Upgrade - 330: People Aren't Always Logical

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

There's a lot of streaming-media news this week, as Warner Media faces intense criticism of its decision to move all its 2021 film releases to HBO Max, Apple faces criticism for killing a show based on Gawker, and Disney fires off its Death Star, unveiling a slate of originals that are likely to take Disney+ to the next level. Oh, and Apple announced a $550 pair of headphones!

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 330 today's show is brought to you by express vpn bombus and mail route my name is mike hurley and i have the pleasure as always of being joined by jason hi jason snell hello michael hurley how are you i am fine thank you i have a hashtag snell talk And I have the pleasure, as always, of being joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason Snell. Hello, Michael Hurley. How are you? I am fine, thank you. I have a hashtag Snell Talk question for you that comes from Matt. And Matt wants to know, Jason, do you prefer to be called Jason, Snell, or Jason Snell? Jason is my name, and I prefer to be referred to by my name, my first name, yes.

What do you feel about Snell? I have been called that throughout the years. Okay. Being a Jason born in the 70s makes me one of a very large number of Jasons. What are lots of Jasons? Okay. Too many Jasons. In school, I was always Jason S.

And for about nine months, one year, I guess one grade, most of one grade, I was Jason S. N. Oh, that's upsetting. Because there were two Jason S's. I had a thing of this in my school. We had two Amy's in my class, class of 30. And one of them was taller than the other. So we ended up with big Amy and little Amy. one of them was taller than the other so we ended up with big amy and little amy and i've always been concerned about what may have happened to those individuals and their mental health in the

long term of being big amy and little amy how old were they when when they were called this maybe have they grown yet because the danger is one of them grew more than the other that never happened during our school time and i actually remain remained friends of little Amy into secondary school. And little Amy was always little. Always little. Okay. Because that's, you know, you hear those stories about there's like a basketball player named Tiny. Because he was a little kid.

Or Tiny Lister. And they started calling him Junior or Tiny. Right. Tiny Lister just passed away. So he was a big guy. Right. He's a big guy. Well, sometimes it's ironic.

Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it was like. You're tall, but you're the smallest in this group yeah we had the kid who was always the tallest kid in my um in my elementary school and by the time we got to high school i remember seeing him around because we fed like five elementary schools into that high school so you didn't see most of the people who went to elementary school and i would see him occasionally and i'd be like oh he's just like a guy he's just like an average height guy and he just happened to be a little taller like earlier on the growth chart in elementary school and so he was the tall guy he was not the tall guy he was not tall he was just normal height but um so if he had gotten a name if he had been you know big aaron

we would have gone to school and be like you you're just a guy. Why are you big Aaron? Like, I have no good answer for you. So I did, as a Jason, I did get called Snell a lot by some people because it was a way to correctly differentiate me from all the many other Jasons that were out there. I don't love it. I got to say, I don't love it, but I understand it and I've come to accept it. It's not my preference. If you know, when you're not differentiating between many Jasons, but some people do have that technique of referring to people by their last names and, and that that's fine.

I do it. I do it some, but it's, I tend to only do it when it's a, when it's, I need to differentiate people so you know i refer to gruber a lot because not only is gruber at gruber in syracuse exactly because not only are they gruber and syracuse on twitter but they are both johns and if i say you know i was talking to john

it's unclear so yeah i just realized that i go Gruber, Syracuse, John Voorhees. Ah. Both. You're doing a Jason Snell to John Voorhees. I do. I definitely double name. He's a man who needs some introduction, so you use both names. One day he hopes to just be Voorhees, but there's also Jason Voorhees, who's a serial killer in movies.

Let me give you a secret that, you know, I probably shouldn't say this on the show, but I'm going to do it anyway. I've always wanted to be just referred to as Mike on podcasts, and everyone knows who that is. Yeah. Because, you know, you hear that, right? You just say the name.

But people tend to refer to me as Mike Hurley, I think, in a lot of in a lot of uh environments and i would like to just be like mike you know there's so many mics out there that's the problem that's like the most common in your age group that's the most common name i think it's a very or top four yeah top four one of the reasons it's actually the main reasons why my name has a y in it is because of how common Mike and Michael was in my age group. So I went with the Y just purely to differentiate myself when I was 16 years old. If only it was audible. I had a secondary question for you from the Snell Talk question,

which was, did you have any nicknames growing up? Oh, man, this is going to be good. Oh, yeah. No, I didn't have any. Ah, I thought you were going to give me a good one that I would call you forever. No. Thank you, Matt, for that hashtag Snell Talk question. 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 Snell Talk or use the question mark Snell Talk command in the RelayFM members Discord. As you can see, very clearly, we will take questions about anything. So whatever it is you want to send them in, maybe yours will be picked. So as we are recording today, we're in that weird timeframe again, like we were last week.

iOS 14.3 is launching today, along with Fitness+. As of recording, we don't have access to any of that stuff. So we'll maybe be touching in on it again uh over the coming weeks i am very intrigued to try out fitness plus are you jason i am i'm i'm looking forward to giving it a try since i'm an apple one subscriber i get it and i have although i am my primary exercise is running which is covered in this. I don't have a treadmill or anything.

I actually run outside. But I do have a stationary bike and I do have a TV in a living room where I could do whatever they're kind of like flat yoga or whatever it is that you just kind of move your body around. I could try that stuff too. Although, as you can see from the conversation that we're having here, I'm spectacularly bad at that. So I would need to start at the introductory state. So maybe i'll just hop on the stationary bike and try that out

yeah i'm really keen to try out their beginners thing and also the yoga so i will be following up on that over the coming weeks i think uh bloomberg got hold of a memo that Tim Cook had shared with Apple employees talking about their kind of return to work plans or lack of. So basically, it's at the moment that Apple is stating that it seems likely that most employees will be working at home until at least June of 2021. And an additional quote that I found interesting from this memo there's no replacement for face-to-face collaboration this is from tim but we also we have also learned a great deal about how we can get our work done outside of the office without sacrificing productivity or results all of these learnings are important when we're on the other side of this pandemic we will preserve

everything that is great about apple while incorporating the best of our transformations this year i think you know reading between the lines i think it's pretty clear that that apple want their people to be in their buildings and sometimes they have to be but it seems like there might be a bit more flexibility on that than there was before. Yeah, it's, again, they have built large campuses and invested a lot of money in them. So I think that these corporate culture things die hard. But I do like that at least there's a little bit of lip service

being paid to the idea of preserving everything that is great about Apple while incorporating the best of our transformations. You know, honestly, there's no replacement for face-to-face collaboration is the part that gets me because there is, there's a lot, there's a lot. And some, you know, face, face collaboration is great.

It has its merits, definitely. But there is, I mean, it depends on what he means by this, right? This is, this is just a statement. It's a. It's a corporate memo from the CEO. I get it. But I'm a big believer in the fact that you should hire the best people wherever you can hire them. Yes. A lot of them aren't going to be in the Silicon Valley. And then spend the money that you would have spent on enormous rent or whatever your costs are for facilities on smaller facilities. facilities, on smaller facilities. And then also, once people are able to travel again, have, you know, in-person meetings and things like that, that where people can get to know each other,

get to know the people that they're collaborating with. And I also know some jobs you have to be there, and that's fine. But we'll see. I remain skeptical. I think that this is going to give some people inside Apple some ammunition to find ways to hire people who are great who are not in the office but i also think that managers who just don't want to do that will probably be allowed to continue with that policy and that's that silly thing of like you're doing a thing that's entirely typing words into a screen but you have to sit at a desk in Cupertino doesn't make sense no apparently this is from the Bloomberg report to get around some restrictions on travel Apple employees have been controlling robots from their homes using iPads to inspect manufacturing production overseas they've had these little telepresence robot type things which is funny right that's the way they've done it.

