Upgrade - 281: Your Historical Knowledge Has Been Noted

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

We close the book on the 2010s with a special draft of Apple keynotes and media events from the past decade, joined by special guest Stephen Hackett. And in Upstream news, it's a busy season of announcements for both Apple TV+ and Peacock.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 281 today's show is brought to you by pingdom booze allen and direct mail my name is mike hurley i am joined by jason snell hi jason hello mike hurley welcome back to uh home in the UK from the shores of America and from California. We got a big show for you. We got a big show. We're a day late because I was traveling over the weekend to visit my daughter in Oregon where she goes to college. She's doing great. It was great to see her.

And now we're back in our respective homes and have a huge show. Huge, huge. Big show. We have a huge show huge huge big show we have a hashtag snow talk question to kick it all off and nick wants to know jason what is your most memorable apple keynote experience for me it was running late for calculus because i had to see if the apple watch was real and subsequently going wild when it was revealed jason obviously yours would be slightly different to most people's, but what is your most memorable keynote experience? A little foreshadowing here. We're going to be talking a lot about keynotes in a little bit.

And so I'm going to leave some of the more personal and interesting Apple-related details for that and pick some wacky things. So I got to stand next to Al Gore, which at the Yerba Buena Theater, and I think I've told this story before. There's not a lot to the story, just to say that I was standing next to him at a urinal. Oh, good news. Thank you. Unusual for a vice president of the United States to be that close. And so, hi, Al. And I got to see one of my favorite bands of all time, U2,

or at least large portions of them, twice at Apple events. But that may come up later, too. I think my moment I will also bring up later on in the show, too. It's my most memorable Apple keynote experience. Because it will be a spoiler. Is Al Gore related in any way? I cannot comment at this time. That is because later in the show today, we are going to be joined by my friend and yours,

Stephen Hackett, as we draft our favorite Apple keynotes of the last decade. So you have that to look forward to later on in the episode. Yes. But Jason, I want everybody to settle in now because we have a headlines bonanza for Upstream. Upstream extravaganza. So much going on. All right. So settling everyone.

Okay. We've got some basic news stuff. And then if you remember, it was that TV Critics Association thing this past week. So Apple did, as we expect, released a bunch of information about deals that they're doing. And there's also Peacock. So Studio Ghibli movies are coming to Netflix, Jason. Yes. a bunch of information about deals that they're doing um and there's also peacock so uh studio ghibli movies are coming to netflix jason yes outside of america outside of america so we talked about this upgradians already know this that hbo max made a deal with studio ghibli for

uh the miyazaki movies for all of their stuff uh it's going to be on hbo max in the united states um and canada i think canada's already got a deal there's also a japanese streaming deal that's different if you're not in the u.s or canada or japan all of those movies are going to be on netflix so everywhere else they will get they made the deal for netflix and it's huge because they have largely not been available for streaming or even for a la carte purchase. Before, you had to get the discs, essentially, to watch these movies. They are classic animated movies. Some of them are serious.

Some of them are fun and for kids. We've done a half dozen of them as episodes on The Incomparable. They are some of my very favorites. We've done a couple Mike at the Movies episodes about them. I'm very excited for people who haven't seen them or haven't seen them in a long time to be able to. And so if you're in the U S it's HBO max, I don't know what the services in Japan where you're going to be able to get

them, but, uh, everywhere else in the world outside of North America and Japan, uh, look to Netflix and starting very soon, starting in a couple of weeks, February 1st,

they're releasing the first set. They're releasing the movies in three waves over a few weeks' time. But the first wave includes most of the movies that people will want to watch. Spirited Away, Howl's Moving, Castle, and My Neighbor Totoro. They're coming first, so that's going to be really great. This, along with other pieces of information, like the fact that Friends is still available in the UK on Netflix,

it's not looking good for HBO Max International. Not right now. Not yet. They're going to start with North America and go from there, I guess. Great news, Jason. Disney Plus is going to launch earlier than expected in some European countries.

So instead of March 31st, it's now march 24th one week earlier so you get to see the mandalorian in two months congratulations can't wait i also want to see the imagineer series because i was at disneyland last week which was oh yeah absolutely incredible we did uh 15 hours in the park we did as much as humanly possible in one day escorted by the sparks family and the whole time they were telling us things about the Imagineering series so I'm really excited about watching that as well

but I can't wait to get my hands on Disney Plus in a few weeks time I've got some great news one of my very favorite shows of the last few years which is called Counterpart it aired on Starz which is a not particularly well watched network in the US. And so I would run from place to place and be like, watch Counterpart. Everybody watch it. It's so great. And nobody watched it because it was on

Starz and you had to get Starz to watch it. They did two seasons, 20 total episodes. It does have an ending, I would say say i wish it had continued there are threads that they could have picked up and continued but i think when they ordered it they ordered 20 episodes and the producers knew that they needed to land it after 20 because they might not get more episodes um and it was canceled after the 20 they didn't order more episodes and they shopped it elsewhere and it didn't make it anywhere else so there's just the 20 episodes it is fantastic it stars jk simmons oscar winner winner J.K. Simmons. It is a genre show. It's actually a few genres. It's sort of sci-fi, but it's also set in the present day. And it is a kind of Cold War thriller, which is interesting

since I just said it was set in the present day, but you have to watch it to see. You don't know anything about the premise of the show. Watch episode one and see if you're hooked because you will be in for some surprises. Anyway, the great news is it is at least in the US, and I don't know about rest of world details because it's very hard to find this, but it looks like Amazon Prime is going to put this on everywhere it can over time. Starting on February 1st, there's that date again. So if you're in North America, at least, and basically anywhere in the world,

in February, check out Counterpart and see if it's available on Amazon Prime in your region because it is a fantastic show. I love it so much. And I'm actually, I feel like

now that it's going to be widely available, this is going to be one of those shows that gets discovered and that people watch it and they're like, oh, wow, this is really great. And it's like, yeah, it's too bad that they already canceled it and they're never going to make

anymore but you will get a very satisfying 20 episode set so please uh starting in february you get your chance to uh i'm so happy for all of you you get your chance to watch counterpart it's so great i hope it can't we can get i can do like the star subscription here and get it but i've not done that i assume that what will happen is all that stuff is going to eventually just kind of drop off and Amazon will light it up in all the countries where it can. That's what I'm hoping will happen here. And then it will just be a catalog title on Amazon. That would be great because people deserve to see it.

But anyway, in the U S February 1st counterpart, it's all coming. It's going to, it's great. I wanted to do some follow out to to episode 497 of The Incomparable, where you talk about For All Mankind. Yes, we did.

Apple TV+. That's the first incomparable thing about Apple TV+. And it's a good panel, including both me and Stephen Hackett, because, you know, space. Along with Kathy Campbell, Dan Warren, and moises chou yan so if you'd like to hear us talk for a little more than an hour about the first season of for all mankind check out incomparable 497 it's a great episode i listened to it today oh nice i edited that in oregon i missed that show already you know yeah yeah i i while i was editing it i'm like

oh i wanted to come back but it just left it's not going to be back for months now alright you ready for some Apple TV Plus news yes can you tell me if any wrestlers slash Marvel actors are going to be in season 2 of Sea believe it or not Jason I can this time Dave Bautista who you may know from being

Dave Bautista in the WWE or as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy, which is probably how most people know him now. He's going to be in season two of Sea. Feels like a good addition, honestly, because big guy, right? Big guy, great actor.

I'm not going to watch it, but good for Dave. Big surprise, Jennifer Aniston won Best Actress at the SAG Awards for The Morning Show yeah came out of nowhere so it's another another Apple event win

they had already won for Billy Crudup for his super weird as we mentioned last time I think super weird performance as

Sliming Network Executive but Jennifer Aniston made it she made it so this is big for them this is big for Apple this is big for them it's cool

this is big for them this is big for jennifer aniston too right it's amazing credibility very very happy for her but like this is big for them to win a best you know like one of the top line uh awards at a prestigious award show they wanted this they got it so that's great apple have signed a multi-year deal with lee eisenberg who is the co-creator of little america which has debuted to great reviews um by the way like lots of outlets are reviewing little america very highly i think that debuted within the last yeah i've seen a few a few critics say that this is apple's truly you know great show on apple tv plus um lee eisenberg i think known most uh known notably for the office he was the um he was an executive producer on the u.s version of the

office and then he he has also produced several other uh tv series including smilf which is an excellent show and then little america so they've got a they've got him in a multi-year deal now for to make some apple shows yep um after quote from apple reviewing the information available they have decided that they will be putting the banker in theaters and on apple tv plus um so this was the show that so the movie i should say that have had been called off. It was pulled. It was an Oscar contender. They hoped that it would get nominated for Oscars, but they pulled its release in December for Oscar availability because somebody said, a woman said that a guy who's actually a character in the movie

and was listed among the producers, who's the son of the main character of the movie, had sexually assaulted her. And so they pulled it to sort of investigate what was going on. And Apple's statement says that he is no longer a producer of the movie and will not profit from the film's release.

So, I mean, this is one of those things, we went over it on this show, that it's not the case where it's like, oh, the main character of this movie turns out to be a horrible person. What are they going to do with the movie? It was like an ancillary character who's only really seen as a kid in the movie. But because he's a relative, he was listed as a producer.

