Upgrade - 243: Fiddling Around With Folders

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

Jason struggles between the Mac's insistence on file management and iOS's lack of it, Podcasts take a step toward going viral with some help from Overcast, and we prepare for the Upgrade Summer of Fun with a new arrival from Dongletown.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 243 brought to you by hello lunar display and butcher box my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason snow hi mike hurley how are you i am very well fine and dandy indeed. And I have a hashtag Snell Talk question from number one up gradient Casey, who wants to know if you could watch a movie or series for the first time all over again, what would it be? There's a good question from number one fan Casey. I think I'm going to say Lost. And I know that's controversial because a lot of people don't like how lost ended but you

know i loved lost i love the whole thing if you didn't like how it ended wouldn't that make it the perfect show to watch this way so like if you ever did watch it again you wouldn't remember how badly it ended i also feel like one of the big problems with lost at the time because lost was a very modern show a little bit it was a little bit before its time and because it was network tv um there were long gaps between episodes. So you'd get like eight episodes and then it'd be off for six weeks and then you'd get four episodes and then it would be off for five weeks. And I would love to watch that show for the first time being able to basically binge it or at least watch it at my own pace over the course of a few weeks instead of having to stretch it out over years with huge gaps in between seasons.

Because I think the show plays a lot better when you're not losing narrative momentum every six episodes as they stop for a rerun break. So I have been meaning to do a Lost rewatch, and I will at some point. But in the meantime, I think that's going to be my answer it's not my favorite show although it probably is in my top five of all time but i think it would be the one that would benefit the most and for movies i don't have i don't i don't think i have an answer

for for movies there are a lot of movies that i love i'm not sure there's a movie that that i would um want to i feel like the the going for the ride for a tv show where you don't know where it's going is just it is more fulfilling over the long haul than a single movie i think that for this question tv shows are better than movies unless it's like a movie series right like if you wanted to watch star wars you know yeah or all the marvel movies something like that sure yeah that would take a long time to watch all the marvel movies people People do that though. Do you see that? Like I saw people doing that. Like they do like a three or four day, basically live in the cinema. I couldn't imagine watching movies that way. No. You'd lose your mind. Yes. Thank you to number one upgrading Casey for sending in this snow talk question. If you want to have a question

to help open a future episode of upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk, and it may be considered for future use. We have very exciting news. We have merchandise available for you right now. Right now. UpgradeYourWardrobe.com. That is UpgradeYourWardrobe.com. There's also links in our show notes. Look, the summer of fun is approaching, right? We can hear the waves crashing. We know it's on the way. And we thought to ourselves, you know, we want to make sure that the Upgradians are ready for the summer. People are headed to the beach.

Luckily for all of us, you don't have to leave Dongletown behind because now you can join the Dongletown Surf Club. We have a whole range of items available, including a Dongletown Surf Club. We have a whole range of items available, including a Dongletown Surf Club tee and tank top, so you're ready for the beach, a Dongletown Surf Club tote bag, and quite possibly, in my opinion, the greatest podcast merchandise ever created,

the Dongletow. Yes, we've made a beach towel. We've made a beach towel. It says Dongletown Surf Club on it it's true it's true also the classic dongle town t-shirt is back in stock in uh the navy variation and this is our this is our pre-wwc get ready for the summer of fun ensemble yeah we're doing it now because we want to make sure that like so basically you can buy it now it's available till may 13th it should arrive uh before wwdc if you're in the us that's why we're doing it right now that's why atp are doing theirs right now also um so if you haven't yet bought atp merch why don't you buy

it all together and just pay once for shipping um we i i will say i love we had such a great response to the original Dongletown tea. This is my favorite of the two, design-wise. I think this is perfect. This has a couple of excellent puns on it. I would say, read all the text out loud. That would be my tip to you. Just read it all out loud, because you might notice something you wouldn't have noticed otherwise. And I want to just mention about the towel.

So it's an actual beach towel, like a real deal beach towel. We're working with our friends at Cotton Bureau. This is why I love working with Cotton Bureau, because Jason said to me, wouldn't it be nice if we did a towel? And I said, Jason, yes, it definitely would be. So I contacted our friends at Cotton Bureau. I told them what we wanted to do. And they do what they always do for me, which I appreciate so much when I come up with these weird and wonderful things where they're like, hmm, let's see if we can do that. And then they go away and they come back to me and they find a way to do it.

So I'm really, really excited about this merchandise this year because I love the design in general, but I am very excited about tote bags and beach towels like that is just like a fantastic like isn't it great you know like maybe maybe you're a person like t-shirts aren't for you well now you can buy a tote bag or a beach towel and you'll be happy so go to upgradeyourwardrobe.com i have i told you that i got stopped somewhere i was actually on a walk with my dog and and somebody actually uh asked me where dongle town was interesting and i said okay

how am i gonna how am i gonna respond here and i said i i let i let him in on it i said it's kind of a joke about how you know if you buy a new computer you have to plug in like an adapter like a dongle in order order to get it to work. And he was like, oh. And I said, it's a computer thing. And I ran away. Yeah, right. You should have just said, it's in all of our minds and in the bottom of our backpacks.

That's where Dongletown is. It's everywhere. Dongletown is all around us. But being in California, people are like, oh, Dongletown, California. Where is that? And the answer is, it's everywhere. Oh, I guess that's the problem, being in California. Oh, Mike, I was very confused that Dongletown Surf Club didn't come in the tank top, like you said.

But it turns out right at the very top of the page, there's a little toggle for T or tank. So if you want to show off the guns, I will not be buying the tank top. But there it is. It's available for you. I'm going to buy the tank top. I will probably never buying the tank top but there it is it's available for you i'm gonna buy the tank top i will probably never wear the tank top but adina is very excited about the tank top okay awesome i am i'm glad to have it and uh for those who are wondering about more traditional upgrade merch of logos and hoodies and things like that that's more of our fall collection, I would say. This is our summer collection. Yeah.

Let's go with that. Oh, there are also some pins left. We have a small amount of logo pins left if you want to get those too. But upgradeyourwardrobe.com. Get ready for the summer. It's only available for a couple of weeks. You don't want to miss out on these ones. So go get it.

Follow up. No spoilers. We've both seen avengers endgame we're not going to be talking about it on this show as we would usually do there's going to be no mic at the movies about it because we're both going to be discussing it on the incomparable this week so yes jason has finally allowed me to be on the episode of the incomparable and i'm very excited yeah we're going to talk about it on saturday so we get a week to think about it and then we'll talk about on saturday and i will my plan is to talk about and release that episode next saturday and then there's a second panel of the incomparable because everybody wanted to talk about it and that'll probably release sunday so it's a double feature but you and i will be on that episode on

on saturday so people can keep their eyes on the incomparable i wonder what the total runtime of those two episodes will look like compared to the total runtime of endgame well i mean that's a good question i think i think if you put them both together i think it would be great if you put those two episodes together it was the runtime of endgame i fear it will be more than that yeah i reckon it will be more than that too i have a lot to say um i don't know if i'm gonna be able to get the time to see it again, though. That's the problem. I'm hoping to see it again this week because it's a three-hour movie. There's a lot in there, and I would love to see what I kind of missed the first time. Podcasting about a movie you see once, so much of what I do is a movie that I watched on video after seeing it in the theater or it's a TV show where I can watch it.