Apparently they've been using AR or somehow. Would you call that kind of robot an inspector gadget? Jason, you're a genius. That's I know I'm not like guffawing right now because it's one of those jokes that just like

caught me off guard. That is absolutely fantastic and you deserve all of the credit for that one bravo um chance miller from n to five macpoint is out on twitter it's just like a good thing uh that basically the the likelihood of an in-person wwdc seems pretty set to know from this if apple is saying you will be working from home until june there's at which point you will go to san jose and mingle with we're gonna do nothing and then we're all getting together no it's not happening like you know i've been i've been saying this i think on connected more recently i might have mentioned here like this is not it's not happening um

there's you know the apple announced wwdc in march or april like how how could anyone expect right that we would be there's no way enough right like and i know that the vaccine is starting to roll out but like come on like it's gonna be way into 2021 before we're vaccinated at the level that people could get together in these kinds of numbers like i said it before like yeah i said like no matter what happens in 2021 what company would want to be on the line for 5 000 people or more getting together right like legally just from a legal standpoint you know it's just you don't want to be in that mess hopefully 2022 maybe you know 2020s wwc went really great if 2021 goes even better i don't know i don't know if it will come back i really don't i can't say for sure now i think it is convenient for them in a way to have this be sort of so clearly not ready for for uh

in person it allows apple to refine what they've done which by all accounts was pretty great right like everybody seems to be it was wonderful um have been pretty happy with it yeah um so it lets them kick the can down the road a year do another online event this summer uh or sorry next summer this coming summer i don't It's almost 2021, but it's not quite yet. Yeah. And then figure out what they want to do, if they want to do an in-person event or completely revisit it. So we'll see.

I think people who really want them to bring back classic WWDC, this is a bad sign because it allows everybody another year to get used to not having it at the same time um i want to reference this memo that tim cook sent out where he said there's no replacement for face-to-face collaboration so maybe yeah yeah i don't know i don't know. I don't know. Definitely not 2021, 2022. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Next week, we're going to be doing the Upgrade Holiday Special.

We have a couple of things planned. We're going to be doing a Mike at the Movies. We are going to be watching, and we would encourage you all to watch, a Charlie Brown Christmas special for mike at the movies it's available on apple tv plus this is one of the rare very rare movies uh that we have done for this series uh especially the holiday ones which is easy for everyone to get it um so in in many apple tv plus it's there it's 25 minutes long it is a not a movie. It is a half-hour television special from the, what, 70s?

And yes, everybody, Mike hadn't seen it. I haven't seen it because I'm not an American. And I think Charlie Brown is not exclusively, but seems like a very American thing. But I have this to watch, and I want you all to watch along with us. And we will be talking about it next week. We would also like to do an extended Ask Upgrade

for next week. We want to do a regular Ask Upgrade, but also a holiday themed Ask Upgrade. So please, if you have any holiday related questions, send them in to us by tweeting with the hashtag AskUpgrade or using question mark AskUpgrade in the RelayFM members' Discord. Just ask us some holiday-themed stuff. It could be about technology.

It could be about anything. But we would really love to see what you have to say. And then while we're talking about scheduling, then the week after, we will be doing the 7th annual Upgradees. So I would say we will close voting at some point next week. We will announce on next week's episode when exactly that's going to happen. If I was going to pick a day out of the air, which honestly is all I'll be doing anyway,

probably be like midweek next week. We will close voting. I will announce the date next Monday. But you want to go to upgradies.vote and get your votes in, your nominations in for the 2020

Upgradees, the 7th annual Upgradees. You want to get those in ASAP, please. And thank you to everybody who has done so so far. We've had many, many, many, many hundreds of votes. So please get those in for our Upgradees special. All right, this episode is brought to you in part by ExpressVPN. The sad truth is that our data isn't always as safe as we would want it to be

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Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of this show and RelayFM. So we have just an obscene amount of upstream stuff to talk about today. We have Disney stuff. We have Apple stuff. There's been reports. There's been basically Comic-Cons happening in the last few days.

But we should do a little bit of follow-up, actually, that there has been... So people, you know, we were talking about HBO Max last week, right? And, you know we're talking about hbo max last week right and uh you know everyone's really excited about all of the movies that are coming to hbo max except the creators of these properties so that there has been i think it started with christopher nolan nolan was kind of like uh he broke the dam on this um and was really upset about hbo max he said something like i will i went to bed with a creative partnership with the greatest movie studio ever and woke up

with a movie on the world's worst streaming service which is very hyperbolic because i'm not sure warner brothers is the greatest movie studio ever and i'm definitely sure that warner that hbo max is not the worst streaming service but even with quippy gone whilst he is being hyperbolic you can i see what he's saying and the the reason is i can kind of get what he's saying is that i was reading some stuff about this from um in other reports that nobody knew this was going to happen. None of the directors, none of the actors, none of the agents, nobody. HBO or Warner made this decision and did it. And one of the things that has been even more upsetting to some creators is this was not the case of Wonder Woman.

With Wonder Woman, everyone was involved. Gal Gadot got to make a deal with Warner to say, this is how much money you're going to pay me because I'll make less money, right? Right, because there are certain people who get a portion of money for each point along the gross, which is where the real money is, because profits, movies can be accounted

to not make a profit. But there's the gross, which is, it did a billion in box office, and you'll get a certain percentage of the first hundred thousand. And if you're like the director or maybe a producer, but like if you're like the director and the star, you make deals where you don't get paid as much up front, but you get a piece. This is why Robert Downey Jr. has all the money. Right. Because he ended up being in all of these Marvel movies that made an enormous amount of money. up being in all of these marvel movies that made an enormous amount of money and because he was there at the beginning and made a good deal he got paid out of the the enormity like if this movie is

a billion dollar movie you're gonna make a lot of money if it's a if it's a hundred million dollar movie you're not you know everyone was taking a gamble then they took a gamble on downy downy took a gamble on them so he obviously got a good deal and then just made just like you know all of it if you say so gal gadot is a good example of uh she's a star wonder woman did really well undoubtedly her deal includes participation in box office that no longer exists and uh there are other people who have that whether it's from residuals from box office or it's residuals from something else there's there this changes what it how the pay the pay you negotiated your pay based on an assumption that this movie was going to be in theaters and now it's not and and although they negotiated that for wonder woman they they

seem to have not done anything about these movies that are coming out in 2021 yeah and people are up in arms about it for good reasons now christopher nolan is one of these people he's not i'm not a big fan of christopher nolan i'm not really a fan of most of his movies i think he's made some good movies but i don't i think he's made some overhyped and not very good movies too but he's also the kind of guy who's like well you should really only see this in the theater and imax and 70 millimeter like's, I only want to shoot on film. Yeah. I mean, he was the ridiculous fool who pushed on Tenet coming out. Right. Like, yeah, just a stupid idea.

Cause it did, did, uh, did great. So, um, so he's, he's got some other access to grind about the, the glory and the, and the mythology of being in a movie theater instead of watching it on streaming. And I have very little patience for people like that. I think people should watch movies in the theater because they want to go in a movie theater instead of watching it on streaming and i have very little patience for people like that i think people should watch movies in the theater because they want to go to a movie theater not because of uh they're being forced to by exclusivity arrangements because um christopher nolan knows what's good for them so i'm gonna set that however right so like i agree with everything you're saying but like to go back to this whole point, I understand what he's getting at

in that sense of like, we all thought we knew what was going on here. Exactly. And now you've decided and consulted none of us that you're changing the entire model. And we all purposely did not do deals with Netflix. And now you've just put us in that situation. So exactly right. now this isn't

this wouldn't happen normally right no the pandemic has forced this yeah i mean if this would have just happened out of the blue in a regular year we would be in a very it would be like incredibly different to now right like you think people are mad now and and christopher nolan knows this and other people know this like this is where it's going anyway yeah but this is this is warner using this as a way to make it happen now like instead of incrementally to make it happen now now i will say they all got warned like an hour before they made the announcement and they're all outraged about that i get it i also get that the moment that if if they went to everybody and said here's what we're planning you know what would happen right it would be in variety in the hollywood reporter immediately yes and they begin negotiating in the

