Upgrade - 305: A High School Production of Dracula

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

Apple's services are in the spotlight, as Apple TV+ adds material, Apple News gets kicked to the curb by the New York Times, and Apple Arcade grapples with finding the right kind of games to publish. In other streaming news, we touch on Quibi and CBS before diving into Disney+--most specifically, Myke at the Matinee featuring "Hamilton."

From RelayFM, this is Upgrade, episode 305. Today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace, Pingdom, and ExpressVPN. My name is Mike Hurley, and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hi, Mike Hurley. How are you? Summer of fun, my friend. Summer of fun! The summer of fun is upon us.

If you are new to Upgrade, the summer of fun is where we spend the summer months doing some additional and fun things in the show. Today, we are doing our very second but first official summer of fun topic because the summer of fun happened upon us all in last week's episode merely by happenstance and accident but we are going to be talking about hamilton the disney plus theatrical movie version of hamilton we're going to talk about that a little later on in today's episode but we have lots to get to we have lots of upstream lots of other pieces of stuff that we want to talk about that's been missed because of all the

wwdc news over the last couple of weeks but as we always begin our episodes and we will begin this one officially we have a hashtag snow talk question this one comes from thomas over in the relay fm members discord thomas wants to know what is your favorite ice cream flavor, Jason? You know, not all these questions need to be complicated. Mint chocolate chip. Yes! That's my favorite too! Oh, yay! And I'm pleased

about that because most people say that mint chocolate chip is a bad flavor that I mention this stuff to. I think it's one of those flavors that people tend not to like. I don't know why. The podcast that brought you pepperoni and pineapple pizza brings you mint chocolate chip ice cream you're welcome america yeah what do you want from us no one else is welcome to it it was the fourth of july i just i'm talking to america now you're welcome okay um it's interesting everyone else everyone else is sort of welcome too right you know now

i like all kinds of ice cream you know like i'll have like my favorite ben and jerry's flavors or whatever but if i'm going to an ice cream shop the first flavor i'll always look for is mint chocolate chip and if they have it that's what i'll get it's the best has been since i was a kid although there was that brief period oh i shouldn't even talk about there was a brief period where i couldn't have it because i uh i had some lovely mint chocolate chip ice cream and then about two hours later um i got sick oh and it wasn't the mint chocolate chip ice cream it was some medication i wasn't aware that i was allergic to that was how i learned it um but it was a bystander and uh for a couple years i couldn't have it i'm very pleased you couldn't have it you've had a few of these situations over the time i've known you like when you couldn't have uh was it gluten for a little bit

recently but now you're back on back on gluten again i am people keep asking assuming that yes that's i i didn't talk about too much but yeah i i i was off gluten for a year and i'm back on it now uh and per doctor's instructions and we'll see what happens with that. But yeah, I'm eating regular pizza dough and regular bread. What a great instruction to be given by a doctor, right? Eat gluten. Thanks, doc. I will. I really expected her to say something different.

And she's like, well, you know, just go ahead then. I'm like, done. Sold. I know for the questions. Done. I got to go. I got to go put some beer in the fridge. Bye. There's a pizza waiting for me. I'm like, done, sold. I know for the questions. Done. I gotta go. I gotta go put some beer in the fridge. Goodbye.

There's a pizza waiting for me. I'm out of here. And she said like, we'll follow up more with, after the, after this whole pandemic is over, we'll follow up more and do some more tests and all of that. And I,

and the longer this thing goes, I'm like, I am just going to keep eating bread forever at this rate. And it's positive. If you would like to send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade, you can send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk or you can use the command question mark SnellTalk in the Real

AFM members Discord. They go into a list and we may pick yours to help us open a future episode of the show. So on last week's episode, we had Bob Borchers and Ronak Shah on the show but we did also have an interview on Connected as well that I wanted to follow out to

where we were joined by Jenny Chen and Stephen Tonner. Jenny was the engineer who demoed Apple Pencil during the keynote. And obviously we spoke about Apple Pencil a lot. And that was something that I was really excited to be able to talk to because I love those new features in iPadOS. So you can go and check that out if you want to.

And I'll also include a link in the show notes to a list that friend of the show underscore David Smith put together of all of the interviews and podcast appearances that occurred during the week. There were lots of them. There were different videos and stuff like that. So I'll put that in the show notes as well in case you missed it. It seemed like it was interesting. I actually kind of liked it as a consumer of the content, of all the great content, to have it come out

mostly the week after WWDC because it gave some distance. And I'm sure from Apple's perspective was interesting because it allowed them to stretch the news a little bit more, which I'm sure was a pretty good strategy for them. So that was cool. So I just wanted to follow up to that.

I like having a list. I like seeing how they're reaching out. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. So I hope that it continues because it was really fun to be a part of. So should we do some upstream news, Jason Snell? I have been collecting some stuff.

I feel like it's been a while. It sure has. And just before the show started, we were reading that Vulture story about Quibi. Yeah. Which, I mean, I don't want to say too much because I feel like I've pointed and laughed at Quibi a lot already. But it is an amazing story. And I guess we'll put a link in the show notes to that story but it is an amazing story about just how i would say broken quibi is and it we knew it was but like this goes into more extra details of how broken it is and so you know if you want to point

laugh at quibi some more read that vulture story i, it's like, we knew it was a bad idea. What we didn't know was just how badly the idea was being put together. Yeah, the headline is, is anyone watching Quibi? And the news angle is that their 90-day free trial period's about to expire. It's started.

I suspect Quibi will start to expire there soon thereafter i am fascinated to see what happens from this point because like they have spent 90 days being laughed at and having their technology not being good enough uh or being weird in certain ways and ultimately having no hits from that content. And so I am really intrigued to see what happens now because people will either decide to stick with it or they'll get rid of it. And I cannot fathom why people would stick with it. I would love to know, actually. If you are an upgradian and you are going to voluntarily pay for Quibi, please get in touch and tell me why.

I would love to know. Like, I'm not saying that it is impossible. I am just intrigued because I have not signed up for Quibi. I don't even think there was a trial period here. It was too expensive. I don't remember. I just didn't bother.

It just didn't seem like it was worth it. Nothing stood out to me. I think they didn't have an ad-free tier or something, so it was like £10 a month or something like that. I'm not going to do that. So I would really love to know. I would really love to know. But I have a bunch of Apple TV Plus news for you, Jason.

Okay. They've given a straight-to- to chris miller and phil lord for a murder mystery comedy called the after party uh miller and lord are responsible for many of your favorite comedies over the years right cloud you have a chance of meatballs they did the lego movie lego batman movie and uh they were involved in spider verse uh like they are as a pair some like they make some of my favorite movies of the last few years that that kind of it was funny like i was uh just a couple of nights ago we watched the jump street movies and halfway through the movies like it's like 21 jump street and 22 jumps i don't know i don't remember if they called it that or not but we were watching those and i was like i enjoy these i wonder and

i was like oh yeah no it is miller and lord lord right so it's like oh okay um so this this uh show that they're doing is set at a high school reunion and a quote from the variety article uh each of the eight episodes will feature a retelling of the same night told through a different character's perspective each of its own unique visual format and film genre to match the teller's personality so not only is this going to be i assume funny because it's from them but also i like the the conceit of this of each episode being a different genre of yeah show sounds really fun so i'm very excited about this actually it's more than just a rashomon story it's also like it's it's the point of view goes to the genre and the visuals and all of that and those guys are so creative and and and smart with the lego movie and uh into the

spider-verse and you know it's yeah so i'm i think that's a that's a smart one good people to be in business with i would say definitely uh they've also signed apple also signed an overall deal with mark bomback the show runner of defending jacob when i saw this headline i was a bit perplexed because i ended up not watching defending jacob i think because you told me you didn't like it no i haven't seen it i haven't seen it it must haven't seen it. It must have been another one of their shows then, and I've somehow gotten it confused. Yeah, it was Home Before Dark about the girl who investigates a crime.

Yes. It's the one that I hated. Then I will watch Defending Jacob then, because it was on the list. I was like, didn't Jason Dupuy- No, no, this is the one that was- In John Six's backyard. Exactly right. I got to get your trivia out.