It is a very different experience when you can only watch it once and you can't take notes yeah which is what happens when you see a movie in the theater so I'm hoping to go back and see it sometime this week if I get a if I get a chance you know I realized uh Marvel movies have occupied a third of my life oh yeah isn't that wild that's true isn't that wild yeah it's big all right so you can look out for that. Well, that's it. They're never making any more Marvel movies now. That was it. The end.

That was what it meant. Yep. It's a spoiler. That was it. That's what we said at the end. Yes, Disney stock went down on the revelation at the end of Avengers Endgame that Marvel Comics is shutting down. It's strange.

It's a shame. They made a billion dollars this weekend. They should probably keep going, but oh well. I found it really weird when Captain America looked directly into the camera and said, that's it for Marvel now. See you, kids. That's it. Go home.

Very strange. He took off his mask and he just dropped his shield and walked off and said, later, losers. No more superheroes. Go find your Batman if you love him so much. It was really weird. Yeah. I thought the moment where captain america endorsed batman was perhaps the strangest part of that it's like you know batman's pretty

great go talk to batman bye smell you later smell you he was out of there yep it would have been a new catchphrase if only there was more captain america movies but unfortunately no more because there are no more marvel movies all right let's do some upstream. Got a couple of headlines in streaming media. Comcast, believe it or not, as if it couldn't have been predicted, is in talks to sell Hulu to Disney. According to CNBC sources, Comcast is currently weighing up its options over what to do with its 30% stake in the streaming service. One of those options is indeed to sell it to Disney,

and Comcast and Disney are talking about it. I mean, everybody knew this, right? Like this was not this is not a revelation. But seeing it on CNBC makes it seem more real than just what we believed would happen. Yeah. The new piece of information here is that they are talking, which is I think that was unclear whether there was active conversations about the future of Hulu and the ownership of Hulu or whether they were just sort of like everybody knew that this would be a thing that needed to happen. But they are talking what the CNBC story says is that Comcast has not decided what it wants to do. It's very much the arguments that we discussed maybe last week, which is the idea that they could keep their stake and be a part of something and sort of get a peek into Disney's strategy, their competitor.

But at the same time, they would also be involved with their competitor instead of doing their own thing. So I think it sounds like Comcast is also weighing sort of strategically. And maybe the game here is also like basically what's it worth it to you? What's it worth it to us? What's it worth it to you it's a complicated uh thing and it could go either way i think the cleanest thing would be for comcast to get some cash and walk away and use that cash to build their own streaming service rather than uh kind of continuing to partner with hulu but what they did say and i think this is an important point, is Hulu has, you know, it's not just a place where you come for original programming. It is the TV industry's playback for broadcast TV in the US. And Comcast did say that they are happy with, you're going to want to put all of their shows, including NBC's network TV shows, on their streaming service because then it's a direct customer relationship with their content. I have watched some CBS shows that I would not have thought to watch or would have forgotten to record on my DVR. But the way that service works, you get access to all their shows the moment that they air. It's like HBO Go.

The moment that the CBS shows air, they're on streaming. And I'm on the ad-free tier. So it's basically all the CBS shows are available for me ad-free, no commercials by paying for this. And there's something, it's actually, that's not bad. Like the combination of all the network shows, when I want to watch them and all their originals in one package. I look at CBS All Access, which is very narrow. And I think this is a model. Like this is what Disney should take all of ABC and put it on Hulu.

NBC Universal should take all of NBC and put it on their new streaming service. That's like, that's how you should do it. That it actually makes a lot of sense. I think it really strengthens the service by basically saying we have a TV network, but you're streaming. So you're obviously not watching it.

So you get these shows here instead. Like I don't see the problem with that. So I have a hard time seeing them in the long run staying, but they're talking. It's good. And WarnerMedia will be showing off their streaming service this fall. CEO Randall Stevenson has said

that they will be giving a detailed look at the platform and its content in either September or October. They underline that HBO will be at the center of the platform. And this is a quote, theney announcement gave us nothing but more optimism about what we'll be able to bring to market um that considering the quotes that surround all of this does not sound as snarky as you could imagine it sounding um it actually was more of like a disney have a really good offering kind of thing and it looks like something that's exciting. And we think we can do it too.

Not so much of like, I saw what they did. You want to see what we got? I think it was more, and I think rightly so, that WarnerMedia should be encouraged by Disney. And I think that WarnerMedia really feel like they have something to offer. And it's not necessarily what people think of them as having right like i think with disney people are much more aware of what disney owns than they are with warner media um you know like i think that people just think of hbo as hbo and like game of thrones is owned by the hbo company but it turns out it's also owned by the wizard company too so

like you know yeah i think putting hbo at the center of the platform is a smart thing i think that that was the that that's we'll see exactly what they mean by that but like using hbo and kind of inflating it and saying you know hbo is going to be the start of this and maybe it's not all of it but it's it's the core and it's going to do more content if you view like the disney presentation where they've got their brand tiles of like disney and marvel and and all that like Warner Media doing something like that where they've got they've got an HBO stream and they've got a DC superhero stream and they've got some other you know Harry Potter stream or whatever it is however they want to put that together you gotta you know take advantage of your brands and your intellectual property and the most powerful part of the WarnerMedia kind of content development world is HBO. HBO is at the center of

it. So they are leaning into that, which is interesting. Of course, a lot of people have left HBO because it's not going to be the old HBO. It's going to be this new kind of, you know, higher volume content HBO, but it's still the center of their strategy and it should be. All right. Today's episode is brought to you by ButcherBox, the folk who deliver thoughtfully sourced meat directly to your door. You can enjoy healthy, grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken, and heritage breed pork. Plus, ButcherBox meat comes from humanely raised animals

that are never fed antibiotics, hormones, or fatty fillers. Each ButcherBox comes with 8 to 11 pounds of meat, which is enough for 24 individual meals. You can choose from five different box types depending on your meat preferences. Jason Snell, I am very aware of the fact that you are a big fan of butcher box. Is that correct?

Mike, I just got my latest butcher box this weekend and it's the custom box because i want to pick exactly what's in it because we don't have pork in this in this family but they've got lots of selections and so i was able to go through and we actually um it's a big part of our meal planning because i like having the freezer stocked with stuff and i can thaw it very easily um it's really easy for me to, especially using my little sous vide machine to thaw the meat out and also sometimes just cook it in the afternoon. So by the time everybody gets home from school and work, it's ready to go. And it makes meal planning a lot easier knowing that we've got this stock of stuff. It's not every meal we have comes out of the freezer, but it's a very convenient fact that we've got that stuff ready to go. And so we can choose to take out some ground beef or take out some chicken thighs or whatever we want, some steak, and make that meal for the day. So super convenient to have it. And it comes hard frozen.

There's dry ice in the box. It's hard frozen and in shrink-wrapped little containers. So they go in the freezer and then they come out one by one and we eat them. ButcherBox, my favorite thing about them is they have, I think, the most exciting offers that I've ever come across as the thing to entice our listeners to go and sign up. This month, ButcherBox is offering the Ultimate Breakfast Bundle, which includes two packages of bacon and two pounds of breakfast sausage for free in your first box. The bacon is Whole30 approved, uncured, nitrate and sugar free.

