Upgrade - 273: Sideways the Game

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

This week we discuss Tim Cook's political high-wire act, Apple's attempts to reduce bugs in future iOS releases, and Jason's wishes for iOS 14. Finally, just in time for the holidays, Myke at the Movies returns with 1988's "Die Hard."

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 273 today's show is brought to you by pdf pen from smile linode moo and fresh books my name is mike hurley i am joined by jason snell hello jason snell hello mike hurley how are you i am fine and dandy my friend big show today lots of stuff going on giant massive but we start off with a hashtag snell talk question from our listener upgradian troy who says do you gentlemen or jason i guess we'll start with jason do you jason put your airpods in at the same time or one at a time? Is this a trick question? I saw this question and I was like,

there's obviously only one way. But then the more I thought about it, it was like, well, I guess there are both ways. But to me, there is only one way. I am assuming that you are like me. So I think that the concept here that Troy is talking about, about putting them in simultaneously, is you would extract both from the case, put the case down, and then you do a kind of like, I don't know, Mission Impossible kind of thing of like, synchronize, you know, and then they go in. That is not what I do.

I pick up the case. I flip it open. I'm holding it in my left hand. I take my right hand, and I pull out the right earbud and stick it in my left hand i take my right hand and i pull out the right earbud and stick it in my ear oh you got right first my right hand takes the case pulls out the left earbud sticks it in my left ear that's how it works i hope that was exciting i will uh uh i don't know which pant leg i put on first but i i know which ear pod air pod thingy i put in my ear first the right one yeah i'm with you i think i'm left and then right but like one at a time but i see how you could do

two like at the same time i'm assuming that troy does both which is why troy would even fathom to ask this question he's tom cruise he's ethan hunt he's j Bond. He's doing both at once and he's super cool about it. But I put my AirPods in one leg at a time like everyone else. Yeah. If you would like to send in a hashtag Snell Talk question to open the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk and it may be considered for future openings. Thanks so much to Troy for sending that in. We have some uh follow out mostly

today um jason has some grievances and would like to air them so jason over to you i've been listening to podcasts this last week and i realized that's good that we're that we're missing out yeah technology podcasts you might be familiar with them and i've been realizing we're missing out i mean also broadly i've got lots of ideas mike we should talk about it sometime other ways that we can like improve the show by uh adapting things that work for other podcasts more generally. But I'm going to leave that there for now. And instead, I'm going to focus on... I can't tell if you are burning or if this is all just a bit.

Like, I can't. I'm not sure where we're going with this. It might be a bit. Anyway, but among the things that I listened to this week and I thought, boy, why don't we do that on our podcast? I just always thought that was out of bounds. And yet they're talking about it for all of this time and people seem to be interested in it. So ATP, the Accidental Tech Podcast, the Lifetime Upgrade Award winner for favorite tech podcast, did an episode where the entire after show was basically a, it was preparing the way was the refrigerator episode of Reconcilable Differences.

This ATP episode 353, they talked about John preparing the way for his Mac Pro that he hasn't bought yet because you can't buy one yet, but he's already prepping his workspace and he's going into details about like, I had this folding table and I'm going to replace our tray table. I'm going to replace it with a real table. And I've got this power strip that I'm replacing. And here's the model of that. And let's talk about upright UPSs and the difference between the power strippy ones and the upright ones. And I thought to myself, I've spent the last two months reorganizing my office space to because after five years, I decided it needed to be, you know, refreshed. And I don't think I've spent very much time at all talking about it.

And then I hear John Syracuse spend like 20 minutes talking about like power strips. There's one important thing to remember here, Jason, which is the Syracuse has spent like 20 minutes talking about power strips. There's one important thing to remember here, Jason, which is the Syracuse effect. John could read a phone book and people would listen, including me. The world is enwrapped by the idea of what particular short extension chords John is using in his power strip. I understand. But what I'm saying is maybe we should get in on that action, you and me. What I'm saying is maybe we should get in on that action, you and me. Maybe we need to up our game a little bit in terms of talking about office supplies and having people be interested.

Well, I already do that. It's called the pen addict. I don't want to say we would be upping our game. I would say that we would at best be sideways in our game. Well, actually, we could use the same prepositions here so we would be outing our game because it's another podcast yeah if if it was if it was upping our game it would be follow up it would be from our previous episode but this is follow out so we would be outing our game or maybe we could just create a completely new paradigm for a show segment i like i like new paradigms let's do it because john likes those so

yeah you should create one of those for when and then everybody will have to give us credit and then just uh uh use it as your own yeah that's a good idea i like it so anyway what i'm saying is my my the big wall in my office is orange now okay that's what i'm that's what i'm saying let me tell you i have a blue wall. I want a whole segment about paint colors. We can talk about shopping for paint. I went through so many samples of paint before arriving on the right paint color. Less interested in paint colors.

You know, I got power supplies. I had to buy some of those little cords too. So I realized that I had an area of my office where there were going to be like five cords running across a run of carpet where one could theoretically walk. And I looked at it and I was like, that looks really, that's not, like not just does it look bad,

but like that looks like a horrendous accident that not only makes me fall and break a bone, but potentially pulls equipment off of my desk and shatters it. Right. And I had this whole thing of like, well, how am I going to make this work? And I have an adjustable desk. So you can't just lock it down at the bottom level because then you press the button and take the standing height and everything tears apart. That's no good. So I ended up like, there's a, am I really going to mention products here? I found, so I have a carpet that actually is basically like Velcro. Velcro will

stick to my carpet. And so I found a cable run thing on amazon that is is velcro and fabric and it's a very similar color to my carpet and and so instead of having one of those like tubes that you lay down and run cables on so people don't trip on the cables and they trip on this the tube instead right like that's what those you want to trip on you want to trip on the tube and not the cables that are in the tube. Well, because, see, that's the thing. The trippable situation, that's actually not to protect you. It's to protect the camera, right? No, to protect the cables.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly right. You can still trip, but no one cares about that. Exactly. So I got one of those, and that actually really worked, except then I discovered that with the cables pinned down, which is good rather than having tripwires across my office, then it didn't reach the UPS unless I pulled the UPS out. Now I've got a big, ugly power strip

that's in the way. So I went on Amazon. I did buy some of those one meter cables that have, they do work if you have a tightly clustered bunch of things and you've got bricks and they don't fit on the power strip like they do work for that but in my case I literally just needed to get them to be a little bit longer and reach out to the UPS so I could put them all underneath this fabric thing and I did it and it and it works and it looks pretty great and I bought all of this cable management stuff that I've never really done good cable management. But I bought it with this desk that I got. And the desk is great.

The cable management actually looks pretty good. I have a, yeah, it's coming along. I've painted two of the walls, but I've got two more walls to paint, which are the more utilitarian walls in the garage. They're more garage-y walls, which means they're full of junk and covered with stuff. And I'm going to have to do a lot of cleaning to paint that part, but it's, it's shaping up. And, uh, and I did have to buy a bunch of stuff and the best part, Mike, cause I will move on from this now. Um, cause I haven't prepared enough Amazon links to talk about all these products that I bought. Uh, because that's how you prepare the way is the way for an affiliate. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, you know, I still haven't assembled everything back together. I still

haven't hung stuff on the walls. Uh, but I will say that, that as a part of this, I got to, so I had two different segments of my office in terms of like networking. I had like the stuff that was over by the door to the rest of the house. And, and because I have a TV over there, I had a bunch of like video game consoles and stuff. And I had, that's where,

as I bought like new smart home things that required little hubs, like the, the hue hub and my casita wireless switch has a little hub. I had to plug those in somewhere. So I ended up with this whole cluster of things over by the door where there was a big power strip and there was a bunch of video game consoles. And then there were all of these little things that needed to be connected to ethernet, which means I needed an ethernet hub. And one of the things that was nice is I completely

changed where the stuff is in my office. So all of the networking stuff is really in the corner over here to my left. I had to buy some longer Ethernet cords, and I don't think I and a bunch of cables I wasn't using anymore, which is really nice because I think the truest sign of a successful teardown and re-hookup of your stuff is when you discover you don't need all the parts that you used to use. I relocated a bunch of the hubs to- Well, I mean, it depends. If you're doing that to your washing machine, that's a bad- No, but if it all still works

and you end up with like five extra cables, you're like, what were these plugged into? Why were they there? And the answer is they probably weren't plugged in and weren't being used because they were being used for something that you ripped out, but you left the cable. Anyway, so I relocated a bunch of my smart home hubs to the corner of my living room where I already had an ethernet hub and a couple of things plugged in. room where I already had an Ethernet hub and a couple of things plugged in. And the only network device that's there, like two network devices that are over by the door to the rest of the house.

So it's not a big technology thing there. I actually relocated the video game console to in the house as well. And yeah, so's it's uh what i'm saying is um every five years or so you should tear apart your office and put it back together again i'm about to do that but i don't know what i want to do yet like i know i need to destroy my office and rebuild it stronger and better and faster than before um but i haven't worked out exactly what i want to do the only thing i know is that I want to... I have two desks in the office and that's my gaming PC on it.

I want to have that do double duty and also be like a permanent place that I can plug my iPad into and have a keyboard, monitor and mouse that's always there really like perfect. Perfectly ready for me if i want to do like fixed ipad work which is something i do do and i was doing which is which is the stuff where i end up like walking out into my kitchen which i can't do this week because my son's off for thanksgiving

this week so that i can only do it when there's nobody in the house really or although he is a 15 year old boy he basically stays in this room room. So maybe I could work out there. By the way, speaking of things that we should consider for stealing from other podcasts. Yes. You just made a $6 million man reference there. I did. And there's no upgrade references Twitter account, is there? There isn't.

We need to make more pop culture references that are cryptic. I don't want to do those because you have so none of them it doesn't work when it's just you know everything and i know nothing when you've got what do you mean that's exactly the dynamic of atp is that syracuse knows all the references and they don't you know and then they can fight i haven't got somebody to fight with about how few references that i know all right all anyway talking for 10 minutes about nonsense also a thing i picked up from other podcasts i feel really good about it um i feel like i'm being shamed here well done um oh not yet because i haven't even mentioned last week's episode of connected which had like

40 chapter markers in it and was largely a podcast about three gentlemen from all over the world loading web pages and reading them on their computers while they were doing a podcast. You just did that, right? Like there was a bunch of websites that you just went to and looked at products and I'm not including literally any of them in the show notes. Absolutely not.

So you have them up well. I didn't look at a webpage once when I was doing that. I was staring at my office while I was doing that. We just record at a time when Apple decides to release battery cases. What do you want from us? Yeah, anyway, my there is that uh you and i need to up our i feel like on this podcast up our accessory game in some way sideways the game yeah okay because it's uh you know like popsockets uh more popsocket talk from you i think i drove i drove you away

with my let's say lack of interest in popsockets yeah you only have yourself to blame with this one right like foldable phones yeah foldable phones well i regret nothing about the foldable phones but popsockets yes uh cases i mean then i do realize that we we did spend a lot of time talking about ipad stands and keyboards so maybe that's our, our bailiwick is iPad stands. Yeah. And I want to find a new one, but yeah, yeah. Mine failed. So I'm also looking for a better iPad stand.