I stole it for once. But this is the one starring Chris Evans, Captain America. Apparently, this show performed really well for Apple. So Defending Jacob is allegedly, because Apple doesn't release these figures, but it's come out from somewhere. It's in an article on Deadline. It is in the top two of the fastest growing show in a week-to-week viewership kind of perspective so it grew that was great and also believes to have set records for viewer engagement i don't really know what that

means but it is interesting because defending jacob did not get the same marketing push that the original slate of shows did because those original slate of shows were the launch of TV+, right? And potentially Defending Jacob was their biggest show since the launch, right? Just from a who's attached to it perspective. But it's done well enough that they've signed the showrunner up to kind of an overall deal and they'll take whatever that person wants to give them, I guess. Yeah, sounds good uh apple have also hired sony pictures tv studios co-president chris parnell this is clearly somebody that they worked with at sony because remember the guys who were running

apple tv uh plus are uh sony pictures executives who came over to Apple. So they continue to take people from Sony and put them to work at Apple. Parnell actually worked on For All Mankind on the Sony. Right, because that was a Sony production, yeah. So that's another tie there, right? And so Parnell is going to be taking on a senior programming role, not coding. Parnell is going to be taking on a senior programming role, not coding. This is the other type of programming,

to continue to drive development on Apple's original slate of content. I wonder if Dr. Drang is upset when senior programming people in TV call themselves programmers. It's kind of funny that Apple has both types of programmers now. It does. On the payroll.

Apple have also acquired the rights to a movie called emancipation starring will smith and antoine focois it is quote an action thriller about the harrowing escape of peter a runaway slave forced to outwit cold-blooded hunters and the unforgiving swamps of louisiana on a torturous journey north where he joined the union army is said to have cost in the region of 130 million dollars to secure the rights um and it was apparently being fought out by a bunch of companies because okay so like a movie with this type of theme you can assume a lot of companies wanted to get it especially will smith attached to it because if the movie is good uh it is like content that people are interested in right now and it sounds like the apple tv execs have a previous relationship with will smith which helped

but they still had to battle warner media for it and this is one of those deals where there will be, assuming that theaters exist, there will be a theater premiere and then it will go on to Apple TV. So it's not planned as a straight to Apple TV, but we live in a world where sometimes that happens because that Tom Hanks movie that we talked about a few weeks ago is premiering this week. And that was originally planned to be a theatrical release and instead they basically sold it off to apple tv um there was a uh tom hanks interview and i want to say the guardian today where he he jokes about it but also is kind of he jokes about his his handlers his masters at apple um you get the sense that tom hanks is, I mean, he's disappointed, right? He's disappointed his movie got sold off to a streaming service because it was supposed to be a theatrical release,

not a streaming movie. And although, you know, Apple paid the money and that's fine, he is super disappointed it's not going to be in a theater. you know he made some a bunch of jokes about uh you know how apple wanted to handle his press junket uh virtually and all of those sorts of things but but like you just get the sense i i totally get it where you make a movie and you think it's a movie and then the pandemic hits and your studio doesn't delay it your studio just goes we're just gonna sell this off to streaming where it's never gonna hit the movie theater yeah there's just like a tone deafness to it to me which you know i'm big tom hanks fan but like the whole article is like why are you complaining so much yeah right like he keeps referring to apple as these overlords like then i cannot fathom that they're doing anything any

different that that any other production company would do. And, you know, he's doing something that I know a lot of people do, I do from time to time, which is it's that kind of jovial crankiness, right? Where it's like he is kind of bugged, but also he's just kind of joking. And he's not as, and it's kind of this in-between space. But, you know, basically what I read is he's disappointed.

Yeah, but it's like, I read is he's disappointed yeah but it's like I don't know just the tone of it it just felt a little weird to me it did it was a weird article but you know in the same vein maybe if I was there and he was saying it to me I would find it funnier than when it's written down and I'm reading it I really suspect

that that is the case yeah that's the case. Yeah. Yeah, that's the problem with this kind of thing being turned into text. Like, I don't get his tone in this. And when I was reading the article, it felt like a kind of ungrateful tone, but I bet that wasn't. Now, thinking about it more afterwards,

I bet that was not the tone that he was trying to set. But anyway, this movie is actually it was part of the virtual can film festival um i don't think that it started production at all um like it was like a film emancipation yeah and that's going back to emancipation yeah um because there's a note about it starting production in 2021 i i know that sometimes with a film festival movies production can just mean finishing um but i don't know i don't from what i could put together i don't think they've actually started work on this movie yet um but that the the the amount the 130 million makes it the largest uh can film festival acquisition deal in history which is this

this is what happens when the tech companies are moving in right those prices just keep going up you have some other headlines for us kind of outside of apple right and streaming stuff okay so this is a story about cbs licensing cbs viacom, I guess, licensing some of its shows to Universal for the Peacock streaming service, non-exclusively. And I got a lot of feedback from people who've been listening to us talk about this saying, why did this happen? I thought in the streaming wars, everybody was taking their ball and going home. Yes, but no, it's a little more complicated than that. So CBS, first off, has always had this strategy that is build our own thing,

but don't turn down money from other people. And that dates back to when Les Moonves was running the company. It's the reason that they launched CBS All Access in the US and sold and basically paid for their Star Trek shows by selling them internationally to Netflix and Amazon. So they've always been kind of like trying to build their new thing, but they like money and they want to kind of diversify

where their money's coming from and not just go all in on their streaming service, which is smart, given that their streaming service is a small service. Having other cashflow is a good idea. And the other thing I would say is when we talk about everybody kind of taking their ball and going home,

we're talking about the crown jewels. We're talking about Warner Media walking away with friends. We're talking about Universal walking away with the office. We're talking about things that are super high profile and have a lot of value.

But you got a catalog and this is a non-exclusive licensing agreement. And really it's like Peacock wants some stuff. ViacomCBS has some stuff and they would like some money. And so they make a deal. And I think a lot of times when this is going to happen is when the stuff that you own has more value in licensing than it does sitting on your own service. And that may be more value because Universal is trying to launch Peacock or because they think it's a better fit with their audience. It's also true that some of these companies have catalog stuff that doesn't really fit the approach that they're taking to content, but it fits someone else's approach, probably

because it was made for some other company on a TV network somewhere. And I have actually a good example of this. So the classic 80s TV show Magnum PI starring Tom Selleck, that was a CBS TV show. And it's been running all eight seasons of it have been on Amazon Prime Video, and they just came off on the 1st of July. So it's not currently available anywhere. And it's owned by Universal. So there's a lot of talk that maybe it will go to Peacock. And it might. It might.

But my first thought was, well, wait a second. CBS and Viacom just made a deal with Universal to license a bunch of stuff for Peacock. CBS is airing the new Magnum P.I. show, a reboot of the old 80s show on their TV network. And some seasons of that are available. I think the current season is available on CBS All Access. I'm not sure the first season is. It's one of these things where

they're connected here. CBS All Access is a way better place for that show than Peacock because in the mind of Americans, it's a CBS show anyway. Anyone who remembers it thinks of it as CBS. But on a larger point, the current show is also on CBS, right? Even though that's a universal property, it's a better fit for CBS All Access than it is. So I think you're going to see stuff like that too. Um, uh, not saying that, that, by the way, I, um, I have a Magnum PI related podcast that you could listen to if you want some laughs. It's me and Philip Michaels and David J. Laura, and it's the incomparable.com slash Magnum. So you can go those who would like to relive the eighties, uh, but it would help if that was back on a streaming service somewhere. Come on, come on, universal, put it somewhere.

But anyway, so we're going to see deals like this. I don't think they're that weird. I think we're exiting the era where everybody's taking their super prime stuff that they should own themselves, but they license to an enemy, mostly Netflix and really regret it. We're exiting that era, but there will still be cross-licensing of catalog stuff

because I think a lot of these companies are going to say, sure, if you want to give me money for this thing, great. Because I'd rather have the money than the exclusivity. And that will still happen. I'm sorry that you are going to struggle to get your TV show for your podcast. Or do you have it already somewhere else? Oh, I bought the whole thing on iTunes. I'm fine.

Yeah. But I think one of the things that was, I guess one of the reasons you heard about it a bunch, right, is this is what we have been saying or you have been saying for a while. Yeah. It's like this is what Apple could have got, the ViacomCBS stuff. And they didn't, right? That's right.

It's gone to somebody else now. Yeah, well, I mean, some stuff. This is like some movies and some TV shows, and it's not exclusive, so Apple could do it too. I think the reason people really answered this is they assumed all content would return home and then remain exclusively home forever, and I don't think that's true.

I think everybody's going to keep licensing stuff to Netflix, too. Honestly, I think that there will be a lot of content that still get licensed. It's not like licensing is going to end. I think it's going to be much more selective. I think movies is a great example, too, of the movie catalog, where rotating movies through, if it's not part of a big brand, especially like Disney wants all the Marvel movies and eventually they will get them all.

