Upgrade - 28: Two Men in a Very Tiny Room

Episode Date: March 23, 2015

This week Jason and Myke are live and in person in London! They discuss the rumours of the Apple TV, what tech makes the cut for travelling, and whether Jason might be joining the iPhone 6 Plus club.

Live from London and from RelayFM, this is Upgrade, episode number 28. Today's show is brought to you by our friends at Harry's, an exceptional shave at a fraction of the price, Hover, simplified domain management, and MailRoute, a secure, hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam. My name is Mike Hurley, and today I have the absolute pleasure of being joined across the table by Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Mike. Hi, Jason.

I'm right here to shake hands. Yeah, look at that. We are touching. We are both live in London. Jason is here as we are preparing. This is the first of two live and in-person episodes that we're going to be doing of our lovely show. We are ensconced in a very small office. Yes.

Somewhere in a secret location in London. High above London. We are towering over London town. So we have an interesting setup for today. I'm getting over a cold, Jason. I'm sorry if you, I'll try and stay clear of you for as much as I possibly can. You tell me that after we've shaken hands. And hugged.

We hugged. Yeah, we did. Casey insisted that you give me a slightly awkward hug, which is fantastic. Indeed. I appreciate that. Extra long, extra awkward. And we're sitting here across from each other. Jason has a beautiful sticker on his MacBook Air.

Yeah, the six-color rainbow Apple. I got that when I started six colors. Also, I realized we had three Apple laptops in our house, and to tell them apart was hard. So now we ordered stickers for everybody, and now we can tell them all apart. My wife has a knitting pattern. I have the six-color rainbow Apple,

and my son has a TARDIS from popular English television program MME, Doctor Who. Doctor Whom. Yeah, Doctor Whom in the yes in that case so we have an action-packed show we do always we do um should we start off with your favorite topic I wonder if we're not as energetic as we normally would be because we're not shouting into a microphone but actually shouting at another human being it's very peculiar it's it's when you when you record on your own all of the time just looking at a computer it's a very very different experience because plus there's so many variables that change i don't have my own microphone i can't hear my own voice like there's all of these things change but this you know we work with what we've got it's going to be a very

different but very exciting episode yes yes in our in in our special... Also, we've come together to make this podcast. Technically, I provided two table microphones. You provided your USB interface. It's a perfect match. This is a meeting of the minds. Yes. And we'll do this.

And if this fails, we'll just try it again next week. Right. Should we do some follow-up? Yes, please. I wanted to... We got some feedback about Apple TV and there was a story about Apple TV. And since we talked about it, I thought we would talk about it some more. John Pekowski at BuzzFeed, formerly of D, all things D.

And then in between he was some – was he somewhere else? I don't know. He's moved around a little bit. Was he at the Times, the Journal or something like that? Yeah, maybe. Maybe so. But anyway, now he's – So he's part of this new San Francisco office, right?

Yeah, Matt Honan, I believe, hired him for the BuzzFeed San Francisco Bureau. I do enjoy some of the crazy stuff on BuzzFeed, but I feel like I can't take it seriously when I go there to read serious stuff. It is weird when you see all the subheads from a serious bit of Apple Scoop and it's the same subheads that you would use to have like you know eight things you didn't know about where honey comes from take this quiz about how much of a b you are yeah exactly yeah um so anyway john pakowski is working for buzzfeed now along with matt honan who is uh who a friend i don't know if he's a friend of the show but he used to work he used to work for me at Macworld. And they're doing some great work over there. And John Pekowski's sources are excellent.

And he says there will be a new Apple TV. It will launch at WWDC. There's a reason why on Apple's site, it says Apple TV starts at $69. I think that's just a mistake. Well, he says it's not, I mean, it may be, but he says, look, I'm also saying they're going to have it at WWDC. And he had some details.

He said it's going to have an A8 processor or a variant of the same. It's going to have a dramatic increase in onboard storage to accompany downloadable apps from an app store well beyond the 8 gigabytes that's in the current device, and an improved operating system, he says, that will support Siri control of Apple TV and enable it remotely for a selection of HomeKit-enabled home automation devices. So a lot of these rumors have been rolled together into this report where he's confirming it and saying it'll happen at WWDC. It's going to have a new remote control. It'll have Siri support, perhaps even on the remote control.

It'll have app support. You've got to wonder about game, the ability to play games on it. This may be the piece of hardware that some people have said has been floating around at Apple for a couple of years, just waiting for approval to launch it. A rumor like this may be a bit critical,

but a rumor like this, it seems like it's just an easy one to do because he's basically taking all of the rumors and saying this is going to happen. So even if only like 75% of it, it's like, well it right well and in many ways i think all he has to do is get a good source to confirm say say you know look this is the stuff that that is floating out there and get somebody to say yes that's accurate and it'll happen in june and that may be that may be the case here but um this product if if if the rumors are true and the the rumblings that i've heard are true that this has been floating around for a couple of years, then that's interesting too because that's – of course stuff is going to leak, especially if you leave a project and a year later it's still not out.

I mean I think people might be more – when we were talking about rumors, that's one vector for rumors I think is somebody who's left a project and is frustrated maybe that their work has not come to anything and they haven't released it. But John Pekowski, I think the big nugget here is he says it's going to happen and it's going to happen at WWDC. And Mark Gurman had a different report a little bit earlier that was a little vaguer about when it was going to happen. But these seem to be in line that they their sources seem to be quite similar um what do you think a product like this does for apple because this is like a hot like is it would it be uh a good idea to launch another platform now when they've just announced the watch platform i don't know i mean i imagine this is all going to be quite familiar to ios developers and these are all going to be in the family and whether this is in fact we

theorized a few years ago there were a bunch of people on the internet i don't say we like you and me but there there were a lot of people saying the idea of apple tv apps might even be with the apple tv as kind of a child to an iOS device, which is very much what the Apple Watch actually is. But I don't know. I think that they'll all be similar things. iOS developers should feel very familiar with them. And probably the people focused on watch apps are probably in a very different category most of the time

from the people who would be building Apple TV apps. Those don't seem to have a lot of overlap. I'm interested to try and understand what kind of apps people would make that would go beyond stuff like just taking advantage of AirPlay and things like that. Do you think that people would make games for this device, then Apple needs it? Would they think about a controller if that was the case? I think, I mean, there were rumors that this would be you know a device that would have an optional controller and amazon has sort of done that and roku has done that where there's kind of a generic controller and then there's like a premium controller amazon's premium controller

has the microphone you get that with the fire tv but you don't get it with a fire stick you have to buy it separately and roku has a blow a bluetooth blowtooth what is bluetooth it has a bluetooth remote and a and a blowfish that comes with it as well um a bluetooth remote with a motion sensor in it so you can play i don't know angry birds or it's the one that they always talk about i think that may be the they put a lot of money into buying angry birds getting it developed on on roku so now they're going to promote it but um i could see that i could also see apple saying look for anything beyond the most basic interaction use an ios device i could see that too yep yeah and that's what you know a real place the third part is to create like really really nice looking controllers you know they may have like a made for

apple tv type thing like they have made for iphone and stuff like that it's interesting i mean as i said in my i just think it's it's it would be an interesting choice to have it now when there really should be a lot of focus even at wwdc for the walk right because that's i assume when we're going to see this is what watch apps will be right although the watch that's true that's true what we've seen so far with watch Although the watch, that's true. That's true. What we've seen so far with WatchKit is the stuff that's the very basic stuff.

So if they're going to roll out how to write proper watch apps at WWDC and how to write Apple TV apps, that is more stuff. But then again, what better place to do it than WWDC? It's the venue. It is the venue. And again, maybe there's not as much overlap as you'd think because I'm trying to think of the kinds of things, kinds of apps that would be great on Apple TV and its media apps and games.