The sausage is a healthy, authentic version of a classic style pork sausage, simply seasoned with salt, pepper and sage. Right now, new members will get two packages of bacon and two pounds of breakfast sausage added to your box for free, plus you get $20 off your first box. Go now because it's limited supply,

so while supplies last, it's a limited time offer. So to get that ultimate breakfast bundle of two packages of bacon, two pounds of breakfast sausage for free in your first box, and $20 off your first box, go to butcherbox.com slash upgrade or enter the promo code upgrade. That is butcherbox.com slash upgrade promo code upgrade to get your hands on that wonderful

offer. Our thanks to Butcherbox for their support of this show and RelayFM. So, Jason, you wrote an article on Macworld last week where this quote comes from, which I enjoy very much. These past months, I've noticed something strange creeping into my thoughts occasionally while I sit at my desk

working on my iMac Pro. iOS does this better. Shock horror. Heresy. So what's going on here, Jason Snell? You know, it's Finder Windows is where it all started. It started in the Finder Windows. I want you to know, it's Finder Windows is where it all started. It started in the Finder Windows.

I want you to know, I'll get into this a little later on, but you've infected my brain now with this technology. I heard from some of my friends who are longtime Mac users who are like, what are you doing? I can only imagine this upset quite a lot of people. But, you know, and I'm writing it and I'm thinking, does this come across as one of those things where a columnist says something inflammatory just to get attention? And the answer is, I kind of don't want your attention. I'm just writing about this because it actually happened to me. It's literally, that is the story here, is I am working in the Finder and I've got like windows open and some windows are behind other windows.

And then I realized that I've got eight of the same window open for the same folder, which I was going to put in a mention how the old finder wouldn't let you do that. And then John Syracuse sent me a note and said something, something spatial finder. And I was like, yes, I almost went there. And I just said, no, no, no, no, no.

It's too, I'm not going to go back to the past. But like I had that moment where I'm like, okay, I'm going to open this window and I'm going to go to this folder and I'm going to make a new finder window. And I'm going to click on this thing in the side bar and it's going to go to this other folder somewhere else. And I'm going to move the files over. And then I'm going to, I need to get this file out of the downloads folder and I'll open that and all that. And I thought, this is kind of silly, isn't it? Like this level, like I get why I need to do that sometimes. And I've got workflows that have built up over years in terms of this stuff. But I had that moment where I thought like on my iPad, I'm in an app.

I'm in like OneWriter and I swipe from the left side and it shows me my little stories folder in Dropbox where all my stories are. And I pick one or I press the plus button and it makes a new one in that folder and I give it a name. And on the Mac, it's sort of like, you know, some of this is also habit. Like I could go to BBEdit and press open and use default folder to set like the stories folder to be my default folder and set the window to be the right width and look the way I want and do the same thing. I could do that more or less, but the way I've been trained to use the Mac is go to the finder,

open a window, navigate to the right folder, and then create a document or open a document that's in there. And it was just a little moment where I thought, I wanted to ask myself, because I write about this, I wanted to ask myself and talk about it, why do I feel this way? Let's explore this. And I was thinking, I think iOS is the reason. I think this is an example where I, without saying that I think iOS's initial extreme concept of files not existing, I think that was too much. idea that maybe something we said earlier about old technology right and how apple hopefully could come up with something better than apple events uh which they invented in 1991 um i had that moment where i thought this is really a fundamental brilliant concept from 1984 but you know i'm now it's 2019 and i'm still opening finder windows and moving things around and there are a lot of parts of my job where i feel like an app-based context makes more sense than a file-based context and some of this is me and it's not the system some of this is me and

apple has definitely tried to push a lot of its apps to be more app based and not finder based in terms of how you use them. That's why logic and final cut store things in packages. And, you know, GarageBand does that too. And they, there's a lot going on there. And iCloud Drive tries to push you in this direction. But I just, I don't know, I had that moment where I thought, oh, I prefer the fact that iOS, uh, kind of gives me the files that I want in the context of the app I'm using. And if I really need to go and dig around with files in the file system, I'll open the files app or the Dropbox app or whatever. And it was just, it was a, it was an interesting kind of like moment of realization that I'm not, I have, something happened where I do not take the conventions of the Mac for granted in the

same way that I used to because I'm using iOS so much that it's changed the way I think about some of this stuff. Not saying like the Mac is bad and that iOS is good. It's way more nuanced than that. But saying that some of the assumptions I made about how I use my computer are changing. I am definitely in the mindset of preferring the app-centric model of files and how you manage your computer life.

Because I think of my work as happening in places. There are apps and tools that I need when I'm in a certain mode. And I think more easily in that way than considering which document do I need to find in which folder structure to begin my work right now. I am much more of the idea of going here and like you mentioned that like you reference one writer which is where you write a lot of your stuff on ios right like you open that app and now you're in writing mode as opposed to like let me go into

dropbox through six different nested folders to get the file that i need to open one writer with and it's just like a different and i i don't think either of us is saying like one is right and one is wrong it's just like a different way of thinking um but it's interesting to me that you have changed your thinking having used the mac for longer than me i I did find this funny, actually. Like Casey on ATP referred to me as a new Mac user. New Mac user, yeah. I've been using the Mac for nearly 15 years. Welcome. As long as him, right?

Which is kind of funny. I think me and... Actually, I've been using the Mac for longer than Casey because Casey's first Mac was the white MacBook. I had the Intel iMac. So I am a longer time Mac user than number one upgrading Casey Lewis. But I'm considered a new Mac user because I am not like deep into the terminal. Like I am just like a regular –

You're of the new generation. You're one of these kids today. Yeah, who uses iOS. With their iPads. With their apps and forgetting about their files. And their rock music and whatever. But I have an actual example of something that happened to me today after preparing for the show.

I was on my Mac and I was working on a contract in Pages and I needed to sign the contract. So I've made it in Pages and I needed to sign the contract. So I've made it in Pages, and I needed to sign it before I could send it. So I had to go into Pages, I exported it as a PDF, saved it to my desktop. Then I had to open a Finder window, go to the desktop, right-click the file, open in, choose PDF pen, sign it, save it, open up my email app and send it. On iOS, I'm in pages, I click share, I choose PDF. It then gives me a open in dialogue immediately. I just tap on PDF pen and then I sign it and save it. Like there's none of this middle dance of like, where do you

want to save the file? Right? Like there's none of that that like it just goes from app to app and i really like that and i know that sometimes on ios the share extension stuff can be clunky but when it works which for most of the stuff i do works great like for that exact type of thing of like taking a document turn into a pdf send it somewhere or whatever that's way nicer to me because it's just going from app to app like the idea of me saving it to the desktop and then opening it again somewhere else is a completely unnecessary step for me to have performed the work that I wanted to perform. And there are issues here, although Apple has made some changes in iOS where now you can sort of like open a file directly in from an app and it opens it directly. It's not creating a, you know, another version of it, which is the way it always used to be. So you can work on the same file and move it around between apps.

And that's the kind of thing that, iOS is coming out of its extreme origin of no files. And that doesn't work either. I was thinking about like Logic or Final Cut. Logic is a good example because I added a lot of podcasts in Logic and I also added podcasts in Fairlight on iOS where they have a package format, which I don't use probably because in part, it's part of my workflow, but part of it is also that I'm very file oriented because it's the Finder and it's a Mac and all of that. But like dragging the best way to put a bunch of files into a Logic project is to open the Logic project and then open the Finder and then drag the files in one by one to write where you want them to go.

And Logic, as far as I can tell, doesn't even have a batch import feature. It has an import file feature that lets you pick a single file. And that's not better. And that's not better. So the Finder ends up being, and I think maybe this is the root of it, is interacting with lots of files in lots of complicated ways on the Mac. Most apps are just like, just use the Finder. Don't involve me. Drag and drop works. Drag the files in. I don files over and I'm in a project, Ferrite will bring up a little side panel with all my files and I can drag them out one by one. And they're, you know, basically I airdrop those files to Ferrite, not to a holding folder. So then they're in Ferrite's storage area and then I'm dragging them into the project and then they're in the project. And I think that's better.

