Upgrade - 25: I Don't Need a Saturday Box

Episode Date: March 2, 2015

This week Jason and Myke are joined by David Sparks. They spend some time discussing David's recent jump to the indie life, expectations of next week's Apple event, the Pebble Time Kickstarter and why people may want to share secrets.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode number 25 today's show is brought to you by igloo and internet you'll actually like lynda.com where you can instantly stream thousands of courses created by industry experts and squarespace build. Build it beautiful. My name is Mike Curley. Today, I have the pleasure, as always, of being joined by the man you pay to see, Mr. Jason Snell. What do they pay, and who do they pay it to? The Piper. Hello, I'm Michael, as Merlin Mann refers to you. Hello, Jason.

I listened to your first, well, not first, but your inquisitive with Merlin as a Service from last fall. I finally listened to it. It's off of my playlist. I'm going through the deep cuts through the back catalog. So I got that one out of the way. That's the one where he sings the Cotton Song. Man, that's good stuff. Good stuff.

And he calls you iMichael throughout, which I love. So hi, iMichael. That was a long time ago, that one, I think. That was like October or something. You were still working at your job, but had quit. And actually, talking about people leaving their jobs, that actually led. So I had breakfast a few weeks ago when I was down in L.A. with David Sparks of MacPowerUsers and MacSparky and other sorts of things, and legal profession fame.

And we were talking about how David recently made a career change of his own, and I thought that would be a fun reason to invite him as our third ever guest on Upgrade. So, David, welcome. Thank you, Jason. And I'm Michael. It's actually kind of thrilling to be on the show. I listen to your show every week. I think you guys are great. Well, I have bad news for you. This week's show, you will have already heard it by the time it comes out. I know. I know. I'm a little uncomfortable every time you talk about mailbagging. I have to say that makes me a little nervous. We will have no conversations about mailbagging this week. I can guarantee it.

However, next week we will talk in depth about mailbagging. So you'll have to stay tuned for number 26 to get more mailbagging. We're actually going to reveal the secret. Yes. We had a very nice listener who told us about what it is and sent us a link. But MailRoute not a sponsor this week, so we're going to save it for the MailRoute later. Hold your powder. That's right. MailRoute not a sponsor this week, so we're going to save it for the MailRoute later. That's right.

Why would we give them free space this week, which we seem to be doing right now? Anyway, David, it's great to have you here. We're going to talk about what you're doing and go through all of that. But I feel like first we should discuss something that is not follow-up, Mike, not follow-up, but topics that we covered recently that we would like to talk about again briefly at the top of the show. But it's definitely not follow-up, Mike, not follow-up, but topics that we covered recently that we would like to talk about again briefly at the top of the show. But it's definitely not follow-up. I find it so interesting that you were so excited about follow-up, but now you've been ground down to the point where you've had to rename it.

Uh-huh. I feel bad about it. Well, you could argue that I overdid it a little bit with the follow-up, where I was just like, let's just make the entire show follow-up. And that might have been a mistake. But no, I love follow-up. I'm making fun of the people who don't like follow-up. Let's see.

We should mention. So we talked about The Pebble last week before it was on Kickstarter when it was just a rumor. And we both said, oh, it looks terrible. Good luck. they're doomed and of course they then had what was the most massive success ever on kickstarter yeah it's it's i think listen to us probably by the time this show comes out they will be the most popular kickstarter of all time i think the record is something like 12 million and they're currently at 11.9 yeah so i feel like it's worth clarifying at least what how i felt about this at the time yes a clarification i like that revision is let's do that right con i can go and change the original file um yeah because a lot of people

made a point of a lot of a lot of upgradians made a point of pointing it out to us. I am extremely happy for Pebble. I think they're a great company, and I think it's fantastic that they have had such an incredible success. However, I do still feel like their days are numbered, and I still don't like the look of how this product looks. I think the OS looks fantastic, and I wish that the Pebble OS had always looked this way and acted this way.

It looks amazing uh however i think that their days are numbered they and they i think pebble as a company has to consider trying to and i'm sure they are make like a full-blown android wear watch that can take advantage of the apps that are in that ecosystem because all it can do is when people say that you know it can take advantage of android where it can just take advantage of the apps that are in that ecosystem. Because all it can do is when people say that, you know, it can take advantage of Android Wear, it can just take advantage of the notification support. But the apps, like let's say Pinterest brings out their app, they would need to create a specific app for the Pebble.

They can't use the Android Wear app. So I think that's their future if they're going to stick around. But I just think that the Pebble is like the first entry. It's like the first one that kind of works. And all of the things that are think that the pebble is like the first entry it's like the first one that kind of works and all of the things that are good about the pebble is what the current kind of full-powered smart watches will be doing in a couple of years time um and i don't think that i would be surprised if they're able to innovate as quickly as companies like apple and motorola and samsung i think the pebble has a place in the sense that it's cheaper than the Android Wear watches,

and it has much longer battery life because it's using that e-paper screen, which is basically an LCD screen that's very low power. And so it has a week-long, more or less, battery life and for a low price. I think that there's a place for a phone like that or a watch like that. That's not what the Moto 360s of the world are offering. And I think they've got a chance there. In the long run, yeah, as battery life improves on these devices, still they might be able to do it on the price side. And if they really can do a good job of integrating with Android and using the Android Wear APIs, I think they've got a chance.

I'm not as negative as you are, I think, about this. But what I'd say is as an iPhone user, I just don't even consider the Pebble time an option. And that's not Pebble's fault. The fact is Pebble has always had a problem connecting with iOS. They've tried very hard. They've struggled mightily with bugs in Notification Center. they've tried very hard they've struggled mightily with bugs in notification center but anything that's sort of like send things out to a watch specific in ios apple's gonna pretty much reserve that for the apple watch and so pebble's never going to be a very good

citizen on ios because ios doesn't want to talk to them and apple's not going to make any effort and so as an iphone user i feel like i would never buy the Pebble Time because I just don't think it's going to be good enough and enough better than the Pebble that I've got, let alone the Apple Watch, to make it worth investing in that with the Apple Watch coming around the corner. And that's not their fault, but I just, you know, the platform vendor is going to make their own watch and it's going to be super integrated with their operating system and that's not the case on android where there's a lot of different players but on ios you know pebble's never going to be able to hook in i think so that that's my skepticism there well i think we're still in a place where one vendor making the hardware software is a better solution and

you know that's the big thing with apple so here we are i can't wait to see what they do with the apple watch and actually i think one side benefit to all this was when the apple watch got announced i got suddenly more interested in my pebble watch again i pulled it out of the drawer and found out they had done some software updates to make it actually more useful to me. And I would suspect a lot of people who are not fully invested in the Apple world may suddenly be more interested in smartwatches. And maybe that's one of the reasons why Pebble is doing as well as it is. Yeah. Totally.

Anyway, congratulations to Pebble on their great Kickstarter success. I think it's great. think it's super smart to get people to pre-order a watch before the apple watch comes out i think that is a stroke of genius um can't get better press than a 12 million dollar kickstarter no good for them uh we talked last week about how i'm coming to the British Isles and we're going to do an episode in person. We're probably going to do two episodes in person, one in London and one in Ireland when we're at the UL Conference. But probably after we record that episode on March 23rd in London,

we're going to do a meetup. And do we know where it's going to be yet, Mike? Provided that you were able to get us the location to record. I was. Then it will be in and around the King's Cross area of London. There are a few bars and pubs there. We've yet to nail down the exact one that it will be but it will be in that sort of area of central london it's very very accessible if you're coming into london and it will it will be in the evening time uh again like we'll have

loads more information as we get a little bit closer but if you want to mark down it will be like after work you know after british work work hours are finished on March the 23rd. Myself and Mr. Jason Snell will be drinking in a pub somewhere. And we would love it if you're available to come and join us. Just calling all British upgradians to that. So more information to come. But I'm excited about that. I'm excited about doing an upgrade in person, too.