You know, if you own a property like that, but other movies that are just in a catalog, like if you can make money kind of rotating them around to different services and stuff, I think they'll do that. As long as there's money to be made. Again, I think for these executives, the equation is very simple,

which is, is it worth more to us to lock it up on our service and hold it for ransom? Or is it worth more to us to get a check written by one of our competitors, no less, that benefits their service but gives us money, which we like? And they have to make those decisions. And CBS has been especially very good at saying,'ll take the money so that's what's going on this episode is brought to you by pingdom from solar winds while you've been listening to the show how would you know if your website had gone down what if your customers couldn't click that buy now button or access your latest blog post you might stumble across this issue by luck someone might contact you someone might email you,

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Our thanks to Pingdom from SolarWinds for their support of this show and RelayFM. So I wanted to talk a little bit about Apple's other service offerings as well, because there's been some news over the last couple of weeks that's kind of rocked the boat a little bit. Some stuff regarding Apple News and some stuff regarding Apple Arcade. So the Apple News news is that the New York Times has departed Apple News. They have stated to be unhappy with the relationship between Apple News readers and them because Apple's in the middle and don't let the Times have any contact with or relationship with the reader themselves, right? Whatever it is, they don't get to have data about them.

They don't get to convince them to become New York Times subscribers. What they're doing is pumping content in for Apple to be able to leverage their new service for. Now, it's worth noting, which I didn't know until I read this article completely, because I just saw the headlines and made an assumption. This is nothing to do with Apple News Plus. Right. The New York Times were not in Apple News Plus. This was actually just the free Apple News portion.

So the Times was only supplying a handful of stories a day of the stories that they will publish to their own subscribers or to their own website, they would give those to the free Apple News service, maybe stuff that they thought was particularly interesting or they wanted to get larger eyeballs to or whatever. But the New York Times is a large content provider and having them supply any content will make people look at Apple News more, which, you know, because I'm sure they do a lot of stuff which probably got the old push notification treatment. But if Apple want to be able to sell people Apple News+, they need as many large providers as they can get,

and they've lost now one of the biggest. Yeah, well, and New York Times, I mean, as a source of reading in the free app to make it more palatable and interesting and all that. And, you know, it was nice that they were giving them some free articles, but now they're not because why should they? And I think that's right. which is most of these sources would be better off trying to build their own subscription system rather than being in Apple's ecosystem and getting scraps of what Apple is getting. And this is why I continue to feel like I'm not sure Apple News Plus is tenable. But I don't know.

I don't think they've figured it out. I think that's for sure. I fully expect that there will be a series of stories, like another service we're going to talk about in a minute, about Apple having done this for a year, refiguring the service and turning it into something different. Also, I think the service was sort of broken from the start because they bought that magazine service and turned it into Apple News Plus sort of and used those existing agreements and stuff. Like, I get why you would want to do that to get a head start, but I think it also maybe distorted the service and made it weird. I don't know. I have worked in the media for a very long time now, and I still don't really get Apple news. Plus I don't,

I don't think it makes from a business standpoint. I just don't, I wouldn't put my media companies content in it. Like I, I get what the New York times is doing. So yeah, I mean, actually this would have been a great thing to do in around the time the ipad came out

yeah where where people are like oh what are we going to do and they say look here you give us a feed we put it in an app we're going to take some money you're going to get some money you can put some ads in it it's going to be great but like apple refused to do that and said they're like everybody write your own apps which was a huge mistake everybody had to work out their own monetization strategy yeah and uh surprise when you have your own monetization strategy it's actually really nice to do that because you end up being able to make more money that way which you are you know is is that you put the work in so like you know in a similar vein you know people say oh maybe maybe apple will come along and try and disrupt podcast membership programs right if apple debuted a apple news plus like service for podcasts i can't imagine wanting

to be involved in it because we have our own system now that we've worked for and the money that people give we get all the money after the fees we get it yeah we don't have to split it amongst every true crime podcast that people are listening to as well and also with the richest company in the world which is going to take 70 off the top just because oh yeah because that's the wild thing right it's like those those deals for news plus it's not even the 30 or the 15 that people think about it's like 50 yeah right so even if the new york times is selling their subscription through in and out purchase in the app store they're still going to make more money they'll get after a year 85 of that money

where if they put that content into apple news plus they'll get 50 of the money of a smaller portion because that money is spread amongst every publisher like it's not a good deal for them and you can make the argument of like oh you make it up in volume or whatever but i don't think that's always true and it's too unreliable right like what they want to do is know that they get like i don't know, 300,000 people to give them $5, $10 a month or whatever it is. I don't even know how much the New York Times costs. And that that is a better option for them than what if 20 million people sign up for News Plus and you get a portion of it. Maybe you get more money, but maybe you don't.

And it's actually quite nice to build a business on some level of reliability and when you own the whole system it's better for you so like really apple couldn't do it there was no deal that apple can do at this point to try and woo the large publishers it's too late the ship has sailed also let me let me you're making an assumption about the cost of the new york times that is not accurate by the way and this explains it even more the new york times after you get through your basic whatever you know intro fee 17 a month okay right i mean that's what it costs i mean that could be very much worth it for many people if you read the times every day just to make it clear like compare that to what they would get out of something like apple news plus but like and i go i get that they're rarefied and

they're the most successful journalism online uh product in in the u.s maybe in the world but still like just keep that in mind too that they did it themselves and they get 200 a year from the people who pay i actually think it scales though like if six colors became a part of apple news plus you would probably still not make as much money as you make out of the six i agree but i'm also not charging 20 i mean that's the thing is like it get the more you charge the worse the disparity i would argue but yes, I wouldn't do it either. So, yeah. Yeah, I wanted to mention something, by the way, that's changing in iOS 14.

And we'll see some of the details of this are sketchy, but it sounds like Apple is actually changing the way links work in iOS 14 for people who subscribe to News Plus. who subscribe to News Plus, where if you tap a link to a News Plus source, it opens in News Plus and not in Safari. It actually takes your web links out and moves you to News Plus. And Apple's doing this as a service. You're a News Plus subscriber. They want you to look at it through the kind of the news app experience and they say they think that that is superior it's a setting that you can turn off but what i'm fascinated by is the idea that apple has built this system that allows these uh these web links to be redirected inside or outside apple news plus i don't think it works for everything. I don't think it's like all news shows up in Apple News. I think it's News Plus sites only.

And like I said, you can turn it off, but it's very strange. And I also wonder, I have a little itchy feeling like maybe this is also related to the tech that they put in to allow you to set a custom browser. I mean, I don't know it's it's weird like apple taking web links and doing something weird with them i mean you already could do that with uh there were certain links with apps installed and stuff like that so they're kind of extending that but they're literally like if you're a wall street journal if you're an apple news plus person and you click on a wall street journal link in ios 14 i think by default it opens it in

apple news even if you clicked on it in the web on the web weird weird so something to watch because apple is doing that is a case where apple uh although talking presumably about like user experience they are also driving users even more aggressively into into apple news existing customers but still you know it's it's driving people out of the web and hijacking their link and i hate that i hate that now i hate that when any web link that i tap on opens in a in a an app without my approval yes it happens a lot there are people in the discord saying that like this is universal links but i don't think it is universal links because with universal links you are able to claim as a company your domain that's right as linked to my app so i can there are certain cases where if i tap on a link to

the athletic or to the new york times it opens in those apps. This is you tap on a link to the Wall Street Journal from a random web page and it opens in Apple News Plus, which is not the Wall Street Journal. If the Wall Street Journal app is there, it will open in the Wall Street Journal. But if the Wall Street Journal app is not there, which means Apple has a catalog of all, presumably the way this is implemented is Apple knows all of its partner sites. And if one of those URLs comes up in Safari, they're like, yoink, take it to Apple News Plus. I don't like that.

So the other service that's seen some changes that you were alluding to is Apple Arcade. There was an article in Bloomberg. We spoke about it in some detail last week. Basically, Apple wants to focus more on games for Apple Arcade with, quote, higher user engagement. So the types of games that they're now looking for are, I think, more traditional mobile games

than games that are like high-concept experiences. It seems that basically they are not seeing the success that they wanted with people keeping their subscriptions or even signing up in the first place. So what Apple Arcade looks like it's going to need is some big titles to draw people in, and then mechanics that keep those people playing those games. I've referred to this now as like IAP without the P, right right so basically the in-app purchase mechanics that you know from games that want you to give them money for gems but there being no money involved but still kind of how to create a game which is engaging and engaging means

addictive in some way basically and that's the kind of games that they are now looking for i personally don't have that much of a problem with them going down this route i would like to see them maintain some kind of balance to have more games like that but also you know commission some games that feel like art in a way and try and find a balance but i would say that i think that there have not been enough games on Apple Arcade that do keep me wanting to play and I think that that is a problem yeah I feel for the game developers who got commissioned by Apple and then Apple is dropping them yeah which you know they're getting they got paid uh and I feel bad for them because now they've got a game that they are going to not get paid for anymore and are they going to continue it and all of that?