I think that's a better approach and I know it's different. And, and then they're in the project. And I think that's better. I think that's a better approach. And I know it's different. And what, you know, these platforms are colliding. So part of my thought here is just Apple is trying to push the Mac to be a little more app-centric in terms of documents. Apple is also trying to push iOS to be a little less app-centric. And I think that's good, because I think there is a place that is more than what the Mac does today, but also more than what iOS does today. That is probably the better place for users because the, you know how you and I go back and forth about things like to-do lists and project management apps and all that kind of stuff, where my big concern is always the danger

of becoming, Merlin has talked about this a lot. It's the danger of becoming somebody who's a professional organized person who doesn't end up doing their job because they're spending too much time getting organized and not actually doing the work. And that's always my concern about putting any time into kind of like organizational stuff

is this is time away from the work. I should just do the work. And you take that to an extreme and it's ridiculous too because you're completely disorganized and you can't do the work. So you have to find that medium. But anyway, this is a little bit like how I am thinking about

like the argument about the finder being the center of the Mac is you end up being, like in the early days of the Mac, custom folders, custom folder icons and colors and all this stuff was like a huge part of your identity

as a Mac user was like the file part of your identity as a Mac user was like the file system was your identity as a Mac user. And from a little bit of a remove, I look at and I think it's kind of ridiculous, right? Like managing my files and folders. I used to file my email in specific folders, and now I just have an archive in Gmail and I search for it. Like I gave up the idea of creating these archives because it seemed like a waste of time. And I feel like maybe fiddly when I talk to people about the finder, a lot of times it's sort of like, oh, but I need to put these files in these places. And I do a lot of filing of my files and I put them into these places where I can get them later. And, you know, sometimes if you're working on projects with coworkers and things like that,

sometimes that is necessary. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I wonder if a lot of the fiddling around with files in the Finder that Mac users do is just because it's the center of your world and not because you really need to be spending time fiddling around with files and folders. I think it's unnecessary.

You know, the underpinnings of it, the stuff that goes into the file system on the Mac, by and large, unless you're using something like Dropbox, it's not collaborative. So the reason I mention this is like, we use Google Docs all the time, right? I have no idea how my Google Docs are filed because it's not important.

Because the system is like collaborative at its core. It's up to me where I find it. It's up to you where you find it. And we just deal with it that way. It's not about having this nested file system of show notes documents. Yeah. And it's very much like when I went from Eudora to Gmail and just said, you know what? I don't need to create a complicated series of mail filters that put every message that I get in my history in a very particular mailbox for me to retrieve

later because technology has reached the point where I can just say, hey, where's that email about this? And it shows up and I don't need to know any more than that. And it's a different way of doing it. And it's, you know, changing the way you work is hard because there it incurs a cost and you don't, it goes back to the idea of, uh, of, uh, not wanting to waste my time doing things that aren't my work while making a change in how you work is time spent. That isn't your work. And I get that that's a hard thing to do, but it, I, in a moment like this, where I've, you know, using iOS has changed my perspective a little bit, I look at it and I go, oh, wow, that's a lot of busy work just managing where things go.

And yeah, my Google Drive is not particularly well organized. In fact, the only way that my Google Drive is organized is mostly about permissions, because you can set a folder to have specific share permissions in Google Drive. And then if you put a file in it, it inherits the folder's permissions like that. But that's a function. That's like, oh, every these, you know, Dan and Steven can see the Six Colors magazine folder. That's a different, that's a different kind of thing. That's not really organizing the files. And yeah, I also know that some people are like, what do you mean you're not organizing your files? the files. And yeah, I also know that some people are like, what do you mean you're not organizing your files? You've got to organize your files. It's like, I get it. But I don't. Honestly, I need to organize them in very specific ways for projects and things. And that's it. And if

Logic or Final Cut, which actually does do this, did all that work for me, then I would really not have to do it. I do want to just mention files the files app on ios it's not better than the finder no like it let's not get this confused right like we're not saying here that like managing files on ios is better it's like the difference in the kind of the ideology ideological view of how you work right right no if it's a shootout between files and the finder like no the finder is a spectacularly powerful ability you know tool for moving files and folders around on your computer and files.app is a you know barely like a 2.0 kind of product that's got all sorts of quirks and it's better than what was there before which was nothing or the iCloud drive app well the iCloud drive app was the 1.0 right and then files is the

2.0 but it's like it's not it's not great and iOS's approach I guess what I'm saying is iOS having this document centric approach I think is smart if they can find lots of good ways to integrate the concept of files when necessary. Because there are times when you want to say, I need this file from my archive. I need this file that I worked on. I want to make sure this file is backed up. I need to send this to somebody. There are things like that. That's why files needs to be better. But I think coming from the approach iOS is coming from, But I think coming from the approach iOS is coming from, I'm seeing the benefit of that in a way that is harder to see on the Mac due to a mixture of things, due to a mixture of assumptions based on like how the Mac has always behaved and my history as a user and how a lot of apps choose to interact with the file system on the Mac. Because on the Mac, you've got this great file utility that's at the very center of everything. Mac because on the Mac, you've got this great file utility that's at the very center of everything.

And so you use that. If you're a Mac app, you use that. Now with Marzipan, what happens there, right? That's a whole other issue because those apps are all being designed to be app-centric and not document-centric. So you start with the app and then the documents kind of come along for the ride, which is the opposite of how the Mac, like the classic way you worked on a productivity app on the Mac back in the day was that you found the document you were working on and double clicked on it. And then it opened an app that opened the document. That's the exact opposite of how it works on iOS, right? You open the app and then find the documents that belong to that app. And there's something to be said for that in a lot of contexts, not all contexts. But anyway, that was my journey, Mike. I feel like I've stepped outside of my computer

history just enough with using iOS in addition to macOS that it lets me see um some of my habits and some of the assumptions of the mac interface in a way that i i hadn't before well this is what lies before us over the next 12 to 18 months is thinking in these terms it's very different now right like we're we are moving you know whether or not, into a kind of merged future. And it's going to require a lot of soul searching for users of Apple's products to kind of work out where they want to sit on this side of marzipan. You know, like it's going to be interesting. I think it's interesting. We'll see how it ends up shaking out.

Yeah, it's a lot of design decisions that Apple's going to have to make. And it's going to be weird. Like, as we said before, you said it two weeks ago, I think. It's going to be weird. Like, let's underline that. It is going to be weird.

Even if Apple does a great job and executes this incredibly well, it's still going to be weird because you've got a whole class of apps that are not like the apps that have existed on the Mac. And they're going to have, you know, if Guy Rambeau and Steve Trott and Smith are to be believed, like, it's going to be more like classic in some ways where, like, there's going to be a separate system folder with the Marzipan stuff in it like there is on Mojave. And that's not the system folder that the Mac apps use. It's the system folder that the Marzipan apps use. It's going to be weird, even if they execute it well.