And Apple has basically kind of like uncoupled the business of this movie from that guy in the wake of these allegations. So, you know, we will get to see it in March in theaters. And then it's that quick, it's the Netflix window, Mike. It's March 6th in theaters or wait until march 20th and it's on also on your tv but that makes it oscar eligible for next year for next year similarly probably spike jonesy has a document documentary uh is it jonesy jones i think we just say jones spike jones yeah i don't know why i did that jones this documentary beastie boys story which is about the Beastie Boys, will be coming to Apple TV Plus after a run

in IMAX theaters. So Apple's picked this one up. I don't think that this was something that they instigated, but it's a movie that they've picked up for the service. Yeah, they picked up the streaming distribution of it, yeah. And this movie will debut first at South by Southwest, along with two

other Apple TV Plus shows including Central Park which is the animated series from the creator of Bob's Burgers and Home which is the documentary series that looks inside the world's most innovative homes this is like one of those shows that you see on Netflix a lot right which is like tiny house

nation like it's like you know like a fun like let's take a look inside some beautiful homes type thing um at the tv critics press tour apple announced that home was going to be debuting on april 17th and central park will be available this summer nice uh also at the critics press tour apple announced a bunch of stuff over that time period uh some some of these headlines are as following meryl streep will star in an original animated film that will premiere on earth day okay julia louis dreyfus has signed to a content deal which is very exciting this is so i believe her deal is

involves richard plepler's production company and we talked about this before, how the pleb keeps on plepping. It's the guy who used to run HBO. And since HBO is now trying to max itself out and Apple TV Plus is sort of trying to be HBO, this is an interesting moment where they're taking Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who starred in Veep, obviously, and Seinfeld back in the day, but most recently Veep on HBO.

And she's got a kind of deal with apple and with richard plepler's production company i wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of these types of things like yeah ex-hboers coming over to apple now that is like an exciting prospect right like they announced nothing tied to this and of course like unlike some of the other deals julia dreyfus has nothing on Apple TV+. So you're right, this is coming from PlayPlayer, and that is super exciting, because I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus. I think she's fantastic,

and I cannot wait to see what more she does with Apple. April 3rd is going to see the release date of the drama series Home Before Dark. This show is inspired by the true story of reporter Hilde Lysiak, who broke the story of a murder in her town aged 11. So this is that story. She's like, I remember this.

This is one of those ones. We've spoken about these shows before. So that's coming. Chris Evans' show, Defending Jacob, which is a thriller. It's a miniseries, right? Yes, this is a miniseries that will be premiering on April 24th. What you need to know about that is that it was shot in the park behind John Syracuse's house. Everybody needs to know that.

Mythic Quest has been renewed for a second season already. This is one of those things where they had to get the deadline date in and they've done it. There's going to be a new UK-based comedy series called Trying premiering on May 1st, starring Rafe Spall, Esther Smith, and Imelda Staunton. I'm a big fan of Rafe Spall. This is a good example of how we talked about a couple years ago, how Apple hired a couple of key UK television executives, including somebody from the BBC. But Apple, very early on, started doing UK-based development.

They also have other country-based development. There's European development. They got a bunch of people all over the world. We are going to start seeing, like we do with Netflix now, we're going to see shows that were made outside of the US that will roll out worldwide, but will be made from producers in various countries

because Apple TV ultimately, Apple TV Plus is supposed to be an international service with content from all over the world. So this is, I feel like, technically the first example of that where we're all going to see trying on May 1st, but it's a UK developed series. What else do we have? Oh, Amazing Stories. It's coming on March the 6th. There are going to be five episodes of Amazing Stories from Steven Spielberg on March 6th. Yeah, and I wonder about that, whether it's five episodes is a funny number. And you and I have talked a lot about what Apple's rollout strategy is. Obviously, with their dramas, they've been dropping sort of they dropped three and then they did a weekly release cycle. There's this real question about like with some of the comedies are they going to drop them all at once

or are they going to try some other approach because i've you know the argument is often that like comedies are lighter and are less plot focused and so you could just drop them all and do a binge or view them at your leisure whereas you kind of want the ongoing discussion of the drama this one comes up so this is an anthology series, amazing stories, but five episodes as a number makes me think that maybe their strategy with this is to order a large number of these and then drop them in small batches. So we'll call it like season one, but it may actually just be kind of batch number one and there'll be another five episodes in four months or six months or something like that.

And that's, you know, I think it's something to watch is just Apple figuring out what the best way to roll out a TV series is. And we have some news about Peacock from NBC. So they announced some of their content plans. So they have some original content that's coming, but one of their big selling points is going to be that their late night programming from Jimmy Fallon and Sethh meyers their talk shows they usually they are

at 11 35 and 12 35 respectively nbc will now broadcast these at 8 p.m eastern time on peacock so you'll be able to watch them early yeah so this is an interesting thing so they record earlier than that they recorded like 5 30 i think eastern time to give them enough time to prep them for air but they're obviously shifting that time now um not the recording time but the the um the release time it shows you how the balance of power has shifted there was a lot of conversation when this was announced about how like oh the affiliates aren't going to be happy those are the individual tv broadcast stations in america that broadcast this but what you need to know about the affiliate relationship with networks these days is the networks own and operate the channels in most

of the major markets. If it's a big enough market, they just bought the channel and they run it. And the balance of power has completely shifted now where it's like, well, we could either have this be an original exclusive to our broadcast channels, or we could use it to sell our streaming service. And the answer is, well, duh, we're going to use it to sell our streaming service. So I think it's interesting if you're a fan of Jimmy Fallon or Seth Meyers, they can be a primetime show for you. You can watch them every night at eight, if you want, or if you're on the West coast at five uh watch it while you're making dinner will a lot of people do that i don't know about a lot but it's a fun little bonus thing and i think

it's an interesting sometimes it's little stuff like this that not only shows you the balance of power like i said but you know might actually change the way people uh watch these shows the idea that um it's a late night show but if you always just record it and watch it the next day well guess what now you can just watch it that day there's but if you always just record it and watch it the next day, well, guess what? Now you can just watch it that day. There's no reason for them to record it and then hold onto it until 1235 AM if you want to see Seth Meyers. You can watch Seth Meyers today

at 8 PM or 9 PM, whatever, on Peacock. It'll be interesting to see how it goes, but I like that they're trying stuff like this because it's a very different approach from theoretically a broadcast television network to do it this way it's an advantage that they have so they're just taking advantage of it yeah but they announced original shows obviously the one that i am most excited about the adventure zone is going to be getting an animated series on peacock this is incredible i'm so excited about this i have questions it'll

be interesting to see what the details are because it's an animated series it's apparently going to be the balance arc of adventure zone they're going to animate it the way that the show is described because so much of the show is the dm right it's not just the players it's the dm and there's one way you could do this show where it is you take the story of the balance arc and you tell it in animation and you have the players playing their characters and it's like the DM disappears, right? And that's not what you want. So I wonder what it's going to be like and if it's going to be kind of meta where it sort of starts out with them playing D&D and then it goes into the world or it cuts back and forth. There's a lot of different ways you could do it. And I'm really curious to see how they do the storytelling because, you know, the way this is supposed to

work is the DM tells the story, he's doing the voices of all the other characters, and then they're the two players. And you've got two things happening simultaneously, right? You've got the family sitting around the table playing a game, and you've got the story underneath it. And from the descriptions, they're not going to lose the family playing games part of it. So I'm really looking forward

to seeing how they execute it. But it's very cool. Even just like, what is it going to be? Are they going to use the original audio? Yeah, or are they going to re-record it? I don't know. The Ricky Gervais show on HBO was literally they just to re-record it i don't know like the ricky ricky gervais uh show was on hbo was literally they just took they edited it but they took the audio from the podcast that's

what i hope they do because i think it could be difficult otherwise but are they gonna commit to like 135 hours of whatever right so, there isn't a lot of information and, like, the McElroys have said, like, they can't give information yet. Right. But I am just happy to see this because obviously, like, of course I'm happy to see it. Especially The Balance because it's just, like, my favorite

story ever. But there's more. Clean Slate, a comedy series starring George Wallace and Laverne Cox will be joining Peacock. Expecting, which is another comedy from mindy kaling and howard klein uh division one which is a comedy from ailey polar which i love this focuses on a women's soccer team it's like a real coming of age type thing yeah hatching twitter a documentary series from nick nick bilton based on nick bilton's book

hatching twitter um i think this is the beginning of more like hatching twitter will be the first one and they're going to do other uh investigative documentary series as a way it's described and magruber uh will forte will revisit his role as magruber which was a parody of macgyver which then became like a thing of its own yeah it was a saturday night live sketch that became a movie and they're apparently going to do it as a as a show on peacock which is funny i wonder about talking about seth meyers and jimmy fallon um they they already made the the move which for people who don't know who don't live on the west coast um saturday night live used to air live at 11 30 eastern and then on the west coast they would just air it on tape three hours later.

And at some point in the last few years, they realized that there was nothing on TV on Saturday night on the West Coast, and they started showing Saturday Night Live at 8.30 live in primetime on the West Coast, which is amazing. It's great. As a kid, I always wished they would do that. So they do that now. So they can't do what they did with Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers in terms of making it available. But I do wonder if they'll make it available everywhere live and if they'll do other Saturday Night Live tie-ins.