It's not great. It's not great. At least they got paid. It's not like Apple is reneging. Presumably this is all in the contract, but that they are cutting those developers off. I feel bad for them. That said, first off,

I'm right there with you. I don't think there are enough games on Apple arcade that engage me. And as somebody who pays for that service, it makes me think maybe Apple Arcade isn't worth the money. And two, of course, Apple should be focused on what games are engaging Apple Arcade customers now that it has Apple Arcade customers and that it should try to increase

engagement. That's not evil. That's literally we want people to find value in this in this thing a game that doesn't engage you is not good like for and i i know like yes there are this is complicated i'm not trying to say you talk about art like games there are good games and they're bad, but I would argue that if it's a game you open and then you don't ever go back there again, it doesn't matter how beautiful it is. It failed because you never went back. Like it could be ugly. It could be beautiful,

but if it, if, if you don't want to play it, it's failed. And so I totally think Apple is in the right to say, we need Apple Arcade to be more engaging. And I think now that we've learned, because they've got all the stats right, they know minute by minute how many people are playing different games. is the kind of game this audience wants because it's an Apple Arcade audience. And who are they? And what kind of games do they want? And we've talked about games here on the show. Like there are Apple Arcade games that engage me and they tend to be games that I can dive into and play a little bit and then leave

and then come back later in a way that some kind of like overarching games don't. I don't know if I'm representative of an Apple Arcade. I mean, and there's no one user, but like an Apple Arcade user or whether some of the games that I look at and think I am never going to play that game are actually the ones

that drive the most engagement for Apple Arcade. But like Apple should make the right decision for its business about like finding the best way to make that $5 a month that you're paying as a user worth it and they've learned a lot in the last nine months and presumably now um they can go ahead and and make some changes so like i i i think this is obvious and the right thing to do and while i feel bad for the game developers who got the plug pulled like of course apple should be trying to make apple arcade as engaging as possible otherwise people why would

people pay for it because you know i understand the argument like the the engagement depending on how you measure it usually you would assume here would mean time spent right um and you could say well look at monument valley right where it was a linear game you didn't have a ton of replayability especially not immediately and it's like a three-hour game and if you looked at just at time you would say well they wouldn't want a game like monument valley which is one of the best ios games ever made but whilst that game if monument valley was created and existed only in apple arcade today even if it got the buzz that it got that does not keep people on a monthly subscription that's right they may go in that one time and that's awesome right that apple made like they could have made five million

dollars from it right you know like a million people sign up which honestly i think for for a game like monument valley it's probably at least how many people played it right like it was a massive deal and you could do the math you know you know how long the play is going to be so you actually know what an optimal amount of gameplay for a monument valley is going to be so you know what it's worth to you in terms of time and in terms of the halo right but it's not going to get me in what okay i played monument valley was great it was beautiful thank you apple arcade now it's the next month what do you have for me now and the truth is they didn't have anything

but my expectation is they will still have games like that. Sure. To get those peaks, right? But then they need stuff which is built to never end, right? Exactly. Yeah, you get them in the door. Yes. You come for the... What's the phrase?

Whatever. Come for the pancakes, stay for the pie. That doesn't make sense. But you get what I'm saying? There's the thing that gets you in the door and there's the thing that makes you stay. And Monument Valley may get you in the door or some title that is famous

or that people are buzzing about. But like, what have you done for me lately after that? You've got to do it. You've got to like keep feeding. And that's probably a different game managed in the chat perfect example come for sayonara sayonara wild hearts that was i mean that apple gave it a design award like that was their basically monument valley it was it had a play time to it and yes you can replay it seems you can replay any of these games

but you're replaying it out of choice rather than the game mechanic being keep coming back and playing more more more which you know the game that apple apparently have been saying make games like this to the developer partners is grindstone and that is a great example right of a puzzle game with as many levels as they want to add they can just keep adding them uh and it's match three you know like that goal like match or whatever that's the type of game you'll probably see more of and there can be people that turn their nose up at that and i understand but this is like all of this services stuff and why we keep seeing Apple drilling down on it, and we spoke about it a million times, is because this is their driver for Wall Street. Because they can't sell more iPhones, really,

than they've been selling. The growth isn't there. We spoke about this a million times. So where they need to show the growth is in services. And honestly, none of them are doing that well, maybe except Apple Music right like that one just keeps trundling along but we're seeing shifts for arcade and apple silently added in like a two month trial now you wouldn't do that if things were going well change your one month trial to

a two month trial uh new tv plus whether it's good or it's not, there's not going to be content past a certain period of time, right? Apple News+, does not have a lot of publishers and they're seeing cold feet across the board. They need to take now as a time to shift where they can put some blame on the pandemic, right? This is like we're in a period of time where every bad business decision or every bad business turn can be you can aspire blame to it right like oh you know pandemic right like i used to work for a big company i know that that's what's happening right

like in in any big company right now we'll say that and there'll be an element of truth to it right but you also get an out for like your bad part of the business which isn't going for a while right isn't that what jeffrey katzenberg said um i think he was joking kind of but also serious kind of about quibi which is i blame everything bad that happened on the pandemic he was only joking for as much as people wouldn't believe him like anyone that would believe what he meant he meant it right because it's it's you have your out right right it's like in the same way any times a recession oh it's because of the recession you know like you have it whatever it's true yeah exactly that's where the joke comes from because that's what it's referring to right like that's what that means so

they have this period of time now where they can retool and apple's great benefit that other companies don't have is infinite cash right so they can they can just keep doing this right like they they had a bunch of uh developers that they'll never see a game for but they paid them maybe half of the money oh well let's do more let's get more money right but can we open up the money box and get more money out okay money because it doesn't matter right like in in in air quotes like it doesn't matter because that money is coming from a part of the business which is just generating more money than any business has ever generated right like you just just we've got all this iphone cash just sitting in the bank yeah we'll just take more of the iPhone cash. It's like a tiny percentage of it.

We'll buy a bunch of more developers and have them buy their time, buy contracts. So they have the ability to do this retooling. Honestly, I'm happy that they're doing this rather than being like, Apple Arcade didn't work, did it? Gone.

Which they could also do. But my hope would be that, and I also, in the article, one of the things that I actually appreciated where, again, some people didn't like this, but apparently Apple have told the developers, like, look, this is the type of game that we want to make now.

If you want to make a game like this, we'll fund it, right? Which I thought was, I think is a pretty classy way to deal with it. Yeah. The danger, of course, is that they're going to get too many games that are the same i my my hope is that what's really happening is they know they know that there are a bunch of different profiles of games that they want and then know they're ones that there are ones that they don't want and you know you

mentioned grindstone um i've been playing round guard basically ever since you recommended it yeah and that's a that's an example of a game that is fundamentally replayable like you play it and then it's over and then you have to play it again and you're trying to get a high score and yet there are also elements in it that allow you to progress and change gameplay as you continue and i i that is perfect right that is a game that i have remained engaged with and it doesn't really have an ending i mean i'm sure it has an ending ending but like at that point you've spent so many hours with it that you've rung every last hour out of that person that that is the type of game where you will stop wanting to play it before it will have

content that you can't play yeah i think that's i think that's almost certainly true um and i think about alto's odyssey right which i i did get to the end of not only did i did it get hundreds and hundreds of hours after me i don't even want to think about how much time i spent playing alto's odyssey but even when i was done i would go back to it sometimes just in the in the kind of like fun mode the the chill mode and just use it that way and like the not every game is gonna is gonna be able to do that but like that's what you want and and that's it's gross to say like oh well they just want games with engagement it's like oh yeah they want games people want to keep playing that's uh yes of course they do of course they do you know you you said about that right you you have

mentioned in that like saying about the same type of game three different types of game mechanic you have grindstone which is a a matching puzzle game like candy crush yeah round guard is what's called a roguelike which means like you die but you benefit from your previous run right exactly a good role roguelike and then also uh like a sports side scrolling game in alto's adventure right like it's snowboarding basically yeah yeah it's like an infinite uh side scrolling yeah but they all have that core idea of you can spend a bunch of time with this and you'll get better at it and you keep redoing keep redoing keep redoing like there are lots of different types of games that you can get in at it. And you keep redoing, keep redoing, keep redoing. Like, there are lots of different types of games

that you can get in this, and they can be good games. They don't all have to be Candy Crush. Candy Crush is fun enough, but I think we can all agree that Candy Crush exists to just squeeze money out of people. Also, there can be good games, and I think this is important,

there can be good games that are bad fits for Apple Arcade, and that's okay too. Yeah like you said is monument valley actually a good fit for apple arcade maybe it isn't doesn't mean it's not a good game maybe it's a bad fit would something like journey be a good fit for apple arcade a game that you can play through in like four hours and you can replay it and i have and And so maybe, but probably not, but it doesn't matter. It's a good game regardless. But if I'm running a $5 a month game service,

I should absolutely be focusing on the games that are going to make the $5 worth it for my customers. Yeah. And also, and this is like the morning show or something like that. Also, I need to have games that people are going to talk about that make people sign up. Because they have to come for the food before they stay for the pie. And we've got it in the end.