And those are not probably what you want to see on the watch. That's a good point. Yep, definitely. So maybe this is something for everyone. You know, a little bit of this. Watch people over here.. Watch people over here. Apple TV people over here. You might get like a West Side Story kind of thing where they're fighting.

We're not going to sing that whole song because we don't want to pay the royalties for that. Upgradian Bob gave some feedback that I wanted to read, which is similar. He references the John Pekowski story and says, I'm sure you'll be talking about the Apple TV future this week. Upgrading Bob, you may have made this happen. But I have a question about the $69 current model. If one were looking for a way to stream music to a stereo or an additional stereo in one's house, the typical answer is Airport Express at $99. But didn't Apple just make it it 30 cheaper to do the same thing with apple tv that's an interesting idea um but is um apple tv's ports doesn't apple tv just do hdmi and like optical out does it have a mini jack on it i think so i don't think it does and i i think

and i think that's the issue is that there's a standard audio mini jack on the back of the Airport Express, and all that's on the back of the Apple TV is optical audio, HDMI, and that USB port that's just for tethered beta updates. Basically, it's not in use for regular stuff. not in use for regular stuff so so if you had an audio something that took optical audio out that toss link connector then yes you could you could use apple tv and it would probably work it's hdmi optical audio yeah ethernet ir micro usb but no no mini jack for audio which is what the airport express does i agree it's a little weird that the airport express is is um is 99 and the apple tv is 69 but that's that's the way it is i have just found out that apple puts the apple tv under the ipod section of the website which is a really weird place for it to live that's a bad neighborhood to live in yeah that's like living on the edge of

a cliff shuffle nano i'd forgotten that this nano even existed oh yeah the ipod touch apple tv and accessories hmm well maybe maybe that would be a sign when the Apple TV has truly left hobby status, is that it gets its own navigation on the Apple website. Yep. Store, Mac, iPhone, watch, TV, iPad, iPod. iPod, yeah. I don't know. I wouldn't buy any real estate in the iPod section, right?

I'm so surprised that a lot of these products exist exist and i wonder what the point is of them now like this ipod touch it's what iphone 5 it's the iphone 5 right that's what the internals of it is that it maybe maybe so this is the one that john syracusa yeah had before he he got his iphone 6 so So is it even iPhone 5 spec or is it like a 4S? I think the screen, like it's an iPhone 5 size. Oh yeah, yeah. But the processor in it, I don't think is even iPhone 5 processor. I could be wrong about that.

It's a, I'm looking at the page. We are diving deep today. I'm sure the chat room are probably already telling us exactly all the specs. I should go there. Yes, chat room says it's an A5 which was is that four is that the iphone 4 so normally we would have we would have all of our uh yep well we're iphone 4s yes neil ash in the chat room is saying it's the iphone 4s don't lie to us neil ash we're trusting we're putting a lot of trust in you

right now yeah so that's really interesting that this product still does exist to me. I find it a very peculiar thing. I know that it's kind of like if it's sitting there and you sell 100,000 of them a year, then it's 100,000 products sold. Just like the iPod Classic, right? It's easy to make. It's cheap to make. People still buy them. You're not putting any effort into it.

But at some point, this is the – I mean the argument here is that at some point, you know, this is the, I mean, the argument here is that at some point you could make it go away. And although some people would complain about it, I think Apple would say, look, if you want something in your pocket, buy a phone. If you want a lower cost iOS device, buy an iPad mini. Yeah, because $199 for an iPod touch and $249 for an iPad mini, like the starting iPad mini.

But at that point, you know, if you think who are you buying them for and it's probably kids maybe an ipad mini is better they're both for an a5 chips that's also an a5 chip that's also also something that should probably be killed killed yeah um oh anyway um so thank you upgrading bob for suggesting that we talk about the apple tv and also talk about uh mysterious products on Apple's website in the dead zone. The deep depths of the iPod category. That's right.

Some might say that a giant monster lives deep in the iPod category. But very few bear to venture in there. Ahoy, iPod. No. We have a cheese vertical update. Naturally you have you had any more cheese uh i have my my girlfriend is is plowing through the manchego oh she is enjoying it very much so uh i would like to pass along my thanks oh good she's well i i assume that there will now be more manchego in our house than ever before. Excellent. That's good to hear.

We also got some good feedback from listener Brandon. He said, thank you to me for your work as an ambassador of fine dairy. You should get a business card. When I come into Heathrow, I should say I am an ambassador of fine dairy. What are you here for, sir? I'm here to spread the good word of sheep cheese. Yes. And Brandon says, I just had my first hit of Manchego. Wow.

Sheep juice is delicious. I like hit. He's called it a hit. Like a dealer. So plus 10 for hit, minus 10 for sheep juice. Just to be clear, if you're sleep drinking or eating sheep juice you are not having cheese that is some that is another part of the sheep that you should not know you should not squeeze that sheep anyway listener listener listener eric also said uh he sent on a link that

we can put in the show notes to a podcast called gastropod which did an episode called say cheese which a listener eric recommended and said it's the ultimate cheese vertical an entire podcast in the inquisitive style wow save i'll i'll have to give that a listen to find out more about cheese including apparently that cheddar is a place in england where cheddar is from this is this is what we learn these are the important facts you will only find on upgrade so that Cheddar is a place in England where Cheddar is from. This is what we learn. These are the important facts you will only find on Upgrade. So she's vertical. Before we go on, Mike, I wanted to also give you a report from where I'm staying while I'm in London, my friend Simon's house.

Simon and Julie and their daughter Lexi are taking care of me. And this morning I got up and fought the jet lag. And they have a little, up at the very top of their house where their guest room is, they have a little tiny shower. And I went in there and then I shaved the smooth face you see here. And one of those comforting things, I'm thousands of miles away from home, but you know what I had with me? Please tell me.

I had the delightful shaving lotion from Harry's a good friend at Harry's who helped and support this episode oh we do love Harry's they are the best and you know as as Jason said when you're away from home there are sometimes the little comforts that you need and Harry's is definitely one of those little comforts because shaving can be difficult it can be uncomfortable it can cause nicks cuts scrapes so much more and also it's expensive we are buying these blades you know if you really want to get a good shave you have to replace your blades frequently and that can be extremely expensive but that's what harry's they are out there to tackle harry's make their own blades they went and found an incredible factory in germany who are absolute experts at

crafting these beautiful razor blades and they decided that they needed them they needed to make blades they went and found an incredible factory in germany who are absolute experts at crafting these beautiful razor blades and they decided that they needed them they needed to make sure they could always get these blades because they'd found the perfect ones so they purchased the factory in germany and this allows them to offer an extremely high quality shave at half the price of other big branded blades because they own the whole stack harry's will ship for free to your front doorstep and they have an incredible deal for their starter set which is just 15 it can get you a razor moisturizing shave cream or foaming shave gel and three razor blades on average a harry's shaver saves 150 each year because they use their harry's blades i love the way that harry's razors look

jason loves their products as well they they really care about making your face feel good their stuff smells great um uh my girlfriend has now stolen my harry's razor wow yeah because she so we okay cheese and uh the harry's razor now she's taken over she has immaculate taste is what i'm saying she was unhappy we were talking about it. She was unhappy with her razor blades. So I said,

well, why don't you try this one? And she is now very happy with the Harry's set that she has now stolen from me, which is great. I mean, I love the way it looks. It's got a great classic style. Their products are just so great.

I'm a big fan of their stuff. They've got a really nice brand that I like and it kind of, it's very cool and retro. Harry's are a great company. You should go check them out. If you want a clean, close, comfortable shave then you should be going and checking out Harry's.

