I was like, oh, that looks like a good product, and I'm i'm hoping like you that there will be more support for usbc um we got some good

feedback from list upgrading zavante uh about terminology for folding phones um zavante suggests terminology that is used in the world of origami so they they've got two names here, the Valley Fold and the Mountain Fold, which are beautiful ways of describing it. So the Valley Fold is the Samsung because the screens go in on themselves, right? So the fold is at the bottom. And the Mountain Fold is the Huawei because it goes out on itself.

So we've got Valley Fold and Mountain Fold. I'm going to try my best to try and incorporate those going forward because I think that's a really great and tidy way of describing the differences in the folding screens. Like when you say valley and mountain, it like visually you can get an idea, right? Like screen on the inside, screen on the outside. So that's really, really good feedback.

I'm going to try and remember that going forward. That's way better than innie and outie. This is why because I have no time. I have no time for that description. It's not something that I want to be saying, and it's not something that I will say. So Valley Fold and Mountain Fold. So we're going to move into Upstream now.

I had some great feedback, Jason, from new upgradian, David Chen, who suggested that we, every now and then, explain what Upstream is, which is a really good point. Upstream is a segment good point um upstream is a segment on upgrade where we talk about the happenings in streaming media so this is because this was actually this the idea for this started in chicago like a year or two ago um when me and jason were talking we were talking about disney because they were kind of ramping up to do

something and we found that we both really enjoyed talking about the kind of the happenings in streaming media and and especially because it was becoming clear and it's now abundantly clear uh that apple which is obviously the company we focus on on upgrade uh is getting into this world themselves so we thought we would prepare ourselves and prepare the upgradians by talking about what's going on in the world of streaming media and that is what upstream is all about right and a ghost uh foretold that this will one day be its own podcast in the future. But we're making no announcements. We don't believe that necessarily. But the ghost, yeah, what will happen will happen in life in the future.

We don't know. But a ghost, we're big with ghosts is what I'm saying. Ghosts love Upstream. Jason, do you want to kick off Upstream with this HBO news? Ghost love Upstream. Jason, do you want to kick off Upstream with this HBO news? Yeah. So Richard Plepler, who actually has been on stage at an Apple event when they were rolling out HBO Now on Apple TV, I believe.

He's been the CEO at HBO for a long time. And before that, he worked in other jobs at HBO. He is out. He has quit at HBO. And this is part of a larger story. So one guy losing his job is not necessarily a larger story, but there are major changes that AT&T is performing at Warner Media. So they hired Robert Greenblatt, who was the head of Showtime and NBC. He is now in charge of entertainment. He's basically the president of entertainment at WarnerMedia, and that includes HBO as well as the Turner Networks, TBS and TNT. They've also done a reorg where a different executive is in charge of like the animation stuff adult

swim and cartoon network and all of that they put the sports stuff under jeff zucker who runs cnn and basically what we're seeing here is that there that uh the warner brothers structure um and the time warner structure from back in the day uh was full of these little fiefdoms so like there were the turner people and there were the the like hbo was its own little thing and plepler ran it and uh at&t is not interested in that like at&t is like this is not how we want this to be structured which is their prerogative and might even be right i mean uh i think um i think it's worth having that like organizations do get in weird structural things where there are reasons because of the people that you've got

or because of historical things that don't matter anymore. The new owner comes in and says, this doesn't make any sense. It's their prerogative. They may be right. It will lead to a lot of turnover and layoffs and all sorts of things like that. It may end up making them a much better structured company

going forward, but there's a lot going on there and then i think and we talked about this on tv talk machine um my podcast with tim goodman from the hollywood reporter last friday uh there is this sense that this is the end of hbo as we know it but we knew we knew you and I talked about it. We knew this was coming because the head, the AT&T guy who was brought in to be in charge of Warner media, um, he stood up in front of a crowd of HBO employees. And this is, uh, John Stanky, the CEO of Warner media, who worked at Southwestern Bell and AT&T for a long time, a phone company guy. He stood up and basically said, a phone company guy. He stood up and basically said, we need you to do more. HBO can't be a boutique anymore. We want quantity. Quality over quantity isn't going to do it for us. We want

quantity too. And at one point famously, and this is a presentation in front of employees at HBO, Plepler pointed out that HBO is profitable. And I totally get what he was doing, which is he's trying to pump up his employees a little bit and said, look, our business is good. And so he says that, and he's immediately undercut by Stanky, who says, essentially, not profitable enough. And it was like, okay, writing's on the wall here. AT&T now owns your business business they don't care that you're a little profitable boutique uh critically acclaimed uh television thing because they they think and and this is the funny thing is they think that's going to be irrelevant in the future of streaming media

and that something of the size of hbo is not going to be able to make it. And I don't know if they're wrong about that, right? But it is the case that this was an organization that functioned pretty well, generated lots of very high quality, critically acclaimed, award-winning content, which everybody wants, like Netflix wants that,flix wants that everybody wants that that was profitable and successful but maybe not the business that is exactly what at&t wanted and their response is to blow it up and like okay okay you the owners you you bought it you can break it but you may regret it right you may regret that decision because you're taking an asset and taking everything potentially that it was good at out of it. And it doesn't retain its value. If you take HBO and you mash it up into little pieces and spread it around your organization, it's not like the same amount of value spreads through your organization necessarily. You could just have lost all the value of HBO. But this is what AT&T is doing with WarnerMedia is they basically are taking it all apart and then putting it back together again.

So Plepler leaving HBO is symbolic in a way of just how much they're doing. And Greenblatt coming in and the other lieutenants kind of getting their areas that they've broken apart the old way that they did business at this company. Because they're serious about this. Like, they want that WarnerMedia streaming service, especially, to be a major player. And they also have to navigate their existing, you know, cable brands and how they move those forward. So it'll be fascinating to watch.

But I do feel like the HBO, as we we know it era is over you know maybe maybe we'll put the the stake in the ground when the game of thrones finale airs or something prepare yourself for a lot of think pieces about how the game of thrones finale is uh emblematic of uh the end of the of the old hbo and the beginning of a new h. Steven Spielberg hates Netflix. Apparently so. So Spielberg believes that movies coming from streaming services should only get as far as the Emmys and not be in contention for Oscars.

And he's going to be supporting some raw changes to the Academy Awards that are happening soon, that are going to be tried to be put into place soon. There's going to be discussions about changes to rules place soon there's going to be discussions about changes to rules and he's going to be making this case so the case that spielberg and others believe is that they feel that the playing field is unfair when comparing the new studios to traditional studios so the new studios being your netflix's for example they say the budgets can be way larger than traditional studios like for, for example, I think Roma's budget was like $50 million, and some of the other movies in the category,

like the foreign film category, were like $5 million. Spielberg believes, and others believe, that these movies are not spending enough time in the theater. They're just spending the minimum or maximum amount of time that they need to be able to be in contention. They're immediately available worldwide, 24-7. I'm not 100% sure why this is a problem. And they don't respect the 90-day theatrical release window.