press yeah for a better deal yeah which is why they didn't tell them yeah yeah i get why they didn't do it but um i think it is a fair point that the challenge here is what is fair in terms of compensating the people who had their compensation originally tied to a theatrical release? What is fair for them? Because they're not going to get a theatrical release now. So what happens? At the high level, you've got creative types like Christopher Nolan, who it's, I would argue it is still about the money, but it's not just about the money. It's also about the prestige. Anyway, it's about the Batman Begins. No, it's about the prestige of being in a, getting a big movie release and

feeling good about it. And so when you see people like Denis Villeneuve, who did Dune, say, you know, you know, i don't even know if i want to make the other dune movie now like that's not great because they want that to be a two movie franchise for them and uh there are relationship issues right there there are relationship issues with high profile creators that are uh that are now more difficult there there are more issues there because there's a lack of trust going on here and that was that was a problem with this but i also see the other side which is they could have approached everybody in advance and we'd be basically where we are now which is how dare they suggest that we do this we're not going to do that right and i'm pretty sure that

uh warner has warner's lawyers have looked at this and say well can we do this. We're not going to do that. Right. And I'm pretty sure that, uh, Warner has Warner's lawyers have looked at this and say, well, can we do this? And the answer is yes. Um, that doesn't mean they should do it. And, and I get why they might have chosen this technique, but it's going to be damage control for them now with all of their partners. And the big challenge is that Hollywood has no credibility when it comes to money and working with their people like box office results are pretty out in the open and so if you peg your payment based on box office results you you will get paid in a way that you won't if it's almost any other metric because they can fudge all of that in the accounting

and so instead what what they did with wonder Woman is they sold Wonder Woman from Warner to, they sold this rights window to HBO Max. So it was an internal sale of the rights. And that's money that's being used to pay the residuals to the people who worked on the movie. And the problem with that is it wasn't an auction. It wasn't an open negotiation. The only bidder was Warner itself.

And this has come up time and again, where like, what was it? Friends, I think is an example of this, where the argument was that Friends was owned by Warner and got syndicated on TBS, which was owned by warner and uh got syndicated on tbs which was owned by warner and the people involved in friends all have residual payments based on syndication sales and i think there was a lawsuit

about this and there have been many lawsuits many so many lawsuits in this area because the idea is it's it's self-dealing they are um they are not putting it out in the open market it's an artificial valuing the property potentially exactly exactly like if if they had made that available on the open market somebody might have bid three times as much for netflix would have paid more for wonder woman than hbo paid themselves for wonder woman you know possibly Or at the very least, Netflix would have been able to, you know, run up the price

and say, well, we would pay this for it. And Warner would then have to pay that to itself, which I get is play money, but it would mean that the percentage of that would go to people and that's real money. And so there is a, like Hollywood studios are unfair to those people like there's no doubt about they have no credibility to say no we'll take care of you it's going to be okay and i know that jason

kylar who is the the ceo of warner media now who worked at hulu and i think is a very smart guy and and i would say no understands what the future of this business is and is behaving like it the problem with that is you've got to bring everybody else along you've got promises that you made that you're now not able to deliver because of the pandemic it's a difficult situation um not being able to deliver because of the pandemic is different from what hbo have decided to do right where it's like there are these movie studios and these movies that are just like up in the ether like James Bond. Right. Right.

It's like, look, we want to do what we all wanted to do. And we're going to wait until we can do that. Where Warner have just been like, NASCAR, we'll just do this. Warner have just been like, nah, screw it, we'll just do this. I could argue that that is all happening because of a deep sense of denial about how long the pandemic is going to affect things. So I could argue that what Kylar did and what HBO did is... And what Disney's doing, which we're going to get to shortly. What Disney's doing to a certain extent, yeah, exactly, is clear-eyed in a way that, and logical, in a way that saying, well, maybe Black Widow will open in April is not.

But people aren't always logical. And this is the thing is you are dealing, you're in a business where you're dealing with very creative people. They are, they are full of emotion about the projects they're working on. They have poured their selves into these projects. They have infused them with their own self-worth and they have, have talked to their agents and they've made deals based on a, a world that no longer exists. And while you can just say, well, that world doesn't exist, so we're going to figure this out, you don't have any credibility if you're the studio to actually be fair. So you're going to have to put up and you're really going to have to prove it,

which a unilateral announcement does not do. And so I understand, like, there's a lot of repair work that they're going to have to do, even though, and this is actually, this is the story I think of HBO Max and Warner Media in general in this period, which is, I don't think they're making bad decisions. No. I think they're executing them badly. And I think that some of the decisions are good decisions that have very painful outcomes that they're going, that they probably could have done differently to an extent, but they were always going to cause pain because I think that they have basically fully committed to the future. The challenges were in a transitory period and they decided to rip the bandaid off.

And when we talk about Disney in a minute, Disney is playing partially because Disney has more money, I think, is playing a more transitional game. Yes, where they are getting their movie stars to make TV shows. Yeah, Disney is executing, and has been for a few years now, this transition plan where a lot of the stuff that used to be movies is now going to be fueling TV, streaming TV production. And it's like movies, but for TV. And they're still also going to do theatrical films. And that leads to weird things, like Black Widow's not coming out because it's going to be in the theaters.

And, you know, whereas Warner said, we're just going to forget that and we're just going to put it on streaming. Disney is saying more like, no, no, no, a lot of that stuff we're going to keep. And just before we get to Disney, I wanted to say the reason this is relevant to you as a viewer of entertainment like this is what's the future of theatrical? Because if there is no future for theatrical or if there is a niche future for theatrical where it's also on streaming or it's only briefly theatrical, I think what you're going to see,

and I think this is going to happen whether anybody wants to do it or not, I think it's just going to be the future of theatrical releases. They're not going to make as much money as they used to. And why that's relevant is if theatrical releases aren't going to make as much money as they used to, studios aren't going to spend as much money on them as they used to. Because that's the real issue here, is you can make a Marvel movie for TV. You're not going to spend the amount of money on it that you spent if you were going to make a billion dollars in a movie theater. You're not.

And so if I had to project out five years, my guess would be there will be theatrical releases, but they might be smaller. They might be cheaper because the theatrical market has drained a little bit whereas your streaming stuff is going to be way bigger budget than tv used to be because it's more movie like on premium streaming yeah it's uh like there's this middle ground right now where you have like tv and movies and then this like golden age of streaming is in the middle and it's more

expensive and so like we're going to start talking about disney now but just like just as a way to tie these things together like one of the things bob eiger was saying and the investor thing was saying that like they are spending not that they're spending they are creating uh their shows that look like movies and some of the clips that they showed, they looked like scenes from Marvel movies, but they were from TV shows. Now, of course, there's not going to be as many of them. Anybody who saw The Mandalorian last week,

I mean, the whole season, but last week's a good example, that was like a movie. There were some special effects shots in there that's like, I cannot believe this is a TV show. This looks like a Star Wars movie. And that's sort of where we are. And it's not, and they don't spend as much money on it, but they spend a lot of money on it. And that may be the truth of it. And again, if you're a director or a star who is used to getting participation in a movie that's going

to make a billion dollars, it's got to bum you out a little bit that that might dry up and and i think that explains some of the reaction to warner so i i sorry for people who wanted a hot take about the warner stuff but the truth is um i think they're making some good tactical decisions and also made some bad human relationship decisions and that the people who are upset with them breaking the the model are people who deserve to be paid and it feels a little bit like they're just not going to be paid right for this and that's not like i i i get i can i can agree and be enthusiastic about moving those movies all onto hbo max while also recognizing that the people who made those movies deserve to get paid what they were promised.