That should be a lot of fun. It's only a few weeks away. I know. I know. It's three weeks away. We will be doing that. That's pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. I made another part of my leg of my travel reservations today. So it's all happening. That's exciting. Let's see. What else? Oh, let's see. On Twitter, following up our conversations about moving big files around, there was a Twitter user named Ari who wrote in. I had to look up again because it was from the Ask Upgrade If This Then That thing. Ari says, if both your machines have Thunderbolt, you can link them together that way at 10 times the speed of gigabit Ethernet. And this is absolutely true.

I was talking about how I have a gigabit Ethernet Thunderbolt adapter for my laptop. And so I could just plug that in and use gigabit Ethernet to transfer. And several people pointed out, you could also just plug in Thunderbolt and do it that way. And I thought, well, I'd have to shut it down and put it in target mode, which I've done in the past, but I'd rather not shut down my laptop. And then I had somebody pointing out, well, no, actually you can do, it's essentially like a fake network, a null network that uses Thunderbolt as the network and you get the super high speed.

So there are lots of ways just using Thunderbolt to transfer files back and forth really fast. My preference to use Gigabit Ethernet is just that I don't have to shut down my laptop, and I can keep using the network on my Mac, and it's sort of like nothing. It just happens because they're both on the same network. I don't have to change my Mac's networking settings. I don't have to do anything like that. But yeah, there are lots of ways to do it. You don't actually need to get an Ethernet adapter if you don't want one.

And you've got a spare Thunderbolt cable. You can just connect them directly and it's super fast. So thank you to Ari and everybody else who wrote in about that. Mike's still not going to copy his files though, right? Not unless I have to. Not unless I have to not unless I have to that's a good answer can we close the book on this yeah that's it

networking it's all about networking protocols it's not judging you it's about information about interesting ways to move data all data it could be recipes. It could be pictures of cats.

It doesn't have to be podcast audio files. It could be anything. But can I just tell you, Mike, just for clarification, we're rounding up to episode 250 on the Mac Power Users, and you're not done talking about networking on Upgrade. I just want to let you know. No, it's going to go forever. But we just won't.

We're taking it out of the context of users, of listeners judging Mike for his data practices. We've moved beyond that now. They'll judge Mike for various other things. Many, many, many more things. So many other things. Many, many, many more things. So many other things. So listener Matt wrote in to talk about, we were talking about rumors and rumor reports. And listener Matt wrote in to ask, I think it's an interesting question, what motivates people who leak information from inside Apple corporate? Are they being paid? Is it just for the thrill? And what does 9to5Mac's success say about the current state of Apple journalism? This is a big topic, and I think maybe we can come back to it at some point.

There have always been leaks from inside Apple. There are purposeful leaks, and there are, like, from as a strategy, and then there are just people who leak information. Back in the day, in the old times, when MacWeek was being published, all that stuff went in MacWeek. MacWeek was the place for this. But it faded away. And now 9to5Mac does a lot of this. They've got good sources. They've got good connections. They know people. I mean, that's really it. It's who you know. Jim Dalrymple knows people and will occasionally give a head nod about like, yep, that's happening.

And Mark Gurman gets like greater, greater details. I think Mark Gurman is getting people who are not authorized to speak about this stuff to talk about it because he knows people who want to get it out. Why do they get it out there? If it's not a targeted leak, I would say it's because people who know secrets really want to tell them and like feeling powerful and being able to affect the conversation. And I think when it's not something, that's my armchair psychology anyway, I think when it's not something that the company actually wants to leak, that's how you get it, is people really are excited about knowing something. I feel that pull when I know something that is not widely known. I'm sitting there thinking, wow, I know this really great secret. And there's like that little tickle in the back of your head that's like you could tell somebody the secret and blow this whole thing wide open. And then you don't do that.

But some people, I think, succumb and they tell their buddy and they like being the super important source. come and they tell their buddy and they like being the super important source. It makes them feel good about having that special information and being able to get it out there and having that kind of power, even though it may not necessarily be in the best interest of their employer. What about disgruntled employees? Oh, sure. I mean, you can often detect but that's that's totally a thing that happens um what was the the one that the one that i really liked was the um the verge i think did a story about microsoft killing their crazy um it was like a two-faced tablet with a pen and it was this whole concept yeah courier exactly and that that was very clearly the people who worked on it who were really mad that they got shut down. And so they basically said, we're going to leak it and we're going to make Microsoft look bad by leaking all this information and having Microsoft, everybody ask Microsoft, why did you not go ahead with this really cool, innovative thing? I mean, you can see the tactical stuff. Also, I think some bad rumors come from people who left Apple, you know, a few months ago, let's say, or any company.

And they're leaking what they knew at the time. And that may or may not actually be accurate anymore. I think you see some of that, too. Don't you think that it seems like people in Cupertino and Silicon Valley in general are just more mobile these days? They're getting around to different companies. And when you have that kind of transition, secrets tend to get out as well. Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

You move from one place to another. You can drop information about your old place or, you know, or maybe you don't feel a loyalty to that. I think in the end, it's motivated, though, by that same feeling of, I know something special and I can feel very special by sharing that with someone instead of just letting it sit there and expire, right, until everybody knows it. You know, I want to do something with this information that I've got, and leaking it to the press is one way you can do it. And speaking of rumors, listener Charlie also wrote in.

We were talking about the Apple car rumors, and Charlie said, what if the Apple hires from Tesla were about in-house batteries like Tesla is working on? This would gel with Apple's HomeKit and their emphasis on solar for their data centers, or it could be a car, which would be cool. And I think given the details from 9to5Mac, especially, of who has been hired at Apple, I have a hard time believing all of these people have been hired at Apple to work on, you know, batteries and HomeKit and solar for their data centers. I just I can't. It's it's that seems it's very creative points for creativity, but I think it's highly unlikely. I so we'll go with option two, which is it could be a car or something car related. And that would be cool, too. And I think that's probably what they're working on. It wouldn't surprise me if there's some spinoff benefits,

things that are unexpected to Apple and to this process that lead to products that we don't think they're working on, that they don't think they're working on, that might emerge. But I think it's hard to come up with a story. And there have been a couple reports that have said very much so this is a car project. So I think we have to call it that, that it's a car project. Whether it generates a car at the end of it or not, I think it's a car project. Like how the tablet project developed the iPhone.

Yes, exactly right. They worked on the tablet for a while, and then they said this isn't going to go, but we could turn this into a phone, and then it became the iPhone project. And then they went back to the tablet for a while and then they said this isn't going to go but we could turn this into a we could turn this into a phone and then it became the iphone project and then they went back to the tablet later should we take a quick break yes all the follow has been followed up and the only follow-out i had was listening to old episodes of inquisitive with you and merlin i'm michael so i'm i'm done Let's talk about a friend. This week's episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at lynda.com. You can invest in yourself and start something new. You can learn some amazing new skills or

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I challenge you to learn something new. Thank you so much to lynda.com for supporting this show, for supporting people and learning things, and supporting all of RelayFM. I neglected to mention that you and Casey talked about cheese. There's some follow-out.

You talked about cheese. You did a cheese vertical without me, Mike. What is going on? It's not really cheese. We did a processed other type of milk product vertical was it that's right it was the velvet velveta vertical vertical yeah that doesn't that's not cheese okay i don't feel bad now okay fine eat it casey he does and he likes it oh oh casey casey casey casey Will he ever learn? No, never. David Sparks, thank you for joining us. You quit your job.

Yeah, can you believe it? I'm still getting over it. How long has this been coming for you? How long has it been that you actually wanted to do this, like seriously? You know, I listen to you guys talk about it, and I've listened to other people talk about it over the years. And it's been one of those things where I have consciously repressed any thought of doing something crazy like that. So I think I was planning it longer than I realized I was, if that makes any sense. Yeah, it does. Yeah.