Yeah, I would argue pie is food. And that saying implies that pie is not food. And just because this is a robot or not topic, we'll move on. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. I love Squarespace and I know you will too. Make your next move with Squarespace. They will let you easily create a website for your next idea or project. With the ability to register a unique domain name,

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We're going to talk about Mike at the movies. Well, Mike at the matinee comes back or movies. Are we matinee or movies this time? We're going to say it's movies because it's a movie now. I don't know what it is because we have spoken about hamilton on this show in the past so back in 2018 i think january of 2018 i'd seen uh hamilton for the first time in london um it had also been the first time i had heard hamilton like i purposefully avoided it because I was waiting for the London run. And so it gave kind of my initial impressions of the show. So I recommend if you haven't heard that, there'll be a link in the show notes where you can go and check that out, which will also take

you to a page on The Incomparable, which you may not know about, which is kind of about a month or two after every Mike at the Movies segment, Jason clips those out and they're in a special standalone feed, which if you ever want to go back and listen to any of the Mike at the Movie segment, Jason clips those out and they're in a special standalone feed, which if you ever want to go back and listen to any of the Mike at the Movie segments that we've done, they're there for you. So that's just a fun little thing that Jason does. One of my favorite podcast artworks that I actually have a poster of on my wall

that our designer Simon made for me. That's beautiful. It's because it's just wonderful. I love it. So, okay. So Hamilton debuted on Disney+. made for me um that's beautiful it's because it's just wonderful i love it so okay so hamilton uh debuted on disney plus um it was originally going to be a theatrical release in october of 2021 but they brought it forward significantly yeah there is um there have been a lot of interviews

and stuff the idea here not only are people kind of hungry for content and that Disney Plus felt like, Disney felt like this was an opportunity for Disney Plus. And also we've been seeing all of the theatrical releases being scrambled around and stuff getting deferred and some stuff gets deferred and some stuff gets moved to streaming. That seems to be what's happening, right? And so they decided to move this forward and the way that lynn manuel miranda discussed it uh in some of the interviews that i've seen with him is uh he also felt like we're in an era now where live theater is shut down and so this also has the advantage of bringing kind of the feel of live theater to people who are not able to see live theater and the whole live theater experience but they did have to negotiate. My understanding is they had to negotiate with all of the people who have

financial participation in the movie, because a lot of that stuff was based on box office and there's no box office. So they had to make a new deal to compensate those people in order to put it on because now, you know, obviously there's no box office but it still has direct benefit to disney by making disney plus more valuable yeah and i think that was why it ended up being a lot of money that disney uh gave to this it was

75 million dollars although that was for the just for the rights to make the film in so yeah i'm sure there was more money distributed because people that had a what is it they call it an option or something on it i don't remember the phrase but people that would get some kind of residual check right some royalty check they're not going to get that because that's not how streaming services work yeah if they had a deal that was based at least in part on ticket sales there are no ticket sales so they have to change that deal they probably had a residual deal about streaming that was anticipating it would be a smaller cut following the bigger cut of theatrical and of course there is no it's the only cut so they you know they seem to have come to some arrangement and the result is that everybody who lives in a place

with disney plus can see hamilton now so I would say it was super nice over the weekend to see pretty much everyone I follow online enjoying something collectively. It feels like it's been a long time since I've seen something like that. You usually have the kind of the doom scrolling thing where everything is just sad and everybody is sad. And Lin-Manuel Miranda in his, there's an extras there's like a 30 minute long interview with with the cast and crew

oh i didn't know that i know what i'm watching tonight is in the extras um and it's nice i mean it's not it's nice it's like a little thing it's not like a big documentary or something it's just a little zoom chat basically i've seen the documentary how is it hamilton's america is that what it's called yeah oh sure yeah, sure. Yeah, the PBS show. But yeah, so it's a little conversation. And it's nice. But one of the things in it that blew my mind, but I think he's right, is Lin-Manuel Miranda said, you know, you do this show and you do it every night for five years and a few traveling

productions and it's for 1,500 people. And he said, to think about it, that over the 4th of July weekend, more people will see Hamilton than ever saw it before. Jeez. Put together. All of it put together. And I think he's right. I think if you do the math, he's probably right, which is fascinating, right? Like people who heard the soundtrack and stuff, but did they get, I mean, you have to be able to, first off, the hard ticket to get, not in very many cities, you'd have to, even if you're in those cities, you might not be able to

get in and theater tickets are very expensive. so there are lots of people who know nothing about hamilton who watched it and lots of people who have listened to the soundtrack the sorry it's the original cast recording it's not a soundtrack uh and they haven't seen it and now they all get to see it i've been that does it sound like something that i've been corrected on before we say soundtrack so much but it's not a soundtrack it's a it's an original cast recording it's totally different but there was some stuff online uh over the weekend i'd never seen before which was comments about the politics of hamilton like from a critical perspective which i'd never really seen and i thought that it was i just wanted to talk about

i've seen some of it but yes yes it's worth talking about it it never comes across my radar before and i think there's a couple of reasons for this why now like i mean one everyone is experiencing hamilton at the same time which is not the way that hamilton has typically been experienced it's on like a staggered uh rolling thing right as people go see it or find the album for the first time um and then also we live in a time right now which is just very political right like that's in every sense of the word it's kind of where we are at the moment at this point in the timeline and so i wanted kind of, I've been reading some of the stuff. So it's like, it's worth remembering that many of the men depicted in this, we'll say movie for just to keep

it easy at this point, were slave owners, right? Because they were people of power and that was something that they did.'s it's very briefly addressed during one of the rap battles right where um i think it's hamilton says to jefferson to jefferson about like who's doing the planting right yeah that's right and and also does call him a slaver at one point yeah and they're in that same rap battle and there's some other references too there's a reference to sally hemm, who was Jefferson's slave, who he also fathered children with. There are several references to John Lawrence attempting to free the slaves and wanting slavery to end. So slavery is engaged with briefly in Hamilton, but it's not what it's about.

briefly in Hamilton, but it's not what it's about. Yeah. No, and so there's people that say, and I can understand this point of view, that like, because they are the heroes of this, of this, of this piece. Yeah, or at least, yes. Glorified, right?

Because people look up to them or, you know, what has happened since is like, people have a renewed interest in learning about Hamilton, right? So people want to look up to him like they do the other founding fathers but he is also like many of the men depicted in this uh in this piece they are like problematic especially by by today's standards right but even going back right even even then i mean that's that's part of the argument is that the show also depicts that people thought during the revolution thought that slavery was immoral, but politically they had to compromise on it. And although the show doesn't get into it, I think it's not fair to say that nobody gave any thought to the fact that slavery was immoral during the American Revolution.

Like that's not the case. during the American Revolution like that. That's not the case. Although I would also say about heroes, we got to choose our words carefully here because one of the things that Hamilton, I think, is really good at is humanizing these figures that are just powerful mythical figures in American culture. But humanizing doesn't mean lionizing, right? It means you see how petty they are and how self-interested they are. And of course they were. They were human beings. I would say I think the strongest argument is that Washington is portrayed in the most glowing terms of anybody, any man in Hamilton. He's like a god in this.

anybody any man in hamilton he's like a god in this uh and and we know yeah washington was a slave owner and he yes he inherited those from his wife and yes he freed them upon his death but he didn't free them before that and so washington is and again it's not about washington and it's complex but like i i do think like jeff the way Jefferson is portrayed. And I think it's worth, and Lin-Manuel Miranda has said this on Twitter, actually, he says, it is always worth engaging with it. He said in his interview,

that is part of the extras, people ask him if the show, the show's meaning has changed as time has moved along. And he said, like from the Obama era to the Trump era, and he said, no, the show's meaning remains what it was, but what we take from it and what we see in it changes as the times change, which is how it is with art and it's how it should be.

And I think this is a great example of that too, about how thinking about America's racial issues and its original sin of slavery and thinking about hamilton and asking the question you know is this another example of the kind of american mythology that perpetuates racism in america that is a thing that is a very of the moment thing to engage with in the show um that said you can't talk about hamilton without talking about the way hamilton is cast because that's not a quirk that it's all people of color in these founding father roles in hamilton it's not basically every other role right yeah well i mean other than like the king and yeah, but it's a statement and implicit again. And it's not just a statement about how people of color are not treated well in the theater world.