Let's just state for the record, right, that we are talking about, in some instances, people that make lots and lots and lots of money, millions, right? And it's the question of, oh, they have millions. Society has valued these people this way. Also, there are people who are not glamorous who have residual payments. There are people who are not glamorous who have

residual payments. There are people who are not glamorous, who are technical people, behind the scenes people, people you've not ever heard of, and they're the ones who, this is how they bank their house payment. And so it's a bigger issue than just the stars. And Nolan, to his credit, made that issue. He said, don't worry about

me getting paid. Worry about my cameraman, my lighting worry about me getting paid. Worry about my cameraman, my lighting supervisor, my set director. Worry about all those people getting paid. Don't worry about me. And I think that's the truth of it is that this isn't just boohoo rich actors. It's also all the people who you don't know of who are also potentially getting the short end of the stick because of this business model change but i'll say that while also saying i feel like this was kind of inevitable and what i hope is that that they the outcry that's happening now leads to those people getting paid fairly for funding

let's be honest for funding warner media's attempt to build circulation revenue for hbo max yep so let's talk about disney so disney had an investor announcement last week that was basically part comic-con where they made a bunch of announcements and showed a bunch of trailers um so we're going to try i'm going to give a very high level to this because there is literally too much stuff to talk about. So over the next few years on Disney+, we'll be getting 10 new Marvel series, 10 new Star Wars series, 15 Disney animation Pixar series, and 15 feature movies from Disney,

all to Disney+. Yep. Some highlights. There's a lot of stuff. They showed a lot of trailers and gave more information about things we already know about. But some of the things that were new, they're making a series based on the alien franchise from Noah Hawley,

who did Fargo and Legion, which are both. I mean, Legion got really weird, really fast, but like, he's really a smart guy and they put him in charge of this alien TV series. And this is coming to Hulu or Star,

so that Disney have finally given information about how the FX and Hulu stuff is going to be international. They're creating a separate property called Star, which will become part of Disney+, so it will be like another tab. So that's where I will be able to watch this content, and also very cleverly,

in places where Disney need to provide a percentage of content in a language or produced in an area, it will go on Star. It will go on Star, and the idea here is this also solves the rated R problem of Disney+,

which is they're going to have you. Always Sunny in Philadelphia is going to be on Star. So it's kind of funny. I will watch Always Sunny in Disney+. Yeah, but the way it works is that Disney+, the plus includes swearing, right? So you'll go in and you'll say, I am over 18 or whatever, or a parent or whatever, and I want to turn this on and then star will be there and you'll be able to watch.

And presumably that'll, that'll probably also include like Hamilton with the F word in it and the Taylor Swift thing with the F words in it and all that. But it will have all the, all the FX Hulu content, anything that's sort of not kids content will kind of be able to live in there and it's so in the u.s we'll have hulu but they're using star which i think started in india but it is a global brand but what they're not what they're going to try to do is sort of like

name is actually in india is the name of the service and they're keeping that hot star name in some territories so it's kind of come star everywhere else um some of the star wars highlights for me so we knew about obi-wan that you know with uh ewan mcgregor but they announced that hayden christiansen will be resuming the role of darth vader which is incredible but i think it's like one of those like so surprising type moves it's like i don't know if i'm gonna like this but just because i'm so surprised about it i really like it so that's gonna be really interesting um and also one of the upcoming features uh i believe this is an actual theatrical movie it is um is going to be rogue squadron directed by patty jenkins who is the director of wonder woman yeah of the wonder woman movies and then taika waititi we

already knew was directing a star wars theatrical release and he is still they mentioned him it seems like disney's gonna start getting weird with star wars i think uh which i'm kind of excited about i feel like maybe the Marvel influence of like, you need to look at your mates over at Marvel and consider that. I wonder if the Taika Waititi movie is the one that Kevin Feige is producing, by the way. I wonder, because there was a rumor that Kevin Feige from Marvel was going to produce a Star Wars movie.

And since he's worked with Taika Waititi on Marvel movies and he's directing a Marvel movie right now, but I honestly don't know if that is not happening or is happening differently or whatever. But yeah, so it's interesting because they've got their whole slate of Star Wars, including a bunch of new Star Wars series that they announced. There were a lot of jokes there about so many Star Wars

minor characters giving their own shows including two mandalorian spinoffs uh that'll be coming from the people who do the mandalorian plus some other star wars shows that are not coming from the people who do and there are some more animated series on top of it but um and we'll you know and we're about to talk to talk to marvel marvel but just a um as a little sidebar, when we talk about CBS All Access, which is going to be Paramount Plus pretty soon, we talk about they have Star Trek. And one of the things they're trying to do with Star Trek is have it be that basically

there's always a Star Trek show on. So if you like Star Trek, you've got to keep subscribing to CBS All Access because there's always going to be a Star Trek. Discovery will go off, and then Picard will come on, and then Strange New Worlds will come on, and then Lower Decks will come on and there's always a Star Trek show in season. Clearly, Disney Plus' strategy, and we gave them a hard time about this.

We have been for a while now. This is phase two for them. And this is where they're like, there will always be Star Wars and Marvel shows running on Disney Plus. You'll never be able to cancel it. There will be a new Star Wars and or Marvel show and probably like a Pixar show on every Plus. You'll never be able to cancel it. There will be a new Star Wars and or Marvel show and probably like a Pixar show

on every week. They're basically turning it into a TV network, essentially, for all of their properties where there will, every week, there's going to be new stuff

on Disney Plus. And that is really impressive, especially when you, this is why Netflix has been trying to buy intellectual property in the background by comic book studios and stuff like that for a while now is because this is why netflix has been trying to buy intellectual property in the background by comic book studios and stuff like that for a while now is because this is this is how disney

plus potentially beats netflix at its game is is with using franchise stuff to make their service mandatory for fans now obviously you know i've said this before my heart is in marvel like it's you know marvel movies they're my Star Wars, really. I'm a fan of Star Wars, definitely, but Marvel movies is what really hits for me. And they have some incredible stuff coming up. A Secret Invasion series, which is going to start Samuel L. Jackson. And Ben Mendelsohn, who plays the Skrull in Captain Marvel. They're the stars of that show. It's a Nick Fury and the Skrull in Captain Marvel they're the stars of that show it's a

Nick Fury and the Skrulls TV show that's coming Ironheart I've wondered what are they going to do for Ironman what they're going to do like what they've done with the comics Ironman is now a woman is Ironheart in the comics this was a very

recent invention this is Riri Williams is a character who is a, she's a black girl from Detroit, I want to say. And she invents Iron Man armor, basically inspired by Tony Stark. She invents Iron Man armor. So you can see the story here, which is basically like you get to do the Iron Man thing,

but it's a kid. So that's kind of, it's like Spider-Man-y in that way. And those comics have been a lot of fun. So it's a fun kind of furthering the Iron Man family. And in fact, in the comics, Riri Williams gets to know Pepper Potts and like she's still integrated into kind of Iron Man's world

while also having her world. And that could be really interesting. There's also already announced there's a Ms. Marvel series coming, which is another relatively new character. But they announced this time as a part of this that that character is also going to appear in the next Captain Marvel movie.

And that's one of those moments where you're like, oh, like, let's be clear. This isn't just movie characters getting their own shows, although it is that. It's also TV show characters using that as a launch point to then appear in theatrical releases. So if you're expecting to, like, hold a firewall and be like, I'm not watching those Marvel TV shows. I'm just going to watch the movies. That's fine. But those TV characters are going to be in the movies because disney wants you to have it all

and buy it all and watch it all it's like you could jump in at any marvel movie if you want to if you haven't seen the rest of them but you're maybe not going to understand it all um and that's the way it's going to be with the shows because they announced captain marvel 2 and then stated that the actress playing m. Marvel is going to be in Captain Marvel 2. So they're mixing them all around in a really, really great way. They spoke about making a Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special for next year, which super good. I'm into that. It's actually two years. Is it two years? Oh, okay. It's 2022. See, this is part of the Disney announcement is they're announcing what they're going to do for the next like three or four years.

They want to really just sort of make it clear that they have all of this stuff in production. But what I love about the Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special story is they're shooting Guardians of the Galaxy 3. three and what they decided to do while they've got the cast there is also do this guardians of the galaxy holiday special for disney plus that is directed by james gunn and i think he wrote the script and he thinks it's so it's like a fun little thing that is going to be produced alongside the production of the movie using the same sets and characters and all of that so it's they're basically creating like a second little TV special alongside the movie. I think it's a really interesting approach

that could be replayed in other places, right? Like it's not making it into a TV show. It's making it into a theatrical feature with a special, which is another way to cut it, right? Not every movie needs to just be a movie. Not every TV show needs to just be a TV show. You might be able to find some way to kind of like do a little bit of both.