You know, it's tough because, you know, I hear all these guys saying, oh, you know, I'm sticking it to the man, going out on my own. But Jason Snell was one of the first person I heard that did that, that had a mortgage and kids and, you know, commitments, you know. And I think Jason, I told you at breakfast, Jason, you're very inspirational to me in the fact that, you know, you pulled all this off and you've done so well with it. But it really is something that I think I've been thinking about for a long time. me and the fact that, you know, you pulled all this off and you've done so well with it, but it really is something that I think I've been thinking about for a long time. And I had kind of a hallelujah moment, uh, because, and I wrote this up at Max Barkey. So it's a long explanation if you're really interested, but, uh, the thing was at my old firm, I had been there over 20 years and I was the guy that they would shoot out of a cannon at a problem.

And I got shot out of a cannon October at a problem. And when I solved the problem, I think I did actually a pretty good job of solving the problem. I looked around and realized that my whole life had been turned upside down in the meantime, that I didn't get another book shipped that I had planned on shipping. My own personal or, you know, the clients that are kind of people that i work with were being ignored and it was just i wasn't happy with that result and um and then it all kind of came together very quickly for me so is it safe to say that like when when you came out on the other side of that big project you kind of re-evaluated and saw what was now most important to you?

No, I think I always knew it was most important to me, but I was kind of deluding myself about making a decision. I was thinking, it's okay, I can just keep doing this. Yeah, I don't need to worry about it because I can just do it all instead. I haven't got to the point yet where I have to make the big tough decision. I haven't got to the point yet where I have to make the big, tough decision. And that was because people have been asking me for years because I produce a lot of stuff at Max Barkey. I do a podcast, and I am a lawyer. And they're like, I don't understand how you do it all.

I mean, I get that email every day. That guy needs to stop emailing you every day. Yeah, he does, really. How does he do that? I think he has a text expander snippet and a keyboard maestro thing. Anyway, so I'm getting those emails, and I've always said, well, you know, I just juggle a lot, and I just keep things rolling, and I've always felt like I could do it. And I wanted to make sure that I never got to a point where everything was suffering. You know, I mean, you know, when you run too fast and you fall on your face, I was always a little worried that I would go too hard at doing too many things that all of it turned to junk. And, um, but I always felt like I haven't got to that point yet. I don't feel like I'm

shipping junk. I don't feel like the legal work is bad. I just, I just feel like I'm able to keep up. I can keep doing this. And then what I realized at the end of that last big project was, oh, I had made my decision. I had already, without even thinking about it, I had dropped Max Barkey and I had dropped kind of my own legal practice side of things. And I had committed myself fully to the firm. And, and I'm like, wow, you know, it's funny when you catch yourself in that moment where you realize you had made a decision without even consciously realizing you were making a decision. And, and that upset me because I'm like, well, I knew that big decision was coming. I wanted to spend some time thinking about it. And, uh. Why wasn't to say, okay, I'm going to quit my job. I said, I actually spent about a week then saying, okay, well, what are your options? I mean, if you're going to make this decision, what do you need to consider? I mean, you do have a family and you do have a kid in college and you do have commitments in your life. a kid in college, and you do have, you know, commitments in your life, and you've got a day job that pays you well and has benefits and all those things, and that's something you have to consider, and then what else do you have on the other side of the table? And so I actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about it, and at the end of the day decided to leap. Now, when I made this decision, obviously I didn't have as much as you mentioned, like I

really didn't have nowhere near kind of the commitment that you do um that both of you did and even thinking of things like health care right which isn't there is a real big sore spot um for people in america making decision because i don't have to worry about about finding the money to pay for something which apparently is very very expensive to do um david are you the kind of person or wait did you in this scenario kind of sit down and open up numbers and like just crunch some stuff over a couple of weeks? No, in my mind, I did have a spreadsheet and I had thought about all that because healthcare is not an insignificant cost for our family. But not only that, like when you go out on your own as a lawyer, you've got to

pay for your malpractice insurance and you've got to, you know, there's all these other expenses you're going to add to your life. And I spent a lot of time with the spreadsheet. And the funny thing is, it's all just funny numbers to you because you don't know what kind of income to expect when you leave a law firm, how many clients are going to come with you, you know, how many people are going to continue to buy the Max Barkey field guides? Or if I make more, how many people are going to feel like, you know, that buying one book a year from me makes perfect sense, but buying three books a year from me is silly and they're not going to do that. I mean, you just don't know. There's all these questions.

So I have this spreadsheet that is, um, that's probably false in every light, but I had it and it made me feel better. So I went ahead and made one. But at the end of the day, you leap. I think that's the only way to say it. Yeah, eventually, like, there's no amount of preparation you can do to stop you needing to do that. Like, at a certain point, you have to make that jump. You have to make that decision. And it doesn't matter how much you prepare, you're still kind of leaping. Yeah. But you know what? It's exhilarating. I'll tell you that.

Oh yeah. Yeah, it is. What's funny, I mean, for me, everything I was doing was mixed together. So it was the stuff I was getting paid for, and then there was podcasting and things like that. And it was all in the same pool of people. And my podcasts were not about technology, but they were a lot of the same people and in the same world. And I think one of the interesting differences with you, David, is that you've got your kind of law community and then you've got the technology people. And what always struck me when I talked to you about this is in your law life, nobody understands you, right? That if I was to say at Macworld, I'm thinking of going out on my own and starting my own site and starting my own tech

podcast, people are like, oh, I get it. But for you, everything you did, Mac Power Users and Mac Sparky and the field guides, all of that stuff was just kind of a weird footnote of curiosity into everybody, all of your colleagues who are in the legal profession, right? It's a source of mocking is what it is. a lot of the people on the legal side for years frankly i kept it all kind of on the down low i just i had this like horror story of walking in a deposition and having opposing counsel saying well max barky are you going to object to this or you know something like that and um and then um but as kind of the brand and the stuff i did grew um i found i got so much satisfaction out of it.

I mean, people recognize me in restaurants sometimes when I go in about the Max Barkey stuff I do, not the lawyer stuff I do. And I started to become a lot less hesitant to take advantage of it. In fact, with the new law practice I'm doing, I just broke down the wall. And on my legal website, it has links to my books and explains how I use technology to help my clients. So I've kind of gone the full circle on it. But I can tell you, with the people I was working with, I'm not sure I ever really understood it. And when I told them I was leaving, they were completely flummoxed. They didn't know what to think about this.

Because they're looking at my clients, which are great clients, but not many of them are the type that are going to be filing a lot of big, expensive lawsuits, and they're trying to wonder how I'm going to pay my rent. And so it was kind of interesting, and I'm not sure that bridge ever got fully built. They're kind of just like, oh, no, David's gone crazy. I think that's a good way to summarize it, Mike. And I've done it very publicly. So, you know, if I fail at this, it's going to be a great story for all those people out there. So you mentioned about like the fact that you had your clients. So I mean, because this might just be something that I'm misunderstanding about the way this stuff works.

You kind of had your own law clients prior to doing this anyway. Well, yeah, I mean, I guess I'm really, they all, I worked at that firm for over 20 years. So at the firm, I would work on what we would call the firm clients, which were the people that were referred to some other attorney or were already existing in the firm before me. people that were referred to some other attorney or were already existing in the firm before me. And then I had kind of my stable of clients, which were the people that I had met and had hired me specifically and who I was specifically responsible for. And the people I worked with were, you know, really nice people. And it was not a bad, like, parting, if that makes any sense. And I always knew that they wouldn't have any problem with the clients that were, you know, my clients would leave with me.