These are the reasons why people like Steven Spielberg are saying, oh, no, they shouldn't be in contention for the Oscars. And I think this is bull. I think it's absolutely ridiculous personally because this is a bunch of people who believe that an old way is the right way of doing things and they're scared that the new people are coming in and they're trying to beat them off and i think what frustrates me the most about this is spielberg has his hand in many pies with these streaming companies already and for some reason he's now trying to protect them from

the oscars like the oscars are this like magical thing that can't be tarnished when clearly the movie industry has changed so much since the oscars began anyway and there's been so many other changes this is just another change that this industry is going to have to go through that's right this is this is uh this is somebody in his 70s who doesn't like change that he sees in the world but you know he was a beneficiary of the change he wrought change in the movie industry too i mean he created the modern blockbuster with jaws right like it's yeah it's ridiculous this this is um and from a pure like rule standpoint because i as a sports fan, I'm fascinated by how sports leagues change their rules in order to try to change the product and make it more entertaining. And sometimes they fail and sometimes they succeed.

And there are always arguments about, well, we want to keep the sanctity of what it's always been. And other people say, no, you need to change because what you've got right now isn't isn't good anymore and this is a little bit like that which is like let's make some arcane rule changes in order to really uh uh stick it to netflix and like i i think this is a challenge because movie and movies and television are um basically the same now like the only like literally i mean there there are there are differences but like it's the same acting pool. It's the same talent pool. The quality standard can vary across them, but it's pretty much equal. Like you have good and bad.

Prestige TV and prestige movies aren't really any different. All the players are the same. And so you end up being in this arcane thing like is the Oscars. This is like Oscars saying we want to have a popular film category like really because you know you're you're basically creating the most artificial of barriers in order to put things in in the corner um and and this is a good example of that where it's like oh no um it's like i i think i i might have mentioned it last week somebody uh referred to roma as a tv movie the other week and it it's like, okay, that is a laugh, right? Like Roma, first off,

should have won Best Picture and probably didn't because people in the Academy also feel like Steven Spielberg and don't like Netflix and the Academy voters are older. But, you know, are we really going to take an award show

and make it entirely about preserving the theater owners, uh, business model that's falling apart. And is there really, well, we, this is a celebration of art,

but only art that appears in certain places for certain durations of time. Now they may go down this path, right? Cause the, the, um, the con, uh,

kind of film festival went down this path. Um, but it seems like a mistake to me i mean netflix went to the trouble of screening roma in theaters um more i think more theaters than they had to and longer than they had to um and it and it got a lot of applause from critics who said this you should go see this in the theater even though it's on netflix because it's beautiful um i i just i feel like this is is completely misguided so i i'm with you this is this is it's sad to have a such a renowned director become an old man yelling at a cloud yep um but that's what this is and bbc and itv are set to launch brickbox in the uk this is a streaming service that is currently available in the US, which houses BBC and ITV's content.

They're looking to launch it in the UK now for about £5 a month. So in the UK, we actually already have on-demand services for both of these channels. So we have the BBC iPlayer and ITV Now. So you can go on and you can get access to this content for a set period of time. BBC is is there's no ads but the content's only there for say like a month or something right um and itv now it's

like a similar thing or it's itv hub i think it's called sorry um similar deal like you can go on there's tons of ads tons of ads on their content um but you can watch it for a set period of time uh and then so the brick box service would be adding box sets, right? Like full seasons of television shows, which you can't get on the BBC. Nobody buys DVDs anymore, so this is a streaming service that you can, instead of buying DVDs, you pay for the streaming service and you get it. Which is particularly interesting for the BBC because a lot of their stuff isn't even available on iTunes to buy.

So I don't know why that's the case. I'm a little bit annoyed about this, to be honest. I pay a TV license, and that TV license goes to funding the BBC. So now what? I paid a TV license, which is money that I pay, and now I have to pay £5 a month to get the content as well? Well, to get the content after it's gone off of its broadcast window. I have many issues with the

tv license anyway you don't you don't get to uh well okay but i just want to be clear here you don't get to walk into uh do they have hmv anymore i don't know you don't get to walk into a store somewhere and just pick up a bbc dvd box set and walk out with it because you're a license holder no but there's but it's like tv license is fine for the iplayer but it's not but then they don't keep any of the content and then i would have to pay more i mean the problem i have with the tv license is fine for the iplayer but it's not but then they don't keep any of the content and then i would have to pay more i mean the problem i have with the tv license in the uk is it's effectively treated like a tax um like you can not pay it but if you don't pay it that you get harassed like they send you letters and they come to your home but like i never watch bbc content but i just don't do it. I watch Netflix and I watch Amazon stuff.

We don't even have our television plugged into an aerial. It doesn't receive a picture because we just watch everything online. But I have to pay the TV license because otherwise they try and make my life hell. So I have this whole issue. But yes, you are completely right. I think this is a fascinating thing, though, because I think the TV license, I'm sure that there was a really good reason why they built the licensing system in the UK. But as an American, I've always been fascinated by that. And I find it bizarre because it's the worst case scenario of somebody saying, I only want to pay taxes on the services that I use.

And you can't do that, right? Because everybody will then be opting out of every other part of it that they like, I don't drive, I just walk. So I don't want to pay any of the highway taxes anymore. Well, no, you can't. You just you pay the taxes. And, you know, it goes into a big pool. And then theoretically, it comes out and is used for things, some of which are for you and some of which aren't, but it's for the common good. And that's the thing about this is this, this strikes me as being like there were cranky people who are like i don't watch television i don't own a television why must i pay for the bbc they're like all right fine we'll make it this thing where it's a license and only people

who own tvs will pay it which is almost everybody but not you sir not you it's like why i i'm sure there are lots of great historical reasons why it exists but it should just be it should just be uh part of your taxes and the and the government should say we will use some portion of taxes to fund the bbc because it is the gem of of britain's cultural contributions to the world in the last hundred years and that's probably enough happier with that right like if it was just a tax like my problem is like you treat it like it's a thing you can choose well right and because it's public and it's funded by the public, I agree with you. I think it's really sleazy of them to window content produced by the BBC directly it with the British license fee money, it should probably stay on streaming on iPlayer basically forever.

Not for things they buy the rights to and stuff like that, but for the things that they own and that the license fee paid for. There is a really strong argument to be made that artificially windowing it so that they can resell it to you later is crappy. Yes, you have hit the exact thing of why this annoys me. Because it's like, I'm paying for the content to be produced. And then I can watch it online for free, but only for 30 days. Oh, you missed episode one? Well, you actually now can't get it. I've had stuff like that, where it's like, oh, you missed an episode?