So that'll be an interesting experiment. And the Fantastic Four are going to be given another shot. They're going to try. What if the, could the Fantastic Four work if it was actually a Marvel movie instead of whatever they had before? We'll see. It's from the director of spider-man homecoming john watts so that's good but how you fit the fantastic four in the mcu remains to be seen they were for people who aren't comic book nerds the

fantastic four and only know the fantastic four from all the bad movies that they've been in fantastic four was the original Marvel Universe characters. That's where the Marvel Universe basically started is Stan Lee and Jack Kirby doing Fantastic Four. And then they added Spider-Man and the Avengers and all that. So they are in the comics. They are kind of Marvel's crown jewels in a way. And yet have been owned by another studio. And Marvel never got to integrate

them into the Marvel cinematic universe. So I'm kind of fascinated by that. I'm also, there's a good question about like, has, have the bad movies killed that franchise? Um, that I'd only say Spider-Man,

like coming back to John Watts, like Spider-Man franchise was pretty dead. And then they made Spider-Man homecoming and it was like, Oh, it's in the MCU and it was like oh it's in the mcu and it's a good movie yay so they could do that again they could totally do that again they're going to be doing a bunch of pixar related stuff including some series as we mentioned um but there's also just a movie that i wanted to mention i'm just so excited about because i love

the premise so much it's called light year and it's about the character that the buzz light year toy is made from yes so it is like imagine it's the movie from which the toy was made a genius idea and it's and the buzz light year will be voiced by chris evans which is just like it's all so it's just so good disney are getting wild y'all they are doing some freaky stuff and i am into it like this is so great they are on it so like they they want the this is the i i said to you on slack earlier like this is the death star basically uh being rolled out here it is it is disney saying we are spending a lot of money to do our whole franchises on disney plus plus in addition to theatrical right like that's we're gonna do both and we're gonna we're gonna do all the stuff on disney plus and if you love these franchises you

will have new stuff from them coming into your house every week so you've got to keep paying us for disney plus which they raise the price by a dollar by the way yep so like that'll that'll keep happening that's like yeah but you look at this you're like there oh there's the value in originals like we were complaining that the catalog was there but where were the originals and it's taken them some time to get to this point but um starting next year they're going to start rolling this thing out and i think basically that's it from that point on it's going to just be rolling thunder of Disney content releases on Disney+.

Yeah, like it starts early next year and then the Marvel shows begin. And the trailers they show for the Marvel shows all looked weird and wonderful in their own ways. Like this is the Disney Plus that we wanted, right? Like definitely. This is what we, as you said, we were talking about this. Like it felt like they were kind of spinning their wheels a little bit.

Julia Alexander at Polygon wrote a really great piece about this calling What We Have Now, The Real Disney Plus. Yes. I'll read a couple of quotes from this. It's a great article. It's going to be in the show notes.

Last night's presentation established the undeniable version of Disney Plus that delivers on nearly $100 billion worth of acquisitions over the last 15 years. There come a time when disney has a new star wars or marvel show seemingly every week and that powerful harnessing of lucrative sought after fan adored brands should be terrifying to competitors and like this is it right like this is the thing of like whether this was what bob iger planned or whether it's just all of the stars aligned and they ended up capitalizing on it.

It's like the last however many years, like 15, 20 years of Disney collecting all this IP has gotten them to this point. The movies are great. Amazing. We love the movies. But what about consistent continual revenue constantly plus merchandising, plus theme parks, plus cruise ships, right?

Like this is creating an absolute powerhouse. Like you thought Disney was powerful before. Like, as you said, like the Death Star is a perfect analogy for this. It's like, wait, what is that over there? Oh no, they're gonna blow up my planet no the um yeah i think i mentioned netflix earlier like i think this is going to be one of the long-term challenges because i think disney plus is going to be a serious challenger for netflix like that

is it is happening they're going to be seriously close in worldwide subscribers at some point this decade it's gonna happen but long run is about the content right and disney plus like it's great that they're doing all this marvel and star wars stuff but their challenge is going to be what do they have that's original and like again within marvel and star wars if you're doing it right there is original content in there within the framework of the franchise you have the ability to do original content it's something that you and i have talked about before i've talked about it on the incomparable a lot like marvel movies have worked over the long haul because they've allowed them to be in different genres and feel different

they're not i know there are people who are like only see avengers movies who say they all feel the same but like go watch ant-man like yeah it's go watch guardians of the galaxy uh thor ragnarok yeah they're they're there's a lot of space and star wars although star wars up to now has been largely the movies have been largely the same with the mandalorian you see there's plenty of room and with the animated series too honestly up to now has been largely, the movies have been largely the same. With The Mandalorian, you see there's plenty of room, and with the animated series too, honestly, plenty of room to tell different kinds of stories if you just can't do it with the pressure of a giant theatrical release. But on streaming, you can do that. So there is a framework with the franchises

to tell some different stories. But in the end, Disney is going to also need to do original stuff, new stuff, things that people who are not deep into Marvel or Star Wars want to see. And I would imagine if I'm a Disney executive, that's phase three, right? Phase two is get all our franchises revved up and running. Phase is more original uh intellectual property the next big franchise whatever it might be and that's why i mentioned netflix making these deals with comic book publishers and things like that and and novelists and stuff what are they doing there it's like well netflix knows that its weakness is that it doesn't own the intellectual property for big franchises everything on netflix is kind of i mean not everything most of what's on netflix is original stuff which is

great but also a harder sell marketing wise so i think that's going to be an interesting dynamic this decade about like does netflix buy or find something that is such a hit such a breakthrough that instead of being three seasons and out it becomes we're going to do a series of original movies and we're going to do spin-off tv series that are going to drop on netflix like i don't think they've reached that point yet but i don't think they found that thing yet but i do think they're looking for that just like disney is going to be looking to be you know to make sure that they're trying to find the next franchise that's going to be a really fun dynamic to watch and then everybody else is like hello over here peacock disney revised uh their guidance to investors. They previously said that by 2024 that they would hit 90 million subscribers

so that they could. They have now created a new projection that by 2024, they will have 260 million subscribers, which is quite a significant jump. Just to state, I mean, this is now, but as of right now,

Netflix has 200 million so disney feel pretty confident that we all think of television as netflix now right like a lot of us you know especially the younger generation we we just think of like streaming like net like netflix is a thing like television is a thing it's not and then there's all this other streaming stuff but it's like netflix is like the home you's not and then there's all this other streaming stuff. But it's like Netflix is like the home. You go there to see what's there first. Disney think that's going to be them.

And that's very interesting. And you know what? If I could put money on it, I would bet they're right. I think that stars have aligned and they've got it on lock. I think Disney Plus is going to be much bigger than i had originally estimated it would be for sure and i i don't think it's because the

pandemic has helped them in any way yeah because that's true the big growth they are going to see is post-pandemic no they they well this is the funny thing is they feel like they don't need to do what warner did which is no they're cool take pull the plug on theatrical in order to prop up their uh streaming right disney's like what i did was a stunt right it's a stunt and and like i said it was a stunt also i think maybe maybe a little injection of realism about the 2021 box office and saying, why would we not just use this to fund our streaming service? There're still going to own a large percentage of whatever theatrical film market is out there yeah as you said before if they don't even just own their own theater chain by that point which is the other piece of this sure and then here's the other thing is long term this also is a hedge for them because if theatrical doesn't come back or doesn't come back at the

level that that it was before which i think is pretty likely likely yeah um which is not to say there isn't money to be made in theatrical but it allows them to adjust and you might end up in that scenario where they're still doing theatrical releases but they are um smaller budgets than maybe because they don't expect to make a billion dollars on them or maybe they do like they can go any which way here because if this is all set up and working correctly disney is going to have all the money from theatrical and all the money from disney plus and have these two two different businesses also knowing that the theatrical is going to reference a lot of their content on Disney Plus and then it's going to go to Disney Plus and all the money just gets sucked into Disney eventually. This episode is also brought to you by Bombas.