But my point was I didn't have enough time to take care of those people because I was so busy dealing with some of the other stuff going on. Right. So now that you are not, so what's your life like now? Now you're not doing the firm anymore, but you still have a lot of practice. And we'll put a link to it in the show notes and, and you're right. Your, your website makes it very clear that technology is something that you're, you're interested in. You're completely out of the closet as a guy who likes technology now. It's crazy. And, um, but you're also, so you're doing that. And then you're

also planning on doing more with Max Barkey and the field guides, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, my goal is I'm not looking to grow some massively huge law practice. I'm not looking to grow to where I hire a bunch of people. I want to kind of have a control over that where I deal with the people I like and do the kind of work I like for them. And I have enough time to do that and run the Max Barkey publishing side of my life. And because I'm such a nerd, I think it's going to work out. I mean, I was a little worried, I have to admit, for the first week or so, because I spent so much time getting all the admin back end of setting up an independent law practice. I'm going like, oh, what did I get myself into? I don't have time for Max Barkey. But of course course it's going to take two or three weeks to kind of get that all settled where in

my mind it was only going to take a day. And, um, and that's all settling now. And I'm starting to see benefits of it. I mean, like today I've, we're recording this at 11. I've already spent about three hours working on client problems this morning, and I'm going to do this podcast. I'm going to do a Mac power users podcast this afternoon. And tonight I'm going to do this podcast. I'm going to do a Mac Power Users podcast this afternoon and tonight I'm going to eat dinner with my family. So I'm already heading the right direction. There is this funny thing though that I've come into contact with recently is like now I feel like I don't have any time anymore and I don't know how that's possible because I did it all before so now what's going on on? And it's this kind of this weird, I wonder if you feel this way, Jason. You end up to the point where it's like, I've managed to fill this time really, really fast.

Well, the way I think of it sometimes is that my time is now very flexible, which is great. But it also means, flexible means that it can be anything. And unless you block things out, it will be anything and everything. And so that's, for me, that's the challenge is marking off time to do specific things. Because if you can do anything, then not only is that hard to decide what you want to do, but it makes it hard to get away from it and so you know being able my wife and I have been talking about how we start putting things on the calendar like game family game night is on the calendar and we're we're gonna like calendar our dinners and what the food's gonna be and things like that which on one level seems

insane like it's insanely scheduled but what I would I would say is so much of my time especially is super flexible that it really actually adds structure. And it's helpful to add structure to that schedule. So for me, that's what it is. I can literally work on anything, anytime. And it takes a really different mindset. Whereas before, I'd get on the bus and I'd come home. And then I might do some work when I was at home, but there was just a huge, there was a transition point. I was not at the office anymore. I was

not working on things. And then I was home. And now it's just sort of like, I could do anything, anytime. I could watch a movie in the middle of the day and then write stories at two in the morning if I wanted to. And nobody would care except my family, who would hate me because I would not be on their time schedule anymore. Yeah, and I'm adjusting to that as well, Jason. For instance, I am a proponent of deferring email because I've just got too many things going on. And for the longest time I had these defer boxes and sane box where I would have a Saturday, um, box that was on my max Sparky side. And this stuff came in during the week and I'm busy dealing with the day job. I would drop emails into Saturday and then on Saturday

morning I'd get flooded with all these emails I need to deal with. Um, I don't need a Saturday box anymore. You know, I, I need maybe a two day box, but I don't need a Saturday box because I may be doing the Max Barkey stuff on Wednesday. And on the legal side, it's the same thing. I had a Monday box and now I don't need a Monday box anymore because it's my own thing. I can deal with it on Sunday or whenever. And, and it is very easy to fall into the trap of just, just filling that, that time. Like it's an infinite vessel again. So I am still figuring that. In fact, some of the best advice I've got, and it's kind of amazing how much positive advice and support I've got since I announced this. Thanks partly to you guys, I think, because when you talked about

on your show a few weeks ago. But I got an email from an attorney who did this 20 years ago. And the best advice he says is just be careful about where you say yes. Because when you start out, you're going to want to say yes to everybody and you're going to get yourself in the same problem you had before. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, I'm there. I'm there right now.

But what I keep telling myself is I'm saying yes to a lot of things right now because I want to experience them and then make some judgments about what the things are that I'm going to say no to. So I'm saying yes to more things than I probably should. Projects, like I'm working on an ebook. I'm working on a wire cutter project. I'm working on a weekly column that's going to maybe debut this week. Um, and another weekly column that I'm already doing. And, you know, are, are these too many things? Probably. But, um, I, I feel like I, I want to try them all now and then I will make some decisions rather than I have a hard time saying no to something that I do want to try and, uh, don't know whether it's going to be something I want to do in the longterm. I, um, although I have a hard time saying no to something that I do want to try and don't know whether it's going to be something I want to do in the long term.

Although I have reached that point now where I'm so saturated that if there was another opportunity that came on, I would say, can we wait until after I finish this book to do that? But you can expand to fill the space. It's amazing how that happens. Great. I'm already starting to see that. And I'm also kind of in the honeymoon phase with this stuff. It's amazing how that happens. Quickly. Well, it is. I'm already starting to see that. And I'm also kind of in the honeymoon phase with this stuff. It's so great.

I mean, just being able to wake up in the morning and answer all your email at your iPad and not have to put on a suit and tie. I mean, you know how much faster I get my work done in the morning, the legal side, when I don't have to, you know, get, get dressed up and then drive a half hour and then deal with the initial, everybody walking in your office in the morning to, to gossip and talk and then make it, you know, all this stuff just goes out the window. Now I can wake up, make some tea and start working. And, um, I'm still wrapping my head around it. The, the suit and tie thing. Um, Mike, did you have to dress up like that at the bank? Yeah, I did.

Wow. See, so, okay, that's the one thing where I have no frame of reference. So the story is I went and had lunch last week with a couple of my old colleagues from IDG. And it was my first time back in the building since I left, which was weird. And it was my first time back in the building since I left, which was weird. And I was thinking about what I was going to wear to this meeting. And I thought, and in fact, I ran into somebody who lives in my town, who I used to work with at IDG, who said to me what I had been thinking, which was, I'm surprised you're not wearing a baseball cap and shorts and sandals and just like super, like, I don't have a job anymore. And I said, you know, I thought about that, but I was worried that it was going to come across as, wow, he's really given up. This is so sad. So instead, not even thinking of what I was doing, I thought, well,

I'll wear, you know, I'll take a shower in the morning and I'll shave and I'll put on decent clothes and I'll go. And in the end, I was standing in the hallway on the sixth floor at IDG wearing my work clothes from IDG. It was a shirt that I always wore to work. It was, yes, because I didn't have a dress code, one of my little hoodies, jeans. I looked exactly like I did six months before when I had worked there. I had put on the uniform. But I considered looking like an even greater slob than I already am. But I was afraid it would be taken the wrong way, which is, oh, did you see him?

He didn't even shave. So sad. And so I was like, nope, I'm wrong way, which is, oh, did you see him? He didn't even shave. So sad. You know? And so I was like, nope, I'm just going to look exactly like I did. But I didn't even realize it until I got there that I was essentially wearing the uniform. But suit and tie, I can't even imagine. So I salute you for all of your years of service, both of you wearing fancy clothes like that. I don't think I could do it.

Well, I still have to do it on occasion, you know, and that's another thing I'm learning. It's not when you need to visit somebody and do that versus every day as part of the grind, right? Exactly. And I'm like, I'm learning to like lump my offsite meetings together. Like, you know, one of the things I've always felt like lawyers make such a big deal about client meetings and clients have to get up and drive over there. So with a lot of my clients, I do the ones that, you know, give me regular business. I just drive and meet them at their office once a month. And so I try to lump those into, you know, one day a week where I make those visits and then I don't have to do it every day.

And, you know, I'm still figuring so much of this out. It's actually kind of fun, you know, having done the same thing for so long. As a workflow process guy, I'm having a lot of fun just kind of like saying, you know, I have a blank slate. I was talking to Merlin Mann about this, speaking of Merlin, and he says, you know, how many times in your life are you going to have a chance to start making new habits from scratch like this?

He says, be really careful as you start setting them up, and he's totally right. I mean, I'm really considering things as I go through my day. Does that sound hippie enough? No, I like it. Yeah. No, it's good. Let's all put on our sandals and grow our hair long and join hands and sing. It's great. David, it's great. You and I have talked in our little breakfast. So my wife's parents live not too far from where David lives. And so every time we're passing through there, we try to get a meal together. Usually it's breakfast. It's not always.