Anyway, at least there's a, at least we do merch like other podcasts. That's a place where we're already keeping pace. At upgradeyourwardrobe.com. That's right. Registering domain names. We're also pretty strong with registering domain names.

Oh, I have another one for you in a minute. I know. Don't you worry about that. UpgradeYourWardrobe.com, they have the original Dongletown merchandise is available, Orange and Navy. Also, the new Dongletown Butterflies team. You support your local sports team. We've had some great suggestions for what the Dongletown Butterflies could be.

Yeah. I don't know why we didn't assume that it was Brainball, which somebody mentioned. It's probably Brainball. Probably, but we have yet to confirm or deny if it's Brainball. Yeah.

Federico sent me a good suggestion, actually. What was it? He said that competitive piano, because it's all key-based. Interesting. So that's one. We've had debate team I've seen a couple of times. There's Dodgeball, all sorts.

How about Competitive Adapting, like what Stephen Hackett did on his video last week? Competitive Adapting, where you're given... Or like the escape room that we did at WWDC. You're given a box of dongles, and you have to create a mega dongle. And you've got to connect this thing to this thing, and you've got to just put it all together.

Maybe that's a sport in Dongletown. Maybe it is. Who knows? Dongletown is a wonderful place. You can support the Dongletown Butterflies or the local port authority by going to upgradeyourwardrobe.com. Upgrade Hoodie is available too.

It's great for the cold winter months. Upgradeyourwardrobe.com and you can buy that merchandise right now. We still have more follow-up, don't we jason snell uh yeah i guess we do just a really quick one which is um we talked about last week the idea that maybe apple could be a little more open about its future product directions rather than just saying we don't discuss anything uh when you've got a crisis and you're trying to defuse it and i think I would say that the keyboards is a PR crisis. When you announce the product that's got the new keyboard in it, you could put your foot on the gas or some extra weight on the scales.

Or I don't know what the right metaphor is here. And do a kind of a wink, wink, nudge, nudge to say, you know, this is a great keyboard. We expect to use it in future versions. And basically like say, this is our keyboard going forward. Yes. You know, please end this. And I got, I feel like we mentioned this in the episode, but I definitely got feedback from people who said, but they can't ever announce anything about future products because of the Osborne effect, which is this famous story from the early days of the personal computer industry, where if you announce a replacement for a product, sales of that product will cease and

that will hurt your company. And that is an issue which I would say I'm not advocating that Apple announced a new 13-inch or 14-inch MacBook Pro today or last week. I'm not advocating that. But I don't know if a wink and a nod saying, you this is going to be our our keyboard on future laptops too and leave it at that would really kill future sales any worse than all of the bad reputation that apple is building up and i think that's the counter argument is the damage done by the perception that apple's keyboards are bad could they start repairing it sooner by being a little more open about how like yeah you know we're we are uh this this is a great leap forward and we expect that it will come to all of our products and you know they could even use it as a way to spin the existing keyboard if they and

this is the challenge is they would need to actually have data that they could say truthfully uh which is thank you, that's a reference. Reference is acknowledged. See? Right there. Are we just a tribute act today? Yeah, I think so. We're playing the hits. Anyway, here's Wonderwall. So they could, if they have data that shows

that the new materials, butterfly keyboards, that they introduced this year are actually more reliable and stable and people like them more, they could even roll that in there and say, you know, with this, now we've got two sets of keyboards that keyboard designs in 2019

that have really upped our game in terms of stability and happiness of users. And they could use it as a selling point of like, see, we figured it all out. And also I will say, I don't know if a wink and a nod is going to really move sales that much in terms of the fact that the only people who are looking for Phil Schiller's winks and nods are us, the computer nerdy types and less the general public.

But anyway, I acknowledge that that's what motivates Apple not to talk at all about future products. But this seems like an extreme circumstance where maybe they could have given it a little more of a wink and a nod. I would have taken that. A Santa Claus-like wink and a nod. There appears to be some kind of Apple Media event on December 2nd. Some invites have gone out.

Only Lance Ulanoff shared the invite. Lance Ulanoff was not supposed to share the invite. No, he was not. It's happening in New York next Monday at 4pm Eastern Time. It looks to be an award ceremony for apps. We're not going to be drafting in case anybody was wondering.

No, I'll tell you what it's going to be. It is Apple's annual press release where their in-house editorial people have picked the best and top uh apps and stuff of the year um turned into an event so it is it is a press release turned into an event and i suppose you could argue that all of apple's media events are a press release turned into event but what i would say i don't want to be too harsh here but like this is a press release i don't pay very close attention to turned into an event so great it's a

again you know it's great people who get named on that list are super into it and why would you not i think this shows apple like marketing the heck out of their stuff is like well you know apps of the year why don't we make more of that and so somebody was like all right let's do a little thing in new york and uh we'll have a red carpet and we'll have apps and everybody you know it's a good promo for buying apple stuff over the holidays and let's do it so that seems to be what it's going to be you You know, that's fine. We all know there's only one awards ceremony of the year that anybody should care about anyway, right, Jason? Yes, that's exactly right. Only one awards ceremony at the end of the year merits your attention, friends. The Upgradies!

The Upgradies are coming. The Upgradies awards ceremony will be broadcast live from our independent homes on december the 30th 2019 so you can come and listen along live if you want to but the nominations the voting is now open if you go to our wonderful new url which is upgradies.vote so you go to upgradies.vote you will be able to find the google form to allow you, the Upgradian, to have an impact on who may take home Upgradies this year. We're bringing back all of our categories except for one. There's going to be no award for my favorite Michael in the movies this year because we've only done one. We've got one more to be done later on today.

So it kind of seemed like a strange one to keep in. Everything else is there. Go in. Give us your answers to the questions. Remember, the Upgradies are not a democracy. We use the Upgradians votes to help influence who will win. Sometimes it goes to whoever the Upgradian picked because me and Jason don't have strong feelings about a category, or we use your votes as a way to help us decide on who should win so it's upgradies.vote fill out the form voting will be open for a couple for a number of weeks throughout december until it gets to the

point where there's so many as there were last year that i have to close it down because i need to total up those answers which is a very very complicated process when people write in their own text what they want the winners to be and it's very difficult to collate but go to upgradies.vote and you can cast your votes right now for the sixth sixth annual upgradey awards i checked it's sixth yeah yeah you have a hard time saying sixth don't you turns out turns there's an extra S in there. Six. Slytherin. I mentioned Mike at the movies.

We're going to be doing Die Hard at the end of the episode today. So you can look out for that. Yippee-ki-yay, Mike Podcaster. Indeed. And that's the only way it's going to be said. Today's show is brought to you by PDF Pen from Smile. PDF Pen 11 is the ultimate tool for editing PDFs on the Mac.

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If you're interested in getting some inspiration for your Upgradees votes, then you can go to Upgradees.com and you can see every winner of every Upgradee in history. Right, Jason Snell? That's right, Mike Hurley. Okay, we have a topic that I want to talk about today that I am more keen to talk about than Jason,

which is because it's political-based, and I want to talk about it. And these things tend to be... I mean, it's one of the cardinal rules, right, of podcasting. Is it? Well, it's to talk about politics. I hear that Pod Save America is really successful. Should we steal some things from them?

Well, let's just say, unless you're a political podcast. How about Romaniacs? I like Romaniacs. That's a good podcast. We could steal some stuff from them. I don't want to steal. I don't listen to political podcasts, but I'm turning ours into one right now. I want to talk about Tim Cook, Donald Trump, and the Mac Pro.

Okay. All right. So I have a bunch of stuff to say. Then we're going to talk about it a bit more in general. Does that sound fair? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. So last week, as part of promotion for Apple announcing that they were opening a new campus in Austin,

which we'd heard about before, but they were kind of confirming and giving some architectural overviews and stuff. For that, Tim Cook gave Donald Trump a tour around their Mac Pro manufacturing facility that is also located in Austin. This facility is owned by a company called Flex, who were previously known as Flextronics. They're an American manufacturing company that's headquartered in Singapore, but they are an American company at heart, I believe, is what Wikipedia could tell me anyway. Flex has been manufacturing from the Mac Pro for Apple since 2013, so it started with the trash can, and they are continuing for the new machine.

I had a question. I posed this question on Connected. I did a little bit more research, but I've been able to find a definitive answer about this facility in general. Are all Mac Pros made there, or are just US Mac Pros made there? Right. Is there another Mac Pro factory somewhere else that we

don't know about and this may be reason for you to buy a mac pro mic so you can look at the bottom of the can and see what it uh see see what it's for such purposes i'll point uh yeah that's right it's it's for your work i that's a reference so see we're doing it here we're doing all the references today we are doing it we don't have to do it okay all right um i'll yeah since 2013 and i think this is a point as we get into like what apple does for to pander to american politics i think this is an important point right this factory making the mac pro was i mean we could argue it but like in 2013 which is before the current administration apple was already pandering to american politics where they were being criticized for making all their products in china and so they set up this

one yeah this was a political move that apple did for the world at large right well for americans at large it's like a fig leaf uh over apple's uh production of devices out the design in california wasn't working because they knew it was made in china even though it was designed in california and so they did this in 2013 they set up this factory and said look at us we're doing manufacturing in USA, even though it's a very low volume, high margin product. And there were all sorts of stories about how there were a lot of issues, but they have kept at it and they're making the new Mac Pro at this facility, the Flextronics facility. The most I could find is in Apple's press release where they said that they were making this device in Austin again.

They said that the new Mac Pro will include components designed, developed, and manufactured by more than a dozen American companies for distribution to U.S. customers. Now, that says one thing, doesn't say the other thing. One could read that that is purely like if you're ordering in America, it comes from there. But if you're ordering from somewhere else, it comes from somewhere else. But it doesn't confirm that. No, it doesn't. And again, I'll say this is not new. The suppliers thing is not.

I'm sure there are new. I'm not sure. But I would guess there are probably some new suppliers in this list because it is a new product. And it might have even been designed with the idea of how many us-based supplies. It reminds me a lot when Steven and I talk on the liftoff podcast about how a lot of NASA programs made a point and still make a point of spreading out the suppliers to all, shall we just say congressional districts that one can,

because it allows every member of Congress to say, Oh we just say, congressional districts that one can, because it allows every member of Congress to say, oh, you know, NASA's working with us and you've got our vote because you brought some money to my district. It's a little like that, a little reminiscent of that, I guess I would say. But Apple has made a point of pointing out, even when it's criticized for things like assembling the iPhone in China, about things like how the Gorilla Glass is made by Corning in Kentucky, I want to say, and that there are a bunch of components that are made in the U.S., even when the device is assembled in China, that those are things made in the U.S. and then shipped to China for assembly.