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So let's continue this train and talk about Apple TV killing the Gorka show. Oh, boy. Okay. This came out. This is a New York Times article. Listeners of this show may remember us talking about this show when it got commissioned a while back. The show was going to be called Scraper. It was being co-created by some ex-editors at Gawker with the premise being a show about a new organization just like it.

And they were actually going to use things from Gawker's past for stories because I remember us joking about like are they going to do something about the iPhone 4 yeah and Tim Cook sadly doesn't listen to us but I just want to point out when we say people who used to write for Gawker the creator of this show is Cord Jefferson who is a an Emmy winning writer

of among other TV shows Master of None The Good Place and watchmen so cord jefferson very talented person in his post gawker career as a professional television creator and this was his first i think his first series that he has created personally. But apparently it's not going to run on Apple TV Plus after all. So the story goes that Tim Cook personally canceled the project after being, quote, from the New York Times article, surprised to learn that his company was making a show about Gorka, which had humiliated the company at various times and famously outed him back in 2008 as gay now scraper is now back

on the market and the executive who bought the show at apple his name is lane eskridge has left the company um and so let's let's talk about this now because there's another part of this which i want to get into in a minute but let's let's pause here and have a little discussion about what's going on here so can we can we talk about bad management like what not to do in an organization yeah okay go on because i feel like that's the number one thing i have to say about this which is who who green-lighted this and who got all of these scripts written when, okay, like, it's not a good look that this all got approved and then it bubbled up to the CEO and then he killed it. Because this is the kind of thing that you check, right? that you you check right like this is the kind of thing that somebody needs to have a clue about this gawker project and say you know apple has a fraught history with gawker maybe we should

talk and make sure everybody's in alignment on this we'll use some corporate speak here let's make sure we get alignment on this from the top from eddie and, that what this show is and what it's going to be like and whether we're comfortable saying yes to this. And it's possible, you know, I mean, obviously it got there eventually, but it seems a little, I have a question about like why it got to this point. It feels from the piece in the New York Times,

like Apple said yes, and then it said no. And that's the part that I think there's a disconnect there. And then this development executive left the company. So either this was not communicated when it should have been, and it was sort of like hidden, which is bad and would be a reason why somebody might leave the company when it was discovered. Or the alternate view is this was disclosed and everybody said it was fine. And then all of a sudden the CEO said no, and they had to unwind the whole thing. And the person who got all the approvals and got this show in development saw it all taken away because of a fiat from the top.

I guess what I'm saying is, at least as it's depicted in the New York Times, I have questions about Apple and why it happened like this. Because you should not ever have a situation where you approve something and pay money and get it going. And then later the CEO comes in and says, no, get rid of it.

I want it gone. Like ideally you should run it by the CEO comes in and says, no, get rid of it. I want it gone. Like, ideally, you should run it by the CEO. You should be smart enough to know that this is going to be controversial. Run it by everybody. Get everybody to approve it in advance and then go with it. And that seems to not have happened there. So on a fundamental level, I'd say it makes Apple look bad just because, you know, what are they doing? It makes it seem like Tim tim cook is you know reading

scripts and approving things again which is a story we've heard before and the way you avoid that is by getting everybody clear we're gonna make this right okay everybody's okay with it we're gonna make this show and apparently that didn't happen so i didn't grab i didn't get this from the article maybe you did do you have a sense of a timeline here like how long was this show in development at apple before it was canned i don't know and and the ben smith story doesn't tell me the impression i get is long enough for them to put in an order for multiple scripts which i don't if, I don't know whether they bought, based on the pitch, they bought a whole season's worth of scripts

before they put it in production or whether they green-lighted it and then they were writing the scripts and then they saw the scripts and didn't like it and they killed it. It's unclear to me how deep they went in this process because it is possible that what they were pitched, they liked,

and then they saw the scripts and said, oh, no, no, this is not what we were pitched. It's possible that's what it is. That story doesn't suggest that that's what it is, but it's possible that that's what it is. Because the other potential timeline that I'm thinking here is an executive said, yes, it got out in the press. Tim saw it and said, what the hell is this? Kill that. And this was months ago. But now it's only now bubbling up.

Because now this show is now back on the market again. Now that wouldn't happen immediately. There would be a period of time. So they may have negotiated a payout and an exit and perhaps even a waiting period. It's possible. That's possible. The problem is from this report, we don't really know. It looks bad for Apple.

And I'd say it looks bad for an Apple in a gang who couldn't shoot straight kind of way. But it's possible that that's not what happened, that the time sequence is different. I'll bring up at this point a couple of tweets from Mike Schur, who is the creator of The Good Place and Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and has worked on The Office and is one of the great comedy creators of television right now. And Corey Jefferson worked on The Good Place. And he tweeted, not knowing, it seems, much about this project. He's got his own stuff that he's working on. much about this project. He's got his own stuff that he's working on. But his comment was, I know Tim Cook has a personal grudge against Gawker, but killing the show only really makes

sense in that context. If it was going to be a one-sided, un-nuanced hagiography of the site and the people who ran it, and given what I know of Cord, I doubt that is what he had in mind. There have been TV shows about sociopathic mobsters serial killers corrupt law firms and diabolical politicians succession is about the murdochs the crown is about the actual british royal family you cannot assume what this show was going to be and this and then pass judgment on it based on the subject um and i i think that's an interesting point, which is, I think there's an assumption among some people that Gawker was awful and sucked and did a lot of bad stuff

and then was killed by a billionaire, by the way. So there's, it is a nuanced story, right? Like I have lots of negative thoughts about a lot of what Gawker and Gawker's spinoffs did. I also have positive thoughts a lot of what Gawker and Gawker's spinoffs did. I also have positive thoughts about some of what Gawker did.

And I also have thoughts about the fact that they angered the wrong person and got destroyed because of it. I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff there. And as Mike Schur points out, that actually sounds like kind of potentially a great TV show and not one that makes the people who were their saints, which is why the framing of this as Tim Cook called and he doesn't want to make a show about Gawker because they're mean is very weird and reminds me of something. Does it remind you of something, Mike? Well, the expensive NBC thing. Expensive NBC. It does a little bit.

I just have a problem with this whole argument, right? Where there is this, like, and I'm not saying that this is what you're saying or what Mike Schur is saying, but there are people saying this, that maybe he just doesn't want it made. And like, I think that's fine. Like, just because they don't want it made

doesn't mean it won't get made, but not everything has to be for everyone in every place. It depends on the manager. And like, again, and we don't know exactly how it goes down here. If it goes down as described, the problem with it is you're a creative person in hollywood and you've got something to say and you've worked with all the apple tv executives

and they like what you have to say and you get set up to do this show and you start you hire a writing staff and you start going on scripts and you get six scripts in and then all of a sudden again this is just one scenario you get the word that basically Tim decided he doesn't like it. It's dead. And that is going to make it hard for your creative executives at Apple TV Plus to make deals with talented people. If the perception is that the whims of a computer executive in Cupertino are going to determine whether your show lives or dies even after you've made the deal

and everybody in the room agreed that it's great. Okay, but I understand that. Okay, but then we're looking at where we are right now, right? You've got the guy who come up with the DVD company. You've got the guy who runs the theme parks. You've got the AT&T guy, right? Like this is just the landscape now the chat yeah okay and Ben Smith makes this point I think the challenge is and and right no company needs to make a show they don't

want right like and there are other places you can shop it and it's it is commerce it's art but it's also commerce get I get all of that. I guess my issue is, um, what you don't want is to seem capricious because you've got executives who are going to have opinions and they're going to swoop in at the last minute. If you're, if you're one of the creators who is a great up in this case, court Jefferson, Emmy winning writer, a really well thought of this is his first show.