Sometimes it's lunch. Our schedules are more flexible now. So it could really be any time. We could eat at 3 in the afternoon if we wanted to. But who does that? Those are crazy people. Yeah, my employer has a very liberal policy for Jason's meetings. Mine too. And so we've been talking about this for a while, about my dissatisfaction with my job

and David's dissatisfaction for his job and our excitement about these other projects that we're working on that we'd like to do more about. And those were always really good for me when I was still thinking about this. They were really good talking to somebody who was dealing with a lot of the same things and kind of working through this. And it's really nice to see that we both come out the other side of that. And so I'm really excited for you. I'm excited that you're able to have your clients and do your law practice and integrate it more fully with, I mean, it's never going to be completely integrated in a way that sort of mine is because they're very different jobs, but they're more part of a whole now for you than they were before. And I think getting more Max Barkey and getting more field

guides and other stuff from you in the bargain is really good for those of us who always understood the tech nerd side of you. So I think it's really awesome that you're doing this. I was able to publish a video field guide yesterday and I got so many emails from people saying, oh, if this is what it means you're quitting your job, we're going to get more of these, then I'm all in. And that felt so good hearing that from people. It's really great.

What is that guide? Tell people what the guide is. Oh, it's on a workflow. You know the app, it's really great what is that what is that guide tell people what the guy oh it's um it's on a workflow you know the app it's called workflow it's an app for the ios uh ipad and iphone and it's automator basically it's automator for ios i don't have any idea how they ever um got that through at apple i think they must have like naked pictures of somebody at apple very high up because it got approved and and it's automator on iOS. I mean, it is amazing. And the more time you spend with the app, the more you realize you can like

build you. It's basically an app building platform for geeks, but not app developers. So I can say, you know, go in this application and take a picture and then go in this application and send a message and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I did a video. It's an hour long video where you go through and kind of describe how it works. And, um, and that's, that's possible because I wasn't grinding away in a suit and tie every day for the last three weeks. That's awesome. That's good for us. I hope it, uh, it's good for you. I think it's going to be good for your life. I think so. I mean, you know, it's definitely where I need to be. And I just need to now make sure I can execute and make it happen where I can stay with this. Yeah.

And I think I will. Awesome. Mike, is it time to listen to you tell us about another good friend of us? Of course it is. Friend of the show. I anticipate, I predict that this might be a friend we'll actually like. We like them all, Jason, but this one makes an intranet that we'll actually like. Oh, you're right.

You're right. We actually do like them all. But this one, you know what I don't like, Mike? I don't like intranets. I think intranets are bad. Every intranet I've ever used has been bad. What can I do? What can I do? Well, Jason Snell, let me tell you about Igloo. like intranets i think intranets are bad every intranet i've ever used has been bad what can i do what can i do well jason snell let me tell you about igloo hi michael yes with igloo you can

share news organize your files coordinate calendars and manage your projects all in one place mr jason snell it's a fantastic way for you and your team to work together and socialize together too is my cat on my team if you want to be on my team all right you can set it all up and your cat can use your their iphone 6 or 6 plus or any device that they want to use because igloo's internet works on any device they have a responsive design built platform. It works all within any web browser you can get your hands on. So you can do anything from reading a document to managing your tasks or sharing a photo of your

lunch to maybe even administrative tasks like managing your settings. You can do this wherever you want, whenever you want, however you want with Igloo. Igloo's latest upgrade, Viking, revolves around documents and how you interact with them, gather feedback, and and make changes they have further beefed up their html5 document preview engine this can be viewed again on any platform you can get your hands on and this ensures that everyone

is always up to date with the latest version as it lives in the intranet platform itself they've even added the ability to track who has read critical information to make sure that everyone's on the same page this could be really useful for things like you know if you need bob in accounts to see the document that they need or maybe you need like to make sure that everybody has looked at a specific legal document or a training document you know because you've got some sort of thing that you have to complete in your company in big companies even in small companies this stuff pops up all the time and this is a great way to find that information out without having to bother everyone constantly,

like sending an all-hands email to make sure everybody's read the training materials. Those are the worst. The worst. You could just check it yourself. Best of all, Igloo's platform is totally customizable. You can choose how you want it to look and function however you want.

And these changes can also be set for certain groups and of course you know harkening back to earlier wherever you make these changes they're going to look the same on all platforms if your company has a legacy intranet that looks like it was built in the 90s or if you hate the intranet platform like jason that you're currently using you should be giving igloo a try igloo is free to use of up to 10 people and you can sign up right now at igloo software.com slash upgrade thank you so much to igloo for their continued support of this show and relay fm i want to specify i believe it's free for use of up to 10 people and unlimited cats as many cats as you can stuff into the into the igloo uh yeah they might get chilly but you can

do it they'd be very cold cats, but they could do it. Merlin came online while you were reading that. He's out there. Listening. He may be. It's entirely possible. Merlin's always with us, is what I want to say. He's always with us.

He's always in my head. It's true. It's funny, because I told him him we had a little phone conversation i said you know i want to thank you because i think you know listening to you on back to work and all the all the nice things he's said over the years that all the great shows and uh and he said uh he says i don't want any responsibility for this i got thinking you know he must feel a little bit of an emotional weight because all these nerds out there like me are making big changes in their life sometimes based on some of the advice they've received from him. And it's like, I don't want to be responsible for that. I can get that.

Yeah, that's a big – that could be seen as a big burden to have. But I guess if you really believe in it, then, you know, then you're probably happy. I'm sure he's happy that people are doing this stuff. But maybe we shouldn't all lay it on him, especially if it doesn't work out. So you want to talk about the Apple event next week? Yes. So Jason Snell, explain to me how this occurs for you. I think I probably ask this sort of stuff of you every time,

but I'm always really interested. When you get these invites, as you have been invited, which makes me very happy, I'm sure it makes you even happier, do you have some sort of special notification system? Federico was telling me about how he's setting up like a hue light and he might have it go like red if some news pops up or something like that uh how does this stuff happen for you do you just see it in your email like any other old email you know i used to have a i used to have a notification and i should check and see if i

could set that up again i used to have a notification where um if i got an email from apple i got a uh a notification on my phone that it would just say Apple email with a special sound. It was like, just like how when anybody from Apple switchboard calls me, I have a custom ringtone. I have a contact that's just Apple and it's their standard number.

Every number from within Apple, every call you get is from the same number. Are you willing to share the custom ringtone like what what is it oh well it's it's a stock ringtone okay it's not it's it's nothing it's nothing special let me see if i can find it here but the point is i know when they're calling me but i don't know when i get those emails and so when i'm um when i'm trying to wait for a phone call, I'm okay. But if I'm waiting for an email, I've lost that. And so I actually got, the first I got of it this time was somebody said,

oh, Apple event. I saw something on Twitter and I immediately flipped over into my email and it was indeed there. Let's see. That's the one you use. Yeah. If Apple's calling, the red alert goes off. It makes me laugh every time. And then I have to compose myself and answer whoever from Apple is calling me. But I should do that for email too, because I don't have a red, red lights don't go off. There isn't a siren when something from RSVP Apple events at apple.com comes in. And I probably should, although it doesn't really matter other than to write a story

saying, Hey, there's an Apple event. So it's a good reminder. I need to put that back in practice. I was using, uh, what was it? There was a, there was an app that you could basically forward a message to this address, and then the app would get that and ping a custom notification on your phone. And I don't think I have that app turned on anymore. Or it was forwarding.

It was probably forwarding from my Macworld address, and so when that got shut off, I lost that Apple alert. I should put that back. There are probably a bunch of those things like, like box car. Yeah, that was using box car. That's what I was using.

Right. Yeah. I should, I should set that up again. And Joe steel in the chat room quite rarely points out that Chris Breen should just now start prank calling me just for fun from the Apple switchboard. That would be pretty funny. Hello.

Hello. Oh, it's just me. How you doing? I'm having a sandwich. Talk to you later. Gah! Or just laugh maniacally and hang up.