Go to harrys.com right now and they will give you $5 off if you use the coupon code UPGRADE with your first purchase. That's h-a-r-r-y-s dot com and coupon code UPGRADE to get $5 off your first purchase to start shaving better today. Thank you so much to Harry's for their support

of Upgrade, live from London. Doing this live, I keep waiting for us to finish things and having like an audience. But there's no, we're live before nobody. Live before a chat room. The chat room is always there with us. They're always our studio audience. There is a large chat room audience today. This is one of

the, looking at our statistics, Jason, this is one of the largest live listener audiences we've had. Well, we could – we're also a little earlier than usual because I usually – we usually do this at 11 a.m. Pacific time. Yes. Which is, what, 7 p.m.? Most of the year it's 7 p.m. Yes, most of the year it's 7 p.m. We're in that weird time now where it's different. The three weeks of it not being correct for anybody.

Yeah, yeah. But so we're a little bit earlier than that and maybe people are happy about that. I could do this podcast earlier in the day, but I don't know if Monday morning – I don't know if I would be at my best at 8 or 9 in the morning on a Monday morning. I don't need you to do that. I don't know if I would be at my best at 8 or 9 in the morning on a Monday morning. I don't need you to do that. I think 11. I'm sufficiently caffeinated, and I've had a chance to go through our notes and all of that, which if we did it earlier, I think I'd have to do it on Sunday night. I don't want to do that.

So I wanted to talk to you today about your technology life when you travel. Yeah. Because I always find this interesting. It's tropical. Excellent topic. Did you know I'm traveling now? Really? Because this interests me

because I like to understand the way that people deal with these things. Because plus also for the first time, me and you, this is the first time that you've traveled that me and you have been in so much contact because now we do the show. Right.

And the last few days you have been on edge, I think is probably the best way to put it. Well, on Friday in the relay Slack room, I believe at one point I posted something that was just the word travel stress in all capital letters with spaces in between them. Travel stress in all capital letters with spaces in between them. And if I could remember how to get that ASCII art picture of the guy jumping out of a window, that's what I would have done. Stephen Hackett is going to immediately send you his text expander. Yes, please do because he uses that a lot too because that's what I was feeling. And it was, you know, all last week was super stressful for me. And I know some people get really stressed out when they travel and sometimes i do too but for this this time all the stress was before the trip i felt like once i got here i know my way around london i've been here so many times now this is

like my fifth or sixth trip to london right since 2000 before 2000 i had never been outside of north america and um but since then i've been here a bunch. Um, and so I know my way around the tube and I have an oyster card and I, it's all, it's all good. But last week I was sitting there thinking I have this huge stack of things that I have to get done before I go. And so as the week progressed and I was not, I felt like my pace was not sufficient to get everything done before I went. You know, it just amped up the stress. I had a bunch of stuff that I had agreed to do in the evenings last week because I couldn't agree to doing it the following two weeks. So I ended up with four of the five nights.

I had an evening engagement of some sort. I had a podcast. I had to teach a class. I had to speak at a user group. And I had a board meeting for the non-profit that i'm on the national novel writing month board and so four out of the five nights i also couldn't these i was so busy last week that i felt like this is the kind of week where i could work go back to work after dinner and work through the evening and in order to get it done and i

didn't have the evenings either is this do you think that this stress is different this time because there's of your work situation has changed partially i think i mean it's definitely true that um when i would travel before even if it was a business trip i would delegate to people and and not have to worry about it as much and And now one of the facts of being on my own is that I need to make the arrangements and my ability to delegate is limited. I did actually have a nice conversation with Dan Morin, who I believe is actually listening to us live, saying, hey, Dan, can you look in on the website for me

just because I don't know how constant my focus will be. I'm going to be traveling internationally. I've got a bunch of trips. I did – I mean I wrote two or three things this morning. But tomorrow I'm hoping to walk around London a little bit and so I'm going to be a little less attentive. So yeah, some of that is there that I've got responsibilities that – I have responsibilities before but I also had a team that I could say, can you watch this for the next week? And I, I don't, I don't have so much of that now, you know, that my book chapters that I'm working on and blog posts that I'm doing and, and, uh, all of that is stuff that I, I have to take care of myself. So I think, I think that

was, I think that was part of it. Um, you know, but in the end, there's a, there's a good end to the story, which is in the end, I feel like I did end up doing everything I needed to do before I went. I didn't defer anything or punt anything. I wrote the chapter that I needed to write, uh, for the book that I'm working on. Um, it's a funny thing. I'm, I'm writing a, uh, an ebook for tidbits about photos, the photos app, which is great. I'm learning a lot about the photos app, but one, one of the, one of the things, and it's, it's pretty good, although Aperture users, I think, are going to hate it. But iPhoto users will like it. But so Tanya Angst, who is the series editor for those books, we agreed to a schedule. And I said, I've got two weeks that I'm going to be traveling

internationally. So we need to work around that. And they said that was fine. And then she sent an email early in the week and said, so here's what i'm thinking we want to do to move the schedule around a little bit in order to get a first version of the book out sooner and i looked at it and she was sort of assuming that i'd be writing it for the next two weeks and i i wrote back and i said one problem with this um i'm not going to be around and and and it was nice because she had that moment where she's like oh I forgot you were traveling so it's all okay but in order to fulfill the basic level of what this plan was that she

had I did need to do some stuff that I had initially expected not to have to do until after I got back I had to do this week and that was what I think put my stress level over the edge but in the end I wrote the chapter I needed to write on Saturday my wife and I took a walk for an hour or two we came put my stress level over the edge. But in the end, I wrote the chapter I needed to write on Saturday.

My wife and I took a walk for an hour or two. We came back. I was already packed at that point. I packed my suitcase on Saturday morning. And my flight was at 9 p.m., which was actually great because I was already getting tired when I got on. And then I was able to sort of doze on the plane. And then the stress was gone because then I was in the air and it was all over but that that preparing for it and figuring out what to pack including what technology to pack that was all balled up in that in that stress that just kept elevating throughout the whole week until on friday i shouted in the relay chat room travel stress i want to get to the technology but there isn't there is an interesting part because i'm feeling this because on friday i am away for two weeks yes right and you're you're

doing the multiple stop uh travel just like i am and there's an interesting thing where it's like even though things are getting taken care of because it's yours now it's different to when you worked somewhere because it was like if something went wrong it's like well someone's going to fix it right and ultimately it doesn't affect me if something happens because i'm not there but now if something goes wrong and i'm not there it ultimately affects me right i mean that adds a different you do have steven yes and you do have your your co-host like steven's taking over a lot of the responsibilities which i love him for uh but it's still it's like this other thing where it's like ah but it's you know if things go a bit awry like if something pops up and i have that for me i have that like low level anxiety at

all times it's like i need to be connected because i there are there's going to be parts of my two week trip where i will not be connected and that's going to be a really interesting way to do things i hope you weren't bitten by a vampire during those times we will see i am going to i'm going to romania for a week as well so that's good we're traveling around so i i expect that parts of the mountains will not have accurate cell coverage uh so we'll see we'll see what happens so let's get to the technology they bring with you yes what do you what have you got and how do you make those decisions what what makes the cut you know the big thing that that um did you bring your eye on that i i alas i did not the that, uh, that I stressed out about was actually