And, and, and as Mike sure pointed out on Twitter, wouldn't you want as a streaming service to have that be a, one of your shows to be the show from this guy? And wouldn't you want that? The challenge is not do they have the right to do it to me? It's do you get a reputation that there's some random chance that somebody somewhere is going to just swoop in and kill your show? And that's the way it's portrayed in the Times article.

It's not necessarily what happened here. We've seen before the expensive NBC example where somebody got kicked off of a show and was really bitter about it and leaked, for those who don't remember, to the Hollywood press that Apple TV's content was a joke. It was all going to be family friendly. It was going to be like NBC level of standards and practices, but with a lot of money behind it. And it turned out to not be true. And that that was sour grapes from somebody who was working on a show. My theory is amazing stories that got recast with a different target audience, but was not reflective of Apple's slate as a whole or Apple's rules as a whole. And they extrapolated because they wanted to make trouble because they were unhappy with what had happened with their show that they had previously been working on. So we got to remember that this information may be coming out of people who are and almost certainly is coming out of people who are angry that Apple cut this show and that they have to shop it around again.

it around again yeah but again again john stanky or or you know any of these like ceo types the difference is there are no rumors that that uh john stanky doesn't want to make a deal with uh with uh john oliver because john oliver makes fun of at&t or or anything like that like we haven't heard those stories and yet we hear these stories these are easy stories to write about Apple though right like people like to write these stories right so the challenge for Apple is people like to write these stories and there's more there's just more of a vibe that Apple is a weird control freak company which I saw a comment on Twitter from a friend of mine last night that said this is really bad for Apple's uh like the way it it views itself and the way it views itself

and the way it sells itself. And I'm like, I don't know, control freak. That like, kind of sounds like Apple to me actually. But this is the thing is, I think the bad thing for Apple here is, do they get a bad reputation? And do they not get stuff brought to them? Because remember the story with Quibi

was that everything that got brought to Quibi was everybody's second rate material because they had tried to sell it everywhere else and failed and so they brought it to Quibi. Apple doesn't want to get, Apple wants prestige projects and they want to reassure creators that they want to be in business with them

and when they give them their word that it stands for something. And that's the danger in this story is that it could for something. And that's the danger in this story is that it's a, it could potentially have a chilling effect on future Apple TV content deals. Not that it's going to hurt Apple's bottom line. And Ben Smith's argument in the times is really more like, these are all enormous corporations with powerful CEOs,

which of course they are. The CEOs are powerful because they're in charge of enormous corporations. I think that he overstates that a little bit. But the point is, yeah, they're big media companies and they're going to decide what they want to do. And they're going to set rules. And if you're Apple and you have a huge phone business in China, you're going to say, maybe we don't make a TV show about the Dalai Lama. And we can all grumble about that and we can all debate that, but it's their money. And I get why from a business standpoint, they would say, we're not going to do that. I think the bigger issue and why you wouldn't bring that show to

Apple TV, the bigger issue is if Apple says, yes, this is a show we want to do. And then six months later, the CEO has a brainwave and your show gets killed because that's not going to make people want to work for Apple. the apple part was um eddie q this is quote has told partners that the two things we will never do a hardcore nudity in china and i just should be clear and china not just hardcore nudity is fine but not in china it's actually china in general yeah and hardcore nudity in general which is a far cry from expensive abc or nbc and we've seen that we've seen that with what they've done there there's plenty of strong language and sexual content other and sexual content and all sorts of stuff on apple tv's uh thing so i guess this is this is i don't know it is a black eye to apple but like again i feel like the real story here is

not the black eye to apple for having standards about what it wants on its on its platform because of course it does so does disney so does at&t so so does everybody so does netflix so does amazon right all of these companies are enormously powerful companies, which is sort of Ben Smith's point in the times. And they all have other rationales. And, you know, television is, as you said, it is commercial art. It's a business. It is art, but it is also a business. And are we surprised that the giant businesses that run it have stuff that they don't want on their show and on their air or on their stream

and stuff that they are okay with? Like, it's not surprising. I think it's good to be informed of it, but it's not surprising. I think the long-term deleterious effects of this are more fear that apple is a bad partner for me to bring my show to as a as a you know great high-powered creator yeah i wonder about the balance on that though jason like yes this is true but look how many people they've got on board well i know that that's that's the thing

and that's what makes us i think bring up expensive nbc right because that was a case a case where you were trying to kind of tar apple with this brush and um it didn't seem to to take and i would think that the word of mouth of people who had a good experience with apple would also be spreading in hollywood like if they are good to work with that people would say yeah they were great to work with it wasn't a problem we didn't have a problem with it um and if they're not by the way if they're bad to work with then that spreads too and then people don't go to apple for their projects if they can help it. So I think that's all. Yeah, I don't know. It's a weird story.

And I think it's entirely possible that in the end, what's going to come out is that we're going to realize this is very much like the expensive NBC thing where there are sour grapes and there's more to the story and we may or may not ever hear more of the story. And I kind of hope that's the case because the alternative really is that Apple mismanaged this and you shouldn't ever be in a situation as a, as a creative executive at Apple TV plus, honestly, where you can be fully behind a project and then have it yanked out from

under you by a higher up in Cupertino. And it doesn't mean they don't have the power. It means you need to manage up and you need to manage expectations and you need to communicate with Eddie and with Tim that this is the show we're doing. Do you have a problem with this? And if this isn't just sour grapes, it's a sign of somebody making a big mistake in the chain of command at Apple to say yes and then say no, of command at Apple to say yes and then say no, because nothing is more infuriating if you're making business deals than to get a firm yes and then have it walked back a few weeks later. I find this an interesting story. I think that it's a very shades of gray story. It really does remind me of the expensive NBC part in that there were things in that report that were worth taking away.

The same here. But I think I, you know, I just like a lot of the conversation I've seen around it, I just think are idealistic viewpoints from people that like, oh, because it's art, it must be made. And so it must be funded and executives must must stay out of the way it's like i'm sorry this is not how commercial art is made uh like yeah people have to pay for it someone has to make the decision and if you're paying for it i'm afraid you kind of do get a say if you want one right like that's just the way this type of content is made and guess what in hollywood the

people with the money interfere all the time. Yes. And it's entirely possible, by the way, that this was not Tim Cook being involved at all. But a producer, somebody inside Apple TV. Why are you doing this? Seeing the scripts and saying, this isn't what we agreed to. And, you know, this is a company that's been burned by Gawker all these times. And you seem to be applauding them here.

And maybe the creators say, well, no, that's not what we're doing. And they're like, no, we didn't agree to this. You know, and that gets relayed to a writer on the staff as Tim Cook didn't like it. So we got killed, but it might actually be, I hate to say creative differences, but it might actually be that we don't, we don't know what that is. But you're in the end hollywood in general is people with lots of money who tell you what to do and as a creator you have to navigate that and um i think it's a shame because just in describing the history of gawker which again a company that i don't really have a lot of love for um that's a great story like i could see there being an amazing show about the the trials and

tribulations from the very unlikely founder to a lot of the people who worked there including some people who did some great work and some people who did some really kind of awful things and then they got destroyed by a rogue billionaire like and a and a wrestling star like there's there's an amazing story because i actually do want a movie or tv show made about that literal thing because it's so fascinating to me but i could see apple looking at the scripts and saying this isn't us i could imagine there being a thing like just this being like this is celebrating a bad thing like something we think that is bad and we don't want to do that even said oh yeah you know i get your arc here it's sort of like succession or something like that but these early days yeah it's not really for us it's not

really working for us and having it literally be a creative decision that gets spun as a decision about Tim Cook being angry that he was outed by Ryan Tate. But I don't think that's necessarily the case. And we don't know. We don't know. It's hard to say. If that is the case, that's bad management on Apple's part and they should get their ducks in a row before they make deals with TV producers. But there are a lot of other ways to interpret this too. All right. This episode is also brought to you by our friends over at MailRoute. Bad actors threaten your business with spam and viruses,

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AirPods Max. This is kind of funny. AirPods Max is like a, it's almost like a doomed upgrade product because we knew something was going to happen, right? And that was a last week's show. And then it came out on Tuesday, the day before. And now we know what these things are.