They do a dress rehearsal earlier in the evening that is traditionally only available, I think, inside NBC. But I had that thought when I was reading about Maccgruber and as well as the jimmy fallon stuff thinking well here's a combo like maybe they could like stream the dress rehearsal on peacock and that would be interesting right it would be like oh you get special access to the rehearsal of saturday night live or something like that i don't know it'll be interesting to see how they experiment with it um speaking of experimental Peacock things, by the way, so many pricing tiers, Mike, so many different ways that people can pay for or not pay for Peacock based on what we talked about before, which is NBC is owned by Comcast. So they want to make this available with ads in various ways, and they want to make it available to Comcast

cable subscribers in various ways. So they have three make it available to Comcast cable subscribers. In various ways. So they have three different pricing tiers. For Peacock. It's free with limited content. So I guess that means the originals. Like you're not going to get Jimmy Fallon. Only for free is my expectation. Yeah they'll have like a free tier.

With like NBC sitcoms. From the broadcast network and stuff. That's essentially what you might have gotten on hulu that will eventually just all migrate to the free version of peacock and this will undoubtedly have ads right yeah for sure there is also five dollars a month with ads and access to everything but this is free to comcast subscribers so if you're a comcast subscriber you can get peacock for free but it has ads right but it has all the premium content exactly it has everything um or anybody can pay ten dollars a month and get everything with no ads um but there is no uh news on international plans yet this will be launching on july 15th in the u. Yeah, and probably just on the US for a while.

I do wonder as a Comcast subscriber if I can pay $5 a month to not see ads or if I'm going to have to pay full $10 a month to not see ads because I don't want to see the ads. Couldn't find that answer, Jason. No, I don't think they have that answer yet. But if you're on the $5 or $10 plans as well as the early access to late night shows,

you also get sports. So like the Premier League league yeah that's right they're they have this gold product right now which is sort of like the premier league matches that aren't on their cable channels are available on streaming as part of that and they're going to roll that into peacock so um that's pretty cool and i think like cbs all access they're going to do the thing where you know um the NFL game that's on on your local NBC channel, you'll just be able to stream if you're on one of those tiers,

they'll let you stream that one game live. So that is our mammoth upstream headline for this. So much going on. Yeah, this is a particularly busy time. So I saw a couple people talking about this on Twitter over the last few days. Seems to be so much news right now about this this is going to be what

january's will be like always now because this is the time of the year when a lot of this stuff is happening awards and then we have the first set of when companies will be showing off some of their stuff for the year january, the TV critics' dinner thing. So this is where we are now, right? This is what Apple's in this game. Other companies are moving into a more technology-focused game, right? We're talking about NBC with Peacock. We have Disney with Disney+.

This is the time of year when original content will be announced. So you can mark this one on your calendar. January won't be boring anymore, Jason. There's always going to be something happening. Oh, yeah, for sure. All right, before we get into our draft, let's thank our first sponsor of this episode, and that is our friends over at Pingdom.

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free trial with no credit card required then when you sign up use the code upgrade at checkout to get a huge 30 of your first invoice our thanks to pingdom from solar winds for their support of this show and relay fm so jason it is a new decade right and so like we've seen lots of roundups and such and there was an idea that you put forward to the Upgrading Council, which was ratified and agreed upon, that we should get in on that game of doing a top something of 20. Yeah, the 2010s, let's say. Yeah, I felt like we have to do something, right? We have to do something to mark the passing of the decade. And there were a lot of best of the decade lists and all of that.

And I had an idea. We don't want to let this pass. And it's January 2020 now. So we need to do it now if we're going to do it. And it's well known, Jason, on Upgrade, we do not make lists. We draft things. We do make lists. We make them via draft.

See, that's the great thing about a draft is when you're done with a draft, you have a list. You have a list. Which is great. So what are we doing we are going to draft apple special events slash keynotes from the decade of the 2010s and to do it we're going to need some help and that's why we have brought in special guest star steven hackett hello wait i was i was told i was here to talk about the macintosh portable we're not doing that again this is this is a real thing that you're here for yeah jason wanted to do the draft and then brought in help which makes me think that jason doesn't trust my historical knowledge yeah i just thought

it's more that i like steven's historical knowledge than that i just like yours also mike i didn't want to do like a like an eight round draft with two people i thought it would be fun to kind of like mix it up and have a third person picking just for variety. Don't do an eight-round draft for two people. Do a four-round draft for three people. That's what we've learned. Yeah, and then we get a top 10 list with two alternates.

So that's nice. Everyone loves a good old top 12. So Stephen, as guest, would you like to pick? So I guess we should say there's no real rules to this. I think having spoken about this previously, we have come to the conclusion, not that we have shared any real information with each other,

that the three of us are all picking keynotes for very specific reasons that are specific to the three of us, which is going to be interesting to see how that unfolds. But that's what we are. I didn't want it to be one of those where it's like

the best or the most important like i i i sort of feel like it's the most significant or interesting in some way but you may have a different definition i have a completely different reason set for my picks so oh boy all right well so we will uh we'll figure it out but it's still a draft so if somebody else takes those picks before you, then you don't get to pick them. So, Stephen, what is your first pick in this draft that we have concocted? I will say I've watched a lot of YouTube over the last couple of weeks, like refreshing on this stuff. And I'm going to start at the beginning of the decade with the iPad introduction. Oh, darn it.

In January 2010. Yep. That was my number one. start at the beginning of the decade with the ipad introduction oh darn it in january 2010 yep that was my number one was very clearly the top pick for everyone i think for us yeah very yeah for reasons that anniversary is next week uh i'm planning some stuff for that but the reason i like this keynote so much is that yes it's a new whole new category and that's really fun but it is so different in the way that jobs delivered it you know he had that that really fancy black chair and the little side table and he really used the ipad during his demos the way that people use an ipad right it's sitting down you're sort it's sort of an intimate device. And I think all of that was just so brilliant.

It all holds up pretty well. And I just, I love the showmanship in that because it's sort of understated. And we all know, right? Like if this had been decades of all time, the iPhone keynote would have won, right? Because that's, I think, the best Steve Jobs keynote Apple's ever did. But the iPad one is so different from that. And I don't know, I just, I really liked the way

that it was done. And it always jumps out at me as something special. Yeah, I think this is the consensus number one, it sounds like. And since you got to go first, you got to pick it. But yeah, I think that for all the reasons you said, looking back on that now, and I'm sure we'll get more of that in the next week as we barrel toward that 10th anniversary, some of the assumptions that we all made back then are kind of funny now, like, oh, Steve Jobs has just saved books and newspapers and things like that.

But at the same time, like, taking the iPad and sitting in a chair and kind of flipping around on the iPad, like, yeah, that's the iPad experience. I live that every day. So they got that part right. Yeah, it was done so well. Like I remember like Steve looking down over his glasses,

that kind of thing, looking at the iPad. But I think the thing that was so good about that event and the reasons that you've mentioned for doing this was I think without an extended demo like that, the iPad would not have gotten across it just wouldn't have gotten across to people because it did look just like a big iphone right yeah like and so i think they really had to spend some time in that event demonstrating how it would be used and steve standing at a table and doing the demo like they've done for every other one of their products and for every iPad since.

Right. Like later on, the iPad, they're not sitting down in a little leather chair. Right. Like it just found its way onto the demo table and they would do their thing because people understand how it's used by then. But they really it was like a masterstroke of whoever came up with the idea of demonstrating it that way. Plus, the iPad was just a fascinating product. The iPad introduction is also particularly, and maybe I'm tipping my hat here, meaningful to me because it was this which made me decide I wanted to start podcasting. Because I had so many views that I wanted to get out that I needed an avenue for them and so

I've been podcasting for 10 years in April and that was when the iPad came out so my first episode of any show that I ever did which doesn't live online anymore because I don't want it to included my thoughts on the first ever iPad because it came out in the UK, included my thoughts on the first ever iPad

because it actually came out around that time and then we got it in the UK a little bit later. So that was a particularly meaningful event for me. My first pick carrying on that line is WWDC 2013. This is notable for two main things. iOS 7, which is pretty big. I mean, when you think about it in the grand scheme of things right like the ios 7 was a pretty meaningful uh operating system it changed a lot

right it was kind of infamous now i think is probably the better way of putting it uh wwdc 2013 also included the trash can mac pro everybody's favorite mac oh yeah it's a very looking at it from this level infamous up and down wwc 2013 but the reason i have picked it is it was my first wwdc that i went to so this keynote was the first keynote i'd ever watched i wasn't on my own like i watched it in a hotel room with a bunch of friends including steven um and jason it may have been the first time me and you met was at wwdc 2013 seems likely i think at the mac it was it was the macworld party you invited us which was wonderful and that was super exciting so that you know wwdc 2013 it was one of you know the best times that i've ever had in my entire life because i got to do something I'd always wanted to do.

And I got to meet a lot of friends that I've made online, start building relationships that, again, got me to where I am today. So that's a very important keynote for me in that respect. Yeah, it makes sense. I remember very clearly sitting there when they played that first video showing the new interface in iOS 7 and just kind of not believing what I was seeing. That was a beautiful video, though. It really was. It suggested a potential future that was spectacular that, you know, didn't really live up to it. spectacular, that, you know, didn't really live up to it. But it was a super important moment for iOS, right of kind of saying, Look, we built the original iOS based on all these interface

assumptions. And we can we can talk about the pros and cons of the flat interface, and they had to walk a lot of stuff back. But I do think it's important for the platform to every now and then say, Hey, everything we do is based on assumptions we made, like in this case, before the product actually shipped. And we need to refresh it and do something different. And, you know, there was a lot of fallout from that. But it was a super important moment in the evolution of iOS. Yeah, that was on my list for the reasons that Jason and Mike, you both shared. It's such an important event, and it gave us an infamous Mac, and it was the first WWDC that I attended. I've been to Macworld the year before, but it was fun to be there. And it's wild to me that that is seven years ago now,

six and a half years ago now, and that that computer just went away. There's so many weird things about this keynote and it definitely deserves to be in this list. Good and bad. Yeah. Good and bad. All right, Jason, what's your number one? All right, I had a few

that were at the top of my list, including the iPad, but I think I'm going to go with one that's a couple notches down just because I think it's important as an event and also kind of important personally. And that is the September, 2014 event at the Flint center in Cupertino.