So this has been an Apple priority to talk about all of its US sourced parts for a while now, because they get criticized as a major American company. And there has been this ongoing conversation about the lack of factory support in the tech industry for American industry. And there are lots of reasons why that doesn't exist, but it doesn't stop them from being criticized for it. Yeah. It's like, I know that Apple have other facilities like this in other parts of the world. There is one of these in Ireland that does all of the build to order stuff. I know for the UK and maybe for most of Europe. So that's why it would just surprise me if Mac Pros were not also being put together there if they had to be put together anywhere else anyway

i don't know that i would love to know if anybody does know but i haven't been able to find out we will know eventually but i don't know when that will be and we're about to talk about tariffs and things like that i i think it's also something that we should mention here is like the reason there's an assembly plant in cork inork in Ireland is almost certainly because there is favorable European Union regulation for those products to be assembled. Well, there's favorable Irish regulation. Well, yeah, but also it's access to the EU, right? Yeah, I'm sure it's part of that too. So part of, this is something to keep in mind that maybe seems invisible at times and other times it seems like as thick as a thick fog.

But tariffs and import restrictions and all sorts of things like that are part of the calculation that a big multinational company like Apple makes when it's deciding what to build and where to build it. Like, and it's not just one company. My iMac Pro was assembled in cork. Yeah, exactly right. And again, could they have just shipped it from the US or shipped it from China? Maybe, but there is that plant in cork. And is it there for Apple to make the people in Ireland feel great about Apple? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But I would gather that favorable Irish regulation and also favorable access to EU markets plays a part in it. And that's part of the big corporation distribution supply chain game, which, by the way, Tim Cook is the master of, and that's why he's the CEO of Apple. Basically invented the game yeah and i will say from my perspective up to this point we're all

good this is these are the these are the things you do right in my you you do this stuff this is the game you play but from here i think things start to get a little bit strange uh so there was a press conference um after the tour that cook took trump on uh in which tim cook said i particularly like to thank president trump's secretary munchin munchin munchin and the guy who looks like john oliver okay and the other members of the administration i'm grateful for their support in pulling today off and getting us this far it would not be possible without them. Like, I just don't really know what that quote is referring to. And it seems it's very pandering.

It feels I mean, for their support in pulling today off, it feels is like hovering over this to really is this idea of an exchange or you could say a quid pro quo. That's a phrase that's going around a lot where the idea here is you know we will we will do this if you can cut us a break on tariffs yeah which again all right even to this point okay right like you want the tariffs so your products can still be made where you want them to be made because you want to try and stop you want to be basically cut out of america's trade war with china right like apple wants to be cut out of that like i'm sure every single company wants right exactly my company cortex brown would like to be cut out of

this because we have our notebooks made in china and we are being hit with tariffs like it's a thing right like stuff is happening right um and so like you you do what you do right in in regards to that then there was another part where the trump is giving a speech he's given a press conference afterwards and he turns around and asked him a question about the economy and tim cook says i think we have the strongest economy in the world right now right that is to appease trump right yes and then jury also during the press conference trump said that he is currently looking at exempting apple from the next round of china tariffs it's nice for him to put out there the specific reason why this is all happening isn't it yes it's just well because you know yeah it just says what's on his mind i think

is the typical thing that's pretty much what happens all he can do uh and so this is all to this point we're like oh this is like this gives me an odd feeling but again it's like i understand he wanted that he's he's trying to like play it all up look nicey nice but then the part that i really don't like is Trump then states online that he has opened a major apple manufacturing plant in Texas, which we know isn't true. We know it's not apples. Hold on now. It was already in effect and has been going for six years, and it is not by any stretch of the imagination major. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's making one low-yield product.

Yeah, that's exactly right. It's making one low-yield product. And the most, so the most generous reading, and I kind of can't believe I'm going to give Donald Trump a generous reading. You should play devil's advocate for me. I'm not a fan of this guy, but I will say he, and this isn't that generous because I'm gonna say that he he he's a little confused as he always is i think what's happened is that he's conflated apple's commitment to building that large campus in austin which they broke ground on yes on the day that trump came but before he came

i think he's conflating that with this. Now, purposefully, not on purpose, who could tell? But I suspect that that's what's going on here. Because Apple is building, I think, again, not necessarily because of Trump, but Apple is building a big campus in Austin, and they broke ground on it. And that's a thing that you could show off as like, look at Apple expanding in America, and isn't this great? But it been intentionally perhaps conflated with this manufacturing thing because it serves the story that the president wants to tell which is that to to pander to his base of people especially in industrial states who feel like the american industrial core has been hollowed out and moved away that here's an example where uh your guy the president

has taken apple and gotten them to open a huge plant in texas even though that plant was already open and and the place that they're opening that they broke ground on is a non-manufacturing plant and it's going to be full of white collar workers and it doesn't have anything to do with the industrial base so i completely agree with you. But the two parts of this that then... So one, I think that they are very aware of the fact that

this isn't new, and it's convenient to say because there is now a Trump re-election campaign video, using footage of this tour, talking about and showing how Trump is bringing manufacturing back to america but the thing is i have not not 100 if it's a campaign video or if it's just a white house video but it's certainly a you know it is a promotional video video right and at this point

in time you could argue any pro-trump media can be used as an idea of why he should be the president, right? Sure. Apple have not corrected this statement at all, even when being pushed from the media to correct it. When asked to comment, an Apple PR person played the sound of crickets chirping. Yes, but this is something that is very correctable. It's not even one of these ones where it's like, we're going to talk about a software shakeup at Apple later on, and Mark Gurman has asked an Apple spokesperson to confirm

is something that's secret is real, right? This is facts. We know these facts. It's even to the point that the pictures in the campaign video show the flex logo on the workers t-shirts yes that it has nothing to do with apple well i mean it it's apple they're assembling apple it's not apple it's not apple apple's factory but they're assembling apple things, for sure. I mean, we know that, but Trump's all claiming that. So, John Gruber wrote a great post about this. And, you know, he says in the post, like we did, there are good reasons to engage with the President of the United States, right? You need their support to get things done.

And if you were able to bend the President to your will a little, that's great. You have done your job as the CEO of a company. But I want to read a quote from from John Gruber. But appearing alongside Trump at an Apple facility in a stage photo opportunity is implicit support for Trump and his reelection. The video makes it look like Trump's trade policies have been good for Apple and that Tim Cook supports Trump. Both of these things are false. So we're very aware of why all this has happened. It's the tariffs stuff, right? this is obvious that like it's very difficult for tim cook if he is hit with tariffs on literally the things that he needs right aluminium right all of the all of the components right like every how about this

every iphone shipped out of china which is all of them basically very expensive because look you know and we all and we may all know the story by now, right? But, like, there was... Apple put out into the press, clearly, that they were going to manufacture the Mac Pro now in China because of the tariffs. Then there was a bunch of stories, and then Apple got 10 out of 15 tariff exemptions,

and now they're, like, bringing the manufacturing back to america this is managing up on the biggest possible scale right like this is this is tim cook and we can talk about the political ramifications of it because i think they're absolutely there because you're being you're being allowing yourself to be used by somebody who is simultaneously a politician running for reelection and the president of the United States who's threatening your business with tariffs. And you're trying to navigate this thing.

And he does the same with China as well, Tim Cook, where you've got these entities that can make business for you really bad, really bad. And so you don't want to anger them and you want to handle them carefully. And you maybe even want to try to manage the situation so that they get along if you can be a go-between a little bit, which I think sometimes Tim Cook is a little bit. But yeah, he's managing up

where he wants to steer Trump and his people. Although with Trump, you can potentially steer his people by steering him because he's going to say stuff and then that's what it has to be, even if the people were working on something different. And so, yeah, you can see it happening here. had a terrible manager where you've had to spend huge amounts of effort on managing your manager so that they you know behave in a way that is conducive to whatever you want to have happen uh will i mean i i certainly feel it every time i see a situation like this with these guys it's like oh boy because yeah that's what tim cook's trying to do as the ceo of apple is he's trying to say what he needs to say and do what he needs to do in order to get uh trump to be like apple is great they're playing ball i don't want to hurt them with tariffs let's exempt them from the tariffs that's what that's what he's trying to do

and the exchange there is that he stands next to trump and says this is the best economy ever and gives him a photo op at an apple factory and says all of this is in thanks to the work from the trump administration yeah and if you don't think this will come up at the republican convention next uh summer before the election as a thing that people keep citing about like how great uh apple is and that they're all coming back to america and apple is investing in america and all that if you don't think that's going to be a bullet point somewhere at a campaign rallies and at the convention um i think you're wrong i think it absolutely will be used that way our friend tim the very special individual right as we call him but like i think it is i feel like i'm you know the meme with Charlie Day and the string?

Sure. The conspiracy theory meme? This is not about the Mac Pro at all. The Mac Pro surely, surely has profit margins to swallow the tariffs. It's about the iPhone. Yeah. The Mac Pro is a symbol, as it's been since 2013 when they did this in Austin with the Mac Pro. It is a symbol of something that Apple can say that they brought back to the u.s um i don't think it's all entirely cynical i do think

that apple uh is proud of using american suppliers and is i think it was right for apple to say it is not the perception that an iphone is an is a chinese product is not accurate in addition to all the software and the industrial design being done in the U.S., that there are lots of suppliers that are key suppliers, including perhaps most importantly Corning for the glass. That's all happening in the U.S. I think they're right to push back on the narrative that it's all China. But this is a thing that's more for show, I think, because you're right. In the end, this is about a chess game to have the iPhone escape as much of the pressure of a trade war with China and tariffs as possible. I just think he went a little bit too far here.

I think he gave up a little bit more than he got. I think that this is what he had to do. I think that's my problem with it. I think you're perfectly reasonable, and John is perfectly reasonable, to say this is embarrassing for Cook. He looks like a puppet. And he does. He does.

And I keep coming back to, like, thinking, thinking you know as a ceo you do i mean this is also on the heels of the hong kong stuff yeah i can make a defense of tim cook uh about the fact that he is the ceo of a public and profit-driven corporation and that his job is to maximize shareholder value and profits and that's capitalism however apple does talk big about corporate values and trying to do good in the world and i think it is a fair argument to say that uh you know if iphone margins were destroyed by the trade war because tim cook uh antagonized trump that he would be held accountable but also that apple tends to emphasize the corporate values where it feels it can actually advance the ball,

like renewable energy and recycling of materials. But if you watch that, you will see a negative space. You'll see an empty space, which is the stuff where Apple maybe has some corporate beliefs and values, but it needs to make profits and maximize shareholder value. And so you end up in a position where you're Tim Cook and you're like, iPhone profits and playing ball with Donald Trump. And how do you square that circle? And honestly, the other problem is in the past, you could cut a deal as a CEO with a president, a sitting president or other politician. And they're like, OK, we're going to make a deal. And like, we're going to say this and we're not going to say this.