It is a statement about the myth making of American history and about racism that has been in existence in America since the beginning. That's what that is about on a very clear level. And that's Lin-Manuel Miranda saying the people of color were always part of America, that you can't hide them, that they built this country too. You can't hide them that they built this country too. And that when you engage with a person of color as George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, it obviously immediately has multiple levels because we know, ideally, you know that Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner. And also it's Daveed Diggs, a black man, an amazing rapper, by the way, just amazing, talented, incredibly talented person. So that's one of the things I love about Hamilton is that there are so many different levels it's operating on. It's so ambitious. And I think it is great, as Miranda said, to talk about these issues regarding Hamilton. But I think Hamilton hamilton but like i think hamilton passes the tests right because this is what hamilton is about

it's all it's all there for you to take from it it doesn't i don't feel it other than like i said george washington is given a pass at a level that maybe the other characters aren't but like they're human and they're messed up and like the the the title character hamilton is uh is completely self-destructive we haven't even talked about the fact that i think at its core one of you know one of the main things hamilton is about it's about a lot of things is about how badly the women are treated in this period and how how vital and important the women are and yet how everything is uh everything is turned against them at every point and how the men in their lives ignore them and go on with being their the great

man when the women are right there like there's so much about that it's about a lot of things too but and that's why i love it is that it's so ambitious and it's so largely successful but that doesn't mean that it isn't worth like it it kind of wants you to engage with it and it wants you to ask those questions that's that's another thing i love about it i think that it has actually taken on this whole new meaning again which i mean it was really like uh coincidental right like this was announced to be coming to disney plus before the resurgence to Black Lives Matter movement, but has ended up landing at a time where people

have this type of stuff front of mind again. Somebody, and I think it was, I think it's Leslie Odom Jr. who plays Burr, who is the main character of Hamilton, by the way, and is also a really messed up character, right? He's the villain, but he is the main character in Hamilton, by the way, and is also a really messed up character, right? He's the villain,

but he is the main character in Hamilton, I would argue very strongly. He said that his last performance on Broadway, I think it was him, he dedicated the performance to Philando Castile. And his point was, it's been since then, And here we are again with another black man killed by police. So, yeah. And that's all in there. I really do recommend that extra interview thing. It's good because it's the whole cast and talking about how current events impact them and how their lives changed and how it was set up. There's a a wonderful

interview with leslie adam jr in the la times that talks about how little they got paid when it was in i think they didn't get paid when it was in workshop and they got paid almost nothing when it was at the public theater and then they extended the run at the public theater before it came to broadway and um he said wait for it is not just about burr. It is about also him knowing this is going to be something, but spending huge amounts of time with almost no compensation to get to the point where they finally, you know,

changed the balance of how people get paid. If they're, if you're in a Broadway hit, which they did ultimately, it's just, there's a, there's a lot going on here. So for me, this movie, like I don't look at it as a, like a way for me to learn history.

I mean, because one, like I kind of, I don't really care that much about the history of the founding fathers of America. Like, I'm sorry. Like. No, I think it's good to have that perspective because because a lot of people are like well but why do i care right like it's intriguing to me i didn't even know alexander hamilton i didn't know he existed until this so it's i mean i found that part interesting to it to even learn about someone who seemed to be pretty important in american

history that didn't get the same kind of treatment that the other founding fathers did that's right but what i like about this uh this musical and what my personal themes from it why it touches me is the themes of love legacy and forgiveness like they are incredibly well done for me in this like it's love of all kinds and legacy is the big thing right like for me like that i take from this like who lives who dies who tells your story like that rings in my mind a lot like it is it's an incredibly important thing and it's the part of the the the musical that hits me the most is um the final song so ela's final song, right, where she goes on and, like, Eliza ends up being the one that tells the story,

and then she kind of stands at the end as, like, I made all of this happen, right? Like, without me, you wouldn't know any of this, because most of that story would never have been told, because she erased it, right, until she decided to bring the story back again and lives on and tells the story of all of them for a long period of time and that that moment like i can't so that the the the from from uh when uh what is his son's name? Philip. Philip.

From when Philip has the duel, I can't listen to the music. I've only heard those songs like five or six times because I heard them the first time. Then I listened to it all once through and then it's just been the two other times I've seen it live and when I saw it over the weekend

because they destroy me like i can't i can't do it right so like unless i am watching it it's the only time that i can ever listen to it because by the every time i have seen this by the end of it i am a blubbering mess because that that's when all of the things that touch me the most really take a crescendo in this um as everyone starts to die and everyone starts to try and atone for their uh the things that they have done to upset people in their lives right like that is like that's when it gets me yeah and it's the classic um it's the classic second act problem of biographies which is the one i always bring up is i don't know if you've ever seen lawrence of arabia but the first and that's

a very long movie with an intermission the first act also i think every steven sondheim musical is like this too the first act is this delightful thing so you know the delightful adventures of lawrence or the delightful adventures of a or the delightful adventures of Alexander Hamilton. And then the second act, you know what happens in the second act? Because that's life, right? Like it goes bad and people die and then the protagonist dies and the end. It's kind of funny that that's the shape of it. But yeah, you're right. Second Act's got a lot of amazing stuff in it, but you're right. There is a point at which it is much more emotionally rough sledding.

Beautiful, but harder to watch, for sure. Because it is also when the majority of my favorite songs are there, but I can't listen to them. Basically, for me, i think my favorite performance in the whole show is philipa sue who plays eliza um like burn and who lives who dies who tells your story like uh i they're like absolutely unbelievable and i'm so happy that this movie exists so i can see her sing these songs because i would never get them otherwise because you know like i've seen i've seen you know like i have seen a completely different cast right like i've seen the london cast and like the the hamilton of the lond London cast and the first bird that I saw were my

favorites like like I actually in their own way like like the more to the original cast recordings because it's different people they do it in different ways um and you know and I've seen uh there's been a different bird that I've seen in London who I don't like as much right and it's just your own personal tastes and I'm sure for me me, it's partly because that's the first time I'd really experienced a lot of it. But, you know, I've listened to, there is, I'll put this in the show notes that actually just appeared in the Discord. There's a version of Burn, which includes all five of the women

who have played Eliza. I think there is a version i think there's a version with three um i'll find it for the show notes we're like three of the eliza sing burn and philippa sue just absolutely knocks it out of the park for me i think that she is unbelievable and part of the reason that i love those songs so much is because of the tone that she set in them. Because that's so interesting about this cast anyway. It's like, this is a musical that people love and adore and they see it all over the world and there's all these different traveling companies

and different companies. But this group of people, they set what the musical should sound like, right? And every person who plays these roles in all the different productions still try and emulate a little bit of the original, right? Because that's the sound of that person. And so I'm so happy that I now have the ability

to see these people do it, right? Like it's what I've kind of always wanted to. Yep. Oh, I wanted to mention, by the way, I've had multiple people who watched Altered Carbon on Netflix then see Hamilton and are like, oh. Because Renee Elise Goldsberry, who is Angelica Schuyler, she's in Altered Carbon, both seasons of it on Netflix. And I have a lot of friends who watch sci-fi TV, right, who watch Altered Carbon.

And I watched Altered Carbon and said, oh, yeah, it's Renee Elise Goldsberry from the original cast of Hamilton. But lots of people didn't, they didn't know that and they didn't go see her in Hamilton and they watched Altered Carbon. And this happened multiple times over the weekend where they're like, oh, because they did it the other order. They saw her in Altered Carbon and then they saw her in Hamilton. But yeah. And a lot of these casts have turned up in other places since then. So you may be like, oh, that's that guy from... Yeah, I see now.

It makes sense. I think one of the great things about this movie as a movie is that it's theater. And it's not like a movie made out of a stage production, but it is a stage production, which is brilliant. And I wish this would happen more. I understand why it doesn't there are lots of reasons it's very expensive to do something like this so you kind of have to have a mega hit you also don't want to take away the money stream from all of the ancillary productions and all of that um but i do wish that this happened more often where people who are not able to go to the theater could see

a film as theater in a brilliant kind of mixture so like we hear the audience except and i think this is a really nice detail um when lin-manuel miranda first says alexander hamilton in the show when alexander hamilton says that line the the whole audience erupts and they have to stop and wait for like 20 seconds for the applause to die down before the song can continue. And one of the conditions that Lin-Manuel Miranda made was, we're not going to do that. Like, we're not going to do that. So he introduces himself. There's no audience reaction.

They changed. They used a different shot and they changed the audio. So it sounds. So he is introduced with no pause. And their argument was that applause is for the phenomenon of Hamilton, not for the show, because it's just the beginning of the show. There's no reason for Hamilton to get applause there because he hasn't earned it yet. And the show hasn't earned it yet. And I love that approach. So the audience is in it for the rest of the time. And they applaud.