So what happens is the email comes in and it says, please respond to this address if you can make it. And I respond immediately and I say, yes, I'll be there. Thanks for inviting me and i look forward to seeing you um and this time i did that and i got a response back from the pr person who was patrolling that account saying look forward to seeing you next uh next monday and um and then you know never fails like a couple hours later i got a phone call from somebody at apple saying hey you probably already responded to the email, but I would like to in person

make sure that you're coming. I say, yes, I am also coming. So you sort of double RSVP and that venue is not too huge and they want to get the numbers right. Get the white glove treatment for Mr. Snell over here. I think that's no different than it was before. I think that's what they do. They really want to make sure that you're going to be there and know if you're not going to be there. Yeah, because I guess if you just say, yeah, I'll be there, but it's like it's a wasted space if you don't turn up, right?

Exactly. And they want to fill every seat, I'm sure. They totally do. So I'll be there, and then we will need to figure out when I'll be able to talk to you afterward. I've already cleared my schedule for that day, so it can be any time. All right. It's great for us, a Monday event.

Upgrade's going to be right there at the scene. We have Jason Snell reporting live. You can bring Tim on the show. Upgrade is on the cutting edge. I'll ask Tim whether he can come on or not he's he's a busy guy though so i'm interested to hear from both of you um i mean the obvious i assume is that we're going to hear about the apple watch but um i know that jason me and you had spoken about this before and i believe that the stance that that you had uh if i remember correctly

was that you didn't think that they would have an event just for the watch yeah yep that's what i said so do you think that this is just the watch or do you think that they're gonna have other things and we had uh jason via twitter a different jason yeah jason martin right asking you know do we think that there's going to be any other announcements maybe the elusive macbook air maybe a big ipad um could be could be anything i suppose you know my gut feeling is that this is going to be all about apple watch and that not that they won't make some other announcements but i doubt it will be anything huge um i'd love to be wrong i would i would love for the you know that rumored retina macbook air

or something to be dropped as a part of this that would be awesome but my gut feeling is that this is you know it's six months to the day from the announcement of the apple watch and i think they're going they need to remind everybody uh and they've got six months more information about what the product actually is and how it actually works and more things that they can demo and third-party developers that they can highlight and so i think the bulk of it is still going to be about the apple watch because they really want to hit this one out of the park and um oh i learned things about how cricket works. So check this out, Mike. They really want this one to go for six. Huh?

Yeah. Correct. Cricket? Okay. They want to – I always feel bad when people use baseball metaphors with people who aren't from baseball countries because they make no sense. So we hit it out of the park, Mike. I'll explain later what that means. So they want to spend a lot of time on this. And so I think they will. And because, you know, six months ago, they didn't know. They

didn't know what the battery life was going to be. They didn't really know what the third party apps were going to be. They didn't really know what their apps were probably going to be and how they were going to work. And I think all of that's been fine tuned. And the fact was, that was six months ago. So there's this general buzz about the Apple Watch. But as I found out when Dan and I wrote that Apple Watch FAQ for Six Colors, people don't remember. I mean, people don't remember. It was a long time ago. And in our audiences, people who are like really into Apple stuff. And still, it's like you tune it out. It's so far away. It's not real. In September, it was not real. Now it's going to be real. And there's way more information to be told about it.

And they don't want to blow their chance to make this impression. So I think it's going to be largely about the Apple Watch. But yeah, I would imagine that they'll throw some other stuff in, probably, just because they're going to have the press there. And so why not? What about the music streaming service? Do you think it's too early to hear anything about that? What about the music streaming service? Do you think it's too early to hear anything about that? The rumors are that they're still really working on it. So I would expect that later, but you never know.

I mean, they may give some updates, right? They might give a Beats update and say what's going on with Beats. We can wait for the full iPod event, right? They're still going to have that in the fall, the iP event anyone ipod event yeah yeah i mean or entertainment event i guess is sort of what it is now and you you put some stuff in there that wouldn't surprise me at all do you think that the watch is going to get new features or something new that we didn't see at the first unveiling you know brian chen in the new New York Times wrote a thing that obviously was fed by somebody at Apple that talks about how they're going to have a new feature that is a... It's like reserve mode or something?

Yeah, it's a watch face that's on so that you can see the... Basically, before they were going to say the screen is off unless you lift your wrist, and then it turns on and you can see the time. And it sounds like they are trying to make it so that that screen can be on more without having severe battery problems. So there's some sort of like super low power mode where they are going to show you the time, but it's not going to have the rest of the features until something else happens. And that's like a, that could just be a software detail that is some of the energy saving that they've done in order to get the battery life

where they want it to be. But with the way Brian Chen put it, that's like a feature now. And so they'll probably talk about that and say, well, let me explain how this works and how we can show you the time and still stay alive you know, alive for a day. And so I do think there will be some stuff like that where maybe not like a new whole new feature that opens up a whole new direction for the, for the watch that we didn't have before, but more like as we were building this thing, we realized we needed to do this and they may not phrase it that way,

but I think in six months time, that's what you're going to see is the fruits of six months of pushing this thing across the finish line and having made some decisions that might lead to some features that they didn't talk about before. Because there were stuff where they were pretty hazy and there's probably some stuff that was a little bit pie in the sky that they're going to have to rein in and say, well, actually, this is going to be how it works now, now that we know. Because now it's a real product, I think. If Tim Cook says it's coming out in April, I mean, it's got to be real now. They've got to be making them. And that was not the case six months ago.

They were not real. Also, there have been, I think one reports that like a thousand, there are a lot of Apple employees wearing these watches. So that informs development too, I think, that there are so many different people wearing these things and presumably having different experiences with them that feed into how they tweak the software. And we'll see that too. So there's a lot more, they could fill an entire event with it. There's no doubt about it. And I think they will fill most of the event with it, but hopefully we'll see some other stuff too, just because I like some diversity in my Apple product announcements. I'm curious to see how deep they go on the battery life question, because I think that's going to be a real big deal.

And my guess is they're going to say, oh, it's great, just charge it every night and you'll be fine. And they're not going to tell you much more than that. I think if that's what they do say that's that speaks more than the actual numbers like if they don't give numbers i think that that will say more than the numbers would say you know like if they if they just don't say oh it's it's a eight hour battery life or whatever which they kind of do for every other product it would maybe say to me that it's not perfect i think they're going to talk about it i think they have to i have to they not perfect. I think they're going to talk about it. I think they have to.

They have to. And I think they'll have a story to tell. And again, what that story is and how they tell it will be interesting because the way they told it in September was really much like, at the end of the day, you'll plug it in and it will charge overnight, which didn't really say anything about what the battery life is going to be. And they didn't know. And now they're going to know. So they'll tell the story. And the story may be, well, we've got this amazing low power mode. And if you don't use it too much, then you can get through a day.

Or they may say, oh, yeah, you can get through an entire day, no problem. It'll be interesting to see how they do it. But I do think they will absolutely address it. Because how could they not? They have to. interesting to see how they do it but i do think they will absolutely address it because how could they not they have to i'm really interested to see um what the charging cables are going to cost for this thing so i think there's a potential to be a bit more of a blowback about and there always is right you know like when they whenever they introduce some sort of change which means new

cables there's always a an issue but i think with a device that admittedly potentially from apple's perspective what you need to charge every single day i wonder how people are going to feel because i also look at those charging cables and be like that's probably gonna be more expensive than a than a lightning cable and so i'm i'm really interested to see how that how that goes i think it wouldn't it wouldn't be it wouldn wouldn't be too hard to maybe put an extra one in the box, but who knows? I'm sure you get like 12 with the addition.