And you're going to say this and you're not going to say this. And you're like, you come to some agreement and everybody goes, yeah, this is how it happens. And then it's a staged opportunity. And like Obama walks in and, you know, USA, USA. And then he walks out and it's done. I think one of the other aspects of what's going on here is Trump doesn't do that. and like Obama walks in and, you know, USA, USA, and then he walks out and it's done. I think one of the other aspects of what's going on here is Trump doesn't do that. Like you are, once he's in your factory and the cameras are on and you're Tim Cook, like he could say anything

and what do you do then? And I think that's where some of the unease here is, is it's not lockdown. He can say or do anything. And if you're Tim Cook, are you prepared to start fact-checking Donald Trump on the floor of your factory during his photo op? And I think there's a strong argument to be made that by him not doing that, he is completely capitulating to uh trump's agenda about apple

that is based on lies right it's based on completely inaccurate information um and that to me that's the i understand that moment but that is the disappointment right is like he allowed himself perhaps he was trapped in it but to be in a moment where he either needed to sit there and smile, stand there and smile, or he needed to push back at the President of the United States, who, as we are constantly reminded, does not appreciate that. This is so complicated. And I understand the complication, but it just feels a little disappointing, right? Like I can't help but be disappointed. Yeah, I mean, and I think it's fair to argue in another post that John Gruber made last week. Like, I think you could also argue that allowing data centers in China to be,

Apple data centers to be in Chinese government-owned companies' facilities and removing the Taiwan flag if you're localized in Hong Kong, where it's not illegal to show the Taiwan flag, and then coming out last week and saying we've never felt pressure from China. I mean, you could argue that we spent the last 10 minutes talking about the second most embarrassing thing Tim Cook did last week. That's true. That's a very good point i'd forgot i'd forgotten about that exact interview because he's he's had a bit of a he's had a bit

of an old week to timmy and and and he he and here's the thing and this is not going to please everybody who wants the the the you know the rage session the what is it the 30 minutes hate in 1984 that's a reference um the it's not gonna please everybody but it's like it's a it's a tough line like ceo of apple like he he literally has to do diplomacy with china and diplomacy with the government of the united states and its president and try to keep his company uh running and not uh falling apart because of the bad relationships he's so important he is effectively a world leader at this point yes i think essentially it is and that says something about the ascent of large corporations and the power they wield i think that we could

talk like there's a lot of things here that we're not necessarily equipped to talk about about capitalism and the ascent of the power of corporations and all of that, versus governments wielding trade powers and things like that in order to perhaps address domestic issues by rattling their sabers on trade. There's a lot, there's so much going on here. And my point is not to absolve Tim Cook. My point is to say, this is really hard stuff. And I'm not sure there's a good answer here because anybody who doesn't like Trump wants Tim Cook to say, no, I'm not going to do a photo op with Trump or say, I'll go to the photo op with Trump. But when he says that this is a new facility, I'm going to correct him. I'm not going to let it stand, or I'm going to go on the first interview I do afterward. And I'm going to, I'm going to correct what he said and hope that that doesn't

rain fire down on me for contradicting him. And the fact is, and I don't think I'm surprised because Tim Cook doesn't seem like a firebrand to me, that he just gritted his teeth and smiled and spoke when he was called on and hope to, I think, just hope to escape and minimize the damage and hope that the net result is positive for Apple and live to fight another day. That's what I think. And is that cowardly? It's easy to call somebody a coward if you're not in their shoes and you don't see what they have to lose. If you're purely idealistic and you can let it all burn, if they say that thing, you really want to tell Trump off in person uh in front of uh the cameras you could do

it but what's that going to mean for you and for apple um doesn't mean he shouldn't have done it doesn't mean he shouldn't have found a way but it's a really tough set of trade-offs and that's the that's the high wire that tim cook gets to walk every day um so yeah it's a, that's, I wouldn't want his job. Thank you for talking about this with me, Jason. Sure. It's great. Cook has a particularly difficult time because of the ideals created by his predecessor. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, and, and on one level, he's the exact right CEO for Apple for this era,

because what we said at the beginning because of operations because operations and logistics and all these things this is what this is about this is about what are you making where um and about balancing lots of different interests and while tim cook probably didn't expect to be doing delicate negotiations with uh senior chinese ministers and the president of the United States. That's where he is. And yeah, it's hard. It's tough to have the company that you follow and care about

and you want them to do well, which I think a lot of people who listen to the show obviously feel, interact with politics like with john grouper obviously like he's got tim cook and then there's donald trump who he can't stand and it's like no no no no you need to not give this guy material i get i get that feeling um but you know then you're tim cook and it's your whole company and it's riding on this. And I don't know, it's hard.

It's hard. Succession planning for Cook, I think is going to be and is probably more difficult than succession planning for jobs. I think at this level, and I would put this across industries, like I think it's hard to replace any CEO because everybody at that level, you know, ideally has a totally different set of responsibilities.

But yeah, it's brutally hard at Apple, right? Because realistically, it has to be somebody at Apple, a current or former Apple person. Because I would argue, and this is arguable, but I would argue Apple's culture is so unlike other cultures that you could not bring in somebody who is the CEO of some other tech company and install them at Apple. It would take too long for them to get it. Yeah, it would take years for them to figure it out, unless there's some magical cultural match. And I would argue at that point that person probably either worked at Apple before or was surrounded by people who worked at apple who started that company not sure there are a lot of things so really you're looking internally which i think is interesting also in terms of who they hire and who they promote like because part of your succession planning needs to be

to hire really really really good executive level people around you over the course of 10 years or more because that's who the next CEO is going to be and you better get a good one you better get the best one today's episode is brought to you by Linode with Linode you can instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the cloud and get everything up and running in seconds with your

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of that $20 credit. Our thanks to Linode for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. We have a report from Mark Gurman over at Bloomberg in regards to a software shakeup happening at Apple. Craig Federighi and Stacey Lysak were said to have held an internal meeting. Stacey Lysak, who's a name that I was not familiar with, is the Senior Director of Operating System Platforms.

That was what a Google search told me, Jason. So, good. LinkedIn is very useful for things like this. So apparently Apple are once again changing their approach when it comes to operating system software development and release after what has been no doubt a rocky release cycle this year is probably a nice way to put it. In a nutshell from this report, Apple are no longer

going to be allowing buggy features to appear in their daily test builds by default. So Apple's QA testers will be able to selectively enable features that are deemed to be unfinished and then see what impact they have on the system. One of the reasons for this is because over the summer, it turns out that Apple's testers were sometimes completely unable to test features or use the operating system at all because parts of the operating system were completely broken. Also, internally, Apple have a scale that they rate their problems at or their operating system builds are and how stable they are. Unsurprisingly, iOS 13 has been rated lower than iOS 12 in Apple's internal stability testing.

The new process has already begun because development of iOS 14 has begun. I assume that this meeting was the, like, you know, smashing the champagne against the wall kind of thing for iOS 14. I would assume. I was thinking of that a little more violently, and then I realized, oh, you mean like a boat.

Like a boat, not like a Federighi Super Mad. So this process has begun. Oh, did you see Greg smash the champagne bottle against the wall? He's very angry with us. So angry. He got in his hair and everything. He was so upset. The new process has already begun with the current development of iOS 14,

and they are apparently already pulling out features of iOS 14 to go into iOS 15, which is for some reason, according to Mark Gurman, being dubbed internally as iOS 14 plus one, which was just very weird. And so this is how they can focus on performance. So this all seems like you would have expected. I could have written this i love the idea by the way i love the idea that they are going to focus on stability and also introduce just as many features as they did this year that was something that it says in a report that it's going to be

comparable to ios 13 in features but they're going to focus on stability i mean and let's be honest that's great 12 had a bunch of stuff in it. And we know that 12 was a stability release, but it still had a bunch of stuff in it. But it may have been that 14 was going to be even more ambitious and they've pushed stuff to 15. So here's the challenge with all of this stuff is it's Apple internal. And while I know for a fact that there are people who listen to this who work at Apple. Hello. We love what you do. Why they don't talk to us about this stuff

and that's fine um but i will say we talk about it a lot it's a black box to a certain degree like how they do their processes and sometimes when we talk about things that are going wrong or we perceive as going wrong with apple product releases like the os bugs we had this debate we've had it here a couple of times which is like how, how do you fix this? And the answer is fix the processes internally, I guess. But like, we don't know what the processes are. We aren't a meeting, they identified some ways where it made it harder for them to test their software, specifically that the people who are relied on to test the software when it's in beta were unable to run the betas because of, you know, and they pulled that thread and they're like, well, why? And the answer is stuff gets checked in every day for the daily builds. That's really bad. And it doesn't work. And they're like,

maybe we could turn that off if it doesn't work and so then you could continue to use it and they followed that thread now is this the only thing they're doing maybe not probably not and we so rarely get any peek in at all that um i love this story just for that just the idea that that I want to hear about Apple recognizing issues with their process and adjusting their process. I don't know the details. I don't know if this will work or not, if it's a good idea or a bad idea. I have no idea about that.

But you like to hear it. You like to hear that they're trying to work it out. Playing the hits today. You love it. You know to love it. You like to hear that they're trying to work it out. Playing the hits today. You love it. You know to love it. Yeah. I figure we're in a constant TikTok now. I hope somebody doesn't create that upgrade references account this week because they are dead now.

Yeah, they got a lot of work cut out for them. Yeah. You just love to see it. I don't really have a lot to say on this. This seems like the inevitable thing that would have happened, right? I think it's cool tidbits about how they score everything. And that is a nice little barb that Gurman throws in where he's like, you know, they scored on 100 points stale in terms of stability.

So like this release, iOS 12, it got like an 85 or something like that. And then he says, it's not clear what score ios 13 received was it double digits yeah uh yeah yeah but i i think and and in terms of future stuff which grumman likes to report about like i think apple in the last couple years have shown they are willing to pull features out and punt them if they need to and that's great um he talks about punting them into ios but what they're calling you know plus one uh 14 plus one or whatever the code is uh azul plus one or i forget they've got a there's a a meaningless code name for it but um which he assumes is ios 15 and maybe it is because maybe he knows more than he's saying

there but i keep thinking what i want to see apple do next is not punt features they're already doing this a little bit but like not punt features straight away to ios 15 i mean obviously if it's just never going to happen that's fine but like i really would like to see them plan out features and spread them out over the year so that they could say, I know that's not entirely practical because they're starting to work on the OS now and it's not even the end of this year. But I would really like it to be structured where- They need to own it at WWDC because the last two years they've been doing this anyway. Right. Yeah, right. They've been having to delay stuff.

So they may as well just say some features will come throughout the year but these are the ones shipping in june you know yeah and i would i would also prefer them not to say look if it doesn't ship by december or january it's just not going to ship until beta in june and the following september i think that that is um no way to run a railroad that they they need to uh they need to try to even if there is the big tent pole in the summer they need to kind of spread out the rest of the of the feature rollout but anyway i do think it's interesting that they said feature on performance kick some things to ios 15 but also have the ability to to uh ship something meaningful in 14 um uh which is important because as an ipad

user i hear about things getting kicked out of ios 14 to ios 15 and it gives me a flashback to when there were a bunch of ios uh ipad features in ios what 12 that got kicked to 13 13 and then it created ipad os yeah what that was so let's talk about ios 14 a little bit. Yeah. You wrote a wishlist, which I can't believe you were able to compile. I did. I called, you know, so Phil Michaels, my editor at Tom's Guide, and I'm writing for them monthly now. He's great at suggesting, and I've worked with him for years. He's great at suggesting story ideas.