That was the launch of the Apple watch. Now keep in mind, this was months before the Apple watch actually shipped to the point where there is an event in 2015 that's still available for those who want to pick it, where they explained again what the Apple Watch was because it had been a while since it had been like six months since they introduced the Apple Watch. But they wanted to have the Apple Watch debut in front of the big audience that was waiting for the new iPhone. So the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus also at this time. So this is the big iPhones. The generation that still exists is still kicking around as the iPhone 8.

So this was the beginning of a brand new generation of iPhone hardware design. It was the introduction of the Apple Watch. Apple Pay was part of this equation as well. You may also remember it as the event where Steve and Bono touched fingers. pay was part of this equation as well you may also remember it as the event where uh steve and bono touched fingers oh my god was that that one and you got uh an album and put in your itunes library or sorry sorry tim yeah steve steve also had a bono moment that people don't remember that

was the previous decade right that was the california theater ipod photo event that there were two u2 events don't forget forget, two U2 events at Apple. Why not just keep repeating it? This decade, maybe they'll come back again and put another album in our libraries. Anyway, but the other reason that I picked this is because this was my last hurrah event. This was the last event that I did. Executives at IDG decided that they were going to lay everybody off on September 9th. And I pointed out that we would all be at an Apple event then, and it might not be the best time to lay everybody

off. And they said, okay, we'll do it on the 10th. So I went to this event knowing it would be the last thing that I did at Macworld and that most of the people I was with at the event would also be losing their jobs the next day. So it was super intense and bittersweet. And Apple gave me an iPhone, which they didn't always do. After the event, I had a briefing to get a review unit, which was kind of on and off. That would sometimes happen and sometimes not. And I had to tell my very nice PR person who I'd been working with several years. I was like, okay, I got to tell you something about this.

I'm not going to be working at IDGS up tomorrow. Yeah, so it was super intense. But also, I think from an Apple perspective with the Apple Watch and the iPhone 6 line and the first kind of big iPhone with the 6 Plus and the introduction of Apple Pay, this is a super important event of the decade. Plus and the introduction of Apple Pay. This is a super important event of the decade. It's also an interesting event because Apple didn't know what the Apple Watch was going to be good for yet. And so you watch Kevin Lynch in this demo, basically

building the case of the Apple Watch is going to do everything your phone does. Open your hotel room door! That was my favorite. Yeah, I mean, it's wild and you know, it's amazing to see how far that product has come. That's what really struck me in rewatching this keynote. The other thing that struck me, and I remember thinking this at the time, was they blasted it through a really important iPhone in like 22 minutes.

Like the iPhone is done super fast and clearly there was a lot more to do. It's also Tim Cook gets to do the one more thing. His voice breaks when he says it. It's clearly emotional for them. And because of the IDG stuff, we had Upgrade and episode one of Upgrade was about this iPhone, which is really special too. That is absolutely true.

Like a week and a half later, the episode one of Upgrade happened. It's, yeah, yeah. That I refer refer to this as the what doesn't it do keynote because it was literally like the it slices it dices it opens cans it does whatever you want it's the apple watch and then they had to figure out like what it actually was for uh over time yeah i it is wild looking back at this one because that iphone it you know it wasn't just the first big iphone it was also the iphone that made the sales charts go bananas right like right it was that iphone that broke and smashed and obliterated all records which then apple is still paying for

all these years later right like that incredible rise that occurred um but i had it on my list because uh you know it was a obviously not a great reason for in some respects but it also did lead to the beginning of upgrade which is very important to me yeah and it seems like everybody that was laid off from idg has fell on their feet quite nicely i think right it seems like yeah i think so hope so all right so we're moving in to round two steven what is your second draft pick this was going to be lower in my list but mike i think your game here is uh events that's that are important to you personally so i'm going to steal one why are you going to do that but this doesn't make this i'm going to take a bet that this doesn't make

sense wait a second are you picking it because it's also important to you, or are you just being mean and picking things that are important to Mike? It is third on my list, so I'm just bumping it up one. Oh, I see what's happening here, yeah. But you could still leave it third on your list, though, right? You don't have to. Yeah, but the— Is this how you draft?

But this is how drafts work, Mike. Okay, fine. Is you want to get the picks you want to get, so you have to jump in front of other people. All right. So I am betting that the September 2015 event is on Mike's list. It is on my list. It is the introduction of the iPad Pro.

It's also the introduction of the iPhone 6S, the Apple TV with Siri remote. We get the line of the future of TV as apps. A very busy keynote. This was on my list too, just to be fair. I also had this on my list. So you, well done stealing our picks, Stephen. But that iPad Pro, I mean, and rewatching that, so I have very complicated feelings about the iPad Pro.

And I feel like in a way, Apple has made a promise it has yet to deliver on in some ways. But rewatching that keynote, it's really clear that it is a big departure for the iPad, even though it kind of looked the same. It was just bigger. But the pencil and the keyboard, those are things Apple had never done before. There's also the bonus points for me that Apple used space-themed stuff.

So there's a picture of Jupiter and there's movies like Clips of the Martian, kind of very space-oriented demo content. And, yeah, a a big big event and even though you know the apple tv the future of tv is app some of that stuff didn't pan out i think that helps make it a classic though is that this is the future of tv is apps event it also in a way feels like one of the first modern apple keynotes like you could maybe make that argument about the September 2014 event. But this event is jam-packed. It was in a venue they hadn't really used much, if ever before.

This was at Billy Graham Center, I think. Bill Graham, yeah. Billy's his son. It's a smaller venue next door. Billy Graham has a shack out back. And it is just so jam-packed. It's a really fast-moving keynote in places, and that's kind of how they all are now.

This one sort of felt like a shift in the modern direction. Yep. So I wanted this one because this is third on my list, by the way. So I can't wait to pick my second one now because it was what I thought you were going to take. But the iPad Pro is obviously very important to me. It was a great event for that because that was the device that really changed a lot of the way that i compute now um but also it was uh where hashtag mike was right was born that's where the

phrase comes from because i was standing alone in my belief that apple would introduce the ipad pro at this event uh people were saying it would saying the event would have been too much, but I was convinced that Apple would introduce it alongside the iPhone because people would be looking at it. Because that iPad Pro didn't come out until October or November. I thought Mike was right. It was about the plus-size phone being the one to buy. Nope. It started here.

And then we retroactively applied it, I think. No, did we? It's all a blur. Who knows? But it was definitely used in aplomb there because it was where I was right about something, which was nice for me for once. But my second pick is WWDC 2018 because that's where Connect connected was featured on stage during the apple watch portion of the keynote which shows me that really steven didn't care about emotions he just wanted to take a pick

that he thought was my second but that was obviously very important to me uh because as well as i mean i was 13 no i was 12 mojave my favorite of all the times not really uh i do i did have a long love affair of mojave it would still be on it if i could but had to to upgrade um yeah this watch os5 came as well none of that stuff is really that important to me now but i still have a fracture on my wall of tim cook standing in front of an apple watch with a connected logo on it which was quite a moment. It really was. I wasn't in California for the event.

We had a death in the family. So I was home and I flew out on Wednesday for the live Connected. And so I was in my office and I kind of broken away from family stuff long enough to watch the keynote. And it's one of those things where Twitter and like people in the room are ahead of the live stream.

And all of a sudden, like my mentions were just, I mean, like tweet bot was freaking out on my iMac and, and then it comes up and I have that same fracture. And yeah, it was incredible. I don't know if we've told the story before,

but we were actually considering changing the connected artwork or updating it. And we will never do it now. Can't do it now.'ll do it now we'll never be touched we actually started conversations about it a few weeks before like because it was one of the original ones and the relay fm style has kind of moved on quite a lot like it's become our artwork is more complicated now like it's more more happening and the connected one is quite flat right like it's it's ios 70 i guess uh and but now we now we can and we'll never ever change it because otherwise the money i spent on that getty image would have been in vain right yeah

and we didn't know that was going to be in the keynote itself um so it was it was really exciting yeah that was an absolute surprise like and one of the great ones just very good moment so you had gotten some approval for apple to use it in something but didn't know that it would actually be on a slide on the keynote right we've done that a lot over the years you have to get approval lots of things right and they'll never tell you what it's for but like it could just be as simple as like we want to use your artwork on the store or something and then like the, our artwork then showed up in support pages for watchOS 5. So yeah,

that's the way it goes. All right, Jason, what's yours? All right. I'm going to go with one that is, it's, it's a content pick.