I'm just interested to see how that unfolds as well because it's going to be a little bit more of a the whole battery life thing, anything related to power and battery in this device I think is going to be a bit of a sticky situation. Yeah.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I love it when Apple does something new because we get to see them do things that are unanticipated, and I think that's what we're going to get some of now. But I would love for there to be Mac announcements. I would love for there to be new Mac announcements. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that there will be Mac announcements that are done by press release and with a note on stage saying, oh, we have this new thing today. But I think it's more likely that

those will come later. If there's a new MacBook Air, for example, that it'll just come later. And that they don't want to divert people from the main message here. I don't think this is going to be one of those sort of smorgasbord Apple events where they've got a whole bunch of different things. But you never know. never know that's just you know my gut feeling is it's timed too perfectly for yeah um for the watch launch we should say as well like saying about timed perfectly monday is when daylight savings time uh ends right is that when it ends or goes into effects i can never get it wrong yeah it's uh if and uh no starts begins daylight saving begins and we'll go for go to daylight time so that's that's the reason that they've set it for monday it's just because it's just you know i don't know oh it's too perfect jason they never do events on mondays it's it's time it's all time

related they may just have that you know they may just have that as a day that they could they could book the theater but it doesn't matter it's close enough that it that it doesn't really matter that's they're they're gonna get it we'll all be uh we'll all we'll be sleepier or we'll be no we'll be we'll be well rested because we uh move the clock, so we gain. Is that right? I think you got it wrong. I think we lose an hour. Oh, we lose an hour, right, because it'll go from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m., so we'll all be sleepy, basically.

It's going to be fun. I think they're going to put on a good show, and I think we will get some surprises about the watch builds themselves and the straps. I don't know. I think they're going to have a couple surprises up their sleeves. There's so much uncertainty about the details of this thing. So the more details we get, the better for everybody, I think. I think that is why this next event is so important. Because there are so many tangible details that we have absolutely no idea at the moment.

Just guess. We don't even know how much it costs. We literally absolutely no idea at the moment just guess like we we we don't even know how much it costs like we we literally have no idea because it says start it starts at 349 but for what you know like yeah even get a strap like no it's on a string at that point yeah we don't know anything one of the things that i was starting to become concerned about was uh international availability uh because i saw somebody tweet and I took a look. On the US page, it says, like, coming in April. And in many European pages, it says coming in 2015.

And I kind of noticed this recently. But Tim Cook's been doing this very peculiar European press tour at the moment. He's flying all over Europe right now and he's he's he's visiting visiting many apple stores he visited the apple store that i gave my talk in the day after i was heartbroken jason uh and i you know reading like he walked into that telegraph had an interview with him apparently he like walks into the apple store and all the employees didn't know he was coming and then there's like this big applause and stuff. He's been taking selfies of all the staff. But anyway, it seems like there's been a lot

of questions asked of him and from what it seems from reports that are coming out, it will be available in April internationally. But what we might see is start of April in the US, end of April in Europe. But it's just interesting.

It is very interesting to see him going around at the moment uh and for what doesn't really seem to be any specific reason but he seems to be visiting lots of places just a goodwill tour yeah availability is fascinating to me also because everybody has been saying and tim tim cook, it's coming out in April. Well, traditionally, if you have the Apple event one week, the following Friday of the following week is when the product is released. But that's March 20th. So there's a great mystery here about when this product is actually going to be released, because are they doing this with a month's run up? Is it going to come out earlier than than expected?

Are they going to do an event on the 9th and say you can all buy this on the 3rd? Or is it going to be you can all buy this starting tomorrow, you know, order it, but you won't get it until the beginning of April? I don't know. And pre-ordering seems really difficult, but maybe there's so many infrastructure changes that Apple have to make, they can't start making them until they announce. Like, for example, let's say that they do need to do some stuff to the retail stores ahead of the product launch. They need a bit of a runway to start doing that, and they probably shouldn't start doing it

until they've actually announced a release date for the product. That would be my guess. Well, also, when you think in the past, they always have that very short period between the big unveiling and putting it for sale because they've already got devices for sale. And they know nobody's going to buy an iPhone as soon as that announcement's done until they release a new one. In this case, you don't have that holding you back. I mean, you can't go out and buy the current Apple Watch. So if it takes them a month to put it in the store, that's just going to give it a month to build up excitement and give Jason more time to write up the FAQ for Six Colors. Yeah. Especially since I'm going to Europe for two weeks, right as this is all happening. I'm

wondering about that, but there's nothing I can do. Every time I make a trip plan, I have that moment of like, oh, Apple could completely destroy this by releasing a product right in the middle of it. But there's nothing you can do. You just have to just, you can't, you got to live your life and, uh, let, and that's why I wrote the original iPhone review from inside a, uh, a tent in the forest because that's when the iPhone came out during my summer vacation. That's just how it was. So we'll see. I look forward to asking you the time when you're in Ireland. Yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about it.

We'll talk about it a lot. I think we've reached hashtag ask upgrade, Mike. This week, hashtag ask upgrade is brought to you by our friends at Squarespace, is it not? It is indeed the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, and online store. That is Squarespace. For a free trial and 10% off, visit squarespace.com and enter the offer code UPGRADE at checkout. When it comes to finding a self-fulfill place online, there is nowhere better than Squarespace because they build it beautiful. They give you all of the power that you need to make something amazing. They give you a fantastic

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to squarespace for helping us out at relay fm squarespace build it beautiful all right first question and and david you are now part of ask upgrade so get ready um it's not really a quiz uh listener chris wrote in to say what's your alto's adventure high score are you playing alto's adventure anybody i love this game i love it so much on on virtual which is the show that i do with federico vatici all about video games we interviewed one of the creators of alto's adventure last week so i I'm looking at my Game Center high scoreboard right now. Serenity Caldwell, 190,000. John Syracuse, 101,000.

Michael Hurley. Hi, Michael Hurley. 84,654. Amazing. Mine is like 41,000. I'm way behind on you guys. But I feel like I'm good at this game and getting better all the time,

which is usually I play these games and I enjoy them, but then I feel like I plateaued and I'm not really as good as anybody else and I'm not getting any better. And then I sort of give up after a while. But with this one, I feel like I'm still getting better at it and I'm making breakthroughs all the time. And I love it. I just love everything about it.

I love how it looks. I love how it feels almost restful. I don't feel stressed when I'm playing it in the way that when I would get to 200 and Crossy Road, I would freak out because I would be afraid to tap something wrong and ruin my thing. I just, I feel like it's cool. I'm just going down a mountain, whatever. I don't know. It's remarkable. So I'm loving it. I'm with you, Jason. I love this app, this game so much. I haven't taken to a game like this one in a long time. I can now regularly get to a second Elder, but that's still not very high.

I think I'm in like the 30,000 to 40,000 range. But man, I like it. I have been seeing a crash have you guys got this crash where you get stuck yeah no yeah i've had that uh apparently that is a bug related to you might not be having this problem uh david when you if you're listening to other audio it's like an audio related bug but uh yeah that they've got a fix coming there's also like some some other bugs with like the wingsuit and stuff like that but i think that they've got a fix coming there's also like some some other bugs with like the wingsuit and stuff like that but i think that they've got a they've got a fix coming

soon yeah it is fixed i've been using the beta and it is totally fixed and i can i can fly with the wingsuit now which is fun i haven't really figured out how to use it right but saying about the calming nature of this game it's all in the music it's just an absolutely fantastic score that they've got yeah the music and the graphics the the fact that, well, there's another skiing game on iOS that is you're running away from an avalanche. Ski Safari. Yeah, yeah. And I don't like running away from an avalanche. That stresses me out. I like that you're only chased for a certain period of time in this game. And that's good because it adds a bit of adrenaline, but it's not the entire time.

Right. And then meanwhile, it's, you know, the snow is coming down or rain is coming down and the sun is setting. And then it's nighttime and it's just beautiful. So it's great. Also, I like that they seem to have been tipping their cap at Journey. Beloved game where I'm going to have to listen to cap at Journey, beloved game where, I'm going to have to listen to that episode of your podcast, the so much Mike,

so many Mike podcasts that I have to listen to. It's Jason Snell. It's the, yeah, I know. Take that. You're on more podcasts than me. You just have to, you have to take it.