And he said, an iOS 14 wishlist. I'm like, wow. Well, I said, well, the moment iOS 13 ships, I suppose. But in the end, it's also kind of a, you know, iOS 13 aftermath. It's the, in the aftermath of 13, what, what didn't get addressed or didn't get addressed properly that I would love to see Apple prioritize next year. So it's, it's kind of that article. So it's, it's as much about iOS 13, um, missing things as it is about iOS 14 and 2020. So give me some of the headlines here. What would you like to see in iOS 14?

Well, number one on my list was stability, right? Which is just that TikTok thing that we were just talking about. And I think that I would like to see Apple... look, I would like to see Apple focus on stability all the time, right? But if it can't, then at least alternating releases where you introduce a bunch of new features and then you clean it all up, that's the next best thing. And I can't control, I'm not saying Apple, iOS 15, full of bugs, let's do it. iOS 15 full of bugs. Let's do it.

Like, I'm not saying that, but I am saying given iOS 13, it would be nice if I would be okay with them taking a little more time to kind of retrench a little bit, clean up the bugs, do the performance boost on older hardware things and just kind of like keep it rolling in that way because 13 was too bumpy

and it can't happen again. I completely agree. I would love to not have to focus so much on this as a thing. Just as a person talking about technology, I don't like to have to keep talking about the fact that X feature isn't working i much prefer when features work is more interesting to talk about things going well

than things going not well i find it's what i like to talk about most so like selfishly as as a technology focused podcaster i would much prefer there to be uh less bugs i think it's nicer that way sure um i had a bunch of stuff about shortcuts and and this is really my i mean federico talks about it way more than i do and matthew cassinelli does a lot of stuff about shortcuts but i care about shortcuts a lot and i care about you user automation a lot i've talked about it on this show a lot and i feel like shortcuts this is 2020 is like the i don't want to say make or break, but like it's a very important year for shortcuts because 2018 was rollout, right? The product was acquired.

2018, rolling it into official Apple version. Let's make it a part of this, right? Although it was very much just just workflow uh turned into shortcuts and there were some new features for the siri shortcuts and stuff like that but really those were kind of a different feature welded on and it was otherwise kind of just workflow which was great as a user workflow i was glad they didn't mess it up. 2019, we got a bunch of new features in shortcuts, which is great. But if you look at shortcuts, the list of things that could be done to improve it is enormous. It's got more potential than so many other parts of iOS.

Just so much stuff, because it's so new, so much more that they could do. And what I really want for 2020 and iOS 14 is I want them to keep their foot on the gas with shortcuts. Like there's so much more that they can do. And I made this point in the article, one of the great things about shortcuts is it gives you a release valve

because you can build shortcut connectivity and it frees Apple from having to actually make some features that are edge case features. And instead, you put in some effort to wire everything up to shortcuts and then let the users make the edge case features themselves. then let the users make the edge case features themselves, which I'm, you know, yes, I want folders and shortcuts and more organization and the ability to copy and paste different sections and debugging and all of those things. But I also just want Apple to extend shortcut stuff to more parts of the system and make it more powerful. And the example I gave is I would love to be able to say, you know, when I squeeze the stem on my AirPods Pro, instead of toggling transparency, what I wanted to do is toggle transparency, turn on transparency, and lower the volume of what's playing back. And then when I do it again, if transparency is on, I wanted to turn it off, go back to noise canceling, and then raise the volume again. That's a shortcut like i don't

need them to build a feature in the bluetooth sub menu of like some other modes for that squeezing on the stems of the airpods pro it's like ridiculous super fiddly they shouldn't do it it's bad but i want that feature so the answer is just extend it so that shortcuts can do that for me and if they and if And that's just one example. But that's what I want to see is I want the iOS development group to say, shortcuts is a part of what we are now. And like back in the old days with Apple Script and Apple Events on the Mac, say, you're not a good part of the system or an app if you don't tie into shortcuts.

And then let the users deal with it. Like, if you can do it, you can shortcuts it. It's a terrible phrase. But seriously, like, Apple is so used to on iOS, especially of like, if we don't build it, it can't happen. And I think that the response to that is, if you build a shortcut connection and walk away, unless it's, I mean, if it's a feature that most users want, you should build it as an explicit feature, right? But so much of this stuff is at the edges and it's the details.

And it's like, this is better handled through shortcuts and just build in shortcut access, more shortcut access everywhere. through shortcuts and just build in shortcut access, more shortcut access everywhere. And, you know, yes, I would like it to be more powerful and have support for a scripting language or command line sandbox or something like that. But like, I just, the, if you think about some areas of iOS where they've built so much and it's so functional, and then I look at shortcuts and think I could list like a hundred things that I wish shortcuts could do. Like there's so much possibility. There's so much potential that I just, I will be really disappointed if it feels like they kind of took their foot off the gas and said, you know, shortcuts is, is good for a while. Cause it's not, it's, it's good, but it could be a big win for users and for user automation if they kept pushing it. This stuff is all kind of customer focused.

Do you have anything more focused on developer tools? Well, yeah, I think developer tools has to be a big story at WWDC next year. This was a rough year, right? So it's like lots of bugs. But it's not just for users. It's for developers. Like they got they introduced the two different new methods of building apps, Mac Catalyst and SwiftUI. You've seen the result in developers like I mean, we I don't know about you, I expected this fall to see a whole lot of app updates supporting new features of iOS 13 and supporting Catalyst.

And for lots of the apps that I rely on, the developers, the message from the developers has been spent the summer working out the bugs in iOS 13, spending the fall looking at implementing iOS 13 new features. And as for Mac Catalyst, talk to me next year. And that's rough. That's rough. So I feel like making progress with the developer tools,

making Mac Catalyst better, progressing SwiftUI, and trying to make sure that developers get a more stable platform. Stability doesn't just benefit users in the fall. Stability during the summer benefits users because the developers are able to develop instead of getting frustrated by the development tools being in pieces and the betas being messed up, which is what happened this year. So I think that it benefits users in the end, but it benefits the developers for them. Another example of like, you did some new stuff,

don't walk away because that happens sometimes. Apple rolls out new stuff and it walks away and says, I'll get back to this in two or three years. And no, don't. No, no, it's not good enough.

Like you need to keep pushing on all of this stuff. They walk away. Like Catalyst is a great example. Like there's so many things if they listen to developers, there is a whole list of things that they could do to make Catalyst better. They walk away, like Catalyst is a great example. Like there's so many things, if they listen to developers, there is a whole list of things that they could do to make Catalyst better.

They're going to do that? And if they don't do that, what does that mean? Does that mean that Catalyst is never going to be better than it is and it's just kind of is what it is and they've walked away from it? SwiftUI, I fully expect for them to keep progressing because it's in its infancy,

but like all of this stuff is important. iPadOS is one of those things my that's my last big point um that i made in the article and that i can make here which is just what we said before about kicking features out of ios 14 to ios 15 like what we said last summer they named ipad os ipad os is a thing now. There will be an iPad OS 14, right? It can't have no new features. It can't have enhancements to features that matter to the iPad. By giving iPad OS its own name, it's Apple putting a chip down and saying, yes, this is also a thing we're working on. I don't know what I'm going to do with this chip now. Are they playing poker with it?

Is it Baccarat? I don't know. But it's them saying iPad is important too. You cannot go the next year and walk away from the iPad and do what you've done the last off years with iPad features and iOS, which is to kind of ignore them. So that's all of us who use the iPad are going to be watching very closely next year with 14 because we want to see forward motion on the iPad every year.

Yes. And it needs it. There's a whole, you and I can come up with a list. And it can be nerdy. We can come up with 20 things. Just pump files full of more features and we'll be happy, you know? Fix files, make the cursor support better.

You know, there's so many things they could do. Better keyboard support, keyboard shortcuts across the system, keyboard tie-ins with shortcuts. Like there's so many things, external display, you know, with app mirroring. There are so many things

that are there and they don't have to do them all because that's not possible, but they could pick some. But I really hope they do because it's going to be very frustrating if iPadOS gets introduced in 2019. And in 2020,

if the iPadOS update page is basically like, you get all the features the iPhone does. Right, because that goes against exactly what they said when they announced it. It's like, this is now one of our operating systems. And I want to take them at their word but me too i can't because of 2018 and 2016 i will at least say i have more faith in them this time than i did in 16 and 18 because they called it its own thing yeah i'm still nervous but i have more faith this time because they have given it a distinction like if you are actually legitimately calling it its own operating system at wwdc there

is always features for every operating system even tv os gets new stuff right so ipad os has to get new stuff as well as benefiting from whatever you introduce to the major iOS stack as it is. That would be not just my hope. That is my baseline assumption for what is acceptable as an iPad user. So we'll see. All right. Today's episode is brought to you by Moo, the online print and design company specializing in customizable business cards, postcards, stickers, and more for your business.

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for 15% off any order of $50 or more. Our thanks to Moo for their support of this show and RelayFM. Should we do some hashtag ask upgrade questions before we do our mic at the movies? It's a good idea. I had those lasers ready. I'm glad we got to use them. Brilliant. First one comes from

Jason. Not Jason. Yeah, another Jason. Not Jason. Another Jason. An Upgradian Jason. Who says, if you have the iPhone 11 battery case and use the Halide application, can you confirm for me that I know it won't launch Halide because it will launch Apple's camera app, but does the camera button

fire the shutter in Halide when you have it open? No, it doesn't. So the new camera the new uh smart battery case has a physical camera shutter button on it so this was a surprise to everybody you can press and hold the button and it will open the camera app and then once the camera app is open any press of that button physical button not even like a smushy button it's a clicky button it's a plastic button um will take photos when you open the highlight app which i did today and you press the button nothing happens if you press and hold the button then the camera app will open so no this is a pure apple camera app feature

wouldn't surprise me if there's an api for that so that camera apps will be able to add support for it later. Maybe. But it's good to know that right now Apple has shipped a feature that's only available on its accessory. And I also want to thank Upgrading and Jason for doing one of the things I asked at the beginning of the show, which is

just give us more of that sweet, sweet accessory talk. Accessory talk. Accessory talk, yeah yeah maybe that could be the segment just accessory talk of mike and jason yeah it's be like upstream or something you know i know that's what you want more segments i was gonna say sounds really boring too but okay yeah you want no accessories it's great money money money money yeah yeah is it money money where's the money money money coming from oh well well, we were doing Amazon referral links to all the accessories,

and people are going to be like, I want that, I want that, I want to get that, and then they're going to buy it, and we get money for it. Money, money, money. It's just a, yeah, it's a cash grab. Accessory Talk is brought to you by Logitech. Oh, man.