And I don't know about you, but I'm getting some at some point this week. But I don't have them right now. So you don't need to know about me. I don't use over-ear headphones. And there has never been a product that I am less in fit for. I do. I hate over-ear headphones. Sweaty ears. been a product that I am less in fit for. I do. I hate over-ear headphones. Sweaty ears.

Yeah, sweaty ears. That's right. We spoke about this last week. I feel like I don't remember if I predicted that this is what was going to be the product, but it was what I most thought would be the product if Apple released anything this year was the over-ear headphones. It seemed like the most logical to me. Anything this year was the over-ear headphones.

It seemed like the most logical to me. If you do want to hear actually from people that have used these products, I recommend the most recent episode of the talk show with John Gruber and Matt Panzarino. They both have them. They spoke about them for like an hour. It's a really good episode of the talk show. I recommend it. But what I want to know though, Jason,

is even though you are a person who will not own or use this product themselves uh i do know that you're obviously a person with impressions and with opinions and i wanted to know three things from you i want to know what you think of the design what you think of the overall kind of feature set that apple is offering and the price again we might we're going to touch on these next week because I will have had some time to use them. But I want to get kind of like your feelings on these, especially the pricing stuff. I wrote a piece that I've been meaning to write for a while

on Macworld this week or last week about pricing in general. And listeners to Upgrade will nod along because you've heard me play these songs before about how Apple apple you know always imagine the price that you want to pay and then raise it painfully and then raise it some more and that's the price and this is boy this is that right 549 for a pair of over your headphones is a lot of money um but apple priced it that way thinking that first off they've sold out basically through next year so whatever they had made it

like it's gone launch is the oldest you can get yeah so they priced it that way possibly knowing how many they had to sell and thinking and clearly they sold them all so they're doing pretty well at that price and and you might not like it or even find it valuable at that price but uh i think they priced it pretty well because you have to add in all the Apple stuff, right? It's like, yeah, they're more expensive than Bose or Sony headphones, but it's got the Apple wireless stuff that's so nice. And it's got, I don't know,

it's got Apple's design and it's got that look and you can buy it in an Apple store and it works great with all the, it's got spatial audio and it'll switch between in an Apple store and it works great with all the, it's got spatial audio and it'll switch between your devices. And if you're in the Apple ecosystem and you're buying things at an Apple store and all those things,

you're like, oh, okay, I'll just buy these. And not everybody will do that, but will enough people do that to make it worth it for them? And I think that's true. That's why Apple sells expensive versions of things that other people sell for less is because they're Apple and they can charge more and they'll make more. This is why there are cheap Apple iPhone

cases on Amazon and people buy the Apple cases that are way more expensive. It's the same thing. It's the same principle. And I get that some people like that and some people hate that, but I think that's what's going on here in terms of the design i don't know i don't even know how to judge it they look nice because they got aluminum and they've got the little they got colors which makes me happy and i there were no red macbook no red no product red macbook air yet uh just put put a pin in that for 2021 uh mark german said that they were trying very hard to get this with detachable, little detachable headband thing, and that didn't happen.

They had to change it to what it is now. Because the two cups are independent, but the headband is attached to both of them, so they can't kind of come off. And the other thing that's interesting is he said that they were trying to build a touchscreen version, or a touch version, not touch touch pad version, basically touch controls. And that, that didn't work out.

And so there are physical buttons. There's a button and a digital crown. And I don't know what to think about that because if they were going to do touch controls and then they, they ended up not, and they did this, I feel like they dodged a bullet there because i have tried headphones with touch controls like big over your headphones with touch controls and uh i hate them

i hate them like a touch surface on the side of your head physical buttons are really good you know exactly when you want to change the volume and you've got a little dial and you can go and it's louder that's really good like that's what it should be it's a little dial like the digital crown so i like that they used physical buttons in this product and i hope they keep using them because i don't think learning a whole bunch of gestures and tapping the side of your head is is great i didn't really love it with the original AirPods either. So you've got room for physical buttons. So bring it on. Weird to use the crown though, right? Seeing it out of context, like out of its usual context, it looks peculiar to me. Yeah, but I like it. I think it's a good move. In the end,

it's just a dial, but it is obviously from the digital crown collection. They brought it over. from the Digital Crown collection. They brought it over. I don't know. And then otherwise, I just want to listen to people who know about this stuff tell me whether it's how good it is and whether they feel it's worth it to them

because this is a category that I don't have an opinion about and I haven't used the products in it and I don't appreciate it, quite frankly. So beyond that, I don't really have anything more to say. Plus to colors, and I understand why they priced it this way. And if they priced it wrong, you know, they'll find out and they'll change the price.

Although I will say something I mentioned in that article. I mentioned the fact that modern Apple, the last couple of years, overprices their products so that they can market them. It used to be the price was the price, and that's not true anymore. I know we've talked about it here, but my example is the 1099 MacBook Air that you could always find for $999. And I think that that will be the case with these headphones too. I would be shocked if sometime next year you couldn't find them on Amazon for $499 or $479.

And people will be like, oh my God, go get them. It's such a great deal. And not even realize that they're still paying $500 for that set of headphones, even though it's $49 off. I think stuff like that will happen because that's sort of part of what Apple does now is market their products by leaving enough room for them to have deals in various online stores. online stores i am very intrigued by them um i i love my airpods pro and i'm intrigued by a pair of headphones that have similar technology uh which is why i have ordered a pair the price is like it's high but i wasn't surprised if sense. I would never have picked this number, but it also doesn't surprise me for all of the things that you've said. It's just like, yeah, of course, in a way. And it's one of those things where it's like, okay, they are that price.

They are very expensive. You know, like it's more expensive than a PlayStation. Like it's a lot of money, but you also can't buy them. And sometimes that's the best kind of marketing because now airpods max they are a hype product yeah i guess you can't get them and i don't think apple intended this to happen but it's like you know it's the wii u thing right if something is something is out of stock i mean honestly we're seeing it right now. All the graphics cards, you can't buy them. All the games consoles, you can't buy them.

Once something goes out of stock, it gets tricky to put it back in stock for a while. And you cannot deny the cultural significance of AirPods. That's why they're called AirPods Maxods max even though really really this should be its own name like homepod is its own name because everything that would be like they're not like airpods it's like it's airpods they don't really share all they share is the technology inside it's like airpods are little things right like you put this big thing on your head this is my airpod it doesn't it doesn't track i don't think which is why we always gave it the jokey name like head pods or

whatever right but which apparently was the code name because there's great friends who are the codes belongers found out that it actually is called head pods in some of the code yeah but i just think you know air podsods or especially like airpods max it's like i know why you named it that like i get it like i get it it was the right name for the product from a marketing perspective but it's just like a funny name to me um i am very intrigued by them as a as a thing uh i hope that they are as good a pair of headphones as the AirPods Pro are earphones. And I will follow up on that next week. So as we mentioned earlier,

next week's episode is our upgrade holiday special. So make sure that you go and watch a Charlie Brown Christmas special on Apple TV+. You can go and watch that. We're going to be talking about it next time. And please, if you have any holiday themed Ask Upgrade questions send them in to us over Twitter with the hashtag

Ask Upgrade or with question mark Ask Upgrade in the RelayFM members Discord you get access to the RelayFM members Discord if you support the show with Upgrade Plus if you go to getupgradeplus.com you can sign up we give great content for you every week

and no ads as well. So if you want an ad-free episode of Upgrade every single week with bonus content, you can go and get that. This time in Upgrade Plus, we talk a little bit about keyboards and what it's like for the two of us to write. So that is some additional.

But it's a lot of behind the scenes stuff, sometimes some extra stuff. It's always really fun in Upgrade Plus. So go to getupgradeplus.com. I would like to thank MailRoute, Bombas, and ExpressVPN for their support of this show. Of course, thank you for listening. If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com. And he is at Jason L.

I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, Tall Mike.