about audio because we have these two episodes that we're, that we're recording and I want to record a clockwise when we're in Ireland as well, uh, which hopefully you will be on. Um, and, and so I had that moment of thinking, you know, what, what should I bring? I've got two table mics. Should I bring my USB thing? Should I bring my recorder, which is an SD card recorder that is also its own microphone, so that gives me a third microphone for a tabletop situation? And I stressed out about that for a while. And in the end, I thought that I would just bring the recorder, which can double as a USB audio input if I need to. can double as a USB audio input if I need to. And then I thought, oh, I can ask Mike to bring his USB thing to the office in London,

and that's what we're using now. So it all actually all worked out because we teamed up, and that made it a lot better. So I stressed out about that. I have my MacBook Air, so bringing that was not a big deal except for the fact that, and we talked about this briefly when I was traveling over the holidays, I don't have one computer anymore. And so I had that moment of, I did a lot of stressing out because of files I didn't want to bring with me, not just because of the work, but because of the sizes, like the Total Party Kill project is like 10 gigabytes. And I thought on my little MacBook Air SSD it turns out I do have room and and I'm happy that I've already edited next week's episode because I don't have to do that while I'm here

but I was also trying to minimize the stuff that I was copying because on Saturday afternoon I ended up copying all the projects that I that I know I need to work on next weekend's incomparable and the following weekend's incomparable I need to edit while i'm here and so i brought those files with me so some of it was that of making sure that um that the apps that i had on the laptop which i hadn't opened since the apple event making sure they were all updated and it turned out that i needed to update because i'm writing about photos there was a new os 10.10.3 beta that had come out so i need to update to to to the latest beta so that i could have photos with me and running beta software on your laptop when you're traveling is crazy but at the same time i'm writing a book out about photos i have no i have

no choice but to do that and that's actually why i'm on the beta on this laptop is because i knew i'd be traveling and need access to the. So that stuff was the big stuff. I'm not too worried about chargers at this point. I brought a computer charger and an iPad charger, and I brought my iPad with me, and the iPad charger doubles as the phone charger. And so that was most of it. I did spend, oh, it was, i would say i spent an hour with it but i

didn't because i was doing other things in the background while this very slow burn was happening between my ipad and itunes um because i wanted to load a bunch of movies and tv shows on for the plane and for my train and all of these different trips that i'm taking in case i want to watch something and uh first off it was attached to my mac mini and when i tried to sync it on the mac mini it started to act very strangely and i thought you know what i'm going to unsync it from my mac mini i'm going to sync it to my my imac and and and my imac is connected to the mac mini's uh giant uh storage volume with uh gigabit ethernet so it shouldn't be a problem lots of home movies yeah yeah lots of home movies pictures of the kids no it's stuff

I've ripped off of blu-rays and things like that perfectly legal but still um and what I discovered is that the I was running the iPhoto's uh beta on I on iOS the iPhone or, or the iCloud photo beta. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah. And although that is supposed to dynamically determine how much storage on your device it uses, for this photos book, I've been syncing photos.app with the cloud, and I've got something like 4, or five thousand photos in in there and they had all synced to the device and so the device was reporting that i couldn't the ipad mini couldn't sync any videos because it had 70 gigabytes of photos and i tried to remove them

by turning it off and it said i will this will delete 6 000 photos and i said yes that's a good idea and it and then i attached it to itunes and it still reported that i had 70 gigabytes of photos it turned out that like i said doing this in the background while i'm working on other things but what i ended up doing was i had to update my ipad mini to the the ios beta so i'm all on beta every device i have here is using beta software but that because i knew that this was some weird bug involving the icloud photo library stuff and indeed once i had updated to the beta and i turned off icloud photo library it deleted all the images off the off the off the now this is this has got me concerned because if iOS really wants to download a thumbnail of every single one of your iCloud images in your iCloud library—

That could still be massive for some people. Well, this is what I'm thinking is that if I've got 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 photos in my collection, does that mean that if I turn on iCloud Photo Library, it's going to try to fill up 60 or 70 gigs of my device with photo previews? Because that's insane. That stuff should be streamed if there's not enough room, right? There should be something that it does. But this is a thought that occurs to me as I'm freaking out on Friday afternoon. And so I just decided – or maybe that was Saturday morning. So I just turned it off for now.

But it's something that I need to investigate when we get back. That's a really good point, though, because thumbnails are small, but they still take up space. And if you're encouraged to put your entire life's worth of photos into this app. And in the iOS 8.3 beta, all you can do is turn it on and off. So does that mean that you can't have a large library unless you have extremely large devices? Shouldn't it do the, we're going to assume how much space? Yeah, well, that's what it should do.

And it's beta, so maybe it will do that. But I had the experience where I really, I needed to turn it off in order to copy movies to my iPad. Not ideal. But anyway, that was a huge source of stress. But in the end, I did end up where I've got some movies, got some future homework for The Incomparable on there that I have to watch that John Syracuse assigned me,

and then some other stuff that is of my own choosing. The problem with watching anime on an airplane is that anime is one of those things that just there's often surprise nudity that happens out of the blue and and and then i'm the guy who's watching cartoon boobs on on in coach class on british airways and that's a bad that's a bad thing so um that's a that's a challenge so we're going to talk about the phone that you have with you we'll talk about that i i omitted that from my packing list just so that we could talk about that as its own topic but i'm interested uh did you get a local sim i did i did now in the last two times i've

been here i uh have bought uh a sim at from three yeah uh which is a you know they they are a prepaid they they're a carrier but they they have a prepaid prepaid plans and they have the insane data limits yeah so they're they're um they're the when i was in ireland a year and a half ago i bought one and then and then last year i bought one here in lond a shop not too far – about a block from here in fact. And in London, the deal is for 15 pounds, you get 30 days of like 1,000 talk minutes and 1,000 texts and something like – oh, and unlimited data. And it roams, although I think maybe's a a data cap when you roam so so next week when i'm in ireland i will be able to use a certain amount of data hopefully without ever having to recharge it or buy a new card um i'm hoping you are really good they have this um i think they call it like the something abroad or something like that yeah where

you can use at home abroad i think and you can use your your data and minutes and stuff in other countries and it just takes from your local allowance yeah there's no roaming charges yeah it's pretty great so so so i was thinking i've got to get to my friend simon's house and i i like screenshotted some some google maps so i would know how to get there just in case and then we get to the baggage claim area so i'm i'm through um the customs and immigration i'm in the baggage claim area and against the wall is a sim card vending machine and in the vending machine the three package is there uh for 20 pounds so i and i know that's a five pound markup and i think to myself

if i get it here i will immediately have data i can send a note to my wife saying i landed i can see if simon has sent me a note because i was asking him what the right tube stop is the best the most efficient route to go and i will have access to maps as i'm making my journey so i can i can get there regardless of whether simon gives me proper directions or not or i cannot spend those five extra pounds and wait until monday morning and then walk down on monday morning so i i spent the five extra pounds for 20 pounds got it as i'm waiting for my bag to come off the conveyor i pop open the sim card on this phone put an unlocked phone put in the sim uh turn it on and uh and send my wife a text saying i've landed yep and get the directions from simon and

he has a better tube stop for me to for me to ride to and all of that happened totally worth it but it's come to that now where you know and it's smart because international travelers are going to want to buy those cards so why would you not put a prepaid sim card vending machine at the baggage claim and of course put a markup on it so by the time my by the time my bag came out and five pounds didn't seem i had a couple people on twitter saying oh you know that it's probably a bad deal and i you know it is a five dollar or five pound markup but i knew that i knew what the markup was and i was fine with it but the fact that i was online and sending messages to people before my bag even came out i mean i say i literally spent no extra time because i would have been standing there waiting anyway it's incredible how fast they set