Well, you can't buy it anywhere. You can't watch it now. It's like, oh, you missed an episode. Well, you can't buy it anywhere. You can't watch it now. What am I doing then? But anyway, I just find this five pounds a month isn't expensive particularly, but it's right. reason to put effort into doing things like dvd releases of old tv shows and restoring things and getting bonus material and all sorts of other stuff like that when they had a dvd sales stream and the dvd sales streams are going away and the blu-ray sales streams and i think that's really what they're trying to do here is like give us a place where people who want this old old stuff can get it um and we can have the money so that we can put the old stuff out because a lot of the old stuff doesn't just appear right

they've got to actually spend money to get it on yeah i saw a whole presentation about this about the people who restore the doctor who episodes um and it's kind of amazing how much technical effort goes into that but uh but yeah i i i hear you that this is i get this is cool in the sense that there's a lot of content that's not that's from britain that's not available in britain and it's good that it will be available now i think it's fascinating the bbc and itv who are direct competitors in the uk i can't i couldn't believe this because i didn't really know anything about brit box i thought companies which there was a company that was buying the content it is wild to me that the two main networks who are in direct competition joint together to make this service and then it was for it was for america and canada

and it was just like whatever and then rolling it out in the uk but um they want to compete with netflix is basically the answer yeah yeah it's weird we'll see we'll say i bet i end up signing i'm gonna get a lot of angry people who explain why the license fee is the is the best way to go i just feel like uh i just those kinds of of tax schemes bother me when it's when it's sort of like i don't use that so i don't want to pay for it anymore it's like well you know if if if that would be a really, you say that now, but if every road you drive on is a toll road because nobody wants to pay or, you know, every service you use is you have to pay for that, even though it's a government service, because nobody wants to pay for that thing, but they want to pay for this other thing. Like, at what point is that ridiculous? And I would argue when you have a separate license for owning a television set. Or, as we now know, Mike, right, a device that can view televised content.

Yep. Like, if you want to watch the BBC on a phone, you need to pay for a license, which is bananas. It's silly. Like, the way it does it, it's so funny. It's like, do you have a TV license? You have to say yes or no. That's it. it's so fun it's like do you have a tv license you have to say yes or no that's it it's weird let's take a break and thank fresh books for their support of this show fresh books are out there to try and help freelancers save time because of fresh books amazing tools like being able to very quickly and easily send out invoices track your expenses and

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All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade and enter upgrade in the How Did You Hear About Us section. Our thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. So we actually have a little bit more upstream related news. So much upstream. This is in regards to a report about Apple. So this was in the New York Post today, basically stating that Apple executives are meddling too much

in the content that's being produced. Now, we've heard this being said before. Yes. But this article has a bunch of quotes from some sources in the tv industry that i think are particularly interesting to discuss so i'm going to read a couple of these quotes to you so this comes from the new york post right that's a good disclaimer by the way the new york post which is a tabloid newspaper that is uh and this is a poor i would say this is kind of a poorly written story, but it's worth evaluating the quotes that they've got.

Agents and producers can't stop griping about how difficult Apple is to deal with, citing lack of transparency, lack of clarity, and intrusive executives, including Tim Cook, the CEO. That doesn't surprise me, though. Of course they're not going to be transparent, and of course they're not to be uh clear clear because that's apple's way um they're not going to tell i don't i'm not saying this is right but like this part isn't a surprise to me they're not going to tell the tv executives when the service is launching they're not going to do that because that's not what apple does there's obviously going to be friction here that is unsurprising um that there would be friction between the in fact the story says at the end um and and one of their uh sources says this too which is like silicon valley's culture is different and netflix was like this when they started too because they were a silicon valley

company and they they were secretive and this is apple which is even more secretive so like of course there are culture clashes on the information front of course there are family friendly is happening again so another quote Tim Cook is giving notes and getting involved said a producer who has worked with Apple one of the CEO's most repeated notes is don't be so mean the sources said funnily enough I can see Tim saying that I can see that I want to talk i can see that um i want to talk about this quote but we'll get to that in a minute um but i have a little bit more so uh they are

making big changes firing and hiring new writers as a lack of clarity on what they want a lot of the product is not as good as they hoped it to be he said also apple want a positive view on technology to be displayed in their shows yeah so um a couple of notes here the classic note of why is somebody talking about this um to the new york post and it feels to me very much like somebody is kind of um disgruntled about like the firing writers thing really set me off of like, this sounds like a producer on a show that was having some problems and that they made some creative changes and that this person is upset about them. And that doesn't necessarily mean that that was a bad move or a good move. It just is a person who's upset about them. And it feeds into the narrative that Apple is more hands-on here.

It's trouble for Apple because the reputation of Apple in the entertainment industry is going to affect who is willing to make deals with them. So you can be sure that everybody who's involved in making shows for Apple is going to talk to their friends and colleagues about what the experience is like. And that will make it harder for Apple to produce shows with top flight talent if the response is that it was a nightmare. That said, it's not surprising given how many shows that they funded that there might be some shows that have been troubled and that Apple has looked at and said this, we are not satisfied with the quality of this. I'll invent an example here that might not be it at all, but since we talked about Steven Spielberg earlier, what if their Amazing Stories deal came through and they looked at the scripts for that that were being generated and they're like, no, no, this is not, this is bad. And maybe it was bad or maybe they're meddling and it was perfectly fine. I'm not surprised that

there might be a note that Apple is not interested in doing doing Black Mirror yes right which is specifically that but again there are issues about who's going to work with Apple I also get like every network and

you know Netflix is a little different because Netflix is sort of everything now but like every if you look at TV, you know, Netflix is a little different because Netflix is sort of everything now. But like if you look at TV networks, you know, they have tones and they have personalities. The best of them do. Where you get a sense of if I'm watching a show from these guys, it's going to have this sensibility. If I watch shows from these guys, it's going to have this sensibility. And I don't think it's wrong for Apple to say, here's what we want to be. We want to be optimistic and we want to be, you know, we don't want people, you know,

we don't want this thing that's mean and we want to be positive about the future and things like that. That's okay to a point, right? But beyond a point, it ends up being the enemy of good television. And that's the push and pull. As a Star Trek fan, one of the things that happened when they brought back Star Trek for the next generation was Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, had this sort of like, over the course of the 15 years since he had done the original Star Trek, or 20 years, had created this almost kind of cult-like sense around him of like this view of the future where in the future, humanity is perfect and there's no conflict and there's no money and everybody gets along. And then the writers were like, how am I supposed to write a drama where there's no interpersonal conflict between the characters and everybody's perfect? And the answer was

they couldn't and the show wasn't very good until he was no longer closely involved. And that's the flip side of this, right? Is Apple trying to flatten the content out so much that it's going to be uninteresting? Or is Apple just exerting some really high-level comments about what they want the direction of the service to be? direction of the of the service to be um so this could be good it could be bad because you know it could just be somebody who's been out of shape that their that their show got a thumbs down i have a question though i don't have an answer to this it's just a question if you are paying for the content to be made do you get a say should you get a say i feel like this isn't unique to Apple. I can only imagine

financial backers have always done this stuff when it comes to movies and TV. If you're paying for it and you have some thoughts on it, you're going to give them, and probably they're going to have to be integrated, or you're going to have to deal with talking the financial backer down I feel like this can't be something that is completely unique as you said the article even cites that Netflix struggled with this initially I feel like this is a fun story to write

and it does enforce what we kind of thought was going to happen but I can only assume you could write this kind of thing about any movie that's ever been made yeah probably so or at least a lot of them yeah um i think i think this story so this story is problematic because it's it's very hard to judge it feeds into existing narratives um it's from the new york post which i don't find a particularly uh reliable uh news source uh and they're a tabloid. They are going to hype it up as much as they can.