See, that's why you're in sales. Money, money, money. Howard says, I'm an owner of a mid-20 inch macbook pro i've been very very satisfied of it up until recently i've been taking a fair bit of 4k 60 frame per second video on my iphone 11 i've noticed that my mac cannot play the video without frequent short pauses is this to be expected i'm wondering if a a recent MacBook Air could maybe better handle this. Yeah, I don't know exactly what's going on here, but it feels very much

like either the 60 frames 4K is a lot of video. It's a lot of data. It's a lot of data there. So I don't know if it's the data not streaming off the hard drive fast enough or if decoding presumably HEVc at 4k

60 is uh it's failing or if it's transcoded on the mac to a different format and it's having trouble play that i'm regardless a five-year-old laptop not being able to play 4k 60 video um smoothly is not surprising and so so yes i'm pretty sure a retina macbook air would be able to handle that much better recent apple um laptops have ability to do hardware decoding of hevc i think which helps uh and uh they've all got ssds that are faster i think than they were back in 14 assuming assuming you've gotten SSD. So yeah, I think that this is an example where your iPhone's feature set

has outstripped your laptop's capabilities. That's a shame. That is a shame. Tech travels fast. Yep. Harry asked, do you think Apple will ever release a new product line under the i naming scheme?

A customer glanced at their website and the only products that have big Steve Jobs hits Do you think Apple will ever release a new product line under the iNaming scheme? A customer glanced at their website, and the only products that have are all big Steve Jobs hits, like the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. That was replaced with the Apple logo, which is very frustrating if you ever write anything down. It's Apple TV. What else have we got? Apple TV Plus. Apple Watch. There you go. That's the big one. To the point that even on Apple? Apple TV Plus. Apple Watch.

There you go. That's the big one. To the point that even on Apple's website, it just says Watch. I was surprised today. I was looking through the Apple's website while I was compiling some categories for the upgrades. And on the Watch page,

AirPods is listed there. I just thought it was a funny place to put it. AirPods goes everywhere. It's also on the iPad page, the iPhone page, everywhere. Put AirPods all over everything. I know it's compatible, but it just seemed like a funny top-level navigation thing. But no, I don't think the iNaming is ever coming back. No, I will only give one exception to that, which is I think that it's not impossible that a spinoff product of the iPhone or the iPad could get that name.

Okay. So I think it's unlikely because they could have called the HomePod the iPod, I guess, and they didn't. But like the one that I keep coming back to is if they made an iOS laptop, would they call it iBook? And I think maybe, probably not, but maybe because it couldn't be a MacBook, but it could be an iBook. It could also be like an iPad book, but that, you know, I don't know. Anyway, that's my only exception. And I think that's not very likely.

Otherwise, I don't think it's ever going to happen again it's over the i era is long over and the apple logo reigns yeah i think that they're done with that i mean i don't personally i don't really actually like the apple something branding because it's it's it's led to i think really to, I think, really unimaginative product naming. Like Apple Watch is just not fun. It's not fun, but it's a good name. But then everything is just named what it is. Music, TV, news. I don't know. It feels both boring and dystopian to me.

Wow. It's just like everything is apple something right like it's apple news apple music it just seems a bit like the one company that controls it all i don't know i just don't yeah i get it i get it i just i feel like if you're the most recognized brand in the world that leaning into that, probably not a bad decision. I 100% agree with that, and I know that's why they're doing it, but I still would love a little bit more. Jeremy asks, if we all now live in Dongletown and root for the Dongletown butterflies, upgradeyourwardrobe.com, where did everybody live previously? Was it Port City, somewhere else? Jeremy, there's always been a Dongletown.

Its population ebbs and flows, but since the first parallel port met the first RS-232 interface, there has always been a Dongletown. It started as a village that was an adapter village, but yes, Dongletown has always been with us as long as there's been technology and things that need to be adapted. Where do they come from

though, do you think? Well, the population ebbs and flows over time. There are often new members of Dongletown as new technologies are launched. The population grows and then over time that population will have had their fill of Dongletown

and will finally, you know, move on to elsewhere. But then the next like time moves on and more dongles are needed and then the population grows again. So they've just, the people of Dongletown have learned, the shopkeepers of Dongletown have learned to be flexible because the population does ebb and flow. They've got like whole that they they turn into garden centers when you know there's the usb hasn't changed in a while and then they turn them back into schools again when there's a new usb that's a true story there's a elementary school by uh by my house that was a garden center when we moved here and then it turned back way too specific way too specific yeah no there was there they sold plants and then uh like two years later it was back to being an elementary school

because they had more kids and then i'm later, it was back to being an elementary school because they had more kids. I'm pleased that that one wasn't just purely constructed from your brain because that would have been very esoteric. Amad asks, with the rumored 13.3 MacBook Pro going to a 14-inch... I wanted to say this. I think I heard this on ATP. Yeah.

The rumor is purely constructed by our own hopes and dreams. There is nothing to say that that laptop is going to get any bigger and I think that is worth pointing out at this point we keep talking about the possibility of the 13 going to a 14 MacBook Pro size but there is no way of knowing right now if that's the case we just assume it would naturally be that way but let's imagine as Ahmed is, that it does increase in size.

Do you think that the MacBook Air line could again split into two different sizes? Maybe there's a 12-inch and a 14-inch or something like that. What do you think? Do you think they may split the MacBook Air line up again? I have a hard time seeing it, but I do feel like it's possible that they would make an ultra-compact laptop. I feel like this is the thing we've been talking about as the arm macbook but it's hard to say like the macbook air is new and it is a surprise product they really thought that they had replaced

it and then they had to go back and basically make it i think um so i don't know i as a lover of small laptops i would love there to be something smaller. And I think it wouldn't be for everybody, which is why the 13-inch Air would continue. So I think it's possible. I wouldn't put money on it, but I feel like it's entirely possible Apple would make another ultra-compact laptop in the vein of the MacBook. And whether that's ARM and whether that's an iOS laptop or a Mac laptop. I think those are all kind of out there. But I yeah, I'm not confident enough to say that I would bet on it. I wonder if Apple will time the second seasons of these shows to line up with when the free accounts from 2019 products, right? So we all got our free account if we bought a product, when they expire, driving people to renew their subscriptions. What are your thoughts on their hardware and TV show synchronicity?

Wouldn't that be clever of them to say that just as your year of free Apple TV is waning, the premieres of those shows are going to be returning the ones that you liked and remembered uh wouldn't surprise me i think that the renews have the renewals happened largely because there is always a uh contractual moment where you need to either because what happens is the actors and the other production crew they're like those who are under contract are under contract with a renewal date. You can't keep them around forever and say like five years later. Because otherwise they're going to need another job, right? Yeah, right. Right.

You need to pick up their contract and then you pay them and they work again. And you can't keep them around forever and wait for one of them to become a star and then say, ha ha, now I'm reactivating your contract. It doesn't work like that. And because Apple TV ended up not launching until quite a ways after that they produced these shows, I think possibly later than Apple planned on launching it initially. I think the main reason this stuff got renewed

when it did was because they had to contractually. Morning Show was already a two a two series season commitment series commitment for the british um but uh i think uh they just had to go ahead and uh how long does it take for them to rack up season two of for all mankind it could be ready next fall so now that now that they've been renewed and they've done it and see and all of that so yeah that would be very clever i wouldn't put it past i reckon that's exactly when they're gonna do it like right just one year later here they come again and that's i mean that's how tv shows work that are released weekly is you play you premiere them and play them out and then the next year at the same time more or less you ideally you premiere

them and and roll them out again and and uh that would be perfect timing yeah i think so because it fits fits just well for them in a bunch of reasons, right? They have their biggest platform to promote the series on. In fact, I would say it would be smart if they premiered them before the year was out. Because since they're a weekly release, they would remind you that they're back. You would maybe get back into them. If you hadn't seen them yet, maybe you would binge the first season and then start watching the second season

and it would be another hook to get you you'd hit that brick wall of the renewal and you'd be like, alright. Also, by the way, everybody who's on the free is actually on auto-renew. So it's not quite the same as having to choose to renew. You have to choose

not to cancel. But it would be a good time if you're thinking, oh man, I should have canceled that. I should cancel it before they charge me for another month. If there was content on there, you're like, oh yeah, right, I did like that show. And then you stay. Like in theory, what they could do

is that when they show off the iPhone, like the first episodes are available today and it would give them that time, right? And then they can say like, here's the thing, go get it. Because it will line up, because everybody's trials didn't start until November. That's right. You're not getting a free trial next year, folks.

No. Well, probably not. Probably not. Maybe first-time customers, but I doubt it. Maybe. Alright, that is it for Hashtag Ask Upgrade, so now we're going to talk about Die Hard in the Mike at the Movie segment. But before we do that, I want to thank our final sponsor of this episode, and that is FreshBooks. If you ever send invoices to anybody, if you ever track expenses, if you

ever need to get paid online by your clients, you should be looking at FreshBooks because they have built the tools, the services, the features to drastically reduce the time it takes for you to get all that stuff done, to drastically reduce the frustration, to drastically reduce all of the chasing. That is what I love about FreshBooks. They have super simple cloud accounting software that will make it so easy for you to do all of these tasks. You can very easily automate late payment email reminders, so you don't need

to spend any time chasing payments, because that's just one of the wonderful things that FreshBooks does. Every time you send out an invoice, you can say, hey, after this period of time, just send that person a reminder, so then you don't have to. And you also never need to chase your clients down to see if they've opened your invoice, because you can see it right there. You can see whether they've seen it. You can see whether they've come back invoice because you can see it right there you can see whether they've seen it you can see where they come back to it it's so so simple i also love that with freshbooks you can save all of your line items and stuff so it's really really easy with just a couple of key clicks honestly that you can get an invoice sent out you can also automate invoices to just go out like if you're billing somebody the same amount every month, you can just set it up so it recurs.

All of this stuff and so much more can be yours if you go sign up for FreshBooks. And they're doing a 30-day free trial for listeners of this show. Just go to freshbooks.com slash upgrade. There's no credit card required to sign up. And when you do sign up, when they say, how did you hear about us?

Say, on the Upgrade podcast. That's 30 days free trial no credit card required at freshbooks.com upgrade our thanks to fresh books for their support of this show and relay fm time for mike at the movies die hard starting the holiday season off right jason snell we're a month away from christmas so what better time to talk about the classic christ movie, Die Hard. So, Jason, what makes Die Hard a Christmas movie? Well, the number one thing is probably that people like to annoy other people by calling it a Christmas movie when it is, in fact, an action movie.

But it is set on Christmas Eve, and the soundtrack is heavy with christmas music uh a christmas party factors in a uh santa hat and the phrase ho ho ho factors in the phrase is actually i have i now i have a machine gun ho ho ho but you know the the sentiment is there and uh yeah it's it's i think i think it's one of those things where is it a christmas movie in terms of content no but it is an action movie with christmas trappings that is a beloved movie that is fun to watch fun to re-watch and christmas especially if you don't like a lot of the christmas canon um it can you can bring this into your personal christmas canon and watch it at the holidays and uh see john mclean kill a bunch of terrorists it is not terrorists it is not actually terribly christmas canon it is a movie we watch every year at christmas because honestly like we had no qualms about home alone being a christmas movie last year

and home alone is as violent as i had in many ways there's a lot of similarities including broken glass and feet uh falling off high places it's all in there you know um but it's just because it's set at Christmas that's what makes it a Christmas movie uh this is also the maybe only time or the rare uh time where we have both seen and loved this movie, but I talked about it on Mike at the Movies. One of my most fond feelings, memories towards this movie is the coloring of this movie. It's also beautiful, the way everything is colored, just the general hues of this film I enjoy very much.