up and you could just pop it in and it's just ready to go and it's ready to go and then there's information you can register and you can top it up and things like that but you just pop it in and it'll go and i was also impressed by this um three's uh little card that the sim card comes in is a uh it's it's got all the sizes so if you've got one if you've got a sim or a micro sim or a nano sim you just punch out the size you want from the car very clever very very super smart so i was i was very impressed and this is the third time i've used them like i said and i i recommend it you have to have an unlocked phone that's the only thing although at&t in the u.s has gotten much better at unlocking your phone um my understanding now is that after you're out of contract you can call them and they

send you a text basically and then it's unlocked my only issue with that stuff is i message i i really wished you could still receive iMessages to your phone number when you're on another phone. Well, you can because your iMessage account, Apple registers the number of your cell phone. So does that work now? Because when I've tried to do it in the past,

it hasn't worked. Yeah, it worked. I was actually asked on this phone I've got, it says would you like to receive iMessages at my us phone number i said yes perfect because i i only iMessages will work you know your normal sms's won't go through but iMessages will go through anybody that sends me an sms i don't want it no yeah because it can get really expensive so i'll probably just buy a sim in ireland when we land and then also a sim in romania when i got to travel because three doesn't unfortunately their feel at home doesn't include

romania because i use ee here and i use ee because their their lte is incredible and three use some of that but they don't have the access to the speeds when i signed up to ee they were the only lte carrier in the uk and they were that way for about six months have the access to the speeds. When I signed up to EE, they were the only LTE carrier in the UK, and they were that way for about six months. And I loved the speeds. You can get up to like 80 megabytes down in certain parts of London. It's really, really amazing. It looks like what I'm getting is 3G

for the most part on 3. But again, having data while I'm traveling internationally is such a treat, because for several years, after we all came to expect having the internet in our pocket at all times, but before you actually could get it in any way that wasn't sort of this ridiculously overpriced international roaming, that was bad. It would always catch you out. Every single time, it always catches you out i should say n cremens in our chat room says that actually three's got unlimited uh data in ireland there's just a tethering limit which is what marco armand uh yes talking about because

marco just went through this too yeah and uh because marco has he's just been in he was at ns conf and now he's going back to rule next week yeah but he's taking a week sabbatical in new york before coming back to here. But there was something that they spoke about on that show, which I want to now speak about on this show. Yes, I am replicating Marco's experience in so many different ways. But first, I think we need to hear from some friends at a company whose name is pronounced Hover. Hover. Hover.

Hover. Hover. Hover. Hover. This week's episode is, of course, brought to you by our friends at Hover. They are the best way to buy and manage domain names. It has been my place of choice for years. I know Jason uses them.

Everybody that I know uses Hover because they're the smart choice if you want to use it, if you want to buy domain names. Snail Zone. Snail Zone. Like, this week, I actually transferred MikeHurley.net from a horrible company over to Hover. It's very simple. They make it so easy to do the transfer. Basically, there was a guide, and it was like, you need to go there and click this and click this, but be careful.

Make sure you click that button because they'll lock you in. It was a really, really simple process. Hover took care of all of it for me. They have really great guides about how to transfer, which have screenshots of the other DNS providers, and it shows you exactly what bit you need to do. Super, super simple. I'm so pleased that I finally got that domain away from those clutches and into Hover.

There's so many things that I really love about Hover service. I love their searching stuff. It's really easy. It's nice and clear. You know exactly what you're getting. They don't try and throw in a bunch of additions that you don't really want, but they do throw in stuff you do want, like whoisprivacy for free with all of Hover's domains. They have all the TLDs that you want,.com,.co,.me. They have all the crazy new ones as well, and they're adding even more interesting top-level domain options.

Excuse me, I do have a cold. I don't know if you noticed. It's progressing through this episode. They have more and more that they're adding all the time. You're doing great. You're doing great. Thank you, sir. Hover have great customer support. They have a no-hold, no-wait, no-transfer telephone support policy.

They're famous for this. There's a great reason why. When you call them, you are talking to a human being. If you have domain needs, Hover.com is the company for you go to hover.com and use the code watch w-a-t-c-h at checkout to get 10 off your first purchase at hover.com and show your support for upgrade and all of relay fm thank you so much to hover for their continued support of this show. We love them very much. You know what a phrase is that you shouldn't say when you have a cold? Please tell me. Domain needs.

Domain needs. Domain deeds from Hover.com. Doesn't work. Well, so, this is the year of Mike. Mike has been right through all of 2015 so far. Interesting. interesting claims.

Yes, the thing that I'm right... Strong words. The most about is everybody deciding that the 6 Plus is the phone for them. This started on Connected, on the Fine Relay FM, where both in the same episode, Stephen and Federico professed that I was right about the 6 Plus and its incredible benefits over every other phone on the market.

And then I was thrilled that this week's episode of our favorite follow-up show is the Accidental Tech Podcast, which was a great episode this week, in which you could hear the strain of Casey as they went through an

entire episode of follow-up but then at the end had the best topic ever in which marco professed his new love for the six plus uh in which they also professed that mike was right um which enables the hashtag mike was right to stretch even further so you are sitting here in front of me with a 6 Plus right now, a white one. So I wanted to just take us back to episode one of this show, which was where we reviewed the iPhones. And in that episode, I remember you scoffing at the 6 Plus. Indeed, this very model, in fact, this very unit. It's still that one.

Yeah, yeah. Wow, you hang on to those things. Yeah, this very model, in fact, this very unit. It's still that one. Yeah, yeah. Wow, you hang on to those things. Yeah, this is why. This is why. You've got to live with it, spend some time with it. That's clever. Anyway, so this beautiful one right here, straight from Cupertino into Jason Snell's hands,

you said it was too large and just not for you, but I knew it was going to be the phone for me, and I'm so happy, and I continue to be happy with my 6 Plus. So you have been using this for just a couple of days. Since I inserted that SIM card at the baggage claim. So I'm interested to see especially how we are with this on next week's episode. But what do you think about it? Because now you've used the 6, right? That's the key thing, because you jumped from the 5S to the 6 Plus in review. Indeed. But now you've had the 6 right that's that's the key thing because you jumped from the 5s to

the 6 plus indeed but now you've had that part in the middle yeah you uh so i mean i i chose to bring this because um i i because i also had access to an unlocked iphone 6 so i could have i could have done that and it would have been the same as my my phone that i carry uh at home and i thought you know this is a great opportunity to bring that unlocked six plus and use it and have some some time with it plus with the plus the uh battery being larger and me traveling i thought that might be a good thing to have and having the bigger screen and if i if i'm in cases where i'm i'm not i don't have access to other technology i'll have you know because i'm not at home and I'm not as comfortable, I will have this big screen on this big iPhone. So I had a bunch of reasons to try it.

I don't think I'm going to give you the same narrative as Marco because my initial reactions are, good God, it is a huge phone. Because my initial reactions are, good God, it is a huge phone. The first, I was trying to use it while I was walking to the tube station and from the tube station in one hand, as is my want as an iPhone user. And I had to tap on a button in the lower part of the screen, but it was the lower right. And I couldn't reach it. I almost dropped the phone trying to stretch my thumb over to reach it. And I realized that I needed to use two hands, except I was carrying something in my

other hand. I only had the one hand free, and I thought, whoa, this is a big phone. I cannot reach the other side of it from here. There's a special grip. Reachability I could do. And although I special like reachability reachability i could do yeah and although i rarely use reachability on the six on the six plus yesterday i was thinking oh reachability good god glad i have that but but reachability doesn't help me get from left to

right so i think this is something that you you end up getting to you you develop a confidence with the phone. So I can, I have like a really weird way of holding it. Like I am now demonstrating to Jason, this is Mike's iPhone six plus tips. If I needed to get to that bottom corner, I would like throw the phone up into, into my thumb.