That said, there is probably some truth in here. It does reinforce the narrative that Apple may be putting a little bit too much control over this. And that the narrative is that Apple doesn't understand how you make good television and Apple doesn't care, which means they're going to get the television they want, but it might not be good that said there are high level executives who they hired who are tv development executives who are running this service and one would hope that they're um they're being some sort of a buffer but you don't know that's why they were hired right like

you would assume that tim cook and or maybe edq knew that for them to do this, they needed a buffer. They needed someone who could, or people who could take what they thought and translate it and vice versa. Otherwise, Eddie would have just done this forever, right? They tried it and it didn't work. When they were really hands-on, you assume in carpool karaoke and planet the apps those shows did not work so you would assume that these executives are smart enough to be like oh if we're going to do this seriously we actually need people who can sit in the middle of this and manage it for us also the idea here that um what you said about like if it's my money i get

to have some say they're trying to figure out what this thing is. And they've got creative people making shows for a product they don't know what the product is. They have so much on the line with this. Exactly. They spend a lot of money

and Apple are control freaks, right? They want it to be exactly what they want. And you've got a producer who maybe has gotten a brief, but then they see a script and they're like, this is a little bit off

of what we were talking about. And there's some feedback there. And I think that's kind of natural. Um, I get that it could be frustrating, but they do, they do get a say. I think the, the post story makes this like many notes from Apple executives seeking family, family-friendly shows. Well, that, that might literally be, this goes past our standard that we're setting. Like this, this pushes it too far, dial it back a little bit and tim cook is giving notes like i i it's possible that tim cook is literally writing things down on scripts and saying don't do this although i'm really skeptical about that my guess is that it's it's notes on big concepts or on where they draw the line on certain things in

terms of the tone they want to set um they this story says oh well cook has been seen on the set of this show that they're doing um in in vancouver c which i think is the jason momoa show that has got an enormous budget it may be the most expensive tv show ever produced is the rumor that i'm hearing really um well of course he would go to the set but that doesn't mean he's giving notes on the set, right? That's not the same. So I don't know. He's giving feedback on Agent's set of Cook.

Oh, of course. So this could be good. Again, this could be bad. He could be, Tim Cook could literally be saying, I don't want you to say that bad word, Jason Momoa, on the set of Sea in Vancouver, but probably not. That's probably not happening, but it could be, and that would be bad. But it's funny, the idea of him visiting the sets.

Of course he is. Of course he is. He's paying for it, and that's fun. Who wouldn't do that? And they want to launch this thing, and they want to be proud of what they launch. And if you've got a dog, they know they're going to get beaten up if there's a lousy show that they launch with. So the stakes are high, but at the same time they also hired the professionals to do this job and and that's the that's the the thing that that makes me a little more queasy is like should tim cook or eddie q or somebody else be giving notes or should it just be

i think ultimately like there's going to be some stuff right like it's not going to be everything they're not going to be like you say not going to be looking at scripts but every now and then they're going to see something and now have a view on it yeah it's to be everything they're not going to be like you say not going to be looking at scripts but every now and then they're going to see something and now have a view on it and yeah it's also possible that they're good cop bad copping them here yes i'm just i don't know that for sure but like when i think about erlich and van amburg the guys that they bought that they hired from sony to do this that they bought they bought from sony just them from well sony you know sony sells walkman and they still sell Walkman and they also sell TV executives, apparently. Anyway, those guys, they they rolled out their money and they hired those guys away from Sony. It's possible that those guys are, you know, that Tim Cook has basically said, this is Tim. I can be the bad cop. Right. Kind of thing where it's like literally they use Apple as the boogeyman to say, hey, friend, you know, Ron Moore, we have some notes about this.

Oh, Apple, you know, Apple, Tim Cook made it clear to us that this is a line we shouldn't cross. Even if they feel that themselves, there may be some of that like, you know, but we have a great relationship, but don't blame us. And that happens as a parent. I can tell you, you definitely can do the good cop, bad cop thing. It's a, it's a technique. And they may be, maybe there's some of that going on where Apple is the boogeyman and they're used as a kind of like, oh, well, Tim's got his standards, but I'm working with you and we'll, I'm on your side and we'll work it out.

That's also possibly what's going on here. So, you know, it's fine. I think every time we talk about this too, we get people who say, who's to say that a show that's family friendly or don't have swearing or nudity or ultra violence is fundamentally a bad show. Some people don't want to watch that stuff. And I totally agree with that. Um, the thing that we always say is there are a lot of people in hollywood who want to make shows where they have they can do whatever the hell they want and we don't always get to do whatever the hell we want but if you're a an a-list person who everybody wants to hire and netflix doesn't care about the content of the show as long as it's good they don't care about the nudity and the violence and have you you ever followed one of Netflix's Twitter accounts? They swear on the Twitter accounts, right?

Netflix's brand is that there's no limits for the stuff that they'll produce. And if you're an A-lister, it's just easier to work with somebody who is not going to bug you about items in your script that they think are too mean. That's the deal here. about items in your script that they think are too mean. That's the deal here. Not that there can't be great content that doesn't have nudity and violence and bad words. That's not the issue.

All right, so let's talk a little bit about Marzipan. All right, Gearshift. I think it was last week or the week before there was the Mark Gurman Report kind of setting out the three-year plan that we're going to see. The MARSA plan, you could call it if you wanted to. The grand three-year MARSA plan. Steve Troughton-Smith has written a couple of blog posts.