It's a really good event. It's unique in a bunch of ways. I also saw a whole bunch of people who i don't usually see at these events uh because it was in brooklyn it's the october 30 2018 brooklyn event um so not only was it in brooklyn so that was unusual and i got to like uh show federico around a little bit because federico was there uh which he isn't often at these events, especially not at an event like this where he was sort of invited to come, but it doesn't have his whole, like everybody he knows around him. But like Casey and Marco were there. There's a

surprising number of people who I don't normally expect to see at Apple special events outside of WWDC who were there. That was great. But the event itself, not only the unusual location, which was, it was a really great venue and it was kind of fun to be in Brooklyn. Retina MacBook Air, which is I think a super important product because the MacBook Air is arguably, the modern MacBook Air is arguably the most important Mac of the decade, most successful and beloved Mac of the decade. And Apple tried to kill it and replace it with a couple different laptops and it didn't work. And Apple tried to kill it and replace it with a couple different laptops. And it didn't work. And the users basically rejected it.

And they had to go back and make a retina MacBook Air, which is what this product is. A new Mac Mini, where everybody's like, oh, Mac Mini's dead. It's never going to get updated. But there it was. There was a new Mac Mini as well. And then on top of all of that, that modern generation of iPad Pro with the great industrial design, and they're declaring that it was faster than 90% of the laptops sold in the previous year with the new Apple Pencil and all of that.

Great advance for the iPad Pro, which I love as a platform. So great products, interesting people, interesting venue. There's nothing that I can say badly about this, even though it made me travel across the country in order to get to it, which I don't have to do for events in Cupertino. Still just a great event. And the late October Apple event in a weird location,

it's pretty good, pretty good, pretty good. Yeah, I wanted to pick this one because there was so many awesome products at this event. Like it was a good event. It was like a kind of an apology event a little bit, right? It was just like, all right, so here's the two Macs that you wanted, and here's an incredible iPad Pro to go along with it. That was a good one.

And in the same vein, like, I was watching from afar. It was nice to see so many people that I believe deserve to be at these events at those events. Like, Federico was there, Casey was there, Marco was there. It was a nice thing to see. All right, so that brings us to the end of round two. We have two more rounds to go in this wonderful draft. But before we carry on, let me thank our sponsor,

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all of their full-featured pricing plans. Head over to directmailmac.com slash upgrade to experience the top-rated email marketing app for the Mac and see how they can help your business grow. That's directmailmac.com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Direct Mail for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. All right, Stephen, what is your next pick? This is, you know, getting into the later rounds, it gets a little bit trickier. This is, you know, getting into the later rounds, it gets a little bit trickier. But I am going to go with October 2010's Back to the Mac event.

Oh, wow. It was on my list. Didn't even make it on mine. It's the introduction of the good MacBook Air. You know, they got rid of the weird one with the port flipped down, the 11 and 13 inch. It also was the first demo of Mac OS X Lion. So we see Craig Federighi's shaky hand on the mouse. He's much better now on stage than he used to be.

So this event is cool because that MacBook Air is really important. It was really the laptop that defined the decade as far as notebooks, not just Macs, but PCs as well. Ultrabooks came from this laptop. But there's an interesting layer to it as well from Apple's strategy perspective where all of this whole event is about bringing

stuff from iOS and the iPad back to the Macs. We talk about that in software and hardware. And look, Lion is not a great release of macOS os it did a lot of weird stuff that's where they changed i think like the save as dialogue and it had linen everywhere and like broke full you know full screen apps broke multiple monitors lots of weird things yeah it brought the ios design right to the mac like for some apps right and what is interesting

is that now that we have ios apps on the, Apple has sort of moved away from this philosophy of iOS and macOS should look alike and act alike to – we're going to use underlying technology to sort of unify at the app level and let the OSs kind of be true to themselves. And so it's a real shift from this strategy that we see 10 years ago to where we are now. That really hit me for the first time in rewatching this was, yeah, I've always thought about this as, oh, that's when the good MacBook Air came out. But there's also this glimpse into where Apple was going. And the next several releases of macOS after this reflect this. And then at some point, maybe around Yosemite or so, they shifted to kind of where we are now. Yep. I mean, I had this high on my list, too.

It was a coin flip about this or a different event for my pick in this round. So well done. I mentioned it talking about the MacBook Air in the last pick that this is the one that started that ball rolling. And then late in the decade, they're like, all right, no, no, no. You want the MacBook Air back. Okay, that this is the one that started that ball rolling. And then late in the decade, they're like, all right, no, no, no, you want the MacBook Air back. Okay, here it is. You can have it. Because this is a super important computer.

And this, I remember, you know, this event and how excited everybody was about that new MacBook Air because that first MacBook Air was weird. And this MacBook Air was like, I think we even got that feeling at the time, like, oh, they got it. They figured it out. This is the future concept Mac laptop had become like the great current Mac laptop.

It's the laptop everyone says is their favorite of all time, right? Well, not everyone, but a lot of people for good reason. Yeah, it's great. There's a funny line in this of uh jobs is like you know what happens if an ipad and a mac hooked up yeah like a really funny way of talking about it but it yeah it defined so much i mean this was the macbook that brought ssd technology to the masses right and the wedge i mean all of it's so iconic like you can't i think it's really hard to overstate the importance of this laptop and this little like press event i think it's really hard to overstate the importance of this laptop and this little press event.

I think it was on their campus. It's just kind of where it all started. And Lion, as an operating system release, really is the story of the decade to come for the Mac, which is how does the Mac fit in at a company that is so dominated by the iPhone and only going to become more dominated over time? Back to the Mac, the idea there is like we've been talking about the iPhone a lot. So now we're going to talk more dominated over time the whole back to the mac the idea there is like we've been talking about the iphone a lot so now we're going to talk about the mac a little bit but it also brought in mac you know ios features sort of to the mac and that became a whole balancing act over the decades so that's why this is a good pick so good job steven thank you all All right, I am going to go back to 2010, and I'm going to pick WWDC 2010. Ooh.

Now, it's worth noting, this is kind of a fun thing, WWDC back in 2010, that's not where they announced iOS updates. So iPhone OS 4 was actually announced in April at a special event where they did the roadmap thing. At WWDC 2010, iPhone OS was renamed iOS

because at that point it was iPad as well, right? That was because the iPad had just shipped. So they were pushing iPad apps as well. But also at WWDC 2010, they unveiled the iPhone 4. Because again, there was the schedule that we have now was wasn't in place then, right? Like where you could predict

exactly what Apple was going to do on a calendar, right? Like, iPhones come in September, iOS comes in June, like we knew that was we know that's the case now. But it wasn't really the case then things was kind of a little bit more in flux, I guess. Also, FaceTime was unveiled. But the reason that I wanted to pick this event was two reasons. One, this was the last iPhone that Jobs ever got to show off, right? Yep. Which was obviously a very important thing.

But also, this was the iPhone that was left in a bar. Yes! This was the first heavily leaked iPhone, which started, I guess, the industry that now exists around trying to leak iPhones. This was the one left in a bar, picked up by Gizmodo.

There was the secret California technology police, all that wonderful stuff in what is one of my favorite just tech stories of the last decade. Steve Jobs sort of threatening phone calls to Brian Lamb at Gizmodo. Yep. So good. Like such a good story.

It was the iPhone that we all thought was really ugly when we saw the photos. But then when we saw it, it has gone down as being one of the best looking phones ever. It brought Retina. This is the first Retina device. Just like awesome. So awesome. Great story. Great WWDC. ever it brought retina this was the first retina device um just like awesome so awesome great story great wwdc super strange when you think back to it now like this wasn't where they showed off ios they released a phone instead it's like such a weird thing to think about for wwdc but that was what that's they those were the times kids yep for sure this is a great event and you're right about the the whole uh uh the cycle being so weird 2011

apple started releasing iphones in the fall so the next year but uh in 2010 yeah there was this whole weird other schedule and the ipad came in and i i didn't have this on my list only because i had so many 2010 events on my list and i thought that's pretty rough to have just pick from the one year out of the whole decade but a lot of stuff 2010 was a big year for apple big big year huge year okay i'm gonna do it i'm gonna pick antenna gate oh you got it yeah when you said you had a lot of 2010 events i just like oh man he's gonna get my next one yeah i had to pick it now because i was afraid it was gonna to, in fact, I had this lying in wait. I wanted it earlier and I was like, no, they're not going to pick it yet. I'm going to take the risk and I'm going to wait until round three. So for those who don't remember, after

that wonderful iPhone 4 came out, there was a whole rash of stories about how if you put your fingers in the right places, it lost all of its reception or most of its reception, its cellular reception. You could drop a call or a data session just by putting your fingers in a couple of places on the edge, that metal edge of the case where they had put the antenna. And there was a whole thing. This is the quintessential Apple product flaw story, which honestly we see every year now, but they're all just trying to be AntennaGate and none of them are as good as AntennaGate. It was so bad, in fact, that June 7th, 2010 is when they announced the iPhone 4 and presumably shipped it a few days later. July 16th, a month later, they had to call a special event.