And we're going to go through this process. But it's also kind of fascinating to watch how it might evolve. Because I feel like the decision that Apple made when they kind of made their change about how they were viewing the Mac was on one level, be careful what you wish for from for Mac users, because I think Apple pivoted from saying the Mac is a legacy platform that we want to keep around and keep the users on it happy. But it's not the future. It's just going to stay the way it is. And they pivoted from that to, all right, we're going to drag the Mac into

the present. And this kind of stuff is how they're doing that. And if youed from that to, all right, we're going to drag the Mac into the present. And this kind of stuff is how they're doing that. And if you're a longtime Mac user, you will be uncomfortable. And I will be too, because I am one of you. I will also be uncomfortable because the Mac is going to have to change in ways and it's going to be weird. So that's the bottom line. It's going to be really strange to open some applications and be like, you don't look right. Like that's what it's going to feel like for to open some applications and be like, you don't look right. Like, that's what it's going to feel like for a while. You know, like Steve Troughton Smith was tweeting over the weekend and he was kind of just like, I wouldn't say call to arms as such.

But like, you know, like, hey, if you are a developer and you think you are going to move into this, like because he says, like I am, you know, I'm going to move all of my apps to marzipan because it's what i want to do let me know and i saw we're going to talk about overcast in a bit but i saw marco armand say like my plan is day one like i want to have overcast on the mac day one it's going to look so strange right to like be on my imac and click the overcast it's going to look like I reckon, basically the same I would assume, my iPad app. And that's going to be very, very disorientating. So, that's why

it's going to be weird. That is, I think this is going to be our as we ramp up towards the summer of fun. We're in the weird time now. Or is the fall the weird time when it ships? So it's summer of fun and then the autumn of weird the autumn of weird we'll find out all right today's show is also brought to you by our friends over at luna display the makers of the hardware solution turns your ipad into a wireless display for your mac meaning you'll have a second display that is

super portable with basically zero lag and stunning image quality. Setting up extra screens can be a fiddly and frustrating experience, but lunar display couldn't be easier. You just plug a lovely dongle, whether you're in town or you're at the beach, it doesn't matter. You just plug this dongle into your Mac and you're good to go. Everything works over Wi-Fi if you're in regular Dongletown, but if you're at the Dongletown Surf Club, you can do it with a USB connection if there's no Wi-Fi connection for you, how perfect is that? So you might be traveling, you can just

use a cable instead, and you still have the ability to use your lunar display to screens. You can have your laptop, you can have your desktop and your iPad to the side, and you can use it just like an external monitor. It supports external keyboards, touch interactions in the Apple Pencil. I will say, you mentioned in your article about touchscreen Macs, and it made me think of the fact that I think the Mac with an Apple Pencil is fantastic, because I do this all the time now. Like, that is the easiest way, when I'm using my Luna display, to get all the touch interactions that I want. But it works perfectly like i really

like being able to use like my apple pencil in pixelmator on my mac over lunar display which i do quite a lot the the art the uh the the banner image that i made like the kind of of our merchandise it's in our show notes and we tweeted it and stuff i made that in pixelmator on my mac on my ipad with luna display and my apple pencil because pixelmator on the mac is better than pixelmator on ios which breaks my heart but it just is it's easier to use but anyway like you can do all this stuff i do all the time they also recently luna display is always adding a bunch of updates to make the system better including the new liquid video engine which brings significantly reduced latency and faster screen refresh rate, which just makes it even better than ever before.

Listeners of this show can get an exclusive 10% discount on Luna Display. Just go to lunadisplay.com, lunadisplay.com, and use the promo code UPGRADE at checkout. That is lunadisplay.com, promo code UPGRADE at checkout. Go there right now and upgrade your setup.

You're going to love it. Our thanks to Luna Display for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So we mentioned Overcast a moment ago. Over the weekend, Marco shocked the world and introduced a new feature to Overcast about basically with the idea to share clips, to be able to have you listening to an episode of one of your favorite shows on Overcast. And you're like, oh, that was a good

little clip. Previously, what you would do is you grab the URL, right? And you just tweet about it and be like, oh, this is a really good episode. There's no context there. There's nothing. There's no, because it's so difficult to share this stuff or maybe you'd you'd get a timestamp link in overcast and you tweet that but not everybody uses overcast or any other app that might do this right so like then you're kind of locked in and you might you might not click it because you use pocket costs so like what use is this to you you can't do anything with that and it's a weird context where it's loading a web page and then it has to load the whole file and wait until it gets to the you know where it can load your web browser has to load it to get to the time code and that if it's dynamic ad insertion the time

code may be may have drifted and then you're not even sharing that moment that you want to share so marco has created some new ui inside of overcast where you can if you're listening to a show you can press the share button and you can select a clip to create a clip and you can create a clip of up to one minute in length that can be audio only or video in horizontal, vertical or square formats. And it uses the show artwork and it has like some animation going on

and you can choose, I love this, you can choose to add overcast branding and Apple podcast branding or no branding at all. That is a Marco move. I think if I've ever seen one that like he will just let you not put his branding in there. Right. We'll get into that a little bit more in a minute because I think it's actually pretty important when talking about this whole thing in general. This was all inspired by a thing that my RelayFM co-founder Stephen Hackett said on an interview show that he was on called Unco. It's actually a really good interview. The whole thing

kind of like Stephen's thoughts on podcasting, its history and all that kind of stuff. But Stephen was talking about the virality of podcasts, that it's super hard to share clips that might give people a taste of the show that someone's talking about people tend to just share links and text and that kind of stuff and as a podcast producer it is such a pain to do this kind of stuff with the tools that currently exist right like i would open like final cut right and drop everything in just for the sake of creating a 25 second clip that i could share on instagram like it's too. But this gives me as well as a producer of shows, the ability to grab a clip that I would want to share as well as like, and if you think like,

if it would be too much hassle for me to do this, no listener is ever going to do this, right? Like you're not going to go to the effort of like creating a video project to share a 20 second clip of a show that you enjoyed um and i don't know about you jason but i've been seeing these clips all over my timeline uh on twitter this weekend and i have loved it because i've seen people sharing stuff that they like i've had listeners of my shows tagging me in clips that they've shared and i've really enjoyed actually

going back and listening to these like 20 second random things from like years ago you know like someone went back to the beginning of the pen addict when me and brad talk about the fact that we don't like fountain pens that much like that is the kind of stuff that's like popping up and like so i want to use this feature to promote my shows like i'm trying to get into that mindset a little bit more and i hope to see people sharing this stuff too what did you think uh about this feature i uh well first of it's funny because as a beta tester of overcast i think it's funny that he didn't beta test this feature no that's what i mean he shocked the world nobody nobody knew about it except steve himself he didn't want to put it through the approval process for test flight so he just uh

did it himself uh i think it's i think it's a great move i think this is you know i i think he's trying to keep it within fair use which is why it's a single like minute clip because he wants this to be a viral thing that promotes podcasts i think um he's run up against some challenges in uh in terms of how ios sharing works where um it's not as straightforward as it should be like you can share the video but it doesn't come with a link to the podcast because it's just a video yeah um and so then you need to like copy the overcast link and then copy i i kind of want him and i know he probably can't do this, but what I really want is like a video share that also puts something on the clipboard that's like the name of the episode and a link to the podcast or something like that, something a little richer than what is currently

there. But I know that there are a lot of complexities in that situation. But at the bottom of this, he's trying to solve a problem that we've all been moaning about for a long time, which is it's very hard to share, to really share a great moment in a podcast and have it, you know, have it kind of go viral. Instead, I see these links all the time where people are like, oh, this was a really great moment about this thing. So you should listen to my podcast. It's like, OK i i am now gonna download an entire episode of your podcast um that's a harder sell not sight unseen but like hear unheard yeah hear unheard exactly right so instead i get to listen to a clip up to a minute and and think oh that's really interesting or funny or whatever and maybe i'll go listen to it but also it allows