Well, I don't even know if you could call them blog posts. They're more like... They're like tech notes. Yes, they're wild. blog posts they're more like they're like tech notes yes they're wild because he's basically built some tools and exposed some stuff to enable ios developers right now to bring their apps over to the mac in some form which is using the technology that is in mojave that allows apple to do it right so apple have news and home right and stocks and the voice recording app and so there is some underlying

technology in the current shipping version of Mojave, which allows these iOS apps to run on the Mac. And through some incredible digging and kind of reverse engineering, which is way over my head, Trout Smith has created some tools. So of course, James Thompson now has a working version of marzipan peak elk so James has taken the iOS version of peak elk and has put it onto the Mac and he posted a bunch of tweets of him doing this I'll put some in the show notes

and James says, and I think this is a really interesting point, so this is something he was tweeting this is just a proof of concept I have no plans to replace the current Mac version as soon as marzipan is available I'll only do it if and when the app is better than the current native Mac one, because James has a Mac version of pCalc that is running right now. And I'm wondering, Jason, do you think that that specific point is going to be something we hear a lot of? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. i think this is the balance that mac

developers who have existing mac apps are going to have to deal with the idea of i've been maintaining two different apps which share code but there's a ios version and a mac version and wouldn't it be great to have it just be one but if i do this now these things are not going to be there and that's no good like like uh and and we're you know they And they're playing around with the marzipan that shipped last fall and is not supposed to be used. So you can't really judge it for what it lacks because there's a reason Apple didn't ship it to anybody else. And Steve Troughton Smith has figured out how to make it work anyway. And it's fascinating just to look at it and see what the details are and the work you need to do in certain areas to add things to a toolbar or add pop-ups and how the menu, you know, how you add menu items and things like that. But it's fun to

see the details because we're getting a little bit of a preview of what it might look in a final version. But you have to make that decision. Like, do I want to take features away, take functionality away from my users on the Mac just to make my life easier? I would hope that most people who are doing Mac apps, especially longstanding Mac apps, will choose not to do that until there's probably a point where the balance shifts. And it may not be possible with the new version that comes out. The first wave may be apps that don't exist on the Mac or that are bad on the Mac.

That's the other thing. James actually has been doing pCalc on the Mac forever, like literally forever for as long as I've known him. But there are also apps out there that are very much like, oh, I guess we'll do a Mac app. And the Mac app doesn't really stand up to the, to the iOS app. And those will be easier choices, right? To say, we can just put this on the Mac and, and we can solve this problem and it'll save us a lot of effort.

Plus there will be iOS apps that can't come to the Mac right now. And overcast is an example we use where, you know, the, that moment where you realize, oh, you know, Marco can,

can write overcast for the Mac now because he doesn't have to write a Mac app. He can take his iOS app and just make it a Mac app. That's exciting. But for James, I mean, I would say Marzipan will be a success when developers look at it and say, yes, I can take my iOS app and make it as good or better than my Mac app. But that may be a while. yes, I can take my iOS app and make it as good or better than my Mac app. But that may be a while. I do think as well there could be, there's like a good enough point, right? Like, I know you're right.

It's that tipping point. For a lot of people, that tipping point is going to be when it can be better. But I think for also another huge bunch of people, it will be when it can be close enough. Like when it can at least offer the functionality that you need it might not be as good as the mac version currently is but if it allows you to be able to really streamline your development maybe it will work better and and whilst i know there's going to be a lot of frustration for people during this time period i do think i do think that there is a better future for the mac on the other side of

this like it's gonna it's gonna shake up a lot of what people think macs are and what they look like and how they act but it's gonna breathe a bit of life into the platform i think like new fresh life which is going to be exciting so anyway using using steve's tools uh j James was also doing some stuff with resizing the windows, which I found very interesting. So he had the full iPad view, and then he could shrink it down. And when he got it into a certain size, it kind of snapped into the iPhone-like split-screen view, right? So like the skinny split-screen view on an iPad. And this just makes me wonder, is this iphone delay about like why what they're gonna so german said that we're gonna get this year will be ipad apps and then next year is iphone apps

and i just feel like that makes it even more confusing to me that like imagine if you can do this right like if you shrink the window it just switches over to your split screen view right so it's using the size classes and once you hit a different size class if your ipad app observes it it's just going to show the different size and it makes me question the iphone thing i think you just answered your question i was going to say this is a conspiracy theory but i don't even think it counts as a conspiracy theory what makes something an ipad app and an ip, a universal app, is its ability to be displayed in different sizes.

And I feel like what Apple may be doing here is, and this is the conspiracy part of it, is saying, if you can't be bothered to make your app work at different sizes, it can't run on the Mac because the Mac users demand the ability to resize apps. And if you use the size classes and you've got it working on the iPad and the various different sizes of iPad, you're going to be able to do it and use it almost through the lens of quality for users and user expectations, basically crack the whip a little bit on developers who have not bothered to develop an app that wasn't

uh that that goes beyond the iphone like right like this is your motivator like you really need to do that now like this is the platform you need to do it we're not going to have uh a situation where mac users have this little thing that's shaped like an iphone and can't be resized that's like no we're not going to do that yeah that may be the motivator here but that's not technical the part of that though is like that's not going to change in theory right from year one to year two and that's why it's confusing to me like what is going to happen in that time period for the iphone apps to be good what may happen is that they give a warning this year that says um apps aren't going to be in the app store if they don't do size classes next year oh yeah okay yeah yeah all right all right now we got

a conspiracy theory all right yeah it's not it's not that iphone apps will be available it's all apps will be available because all iphone apps are universal oh boy all right maybe that's it maybe that is it who knows like it's if you think about it it's kind of amazing that apple has allowed this to go on where you can design these apps that that will resize in the various sizes of iphone but won't go beyond that and i i could totally see them saying you know part of being on our platform now is having the ability to have your apps dynamically resize for all sorts of different screens and if and you need to do that just like bottom line you have to do that and if that happens that's not only good for the mac that's bloody good for the ipad because for the ipad too yeah i mean it makes sense to me i

understand you know you may think oh my my my app is for iphone it shouldn't it wouldn't work very well on the ipad etc etc i get that but boy that would be great like for for users that you would be able to use these these apps on all devices and again i also understand the complexities of business models and then you're offering one app where you could have two apps get all of it um but as a user i would i would love that very much um and then you know maybe this is where all the subscription stuff needs to play in more more seriously but i like i like this is why i like what steve tratton smith is doing because he's yes he's looking at mojave um marzipan which don't have the mojave marzipan by the way it's made with sand um but uh he is giving us

a view into what this is going to be like for developers at a time when apple doesn't want to talk about it and so i find that that that has a lot of value and his posts, which we will link to are extremely technical. So if you're not a developer, you will probably find, especially the one that's got all the giant code in it, uh, to be, uh, hard to understand. But the, the idea where he shows sort of like, here's how you take a basic thing and use his tool called marzipanify to get it running on the mac uh based on the ios you know i think simulator builds um and then the work you need to do as a developer to take it further so that it becomes something that feels more Mac-like and that Apple has already in the

marzipan that ships in Mojave built those tools in and presumably those will only get better. And that's what I found fascinating about this is we get a little bit of a view into how Apple is building this system that it's going to roll out this year in three months and say, this is how you build unified apps on Mac and iOS and have them be Mac apps. Because I, I agree with you. Um,

I think this is ultimately going to be good for the Mac because the alternative is, is completely static, like nothing. Right. And, and, and this is better than that.