Especially the beginning, it's all kind of like sunsetty and everything's red right right because he's uh he's landed in la and they're doing their christmas party on what appears to be i mean they didn't do an early release for christmas eve which is kind of jerky but they did do a lavish christmas party most company christmas parties aren't done on christmas eve that is a little bit of a stretch maybe in the 80s that was there was a little mean i think to everybody you know families but it is december 24th in los angeles which means that that sunset that probably is like a four o'clock christmas party 4 35 o'clock it's well it's not that makes 9 p.m christmas party that makes sense because uh holly's still working, right?

Yes. And when the party's going on and they're like... So really it may have just been... There's a question of whether Nakatomi is a bad boss, is a bad company to work for. Mr. Takagi seems very nice, but at the same time they're making you stay and work on Christmas Eve instead of just sending you home.

Well, they did say as well there was a big deal done that day, right? So maybe really they're just celebrating the big deal. It's like a combination thing where they're like, we're just going to bring in stuff and have it be the holiday party is now going to be even more lavish. And then you go home, right? Then you get your Christmas bonus and you go home and it's all going to be over by about six

and then you can go back to your families. Unfortunately, surprise, Christmas terrorism terrorism that's a reference but yes so there was i'll explain this there was a on the low definition on the incomparable game show we did a round that was uh it's called loves a strange place and the idea there is what do american movie titles get translated into in other languages because they're not often they're often not direct translations and i think the swedish title of diehard is action skyscraper um but we we all had to come up with guesses about what a good mistranslated or weirdly translated title was and i think my favorite might have been surprise christmas terrorism although lonely christmas cop is also a good one uh so this movie

i mean i don't even really know how to describe it it's just you know it's like the the man pushed too far type idea right like yeah uh this is willis's character plays a New York cop whose wife is, they're currently separated. He's separated from his wife and he's flown to LA for this, like, will she? But they both go through at the beginning, which I think is interesting, a will she invite him? Will he accept to stay in the guest bedroom of where she's living with their kids?

But he's got a pretense of staying with someone else. But she's already told the nanny to make up the spare room for him. And so they're in a precarious situation where they've separated, but he's coming out to visit. And there's a real question about like are they gonna reconcile are they going to have it out and be done what what exactly is going to go on and it's hovering in the air uh as uh the you know the the bullets start flying and i love the whole 80s vibe of this movie. I love the way the Nakatomi offices look. Yeah.

I love the touchscreen company directory. That's a very fun scene because, like, you know, it's like, no way, no way is there a touchscreen. And I was like, I don't know. I think there was, like, some weird rubbish touchscreens. But that was clearly a non-working touchscreen because when you watch that scene every time bruce willis presses a key the seat like his body kind of moves a little bit like ah it's it's very funny like i was just kind of was paying notice that you could see him kind of like flashing a

little bit as they're stopping and bringing up a new screen. That was totally the kind of weird, expensive, and not necessary tech that you would have seen in the late 80s, where you're putting your finger on a CRT, and it's able, with these giant buttons, and you're able to do that rather than having a directory book or something. They've just got this electronic directory running on a PC with a touchscreen. I'm assuming similar technology to the Kindle touchscreen.

Yeah, I don't know whether that was optical or what it was, but yeah, they definitely, those kind of things existed. And of course, it serves a character point, right? Because he looks her up under his name and she's not listed. And then he

looks her up under her maiden name and she is. And this is how he finds out that she's going by Holly Gennaro and not Holly McClain, which is a super important character and plot point later, which is a little bit of economy that I like in this screenplay. It's saying something about the precariousness of their relationship while also leading to the point where there's confusion about once his once his identity comes out to hans and his gang they don't immediately connect her to him which is important for uh to plug a plot hole so it's uh it's good it's good yeah i mean this is one of those things where i could imagine that being put in after the first kind of reading or whatever you know or it's like yeah well but if we call if she's holly mcclain

and her name's on a door somewhere or like they're gonna work this out and it's like oh well what we can you know it's like a clever way of doing it i like could be which is reminds me like kind of like just the the identity thing one of my favorite funny parts of this movie i'm jumping way ahead now is when um mclean like john mclean's talking to the policeman al and they're just having all these conversations on the public like radio and that you know that like the terrorists are all listening to like their heartfelt and like communication that, you know, like I was saying,

like I shot a kid, right? Like it does the whole thing. And it's just like, they just let it happen, which I think is kind of funny. Most of the times I'll just let those two do what they're doing. We've got missiles to set up,

but they also have like, they're, they are speaking in code, right? Like throughout they, they are limited in what they know that it's an open channel. So even though they can share feelings on an open channel, you can't, there's something there. You can't encode your feelings on an open channel, something like that. They do, you know, it's like if you are who I think you are.

You know we're in a problem situation right now. And although he's grunting and groaning as he's removing glass from his feet, he's not saying, oh, I'm really injured and I can't walk because that would be giving them information that he doesn't want to give them. So they kind of have that kind of double talk. It's a good, it's great because they only, you know, Bruce Willis and Reginald Val Johnson are only in one scene together at the very end. That's it. Like, that's the whole, otherwise they're just, it actually reminds me a lot of um one of my favorites star trek 2 uh in two ways one is that those two characters are only on on screen together in the one scene like how kirk and con are never on the same set together but it's also

like the conversation between kirk and spock where they're speaking in code and it's like they know what they're communicating but they know that they're listening to them so they it's a it's a nice uh any movie that reminds me of star trek 2 is uh also made in the 80s so it's got a lot of things going for it this uh this movie features one of my least favorite uh corporate lines uh which is when uh so holly and and john are in the bathroom right and they're talking like he's washing up or whatever. And Holly's assistant comes in and says like, Mr. What's the guy's name? Is it Mr. No, it's not Mr.

Takagi. Takagi. He wants you to say something to the troops. Yeah. About like giving a speech. I hate like people in companies being referred to as troops.'t like that yeah and it totally happens you know um we watched this with julian and he uh he snorted at that line he's like troops troops and i said yeah that's a that's a corporate thing but he was he was rolling his eyes at it too and yeah that's totally which is worse the uh all the employees

were a family or you're my attack troops they're both pretty bad i think troops is worse because family whilst also terrible but it's a lie that's the thing is it's a lie well but troops is a lie too but like that's true there is at least with family there is something warm in that and like troops is like right you're in the army now yeah congratulations we're fighting everybody yeah and ellis as a character right the weasley co-worker oh he uh he's the worst right because he he embodies every 80s yuppie archetype right down to his uh multiple instances of uh snorting cocaine um and thinking he can make the best deal with the terrorists which doesn't go well for him um it's a statement yeah it doesn't that's that's actually a legitimately great scene because

uh you can you're reading it on the multiple levels of of hans gruber uh trying to glean information from this guy and he's also trying to glean information about the relationship that this guy has with mclean mclean knows exactly what is happening and ellis is completely oblivious and thinks that he can convince he's a great salesman he convinced anybody of anything and of course in the end ellis is dead at uh shot by gruber so it doesn't work out for him we should you've mentioned hans gruber how just just fantastic alan rickman is so good in this movie i mean i i there i i do love uh anything to do with alan rickman speaking in this is fun for me, because it's like at the very beginning of the movie, he pretends to have a slight German accent. Yes.

But it is gone very, very quickly. Well, it's always a little tiny bit German, I would say, but very, very little. I mean, very slight. But it is there. I like how wacky this character is, too. He doesn't get enough credit for being wacky. The whole, like, I read about him in Time magazine or whatever,

about the Asian pawn. Yeah, that's such a good line. And the fact that he is, the whole time he is pretending to be a left-wing terrorist, but in fact is just a robber. He's just stealing money because the terrorism thing is- He is an excellent- What is it?

You are a petty thief. I'm not a petty thief. I'm an excellent thief. Yeah, right? But I must have missed 60 minutes, right? There's all these kind of just- He has a sense of humor. And of course, then he pretends to be a scared American who works in the building briefly and that's really funny and the accent is so terrible i love it i

love how bad the accent is like it's so perfect for what's happening in that moment like yeah i love bill clay that's it because he's smart enough that's another example too where he's smart enough to have figured out that he needs to pose as somebody in case this happens. And it does. And then he has a name ready to go, which is like how smart Hans Gruber is. But, of course, it's not enough to fool Bruce Willis. He's already he's got enough clues there to know that it's not that he's actually a cop. You know, no one can fool Megacop.

Now he's got he's got clues. Right. This is this is why this movie is so good. And I'm sure there are other movies before it that are similar, but it says something that there's so many movies after that are literally just diehard in what blank. Because it's the idea of you take a hero and you close them off from the rest of the world

so that they don't have the resources to do this. They have to do it by themselves. Because we live in a big connected world and you can't... you know, most, most movies that's going to be the plot hole, right? Is why didn't they call for help? Like that's a friend of mine, their review of Iron Man three is, well, why didn't he call the Avengers? It's like, okay, well they were busy. Uh, but here, so you close them off and he doesn't even have shoes and he's got his one his one gun. And he's way outnumbered. But he has his skills. And then he kind of like keeps working the problem.

It's so great. And the fact that although many of the henchmen are lackeys and not very bright, his primary opponent is very smart. And they keep matching wits. And as the situation keeps escalating, the movie holds back enough that you always are thinking that um hans gruber is going to have another card to play and he keeps so like the the cops show up and you're like aha now we're getting somewhere and he's like good i needed them to show up and you're like what and what i really need is is cop level two i need the fbi i don't even want to be here yeah yeah which, which is very good. You mentioned the barefoot,

like that is so iconic, right? Like barefoot vest wearing, like that look is so iconic to this movie. And I love the fact that he doesn't have his shoes on. Yeah, no, he's desperate.

It's actually one of the reasons I live Indiana Jones is that he gets beat up and he makes mistakes and he, he, he's taken damage. He gets both of them. You know, they get shot at one point in their movies and they just got to keep, keep doing it.

And that what works about Indiana Jones, he's vulnerable. He's just trying really hard. You can see him exerting huge amounts of effort. And I mean, diehard is, it takes that to extremes, right?

Like he's bloody, he's beaten. He's he, at several points, he's like, he's, first off, he's confronted with a situation. He's like, oh, no way. This is ridiculous. And then as he's doing stuff, that's ridiculous. He's like screaming and growling and being like, ah, like he's not having a good time. He's not a robot. He's not a Terminator, right?