You basically, the more you use it. Well, that's what, that's what I did. And it was terrifying. It's, it's,

this is, this is the thing you need to get more comfortable i have had some catastrophic drops with this phone because of its size i did this i've done this a couple of times you kind of drop it and as you try and catch it you hit a corner and it just spins uncontrollably and hits the floor which i'm very happy i have a case on it uh i have for the first time i bought apple care with this phone because i knew that there was a bigger chance of dropping it that is a thing that over time you start to get used to but so and also is like i know that you're a terrific user twitterific is totally not built with this phone yeah well that that was in fact where i felt the pain was in twitterific they that more than any other app that i've used on a on a regular

basis that's the one that i struggle with the most because all of the buttons are at the top which is not ideal uh and i i have i do feel this still that there are many developers that are not accurately thinking about the size challenges of even the six with some of this stuff like i believe you should be able to with a lot of those tab bars have it configurable so it can sit in other parts of the the ui especially something like a tab bar like right i know i'm making like i'm like professing this is easy just move it and i'm sure it's not but i still feel like there's there are a lot of apps that they're putting the navigation where it used to be rather than where it now maybe should be, which is in a different part of the device.

Because those far corners, any corner can actually be hard to hit with these devices. Yeah, my problem was where I really felt it was with the keyboard, though, where I wanted to hit the delete key. And I was holding the phone in my left hand and my thumb left thumb has to get over there and and i'm walking and i'm thinking to myself i can hit that button but i may drop this phone if i do that so i may uh this this isn't necessarily a a great help but there's a really great third-party keyboard called flexi and one of the functions that it has is you can squeeze the keyboard over. So it just occupies two-thirds of the keyboard screen. So it squishes it together, and it makes it really, really easy

for one-handed typing. It's also a really good keyboard, this one, actually, the Flexi keyboard. I've only been trying it out for a few days, but CGP Grey suggested it to me because he is a Dvorak keyboard user, and it has Dvorak, which is, I don't even understand. I enabled it, and I don't get it. I'm starting to understand CGP Grey better now.

In the chat room, he says, where did you hear about that keyboard, Mike? Is he there? Well, somebody identifying as Grey is in the chat room. Come on over, Grey. We're in Londonondon see i'm not head on over i will say nothing more unless you confirm why i know about this keyboard because he showed me it uh and and he showed me the fact that you can squeeze it up it's actually a very good keyboard and i do suggest that people should try it out um but I am yes it can be difficult sometimes to hit certain

parts of the interface yeah well I'm going to live with it and I enjoy the big screen and I enjoy the fact that the battery is bigger and so it lasts longer. Gray says that he doesn't actually

use Dvorak on iOS that's his finger type or hand type and keyboard. I don't know. I have no idea how you could use two different types of keyboard. On iOS, I use this. Yeah, very interesting. So obviously one of the great things about the 6 Plus is the amount of information that you can see on the screen at once. Do you find that to be significant over the 6?

Like, do you feel like you're able, like, say, for example, when you read Twitterific, you can obviously see more tweets. Do you find that to be an interesting thing? Well, again, it's only been a day but no so we'll see i i i'm just i'm remaining skeptical but this is why i'm doing it and it's only day one and i'm going to be here for two weeks and i'm going to be using this phone as my phone for two weeks so we'll see how it goes but uh again i think i would have been more impressed coming from the five to the added space of the 6 Plus, but coming from the 6, it's bigger. It's bigger.

Everything's bigger. There's more of everything. Actually, I showed this when I was packing up. I showed this to my wife, and she was really interested in it. And one of the reasons, because she was thinking about it, because she thought about how, oh, it's so huge, I would never put that in my pocket. And then she said, you know what? i never put my phone in my pocket it's always in her purse or in a or in a small bag it's not in her pocket and uh and then she said actually having the bigger screen is nice and then she is she is starting to need reading glasses and there's the larger mode display

mode on the six plus. I forgot that existed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's because you're crazy. That's because you're young. But,

um, but, uh, I, I showed it to her and she said, why wouldn't you always have it like this? I said, well,

because you can fit more things on in the other mode. And she says, no, no, no, no, no. Why would you not have it like this where everything's just bigger and

easier to see? So, and, and if you're using standard sized um not non-crazy phones things that aren't the six plus you have to just crank up the text in the text controls and then everything looks weird um whereas if you put it in the if you put it in the um the big the large print mode it's just like an iphone 5 except huge so gray has now confirmed to me in the chat room like so he is now using the six plus yeah um so this is what i'm starting to see so he is another mike was right convert yeah now my my feeling about this uh because obviously marco was being quite positive about it i believe that before the end of this trip,

you will feel very differently about this device. Strong words. Strong words. Federico is on board now, totally as well. My feeling is now people can see the advantages of the device without being completely shocked by its size because you've had the stepping stone. Yeah, I've heard the theory.

I've heard the theory. I'm holding out hope for you still like because you're going to see i still i my my soul can still be saved that's what you're saying battery when you because again you've not really seen the advantage of the battery yet even because you've not been using it enough but when you see just how far it can take you in a day it's a it is an incredible thing the the six plus is i i love that device this device more than many other apple devices it's because it's like i don't i don't use an ipad anymore i don't need one because i can get so much out of out of this device talking about this actually reading is one thing and i want to mention something because obviously we're going

to be way out of the loop now because of when we record that book comes out tomorrow doesn't it that steve jobs oh yes yes you've seen any of it i only the excerpts that fast company's been running a a an upgradian i can't remember their name now because they tweeted at me earlier they they picked it up in waterstones in london already or in the uk somewhere they because they've just got them on the shelves in some places there is going to be an audio book yes i'm very excited about audible is doing an audio book but yeah that i'm like apple is like truly ordaining this book now have you seen like they tweeted about it in emails oh yeah there have been a few pieces steven levy wrote about it brian chan wrote about it that that apple is publicly backing this as the the the blessed steve jobs book as

opposed to the isaacson book tweet i didn't see eddie q street i i remember i in the jonathan i've uh profile where he said you know my opinion of the isaacson book couldn't be lower yep he said eddie q's oh is this the one where it's like... Best Portrayal was about to be released, Becoming Steve Jobs. Right, that was his reaction to seeing and a bunch of Apple people walked out of the documentary about Steve Jobs that was at South by Southwest. Oh, right, yes.

And said that's not the Steve that we knew, but this book is. So he was pretty upset, I guess. I'm excited about it. I am very excited about it. I am very excited. Yeah, I pre-ordered it. I'll read it maybe on the train up to Scotland. I'll be listening.

You'll be listening? I'll be listening. You won't be listening to me read it. That would be very quiet. You'll be listening to the book. Audible, that's what you're saying. Are you a fast reader? I bet you are.

I am. So when do you think you'll have it done by? It depends on how much other stuff I have to do. I also have to edit some podcasts and things like that. But between my flights and everything, I should have some time to rip through it. It's interesting, though, that there is now this book that Apple is saying is the right one, even though the guy it's about allowed for a book to be be created which is now considered to be bad like apple is basically shunning the isaacson yeah well i think what this teaches us is that um

john syracusa is always right that's the best episode of hypercritical and we should listen to him number 42 the wrong guy the wrong guy god so good like when i start typing it into my url bar i'll type in five by five dot tv slash hy that episode comes up as in my history i i keep this shirt this episode of hypercritical always downloaded because it's just a masterpiece if you've never heard john syracuse are ripping into the isaacson book there is a treat for you in our show notes which can be found at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 28 or in your podcast app that you're using right now your podcast app of choice right uh should we maybe approach some Ask Upgrade?