fans uh listeners of podcasts to share favorite moments and that's also a lot of fun so i hope it i hope it takes off and i hope more podcast apps do it yes this is what i wanted to talk about right the idea of this how these tools are for podcasting in general because there are a lot of like um proprietary systems like platforms and stuff like that that will that can generate these things for you but you have to work with them you have a host of them or have an arrangement with them like you'd be a part of this like big huge cms network thing and that's not tenable for most people right like it's requiring way too much um And I think that this stuff is really useful

when it is available to everybody, right? Like, I hope that other third-party apps find a way to make features like this for themselves. Like, I am obviously a huge fan of Overcast, and Marco was one of my closest friends, so I want him to get more customers because of this, right? So I'm happy he did it first for that reason but i also hope now that the the success of this feature will prompt other app makers to do it too because then it's good for everyone and like this goes back to

kind of what i was saying about like the branding thing uh the fact that marco will allow you to put branding in or not is that i feel like that whilst he is very happy to have it out first would also encourage other people to do this because it is good for the overall podcasting ecosystem that we all seem to care so strongly about like and there was like a

quote from Marco's kind of announcement posted this that I wanted to read where he said for podcasting to remain open and free we must not leave major shortcomings for proprietary lockdown services to exploit conversely the more we strengthen the open podcast ecosystem with content functionality and ease of use the larger the barrier becomes that any walled garden must overcome to be compelling and like I you know this is why like I am happy that an app that is as popular as Overcast is run by someone whose podcast politics align with my own. Because, you know, it makes me happy that someone like Marco is there. I mean, we're inside baseball right now,

but this is like coming in from a weekend of this startup called Luminary, which is like a closed platform system that really upset a lot of podcasters because they said podcasts didn't need ads, and they are a system where it is a regular app, but it also has this paid tier so it's a free app where you can listen to in theory you can listen to any podcast then as a paid tier where they have a bunch of stuff which is exclusive for them and they will kind of when

they first came onto the scene their whole pr was about like oh we're better because our shows don't have ads and podcasts don't need ads and they just need our system instead. And then there's been this whole furore over the weekend of just basically a million different things that Luminary has done wrong throughout their launch and the way that they're communicating. And so after something like this, to see a tool like this, and for it coming from Marco,

it's like I consider it a good thing. I personally am not worried at all about the future of our uh business here i have seen and i may be being naive but i've been doing this nearly 10 years and i've seen a million things come and go that are going to destroy podcasting, especially over the last few years. And I have seen every single one of these make absolutely no dent in anything. Maybe at some point it's going to happen, but I don't think that we are any closer to the heat death of podcasting now than we were five years ago. I just don't think that it is significantly closer. The part of the industry that we're in is still growing.

I don't really know how much people want to hear about this sort of stuff, but advertising revenue is going up. And if you're in the right places at the right times and you're doing the right things, this business can still be an extremely viable one if you do it in the right times and you're doing the right things, like this business can still be an extremely viable one if you do it in the right ways. I feel like the right model here

is to look at the web and say, what's great about the web is that the web browsers are just part of the landscape of your device. Everybody's got web browsers and the web browsers all work on the web. And if you want to give away things on the web and have advertising, you can do that. And if you want to charge for content on the web, you can do that.

And that the way forward for podcasting is probably a system, and we kind of already have it, but it could be better. But it's probably just embracing open podcast standards along with an easy for users way to say, I have paid for this, like you do in the web. So authentication and some podcast apps support authentication now, where you can put in a username and a password and get to a password protected feed or a user and password protected feed. That is what open podcasting is kind of lacking right now is a unified way of doing that, where if you try to subscribe to this podcast, a, you know, put in your username and password prompt comes up and then you do that and every podcast app supports it. Right.

This you're saying, like, if if what you want to do is have some method of podcasting, which is paid. Right. Because one of the ways that one of the reasons this is happening is because if you want to charge the and build a fairly simple experience for people who want to pay to listen to a podcast or a network of podcasts, you have to build your own app, basically, because it gets it's ugly. It's like asking people to subscribe to a raw RSS feed URL. It gets complicated and it's not supported the same way everywhere. And that is what open podcasting is missing that the web allows you to do because the web will let you,

a web browser will let you log in and it'll let you take a cookie that says you are logged in and then you get access to the premium content, whatever it is, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, the Financial Times, you name it.

And podcasts, that part is hard right now because it didn't really get built that way. And I feel like the best thing that the open podcast community could do is try to find a way forward that lets open podcast apps deal with subscriber content. Because right now you've got this weird uh place where there are podcasts like luminary that are trying podcast apps that are trying to mix

both they're trying to say well we're a podcast app uh plus our podcasts are in here and that what they're trying to do is remove this barrier which is uh i need to switch to a different app in order to listen to these certain kinds of podcasts that are not available elsewhere and that and then my all my other podcasts are over here and that kind of stinks and uh like audible has done that with their channels stuff and i you know i had access to that and i basically never listened to it because it's in a different app and i don't want to listen to my podcast in a different app. That is like, you know, it's okay if you want to have a separate app like Audible to do audiobooks, right? Like a separate app. But where Luminary is

kind of in the middle here is this, they want to have it both ways. They want to be part of the open podcast environment that people like and sell you stuff. And because they can't do that inside other apps, they have to do it in their app. And I do see that as another weakness of the podcast world. Like I have for, because I have podcasts that are behind a membership, you know, and you do too for Relay, right? So we both have this. And, you know, it's kind of security through obscurity. It's kind of porous.

It's not the best. And, like, I would love it if there was an easy way for me to just say, put in your six colors or incomparable username and password, and then you get access to these podcasts on every podcast player on every platform. But it doesn't exist. So, you know, that to me is a hole that I would love to see plugged somehow. Maybe somebody should pour VC money into that idea. Well, actually, what would be really interesting is if Apple did it. If Apple came up with a system where Apple said from now on the podcast app will accept this method of authentication and only this method, and we will show your

authenticated podcast in the itunes directory but mark that they're paid only and allow previews and like if apple built that feature out and it wasn't just for apple's player key point they could move the entire market to do it i feel like probably the company close enough right now is patreon well patreon right patreon has that idea that you're logging in and you get a a url url it's still complicated but they could provide an api right you know well i mean well so so wouldn't that i think it starts that would be great it would i think apple doing it would be the one that would push had the highest chance. But you're right. Patreon could help matters too.

I feel like Apple would be less likely to make it open to everyone than Patreon would be to make it work. I feel that's the problem is that Apple wouldn't be as inclined to do that. But I don't know. I mean Apple so far has not really exerted their authority in this space. Maybe they would just make it really easy for you to pay for those things with Apple pay, do it that way. But I don't know that that is a challenge, but this,

you know, this is a whole about the lack of virality in podcast content that Marco is trying to fill. And I think it's great. I mean, how many times have I had a moment where I am drawn, I'm driven to tears by wacky things happening on the flop house. And I just can't, I just can't share it.

Like I can't share when Stuart doesn't understand that Kiefer Sutherland is trapped inside the mirror at the end of Mirrors. Wait, what? Come on, right? Like it's so funny. What? And I can't share that.