Steve Jobs had, after the intensity of doing an iphone launch and a wwdc he took his family to hawaii they're on vacation this store keeps building and building and building and they eventually steve jobs has to come back from his vacation they did a hastily called like i believe it was literally come to cuino Town Hall tomorrow, and we'll talk to you about this. It was not a full room because it was on such short notice. It's not a product launch. It was kind of a presentation followed by a Q&A session. There are – it was Steve Jobs at his best slash worst because he doesn't want to be there he's really mad that people have brought

this up but also he knows he needs to spin this a little bit because it is kind of an issue so he does things like give everybody free bumpers for their iphones and it's very case fine have a case fine see if here's a case and so that it is a remarkable event in that it is Apple kind of off its game trying to do damage control. And it's Tim, Phil Schiller and Steve Jobs, I think, sitting on awkwardly on kind of stools on the stage. I've got some photos of this event that are amazing where it's like, we do not want to be here. amazing where it's like we do not want to be here and then after the event they took a small group of us and did the like no no no we really do test our iphones before we release them where they're like look at this radio lab and look at this anechoic chamber and all of this other kind of like stuff where they literally nobody gets to go there because it's where they're researching

future iphones we went past tables that were covered with drop cloths because it was obviously next year's iPhones being worked on there. But they brought us in because they were desperately trying to change the narrative about how like, oh, Apple didn't even test this thing. And they're like, no, no, no, we totally did. Anyway, it was an incredibly unusual event. It's got some great Steve Jobs moments. It was painful. It was awkward. It was weird weird it's an event like no other um and so yes i pick antenna gate so it's like it's fun for me to think about like you know i just mentioned that oh the iphone 4 started the like industry of leaks this started the industry of reporting that there are problems with iphones right like every year everyone's trying to find the new gate right like

in in kind of especially like in mainstream media because if you can find that thing and you can report on it, it gets a bunch of news, you know? Sometimes phones don't have headphone jacks. Sometimes phones make hissing sounds. Whatever the reason, you want to get a report on that because it blows up, right? Like people love that news.

And this was the first time that had happened and apple had to call a big event about it they never do that again and i think for good reason right like there are different ways to deal with these types of problems especially when this actually wasn't a thing that really affected anyone really like yeah you could maybe make it happen but it wasn't a problem also you're holding it wrong right this is the you're holding it wrong moment too i uh yeah i skimmed this one i didn't watch it in full but man jobs is like he's like you want a case fine like yeah it's it's cringe it's cringe tv it's like super cringy the whole thing if you watch it it's just uncomfortable it is and it's just funny that in

hindsight like i don't know how big of a problem it actually was apple argues in this event that it wasn't a big deal and but then with the 4s they changed the the design and yep you know uh so there's that and there was a report a few years later that it had been predicted with an apple and that engineer is no longer with the company who knows but definitely an outlier and one one worth mentioning but that's a lot of 2010 stuff guys i have some thoughts i know why that is that entire round was 2010 yeah that's fun that's true that makes four out of the nine uh events that we've picked were from 2010 big year i have something to say about that at the end but okay uh so i'm up next final pick final pick and i'm going to go with wbdc 2017 so i don't even remember what versions of ios orOS were here. That's not even in my notes. Eleven. What jumped out at me in skimming it is that Apple spent a lot of time on hardware in this event.

You know, this was after – I think it was after the roundtable about the Mac Pro coming back and the iMac Pro had been teased. Pro coming back and the iMac Pro had been teased, but Apple then spends quite a bit of time talking about updates to Macs. This is where we get the teaser for the iMac Pro. We also see the HomePod in this event, which is like a wild add-on at the end. There's a lot of interesting hardware stuff, and I think the beginning of the turnaround in terms of Apple doesn't care about Macs anymore. This is also where we get the new little iPad Pro. Yeah, the 10.5-inch.

10.5, yeah. Oh, this is where they also revised the big one, too. I think this was the first... Was this one of the first, if not the first, revision of the big one? I think it was, with True T this one of the first, if not the first revision of the big one? I think it was with True Tone and the other editions. Promotion. Yes, a lot of hardware love here.

Yeah, so they had already done the first... The iPad Pro staggered out where in the fall they did the big one and then they did the smaller one in the spring. And this is the year where they got them all... And they had different features, remember? Where they weren't all... You couldn't buy a best iPad

and that was the time where they were like, no, no, now we've got the iPad Pro. Here it is. Which was good, because that was confusing. And the HomePod. Yeah, what a weird launch, that HomePod 2, where it's like, eventually, it'll be out. Eventually.

Because they felt, this was the rare case where it felt like Apple really had to pre-announce a product because they felt pressure, because everybody was saying, where is Apple? Why don't they have a product in this category? And so they kind of pushed it out before I think they would have liked to. I think this is a product announcement that they,

we spent the summer saying, why didn't they just announce this in the fall with the iPhone? And the answer was because there was so much pressure on them to announce it. Right. And like, talk about the wrong environment for them to announce this product, right?

There's no developer story for the HomePod and like there barely is still one to this day this is this is the one too where i got to be brought into the um the the undisclosed you can say that you heard the home pod but you can't say where um where they brought me into a room and that you couldn't touch it but you could you could listen to it uh very strange obviously not a unusual for Apple because it's rare that they will show the press a completely not ready product. But that was very clearly a not ready product that they wanted us to hear. But don't touch. Try not to look directly at it.

It was very weird. Because I guess the only thing the HomePod really had and still has is it sounds real good. So you kind of had to because there was no development thing they had to at least try and get people to talk about what it was good at and that was making noise so still good at making noise still bad at everything

else my final pick is I don't like to go so recent but there is good reason for this wwdc 2019 because this was my favorite thing about wwdc is when they give you everything you've been asking for right that that is like my favorite thing that wwdc can do is like the community has a list of things and this is the time that we're going to get them uh 2017 was like this

right because we got definitely hardware that we were talking about 2019 i think takes it to another level because not only did we get everything we wanted which was mac pro pro display xdr right like there was a bunch of things that people wanted in there a lot of features to ios 13 that we were looking for some of them maybe didn't pan out the way that we wanted right like the same as like catalyst like that came that became available but didn't pan out necessarily the way that people were thinking it would initially one of the things that we got that nobody was asking for was ipad os like i mentioned this recently on an episode like it's amazing that we have it but like no one was expecting it like no one was really asking for it but we got it so it was one of those wwdcs where

like every 10 minutes i was making screaming sounds right where it's just like oh my god they've done this thing right like and so i remember that one was was especially fun to watch for that reason and then it had all the weirdness to it like here's a display it costs a thousand dollars to hang it on something right it's just like yeah you know we talk about we've been speaking about throughout this draft memes that will remain a meme for a very long time about apple keynotes right that like oh how much does the stand cost right like that we're going to be still be doing that joke in like five years time uh so i think that this this wwdc will go down in in history as well it as far as like the emotional angle i got my first ever press

invite uh to this keynote and through mac power users we got to talk to doug brooks the product manager of the mac pro and recently we interviewed somebody who had access to it in advance and there's one under my desk like and federico got to speak to craig federighi and then we were able to have some people on the show to talk about swift ui like it was like a big year for that kind of stuff which was fun it was and and hopefully uh that that continues in the future with podcast or access but yeah so for like the emotional angle this would be definitely high on my list because i got to be in the room which was just an incredible experience to be there for the first time. And there's, I don't know, like 6,000 people in the room, but it was a lot of fun. And Jason, it gave me a new respect for what people like you do who

go to these events all the time. Covering it live, it goes by so fast. I kept my notes from that keynote that I was taking during the show and there's huge gaps in them because you just can't keep up. And so that was a fun it was fun to be in that role. Hopefully I get to do it again, but that WC 2019 will always be special

to me because I got to be there. Wiley Hodges and Josh Schaffer. That's who we had on the show. Couldn't remember off the top of my head. I apologize. And we did a download, rest in peace, there wiley hodges and josh schaffer that's who we had on the show that's right those names couldn't remember not top of my head i apologize and we did a download rest in peace and uh with apple as well oh yeah we did all the great shows look at us all the great shows all right i'm going to close out the draft um and i have two kind of momentous apple history moments to choose from. I'm going to choose the September iPhone event from 2017. It's the launch of the iPhone 10,

a super important product to Apple. You know, bringing in Face ID and OLED screens and the notch and the edge-to-edge display. It's a super important product. It is still the iPhone generation of design that we're in. There was a new Apple Watch then too. There was the 4K version of the Apple TV at last. But the number one reason that I'm picking it is

this was the opening of the Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park campus. And while it didn't smell good outside because it was all covered in fertilizer because they were growing their plants, it was an amazing event because they opened the theater tim cook did his dedication to steve jobs at the beginning of it and then they unveiled the iphone 10 which was a huge product thing so both for kind of apple history reasons and for product reasons i pick the september 2017 ip event. That is a good one.

It also includes the forgotten iPhone, the iPhone 8. iPhone 8, sure, also exists. It's an iPhone in our lineup. My wife is using one. That's a good pick. Yeah, I had that one too. Definitely on my list too. And yeah, the iPhone X is such a momentous change in the lineup.

The biggest, I think, since we've seen in the 6 and 6 Plus. So it's definitely important. And I'd actually forgotten that this was the first one in the theater. I knew it was about this time, but I'd forgotten it was the iPhone 10 event. All right, so that is the end of the draft. We've picked all of our picks, but of course, it wouldn't be a draft without honorable mentions. So, Stephen, is there anything that you want to just cast a quick note to

that didn't get picked in our 12 overall items? Yeah, I've got a couple. I think the iPad 2 intro in March 2011 is another really strong keynote. I mean, the original iPad was such a hit immediately, and the iPad 2 just continued to bury their competitors in the ground and plus it had the really cool video with the smart covers if you remember

those and it was also a shift the original iPad keynote involved a demonstration of iWork and this one involved a demonstration of iLife photos and movies and stuff it was kind of a shift in Apple's content strategy for the iPad which I I think was really interesting. And I'll stay in 2011 with my other

one. The WWDC of that year, it was iOS 5, so it was PC free. Remember, you could sync over wireless if you wanted to, but it was the introduction of iCloud which is actually Steve's last keynote we have the the line that you've said on this show the truth is in the cloud it's a huge quote from this and there's also a joke about mobile me which is fun that jobs knew that it wasn't their finest hour so I think kind of a in hindsight a really important WBC because like we're still living in this world where icloud is the glue that holds all these things together the only uh event that i had left that wasn't picked uh is the march services event from 2019 oh wow it's unusual isn't it yes uh it is his i think it is historic because it marks the changing of the company. This event had no product, but Apple thought that it was worth bringing in the world's media.