I'm so excited for next week for when you finally decree that Mike was right. Okay. Interesting. Maybe I'll do that on the show after when you're not on. Yeah, because I'm going to miss one in a couple of weeks. So maybe that's when you can give me the blessing that I've always wished for. Yeah, definitely not declare you completely wrong and ban you from the podcast.

Never coming back. For not joining the Six Plus cult. Let's see. We should move on to Ask Upgrade right before we do. We are recording this a couple hours before we're going to be doing our meetup. So maybe next week one of our topics can be to talk about the meetup and also,

and also the fact of us doing this podcast in person. I would love to talk next week about the value of seeing people in person. We'll be at all. So we're going to be seeing a lot of interesting people. So I think that'll be a good thing to talk about. And we are definitely looking forward to the, to the meetup to tonight. That should be a lot of fun.

We're going to be in that firm of mine next week. Yeah, for sure. But before we do that, I have to tell you, Ask Upgrade is brought to you by MailRoute. Woo! Our friends at MailRoute. Imagine a world without spam, viruses, or bounced email.

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we can speak, we can speak simultaneously, which we can't do when we're completely, completely laggy because we always have the round trip just all the latency yeah we could sing we have a zero let's not do that we have zero latency right now we only sing at christmas listener neil ash has asked what health apps do we currently use in conjunction with apple's health app you know somebody asked me about the health app the other week, and I had to say I used it. I checked it out right when iOS 8 came out,

which is when nothing worked with it, and I haven't gone back to it. Exactly the same. I haven't even filled out my information in it. And Federico, you know, he's using it. And I hear people who say that they like it and it's good, and I just have not gotten back to it. So I'm using Pedometer to view my steps. Pedometer++ from underscore David Smith.

From underscore David Smith. I love that app. I have it in my notification center. I love it when I go over 10,000 and I get the confetti when you open the app. Yay! But that is the only app that I use. I don't even think, I assume it's got health app integration,

but I've not tied them together in any way. It does. Well, or at least they're both reading the same data from the same sensors. Yeah, of course. So they'll show it. So that's the answer is, I think I need to revisit it,

but it also, I think, shows the power of having, not necessarily a negative experience, but having kind of a zero experience with sometimes Apple will bundle an app that doesn't have any support yet, which makes sense. It's a real chicken and egg problem.

They have to have the app there. But when I first wanted to use it, there wasn't anything there. And so then I sort of shrugged and said, oh, this isn't interesting. It was for like an hour and then took it all away again. It was a really botched launch

of the health app. So it's too bad. But I do need to revisit it. Absolutely. I feel like a lot of this sort of stuff was in advance of the watch. And I think that the watch will be forcing us

into a way of using it because it just does it automatically. So maybe that's when I'll start checking it out a little bit more. Listener Chris is wrote in, the weirdest thing about the USB Type-C to Chris is wrote in the weirdest thing about the usb type c uh to chris is that

all the ios devices come with a standard usb cable right now first we'll point out this is not a question it's a statement yes so hashtag tell upgrade don't please no we don't need to know that but that is i mean we've spoken about this yes it is really interesting that if you have any apple devices they come with cables that you can't yet use with the iris devices yeah and the new macbook air i'm a little surprised that the macbook doesn't come with an adapter or that apple doesn't sell a you know a lightning to usbc cable although that probably would be an adapter in and of itself but the thing is from apple's perspective when looking at this device why yeah right well that's a fair point is that why would you have and why do you need to connect those two devices and i think we

said this maybe last week is you know apple's take on this is why would you connect them there's no need that that there are edge cases where you would sync over a wire but that they've got wi-fi sync and they've got cloud sync and that's all you need because you know the the idea of this macbook air is we're not thinking about edge cases like right it is a non-edge the edge cases should use another computer um it may be that you know we as we move to usb type c everywhere that that at some point they will introduce a an iphone that that uses usb type c and do you think they will do that well maybe not i mean maybe what i'm saying is a lightning to usb type c connector in the box and that won't that will you know that will be what's expected and you'll need to convert it to go the other way

but there's such an installed base with the existing usb ports that it's very weird it's a very weird situation and i don't think they're going to ship with two new in the box right you'll just have to buy one of the adapters and this leads on to listener ben uh is talking about what we were just alluding to maybe putting usbc connectors onto the ios devices now i don't see that ever happening no i mean what from what i can see lightning is is designed specifically to be different from what usbc does and it's a subset it's simplification and that's good for apple's ios devices but that also means that putting lightning on on a laptop doesn't make sense and it means i think putting usbc on an iphone doesn't necessarily make sense now i could see i could see a scenario where they built in maybe some smart technology so that um

that you could use a lightning to usbc plug or a lightning to usb plug and they wouldn't need any extra intelligence in the plug that the phone or you know the ios device would have that intelligence and be able to sense what kind of a device is connected um i could see something like that happening but but i have a hard time um thinking that they would that they would just switch over i think that's gonna that's gonna be a while yep uh listen to jürgen uh will you be able to pair for instance business and personal with the Apple Watch? Your night phone and your day phone. Yeah, your night phone and day phone. Or for as far as we're aware, is it just one at a time? I can't imagine how you'd have two.

Yeah, as far as I can tell, it's a one-to-one relationship. So you would just choose, I guess. You'd just go into the Apple Watch app and just pair it. You'd pair it. You'd have to do it manually, I would assume. Because that's way too confusing, I think. Yeah, yeah. Because how would it know what like if you're if all the devices are in the same house funneling all of the

communication into the watch i don't think it would make sense you'd have to go in and change it would be like unpair from one i would think i would think and then uh another apple watch question from gary uh will the apple watch have a do not disturb mode so it doesn't turn on if you check it in the in the movie now i don't have i don't have an Do Not Disturb mode so it doesn't turn on if you check it in the movie theater? Now, I don't have an answer for this, but I think it's a great question. I would imagine it would, but I don't know. I think having Do Not Disturb on the watch makes sense. I think it does.

The movie theater is fascinating. And somebody else, actually, listener Clive, asked, can you turn off the auto display on the apple watch and change it to tap to display because he's a he's a truck driver um and and i would think that you would need a do not disturb mode and you would also need the ability to turn off motion-based screen activation because if you're in the movie theater and you move your hand your your wrist is going to light up and is that light not going to disturb the people around you my i know you can i know there is a do not disturb mode okay because i've seen it um because i i've seen it somewhere on apple's website where it also says like you can set the watch to do not disturb or you can set them both to do not serve and i think it's the same for airplane mode so you so you could do that on the on the watch device i think you could do it

in the companion app but the idea of tapping to get the time is interesting because it also saved your battery life i think i i think people would would want to make that decision right right and and i can see apple saying there are valid reasons why you would want to do this so we'll we'll take the hit of the extra complication of having that as a as a setting yeah i'm interested to see what that's gonna what that's gonna look like there's there is all these little things and this is why like my mind keeps going back to the iphone introduction where we have all these questions which are so simple from a fundamental level but if you don't know you don't know the answers and and like because i i remember half the questions dan and i got for the our iPhone FAQ story, we don't have answers to.

We have a little triage space in the document where it's like, can we answer this question? No, no, no, no, no. We just don't know. I could take an educated guess, but I don't know. I remember pouring through the information about the iPhone to see if when you put it in silent, it had vibration. This is the original iphone it didn't clearly say that it turned on a vibrate motor when it was in silent right and i needed to know if it did that and it seems so basic now but i couldn't find an answer

right so i had to wait you had to wait so there's all these little things because they're so basic that apple's not going to talk about them on stage they're not going to put them all in the press like on all the press stuff because because it's so simple. This is why I end up posting when I get one of these products in advance and go out from under the embargo. The first thing I do is say, okay, does anybody have any questions on Twitter?