And it's awesome. And it's like you're in the theater. But they cut that one because they felt like, no, no, no, we haven't earned your love yet. And so it would seem weird. And then the other thing that I think was really brilliant is they shot it from the mezzanine. And they've got a couple other angles. And they shot, I think, two live performances in New York.

And then on one of their dark days where they aren't performing, they went in. And I think maybe they even also canceled a performance to do this. But what they did is they rigged the whole thing and they ran through like 20 numbers with cameras and with a crane. And they shot, they like actively like a movie.

Because I was so confused. Shot those shots. Right. I was like,, shot those shots. Right. It's like, where are the cameras? Right. Because you would get these times where there are clearly handheld cameras shooting them. But then it goes to a wide shot and there's no camera person on stage. And it's because they did these three different recordings.

We used to say like two with uh audiences probably in case there's anything they wanted to change then they have and they also have the ability for multiple takes but then they also did the quiet one where they could get some some close-ups it's really i think very very cleverly done yeah and can't and camera moves i mean there's there's some cameras up above that they use a couple of times i think sparingly and also brilliantly just so you can see people moving around on stage but some of those close-ups, the moment where Jonathan Groff as the king basically spits while he's talking. He's like, he's flying everywhere

and it's hanging on his face for the rest of it. It's so good. I was so happy to see his close-ups because the first song, he barely blinks. And it was just nice in general because the facial expressions that you see and you see between uh the the actors that stuff you don't even really get to see when you're in the theater

unless you're in the expensive seats so lauren has a story about how she went at some point to see a show and was in like the second row or the third row and it's the first time she'd ever been up close to live theater and and she said oh look, look, they're acting. Like, because when you're in the mezzanine or the balcony, you're not seeing the facial expressions, right? So they got some of that in there and that there are some camera flourishes. There's a moment in the room where it happens,

which is all about Aaron Burr being on the outside, looking in at Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson cutting a backroom deal. And there's a shot where the camera is framed so that they're towering over Burr and they're in focus and he's out of focus in the foreground. It's his song, but he's out of focus. And it's like, that's what that song is about. And that shot is all about, it's a nice cinematic moment without you forgetting that you're on a stage, which I think was a great decision. There's also a moment where George

Washington walks out onto the stage and we cut to a reverse shot that's at the back of the stage as he walks out. And I saw somebody was complaining. They thought that that was like too much and took you out of the moment. And I giggled when that shot happens because I think it's so delightful.

Like here he comes and and we're right behind george washington as he strides out onto the set and you see the audience in the background or you know the open theater it's like i love that it's great so um i i think it's really well done in finding the balance between being a being a movie but also being really a cinematic document of a theater experience um and like i said I understand why we don't get more of these, but I wish we got more of these because otherwise it's great that theater is a thing that is between the audience and the performers and you see it and it's magic and it never happens again.

I get that at the same time when we talk about, we talked about WWDC going to bring up all the way back around here, Mike, and how putting everything online and having everybody all around the world be able to see it gives them access, gives everybody access to what Apple is doing instead of just the people who pay a lot of money to come to San Jose for a week. And that's one of the things I love about this Hamilton is so many people couldn't see Hamilton and can't see Hamilton. And to have this moment and this amazing piece of work and these amazing cast members do this thing. I, I don't want it to be completely lost.

It would be nice if we could take a little part of it and bottle it up and let anyone see it. And that's kind of what this is and that's that's awesome i love that and then you can like it or not like it but the fact that you never got to see it you never had a chance because it was too expensive and too hard to get tickets and far away all those reasons now you can i love that so much and like there is a sliding scale to it like i don't think that this movie existing ruins the theater buying experience because a way i kind of see it is you've got the the album the original cast recording watching the movie is more enjoyable than that but seeing in the

theater is more enjoyable than watching the movie if you're able to do it because it's a different experience there's a different yeah it's different watching of a large audience and this does not replace no theater but it supplements it and for a lot of people theater isn't an option and right now theater isn't an option for anybody yeah but but theater the tickets are so expensive and and and you've got to be fortunate to get the tickets and all that like that's the part it's not a replacement for live theater and i i don't think it should be and i'm not saying that it is but i'm so glad that it can also exist because it does it exists in that little space between

the cast recording and so happy theater or or the movie like if they made an acted out movie like well not like cats but you get what i'm saying. That would not be the same either. Yeah. It's like, I'm so happy they did this, right? Because they did it with the original cast, which I've always wanted to see, never would be able to. And also, it wasn't a movie with them either, which I wouldn't want. I want to see them do it.

It wasn't like we're going to be in these big sets or whatever. Right. Like, even if they were able to assemble the original Broadway cast to make a quote unquote movie version of Hamilton, like I wanted this, like I wanted to see what it was like, because again, it's like,

all right, it's the original cast, but they sing it differently to the album. Right. Because they, because they've been doing it for like a couple of years. They live it. Right.

Like by that point, they're not just singing it the way Lin-Manuel Miranda and the team there, like suggest they do it. Right. Like by that point, they've lived these characters. They have their own way of presenting them. They change some of the way that things are presented to make

different jokes or to make points differently and that was really wonderful to see as well because i i wasn't necessarily expecting it from from this group right because like for me it's like oh i've seen i've seen it done in different ways like for me like the king like jonathan groff has changed so much of his songs and the presentation of them from the original recordings and that's because he got a sense of what it was like to be that character because of the way the audiences would end up reacting to him right exactly exactly and that's the beauty of doing it over and over and over again is i mean i was in my high school play and we had three performances. And I will tell you, my performance in number two was entirely based on how people reacted

to number one. And my performance in number three was entirely based on how people reacted to number two. And that was three performances with somebody who was a terrible actor in a high school production of Dracula. Okay. And I can only imagine what goes through the minds of a talented professional at the top of their game on Broadway in a role like this,

where they get hundreds of performances to either fine tune what works and what doesn't, think more about like what the options are, and also play, right? Also try some different stuff. And I think that's great. I heard a story about when they were at the public theater, how Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr,

he has to do one of those, how does a bastard orphan, right? Like he has to do a bunch of those about Hamilton throughout the show. And he came out one day and he got it wrong. He got the wrong one. He did the wrong one. And then he was like, oh no.

And after that had he had cards of what they were in what order that he kept with him all the time apparently so that he never messed it up again it's like professionalism i love it but like there that's part of the magic of theater is you get these people who inhabit these parts because in film and tv and tv you inhabit the roles but you're not thinking about the choices because it's a different episode week to week but in film you know you you think about it you do a read-through or whatever but then you just shoot it and it's like that forever and theater is not like that and by getting them on day 500 of hamilton instead of day 10 we get the benefit of them knowing that this is the version

that's going to be captured and all the knowledge that they built up over time it's a wonderful thing if you haven't seen it you should see it um i'm expecting if you've listened to this part of the show you have seen it uh but there are always people that listen to these things having never seen it i know i've done stuff like that it really is just a i think a wonderful piece of art it's honestly one of my very favorite pieces of art ever like it's top three i think um i adore hamilton uh like the way it makes me feel the things it makes me think about i've never encountered a piece of art which has has affected me in the way that this does i know what's coming and I cry my eyes out every single time. And I'm not talking like tears.

I'm talking like I have been in a theater three times, my body physically shaking from crying. It happened to me just watching it this weekend, right? Like this really is just a wonderful thing in a in a number of ways and and i am so happy now that people can get it in a much much easier way than they've ever been able to get it before and if you don't have disney plus like you can sign up for for like a fiver right like and or i think there might be a free trial probably in some places. Do what you can to see this thing. You will not regret it, I think.

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slash upgrade. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions to finish out today's episode. The first comes from Sims. Sims says, does the rumor of the iPhone not having a charger in the box

because most people would already have one bode ill for us ever getting a USB-C iPhone? This is an interesting story. I hope that Apple does right by its customers and offers a charger if you want one. And I saw somebody say it actually streamlines the international distribution if you don't include a charger in the box

because it doesn't have to vary by region, which is brilliant. I get why they would do it. One of the many, many many ways reasons i should say for why they would do this yes yeah and and it's um so another positive would be it's um it's a thing that most of us have in some form and that a lot of that stuff the argument is that that creates a lot of extra e-waste of something that you don't need. But some people do need it. And I always roll my eyes like I get a Kindle now and the Kindle doesn't come with a charger anymore. And that's the truth of it, right? Is that it's perceived as being that the maker of the thing is just cheaping out and saving money by not including it in the box.