We got Apple News+, Apple Card, Apple Arcade, and Apple TV+. TV Plus took up the majority of the event when Apple one by one brought out all of this a selection of stars that they were working with including oprah uh to which the roof flew off the steve jobs theater at that moment um and it was a big event because i mean it was big for for us because we've been talking about this stuff for so long at this point um and so you know i feel like you know we have upstream we cover this stuff and this was a big moment for that i felt like it's something that i knew a lot about and was

like really intrigued to see if everything was going to go the way that i thought it would but i think that again we will look back at this event uh in another 10 years time and quite like we spoke about 2010 2019 marked a lot of change for Apple. And this is one of the big changes of like, okay, we're a media company now. So let's see what ends up shaking out from that one. My only leftover pick was something that I refer to as the empty chair event. It's October 4th, 2011. This was the introduction of the iPhone 4S and Siri.

Five of My Friends was also at this event but i think in hindsight most notable because um they left a chair at the front of the stage um like in the first row um open for steve jobs who died the next day i think um and so it's i keep i always think about that that that they did an Apple product launch event the day before Steve Jobs died. And they, you know, and they left in his honor, the story goes that they left

his audience chair available, but they knew what was probably going to happen. And so, yeah, that was the other one I had on my list. Any closing statements on our draft here in comparable style? I think it's interesting that

it's pretty weighted towards earlier in the decade and I think there are a couple reasons for that, I mean one we're all Steve Jobs fans and so his presence on stage makes these things feel more special. But I think there have been a couple shifts.

Like if you kind of jump across the decade and look at these events, I think three things jumped out to me. One, Tim Cook is much better on stage than he used to be, way better. Two, Apple is working on diversity. It's improving as the years go by in terms of who is on stage and what they talk about. And I think that's obviously a very important thing for Apple to continue to push on. But three, I don't want to go into this conversation necessarily

unless y'all want to, but if you go back in the past, there's always been applause at WWDC because there's developers there. But press events, it basically was a quiet room for the most part, and that is totally different now. Apple brings in retail employees and other people to these events. And the Brooklyn event is a good example where there are people from the New York area Apple stores there, and they were very clearly enthusiastic about being there, and they should be. That's really exciting. But that's a real difference between like the Back to the Mac event and the 2018 MacBook Air event.

Like just listen to them. It's a very different environment, and I found that really notable while going back through these. The change in Tim Cook is a big thing, right, and getting better at it but then you know you mentioned the diversity it makes it interesting because we're hearing from different people and that just means the events feel different like they have a different energy to them which is good right because you've got as well as people that have been doing this stuff for a long time and know how to work a crowd you have people that you can feel their excitement

because they get to be on stage for the first time talking about the thing that they work on it makes the events feel very different it also makes them feel faster i think because we're they're cycling through people um so it gives them a different energy which i enjoy steven thank you so much for joining us for this draft. Your historical knowledge has been noted and appreciated. If you want to find Stephen's history, well, the history that Stephen reports on, go to 512pixels.net, and of course you can go to 512pixels' YouTube channel as well.

Stephen is the host of many fine programs here at RelayFM, including Connected, Liftoff, Mac Power Users, and Ungenious. Stephen is at ISMH online as well. Did I cover everything, Stephen? It feels good. Thanks for having me, guys. Always a pleasure. Never a chore. Thank you, Stephen Hackett. Until next time. Adios.

All right, Jason, we should do some hashtag askupgrade to send this episode off into space. But before we do, I would like to thank our final sponsor of this episode, which is Booz Allen. Modernizing for the future is a challenge, especially for larger organizations. You may need to integrate legacy systems of new technology. You may need to incorporate

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Integrate, innovate, get it done with Booz Allen. Learn more at BoozAllen.com slash relay. That's BoozAllen.com slash relay. Our thanks to Booz Allen for their support of this show. Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions. Three, two, one. Oh, no. The episode's already been.

Okay. I guess we haven't yet left. We had to send this episode into space. So I guess lift off. Right. We're now. We're just. We're kind of. We're heading up. We're ne're nearing max q yeah i don't know what that means but it's the beginning of

our ascent into orbit uh and kirk asks jason what blu-ray drive are you using with your mac oh uh so i have a new one uh it's a long story i wrote a a post about it or updated an old post about it. I am using the new drive I got. It's an Asus drive. It's the Asus. It's a great name. You're going to love it. BW-16D1HT.

Oh, good. I'm pleased they upgraded from the HH to the HT. That was a good deal. In an OWC Mercury Pro enclosure. Basically, I was talking to people who rip Blu-rays and put them on plex about how there's now this um uh libre drive uh standard which is basically uh a you flash the firmware on the disc and it it it gets in this um completely region free drm free mode where i can take not only regular blu-rays but i can actually take 4 4K Blu-rays and pull them off using the very useful Make MKV app, at which point I put them on my Plex server. So I am a firm believer that, this is my disclaimer, firm believer that if I buy

a disc and I want to play it on other devices in my home, I can do that. And I don't use it for piracy. I use it for my own home playback on my server and for backing up the movie so that I can get it off the disc and into other formats. So I did buy a new one of those because it's nice and fast and more flexible. And my old drive was getting a little long in the tooth. And I actually bought it pre-flashed with LibreDrive. There's a link in my story to uh people who offer it including the guy that i used um who you know basically he buys the drive and flashes the firmware so that i don't have to boot into windows and flash the firmware myself and uh and then sends it and basically charges you for labor and and passes on the cost of the drives. So that's what I did.

And so now I've got a big optical drive for when I want it. This is so weird. I'm like looking at this external enclosure thing. Yeah. It just all looks so strange. It's a big metal slab with a big drive in it. So this isn't in the post. You have a picture, and that's not the drive you have now, right? No, that's my old drive. The old drive. it. So this isn't in the post you have a picture and that's not the drive

you have now, right? No, that's my old drive. Which would look much nicer than the new drive which is very big. It is. Chris wants to know do either of you use clips? I've used it occasionally but as a Vi movie I find the investment versus reward

lacking compared to the photos moments feature. Do you ever use clips, Jason? No. I wish it supported portrait video. I feel like if it did, I could make some fun Instagram stories of it. Because it does like that subtitling thing. And you can do green screen type stuff. And it has all those stickers, right?

Like I feel like clips has a lot of really interesting features. But locking it to square video is just very strange. Like this is not... I know why you did it apple because instagram but you should be focusing on instagram stories not instagram feed posts right like it is a social media app do you remember people originally thought that clips was going to be a social network that apple was making but it ended up just being this social video app. But it should be shooting 16 by 9, not square. Or 9 by 16 or whatever one it is. 9 by 16 is what I'm saying, because so does the portrait, like Instagram stories.

Come on, update the app. That's what we want. They update the app all the time, but never in the ways that I want it to be updated. So no, I don't. Ninja asks, I'm going to be going overseas for a week in March. How does one go about getting a travel data plan?

I often remember, Jason, when you would talk about the vending machines inside of airports. That's one of the ways that you used to get a SIM card. And you can just get a SIM card from a local store when you land. That's what I used to do back in the day when I'd arrive in the U.S. If I hadn't already lost, if I had remembered to bring my sim card from my previous trip i would use that otherwise i'd go to like a t-mobile store because t-mobile have like a travel sim basically it's like a plan which is for 90 days or whatever and it's just it's basically a prepaid plan you could do that um but what i do now my carrier i'm with a carrier called ee here in the uk i'm on a plan

that counts my data minutes and calls overseas as if i was at home so there's no charges right it's just included in my plan check if your carrier does that if they do it's great because then you're not paying a bunch of fees a bunch of carriers i know that american carriers do a thing where you can just pay a fee a flat fee every day and use your phone that way and and sometimes that's actually a pretty good deal especially if you're having to deal with switching sims and switching numbers and all of that that i i went to canada for a few days and it was way easier for me to just have my at&t plan charge me for the three days i was in canada than it was to deal with something else they would be different if you were in a different country for two or three weeks maybe but you really

should check something like this these days because apps are data hungry now and you can blow through daily caps very fast if you use like instagram like it will just gobble that right up and it's all gone so like if you get if you just get into your regular flow of things not really paying attention to your data you will go through daily caps very quickly at this point i don't recommend it like if you've got it if you've got an option where it's like we will charge you per gigabyte over this or whatever find another option because you you don't want to live like that you're gonna be traveling whether it's for work or for a holiday the last thing you want to do is every time you look at your phone, you're flipping switches on and off of cellular data or you're thinking about how much they're going to charge you.