Because then I get the really interesting stuff. And then I can answer them because I actually have the product and can answer it. But at this point, I don't have the product. And if I did, I couldn't answer them. But that's one of my favorite things when the embargoes lift on these products and you see people like yourself and john gruber saying like what are your questions because you find out these tiny little tidbits of information which are really really interesting but apple is never going to talk about them because why would you it would because the amount

of information they would then need to give is way too much that you wouldn't be able to comb through it all. So I'm really interested to see. I mean, it's got to be a couple of weeks until the embargo list. When do you think it will be? Pre-order time? That would be my guess, would be pre-order time. So April 10th. So maybe it lifts a couple of days before, 8th or 9th?

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. I personally haven't heard of, and i don't know if you do and i don't want to ask of anybody that has got a device or has been or has even been offered i know i know there were some briefings after the event although it didn't seem like there were very many and that was so unlike most of these events which it's two weeks before the release date. This was more than a month before the release date. So did Apple really give a small group of people Apple Watches under a month-long embargo? Maybe. They did it with a phone, the original phone.

I mean, it was only a very small select group, but they had it for a time, and it was just then. Yeah, but this is a long amount of time. It's possible that they have, but I actually can say I don't know anybody for sure who's got one. It would have made sense to me to give people on a longer period because this is something you have to integrate into your life. I think you do need to live with it. I think it would be smart if they did give a select group. Also, it'll be an interesting – people were talking about this on Twitter.

It'll be an interesting selection of people who get it because I imagine it will be a very different selection from what we're used to. A swath of different industries. Right, there'll be fashion and fitness and there'll be lots of different ones. I think that'll be great. This comes from listener

Angus. The space black stainless steel watch is only available with a black link bracelet unlike the regular steel. Why do you think this is? Exclusivity. It's fashion. It's fashion, Angus. This is what it is.

Yeah, and also under fashion. What did we say? Because fashion? Because fashion. I think that I look at that black stainless steel watch as the addition of the lower models so it is more expensive you can only buy it in that configuration it seems like so it feels to me like the i want to be special but i don't have seventeen thousand dollars so i look at that watch like that it's the high-end version so it's you can buy it in that way. That's how I see that one.

Whether it is that way or not, I don't know. But there's so much, because I've been talking to lots of people on Twitter. I've had people say to me, I've had conversations with the Apple reps in the interactive chat who have said you'll be able to completely customize it at checkout and get whatever strap you want. We don't know. No. Flat out, we don't know.

We are effectively we have more information than we did before the event about what bands are available but until april 10th we actually don't really know what you're going to be able to buy and they may be able to they may even change it up right we don't know i think there was an argument about either the space black being too hard to make or too expensive to make. And so they limited it. Or because fashion, they felt like the only one that it really looked good with was matched with a black. It's almost like somebody made the argument like, well, you should only make this watch it with, uh, with a band of the same material.

And if you can do that, we could sell that. And, and so there's some reason why they feel like these are harmonious together in a way that other others aren't. And that's just what we have to do. It's like the addition bands. You only get the addition bands with the addition, right?

You can't, but it doesn't look like you can buy the gold ones, like just if you want to. So we'll see. Uh, and then now we're in a listener fred says we need a cheese and wine vertical we can definitely look into that and uh and this this will be we're going to the meetup so that that could be i'm not a big not a big wine fan although i like i like i like red wine occasionally you know give me a zinfandel or a cabernet sauvignon or something like that but i prefer i prefer uh beer to wine yeah i prefer beer and wine to mixed drinks though so i'm i'm really a

i'm really a lightweight is what i'm saying he's just a simple man but yeah exactly but listener john does have a an ask upgrade for the cheese and wine vertical yes uh so we have uh from john you are a do-it-yourself kind of guy jason you like beer have you ever made your own beer have you ever done a home brewery type thing so um uh one of my former co-workers actually was a home brewer and he brought in his beer for everybody and it was pretty good my stock answer to this is to say um this is uh i i do like beer i like beer so much that i'm not going to make beer i feel like room in bed i feel like the amount unlike some things where i would be taking fresh ingredients and and and making you know pickles or or jam or something like that with this i feel

like i'm going to have to invest in a lot of different funny ingredients to make something that probably is never going to satisfy me at the same level as something that is made by one of the high-quality craft brewers that I can buy beer from. And if I was living in a world where the only beer I could buy was mass-produced stuff and not in a style I liked, I would make it myself. But I feel like there are so many beers that I can get very easily that I really do like that I am not going to start making beer in my bathtub. I just, I can't. And I don't have the time for it anyway. It's much easier for me to bake something one weekend than it is to brew beer. I don't have the space for it.

I don't have the time for it. And quite frankly, I think in the end, it wouldn't really make me that happy because I don't think it would be appreciably better and probably would be appreciably worse than what I can buy because I can buy good stuff. I'm not limited to just the bad stuff. Yeah. I mean, I see that kind of thing where it's like I already like things in the world that people are making professionally and there's nothing that i need like i i don't think oh i like this beer but only if it did this to the point where i then feel like i need to go ahead and make it uh so i'm on i'm on board with you with that one and plus i also have like a a distinct fear that i would poison myself in some way yeah that so i try and

steer steer clear of that kind of thing. So Jason, I think we've come to the end of our Ask Upgrade this week, which probably brings us to the end of our first live and in-person episode of Upgrade. It's good. We should do one again next week. Well, that's a really good idea.

Why don't we do that? Why don't we do it from a completely different country? Okay, that's a great idea. Well, I already did that for this one, but we can do it again. There was actually one other one other ask upgrade and i think i just pasted in the wrong one it was uh somebody else asked me to to talk about my favorite my favorite beers so i will very quickly say i like stouts and

porters um people always think that means guinness guinness is perfectly okay although i kind of refer to it as the budweiser of stouts it's available everywhere and it's well it's better than bud what it's fine maybe we can have some this weekend but but there are there are um there are other dark beers that i that i prefer to that and my favorite right now my favorite favorite beers back home would be um i like the anchor porter um i like the Anchor Porter. I like the Stone Milk Stout. Those are probably my favorites. Sierra Nevada Porter used to be one of my favorites, and the Blackbeard Porter is also really good.

I like the English-style Porters a little bit more than the Stouts, and I guess that puts me in England over Ireland. And next week, ask me, and I'll say that Guinness is the best. Let's hope that the border guards haven't heard that. Because they will not let you in. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope that it has been as much fun for you as it has been for us. It's a very interesting experience,

and I appreciate everybody who has listened live as well. So thank you for tuning in. We will be live again, hopefully. Hopefully. Hopefully next week. Internet connections willing in Ireland. Equipment willing. We'll talk about that yeah uh but so look out for that we'll we'll be tweeting the me and jason will do it individually jason is at jason l j s n e double l and i am at i mike i m y k e but also

uh we have a uh sentient uh show twitter account which is at underscore upgrade fm which uh decides to do whatever it does uh whenever it chooses to do it. And it's a lot of fun, that Twitter account. I don't know how it tweets, but it does tweet. I think it just tweeted now. I'm not sure. We'll have to find out.

We'll have to find out. And I want to thank our sponsors for this week, our friends over at MailRoute, Hover, and Harry's. But most of all, thank you for listening. Don't forget, Jason writes over at thefantastic6colors.com, which has a U in it this week, which is incredible.

Yes. I'm very happy to see that we have changed to the correct. Well, while I'm here, we have to spell it with a U. It's the right thing to do. Thank you all for listening, and we'll be back next time. Goodbye, Joseph.

Goodbye, Mike Hurley. Shake hands again. Yay! We did it!