What? Come on. He's in a mirror? Like it's so funny. And it's like, I can't, I just can't share that. What? Come on. He's in a mirror? It's so funny. And it's like, I can't. So this gives me an ability to do that. That's great. I hope people use this feature.

I really, really want people to use it. And I'm so pleased that Marco made it. I think it's really awesome. And I'm very pleased to see stuff like this exist. And I hope that more people do this. I hope to see, you know, my hope would be that this feature does so well that Marco puts even more effort onto stuff like this, right?

And there is a business benefit for him, like a legit business benefit. It is making his app better as well, which is awesome. But at the same time, I think it is helping something that i care a lot about so it's definitely worth checking out and trying out if you are an overcast user or you're not um maybe you can find your favorite moments of upgrade maybe you want to make a twitter account which just shares our crazy conspiracy theories that we love around here

whatever you want but like i would say if you do ever share any clip of my show, please tag me in it because I like to hear what people enjoy. Yeah, because we get so little feedback, especially detailed feedback about like, this was really funny, right? That you're an audience that might laugh or scowl or whatever to what we say,

unless we're live, you know, in that theater in Chicago or at WWDC or whatever, like we don't get that feedback about like, I really liked this bit. It's very hard to express that because you listen to the whole podcast. Oh, wow. Mike says something super smart there,

which makes a change. I think he should know. He should know. Then, yeah, let me know. But yeah, so that's worth checking out.

There's a, of course, links in the show notes for you to check those stuff out show notes they're important to podcasting too in my opinion not everybody agrees with links with links today's show is brought to you by hollow hollow make insanely comfortable buckwheat pillows i don't know if you've ever tried a buckwheat pillow but it is pretty different to your regular fluffy pillows buckwheat pillows support your head and neck so much better because they don't collapse under the weight of your big brain like traditional pillows will. Hollow pillows stay cool and dry compared

to feather or foam pillows. They breathe better, so you don't need to find the cool side of the pillow because the whole pillow is cool because air can flow through it. You can also add or remove filling very easily to suit your needs, so it can be just the right thickness that you want. Buckwheat pillows are super popular in Japan. I've never come across a pillow menu at a fancy hotel before, but the people at Hullo tell me that they exist. And if you do come across a pillow menu, you may find buckwheat pillows on there. And I bet it's at the very tippy top of that menu because I love my hollow pillow. I have been sleeping on it for nearly a year now.

I got it last June. I'm never going back. I absolutely love the support that I get from this pillow. It's so comfortable for me. Hollow pillows are made in the USA with quality construction and materials. Their certified organic cotton case is cut and sewn for durability and the buckwheat is grown and milled in the US as well.

You may be curious to try one of these out and you can because you can sleep on it for 60 nights and if Holo isn't right for you, you can just send it back for a refund. Go to holopillow.com slash upgrade right now and you can get your own buckwheat pillow. There's h-u-l-l-o-p-i-l-l-o-ow.com slash upgrade right now, and you can get your own buckwheat pillow. That is H-U-L-L-O-P-I-L-L-O-W dot com slash upgrade.

And if you buy more than one, they have a special discount of up to $20 off, depending on the size that you opt for. They have fast, free shipping of every order, and 1% of all profits are donated to the Nature Conservancy. Give it a try. If you love it, you keep it. If you don't, just send it back. Hollowpillow.com, H-U-L-L-O-P-I--l-l-o pillow.com upgrade our thanks to hollow for their support of this show and relay fm

i i wished sometimes that our company was called relay fmo because then i could say that whole thing and it would rhyme because it's thank you to Holo for their support of this show. And then RelayFMLO, you know. But that's not. Unfortunately, we didn't make that decision nearly five years ago. So I'm stuck. All right. Let's do some hashtag AskUpgrade. Yeah, this really needed the lasers today.

Because the first question is about lasers. And I knew that you were not going to give me them unless i was quiet for a long time so here we are andrew asks does jason make pistol fingers or stabby pointing hands while doing lasers no no first off um fingers don't shoot lasers okay okay they don't that's silly that's ridiculous i i just lean i lean into the microphone and then the lasers um emerge you lean in i do for lasers i get in as close as i can to the microphone i'm actually touching the microphone with my face and then i go laser experience oh wow yeah can you give me a laser from from regular uh distance oh that sucks i don't want that i know right if those are garbage lasers nobody wants those lasers

i want i want lasers this is if people are going to make clips of this is this what is this what they're going to make i take it all back jeff wants to know do you know of any podcast apps that support re-listening to old shows i'm thinking of something where i can tell it to start with this episode and then download a new episode every x days so you're kind of listening in a time machine so i call this the syracusa feature because john always tells us you start at the beginning i don't even know if it needs to download an episode every X days. I think what you really need is an inversion of the standard podcast procedure, which is start at the beginning and keep three episodes or whatever.

Download this many episodes. What I want is when I'm done, I just want the new one to pop up. That's what I want. So what I want is I want to say, you know, keep three episodes and start at the beginning. And so it'll download the first three episodes. And when I finish episode one, it will download episode four. Yeah. And the key part here is this is not a sorting option.

This is the like because you can a lot of apps have sorting options, right? Where you can like reorder them. This is the idea that like it would show up in your all unfinished playlist or whatever, or your like all unplayed playlist or whatever function of your app, which shows like a chronological list of all the stuff you have to listen to. Right, like it's a new episode,

but it's actually not. And I agree. I think stuff like this should be great. I don't know about any apps that do this. I have lobbied Marco for the Syracuse feature in Overcast pretty hard because there are podcasts I listen to now that I am way behind and I want to go through them sequentially from the start or from the point where I am now. And I want to have that behavior where when I'm

done with this one, I listen to the next one. But because it's a podcast that's that's currently like 50 episodes ahead that is more work than i'd like i'd really like to say you know i want to start season two of hello from the magic tavern now and then just keep giving me new episodes and you could you could do it keep giving me a new episode every week um i i tend to listen to a lot of shows in like that in binges so So I'd like to be able to say, keep three or five or whatever at any one time. And then as I finish the last one, put the next one in the download queue or in the playlist or in the streaming queue, because I'm going to keep on moving forward. I think this is fitting with our theme. This is

another way that podcast apps can make things easier for users where you can do this now, but it's more work and it shouldn't need to be. Some podcasts, there's even a tag in iTunes. Apple made a tag that is basically start from the start instead of show me the latest for things that are not timely. Apple made a lot of tags last year, or a couple of years ago. nobody's using unfortunately they're very hard to implement visually but that's an interesting idea where like that could be a cue for somebody for an app developer to be like oh i'm gonna offer for this podcast i'm gonna offer the start at the beginning option because the podcast maker marked this as a start at the beginning so like total party kill is like that the dnd podcast that i do uh it it it's a start at the beginning podcast and you

can draw you can jump in anywhere but it is a series of linear stories with different groups but they all start at the start and go forward too right and seasons yeah yeah for the no podcast apps other than apples that support you're using all you're using all of the features i got all the nobody's nobody's all in there because even apple's implementation of some of this stuff leaves a lot to be desired kind of visually and i think that's why no other apps have implemented them because the creator of this new part of the rss standard has yet to implement it in a way that visually makes a lot of sense that that is is pleasing i i you know i wish that they that some of that rich data would get better used but i understand also that most people don't use it and so there's no point in it.