So, um, yeah. So thanks to Steve Stratton Smith for doing these articles and for inventing this Mars and panify tool. So, thanks to Steve Stratton-Smith for doing these articles and for inventing this Mars and Panify tool. And thanks to James Thompson for finally taking a day and turning off system integrity protection on his iMac and building a Mac version of iPad or of pCalc from the iPad version because

that's fun. Is that what you have to do? You have to turn off system integrity protection? I think you do. That sounds terrifying. I don't even know what that means, but it sounds really scary yeah it's meant to yeah i guess that's the point right if you don't want someone to turn something off give it like a horrifyingly scary name all right today's show is also brought to you by our friends over at luna display they

are the makers of the only hardware solution that will turn your ipad into a wireless display for your mac meaning your second display that was super portable can be with you anywhere and have basically zero lag and amazing image quality. Setting up extra screens is a fiddly affair, but Luna Display couldn't be easier. You just plug in a lovely little dongle into your Mac and you're good to go. Everything works over Wi-Fi, but if you're somewhere without Wi-Fi connection, maybe you're on some kind of plane or train or an automobile, you can just use a USB to connect them together, and you'll be able to still take advantage of that multiple screen glory.

It's super simple to get set up, and then you'll have your extra screen real estate whenever and wherever you need it. Luna Display is a complete extension for your Mac. It supports external keyboards, Apple Pencil, touch interactions. It turns your Mac into a touchscreen device, and the all-new Liquid Video Engine brings significantly reduced latency and a faster screen refresh rate. I absolutely love using Luna Display on my iPad.

It makes macOS an app. Like, I have all the power of macOS just at my fingertips wherever I am in my home because I have my Luna Display plugged into a headless Mac Mini, and it just gives me the extra tools sometimes that I need to get something done. It allows me to go in and easily manage my Mac Mini which is doing some

home server-like tasks for me at the moment. It's really, really amazing. Listeners of this show can get an exclusive 10% discount on Luna Display. Just go to L-U-N-A-D-I-S-P-L-A-Y.com and enter the promo code UPGRADE at checkout. That is lunadisplay.com

and the promo code UPGRADE at checkout for that 10% off. Our thanks to Luna Display for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So, let's talk about Touch ID and Face ID because the Galaxy S10, the reviews are out. Well,10, the reviews are out.

Well, some of the reviews are out. There's actually no embargo on the S10, so people can publish their reviews whenever they want to. And so there's been a couple of reviews for the Touch Sensor and a couple of reviews against the Touch Sensor. So we spent a little bit of time last week on Connected, me and Federico, talking about the technology that is going into the touch sensor. So we spent a little bit of time last week on Connected, me and Federico, talking about the technology that

is going into the S10. So this is a very different type of technology. It's called ultrasonic fingerprint scanning. So the fingerprint sensor is embedded in the screen and it uses sound waves to detect your fingerprint and unlock it. So what that means

is you don't need to have any kind of button or any kind of sensor. It's embedded into the screen, so you can just put it right there behind the screen. And unlike some of the other in-screen fingerprint technology, you don't need to shine any lights on it. You can actually unlock the phone while the phone's screen is off. So it's pretty cool.

But there has been some reviewers that do not like this. And there's been some reviewers that do like this. And I find that particularly interesting. So I'll read a couple of quotes for you. And we'll have links to all these in the show notes. So Brian Chan at the New York Times says, my bumpy experience with the print sensor found up one conclusion. Face recognition is a more convenient method for unlocking phones, and Samsung is behind Apple in this area. Samsung does have face recognition stuff, but it's not very good. And Dan Seaford at The Verge says

that the fingerprint sensor is not as fast or reliable as the traditional capacitive fingerprint scanner on the back of the S9. The target area for the reader is rather small, and I had to be very deliberate with my finger placement to get it to work. But then I've seen a bunch of YouTube reviews, so from Jonathan Morrison at TOD Today,

who shows you can see it's super fast and reliable, and Marques Brownlee, MKBHD, says that it is convenient. You can unlock it when the screen is off. He shows some phones side by side, and the S10's unlocking faster than them. It works with wet hands. I don't understand what's happening here. I'm seeing a lot of

like a conversation happening on twitter between journalists right what it looks like is either there are hard work works or this technology works better for some people than others but and you can throw into that um personal preference too right yes a hundred my feeling my feeling here listening to lots of people talk about it and seeing lots of people write about it is that they are some people like fingerprint scanners more

and some people like face ID more. It's not a 100% like, oh, this is better. I would argue part of that is resistance to change. I'm sure there are people who prefer putting digits into their phone than doing touch ID. Those people are interesting. But I'm sure there were some, right?

Where it's like, I don't want to do the thing where I touch the thing and hold my thumb there. I just put in the code and I go. And it's like, there's't want to do the thing where I touch the thing and hold my thumb there. I just put in the code and I go. There's going to be some of that. But I do believe that beyond that, there are things ergonomically. Some people have issues with maybe their face ID scanning doesn't work as well. Maybe their face has something that makes it less liable to lock or more unreliable. less, you know, liable to lock or more unreliable. Maybe they have a particular gesture that they got really comfortable with, with like putting their finger or thumb on their phone as they're taking it out of their pocket. So that as soon as it's up, it's, it's, it's working. Whereas with, with face ID, you have to lift it up and then it scans you and then it opens.

I vastly prefer face ID to Touch ID. But at the same time, there's also a false dichotomy here because you could offer both if you wanted to. Like Apple theoretically could use this technology, this ultrasonic scanner technology, to put a fingerprint scanner under their screen and have face id and let you choose um there are also some choices apple made with face id that are really annoying like the double tap apple pay button thing which i don't like and i don't and it doesn't feel necessary that is one of the things for me that really really makes me wish miss i should say touch id the way that all of the apple pay interactions are done so like i've been traveling this week so i've been getting lifts everywhere and stuff and that when the apple pay thing comes up and i've got to double tap and then look and wait

for the animation that's so much more cumbersome and slow than touch id used to be because the touch id you just touched it and it was done right like that was it because the what is the action of me now reaching to press that side button that is all i would have needed to do is one of those taps and then it would have been completed and so like this is like every time using apple pay every time you're buying something from the store um i use apple pay a lot in london and it's much more frustrating to have to get the face ID stuff to work than it would be with the touch ID because touch ID it's just got to be in my hand I don't have to have it in a perfect view and when I'm walking through a train station I'm not necessarily that keen or like that it's not as easy for me to just put my phone in front of my face as it would have been before to

just touch the home button like i love face id it is amazing technology and it mostly works great but it does still need ideal conditions like what this device or this technology to be the best that it should be really this seems quite simple to me if i can see my phone it should see me that's what i want right like if i Like, if I am within arm's reach of my phone and I can see it, I want it to be able to see me rather than me needing to, like, position myself or position the phone in such a way that it will unlock. Now, I know that this stuff is, like, that idea is probably still far away if it ever comes, but, like, that's the ideal.