He's just this, this guy who has to survive and that gets you on his side and it makes you root for him it's just it's really good how many times you think bruce willis stubbed his toe drew in the film and in his movie i was thinking of that when i was watching this last night oh god this must have been grueling for him to film for that reason right like because he's in bare feet all the time all the time like just running up the metal staircase yeah must have hurt so bad because it's that metal that's got those little indentations in it right uh-huh like just all of that stuff and like they're building a film set he must have stepped on so many things like he must have legitimately hurt himself like and it's not like serious stuff but like at a point where there

must have been times when filming this movie when he must have been very unhappy right because it's like that is not a nice way to work right like in those circumstances you have no shoes no socks he's just running around with his bare feet like must have been pretty difficult to film this one i think like probably quite a bit of method acting going on there it's glass everywhere you know kind of been nice stepping on lego i'm sure at some point sure that's great that's a great part right when it's shooting out the glass which i i can't imagine any more bullets have ever been shot in a scene in a movie than the shoot the glass scene but isn't that isn't that good and that is another one of those things where it's like hans gruber is smart and and he's a he's dangerous he's a dangerous opponent for john mclean because he has good ideas that he expresses in movie german

and then translates immediately into english so the audience can understand i don't understand that part like why couldn't the german guy understand the germ maybe there's no german they're european european so maybe he couldn't remember if uh if he spoke german or he only spoke swedish or something like that so then he switches to english it's very funny that part it's funny that part but it is good though glass and i also like that whilst it's happening like mclean is like freaking out it's like so it's too much right like i like it like he even indicates like these are too many bullets yeah oh i forgot to mention something which is very uh late 80s early 90s uh hans gruber is using a file of facts at one point yes they were a 90s thing yes he's a very very organized uh robber right that's why he's so good at it most organized crime uh i love

the disdain for the fbi and their rules everyone's so mad that the fbi has a process right where he's like oh they're doing it by the terrorist playbook it's like yeah they probably should though right like there's gotta be a process come on right and that that's i mean that's the beauty of the plan right is that gruber knows the process and so he knows if i say that i'm a terrorist the fbi is going to come they're going to do the terrorist playbook that includes cutting the power and all these things it's like that's what i want i want the playbook although the fbi are not portrayed very well in this movie right when they're in the helicopter and it's like i'll probably lose 25 of the hostages that seems like a success

law enforcement is not portrayed because there's dwayne johnson who is or dwayne johnson dwayne something does the rock the lieutenant the lieutenant because it's johnson and johnson are the agents no relation uh but dwayne T. Robinson, right. He is a jerk. And it's very much like we're rooting for Al. But then this guy takes over and he's a stuffed shirt. He's like, oh, we're going to do it my way. And he has his guys go in and they're doing it badly.

And they send in the car. Send in the car. I love that. And they fire the it badly. And they send in the car. Send in the car. I love that. And they fire the missiles at it. It's amazing. And then the FBI guys come. And if I have a criticism of the movie is while it is, they're so broad. The FBI guys are so broad.

But at that point, it's funny because in this movie you're rooting for john mclean but against the fbi and the lapd jerks you're kind of rooting for hans gruber right you're kind of like oh he's smarter than them like you don't want hans gruber to win because you want mclean to win but when the cops come they're so bad uh and and it makes you want to see them fail just because they're bad at their jobs it's a weird line to walk where you actually kind of want the the good side uh to fail or at least see how they're going to fail a period of time the fbi is more of a villain in this movie than the villain in this movie. Yeah, because they're going to get people killed

and John McLean's not going to let them. So yes, at one point, John McLean has to save people, save the hostages from the FBI. Because, and it is, you know, technically it's he's saving them from the terrorists or the robbers because they've wired the building with C4,

but it's an action that's precipitated by the FBI. And then the FBI try to shoot Bruce Willis or the robbers because they've wired the building with c4 but it's an action that's precipitated by the fbi and then the fbi try to shoot bruce willis because he's trying to scare the people off the roof which he succeeds at doing um yeah yeah it's funny uh all i can say about the fbi guys is they're they're comic relief essentially like they're in it to blunder and have wacky dialogue and they're an important part of the plan the plot right like yeah sure and then you get that moment where where uh was it robert davi is like uh this is like saigon and the other guy his response i won't repeat but his

response is basically like how old do you think i am i wasn't in vietnam what are you talking about and then it's all really there so that when they blow up in the explosion and their helicopter crashes that Dwayne T. Robinson can say, we're going to need some more FBI guys, I guess. Which is a horrible line! It's so mean!

And then there's another villain we haven't even spoken about yet, Richard Thornburg. Oh yeah, that's right. The news guy who upsets everybody. That's right. Gets clocks in the face. That is so, I mean, that is

how you know that you are in an 80s movie. Is it Richard Thornburg's in it? Being a slimeball? Well, I mean, it's that. William Atherton, sorry. William Atherton yep if you can get william atherton as a villain in your movie you are doing great because he is the villain

real genius the ghostbusters and real genius are the two best examples of that but he's also great in this he's just awful and here he it's like who's who's the true villain the the terrorist robbers with the c4 who are killing people and blowing things up yeah yeah yeah okay all right they're the true villain but the tv news guy he's pretty bad too um it's just kind of funny like the imbalance there and and it's like do they need the social satire of the tv news guy and the two anchors and the guy who gets where helsinki is wrong and he insults him before he goes on the air and then they have to tell him he's on the air and like do they do they need that part of the movie other than for the plot point where it's revealed

that the kids are there and it leads alan rickman to realize that holly is john's wife like it's not a lot of the stuff with with uh william atherton is not necessary but it's great it's it adds a lot of flavor and color to the movie like there are a million ways that they could have had them find out about the uh about them being married but the fact that it was for thought of nobody inside of the building is a good thing, I think. Like that it's an external force. Not to get too highfalutin here, but I think that one of the things that this movie is about is about isolation. And it's not just about putting John McClane on his own in the building. But I would say it's about the fact that there's no one that he or Al can rely on because nobody's listening to them.

They know, but they are forced to go on their own because nobody else will help. And the media revealing information like that, I feel like is just yet another layer on top about how you are not going to get help from the outside world. They are only going to be a hindrance. The FBI guys, the TV news, the LAPD,

they are all against you, not because they hate you but because they aren't interested in listening uh to to what you need they just are going to do their own thing so it's even more isolating for john and al to have have that extra so the media is just another layer of not helping. Oh, this is also exemplified by the police dispatchers who pick up the radio signal earlier on in the movie. Oh, yeah. Isn't that great? Are you familiar with the phrase jobsworth? No. So it's a British phrase,

and the definition from the dictionary is the best way to describe this. A jobsworth, that is one word the word worth, w-o-r-t-h added to jobs, an official who upholds petty rules even at the expense of humanity or common sense it's a 911 dispatcher

who gets a call saying people are being shot first off, in modern America people being shot in an office building would not be viewed. That was a moment where I was like, Oh yeah, 1988. You'd,

you'd be like, Oh, this seems like a prank call. And today you'd be like, Oh, people being shot in an office building. Yeah. That happens all the time.

Right. Uh, but her, she's so passive aggressive about it. Like she doesn't even want to alert a single car she has to work up to alerting a single car one patrol car to go check it out

to be driven by Al who is using a private call line or whatever which if he knows it and knows how to access it could indicate something it's a great moment but you're right yes that's again kind of and knows how to access it could indicate something. I don't know. It's a great moment.

But you're right. Yes. Again, kind of. I mean, it's good because it's me against the world and I'm alone and nothing is helping and it just keeps getting reinforced, right?

Like Die Hard isn't just about his isolation. Wow. I'm going to blow your mind. No, this is too much. It's not just about his isolation in the building. It's about his isolation in society and in the world right he's separated from his wife he the the authorities can't help him other than al who is himself an isolated man like and you could argue that that hans gruber is isolated too and he's playing the other side of the chessboard there but like this movie if you

watch it closely it is really isolating john mclean he is on an island in the middle of a lake on the island where there's another little island like he is all the way by himself as by himself as he could be so what you mean is perfect christmas movie it is what could be better i love this movie now i have a machine gun genuinely excellent one of the all-time great action movies. And it's just a fantastic movie to have a reason to watch every year, which is one of the reasons why

I and many others consider Die Hard a Christmas movie because it gives us that excuse to watch Die Hard. Die Hard 2, I also really enjoy it. And that's kind of the limit I go to with Die Hard. Yes, we just did a sequels draft on the incomparable and one of the ones that i mentioned was you just after die hard 2 there's stop that's no more die hards after that um uh you mentioned in our notes here like the classic scene where uh where hans gruber falls out of the window at the end where it's it's actually if you

watch it's amazing there is this line of dialogue early in the movie, right when John gets to the tower, where they're talking about how she's got her new watch that she should show John, and it's a Rolex and all of that. And it's only there so that at the end, they have her watch, which he's grabbing onto, and they undo it, and he falls to his death.

That's why it's there. It's just in there to hang a lantern on. Holly has a watch, which is necessary. If anything, the only thing that could have made that moment better is if Hans Gruber had given her that watch. Oh. But for those who don't know the trivia, it is an amazing moment.

They shot it in the shot from above looking down at Alan Rickman as he's falling. Obviously, he's in front of a green screen and there's a pillow at the bottom, but he's dropping far enough that you can see him fall away. And they shot that scene in slow motion. And I'll come back to it in a second because then it cuts to a person falling and flailing against the side of a building. and flailing uh against the side of a building and i believe that may still be the record for the longest fall for a by a stunt person in a movie oh my god um because that they're they actually did a person for like not that i don't know how many stories it actually was that they shot of that and and there's movie magic there but but like that is a person flailing and falling into a gigantic air mattress thing with I don't even know what, how many.

So that's a true story. That was like a record-setting stunt fall. But the Alan Rickman face is so amazing when he starts to fall to his death. And the story behind it, and I don't know if this is apocryphal, I think it's real, is that they said, okay, Alan, we're going to drop you gonna drop you on three one two and they dropped him and that's why he looks so surprised because they dropped him right they dropped him before they said they were gonna drop him and uh it gives you that extra moment of like and uh in slow motion especially you know acting there's some things with acting I think that you can get away with in full speed but in slow motion you really

are analyzing every single tiny moment so you want it to be fully on and it's such a great moment to cap it off and we haven't even mentioned Argyle the limo driver which who only factors into the plot very tangentially at the end when he runs his car into the van that has Theo in it, the safecracker. Who, by the way, I think is the only person who survives from the whole terrorist group, assuming he doesn't die by having his car run into in the garage by Argyle. I think he might be the only terrorist robber guy in the party who survives it.

Maybe not. Somebody can do the math about about who where they all die i'm sure somebody has done that but i think he might arguably still be alive but argyle is great as comic relief because and honestly i talk about argyle it's really a double act right it's argyle and the giant stuffed bear that's in the back of the limo and the way they frame it where it's like Argyle's there and the bear is in the rear view mirror and because McClane brought the bear for his daughter. And it's funny that the bear is always in the background. And then finally, there's that shot where Argyle looks at the bear in the mirror and is like, shut up or whatever.

It's like the bear is judging you, Argyle, as you sit there locked in the bottom of the building. I love it. Again, is Argyle's presence in the movie necessary? No, but it's great. Wonderful movie. Yeah. Big fan. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade.

If you'd like to find our show notes for this week, go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 273. Thanks to Smile, Linode, Moo, and FreshBooks for their support of this show. You can find Jason online at sixcolors.com, theincomparable.com, and he's at jsnall on Twitter. I'm at imike, I-M-Y-K-E.

We both host many shows here at RelayFM. Go to relay.fm slash shows and probably find something new if you're looking for a new podcast in your life. We'll be back next time. Thanks so much for listening. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Stahl. Ho, ho, ho. Now I have a machine gun.