And what if you need it? not including it in the box and what if you need it. So what I hope Apple does is say, we're not going to include it in the box because reasons, including e-waste, blah, blah, blah. But when you buy an iPhone, you have the option to ask for a charger. And then I have a couple of people suggest they could even do it like the Apple Watch

where they kind of like stick it on. It's two boxes at once. So like, I feel like if you're in a store or if you're ordering online that you have the option for no charge to add a charger or for almost no charge to add a charger. Because what, if I were Apple,

I'd be like, we are, we're going to save money on this. And, uh, and it's better for e-waste, but we're, we're not going to nickel and dime our customers and make them feel like they're buying an expensive phone and then we're cheaping out on a power adapter. Will they do that? I don't know.

But I would hope that they would do something like that, whether it's a credit. I don't even think – I've seen people say it's a credit for the equivalent cost of a charger at the Apple store, but if they want to use it for something else, they can use that too. I wouldn't do that because I think that actually would be detrimental to sales. I would just say, at the moment you buy it, you can ask for one. And if you want it, we'll send it to you. And if you don't, we won't. And that's it.

That's the deal. Do you need another charger? And a bunch of people will be like, nah, I don't need another charger. And other people will be like, oh yeah, actually, please send me a charger. And I think that's good. I think I would love to live in a world where we could say when we buy these products, whether we really need another USB power adapter, because I've got a lot of them and you've got a lot of them. And I think a lot of people have plenty of those and don't need more. So that all said, what about USB-C iPhone? I don't know. I'm not sure it makes any difference because like in the end, we all are probably going to have a lot of USB-C chargers too, and they could still make that same offer. So I'm not sure it tells us anything about whether there will ever be a USB-C iPhone

or not. Well, I think a lot of people expect that this is like step one of an iphone with no charging port right that's what a lot of people were thinking this is the beginning of yeah and and you know they would still be like a magsafe that's the thing is i can't imagine them doing a uh an iphone that doesn't have a a way to charge that isn't you know um an inductive charger that you buy separately for 60 bucks and so whether that's a magsafe like a smart connector-y kind of thing or something i don't know um i don't know about that but i'm not sure this changes that austin says do you think the ipad os cursor and it's

the way that it operates could make its way to mac os big sir looks more touch friendly but it also looks like that new adaptive pointer would fit right in i i think so i i'm a little surprised yeah i am a little surprised big sir doesn't offer it huh but i would i would not be surprised at all if the look of the mac os pointer changed and even if the arrow remains as the default if they change the text selection to be more like that and that obviously when you're using an on apple silicon if you're running an ipad app or an iphone app perhaps it would change to the finger circle in that scenario when you mouse over i hope that it will do that anyway a more modern pointer that uses all the lessons that they learned and when you mouse over i hope that it will do that anyway a more

modern pointer that uses all the lessons that they learned and again you should watch that that pointer design session from wwdc it's amazing um i want it's hard to watch that session and not want it on the mac and i do um but they also make the point that the mac can accept a level of precision for pointing that you need a cursor or pointing icon to indicate that level. And they actually have a crosshairs that they use. So I got to think that in a future version of Mac OS, the way that pointing it works will get updated and be different from what it is now and will be more... It's hard not to use the iPad pointer and think this is a modern pointer and then go back to the Mac and think,

oh, I'm back in 1984 now. Doug asks, what was the last user upgradable component that you bought and installed into a Mac, I'm assuming? For me, it's the RAM in my iMac Pro because the iMac Pro has a door on the back so it's recent so you know whatever 2017 when I bought it I bought it and then I bought third-party ram because I wanted more ram than apple would I could get it cheaper by installing it myself

and so I did that's it I put ram into an iMac a long time ago but i think it was one of the white plastic ones that was the last time i did any kind of user upgrade to a mac um because i kind of i kind of get used to just how the devices are i think i've kind of slipped into an ios mentality like the machine that i use is just the one that i use and it gets slow in the ways that it gets slow or whatever until it's replaced and i use max Macs for a long time. Like I replaced my iOS devices and iPadOS devices frequently, but my Macs I will use for multiple, multiple years, right? Like the iMac that was before this iMac Pro I had for like five years. I've had a laptop for like three or four years. But I did build a PC a couple of years ago,

and every part of that was user installed. It was just a pile of parts until I put it together. So that's what I will, that's what I'll, that's what I'll say is my entry into that. Nathan asks, do you think needing to support Intel based Macs will hold back what Apple can do with macOS and mac hardware running on Apple Silicon. I don't. I mean, do you? I think Apple's going to do what's best for Apple and that they're going to push those things forward as aggressively as they can. And then the Macs that don't have them are just going to be what they are now. And I can't see apple limiting itself just because because like

they're gonna all those non-apple silicon max all the intel max are going to be old max right they're going to be old max yeah they're gonna they're going to cease to make those anymore when they make this transition and they're going to want the new ones to be awesome and the old ones they want them to be less awesome because they want you to buy a new one and i don't think they're gonna you know do anything to destroy them but i i don't think they're gonna hold back out of fear that the intel ones are gonna look bad i don't think that's gonna happen yeah i think we've again like if you if you look at this as uh the ipad and iphone idea every year Apple introduces some feature, which is a combination of hardware and software in a new phone that old phones can't do. And I think that that's the kind of stuff

we'll start seeing on the Mac, right? Like big things that Macs couldn't do before that the new ones will be able to do and mac os will support it but if you're on an older mac that doesn't have the hardware you don't get the software feature right like it just doesn't exist and they will create a split and i think that that is perfectly fine to do um you're not losing out because you're not taking anything away from you but the new machines will have all this new functionality i think we're going to see not only are we going to see this, I think we're going to see a lot of this, right? I say, go back to last week's episode and you'll hear all the things

that me and Jason think Max might do that the current ones can't. And they're not going to bring any of that. I wrote a whole piece on six colors that elaborated all of our points from last week too. So yeah, that's going to happen. And finally today, Stephen asks, how did you come up with the text adventure crossover ideas?

Like where do they come from? And do you plan on continuing these in the future? If you don't know what this means, all RelayFM members get access to a feed called Crossover. It has a bunch of content in, including on a yearly basis for the last few years we've done member specials where we do things that are out of the norm for the shows or shows come together um and we have done crossovers between cortex and upgrade i think we've done four of them

three of them oh probably four we did six gun showdown spooky manor yes space the space one space station uh danger town beatdown so four text adventures uh which are these me and gray are working together as the player jason is the computer um and they're put together with lots of music and sound effects and stuff like that i love doing them they're amazing uh we are going to continue doing them we're actually recording one soon for the member special the annual member specials this year so if you're a real fm member no matter what you do whether you give to all shows one show any show you get access to this stuff um so we're going to be doing them again but jason you put that you put together the the beginning of it uh where did where do they come from where do the ideas come

from so we um on the incomparable we have a podcast called uh the incomparable game show which i recommend is extremely entertaining and you you will like it so you should try it there's a lot of really fun games that we play over there it's every other week and one of the things that we did was these things called parsley adventures that it's a guy who has written these things to be basically party games but they're in the style of an old style computer text adventure thing and so um everybody takes turns throwing commands into the parser and you're supposed to move around and pick things up and go from place to place and essentially solve a puzzle with just simple commands. And it's hilarious with 20 people or 15 people because even if you figured it out, the person who's giving the command may not. And then they mess it up.

And then by the time you get there, you can it's it's quite a a study in frustration at times it's actually really delightful um and so uh tony cindelar has done a bunch of those there as the parser and i played those and uh and then we thought that would be a way because we you know something like dnd is a little too complicated for um for the hurley gray adventure where it's just the two of you and we we're only going to do it for an hour or two but um but this guy jared sorensen at memento mori theatrics uh he wrote them and he actually put out a book with all of them in it and there's like 12 of them or something there's a lot of them and so that's that's where we got the idea um from jared sorenson and we're using his

games and then via tony cindelar at the incomparable game show if you want to get these and if you also want to become uh an upgrade plus member so you can support this show you get an ad free feed with additional content for each episode. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up $5 a month or you can go to relay.fm upgrade and you can sign up for our annual plan, which is $50 a year. So you get bonus segments, no ads. You get tons of bonus content, access to the Relay FM members Discord.

Today's Upgrade Plus post show, we're going to talk about Jason's movable type to WordPress adventures, which is a thing we've had on the topic list for a long time. And I don't think we're ever going to do it otherwise. So we're going to talk about that in our Upgrade Plus post show today. So you go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up for that. If you want to find information out about this episode, go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 305.

Thank you so much to our sponsors, Define Focus, Squarespace, Pingdom, and ExpressVPN. You can find Jason online at sixcolors.com and he is at jsnell. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade and we'll be back next time.

Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Mike Hurley.