And I feel like Touch ID met its ideal, right? And I think this is one of the things that makes people struggle with it. Touch ID got as good as that can be. Face ID is not as good as it could be. And I think this is where maybe there's some people that are a little bit unhappy with it. Ideally, Jason, I would like to have both technologies in an iPhone. Yeah, I can see that. I mean, I don't miss Touch ID at all,

but I get... I think this is a one... You mentioned it already. You said it's personal preference. It's not saying Face ID is bad. I love Face ID. On my iPad, it's incredible. I have no problems with it at all.

But on my iPhone, it's not perfect. And some of the interactions that I frequently made with my iPhone was made worse by Face ID. Another point that Brian Chen made in his New York Times review is that when you talk to the vendors about the security of these different techniques, the security of these different techniques. It seems like Face ID is way more secure, that it's much harder to break than a fingerprint scanner. But we may be arguing about ridiculously secure versus impossibly secure, and that for most people, it doesn't matter.

I do think, though that um what is really motivating i think especially chen but but both those reviewers who didn't like it the verge reviewer too is this perception that the that using cameras and and dot projectors to scan your face is a good technology that Android phones and Samsung phones have not bothered to implement. And basically, Brian Chen's point was basically like, come on, Samsung, just copy Apple. And I think that's not necessarily do away with the fingerprint scanner as much as it is the face scanner that Android has is this ridiculous photo compare thing where you can

put a mask on or put a picture of somebody in front of the camera and it'll unlock. It's really insecure. It's far less secure than the fingerprint scanner. And I think that's part of the conversation here is literally just this face unlock feature that is kicking around is a joke. And if you want to offer face unlock, you need to do the real thing, which is kicking around is a joke and if you want to offer face unlock you need to do the real thing which is what apple is doing and not this really kind of bogus thing that you're doing um but i agree in an ideal world and of course each one of these things costs costs in size and space and money um but that having multiple authentication options available is uh it would be a good thing in the end.

Because I do think I'm starting to get the sense that there really are just people who prefer one and not the other. And now that we've lived with it for a little while, it's not as much about I don't want to go to something new. I'm familiar with the old. And quite honestly, the thing about the Samsung thing is it's invisible. That's the amazing thing about it, right? Is that you just put your finger on the screen and it unlocks. And we talked about that for Apple iPhones. They were trying that for a long time, and they decided not to bother with it and just to skip ahead to Face ID. But there is an argument to be made that, you know, we may have learned that it's better to have both.

And if that's the case, then Apple has to make a decision. Like, it looks super cool, and it also enables other things so like samsung's displays look amazing right now because they have those little basically the cutouts for the cameras but you get bigger displays and there's no notch right if you don't like the notch you're going to be stuck with it on the iphone for a long time because a face id samsung doesn't have to do that yeah but then again if you're somebody who uses this as uh as uh our chat room is pointing out right now um if you have gloves for example like face id is great and touch id is the worst yeah of course that's a great

example if you have your face covered because it's also cold well you're still screwed aren't you like i totally get the glove idea but there are many things right that go one way or another and like there there are pros for touch id and pros for face id and there are cons of each i will say one thing that has been this is like completely personal experience thing which has been so strange i gave my mom an iphone 10r for christmas she has never complained to me about face id and i can't believe that i was like very concerned about moving my mom from touch id to face id no complaints which i you know that is a big win for me because i was like this is going to be that was the thing i was mostly worried about

so this is going to be a disaster because she was so used to touch id she had her iphone 6 for years a long time right since the iphone 6 was new up until last year um but she seems to have got on board a face id because it does work very well right it does um but as i say it just i think it's a personal preference thing i would like to see both i actually think you know whilst i get the idea of like apple would never bring back that technology because apple never go backwards like i get that point i don't know i feel like there could be some real i feel like you could spin it as a benefit consumer choice because the technology is better i don't think that is completely out of the question you could also this is just a just a wild idea i'm throwing out there you could also

use this to differentiate high end and low end and put this technology under your iPhone, maybe not XR, but your SE or something like that and be like, it's just got Touch ID in the screen. And it would allow you to get rid of the buttons without having to add the whole Face ID sensor stack and you can make a cheaper phone. Maybe there's something there too. But I agree on the high-end stuff. Why not load it in and just say, yeah, you get it all and you can use it either way.

I do think, though, your point points out to ways that Face ID is implemented on iOS that could be better. Like that, again, to come back to the Apple Pay thing. Like I get that Apple wants all these verifications to go through by clicking the side button. But I'm with you. I think it's really annoying i'm sure that they've got reasons i'm sure they're like well no clicking a hardware button is makes you not miss tap and and buy something you want and all that but like it feels um it it feels so much worse than the old approach where you just put your finger on the home button and you were done

because you were both biometrically authenticating and approving. And now you have to, you know, now it kind of happens backward. And I don't know, it feels to me like it could be better. And that's an area of friction in Face ID that wasn't there before. All right. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at Eero. With Eero, you can build a Wi-Fi system that is perfectly tailored to your home. Considering the high bandwidth world that we live in today,

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check the sites that you visit against a database of millions of unknown threats to prevent you from malicious stuff. Eero Plus also includes subscriptions to 1Password, Malwarebytes, and Encrypt.me as well. Jason Snell, could you tell me something about your Eero device that you have at home? Well, I have all of the things, right? I've got the connected door lock, and I've got a Wi-Fi robot that vacuums my floor and like there are so many different

devices all over the house i've got um you know cameras and there's just there's a lot and so i need to have my wi-fi everywhere even more than i did before i don't have a very large house but i do have corners of it that were harder to get wi-fi to that where i ended up putting cameras or other devices and so so now my needs- And then you're relying on it, right? Like if you're putting the camera there, you need to know you have a connection there. And it used to be just where I would go with an iPad, right? Or somebody in my family would go with an iPad or a laptop. But now it's all of those other devices too, where I want them

also on the internet all the time. It needs to be a reliable connection. And that's the thing that I have liked about Eero is that I have the multiple Eero devices. They all work together. It was easy to set up and handoffs are all seamless. So basically, instead of just making sure that the Wi-Fi gets to my backyard so I can sit out there in the summertime, it now gets to all the different corners of the house where the constellation of Internet of Things devices are. And so that's been my

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ask upgrade questions and Jason any lasers? Oh there was a delay on the lasers because they were clearly very powerful today. The lasers were, the last couple of weeks, were gearing up for a giant laser explosion, apparently.

That was very good. Sorry to all fans of this stupid Ask Upgrade lasers who wrote in to complain that I did not give the lasers out. That's not stupid. I won't accept that. I won't accept that for one moment, sir. Not one moment. First question comes from Todd.