But this is an example where it might actually be helpful to say, oh, I can tell, at least on some podcasts, that this is a start at the start and even offer this as a feature. But regardless, it should be easier for users who want to start at the start of something. If I'm listening to Hello from the Magic Tavern, I tell somebody, because let me tell you now, it's great. It's an improvised fantasy podcast about a human from Earth who lands on a fantasy world and he and a wizard and a shape-shifting badger person do a podcast every week. And it's entirely improvised and it's hilarious. But part of the hilarity is that every time they make something up, it's part of the canon and they can't contradict it later. And so you really need to start at the start. you can do that you can subscribe to hello from the magic tavern and and make the effort to tap in the right places and play the first episode it would be a

lot nicer if the default was not here's the latest episode of hello from the magic tavern because you don't want to hear it you want to hear episode one and then if you like it episode two yeah that's how it should be consumed my my one of these is the adventure zone yeah that's a great i mean the dnd podcast so the the uh adventure zone dragon friends are both uh both those podcasts or podcasts i'm listening to from way back in the catalog and i would actually listen to them more often if i didn't have to go and say, oh, where am I in the adventure zone? Like, oh, I downloaded three episodes.

I must be there now. It's like, I would rather just subscribe to it, right? Like Jeff suggests here. I will say, I would like to claim immunity from this request. I put this question in before we spoke about Marco adding features to his app. So, you know, sorry, Marco, because we're clearly directing this at you now, I think. At least I am because it's the app that I use and I want that feature. Kevin, Kevin has a question. Do

you think that if a developer uses Marzipan APIs in an app, they will be required to distribute it via the Mac App Store? 100%, Kevin, 100%. This is probably a bigger discussion for a later episode, as again, we either get closer to or away from WWDC. But why did Apple all of a sudden decide to redo the Mac App Store? Yeah, I think eventually you're going to be able to buy, either for a discount or whatever, you're going to just be able to buy all of the apps for all the platforms at once, right?

Instead of right now, you're going to have to buy the Mac app separately from the iOS app. Yeah. I think in the long run, that's probably not going to be the case, that they'll get bundled together, or at least developers will have the option to bundle the app across platforms together maybe for a special price who knows and then we'll stop calling it the mac app store yeah it'll just be the app store i think there's i wouldn't say it's 100 i'd say it's like 95 because it's possible with all these new

things that they're adding um where they're you know they're notarizing apps and things like that. Yeah, there might be a few things you can do. It's possible that they'll let Marzipan apps in as notarized apps and have it be mandatory. So you still have to pass through Apple's process before being released. But I think it's also entirely possible that it'll be 100% Mac App Store. Where I think the line will be drawn, from a user

interface perspective, if you're using UIKit, you'll be in the Mac App Store. We were talking about the idea of maybe integrating with shortcuts. If those are separate APIs, you can probably still be out of the App Store and use those. That's how I think of it in my brain. If your app's going to look like an iOS app, it's going for the App Store. That's where I draw that limit in my brain. Jack says,

you're very skilled in the art of speaking on a podcast. Did that come just from experience? Did you prove that this week? I don't know. Or did you actually do something conscious to learn these skills? I don't mean recording. I mean speaking and presenting, voice modulation, pacing, articulation.

Jack did not direct this question specifically at either of us. So I'm going to assume Jack likes the way that we both speak. Okay, great. And I think the answer for this is the same for both of us, where it's purely a case of practicing and paying attention to the things that annoy people more frequently, because they can't get out of your brain. And then you end up kind of changing a lot of the way that you speak. If you're Mike Hurley, you lost a lot of your accent,

is what happened, as you became more like an American person. I think there's multiple things going on here. I think some of it is just who you are and how you speak, and that is your starting point. I gave my elementary school graduation speech. I was in radio in high school. Humble brag. I gave a speech at my high school graduation. I have done – I got a bunch of medals at the speech festival when I was in eighth grade.

I had the key to the city because of a great speech that I gave once. I'm Batman. No, I, you know, so I've been doing this a long time of like public speaking, public also part of his personality, which is public speaking has never bothered me. Like some people say it's the worst thing that you could possibly do. There's death and then like one up on the list of terrible things is public speaking. I've never felt that way. I am awkward in lots of social situations, but in front of a crowd on a stage is not one of them. So I've got that going for me. And then what Mike said, which is then you do this for years.

And every now and then I get an email from somebody who says, I just listened to Upgrade number one or I just listened to The Incomparable number one. And wow, you are much better now than you were back then.

And it's like, thanks, I guess. Like you're insulting my past to compliment my present. How do you get to do a live show at Carnegie Hall, Jason? 10,000 hours of practice. I think so. I mean, it's not an accident.

You just wander on the stage. And that was going to be my point is one of the reasons that I don't feel bad about somebody saying I listened to Incomparable No. 1 from August 2010 and, wow, your podcast is much better now is because it should be, right? You would certainly hope so. I would really not be happy if I did something for nine years and didn't get better at it. Like that is not, not just like the technology and I'm using a better microphone. I'm better at microphone technique and I'm better at editing podcasts and all that, but I should be better as a host.

I should be better at speaking. Like you should keep getting better at whatever you do as you go. so part of it is that is you just got to get started and uh and get better as you go and that's true for everybody so don't don't say you know don't say oh i can't do a podcast because i'm not as polished as all the podcasts that i've been listening to for many years like you got to start somewhere yeah and you'll never go down that road if you never get started if you feel that way because like you're like oh i love this show and i'd never be as good as them just go back to the earliest recording you can find of that person and you will immediately feel better about yourself mike has done a really great job of hiding a lot of a lot of his old podcasts don't even exist on

the internet anymore because hello governor you can go all the way back though to 2012 with the episode one of the pen addict yeah okay listen to this guy who's talking like this and he's so happy to be on a podcast he's a soccer hooligan he is who loves pens he'll stab you with his pen he will anger him and finally jay lily asks i'm getting a a MacBook Air for my wife to use during her master's program. Should I get eight gigabytes of RAM or 16 gigabytes of RAM? Always more RAM, right? As much RAM as you can afford?

I don't know. It depends on what his wife is doing with her master's degree. If she's doing basic stuff, like I think that RAM gets oversold, especially in this era of SSDs and eight gigs of RAM as a standard is actually pretty great. So unless she's doing stuff like she's got lots and lots of apps open at once and things like that.

I think the best buy on laptops right now is to watch for one of these sales on Amazon or elsewhere where the MacBook Air base model gets sold for $9.99. I think that's the right price and it's a great deal if you can get one. And I've gotten two that way. So I feel like that's the best thing to do is just get the base model because for most uses, it's going to be fine. Unless she's getting her master's in 3D graphics or computer science or engineering or something like that, in which case she's got some very specific technical needs. But if it's not something that specific, I think I wouldn't worry about it, quite honestly. I would go with the base model because I think the base model is pretty good. And honestly, I'd probably spend money on disk before I'd spend it on RAM because the base disk on the MacBook Air is very,

very small. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade and it may be considered for a later episode. And if you want to own the coolest podcast merch of the summer, you need to go to UpgradeYourWardrobe.com and you can get that. Whether you want to be super cool in San Jose or you just want to think about USB when you're at the beach, you can do that with the Dongletown Surf Club merch at UpgradeYourWardrobe.com, available until just May 13th. So do not delay on this one. Go buy it now, now, now. Thanks so much to our sponsors this week, the fine people over at Lunar Display, Holo, and ButcherBox. If you

want to find Jason online, sixcolors.com, theincomparable.com, and he is at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E, and I and Jason both host many shows here at RelayFM. Go to relay.fm slash shows and you may find something new. We'll be back next week.

Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Pew, pew, pew.