Because your scarf grows just just as it doesn't journey as you do more power-up things and in fact when you get to the that moment where you can use the wingsuit your scarf turns white which is very much a a journey kind of thing where the you when you get all the all the uh power-ups you you get the white robe so uh i love it but mike's way ahead of me in terms of high scores but serenity's got us all beat because she is an obsessive game player like that. Yep. She's working on tips and stuff for IMO as well, right? So she can kind of write it off as being part of her job.

Yeah, she can say that. That's a nice excuse. I think it's more that she has a way to explain why she's playing the game that much. But she'd be playing the game that much regardless. So who's your favorite snowboarder? I'm all about Maya. I'm loving Maya because you can do all the

backflips. Backflips are so great. Yep. It's got the speed for the backflip. Yeah. At this point, I only have Alto and Maya, and Maya is definitely... I love it. She's slow, but she does the backflips, and you can do the combos and it's great. We have another

another ask upgrade about a game which is about threes which is also a great game. This is from listener I'm going to say Hela thank you so much for your threes recommendation I love the game now tell me

how to stop playing it can't no play Alto's Adventure instead that's about all I got 3's is great since the game originally came out well over a year ago

I've played it every day I play it every day 3's just such a great game huge fan let's see Swilliams Every day. Like, I play it every day, Threes. It's just such a great game. Huge fan. Let's see. Swilliams. Listener Swilliams from the chat room says,

Can you talk about Birdman being the greatest film of the 21st century? I went on the record the day before it won Best Picture as saying I didn't like it. I didn't hate it. I just didn't like it. I haven't seen it. I disliked it. I haven't seen it. But it won Best picture is saying i didn't like it i didn't hate it i just didn't like it i just liked it i haven't seen it but uh it won best picture so you know so the greatest show on earth also won best picture i'm just gonna point out dances with wolves and crash and gladiator gladiator won best picture gladiator for pete's sake i was channel surfing and stumbled on dances with wolves and i had forgot how much I didn't like that movie. I liked it more at the time, but now, watching it now, I can't.

No. Anyway, so the answer to the question, William's question about if I can talk about Birdman being the greatest film of the 21st century. No, I can't. Sorry. Listener Rajiv wrote in to say, do you think the Apple Watch will have the capability to connect physically to a computer and iTunes?

I, well, what's weird is you can load music on it, apparently. I have no idea how. And I think that would be the question. It's probably going to be something you load from the phone via the Apple Watch app. I don't think there's going to be any way to connect it to a Mac or to iTunes. I think it's umbilical will be to the iPhone. That's my gut feeling. Because we're assuming that the charging, the inductive charging cannot carry data, right? Because that's the only connection it has to USB. So then you'd also naturally assume

that if you're going to be able to connect it wirelessly to something, it's not going to be to a Mac because it's pointless without the phone. So currently, so it feels like phone only. I would agree. And we have one more, is from uh listener matt who said did you do you watch modern family why is this week's episode an apple commercial um so i i haven't seen this i am a fan of the show uh throughout the history of modern family it has had a very strong apple link like phil is as an apple is an apple nerd like us the character phil the dad he's an apple nerd he waits

in line for an iphone um apple pays for placement i mean they pay that so that the computers they use are all apple they use all apple products that. That's just like, they do that. But my understanding is the writers come up with the ideas and they're not paid to put anything, to put a storyline around Apple stuff. They think, I think they just have enjoyed the fact that, I think they're Apple nerds too. I think the writers are Apple nerds and they thought this was a cool idea to do a whole episode that's taking place on a screen. I don't think it's, you know, I don't think Apple apple said we'd like to pay you to write an episode that takes place on our computer screen i think that uh the the writers just went along with it i love the episode where phil wait does the iphone line i thought that was hilarious

yeah that's really great and then um what's uh claire like she jumps out of the line that one with for the ipad, the iPad, yeah It was the iPad line, right? I haven't seen the episode I haven't seen it either From the screenshots I've seen, I would be surprised if Apple paid for it because they're kind of doing things that you can't do There are multiple FaceTime calls

going on at once and if Apple paid for it, they wouldn't want the product to be misrepresented And in fact, they had to fake up the interface because they they used it there was a story and i don't know where i saw it that it was about how they were plotting this all while um while yosemite wasn't even out yet and they were trying to fake up you know a yosemite-like interface but um they had to fake they had to fake it all to get it at the resolution that they wanted with the things that they wanted with a control in order to make you know build this episode um because it was technically quite complex to do that um i think i think it's cool though i'm looking forward to watching it but i

haven't seen it yet but it's good i'll tell you it's good but it's not as good as a regular modern family episode right yeah okay because one of my favorite things about that show is the the physical comedy and i assume there's probably not a lot of that in this well what they did what they did to make it fun is they put in like while two characters would be talking to each other in facetime uh they would be googling um you know you could tell where they were thinking by what subject they were googling and it kind of kind of gave you an insight into the character which is actually really funny because you know the guys who write this really it's a very funny show but yeah i don't think i want to see a lot of this stuff in the future yeah and like on this note as well i don't know if either of you watch house of cards

um no there was a an episode of house of cards in season three don't worry this isn't a spoiler it's been everywhere where monument valley is a plot point and um i was very interested in this um to try and work out how this had occurred because at certain points it feels like a plot point and at certain points it feels like shameless product placement like it kind of skirts the line um and as the episode goes on it kind of makes more sense maybe um but it turns out that there were no money exchanged hands and it was a collaboration like the us two games account tweeted about it because there is a lot of product placement in uh in-house cards from like samsung and sony uh and microsoft with windows everyone has windows phones

which actually does feel believable in in government i don't know if that's the case but i was willing to believe it more than in other shows because i feel like if it's going to be happening in one place it's going to be in a huge huge corporate environment and how much more of a corporate environment in that sort of sense like business-y is the White House and that sort of area but I figured they're not going to be using Blackberries anymore, although they probably are so it made sense to me that they use Windows phones

but yeah, Monument Valley is there. It was a nice surprise to see Frank Underwood playing Monument Valley. So there you go. I think that about brings us to the end of this week's episode. Thank you to everyone for their Ask Upgrades, as always. You can always send us

in questions, follow up feedback by using the hashtag AskUpgrade on Twitter and we do look at them all and thank you for everybody that sends them in, as always. And if you want to get in touch with us personally I'm at imyke on Twitter and at jsnell and of course we have had the fantastic Mr. David Sparks join us,

who is at Max Sparky on Twitter. David, whilst we have you here, is there anywhere that you would like to point people on the Internet right now to go and find out what you're up to? Yeah, if you go to maxsparky.com, you're going to find just about everything I do. So that's a good place to go. Excellent stuff. And more of it than ever before.

Yay! Thank you. And keep locked to sixcolors.com on Monday for live coverage, I assume, again? Yes, we'll do some live coverage. Probably we'll use the Six Colors event Twitter stream to talk about what's going on as well. And then I'll have a bunch of follow-up afterward.

At some point in there, we will record an episode of Upgrade. I have no idea when that's going to be. I'm also supposed to do an Uncomparable episode that night. I may reschedule that one because it's going to be a busy day. But we will be back at some point on the day to talk about this all here on on upgrade next week so get ready for that exciting you should also follow the uh at underscore upgrade fm twitter account because we'll be uh announcing there when we're going to be recording because right i think that it will probably just be whenever it makes sense right well one of the questions is going to be where

where am i going to be am i going to come home after that event am i going to uh stick around in downtown san francisco for a while um we'll we'll see how how it works i i i have been offered the use of the mac world pod cave so who knows i might even be back in the old haunt again i hope i wear my uh work clothes they won't let you in otherwise no dress I think you should dress like a hobo that day, Jason. Yeah. Apple will love that too. If you'd like to find the show notes

for this week's episode, they are in your podcast app of choice, so you can go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 25. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Igloo, and lynda.com. And we'll be back next week for a very exciting episode

as we recount the Apple event, which goes on the 9th of March. Until then, say goodbye, everybody. Goodbye, I'm Michael. Goodbye, David. Bye, gents.