Todd wants to know, do you think that Apple's TV service will have a skip intro feature? And a bonus question to this, do we skip the intros on TV shows on Netflix? Oh, Todd, Todd. I,

how shall I put this? I sometimes skip the int the intros i do if it's a show i watch a lot if i'm binging a tv show yeah i'm not gonna watch the intro every single time if i'm watching four episodes of a show in a row i don't need to see the opening credits every time i'm so sorry i agree with that for people that that upsets but like for people who are in the credits like todd is yeah i mean like but you know it it also depends are in the credits like Todd is. Yeah, I mean like, but you know, it also depends. If the show has like

a really good opening, so like when we watched True Detective, the first season, binged the whole thing, but the opening was so good, I'd watch it every time. But some shows,

like House of Cards, oh my God, House of Cards, its opening is the worst thing in the world. This is what I was going to say is, it is not just about binging for me because i don't do i do i am of course as some people know a big fan of the

slow binge which is you watch like an episode a day slow binge i've been yeah the slow i think i've heard you say that before oh yeah that's i talk about it on tv talk machine all the time big fan of the slow binge i i'm not somebody who's going to sit down and watch four episodes of a show in a row it's just never going to happen i have other other things going on in my life, but I will watch one or two and then watch another one the next day and another one the next day. And that's what I call the slow binge. I recommend it. In fact, sometimes I will slow binge like two or three things at once. So I assemble a little lineup of shows and I watch one episode of each every night. It's great. Anyway, be that as it may. Uh, I think the

other issue is what you hit on, which is some intros are good and some are long and boring, and I don't need to see them again. And that varies from show to show. There are shows that I love that have boring intros. Uh, but there are also shows that have great intros and I watch it every time and it gets me in the mood for the show. It really depends. Like I don't skip the game of Thrones intro, right? Because I love it. The music gets me excited and they show different things on the map every time that they're little Easter eggs. And like, that's great. But there are other shows where, you know, it's the same every time and it's kind of long and it's really boring. And I don't particularly love the music and it doesn't get me into the show and um and i i don't bother like uh travelers on netflix which

is a show i really like um and that is an opening sequence that i really don't like and it's super boring and i don't watch it so yeah j-raf asks do you think that an airplay 2 dongle is still on the horizon for apple so this would allow you to watch uh content from your device like a chromecast for example we spoke about that before uh well i never thought it was definitely on the horizon right there was a report that apple was considering it which is the weakest of apple rumors but we also spoke about the fact that we thought it could happen right that we thought that it made sense this was before apple announced all of the TV integrations. Exactly, exactly.

So my hope is that they will do something. I'm not sure AirPlay 2 dongle is the way to go. I would really like it if they would just do a low cost thing that actually ran the TV. I would much prefer a cheaper, much, much cheaper Apple TV, like a Fire TV stick. But I don't think it's going to be that if they do it.

I think they're more likely to do a have your iPhones and something. Yeah, it could be could be it could be so i think this is a possibility it also depends on how what deals they're making with third-party hardware because what if airplay 2 just shows up everywhere then they don't need to do it because then then you can literally just go buy a roku box for for 25 bucks yeah or if they just do what they did with samsung with more people so like the amazon fire tv stick gets apple tv and you know he just moves on from there either way whether it's airplay 2 or the or tv app stuff um but they're going to need to make that with third-party hardware manufacturers right not just tv people for exactly because because it doesn't matter if apple

offers an airplay 2 dongle or a cheap apple tv if you can point at an amazon fire stick or a roku you know a little 35 roku thing and say you can get it there then apple doesn't need to make it our next question comes from dan dan says i have a mid 2012 non-retina macbook pro with four gigabytes of ram and a spinning disc hard drive it's getting pretty slow but i don't want to buy a new one just yet it's only used for the homework for the kids would an ssd be enough to boost its performance or would more ram be the thing to give it a significant boost i feel like an ssd right i feel like an ssd is probably going to be the thing you'll notice the most storage is usually the limiting factor i think an ss SSD is going to help you more.

I think in almost any case, an SSD from a spinning disk is going to help you the most. Yep, I think so too. You know, it's an old machine, so it's still going to feel old in places, but putting that SSD in it will be good. Didn't you do this? You did this for your mom's laptop or something?

Yeah, and then I sold it to a college student. Yeah, I took her laptop and I pulled the old drive out of it i put in i did put in some more ram but i also put in an ssd and it ran way better than because it was even though it was an older laptop it was um running on an ssd and it felt way faster oh look at that i just found it on six colors so i'll put it in the show notes people can see that for reference too if they want nice good times nicholas asks do you feel that the battery on your new ipad pros drains faster than the older ones if so could it be the apple pencil draining the battery faster as it's constantly attached i don't have noticed any battery changes and i don't and the apple pencils battery would

not be big enough to take a significant drain so if you're having issues maybe you should take it and have apple look at it um my ipad pro still gives me but as much power as the old one did so if you're seeing significant changes then maybe you need to get that checked out and gary asks which would be better for video editing a 12.9 inch ipad pro or a 13 inch MacBook Pro, the 15 inch is beyond my budget. Well, at this point, I think my answer is the MacBook Pro. Because as much as I like the iPad Pro, I think the MacBook Pro has... It has more options for software. Has tried and true video editing options on there.

And that's what you should go with. I would love to be able to say that the iPad Pro is a straight up, either a choice or a pick between the two. But while there are video editing apps on the iPad, I think you should get a MacBook Pro for video editing. I wouldn't video edit on the iPad at this point. Maybe one day, but if you need to make that decision right now, that choice is a MacBook Pro for sure.

I think so. I agree. All right, that wraps it up for this week's episode of upgrade thanks so much to our sponsors freshbooks ero and luna display but mostly thank you for listening if you would like to send in a question for us to answer at the end of the show just send in a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade and then maybe we'll be included for a future episode but if you want to help open the show the hashtag snell talk is the best way to do that you can find us online jason is at j snow j s n e double l on twitter and he's over at six colors.com and the incomparable.com find me on instagram i'm i mike i m y k e i'm on

twitter there as well too you can find this show and many others at relay.fm slash shows i'm sure there'll be something else that you can pick jason i know you host uh many others at relay.fm slash shows. I'm sure there'll be something else that you can pick. Jason, I know you host Download here on RelayFM. What do you think is going to be coming up on Download this week? Oh, whatever happens this week will be on Download this week. We don't even know yet because it's all about what happens this week. I love that. I don't know.

This is the mystery, the mystery of technology news. But what you will find on download is not just Apple. You'll find stories about the whole technology industry at large. We spent a lot of time on Android phones the last two weeks. Yeah, as you would, right? World Congress, all that kind of stuff. So if you're looking to find out more about not just the foldable phones, that's where you'll be able to find it there on download here on RelayFM.

Thanks so much for listening, and we'll be back next time until then say goodbye jason snell you know if we were a netflix show this is the moment where the credits would zip into the uh into the corner and start counting down to play another show three but i don't like it i don't want to skip the credits it's over bye mike