You either want an all-in plan for your carrier or you want to get an eSIM or a regular SIM card from some carrier, assuming you've got an unlocked phone especially which um most most of them can be or are now um so yeah that's the the e-sim thing is really nice right because if you have the ability to have a second sim active on in your phone as well as your existing uh sim then you can you can do a little bit of both and that makes this this is getting better i guess is what i'm saying yeah i've included a link in the show notes to a knowledge base article from apple talking about how to use e-sims um and this is like especially useful in iphones was it the 11 was no 10s from 10s and 10r and later uh you can use a second SIM, electronic SIM, in your iPhone. So if your iPhone is unlocked, which is important, it's also important if you want to buy a SIM when you land,

make sure your iPhone is unlocked before you do that because otherwise you're stuck. So that might not always be an option for you, but eSIMs are another way to do it. But I agree with Jason. Do everything you can to avoid paying for gigabytes. You don't want to do that now because you will end up in a situation afterwards, I can almost guarantee. It will be more expensive than any other way

that you would want to do this. Ben writes in and says, after last week's episode, I got to wondering, what are your etiquette rules around taking smart devices with you if you were to move to a new house? Can you take the smart bulbs in the ceiling mounts the smart roller shades that you installed what about the ring

doorbell what stays what goes all right so there are a lot of issues here one of them is are you renting or are you selling your house um and what was in the house when you moved in. But I think the simplest answer is if you are a renter, return the house, consider what it would take to return to the house to the original condition it was in. So you put smart bulbs in the fixtures. If you want to take your smart bulbs with you, that's fine. If the house didn't come with smart bulbs, just buy some bulbs and screw those in and take your smart bulbs with you. It it's something like a roller shades, right? Like if they weren't smart roller shades when you got there and you installed them, I think they belong to you and you should be able to take them, but you can't leave the house

without shades. If the house had shades, when you moved in, you need to put shades in before you leave either the ones that you kept, right? Or if you threw them away, the ones that you are going to have to buy to replace them. And then you do the balance. You do the question of like, would it be easier for me just to leave them here where they are already installed and go buy new ones in my new place? But I think returning it to the place that you left it, like if you have a Nest thermostat on your wall and it originally came with a cheap plastic thermostat and you still have that somewhere, just put the cheap plastic thermostat back. If you're selling your house, I don't know, talk to your realtor because there may be some

implication of whether they're buying the equipment or not. But I think even then, I have a hard time believing that any house sale is contingent on things like whether you've got smart bulbs in the outlets so my real guidance here is leave it the way you found it unless you decide that that's actually more complicated than it's worth yeah this is definitely the case for renting in my opinion right because it's like it's more trickier house sales are a bit weirder because like yeah you know you're buying the shell not the stuff that's in the middle. Right.

Unless that's negotiated because sometimes that happens where it's like you've got this huge table that fits in this room and they're like, we love that table. We want to buy it along with the house. And you're like, okay, throw in another thousand dollars and you can have the table. Yeah. But yeah, don't leave people without a thermostat, which is another point. If you're renting and you're putting any of this stuff in keep the old stuff keep the old stuff be put back in consider that when you move out upgrade warning

uh it's literally an upgrade warning as well as a warning from upgrade josh writes in and asks do you think it's possible and or probable that streaming services will ever pick up cancelled shows from other streaming services i just just really want Sad Spies back. We all do, Josh. We all do. We all do. This has already happened. It will continue happening.

I think the most likely scenario is that the studio that made the show has its own streaming service because what you want to see is alignment between who made it and who profits from it and what the outlet is where it's being released and if you see alignment um then you you there's a more likely chance like nbc did this to itself where nbc the broadcast network canceled ap bio and then peacock picked it up peacock as mentioned earlier on this episode uh so you could see that then again you know peacock among the shows that they picked up were shows from other uh studios so you could end up in a situation where peacock cancels something and the studio who made it is like oh uh maybe we should put this on our own streaming

service if we have one so uh i i think it will happen it has happened it will happen again but um as time as time goes on and there's sort of less desperation to get streaming services up and running, I think you'll see it less because you really need a unique position where somebody feels like they're in a stronger position with the show than the originator and um when it's streaming to streaming i think that's less likely to happen you won't less likely to have something like the expanse where um the sci-fi channels deal with the expanses uh production company was very specific in the u.s and they didn't have some of the streaming rights they wanted and it was a bad deal for the sci-fi channel but amazon could make a good deal and had been using it in the rest of the world and felt like good about it when there's a lack of parody like that you can see it happen more when everybody's just i got my own streaming service worldwide and everybody's got the same it's less likely that somebody's going to see a canceled show and say oh you know

that would make sense doesn't make sense for you but it makes sense for us so you want to look for where there are moments where there's a real disparity um which is happening now, but I think over time will happen less. And also as there will be fewer production companies used, right? So if Netflix have a Netflix original that they have created and canceled, it is less likely for that to show up. Well, it basically can't because they own it and they killed it. And that's,

that's also the case with a lot of stuff is if it's from amazon and amazon funded it and amazon owns it forever then it's not going to go somewhere else and that may be the case with patriot um and and streaming services want that they want to own it all if they can and uh and they will try to hold on it forever. And finally, Michael asks, iCloud Drive is super buggy for me. I copy PDFs. It keeps showing upload signs. Nothing happens for days.

Have you guys switched to iCloud Drive or would consider it? I have not considered it because I use Dropbox and there are things I use in Dropbox that are very much how I want to live my life. And while I could probably move some of my things to iCloud Drive, other things I'd have to stay in Dropbox, at which point I think I would rather keep Dropbox. It has lots of nice kind of fiddly features that you can do on the web where it's keeping files over time and it's doing versioning.

And I'm paying for a higher level of Dropbox. So I get that kind of functionality, which I find really valuable. I'm going to use this as a moment to say I am really frustrated with how bad the Dropbox experience is on iOS. Files has issues, but Dropbox has real issues. It feels to me like Dropbox has just decided that strategically, it either doesn't care about its iOS experience, or it doesn't want to be seen as just a file provider, which is what my guess is, because it is so much more painful to use Dropbox on iOS than it should be. There are plenty of iOS 13 APIs to improve the files app experience for external providers like Dropbox. And yet Dropbox

has always been behind and wonky. And even to this day, when I use files to import something from Dropbox, I end up seeing like an old version of my Dropbox that is not what it currently is, because for some reason, the Dropbox app isn't updating the data. It's so frustrating. But that said, I have not considered switching to iCloud Drive for most of my stuff because I have it built in Dropbox and Dropbox offers me other features. I would consider switching small things to iCloud Drive in the meantime, but I'm not going to move house completely. But like you mentioned, I agree with you, like Dropbox and ios especially so frustrating could do it's embarrassing but i drive is bad too though right which is like my question and

it's situations that i have you say things to iCloud drive and like i try and open a 46 kilobyte numbers file and it will sit and spin for 10 minutes before it opens it's like why what are you doing this should be on the device. Like what is happening, right? So I have this problem all the time with iCloud Drive stuff, right? Like the containers that the apps have inside of iCloud Drive. I use iCloud Drive like my on-device storage. Like I save files there that I'm going to be sending somewhere else. Like it's like, oh, I've got a PDF that I want to email somebody. I just save it to iCloud Drive and then email it.

I don't use it for storage long-term storage. Yeah, but you could just use on my iPad for that. You don't actually even need to use iCloud Drive for that. I don't have to. It just goes there because it's there, right? I just put it there because this is where I put things because I've been doing that since before on my iPad existed, so it's just part of my workflow. And like and you've got the buttons to save to icloud drive in a bunch of applications rather than like i'd have to go i'd have to

physically like choose then to open on my ipad it's like yeah whatever i'll just put it in my cloud drive thing for dropbox for me like i don't really have any problems with dropbox i know a lot of people hate dropbox like but i have no problems with Dropbox. I know a lot of people hate Dropbox but I have no problems. I think it's a great service. For example, I couldn't switch to iCloud Drive because I now have more in my Dropbox

in storage than most of my devices could fit on them. But Dropbox has a solution for this. They're SmartSync stuff, right? Where I have two different ways of doing it. I can either select and sync things,

which I do on my iMac Pro, or I can use a SmartSync on devices that I don't need to have everything immediately available, and you just download the files that you need. Like, I think that's a great feature that Dropbox has available. Like, our drive doesn't have that feature. Like, I couldn't switch even if I that Dropbox has available. iCloud Drive doesn't have that feature.

Like, I couldn't switch even if I wanted to because it's too much stuff. And honestly, I wouldn't trust iCloud Drive with a terabyte of data. I just wouldn't because it can't even serve me 45 kilobytes. So I will say you can actually do that on iCloud Drive. It will download things on demand and you can click and choose remove download and it will remove that file from your drive and leave it in the cloud. So you can do that. But in going to check that right now, I noticed that my iCloud Drive still has the little clock that says it's uploading one item that's 15K that has been there forever. And I don't know

what that item is. And it's stuck. With the i don't know what that item is and it's the way that you described it it seemed like it's just going to download stuff and then i have to tell it if i want it to go away but with dropbox nothing's downloaded unless i choose it to be that's a setting that's a setting and i think that that you can actually set it so it works that way so but i i agree i am more comfortable using the dropbox approach there and i you know i cloud is not without... If this was a case where iCloud worked perfectly and Dropbox was what it is today, I would still have to use Dropbox for some things, but I would be more tempted to move

a bunch of other things to iCloud Drive. But you're just trading one set of bugs for another set and more features for me on Dropbox. All right. So that's it for this week's episode of Upgrade. If you want to find our show notes for today, go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 281. If you want to have a question answered on a future episode of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag askupgrade and it may be included.

Thanks again to Stephen for joining us. If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com. He is at jsnell. You can find Jason on many shows here at RelayFM and The Incomparable as well. I am at I'mYKE. Thanks to Booz Allen, Direct Mail, and Pingdom for their support of this week's episode. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, everybody.